Blah blah blah mild spoilers blah blah read at your own risk blah blah…

In case you didn’t hear, this currently “the number one movie in America,” a grandiose statement that boils down to: “It was the only new comedy in America, and everyone already saw ‘Hitch.” So some of you who were either not planning on seeing this or, more likely, were not even aware this existed, might now feel compelled to see it. Well, I just saw it and I have one immediate reaction to share with you:

Wow.

Followed, naturally, by a more wordy followup to my initial immediate reaction:

…What the HELL did I just watch!?

To imagine how profoundly “WTF!?”-inducing “Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman” is, I first ask you to imagine a hypothetical movie: Imagine, if you will, comedian Mike Meyers writes and agrees to co-star in a serious, issues-oriented drama. His film is about a young woman dealing with heartbreak, and is full of scenes of wrenching, important material. I’m talking marital problems. Spousal abuse. Endangerment and betrayal. Drug-addiction. Families torn apart, the whole deal. At about midpoint through the movie, Meyers’ young heroine (played, of course, by a talented up-and-coming ingenue) decides she needs some help with her problems. So she heads out to find her friends, knocks on their door and out steps… into a previously totally-seriously melodrama, remember… Mike Meyers. As Austin Powers.

Can you imagine how inane that would be? How instantly and immediately wrongheaded it would feel? How mind-bogglingly dopey it would be? Well, that’s pretty much what happens in this movie.

Tyler Perry is a playwright, one of those hugely-successful Black cultural-phenomenons with legions of fans and hugely-profitable personal empires that 99% of white people have never, ever heard of. His shows, (I’m told), big hits on the Christian theater-circuit, are a fusion of sitcom-broad humor, self-performed characters, Gospel music and old-time homespun life advice. His most popular character is Madea, (as in “My Dear” with a Southern accent,) a large-and-in-charge black grandma caricature who packs a gun, cusses a blue streak and espouses angry philosophy of rage, retribution and responsibility. As is so often the case, this character is played by a male comic in drag, Perry himself in this case. Madea is Perry’s cash-cow character, and he’s already parlayed her into a couple of made-for-video movies and tries to work her into as many of his projects as possible. “Diary,” which began as another stage-show, is the latest of these.

If you can believe it, what we have here is a Christian-Gospel-Black-Feminist-Revenge-Redemption-Cautionary-Comey-Romance-Courtroom-Crime-Drama, starring Kimberly Elise (of T.D. Jakes “Woman, Thou Art Loosed!” which Perry co-wrote) as a rich black woman who finds herself thrown out of her home by her lout of a husband after 18 years. Destitute (she’d signed a prenup) she reluctantly heads back to her poor-neighborhood roots for support from her family, which turns out to include Perry-as-Madea as a grandmother, Perry-as-and-old-man as an Uncle, and Perry-as-himself as a brother-in-law with his own problems (wife has become strung-out heroin junkie roaming the town) and assorted hangers-on for large party scenes. Egged-on by Madea, she’s encouraged to “empower” herself by trashing her former husbands house, getting a real job, reconnecting with her working-class roots, getting more Jesus in her life and finding love with a Bible-quoting, impossibly-noble steelworker (Shermare Moore.)

To put it mildly, the film is a colossal mess. It careens from soap-opera melodrama in it’s opening scenes to slapsticky drag-show comedy once Madea shows up to drippy romance with Moore… and since that’s not enough we get courtroom crime-drama with ex-hubby lawyer defending a street hood from his past, a drug-tripping scene, several barbeques, a subplot where a main character becomes caretaker to another character who had wronged them after they are paralyzed and a launches into a Takeshi Miike-like torture sequence (seriously) and, somehow more improbably than anything else, the arrival of the Elise’s character’s mother who spouts Biblical wisdom that is somehow meant to turn the whole grab-bag of scenes and styles into some kind of Christian parable.

What’s especially troubling here is that so much of this actually works. In peices. The jacked-up melodrama of Elise’s scenes with the husband character, full of screeching and shouting a declarative gesture, play as deftly-replicated soap opera hyperbole. Perry’s comic talent is without question, and Madea is a great achievement of character-creation (if, it must be said, not so great an achievement of makeup.) The cutsie-poo romance stuff works here and there, as do the requisite “large extended family barbeque” scenes. Even the blunt Evangelical-moralizing, though it’s the precise-opposite of my cup of tea, is sincere and heartfelt. It just does not add up.

Only one of the disjointed story-threads really works, and tellingly it’s the one most removed from the rest of of the film: Perry’s third character, the brother-in-law, is raising two kids on his own after his wife turned into the town junkie. Strung-out on an unidentified narcotic (Heroin is most-strongly implied,) she was once an aspiring singer but now wanders the town and only appears occasionally late at night to beg her husband for money and food. He wants to help, but she resists, and it’s taking it’s toll on the children as yhe daughter has inherited her mother’s vocal talent, but dad forbids her joining the church choir because music had led her mother to drugs. There are real, honest, heartbreaking scenes here: The mother showing up at night with another vauge promise to “change,” a renunion between Elise’s character and her strung-out sister, and an extraordinary sequence where the daughter sees her mother on the steps of the local drug-house and orders dad to stop the car so she can say hello. These scenes speak volumes about the world Perry’s characters and stories are coming from, and he gives his own best performance amidst his own best writing. A whole stand-alone film could have been made from this subplot, and it would’ve been a hundred times better than the one it instead occupies.

This sort of tone-jumping and genre-mixing can work in the heightened-reality of live theater, but on film there needs to be something to join the disparate elements together which is simply missing from this movie. Madea does not fit in the rest of the film taking place outside her home, and likewise elements from the rest of the film do not work when they seep into Madea’s world. Elise doesn’t just change clothes as she moves between her rich/poor self, she changes her whole performance, twisting from a yowling harpy to a broken angel and back again and never once convincing the audience that there is a plausible logic for the switch. This kind of filmmaking-by-blender requires MASTERS of directorial and writing control at the helm, and while Perry’s effort is admirable his results are less so. This isn’t like “Kill Bill,” where Quentin Tarantino was able to merge kung-fu, samurai, western, sleaze, crime, melodrama, horror and comedy staples and iconography into a solid narrative existing in a “world” of it’s own; there’s no sense that any of this is happening for any reason other than “thats what comes next in Mr. Perry’s script.”

I expect to be told, as Roger Ebert was for his negative review of the film, that I don’t get or am incapable of getting the film because I am white, and the film is “made for a Black audience.” Frankly, I find that to be slightly offensive and short-sighted: This film was not made for “a black audience,” it was made for “an audience of existing Tyler Perry fans,” who already know the rythyms and the gags and may even be ACHING for Madea to waddle onto the scene. I have a respect for the Black Evangelical religious community in this country, in as much as it’s leaders (like T.D. Jakes) seem to see their Christian ideology as something designed to help people with their problems instead of the “do it because the book SAYS SO!” version of Christianity espoused by most of the media-prominent white evangelical leaders. If this community is Perry’s “niche,” then more power to him; but in the same spirit I’m afraid my verdict on the film must be that it’s unlikely to win any new converts since it spends most of it’s time preaching (literally) to the choir.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

P.S. Here’s Ebert defending his review from what was apparently a great outpourring of angry disagreement. A good read:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050302/ESSAYS/50301001

And HERE is some of the actual angry disagreement, which it must be said got INCREDIBLY ugly. Roger Ebert can be called a great many things, and not all of them flattering, but a racist he is most definately not:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050301/ESSAYS/50303001

Disagree with me? Agree? Cool. Hit the “comments” button and let’s talk about it.

Let’s try something new. I won’t be reviewing every DVD I see, but when one comes along worth talking about it I’ll do one of these. There’s got to be more to blog about than new releases and FCC politics, right?

Anyway…

“Taegukgi” is a Korean “Saving Private Ryan.” Normally I wouldn’t be so crass as to describe a movie as simply being another movie in a new location, but here I find it appropriate because it’s hard to see the film and not discren that “Korean Private Ryan” is exactly what the filmmakers were hoping to achieve. “Ryan’s” combat sequences rewrote the definition of what a “serious” war movie is supposed to look like, and ever since it’s release the International Cinema landscape has been overflowing with films who’s makers are doing their darndest to graft the “Ryan” asthetic onto their country’s unique experiences in war, and “Taegukgi” gives no indication that it’s inception was any different: It exists firstly to give Korea a “Ryan” to call it’s own, and secondly to be an engaging film in it’s own right.

Opening amidst the unearthing of remains from a Korean War battlefield in which some artifacts are found seeming to belong to a still-living elderly veteran named Jin-Seok, the film flashes back to the war itself where Jin-Seok finds himself drafted into the South Korean resistance army against his will. His older, rough-hewn brother Jintao follows him into the army to keep him safe, and becomes convinced that if he throws himself into “above-and-beyond” battlefield heroics he can earn the clout to petition the generals to send his younger brother home. But as Jintao plows ahead into ever-more-harrowing and risky situations, and becomes a Medal of Honor contender, he earns Jin-Seok’s resentment and begins to lose grip first on his sanity and, eventually, on his humanity.

There’s no doubt that the films looks great, another in Korea’s recent slew of entries proving their intent and ability to become major players in the big-budget World Cinema stage. And when the story is focusing on the story of Jintao’s inner-conflict between his vauge mission to earn his brother’s discharge and the sudden status of hero it confers upon him it has all the drama and suspense of a classic war film in the making. It’s middle-act, a long and punishing chronicle of important battles in the pre-Chinese-involvement era of the war, is a marvel of military-genre filmmaking.

Unfortunately, the film eventually shows signs of having the same problems as most of the other “Ryan”-progeny: It piles on too many battles and “we can do this, too!” scenes of thousands of people in period costumes, shaky-cam battlefield clashes and jittery montages of flying mud, clattering bayonets and air-mortars sending stuntmen and props into the air; the film proves that it can hang with the big-boys in terms of war scenes after about 40 minutes, but then it doesn’t stop trying to prove it and soon comes off as trying too hard. Also, the filmmakers seem too eager to touch on every major idea and event associated with the war, and the plot contorts itself into an increasingly soap-operatic shape in order for Jintao and Jin-Seok to encounter old friends conscripted into the Northen enemy army, civilians suspected of communist-sympathies being murdered, POWs, defection, attrocities on both sides and just about anything else you can think of; and by the last act the film starts to play more like a time-compressed miniseries than a single epic.

This is a good film, but a flawed one. It’s hard to criticize a movie for trying too hard, but overall “Taegukgi” doesn’t quite rise from being “SPR’ in the Korean War” to being an important Korean War story in it’s own right. Still, it’s a well-made war movie and it’s hard not to be moved by the scenes that really do work, and there are plenty of them. War movie afficionados should definately give it a look:

FINAL RATING: 7/10

What people miss about the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is that they aren’t actually “responsible” for the censorship or (lack thereof) of radio and TV. They only really “step in” when compelled to do so, and like most governemt entities they do their best to “work” as little as possible. For the most part they are merely enforcing laws previously decided upon by Congress or (as is more often the case these days) responding to pressure from agenda-driven lobbyists and/or “watchdog” groups like the Parents Television Council or the American Family Association. (You can read my full expose of the PTC at the link below:)
http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2005/02/your-freedom-is-in-danger-plus-meet.html

The FCC has been in the news again for the last few days, following their decision that “Saving Private Ryan” can run unedited if broadcasters so desire:
http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20050228-000618-1628

Now, firstly, this is an enormous victory for common sense in the Culture Wars, and represents a major setback for the finger-wagging Puritanism that has gotten so uppity since the manufactured controversy of the Janet Jackson Halftime Incident. Let’s put it this way: Saying that a network cannot air “Ryan,” a patriotic ode to WWII heroics because of foul language used by characters playing soldiers under fire is so blatantly moronic an idea that even the PTC’s professional-prude leader L. Brent Bozell thinks it should be left alone:

“We agreed with the FCC on its ruling that the airing of ‘Schindler’s List’ on television was not indecent and we feel that ‘Saving Private Ryan’ is in the same category. In both films, the content is not meant to shock, nor is it gratuitous.”

Lest you think Bozell is going soft on us, though, the PTC this week is launching a campaign against the “CSI” franchise. True to form, what finally tipped the scale wasn’t “CSI’s” celebrated gorey violence, but an episode centered around kinky sex fetishism. At least they’re consistent.

So the PTC is cool with “Ryan,” but the even MORE radical fringe of the Religious “Right” isn’t. The “American Family Association” is mad as hell:
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/afa/12005c.asp
You can check the AFA’s official website here:
http://www.afa.net/

There’s nothing too special or imporant about the AFA. Most have never heard of them, and they aren’t taken that seriously even on the censorship circuit. They’re pretty cookie-cutter as these things go, like most religious groups with “family” in their name they have very little to offer in the way of family-help and dedicate most of their time attempting to undermine the First Ammendment and spread hatred for gays and lesbians. The only interesting thing about them is that their founder is one Donald E. Wildmon.

Wildmon was a big wheel on the Christian pro-censorship movement back in the 80s, but he lost essentially all mainstream credibility when he went to battle against Mighty Mouse because he was positive that the cartoon hero was a cocaine addict. No, seriously, that’s what happened. Read all about it in THIS expose on Wildmon:
http://www.mediacoalition.org/reports/wildmon.html

But since that expose is long, here’s the topical part:

“In the disputed episode, Wildmon charged Bakshi with portraying Mighty Mouse as experiencing drug-induced exhilaration after inhaling the petals of a flower. Mighty Mouse had sniffed cocaine, Wildmon contended.”

Somehow, the term “religious nut” suddenly seems so… inadequate.

Anyway, here’s why I think the FCC still got this wrong: In making their decision, the FCC came down heavily on the side that “Ryan” got a pass because of the “context.” In other words, “these are still naughty words, but it’s an important historical movie so that makes it okay.” Now look, I’m all for anything that helps point out how pointless and wrong any of the broadcast decency laws are, but the plain fact is, the context shouldn’t matter.

If these words are inherently harmful, which is the entirely wrongheaded, unproven and unprovable “logic” on which the whole decency-laws concept is founded, then it should not make them “less bad” if presented in a film about WWII or the Holocaust. Likewise, if Tom Hanks cussing in a movie is okay, then one of the Desperate Housewives doing the same should be okay too. If this was a court case, allowing “SPR” to use “harsh language” on TV would free up everyone else’s right to do it on TV as well, (fair-and-equal treatment, remember?)

The FCC is right to allow networks the right to run “Ryan” uncut, but they were wrong to stop there. By reaffirming the intangible of “context” as a mitigating factor, the FCC has ensured that broadcast “standards” will continue to be run through an ideology of complete hypocrisy.

Let’s just say it: The show was good, but predictable and nothing Earth-shatteringly interesting happened. I really don’t have much more to say about it than what I posted last night right afterwards, but as expected a score of entertainment pundits were out in force to post their views on the show as a whole; and some of these I do indeed have something to say about. So let’s get to it…

AICN’s Harry Knowles weighed in on the show today, and like myself he’s mad-as-hell about the short-shrift given to the technical awards in the “new format” this year. It’s a tangent, but it’s a passionate one:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=19520

Speaking of angry, the “Passion” boosters are still trying to spin righteous talking points out of a controversy that just hasn’t materialized for most of us… the public at large just isn’t all that upset that a C-list actor getting whipped in a Jesus costume was deemed unworthy of a Best Picture nominee. Still, Bozell and company as a culture-critics have refined grasping at straws to the stature of a martial-art, and so here presents his scathing indictment of the evening: The audience applause sounded a little louder, apparently, for Chris Rock’s jokes about “Fahrenheit 9/11” than for Chris Rock’s jokes about “The Passion.” Bozell’s “Media Research Center” apparently finds this to be of such incredible importance that it made the top-entry of their latest “Cyberalerts” posting:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2005/cyb20050228.asp#1

Another unhappy fellow is Dr. James Hirsen. Yes, the Dr. James Hirsen. What? Never heard of him? Wow, what a surprise 🙂

Hirsen is basically an E!/National Inquirer-style celebrity/Hollywood gossip journalist with not one but TWO regular columns on the Far-Right website Newsmax.com. His schtick is covering the same “juicy” Hollywood scandal-rag stories as every other entertainment psuedo-journalist out there, but slanting every story towards “proving” his belief that the creative community is swarming with Weirdos and Freaks who (no doubt) need more Church in their lives. His thoughts on the show:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/2/28/10449.shtml

Money quote: “But after hearing from countless numbers of folks, I suspect Rock’s attempts did nothing to assuage the rage that people felt regarding the disgraceful dismissal of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

“Rage?” Folks, if you or anyone else is feeling anything that could be described as rage over the lack of “Passion” nominations, then you really need to sit back and take stock of your priorities. Those of you who would define yourselves as Christians may want to consider what Christ might have thought about His followers feeling rage about a crappy movie based on His death being denied a trophy. You may even want to reaquaint yourself with His actual philosophy and teachings on the subject of priorities, rage, etc… though you’ll have to rent a different movie because none of that was considered worthwhile for inclusion in “The Passion.”

And hey, were you wondering what Robin Williams putting that peice of tape over his mouth was all about? Well, turns out that the show’s producers had nixed Williams’ plan to sing a song trashing James Dobson and other so-called “conservative” religious leaders who’d been attacking cartoon characters for appearing in a schoolroom “pro-tolerance” video that they feared might inspire the coming generation to disregard the Christian Right’s hatred of gays:
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-oscars-williams,0,3155460.story?coll=sns-ap-entertainment-headlines

Of course, as you saw, Williams proceeded to rip the tape off of his mouth and got in his digs at the Culture Warriors’ expense in spoken-word form. Bravo to you, Mr. Williams.

More of these little vignettes of punditry as I find `em, but that’s all for now…

Okay, a more detailed entry will likely follow as the “rest of the story”-stories about the just-concluded Oscar telecast begin to trickle out, but for now my first impressions are as follows:

Chris Rock’s hosting turn was funny and fresh, but not so funny and fresh enough I fear to dispell the notion that his MTV-generation comedy was an awkward fit for the too-stuffy-even-for-VH1 asthetic of the Academy. Rock’s best material came in the form of “did he say that?”-deapans (introducing Halle Berry as star of “the highly anticipated Catwoman 2,” or Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek as “four of the lovliest images in Hollywood”), while “energy-injecting” exercises (interviewing attendees at the local Magic Johnson Cinema who prefered “White Chicks” to any of the nominated films, an embarassing sketch where he pretended to be a line-reading substitute for Catherine Zeta Jones opposite Adam Sandler) just didn’t come off. Nice job overall, though.

The “shakeup” of giving out the lower-profile awards in the seats or by lineup is the worst idea for the show in many a moon. It was awkward, stilted and terribly undignified, and now that those subjected to it have nothing to lose I suspect most of them will be agreeing with me loudly tomorrow. This could not have been a more naked attempt to “speed things up” by further ghettoizing the technical and short-subject categories in order to give the Joan Rivers crowd more time to gawk at the Big Names in Pretty Dresses. Every single award handed out in one of the “new” methods was damned disgrace, no two ways about it.

Holy cow! Julia Roberts with a FIGURE!!?? Wow, thank heaven for those twins… and the two babies that helped make them possible 🙂

Morgan Freeman is just pure class. Finally able to see his name removed from the “I can’t believe he’s never won…” list, Freeman’s speech is a short, pleasant thank you that spends more time praising the other players in the movie than it does on the man giving it. Well done.

How sweet was it to hear the near-total lack of applause any time “Passion of The Christ” was mentioned for anything? And how much sweeter to see it step up to get beat-down in every one of it’s paltry nominated categories? The only thing that could have added to the overall sense of justice-served I felt at this would have been for “Sister Rose’s Passion,” a biography of the revolutionary Catholic nun who became a champion for purging Catholicism of it’s anti-semetic “Passion Play”-era past, to have won the “Best Documentary – Short Subject” award, but this was not to be.

And speaking of “The Passion,” how angry do you supposed Michael Medved, L. Brent Bozell and all the rest are that not only did their yearlong campaign to turn the film into an Oscar winner implode, but so did their spiteful Plan-B of destroying the win-chances of “Million Dollar Baby”? Clint Eastwood’s film took home four of the six major awards, including Picture and Director, and will now likely be seen by everyone who was previously on the fence about seeing it. In the words of Clint’s character, Frankie Dunn, at a point when one of “Baby’s” major players scores a decisive moral victory over a gaggle of opportunistic neanderthals who just can’t help but remind me of the Medvedites for some reason: “Maybe somebody ought to count to ten.”

What was the deal with Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand? Something got said just before they stepped into view, and Hoffman was pulling away from her like she’d just contracted smallpox. Was this failed schtick or was something else going on?

What is Beyonce Knowles doing there? I know, I know, this is more of trying to make the show “hip,” but a pop crooner doing middling interpretations of the nominated songs is irritating and obnoxious in the extreme. Just play the damn songs, already.

That’s all for now, be back later with more details and more blogging. Lemme know what you though in the Comments section.

WARNING: Even though most of you have by now either had the ending of “Million Dollar Baby” spoiled for you and/or have seen the film for yourselves, I’m still going to avoid actively posting or discussing the specifics on this blog entry. The folks in the articles I’ll be linking to, though, will not be so kind so click at your own risk. You have been warned.

As of this writing, the Academy Awards are only about sixteen hours away. For the entire awards season, we’ve watched extremists claiming to represent America’s religious community vent their frustrations at the “snubbing” of their beloved epic of medievalistic torture-porn, “The Passion of The Christ,” by trying to “take down” the Awards themselves and the likely winners in particular. With it seeming more and more certain that Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” will be the film that “steals ‘The Passions’ award,” so called culture-watchers are making one last ditch effort to damage the reputation of the film and Eastwood out of what I can only describe as distinctly un-Christian spitefulness.

Albert Mohler, (posting at the Christian family website Crosswalk.com,) throws his hat in with the Medvedite critics who feel that spoiling the film will “save” potential viewers from it’s “harmful” message:
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler/?adate=2/24/2005#1314506

It’s mostly spoilers, so I can’t use most of the best money quotes, but here he is defending Medved:

“The cultural left responded with a vengeance, defending “Million Dollar Baby” and Clint Eastwood and suggesting that Medved was a “spoiler,” out to ruin the movie’s commercial prospects.”

Okay, let’s be clear about this here: Medved IS a spoiler, and there’s nothing “vengeance”-related about calling him so. Whether you disagree (as Medved does) with what he sees as the film’s message, withholding the dark 3rd-act plot twist so that it wallops the audience the same as it does the characters is THE central narrative mechanism of the film: In giving it away, anyone who does so forces the audience to see the film in a manner infinitely less affecting than was intended, and beyond all that it’s still just a rotten thing to do.

Crosswalk also posts an article adding fuel to the “boycott the Oscars for ignoring Mel Gibson!” fires, courtesy of “independent film producer-director and screenwriter” Joe Camp, best known (oh heck, ONLY known) as the creator of “Benji.” Joe Camp thinks our culture is going downhill, that Hollywood is to blame, and that their failure to nominate a nearly-plotless feature-length depiction of a C-list actor in a Jesus costume getting the stuffing kicked out of him as the Best Picture of The Year is the final nail in the coffin. But Mr. Camp can say it better for himself:
http://www.crosswalk.com/fun/movies/1314224.html

Now, I’ve never heard that Joe Camp is anything but a really stellar guy. And I’m certainly not going to argue the film-quality-gauging skills of the auteur who cracked the uber-complex cinematic equation of “that dog is cute, let’s film that dog,” but lets look at some quotes here:

“I would like to see all the Christian people who went out and spent money and made it one of the top-grossing pictures of all time not watch the Academy Awards, just because of that,”

And before that, the article tells us (in regards to the “Family Values” of the “Benji” franchise):

“Another movie that depicts those values even more directly is one “Benji”‘s creator regards with great admiration: “The Passion of the Christ.” He feels producer-director Mel Gibson’s movie about the crucifixion of Jesus has proven the power of the individual, with uncompromising vision and beauty, as few other films before it have done — and, lest anyone forget, it was a box office blockbuster to boot.”

Yegh. Enough is enough, people. I want ONE of these Religious “Right” zealots propping up “The Passion” to explain to me where all these “values” are in the film. We see almost none of Christs’ good works or teachings, of the multiple miracles he’s said to have performed the film feels the best thing to show us is a fictional scene crediting The Lamb of God with the invention of Big Tables. If I’m not already a believing, practicing, 100%-converted Fundamentalist Christian before I sit down for this movie, WHAT am I supposed to get out of this other than a long stretch of the kind of “plotless gorefest” the Michael Medveds of the world have spent their whole prior careers telling me I was going to Hell for enjoying? If watching a main character take a hellacious beating and come back for more is the definition of a film about values, then “Passion” shares values-movie shelf space with everything from“Lord of The Rings” and “Star Wars” to “Salo,” “Kill Bill” and “The Story of O.” Yet somehow, I don’t think the director of “Benji” is going to try and convince me that “The Story of O” was robbed of an Academy Award nod anytime soon. Just a ballpark guess.

Ahem. That being said, Camp makes his point eloquently and his feelings sound sincere. And “Benji” really is one of the better dog movies, when you get right down to it.

Let’s hear from a lady. Jill Stanek is an anti-abortion-rights activist, who’s position on the subject lies slightly to the right of the talon-fingered newborn from “It’s Alive!” Though she’s definately not-kidding-around with her comittment to her cause, she’s evidently not above using the difficult subject matter of her cause as the money-shot in a gag headline. Witness her new Worldnetdaily column, entitled “Pro-lifers: Abort the Academy Awards!”
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43052

Here’s where this one gets interesting: After using the word “abortion” as a shock-word for a jokey headline about a movie award show, the actual column attacks Oscar Host-to-be Chris Rock for having made abortion jokes in his past. Here’s Rock’s joke:

“Abortion, it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful abortion is legal,” joked Rock. “I love going to an abortion rally to pick up women, cause you know they are f—ing.”

Okay, the only thing “shocking” about that joke is that an original talent like Rock would resort to that worn-out Frat Boy oldie of a dirty joke. But here’s Stanek’s outraged reaction:

“Some say Rock was actually making a sarcastic indictment against abortion. That could be, and his comment did open my eyes a little wider on the exploitive nature of abortion. Nevertheless, the joke was repulsive, and any comedian who would use abortion to get a laugh is the last comedian in the world I want to watch on television. Abortion is the unfunniest topic in the world.”

“The unfunniest topic in the world…” unless the funny is occuring in headlines to her own articles, apparently. But while pointing out baldfaced hypocrisy may be fun, (and it is,) we move on to the REAL reason she’s up in arms: The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences has had the unmitigated gall to nominated for various awards not one but TWO films that run counter to the personal politics of Jill Stanek. Well, at least she’s not being unreasonable or anything…

Specifically, she takes issue with “Million Dollar Baby,” for reasons I’m still not going to spoil for you, and “Vera Drake” for being about the life, arrest and trial of a pre-abortion-legality working class Englishwoman who provides (illegal) abortions for those too poor (or in too bad a situation) to afford the nice, discreet, clean (but still illegal) ones used frequently by the wealthy. My immediate reaction here is: “Tsk, tsk. She forgot ‘Kinsey!”

But okay, as a “pro-lifer” Stanke has, of course, all the right in the world to be irked that “Vera Drake” has three nods. But she also saddles up next to the Medvedites when it comes to “Million Dollar Baby”…

“You’ve likely heard about the shocking end of “Million Dollar Baby” only from friends. Its ads and trailers give no clue to its real agenda.”

This kind of groupthink borders on the eerie. People: Withholding details of a major plot and tonal shift is a NARRATIVE DEVICE, not evidence of a hidden agenda. Granted, Stanek and others who confuse the two have the benefit of not being professional critics and former film-scholars of note… what’s Medved’s excuse again?

In the end, there’s ONE person left yet who hasn’t been much heard from on the controversy, and that’s the director/actor himself. Clint Eastwood has only offered smatterings of info on how he feels about the propaganda campaign being waged against him, but he finally spoke in depth in an extraordinary interview with Time Magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1029865,00.html

Seriously, take the time and read that. Eastwood is not only the finest living actor/director in America, he’s also one of the most honest and intelligent. One of the best filmmaker interviews I’ve ever read. But let’s see the “money quote” exchange here, when Time writer Richard Schickle puts the Big One right on the table i.e. former Republican mayor Clint Eastwood “turning against” his Conservative fans with “Baby”:

TIME: THERE’S A NOTION THAT CLINT EASTWOOD, THE GREAT AMERICAN ICON, HAS SOMEHOW DISAPPOINTED A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF HIS CONSTITUENCY WITH THIS MOVIE.

EASTWOOD: “Well, I got a big laugh out of that. These people are always bitching about “Hollyweird,” and then they start bitching about this film. Are they all so mad because The Passion of the Christ is only up for the makeup award and a couple of other minor things? Extremism is so easy. You’ve got your position, and that’s it. It doesn’t take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.”

Hey, whaddaya know… Dirty Harry just made my day 🙂

MovieBob to Universe: You can please stop with all of the you-asked-for-it ironic/karmic signs already, we get the idea. The 90s are over.

Our latest exhibit that the preceeding decade has, officially, passed into the ether comes in the form of “Cursed,” a teenaged-werewolf entry from the former “Scream” team of director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson, which arrived in U.S. theater’s yesterday to snatch the title of “worst excuse for a horror movie in 2006 thus-far” from “Boogeyman.” Yup, it’s as bad as you’ve heard.

You might remember that, back in 1996, Williamson and Craven’s innaugural collaboration, “Scream,” was regarded as something of a big deal. If you were pop-culture-attuned at all at the time, you may recall hearing that this film, an updated 80s-style “teen slasher” with the “hook” that the characters were aware of the “rules” of their genre, was credited with “reviving horror movies.” If you were a Movie Geek at the time, you may recall getting unspeakably annoyed at people who, upon hearing you say something marginally obscure about film, were given to point and declare “Yo! He’s like that dude from “Scream!”

You might also remember that Williamson followed his success with three more teenaged horror movies, “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “The Faculty,” and “Teaching Mrs. Tingle,” (none of which were very good), a “Scream” sequel (also not all that good) and the catastrophically awful WB teen-drama “Dawson’s Creek,” the toxic influence of which is still being felt today. Craven, the one-time 70s/80s horror master who had fallen on hard times prior to “Scream,” had a brief upshot in work-quality, then went back to hard times as the executive-producer of a slew of bad movies and director of a Meryl Streep oscar-bait yawner about a violin teacher. No, really.

“Scream” was the quintessential “90’s” horror-movie, in as much as it was an “independent film” made and released by a big studio with name actors, endlessly in love with it’s own glib cleverness and, above all else, traded heavily in the “reference humor” popularized by Kevin Smith and run mercilessly into the ground by… everyone else and Kevin Williamson in particular. One more thing that makes it utterly a film of the 90s is that “Scream” became dated so fast that it became itself easy-fodder for the “reference humor” of “Scary Movie” with dizzying quickness. In fact, let me put it out on the table right now: As far as Williamson is concerned, I’m of the mind that the emporer has no clothes.

Williamson’s “Scream” schtick (a formula movie where the main cast kept joking about formula movies) went over big with the mainstream critics, who openly welcomed a “horror” movie that seemed to agree with them about how silly they always thought horror movies were to begin with. From where I was standing, most of the teenage audiences whom the media told us were “won back” to slasher films by Williamson’s cleverness didn’t really get into the jokes, and the Horror Geeks who would’ve gotten into the jokes didn’t because they weren’t all that nifty as references go (Jason wasn’t the killer in the first “Friday the 13th???” Whoa!) For my money, “Scream” was a hit because it was a solid Wes Craven slasher movie, and teens of that generation hadn’t had one to call their own yet. As if to prove my point for me, Williamson’s follow-up script for “I Know…” was in-joke free and did the same kind of business.

And furthermore, Williamson can’t even lay claim to having pioneered anything with self-aware horror. Horror movies where the characters were “aware” of horror movies had been done as recently as 1991 in “There’s Nothing Out There,” as the boys at StompTokyo.com discovered:
http://www.stomptokyo.com/movies/theres-nothing-out-there.html
(And yes, I’m aware that StompTokyo’s reviewers say in that review that they think “Scream” was still better, so you don’t need to bother pointing that out.)

And hey, Wes Craven himself did it before “Scream” as well, in “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111686/

Agree or disagree with me about “Scream,” but it can’t be denied that “Cursed” was hoped by all involved to be the Craven/Williamson-blockbuster’s second coming: The poster is nigh-identical, it’s a teen-targeted horror release, etc. From the get-go, this has been the promise: “Scream’ but with Werewolves!” Granted, exploring teenaged-angst through the metaphor of Lyncathropy is precisely as old as the teen-horror genre itself (having been originated in the 50s with “I Was A Teenaged Werewolf”), but surely a decent entry can be drawn from this material. Craven, for all his ups and downs, is a great director of both young actors and onscreen carnage, and Werewolves are certainly the most violent of the “classic” movie monsters; so if nothing else we should be in for some good old fashioned monster-splatter courtesy of creature-FX god Rick Baker. And hey, Christina Ricci is in it, and her bambi-eyed sexy/creepy hotness goes with horror films like pizza goes with everything. Someone would have to try to screw this up, right?

Well, if so, “someone” tried their ass off.

MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW:

“Cursed” finds Ricci as a 20-something TV publicist (in an early sign of unintentional-hilarity to come, she works for the canceled-ages-ago Craig Kilborn Show) taking care of her geeky teenaged brother (Jesse Eisenberg) after their parents’ untimely deaths. She’s in a dramatic relationship with a Wax Museum owner (Joshua Jackson sporting look-I’m-a-grownup-now facial hair) while lil’ brother is pining for the high school hottie who’s hot-tempered boyfriend (Milo Ventimiglia) likes to beat him up and accuse him of being gay. One night, the sibs get throttled by a Werewolf and wake up with canine-style superpowers that increasing at the ever-frightening rate of whenever-the-plot-dictates, and as you might expect The Race Is On to find and destroy the “original Werewolf” and end the curse before more (offscreen) violence occurs.

Would you be surprised if I told you that Ricci’s wolf-powers interfere with her work while Eisenberg’s turn him into an overnight campus big-shot? Would it bowl you over if I told you that the initial attacker-Wolf is walking around in-congito among the main cast? Or that it’s not only eye-rollingly easy to pick out not only the “whodunnit” twist but also the supposed-gotcha “who-also-dunnit” twist? No? Hm. How’d I know? Maybe I’m psychic… but it’s funny, I don’t feel like Patricia Arquette…

Okay, so the plot is trash and the characters are central-casting cutouts even on Kevin Williamson’s curve, but this is STILL Wes Craven, still a Werewolf movie and still has Rick Baker effects, so at least there’s plenty of sweet man-in-suit monsters spilling plenty of latex entrails and Karo syrup all over the place, right? Nope, no dice.

The industry scuttlebutt on this one, for awhile, has been that the studio tossed out the script and ordered a rehaul in the middle of shooting, (tossing out original castmembers Skeet Ulrich and Omar Epps,) and that in addition they ordered scenes featuring Baker’s monster-suit werewolf trimmed and replaced with a CGI-double. After Wes Craven claiming that he was “still proud” of the finished film so long as they didn’t “cut it,” the film was stripped of its gore-scenes in order to take advantage of the post-Ring/Grudge/Boogeyman paradigm of “make a PG-13 horror movie, open in the #1 spot.

What we’re left with is a film that is, without hyperbole, almost-totally useless: A lousy-looking Werewolf we almost never see, making a gorey mess that we really never see, out of a roster of character we can’t possibly care about. Oh, and the requisite bad taste in our mouths from knowing that we’ll have to wait for the innevitable “UNRATED DIRECTOR’S CUT” DVD double-dip to find out of this was any better when it had some blood in it.

The film has ONE semi-interesting moment where a slightly better movie seems to be on the horizon: After Kid Brother throttles Homophobic Jock with his Werewolf-Kwon-Do in gym class, he points out the oft-held irony that vocal-homophobes are often closeted gays themselves. That night, Homophobic Jock comes to the house to appologize, comes out of the closet to Kid Brother and, still under the assumption that Kid Brother is also gay, tries to kiss him. The film unwisely (yet sadly in-tune with the likely sensibilities of most of it’s audience) plays the whole thing for laughs, (“I’m not gay, I’m cursed!” “Dude, I know! It does feel like a curse sometimes…” yuk, yuk, yuk,) but it’s the one unexpected thing in an entirely paint-by-numbers movie; and Ventimiglia as the Jock manages the character shift so well that by the time he’s charging off into anti-Werewolf battle with the would-be object of his affection he turns into “Cursed’s” best character in almost exact concurrance with the film’s forgetting his existance.

Even given this bad review (and all the other bad reviews,) some of you, like me, know you’re going to see this anyway just to get a look at the latest Rick Baker monster suit (for the record: There’s really only two good solid full-body shots of it when it’s not the ultra-cheap CGI dupe,) and I’m sorry to report that it’s a letdown as well: Oh, Baker’s sculpting and musculature are as good looking as ever, but at the level of basic design this is one of the least cool-looking Werewolves in a long time; barely even looking like a wolf at all and in fact bearing a closer resemblance to a giant bipedal Badger. Worse yet, the one transformation scene we get is done entirely with CGI, and Ricci and Eisenberg never transform at all. In fact, one of the big “final confrontation scenes” between characters who are all Werewolves has them in human form the whole time, tossing eachother around a kitchen and bellowing teen-angst melodrama just like in “Scream.” If there’s a mistake a Werewolf movie can make, “Cursed” makes it twice.

This is the kind of bad horror movie that will be making the lists of bad horror movies compiled by Film Geeks well into the next decade. It’s not scary, it’s not interesting, it’s characters are empty, it’s script is disposable, it’s monsters suck and it’s gore is nonexistant. I’m going to beg you here: Don’t see this movie. Don’t give your money to this. Don’t let this turn into a hit and send one more message to Hollywood that they don’t have to try to make successful horror movies. If you want a “teen-angst Werewolf movie,” get down to the rental place and ask them for THIS:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210070/

It’s called “Ginger Snaps,” and if you’ve got a Horror Geek worth his weight in Fango backissues in your life he’s probably already told you that this “has to be” better than “Cursed.” Listen to him. It’s got better Werewolves, better gore and one of the best horror scripts of the last couple of years. Just like “Cursed,” it’s got introverted siblings, teenaged-issues exaggerated into horrors by a Werewolf bite, even an Evil Jock as a red-herring baddie, but UNLIKE “Cursed” it’s not afraid of being smart, creepy and sexy about things; eventually turning Lycanthropy into a fits-like-a-glove metaphor for teenaged menstrual-angst. It’s good stuff.

“Cursed” is not good stuff. “Cursed” is a film of no use or value to film buffs, Movie Geeks, Horror Geeks or just general moviegoers. It’s a nothing-movie, and the only scary prospect it brings is the thought of having to endure “Cursed II: The Suckening” should this make back it’s budget come Monday morning.

FINAL RATING: 3/10

Yeah, I know. No one cares how this is, no one was waiting for this, a great deal of you had never even heard of it or, if you had, knew it was coming. I was planning on reviewing it, but it turned out to be the only new movie my schedule allowed me to see tonight, so more’s the pity on the both of us, eh?

This is one of those bad comedies that probably lost any chance it had to be any good the moment someone decided “it can’t not work!” Most likely that moment occured concurrently with the hiring of Tommy Lee Jones for the lead. Jones is one of those little showbiz marvels, the talented, utterly-unpretentious workmanlike character actor so adept at filling up (often) thinly-written supporting roles with charisma that they become “marquee-name” leading-men because their very presence makes audiences feel instantly comfortable and “connected” to their role.

Always a reliable actor well-liked in his industry, Jones went from character actor to unlikely leading man after his “holy crap!”-inducing turn as Sam Gerad in “The Fugitive.” Since that film (and his subsequent Oscar win) Jones has been one of Hollywood’s busiest older-stars, appearing in a spectacular number of major-release films giving performances that are always good, frequently great and consistently based on the same premise: That audiences instantly connect with his decidedly-unimpressed-with-himself/old-school tough-guy vibe and can instantly imagine how “good” a movie might be by placing that “vibe” in any given situation. “Tommy Lee Jones fighting aliens with Will Smith” (“Men in Black”) sounded like fun, and it was. “Tommy Lee Jones versus an evil version of Rambo” (“The Hunted”) sounded like a decent little actioner, and it was. And so on, and so forth.

In “Man of The House,” Jones is playing a hardcase Texas Ranger Roland Sharp who’s chasing down the mystery-asassin who killed a high-profile witness and wounded a fellow Ranger in the process. The only witness to the crime and, thus, the bad-guy’s face, are five College football cheerleaders; so Sharp is assigned to move into the girls’ sorority house, protect them from the at-large killer and wait it out while they try to pin down whodunnit. (Provided with the information, as we are, that the girls cannot pick the killer from a list of “every known criminal in the United States,” will tell every member of the audience who’s seen more than a few cop movies in their lives who the bad guy is much quicker than it takes for anyone in the movie to figure it out.)

So the idea here is “Tommy Lee Jones having to share a house with five dizzy girls,” and let’s not lie: It’s a good idea. It sounds good. Jone’s rough-hewn bluntness paired off against five yip-yapping young girls is immediately appealing, and we can imagine all the fun scenes that will organically grow out of it: It’ll be funny to hear what he thinks of current pop music, his thoughts on their fashions, his reaction to encountering a bathroom full of feminine products, etc. It’s understood that the opening and closing acts will contain a healthy amount of shoot-em-up action business while the “funny stuff” will occupy the length of the 2nd act. It’s a given that Jones will impart some old-fashioned wisdom to the youthful girls, help them solve problems with experienced advice, etc., while they in turn will help him “loosen up,” and everyone will learn something and grow as people just in time for the bad guy to show up and get foiled before everyone reconvenes for the one-big-happy-movie-family coda. In addition, there’s the opportunity to stock the cheerleader roles with fresh young faces eager to use the role as a full-motion headshot for future work. Done well, or even passably-well, this could easily be a fine little no-brainer comedy.

Too bad it’s not done well, or even passably well.

It seems obvious, almost from the get-go, that the “this HAS to be funny” nature of the project may have inspired either a bit of laziness, a bit of producer interferance or a combination of both in the production overall. It’s just not very funny. The characters are sketched too broadly, even for a film like this, and it just does not work. Jones is as good as ever, and all the girls’ aquit themselves well enough, but there’s just not enough there to work with. Scenes and events that rely on a connection with the characters or an understanding of reaction falter because the connection and understanding simply aren’t there. Jones’ role, even moreso than usual is based entirely on the idea that “it’s Tommy Lee Jones.” The girls’ roles are so thin that it almost feels like overkill when the film gives them names, as they’re really only defined by their broad archetypes: as expected, we have Smart Girl, a Silly Girl, Hot-Tempered Latino, Edgy Bad-Girl and Largely Uninteresting African-American Leader Girl. (“Stoic Asian Martial-Arts Expert Girl,” apparently, was not invited to attend on the grounds that the film was already being too nice to me by providing some lovely footage of Monica Keena in a sports bra.)

Monica who? Keena has yet become a suitably big-named starlet despite a genuine talent and, it must be said, a tremendous sex appeal, but you might know her as “that actress who looks like Brittany Murphy might look if she ate some food once in awhile.” Take a look:
http://www.wallpaperbase.com/wallpapers/celebs/monicakeena/monica_keena_2.jpg

So yeah, it’s not a total waste.

The director is Stephen Herek, a solid worker-bee filmmaker who started out in the late-80s with a pair of genuine classics- “Critters” (which he also co-wrote) in 1986 and “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” in 1989- before settling into a good niche as a maker of likable family fare like “The Mighty Ducks” and “Don’t Tell Mom, The Babysitter’s Dead.” He also made the perpetually-underappreciated “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” So the guy can direct, and he doesn’t so much do many things wrong with this material as he does “not do enough” (it would be too harsh to say “fails”) to elevate it from a disposable collection of gags with barely enough laughs to fill it’s own trailer into something slightly more likable. The film’s biggest running joke, about Sharp’s insistance that the girls avoid wearing revealing outfits, not only doesn’t produce any great deal of laughs, it serves to make Sharp look creepily preoccupied with the subject. (It’s also a little too smug of the film to point out how “Girls Gone Wild” the cheerleaders’ early appearances are.)

There are brief glimpses of a better movie wanting to poke it’s head through: One of the girls developing a crush on Sharp comes up and is quickly dropped, as is the quick rapport he develops with “Bad Girl.” And yeah, the expected sequence in which Sharp undergoes a “makeover” is about as clever as you’d, well.. expect.

But in the end, this is pretty bad. Too few laughs in a film that’s really designed to provide as many as possible. Not that it’ll take much effort, but this is really worth skipping (unless choice #2 is “The Wedding Date,” in which case… it’s really worth examining what you’re doing in a situation where those are your only two choices.)

FINAL RATING: 2/10

I’ve put this off long enough.

What I have here is a blog about movies. There are certain things you just HAVE to do on a movie blog. One of those things is, when this time of year (end of winter) rolls about, you turn your attention to “the big stuff coming this summer.” It’s one of those trends that’s not worth bucking. Everyone is doing it because, really, Hollywood makes darn sure there’s not much else for us to do.

So I’m sitting here, trying to organize my thoughts about the upcoming Summer Slate and find a thread around which to build a posting that doesn’t read like every other blog posting on the same topic. To jog my memory, I start running through the “upcoming” lists around the web, and the expected stuff starts to jump out at me: “War of The Worlds” is coming. “Fantastic Four” is coming… and not looking one ounce better, sadly. “Batman Begins,” “Sin City” and “Hitchhikers Guide” are all coming. All good so far, right?

And then, as if waking from a dream, two words come to my mind: “Star Wars.”

And then it hits me like a ton of bricks: I had completely forgotten that this was even coming out.

I should offer you some context in which to better understand what a shocking/englightening moment this was for me: I have a full-size reprint of an original “Star Wars” theatrical poster hanging on the wall opposite my bed, positioned as such that it’s one of the first things I see when I wake up each morning. Next to that, both volumes of the “Star Wars Infinities” comic collections are sitting atop one of my bookstacks. A DVD set of the original SW trilogy (pre-not-so-special-edition “fixes” versions, thank you) holds a prominent place on the “frequently-watched” section of the DVD shelf.

I had “Empire Strikes Back” bedsheets when I was a kid. I watched the originals to the point of memorization. When I got my first working copy of Adobe Premier, the first thing I did was make a half-dozen short films of myself and friends weilding lightsabers. I’m a “Star Wars” fan in the truest, bluest, child-of-the-80s sense of the word.

And I had completely forgotten that a new “Star Wars” movie was among the big Summer releases this year.”

And not just any “Star Wars” movie. “Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of The Sith.”

As in “the one where we’ll see the birth of Darth Vader.” As in “the one where we see the Republic fall, the Empire rise, and the end of the Jedi.”

As in: THE LAST “STAR WARS” MOVIE THAT WILL EVER BE MADE.

And I’d completely forgotten about it.

And I didn’t have to look far or even wonder too long about why this act of forgetfulness was able to occur. The answer was staring me in the face, and indeed has been doing so for well over two years now:

I just don’t care anymore.

You’ve all heard this before, not from me but from others like me, so lets not dwell on a story we’re all overly-familiar with. In brief: Waited in line for “Phantom Menace,” went into about 6th months of denial, eventually admitted to myself that it sucked, held out hope for “Attack of The Clones,” immediately recognized that it was better but still sucked, now awaiting #3 in the same way one awaits a funeral (i.e. wanting it to arrive and get over with so you can begin trying to let the good memories eclipse the bad.) By now it’s a story as archetypal as “boy meets girl.”

And it’s not just me.

And it’s not just the Geek Community.

The magazines and film sites are beginning to trickle out their “Summer Preview” stuff, and patterns are beginning to emerge: “Will The Fantastic Four be the nadir for Marvel characters as movies?” is a hot topic, as is “Do we really need another Batman movie?” (answer: YES.) “Will Hitchhiker’s Guide appeal to non-fans?” You get the idea.

But, while it is getting obligatory covers and mentions, another pattern is becoming strikingly clear: “Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of The Sith,” the final question-answering installment of the former keystone franchise of all cinematic scifi/fantasy, the film “we’ve waited over 20 years to see”… doesn’t really rate that much of a mention. Theaters have massive advertising up for “Robots” unknown bionic heroes but not yet even a single image of C-3PO. “Star Wars,” once as a collective franchise a member of the pantheon of “above criticism classics” like “Godfather,” “2001,” “Citizen Kane” and “Psycho” has been reduced back to “just another big movie coming out,” and as far as “anticipated blockbusters” of the coming summer go Obi-Wan vs. Anakin in “RoTS” seems to be registering currently as barely more noteworthy than Jamie Foxx vs. A Killer Airplane in “Stealth.”

There’s a growingly-common analogy out there that compares Star Wars fans experiencing the meltdown of the franchise to battered wives. It’s allegedly hillarious, dontcha know, because “all those geeks never get laid, so it’s clever to compare their fandom to a relationship to highlight that fact.” But nonetheless, there’s a grain of truth to it. Being a SW fan right now is painful, and each day brings new bruises. By now, many have moved on or at looking at it as just another movie. Others, like myself, have worked tirelessly to recondition our minds to be able to easily seperate “real” SW (unedited originals) from the prequels and special editions. Others, though, are still working themselves raw trying to remain in denial about how far the thing has fallen, and these are the poor fellows who come off like abuse-victims.

But I want to know what you think. Hit that comment button below and tell me if you’ve had a similar experience it not being able to even remember it’s still coming, if you don’t care or if you think I’m crazy and want to tell me off on the whole thing.

Let’s hear it.

Those of you who read my little peice last week about the toxic influence of pro-censorship advocate L. Brent Bozell and his web-based outfits The Media Research Center and Parents Television Council on the current national FCC policy know I’m not a fan of the guy or his work. Those of you who didn’t, well, here’s your chance:
http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2005/02/your-freedom-is-in-danger-plus-meet.html

But as a refresher: Bozell calls himself a “conservative watchdog” and dedicates his life to stamping out stuff he doesn’t like from TV, film and radio. So, yeah, not a fan.

But the thing is, Mr. Bozell and I have a lot in common. For example, both of us share the likelihood of our ears perking up when we hear the word “lesbian” bandied about in relation to a television show. In fact, we’re both much more likely to watch any show that promises a “lesbian twist,” which these days is just about any show other than “Everybody Loves Raymond” (and thank heaven for that, I wouldn’t wish having to lock lips with Patricia Heaton on anyone of any sex.) Where we diverge is, I’m comfortable admitting I’m just a sucker for two girls “getting together.” It’s sexy. Whereas Bozell is allegedly devoting himself to watching sex-fueled TV shows “so you don’t have to.” Ahem. In any case, we both taped that last episode of “The O.C.”

Anyhow, Bozell is up in a dander about an “outbreak” of lesbian moments on TV during sweeps month. It’s understandable that he’d be upset, the notion that TV Networks add girl/girl coupling to their shows during the ratings-sweeps because they know for a fact that it will make many more people than usual watch flies in the face of his zealous insistence that the “Liberal Media” boogeyman is trying to force this content on a public that “doesn’t want it.”

Last night “The Simpsons” outed perennially single supporting character Patti Bouvier, and predictably Bozell is cheesed off…
http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2005-02-21/#tv1

Man, if yellow-skinned cartoon characters that every other censorship-pundit gave up on trying to silence about eleven years ago talking sex bother him so much, my Anime collection would give him a seizure…

And to prove himself further, he elaborates on the subject on his MRC column. Here Bozell clicks off every Sapphic instance he’s witnessed on the boob tube this month, and honestly his list puts mine to shame. I’m envious that this guy has seen so much more girl-on-girl action on TV this month than I have, and he’s (allegedly) not even enjoying it.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/BozellColumns/entertainmentcolumn/2005/col20050218.asp

But hey, look what I found…

In the screed linked-to above, Bozell goes off on the recent episode of ABC’s ghastly “Wife Swap” in which the trading couples were Evangelical Christians and a Lesbian family. He describes the predictable results:

At the end of the “swap,” the Christian mom makes the lesbian cry by saying, “I think you are, according to the word of God, depraved, and I don’t want anyone depraved near my kids.”

At first, I’m thinking the point here is “gee, isn’t it typical that what bugs Bozell about “Wife Swap” isn’t the inherent cruelty and indignity of the show and most of it’s Reality TV ilk, but that the show has trained the TV Eye on the seething, irrational hatred that informs too much of so-called ‘Christians’ thinking in this country,” but then he goes on…

“That leaves everyone in the audience thinking, correctly: then maybe you shouldn’t have volunteered to go on “Wife Swap,” dummy.”

Okay, so he doesn’t like Wife Swap. Fine, at least he’s not being a hypocr…

Oh, wait. Look at this from September 30, 2004…
http://www.mediaresearch.org/BozellColumns/entertainmentcolumn/2004/col20040930.asp

That was Bozell praising the heck out of “Wife Swap” back when it was new. Check this out:

“While the shows center on women from radically different home environments switching places, there is no sleazy expectation of swinging infidelity. Instead, the two families struggle to integrate a total stranger into their lives for a week, and often what emerges by show’s end is a renewed appreciation of the very essence of motherhood.”

So back then he ADORED “Wife Swap” for it’s family-values influence on the Reality TV culture, but NOW someone who goes on deserves to be verbally abused because they are a “dummy” who ought to have known better?

Now, admittedly, catching a pro-censorship advocate like Bozell in an act of hypocrisy is about as exciting as catching Winnie The Pooh in an act of honey-eating, but I just thought I’d bring it to your attention. And remember, this man and his organization are right now exercising an incredible amount of pressure on the FCC. Do you want these people in charge of what’s “decent” and what’s not?

Didn’t think so.