Love: Pedro Martinez

http://soxblog.mlblogs.com/Pedro%20and%20Nomar.jpg

Pedro Martinez is my favorite player of all-time.

This is an obviously biased opinion; he did after all reach his dominance at a time during my most fervent fandom of baseball(1) and happened to be pitching for the Red Sox. But it is also a completely and wholly valid choice for a favorite player on a more objective level. He was perhaps the best pitcher in the steroid era. He had a Koufax-like streak of a few years where he put up insane numbers. Years where he made the best hitters in game look stupid. His 1997-2000 for example:

1997	25	MON	NL	17	8	.680	1.90	31	31	0	13	4	0	241.1	158	65	51	16	67	5	305	9	1	3	947	219	0.932	5.9	0.6	2.5	11.4	4.55	AS,CYA-1,MVP-16
1998	26	BOS	AL	19	7	.731	2.89	33	33	0	3	2	0	233.2	188	82	75	26	67	3	251	8	0	9	951	163	1.091	7.2	1.0	2.6	9.7	3.75	AS,CYA-2,MVP-21
1999	27	BOS	AL	23	4	.852	2.07	31	29	1	5	1	0	213.1	160	56	49	9	37	1	313	9	0	6	835	243	0.923	6.8	0.4	1.6	13.2	8.46	AS,CYA-1,MVP-2
2000	28	BOS	AL	18	6	.750	1.74	29	29	0	7	4	0	217.0	128	44	42	17	32	0	284	14	0	1	817	291	0.737	5.3	0.7	1.3	11.8	8.88	AS,CYA-1,MVP-5

Holy Crap!

Keep in mind he’s 5-11. For years he was doubted as being a starting pitcher because of his slight frame. but he made up for it with control and a contortionist-like movement and grace with his freakishly weird hands (2). He could unleash a mid-90s fastball in his heyday but didn’t have the ability to throw it 85 percent of the time like most power pitchers. Instead he relied on his world famous change-up. Yes world famous. A pitch that looked the exact same as his fastball until you already swung. And if you were lucky enough to time it right you’d still miss cause the thing had so much movement it was stupid. It traveled in and down on righties and he could catch the inside edge on lefties. It is easily in the top 5 pitches of any pitcher ever. Up there with Ryan’s electric fastball, Clemens’s splitter, Randy Johnson’s slider, and Koufax’s curveball. Oh yeah, and Pedro had the ability to break up the rotation of those two pitches, with his reserve curveball, which he threw from THE SAME EXACT arm slot. This is insane for a pitcher throwing at that 3/4 angle and he had to use the weirdest grip possible to make it work. With every other pitcher that curveball drops straight down 12 to 6, but Pedro could make that puppy hook out and down. He still throws it as a looper and it’s STILL nasty. The best part of that curveball was it could easily be most guys #1 pitch, but with him it was his #3.

And now he’s definitely in the twilight of his career. His fastball is 85-88. He’s just gassed. Hampered by injuries (which were definitely real and inherent to a guy of his size putting that much strain on his body), he’s had to go the finesse route, but he’s still startlingly effective. He’s not striking guys out, but he’s scraping for every ground ball, pop fly, and sly K he can get.  Even this year people thought he was done and then Charlie Manuel trots him out against the Dodgers and he just owns them. Even in his Yanks start he pitched pretty great, out-thinking guys, like with his awesome “quick pitch” in his last start against Jeter.

Look, calling someone a “gamer” is as banal and mundane as it can get, but nobody fits that description more than Pedro. A fierce, prideful guy who’s always going to go out and think he’s the best player on the field.

And that’s why I’m looking forward to his next start tonight. Some highlights from his conference yesterday: (via boston globe)

Pedro Martinez is in the interview room now at Yankee Stadium. His comments are too good not to share with you in (nearly) real time:

On Red Sox fans: “I know they don’t like the Yankees to win, not even in Nintendo games.”

He also said that he still considers himself a Bostonian and that he treasures his relationship with Red Sox fans. Earlier, he joked with reporters that he “wants his props” now and not when he dies.

Pedro faces Andy Pettitte tomorrow. Their first matchup was in 1998. Now they’ll take the mound in Game 6 of the World Series. It’s a very intriguing matchup.

UPDATE, 5:55 p.m.: More Pedro:

On Red Sox fans: “I’m pretty sure that every Boston fan out there can feel proud that I’m going to try and beat the Yankees and I’m going to give just the same effort I always did for them. They’re special fans and they will always have my respect.”

On Johnny Damon: “He’s a tough out and he’s going to give you a battle and he’s not going to get unraveled for anything. He’s always going to make it fun. J.D. is just a special human being and special player. I’m glad he’s doing well, too. That’s one of the guys I will always root for.”

On his legacy: “I’m pretty sure my name will be mentioned. I don’t know in which way. But maybe after I retire, because normally when you die, people tend to actually give you props about the good things. But that’s after you die. So I’m hoping to get it before I die. I don’t want to die and hear everybody say, ‘Oh, there goes one of the best players ever.’ If you’re going to give me props, just give them to me right now.”

What’s better than that?

He’s the anti-Clemens. A charismatic, thoughtful, brash-but-in-a-good-way, perennial all star, who in the dwindling days of his career reinvented himself as a finesse pitcher who’ll take the ball any time you give it to him. He regards all his fans and the fans of his teams with true respect. He remembers his friends and teammates with fondness. Yes, he once threw an old man on the ground, but the dude was asking for it (3).

And so he finds himself tonight going up against the New York Yankees yet again, with the entire season on the line. He’s going against a tough gamer guy as well in Petite (4), and I love it. I’m still pulling for Pedro. My fandom of him would continue for years no matter what team he played for. He was that much fun to watch.

I wish him way more than luck.

 

1 – not necessarily my most attuned. that would probably be the last few years. I was just simply my most fervent. I was young and bullish. whereas now I find myself waxing philosophical on the game of games.

2 – seriously, look that shit up

3- come on. it’s funny. no one got hurt… luckily

4- a great stand up guy, but admitted PED user. not going to point out as a bad thing.  just saying if we’re going to compare to pedro, than it should be mentioned.

Like: This Article Absolutely Eviscerating Ayn Rand

I rarely do a quick blurb and link, but I couldn’t resist.

I’ve detailed my dislike of Libertarianism, Ayn Rand*, and even Slate before, but here is Johann Hari’s excellent and scathing evisceration of Ayn Rand based on two new biographies (props to Travis for the find).

Enjoy:

http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/

*I have since attempted to actually read Atlas Shrugged and get halfway through before giving up due to inherent nonsense. Meanwhile I have read all of the fountainhead in sort-of-skimming fashion.

Like: My PowerMac G4 (R.I.P.)

“At long last it’s Crashed, this Colossal Mass…”

I’m not quoting the Shins because I’m in love with the Shins or anything. I’m quoting them because it was appropriate.

It was a long time coming. I bought this sucker in 2000. A powermac G4 with dual 800 cores and 80 gigs. This was the top of the line at the time. A lot of money and a solid investment for a guy who would be doing lots of video editing. And it went amazingly well. For almost 9 years the two of us worked in perfect harmony. Rarely a problem.  It’s nine years later and still you could keep up with all the advancements, and changes to web design, and newer OS systems. You could even play some of the more recent games. You were like the little engine who could! To think I once ran OS 9.2 on you! (only the greatest OS ever but that’s beside the point). We were made for each other this computer and I, and I simply could not have had a better computer.

And now with a kaput power supply, fan problems, and quite possibly some serious damage to the logic board and HD, it is time to salvage what I can from you and move on.

To my next computer, I wish you good luck… you have some big shoes to fill.

To My PowerMac G4

Computer, Desktop, Friend

-(2000-2009)

Love: Where The Wild Things Are (PART 1)

(Note: in an effort to get this up I’m not going to edit so I apologize for the stream of conscious approach)

Where The Wild Things Are was my favorite book of childhood. I wasn’t exactly sure why it was at the time. It just was. I would read it constantly. Draw pictures of the Wild Things. Make up my own Wild Things. All that sort of stuff. I was one of those hyper-imaginative kids that would sort of make you worry in some ways. At first glance WTWTA doesn’t seem to be about too much. Boy gets in trouble. Sent to bed without supper. Imagines a place with fantastical where he gets to be troublesome. Eventually returns. Gets supper. Really that’s it and it would seem obvious that it’s some sort of ode or bit of comforting tale to kids when they get in trouble. But the open ended-ness of the stark narrative really has allowed the psychological subtext to be debated for years and years. Is it about troubled kids? Is it about the recess of imagination? Inclinations to violence? Is it simply an analgous tale to Maurice Sendak’s own feelings toward his homosexuality? Really, it’s gone a million ways.

And with that it’s amazing that the best analysis I’ve ever seen at getting to the heart of Where The Things Are, came in the form of the new featue film from Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers.

I could write an 100 page paper on the analysis of child psychology in this movie. This not hyperbole. It’s is a stunningly complex film. So much so that I need to see it again to really tinker and figure some stuff out. This is not exactly the simple plot of the book, but a fully fleshed out child with a fully fleshed out (and still slightly ambiguous) child mentality. And in exploring his life at home, then his life with the Wild Things, a lot of grand themes take presedence: anger, jelousy, delirium, school, sybling detachment, divorce, existentialism, and many more.

The opening section of the film deals his life at home. We get bits and pieces of everything, a sort of key to understanding the rest of the movie if you will. I’m not going to get into details, because the subtle way the movie reveals these details is such a joy; a kind of forgotten way of filmmaking. It’s all detail oriented stuff, with bits of dialogue off to the side, an image through a doorway, a few hand-made items. Max (oh yeah, that’s the main kid) absorbs his environment and things seep into him quietly. It’s remarkably well-observed stuff here. Everything is impossibly pronounced yet never feels in your face or didactic.

And then all sense of being definitely didactic goes out the window when Max acts out, and runs away to escape to his island where the wild things are. The sequence takes up close to the rest of the running time and not only is it amazing from a technical filmmaking perspective, but it’s one of the most surprinsingly complex and nuanced bit of storytelling I’ve ever seen. It pretty much abandons a technical narrative for an emotional one. Max meets the Wild Things and becomes their king. He interacts with his new friends on a very child-like and visceral manner. Really it seems to be postulating that The Wild Things are not just the inclination to be troublesome, but representations of all the kinds of emotions and fears that lead to being troublesome. It’s freaking brilliant about it too. There’s no obvious one to one. One character isn’t his mother. One isn’t his dad. One isn’t fear. One isn’t anger. They’re all of those things in different ways. His main friend Carol (Holy Shit James Gandolfini. Just amazing work here) who seems to personify a kind of strained masculinity and terror. He is both Max’s absentee father and Max’s id. They’re tumultous relationship seems to be the core of Max’s wrestling with is own anger and maturity, but if so it is only one half of the coin. The other half is realized by the two female Wild Things which represent different aspects of his mother and sister. First in Judith, the stern and dissasociated Wild Thing (another spectacular voice performance, this time from a morbidly funny Catherine O’Hara) who constantly seems to be at odds with Max; and also with the most affecting Wild Thing, KW, whose quiet resignation, humanity, warmth, and emotional weary simply radiates of her and illustrates Max longing for a reconnection with these two central women of his family. Lauren Ambrose doesn’t even get a paranthetical aside for this performance.  Fully realized. Textured. Heart Breaking. Seriouly, why don’t we nominate voice actors again?  It’s that good.

So is  Max’s journey to where the wild things are a dream? His imagination? Both? Does it matter? Either way the movie certainly seems to be adopting dream-logic for the sequence. Believe it or not, the film that WTWTA most closely resembles is Mullholand Drive of all things. An odd choice for a “kids movie” one would think, but it’s completely analogous: a reality and a dream complimenting each other, fragmenting already stark dichotomies to tell a whole picture of a person and complete a pyschology.

I don’t blame a lot of people for not liking it. When I say “they just didn’t get it” it’s not some holier than thou statement, but more an acknowledgement that it’s really difficult to get. I certainly didn’t get all of it. At least not yet (once again, I need to see this again). I just know I haven’t seen something this ambitious in a long time. It was as formally and thematically ambitious as There Will Be Blood, and like that movie it deserves to be credited not only for it’s ambition, but for it’s amazement at how well it succeeds. I have to let it settle in as I just saw the thing last night, and I’m not really prone to over-doing something after having just seen it… but right now there are two films from this decade which take the cake for not only being flawless films, but cinematically and emotionally ambitious, while reaching some kind of deep seeded and complex truth. The first Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  and other is Where The Wild Things Are. And I’m not even that crazy about Spike Jonze’s other movies.

And lastly, is the movie for kids? A lot of it will sure go over their heads. But that’s fine. In a way that’s what makes the film exactly for them. Kids are much better at sensing emotional truth than we ever give them credit for and I am positive they will see this movie and connect to Max’s life.

Like: This Patton Oswalt Quote

“Man. Having babies. God. You smell bad when you don’t sleep. You know? You get that weird BO? You smell like cake mix and violence.”

I don’t have babies or anything, but I still find that hilarious.

This was on a recent Sports Guy podcast.

Like: Kit Kat(s)

Why?

Because they’re fucking delicious.

And I don’t feel like I ate a brick after I had one.

Don’t Like: My interaction in the coffee line / Like: My interaction in the elevator

So someone wonderfully pointed out that my site is turning into a movie review site. Sorry. I’ve just been seeing lots of movies and they’re on the brain.

So here comes the daily observances of foibles.

This morning I was in line to order a coffee. I do this about once a week, if that. This is what happened:

Me: “Hi can I get a small latte.”

Barista Lady: “What kind of milk?”

Me: “whole.”

BL: [not hearing me] “we have soy, skim, 1%, 2%-”

Me: “whole is fine.”

BL:  “Regular?”

Me: “yeah.”

BL: “you sure?”

Me: “yes.”

BL: [realizing she came off as judgemental] “Sorry. it’s just no one’s ordered regular for weeks. I gotta open a new one.”

… ah life in California.

LATER, IN THE ELEVATOR:

Two girls walk in. They know and talk to each other. One is holding  plastic bowl with a covered top. They put oatmeal in these at the breakfast place downstairs. I just stand to the side.

Girl 1: “Oooh. you got breakfast.”

Girl 2: “yeah”

G1: “What kind of oatmeal?”

G2: “Not oatmeal.”

G1: “Huh?”

G2: “Oh. No. I just crammed this sucker with bacon.”

I laugh out loud… They both look at me.

Me: “That’s awesome.”

[EXEUNT]

Like: World’s Greatest Dad

I’ll keep this short.

World’s Greatest Dad is a funny movie. Perhaps more surprisingly, it is also a very good movie.  You can’t say this is a total surprise, as the film’s director, Bobcat Goldthwait (yup, the Police Academy guy), already established a nice little foundation of indie/tv work: the profoundly messed-up Shakes the Clown, the great ruse Windy City Heat, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Chapelle’s Show, but most most of all his 2006 feature Stay, later retitled Sleeping Dogs Lie. Admittedly I have yet to see that last one, but all reports indicate it was surprisnigly nice little film about honesty and (in his words) “a tasteful amount of beastiality.” So WGD seems to be a nice little evolution in his career. (For example, it looks pretty good. Sleeping Dogs Lie was shot on some pretty low quality video, so Bobcat seems to make the leap to 35 with a surprising amount of guile. It’s not flashy or anything, but it’s got real steady feel to it).

Robin Williams gives easily my favorite performance of his since “The Genie” in Aladdin (yes this includes Good Will Hunting) . Even if the situation around him gets a little crazy, he plays it straight. His down to earth, good-natured-but-understandably-frustrated dad just rings very true. Even when things get very crazy and he takes his inner desires to some pretty extreme places. But it works.

But most of all Bobcat has crafted a wholly focused movie; all it’s trying to do is say one true thing (even hinting at this goal by quoting the famous Hemingway axiom of “one true sentance”). It’s an underrated and under-attempted quality in a movie and I found it admirable.

There’s actually a nice little moment that encapsulates this aforementioned one true thing. That moment is when Krist Novoselic shows up. The name Krist Novoselic is an intersting one, because he’s one of those unrecognized yet incredibly influential people. How do you know him? He’s “the other guy” from Nirvana. And his appearence in the movie is completely appropriate. He’s friends with Bobcat and when the director asked Krist to be in said scene, Krist asked “Just what is this movie about anyway?”

(WARNING THEMATIC/KINDA PLOT SPOILERS FOR THE REST OF THE BLURP SO TURN AWAY NOW) Bobcat answered: “You ever know that situation where someone dies and a bunch of people who didn’t know him talk about him, and turn him into something else that has to do with their own wants and needs, and push the people who actually knew him and cared about him off to the side?” Krist apparently smiled “Yeah I think know something about that.”

So yeah. The movie is basically about that. And it leads to Bobcat’s “one true sentance” (which is wonderfully enough the first sentance he wrote down and the starting point for a movie… thematically working backwards is also a wonderfully under-represented thing in movies). Here’s the paraphrased quote: [People think the most terrifying thing in the world is being alone, when really the most terrifying thing in the world is being only with people who make you feel alone.] And the movie earns the right to say it.

I’m looking forward to more Bobcat movies.

Like: Inglourious Basterds

Yikes. Inglorious Basterds might be my favorite movie of the year (for the record, I’m still deciding between Up, Drag Me To Hell, District 9, and Tetro in some fashion). It is also probably my favorite Tarantino movie since Pulp Fiction.

The revenge picture seems to be making some sort of cinematic comeback. It’s an odd little genre and unlike say Kill Bill, where the revenge is kind of a literal plot level thing, the revenge picture is kind of like a revenge surrogate for the audience in a larger social text. There’s some of the old blaxploitation movies that skewed that direction (eg. Sweet Sweetback’s Badaaass Song) and the rape-revenge movies (like I Spit On Your Grave). The goal of these movies is simple: catharsis. Show the revenge and the audience feels a sense of elation that often don’t get to feel in the reality of those situations. This is not an insidious practice. These movies aren’t advocating revenge in real life or anything (those who say they do, psssh… nonsense), but what does seem to matter is what exactly you’re justifying in revenge.  Racial injustice and sexual assault sure make a whole lot of sense , which is why the aforementioned movies relatively embraced by some critical communities. Meanwhile movies with bad revenge desires, like sayyy Death Wish (paraphrasing: “I’m going to go shoot up random minorities cause I’m sick of their shit!”) are much more problematic. Even something like Crash or Glory which are merely made to appease White Guilt I find kind of distressing. So either way it’s kinda murky territory but the point is there are revenge pictures and they serve a function.

So imagine if you will, a World-War 2 revenge picture.

We forget that we kinda used to make them all the time (Dirty Dozen, etc.), but the last decade or more has featured a lot of sobering, serious World War 2 movies. Don’t get me wrong, these films have varying degrees of  importance and immersion that I greatly admire, but they also made us forget that we can make audacious non-historical WW2 movies too. It’s OK. Not everything has to be Saving Private Ryan. This bears mentioning because I think I saw about 10 films that felt as if they simply had to be SPR, even with having no reason to be.

Enter Quentin Tarantino, who seems to have come at just a perfect time.

Inglourious Basterds is brash, audacious, tense, vibrant, list of great adjectives with wholly cinematic allure. 95% of it’s running time is rich with the highest quality Tarantino dialogue (not what I felt was sometimes a lame imitation in Death Proof) and those moments are punctuated by brief but intensely violent moments; the kind of moments that are well-served and often built up to brilliantly.  The film starts simply “Once upon a time in Nazi Occupied France”, which couldn’t be more perfect because although the settings are often startlingly intimate, the ultimate version of the Third Reich we get here is not all that different from the version we get in Indiana Jones movies; which is to say, the complete encapsulation of movie-time villainy. It’s like we’ve forgotten that you can portray the Nazis that way without turning into an Us vs. Them fascistic dick.  You can. It’s okay. It’s part of an accepted movie and cultural language and in our desire to be thoughtful rounded people we have somehow come into the belief that our villians have to be just as thoughtful or rounded. Nonsense. It’s knee jerk liberalism (and this from a hardcore liberal). God, they’re the NAZIS. They were the most hateful and evil group of dicks in the recent history of western civilization. It’s okay to make them the embodiment of evil. BECAUSE THEY WERE.

Now, that is not to say Quentin Tarantino would EVER make the mistake of hollowing out his characters to the point of simplistic archetypes and cutouts. Quite the contrary. For starters Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine knows EXACTLY how to march right up to the line of ridiculousness and keep it… well not grounded, but just grounded enough not to lose the audience. Sure Pitt’s chewing scenery, but he’s doing that infamous tight rope walk where it’s all balanced in perfect movie reality. Ebert talked in his review about Tarantino’s uncanny ability for doing this. He can make a line or moment utterly ridiculous and yet finds this unmistakable way to ground it and give it emotion.  Pitt gets to give a tongue thrashing assault and does so with such utter committment I usually find missing in most of his “serious” roles. As a result, it’s probably my favorite Pitt performance. He’s having a ball and so are we; taking absolute delight in every little verbal tick and inversion of his oh-so-balls-out Tennessee diction. It wholly showcase’s Tarantino’s world famous ear for dialogue as it reverberates through and through. He’s a perfect vehicle for the basterd’s grim and unflinching philosophy/behavior as most of them don’t say a word; they’re just an outright presence, scalping their way across the countryside.

As counterpoints, there are the two central females of the film: Melanie Laurant’s Shoshana and Diane Kruger’s Bridget von Hammersmark. I kind of think it’s better to keep their involvement in the plot a secret, not because it’s twisty or anything, but because it’s just no necessary. Suffice to say they are two completely realized characters with vibrant personality, layers, and depth. This bears mentioning because Tarantino is unfairly thought of as a kind of guy’s guys director and instead, looking over his filmography, he’s litered his films with about a dozen+ fascinating female figures.  They get to espouse rich dialogue. They get to perform their butts off. They get to be heroes. He never asks them to get naked. They are more or less treated on an acting level with complete respect. They’re simple characters in other films (ie “the girl”) and here they are something so much more. Let’s stop and think about not only how rare this is, but how incredibly refreshing it is.

This leaves “the bad guy” as a matter of discussion. It has been said many times already but Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa of the S.S., is without a doubt one of the best performances of the year. Probably the best. Landa is such a all encomapassing figure: an authority, a mannered gentlemen, a seething detective, a fucked-up sociopath, a delighted nave, a touch fay, all-together menacing, and yet completely and totally coherent. How can you even do that? It’s a mystery for sure, but it is such a great combination of writing, direction, and performance to be sure. I can’t speak highly enough of it. But it’s one of those performances that EVERYONE gets, like Ledger’s Joker or Day Lewis’s Daniel Plainview; no one misses what’s going on from the visceral forefront to the many subtlties at play. It’s a remarkable achievement.

So as for what this whole freaking movie is actually about (and it is about something given my opening bit about Revenge films). Let’s get into what actually happens in this sucker.

WARNING HUGE FUCKING SPOILERS AHEAD BUT ITS WHAT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT SO TURN AWAY NOW IF YOU HAVEN”T SEEN IT. REALLY… AND IF YOU REALLY DON’T CARE THEN FINE I SUPPOSE… OKAY… Getting back to the Revenge film bit… Basterds is wholly cathartic because you get to see the war you want to happen and not the war that did. We get to see Nazis utterly shot, scalped, beaten to death, scarred, and blown up. And it’s not like some parade of violent delights either. I mentioned the matter of buildup and punctuated violence which gives all of this said violence some hefty weight. The idea is catharsis in every possible form. And if you’re doing Jewish revenge, if you’re going to go ALL THE WAY with that logic. Then your ending is simple (again spoiler, here’s the ending), why not have your jewish ww2 revenge picture end with  Hitler, Goebbles, and all the high ranking nazi officials getting gunned down and burned alive in movie theater? Why not have your more humane Nazis get forever branded with the nazi symbol on the forehead so they “can never take off the uniform.” What the heck is more cathartic than that?

Nothing. It’s the ending we never got. Sure WW2 was born out of revenge for WW1 (more debatable than is commonly accepted by the way), but that’s not a concern. In reality, Hitler was the true to form and cowardly shot himself in a bunker (we’re pretty sure about this). So, in the interest of catharsis, why not shoot him over and over again in the head?

Some critics seem to have a problem with this. Particularly David Denby of the New Yorker (not even going to bother to link to his knee-jerk nonsense). But to label this kind of revenge film as stupid or insensitive is just as stupid or insensitive. That’s because doing so means you’re mistaking Tarantino for an amateurish idiot who indulges in violence or revenge for revenge’s sake. Sure he’s a brash persona, but he’s no dummy. That kind of indulgent simplicity is what many of his imitators do, but not he. Tarantino is a master of both wholly exploiting a genre for all it’s worth and then subverting or transcending it in the most interesting ways. DFW once wrote a great piece on how his lynchian tendencies are played for “coolness” rather than discomfort and therefore lose effect, but I think his work from Pulp Fiction on works beautifully in terms of transcending that surface coolness. He simply cuts above garrishness. It’s not because he has lengthy dialogue scenes or simple tricks like that, which people often mistake for being smart, it’s because of a much more nebulous tone of intellect and emotional gravity. It’s beyond simple irony or dissaffect. It’s genuine care and love for these, the depraved archetypes and conventions at play.

It’s a wholesale acceptance of the human condition, IE understanding that the desire for revenge (in cinematic form) is cathartic even for the most liberal, a-fascist personalities in the world, which once again I am. I’m practically a freakin pacifist, but I can wholly understand and engross myself in the Tarantino ww2 reality. Yet for some reason it seem to urk other critics, colleagues, and friends who find this kind of treatment of a “serious subject” to be offensive. The same people who find Dirty Harry to be some kind of fascistic guide to life.  I don’t understand that. It’s like they’ve never seen a movie before. Movies don’t have to espouse your sense of politics or life philosophy (hell, we kind of perfer if they don’t). And I don’t say that in a “it’s just a movie don’t take it seriously” kind of way. I say that in the sense that there’s this cinematic social contract that what you’re seeing is a representation of a kind of dream or inner will.  The best directors know what’s happening, acknowledge it, and go past it. But so many people get trapped in Tarantino’s acknoledgement of base tropes, they can’t get past it. Come on! You’re not falling victim to a movie, it’s falling victim to you, ultimately. It’s a such a freaking shame too because they’re missing out on the best kinds of movies. The kind where you get to subvert your own freaking pretentions of what is proper and ride your own id. And unlike most trash, Tarantino guides your id with such utter care and poignancy. God… You’re missing out on those movies.

And missing out on the genius of Inglourious Basterds, probably the best movie of the year.

Like: District 9

So I’ve missed the last few weekends of movies and am going back to furiously catch up.

Starting with District 9, which is astoundingly good.

I’m not sure I can add anything to discussion, people seem to love the serious sci-fi angle on this this (relatively) low budget and rather unlikely blockbuster.

But I just found it to be doing so many interesting things so let’s go to bullet form:

-This is the best CGI I’ve ever seen. Hands down. The close ups of the bugs are photoreal. You’d swear they were prosthetic or practical effects, but nope. CGI. James Cameron should be ashamed of himself, spending 450 million to make “photoreal” cgi and instead his Na’vi from Avatar look like damn cartoons. He was utterly bested by a south african filmmaker with 30 millions dollars and hell of a lot more smarts. So how did this guy do it? Care, mostly. Rely on less CGI shots, spend more time on them, opt for a non-glamorous shooting style, go for an alien design that caters much better to CGI (ie bugs), and it helps to have WETA on your side, who in my mind is easily the best effects studio working today.

-Lots of great tone jumping. You don’t really notice it like you would in other films, but by keeping the docu-like form and cinematography the filmmakers afford themselves the ability to jump tones, and even narrative to a degree, all while keeping a cohesive singular movie. It’s just so exceptionally well done and I don’t really think people realize how vibrant and stark the sense of humor is in some of the scenes (the prawns living habits, the main prawn father/son interactions). Like I said the whole docu vibe affords them a lot of leeway. Just a brilliant move.

-Speaking of the “Shaky” cinematography, THIS is how you do it (Booooo Cloverfield). They know just exactly how to hold the camera with a slightly wider shot and focus in when focusing is important (it only gets real shaky with intentional bumps). Just lights out work, and believe me they worked on this over and over again until they got it right. Loved it.

-Lots of great violence. I’m not some guy who just sees movies like this for it’s action, but boy oh boy can a appreciate a film when it does it well. Blowing people up doesn’t have to be some mindless actioneering, but instead can be a cinematic, visceral and even cathartic film experience.  Like a pro, Blomkamp holds off most of this til the end and unleashes such a great last few acts.

-This movie has a lot in common with Starship Troopers (also just a great movie. I’m not kidding, the cartoony stuff just plays perfectly in that film. Verhoeven’s no dummy). D-9’s not going for the same satire angle, but there’s a lot of the same kinds of things being said about war mentalities, the “other”, etc.

-The movie somehow has just the right amount of sweetness too.

-Particularly loved the opening detail on their malnourishment as explanation, does so much explaining in a simple detail.

-Having Sharlto Copely, who plays the main guy Wikus, just absolutely NAIL the role has to help you out. It seriously wasn’t until this exact moment that I realized he was acting against nothing and completely sold his relationship with the main bug. It blows my mind. I seriously didn’t even think about it til right now… whoa… I had been thinking about his character arc and how he sold his development. Which is what you really should be thinking about and not the CGI. Just brilliant.

-As a historical lover of first person shooters, I could appreciate all the great inventive weapons in this. Fun stuff.

-That’s good for now I think. I really liked this well executed, and thoughtful movie. Sure the concepts at play aren’t exactly rocket science, but they sure aren’t banal and they used a valid sense of maturity and tact in dealing with them. Which is a HELL of a lot more you can say than most summer movies.

-Peter Jackson found a winner.

PS – A basterds blurb coming soon