Flight

Part eight of Haibane-Renmei.

The earlier episodes (follow the links).

High Times

Blake Edwards has died, at the age of 88.

While any movie with Julie Andrews in it is unwatchable, and while the Pink Panther movies all stink -- there are the wonderful TV creations of the late-50s: Richard Diamond, Mr. Lucky, Peter Gunn. And any man (with the help of Henry Mancini) (and Jack Kennedy) who could create endings such as these, was -- at times -- great.

Girls!

Part Bubbles / part Blossom / part Buttercup, Saya lives for this show -- and she's right, 'cause it's great! A real Hanna-Barbera throwback. (And sadly the last production from HB.)

Yogi and Booboo -- meet the Girls!

Winter

Part seven of Haibane Renmei, "Arrival of Winter"

The previous six parts.

Face of Evil

A piece of toilet-buildup by the name of Michael Bloomberg -- nominally the Mayor of what was once the greatest and most human city in the world -- made these announcements yesterday:

10,000 New York City jobs will be eliminated between now and the end of next year

6,200 of these are public school teachers (an announcement made only days after appointing former Hearst Magazines pimp Cathie Black as NYC Schools Chancellor, a woman with no experience in education or anything else human)

Hundreds of jobs eliminated from the Administration for Children's Services

$20 million cut from the already devastated library system, once the greatest in the world

Several thousand student summer jobs gone

$20 million cut from the Department of Cultural Affairs

The closing of the Department for the Aged

2,000 jobs eliminated from the Department of Parks and Recreation

The closing of two-dozen fire stations (inner city fire stations, of course)

A one-third cut in funding for public school vacation programs

Almost 1,000 jobs eliminated from the Departments of Transportation and Finance

Bloomberg bleated that these "hard choices" were made because of a $3 billion budget gap -- a gap he could pay for out of his own dirty pocket and still have $15 billion left over.

The New York City Police Department, of course, was untouched.

And Wall Street soared. . . .

Beyond Grace

The best book so far written on the Kennedy Assassination, and the best book on John F. Kennedy himself. Originally published by the small and brave Catholic house of Orbis Press, Simon & Schuster -- amazingly enough -- bought the paperback rights and brought it out last month, promoting the book and author Jim Douglass in a wide-ranging nationwide tour.

As I wrote upon the book's initial release:

In Kennedy's murder by the forces of the Unspeakable, a contemporary crucifixion, Douglass sees meaning beyond the resulting Vietnam genocide, beyond the takeover of our society by back-stabbers, soul-crushers and ghouls, beyond the shifting of cultural meaning toward something hideously empty and narcissistic -- meaning in the symbol of a man willing to die for his beliefs, for his (in Douglass's term) "turning." One can argue with this, for at the heart of Douglass's profoundly spiritual argument, there is something anti-political: rather than viewing John Kennedy's murder as a political and economic act by men who saw themselves only in those terms, we experience it through Douglass's writing as a modern day Stations of the Cross. First Station: Kennedy refuses war with Laos. Second Station: Kennedy refuses invasion and air attacks during the Bay of Pigs; Third Station: Berlin Wall goes up, Kennedy lets it stand. Etc. It is an agony, as we follow Kennedy's turning and his movement toward the Golgotha of Dallas.

So what do we do? Much can be said for acceptance and a belief in transcendence, a belief in Grace. But as Jack Kennedy said: "Here on earth, God's work must truly be our own." Do we let this crucifixion stand? Do we accept the vampires now in almost total control? Do we try to protect a man who may soon be experiencing his own turning, Barack Obama? [Not necessary.] Do we take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them? Can they ever be ended here on earth? Do we let Catholicism be defined by Hitler-Jugend Joseph Ratzinger, the man who led the war against Liberation Theology? Do we let Christianity be defined by Tim LaHaye and his life-haters?

Such questions. That "JFK and the Unspeakable" forces us to ask them marks the Douglass book as a rare and beautiful masterpiece, one I'll be going back to many times through the years.

The great Jim Douglass spoke of his work in a brilliant and very moving speech in Seattle, Washington, late 2008.

Victory!

Bring back the RCA-501 computer and dump the always sickening Chuckie Todd!

It's Gonna Be. . . I Believe!

WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The cherry on top: winning it in Dallas, Texas in front of this miserable cracker:

GIANTS!!!!!!!!!

Early Autumn

Part 6 of Haibane Renmei, "Loss"

The earlier parts.

Final Round and Counting

18 days before election, the two candidates debate for the 4th and final time.

Number Three

50 years ago this evening. This one's a true kinescope, not necessarily a good thing, as you will see. And as you will see, the two candidates were on separate coasts. Separate universes, actually.

Round Two

Kennedy-Nixon Debates, part two of four, 50 years ago tonight.

This is the one where the Vice President stops wearing light-gray suits and starts wearing make-up.

In the Company of Men

One was the Prince of Darkness; the other, a Prince. Yet both were giants who defined their worlds, and they recall us to a time when the country believed in the connection between action and consequence, not only in the political realm, but in the private as well.

50 years ago tonight: Kennedy/Nixon Debates, Round One.

Maggie

In Centre Stage (1991), the greatest of all Hong Kong movies, Maggie Cheung plays herself, plays immortal silent-screen star Ruan Lingyu, and plays Ruan Lingyu playing various tragic heroines. Yet we are always watching Maggie. How could we not?

Centre Stage is one of the rare viewing experiences which restore and deepen one's love and understanding of movies. From a negative point-of-view, the film reminds us (by embodying a whole other approach) of the tawdriness and triviality of US movies and pop culture generally. What if this were an American movie about an American female icon (Monroe, Gloria Swanson, Margaret Sullavan, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland)? The character (and no doubt the approach taken by the woman playing the character) would be defined by whom she slept with, whom she didn't sleep with, what sort of drugs she took, how many times she beat up her kids, how many times she showed up drunk on the set. "Truth" defined as filth. Yet (of course) the movie would end with some sentiment telling us how terribly misunderstood the American legend was and how basically good she was. Most important, there would be no connections made between the woman, her life, and the power relations surrounding her.

Positively, Centre Stage is pure tenderness -- pure joy, heart, and magic. Cheung, one of the most beautiful women of her time, also happens to be one of the greatest movie actresses (the greatest?) of her time. Her look is always mesmerizing, but Centre Stage is another place entirely: the 1920s and early 30s visions she embodies as Ruan Lingyu make her unearthly -- director Stanley Kwan's desire: for Kwan defines Lingyu in purely spiritual terms -- as a great, beautiful soul: great because entirely moral: incapable of evil, or rudeness, or anything degrading of life: beauty outside because beauty inside. Kwan tethers physical beauty and grace to moral and spiritual grace. But of course it's as much Cheung as Kwan. Perhaps she is as strong a moral agent on set as was Cary Grant. Here, she makes the movie glow with holiness, she and Kwan rejecting postmodern morality, particularly as it applies to private life.

One of the most beautiful women of our time turns out to be one of the strongest movie forces for "goodness" in our time. Maggie Cheung is the anti-Madonna. (Or, actually, the true Madonna. . .)

Beginnings

My daughter starts elementary school today. She's pretty scared. Me, too.

In her honor, Part V of Haibane Renmei: "The Beginning of the World"

Other parts, go here.

Con Men

In light of the recent Emmys sweep -- a brave and brilliant voting organ that's never given a single Best Show award to the likes of Steve Allen, Have Gun Will Travel, The Fugitive, Columbo, Bob Newhart, Rockford, WKRP, SCTV, Miami Vice, Seinfeld , Curb Your Enthusiasm, or The Wire(!) -- a repost.

Look at this asshole. Does this feel like 1963 to you? Or, does it seem like a shot from a Sex and the City out-take wherein the cast all dressed up for a Days of Wine and Roses party?

Mad Men – that perfectly shallow and narcissistic show by and for shallow urban narcissists – bears as much relation to the emotional, psychological, moral and political moods of the early 1960s as does Twitter, So You Think You Can Dance? (no you can't), the iPhone, and places like Salon.com. Far more a version of Sex and the City with cooler clothes, cars, music and girls, what's left out of this piece of plastic is everything we truly know about the time, which is everything its smarmy Yuppie audience has had a major hand in exterminating: earnestness, optimism, a sense of community, grace, complexity, self-deprecation, hatred of the rich and big business, a refusal to demonize others and puff up ourselves, and (perhaps most important) the assumption that people are basically good.

Not only were slick and shiny dime-a-dozen ad-men no one's idea of a role model in the early-1960s, they became the embodiment of everything corporate, compromised, materialistic and oh-so-1957. ('Course one of the wonderful things about that time is no one thought along the lines of "oh-so-1957".) Take a look: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Lilies of the Field, the Beach Boys, Henry Mancini, Stanley Elkin, David Janssen, Jasper Johns, the 1962 Dual-Ghia, Steve Allen, Ornette Coleman, Rosemary Clooney, The Hustler, The Ladies Man, the TWA Terminal at Idlewild, and of course Jack Kennedy himself.

What we get here, rather, is the same old campy, self-referential "I gotta go right out and buy that tie!" mutant elite ass-kissing. Creator Matt Weiner tries very hard (and very successfully) to pull the wooly over the eyes of the self-enchanted mind-travelers who read/watch/listen in order to feel even more self-enchanted, for this glamorama soap opera has all the subtlety of a Bloomingdale's store window. (Come to think of it, Mad Men is the ultimate Bloomingdale's store window.)

Just take the role models. We have the ubercompetent corporate drone. The hysterectical stay-at-home worthy of Desperate Housewives. The frail, tremulous heroine buried under an avalanche of agency problems. (With the coming gravy of sexual harassment ladled over her. Abortion anyone?) The porcine connected jerk invulnerable to retribution because of his seniority. The burnt-out case, with bad job, bad marriage, stacks of unpaid bills. And everyone always chirp-chirp-chirping at those oh-so-important client meetings. (My kingdom for a cell phone!)

Sure smells like 1963 to me. Or is that the Starbucks down the block?

What’s most repulsive about Mad Men is how this time (the “last time before America became a slave to anxiety,” as Mailer put it) is seen through the Weiner-ish prism of contemporary Yuppoid self-congratulation. Yeah, sure they had the music and the cars and a real man as President. But we’re so much smarter now. So much more dedicated to our work, our appearance, our health, our environment. So much more civilized about race, and gender, and sexual preference. So much more educated with so much more knowledge right at our fingertips. And how ‘bout that clunky and pathetic old technology?!

An incredibly stupid show for its appropriately stupid audience. How is it possible to make a series about a time that seems more golden as the years go by, especially from the POV of the emotional and cultural cesspool America has become, without so much as a glimmer of regret, sadness, or melancholy toward what's been lost? But then, what narcissist is capable of regret?

Back to the top: which one feels like 1963 to you?

Are We to Be Spared Nothing?

No, I guess not. . .

After being nominated for Best Director at the Oscars for his last two films, Jason Reitman could pretty much have his pick of projects at any studio in Hollywood. Reitman has signed a deal to write and direct VERTIGO 3D, a remake of Hitchcock's 1958 classic, which will reteam him with UP IN THE AIR star George Clooney.

Clooney will play the role made famous by Jimmy Stewart in the original; a detective who becomes strangely obsessed with the woman he's hired to trail and the sudden appearance of her doppelganger. In talks to join Clooney is Anne Hathaway though it's reportedly very early in negotiations.

While the original was more a psychological thriller, Reitman is looking to add some action sequences to, as he puts it, "make it more relatable to modern audiences." Reitman, who was quietly working on the script during the UP IN THE AIR press tour, will also be shooting the film in 3D and hopes to use the effect to more effectively convey the acrophobia of the lead character (think the Hitchcock zoom in 3D).

More relatable to modern audiences? Maybe we'll get to see Scottie hit the ground after he hangs from the rain gutter, be rebuilt as a Cyborg, take Elster's assignment now changed to smoking-out his suspiciously pro-terrorist wife, whom Scottie follows, falls in love with from his mechanical heart, the wife "dies," is seen again sometime later -- turning out to also be a Cyborg! And forget San Francisco. Miami's the place. (Maybe we can get Lebron to do a walk-on.) Sure hope Gustavo Santaolalla is available to do the music.

And who the hell is Jason Reitman? Wasn't Ivan Reitman available? Anne Hathaway?? 3D???

This from a man -- Clooney -- who as director and executive producer (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Far from Heaven, Good Night and Good Luck, Leatherheads) -- aside from overall quality -- has always shown deep appreciation for the particulars and tone of the eras of each work. Who else in 21st Century Hollywood would have executive produced a project devoted  -- in Todd Haynes's suffocating and turgid Manner -- to the aesthetics of Douglas Sirk?

And now?? 3D this, slick.

Over the Walls

Part 4 of Haibane Renmei, "Birds Fly Over the Walls"

Parts 1, 2 and 3.

Haibane III

Third episode of Haibane Renmei, "The Temple"

Part I.

Part II.

Sweet 16!

Whether out of exhaustion or tightness, the first three quarters were one of the worst-played championship games in NBA history.

But then. . .

And sweetness and joy. . .

John Wooden, 1910 - 2010

R.I.P.

His greatest team, and their only loss.

Purple & Gold

When the playoffs began seven weeks ago was there anyone who paid attention to the 2009-10 regular season predicting a Lakers/Celtics NBA finals? Alas.

It's been tough to care about team sports since the birth of my daughter. I root for the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Lakers as much as ever, but the ups and downs emotionally are much flatter. However, being a Lakers-lover for 35 years and a Celtics-hater for just as long, not in this case. . .

Compared to 2008, the pluses for L.A.:

Motivation has flipped. The prime motivator this time is Kobe's drive to overcome '08. Removed is the "haven't won a thing in 22 years" motive on the part of the Smeltics.

Home court has flipped.

Pau Gasol better and much more a part of the team.

Artest.

The "Big Three" (yeah, sure) two years older.

No P.J. Brown.

No Eddie House.

No James Posey.

No Leon Powe. (Boston's major size and rebounding advantage from '08 now mostly gone.)

Kendrick Perkins will be suspended at least one Finals game. (Probably one in Boston, as Phil Jackson earns his bread.)

Doc Rivers has clearly outworn his welcome, hence Boston's regular season.

Rasheed Wallace now with the Celtics.

Vladimir Radmanovic no longer with the Lakers.

Pluses for Boston:

Worse L.A bench than 2008, and that was crap. Basically the bench is one man, Lamar Odom.

Rondo much better.

Nate Robinson.

No Sam Cassell.

Bynum again no factor, despite being two years older and a more important part of the team architecture than in '08. Trade the party guy, preferably for Chris Bosh.

Fisher two years older. He certainly will not play as well against Boston as he did against the Suns.

Perhaps most important, we're not starting from an equal spot. Looking back, the 2008 Celtics were clearly a better team than the 2008 Lakers. Looking back, perhaps the best NBA team since the '01 Lakers.

So the question is, do the pluses and minuses add up enough for L.A. to overcome the '08 gap? Probably. At least enough to make it a coin-flip. The series will come down to calls, injuries, bounces, luck.

Much like the Detroit Pistons in 1988, Boston won't be able to win the title on the Lakers' home floor, so it's either Celtics in 5 or L.A. in 7 -- and this Boston team just ain't that good. Lakers in 7. In reality, a wash.

Haibane, Part II

Second episode of Haibane Renmei - "Town and Wall"

Primary

Fifty years ago this week, courtesy of Robert Drew.

Revolt of the Angels

Haibane-Renmei (2002) is a 13-episode anime based on Yoshitoshi ABe's comic series "The Haibanes of Old Home." A collection of seemingly-teenage girls have died, unknown to each other, waiting in a kind of way-station, a protected city called Glie, somewhere between earth and heaven. Our main protagonist Rakka ("falling") is at first terrified of the light and the pale clarity -- a beauty that is something constant and star-like. Clouds fly fast overhead; and sharp and isolated come drops of rain. As it rises, the sun has a lovely strong winey warmth, golden over Glie, filled with the soft wind when the spirits of the dead fail, to make us feel their hurt. Space, and the frail vibration of space; the glad lonely wringing of the heart.

She turns. The past fades from consciousness. There are wisps of gleaming light ~ out on the streets, free from all the hemmed-in life ~ the horror of human tension, the insanity of machine persistence. And the long-drawn-out agony of life among tense, resistant people. All gone. And Glie has old stone so sound, so beautiful: rustless, as flesh is rustless, and happy-seeming as aluminum can never be. Rakka finds the Haibane lit up with love, and grief, and a ravage of sorrow -- angels for whom life is real only through feeling, who shine in all the glory of their love for each other: "I wanted to be with you much longer."

Episode 1 - "Dreams of Falling from the Sky"

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli

As far as I'm aware, no part of the Catholic Church is currently engaged in the destruction of Palestinian culture, homes, women, children or old men. Nor is the Church part of the Holy WASP Capitalist Crusade -- led by a Jeremiah Wright-debunking conman -- against the world in places like Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Still ~ the charges being made in the US media! (primarily by half-pimp, half-bitch and always illiterate Christopher Hitchens): truly worthy of some KKK pamphlet from the 1920s. Homosexuals and pederasts are in charge of the Catholic Church. "No official records exist," says Hitchens, "but informed speculation" (no doubt coming from the same speculators who wrote "Protocols of the Elders of Zion") "tells us":

Homosexual priests make up more than half the church
Men become priests in order to cornhole each other
Most priests are misogynists
Almost ALL OF THEM are drunks

I see.

Well, this sort of buggery has gone on forever, has it not? In the highest reaches of Zionism, Islamism, Hitchens' closet, and most certainly among:

Yale Skull & Bones
Oxford & Cambridge
The Council on Foreign Relations
The TriLateral Commission
Sullivan and Cromwell
CIA
The Carlyle Group
Lutherans, Calvinists, and Presbyterians
Methodists, Anabaptists, and Anglicans

And all the other WASP bloodsuckers who have caused the deaths of billions of people over the past few hundred years.

To define the Catholic Church by the likes of the current Nazi Pope and his fellow pederasts is like defining togetherness along the lines of the Manson Family. Why no mention of Liberation Theology and all the suffering it has tried to comfort these past 40 years? (In the face of virulent attacks from Rome.) The magnificent liberations throughout South and Central America are all Catholic-based, as is the continuing model of the Cuban revolution. The only administration in US history which stood up to the WASP National Security State was Catholic-based.

And the timing of this has always smelled. It reminds me of Chomsky's defense of government: "There's a lot of things wrong with government, but what the US Elites hate about it is what is right: that government is reachable and controllable by the people, that is it the only weapon available against increasing privatization and inequality." And the attempt to destroy the public face of the Catholic Church — a jihad coincidentally begun under the most extreme WASP war administration in US history, Bush/Cheney — emerged to try and destroy what is RIGHT about the Church: its remaining preference for the poor, its involvement with anti-war, anti-globalist, anti-capitalist movements across the world.

The differences between Christopher Hitchens and our current Rat Pope is that only one is a public drunk and only one bathes.

Mirrors of Inch-Deep Water

When the New York Times isn't calling for the destruction of Iran or celebrating the decent helplessness of the Israeli state or embodying most everything compromised, middle-brow, and mediocre, it tries its best to stroke  (usually on weekends when the gas of office-stroking is low) the completely understandable cultural insecurities of its dwindling yet still intensely compromised, middle-brow, and mediocre city readership. So it gives an occasional tip-of-the-hat to local artistes of undue ambition and impotent imagination, those invariably more interested in being part of an elite than in the creative act itself.

Today, we are introduced to the new Poet Laureate of Brooklyn (when was that election?) in a story titled (believe it or not) "A Poet Who Doesn't Do Lofty." (How did GAP admakers miss that one: shots of decadent over-dressed partiers, b&w stills of the American working class [perhaps from Williamsburg], a narrator [with Howling Wolf in the background], "In this age, who wants lofty?")

Supposedly, not Tina Chang. (Yes, that's the poet laureate of Brooklyn. And it tells you about all you need to know about what's happened to early 21st-Century Brooklyn.)

But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud!

I was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,

Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,

Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet never told them a word,

Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,

Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,

The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,

Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

Closer yet I approach you;

What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance;

I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.

Who was to know what should come home to me?

Who knows but I am enjoying this?

Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?

Okay, Walt Whitman. Maybe not fair.

Neither is featuring this on the front page of the New York Times:

About "Roman," Tina Chang's new baby:

My child was once a thought and he had

no name, locked in the stall of my making.

The child was housed inside me for a long time,

held still in water, his limbs floating on a screen,

fingerprints intricate as aerial maps.

On suicide:

Red door open.
They come from the trees hanging,
they come cheering,
they come silent.
Swishing, swishing.

A small cord around my neck
makes a kind of song like a flute.
A flower planted inside my mouth.
Let's say it was a rose.
Let's say it was noon,
time to swallow a pill, let's say valium.

About. . .  I have no idea:

There’s a baby in a basket. There’s a burning
basket lullabye. You know the words.
The words are mixed with the soil when
the soil is lifted with a shovel.

Place the soil on top of the wooden boxes
whose bodies dream oo’s and ah’s,
of fireworks branching out in the sky
on holiday, pots and pans clanging,
children playing by dawn, a dream
nailed down to a box.

How Tina Chang thinks: “We don’t only want to engage Park Slope and Williamsburg and Dumbo and places that might be considered — I want to phrase this carefully — places that might, um, already benefit from these rich communities of literature." (And this is when she's being careful.) "We also want to be able to penetrate neighborhoods such as Bensonhurst and Bed-Stuy." Well, Ms. Chang, you might have a tougher time "penetrating" certain Bed-Stuy neighborhoods or the Soprano Family than you had in the D-Day invasions of Greenpoint or Boerum Hill. Still, you do have the zoning boards on your side. . .

Yet, amidst the portobello-mushroom-and-leek quiche baked by her partner (a Haitian named Castro), her flowing black hair and a remarkable ability to pull off form-fitting black leather pants, reading T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" to Roman in utero, and her Afghani sister-in-law, the sister-in-law's brothers' wives from Columbia and Ecuador, and that Haitian partner, Ms. Chang does have a super-cute baby and very nice feet.

Size Does Matter

“Violence in a cinematic context can be, if handled in a certain way, very seductive" - Kathryn Bigelow

"There is that saying, 'There is no politics in the trenches,' and I think it was important to look at the heroism of these men." - Kathryn Bigelow

“Fear has a bad reputation, but I think that’s ill-deserved. Fear is clarifying. It forces you to put important things first and discount the trivial.” - Kathryn Bigelow

“The Jordanian royal family was very supportive of this production.” - Kathryn Bigelow

"The most important thing in life to me? Size, baby! -- Jenna Jameson

One watches the annual "Oscar ceremony" for the same reason one marries again: the triumph of hope over experience. The presentation of March 7, 2010 offered little in the way of hope, so let's say one watched out of fascination with a culture gone totally depraved. And speaking of  depraved, how about that Kathryn Bigelow?

Of course, the best reason to watch the Academy Awards is for the insight provided into that final outpost of total irrelevance: 21st-century Hollywood. From last night's results, one can clearly see the social process which is taking shape: as the US prepares for wider war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen (and who knows where else), and prepares for eventual Israeli/US airstrikes on Iran, the "elite" layer of US liberalism is accomodating itself quite comfortably to Obama-style aggressive war, justifying its new attitude by claiming the "progressive" adminstration in Washington is conducting a different kind of intervention, for different aims. Different in what way, no American movie can quite explain, as the corpses continue to pile up.

Hence Kathryn Bigelow. What exactly is The Hurt Locker? Its "story" is non-existent, and what does exist between the dribs and drabs stolen from the movie violence pallettes of Peckinpah, DePalma, Anthony Mann, Malick, Walsh, Ford, Kubrick, Coppola etc. is the rankest male bonding swill via (of course) violent, drunken, macho horseplay in the barracks and the trenches. The "Iraqis" (actually Jordanians, but a raghead is a raghead) are portrayed as either faceless, darkly-clad terrorists or cliches worthy of Butterfly McQueen. . . who are also terrorists. So what is the point of this completely unnecessary movie? And why did it win last night?

Regarding the point, one can look to its very nasty ending when Johnny (or in this case Jimmy) Comes Marching Home: Bigelow actually celebrates the idea of a dedicated, fearless military caste, permanently on call. Nothing here to upset the likes of Heinrich Himmler, Roberto D'Aubuisson, Papa Doc Duvalier, Dick Cheney, David Petraeus or Stanley the Manly McChrystal. Why did it win? George Packer of the New Yorker points to it:

Above all, The Hurt Locker is an Iraq movie with a modest agenda and no obvious political views. That, more than anything, is the source of its strength.... Perhaps, with the departure of the Bush administration, the withdrawal of American combat units from Iraqi cities, the attention of the new President shifted to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran...Iraq can start to become a real war, not a symbol of all-consuming evil—the subject of movies that try to be good movies rather than major statements.

Right. So it is a good thing that one of the great crimes of modern history -- the US invasion, destruction, and occupation of Iraq -- is treated "neutrally" with no politics. But of course to treat this

A million Iraqi casualties minimum.
Five million displaced from their own nation.
Complete destruction of Iraq's infrastructure: roads, bridges, telephone systems, oil refineries, gasoline storage tanks, power plants, water-pumping stations and sewage treatment plants, even village water tanks.
Total destruction of what was once among the best education systems in the world, targeting in particular the university system and university professors. (Over 300 professors have been murdered by US sanctioned death-squads.)
Extermination of the oldest culture in the world, beginning with the mass theft of some of the most precious artistic treasures in world history.
The targeting and assassination of archaeologists, writers, painters, calligraphers, and singers. (100 singers have been murdered to date!)
Per the World Health Organization, 70% of Iraqi children have suffered nervous breakdowns.

"neutrally" is as aggressive a political statement as one can make. (Perhaps Bigelow's next project will be her version of Helter Skelter, sort of an updating of Only Angels Have Wings with Charles Manson in the Cary Grant role.)

Aside from being a talented huckster, and a talented. . .  well, let's turn to Mailer and The Deer Park:

Tentatively, she reached out a hand to finger his hair, and at that moment Herman Teppis opened his legs and let Bobby fall to the floor. At the expression of surprise on her face, he began to laugh. "Don't you worry, sweetie," he said, and down he looked at that frightened female mouth, facsimile of all those smiling lips he had seen so ready to serve at the thumb of power, and with a cough, he started to talk. "That's a good girlie, that's a good girlie, that's a good girlie," he said in a mild little voice, "you're an angel darling, and I like you, you're my darling darling, oh that's the ticket," said Teppis.

What otherwise might be the interests of Kathryn Bigelow? The Widowmaker is little but pre-nuke worship of all things martial. There's the by-the-balls calculation and Nieztchean babble of Strange Days. (How stupid can one be about a city, in the face of Angela Bassett's greatness?) The imbecilic Blue Steel somehow mistakes Jamie Lee Curtis for Maria Falconetti. Bigelow finds some memorable images (and the very sexy Jenny Wright) as backdrop for the video version of Tangerine Dream's Near Dark. But it is Point Break  -- her 1991 remake of Buck Angel's Sea Food, Part XIV -- which may be key.

Vampires, surfers, serial killers, cops, drug dealers, Russian spys, and most recently male racist murderers who travel to distant lands for sport. Not a cookie-baker or a mommy in the bunch. Well, hee-haw ~ how butch of you, Kathie. The list reminds me of my old school buddy Ed Bray, who wanted to be liked so much by girls that he became the Mayfair High version of George Constanza (before there was a Seinfeld): he would enlist in whatever he thought would bring him closer to them: ballet class, piano, home economics and fashion courses; Bray even volunteered to be assistant coach on the girls' track team. Didn't work, of course.

So let us congratulate Ms. Bigelow on figuring out how to be close to as many he-men as possible. And let us drink a toast to her no doubt seething sexual life. Now put down the camera.

Let us end with the man who should have directed The Hurt Locker ('though I hear his sex life wasn't so great):

"I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." -- General Smedley Butler

How Many Times Can You Kill a Man?

New color footage showing JFK’s arrival in Dallas was put on display Monday at the thoroughly corrupt Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza. The short clip, shot on eight-millimeter film by a 15-year-old student, provides a color close-up of Kennedy and his wife as they arrived at Love Field. 45 minutes later, the President would be executed by his own national security state.

Meanwhile, Hearstian pimp station The History Channel announced plans to air an 8-hour hit job on the last democratic dynasty -- a family that gave the lives of three brothers and one sister in service to their country, brought to us by Joel "24" Surnow, fresh from sucking out Dick Cheney's colon.

Perversion for Profit

In the wake of JFK's murder, the nomination of Barry Goldwater as Republican candidate for President, and the election of nitwit movie stooge Ronnie Raygun for Governor of California, the baboon Right was really feeling its oats in the middle-1960s. So Charles "provided John McCain with juicy hookers and he provided me with juicy legislation" Keating hired the immortal George Putnam to teach us all about the true core of the Worldwide Communist Conspiracy: pornography.

"Perversion for Profit" (1965) was produced by Citizens for Decent Literature, out of Cincinnati, and quite obviously had a hand in bringing down the Soviet Union and saving the world from Cummunism.

In the Name of the Father

Of Robert Francis Kennedy's twelve children, none has carried forward the bright, brave, tender flame as intensely and honorably as the second son. RFK Jr. has been among the most courageous of American environmentalists, and when Senator Barack Obama was running for the Democratic presidential nomination (during what now seems like the pathetically naive years of 2007/08), Obama gave every indication that RFK Jr. would get a top environmental post in an upcoming adminstration, perhaps even head of the EPA. When the time came, though, Robert Kennedy's son didn't get so much as a sniff. (All top environmental posts, in keeping with the rest of the ObamaHillaryEmanuel Adminstration, went to corporate state flunkies.)

Among RFK Jr.'s many good works is his push for media alternatives to the mainstream, including a terrific webcast for GoLeftTV. This week he has a fascinating interview with Matt Taibbi, called "Obama's Big Sellout."