No matter how far I roam  in the land of film criticism, I always come back to Dargis. Sigh..Here she is on Soderbergh's movie opus to Che:

"Mr. Soderbergh cagily evades Che's ugly side, notably his increasing commitment to violence and seemingly endless war, but the movie is without question political -- even if it emphasizes romantic adventure over realpolitik -- because, like all films, it is predicated on getting, spending and making money."

                                  (pic via Hollywood elsewhere via David Poland)

Just for kicks and because it's Friday, and because I am too busy to casts the nets, I thought I would bore you with an entry from my jounal dated 10/10/07. As I read over it, I wonder about where my head and energies were at then and if some proverbial progeress has been made. The jury is still out on the latter. Names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent.

10/10/07-  On a plane to Atlanta for the NAFEM show, visit P*** P***, and on to Raleigh to visit T** T***, M** T**, and DB****, and then on to Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach to hammer out an outline for “TFC.” It has been 1 month since I quit boozing it up. I feel OK although I have been smoking cigs and c****, the latter which relaxes me but also brings on a crisis of conscience for the things I do which I shouldn’t. Booze did cause some of my more stupid moments or indulgences but I wonder if quitting will cut-down on these? One hopes.

I do miss drinking especially when friends are over, there are parties to go to, or good food like clams over pasta is on the menu. A bottle of white is sorely missed. Having said that, I have not had a deep panic attack like I sometimes have during business dinners with intimidating bigwigs. H***** and I are kinder to each other except when there is a pack of cigs floating around. They drive her crazy much the same way massive amounts of booze do me. Managing addictions is not the only challenge.

Writing is finally moving forward. Not that I have anything on paper just yet, mostly a bunch of notes- but I feel I understand now what writing a good book or screenplay is about. I know what is expected of me (I also know how difficult it is!) Part of this trip is dedicated to some good hard work on TFC. I will be angry with myself if I sink into a morass of loneliness and slothful indulgence.

Work is going OK I guess. We are not making any big accounts or sales but we are making some small accounts. S***-San, the President of N**** Japan, is in LA for a few weeks. It seems he brought his mistress with him. Ballsy. Like many Asian Bosses, he talks a lot but rarely listens. T** and M***** barely translated. He-S****-just went on and on. T** gets on my nerves sometimes because he forgets a lot and seems to not care about employee benefits but I know this is not the case. He is a nice guy but seems over-burdened. M***** is plain slow. But I am sure I pose a lot of trouble to those two as well. MJ**** is in it for the laughs and to say he has a job despite getting a windfall of $$$ from his grandmother and his father’s passing.

                      (Nuns Playing volleyball on Redondo Beach, 10:42 am)

"I mean, if I knew it would take me 15 years to get back in the saddle and work again because of the way I handled things, I really would have handled things differently. I just didn't have the tools. I'm doing things differently this time around -- understanding what it is to be a professional, be responsible and to be consistent. Those are things that weren't in my vocabulary back then. Change for me didn't come easy; I didn't wanna change until I lost everything, until I realized that you better change, or, you know, blow your ****ing brains out. -Mickey Rourke doing press, sorting it out, proving that it is never over until it's over.

Some random thoughts on Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex which I saw last Friday in Santa Monica as part of the LA Chapter of The Goethe Institute..hmm, which reminds me to seek out Fassbinder's take on the movement.

You can tell the director Uli Edel really was inspired to emulate the style and pace of Downfall, the brilliant German film about the last days of Hitler & Co written by  Bernd Eichinger who, as it turns out, is also the writer of DBMK. The film works but only if you take the ride on its own terms; i.e. throw out the three-act structure with a required all-is-good climax. It's a more tantric endurance test than that, but one that pays off if you stick it out.

Any film that even remotely deals with Terrorism from the terrorist’s POV, especially Western Terrorists, is going to raise some eyebrows. I think that is why the filmmakers tried a stylized docu-drama approach, mixing in real news footage of the RAF and staged scenes of the fine, big-boned German casts (Moritz Bleitreu, Martina Gedeck, Bruno Ganz) partying nude, smoking dope, and making bombs. It made me think of the documentaries on American Terrorist movements like The Weathermen and SLA.

 Heady stuff but often draining.

There is one funny scene that stands out as a blaring gulf between West and (Mid) East revolutionaries. The RAF (a movement that is believed to have killed more than 30 public figures in an attempt to crush West German capitalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s) visit a Palistinian Terrorist Camp and immediately piss off the PLO or Hamas (?) by the fore-mentioned  nude sunbathing, drinking, and smoking dope under the Desert sun.

As a film it is often overwhelming as it takes off, almost stops, and then takes off again. That is how history unravels I suppose, but like I said, if you like Downfall’s pace you can get into DBMKs.’ You don’t have to be Chomsky-ites to sympathize with the human toll total faith and immersion in a movement-outlaw or otherwise-can take on a human being. I read that this film will try to be the Best Foreign Film entry for Germany come Oscar time but I'm not holding my breath. A little too..um, challenging for the Academy.

Highly recommended.

It's appears that there is indeed feast or famine in the Hollywood Food Chain of Salaries from the bottom (temp) to  roughly the region of the hip or cleft of the buttocks (Development Exec). I would say go into a different biz like real estate or hedge funds but now that is also being capped.

Make something like a bench and sale it or open a vegetarian fast food restraunt instead.

Well, thank the good Lord, your higher power, or the door knob to your office for another week in the can. I am off to see the Der Baader Meinhof Komplex tonight (alas, I will miss the debate) in Santa Monica. Very excited about this one. Here are a couple of well..things you might be mildly interested in

HUMANS ARE SUCH EASY PREY DRIVE-IN SERIES
Hollywood MobMov has teamed up with the Steve Allen Theater to give you a spook every Friday till Halloween.

THIS WEEK:
Village of the Damned (1960)

In the English village of Midwich, the blond-haired, glowing-eyed children of uncertain paternity prove to have frightening powers.

All screenings begin at 9 p.m. in the parking lot. Screenings also will occur in the theater in case of overflow crowds. Lot opens at 8:30.

Tickets are $5.00 per person, and can be purchased in advance here.

So you think you're funny? Prove it! Submit your comedy script or short film today at www.lacomedyshorts.com. Hurry... Early Bird Deadline ends Friday, October 3rd.

When folks ask why HIT became involved in the web serial Masher, we have to kinda wonder ourselves. Some commenters have used the word "pervesploitation" and there is a grain of truth in that. But we can offer up two points to consider about Masher and the nature of socio-sexual interaction:

1.) Any experience that human beings seek out is a part of being human as a whole, no matter how weird or strange it may seem.

2.) Art (I use the term broadly) has a responsiblity to at least try to show or illuminate the sexual mores of human beings outside the filter of accepted sexual behavior in society. Whether or not it entertains is a matter of taste which only reinforces my point in a way.

I said all this because Karina Longworth offers an excellent review of the doc I Think We're Alone Now from the Fantatic Fest.

..the popularity of I Think We’re Alone Now (otherwise known as The Tiffany Stalker Movie) at Fantastic Fest makes a certain perfect sense, and not just because this audience is accustomed to stories of sexual obsession (usually fictional, usually much gorier). In putting a camera in the faces of two lonely, mentally unwell adults, who are both desperate for the attention but incapable of filtering their stories, director Sean Donnelly has made what could be classified as an exploitation film. But even more appropriate for the venue, it’s an exploitation film tailor-made for anyone familiar with unrequited longing, and it wouldn’t work at all if Donnelly’s genuine care for his subjects didn’t shine through.

HIT urges you to seek this one out in the theater if possible or on DVD if you live in a town with only multiplexes. Read Karina's review and then with that in mind, here is the first episode of Masher.

U.S. Premiere! THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX (DER BAADER-MEINHOF KOMPLEX) 2008, 149 minutes. Directed by Uli Edel (LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, CHRISTIANE F.) and written and produced by Bernd Eichinger (PERFUME, DOWNFALL), this high-paced thriller traces the history of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a movement that is believed to have killed more than 30 public figures in an attempt to crush West German capitalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Moritz Bleibtreu (RUN LOLA RUN) stars as Andreas Baader alongside Martina Gedeck (THE LIVES OF OTHERS) as Ulrike Meinhof, who are fighting a violent war against what they perceive as the new face of fascism: American imperialism supported by the German establishment, many of whom have a Nazi past. The man who understands them is also their hunter: the head of the German police force Horst Herold played by Bruno Ganz (DOWNFALL, WINGS OF DESIRE). While he proceeds in his relentless pursuit of the young terrorists, he knows he's only dealing with the tip of the iceberg. Director Uli Edel will not be in attendance as was previously announced. View Trailer

- Indiewire has the rundown of the winners at the IFP. Interesting projects of note.

- If you are in the LA area, you are required to attend the DV Expo

YOU NEED TO BE HERE
DV EXPO: November 4-6, Los Angeles Convention Center

Don't miss out on our SPECIAL OFFER!  
Register by October 3 to receive 15% of all conference rates or a FREE Exhibits-Only Pass!

I did not think it possible but the SAG intercine wars go on and get nastier.Sean Baker and Shih Ching-Tsou's Take Out is opening on five screens in Los Angeles today. See it!

Well, Fall-or what passes for fall in Socal-is falling. A few things of note around the dial.

- As usual, Machine Project Events has come with another interesting presentation: Please join us on Friday, Sept 19th at 8pm for The Mind Diddlers, the latest evolution in Jason Brown’s ongoing lecture series. Topics to be covered include the genetic algorithms of Jeff Bridges, the sexy origins of modern rocketry, mythology about aliens abducting your wife, and the perversions at the heart of information technology. Free.

- Mr. Pitt steps up for gay rights: "Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8."

- Finally, from the smelly end of the dog park comes this instant family classic lovingly hand-crafted for folks from Mebane, NC to Lancaster, CA.

And to clear your palette, I leave you this. Who is she?

To often we spend way more time in our own heads inside our own little worlds than can possibly be good. Movied to death, paperbacked to death, gamed to death, worked to death, blogged to death ad nauseum. But cirsumstances sometimes have a way of making us realize ,like a fist to the gut that sucks the wind out of you, what is true and important in life.

Maybe it should not take said fist to said gut but more often than not it does.  A combination of things in me life, some a fist some not, have made me realize that this is indeed life and I'm in it and I had better do my best in it for the short time I'm here.

Go.

David Foster Wallace, the author best known for his 1996 novel "Infinite Jest," was found dead in his home by his wife Friday night. He had hanged himself at the age of 46.

His commencement address to Kenyon College might provide a clue

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

I am stunned.

While I am recouperating from the scapel, I thought I would leave you with one of the last peoms Ted Berrigan ever wrote

Last Poem

by Ted Berrigan

Before I began life this time
I took a crash course in Counter-Intelligence
Once here I signed in, see name below, and added
Some words remembered from an earlier time,
“The intention of the organism is to survive.”
My earliest, & happiest, memories pre-date WW II
They involve a glass slipper & a helpless blue rose
In a slender blue single-rose vase: Mine
Was a story without a plot. The days of my years
Folded into one another, an easy fit, in which
I made money & spent it, learned to dance & forgot, gave
Blood, regained my poise, & verbalized myself a place
In Society. 101 St. Mark’s Place, apt. 12A, NYC 10009
New York. Friends appeared & disappeared, or wigged out,
Or stayed; inspiring strangers sadly died; everyone
I ever knew aged tremendously, except me. I remained
Somewhere between 2 and 9 years old. But frequent
Reification of my own experiences delivered to me
Several new vocabularies, I loved that almost most of all.
I once had the honor of meeting Beckett & I dug him.
The pills kept me going, until now. Love, & work,
Were my great happinesses, that other people die the source
Of my great, terrible, & inarticulate one grief. In my time
I grew tall & huge of frame, obviously possessed
Of a disconnected head, I had a perfect heart. The end
Came quickly & completely without pain, one quiet night as I
Was sitting, writing, next to you in bed, words chosen randomly
From a tired brain, it like them, suitable, & fitting.
Let none regret my end who called me friend.