Four Mid-January Quickie Reviews:

Quartet

Any movie in which a character who is on the waiting list for a new hip asks -- “Would you like to go for a walk?" – has no relationship whatsoever to the real world.

On The Road

The critics are saying this moving is ‘missing something,’ that it’s ‘not quite right.’ Let me sort this out. It’s fucking gay man. It’s a fucking gay movie. That’s the only problem anybody could possibly have with it.

Zero Dark Thirty

I could take or leave the Osama rescue stuff but this movie was a bit feminist and sometimes Jessica Chastain reminded me of Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect which I so totally adored.

Amour

Don’t go if you are feeling remotely depressed, or if you are in any way near, or approaching, old age (I fit in both categories and I went to see it and I’m still in recovery). But, that said, it’s a pretty fucking good movie.

Texas Chain Saw 3D and Newtown

      There’s been a lot of foolishness talked about violence lately; I would like to sort it out. In my view, most human beings (especially males, but not always) are born with violent tendencies. Most are able to express these violent tendencies in socially acceptable ways – i.e. through sporting events, war, minor scuffles etc. There are, however, instances in which people commit acts of extreme and random violence – murder, or mass murder, for no apparent reason.  At least there seems to be no reason, until the pundits come along and link the violence to some social ill.

      A perfect example is the alleged rape of a girl in Steubenville Ohio in 2012. It recently received extensive media attention because the boys accused of victimizing her apparently joked about the rape in a video that has gone viral. The discussion after the incident was much like the one that followed the 2011 Tucson shooting (involving Congresswoman Gabby Gifford and 18 others). In both of these cases -- as in the case of the Montreal massacre -- extreme, senseless violence was related to social ills. In the case of the alleged Steubenville rape (and the Montreal massacre) a connection was made to societal misogyny -- and in the case of the Tucson shootings, a link was made to right-wing extremism. To some degree, these links are alluring simply because we crave an explanation.

      Unfortunately, most random acts of violence simply have no reason; a sociopathic or psychotic personality has committed them. But the ‘expert’ explanations for such incidents are deeply compelling because they drive us to ponder the nature of modern society. As the boys and men from Steubenville continue to disavow responsibility for abuse, piously mouthing phrases like ‘That’s disgusting,’ and ‘I would never do that to a woman’ the paradoxical power of the boys’ words on the viral video rings all too true. One of the boys says, in effect  -- ‘if it was my sister I would still think it was okay if she was raped.’ In other words, though men in our culture may pretend to respect women, misogyny is here to stay. Hatred of women and right wing extremism are both rampant in North America. However, they are not the cause of violent acts. But when extreme violence occurs we feel guilty about repellant cultural attitudes that may never change.

      Since the tragic murders of the children in Newtown, there have been calls to regulate the sale of automatic assault weapons (which I support) and to censor violence in Hollywood movies (which I would not). Many have pointed out that only a month after Newtown, the biggest grossing movie of post-holiday weekend was Texas Chainsaw 3D.

      What’s the big surprise? The hypocrisy of our modern, decadent culture is quite literally beyond belief.  Texas Chain Saw 3D is endlessly seductive, featuring big boobs (both male and female) and a campy, immoral tone that implies its violence need not be taken seriously. But most important -- and most attractively for  young people terrified of being ‘different’ or having an outrageous thought -- this movie says nothing, means nothing, and does not threaten the vacuous ‘twitterverse’ they live in. The movie is bereft of ideas. We are raising our children in a world where capitalism has taught us only these values: survival (in a recession) or luxury (in a boom). Instead of wondering ‘Why am I here?” “What is right and what is wrong?” “What is real and what is an illusion?” or even “What is love?” young people are trained to unquestioningly consume the banal content that comes to them from itunes, google and eBay. They are told they will find salvation in consumerism, marriage, and God.

      As we continue to mouth impotent platitudes our culture ceases to be about anything, and (as Adorno predicted) the Hollywood films we watch are basically the movies that movie executives want us to see. Decadence is not the decline of religion, or morality, or chastity, it is about a culture that no longer thinks, questions, explores, or creates.

      Modern decadence does not cause random violence.  But the ‘social ills’ so many people find shocking these days -- well I find them to be – if you closely examine our values -- not much of a surprise.

Post-Holiday Movie Reviews

Les Miserables

‘I love you more than the stars and the moon and my own bum! You are a special little blonde boy who gets shot in a revolutionary cause! You are the world. No, sorry, I got that wrong…we are the world!' Not since Rent has there been SUCH a FILM! It’s just so goddamn inspiring I could like, shit in my pants and then eat it.

Anna Karenina

It’s kinda interestingly directed and Raphaël Personnazrprise (Vronsky) looks fucking fabulous naked on a bed.

Django Unchained

Well at least it wasn’t boring like Planet Terror.

Parental Guidance / Guilt Trip

Please. Enough already. If all Hollywood can think of to do with Bette and Barbra is to put them in shit like this now we might as well all just pack up our dildoes and die.

Central Park Five

Best.

Holiday.

Movie.

Ever.

No,

really.

Pre-Xmas Movie Reviews

Deadfall

I have only one thing to say: Charlie Hunnam. Was there some dumb thriller going on around him called Deadfall…well I kind a missed it cuz I was looking at him! In case you don’t know.,.. Charle Hunnam also appeared as Nathan Maloney in the British version of Queer As Folk (much better than the dumb uptight American one). OMG! Proof that some cute blonde boys don’t grow up to be fat old men but even cuter blond hunks. I want to eat his shorts but really his thighs because they are probably sprinkled with a fine blond fuzz. (Actually I think I saw his thighs in the movie: worth the price of admission….)

Hitchcock

Oh I don’t know.  I’ve already forgotten it.

Hyde park on Hudson

A lot better than the reviewers said but not good enough. Since the movie practically opens with a hand job it’s sure to turn some people off.

Lincoln

I was right. Tony Kushner is not a very good writer. OMG! This was so boring I watched the first hour I really tried but there was nothing but debate about issues no human beings for Chrissakes Tony Kushner get your head out of your own too-intellectual-show-off ass and write about people! That’s all any of us really care about….

Late Quartet

I cried through most of it. But of course I love Catherine Keener so much I would pay to watch her pee.

The Dangers of Religious Freedom

           

I always read the National Post

 It’s important to know your enemy.

And yesterday they featured a trio of articles on the subject religious freedom -- certainly a hot topic these days, especially for the religious right.

            Yes, a great deal of ink is being spilled over the vital question: how do we balance human rights and religious freedom? What if a lesbian wants a man's haircut and a Muslim barber refuses to give her one? This ‘crucial’ conflict sure sets tongues a-flappin.’

            The latest bunch of highly controversial issues gracing the front page of the National Post include: a Muslim woman fighting for the right to where her niqab in court, a Montreal woman halted from holding mass in a rented room because of an obscure bylaw, and Canadian Jehovah’s witnesses fighting for their right to abstain from giving children blood transfusions. These three burning news items (no other paper covered them -- with the notable exception of the niqab controversy) were on the front page of yesterday’s National Post. Last week the National Post was agog over the possible abolition of ‘Merry Christmas signs’ on Saskatoon buses. All of this comes hot on the heels of last summer’s spirited debate over whether or not birth control should be offered as part of ‘Obamacare.’

            In each of these instances ‘freedom of religion’ is pitted against government interference. The implication: we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, because our governments – and much of the populace -- have become Christianphobic (I’ll admit it, I am!). As Mike Huckabee recently observed about the massacre at Sandy Hook – why did Adam Lanza kill those 20 children? Because “God has been removed from our schools.”

            Freedom of religion has morphed into something scary. The American first amendment “prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion.” So it looks like the founding American fathers wanted to make sure folks could worship the God(s) of their choice and speak freely about their religious beliefs. Sure, makes sense to me. But ‘impeding the free exercise of religion’ sure is a sticky wicket. Is my freedom to exercise my religion being impeded when the government demands that I remove my niqab for a trial? Or when the government uses my tax dollars to pay for abortions?

            I would argue: absolutely not.

Regardless of what the American founding fathers meant (who cares about those slave-holding patriarchal puritans, anyway?) the only religious rights that count are the right to worship, and the right to speak openly about your faith. But no one has the ‘right’ to demand that the government pass laws that take into account their religious beliefs, and no one has a right to disobey laws because they go against their ‘deeply held religious convictions.’

This may sound brutal. But the alternative is worse. What if your ‘religious conviction’ is that 50% of all female babies should be killed at birth? What if your ‘religious conviction’ is that all people of colour should be crucified and burned? If the government is to going to allow those who demand religious freedom to tamper with the law then there’s no turning back.  Because remember, one person’s crazy idea is another person’s ‘deeply held belief.’

It’s pretty simple: the North American religious right is championing the cause of religious freedom in order to kill the separation between church and state and bring back state sponsored Christianity. If you doubt this, look back at the three articles in that recent National Post. Interestingly, the paper comes out firmly against the issue of women being allowed to wear a niqab in court, but firmly on the side of the woman who is told she can’t hold mass in a rented room. In North American religious freedom means the freedom of Christians to run the government, and our lives.

            I’ve always believed that people should keep their religion to themselves. After all, isn’t it all about what goes on between you and your God? What business is it of anyone else’s?

            If I had my way, religion would be practiced in private, and sex would be practiced in public.

            I think it would make life healthier and happier for us all.

Eaten by the Life Section

I know that newspapers are dead but I still read them.

I’m interested, for instance in seeing what Margaret Wente is going to plagiarize next. (Margaret Wente is one of those columnists who likes to pretend she doesn’t lean one way or the other but is terrifically dumb and right wing. Why doesn’t The Globe and Mail fire her already?! )

What scares me most about newspapers lately is not Margaret Wente but the fact that most Toronto newspapers have decided to combine the ‘arts’ (or as it is sometimes called the ‘entertainment’ section) with the ‘life’ section. What scares me about this is that when I’m looking for the ‘arts’ section I keep reading the ‘life’ section by mistake. (Thankfully The National Post puts their ‘arts’ section in with ‘sports’ and there is no danger of me accidentally reading ‘sports’.)

What’s so scary about ‘life’?

Well, it makes no sense to me that the ‘arts’ should be put together with ‘life.’ I know the justification: a barely hidden, sexist agenda. Newspapers must compete with digital media so they have no choice but to be subtly sexist. Political correctness to the contrary, we all think men and women have vastly different interests. Newspapers think only women (and femmy men like me) read the ‘arts’ section and so ‘the ‘arts’ should be paired up with the ‘life’ section (which is really the‘women’s’ section of the newspaper renamed so it won’t offend anybody). But this makes no sense. I’m sure straight, masculine men read the arts section, as well as the life section, too.

But my objection runs deeper than that.  Philosophically, ‘life’ and ‘art’ have nothing in common.

For one thing the ‘life’ section is family friendly. I opened up the ‘life and arts’ section recently and by mistake began reading an article about a woman who was angry because schools claim to be ‘nut free’ zones, yet have trees around them that drop acorns. Obviously this is of great to concern to family obsessed, nut-obsessed, nuts. But lady…are your children running around eating acorns they find in the road? Then they have problems that go far beyond food sensitivities. Adjacent to this, I was treated to a picture of a pregnant woman lifting weights, and an article exhorting  me to understand that yes, pregnant women do need exercise.

The ‘life’ section is all positive energy; about families and kids.

            The ‘arts,’ on the other hand, has always been anti-family and anti-kids. Ever since Medea killed her children -- and on to Tennessee Williams' play about a mother who pushed her son to a point where he was eaten by cannibals -- art has concerned itself with things that upset families and challenge them.

            Also, the ‘arts’ are also generally unhealthy, and by placing the ‘arts’ section inside the ‘life’ section, there is a very real danger that the ‘arts’ may be eaten by health.

            The point of all the articles about health is not just to keep you healthy, but to convince  us that we can control our lives by, simply, eating good food, exercising, and hanging around with nice families. In contrast, art -- at least all good art -- is about this one fact: death, sex and loneliness are inexorable, inevitable realities of existence. The ‘life’ section of the newspaper fosters the myth that we ultimately can control our own health and therefore our lives, whereas the arts constantly remind us that illness, unpleasantness and promiscuity are inescapable.

            The incredibly paradoxical, contradictory melding of the ‘life’ section and the ‘arts’ section came to a nonsensical climax this week with the news about Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash having sex with a 16 year old boy.  Finally the perfect article for ‘arts and life’! Disapproval of an unhealthy lifestyle! (Of course if an adult male heterosexual puppeteer had sex with a 16 year old girl, his pals -- and most of the patriarchy -- would cheer him on…) And there is the ‘entertainment news’ factor! Kevin Clash has, respectfully, taken a leave of absence from Sesame Street!

            Well let me warn you, the ‘arts’ will ultimately never be healthy enough -- or family friendly enough -- for ‘life.’

So ‘life’ is sure to eat ‘art.'
If it doesn’t eat my brain first.

           

           

NOVEMBER MOVIE RANT!

Adding Insult to Injury: The Sessions

What a stupid, sanctimonious and quite enjoyable picture. Yes it’s well done -- but what lengths do we have to go to these days in order to excuse ourselves from watching two people fucking? First of all the poor disabled guy who wants to hire a sex surrogate has to go to a priest (William H. Macy in a thankless role) to get permission. And just so we don’t confuse her with a prostitute, Helen Hunt explains the difference: “A prostitute is interested in getting your business again, I am not.” Oh, I see. So if a client saw you once and then phoned the sex surrogate agency and said “She was really bad at her job fire her” you’d be happy, Helen? I don’t think so. This movie is an insult to prostitutes everywhere. The lengths it goes to in order to differentiate between prostitution and sex surrogacy are insulting. The truth: PROSTITUTION AND SEX SURROGACY ARE THE SAME THING, unless of course you hate sex and women. Prostitutes perform a service. Sex surrogates perform a service. Both are paid. Both have sex with clients because it is a job, for money, to satisfy the clients sexually, not to satisfy themselves. This movie -- though warm and entertaining -- is full of shit around sexual politics. Maybe we’re just all so glad to see some sex on the screen that is ‘okay’ for us to watch, maybe we’re just such HYPOCRITES that we’ll ignore even the height of hypocrisy to get our fix. Read my lips. Sex is okay. Prostitutes are okay. Sex surrogacy is okay. You don’t need a fucking priest to give you permission for ANY of it, dummy.

Okay?