There are fewer members of the Washington establishment that I detest more than Richard “Dickface” Cohen. I noticed yesterday evening that he’s finally soured on his hero John McCain, but I’m willing to predict that within a few weeks he’ll have decided that McCain has somehow regained his honor, and that Obama has committed some unforgivable transgression of campaigning, and at this point Cohen will happily resume shilling for the Arizona senator. Cohen is as much of a turncoat liberal as Joe Lieberman, and soon enough he’ll return, tail between his legs, to genuflect at the altar of power.

One of the most sickening episodes during the Bush administration, one that betrayed so many members of the Washington press as nothing more than sycophantic lapdogs for the establishment power structure, was the conviction of Scooter Libby and the commutation of his sentence by President Bush. Among the litany of abuses of the basic principles of both democracy and constitutional government, this was the one example that stood out to me as an unmistakable signal that our system of representational government, as articulated in the Constitution, was in dire jeopardy.

I’ve seen a number of lists of questions that the press should theoretically be asking Sarah Palin, if they ever get a chance to query her outside of a very strictly controlled setting (such as Charles Gibson’s interview, which was surprisingly adversarial). But I’ve got one question that’s been bugging me that I’d really like to see someone ask John McCain: “Did you think it was appropriate for the President to commute the sentence of convicted perjurer Scooter Libby, and would you have done the same thing?”

The Film: The Bourne Ultimatum

The Song: “Extreme Ways”

The Artist: Moby

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In Mike Judge’s 1999 comedy Office Space, its protagonist Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is described by the downsizing consultants as a “straight shooter with upper management written all over him.” It’s a gross misjudgment on the part of the consultants, as Peter’s casual demeanor charmed them much the way that George W. Bush was able to charm almost half the voters of the United States of America the following year. Peter’s boss, the endlessly imitated Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole), is a lousy manager himself, but he’s driven by enough of a sense of self-preservation to disagree with them, explaining that Peter isn’t the caliber of person they want in upper management, and that “he’s also been having some problems with his TPS reports.”

Satire is Mike Judge’s strongest suit, and the disintegration of American society into various facets of stupidity is a topic he confronted more broadly in his following film, Idiocracy (2006). But the focus in Office Space was much sharper, where work life in general was the target, but the workplace managers came under the heaviest fire. Playing a cameo as the manager of Chotchkie’s, Mike Judge himself is willing to step in as the target of ridicule, repeatedly castigating Peter’s girlfriend Joanna (Jennifer Aniston) for her insistence on wearing the minimum number of pieces of flair. It’s meaningless minutiae such as this that are clearly a source of such exasperation for Judge; cover sheets on TPS reports and pieces of flair are not important to how a business functions, and are a waste of time for management to concern themselves with.

The Film: Office Space

The Song: “Shove this Jay-Oh-Bee”

The Artist: Canibus (feat. Biz Markie)

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One of of the most overlooked films of 2006 (a terrible, terrible year for movies; with redemption only brought by the likes of The Departed, Borat, and Casino Royale) was the noir high school murder mystery Brick. The independently produced film took a story and characters that would normally belong in a Dashiell Hammett novel and deposited them in the setting of an Orange County high school. The movie features the familiar face of Joseph Gordon-Levitt filling the role of the hard-boiled detective unraveling the conspiracy that resulted in the murder of his dame, and he inhabits the role so brilliantly that his performance instantly erased all of the ill will I’d harbored towards him for all those years he spent on Third Rock from the Sun.

While occasional films will address the tense high-school relationships between children and their parents or other authority figures (Rebel Without a Cause, The Breakfast Club, Dead Poets Society) most teen films conveniently relegate adult characters to the periphery, only letting them occasionally affect the events of the film. A variety of techniques can be used to ensure that adults stay out of the picture; they can be on vacation (Risky Business), absent (Napoleon Dynamite), dead (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*), or simply invisible (Lucas). In Brick, the only adult figure (aside from a brief glimpse of the Pin’s mom) who becomes involved in the narrative in any way is the Assistant Vice Principal Gary Trueman (Richard Roundtree). And even AVP Trueman doesn’t really affect how the story plays out; he inhabits the hard-boiled detective novel equivalent of the local police chief who reluctantly agrees to allow the private detective the freedom of movement he needs to solve his case. And despite a number of scenes taking place during the school day, the high school campus is virtually deserted.** It’s these aspects of Brick that are the most challenging to an audience in terms of willingly suspending their disbelief.

The Film: Brick

The Song: “Sister Ray”

The Artist: The Velvet Underground

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With another potential Hollywood strike looming (the SAG contract has expired and the actors have yet to reach acceptable terms with the studios), it’s possible that reality television will see a revival in the coming year. Personally, I think that reality television has run its course, and we’ll see fewer and fewer non-scripted dramas appearing on network television. And honestly, it couldn’t make me happier.

I remember enjoying the first season of The Real World, which took place in New York City while I was still in high school. I found most of the contestants sympathetic enough, but I think that (aside from the background soundtrack, which was phenomenal) the genuine appeal in the show lay in the fact that their lives in the city were so vastly different from my mundane suburban existence. As I grew older, and my own life experiences became more similar to those of the contestants on the show, it began to be less and less interesting to me. It seemed like a waste of time to watch other people engage in relatively ordinary activities, like rollerblading around Miami, when I could just as easily get stoned and rollerblade around Claremont myself.

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When I was living in Johannesburg, I spent about four months dating a woman who worked as a professional editor for film and television commercials. She put together a video of surfing clips for me to help me promote “Groundswell,” and while I was thrilled with what she did, I never had a full appreciation of just how much work video editing is until I tried my own hand at the task. As you might have seen three weeks ago, my own project was ridiculously simple. It consisted of a single image, a few simple fades, a sequence of white text scrolling over a black background, and a single splice of video pilfered from the end of a movie to include the final few logos that are standard issue for every credit reel. Getting these few things done kept me up until 4 AM during one evening and 2 AM on another.

I think editing is, from the audience’s perspective, the most underrated aspect of filmmaking. A film cannot be great without great editing. Lousy editing can ruin what would otherwise be a great film. And while clever editing will never be enough to save 90 minutes’ worth of crummy material, if you’re willing to claim that you’ve never in your lifetime been hoodwinked into seeing an awful movie simply on the strength of a well-edited preview, then I’m willing to call you a liar.

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It’s the end of the road for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. A few signs lately have pointed towards Hillary finally packing it in, and after Barack Obama sweeps up enough of the black vote in the urban strongholds of Montana and South Dakota today to claim victory in these final two primary states, it’s likely that Clinton’s campaign will offer a formal concession. Hillary’s last-ditch effort to convince the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to seat Michigan and Florida’s entire slates of delegates with full voting status (and award all of said delegates to her) failed, and her pitch to undecided superdelegates over the last month has mostly been falling on deaf ears. By the end, her surrogates’ statements about the which states “mattered” and specific, irrelevant ways the popular vote could be tallied to produce a slim lead for Hillary were beginning to insult everyone’s intelligence.

The nomination is decided by delegates. In the primary process, the total popular vote is no more critical to the outcome of the contest than passing yardage is to the outcome of a football game. Having Hillary attract superdelegates based on an absurdly subjective interpretation of which votes to count would be like seeing Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy persuade the NFL that his team should represent their conference in the Superbowl because, even though his team had a lower number of points than the Giants in the NFC championship game, they forced more fumbles and had a higher field goal kicking percentage and would be a stronger matchup against the Patriots.

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In the final few moments of Tony Scott’s True Romance (1993) Alabama, accompanied by an injured Clarence, drives past a sign that reads “Last U.S. Exit, Mexican Border 5 miles.” It’s at this very moment that the music shifts from the ominous strains that accompanied the chaotic final shootout in the Beverly Ambassador, to the light and playful leitmotif that has been present throughout the rest of the film. The film’s score was written by Hans Zimmer and the familiar theme was drawn from an original composition by Carl Orff, who was most famous for composing another film score favorite, the Carmina Burana.

Once Clarence and Alabama have reached their final destination a sandy beach in Baja, the end credits roll, accompanied by Chris Isaak’s “Two Hearts” from his 1993 album San Francisco Days. It’s a song that’s reminiscent of the works of Elvis Presley, who serves as an imaginary mentor for Clarence during his criminal escapades. For the longest time I thought that it was Elvis Presley himself singing “Two Hearts,” and once I learned otherwise, I still continued to assume that it had originally been recorded by the King until just moments ago.

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Playing a disabled or mentally ill character seems like it would be one of the most demanding roles for an actor to portray. It’s probably just as tough for an actress, although few films seem to be centered around handicapped women. It also seems to be something of an initiation rite – although it’s not universal , a large number of the finest actors, particularly in more recent years, have distinguished themselves by portraying characters that are either on the lower end of the intelligence scale, or suffering from a psychiatric disorder that makes coping with the surrounding world into a daily ordeal. In the final few moments of Billy Bob Thornton’s breakthrough performance as both an actor and a director in Sling Blade (1996), a fellow inmate in the mental institution he’s returned to asks him, “What it was like out there, in the world?” Thornton’s character Karl responds with the memorably simple pronouncement, “It was too big.”

The Film: Sling Blade

The Song: “The Maker”

The Artist: Daniel Lanois

Although the immense praise Billy Bob Thornton received for his performance as Karl Childers was well-deserved, it’s actually hard to pin down what handicap or illness Karl suffers from. When he is interviewed by a student reporter at the beginning of the film, the elaborate preparations and preconditions suggest that he suffers from autism and won’t react well to a deviation from routine. His tendency to rub his hands together suggests stereotypy, another common autistic trait. And Karl’s savant-like talent for fixing small engines coupled with his rudimentary social skills add even further to this impression.

However, Karl complacent acceptance of his imminent departure from the mental institution and his ability to adapt to new situations seem to refute this. Furthermore, the instantaneous empathy that Karl begins to show for his newfound friend Frank Wheatley is very uncharacteristic of autistics. Karl’s grasp of the implications of Doyle’s return to the household suggest that he can conceptualize complicated situations, and although Karl’s solution to the problem is very straightforward and simple, it’s a course of action that he contemplates thoroughly before following it through. In both writing and portraying Karl, Billy Bob Thornton managed to create a character that either suffers from a very unique disability or illness, or otherwise suffers from no disability at all other than a need to process information very slowly and a certain lack of initiative. (more…)

When The Breakfast Club begins, we’re presented with the five characters as easily defined stereotypes – “a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.” In the film’s closing moments, against the backdrop of the Simple Minds classic “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” Anthony Michael Hall iterates the fundamental message of the film – that although it is much simpler to perceive the characters as members of discrete categories, it’s just plain wrong, and it’s an insult to each of them to do so. The members of the Breakfast Club don’t believe that Principal Vernon’s assessment of any of them is going to change in the slightest beyond the stereotypes he has already assigned them to, and therefore feel there is no point in attempting to explain themselves to him. It would all go in one ear and out the other.

The Film: The Breakfast Club

The Song: “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”

The Artist: Simple Minds

Ever since this endless presidential race began – and let’s be honest, the Democratic primary has effectively been underway since Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 convention and the Republican primary hasn’t been much shorter – the traditional media has been struggling to characterize the candidates in terms of their high school equivalents. Anyone who has actually been to their high school reunion has a pretty good idea that people change a great deal in college and thereafter. Relying on a perception of a candidate’s stereotypical high school persona to make judgments about their current character and competence is an activity you might expect from someone who needs a bib to eat, has mittens pinned to their jackets, and isn’t allowed to play with matches, but certainly not from a professional journalist. (more…)

Like many suburban teenagers, I was first introduced to world of ska by the plaid-clad, Boston-based, masters of merchandising the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. It was the first time I ever became part of a subculture, and even then it was only in a limited sense. I went to just about every show that I found out about, but I never started dressing like a mod or riding a scooter (an image so brilliant realized by Phil Daniels in Quadrophenia), and while I dreamily entertained the idea of starting my own band called “Boss Tweed,” I was never part of the scene as anything more than just another kid in the crowd.

But I learned the history as well as anyone literate enough to read the FAQs hosted at the Usenet group alt.music.ska, and it dawned on me pretty quickly that the Bosstones weren’t a pure ska band – they were “ska-core” and happily described themselves as such on their EP album Ska-core, the Devil, and More (1993). I was surprised to learn that ska originally emerged from Jamaica in the sixties, and was actually a predecessor to reggae. The genre went through three distinct generations, and the music I was swinging my elbows to was actually part of the third wave.

Even though I was never fully immersed in the ska scene, it never failed to infuriate me to see the media get hopelessly confused over what ska actually was. Bands were often described as “ska” simply because they included a brass instrument or two, or followed ska’s distinctive musical structure of emphasizing the “up” phase of a beat. Bands like Goldfinger (pop/punk) and Sublime (reggae/dub) were haphazardly thrown into the category without recognizing that all true ska bands a) had horn players and b) consisted of at least five people, and usually more. I remember flaming the hell out of Christopher John Farley when he wrote up a brief article on ska for Time, and actually getting a direct response. But nothing upon nothing fueled my ninety-pound keyboard commando rages more than hearing the Southern California rock band No Doubt described as a “ska band.”

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