No real spoilers for True Blood, but if you’re the sort of person who wants to know absolutely nothing, then stop reading this and go watch the damn show.
I haven’t written about television so far, but it was always my intention to allow this blog to go there, so this is as good a place to start as any. Like nearly everyone, I’ve been watching and loving HBO’s True Blood. It has a great balance of smart writing and over-the-top pulpy luridness. All the characters are great, and played by great actors (how can you go wrong when the only two cops in town are Bill Sanderson and the guy who played Frank Sobotka on The Wire?).
As I’ve already given away with the title, my favorite character on the show is easily Lafayette, played spectacularly by Nelsan Ellis, an actor who’s done nothing else I’ve ever seen. There’s plenty to like about Lafayette, much of which my friend Mark covered in an excellent blog post last year. I agree with everything Mark says:
Lafayette is exciting because his behavior is unpredictable. He can be soft in one moment and hard in the next. He can convince Jason to make an amateur porn today and he can kick a redneck’s ass tomorrow.
But thanks to the writing and Nelsan Ellis’ performance, he doesn’t come across as a scary loose cannon, even though he’s a drug dealer, a prostitute, a short order cook, and a road crew worker. Instead, he’s the most blithely confident character on the series. He’s the only one who never gets shaken. The only one who is perpetually unsurprised.
Even better, Lafayette’s confidence comes with a clear moral code: Protect yourself, protect your friends & family, and fuck up the people who disrespect you.
Obviously, in Season 2 we’ve seen him get more than a little shaken (although it took a pretty extreme situation). Still, though, he seems ready to reemerge as the same strong character he was before his ordeal, although perhaps with a more acute sense of his own limitations.
There’s something else that gets me excited about Lafayette though, which is the real reason I’ve chosen to spotlight him this week. Mark points out that there’s nothing wrong with archetypes, but too often television characters aren’t archetypes so much as stereotypes, and often outdated and repetitive ones at that (even on shows as acclaimed as True Blood). When watching (and writing) television and movies, people like to keep characters in little boxes based on their traits, much as they do with people they don’t bother to get to know well in real life. The cultural focus right now is still on getting to the point where television isn’t just filled with reasonably well-off implicitly Christian heterosexuals who are all of one race (that race being white unless the show is targeted at a “niche market”).
Consequently, a minority character who has any sort of personality beyond their minority status, however sketchy, still seems like an achievement. This is why it seemed weirdly like a breakthrough when Kelly Kapoor on The Office became “the shallow Indian girl” instead of just “the Indian girl.”
The thing about Lafayette is that he occupies more of these little boxes than any other character, possibly ever. There are all these unfortunate ideas we have about the mutual exclusivity of various cultural categories. You can be black and gay, but being too gay makes you seem less black, or vice versa. And if you’re either of those things, you might as well forget thinking of yourself as having a Southern identity. Similarly, there are respectable, hard-working blue-collar types who work in restaurants and on road crews, and we must be careful to keep them totally separate from cultural pariahs like drug dealers and prostitutes. Then along comes Lafayette Reynolds, who insists on being a gay, black, Southern road worker/cook/dealer/occasional prostitute. I’ve spent enough time working in a restaurant in the South to know people who fit most of these specific categories, and plenty of others whose list of boxes is just as long.
More importantly, he manages to be all these things and still have a personality that’s not just a string of social categories, and yet none of those categories seem tacked on or irrelevant to who he is. I enjoy watching Lafayette on True Blood because he’s funny and fearless and I’m never sure what he’ll do next, but I love the character because he demolishes expectations of what a television character can be.
Let’s go back a little farther than last week. This one came out in 1931, when Betty Boop was still a supporting player (and a dog), and Bimbo was the real star.
Before we get started, I feel like I need to address the issue of Bimbo’s name. It seems weird now to name a male dog “Bimbo,” but in the early 20th Century, the term was basically a gender neutral synonym for “fool,” and in fact usually referred to men (the feminine version was “bimbette”). So a male cartoon dog named Bimbo made just as much sense as one named Goofy, although Bimbo did come first.
But enough semantics- let’s get right down to the point: There is a lot of butt-slapping in this cartoon. Seriously, a ton. It’s a major theme, as is booty dancing. All in all, it’s very butt-centric. There’s even a stationary bike that slaps your ass as you ride it. And for some reason, Bimbo rides it for a pretty long time.
The whole thing is apparently an attempt to initiate Bimbo into some sort of secret society, who meet underground and wear burning candles atop their heads (which, as uniforms go, is pretty awesome). We never learn if he’s been specifically chosen, or if they do this to everyone who Mickey Mouse’s wicked little brother tricks into falling into their hole.
The real point, of course, is to put Bimbo through as many surreal and spooky scenarios as the animators can dream up, in rapid succession. Gravity stops making sense, characters appear from where there was no room for them (like inside a light fixture), and Bimbo’s shadow is decapitated (and then does a nifty little dance). There’s even a cameo appearance from a skeleton, who speaks his single line into a telephone, just like Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall.
As it turns out, the only thing that can persuade Bimbo to join is his libido, but fortunately Betty is there to aid in that persuasion. To audiences used to more recent (post-Hays Code) cartoons, the undisguised lust in Bimbo’s eyes (and grin) is probably more shocking than the violence. And then there’s the butt-slapping.
Unsettling elements aside, this is an amazing cartoon. The animation is smooth and clean, especially for the time. The story is simple, but it never loses its momentum. The character designs are gorgeous, too. Betty Boop isn’t quite fully formed yet, but this is when Bimbo found the look he would keep. It’s quite an iconic look, too. Even if you’ve never seen a Bimbo cartoon, if you’ve seen any sort of tribute to early animation (whether it’s the first appearance of Itchy in that “Simpsons” episode, or the Warners on “Animaniacs”) that first scene of Bimbo strolling down the street is bound to look strangely familiar.
I’m going to keep this one brief, because I’m traveling this week and thus low on time. Still, I couldn’t resist doing something in observation of my least favorite holiday.
5. Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi
At first I was thinking of The Empire Strikes Back, since that’s famously when Luke learns that Vader’s his daddy, but that only happens at the very end of the movie. Jedi is the one in which Luke spends the entire movie dealing with the fact that his father is the most evil guy in the galaxy (or at least in the top two). I love that Luke has started dressing in all black, and even wears a cape. Despite telling himself that he hates his father, he can’t resist trying to be a little more like him.
4. The Godfather
Well, I mean, obviously. “I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life – I don’t apologize – to take care of my family, and I refused to be a fool, dancing on the string held by all those bigshots. I don’t apologize – that’s my life – but I thought that, that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the string. Senator Corleone; Governor Corleone. Well, it wasn’t enough time, Michael. It wasn’t enough time.”
3. The Squid and the Whale
My favorite aspect of this divorce story is the way that the older son sides with the father initially, because he’s the cool parent, and then becomes increasingly disillusioned as he realizes that “cool” isn’t necessarily what you want or need out of a parent. And yes, it’s a little creepy when Jeff Daniels makes out with Anna Paquin, after playing her father a few years earlier in Fly Away Home. But really, that just adds to the “Dad, what are you doing?!?” factor.
2. All That Jazz
This movie isn’t really about fatherhood, exactly. It’s about a guy whose many addictions (to sex, to work, to pills and liquor) irreparably destroy his life, and fatherhood is only one of the things he manages to be really bad at. Still, I’m including it mainly for one moment- a moment that makes me tear up every time I see it. When [spoiler alert] Joe is dying, he envisions his passage as a big final musical number, and towards the end of it, he runs out to the audience to greet all his fans. As he interacts with his ex-wife, his girlfriend, his colleagues, and his rival, there’s an emotional distance. He shakes hands and smiles and goes through the motions. Then he comes to his daughter, and she jumps up and wraps her arms around his neck and doesn’t want to let go. It’s heart-wrenching. It’s also one of the reasons I love this movie.
1. Field of Dreams
Yeah, I know it’s clichéd. I’ll even admit I haven’t actually watched it in at least 15 years. But it’s stuck with me, and it’s a part of our culture (no matter how far Kevin Costner has fallen since it came out). This is a movie about guy who builds a giant monument to American illogic, seeks out a magical negro version of J.D. Salinger, and hosts a secondary afterlife for Baseball players, all so that God will let him play catch with his dead father. I suspect that if it made more sense, it wouldn’t be so beloved.
Can I just take a minute to say how completely not excited I am about Tim Burton’s Alice in Wondlerland? Most of his recent movies have been all style and no substance, and this looks to be no exception. And it’s always the same style- that ornate, lacey, top hat, striped tights, perky-goth thing. Corpse Bride, for example, had no memorable songs, no story to speak of, and no fleshed out characters. Just an hour and a half of that Tim Burton style. And of course Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, who are pretty much a permanent part of the style these days.
So today I saw the photo of Depp as the Mad Hatter…
Wow. That’s pretty hideous. And then Bonham-Carter (the Red Queen) has some kind of digital thing done to her head-body ratio, which puts her squarely in the uncanny valley:
And for some reason Anne Hathaway (the White Queen) looks exactly like she did in her final scene in Brokeback Mountain, when she was playing a seemingly bloodless platinum blonde Texas trophy wife.
Not a look I would expect her to want to return to. For curiosity’s sake, I do wish they’d included a portrait of Alice herself, since she’s, you know, the lead character and all.
And while I’m complaining, what’s with the inclusion of characters from both books, and the apparent conflation of the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts? If this is supposed to be a big family blockbuster, wouldn’t it make more sense to stick to Wonderland for this movie, so you can save Through the Looking Glass to be a sequel? But then, fidelity to the source material has never been Burton’s strong suit. Unfortunately, I’m no longer sure what his strong suit is. Top hats?
I originally had a different character in mind this week, but after posting the Betty Boop cartoon on Friday, I realized I have more I want to say about her.
Betty Boop is one of the original cartoon superstars, and the fact that her legacy is so little understand or respected today says something about the influence of corporations on our culture. Fleischer Studios stopped making cartoons in the 1940’s, and since then the ownership of Betty and her filmography has been a complete mess. While Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny have gotten prestigious digitally remastered DVD releases of their classic cartoons, Betty Boop is still only to be found on bargain bin collections with murky pictures and subpar sound.
Meanwhile, King Features Syndicate owns her merchandising rights, which means that since the ‘80s, most people just think of Betty as a character who appears on t-shirts, often dressed up to jump on whatever trend is big at the moment. Of course, there’s an argument to be made that the Disney and Looney Tunes characters occupy much the same niche these days, but at least someone wearing a Mickey Mouse tee is more likely to have seen at least a few of his classic cartoons.
Nearly a decade before Bugs Bunny came on the scene, Betty Boop was Mickey’s primary competitor for cartoon superstardom. Whereas the California-made Disney cartoons were typically pastoral and thematically rather tame, the Fleischer shorts grew directly out of Jazz Age New York City. Betty was usually portrayed in her early appearances as a professional singer and dancer. Inspired by Helen Kane and Clara Bow, she had short hair, a short dress, and unapologetic sex appeal. She was also clearly Jewish, just like her creators. Eighty years later, I’m pretty sure there’s still never been a Jewish Disney character (if you can think of one, please let me know).
Betty was created as a love interest for Bimbo the Dog, and she was originally a canine herself. After a few cartoons, though, she evolved into a human and a star, eclipsing and ultimately outlasting Bimbo. We’ve already seen her as Snow White, but she also played Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Alice, among others. In a 1932 cartoon, she ran for President and won. She encountered Cab Calloway, Rudy Vallee, and Louis Armstrong. She even made some live action appearances, aided by the fact that Mae Questel, who did her voice, also happened to look just like her.
Unfortunately, the daring and adult nature of the Betty Boop cartoons led to their downfall. When the Hays Code went into full effect in 1934, cartoons featuring jazz, drinking, and visible undergarments became strictly verboten. Betty’s skirts got longer, she moved to the suburbs, and the featured music got a lot whiter. Koko and Bimbo were replaced with a boring human boyfriend named Fred, a zany Grandpa, and a minimally anthropomorphized puppy called Pudgy. The cartoons were still cute, and there were occasional moment of greatness, but things would never be the same. Meanwhile Mickey, whose adventures had already had a childlike innocence, was able remain unchanged, and went on to become the foundation of an empire.
Now it’s time for Fleischer Friday, in which I inflict on you my irrational love of 86-year-old cartoons we watch and discuss a classic of early animation. This week, one of the best ever, the Betty Boop version of Snow White:
The first thing you notice in this cartoon is that it doesn’t really succeed in telling the story of Snow White. It certainly starts out like it intends to, but once Betty-as-Snow escapes beheading, things go off in a different direction. The dwarves are barely there at all, only serving as seven identical pallbearers for the frozen Boop. Betty’s usual supporting cast of Bimbo the Dog and Koko the Clown are given much more prominent roles as the Wicked Queen’s guards, who are won over by Snow White’s beauty.
The Queen herself bears more than a passing resemblance to Olive Oyl, who she predates as an animated character by three and a half months. Both characters, as well as Betty Boop herself, are voiced by the spectacularly talented Mae Questel. The Queen is the focus of several of those great Fleischer Studios sight gags, such as when her angry face turns into a frying pan, and when she decapitates her thumb. The Magic Mirror is also put to good use. I’m particularly fond of the bit at the end where he blows the Queen a raspberry, and his tongue turns into a honking goose.
Obviously, we can’t discuss this cartoon without talking about Cab Calloway and his version of the Saint James Infirmary Blues, which dominates the second half of the short. These early Fleischer cartoons frequently served as the equivalent of music videos for popular artists of the day, and Calloway was their most perfectly matched collaborator in this regard. Like the Fleischers, Calloway had a reputation for outrageousness and an unmistakable style. He doesn’t just lend Koko his voice, but also his distinctive dance moves, which would have been immediately recognizable to audiences of the time.
It’s when Koko starts singing that the cartoon completely departs from the traditional Snow White story, and I can imagine how someone who’s invested in narrative structure might object to that. The thing is, though, even in 1933, before Walt Disney got into the feature film business, everyone already knew the story and how it was supposed to end. So rather than trying to squeeze that whole story into seven minutes, the Fleischers take it in a totally new direction. There’s no boring WASPy Prince in this version, just a sad clown with a distinctly African American voice beneath his painted-on whiteface- a far more interesting suitor for our New York Jewish flapper princess. And while so many stories end with a kiss, how many others end with a dog pulling a dragon inside-out?
This documentary is a kind of visual dialog between two filmmakers: Timothy Treadwell, the conservationist and bear devotee who presents the wilderness as a place of peace and beauty, and Werner Herzog, the art-house auteur whose films have always been about the violent indifference of nature. Of course, Herzog gets the final word, because Treadwell gets eaten by a bear.
4. Wall-E
I’ve always respected Pixar (although not enough so to see Cars), but they really exceeded my expectations with this one. It’s true that the film can leave you a little disappointed the first time through, because the first half really is better than the second, but on repeated viewings you can really see how the whole arc holds together, from the desolate ruined Earth at the beginning to the hope for recovery at the end.
3. Hustle and Flow
I know a lot of people have a problem with the gender dynamics on display in this movie, which is understandable since the protagonist is a pimp. I certainly have no interest in arguing with those people, who have every right to their position. For myself, though, I’m completely taken in by the gorgeous cinematography, the unglamorous look at poverty and crime, and the performances. Terence Howard seems to be perpetually on the verge of getting the respect he deserves, Taraji Henson is starting to get at least a little bit of attention, and Taryn Manning remains completely unrecognized. I didn’t know who any of them were before seeing this movie, and they all three blew me away. There’s also a great little performance by DJ Qualls, a likable actor who may not ever been in another good movie in his entire career.
2. Me and You and Everyone We Know
As the title implies, this is a pretty far-reaching movie, particularly for an indie from a performance artist turned first-time director. Like most of Miranda July’s work, it’s all about the struggles of flawed people to feel some kind of connection with each other. The size and diversity of the cast enable her to show how that need for closeness keeps coming up, from childhood to old age. The truth is, I’m having a really hard time writing about this, because the themes are so big and emotional that it’s difficult to discuss them without making the film seem hackneyed or manipulative, neither of which it is. I just know that every time I watch it, I find new threads to follow as they weave through the story, and when it’s over I feel as affected as the first time I saw it. John “Sol Starr” Hawkes gives a great performance as the male lead, managing to be likable and sympathetic while still seeming like a guy who’s pretty profoundly damaged.
1. The Royal Tenenbaums
I think it’s become fashionable to dismiss Wes Anderson as a worthwhile filmmaker, but I just can’t do that (at least not as far as his first four films are concerned). Tenenbaums has a flawlessly intricate structure and a calculated artificiality that combines to create a unique (and frequently imitated) tone. Anderson is also something of a genius at casting. The three Tenenbaum children are not played by people who I have much respect for as actors, but they fit the characters so perfectly that it works. In other words, Ben Stiller is aggressively neurotic, Luke Wilson is listless and melancholy, and Gwyneth Paltrow just seems sort of cold and empty. On the other hand, the older generation of characters is represented by four amazing actors: Huston, Hackman, Glover, and Murray, who are all at the top of their game. If I were to make a Venn diagram of fun watchable movies I can put on anytime I’m bored or need cheering up and movies I regard as complex multi-layered achievements in cinematic art, The Royal Tenenbaums would be one of a tiny number of films occupying the two circles’ intersection.
It makes sense to start with Philip Marlowe, since he’s on the banner and gives the blog its title. But Philip Marlowe is a term that needs defining. You can’t talk about Marlowe without establishing which Marlowe you mean.
The original, Raymond Chandler’s literary Marlowe, reinvented the idea of the fictional detective. Or at least he completed the reinvention that had started with Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. He has an intellectual side, but plenty of street cred. He’s good with women, but he never lets himself get too involved. He plays chess, drinks whiskey, makes fun of cops, makes out with widows, throws a punch here and there, and gets hit in the head and knocked out pretty regularly. He maintains a cynical facade, but there still seems to be some idealism left in him. His only real co-star in the novels is the city of Los Angeles.
When Humphrey Bogart played Marlowe in Howard Hawkes’ film of The Big Sleep, he solidified the public’s idea of the detective’s appearance, despite being several inches shorter and several years older than Chandler’s descriptions. He is great at Marlowe’s sarcastic dialogue, though, particularly in his scenes with Lauren Bacall. More than anything, Bogart’s Marlowe is an extraordinarily efficient detective. The plot of The Big Sleep is convoluted to the point of absolute incoherence, and yet somehow he’s still always one step ahead.
My favorite Marlowe, on the other hand, presents just the opposite image. Elliott Gould’s Marlowe, as seen in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, is almost Columbo-esque in his shuffling, half-asleep demeanor. He only seems to own one suit, and the bar where he hangs out is the closest he has to an office. But Elliott Gould in this role might be the coolest guy there’s ever been. In the face of a violent nutball gangster, a paranoid alcoholic grizzly bear of a writer, or a bunch of asshole LAPD cops, Marlowe never seems the least bit excited or concerned. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention to anything, but he takes everything in. He even takes pity on the young hood who’s tailing him, giving the kid fashion advice and the address where he’s headed. He only loses his cool once, at the end of the movie, when he realizes that his oldest friend and his newest friend have both betrayed him, and he’s the last idealist on Earth.
There are, of course, other Philip Marlowes. Dick Powell’s Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet didn’t do much for me, but then of course that movie’s source material is the only Chandler novel I didn’t enjoy enough to finish. I don’t have high hopes for Robert Mitchum’s two outings as Marlowe, but I’m curious enough to have them in my Netflix queue. I’m also interested in Powers Boothe’s television version from the 80’s. I liked Boothe on “Deadwood,” and the idea of him as Marlowe intrigues me. As I meet more Marlowes, I’ll let you know what I think.
I know I’m far from the first to say this, but I’m so excited about the Where the Wild Things Are movie that it makes me uneasy. When I first heard about it, I thought it was an awful idea. I mean, the Dr. Seuss adaptations of the last few years are troubling examples of what happens when you try to make full-length Hollywood family films by adapting classic picture books. There’s just not enough story to go around, and of course what the studio hacks come up with is never near up to par. So when I heard that WTWTA was getting the live-action treatment, I was not enthused. It’s my favorite children’s book, and probably the single most flawless book ever written.
But then I saw the trailer:
I could probably gush incoherently about this for hours, so I’m to try to organize my thoughts into bullet points.
The visual style is a perfect match for Sendak’s artwork. The colors are muted, and the settings have character without being the kind of bright green CGI forests that we’re used to seeing in children’s films.
Every one of the Wild Things is recognizable from the book. There’s the chicken-headed one, the smaller goat-looking one, the one with long hair, etc. And they all look exactly like they did in the book, and yet somehow exist believably in three dimensions.
James Gandolfini’s voice. I wouldn’t have predicted him for a Wild Thing voice, but now that I’ve heard it, I can’t think of any actor who seems a more intuitive choice. After all, Tony Soprano, in his own way, was a cuddly monster.
“Wake Up” by the Arcade Fire. Like basically everyone else in the world, I’ve listened to this album maybe a few too many times in the past five years, but this really is an amazing song, and it gives the trailer a nostalgic, bittersweet flavor.
While it’s true that there are many scenes in the trailer that resemble nothing in the book, none of them feel instinctively “wrong,” or like a betrayal of the book’s themes. We see Max being an excitable kid who’s dissatisfied with the real world, and we see Max having fun with the Wild Things. No sign of an unnecessary “origin” sequence, and no hint of any human other than Max having any interaction at all with the other world.
It’s certainly possible that I’ll eat my words and regret my enthusiasm when I actually see the movie, but I really hope that’s not the case. If anyone’s out there reading this, how do you feel about the trailer, and how much is that opinion affected by your feelings about the book?
The themes about the dehumanization/commodification of the individual at the hands of corporate interests. This is seen in a very literal way with the character of Murphy himself, obviously, but it’s just as true with everyone else in the movie– no one’s life is valued except for the executives at the very top of the pyramid.
The character of Lewis. A total badass, highly ethical, attractive but not sexualized. All this from the female lead of an 80′s action movie?
Kurtwood Smith. I admit, as a latecomer, I think of him as the Dad in “That 70′s Show.” What a fantastic villain, though.
Peter Weller’s performance. As a puppeteer, I’m always impressed by good suit/movement work. Weller’s Robocop really gives you the sense that he’s a machine, without ever making it look silly. I especially love the way he turns his head, and then his body follows.
The ambiguity regarding Robocop’s identity. Is he still Murphy, or just a robot with some bits of Murphy in him? Is there anything left of Murphy beside his face and brain? Is his whole brain even in there, or just parts of it? Not knowing makes the story much more interesting. It’s also great how Robocop never really recovers Murphy’s memories. A full recovery of Murphy’s identity would have made the character too tragic, and damaged his effectiveness as a hero.
Things I Didn’t Like about Robocop
The ED-209. Phil Tippett’s “Imperial Walker” style of stop-motion has not aged well, and I say that as a fan of stop-motion. Also, the thing is laughable as a cop-replacement. All it does is shoot you after 20 seconds, and it can’t even navigate stairs.
Kurtwood Smith’s gang- especially the comic relief black guy. A lot of things about this movie are atypical of the 80′s. This, sadly, is not one of them.
That part where the one guy gets horribly mutated (instantly!) by toxic waste. All of a sudden it’s like we’re in a Troma film. Silly and unnecessary.
No real spoilers for True Blood, but if you’re the sort of person who wants to know absolutely nothing, then stop reading this and go watch the damn show.
Wow. That’s pretty hideous. And then Bonham-Carter (the Red Queen) has some kind of digital thing done to her head-body ratio, which puts her squarely in the uncanny valley:
And for some reason Anne Hathaway (the White Queen) looks exactly like she did in her final scene in Brokeback Mountain, when she was playing a seemingly bloodless platinum blonde Texas trophy wife.
Not a look I would expect her to want to return to. For curiosity’s sake, I do wish they’d included a portrait of Alice herself, since she’s, you know, the lead character and all.
It makes sense to start with Philip Marlowe, since he’s on the banner and gives the blog its title. But Philip Marlowe is a term that needs defining. You can’t talk about Marlowe without establishing which Marlowe you mean.
