But He Isn't Arguing Anything!

I keep writing chapter three (I am on page twelve), but I have yet to really argue anything.

Grrr.

Poem by W.H. Auden: As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

Two Movies in Rapid Succession

I reluctantly watched Paul Haggis's war drama In the Valley of Elah the other day, since it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. I don't like Paul Haggis as a rule. He doesn't like his characters enough for me to really appreciate him: kind of like the Neil LaBute of cinema (well, not as bad as LaBute, but you get what I mean). The last film of his I watched (The Last Kiss) I found completely infuriating, since it was based on a really good film. Haggis's version, made all the characters unlikeable.

In the Valley of Elah follows this mold, but is also a really poorly crafted film. The set up of Elah is that Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon's son goes AWOL somewhere in Texas. He disappears from the base and Jones goes down to the base to find him. He meets with opposition from the Army and so he recruits Charlize Theron, who is a local cop, to help him find his kid. The kid turns out murdered and chopped up into pieces. And then it loses steam, because the movie isn't really about anything. There is not really a plot except the act of figuring out what happened to the kid. And what happened to the kid is really underwhelming. Worse yet, what happened to the kid is revealed to the audience piecemeal, like evidence gradually being discovered in an episode of "Law & Order." There is no real detective work in the film, instead evidence just keeps dropping into the audience's lap. It's an un-artful way to script a mystery film, and In the Valley of Elah never works.

I also finally watched Deliverance, John Boorman's film of James Dickey's novel. I am writing about this movie obliquely for my thesis, so I thought it was important to watch it, at least for the scene of male rape that occurs about halfway through the film. Deliverance is a weird picture. It is centered around an act of male rape, but the movie is really an adventure picture with a tiny plot. I liked it, I suppose, but I didn't really get the film. It's a strange story to want to tell and it's told in a strange way. Eh.

No More Tamer

So the Tamer Tamed symposium is officially over, thank Jesus. Now I can get back to writing my thesis and actually doing the homework for the class I'm taking. (I'm taking a class called U.S. Latino/a Theatre & Performance, by the way. It's a blast.)

So tonight after the Oscars I plan to start writing Chapter Three. I have decided to write about Mark Ravenhill's plays Handbag, Mother Clap's Molly House, and Some Explicit Polaroids. I was going to tell you what my angle is, but it has no real theoretical basis and so it may end up changing as I start to write. I don't know yet. As of now, my thesis defense date is March 26th, which means the whole thing (i.e. chapter three and the conclusion) needs to be finished and to my committee two weeks prior to that, or March 12th. This date, you might have noticed, is less than three weeks away. I don't know how this is going to happen, but it needs to.

Grad school is totally kicking my ass right now.

Is everyone excited for the Oscars tonight? Should be fun. This is the happiest I have been with the Academy in quite a long time.

Oscar Predictions

It's three days until the Academy Awards ceremony, and I apologize for not doing my usual run-up to the awards. I have been spending a ton of time, instead, with one of my favorite topics: Elizabethan & Jacobean theatre. I will also be working for most of the day on Sunday, so I won't be having a party this year either.

At any rate, I do want to make some predictions for the ceremony, since it is in a couple of days. (P.S. I got 16 out of 20 last year, which is pretty damn good.) So, this is who I think will win:

Best Picture - No Country for Old Men
Best Director - No Country for Old Men
Best Actor - There Will Be Blood
Best Actress - La Vie en Rose
Best Supporting Actor - No Country for Old Men
Best Supporting Actress - Michael Clayton
Best Original Screenplay - Juno
Best Adapted Screenplay - No Country for Old Men
Best Foreign Language Film - the Counterfeiters
Best Cinematography - No Country for Old Men
Best Film Editing - There Will Be Blood
Best Costume Design - Atonement
Best Art Direction - Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Best Original Score - Atonement
Best Sound Mixing - No Country for Old Men
Best Sound Editing - There Will Be Blood
Best Original Song - Once
Best Visual Effects - Transformers
Best Makeup - La Vie en Rose
Best Animated Feature - Ratatouille

As I've said before, I really love this year's selection of Best Picture nominees, and even I would have a rough time picking my favorites in most of these categories. So, I will be really happy with There Will Be Blood and No Country picking up ten or twelve Oscars between them, no matter who wins the most. Still, I predict that most of the love will lean toward the Coens.
People I am especially rooting for, who I think actually have a chance of winning:
. Julie Christie, Away from Her
. Atonement in all categories
. Ruby Dee, American Gangster

Happy viewing!

Norbit

I actually sat through Brian Robbins's film Norbit in its entirety. Like last year's Click, I would never have watched Norbit except that it was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for an Oscar in the category of Best Makeup. (An award it should probably win. The makeup really is excellent. But in service of what must be the most atrocious, tasteless film of the year.)

Norbit stars Eddie Murphy as a nebbish orphan who marries an enormously fat black woman who bullies him and makes his life hell. Murphy, of course, also plays the wife (her name is Rasputia). Murphy also plays Mr. Wong, the Chinese man who runs the adoption agency where Norbit lived as a child. The film also stars the totally gorgeous Thandie Newton, Cuba Gooding Jr., Eddie Griffin (the only funny person in the movie), and Katt Williams.

The main thing about Norbit is that it should never have been made. The amount of time and effort that was spent on something this ridiculous, this offensive and this pointless is mind-boggling. It's extremely poorly directed, with some absolutely terrible acting at times. The plot is paper-thin and is really just an excuse for fat joke after fat joke after fat joke. If this isn't completely offensive, I don't know what is. And it isn't even funny. And the film makes it seem as though Rasputia's weight is not just heavy, but immeasurable. She is heavy like an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. She busts through walls with her weight, and empties pools by landing in them, though she is never injured or hurt in any way. All that weight, I guess, keeps her from being injured. Fat people, it seems, don't actually feel anything.

The penultimate sequence in the film sees Mr. Wong (who has a love of whaling) yelling "Whale Ho!" and throwing a makeshift harpoon at Rasputia. He hits her, you guessed it, directly in her asshole. Aside from being completely preposterous, it's a sanitized and valorized image of anal rape! Rasputia, of course, is not injured, because fat people don't have any feelings, or even nerve endings. She speeds off like Wile E. Coyote and flees the town.

A horrific movie. Not as boring as Becoming Jane, but horrific nonetheless.

Symposium

Okay. I cry uncle. I am a passive-aggressive, whiny bitch.

But I am finding it really hard to work on this symposium no matter how many encouraging emails I get. I don't want to do this shit and it makes working on it all the harder. I could be doing something fun. Like working on my thesis. Grr.

John Fletcher is my enemy.

Surf's Up

So in my ongoing task of seeing all of the films nominated for this year's Academy Awards, last night Trent and Julie and I watched the Chris Buck and Ash Brannon animated comedy Surf's Up starring a bunch of cartoon penguins riding waves.

Surf's Up is really good. I know, I know. I was skeptical, too. And I'm rather sick of penguin movies, quite frankly. But it's good. See, it's a faux documentary about a little penguin named Cody Maverick who wants to win a surfing championship. The way it works is that we're always aware that there's a camera watching the little penguins and their crazy antics. There are cameras attached to the surfboards, like in other (less enjoyable) surfing documentaries (Step into Liquid comes to mind. Zzzzzzzzz.), and so when animated water splashes onto the camera lens, water stays on the camera. It's a really cool trick and it endeared me to the movie in a way I can't explain. The whole thing is just so inventive. The plot, of course, is ridiculously trite, and frequently descends into idiotic sentimentality. But the filmmaking is stellar. Brannon and Buck are even in the film as the cameramen. They ask questions of the penguins and manipulate the "cameras." It's all so much fun. The voice talent is great, too. Shia LaBoeuf is one of my new favorites. Although he does say "no no no no no no" a lot (as pointed out by my friend Kevin the last time I talked about Shia.) The other actors are the great Jeff Bridges, Diedrich Bader, Jon Heder, Zooey Deschanel, and James Woods (is he in every animated movie, or is it just me?). Pro-surf legends Kelly Slater and Rob Machado also make appearances as correspondents for SPEN, the sports penguin entertainment network.

Anyway, it's no Ratatouille but Surf's Up is a good time.

The Rape Chapter

I finished draft one of the rape chapter tonight. My advisor has been really liking my first drafts, so I expect her to give this one the okay, too. We'll see. The rape chapter is a tad more theoretical than my last chapter. Anyhow, since it consumes so much of my time, I thought I might share part of it (the most theoretical part, incidentally, and therefore the part my professor is likely to object to the most). Let me know what you think:

The rapist is unique as a character because the act of rape effectively renders him different from his society. The rapist is at once a combination of the criminally deviant and the sexually deviant and is, therefore, irredeemably queer.
The staged act of rape that the rapist commits performs a similar function for the rape victim. As with the rapist, the male victim of a rape is also defined by both sexual deviance and violence. Michael Scarce’s reading of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance (1970) and John Boorman’s film of the book illuminates the point: after Bobby is raped by a man in the Georgia woods, “[h]is comrades cannot stop thinking of Bobby’s ‘willingness’ to be raped, as is common treatment for many male rape survivors. We like to believe that men are capable of defending themselves physically, and if a man is raped, he must have somehow allowed it to happen. This classic blame-the-victim mentality is accompanied by a feminization of Bobby.” A willingness to be penetrated by another man is unquestionably a component of gay male identity. The men in Deliverance come to see Bobby as feminized because of the violation committed against him. The act of rape queers Bobby for them. His sexual preferences and proclivities have, of course, not changed in the moment of this act of violence, but the men (and the audience) see him differently because of it. The assumption or accusation of homosexuality in this case of male rape is an ideological tactic designed to minimize the vulnerability of all males to acts of (sexual) violence. We read rape as homosexuality in order to exempt ourselves from the very real possibility of similar violation.

Thoughts? Should I post some more? This chapter, quite frankly, took a lot out of me. Turns out it's really difficult to write about acts of rape and how they form and inform subjectivity.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Series' End

Yeah, so, I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End this morning. Actually, I watched the first hour and forty minutes or so last night and then the final hour and ten minutes this morning so I could send the DVD off in its little red envelope back to Netflix.

Do I really need to tell you that it was stupid? As with film number two, the plot made very little sense. Orlando Bloom is gorgeous. Um... what else? The things for which the film received Academy Award recognition were indeed stellar. The makeup was exceptionally cool, and the effects, as usual, were rather stunning. I had no idea what was going on half the time, and there were about twelve pauses where we had sad dialogue about how people couldn't be with their true loves and junk like that. I have already said many times in this forum how bored I get when an action movie decides it's going to be about love for ten minutes and then returns to action. Stay an action movie! We don't care about love. We're here to watch shit blow up!

I laughed out loud three or four times, which is more than I can say for Pirates Part Two. It was mostly just really fucking boring. I didn't hate it, honestly, but I was expecting it to be much worse and it wasn't too horrible. Plus I broke up the monotony by watching it in stages. Maybe I'll watch Norbit in stages. No. It's probably best to just get it over with as quickly as possible (like virginity).

Robots in Disguise

I want to preface this entry by saying that I had no intention of ever seeing Michael Bay's Transformers, but as it turns out, it's rather a technical marvel and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles decided to nominate it for three Oscars last Tuesday. This made it the movie with the most nominations that I hadn't seen yet. So I told Netflix they'd better send it my way.

Transformers isn't what I would call a bad movie. Well, maybe it is a bad movie. The thing is, Transformers just looks so fucking cool. The whole time I was watching this clearly very expensive film I kept muttering to myself how cool everything looked.

I am officially a Shia LeBoeuf fan now, too. He is so charming and cute. Jon Voight, on the other hand, who plays the Secretary of Defense or some such, is flat out horrible in this. It's like he never took an acting class in his life. Kevin Dunn and Julie White are Shia's parents, and they're both really fun. Bernie Mac has a cute cameo.

Mostly, though, this movie is really really stupid. All of the stupid dialogue is compounded by the fact that, quite honestly, I couldn't figure out what was going on half the time. And by the end I was completely confused. The plot, as much as there is one, involves a bunch of alien robots locating a pair of glasses, I think. But the glasses were never lost as far as I could tell. And then John Turturro enters the movie and all Hell breaks loose.
There are good alien robots, see, and bad alien robots. . . . Of course there are.
It's rather hard to tell them apart, though, quite frankly.
The plot also involves some kind of cube, and doing billions of dollars of damage to downtown Los Angeles. I didn't much care about that stuff, but when the alien robots—I can't remember what the bad ones are called—are changing (transforming, if you will) into other random things like iPhones and cd players and fighter jets and tanks and shit, I was all about it. That stuff is cool.
Thankfully, too, there wasn't any stupid love plot or mooning about why MJ doesn't love Peter Parker anymore. Instead the action was broken up by comedy, rather deftly rendered by LaBoeuf, White and Dunn.

It was long too. About two hours, twenty minutes. Too long for an action movie, certainly for one with this scant of a plot. Still, I was drinking, and it wasn't that bad.

P.S. My commitment to the Academy Awards means I'll also be seeing Norbit, Surf's Up, In the Valley of Elah (which I was really hoping to avoid) and what the Fug Girls have called Yet More Pirates of the Caribbean.

Oscars

In case you're keeping score, my four favorite movies of the year all got nominated for Best Picture this morning.

Atonement: 7 nominations
There Will Be Blood: 8 nominations
No Country for Old Men: 8 nominations
Juno: 4 nominations

This is, in fact, one of the first years I can remember where I am really fond of all of the films up for Best Picture. I am happy about it.

The other big scorers this morning were Michael Clayton (which I really liked), Ratatouille (which I loved), and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which I really liked).

There were some bizarre surprises this morning, too, which is why I like nomination morning so much.

I was most excited by Ruby Dee's nomination. And Michael Giacchino's. And, of course, Viggo Mortensen, who totally deserves this. It's about time.

Jolie's Snub

Angelina Jolie, though she was thought a veritable lock for an Oscar nomination this morning, was snubbed by the Academy. It's a snub that I predicted back in June when her movie, A Mighty Heart was released. I didn't see the movie and expected that Jolie would be overlooked come Oscar nomination morning. I was right.

The thing is, I had been avoiding the movie since June, but then I watched Mira Nair's The Namesake last week (it's really good, but I wish it were more intelligent than it is) and a slot opened up in my Netflix queue. By this time, everyone was naming Jolie as a lock for a nomination, so I thought I should relent and send away for it, even though the nominations didn't come out until this morning.

Fastforward to today, when, realizing she was snubbed, I now have wasted my Netflix slot. I mean, I still haven't seen Transformers or Norbit or Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, yet, right? And I need to send away for those movies. And now, since it didn't wind up getting any nominations, I don't need to see A Mighty Heart, which the trailer made look so sentimental and silly.

But I popped the DVD in tonight, figuring I would send it back to Netflix in the morning and clear some space for the movies I need to see now that they've been nominated (Surf's Up, In the Valley of Elah). Boy was I wrong. Angelina Jolie was seriously fucking robbed this morning. And the film is excellent.

As a matter of fact, the only thing wrong with A Mighty Heart is its cloying title. Michael Winterbottom's film, which is the story of Mariane Pearl, the wife of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002, is never dull, moves along at a rapid pace, and is edited like a memoir, interweaving tiny splices of the Pearl's lives together with the kidnapping crisis. It's also a kind of cubist retelling of the situation, taking snapshots of Pearl's parents, the police departments, CIA, and other journalists working the story in addition to Mariane Pearl herself. I found the film incredibly moving, and also searingly intelligent about U.S.-Middle East relations. Pearl is an amazing, heroic character and Jolie plays her with tenacity and an incredible inner power. It's a truly superb performance, and Winterbottom's film is one of my favorites for the year. I was a fool to wait this long.

The Oscars!

You may or may not know about me that Oscar nomination morning is my favorite day of the year. Like my own private Christmas morning. Julie and Trent were asking me why yesterday and there really is no reason that I can think of. I don't have specific films that I am super-excited for, really. I've seen the films and I think they're great on their own merits whether or not they get nominated. A movie like Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring or Children of Men doesn't need Oscar nominations to wind its way into my heart. I already loved those films, and when they didn't get tons and tons of Oscar nominations, I was not upset.
It's the surprise of it all, I think. The exciting, nail-biting exercise of wondering who the crazy, usually-conservative Academy will nominate this year. Who the branches will deem worthy of honor. For me this is the fun part. And I like rooting for people, too. Mark Wahlberg's nomination last year made me happy as a clam. So did William Hurt's and Amy Adams' the year before.
When I lived in California, I would wake up at 5:30a and make coffee and wrap myself in a blanket and watch the nominations in the early, early morning. Now that I'm in Florida, the nominations aren't until 8:30a. This year I have to audit a class at 9:30a, so I can't exactly curl up on my sofa. I need to figure some shit out. My roommate and I talked through this last night, and we think I'll still be able to get parking if I watch the broadcast and then leave right after. So that's the plan for Tuesday...

I thought I would also share some of the big names I'm rooting for. Hopefully each of them is mentioned on Tuesday morning...

Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Keira Knightley, Atonement

The Songs from Enchanted

Roger Deakins, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

And in the score category, I'm rooting for these guys. Nothing is ever for sure in Original Score; it's a notoriously hard-to-predict category:

Alexandre Michel Desplat, Lust, Caution

Johnny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood

Dario Marianelli, Atonement

Of course, I want all of my favorites to do well: Atonement, There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Juno, James/Ford, Eastern Promises, Ratatouille...


The Lives of Others and After the Wedding are ineligible this year, and it's not looking like Sunshine will be able to eke out any nominations, but it would be nice if it got one or two...
I also think Michael Clayton (which is going to place better than expected), Into the Wild and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are all respectable films that deserve a group of nominations.

I'm so excited!

It's Like a Cartoon... with Real People

Last night Julie and I went to go see Charlie Wilson's War, the new Mike Nichols movie. I didn't hate it, really, but I disliked it rather a lot.
For one thing, the subject matter is really silly. It's also really cheesy and the attitude the film takes is a kind of ironic distance from its subject matter. This is supposed to be clever and funny and in keeping with the main character's personality (Congressman Wilson is a notorious womanizer and drinker). The thing is, the subject matter is actually really important, and Charlie Wilson's War's attitude is that the whole situation is a kind of football game, where the stakes aren't really that high. At one point a character even says "Let's kill some Russians!" It's hard for me to get excited about something like that.
It isn't just that the film is rather dumbed down (and kinda racist in the way that it makes all nations in the middle east seem like the exact same country). The whole thing also looks like it was made on the cheap. There are way more interiors than there ought to be for a movie of this type, and it feels strange and claustrophobic. At one point I even noticed painted drops substituting for decorated rooms near the end of the film. REALLY? They couldn't afford a set? It's a movie with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman!
The acting is fine, I guess. Hanks is good, as usual. Julia Roberts' accent goes in and out. I know Philip Seymour Hoffman is being bumped around as a Supporting Actor candidate for Oscar, but I don't see why. It's not even that flashy of a performance. His work in The Savages is much, much better.
Anyway, I didn't dig this movie. It made me uncomfortable, and it's just not that smart. It's actually more like a living cartoon than anything else.