Issue #06/61, March 25 - April 7, 1999  

It had been my hope this week to give you an exclusive review of the uncut, 51-minute kompromat video depicting no-longer-former General Prosecutor Yuri Skuratov "cavorting" (in the parlance of our times) in a private residence with two naked prostitutes. But alas, the tape is harder to come by than the press would have us believe. The two girls at Pushkinskaya referred to in Moskovsky Komsomolets proved to be one of those pay-up-front, oregano-for-marijuana type scams so common to Grateful Dead shows and Alphabet City. Meanwhile, Fred Weir's claim in the Hindustan Times that the tape was available on street corners all over town was a typical result of that bearded Canadian leftist's shoddy (or non-existent) research.

My own search for the tape--starting at several of the less reputable video kiosks just beyond the Garden Ring and ending at the Gorbushka market--yielded nothing more than intriguing sociological data. The results: Most of the middle-aged dealers (i.e., the guys selling home-recorded tapes of everything from Mike Tyson's "Greatest Hits" to serial killer home movies) seemed certain of the tape's complete non-availability (to anyone with fewer than three blue sirens on his Black Mercedes, that is), while the teenage dirtheads with nothing but hard-core porn had no idea who Skuratov is or that such an office as Prosecutor General even exists in Russia. One fellow in a long-sleeve Megadeth T-shirt, after listening politely to my point-by-point explanation of the Skuratov scandal, Russia's bicameral parliamentary system, and the tape's alleged contents, became convinced that I was looking for a 1990 Dutch film called (in Russian, anyway) Stary dyadya i dve molodye devochki. I thanked him and went about my usual Gorbushka business: hunting down spaghetti Westerns and the like that mix well with the old heroin high. It's all just as well, I suppose. I'm sure whatever is actually on the Skuratov tape can compete with the likes of Mr. Nasty's Dirty Debutantes #5 in terms of priapically stomach-twirling unpleasantness--just about the last thing my system needed on Sunday afternoon.

Which, unfortunately, leaves me to the same old kino shit, even if it is relatively new kino shit. But try not to get too excited about the fact that everything out right now is an Academy Award nominee or victor (everything except Lost in Space, that is, which probably would have been nominated this year too if it weren't already two years old or something). It's not local screen quality that has risen, but rather Oscar's standards that have fallen... again (difficult as it is to conceive). Perhaps Nikita Mikhalkov's trivial cosmetology epic has a realistic shot next year, after all. The ultimate indication of the Academy Awards' irrelevance (this year, anyway) is certainly The Big Lebowski's failure to garner a single nomination (in fact, the Academy even went so far as to send the Best Actor trophy across the Atlantic with some Wop rather than give it to Jeff Bridges). Nearly as damning, however, is the fact that Mighty Joe Young did receive one--only for a bullshit technical award, but still. A fourth-generation Disney revisionist remake of a knockoff of a lame monster movie that was itself subjected to a quasi-revisionist remake back in the 1980s is bad enough, but no film should have to suffer being directed by someone named "Ron Underwood." That's a name for a shady cable guy or a typewriter repairman--anything but a film director. Needless to say, I gave this one a pass. Sorry, Mr. Underwood.

I tried to go see this year's big Oscar winner, Shakespeare in Love. Honestly I did. Even if the movie does have People magazine hot people of the moment like Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck putting on British accents and Elizabethan garb. Even if it was co-written by Tom Stoppard. Even if it was directed by Fox-TV football commentator John Madden. Even if it is called Shakespeare in Love. But alas, it was not to be.

As I arrived at the Cinema Center Sunday evening on the tail end of my first fen-bender in many moons, the line for tickets was snaking around incoherently back into that little enclave near the elevators and showed no sign of moving rapidly enough for my fragile psyche to handle. Surrounding me on all sides were Moscow's most pafosny, overdressed natives and shiniest remaining expats--delighted, no doubt, to be standing in line for hours on end to see the film that would be crowned king in just a few short hours. It didn't take long for some really nasty paranoia to take hold, and I was out of there. I hate to let y'all down like this, but I really had no fucking choice. No fuck-ing choice.

Fortunately, I was able to catch the Shakespeare trailer later that evening at a showing of American History X (about which, see below)--I don't think I missed a whole lot. And frankly, I don't much feel like talking about it. Next!

Lost in Space. Why they bothered to send this one through the theaters after all this time is beyond me--I mean, it has only been out on video for like two years now. Oh well, I guess it was thinking of this sort that was responsible for such an ill-advised movie in the first place. I could spend all of 15 minutes griping about the non-existent plot, anachronistic transplanting of 1990s American social mores fifty years into the future, William Hurt, Gary Oldman, or that annoying little brat from Party of Five who talks like she's on helium 24-7, but all the problems boil down to this: a Friends actor in a starring role equals shit. That goes double if we're talking about the lowest-rent Friends, i.e., nightmare hippie girl Phoebe or dumb actor Joey, who just so happens to be piloting the ship (literally) here. Is it any wonder the Robinson family ends up "lost in space"? Just be thankful that you don't have to tag along with them.

Which brings us to American History X, a "serious film about racism in America." Now this is a label that no film should be saddled with, and AHX is most certainly not up to the task. A brief Internet search yielded nothing in the way of first time director Tony Kaye's background, but the excessive black-and-white recent-history flashbacks and hyper-slo-mo shots lead me to suspect he cut his moviemaking teeth on Don Henley videos and commercials for useless personal hygiene products. The most jarring such indicator comes via the foreshadowing of the seductive shower-head drip that precedes the obligatory Deliverance prison-rape sequence. Poor Edward Norton is about to get brutally sodomized by his neo-Nazi former protectors, and Kaye (who also handled cinematography duties--something of a rarity in the biz) seems to think he's selling Gilette shaving gel. Of course, no director in his right mind would film an ad for that shiny green stuff in black-and-white. Makes no sense.

Norton, another hot young rising star of the moment, received an Oscar nomination for his performance here--I suppose in recognition of his having hired a personal trainer in order to beef up considerably from his usually scrawny self (in fact, with the shaved head and goatee he looks a lot like a young Rob Halford). It's not like there was anything particularly believable about his skinhead orator character. Like most other "racist" characters in the film, Norton as ringleader utters the words "nigger," "kike," and "spic" with no real conviction or hatred. That is, he sounds like a liberal actor rather than a dangerous sociopath. Perhaps this is what drama is all about. If that's the case, it's no wonder I hate actors so much.

Perhaps even more importantly, you don't have to be a basketball pedant on the level of our own Matt Taibbi to recognize that Norton would be brutally outmatched in a game of hoops against a team of Crips from South Central. Desire and hustle will only take you so far--especially when your moves on the court resemble those of a heavily sedated hippopotamus.

It is only in the closing sequence, however, that the film takes that bold step from quasi-bearable mediocrity to outright formula garbage. In the space of just five minutes, (1) Norton's younger brother (played by Edward Furlong) is gunned down in true Christ-o-martyr fashion and with plenty of LA ghetto resonance to boot, (2) Norton has one of those ludicrous "what have I done?" catharses over the dead body where the actor is forced to stupidly cry out in anguish what a sensible person would only think to himself, and then (3) Furlong's voice issues from beyond the grave in order to read the closing paragraph of his last-ever high school essay--which also happens to contain the film's final conclusion, pretty much clearly identified as such in a single, easy-to-digest sentence. And this insightful conclusion? That life is like, way too short to be obsessed with all that hate and bitterness stuff. Better to be a freewheeling liberal. Better to be Elliot Gould.

Hell, it's a damn good thing they spelled things out so clearly. Up until that point, I was sitting there thinking that the film's message was that neo-Nazi skinheads are fairly stupid and listen to bad music all the time. Just goes to show how much I know.