Iran doesn't like "300"

Iran is angry. Yeah, I know, "Iran?? Angry??? Are... are you sure?" Who'd a thunk, eh?

Now, "angry" is pretty much the default operating system for Iran, yes. Moreso lately than usual. They're angry that they don't control more of the Middle East. They're angry that there's a war in Iraq that they aren't benefitting from as much as they might otherwise be. They're angry that various world powers are uniting under the theme of NOT letting them obtain a nuclear weapon. And, as always, they're angry that neither they nor their ideological allies in Palestine have succeeded in wiping the Jews out of existance.

You'd think that'd be enough to be angry about for a nation of 70 Million people. But, apparently, no. Apparently with a major war looming right next door and their own President essentially begging to be attacked, Iran has still found time to work itself into a hysterical lather the type of which the Muslim World typically reserves only for newspaper cartoons and a women with a visible nose-bridge over the movie "300." So says a Time magazine corespondent in Tehran: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1598886,00.html?cnn=yes

Iran's problem? Well, the film's snarling villians are Persians, and what's left of the once-mighty Persian Empire and it's once-proud Persian People we now call Iran. Ironically, more Americans now know this BECAUSE Iran brought it up than probably ever knew it while going to see "300."

This was bound to happen, and wouldn't really be something I'd call newsworthy (again: Iranian anger is not news, in the same way that a wet fish is not news) save for the kind of special hilarity it provides with quotes like these:

"Everywhere else I went, from the dentist to the flower shop, Iranians buzzed with resentment at the film's depictions of Persians, adamant that the movie was secretly funded by the U.S. government to prepare Americans for going to war against Iran. "Otherwise why now, if not to turn their people against us?"

I wonder if it's even worth trying to explain to Iran that that isn't the way things actually work here. Or, even better, that what they're imagining is unfathomable in the current political climate: "Hollywood" and the regime that currently occupies the White House and Pentagon tend to view one-another in terms of lions-vs.-hyenas: natural born enemies. Of course, it doesn't HELP that the expected wacko-contingent of the political "right" has been jumping up and down aiming to claim the film as "theirs" since before it came out, while the wacko-contingent of the "left" is slinging around their favorite insta-slams of "racism" and "imperialism."

On the scale of such things, this isn't quite as tragically-amusing as when Britian got angry about looking bad in "The Patriot," if only because there was never the chance that Britian would fire off a missile or two over it. Still... you have to wonder if this can safely be called a case of a nation having it's priorities obscenely out of alignment, and I mean even for Iran.

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REVIEW: 300

A small word of caution to any readers whom it may apply to: If you are yourself or are the concerned friend of a high school athlete with ANY games scheduled against one of the gazillion opposing teams in the U.S. called "The Spartans" at any time while "300" is still playing in theaters, please heed the following advice: Watch the hell out!

Yes, once again we dive into the "Braveheart"-birthed subgenre of epics that can be accurately refered to as Loose-History For Varsity Football Dudes and Frat Boys, with Zack Snyder's ambitious "300" jockeying to unseat current-champ "Gladiator" as the default favorite "historical" movie of your local Atomic Wedgie Distributor. This doesn't make it a bad film, not by any stretch, though it does aid in approaching the movie on the proper terms.

The film is a very literal translation of Frank Miller's 1998 graphic-novel, itself a "cool-parts-only-and-cooler-parts-added" retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae (300 Spartan soldiers under King Leonidas versus a thousands-strong multinational horde under the Persian god-king Xerxes for those a little rusty on their Western Civ.) Most historical epics, for better or worse, aim to examine the deeper concepts of legendary events, or tie them to modern paralells, but you'll find little of such here: This is a story of Sparta as the Spartans would've wanted it told. It casts it's Greek heroes in the idealized (and profoundly homoeroticized) terms in which they cast themselves, and likewise Xerxes army appears as a clashing collective of beastial exotica that indeed captures the ghoulish identity ancient Greece assigned to her foes. The Spartans appear as expertly-oiled bodybuilder specimens who go to war naked save for their crimson capes and leather Chippendales speedos; while the enemy is either ugly, malformed or outright monstrous - at least two of the "heavies" are almost literal ogres, while Xerxes himself is a towering, peircing-adorned giant with a digitally-distorted voice.

On the one hand, historians will have something resembling a point when they meekly point out that Xerxes armies probably didn't include a Jabba-esque executioner with giant claw-shaped blades replacing his forearms. But it seems to me a slippery slope to hold such gratuity against a film who's area of history involves a clash between two civilizations so alien to modern audiences that even a "straight" retelling would have all the relateability of an unsubtitled clash between Aliens and Predators.

The nigh-extraterrestrial nature of the onscreen presentation is also helpful in allowing the action to be appreciated on it's own merits: A sampling of any pool of reviews will reveal that critics are already too eager to read political subtexts into a film that's more concerned with making every spear-to-the-gut kill cooler than the last, but I for one am not finding many such reviews worth taking very seriously. "Conservative" critics are largely making fools of themselves trying to cast King Leonidas (Gerard Butler, late of "Phantom of The Opera") as some kind of Bush avatar, while their mirror-mirror dopplegangers on the "Left" are throwing a White Guilt hissy-fit over the fact that all the good guys are caucasian Greeks while the baddies are mostly, well.. not.

This is neither the time, the place nor the material for that kind of introspection - Greek Mythology doesn't really "do" subtext. Thermopylae is here framed in the terms of the East vs. West clash of Grecian reason and Persian "mysticism and tyranny" that have been it's default portrayal in verse, prose and portrait since it occured, and given the end result there's nothing wrong with that: The film is "about" exactly what's up on the screen: Balletic scenes of combat, loving-photographed spears thrusting through enemy torsos, gruesome enemies and thundering declarative narration. It's a film of manly men doing manly things, and depending on your reading of that description you're either going to regard it as High Camp, Holy Writ or some feverish hybrid of the two.

Created almost-entirely using green-screen "sets" and copious CGI, the film is painterly in the most literal sense: Every shot is practically a post card in motion, meticulously composed down to the last drop of spewing digital bloodspray. Every shot of the Spartan's in combat is designed to linger on the striking visual of their battle poses, every sword-stroke and heroic leap looking like the result of a life of practice. Every shot of the Persians is a chance to show off the creativity of the makeup, costuming and armory crew. When Leonidas consults an Oracle, it appears in the form of a nubile girl doing a peyote-fueled cheese-cloth striptease. If there's a "cool" way to behead, stab or slash an enemy using Spartan weaponry, you can bet Snyder and company have incorporated it; along with providing one of the better motion picture realizations of how a Spartan Phalanx likely worked.

When you come right down to it, "300" is essentially a single battle scene blown up to the level of a Wagnerian opera. And, as such, it's a tremendously successful achievement. It's not the transcendantly-excellent work that was "Sin City," the previous high-style Frank Miller adaptation, but it neither wants or needs to be. It's a brawl, writ-large and fully committed to building up it's audience's lust for digitally-stylized bloodshed and then leaving them more than satisfied. This kind of thing isn't everyone's cup of tea, but approach it with and open mind and reasonable expectations and you're likely to at least come away having experienced something altogether fresh.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

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Captain America

Most of the rest of the world, I now know, found out about this on the news throughout the day. I woke up and barely made it to work on time, then directly from work to the comic shop so... hadn't heard a thing. I knew #25 would be a "big" issue, being the first Cap story post-"Civil War." But I didn't figure on this. Yeah, signs had been there for a bit, 20/20 hindsight and all, but in the actual reading this came as a complete shock to me (I had half-expected it DURING "CW"... but right after??) It's a cracking great issue, yes, and coupled with the past year's worth of stories about the character this may be the most "satisfying" comic book death since Captain Marvel... but, still... Wow. Ton of bricks.

And, yes, I did cry.

"O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead."

-- Walt Whitman ("O Captain! My Captain.") 1891

"So forever in the future,

Shall I battle as of yore,

Dying to be born a fighter,

But to die again, once more."

-- Gen. George S. Patton ("Through a Glass, Darkly.") 1922

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A Cold Day In Hell

That distinct sense you had over the weekend that they were ice-skating in Hell wasn't your imagination: Anne Coulter finally pulled a stunt so crass that Conservatives are lining up to kick her out of the clubhouse, once and for all.

The problem arose when Coulter got up to do her signature verbal flaying of Democrat presidential candidates at The American Conservative Union Political Action Conference. It was televised, a sampling of potential Republican presidential nominees were present, and then this happened:

Coulter on John Edwards: She'd like to have said something about him, but "apparently you have to go into rehab if you use to word faggot."

So... a psuedo-pundit flamethrower who's entire schtick is to say vile, shocking things so that they can be opened up for discussion through the back door uses the anti-gay equivalent of "nigger," and "Conservatives" react by...

...um... actually acknowledging that it was a big deal? Really? The same "conservatives" who rally behind the openly anti-gay president? The same "conservatives" propping up the so-called "gay marriage ammendment?" What the HELL is going on here? Did I wake up in some alternate universe where political types act honorably? Has the Republican Party realized that being the party that's "down" with hating homosexuals is a long-term losing prospect?

Here's right-wing movie blog "Libertas" doing the right thing:
http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/?p=4506

Over at the similarly firmly-conservative Hugh Hewitt site:
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/g/380bdbbd-8f01-45cb-8dd8-d1370aa6f1b2

And most-importantly, all three "top" GOP candidates - Mitt Romney, John McCain (who wasn't at the event) and Rudy Guiliani - all denounced her:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/us/politics/04coulter.html?ex=1330664400&en=29da3997b1d639ef&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

This isn't about hate crimes laws or any such nonsense. Coulter is free to say whatever damn fool thing she wants to. But it's also the right of others to distance themselves from her words if they find them offensive, and the right of the Conservative "movement" to kick her to the curb if they feel she is no longer helping them with this stuff.

This is the sight of the Political Party acting like a responsible movement of mature, tasteful adults. Hopefully we can look forward to more like it... but I doubt it.

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REVIEW: Zodiac (2007)

How do you make a movie about the hunt for a famous serial killer when the hunt never really ended and the killer was never really caught? Especially when almost every piece of evidence seems to contradict every other piece, multiple "favorite" suspects are still tossed around and the whole mess is so knotted up and convoluted that there remains a very good possibility that the so-called "Zodiac" may have been almost-entirely a creation of hype and hysteria?

If you're David Fincher, a vanguard of the so-called "MTV School" of directors who's earlier films (chiefly "Se7en" and "Fight Club") are already pointed to as revered classics by fans and stylistic excess by critics, the answer seems to be: You pull back. You slow down. You set yourself a leisurely (but in no way "relaxed") running time of just-under 3 hours. You focus on what IS knowable: The evidence. The statements. The contradictions. The suspicions. The history of the period. You ground your narrative in the exploits of three different real-life people - a detective, a journalist, a cartoonist - known to have undertaken three different forms of investigation into the case. You set up as your theme the psychological and personal toll the unsolvability of the case takes on them.

Oh, you also make the first real contender for the best movie of 2007.

For the uninitiated, Zodiac was (and may still be) the most media-involved/driven serial murder case since Jack The Ripper. From the late-60s to the mid-70s someone calling himself The Zodiac began sending letters to the publishers of San Fransisco area newspapers, taking credit for a series of seemingly-isolated local shootings and stabbings and offering details and (eventually) bloody evidence as proof; along with crytpic secret-message cyphers and a self-chosen "logo" that turned the event into a media frenzy. Soon enough he was claiming credit for murders he may likely have not even committed, murders were being claimed on his behalf, and eventually it seemed as though the police were trying to catch not a man, but a force of nature as real yet imperceptible as the wind - and about as difficult to capture. To this day, the case remains unsolved; one of the most notorious "cold cases" ever.

Fincher's film approaches the task of a police procedural which by necessity-of-facts must actually be ALL about procedure through the paralell stories of three men: David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) a police detective who's assignment to a single killing ends up turning him into law-enforcement's "face" in the Zodiac killings, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) a San Fransisco Chronicle crime reporter who chases the Zodiac story for the glory and finds himself perhaps too close, and Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) a Chronicle cartoonist who's at first mainly involved because his skill at cypher-cracking finally gets him invited to the "big kids table" (or, rather, the local watering hole) with the "real" reporters but eventually became the most obsessed Zodiac-hunter of all; penning the two highly-regarded books on which the film is based.

One by one, we watch as all three men are consumed by their connection to Zodiac. Avery, already a self-destructive drunk and cocaine early-adopter, leaps into the fray for the glory and finds himself drained all the quicker: Threatened by name in a Zodiac letter, inspiring local journalists to don "I'm Not Avery" buttons, he sinks into his own abyss like only Robert Downey Jr. can - embodying a man who seems to throw his life away on Zodiac because Zodiac was the most opportune thing to throw it away on at the time.

Inspector Toschi, on the other hand, just wants to find the guy and be done with it. He didn't bargain on having to chase down something thats more like a ghost than a man. One moment he's with the first team on the scene of what looks like a simple robbery/homicide, the next moment "Zodiac" is ritualistically knifing a couple in the park dressed up like a C-list supervillian in a black hood and a chest-logo jumpsuit. The world is spinning out of control with a killer who may not even fully "exist" at the wheel, and everyone is ready to blame him. At one point, Toschi is horrified to find himself watching the big new movie, "Dirty Harry," and realizing that the film is (and really was) a fanciful vision of "super-cop" taking down a Zodiac-style madman singlehandedly. This, he acknowledges, is a sign that he's already lost: The movies already making "what-if?" fantasies out of it.

And then there's Graysmith. At first, he's just thrilled that his skill with puzzles and codes makes the other reporters and editors notice him. Watch how forlorn he looks, gazing longingly into the smoky bar where all the "big guys" head after work without ever inviting him... and then how elated he is later when Avery asks him to come along as discuss Zodiac. Soon the case overtakes and defines him, even as it becomes less and less clear what if anything he's actually contributing: "The cartoonist who's investigating Zodiac" is his whole identity, and we watch as that identity enamors him to a nice girl (Chloe Sevigny) only to eventually pervade and ruin their marriage.

Through this we come to understand, maybe a little better than the real Graysmith may like, why it had to be him who probably came the closest to identifying and naming the "real" Zodiac: Outside of the case, Toschi had his future and his wife; Avery had his chosen descent into alchoholic oblivion... but if not Zodiac, what was Graysmith's purpose, all that time? In an amazing scene in the 3rd Act - which chiefly concerns Graysmith's year's-later marathon of independent detective work that led to the book and what it's author believes is the likeliest suspect for - Graysmith confronts a next-to-last step witness and nearly breaks down when they fail to give the name he was sure they'd give. He begins to plead, insisting that they just say the damn name... and it becomes apparent that he's beginning to not even care if he gets the right ending, so long as it's finally an ending.

There's a temptation when one is making one of these "period" detective stories, especially when the period pre-dates the seismic shift that led to our "digital" world, to dwell on the quaint romance of the era; especially when all that procedure and evidence hunting and good ol' fashioned gumshoe work is literally all one has to construct a movie out of. Indeed, Fincher hits all the stylistic and mood notes he needs to: He "gets" the aura of clacking typewriters, shuffling papers and thin haze of cigarette smoke that defines every interior of the time, the muted earth tones and pastels of 70s urban interior-design and the expectedly-classy arrangement of era-appropriate classic songs pulse at the margins of the soundtrack like a chorus unto themselves - Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" has never seemed so eerie.

But Fincher and the film are also up to throwing a curveball on the period-detail side, undercutting the romanticism of the trappings with a rising drumbeat of hindsight critique: The film effectively does for the trendy romanticism of analog-era police work what "Letters From Iwo Jima" did for the romanticism of the Japanese WWII honor-culture; going behind the details to strip away the mythos. Sure, it's nostalgiac to look back on the days when cracking the case was about file-hunting, smoky meetings, worn-out shoes and the rush to find a phone in time... but "Zodiac" also effortlessly reminds us of what a pain in the ass it must've been, too. In one tour-de-force piece of editing, the film lets us watch as multiple police bereaus try to coordinate their investigations, none of them on the same page and some clearly not interested in ever being so. It's almost astounding to be reminded that a mere two decades ago something as vital as handwriting or fingerprint analysis was still accomplished by taking sample pages to the offices of an aged scholar and his magnifying glass.

I can't imagine many audiences being able to watch it and not be overwhelmed by the unstated but undeniable notion of how "easy" it would seem to be to catch this creature in our age of DNA, digital analysis and "C.S.I." In the theater I sat near a group of young women (older teens, I'd guess) and during the first drawn-out murder sequence one of them was heard to ask "why don't they call someone!?," only to audibly gasp a moment later upon realizing the problem with her question. It almost seems to suggest that Zodiac "himself" could only ever have existed under these conditions, rising from the darkness just at the point when society was starting to move faster than it's ability to transfer information.

"Zodiac" is a long, dark and deliberate movie; but it's also riveting, fascinating and crammed with great performances and richly-textured direction. It's the best new movie you can see in theatres, right now. Highly, highly reccomended.

FINAL RATING: 10/10

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MINI-REVIEWS

THE ASTRONAUT FARMER:
With a fixed eye on Preston Sturges/Norman Rockwell Americana and a plot that can accurately be described as"Field of Dreams" meets "The World's Fastest Indian" meets "Apollo 13," this debut "mainstream" confection from the quirky Polish Brothers seems to have as it's ultimate goal a comfy DVD future as a perennial Father's Day gift. In those respects it succeeds, but it also works a lot better than it's cutesy-poo premise - a would-be NASA man turned Texas rancher/dad builds a rocket in his barn to try and make the trip on his own, enlisting his wife and moppets as "mission control" and defying a concerned government - might lead you to believe. Billy Bob Thornton feels authentic in the lead, walking the line between dreamer and nutcase just deftly enough that we can sympathize with those who point out how insane his plan seems; think "The Rookie" as-directed by the Coen Brothers. Little too long and over-complicated in the middle, but it's heart is in the right place.
FINAL RATING: 7/10

THE NUMBER 23:
Great atmosphere, nicely darkened turn by Jim Carrey, solid casting all around, looks and feels great, well paced by Joel Schumacher. Just one widdle-iddle thing... Hollywood? May I have you're attention, please? Listen to me carefully: STOP. USING. THIS. TWIST!!!! NOBODY IS SURPRISED BY THIS ANYMORE! IT'S THE FIRST THING WE THINK OF NOW! KNOCK IT OFF! Ahem. Also, no character in any movie ever should be named "Fingerling." Otherwise, not so bad at all.
FINAL RATING: 6/10

RENO 911: MIAMI:
Some semi-improv "mockumentary" sketch comedy bits are just begging to be expanded into the comic breathing room of a feature film. See: "Borat." Others CAN work as features, but don't really need the room and can come off a little awkwardly. See: This. But see it anyway, because even though there's bits here that just don't work, like some generic ribbing of "Scarface" worship, it's still every bit as funny as the cult-hit Comedy Central spoof of "Cops"-style reality-police shows it's based on. The dysfunctional Reno cops head for a Police convention in Miami and wind up defending the town on their own when a bioterror attack quarrantines every other cop in the area. Much hilarity ensues, thanks to the comfy and talented cast plus a smile-inducing lineup of cameos including Danny DeVito, Patton Oswalt and a certain action star who's appearance I wouldn't want to spoil.
FINAL RATING: 7/10

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Oscars 2006

Wuzza... Oscars? Oh, yeah... (Sorry, been knee-deep in "Twilight Princess" for a few days.)

Martin Scorsese won an Oscar, finally. And the movie won, too: A hard-nosed, no-bullshit, full-bore crime "genre flick" snags Best Picture versus a big, bloated Message Movie and a Sundance family pic. AND "Dreamgirls" LOST a whole mess of awards. In other words, the good guys won, the bad guys lost.

Also: Ellen? Great host. Funny. Should come back next year. One of those tasty-good "Dreamgirls" losses? Statue went to Melissa Etheridge instead. And so, for the fourth or fifth time today I say: "Thank God for the lesbians!"

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