On Missing Trains

Of all the stories posted here-in, this is perhaps the one of which I am least proud.  Stories of drugged and drunken exploits come with moderate bragging rights, travel tales have their own appeal, but this is a tragedy of hubris and stupidity of which I am ashamed.  To begin, some back ground information:

The Amtrak passenger train City of New Orleans passes through Newbern, Tennessee on it's north-south run from Chicago to New Orleans.  My family live a bit more than an hour from Newbern and when traveling home for a visit this train is the most comfortable, most cost-efficient and generally the easiest mode of transport.  I have ridden this train several times and boarded and exited at this station each time.

So, poised to board the train early in the morning of December 26th me and my father (a semi-driver for more than 35 years) arrived at the station, watched a few freight trains pass, and ascertained that the the tracks to our left headed north and the tracks to the right headed south.  We were so sound in our knowledge that when an Amtrak passenger train came rolling up at precisely the time my New Orleans-bound train was scheduled to arrive, that we watched it stop, watched passengers deboard, and watched it roll away certain in our sense of cardinal directions and positive that that train had come from New Orleans and was headed to Chicago.

Newbern is an unmanned station, so there was no one to ask as to how late my train was going to be.  We did however ask one of recently exited passengers from where she originated.  When she said Chicago, I stared at her disbelievingly, then stared at the tracks and realized that we had been wrong.  I had missed the train, or rather, mistook the train, which is probably just as bad.

Deeply shamed, me and my father were.  We studied the tracks for a while and decided that even if we were wrong, we were wrong in the most logical way and that our wrong assumption was the easiest assumption to make.  We drove away, cursing the silly train for traveling north to south in such a haphazard way.  Pride cometh before the fall-- I boarded the train later in the week and arrived safely back in the Crescent City.

Merry Christmas from the Family

I made a half-hearted attempt to avoid the annual pilgrimage to Clarksburg, Tennessee for Christmas festivities, because these types of things always tend to seem far more unpleasant while they approach than when they actually arrive.  It was a quiet bit of welcome respite.  

Behold!  Photos:

with William Arvel Woods

Will and Mary Woods

Nate Moore

Amelia Vestal

Matriarchs

"What things these days..."

Nephews

And to all, a Merry Christmas.

Red Bull Gives You Wings

     It is like a slow ascent to consciousness, like floating up from the bottom of the sea towards the sky above.  You realize that you are cold, but you don't know what you can do about it.  Next, you realize that you are walking, but it seems natural so you continue.    Then it dawns on you that you are outside, but that doesn't seem odd.  Finally you come to your senses and realize, with regret and shock, that you haven't the slightest idea where you are.  You're wandering around outside, without a jacket, in what appears to be a random suburb filled with unfamiliar houses.  This is not your suburb.

You check yourself.  You're fairly clean and dry, so you've been on your feet the entire time-- luckily no rolling around in the dewy grass of someone's front yard.  You see a Picayune on the ground and are thankful that you are assumedly still in the New Orleans Metro Area.  You pick it up and check the date:  Sunday.  This is right, last night was Saturday.  Check your pockets-- your phone is gone.  You have your ID, a debit card, and one single dollar.  Hope you didn't go to any ATMs whilst you were blacked out.

You pull your arms into your shirt and shiver and walk, and you curse yourself and your situation, staring around dully in disbelief.  Finally you stumble onto Veteran's Boulevard, but you're on the south side and far too west. You go into a gas station, looking a fright, and get twenty dollars out of an ATM. You stumble into a nearby sports bar, call a cab, and have a beer while you wait.

You get home and learn several things:  you gave your phone to your friend before disappearing, assumedly into a cab.  You left the bar around five-- you came to around nine.  During four unaccounted hours you spent thirty nine of the forty dollars you don't remember getting out of the ATM.  Theoretically, that money went to the cab driver that dumped you in the middle of nowhere.  You also realize you don't remember any of the five (5) drinks, four of which were bought for you, you had at the bar before abruptly leaving.  Mystery somewhat solved, you cancel all plans for the day and crash hard and long into your bed.

This friends, is a shining example of the absolute empirical evil that is Red Bull.  When mixed with vodka, it produces a delicious concoction that will try it's hardest to kill you.  While straight booze/beer/wine will dull your mind and body and eventually leave you passed out on the floor/couch/pool table/wherever, Red Bull and vodka will only dull your mind, keeping your body sprightly and alert so that it leaps joyfully into autopilot while your mind passes into shadow.

Experiences don't lie; you have been warned.

Smells like a wet dog...

I see plenty of bad movies, in theaters and out, and am not always inspired to write a missive of them, but with Slumdog Millionaire I think it important I do.  The film is, to say the least, well received.  It's garnered several year-end critics prizes and Golden Globe nominations, it has a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomato (for comparison, Milk also has 93%, Doubt has 76% and Australia a mere 53%) and won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival.  The film seems poised to walk headfirst into several Oscar nominations once they are announced and I stand back, aghast, at all this critical praise for such a terrible film.  Here is a film almost as awful as it's title, and there will be a backlash.  Here is this year's Crash.  I want it known I was against it from the first, and didn't jump aboard once it became trendy.

     Let me point out that I went in predisposed to pleasure-- you're looking at a Danny Boyle fan.  Trainspotting.  28 Days Later.  Millions.  These are all good films (okay, Trainspotting is a great film, but this is not a post about that.)  Yet here... here he has the most simplistic, nonsense, annoying, stupid story to tell and despite abundant style and beautiful, kinetic location shooting he can't rise above it. 

Here is a film about a poor slumdog from the streets of Mumbai whose destiny is to reunite and live happily ever after with a girl from his youth.  Throw in the fact that the girl is kept by gangsters, one of which is the slumdog's brother and that can either add a level of intrigue and emotional resonance to the whole affair or turn it pedestrian, either way, still not ridiculous.  Now let's mix in the fact that the boy's destiny leads him to the Indian version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' so that... the girl can see him on TV and come to the studio and find him.  Ehh, okay... a film with a stupid premise can still prevail.  This one doesn't.

For starters, the structure is annoying.  The boy is being interrogated and tortured because officials are certain he cheated to get as far as he did on the game show.  Of course he didn't and he explains in flashback how destiny gave him the exact answers to the exact questions he would be asked.  This could work with a little finesse and subtlety, but instead we seem hammered down by the fact that DESTINY HAS BROUGHT HIM HERE! He is asked who invented the revolver-- cut to a scene where his brother threatens him with a Colt.  He's asked a question about a Bollywood movie star-- this leads to an anecdote where he falls into a pay toilet and runs about covered in shit.  Oh destiny, you wily muse!  The editing of the question and the answer so deliberately draws attention to the destiny device, which can't sustain much scrutiny.

So, the destiny angle doesn't work and grows extremely tedious extremely fast.  It goes unanswered how he passed the preliminary exams to get on the show, or what posseses him to even try-- however, I'm not sure the film realizes it leaves him no motivation.  There's a curious scene in an office building where he seems poised to call the show... but instead calls his brother, who, as earlier stated, is a gangster.  The gangster episodes seem as though someone owns copies of Boyz N the Hood and Scarface and keeps them on continuous loop until they are engrained in the psyche permanently.  No one in these scenes behaves plausibly at any time.  Consider, as an example, a scene where the brother climbs into a bathtub filled with cash to be shot down in a barrage of gunfire.  Why?  Metaphor, I suppose.

What this film needs is a nice shot of whimsy and some common sense.  Boyle never satisfyingly works together the juxtaposition of the harsh environment with the fairy tale story, and that handicaps him fatally.  And it doesn't help that the destiny/romance plot line is SO SO SO predictable and uninvolving.  I couldn't get behind anything I was seeing on the screen.  There's no way such fluff could generate real emotions and the film is far to high-minded to adequately manipulate them.  I think Boyle wanted to create something about how hope can survive in the harshest of places, a lovely little piece that would show the dark underbelly of extreme poverty and make it accessible to the masses through a charming against-all-odds romance.  Epic fail, Mr. Boyle.

These characters!  Dev Patel plays the lead boy with all the charisma of a wet mop.  He has one expression-- put-upon, and watching him trying to act his way through is like chasing a deer through the woods with a meat cleaver.  Frieda Pinto, as the girl, is stunningly lovely, yet hopelessly stupid and vapid.  The brother character is nothing mre than a plot device used to elicit emotional responses from the hero.  He has no motivations, no desires, no anything.  Just cue cards reading 'maudlin', 'vile', and 'irritating' to which he imitates in accordance. And the host of the show makes Regis Philbin look like Oscar Wilde.

Oh. My. God.  This film is just awful-- trite, stupid and, worst of all, boring.  And the fact that it's receiving such praise is baffling.  I know it's been a hard year, with a brutal election and an endless war and a downward-spiraling economy and everyone wants to be heart-warmed, or at least reminded that there are people worse off than they are, but seriously, this year also brought us Wall-E and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day... hell, even Funny Games was more pleasant than this.

Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow

I don't like the snow.  It's really cold and wet and dirty and altogether unpleasant.  I've spent a fair amount of energy avoiding it.  So when I was awoken from my slumber this morning to the excited cries of "It's Snowing!!  It's Snowing!!"  I automatically thought "I'm in New Orleans.  You are a liar.  Stop shouting."  Unfortunately, they were not wicked lies.  It was really snowing.  In New Orleans.  WTF?

And not just a little snow, (Okay, maybe just a little snow when compared to places like Chicago or Long Island, but for SE Louisiana?) but at least a wet, slushy inch of wet miserable white all over everything.  And then, later in the day, it started to sleet.  I don't know who to blame... so I'm pointing my finger at global warming.  It's up to you Al Gore and Dennis Quaid!  Save us.  It's cold out there.

Ian's First Snow

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Palm trees are NOT native to SE Louisiana

Snow Angels

Cameron del Mar the Second

Cameron del Mar was a delightful animal, a cat of wonders and joy.  He is gone now, but his memory lives on...in this shiny new Schwinn I've purchased to ride about the countryside.  At first, I wasn't going to name the bike after the cat, but, lo and behold, this is a del Mar Schwinn.  It says it right there on the side.  It is destiny that this bike be mine, to look after me when Cameron cannot.

Hopefully, the owning of the bike will promptly inspire the learning to ride of it.  Because I don't know how.  And I've only been able to practice indoors, because the weather is shitty.  Raindrops keep falling on my head...

Dear Austin:

Oh, Austin... there's no place quite like you.  The aggressively liberal capital of the biggest and strongest of the red states, filled with your free wheeling, unfriendly, mostly effeminate, "let's change the world" folks.  Anything goes in you, Austin!!  You keep it weird.  You are incredibly pretensious and more judgmental than you would ever, ever admit, but you are a lot of fun.  You have, probably, the largest, most vibrant independent music scene in the country.  You are also home to the massive University of Texas.  Both of those go a long way to explaining precisely what is so wrong with you, because there are few things more insufferable than indie musicians and college students.  Unfortunately, they are also the basis of everything that is so right.  

The sheer volume of delicious eateries, music venues, bars, coffee houses, music stores, indie video parlors, green spaces, organic and vegan markets and vintage shops couldn't exist without the unique mixture of people who inhabit you.  You are very fun, Austin.  There are many reasons to recommend you.  For a visit, you are top notch.  To live in you would require a complete lifestyle change and a world-view akin to a Kerouac novel.  You are very accepting, Austin, as long as everyone is just as offbeat as everyone else.  When I'm tired and hungry and broke, Austin, I don't give a rats ass if something is eco-friendly or local. When I have money, sure, but you require a devotion that I personally do not have.  Thank you, Austin.  I've enjoyed my time here.  But now, it's time to go.  

Devil Town

Texas State Capital

University of Texas

I'm going back to New Orleans, Austin.  Right now, I feel like that is both where I need and want to be.  You know New Orleans, Austin, don't you?  I'm sure... your aggressive campaign to become quirky seems like a thinly veiled attempt to emulate that wonderful place.  But there's one major difference.  New Orleans exists, for the most part, in the real world.  Hurricane Katrina made sure of that.  You, Austin, live in a late-60s super-liberal bubble of pipe dreams and lost causes.  You are a delight, Austin, but reality is also swell.  Come join us, won't you?

How Far We've Come

I'll say very little about the technical and cinematic qualities of Gus Van Sant's film, Milk.  It is a good movie, probably as good as you expect it to be and maybe a little more.  It represents a return to mainstream cinema for Van Sant, but not a surrender to it.  The indie spirit still occasionally shines through.  It contains very strong work from Sean Penn, James Franco and Josh Brolin, possibly the best work of any of their careers, and they are all very likely Oscar contenders.  As a film, it is very successful.

As a cultural statement it is enraging and a more than a little disappointing.  The major conflict of the film (and of Milk's political career) is a campaign to prevent anti-discrimination laws in California that prevent teachers from being fired based on sexual orientation from being overturned.  The campaign succeeded, and the laws stayed.  However, the film deals with this development in a bit of muted joy, probably for two reasons-- the first is that it has an assassination to hurry on to and the second is that Van Sant realizes what a hollow victory it really was.  

You won't learn this from the film, but today, right now, in 2008 in the United States there are still thirty (30) states where someone can legally lose their job simply for being a homosexual.   

Read that again.  That is more than half of the country. And, of course, that doesn't include the vicious 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' military policies endorsed by the federal government.  And the gay marriage debacle, which came to a head when the citizens of California deemed they could take away constitutionally granted rights from homosexuals by passing Proposition 8.

That is infuriating.  Imagine a child asks for a coat to wear on a snowy day.  You tell it no and send it off to school.  It gets used to the cold.   Now imagine you gave the child a coat, sat it outside in the snow for a moment and then took the coat away.  That child will revolt against you.  If you show someone the light and then close them off from it, their wanting will be your end.

Where was Milk prior to November 4th?  Oliver Stone's ineffectual W. was rushed out prior to the elections in hopes it could make a difference.  But that project was too soon, too current to have an impact.  History will judge Bush in 30 years, once the facts are in, in ways far different than the present may judge him now.  But Milk?  Milk could have had an impact.  Yet... it was delayed, coming out instead in the midst of awards season.  Ironically, it's good enough it would have been remembered had it come out in October.  What a wasted opportunity. 

Proposition 8 is government sanctioned bigotry, propelled by religions that have subjugated and oppressed since their inceptions.  There are thorny political topics out there, where many different views must be considered (immigration, abortion).  Gay marriage is not one of them.  If you oppose gay marriage, you are a bigot.  If you say it 'destroys the American family' you are a bigot and a liar.  If you believe it actually has any affect on the American family at all, I'll join you in a march in favor of criminalizing divorce.  I'll join you on a march forcing heterosexual couples to procreate.  And if you oppose gay marriage on religious grounds, you're a brain-washed bigot with no sense of irony.  

Speaking of a sense of irony, seeing how California has taken away civil rights, I have a new plan to get the country out of recession.  Let's re-enslave African Americans.  Forcing them back into chains will quickly and decisively cut down on the business expenses of banks, auto-makers, and corporations.  Afterwards, a campaign to take the vote away from women.

Wednesday is national 'Day Without A Gay', where homosexuals are encouraged to call in gay from work and instead volunteer for GLBT rights.  They are also encouraged to only support GLBT friendly businesses.  I suppose civil disobedience is a justifiable response-- I'll be participating.  But kindness can only get you so far.  As 70s activists cried, "Civil Liberties or Civil War".  We will not roll over without a fight.

  
And finally, to all you closeted, discreet, 'straight' guys out there who troll Craigslist and gay bars, fuck you.  Fuck you all.  It's your cowardice that has allowed decades of injustice to your own people, whether you accept them as so or not.  You are fearful little children whose timidity and terror have caused the Stonewall riots, the White Night riots, killed Brandon Teena and Matthew Shepard and allowed Proposition Eight to pass.  You should be beaten out of the closet.  Grow some balls and be a man, don't just blow one.

The truth comes out...

Thanks to Jeana Richard for the photo.

By the way, I'm coming home to you.

Current Obsession: The Films of Werner Herzog

Herzog on the set of Fitzcarraldo

Werner Herzog has made two or three films that are as close to perfection as the cinema comes, several other films that are fine, at least one film that is just plain bad and no films that I wish I had never seen.  His films are strange, often times descents into madness-- they create strange moods in those who see them.  They tend to feature men at odds with overpowering environments.  They are unlike the films of anyone else.

My favorite is, without doubt, Aguirre, the Wrath of God.  It is, I think, one of the greatest of all films, without an off-putting moment.  It reaches heights of perfection that most filmmakers only dream about.  It centers on a failed mission into the Amazon in search of the fabled El Dorado.  It ends with one of the most memorable sequences I've ever seen as Klaus Kinski rages alone on a raft covered with chattering monkeys, making plans for world conquest whilst floating down the river to his demise.

Kinski worked with Herzog on four other films, including Woyzeck (about the dehumanizing effect of society on an unstable young soldier), Fitzcarraldo (about a man who yearns to drag a steamship over a mountain in order to bring opera to the darkness of the rain forest), and Nosferatu (the remake of the classic silent Dracula film).  Although it's almost a supporting role, my favorite of the Kinski performances is in Nosferatu-- where he combines the beastiality and sensuality of the vampire in ways that are haunting and unforgettable.  It is, in fact, the best thing about that film, otherwise unremarkable, mainly a failure because it chained Herzog to a steadfast plot, something he otherwise tends to avoid in pursuit of transcendence.

Kinski as Dracula in Nosferatu

Fitzcarraldo is another film that suffers due to a plot that seems out of Herzog's comfort range.  He seems to work best with stories that center on men failing to overcome the oppressive environments they find themselves.  When Fitzcarraldo succeeds-- when he drags the ship over the mountain and then rides to glory down the river with his phonograph blaring the music of Caruso, it strikes one of the falsest notes in the Herzog canon. 

If his work with Klaus Kinski provides the most recognizable films in his filmography, his work with other actors may provide the best performances.  Consider his films with Bruno S. (The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Stroszeck) or Eva Mattes (Stroszeck, Woyzeck).

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, about a man locked in a dark cellar since birth who is suddenly and mysteriously released into a society that baffles him, is the director's second greatest work.  In it, Bruno S. gives a performance that is heartbreaking and poetic.  He played a similar character in Stroszeck, an equally compelling film that is hampered a bit by it's determined off-beatedness. It's a strange film about an ex-convict, an old man, and a prostitute who move to Wisconsin to live in a trailer home.  It says a great deal about the dreams of American immigrants in unexpected and sometimes curious ways.  

In Stroszeck, Eva Mattes, an understated, earthy beauty, plays the prostitute.  She plays a similar character in Woyzeck, where she won a much deserved Best Supporting Actress prize at Cannes.  You won't find acting better than her work her anywhere else.

Mattes and Kinski in Woyzeck

He chose actors not so much for their obvious talents, but for the way they could embody characters.  He wanted people in roles that would require them to act very little and mostly respond as they naturally would.  That gives his fiction films a documentary quality-- he matched that by giving his documentary films a sometimes fictional slant.  Consider in Little Dieter Needs to Fly, about an ex-POW, how some of the actions of Dieter were improvised on the spot to get his point across.  He also made the exceptional Grizzly Man, about a man who believed he could live unharmed with bears and My Best Fiend, about his turbulent relationship with Kinski.

Then, there's Fata Morgana, one of the more curious films in his canon.  Theoretically a documentary on mirages, it combines stunning and hallucinatory shots of the Sahara desert with a curious performance in a music parlor, the Mayan creation myth, a sea turtle, and songs by Leonard Cohen.  It isn't like anything you've seen before.  Good or bad doesn't seem to even apply to it-- it feels less like a motion picture and more like an object or an idea.  Some may find it boring or insufferable.  I found it fascinating.

That is not to say that Herzog cannot make a boring or insufferable film.  He made Heart of Glass, a fiction film about a small village with a glass blowing factory.  The foreman dies, taking the secret of 'Ruby Glass' with him.  The town sinks into despair and eventually madness.  The film itself is maddening, combining long, irritating narration depicting the end of days with odd behaviors and actions by actors under hypnosis.  (Apparently, all the actors aside from the lead performed under hypnosis to better exemplify the descent into insanity.)  The plot gets brutally pushed aside to make room for the oddities, which quickly become dull.

His best known film, by virtue of it's star, Christian Bale, is probably Rescue Dawn, a fictional retelling of Dieter Dengler (of Little Dieter Needs to Fly) and his time in the jungle.  Bale lost a great deal of weight, whittling himself down to a skeletal frame (something he does with some regularity, however), Steve Zahn provides a powerhouse supporting performance, and the film brought Herzog's unique style to a new generation.  Rescue Dawn is one of the better films of this decade.

Herzog on the set of Rescue Dawn

Eye Candy: Hugh Jackman

It's official... Australia is just another flop for Nicole Kidman.  Poor girl; she just can't open a movie.  But don't let that keep you from seeing it.  It's just like Margot at the Wedding or Cold Mountain or Dogville or The Interpreter in that it's just delightful.  Really, it is.  It's gloriously old-fashioned-- half  '30s Western and half '50s war movie, with a strong line of The African Queen and Gone with the Wind providing a backbone and The Wizard of Oz there for thematics.  Really, it basks in that kind of operatic ecstasy that Baz Luhrmann is known for.  Nicole Kidman does her best Katherine Hepburn for the first half and her best Vivien Leigh for the rest.  It truly is something special.

And Hugh Jackman isin it, too, doing his very best Humphrey Bogart and being rugged and gritty and all the while having a big ole heart of gold.  He was recently named People magazine's 'sexiest guy alive'... sometimes I think he looks like a toad.  And often times he has really unfortunate hair.  And I'm bored with him playing Wolverine.  But in Australia?  Well, in Australia he earns the title.