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July 27, 2008

THE DARK KNIGHT OF THE SOUL

There is very little not to like about THE DARK KNIGHT. It's a well-crafted, gloriously entertaining popcorn movie. It lacks the somber preachiness and rushed storytelling of its predecessor, the sense that every character had to spout summaries of Aristotle's ethics until Bruce Wayne developed his own identity. The new film is fast, fun, and scary - it goes places where movies like this normally don't, all while keeping its feet on the home turf.

I keep hearing that KNIGHT has somehow transcended the genre, and it hasn't. The film still exists in a world where a helicopter can crash into about four buildings, which would no doubt kill or seriously injure at least ten people, in a major Metropolitan city, and no one seems worried about it. To put it simply, THE DARK KNIGHT is a world where the Joker can exist, and ours isn't. Our world inspires Heath Ledger's performance, but it is still a performance. In a comic book, a villain materializes because it ups the ante of suspense; this is necessary, vital to the mechanics of the story. Just don't call it realistic.

And that said, the film is remarkable - I didn't realize it was over two and a half hours long until someone told me. It keeps you in your seat, which is too bad if one bottle of water sends you to the bathroom every twenty-five minutes or so (as mine did). The "transcendent" element seems to be that characters are put in danger who normally aren't, and the realms that we consider safe prove to be fatal. The Joker, like the jingo-istic villains of the first flick, is the fear itself we have to fear (or overcome, or fight, or imprison, or kill if he offers us a loaded gun to his forehead), but he's also a pretty cool mash-up of arch criminal and face-painted baddie. He has no history or future, so he blows up hospitals and threatens to kill civic leaders. He's what happens when codes are rendered meaningless by their followers.

The word on the street based on the reviews I read is that Batman is a third party to all the happening to Harvey "I believe in . . . " Dent and the Joker, but his gadgets are on full display. I still have a few problems here - one thing I liked about the Burton movies is that Batman seemed to be jiggering up his heat seeking batarangs with his bare hands, not behind the scenes of some military-industrial operation. And the Batmobile continues to be, inexplicably, a drab tank. In the first Burton movie, Jack Nicholson mused, "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" In this one, he'd shrug and continue slashing art galleries.

Christian Bale is a bit of a bore, rightly called a secondary character in a movie that bears his name. But all the "Dark Night/Dark Knight" synonyms are helpful for explaining an internal tension that isn't really expounded as much as visualized. I'm continuing to love the way that Bruce Wayne's irresponsibility is contrasted with Batman's obsessive responsibility, and the way that Wayne has to work very hard at keeping up this image.

The fight between realism and comic-book entertainment is an old one, and THE DARK KNIGHT may be the most successful of the clash between the two opposites. It is the work of a visionary director and writer and a great cast of actors.

Posted by Andytown at 1:04 AM | Comments (2)

July 18, 2008

A REVIEW OF FLESH AND BLOOD BY MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM

Flesh And Blood by Michael Cunningham

My review

FLESH AND BLOOD is Cunningham's worst book, I think (he wrote it before THE HOURS made him a literary superstar), and yet it still resonates with me, and it may possibly be his most beautifully written. There are entire paragraphs I can excerpt that are worthy of being published as a poem. For instance, this:



"Zoe sipped her coffee, looked out the steamed window at Waverly place. An obese man walked a gleeful-looking yellow dog he had dressed in a white blouse and a plaid skirt. There was a new world with no rules and there was an old world with too many. She didn't know to live in either place" (155).



What makes him my favorite author is the way he takes something epic and turns into a series of intimate moments, like we're reading a scene that already has a history that later becomes explained or must be inferred from his (always) dynamic characters. Cunningham is a modern (or post-modern, whatever) writer in the sense that he tends to scoff the fact of the epic, the tragic, and the objective meaning at the same time as he admires he characters in their bold searches for just those things. Zoe, the youngest and most tragic of the bunch, never figures out how to live in her own skin, and her the degradation of that flesh becomes a central metaphor.



In this case, the Stassos family is notable for their lack of commonalities. Taking that Tolstoy passage about how every family is miserable in a different way (or something like that), each member of the Stassos shares the same blood (a fierceness and individuality that refuses to conform even when, technically, it seems to be moving toward some kind of numbing acceptance) but bears it under different flesh (in Cunningham's brilliant and hardly reconfigurable use of metaphor, I believe that such "flesh" is always choice, and often a choice of sexuality).



SPECIMEN DAYS, FLESH AND BLOOD, and A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD all share the common theme of makeshift families. A family, for Cunningham, is either something completely organic or impossible to avoid. A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD deals with those who have resisted or rejected families, and the tolls those take, and their attempts to establish that community in a way that avoids the mistakes of their "real family."



The ending of FLESH AND BLOOD, its final powerful moment, is vivid, and carries with it a sense of Freudian reenactment. This is, of course, my readerly subjection to the text, but I do think Cunningham is punishing not only victimizers, but also the reader who has been forced to indulge in the victimizations. If the enemy of Cunningham is convention, the unattainable ideal is something like the weird Alien love story that closes SPECIMEN DAYS. Ever an apologist for gay culture, Cunningham pushes to accept what is primal, rather than what previously dog-eared for happiness. The result is a montage of events, places, people, personal choices, and consequences, and it is as beautiful to read as it is tough to endure. And Cunningham has always been, at heart, a naturalist, a determinist who believes that nature in some form of disease is going to writhe us of what makes us uniquely us. And yet he's also an optimist, and he loves families, and strong women, and children, and literature.



Which is why, I suppose, he is my favorite writer.


View all my reviews.

Posted by Andytown at 6:10 PM | Comments (1)

July 15, 2008

I HAVE A MASTERS IN ARTS

I passed my thesis defense! With flying colors (or with colors, I suppose; there were no letter grades, but everybody gave me the "passed with no corrections" deal. In order to prepare (in the height of some anxiety), I decided to prepare a spiel that would explain my thesis: my introduction to the subject, why I chose it, how it evolved, and a general summary. It's probably pretty sloppy, but here 'tis:

(I imagine this will become the least-read blog post in the history of Andytown, which will rank it among the least important cultural documents in the history of the world)

As part of a Senior-level colloquium I was teaching at Westminster Academy, I more or less stumbled on THE FEDERALIST PAPERS. The class was a pretty ambitious hodge-podge of ethics, aesthetics, philosophy, epistemology, religion, science, economics, existentialism, and of course, politics. A sample oral essay question that might be asked on a semester exam asked the students to postulate what might happen if, rather than four self-righteous Hebrews, were confronted by John Stuart Mill, Aristotle, and Nietzsche. How would they counsel Job? It was highly ambitious, mildly successful, and as a part of a four-teacher panel, I got more out of it than any of the students, particularly when I re-engaged FEDERALIST 10.

FEDERALIST 10 struck me on several levels: initially as an ur-text of the type of libertarian principles that I went around badgering my friends with at bars. But mostly I was pleased with James Madison as I would be a student writing a paper for one of my classes: he made an argument; he defined his terms; he knew his history and anticipated rebuttals.

It took me a while to wrap my head around Publius, and as I proceeded to devour both the PAPERS in their entirety and Ralph Ketcham's dry but meticulous biography of Madison, I learned more about the later schism between Madison and his FP co-author Alexander Hamilton. That made the concept of Publius - a pseudonym that sacrificed personal claims to authorship for the sake of a consensual argument. As a trope, it was fascinating. Publius was not only arguing representation, he was representation - in his existence, he was providing of the very thing he hoped to see actualized in the Republic.

And so, rather than reading Publius just as a justification for my libertarian tendencies, I began to see him as an ideal rhetorician. As I began to dive more into the eighteenth century and its rhetorical practices, and became obsessed with the battles between philosophy and rhetoric (particularly through the perplexing lens of Immanuel Kant), I realized that Publius was carrying on a tradition that embodied both classical rhetorical practices as well as established rhetorical ideals - papers like #37, where Publius established the need for "perspicuity" and yet noted that there was an "unavoidable inaccuracy" in language finds itself in the rhetorical mid-section I found as characteristic of the mid 18th century. The Lockean/Royal Society arguments against rhetoric and movement toward a language of certainty became the impetus for projects like Blair's Belles-Lettres, Reid's Common Sense, and, in America, John Witherspoon's lectures at Princeton. When I found that Witherspoon's most apt pupil was one James Madison, I knew I was on to something.

It was then that I began asking, how does Publius persuade? What was Publius' strategy? Who is Publius responding to, and what inspired his style? This led me to Blair, Witherspoon, Addison, and modern scholars like Sandra Gustafson and Michael Warner whose extensive examinations of the discursive projects of the 18th Century tell us much about the way power was established through publication and public presentation in the public sphere.

I was struggling, I admit, because my initial secret motive was to elevate James Madison as a writer over the despotic-minded Hamilton. But I realized this contradicted my project as whole - to show that two men of wildly different backgrounds and contradictory beliefs could nonetheless come together to argue for the same principle.

But with anonymity, how does that change the rhetorical strategy? The pseudonym, as I note in my paper, was not Madison, Hamilton, and Jay's invention, but it comes at a time when such anonymity was used for literary, rather than deliberative purpose. But the use of published works to establish persona, I found, was a common tactic among 18th Century writers - from Jonathan Edwards' manipulation of David Brainerd's posthumously published diaries to Franklin's numerous ironic advice columns. There seemed to be an effort to create character, in a rhetorical sense, of the ethos necessary not only for the assemblyman but also the citizen. What Publius was doing was not only presenting a political argument, but arguing rhetorical values. As I note in the text, in a point I may have articulated crudely, but that most reflects my subjective feeling toward both my approach to the project and the Papers as a text, is that by liking the text, you like Publius. This corresponds to Aristotle's guiding notion that character is produced not only through past deeds, but also through the vehicle of the speech itself. Madison and Hamilton had character, but they were also associated with the (symbolic) aristocratic robes they wore in public. Publius, on the other hand, had none of this. His ethos was the speech itself, and this became a unique way to look at rhetoric, as both theory and a model.

But what was Publius up to? It wasn't until I read the passage from #15 that became the basis for my title and chapter structure that I realized he was telling me what he wanted to do. To be a guide holding a light on a road gave me the categories I needed. The light was his rhetoric, the road was his narrative, his role as a guide the persona he wanted to establish.

My first chapter, on The Light, was informative, but ultimately unoriginal. All I was doing was restating the practices of the period. I admit I got lost on this. I originally wanted to begin with Phaedrus and Plato's symbolic lovers, work my way through Aristotle, Cicero, and Augustine, the rhetoric curriculums of the Renaissance, and end with the 18th Century tension between certainty and symbol that found its synthesis in Hugh Blair and John Witherspoon. This has formed the basis of a future project, but ultimately was the most distracting of all the chapters I chose to write. I became so fascinated with the history as reported by Thomas Conley and Brian Vickers that I wanted to retell the story they had already told. But it still fit my thesis, and the FP found a stylistic medium that the eighteenth century found necessary.

My second chapter came out of my full reading of all the Papers. After reading 1-10, I noticed that Madison's paper was not only the most articulate political analysis perhaps in American history, but also the solution to the problems that 1-9 outlined. The papers, while harried and rushed, still gave me some sense that it was a narrative. But as I started asking myself questions about the validity of this theory, I realized the complexity of the question I was asking, and the potential it offered in reading the papers: was I reading the narrative because I was conditioned to read narratives, or were the Papers genuinely structured in such a way? I turned to two theorists on different ends of the spectrum - Roland Barthes are Gerald Genette (the latter recommended by my advisor). Both offered the possibilities I was looking for and, while, what I ended up with is a question I may have never answered (I admit I rode the fence), I believe I definitely found the potential for texts like the FP to take the form of a narrative, even by the stylings of its day. In its similarity to a jeremiad, it offers the move from sin to salvation - a narrative move if there ever was one. This chapter is an introduction to something I will continue to explore; it is fascinating the way public rhetoric can be read as a narrative even if it isn't, but also there's the possibility that these brilliant thinkers, in all their foresight and planning, realized the narrative progression that Barthes sees as innately structural. And further, that they realized the progression and sequencing (Barthesian terms) were necessary to their mode of persuasion.

Finally, and this was my original point, I wanted to explore the motive of Publius. Was there some goal behind his writing other than just to persuade a form of government or a constitutional agenda? As I continued to read, I decided that Publius was modeling the rhetoric he wanted to establish for his new nation, and that was built in the "candid" climate of a Republic rather than the chaos of a democratic assembly. I've spoken about this already, but much of this has to do with Kenneth Burke's concept of identification as a central (if not THE central) motive of rhetoric - that in rhetoric the speaker passes off shared values that cause an audience to identify, and that identification leads to persuasion. And taking that into consideration, as well as the nascent tendency for publication to influence personality (or try to), made me see the agenda of Publius as something more than political. It was rhetorical. What was remarkable to me, as I noted at the beginning, was that the politics and rhetoric were so ideologically cohesive, strangely so; each required the other. The philosophy of the new breed of American republicanism could be converted into a rhetoric suitable for its continued existence, and in writing that, Publius could model that rhetoric.

In his closing letter, Publius asks us to judge the success of his project. I chose to avoid the typical debates - its influence over ratification, its validity as constitutional interpretation, its political theory and influences, its aristocratic intentions. For me, Publius is first and foremost a rhetorician, and one of the best of his kind.

Posted by Andytown at 6:32 PM | Comments (1)

July 14, 2008

THE SAME THING BUT WITH MOVIES

Here's what I did:

The same thing as my last post, only with movies. However, to balance out the clearly iconic picks, I've chosen a sleeper for each year - a movie you may not have heard of, but is awesome.

1977 - ANNIE HALL (Sleeper: SLAP SHOT)
1978 - NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE (THE DRIVER)
1979 - APOCALYPSE NOW (BEING THERE)
1980 - THE STUNT MAN (HOPSCOTCH)
1981 - REDS (THIEF)
1982 - BLADE RUNNER (MY FAVORITE YEAR)
1983 - THE RIGHT STUFF (THE KING OF COMEDY)
1984 - ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (BLOOD SIMPLE)
1985 - BACK TO THE FUTURE (TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.)
1986 - HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (MANHUNTER)
1987 - BROADCAST NEWS (LESS THAN ZERO)
1988 - EIGHT MEN OUT (CLEAN AND SOBER)
1989 - DO THE RIGHT THING (NEW YORK STORIES (the Scorsese segment - LIFE LESSONS)
1990 - GOODFELLAS (QUICK CHANGE)
1991 - TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (RUSH)
1992 - UNFORGIVEN (SNEAKERS)
1993 - DAZED AND CONFUSED (MAD DOG AND GLORY)
1994 - PULP FICTION (NOBODY'S FOOL)
1995 - HEAT (TWELVE MONKEYS)
1996 - FARGO (BEAUTIFUL GIRLS)
1997 - WAG THE DOG (LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND)
1998 - THE THIN RED LINE (THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO)
1999 - EYES WIDE SHUT (STIR OF ECHOES)
2000 - CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (GEORGE WASHINGTON)
2001 - MEMENTO (VANILLA SKY)
2002 - ADAPTATION (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE)
2003 - CITY OF GOD (SHATTERED GLASS)
2004 - ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (PRIMER)
2005 - BROKEN FLOWERS (THE WEATHER MAN)
2006 - CHILDREN OF MEN (THE FOUNTAIN)
2007 - THERE WILL BE BLOOD (RESCUE DAWN)

Posted by Andytown at 1:10 AM | Comments (1)

July 9, 2008

HERES SOMETHING I SPENT MORE TIME THAN NECESSARY ON!

Since I'm done with my thesis (kind of), this is the kind of thing I should be wasting my time on - picking my favorite album for every year that I was alive. The AV Club did it, as did other blogs. Since I'm done with my thesis (kind of), I might do the same thing for movies. Won't you be lucky!

You can find the lists of albums from each year on the Wikipedia, if you are looking for such a glorious waste of time.

And yes, I like the Talking Heads that much.

1977 - MARQUEE MOON, Television
1978 - THIRD/SISTER LOVER, Big Star
1979 - FEAR OF MUSIC, Talking Heads
1980 - REMAIN IN LIGHT, Talking Heads
1981 - PRAYERS ON FIRE, The Birthday Party
1982 - NEBRASKA, Bruce Springsteen
1983 - SPEAKING IN TONGUES, Talking Heads
1984 - HATFUL OF HOLLOW, The Smiths
1985 - PSYCHOCANDY, The Jesus and Mary Chain
1986 - TRUE STORIES, Talking Heads
1987 - APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION, Guns n' Roses
1988 - GREEN, R.E.M.
1989 - MYSTERY GIRL, Roy Orbison
1990 - NO DEPRESSION, Uncle Tupelo
1991 - NEVERMIND, Nirvana
1992 - BLIND MELON, Blind Melon
1993 - VS, Pearl Jam
1994 - WEEZER, Weezer
1995 - GHOST OF TOM JOAD, Bruce Springsteen
1996 - BEING THERE, Wilco
1997 - OK COMPUTER, Radiohead
1998 - IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA, Neutral Milk Hotel
1999 - I SEE A DARKNESS, Bonnie Prince Billie*
2000 - Elliott Smith, FIGURE 8*
2001 - IS THIS IT?, The Strokes
2002 - YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS, The Flaming Lips*
2003 - THE DECLINE OF BRITISH SEA POWER, British Sea Power
2004 - FUNERAL, Arcade Fire
2005 - END OF LOVE, Clem Snide
2006 - DESTROYER'S RUBIES - Destroyer
2007 - SOME LOUD THUNDER - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
2008 - DIG! LAZARUS DIG! - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (so far)

· 1985 and 86 are pretty weak years for music, unless you like the Replacements, which I kind of do, but not more than the endlessly listenable TRUE STORIES (which works as both a soundtrack and an album).

· If there were an actual awards that people cared about, they would probably see me passing over Wilco's SUMMERTEETH to award BPB's indie classic. Maybe I did. I really don't think anyone is too worried about engaging in this debate.

· Technically, my favorite CD of the year was Aimee Mann's soundtrack for MAGNOLIA, but it doesn't really count (even though I listened to it constantly during my the last semester of my Senior Year in college), so YFM is a perfectly acceptable substitute for an excellent year in music: it also saw KID A, Clem Snide's YOUR FAVORITE MUSIC, and HEARTBREAKER.

· In the closest race of the bunch, YOSHIMI barely beats out YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT. Few albums ever have charmed me and broadened my horizons like this one of a kind curio, and the subjectively empowering line, "One more robots starts to be, something more than a machine." A close third: Beck's SEA CHANGE. Were there voters, it might have split the vote, that or Pedro the Lion's (underrated) CONTROL.

Posted by Andytown at 8:24 PM | Comments (0)

July 5, 2008

ANDYTOWN'S FEW MINUTE MOVIE REVIEWS

By now you've either seen IRON MAN or you haven't. I hadn't until Monday, when I celebrated a completed (read: error-filled) rough draft of my thesis by catching the 4:00 Matinee of the latest Robert Downey Jr. star vehicle. Downey's presence makes this worthwhile for someone like me, who feels that the studios are converting the least interesting superheroes into big screen stardom. I didn't know much about Iron Man. He was a guy who wore an iron suit and he could fly, that's it. And in the trailer, the Black Sabbath stand-by was used, which was sure to be a bad sign. Jon Favreau has directed about four movies, none of them very good. Nothing about this made me think I'd like it.

And lo and behold I did. It's at least as much fun as the first SPIDERMAN, and its special effects didn't leave me bored. To say that Downey is perfect for this type of thing is the understatement of the mega-verse: he's absolutely crucial to the success of the film. There may be nobody better in the world at reading dialogue than this former coke-hound / WEIRD SCIENCE co-star.

IRON MAN, like the recent surprisingly good HULK, plays on that classic Promethean theme: how far can go before we transcend the limits of the gods. I like the way Iron Man suggests both possibilities, rather than just a traditional cautionary tale. I also like that Tony Stark, easily the most interesting super-hero alter-ego I've ever met in a movie, has room to fall and fall hard. What's left is a movie with a pretty good story, if a few unnecessary scenes (I'm confused as to why Terence Howard is in this movie, for instance). But this movie has heart - seriously; it's one of the key plot points, and it's a series in which I'm eagerly anticipating the sequel.

HANCOCK, on the other hand, could stop existing right now and I wouldn't complain. It's not to say that the movie was bad. I am an unapologetic Will Smith fan, and have been since he became the voice of my generation by announcing what we all knew, that Parents Just Don't Understand. The more successful of the Fresh Prince/DJ Jazzy Jeff combo (to say the least), Smith is as charismatic a presence as is working in movies these days. I have a tendency to be suspicious of movie stars, but I love Smith. Here the object is to wrench him of his obvious charisma to amp up his watchability, and it works. Especially since he's pared with the brilliant Jason Bateman, playing a role tailor-made for his peculiar nice-guy gifts.

And yet the movie is not very good. It's endurable, even enjoyable, as an attempt at a post 9/11 Superhero (a refreshing element is that he doesn't tap into all kinds of familiar mythologies). But Peter Berg, who directed this, has yet to make a movie that deserves to exist on the merits of its director. Berg is flashy, loud, and likes to move the camera a lot, kind of like his mentor, Michael Mann (who exec-produces pretty much all his movies). And here the result is something that's so tonally awkward and yet utterly conventional that the weirdness was completely cancelled out by the conventions.

HANCOCK is getting some good reviews from unlikely sources (The New Yorker, The AV Club), yet I think it was rushed and silly. I'd be interested to hear from other viewers.

Here's an excellent review of both the movie and Smith at Time.

A few quick Netflix reviews:

EAGLE VS. SHARK - NAPOLEON DYNAMITE goes to New Zealand. Jemaine Clement (of the wonderful FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS) salvages the movie with his presence, but ultimately this is the type of thing that could build an atomic bomb of quirk. There are several funny scenes, but these movies are frustrating because they're so anti-cinematic. And I found the actress annoying, when I think I'm supposed to fall in love with her.

CHARLIE BARTLETT - Sucked. Everyone is saying it's a RUSHMORE knockoff and they're right, except this one has neither the charm or wit of that masterpiece. I found its precocious protagonist irresponsible and annoying when he was supposed to be our Huckleberry Finn. Robert Downey Jr. is good in every scene he's in, as he always is, but its another movie about teenagers that doesn't know anything about teenagers. A much better movie was ROCKET SCIENCE.

THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL - Was trash. I would be lying if I said I weren't intrigued by watching Natalie Portman play Anne Boleyn, but I'm also an Anglophile, and this is a period I'll be studying in my PHD program - so visual representations are an easy sell for me. As history, it was soap opera mixed with revisionism, a bad mix, but at least it could have been tawdry and compelling, which it wasn't.

BE KIND REWIND - Was mostly pure joy. It's a great double-feature for SON OF RAMBOW. It's kooky to the nth degree, yet Michel Gondry has fun with it, and Mos Def and Jack Black are as funny as they've been in a long time. Their remake of RUSH HOUR 2 is worth the rental alone. But it also says something about the type of movies people want to watch, versus the type of movies people make. And ultimately it's about nostalgia, loving memories, and the kind of goofball communities that movies like this celebrate (as opposed to, in the case of EAGLE VS. SHARK, denigrate and pick on for comic potential).

JUMPER - Was pretty much the stupidest movie I've ever seen. Why did Doug Liman (director of the first BOURNE IDENTITY movie) waste his time with this?

Posted by Andytown at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)