Four months ahead of the World Cup soccer tournament, one of USA’s opponents is embroiled in a sex scandal that’s had repercussions on our side as well. All Britain is currently abuzz with the news that central defender and England team captain John Terry has had an affair with his ex-teammate’s girlfriend. The exact status of Vanessa Perroncel, an underwear model from France, is unclear: Terry and others say that she’s Bridge’s ex, while others claim that she and Bridge were in the process of reconciling. This much is certain: She’s the mother of Bridge’s son. Terry’s a married father of twins. Terry and Bridge were teammates at Chelsea FC until Bridge transferred to Manchester City last year. They were good friends until this happened. They may be forced to deal with each other again if Bridge is selected for the English national team. (He’s on the bubble.) Awkward!
Bridge hasn’t said anything beyond a terse “no comment” statement issued through his publicist, but he’s reported to be upset, not surprisingly. Bridge’s new teammates at Man City wore “Team Bridge” t-shirts in the wake of the news breaking, probably to heap further humiliation on Terry as much as to express support for Bridge. Oh, and if shagging his friend’s girl isn’t enough reason for you to hate Terry, there is the fact that in the hours immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he got drunk and taunted a bunch of American tourists. He gave up drinking after the resulting public shaming, and the British press and fans eventually wrote off that incident as a bit of youthful stupidity. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’s just not a good guy.
All that aside, Terry is way too good a player to be dropped from the team, but the talk is that he may be stripped of the captaincy. In soccer, the captain’s status is much the same as it is in hockey — it actually doesn’t carry all that much power, despite the importance that players invest in it. Besides showing leadership in some vague, undefined way, the captain’s responsibilities are mainly acting as a liaison with the officials during games, and with the coach at other times. The decision about whether to retain Terry as the captain is up to England’s coach, Fabio Capello. It seems hard to imagine how Terry can continue as a team leader, but perhaps he has some chits to call in.
It’s hard to believe that there’s never been a high-profile scandal like this in American sports. Mavericks fans may remember the Jimmy Jackson-Jason Kidd rift that supposedly happened over Toni Braxton, but the players denied that anything ever took place. The same goes for the Joe Horn-Willie Roaf bust-up that the New Orleans Saints went through more recently. We also can’t count the two Yankees’ pitchers who swapped wives in the 1970s. That was consensual. Most athletes are smart enough to know that hooking up with a teammate’s wife, girlfriend, or baby mama tends to have an adverse effect on locker-room atmosphere. Still, the idea that through all the decades of baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, no one’s hormones ever got the better of their judgment? That’s like the idea that no great athlete was ever gay. The sheer numbers alone seem to make that unlikely.
It turns out that locker-room adultery has indeed happened in American sports. Prompted by the Terry scandal, Steve Sampson, who coached USA’s soccer team in the 1998 World Cup, revealed that the reason he cut midfielder and captain John Harkes from the squad shortly before the tournament was because Harkes had an affair with the wife of USA teammate Eric Wynalda. At the time, little reason was given publicly as to why a key player like Harkes had been suddenly dropped. Team USA performed dismally at that year’s tourney, and the few sportswriters who cared about American soccer at the time castigated Sampson as an idiot, partly because of what he did with Harkes. Now that decision looks more understandable. It was still wrong from a competitive standpoint, but it’s more understandable.
Tune in on June 12, when Team USA begins World Cup 2010 by playing against England. Will Terry still be captain? Will Bridge be on the team with him? Oh, and look! John Harkes will be calling matches for ESPN, while Eric Wynalda will be providing analysis for the Fox Soccer Channel. The World Cup does have a way of bringing people together.
I’m doing something different this year for my list of the best acting performances. I figured that you don’t need me to tell you about the greatness of the three principals in Up in the Air or Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. Instead, I thought I’d run down the terrific work done by actors in 2009 that, for one reason or another, are distant longshots at best to be announced during tomorrow’s Academy Award nominations. While everybody forgets these performances in the Oscar hoopla, we can remember.
Michael Sheen
The 40-year-old Brit had his 2009 bookended by his appearances as a snarling werewolf leader in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and as a dainty vampire overlord in The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Sheen’s dissimilar performances in them are remarkable enough in themselves, but his real great performance this year was in The Damned United. He portrayed Brian Clough, the 1970s English soccer coach who briefly derailed his glittering career to take over Leeds United as a way of pursuing his own personal vendetta against the outgoing coach. Clough’s remorseless ambition, innovative mind for soccer and business, charismatic media presence, easily wounded pride, and downmarket Middlesborough accent are all magnificently captured here. Sheen is worth watching just for three locker-room pep-talk scenes, each with its own character. How has this actor never been nominated for an Oscar?
Leslie Mann
Judd Apatow’s leading lady (offscreen as well as on) gave two performances well beyond the call of duty in the likably disposable teen flick 17 Again and in her husband’s flawed Funny People. Watch the scene midway through the latter film when her character visits her dying comedian ex-boyfriend and crumbles as the meeting ends and she realizes she might never see him again. This actress has had a renaissance starring in comedies, but some enterprising director might want to give her a shot in a straight drama. Honorable mention in this space for Adam Sandler in Funny People, who was magnificent when the messy script allowed him to be.
Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt
The Oscars’ acting categories are all about individual achievement, so there’s no way to recognize when two actors generate something greater than the sum of their parts. As innovative as this film is in terms of structure and technique, it would have been severely diminished without the chemistry between these two young leads. Sadly, the Academy tends to overlook romantic comedies, even though acting well in them is no less difficult than heavy dramas. It makes no sense, but then, that’s how irrational biases work.
Michelle Pfeiffer
The 51-year-old confronts the demise of her youthful beauty as the aging courtesan in Chéri, and in doing so makes us confront the end of our youth. That’s why this costume drama is so powerful, leaving us with the chill of the grave. The final scene of this unjustly overlooked film is absolutely searing, thanks to Pfeiffer’s interpretation of a woman letting her young lover go to someone more age-appropriate, thus sealing both their fates. Let everybody else hail Sandra Bullock and her cheery “movie star confronting mid-life” role. I’ll take this performance any day.
Christian McKay
You’re thinking, “Who?” He’s the English stage veteran who portrays Orson Welles in Richard Linklater’s film Me and Orson Welles, and does terrific work in a lightweight vehicle. He has the impersonation of the well-known movie star nailed shut, but he also captures the selfish, ruthless, charismatic artist underneath all the Wellesian tics. Relatively new to the big screen, this actor has a bunch of movies in the pipeline, so remember his name.
Toni Servillo
Another entry in the “Hollywood doesn’t know who he is” category. This 50-year-old Italian star had the help of some great age makeup to portray the elderly prime minister Giulio Andreotti in the political satire Il Divo. (Look at photos of the real Andreotti and you’ll be astonished by the resemblance.) Servillo doesn’t do a whole lot of emoting in the role, but you won’t forget his embodiment of the bespectacled, calculating overlord at the center of the movie’s hijinks, presiding over the wacky, murderous proceedings with the jaded demeanor of a modern-day Roman emperor.
Matt Damon
What Oscar buzz there is around him this year is going to his supporting turn as a rugby player in Invictus. His much more interesting work as the pathologically lying corporate executive in The Informant! has been completely ignored. Too bad; he’s really funny, and he captures this shallow, wonkish, too-eager-to-please personality type in all its dangerous glory.
Mélanie Laurent
Some of the Oscar handicappers are actually giving Laurent an outside shot at a Supporting Actress nomination for Inglourious Basterds, but she still lags behind her co-star Diane Kruger because of her German co-star’s Hollywood connections. That’s a shame because it’s Laurent who does the heavy lifting here. Watch the restaurant scene where her character maintains her composure while sitting across the table from her family’s killer (and has him order strudel for her). Laurent’s wiliness and steely resolve that makes an impression on you. For good measure, check out her contrasting low-key performance as a present-day grad student in Paris.
Maya Rudolph
You know her from Saturday Night Live, but nothing you saw of her on that show can prepare you for the unobtrusive, quietly beautiful performance she gave in Away We Go as an expectant mother trying to figure out how to raise a baby during a road trip that shows her all her friends’ mistakes in that area. The final scene of this uneven film is terribly moving, and it’s all because of Rudolph and her tears of joy at finding a proper home for her new family.
This post is for anyone who sat through the Transformers sequel and concluded that film writing is dead. I was privileged enough to see many other movies feature excellent dialogue, so I’m presenting some of my favorite pieces of screenwriting from 2009’s movies. Obviously, most of these are in English, but there’s one exception. WARNING: LOTS AND LOTS OF STRONG LANGUAGE AHEAD.
Up in the Air is as good a place to begin as any. Look at the economy of this opening exchange between two characters meeting in a hotel bar. Sixteen lines is enough to set up the entire central relationship in this movie. The writers are Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, based on Walter Kirn’s novel.
RYAN: You satisfied with Maestro?
ALEX: (takes a moment to register that he’s reading off the rental car key in her hand) Yeah, I am.
RYAN: They’re a little stingy with their miles. I like Hertz.
ALEX: Hertz keeps its vehicles too long. If a car has over 20,000 miles, I won’t drive it.
RYAN: Maestro doesn’t do instant checkout. I like to park and go.
ALEX: Hertz doesn’t guarantee navigation.
RYAN: Funny, you don’t seem like a girl who needs directions.
ALEX: I hate asking for directions. That’s why I get a nav.
RYAN: That new outfit, Colonial, isn’t bad.
ALEX: Is that a joke?
RYAN: Yes.
ALEX: Their kiosk placement blows.
RYAN: They never have an available upgrade.
ALEX: Basically, it’s a fleet of shitboxes. I don’t know how they’re still in business.
RYAN: I’m Ryan.
ALEX: I’m Alex.
This is from The Damned United. It’s the first speech from legendary soccer coach Brian Clough to his new team, Leeds United, which he’s just taken over from his hated rival Don Revie. Here’s an object lesson in how a new boss alienates his work force from Day One. The writer is Peter Morgan.
BRIAN: Well, I might as well tell you now. You lot may all be internationals and have won all the domestic honors there are to win under Don Revie. But as far as I’m concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you’ve never won any of them fairly. You’ve done it all by bloody cheating. (to Billy Bremner) Mr. William Bremner, you’re the captain, and a good one. But you’re no good to the team and no good to me if you’re suspended. I want you fit for every game. I want good, clean, attractive football from my captain starting next week at the Charity Shield. (to Johnny Giles) And you, Irishman. God gave you skill and intelligence and the best passing ability in the game. What God did not give you was six studs to wrap around another player’s knee. (to the team) Now things are going to be a little different around here without Don. Might feel a little strange at first. Might pinch a little, like a new pair of shoes. But if you want your grandchildren to remember you as something other than the dirty buggers you once were, if you want to be loved as champions, real champions, you’re gonna have to work and improve and change. Now, let’s start off by playing seven-a-sides.
BREMNER: Coach Revie never asked us to…
BRIAN: I don’t care about Coach Revie. The next player who brings up what you did or didn’t do under Don Revie will be cleaning my shoes for a week.
Rhyming couplets? Oh, yes, Rian Johnson went there for the dazzling opening of The Brothers Bloom, going for almost seven minutes with the rhyme scheme intact as he shifts the words between the narrator (Ricky Jay) and the characters, and shuttles back and forth in time. You’d expect something this audacious from the same filmmaker who gave us Brick. Oddly enough, the screenplay format doesn’t do justice to the rhythm of the words, so I thought I’d embed the video of the sequence.
Jimmy Fowler liked Whip It, and so did I. This scene stuck out for me; how often are female movie characters allowed to be adversaries and still have this kind of understanding of each other? Not often enough, that’s for sure. Here the old roller derby veteran Iron Maven lies in wait for the young heroine, Bliss a.k.a. Babe Ruthless, and confronts her after skating practice. The writing is by Shauna Cross, adapted from her own novel Roller Girl, although this scene isn’t in the book. I like Bliss’ mistake about Maven’s age — when you’re a teenager, everybody between the ages of 25 and 45 looks pretty much the same.
IRON MAVEN: Ruthless, Ruthless, Ruthless.
BLISS: Maven, Maven, Maven?
IRON MAVEN: Hey, guess how old I am.
BLISS: 27?
IRON MAVEN: Aw, that’s sweet. I’m 36. Guess when I started skating. I was 31. ‘Cause it took me that long to find one thing I was really good at. And you know what? I worked my ass off to get it.
BLISS: Yeah, me too.
IRON MAVEN: It’s too bad you’re only 17. What do you think the league is going to say when they find that out? Or your teammates? When they find out you’ve been lying? That’s gonna be rough.
BLISS: Maven, please. Look…
IRON MAVEN: No, you look. One day it’ll be your time, Ruthless, but it’s not your time now, and I were you, I wouldn’t even bother lacin’ up those skates.
And just to piss off Jimmy, I’m including Diablo Cody in here. This comes up late in Jennifer’s Body, when Needy Lesnicki comes to rescue her boyfriend Chip from Jennifer, only to find Chip mortally wounded and Jennifer levitating above an empty swimming pool. (The “It’s just hovering” line cracked me up.) Cody gets a lot of comic mileage from making the horror movie monster into a bitchy teenage girl. Not only is this funnier than most other horror flicks, it also packs the sting of two childhood friends discovering that they don’t like each other any more.
CHIP: She can fly?
NEEDY: It’s just hovering. It’s not really that impressive.
JENNIFER: God, must you undermine everything I do? You’re such a player hater.
NEEDY: You’re a jerk.
JENNIFER: Wow, nice insult, Hannah Montana. Got any more harsh digs?
NEEDY: You know, you were never a very good friend to me. Even when we were little, you used to steal my toys and pour lemonade on my bed.
JENNIFER: And now I’m eating your boyfriend. See, at least I’m consistent.
NEEDY: Why do you need him? Huh? You could have anybody that you want, Jennifer. So why Chip? Is it just to tick me off? Or is it because you’re really insecure?
JENNIFER: I’m not insecure, Needy. God, that’s a joke. How could I ever be insecure? I was the Snowflake Queen!
NEEDY: Yeah, two years ago, when you were still socially relevant …
JENNIFER: I’m still socially relevant.
NEEDY: …And when you didn’t need laxatives to stay thin.
JENNIFER (furious, advancing toward Needy): I am going to eat your soul and shit it out, Lesnicki!
NEEDY (retreating): I thought you only murdered boys.
JENNIFER: I go both ways.
(Jennifer stops suddenly and gasps in pain, because Chip has impaled her in the midsection with the sharpened end of a metal broom. He collapses.)
JENNIFER (pissed off and angry): Ow. (She pulls the weapon out of herself. She is bleeding profusely.) Got a tampon? (In shock, Needy shakes her head.) Thought I’d ask. Seemed like you might be plugging.
This is a job interview scene from Observe and Report that gives a window into the main character’s massive, dangerous hero complex. The film was written and directed by Jody Hill, though it wouldn’t be surprising if Seth Rogen contributed some lines here.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, Ronnie. Today I’ll be giving you a psychiatric evaluation to determine if you’re competent to enter the police academy. So let’s start with your background. Where are you from?
RONNIE: Born and raised right here, actually.
INTERVIEWER: Local boy, okay. And do you have any history of depression or psychosis or anything like that?
RONNIE: Uh, yeah, but nothing really worth mentioning. Just a little bipolar disorder, no big deal.
INTERVIEWER: Oh. Are you taking any prescription medications?
RONNIE: I am pleased to announce that I am currently off all prescription medications.
INTERVIEWER: Congratulations! Why did the doctors take you off?
RONNIE: They didn’t.
INTERVIEWER: How are you feeling?
RONNIE: Great, actually. I met a girl. We’re in love, so that is very good. I am this close to catching this pervert, catching a robber, just generally becoming The Man, so at this point in my life, I just really feel ready to destroy some motherfuckers.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I’m just going to write this down.
RONNIE: Yeah, write it on down.
INTERVIEWER: Why do you want to become a police officer?
RONNIE: That’s a big question, now, isn’t it? I have a dream most nights. It starts on a playground. And there’s kids, you know, laughing, and they’re swinging. There are dogs barking, butterflies just flapping their little wings. And then you hear a rumbling, and over the horizon comes a black cloud, and it’s made of cancer and pus. And it starts sweeping over the playground. And everyone starts screaming and clawing their eyes and saying, “Help! What do we do?” And you know what happens next? Out steps me, wielding the biggest fucking shotgun you’ve ever seen in your life. And you know what I do? I blow every fucking thing away. And I am getting God’s work done. When it’s all over and the dust has settled, the whole world gathers below me, and they say, “Thank you, Ronnie. Thank you for helping, being a great man and doing this for us.” And you know what I say? “You don’t need to thank me. I’m just a guy with a gun. I’m just a cop.”
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Thank you for your time, Mr. Barnhardt.
RONNIE (laughing): Eh, I think you mean Officer Barnhardt.
This early exchange is typical of the urbane wit in Fantastic Mr. Fox, written by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, and it picks up on a theme that strikes interesting notes off America’s housing crisis: Fox buys a house for emotional reasons, and only later does he start to fret about the property holding its value (after the farmers dig up the hill and wreak havoc on the woods trying to kill him). The funniest joke here is actually Fox devouring his pancakes after all this civilized conversation.
FOX: (reading the newspaper) Does anybody actually read my column? Do your friends ever talk about it?
MRS. FOX: Of course! In fact, Rabbit’s ex-girlfriend was saying to me last week, “I should read Foxy’s column.” But they don’t get The Gazette. (calling to the other room) Ash, let’s get cracking!
FOX: Why would they? It’s a ragsheet.
ASH: (entering the room in his underwear) I’m sick.
MRS. FOX: You’re not sick.
ASH: I have a temperature.
MRS. FOX: You don’t have a temperature.
ASH: I don’t want to go.
MRS. FOX: Hurry up. You don’t want to be late.
(Ash goes back into his bedroom.)
FOX: (to Mrs. Fox) I love the way you handled that.
MRS. FOX: (to Ash). Your cousin Kristofferson’s coming on the 6th. I want you to be extra nice to him, because he’s going through a very hard time right now.
ASH: (re-entering) Where’s he gonna sleep?
MRS. FOX: We’re gonna make a bed for him in your room.
ASH: I can’t spare the space. Put him in Dad’s study.
FOX: (cutting a real estate listing out of the paper) Dad’s study is occupied by Dad.
(Ash leaves again.)
FOX: (to Mrs. Fox, as she sets down a plate of pancakes in front of him) I don’t want to live in a hole anymore. It makes me feel poor.
MRS. FOX: We are poor, but we’re happy.
FOX: Comme ci, comme ça. Anyway, the views are better above ground. (kisses her paw) Honey, I’m seven non-fox years old now. My father died at seven and a half. I don’t want to live in a hole anymore. And I’m going to do something about it. (He tears the pancakes to shreds and gobbles them up in two seconds, leaving pieces all over the table. Then he stands up, takes a sip of his coffee, and walks to the door.) Well, I’m off. Have a good day, my darling.
MRS. FOX: You know, foxes live in holes for a reason.
(Fox shrugs. Ash re-enters, wearing a bizarre outfit and brushing his teeth.)
FOX: What are you wearing? Why the cape with the pants tucked into your socks?
(Ash just glares at him, spits off to one side, and goes back into his room.)
FOX: Well, I guess he’s just … (waves his paws in the air) … different.
Quentin Tarantino did some of his best writing in Inglourious Basterds. This is a long scene, but the length is necessary for the director to turn the screws. I’m only quoting the last third of it. The German-speaking members of the Basterds (including Hicox and Stiglitz) have disguised themselves as Nazis and met with Bridget in a French bar, only to have Gestapo Maj. Hellstrom and his ear for German accents interrupt them and bring the whole operation to a crashing halt. Most of this conversation is in German; the translations were reportedly done by Tom Tykwer. I love Hicox’s use of the word “pickle” just before the shooting starts.
HICOX: Well, Major, I don’t mean to be rude, but the four of us are very good friends, and we haven’t seen each other in a long while. So, Major, I’m afraid you are intruding.
HELLSTROM: (stonily) I beg to differ, Captain. It’s only if the fräulein considers my presence an intrusion that I become an intruder. How about it, Fräulein von Hammersmark? Am I intruding?
BRIDGET: No.
HELLSTROM: I didn’t think so. It’s simply that the captain is immune to my charms. (After a pause, Hellstrom bursts out laughing.) I’m joking! Joking! Of course I’m intruding! Allow me to refill your glasses, gentlemen, and I’ll bid you and the fräulein adieu. Eric has a bottle of 33-year-old whiskey from the Scottish highlands. What do you say, gentlemen?
HICOX: You’re most gracious, Major.
HELLSTROM: (to the bartender) Eric, the 33! And fresh glasses! (to the table) You don’t want to contaminate the 33 with the swill you were drinking.
ERIC: How many glasses?
WICKI: Five.
HELLSTROM: Not me. I like Scotch, it doesn’t like me.
BRIDGET: Nor I. I’ll stick with champagne.
HICOX: (holding up three fingers) Three glasses.
(Hellstrom sees this, and his expression changes. He waits patiently while the waitress arrives, sets out the new glasses, and fills them. She leaves the table.)
HELLSTROM: (raising his glass) To a thousand year German Reich!
EVERYONE: To a thousand year Reich!
HELLSTROM: (drinks) I must say I grow weary of these monkeyshines. (He pulls his gun and cocks it, leveling it under the table.) Did you hear that? That was the sound of my Walther pointed right at your testicles.
HICOX: Why do you have your Walther pointed at my testicles?
HELLSTROM: Because you’ve just given yourself away, Captain. You’re no more German than that Scotch.
HICOX: Major…
BRIDGET: (at the same time) Herr Major…
HELLSTROM: (to Bridget) Shut up, slut. (to Hicox) You were saying?
HICOX: I was saying that makes two of us. I’ve had a gun pointed at your balls since you sat down.
STIGLITZ: (pulling his gun and placing it in Hellstrom’s crotch at point-blank range) That makes three of us. And at this range, I’m a real Fredrick Zoller.
HELLSTROM: Looks like we have a bit of a sticky situation here.
HICOX: What’s going to happen, Major, is that you’re going to stand up and walk out that door with us.
HELLSTROM: No, no, no, no, no. I’m afraid that you and I both know, Captain, that no matter what happens to anybody else in this room, the two of us aren’t going anywhere. Too bad about Sgt. Wilhelm and his famous friends. If any of you expect to live, you’ll have to shoot them, too. Looks like little Max will grow up an orphan. How sad.
(long pause)
HICOX: (switching to English) Well, if this is it, old boy, I hope you don’t mind if I go out speaking the King’s.
HELLSTROM: (in English) By all means, Captain.
HICOX: (lighting a cigarette, taking a puff, and picking up his glass) There’s a certain rung in Hell for people who waste good Scotch. Seeing as I may be rapping on the door momentarily… (he drains his glass) I must say, damn good stuff, that. Now, about this pickle we find ourselves in, it seems there’s only one thing left for you to do.
HELLSTROM: And what would that be?
HICOX: Stiglitz!
STIGLITZ: Say auf wiedersehen to your Nazi balls. (He shoots.)
Here’s the best script I heard all year, In the Loop, written by a team of four writers. In the following scene, the prime minister’s communications director Malcolm Tucker — one of the most tyrannical bosses in movie history, and a man who’s so addicted to profanity that he says “Fuckity bye” before hanging up his cell phone — dresses down cabinet minister Simon Foster for saying in a radio interview that war was “unforeseeable.” In the middle of it all, Simon’s deputy Judy tries to introduce a baby-faced new employee Toby. David Mamet must have been soooo jealous when he saw this movie; this is the political satire he’s been trying to make for decades.
JUDY: (hanging up) Malcolm. He’s coming.
SIMON: Oh shit, he’s still alive. When’s he due?
MALCOLM: (entering the room) Now. And don’t say you weren’t prepared, because I rang ahead. (to Judy) Give us a minute, would you please, love? (She leaves.) In the words of the late, great Nat King fucking Cole, “unforeseeable,” that’s what you are.
SIMON: Come on Malcolm. He asked me for a personal opinion.
MALCOLM: Well, why didn’t you say? I mean, he asked you. Of course! Fuck, that explains it. Say he’d asked you to black up, or to give him your PIN number, or to shit yourself. Would you have done that as well?
SIMON: I would have blacked up, because it’s radio. Nobody would have known.
MALCOLM: Very good.
SIMON: War is basically unforeseeable, isn’t it?
MALCOLM: That’s not our line. Walk the fucking line. Look, we’ve got Karen Clarke over from Washington today. We’ve got enough fucking Pentagon goons to stage a fucking coup d’etat.
JUDY: (re-entering with Toby) Minister?
MALCOLM: Not the time, love. I’m busy. Fuck off.
JUDY: This is Toby.
SIMON: (gets up to shake Toby’s hand) Toby, hi. Glad you could make it. It’s been a bit of an odd morning here. Welcome to the madhouse. I apologize for Malcolm.
MALCOLM: Don’t apologize for me. Apologize for yourself. (to Judy) Didn’t I just tell you to fuck off? And yet you’re still here.
JUDY: It’s true. I am. Still here.
MALCOLM: (to Toby) Hey, Fetus Boy. Lesson Number One. I tell you to fuck off. What do you do?
TOBY: Et off?
MALCOLM: You’ll go far. Now fuck off. (Toby leaves.)
SIMON: Judy and I were thinking that I could row back on Question Time tonight.
MALCOLM: You’re not going on Question Time tonight. You’ve been disinvited.
SIMON: What? We’ve been prepping Question Time.
JUDY: Why wasn’t I told about this?
MALCOLM: Why the fuck would I tell you about this? I’ve just told you to fuck off twice. And yet you’re still here.
JUDY: You should tell me about it because it’s a scheduled media appearance by this department’s secretary of state, and therefore it falls well within my purview.
MALCOLM: Within your purview?
JUDY: Yes.
MALCOLM: Where do you think you are? In some fucking Regency costume drama? This is a government department, not a fucking Jane fucking Austen novel!
SIMON: Malcolm…
MALCOLM: Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock.
JUDY: Your swearing does not impress me. My husband works for Tower Hamlets and believe me, those kids make you sound like Angela Lansbury. (She leaves.)
MALCOLM: She’s married? Poor bastard.
SIMON: Malcolm, Judy’s lubricated horse cock aside, are you saying that I’m now no longer allowed to make media appearances?
MALCOLM: Correct. Not until we can trust you to keep the line.
SIMON: I was going to keep the line. I was going to say I don’t think war is unforeseeable.
MALCOLM: What is it, then?
SIMON: I don’t know. Foreseeable?
MALCOLM: No! Not foreseeable! That’s fucking declaring war! Do you want to fucking declare war?
SIMON: I’m a cabinet minister. I didn’t get here by screwing up every media appearance I ever had.
MALCOLM: Write this down. It is neither foreseeable nor unforeseeable.
SIMON: Right. It is neither inevitable nor …
MALCOLM: You better walk this fucking line.
SIMON: …evitable.
(Malcolm leaves Simon’s office and goes into the main work area.)
MALCOLM: (to Judy) You, hey! Put the snifter out there. If the BBC ambushes a minister with another surprise question about the war, I’ll drop a bomb on them.
JUDY: Well, I can’t do that, can I? That’s political.
MALCOLM: Does that not fit within your purview, Mary Antoinette? Listen, why don’t you just scuttle back to fucking Cranford and play with your tea and your cakes and your fucking horse cocks. Let them eat cock! (to Toby) Hey you, Ron Weasley! You do it.
Well, this is amusing. Earlier, CBS approved an anti-abortion ad to run during the Super Bowl featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother. The network is acting in accordance with their newly relaxed policy on advocacy ads. Various women’s groups are demanding that the ad be pulled, even though the FCC regulations don’t give them a leg to stand on.
Now the other shoe has dropped. CBS has received an ad for gay dating website ManCrunch.com. (”Where many, many, many men come out to play,” according to the site’s tagline.) What does the network do now? Accept the ad and piss off many of the same people who’d cheer the Tebow spot? Or reject the ad and piss off people who think CBS has an ideological ax to grind?
My thoughts on all this: 1) I don’t have a problem with Tebow expressing his views in a polite, nonconfrontational manner. 2) This is a clever stunt by ManCrunch.com. Whether their ad runs during the big game or not, they’ve already won themselves gobs of publicity. Did you know about their existence before this? I didn’t. 3) CBS may have an out if all their Super Bowl ad spots have indeed been sold already, as has been claimed. 4) Those viewers who watch the Super Bowl only for the ads (I’ve never understood those people, by the way) have an even bigger reason to tune in this year. 5) A Packers fan and a Vikings fan getting together? Only if it’s hate sex springing from a Brett Favre-related argument.
The latest dispatch from the culture wars is the right wing’s attack column forming against Avatar. The Weekly Standard’s John Podhoretz and John Nolte call the movie anti-American. Town Hall’s Jonah Goldberg tells the Na’vi to accept Jesus Christ into their hearts, while Ross Douthat at the New York Times gets weirded out by the movie’s religious content. Overseas, Nile Gardiner at the Daily Telegraph calls Avatar “the most left-wing movie ever made” (not a compliment in his book) and the Vatican’s official newspaper famously runs the film down for turning environmentalism into a false god. Even the left-leaning Gregg Easterbrook assails the movie’s politics in his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN.
At first blush this looks like just another example of how lost the right wing is. Instead of offering up constructive solutions to the problems facing our nation, they’re busy attacking some dopey sci-fi movie. Republicans have a long history of proving themselves tone-deaf when it comes to pop culture — remember Bob Dole running against Quentin Tarantino in the 1996 presidential campaign? Now the conservatives are positioning themselves against an insanely popular movie that may end up as the all-time box-office champion. Can these guys do anything right? Message fail, LOL.
The thing is, the conservatives are on to something here. All the movie’s Hollywood-style self-flagellation about the West’s colonialism is old hat, and it’s not particularly well handled. James Cameron has admitted to embedding politics into his movie, but Avatar doesn’t comment meaningfully on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the way The Dark Knight critiqued the war on terror. No, Cameron just blames blindly obedient soldiers and soulless corporate sharks for everything bad that happens. This is the same batch of villains that he served up in 1986 when he made Aliens. Back in the Reagan years, it was invigorating to see those gung-ho soldiers who were eager to blow stuff up get their comeuppance. Maybe Avatar’s message would have been timely if it had come out in the early days of the Iraq war. Now, though, with our military doing some long-overdue strategizing about how to win over the ordinary citizens in the Middle East, Avatar’s thinking just seems passé.
Which isn’t to say that the right-wingers are dead on. As usual, they’ve missed an important point here. First of all, Avatar’s villainous soldiers may not be Americans. It’s not clear that the United States still exists in its present form in this movie’s version of the future. True, most of the actors talk like Americans. Maybe it’s just Sam Worthington’s shaky accent that made me wonder where these characters were supposed to be from. The larger point is that Avatar isn’t specifically about American power as much as it’s about colonialism. The critique of people coming into a foreign place and ravaging it for resources makes the movie part of a Hollywood tradition that includes Pocahontas (1995) and Dances With Wolves (1990), and stretches at least as far back as Little Big Man (1970), in which Custer’s death at Little Big Horn met with cheers from white audiences. Avatar further plays into this by casting African-American and Native American actors as the Na’vi, which is so pat that it leaves me uneasy. (I love Movieline’s formulation of Avatar as “blue people voiced by black people representing red people.”) You can slam the movie for being unoriginal, but it’s too easy to call the movie is anti-American and then just leave it there.
Still, for once the right-wingers aren’t talking out of their asses when the conversation turns to pop culture. In their own way they recognize that Avatar is pretty much the same movie as Battle for Terra. The only difference (to the tune of $1 billion and counting) is the packaging.
Part of the fun of this job is scoping out new talent, so here’s my favorite films of 2009 directed by first-time feature filmmakers. I decided not to include documentaries in this list. Oh, and No. 6 on the list is out on DVD today.
1. (500) Days of Summer (dir. Marc Webb): Romantic comedy is hard to do well, and the delicate tone of this piece is particularly hard to capture. Music video veteran Webb does it to something like perfection, especially in this great, joyful dance number. 2. Zombieland (dir. Ruben Fleischer): Making short films for the internet can be great practice for features, but the ambition and panache of a comedy like this is something that you either have or you don’t. 3. District 9 (dir. Neill Blomkamp): Trained as an animator in Canada, the 30-year-old went back to the country of his birth and helped put it on the cinematic map with this sci-fi action hit. 4. The Messenger (dir. Oren Moverman): The former Israeli Army officer Moverman brought his experience informing families of casualties to this American drama. Overshadowed by both The Hurt Locker (as an Iraq war film) and by Up in the Air (as a movie about bearing bad news), this centerpiece of the Lone Star Film Festival would have been an awards contender in another year. 5. Paranormal Activity (dir. Oren Peli): Wow, a great year for filmmakers named Oren. The video game programmer took his little horror flick and promoted it exceptionally well. The movie as a whole might be a little wispy, but there’s no denying the shivery power of those sequences filmed in the couple’s bedroom. 6. Moon (dir. Duncan Jones): David Bowie’s son may have decided to continue his dad’s adventures of Major Tom. This bendy little science fiction flick was shot on the cheap but is no less satisfying for that. Sam Rockwell gives a great unheralded performance, as does the robot voiced by Kevin Spacey. 7. A Single Man (dir. Tom Ford): The fashion designer turns out to have talent as a movie director, too, with this reverie-like film that drifts too much in spots but nicely captures the anomie of a widower trying to find a reason to live without the man he loves. 8. Crazy Heart (dir. Scott Cooper): Everyone’s talking about Jeff Bridges and the music here, but sometime actor Cooper has a real feel for the dive bars and crappy cowboy joints that his hero is reduced to playing. 9. Whip It (dir. Drew Barrymore): By all means, let’s have more actresses do like their male counterparts and get into the director’s chair. This roller-derby film’s script is as flimsy as its source, but Barrymore’s energy and talent at handling her cast make you wonder what she could do with better material. 10. Grace (dir. Paul Solet): Fresh out of Emerson College, the recent graduate first made this as a short film and then turned it into an effective horror feature seething with female issues. Honorable mention: Robert D. Siegel’s Big Fan, Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre.
Harry Reid has found trouble recently from Game Change, the upcoming book on the 2008 election. The real dirt, though, is on John and Elizabeth Edwards, as detailed in this excerpt in New York magazine. I just got through reading it, and my overriding thought was, “My. God.”
I never invested much in Edwards’ candidacy; the guy always struck me as a phony. That’s why I was so amused when the stories about his mistress came out. However, I didn’t suspect the layers of pathology at work behind his doomed run for the presidency. The article paints a toxic picture of a narcissistic, megalomaniacal politician and his passive-aggressive wife with a martyrdom complex. This is a political partnership that makes the Clintons’ marriage look healthy. The 2008 election was a piece of gripping historical drama, but this is one hell of a juicy subplot that’s just now coming to light.
Elizabeth Edwards’ defenders are once again out in force, with Lee Siegel penning this hysteria-tinged piece on The Daily Beast. He does make a good point comparing this to an HBO drama; the Elizabeth in the excerpt comes across like fictional cheated-on wife Carmela Soprano, swinging back and forth between rage, denial, and naked pleas for attention. Indeed, the article treats us to Elizabeth baring her surgical scars in an airport terminal and screaming “Look at me!” at her husband.
But Siegel’s dead wrong when he says the Edwardses only hurt themselves. What about the voters who believed John Edwards was the best man to run the country? What about the campaign workers who gave their time and hard work? What about the campaign contributors who wrote checks to the Edwards campaign, digging into their wallets with the country on the brink of recession?
And what about Hillary Clinton? She put up a tough primary fight, and there’s a pretty fair chance that Edwards’ candidacy pulled more voters away from her than from Obama. I’m not pining for a Hillary Clinton presidency, but if I were her, I’d read that and wonder if I’d be president today if that clown Edwards had stayed on the sideline. All in all, the article is so appalling, it almost makes me think Sarah Palin would have been a better presence in the White House than the Edwardses. Almost, that is.
Like everybody else, I was appalled when I heard about NBA star Gilbert Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton pulling guns on each other in a locker-room dispute. Yesterday, though, the story took a funny turn: TMZ reported that one of Arenas’ unlicensed guns was a gold-plated Desert Eagle. If you don’t know your firearms, the Desert Eagle is a freakin’ huge weapon that weighs four pounds, with some models sporting a 10-inch barrel. Watch this video of a woman firing one of those and getting clocked in the head by the recoil.
Who else has a Desert Eagle? Saddam Hussein had one, with the same gold plating, no less. Also, Mike Myers had Goldmember carry one, appropriately enough, in Austin Powers in Goldmember. I think anybody who has one of these .50 caliber hand cannons should have an inscription engraved on the barrel that says: “If you think I’m big, you should see my owner’s penis.” Let’s face it, the barrel can probably accommodate the whole sentence.
People are shocked that Arenas copped to pulling the gun as a joke, but I remember the story told about Colombian soccer player Faustino Asprilla, who not only showed up to practice one day in Chile with a gun, but fired it several times in the air. When his teammates calmed down enough to ask him why he did it, he said he was “trying to lighten the mood.” So Arenas isn’t the only star athlete to associate gunplay with humor.
The New York Times recently found that only about 10 percent of the films they reviewed in 2009 were directed by women. Of course, women make up much more than 10 percent of the world’s population. The lack of female movie directors isn’t a new phenomenon, nor are news articles in the mainstream press pointing that out. What the statistic in the Times tells me is that this is a global issue. Sexism in Hollywood is a large-scaled and many-faceted problem, but women’s opportunities abroad don’t look any better.
Addressing why this is and what can be done about it probably requires more work than I can do in the space of a blog post. However, I noticed a number of good films this year directed by women, so I thought I’d list them below. Since the Times article came out, two other movies with women at the helm (It’s Complicated and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel) have come out and raked in money at the box office. Let’s hope that this starts a trend of more female directors getting the chance to make our cineplexes a more diverse place, and to make better stuff than Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
1. An Education (dir. Lone Scherfig): This isn’t the first time I named a movie by a female filmmaker as the best of the year. Part of what amazed me about this was finding out that Scherfig could direct in more than just one style. That flexibility bodes well for her future prospects. 2. The Hurt Locker (dir. Kathryn Bigelow): For anybody who still thinks women should only direct movies about women’s issues. 3. The Beaches of Agnès (dir. Agnès Varda): A pioneer among women filmmakers manages to do some of her best work at the age of 81. That’s an inspiration to all of us, male and female. 4. The Headless Woman (dir. Lucrecia Martel): Pay very close attention to this movie about a wealthy housewife who kills either a dog or a little boy (she’s not sure which) in a hit-and-run. Details tucked into the corner of the frame reveal a highly complex drama addressing subjects of class and race in Argentinian society, ones with resonances for us. The third film by a director with an almost mystical command of the medium. 5. Humpday (dir. Lynn Shelton): Just noses out I Love You, Man as the best movie of 2009 about male friendship, and it was written and directed by a 43-year-old woman working in the “mumblecore” movement, which tends to favor younger filmmakers. The scene where the wife finds out that her husband plans to do gay porn is as funny as anything I saw at the movies this year. 6. Afghan Star (dir. Havana Marking): I mentioned this earlier. My heart goes out to those female contestants who received death threats just for performing on the TV show. I hope they’re okay. 7. Treeless Mountain (dir. Kim So-yong): A Korean-American filmmaker went back to the land of her birth to make this delicate drama about two sisters trying to make sense of the world while being shipped from relative to relative during a time of family upheaval. The insight into the minds of these girls (ages 6 and 4) is amazing. 8. Jennifer’s Body (dir. Karyn Kusama): I think a lot of the animosity towards this movie comes from the fact that Kusama and screenwriter Diablo Cody told this story from an unabashedly female point of view, something that those of us who watch horror movies simply aren’t used to. That viewpoint is exactly what I found fascinating about it. 9. 35 Shots of Rum (dir. Claire Denis): This opens in Dallas on the 15th. I don’t understand the cult following for Claire Denis, but I probably need to see more of her stuff. I appreciated the craftsmanship that went into this soft-spoken French domestic drama without being moved by it as many other critics were. 10. Julie & Julia (dir. Nora Ephron): Gee, it’s a shame that the real-life Julie Powell turned out to be so profoundly messed up. That doesn’t dim the luster on this food movie by a foodie director that pays tribute to the unconventional spirit of two women in different eras finding their own way of expressing themselves. Honorable mention: Jane Campion’s Bright Star, Christine Jeffs’ Sunshine Cleaning, Jennifer Baichwal’s Act of God, Drew Barrymore’s Whip It
I was trying to figure out whether I had enough material to do this list, and then Bill Simmons beat me to the punch. He even had his best sports movies in more or less the same order as I had. I guess I should file that under You Snooze, You Lose.
(Simmons also makes the case that Clint Eastwood is an overrated director, a drum I’ve been hitting for a few years now, so I guess I got to that one before The Sports Guy did. I don’t always agree with Simmons when he talks about movies, but when he sums up The Blind Side and Invictus with, “One movie was a little too Hollywood; the other wasn’t Hollywood enough,” that’s just about perfect.)
Anyway, I thought I’d add a few of my thoughts on five sports movies better worth seeing than The Blind Side.
1. Sugar: I blogged about this one before. Even though it doesn’t end with the hero realizing his dream of pitching Game 7 of the World Series in Yankee Stadium, his voyage from the Dominican Republic to America comes to a quiet end that’s exhilarating in its own way. 2. The Damned United: This is by the same screenwriter/star combination who made The Queen and Frost/Nixon, and it’s every bit as good as either of those movies. The only reason it’s not getting Oscar buzz is because Americans don’t know who Brian Clough was. This is the story of the one big failure in a legendary soccer coach’s career, and you don’t have to know anything about soccer to appreciate its study of a coach whose ambitions and ability to feed off grudges lead him to screw up his biggest opportunity. 3. Whip It: More on this one in a later post. It’s not a great film, but I was charmed. 4. Big Fan: I’d think more highly of this if it were darker and more twisted and above all funnier. Writer-director Robert D. Siegel (who wrote The Wrestler before this) must have a sense of humor somewhere, or he’d never have been editor of The Onion. Simmons is right, though: This story takes unpredictable turns. 5: Tyson: James Toback only conducted interviews with the boxer himself for this documentary, and the result is an exhaustive and exhausting look into Mike Tyson’s screwed-up head. Big demerits for this movie because it’s really unfair to Desirée Washington. Even so, it’s fascinating stuff. Honorable mention: Technically, this isn’t a 2009 release, but Take Off played for a couple of weeks at AMC Grapevine Mills. It’s a South Korean film telling a heavily fictionalized version of the establishment of their national ski jumping team for the 1998 Winter Olympics. It’s the best ski jumping movie I’ve ever seen, for what that’s worth.
The Wreck Room
will always be a mythical place in both local and national lore. The Wreck, which was razed a couple of years ago after a 10-year run to make room...
Most of the time he was growing up in Fort Worth, painter Drew Snyder wanted to be a musician. It was his first artistic identity. Some of his friends and fello...
In late December, a small group of Starbucks employees blocked the drive-through window at the company's coffee shop at Rosedale Street and 8th Avenue for about...
OPENING:
An Education
(PG-13) This radiant and gently heartbreaking drama is one of 2009's best movies. The Oscar-nominated Carey Mulligan stars as a 16-year-old ...
kristian.lin 
The Wreck Room
will always be a mythical place in both local and national lore. The Wreck, which was razed a couple of years ago after a 10-year run to make room...
Most of the time he was growing up in Fort Worth, painter Drew Snyder wanted to be a musician. It was his first artistic identity. Some of his friends and fello...
In late December, a small group of Starbucks employees blocked the drive-through window at the company's coffee shop at Rosedale Street and 8th Avenue for about...
OPENING:
An Education
(PG-13) This radiant and gently heartbreaking drama is one of 2009's best movies. The Oscar-nominated Carey Mulligan stars as a 16-year-old ...
