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I Am Part of the Problem
For my entire life, I have surrounded myself with White people. Growing up in the suburbs of Buffalo, I could count the number of my Black classmates on one hand. After watching the LAPD beat the shit out of Rodney King, I was not compelled to reach out to any of them.
When it came time to go to college, I chose an even less diverse place – a small Franciscan college near the Pennsylvania border. I did not care at all about Saint Francis. But I certainly cared about feeling comfortable.
Since then, I have chosen to work for five overwhelmingly White companies. Because I rarely heard racist things, I therefore believed these were non-racist places.
A year after Trayvon Martin was murdered for being Black and wearing a hoodie, I chose to move away from my hometown with my wife, who I adore and who also is White. I suggested Maine – quite literally the whitest state in America. I love Maine; the nature is gorgeous. But from the perspective of my awareness of racial injustice, this was like a caterpillar deciding against becoming a butterfly and lining its cocoon instead.
For the last 20 years, I have felt compelled to write about music, and a lot about hip-hop specifically. In 2002, I wrote my first-ever “column” in a local rag about why suburban kids like me love rap. Using the “family values” conservative and noted rap-hater William Bennett as a straw man, I wrote, “The more you try to hide a culture, the more we want to be a part of it.”
But I clearly never wanted that. As I write this, 18 years later, it is from that same deafening cocoon of White privilege. A place where opportunities fall in my lap. Where I never have to fear physical harm. Where I rarely see Black faces, but seek attention for writing about Black artists. When a Minneapolis police officer casually murdered George Floyd, keeping his hands in his pockets as his victim cried for his mother, I was getting buzzed on craft beer and enjoying a fire in my backyard – where almost all of my neighbors are White.
My racist preferences have perpetuated a racist system. I haven’t had to do anything to be complicit in this system, because it’s got centuries of fuel in the tank – a despicable legacy of murder, rape, and rank dehumanization. Black people have always known this of course. They’ve been pointing at it, screaming at us to at the very least acknowledge it.
So here I am, doing the very least. I wish I had some big reveal to share here. I have donated some money. I am pushing for antiracist policies at work. But I haven’t been to a protest. I remain part of the problem, no matter how much that makes me want to throw up.
I finally see the walls of privilege that racism has built for me. If you feel like giving me credit for this, please wait until I have burned them down.
#BlackLivesMatter
Catching Up with King: The Dark Tower, Vol. II
Like 99% of authors, Stephen King is at his best when he’s writing about what he knows. And like 99% of wealthy white male authors, Stephen King thinks he knows way more than he actually does.
Right before I finished reading The Drawing of the Three, the ambitious and problematic second volume of King’s seven-part fantasy epic The Dark Tower, the author took to Twitter to weigh in on a subject he should know a thing or two about. The publisher Hachette had decided, after many of its employees walked out in protest, to cancel its plans to publish a new memoir by Woody Allen. You know, that certifiable creep who married his girlfriend’s daughter and was credibly accused of pedophilia? Pretty hard to put your foot in your mouth on this one, right Stevie-boy?
By sharing his “unease,” King is inadvertently also sharing that he doesn’t know (or care) what message it sends when our society gives rich and famous predators like Allen a platform. All he knows (or cares) 
about is what effect this publishing decision could have on writers like himself. It’s an ignorant, privileged perspective. It’s really hard to read.
And while there’s a lot to like about The Drawing of the Three – a ruined coastal landscape littered with demonic lobster beasts; a quiet, tainted hero with wells of misery drilled into his soul; portals into the human mind that Being John Malkovich would pass off as original a dozen years later – it’s a book with weaknesses that are hard to reckon with, much like the author’s Twitter feed.
While the overarching story is just as broad as its predecessor, following Roland the Gunslinger on his quest to find three spectral doorways, The Drawing of the Three is far more committed to character development, and is more of a page-turner as a result. Roland’s fate is wrapped up in who he meets when he steps through these doors, and King breaks the book up into sections that are laser-focused on the newcomers.
The first is Eddie Dean, a character King could write well in his sleep – a heroin addict from a dysfunctional family. From the moment Roland steps through the door and into Eddie’s mind, The Drawing of the Three becomes an oddly gripping, metaphysical buddy action movie, complete with a climactic shootout at a drug lord’s lair. This is King writing what he knows and boiling it down into Grade A pulp fantasy.
But then comes door number two. We’ve dealt with King’s approach to writing characters of color before in this column; the black people that appeared around the fringes of The Stand were either barbarians, drug addicts or magical exotic creatures. But the character that Roland meets/inhabits when he steps through that second portal makes Jar-Jar Binks seem sensitively rendered. Odetta Holmes is a wealthy black woman in 1960s New York City, a civil rights activist who lost her legs when a psychopath pushed her onto the subway tracks. King writes her as a soft-spoken, thoughtful figure, with deep reserves of strength just visible beneath the surface. Someone who has had unthinkable violence done to them and uses it as fuel. Someone who fits the 
description of a gunslinger to a tee. If only King could’ve stopped there.
But no. In a downright meta display of how unqualified the author is to write about the black experience, King gives Odetta a dissociative condition that Eddie incorrectly calls “schizophrenia.” Detta, the character’s alternate personality, is purposely written to be the most vile, violent, racist caricature possible. Other characters in the story comment on this, saying things like “She talked like a cartoon black woman, like Butterfly McQueen gone Looney Tunes,” to remind us that this is a literary device and we can hope and pray that it all will make clear, non-racist sense in the end. It doesn’t help. A warning that the following passage, which depicts an encounter between Detta and the EMT who saved her life after the subway attack, is quite upsetting. Let me be clear that the treatment here is all King – the italics, the caps, the spelling:
“YOU AIN’T NUTHIN BUT A BUNCHA HONKY SONSA BITCHES!” she screamed. Her face was monstrous, her eyes full of hell’s own light. It wasn’t even the face of a human being. “GOAN KILL EVERY MAHFAHIN HONKY I SEE! GOAN GELD EM FUST! GOAN CUT OFF THEIR BALLS AND SPIT EM IN THEY FACES!”
Imagine being truly engrossed by a book that depicts a fantastical world colliding unexpectedly with our own. And then imagine having to contend with this dialogue, and these descriptions, for hundreds of pages. It’s like watching Stephen King tweet passionately about why Elizabeth Warren should be president, and then having to deal with his defense of Woody Allen out of nowhere. It’s literary whiplash.
The Drawing of the Three ends with a fairly legitimate explanation of why Detta existed at all – she is the projection of a childhood trauma, triggered by a white man’s horrific deed. King is very good at writing about trauma, how it traps and intimidates and haunts us as we grow older. It’s a subject he knows well. Why couldn’t he have just stuck with that? Why couldn’t he have just given Odetta some moments of righteous anger, of understandable rage? Why in god’s name did he write Detta like that? I can’t imagine a satisfying explanation, no matter how hard I try.
THE “CATCHING UP WITH KING” RANKINGS
11. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
12. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
My Best Pictures
Before 2019, it was a sketchy proposition for a Very Important Filmmaker to Grapple with Their Own Mortality on screen. Because there are few people on earth as egomaniacal as a famous director having a midlife crisis. How can we expect them to resist the urge to wallow in their own pretentiousness? This is the urge that drove Stanley Kubrick to make Eyes Wide Shut, one last exercise in justifying his own perversions before his soul could be judged. The Tree of Life made us weigh the minutiae of Terence Malick’s childhood against the literal creation of the universe (I’m sorry that your dad was an asshole, but come on, dude).
But last year was different. It featured plenty of high-profile filmmakers tapping into that ol’ existential wrestling match, and at least three of them held their own egos in check, telling stories brimming with genuine, relatable pathos – along with all the tenderness and pain and humor and philosophical profundity that implies. Two of these, Martin Scorsese and Pedro Almodóvar, even racked up Oscar nominations. The third, David Milch, is a TV guy who used the unlikely return of his finest show to say something incredibly meaningful about endings.
So as we near the end of yet another Oscar season, praying to God that it doesn’t embarrass us too much (please Lord, don’t encourage the makers of Joker any further) and that the good art gets rewarded (Parasite, Antonio Banderas, Florence Pugh, The Lighthouse’s cinematographer), let’s focus on an unlikely, lovely fact – these 2019 films about old age and disease and death left me feeling especially alive, each in their own way. Now, without further ado, are My Best Pictures:
Deadwood: The Movie
Thirteen years after HBO unceremoniously cancelled his signature show – the curse-jar-shattering Shakespearean Western Deadwood – showrunner David Milch was finally granted the opportunity to give us all a sense of closure, in the form of one made-for-TV movie. And he did it in the midst of unimaginable personal turmoil, having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a year earlier. Somehow, his script for Deadwood: The Movie packs a season’s worth of story into 120 minutes, without sacrificing the show’s penchant for loose banter and heavy soliloquy. A plot involving the return of the slathering wolf George Hearst, who discovers how he was hoodwinked a decade ago by our ragtag murderin’ pals, provides plenty of dramatic tension. But more importantly, it creates pockets of space for director Daniel Minahan to recreate the familiar, mud-smeared thrum of a town living on a knife’s edge. While giving almost every surviving cast member their own lovely curtain call. When Ian McShane delivers his final words as the abusive monster/loyal friend Al Swearengen, we get one last shot of profane, blasphemous poetry. And then it’s closing time, for good.
Homecoming
Just like a great drama has to offer more than just drama, a great concert film has to give us more than just music. And Homecoming, Beyoncé’s tour de force documentary about her instantly iconic 2018 Coachella performances, is one of the greatest accomplishments of the genre. Because this supremely motivated superstar approached the task of directing with as much tireless effort and conceptual flair as she applied to the stage show itself. As the first black woman to headline White Privilege Woodstock, Beyoncé embraced a theme of education, employing the marching bands and color schemes and resilient legacies of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, amplifying how rare it is to see unfiltered depictions of black culture on stages this large in America. Via a riveting series of cinema verité-style behind-the-scenes interludes, we get a real sense of how much work goes into a choreographed production of this size, of how easy it could be for its star to forget about cultural impact and just focus on the Herculean task of recovering from her pregnancy and hitting those umpteen-thousand cues. But her whole point of showing these rehearsals, of giving a voice to her dancers and drummers and designers, is to show us how hard her community works. So when we inevitably see this impossibly talented person singing about being crazy in love, while being surrounded by her artistic, cultural, and biological families, that love feels all-encompassing enough to shelter us all.
The Irishman
Like most mob movies, The Irishman is sprinkled with moments from the lives of practicing Roman Catholics – well-attended baptisms; ornate weddings; wrenched expressions of guilt; naked pleas for forgiveness. But the theology behind Martin Scorsese’s 26th feature is, if anything, more Buddhist. By following the corpse-strewn path of real-life hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro, speaking volumes with every wince) in minute detail, the director asks his audience to meditate on the long-term damage of each heinous act. To consider the metric ton of bad karma slowly being amassed. And to consider, silently and unblinkingly, the wretchedness it causes. Sheeran’s hits aren’t captured with elegant tracking shots – they’re abrupt and impersonal, a decidedly inhumane transaction. Obituaries of random characters pop up from time to time, blunting any swagger they might have in that moment with the fact of their grisly demise. What little romanticization there is comes from Steven Zaillian’s crackling script, which makes these criminals much funnier than they likely were. Coming from the likes of De Niro and Pesci and Keitel, this dialogue, along with the walking-and-talking Chekov’s gun that is Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino, spittin’ mad), kept me rapt past hour three. Just in time for Scorsese to show us what comes of all that greed and political maneuvering and emotionally barren tough-guy bullshit. It sure as hell isn’t nirvana.
The Lighthouse
When my wife and I moved in together, it was into a studio apartment that would’ve been cramped for one person. The “bedroom” was a ladder to a wooden pallet installed a foot below the living room ceiling. The shower was like a leaky coffin. There were rats, and those rats had fleas. In case I ever forget how lucky I am to have found someone who could live in such a shithole with me without killing me, I will watch The Lighthouse and let the waves of gratitude pour over me. Robert Eggers’s ominous, patient, quite-funny masterpiece of psychological horror shows us what happens when two incompatible people get thrown into close quarters with no chance of escape. When Ephraim (a briskly mustachioed Robert Pattinson) lands on an isolated New England island to work as an assistant to the head lighthouse keeper (Willem Dafoe, a bug-eyed, farting Lear with a beard like a cartoon lion), they pass the time by getting plastered, telling stories, and generally trying their hardest to manage how annoyed they are. When it becomes clear that their scheduled transport off the island is not arriving anytime soon, things get a whole lot weirder. The actors both do some incredible work depicting how need can so easily turn to resentment, which slowly pickles into rage. Often, it’s unclear if they are going to kiss or kill one another. By the end, they’ve broken all kinds of leases, including the one so cruelly granted to them by God.
Pain & Glory
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a more moving encapsulation of the relationship between pain and religion than this line from Pain & Glory, Pedro Almodóvar’s nostalgic, bittersweet, overwhelming visual feast of an autobiography: “The nights that coincide several pains, those nights I believe in God, and I pray to him,” shares Almodóvar stand-in Salvador Mallo (played with electrifying vulnerability by Antonio Banderas). “The days when I only suffer a type of pain – I’m an atheist.” The film follows Mallo around Spain as he reconnects with old colleagues and lovers, his nostalgia receptors sparked by a local revival of one of his earliest feature films. Reminiscing all the while about his complicated relationship with his mother – the person he worshipped as a child, whose stubborn homophobia caused him great pain as an adult – Mallo feels finished, a husk of what he once was, assaulted from all sides by headaches and back pain and choking fits. Even at his lowest, Almodóvar can’t help but make every shot feel like a painting that would change your life if you stumbled across it in a gallery window – everything from Mallo’s kitchen cabinets to the color palette of his nightly pills feels injected with the luminescence of an endangered sea creature. By the end, our hero is writing again. He doesn’t know if this new work is going to be a comedy or a drama. He only knows that it’s alive.
Parasite
Usually, when something is deemed to be “too on the nose,” that’s a diss. A criticism of a pedantic piece of art that doesn’t trust its audience to get the point. But when I say that Bong Joon-ho’s dark comedy Parasite is on the nose, it’s a compliment. I’m not sure what the income inequality problem is like in Bong’s native Korea, but America was in desperate need of a whip-smart story about the ever-growing chasm between the rich and the poor, full of metaphors that hit us over the goddamn head. Parasite follows a poor family of four who lives in a basement apartment – huddled together watching drunks piss in an alley like it’s an FDR fireside chat. When they get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to infiltrate the gorgeously outfitted confines of a wealthy household, their hopes are sparked, and their fates are sealed. The instant-classic scene of the son and daughter (Choi Woo-shik and Park So-dam, witheringly sarcastic) practicing their fake art teacher backstory establishes the first half of the film as a class caper that hits that age-old snobs-vs-slobs pleasure center. But the family didn’t really have an exit strategy, and unfair class systems are constructed to destroy those who try to climb too high. So as Parasite transitions into the horror movie it was pretending not to be, and our smiles curdle into grimaces, we realize that we’re witnessing a brutally efficient takedown of the American dream. One that’s so on the nose, we have to breathe through our mouths.
Us
“It’s us.” Of all the indelible one-liners in the history of horror, this might be the most economical. Because when you take away all the clever flourishes and dynamic performances from Jordan Peele’s second feature, what’s left is a multi-layered metaphor anchored in a stark, preternatural fear – that, unlike what so many well-meaning parents and teachers have told us, we’re not special. Us pits the Wilson family, led by matriarch/superhero Adelaide (Lupita Nyang’o, Best Actress), against their own bloodthirsty doppelgangers, clad in red jumpsuits and wielding beautiful vintage scissors. As Adelaide discovers the origins of this mysterious legion of doubles, and does the math to connect them with a certain House of Mirrors-related childhood trauma, Peele’s ultimate points also emerge, fully formed. We might not be able to see the strings, but the haves and have-nots of our society are inexorably connected. When a smirking California doofus “earns” enough money to buy a hideous modern home with a boat out front, there is an equal and opposite impact on the guy who works at the factory that processes marine supplies. That doofus may think they live in different worlds. But no. It’s us.
Honorable Mentions: Annabelle Comes Home; Escape Room; Glass; The Great Hack; Happy Death Day 2U; I Lost My Body; The Intruder; Jojo Rabbit; The Last Black Man in San Francisco; Little Monsters; Little Women; The Nightingale; Ready or Not
February’s Bestest Songs
Here are my favorite tracks from the February that was. It was so cold, it should work at Friendly’s.
1. Lizzo – “Cuz I Love You”
Lizzo reminds us that love is the best kind of devastating, singing with real, visceral, mascara-streaked joy. An instant classic.
2. Benjamin Earl Turner – “Ja Rule”
If Mega Millions branded their winnings as “I don’t give a fuck money,” I’d buy a ticket every day.
3. Jessica Pratt – “Poly Blue”
My wife perfectly described this gentle folk song as music to put on while taking a nap with someone you love. She was totally talking about me, right???
4. Ex Hex – “Rainbow Shiner”
Mary Timony’s shit-hot band is back after five years, writing riffs that make me search for used El Caminos on Craigslist.
5. Serengeti – “Dust”
Over a playful Wurlitzer loop that would make MF Doom jealous, this Chicago MC shows off his knack for describing professional failures: “Wanted to be a food stylist / Ended up at Little Caesar’s.”
6. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “For Real”
A previously unreleased gem about artistic authenticity, from one of rock’s most authentic voices.
7. Tierra Whack – “Only Child”
Current lyric of the year: “You done turn my heart so cold / I should work at Friendly’s.”
8. Kero Kero Bonito – “The Open Road”
If you didn’t believe this delightful British trio had hooks to spare, remember that this is a fricking B-side.
9. Maxo Kream – “Meet Again”
This gifted Houston rapper pairs heartbreaking rhymes about an imprisoned friend with a beat that’s as smooth as a summer cocktail. This dissonance is brilliance.
10. Spellling – “Haunted Water”
Vintage horror movie synths, torch song vocals, and a shout out to “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” = a formula we didn’t know we needed.
11. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – “Cyboogie”
If our robot overlords could groove like this, John Connor would be out of a job.
12. Mountain Men – “Take Me Home, Country Roads”
One of the purest songs ever written, sung with reverence and warmth? It doesn’t make me cry at all. It’s just getting a little dusty in here, what with all the country road travel and such.
Songs of the Summer 2018
It’s that time of year when eggs fry on sidewalks and toast toasts on windowsills. Summer! Here’s a playlist of music that should go perfectly with your 2018 barbecues, beach blanket bingo tournaments and dead skin peel-offs. You can find song by song analysis below that. And below that? Nothingness. An eternal void. HAPPY SUMMER EVERYONE!
1. Janelle Monáe – “Make Me Feel”
Who better than sci-fi R&B diva Janelle Monáe to use the raw materials of Prince’s “Kiss” as a launchpad to something entirely new? “Make Me Feel” achieves the kind of bliss that turns summer flings into engagement rings.
2. Caroline Rose – “Soul No. 5”
“I got soul” is a gutsy thing for any singer to claim. But as Caroline Rose belts it over a relentlessly catchy new wave riff, we accept it as a matter of fact.
3. Khruangbin – “Maria También”
Old school strutting music from a trio of surf-lounge-funk instrumentalists. What, you were just gonna walk?
4. Cardi B – “I Like It”
“They call me Cardi B / I run this shit like cardio.” After hearing the most satisfying bass drop of the summer, how could we argue?
5. Natalie Prass – “Short Court Style”
A lush, breezy disco groove that waves like palm trees – requiring zero effort to enjoy.
6. Pusha-T – “If You Know You Know”
Why did Push and his producer Kanye West make us wait 37 seconds until the incredible beat drops on this track? Because they knew we’d appreciate its luxurious stereophonic glory even more. They knew.
7. Kacey Musgraves – “High Horse”
“Oh I bet you think you’re John Wayne,” goes this effervescent disco track from country singer Kacey Musgraves. Defenders of the way things used to be have never been eviscerated so neatly, or joyfully.
8. Parquet Courts – “Wide Awake”
One of our most dependable rock bands expands their scope from Ramones pep and Velvety churn to include Fear ofMusic-era Talking Heads, resulting in a shout-along funk gem that boasts the bass line of the year.
9. Sofi Tukker – “Batshit”
A New York EDM duo channels Right Said Fred in a song about losing your mind, and wouldn’t you know it – I’m doing my little turn on the catwalk.
10. Drake – “Nice for What”
You can argue about the legitimacy of Drake’s feminist stance here, but can we do it when the song is over? That flow over an expertly deployed Lauren Hill sample is positively infectious.
11. Azealia Banks – “Anna Wintour”
Speaking of music great enough to drown out uncomfortable conversations, problematic human Azealia Banks continues to fuse dance music with hip hop in breathtakingly organic ways.
12. Screaming Females – “Fantasy Lens”
Marissa Paternoster is the best guitar player.
13. Cupcakke – “Cartoons”
“I don’t look for n****s so fuck Waldo / Bitch I’m cocky like Johnny Bravo.”
14. Khalid & Swae Lee – “The Ways”
The high point of the stacked Black Panther soundtrack is this agave-drizzled island love song from a burgeoning singer/songwriter and half of Rae Sremmurd.
15. 2 Chainz ft. YG & Offset – “Proud”
Rappers usually turn to balladic form on songs dedicated to their moms. 2 Chainz opts for a burbling, insidious trap groove – the perfect balance of sweetness and grit.
16. Frank Ocean – “Moon River”
I used to think “Moon River” was a trifle of a song, propped up by a legendary actor in a hit movie. The lyrics are meaningless! Then Frank Ocean sang it, harmonizing like a motherfucker over gentle, ringing guitar chords. And I can’t stop crying. End every party with this, and even the lame ones will feel meaningful.
My Best Pictures
So here we are, a week before we get to watch the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences give a bunch of awards to Alejandro’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Camping Trip. Per the usual, it’s gonna be a long, depressingly whitewashed event, drunk on its own twisted definition of “prestige picture.” Movie about a man beating insurmountable odds so he can exact revenge? Prestige Picture. Movie about a woman beating insurmountable odds so she can exact revenge? Genre Picture. Look, I’ll be thrilled if I’m wrong, and Mad Max: Fury Road wins Best Picture. But ever since February 2006, when I assumed Brokeback Mountain was a lock – especially with insulting dreck like Crash as its competition – I’ve learned to expect the worst.
But enough negativity. It’s the Oscars. I’m going to watch the shit out of them. And I’m going to picture what the Best Picture field would look like if it was up to me, just like every year:
Best of Enemies
At a time when “watching the news” means a screen full of red-assed pundits yelling themselves hoarse, directors Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville take us back to the beginning of it all – the televised 1968 debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley. Their film is as compulsively watchable as those ideological showdowns were, framing them as the moment when TV editorializing went from “Point/Counterpoint” to “Point/Shut Up I’m Still Talking.”
The Hateful Eight
When the script for his eighth film leaked, I can see why Quentin Tarantino initially freaked out and announced he would never shoot it. Because while it has the look and feel and language of a period Western, at its heart, it’s an Agatha Christie-style whodunit, set in a cabin in a snowstorm. No-spoiler rules most definitely apply. So I’ll only say that The Hateful Eight is classic Tarantino – three hours of some of his best, most crackling dialogue, along with expertly deployed flashbacks and perspective shifts that hearken all the way back to Pulp Fiction.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Director George Miller’s fourth installment of his Mad Max series continues the trajectory of its namesake – a post-apocalyptic loner forever scarred by the murder of his family. But Max (a quiet and weary Tom Hardy) is not the protagonist here. Fury Road is the story of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron, never better), a steely-eyed, one-armed soldier running on dual engines of outrage and hope. She rescues the sex slaves of the tyrant Immortan Joe, hiding them in her armored rig. What follows is an exhilarating, non-stop chase sequence and overwhelmingly satisfying revenge tale. By the end, a semi full of traumatized people are driving full speed at their oppressors. And we learn that power is one thing. And strength is another.
Spotlight
After watching Best of Enemies, and ruminating on how cable news became the Limp Bizkit to Gore Vidal’s Rage Against the Machine, Spotlight might just be comfort food you need. This engrossing procedural drama projects a deep love for newspaper journalism, while still keeping one eye on realism. Director Tom McCarthy – who so convincingly played a reporter with spotty ethics on The Wire – depicts the true story of how the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team uncovered a conspiracy involving the Catholic Church and the rampant pedophilia in its ranks. McCarthy does for journalists what the best episodes of Law & Order did for cops. They work hard. They expose lies. They achieve some level of justice. Then we shut off the tube, and sleep better.
Spy
Don’t worry, survivors of Austin Powers In Goldmember. Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy’s third movie together isn’t a spy spoof. It’s a legitimately great spy movie – action-packed, intricately plotted, and very, very funny. McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a CIA agent stuck as the personal assistant of special agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law). Then disaster strikes, Cooper gets promoted, and the film ingeniously flips the script on your typical McCarthy comedy. We learn quickly that Cooper is more than just a lovable goof. She’s a brilliant agent, a highly trained fighter and marksman – far better than Fine or Rick Ford (Jason Statham, mocking himself with aplomb). Yet the CIA keeps giving her dowdy and sexless secret identities, a sly metaphor for Hollywood’s expectations of McCarthy. Her frustrated reactions to these moments are what make them funny. She’s acknowledging what she’s up against, before proceeding to gleefully kick its ass.
Tangerine
Shot on iPhones and starring untrained actors, Tangerine is a refreshingly unpolished snapshot of friendship, following two transgender prostitutes as they navigate the streets, buses and donut shops of Los Angeles. Its plot is thin: When Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is released from prison, she finds out from her friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) that her boyfriend has been cheating. Sin-Dee goes out looking for him. By keeping the story this simple, director Sean S. Baker can let the scenes play out in an Altman-esque way, with conversations starting, stopping, and overlapping in a way that believably mimics real life. It’s spiked with a joyful energy, but the darker moments feel just as organic. Like the final scene in a laundromat, which has the power of 1,000 “Lean On Mes.”
When Marnie Was There
The final film to be produced before Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement and Studio Ghibli’s ensuing hiatus (god it hurts to write that), When Marnie Was There makes masterful use of the “magical summer in the country” trope to tell the story of a child who worries that no one loves her unconditionally. When Anna discovers that her foster parents receive government payments for raising her, she becomes depressed. After a serious asthma attack, she is sent to stay with relatives in a gorgeous country home. Across the water, Anna discovers an abandoned mansion that turns out to be not so abandoned after all. Written and directed with tenderness and wonder by Hiromasa Yonebayashi (The Secret Life of Arriety), When Marnie Was There shimmers with natural light, and sparkles with the thrill of discovery. “You are more loved than you realize,” it says to us. What an absolutely perfect way to say goodbye.
1/11/11
In honor of today’s date, five #1 picks:
#1 breakfast cereal: Raisin Bran Crunch
#1 bean: Kidney
#1 fruit: Apples
#1 beverage: Coffee
#1 toilet paper: Scott
Chewing Tobacco for Kids!
I have lots of great memories of my Little League baseball days, none of them involved with actually playing. That emotional rollercoaster of being embarrassed to ride the pine, yet scared to play, is best left forgotten. I’m talking about the snack stand here, folks. This is where I became addicted to processed nacho cheese, rainbows of Nerds and Runts, and Kids of the Garbage Pail and Sour Patch varieties. My most precious memory, though, is of consuming bag after bag of Big League Chew, that sugary, cheap shredded gum that comes in a fun pouch – just like chewing tobacco! Whilst sitting on the bench, you could shove your cheek full of a wad of Chew and pretend you were a real ballplayer, spitting all over yourself and groping your crotch like a brain-damaged, tick-infested animal.
So when I read today that Big League Chew will be produced in Akron, NY – a short drive from my hometown of Buffalo – I jumped for joy. Or at least I tried to. I’m kinda fat for some reason.
Something new for my audience.
Hey mom and dad, guess what? I’ve got a new page on this blog, called “Advertising Stuff.” I’ll periodically post some of the work I’ve done at my day job as an advertising copywriter. You’ll see the link at the top of this page. Please look at it and comment. PLEASE! If you don’t, I’ll remind you of all those field hockey games and harp recitals you missed. And then you’ll feel guilty, and take me out to Red Lobster to make me feel better. Which I will.
sweensryche.com 