Toxic Hot Seat (2013): Unraveling the story

Toxic Hot Seat (2013)

dir: James Redford, Kirby Walker

Toxic Hot Seat is one of this year's premiere HBO Documentaries, and it's a blistering one. James Redford and Kirby Walker unravel a story of government influence, misused reports, corporate money and influence, and ill-conceived laws to outline how America is sitting on furniture that are filled with toxic chemicals under the guise of fire safety.

It starts with San Francisco firefighters coming down with cancer at rates that far exceeded national averages. If I remember right, the rate of cancer among SF firefighters was 11 times that of the national average. The main reason is because they go into fires which has all of the chemicals in our house burning into the atmosphere, especially furniture.

This all started in the 1970s, when there was an observation that most house fires started by a burning cigarette. But, Big Tobacco wouldn't develop and/or release a cigarette that self-extinguished in order to reduce the fires that an ignored cigarette could cause. Instead, they pushed for the furniture to be less flammable. Which lead to the development of flame retardants in furniture, which was launched by a study that said it could reduce escape time by half a minute.

This led to a law in California, where all furniture now had to have flame retardants in them, with a negligible increase in escape time. Since that law existed, it was cheaper just to have all furniture with padding that had those flame retardants in them, and so all of America got the furniture.

Fast forward into the '00s where we have discovered these chemicals, after 20 years of being in the houses, are now causing cancer. The fight is on. Maine and California had dual state initiatives to ban flame retardants, and the chemical companies spent huge amounts of money to astroturf the hell out of these states. Maine wasn't used to it, and suspected something was up. They successfully banned flame retardants. But, California was duped and the bills continuously failed due to astroturfing.

Where Toxic Hot Seat is successful is that it isn't just a bunch of hippies talking about hippy things, like a lot of radical documentaries. Toxic Hot Seat starts with Salt of the Earth firefighters, moves on to PhD scientists teaching at U-C Berkeley and Chicago journalists, and then moves on to mothers and female freshmen senators to tell the story. There is no voice over used in Toxic Hot Seat. And, while the details of the chemicals are glossed over on occasion, there's enough there to know that the research has been done. There is something wrong at stake here.

To me, the most important part of Toxic Hot Seat is the story of astroturfing that exists in its modern day sections. The chemical companies created groups with innocuous sounding names, and paid children and colored people to testify on behalf of the flame retardants in order to dupe the politicians and the voting public that there was a grassroots movement for the use of flame retardants. It took journalists from the Chicago Tribune to do an expose on the toxic chemicals in our furniture and lives to properly call out the astroturfing. And, while even journalists can be bought, this is why we need to have independent journalists at newspapers which are not beholden to giant corporations. We need some unbiased information to discover the roots.

Toxic Hot Seat is a vital documentary not just on flame retardants, but also on the political processes that we've let develop. It's about astroturfing, and complacency. And, it's about how legal misinformation and deception actually is. This is required viewing for Americans who need to know what strings are being pulled how...not just on flame retardants, but every issue that is against the big bad corporations.

Freeway (1996): A Leftist Feminist Screed...by accident?

Freeway (1996)
dir: Matthew Bright

As some personal background, I have a history with this movie. This movie came out when I was a developing teenager. I think I remember it playing for all of a week in my market. It got rave reviews from both of my local newspapers, 2 thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert, and everybody was commenting on how the movie was an overly-violent, tarted-up, foul-mouthed blackly comic modern exploitation take on the Big Bad Wolf fable.

Of course, I had to see it.

By this time, I had already been absorbing early John Waters and knew my way about some of the midnight screeds if not the 70s exploitation genre. But, still, Freeway blew me away. I rented this movie on VHS the first week it was out, and watched it twice before returning it. This was the type of balls-out black comedy that I'd been looking for.

It wasn't until recently when I really started looking at it as the ground-breaking work that it actually is. There is so much bubbling under the take-no-prisoners surface, but it gets coated in every bit of slick bleakness that it all you see is the black-as-night sugar coating, and not the radically political underbelly that Matthew Bright has concocted, inadvertently or intentionally.

Now, Matthew Bright was a person with ties to some of the Hollywood alternatives. He had been a writer and actor in Forbidden Zone, directed by Richard Elfman in part to highlight Oingo Boingo, whose leadership Richard had just passed to Danny Elfman, his brother. He had also scripted Guncrazy, the Drew Barrymore vehicle by Tamra Davis, wife of Mike D of the Beastie Boys and director of CB4.

Matthew Bright had ties. With Freeway, he made the move to also being a director, and scored an executive producer in Oliver Stone. And, with Freeway, Matthew Bright made the only movie that has any sort of quality, or at least mass appeal. It's hard to determine just how much of this movie is Matthew Bright's and how much is Oliver Stone's, especially given Bright's later works, Ted Bundy, Freeway 2, and Tiptoes. Yes, THAT Tiptoes.

Freeway is interesting in that it is possibly one of the most radically progressive scripts to ever come out of even the indie world with one of the most exploitative features even in the post-Tarantino world.

Bright took a Brothers Grimm cautionary tale of Red Riding Hood, and made it more adult. We're introduced to Vanessa Lutz, a high schooler, as she is being taught to read the sentence "The cat drinks milk." When she finally manages to figure it out, she makes out with her black fiance, Chopper, as a reward. The next scene introduces the audience to her mother prostituting herself on the street, and her stepfather smoking crack in the motel room they reside in. And, in the third scene, Vanessa is watching TV with her stepfather when the local news does a story on the I-5 Killer, who has been raping and killing teenage girls up and down the freeway.

Matthew Bright engages in one of the most effective storytelling setups ever. The main character is an illiterate Southern female criminal who is in an interracial relationship, her mother is a meth-addicted whore, her father is out of the picture, her stepfather is a crack-smoking pedophile, and there is a killer on the loose. Within minutes, her mother is pinched, the cops take away her parents, she cuffs the child welfare lady, and takes off for her grandmother's house with a basket of beer and a gun from her boyfriend who is also killed.

On the freeway, her car breaks down, and in walks Bob Wolverton, who is a school psychiatrist who probes her brain, then degrades her. He assaults her until she manages to grab the gun and take back the situation, and shoots Bob...who survives. And then they go through the court systems a bit before Bob is exposed as a pederast, and everybody ends up at her grandmother's house where Bob has killed the grandma, and is set to kill Vanessa.

Matthew Bright has created a movie with so many political issues.

First, Freeway is feminist. Sure, it's written by a man and has a male perspective. And, Matthew Bright's commentary is totally one of the most disturbing thing that has ever been put to disc, with Bright constantly perving over the bodies of the females in the movie, saying that this film is his "Ode to girls."  Which, *shudder*. I don't know if it is a joke, but he's just sounding creepy.  However, this is totally one of the feminist movies of the 1990s. Vanessa Lutz is a female who can only be a female. She is given agency, aggression, and is a victim of a system that is set up against her, but does not allow herself to be victimized. She accepts help when it is necessary, but otherwise, she's never a damsel-in-distress, nor is she a gender-neutral character. Vanessa Lutz is a street-smart girl who has a brutal sense of morality, but she does have a functioning sense of morality.

Which is more than most of the men in the movie have. Bob Wolverton is a rapist and a murderer. Both of the detectives think that she's a lying criminal because of her past of being a shoplifter, firebug, and was pinched for soliciting. Her stepfather is a lazy shit who molests her while her mother is out being a prostitute. Yet, the moral center is this strong female character who constantly looks after herself in a system that has been aimed against her.

Freeway is also progressive in sociopolitical ways as well. Much like the earlier Pink Flamingoes, whose opening song is actually used in the first scene of Freeway, Matther Bright is engaging in what most of polite society would call the dregs. This is a girl who came from a broken trailer trashy home, whose mother split from the father after she splashed chemicals on grandma's face. Her family is addicted to drugs and gets rent vouchers. These are ALL of the conservative hot button issues of how society is falling to the bottom.

Bright is also using these characters to contrast with the characters of Bob and his wife. Mrs. Wolverton is constantly shown in white and gold, which was in fashion with the yacht club elite. They live in a multi-level house in the suburbs, and own an SUV. They have a big yard, and basically have a lot of money. These are the "respectable" people, who even on television get called "heroes." Yet, Mrs. Wolverton is out for Vanessa's blood, and Bob is a serial rapist and murderer.

Freeway isn't a type of script that comes along all that much, because it is also a vital smooth black comedy which masks all of this through an over-the-top tonality that makes it feel as light as 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, except hilarious. The last movie I can think of that had a strong female in the face of adversity and a focus on treating the poor as people of a certain morality, was the sour but great Frozen. Strong female characters are rare, especially unconditionally strong females. Movies like Gravity are being praised as Feminist because it is about a female who carries the whole damn movie, but this is a female who almost kills herself and has to conjure a male voice to give her strength. Not Vanessa. She may be troubled, but she doesn't need a man to give her strength. It is all female.

In turn, this movie may have benefited from being partically produced by Oliver Stone, whose fingerprint might actually be on this film. It is in the energetic phase of Stone's filmmaking, such as Natural Born Killers and U-Turn. The frequent jokes, visual puns (such as Freeway Entrance with a sign saying No Motorized Bikes immediately after Chopper being killed), aggressive people, moral amorality, and inversion of meaning have tones that seem to be founded in Stone's past as much as Bright's past. And, given Bright's "this is my ode to girl" commentary, one is left to wonder if it is more of Stone's movie.

But, in any case, Freeway is an amazing one-of-a-kind bullet of sexy violent leftism. It's almost a progressive screed saying "think of the children." It's fast, hilarious, smart, and brutal. Bright would never create a film of such nerve again.

Postscript: keep your eye on the jewelry, as that's almost a story unto itself. Vanessa starts off with a necklace that says "Foxy Lady" while also having stuffed teddy bear earrings. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wolverton is introduced with these earrings that look like a tchotchke cabinet of maybe religious symbolism puked on her ears. They're seriously the single-most ridiculous pair of earrings I think I have seen in a movie. Everything tones down a bit by the end, but man...those earrings.

Why I'm not seeing Ender's Game, and why you shouldn't either

Let me level with you. My father loves the novel Ender's Game.  I mean, he LOVES Ender's Game. I never read it, myself. In high school, I was too busy reading Trainspotting and A Clockwork Orange and Catch-22. Even as a kid I was too busy being engulfed in the world of Stephen King (reading The Stand in 7th grade is quite fun.

But, in college, I learned about Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender's Game. The author of this book that my father loved, my friends loved, and I had been thinking of getting around to due to peer pressure. But, my freshman year, I learned about Orson Scott Card, and that totally fucked my world view in fours.

Growing up, I wasn't inundated by anti-gay culture. I wasn't bombarded by religious messages saying being queer was terrible, and that I'm going to hell. I had a distant cousin that was gay. I had the early internet, where Geocities frequently had gay education mixed in with porn.  I learned what Stonewall was, and the meaning of the Pink Triangle while looking for whack material. Geocities gay geeks, if you're out there, know that you educated at least one kid about gay history when he had nobody else to teach him.  Thank you.

And, so, it wasn't until college when Orson Scott Card's essay from 1990 popped onto my screen. That essay? The Hypocrites of Homosexuality. In it, Card calls for homosexuality to be criminalized, and that the Church should demonize any and all out-of-the-closet homosexuals. He wants all homosexuality to be in the closet, and to remain behind locked doors where nobody can see, or hear. And, to also arrest people for trying to pick up guys.  Basically, he wanted us to be in jail if we ever stepped out in public, despite his hypocritical statement to the contrary.

Card always says that he was being liberal for the times (1990) and the place (Mormon audience). But, he's encouraging the Mormon audience to demonize the homosexual unless they repent their sinful ways, and come into the straight fold.

Reading that a decade later at first shocked me. Then, it offended me. Then, it saddened me. Then, it pissed me off. This motherfucking asshole thinks that I'm less of a person because I want to live my life the way I want to live it?  This guy, who my friends think is an amazing writer, thinks that I am a danger to his way of life? I didn't give two flying fucks about this douchebag or the religion he was a part of, but he wanted to make my lifestyle illegal?!  Oh, hell to the fucking no.

Orson Scott Card didn't just challenge my lifestyle and make me feel like I was less than nothing. Orson Scott Card wanted to make me illegal. He wanted to raid my bars where I communicated with my friends, and picked up people who were willing to be picked up, and he wanted to put me in jail until I conformed to his lifestyle.  That is the Orson Scott Card who wrote Ender's Game.

Orson Scott Card made me into a minor activist. If a friend said I should read Ender's Game, I would point them to this essay and say No, I Will Not. They even offered to loan me his book, and I refuse to read it. For all I know, Ender's Game is the greatest book since Dracula, or whatever you consider a great classic.  But, I refuse to read one word of it because he made me feel like less of a person than he was by saying I should be illegal.

When I was being all activisty, my friends hadn't known Orson Scott Card's pure hatred of all things homosexual. And, it wasn't really all that big yet. In 2004, Orson Scott Card had commented that homosexuality was the result of "a disturbing seduction, or rape, or molestation, or abuse." He just told me that I was a molested child.  I'm not, by the way. But, even still, the gay community hadn't really addressed Orson Scott Card at large until...Hamlet.

Orson Scott Card wrote a reimagining of Hamlet, where King Hamlet was a gay pedophile who had molested Laertes, Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as little kids. And, King Hamlet was actually killed by Horatio as revenge for the childhood molestation.  He also turned Hamlet into an idiot who doesn't really want the throne after his uncle takes it from him. Yeah, the author of Ender's Game turned Hamlet into a gay pedophilic rape-revenge story.

Orson Scott Card then turned up as a chair member on the board of National Organization of Marriage, which is an anti-gay political group who makes and spends money by demonizing gays and their right to marriage benefits such as hospital visitation rights and death tax benefits. This is the Orson Scott Card who wrote Ender's Game.

This is not character assassination. This is merely saying exactly who Orson Scott Card is. He is a Mormon who is willing to put his money where his mouth is, and demonize gays to make money. That is the kind of guy who wrote Ender's Game.

This Orson Scott Card has made $1.5 million from the film rights alone. This Orson Scott Card is listed as a producer on the film of Ender's Game. If Ender's Game succeeds wildly, Orson Scott Card will have his whole Ender series optioned.  He will be making money hand over fist. And, my readers, if you see, or buy, or read Ender's Game, you will be supporting this type of backwards ass thinking, and giving this man more money to use against homosexuals in the future.

This is why you should not see Ender's Game. This is why you should not buy the book Ender's Game. This is why you should not support Orson Scott Card in any way, shape or form.

...

And, then there's the studio.  Back in July, Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment vowed to do a gay benefit premiere of Ender's Game. They have been trying to distance themselves from Orson Scott Card, saying he already made his money.  But, they want to do sequels. They want to make money from this so they can option more of Orson Scott Card's novels.

And, they lied.

Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment never did a gay benefit premiere of Ender's Game. That never materialized. They haven't given any money to offset the $1.5m that the producers paid to Orson Scott Card, so far.  Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment are making money by giving money to somebody who is completely working against gay interests. And, they refuse to do anything about that.

Do you really want to give money to that?  Other Lionsgate films you can boycott, if you're feeling more pissed off than me: Escape Plan, Catching Fire, and A Madea Christmas.

Fuck you Lionsgate. You're now tied to Orson Scott Card, especially since you reneged on your promises in July.  Suck it.

The Final (2010) and Murder By Proxy: How America Went Postal (2010) : High school re-enactment as microcosm

The Final (2010)
dir: Joey Stewart

Murder By Proxy: How America Went Postal (2010)
dir: Emil Chiaberi

Initially, this entry was going to be solely about The Final and how it was a fantasy role play that was probably made by people who were either outcasts themselves or by people who were trying to enter the minds of the kids who do mass shootings.  Initially, it was going to be about life lessons and how the direction was actually pretty good, and how the movie is also a bit of a warning sign saying treat people better.  Because, really, we need more of that.

In a fit of happenstance, I stumbled upon Murder By Proxy immediately after watching The Final. The former is a documentary, and the latter a torture-porn horror film.  The former is about workplace environments, the latter is about high school. The former is, in part, about the failed 2008 thrust of Washington State House Bill 2142, the latter is about a Halloween party.  On the surface they seem like such disparate movies, but they are so intrinsically tied together.

Murder By Proxy documents the rise in workplace violence that started in the 80s, and increases to this day. It starts with the first case of workplace mass murder, in Edmond, Oklahoma, in 1986 by Patrick Sherrill at a post office.  It continued with the 1991 mass shooting in Royal Oak by Tom McIlvane, and focuses on his case for its intent.  Murder By Proxy does also look into many other cases beyond these two, but these are the most in depth cases given its use of Charlie Withers.

The "official" story (and, on the Wikipedia site it still is this story) was that McIlvane was a post office employee who had a history of altercations and had gone postal after being fired due to insubordination. Interviews in the film indicate that the management had become caustic and aggressive, and had started writing up McIlvane for stupid inane things, such as wearing shorts that were too tight.  Director Emil Chiaberi found help explaining the case in the form of Charlie Withers, an employee at the time of McIlvane's rampage who wouldn't stay quiet about the injustice he was seeing.

The thing is, Murder by Proxy is about the workplace bullying that occurs in everyday society.  There are no protections from it.  These range from usual harassment to downright belittling and condescension.  In the 1970s, the Postal Service had been pseudo privatized, where it was separated from the US government getting money, and was now responsible for making itself rather self-supportive.  This meant that the Postal Service was now available to using the same hostile management tactics that started pervading all management in the 1970s and moreso in the 1980s, and still pervades to this day.

In interviews found and conducted within Murder By Proxy, post office employees repeatedly said that they didn't agree with what McIlvane did, but they understood it.  Having your fellow workers say they understand why you went on a shooting spree, is damning evidence pointing towards a shitty management in the work place.  Your employees should not be "understanding" of another employee mass murdering the management.

Since the 1970s, the majority of the laws passed have been to protect the rights of the employer.  Murder By Proxy spends part of its time focusing on Washington State House Bill 2142, which was an anti-hostile work environment bill.  Charlie Withers even flew to Olympia to speak on behalf of the bill.  It was sponsored by 7 representatives.  It died in committee in February 2008.

In 2008, there was a case here in Washington, Spain vs Employment Security Department.  In the case, Spain had reported constant verbal abuse by her employer, who also made employees stand outside in the rain amongst other allegations.  She was denied unemployment insurance, and sued all the way to the State Supreme Court, which ruled that she had "good cause" and the ESD commissioner had discretion to say that she did.  The Supreme court ruling came down in June 2008, four months after the anti-hostile bill died.  Which would be OK news...except in 2009, Washington State house and senate passed a bill that stated that "good cause" was not a good enough reason anymore, and also reduced the taxes that employers had to pay.  This was passed in February 2009.

Let's go through that timeline again.  In early February 2008, Washington State rejected a bill that would made it punishable to have a hostile work environment. In late February 2008, Spain vs ESD was argued to get unemployment money for quitting due to a hostile work environment. In June 2008, she was allowed to collect unemployment.  But, in February 2009, Washington State passed, with the help of many democratic senators and representatives, a bill that not only rolled back that ruling (allowing for hostile work environments to have no legal ramifications) but it also cut the taxes of employers.

One of the reasons people shoot up their places of work is that they are intrinsically tied to their job, and they otherwise feel helpless.  At least, that is what Murder By Proxy says, and that's rather conventional wisdom.  If an employee is very tied to his job where it is his friends and life, then losing his position, especially by claims of insubordination or a newly hostile environment, is likely to set off a catastrophic mass murder.

Murder By Proxy also sees the ties to this type of hostile environment to the high school environments that are created.  Murder By Proxy directly links going postal to Columbine.  The filmmakers state that we frequently go for the too-easy answer: Drugs, video games, movies.  In trying to explain what turns a yellow card of warning into a red flag after the fact, Chiaberi explores his own too easy solutions.  He explores fame, and isolation.  But, he barely touches on a few reasons that seems rather easy and obvious to some: revenge, leaving the world a better place, and educating people.

The Final doesn't even hold back on those lessons.  In The Final, a group of outcasts, who have been mocked and harassed daily by the various cool kids, set up a Halloween party where they plan to torture and disfigure the kids in order to teach them lessons.  The outcasts don't want to actually kill their tormentors because that would be too easy, and the tormentors wouldn't suffer enough.

The Final addresses, briefly, the whole fame angle.  And, it also posits that the outcasts have all survived on a diet of horror movies, trying to claim it is more dangerous than it is.  By the end, fortunately, The Final decides that the fame angle exists only because it is intrinsically tied to the lessons the outcasts want to teach the world.  The outcasts ramble on and on about how harassed they were, and how cruel the tormentors were, and how this will be a lesson to everybody to stop being such high school shits.

And, the causality and morality of the outcasts is where The Final is most interesting.  Outside of the speechifying, The Final is a typical torture porn where the kids disfigure, dismember, coerce, split spines, and all sorts of other violent and brutal acts intended to inflict the pain they're feeling.  And, to be fair, the outcasts really to want to inflict pain and vengeance.  But, an outcast really wants to teach lessons.  This is why the outcasts in The Final made sure they have a captive audience.  This is why the outcasts feel so compelled to speechify.  This is a fantasy concocted by somebody who has been an outcast, or at least knows the minds of those who are  This is a fantasy of vengeance that is inflicted at the highest order.

Whether The Final is scary or not depends on your stomach for the torture porn genre.  It really is pretty well made for a low budget affair.  The acting ranges from decent to occasionally awful.  The cinematography is actually really good, and the pacing is decent.  It is actually a solid movie inside of its own little techniques.  But, The Final is trying to say something about the mindsets that really hadn't been explicitly put down before.

Gus Van Sant's masterful Elephant or Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin both have different takes on the outcast, neither of which get close to what it really is.  Elephant gives the atmosphere for the killing, but ignores the reasoning of the killers.  We Need To Talk About Kevin posits a sociopath is needed to kill people.  But, as Murder By Proxy points out, anybody could be a killer in their workplace.  And, similarly, anybody could be a killer at school.  Give the right atmosphere, and anybody could be a powder keg.

What The Final is trying to be is that fantasy lesson given by the outcast to everybody else to not be such pieces of shit to everybody. Murder By Proxy is the real life results if these lessons aren't learned by the time people get into business.  The Final is a solid low-budget torture porn movie that, while bloodless and not all that scary, rarely delves into stupidity.  Murder By Proxy is a masterful documentary that ties in everything you have been worried about the business sector, and how that's turning all of America into a powder keg.  Separately, they're amazing films.  Together, they provide an interesting and horrific conversation.

War of the Worlds (2005): 9/11's not so subtle metaphor!

The Other Films Classic

War of the Worlds (2005)

dir: Steven Spielberg

THUD! Did you hear that? THUD THUD!! OW! That hurt? What was that? 

That was the anvil hitting you across the head in the form of Spielberg's latest blunt object, War of the Worlds. A message movie where he tries to cram every single little bit of message as he can into one movie. Here's a list of messages:


1) The World Trade Center Bombings was horrible.
2) War is horrible.
3) If you can escape your father's clutches, you can survive a giant explosion without injury.
4) If you can trust your kids, they will be safe.
5) Charleton Heston is a great inspiration to psychos everywhere.
6) John Williams is as subtle as...well...as Steven Spielberg.
7) Boston has extremely strong windows!
8) Video cameras can survive EMPs, especially in the service of "cool" camera shots.


Before I go bitching about the movie much more, I should state two things. I rather enjoyed myself through half the movie, and that will be coming up later. And, I have a bias against Spielberg, so this isn't an unbiased review.

Yes, my friends, War of the Worlds was Spielberg's 9/11 movie as a metaphor. When giant alien machines unearth themselves, they wreak havoc on Jersey, NYC, and various other places around the world. Of course, Tom Cruise, the movie's heroine, is a self-centered, divorced, father who is charge of his two kids, a 10-year-old know-it-all girl, Brilliance, and a 15-year-old surly boy, Sulk. Well, Brilliance and Sulk aren't really their names, but they'll do for now.

Tom's ex-wife has gone with Tim to visit her parents up in Boston, and felt that Brill and Sulk should stay in Jersey with their father. Tom, however, doesn't have food in the house, and doesn't have much time for the kids until they're under attack, at which point he starts becoming a protective Father Knows Best, who doesn't trust his kids to make a decision of their own if they tried.

Meanwhile, the Aliens land and use their machines to exterminate the human race, namely because they're...envious? Ah well, it doesn't matter as the initial and final explanation are all short, and to some throw-away point. Why? It doesn't matter because this is Spielberg's WTC movie!

Yes, folks, as soon as the Aliens attack, we see people taking pictures of the machines, getting vaporized, and other sorts of awesome effects laden imagery. It is in the initial attack scenes (save the usage of the fucking video camera not 20 seconds after the EMP happened), that Spielberg almost shines. He mixes his obvious imagery with a semi-knowledge of B-movies to achieve fun and exciting imagery mach 2.0. And, then, it all starts to go haywire.

Tom and his kids steal a van (which was recently repaired with a new solenoid), and go through many journeys to get to Boston so the family could be together. 

There aren't any real impressive scenes, and some are so stubbornly blindingly bad that I have to go through them. Tom and his kids reach their mother's Jersey home, where they hide in the basement during an attack. The aliens are about ready to blow more shit up with Tom and the kids are in the cellar. Sulk then pulls Tom and Brilliance into a lower cellar...which still has windows! The windows in the main cellar burst out with a huge explosion, but the windows on the side of the house are relatively undamaged, and the cellar is pitch black while the flames are all around. OK, then.

People are posting signs looking for their loved ones *THUD*, just like on 9/11. Except...everybody is leaving their home! How will they be contacting you? If you see my daughter, Please call my non-working cell phone/land line/mail me. *roll eyes* Ah well, we needed to be hit on the head.

Sulk decides he wants to be all he can be and joint he army to fight back. Tom leaves Brilliance by a tree to go chasing after Sulk and bring him along. As Tom and Sulk argue over whether Sulk is a man or not, Brilliance starts getting almost abducted by a helpful crazy couple. Tom sees Brilliance get almost taken, but still has the time for a long-ass good-bye, farewell, you're-a-man-now, scene. And, then, Sulk blows up, as obviated by the big explosion.

Tom and Brilliance go through a forest, which didn't look too destroyed, but clothes start falling from the sky. From where? I dunno, as there were no people to explode. Then, Tom Cruise made his potatoes into a forest and said, "This means something."

Charelton Tim Robbins makes a cameo as silly crazy person who wants to fight back. He is cleaning his gun in a motion that strongly looks like jacking somebody off during one of the heartwrenching scenes. I think it was heartwrenching. I was too busy laughing my ass off through it. Seriously, I was in tears I was laughing so hard. And, then, as the laughing fit from the jacking off motion dies down, Tom sings Deuce Coupe to Brilliance, with much owed to Cameron Diaz in My Best Friend's Wedding. My sides hurt after that.

At this point, we really start doing stuff just so the camera could look cool. Charleton Tim and Tom start running through CharletonTim's basement frenetically, removing blocks from the window so the camera could look through, then replacing the blocks. And, the dumbest aliens in the galaxy use their camera to go searching for the inhabitants of this domicile, and are foiled by a mirror. We think that the aliens are a bit narcissistic and watched their camera in the mirror. As if mirrors weren't invented by that race.

Soon, the cute ewoksaliens come exploring around the basement, and playing with things,

Tom eventually arrives in Boston with the kid, after he exploded an alien (bad pie), where all the windows are still intact. Even in buildings with much destruction by passed out alien machines, the windows were still in tact. However, it is all a dream because Sulk didn't really die, but Tim, not CharletonTim, did. Or at least he wasn't shown much because it is all about Tom and his ex-wife and their kids, including not-burnt-up Sulk and Brilliance. In a quick 10 second wrap-up by Morgan Freeman, we find out that the aliens were killed by single-celled organisms, viruses or bacteria of some sort. Way to go Morgan! (Didn't the narration remind you of the narration to BASEketball by CHARLETON HESTON!!)

So, other than the initial destruction, and a couple of the other scenes, the movie is pretty Spielbergian. And, very Spielberg from 25 years ago. Without the total and utter destruction, the movie would have sucked. 

BTW, The Aliens were made of people

Bulworth (1998): When progressive politics get it right

Bulworth (1998)

dir: Warren Beatty

wr: Aaron Sorkin, James Toback, Jeremy Pikser, Warren Beatty

This past May was the 15th anniversary of Warren Beatty's scathing screed Bulworth.  Four Presidential election cycles later, 15 years later, it's worth it to check in with the most underseen, underrated scathing polemic this side of Wag the Dog.

The '90s were lousy with political screeds and satires.  Election, Citizen Ruth, Dave, Primary Colors, The American President, Wag the Dog, Primary Colors, Bob Roberts, The Distinguished Gentlemen, and Bulworth.  The most biting of these were roundly ignored and rejected, while the more easy going won big box office results.  Smack in the middle is Bulworth, just as much a satire as a screaming rant against democrats, and the state of progressive politics...by a democrat.

In the 70s and 80s, Warren Beatty was an active fundraiser for democratic politicians, and actually toured with the likes of Jerry Brown.  But, by the 90s, Beatty had become disenchanted with the state of democratic politics.  Bill Clinton was starting the deregulation of wall street, and putting policies in place that would benefit the corporations. Regulations and laws dictated by our favorite lobbyists had been popping up with regularity, and politics had been increasingly more transparently been shown as being bought and sold by the powers that be

Beatty had had quite enough, and following his cash cow Dick Tracy, he decided to make Bulworth, retaining complete artistic freedom, including final cut.  And, Bulworth was released in wide release, with little to no advertising, and with surprisingly little fanfare.  It made a total of $26.5m in domestic gross.  It was nominated for a bunch of awards, but had disappeared from the public's eye within days of its release.  It had a criminally bare bones DVD release, and has not even had a blu ray yet.  It seems that everybody wishes this movie to be ignored.

But, what is in this movie that was nominated for awards and released in 2,000+ theaters that has since been roundly dismissed by the culture at large?  What is it about?

Bulworth is about a Democratic senator, Senator Bulworth, who signs up for a very large life insurance in exchange for a vote on a health care bill, and subsequently signs up for a contract to off himself.  And, in the process of a re-election fundraising campaign, he loses his mask, empathizes with the Black community, and starts spouting truths via rapping, in the most brutal way possible.  

There is no subtext to Bulworth.  It's not subtle.  It's a primal scream. It's just brutal raging against the system.  Beatty doesn't pull any punches whatsoever, either. He rages against the Democratic use of race baiting while still maintaining the Republican party notes.  He rages against the Democratic appeasement of the decimation of the welfare state.  He rages against political corruption.  He rages against donations and money in the system.  Basically, he screams at the state of the Democratic party for the majority of the 108 minute running time.

But, while it isn't subtle, it is surprisingly not simplistic.  Beatty's Senator Bulworth is, at first, a huge racist upper-class white dude who is as corrupt as they can be.  He'll state things like telling the black community to "put down the chicken wings and find new role models besides spouse-abusive athletes" because that's what white sheltered racists would say.  But, Beatty conspires to have Bulworth delve into the Black community until he comes out as a rapping senator who uses rap as a symbol of association with the Black community.   At first, Bulworth is telling it like it is as a white person who is sheltered from the lower classes, but as the movie continues, he is starting to see things from an evolved point of view that includes how the lower classes are affected by the politics he and the democrats have put on.  

So, what's changed since Bulworth's release? Not a hell of a lot.  Even though we have our first half-black President, he's still selling out the lower classes for the rights of the corporations. The majority of Democratic senators and politicians have little to no qualms about giving corporations tax breaks while also cutting the rights of the workers.  Even in the progressive PNW here, we have Democratic politicians who recently gave corporations tax breaks, while also limiting the rights of the Employment Security Department (our government unemployment office) to give out unemployment benefits. When asked about it, one commented, essentially, a lot of other Democrats voted for it, so whatever.

Earlier this year, Obama was said to have "gone Bulworth" in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman trial.  By going Bulworth, he decided to screed against the white community at large with a focus on the white conservative community.  It shows just how abused the idea of Bulworth is, in that "going Bulworth" isn't rallying against your own system, but against your enemies and the commentators.  

Bulworth is the satire that isn't that satirical.  It's the movie that stabs over and over again.  It just doesn't stop screaming.  It may be a little funky in its "White Guy Who Raps" methodology, but even that had its purpose other than look at the funny white guy.  This is a scathing movie that should be required viewing for almost anybody who proclaims themselves to be a progressive.  This is a movie that should be required viewing for anybody interested in politics and how we got to where we are.  It isn't a movie that's just angrily taking the piss out of the other guy.  This is a movie that's interested in self-checking.  And, that's what makes it all the more satisfying.

Butter (2011): When liberal politics go wrong

Butter (2011)

dir: Jim Field Smith

"None of this would have happened if Mr. McAllister hadn't meddled the way he did. He should have just accepted things as they are instead of trying to interfere with destiny. You see, you can't interfere with destiny, that's why it's destiny. And if you try to interfere, the same thing's just going to happen anyway, and you'll just suffer." - Tracy Flick, Election

Reading the liberal blogs and websites, one gets the idea that conservatives are unfunny jerks while liberals are hilarity incarnate. They use examples of formerly funny directors losing their edge on conservative films like David Zucker did with An American Carol. But, liberals are prone to being unfunny assholes as well, and Butter is the star-studded proof.

Star-studded? Wait...isn't this that movie that pretty much went straight to streaming that Netflix has been promoting the fuck out of by putting it in the top row of the comedy section for like four months straight that nobody ever heard of except for that posting and this review? Yes. Yes it is. It's a blacklist screenplay from 2008 that got picked up by Jennifer Garner for her first outing then released by those Weinstein fuckers. As such, they were able to blackmail 2/3 of Hollywood to try to save think stinking piece of crap. Obviously, Jennifer Garner saved the starring role for herself, but then she got Hugh Jackmam, Olivia Munn, Rob Corddry, Ty Burrell, and they even dug up Alicia Silverstone. And that's just the juicier roles.

You know with a cast like this, it's either going to be awesome or its going to shit the bed. And, really, it kind of does the latter

Butter is trying to be the updated Election, where modern day politics are parodied through small town competitions. It opens with a woman winning Iowan governor, and then backtracks to be nothing about that race. It's really about a butter sculpting competition. Isn't that hilarious? FOOLED YOU!! It's this level of hilarity that marks Butter as being high brow entertainment. 

Butter is really about how a trophy wife's loss to a ten-year-old girl, named Destiny, in a butter sculpting competition caused her to run for governor. But, the butter competition is the climax of the movie, and the politics are whisked away as unimportant to the movie. Instead of doing a clever mirror politics story, where the woman uses the same bullying techniques to no avail in the butter competition but succeeds in politics, we're stuck with a full 90 minutes of butter.

Everything about this movie is tangential. The trophy wife's husband being a former butter sculpting king? Impetus at best. The stripper he picks up on a lonely night? Tangential. Sum total of her purpose: buying the 10 year old a set of knives. The car dealer the trophy wife fucks who tries to cheat the game? Tangential.

Everything about this movie is about the inevitable fate, even if it refuses to acknowledge it. It's like the authors took Tracy Flick's words of wisdom at the beginning of Election as a challenge. No, people who mess with destiny don't get hurt, they become governor!

What the movie is trying to be is a cynical, world-weary look at how politics is just a competition of little consequence, with players who are too petty to lose. It's trying to say that in butter competitions the good people win, but in politics...not so much. Perhaps it's even trying to say that the Iowa straw poll victors are the better people, even if they lose (Iowa has only picked 2 out of the past 6 Republican nominees since 1979. But, what it is saying is that Republican politicians are nuts.

Iowa straw polls are for Republican candidates only. This isn't a criticism of Democratic politics. This is only directly analogous to Republicans. And, it's saying that, unless you're a 10-year-old little black girl, you're a fucked up backwoods hick Republican who has affairs and cheats in order to get to the top. And, it's all very obvious. Zomg is it obvious.

But, worse than that, it's blatantly misogynistic. The lead character, a stand in for every Republican female ever mocked (Michele Bachmann, Christine O'Donnell, but namely Sarah Palin, etc) is a cold woman who married to make herself look like a winner. And she'll lie, cheat, and fuck her way to the top. Then, there's the stripper who seems to want to destroy people for money. The only good female adults are either the judge of the competition (arguable in her case) or the adoptive mother, both of who play back seats to the rampant female leads.

In the end, it's not funny, biting, insightful, honest, or even incisive. This is a heavy handed pseudo metaphor attack aimed at Republican armed with the dullest of instruments. This isn't a must watch, a warning siren, or a clarion call. It's a "fuck you" to conservative politics in general, without anything specific to say.