Brokeback Mountain and Doogal

In the last couple of weeks, I saw Brokeback Mountain and Doogal. Both were shown in a theater. Both appeared to be projected at 24 frames a second. Both were seen by me. Other than those things, they basically had nothing in common.

Brokeback Mountain, of course, is something of a phemonenon at this point. It is a very good movie. The thing that really struck me about it was that the script and the direction were done in a way that was like a pretty stereotypical cowboy movie. Lot of yeps and uh-uhs. Lots of panoramic vistas and herds of livestock roaming around. The food gets screwed up. They eat too many beans. The cowboy doesn't want to move to town. The main character, Ennis, is basically a shut-off guy who has a hard time relating to his wife and kids. But this format of course is used for a pretty radical story, as mainstream movies go. It's the "gay cowboy" movie, after all.

I found this juxtaposition to be pretty brilliant. Shut-down cowboys using monosyllabic dialgoue to talk about their relationship. It wasn't a surprise when the end credits came up and Larry McMurtry was one of the screenwriters. McMurtry has a long history of writing cowboy characters in ways that speak to themes that work now. Lonesome Dove is a brilliant book and the miniseries was great, too. Once I saw that McMurtry was one of the screenwriters, I realized that the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain were very much like Woodrow -- the shut-down Ennis -- and Gus -- the more open Jack -- with a gay edge that didn't exist in Lonesome Dove, of course, but wasn't all that different from the really close relationship between Woodrow and Gus. Basically, Brokeback Mountain emphasized the personal effects of the characters' backgrounds -- Ennis needing something or someone to hold on to after he basically had been left alone when his parents died, Jack being a way closeted gay man -- more than Lonesome Dove did, while deemphasizing the Western panorama aspect of the cowboy stereotype. (It's kind of funny how Jack drove back and forth from Texas to Wyoming several times in the movie and it was treated like he was commuting, while just one cattle drive from Texas to Wyoming or somewhere around there consumed the whole book of Lonesome Dove). A lot of the same story elements just turned and applied to new kinds of issues.

Ultimately, I didn't think that Brokeback Mountain was a truly brilliant movie the way that, say, Sex, Lies and Videotape, LA Confidential or The Crying Game were brilliant movies. Some of the important characters weren't realized very well. Jack's wife's character was pretty crucial, but left largely undefined. Jack's confrontation with his father-in-law and his wife's reaction to it didn't make a lot of sense. All that being said, I thought that Brokeback Mountain was very, very good, especially Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams. Michelle Williams was great in getting over what it would be like to be a woman with severely limited horizons who was just trying to make a normal life, but that was falling apart. Heath Ledger similarly was very, very good in showing you a guy who really had nothing to rely on in his life, but was trying hard -- with very little dialogue. The moment when he tells Jack to lay off of his wife was really good. Similarly, without ever saying it, he got across that he really wanted to be a good father, but just didn't know how. In a weird way, Brokeback Mountain reminded me of Toy Story in that both are sort of landmark movies and would have been remembered for a long time even if they had only been decent, but fortunately turned out to be very good and so will be remembered even more.

None of that applies to Doogal. That movie blew chunks. It's about a dog that has to, along with his friends, stop an evil wizard spring -- literally, a spring, like the ones that stick out the sides of old mattresses -- from freezing the world via the magic generated by his magic mustache. It made so little sense that, about halfway through, it occurred to me that it might be a movie that originally was made in a different language and then had English dialogue dubbed over it. I thought maybe it had been French -- the movie kind of looked like animated Cirque du Soleil at times. Turns out it had been English and then had American dialogue dubbed over it. Anyway, it blew. After seeing enough Pixar movies, seeing animated hair move doesn't justify a movie anymore. And that's basically all Doogal had going for it. Stay away, even if your kids beg. If, however, you are a college kid looking for a movie to watch while drunk (not you, Intensius), Doogal might work for you.

Brokeback Mountain: Film minus
Doogal: Flick

Attractiveness Quotient, Olympic Style

A while ago, I wrote something about how I couldn't believe how out of whack the attractiveness quotient is between young men and young women at this point. Basically, you see scuzzy-lookin' young men with long, bad hair dating normal, attractive young women. It is mystifying to me because, over the course of modern history, I believe that this is unprecedented.

Now, we get the Olympics and The Flying Tomato. You know, Shaun White, the American snowboarder who won a gold medal:


Now, after this dude wins his half-pipe gold medal (he doesn't seem like a "pipe's half full" kind guy to me, he seems like kind of "full pipe" kind of guy -- of course, I don't know him), he starts long-distance hitting on Sasha Cohen, the American figure skater, saying he didn't see her at the opening ceremonies, hopes to see her at the closing ceremonies and hopes that she likes gold-medal winners. Then she kind of coyly plays along, saying it's too bad he's staying in the Olympic village in the hills while she's at the one in the valley, while also saying that she does like gold medal winners. She then goes out and falls a couple of times in the free skate, but still gets a silver medal. Then she's interviewed by Bob Costas, who asks her if she's going to see The Flying Tomato at the closing ceremonies, and she says that she might be on the Tonight Show (come, Sasha, Letterman please, be cool, man) and says "so I guess I shall leave you with an ambiguous answer."

Now Sasha Cohen is a regular-looking, pretty attractive young
woman. I hope to God that she has prospects other than the Flying Tomato. Now please understand what I'm saying here. First, I'm very happy that the Flying Tomato is having a successful career and apparently is a multi-millionaire due to his skateboarding and snowboardings exploits. (It could be worse. After all, Chris O'Donnell and EthanHawke are multi-millionaires too and they don't have any talent at all.) Second, I'm not saying that pretty women should only date handsome men. I mean, aging rock stars, for example, need love, too. (Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter? Ugh. Ric Ocasek and Paulina Porzikova? Eeek. Mick Jagger, he of the currently unfortunate triceps, and anyone female? Yikes.)

What I am saying, though, is that young American men do not need to be encouraged in their currently horrendous grooming choices. Ms. Cohen had herself a nice opportunity to strike a blow for improving the world's attractiveness by saying, "The Flying Tomato, he might be OK if he'd wash his hair." Alas, she passed, expressed at least some insincere interest and thus encouraged the bad style choices of 15- to 19-year-olds all across our great land. And that -- not Ms. Cohen's missed jumps or Bodie Miller's 0-fer -- seems to me to be the big missed opportunity of this particular Olympics.

Pimpin' Kermit

Sittin' here watchin' some Olympics, something horrible came on. Need to take a minute to regain my senses and to explain.

One of the more important aspects of watching the Super Bowl is, of course, watching the commercials (especially when the Super Bowl is as boring a game as this year's was -- except that play where Rothlisberger ran right up to the line of scrimmage, stopped and completed a pass to convert a third-and-25, that was brilliant). So, at some point while grabbing some good Maui kettle BBQ chips during the Super Bowl, I looked up at the TV and saw the tail end of some commercial with Kermit the Frog singing about how it actually wasn't that hard to be green. Through the magic of the Internet, I discovered that the commercial was from Ford and was about their gas-electric hybrid little SUV and Kermit was singing that it might actually be easy to be green because this SUV was green. The first part of the commercial featured Kermit singing about how it wasn't easy being green while riding mountain bikes and kayaking and rock climbing.

OK, that was pretty entertaining. It's a nice play on Kermit's classic song, particularly where Kermit gets his worried face while hanging on to a cliff with one hand. Enthusio liked it, so did I. Still, it's a small bit disturbing to see Kermit being a corporate pitch guy. I mean, Sesame Street is one of the most sacred things to people my age. One of my high school friends -- who now teaches high school Latin and AP English -- claims that our generation is more tolerant because, hey, we watched Sesame Street and, on Sesame Street, it didn't matter whether you were pink or blue or green or purple. And Kermit was the ringleader on Sesame Street, of course. But all things change and, when the rights to the Muppets were sold to Disney, you had to figure that the Muppets would get somewhat more commercial. I'm a grown-up, I can live it. Kermit pitching for a Ford hybrid. OK, give me some more chips and a beer.

But, tonight, what I saw something that sort of me feel like Roy Schneider in Jaws when he is throwing out the chum and first sees the shark come out of the water. Just speechless horror. You're gonna need a bigger boat for this one.

Just for you, I will relive the experience as a stream of consciousness. I come downstairs from getting The Mermaid and Enthusio tucked in and there's a pizza commercial coming on. There's a geeky-looking kid starting to eat his pizza. There's a song coming on. It sounds like "these bots are made for poppin'" What? Oh, wait, it's Jessica Simpson. Oh, I heard about this. She's singing something based on Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" Wow, that's a bad song. Wow, it's being sung badly. Oh, they're talking about how the pizza has cheese bites around the edge. It's "bites," not "bots." That's good, "bots made for poppin'" makes no sense. You mean, the pizza has a pre-formed crust? There isn't some cook in the back carefully forming the crust from a lump of dough and carefully making sure the edge comes together? Lame. Ms. Simpson seductively throws one of cheese bites into the geeky kid's mouth. Wow, classy. Wait, wait, wait, what the hell is this?!? That's Kermit! He's saying, "We'll have what he's having." There's Miss Piggy! She's kicking him! It's not only about bad pizza with a bad, bad version of a bad, bad song being sung by a bad singer, it's also a bad take-off of a sex joke! You have got to be kidding me. They made Kermit participate in this! Kermit! Not Kermit! No, no, no!

At this point, I have almost lost a few of my senses. I must sit down. The horror is overwhelming. My mind is swimming. I am horrified because Jim Henson must be rolling over in his grave. No, I would be more horrified if Jim Henson wasn't rolling over in his grave. Kermit, Boots Are Made For Walking, Jessica "Is It Fish or Chicken?" Simpson, bad pizza, sex joke. Make it stop! Please! Kermit, bad pizza, sex. Is this a sign of the apocalypse? Is Elmo next? Will my children have to watch Blue's Clues Steve selling Viagra? Please, I beseech you, no.

My Sister Has Moved

My sister The Force of Nature (we will use the term T-Fon [phone] in the spirit of J. Lo., T-Mac, etc., but not L. Ron) has moved. Moved to New York City, no less. I am very proud of her, though my own emotions are mixed. Pro: this is a great move for T-Fon professionally and personally. Pro: being not married and with no kids, why not move to NYC for at least a while? Sounds like a blast. Pro: now we have someone to see in NYC. Con: she's on the other side of the country now. Con (big con): if she stays there, she might become a Yankees fan (that sound you hear is my teeth grinding).

When T-Fon told me that she was thinking of moving to NYC, I wasn't especially surprised. She's always been an adventurous person, much more adventurous than me. When we were kids, we fought all the time, of course. If you have ever read the book Lord of the Flies, then you probably remember two brothers referred to as Samanderic. That's about how our mom would yell at us when we were fighting: WebbedtoeandTFon, stop fighting! (It's much more musical with our real names.) This kind of thing continued through our teen years, in different forms. She was a freshman in high school when I was a senior and, while her locker was about three down from mine, she only acknowledged my presence when she: (1) wanted a ride somewhere; or (2) wanted some money. (Perhaps I'm exaggerating.) But you get to be grown-ups and you realize that your sister is actually pretty cool.

Even as kids, though, it was always clear to me that T-Fon was always, and somewhat paradoxically, both more comfortable with the things that people did where we grew up and more adventurous. I read the encyclopedia, she rode horses on the side of the road. She would get out to see her friends during the summer, me not so much. She played sports "in town," I played golf with my grandfather (which is not to say that was a bad thing, it just was safer, looking back). She wore yellow Chuck Taylors to her eighth grade graduation, I wore a brown knit clip-on. So I guess that it's not a surprise that I found a groove that works for me here in the Central Valley pretty early on, tried a few different things and then came back while T-Fon is headed to the city so nice they named it twice. Just different paths toward finding what works for you.

So I'm quite proud of T-Fon. Not a lot of people go from Hall's Corner to NYC. I'm very glad to know one.

24

Started watching 24 lately. I am way late to this particular cultural phenomenon, 24 being in its fourth or fifth season, I think. At least three members of my family have been into 24 for several years. When we were in Hawaii almost three years ago, Mr. Dry Wit made sure that he saw 24. But I guess it's better late than never.

Besides 24 being really entertaining, two things about it strike me as fascinating.

The first one is one that I probably don't appreciate fully because I haven't watched the past seasons. There was an African-American President on 24, played by the actor with the deep voice who does the Allstate commercials now. The thing about this is that it feels completely right. God knows, the country should be ready for a President of color. It's only been 143 years since the Emanication Proclamation, 138 years since the 14th Amendment, 43 years since the March on Washington. It's about time. If Colin Powell had run in 1996, he might have won, although it's pretty unlikely that he'll ever get to be President now. Similarly, Condelezza Rice might have had the potential to be President, but that seems pretty unlikely at this point, too. Maybe Harvey Gantt if he had beaten Jesse Helms in 1990 (still more than a little bitter about that one). Maybe Henry Cisneros if he hadn't had an affair. Maybe Barack Obama.

So I think that most of the country is ready for a President of color. But you still hear things like about how unnamed Bush supporters went around South Carolina in 2000 campaigning against John McCain by talking about his "black baby" (a child that McCain and his wife adopted from southeast Asia, I believe). That kind of stuff has to make you wonder.

Seeing 24 portray an African-American President and have that President -- President Palmer -- basically be exactly the kind of thoughtful, decisive, tough kind of guy that you would want as a President is a kind of very useful cultural thought experiment.

The second thing about 24 that I find really interesting is that it makes you think about what kind of government behavior would be acceptable if, says, terrorists were ready to set off a nuclear bomb or release lots of nerve gas. The lead character on 24, Jack Bauer, does some awful stuff, but always in the specifically defined context of one day in which the end of the world is about to happen. In that context, would be OK for government agents to torture people to find out what they need to know?

That kind of thing certainly doesn't seem wrong in the show's context. Use tasers on people or threaten to cut their eyes out to get information? Well, if there are guys driving around LA with nuclear bombs or nerve gas, that might be OK by me, I suppose. Being a bit of a geek, I've always been pretty interested in constitutional law (I remember being surprised hearing about eminent domain for the first time in fifth grade) and, you know, torturing people doesn't strike me as the most constitutional thing to do. The Constitution isn't just a statement of the rights that people in the U.S. have -- it's also a statement about what the government can't do. But what are you going to do in the most extreme circumstances?

The key to this mental exercise is the line-drawing, I guess. Where does this kind of thing go too far? This last week, Jack wouldn't help terrorists release nerve gas in a shopping mall, though the President ordered him to do so because that would have been a way to find the rest of the nerve gas that the terrorists have. Clearly, Jack is the lead character and you, the audience, are supposed to sympathize with him as the guy who is drawing the right lines. (BTW, this lionization of Jack gets to be a little much at times.) There's little doubt that, in the kind of horrific situation that is portrayed each season on 24, horrific choices would have to be made. As I understand, on Sept. 11, someone (Cheney, I believe) issued an order to shoot down Flight 93 if it got near Washington.

You don't have to buy the choices that Jack makes on the show. (There was an almost incomprehensible op-ed piece in the S.F. Chronicle last week that suggested that the mere fact that 24 exists and displays torture demonstrates that our politics have become totally unacceptable because the display of fictional torture shows that torture has become far too accepted in society. At least, I think that's what the piece was saying.) But I don't think that there is any other media creation at this point that is presenting anything that makes people think about the choices that may have to be made at some point in responding to terrorism. A lot of people seem far too willing to "make the tough decisions" about terrorism and a lot of people seem too willing to believe that such decisions won't ever have to be made. 24 is worth watching if only because it makes you think about such decisions and their consequences.

Madonna's Hernia

You probably saw a story about it, but I'm going to tell you about anyway: Madonna apparently had surgery to cure a hernia. A minor event, in the greater scheme of things, no doubt. My God, it made me feel old, though.

I've always felt a little privileged to have been marinating in the pop culture when Madonna came out. I remember very distinctly being at a picnic -- it was called a picnic, it was called a party at a park, but it was basically a picnic -- in 1984 just after the finish of a play that I was in and just before I started high school, where a guy who was two years older than me and who was in the play and who would be the high school quarterback was standing around singing Madonna's "Holiday." (I now realize that the Go Go's' Vacation was a much better song on a similar theme.) Can you imagine a high school quarterback standing around singing something by Avril Lavigne or Ashlee Simpson (I'm not equating those two, BTW) these days? Uh, probably not.

But Madonna was a big deal. She wasn't particularly original to start -- she more or less took Deborah Harry's vibe and mixed it up with slightly updated disco music. She hit big right when videos started, probably largely because of videos. She has been a hell of a lot more durable and interesting than just about every other singer who hit it big via early videos. (Anyone know what Toni Basil is doing these days?) She clearly was intentionally outrageous to get attention -- rolling around on the ground singing "Like a Virgin," dancing around with burning crosses in the "Like a Prayer" video, the whole Sexx CD (I really wanted to type "album" there, but I have decided to leap into the 1990's) and book, the video with risque stuff in it that MTV wouldn't play before 11 p.m. or something (the one that they parodied on Wayne's World when Garth had a unit on him). Madonna, though, wasn't just trying to shock people to make money. She actually made the effort to be a better singer. She had a sense of humor (thus the participation in the Wayne's World parody). The thing that I found pretty impressive was that she was willing to publicly link herself with a lot of gay-themed things at a time when that wasn't particularly acceptable. You can view her use of "vogue" dancing as just a slick co-optation of gay culture to sell CD's, but would that kind of dancing ever gotten out into broader pop culture without Madonna? I think not.

So, anyway, I've felt a little privileged to have been around to see Madonna. Not nearly like I feel about having been around to watch the Berlin Wall fall or or to see Nelson Mandela become president of South Africa or even to watch the various sports miracles that I've seen (Doug Flutie's pass, Jack Nicklaus at the Masters in 1986, Kirk Gibson). It's just that there aren't that many people who make you consistently think, "OK, what's she going to come up with next?"

And now Madonna has a hernia.

Not one of those "sports hernias" that have become one of the cool injuries for professional athletes to have (along with microfracture surgery). Just your basic kind of hernia. The kind that Weird Al Yankovic sang about in "Livin' With A Hernia" (to the tune of James Brown's "Living in America". Heh!) Man, it was bad enough when Madonna bought the Scottish castle. Not much says unfunky like living in a castle in cold, foggy Scotland. But a hernia? Madonna? How did that happen?

What's next? Will Tom Cruise turn out to be a freak? Will Andre Agassi go bald? Will Kathleen Turner start playing parts where she pretends she was a man?

Sampling

Enthusio wanted to go see the kids' movie Hoodwinked last weekend, so he, the Mermaid and I went to see it. It was kind of tolerable. If you don't know the intricacies of its plot, it's a mystery about who stole the recipes of Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother. (Spoiler alert: it's the rabbit with Andy Dick's voice. Really, it's Andy Dick's voice. He and Jack from Will and Grace who voiced the evil cat in "Cats and Dogs" are separated at voice-birth.)

Sitting there watching this movie, though, it suddenly occurred to me that basically every significant aspect of the movie was ripped off from something else that I had seen, heard or read before. Using the story of Little Red Riding Hood as the basis for the movie was tolerable, given that fairy tales have been the basis for later stories forever. However, literally everything was ripped off from somewhere else. Most of the structure of the story was in a format where various characters told the inevitable police investigator what they saw, a technique that the movie Rashomon (which I have ever seen, but have heard about) apparently pioneered. In recent years, that technique has been used at least by the excellent TV show "Boomtown" (unfairly cancelled, damn you, NBC). The police investigator frog essentially was Hercule Poirot, down to the little mustache. The wolf was an investigative journalist who was clearly supposed to be Fletch (there was even a scene with him playing basketball in a big Afro). Fletch's photographer was an over-caffinated squirrel who was clearly based on Scrat from Ice Age. Grandma was into extreme sports and even was featured slamming some kind of soda while skydiving, an apparent homage to Mountain Dew commercials. (Homages to Mountain Dew commercials, think about that for a minute.) While being chased by a Schwarzneggerian bad guy on skiis, Grandma busted out with a variety of moves captured in slow motion a la "The Matrix." The woodsman was a struggling Method actor who actually sold Schnitzel sticks and was trying to motivate himself to get a woodsman part by chopping down a tree while reading "Chopping for Dummies." Spoiler alert (like you care at this point): the evil rabbit bore more than a little resemblance to the drawings of the evil rabbits in "Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse." Red Riding Hood was put into physical danger by being tied up in an aerial tram with lit explosives in a kind of cross between a scene from "Moonraker" and "Speed" (she even kind of looked like Sandra Bullock). Otherwise, Red Riding Hood was just pretty dull.

I was just floored. The whole movie was a collection of samples from other things, all mixed together and spit out in a form to appeal to kids. (This was after sitting through pre-movie ads for nachos that were based on Lord of the Rings. Apparently, the flavor of some nacho cheeses is so powerful only Frodo Chip can resist being turned evil buy them. I didn't buy the basic premise: I hate nacho cheese and do not believe that I would be turned evil by it.) There's about $35 I'm never going to get back.

I guess that we've been headed toward this sort of thing ever since Sugarhill Gang hit it big with "Rapper's Delight" in which they sampled Chic's "Good Times." Lots and lots of rap music is based on samples, of course, and I enjoy quite a bit of that. I mean, it doesn't get much better than De La Soul's "Eye Know," which is based on a sample from Steely Dan's "Peg (I Know I Love You Better)." Both the juxtaposition and the result is entertaining. As rap has gotten more influential, this ethos of sampling has slowly made its way into all kinds of media and lots of times that's enjoyable (which is kind of ironic because rap has gotten less sample-dependent as other artists have realized that rappers are making big money using samples and accordingly the price for using a sample has gone way up). It really crossed over into kids' movies with "Shrek," I guess. I'll admit I thought it was pretty funny when Princess Fiona went all Matrix on Robin Hood and his men.

But we have gotten to the point in a lot of entertainment where the sampling is completely overwhelming any originality. Music reached that point no later than when Sean Coombs (Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Iddy Bitty Wittle Puffy) basically just changed the words of the Police's "Every Breath You Take" to do his euology of Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G. "I'll Be Missing You." The song was kind of like something that Weird Al Yankovic would do, except not funny (which is the point of Weird Al's stuff). All of the originality came from the Police.

This sampling is really bad, of course, when old TV shows are remade into movies. Very, very rarely, the movie is good (The Fugitive, anything, anything, anything else? Bueller, Bueller? Sorry, that's a sample, right there). Very, very often, the movie stinks (Flintstones, anyone?).

But Hoodwinked struck me as something new and bad. It's a whole movie that is just basically little bits of other stuff. It's like a collage of stuff cut from magazines run at 24 frames a second. Come on, people, make something new.