So I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now: Anne Hathaway will be playing Selina Kyle in ‘The Dark Knight Rises.’
Of course the internet and many armchair critics shit their collective panties over this, but we were also concerned about the casting of Heath Ledger as the Joker, and we all know how that turned out.
Here’s why I am fully prepared to see her appear in the film, and have it be another perfect casting move:
"Bette Davis Eyes. I has Them."
This is the movie she was nominated for an Academy Award for–an arthouse film by Jonathan Demme that sort of slipped through the cracks. Or maybe it didn’t. 2008 is kind of a blur to me.
It’s about a young woman who is given a brief pass from her rehab program in order to attend the wedding of her sister.
I have to be honest; I started watching it, but it was so heart-rending that I stopped about 20 minutes in. I’m going back to finish it some day, but at the time it hit way, way close to home for me.
Anyhoodle, this film and others are more than enough to convince people she has the acting chops to play Selina Kyle.
But Catwoman?
Here’s the thing: when Christian Bale was cast in Batman Begins, he was cast as ‘Bruce Wayne’ and not ‘Bruce Wayne/Batman,’ likewise for everyone else, except The Joker, who had no other name.
I’m not going to guess how they’ll present Catwoman, if they do at all; Nolan doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to strong female characters, and it was discussed on another well-read blog that I’m too tired to find the link to. I don’t know if I’d want to see her as the usual ‘jewel thief’ character she tends to be; they might take a lot of inspiration for her from the ‘Hush’ storyline, so that’s a possibility.
So that’s just my two cents on the Anne Hathaway casting. I haven’t even wrapped my mind around the casting of Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. However it turns out, it’ll be awesome, I know that much.
I love them, as I’ve already discussed in a few entries on my blog. There’s nothing like a Man With No Name cleaning up a town through a judicious usage of fists and bullets–especially when the bad guys are rapists or murderers. It’s awesome.
Westerns!
I love them, as I’ve already discussed in a few entries on my blog. There’s nothing like a Man With No Name cleaning up a town through a judicious usage of fists and bullets–especially when the bad guys are rapists or murderers. It’s awesome.
I’ve also already discussed my disappointment with the current spate of mopey, angsty Westerns that the US has produced: Movies like 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and No Country for Old Men are all great movies, but the genre seems to be dominated by miserable people. Even the Australians got in on the mope-fest with The Proposition, which was another great movie but which was a little too rapey for me to really enjoy. I’m looking forward to the upcoming Cowboys vs. Aliens movie, but it’s also possible that won’t be intended as a Western at all and won’t explore Western tropes much. Also, Daniel Craig has monkey ears.
Also, I think he's afraid that if he smiles, his career will be over. Which doesn't bode well for Cowboys Vs. Aliens being a fun movie.
Apparently, in the middle of the 20th century, Eastern Europe began making Westerns called Osterns, which usually depicted Native Americans in a more compassionate light as freedom fighters, compared to their role in American Westerns as villains. I haven’t seen any of these, but I’m really curious to.
And now, breathing new life into the genre come a group I am going to call East Meets Westerns. Made by or starring Asians, the genre only has a few entries at the moment: The Good, the Bad, and The Weird; Sukiyaki Western Django; and The Warrior’s Way, which only came out this weekend in theaters.
I think of them as East Meets Westerns because I like how that sounds; the filmes of Sergio Leone were known as Spaghetti Westerns because they were made with cheap Italian labor in Italy, and that name has always bothered me a little. Of course the Italians call them something else, but it doesn’t seem like these new Westerns yet have a name. It could be because they aren’t intended to be their own genre–after all, it’s not like every movie that gets made in Asia has to be branded as part of a genre. But for the sake of searchability for enthusiasts, say on Netflix or through Amazon, they really should have their own name. God forbid someone searching for a good, fun Western gets suggestions for Westerns where everyone is miserable and dies at the end, when there are fun movies like this getting overlooked because of a semantics issue.
When Hollywood remakes this movie, they will meticulously remove every possibility of joy and no one will be smiling on the poster.
Anyhow, I’ll be reviewing Good, Bad and Weird and Warrior’s Way today, so that’s what we’re working on.
This sounds weird, but its something that needs to be addressed and that I’ve been thinking about for some time. I think people today are more passive than ever when it comes to facing their fears, or dealing with difficult issues. And difficult issues become easier to deal with if you make the effort. But if it takes more effort than liking it on Facebook, people don’t want to be bothered, it seems. And changing the way you think about things takes effort, it takes a BIG effort.
Let’s clear a few things up:
I’m white. I’m Irish, English, Scottish and Dutch. My parents weren’t very religious, and since most of my family were 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants, we didn’t pass down any kind of cultural identity, other than the Southern thing. Quite literally, the only thing that both sides of my family have in common is moonshining, and that’s not something you all get together and talk about at Xmas.
In middle school, I was usually one of the few white kids in classes predominantly full of Hispanic or black children. I felt lonely, and I never seemed to know what was cool. I did make friends, but it was more a friendship of personality than shared interests. I made people laugh sometimes, and I had people to sit with at lunch, but when people started discussing movies or music, I might as well have been from another planet. And when you’re 12 in 1992, you didn’t just get on iTunes or Youtube and figure out what people are talking about. You had to go to the store and try to listen to the ‘Mature’ albums when the clerk wasn’t looking.
In college, I worked in a Chinese restaurant, where again, I was one of the few, if any, white people. I learned a lot about the restaurant business, and a few snippets of Chinese and Vietnamese culture. My generally odd personality was an endless source of amusement to the manager, Mr. Lee, and the cooks, who didn’t speak much English. Less welcome were the jokes one older cook would tell about me (in Cantonese) that made the other cooks uncomfortable–I never found out what he found so funny, but can hazard a few guesses. Anyway, I digress.
In short, I know what it feels like to be different.
But I never for a moment imagine that I know what it feels like to be a minority.
Missing from Picture: An Actual Black Person
I can empathize, I can enjoy movies aimed at Black or gay or Latino or Asian audiences, I can explore other cultures than my own. I can read books, watch TV shows aimed at demographics that aren’t me, read blogs and editorials and listen to podcasts, but this does not mean I think I am being somehow included.
In short, there is no such thing as being an Honorary Minority.
There’s no secret handshake, there’s no jacket with your name embroidered on the back, there’s nothing that will make people instantly know that ‘you’re down.’
All you can do when you meet a person who is different from yourself is treat them the way you would want to be treated. They don’t want to emotionally validate you, they don’t want to let the rest of ‘their kind’ know that you’re cool, they might not even want to know you at all. Would you want to be expected to do that for every person who had experienced a tiny fraction of your way of life and imagined it to mean they knew you inside and out?
Now imagine, instead of it being a superficial thing, like the kind of music you’re into, or what kind of movies or food or clothes you like, that it’s something about yourself you can never change or hide. It’s with you always. You can’t buy a new outfit and be someone else, you can’t blast music from your car so the guy at the drive-thru thinks you ALWAYS listen to that band. It’s with you before you wake up in the morning, whether you wear business or casual, if you’re in the mood or not. In some ways, whether you wanted it or not, certain aspects of your identity were chosen for you–for the rest of your life.
This sounds weird, but its something that needs to be addressed and that I’ve been thinking about for some time. I think people today are more passive than ever when it comes to facing their fears, or dealing with difficult issues. And difficult issues become easier to deal with if you make the effort. But if it takes more effort than liking it on Facebook, people don’t want to be bothered, it seems. And changing the way you think about things takes effort, it takes a BIG effort.
Anyway, that’s my soapbox speech. Let’s get back to the movies, right?
At a party/lunch/work function/bar/medical convention, a conversation is going well, but dangerous territory is broached.
The Enemy: ‘What’s your Favorite [insert media example here] of all time?’
The Victim: ‘Oh gosh, there are so many, I don’t know, I can’t think of anything, I…I guess [you blurt out the title of some widely-acknowledged lesser exponent of an artist’s creative oeuvre, ie Prince’s ‘Under the Cherry Moon’ instead of ‘Purple Rain’ or Clint Eastwood’s ‘Paint Your Wagon’ instead of ‘Unforgiven’].
YOU HAVE DIED.
My hypothesis will prove that within a certain set of predetermined enviromental factors, game will not be present.'
Socially, anyhow.
How to avoid such a fate? Where is the reset button of life?
There isn’t one, but those who aren’t willing to learn from history are doomed to repeat it!
If you had known the maneuver known (in my head) as the Reverse Highlander, this wouldn’t have happened.
Are you ready to learn it?
‘So what’s your favorite [blahblahbla] of all time?’
Step One: ‘Well, there can’t be only one.’
See what I did there?
Step One allows you time to gather your thoughts, organize, and target them instead of just shotgunning them all over the face of whoever you’re speaking with. I fully realize that the average person does not live in fear of conversational faux pas like long pauses, losing one’s train of thought or stuttering, but there’s no harm in being prepared and practicing good conversational skills.
Step Two: You’ve gathered your thoughts, and can now progress with the conversation like a stone cold orator, which if I know kids these days is every kid’s dream.
‘Of course I enjoy [Neil Gaiman’s film adaptation of Coraline/most of his books/his accent] but there can’t be only one favorite. And even though it landed heavily on the side of suck, there was something fun about his Beowulf adaptation.’
I’ve seen some amazing suggestions over the years; one idea was teaching crows to pick up trash and paying them with food, through the use of these crow-targeted ‘vending machines.’ The crow puts in a bit of trash, metal, or paper, and the machine spits out a peanut. HOW AMAZING IS THAT IDEA? People used to use animals for heavy lifting, hauling and protection; what if we used technology to put them to work cleaning up garbage or picking walnuts or something?
Man cannot live on bread alone; we need wine, cheese, tacos, pesto, ketchup, Chinese food, or sometimes just a can of Pringles.
Your brainmeats are the most important organ you have–feeding it the same old boring crap over and over leads to blandness and eventually, decreased brain function. You have to give your brains a little flavor once in a while to liven things up and get them energized. Your brain grows the same way muscles grow and get stronger–with exercise.
And one great way to flavor your delicious brainmeats is with something like the TED talks, such as this totally amazing TED video about one man’s crusade to make condoms available throughout Thailand.
How amazing was that? 13 and a half minutes of awesome. And family growth down from 7 children per household to 1.3 in twenty years! A 90% DROP in NEW HIV/AIDS CASES!
90%!!!
If you aren’t familiar with the TED talks, they are always worth checking out. They’re basically these global conferences where people go to showcase some mindblowingingly interesting idea that they need funding for. And of course, you don’t just show up with some bullshit scribbled on the back of a napkin and then pass around a bucket for pocket change. TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design, and the people who showcase their ideas are usually people whose ideas have already borne fruit, like Mr. Viravaidya.
I’ve seen some amazing suggestions over the years; one idea was teaching crows to pick up trash and paying them with food, through the use of these crow-targeted ‘vending machines.’ The crow puts in a bit of trash, metal, or paper, and the machine spits out a peanut. HOW AMAZING IS THAT IDEA? People domesticated animals for heavy lifting, hauling and protection; what if we used technology to put them to work cleaning up garbage or picking walnuts or something? And their involvment is voluntary, and they teach their offspring and other individuals within the species the behavior; it becomes sharing culture instead of domestication.
Anyhow, the TED talks are a great way to renew your faith in humanity and give your brainmeats a little flavoring.
Mr. Viravaidya is a goddamn genius on many, many levels. Only one of them is the condom thing–
–he mentioned something about ‘labor as collateral’ for people who have bad or no credit history. This BLEW MY MIND.
Think of all the homes sitting around right now that have been foreclosed on, which are now owned by banks. Many of them are falling into disrepair, making them LESS likely to sell to a buyer who ins’t already interested in either a fixer-upper or bulldozing the whole thing in order to build a McMansion. Maybe that’s why the bank isn’t interested anyway–they’d rather get someone in who’ll bulldoze a 250k house so they can build a 4 million dollar shitbox.
But think of how many people are out of work right now, in debt to those same institutions or others. The banks could easily swap labor as collateral for loans!
You apply for a loan, you voluntarily perform some task in order to qualify for it–be it manual labor or some kind of service, and you get your money and the bank receives your services in exchange. Sure it wouldn’t be a perfect option–not everyone has services or training to swap or is able to perform physical labor, and the opportunity for exploitation is huge–but it’s at least SOME kind of option for people with no or poor credit history, so long as you’re serious. Public Works projects, like fixing up crappy schools, parks, roads, or government buildings could be an option.
Anyhoodle, I saw that video and wanted to share.
If Mr. Condom bringing birth control to Thailand isn’t your cup of tea, then just go to the TED talks search function and type in something mildly interesting to you. There’s probably a great video on it right now.
