The Reggie Bush Curse Begins

First off, perhaps it's better to call this the Football Jesus curse or in honor of the Big Easy, The Voodoo Football Jesus Curse.

The elements should be familiar to Red Sox and Sonics fans - drafting an overhyped oaf over Michael Jordan or passing Babe Ruth over to your rival.

It's clear now that a lone Katrina survivor who was relocated to Texas has hexed the Houston Texans for unspecified reasons. Perhaps sheer spite for Texas not catching much hurricane flack while New Orleans suffered.

The result: Reggie Bush goes to New Orleans. Next thing you know, steady running back starter for Houston Dominic Davis has knee bones grinding together. Out for a while? The year? Forever? I've only heard that description used for Terrell Davis and Curtis martin, both done for good. Watch out Houston RB's, your future is in jeopardy.

Ranking the Coen Bros. Films

Given that they're the most talented filmmakers of their generation, and they seem to be on sabbatical, it's time to rank their films. The Coens have 3 distinct traits, not always employed and not always employed well when employed: intelligence, humor, and style. Keep those in mind. Starting with the worst:

11. Barton Fink - A movie about writer's block. Predictably boring. This film is sorely lacking in humor and is only mildly stylized. That leaves us with an intelligent film, but an intelligent film about writer's block and a bitterness towards Hollywood that is generally lacking in the Coens usually boisterous, light ribbings.

10. The Ladykillers - A film with too disparate a hodgepodge to pull together. Certainly the characters are good but the film lacks consistency and seems to bounce around aimlessly. A disappointing effort apparently done for the sake of Hanks' interest and a need to make money.

9. O Brother Where Art Thou - Because the film is good and soundtrack changed music, if ever so briefly, it may be a surprise to find this film so low. That said, kitchy journey stories like the Odyssey are a cop out. The film has strong moments, is beautifully shot, and features strong performances. But it wears thin.

8. Blood Simple - The Coen's first film is lacking in style and humor, but is brutal and smart. Very effecting but only a glimpse of potential.

7. Intolerable Cruelty - Extremely uneven. At its best moments, it is fantastic. Unfortunately, it is clear that the Coens took the project on and made it good rather than creating it from the ground up. There are mismatched elements and a bum stretch towards the end, plus a surprisingly humorless turn from Cedric the Entertainer, makes it lose steam. Still a very underrated film featuring moments of astounding comedic brilliance and real heart.

6. Raising Arizona - The first true Coen film, in parts bizarre, funny, and smart. Cage is good, Tex is better, and all around it is a genuinely likeable film. An appropriate midpoint to hold hands with the #5 film, which is very similar, only better in every sense.

TIMEOUT: I would just like to mention To the White Sea. To the White Sea was an essentially dialogueless adaptation of a very brutal novel by the writer of Deliverance about an American airman trapped behind enemy lines. To be done in black-and-white, and hopefully with a better ending than the novel, it was an artpiece to surpass all there other art pieces. They got the interest of the generation's most underrated actor, skill-wise, Brad Pitt. This was going to be their best art film...but they couldn't budget it. If only we had phlianthropists who made films for the hell of it.

5. The Big Lebowski - The best of the basically plotless comedies, a worthy cult classic. Nothing need be said here except that I think moview with real narrative features to be inherently superior.

4. The Man Who Wasn't There - The best of their art films, a dark, very intelligent, very powerful film, superbly scored (as always), brilliantly written, directed, and acted. There are, again, flights of fancy a bit too silly...it would have been better to play this one a little straighter. But a very impressive effort, a travesty to have received no Oscar attention. Whose shoes did these guys spit on that no one wants to nominate them? Perhaps it's because they're too smart for Hollywood and don't make dull overtly-political tripe.

3. Fargo - A controversial choice. Many Coen fans find the more mainstream dramas of the mid-90's to be a travesty against true Coendome. Others would say that Fargo is without question their best effort. The truth is that Fargo is a good film but not a deep one. It lacks the artistic flares, the repeated symbolism that would push it to the top of the list. But it is a great movie.

2. The Hudsucker Proxy - A delightful film, funny, consistently themed, a rare topic, well-acted and tight as a drum. Only second to:

1. Miller's Crossing - The only time the Coens blended everything perfectly and added a touch of Godfather to the mix. Funny, quirky, and intelligent, the film is missing the missteps and goofiness and inconsistency that takes away from many of the other films. It adds a literary stroke of intelligence and a slow, well-measured descent from light comedy to an extremely mature conclusion.

ESPN embarrasses itself.

With baseball playoff races still only percolating and football a few weeks off, ESPN has hit one of its low points in desparately trying to stir up controversy.

Points A and B: Reggie Bush and Terrell Owens.s

First TO:
TO and Bill Parcells are favorites because they feed ESPN stories to soak up time. So you put both of them together on America's team and ESPN starts shivering in ecstasy. So TO tweaked a hammy, now ESPN has to ride this story "TO not working hard, already causing controversy", "Parcells disgruntled" despite the fact that there's no story. He tweaked a hammy. Plenty of guys take it easy in preseason with a bum hamstring. There is no controversy, except now ESPN has forced TO back on the practice field, whether he's ready or not.

WORSE: Bush
Bush is really good. So ESPN wants to hype him. First, he missed a day of training camp unsigned and ESPN was reporting he would sit out the season. He practiced the next day. Then ESPN covered his Monday night performance. They knew it was something very..., they just didn't know what. They couldn't get their story straight. The Sportscenter crew was creaming itself like every cut he made was the next coming of Barry Sanders' highlight reel. Then they cut to the sideline reporter's post game interview, and she was blitzing Bush with questions about getting "completely stuffed".

Stop. Stop. Stop. Cover the event, stop embarrassing yourselves. It's too lame to even demand creativity.

Traffic Flow Dynamics for Dummies
(That means you idiot!)

My brother has a theory on driving and politics - we're all sympathetic to Democrats when we use public transportation - we all suffer together, we're all in it together. Then we get in our cars and realize, "I'm living in a nation of assholes."

It's bad enough that the traffic lights aren't synchronized...we all have to deal with drunkards, senile people, immigrants who come from countries with different theories than the "shortest route is between two points" standard, ladies afraid of the highway, and people who are lost and think the way is found by going as slow as possible.

So here are a few tips for sane, thinking people to consider when driving down the street to keep the traffic flowing and the roadrage safely controlled by CDs or talk radio.

1. The fast lane is for going faster than the speed limit.
2. Get out of the traffic and into the exit/turn lane...THEN SLOW DOWN.
3. Never go the same speed as the lane next to you
4. Merge at freeway speed
5. Do not use the brake on the freeway unless there is a traffic jam...taking your foot off the accelerator will slow you down sufficiently
6. It is possible to drive while it is raining.
7. Your blinker signals your intentions.
8. If you are pulling up to a red light and do not plan to turn right, please vacate the right lane so that those who do intend to do so can use it.
9. Cell phones, sandwiches and the radio are to be fiddled with only for those capable of driving their car normally while using them. Don't turn into a senile Asian woman just because you're talking to your girlfriend.
10. For heaven sakes do not NOT NOT drive slower than the speed limit up to a green light and then speed through it when it turns yellow with other cars left at the red behind you. THIS IS WORSE KARMA THAN CLUBBING BABY SEALS.

An Inconvenient Truth: I paid money for a 2-hour campaign commercial.

I went to Al Gore's movie having been told it was very good. Parts of it are and bring up consequences I had not before contemplated. But the movie is a slideshow, and we know how much we loved those in college.

More importantly. this movie has 2 glaring flaws: Al Gore and Al Gore.

Glaring Flaw #1 Al Gore plays Michael Moore.

As we all know, Michael Moore introduced the "documentary" political campaign commercial as a self-marketing ploy to actually get money from people for telling them how to think rather than spending to have them ignore you when you tell them how to think. Al Gore has a long history of lacking creativity, or claiming he had a creative idea after someone else invented it(internet, the movie Love Story, he even admits in his movie that his passion for this issue is based upon his 'soaking in like a sponge' the message of his professors.)

And so, for his hagiography, err...documentary, Al Gore mimick's Moore's canon. We have the oh-so clever cartoon, the photo montages, the quotes from great men, the angry documentor confronting wrongdoers. But most of all, just like in Moore's film, the subject is not the subject, it is only a vehicle for the ego of the filmmaker. At least Moore is a goofy, hokey presence on camera; even though it is a sham, it is a good one and we are all posers at this point anyhow.

But Gore, Gore never knew he was in the first place. He is his ambition and his sense of superiority. There is nothing else. Al Gore is not a man, like John McCain, or even a character, like Bill Clinton. He is a hollow man. He is a Richard Nixon. The words "Al Gore" mean nothing unless there is something, something like "Vice President" or "Congressman" or "Filmmaker" beside it. Because there is no Al Gore. What little there is of Al Gore is what he believes about the environment. But even that must carry the train to what Al Gore cares about most - Al Gore. If only there were something to care about.

Which is Glaring Flaw #2: Al Gore plays Al Gore.
This movie is not a documentary. It is a CV for president and just as doctored as your average average Harvard student's application. It diverges wildly from it's environmental message to allow the quintessential Empty Suit to take another stab at reframing his life to make him likeable and respectable. I could not believe what I was seeing for the first 15 minutes of the film - it was nothing but Al Gore. When they ran out of angles to shoot Gore from, they actually put the back of his head on screen for several seconds with no voiceover...TWICE!!!

This version of Al Gore is apparently funny. Or at least a canned audience of concerned Ivy League backbenchers is willing to laugh at the punchlines. There'll be at least one toady at your local theater obsessed enough with his/her politics to go along. We find time for Gore to show his 2000 Presidential run and the fallout from the contested election. If you were one of the few women out there who was turned on by Gore's condescending-ex-husband-like showings at the Gore-Bush debates, consider this an orgy of pedantry.

But more importantly, Gore and the director make an effort more labored than Shatner's rendition of Rocket Man (http://www.youtube.com/watch?search=Shatner&v=aVlf04AwHCI) to tie in a new, earthier version of the Life Al-a-Gore. In the first family segment, Gore's poor, noble, farmer father raises him on a rural road where they farm cattle. Gore mysteriously goes on to the Ivy League and jumps right into politics where he tirelessly lectures bought off scientists on their duties, only later to be cheated out of the presidency.

We are, of course, reminded once that Gore lived most of his childhood in a DC Hotel. If you were unfamiliar, Gore's father was a Senator, and not just any Senator, but the Vanderbilt family's personal senator. Don't be surprised if Gloria Vanderbilt's child, CNN nepotism-hack Anderson Cooper has a lovejones for Gore come 2008. Cooper's book was just as wastefully self-centered as Gore's film.

We also have a laughable rendition of Gore's connection to big tobacco. You see, Al Gore's sister died of lung cancer. You remember that humble cattle farm the Gore's kept...well, I guess they also grew a bit of tobacco. But when Gore's sister died, the Senator from Vanderbilt, according to Al, stopped growing tobacco. It just wasn't right to make money off of their sister's death.

Except Gore was widely bashed in the late 90's, before the hush campaign to get him past Bush, for his continued connections to, and profits off of, big tobacco.

The bigger question is - what in the name of Sam the American Eagle is any of this doing in a documentary on Global Warming? A few oblique literary turns of phrase are somehow supposed to bridge the gap and justify to the viewer that he spent 8 bucks to watch a long commercial?

An inconvenient truth: Al Gore is running for something - even if he's given up on the presidency, and that's not at all clear, he's still running for Al Gore (Fill-in-the-blanks-here).

Closer: Why Your Favorite Movie is Lame

While reading Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", late in the novel, Joyce reviews his own book, claiming true art is best when it arises no passion in it's reader and can be appreciated only for its artistry. This revelation bites heavily into the reader's enjoyment of the book - if you were ever moved by a part of the book, then you had read it wrong.

As a lesser writer, Closer's author, was forced into self-deprication to indulge his vanity and review his own work on screen, having his trampled flower bemoan how all art is supposed to be sad to be beautiful but the people are still sad, so it is not beautiful. And in one scene, everything that is right and wrong with Closer is on display - the set up is strong, the picture of herself crying taken by the woman who has caused these tears, shared with this woman's lover. But the delivery is wordy and trite, forced to hear the scene's punch through the author's whiny reflections rather than to see it and know it. In this, the author reveals his arrogance - that his words are better than the scene (they aren't) and that his audience is much dumber than he is (we aren't).

First the basics - the film is in fact quite obviously a play since it is driven by dialogue rather than action. It was clearly penned by a long-struggling author with a bit of flare and wit, but one completely self-absorbed.

The cast almost entirely reads of the artist's artist's conceits - the struggling author, the trampled woman of the night, the falsely sophisticated art docent. It is only Clive Owen's porn-obsessed doctor who breaks new ground, but in this case the character feels false and only squeaks by thanks to a strong performance by Owen. All of the characters are too witty for their own good, written to indulge the author's strongest skill rather than to fit the character itself. Though Owen is very good, his character isn't working class enough...every character becomes a psychiatrist as they wander their way through the reams of dialogue.

Julia Roberts seems to have either not been up for such wordiness, or to have successfully convinced the director to leave out her dialogue. Her role is effectively understated in comparison to the rest. Her effectiveness in the role is still bothersome - the queen of Hollywood is far too comfortable in the role of the film's weakest character, a tawdry and weak woman masquerading as a sophisticate. The power women of Hollywood past could never have played the role, for they chew up the screen and the characters around them. Roberts' skill actually diminishes her star.

The same goes for Jude Law, who once again looks the part of a dashing movie star, but plays the role of a weak and flighty cad. Since this is the role Law always plays, with the exception of woefully chosen turns in Spielberg movies, we can assume that Law will never be a true picture star, merely something for the girls to look at.

Finally there is Natalie Portman, cast against type because she's trying to reprove herself and wash the Star Wars out of her hair. Unfortunately, she hasn't been around long enough to prove herself a first time and we're left with a rather shallow performance that could have done with less dialogue and false wit.

The film occaisonally makes attempts at turning the setting into art, but never quite gets it right. There is almost no cinematographic artistry to bring the movie home as something beautiful, most probably because the director was too in love with the psychosexual dialogue to spend much time making a picture. This is an egregious error in a love-story/drama/independent work, but a love story especially, because our notions of love or so intimately tied with beauty.

The above referenced scene, with Portman looking at her own photo, is a clear example - are we left with a timeless image of the moment, something like Anita Ekberg's moment in the fountains from La Dolce Vita? No, what we remember is her flat delivery of an airless line about the nature of art. Other scenes are lifted from the film's intellectual forebears, most notably Law and Portman's final split being an almost exact replica of the superior Les Mepris (Contempt).

And finally, the movie is only as big as its characters and its drama. Unfortunately, these are all characters who we are assumed to have a too easy sympathy for. Since we never fall in love with them, and move so quickly into the betrayals, we do not care for them or about them. They are all, in their own way, weak and tawdry human beings for whom we develop no awe to displace this lack of sympathy. All that's left is what intellectual sustenance we may find, and though there is some, there is not enough to make the film great.

The Thrill of Cycling

The New Republic has a headline that reads "Why Performance Enhancing Drugs Don't Take Away from the Thrill of the Sport."

Do I need to read it to know that the answer is that there is no thrill in the sport to begin with?

BOY VANDERBILT HITS BACK:

"I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE PAYOLLA, THEREFORE, NOTHING WRONG WAS DONE."

Anderson Cooper, the boy anchor promoted over similarly bland media mediocrities for his shiny silver hair, alternative lifestyle, and fabulously wealthy mother, has lashed out at critics (that is, people working for his own organization) of CNN/Time's payolla scheme to buy the exclusive Angelina interview.

In a nutshell, Time paid 4 million to Jolie's charity. Suddenly, they landed an exclusive from her and her agent called the Dandy Vandy for an exclusive interview. Disgusted CNN/Time employees leaked the news and suddenly we can all delight in a wonderfully juicy bout of hypocrisy.

Media-types like Anderson make a living off of leaks. But now leaks are very bad things. So bad that Anderson curses them with the dastardly "Killer Quotations". You see, the insiders who gave Drudge his scoop weren't really insiders. They were "insiders". I guess the only insiders that can't be trusted by CNN are CNN's own insiders!

Funnier still, Anderson can't deny the story, as firmly as he denigrates it as all lies and quotations. All he can say is that he doesn't know anything other than that money changed hands, the agent called his people, and you should watch his interview.

Politicians have supporters and fundraisers who employ dirty tactics all the time, perhaps with their knowledge, perhaps tacit approval, or perhaps completely independently. But would that stop Serious Newsperson Anderson Vanderbilt, excuse me, Cooper, from casting serious doubts on the morality of the politician in question? I can just see Anderson looking stolidly into the camera, perhaps from outside his own mother's estate, and shaking his head in disgust at the dirty deeds of some other Anderson.

Now that the rumor, slander, leaking, and payolla has to do with Anderson, he's as clean as a whistle because he didn't know it was taking place. In the style of his creek-of-consciousness autobiography, he was probably daydreaming during his hardhitting refugee piece wtih Miss Jolie about how the refugees' plight reminded him of the time his mother didn't have his Mercedes ready for his 16th birthday.

Just another reminder brought to you by Anderson Cooper - no one does anything legitimately.
Even if you're a Vanderbilt backed by Ted Turner, you still have to pay up.

Thank You For Smoking

One of the better comedies I've seen and even rarer - the comedy that's probably funnier the first time. A lot of funny movies, Anchorman, Rushmore, get funnier once you watch them a second time familiar with the characters. This one was just funny.

Sopranos Way Off the Mark

Boy has the Sopranos been uneven this year. Great first episode, a horrible episode about the meaning of life that sounded like the shittiest drunk philosophy conversation some pothead foisted on you your first year of college, followed by a fantastic episode that set up...this schlock.

Please, Sopranos writers, didn't you see my cardinal sins of pretension? Don't make Tony play way out of character just so you can lecture us about gay people. Two GLARING plot holes: 1) Frankie was into something similar and Tony was ready to out him over that. 2) Might not he be forced to act worrying that Vito would go into the Witness Protection program over being outed?

I've always found Vito tedious, he can be shot. I like Adrianna and Christopher - why kill an interesting character off and leave a boring one - just to feel good about gay people?

If that weren't the worst of it, much of the rest of the episode was about BS al-Qaeda lame plotline and Meadow opening her huge trap again. Please shoot Meadow immediately. Please stop all contemporary social issues commentary.

Shooting Tony, that was original. There's so many interesting plot lines available with these characters. Why are you wasting our time with this? I can only suspect that James Gandolfini is gay and would only come back if the show dealt with these topics. He did play a gay guy too in The Mexican. Or maybe the writers hang out in New York way too often.