THIS MODERN NIGHTMARE

KINSEY & THE POWER OF KNOWLEDGE

Your attitude towards the movie KINSEY probably has a lot to do with your reaction to the story of the garden of Eden. Eve gave Adam the apple. In a state of complete ignorance, they suddenly became aware of the world around them and their place in it, with knowledge being the guiding light. If you see Eve as the villain in this piece, and the apple as a symbol of evil, then chances are you won't be a fan of Alfred Kinsey. On the other hand, if you see knowledge as power, as the shining light that eliminates the darkness of ignorance, then you'll probably see Kinsey as a hero.

The movie, KINSEY, portrays Kinsey in a mostly heroic light. Before he came along, America was pretty much in the Stone Age as far as public knowledge about sex goes. It was the 1940's, and many newlyweds weren't really sure what they were supposed to do on their wedding nights. Syphilis was rampant, but many people who had it didn't realize they could cure it with a simple shot of penicillin. Alfred Kinsey, a pragmatic man, thought that if people knew about these things, maybe their lives might be better. Of course, when his books on human sexuality came out, religious groups shouted against them, but they became best sellers nonetheless.

As Alfred Kinsey, the man who, with his colleagues, interviewed thousands of Americans to get a better understanding of sexual practices in this country - trying to get a better grasp of what is "normal" - Liam Neeson does a terrific job portraying someone who really wants the answers and is willing to take risks to see it through. If Kinsey doesn't always seem like an especially passionate man (in the sexual sense) in the course of the film, he certainly is passionate in his desire for knowledge, starting with an almost obsessive study of the gall wasp early in his career through his groundbreaking cataloging of human sexual behavior, the work that made him a household name. Neeson does a great job and certainly deserves an Oscar nomination here.

The supporting cast is fine as well, from Laura Linney, who can be relied upon to almost always turn in a terrific performance, as Kinsey's long suffering yet free spirited wife Clara "Mac" McMillan, to Peter Sarsgaard (most recently in another fine film, Garden State) as Neeson's most loyal disciple (and sometimes lover). Kinsey was not above experiencing such things as homosexuality first-hand for the sake of his research. And it's this risk-taking that is particularly interesting, especially in contrast to his rather dispassionate demeanor.

The story of KINSEY is almost as relevant now as it was in the 1940's. With our culture seeming to be going backwards in many ways (the climate of sexual repression seems stronger now than it has been in years, starting with the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, which was really a bunch of people making a mountain out of a molehill, to recent FCC crackdowns on everything from the Howard Stern Show to a recent commercial featuring actress Nicole Sheridan in a towel (which really was pretty tame stuff). After years of seeming progress in freedom and frankness in our culture, the current climate seems to be pushing all this back to a safer, more sanitized nostalgia for a simpler time that no longer exists), maybe the time has come for some light to once again be shed on the darkness and knowledge to once more rise above incredible ignorance.

Without Eve and without people like Alfred Kinsey, we'd still be wallowing around on the earth like animals, oblivious to the world around us. Knowledge is power. We don't need less of it. We need more.

GET ELECTROSHOCKED FOR THE HOLIDAYS!

Well, after an unforseen delay, my latest story, "Electroshock Therapy for Mimes" finally went up online yesterday. You can read it here.

This one has a little bit of history behind it. You see, this was the very first story I ever sold. Back almost 20 years ago when I was in college (man, I can't believe it's been that long!), I sold this story to a cool little science fiction magazine called The Minnesotan Science Fiction Reader, but the magazine went belly up before it could be published. All rights reverted to me, but the story never saw print. Fast-forward 20 years later and it's finally being published by TWILIGHT TIMES, and there's word that this issue (the Halloween issue) of the webzine may come out in print magazine form in 2005 (more about that when/if it happens). In the meantime, I'm just happy to see it finally in print.

So if this story sounds a little different than other stuff you've read of mine - that's why. It's interesting to see how much my style has changed over the years.

That's all for now. Til next we meet.

Infernally Yours,

LLS

Not much going on. Didn't go to the movies, but I did write the latest installment of CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT this week with Michael Arruda (we reviewed THE GRUDGE). So that should be coming out on Thursday.

More next week.

SIDEWAYS

This week I took a break and only saw one movie (as opposed to four last weekend!). This time around we're going to look at SIDEWAYS, the new film by Alexander Payne, who previously made the interesting movies Election and About Schmidt.

SIDEWAYS, like Payne's other films (especially About Schmidt), deals with characters who are living lives of quiet desperation. This time around we're looking in on the life of Miles Raymond (the amazing Paul Giamatti), an 8th grade English teacher in his 40's who is also a writer, even though he hasn't been published (despite several tries), who is still suffering the after effects of his divorce two years ago, and who's life has reached a dead end. He really has a hard time staying motivated to keep going.

Enter his friend Jack (Thomas Hayden Church, previously of sitcoms like Ned and Stacy and Wings), a former soap opera actor and now doing commercials, who is about to get married. Like Miles, Jack feels like his life has hit a crossroads and it's time for some major change. Where Miles is deep and brooding, though, Jack is shallow and vain. He's a man who has traded on his looks his whole life, and now that he's getting older, he's finding it harder to do that. And he's not sure what else he has to offer. These two men have been friends since they were freshman roomates in college, and they get together for one last hurrah before Jack goes to the altar. Miles drives his friend up to the California wine country for a week of supposed debauchery. But things don't go according to plan.

Oh yeah, Miles is also a wine expert, and that's important because it is intricate to who Miles is. While he's never been able to actually make a living at it, Miles is enamored of wines, especially the elusive Pinot Noir, and he tries to share this with Jack. But Jack just wants to get laid one last time before his wedding to prove he's got what it takes. His mission is also to get Miles laid, since Miles has been pining away for his ex-wife for way too long.

The two men meet two women in their journey - Miles finally makes a move - after much reluctance and prodding by Jack - on Maya (Virginia Madsen), a waitress in his favorite restaurant, the Hitching Post, who he's known for years (it appears he makes these pilgrimages to wine country every year) but never had the nerve to approach before. Jack finds Stephanie (Sandra Oh, previously of the HBO show Arliss, and who I never remember being as hot as she is here), a wine pourer and a free spirit whom he is instantly attracted to and who he starts a passionate affair with.

Of course, Jack and Miles don't say anything about Jack's impending nuptuals, which sets the trap for hard feelings later on, and the idyllic week away from it all collides with the real world as Jack's Saturday wedding gets closer and closer.

What do they do? Does the truth come out? How does everyone react? Well, you've got to see the movie for those answers. But while you're doing that, Sideways is an exceptional movie about very real people. Payne does a great job of directing - it's low key, naturalistic, and often funny. Giamatti, who I first noticed as Howard Stern's adversary Pig Virus in the film PRIVATE PARTS and who did a great job portraying Harvey Pekar in last year's AMERICAN SPLENDOR, is terrific as always, and this might be the best role yet to showcase his talents. He isn't playing a real person this time, and there's more room to show different sides of this character's personality. Giamatti was robbed at the Oscars earlier this year when he wasn't even nominated for AMERICAN SPLENDOR, but I hope that's corrected this time. He's overdue for recognition as one of our best actors. Hayden Church is also a find - I remember watching his old short-lived FOX sitcom Ned and Stacy (With Debra Messing who later went on to Will and Grace) and thinking he was a really funny guy, and then he seemed to disappear for awhile. As far as I know this is his first major cinematic role, and he does a fine job. Madsen and Oh are also terrific, fleshing out these women and making you care about them. The acting, writing and direction in this film is exemplary.

I think Sideways is one of the best films I've seen this year. And if this sounds like the kind of story you could relate to, or even if you don't, it's worth checking out.

MOVIE MERRY-GO-ROUND

No reason to talk about this week’s presidential election. It’s over with. I could go on and on about why I think it was a total disappointment and how bummed out I am about the next four years we have coming up. But frankly, why bother at this point? Might as well move on to other things.

Saw four new movies in the theater last weekend. So let’s talk about those instead.

First off, we have SAW. This movie starts off in the middle of the action - two men wake up in a large, filthy room that once a public bathroom. Now it’s just an expanse of floor, some plumbing, and a dead guy in middle of the floor. His head’s been blown off, and as he lays there he has two things in his hands. In one hand, a tape recorder. In the other, a gun. These things will become very important later.

On one side of the room is Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes), a surgeon. On the other is Adam (Leigh Whannell, who also wrote the script) a private detective who was hired the night before to keep tabs on Dr. Gordon. They are both chained to the walls and have been given handsaws. The saws won’t work on the chains, but they could easily cut off limbs that would allow escape (if you don’t lose too much blood first)- thus the movie's title. Both men have no idea where they are. There is a clock on the wall. Via the tape recorder and little notes hidden in the room, their tormenter lets them know what he wants. He wants each of them to kill the other to get out alive.

Meanwhile, their tormenter, The Jigsaw Killer, has struck before. In flashbacks, we see that most of his victims have died, but there was one who survived. When the police question her, it’s revealed that she is a junkie but has since cleaned up. The woman says that it was all a test to see if she was worthy of a second chance. A chance to live life to the fullest. She passed the test.

Back to the bathroom. Will these two latest victims pass the test?

Meanwhile a detective who has been trying to catch the killer for years (Danny Glover) is frantically trying to get to the bottom of it all. And Elwes’ wife and child have been kidnapped to ensure his cooperation.

As you can see, SAW is a complex movie, and it alternates back and forth between the past (the killer's previous tortures, how the main characters ended up here, Glover's search, etc.) and the present. Since the "killer" (who doesn't actually kill anyone, but usually gets his victims to do it for him) works from a distance, it could be anyone (maybe even Glover). SAW is the kind of movie where you can get sucked into it while you’re watching, and then afterwards, when you really think about it, you can find all the plot holes and absurd leaps of logic. In retrospect there’s a lot wrong with Saw, but when I was sitting there watching it, I was riveted.

Despite the fact that it has flaws and that, while ably directed by James Wan, it wants too badly to be the movie SEVEN, I enjoyed Saw and thought it was a pretty good flick. I really wanted to find out what was going on. While the answers might not be totally satisfying – if at all – I enjoyed the trip getting there.

On the same day I also saw THE GRUDGE, the latest American remake of a Japanese horror movie. I had high hopes for this film, since it was produced by Sam Raimi, a guy who knows his horror (before he started making the Spider-Man movies, he was the genius behind the EVIL DEAD flicks). The film is also directed by Takashi Shimizu, the Japanese filmmaker who made the original version of the movie, JU-ON.

The GRUDGE focuses on Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar), an American nurse in Japan -presumably she’s there because her architect boyfriend Doug(Jason Behr), is taking classes there. When she goes to take care of a sickly American woman (Grace Zabriskie, formerly in Twin Peaks) Karen stumbles into a house of horrors. You see, there were some violent deaths in the house and the ghosts hold a grudge against the living.

Sarah, along with a police detective (Ryo Ishibashi), tries to solve the mystery of the house.

Like I said, I had high hopes for THE GRUDGE, but I was really disappointed. First off, it seemed too much like THE RING remake a couple of years ago. Once again the main ghost is a woman with extremely long hair that covers her face, except for one bulging eyeball. This is starting to become a boring cliché. Another ghost – a kid in white makeup – isn’t scary at all. In fact, I didn’t think there were any scares in THE GRUDGE (although I kind of liked the “shock” ending, even though it was very predictable), and what’s a horror movie without scares? I wasn’t too interested in the story, I thought the whole thing moved too slow, and found the actions of the characters pretty annoying.

THE GRUDGE was Number One at the box office for two weeks, for some inexplicable reason. But I’d recommend waiting for it to come to video. There’s no reason to rush out and see this thing. If you saw The Ring, and/or some of the recent ghost movies to come out Japan in the last few years, there’s nothing new here.

I also saw the new movie Tarnation, the debut film by Jonathan Caouette, which has been getting a lot of attention lately in the indie movie world, and was even produced by directors Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell. Tarnation is basically a bunch of Caouette's home movies, from childhood to adulthood, edited into a cohesive whole about growing up gay in the midwest with a schizophrenic mother who's in and out of hospitals and being raised by his oddball grandparents. There are some very touching scenes of Jonathan as a kid and as an adult, and the film is just as much about his mother, Renee, who was a model and seemed destined for big things before she exhibited the behavior that led her parents to have her subjected to a series of shock treatments that might have done her much more harm than good.

While the movie is mainly about Jonathan and his relationship with his mother throughout the years, there is also a scene where he is reunited with his father, who left them before Jonathan was born and didn't even know that Renee was pregnant. There are also allegations of abuse by Jonathan’s grandparents perpetrated upon Renee by the end of the film (the eccentric grandparents suddenly seeming to be more creepy than goofy). And all of this creates a lot of real-life drama.

It’s amazing that Couette was able to take all this footage and make a real movie out of it, especially one that is as moving as this one sometimes is. But for the most part I was kinda disappointed with Tarnation. Considering the buzz behind it, I expected something even more powerful. Tarnation has its moments, but by the end I was much more impressed with Couette’s editing expertise than I was with him as a director. Sure his life has a lot of pathos to it. But so do thousands (if not millions) of other lives. And this story didn’t seem unique enough to really move me.

Back in 1969, the crimes of the Manson Family scared the hell out of this country. Not only did they mark the end of peace and love, they also had repercussions in art and cinema. Many of the harsher 1970’s horror movies were influenced, if even on some subliminal level, by the events of 1969. So I guess it’s only fitting that someone made a movie about the Manson Family in the style of a 1970’s horror movie.

And so we have Jim Van Bebber’s film, The Manson Family. Supposedly this one was in the works for about ten years and it’s been getting some buzz on the festival circuit. The thing is, I had a very mixed reaction to it. The movie’s style seems to be a mixture of 70’s style horror and the 80’s NY Cinema of Transgression movement that launched the careers of underground filmmakers like Nick Zedd and Richard Kern (some of the characters in Van Bebber’s movie are even watching Kerns’ classic short film You Killed Me First at one point).

But since the events portrayed in The Manson Family are real, the movie walks a very thin line between trying to make a horror movie out of a horrific crime from America’s past and merely going through the motions in a story we have all seen many times before. There’s really not much new in Van Bebber’s film. And while he doesn’t shy away from the graphic aspects of the murders (another tight rope - since these events really happened - this time between realism and tastelessness), his movie falls short of its ambitions for me. Part of the problem is that, since it took ten years to make, it seems to be cobbled together from different parts. One part, the main part, is the movie about the events of 1969 itself. The other part is some strange “modern day” flash-forward that focuses on a group of modern day murderers inspired by the Manson family, who attack a television journalist who is putting together a documentary about the topic. The 1969 parts are clearly the heart of the movie and it’s a mixed bag. The acting isn’t always good, but there are scenes that work, and Marc Pitman, the actor who plays Tex Watson stands out. Marcelo Games, in the pivotal role of Charlie, is pretty hit or miss. Sometimes his performance worked for me, sometimes it didn’t. The thing is, it’s a role that demands a lot of charisma in order to be believeable, and Games isn’t always up for the task. The movie tells the story of how the “family” got together, how Charles Manson tried to break into the music biz without success, and the how things turned violent as everyone involved seemed to slip deeper and deeper into paranoia and madness.

What doesn’t work at all are the segments that are supposed to take place in the present day. These scenes try really hard to ape the films of people like Kern and Zedd (in contrast to the 1969 scenes that try to capture the feel of 1970’s horror flicks and are more successful), but the bottom line is that the modern day stuff is unnecessary and pointless. These new scenes just have nothing at all to say and just take us away from the real movie. It’s almost like they were filmed to pad the movie out to a longer running time.

The Manson Family wasn't in the theaters for very long (only a week here), but if you are interested in true crime films it might be worth checking out on video. But, I thought it was a very mixed bag.

That's all for the Merry-Go-Round for this ride. Everyone off til next time.