"He's basically Ed Wood, but with an inexhaustible supply of money."

--"Moodie" of the British Horror Films Forum on George Lucas.

Yes, it's Oscar season, apparently, and this year marks the first time (I think) that I've ever seen all five Best Picture nominees in the year of their eligibility. I'm happy about that, as this has been a really decent year for that sort of thing, with one glaring exception that I mentioned earlier. I'm behind There Will Be Blood, although I'll only get irritated if Atonement wins.

Michael Clayton (2007): Tony Gilroy's moody 70s-homage thriller played for a day at the Michigan Theater, and as I missed it earlier at Showcase, I decided to catch it before I left. Michael Clayton (George Clooney) wokrs as a fixer for a wealthy and influential New York law firm on the verge of merging with a London concern and going global. His friend Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), the firm's most lethal and feared counsel, flips out and strips naked during a deposition in a class-action lawsuit against one of the firm's clients, a sleazy Archer Daniels Midland simulacrum called UNorth (their TV commercials are priceless bits of satire on the fim's part). Yes, Arthur's having a crisis of conscience, and the firm's head honcho (Sydney Pollack) sends Clayton to Wisconsin to manage the meltdown. Arthur's actions and the apearance of a damning memo from UNorth's scientific staff spark rebellious impulses in Clayton (once an idealistic lawyer working in the D.A.'s office), which grow after ambitious UNorth executive Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) tries to interfere with his search for the truth. I really enjoyed this; I hadn't seen a good meat-and-potatoes flick like this in a while, and while it doesn't have the linguistic, visual, or thematic fireworks of fellow Best Picture Oscar nominees There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men, it's got an appeal all its own, and I don't remember applause breaking out at a crucial scene during the other two movies. The idealist-lawyer-against-the-system story is one of the most dependable--and hackneyed--storylines in American movies and television, and it's a credit to Gilroy and the actors that they manage to make the story seem fresh and inspired (especially with its relatively downbeat ending).

Juno (2007): Will and Ariel Durant, the longtime eminences grises (usage?) of middlebrow "you-can-own-the-entire-set" history, once wrote of a British playwright (I think it was Sheridan) that his "wit dulled by excess." Something much the same could be said for Juno. Sixteen-year-old Juno McGuff (Ellen Page)--a confused, hyper-articulate, but still very likeable mess, much like the movie itself--gets pregnant by off-and-on boyfriend Paul Bleeker (the great Michael Cera of Arrested Development) and, after a weird set of happenstances, decides to carry the baby to term instead of aborting it, and searches for a couple looking to adopt. She finds Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark (the great Jason Bateman of Arrested Development--I wish there had been more of a pattern there), a cartoonish pair of yuppies, advertising in the Penny Saver and quickly strikes up a business relationship with them as a surrogate mother. Juno herself is very nearly unbelievable, were it not for the fact that she reminds me very strongly of an old friend of mine (who actually had a similar origin to her unusual name from Greco-Roman mythology).  First-time screenwriter Diablo Cody (who's also one of the only reasons to read Entertainment Weekly these days) trowels on the quirkiness to the extent that the first half of the movie, at least, feels a lot like a live-action cartoon. I might have taken more umbrage at the suffocating hip of Juno's own dialogue if it hadn't been so damn funny. It's not just Juno--her family and friends are similarly sarcastically gifted, with only Mark and Vanessa left out (for the most part). The latter's well-to-do suburban uniformity gets run through the satirical wringer with the same daring and originality with which it's been done in other movies over the past thirty or forty years. Fortunately, by the time the movie rolls into the second half, the power of the story and the overall excellence of the acting (I've thought of Bateman and Cera as Michael and George Michael Bluth for so long that their prowess in dramatic scenes is genuinely revelatory) break throught he dialogue and twee soundtrack (it's hard to miss the Wes Anderson vibe in the latter, what with all the mid-60s Kinks and post-Cale Velvet Underground--it really ought to be the other way round, although it goes without saying that Juno beats the pants off Royal Tenenbaums). Page has been hailed for her winning performance, and rightly so, but the real surprise for me was Garner--I was never into Alias, and haven't seen her in much of anything else besides Pearl Harbor, but she was really good in Juno as a character who's very nearly a yuppie caricature. To be sure, it's almost impossible not to like a movie in which two characters argue over whether Herschell Gordon Lewis or Dario Argento was the greater horror director (and the answer is Argento, for fuck's sake)*. Speaking of horror, watch for Ginger Snaps' marvelous Emily Perkins as the abortion clinic receptionist. In the end, Juno's a lot like musician Kimya Dawson, late of the Moldy Peaches, many of whose songs appear in the film. I heard her at the Blind Pig several years ago out of curiosity. The actual music didn't rock my world, to be honest, but the warmth and sincerity of the show itself melted my heart, to the extent that I gave her a huge hug after she hand-stenciled a T-shirt for me (so that I could send it to my aforementioned Juno-reminiscent friend, strangely enough). In the end, that's what I wanted to give Juno--a hug (the final scene really is terribly sweet).

*I noticed, however, that Michael Reeves, Larry Cohen, Pete Walker, and George Romero all went unmentioned.

Until the beginning of this month, I hadn't really written anything in some time; either the brief heartbreak of last November had taken it out of me (you'd think it would be the other way round) or I'd just run out of steam. At February's start, I promised myself to write every day, to at least a couple of thousand words a week. Two recent events have rather renewed my purpose.

The British Horror Films forum, of which I'm a happy and proud member, recently saw the announcement of an "experiment" by our friend Kath, whereby a very haunting picture was posted (I don't have the link, but it showed two desiccated corpses clutching each other tightly against a sickly-sweet yellow backdrop) and members were asked to write stories based on that picture. I hemmed and hawed and said it would probably take a couple of weeks for me to do something, and then I write this that very night in under an hour. The enthusiastic reaction really jazzed me, and it was great, too, to see some other excellent contributions as well. There's a lot of genuine talent on the board, and considering the crap market for short stories (especially horror or "speculative fiction," a term I prefer to "scifi-fantasy"), it's likely the only place we'll ever have to see other people's honest reactions to our work. Bless you guys.

Monday, I went to hear local poet Karyna McGlynn read from her chapbooks Scorpionica and Alabama Steve at Shaman Drum. I've known Karyna for several months now (my friend Adam's her significant other), and had grown increasingly curious about the work she did--she's an M.F.A. at Michigan and teaches at Washtenaw Community College, and apparently won the prestigious Hopwood Award (named for Charles Hopwood, local literary luminary of the early twentieth century and writer of Gold Diggers of 1933, which I inexplicably haven't seen). So when I heard she was going to read at Shaman Drum, I figured I should go hear her. I've made my feelings on most contemporary poetry known already, and was a little alarmed that I'd have to indulge in the well-meaningly mendacious "um, yeah, I thought it was pretty good" shuffle that's a persistent danger whenever you have to read work by people you know (I've certainly been the recipient of such "praise" more times than I care to remember). Fortunately, after the hilariously rococo introduction given by that guy at Shaman Drum who does it so well (I've heard him introduce Peter Balakian, Daniel Clowes, and Kim Deitch, and it's a crackup every time), I found rerlief that such muffling wouldn't be necessary. I heard nothing that started with "I am a gull," nothin'. The poems from Scorpionica were powerfully haunting cinematic pictures from her childhood in Texas that could easily be done into short films, and then we got Alabama Steve, poetry after my own heart. It's hard to describe Alabama Steve--the pieces are a lot like "Rollo's Lament," only better and more coherent, all boisterousuly funny "poetry-prose-flash-fiction-whatever" involving the adventures of a semi-mythical character named Alabama Steve. Apart from the appearance of Journey's Steve Perry and a praying mantis scientist named Alejandro, I can't really say much else, but was charmed beyond words, and reminded that there's really a place for whatever literary lunacy you care to name--including hers, including mine, including everybody's. Thanks, Karyna.

 So if I stop again, I only have myself to blame.

I wonder if it works the other way round?

Rodentz (2001): Also known as Altered Species, but either Ken Russell threatened to sue or the producer thought the "z" added badly-needed street cred. Mopey lab assistant Walter (Allen Lee Haff) works in a supremely sketchy arrangement where Dr. Irwin, stripped of university funding because his research wasn't "PC," experiments with some kind of growth serum on rats in a private facility--on the wrong side of the tracks. It's apparently the weekend, and Walter's charismatically annoying "friends" are tooling around in a van that might have belonged to Michael Kelso on That 70s Show. Alicia, Walter's girlfriend (Leah Rowan), rides with them, struggling to avoid the slimy advances of Gary (with one of the funniest rejection lines I've ever heard) and getting directions wrong after swigging from what looks like a gasoline can filled with tequila. Any question that raises recedes into the background, as they pull into the lab ("it's kind of sexy") and find that all isn't well. Walter's being cartoonishly wishy-washy and both Dr. Irwin and janitor Douglas (whose accent gives the impression that the "Douglases of Virginia" have served proudly as janitors since Jamestown) have been eaten by hungry little rats (as has their very inappropriately named cat). On top of all that, they have to face down a giant rat only marginally more convincing than the one in the 1977 Doctor Who classic "The Talons of Weng-Chiang." I started laughing about ten minutes in and didn't quite stop for the rest of the movie. When I think that our recent movie night featured Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1932 snoozefest Vampyr instead of this... it's good, clean, dumb fun, with irritating characters whose obnoxiousness actually works for the movie instead of against it. My favorite was probably Alicia, both for her cool retro-90s wardrobe and constant "what-ever" facial expression, but others may think differently. If you ever run across it, treat yourself. It's a hoot.

Vampire Weekend: I heard their eponymous CD over the weekend and, once I found that they had an early show in Ann Arbor at the Blind Pig starting at eight, decided I might as well give them a whirl. For those who don't know, these fellas are the latest New York area blogger/music-magazine swoon (with, among other things, a recent writeup in Spin). This probably means they'll follow the same meteoric year-long rise and subsequent disappearance  previously plowed by the Strokes and Franz Ferdinand. It's a pity, as the CD is rather good (of course, I thought the same thing about the Strokes and Franz Ferdinand), with some good beats and melodies helped along by a healthy Afrocentric fusion sound (although one song toward the end--I think it was the one before "Walcott"--sounded a lot like either the Arcade Fire or the disappointing British Sea Power). The fact that it was an early show decided it for me, and so I wound up waiting for an hour in the snow (rendering it impractical to read from the collection of M.R. James short stories I'd brought with me), in the midst of a student-clogged line before learning that they'd sold out. I don't consider it time wasted. I found myself behind one annoying conversation ("Oh, I speak French! Where were you in France?" "[Oh, we summered in] Nimes"--it would have been too funny had the bracketed version been the one I heard, but there was also a debate over sartorial politics featuring Nicolas Sarkozy and Gavin Newsom, and the girls' boots were both attractive and sensible; you don't see that too much anymore) and then turned behind me to find an absolutely hilarious one (for which I thanked those responsible more than once), careening wildly from ruminations on the origin of Kiwanis to plans to smoke up in the Eight-Ball bathroom to thoughts on a friend's upcoming birthday party--"if he wants his birthday party to turn into an orgy, I think that's unrealistic." We also got to watch a sideswipe between two cars at the entrance to the parking lot opposite, and the consequent (and disproportionate, if you ask me) police presence. All that fun and I saved $10. An excellent Tuesday evening, I'd say.

Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew

1/4 peanut oil, 1 chopped onion, 1 red or green bell pepper, 1 fresh jalapeno or serrano pepper, seeded and minced

Heat in pot and cook until vegetables tender (7-10 mins.)

4 cloves minced garlic, 1 packed TB minced fresh ginger

Add and cook for 2-3 mins.

1 TB chili powder, 1 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Add and cook for 1 min.

2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes, 1/3 tomato paste

Add water to cover, and add potatoes and tomato paste. Bring to boil, lower heat, cover, and simmer 45 mins., stirring occasionally.

2 small trimmed and sliced zucchini

Add and cook 15 mins.

1/2 cup peanut butter

Place in small bowl and add 1 cup of stewing liquid. Mix and add to pot. Cook another 15 mins. Serve with grain of choice (rec. rice or couscous).

This was a pleasant surprise. I made this with chocolate-banana tea loaves and a roasted red pepper tart for our movie night (they're only half an excuse for me to cook, really), and I was a little worried about making a peanut stew, but it's delicious--sweet and tangy and with a real heat at the end of the bite. The rice takes some of the sting away. I'll have to remember this one.

Slow day for post titles, although I wanted to acknowledge that the funniest thing Bill Murray's ever done was that "Il Retorno di Hercules" sketch when he came back to host Saturday Night Live in the 80s.

 Sometimes I really, really can't stand this town. I'm pretty sure I always had a good time at Leopold Brothers (with a couple of niggling exceptions), and its departure will be a gaping loss for Ann Arbor. Along with the decent beer, excellent food, and awesome jukebox, owner Todd Leopold, with his stalwart defense of sustainable development and genuine environmentalism --that went beyond a purely cosmetic version for well-to-do "bourgeois bohemians," i.e. "The Ann Arbor Greenway"--was an excellent example of the small-businessman/public citizen, the kind of person of which this town and country need a lot more. His frequent and incisive criticisms of city and state policies on Ann Arbor Is Overrated and Arbor Update demonstrated how hollow notions of progressivism really are in Ann Arbor, as some of the town's more comfortable and complacent commenters seemed to have taken one lesson away from their semi-legendary pasts in "The Sixties" (TM): Never, ever, criticize anything. He was also a Go!Team fan, which is awesome.

Eric Alterman has a great take on an old foolishness. For the record, I'm proud to be one myself.

In related news, Charlie Pierce really needs his own blog. It's rare you can get that kind of polemicism mixed with dead-on analysis, and now's a better time for it than ever.

Atonement (2007): As Bill the Cat might say, "thhhhpppppthhhh!" What a silly bastard of a movie. I'd simply describe it as a "load," but mitigating factors prevent me. I'd heard wildly conflicting reviews of this one from a far-flung variety of sources and figured it was essential that I try it out for myself. What emerges, despite being based on a recent Booker Prize-winning novel by Ian McEwan (I've never read his stuff, and maybe it is that silly in real life)* is basically an unconscious stiff-upper-lip parody of people acting very, very stupidly, with heavy-handed attempts to make it more "adult" and "modern." It's sad, really, as there's a good story in there, and most of the performances, though intially of the same parodistic water, start to grow on you.  In 1935 England, sisters Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Briony (Saoirse Ronan, and how cool a name is that?) Tallis live an upper-class life on an (I suspect) improbably beautiful estate with Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) as their friend and gardener with a convoluted and similarly improbable past of his own. Though all three are friends to varying degrees, an almost random and explosive act of injustice tears them apart. It involves the word "cunt," and the way in which that particular aspect of the plot was handled reminded me of a godawful U-M Basement Arts production that I'd seen, in which college kids, given the chance to put on a play free of parental or school supervision, loaded down the show with cussing and sniggering references to sex. A prerogative of college kids, but not of Oscar bait. I saw what director Joe Wright was trying to do, but it didn't work. Robbie goes to prison, to be released four years later for the BEF so he can wait with everyone else at Dunkirk. The characters relate to each other in drastically changed circumstances during the war years (Briony now played by Romola Garai), until the scene shifts close to the present day, with an elderly Briony (Vanesa Redgrave) reflecting on the tragedy of her younger years and the pitfalls that ignorance of desire can represent. It all looks fine on paper, but... every attempt to gussy the story up with snazzy camera angles, shooting in reverse, relatively explicit sex scenes, and schoolboy-obvious visual and audo cues actually makes it more stodgy and "Ehngwish" (I don't know if there's an existing equivalent for "Oirish," the kind of thing you get in, say, The Quiet Man--which was, let us remember, good--but if not, I'm making one up). The musical phrasing is particularly annoying. When Robbie writes a passionate love note to Cecilia at the beginning of the movie, of course he's listening to La Boheme, and when Briony, now a nurse, sits up with a mortally wounded French soldier from Dunkirk who goes on about this girl he knew who used to play Debussy, of course Clair de Lune starts to play as she leaves him. What's unfortunate about this is that there's good in the movie, but none of it comes together. It was like Brokeback Mountain, only worse. If you want a good story about Dunkirk, grab the Foyle's War episode "The White Feather" (Rome's Tobias Menzies, who's in Atonement for about thirty seconds, is fantastic in it). It actually had me silently giggling in places, to the doubtlessly disapproving stares of my neighbors (who can bite me, by the way, especially the guy who left his cell phione on during the show). McAvoy and Knightley, though their accents are tewwibwy, tewwibwy pwoper in a nails-on-the-chalkboard way, get much better as the movie goes along (and as I think both are excellent actors anyway, I blame the movie), especially in an argument scene with nurse Briony. The best thing about the movie, though, is Ronan. Foreign movies seem to have had an unusual run of luck over the past few years with child actors (I think especially of Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider and Ivana Baquero in Pan's Labyrinth), and Ronan holds what she can of the movie together in a way that speaks well of her future career. And her name really is pretty cool. As for Joe Wright, I charitably hope his artistic fortunes improve, as 2005's Pride and Prejudice, though not a patch on the 1996 BBC classic, wasn't all that bad (Brenda Blethyn, who plays Robbie's mother in Atonement, brings a pathos to Mrs. Bennet that Alison Steadman never evinced in the TV version, and Jena Malone and Carey Mulligan just need their own damn movie). If this wins the Best Picture Oscar, it'll be grand folly of Braveheart-Forrest Gump-Driving Miss Daisy proportions.

Cloverfield (2008): Okay, that's more like it. Great; I had to go and fall in love with Lizzy Caplan again. I was thoroughly prepared to laugh my ass off throughout this movie at its ridiculousness, but found myself taken aback at how good it was. Even the occasional bit of cheesiness ends up with some pertinence to other themes. Producer J.J. Abrams and director Matt Reeves set up a Godzilla-like monster attacking Manhattan and show the efforts of a doughty band of survivors trying to make it out of the beleaguered borough before either the monster or defending government do for them. Mild spoilers ahead!! The movie's an odd hybrid; filmed much in the style of The Blair Witch Project (all on someone's home video), the first ten minutes or so actually comprise a very funny short about a going-away party at a painfully hip downtown crib thrown for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who's just got some sweet new job in Japan but who has very mixed feelings about leaving his recent ex-girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman). Rob's mildly sketchy brother Jason slacks off his camcorder duties--assigned by his severely gorgeous girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas)--and cons the bumbling Hud (T.J. Miller) to do the job, if the latter can find time to do so while incompetently flirting (mind you, is there really any other kind?) with the devastatingly beautiful and very cool Marlena (Lizzy Caplan--oh, Lizzy Caplan). Rob and Beth get into a fight, and he, Jason and Hud end up out on the landing, threatening to begin one of those vaguely "you're so money" post-nineties guy conversations for which Swingers has yet to pay (although Jason did, so that's something, anyway). Thankfully, right at the most excruciating moment (literally), all hell breaks loose. Fleeing with the rest of Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge, Rob discovers via cell that Beth is still in her apartment and badly hurt--Rob and gang to the rescue! The "princessy" stench Beth gave off earlier in the evening lends Cloverfield a faint fairytale vibe. I found very little wrong with this movie. The first ten minutes were painfully familiar; I could easily imagine the scenario playing out in Michigan (Madisonfest, Arbourfest, Mittenfest, take your pick). What happens afterward is genuinely affecting; the characters could have been such easily despicable hipster fucks (which still would have been great fun; it could have been Cry Funny Happy Meets Ghidrah--or Monster Zero, depending on which planet you're from), but I found them truly empathetic, although Hud could be a little too cartoonishly bumbling. I thought Marlena was the most memorable, but then I'm obviously prejudiced (besottedness aside, she did have some very funny and moving scenes). Caring for characters, of course, is a lot harder to do when your real "star" is the ingenious CGI horror ripping the city apart. I never thought I'd say this, but I think people are starting to get good at CGI. It helps that not much of the monster is ever shown; the only real long shots are usually through explosions, dust, and murk. While I understand that a number of theories have been floated regarding the monster's actual nature, I was reminded most, of all things, of those weird horse-like creatures Jen and Kira rode to get to the tower in The Dark Crystal. Sadly, for various reasons, I doubt we'll be seeing a series of increasingly ridiculous and pointless--yet funny--movies featuring constant attacks on New York with people pointing up at the sky en masse and screaming "It's Cloverfield!!!" with their mouths not exactly matching the words. While I seriously doubt this'll be up for Best Picture anytime soon (despite its overwhelming superiority to one of this year's choices), I expect its ending to prove as relatively controversial as the ones for No Country For Old Men and There Will be Blood. A very pleasant surprise, and a great way to get Atonement out of my system.

*Why the hell doesn't someone try and film Wise Children? Mind you, when it comes to Angela Carter adaptations, The Company of Wolves was rather uneven. And given the frequent fate of many literary transfers (with the glittering exceptions of No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood), maybe it's best that they don't.

This is generally the time of year when I get really depressed. Even when I lived at the old house on Spring Street, with its unbeatable pre-dawn vistas of the downtown lights high enough to avoid the figurative hurled tomatoes of Old West Side nimbys, I couldn't escape the grey, dismal stranglehold of the snow and the sludge, holding me in and fastening me tight. The early winter entries in my journal (which, after I met my current friends and started blogging, pretty much dwindled to nothing--and we can all be grateful, believe me) are a sorry cavalcade of maudlin self-pity and high-school-level paeans to some form of self-destruction. I don't feel that this year. Maybe I've grown, or maybe I've decided nothing much matters in the very long run and that there's not much point in worrying about it. I'm not going to complain, either way (well, about that, at any rate).

I have the hiccups for what must be the first time in five years. My boss--"Fluffy"--is no longer so (in charge of me, that is; she still screams "fluffy"), and that pleases me. Trust me, it's no fun facing the condescension of someone who has to ask you which month boasts Cinco de Mayo (or whose colonial rule the thirteen colonies rebelled against).

 "Super Tuesday" is a few days away, so I guess I should say something. I've mentioned several times before that I rarely discuss politics--"as such"--here, mainly because it's done so much better jillions of other places on the web. I should probably make an exception now, though. For some time, I'd been teetering between supporting Edwards or Obama before settling on the latter. I feared that Edwards had too much of the "2004 loser" baggage to be terribly viable, and figured we needed a transformational figure of Obama's caliber to get anywhere near fixing this country after the all-out wreckage of the last eight years. He certainly seems to have the most appeal towards independents, and at this point, I call myself a moderate Obama supporter. That said, though, I wish Edwards had stayed in the race longer. I thought his concession speech was pure class, but believed another month or so might have pushed the debate leftward (where it needs to be). From what I can tell, that's actually happened--on a rhetorical level, anyway. Whether Obama or--especially--Clinton will actually move to fix the country's (and world's) central economic problem of staggering income inequaliy remains to be seen. My own involvement with the election, along with that of most other Michigan Democrats, has been a little bizarre. The state party's foolhardy decision to move the primary date ahead to mid-January saw Michigan stripped of delegates to the national convention, making our election meaningless (that's what we were told, anyway). Now I'm not entirely without sympathy for the Michigan Democratic Party. The primary system, like the electoral college, grows less and less justifiable every year, and while I don't think it should necessarily be abolished, I think it (like the electoral college) could stand to have its purpose challenged in a major way. The middle of an election cycle is not the time to do it. We had a putative choice between Clinton (who pledged not to campaign in Michigan but whose name somehow remained on the ballot), "uncommitted"  (basically Obama or Edwards), Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Chris Dodd (the latter dropped out the day of the primary). The people responsible for this cockup (including members of the hugely problematic Dingell dynasty and, I'm sorry to say, Senator Carl Levin) said our votes might still count even if we voted "uncommitted", but, shockingly enough, I didn't trust them. I voted for Kucinich. I find his platform inspiring if hugely impractical, had a sneaking admiration for him when I lived in Akron (his district's in Cleveland), figured I'd never have another chance to vote for him, and got a kick out of imagining his raisiny little face lighting up at the prospect of another vote.* Most of all, though, I figured more people voting for Kucinich might send a nice consequence-free scold to both the state party (for the tantrum) and the national party (for causing the tantrum). Tantrums all round, then. My already tepid regard for Clinton has declined considerably over the past few months, both for her hypocritically using Bill as an attack dog and for her belated push to have Michigan and Florida votes counted when it comes time to tot them up at the convention. Like many Democrats who didn't support Hillary, I was still pleased to see her win in New Hampshire mainly because the mainstream media was so obviously rooting for her to fail (the point man in this pathetic exercise being MSNBC's grotesque, egregious Chris Matthews). Still, having the right enemies isn't enough anymore. Obviously anyone would be better than Bush or any of the Republican candidates (although I have to admit a reluctant amount of respect for Huckabee--it's nice to see a "pro-life" figure who actually seems to care about what happens to unwanted children after they're born), but surely we can do better than that at this point, right?

*I realize the last part exposes my own considerable superficiality, but then again, the guy's a successful, greatly-beloved-in-certain-quarters public figure with a smart, loving, and attractive partner. Go figure.

There Will Be Blood (2007): I liked Boogie Nights. I didn't like Magnolia to the extent that I had no interest in seeing Paul Anderson's next, Punch-Drunk Love. As for There Will Be Blood, I'd actually read the novel on which it's based, Upton Sinclair's Oil! (1927)--a lively account of one man's rise in the California oil industry of the early twentieth century. As the novel was so good, I was more than a little curious to see how There Will Be Blood turned out, and I now forgive Paul Thomas Anderson for Magnolia. Good Lord. Daniel Plainview (Daniel  Day-Lewis), a geological surveyor turned oil prospector, strikes it rich as an oilman in 1902 and develops a burning need to expand his empire among various southern Califnroia homesteaders. One such, nascent preacher Eli Sunday (the marvelously creepy Paul Dano), sees Plainview's greed as a means to jumpstart his own evangelical domain, and Plainview finds himself confronted with an unexpectedly growing family, namely his adopted son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) and his long-lost half-brother Henry (Kevin J. O'Connor). Various streams of greed and rapacity flow together to create a hypnotically compelling drama that actually seems short at two and a half hours (as long running times are a particular pet peeve of mine, that's saying something). I was riveted throughout, thanks to the performances, the photography, and especially the music (mixing Brahms' stirring, outdoorsy Violin Concerto with austerely menacing chamber-pop courtesy of Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood), one of the most memorable scores I've heard this decade. It reminded me, of all things, of Visconti's The Leopard (1963), in that it seems like a prefect match of style and substance. The loveliness of the southern California landscape (much of the oil well scenes, apparently, were filmed in Texas) provides the perfect backdrop to the elemental struggles that, despite the possible present-day meanings (e.g. the conflict between evangelicals and big business in modern American conservatism, the dangers to American and world society inherent in the oil industry), remain at the film's center--greed and a debilitating obsession with family. Day-Lewis is mesmerizing as he starts to doubt the loyalty of his own "kin" (they aren't sufficiently "part of him") and amasses wealth and property for no apparent good reason. He's a "hero" who proves the bankruptcy of his own grandeur--by film's end, he's rich and powerful, but doesn't seem to have much to show for it. It's all hollow majesty. The whole thing's unforgettably conveyed in the most memorable scene: an oil derrick suffers a gas explosion and burns in the night, watched by Plainview, who resembles nothing less than an overgrown Nibelung, oil-stained and bathed in the fiery glow from the flameburst in the middle of a dire California night. Another plus that struck me is how the "historical" aspect was softpedaled. Lesser directors would have tried to "immerse" the audience in the 1910s (when the bulk of the movie takes place) with spoiling dollops of period detail, but that doesn't happen a whole lot here--for instance, Plainview and H.W. share a meal in a restaurant that, were it not for the clothes, could easily exist today, with all interior shots and no constant takes of masses of extras in period clothes swaming about outside with Model Ts buzzing back and forth. It's good to see the viewer trusted to remember that the movie technically takes place in the past. The movie's visual austerity lends it strength. I haven't decided yet whether the wobbly climax can be counted an instance of directorial indulgence or not, but the rest of the movie's so damn good that I may decide not. Magnificent, and the best movie of 2007 (like I've seen that many).

Juggernaut (1974): One of my favorite directors, Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, The Knack and How To Get It, How I Won The War, The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, Robin and Marian, etc.) takes on the 70s disaster movie. Time Out has a fantastic review that first got me interested in seeing the thing, and I really enjoyed the shit out of it. The ocean liner Britannic sets sail from Britain to the U.S. with a genuinely empathic gaggle of people on board: the world-weary captain (Omar Sharif), a relentlessly upbeat recreation officer (Roy Kinnear), a plucky mid-Atlantic divorcee and adulteress (Shirley Knight), a steward of Pakistani derivation with amusingly (and intentionally) shifting accents (Roshan Seth, in one of his earliest roles), an American mayor (Clifton James, best known as "Sgt. Pepper" in the first two Roger Moore Bond movies but also a respected character actor and frequent player in John Sayles flicks like Eight Men Out and Lone Star, a harassed mother of two (Caroline Mortimer), and sundry others, even Gareth "Blake" Thomas as a truculent Liverpudlian mechanic. This ain't the Pacific Princess. The weather's all dingy and grimy and things constantly go wrong in that great early-seventies-British way that I can't get enough of--among other things, the gyros won't work, ensuring that the ship rolls back and forth, causing mass seasickness. As if that weren't enough, Porter, a shipping company executive (the inhumanly ubiquitous Ian Holm), gets a call from a shadowy character named "Juggernaut," who's unsportingly placed seven bombs aboard ship, their defusing dependent on his being paid half a million pounds. A (probably inebriated) bomb squad gets called in, led by Fallon (Richard Harris) and Braddock (David Hemmings)--I make the first observation not as a mockery of the late stars' well-known offscreen lifestyle; it's implied that these guys seriously knock it back. Parachuted near the ship, most of them make it in, and from then on it's a battle of wits in order to defuse the bombs (joined by Anthony Hopkins as a detective trying to find the bomber before they explode) and confound the mysterious Juggernaut. I loved pretty much every minute. Having seen a few disaster movies in my time, I was carried away by the unusual directorial vision. Lester obviously cares about his characters enough not to turn them into caricatures or saints, and the effect is marvelous. The witty script at times seems like it's packed full of bitchy zingers, and the action really makes one wonder who'll survive. As for the acting, I really think some of these people give career-highlight performances.  Sharif never head a terribly iconic or convincing role after Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago (not to say he wasn't good in anything--check him out in the mid-80s NBC miniseries Peter the Great or 1967's offbeat Wehrmacht murder mystery--!!!--Night of the Generals), and he's excellent as the man who has to share his ship and career with a mad bomber, a bomb squad, and 1,200 easily-irritated passengers. Kinnear's Kinnear, but his role has a little more depth to it than in stuff like Help!, the Musketeers movies, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Knight has some particularly good moments, and I should probably see more of her work--she apparently plays someone on Desperate Housewives these days. The supporting cast on land is just as good and really kind of spoils the viewer (among them Cyril Cusack, Ken Colley, Freddie Jones, and Julian Glover), but the big story here is Harris. The man's obviously a terrific actor, but I can't think of any one else of his caliber (even Michael Caine) who's made so many god-awful flicks (Orca, Tarzan the Ape Man, etc.). I even liked Michael Gambon better as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies. In Juggernaut, his heroic yet mildly alcoholic and probably self-loathing Fallon manages to barely carry the movie (his performance makes the film's climax that much more nailbiting), and with that cast, it's really saying something.

Fluffy is leaving the cafe. There have been many, many times over the past four years when I've fantasized just such a scenario, although they usually involved her deciding to chuck in the whole thing and go run a salsa camp or the federal chintz lobby. Her reasons were murky, but any will do, really (I believe she'll be joining the "distribution" side of the "industry," like Sysco or Van Eerden). I might have had mixed feelings about it at one point (I do have mixed feelings about outlasting her). She taught me a fair amount of what I now know about cooking and seemed a good boss at first, but too, too many days of being treated like I was in preschool have really leached away the sympathy, as had her increasing shiftiness and forgotten promises vis-a-vis the staff. We've known about this for a month or so, but were sworn to semi-secrecy due to the effect the revelation might have on business. I wondered about this, whether she thought the offices of downtown Ann Arbor would be swept by a rash of suicides at the possible interruption of pastry sales, but respected (for the most part) her wishes. Now that it's really happening, I feel slightly giddy.

I still don't plan to stay there very much longer, but my own departure will, I hope, have little to do with the actual work environment. I was afraid my work would keep getting more and more miserable (my best friend there was dropped from the schedule and now no longer works there, a common weasel tactic among modern bosses to avoid unemployment paperwork after firing their workers) until Fluffy would decide to try and get rid of me (a similar situation, I suspect, led to my axing a decade ago at Barnes and Noble in Baton Rouge). I wanted to quit first, and still might, but this takes a lot of potentially unpleasant pressure off me. Our new manager seems a pleasant enough fellow (while he apparently had a lot to do with my friend's "leaving," I suspect Fluffy was rather more to blame) and his administrative style has already been rather encouraging (although (a)there's nowhere to go but up and (b) there have been an inevitable number of minor cockups, the blame for many of which can belaid at the door of the cutesy hipster-magnet coffeeshop down the street which we sell quiches and sandwiches), so at this point I'm cautiously optimistic. I still need to switch jobs at some point this year, but at least I might be able to leave on a high note now.

The Vulture's Eye (2004): "You godless cocksuckers!" This makes two ill-conceived Dracula knockoffs made for a shoestring budget on live-action video that I've seen in the past year. I tried to make it through The Vulture's Eye once, failed, and then steeled myself and tried again. It's ridiculous, but it's an improvement in some ways on Die Hard Dracula. It's still awful, though, so I should probably concentrate on that aspect of the prodcuction. The basic plot of Dracula gets airlifted to modern-day Purcellville, Virginia (right in Loudoun County up near the Shenandoah--one of my favorite professors was from that neck of the woods), with most of the characters retaining their names, except for Jonathan Harker, who's now Quincy Morris; Transylvania, which is now Sierra Leone; and Dracula, who's now "Count Klaus Vogel." Mina's still British, for some reason, and Van Helsing dresses like Colonel Sanders and slobbers all over dinner tables. Renfield's married, presentable, and doesn't like people talking shit about the Pope (or, as he calls him, "His Holiness"). Why? you ask. It's okay; I don't really care, either. Count Vogel insinuates himself into the lives of what appear to be the faded Tidewater gentry (particularly in a hilariously overripe dinner party scene), unless his prey can unite to stop him, etc. etc. The dialogue is wretched (see above), there's a terribly weird treatment of Catholics and Catholicism, and an avalanche of pointless slo-mo "artsy" shots (although some of the editing towards the end does get rather decent, and the countryside's awful purty). The acting isn't quite as bad as I'd feared but still highly variable. The guy who plays Jack is an especial hoot in this regard. Speaking like he's presenting an ESL video in one scene while talking about Van Helsing, he has little trouble getting terribly animated later at the dinner party when he's supposed to be drunk, a sea-change in his vivacity that led me to believe he'd actually been drinking. The best part of the movie is probably Brooke Paller--sort of a zaftig Melisa Gilbert--as Lucy Westenra, who comes close at times to being truly affecting (maybe it was the fact that she was the only remotely interesting character). One area--the only area--in which I think The Vulture's Eye is actually laudable is the whole body image thing; good for them to cast an actress who isn't thin as a rail in the "sexy" part. There's one genuinely funny joke. There are also some really nasty mixes of sex and gore, with breasts covered in blood and similar shots. They don't belong to the actresses, though--I stuck through the end credits and was privileged to learn that they were in all likelihood the property of "The Butt-a-lator" (I've forgotten her name; wouldn't you?) and "Sister Helen Margarette." I never thought it would be necessary to advertise anything "as "better than Die Hard Dracula," but it looks like that day has finally come. Huzza.

The movie on the other side of the disk (it's one of those), Vampire Stakes, has a scene where someone says "let's go kick some vampire butt." Why don't people try? Why don't they fucking try???

 Wild Caribbean Black Bean Chili

4 cups dried black beans

Pick over and rinse; combine beans in large pot with water to cover by two inches. Bring to boil and reduce heat to low. Simmer , partially covered, until almost tender, about 1 hour.

1/4 cup vegetable oil, 4 medium onions, finely diced

Heat oil in same large pot over medium heat (having removed beans) until hot. Add onions and cook, stirring occassionally, until just starting to urn brown (8-10 mins.).

1/4 cup minced garlic, 1-2 tbsp minced habanero peppers or 6-8 minced jalapeno peppers

Cook, stirring, for 1 min.

1/4 cup chili powder, 1/4 cup cumin, 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, 2 tsp pepper, 3 tsp orange zest, 1 1/2 cups orange juice, 2 tsp grated lime zest, 3/4 cup fresh lime juice, 28 oz. crushed tomatoes, 6 cups water

Add, stir together well, and bring to simmer. Stir in reserved black beans, return to simmer, and cover, reducing the heat to low. Cook, partially covered, add more water as needed, until beans are al dente (1 1/2-2 hrs.). Suggested garnishes: sour cream and cilantro.

I had some friends over this weekend to watch movies for the first time ever (and I've been living there over three years), so I was terribly excited. Too excited, as it turned out, to remember to eat, but not too excited to screw up the recipe. I thought it turned out pretty good. I had to make a few adjustments--I couldn't find any habaneros (apparently the hottest chili known) but didn't want to use jalapenos (too boring) and so compromised with serranos, using about 4 of those. Instead of crushed tomatoes, I chopped up some fresh ones and pureed them, and I decided to add 1 tbsp of cilantro to the whole thing.

 I also made some catfish jambalaya, which turned out more like catfish risotto but was still delicious. Though briefly tempted to watch The Vulture's Eye (other people, not me), we instead watched this, which, as always, was awesome.

A new year and my blog's a desert. It's not that nothing's been going on, but I haven't really been impelled to write anything. Suffice it to say, one could do a lot worse than to watch James Whale's scary, sexy, funny old-dark-house masterpiece The Old Dark House (1932), Ken Loach's right-on revisionist take of the Irish War of 1918-23 (which I aways saw as a combined war of independence and civil war), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006; the DVD has a terrific documentary on Loach's work, much of which I love, such as 1991's Riff Raff, 1993's Raining Stones, and 1996's Land and Freedom), and Richard Lester's forgotten, actually-genuinely-good disaster-movie classic Juggernaut (1974). Maybe I'll elaborate one day.

I also still love Charlie Pierce (although if anyone listens to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, his laugh can be seriously annoying).