TIFF - Movies Seen

Comments to be fleshed out, hopefully, as I've been bed-ridden for four days following a nasty bug caught on the last day I was at TIFF. Tiff.

Day 1

The Duchess of Langeais (d. Jacques Rivette): B+

This movie tries very hard not to break your heart, but does a little anyway.

The Mourning Forest (d. Naomi Kawase): C+

While I can always go for Shinto animal spirit mumbo jumbo, this movie is about an erratic child-man healing via group therapy. That is much too ask from this viewer.

Flight of the Red Balloon (d. Hou Hsiao-hsien): B/B-

Juliette Binoche is stressed out in this movie. Has anyone ever been stressed in a Hou Hsiao-hsien movie?

My Winnipeg (d. Guy Maddin): B+/B

I noticed that Canadians are very tickled by jokes about how bored and miserable people are in Canada. They were also very entertained by Guy Maddin's live narration of the film, as was I. That's the kind of special presentation that makes TIFF worth it.

Day 2

The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (d. Eric Rohmer): B+/B

What if someone filmed Nicaraguan fourth-graders doing a shadow puppet performance of Corey Hart's "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night" video? It would probably be as pointless and weird as this experiment in period camp. But would it be as fun?

The Man From London (d. Bela Tarr): C+

This movie has elegant tracking shots, images of lusciously inky black, and a guy trying to balance an apple on his nose. I wish I cared about the dude from London, though.

The Edge of Heaven (d. Fatih Akin): B

This movie had a pretty hot lesbian scene. But I think it ends up saying that German liberals should not be helping Turks. Or maybe not. Also, I'm kinda depressed that Hanna Schygulla did not spend 3 million euros to aid her in aging as gracefully Deneuve has.

Ploy (d. Pen-Ek Ratanaruang): C

This movie likes to do that trick where out of nowhere something totally shocking happens, but then it will say ha ha, just a dream. Besides that, it is mostly boring when it is not stupid.

Day 3

Secret Sunshine (d. Lee Chang-dong): B+/B

This movie features the ultimate helper guy. Also a woman who kinda cycles through the five stages of grief one too many times. Movie peters out, but this Lee Chang-dong sure knows how to direct actresses.

Les Chansons d'amour (d. Christopher Honore): C+

I love preening twits like the actor in this movie when he's in one of those French movies all about examining these preening twits under the microscope as if they were plankton on a slide. But who wants to go on an emotional journey with one?

Day 4

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (d. Christian Mungiu): A-/B+

Remember when helper friend was stuck in her boyfriend's apartment, subjected to a torturous dinner party where conversation revolved around doctor gossip? Remember how badly she wanted to leave, how tense she looked as she took the champagne glass to toast, and how the camera doesn't even catch the face of other party guests? That was so awesome.

Happiness (d. Hur Jin-ho): B-

Terminal illness movie: -28 points. Soulless city slicker finds humanity in the countryside trope: - 31 points. Corny romance: -22 points. "I wanna hold your hand" scene: -10 points. Maudlin score: -5 points. Somehow turning on a dime into the preferred Destruction Wrought by Weak-Ass, Selfish Man movie: +60 points.

Sad Vacation (d. Shunji Aoyama): D+

I remember a flat, unnecessary movie called Texasville, a sad attempt by Peter Bogdonavich to capture the old magic of The Last Picture Show after producing a string of flops. This is Mr. Aoyama's Texasville, only the results are far worse.

Redacted (d. Brian DePalma): B-

I expected this movie to be abject crap, and so I was shocked when it was not totally retarded. While there are many scenes of community theater badness, DePalma is not afraid to show the central problem for U.S. soldiers in Iraq, which is that they are on a hair's edge all day, playing protector to their potential killers. And also, they've been letting in some serious nutjobs in there.

It's a Free World... (d. Ken Loach): C+

Ken Loach tries really, really hard in this movie to not make a polemic about the Evils of Globalization by casting Pamela Anderson as a single-mom entrepreneur. But soon enough, each scene turns into either Illustration of the Destructive Logic of the Profit Motive, or Example for Why Capitalist Competition Dehumanizes Us All, or Why Must This Bitch Continue to Exploit These Poor Undocumented Workers, Why?

Day 5

Silent Light (d. Carlos Reygadas): B+

This movie is of course excellent. I would use the phrase "tour de force" except every moment in this movie is a "tour de force". Which makes me think maybe this movie has problems.

TIFFing

My September unexpectedly freed up, and what better way to spend some free time than to catch five movies a day in one of the most attractive cities in North America? All accounts a bumper crop of festival goodies, most of which will be screening at the Toronto Int'l Film Festival. Alas, I won't be seeing too many of them, given (1) a short stay of four-and-a-half days; (2) the perverse programmers decided to schedule a bunch of cinephile must-sees at the same time-slot (on the 9 am-noon on September 9: the new Rivette, Rohmer, Roy Andersson, Kitano, and Pen-ek are all screening); and (3) I'm staying mostly away from major commercial releases. I'm aiming largely to catch movies that won't get a release, or at best, have one of those blink-and-it's-gone deals. I've been very bad about catching up to movies on one-week runs lately.

It also means I won't be seeing (or won't aim to see) many of my most eagerly awaited movies of the year, which I hastily rank this way: (1) I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' pomo Dylan riff (with Cate Blanchett!); (2) There Will Be Blood, PTA's long-awaited new effort (with DDL!); (3) No Country for Old Men, Coens' reputed return to form; (4) Paranoid Park, another Gus paean to troubled youth and shot by Chris Doyle (I fully expect this to be my favorite movie of the year), (5) Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, boasting a typically great cast, trailer, and one sheet, though the Venice reviews are mixed; (6) American Gangster (Crowe + Denzel > 90s version of De Niro + 90s version of Pacino); (7) Ang Lee's steamy Eileen Chang adaptation Lust, Caution (Tony Leung in Tony "the Lover" Leung mode! Hot Chinese ingenue doing full-frontal!); (8) Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding, with Nicole and Jack Black; (9) the acclaimed My Kid Can Paint That; and (10) lastly, what do McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford have in common? Westerns with long titles conjoining two names? Hope for more. Jesse James is billed as a spiritual descendant of those languorous, poetic masterpieces, though I'd settle for a slightly more focused The Proposition.

Eight of the ten cited above will be playing at TIFF. But I think I can wait.

For some reason, the TIFF gods didn't schedule either the new (supposedly terrible) Wong Kar-wai or the new (supposedly terrible) Olivier Assayas. Cannes' fave Actresses is also nowhere to be found. Yet for all the whining one can do, it's hard to complain about four days where new movies by Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Guy Maddin, Bela Tarr, Hou Hsiao-hsien and the highly regarded Cannes bows Silent Light, Secret Sunshine and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days are all screening. With the exception of the latter, all of these face iffy prospects for commercial release.

My schedule below is borne of both necessity (I couldn't score tix to Mourning Forest, Secret Sunshine, or Redacted) and choice (I want the flexibility of having some slots open to take advantage of festival buzz). With ticket prices at close to $20 a pop, I'm also wary of taking chances on less touted features.

Anyway, TIFFers, give me a holla if you happen to be at the same screening.

Friday - September 7, 2007

Same Day tix - The Mourning Forest - Scotiabank 4 - 12:00 pm
The Orphanage - Sb 1 - 10 pm

Slots open - (a) 5 pm - 7 pm (Nap)

(b) 9:30 pm - 12 am The Orphanage - Sb 1 (10 pm)
Control - Sb 2 (9:45)

Tentative Schedule

09:45 am - 12:00 pm Rivette - Sb 2
12:00 pm - 02:00 pm (Mourning Forest - Sb 4)
02:45 pm - 04:45 pm Hou Hsiao-hsien - Ryerson
08:00 pm - 09:30 pm Guy Maddin - Wintergarden (Visa Screening Room)
10:00 pm - 12:00 am [Slot (b)]

Saturday - September 8, 2007

Same Day tix - [Choices from (a), (b), and possibly (c)]

Slots open - (a)11 am - 3 pm - The Man from London - Sb 14 (12:30 -3)
My Kid Can Paint That - Sb 2 (12:15-2)

(b) 3 pm - 7 pm - Edge of Heaven - Sb4 (3:30 - 5:45)
Useless (Jia) - V-8 (4:30 - 6)

(c) 9:30 pm - 11 pm (Socialize - Poker?)
Happiness (Hur Jin-Ho) - Sb 1 (9:30)
Chrysalis - Sb 4 (9:45)

Tentative Schedule

09:00 am - 11:00 am Rohmer- Isabelle Bader Theater
12:00 pm - 03:00 pm [Slot (a)]
03:30 pm - 05:45 pm [Slot (b)]
07:00 pm - 09:00 pm Ploy (Pen-ek) - Sb 14
09:15 pm - 12:00 am [Slot (c)]


Sunday - September 9, 2007

Same Day tix - Secret Sunshine - Sb 1 - 11:45 am
Slot (a)

Slots open - (a) 9 am - 11:30 am - (Rush Secret Sunshine if no same day tix avail)
(Sleep in)
Lust, Caution - Sb 2 (9:15 -11:45)
XXY - Sb 4 2 (9:30-11:00)

(b) 5 pm - 9 pm - (City stroll/shop/surf net)
The World Unseen - Sb 3 (6-8 pm)
Barcelona (A Map) - Sb 4 (6:45-9)

Tentative Schedule

09:00 am - 11:30 pm [Slot (a)]
11:45 am - 02:15 pm (Secret Sunshine - Sb 1)
03:30 pm - 05:00 pm Les Chansons d’amour (Honore) - Sb 1
05:00 pm - 09:00 pm [Slot (b)]
09:15 pm - 11:00 pm Chaotic Ana- Ryerson

Monday - September 10, 2007

Same Day tix - 4 Months, 3 Days - Cumberland 1 - 10:00 am
Redacted- Varsity 8 - 6 pm

Slots open - (a) 9am - 12 pm - 4 Months, 3 Weeks... - Cumberland 1 (10 -12 pm)
In Bloom- Sb 2 (12:15-2)

(b) 12 pm - 2:30 pm - George Romero’s Book of the Dead - Sb3 (1:00 - 2:30)
Chrysalis- Sb 1 (12:30 - 2:00)
Happiness - Cumberland 3 (12:15 - 2:15)

Tentative Schedule

09:45 am - 12:00 pm [Slot (a)]
12:00 pm - 02:00 pm [Slot (b)]
02:30 pm - 05:00 pm Shunji Aoyama - Sb 4
06:00 pm - 07:30 pm (Redacted -V 8)
08:00 pm - 10:00 pm Ken Loach - Wintergarden (Elgin)


Tuesday - September 11, 2007

Same Day tix - Jellyfish - Cumb-1 - 2:30 pm or Man from Plains - V8 (2:15 pm)

Slots open - (a) 9 am - 12 pm [ten movies screening but nothing to see]
Night - Cumberland 1 (9 - 11)
Terra - Sb 10 (10 - 12)
Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame - Sb 4 (9-10:30)
Love Comes Lately - Sb 1 (9:15 - 11)
(Sleep in)

(b) 2:30 pm - 5 pm Jellyfish - Cumberland 1 (2:30 - 4:30 pm)
Man From Plains - V8 (2:15 - 4:15)

Tentative Schedule

09:45 am - 12:00 pm [Slot (a)]
12:15 pm - 02:15 pm Silent Light - Scotiabank 4
02:30 pm - 05:00 pm [Slot (b)]

Suns, suspended + sports notes

The NBA would do well to follow the teachings of (not-Leandro) Barbossa, who wisely pointed out that the Pirate's Code is best viewed as a set of guidelines than hard and fast rules. The evil pirate's had a much smarter approach to legal reasoning than the NBA, which suspended the Suns' Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw one game each for leaving the bench momentarily, reacting to a cheap shot delivered to their star point guard in the closing seconds of the game. The Spurs' Robert Horry, the instigator, got two games. Under the NBA's Draconian rules, any player leaving the bench during an altercation will be automatically suspended for one game, no questions, no exceptions.

It's a lazy rule, and by applying it without thought or care, the decision led to a horrid result which rewarded the bad actor while punishing innocent actors. It's hard to imagine such an ill-considered decision made by someone not associated with the Bush administration, but there you have it. Sports fans everywhere are rightly furious.

To add insult to injury, David Stern is now trying to make high-minded "letter of the law" justifications for his mistake. On the Dan Patrick Show, Stern came off as a defensive, self-satisfied douchebag. "A rule's a rule", Stern insists from his Olympian perch, insinuating that he's too high-minded to worry about such pesky matters as facts. If we don't apply rules inflexibly, why, we'd have...judgment calls! You can't have the league commissioner, getting paid tens of millions of dollars a year, actually be put in the tough position of making judgment calls, can you? Stern pretends that he's applying the law judiciously, but as a former attorney he should know that few laws are bright-line rules applied with no flexibility. The law empowers courts to take situation and circumstances into consideration. Even the most inflexible of laws -- traffic laws -- are enforced and applied differently: nobody treats the guy running red lights to get an ailing mother to the hospital the same as a drunk driver. That's why we have judges -- note the title -- rather than judicial clerks deciding matters.

Stern's been a very good commissioner, but he needs to call a PR firm and regroup. And contrary to Stern's retorts, the problem isn't just that the results are unjust but also that his reasoning is screwed up. Only the most intellectually lazy, folks incapable or fearful of making judgments based on available information, would reason in this literal fashion. I mean, what happens when the Suns send cheerleader Sean Marks to break Tim Duncan's knees, and Parker and Manu rush in to defend their star? Suspend them all? If the Suns end up losing this game, the heat's gonna be turned up another three notches.

Bill Simmons just posted his take. Pretty dead-on, especially this part:

Let's say you're one of the best seven players on the Phoenix Suns. You love Nash -- he's your emotional leader, your meal ticket to the Finals, the ideal teammate and someone who makes you happy to play basketball every day for a living. He's killing himself to win a championship. His nose was split open in Game 1. His back bothers him to the point that he has to lie down on the sidelines during breaks. He's battling a real cheap-shot artist (Bruce Bowen) who's trying to shove and trip him on every play. But he keeps coming and coming, and eventually, everyone follows suit. Just as things were falling apart in Game 4 and you were staring at the end of your season, he willed you back into the game and saved the day.

Suddenly, he gets body-checked into a press table for no real reason on an especially cheap play. You're standing 20 feet away. Instinctively, you run a few steps towards the guy who did it -- after all, your meal ticket is lying on the court in a crumpled heap -- before remembering that you can't leave your bench. So you go back and watch everything else unfold from there. Twenty-four hours later, you get suspended for Game 5 because your instincts as a teammate kicked in for 1.7 seconds. Think about how dumb this is. What kind of league penalizes a teammate for reacting like a good teammate after his franchise player just got decked?

Random sports notes:

* How do you not go with the Suns this series after all the dirty tactics we've seen? I respected the Spurs before, but man, it's hard not to root for Steve Nash, the consummate warrior and the best pure point guard I've ever seen.

* Warriors-Jazz. Every time I tune in to this series, I see some variation of this sequence: (1) Stephen Jackson or Matt Barnes launching an off-balanced trey; (2) AK-47 grabs long rebound; (3) Utah goes into half-court set, resulting in a Boozer post move, an Okur three, or a second-chance basket. The Jazz must be something like +60 in the playoff games I've watched. So on the internets I find out that the Jazz are actually not the second coming of the '87 Lakers, but a mid-tier team. Maybe so, but the nine quarters of Jazz basketball I've seen on the teevee make them look like world-beaters, and this team seems to match-up well to both the slow-footed Rockets and the run 'n gun Warriors. They'll give the eventual NBA champs (Suns or Spurs) a tough series.

* The Rocket in pinstripes. Well, we'll always have Pedro. It's sad, I suppose, that my favorite player growing up turns out to be a mercenary. But that's what he is, and the deals on the table weren't even close. Can't blame the guy for taking an extra $9 million. Plus, a pro-rated $28 million (+ luxury tax hit) is a lot of coin in exchange for 5.1 IP and a 3.80 ERA, which is what you can expect from Clemens facing the more patient and deeper lineups in the AL. In any event, the Yankees', with their roto-team lineup and the addition of Clemens and all-world prospect Philip Hughes, should be able to mount a run. If the Yankees don't, they'll be biggest bust in baseball history. Not a good way to send Steinbrenner off.

* Red Sox: Best team in baseball? When you're first in the league in runs scored and runs against, the answer is pretty clear. Can this excellence be sustained for the entire season? Last couple of seasons, the Sox took a dive soon after the all-star break. This team should be more resilient. Offensively only Lowell and the 2B platoon are seriously overperforming; Theo's high-priced acquisitions like Lugo and Drew haven't stepped up yet, and Manny should regress to the mean. As should Coco Crisp, the weakest link on the team right now. Even with four starters underperforming, the offense currently leads baseball in team OPS. A good sign.

The pitching should drop off some, as Schilling and Wakefield will end up with ERAs in the high 3's. But Beckett, as long as he can get a handle on the finger issue, should remain a Cy Young contender. Last year, he'll pump his straight 97 mph four-seamer until he's blue in the face, stubbornly "challenging" hitters at every opportunity. He's now mixing in a change-up and snapping off sharp curves for strikes on fastball counts, finally learning to pitch. It's a pleasure to watch. I'm also confident Dice-K will end up posting great numbers. Guy's stuff is just too good. Even in his strong start against the Tigers, he didn't have his best pitches working (the curve, slider, and the shuuto, a change-up with a screwball action). He ended up up throwing cutters and two-seamers most of the game, inducing 15 groundouts. Once Matsuzaka settles in, he'll be a top ten starter in the AL.

* Non-Sox baseball fans: If you love baseball, you owe it to yourself to watch at least one Curt Schilling start (the Sox are on TV like 20 times a year) and then go to Curt's blog 38 Pitches the following day to read about what's going through Curt's head as he's pitching. It's incredibly illuminating, the internet equivalent of reading Greg Maddux's notes after a game.

* De la Hoya-Mayweather. Caught some of the replay -- kinda reaffirms what everyone thinks about boxing these days. It's boring. A couple of guys getting a big paycheck and going through the motions. Hey, Oscar's got a hot wife, a hundred mil in the bank, fame, and the unblemished face of a tennis pro. Why risk your health by going all-out?

Virginia Tech Killer (updated)

Awful. And we now get a portrait of a dude who exhibited tell-tale signs of a would-be psycho killer.

“He was always really, really quiet and kind of weird, keeping to himself all the time,” he said. “Just of anti-social, didn’t talk to anybody. I tried to make conversation with him in August or so and he would just give one word answers and not try and carry on the conversation.”

Then there's this:

Cho was an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service...

I'm sure we'll soon be hearing about him skinning cats for fun.

Whenever something crazy and catastrophic like this happens, demagogues of all stripes use the incident to beat the drum for their own cause. Gun zealots are already crying foul. And in our nativist climate, I'm rather curious about how Cho's national origins would play. By way of background, the Post identifies Cho as a Centreville, VA man who immigrated from South Korea to the United States as a child. The emphasis seems right. Having immigrated as a pre-schooler to the United States myself, I would certainly think it's more accurate to describe me first as someone from Alhambra, CA rather than "an immigrant from Taiwan" . The AP on the other hand, leads with the guy's national origins and immigration status, as if he were an exchange student. The guy grew up in the U.S.; he was majoring in English lit. He's not a fob. It'll be interesting to see if the media continues to emphasize Cho's weirdness and alienation (which may partially be attributed to the immigrant experience but obviously not entirely) as the story plays out, or if they start playing up his foreign origins.

Lastly, did he go by his surname first? If not (and I can't imagine why he would), why is the media calling him Cho Sueng-Hui? Weird.

Update: A Counterstrike fanatic! Mercy as we go through another cycle of hand-wringing about violent video games.

Update 2: Obviously, his ethnic background should be mentioned. But it's not his defining characteristic (I'd suggest "sociopathic"), unlike, say, the 9/11 attackers, whose motivation is religious tribalism. To AP 's credit, the story discussed up top eventually had the headline altered to "English Major blamed for massacre," though I'm not sure being an English major is all that germane either. Last note on this: I still think the Asian American's Journalism Association's advisory, imploring the press to not identify Cho's race unless "germane to the story" is an overreaction, but reading these kinds of exchanges between right-wing nutjobs gives me some pause (Via Daily Dish (and House Next Door). Now, it's entirely expected that some whites, especially in economically distressed times, would scapegoat minorities for their problems, especially the illegal immigrants perceived to be taking their jobs. What's disturbing is the large number of whites who think of themselves as besieged on all quarters by minorities and "liberals" -- two classes that don't actually wield a whole lot of power in this country. You can find the sentiment underlying the grievances aired during the two big media stories last week, the Imus brouhaha and the Duke lacrosse team botch-job. It's hard to say what's most pathetic about these people: their bottomless self-pity, the total lack of self-awareness, or their unshakable sense of white entitlement.

Oh, and Jo, the throwaway comment about Old Boy? Check this photo out. What. A. Fucking. Basketcase.

Madame de...

In anticipation of a reacquaintance with the exquisite Madame de... tonight at LACMA's Janus series, I googled the movie and unearthed this declaration by Andrew Sarris:

When people have asked me to name the greatest film of all time—in my humble opinion, of course—my instant answer has been unvarying for the past 30 years or so: Max Ophüls’ Madame de … (1953).

Sarris then names a few of this movie's most passionate supporters, which include the likes of Pauline Kael and David Thomson. Then Sarris raised an interesting question: is there a generation gap when it comes to the work of Max Ophüls, and does that extend even to his widely acknowledged masterpiece? I haven't seen Madame de... since college. I remember falling in love, mesmerized by not only those tracking shots but also by the lightness of touch, and by the idea that we can't ever truly know our lovers. Unlike, say, Ugetsu, another "sublime" objet d'art from 1953 loved by the same set of critics (and which I stupidly dismissed at the time as melodramatic tripe), it's a tragedy played more like a waltz than an opera.

But I wonder if I hadn't been unduly influenced by Sarris and Kael's raves, included in Confessions of a Cultist and I Lost It At the Movies respectively, which read more like descriptions of first orgasms than proper movie reviews. (As perhaps the ultimate formalist, Ophüls tends to elicit reviews that are little more than recounts of rapturous virgin viewings -- see also Thomson's Biographical Dictionary entry.) And it does seem peculiar that Madame de... is not especially celebrated among the younger set of critics I know, and Ophüls' rep in general appears to have lost some luster, even as Ophüls-devotee Stanley Kubrick has now become the supreme godhead for twentyandthirtysomething movie buffs. Can it be that Ophüls' quaint romanticism just doesn't hold up for young contemporary audiences, as Sarris surmises? Is this peerless formalist, like Griffith, Rossellini, and Ford, something of a fallen master, known for a style that has lost resonance with contemporary movie enthusiasts?

Perhaps so. His other movies that I've seen are impeccably filmed and highly sensitive to the wronged woman's conflicted heart, but also are flawed in some fundamental way. If Godard had mistakenly decided to make Contempt not the story of a marriage but as a tragic character study of Brigette Bardot, it might've turned into Lola Montes, one of the most beautiful films ever made about an utterly vapid character. La Ronde is very clever. A nice little woman's pic/noir hybrid, Caught's somewhat underrated but lacks urgency. Le Plaisir is a trifle. And if martyred naifs are your thing, Letter from an Unknown Women is about as good as it gets. It's naturally the only one of his movies I don't like. Have yet to see La Signora di Tutti and Leibelei, and The Reckless Moment is actually number 1 on my must-see list, but who knows when it'll be screened again, or when the DVD rights will finally be cleared? After surveying this uneven body of work, doubts arise concerning the director's position in the pantheon. But even if Ophüls is downgraded, we're still left with that inimitable style and that camera that pirouettes and glides across the set so gracefully that aesthetes are left weeping with joy in their seats, a "vindication of cinema," in the words of Thomson.

We're also left with Madame de...which I'm anxiously hoping will be as breathtaking as I remembered. I fear it may be like sex with an old lover -- the reacquaintance can never live up to your memories of past encounters. Oh, drat, now I'm resorting to this lame metaphor.

Life in Los Angeles explained

This handy graph, courtesy of the Economists View blog, finally reveals what Angelenos have long known: this place is a freakin' sausage factory.
The Blue bubbles mean areas where men out-number women. Red bubbles indicate areas where women outnumber men. The bigger the bubble, the greater the numerical disparity between genders. One can draw an obvious conclusion from this graph: that single females are huddled east of the Mississippi, while single men congregate westward. How to explain this? I can offer a reasonable explanation for the Bay Area, but otherwise, I got nothin'.

At least the trouble appears more systemic. It's gratifying to learn that it may not be just my bad luck (or worse, extreme uncoolness) that has doomed me to habitually attend events where at least a 3-to-2 sausage ratio prevails. Perhaps now I can finally find the strength to stop complaining about an infamous social outing when I ended up busting out "Ice, Ice Baby" in front of twelve dudes I've never met before at a birthday party. This was two years ago, and I still haven't recovered.

There he goes again

Apparently, this ridiculous piece by old friend David Ehrenstein published in the LA Times op-ed page has achieved some notoriety, though not the good kind. Leaving morons like Rush out of it, Ehrenstein's sad imitation of Armond White doesn't begin to stand up to any kind of scrutiny. In a nutshell, Ehrenstein argues that Barack Obama is a real life manifestation of a fantasy movie figure, the Sidney Poitier/Morgan Freemanesque "Magic Negro", who somehow assuages white guilt through the sheer nobility of his being. The argument is so very, very wrong. And dumb.

To be sure, the "Magic Negro" exists as a singularly irritating Hollywood trope, and I appreciate Ehrenstein's discussion of same. I personally would've singled out Djimon "let us free" Hounsou as being the post-Poitier exemplar of the patronizing "Magic Negro" archetype (even Freeman is allowed to stand on his own sometimes), but the examples provided were fine. Attaching the label to Obama? Here's Ehrenstein's entire case:

It's the way [Obama] said it that counts the most. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

I mean, that's it. That's all he has. Let's dispense with it, then, shall we? First, his entire against Obama rests on positive stylistic traits to which any number of presidential contenders aspire. Hillary is also trying to project these same qualities (warm, familiar, unthreatening) with less success. So is someone like Republican contender Mike Huckabee, who's trying to put a friendly, congenial face on social conservatism. Would Ehrenstein prefer that Obama run as Mr. Angry Black Man? He's running to appeal to the most people, not to flatter the sensibility of narcissistic culture critics. More pointedly, the Magic Negro, as defined in the piece, is a black man without a past, who exists solely to redeem the white protagonist. What does it say when Obama's campaign message is basically "vote for me because my life story offers hope for a better future." This is biography-as-metaphor, and Obama himself used his best-selling memoir as a launching pad. Obama is all about telling his own story, which is the opposite of what a Magic Negro should be doing, no?

In movie terms, Obama is more like Denzel, the charismatic, likable protagonist whose actions drive the story. We root for Denzel because we like him and he's the good guy, not because he's there to teach the white star some valuable lesson. In the same way, Obama's appeal comes from his incredible charisma, compelling biography, and the sense that he's trustworthy, authentic, and has good judgment, not because he grabs our sympathy as a noble helper guy, auditioning to be the Vernon Jordan of the post-Bush era. The whole idea doesn't stand up to one poke. One really has to wonder what's going on at the LA Times op-ed section when they run something as sloppily thought-out as this. Just because it has a provocative title? Perhaps the Times feels the need to balance the weekly lunatic ravings of Jonah Goldberg with retarded lefty rants, and David Sirota wasn't available this week.

Update: I guess there's a lot of shit going down in the Times recently. Running dumbass opinion pieces are the least of its troubles. Please Broad/Burkle/Zell, step in and do something.