In 1994, Quentin Tarantino introduced the notion of the two sophisticated criminals bantering about the state of the world. This was an interesting way to turn a traditional concept, the dumb criminal, on it’s head.

Crash, the 2005 Oscar Winner, is a film about racism that opens the same way Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers opened. With two criminals commenting on the state of the world. That initial opening raises your hope that you are about to see something really good. The Oscar tag makes you feel even more excited, and then the film falls apart. The morality play takes over, and the story withers and dies.
The intent of Crash is to teach us that in our little racist world no one is an angel and no one is a saint. Every single character in the film is either a victim of racism or commits an act of racism within a single 36 hour time period.

To make the film seem more than an after school special we have odd co-incidences, great actors, and some adult themes. But the predictability of the film is irritating.

Of course, when daddy gives up his invulnerable bullet vest to his daughter, the daughter will try and save him from a bullet.

Of course the good white cop is going to stereotype a black man and do something terrible, like bury his body in a ravine.

Of course the good black man is going to try and recover his manhood by acting out some gangsta fantasy.

Of course the good black cop is going to sell out a bad white cop to save his criminal brother.

Etc…

You can watch this Oscar Winner or you can watch South Park. South Park’s commentary on racism is far more biting and insightful.

Silly mindless fun.

Some critics saw the trailer, and the first half of the film and thought that the film was trying to be profound. They assumed it was going to be a deep film that explored the issues of mortality, slavery, technology etc.

It was not.

In some sense that was a shame. There were a lot of potential in the plot and the initial setup.

But that would miss the point. Because I had 2:30 hours worth of fun. And Scarlett Johnson was very hot.

spoilers

To summarize: the film opens in this futuristic world at some indeterminate point in the future. The individuals in this future world have wierd names like Lincoln Six Echo and look like the characters from THX-1138.

The people are trapped in a sealed environment because the outside world is contaminated due to an environmental disaster except for one place called The Island. Every so often people win a lottery that lets them leave the sealed environment and go to the Island.

Very quickly we figure out that something is wrong. The Earth’s environment is not poisoned. There are people dressed in black watching the whole world behind the scenes using secret cameras making snide remarks.

Soon we discover that the people in this world are clones produced from some bio-material whose tissue is being harvested to extend the lives of their master copies. The Island doesn’t exist. The winners of the lottery are being harvested.

At that point the film switches gear and becomes a high tech chase through the world as two clones escape. The high speed chase borrows heavily from the best films like the Matrix and Face-Off.

The film ends with a scene straight out of Logan’s Run where all of the clones stand outside of their strange prison and realize that there is a big world that they can now inhabit.

This will be reasonably quick. Studio 54 is a film about the club in the late 70’s that elevated debauchery and exclusivity to a new level.

The wierdest part of the movie is the actors who are in it. Mike Meyers as Steve Rubell playing a somewhat serious role as the decadent club owner. Neve Cambell the debutante TV soap star trying to break into the mainstream any which way she can. Watching them gives you a wierd shit moment.

There are better movies that cover this time period. My personal preference remains The Last Days of Disco.

Studio 54 tries to explore the fascination America and the world had with Studio 54. The claim is that Rubell allowed the pretty little people to hang with the rich and famous. So everyone wanted to be in. They wanted to be part of the club that let them for a brief night be one of the special people. It wasn’t an exclusive club, it was a club that anyone could go to if they were hot enough.

But do we really need an entire 2 hours to explore that theme? The movie itself has obvious moments that make one groan. The love interest, the death, the speach, the “you are irrelevant young man, I made you” moment, the father rejecting the son’s lifestyle etc…

You could skip this movie entirely. Although watching Mike Myers ask Breckin Meyer for a blowjob is both funny and repulsive at the same time.

Wikipedia.org has information on this topic…

It’s April 19th 1994, and a genocide is taking place in Rwanda.

A year earlier on April 23rd 1993 the Holocaust Memorial Museum is founded. The museum is dedicated to the premise that the systematic slaughter of one people by another is wrong, so wrong that the American people will never allow it.

Hotel Rwanda is the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, played by Don Cheadle, the manager of a 5 star hotel who saves 1200 people from the Tsutsi genocide. The general tale is simple enough. Paul as a hotel manager of a prestigious hotel is able to exploit his contacts and his resources to buy enough time to be saved by the Tsutsi rebels that overthrew the murderous Hutu faction.

Watching Hotel Rwanda shames the west. Paul could have at any point in time saved his own skin and the skin of his family. He could have walked away from the Hotel, from Rwanda and into security. But he chose not to. And he did this not to save his friends or his family, but to save 1200 random strangers that he did not know.

Instead of Paul’s heroism the lone super-power was so determined to avoid intervening in Rwanda that the WhiteHouse spokesman said: There are acts of genocide taking place. Not that there is a genocide, but acts of genocide. Because if there had been a genocide the US would have had to intervene.

Maybe Clinton was afraid of another Somalian fiasco. Maybe we, the west, felt that it was just another bit of African’s killing African’s. Nothing to worry ourselves about.

When reading about the founding of Israel, we learn the contempt the founding fathers had for support from outside powers. They knew that if they were to depend on someone else they were to to sign their own death warrants. The moral lesson from Rwanda is the same. That if you expect outside powers to intervene on your behalf you are foolish. That the west will not intervene, but will at a later point construct a monument to your suffering.

The more I study history and observe the world, the more I wonder whether Woody Allen was more of a genius than I thought. In Hannah and Her Sisters one of his characters remarks on the Holocaust: What we should be asking is not why it happened but why doesn’t it happen more often.

On a final note, if you want to read a detailed description of the blood bath in Rwanda, I recommend the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. The book does a lot to cover the details of the carnage and provides some historical context.

In Broken Flowers Bill Murray reprises the role of Bob from Lost in Translation.

Whereas in Sophia Coppola’s film we have a wistfully irreverent film that explores the alienation of Bob to his life through the feeling alienation a westerner experiences in Japan, Broken Flowers is an indie film that tries to be twice as clever and half as fun.

The symbolism, the sets, the quiet silent moments and the utterly unsatsifying ending all create this feeling of alienation in the audience. This peculiar sense of why the f**k am I watching this movie? And can someone please the gun…

spoilers below…

The movie begins in Don’s sterile home. His girlfriend abandons him. His aloneness is contrasted with the vibrant life in his neighbors house. A house that has 5 children, a wife and celebrations of life. In case we miss the comparison, his girlfriend asks: Don’t you want to be like Winston, your neighbor?

Stuck in this lonely space, an ex sends him a letter announcing a child that may or may not be looking for him. With nothing better to do, he goes on a roadtrip to visit the four girlfriends he had some twenty years ago. The first is a blue collar widow of a NASCAR driver. The second a sterile frigid woman who once was a hippie. The third a pet therapist who is now a lesbian. The fourth quintessential white trash that will not speak to him. The fifth is dead.

When he arrives back home he notices a young man that appears to be following him. He approaches the young man and we think for a moment that boy must be the son. However, when confronted with this comment, the young man reacts violently and runs away. Don is thus left alone and confused and wondering what exactly the point of his life really was.

In case we miss that point the camera pans around him and we realize he is standing staring at a four way intersection in some random neighborhood.

There is a cult of indie worship in this world. I am fan of good movies. This movie was too clever and not fun.

Pass.

There is a movie that will explore the transformation of America by the Kinsey report. In this movie, we will understand how information can destroy myth and legend. How fact can liberate the human soul.

This is not that movie.

The movie begins in Indiana, where a young man is taking the sexual history of Kinsey. As he asks Kinsey detailed personal questions, we learn about the test, and about the personal sexual history of Kinsey.

And that’s what the movie is about. The test and how it was used to create the two seminal works on male and female sexuality and Kinsey’s rather interesting sexual life.

Kinsey’s sex life is intended to act as a proxy for America’s sex life. He starts out ignorant and fearful about sex. As he learns more he becomes more comfortable and happier. In the beginning he is reading a manual on how to avoid masturbating. In the middle we watch him have sex with a man, and then allow his wife to have sex with the same man. At the end of the film he is lecturing his graduate students about the dangers of mixing free sex with emotional entaglements.

The film stars great comedic actors: John Lithgow, Tim Curry and Oliver Platt. And it’s a shame that they play the roles of the great villians in American sexual life. A shame because although very funny they trivialize how villianous the Church, the scientific establishment, and money were. The Church used sex to control the people. The scientific establishment was unwilling to investigate the topic to avoid controversy. The establishment did not want to pretend that they were doing it and wanted to appear as good Christians. As a result thousands suffered because of their lack of nerves.

The film is funny. In some ways it’s the 40 Year Old Virgin all over again. Of course when you talk about sex, it’s going to be funny. The sexual histories that are collected and shared are absurdly funny. Kinsey’s in particular has ridiculously funny moments. For example, his wife, played by Laura Lienney, is at the doctor’s office and is asked to show us how big Kinsey’s penis was. Well it turns out that Kinsey had a 12″. But watching the whole sequence of the doctor showing the ruler, the husband squirming and then the wife squirming and then doctor’s eye bugging out is too funny.

The problem with humor in this film, is that there is a serious topic burried in all of the sex jokes. That America was repressed and as a result people were hurt. During the filme we are reminded that this is not just good clean fun but serious business. Unfortunately those moments of seriousness clash so violently with the humour that those serious side jaunts seem out of place.

The one sad truth about this film, is that in the absence of decent sexual education people will hurt themselves. With various religious groups encouraging abstinence and discouraging information in the face of plague, the tragedy of the 50’s seems to be repeating itself. This film would be a success if one of those morons and their leader that think that sex-ed is the problem were to understand that ignorance is the problem. In the profoundly ignorant 50’s people were doing it all of the time!

Downfall is a German film about the final days of Adolf Hitler. Thanks to 60 years worth of historical study, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the revelations of the participants, the exact details of the events are well understood. This particular version of the story is as accurate as it will ever be.

A German writing about the end of Nazi Germany is conflicted. On the one hand is the tragedy of the events in Berlin. Thousands of Germans died defending Adolf Hitler’s bunker. And in the movie it is abundantly clear that is what they are defending. Not Germany, not the Nazi party but Hitler. On the other hand, this was Nazi Germany. As a Greek who has visited memorials throughout Greece to massacres perpetrated by Nazi Germans, who is initimately familiar with the Genocide practiced on the Jews thanks to his own personal study of the topic, I find it hard to feel sorry for the Berliners. Like Goebbels says: They claim innocence but no one forced them to go east. There is satisfaction in seeing Berlin destroyed in 1945, and then there is horror in understanding that you feel satisfaction.

This is a profoundly disturbing film. And that is it’s power.

The film is shot from the perspective of Trauld Junge Adolf Hitler’s young secretary. Traudl Junge, in an interview at the beginning of the film admits that she thought joining the Nazi’s would be a great adventure. At the end of the film in the conclusion of the interview reminds the German audience and ourselves, that not knowing is not an excuse when such horrors are taking place. And that’s what the movie does. It shows how people chose not to know. How they chose to believe. How they desperately clung to the power of the Fuhrer. Trauld repeatedly is given an oppurtunity to flee the Fuhrer, to escape. And yet she doesn’t. Is it because she is loyal to the Fuhrer or because she does not believe it could end?

And that’s the part that frightens. How so many of the Germans who surrounded Hitler were convinced that without their Fuhrer, life was not worth living. Hitler was some kind of God who personified their entire aspirations, and his death destroyed all hope. Goebbel’s wife kills her children because she believes that life without Adolf is not a life worth living. The various SS officers upon learing of Hitler’s death blow their brains out rather than continue living.
There are three attributes that make the film particularly powerful.

The first is the performance of the actors who capture the insanity of the participants.

The second is the bunker as a symbol of death. The film is shot almost entirely in the bunker. We, the audience, escape the bunker only momentarily during the film to see Berlin being destroyed. The bunker transforms itself during the movie from a place of refuge to a final resting place. A place to flee from if you want to live, like Himmler, and come to if you want to die, like Goebbel’s wife. The bunker becomes the sepulcher of Nazi Germany. Only when Hitler is finally dead is the audience and Germany allowed to exit from the bunker. It’s only then that we begin to feel safe, that there is finally hope.
Finally he story itself. This is the final days of a powerful evil force. Watching it die is like watching the end of a horrible disease. There is something immensely satisfying and horrifying about this end.

Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler puts on a masterful performance.

A fantastic film. Definitely worth watching.

Last night I went to see V for Vendetta, a film based on the comic book by Alan Moore.

Warning: Spoilers.

The comic book revolutionized the art form because it did not have any thought bubbles, and because the main dramatic character had no facial expressions. As a result, the feeling of mystery and uncertainty about V, the main character, was enhanced. An essential aspect of the comic is we never really understand who V is or why he does what he does. Is it all part of an elaborate vendetta or is he a revolutionary or is it all of the above?

The comic book is very subversive. Essentially V claims that liberty and justice have sold themselves out for stability and power, and that the only way to restore freedom is to transform the power structure to an anarchy. An anarchy is not a place where there is no order, but that order is not imposed.

In addition to politics, the comic book attempts, modestly successfully, like Les Miserables, to not only address the big questions but also the little ones of the little people. V the comic book wants to be a tapestry not a simple morality play. For example, in a bar a meaningless character pleads to the fingermen (the secret police) to let his mother live with him, and the fingermen point out that she should have been sent to the homes years ago. He complains that the homes are gas chambers. The fingerman turns to him and says: No, truth be told they are a room with three men and a truncheon. At which point the man breaks down and asks why must man live this way. The protestor is quickly subdued.

The movie is less subversive and less amibitious. It’s more a critique of fascism than a critique of structured government. The villian is not justice brokered by powerful men, but the powerful men running the show. It’s a story about revolutionary violence, not a story about the violence perpetrated by power. And perhaps it’s even a critique of the Bush administration.

Having said all of that, the movie retains the flavor of the comic book, and the creators of the Matrix do in fact know how to put together action sequences and exploit special effects to dramatic effect. So the movie entertains even if the moronic love moment between V and Eve could have been removed … the predictability of it was pathetic.

Which brings me to the other piece. The comic book structure is divided into two elegant parts. In part I we discover V as a man performing a Vendetta on his enemies from the Larkhill asylum. At the end of Part I we are left wondering like Finch, was V performing a Vendetta when he killed anyone who knew him and now it’s done? Or was V planning something bigger? Or did V kill everyone not to recognize him but to create a plausible back story? Or what? The second part is where we discover the or what.

The movie structure eliminates the creepiness of the descent into V’s insanity. The movie V is a revolutionary who announces his Vendetta and his Vengence on society in the openingin sequence. We know he plans to blow up parliament as he dramatically declares his revolution in the first 15 minutes of the film. This creates tension in the movie, but alters the comic book pacing and reduces the impact and creepiness of the murders.

The movie, instead adds some back story explaining why the fasicst come to power, although the backstory is silly and predictable. However, there is a small moment of surprise when we discover that perhaps the entire back story is really all part of V’s plan.

Natalie Portman, as Eve Harmond, fails to capture the essence of the most dramatic moment of the comic book. When Eve finally discovers that she is free from the bonds in her head. The directors can not be blamed for altering the structure of the comic book, the problem is that Natalie simply can not convey the Matrix like moment where you discover that you were trapped in a cage and now, at long last, you are free. Part of the problem is that they could not use makeup effectively to show the degradation of Eve’s body. Some bruises, dirt etc would have helped significantly.

Hugo Weaving performed admirably, and with restraint as V.

John Hurst did a great job as the crazed leader of the fasicst organization.

All in all a fine and entertaining movie that captures the spirit if not the essence of V.

Enron.

In 2000 I was in Greece doing my military service, and I kept getting phone calls from my wife about the collapsing California power infrastructure.

I remember hearing that the problem was too much demand and too little supply. I remember thinking that the financial boom that Northern California had thanks to the stock market bubble was finally over-taxing the basic infrastructure. I remember hearing how imperfect deregulation had created a catastrophe. I remember being ridiculed by my Greek friends. I remember the power generator NetApp built to deal with the power shortages. I do not remember hearing about Enron.

Then I watched the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and I realized that those pig-fuckers in Texas had goat-fucked the entire state of California. And I was pissed off in a way that I had never been pissed off.

What had happened was that the Enron traders convinced the power production companies to cut their power supply. As a result, the consumers of power had to buy power on the spot market at higher prices. As the supply shrank the power on the spot market increased. Because California’s power deregulation did not cause end-user prices to spike, the effect was felt primarily by the power distribution companies that suddenly were being squeezed, unable to raise prices to conusmers and watching their prices for power go up.

And if that was the only thing Enron’s bastards did that would have been sufficient. Crippling the entire power system of the seventh largest economy of the world sounds like the plot of an evil villian from a James Bond film, not the actions of the 8 largest company in the world.

They preceeded that coup with the limited partnerships financial shennanigans. Essentially Enron created a financial instrument that let it sell assets to other companies for Enron stock and those companies would make money by selling Enron stock later.

And yet all of this tremendous evil that was carefully engineered by less than 10% of the company would have been palatable if it had not been for the fact that thousands of people (20k) were destroyed by this, excluding the people who were hurt by the engineered power crisis (40 million).

Now that I think about it, the engineered power crisis is enough for us to put them in jail for an exceptionally long time. In Stalin’s time, the Soviets talked about saboteurs who were wrecking the economy. Here at last are some true wreckers. And still Skilling and Lay protest their innocence.

As a final note, in 1999 I remember thinking that there was something wierd about how Enron did business. A sales guy came back from the bidding that ocurred around the Enron-Blockbuster deal for the streaming media infrastructure. He said that what he found fascinating is how Enron booked all of theoretical profits from the deal immediately without ever making a dime. I remember thinking, but that sounds wrong.

But I figured that I was an ignorant engineer, and it was just too advanced for me.

It was. It was thievery on a scale that I could not conceive.

There was one good thing to come out of this. Thanks to Andy Fastow and the criminal enterprise that was Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley emerged and thanks to it the compliance market for storage. As an employee of a storage vendor, this is good news. Andy Fastow created the SnapLock and LockVault market, so I guess I should be thankful for small things…

The film The Fourty Year Old Virgin fills one with dread. A movie about a 40 year old overgrown geek, Andy Stitzer played by Steve Carell, whose co-workers suddenly decide that they must help him bust his cherry.

And yet, this film managed to be funny without being disgusting or insulting. It did not resort to cheap and stupid laughs, instead it managed to reach the line, dance on it like a tightrope walker and stay on it. The first 3/4 of the film are about the desperate attempts Andy takes to finally rectify a 25 year old itch. The last 1/4 of the film is a romantic commedy. The first 3/4 is better, but the last 1/4 satisfies the moviegoer.

This is a fun movie, that’s a date flick for the happily married or happily settled …