Click the cover, buy the book!

Eileen Jones’ new screed on America’s cinematic flameout, Filmsuck, USA, is currently available on Amazon for the absurdly low price of $1.99.  Buy it today!

Here’s an excerpt from the intro:

That loud sucking noise you hear is American cinema going down the drain. We’ve been listening to that slow slurping gurgle for a long time now, and are used to it. Still, sometimes you might wonder how American cinema, which was once the best in the world, wound up circling the drain with a mournful glugging sound for years and years and years. And you might also wonder how much longer it can go on like this, before the Final Suck occurs and we’re looking at nothing but empty drainpipe.

It’ll never happen, you might say. That’d be like saying America’s going to shut down its space program, and let other people take over, like the Russians and the Chinese and the Indians and any random jerk-off billionaire looking for an expensive hobby. Oh, wait…yeah. That already happened, didn’t it?

Anyway, I have a few ideas about how it all went to hell. They’re presented here in two forms: the longer, concentrated rant of this introduction, plus the short ranting bursts erupting out of a number of reviews of specific films from the years 2008 – 2012. The reviews are there to help you chart the American cinematic decline as it actually occurred, from the point of view of a reporter in the field, somebody risking her life by standing right next to the drain during The Big Suck of the 21st century.

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Read the sensational Vanity Fair profile on The eXile, and founding editors Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi: (more…)

This article was first published in The eXile on July 8, 2004

Much has been said over the past week about the final collapse of the Russian Left-opposition. Even a neo-con like Michael McFaul publicly lamented (through crocodile tears) the weekend split of the Russian Communist Party opposition, charging that “democracy as a result has suffered.”

But the fact is that the Russian Left died a long time ago — in the mid-1990s, when they agreed to collaborate with the powers-that-be, and to destroy anyone within their ranks who tried breaking free from their sleazy arrangement with Yeltsin and the oligarchy. The Communists didn’t want to win power, in fact they were terrified of taking power — they were safer, and better-off, as a toothless, fake opposition, which served Yeltsin well because he could whip up Return of the Red Scare fever any time he needed more IMF funds or any time Clinton’s people threatened to make a stink about the corruption and genocide that Yeltsin was responsible for.

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There’s a new TV show called Warriors running on the History Channel that’s a current favorite of mine. I hesitate to mention it, because no doubt it’s pretty basic stuff. I hate to think what Gary Brecher would say about it—the merest ABCs of warfare!—but it can be riveting for those of us who never got a lot of schooling in war, for all sorts of reasons. These are some sample reasons:

1) You check the box marked “female.”

2) You, like Dick Cheney, had “other priorities.”

3) You bought the crazy notion that even thinking about violence is bad.

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This is a vengeful slagging of previews I’ve seen at least ten-thousand times, maybe through bad luck, bad timing, bad karma, it’s hard to say. They’re all for movies opening March 20th. Except for The Soloist, which may never open, judging by the way they keep not opening it.

I Love You Man

This is the “bromance” one about a guy (Paul Rudd playing the same damn thing he always does) with no male friends who needs to recruit one to be best man at his wedding. The recruit is Jason Segal (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), who’s big and puffy and boring and yelly, yet other characters always regard him as outrageous or liberating or heartwarming or something. We need hardly add that Jason Segal needs to be taken out into the woods and shot, or abandoned on an ice floe, anything to put an end to the tedium. (more…)

Mark Ames is the founding editor of The eXile and co-editor of The eXiled. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Playboy, Daily Beast, Alternet, Radar, The New York Press, and elsewhere. He is the author of“Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond” which became the basis of the critically-acclaimed 90-minute BBC documentary film, “Going Postal”; and Ames is co-author with Matt Taibbi of the book “The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia.” Ames has made several guest appearances on MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show, along with radio appearances on Dylan Ratigan’s ABC radio program; radio spots on Chuck Mertz’s “This Is Hell” show, Scott Horton’s “Antiwar.com Radio” show, Michelangelo Signorile’s radio show, KFPK radio, Air America and elsewhere. He is currently at work on a new book for Wiley.

Yasha Levine is the former editor of The eXile and founding editor of The eXiled. Levine’s articles have appeared in Wired, Slate, Penthouse, Time magazine and elsewhere. Levine currently lives in a trailer home in Victorville, California, with his two guns, and is currently working on a book.

Gary Brecher writes the “War Nerd” column. Brecher has been published in The American Conservative and Alternet, and is the author of the book “The War Nerd.” Brecher has been cited on FoxNews, and was once accused by neocon historian Victor Davis Hanson—guru to Dick Cheney and “Scooter” Libby—of setting fire to Hanson’s vineyards. Brecher has been interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio and on Chuck Mertz’s “This Is Hell” radio show. He lives in Fresno, California.

Eileen Jones is the world’s greatest movie reviewer. She teaches film theory at UC Berkeley.

John Dolan, who taught The eXile editors how to write, is the author of Pleasant Hell, along with several books of poetry and a book about the ruthless Darwinian struggle for fame among 18th century England’s poets, “Poetic Occasion from Milton to Wordsworth.”

I wish I knew how to quit you

I admit I enjoyed Pineapple Express more than I expected. Turns out it’s much more wholesome than Knocked Up and Superbad and other Judd Apatow Factory products, because Apatow & Co. have pretty much come out of the closet entirely in this one. Finally! No more pretending it matters whether it’s possible to find a way to like women, or live with them, or even just score with them; no, they’re up front here about what really counts, which is true love among men. Call this one Judd Apatow’s Brokeback Mountain. (more…)

She’ll never get the grass stains out of those shorts

You remember those old kid-game cartoons telling you there are 22 things wrong with this picture and you have to circle them all? Like, say it’s a picture of undersea divers but instead of flippers, one of them’s wearing clown shoes or something. You have to remember, this was before Gameboy was invented. Very, very tough trying to amuse yourself as a kid in those days.

Anyway, most people don’t realize we continue to be confronted with “What’s Wrong With This Picture” challenges for the rest of our lives. We forget our early training, but the pictures go right on getting wronger and wronger.
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So I’m just back from watching The Dark Knight with an audience of about five hundred reverent teenagers, some of them urgently muttering, “Yeah! Yeah!” during the more violent action sequences, and I can confirm that this film has indeed raised the bar as far as the quality of our summer superhero films this year.

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The eXiled Coat of Arms Is Back With A Vengeance

One month ago, our newspaper The eXile got stomped into extinction by some ham-fisted Russian government officials, who decided that since there’s a new president in the Kremlin who’s talking up some nonsense about a new “liberal era,” what better way to show your boss that you understand what he means by “liberal”—with a big wink-wink—than to shut down the only good thing that Russia (more…)