Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Hot Tub Time Machine Swamps Greenberg

We try to see a movie a week; once in a great while it is two films. Last Friday, the usual film night, we headed to Sundance to see Greenberg, the rather serious film with Ben Stiller in the title role. Stiller can act. The problem is Greenberg is a dud.

There is no law that every film about a neurotic Jew needs to be funny or meet the standards of Woody Allen. It is required that films not only be well acted, but they be well written with characters that are interesting, whether we like them or not.

To make up for it, I suggested on Saturday night that Sara and I see Hot Tub Time Machine.  On the way to the decidedly non-intellectual and musty Star Cinema, Sara advised me that she would do great bodily harm to moi, if I selected two bombs in a row.

Hot Tub Time Machine is a glorious silly film with juvenile humor and it has a far more profound message than Greenberg, whatever it is.

It has the usual array of gross jokes, most of which are  original and funny. The inside references to Back to the Future make you feel rewarded for watching that movie more than once.

Any film that successfully pulls off the hackneyed foiled suicide attempt and blown sex scene along with a running gag where the both the cast and the audience are waiting for the bellhop to lose his arm deserves serious attention.

We left the theater, Sara telling me I would be OK. Someone should tell Robert Redford to dump Greenberg and to book the more creative, better directed, and far superior Hot Tub Time Machine.

Sandra Bullock: Acceptance speech better than Blind Side performance

Every once is a while there is a rare gem at the Academy Awards such as Sandra Bullock's acceptance fo the Oscar for best actress in The Blind Side  Sandra Bullock acceptance speech highlights Oscar winners 2010 list

Those painful speeches are usually a rambling discourse on some politically correct subject and/or an over-wrought tribute to the actor's family.

Bullock spoke form the heart with grace and style and sincerely thanked her mother while sending a genuine message about caring.

When you combine her Academy Award acceptance with her personal appearance the previous day for her Razzie, Bullock shot to the top of the list among actresses to be admired. Bullock vows to display Oscar, Razzie side by side.

 

Worst. Baseball Movies. Ever.

It seems Waxing America readers are fans of fictional baseball movies, judging from comments on Paul's post about "Field of Dreams," which is on most fans' list of top ten best baseball movies. (Google "top ten baseball movies" to see the usual picks.)

My best ten list is pretty typical, except that I don't include "Pride of the Yankees" (hate the Yankees), or "Bad News Bears" (foul-mouthed cuteness is overrated), or "A League of Their Own" (Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell paying baseball? No.). My unranked ten best are: "Field of Dreams," "The Natural," "Eight Men Out," "Bang the Drum Slowly," "Bull Durham," "Major League," "The Jackie Robinson Story," "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings," "The Sandlot," and "Long Gone."  My favorite is "Long Gone," an HBO film based on a wonderful Paul Hemphill novel that nailed the "minor league old guy on the way down and young phenom on the way up" story several years before "Bull Durham." Well worth a watch.

Anyway, here's my unranked ten worst:

1. "Fear Strikes Out" - Anthony Perkins playing Jimmy Piersall and not credible throwing or hitting. (thx commenter Ty O'Mara)
2. "For Love of the Game" - Kevin Costner as a sensitive, thinking pitcher worried about his relationship?  Nope. (thx Toni Morrissey)
3. "Mr. 3000" - Despite the Milwaukee locale, Bernie Mac is not a Robin Yount.
4. "Brewster's Millions" - How do you make an unfunny movie with John Candy and Richard Prior? This one manages.
5. "Bad News Bears Go to Japan," "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," "Bad News Bears" (2005 remake with Billy Bob Thornton), "Major League II" and "Major League: Back to the Minors" - 5 dogs share one slot and don't make one decent film when their good parts are all added together.
6. "The Babe" and "The Babe Ruth Story" - Neither John Goodman nor William Bendix could do more than a bad home run trot.
7. "Strategic Air Command" - 47-yr old Jimmy Stewart as a Cardinals player recalled to the Air Force as a bomber pilot to help save the USA from the Commies, while June Allyson pines for him back home. Painful. (See also "The Stratton Story," another bad baseball movie with Stewart and Allyson.)
8. "It Happens Every Spring" - Ray Milland invents something that repels a baseball from wood, becomes a star pitcher and hilarity fails to ensue. (thx Marshall Cook)
9. " The Slugger's Wife" - Neil Simon wrote this bomb, which Janet Maslin called "...resoundingly unfunny..." (thx Tim Morrissey)
10. "Ed" - Matt LeBlanc and a chimp named Ed. The stupid hijinx are unwatchable.

The very worst?  A tie between "Fear Strikes Out," which has non-baseball scenes of parental abuse that are less fun than the painful baseball sequences, and "Strategic Air Command," which features dialog that General Curtis E. LeMay  may well have written.

Nominations for worse baseball flix to avoid?

- Barry Orton

Lions for Lambs: Reflecting on Sixty Years of Lying Our Way into Wars

We saw Lions for Lambs Saturday. I spent most of the time watching the film thinking less about the war in Iraq, and more about the last sixty years of treachery, deceit, and treason by Republicans like Bush.

• If the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was still around, there would be an investigation. In light of the Hollywood Blacklist and what was done to so many writers, directors and producers, Robert Redford must be given credit for telling this story.
• Tom Cruise was despicable as Republican Senator Jasper Irving from Illinois. I wonder how much of that was acting and how much if that was my general distaste for him in recent years.
• As we learned in reading David Maraniss's They Marched Into Sunlight, the story of the soldiers risking their lives is far more compelling than that of those opposing war.
• The weakest of the three story lines was Professor Malley and student Todd Hayes' discussion.
• The film was O.K. but it should have been about Janine Roth (Meryl Streep). That is the compelling story. That was the most relevant in terms of figuring out how we keep getting manipulated and maneuvered into buying the crap the George W. Bush recycled from Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.
• I keep thinking about the trash-talking-right-wing-bobble-heads from Limbaugh on the national level to Belling on the local level who keep feeding us lines like, "Well, the Democrats are as responsible for this war as Bush. They supported it from the beginning." As though the Bush lies that manipulated and deceived are not to be factored into evaluating responsibility for this impossible disaster.

"Whatever It Is, I'm Against It"

To celebrate the first day of UW classes and the beginning of football season here in Madison, Waxing America recommends watching the opening of the film that best captures key elements of academia: the Marx Brothers 1932 classic' "Horse Feathers."  (Click link to watch YouTube clip.) The plot revolves around the need for a college president to field a winning football team to keep his job, a concept not exactly unknown to academia 75 years ago or today.

Yes, I know many of you will argue for "Animal House," and let's all admit John Belushi showed genius in that film, but he can't touch Groucho, who sang, danced, and was the voice of comic anarchy in the face of authority. 

As the new Huxley College president, Groucho's Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff's introductory speech to the faculty and students, which features a wonderful song with the chorus, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It."

Here's the first couple of verses:

I don't know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway --
Whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it.

Your proposition may be good
But let's have one thing understood --
Whatever it is, I'm against it!
And even when you've changed it or condensed it,
I'm against it.

I'm opposed to it --
On general principles I'm opposed to it!

Chorus: He's opposed to it!
In fact, in word, in deed,
He's opposed to it!

- Barry Orton

Christmas Movie Poll Results

While it led most of the holiday season, with a 132 votes cast, in the last few days, Jean Shepard's A Christmas Story (41.7%) slid into second place behind Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (43.9%). A Christmas Carol was a distant third.

While I can't stand the thought of watching Capra's film one more time in my life, it at least disproves conservative myths.  It turns out that liberals are sentimental slobs who are not waging war on Christmas.

O. J. Simpson: A New Level of Depravity

We shook our heads at Death of A President, a story more about the loss of liberty and freedom in America following the fantasized assassination of President Bush. Now O. J. Simpson brings us another unnecessary chapter, in fact too many chapters, in the never ending saga of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Death of A President did not need the set up of a murdered President, but as the story unfolded we were given a chilling depiction of a real scenario in this country of the loss of liberty.  It is speculation that contributes to the public dialog; it is content of redeeming social value.

In his new book, Simpson "describes how he would have murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and waiter Ronald Goldman—if he’d actually done it."

Spare us. In If I Did It, the formerly accused vaulter of airport debris, must be desperate for coin as the film royalties are rapidly drying up. There is much that is obscene in this country:

Dick Cheney looking at us with a straight face telling us that Halliburton is not stealing millions billions from the American people.

Donald Rumsfeld looking at us with a straight face telling us the war in Iraq is too complicated for mere mortals to understand.

George W. Bush looking at us with a straight face telling us he knew what he was doing when he sent hundreds of thousands of civilians and many soldiers to their death and destabilized an entire country.

Tom Delay, Abramoff, and the entire lot of thugs and thieves telling us they are loyal Americans.

Damn, I guess Simpson is just a small time piker after all.

Fidel, Borat, and the Chickens

Waxing America has fixated on Borat for a year now, so please excuse while we review movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

In 1960 a determined Fidel Castro arrived in New York City to address the United Nations. His entourage arrived at some fancy digs, but when the innkeepers would not guarantee their safety, the cast of dozens and their live chickens headed for Harlem's Theresa Hotel on 125th not far from the fabled Apollo Theater.

Borat, his producer and only two chickens arrive in a midtown Manhattan hotel, but the trauma level is about the same.

In the coming months, as we all are accosted by teenage boys with video cameras doing their best to embarrass and humiliate us in the name of performance art, I have two pieces of advice which I learned from my thousands of interviews. Say nothing and turn your back to the camera.

And go see Borat.  But only if you feel safe in a hotel room filled with chickens.  That is the entry level of this not so subtle drama. In fact, after seeing this film, many people may swear off not just hotel rooms, but hotel elevators and even the hotel banquet room.

We can argue which scenes are the most humiliating, obnoxious, offensive, or demeaning to Borat and his victims. Curiously, it is the conservative Republican and former Congressman Bob Barr who does the best job of containing his discomfort, where weaker mortals might have choked.

There is a political message in there somewhere, which transcends the evangelical Sunday morning mass, also with a cast of thousands. I will let you know when I find it.

If you need to know more about this film, I suggest you read reviews in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and New York magazine. I am an intellectual. ***That's right Paul, keep telling yourself that.***

Side Street: Deviant Art and Other Stuff

Jody at Side Street looks at Deviant Art and other stuff this week: Love and Faith.

Which leads me to feature this:

Cyrus Nowrasteh's Path to 9/11 Political Distortion: His Own Fabricated Biography

According to Libertas: A Forum for Conservative Thought on Film:

Nowrasteh told us that he has always gravitated towards true stories. A Persian-American whose family had to flee Iran when it was taken over by Islamic fundamentalists...

The Wikipedia entry for Cyrus Nowrasteh states:

Cyrus Nowrasteh a Persian-American who was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. His "family had to flee Iran when it was taken over by Islamic fundamentalists."   (Yes, I added the emphasis.)

And from iranian.com as recenlty as 2005, guess what:

A Persian-American whose family had to flee Iran when it was taken over by Islamic fundamentalists...

The Iranian Revolution did not pick up steam until 1977, culminating with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

Cyrus, since you were born in the Boulder, and graduated from Madison West High School in 1974 your family must have arrived in the U.S. prior to 1956. Come on, it looks good in your bio, but if your family fled an oppressive Iran any time prior to the mid 1970's, it was fear of the right wing autocratic rule of the Shah, not the Islamic fundamentalists.

Maybe it was the extended family that fled Iran in the 1970's. In either case, nothing like adding a little docudrama, merging individuals, and stretching the truth in the name of your art.