Author: KcM

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

Nat Hentoff recoils at the provisions of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft’s next salvo in the war on civil liberties. Meanwhile, Dubya’s bean counters at the White House OMB try to ascertain the monetary value of lost privacy and freedom. Sigh…you know it’s gotten bad when even GOP apparatchiks like Dick Armey are calling out the Justice Department.

Rising from a Ring of Fire.

While Todd Haynes works on getting his Bob Dylan biopic off the ground, MTV has a scoop about the Man In Black: Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon will play Johnny Cash and June Carter respectively in the forthcoming Walk the Line, to be directed by Girl, Interrupted‘s James Mangold. I’ll give it a chance, for the subject matter if nothing else.

From sweatshops to dogfights.

Nike receives some bad press for paying homage to dogfighting in its new basketball ad (“The Battle: Speed,” available here once you get past the flash.) My reaction was much the same as the guy from Slate: I generally liked the ad and liked the music (even if I thought Gary Payton would kill Steve Nash in 1-on-1), right up until the shot of the pit bulls going at it at the end. Since my own dog was mauled by a pit bull owned by some dumb-ass kids aspiring to this side of street life (4/15), I also found that shot to be in very, very poor taste. I would say I’d boycott Nike for it, but I pretty much already do – I generally buy Sambas or Pumas for my daily gear, and the And-One Sprewells for my basketball kicks. (In fact, I used to have a pair of the Nike GP’s, and they fell apart on me.) At any rate, a bad call by the boys in Beaverton.

Running Scared.

Two choice nuggets from Follow Me Here: 1) Frantically afraid of even remotely tough questions, the Bushies have declared war on Helen Thomas (and the Washington Post.) 2) A new poll has Dubya losing to a theoretical Democrat in 2004. Of course, it’s putting this theory in practice that will be the main problem for the Dems next year.

Schindler’s Liszt.

Caught Roman Polanski’s The Pianist Wednesday night and quite liked it, although as you might expect it’s pretty grueling – I’m not sure if I’d watch it again anytime soon. The first half plays out as a well-done and unflinching (non-Spielbergized) look at life and death in the Warsaw ghetto. (Watching Adrien Brody step over the bodies of starved children on his way to work, I was briefly reminded again of how unbelievably unrealistic and offensive I found Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful.) As powerful as this first hour is, though, it can’t help but follow some of the conventions we’ve come to expect from films in the Holocaust genre – the Szpilmans keep saying things like, “Well at least we know this is as bad as it’s going to get,” while the audience knows full well it’s about to get much much worse. So, despite the unspeakable horrors on screen and the often-riveting performances throughout, we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The second half, however, is a different story. When through a combination of luck and timely aid Szpilman finally manages to escape the ghetto, the film enters (at least to me) novel territory and becomes a strangely riveting and unfamiliar survival story, wherein a deteriorating Adrien Brody, moving from apartment to apartment and constantly scrounging for food and warmth, tries to wait out the end of the conflict. This part of The Pianist moves at a strange, languid pace and feels very unfilmlike, until a twist at the end that, although it may be true, still brings us back onto the well-trod path of filmic convention.

I doubt The Pianist will win any major Oscars, not only so the Academy can dodge the Polanski child molester bullet but also because Adrien Brody, who is undoubtedly excellent, plays Szpilman so maddeningly remote. We spend a lot of time with Brody in this film, and never once do we get the sense that we know what’s going on in his head, which I suppose is part of the point. At any rate, I can’t see the Academy rewarding this kind of understatement over a scenery-chewing performance like that of Daniel Day-Lewis, who carries Gangs of New York over at the other acting extreme. Nevertheless, The Pianist is a film worth seeing, if you have the stamina for it.

Next stop, Room 101.

It came out yesterday that two suspected Al Qaeda operatives held in US custody died from “blunt force injuries” during interrogations. Even if these wounds were perpetrated before their capture (which is a big if), it’s utterly dismaying to read where the line is being drawn by our government between “stress and duress” and out-and-out torture. Equally stomach-turning is that we apparently subcontract out the tough nuts to crack to those nations even less perturbed by the ethics of torture than we are. What have we become?