You probably know about it already, but in case not, there’s a really bracing animated half-hour series on the F/X Network called Archer. It’s a spoof of the James Bond-type spy genre, which doesn’t sound too good, but never underestimate what Adam Reed of Sealab 2021 can do with moldy genre spoofs.
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I promised this guy I’d review a new novel called Exiles, so the review could appear in eXiled and provide some sort of synergistic frisson in the universe or something. That was months ago and I still haven’t done it. Here’s why:

It may be that I will never send Iris this letter, Spiegel thought. But someday I will see her and we will talk about these things, and then she will know.

You see? That’s the last line of the novel. I peeked at it to see where the thing would end up if I actually read all 344 pages, and that’s the final kicker. Note how the contractions have all dropped out, always an ominous sign in any novel written after 1890. “I will see her, we will talk, she will know.” Straining for lofty effect by not writing I’ll, we’ll, she’ll—bad. Very bad.
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It’s fashionable to dismiss The Simpsons, to claim never to watch it anymore because its best days are long gone. It’s been fashionable to do this for ages. I remember when the show was about five years old and staggeringly great, I was informed by a pompous grad student, nicknamed “Astroboy” for his huge horn-rimmed glasses and abstracted air, that he didn’t watch The Simpsons anymore because its best days were long gone. “It’s lost its purity,” he said. “Homer is a little less Homer now, Lisa is a little less Lisa.”

And yet you are never less Astroboy, I thought, no matter how hard we pray.

But I didn’t say that aloud. I merely said, “Them’s fightin’ words,” and he seemed baffled and went away.

On The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special: In 3-D! On Ice!, they had come up with a ready response to Astroboy and all his kind who clog internet sites with their fascinating observation that they don’t watch the show anymore because its best days are long gone: “I think the internet postings were a lot funnier ten years ago. I’ve kinda stopped reading the new posts.”

So fuck all y’all!
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For a good time, call Robert Downey Jr.

Of course, some people don’t want to have a good time. That’s one of the mysterious facts of our modern lives, and that’s why there’s a market for films like Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. But for the rest of us, who are still pursuing happiness, as is our inalienable right, we go to movies that might have some kick to them. And these days Downey has a kick like a mule.

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What are the best movies of the decade? How the hell should I know? To hear the critics tell it, it’s Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, plus a lot of other solemn bummers I didn’t see.

However, among the ones I could bear to look at, here are the highlights. We’ll start just with 2009, which was a weirdly good year for films, though everything else blew.
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Avatar turns out to be the one about the white guy who gets mixed up with Noble Savages and likes them so much he goes native, right before the big battle. So no surprises about the plot. But what about the totally immersive game-changing 230-million-dollar 3-D animation/live-action digitized supersensory orgasmatron of a revolutionary media experience, you ask?

Eh, it was all right.
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Sometimes you just want to see a lot of people die, but if you did anything about it in real life, you’d get entangled in a lot of red tape. So you head off to the cinema instead and watch stuff like 2012, which is really funny, in spots. It reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s nice line about the death of sweet, saintly Little Nell in Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, one of the great tearjerkers of the 19th century:

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.

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I’m morbidly devoted to the works of Charles Dickens. It’s a childhood aberration. At a young age I started reading whatever books were on the family shelves and bonded with Dickens and Twain before I had a fully formed cranium, practically. From them I developed a vaguely 19th century sensibility that’s been nothing but trouble. That’s how I come to ruin me-self. (more…)

I finally got around to seeing Paranormal Activity, the low-budget ghost movie that’s making so much money. It’s spinning through the predictable cycle already charted by The Blair Witch Project ten years ago:

1) early fan buzz and glowing reviews, followed by

2) naysayers claiming the movie’s not scary, it’s stupid and boring, while critics begin to damn it with faint praise by saying the film’s “a triumph of clever marketing,” which leads to

3) a total raving backlash, with all agreed that fans of this piece of crap are idiots who don’t even know they’ve been had. And still to come,

4) a vague consensus that, in retrospect, Paranormal Activity was pretty good.

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By now the Coen brothers are so great at filmmaking they’re actually scary. They started out twenty-five years ago with massive cinematic talent and the finest sensibilities in the modern world, and they’ve worked and worked till now they can achieve glorious screen effects with such ease, suppleness, and casual precision, it’s overwhelming if you let yourself dwell on it. But A Serious Man doesn’t let you dwell on it till after it’s over. The last shot alone is so moving, so incredible and complex in its impact, it sears itself into your brain like the twin ghost girls in The Shining, and you go home stunned.

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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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Capitalism: A Love Story is a fantastic slap-upside-the-head film, just what we need right now. It’s been playing a week in New York and Los Angeles, and just opened wide. The reviews are “mixed.” Critics say it’s just Michael Moore preaching to the choir again: people who love Michael Moore will go see the film, people who hate him won’t, therefore he has no persuasive effect whatsoever.

Though Dana Stevens of Slate doubts that anyone can really love Moore:

If you already dislike Michael Moore, Capitalism: A Love Story, his latest documentary/provocation/performance-piece/decoupage project isn’t likely to win you over. And if you love him without reservations, this movie has nothing to tell you that you haven’t already shouted through a bullhorn at a “Free Mumia” rally. But is there anyone who falls cleanly into that latter category of unabashed Moore love? The hulking Michigander’s 20-year career as an agitprop prankster, his stalwart refusal either to go away or to hone the blunt instrument of his demagogic style, has made Moore a problem for the left and the right. Even those who largely agree with Moore’s politics are often mortified by the delivery system: the juvenile stunts, the easy demonization of his opponents, the deliberate donning of blinders when a cogent counterargument comes along.

As usual, that leaves me out. I love Michael Moore, and I never shouted anything through a bullhorn. I should’ve, though. Maybe I’ll start. (Note to self: buy bullhorn.)
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If you think our culture is totally, horribly, permanently screwed up, go see The Informant! Because it’s a gallows-humor study of how/why we are totally, horribly, permanently screwed up, so it gives you an opportunity to consider the question. But if you don’t want to do that, don’t go. You’ll find it boring, or an example of pernicious “blank irony,” or something.

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It was in the news the other day that a cheetah had achieved the fastest recorded cheetah-time, running 100 meters in just over 6 seconds, which is about 36 mph.

What the hell? That’s the fastest recorded cheetah time? Are we only clocking old cheetahs, lame cheetahs, cheetahs who aren’t feeling well? Every right-thinking child knows that cheetahs are the fastest land animals and can hit speeds of 60 – 70 mph, if properly motivated. This cheetah they clocked at 36 mph—named Sarah, if it matters—got dropped out of the back of a van and was merely loping after a target.

Then this bogus news story generates the inevitable question: can Usain Bolt beat a cheetah?

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Extract is so bad its rottenness becomes a source of fascination, which is a good thing, because there’s nothing else to sustain your interest while the 89 minute dud drags by. It’s all Mike Judge’s fault, that much is clear. He wrote and directed it as if he’d forgotten what he does for a living. Is he suffering from amnesia? Narcolepsy? Ketamine addiction? The malaise that afflicts so many Hollywood types with so much success and so few brains they wind up in the hospital suffering from “exhaustion”?
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