Reprinted below is a comment I was in the process of leaving on a talkback about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement on BAD as word was coming down (and continues to come down) that protesters at Occupy Boston are being beaten and overwhelmed by the Boston Police. Not a good night here, obviously…

From me:
These things are always tough for me, in the macro, because my commitment to clear reason (call it “cynicism” if you like) doesn’t permit me to dial-back my overall-negative assessment of humanity when it’s a swath of humanity I’m sympathetic too; as is the case here.


My cold-water-in-the-face “read” of this “Occupy” business is that it IS the “left” version of the Mark I “Tea Party” business: largely fueled by not-particularly-sharp folks with a simple-to-nonexistent grasp of politics getting smacked in the face all at once by the realization that The System is FUCKED and reacting by focusing the blame on whatever their vague political/personal prejudices already had them seeing as The Bad Guys – i.e. the Teabaggers reflexively blamed minorities, gays, non-christians and foriegners; the kids at Occupy reflexively blamed “Corporate America.” Yes, the INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT distinction is that “Occupy Wall Street’s” choice of bad guy actually IS The Bad Guy; but I’m unable to fully “get down” for the romanticism of it. I don’t “like” looking at it that way – as I’m typing this, the news is coming in that the Occupy Boston crowd is getting savaged by the cops and I’m pissed as HELL about it – but there you go.


THAT SAID…


Just as the Teabaggers hadn’t existed for long before they became (largely) unwitting-dupe mercenaries for the GOP; if these kids can hold out maybe, just maybe, some form of leadership can either emerge-from or “hook up” with them and they can be an instrument of ensuring the all-important goal of preventing “conservatives” from attaining one more shred of power or influence until the ability of their policies and beliefs to do lasting damage has been permanently (constitutionally?) shielded against.


I know whose side I’m on.

I stand by that, overall – being unromantic about something doesn’t mean you can’t be sympathetic toward it and vice-versa. Is “Occupy Wall Street” primarily just vauge, petulant anger at “the man?” Yes, I think it is. Is there any kind of important, cogent political/philosophical “point” to be had from it? Not really, no. BUT! Are they are at least aiming their anger in the right direction? YES. Should they be getting bludgeoned by cops? NO. Do they have my support, whatever little it’s worth? ABSOLUTELY.

One is given to understand that the Dr. Pepper people are “kidding” here. Regardless, this has to be one of the stupidest commercials in a long time…

Via Gawker (EDIT: and The Escapist, which just ran this as I was also typing it up and where someone just made the same Futurama joke)

I have moments of weakness wherein I start to feel “bad” about my own intellectual-elitism… or, at the very least, feel like maybe I shouldn’t be that quick to condemn the anti-intellectualism of present-day humanity. After all, “the people” cannot possibly be as dumb as I think they are, right?

Thankfully, something always comes along to remind me that it’s just not possible to set the bar too low: A woman in Michigan is suing the distributors of “Drive” for misleading advertisting – specifically, she feels that she was promised “The Fast & The Furious” (no, really – she name-checks F&F in the lawsuit!) by the trailers; and that the actual film failed to deliver. She also claims that the film is anti-semitic, presumably based on scenes where a Jewish character uses “the K word” to complain about anti-semites calling him “the K word.”

Ugh. I just… just… UGH…

Good for a laugh, obviously – especially when you start to wonder where this person found a lawyer when she apparently does not own a computer, phone, television, newspaper or any of the other hundreds of ways to look up what a movie is about before you see it; but frankly the idea that ANY lawyer considers this case actionable creeps the hell out of me.

The “misleading trailer” is one of the few weapons good movies have in a market where the audience is ready-and-willing to punish good movies for not living down to their expectations. Fair or not, boxoffice matters and “tricking” Michael Bay’s America into occasionally shelling out for something worthwhile is one of the main ways “worthwhile” can still turn a profit.

Movies are bland enough already because studios are afraid that even appearing  to offend or challenge the sensibilities of Joe & Jane McNormal will lead to a lowered boxoffice take – how much worse will it be if they’re afraid of being sued because what they’ve made didn’t bear enough resemblance to a fucking Vin Diesel vehicle?

I used to be a movie theater usher, and occasionally had to help “negotiate” infuriated customers in such situations until the manager came over to hand them their “shut up and go away” freebie-tickets. I recall one weekend in particular where much of my evenings were spent glibly asking people if they in fact realized that the movie they’d bought a ticket for was called “SIN City.”

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It’s actually really good. I’m as surprised as you are.

“Intermission” speaks on Mortal Kombat…

HitFix’s Drew McWeeny and THR have two news items up about Johnny Depp casting – one a new project, another that’s been in development for awhile. Both of them would’ve sounded MUCH more intriguing back before Depp had Pirates4 and Alice In Wonderland in his recent-filmography. But, then, who knows?

First, the more interesting of the two: A biopic of Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. That I want to see regardless of whom they cast.

Secondly, his long-gestating do-over of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Thin Man,” a detective franchise previously adapted into a mega-popular film series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. This is the one that has “red flag” written all over it. The basic setup is an uber-wealthy married couple, Nick and Nora Charles, who solve crimes and mysteries more-or-less for shits and giggles. The “gimmick?” They’re both functional alcoholics, doing their thing while constantly sauced – the book and films having originated in the era before over-drinking was thought of as a “problem” for the upper-class. So… yeah, you can already see what the danger is: It’d be very, VERY easy for this to turn into “Jack Sparrow but as a 40s crimesolver.”

I’m curious as to how they plan to translate ANY of it. The original films hold up remarkably well, but it’s still pretty jarring how “cute” they play Nick and Nora’s vices (seriously – go watch one of the first four or five of these, they really put it away) for modern eyes. I’m not sure that really “works” anymore. The original “Arthur” was the last real ‘eccentric rich alcoholism is adorable’ movie, and famous MAAD appeared one year later and “Arthur 2” just wasn’t as funny.

I was never a regular consumer of Steve Jobs’ or Apple’s products. I have some, but I’m a longstanding PC user and was never down with the iEverything lifestyle. Not my thing. And I was also never part of the Jobs-As-Techno-Prophet hagiography.

That being said, two things simply cannot be denied in the wake of his passing:

1. Jobs, along with the other ground-zero innovators of the home-computing movement, are responsible for creating the world we are in today. Whatever else he may have been, Steve Jobs was one of those rare individuals whose vision and drive to realize it dragged the rest of humanity’s sorry ass across the yardlines of cultural evolution. Those who read/watch my stuff know that I am unabashedly glad to live in The Age of The Nerd, where each day makes the intelligent, the creative and tech saavy more and more vital to the world as the brutish and the pre-mechanization “strong” more and more obsolete; and I know that I owe a great deal of the thanks for this Age to Jobs. His name, unquestionably, belongs next to Edison, Ford and the other Titans who built the modern world.

2. Anyone dying in their mid-50s sucks, but a great thinker and creator dying so soon is a fucking tragedy. I know that, for a lot of people, there’s something poignant or even “just” about the idea that cancer especially and death/disease in general “not caring” how important the afflicted is – “we’re all equal in God’s eyes” and all that. Honestly, I’ve never found that sentiment particularly comforting and certainly can’t see what’s “just” about it. Someone like Steve Jobs changed the entire world multiple times in just a few decades, how much further would we have moved ahead if he’d had a few more? There’s no “balance” in that… no “great mystery.” The whims of fate, destiny, whatever aren’t things we should happily going along with – we should treat them like obstacles to be overcome. To me, that’s what makes sense.

The titular hero of “War Horse,” a farm horse conscripted into the army during World War I who tries to fight his way back to his rightful owner, will benefit from being immediately sympathetic and likable just by virtue of existing. People will see the horse, people will like the horse, anyone who is good to the horse we will also like, anyone who is bad to the horse is worse than Hitler and we will hate them and cheer for their violent defeat… all without the star of the film having to utter a single line of dialogue.

With Steven Spielberg directing, Janusz Kaminsky shooting and John Williams scoring; you could probably say the same thing about the movie – everything from the setting to the subject matter to their prior collaborations is in-their-element, Tommy-at-the-pinball-machine stuff for this crew…

Some folks are already calling this an Oscar frontrunner and potentially Spielberg’s biggest hit in awhile. I see no reason to doubt either calculation.

Aquaintances of mine who’re fans of (or at least familiar with) Lee Childs’ “Jack Reacher” books are, I’m given to understand, immensely unhappy with the casting of Tom Cruise as the lead in Christopher McQuarrie’s adaptation of “One Shot,” the first official movie adaptation of the series about a former Military Police Major turned ass-kicking vigilante drifter; possibly because Reacher is described as a 6’5 heavily-built hardass and Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise.

I doubt the following news will necessarily change their minds, as Cruise still sounds fairly miscast, but the film has definitely jumped to the top of the hardcore film-geek must-see list: Variety reports that legendary director Werner Herzog has signed on to ACT in the film as the main bad guy. Holy Shit!

On paper, “The Lady” sounds like a snoozer – a Western biopic of an Eastern (Southeast-Asian, specifically) human-rights martyr timed for an Oscar-qualifying Fall release.

Two things make it worth paying attention to (for reasons other than the obvious sympathy/admiration for Aung San Suu Kyi, of course, which is an issue wholly-seperate from the movie) – it’s directed by Luc Besson, who “gets” that biopics of icons don’t need to be ponderous and staid; and it’s a non-action star vehicle for the great Michelle Yeoh.