Edwards

So today during break at work, I find the channel, previously set to the awesome Batman Begins (goddamn I am loving those Nolan/Bale Batman movies these days) set to some news channel, reporting on the latest news, the Edwards controversy. I am still a little uncertain of all that has occurred, but I gleamed then, and gleamed later, that Edwards admitted to having an affair with the woman from the whole love child rumors, that he is denying that the baby is his, and that his family has known about it since 2006. Shit. As I said to my co-worker, I guess this means he's out of the running for vice president.

I have been kicking around a bit of the left blogosphere, and a couple of broad motifs are poping up. 1) Fuck Mickey Kaus (even though he was (generally) right about all this). 2) I feel sorry for Elizabeth. 3)Fuck Edwards, this was politically risky. 4) Fuck Elizabeth too, I can't beleive they ran a campaign knowing this was out there. 5)Goddamn, we dodged a bullet. 6) Various asscovering excuses for verbal assults on espousers of the rumor before it was confirmed.

Personally, in my own small petty way, I feel kind of vindicated in that, though my faith was often tempted, Obama was always my favorite of the Big Three in the Dem primary. Sure, it's probably just the Illinois bias that did it, but still, I picked not only the winning horse, but the right horse. Bill had to many shady business deals for Hillary to be viable, and if Edwards had been the nominee now, we would have been fucked for no reason. Somehow, we lucked out and got the super devoted family man. Seriously, for a bit of hubris, here, I will go all in (mark it!): There will never be a personaly scandal involving Barack Obama. The man simply cares to much about the concept of family. I read his book, trust me. My take is that Barack Obama, because of his own upbringing, and because, I think, he was conditioned to approahc situations as a kind of objective, analytical observer, places unquantifiable value on his family unit as a source of identity. It's the value of the impossible dream. I think Barack Obama thought he would never get a stable, "normal" life, and so he feels incredibly blessed that he was able to get one. Watch that father's day speech. The man really really cares, on an almost primordial level, about his role as the father in his family. And hell, Michelle? The accumulation of anecdotal evidence I have come across leads me incontroveribly to the conclusion that those two are just incredibly protective of one another. I just don't see anything coming between them. They are a team.

But then, I thought John and Elizabeth were a team. And maybe they are. But still, this completely changes the understanding of the dynamic at work. We are no longer dealing with two faithful soulmates. So what are we dealing with? The quality was changed.

And I think the anger, or sense of betrayal, in the blogs is right. Whether or not it is fair, adultery is something that must be factored into politics, and the hiding of it is dangerous, and can effect the lives of other people. Whether it is fair or not, had this come out now , it would had lost the election, and that makes it irresponsible. Sure, it's a double standard for democrats. But if you want to be a democrat, that doesn't mean you can have affairs. It's that nature of the Game that you can't. Complaining about it at this point is like plaing chess and complaining that White always gets to go first. Of course white gets to got first! That's the rules asshole. If you don't like it, don't play black! Me, I like to play black. I like getting something to react to right off the bat. I like the limitations. But if you don't, you are playing the wrong game. Go play something else. And for God's sake, don't play something that might fuck up my life when you lose.

Casting Couch: Neverwhere!

Is there anything as fun as trying to figure out who should play the characters in one of your favorite books? Yes, but those are not things I have been doing since I woke up. Today, Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman!

While Neverwhere actually kind of started out as a BBC television miniseries, meaning it has already been filmed once, that show doesn't really capture the grandeur of the book version. Meaning there's space for a big-budget Hollywood movie version. But who to play in it?

Richard Mayhew—I kind of see James McAvoy in this part, although I think when I first read it a I saw someone like Ben Chaplin, I think he is too old for the part now. Lots of points for McAvoy, though. For one, he's Scottish, just like Mayhew, so no need to fiddle with his accent. Also, he has a kind of unassuming disposition, and though I haven't seen Wanted yet, I assume he can carry of the role of the unlikely action hero, or the role of the almost but not quite an action hero. Also, it's the lead, and he has some star power that could launch such a project.

Door—A tricky role, since age is appearance is so important. You need someone who simultaneously possesses childlike innocense and some degree of muturity, and is actually quite possibly an adult. Also, she has to be kind of pixieish, without being a manic pixie dream type or anything. Oh, and red hair. Really, really, red hair. So, though I haven't actually seen her in anything, I am going to go with Rachel Hurd-Wood, who played Wendy in that last Peter Pan remake, and was in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, a movie I really want to get around to seeing sometime soon. Basically, she looks exactly like Door, seems, from the Perfume photos on IMBD to possess the self-possession necessary to play the actual hero of the story, and hey, she worked opposite Alan Rickman, so she has to be pretty good, right?

The marquis de Carabas—Hmm, a theatrical, cunning black Englishman of uncertain motives with hints of casual cruelty? Really, this part is so Chiwetel Ejiofor I was picturing him as I read it. It's like someone was just trying to come up with the ultimate part for Chiwetel to have fun with.

Hunter—Um, I really don't know who should play Hunter, but she is kind of important, so I still wanted to include a spot. You could really cast Halle Berry for all I care with this part. Sophie Okonedo? Freema Agyman?

Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar—Hard. My two favorite characters in the book. For Mr. Vandemar, I would go with Ian Whyte, the 7'2" Welshman who played the Predators in the recent Predator movies. For one, he's 7'2," and not as a result of Gigantism. He seems perfectly porportioned. I calculated once that, since Mr. Vandemar is described as two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup, and if Mr. Croup were, say, 5'6," and a head was about eight inches, then Mr. Vandemar is 7'2." In other words, in the book Mr. Vandemar is huge. Ian Whyte seems to be identitcally huge, and that is fortuitous. Also, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar are described as looking like a fox and wolf together, and Ian looks suitably wolfish, even without makeup.

Mr. Croup is distinctly harder for me, as he is my favorite character in the book, and consequently the most higly focused in my mind, and no actor really looks like that image. However, having given it some thought today, I think Michael Sheen would do the part justice. Like Ian, Sheen is Welsh, and I have always thought it preferable that these two have similar accents. They are a duo! (And I always found it disconcerting in the BBC version that Mr. Vandemar had the same accent as Richard Mayhew; there should be no familiarity between those two.) Sheen is also not to tall—IMDB lists him as 5'9," so he would probably have to take his shoes off when doing scenes opposite McAvoy—that the height differential between Croup and Vandemar wouldn't be lost. He can obviously play vicous characters, as he did in Underworld, as well as cerbral types, so I see him as perfectly capable of pulling off the specific quirks of Mr. Croup. And damn if he doesn't look like a fox.

Islington—Sinead O'Connor. I love Sinead O'Connor. Islington needs to be larger than life, ethereally beautiful,yet neither female nor male. Reading the book, I always pictured it as bald, white-skinned almost to the point of translucence, and with a voice that was as ethereal as it was. Sinead is very good as pulling of the bald look, has the beauty for it, and there is no realy reason to cast one sex or another with androgynous characters. But really, I am also kind of thinking about character here. Though I haven't seen her turn as a foul-mouthed virgin Mary in The Butcher Boy, He songs are actually really well-played emotional peices, and display the exact range needed paly both angelic gentleness and angelic wrath. Anyone who can sing "Troy" the way she does can play the former angel of Atlantis. I can't wait to hear her scream "They deserved it!"

Robocop

I just got done watching Robocop for the first time. Good movie. Fun movie. Slight movie. Actually, I was kind of amazed how insubstantial the plot was; the film only clocked in at 104 minutes, which compared to something like The Dark Knight, around 150, is pretty short for an action movie. I mean, the movie is basically about a guy who dies in the line of duty and then becomes and empty cyborg, get revenge on his killers and reclaims his identity, even though he has no real contact with it. There really isn't much plot, just a bunch of setting that subtly satirizes modern America. The kind of critiques that, unfortunately, are still very very valid, although probably a bit simplistic for our times. There is definately room for a sequal, which I think is written by Frank Miller, and I kind of want to see, since I saw it already, but years ago, and I remember liking it, although I think it didn't get the best reviews. It's just that the first movie doesn't really do much other than setup, though in an enjoyable way, and you leave it kind of wanting to see more of the concept.

Unrelated to anything, I got kind of a cyberpunk feel off of the issues raised in it, or at least in the issues that could have been raised by it, but were really just kind of hinted at. The whole mind-body kind of thing, and what is the self: could it be downloaded, or is there something more emepheral about it? What makes a person a person, and not just a robot? That kind of thing.

Shit. Now I need to start watching that Ghost in the Machine series.

The Dark Knight

I saw it back on opening weekend, and saw again last Tuesday, and have been meaning to write a post on it, once I got my thoughts together, but nothing got in the way. Some points:

—This was the most realistically set Batman movie yet. Begins was set in a substantially more realistic world than the Burton-Schumacher films, with their art-deco city models and candy-colored villains, but even Begins has an ancient secret society, fear-inducing flowers, fancy e-trains and a cityscape that is obviously invented. This film, on the other hand, is just completely filmed in Chicago. (I remember thinking during the opening shot, when the camera draws in close on a large, black monolith of a building, how this must be a symbolic portant of the coming tradegy of the story or something, and remember that I have seen that building before, while driving around Chicago.) The characters are drawn as professionals working within the halls of power in an incredibly corrupt city, with the shadings such real people carry, not as broad caricatures. There are no secret societies mentioned, the fear-compound makes only a brief cameo in the beginning, the Joker as portrayed, has none of the science fiction elements from the comics. No white skin and naturally green hair, or lethal laughing gas leaving a rictus grin. Just a psycho with knives, guns, and bombs. With all these changes the major casting change, replacing Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhal, didn't really bother me at all. the films almost seemed to be taking place in different worlds.

—There has been a lot of writing trying to pick apart the films message or politics, which is fun and all, but I think that reading the film has having any kind of positive suggestions about society misses the point of the story. The film isn't political, but personal; it is a tradegy. The plot of the movie is: three guys try to take on a force of chaos, and fail. That's it. In fact, though a first viewing kind of obscures this, the conclusion of the movie is the moment [SPOILERS!!!] where the bombs go off in the warehouse, and Rachel Dawes dies. In fact, if I were to pin the climax to any one moment, it is the shot of the Joker sticking his head out of a cop car in the dawn light, with redlights flashing behind him. Not only has he won, destroying all that the characters care about, but he has gotten away with it. Everything that happens after that shot is denoument; just the characters sorting out the after effects of the Joker's victory. Dent goes insane and accepts the chaos, Gordon realizes he is impotent, even with his newfound powers, (he can't even save his family) before it. But Batman, to his credit, and making him the ultimate hero of the story, decides to just keep on battling the chaos anyways, even if he can't stop, and just might be destroyed by it. It's less a story about political systems than the cruel whims of fate, set within the halls of power.

—Ah, the Joker. Like just about everyone, I think Ledger was amazing in this movie, and totally deserves the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, if not just Best Actor. Damn, he is good. Every choice he made was sublimely creepy, and he still managed to be funny while menacing, which doesn't seem like it is possible. I have replayed the pencil trick in my head hundreds of times now. Also, Nolan did just a superb job in shaping the character. This Joker, while differing from the comics version drastically in surface details, still managed to fit in all the thematic touches of the Joker of the comics. There was the Joker as needing the Batman as a reason for being (which I think comes mostly from Dark Knight Returns), Joker as psychoterrorist trying to drive the world as crazy as he is (Killing Joke), Joker wearing ridiculous costume while on assignment. They got that the Joker's entire shtick is doing things that are violent and cruel, while using the rhythms of comedy to suggest they are supposed to be funny. Sometimes it is funny, like with the pencil trick, and then sometimes it just seems mean, which is really all it ever is.

Argh!

The problem with being a mercurial bastard is that you can go a long time not doing anything because you are too busy devoting time to doing everything.