Terry Gilliam's Odd Criticism of Johnny Depp

Terry Gilliam is such a talent that it pains me to point out that his recent criticsm of Johnny Depp is utterly insane.

From Vulture:

Hitfix's Drew McWeeny had the pleasure of spending an hour with Terry Gilliam at Comic-Con recently and managed to get him to share some honest career advice for his friend Johnny Depp: "He'd better start making some good films ... I'm not a great fan of Public Enemies, because I think [Michael Mann's] a fucking extraordinary filmmaker, but personally I didn't think Johnny had enough room to act ... He's making so much money. There was a piece in the Huffington Post today [Presumably he means this one]. It's a letter saying 'All right, come on, we all love you, but stop.' ... It's like, 'Come on. You've got the power to make some really good films happen. Why are you doing this shit?'"

Far be it from me to pile on here--Gilliam did make 12 Monkeys and Brazil and he was in that little comedy troupe called Monty Python--but since Gilliam and Depp collaborated to make the satisfying Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam hasn't delivered any films of note, while Depp has run up the score with Blow, Chocolat and and two out of three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Oh, and yes, Public Enemies was a remarkable film.

Of course, Gilliam and Depp could be playing us. The two have at least one movie coming out in the near future, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the late Heath Ledger's final film. Depp is also rumored to be involved in Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

A Tale of Two Cartoons

Comic-con, which has become a massive pop-cultural event, brings news of two beloved cartoons. The Simpsons, which continues to slowly lose relevance, despite continuing to be a well-made product, will continue indefinitely, as series creator Matt Groening assured the crowd in San Diego at the show's hour-long panel discussion that there was "no end in sight." I don't mind a show like this continuing for the sake of continuing, but it's sad that a show that used to be so important is willing to settle for better-than-average and keep cranking out material for the sake of staying on the air.

Meanwhile, Family Guy, a show still very much in its prime is still so edgy that it's own network is unwilling to air one of its episodes. The subject of the episode: abortion. The network in question: Fox. No surprises there. While Fox hasn't officially shitcanned the episode yet, the liklihood is that the episode will just be made availible on DVD.

Lost Season 5 Finale Initial Reaction

[spoilers]

The explosive 2-hour finale of Lost's fifth season just aired. I am both impressed and unsatisfied. I am impressed that they were able to wrap up a sprawling 2-track epic story with many of the long-running questions posed by the mysterious series answered, or at least addressed to some extent. I am unsatisfied that they ended the season in such a way that I have absolutely no idea what the show is anymore.

If this episode marked the end of the series, it would stand with the finale of The Sopranos in the category of bold, open-ended, diabolical conclusions. The island's deity has been murdered, Julius Caesar-style by Ben on the orders of Locke in the base of the broken Egyptian statue, outside of which a gang of self-declared good-guys just dumped Locke's dead body. So, who is Locke and with Jacob usurped--and after only one episode--what becomes of the cloudy theology of the island?

Meanwhile, back in the 1977 timeline, Jack's nuke turns out to be a dud, until Juliet, dying at the bottom of an electromagnetic hell hole, detonates it, ending the season in a throat clenching flash of white. What the hell does that mean? Did they just change the future? Will season six open with Oceanic 815 landing safely in Los Angeles, or did Faraday miss something? Does this mean that Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Miles, Jin and Sayid have to haul ass away from a nuclear detonation that didn't change anything, as Miles foreshadowed?

Two years ago, ABC and Lost's producers agreed to end the show after the sixth season, so that means there's one more season left. I find it very hard to believe that the producers would ostensibly reset the entire series with only one season to go. Are they supposed to bring back all the departed actors for one more run, where we get to see what would have happened to these people if there never had been a plane crash on the island?

As for the show tonight, it was quite a send off for a season that managed to live up to the high standards set by the show. One of my most profound disappointments was the defeatist attitude of the long missing Rose and Bernard. They refused to participate in the hysteria--which we like to call the SHOW--the other characters were swept up in. They wanted peace and quiet even if it killed them. All right fogies, hope you had a nice view of the mushroom cloud.

Sadly the show will not be back until January 2010. So between now and then I'll betrying desperately to get the image of Juliet bashing the nuke with a rock until the screen whited out from my Lost-addled mind. So, if you haven't started watching Lost and you read this despite the spolier warning, I advise you to wait until the DVDs of all six seasons are available, then watch them all in a week or two.

Directors Kevin Smith, Mel Gibson Take Divergent Paths To Address Identity Questions

There's nothing original about the idea that generally speaking there's more candor going on on the Internet than there is on television. But seeing it so thoroughly juxtaposed in the respective recent marketing gambits of Kevin Smith and Mel Gibson is enough to make one nod at the authenticity and candor of the former while shuddering at the chilling madness of the latter.

Something is going on with Kevin Smith. I've been following the guy quite a bit over the last couple of years, not so much because of his movies, but because of his generally riveting podcast, which is called Smodcast after Kevin Smith and his longtime producer and co-host Scott Mosier. This podcast radiates with candor. Smith, Mosier and their cohorts discuss anything and everything from fucked up sexual scenarios to Smith's deep disappointment in the weeks following the poor performance of his last movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

I grew up watching Smith's movies. My friends and I loved Clerks and loved introducing it to people our age who just weren't quite as cutting edge as we were. I happily stuck with Smith's movies through their diminishing returns until I saw Jersey Girl. I just figured he was all done. Actually, I figured he was all done unless he decided to do other things. Then he did Clerks II, which was not bad but it was a step back to his safety zone, and Zack and Miri, which I avoided, perhaps unfairly, because of the Apatow vibes wafting off the bad trailer I saw promoting it. I'll watch it on Netflix, and I'll probably like it just fine.

Now word is out that for Smith's next film, he will not be the writer, rather he will only direct. The movie is called A Couple of Cops, and stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. Smith's role directing this film has started a conversation over who Smith is and who he is going to be as a director. In this interview with Lee Stranahan, Smith shows that he has no problem letting people see what he does for a living.



Conversely, Mel Gibson, a man with much more intense identity issues than Smith, suddenly popped up on Jimmy Kimmel's Show doing what he thought would come off as charming shtick culminating in a lame, yet elaborate, Col. Sanders joke. WTF?

Part 1:


Part 2:


Gibson showing up on Late Night television ended his quest to regain authenticity before it even started. Even the President, who was well liked enough to be elected President, got mixed results from his appearance on Leno, who everyone knows is an utter shill, just like every late night host aside from Letterman, and Letterman is only tough if you piss him off. Gibson's insanity and utter lack of authenticity hurt his cause far more than the fact that Kimmel was haplessly trying to laugh along with him Gibson, instead of at him, helped it.

As his interview shows, Smith, however, is beginning to get the hang of how to use the Internet to show the world that he actually is a real person with a thought process doing his best to make the best movies he can. Smith may have landed in this happy comfort zone by pulling back a bit from his over-engagement with fans. Instead of blogging and lurking on forums and fighting with them one by one, he's settled into the most authentic medium left--the podcast. Smodcast is nothing more than an hour long conversation about whatever comes out of their mouths. Smodcast is the best podcast available because Smith and Mosier get that two interesting people doing nothing more than talking is always going to be interesting. Charlie Rose does it on TV every night, but he can't say half the nasty shit Smith can. Rose is also stuck in the role of the interviewer and he has to deal with the constraints of decorum.

Ironically, it is Jimmy Kimmel's former partner, Adam Carolla, who is taking the podcast to similar heights as Smith by embracing the role of the interviewer and deftly moving in and out of it as best serves the tempo of the "show". Carolla only started podcasting recently after his radio show got the ax. The conversations he's recorded benefit from the fact that even though millions have downloaded his first few shows, the people talking always seem to let down their gaurd as if they don't believe anyone is ever going to hear what they are saying. Before grudgingly trying out Carolla's podcast, I was no fan of his prior work. The Man Show suuuuucked. Crank Yankers had it's moments, but at the end of the day, it's just puppets. I never watched Loveline. I did enjoy his work as Death on Family Guy, but it was such a small part that it didn't really count.

But after sitting in my cubicle at work for 80 minutes riveted to Carolla's conversation with Seth MacFarlane then spending another hour listening to him talk with a very candid Tom Arnold, I realized that podcasting at this incredibly high level is doomed. It's going to become corporatized somehow real soon. Even if it's not, the subjects will get the message--we are listening. It's just too good not to be destroyed. As for Carolla, he may never hit on his signature role that highlights his obvious talents, but then again, he could have greatness I never would have expected before him sooner than later.

What You Are Hired For Is To Help Us

Like a lot of people, I have a collection of lines from movies in my memory banks that pop into my head when my feelings match the mood of a character as they utter their famous, or not so famous, line. It doesn't have to be some ubiquitous utterence like, "Life is like a box of chocolates," or "Give me back my son!" It can be any obscure line in Bottle Rocket or The Big Lebowski. For instance, every day last week, I woke up dreading going to work, and every morning I would express that sentiment in my head with Anthony's (Luke Wilson) line from the beginning of the third act of Bottle Rocket when he calls Bob on the walkie-talkie and says, "I really don't want to do this robbery." It didn't matter that I wasn't going to be robbing anything, the similarity between Anthony's reluctance to do the robbery and my reluctance to get out of bed, take a shower, commute for an hour to get underpaid for eight hours, only to then commute for another hour back home made my fixation on that line the perfect vessel for my angst.

Similarly, today, as I watched Republican after Republican get up and pretend that more tax cuts will stimulate the economy, despite the evidence to the contrary, the line in Glengarry Glen Ross uttered by Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) to Williamson (Kevin Spacey) during Pacino's molten monologue near the end of the film--"What you are hired for is to help us, does that seem clear to you? To help us? Not to-fuck-us-up"--kept repeating in my head. In my mind's eye I could see President Obama walk up to Lindsay Graham and say to him, "What you are hired for is to help us, does that seem clear to you? To help us? Not to-fuck-us-up."

Anyway, here's the sequence leading up to Roma's explosion.

Everybody Be Cool

UPDATE #2: Bale calls in to some radio station to apologize.

UPDATE: Speaking of 'cool' the peep(s) at Ain't it Cool News provide some context for this incident.

So I listened to this supposedly scandalous Christian Bale tirade where he eviscerates a DP on set. Eh. Let me tell you something, people, that is not that bad. People are all scandalized over this? This is nothing. It's actually a bit scarier in the techno remix. I'm a pretty calm dude, but I believe what Bale's saying. The guy probably fucked up Bale's take and that can be frustrating. Remember the bosses of big Hollywood movies are the star actors. What I don't get is why Bale's doing this movie in the first place. Terminator Salvation? Christian Bale? Dude, come on.

You want to see a on set freak out, this one is so good that I'm not even sure it's real:



Bale's freakout doesn't compare with that, nor does it compete with the crappy behavior pro coaches indulge in on a weekly basis:



Remember this, he was yelling at a guy who he works with, not his daughter like Alec Baldwin, and he didn't hit anyone in the face with a phone like Russell Crowe. Fact is it happens to working stiffs everyday whose bosses think they're Cosmo G. Spacely. We should start putting that shit on our blogs and techno remixes.

IRREVERSIBLE

Matthew Barney, avant garde filmmaker/ex-model, was asked to name the best film of the year 2002 and why. His reply was short - Irreversible. His reason - the fire extinguisher scene. I embrace this brevity because the film is important for this attribute alone. Displaying Horror up front so as to stabilizes the audience with a tragic event increasingly far behind them. How it establishes sympathy with the characters - becoming the overriding goal for all characters with their audiences- as they are. Victims. Living out lives. Before the horror.

Now the gimmick. The gimmick is bad. No matter how many "backwards" films are made, it will always be. But while many films play games, this one, despite its gimmick, does not. This film, more than any other, trivializies all other films produced since. ALL the films that tell themselves they move forward. This is why the film is so important.

The year currently is 2006 and a new benchmark in the history of film has been set. Irreversible is the standard of excellence for a new millennium of cinema. Its goal was to prove that time destroys everything. Think of this when so many walk out or shut their eyes thirty minutes into the film. Because this film and all of film are no longer the dreams we wish them to be.

In the year 1902, we were allowed to go to the moon with Meilies' La Voyage Dans la Lune. Some decades later, we went to the moon for real. In the year 2002, a hundred years later, Irreversible asked us to evaluate time. Looking within this reality, some decades from now, what could be possible in this world?

To walk out on this film is perfectly understandable. It is completely ridiculous that such places and events could exist and happen in this world. I too try to walk within this dream.

But as the world changes. And as the cinema continues to reflect that change. And as all those who stayed for the film's duration know. We are going to see this film again. For real. In our lives. Some decades from now. We will then remember Irreversible as we were. As victims. Living out lives. Before the Horror.

The horror film. What once was a genre that contemplated the fear of change in America has become a bloody gorefest based on a japanese film starring Jennifer Love Hewitt.

If this is the new horror genre - then Irreversible is our punk rock.

THE BIRD

Three things just hit me at once.

1) I haven't written on the Explosion in a few.

2) I guess my boy the Station Agent wrote about Platoon a while back.

3) I just read a best forty movies of the nineties bullshit on AOL and neither The Thin Red Line or Life is Beautiful was on it.



Oh, and neither was Heat, which is not surprising I suppose since that's the number one movie ever.

But back to the point.

As I counted down all I could do was wait for The Thin Red Line or Life is Beautiful to pop up, hoping more I guess since as I descended that hope seemed to be the only thing I was going to get.

What replaced them instead was films like The Matrix and all this all other shit like Schindler's List and Fargo, I mean you got to be kidding me, The Matrix, Fargo?

Switching over and seeing the Agent's post on Platoon drove the distatste home even more. These war movies they got us sitting through these days are getting more and more off point (the most recent being Valkyrie, a well written film but - *spoiler alert* - Hitler doesn't die!)

I guess what I have to say about all this is that there is thing out there, we call it war, and never has it been approached more even handedly then with Malick's The Thin Red Line, the good and the bad and the right and the wrong all wrapped up for us to make heads or tails of.

And never has humanity in the face of war been tackled so well as with Life is Beautiful.

Maybe these movies aren't entertaining enough, or maybe they're too entertaining, I don't know.

What I do know is that I don't want to see soldiers blow up for the first twenty minutes and then ponder the worth of nine soldier searching for one. I mean cry me a fucking river and find Will Hunting already, I don't like the idea, it's exploiting the military, it's complaining and it's absolutely revolting.

Give me some metaphors instead, make me think about Colonel Kurtz up that river, make me think about what it means to surrender that command, what it means for the military to serve, no matter what the mission, give me reasons to question, give me reasons to follow, make me think about the real victims of war, our humanity, and how it will always survive despite its weakness in the face of war.

Make me think of that bird, that dying bird in The Thin Red Line.

There it is.








I've been missing shit like that.

Has the Worm Turned?

One of my favorite scenes in Oliver Stone's Platoon is when Chris is inducted into "the afterlife" by the Heads. After Charlie smokes with the heads, Elias asks him if it's his first time. Taylor nods. Elias tells him, "Then the worm has definitely turned for you."

That's is a great idiom. The worm has turned. According to The Dictionary of Cliches by James Rogers it means:

Someone previously downtrodden gets his revenge; an unfavorable situation is reversed. The saying represents an evolution of the old proverb, 'Tread on a worm and it will turn.' The meaning was that even the most humble creature tries to counteract rough treatment. Shakespeare picked up the thought in Henry VI, Part 3, where Lord Clifford urges the king against 'lenity and harmful pity, saying:
To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.'

Stone's embedding of this idiom within this symbolic ritual rebirth of Chris in Platoon works on a couple of levels. It foreshadows Chris's actual revenge which comes later. It is also a more poetic stand in for the idiom "the tide has turned", which means that Chris now has the strength he needs to cope with his situation. That strength came from the revelation Chris is supposed to have had after being shot. He's supposed to see what the rest of the heads see about the war. This is most well represented by what Elias says next--"Feeling good is good enough." This simple imperative sets each man's mission, which is to enjoy moments like the one they are having, and to survive in battle so they can have more feel good moments later.

It seems to me that according to Rogers's definition of the term "the worm has turned" the tide would have to turn before the worm does. In typical three act structure, the tide turns to indicate act three has begun and the worm turns at the movie's climax.

In America, and in much of the rest opf the world, the tide seems to have turned. Perhaps it happened with the blue wave of 2006. If so, maybe the worm turned when Obama got elected President. I hope that Obama's election was the tide and the worm's turn is still to come.

A worm turned when an Iraqi journalist called George W. Bush a dog, took off his shoes and hurled them at the President's head. Sure the guy missed. But has anyone ever been turned into such a hero in so much of the world for failing to hit his target?

Maybe the tide turned when Hurricane Katrina and the invasion of Iraq became burning tires around Bush's neck and the worm will turn when our kids are told about his awful example in their middle school history classes.

A worm turned when the bastards who manipulated the markets to their advantage and to the detriment of workers logged on to their bank accounts and saw a massive chunk of their ill gotten gains had evaporated when their rigged markets went belly up. Maybe the worm turned some more when many of these same people found out that a guy named Bernie Madoff walked off with even more of their empire.

This pseudo-revolutionary condition we are in is confusing, but I don't think we've seen the last of the worm yet. Surely though, the tide has turned and that feels pretty good. And maybe feeling good is good enough.

The Incredible Hulk's Lifting Technique

I just spent the last three hours hanging out with my next door neighbors. I know them only in passing, but they seem very nice. When they heard that my girlfriend would be in South Florida on Christmas, they invited me to join them and their family for Christmas dinner. I wisely accepted. After a fine meal, which featured a sweet potato-marshmallow concoction that can only be described as being off the chain, I settled on their couch to stare at their television while my food coma washed over me.

One of the cable channels was showing The Incredible Hulk. I wasn't sure at the time whether I was watching the 2008 TIH or the 2003 Hulk, which apparently wasn't incredible at all. The reason I didn't know which one I was watching was because someone made Banner mad and he was all CGI Hulked out. I noticed Tim Roth was hanging around, so I looked it up and, sure enough, I had been watching the newer, more incredible Hulk. And I must admit, the five minutes I watched were pretty incredible. But I had one problem with what I saw.

The Hulk has terrible lifting technique. He was throwing tanks and all kinds of other heavy shit all over the place and never once did this guy bend at the knees. I don't care how incredible you are, after a while, you're going to throw your big green back out, Hulkster.

I gave up my seat because couch space was limited and one of the older family members looked ready to crash out and enjoy their own food coma. But I was left wondering, why make the Hulk Green? Turns out it's because the printer had a hard time making him the gray color they intended, so they went with green because they ran out of time. I don't think gray would have been any better though. He would have looked like a statue.

I'm thinking that the best version of the Hulk was the from the late 70s and early 80s. How can you beat the guy from My Favorite Martian turning into an Italian body builder? Gamma Rays are awesome.

Family Guy has had a lot fun at the expense of that series. Here's a couple of clips:

"Jesus & Hulk"


"The Sad Walking Away Music"