http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Mon, 30 May 2005 13:44:25 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/30/134425.php Michael Roy HollihanFrance held a vote yesterday on whether or not to approve and accept the new, 450 page Eurpean Constitution. The main architects of the European Union were French, so there was a certain necessity to approval. The vote failed decisively: 55% non to 45% oui. The whole Euro-project is now in disarray, with the possibility that Britain will also reject it later this year.What's fascinating is to look at the "county by county" vote. Does this remind anyone of another map? Politics30317@blogcritics.org Mon, 30 May 2005 13:44:25 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/09/133024.php Michael Roy HollihanWhile Star Wars and Dr. Who are the most popular subjects for fan films, Batman gets more than his share of the superhero fanfilms for one simple reason: he's only human. Granted, he's got superior athletic ability, superior detecting and critical thinking skills, a massive pile of money, and a dark rage to avenge his parents' murder, but he is still only a man. That makes filming his adventures quite a bit easier than those of Superman or the Flash or Spiderman. Although the costume isn't cheap....Most fanfilms tends to be on the short side, five to fifteen minutes long, but a few are feature length. Some are quite good. One that caused a stir a couple of years ago, Batman: Dead End was made by a wannabe Hollywood director as his calling card introduction. In it, Batman is fighting the Joker in a rainy alley. Just as he finally brings him down, another villain appears behind. From another movie franchise. You see this monster and wonder if Batman could possibly win this one. It's a jaw-dropper and tantalising.The same director then made a "movie trailer" called World's Finest. It was the "coming soon" featurette announcing a new movie, but there's only the trailer. No movie will get made. That's becoming another trend: making the trailer alone. They're short and have only the highlights. World's Finest is, of course, the teamup of Batman and Superman. The trailer has Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White. Lois Lane is both hot and snarky. Batman fights in the alleys, Superman catches a dropped truck. They stand side by side against the sunset, discussing what to do. The production values are high, and so is the acting. Especially the actors playing Batman and Superman, who are pitch perfect. I remember the first time I saw this, as soon as the "Coming Soon" title appeared at the end, I was shouting "Yeah! I'd go see that!" only to realise that there would be no movie. Ever. Both of these shorts are more than worth your time. You can find them, and a lot of other genre films, here. The diversity, inventiveness and sheer exuberance of many of these films will surprise you.And there's more. You can go here for screencaps, posters, trailers, reviews and links to a lot of other films: superhero, action, horror, you name it. Even comedies about a heartsick Superman who can't handle Lois Lane's rejection and so mopes are Jimmy Olsen's apartment, and "Cape Chasers," about the private lives of public heroes. I'd recommend you visit just for the delight of seeing what's out there and how good some of it is. You can also take a look at this article from Britain's The Sun, which also has some pictures, including a fan Lara Croft! Hubba-hubba.That's the point. There will be no more Lara Croft movies, but fans want to see one. There will never be a movie teaming of Batman and Superman. Too much legal wrangling. You'll never see Spiderman fight Batman, no matter how exciting the prospect. Alien vs. Predator, the movie, only happened becuase genre fans drooled over the prospect for years, leading a comic book company to create a series. The success of that convinced studio heads to try a low-budget version. The failure of the movie has killed any chance of sequels, most likely. The people in control have other concerns than just the simple desires of the fans.But back to the Batman. There's something potent in the mix of rage, vengeance, crime fighting, film noir and moral ambiguity that attracts so many back to him. He is iconic: the lone figure standing over the city skyline eternally on watch, the shadowy shape in the corner of your eye that makes you catch your breath, the righteous figure dealing justice to the criminal. No wonder we are drawn to him. Once you get past the expense of the costume (which can go into the thousands), making films for him becomes pretty inexpensive. I truly believe that fan-made entertainment is the wave of the future. Just as inexpensive computers, easy to use software and the Internet led to the fan fiction explosion and then the birth of the blogosphere, so will cheap cameras and editing software lead to an explosion of fan movies and series. The tools get more and more accessible, then more people get hold of them. It's already happening, bubbling under the cultural radar and rising.One newer variant is the all-CGI movie. Several folks have created Batman and Supergirl movies done entirely with computer-generated characters. Star Wars, too. Others have learned how to harness video game rendering engines to make the game characters "act out" their movie scenarios. Even MTV has caught on to this trend with their "music video mods," where videogames are turned into lip-synched music videos. Try Bloodrayne singing Evanescence' "Going Under." Whoo!I mentioned the other day on my blog Channel 101, a fan-run "television prime time" made up of original pilots and episodes that are voted on monthly. People come to a theater, watch the new episodes of returning shows and the new pilots of hopeful series, then vote on what stays. The originality and creativity is astonishing, as is the number of people taking part.Right now there are two blocks in the way of fan-developed fun. One is the lack of broadband connectivity. Once more than half of the country is on broadband, watch for fan entertainments to explode. Even short, five minute films are large downloads, ten to twenty Mb. Longer programs, like you find on Star Trek: Hidden Frontier run to 60 to 100 Mb! Full length features like Nightwing: A Knight in Bludhaven run even larger. Only with broadband can these be easily shared and we're just not there yet.There's also copyright. At present the studios are treating fan films benignly. The general sense is that as long as you don't charge for, or sell, your creation -- don't profit in any way -- you're fine. Usually a legal disclaimer and props to the copyright holder are sufficient; maybe a linkback to the copyright holder's website. Occasionally, a cease-and-desist campaign will happen, as did with Harry Potter fanfiction when too many folks started writing pre-legal age sexual adventures involving Harry and his teachers, as well as Harry and Hermione.There was also a flap at last year's Comicon, in San Diego, California. This is the nation's largest comic convention and, in recent years, a launching point for promotional and "buzz" campaigns for science fiction, fantasy and horror films from the big studios. The stars come out to talk with fans, new trailers are released to huge hype, panel discussions with filmmakers are held. Tens of thousands attend. The studios threatened to withdraw all their support from Comicon when fan films started being shown. The convention holders, of course, had to acquiese, but fans were still angry.That's the nub of this. Someone creates a hugely successful character or story (Sherlock Holmes, Bugs Bunny, Batman, Star Trek and Star Wars), fans immediately want more, more, more. Studios can't move fast enough, or bravely enough in some cases, so fans take it into their own hands to make more. Star Trek and Harry Potter fan fiction are both rife with romantic adventures the producers just won't take a chance on showing. People make fan films to revisit odd forgotten corners, or favored secondary characters, like Boba Fett of Star Wars. It's the central issue in Henry Jenkin's seminal book Textual Poaching, which looks at the issue of the popular spread of literary (in the book's case, but it applies to cinematic as well) figures and settings into the wider culture, the appropriation of the specific into more generalised thematic uses. In precisely the same way that the stories of the gods and heroes of old have come down to us and been used in a hundred ways, so do the popular figures of today get taken up by this generation.Captain Kirk became the symbol of manliness, virility and action. Luke Skywalker, the symbol of finding your destiny. Harry Potter, too. Superman became the embodiment of the American Way as Batman became the symbol of flawed men fighting the endless fight against evil. X-Men: society's outcasts finding new societies, and the struggle against bigotry. Star Trek: unbounded optimism, friendship over fighting, and the Kennedyesque New Frontier.Normally, this would be a good thing as new generations take up the heroes of old, re-examine them, recontextualise them, take them apart to study them, then rebuild them in new ways. Look at all the ways Cinderella has been explored over the centuries. Or Hamlet, or Romeo and Juliet, for that matter. Shakespeare might never have imagined his play done the way Baz Lurhman did in the Danes/DiCaprio version (actually, I think he would have approved), but it reconnected with a new audience in a vital way.A recent minor example? George Lucas has admitted he isn't interested in the Clone Wars saga of Star Wars. A group of fans (professional animators and writers) managed to get major studio backing and approached him to take that story up. Lucas approved and the Clone Wars animated adventures came to be, done in a non-Star Wars anime style. An examination of part of the mythology in a new setting! Lucas also resisted novelisations of his movies and characters, but once he finally gave in, we got the story of the Jedi Knights and the Rebel Alliance. People want what they want and creators who don't give it find their works taken and explored against their wills.Where before these fan works existed in obscurity or out on the fringes, the Internet Age allows them to find their audiences much more easily and far faster. Star Trek fan fiction was a field only known to a few hundred before the Internet. Now hundreds of thousands read and take part. Now the producers of Star Trek use the tropes of fanfiction (Andorians live on an ice planet and have complex families.) in the actual series. It becomes a dynamic process rather than the one-way feed of the past.The problem is that studios resist this appropriation. They will lose their copyrights and hence, their profits. Copyright used to extend only seventeen years past the life of the author, allowing popular images, figures and settings to enter the wider culture freely. But now, with changes in copyright, studios and estates can keep their copyrights up to one hundred years! For example, Mickey Mouse and a host of other Disney characters should have been public domain decades ago, but aren't. Only a few specific variations of the early design are at this time.The public wants to take up these symbols, so the struggle is on. Studios must enforce their copyrights or else lose them, hence the cease-and-desist actions every so often. The issue hasn't really come to a head yet, but it will soon. And the public will lose out. So will the wider culture. As a natural activity becomes criminalised and more and more people flout the laws, so will respect for other laws erode.The public is already voting. Downloading of songs, movies, anime, and other works is a major portion of traffic on the Internet. It's not going to stop, no matter how the studios and publishers try. Once broadband becomes the de facto standard of accessing the Internet, all bets are off. Already the MPAA and the RIAA are filing hundreds of lawsuits, trying to stem the tide. The puzzled and angry reaction of the public tells you how their campaign will fare.You'll see an explosion of fan-made works based on studio-owned works. People will get used to making their own stuff and watching the works made by others, although there will always be a market for studio works too. (The idea of freely sharing your creativity versus expecting to make a living with it is a whole 'nother post.) It then only becomes a matter of creating sites to bring these fans together and getting the word out. The Internet is spectacular in that regard.The future is just ahead, and I think it looks great.You can find more stuff on Batman films and more here and here. Sci/Tech26486@blogcritics.org Wed, 9 Mar 2005 13:30:24 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/07/025117.php Michael Roy Hollihan[This review contains many substantial spoilers.]June in Japan is the rainy month. The snake in Japan, as in many other cultures, is a symbol for the penis. 2002's A Snake of June, by Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto (already famed for the Tetsuo films and Bullet Ballet) is an enthralling film about the awakening of desire and the explosive consequences of damming that desire.The first thing to be said about A Snake of June is its look. Filmed in black and white, it was transferred to color stock for theatrical showing. Tsukamoto chose to use the possibilities of that stock to give his film a rich Arctic blue gloss that lends the film an otherworldly aura while still keeping the high contrast and heavy detail of black and white. (Beads of water and pores in the skin leap out in sharp relief.) The blue acts to cool the viewer even as events explode onscreen. It detaches us from events in a different way than straight-forward black and white would have. The choice of blue also ties in to the movie's extensive use of water as a metaphor.The movie opens with photographer Iguchi, played by director Tsukamoto, trying to sell some pictures to a magazine. He's told that his pictures of inanimate objects aren't as desirable as erotic pictures. We next meet telephone social counselor Rinko Tatsumi, a quiet woman with a certain French gamin look about her: narrow horn-rim glasses, a stringy boyish bob cut and a mild androgeny. She seems very reserved and self-contained, nervous to please in that way unique to Japanese women in their twenties. Next, we meet her husband, Shigehiko. He's at least 20 years her senior, balding and pudgy and soft. A classic Japanese sarariman and apparently a bit of a momma's boy. (Even his name suggests it. "Ko" is derived for the word for "infant," and is frequently used as a diminuitive at the end of women's names: Michiko, Akiko, etc.) Shigehiko is a cleanliness and neatness freak. When we first meet him, he's scrubbing the kitchen sink. When Rinko protests, wondering if she did a good job, he replies with an odd smile that he enjoys cleaning.As we soon learn, their marriage is dry and sexless. Repression and sterility is everywhere. Enter Iguchi. He mails a packet to Rinko titled "Secret From Your Husband." It's filled with surprising pictures of a reclining Rinko, sitting beside her living room window, exploring her body to erotic effect! We're amazed at the revelation about the prim Rinko and she's shocked by the invasion of her privacy. Iguchi has pierced the bubble built up around her.Then she receives another packet with more pictures of her wearing a very short skirt and makeup, then having an orgasmic moment in the rain. Again, we're surprised to learn about this part of Rinko, as nothing we've been shown yet hints at it. Then, she finds a cell phone. Iguchi calls her and gives her instructions. And the movie kicks into gear.Iguchi is one of her callers at the counseling center, we learn, someone she helped. He wants to return the favor. His plan is to blackmail her with his pictures into doing exactly what she wants to do anyway, but doesn't have the will to conquer her repression and do openly. Her fear of disrupting her marriage, shocking her husband -- her repression -- forces her to follow Iguchi's plan.What follows is the erotic liberation of Rinko and her husband Shigehiko, after a torturous path of humiliation, voyeurism, curiousity, conflict and, ultimately, release. The film's very structure parallels the sexual act itself. We are seduced, violated, seduced again, then taken to climax.All of this is presented through the lens, Iguchi's and Tsukamoto's. Literally, it's a movie drenched in voyeurism, just as the city itself is drenched from beginning to end in rain.A Snake of June is all about fighting through the alienation and separation of modern city life. The film makes extensive use of static framing shots to set scenes or introduce characters. There are also a lot of circular openings -- eyes, windows, cones -- through which we see. Characters often hide around corners to watch other events unfold; there are frequent shots of background characters watching the main three in action, staring directly into the camera as though we are Rinko or Shigehiko.Outside of their marriage, we see Rinko or Shigehiko interact with others, especially Iguchi the blackmailer, through the telephone. Other important moments come through the phone. As much as we see these three out in the world, they don't have much interaction with it. In fact, they own an observatory and a large telescope, the better to disconnect and turn their attentions elsewhere.One stunning sequence involves Rinko being forced to wear her too-short skirt sans underwear through a department store. Her fear is so intense she dons a pair of dark glasses and clutches her umbrella in front of her, like a shield. Add to that her halting, fearful steps, knock-kneed to protect her sex, and she appears almost like a blind woman. Given that she's being led by Iguchi to her release from inhibition, that's a powerful metaphor. The sequence is shot with rapid cuts and shaky, too-close hand-held cameras, to help convey her fear and disorientation. When Iguchi next forces her to buy and insert a vibrator as she parades around the city, Rinko's all-consuming response is truly climactic, orgasmic. Her odyssey is sexual in both form and conclusion!The counterbalancing theme is water. It pours, cascades, drips, splashes, pools and roars through A Snake of June. It's a metaphor for sexuality, the unstoppable pervasiveness of desire. In nearly every outdoor shot, it's raining. Windows are always being spattered with it. Clothes are soaked in it; faces and bodies spotted. There is a repeated shot of water racing like a torrent across stones to a storm drain, collecting in a strange, Lynchian place in the bowels of the city.Another repeated motif is a constant use of the shadows of water running in rivulets down windows, those shadows falling on the walls behind and above the characters, to imply the repressed desire flowing through them, unceasingly running but only a hint of what could be.There are a lot of beautiful shots of water hitting various things. Hydrangeas opening to rainfall; a snail slowly crossing a rain-spattered leaf; a rain-shrouded skyline; windows and walkways splashed with rain; public streets viewed through a haze of rain; and one genuinely wondrous shot of a rain puddle boiling with raindrops, it's whole surface alive with motion. Tsukamoto manages to combine it all with a shot I want to capture for a computer wallpaper: we see Rinko looking apprehensively out her apartment window, through the horizontal slats of open blinds, partly hidden by the angular leaves and limbs of a tree, obscured by heavy rainfall. Alienation, repression, fear and desire all in one aching image.But this is a Shinya Tsukamoto film. His work has been compared to that of David Lynch and David Cronenberg with good reason. Viewers expect a certain weirdness from the man who brought the body-horror nightmares of Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Tetsuo: Body Hammer to life. With Lynch, he shares a similar view of the strangeness lurking just below the surfaces of seemingly normal life, though this movie gets comparisons to the directly weird Eraserhead. With Cronenberg he shares the same fascination with flesh and the body, the limits it can be put through, the fusion of flesh and machine. Though it's primarily a drama with overtones of psychological horror, there are a few moments of trademark Tsukamoto.At two points in the movie, Shigehiko finds himself in a Lynchian underworld where businessmen such as himself are bound and their faces covered in intricate pig-snout cones that limit their view to tiny circles in front of them. These sarariman are forced at one moment to watch a young couple being pushed and shoved in a simulation of sex, as a fat woman in a vaguely circuslike costume bangs a drum. The couple are then put into a front-loader washing machine-like device that is equal parts carnival sideshow and cathedral altar, that fills up with water from the drains above, drowning them. Later, at his dramatic turning point, Shigehiko discovers himself inside the machine, also drowning in water from the streets, being watched by the cone-faced businessmen. Whatever is going on here is entirely metaphorical; it's not even clear he's actually in a real place. In a movie as firmly realistic as this, they are flights of absurdity that somehow still feel proper.There's another moment, when Shigehiko is attacked by an obsessed Iguchi over Rinko, where a black corrugated tube-thing makes an appearance. The cast and crew call it the "metal penis." It's the purest "Tsukamoto" moment. I'll leave it to you to stumble on this scene.A Snake of June reaches a shattering, life-altering climax (literally) when all three characters collide at a construction site unbeknown to each other, mostly. Rinko has at last liberated herself. After a brief call to Iguchi, she puts on the short skirt and makeup, then parades through the department store with obvious satisfaction, revelling in her freedom and power. A horrified but fascinated Shigehiko follows her, hiding like a voyeur, thinking she's having an affair with the photographer whose pictures he's found. When she struts into the site, during a torrential rainstorm, her husband hides around the corner wondering what's to come.Iguchi flies up in his car. As he opens his window and begins to take flash pictures, Rinko gives herself to the downpour. In a solo performance of orgiastic awakening, she swivels and strips for Iguchi until she is naked, consumed in the sensations both external and internal. She finally reaches her orgasm, even as her husband does in the shadows, while Iguchi's flash pops non-stop. The scene is uncomfortable only in its intimacy.Spent, folded into herself, she has one last thing to achieve. Rising straight, facing Iguchi's camera unflinching with a slightly crooked smile, completely naked -- not at all nude, but naked -- she invites his appraisal. Shigehiko, not comprehending that the moment is for ultimately for him, runs away ashamed.All these events have been built up to slowly. The characters react to each other and move forward believably. But from here to the final act, it's like a rush to orgasm. I'll leave this to the viewer's delight.As you've likely guessed by now, I'm in love with this film. It's a near-perfect blend of art, horror and drama. The intricate weaving of voyeurism into every aspect of the filming, theme, metaphor and composition of the movie, along with the concurrent use of water as another, conflicting yet complementary metaphor, makes for a dense viewing experience, even at a brisk run time of 77 minutes!Don't think this is short. Tsukamoto makes use of a lot of the fancy film tricks -- abrupt cuts within scenes, shaky hand-held cameras, oddball angles, changing points of view, long empty establishing shots -- so beloved of modern film-makers. (Think Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Trainspotting.) Unlike many directors who need to pad their movies to 90 minutes, and will therefore cut back on the cutting edge stuff for more conventional narrative techniques to avoid wearing out the viewer (Again, think Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), Tsukamoto does no such thing. He sticks with his choices all the way through. Consequently, the movie doesn't wear you out, nor does it feel truncated. It's a unified experience, from seduction to release, in every sense.There are other elements I'd like to discuss (I took four pages of notes on the second viewing!) but I feel I need to stop before I belabor my point. I really liked this movie. It's probably now in my Top Ten. It's a visual feast, a compelling story of three repressed people finding what they want, a cinematic experience, and a stunning accomplishment of eroticism. Asuka Kurosawa, the actress who plays Rinko, is brave beyond words. What she does on screen would compare to the fearlessness of a Jennifer Jason Leigh or Jennifer Connelly. Amazing but organic to her character at every moment, so her craft is invisible. Even Yuji Kohtari, as Shigehiko, rises above his stereotypic middle-aged, middle class Japanese appearance to equal moments of bashfulness and confusion that are shaded with engaging subtlety.There's no dub available on the disk, only subtitles. They fly thick and fast in this film. It means you should watch the film twice: once with subtitles that you follow closely to catch the dialogue and narrative, then again with no subtitles so you can lose yourself in the visual experience.The odd monochromatic color scheme reproduces perfectly, with great detail and nuance, on my television and so is a treat of its own. No artefacts are in the black areas, nor is there bleeding of colors.There are interviews with the director and his co-stars, and another, short "making of" featurette. Along with some previews of other Tartan Asia Extreme releases, that's it.A Snake of June gets my highest recommendation. It's clear that it was long in the conception and meticulous in its execution. Everyone in the cast and crew are fully bought into Tsukamoto's vision. If you're not sure you'll want to watch any Japanese films, and would like to try just one, make it this. It's culturally specific enough to entertain, resonant enough in its story and emotion to knock even American audiences over. It's beautiful, exotic and erotic. Powerful and cathartic like great sex. And I mean that. Video26371@blogcritics.org Mon, 7 Mar 2005 02:51:17 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/21/065923.php Michael Roy HollihanIt's an unfortunate fact of the race to fill the Tennessee Senate seat for retiring Bill Frist that Tennesseans will be deluged, smothered, with stories about Representative Harold Ford, Jr. He has nearly no chance of winning, barring a surprise screw-up which, with Tennessee Republicans, should never be discounted. After all, even with a majority in the State Senate they still couldn't elect one of their own as Lt. Governor. But Ford has two facts on his side. He has a national presence and reputation, which (like Frist) makes him the subject of lots of "hometown boy makes good" stories. And, he's a Democrat. The state's newspapers are still filled with unbending Democratic editorialists and reporters who view Ford as their next great hope in stemming Tennessee's still-rising Republican tide. It matters not at all how the Republicans conduct their campaign, nor how magnetic their final candidate is (ha!), Ford will dominate the coverage. It doesn't matter how far ahead his opponent is, and he will be every step of the way; Ford will dominate. It doesn't matter who wins, Ford will get sympathetic post-election coverage that will focus on his "gracious in defeat" manner or his "surprising" showing. These are the facts in Tennessee. Democrats who do well nationally get nearly sycophantic press coverage; successful Republicans are deferred to and respected but do not receive the same style of treatment.For those without much time, or interest at this point, you can read this brief roundup of the landscape from the Memphis Commercial Appeal. (Registration required.)But Harold Ford, Jr. will lose. So let's get him out of the way. Harold Ford is the presumptive nominee on the Democratic side. He has the national reputation and a career in the House that give him that all-important edge over any State-level competitor. He's a rising star among the national Democratic leadership, and a would-be heir both to the star power of Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Committee's fading legacy.He's one of a coming breed of post-Civil Rights Era black politicians. He is a black candidate acceptable, and even attractive, to a lot of whites; able to speak the bland pieties of politics without recourse to black cadences like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Ford can "be black" without having to play the race card. He doesn't automatically cause white liberal guilt meters to twitch with his merest utterances.On the state level, however, he is still a Ford. Their behavior has filled newspaper pages and television screens for decades. His uncle John, the legendary State Senator who lives his life like an armed and dangerous 19th Century Mormon, and his father Harold, Sr. who after financial scandals bequeathed his seat to his son in a dynastic display worthy of a Kennedy, have created lasting memories on Tennesseans. Add to that the less-well known Memphis City Council Fords and other local relatives, and you have an extended family whose whiff is deeply unpleasant to many Tennesseans; even some Democrats will curl their lip at the mention of the Ford name. Whatever national cachet he possesses will always lose some of its potency inside the state because of that. Nationally, the press seems little interested in the connections, but in the heat of a high-profile, do-or-die (for Democrats) Senate race that may change.That's partly why the Republicans are making so much hay of Senator John Ford's latest shenanigans with regards to his multiple-partner, multi-home, settling child support in court, family life. It has nothing to do with Harold, but it makes the Fords look sleazy. Republicans hope some of that slime will spatter Harold. In morality-conscious Tennessee, that will cost votes. The more-legitimate questions of John's residency (which I predict the State Senate will ignore, as it affects too many other politicians) and the questionable ethics of his financial connections to TennCare and Children's Services (which the Feds may have to pursue) will serve to keep the Ford name in the press much longer as investigations are called for, deflected, debated, started and dragged out.There's also the fact that Ford's state power base derives almost entirely from two places: Shelby County, specifically Memphis, where he's unassailable, and in the capital in Nashville, where it's mostly admiration for his political skills. There are still some thin areas in the counties in between where he can count on votes, but Middle and East Tennessee are solidly Republican. Were his home district not equally solidly black and Democratic, he'd have to devote more energy to shoring up that base, making him a far less viable contender. On the flip side, his ability to make inroads is severely cramped.So we have State Senator Rosalind Kurita throwing in her name against Ford in the Democratic primary. Her advantage is that she's not a Ford. She's also well-regarded elsewhere in the state. Her problem is the opposite of Ford's: she will make almost no ground in Shelby County and without that she can't come close to winning her party's nomination. Just on raw numbers, she has no chance.Ford also has another problem: a significant part of his power is his national reputation, on which he has become dependent. With the national party in severe flux following a decade of losing election cycles, he finds himself having to defend his Clinton/DLC tactics against a leadership falling under the sway of the Howard Dean / MoveOn.org / antiwar, anti-America Left. Moderates and centrists are being thinned out, made to toe the line, in order to draw sharper distinctions against Republicans. Ford's co-optation instincts are frowned upon.The Ford campaign began, for the state press and for all practical purposes, with this article, adulatory but honest, from the alt-weekly Nashville Scene, back in March of 2004! Looking back from the Demcrats' post-2004 turmoil and struggle, it's eerily prescient to read this: Sounds like a pretty good formula, but this kind of thing doesn't sit well with people like Nikki Courtney, popular morning show personality on WMAK 96.3-FM. During a Q-and-A session following a recent Ford appearance, Courtney shouts into a microphone while apologizing to the 200 or so "Music Row Democrats" gathered at the Belcourt Theatre to hear Ford speak. She takes him to task for telling the audience to stop acting angry."I am angry!" she bellows. "I am pissed off! I want to say that I'm angry!" Some applause follows, and Courtney continues.Throughout, Ford listens patiently, waits a beat after she's finished, nods in acknowledgment and then pretty much repeats what he had just said."Forget 'angry,' " he concludes. "The word we need to focus on is 'winning.'"Mild grumbling in the peanut gallery begins to grow. This crowd wants some red meat, and Ford, irritatingly, refuses to provide it. There is mild doubt on the faces of some of the diehards as Ford continues to say things they don't necessarily want to hear. The question is written on their perplexed faces: We like this guy, but is he really one of us?The answer today is no. Ford is a student of Clinton and Bush, admitting it willingly, who each won with similar tactics of wide appeal and issue poaching and personal charisma. His desire to stay near the middle puts him at odds with the still left-moving national party, who are starting to flex muscle against DLC legacists such as himself.Abramson was far ahead of his time in this article. He makes points and illustrates Ford in ways that resonate almost two years later. It is must reading still. He also nails Ford's problems.Democrats are coming at Ford now, trying to rope the wayward stallion back into the corral. Take The Black Commentator for instance. They write: The Black body politic has been invaded by corporate money, which seeks through its media arms to select a new Black leadership from among a small group of compliant and corrupt Democrats. Memphis Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. is a principal vector of the disease, an eager acolyte of the corporate-funded Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), and now the point man among Black Democrats in the Republican mission to destroy Social Security.Ford should also be known as the Black Man Who Dances With Blue Dogs one of only two Black congressional members of the Blue Dog Democratic Coalition (the other Black and Blue Dog is Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop). C-span congressional scholar Ilona Nickles aptly describes the Blue Dogs as "closer in purpose to a former coalition of southern Members of the House known as the 'Boll Weevils,' whose heyday was in the early 1980's. These Members defected as a group from the Democratic party to vote with Congressional Republicans on budgetary and tax bills."The early 80's, you are reminded, is the period when the Republicans' began their national rebirth. Ford is a student of winners, regardless of party, which is a source of trouble with his party mates, who increasingly are only looking to a narrower and narrower part of themselves.Another recent and unmistakable example comes from another alt-weekly, the Memphis Flyer. Ford has been making sympathetic, but deliberately vague, noises about Social Security reform for years. Even Abramson mentions it. It's of a piece with Ford's ASPIRE program and its ideals of an "ownership society." He's been unclear intentionally. He needs to sound just reformist enough to appeal to Republicans who might support Bush's prosecution of the War on Terror, but dislike his flaccid domestic agenda. So, he can't be clear that he'll need tax increases to do his reforms, which is why he is happy if pundits and commentators inaccurately ally him with the President's plans. On the other side, he has to reassure Democrats that whatever reforms he supports, they won't be unpalatable. Study what he's proposing and you'll see the same old "more government, more money, more outreach" Democratic approach. Ford hoped no is paying close enough attention either way to call his bluff.He was wrong. Lots of the new leadership in the party has been and felt the need to get Ford to clear things up. Jackson Baker, the Flyer's political columnist and a Democratic sympathiser in the general sense of wanting to see the party returned to power and dominance, took up the cudgel. Baker's purpose is multi-fold, I believe. First, he reads the changing winds, the continuing leftward drift, and is tagging along. Second, I believe he's always hoped that covering Ford, the rising national star, would get him noticed nationally as well. Maybe gain him some credibility as a "long time chronicler" of the Ford arc, or at least earn him some insider status when Ford becomes a Senator or Presidential candidate one day. Additionally, Baker has really gotten into blogs recently and may be angling for some respect from that quarter.Baker undertook, in this article, to fix the Ford "problem" vis-a-vis Social Security. It's very well written, lays out the situation clearly, and forcibly pins Ford to a clear plan. It also destroyed all Ford's careful work. As Baker noted, one national Democratic opinion leader, Josh Marshall, thought enough of the article to use it as the basis of changing his opinion of Ford. And now Ford is divorced from perceived Bush sympathies, a potential vote getter, and nailed to a traditional "tax and spend" Democratic plan. He's also firmly associated with Democratic obstructionism and their inexplicable view that there is no problem with Social Security, a view diametrically opposed to his. While the folks at the Flyer are as pleased as can be with their accomplishment, Ford is reportedly quite upset. Small wonder, with friends like these "helping" him out. Having achieved this victory, Baker promises to keep up his shepharding of the wayward Congressman.This incident gives Tennessee Republicans something they are likely to use against him. They can plausibly argue that Ford is nothing like Clinton or Bush, as he tries to portray himself. He's no longer a party-leading moderate, but a minion of the Left. They can also definitively show that if the Democratic leadership pushes hard enough, Ford will bend to them against the wishes of his potential constituents. His independence and flexibility have been destroyed. In a state like Tennessee, with a strong-minority Democratic party requiring outreach to Republican voters for Democratic success, he's been knee-capped politically. But hey, at least he's ideologically pure now. More tactics like this will end his Senate chances utterly.Next we turn to the Republican side, which is already, 18 months out, getting crowded. One major possible candidate, US Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, has declined a run. Her House seat is reasonably secure and she enjoys a sterling reputation. She also has iron-clad Republican credentials thanks to her efforts to stop a Tennessee income tax several years ago. It was she who passed the word to a Nashville radio-show host that a tax vote was about to be snuck through the Tennessee General Assembly. The resulting protests formed within minutes and lasted for months, a staggering show of sustained resistance that killed an income tax for many years (altering state-level politics with it), ended a lot of political careers, and earned her the enmity of newspaper editors across the state. I suspect this ready-made target (the press to this day still refer to the daily throngs of protesters as "horn-honking" yahoos), along with a thriving House career, affected her decision not to run.The reason the Republican primary field is so crowded is a bit of "inside baseball." Bill Frist's voluntary stepping down, after a promised two terms, is almost unprecedented. Senate seats rarely come open. The men and women who gain them generally have a virtual lifetime cinesure. Incumbents are rarely beaten. It takes disease or death, major scandal, or the rare generational political re-alignment to unseat a Senator. Even then, there is usually an "heir apparent" already in line waiting election. Frist has avoided this. An open seat such as we face is just too tempting not to take a run at. The odds may be long, but the rewards make it entirely worthwhile.There are presently three major players in the field.Undeclared but a likely entrant is the former candidate for Tennessee governor, Van Hilleary. Hilleary is generally well-like and well-respected, and has lots of support state-wide, in part because of the publicity of the 2002 gubernatiorial race. That race, and its decisive win for Democrat Phil Bredesen, may come back to haunt him. Already a Republican with good credentials, he managed to lose to a Democrat who -- in Alabama Governor George Wallace's famous phrase -- "out-segged" him.Hilleary somehow found his Republican strength unseated and outflanked by a Democrat who outdid him on solid Republican issues and put him on the defensive. Republicans were divided by their governor, Don Sundquist, who in his second term suddenly turned his back on Republican principles. He spent wildly and backed a decidedly unpopular State income tax. Bredesen successfully fought his Democratic baggage: attachment to a party that had just fought a vicious battle to pass a State income tax and a perception that he would "back door" that tax if elected. Bredesen, as a Democrat, was widely expected by everyone -- Republican and Democrat -- to continue the budget-busting spending of his Republican predecessor, but he steadily stated he would reduce spending and not propose new programs. He was repeatedly hammered with this expectation and never bowed. Hilleary was flummoxed and never gained an offensive. He came off as oddly weak, lacking in leadership, always playing catch-up to Bredesen. Hilleary lost soundly to a Democrat in a race widely tipped to be the Republicans' to lose, leaving him tainted. Facing another underdog Democrat in the Senate race may be a little too uncomfortably close to a history repeat possibility for many. At the least, he'll lose energy, money and time combatting this perception.Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker has been running for quite a while already. He's already got a reported $2 million in the bank, with fund-raising season still to come. But, as Nashville blogger and conservative Republican pundit Bill Hobbs notes: [Corker is] a moderate Republican allied with the state's previous big-spending/pro-income tax governor and also cozy with Democrats....I have to admit that I know next to nothing about Corker. That, in itself, spells trouble for him, as Shelby County / West Tennessee must be a part of a winning state-wide formula in any primary run. Once the race gets underway, expect to see him spend a lot of early time over in the Western Grand Division.[Note to non-Tennessee readers: This long, narrow state is traditionally parsed into three "grand divisions" largely due to geography's effect on 19th century politics and agriculture / manufacturing. The Tennessee River provides the natural boundaries: its eastern flow to the south separates the Eastern and Middle Divisions and on its return northward flow after passing through Alabama it divides the Middle and Western Grand Divisions. Memphis is the "capital" of the West, where the focus was Mississippi River trade and small farming, and the land is very flat and loamy. Nashville is the "capital" of the Middle (sometimes Central), with horses and politics, and elevated rocky soil atop the Cumberland Plateau. Knoxville rules the insular East, with mining, and its Appalachian geography. These Divisions are still politically and culturally distinctive to this day. There are still meaningful animosities and competitions, too.]The last major candidate, and the one I think is currently in the best position, is former four-term Congressman Ed Bryant. (Campaign website already here.) Bryant has previously made a run at the other Tennessee Senate seat, the one currently occupied by former governor and Republican Lamar Alexander. There are important lessons and cautions to note here.Bryant is the only social conservative in the race so far. His stances on a wide array of issues habr strong appeal to fundamentalist and evangelical Christian conservatives. He can be counted on to use this appeal in the next Senate race.But in 2002, when Alexander opposed him, the Bush White House (read: Karl Rove) refused to endorse Bryant, even though he was widely viewed as a stronger candidate, and backed the far past his prime Alexander instead. (He had been reduced to a sideshow perennial Presidential campaign that was noted more for sad laughs than serious consideration.) Alexander has also sometimes been derided for his moderate/RINO (Republican in Name Only) tendencies. The choice stung Bryant.In that race, and other elections cycles during his first term, Bush and his advisors have shown a consistent tendency to prefer "marquee" Republicans -- former office holders or candidates with proven name appeal -- over more strongly credentialed social conservatives. Riordan over Simon in California; Liddy Dole, Arlen Specter, Lamar Alexander, etc. Even if the "marquee" Republicans carry RINO labels and visible liberal positions, the Bush White House has gone to them over popular and desirable social, Christian, and fiscal conservatives.In Tennessee's 2006 Senate race, they are the other shoe waiting to be dropped. It's still an open question whether the White House will involve itself as strongly as it has to date in Senate and House races. Rove has announced that his days of Presidential campaigning are over, but he's also believed to be committed to a plan to ensure a Republican dominance of national politics to rival their previous early 20th century reign, and the mid-century Democratic one. Keeping Tennessee red is vital to that plan.Where does that leave Bryant? Hanging in limbo, unfortunately. At present, I can't think of another "marquee" Tennessee Republican who can be called on. Will the Bush White House accept a social conservative if he's the winning candidate? Or will they move to back a lesser-known (and so more expensive to campaign) moderate like Corker? It's the open question that will be decisive in shaping the Republican primary campaign season.Hilleary and Bryant are both already touting polls showing them leading the field. Obviously, at this early date the polls are totally without merit except as tools for media marketing and newspaper stories. Most Tennesseans have no idea there's already a contest going on!As the race begins to take shape later this year and really heat up, there are many places to get information. From the traditional newsprint sources you can expect the standard, familiar, Democrat-leaning analysis and reporting. Here's the big-city rundown: In Memphis: the daily Commercial Appeal and the alt-weekly Memphis Flyer. In Nashville: the daily Tennessean and the alt-weekly Nashville Scene. In Knoxville: the daily News-Sentinel.Online, there are the following conservative and/or Republican blogs: Hobbs Online (Tennessee's #1 right-side blogger and conservative Republican.) South End Grounds (Former Republican operative in Nashville.) Half-Bakered (Memphis conservative Libertarian.) Frank Cagle (Long-time commentator and analyst.) Fishkite (Christian conservative supporter of Ed Bryant.) Right Minded (Lebanon, TN, Democrat reporter and columnist.) Adam Groves (UT graduate and Republican political operative.)...and their liberal and/or Democratic counterparts: South Knox Bubba (Tennessee's #1 left-side blogger and "progressive" Democrat.) LeanLeft (Memphis Democrats.) No Silence Here (Knoxville News-Sentinel reporter and blogger.) Democratic Talk Radio (Tennessee-based, partisan Democratic weekly talk radio show and website.)This bloglist is by no means complete. As the election approaches more will join in. Most folks aren't paying attention yet. But at the present time, these are the ones who are or shortly will be shaping the discussion. You can go to the Rocky Top Brigade webpage for a more complete list of Tennessee bloggers.The race will ultimately be hot and vigorous. It will have a defining effect on the career of Harold Ford, Jr. It may even become a bellwether for Democratic chances of recovery under Howard Dean's leadership and Republican plans for the post-Bush future. Stay tuned. Politics25777@blogcritics.org Mon, 21 Feb 2005 06:59:23 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/19/044251.php Michael Roy Hollihan[Mild spoilers ahead.]I find myself ambivalent about 6ixtynin9, or A Funny Story About 6 and 9 as the film is also known. This film was made by a celebrated Thai director, Pen-Ek Tatanaruang, who also made Last Life in the Universe.It's as though this movie is trying to be two, or even three, kinds of film at once but not really melding things into a proper alloy. The DVD box bills it as a comic thriller, but I found it dangerously indecisive. Sometimes it's a comedy, and a funny one; sometimes it's a gangster film, and a fair one; sometimes it's a horror movie, and not a particularly distinguished one. You can feel that this movie was supposed to be darkly comic, but it just doesn't gel. If I had to pin it down, I'd call it a gangster thriller, with comedy shoehorned in.The movie is the story of Tum (pronounced like "doom"), who as the movie opens is laid off from her job. She faces money problems now and she's suicidal. The next morning, she finds a noodle box full of cash ($25,000!) at her front door. It's the answer to a prayer until the gangsters who left it there by mistake -- the number 9 on her door keeps slipping down to look like a 6, hence the movie's title -- want it back. They muscle into her apartment and try to rough her up. Tum displays the usual movie pluck, and kills them both.After that, it's a long train of mistaken identities, incompetent thugs, crossed purposes and a growing pile of bodies in her tiny apartment as two rival gangs, the police, friends and her nosy neighbors get involved. Through it all, Tum keeps dealing with it, coping and trying to get ahead. The situation builds and builds until one death too many pushes her to the edge and then a massive Mexican standoff makes her ultimate decision for her.Remember: if you are in the middle of a multi-party Mexican standoff, make sure the phone is turned off.Had this been played as a dark thriller with horror overtones, it would have been a movie like Audition or The Eye, films with cool surfaces and calm characters riding a rising tide of fear and horror until the climactic violence interrupts. Had the violence and death been downplayed and the comic side frenzied up, this would have been a caper comedy like any number of films Hollywood churns out. But the film's languid pacing and deliberately unfurled, refolding narrative keep the comedy from building a momentum necessary to comic success. The opposite applies: the comic interludes keep the movie from sustaining the horrific mood a thriller needs.I may be over-examining this. Certainly a lot of the reviews I saw while getting the above links like the movie as a comic thriller. To me, this is two movies chopped up and tumbled together.That said, the parts where Tum must deal with the gangsters out to get her do have a constantly building tension. Her face-offs with the individual thugs display her cool pragmatism. No matter what happens, she deals with it. That drive helps to propel the movie even as new complications arise.And the comedy is really funny, prompting me to guffaw many times. Not to ruin things, but the thug who sees a cop hidden behind a door, not realising he's a corpse, leaps into a hilarious parody of Hong Kong gun ballet. The nosy neighbors are three chattery women who have an obsession with Tum's (supposed) sex life that includes graphic demonstrations of what they think she's doing. They were surprising considering how chaste Asian mainstream cinema usually is.Technically, this is a well-done film. Varied locations around Bangkok are used to great effect, showing us the everyday lower-middle class side of this exotic Western holiday city. The lighting scheme in Tum's apartment helps make the small space interesting no matter the angle. The locations and sets are numerous, which I enjoyed for some reason. There's no question the director is in charge of his movie and most of his materials. He occasionally takes us into a few character daydreams as though they are part of the real action, an effective device.There's also a lot of blood. It's not gory, but plentiful. This being an Asian comedy, it's bright red. But if blood is a problem, beware.I keep coming back to the uncomfortable fit between the comedy and the thriller halves of the movie. I would recommend this movie to anyone who can be tolerant of faults. It is both tense and funny by turns. Around the hour mark, I reconciled myself to the dichotomous nature of this movie, settled in to see how it played out and had a good time. But if your tolerance level isn't there, you will likely find this movie disorienting or tiring.One word about the star, Lalita Panyopas. She is, to borrow a phrase from the gang at Ain't It Cool News, a tomboy beanpole. She resembles a tall Karen Mok; cute, thin and muscular. But she seems to have only one expression: pained confusion. For most of the movie it works well enough in its small variations, but the few times we see her smile, it's a sudden surprise.Another warning: Thai women's voices tend to be high and nasal, at least in this film. When the characters get angry or agitated it makes for an ear-scraping experience with the vowel-inflecting Thai language. Two scenes came close to painful for me.I have to caution possible viewers about the subtitles. The movie has a lot of dialogue in spots, and sometimes the subtitles come thick and fast. It may be difficult for people not used to them. A combination of bad spelling and sometimes weird mistranslations doesn't help. Also, one character is deaf. When he uses sign language to communicate, there's a black bar that appears on the screen where, apparently, Thai script was inserted. That's not on the American DVD.There are no extras on the disk, save some previews of other Lion's Gate films and this movie's Thai trailer. That trailer includes a few scenes and shots either deleted from the American version of the movie or not used at all.As you can guess by now, I'll recommend this movie to fans of gangster or plucky-heroine movies, or those who just enjoy Asian films in general. I did enjoy it once I "got" it. More mass audiences may be put off by the inconsistent tone of the movie. If you're not sure -- give it a chance anyway. The parts are good even if the whole may not be. Video25700@blogcritics.org Sat, 19 Feb 2005 04:42:51 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/18/171015.php Michael Roy HollihanI was rather amazed to see Saw in Midtown Video only a few months after its theatrical run. That's highly unusual. Normally it would be a sign of a true stinker of a film. Not in this case. Saw is a stylish, tense and surprising horror/thriller.The movie depends on surprises, so I'm not going to spoil anything in my review. Nothing discussed should ruin your experience with it.It was written and made by a pair of Melbourne Australians in Los Angeles. The director, James Wan, doesn't look like he's been out of high school long. The film was made with a microscopic budget that sometimes betrays them. The whole film looks like it was made in different parts of the same set, and a car scene late in the movie is patently fake. On the other hand, the set design, lighting design, and attention to detail is impressive for a small film. The film's central set, a rusted-out, filthy industrial bathroom, especially works.The same goes for the cast: Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Dina Meyer, Monica Potter, Shawnee Smith (who takes a small role and runs with it) and Tobin Bell are all higher-budget stars. Everyone is superb, with the slight exception of a beefy-looking Elwes, who strains believability in some of the weepy moments. He's off just enough at those moments that you can see him acting. But that doesn't throw off the film.The movie opens with a man -- Adam (scriptwriter Leigh Whannell) -- coming to in a tub of water, in the afore-mentioned bathroom. He finds himself shackled to a pipe. Then he learns he's not alone. There's another man, Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Elwes), shackled to another pipe across the room. Between them lies a body in a growing pool of blood, its head blown open in apparent suicide; one hand holds a gun, the other a small tape recorder. That's the set-up: two men locked in a room. Everything proceeds from here.This is one of the only two problems I have with the film: its structure. Too much depends on events outside of the central trap. It's a lot like being inside the movie Se7en from the point of view of the victims; the important detective information has to be shoe-horned in, disrupting us. (This movie really is a child of Se7en in a lot of ways.) We are dropped into a dilemma with absolutely no knowledge of the characters, situation or motivations. At first, everything we learn we must be told by one of the characters in flashbacks. We don't know the trustworthiness of the character, so we don't know if we can believe what he tells us. Unfortunately, the director cuts to scenes the character wasn't in, breaking that mood and revealing the cheat. It quickly becomes obvious the movie is just using the trick of breaking up the narrative, and the sense of time, to keep certain information from us until the plot calls for it. It was effective in Memento, less so here. This also reminds me of Cube, which had a very similar construction and theme -- testing humans to destruction under bizarre, extreme physical and psychological circumstances -- but successfully never left its single claustrophobic set until the final moments of the film.Because of the way we learn of the other characters in the film, it leads to what was, for me, a massive misunderstanding about one of them that, for nearly fifteen minutes, had me totally thinking one character was the bad guy manipulating several other characters, when in fact he was exactly who we were introduced to. Sorry I'm not more specific. It's just that a specific short scene was put in the wrong place, completely putting one character's motivations in the wrong light. One very important scene was ruined for me, because I misunderstood what was happening.Also, the movie sticks with its structure and originality until late in what seems like the last act, when it collapses into some conventional good guy / bad guy struggles right out of a thousand previous films. After effectively keeping the characters relying on their wits and determination, sticking with its brutal and extreme set-up, I thought we were headed for an undeserved, easy wrap-up. Happily it turns out that this is only prologue to a truly surprising and horrific ending, one that's like something out of Edgar Allen Poe, and that's all I'll say here. You think the movie is about to lose its convictions, then it rallies and shocks you. Really shocks you.So far, I've made the film sound less than enjoyable, but I guess that the inventiveness of the production design, which makes decrepit a pervading atmosphere, and the nastily Darwinian puzzle at the center of the movie, with its coldly evil options for survival, create such an unrelenting tension in the viewer that the few elements that disrupt that really stand out. The central dilemma is truly horrifying and seemingly inescapable. When the filmmakers stick to it, they have a distrubingly winning movie, one that grips with icy hands. The director has an eye for composition, light and texture. He also has a willingness to try out camera tricks that often pays off in surprising ways. Given more time for shooting (this production was made in an Asian-fast eighteen days) and a bit more money, I think James Wan will make some great movies.It's grisly, but the gore level isn't as extreme as what many other films this edgy usually assault you with, but neither is it an easy film to watch. The emphasis is on the thriller and psychological aspects, not on the blood'n'guts.The DVD doesn't come with much extra. There are the usual audio options, and an alternate commentary track with director Wan and scriptwriter / actor Whannell. This is fine, in that you get some sense of the tight budget and time restrictions, as well as their sense of awe in working with "name" actors. It's ruined to some extent by their nervous giggliness. Do make sure to listen all the way to the end, though, for an impersonation of a BBC News reporter. There is also a very short "making of" featurette, a music video (Fear Factory) and a "making the video" featurette. The last bonus is a movie poster feature that begins with long, slow, close-up pans of the posters followed by a full-screen view. It's different and kinda effective.The lapses I mentioned above keep me from giving my highest recommendation, but this is definitely a must-see for modern horror fans or folks who like to watch characters fight their way out of impossible situations. The director and crew make the most of the limitations of their budget, with few misfires. Some reviewers have been much more harsh, but I always like to favor movies that reach high but don't quite grasp the ring. This is a nail-biter and a cringe inducer. Almost, but not quite, highly recommended. Video25679@blogcritics.org Fri, 18 Feb 2005 17:10:15 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/22/024342.php Michael Roy HollihanOne year ago today -- Tuesday, July 22, 2003 -- a sudden storm with 100 mile an hour winds struck Memphis, Tennessee. In less than thirty minutes, a major metropolis was wrecked, swept from the map. America never knew.I woke up that day around 5:30, turning on the morning news to see how the weather was going to be. Radar was showing a small, strong cell over northeast Arkansas heading to Memphis. It looked bad, but there were no warnings yet. I decided to haul ass, get dressed and out the door, and try to beat the storm.I walk to work. That morning, I swung by the Rite Aid on Union. The sky was clouding up quickly; no sunrise today. By the time I left the Rite Aid, there was a light sprinkle starting and the sky was pitch black. The time was just after 6:30. In the short distance down the block from Union to Madison, the sky opened up, dumping a torrent of water. Standing at the corner, I discovered I could barely see a block down the road. The rain and wind was getting worse as I stood there. Braving a couple of oncoming cars, I started across the road and realised my mistake: the wind was so strong that if I fell, I wouldn't get back up in time to get out of traffic!By the time I made it in the door to work, the rain was falling sideways. Literally. I stood at the window, looking across the parking lot to the apartments on the other side. Water falling on the other side of their roof was being blown over the peak, almost like a horizontal waterfall. The winds were still picking up.Then the power went out. I got out my portable radio and tuned to WREC, AM600. They were reporting a major storm was sweeping through the city. Well, that was obvious, as the winds were shaking the building of the restaurant I worked in! I had started a bit of opening, but once the power went out, I quit, not knowing how long power would remain out. Little did I know....The radio kept repeating the storm warning, and reporters were calling in from wherever they were with stories of downed trees, blocked roads and damaged homes. It kept looking worse and worse. The rains eventually slowed down, so I went out to Madison to see what it looked like.It was awful. Across the street, an old oak was down, snapped at the base, lying on Madison. Looking back to the west, I could see another, huge oak was down across from Zinnie's. Limbs and leaves were everwhere. There was a growing sense that something terrible had happened.I had a feeling that it would be quite a while before we got power, after lunch at least, so I made sure all the coolers and walk-ins stayed closed, to protect the food for as long as possible. I secured a few other things around the store, then dragged a chair to the door on Madison, with the radio in one ear. Reports were still rolling in and it was bad. Very, very bad.The first amazing thing was how many folks came out within an hour or so of the storm. I have never seen so many pedestrians on Madison! People were out walking around, inspecting the damage. I got stories from them about trees down on other streets and reports of massive trees down all around the city, blocking Poplar even. We shared whatever news we had, trying to figure out what was going on.I watched a man walking by the apartments across the street as he climbed up the concrete patios to try all the doors and windows he could reach. He knew I was watching, but kept it up anyway. There weren't any openings, so he continued on.The phones were out, but I eventually figured out that it was because of the base unit not having power, and not the phone lines. We didn't have a spare that wasn't a mobile, so I had to wait to go back home -- by now I was worrying about damage on my street. There's a hundred-plus foot oak across the street from my building and a two-trunked birch that grew right over the roofline.After a while of watching the tourists, collecting and swapping stories, listening to the news, and wondering what was next, my buddy Amanda came by. She lives nearby and decided to check in with me. She told me there was no power anywhere in the area, except a small block down around Anderton's for some reason. She pulled up a chair and we just shot the breeze, discussing what little we knew.I had decided to stay at the store until one of the managers came by, but by 9:30 no one was there yet. No calls, of course. Finally, another worker swung by, Phil. He had been driving all over the city to see what had happened and he had horror stories of ruined buildings, trees down everywhere, crushed cars, plate glass blown out, power out universally, Union almost undrivable from the debris, etc. I figured I'd take a chance here, so I locked up the store, said good-bye to Amanda and hopped into Phil's car.First thing, we tried to drive by my apartment. We couldn't turn in at Belvedere and Monroe because of a downed oak behind the First Tennessee ATM kiosk blocking the whole street. I started worrying pretty hard now. But when we got to the other side of the block, my building was just fine! The hundred-plus foot oak still stood proudly.However.... Another oak in the middle of the block was lying over the street and had crushed a car parked under it. A third oak was down, blocking the drives into another apartment building. Soem of the lesser, but still enormous, trees had broken and hanging limbs. One had fallen over a home and snapped the roof. It was spectacular.We ran into my boss, who was also out looking at the carnage. I told her what was going on at the store, such as it was, and she told me about the Cooper-Young area where she lives, which was also seriously blocked from tree damage.Phil and I toured Midtown. It was unbelievable how much tree damage there was and how many stores, homes and businesses were affected. It occured to me that one good side-effect of this storm was how many sick and diseased and dead trees had been exposed, had been brought down. Memphis is one of the greenest cities in America, and proudly so. We have one of the most extensive canopies you'll ever see. However, a lot of folks don't take care of their heritage and today was the day we paid for our negligence.By now, listening to radio, it was clear that this storm had been something of hurricane strength and that most, if not all, of Memphis had been clobbered. Walloped hard. Huge sections of the city were without power and, because it had been mostly by tree damage, it would be a long time before the trees were removed or pruned, the old lines untangled and new lines could be strung. We were in for a repair and recovery period a lot like the Ice Storm of 1994, where some folks went without heat and electricity for weeks, except that this was summertime in Memphis. Heat and humidity would smother the city after the storm clouds passed and a lot of old and sick folks were going to be in peril.Let ne detour a bit here. Some things had happened during the initial storm strike that no one knew -- because of the power outage. Some television stations managed to stay on the air with generators, the studios barely lit. Amazingly, both the main AM stations, WREC and WDIA, were still broadcasting and had kicked into emergency mode.But I heard later that the classic rock station was broadcasting during the initial strike. One of their regular guests was driving down Riverside and called them on-air to describe the incredible, inky black clouds massing over the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River. She was talking as the storm crossed the River, then began to scream. The station broadcast her hollering obsceneties -- f-bombs and J f'n C -- as she thought she was going to die. She described how the storm seemed to pick up speed and power as it crossed into Tennessee and Memphis.At the studio, walls were shaking violently and glass almost blew out. Cars parked along the street below suffered roof and glass damage from flying limbs. The DJ's kept talking, frightened and fearful of death. Winds in the downtown were estimated at 80 miles per hour, with gusts measured in some spots at over 100 mph. Both of the construction cranes over the FedEx Forum were bent due to the winds and several blocks of the area around Beale Street were abandoned. I happened to catch the staff at the classic rock station on the air later that morning as they were instructed by police to leave their studios. Construction was halted that week as builders tried to figure out how to bring the cranes down safely. The Clear Channel radio stations downtown were forced to move to the WPTY building at Union Extended and Poplar, in extra studios in the basement! But they did stay on the air.There was a car stopped at Parkway and Summer, waiting for a light as the storm swept in. The woman driver and her passenger missed being killed by a falling oak by a matter of mere inches. Their car was completely crushed from right behind the driver's seat to the rear of the vehicle.It turns out that this was a "perfect storm." The cell that came in from Arkansas was simply a pop-and-go summer storm, the kind you see all the time in this part of the South. But a rare confluence of conditions right over West Memphis dumped massive new energy into the storm, pushing a lot of warm, moist air into a layer of cold air above. The incoming air turned cold, lost its moisture as sudden rain, then came flowing back down at hurricane speeds.The storm cut a swathe more than a mile wide from the middle of downtown, across the heart of Midtown, through Parkway Village and on into Mississippi. There were a lot of anecdotal reports of funnel clouds, but none were proven, including one over Poplar and Goodlett. The National Weather Service radar couldn't catch the storm's energies correctly, so there was insufficient understanding of its power until it was far too late. The NWS insists, though, that this was pure straight-line winds; no tornadoes.It didn't matter. Whatever had hit was equal in effect to a hurricane, and far worse than the Ice Storm of 1994. Power was out everywhere. The airport was closed. (It turns out they had no backup generator! One had to be trucked in. Can you believe that?) Communications were fubar'ed. Roads and streets were impassible across enormous sections of the city. No one had any real idea of the extent of the damage until the next day.You would think that this would be front page news across the country. Unfortunately for Memphis, this was the day that Uday and Qusay Hussein were almost captured and then killed. They were the news of the day. Also, outside reporters couldn't make it in, due to road blockage and the airport closing. Local stations had trouble getting reports together and getting them out. We were, in a real manner of speaking, cut off and ignored.People in surrounding communities couldn't believe what had happened, due to the narrow focus of the storm's power. Nothing outside of the short but deadly path was touched. Folks were almost disbelieving of what we were telling them.So, Memphis fell off the map. By supper time that day, we knew we were deep in it and looking at a long, hard haul. Most of the city was without power, including hospitals and police stations; repairing power lines was going to be a long-term job; same for clearing roads. Phone lines, too, were down all over and some towers had been ruined. We became a post-apocalyptic island of survivors swimming in the middle of a sea of normality. Our city had been blasted back into the first part of the twentieth century, stranded there, and left to fend for herself.Memphians were stunned later to learn that America didn't know what had happened. We only rated a single paragraph inside the USA Today. The Washington Post got to us a week later. The New York Times didn't report us at all, to my knowledge. Evening news bumped us for the Husseins. We felt shunned and ignored. So when the northeast power outage happened later that year and the New York area lost power for a couple of days, Memphians were angry and amused at the wall-to-wall coverage. It wasn't summer up there, it was fall already. Only a couple of days? What wimps! We didn't get power to most of the city for almost a week and whole areas had to wait nearly three weeks. They got all the press and we were the red-headed step child.It took Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen three days to show up and tour the damage, which a lot of folks here remember. Bredesen picked a day when City Mayor Willie Herenton had a campaign fund-raiser scheduled for Little Rock, Arkansas, so Herenton elected to skip the Governor for the fund-raiser. A lot of folks were very angry at the time with Herenton skipping town and that came back to bite him when it turned out that the firm hosting the fund-raiser got some special treatment in the City's billion-dollar bond deal with MLG&W. Herenton's now under Federal investigation for his role in all of that.It also turns out that I know the city's first storm victim. A homeless guy who lives in the neighborhood, Lee Brown, was sleeping in a box across the street from the Ike's on Union (which, by the way, was destroyed by the storm while churches and other buildings around it survived). The burst of winds grabbed the refrigerator box he was sleeping in and swept it across the street and into Ike's! He ended up with a lot of bad cuts and some back injury, but another business owner happened to see the whole thing and called for an ambulance.By lunch time that day, it was clear this was a disaster. I finally was able to close up the store and leave after catching some incoming employees wondering if we would open or not. Back home, of course there was no power. I walked around the block, and neighborhood, looking at the carnage. It was impressive. Everyone on the street was out, discussing what we knew and what we'd heard. Folks with cell phones were talking to family and friends, lining up a place to stay where there was still power. I later learned that hotels out in the county and across state and county lines filled up rapidly with the dispossessed.As evening fell, eeriness set in. The city was preternaturally quiet. No planes, little traffic, at least initially. I was able to walk out into the middle of Union Avenue in evening rush hour and just stand there, not seeing any cars. You could hear sirens from police and ambulance all the time in the distance.And it was dark. Unbelievably dark. I saw stars in such number and mass as you only see well out in the county, it was that dark. You could see the Milky Way. Standing in the heart of Midtown Memphis, you could see the Milky Way.It was too humid to stay indoors, so everyone on the street was outside on stoops, stairways, porches up and down the block. We talked, shared food that had to be eaten before it melted or spoiled. An Asian family across the street set up a cookfire in front of their building. You could hear every conversation on the street, it was that quiet.Foot traffic streamed in and out of the street, folks trying to find some store where they could find beer or snack foods, mostly. The surprising thing was the amount of auto traffic as night set in. I couldn't believe the number of folks out driving around to look at the wreckage. Even though there were no lights on Union, except for the Methodist Hospital sign up on the top of the hill west of us, traffic flowed along anyway. Every once in a while, you could hear the fender bender. We marvelled at the curiousity, and stupidity, of people.Our street was blocked by stout oak trees on both ends, but people kept turning into the street as though things were normal. We watched and waited for some fool to smack into one of the oaks, and though it was close a time or two, no luck. But the tourism trade was a real surprise.Mosquitos were the worst of it. They bit and bit, attacked over and over all night. It was unrelenting. Because we needed to open windows to cool our apartments, everyone had stories and bumps to show the next day.I finally went in just before midnight. I'd tried to interest the folks on the street with looking at the Milky Way, which many had likely never seen in their lives, but there were few takers. I still regret that today, as it was both beautiful and scary. It was something that could only be revealed by the city being so hammered down.I listened to WREC again. They announced that they were switching to their Nashville affiliate after midnight so they could work on their tower or something. There was something really frightening about listening to far-off Nashville, where the story of our trauma didn't always rate a mention in the news breaks, on a battery-powered AM radio in a powerless apartment in a devastated city. It was at that moment when the enormity of our plight finally settled on me, like waking up to realise you really are stranded on that desert isle with a shattered ship.My poor cat Bennie deserves a mention. When I first got home that morning she was firmly hidden in her "storm hole" under the kitchen counter. It was some time before she came out, and gingerly at that! That evening, she seemed to sense the strangeness as she mostly stayed inside, or near the front door. Her eyes stayed wide and her ears and whiskers were always at full extension. That night, she slept on the bed with me.Next morning, I took a cool shower and dressed for work. I carefully checked the frozen stuff, which was nearly salvageable still, and all the refrigerated stuff was still fine. But it was obvious we wouldn't get power anytime soon, so I started making plans to toss the frozen goods. The boss came in and we discussed what to do. She'd heard from our supervisor about plans to transfer food items to the stores in our chain that still had power. The assistant showed up, we tossed out all the spoiled food we found and washed dishes for a while. Then we closed up and went home.Well, I lucked out. Power came back on later that afternoon! It turns out that most of my street is on the same power circuit as St. Peter's Nursing Home. But not my job. It was two more days before we got power back there. I still went in the mornings to check on things and hang out for a few hours, though. And got paid for all of it. Whee!So, after learning that most of our frozen and refrigerated goods had been moved earlier on the fourth day, I had to go back and return it all to the freezers that evening when power came back. Turns out most of the stuff had spoiled or melted too much to use anyway. When we finally opened again, we got slammed by folks who needed to eat but didn't have power yet. We did records sales, with a reduced crew.For the rest of that week, Memphis slowly climbed out of the wreckage. I found that WREC radio was mostly taking a "top down" approach to news. They were reporting offical word from city and government agencies, or taking news from their WPTY television affiliate. It was repetitive and not really helpful, to be honest.Over on black-operated WDIA, it was a very different story. They had taken a "bottom up" attitude, opening their phone lines to callers. All day long, they fielded news of where to find generators and who was price gouging, where to find ice and water and fans, reminders to check the elderly and infirm, reports of working gas stations, etc. It was community radio of the best sort. It was community survival radio. Almost a week after storm day, they found out about a ten-floor retirement building on Camilla that still didn't have power, where the residents were forced to walk the stairs and spend the day outside in the heat and swelter, and spread the word. They were truly heroes of Memphis for their tireless work in collecting and spreading important information.The city slowly got back on its feet. Memphis was functioning with some normalcy within about three days, and by the next week was generally working again with some large pockets still hurting, like a patient out of bed and on crutches, but still wobbly. It became something of a game to figure out where power was going to come back, and when it would happen. Jealousy and complaining quickly reappeared, which is always a sign of returning health.The Commercial Appeal started to run a map after a few days, showing which parts of town were still without power. It ended up taking nearly three weeks to get most of the city restored, though the bulk of power was restored after a week. It was amazing to hear the number of people fussing on the radio about still being out of power, only a few days or a week after the storm, and calling MLG&W every name under the sun. People can be so short-sighted and selfish sometimes. But they also brought some trouble on themselves when they turned away offers of help from utilities and teams from outside the city; a lot of folks blew up over that, thinking that the pace of recovery was being delayed. The community uproar over MLG&W's perceived failure to quickly handle the power outage eventually led to the firing of the utility President, Herman Morris, a few months later.The tree damage took many months to clear. Some dead oak parts laid on our street until the Spring of the next year. One guy at the end of the block just left his fallen oak where it lay and let Nature reclaim it on her own schedule. You can still see the trunk stump and root bundle with a thin coating of dirt and weeds today, across from Sekisui, laid open to the sky.Hurricane Elvis, as the storm was quickly dubbed, left a mark on the city. You can still find tree and building damage all over the place, a year later. Ike's on Union is still closed. City disaster awareness plans have been re-evaluated. People are more aware of storm cells now; television weather teams are more likely to jump to wall-to-wall coverage during strong storms.But by and large, we've returned to all the old patterns. Politics is worse than ever here. Racial tensions flared up during recovery -- some folks claimed that "white neighborhoods" got power before "black" areas -- and haven't improved much as they've cooled. The storm is still remembered and talked about, everyone has their stories, but the wind-knocked-out-of-sails feeling has passed.WPTY, ABC 24, is doing a television special on the storm Thursday night at 7PM. I'm looking forward to it, as I didn't get to see some of the storm onset and immediate aftermath footage. Some of the other news programs will be doing retrospectives during their programming.I can still recall my feelings of wonder that first night. It was very much like so many of those end-of-the-world movies, lying in bed in the middle of a dead city worrying about how we'd make our way back. Would we make our way back? Pitch dark, deathly quiet, huge shadowed blocks on the horizon from darkened buildings, no planes overhead, tinny radio alternating between normal programming and news of the devastation, only the occasional car and siren telling you that there was still a world out there. It was truthfully one of the spookiest feelings I've known. Culture17703@blogcritics.org Thu, 22 Jul 2004 02:43:42 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/05/31/040902.php Michael Roy Hollihan[WARNING: This discussion contains spoilers. While I do not reveal the movie's final act, nor much of the second act, I do examine a lot of the rest of the movie. It will take away some of your enjoyment, so reconsider reading this if you already think you might see the movie. It's best seen completely cold. If you're not sure, then this review will not ruin the movie's final surprises for you, but it will give away some really great stuff from the first half.]It's impossible to guess how this movie will end from the way it begins. And it's not because the directors cheat. (Danny and Oxide Pang; wouldn't you love to be named "Oxide Pang?") The script unrolls just slightly ahead of you until the fateful conclusion.The Eye, made in Hong Kong in 2001 and released to DVD in America earlier this year is a superior horror movie. It is atmospheric and tense, constantly playing with the audience's identification with the main character point of view and her state of confusion. We watch as she sees things we know aren't real, waiting for her to understand. Watching her innocently interact with death and ghosts keeps us on the edge of our seats. The tension is exquisite. It is a ghost movie with an Asian and Buddhist tint that makes it different without being dislocating.A young woman, Mun, has been blind since she was two. Now grown, she is given a cornea transplant that restores her sight. At first, she experiences the confusion of someone who has not seen. As her doctor notes, she doesn't know she's looking at a stapler until she touches it, until she uses a familiar sense. Everything for her is new.She slowly begins to realise that what she's seeing is wrong -- frightfully, terribly wrong. People she meets behave in ways even a blind woman knows are bizarre. Then she begins to experience hallucinations of her room morphing into someone else's room. She slowly grows more and more terrified as her world grows stranger. Mun fears she is going mad and wants it all to stop.The film's script, cinematography and editing are the equal of anything you'll see in Hollywood film-making. The look and feel of this Hong Kong is not like your standard-issue HK gun ballet or chop-socky action film, but a bit grittier and worn looking. The acting, too, is great, especially Angelica Lee as Mun and Lawrence Chou as Dr. Lo. Even the supporting cast is outstanding.Probably the biggest obstacle to American viewing is that there is no dubbed soundtrack, only a well-done subtitling. Which is a problem. You really can't afford to take your eyes off the screen at all, but the dialogue is a necessary part of the movie. It's a bit wearying, I'll admit, to have to constantly jump from one to the other. I can only strongly hope you'll give this movie a chance, as the rewards are substantial.Since this is a movie about ghosts, sprituality is an important ingredient. As I noted above, that spirituality is Buddhist; but that won't be an obstacle, as the film's dialogue explains what Westerners will need to know. What we learn is that if death is sudden or the deceased has an unresolved problem in life, their spirit will stay on Earth instead of going to heaven. These are the people that Mun sees, who in their mindless way distract and harrass her.They are some spectacular ghosts, too. We meet the first one almost right away, in a brief throwaway moment that portends what is to come. As the movie progresses, we encounter more and nastier ghosts. Some we don't even realise are ghosts! Jealous ghosts, confused ghosts, children who don't understand they are dead.... It just gets creepier and more disturbing as we go along. I really want to highlight this aspect, talk about the many manifestations and shocks, but I'm restraining myself to give you the thrill.The ghost effects are subtly handled -- often just a hint of makeup and some some good acting. Some are heavily done up so as to frighten when they appear. Some you don't even know, until their "guides" or angels show up for them.This is one of the movie's strongest choices. The angels are never seen clearly. Often they seem little more than black smoke or heat haze. Long, attenuated forms with slicked-back hair in black, long-sleeve unitards that also cover the neck, with heavy white makeup that removes all their features except for their cavernous eyes. They never speak or gesture or seem to react to the living. They are truly unworldly.The first half of the movie, its first act, is one long exercise in building tension and apprehension. Mun slowly grows more frantic until she snaps and retreats into pretend blindness, isolating herself from the rest of the world as she never did when she was truly blind. After Dr. Lo's intervention leads to catharsis, she seems to accept that she now sees a very different world than others and grows more calm.The movie's second act is almost a different film. Moving from her metropolitan urban world, Mun and Dr. Lo take off for Thailand's tropical jungle to find out the identity of the woman who donated her corneas. A more confident Mun asserts herself, takes charge and drives the story. Here the movie changes tone with the changed setting, resembling the first two Evil Dead movies or the earliest "slasher in the camp in the woods" films. The collapse into madness and despair of the first part is traded in for a more standard problem-solving, ghost hunting narrative.There is a brief flashback sequence that utilises black-and-white, choppy editing, echoey sound, and hand-held camera quite well to shoehorn in some information and atmosphere without feeling like an infodump. Clues left in the beginning, more information learned in Thailand, and through Mun's actions, all lead to a seemingly satisfying resolution -- or so we think!The film's final act slips up on you and simply cannot be foreseen, but once we get there it's a stunning and inevitable epiphany! The moment we learn what's about to happen is like a cold, lead lump in the gut. As we learn the scope of the horror to come, the dread of the first act comes rushing back full bore. The return of the angels is chilling. The climax is perfect and complete. Suddenly, everything makes sense.The movie's real end is a type I particularly love: a circular ending that leaves our heroine right where she started, but wiser and sadder.The Eye's central theme can be seen in several ways. On the purely Buddhist spiritual level, the unfinished business of a spirit must be resolved. Mun is just the vehicle and once done, is left behind. On a different level, her new eyes have given her new sight: she now sees the world completely, without blinders, but that knowledge is more than she can handle. Mun cannot handle enlightenment. She cannot bear up under the pressure. There is also the superhero angle: with great power comes great responsibility. Having discharged her responsibility poorly, though not entirely through her own fault, she has that power taken away. And there's the more mundane level: chance gave her both a gift and a curse, but chance also took it away from her.I've stayed away from describing too much of the movie's ghost encounters because many are truly memorable, but I have to mention a couple of things. First is the now legendary elevator sequence. It will have you squirming in your seat! That's all I can say. Well, and it will also make you think the next time you get on one. Also, watch the edges of the frame, the background, and the crowds for the appearance of ghosts, especially in train windows! That's all I'll say.One final note. The soundtrack to this movie is wonderful. The opening/closing theme is a throbbing, pulsing track rooted in industrial, but expressed orchestrally. Synth strings recall the Bernard Hermann score to Psycho's famous scenes. It perfectly serves the movie. The sound design also reinforces the many shocks and dislocations of the narrative. Spare and effective.The DVD only comes with one worthwhile extra: a making-of featurette that discloses the surprising level of special effects in the film's latter act. Don't watch it until after the movie, as it spoils pretty much everything.I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. For non-fans of foreign films, the subtitles will be off-putting and distracting more than many foreign movies. You simply have to keep your eyes on the screen. But if stylish horror unlike anything you've seen in American films intrigues you, then you have to see one of the best films to come out of Asia in years. Some of the movie's images will stay with you for quite some time to come.Unfortunately, Tom Cruise bought the rights to remake this movie for American audiences. He will ruin it, especially if he casts himself as Dr. Lo. Look at the dumbed down Americanised The Ring versus the more subtle Japanese original, Ringu. There are other great Asian horror movies being redone right now. Ju-On's original director is filming a nearly shot-for-shot American cast version, but with his usual Japanese crew working in Japan. The director of Dark Water, now starring Jennifer Connoly, is literally refilming his movie in America with American actors. It's good to see such interest, but sad to know that American studios don't trust American audiences to work with good subtitles or high-quality dubbing.If you are interested in learning more about Japanese and Korean horror, go to Snowblood Apple, an English fan site. They have detailed synopses and reviews of a couple of dozen movies, including everything mentioned above. They also have a lot of screencaps, so you can get a clear sense of the movies. And there are tons and tons of links to explore. Video16129@blogcritics.org Mon, 31 May 2004 04:09:02 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/05/20/184025.php Michael Roy HollihanLast night was the series end of Angel. It was anticipated in a lot of quarters and this morning the opinion on its success seems divided. A lot of folks were upset with what they perceived as a "cliffhanger" ending, or the lack of character resolutions. I think the closest comparison, as far as ending, is with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where the camera cuts just as our heroes leap off the cliff. We know what's coming, but are left to anticipate it. And for a show that's been remarkable for its unflinching darkness and willingness to shock, the ending's tenor was just fine.Me, I kinda liked it. I thought Joss (Whedon, series and Buffyverse creator) was true to his vision of the show as the on-going fight between Good and Evil. It could have had more drama and more "bang," but it did get to a place that feels satisfying. A lot of folks felt cheated by the end coming just before a climactic battle was about to ensue, but as a some-time fiction writer I like how Joss leaves us to imagine what is to come.Some folks thought the ending was ambiguous, in that we don't see Gigantic Evil vanquished or our heroes slaughtered. It's a device that lets the viewer imagine! Joss was clear enough in the past few episodes that our heroes were going to die. Angel said as much when he finally let the Fang Gang into his plan. He admitted that evil was always with us, would always be with us, was unvanquishable and unending. He also said that the measure of a life was in whether those who were called continued the fight, or gave in. When, in the finale, Gunn went to visit Ann (a minor character from a couple of seasons back who runs a shelter for troubled youth and had a run-in with uber-bad guys Wolfram & Hart), she even reinforces that point. When given a choice of giving in to unstoppable evil or continuing to do good works, she immediately chose to keep doing good.I believe that all of the final four -- Angel, Spike, Gunn and Illyria -- will die in the fight. But, as Angel said last time, their fight would trip up, however momentarily, the Senior Partners and would shock and surprise them. Evil wouldn't win after all, but would also have to keep fighting.Harmony proved to be a traitor, and self-serving to the end. After being revealed, she has the nerve to ask for a letter of recommendation! And Angel has already left one for her in her desk. We also got to see her in some Victoria's Secret underwear for just a few moments, which was quite pleasant. Her scenes proved to be needed comic relief, even though the episode was littered with the trademark Joss witticisms.Some character beats deserve special mention. When former Wolfram & Hart bad guy Lindsay is brought into the team and sent out with Lorne, we know he hasn't changed his stripes. So when Lorne turns on him after they complete their mission, it was a great film noir moment. Lindsay is outraged that a "sidekick" is the one to kill him and not the hero, Angel. Lorne, on the other hand, has been getting increasingly dissatisfied with everything. Killing Lindsay in cold blood, no matter how necessary it was, is simply the last straw. He walks away from Team Angel a tired, sad, and sorrowful man. The light-hearted, fun-loving bar owner is now a killer and he will never be the same. It's a terrible thing to see after Lorne was so much the source of series comedy, but emotionally powerful.The resoltuion of the Fred/Wes relationship -- in Wes' death -- also was stunning. Wes has, since Fred's death and her subsequent reappearance as the demi-god Illyria, been a shattered and grieving man. He's been yanked back and forth between hope and despair as Illyria has denied having any of Fred left in her while showing that in fact quite a bit remains! I think Illyria being a god who sees humans as meaningless ants and who despises us and our world, would naturally deny and suppress any part of Fred she found. Wes' yearning for his lost love has bothered and intriqued her. When Illyria takes on Fred's form in Wes' final moments and she whispers earnestly, "I love you. I love you. My beloved...my beloved," it almost broke my heart. Then to see Wes' face shine in return was devastating. Illyria finally understands and begins to accept her human part; Wes is finally given peace of heart.However, I haven't seen anyone note that Wes' death was typical Wesley Wyndham-Price. He went off alone to kill his demon, full of the usual Wesley overconfidence, and failed. He failed! His demon survived and had just given him a fatal knife stab when Illyria burst in to rescue him. She killed his demon. We've seen Wesley be successful when he's allowed his darkest side to come forward, but whenever he leads with his "hero to the rescue" persona, he always screws up. He screwed up fatally this time. It was painful to see him die, and die in failure, but so very right for Wesley to go that way. It was going to happen sooner or later.Spike got his moment as well. Remember that we first met him as a failed and ridiculed 19th century poet. His poetry was laughed at, which is what drove him to accept vampirism. So, when we see him reciting a poem at a Poetry Slam full of bikers and get an ovation, it was a small gift to him, salve for his pain.The Shanshu prophecy was resolved, in a manner of speaking. Angel supposedly gave up any chance at becoming human again when he signed his name to the parchment. But some have noted that he signed it as "Angel" and not "Angelus." Lawyers can debate which is his "real" name, or which him the prophecy refers to: the vampire he first was, or the ensouled vampire from the prophecy. It's wiggle room for any possible later movies. Note however, that Spike is also a vampire with a soul, so the Shanshu prophecy might now apply to him instead!Lots of great moments: Harmony in the underwear. "Can I deny you three times?" The battle with Angel and Connor against Hamilton. "Blue Thunder." "I mean, really. I crap better magic than this." "Can you pick out the one word there you probably shouldn't have said?" "I feel grief for him. I can't seem to control it. I wish to do more violence." The whole approaching horde of Evil at the end did carry the appropriate sense of overwhelming odds and certain doom, especially the thirty or forty foot tall monster glimpsed in the background!Still, it was a bit underwhelming. We get told numerous times this season how evil and all-pervasive the Senior Partners are, but we don't see any evidence in the final run of episodes. Regular viewers know they're high-level nasty, but it would have raised the dramatic stakes to have seen some.Introducing the Circle of the Black Thorn in the final run-up may have given Team Angel a focus in their fight, instead of the amorphous Senior Partners, but it also brought in something we haven't heard of or seen in the years previous. They didn't come with a cache of evil that would make the end more impressive.They try to wrap up the Angel, Spike, Buffy triangle in a clumsy (though really hilarious) episode that doesn't have Buffy in it! This is something that's lurked in the series for several seasons -- since the beginnging of Buffy -- and it deserved better. Fans have anguished over this far too much for such a knocked off resolution. It also left open the question of why we didn't see hordes of Buffy's heirs descending into LA to join the fight in those final moments.And I've felt that the show has been just a tad turgid for the past couple of seasons. It's meant to be dark and we get a lot of character writing, but the sense of forward momentum is really slowed as a result. Instead of a sense of hurtling to an apocalyptic finale, I felt more like we were trudging morosely, like sullen children. The ending came with a sense of "Whew, finally."Ah well. It was still great fun and I did enjoy it. Give it maybe an A- or a B+. Video15832@blogcritics.org Thu, 20 May 2004 18:40:25 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/05/09/022245.php Michael Roy HollihanGus Van Sant's quietly released Elephant has gotten quite a bit of praise for its deadpan portrayal of a Columbine-like school shooting. The movie leaves nearly every question unanswered, supposedly forcing the viewer to provide their own answers. The movie's texture is long, slow takes with little action or dialogue, timelines that cross and loop repeatedly, building to staccato bursts of violence at the end, blank and affectless. The movie intends not to shock, but to confound.(Note: this review will spoil many movie points. While the story line is already known, there are many directorial choices and tricks that will be discussed.)I have to say, while this is by no means a bad movie, neither was I especially impressed by it. I kept waiting for "something" to happen, which I guess was Van Sant's point. While it is supposedly "deadpan" and "realistic" I found it instead to be very, very restrained but deliberate in its use of camera movement, soundtrack and incidental music, and editing. It resembles a documentary in some ways, but make no mistake: this is a work of fiction.While he uses Columbine as his source material with some fidelity, there is one major authorial thematic intrusion. The first classroom moment we see is a meeting of the school's Gay Student Association as they discuss stereotyping, knowing a person is gay by their appearance. I may be old-fashioned, but when a school movie's first class scene is a GSA meeting, I think a point is being made. (It's even in the credits!) Had this been all, it wouldn't rate mention, but late in the movie when the killers are showering before leaving for school, they take a shower together and kiss deeply! There is no evidence that either of the real Columbine killers were gay, so this is a directorial invention that unnecessarily rattles. It smacks of making an extraneous point. Some have said that since the beta-male boy has said he's never been kissed, that it's a "last wish" thing, but it doesn't feel that way, in the context of everything else.Van Sant borrows some documentary techniques, but they are always used in a standard Hollywood way. The film uses static camera POVs, framing that allows some action to happen or to drift out of the frame, long tracking shots without expediting cuts, and long sections without dialogue. But the static camera still pans, sometimes to stop, other times to complete a 360 degree sweep and other times conveniently following the action. He also violates that simulated docu-purity by using slow motion at key moments and by using background sounds or added "music."For example, one early scene has the camera focus on a pick-up football game. Action moves around and out of the frame constantly. Then a new character appears in the front of the frame, running track. She stops, looks up and around and behind her, then restarts her run. This makes the important point that we can only know what we see, that things happen outside our view that may be vital to understanding. After she has left, another character approaches the camera, to change shirts, then walk into the school.Here is another trick he uses. During the long walk into the school, the camera stays with the young man, following the back of his head the whole way. I guess the point was to make the character unknown to us, since we do not see his face or reactions during the walk. Many shots are like this: sometimes behind the character for long stretches; sometimes in front, but then swinging to some other bit of business in the school. It's not consistent, but used to serve the narrative needs.Sometimes the long shots are tracking shots, like in a school photo lab, where we follow a trio of students developing some shots they've taken, or down long, long hallways with two characters just walking with each other. Van Sant is not above cheap tricks, too, like starting with one character, following their bit of business, only to pick up another, unrelated character and follow their bit of business, etc., etc. Only occasionally do these long shots serve some narrative purpose. Mostly, they're just long thematic reinforcers.Although the movie eschews "rock sountrack" music, there is a lot of orchestrally-created sound used to enhance what we're seeing. Several times we hear animal or jungle sounds; one stretch of hallway-tracking shot is supported by smeared, ennervating noise.The movie's biggest "effect" is the use of disjointed narrative. The movie starts before school the day of the shooting, but cuts and loops constantly. We see some events from three different viewpoints during the course of the film. A late stretch turns out to have happened some day or days before the fateful morning. The general drive is forward through the day, with one major detour into the killers' last evening before we jump back to "now" and the killings we've been waiting for.In fact, this points up one of the movie's strengths and its most endurance-testing feature. Nearly all viewers know we are going to see a Columbinish shooting. The movie spends its entire first third just introducing various people (some with title cards). We wonder as we meet each one, "Is it him?" Then, in a surprising moment as one character leaves the building, we see the shooters -- we know it's them because of their camo / aggro-goth garb and the many heavy knapsacks -- enter the school. Suspense is tightened up, because we are at last clued in. We're waiting for the hammer to fall now. It's only a matter of time. But Van Sant takes us back and forth through the day and around the characters for another third of the movie. We find ourselves watching the corners and backgrounds of the frame, searching for the killers at other moments. Every long tracking shot is filled with dread that the killers will jump out at us.It never happens. We find ourselves taken to the house of the kids we now know are the killers, to be taken through long stretches of watching them play music and video games, sleeping and hanging out. It's meant to introduce us to them, to "explain" them in the deliberately obfuscatory and translucent way Van Sant deploys.It's only well in the final third that the "action" commences. The first moment of the final act is the two boys in full garb, with weapons, standing in a tableaux, in an empty hallway as an oblivious janitor in the distance does his job. The boys wait, checking watches, for explosions that don't come. So, they set out.The first shooting is a girl we've been following the whole movie. She's an "odd" girl with some unexplained problem affecting her gym class. We know nothing about her, though we've followed her throughout the whole movie. We only know she's the "odd" girl from her manner, her appearance (frizz hair, no makeup, large nose and eyebrows, loner affect), from standard Hollywood shorthand. She dies, "pop," just like that. Sudden, bloody blast and out of the frame. Gone forever.The violence is a lot like that. "Pow" it happens, spray of blood and the body falls, like in a video game, and it's over. The movie even goes so far as to make that connection explicit. One of the boys plays a first-person shooter video game the night before that is nothing but walking stiffs in a vast, empty plain. It's simple and meaningless to pick them off. When they begin the violence, the first scene of shooting is an imitation of a first-person shooter POV, with the gun barrel in the bottom of the frame as kids scatter and bodies fall.At the same time, while some deaths are very explicit, some are avoided completely. Three girls trapped in a bathroom are surely going to die, screaming, but the film cuts away at the ultimate moment. The movie ends with the jock and his girlfriend (in the movie's forced shorthand they are the "perfect every-couple" of the school, though we know almost nothing about them) trapped in a meat locker in the school cafeteria. The killer does a taunting "eenie, meenie, meinie, moe" as they plead for their lives. The movie fades as he chooses. We don't see or hear what we know is happening next.One of the movie's few black characters is introduced during the carnage, with title card. We think he might be a hero, as he calmly walks the halls, helps a shocked girl escape, and doesn't get freaked out by a dead body. We seem him approach one of the killers from behind, we expect he'll tackle him. But no, he is shot dead before he can act. Bang, end. This is Van Sant playing with our cinematic expectations. We're primed to think he's going to do something heroic, but that's undercut quickly and brutally. Why? Well, just to slam home the movie's inescapability.Step back from what the movie's about (the killings) and what you find this movie is is a well-executed ratcheting up of audience anticipation and fear, without the expected satisfying conclusion. This is, if you will, the "anti-slasher" film. The characters aren't even stock or stereotypes. We see so little we can't form any real opinions. Yes, there's the "jock," the "odd" girl, the young man-boy, the "bitchy" girls, etc., but since they aren't played for stereotype, we can't really call them that. No one "deserves" to die, in classic slasher-film morality, but death meets them anyway. The killings may be random, but the build-up has been careful and sure. The movie doesn't lull with reassurance, but numbs with blandness, repetition and incomplete set-ups. We are anticipating the killings, since we know the narrative, but also because we want something to happen, to connect it all, to draw a "through-line."One last point is the use of clouds and sky. The movie opens with a soundtrack of kids just talking and doing something we can't figure out, though to me it sounds like mild bullying of someone. I could be wrong. What we see is a teal-colored sky with fast-moving, high cloud cover. At the point in the film after we know who are the killers and that they are about to act, we get a long shot of the same colored sky, but with building clouds, thunder, and storm clouds. At the end, we close with a dark sky where the sun seems to break through. It is, without question, a framing device, much like the title cards.I'm not sure the movie does what its fans claim: putting Columbine in a neutral context that forces us to confront the violence naked. There is too much manipulation of elements and the audience; we are directed to the Van Sant's point, rather than having it revealed. The movie isn't neutral. It's explicitly anti-gun, even to showing the boys buying a gun through the Internet and mail, then signing for the delivery themselves. (I checked with a Second Amendment & firearms-knowledgeable friend, who says that what the movie shows can't be done. It's been illegal [felony] since 1968. It wasn't the case with Columbine.) Where the real Columbine killers had ample evidence laying in the open in their homes, the two Elephant boys have none at all, only lots of teen-angst art and the usual teenboy clutter. You can even make an argument that Van Sant fetishises their "cave" as some kind of gay idyll.The actors are all good, though none stand out for acting talent, unsurprisingly. The two killers are a pair: one looks like a young John Cusack and the other like a suburban-wannabe Eminem. Most of the kids are visually distinctive, but blend together personality-wise. Most of the male actors have that Van Santian "boi" look to them.As a formal exercise in building fearful anticipation in a formalist, Last Year at Marienbad way, or as a study for film students, I could recommend this movie. He tries to make points about the incompleteness of seeing and knowing, about the photographic instinct as a way of seeing, and about propaganda. But as a way of coming to understand the Columbine killers, I think this movie fails. Too much liberty is taken, the director pushes and prods everything too much, to do that. He's borrowed the media narrative, which was wrong. The truth is much darker and weirder than most folks understand. His additions come from some other agenda. Seeing the two boys kiss in the shower is just off-putting and not in the source, though consistent with Van Sant's homoerotic themes in his other films.The actual DVD comes only with the movie (in widescreen and theatrical formats), the usual language and subtitle choices, the trailer and a video-diary of the film's making without narration, though there are a couple of comments made by the actors that are surprising and in one case stunning. These I won't spoil! There is no director's commentary, which isn't a surprise. Van Sant's serious about leaving the viewer on their own.I think this is a failed film, though a fascinating one. Not really recommended. Video15507@blogcritics.org Sun, 9 May 2004 02:22:45 EDT