Nineteen Ninety Nine.

I sit at the tail end of the new millennium’s first decade. A perfect cultural perspective, divided in half: my childhood growing up observing the decadent excess of the 1990s and my formidable years in the blatant reality of the new millennium – fleeting, promising, disappointing, redefining. A harsh reality, dumped like a brew of molded dangling carrots and ice-cold rancor.

What did my cinema see? It saw everything and nothing; the disillusionment of the people – the spectator, the mother – and the photoplay itself. It began with the unease of the unknown – a stench of fear that has emanated from the cultures of yesteryear: the ticking collapse of the stock market plummet; the echoing tick of doomsday clock’s minutes to midnight. “Reality! Reality!” they shouted, humming a prayer that only those with skin can offer. But the culture evaporated when the zeroes returned with comrades. The 2000s hit us in every realm – what did the cinema capture?

The machine. The device, the apparatus itself. Us in transit, now stalled permanently. The dripping jail cell rot of the mirror stuck to Neo’s finger as he pulled back in The Matrix. He digests the silver, delivering a scream echoed out by the bloodcurdling ambience of a server disconnect. He is agonized, tortured, but free. The apparatus was the allure of the organic in the light of its barren scope -- the green tilt of nature now replaced with the neon glow of a digital code. Reality, thus, was the scarcity, and the machine was our artificial prevention from the ‘real’. To feel the natural and the return of the organic we must unplug ourselves and face the chrome-covered intensity of actuality.

A warning. A sincere hope that the pratfalls of the horrorshow before us would never mimic the world that watches. We attempted to refuse. Now in 2009, the scaled blue skin of the Avatar in James Cameron’s titular film, offers the same sense of ‘real’. The artificial digitations of the organic, and our complacent stupor with which we watch, all rested in 90-degrees with glasses the sizes of the reel itself gazed appropriately on the screen.

Avatar preaches the beauty of the organic and the desperate need to preserve its natural allure, yet it is a plea made through the machine, the inorganic preaching the power of the tangible. Those in the Matrix pods are depicted as victims to the development of the real, and we truly do succumb to its ease: “it’s not organic, but it’s close enough”. Now, we watch the cinema not for how it reflects reality, but how it resembles it. The goal is to force the unreal to mimic until it reaches secondary existence, a sort of doppelganger to the substantial – the cluster of starspark freckles scattered along the electric blue flesh of the Na’vi’s, looking as if it mimics the ‘real’ feel of Cameron’s cat-smurf blanket of skin.

We are watching the birth of the matrix. We aid in the disintegration of reality itself. I watch with disbelieving eyes as the people lay within the pods in an electronic embryonic state of being – electronic replaces umbilical, our eyes sag because we’ve never used them before. I laugh disbelievingly, nodding my head in faux-critique posture until days later I am transfixed like a saucer eyed cub at the artifice of reality on a screen that preaches disconnect as a virtue: “look at your size in comparison to your creation – the machine has surpassed you”.

I am hell bent to experience the experience. I arrive an hour before the electro-cinematic rolls tape. I am eager to become the pod, allowing the cinema of attractions to continue onward. I sit back and am presented at. The fetal positions that humans-turned-batteries find themselves in within the hollowed human grapevine looks comforting, and I slowly find myself crossing my legs a little closer than before, until I find both legs atop my cushioned theater seat, feeding the machine (both the cinematic, that, in the wise words of Christian Metz, doesn’t exist until I watch it, and the industry machine itself).

How have we gotten here in only ten years? The shift from the warning of 1999 to the complacent and subtle transformation in late 2009; we face extinction on a mass level, and I return to my fetal position for another fix of the fantastical, larger, brighter, closer to both reality and the audience. I am blinded, and worst of all, I am becoming the very thing I shook my head at so confidently. In the era of the nines, I rallied against the necessitation of the plug in. Now my cinema depicts the organic as only achievable through the process – Jake Sulley feels more alive within the electronically accessed natural world – and through the spectatorship. The nines are over; we are at the tail end of the zero decade, and our warning to ourselves went unnoticed, resigned simply as spectacle, not statement.

The Promise of the 'More'

Dear James Cameron,

There is something between an artist and a ringleader – the same way there is something between a speaker and a politician – that is a far better suited title for you and your cinematic cohorts. You don’t quite pillage our cultural landscape as much as you promise to. But we’ve seen what you’re capable of: taking the purposefully melodic horror of Ridley Scott’s Alien, and transforming it into a wartorn battlefield epic in Aliens, a film whose differences from its predecessor transcend simple pluralization.

What have we done to deserve this feast for the senses, devourer of the spectacle? A punishment for our culture’s abundant love of excess, perhaps – the equivalent of the parent who, one finding you smoking a cigarette, forces you to finish the whole pack. But we haven’t smoked just one in years. We’ve fallen for the desire of more, the desperation for more, the drug-infueled fix for the senses, the shutting down of the brain and the vicarious orgasm of the external: my eyes, my ears, but not my mind. Stimulation on a mass level; I feel dirty.

A marketing campaign built entirely on meaningless bombardment – first of the visual, then of the narrative. You have promised us this, and only this: we haven’t seen this before. But we have, just as much as we haven’t. So I ask you, rather bluntly: what the fuck is Avatar? What is it really? Not what it should be, or what it was 14 years ago. But what is it now? What do you want it to be/hope it to be/need it to be – not for you, but for us.

Because what would have simply entertained nearly a decade and a half ago is now left as more an analysis of us, our culture, our desire. You’ve produced something that you felt we needed before we needed it – a choice of your own accord. Now, we’ve seen it all, but we are still immersed in an industry, a society, that tells us ‘we’ve seen nothing yet!’

Progress. We do nothing but progress, but to no secure endpoint. Oneupsmanship on a grandiose level; I fear for the worst. Above all, I fear you, Mr. Cameron, are a puppeteer of this ambiguity. There is something larger – necessary even – in what Avatar seems to be presenting to us. But I know that it’s aware. Christian Metz speaks of the voyeur within the cinema, that film is not aware that we watch it, but needs us to in order to exist – it doesn’t want to know that it is being viewed, yet demands it.

Its one spoken word – “this is great” – is all we need as viewers. We watch, and the film demands that we care. And, perhaps most importantly, we are in the last legs of being able to pretend we have a choice. At 20, I stand at a point of reflection. Half of my consciousness inhabits the last half of the Twentieth century, while the other half persists through the first part of the Twenty-First.

“We have evolved! I swear it!” And what better place for that false promise – accusation, even – than through the photoplay, the cinema itself. You have taken on a debt of reflection, promising to show us things we’ve never seen before, and things that we can never see again. Because what film does is transcend the spectacle and capture the moment of evolution – on a cultural level, a mechanical level, and an internal level.

But what the early Twenty-First century has shown us is that there is no separation for film to document. The cultural landscape has become externalized, mechanical in nature, and absent in objective spectatorship. We watch to feel on a personal level – our only moments of internal solitude in an age of constant accessibility and expected voyeurism. And so there is your film, which comes to us mere weeks before we embark on the unknown, and continue down the already downtrodden new millennium’s second half.

These weeks of apparent anticipation should be looked at with a nervous eye – one that asks us all to make a decision as to which way we will go: the route of the tangible, the internal becoming externalized, and our cinema reflecting that. Or a refusal. A refusal to heed the promise of the ‘never-before-seen’, avoiding at all costs the empty, and, instead, demanding something more: something to hold on to; something that is not as fleeting as the memory of the moment the cinema showed us something, but the cinema itself.

We’ve disregarded the tangible ages ago; even the romantics, with a tendency to hold on for too long, have traded the photobooth strip of pictures for Apple’s Photo Booth album. We don’t touch anything. And so a film – about humans being transported into the body of a ‘non-human’ creature – begs the question of what it is that Avatar is doing? Depicting us, perhaps, exactly as we are: desperate to be submerged in the mechanical, loosing touch, but gaining power -- or a secondary sense of it. We are placed into the Avatar, and we loose ourselves as we gain a notion of 'our selves'. That is what the Avatar does, but what is it that Avatar is doing?

The answer is nothing and everything: it is progressing us, but without the tangible, without realism or motion on our part or its creators. So, instead, I await, with befuddled enthusiasm for subject matter which neither interests me nor intrigues me for its actual value, but instead for its zeitgeist defining prowess, its ability – or audacity – to claim refuge in the neither-regions of our cultural consciousness, as something surpassing cinema or experience, becoming both and neither in the process. This is not film.

Sincerely,

Rod Bastanmehr

'The Ice Queen Cometh'

The September Issue

Directed: R.J. Cutler

Starring: Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington

A&E Indie Films, PG-13, 88 minutes

In the prickly world of fashion, few are allotted enough time to fully grasp what makes a seemingly frivolous industry the $300 Billion powerhouse that it is. A mere glimpse into that world leaves you as a mortal standing amongst a host of Greek gods. To understand the intensity of this world – the icons built – literally – from the ground up and the casualties left along the way– you need to be keenly aware of every decision being made behind closed couture doors. But with that being nearly impossible, the closest we can get is an insight into the person behind all of those decisions, if there even is a person to identify. Because Anna Wintour knows that she is less a person and more a manifestation of the industry as a whole: brooding, silent, undeniably influential. So when she sits in irritated silence waiting for an Yves Saint Laurent designer to show her the beginnings of a new line, her impatience is both palpable and understandable: Anna, like fashion, waits for no man.

“There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous,” she purrs in the film’s opening scene, in an accent filled with as much equestrian seriousness as there is ice-cold rancor. That same testament could be applied to Wintour herself, as the myth of her power, over both the magazine she lays out and the industry that lay before her, has now reached iconic status. It’s no secret that Meryl Streep’s deliciously cruel and Oscar nominated performance in The Devil Wears Prada was based on Wintour – a fact that everyone from Streep to Wintour herself adamantly denies. A variety of Prada’s name-checked designers and fashion notables even declined to appear in the film for fear of displeasing Wintour, furthering the rather concrete definition of her enigmatic power: the ability to control even those productions for which she has no role in.

And it’s that power that becomes The September Issue’s central focus, one that has the ability to either drive the fashion industry forward or halt it at her simplest of whims. Most quiver at her most basic of requests, citing it as the desires of a megalomaniac. But what director R.J. Cutler does is focus Issue not on Wintour herself, but the magazine she presides over like a cathedral’s head priestess. “More like the pope,” corrects contributing editor Candy Pratts Price in her fashion-savvy drawl, elongating all the ‘A’s of her words two syllables too many.

It’s industry clichés like those that prove to be true the longer Cutler fixes his gaze on Vogue as opposed to just the notoriously recluse Wintour. Likewise, during an intimate boardmeeting, where the staff discusses the unexpected revival of feathered garments as seriously as the discoveries of nuclear materials, – and with equal loathing: “What exactly do they expect us to do with these?” cries one editor. “Wear them,” another dryly retorts. – staff members throw around turns of phrase like “coat is the new jacket” with straight-faced seriousness. And why shouldn’t they? For Vogue, this is a matter of life a death: to remind them that “it’s not brain surgery, it’s fashion” would only further their stress, allowing daydreams of simplicity if they were to just follow through with a medical degree.

And it’s clear that Wintour likes it this way. But does this make her the ice queen, the Devil, she’s been painted as? No – it makes her an editor. And, from what Cutler shows us, a damn good one, giving Vogue half of its now famous totalitarian infrastructure. The other half belongs to Grace Coddington, the former British model whom, after a scaring car accident, took a job at Vogue (starting the same day as Wintour herself), eventually becoming their creative director and, as Wintour states, their resident genius.

Coddington manages to steal the show right from under Wintour’s dominating grasp, become the unsung hero of the magazine and, as a result, the film itself. Her befuzzled charm, preaching the rhetoric of an industry long since changed and emanating the essence of late-70s counterculture, allows her to be the middleman between Wintour’s illuminated throne and the throngs of workerbees that shuffle through the Vogue halls in mandatory high heels.

Don’t, however, assume that this means Coddington and Wintour permeate through a single lense. Far from it: Coddington may be the only voice that ever – ever – defies Anna’s now legendary orders. Where others hold their breath, partly out of fear and partly to allow Anna the appropriate amount of proximitized oxygen, Coddington is quick to disobey, even going so far as to admit she sometimes enjoys Wintour’s exasperation. In one scene, Wintour, perhaps jokingly, necessitates the airbrushing of an extra’s stomach in a photo (the extra, awkwardly enough, is the very cameraman filming the documentary). Coddington, desperate to maintain the ‘everyman’ juxtaposition in the high-glamour shot, quickly phones the retouch department, demanding they heed her order to cease any retouching, regardless of Wintour’s demands. It’s the equivalent of the unnoticed knight defeating the dragon. And it’s breathtakingly exciting – at least, far more than it should be.

But it’s their symbiotic, and arguably codependent, relationship that allows moments such as those to be exempt of any spite. Because what Cutler aims to show is that Wintour is only as good as Coddington allows her to be. It’s Anna who makes the decisions about what goes into her self-proclaimed bible, but Grace who provides her with the appropriate materials to make said decisions. In one scene, Coddington, while readying a model for a shoot, realizes that she is the last living editor to prepare a model’s wardrobe herself. It’s duties like those that grant the humble Coddington the title of ‘genius’. But it’s also those actions that force an indecent attachment to her work. Coddington’s gift is realizing the surreal, often fantastical, photoshoots that place Vogue above the rest. Wintour’s gift is her decisiveness, knowing when and how to actively moderate her enthusiasm.

And as viewers we can’t help but side with Wintour, regardless of if we really understand the decision being made. “That fur garment seems out of place.” Obviously – I mean just look at it! “Evening gowns are too overdone.” Sure, of course they are. “There isn’t enough color on that rack.” I suppose the rainbow is rather tame. We trust Wintour because while many have been quick to preach her abundance of authority, no one has ever been able to deny her intuitive brilliance. Predicting the death of the supermodel long before celebrities adorning the covers of magazines became, pardon the pun, en vogue, Wintour has managed to become the final word in fashion because she’s spent so long staying two-steps ahead of it. We are bound by Anna’s words because of the startling context she’s been placed in all these years before September Issue was filmed. So when Coddington whimpers at the realization that the world of Vogue has, much to her dismay, changed to alarming degrees (celebrity covers being one), we can’t help but assume that Anna simply knows what she’s doing. It seems just a little too late to introduce us to anyone else claiming they know it better.

Timing, in fact, riddles the entire film with deftly amounts of poignancy. Cutler chronicles the creation of Vogue’s now legendary September 2007 issue, which came in at a record breaking 800+ pages, the biggest in Vogue’s 114-year history. But we viewers watch this film in 2009, during the largest fiscal breakdown since the Great Depression, and during a time where the printed press is slowly going the way of the dodo. The people are clamoring with a demand so high,” says one Neiman Marcus executive, “that it’s outstripping the product.” Today, however, fashion houses are unable to spend the money to ship high-end couture to a country that rarely has the courage to proudly wear it. September Issue preaches the efficiencies of a time seeped in excess – one that serves as a sickening reminder of, perhaps, how we got into this mess in the first place.

But as Wintour herself reminds, “fashion is not about looking back, it’s about looking forward”. And after what seems like an ungodly amount of minutia-focused precision, the staff simply wipes the slate clean, and begins discussing October, taking only a brief moment to celebrate their record breaking success: over 13 million people are said to receive a copy of September’s Vogue, making it 1 in ever 10 women, an astronomical percentage. Coddington takes a look at the storyboards for the issue, counting something, but unable to get anywhere past “two”. Turns out, she was counting the number of spreads that she didn’t work on. She is clearly Cutler’s semi-protagonist, unfairly forcing one to label Wintour as the film’s “villain”, which is exactly what one would expect and Wintour would deny.

But there is an unmistakable fog that hovers over the film as we watch her exert her domineering control over every aspect of the magazine’s production: how then, after all, would Cutler ever manage to finish a film without her dominance rearing its head in the cutting room? It wouldn’t, and it’s perhaps alarmingly clear that the “fresh light” we’re supposed to see Wintour in is as orchestrated as the very photoshoots Cutler’s chronicled. But in one of the film’s final moments, Cutler pans over the final layout for the 2007 September issue, catching an image of an odd rubber dress from a “textures” shoot that Coddington had adored and Wintour had cut. Much to Coddington’s pleasant surprise, and ours as well, it has magically resurfaced, placed in the final print, bound for the newsstands. And it’s here that Cutler gives a subtle and remarkably untainted example of Wintour’s decision-making – one that could be argued for the betterment of the magazine or as a gift for a colleague. Could this mean the thawing of the ice queen? Like all of Wintour's decisions, it remains unquestioned.

The Kindness of Strangers

The cacophonous maze that is SFO (San Francisco International Airport) allows for vulnerability on a large scale. We, the flyers, are shuffled around from level to level, escalator to baggage claim, all in the hopes of sitting in a carpeted cylinder that hurdles through the air at ungodly speeds. It's no wonder I feel more connected to the people around me in an airport than I do anywhere else. Because in an airport, you are bound to find people going where you're going, all just as confused as you are. It's like being surrounded by people in their 20s.

There are numerous facadés: the clear "I know where I'm going" strut of faux-confidence, the subtle "I'm a tourist, enamored by the beauty of this building, but don't want to seem like one" eye darts, or the "I should have gotten here 40 minutes ago" mad dash. But with the various comings and goings that have people shuffling around the gateways is a kind of surreal comfort. I realize it more and more everytime: I love airports. They bring out the best and worst in people.

Flying in from San Diego yesterday, my checking in resulted in annoying wardrobe changes (suspenders are rarely a good idea when walking through a metal detector) and unneeded defending of my identity ("yes, security, that is me in my license photo. Yes, I am aware I look different. No, I haven't considered shaving. No, that's not a bomb, it's a bowling ball candle"). But aside from the post-9/11 formalities (the same ones that come with being a middle eastern with a desire to fly), the airport really is wonderful.

Upon landing, I had planned to take the first Marin Airporter back home, a travel of ultra-convenience considering there is an airporter terminal right outside Hamilton. However I somehow managed to miss the bus, even though I was a good ten-minutes early, resulting in me having to wait an additional hour for the next one. That is until Jesus took the wheel and granted me the gift of two strangers who happened to be driving to Petaluma, passing Hamilton on the way. They offered me a ride, and at first I kindly thanked them but told them it wouldn't be necessary. Eventually, they convinced me that it really wouldn't be a burden considering they were driving right through anyway. I obliged and thanked them profusely. Just to be on the safe side, however, I began to secretly draft an email to my stepdad where I typed up their car's license plate number, their names, descriptions of what they looked like, where they were from, any fact that could help find me once I was kidnapped and raped for days on end. But it proved unneeded.

David and Jennifer were coming back from what they affectionately dubbed their "second honeymoon" in the Victoria Islands, Vancouver. They have two sons, ages 17 and 20, and have been married for at least 25 years, if not more (David says 25, while Jennifer firmly believes it's been 27). Having gone to school in Mill Valley, they knew Marin County well, informing me of what my hometown was like before the dot-com boom hit San Francisco, making Marin County one of the most desirable locations in the country. "Mill Valley was just as rich as it is now," they assured me, "but people weren't in as big of a hurry. The town was a little more honest then."

David is a self-proclaimed comic geek, having become one in the later stages of his life. At 50, he is a wonderfully, cheery man, big in both heart and size. From what I gathered, he's a cub scout leader (perhaps for the very troop he was a member of as a child), whose Star Wars obsession has only recently begun to die down (mention that George Lucas lives in his hometown and he'll only begrudgingly mention that he still has yet to see him). But looking at David, you'd never guess him to be a follower of such things. He calls himself a farewhether sports fan, with no real interest in any of those national teams - something he and I were able to connect on. Throughout the duration of our far-too-short car ride, we spoke of comic books and their ability to aptly convey a social critique that is not possible in any other medium, his thoughts on the Star Wars prequels, his memories of the opening weekend of Episode I, and how he and I may have actually been in the same theatre for the premiere of Episode III.

Jennifer told me of their trip, recounting her desperation for a bear sighting that all residents of the Island claimed was inevitable (for the record, she didn't end up seeing one and is convinced that it's all a big lie). She told me of their hikes, their whale watching, their delicious meals and random cravings for Mexican, which she attributes to the "if I can't have it, I want it more" mentality. Their son is attempting to write a screenplay, something they're supportive of, even if they're unsure of its end result. She and David playfully bickered, but there was undeniable love between them, and it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. After a trip to San Diego and a week in Wyoming, I found myself more in awe of their relationship than any of the 'natural beauties' I've had the pleasure of seeing this summer.

They dropped me off and I begged them to let me either pay for gas or their airport parking, but they refused, simply asking me if I wanted them to stay until I was picked up. I told them it wasn't necessary and, after a thousand more thank yous, we parted ways.

There is a kindness that emanates from people in the strangest of times; potentially the same people who control, comment and condemn others whom they know nothing about. I wish, perhaps more than I can ever explain, that I could understand why that kindness shines through when it does, but the point is simply that it does. And I was lucky enough to experience it first hand. There are times when I loose my faith in the people I'm surrounded by. And, as a result, it takes those soul shaking interactions to remind me that my skin and clothes don't matter too much.

It's an honesty that comes with the strangers who help those that can give them nothing but thank yous and good wishes. And it says something when I experience these interactions in the strangest of places and the oddest of times. Had I not asked Jennifer to watch my bag as I went to break a $5 for the airporter, she would never have known where I was heading, never would have noticed the bus leave one level above where I was, and never would have bothered to offer me that ride. And whether she realizes it or not, her and her husband changed me.

My stubborn refusal to heed the warning of never talking to strangers resulted in an, albeit, temporary, interaction that has managed to leave a long lasting impression on me, reminding me that the most important thing we can do as people is to fill the void between us with random acts of kindness, small in theory but gargantuan in effect. In a time where disillusionment is plentiful and rewards are a rarity, I am lucky to have experienced this first hand.

I am luckier, however, that I wasn't kidnapped and asked to put on the lotion. Seriously, worst end to a summer ever.

'Tarantino and his G.I. Jews'

Inglourious Basterds

Directed: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Brad Pitt, Dianne Kruger

Universal Pictures, R, 153 minutes

The first thing to understand about Quentin Tarantino is that his primary audience is Quentin Tarantino. That’s who he makes films for, and everyone else is just a bonus. Which is why the mainstream success he’s found has become so puzzling, considering that his film’s intricate layers– you know, the ones that make the movie going experience worthwhile – are so difficult to truly digest, as opposed to just discuss. Yet he still finds himself in the ranks of our top tier American filmmakers. And perhaps rightly so; aesthetically pleasing, superficially assimilated, nauseatingly referential and with a penchant for walking a fine line between homage and plagiarism, -- really, what’s more American than taking things that don’t belong to us? – Tarantino has cemented himself as a post-modern auteur.

Now, at 46 years old – seriously? – and five films later, Tarantino has finally managed to hone his craft, or whatever you call it. And, like it or not, Inglourious Basterds may be the result, a movie infused with Tarantino squire that at once proves to be too much and not enough.

In classic Tarantino fashion, Basterds is broken up into chapters, culminating in a climax that rounds up the independent storylines for one final blow to the screen – a phrase that quite literally rings true for the film’s finale. Set in 1944, roughly after D-Day, but before the liberation of Paris, we're introduced to an alternate World War II, dividing the film’s main narrative into three separate threads. The titular, motley crew of the Basterds is lead by Lt. Aldo Raine (a typically mediocre Brad Pitt), who commissions his soldiers with the debt of 100 Nazi scalps.

Pitt, who is the film’s sole A-list name, is a modern-day superstar in every way, exerting rugged good looks and arguable acting ability; he is our definitive movie star simply because we have no one else. And Inglourious just furthers that divide between who Pitt is and who he should be. His breathy, southern drawl is a wonderful character quirk— as is the unexplained rope burn around his neck – but there is always a clear sense of referential characterization in Pitt’s delivery, one that is all too aware of its role in the film’s narrative.

But with Tarantino, a director who makes films about film, that kind of psychosomatic awareness is feasibly acceptable. To relentlessly preach characateur in the context of a Tarantino production is to truly be in touch with the source material, as nothing is meant to be particularly natural. If traditional cinema is to be watched in reality, a Tarantino picture is to be watched within a film. It’s what characters themselves would enjoy: kinetic and free-flowing energy, with equal parts excitement and ego bursting at the seams.

Dianne Kruger, who plays Bridget von Hammersmark, a German film actress/British double agent, balances voluptuous and vulnerable just enough to put her in the ranks of Tarantino’s other leading ladies de jour. But it’s Christopher Waltz’s Colonel Hans Landa, also known as “the Jew Hunter”, who truly centers this exploration into genre geometry. His every move is calculated, hauntingly still and undeniably shudder-inducing. He exhibits the larger-than-life persona and European sensibility of a top-tier Bond villain, even possessing a few quirky accessories: an oversized tobacco pipe is an unsubtle metaphor for his masculinity, or lack there of; his fondness for milk seems both teeming with eerie innocence as well as a primal instinct. Waltz has been getting unanimous praise, even earning a Best Actor Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. And deservedly so; from the tense opening scene that may very well be the best of Tarantino’s carrier, Waltz is a force to be reckoned with, leaving all who share a scene with him to be resigned to supporting characters at best.

That is, all except for Mélanie Lauren’s Shosanna, yet another in a superb cast of mostly unknowns. Played with furious subtlety, Shosanna, a French-Jewish runaway whose family was exterminated during a Nazi raid, calculatingly flirts with Frederick Zoller, a Nazi war hero whose recent exploits have been captured in a propaganda film premiering at Shosanna’s theatre. That theater, in fact, is the climactic set piece of the film’s final act, where the three separate narratives – the Basterds, the Nazis and Shosanna – all meet. In true Tarantino fashion, it takes a movie theatre to end World War II.

For all its historical liberties, Basterds is infused with a sort of filmic authenticity - Americans are cast as Americans, French actors as the French, Germans as Germans. And with Tarantino, a director whose films are often injected with a seemingly endless amount of hyperbole, Inglourious Basterds actually manages to become an exercise in restraint, a fact that speaks volumes considering, for example, the film’s cartoonish depiction of scalping. The Basterds’ modus operandi, scalping, is itself a perfect representation of Tarantino as a genre-centered filmmaker, visualizing the constantly referenced but never-before shown torture of choice for the spaghetti westerns of yesteryear.

There is a lot of that, as is to be expected. But things have changed since 1992, back when Tarantino’s constant sampling and pop culture references had resonance for an audience that was feeling the cynicism of an undefinitive decade. Now, Tarantino seems loved because he has to be. To understand him is to understand the basic consumed-cool knowledge of the new millennial film world: shallow in its value, but plentiful in its excess of ingredient. A cinematic masturbator through and through, he’s suffered the sentencing of any director who finds his or herself resigned to an adjective. For one to say a film is ‘Tarantino-esque’ results in head nods, but who really knows what that means, if anything?

Tarantino represents the fundamental postmodern question: can an artist who is so clearly the amalgamation of all that came before – he zooms into people’s hands, just like De Palma! Is that an aerial shot of a Mexican standoff? Here’s looking at you, Leoné – really be branded as original? Maybe, maybe not. But because of his impeccable casting and ability to turn the mundane into magic, or because his very awareness accuses his naysayers of simply “not getting it”, Tarantino gets a free pass.

What Tarantino’s really become is the middle ground of the hip: he’s not particularly original anymore, but he’s cool enough. A catalyst for the 90s independent film movement, he and a host of other film icons, like Kevin Smith, all follow a remarkably similar, but disconnected trajectory, inspiring those around them to be better, only to eventually have their protégés be better than they themselves were. There is certainly no denying that Tarantino influenced a generation of young filmmakers. The issue is that they just managed to outshine him.

Which is why there seems to be a touch of something more important in Basterds, and I think Tarantino sees it too: an unavoidable disconnect that is more present here than in any of his other films. It seems as though he’s become aware of what he’s created, something sprawling and stronger than what he’s use to. Which is why his classic Tarantinoisms are as scarce and sporadic as they are drawn out and repetitive. Tarantino seems to be adhering to our idea of him, not as he really is. He has begun to look at his films objectively, and with Basterds, a film so obviously near and dear to himself (the film’s last line – “I think this may be my masterpiece” – has Pitt staring directly at the camera for a reason), there seems a desire to separate from what we’re use to. So any moment of Tarantino-schtick – Samuel L. Jackson’s explanation of nitrate film’s flammability, on-screen text identifying characters in Tarantino's own handwriting, quick cuts to tangential backstory – seems almost forced, a gift to us from someone who would have preferred to have done it differently.

So forgive this wordy, roundabout praise/lamenting of Tarantino the filmmaker, but there is perhaps no other way to aptly critique a culturally referential marksman like himself. Basterds often hits that same plateau; it fluctuates between brilliance and desperation. But there is a calm that circulates, allowing it to settle as something completely different. Equal parts Aldrich’s Dirty Dozen and Truffaut’s The Last Metro, Tarantino has patience here, allowing his narratives to unfold as they should, his characters to develop as they need and the prickly subject matter to be taken as it may.

Whether it’s his best movie or not depends on which Tarantino you side with: the independently hip writer/director (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction), the homage heavy auteur (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill), or the filmmaker who has put much of his over-the-top style aside for the benefit of actual development. Impenetrable to critique as he may be – his originality is now somewhat secondary to his reputation – he is undeniably gifted, and Basterds marks a turn towards someone a little more aware of themself. For Tarantino, a filmmaker so astute in context, to finally realize his role in the very culture he pays constant tribute to, is in itself a glorious feat indeed.

C-SPAM.

When I was a kid, I wanted to know things.

I wanted to know things so badly that I would beg my parents to buy me every available book on whatever topic was my current weekly indulgence. As a result, I was left with enough literature on UFOs, the Titanic and the birth of Hershey's chocolate that my room doubled as a library of culturally significant texts. 'Culturally significant' in this case means 'important to an 11-year-old' and 'texts' means 'whatever was available at our elementary school's book fair'. But their were numerous works that I would force my family to buy, building myself a collection that slowly began to detour from what the goal originally was: to know things.

I became so overly pre-occupied with having every available piece of information that, somewhere along the line, actually learning that information become somewhat secondary. (Note: this is true for all cases except my obsession with UFOs. That I was all about. It got to the point that I would recite the three different types of 'Close Encounters' with UFOs to anyone willing to listen. Sadly, at the age of 11, every adult near you is considered 'willing to listen'. On the bright side, if there is ever an alien attack of any sort, most of Marin County's adult population should know what to do. You're welcome, America)

The other day, I was speaking to my uncle about politics, which, after college and sports (the latter of which is never a topic I care about discussing - I call football soccer, and war crimes football) is the default conversation for any adult and a 20-year-old. He began to tell me of his apprehensiveness in regards to discussing politics in this day and age - that apprehensiveness was nowhere to be found at around minute 45 of our 'discussion' (read: monologue). He began to recount the days in which politics was more than just a topic, it was a national pastime. A president's speech was the highlight of the year's telecasts; a news anchor would speak to the country, becoming a one-man explanation of all things too heavy to comprehend; the passing of a public figure was accompanied by an anticipated remembrance speech.

But these days, a president's speech is all but forgotten about, until the next day's inevitable "Oh yeah, I heard about that"'s. The anchors are divided by ideologies, with one making you feel scared, and the other making you feel guilty. And did anyone notice President Obama's farewell speech to Sen. Ted Kennedy just this past week? Anyone? Bueller?

But what struck me most was my uncle's belief that the people don't care about politics (if that's even true) because they aren't being told anything. It's a lack of access, he claimed, that is responsible for the apathy of two generations: one that use to throw rocks and now sit in the corner offices making the same decisions they lamented, and one that reads about those very hypocrisies, and uses it as leverage in their overwhelming decision to stay stagnant.

At first, I agreed. As I've stated many times, we'll start caring about the world when there is a world being passed down worth caring about. That, or just let us know what the hell is going on.

Then, the other day, a couple friends and I were dissecting the goal and disposition of our 24-hour news networks: FOX News, the loud mouth conservative base; MSNBC, the loud mouth liberal younger brother, just screaming louder so that other people will notice. CNN, the more grounded and middle-minded of the networks. And then we got to a little diddy I always manage to forget about: C-SPAN.

What the hell. Is up. With C-SPAN?

It suddenly came flashing back to me. 2o years of living - 10 of cultural consciousness - later, and I suddenly remembered how often I would be skipping through channels only to hit C-SPAN and always, I repeat, always, wonder what the fuck I was watching. It was either a never ending frame of the White House lawn or a fountain, or a blue screen that scribbled programming that I swear they never played, all acompanied by a far too sultry and slightly too sleepy female voice, reminding me that, if I was ever to forget, I was watching C-SPAN.

Oh, and it would also stream non-stop coverage of government proceedings and public affairs. So the other day, when reminded that C-SPAN existed, I made a point of watching it. And it struck me in a completely different light. Here it was: constant access to the events taking place behind closed political doors. No, not total access to everything, and no, not all interesting (although watch long enough and you're bound to catch some screaming - it's like the Real Housewives of D.C.), but it was there. We were given access to watch the more minutia heavy moments of public politics and cultural discourse take place.

And no one gave a damn. Not my uncle, not my friends, not even me.

In the Bay Area bubble, where to play any game that deals with counting the number of Prius' you see will end in numbers too high for comprehension, it's easy for me and others to forget about the reality of our political landscape. Adults preach, kids bitch and we all just slap some quasi-funny-but-not-really bumper sticker on our hybrids that make some sort of pun out of Dick and Bush (apparently, Marin also doesn't believe in upping its humor quotient - maybe it's due to our President finally being a badass).

But that belief, that to remain apathetic to any sort of political consciousness is logical because we're constantly kept in the dark, is, I'm sorry to say, bullshit. Because we are no longer in the dark ages. But we're also not in the Enlightenment age either. We're in the information age, where everything we need to know is feasibly at our fingertips. The death of the single broadcaster, the printed press, the need to be knowledgeable is not due to apathy, but excess. With so much information, we've devalued what it means to be informed. The same way broadcasters don't deem it necessary to divert from the shock doctorate. The same way that my friends and I find it satisfactory to label the outlets with what they produce as opposed to provide.

The same way I forgot to read about all the books I bought as a kid. It's the same mentality: the desire to have and to consume overtakes the desire to learn and comprehend. Maybe it's a mix of both of distraction and procrastination. Our desire to be up-to-date has more to do with the source of the information than the information itself. The latest blog to be in-the-know about holds more panache by the watercooler than any of the facts the blog posts. But it's also the knowledge that the facts are there, and there's no rush to get to them. They won't disappear if we don't buy them from the newsstands - they'll be archived. They won't go unseen if we don't catch the broadcast - it'll be on youtube. But in the time between 'wanting to know' and 'taking the time to learn', there is indifference, unfulfillment, annoyance.

The uncles of the world complain about no longer being in the know, even though we're now, more than ever, able to access information at dizzying speeds. What it now takes is the willingness to spend time. Because there is a disconnect that has inevitably grown in the Internet age, and it's deteriorated any cultural center of discourse, leaving no singular stream of information. We're on our own, because we wanted it that way. We made our bed, and now we have to let the C-SPAN lady's voice doze us into sleeping in it.

SI,TW.

It's 3 am, and I'm sitting in my kitchen making Annie's and trying to write a film review. Today, I went to lunch with Hadas, helping her find the world's most perfect outfit in the process. Visited Claire Martin after, where we talked and took a nap together. The intimacy of a very long and complex friendship. Where to go from here?

People are slowly begin to go back to their respective schools/new lives/what-have-yous. Home is becoming something much different nowadays. Still, though, I find myself reminiscing, perhaps once too often, about the days when the bubble that extended from Marin to San Francisco was enough to keep me -- scratch that, all of us -- satisfied.

In other news, I'm pretty sure my dentist tried to kill me the other day. What a profession to take on, one in which you know that everyone who walks through the door is there only because they have to be. I was there about 6 months ago, and the same 1996 issue of Highlights magazine was on top of the dated, scarp stack. Seriously, a subscription to even Reader's Digest? Anything? Sorry, y'all, but I'm an anti-dentite and proud of it. Suck it, Tim Watley.

'This is Not a Love Story. This is a Story About Love.'

500 Days of Summer

Directed: Marc Webb

Staring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel

Fox Searchlight, PG-13, 95 minutes

While walking through an Ikea, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), the not-so-starcrossed lovers of (500) Days of Summer, hold hands for the first time as they pass a sign that the furniture giant has slammed on the wall for all of its customers to read and remember: “We don’t make fancy quality, we make true quality”.

Truer words, my Swedish cohorts. And ones that speaks for more than just easily assembled furniture. Because if there is anything that first-time director Marc Webb manages to do with his amalgamously assembled film about the quest for love to be as we want it, not as it is, it’s ditch the need for anything fancy and just make it about quality.

That’s not to say that (500) Days of Summer isn’t sharp. Far from it: it’s nonlinear concept, tracking the highs and lows in the relationship of a non-believer and a hopeless romantic, manages to transcend the one-note shtick that current romantic comedies need in order to stay original and, as a result, relevant. It works because it elevates the movie, not defining it, an easy feet since it has its two leads, abundant in likeability and oozing in adorable, indie charm, to keep the film tied down.

Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are just compatible enough as Tom and Summer, meaning that they don’t work just as a easily as they do. For every micro-similarity (He likes the Smiths! She likes the Smiths!), there is a macro-disparity (He, an ardent believer in love. She, unsure of what the word even means). If the econo-babble is too much to bare, fret not; this is recession friendly cinema, where a secretary and staff writer at a greeting card company can afford an adorable apartment and a dream-sized loft, respectively, all in the curiously un-metropolluted dream world of Los Angeles.

But even those moments feel remarkably acceptable as the film bounces from day 1 of Tom and Summer’s relationship to day 486, randomly shuffling every other day in between. The arbitrary timeline manages to only enhance the film’s constant mantra of not being a love story, but merely a story about love. And that it is: love of music (only here can Morrissey and Hall & Oates be given equal treatment), love of film (everything from grandiose music numbers to neo-realist Fellini), love of anything and everything too complex to understand. Tom uses love as a way to give meaning and avoid confrontation with the reality of his situation. Summer rejects the notion of love for this very reason. He watches The Graduate and sees the lengths that love is worth going to and the necessity in capturing it. She weeps through its hauntingly, ambiguous final scene, witnessing the characters' inner-realization of a romance founded on nothing more than romance, leaving her to wonder if she's simply watching herself. And thus, their relationship defined: witnessing the same common interests through remarkably different perspectives

Perspective, in fact, colors the entire film, reminding us that by knowing how it all ends, we can focus on what happened before. A split screen simultaneously shows us Tom’s expectations paired against his reality, eventually fading into the latter, enveloping him into the sum of his assumptions. An elevator ride, jolly on day 32, cuts abruptly to one that stinks of depression on day 293. It’s a shame, then, that the film didn’t feel the need to bewilder viewers a bit more with its shuffled narrative, instead allowing the film to play out more like a series of vignette’s as opposed to a Kauffman-esuqe meditation on the human condition and the disorientation that comes with emotional attachment.

But this isn’t that kind of movie, nor does it try to be. It could have been one that was better, had it made purposeful and more interesting use of its unique narrative style. But it could have easily been one that was worse, had it dosed every available moment of dialogue with whiplash lingo that writers, too young to call themselves old, are convinced is the vernacular of a generation too old to call themselves young. The film manages to shake any overly pretentious underground charm by being comfortable in its own skin, letting its characters breathe and speak as if they’re truly feeling the ins-and-outs of each other’s company.

Yet, there is a suspicious disconnect in Summer’s character, one who never feels alive enough to be treated as a secondary protagonist. Deschanel plays her wonderfully, but Summer still feels one dimension short of a real-life person. But, conversely, the more we get to know Tom, the more excusable that lack of development becomes. That distance that we feel from Summer begins to shape into something that resembles an honest understanding of who she is or, more accurately, who Tom believes her to be. She becomes the sum of his interests, his passion, his obsession, and his desire – not for her, but for love in the most general term. And that vapidity makes Summer less real, but more human, making tangible her indirect promise to love him for now, not forever.

“I’ve loved this place ever since you brought me,” Summer says to Tom as they unintentionally reunite at a park bench rife with memories, accurate or not. Tom can’t say the same thing about the places that Summer has taken him, both real and emotional. Tom has introduced Summer to a location with foundation, a promise to stay as she remembers it. Summer took Tom to the emotional highs of his desires, but never reciprocated that same solidarity: A date with Summer to Ikea on day 31 is as playful as a similar date on day 238 is suffocating. But it’s always honest, and (500) Days of Summer avoids any of that tactless indie charm by instead showing us everything in between the traditional meet-cute, montage, mixup and mending that comprises most current day celluloid romances. Rest assured, all of that is indeed here, but like the products in its Ikea setting, it’s simply assembled differently, making something purely original in the process.

More.

What a night. So much discussed, not enough digested.

After two years of college, and a summer where we've all found ourselves scattered from oceans apart to states away, tonight may have honestly been the culmination of where everyone currently is; take that to mean whatever you want it to. Being in Keith's van, high out of my mind, with people I respect, love, admire, learn from, etc, is honestly the most purifying experience I could ever hope for right now. Nothing is clear with anything I'm doing, and there is a grounding that comes with surrounding myself with people that continue to support and push me. These friends have managed to pass beyond just mundane relationships - there is actual understanding here, and there is promise of more.

I'm currently sitting under my covers, trying my best to take in everything I've experienced/learned tonight. In addition, I'm outlining a film review, mapping out the future of what is becoming a more professional blog and watching old Batman cartoons. I am in ageless limbo.

'Weapons of Mass Discomfort'

Brüno

Directed: Larry Charles

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen

Universal Pictures, R, 83 minutes

I sat directly in front of two elderly women, right next to two teenage boys and exactly behind two middle aged men during a screening of Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest, but not greatest, docucomedy about a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista who craves the American spotlight and all the superficiality that comes with it. Within this nexus of demographics, I was able to experience Baron Cohen’s film in an entirely different setting by assessing the hilarity of said experience through the people around me. Here they were, every major audience represented in a film whose goal can only be said to be purposefully dividing.

There were giggles, groans, grunts and guffaws during various slapstick and slap-dick moments, but one scene in particular, in which the titular character screens a potential American television pilot to a focus group, left the most permanent and telling divide: Brüno/Baron Cohen flaunts his/a stunt double’s penis on screen, swirling it around with Truffaut-esque confidence, until it stops in place and speaks to the viewers.

The elderly women behind me howled with laughter, while the teenagers to my right turned away from the screen, pathetically pleading for the scene to have never happened, accompanied by the obligatory chuckle. And the middle-aged men in front of me? They sat in complete silence, not uttering a single world, either out of shock or disapointment. Yet, there was something suspiciously counterfeit in regards to the bellowing elderly women, something that seemed disingenuous and forced; a hope, perhaps, to banish any sort of suspicion of prudery, proving themselves beyond any level of easy disgust. The same could be said for the teenagers sitting next to me, who seemed to have been more disturbed than amused, only letting out a barley sincere chuckle both as a reminder to those around them (and, perhaps, themselves as well) that this is a film they're supposed to enjoy.

Such is Brüno, a film that surveys the current American landscape to the point where not only are the essence of the people on screen called into question, but the sincerity of the audience watching. No one goes unmentioned, unscathed or, sadly, understood. In Baron Cohen’s desperate love for inevitable envelope pushing, he’s foregone anything that made his 2006 pop culture behemoth, Borat, work. As opposed to gut-busting laughs and thought provoking subject matter, he’s settled for cultural objectification and, sadly, audience obligation: to not laugh during Brüno would leave you either too set in your ho-hum seriousness or unable to get the joke. The truth is, the joke’s on you.

The guerilla mockumentary style that Baron Cohen employs is anything but a new subgenre. In fact, it’s been done many times over and often better than any of Baron Cohen’s forays into the model. But Baron Cohen has become the poster boy most often and most easily associated with the genre, in the same fashion filmmakers like Michael Moore represent documentary film for the masses at large. In fact, Brüno is largely a film that prays on the very idea of what’s in fashion, discracing the mere idea of coveting the latest have-to-have. Bruno is introduced as the former host of an Austrian fashion show whom, after fashioning a suit made of Velcro that promptly ruins a runway show, is blacklisted and finds his fame revoked. “For the second time in a century,” he somberly narrates, “the world has turned on Austria’s greatest man, just because he tried something new.”

It’s a brutal line, and Baron Cohen’s acid tongue is all the more appreciated as a sporadic reminder of why we loved him in the first place. Because if Brüno does anything, it’s make us question the man behind the character, if there is one. After all, the only thing that separates Baron Cohen from his more un-PC counterpart is Brüno’sunintentional disrespect as opposed to Cohen's staged antics. Aside from that, both men are very much the same.

It’s hard to pinpoint what it is exactly about Brüno that prohibits it from rising toBorat-worthy acclaim. Some have cited the film’s lack of clear, discernable structure, but the issue is really the opposite: the problem lies in that desire for structure at all. While Borat would use its titular character as the center of the narrative, the film’s real goal was to expose the underbelly of current American culture. That rampant desire to unveil America's true sensual self-indulgence worked by using Borat, the character, merely as a provocateur of larger cultural discourse.

That desire to communicate larger truths is mostly, if not entirely, absent this time around. In Brüno, the center of the film is undeniably Brüno himself. And that narrative structure that is birthed as a result causes the derailment of what could have potentially been a more substantial socio-cultural commentary.

But then again, the film has no true comments to make. It attempts to be a sprawling satire of everything from the pretentious fashion world and egotistical celebrity culture to what Baron Cohen believes to be a documentation of social discomfort towards the homosexual community. There are moments of grandiose hilarity, such as when Brüno comments on the growing trend of adoptive babies being mistaken for designer accesories, but those moments are few and far between.

Instead, Brüno merely provokes in the hopes of eliciting a substantial reaction as opposed to actually working for it. The targets that Baron Cohen paints are far too easy for a filmmaker who believes himself to be perusing the depths of darkened Americana. The caricature of a gay man that Baron Cohen creates isn’t the problem here; after all, Robin Williams’ brilliant portrayal in The Birdcage and Christopher Guest’s role in Waiting for Guffman were themselves equal parts star power and stereotype.

No, the issue is what exactly was expected of these unwitting partakers in Baron Cohen’s supposed unearthing of homosexual unease? On a larger scale, the more appropriate, accurate and interesting finding will be within the theatres filled with liberal pundits who praise differences and cultural changes to any public within earshot, but still finds themselves amusingly closeted in regards to the actual practice of understanding. It’s that American hypocrisy, one of fake-tolerance, fake-charity and, most importantly, fake acceptance, that would have served as a far better bull's eye.

But that would be Baron Cohen biting the hand that feeds him, and what need does he have anymore to truly go far enough in poking fun at the very people who now clamor to fund his latest projects? He doesn’t. So he instead settles for the segments of our country where homosexual detestation is somewhere between obvious and oblivious. There is no middle ground in the Brünoverse, and there are no winners. Only a two-sided sword: either ardent discomfort towards the 'culture' that Cohen believes himself to be promoting or complete and utter acceptance of his hyper-sexualized ridiculousness – a stance that will still inevitably paint you in the dimwitted light of accepting anything with reckless disregard for crudeness or class. Brüno lacks any of that smarter edge that we know Baron Cohen can deliver. It instead banks on audiences’ fond memories of Borat’s startling cultural commentary as blind faith that his new endeavor is smarter than it actually is.

I christen this: 'something'

Okay.

Between LiveJournal (which I only frequent to read, and occasionally post for my own keepings) and Tumblr (my favorite blogging platform, although it's more of a scrapbook than anything else), this is my third online blog. I don't know how to separate this from anything else, but I think I'll use both. Maybe copy and paste some of the things from there on to here? Make this more personal, the other more professional? Who knows. The beauty of blogs, as with all free things, are that excess is not just an option, it's nearly a requirement. I have a tendency to overuse and overneed, a minimalist I am not. For this, like all things else, I will attempt concession.