Is Icarus Falling?

The Election. It is hard to make any sense out of polls or where the candidates stand with the public. But one thing is clear: the Media is in love with the polls, indeed, this is not a Democracy it is Pollocracy. They base programs on the polls; it is their lead-in to the news about the election; it provides the warp and woof of their thinking, especially the warp. But with so many different polls the situation is confusing. Yesterday one national poll said Obama was up by 8 points; another said McCain was up by 4 points. The comedians are getting in the act too. Mo Dowd and Jon Steward are making fun of Obama as a politician with a big head. Steward said while Obama was in the Middle East he decided to visit his birth site “in the manger.” He told Dowd, I would bet in a jocular vein, that he has learned he mustn’t “fly too close to the sun.” She made it into proof of his high-flying egotism and arrogance. Other Media are asking, “Where is the Bounce” from the European trip? USA Today even suggested that his big tour would have a reverse effect; it would energize the Republican base more than it helped Obama. Meanwhile, on MSNBC, Keith Olberman and Andrea Mitchell have taken on the job of closely dissecting the McCain ads about Obama, which are tending very negative, even outrageous. They see Obama as the leading candidate and, as Frank Rich wrote last weekend in the New York Times, “a president-in-waiting,” and the attack ads are acknowledgement of that fact. They are designed to knock him off this pedestal and muddy him up a bit. On Wednesday Olberman and Mitchell diagnosed the falsehoods and half-truths in two ads. The one that the most egregious was the one where Obama is related to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, you know, just one more shallow celebrity taking up airtime to enlarge their egos. Its guilt by association, the oldest of dirty tricks. Mitchell asked question of some female McCain spokesperson, saying isn’t that comparing apples with oranges, as what does Obama have to do with Paris Hilton and Spears? The response: No, not at all, all three are celebrities, and therefore, it is comparing apples with apples. The game is one of changing perceptions not accuracy or pushing your own programs and ideas. They are endeavoring to belittle Obama who supposedly lacks the stature of McCain who is a genuine American Hero. On the other side, the Obama campaign has a tendency to stress the word “old” with McCain and his sympathizers in the press are emphasizing all his gaffes which come in bunches every week. For more details check The Huffington Post or cursor.org, which will give you access to media around the world and to a number of relevant blogs, left, right, and center.

Media Muddle over Candidates

There is so much talk in the media about the media being in the pocket of Barack Obama—just look how all the anchors traipse after him in Europe. Poor John McCain is always holding the short end of the stick. On the other hand, you can read something like the Huffington Post and hear the opposite viewpoint, that the media is favoring McCain and giving Obama a bad time every chance they get, like their one-note-criticism about the Surge, which apes what was coming out of McCain’s mouth, who would also add, “ I would rather lose the election than lose the war,” as if Obama was some kind of borderline traitor. Another little trick that I heard this past week was some members of the media, especially after his big splash in Germany, were calling Obama the “presumptuous candidate” rather than the presumptive one. It’s all a matter of shadings and twisted meanings that are often considered fair game in politics.

Last week that speech he gave in front of 200,000 Germans was the lead item on the evening news. I saw two reports about it that were like night and day. First I listen to Keith Olberman’s program COUNTDOWN, comments by Keith, Howard Fineman, Richard Wolfe and Rachel Madow. They were in general agreement that Obama had wowed the Germans with one of his standard inspirational speeches. He hadn’t tried to be Jack Kennedy or Ronald Reagan; he just stated his case about “This is our moment.” They all saw it as a positive for his campaign, as the U.S. has to stop going it alone and to repair the damage that the Bush Administration has done in Europe and elsewhere. They were also rough on McCain, showing footage of him talking about the “extremists gathered on the Iraq-Pakistan border.” Check your map folks. There is no such border. Iran stands in the way. This is our Foreign Policy expert. They mentioned other gaffes to reinforce the idea that McCain really wasn’t presidential material. Then I switched to CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. There the emphasis was on McCain’s reaction to Obama in Europe with everyone wondering why Obama had to impress the foreigners rather than the folks back home, where the problems were. He needs to persuade us not the Germans or the French that he is presidential timber, as they used to say. They tended to see the German extravaganza as showboating, an egoistic act, and the speech was the same old line, just rhetoric. Rather they showed McCain talking to some veteran group, with everyone shaking his hand. But they also showed him in a Colorado supermarket in the aisle with one woman with cart and a grocery clerk who had just knocked a dozen glass jars off a low shelf. He looked confused, as if he wasn’t sure why he was there. Think of that picture versus the shot of Obama standing in front of 200,000 cheering people. One image can be worth a thousand words.

The Dark Knight

As A Midwestern kid I grew up reading my share of comic books. I was thrilled by the exploits of the numerous super-heroes let loose by the illustrators. My favorites were Batman, Submariner, Plastic Man, The Spirit, and The Heap, a kind of benign Swamp Thing. And, god, don’t let me forget Wonder Woman, my wife’s favorite and symbol of the New Woman, strong and possessed with marvelous powers. When my wife was teaching in the University of Arizona’s Dance Department she did a theater / dance piece that featured a large burlap sack on stage with something inside moaning and groaning and trying to get out of its prison; finally a woman burst out of bag and made a long shout of triumph: It was Wonder Woman in full regalia, ready and able to lead the charge against a world controlled and dominated by men. So, as my wife saw Wonder Woman, she represented the liberating spirit of Feminism. She became more than what her creator wanted her to be.

This is a lead-in to some thoughts about the latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight.” It is a film that aspires to be more than it seems to be. There is an attempt to elevate comic book material, to use the super-hero in a relevant, more emotionally real way, and the same goes for the Joker, the manifestation of the arch-villain, and played so brilliantly by the late Heath Ledger.” The Dark Night “ lands somewhere between industry filmmaker and a place where thornier issues try men’s souls—between entertainment and Art, with a foot in both spheres. Cartoon characters are employed with heightened drama, moral purpose, and a tragic sense of loss. Even a sweetheart and a courageous D.A. can die—can’t be saved by our intrepid hero. Grit, sorrow and anger have been added to the fairy tale. It is as if something snuck into the script through the back door when no one was watching. This movie as fiction is more than what the Batman franchise was in the beginning.

Heath Ledger plays the Joker, not as a circus clown, but as a pathological genius, an individual devilishly clever and always two steps ahead of everyone else. He regards killing people as a lark, in a word, fun. He won’t kill Batman because that “would ruin all the fun.” Unlike most criminal minds, the Joker is not interested in money and he proves it late in the long film. As Bruce Wayne’s manservant says, his only real desire “ is to watch the city burn.” The Joker has a reverse relationship to Batman: His devil is balanced against Batman’s heroic stature; he is a destroyer next to Batman’s virtuous altruism; and, finally, he is The Shadow pulling the rug out from under our Better Self.

Quite frankly, Ledger stole the show. His interpretation of the Joker is shattering, disturbing, and extraordinary. The Director, Chris Nolan, got Ledger to reach deep into his own psyche to pull this characterization out of some dark pocket in his inner depths; and from what I understand he had some trouble returning to normality. He was suffering from insomnia and anxiety: this is where the pills came in, the drugs that killed him, accidentally. His characterization of the Joker had been forged in a different furnace than Jack Nicholson’s Joker. According to the Poet William Blake, whose illustrations have a cartoon-like quality, creative people work within “Furnaces of Affliction.” He also said that John Milton wrote about God and Angels in PARADISE LOST with chains on, but wrote of the Devil and Hell “at liberty” because he was “of the Devil’s Party without knowing it.” I would say something similar about “The Dark Knight.” Chris Nolan and Heath Ledger are of “the Devil’s Party” while Batman and the Police Commissioner, despite being on the side of the angels, are outwit and overshadowed by the Forces of Darkness, which is why the Knight is “Dark” in this telling of the tale.

Dr. Death is Captured

What a story! Can you believe that Rondovan Karadzic, the man accused of ordering the death of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica during the Bosian war, 1992-1995, has been hiding in plain sight right under the noses of government authorities in Belgrade. He was living openly as Dr. Dragan Debic, a local specialist and lifestyle guru who represented Alternative Medicine, much like Andrew Weil does here in Tucson. In fact, he perhaps emulated Weil’s look, as he, like Weil, had a thick flowing white beard and his lectures were videotaped and shown on television. However, he had more hair on his head then Andrew Weil; he wore it as a topknot ponytail, very fashionable in certain quarters. He was able to disappear into the New Age community in Belgrade; such as it was in the city. He even had a mistress named Mila, a pretty middle-aged woman who was always with him when he went to his favorite watering hole, a place called the MADHOUSE. He would introduce her as his wife and he invented some relatives who now live in America.

Unbelievable! If you wrote up a script that suggested such a ruse, no one would believe it. It would be too far-fetched and utterly improbable. I don’t want to forget for one minute what the guy did, but on the other hand, you have to admit he was clever and a very good actor. The sheer boldness of the ploy made it worked. It took a lot of daring to pull it off. What made the disguise work, beyond the physical transformation, was the Alternative life style didn’t seemed to fit the Butcher of Srebrenica. It would be like John McCain becoming a Buddhist monk. He was a Doctor and a psychiatrist before the war so he had that to build on. The first thing the authorities did when they captured him was they shorn him of his beard and fancy hair, like Samson was shorn, losing his strength, returning him to the Karadzic they all knew and could recognize.

Many questions remain. Who helped him in the beginning? How did get along with patients and the young people he was around? Was he a good doctor? Was he always in Belgrade? What was the mistake he made that led to his capture? The importance of his capture for Serbia and its present pro-Western government is this: It moves them closer to their ultimate goal, which is membership in the European Union, as they see belonging to the EU as the key to foreign investment and economic progress. The EU has told the Serbians that Karadzic and Rothko Mladic must be found and tried before they can enter the EU. Mladic was commander of the Army and Karadzic right hand man, the soldier who carried out his orders. They were a deadly pair. He is still on the loose. Karadzic will probably be sent to The Hague within a few days. He has already announced he will defend himself, like Slobodan Milosevic did. The World Court would like to avoid that scenario, if possible.

Irish Eyes are Smiling in Birkdale

Irish Eyes Are Smiling at Birkdale

On the first day of play at the British Open the media focused on Rocco Mediate who was among the leaders at the end of round one. The second most popular topic was the awful English weather; on Thursday it was chilly, raining, and the winds were very strong, very difficult to contend with because they seemed to come from different directions on every hole. It was particularly miserable in the morning when the average score was 78. The winds made play trying and complicated all four days of the tournament.

On the second day Rocco faded a bit and Greg Norman grabbed the headlines after two rounds of 70. Norman, 53 years old with a 23-year-old body (so said some impressed golfer) seemed like a serious contender for the first time in a decade or more. It was a readymade story, an old worthy of past glories with a sad record of losing 4 Majors when he had the 54-hole lead; plus he was on his honeymoon with his new wife, the former Ice Queen of Tennis, Chris Evert. They got married three weeks ago and she had breathed new life into The Great White Shark, taking on the role of his muse and inspiration, filling him with ideas about a comeback, perhaps even winning The Open, which would be a wonderful finale to their honeymoon. On the other hand, his game wasn’t in shape to play competitive golf on the highest level, as he has been playing more tennis than golf. But with Tiger absent his story was the next best thing. So he was talked about, written about, and there was a lot blah, blah, blah about his winning The Open, a kind of retro Cinderella story. Actually, K.J. Choi, the straight shooting Korean pro, had the halfway lead at end of Friday. Camillio Villegas, the lean but sinewy Columbian who has been nicknamed “Spiderman” because of the horizontal contortions he gets into when sizing up a putt, shot the low score of the tournament when he birdied the final 5 holes for a sterling 65. Finally, Paddy Harrington, last year’s champion, was lurking in background. It was assumed his sore wrist would prevent him from winning again.

On Sunday morning the headline in the Tucson paper read: NORMAN ON THE MARCH TOWARD GOLF HISTORY. He was in front by two strokes after Saturday’s round. Some felt his renewed enthusiasm for life, the gift of new love, would help him overcome all the baggage of his past. Tom Watson believed that. Julius Boros had won a major at 48; he felt sure The Shark could pull it off at 53. His broadcast partner, Paul Azinger, was more skeptical. Meanwhile, Choi slipped to a 75 on Saturday and Paddy Harrington ended the day in second place and, therefore, Norman’s playing partner for the final round. David Duval, who had shot a 73 and 69 the first two days, put himself out of contention with an 83 on Saturday. Another miraculous resurgence bit the dust.

Sunday brought all the dreamers back down to earth. Norman bogied the first three holes while Paddy got 6 pars in a row. Then Paddy bogied three in a row and Norman got back in front by a stroke, but it didn’t last long, as he got in the rough too often and his putts weren’t falling any more. Up in the TV Booth Paul Azinger kept criticizing Norman’s course management. He thought with the wind the way it was, gusting up to 40 mph, he should put his driver away and play it safe with irons off the tee. But Norman has always been a gunslinger, someone who shoots for birdies not pars. I think he was in the fairway 5 times off the tee all day, not so good. Meanwhile, Harrington regained his momentum and confidence, getting a birdie on 15 and then he clinched the victory with a spectacular eagle on the 17^th hole, when he hit a 5-wood to within four feet of the pin. At That point he was up by four strokes and it was a good thing too, as Ian Poulter made a charge, but came up short, but securing second place. Norman ended with a 77 and a third place tie with Henrik Stenson, who won in Tucson in 2006. (By the way, that was a mistake Mike Tirico made on the air: He said Stenson had never won in the states.)

In the post-game interview Harrington said winning last year was thrilling and exciting, as a first Major would be, but he found this second Open title more satisfying because it put him in elite company; it validated his ascendancy to Number Three on the top ten list, in back of Phil Mikelson, who was a washout at the Open, and Tiger Woods, the ailing King of the Mountain. He felt he had arrived and it was a tremendous boost to his confidence.

Norman was philosophical. Naturally, he was disappointed, but he did much better than he expected going into the tournament, so he felt he shouldn’t complain too much. Only time will tell if the weekend was an anomaly in his current life, or the start of something big, like a reinvigorated career on the Champion’s Tour. They would love to him playing regularly. He doesn’t need to do it for money, which he has plenty of, but for that feeling of satisfaction that Harrington was talking about. And he needs to exorcise some demons.

Come on Chris; work your muse magic on him. The World of Golf is better with him in it.

One more thing: While in second place in the State Farm Classic in Springfield, Illinois, and playing well, the often beleaguered Michelle Wie made another boo-boo that shot her down so unnecessarily: She forgot to sign her score card, which is an automatic disqualification. If there was one cow-pie in a big field, Wie would find a way to step in it.

Home Invasion as a Sport

“Funny Games” is the kind of movie that makes you want to tale a shower as soon as it is over. You feel begrimed by nasty stuff and you don’t want it to stick. I felt so disturbed I had to take Tylenol PM in order to get to sleep. It is not a viewer-friendly movie. If you plan to see it, be sure to gird yourself, for it is a tough, tough movie to watch.

“Funny Games” is almost an exact replica of Michael Haneke’s 1997 German language film of the same name. Apparently, Haneke is interested in reaching an American audience, especially the people who won’t see a movie with subtitles. I think he is kidding himself; reviewers and word of mouth will keep the audience limited. The casual moviegoer in this country wants to be entertained, not beat over the head for 90 minutes. I ‘d say this film, which is well done, as Haneke has formal skill in abundance, is to be endured not enjoyed. We can learn how a cynical and sadistic European Director views the themes of terror and violence in American movies.

Haneke wanted to make a statement about those things because he sees our film industry as the main purveyor of violence as fun and this film is designed to counter that attitude. There’s no doubt he’s right, as a walk through any Multiplex or Blockbuster’s would make clear. Americans thrive on vicarious violence. Blood, gore, and explosions are mainlined by our youth as a matter of course. Action flicks like the new “Rambo” and the comic book tales such as “Hellboy II,” “Iron man,” and “Batman / Joker” are immensely popular. This is not to say all violence is bad in films. That would be to ignore the world we live in. But it can’t be an end in itself. The night before I saw “Funny Games” I saw “Stop-Loss,” one more film about the War in Iraq and what the violence there is doing to our troops. There is an opening gunfight in the narrow streets of Baghdad and it is quite bloody and gruesome as civilians are killed and three members of the squad die too. The violence is a reflection of what is happening in Iraq; there is a psychological and political dimension to the action and deaths; it is intended to be provocative, to make you think, not have fun with the spilling of blood. The violence hits home and has terrible repercussions, then, now, and in the future. “Funny Games” may or may not have redeemable qualities. People who see the film will have to make up their own mind about that. I think it does, but just barely.

“Funny Games” is the story of two pathological young men who view home invasion as their favorite sport; with perfect manners, twisted minds, and vile intentions, they aggressively and piteously attack unsuspecting bourgeois families at their summer homes by a lovely lake. (To Haneke being bourgeois is the kiss of death.) The movie’s focus is on one family that has just arrived with their sailboat in tow. There is George, the husband (Tim Roth), Ann, the wife (Naomi Watts) and Georgie, their ten-year-old son. The boys invade the home on the pretext of borrowing some eggs and disable George by breaking his leg and then begin to terrorize the three of them. Peter (Michael Pitt) is the clear leader and does most of the talking. Paul (Brady Corbet) is his psychotic sidekick. They call each other by other names too, like Beavis and Butthead, and Tom and Jerry. The combination of their preppy clothes, all in white, including white gloves, which signals nothing to the family, their exaggerated politeness and careful manners, their brittle intellectualism and ruthless treatment of innocent victims, brought Leopold and Loeb to my mind. Like them, they are some variety of experimental nihilists with superior airs. Both boys leave no doubt that evil exists. Also, the way they structure their hideous brutality with games made me recall that monster Anton Chigurh and his coin-flips with his hapless victims. Peter wants George and Ann to bet with him. His bet was they would not be alive at 9 o’clock in the morning. He also offers them a choice to die by knife or gunshot. Be prepared: This movie has no miraculous reversal of fortune. Haneke doesn’t believe in happy endings.

Two of the actors stand out, Watts and Pitt. Watts has to strip naked for the boys and she agonizes throughout the film as her husband fades into the background due to his injury. She is the emotional center for the put-upon family. It was no doubt a daunting role for her. Michael Pitt is evil incarnate, a deadly viper with pure sadism as his gospel.

Haneke has some nice touches here and there in the movie. The one I’ll remember the most is the TV screen splattered with blood with a NASCAR race on the tube, with a broadcaster talking hysterically at top volume. It was a set piece that expressed in capsule form the horror of what happened in this vacation hideaway.

The British Open

In 1998 I was in the British Isles for three weeks with my family. We were there in the middle of summer, late July into August, but the only place that seemed summery was London where the temperature stayed around 70 degrees the eight days we were there. In the south of Ireland we ran into frigid weather, with the temperature in the low forties in the morning and it felt even colder on the coast because there was a gale coming off the Atlantic Ocean. It was equally chilly in Edinburgh and near the coast where St. Andrew’s Golf course is located, with another cold wind blowing making it very uncomfortable. Thank goodness I had been smart enough to bring my winter Jacket.

I tell you about that trip as prelude to making a report about the British Open, which started play Thursday morning. It is being held for the 9^th time at the Royal Birkdale Golf Course on the western coast of England. It was cold, windy, and raining on Thursday morning, but not quite so bad in the afternoon when most of the low scores were made. Scores were generally high, averaging 78 in the morning and 75 in the afternoon. An American pro, Pat Perez, said the weather made an impossible course ridiculous, claiming that only three par four holes could be reached in two. He shot an 82, while John Daly and Ernie Els shot 80. Phil Mikelson had 79, which included a triple bogey 7 on the 6^th hole when he lost his ball. He shot a 68 on Friday to stay in the tournament. Sandy Lyle and Rich Beem, two golfers who have won Majors, were so frustrated they walked off the course. Some Brits were upset with Lyle for doing that. He forgot you are suppose to maintain a stiff upper lip.

Kenny Perry must be having a good laugh in Milwaukee where he is playing in a PGA event rather than at The Open. Perry has won three times in the last several weeks and everyone assumed he’d play in the prestigious Open, which is a Major. But he decided to play where it was 85 on Thursday. He shot a 67 to be in contention again.

Rocco Mediate, the darling of the Media right now, shot a 70 and 73 to be near the lead and still attracting considerable attention. But the biggest surprise of the first two days has been the play of Greg Norman who is there despite being on his honeymoon, having wed retired tennis queen Chris Evert thee weeks ago. She encouraged him to play even though he has hardly touched his clubs for a month and hasn’t been in contention in ten years. But buoyed by the confidence of his new bride he is riding the crest of a wave that everyone is curious to see how far it can carry him. He shot two 70s and he is one stroke behind K.J. Choi, who shot a 69 today to take the halfway lead. There are 20 golfers within 5 strokes of Choi, so it is still anybody’s tournament. Camilio Villegas who birdied the last 5 holes to shoot 65 turned in the low score of the day.

Oh yes, you might have noticed I haven’t mentioned Tiger Woods. He’s home nursing his bad knee, like his doctors insist he do.

Snake Plissken, Hero or Rogue

“Escape from New York” (1981) is outdated and primitive next to the CGI movies of today, but that doesn’t prevent it from being fun and entertaining. And Kurt Russell fans, at least those of the funkier variety, love to think of him as Snake Plissken, gnarly bad and muscular, a black patch over one eye, a former war hero now a jailbird who will do just about anything to gain his freedom. “Escape from New York” is John Carpenter’s effective futuristic fantasy about the U.S. as a police State in 1997, with Manhattan now a top security prison with high walls around it. Like the Leper Colony on Molokai, where the original inmates were simply dumped on the small spit of land and had to survive on their own, criminals of the worse sort were dumped on Manhattan and had to sort things out for themselves. Carpenter’s hook for his tale is this: The President of the United States (Donald Pleasance) has crashed on Air Force One within the confines of the prison and is being held by a man known as ‘The Duke,’ (Isaac Hayes), the criminal chieftain, like King Rat reigning in a terminal sewer; and the warden of the prison, Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) recruits Snake Plissken to go in and reclaim the President who had been on his way to save the world from another war. Knowing that Snake is not likely to volunteer for this next to impossible assignment, he pretends to inject him in the neck with a tiny explosive device, which would go off in if he isn’t back with the President. He has 24 hours to get the task done. Otherwise it’s bye, bye Snake.

What I liked most about the movie is its dark mood and anarchic atmosphere, the sense of Hobbsian rat-hole degradation of a formerly majestic city, and the low-life species of a retrograde humanity that seems to flourish in this fallen Gotham. The worse criminals, the so-called “crazies,” and other denizens of the night roam the streets like hyenas and lions roam the Serengeti. There’s even a cab with Earnest Borgnine behind the wheel who helps Snake locate The Duke. Why a cab should be operating there is odd but why not. If it aids the fantasy, let it be. The city is dark, in ruins, with fires burning and trash scattered everywhere, as all signs of a coherent or civilized community are absent, or in radical decline. The rule of the jungle prevails. .

But in the end there is Snake Plissken, a wonderful mix of hero and villain. It’s unbelievable that Snake was never given an encore performance, a sequel. Or maybe a comic book. For all I know maybe he has. He deserves one.

The Bloody Paws of Peckinpah

A friend of mine in Portland, Oregon, sent me a disc with the HBO documentary on Sam Peckinpah’s Westerns on it. He knew I was an ardent fan of the maverick director, so he recorded it for me.

Since I have read all the books on Peckinpah and seen all his movies, including his first Western, “The Deadly Companions,” which wasn’t easy to find, plus I have seen “Wild Bunch” at least 8 times, the documentary did not break new ground for me. And I knew all about his pugnacious character, his troubles with producers and authority, his womanizing, his drinking and coke habit, and his inescapable urge toward self-destructiveness. I saw “Wild Bunch” for the first time in Eugene, in July 1969. The HBO special allowed me to once again appreciate what great things he accomplished in a span of twenty years. There’s no question that “Wild Bunch” is his masterpiece, but there are 3 or 4 others that also have enduring qualities. I did take away one true insight from the Special: How autobiographical his movies are, something I hadn’t given much thought to before. That is much clearer to me now, how he would divvy up various facets of his own complex personality and put them into various personae on screen, which he would then manipulate like a puppet theater. This is a particularly modern penchant among artists. Who and what they are becomes their favorite subject matter. It’s fair game for a man of great talent, which Sam certainly was.

When my wife and I walked out of the theater in Eugene in 1969, she turned to me and said, “I’d say that film is the last Western. No one will top it.” A few days later I read a review of it in LIFE magazine by Richard Schickel who called it a “dirty Western.” They were both right. It can be considered the last Western in the sense that it sums up the tradition of the American Western as it has existed for two generations, while at the same time it transcends the past and opens the Western to more psychological and mythic interpretations. After “Wild Bunch” Western characters and cowboys had to be believable as human beings, not just pasteboard imitations carrying six guns. When I first saw the film I was overwhelmed by the reality of Pike Bishop and the other characters, their truth on the level of psychological weight and emotional substance; they were outlaws and killers but they were real people, a gang who stuck together—and they had personality. (The second time I saw the movie it was in a theater in the Fillmore district in San Francisco, and when Pike, the leader of the gang, gives his speech in the sand dunes about the importance of sticking together or “else we are just animals,” the theater erupted in applause and shouts of affirmation. The theater was full of young Hispanics and African Americans. They heard what Pike said and took it to heart. They saw it as an us against them situation. And being in the minority, sticking together was seen as an essential virtue.) The members of the gang were not saints, far from it, but they were real, you could identify with them and their dilemmas in time and space. They were men caught in the vise of historical circumstances, as the 19^th century faded away and the 20^th was being born, as automobiles were replacing horses, machine guns were replacing six guns, and revolutions were over taking anarchy. As Pike saw the situation, their options were narrowing and he knew it. It was an existential predicament that has some resemblance to what’s happening today, as instability rules. We can share their plight, walk in their shoes, and admire Pike’s integrity and loyalty, and even his sense of doom and nihilism. When he is with the young whore with the baby, he knows he has reached the end of the line; you can see it in his face. He throws away the empty bottle of Mescal, gives the woman his gold coins, and walks to his compatriots and says, “Let’s go,” and they know what he has in mind: Go get Angel, the gang member being abused by General Mapache, the local warlord. The four men begin what has come to be called “the long march” to what is now called “the bloody porch,” where the final violent confrontation takes place. They were either going to save Angel or go out in a blaze of gunfire, with the latter being what happened. At the end of the battle we see Pike dead at the machine gun, his finger still on the trigger, the barrel of the gun pointed straight up at the sky, as if he wanted to blast the deity off his throne. It was a bold and harsh gesture that it took guts to make.

The “dirty Western” is a reference to the over-the-top violence in the film and maybe the whoring too. Sam had insisted on a on a realistic portrayal of violence, and because of that he got the nickname “Bloody Sam.” When “Wild Bunch” was released in 1969 the country was in the grip of the War in Vietnam, which was spilling into living room across America every night on Television, with news of high body counts and vivid pictures of the wounded and the dead in body bags. Sam simply raised the realism bar, showing the country the visceral side of modern warfare. We hadn’t seen the bloodletting before; Sam rubbed our noses in it, in the wet red dirt. Now it’s standard stuff in movies and TV programs like CSI, but in 1969 it was in defiance of the unofficial Liberal Code, which had attempted to protect delicate sensibilities from extreme violence. Many were shocked at the realism; others, including Roger Ebert, were dazzled by the truth of it all and the pictorial richness and texture of the gunfight scenes, aided by the interjections of well-placed slow motion sequences. But it was the sixties when the mantra of many artists was ‘Tell it like it is,’ and down with sugarcoating the truth. The two shoot-out scenes at the beginning and end of the picture have been justly celebrated since and have never been duplicated, although some have tried. They were brilliantly constructed, orchestrated, and shot and edited, as was the earlier scene of the blowing of the bridge with several horsemen on it, which had to be carefully done to avoid injuries. The only other director who comes close to matching Sam’s style when it comes to large-scale violence would be Sergio Leone in “Duck You Sucker.”

Let me end on a note about his penchant for autobiographical material entering his pictures. In at least two of his movies, “The Deadly Companions” and “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” there is a scene of a gunslinger shooting his own image in a mirror. In each case I think it is a metaphor for self-loathing, perhaps even a disguised suicidal impulse. In Pat Garrett’s case it is a reaction to having just killed Billy the Kid, as if he were suddenly aware he had just killed the best part of himself, his ambitious and carefree youth. It culminates his own drive to destroy his besotted adult self. He was only 59 when he died, done in by alcohol and cocaine, being his own worst enemy.

Two Champs Clash

Two Champs Clash

Today I watched a sporting event that was being called classic before it was over; it was a competition that was extraordinary, one in a million. If there is any doubt about it, the match will be rebroadcast on ESPN CLASSIC tomorrow night. I am referring of course to the exhilarating contest at Wimbledon between Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, the Splendid Spaniard with a physique that makes Roger, the Gentle Swiss Whiz, look like an undernourished choirboy. Any sports fan worth his salt could recognize that this was a battle between Titians of the game, two practitioners at the pinnacle of their talents, with not only a trophy and cash going to the winner, but the NO.1 ranking in the world of tennis was also in play. So there you have it: A great deal was riding on the match and both men played with tenacity and a refusal to give up. They both understood the magnitude of the confrontation.

Nadal, a beefy, strapping kid of 22 is a very strong lad in a sport that usually attracts smaller, slimmer men—think of Borg, McEnroe, Conners, et al. In my view Nadal won on Sunday because he physically overmatched Federer, which really came to the fore with the epic length of the contest, 4 hours and 48 minutes, plus three rain delays. As proof of my contention was the fact Federer had 53 unforced errors, a sign he wasn’t always in synch with his energy. That was his Achilles heel. In fact, his last stoke was a poorly hit forehand, supposedly his strength. Secondarily, he could not break Nadal—he did once—but he broke Federer several times. The Swiss lad had many more winners than Rafa and more Aces, 25 to 6, but it was those unforced errors and the constant pressure of Rafa’s serves that kept Federer on the baseline, almost as if pinned down under enemy firepower. And after losing the first two sets 6-4, 6-4, Federer was on the road to a comeback that took the contest to 5 sets, with two tiebreakers, with so many clutch shots and beautiful volleys you could not count them, they came so fast and in bunches. Nadal won by the slimmest of margins, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7. 6-7, 9-7, but he won. He almost certainly replaces Federer as the new King of the Hill.

I am not a tennis aficionado, but I am sure glad I witnessed this match today; it was one for the ages.

Wanted: Real Reels

Wanted: Real Reels

“Wanted” is a film by Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian director who made a splash with two sci-fi / vampire movies, “Night Watch” and “Day Watch.” I am sure you will see more of his high-energy flixs in the future. The only vampire movie that I could sit through was “Underworld,” and that was because Kate Beckinsale was in it, looking great in tight black togs. Generally speaking, I ignored vampire and horror films. Why? I can’t buy the program. They are an artifice that bore me; it is a fantasy not to my taste. My fantasies run in a different direction.

“Wanted” does not have vampires, but it does have a Fox (Angelina Jolie), vamping up the place. It also has incredible adrenalin rushes, high wire tension, absurdist action, clots of noise, visual dazzle and dizziness, and a car chase with Fox sprawled on the hood of her nifty sports car, with guns blazing, when she’s not driving her red rocket through city traffic. Morgan Freeman is Sloan, the leader of a band of assassins called The Fraternity that has deep roots in the past, with connections to monasteries and ancient, quasi-mystical practices. It’s like a Gurdjieff group gone sour. It’s not hatha yoga; it’s homicidal yoga, which is an oxymoron. A young twit named Wesley (James McAvoy), a timid accountant who suffers from an overbearing boss and panic attacks, for which he scarfs meds by the handful, is brought to Sloan by Fox; he turns out to be the son of great master assassin. Sloan and his cadre of solemn killers help Wesley find his hidden talents by transforming his panic energy into a concentrated form of miraculous energy, until he can ‘fly’ and shoot around corners by an act of will power, just like his father. Okay, dude, that’s quite a trick! It certainly must come in handy in a pinch.

The movie is riding the coattails of Jolie’s celebrity. In truth she has little to do, besides look decorative. She slinks through the action, pretends she’s acting, and looks like a doe-eyed manikin with tattoos. For a split second you see her naked butt—big whopping deal! After that frenetic beginning with the car chase, she becomes a minor character and eye candy in the background. She chalked up another $10 million to support the family and estate in France. Bully for her.

I know many of you out there in movieland will love “Wanted” for all the reasons I dislike it. Let’s call it a generational divide and leave it at that. (It doesn’t always apply as I thought “Juno” was very fine.) Vampire movies and movies like “Wanted” don’t take me anywhere I’d like to go; I forget them as soon as I leave the theater. They are not food that sticks to the bones. So many of the big films of the Summerfest are absurdist fictions full of cheap thrills and fireworks, with papier-mâché characters from the world of comics, with females treated like glazed donuts, and villains who are more laughable than arch. This is Hollywood strutting its stuff. Gimme a break! Where in heaven’s name are the characters I can identify with and who reflect the human condition with sensitivity and insight? Must we leave it to the French, Germans, and others to make those kinds of films? Where are the human stories of people with their feet on the ground, with vision in their heads, and with hearts that are open?

Where Bad Conscience Leads

On consecutive nights I watched the black comedy “In Bruges” with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson and Woody Allen’s latest effort “Cassandra’s Dream,” with Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkerson. What interest me here is the moral linkage between both films and the resemblance in their plots.

”In Bruges” dealt with two deadly coincidences, two criminal shootings that misfired and resulted in the accidental death of a young boy in one, and a dwarf in the other. To use the parlance of the day, both deaths were collateral damage, people who died because they happened to be near the human targets the killers were assigned to eliminate. Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) are in Bruges, Belgium, waiting for their next assignment. To pass the time, Ken becomes a tourist and he truly finds Bruges of interest. It is still a medieval city with fascinating art and architecture, and Ken tries to engage Ray in these things but he gets nowhere. Ray, a restless youth, is not impressed. He finds Bruges a huge bore. Only when he meets a lovely local girl does his interest perk up. On one of the nights he is out with girl the crime boss (Ralph Fiennes) calls Ken and tells him his next assignment is a solo job: He has to kill Ray. The reason is on the previous job Ray shot and killed the target, a Catholic Priest, but he also hit and killed an Acolyte who was standing in back of the priest. Ray felt terrible when he realizes what he has done and since it happened every time he thinks of it he gets grim and shaky, as the guilt grabs him by the throat. But he is trying to live with the memory as best he can. Ken was surprised by what the boss wants done. In the boss’s view if Ray was a principled man he would have killed himself right away; but since he didn’t Ken has to do it for him. Later in the story that remark will come back to haunt the Boss. Yet, Ken knows he is a hit man and they are not supposed to let anything get in their way. Personal feelings about the target must not intervene. It’s a job and he has to do it. But when the moment arrives he can’t do it and he’s willing to suffer the consequences, that is, the boss will come after him as well as Ray. All hell breaks loose in the last twenty minutes of the film. There is a clash involving all three men that is bizarre and weirdly humorous. Moral confusion reigns and no one is left standing. If you want to know who killed the dwarf, you’ll have to see the film.

Two working class brothers, one a loose cannon, the other a narcissistic personality, are the main characters in Woody Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream,” which is the name of a sailboat the lads buy at the beginning of the film. Like the brothers in “Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead,” the brothers have serious money problems. Ian (Ewan McGregor) has pipe dreams of being a rich man and is involved with a real estate deal in Los Angeles, some hotels being built, and he is trying to get in on the ground floor. He also has an actress girl friend that likes the best things and he wants to get them for her. Terry, the younger brother, has a serious gambling problem. He wins enough to take big risks in a high stakes poker game, and one night he is taken to the cleaners, ending up owing 90,000 pounds, an amount far beyond his capacity to find in a short period of time. He’s a car mechanic living on a short string. But the brothers think they have an out: A rich uncle who just happens to be in London. Howard, the uncle, (Tom Wilkerson) and when they talk to him is receptive to their needs, that is, if they are willing to do him a “favor.”

Sure, name it, the boys’ say. Then he lays out a story about his own financial and legal troubles, which he is never specific about, just that a previous associate is going to send him to jail if he testifies in court, so he must be “gotten rid of.” He plays the family card so heavily, even though the boys repulsed by the idea at first, especially Terry, they do eventually decided to do it, feeling they have no other option. Moral considerations are put aside for practical reasons. After the deed is done they have different responses. Ian resembles the Dentist in Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, ”Crimes and Misdemeanors,” who hires a hit man to rid him of a mistress who is threatening to tell his wife about their long time affair because she wants him to divorce the wife to marry her, which he has promised to do for years. Ian, like the Dentist, is egocentric enough to put the deed behind him in a hurry, going forward with his plans about his future, now that the uncle has helped him out and made his path smoother. In contrast, Terry is a nervous wreck, tormented by nightmares, twitchy with guilt, and needing alcohol to get through the days and pills to get through the night. As movie critic James Beradinelli put it, “Terry enters a guilt-fueled downward spiral.” When he starts talking about confessing to the police as he can’t live with himself, Ian goes to Uncle Howard who recommends killing him too, as there are no other options. Naturally, he expects Ian to take care of the matter. Ian agrees, he has no choice if he is to realize his dreams, so he plots to overdose Terry on their sailboat and then throw him overboard. However, when push comes to shove, like Ken, he can’t do it; brotherly love trumps all other considerations. But fate intervened at this point, and you will have to see how it ends.

“Where Bad Conscience Leads” could be the sub-title to both films. Guilt can gnaw on the insides of some people; others can compartmentalize the memory so it’s not disruptive or bothersome to the rest of the psyche. Unlike his brother, who was full of himself, Terry knew the difference between right and wrong, and he had a better grasp on the repercussions of their murderous act. He told Ian they were crossing a line, a point of no return, which was going to be destructive. Ian found out he was so emotionally tied up with his brother, they had to go down together. It was inevitable given who they were.

The Crime Boss and Uncle Howard were negative enablers who knew how to delegate the dirty work. Howard clearly felt above the fray and beyond the touch of morality. Morality ambiguity was not their style. They saw themselves as god-like supervisors of the fate of others; they were the deciders. As far as they were concerned, bad conscience was something for the little people to experience.