5 Bloods

I liked the Spike Lee flourishes in this movie, as I do with all of Lee's movies. But the plot of Da 5 Bloods is a kind of Deliverance picture that questions masculinity... up to a point. The whole thing is just too plot heavy, and it completely unravels by the end of act two. It's also long, and at the end of act two I was stunned to realize we had another 40 minutes to go.

Delroy Lindo is excellent in this movie, but to my mind the action-film aspect (by which I mean an overabundance of plot) takes over Da 5 Bloods by its last act, and this not only seemed to cancel out the work that was done in the first two acts, it negated the emotional payoff of its own ending. A firefight is an exciting way to end a movie, sure, but it makes the movie about that.

Da 5 Bloods' politics are interesting, to be sure, but it is a puzzling – and slightly questionable – move to set a movie about reparations in Vietnam. When a bunch of Vietnamese guys show up at the end of the movie to claim all of the gold (as any reasonable person who has ever seen a movie might expect to happen), Da 5 Bloods introduces the question of precisely who deserves reparations. For this script, unfortunately (at least to my mind), the answer to that question is whoever has the bigger guns.

Da 5 Bloods is on Netflix.

Oscar Nominations 2019: Part 2 of 11

Part 1: Roma, The Favourite, Vice, A Star Is Born.
Part 2:

Black Panther

7 Nominations

• Picture
• Production Design: Hannah Beachler & Jay Hart (Pleasantville, L.A. Confidential)
• Costume Design: Ruth Carter
• Score: Ludwig Goransson
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing
• Song – "All the Stars": Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, Solana Rowe, Mark Spears & Anthony Tiffith

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Daniel Kaluuya, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Sterling K. Brown, Winston Duke, Martin Freeman, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, John Kani.

This movie was cool. I was really into it. Mostly, of course, this was due to Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan and the great energy they bring to working together. Coogler is just so good at what he does. He takes a silly genre picture like this and makes it meaningful and resonant. For me, Black Panther really used this tired old Marvel formula to address important issues of blackness in the United States as well as larger class questions within Black America. This is a very interesting film, and if it is predictable because of its largely formulaic comic-book plot, it does everything that it does in interesting, exciting ways. This movie just won the SAG ensemble award, and it's hard to argue with an award like that. Half the movie, I found myself exclaiming John Kani is in this?! Forest Whitaker?! Angela Bassett?! This is awesome.

Will Win: Sound Editing

Could Win: Sound Mixing

My Rating: #18 out of 66

BlacKkKlansman

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Spike Lee
  
• Adapted Screenplay: Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing), David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel & Kevin Willmott
  
• Supporting Actor: Adam Driver
• Film Editing: Barry Alexander Brown
• Score: Terence Blanchard

Director: Lee

Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Topher Grace, Michael Joseph Busemi, Jasper Pääkkönen, Ashlie Atkinson, Robert John Burke, Harry Belafonte, Corey Hawkins

I thought this movie was great. It is worth saying, first of all, that Spike Lee has never been nominated for best director and that this is only his second screenplay nomination. That is actually crazy. But this is also Lee's best movie in years. It's a brilliant analysis of contemporary policing and the connections between the KKK in the 1970s and the resurgence of white supremacist politics in the 2010s. And it's funny. Lee's frequent Brechtian techniques work beautifully here. This is an excellent film and it's one of my favorite of the year. I will say that BlacKkKlansman's popularity with Academy voters is a little surprising to me. This is a film that spends time with racism and takes a hard look at it. The Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the National Board of Review and plenty of other awards bodies looked more favorably on the milquetoast, candy-coated 1960s of Peter Farrelly's Green Book and mostly ignored the more racist and volatile 1970s in Lee's film. But here the Academy is, handing out more nominations to Lee's movie than to Farrelly's. This is good for everyone.

Will Win: Film Editing

Could Win: Director, Adapted Screenplay
My Rating: #13 out of 66

Green Book

5 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic, Eastern Promises)
  
• Original Screenplay: Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly & Nick Vallelonga
• Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)
• Film Editing: Patrick J. Don Vito

Director: Farrelly

Cast: Mortensen, Ali, Linda Cardellini, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dimiter D. Marinov, Mike Hatton, Jon Michael Davis

I had a lot of problems with this. But I wasn't surprised that this movie got as much love with other awards bodies as it did here. Note that this film got a best film editing nomination. Usually those are linked with Best Picture, but Green Book, as you can see, is film #7 on the list this year. It probably wouldn't have gotten a best picture nomination if there were only five nominees. It looks as though most of the love that was shown to this film ahead of the Oscar nominations has begun to fade. Farrelly, who got a best director nomination in lots of places before January 22, did not (and rightly so) get a nomination here. Still, Nick Vallelonga, despite his recent racist comments on Twitter, got a screenplay nomination, and that editing nomination means that some people still really like Green Book. One thing everyone can agree on is that we love Mahershala Ali. It looks like he's going to win in the supporting actor category come February 24th. All good and well, but I do wish the Academy could think out of the box just a little more. Ali won the Oscar only a couple of years ago for Moonlight. He doesn't need another one. I don't see how giving him another one helps the industry or Ali's career.
Will Win: Supporting Actor

Could Win: Picture, Original Screenplay, Film Editing

My Rating: #44 out of 66

Bohemian Rhapsody

5 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Rami Malek
• Film Editing: John Ottman
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Allen Leech, Aiden Gillen, Tom Hollander, Mike Myers, Aaron McCusker, Meneka Das, Ace Bhatti, Priya Blackburn

Sigh. I get why this is as popular as it is, but it really is not a good movie. I've written about how homophobic I think this film is here, but also, I feel like Awards bodies are giving awards to this movie just to thumb their noses at the critical consensus around the movie, which had been very harsh. And that's not a good reason to give a movie awards. Most people I know who liked this movie have told me they liked it with an apologetic tone, as though they felt guilt for liking the movie as much as they did. I don't blame them, and I don't know why they're blaming themselves except that they know the movie isn't good, even if they did enjoy it. Will Rami Malek win best actor? I think that is insane – his performance cannot compare in any way with Bradley Cooper's brilliant work in A Star Is Born, but Malek has won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild award now, so he is definitely the front runner. This is so crazy. So maybe I'm just ignoring the writing on the wall, but... I think the Screen Actors Guild skews toward television, and so what we're seeing is residual love for Mr. Robot, the show that Malek felt he got too big for. TV viewers love Malek. My thought is that the Academy, which watches a lot less TV, will vote for Bale instead.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Actor, Film Editing
My Rating: #53 out of 66

Outlaw/King & BlacKkKlansman

I am in Los Angeles, and I'm trying to see as many movies as I can, which means I'm way behind on writing about the movies I've seen. Here are two 2018 movies I saw last month.

I really liked Outlaw/King. The fight sequences are great and numerous. And this violence is excellently done. (Sidebar, for me, "well done" violence means violence that the audience can't quite enjoy, violence that doesn't lie about the anguish it causes or the destruction of bodies and lives that it wreaks. I honestly didn't find Outlaw/King to be much more than an action movie set in the early 14th century, but it does that action very well, and it's a gripping, intense, and enjoyable film with a solid group of performers and an engaging plot. David Mackenzie, who directed 2016's Hell or High Water (with Pine and Ben Foster), directed the movie.

The acting in Outlaw/King is uniformly fine. Chris Pine is strangely subdued here. His usual wicked dynamism seems placed in check either by the fact that he's playing Robert the Bruce or perhaps by his lack of interest in his female co-star. It's puzzling. Florence Pugh, who was utter perfection in last year's Lady Macbeth is good here, but seems as subdued, in many ways, as Pine. Maybe this was a directorial thing? I think of all three of the main actors (the other is Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as wild-card performers who often opt for the outrageous in their work, but all of the acting in Outlaw/King is played quite straight. For me the main bright spot was Billy Howle's beautiful performance as the Prince of Wales, Edward (who would become Edward II). Howle was very good in (the boring) On Chesil Beach earlier this year, and is even better here.

Should we talk about Pine's peen? Almost all of the press surrounding Outlaw/King involved discussion of the fact that Pine has a scene in which he goes full frontal. But it's an eye-roll of a scene: a tiny moment in the movie. Don't watch the movie for Chris Pine's genitals. Watch for the action. It's great.

* * *

BlacKkKlansman is also great. I know Spike Lee can be a hit-or-miss director, and often his films don't feel produced as well as they should be, but there's no dying that Lee has a characteristic, clever, ironic style. I always enjoy his approach to movie-making, and Klansman uses this style in some beautiful ways.

Klansman is – how could it not be with its plot? – frequently good, campy fun. Lee approaches the 1970s as a time filled with racism, when law enforcement ignored the terrorist activities of the KKK and didn't bother them, but this approach is... fun. Normally I would find this kind of an attitude toward a serious issue to be annoying, but Lee never allows the stakes to evaporate. Racist bigotry is absurd, and the Klansmen in the movie are idiots whose logic makes no sense. But they're still dangerous. They still have guns. They still want Jewish and Black folks to die. Lee never lets us forget the stakes that are in operation in the 1970s.

A side note on camp. Lee sets the tone of this movie with a cameo from Isiah Whitlock, (a Lee alum – he was also in 25th Hour, Chi-Raq, She Hate Me, etc.) doing his famous bit from The Wire, in which he says sheeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit for so long it begins to sound like an aria. I screamed with laughter when this happened. This is Whitlock's only scene, but it sets the tone of BlacKkKlansman perfectly.

The acting is pretty great across the board, and Klansman may even end up with two Oscar nominations. I think my favorite performance in the movie was Ryan Eggold's, but Laura Harrier, Adam Driver, John David Washington (Denzel's son), and Topher Grace (as David Duke) are all excellent.

Where Lee really hits his film out of the park, though, is with the film's ending. I don't think it's spoiling anything to tell you that the end of BlacKkKlansman jumps forward to the racist violence during the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. There's the KKK again, doing what it's been doing since the 1970s, and... there's David Duke, speaking about "good white men" and Donald Trump in the same breath, forty years later. It's absolutely chilling, and if the movie has been funny and clever, and if we've been able to laugh derisively at the absurd racist antics of the Klan members in BlacKkKlansman, it's impossible to laugh at that same racism in 2017. It's a powerful movie.

Sorry to Bother You

Sorry to Bother You thinks it is a lot cooler than it is. It is cool, actually, and quite funny at times, but it thinks its allegories are clever (and they're not) and it mostly deals in clichés. This is a visually interesting movie, but really it isn't much more than that. I'm ranking this as high as I am because a good chunk of the movie is really quite incisive about racism. But, also, Spike Lee made a movie this year, and this film isn't BlacKkKlansman, even though Boots Riley clearly is emulating much of Lee's style.

Oscar Blackout

One of my standing frustrations with the Academy is that Academy members aren't watching enough movies, and one of the reasons we don't see more black nominees is that Academy members aren't watching enough movies directed by, written by, and starring people of color.

But what should they be watching? I asked a couple of friends to help me out, and I thought the three of us might just rant about some badass movies made by and starring black folks. So, I am joined by my friends Adwin Brown and Dr. Leah P. Hunter. He's a film actor in Los Angeles and she's a professor of communication who specializes in diversity in film and television. I gave them free rein to talk about whatever films they felt like ranting about.

So, if you feel like protesting the Oscars' lack of inclusion, or just wanna watch some awesome movies starring and made by black folks, here are some recommendations.

* * *

ADWIN: Dope is a coming-of-age crime comedy-drama that debuted at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was bought for distribution by Open Road Films. Boasting an incredible cast (Kimberly Elise, Chanel Iman, Tyga, A$AP Rocky to name a few) and an even more impressive production team, (produced by Forest Whitaker, executive produced by Pharrell Williams and Sean “Diddy” Combs) Dope is a hilarious and touching story about millennials, made for millennials. As the movie begins, we meet Malcolm (played by Shameik Moore) a black nerd living in crime-infested Los Angeles (intriguing already, I know) who plays in a rock band with his two best friends. The three of them are obsessed with '90s hip-hop culture, which provides a very welcoming throwback vibe to the entire film that any '90s baby would enjoy. Malcolm dreams of going to Harvard, but after trying to impress a pretty girl that lives across the street (played by Zoë Kravitz) and ending up at a party he shouldn’t have been at, Malcolm and his friends are taken on a scary and hilarious journey of drugs and self discovery that could land them all in huge trouble. If I can be frank, there are honestly so many things to love about this movie – it’s beyond fun! And the script seems to really toy with the idea of playfully mocking the earlier ghetto/hood dramas of the '90s (Boyz n the Hood, Baby Boy, etc.) and mixing up the usual stereotypes associated with them. Visually, the movie is bright and vibrant and the story gets you hooked from the beginning—equally hilarious and violent, and an accompanying soundtrack that will have you bobbing your head the entire film.  

LEAH: Dope was ... um, well ... dope! While it was a classic coming-of-age story, the story itself was turned on its ear because of the racially diverse cast and the choice to make the characters outcasts and not really a part of the culture they were coveting. But, really, they were a part of that culture, right? And, that is what makes Dope such a good film because it goes against stereotype to show the universality of hip hop music (primarily early hip hop) and to give a little insight on how the genre was so identifiable to people who in no way lived the life. Because of all of this, I believe that Rick Famuyiwa should have gotten acknowledged in the Best Director category. Dope is a beautifully shot film! And, Famuyiwa does a great job of directing the cast of young actors. What hurts him though is that the story itself often delves into silliness. Part of what makes the film fun (the coke-out dream girl who is filmed going to the bathroom in bushes, for example) also pushes it more in the comedic direction, which typically means Oscar suicide. Despite that, the movie Dope, and Famuyiwa in particular, remain on my top of the year list.

* * *

AARON: I've already talked about how good Beasts of No Nation is, so I won't repeat that here, but you should know how much I love it. Instead I want to highlight a really awesome African film: Timbuktu. Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu was nominated last year for the Foreign Language Oscar. This movie is absolutely gorgeous, and is perfectly shot from start to finish. Timbuktu is also about the way that a kind of religious fundamentalism has started to take over in Sissako's home country of Mauritania. This film, though, approaches the price of religious fundamentalism and the rule of religious law from the perspective of a young girl – but then really it is an entire city – as they cope with these rules that have nothing to do with their lives. It's a powerful, awesome film. It is important to note, too, that this is a film that is not "about" race, but is about religion and about attempting to live with the difficulties of religious rule. It's an exquisite movie.

* * *

LEAH: Can we talk about how that list of writers (there are 5 people!) who are nominated for Best Original Screenplay for Straight outta Compton should not have been nominated?! It’s probably a moot point because Spotlight won and deserved to win. But, it’s laughable that this film about an African-American rap group, directed by an African American (F. Gary Gray) and starring a majority African-American cast would only have the white folks nominated! In my opinion, though, it was not a great screenplay. Great biopics show all sides of the story. Ray not only showed Ray Charles' genius, but also showed his womanizing and debilitating drug addiction. This is where Straight outta Compton falls short. How can this be seen as an authentic telling of their story when there is no acknowledgement of their abusive treatment of women? No acknowledgement of Dee Barnes or Michelle, among others? By only showing the highlights of NWA’s lives, the screenwriters sucked the humanity out of the characters. Only Jason Mitchell (who played Eazy-E) had some meat to his character, and even then he was portrayed as a hero in the end – just disregarded all of the foul things he did earlier. It just felt a little after-school-special at the end.

 * * *

ADWIN: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (based on the book with the same title) is another coming-of-age drama/comedy that tells the story of a teenage boy’s newly formed friendship with a girl who is dying from cancer. The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival with a standing ovation from the audience and was purchased for distribution by Fox Searchlight Pictures. The film is filled with superb performances by the cast, but one of the strongest stand-out performances comes from newcomer, RJ Cyler. In the movie, Cyler plays Earl, the POC best friend to the white lead, Thomas Mann, and although this may sound like familiar territory, I promise you it does not play out like your typical story. In most movies, having a POC best friend is very common – whether it be the "cool" black guy, the "responsible" Asian guy, or the Indian guy with the "funny accent" – these characters are generally one-note and are only necessary to establish backstory and/or maintain the story-line of the (usually) white lead character. However, while viewing Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, I was pleasantly surprised to see how in many situations in the film Cyler’s character seemed to be the voice of reason. Earl could easily be played as another black kid “from the bad part of town”, but Cyler really found a fun and intriguing balance of being extremely wise beyond his years while still maintaining his comically blunt street smarts. And although the movie follows the platonic relationship between the characters of Greg and Rachel, in many instances Earl is the catalyst between them. Earl is the one who jump-starts their friendship by forcing Greg to show Rachel his homemade movie collection, and at the peak of the movie, Earl is the one who is sympathetic to Rachel’s situation and influences Greg to feel the same way. I believe it can be very easy to fall into familiar traps when writing a script and creating characters, and I am glad that Me and Earl and the Dying Girl went against everything I was expecting.

* * *

AARON: Slightly more recent and also released this year is a film by Jonas Carpignano about Italian immigrants called Mediterranea. This film is, frankly, awesome, and follows a pair of brothers who immigrate to Italy in order to make a better life for themselves, to find work and make money that they can send back home. What they find in Italy is terrible living conditions, terrible working conditions, and the racism of Italian citizens. They find themselves embroiled in violent skirmishes that are protesting the way that police corruption has made the lives of the people in their immigrant community absolutely impossible. It's a powerful story with an extraordinary central performance from Ghanaian actor Koudous Seihon. This film was on many, many critics' top ten lists, which is why I watched it, and it is really revealing as to the immigration crisis that exists in European nations (and not just the U.S.). I can't recommend this movie enough.

* * *

LEAH: I want to say, too, that I am shocked that Creed would get only one nomination and it would be for Sylvester Stallone. Creed was a beautiful film! It was luscious and I cannot believe that Ryan Coogler was not nominated. Second, Coogler’s body of work to be so young in the business is extraordinary! (Fruitvale Station was robbed the year it came out.) That he managed to direct a tentpole film like Creed, still part of the Rocky series, and managed to not only make it big and violent (fight scenes) while at the same time offer the audience very tender moments (virtually every moment with Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson) speaks to his abilities as a director. At the very least, Coogler should have gotten a nomination for Best Director. And, the fact that he collaborated on the screenplay (along with Aaron Covington) as well makes me even more convinced of this.

* * *

This list is far from over. These are the films my friends wanted to call attention to, but there is also Z for Zachariah, a cool exploration of dystopia and race in a world where (apparently) there are only two people left. And there is Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, an updated version of Euripides' Lysistrata. And Girlhood, Céline Sciamma's film about an African-French teenager living in a Paris suberb, who joins a girl gang. The film stars Karidja Touré and has gotten superb reviews across the board.

In any case, Adwin, Leah and I would like to encourage you to support films made by and starring people of color. There are some awesome films out there made by black filmmakers and other filmmakers of color. The only way we can diversify the end-of-the-year awards is by calling attention to – and actually going to see – more films made by and starring people of color. Happy movie-watching!

Dope

If you want to see a clever, exciting, funny film that also happens to be smart about race, get thee to a cinema and check out Dope. As its title hints, Dope is a film about drugs. But the title also refers to being an idiot, a dope, if you will, as well as to the 1990s slang term for something that is cool. As Wiktionary offers: That party was dope!

Dope is about three highschoolers in Inglewood who are '90s geeks. They are, in other words, obsessed with '90s-style clothes, music, movies, etc. But these kids are geeks. They get good grades and get beat up in school. So, of course, they find their way into a ridiculous party at some point and then the eponymous dope gets stuck in a backpack. What is a group of nerds supposed to do with a couple of pounds of molly? This is the plot of the film, and Dope charts the changes that happen to this group of friends and the hilarious happenings of the people around them as they try to get out of the situation with their lives.

I don't have much to say about Dope, in all honesty, because the whole thing just works so well. There are plenty of parts where I thought director Rick Famuyiwa could've tightened things up or taken a different emotional approach, and a couple of performances that I thought were terrible (Roger Guenveur Smith wears some bizarre facial hair and giving the weirdest performance in the film), but all must be forgiven, because if Famuyiwa's directing is not great, his screenplay sure is. This screenplay is excellent. Just. Excellent.

And the acting, for the most part, is also excellent. The cast is headed by Shameik Moore, and he is supported by Tony Revolori and Kiersey Clemons. This trio has great chemistry and impeccable timing, and they are hilarious from the very beginning of the film. But there are some other really superb performances in Dope, too. Rapper A$AP Rocky gives a beautiful performance as the drug kingpin, and Quincy Brown (Sean Combs' son) is really funny as a wealthy drug-dealer's kid. In any case, the whole thing is filled with hilarious and poignant moments.

Comparisons to last year's Dear White People are inevitable with Dope, mostly because both films are interested in thinking about what blackness is, how blackness is perceived and how black people experience the constant and difficult racialization that the world throws at them. But while DWP is interested in lecturing us about how lots of black people don't fall in with black-people stereotypes (really??), Dope is much more interested in dealing with the way stereotypes materially affect black lives. Dope is much much smarter than DWP, and it is also much much funnier. DWP was filled with righteous indignation; this is, of course, merited, but I did not exactly find it enjoyable to watch in its stridency. Dope alternates deftly between being quite serious and laugh-out-loud hilarious. Famuyiwa calibrates this tone very well (if not always perfectly)m and the audience can transition from laugh to gasp quickly.

Both DWP and Dope are also heavily indebted to Spike Lee's filmmaking, and Dope's penultimate sequence (the protagonist's application letter to Harvard) is a Spike Lee flourish that is hard hitting, excellent, and tough as nails.

Just go. You will laugh and you will love it. It is smart and funny and intense and sexy and it just plain works.

Too Personal

I know I complained the other day about Fellini's Amarcord. I called it too much a meditation on the auteur's childhood or something like that. What I meant by that is not that Amarcord is a bad film, really. But there are links, I think, in a film that is ultra-personal like Amarcord that I am not able to make in my living room, not having lived through the same childhood myself.

The problems of a director's too-personal drama being put into a film are multiplied with Dito Montiel's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. The film starts off shaky and continues in fashion. The problem, to my mind, is the plot. It's an all-too familiar story of growing up in New York amid the rough-and-tumble crowd and having to decide—for whatever reason—to leave it. I didn't mind this so much, except the guilt of having left seems to consume Montiel's main character, and I could never figure out why. He's made a really good movie about what a crazy, difficult life he had, and he makes a very strong case for leaving it. Yet the character's big decision is all dependent on this guilt. The climax, in fact, is completely linked with how he was wrong to leave. I was totally lost.

The cast is uniformly good—Channing Tatum, Shia Lebeouf, Robert Downey Jr., Rosario Dawson, Dianne Weist and Chazz Palmintieri—and Montiel (who wrote the script and directed this story of his own life) has a lot of intriguing formal flourishes. Some of these work, and some of them don't. He's certainly seen his share of Spike Lee movies. In one of his best segments (an homage to Lee), each of the kids we've been watching for the last forty-five minutes introduces him- or herself. The best part of it goes like this:

Diane: My name is Diane and I want to fuck.
Giuseppe: My name is Giuseppe and I'm Antonio's brother.
Jenny: My name is Jenny and everyone's a fucking joke.
Antonio: I'm a fucking piece of shit. That's what I am.

It's a wonderful cinematic moment and that final one is simply heartbreaking.

This is A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints at its most intriguing. More often, though, Montiel's playing with form feels like it's only serving to cover up the fact that this is a story we've all heard before.

Terrorism Is Afoot

I always assumed in addition to my friends and the people I have invited to read my weblog, that it would be read by people who were not made aware of its existence by me. It's fine. If you'd like to read, you certainly may. I welcome it, in fact... and feel free to comment if you get the urge. I'd love to hear from you. I make no secret of this weblog. But if you are going to use this weblog to sabotage the work and relationships of others, I advise you not to. It's just not nice.

And now for news of the weekend...

On Friday, I left work and booked it to Hacienda Heights to see my friend Scott in The Diary of Anne Frank at Los Altos High School. Los Altos is doing something right. I don't mean that the show was brilliant or anything: it was far from it, but this place was packed. I have never seen so many people at a high school theatre performance. It was quite something. I was literally the last person to purchase a ticket. How is it that a depressing high school show about Jewish internment can have a bigger audience than a hilarious comedy at a university with really cool special effects. What is Los Altos doing right that the publicist at CSUP is doing wrong? I ask you.

Scott played Mr. Frank. He was excellent as usual. I really hope this young man studies acting somewhere when he goes to university. He has so much potential. I don't particular care for Anne Frank, but Scott's performance had me actively holding back the tears. I have to say, though: weird choice for a high school play.

On Saturday, I watched Empire of the Sun, which might be my favorite of all of Spielberg's movies. I know that I have trashed Spielberg repeatedly in this space and elsewhere, and I still think that he deserves a lot of the bile I chuck his way, but Jaws and now Empire of the Sun, make me really appreciate ol' Steven. I still dislike A.I. and E.T. and The motherfucking Terminal, but Empire of the Sun is beautiful: surreal and dreamlike, but hugely emotionally affecting with an interesting political core. A good portion of the film is a redux of James Clavell's King Rat, but damn the script (by the superb Tom Stoppard) is good.

After Empire, I met Wahima in La Verne and we saw The Incredibles, which has charm for days and is unbelievably clever. Everyone has seen this movie and everyone loves it, so I won't say anything more than I loved it too and I think it is a lock for the Animated Feature Oscar and will probably get an original screenplay nomination, too. Machine washable, darling: that's a new feature.

I visited my parents after the Brad Bird flick and we finalized the Christmas letter. My family cracks me the fuck up, I swear. Michael and Debs went on and on about how dad ought to take out his Chinese furniture store joke. They think it's too much of a non sequitor. Aside from the finer points of comedy in the Christmas letter, we discussed national politics, other Christmas logistics, and the huge fight during the NBA game on Friday night. My dad suggests that President Bush send Colin Powell and Jimmy Carter as his envoys to create lasting peace between Palestine and Israel. This sounds like a great plan to me, but we all know it won't be happening.

Then I went to see The Foreigner. It's a lot better. Chris seems worse, but that is to be expected, I suppose. The audience liked him well enough, I guess. Tori has sped up a lot and her performance is much funnier because of it. The one joke I put in the show got a huge laugh, so I felt good about that. The show is much the same as it was when I first reported on its progress in this space about two weeks ago. It has the same strengths and weaknesses I thought it had then. I still think Jensen is the strongest voice in the show. Matt Guerra is still wonderful. And I still think Brittney, Tori, and Rick are giving good—if unremarkable—performances. The dialects are much stronger, and I only detected a few errors: almost all of them Gelvin's.

Busy day, Saturday. After the show Linda drove me out to her new house in Cathedral City (Palm Desert). It's lovely: more lovely than you can imagine from my words. The best description I can give is that it looks like a picture out of the Pottery Barn catalog. It's truly beautiful. At any rate, Tori, Brittney, Catherine, Peter, Matt, Linda and I drank wine and sat in the hot tub late into the night. I drank (in this order) Shiraz, more Shiraz, Zinfandel, and Merlot (I was plastered by this point and just didn't care.)

Today I woke up, showered, had coffee and some eggs and after sending the girls and Peter off to their matinée of The Foreigner, Linda, Matt, their cats and I headed calmly back toward Los Angeles County. We stopped for coffee near the outlet malls on I-10, and I made a quick excursion into the Club Monaco Outlet where I purchased both a hat and a hoodie for under $25. I will be returning to the outlet mall when I have more time. They had $20 jeans there. It's like shopping in Canada! On our way through Riverside County (Banning and such) there must have been 3-5 inches of snow on the ground. No joke: snow—lots of it—on the ground in California. There was snow on the goddamn palm trees. I have never in my life seen anything like it. It was so cool. And then the snow just stopped around the San Bernardino County line: it was so weird.

Today I finished last week's Sunday Crossword (this is 2 weeks in a row, people!), made the grocery list for Thanksgiving, randomly cleaned, paid some bills and finally watched John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood, which, if I may say, is no Do the Right Thing. Nevertheless when Tre hands Furious the gun and Furious holds his son, I started to cry: a lot. This really moved me. I guess it just hit me how much this boy had lost and how much he needed his father to hold him in that moment. The hug also held all of Furious's hopes for his son. With that hug he declared victory on the Hood.
But... except for the hug and a couple of other nice moments (that Morris Chestnut is a looker, ain't he?), I thought the film was really preachy: maybe even extremely preachy.

Why am I not finishing my apps to Berkeley and Davis? Is it because I think I won't get in, or is it because I think I don't need to try that hard? Whatever it is, it is procrastination. I just can't get up the energy to go and finish all of this application stuff. I feel so... inadequate.

Just so you know, I have busted out my Xmas music. Feel free to do the same. And if you happen to burst into Burl Ives' "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas," while standing in line at the grocery or the coffeehouse, just ignore the bewildered stares of others. It's the fucking holidays. Bring cheer to the lives of others! Cheers.

Sometimes He's an Ass

I hate it when I avoid watching a movie because I don't think I'll like it and then when I finally do watch it it's great.  I feel like an ass when shit like that happens.  Keep an open mind, motherfucker.  So Do the Right Thing fucking rocked.

Last night I saw the west coast premiere of Richard Greenberg's brilliant play Take Me Out at the Brentwood Theatre in West L.A.  The version in my head is better than the one Tito and I saw, though.  Sometimes, directors just miss things.  This kind of thing happens in Los Angeles a lot because so many actors do so much television.  There is so much flat theatre here... and so many actors don't have voices.  Damn tickets were expensive, too.  Not that the play was bad, because it wasn't.  In fact, the show is ingenious.  It's just that this production was flat.  There was, however, nudity.  And a lot of it.  Some kid from popular was naked.  He was good in the show, too.  And Jeremy Sisto.  My favorite was the lead, Jeffrey Nordling.  I should also mention Ryun Yu.  Loved him.

It's so hot.  Ain't nothin' to do when it's so fuckin' hot, either. 

Do I want to go to a party in Pomona tonight?  Not really.  I shouldn't bail on Julie, but frankly I'd rather get a pizza somewhere and go catch Želary.