Things to know about...

The Grameen Bank & Microcredit

The Grameen Bank is perhaps the most successful Microcredit institution in the world. In the Microcredit industry, success is defined by the number of lives changed and not quarterly profits. Banks like the Grameen Bank make small loans to poor people, often women, in developing nations. Loans are made to people who wouldn't usually qualify for loans from traditional banks, and they're used by the borrowers, typically, for small entrepreneurial projects. Repayment, and proper use of the funds, is encouraged via weekly meetings with other borrowers and bank representatives. These meetings enforce a sense of community, and collective accountability. For example, a borrower who runs a food stand might take out a small loan in order to purchase a cooler, which allows them to store more food for selling, and thus increase profits. Once the first loan is paid off, they have the option of borrowing a slightly larger sum, in order to further expand their small business. These banks, these loans are revolutionizing economic development in the third world. In addition, most of these banks are financially self-sufficient, the small interest they charge on each transaction is enough to cover the cost of making the loans. That means, unlike other sorts of philanthropy, large grants and donations are not required annually to keep microcredit institutions afloat.
The Grameen Bank, founded in 1976 by Muhammad Yunus, is an excellent example. Here are some staggering numbers: The Grameen Bank has lent money to over 6 million people, 97% of which are women, for a total of 7 billion dollars. Their repayment rate has consistently been north of 99%. That, by any banking standard, is an astonishing success. Because of this kind of dollar for dollar efficiency, and clearly demonstratable progress, philanthropists are dumping money into microfinance. It's been described as the best hope, alongside the freeing of markets, for economic development in Africa, Asia, and South America. Good enough for me. We need to find a way to bandwagon on this - Stay tuned.

Itunes Nomad Part IV (Canada/Cuba Edition!)

Broadcast - America's Boy

Can't you imagine this song being used, to great effect, in a film about the Iraq War by some hotshot young director in the year 2020? Picture it: the dissonant, screeching beginning, sounding like jammed radar, intercut with shots of troops in beige camoflauge braving a windstorm in that oil-rich, forsaken desert. The montage quickens, sectarian violence, beheadings, lopped off limbs, the felled statue of Saddam, mission accomplished, the looting of Baghdad... The marvelously spooky lyrics begin "Quaker toil, Texan oil..." protesters on the White House lawn, Cindy Sheehan, the furrowed, sweating brow of Donald Rumsfield... "Gun me down with yankee power/ Cockpit Tom with Army charm".... Guantanamo, Cheney, Abu Ghraib... "The eagle lands/ Cowboy corn and bugle horn". We hear echoed smippets of gunfire, distinctly military in its precise, blinding rapidity. And then the vicious, swirling build to the chorus, those haunting, clear and yet somehow detached, faceless words that make up the song's title, repeated, over and over, against a tight shot of the President, in full salute:

"American soldier, America's boy..."

Buena Vista Social Club - Chan Chan

Seeing as how to date I've only tackled those mainstays of contemporary youth cutlure, hip hop and alternative, this may be a somewhat unexpected foray into world music. From its bold, tone-setting first strums, this is a song you can breathe deep into your chest, like that other famous product hailing from Havana, the cuban cigar. Having completed, and then promptly forgotten in its entirety, only enough Spanish as required by the University of California, I can't claim to understand a single stanza of these lyrics. Yet somehow, I think I can hear the meaning, twirling around in those pained, smoky strings and horns: melancholy is universal. Leaving even the lyrical content aside, there's no denying that this is an awesomely evocative track. It's hard to listen and not to be transported, spirited away to some idyllic southern nightspot, overflowing with latina maidens in white salsa dresses, smiles glowing and shifting in hypnotic synchronization with the deep, indigenous cadence... Chan Chan indeed. Whatever that may mean.

Daily Manna (1/30)

This will be a new feature of the Ross Review, where I'll try and highlight interesting articles/media available on the web. I'll try to limit the scope of my recommendations to the informative, as there are certainly more than enough humor sites on the web. My use of the term 'manna' is not, in this sense, accidental: I aim to nourish.

Check out this once-in-a-lifetime picture, snapped by amateur photographer John White in Southern Australia. He nailed a comet streaking across a lake just after twilight, backed by a starry sky. Impressive.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwhite/366649244/

Check out this article from last week's New Yorker, detailing Google's mythical quest to scan (into a web-searchable database) every book ever published. Sound ambitious? They've made much more progress than you might think.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070205fa_fact_toobin

Read this week's Economist cover story on the progressive "greening" of America. A renewed push towards environmentalism is occurring on the left AND right, and from unexpected sources like big business and the religious conservatives. The former because they know regulation is coming eventually, and they want a say in it, if it's inevitable, the latter because Christian leaders are beginning to take more seriously biblical verses requiring the "stewardship of the earth". Dominion, after all, does not only mean the license to destroy. With a green consensus taking shape nationally, it will be interesting to see if we adopt an emissions cap/trade system like the EU.

http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8586069

One more from the Economist, that overflowing fountain of knowledge: this piece takes on the fallout from China's decision last week to bring down one of its own satellites by way of a missile, which was interpreted as a veiled threat to the United States' satellites. America's GPS satellites, crucial for troop positioning and intel during times of war, are particularly vulnerable. No one, however, wants an escalation of space arms as it would certainly threaten current/future exploration by all countries. The article lays out some of the better options for managing this sensitive conflict.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8592950

This is Outrageous.

In this Reuters/AP article we learn that an astonishing 13% of Americans have not heard of global warming. This was the lowest level of awareness among the 42 countries surveyed, despite the fact that America is the largest producer of greenhouse gases on the planet. When I saw the link, I thought for sure it was an Onion spoof. No such luck. There is no question that President Bush's past casual attitudes towards this issue have played a role in producing this sort of humiliating national ignorance. I struggle now to recall a definitive quote, but I believe I recall Dubya smirking and laughing off global warming as late as the 2000 presidential debates, dismissively muttering something about there being no "scientific consensus". Sigh. A stubbornly scientifically-uninformed public: yet another charming feature of the Bush years!

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-29T164554Z_01_L29194410_RTRUKOC_0_US-GLOBALWARMING-SURVEY.xml

Class is in.

I happened upon an excellent website today (it seems the web grows richer in interesting destinations by the day) at www.oculture.com. The "o" in oculture stands for open, and the site serves as a collection and synthesis of the available free academic content on the web. Increasingly, it turns out, prestigious universities in the vein of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and UC Berkeley are offering recorded lectures from their courses on itunes. The recordings can be downloaded as podcasts, free of charge, and listened to at your liesure. The experience of downloading the lectures returned me immediately to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, reminding that uppity pony-tailed grad student that he'd "spent a hundred and fifty grand on an education he could have got for 3 bucks in late charges at the public library". And really, why should America's finest educators be the sole province of its most priveleged? Or, even assuming the selection process of elite universities is a meritocracy (which it surely isn't), why shouldn't the best minds and ideas have a broader audience? Particularly when technology makes for such a useful vehicle for those ideas. What an excellent step in the direction of that most ultimate of liberties: the democratisation of information. This (and not the sordid cameraphone shots of hanged dictators) is precisely the sort of outstanding convergence of free speech and technology we imagined the internet would bring to us. Power to the people indeed.

I'm starting out with a Berkeley course: "U.S. Foreign Policy after 9/11" taught by Harry Kreisler

You can DL it at:

http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/browserRedirect?url=itms%253A%252F%252Fax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewPodcast%253Fid%253D151323198

Join me?

The Vice Guide to Travel (Review)

So I was at American Apparel on Saturday, a neat little shop that traffics in t-shirts and other fashion basics (whose somewhat high prices reflect the fact that they're made without the assistance of underpaid sweatshop workers), when a DVD caught my eye: The Vice Guide to Travel. Its hardcase advertised the fact that Vice (an "edgy" magazine) correspondents had ventured out to the most dangerous, rarely-visited corners of the world in search of grand adventure and ultimate truth. Okay I added the last part. Being an absolute nut for travel, and in particular travel to exotic locales, I scooped it up and then, this afternoon, popped it in for a firsthand glimpse of the globe's riskiest, far-flung wonders. Afterwards, in my living room, the sense of disappointment was palpable.
The film begins with a visit by Shane Smith, cofounder of Vice Magazine, to a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, Lebanon. It's clear his visit took place sometime after the cessation of that county's disastrous 15 year civil war, and before its brief, but highly destructive, war with Israel this past summer. Shane wanders the crumbling streets there, capping his visit with a trip to a "PLO Boy Scouts Center" where children are encouraged to sing songs comparing Israelis to dogs, and draw pictures of bloody knives puncturing the star of David. Unfortunately the penetrating footage, and commentary, ends there. There is archival video of Palestinian children throwing rocks at tanks, and the droning last-words-tapes of suicide bombers (I won't soil the word martyr by invoking it here). But that's it. The group seems to be satisfied to have made a suitably dangerous trip, and they produce the proverbial passport stamp, or roadside sign picture in the form of superficial documentary filmmaking. The segment ends with Spike Jonze, the experimental, albeit hollywood-celebrated, director and two correspondents sitting in a room vaguely bemoaning the complexity of the PLO plight, all they can muster is the bemused, stoned, fratboy's response in the face of great tragedy: "whoa". I watched, uninspired.
The next trip was at least somewhat more unusual. This time Shane Smith and his merry band of New Journalists set out for Sofia, Bulgaria, famed center of the nuclear black market. Why is it considered as such? This is crucial: because a French journalist was able to procure, and purchase a warhead back in 2003 from a rather enterprising Bulgarian named Ivanhoff. In my view, to follow in that journalist's footsteps is exceedingly touristy, if not outright derivative. Why not make an extended documentary detailing the surely-more-exciting travails of the French journalist? We'll never know. So they meet Ivanhoff, who alleges to have met Osama Bin Laden, and somehow in having heard that third-third-person account, we're supposed to be what? Enriched? Enlightened? Apart from some publicity, it seems to me that nothing in this peculiar journey added anything (and may have quite possibly diluted) to the original work done by the Frenchman. This was not a strong start.
Off to Chernobyl! This is, thankfully, the last segment in which Shane "Cofounder" Smith is along for the ride. During the trip to the Ukraine, where an area the size of Great Britian remains radioactive, we watch Mr. Smith carrying on with a pretty, young staffwriter with leery professor-flirting-with-grad-student creepiness. There is an interesting trip to a deserted, destroyed school, where coursebooks are found opened to the very lesson being taught when the reactor exploded some twenty years ago. The walls of the school are adorned with interesting bits of Cold war paraphenalia: charts used to help identify U.S. fighter jets in the skies, lest an invasion take place. The tourguide (yes, the tourguide) brings along a device used to measure radiation, at certain points it registers radioactivity some 100 times that of normal levels. But still, this has the feel of a zoo ranger telling you that the caged lion is the most dangerous animal to man. After all, how dangerous can it be with a sanctioned tourguide along for the ride? Cofounder and lackey conclude the segment by pretending to hunt wild boar, whom they imagine will have three eyes, in the "red forest", the most radioactive place on earth. They carry on like, well, like spoiled westerners, joking and laughing at the scene of enormous destruction and pain. Gallows humor indeed. That's those wacky, free-spirited new journalists for you!
From here, things improve. A correspondent ventures out to the northwest fronteirland of Pakistan, the tribal province the BBC calls the most dangerous place on earth. In addition to that distinguished superlative, this patch of land can also lay claim to being the largest illegal arms market in the world. Given the footage of wild-eyed peasants assembling pistols with their bare hands, and the militia required to set foot in town, this one feels legit. Finally, I thought, some gnarly shit. The tour is indeed intense. Our correspondent watches as men, in a particularly ghhastly incarnation of the try-before-you-buy principle, fire Russian assault rifles into the air on busy streets. Further, though our reporter is just a stranger, he is able to browse and purchase any number of assorted large weaponry. Each showroom resembles the armory of a major United States military base, complete with impoverished children sifting through mountains of gleaming bullets, like baby elephants sifting through piles of peanuts. We are left with the impression that Pakistan's ungoverned wilderness is a chilling hell to be avoided at all costs. Good enough for me.
There are a few more weak segments, including a perhaps-sarcastic trip to China which doubles as an expose on (gasp) fake watches and the eating of dogs. Yawn. Even more puzzling is a trip to the remote jungle in Paraguay where a Nazi-exile camp is alleged to exist. I suppose the discovery that it has withered up and died (but for two Nietzche-resembling, illiterate alleged cannibals) is a sort of moral victory: Nazism, at least in this corner of the planet, has been extinguished. And yet still, it feels empty. Thankfully, the filmmakers have reserved the two strongest, most illuminating journeys for last. The first of these is the dispatching of a waspy, yacht-jacket-sporting reporter to a Brazilian slum, like those featured in Fernando Meirelles' superb film 'City of God'. These slums live up to their treacherous reputation: our correspondent is on the ground less than 24 hours before having to flee the stray bullets of, you guessed it, corrupt police. This is the sort of first-person reportage of the third world we were hungering for (and the kind we feel we were promised by the packaging). Moreover, the reason for going is compelling: we are told that 2006 marked the first year where the world's urban population exceeded its rural population. Our correspondent explains that if this trend towards urbanization continues, all the world will be a slum, and so dammit he wants to visit one. Seems to us as good a reason as any. Brazil, we learn, is home to 50,000 murders a year. Most of these are carried out in the name of the slum-ruling drug lords, who are rumored to pull down a million dollars a week. Because that absurd income obviously elevates these criminals into the most powerful entities in the neighboorhood, they are also responsible for the community's entertainment. As such, they host giant, citywide dance-barbecues called 'Baile Funk' during which, among several other delights, there is exuberant, suggestive dancing along with violent mosh pits. By the limited footage we're able to see (the drug lords have been known to murder journalists attempting to record Baile Funk) the gatherings resemble something like supercharged raves. All of this is genuinely fascinating and one feels, for unfortunately one of the first times during the film, that we're being given privileged access. Perhaps its the lack of tour guides.
It is the final story, however, that best embodies the spiritual, freewheling kind of travel the film purports to record. We meet David Choe, a young American Asian man, in voiceover as he tells us about a legendary dinosaur reportedly still alive and thriving in a remote jungle of the Congo. This jungle, home to sweltering heat and all sorts of venomous creatures, is the only stretch of green earth to have survived the last ice age, and, in addition, is so dense that only 20% of it has been explored by man thus far. Now this, I remarked to myself is an adventure! David, in a hotel in Brazzaville, laments that some of his party have deserted the mission to pursue other story angles: principally the prolific, thriving pygmy prostitution business that dominates the Congolese capital. As evidence, in David's hotel room, we see a group of naked African women jumping on the bed to the great delight of his comrades. David, however, keeps his focus: he is here to see a lost dinosaur. Before setting out into the jungle, he pays a visit to the U.S. embassy where an official tells him, in a laugh-out-loud moment of understatement, that in this country "infrastructure is very challenging". He bribes a trio of unsmiling, machete-weilding pygmy guides to help him burrow into the canopy. At times the foilage is so thick that the tribesmen take to riding on David's back as they tridge through, giving them a better angle with which to hack away at the leafy mess. They arrive at a village, where David sets about inquiring after the dinosaur. The chief repeatedly, and fervently, asks whether he really wants to see the dinosaur. David is finally successful in convincing him of his sincerity, his intensity of desire to see the mythical beast. Fine, says the chief, but first he must take part in a ritual. The "ritual" consists of ingesting a vile hallucinogen, tasting of gasoline, which reduces David to a wobbly, paranoid mess. "It put me on my ass right away" he explains. In a candid moment, he says that he began to fear the pygmy's while under the influence, thinking they were evil mind-readers. After a time, when his intoxication is peaking, a man dressed in a dinosaur costume made of trees emerges from the jungle. David is not sure if it is the real thing. He sums up the fever dream experience with the following terrifying statement: "I thought I was fucked, when I was fucked, I knew I was fucked". Raw experience at last! Bathing in the lake the next day David relays his disappointment at having only discovered a dinosaur impostor. The poignancy of the bit is its lack of self-consciousness. David never treats this as an ironic quest, he doesn't hedge his bets with a smarmy, condescending sarcasm towards his mission, and as such, his sense of a letdown feels real. Had this movie contained more men like him, it would have been terribly compelling, a sort of 'Jackass 2' for the intelligentsia. Later, back in Brazzaville, David spray paints a crumbling city wall with an impressive graffitti mural, transfixing the locals and earning himself the nickname "white wizard". Its a wonderful moment, and one in which we feel, with a pained regret, what this film might have been.

You can buy The Vice Guide to Travel @ www.vicemagazine.com

Check Out...

Nick Davis' review of Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in 4 Acts" at:

http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/features_detail.html?id1=735

I recall going to my mailbox a few days following Hurricane Katrina (at this point, with that event now accorded its proper historic magnitude, the capitalization is due) and seeing the cover of that week's Economist. On it was a close up of an overweight, African-American woman, wailing tears and wearing a torn, two-sizes-too-large yellow shirt, with the wreckage of what looked to be a third world hovel in the background. The caption read: The shaming of America. Those succinct four words had seemed to me at the time an expression who's eloquence would go unsurpassed as a comment on Katrina and its aftermath. That was until I saw Spike Lee's film. Any insight I may have on that film is surely contained in, and exceeded by, Nick Davis' review. Please do read it, and see the movie while you're at it.

Alpha Dog (Reviewed) (In Brief)

Tragedy, it is said, is most poignant when it can be shown to have been inescapable. It is not sufficient to to merely display, in gratuitous detail, a bad thing that has happened. The power is in the force, felt by your audience, of inevitability. On this count, as a rendering of tragedy, Nick Cassavetes' "Alpha Dog" is an abject failure. The film details the kidnap and eventual killing, by various unsavory but still innocent 19 year olds, of a young teen over a drug debt in the astonishingly negligible amount of $800. The story is littered with instances in which, to borrow a turn of phrase, cooler heads may have prevailed. This sense of avoidability makes the already unpleasant task of viewing the senseless murder of a likable 15 year old, an even more sordid affair than it should be. The effect is somewhat like watching a toddler wander outside a crowded party, only to drown in a pool. Your chief reaction, in lieu of shock or contemplation, is bound to be "will someone close the fucking door?!".
The film, however, is not without its charms. First of these is the unexpected screen presence of Justin Timberlake, the only character in this movie, besides the boy victim, worth (at moments) latching on to emotionally. Although even this is somewhat of a cheat. I had the sense, leaving the theater, that Timberlake's character was painted too nice, too sympathetically. He shows, for long stretches in the film, an affable decency, and it should go without saying that decent people do not stand by for the almost entirely unmotivated execution of an adolescent. The characterization and the story do not square. That contrivance aside, Timberlake onscreen displays a reserve of warmth not often found in young actors. I'll be checking for him in the future.
I also thought the film captured the giddy, hard-to-nail aimlessness of college-eschewing post-high-school white suburbans, with their petty pot dealing, often objectified girl props, and embrace of pseudo gangster melodrama. Cassavetes even got the framed Scarface poster right. A tiny part of you is prone to envying these hedonists, floating as they do in between the bookending worlds of parental structure and full adult responsibility. For at least this fleeting moment, the fun is all theirs.
I found it bizarre that the starpower of Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone were called upon for their pooled ten minutes of screentime. It seems to me that character actors would have sufficed. They play opposite poles, as far as parenting styles go, with Willis as the enabling, possibly mob-connected, drug-supplying father and Stone the definitive, shrieking overbearing mother. Much has been made of her final scene, a docudrama style interview, performed in a fatsuit, some five years after her boy was killed. I, for one, thought she was brilliant in that scene: a small, bitterly hard portrait of a human being shattered by a single moment of senseless violence. Her despair is palpable. They say it is the greatest injury to have to outlive one's child: in the hope-drained eyes of Ms. Stone, and in the film at large, we are made to feel that pain. A shame we are denied the opportunity to derive any meaning from it.

Itunes Nomad Part III

I've been asked, here and there, why it is that I choose to review songs in this space as opposed to full length albums. Simple really, much to the chagrin of the dying LP traditionalist, the way we experience music is increasingly song by song. This was bound to happen once downloadable MP3's replaced CDs as the preferred vehicle of purchased music. Sorry so-called auteurs, you too are subject to the will and whim of man's most energetic force: the market. What consumer wants to slog through mediocre filler tracks to get to the juicy nuggets? Want us to buy your album? Don't put shitty songs on it. In the meantime, I'll continue to write about music the way I experience it: selectively.

Jay-Z - Lost One

It is with great sadness and much wringing of hands that I report the following: 'Lost One' is the lone great song on Jay-Z's new album. It's almost as if the title of the track were a reference to its fish-out-of-water status among Jigga's soft, lazy comeback effort. Sorry apologists, but facts are facts, Jay fell off. Lest you think I'm a hater, friends of mine know I've long been a defender and indeed a champion of Hov. It is impossible to overstate the enjoyment I've derived, across all these years, out of his debut LP, Reasonable Doubt. Unfortunately, over time Jay has become a victim of what was once his greatest strength: being outrageously self absorbed. We once marveled at his verses, stylized interior monologues commenting superbly on rap's usual suspects: gritty urban life, new money triumphalism, the swift seduction of ho's, etc. Forgive us for being somewhat disappointed upon encountering an album detailing the not-so-universal struggles of being CEO, avoiding the paparazzi, and keeping Beyonce happy. It was cool when Jay first bragged about nailing Miss Knowles. We sang along enthusiastically to his "hottest chick in the game, wearin my chain" boastings, but, really, I don't want to know about her commitment issues, Jay. Really I don't. Name-checking Chris Martin and bemoaning the chasing, flashing cameras of magazine photographers further suggests that Hov is teetering close to the edge of that notorious artistic graveyard: irrelevance. Its not the end of the world. There can come a point, in this era of the ubercelebrity, when a successful artist's life so ceases to resemble the life of the average person that, he simply stops having anything interesting to say to us. We're grateful it took this long.
Anyhow, I said I wouldn't comment on albums and there I go providing a capsule review of Kingdom Come. Let's return to the song. The beat is spare, clear, riding a mournful, looped piano sample up and down. The effect, the inescapable temptation to nod one's head, is immediate. The first verse is a not-so-disguised farewell, bittersweet at that, to Jay's former business partner Dame Dash. Its okay. The second verse is more relationship-analysis drivel about his famous girlfriend. Were it not for the singsongy appeal of the hook, impatience might have gotten the best of us by now, sick beat notwithstanding. That hook, rendered in a voice more indigenous, foreign, than the usual motown-derivative stylings of rap choruses, ends in a swaggering statement of the song's title "You lost one...". At last, in the third and final verse, the Jay-Z of epochs gone by, returns to us. He tells the story of his nephew, who was, it appears, recently killed in a car accident. This is not just one more sophomoric, dead-homies lamentation that every rapper seems obligated to include on his album. Rather this is about the loss of innocence. There are some lyrical, resonant explorations of grief here. I admit to feeling the slow crawl of goosebumps along my neck, when, Jay pauses midverse, and switches tone, his voice creaking with hurt "Time don't go back, it goes forward/ Can't run from the pain, go towards it/ Gonna see you again, I'm sure of it/ Until then, little man, I'm nauseous". Tell 'em Jay. And speaking of lost ones, we'll miss you homie.

Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline)

This is a song marvelously unsuited to the itunes breed of track-sampling. The vocals do not start to work their sweet hypnosis until well after the thirty second window afforded by the try-before-you-buy double click. If it weren't for the pleasing, eliptical instrumental, and the suggestive, relaxing title of the song, I might have missed out on it altogether. For when those vocal do eventually kick in, they come courtesy of Leslie Feist, and they come hard. For me, this one peaks early. Its the aggressive questioning of the second verse, supplied in an ethereal moan. The effect is like hearing the soft, clear voice of a female confidant, your best friend, possibly a love you know you'll soon regret leaving, telling you you're dead wrong

"And you're walking away
But where to go to?
And youre walking alone
But how to go through?"

Here she kicks it up a notch, and there's a raw scratch to her voice, the plea becomes more intense, and somehow, more self-consciously beautiful. Only a fool could leave her voice, stranded there above the rushing guitar cacaphony. I listened hard, lovestruck.

"If you wanna get it right
You can own what you choose
But you wanna live a lie
And love what you lose"

Tell you what, somewhere behind those lyrics a story lurks, and on one end of it is a heart, in the long term, wrenched murderously in half. Tell you what else: its not the singer's. Oh yeah and the song is good too.

The Last King of Scotland (Review)

Be it a product of increased a-lister awareness, or the current vogue for exotic celebrity adoptions, Africa, that cradle and, more recently, scourge of civilization, is lately quite alive on America's movie screens. If I were in a more ambitious mood, I might style this as a survey of several recent films (most notably, The Constant Gardener, and Blood Diamond) that aimed to tackle the notoriously layered, complicated conflicts of the dark continent. In brief I will say that both of those films are principally concerned with the white, EuroAmerican experience of Africa, a mistake also made (though in smaller measure) in this film. Why the perspective of a foreigner is required to examine the person, and reign of Idi Amin, military dictator of Uganda between 1971-1979, is beyond me. I would have much preferred a character study uncolored by the lens of the outsider, but perhaps this will require an African director.
In the interest of full disclosure: this past January I visited Africa for a time of three weeks and fell deeply for its various charms, and thus today find myself highly susceptible to the nostalgic power of its images. I am just flat out predisposed to like, or rather to revel in, all things Africa. I could hardly wait to get an eyefull of this films generous, panoramic cinematography, as it lovingly dotes on the sights and colors I so fervently wish to return to. There are, however, times when the cinematography, rife as it is with those cliched visions of Africa-- its rust red roads dotted with sunset backed acacia trees, its inky, smiling-and-running natives-- becomes, I'm afraid, something more base: a pretty, superficial backdrop. Or worse, just another piece of a glossy pamphlet showcasing Forest Whitaker's performance. A performance, it needs to be said, that is the best performance you are likely to encounter this year, and indeed for many years to come. I liked Leo in the Departed. Hell, we all liked Leo in The Departed, but if Forrest doesn't hoist that golden statuette come Oscar time, I will be outraged. It will be the biggest, most shameful misapplication of the Best Actor award since Denzel Washington was, in 1992, robbed outright for his portrayal of, you guessed it, another complex, terrifying, charismatic black man: Malcolm X. For this is the sort of acting that exalts the profession, while also reducing, comparitively, the work of its many lesser practitioners to, as the saying goes, childs play. The glistening, haunting, alternatingly rage and charm filled face of Whitaker's Idi Amin stayed with me deep into the night. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
"The Lost King of Scotland" is ostensibly about Nicholas Garagan, a young Scottish doctor, freshly minted, who has come to Uganda with the usual naivete of twentysomething western idealists. He hopes to make Africa a better place, to have some adventure, and, rather less flatteringly, to get laid at every opportunity. With a few tweaks, he might have been a more sympathetic protagonist. As presently consitituted he is an unlikable, bungling, ethically reckless lad, who, amongst other head-slapping decisions, thinks it might be okay to sleep with Amin's youngest and most shapely wife. The friend with whom I saw "Last King" and I had a spirited discussion following the film over the astonishing implausibility of many of Nicholas' decisions: I mean, really, bang the wife of a murderous dictator? Just for kicks? Really? As is evident in the trailer, Nicholas falls in to a quick and easy friendship with Whitaker's Idi Amin, and becomes an advisor of sorts, a courtier at times, and, officially, his personal physician. As such he is witness to Amin's enormous force of personality and, increasingly as the film progresses, the murderous evil of his regime.
I will not go much further into the plot of the film in this space, so as not to spoil it, and also because, as I said before, the story here is Forrest Whitaker's Idi Amin. Rarely has a film character held such sway over his audience. Whitaker's presence on screen, is so magnetic, his scenes so terrifying and yet so greedily hoped-for, that I took to scheduling a trip to the theater restroom around what I thought would be a brief stretch in which he wouldn't appear. In a way our captivation at the hands of this most murderous of tyrants is analogous to the Ugandan people's. There's a scene early on in the film where Whitaker, as Amin, is addressing a large rally in the countryside, in an improvised venue among a vivid green field, his sermon on the mount, so to speak. He orates, like that other African king, the lion, in a bellowing, raspy roar "I may wear the clothes of a general, but underneath this uniform I am a simple man, like you". He is so convincing, so charged with energy and populist charisma, that it became elementary, in an instant, to see why Ugandans originally found him so compelling. This is a man you could fall for. Understand also that this is the mark of great acting: it illuminates. As the film goes on and Amin becomes progressively paranoid, and brutal, we never fully abandon him as a sympathetic character. We are stilll taken in by his lightning-fast switches between moods of screaming, sadistic fury, and gentle, self-deprecating wit. We, like the foreign press of the time, charmed to pieces, and indeed to sloppy, softball journalism, by Amin, make excuses for him. Indeed to the very last scenes, which play out in accelerated fashion the conclusion of his regime, we even hold out for his redemption. We tell ourselves that very worst of complicit, appeasing lies: this is Africa, land of the savages, who else but a strongman can run it? I submit to you that it takes a great actor to show the depth, and, more importantly, the biting falsity, of that ancient colonial assumption. I found myself, in the film's aftermath, wondering whether the movie around Whitaker's performance was just a shell, a bare housing, or whether the sheer intensity of his work just made it seem that way. In either case: Hats off, Forrest. See you at the podium.

Idol Premiere Part II - Highlights Edition!

The carnival that is American Idol Season 6 rolls on! Today 9,000 strikingly talentless hopefuls amassed in rainy Seattle, some complaining the moisture in the air was bad for their vocal chords. Ah, so that's what it is.

Good news! Paula has resumed assuming the movements and posture of a normal person. She, in severe contrast with yesterday, speaks in complete sentences and sits up in her chair for stretches of time exceeding three seconds. Her face, however, is still fast resembling Michael Jackson's.

A disturbing Season 6 statistic/fact: we are running at one Uncle-Sam-costume-wearing contestant per episode.

We meet, thrillingly, a person who calls herself "The Hotness". She doubles as a walking surgeon general's warning against collagen implants. Even the ordinarily charitable Paula loathes her. She tells the camera, and a terrified viewing audience, "Simon kiss this" before pirouetting away in a whirl of matted, cocker spaniel hair.

Amy Salgado, earns quote of the day for the following gem, declared shortly before her (unsuccessful) audition: "Its hard to go through life thinking that youre not good enough to do it, and then when it actually comes down to it, you're pretty good, and you can do it,and I just feel that I'm strong enough to do it, and I'm gonna do it". She doesn't do it.

I never, ever get sick of those reaction shots of bewildered judges during awful auditions.

Simon cruelly asks a woman wearing sheer, pink arm-tights, ostensibly to conceal what surely are the most disporportionately obese arms ever to appear on television, in HD no less, if she has a sunburn. A sunburn! Hey, I laughed.

A bright spot! We are introduced to an Indian family (brother, sister, papa) possessing three of the most disarming, toothy smiles I have ever seen. The brother, at 5'10", resembles Abu from Aladdin. No matter. He sings, of all things, a Stevie Wonder song and is easily passed. His sister passes as well, on the strength of an old jazz standard. The family celebrates by beaming dazzling grins at one another. We are uplifted!

Simon divides "obnoxious" into two words, as in "ob" (pause) "noxious". To great effect, I might add.

A woman as tall as Kobe Bryant (I do not exaggerate) sings Aretha Franklin's "respect". There are many moments in her reckless, swaying performance in which I fear for her immediate safety.

A new high for Season 6: Simon, without aby apparent remorse, compares the facial structure of a contestant to a monkey.

What has happened to Ryan Seacrest? Is someone shooting him with a tranquilizer dart before the taping of each episode?

A Taylor Hicks lookalike threatens to re-style simon's hair, with hairgel he had stashed on his person. When he gets within four feet of Simon, weilding his creams, bodyguards swoop in like the secret service. I was waiting for just this sort of spectacle!

I'm still waiting for a contender, someone I'm confident will make the top three. Week 1 of American Idol is in the books and we still haven't encountered the real thing, the genuine article. I'm starting to get nervous.

- Ross

American Idol - The Premiere

Ah, the holidays have gone by, the air remains crisp, and at last, American Idol has returned to us. There are few shows on television today ballsy enough to open with a neon-cartoon-man gripping a microphone backed by confetti and lightning bolts, camera swirling by, as Ryan Seacrest, acknowledged heir to Dick Clark, intones campily... "This. Is. Uh. Mare. Ick. Un. Idol!"
Its good to be king, isn't it? This 6th season of televisions top rated (by far) show is nothing if not a gloating, flag-waving victory lap for its producers and recurring participants. The successes of last season have not gone underreported, I needn't repeat them here. It will suffice to say that American Idol, despite running two and even three times a week at certain points, absolutely dominated its competition for viewers and marketing dollars, in 2006. No other show came close. So powerful is the show, so phenomenal its rise, that I take a good long look around the room, lest a fascist fan goon be lying in wait, before typing the following gross blasphemy... Has Idol peaked? Certainly the fear of talent drain is founded, for the show's success depends (whatever the charms of its judges) on its ability to locate and parade for our amusement, fresh, compelling batches of young performers, in possession of extraordinary singing voices. These do not grow on trees.
Many American Idol viewers skip, or skim these first few weeks of tryout episodes, awaiting the eventual narrowing of the field, preferring to see the show's democratic darwinism in its later, more talent-dense stages. Not I. To me, these are easily the most exciting weeks of American Idol, barring the final two or three episodes. For it is here that we enjoy the twin and opposite pleasures of trainwreck-viewing and, secretly, the hope that we'll catch a glimpse of a raw talent, a poorly-dressed, stylist-requiring diamond in the rough. A star.
Our judge panel remains, for the moment, intact. Yes Simon, Paula, and Randy are all here, all back, and all welcomed out of nothing else but warm, familial nostalgia by the viewing public. Sure, Randy may be a redundant hack, and Paula on the verge of a hospital visit for "exhaustion" but dammit they are our Randy and Paula, and they should never, even in fifty years time, be replaced. Jewel, the folk-slash-pop-singer joins the trio for this first episode. At shows end I reflected that it's possible that she failed to speak 15 words, in two hours. Quiet one, that Jewel. Looking at the judges table it was possible to consider this a study in contrasting teeth: Simon's glinting as if hours removed from the bleach trays, Jewel's as overlapped and sideways-pointing as ever.
As American Idol has ascended to cultural event on par with the Oscars, or the Superbowl, it occurs to me that (on this, a show of singing!) perhaps the national anthem ought to be performed at the beginning of each show. Instead, the show begins with an awkward transition: we are informed that because Prince performed on the show last year, and Prince is, you know, from Minnesota, this season's audition roadshow will begin in Minneapolis! Of course, I should have guessed it! The invoking of the Artist's show-stopping appearance from last season's finale has the stale odor of past glories being milked, rather embarrassingly, to the bone.
The first tryout of the new season comes to us by way of a fan who, having gotten wind of Jewel's presence, has come to worship her and at the same time display for an audience of millions a truely terrible Jewel-impersonation. She is mercilessly shown the door. The wrong door, in fact. The exit from this audition room is a set of double doors, one of which is immobile, meaning many of the freshly insulted will have to endure the further humiliation of seeming to be momentarily locked in the room. This Jewel superfan is the first, of several, to be told dismissively, on her briskly paced way out, "its the other door". I have to admit, its a nice touch. American Idol: it's the little things. Jewelfan and her family kick off the night's theme (absurdity) by treating the news of her rejection as if she'd been diagnosed with leukemia. Ryan Seacrest stands thoughtfully by, his brow furrowed as if on cue.
Things, on an aesthetic level, do not improve much from here. The evening plays out as a sort of pageant of the bizarre, its chief offender being Paula, who looks like a slumping, doddery old woman wearing a plastic, halloween mask made to resemble Paula Abdul. Also, is it rude to ask whether or not Ms. Abdul recently had several of her vertebrae unexplainedly disintegrate, for one can't help but notice that she cannot, for any duration of time, seem to sit up straight in her chair. She spends much of the night looking as she did in that woeful TV appearance in Seattle last week: shitfaced. Randy, while I'm picking on the judges, seems to be that rare breed of human who actually looks worse when he loses weight. His eyeballs grow bigger every year. That is not a compliment.
Song choice, a familiar lament of the judges, seems to have hit an all time low. A man named Jesse takes the stage and inexplicably launches into a reedy version of Celine Dion's theme from Titanic. Following him was a still more striking curiosity: a black man dressed as Uncle Sam (old glory top hat and all) wearing boxing gloves, and shadow-boxing while singing, I kid you not, opera. I feel that the phrase "only in America" sometimes gets tossed about a bit too frequently: I should not be offended were someone to invoke it here. Next, a steady string of poor singers forces Simon to reach deep into his arsenal of pained, impatient looks.
Finally! Our first Hollywood bound contestant! We know because we are treated to a long and heartbreaking story of Ms. Denise Jackson's struggle as a former crackbaby (her words, lest you think me insensitive) adopted, and raised by her grandparents. A sentimental backstory, aired for the public, is always a sure sign of advancement to the next round. Even American Idol is not so exploitative as to air a tragedy and then pillory its central figure shortly thereafter. Denise shines, but does not astonish, the judges give her the nod, everybody feels good. The good feeling lasts just moments before it is punctured by Denise's tearful declaration that now, she has become "the first person in her family to make something of herself". Yikes.
Meanwhile, the oddballs pour in by the dozen. These include a plump, pyramid-shaped girl who brags that she can impersonate, in song, the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz. I do not exaggerate. The "other door" gag becomes more amusing with each repitition. A self-professed Idol obsessive, who has the gross misfortune of resembling Miss Piggy dressed up in goth or perhaps a (barely) feminine version of Chris Farley dragged up from the grave, morturary makeup intact, blesses us with a barely recognizable version of "Under Pressure". Simon, ever one for appearances, asks her coldly, before having heard a single note of her awful voice, if she really thinks she can win.
Mercifully, another winner does indeed come along. Perla, a latina with an entire Ellis Island's worth of immigrant pluck crammed in her tiny denim capri's strides in, eliciting a perverty, pen-chewing, elongated "hiiiii" from Simon. No taller than 4'10", her heels resemble stilts, so much so that the line of her feet, in profile, might have been perpendicular to the ground. We, as well as the judges, are instantly charmed. Perla is breathlessly ushered on to the next round after being made to perform but a snippet of a Shakira hit. Matt Sato, who gave a refreshing, clean-voiced take on 'California Dreaming' a song I had previously thought impossible to sing without that echoing female backup which made the original famous, quickly squanders his audience goodwill by collapsing into a shrieking melodramatic fit of triumphalism, brought on by the realization that "she" his mother "was proud of him". Spare us, Matt.
And so Idol plays it by the book tonight, giving us a sprinkling of feel-good stories matched to above average voices (there is the obligatory military wife, around her neck strewn a laminated picture of her husband, who is in Baghdad, a place that could not keep its death toll beneath 100 today, all but the heartless will be pulling for her), but no stunners. We keep waiting, with each and every positively or neutrally introduced contestant, for someone with real pipes to blow. But wait further we must...

- Ross

An Announcement, and a Treatise on Pleasures, Guilty and Otherwise...

I recall reading, some time ago, an article insisting that we do away with the phrase "guilty pleasure". Pleasure is pleasure, went the argument, why be snobbish and distinguish between various forms of it. I'm in agreement, insofar as its true that we ought not shrink away from our opinions, our taste. Its a sad thing to see a man put distance between himself and a thing he likes. For what? The approval of others? Shameful. Stand up and be counted. That being said, I think it's perfectly reasonable to grade, and arrange pleasures in a heirarchy. Surely the reading, and contemplation of great literature is more sublime, in fact is more superior to, the pleasing sensation of having my back scratched. Surely the vicarious, gossipy, voyeuristic thrill I get by flipping through the first 20 pages or so of US Weekly, is a less refined, a more base diversion than my perusal of say, the latest Malcolm Gladwell essay in the New Yorker. One traffics in the invasive ogling of pretty, or otherwise famous people, the other traffics in ideas. That is not a negligible difference. To sum up, I intend, in this space as in my everyday social existence, to embrace my lesser vices, to wear my gobbling desire for crude, pop entertainment proudly, as a badge upon my sleeve. And as proof of this, I will be blogging, in intricate detail and with (I hope) minimal condescension, that greatest of post-millineal popular entertainments: American Idol.

Pan's Labyrinth (Review)

For the fairy tale, that literary genre in which we all receive much early instruction, the preferred setting is often an enchanted forest. Guillermo Del Toro, in his new spanish language film Pan's Labyrinth, has given us, if nothing else, an enchanted forest unrivaled in the history of film. Ofelia, the younger of the two marvelous heroines in Pan's Labyrinth, is, when we first meet her, coming to live in a remote old mill, converted into a de facto military base with the purpose of routing the last of the remaining resistance militias, in newly fascist Spain. What business would she, a girl of 11 (too old, her mother remarks, to still be so engrossed in the reading of fairy tales) have in this messy little corner of the war? Her new stepfather, it emerges, is El Capitan Vidal, and he has sent for Ofelia's pregnant mother, so that she may bear his son nearby, under his watchful eye. In the long and distinguished history of evil storybook step parents, surely this Captain Vidal has secured for himself a prominent place. For every fairy tale requires a persona embodying that thing to be contrasted to, to be strived against: pure evil, and our Captain doesn't shrink from this duty. We notice that, in their first meeting, he is contemptuous of young Ofelia and in varying degrees, his pregnant wife, and the housekeeper, Mercedes. We could easily chalk these discourtesies up to bad manners, or a potent streak of male chauvinism. Perhaps this captain isn't such a bad fellow. Mr. Del Toro will not let us entertain these notions long. Indeed it is in the night, that dark realm in which true evil relaxes, stretches out, reveals itself, where we first glimpse the full scale of his sadism. A father and son are caught by the Captain's men high in the hills with a rifle, freshly shot. They insist the rifle was only used to hunt rabbits, and their story seems to be corroborated by their dress, their manner. The younger man, heartbreakingly, insists that his father is an honest man. No matter. Captain Vidal breaks a large bottle across his forehead, reducing the man to his knees, and then jabs the broken bottleneck, sharp shards and all, deep into his face until he moves no longer. He then turns to the cursing, sobbing father who, in the face of this sudden and violent loss, no longer has any use for pleading and deference, and shoots him until he too lies dead. Just minutes after these brutal murders, freshly killed rabbits are produced from the men's bag. The Captain, with a little twinkle, order's the housekeeper to make rabbit stew. So then, we've located our bad guy.
Upon arrival at the mill, Ofelia, as all children must, takes an exploratory walk among the grounds. The place, through her eyes, wide with wonder, drips of magic. The light pouring down through the columns of trees is suspended here and there, along fluttering, floating leaves, bugs, motes of dust, as if the world were a big snowglobe, shaken to reveal glimmering bits of gold at every turn. There are stone ruins, rounded by time, that lead to an elaborate maze, the labyrinth of the film's title. In the background of these scenes is an insectlike stacatto flutter, the beating of tiny wings belonging to the brilliantly imagined fairies of this tale: stalky, slightly scary preying mantis creatures that, when the occasion arises, transform into traditional tinkerbell-esque tiny, winged people, protectors of magical secrets and, indeed, curious little girls. One visits late in the night, beckoning Ofelia back to the labyrinth, at who's center lies a giant, spiral staircase downward. There in the pit is a faun like we've never seen before. Tall, and decorated with features usually reserved for dark-ages-depictions of Satan, swirling horns, cat eyes, and a gravelly voice. Ofelia later remarks that he "smells like earth". This creature, this vision assures us that we have not landed in Narnia, where majestic lions and gentle beavers await. The faun tells Ofelia that she is a princess, lost to the world of the humans, and whose return has been long prophecied. The worry among the underworld is, however, that these centuries of comingling with flesh-and-blood humans have tarnished her, have robbed her of her innocence. Therefore, Ofelia, to gain re-entry to her kingdom must complete three tasks, all before the moon is full. In more ways than one, we are not sure he is to be believed. He entrusts Ofelia with a magical book, a book who's pages populate with ink and color only when touched.
The magical beings in this forest of Guillermo Del Toro's making are not limited to its mythical inhabitants. Mercedes, the housekeeper at the mill, played with great sympathy by Maribel Verdu (Y Tu Mama Tambien), is a study in decency, sacrifice. She smuggles food, medicine, and other necessities to the rebels in the wilderness. Ofelia, with girlish curiosity, spies her receiving a package of medicine from the resident doctor, a man who lives out the hippocratic oath, easing great and terrible suffering, even when, later, it costs him his life. Yes, this is a cast rife with heroes. While Ofelia completes the faun's tasks, Mercedes too, accomplishes her secret feats of daring, many of them mirroring the girl's. Surely it is no coincidence that both Ofelia and Mercedes are required, at separate times, to retrieve, or make use of, a key and a dagger. The two operate in their paralell worlds, which occasionally, and in the end, collide. You may wonder where Ofelia's mother is during all this mischief. She is bed-ridden, her pregnancy severe, an undeniable pall of death hanging over her. Captain Vidal, in another of his moments of great charm, commands his doctor tersely, and without further clarification, to "make sure the baby lives". Ah, true love.
Ofelia's first task is to rescue an ancient fig tree from the gross gluttony of an enormous toad, who has made the giant tree's roots his home. Doing this involves, among other indignities, crawling through sloppy, bug-filled mud to confront the toad, shove three magic rocks into his mouth, and somehow (it is not specified in advance) retrieve a sacred object from deep within the creature's belly. The bugs surrounding the toad are, of course, not tiny. They are instead fist-sized, shiny and black, and yet Ofelia remains undeterred, wading through them and then telling the toad, rather beautifully I thought, in an assured whisper "I am not afraid of you." Oh to have a daughter with this kind of pluck. So many children in American movies have their bravery diminished by sass, or a smirky, precocious one-liner. Ofelia's dire circumstances, both below and above ground, afford her no such luxury. She is the stoic lost princess, and we love her for it. Next, she must brave the attentions of a child-eating monster. This monster stands seven feet tall, naked, with loose folds of skin draped in odd places, a smooth, giant, faceless sharpei of a man. Faceless because his eyes are in the palms of his hands, requiring him to don them as a mask of sorts, in order to see, to pursue. And yet, next to El Capitan Vidal, this freakish cannibal is found wanting. Ofelia succeeds.
Meanwhile the resistance in the hills, becoming more brazen, have engaged the Captain's men in a fierce battle. A prisoner of war is taken, a stuttering rebel who we had occasion to meet earlier in the film, when the good doctor paid a surreptitious visit to the rebels. The Captain wastes no time in using the man's linguistic deficiency to torture and humiliate him. He tells the prisoner he may walk free, back to the mountains from whence he came, if only he can count to three without tripping on the words. There is no surer path to anger, than to view just this sort of vicious, cruelty to the weak. The attempt to count seemed a lifetime long in the viewing. He cannot muster the final number without arousing his halting impediment, and thus, the Captain begins his torturous, bruising work. The next morning the man is a mess, his limbs made into deep, purple mush, his face unrecognizable in its sheath of blood and ruin. The Captain sends for the doctor to give him something to prolong his life, not out of mercy, you understand, but to make for the additional extraction of information. To sound a political note, this is precisely why torture is always wrong. Always, no matter how good-intentioned its perpetrators, despicable. We are not made to participate in the slow, gruesome destruction of a man's life. Our doctor, bespectacled, world-weary, takes stock of the situation and sets into motion the man's death, via a euthanising injection, and his own, for this act of mercy will cost him his life. With dignity he explains his actions to Captain Vidal, his preference of morality over blind obedience, then picks up his physician's briefcase, strolling away, just a few steps before the crack of a gun sends a bullet into his back. We can be sure, in this case, that being shot from behind, is no mark of cowardice. Small comfort that.
No sooner does the doctor expire than are his services urgently needed, for Ofelia's mother has at last begun labor, and judging by the screaming to be heard, and the carrying to and fro of bloody sheets to be witnessed, outside her door, by little Ofelia no less, her prospects are not good. The Captain is solemnly informed "Your wife is dead". He beams brightly at the funeral, his name-carrying, legacy-extending baby boy in his arms.
With her purpose, her connections, to the actual world, now almost fully diminished, the faun returns to Ofelia with her third and final task. She must bring her newborn brother to the pit at the center of the labyrinth, why she is not told. This will be no easy task, for the Captain keeps the baby close at hand. Thankfully, the rebels, led by a discovered and escaped Mercedes, are closing in, providing the necessary distraction. Ofelia sedates the Captain, and under the cover of night and battlefield chaos, runs to the stone maze, her brother in tow. The faun awaits, holding the dagger she procured, as requested, from the child-eating monster. All that is required, he tells her, to complete her mission, and thus usher in her return to her magical throne, is but a few drops of innocent blood, a tiny prick of the baby by the formidable dagger he holds out for her. She refuses the faun's offer, and he vanishes. In the meantime, the Capitan, woozy but not felled by the sedative, is upon her. He snatches the baby back, as explosions boom outside the labyrinth. Ofelia stands, devastated. Captain Vidal then raises his pistol and shoots her at point blank range, so that she crumples along the edge of the pit, blood trickling freely from her chest, mouth. At the mouth of the maze, the rebels await. The Captain knows this dance of surrender, of defeat. He hands over the infant, preparing to meet his end, requesting that his child might know the hour, the minute of his death. Asking, as it were, for posterity. Mercedes, humble housekeeper made military commander, tells him coolly "he won't even know your name". The Captain is shot in the face and falls, instantly dead. We are happy to be rid of him.
They rush to Ofelia. They are too late. But as with all fairy tales, whatever is denied in this world shall be supplied in the next. Ofelia awakes to the faun, to her throne, a room of soaring golds and reds. She has passed the test, she will sit at the right hand of her father, forever, having been found worthy. The faun explains that her act of self-sacrifice, her blood instead of the baby's, was the true third task. She lives happily ever after, and yet the film does not end there. We return again to the pit, where, in the face of much death and war, there are many tears. Where there is no promise of magic, of eternity. We are left to wonder what was real. Did Ofelia, in the face of great pain and hopelesness, merely retreat into fantasy to cope? Was her salvation an escapist mechanism of her own invention? As is the case with all good fairy tales, it doesn't much matter.

Itunes Nomad Part II

Okay, no flowery intro. I'm eating life cereal, dry, in bed, and these are songs I like, and why.

Kings of Conveniece - Homesick

Alas, decades after we'd given up the search, in Scandinavia of all places, I've discovered with much excitement and shrieking of 'eureka', the heirs to Simon & Garfunkel. The shimmery, jangling acoustic riff that opens this song sounds, to me, the way a kite looks descending slowly back to earth. Though it appears just twice, bookending the tissue-thin, layered vocals (more on those in a minute) that riff serves as the sort of musical DNA for this song, its basic code, in the same way that Dylan's 'Knockin' on Heaven's door' is immediately recognizable upon the tiniest whisper of its mournful, stairsteps-down melody. Rarely am I so moved by such straightforwardly sentimental lyrics, as with these. Singing is like acting, in the sense that, sometimes, no matter how hallmarky the words may strike you, there are some people, some voices, you believe. Oh and what a perfect picture of adult disenchantment "Everyday there's a boy in the mirror, asking me 'what are you doing here?'/ Finding all of my previous motives increasingly unclear...". Hmmm, been there. For what else is the dark side of adulthood, if not the pained, knowing disintegration of youthful idealism, of innocence. We hear that innocence, warm and trickling, like sugar dissolving into hot tea, breathed over the tinkling guitar, the "two soft voices, blended in perfection" as it were, and we cling to it, even if its just for one moment longer.

Silversun Pickups - Melatonin

Anyone who knows me knows that I could be found, this past summer, fervently and with great zeal, spreading the gospel of the Silversun Pickups. This song, is a good old-fashioned, angsty, sonic struggle, a throwback to the delicious, flannel-clad glories of the early nineties. Its most striking characteristic: Brian Aubert's adrogynous voice, fighting, with a low, melodic wail, to penetrate the thick haze of fuzzy, astral guitars. The Silversun Pickups are an L.A. band, and what could be more darkly representative of that city, and its various charms, and demons, than the following meet-cute: "She ran into the wall... We're warm comatose/ And after 6 milligrams, we're talking again...". That, friends, is a portrait of tinseltown's treacheries that rivals any. A grungy, unapologetic, left coast answer to 'New York State of Mind'. All the while, Melatonin courses along a murmuring, machine-gun, guitar line that never, ever, lets you forget the track's intensity. Building, and building, until the climax, where the vocals turn accusatory, Aubert repeating, again and again, with that cool, crunching, melancholy grit "And you sat around, and you sat around..." before it gives way, after a long breath, to the soothing break down, the white foam after the wave.

Amos Lee - Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight

This is one of those unfortunate, assymetrical songs, whose first minute, first verse holds a promise, a raw, and bursting potentiality that the latter half can't hope to deliver on. Many vocalists are accused, wrongly, of possessing a soulful voice. The genuine article is few and far between. Mr Lee, I report to you, is just that. If you close your eyes real tight, you might just hear a thin, diminished Stevie Wondery flourish in his delivery. Don't despair Amos, there can only be one Stevie. Braver still, ballsy even, is the choice to turn the hook, the chorus, on that most hackneyed of places, escaped to lyrically in American music, that place "over the rainbow...". And yet we like it, in the mouth of Amos Lee, it sounds fresh, new.

Itunes Nomad

I do not mean, in the titling of what I hope will be a regular music component to this blog, to plug Apple's leviathan-like music service (as if it should require the meager publicity generated by this remote web outpost). Rather, i hoped, honestly to capture the method by which I discover new music: aimless, half-asleep clicks through itunes, that fantasia of cleverly organized, easily-sampled sounds. As with this post, I will, from time to time, introduce, or perhaps re-introduce songs I'm particularly moved by at the moment.

The Shins - Phantom Limb

Its difficult to disassociate the Shins from Zach Braff, but try one must. This, the first single from The Shins' forthcoming album, is absolutely, and without qualification, a great pop song. Opening with a fantastical, scene-setting bit of imagery, sung in a dreamy, lilting beach boys glow "frozen into coats, white girls of the north..." we see clearly, and from the beginning, that we are in for a treat. The song flits back and forth between melancholy tales of aimless youth, to its more anthemic pronouncements, all the while riding a sweet-as-cupcake-frosting guitar groove. And though those guitars make for a pleasing enough backdrop, the story here is the voice, or rather, the singing style of Mr. James Mercer. The guy is flat out unafraid to let himself soar into barely-intelligible, ethereal anunciations that make this a song of sweetly mumbled vowels. The effect is dizzying. I can hardly wait for summer, for this song, I can already tell, will not be fully experienced until it accompanies you, at illegal speeds, down a stretch of coastal highway, the wind filling the holes in the melody.

Nas - Can't Forget About You

Hip Hop, that brilliant recylcer of melodies old, has given us its take on that most timeless of Nat King Cole songs: Unforgettable. Just when I'd thought, all the cool, jazzy emotion had been wrung from that tune, with the advent of the Grammy winning, special-effects-assisted duet with Nat and daughter Natalie some years back. But no, for the moment, Nas, our foremost urban poet, will have the last word. What's most impressive is the way the melody, the bellsy twinkling of the original has been scaled back here. It would certainly have verged on the cloying for this version to be drenched, sentimentally, in the original. You could be forgiven for missing the connection until, at the end of the track, the beat drops out, and Nat intones, strong and clear, that refrain from yesteryear "That's why darlin', it's incredible...". Rap music, with its image-dense couplets, and high word counts that dwarf competing genres, is perhaps the music most suited to the remembrance of things past. Indeed, there is a rich tradition of cozy reminiscing in Hip Hop, dating back to Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth's seminal 'T.R.O.Y. (They Reminisce Over You)' and then most definitively, with the radio-friendly 'Back in the Day' by Ahmad, a song imprinted deep into the psyche of white, generation X/Y/Z suburbia. Nas serves the tradition well here, offering up a few universal gems of our collective experience, "Remember Jordan's retirement/ the shot Robert Horry hit to win the Finals, kid" or "Mike when his talk was live/ when he first did the moonwalk on Motown 25". Pleasant memories, all, but this will not be a song recalled for its superb lyricism, as much as its haunting, bittersweet hook: a first person love letter to that art-producing cauldron of black experience: "these streets hold my deepest days...".

Children of Men (Review)

It needs to be said: I went into 'Children of Men' with lofty expectations. I recalled perking up in my squeaking, red velvet seat immediately upon first seeing the trailer in the midsummer of 2006. Truth be told, I'm a sucker for stories of the future, particularly those without laser guns and aliens. I prefer my filmed futures dark and meditative, brooding dystopias of the Bladerunner ilk. As if the dusky, fallout-leaden skies of London and its random, seemingly senseless explosions were not enough to entice me, this movie had, at its center, Clive Owen, who is fast becoming the most compelling leading man in the movies. I cannot, though it should be said that I have not put forth much effort, seem to get anyone to say a bad thing about him. He is at that tender, fleeting stage that his countryman Jude Law firted with some years ago: his potential seems limitless, the audience is already his, he can do no wrong.
We first meet Clive on his way to work, as he steps into an if-its-not-a-Starbucks-it-sure-looks-like-a-Starbucks coffee shop for his morning cup of joe, only to learn, in the process, that the world's youngest man has, in a characteristic-of-the-times act of senseless violence, died. Only the world's youngest man is not, as you might assume, an infant, or a wee boy, he is 18. Human beings have, nearly two decades prior, ceased to reproduce. Callous to the world's obsession with the freshly murdered "Baby Diego" he strides out into the murky streets of a nightmarish London, and gets scarcely a quarter block before the coffee shop is obliterated in a jarring, camera-tilting explosion. Welcome to 2027. In a year that has seen two films take on, directly, the events of September 11th, this brief scene may provide the audience with the most immediate contemplation with terrorism as we know it. For what is it that we fear more in the West than this cruel juxtaposition of violence and normalcy? We want our wars fought on battlefields, at sea, on remote islands. The barbarism, and yet the unmistakable power, of terrorism is derived from the fact that it brings the fight, the struggle, literally, to our doorstep. We do not want a suicide bomb with our sugarfree latte. No we do not.
It's a credit to the director, Alfonso Cuaron, that he deposits us so unceremoniously into this messy, unrecognizable Britian. There is no tedious, neatly ordered narration to guide us through the events of the last two decades. My intuition is that the how and the why we've arrived in such an apocalyptic state is better served vague: our imagination, along with a rudimentary understanding of today's headlines, will suffice. Early in the film, Theo (Clive Owen) finds himself kidnapped by a fringe resistance group, bound and hooded he is thrown roughly into a small, poorly-lit room wall-papered with yellowing newspaper clippings detailing nuclear holocausts, the collapse of states, and other such extrapolations on the more pressing problems of our time. In many ways the film seems like a call to account for today's powers, with the implication that the United States has paid more dearly for its sins, than has the UK. As an everpresent propagandist intones "Only Britian Soldiers On!" we are left to wonder what has become, in this new world, of the new world. In a tale filled with biblical paralells, the bits we are privy to seem to suggest that America has gone the way of Soddom and Gommorah. And yet all that is speculation, immaterial to the central thrust of the film, of its brave thesis. It is as if we, from the outset, are in Theo's position, freshly kidnapped: the writing is on the wall, the history, in newsprint, is there for the reading, but we haven't got the time, for there's a story, in the here and now, that's unfolding. And unfold it does. The ragtag group of dissidents, led by Theo's ex-wife played by Julianne Moore, who have apprehended Theo want him to leverage his personal contacts into obtaining transport papers for a young girl, a fugee (short, as with the popular hip hop trio, for refugee). It, apparently, is of great importance that this girl make her way to the sea. We are not told why.
Theo, to his credit, resists at first. This is not your father's immediately altruistic action hero. He must be plied with cash and stolen moments of intimacy with his ex-wife, Julian, the ringleader. It becomes clear, with just a single line of dialogue, just what tragedy could have driven them apart. She says to him "he had your eyes". In a way, this hinted-at disintegration of their marriage, in the wake of a child's death, serves as a microcosm for the larger affliction facing mankind: with the children gone, civilization has collapsed. Its worth it here to go a bit more into just how far down the toilet society realy is. Illegal immigrants stand, locked in crude cages along roads and railways. The only product we see advertised on the ubiquitous flat-screen tv's that line the city, besides the government that is, is an assisted suicide pill, its tagline: "you decide when". We've come a long way since Mad Max.
Theo calls in a few favors and before we know it he's off, with Julian, the mysterious girl, and a few sinister members of the rebel group. They're barely on their way when, along a deserted foresty road, they are subjected to a vicious, riotous attack from a stone-throwing mob. In the midst of their escape, which is acheived by, quite exhiliratingly, reversing at some 60 MPH away from the fray, a pair of particularly nasty hooligans (sporting haircuts inspired by John Travolta's turn in Battlefield Earth) emerges on a motorcycle and fires a gun into the chest of Julian, killing her on the spot. Attempts are made to revive her. They do not succeed. Having seen both the vigor with which Theo defended Juian, and the bitter intensity of his grief, the mysterious fugee girl selects him as her protector. She has glimpsed something basic in him, a wasted fatherliness that she senses she can shroud herself in. Theo is not up for the job. He will need proof that it is deserving of his efforts. And it is proof he shall get. For there in the barn, at the safehouse the group has retreated to, our fugee, amongst the hay and livestock (a deliberate biblical nod to the famed nativity scene, no doubt), sheds her shapeless robes and reveals herself: pregnant, bursting with new life. To this point in the film, we've been so thoroughly immersed in the dreary, hopelessness Cuaron paints for us, that we gasp at the sight of her bulbous belly, if ever a film character so physically embodied hope, I do not remember it. Luke, the sinister rebel (made leader in the power vacuum resulting from Julian's murder) tells Theo, who is newly alit with purpose "Good, now you know what's at stake". Indeed.
Theo is up to the task. Ever the proactive protector, he goes slinking around the safehouse and discovers that Julian's death was a planned hit, meant to elevate Luke, who differed somewhat in ideology with her, to the position of leader. He also learns that to this point he has only been spared by the rebels because of a desire not to upset the pregnant girl. He is approaching the end of his usefulness to these killers, the time has come to flee. I return now to Clive Owen. When I last saw him, in Spike Lee's 'Inside Man' his role was that of the omnipotent judge, something just short of the grim reaper, for, in that film, he dispensed justice, and settled scores from 50 years past. He seemed to move outside fate, impervious to outside influence. He didn't so much operate within, as preside over the world of that film. Oh, what a delicious contrast with the situation we find him in here, being battered around cruelly like a pinball, narrowly escaping death at every turn, utterly vulnerable to a stray bullet, or a miscast glance. 'Inside Man' afforded Clive the luxury of smugness, in this film's particular hell, anything outside of weary striving is an indulgence, and Mr. Owen knows that, and we see it, written across his stubbly face.
With MacGyver-esque derring-do and ingenuity Theo escapes the safehouse with the pregnant girl, and her midwife in tow. Seeking friendly assylum and a shortcut to the sea, he calls on his old friend Jasper, played with twinkly delight by Michael Caine dressed and be-wigged in the bohemian style of a favorite liberal arts professor. He unapologetically smokes weed in nearly every one of his scenes. Jasper lives in a cabin of sorts, off the beaten path, where he tends to his mute, wheelchair-ridden wife. I thought this husbandly devotion touch a bit unnecessary, as if we needed another indicator of his basic goodness, his decency. I like my characters ambiguous, it's okay to have to dig to find the good beneath the superficially misanthrope, as with Theo. The crippled wife is like a big, red, neon sign screaming "GOOD GUY" in an otherwise extraordinarily subtle movie. As it turns out, Jasper is martyred for the baby Christ. He is gunned down by a merciless, singular-purposed Luke, while acting as a diversion that enables Theo and company to leave his woodsy, utopian lair unscathed. For shame. We liked Jasper.
From there the trio heads to a refugee camp, where Jasper has said they can arrange for a boat via a corrupt officer who, we take it, buys certain products from him from tim to time. To this point we have only glimpsed the peripheral awfulness of this imagined future, at the camp, the real horror comes into focus. Bussed in on packed, slaveship-crowded shuttles bearing that ominous moniker 'Homeland Security' on the sideboards, it is as though we are Dante entering the 7th circle. Again, today's sins are there in the margins of the film, writ large. The first stop in the camp, to which we lose the midwife, resembles a latter-day Abu Ghraib complete with dehumanizing pyramid stacks of bodies, firing squads, black hoods and a brutality that seems almost to echo the mid 20th century sins of Europe. In order to earn this promised, spiritual redemption, Cuaron must first give us a full survey of the depravity of man, from the fall to Aushwitz. We recoil obediently. Dropped roughly into a dark, trashcan-fire-lit mess of dilapidated buildings, Theo and the girl persuade Jasper's contact to give them a room for the night, and not a moment too soon. They are barely inside when it becomes clear that Theo, on this night, must deliver the baby. The scene is naturalistic without being brutal. It doesn't shy from the messy, third-rate circumstances of the birth, while still preserving its dignity, its beauty. When daylight comes, it brings with it a host of new dangers. What follows is a virtuoso sequence that tracks Theo, mother, and child as they wind their way through the warzone that has become the camp, to an awaiting boat. Bullets whiz by, Theo must dive and dodge, shield and sprint, and all these things at once. Cuaron films this sequence with a stunning virtuoso single-camera tracking shot. The effect is riveting. Still, the film's most poignant moment is yet to come: at the crucial point, when the tanks have closed in, and hope seems lost, it is, as with the nativity story, the baby who saves. Her cry going out like a siren, quieting the guns, parting the sea of bodies gone still with wonder at this tiny, wailing creature, its pure, desperate sound having become so foreign in those barren two decades.
You'll want to know that Theo dies, and the baby lives, lives and is passed on to a benevolent group of scientists, thinkers (wisemen, anyone?) who are bent on mankind beginning anew. She is taken aboard their ark, to await, we must assume the washout of the flood, what ever form it may take. We won't cry for Theo, as much as we'll envy him. That we all might live, and die in the name of such crystal, clear, unimpeachable purpose. It is, after all, the task that makes heroes out of men. And so I am here to pronounce that Alfonso Cuaron and his excellent cast have made a great film, a burning warning of what might become of Western Civilization, while also a retelling of it's most beloved fable. No easy task.

- Ross

Welcome.

For some time now i've toyed with the idea of publishing a blog. Not because I believed I had some great wisdom or exceptional perspective to impart, but more simply because I welcomed the chance to organize, in essay form, the many and varied thoughts that go whizzing through my head daily on the equally varied topics of film, literature, politics, sports, and the culture at large. I expect that the bread-and-butter of my postings will consist of film reviews, both of current releases and of old favorites I hope to re-explore in this space. Expectations, however, are often off the mark. For all I know, by this time next year this will morph into one of the scores of raging, polemical political blogs that now populate the net. Time will tell, I hope you'll stick around to find out.