Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Is it fair to say that many of us attach no actual "nostalgia," in the strictest sense of the word, to the singles of the 1990s?
The Directors Guild of America has announced their nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2010, opting for David O. Russell over the Coens, and the American Society of Cinematographers has an inexplicable thing for Danny Cohen.
The Reverse Shot gang gives us its two cents. Mad props to their giving mad props to underdogs Let Me In, Frozen, and The Anchorage, as well as to True Grit's fantastic, moving ending.
In the wake of Saturday's tragic shooting in Arizona, Chicago newsman Bill Kurtis speaks from the heart about his late son's mental illness.
And will the tragedy be a defining moment for Sarah Palin? Not if FOX News has anything to say about it:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
This episode was recorded a scant two weeks ago, way back when the Claire Denis retro was winding down at IFC Center. I was in town to celebrate Thrashgiving and get down with all my friends—coincidentally when the Golan/Globus series was about to start at Lincoln Center.
But who cares about that? They're all over. So instead: for this podcast we grabbed Michael Tully, writer-director-Terps fan (and now, Park City bound for Sundance 2011) to open up about his beloved team the night before they played in the Coaches Versus Cancer series at the Garden. But we also go over the $13 cost of Tully and Vadim's cinephilia while ignoring any four-hour long Taiwanese films. Mainly we marvel at U.S. Go Home's use of pop music along with the film festival standard of—as Tully describes it—"the 90-minute thing." And in return, we remember a simpler time when Kelly Reichardt made THE SLOWEST CREDITS SEQUENCE EVER for Wendy and Lucy just to eke into "feature-length" status—not to mention a surprising addition to this trope from Wes Craven.
We do go into the art of dealing with your independent film, talk a bit about how Putty Hill's recent sound woes and background music can be the unofficial knee capper of most independent film.
But join us in our SUPER DUPER EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Q&A CHAT INTERVIEW SUNDANCE 2011 TALK WITH MICHAEL TULLY SUCK ON THAT NIKKI FINKE (j/k, while we knew about the film, this was recorded before the announcement of his film being accepted into Sundance 2011. Congrats, dude.)
So if you ever see any of us at the bar, please remember to buy us a drink. For some reason, being influential film folk and podcast host/producers doesn't pay nearly as well as being employed full time. Your liquid charity is appreciated. (JL) Continue Reading »
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
The trailer for Catherine Hardwicke's upcoming adaptation of Red Riding Hood contains a snippet of a new Fever Ray track:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
The first story in Ben Greenman's new collection is called Tall and Short. Some time in the not-so-far-away future, Paris Hilton (tall) and Nicole Richie (short) unexpectedly meet at the airport after a long separation. Warmly kissing each other, their eyes full of tears, the two reminisce about their days as childhood friends. "This is my husband, Joel, Joel Madden…He's from Good Charlotte, the band, do you remember their albums? And this is my daughter, Harlow. She's a third-grader," says Nicole, proudly introducing the man and the child beside her. Not to be outdone, Paris informs her onetime friend that she is "in consideration to run a television studio." This causes Nicole to turn pale, though her suddenly rigid visage soon gives way to "the broadest smile," even as "she squirm[s],…double[s] together, crumple[s] up." Claiming utter delight that the companion of her youth has become such a powerful woman, Nicole considers Paris with "an expression of such reverence, sugariness, and mawkish respectfulness that the production-company head was sickened." Paris turns away, and Nicole presses her hand in parting, bowing with her whole body, as her husband and daughter join her in being "agreeably overwhelmed."
Maybe you've heard it before. It sure does sound a very great deal like Fat and Thin, that one short story by Anton Chekhov, you may think. Or else it strikes you as the not unlikely future of those perpetual frenemies Paris and Nicole. Or perhaps you happen to be a celebrity gossipmonger with a sideline in the Russian classics, in which case you're probably simply happy to finally have your two otherwise divergent loves finally, improbably reconciled. For the record, Paris and Nicole step in, in Greenman's version, for Misha (fat) and Porfiry (thin) in Chekhov's tale. And it does seem awfully decent of Greenman, given Nicole's well-documented weight struggles, to have changed the friends' eponymous characteristics. Continue Reading »
Towards the end of Glenn Beck's 200-minute mega-church-style "rally"/sermon "Restoring Honor"—as bagpipes blared an ill-advised version of "Amazing Grace" and cameras searched the crowd for those swept away in a patriotic frenzy—they stopped on an elderly man dressed in one of those folded yellow hats so popular at Tea Party gatherings (the "1776 Clothing Company" was doing brisk business handing out cardboard fans). Seeing himself on the big-screen, he about-faced, slowly saluted in a I'll-never-stop-serving-you-Old-Glory gesture, then returned to singing along. It was as schticky and corny a gesture of Americana as any cynical TV director could've hoped for, and it worked: what Gawker with cruel but acute concision dubbed "America-porn for the elderly in lawnchairs" succeeded in squandering one of the biggest Washington D.C. gatherings in recent memory. The masses (or maybe just media train-wreck watchers) wanted fire and revolution: Beck gave them nearly three-and-a-half hours of Jesus and gospel.
To read the rest of the article at Infinite Philistinism, click here.
Because there wasn't enough violence in our last Links for the Day, Christina Aguilera recently called for a man who coughed during a promo interview for her upcoming album, Bionic, to be shot. Her new video premieres tomorrow!
Joshua Green over at The Atlantic posted a short but convincing case for Sarah Palin not running for president in 2012. There's also an even more convincing follow-up, in which he takes on colleague Andrew Sullivan.
Pixar has unveiled a fake TV commercial, purportedly from 1983, promoting a new character from Toy Story 3, Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear. Another toy you never had as a child, if you were lucky, Baby Laugh A-Lot:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
I had intended to write a series of blog entries on health care reform this summer focusing not only on already well-documented problems within the system and challenging illogical, boogeyman arguments against a public option, but also on issues that haven't received enough—or any—mainstream media attention, like the underinsured and the role doctors play in the rising costs of health care. Though perhaps inevitable, but no less unfortunate, the spate of attacks on reform that erupted during Congress's August recess required those in favor of it to go on the defensive instead, spending time combating misinformation and distortions about public opinion when they should have been touting the progress Congress has made in making reform a real possibility for the first time in decades.
I found myself unwilling, if not unable, to comment on the distractions, partly because it was so downright depressing to me—a reminder of the brief period just after Sarah Palin was announced as the vice presidential candidate for the Republican ticket last fall and before she revealed herself to be a perpetual political punchline. At a Labor Day barbeque, a friend and staunch Barack Obama supporter glibly called me "un-American and un-democratic" for suggesting that hecklers shouting down a congressperson until his or her public forum grinded to a halt is not democracy but the ugly face of corporate-sponsored astroturfing. It's a tactic used to stifle progress and send a message. That message, of course, is "Kill the bill!," a slogan brought to you by the same masterminds who crafted last year's "Drill, baby, drill!" and which was chanted ad nauseam at town halls across the nation during the final week of summer. Continue Reading »
If the Republican Party was hobbled at the outset of the 2008 election, they were on the floor when it ended. And now Rush Limbaugh is sitting on them. When new party Chair Michael Steele described Limbaugh's hope that President Barack Obama would fail as "ugly" and "incendiary," he quickly apologized. Steele's lack of backbone is not unique. It seems no Republican is up to the challenge of confronting the lunatic fringe's Lunatic-in-Chief: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Georgia Representative Phil Gringey have also criticized Limbaugh, only to later supplicate themselves. But Steele's apology, in particular, demonstrates the dubious honor of being chosen to play referee in a Republican Party torn apart by internal politics. Moderate conservatives, business elites, neoconservative hawks, and, yes, Limbaugh-loving social reactionaries all want to control the party's reconstruction. And what Limbaugh's recent tantrums demonstrate is that the negotiations will be anything but cordial.
Some might think that understanding the crisis in conservative politics requires a lot of sophisticated analysis. I prefer explanations that mix in a good amount of gloating and some pop culture references. For the Republican Party, the template is Sergio Leone: three contingents are fighting for control—the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—and three possible futures hang in the balance. Continue Reading »
In her latest column for Salon, feminist and cultural critic Camille Paglia describes how she became "increasingly disturbed" in the final weeks of the presidential election by what she believes was the mainstream media's avoidance of both the Bill Ayers controversy and—wait for it—questions about Barack Obama's birth certificate. Disturbing, indeed. The very idea that Obama would rest his entire presidential campaign—to say nothing of his actual presidency—on the premise that he could conceal his non-American citizenship without anyone ever figuring it out is patently absurd. "We don't need another presidency that finds it all too easy to rely on evasion or stonewalling," Paglia explained, suggesting Obama could have ended the entire matter by asking his supposed birth state of Hawaii to "issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it." Yes, and he could have settled the issue of his Judeo-Christianity by simply unzipping his pants and inviting a few high-profile reporters to examine and photograph his circumcised penis.
Perhaps inspired by political analyst Michael Barone's statement to the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges yesterday that "the liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby," Paglia goes on to compare the absence of xenophobic inquisition in the media to the treatment of the Alaskan governor, who the writer informs us has been "subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views." Really? The right (and Paglia, apparently) would have us believe that the media's disdain for Sarah Palin is eclipsed only by its hatred for living babies. And here I thought Palin's real problem was her complete and utter incompetence, her inability to construct a coherent position on practically any important issue, her opportunism at the expense of national security, her mean-spirited and divisive fear-mongering, her worrying readiness to put faith before law, and her general disregard for said law. No one in the media has denied the fact that Palin is, to use Paglia's term, a populist phenomenon, but for once they did the right thing by calling a spade a spade—and before that spade got elected. Continue Reading »
There was a period a few years ago, perhaps felt most potently in the days and weeks following the 2004 presidential election, when Karl Rove's fantasy of a permanent Republican majority seemed less like a pipedream and more like modern political reality—and for many, even a nightmare. That nightmare, of course, began on December 12th, 2000, 19 days before the start of the so-called New American Century, when the Supreme Court effectively handed the presidency to George W. Bush. In an interview during the Democratic primary, Barack Obama declared that Ronald Reagan "changed the trajectory of America," and, with the guidance of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfield, Paul Wolfowitz and others, the same could be said of Bush, who is to neoconservatism what Reagan was to the New Right.
Ronald Reagan has been hailed as a hero by almost every subsection of the conservative movement—isolationists, neocons, libertarians, Christians, Arnold Schwarzenegger—but he was filled with contradictions. He saw government as the enemy but raised taxes to save one of its biggest socialized institutions. He took nationalism to the extreme, likening the United States to something out of Disney or the Bible and its biggest adversary to something out of Star Wars, but somehow did it in a way that united the country even as his traditionally conservative preference for liberty over equality inherently divided it. He was an actor. His greatest gift was convincing people that he spoke to them and represented their interests, that he was a populist instead of an elitist, that he was a libertarian rather than a xenophobe. In many ways, this is what made him a unifier; it's what helped the 1984 electoral map look like the end of days for the left. Continue Reading »
We've entered the final stretch of the presidential election and the drowning McCain campaign has resorted to the oldest playground tactic in the book: name-calling. Last week it was "anti-American," a tack recommended to Hillary Clinton by a top advisor last year but which the senator wisely declined to exercise. This is nothing new, of course: False accusations that Barack Obama doesn't wear a flag pin, that he refuses to pledge allegiance to the American flag, and that he's a Muslim have circulated throughout the Internet and by the mainstream media for over a year. But the candidate managed to escape those scurrilous claims—at least enough to win his party's nomination and take a lead in the latest polls. And so, desperately, deliberately and recklessly, surrogates for John McCain have decided to go whole-hog, with Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann summoning the worst in our country's political history by suggesting Obama is anti-American and calling for a McCarthyite witch hunt in Congress.
At a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin earlier this month, a McCain supporter took the microphone and declared his uncontainable anger: "I'm mad. I'm really mad, and what may surprise you is it's not the economy," he spat to a roar of cheers. "We've got to have our heads examined," he continued, referring to the prospect of electing Obama as our next president. "It's time to have you two [McCain and Vice Presidential lightning rod Sarah Palin] represent us. So go get 'em." It was a call for the McCain campaign to get tougher—and presumably dirtier—on Obama, and when I first saw a clip of the man's rant on television, I wondered what could possibly have filled him with such anger, hatred and resentment. After all, his party has held the presidency for 20 out of the last 28 years and has had control of Congress for 12 out of the last 14. I thought, "He's angry?" Continue Reading »
The first story in Ben Greenman's new collection is called Tall and Short. Some time in the not-so-far-away future, Paris Hilton (tall) and Nicole Richie (short) unexpectedly meet at the airport after a long separation. Warmly kissing each other, their eyes full of tears, the two reminisce about their days as childhood friends. "This is my husband, Joel, Joel Madden…He's from Good Charlotte, the band, do you remember their albums? And this is my daughter, Harlow. She's a third-grader," says Nicole, proudly introducing the man and the child beside her. Not to be outdone, Paris informs her onetime friend that she is "in consideration to run a television studio." This causes Nicole to turn pale, though her suddenly rigid visage soon gives way to "the broadest smile," even as "she squirm[s],…double[s] together, crumple[s] up." Claiming utter delight that the companion of her youth has become such a powerful woman, Nicole considers Paris with "an expression of such reverence, sugariness, and mawkish respectfulness that the production-company head was sickened." Paris turns away, and Nicole presses her hand in parting, bowing with her whole body, as her husband and daughter join her in being "agreeably overwhelmed."
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