Best Album Cover of 2007

I've never heard this album, but I've seen the photo a couple of times. The record, for the record, is a collaboration between the Berlin Staatsballett and the Ostgut Ton label featuring music by such techno luminaries as Luciano, Sleeparchive, and NSI. It's received some good notices. The photo is a perfect illustration of a simple concept simply executed: I just wish they'd done away with all of the extraneous type and graphics on the cover.

La Bête Humaine

"Anyone can cook": so goes the mantra of late master chef Auguste Gusteau, who once ruled the whole of French cuisine from his eponymous restaurant, but whose Paul Newman-ized visage now graces boxes of frozen food, and whose restaurant has been demoted from five-stars and haute rigeur to a tourist trap. Yet just as Ratatouille tempers this encouragement with a dose of reality (well, as much reality as a film about an anthropomorphic cooking rat can spare), so to does it stand as a testament to the fact that while anyone can make a movie, not everyone - or anyone, for that matter - can make a movie like Brad Bird.

Bird, you see, is a genius. His previous efforts - 1999's sorely underrated The Iron Giant and 2004's The Incredibles - marked him out as a filmmaker in full, an auteur rather than some faceless project manager; the nearest comparison I can make is to Stanley Kubrick, whose films also manifested the same obsessive eye for detail. Yet where Kubrick only seemed intermittently capable of, or interested in, creating empathetic characters (Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket spring to mind), Bird is clearly a humanist. His characters are full-blooded, three-dimensional, complex, with wants, needs, and desires that we can identify with: Mr. Incredible struggling to balance his responsibilities to his family (and his relationship with his wife) against the opportunity, however illusory, to realize his full potential; Remy's desire to cook allowing him to overcome an ingrained mistrust of humans and his limitations as, well, a rat.

Ratatouille is Bird's best film by far, a visual marvel of such heart and panache that transcends the kiddie ghetto condescension usually accorded animation and instead stands as not only one of the richest cinematic achievements of 2007, but surely one of the finest pop artworks of the young 21st century. The film is the story of Remy, a young rat besotted with a refined palette - a problem when your main source of nutrition is garbage - who dreams of becoming a chef. Forced to flee his country home and separated from his family, Remy finds himself in Paris, led by the specter of his idol Gusteau to the latter's restaurant, its former glory dimmed yet still resonant. It is here after much hijinx that Remy strikes up an unlikely partnership with a gawky plongeur improbably named Alfredo Linguini and the two set about whipping up dishes that put Gusteau's back on the map, and right in the cross hairs of sinister critic Anton Ego, setting up the film's climax, though far from its only conflict.

That the Pixar team has yet again outdone itself should surprise no one; the studio pioneered feature-length computer animation with 1995's Toy Story, and has not yet relinquished its lead. Ratatouille's characters are miraculously brought to life in a way that combines the expressive surreality of hand-drawn animation with such painstaking detail that you can almost hear their hearts beating; compare this to the dull, oddly vacant plasticity of Shrek. Furthermore the environments themselves are astonishing, bordering on photorealism - the kitchen alone, with its bright copper pots, gleaming knives, lush vegetables, and bubbling sauces is (pun intended) a feast for the eyes. Ratatouille's brilliant action set pieces - rats escaping on a makeshift flotilla, Remy ricocheting around Gusteau's kitchen, a chase along the banks of the Seine - are practically thrown gauntlets not only to Pixar's direct competitors but the whole of cinema: "Let's see you top this."

Though heaping laurels on Ratatouille is exhausting business I would be remiss if I failed to note the film's many fantastic vocal performances - especially Patton Oswalt, Jeneane Garofalo, Ian Holm, Brad Garrett, and Peter O'Toole. Unlike other similar animated ventures, Ratatouille is not a vehicle for any of these actors, and each plays his or her part with a conviction and professionalism so all-encompassing that they disappear in the characters, unrecognizable - with the exception of O'Toole, whose voice is such a distinctive dramatic instrument that it cannot, and should not, be concealed).

Speaking with Richard Corliss, Brad Bird voiced his frustration over the treatment he and his fellow animation directors receive in Hollywood:

We're kind of at the kids' table. If I do the most perfect job of directing [an animated feature] — in terms of composition, editing, how the performances come down on the screen — it's still the same thing [as directing live-action]. You're dealing with close-ups and editing and when to not cut and when to cut rapidly and was the music engaging and how do we know what the characters are thinking. [But] people disregard it. It's sort of an unspoken prejudice.

As the critic Anton Ego notes towards the end of Ratatouille, "Not everyone can be a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." Bird's metier may prevent him from attaining the mainstream recognition as one of the current cinema's great realisateurs, but he shouldn't take it so hard. After all, when it comes to animated rodents, he's in pretty good company.

Brian McNamee, Did You Order The Code Red?

He said thought it was a ball. You know, because your first impulse upon fielding a ground ball is to hurl it at the baserunner. What a dick.

And so the bizzaro Roger Clemens Steroids Denial Roadshow grinds on. First, there was the super-uncomfortable, semi-hilarious YouTube-ready video where he denied using steroids. Then, as promised in said video, there was the 60 Minutes interview where a way-over-the-top indignant Clemens tried to cloak his denials in soft-tosser Mike Wallace's credibility (highlight: octogenarian Wallace having to say "buttocks"). Monday was undoubtedly the piece de la resistance, as Clemens and his attorney Rusty Hardin held a press conference after filing a defamation suit in Texas against Clemens' accuser, longtime trainer Brian McNamee. It was McNamee who named Clemens in the Mitchell Report, the product of baseball's internal investigation into the so-called Steroid Era. During the press conference, Clemens played a 17-minute long recording of a recent telephone conversation that he had with McNamee, wherein the 300 game winner insisted that "I just want the truth out there" with McNamee plaintively asking, 21 times, "What do you want me to do?" in response.

Now, you might think that if somebody had seen fit to tarnish your life's achievements and forever sully your name with an outrageous string of fabrications, you might, given the opportunity to speak to them, go mega fucking apeshit on their ass. Yet according to an AP news account, "No matter whether McNamee's tone was angry or pleading, whether he was talking about his ailing 10-year-old son or offering to go to jail, Clemens never fired back with anger or accusations that McNamee was lying." So, to get this straight, Clemens, holding a press conference to emphasize his strong denial of NcNamee's accusations, played a 17-minute long tape during which he not once calls NcNamee a liar. And the presence of Clemens' lawyer, a high-powered Houston attorney, at his side suggests that Roger paid someone to tell him to do this.

Evidently displeased that his smoking gun turned out to be something of a damp squib, Clemens' was exceedingly terse throughout the 15 minute Q&A period; attorney Hardin actually at one point passed him a note saying "lighten up." Finally, Roger, conflating his time in Major League Baseball with government work, abruptly ended the event amidst answering questions regarding his Hall of Fame prospects, saying, "I cannot wait to go into the private sector and hopefully never have to answer it again."

Hardin attempted to put the best face on Clemens' flame out, saying "Look at it this way: Roger Clemens is either the world's greatest actor or he didn't do (what McNamee accuses). And if he didn't do that, then he's been screwed big-time by everybody who believes he did it. Why wouldn't he be upset about it? If you didn't do it, there's not a single person who wouldn't be going crazy." Personally, I don't think that Clemens' Bush-esque "I'm a straight shooter" routine would have required him to be "the world's greatest actor," but that's just me.

Furthermore, according to the AP, he tried to put a pro-Rocket spin on the phone recording:

McNamee sounded distraught during the conversation.

"I'm in your corner. I don't want this to happen. But I'd also like not to go to jail, too," he said.

His voice cracked when he said: "My wife is gone. My kids are gone."

"I don't have any money. I have nothing," McNamee said. "I'm not doing a book deal. I got offered seven figures to go on TV. I didn't do it. I didn't take it. I didn't do anything. All I did was what I thought was right -- I never thought it was right, but I thought that I had no other choice, put it that way."

Hardin said McNamee's attempts for guidance from Clemens seemed odd.

"We played it back, trying to decide, 'What do we do now? What is he saying?"' he said. "There is a 90-percent view of the people around Roger that (McNamee) was trying to set Roger up. Roger thought that maybe McNamee was really trying to say, 'I'm ready to come clean.'

Now, finally, this is some first class lawyering. Note that McNamee sounds like any grade A rat crawling back to his irate mob pals - obviously he didn't want to put Roger in, but the feds had him over a barrel, so he named names. Also, it certainly doesn't help Camp Clemens that former Yankee and Astro teammate Andy Pettitte, whom McNamee also dimed out in the Mitchell Report, decided honesty was the best policy and copped to using Human Growth Hormone to come back from an injury (whatever). Even more damaging is Clemens' admission that he let McNamee inject him with something - allegedly B12 and lidocaine, a painkiller - thus opening the door to one of those feeble Bonds-esque "I thought it was flax seed oil" defenses. Yet Hardin tries to contort McNamee's words into a near admission of guilt, taking his weasely attempts to duck responsibility for naming Clemens and attempting to bend them into some unspoken mea culpa. (Also note the "There is a 90-percent view of the people around Roger that (McNamee) was trying to set Roger up" part. One, this means that there is a 10-percent "view of the people around Roger" - grammar people! - that McNamee is not trying to set him up. So, Rocket, for future reference, watch your back. Two, one wonders how much objectivity that other 90% bring to the table. I mean, are his wife and kids counted in that number? This whole "people around Roger" business makes it seem like he either lives in a bubble of yes-men or he's in junior high. Anyway.)

To be fair to Roger, he's fucked eight ways to Sunday on this one. If he maintained his silence, he would have been lambasted for not taking the opportunity to try and clear his name. Having opened his mouth, he has to deal with the fact that nobody believes what he has to say, especially given the fact that McNamee was right about Pettitte. Furthermore, short of McNamee coming out and retracting his story, there's no way that Clemens can possibly prove that he didn't take steroids anymore than Saddam could have proved Iraq didn't have WMDs. The damage to his reputation is practically irreversible.

Yet...we really don't have any incentive to buy Clemens story, do we? After all, he fits the Barry Bonds profile: not only did Roger have a solid end to his career, he had a spectacular end to it. He was putting up sick numbers all the while McNamee alleges he was abusing steroids, from Toronto, to New York, to Houston, picking up Cy Young Awards four through seven along the way. In fact, Clemens was such a hot commodity as a power pitcher at age 44 that the Yankees brought him back for a staggering $28 million pro-rated deal, even allowing him the oft-mocked "Roger rules" whereby he would not have to travel with the team on road trips during which he was not scheduled to pitch - a perk sure to ruffle feathers in any clubhouse but previously inconceivable in Yankeeland. Furthermore, Clemens engaged in erratic behavior, throwing at opposing batters with regularity, even tossing a shard of broken bat at Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series.

Yes, all of this evidence is circumstantial; you could not meet the burden of proof require to obtain a conviction in a criminal court. Of course, Clemens isn't in court, and, provided that he doesn't get caught in a lie by federal prosecutors as Bonds allegedly did, it's unlikely that he will face legal jeopardy even if he did use steroids. But we're not really talking about putting Clemens in jail. What we're talking about is whether or not he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with the game's great pitchers - Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan, Walter Johnson, Warren Spahn et al., and more to the point, whether or not he deserves enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. Certainly his numbers demand induction - 354 wins, 4,672 strikeouts, and 7 Cy Youngs will do that for you. Thus the argument is centered around whether or not indications that Clemens cheated carry enough weight to make evitable the inevitability of his entry into Cooperstown.

The way I see it, being selected for inclusion in the Hall of Fame is an award, not a right. The baseball writers who have a vote must simply weigh in their minds whether or not they feel that the evidence surrounding Clemens is compelling enough for them to determine that he cheated. Some will, some won't; fine. What troubles me (though troubles may be to strong a word) is the mindset that perhaps the Clemenses and the Bondses of the world should be inducted even if we do think they cheated. This moral relativism cloaks a desire to slither out of making a difficult call, which, after all, the baseball writers are there to make Some commentators, like Bob Costas, have suggested that rather than exclude statistical worthies such Bonds, Clemens, and ye old test case Pete Rose, we ought to place a footnote on their plaques outlining the less than sterling aspects of their career - a kind of compromise that shames the player for his misdeeds while taking the heat off of the writers for shutting him out in the absence of, I don't know, a signed confession. This approach is certainly better than letting the writers - who feel no compunction about freezing statistical worthy Jim Rice out of the Hall because he wasn't nice to them during his playing days - wriggle out of having to apply any actual scrutiny or discretion to an era when, let's face it, they turned as much of a blind eye as anyone towards the chemistry experiment that unfolded right in front of them. Yet, come on: you're basically saying "Though we know they cheated to gain an unfair competitive advantage, we feel that their tainted achievements were so great that we have no choice but to include them in the Hall of Fame."

So yeah, Clemens presents a conundrum, even as he prepares for life "in the private sector." The road show will continue, with Clemens slated to appear before Congress to testify about steroids in baseball, or rather to articulate his complete lack of knowledge on the subject, him never having used steroids. Really, there's no telling how long all of this can go on for, though doubtlessly even as this first wave of furor subsides, the echoes will awaken as Roger approaches that magic date five years hence when he will appear on his first Hall of Fame ballot. I suspect that, in the absence of harder evidence than Brian McNamee's say-so, and with the passage of time, the writers will feel compelled to put Clemens in the Hall. And perhaps they would be right to do so; after all, mere suspicion is not going to be sufficient enough for the serious-minded to dismiss a career larded with outsized achievement. Yet nothing will ever totally expel the feeling that the Rocket got a leg up on everyone else by doing it the wrong way, and the more "genuine" he tries to appear in venting his frustration, the more his protestations seem contrived. After all, Clemens has one thing going against him that all the exculpatory evidence in the world can't change: he's a total dickhead.

And Justice For $59.50 Plus Service Charges If You Want Floor Seats

Ooogly

So I'm feeling all Rip Van Winkle here as I woke up and fucking Justice is headlining Madison Square Garden as part of some MySpace tour (whose line-up looks like Ed Banger label roster + Diplo but whatever). Justice! Justice who has literally three certified Harvey Wallbangers - four, if you can talk yourself into "Genesis" - and a buncha tracks that sounds mostly like a phonograph playing Ride the Lightning at half speed submerged in a bathtub full of gin. Now they are set to play The World's Most Highly Self-Regarding Arena, a place with 20,000 seats to fill on a bill who's other major draw is Diplo.

I looked at the rest of the tour, at least those dates Ticketmaster is handling, and see two ballrooms, the Palladium in Dallas and the Paradise in Boston. Now maybe there's some mistake here - I could buy The Theater at Madison Square Garden for Justice, Diplo et al. After all, that's where Air and Franz Ferdinand played when they headlined "the Garden." But those acts have shifted over a million units in America; Justice, according to yesterday's Billboard story, has moved 39,000 of †, meaning that more than half the people who bought the record in America would have to show up to sell the place out (granted there are other acts on the bill, illegal downloading, et cetera). Even Daft Punk, who presumably have more fans, have sold more records, hadn't toured America since forever, and came packing a fucking ill video pyramid played Coney Island's KeySpan Park, a venue with about half the Garden's capacity. Hell, while we're at it, even the Knicks can't sell out MSG anymore.

I'm guessing that LiveNation (promoting the show) and MySpace are on the hook here and that Justice is getting a decent guarantee no matter how the show sells. But still, who made this decision? I see that this is the second MySpace package tour, and that last year's emo-centric model was headlined by Say Anything and, uh, Hellogoodbye - I'm assuming a) that nobody had the balls to put that in the Garden and b) emo being just so gosh darned "of the moment" that at least Say Anything is out-SoundScanning Justice (and given the record-moving dent that DJ Mehdi and Chromeo have made, perhaps the entire lineup put together). Hey, if this show sells out, I'll eat my words, and possibly my hat as well. But as for all those kids out there eBaying the pre-sale password, just take my advice and save yourself the $5.

1999: The Movie

Ecstasy, beat-up cars with Christmas lights strung around the interior, pre-Cruise Katie Holmes, No Doubt on the soundtrack, maroon leather jackets, "from the director of Swingers", Sarah Polley of all people, a pre-Google un-Google-able title, hallucinatory dance sequences in supermarkets set to the Macarena, Fatboy Slim, a pre-Deadwood Timothy Olyphant as an arch-drug dealer in a Santa hat and sweatpants, automotive deus ex machina, non-linear storytelling w/ title cards, Breckin Fucking Meyer, going to Vegas, Tarantino diner scene centered around Tantra and socks with the elastic and the Family Fucking Circus sitting in the bottom right hand corner waiting to suck, a young Jay Mohr, a lot of pot (but that's pretty much timeless), "Steal My Sunshine", people having guns who oughtn't have guns, predictably bi-curious swinger cop and wife...or maybe not, oh so they are gay, missed connections pre-Craig's List, post-Tarantino (#2) quasi-hilarious meta violence, made the rent and everybody gets away clean in the end.

Really, it's PCU on drugs.

I've Got To Get One of Those Hott Nu Flying Video Cameras

Best Movies of 2007 (That I Saw)

I'd give it all back just for a crack at a spot on this list

This year the movies came covered in blood; apparently, last year was different somehow, though I'm still trying to blink the brain fragments out of my eyelids from Oscar winner The Departed's triage center finally. Here's ten flickers that made 2007 a great year to be a filmgoer. Transformers emphatically not included. Note: For those of you who have already read this, yes, I changed it around (slightly) already. Honesty is the best policy, as they say.

10. Charlie Wilson's War (dir. Mike Nichols)

An Aaron Sorkin movie all the way, Charlie Wilson's War glides where others would plod, condensing the story of America's surreptitious financing and arming of the Afghan mujahideen against the invading Soviet arming into a fleet-footed hour-and-a-half of boozing, womanizing quippery. Tom Hanks, as the inveterate congressman (having been appointed to the ethics committee to cover another member, Wilson notes that he's "on the other side of the issue"), proves yet again why he remains America's favorite movie star, transforming vices into virtues with a twinkle in his eye. An oddly timed picture, as it seems to lionize American interventionism at a time when it is most out of vogue; perhaps, though, it is comment about our flip attitude when it comes to mucking about in other parts of the world.

9. The Savages (dir. Tamara Jenkins)

They aren't savages exactly; brought together by their father's dementia, John and Wendy do what any of us presumably would - they deal with it. Thankfully writer/director Tamara Jenkins sees fit to skip the pop psychology - the dad was a miserable prick, we get it - and instead focus on the intense pull that family exerts even when the loosest of definitions is applied. Linney and Hoffman are magnificent, but at this point we wouldn't expect any less. Not the feel bad movie of the winter that you've been fearing.

8. Black Book (dir. Paul Verhoeven)

Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's milieu is shock: his three best known features in this country are Robocop, Basic Instinct, and Starship Troopers. Black Book, too, refuses to cater to standard notions of good taste, indulging in pulpy violence and white hot sexuality all while weaving a web of resistance intrigue. Verhoeven's movie is messily alive in all the ways that most "period" films seem hermetic, and all the more entertaining, and engrossing, for it.

7. Inland Empire (dir. David Lynch)

Personally, I think this film comments on the importance of monogamy and the surreality of cinema, but what the fuck do I know, there's a goddamned sitcom staring anthropomorphized rabbits dropped in halfway through. David Lynch has said that he likes to preserve a sense of mystery to his movies, but here there is more than a mere mystery - it's a morass. Laura Dern is "a woman in trouble" according to the poster, forced to act her way through the live-action equivalent of "Duck Amuck". There is the avant-garde, and then there is whatever Mr. Lynch is up to.

6. Superbad (dir. Greg Mottola)

If you had loser friends and were ever in high school, this movie is basically your fantasy. Perhaps the best film yet loosed upon audiences by the omnipresent Apatow hit factory, Superbad is crass and affectionate in equal measure, refusing to descend into cartoonish shorthand, a la American Pie a decade earlier. Riotous; check Seth Rogen and Bill Hader as Keystone Kops wrecking their cruiser to the strains of Van Halen's epic "Panama."

5. Eastern Promises (dir. David Cronenberg)

Eastern Promises is of a piece with Cronenberg's late (or mid?) career renaissance. His stylized ultraviolence has been placed with a nauseating realism, but he has turned away from the conceptualism of 2005's A History of Violence, instead spinning a simple yarn about an English nurse and a Russian gangster struggling to protect an abandoned child that also turns out to be a damning piece of evidence. The kind of film that connects the criminal underworld with the mythical Underworld, shut out completely from the daylight.

4. No Country For Old Men (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

If it really were about a man on the run with $2 million and the psychopath hot on his trail, it would still be a great movie; perhaps, even, a greater one, at least in the eyes of its intended audience. But No Country For Old Men is far more than a potboiler: it is an unsparing meditation on the inexorable nature (and intertwining) of violence and fate. Who lives and dies seems less a function of preordained storytelling and more and more like a flip of a coin.

3. Zodiac (dir. David Fincher)

Zodiac has often been referred to as a "procedural," and that it is: we follow our principles - Jake Gylenhall, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey, Jr. - down the rabbit hole of poison pen letters, anonymous phone calls, even hand-lettered movie posters - a never-ending series of blind alleys in pursuit of northern California's infamous Zodiac killer. David Fincher returns here with a subtler flourish, mostly eschewing the digitally-enhanced camera trickery of previous efforts Fight Club and Panic Room for shots that take you deeper into the story instead of distracting you from it. In the end the movie makes its stab at the Zodiac's true identity, but in truth the murderer is more construct that actual human being - an object of obsession.

2. Control (dir. Anton Corbijn)

Here are the young men: three would go on to form New Order, one of the most artistically and commercially successful bands of the 1980s; the other hanged himself at the age of 23, leaving behind a wife and daughter. Together, for a brief time, they were Joy Division. Director Anton Corbijn doesn't make his personal connection to the story explicit - he emigrated to England from Holland, drawn by the band's music - but his photographs form a seminal part of Joy Division's posthumous iconography, and rather than distancing them from their legend, he frames them in it. Control is an act of love, simultaneously a telling of Ian Curtis' story through the prism of his art and an appreciation of it.

1. There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

A week removed I still consider this a modern American masterpiece; perhaps the impression the movie made in my mind is greater than the film itself. Is it P.T. Anderson's Citizen Kane? Such a sentiment is reductive, I think, condescending to Anderson, who has created something profoundly original here - a vision of the black entrepreneurial heart that built this country atop the slag heap of its bastard ideals. Daniel Day-Lewis wears the facts on his face: we have no need to see the common man beneath his jackboot of treachery and exploitation. There is no God but money, and this is His gospel.

Honorable mentions: I'm Not There (dir. Todd Haynes), The Lives of Others (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (dir. Ken Loach), The Simpsons Movie (dir. David Goldman), Rescue Dawn (dir. Werner Herzog), Hot Fuzz (dir. Edgar Wright)

Bowling

New Year's Day in America is typically reserved for three things: hangovers, local government reorganizations, and college football bowl games. All three traditions are deeply ingrained in our society, though the first two have fallen somewhat out of fashion, at least in terms of public esteem - getting shitfaced and voting no longer being haute rigeur, even if both continue on in somewhat furtive fashion. College bowl season, however, is still something we are (somewhat) happily force-fed by an unholy union of sports media with little else in the way of meaningful holiday season content, corporate conglomerates that have staked millions in sponsorship lucre on the value of being associated with some good ole Mom-and-Apple Pie Americana, and the NCAA, whose member schools rake in mega bucks from the 30+ "bowls" played between the Poinsettia on Dec. 20 and the BCS Championship on Jan. 7.

Oh yes, though bowl games might traditionally be associated with Jan. 1, relatively few are actually played on New Year's - a handful of stalwarts known by their sponsor-less names: the (AT&T) Cotton, the (Allstate) Sugar, the (Konica Minolta) Gator, the Rose (tastefully presented by Citi). The Outback and the Capital One Bowls have altogether surrendered any pretensions to being anything more than 3 and 1/2 hour commercials for their title sponsors. Five more bowl games remain yet to be played: three Bowl Championship Series-affiliated games (the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the FedEx Orange Bowl, and the Allstate BCS National Championship Game) and two less illustrious match-ups (the Rutgers-infused, tellingly-sponsor-less International Bowl, and the GMAC Bowl). The remainder of the games were already pumpkins by the time midnight struck on the 31st, a hodgepodge of "championships" that presented us with such stellar contests as 6-6 Alabama vs. 6-6 Colorado (the PetroSun Independence Bowl), 6-6 Nevada vs. 8-4 New Mexico (the...New Mexico Bowl), and 7-5 Georgia Tech vs. 8-4 Fresno State (the Roady's Humanitarian Bowl). Basically, if you were .500 and had a fanbase that was at all ambulatory (and could conceivably get worked up over the Cowpat Tulip Bowl title), you were going bowling.

As for the quote-unquote "real" games, yesterday's action gave you three duds and one pretty decent game, provided that you cared one lick about whether or not Lloyd Carr could end Michigan's bowl-skid against a marquee opponents, the Florida Gators. He did, with embattled UM QB Chad Henne outplaying Heisman-winning counterpart Tim Tebow to spirit the Wolverines to a 41-35 victory in the Capital One Bowl. (I'm excluding the Gator Bowl, in which Texas Tech racked up 17 points in the final four minutes, including a last-second field goal, to come from behind to clip Virginia 31-28, because no one who didn't go to either school could conceivably give a good goddamn about it.)

The Rose Bowl, grand old dame of the bowl scene, elected to persevere with her traditional Pac 10 vs. Big Ten match-up, precluding the possibility of an interesting game, like Georgia vs. USC. Since Big Ten champ Ohio State was already spoken for by the BCS title game, the Rose Bowl settled for runner-up Illinois, who had turned things around with a not-exactly-imagination grabbing 9-3 season. USC promptly set about torching the waaaay overmatched Illini 49-17. thus insuring that America could switch over to the Honeymooners marathon at half-time, guilt-free.

The day's other BCS-affiliated game was another laugh-gasm, with the Georgia Bulldogs emphatically deflowering Hawaii's perfect season with a 41-10 beatdown in the Sugar Bowl. Last year, Boise State, another WAC (Western Athletic Conference) team, pulled off a massive upset of Big 12 superpower Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, prompting murmurs that perhaps the big conference-"mid-major" conference divide had finally been bridged. Hawaii, emerging from said WAC undefeated and with a circus-style offense led by Heisman candidate Colt Brennan, had entertained national title game aspirations (not unreasonably, as virtually every "qualified" team in the nation has slipped on two or three banana peels this season); in the end though, they looked happy to be staying in New Orleans, getting free iPods and watches or whatever swag Allstate coughed up, and playing on New Year's in a nationally-televised honest-to-God BCS game. Georgia, not merely happy to be in the Sugar Bowl, and not eager to be this year's Oklahoma, took Brennan and Hawaii into the alley and mugged the Rainbow Warriors, thus preserving the SEC's self-image as the only real superpower conference in college football.

Finally, an old standby, the un-BCS affiliated Cotton Bowl: Missouri vs. Arkansas. The Cotton presented an interesting match-up: Missouri was at one point the no. 1 team in the land, yakking away a shot at the national title by losing to Oklahoma a second time in the Big Twelve championship a mere week after dethroning undefeated Kansas (the Jayhawks inexplicably got a BCS invite to the Orange Bowl out of the whole deal); Arkansas defeated BCS title game participant LSU in the final game of the regular season in a stunning-OT upset (LSU benefited from Missouri's subsequent defeat, as well as West Virginia's brain-fart at home against a hapless Pitt squad). Missouri was arguably the more aggrieved party of the two, and played like it, hammering Arkansas 38-7. Undoubtedly this performance will hold them in good stead with the AP voters, whose poll is unaffiliated with the BCS system; the BCS having produced a turkey of a title game this year (LSU with two losses, and a one-loss Ohio State team from a weak Big Ten) leaves an opening for the AP to split the crown, as they did in '04 by anointing USC over BCS champ LSU.

Indeed, a number of teams will be hoping for the AP to play spoiler: along with Missouri, USC and Georgia have credible pretensions to the number 1 ranking; USC and Missouri if LSU wins, and Georgia if Ohio State proves victorious. Indeed, there are a riot of scenarios, dependent upon the outcomes of the remaining two BCS games (Oklahoma vs. West Virginia tonight in the Fiesta, and Kansas vs. Virginia Tech tomorrow in the Orange) and the circumstances/margin of victory in the BCS title game, that could justify a number 1 vote for a plethora of one and two loss teams: the aforementioned USC, Missouri, and Georgia joined by Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kansas could all make reasonable cases, given favorable circumstances. Certainly, a definitive smack down by either LSU or Ohio State would give either team an almost-insuperable edge with all but the most intransigent AP voters. Yet a "blooper bowl" scenario (dud game, sloppy play, low score) could sufficiently scramble the picture to produce co-champions and controversy.

So, among the things we've learned:

• It's time for a playoff system: there's no reason the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly 1-A) can't follow the template of the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly 1-AA) and adopt an seeded tournament. An eight or sixteen team field could be created, and the bowl framework could be co-opted: the more games played, the more lucrative sponsorship opportunities, and the greater opportunity for mid and low-tier bowls to move up a notch in relevance. Frankly, though purists and traditionalists argue that bowl culture and the attendant rah-rah pomp and circumstance is a central part of major college football, it's hard to see the rational behind such soulless abominations...er, celebrations of spirit and competition as the Chick-Fil-A Bowl or the Brut Sun Bowl; if anything, the existence of the One-Bowl-to-Rule-Them-All BCS championship game obviates all the other games, including those with reasonably storied traditions. A playoff could preserve and expand upon their relevance (and worth). The three remaining counterarguments to a playoff also ring hollow: academics-wise, big-time football programs boast horrific graduation rates already; big football schools have rabid followings that will gladly turn up in force to see one or two additional meaningful games per year; time-wise, the NCAA Men's Baskeball Tournament takes place over the course of a month - there's no reason a football tournament couldn't occur within the same time frame. All in all, I imagine a playoff system will eventually be implemented with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, only to take on a "why didn't we think of this before?" cast as the cash rolls in and the problems predicted by doomsayers fail to materialize.
• Fox Sports is ill-equipped to broadcast BCS games. The network presently holds the contract to show the Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar Bowls, plus the BCS National Championship game (the Rose Bowl is currently under contract with ABC); to my knowledge, it broadcasts no other college football games during the year save the Cotton Bowl. This disconnect manifests itself in Fox's production values, which seem cobbled together from its ongoing experiences as a chief broadcasting partner of the NFL and Major League Baseball. The leaden, Bruckheimer-esque flourishes might be fitting for professional gladiatorial competition, but they create a sepulcherial atmosphere around college football, bleaching out any semblance of an amateur spirit or campus vibe. Rather than show actual real-life marching bands, cheerleaders, or fans, Fox opens with a computer animation of creepily doll-like blank faced facsimiles shambling towards an Albert Speer-influenced set of arches, hoping to claim some hideous bauble that, I suppose, passes for a trophy (one wonders if this is not intended as a subtly incisive critique of America's institutions of higher education - just replace the tchochke with a mid-five figure salary and a condominium). Contrast this with ESPN's Game Day, which, though in and of itself is also a soulless corporate money-sucking enterprise, at least plays its role in the farce that is college athletics with aplomb, visiting campuses, highlighting genuine student-fans, and donning absurd mascot gear. ESPN understands that atmosphere and sentiment are what separates college football from just being the NFL's farm system; Fox dispenses with that illusion entirely, conducting a show with all the charm of a paid-programming gambling tips hot-line infomercial.
• On a related note, how ridiculous was that Colt Brennan apologia segment? Set to the strains of some overblown instrumental pomp undoubtedly lifted straight from the Armageddon soundtrack (I half-expected Colt to don a space helmet halfway through), the piece consisted of the UH quarterback pacing around some pictureseque Hawaiian rain forest, while in voice-over performing a half-assed act of contrition over a 2004 incident when, while enrolled at Colorado, he allegedly broke into a female student's room, exposing himself and fondling her; Brennan eventually pleaded guilty to burglary and trespassing, with a conviction for unlawful sexual contact vacated for lack of evidence. Of course, the mea culpa was conducted in the most ambiguous terms - I had to look on Wikipedia to find out what he actually did. Such patent insincerity begs the question of why Fox felt the need to do the featurette in the first place; I guess a) they had time they needed to fill in order to justify the extravagance of a 45 minute pregame for the basically meaningless Sugar Bowl, and b) a prior sexual assault rap passes for a "challenge" to be "overcome" nowadays. Anyway, Georgia's defense spent most of the game breaking through Brennan's offensive line and assaulting him, so justice was, in a sense, served.
• Boise State's miraculous victory last year notwithstanding, a tangible gulf between the BCS conferences (the Big East, Big Ten, ACC, SEC, Big Twelve, and Pac-10) and the non-BCS conferences remains. Hawaii went 12-0 in the regular season playing in the WAC, besting along the way Louisiana Tech, San Jose State, Fresno State, the aforementioned Boise State, hanging on 35-28 in a big non-conference finale against the Washington Huskies. Upon encountering an actual upper echelon team, Hawaii became smudge on Georgia's windshield. In a way, the BCS was done both a disservice and a huge favor by the Rose Bowl. Sure, as I mentioned, the USC-Georgia pairing would have been a better game, but Illinois-Hawaii would also have worked out as well, giving both those feel-good teams a fair crack at a BCS win. The downside would have been that, if Hawaii won, and the BCS title game turned out to be a dog, a fair amount of controversy could have erupted over whether or not the nation's only undefeated team, sitting at 13-0 after winning a BCS bowl, deserved to be considered a true no. 1. Hawaii, having turned out to be a dog against the Dawgs, expertly defused that potential cherry bomb.
  

"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed."

Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece. I cannot recall the last time I left a movie theater so certain that I had seen a true work of art; I cannot remember the last film I saw that displayed such audacious ambitions and the means to fulfill them. Certainly the triumph belongs to Mr. Anderson, who wrote and directed the film, and has finally realized his true potential, but perhaps even more so to its star, Daniel Day-Lewis, who, more than merely inhabiting oil man Daniel Plainview, seems to summon him forth; I do not know how such a raw evocation of rage, passion, and violence can simply be considered acting. Obviously, if I proceed in this vein I will quickly exhaust all of my superlatives: for as laudatory a review as I could possibly conjure, and far more eloquently accomplished, I refer you to Manohla Dargis's write-up in the New York Times.

Some stray thoughts:

- Much has been made of There Will Be Blood's thematic connections, especially to Citizen Kane, an obvious antecedent. However, little has been mentioned with regards to the film's stylistic influences. Strangely enough, the feel of the movie reminded me of nothing so much as the psychological horror films of the late '60s and early '70s, especially Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, William Friedkin's The Exorcist, and Richard Donner's The Omen, all of which trafficked heavily in the atmospherics but doled out the scares rather sparingly (especially when compared with today's buckets of blood rape fantasies). Certainly Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood's outstanding score, all dischordant strings and rampaging percussion, plays no small part in this, evoking an undertow of existential dread throughout. Yet even the very composition of the images seems somehow indebted to these films: faces half cloaked in shadow and bathed in firelight, sinister religious iconography, Plainview's son H.W.'s attire - just check out the trailer and you'll see what I mean.

- About the ending, which has, in particular, been seized upon by many critics as the film's Achilles' heel. David Denby, capping an otherwise rave review in The New Yorker, said:

The scene is a mistake, but I think I know why it happened. Anderson started out as an independent filmmaker, with “Hard Eight” (1996) and “Boogie Nights” (1997). In “Blood,” he has taken on central American themes and established a style of prodigious grandeur. Yet some part of him must have rebelled against canonization. The last scene is a blast of defiance—or perhaps of despair. But, like almost everything else in the movie, it’s astonishing.

Without spoiling the film for you, I would just note that the film is called There Will Be Blood, not There Might Be Blood. Yes, the finale approaches the Grand Guignol in terms of staginess, and to some extent, gore. But after watching two and half hours of a man as bottled tightly against the obviously ruthless impulses that throb just beneath his surface, is it so unreasonable to expect an explosion? Is it "over the top," as Denby has it? Only, I suppose, if you believe that Daniel Day-Lewis' Plainview has a top to go over, or a bottom, for that matter.

Dysfunction Junction

Some thoughts on The Savages:

Indie movie checklist:

• Philip Seymour Hoffman (check)
• Laura Linney (check)
• main characters with professions that no real human being has but appeal to upwardly-mobile yupster indie movie audience types (theatre professor and aspiring playwright, repsectively) (check)
  
• familial obligation pulling dysfuctional family back together to contemplate meaning of family/relationships to each other (check)
• Kinks song on soundtrack (check)
• Offbeat locations (Sun City, Arizona and Buffalo, NY) (Check)
  
• Indie-rific cartoon iconography (check)
• Cute offbeat animal scene (check)
  

I saw this movie at 4:10 pm on a Thursday in Chatham, New Jersey, which put me at about 20 years junior to the next youngest audience member. I have to wonder what the elderly think about representations of senior citizens that are a) clearly designed for the amusement of us younger folks - old people dancing in sparkling Busby Berkeley-type outfits, riding on bicycles built for two, getting their nails done whilst catatonic (though, to be fair, the movie resists the temptation to play dementia for heartwarming laughs or sentimental kindling), or b) show the end of life in graphic detail. Basically, if you were 75 and with it, how would you feel about scenes of your septuagenarian peers fouling themselves or playing around with their feces? Is it like a sneak preview of a living hell? Is there some kind of elaborate subconscious process of dissociation? Are seniors so accustomed to watching friends and loved ones go down that very same road that it's like water off a duck's back? Weird.

P.S. I suppose I should say that I liked the The Savages a great deal, though "enjoyed" may be too strong a word, given the subject matter. The movie has been pitched as a kind of dark comedy, which it isn't, though I think the marketing has been designed to get asses into the seats in anticipation that "two siblings deal with end-of-life care for estranged father" might not exactly be a tempting enough inducement. However it's never depressing or heavy handed; even the budget nursing home Linney and Hoffman choose for their father is, though obviously far from luxuriant, not drearily antiseptic. As for the acting, both stars are excellent, though I feel that Linney has been given more of the load to shoulder, standing in as a proxy for writer-director Tamara Jenkins; Hoffman, who has received more of the laurels, turns in a fine performance as well, playing an unsleazy version of his "Mattress King" character from Punch Drunk Love. It's a shame to say, but The Savages is precisely the type of muted, small-scale effort that racks up a couple of nominations and critcs' awards, but gets lost among the more biff-pow Oscar-season fare, like Charlie Wilson's War, Sweeney Todd, and There Will Be Blood. It doesn't deserve to be. Bucks are limited; at least check it out when it arrives on DVD.

Death Worse Than Fate

The premise of the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men is simple: man (Lewellyn Moss, a cowboy played with industrious quietude by Josh Brolin) stumbles upon a drug deal-cum-grisly shootout ex post facto, recovering a case containing $2 million; parties to whom we are meant to believe the case rightfully (or wrongfully) belongs set out after him. Chief among these pursuers is Anton Chigurh, a psychotic obelisk equipped with a cattle stun gun and played by a haircut posing as as Javier Bardem. Not since The Terminator have filmgoers been presented with a killer so singular of purpose, so intractable, as to seem more an Act of God than a three dimensional human being. Figuring as the final leg in this triathlon of pursuit is Tommy Lee Jones as a third generation sheriff on his last legs, outpaced by the sheer volume of blood spilt before him.

For its first two acts, the film slots nicely into the kind of quirkified noir that the Coens have perfected in Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, and Fargo (and on the lighter side of things, some might say, The Big Lebowski). It's their first adaptation, based upon the novel of the same title by Cormac McCarthy (who's having a big year; his latest work, The Road, won the Pulitzer for fiction). No Country's literary provenance shows through in its final third, after the shooting (or most of it, at least) ends, when the film becomes a philosophical meditation on fate - almost like a blood-soaked Magnolia.

Audiences anticipating an ultraviolent neo-western road movie - which, to be fair, is pretty much what the film's trailer promises - will doubtlessly be disappointed; such was clearly the reaction amongst the crowd I saw the movie with. No Country For Old Men is a movie without a climax, or rather a film with many climaxes which never leads to the satisfactory final showdown we have been conditioned to expect. This seems to be the point: that violence is the apogee of senselessness even when its purpose is clear, an act bigger than those victimized by it or those who perpetrate it. Twice in the film Chigurh presents his quarry with the option of calling a coin flip heads or tails, with their life the wager - a gesture which at first suggests a sadistic ambivalence, but in a larger sense, is a microcosm of the intricate workings of fate that brought he and his prey together in the first instance. That kind of fate is inexorable: you can't stop it with a heroic bullet to the head, no matter how well deserved. To say that such a nihilistic battleground is no place for old men might be an understatement.

American Pastoral

Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven begins in an early 20th century Chicago represented, in triptych, as a trash-strewn ruin, an industrial Gehenna, and a Gordian knot of railroad ties before the action shifts to the West Texas panhandle: an ocean of wheat, light and space dotted only by a single, severe house, a constricted absurdity rising in defiance of the surrounding void. This new setting suggests an Eden reconceived as a rural American idyll; such a Biblical allusion would be of a piece with the film's two central motifs, wrath and flight. Bill, a steelworker played with vacant rebelliousness by Richard Gere, accidently kills his supervisor in a fit of rage, forcing him to flee the city with his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and little sister Linda (Linda Manz) in tow. Working the wheat harvest of a wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard), Bill and Abby - who have posed throughout as brother and sister to protect themselves against accusations of impropriety - decide to exploit the farmer's attentions towards her by having her accept his proposal of marriage. The plan has been hatched on the belief that the farmer (he is unnamed in the film) hasn't long to live; when he fails to expire or show any recognizable signs of deterioration, awkwardness transfigures into claustrophobia and suspicion. Bill and Abby's masquerade wears thin, and the farmer slowly uncovers their subterfuge. He confronts Bill, who flies off with a visiting aerial circus, and during Bill's absence cements his marriage to Abby; Bill's return at the start of the harvest - we never learn his whereabouts during his months-long absence - is accompanied by a devastating plague of locusts. Another Biblical allusion. More destruction; more death; more running.

The very title Days of Heaven refers to our infinite, self-defeating capacity to cast ourselves out of paradise should we ever find ourselves in it. Bill and Abby, finding themselves in secure material circumstances for the first time in their lives, cannot suppress their love for one another, the price of said security. Yet never do we, the audience, feel that they are trading a lesser happiness for a greater one, as is the custom in these types of fables. Rather we see only the paradise lost, a land of constant twilight traded in for a compromised existence; not the greater of two happinesses, but no happiness at all. Even in death, we do not, as is again so often the case, feel as though at least love in principle has triumphed. Instead there is a profound sense of inevitability as the film draws to a close, an epilogue consumed with yet more scenes of flight. This time a great wandering, but paradise no more.

The Re-Up

Get familiar

HBO's The Wire returns for its fifth and final season on January 6th. I've said enough about the show here, so I just would like to take the opportunity to encourage those of you with access to HBO to watch before it, like all other good things, comes to an end. One reason, at least, to look forward to 2008.

Unfinished Business

Videogames and rappers: like peanut butter and kung fu

Post-list pre-2008:

Wu Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams (SRC/Universal Motown)
Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals (We Are Free)
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera (Domino)
Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of Decline (Kranky)
King Khan & the Shrines - What Is?! (Hazelwood)
Dinosaur Jr - Beyond (Fat Possum)
Sir Richard Bishop - Polytheistic Fragments (Drag City)
Black Dice - Loaded (Paw Tracks)
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha (Fat Possum)
PJ Harvey - White Chalk (Island)
DJ/Rupture vs. Filastine - Shotgun Wedding Vol. 6 (Violent Turd)
Chromatics - Night Drive (Italians Do It Better)

Pre-2007:

Fugazi - Repeater + 3 Songs (Dischord)
Neil Young - Live Rust (Reprise)
Ghostface Killah - More Fish (Def Jam)
Steely Dan - Gaucho (MCA)
Sly and the Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On (Epic/Legacy)
Roxy Music - Roxy Music (Virgin)
Roxy Music - Stranded (Virgin)
Pylon - Gyrate Plus (DFA)
Portishead - Dummy (Go!/London)
Massive Attack - Mezzanine (Virgin)
Meat Puppets - II (SST/Ryko)
The Clash - Sandinista! (CBS/Epic)
Depeche Mode - Violator (Mute/Sire)
Chuck Berry - The Great Twenty-Eight (MCA)
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk (Warner Bros.)
V/A - Idol Tryouts Two (Ghostly International)
Burial - Burial (Hypedub)

Breathless, A Film By Jean-Luc Godard

Seen from the front, the packaging for the Criterion Collection edition of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (À bout de souffle) is rather spartan. Unlike most other Criterion boxes, there is no still from the film, nor any other graphic representation of the contents therein, just "Breathless, a film by Jean-Luc Godard": a simple fact stated simply.

And Breathless is a simple film in many respects: shot in black and white on a low budget with a tiny cast and crew, the movie is a compact yarn about a small-time Parisian hood who shoots a cop, sequesters himself with an American girl while he ducks the police, and gets gunned down by the gendarmes when she turns him in. It's an archetype owing most to Dillinger, whose girlfriend sold him out to the G-men who would gun him down in an alley next to Chicago's Biograph movie theater; the young Godard, who had been a critic for Cahiers du cinema, dedicated Breathless to Monogram Pictures, an American studio known for knocking out gangster B-pictures, including a 1945 version of Dillinger.

Yet saying Breathless is a gangster picture is like saying that David Lynch's Blue Velvet is a murder mystery. Before Breathless, movies were vehicles that took audiences from point A to point B, playing by a certain set of rules. Breathless, on the other hand, treats its plot with a kind of ambivalence, moving from point to point as if keeping an appointment. Fully a third of the film takes place in Patricia's (Jean Seberg) bedroom as Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) tries to bed her - a digression that does nothing to move the film "forward." Furthermore, the actors look and behave as if they belong in a movie: Belmondo with his too-large tweed jacket and insectile sunglasses exuding a cynicism and diffidence well in advance of his too-few years; Seberg with her movie star posturing, her youthful indifference to being wrapped up with a murderer - indeed, when she turns Belmondo's character in, she does so not because she is wracked with guilt or afraid of any consequences, but simply because it is what her character is expected to do.

Godard has claimed time and again that his intention was to make a genre picture, and in doing so, bend it to his own intellectual and theoretical purposes, explicitly building off of a preexisting cinematic language. In that sense, it can be said that Breathless is a movie of a movie; in an interview with Cahiers du cinema, Godard himself admitted that Belmondo's character dies at the end of the film because his "avowed ambition was to make an ordinary gangster film" and therefore, he "had no business deliberately contradicting the genre." This supreme self-awareness is both an act of reverence and of deconstruction; a contradiction that gets to the very root of why a film such as Breathless endures while those that inspired it have faded into obscurity. Speaking of himself and his colleagues in the New Wave, Godard said, "When we were at last able to make films, we could no longer make the kind of films that made us want to make films." In making Breathless, he exposed the fallacy of trying to do so.