Movies September 2010

30 Rock
Watched a lot of scattered episodes this month from all three seasons, thanks to Netflix on demand. This show is so weird and funny and wonderful, and Netflix tells me it is going away from on-demand at the end of the month. I'm a little asea at the thought of it.

Yojimbo
Had a Kurosawa day this month. I think I had seen Yojimbo before, but I didn't absorb it like I did this time. Seems like the first time I watched, it late at night, and slept through some of it. That seems to happen to me a lot. Anyway -- great movie. I recommend it, awake OR asleep.

Sanjuro
I watched this a few years ago, thinking it was Yojimbo and not understanding it. I read up on Akira Kurosawa's career after this viewing, and discovered that this was a script he had already written, but adapted to put Sanjuro in after Yojimbo was a big success. That makes sense to me, because Sanjuro feels like a different kind of movie, more of a caper flick than the wily anti-heroism of Yojimbo.

Jericho, season 1, disc 2
The compelling:annoying ratio drops on this disc as compared to previous efforts. But we'll keep watching, probably.

Popotan
A short anime series about three girls who live in a teleporting house for some reason? And every episode, they find some way to show a girl's naked anime boobs. The primary compulsion to keep watching is the mystery of why these women live in a teleporting house, but I'm probably not going to finish watching before I just look on the Internet and find the conclusion to the story myself.

The Girl from Monday
The Internet suggests that director Hal Hartley is an indie movie bigshot. This near future sci-fi dystopia ditty is maybe sort of a misfire. Sabrina Lloyd is pretty though.

Iron Man
What a fun superhero movie. Just a lot of fun.

Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman
Not a Timm/Dini/Radomski Batman story, and it shows.

Aliens in rhythmic retrospection

This is a 10-minute encapsulation of why James Cameron has been capable of making great movies, even if Avatar wasn't all that hot.

Even 25 years later, Aliens remains fantastic. It looks a little dated now, but the emotional sting of this movie is as sharp as it ever was -- thrilling and scary. The principals don't do stupid things to create tension, and the machinations are logical and intertwine to create an excellent story.

This novelty rap about the whole thing only highlights these truths.



Thanks to boingboing for the heads-up!

New NPR shows

Thanks to a successful fall fund-raising drive, NPR will be featuring some brand new shows this winter:

• I Concur
• Quiet Sorts
  
• Movies on Radio
• Apply Liberally
• On Further Consideration (spin-off)
• Listening to the Listeners
• One Would Think That
• Barely Distinguishable Accents
• Pun With Sounds
• Marketplacebo (spin-off)
  
• Sincere Pretensions

Jim Cramer on Jon Stewart

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart is typically acerbic in his segments, but gentle in interviews. This is because the guy is genuinely uncomfortable with conflict. You would think this a strange trait for a man who professionally mocks powers and principalities.

But nobody ever got funny by being good at confrontation. You get funny by thinking around things, not through them. Listen to Stewart talk about himself; you consistently hear him mention discomfort at creating or withstanding awkwardness. Certain issues get Stewart to come out of his congenial motley though.

What got us here: Stewart recently did a segment on CNBC show hosts making bad calls on investment, mocking their self-proclaimed expertise. Standard, cutting Daily Show fare, which the powerful and noteworthy routinely ignore four days a week. Jim Cramer, one of several skewerees, took particular umbrage at this and (no doubt backed by the network) began an NBC tour of programs defending himself.

Of course, this peacock display prompted an invitation to appear on The Daily Show. The segment that appeared on the show yesterday was 3 minutes. Forget that.

Instead, view this unedited version, about 25 minutes total, and watch a man held to the fire from the knees down.

Having swum in the American TV journalism pool for so long, I'm used to interviewers playing catch and release. They ask a pointed question, the savvy interviewee deflects it, and because there are only 3 minutes allotted to this segment, everyone moves on. (For that reason alone, I have virtually no use for television journalism.)

I'm amazed at how this fails to happen here. Every time a normal TV interviewer would be done, Stewart keeps going. He has not just a tenacity, but a clarity of thinking that refuses to be sidelined by mealy-mouthed interview subjects.

Stewart is tricky, because he jumps around a lot in the interview. But his thrust is: As a member of the media, you have a responsibility to promote truth. You may not be complicit with the corrupt and powerful.

Cramer behaves in a chastised manner, but see, the guy's on TV in his normal TV costume.* ("My sleeves are rolled up really high, because I'm ready to WORK!") By the end of the interview, when they're both making their preparatory closing remarks, it strikes me that Cramer hasn't even fingered, much less grasped, Stewart's point.

So we don't get reform in the media. The best we get is a vision that this is how somebody should be doing journalism.

===

I've started to think of The Daily Show as the 5th estate, our current best answer to Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? He is the feudal-era jester, the guy who hung around important people and pointed out their flaws with a yuk and remained untouchable for it.

Therefore, it is wrong to call Stewart a journalist. As he himself will remind you (and as Cramer repeatedly crowed in the beginning stages of this dust-up), he's a comedian. But in the process of satire, he does journalist work. This is the distinction that people fail to make, and it's why young people and stoners (and some other notable demographics) love him like a folk hero. He's whipsmart funny. But if more journalists were doing journalist work, The Daily Show would be a footnote, not a keynote.

Link to full, uncut interview


* Compare his TV costume to the polo he's wearing in the clips Stewart runs -- watch how his persona is different out of his work clothes.

Ka-Zing!

Iran is enriching uranium, and I'm frankly surprised the current administration is so unhappy about it. Isn't enrichment at other countries' expense an American pasttime?