A Question to ponder

It seems there is now a concensus that the latest movie by Mike Myers, The Love Guru, is atrocious; and even those who would like to leave some rope for the man who provided so much of the comedic universe in the last 20 years (how distressing to realize that!) have been able to manage only faint and shifting praise. The concerns of and for the film have been such that even the Religion Blog of the Dallas Morning News insisted that the "movie may be more offensive to fans of humor than Hindus." But the point here is not to continue on the wagon - I have not seen the film and likely will not, though I did find Mr. Myers' recent interview on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross to be strangely affecting in its sincerity - rather, it is to consider something raised at the beginning of the review of the movie by Slate.com's Dana Stevens. She begins her review with a broad theorem of film appreciation and estimation: There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are movies so bad they're good (though, strangely, not the reverse) - (italics mine). It is that last piece I would like to consider. Is it not possible for a movie to be so good it is bad? Something to consider, particularly in light of the recent release of the AFI's "America's 10 Greatest Films in 10 Classic Genres". I have thoughts on it but will pause for now and leave it to the floor.

The Outlaw Seldom Pales

It would seem that I am being chided out of the cocoon of tepid engagement by my cohort's quick comment on the previous post. I have long harbored an almost untoward appreciation of The Outlaw Josey Wales, called a revisionist Western movie at a (the) popular open source site for all things. It's easy enough to call up the trailer for the movie - a trailer that marks the movie as "an all-time classic Western," Wales being a man who lived by his gun and by his word. But that thin description does little to actually lay out what was the tend and trend of the film. It begins with a raid on the Missouri farm of a peaceful Josey Wales by Kansas irregular "Red Legs". His wife and son are killed, and after burying (and weeping for) them, he digs his pistols out of the still smoldering ashes of his home. With some practice he makes himself into a tempered crack gun wrangler and joins with a handful of Missouri irregulars to pursue his revenge - not because he cared so much for either sides' political concerns. There is much to be gleaned from the film in this regard. I considered, wondered, given the title of this venture what might be Mr. Foote's concerns with a film like this - with this side of the civil war. The descriptions of the Civil War are so often portrayed as North and South, with the buttered footnote of General Lee so meagerly tortured in his decisions and choice to head the Confederate forces being a fulcrum that allows both sides some measure of honor - it becomes a measure of keeping the Union or standing for the right of States, but either way there is a political legitimacy to the thing. But is it not the fringes of the thing where it is all so better seen if not understood. I say it in this way because there were indeed large issues involved in the War - and almost none of them (at least not to start) were slavery or not slavery. There is little merit in mentioning that slavery was not non-existent in the North, and with some past gentle chiding I can recall a text from my childhood with a KY publishing imprint that referred to the war as a conflict "between the states" rather than the "Civil War" - and if you stumble over the semantic differences there perhaps I might also mention that it was also from family that I first heard the expression "the war of Northern aggression." My kin are of that conflicted border state of Kentucky and though I be near to 40 and it is some 140 years since its end my maternal grandparents were both birthed within three decades of its close. There be stories to tell of Squire - as he was called, for the land he owned - but that is for another time. What Eastwood's "Outlaw" pokes towards is the fact that for all the talk of Shiloh or Gettysburg, on the margins the fray was just that, a fray - an ugly splice that tells us that brutal, ignorant, men with pistols backed their way into a peace that was just as frayed. There are segments where we can make for a localized recognition of one another - just as in the movie and Josey's pact with Ten Bears - to be sure; however, even as the smallest bit settles a segment, there are others that are left undone. We are reminded of the divides that remain by such happenstances as the eversohappy Republican southern strategy. Are there enough pistols for all of us? We might need them, after all it seems as if Grendel's mother is looking to be the next Dirty Harry. This is weak

Zohan

This can only be understood viewed in tandem with Munich, followed by a panel discussion including Alan Dershowitz, John Zorn and Jordan Farmar.

Exposed Negatives

Joel is poised to return Stateside, just as the Euro Cup kicks off and co-host Switzerland takes one in the gut from the Czechs. John Lukacs is known for myriad conceptual platforms, not the least of which is that populism is the greatest threat to civilization. Somehow, the idea of that demarcation rears its head when discussing Thin Blue Lines, to echo Joel's citation of Errol Morris, or a more vertical metric of aptitude -- that some how We/Them needs to be registered via these spatial models. Somehow, regardless, it is a pause for joy when the Bohemians strike a blow against the august centers of power (or cuckoo clocks). (see CZ-USA 2006 World Cup)

Yet, I wrestle with cinema. Joel assayed from abroad the moment when Senator Obama became the THE candidate. The Feral Doctor's subjecting such to print was what struck me. Somehow I find the significance of this time continued by other means in the Guardian interview where Clint Eastwood told Spike Lee to "shut his face" in lieu of Lee's expressed concern about the absence of black soldiers in Eastwood's Band of Brothers. All of this will be moot when my planned vision for the Ping-pong Diplomacy ensures biopic immortality: Woody Harrelson as Chairman Mao and Samuel L. Jackson as Richard Nixon