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Movie: The Expendables

Andrew Klavan — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:30:58 +0000

After I saw this Sylvester Stallone actioner, I joked to Big Hollywood’s John Nolte that I was rearranging my movie list to read:

Casablanca
Gone With The Wind
The Expendables
The Third Man
The Godfather

And okay, it’s not that good, but I had such a good time watching it that it sort of felt like it was for a while. As far as I could make out, the plot, if that’s the word I want, is the same as The Losers but the fun here comes from watching the cast of somehow-not-over-the-hill action guys haul their butts out of the weight room for one last blow-out against the bad guys. Gratuitous scene bringing Stallone together for the only time with Governor Ahnud and Bruce Willis included. And, as always, Jason Statham is great.

The LA Times is Next!

Apparently, girly-man leftist critics, chafing at the movie’s box office success, accused Stallone of being too patriotic. Yeah, and I bet he’s faithful to his wife and says his prayers too, the bastard! But you know what: the reason the film succeeds so well is because Stallone, who also directed, understands what action pictures are really about: namely, manhood – namely, the masculine imperatives to defend the girl, get the job done and be loyal to your buddies. Sly does it all here and while Eat, Pray, Love tanked, Hurt, Maim, Kill – aka The Expendables – cleaned up as it richly deserved.

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Novel: “Prince of Thieves” (aka The Town)

Andrew Klavan — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:27:28 +0000

Whenever I see an interesting trailer for a film based on a novel, I like to read the book before the movie comes out – because I generally enjoy novels more than films. The last time I did this was with Shutter Island, and man oh man, I was glad I did because the book was unpretentious fun while the movie was an overblown bore.

So I’ve really been liking the trailers for The Town, an upcoming film written, directed by and starring Ben Affleck. It’s based on a novel by Chuck Hogan called Prince of Thieves. Masked bank robber takes a girl hostage, then comes back into her life and falls in love with her without telling her who he is.

Listen. This is a knock-out book. Really. If you like crime fiction, or any fiction, buy this, read it. It’s a beauty. Great prose – terrific prose. Good characters, expertly drawn. Powerful plot. Just all around top-notch stuff. I’d put it with The Secret History, A Simple Plan and The Ice Harvest as being among the best recent crime novels that for some inexplicable reason were not written by me.

I look forward to the movie too. Laugh if you will, but I think Affleck is a really talented guy who sort of short-circuited his career with bad onscreen choices and off-screen silliness. He did a good job directing Gone, Baby, Gone and I’ve never forgotten his wonderfully charismatic performance in one of my favorite movies Shakespeare in Love. He’s perfect for the lead in this and I’m eager to see it. But I’m telling you: read the book first.

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Movie: Winter’s Bone

Andrew Klavan — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:47:16 +0000

This won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival – and yeah, I’ll add my vote as well.

Since I grouse a lot about heroines doing things in movies that women generally can’t do, it’s a genuine pleasure to be able to report on a film with a realistic heroine you can actually cheer for. What Winter’s Bone is, in fact, is a tough guy detective story in which the tough guy happens to be a 17-year-old Ozark Mountain girl stuck taking care of her siblings and crazy mom. The detective’s case: she has to find her missing father because he’s put their house up as bail and her family will be homeless if he skips. If you imagine the girl as Philip Marlowe, you’ll see what I mean about the standard detective story plot unspooling scene for scene. But it’s rendered fresh and thoroughly involving by its hillbilly characters and locale.

The cast (some of them actually Ozark locals) is good enough, but the real star of the show is indie director Debra Granik, plus her screenwriting partner Anne Rosellini, plus, for all I know, Daniel Woodrell, the guy who wrote the novel it’s based on but which I haven’t read. It’s the storytelling, in other words, that compels you. It’s very cooly constructed and completely gripping. I had a grouse about the climax in which the heroine suddenly becomes a bit of a passive player, but all in all, this is a powerful, original and moving crime story; my sort of thing. Wish there were more like it.

And with that, I’m taking off on vacation until after Labor Day. I’ve set this blogging gizmo to put up a fresh Klavan on the Culture every day, choosing episodes I thought got less of an audience than they deserved. Study these closely as there will be a test when I return. Enjoy the rest of the summer.

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Hitchens on Anti-Semitism, Me on Hitchens

Andrew Klavan — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:10:55 +0000

Christopher Hitchens is one of the finest prose writers of his generation, not to mention learned, moral and brave. Though I’ve only met the man once, and that for only a handshake and some pleasantries at a party, I was genuinely sorry when I heard he was suffering from cancer. It’s a threat to one of our most worthwhile voices.

Now I disagree with Hitchens often enough, but the only time I think he’s just plain silly is when he starts in on his anti-God rants. It’s not that I think you can’t make good atheist arguments. You can, but he doesn’t. I suspect this is because he’s a believer-in-denial, but he insists that that’s not the case, so we’ll take him at his word.

Anyway, in September’s Atlantic, Hitchens has a typically graceful and informative review of a couple of books on anti-semitism in which he reflects on”the protean character of the world’s most ancient and tenacious prejudice.”

“Anti-Semitism has flourished without banking or capitalism (for which Jews were at one time blamed) and without Communism (for which they were also blamed). It has existed without Zionism (of which leading Jews were at one time the only critics) and without the state of Israel. There has even been anti-Semitism without Jews, in states like Malaysia whose political leaders are paranoid demagogues looking for a scapegoat. This is enough to demonstrate that anti-Semitism is not a mere prejudice like any other…”

But at the end of the piece, he just can’t help adding this:

The chief impetus of anti-Semitism remains theocratic, and in our epoch anti-Semitism has shifted from Christian to Muslim: a more searching inquiry into its origins and nature might begin by asking if faith is not the problem to begin with.

I don’t see the logic of this at all – nor even the truth of its premise. And, in fact, I personally believe the exact opposite is the case. I think the Jews’ chief crime against those who hate them is the book of Genesis, in which they discovered (not invented) the indelible sense of shame attendant on man’s recognition of the moral universe. That universe takes its inescapable authority from the goodness of its creator. And whether they are calling Jews Christ-killers (as in, “They did it, not us!”), or culture polluters (as in “Without them, we’d be free of religion.”) or the secret rulers of the world (“It’s not this God fellow at all – it’s them!”), it seems clear to me that the people who feel they hate Jews actually hate God. And they hate God because, in the light of his goodness, they hate themselves.

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Looking for Ghost Story Redemption

Andrew Klavan — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:02:39 +0000

I’ve spent part of this summer working on a rewrite of my screenplay “Bury The Dead,” optioned by ShoulderHill Entertainment. ShoulderHill’s Steven Adair, who plans to direct the movie, insists he’s going to be shooting late this autumn. May it be so.

Boo.

I’m excited about this for several reasons but here’s one big one. I’ve now re-read this screenplay more times than I can count and, though I say it myself, it’s a really, really creepy ghost story every time. As readers of this blog know, I love ghost stories and have even written a few. What you probably don’t know is that, during the Hollywood ghost story boom that followed the release of The Ring in 2002, I sold, optioned or wrote for hire no less than four (possibly five) ghost story screenplays.

None of these films got made except one: the remake of One Missed Call. And One Missed Call, despite the fact that it did good business, is pretty universally recognized as being a stinker. Rotten Tomatoes gave it the moldy tomato for worst picture of 2008! At least it was second to none!

Now of course, it takes a lot of people to make a film, and none of them necessarily has to do anything wrong in order to make a bad one. In the case of OMC, I think the problem was that everyone made something different. I wrote a self-aware ironic teen scare picture ala Scream, the director made a violent French cult horror movie, the actors turned in indie drama style performances, and the producers (understandably interested in recouping their company’s investment) edited for non-ironic teenage screamers. No wonder it ain’t The Innocents.

And listen, I mean it when I say I truly enjoyed working with all those people; they were great. But I think you’ll understand if I say: I’d feel better about the whole thing if one of my ghost movies got made and came out right. Adair’s an untried director, but I like the way he thinks. The script, as I say, looks awfully good to these biased-but-expert eyes. So we’ll see, come fall, if I get a second chance to scare people the way I feel I know how.

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See You In the Funny Pages

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:02:03 +0000

Well, we’re about as deep into summer as we’re going to get. In fact, this is my last week of blogging before I go on vacation until Labor Day. So let me use this opportunity to address a topic of almost no importance whatsoever: the funny pages.

When I was a mite, my mother used to remark that I was the only person she had ever met who laughed out loud at the funnies. It’s true: I do. I laugh easily anyway and I really do like the comics. (The one below, for instance, cracked me up big-time.)

But leftists ruin everything they touch – and the funnies are no exception. Though even in the old days, there were political cartoons mixed in with the straight comics (Pogo on the left; Lil Abner on the right) it seems to me it was really Doonesbury that opened the floodgates. I’m not saying Doonesbury wasn’t funny at its best. It was – though it’s become a crushing bore recently. But even when it was funny, it was obnoxious to have someone preach his politics at you while you went in search of a mild chuckle. Some papers put the strip on the editorial page, which I always thought was exactly right. That’s where it belonged.

Because, to me, to pollute an innocent pastime with ideas likely to be offensive to half your audience is an act of egotism bordering on narcissism. To insult the president during an otherwise meaningless network TV mystery, or to put a dig in against some policy you don’t like in the midst of a Broadway musical, or to use some daft film comedy to advertise your opinion on gun control or global warming tells the audience, essentially, “My political point of view is so righteous that anyone who disagrees with it is beyond the pale and should not be partaking of this entertainment for civilized people.”

Since Doonesbury, too many of the comic pages I’ve encountered have been infested with sanctimonious and unnecessary political pronouncements. In one of the papers I get – one, I confess, that’s about as far left as it’s possible to be without actually sucking your thumb – there’s not only Doonesbury but the Latino-left and wholly unfunny La Cucaracha, the used-to-be-cute-but-increasingly-annoying Get Fuzzy and the feminist Home and Away which, like Sally Forth, features a eunuch husband and his liberated-read-bullying wife. After I complained about this in print – though probably not because I complained about it in print – they added a couple of right wing comics too: Mallard Fillmore for a while, now Prickly City.

But here’s a better idea: Just stop. Get rid of all of it, left and right. We don’t need to know the political opinions of our funnies writers anymore than we need to know how our actors vote. Truly. Bring on the guys who make all of us laugh. That’s what the pages are there for.

For instance, even in the same lefty paper, there’s Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! a hilarious and nonsensical send-up of Buck Rogers; Lio, a wonderful wordless strip about a monster-loving child; Zits, about raising a teenager; and Baby Blues about a family with young kids. All of these are cute and funny and appeal to a wide range of people without insulting anyone. Would it kill left-wingers to shut their faces for one section of the paper and fill the comic pages with more of the same?

And while they’re at it, could they dump the boring drama strips like Rex Morgan M.D. and gimme some of that Batman and Spiderman? I mean, I’ve listened to NPR and I know leftists think that boring equals serious… but really! It’s the funnies. Lighten up.

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DVD: The Ghost Writer

Andrew Klavan — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:00:21 +0000

The prissy, leftist political silliness of this movie overwhelms both the talented acting and the skillful direction by child rapist Roman Polanski. We’re supposed to care that a Tony Blair-type Prime Minister played by Pierce Brosnan aided America in having terrorists water-boarded? I mean, just give the man a medal and have done with it!

Great actress. Silly film. But great actress.

The movie, based on a novel by the talented Robert Harris, struck me more than anything as proof of how little these leftists get out, how much time they spend talking only to themselves and confirming their own beliefs to each other. The comic-inspired Kick-Ass, which I blogged about on Monday, has a far wider, deeper and more complex moral vision of what it takes – and what it costs – to do good in an evil world. But then Kick-Ass wasn’t directed by a man who gives drugs to little girls in order to sodomize them, so it had a moral head start there.

Oh, but I do have to say one purely positive thing. Olivia Williams, who wonderfully played the inspiring teacher in An Education (and was also Bruce Willis’s wife in The Sixth Sense), turns in an absolutely stunning performance here as the prime minister’s wife. It’s great, Oscar-worthy stuff, and though all the acting is good, she really is in another dimension of excellence from the rest of the cast. I can’t say the picture is worth watching for her sake, but man oh man, she’s tops.

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Pure Magic

Andrew Klavan — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:30:54 +0000

I find magic pure joy. Sleight-of-hand, card tricks, big box tricks with disappearing girls – I love all of it. It reduces me to child-like wonder. So–my heartfelt thanks to the immensely talented magician/comedian Gregory Wilson who recently invited my wife and me to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. Very cool place. You can’t get in without a member invite, but once inside you’re free to roam from show to show, watching some terrific performers do astounding feats of prestidigitation. Here’s the amazing Gregory himself at work:

Also greatly enjoyed an astoundingly proficient card trick artist named Derek DelGaudio. I spoke with him briefly after the show and he told me an elder magician once advised him to make his tricks look harder so people would understand how difficult it was to do what he seems to do so easily. I can well believe it.

A great evening. If you can catch either of these performers anywhere, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

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NT Wright and the Gospel of Mark

Andrew Klavan — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:30:15 +0000

Bishop N.T. Wright is an excellent Anglican theologian who has written some fine if massive tomes exploring how Jesus understood himself in his time and place. He also seems to have a hankering to be a modern C.S. Lewis, writing more popular-style books exploring Christianity in day to day life. These, to my mind, are far less successful than his scholarly stuff.

He does have a decent series of easy-reading Bible commentaries though, Mark for Everyone, Luke for Everyone, and so on. I was interested recently to read his take on the famously abrupt ending of Mark: the women fleeing the empty tomb. Though told of the resurrection, they are too fearful to spread the news–and that’s it. There are other endings sometimes tacked on, but they are much later additions.

Wright insists that the true end of the gospel has been lost. Mark’s too good a storyteller and the ending is too abrupt to fit, he says.

I’m convinced he’s right about this, but I don’t care. The truncated finale of Mark has always been my favorite resurrection story because it’s the most like life. We see the empty tomb but not the risen Christ, the unimaginable possibility but not the proof. We may have faith, but we’re also afraid. It’s a profound statement, taken overall, accidental or no.

Maybe the answer is that the loss of Mark’s original ending is the work of the Big Editor in the Sky.

Mark & Rob & Peter & Me

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Kick-Ass: Art Over Politics

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:30:29 +0000

Because the trailers for the comic-inspired movie Kick-Ass didn’t interest me, I didn’t see the film and because I didn’t see the film, I didn’t read most of the reviews and commentary and because I didn’t read most of the reviews and commentary I generally missed the lively and interesting controversy that followed on the movie’s April release. Thus I had a surprise waiting for me when the new DVD arrived via Netflix, where I had put it on the queue because… well, because I’ve seen just about everything else.

Yes, they did.

The movie began as what I thought it was: a sort of Spiderman-to-the-hip-degree, wherein a more realistic wimp than Peter Parker becomes a more realistic masked crime fighter than the web-spinner. But it changed at first gradually and then very suddenly into something far different, more original and more disturbing. The almost suicidally inept high- school-kid-slash-not-very-superhero Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson) is over-shadowed by the real crime-fighting deal, Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz), a 12-year-old trained to murderous mayhem by her wronged cop father (Nicholas Cage in one of the performances of his career).

Hit-Girl is the center of the controversy. The child speaks in the foulest possible language and dispatches mobster henchmen in savage acts of hyper-violence that splatter the screen with blood.

Pompous lefty critic Roger Ebert found the picture, “morally reprehensible.” Big Hollywood’s libertarian Leigh Scott – in the one commentary I actually did read at the time – lauded the film as libertarian because it glorifies individual moral choice. But BH’s editor John Nolte said no, despite the language, Hit-Girl is a conservative heroine:

“She’s dignified, heroic, selfless, completely self-reliant, and lives by a simple code that says evil loses. No angst, no handwringing, and no moral equivalency.”

Other critics, like Leonard Maltin and the LA Times’s Kenneth Turan, treated the hyper-violence and language as if it were a stylistic rather than artistic choice–as if it were more about visceral flash than meaning. Both, like Ebert, seem to have spent some time worrying about whether they’d be deemed uncool for raising moral objections. Which speaks rather sadly of their inner concerns, but never mind.

As for me, I liked the film a lot. Thought it original, exciting, emotional and well done–one of the best movies of the year so far. I had moral qualms about paying a pre-teen actress to speak filth, but no qualms whatsoever about the pre-teen character she played speaking filth. The film’s rated R, after all, so if that sort of thing offends you, you’ve been warned.

Moreover, I thought attempts to claim the film politically were misplaced. Politics and art grow out of the same soil of eternal human truths, but their tasks are different. Politics is, or should be, about governing best to reach the best ends–which to my mind always involve individual liberty. Art, on the other hand, is visionary: it’s a record of the artist’s inner experience of the world and, at best, of mankind’s inner experience.

Kick-Ass remains an honest vision whether you’re liberal, libertarian or conservative. It’s an exploration of the place where our fine fantasies of battling evil meet the dreadful reality of blood and corruption. Like a war for a just cause, it’s at once uplifting in its heroism and horrifying in its consequences. The psychotic-but-righteous father and the twisted-but-brave little girl are both the reality and shadow-side of Kick-Ass’s yearnings to do good, part of the inner landscape of the wannabe superman.

Conservatives are sometimes bellicose about the necessity of fighting evil while liberals quail and fret at the nastiness of it all. But in art, as in life, the necessity and nastiness are one. Kick-Ass is an engaging and challenging reflection on what Winston Churchill called, “horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and squalid, the pitiful and sublime.”

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