Airbags

Twilight, Bolt and A Christmas Tale

2008-11-21T00:17:50-06:00

Twilight I've never read one of Stephenie Meyer's novels about the tormented love affair between the human Bella and the vampire Edward, so when I speak about Twilight, I am only discussing the film version and whether or not I was indoctrinated into this story to any degree of satisfaction. I want to know if screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown) have constructed a compelling film for those of us who know nothing about novels or where the tale of these angst-ridden teens is headed. The truth is that Twilight is a beautiful-looking work with a pair of the most bizarre and frustrating characters you're likely to see in a film this year. I'll give the movie credit for avoiding most of the infuriating trappings of modern vampire films, but that doesn't make the resulting work all that captivating. And let me add this right up front, if you do go see Twilight and coo and swoon over the film and try to tell me it's a great movie, I'm going to point you right at a theater in this city playing Let the Right One In to give you a prime example of a truly great young vampire tale. I realize it's not fair to compare these two movies, but for all its trumped-up drama, longing gazes and breathy dialogue, Twilight doesn't hold a candle to the emotional weight of the stark Swedish vampire story about a 12-year-old boy who falls in love with a same-aged vampire girl. I should applaud the choice of Hardwicke to direct Twilight. She has made a succession of films in recent years that tap into hormonally heightened teens, and this story seemed almost written for her. Bella (Kristen Stewart) is a withdrawn girl moving from her mother's home in Phoenix to her father's place in the rainy Pacific Northwest, where she spent her early years when her parents were still together. She reunites with old friends, including the Native American Jacob (Taylor Lautner), and meets a whole slew of new ones. It is at school where she first becomes acquainted with the Cullen "family," who all dress rather formal for high school, are intensely pale, and pretty much stick to themselves. Bella is paired with Edward (Robert Pattinson) as a science glass lab partner, and the two seem unnaturally drawn to each other. Much of what follows is a variation (although not that great a variation) on a high school courtship movie. The two dance around each other and their unmistakable attraction, but a series of strange incidents involving Edward popping up in the least likely places and a little investigating lead Bella to discover the truth about Edward — he's a vampire. One of the reasons I'm guessing Twilight was such a big hit among the younger female sect is that Edward and his family are "good" vampires, trained only to drink the blood of animals and resist killing humans. And what self-respecting 13-year-old girl doesn't want to hang with good vampires? But since you can't have good without bad, we eventually do meet the villains of the piece, three vampires (led by Cam Gigandet's James) who stalk and kill humans, and have moved into the area not knowing that the Cullens have laid claim to the area. We can tell they're bad vamps because they dress like they just left the club at 4am and are still ready to party. One thing I did like about Twilight is the way Hardwicke shows the balancing act that Bella lives everyday going between the human world at high school and living with her sheriff father (Billy Burke), and getting to know Edward and his family, led by Peter Pacinelli as Dr. Cullen (cool idea making the local medical examiner a vampire; that way he can cover up any suspicious deaths in the area). But as much as I tend to admire Stewart's style of acting (in such works as Into the Wild and this year's What Just Happened?), her stammering and nervous ticks started to grate on me after a while. She brushes hair out of her face and wrings her hands so often that it's distracting I realize Bella is a fish out of water and a natural-born klutz to begin with, but I felt like Stewart was flailing and uncomfortable playing someone with zero boundaries or filters. It also seems impossible for her to finish a thought or a sentence. I imagine a screenplay loaded with ellipses (...). And then we move on to Pattinson, who plays Edward as the vampire version of James Dean complete with gravity-defying hair, the whitest skin available in a makeup kit, and red lips that make him look more like someone you'd meet in a tranny bar than a haunted house. His eyes almost never leave Bella, which is meant to invoke some sort of sexual tension or danger, but to me it was just plain creepy. In fact, there are so many moments of mutual glaring at each other in the film's early moments that some of the young die hards were even laughing in the audience when I saw the film. Edward stammers slightly less than Stewart, but he's completely devoid of any charm or grace despite his insane good looks. One show-and-tell sequence in which Edward allows Bella to see the full extent of his physical abilities is about the closest we ever get to a traditional seduction, although a bedroom kiss in the home of the virginal Bella is one of the rare instances of on-screen chemistry between Stewart and Pattinson. Twilight is not a complete failure. Hardwicke's work in showing up this sleepy little down in Washington state almost makes it feel otherworldly. Some of Meyer's' takes on age-old vampire lore are kind of neat (direct sunlight doesn't hurt these vampires but it does make they sparkle like they have diamonds under their skin). And I'm pretty sure we never see a set of fangs in the whole movie. Once the film moves away from the romance and into a cat-and-mouse game between the good and bad vampires, the tension is strong enough to keep us entertained. But in the end, Twilight is little more than a "Dark Shadows" for the high school set. It's a soap opera with a bigger budget, and a not-so-veiled plea from Meyer for abstinence before marriage. But it's a clever and well thought out gimmick that seems to drive the young girls wild, both in book and movie form. You have to respect that on some level. In a lesser director's hands, the film would have been a cataclysmic mess. In Hardwicke's capable hands, Twilight is passable without being exceptional in any way. Go to Ain't It Cool News to read my interviews with Twilight star Kristen Stewart and director Catherine Hardwicke. Bolt I know that the knee-jerk reaction to any non-Pixar animated work from Disney is resistance and ridicule, but please allow me to be among the first to tell you that Bolt goes down easy and is a whole lot of fun. Yes, co-directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard use what has to be the most obvious creature in the known universe to gain our affections — a cute dog (a rescue dog, no less, voiced by John Travolta), who has superpowers that he uses to defeat the evil Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell), the villain with one green eye. His master (or as Bolt calls her, his human) is Penny (Miley Cyrus), and together they have continuous adventures defending the world against Calico and his particular brand of evil (complete with a pair of evil cats) with Bolt's extraordinary abilities to leap hundreds of yards at a time and a super bark that seems to have the impact of a small, concentrated earthquake. The only thing is, none of it is real. You see, although Penny does love her dog dearly, she's also an actress on a TV show, of which Bolt is the star. The showrunners have come to realize that if Bolt ever sees a camera or boom microphone he'll know his whole life is a lie, so he's essentially isolated and left thinking he really does have all of these powers and that Penny's life is in constant peril. Some of the great voice talents used early on in the film include James Lipton as the show's director and Greg Germann as Penny and Bolt's slimy agent. Through a series of misadventures, Bolt is accidentally shipped from Hollywood to New York City. Thinking that this is all Calico's doing and that Penny is in serious danger, Bolt decides to somehow make the cross-country journey back to his human. Before leaving New York, Bolt crosses paths with a mangy stray cat named Mittens (voiced to sassy perfection by "Curb Your Enthusiasm's" Susie Essman), who Bolt immediately thinks is in line with Calico since, you know, she's a cat and all cats are evil (cats are not represented well in this film in case you couldn't tell). Mittens pretends to know where Penny is being held, and the pair begin the trip to California together. Along the way, they add a third member to their party, a weird, fat star-struck hamster named Rhino (Mark Walton), who lives in a plastic ball and loves TV. He knows exactly who Bolt is and is the first to reveal to the dog that the life he knows is a lie. Bolt works because it doesn't try too hard to be cute and lovable. The adventure show opening is fantastic, and a big part of me wanted all of Bolt's superpowers to be real. But this film is at its heart a road trip movie. Bolt and Mittens are a great team, with Essman really delivering in some crucial emotional scenes that reveal a bit about Mittens's past and her scrappy nature. She's a damaged feline. The film has some emotional depths that I wasn't anticipating, and there's more than one moment in the film where you might feel the old tear ducts start to fill up. And while the film is clearly made for younger audiences, I don't think any adults are going to struggle to enjoy Bolt. I especially liked Walton (a storyboard artist, who also does voice acting) as Rhino, who is clearly meant to embody fanboys the world over who actually get the rare opportunity to spend a little time with a hero. As far as I'm concerned, he and Essman are the stars of this film. Bolt has a noble innocence to it as well. Bolt the character understands that a dog and his human belong together and that's really all her cares about. Sure, having the veil pulled away from his heroic life is devastating, but it's secondary to his knowing that Penny really does care about him. I was also quite pleased that the film didn't pull any punches when it comes to putting animals and young humans in peril. This film is rated PG not G for just this reason. Penny gets kind of beat up (in the TV show) and Bolt and his pals see mild abuse as well, especially in a fire sequence at the end of the film. If you have youngsters that will freak out because they think a puppy might get killed, you may want to keep them away from this movie. My guess is the kids can take it even if you can't. There are easily a dozen movies I'd recommend people go see ahead of Bolt, but I'd also urge you at some point to check this out before the theaters get packed with award contenders and end-of-year event films. And you can watch this film in 3-D at certain theaters (I did not see it this way but would love to, especially the opening action sequences). Not a must see, but a good time nonetheless. Head to Ain't It Cool News to read my interview with Bolt star Susie Essman. A Christmas Tale One of the pure joys of the Chicago Film Festival this year was A Christmas Tale, the latest work by French writer-director Arnaud Desplechin (Kings & Queen, Esther Kahn, My Sex Life...), a film less about the holidays and more about how even the most demented, dysfunctional, back-stabbing family members can pull together in times of crisis... if only they then can get just a little more screwed up than they were before. For those of you as obsessed and enamored with current French cinema, this one is kind of this year's crown jewel with its unbelievably notable and stellar cast, including the Catherine Deneuve as the family's matriarch Junon, and Quantum of Solace villain Mathieu Amalric as the eldest living brother Henri, the most self-destructive (or perhaps just plain destructive) member of the family, whose manipulations and bad behavior got to be so unbearable that his own sister Elizabeth (Anne Consigny) had him banished from the family five years earlier as part of a court settlement. The younger brother, Ivan (Melvil Poupaud) is the most stable creature in this barn, and seems to have escaped the household relatively unscathed, now with a wife (Chiara Mastroianni) and two wise-beyond-their-years sons. Rounding out the clan is father Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon), a man of logic and reason (some might say blissful ignorance as well), but also someone filled with great passion for his wife and great affection for his children. While there certainly is a thread of a plot to A Christmas Tale involving Junon being diagnosed with leukemia (a disease her eldest son, Joseph, died from as a child), and each member of the family getting tested to see if there is a bone marrow transplant possibility, the real joy of watching the film is to lay witness to the dance that goes on as the siblings each arrive home for Christmas, including the exiled Henri. The film examines each character as they relate to each other and how they relate to their own families. Elizabeth has an emotionally troubled son (Emile Berling), and a soulless husband. Ivan would appear to have the perfect family until cousin Simon arrives and a long-buried secret about him and Ivan's wife is revealed. Henri brings his new girlfriend Faunia (the charming Emmanuelle Devos, who has starred in many of Desplechin's films, as have Deneuve and Amalric), who becomes deeply engrained in the family in just a few short days. While A Christmas Tale has great moments of humor, it's some of the darkest you're likely to see this year. Even when potential donors come to light, the emotional blackmail games begin with a vengeance. Henri does not easily forget who supported his banishment and who defended him. If you've never seen Amalric in a non-English language film, this is a great introduction to his talents. He was absolutely devastating in last year's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as the stroke victim narrator, but this work really shows just how unhinged he can become with the right material. We watch him bob and weave from charmer to bastard, sometimes within the same scene. What is perhaps most remarkable about the film is that it doesn't use Christmas as an emotional crutch, a cure all to all family problems. If anything, the holiday season highlights what is so deeply wrong with this family by pulling everyone together under the same roof to pick at each other, dig at old wounds, and unbury painful memories. A Christmas Tale is the anti-holiday movie, and I love it all the more for being so. One of the reasons I am so passionate about French cinema is that there seems to be a genuine community among dramatic actors. In America, we see a lot of this communal work in comedies, but in France we see so many of the same actors working together time after time. Deneuve and Amalric have made so many movies together, I've lost count, as have Amalric and Devos and Deneuve and Mastroianni (which isn't surprising since they are mother and daughter). There are many other examples of this co-mingling in French cinema, and in a way it's a comforting phenomenon and an easy way to keep track of certain favorite actors. A Christmas Tale is loading with screaming matches, drunken declaration, a bit of bed-hopping, and some hard-won revelations and realizations about this family that are equal parts brutal and liberating. Go see this film and then go home and hug someone in your family, and thank your stars that your relationships are (hopefully) just a little bit more stable than the ones in this wholly satisfying and riveting work. And by all means, get to this one before the next onslaught of Hollywood Christmas movies hits theaters to water down and artificially sweeten the holiday season. The film opens today at the Music Box Theatre. Editor's Note: Beginning next week, Steve at the Movies will appear on Gapers Block in A/C, our arts & culture section, where you'll get the same great movie reviews and also be able to comment on them!

Is Chicago In Fact Ready for Reform?

2008-11-19T12:04:40-06:00

Forty-third ward alderman Paddy Bauler famously said, "Chicago ain't ready for reform," after residents defeated a popular referendum to lower the standard Aldermanic bribe from $10 to $7.50. Just kidding. He said it when Mayor Richard J. Daley beat a good government (or "goo-goo") candidate in the 1955 mayoral election. In 1983, Harold Washington's victory over Jane Byrne and Bernie Epton demonstrated that Chicago could be ready for reform; his reelection in 1987 confirmed it. The impressive electoral victories of Richard M. Daley in the face of mounting scandal (G.F. Structures, Remedial Environmental Manpower, Hired Trucks, Sorich, and so on) seem to have vindicated Bauler all these years later. Mayor Daley has his strengths and his faults. But there is little doubt that Chicago's democracy has retarded under his mayoralty. If you respect democracy, though, how can you argue with the fact that the mayor has regularly won enormous margins, including in wards he is "supposed" to do poorly in, such as majority black or "lakefront liberal" wards? While Mayor Daley never wins the eye-popping vote totals his father was able to bring in, he has won stunning majorities. And at the end of the day, the will of the people at the ballot box is the only real measure of a politician's worthiness to serve. The caricatures of Chicago as a uniquely corrupt city and Mayor Daley as an omnipotent operator of a vast, nefarious Machine are less relevant than the fact that Mayor Daley is seen as an effective if uncharismatic and authoritarian manager of a complicated city. Mayor Daley has also benefitted, however, from an appearance of invincibility. If a mayoral challenger were to put up a real fight, Mayor Daley's wide but shallow support could dry up quickly; the extremely low voter turnout in municipal elections suggests that it's a lack of a viable alternative, rather than partisan support for the incumbent, that drives the mayor's drubbing of his "opposition." Is there an analysis of recent election patterns in the city that indicate a path to mounting credible opposition to the mayor in 2011? There are three recent contests to look at. First, there is the Constitutional Convention vote from this past election. The Con Con was a good government issue in its most distilled form; a vote for the Con Con was a vote against the status quo. Given that there was little effective organized support for a "yes" vote and a well-financed disinformation campaign for a "no" vote, it is surprising that Chicago over-performed the rest of Illinois by 13 percent. Particularly considering that Illinois' entire power structure comes from Chicago — every constitutional officer, and both legislative leaders — that Chicagoans expressed a greater will for reform than the rest of the state indicates something. "Yes" won eight wards: all of them majority black or Latino. A total of 18 wards came in within two and half points. All 16 are majority black or Latino. The First Ward, which is plurality Latino, was within six. The Yes vote's best white ward was the Lakefront liberally-est of them all, the 49th Ward, East Rogers Park. It went 53-46 against. But city-wide, only two wards didn't over-perform the state's yes vote: the 41st Ward, which is represented by the City Council's only Republican, and the old Machine's holdout ward, the far southwest side 19th. (Surprisingly, Mike Madigan's 13th Ward over-performed the state). Looking at suburban Cook County, the pattern holds; the strongest "Yes" townships Cicero, Calumet and Thornton, all three with large minority populations. Is there a reasonable conclusion to draw from these results? One interpretation is that minority voters are ahead of a generational and demographic shift in the city electorate that is less constrained by traditional voting patterns and willing if not eager to remake the political establishment. This is amplified by the results of the 2007 aldermanic elections, which saw incumbents lose at a greater clip than they had in a decade. The Readers' Ben Joravsky, in a short exploration of the results of the Con Con vote, points out that only two thirds of voters who voted in the city even bothered to vote on the Con Con issue. Considering the lopsided spending of the two sides of the issue, and the heavy-hitters pushing for a No (not to mention the natural constituency the anti- forces had: pensioners), it is even more surprising that Chicago voters voted for reform at a greater rate than Illinoisans generally. Second, though less compelling, are the results of the Forrest Claypool/John Stroger primary. In that case, we can expect black wards to have come in strong for Stroger, a pillar of the black political establishment in Chicago for a generation. Stroger also had the backing of the then-still-kind of popular governor and the nominal support of the mayor. But Stroger was utterly rejected at the polls in 17 wards, where he lost to Claypool by a 60-40 margin or worse — in 10 wards, the difference was 70-30 or greater. Overall, Claypool won 20 wards — including three majority or plurality Latino wards, and was competitive in another three, two of which are majority Latino. It is not possible to simply attribute Stroger's losses in these wards to voting along racial lines; of the "ethnic white" wards, Stroger won two and was competitive in two more. Voting "Yes" on Con Con and voting for Claypool against Stroger are both acts of a sort of political leap of faith. In both cases, voters were acting more as a rejection of the status quo than in support of a positive alternative. They were willing to invite the unknown out of disgust with what they saw. The third case would be the 2007 Aldermanic elections. Nine new aldermen were elected, and a few more came within a hair's breadth. The 32nd Ward should provide an ominous example for the status quo: it was the mayor's own decades-long policy of gentrification and open development that weakened the once-fearsome Regular Democratic Organization in that ward; high resident turnover and a new crop of residents with no personal or political ties to the alderman's office or the party committee were easy picking for a good government, slow-development message. But more importantly, competitive elections for alderman pin down money, volunteers and regular election workers. While voter turnout actually decreased between 2003 and 2007, it increased in the most competitive wards. The mayor's strongest wards — on the Southwest and Northwest Sides, a few on the mid-north and mid-south — regularly turn out at the same levels across elections; there may not be much capacity for increase there. But the "Daley-weak" wards turn out at among the lowest levels city wide, and therefore have the greatest room for growth. Taken together, the 1-2-3 punch of these elections may indicate that the mayor and aldermanic incumbents are susceptible to a challenge from candidates willing to make a city-wide case for a new direction; the North Side "Claypool" wards — many of which overlap with recently competitive aldermanic wards — and the black and Latino majority wards that voted for Con Con represent the mayor's "shallowest" support, presumably all persuadable. But the lack of continuity between the three — there is no geographic or demographic correlation between the Claypool-Con Con-contested aldermanic "reform" votes — would make that argument difficult to make, but not impossible. They said Harold Washington represented a unification of man, movement and moment. If 2011 is not the year, it will definitely forge the men and women and the movement for dramatic change to come in 2015. Editor's Note: Revenge of the Second City has moved to Mechanics, our new political section. Please comment on this column over there.

Quantum of Solace, Slumdog Millionaire, Let the Right One In and JCVD

2008-11-14T00:23:08-06:00

Quantum of Solace Is it November already? Then it must be time to kick some ass. I wish I could show you the film titles I'm seeing in the month of November. Since the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards deadline is very early in December, any studio wanting their film to be considered has to show us their goods in the next three weeks. And in my estimation there are a couple of films that are released this week that might just land in my Best of 2008 rundown, and how could I not consider the sequel to possibly the finest James Bond film ever made. In case you've been living in the wilderness for the last year, the latest 007 adventure is actually a worthy continuation of the Casino Royale plot, picking up about 10 minutes after Bond (still Daniel Craig, still the finest actor to ever play the role) has disabled Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) at a villa in Italy. Bond is still hurting something fierce after the death of his love Vesper, and while he won't admit it, he's looking for payback, which may not be as easy as this still relatively green spy realizes. In this newly rebooting Bond world, this is the first film in which Mi6 begins to realize just how insecure its own organization has become and how all-encompassing a new-to-them global criminal organization truly is. A couple things you're going to notice about Quantum of Solace (look up the many definitions of the world "quantum" to see that this title is actually quite appropriate) upon your first of many viewings. It's a lot shorter than all other Bond films — with credits, it runs about 105 minutes. The only reason I mention this is to say that watching the film, I would not have minded if it had run longer in an effort to explore the more emotional side to Bond. Not that Quantum doesn't touch on this; it does for sure. I'm just greedy. What we do get are a half-dozen or so of the finest action sequences committed to film in a very long time, everything from hand-to-hand combat, foot chases, car chases, speedboat chases, airplane hijinks, you name it. The movie is practically wall to wall action, with just enough time in between to meet a host of new good and bad characters and reunite with a few old friends. Although not quite as nasty as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, Dominic Greene (played by French superstar Mathieu Amalric, best known for playing the lead in last year's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and a memorable supporting part in Spielberg's Munich) is still pretty great as a mover and shaker who seems to be buying up large quantities of worthless land, particularly in South America. Bond and M (Judi Dench, who is blessedly featured a great deal more in this film) believe Greene is looking for oil. The also know for a fact that that he's a major player in the mysterious evil organization. Also new to this film is Camille (Olga Kurylenko, recently featured in Max Payne), a vengeance-filled beauty who had ulterior motives for allowing Greene to sleep with her. As for old friends, I was particularly delighted to see Jeffrey Wright back as CIA agent Felix Leighter, who is forced by the agency to get closer to Greene than he feels comfortable doing. Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Monster's Ball, Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner) and returning primary screenwriter Paul Haggis have crafted a pretzel-tine scheme that is actually timely and scarily possible (to a certain degree). But Forster is a man of emotion, and he never misses an opportunity to let Bond's rage show through. It seems he's incapable in his current state of mind of simply disabling an attacker, and he ends up killing a whole lot of people in this movie. He's also is so focused on his mission that he breaks free of the confines of Mi6 when he needs to, giving M no choice but to cut off his resources. Ha! The process of discovering Greene's master plan is loads of fun, as is watching Bond still find time to seduce women, help a damsel who might be more emotionally crippled than he is, and continue the search for Vesper's killer (not as easy as one might think). I love that there are almost no scenes in Quantum of Solace in which Bond isn't bruised and/or bleeding from somewhere on his body (quite often his face). Craig refuses to play his version of Bond as a flawless pretty boy who no bad guy can touch. He's a punching bag at times; he's still all-too-capable of making mistakes in both judgment and how execution, and both Craig and Forster relish in Bond's faults. I was also a real fan of Kurylenko's Camille, who is a great beauty who Bond recognizes as a fellow wounded warrior and avoids attempting to seduce her. So what's missing from Quantum? Not much, although I kind of wish there was a card game-like central battle of wits between Bond and Greene. But this isn't that kind of film. This is a movie about action, about phenomenal stunts, fights, chases, and explosions. And it manages all of these elements without sacrificing plot. With the stakes ratcheted up considerably from Casino Royale, this latest film raises its own stakes along with it. One of the best pieces of news in recent months is that Daniel Craig is doing at least two more Bond films. If Quantum of Solace proves anything, it's that the possibilities are endless for this new brand of James Bond. How often can you say that about a 40-year-old franchise? To read my exclusive interviews with Quantum of Solace star Daniel Craig and director Marc Forster, go to Ain't It Cool News. Slumdog Millionaire There are quite a few great movies to choose from this weekend, but I believe that this one is my favorite. From a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Millions) has made the most vibrant and mature film of his career. At its core, Slumdog Millionaire is a biography of a still-young man named Jamal Malik (played by three different actors, including Dev Patel, who plays Jamal as an adult), who grew up in the slums of Bombay, India, with his brother Salim. Somehow, Jamal makes it on the Indian version of the wildly popular "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and manages to get all of the questions correct before time runs out just before he gets to hear the final question. As he leaves the studio for the night, he is arrested and accused of cheating. The investigating officer (played by the great Irfan Khan of The Namesake and A Mighty Heart) forces Jamal to watch a tape of the show and explain how he knew the answer to each question. This framework allows us to travel through Jamal's remarkable life through the underbelly of India, including a lifelong love with a girl named Latika (played as an adult by Freida Pinto), who moves in and out of his life over the years. There's really no reason to go into detail about some of the events that define Jamal and make it possible for him to excel on the game show. The fun of watching Slumdog Millionaire is the unveiling, piece by piece, layer by layer, of Jamal's world. His life as an Oliver Twist-like street urchin, con artist, thief, and finally an assistant call-center worker. What happened to his parents? His brother? His lady love? And does he get to come back to the show for the chance to win millions of rupees? It's all in there, and it's an exciting and electric story that will have you vibrating with anticipation. As if that weren't enough, Boyle jams his film with one of the greatest soundtracks of Indian club tracks imaginable. Patel's wide-eyed performance is a real find as Jamal, the young man who finds it impossible to lie. And Pinto's Latika is simply beautiful. I even loved the way Boyle weaves in Hindi and English — I'm guessing this is how things are in the more metropolitan parts of India — to further the authenticity of his stunning film. You've trusted Boyle to tell great stories about heroin addicts, raging viral maniacs, and the possible end of the world thanks to the sun burning out. You absolutely must have faith in his abilities to tell the most human story he's ever embraced. This is a marvelous achievement, filled with life, danger and thrills, all of which combine to produce one of the most uplifting films of 2008. You're going to cherish Slumdog Millionaire. Let the Right One In Known by many as simply "that Swedish vampire movie," Let the Right One In is one of the most original and eerie vampire films ever made, as much for what it does not work into its deceptively story as for what it does. Avoiding all of the usual trappings of modern vampire films, director Tomas Alfredson does not give us fashion-model vampires who dress in black and look like they're on the way to a club. Instead he gives us a pale and frightened 12-year-old girl named Eli (Lina Leandersson) who moves into an apartment building with her non-vampire father. She becomes friends with a same-age boy named Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a bit of an outcast at school who is picked on ruthlessly by bullies. Oskar doesn't quite understand what Eli is, but she's mysterious and she talks to him, so they become friends. In the world around Oskar, people begin to disappear and get murdered, only to be found in elaborately staged poses meant to maximize blood drainage. Oskar is captivated by the stories he's hearing about these deaths, while Eli seems decidedly unimpressed (she also seems impervious to cold weather and she can climb the walls). This pair of misfits forms a sweet, non-physical romance that makes Eli feel safe enough to confess her true nature to Oskar. One of the most fascinating parts about Eli's existence is that she's not sure how old she is, but based on the age of her father, we imagine that she's been trapped at 12 for quite some time. After an unexpected turn of events, Eli determines she must leave the apartment, leaving Oskar both heartbroken and again vulnerable to bully attacks. Let the Right One In (the title comes from the practice of having to invite a vampire into your home before it can have its way with you) isn't about excessive gore or standard-issue scare tactics. The film builds and earns its tension-filled moments with a careful mix of measured performances (especially moving and creepy Leandersson) and a sparse, quiet sense of drama and fear. The film is not just unlike any other vampire movie you've ever seen; it's unlike any horror film I can think of, at least in the last 20 years.You need to seek this one out and see it. It's not overly violent or flashy, but it is a fiercely scary and perfectly realized work. The film opens today at the Landmark Century Center Cinema. JCVD I don't think I would have believed you if you'd told me this at the beginning of the year that one of the boldest and most risky performances of 2008 would come from Jean-Claude Van Damme. But that's exactly what JCVD gives us, a self-referential work in which the Muscles from Brussels plays himself (or a version of himself) who returns to his homeland a broken and burnt-out actor, all too aware that his glory days are long behind him. He's happy to take lame movies — knowing full well they will likely got straight to DVD — because he's broke, in the midst of a brutal custody battle for his daughter, and losing most action roles to a crop of younger performers (and apparently Steven Seagal, the only plot point I wasn't buying). Director and co-writer Mabrouk El Mechri has pulled together a beautifully structured thriller plot involving Van Damme apparently holding up a bank and taking hostages, creating one the biggest news events Brussels has ever experienced. What's fascinating about JCVD is that Van Damme agreed to do it at all. The screenplay paints him as a desperate, faded star. He's a loser who can't fight nearly as well as his choreographed, on-screen counterpart. And although I understand that this is a fictional version of the man, there's a lot of truth to this fiction. In one particular sequence from the film that I will never forget, Van Damme is literally lifted out of the movie for a brief, dreamlike moment where he directly addresses the audience. It's a stark, emotionally naked confession, during which the man actually cries quite forcefully. Aside from just being flabbergasted that Van Damme was capable of crying so convincingly on cue, I found the moment one of the most perfect screen moments I've seen all year. El Mechri adds a steely blue look to the movie that manages to make it look both otherworldly and very much a part of Van Damme's bleak world. Above all else, JCVD made me want to revisit Van Damme's Time Cop, Blood Sport, Universal Soldier and a half-dozen other films of this still very athletic action hero who has a real future ahead of him as a genuine actor. Check out JCVD, one of the biggest surprises you'll have in a movie theater in recent memory. The film opens today at AMC Pipers Alley theater.

New Burge Allegations Present a Challenge for Cops

2008-11-12T15:23:25-06:00

Chicago attorney and victim's rights advocate Tamara Holder is the bearer of bad news, and fresh lawsuits, for embattled former Area 2 Commander Jon Burge. Holder is preparing to file new federal lawsuits against Burge, his associates (or "henchman" as she termed them to me), the city, the Chicago Police Department, and the office of the State's Attorney of Cook County — the office occupied by one Richard M. Daley at the time Burge was allegedly torturing confessions out of Chicagoans. Burge's recent indictment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges by Northern District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald dragged him out of his Florida retirement and put him back on display, and cops across the city squirmed to see one of their own facing a judge. Holder, an expungement specialist who owns the domain xpunged.com, was contacted by a Latino man who claims he was held and brutally beaten by Burge and his associates in 1983, when he was 14 years old, in order to extract a confession to a murder. "He contacted me to clear his name, because I specialize in expungements," she told me. "But his story is really just terrible." Holder would not release the name of the man, as the lawsuit has not yet been filed, but she shared some of the details of the case. Holder alleges that her plaintiff had a co-defendant whose confession bore a statement by the State's Attorney's office clearly outlining that the document was for the purpose of a confession to a crime and that the attorney present was not the suspect's attorney. Her client's statement, however, did not feature any such disclaimer. According to Holder, the plaintiff's attorney at the time moved to have the confession suppressed on the grounds that it was coerced, but the judge refused. As an unfiled suit, obviously all skeptical instincts should kick in. These are allegations relayed by the attorney representing the plaintiffs in a suit. The legal process will ferret out the truth, hopefully. Further, neither nor Burge nor any of his associates have been convicted of the crimes now indelibly associated with their names. Holder appeared with Rep. Danny Davis, Jesse Jackson, and others at a Rainbow-PUSH event to highlight the on-going Burge controversy in late October. Holder, who runs an expungement clinic through Rainbow-PUSH, expressed a desire to see not only Burge but his associates brought to justice. Rep. Davis made police abuse an issue in the 1991 mayoral election, a particularly thorny issue for Mayor Daley, who was the State's Attorney for much of the period in question, and therefore the prosecutor who benefitted from the extraction of confessions from murder suspects. Then-mayoral candidate Daley obviously greatly benefitted from a "law-and-order" image at a time, the late 1980s, when the city was mired in the crack wars and Chicago approached 1,000 homicides a year. That systematic abuse may have taken place, and convictions followed, is an understandable outrage in Chicago's minority, low-income communities. It is a twofold outrage: first that basic human rights could be so baldly violated, and second that the search for the actual perpetrators took a back seat to "juking the stats." Ms. Holder's client's suit and its details could be explosive for the city and our police department, at a time when morale is rumored to be at its lowest point in years. The torture and forced confession of a minor is a human rights violation that simply cannot be shrugged off. Meanwhile, Chicago's homicide rate is still at twice that of New York City and nearly twice that of Los Angeles, and has seen a steep increase as the economy has declined. For cops on the beat, there is a dangerous tipping point between public confidence in the law and an assumption that the law is corrupt. When that tipping point is reached is when the tenuous peace of the streets turns into chaos. That is when cops start dying. Jon Burge's alleged treatment of Chicagoans for nearly 20 years as a detective in Area 2 is a horrific story. Phony tough guys who abuse their authority on defenseless people are parasites on a law-and-order society. And unfortunately, the story of torture under Burge has been reasonably well established; the report by Special Prosecutor Ed Egan, released in 2006, found improprieties that could not be prosecuted due to the applicable statutes of limitations. In 2005, after years of brilliant reporting on the issue, the Chicago Reader ran a story linking Burge's alleged torture techniques to interrogation methods used in Vietnam. Burge has maintained his innocence. In our outrage at the treatment of suspects in police custody, it is easy for a "people against the police" framework to develop. This is not the only way to think about it. The fact of torture is of course abhorrent; but Burge's alleged conduct should be considered in a different light. Torture of suspects in police custody — and any undue treatment of suspects in police custody — demeans our police officers, too. It corrupts good police work; it provides cover or comfort to legitimate criminals; it undermines public confidence in working men and women who put their lives on the line every single day to keep the peace in our communities. Good cops doing hard work are kneecapped by stories like these, and a tendency to heap unction on lowlifes and career criminals emerges, making life on the street even harder for cops. This is not just a "few bad apples" argument, but something deeper. Top-heavy political control of the police force leads to a lack of transparency and a fiendish need for "better numbers." Many CPD officers have a reflexive defensiveness when it comes to issues like this. They argue that the fear of lawsuits and a lack of back-up from political leadership makes cops unwilling to do the rough police work necessary to get information from the streets and keep run-of-the-mill hoods in line. And seeing the media and the public through them swoon in defense of roughed-up hoods can be extremely isolating for the boys and girls in blue who day in and day out deal with the worst in human nature. Rank-and-file cops themselves realize that that atmosphere makes good police work difficult, or impossible. As we find with most public service, a combination of transparency and peer control of policy, rather than increased politicization through increased bureaucracy would do more to "clean up" the force than anything else. Instead, accusations of "police torture" pinions rank-and-file cops into "defending" a torturer, and pointing out that, hey, some of these guys may have been guilty anyway (and, indeed, Patrick Fitzgerald has reopened a case against Madison Hobley, who won a lawsuit against Burge and the city), and very few of them were angels. None of this, of course, justifies robbing any U.S. citizen of their Constitutional rights. As a public which relies on the police for our own peace of mind and body, we should never forget that it is almost always political leadership and a politicized bureaucracy, not rank-and-file cops, who must be the focus of our rage when the rule of law breaks down and scandals like this become apparent. The on-going Burge case is complicated psychologically, if not ethically. No Burge apologist — including cops — can reasonably claim to be for "law-and-order." If the allegations against Burge and his unit in Area 2 are true, they are criminals themselves and therefore cannot by definition be on the side of law. By the same token, nobody indicting the CPD or "cops" in general can claim to be on the side of "the victims," because only the police can fairly deliver justice for victims, and undermining confidence in the police force weakens the social order. We have to find a way to be advocates for rank-and-file cops while unreservedly condemning the types of inhumane activities Burge has been accused of. While Burge's most immediate victims would be the men he may have tortured, his fellow officers are not far behind.

Synecdoche, New York, Role Models, Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Soul Men and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

2008-11-07T00:41:18-06:00

Hey everyone. Before I get started this week, I want to pay tribute to a man who actually has two films opening nationwide today — the late and truly great Chicagoan Bernie Mac, who has a starring role (one of the far too few of his career) in Soul Men and does the voice of a lion king in Madagascar: Back 2 Africa. Although I never had the chance to sit down and interview Mac, I did run into him around the city on more than one occasion over the many years since I really took notice of him in Spike's Lee's groundbreaking concert documentary, The Real Kings of Comedy. There's a reason the Mac-man is the last comic featured in the film, because Spike knew to save the best for last. I feel confident in saying that Bernie Mac had no idea who I was and had never heard of any of the modest little sites for which I write, but when a true fan expressed his/her appreciation for Mac's great work as both a stand-up comedian and an actor, Bernie Mac always took the time to listen and express appreciation right back. Mac the comic, which is the Bernie I'll know and love best, could be vulgar, sensitive, vicious, touching, and above all else funny. In fact, if it wasn't funny, it wasn't worth uttering, according to Mac. As an actor, I still believe that the best work Mac ever did was in a lesser-known Ted Demme-directed work called Life, opposite Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. As a comic actor, it's hard to beat Bad Santa, although I have a great deal of affection for Mr. 3000. I never missed an episode of "The Bernie Mac Show," despite Fox's constant moving around the show's timeslot. Boy, will I miss Bernie Mac, one of the few men in the world who can do entire routine about beating children so hard "you can see the white meat." I wish he could have gone out with better films as two of his final works (his last film, Old Dogs, will come out late in 2009), but I'll take Bernie where I can get him. If you don't find yourself honoring his memory by catching his latest films, remember Mac this weekend in some of his older, better works. Synecdoche, New York Whatever you do, do not let someone (including me) try to explain the plot of writer-director Charlie Kaufman's film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. First off, it's impossible to do. Second, the film is also totally devalued the minute you attempt to explain or analyze it to someone who hasn't seen it. Kaufman has written some of the most original works in the last 10 years, including Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In my book, the man is a certifiable genius when it comes to his writing. Synecdoche, New York is also written by Kaufman, who attempts his most ambitious work yet about theater director Caden (Hoffman), who is married to a woman (Catherine Keener) who despises him and has a daughter who barely knows him. Caden wins a major theater grant that gives him license to perform any show over any period of time for as long as he likes without fear of not being fully financed at all times. With his life falling apart before him, Caden decides to cast actors to play characters in his life, including an actor to play him. He recreates moments from his miserable life in the hopes of finding some greater purpose to his existence. As the days, weeks, months and years (yes, the timeline of the film goes across decades of Caden's life) pass, each new person he meets on the street or in his apartment building goes right into his work. There is no actual performance of these mini-plays. Instead, he ends up a building a replica of the buildings he goes into on a daily basis. As the actors he's using begin to form bonds and have love affairs, those relationships, too, must be represented in the ongoing, never-actually-put-on play. You see what I mean about the plot being impossible to explain? And as much time as it took me to get used to the rhythms of Kaufman's film, it's not a struggle or pain to keep up with what's going on in the film. Synecdoche doesn't feel like a gimmick either, which I thought it would. The almost too good to be true cast of mostly women (including Samantha Morton , Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Hope Davis) breathe so much beautiful life into the proceedings that it's easy to get lost in the warmth the film does manage to deliver despite its dreary lead performance from Hoffman, who has never been more stark-raving miserable. As the film enters its final act, it becomes less about the specific incidents in Caden's life and more about embracing the ordinary things that happen to us in our day-to-day existence. For most of us, real life is mundane with punctuations of excitement. Movies and plays are the opposite. Charlie Kauffman is attempting, through his character, to capture the ordinary and make it seem less so. Synecdoche is like nothing you've ever seen before, while trying very hard to display things you see everyday. Some may have issues with the movie's final moments, but I cherish them, especially when Dianne Wiest enters the story. This film is a gamble, both on Kaufman's part and yours. Take the chance, and check out one of the most unnerving and comforting films you'll see all year. I can't explain it any better than that. And don't let anyone else try to talk to you about it before you see it. The film opens today at the Landmark Century Center Cinema. Role Models Sometimes it is possible to take a formula film, with a predictable ending and all, and make it something special and exceedingly funny thanks in large part to an absolutely dead-on cast. Role Models is a collection of some of the funniest people working today, both known and relatively unknown, doing dumb shit and doing it oh so well. Master ad-libber Paul Rudd plays Danny, an energy drink salesman who goes from school to school with Wheeler (Seann William Scott), who dresses in a Minotaur costume selling a product called Minotaur (how do they come up with this stuff!?). The men are arrested and sentenced to community service, serving as big brothers to two trouble kids played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bobb'e J. Thompson. The program is part of Sturdy Wings, run by an ex-con director played by the goddess Jane Lynch (Best in Show, The 40 Year Old Virgin), who is determined to turn this reckless energy into something constructive for these two kids. What Rudd (credited as a co-writer of the film, along with Ken Marino, Timothy Dowling and director David Wain) managed to pull off is some truly funny comedy. Wain and Marino were part of the vastly talented group of folks who did "The State" on MTV about 100 years ago, but they continue to produce quality funny films, such as Wet Hot American Summer and last year's The Ten. I'll admit, I kept waiting for the film to falter or get unbearably boring, but it never really does. The concluding battle set among live-action role playing (LARP) cast members goes on a bit too long and isn't that satisfying, but based on the two times I've seen the film, the sequence is a solid crowd pleaser. Throw in the lovely and unbelievably busy Elizabeth Banks as Rudd's on-again/off-again girlfriend, and you've got a damn fine movie that isn't going to win any awards for originality but still remains one of the funniest things out there right now. Rudd is just funny whenever he opens his mouth, and Scott (American Pie) has become of the most reliable comic actors working today. He's not simply doing a variation of his Stifler riff. This is a far more measured performance than we're used to from him, and he pulls it off like an expert. Between this film and The Promotion early this year, Scott continues to surprise me with how much of his untapped comedy resources we have yet to explore. The film goes for the cheap laughs nearly as often as tries out things that are truly new. Role Models won't teach you be a better parent, camp counselor, or how to LARP, but it does seem determined to make you laugh a lot. It's hard to believe there's someone out there who wouldn't get a kick out of this baby. To read my exclusive interview with Role Models star Paul Rudd, go to Ain't It Cool News. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father I'm not going to say too much about this absolutely flawless documentary opening today for a weeklong run at the Gene Siskel Film Center, because the story it tells and the unpredictable nature of its narrative are so gripping and emotionally wrenching that to spoil any part of it would be criminal. What little I will reveal is that the film from director Kurt Kuenne began life as something much more simple than it turned out to be. One of Kuenne's best friends, Dr. Andrew Bagby, was murdered in 2001. It turns out Bagby's former girlfriend was pregnant with his child at the time of his death, so the filmmaker decided to travel the country to meet dozens of Bagby's closest friends and family in an effort to piece together a profile of a father this child would never know. It is one of the purest forms of cinematic kindness I've ever been made aware of, and if that were all the film was, it would probably still be quite good. But as Kuenne is on his journey, events are unfolding concerning Bagby's murder that play out like one of the greatest crime dramas that has yet to be written by Hollywood. In fact, if a screenwriter ever put this story down on paper, I'd probably be telling you how outrageous and unbelievable it was. Your mind almost can't wrap itself around the events as they unfold, and Kuenne edits his work to maximize the shocking turns the case takes with it feeling like exploitation. I implore not just those of you who embrace documentaries on a regular basis to see this — I know that you will — but I beg anyone who cares anything about quality cinema to make the journey to whatever theater is playing this film and see it. Drag along as many people as you can, and see it. Nothing I can tell you will quite brace you for what's in store for you, and that's the best way to experience this or any other movie. Dear Zachary will quite literally change your life, even if it's only for a day. To give you a sense of the film's power, I first saw this film for the right around the time it premiered at the SXSW Film Festival back in March, and I'm still talking about it. Don't miss this rare and special opportunity. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas I can't imagine that most people who see this tale of the son of a Nazi officer wouldn't have the same reaction I did. Look, I realize that the nature of cinema is manipulation, both visual and emotional. That's how things work. A filmmaker directs his/her actors, edits and scores his/her work as part of a grand manipulation process. But good films don't wear their manipulative tools on their collective sleeves. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas seems almost proud of them. Director Mark Herman (whose previous films have been far lighter fare, such as Brassed Off and Little Voice) may be in over his emotional head with this story (based on the novel by John Boyne) of a German family (played by non-Germans David Thewlis as the Nazi in charge of a death camp and Vera Farmiga as his wife) who move to a remote location where the couple's young son Bruno (Asa Butterfield) decides to explore the grounds. He stumbles upon the camp, which he believes is a farm, and meets a young Jewish boy named Schmuel (Jack Scanlon). The pair strike up a friendship through the barbed wire, and it becomes increasingly clear to Bruno that something far more sinister is going ton with the "farm" and with his father than he first believed. The first of many problems with the film is that since we know right off the bat what's going on at the camp, Bruno's awakening doesn't translate into ours giving a crap what's going on. "But he's an innocent child. Of course we care what happens to him." Yeah, not so much. When a film like this asks us to become emotionally involved in the fate of a Nazi officer's son, and pays far less attention to fully realizing Schmuel or any other Jewish characters, there's a serious miscalculation about how much sympathy people are capable of. The entire film feels like a gross miscalculation. The "German" characters frequently use expressions that are clearly British. Farmiga herself adopts a British accent for consistency's sake. The movie never moves beyond a bunch of actors playing dress up for a story that is missing several crucial emotional components. By the time the plot reaches its almost ludicrous climax, I had long since reached for threshold for being tugged and pushed into caring about what happens to anyone in this story. If you have a passion for poorly made Holocaust films, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas opens today at the Landmark Century Center Cinema. Soul Men Not a great movie befitting Bernie Mac but not a complete bust either, Soul Men is the fictional account of two back-up singers Floyd and Louis (Mac and Samuel L. Jackson, respectively) for megastar Marcus Hooks (a funny, non-speaking cameo by singer John Legend). When Hooks broke out as a highly successful solo act, Louis and Floyd started their own group called The Real Deal; they even had a hit. But internal strife broke up the band some 30 years prior to the real story being told in the film, which involved the death of Hooks and a tribute concert being organized at the Apollo Theatre during which The Real Deal might possibly reunite. Floyd is now a successful car salesman, while Louis is a mechanic who has had one hard time after another. Soul Men is really a road movie disguised as some sort of musical tribute to great soul tunes. Certainly, the film features a handful of great old music sung by Legend, Mac, and Jackson (with varying degrees of success). The one thing this movie is not is a male version of Dreamgirls (I wish). The saving grace of Soul Men (and there aren't many) is that the film allows Mac and Jackson to swear up a storm. I realize that relying on four-letter words for your comedy is something of a crutch, but when Bernie Mac curses, it's music to my ears. Hearing "motherfucker" come out of his mouth makes me tear up just thinking about it. Nobody swears like Bernie Mac, except maybe Dennis Farina. Even when they are pretending to despise each other, Mac and Jackson have a great familiarity on screen, like they've worked together for decades before the cameras ever started rolling. And if the film had just been about them being cantankerous, I think I would have loved it. But director Malcolm D. Lee (Undercover Brother, Roll Bounce) clutters his film with sentimentality in its back half. One of the pair may or may not have fathered a child with a woman they both had a relationship with at different points in their lives. There's a domestic abuse scenario that is played for laughs, and it really doesn't feel right. There are a couple of supporting characters (in particular, Affion Crockett and Adam Herschman) that completely break the mood of the film by behaving like cartoon version of real people. There are also a handful of cameos (by the likes of Jennifer Coolidge, Ken Davitian, Sean Hayes and Vanessa del Rio) who don't add anything to the film except time. Despite my feelings on this movie being decidedly mixed, I'm forced to recommend it slightly just to watch Bernie Mac give a role (even one as underwritten as this one) his best. There's a great collection of scenes during the end credits that really got me choked up. They combine outtakes, on-set interviews with Mac, and footage of him warming up a crowd of extras during the film's climactic music number at the Apollo. My god, did he love being in front of an audience. Mac was a master storyteller, more than a joke teller. He told the funniest, dirtiest stories I've ever heard, and I will miss knowing that he will never again show up at a Cubs game to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," or that I will not run into him at a restaurant or store in Chicago. This movie isn't the best Mac has to offer, but for us completists, it holds the place just fine. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa I bet most of you don't remember that the original Madagascar opened the same day as Revenge of the Sith. I'm guessing even fewer of you care. I guess my point is that Madagascar did remarkably strong business against a juggernaut of a film, and I actually thought it wasn't half bad. For those of you who relished in the idea that this kids animated work still featured a fair number of adult gags for parents to giggle at, here's more of the same. Looking a little better than I remember the first film looking, Madagascar 2 concerns the animals from the Central Park Zoo picking up right where they left off at the end of the first movie. Attempting to get back to New York on a refurbished airplane (refurbished by penguins, I should add), Alex the performing lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) end up crashing down somewhere in Africa where Alex ends up meeting his parents, (Bernie Mac and Sherri Shepherd), the king and queen of the lion pride. Marty meets a massive herd of zebras (all of which have Rock's voice), and starts to feel not so unique in the eyes of his friends, while the Melman-Gloria romance heats up when she starts seeing another hippo (voiced by will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas and CNN Holograph Central). Madagascar 2 is standard-issue simple plots and subplots with easy-to-solve problems for all of our heroes. But it's the small touches that make the film work a bit better than standard-issue animated fare. Sacha Baron Cohen blessedly returns as King Julien, the borderline psychotic lemur, as is Cedric the Entertainer as his buddy Maurice. Cohen can make me laugh harder with a cast-off line than most people can spending hours crafting a single joke. One welcome addition to the lineup is Alec Baldwin as Mac's rival lion Makunga, who even has a variation of Baldwin's slicked back hairstyle. Makunga is basically Scar from The Lion King, but he has way more fun with the role than Jeremy Irons did. He's a prancing, preening force of evil who would rather let his people die of thirst when the local watering hole dries up than give up power. Baldwin can do very little wrong in the world right now. Madagascar 2 is probably about as lovable and entertaining as the first film. Take that for what it's worth. If you never saw the original film, the addition of Baldwin to the cast as well as more lemurs and penguins might be enough to get your butt in the seats this time around. I think I chuckled a bit more three years later. Rock and Stiller have a better chemistry this time around, and even Schwimmer's moody giraffe made me laugh quite a bit. It's no Wall*E or even Kung Fu Panda, but this one's not too bad. And it beats the shit out of Clone Wars! (Feel free to use that on your posters, Dreamworks.)

...has moved to our new section, Mechanics

2008-11-05T23:32:55-06:00

Check it out here.

Yum, Vegetable Stock

2008-11-04T00:26:41-06:00

Editor's note: One Good Meal is on hiatus. This column originally ran on Jan. 9, 2006. I imagine at least one or two people reading this column made a resolution recently that they would "eat healthier," "cook better" or eat more vegetables. I'm here to make it possible for you to do all three and be frugal while reducing waste. I keep a large zipper bag in my freezer, and every time I have a carrot that goes a little limp, onion skins, celery scraps, potato peels, etc., I throw them in the bag. Then when the bag is full, I pour its contents into a pot, cover with water, throw in a few peppercorns, a bay leaf and several cloves of garlic and cook it. After it simmers gently for an hour or two, I strain off the solids. What's left is homemade vegetable stock. It's great to use as a base for soups, or to add to any recipe instead of water. It's also a great way to use up things which would normally have gone to waste. But it's rarely a consistent flavor, and for some dishes I want to know that flavors in the stock aren't going to interfere with what I'm cooking. And there are a few things which can ruin the flavor or texture of stock. Celery leaves, especially those on the outer couple of stalks, are often bitter and can make you pour out your entire stock experiment. Potatoes seem like they would be a great thing for stocks, but they release their starch and thicken the stock — not to mention they make it cloudy and look very unappetizing, even though it will taste fine. Potato peels, on the other hand, are just fine. Using beets in your stock is OK, but they will turn your stock pink. This might be good if you're trying to make a pink-themed dinner, but pink mushroom risotto? And the seeds in tomatoes also give stock a weirdly bitter flavor. Most vegetable stocks that you buy from a store are going to be hearty and dark. But cooking your fresh veggies in a pot of cold water is going to create a very light and mild broth. Which is still tasty, but if you're used to hearty and rich store-bought stock it will require an adjustment. To get that hearty and rich flavor, there are a few steps you can take. Put all of your vegetables into a cake pan or roasting pan in the middle of your oven at 350° F for about an hour. Switch to the broiler and broil them for about 5 minutes, or until the top of the vegetables is brown but not black. You can also caramelize the onions and the carrots in the stock pot before adding the rest of the vegetables. For two large onions and two large carrots (which have not been peeled but have been scrubbed), you'll need about 4 tablespoons of olive or vegetable oil. If they seem to start sticking feel free to add more, but you want to use the least amount that you can. Put your stock pot over medium heat, add the lightly chopped vegetables and oil, and stir until everything is coated with oil. Stir occasionally for about 15 minutes. The onions and carrots should smell sweet and they should be dark. Either one of these methods will give you a much darker and richer flavored stock. Use both and you'll want to eat it every night. Here is a basic list of ingredients that will create a generic broth. Feel free to leave anything out, or substitute at your will. And while it would be fine to cook everything with whole vegetables, if you increase the surface area, you're going to be able to extract more flavor from the vegetables. But if you cut everything too small you're going to get a thick mush, which is going to be hard to strain. I suggest cutting the onion in half from root to stem end and then slicing it into 1/8" slices. For the carrots (if you're caramelizing them) cut them into 1/8" coins. For everything else, cut them into large bite-size pieces. Basic Vegetable Stock 2 large onions 2 large juice carrots or 6 regular-sized carrots (you can use those baby carrots in the bag, but they don't have peels so the flavor will be reduced) 6 ribs of celery 2 large leeks (slice these into 1/4" rings and rinse it very well in a large bowl of water to remove dirt) 1/2 head of cabbage (red will impart a reddish tinge to the broth) 8 ounces of mushrooms 1 head of garlic (rub off the loose outer layer or two of paper-skin and cut it in half to expose all the cloves of garlic) 1 medium turnip (scrubbed but not peeled) 1 apple (remove the core) This will provide just a hint of sweetness. 1 bell pepper 1 small bunch of parsley (rinse and remove brown leaves) 3 bay leaves 1 teaspoon of dried peppercorns 6-7 stalks of fresh thyme or 1 tablespoon of dried thyme Follow the instructions above for roasting the vegetables and caramelizing the onions. Transfer the vegetables from the roasting pan into the stock pot. There is going to be a whole mess of yummy goodness stuck to the bottom of the pan. You're going to want this in your pot as well. Pour half a cup of red wine, white wine or water into the pan and scrape at the stuck bits with a wooden or plastic spoon or sturdy spatula. (This is a lot easier if the pan is warm.) Pour that into the stock pot. Pour cold water into the pot until everything is fully covered with water — cover by an inch or two if you have room. Bring to boil, then reduce the heat on the pan to a simmer (probably as low as you can turn it), cover it with a lid and let it cook for about two hours. Now all you need to do is get the solid bits out, cool it down, and transfer it to containers for storage. Cooling it down is your top priority. You could let it sit uncovered on your stove for an hour, which will cool it some, but not enough to be safe. Leaving it for longer can encourage nasty bugs to land in your stock, and then in your belly. I suggest putting the plug in your kitchen sink, dumping in a couple of trays of ice (you're going to want them empty anyway), and adding about 4-5 inches of cold water to the sink. Now carefully transfer your pot to the sink, and let it sit for 10 minutes. Stir it occasionally to get the cold stock from the edges of the pan to the middle. Once you can safely stick your clean pinky finger into the stock, you're ready to strain out the solids. If you have one of those fancy sieves, you can use that. If you think $85 for a stainless steel fine-mesh strainer and a wooden peg is a ridiculous investment, then here is a much cheaper alternative. You probably have a colander or strainer that you use for draining pasta. Take a piece of cheesecloth (costs about $2 at the grocery store and you can throw it in your washer and reuse it many times before it starts to fall apart) and line your strainer with it. Place it into a large bowl or a pan that is larger than the strainer (I used my roasting pan for a long time; it's awkward, but it works). Ladle or carefully pour some of the broth into the strainer, keeping as much of the bits in the pan as possible. Once the liquid is out of the pan, dump the solids into the strainer. You're likely to have a thick sludge of mushy bits. Pick up the sides of the cheesecloth and bring them together in the center. Hold it tightly and carefully twist the ball in one direction. You can skip this step, but you'll gain at least another cup of the most flavorful liquid if you do it. Twist this several times until you no longer have liquid coming from the cloth. Throw away the solids and turn your attention to storage. You can pour the broth into your old glass pasta sauce jars, leaving a couple of inches of room at the top, and place these in your freezer. If your storage space is more limited, you can ladle the liquid into labeled freezer bags. Or you can pour the broth into your now empty ice cube trays. Once they freeze, you can transfer them to a bag, and then you can pull out small amounts from your freezer as needed instead of thawing out an entire quart of liquid. Next week I'll give you a few ideas on how to use your tasty stock. In the meantime, feel free to impress your friends.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, Ballast, I've Loved You For So Long and Fear(s) of the Dark

2008-10-31T00:35:26-06:00

Hey everyone. I must begin with an apology. Last week I reviewed Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which actually doesn't open until this weekend in Chicago. I jumped the gun on that one, and thankfully the film had a limited opening in early October in a couple of cities, otherwise, I'd be in big trouble. Zack and Miri Make a Porno In so many ways, Kevin Smith's latest sex-drenched love story is the best thing he has ever done. I've always held that Chasing Amy was his best crack at combining four-letter words with a believable love story, but Zack and Miri surpasses all previous View Askew-niverse offerings thanks primarily to its cast, made up largely of newcomers to the Smith stable. But Smith also seems more loose and happy to be working outside of the confines of the Jay and Silent Bob collection of regulars. OK, fine, Jason Mewes (Jay) is in this film, but he's used in a much different way here. Jeff Anderson (one of Smith's Clerks twosome) is also here, still dishing out sarcasm like so much tasty macaroni and cheese, but the meanness of his old character Randal is gone. More importantly, Smith has cast Seth Rogen, an actor who wanted to be in a Kevin Smith movie when he grew up, and his commitment to this material is stellar and fearless. Also on hand is the very busy Elizabeth Banks (W., Role Models, and Rogen's co-star and bathtub lover in The 40-Year-Old Virgin), who is not only the loveliest borderline homeless woman ever, but she has a comedic chemistry with Rogen that makes her the absolute strongest female character Smith has ever written. Zack and Miri is a film of the times. The two best friends for as long as they can remember live together as roommates, have never slept together, and are perpetually broke. In the current economic times, I think a lot more folks going to see this movie are going to be able to identity with Zack and Miri's predicament (if not their solution to it). After having most of their utilities cut off and with the threat of eviction hanging over their heads, they decide to make an amateur porn after a YouTube-like video of them in their underwear makes them internet stars. They enter into the production as professionally as they know how. They hire a producer (Craig Robinson of "The Office," who plays Rogen coworker at a coffee house and just happens to have a little bit of money to invest), a cinematographer (the one guy they know who knows how to actually operate a video camera), and cast would-be porn stars (some played by real porn stars, like Katie Morgan and legend Traci Lords). At first they decide making a spoof of a real movie is the best call, so they write a script for a film called "Star Whores," but eventually the story becomes simplified and is set and filmed in the coffee house after hours. The elephant on the set, as it were, is the tension that builds as a scripted sex scene between Zack and Miri fast approaches, and while they promise that doing the scene won't change their relationship, the fact that they're even talking about it proves that it will change everything. And about the sex scene, it might be the fucking funniest fucking scene ever fucking committed to fucking film. Feelings are altered and neither one is prepared for it or knows how to react to it, leading to some ugly words and hurt feelings. I've heard different people have wildly varied reactions to these sequences, with men and women saying they don't like the way Zack behaves post-coitus and/or the way Miri acts. I think that says something about Smith's writing, which paints a very believable conflict of feelings between the two friends. And while I wouldn't call Smith's script "sophisticated," I would say that it's his most mature, even amid all of the boobies and vulgarities. Even amidst all of the heavy emotional content, Smith keeps us laughing steadily. An opening sequence at Zack and Miri's 10-year high school reunion, featuring Justin Long and Brandon (Superman Returns) Routh, belongs in the lexicon of Smith exchanges. Craig Robinson has been a great supporting actor for a number of years now in Knocked Up and Pineapple Express, and it's great to see him hold is own in one of the larger roles in this film. There's a sequence near the end of the film where we see him at home with his wife (Tisha Campbell) that is so wickedly funny, you'll have trouble breathing. I was especially impressed with Katie Morgan's work (dressed and undressed). She has an energy and unexpected comic timing that would make it fairly easy for casting directors to consider her for future, clothed work. It seems a bit played out to talk about how Smith seems to borrowing from the Apatow way of doing and casting films, since Apatow probably borrowed a thing or three from Smith's brand of humor and way of generating material. If anything, Zack and Miri is a tribute to how much these actors appreciate the ground that Smith broke as a writer and maker of low-budget comedies, and I hope Smith continues making films this complete and deep feeling. In truth, only Kevin Smith could have made the most romantic film of his career and still fill it with some of the foulest and most over-sexed language and situations in movie history. It's actually the perfect blend of every tool that Smith has in his arsenal, used to tell a sweet love story set in the world of amateur porn. I think I'm in heaven. Visit Ain't It Cool News to read my exclusive interviews with Zack and Miri Make a Porno writer-director Kevin Smith and stars Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks and Craig Robinson. Regarding the interview links: please note the dates these interviews were posted. I spoke with the first three folks at Comic-Con in San Diego back in July, and I'd only seen about 10 minutes of the movie at that point, so I was unable to really ask specific questions about it. I spoke to Chicago native Craig Robinson earlier this week, after I'd seen the film, so we're able to go into a bit more detail about it. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story I learned more about the modern Republican way of campaigning and button pushing from this humble documentary than I did watching W. Boogie Man is the lively documentary chronicling the rise and fall of Lee Atwater, the architect of political dirty tricks, a style he used to maximum effectiveness during the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and more so with George H.W. Bush. Atwater worked side by side with our current president (and mentoring Karl Rove), managing Bush Sr.'s run against Michael Dukakis (who is interviewed extensively for this movie), a race Bush seemed destined to lose as a result of his possible ties to the Iran-Contra scandal. It was Atwater who first told the media about Willie Horton, and oversaw the creation of the "revolving-door of justice" attack ads that brought Dukakis down. The process is as fascinating to review as it was terrifying to watch when it was happening, and my only question to the world at large is, Why has no one made a movie about this man before now? As first-time feature director Stefan Forbes points out through his countless interviews with friends and rivals of Atwater's, as well as members of the media he so brilliantly manipulated, Atwater was certainly not the first man to paint an opponent in a bad light, but he did so using some of the most underhanded ways imaginable. Although Atwater was clearly not a racist (his love of listening to and playing blues guitar is well documented, as are his friendships with blues musicians), he know how to use race to drum up fear in certain Southern states. His skills as an image-maker were as impressive as his means of breaking down an enemy's image. He painted H.W. Bush as a Texas good ol' boy, putting him a cowboy boots and jeans, when in fact Bush lived most of the time in Maine. Boogie Man does as righteous a job psychoanalyzing Atwater and his motivations for earning his living this way as it does detailing his playbook of negative campaigning that is still being used today. Atwater's fall from a type of brain cancer was fast and brutal, and some might say appropriate. The what-if scenario that the film brings up is how swift and nasty Atwater would have gotten if he'd lived to run Bush Sr.'s second-term campaign against Bill Clinton. How different would the world have been today? Boogie Man is absolutely one of the most compelling documentaries of the year, and critical viewing in the days before the presidential election. Learn the tricks so you don't fall for them. The film opens today at the Landmark Century Center Cinema. To read my exclusive interview with Boogie Man director Stefan Forbes, go to Ain't It Cool News. Ballast When a film opens up with one suicide and one attempted suicide, it's a safe bet that said film is going to be a tad on the bleak side. But nothing quite prepared me for the soulful power of Ballast, the feature debut from writer-director Lance Hammer, whose film is not about suicide but about the impact these actions have on those left behind. Set in the murky, gray winter of a Mississippi Delta township, the film focuses on three black characters, all of who are linked to the dead man. One is his brother Lawrence, who is our suicide attempt, so overwhelmed by his brother's death and his failed attempt at joining him that he is practically struck dumb and inactive by the situation. The brothers owned a mini-mart/gas station that has remained closed for many weeks after the brother's death. We also meet 12-year-old James, a good kid whose path appears clear to us as he begins to hang out with drug dealers, dabbles in crack himself, and seems impressed by guns. When he finds out about his father's death, he visits his uncle, steals his gun, and forces the uncle to walk him through the house to see his father's possessions. The third player in this film is James' mother Marlee, a struggling woman who is informed by a lawyer that half of the house where he husband lived and the store are hers. Her immediate reaction is to sell everything and take the cash, but when dangerous situations rise up where she and James live, she decides to take up residence with Lawrence living in a side house on the property. She and Lawrence never got along, although it seems neither knows exactly why. As much as this film is filled with misery and hard times, it is wonderful to watch the ways Hammer slowly allows his characters to fill in the large gaps in their hearts and souls, and heal each other in the process. The process is slow and painful (which does not mean the movie is), and blessedly goes against every convention Hollywood has taught us about grief and forgiveness. This is not something that a single kind word or deed is going to heal, not even close. Even the look of the film is rough around the edges. Hammer moves his hand-held camera through the action as if he's a fourth character in this story. Although the movie covers some of the emotional and economic ground as David Gordon Green's George Washington, the visual style of the two films could not be more different. Ballast simply might be too heavy and raw for some, and I understand that. But if you're in the mood to or habit of discovering great new filmmakers, Lance Hammer is one I'm going to be keeping an eye on in the years to come. I hope he maintains the same emotional punch that he holds so dear in Ballast, because films this strong are few and far between. We've had a couple this year that came close, such as Frozen River and Snow Angels (notice how all of these heavy films take place in winter?), but in terms of naked cinematic fortitude, Ballast is on most solid ground. The movie opens today at the Music Box Theatre. Ballast director Lance Hammer will be at the Music Box Theatre on Friday, October 31, and Sunday, November 2, for post-screening Q&As after most showings of the film. Check the website for showtimes. I've Loved You For So Long A little bit more misery for you on this fine weekend, but this film is cut from a distinctly different cloth. Writer and first-time director Philippe Claudel has crafted one of the most delicate and fragile works of 2008, a movie that is the cinematic equivalent of walking on egg shells as British sisters Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) and Juliette (Kristen Scott Thomas) navigate through spoken and unspoken territory in hopes of striking a balance in which both can live comfortably. Living in Paris, Lea is married with two lovely adopted Vietnamese children. Once a doctor, Juliette has just been let go from an extended stay in prison for murder; she went into prison when Lea was still a teenager. Since Lea's home is the only place she can stay presently, Juliette moves in with the family but makes no secret of her lack of interest in being there or interacting with the family. Lea's husband Luc is hesitant and sometimes openly hostile about having the quiet and anti-social Juliette living there. Also living in the house is Luc's mute father, Papy Paul, who is perhaps the only person Juliette enjoys spending time with since there's no risk of him asking questions about her crime and punishment. Juliette's crime is revealed fairly early on in the film, but I won't give it away here. Her reasons for committing the crime are far more interesting to the plot and quietly devastating. But the truth is, the film isn't really about the murder. It's about these two sophisticated, lovely women rediscovering a long-lost connection they once had in their youth. And that is a story worth watching. It's also about the slow process of people coming to terms with Juliette's crime and her return to society, finding a job, getting her own place, and confiding in her moody parole officer. It's tough watching Juliette get treated so badly by prospective employers when they find out why she was in jail, but it's just as tough watching Luc hesitate allowing Juliette to baby-sit while he and Lea go out for a night on their own. Scott Thomas has quite simply never been better, and I'm enjoying the fact that half the movies she makes these days are French productions (such as the recent Tell No One and The Valet). We anticipate the film's big emotional moment when Juliette tells Lea the exact reasons for her crime, and I'll admit, I didn't quite see her explanation coming. But the truth is, I've Loved You For So Long isn't about big moments; it's about a series of smaller steps between the sisters that make it so satisfying. The film is sometimes very tough to watch, as if we're eavesdropping on some very private conversations that no outsider should be allowed to hear. Assuming this film gets any kind of traction, Scott Thomas seems like an easy lock for many a nomination come awards season, but the fact that it's opening in Chicago at Pipers Alley doesn't give me much hope. I pray I'm wrong, because it would be a true shame if she is overlooked. This is the kind of film that makes you want to patch up any troubled spots you might have with certain family members, but it never goes for the obvious emotional triggers. You will probably cry while watching this film, but the movie has earned your tears. This is one you shouldn't miss. Fear(s) of the Dark One of the most unique offerings at this year's Chicago International Film Festival, this animated horror anthology showcasing the talents of various artists, most notably Charles Burns, as well as Blutch, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti and Richard McGuire, all of whom put their particular visual spin on suspense and horror stories. The connective tissue holding the stories together is a freaky tale of a death-like man who holds four hungry dogs on leashes. One of the more inventive stories borrows from Japanese art and culture, as a young girl has increasingly more realistic anxiety nightmares. My absolute favorite is the final episode in which a man goes into a dark house. The use of simple black-and-white, light and shadow, sounds, and fantastic vocal work goes to create one of the scariest things I've seen in any fright film this year. Although the stories are all done in black-and-white and were all clearly created for this project, they aren't directly linked. A nice narrative reading from a female voice sets the right tone for the collective works as she talks about fear, anxiety and the stuff that makes us uneasy. I don't want to go into detail about any of the works because so much of the joy of this collection is discovering the artistry and the storytelling, but for horror and animation enthusiasts alike, Fear(s) of the Dark is a keeper. Not all of the stories work, but most of them do, and that's why I'm recommending this effort, which opens today at the Landmark Century Center Cinema.

Election Season Rhyme and Reason

2008-10-28T23:08:19-06:00

Top of the ballot: Should the citizens of Illinois hold a Constitutional Convention? I wrote about this issue a few weeks back. And the answer is that yes, they should. The only compelling argument I've heard against the Con-Con was that it could endanger state and local employee pensions. That seems to be unlikely if not untrue — due to the federal Constitution's so-called "contracts clause," and also because pensioners are probably the most well-organized constituency group against the Con-Con, so I don't think they'll be left weeping on the sidelines when the Con-Con comes. The reasons to support it are myriad. First of all, the problem with Illinois politics is not the current "bums," and therefore the solution to the problem is not one that could be solved by throwing the current bums out. The problem with Illinois politics is a system that concentrates an enormous amount of power in very few hands; a districting system that allows politicians to choose their voters, rather than vice versa; and an education funding formula that makes equal opportunity nearly impossible. Secondly, the fear of "special interests" dominating the Con-Con process is ridiculous on its face, particularly because it is being offered by a coalition of special interests. But the system is blind to which special interest is benefitting from the system. Sometimes, progressive or "good" interests are able to dominate the political climate in Springfield; sometimes, it has been the "bad" interests. I don't want to be in the position today of supporting a system because my "team" benefits, and then be left with no arrows in my quiver when the other team takes control. Third, the left has an ideological duty to support measures that devolve power to the greatest possible number — as close to "the people" as possible. We cannot say we are for democracy sometimes, but then oppose it when we fear its outcome. Certain rights cannot be infringed, even by majority whim — the right to vote, the right to privacy, due process, etc. — but most of the rules that effect our civic lives get their legitimacy from majority rule, and every chance to bring the policy making process to the grassroots level should be supported, or we risk making hypocrites of ourselves either in the future or in the past. Rich Miller has provided the most elegant argument about how the concentration of power compromises the political system. And it's a simple argument: Carefully constructed legislative districts make only a handful of seats competitive, and the majority party's leadership controls the legislative process from beginning to end. There is no chance for elected officials to meaningfully buck their parties, or forge a policy or legislative consensus outside of party leadership. If you want to get something done, you have to deal with Michael Madigan, and Madigan alone, in the House. Ditto (for the time being) for Emil Jones in the Senate. This kind of concentration of power constricts the "marketplace of ideas" that should reflect the diversity of opinion in the state, while also ironically making it easier for the largest organized interests to buy their way into favor. And, at the end of the day, the voters still get a chance to vote the new constitution up or down. Personally, I believe in the people's ability to govern themselves — even if the process may seem chaotic to us. Vote Yes for a Con-Con. If you're afraid of what the results could be, pay attention to the process. Organize. Be a delegate. But don't ever say no out of fear — because that's the message the anti forces are sending out: "If we call a Con-Con things could get better; but they could also get worse." Americans — left, right, center — have a voracious appetite for change right now. But change doesn't come to the timid. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Timid men... prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." I'm not scared of a bit of boisterousness — are you? Other Illinois Races, in Two Clever Sentences Each, With Some Cheating Via Judicious Use of the Semi-Colon: Aaron Schock versus Colleen Callahan (US House - IL18) Schock is a wunderkind, but may also be a careless notary. Colleen Callahan is probably Irish. Prediction: Schock +12% Marty Ozinga versus Debbie Halvorson (US House - IL11) Ozinga looks like a cartoon character of a plutocrat, sans cigar. Debbie Halvorson is from Crete but, sadly, is not a Minoan-American. Prediction: Halvorson +4% Mark Kirk versus Dan Seals (US House - IL10) Kirk has been a friend to Assyrians, and well serves his constituents. Unfortunately for him, Dan Seals will have a (D) after his name in Barack Obama's home state. Prediction: Seals +2% Jan Schakowsky versus Michael Younan (US House - IL09) Michael Younan is himself Assyrian. Also my Facebook friend. Prediction: Schakowsky +30% Dan Kotowski versus Mike Sweeney (Il Senate - 33) Mike Sweeney was the Elk Grove Township Clerk, a job with many duties, including the most important, filing the annual tax levy on or before the last Tuesday of December. In 2006 he failed to do that. Prediction: Kotowski +7% Anita Alvarez versus Tony Peraica (Cook County State's Attorney) I don't care how many mildly crazy Peraica supporters storm the County building when he loses an election, I like him. Unfortunately, I like him in the same way I like Sancho Panza. Prediction: Alvarez +5% Pete Roskam versus Jill Morgenthaler (US House - IL06) Morgenthaler doesn't live in the district; that's bad. Roskam compared women who seek abortions after a rape to the guys who raped them; that's crazy. Prediction: Roskam +7% Judy Biggert versus Scott Harper (US House - IL13) Yes, Illinois has a 13th District; you may not have guessed, since you never really hear about it. Perhaps you thought they skipped it, like with hotel room floors. Prediction: Harper +<1% Paul Froelich versus Anita Forte-Scott (Il House - 56) Froelich, of Schaumburg, switched from Republican to Democrat a few years after John Kerry won Schaumburg Township +10. He also switched from Republican to Democratic a microsecond before everybody decided they loathed Rod Blagojevich. Prediction: Froelich + 2% Brent Hassert versus Emily Klunk-McAsey (Il House - 85) I'm pretty sure Brent Hassert's (R) family has a street named after them in the Bolingbrook-Romeoville area. Don't bet against the guy with a street named after his family. Prediction: Hassert +8 Elizabeth Coulson versus Daniel Biss (Il House - 17) Beth Coulson is a Republican that keeps winning in the Democratic north/northwest suburbs, because voters know and like her. In a Presidential year, with Obama on the ballot, there will be plenty of brand new voters who do not know her, and do not like the R after her name. Prediction: Biss +3 Barack Obama versus John McCain (Appointer-Of-Federal-Reserve-Chairman-In-Chief) A year ago, I said a bucket could run against the Republican in 2008, and win. Barack Obama is considerably better at campaigning than a bucket. Prediction: Illinois vote, Obama +31; National Popular vote, Obama +5; Electoral College spread, Obama 364 to McCain 174 Appointment for Vacant Junior Senate Seat Um... Tammy Duckworth? Or someone else. What are your predictions?

Alien Fractals

2008-10-28T00:19:11-06:00

Editor's note: One Good Meal is on a brief hiatus. This column was originally published on Sept. 18, 2006. There's something about wandering the aisles at a grocery store and seeing food that is so unbelievably different than anything I've seen before that makes me want to buy it and head straight for the internet when I get home. Thankfully I have a partner who shares my delight of strange foods, so when he brought out this green ball of something that looked like an alien head, I squeaked with delight and a little bit of surprise. I assumed it was some recent blend of broccoli and cauliflower and was delighted to find out that it is actually a distant member of the cabbage family (as are broccoli and cauliflower) and had been discovered in Italy in the 1500s. There it is called broccolo romanesco, the french call it chou Romanesco and the Germans have a word for it with 18 letters in it. But you're likely to find it called Romanesco broccoli or Romanesco cauliflower. The shape of the head is very interesting. It is green, like broccoli, but has really tightly packed heads (or curds) like cauliflower. The stems are very woody and pretty much inedible. But the flavor is similar to that of both. It isn't as powdery tasting as broccoli and doesn't have the slightly bitter taste of cauliflower. It's delicious raw and would make a wonderful conversation point to any vegetable platter or crudite tray. Any dip that would go well with cauliflower or broccoli would be great with this, and the shape makes it great for dipping. It's also delicious when it is steamed for 15 minutes — or 25 if you prefer your vegetables soft instead of crunchy. Add a teaspoon of salt to the water and it will help to brighten the flavor without changing it much. If you're a mathematician, you'll love the fractal nature of this veggie. It repeats itself wonderfully and is quite beautiful. When you go shopping for it, look for heads that are tightly packed, more green than yellow, and avoid any that have signs of mold which can be fairly common since they're often stored in plastic bags. If you store it in the vegetable bin of your refrigerator it should last at least a week, unless it is overly-ripe. When you're ready to prepare it, rinse it under cold water. Break off the smaller bits near the base. To get to the larger spirals near the bottom, cut out the center stem and then break them apart. The stem is too tough to eat and should be discarded. And while any recipe for broccoli or cauliflower is suitable, here are a few that are particularly attractive to me. Romanesco cooked with kalamata olives, creamy romanesco soup, pasta with garbanzo beans and romanesco, and romanesco with a mushroom and wine sauce. Chou Romanesco with Kalamata Olives 1 romanesco head, broken into smaller portions 3 tablespoons of olive oil 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or flavored vinegar 1 clove of minced garlic 12 large Kalamata or other flavorful olives salt and pepper to taste Bring a quart of water to a boil in a pan with a steamer tray. Place the small heads of romanesco into the pan to steam for about 15 minutes. If they're not done enough cook it for longer. (If you have a large enough pan, you can cut out the center stem and place the entire head of romanesco in the pan to steam. This will increase your steaming time by about 5-10 minutes.) Remove the pits from the olives if they're present and chop them into quarters. In a small bowl combine the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and olives. Stir well with a spoon. Once the vegetable is finished cooking, remove it to a bowl, pour the dressing on top and toss until everything is well coated. Serve immediately. Makes 4-6 servings. Creamy Romanesco Soup 1 leek, or 1 medium yellow onion, or 5 shallots 1 tablespoon of olive oil 1 clove of garlic 1 head of romanesco 4 cups (2 cans) of chicken or vegetable broth 1/4 cup of milk or cream for thinning out the soup (more broth can be added instead) salt and pepper to taste If using a leek, cut it in rings and then immerse them in a bowl of water and stir well to remove any dirt. Carefully remove the leek without stirring up the dirt which should settle to the bottom. Shake them dry. Put a large, deep skillet, dutch oven or larger pot over medium-high heat and add the olive oil and leek and sauté (or the onions or shallots) for about 3-4 minutes, or until it's softened and starting to turn yellow but not browned. Add the clove of garlic and stir. Separate the romanesco head into small bite-sized pieces and add them to the skillet. Let it cook for a few minutes till the leeks start to brown. Add the broth and cook for about 20-30 minutes. The romanesco should be very tender. You can either use a stick blender (like this) or a standing blender. Add 1/4 cup of milk or cream, or more if it's still too thick. Or add more broth until your desired thickness is reached. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with garlic bread. Makes 4-6 servings. Pasta with Garbanzo Beans and Romanesco 1 can of garbanzo beans that's been drained of liquid 2 tablespoons of olive oil 2 teaspoons of salt 1/2 of a head of romanesco, broken into bite-sized pieces 8 ounces of orecchiette pasta (shells would also work) 1 small yellow onion minced 2 cloves of minced garlic large sprinkle of red pepper flakes 1 can of diced canned tomatoes salt and pepper to taste grated parmesan cheese for garnish Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the salt and drop in the romanesco and let it cook for about 4 minutes. It should be tender when pierced with a fork but not terribly soft. Remove the romanesco and drop it into a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process. Add the pasta to the boiling water and follow package directions for cooking. While the pasta cooks, in a skillet over medium heat, add the olive oil and onion. Let the onion cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes or until it is tender but not yet turning brown. Add the garlic, red pepper flakes, tomatoes, chickpeas and romanesco. Let everything cook for about two minutes or until the ingredients are heated through. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Drain the pasta and add it into the skillet. Toss to combine and serve with grated parmesan cheese for sprinkling on top. Makes 2 servings as a main dish or 4 servings as a side dish. Romanesco with Mushroom and Wine Sauce 1 head of romanesco 1 teaspoon of salt 1 pound of sliced button mushrooms 3 shallots or 1 small yellow or red onion, sliced 3 tablespoons of butter or olive oil 1/2 cup or port, or other heavy red wine 1/2 teaspoon of dijon mustard salt and pepper to taste Rinse the romanesco and break it into bite-sized pieces. Bring a pot with a steamer basket to a boil over high heat. Once the water comes to a boil, add the romanesco and cover to cook for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, add the mushrooms, shallots and butter to a skillet. Cook for 10-12 minutes or until the shallots are starting to turn brown and the mushrooms have softened and browned as well. Add the wine and the mustard and reduce the heat to low. After the romanesco has cooked for about 10 minutes, transfer it from the steamer to the skillet. Let it cook, uncovered, for an additional 5-10 minutes until the romanesco has reached the desired tenderness and the wine sauce has reduced. You can serve this on a bed of cooked white or brown rice or even over strips of beef or chicken which have been broiled or sautéed until done. Makes 4-6 servings. Even crazy looking vegetables that look like they crawled out of the mind of a horror film director's mind can be quite tasty and easy to incorporate into a diet. Romanesco not only looks cool but happens to be high in fiber, vitamin C, and folic acid. Seen any cool vegetables at your local market that you don't know what to do with? Let me know.

Changeling, Happy-Go-Lucky, RocknRolla, Pride and Glory, High School Musical 3 and An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt

2008-10-24T00:27:53-06:00

Changeling Someone asked me what the last bad Clint Eastwood movie was as a director, and I had a hard time answering the question. I guess the last one I didn't recommend was Space Cowboys, in which he also starred. I guess this is my weak-ass way at telling you that, while I didn't dislike his latest work Changeling, there is something about the film that just doesn't work. There is certainly no shortage of great performances in this film, especially the work done by such well-known players as Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich as well as lesser-known character actors like Michael Kelly and Jason Butler Harner. Perhaps it's the story that never quite drew me in. But more than that, it feels like Eastwood's heart just isn't in this tale of a missing child in 1928 Los Angeles. The twists and turns of this bizarre, real-life case — in which the police return a boy to Christine Collins (Jolie), who is in fact not her son — are so hard to conceive of and wrap your head around that they leave you a little empty. I know enough about the actual case to know that Eastwood and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski took some serious liberties with the facts, but that's not my problem either. There's just too much going on here, and too many grand personalities vying for screen time and possible awards accolades. Eastwood covered a missing child scenario before in Mystic River, but that film seemed more focused and less flailing. I loved Malkovich's take on radio evangelist Rev. Gustav Briegleb, who has made it his mission to expose corruption in the LAPD and protect Collins from them as her voice and claims get louder and believed by more. The police are so afraid of the embarrassment of having reunited Collins with the wrong child that they refuse to believe her claims that the young man is not her son, despite the fact that he is apparently three inches shorter and has different dental records. At one point, she's even put into an insane asylum by the police for acting hysterical. Last year's Oscar nominee Amy Ryan (from Gone Baby Gone and currently guesting on "The Office") makes an all-too-brief appearance in this sequence as a fellow patient who was also put in the loony bin falsely by the police. Part of the problem is that there are so many subplots to the Collins boy's disappearance that the film ends up feeling scattered and unfocused. The asylum sequence is too long and brings the plot to a grinding stop. Then there are the scenes involving a fairly honest cop (Kelly) interrogating a kid and eventually chasing down a possible serial killer. And the police chief and his right-hand stooge are involved in an endless succession of dirty tricks against Collins. While these distractions are meant to close the book on what exactly happened to Collins' son, they drag the film down and on (the running time is nearly 2.5 hours). Jolie's devastating good looks and solid acting are certainly welcome, but I got so lost in her perfect makeup and clothes, I sometimes lost interest in what was going on with the plot(s). As I said, there are many good things about Changeling, but there's a central piece needed to hold everything together that is simply missing. It should be Jolie, but it isn't. And I usually don't have issues with her as an actress. It might have been Malkovich, but he's not in the film enough to make that happen. No, the problem with this movie is that something — other than a little boy — is missing... a spark, an energy, a passion is lacking, despite a whole lot of trying. It's a valiant effort on Eastwood's part, but this is a rare instance where I did not connect with his usually flawless work. Happy-Go-Lucky Speaking of filmmakers who have rarely, if ever, made a bad movie, the 65-year-old British auteur Mike Leigh delivers what may be his most accessible but no less compelling work, featuring yet another in a long line of lead female performances that is worthy of every award nomination it's likely to garner. Sally Hawkins stars as Poppy, a school teacher with a spirit, attitude and sense of humor that is completely without boundaries. Hawkins plays the role like it was hers from birth, which in many ways it is. As with many of Leigh's films, the "story" (as much as there is one) emerges from what is essentially a character study of Poppy simply going through her day to day routine. She pretty, dresses a bit loud, and finds it in herself to laugh and crack jokes through even some truly painful experiences, such as throwing her back out. For her, life's glass is always half full. Although the film's title might lead you to believe Happy-Go-Lucky is an unabashed comedy or some sort of light-hearted fare, don't be too sure. While this is certainly one of Leigh's lighter efforts, it's by no means lightweight as we see Poppy deal with a possible abuse situation regarding one of her students. But by far the film's most intense sequences comes from the least likely source: Poppy's weekly driving lessons with Scott (Eddie Marsan), a bitter and buttoned-up man whose methods of instruction would fit right in at any prison camp. His is one of the most well-rounded characters in the film, and we see a transformation in his persona that is both sad and scary. Almost as a means to counter that, there's a single sequence in which Poppy meets an older homeless man that is simply one of the most touching moments you will see on film all year. The film's final act centers on Poppy's almost accidental love life, a situation that arises out of the child abuse situation (irrefutable proof that she can turn any negative into a positive). Leigh is best known for his high drama in films such as Naked, Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, and while Happy-Go-Lucky is no less satisfying, it falls more in line thematically and tonally with works like Life Is Sweet, Career Girls and All or Nothing. If these titles mean nothing to you, first of all, shame on you, but second, this is an excellent opportunity to introduce yourself to the wonders of true modern British cinema. More importantly, the film gives us all a chance to meet one of the most richly drawn female characters of this year or any in recent memory. The film opens today at the Landmark Century Center Cinema. RocknRolla I keep waiting for Guy Ritchie to find his footing again, and his latest film does return him to the world of gun-toting British gangsters, rapid-fire editing and swirling camera movements, all of which are steps in the direction of his early and best works, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. But what RocknRolla is missing is a solid entry point such as Jason Statham gave us in those two films. Although 300's Gerald Butler is being touted as the star of the film, he's not really; he's just one of many seedy types that populate the film and give Ritchie's vision its patented mixture of over-inflated machismo and dark, dark humor. The narrator of the film is actually one of my favorite actors working today, Mark Strong, who also happens to be the best thing about Ridley Scott's latest, Body of Lies. Strong is a chameleon, so you may not know exactly what he looks like. I remember first noticing him in Stardust last year. In RocknRolla, Strong plays the right-hand man to one of London's most important crime lords (played by Tim Wilkinson), who has made a small fortune getting things done in the real estate market. A few more scenes with Strong would have established him as our door into Ritchie's complicated plot, and allowed me to like this film a whole lot more. As it is, the movie isn't half bad. I couldn't begin to dive into the plot in any kind of detail, but it involves million of pounds of money meant for bribing purposes so a Russian gangster can buy up and develop massive amounts of London real estate. Money is stolen, low-level criminal types are beat up or killed outright, a valuable painting is passed around from scumbag to scumbag, and there's some drugged-out rock star whom most people think is dead but is actually just holed up somewhere taking massive quantities of drugs. Why do we care about him? It takes way too long to find out. Ritchie's strong suit is pulling together all of these stories and characters, and making the experience of watching them go through the paces fun even if the various plot elements don't all make sense (the did for me in this case). And he always seems to attract great (or at least interesting) actors to his movies. In RocknRolla, we see the likes of Jeremy Piven, Thandie Newton, Ludacris, Toby Kebbell, Gemma Arterton and Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from "The Wire"). Some of the characters are overly slick, while others are patsies and thugs, but they are certainly never boring to watch. In a weird way, RocknRolla's flaws are also its strengths. I've seen Ritchie do versions of this before, and working in his comfort zone is where he operates best. The problem with that is that he doesn't bring anything really new to the table beyond a chorus of new faces to replace the old. For the most part, I enjoyed this movie for my own reasons, but I'm not sure those reasons quite translate into a universal recommendation. If you've been impressed with Ritchie's work in the past (excluding Swept Away and parts of Revolver), you might really enjoy you time watching this one. Either way, I'm really excited to see his take on Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law (and Mark Strong as the villain, I might add), set for release next year. RocknRolla is a toss-up. Pride and Glory One thing no one can ever accuse writer-director Gavin O'Connor of doing is short-changing his audience on energy or being disingenuous about how he approaches his material. His two previous films (the fantastic 1999 indie hit Tumbleweeds and Miracle, 2004's docudrama about the 1980 Olympic hockey team) are examples of what an absolutely solid filmmaker the guy is. His latest work (co-scripted with Joe Carnahan, director of Smokin' Aces and Narc), Pride and Glory, swings for the fences in terms of scope and intensity but is continually thwarted by its simply and constantly spiraling out of control. When you get two spirited actors like Edward Norton and Colin Farrell, with a shot of ham courtesy of Jon Voight, you can probably expect that reining those characters in might be a full-time gig. Still, the story of two generations of New York cops who become linked with a pretty ugly scandal involving dead officers, drugs, and all sorts of unseemly criminal types has its moments. Norton plays Ray Tierney, who is pulled back into the fold after a personal tragedy by his father Francis (Voight), the chief of Manhattan detectives, to lead the investigation into the deaths of four policemen. Farrell plays Ray's brother-in-law (married to Ray's sister) Jimmy, a lose cannon in the classic sense. One of the problems I had with this film is Farrell's choice to play Jimmy as so obviously guilty of something. The movie's secret weapon is the always-reliable Noah Emmerich as elder brother Francis Jr., the family's and the force's stable, often silent pillar. The investigation in this film seems secondary to the character portraits, and I'm OK with that. The film is strongest when it focuses on the relationships between the family members. There's a dinner sequence featuring the entire cast that is something to behold and feels wonderfully alive and spontaneous. In a way, I wish O'Connor had enough confidence in those sections of the movie to make that the focal point. Francis Jr.'s wife (Jennifer Ehle) has cancer, and Ehle is such a strong actress that whenever she's on screen, I never wanted to see her leave. Lake Bell plays the Tierney family's only sister (married to Jimmy), and she's terrific but gets so little screen time that it's frustrating. The world has enough police dramas on TV and in movies that Pride and Glory does not seem particularly special or necessary. I liked that O'Connor tried to draw parallels between the secretive world of the police and way governments or corporations protect and deal with their own, but even that isn't exactly uncharted waters. Pride and Glory has a great look, some fine acting, and a select few moments that I thought carried me through it, but ultimately the effort is disappointing considering how long we've had to wait for a new film from O'Connor. High School Musical 3: Senior Year Yeah, that's right. I saw it. What are you going to do about it, you sonofabitch? I not only saw it, I watched the first two High School Musical movies as a primer. I made the decision long ago that if I was going to dive in, I'd do so head first... and maybe I'd be lucky enough to crack my head open and miss the third installment of the single safest movie you will ever see (or not see) this year. I'll admit that the level of enthusiasm the largely young female audience I saw HSM3 with fascinated me to no ends. But more than that, I'm intrigued by Zac Efron for a couple of reasons. First off, he's the only one of this bunch of not-so-young-anymore actors who can actually act. He's the best singer, the best dancer, and, based on the screaming when he flops his floppy hair a certain way or takes his shirt off, the best looking of the bunch. I'm really glad that my first exposure to him was Hairspray, and not one of these movies. Forgetting the easily forgettable plot of HSM3 — about Efron and his girlfriend (Vanessa "I Saw You Naked So Stop Playing All Virginal" Hudgens) and their friends preparing for graduation and college — the film's highlights are the musical numbers. But here's the thing, it's very clear to me that in order to secure Efron in this third sequel that I'm fairly certain he didn't want to do, the song-and-dance makers had to showcase him a whole lot more in this movie than the previous two. What's even more interesting is that those are the film's strongest moments. There's one angst-ridden solo sequence where Efron tears through the empty school trying to contemplate what his next move will be. Will he continue playing basketball at a nearby college in Albuquerque, or will her head off to Julliard where he can sing and dance until the gay cows come home? Will he and Miss Naked Virgin stay together, perform in the big senior show or will she leave to go to Stanford on an early admission program? These are important issues, people! There's another impressive song-and-dance scene with Efron and co-star Corbin Bleu set in a car junkyard that so clearly casts Efron as Justin Timberlake it made me laugh. It was a little frustrating watching HSM3 since none of the other actors seem to adjust their play to the back row style of overacting for the big screen. You don't have to wave your arms around and make faces on the big screen. We can see you; stop trying so hard to get noticed. Wait, am I trying to say I liked this movie? In a way, I guess I did. I wasn't clawing at my eyes as I ran screaming for the exits when it ended. And the fact is, I dig Efron as a performer, and I hope that in future roles he's able to continue in future musicals. I seem to recall he's going to star in a Footloose remake, which actually sounds like a great idea. As an actor, the kid's not bad either. I'm hearing good things about him in Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles. He'll probably be one of the actors who is always fighting to be taken seriously because of his good looks and his twinkle toes, but the fact is, Efron is a great all-around entertainer who will look back at HSM3 as the end of the first chapter of that part of his life, while I look at it as the beginning of a new chapter in mine called "Me and Zac: 2 Gether 4 Ever." Toodles! An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt / I Am So Proud of You So here's the thing about Don Hertzfeldt: the guy is a certifiable genius. Anyone who has watched his glorious and hilarious hand-drawn animated shorts Billy's Balloon, Ah, L'Amour, or Rejected knows this already, and you've more than likely watched these shorts more times than you can count, especially the truly inspired Rejected. But beginning with The Meaning of Life and continuing on to the 2006-07 exercise in mental gymnastics Everything will be ok, the Oscar-nominated Hertzfeldt has gone from being a gifted writer and animator of comic shorts into a more existential realm which faithfully examines the way the human mind works and doesn't work. He's showing us the mental movie that runs inside a fractured mind, maintaining a level of humor, but adding a blanket of melancholy and despair. One could see these recent works as a portrait of a man trying to fend off a psychological meltdown, or perhaps this is said meltdown in its earliest incarnation. Most importantly, Hertzfeldt has transformed himself from animator and storyteller into a true artist. And his latest work, I am so proud of you, is heartfelt proof of this. His longest short to date, this new piece is something of a follow-up to Everything will be ok, and much like that work, it's impossible to summarize or explain. You just need to see it, and in doing so, you'll understand that behind Hertzfeldt's countless triumphs and accolades over the years is a man with some serious issues in dealing with the everyday world. This is the first of his films that got a genuinely deep emotional response from me, and I think it's accurate to say I was fairly devastated after watching it, which of course forced me to watch it again. But don't take my word for it. Go see it for yourself in an evening of really special events. On Friday, Oct, 24, Hertzfeldt will be in Chicago as part of his North American tour for an "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" at the famed Music Box Theatre. A second show has just been added, so advance tickets are now available for an 8pm show and an 11:30pm show. First off, a selection of Don's classic animated shorts will be screened, concluding with I am so proud of you. After the shorts, what is sure to be one of the most awkward and uncomfortable Q&As you'll ever see will commence. You do no want to miss this rare event. I've heard from people I trust who have seen Hertzfeldt do Q&As that he's a bit shy and reserved, which surprises me not even a little. But hopefully, great questions and an enthusiastic crowd will lure some excellent responses from him. And what if you don't live in Chicago or can't make the trip? Perhaps Don is coming to a city near you. He's already hit the Northwest as well as the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin recently. Chicago is about the midway point on this tour, which then takes Hertzfeldt to Omaha, Calgary, Atlanta, Allentown, Rochester, New York City, Denver and Los Angeles by November 30. Check the Bitter Films website for specific dates and locations. I implore you if you live in one of the towns not to miss this evening of classic animation and a chance to spent a little time with this talented artist.

...is on assignment. Back next week.

2008-10-23T00:26:00-06:00

Chicken, Whole Roasted

2008-10-21T00:49:50-06:00

Editor's note: This column originally ran on January 25, 2005. One Good Meal is on a brief hiatus and will return soon. When I'm looking for comfort food, I'm quite fond of roasting a chicken and baking some potatoes. And on the occasional Sunday when I just can't bear to put forth a lot of effort for dinner I'll warm up a bag of frozen veggies to go with dinner. Seriously, there's something about cracking the skin on a fresh-baked potato that reminds me of my mom and warm hugs in the kitchen. Since my downstairs neighbor is kind enough to let me cook vicariously in his kitchen, it only seemed fair to present him with one of my favorite recipes. This seems like it shoud be an intimidating dinner because you've got a whole chicken that needs cooking, but it shouldn't be intimidating. It's quite easy if you're willing to set a timer and flip it a couple of times. And as long as you aren't squeamish about separating the skin from the meat, you'll be able to add herbs and garlic under the skin which will result in tasty, tasty meat. Before we can get to cooking, you have to know what kind of bird to buy. Its not as easy as it sounds. Whole chickens range anywhere from 3 to 10 pounds and some of those just aren't right for roasting. Cornish game hens are the smallest variety of chicken. That's right, it's not some wild bird, it's a hen that is bred to be small-boned and meaty; they have a delicate flavor and are perfect for roasting, but that's another column. The broiler-fryers (which are most plentiful), which weigh 3-5 pounds, are about 45 days old and are very tender, but the meat-to-bone ratio means that roasting will result in tough meat. These birds need to be cooked fast and on high heat, so they're perfect for frying or cutting into pieces and broiling quickly. There are also capons, which usually weigh 8-10 pounds. They sound like a fancy bird, but they are castrated male chickens which are kept confined to a very small cage so they can't develop muscle tone, and are therefore very tender. Sure, they're great for roasting, but they're so big they take a long time to cook and for a household of less than four, it is too much meat. Fowl or stewing hens are older hens that have lain a lot of eggs. They're flavorful and great for making broth, but tough if roasted. Roasters are about 10 weeks old and will probably weigh between 5 and 7 pounds. Perfect for one or two people with lots of food leftover, but big enough for four or five with a couple of side dishes. If you plan on cooking your chicken more than 48 hours after you've purchased, it should be kept frozen. A whole chicken can last about six months in your freezer, while a cut-up chicken starts to get freezer burn after three months. Thawing them out does take a long time, but if you put it in the fridge 24 hours before it's going in the oven you should be fine. If you don't have that much time, keep it in its vacuum-sealed bag and put it in a sink under lightly running cold water for about an hour and a half. Many people think chicken is hard to cook because of the press given to salmonella. It's nasty, nasty stuff but don't get paranoid. It's easier to avoid than the cooking show lawyers will admit. Here are my tips. If anything touches the raw chicken it has to be washed before it touches anything else. Cutting chicken on a wooden cutting board is actually safer than plastic, don't stick your chicken-gooey fingers in your mouth, and make sure the meat is cooked all the way through before serving. Throw away all the trays, foil, and plastic the raw chicken has come in contact with. Clean -- don't just wipe -- any area that may have come in contact with raw chicken juice. Ingredients: 1 roaster 2 cloves of garlic Fresh thyme, sage, or other herb you know you like (a dried mix of these herbs will also work, keep it to about 2 tablespoons of dried herbs and 2-3 of chopped herbs) 1 tangerine or smallish orange (a large lemon would also work) Salt Pepper Large dollop of butter Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Remove the chicken from its bag. I'll assume that you can figure out which pieces the wings, legs, and breasts are. The back of the bird is boney, and the breast of the bird should be meaty. Inside the neck cavity you'll find a paper or plastic bag containing chicken bits and the neck of the chicken, which need to be removed. Cut off the odd flaps of skin that are probably near the neck cavity and the butt cavity. (You won't need these for tonight so put it all these extra pieces into a large zipper bag and throw it in the freezer. When you get a lot of them, you can make chicken stock.) Rinse off the chicken inside and out. Pat it dry with paper towels, and throw the towels away. with the tip of a paring knife, poke holes in the skin of the bird, but not so deep that you're piercing the meat. Peel your garlic and slice it into thin slivers. You don't have to be able to read through them, but they need to be small enough to slip between the skin and the meat of the chicken. Take the fresh herbs off the stems, chop and mix with a tablespoon of salt and as much pepper you'd like for a whole chicken. I'd use about a teaspoon, but I like pepper. Sprinkle one-third of this mix inside the bird's cavity. The rest will get shoved with the garlic evenly between the skin and the meat on the top, sides, and legs. To get to the meat on the legs you'll have to make small incisions with a knife and just shove the seasonings through that. I usually ignore the wings because those just end up in my stock-pot, but if you like to eat them, season those as well. Wash your hands. There isn't much meat on the back so don't worry about putting seasonings there. The citrus is going to help provide moisture and a bit of flavor to the chicken. You're going to want juicy fruit and the easiest way to do that is to beat it up a bit. Think about your ex or your boss and bang it on the counter or sink edge until you can feel it soften up. Stab the orange several times with a fork or knife. The more holes it has, the more outlets for steam, and the more citrus steam the more citrus flavor the chicken will have. If you really like orange (or lemon), you could take some of the zest off the fruit and put that in with the spices between the skin and the meat. Place the orange into the cavity -- it will probably fit better in the butt end than the neck end. Wedge it into the middle if you can. If you have a roasting pan with a rack, that's wonderful. I don't, so I improvise. I have a skillet that is safe to put in the oven, you could also use a casserole dish, or any baking dish with slightly high sides that will fit the bird when it is on its back. Place the bird breast side up in the pan, take a tablespoon or so of butter and rub it all over the top and sides of the chicken. Put it in the oven for about seven minutes. This will help the skin get a bit crusty without causing the meat to dry out. Turn the oven down to 375 degrees and remove the pan. Being careful not to burn yourself, turn the bird on its side. If it wants to fall over, make a couple balls of aluminum foil and wedge them under the bird. Put it back in the oven for 15 minutes. Pull the pan back out, flip the bird to the other side and return for 15 minutes more. Pull the pan back out and turn the chicken breast side up and remove the foil balls. Cook for another half-hour or until the chicken is done. How do you tell the chicken is done? If the skin is golden brown you're at least close. If you tilt the bird and the juice that comes out of the cavity is rosy, it's not done. If you stab a thigh (this is the slowest cooking part of the bird) with a fork or knife and you get pink liquid, it isn't done. If you are able to grab the end of the leg bone and wiggle it and it feels loose, it's probably done. If you're leery, cut into the inside of the thigh with a knife and fork and see if the meat is pink. Don't be nervous if the meat is fine but the bone is dark. If you have a meat thermometer, the meat should read at least 170 degrees Farenheit. Put your chicken on a platter or cutting board and let it rest for 10-15 minutes. To keep it warm, put it in the microwave or cover it with foil or a pan or large bowl. But don't cut it. This will keep the juices in the chicken, not on your plate. Baked Potatoes 1 baking potato per person Salt, pepper, butter, chives, and sour cream as garnish Pierce your baked potato with a fork four times. Place this on the outside edges of the middle rack in your oven, leaving the center for your chicken. No need to place them on a tray or foil. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until you can pierce the potato easily with a fork. Remove from oven with a hot pad or oven mitt. While you're waiting, you could make gravy to go with those potatoes you baked in a separate pan, or that box of Stove-Top stuffing you made. Trust me, this is easier than it sounds. All you need is the drippings from the chicken, a cup of liquid, a tablespoon or two of flour, and 10 minutes. Either put the skillet you cooked your chicken in on the burner, or transfer your drippings to a skillet. If there are stuck-on bits, add a half cup of liquid to the pan and stir to remove them. You can use any sort of broth, or beer, or wine (my favorite), or fruit juice, or even a soda if you're desperate. You could use water, but the flavor will be lighter. I'd recommend adding about a half-cup of liquid to your pan set on medium-high heat and putting one tablespoon of flour into another half cup of liquid. Once the liquid in the pan boils, slowly pour the flour/liquid mix into the pan while stirring constantly with a fork or a whisk. Once it comes back to a boil it should start to thicken up, turn the heat down to medium and keep stirring. If after three or four minutes of stirring it doesn't seem to be thick enough for you, slowly add another teaspoon of flour, wait a minute or two, and add another teaspoon if necessary. If it seems to be too thick, add a quarter cup of liquid to the pan. Once it seems to be the right thickness, you can now turn the heat down to the lowest setting possible and stir it every minute or two while you cut apart the chicken. You should be able to slice between the leg and the main body to the joint, which should separate, and then you can cut through the rest of the meat and skin to remove the thigh and drumstick together. You can cut off the wings in this same way. Following the line of the rib cage, you should be able to get a few slices of chicken off the breast. Delia Online has some photos of these steps. You're now ready to put the chicken on a platter with your baked potatoes, your gravy in a small bowl with a big spoon, your warmed frozen veggies, and a simple salad on the table to impress people. It's basic, but it's delicious. Simplicity is what makes roasted chicken a wonderful, wonderful dish.

W., Sex Drive, Max Payne and Moving Midway

2008-10-17T00:25:10-06:00

Hey everyone. Primarily due to a busy pre-Chicago International Film Festival schedule, I missed a few press screenings of films opening this weekend. My biggest regret is not getting to see director Barry Levinson's What Just Happened? with Robert De Niro, Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci and Bruce Willis, among many others. I have no idea if the movie is any good or not, but with a cast like that, I don't really care. Also opening this week is The Secret Lives of Bees, which I hear is a great book, but the trailers for the film look sappier than honey. But fear not because I've already gotten my invite for next week's High School Musical 3, and you know damn well, I'm not missing that. And speaking of the CIFF, this year is a doozey. One of the best line-ups in the past 10 years, featuring such fare as the superb Opening Night offering The Brothers Bloom (which you've already missed since opening day was yesterday) from writer-director Rian (Brick) Johnson, starring Adrian Brody, Rachel Weisz and Mark Ruffalo; the animated horror anthology Fear(s) of the Dark; the skull-rattling The Good, The Bad, The Weird from South Korea; director Mike Leigh's brilliant Happy-Go-Lucky; the deeply moving French offering I've Loved You So Long, starring Kristin Scott Thomas in the best work of her career; Pride and Glory from director Gavin O'Conner, starring Colin Farrell and Edward Norton; Danny (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire; writer-director Charlie Kaufman's (writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation and Being John Malkovich) freakishly good Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Samantha Morton; Kevin Smith's vulgarian gigglefest Zack and Miri Make a Porno; and Darren (Requiem for a Dream, Pi, The Fountain) Aronofsky's The Wrestler, with an absolutely heart-crushing performance from Mickey Rourke. I'll have full reviews of all of these films when they open, and all sorts of interviews with directors and actors to accompany the reviews. And these are just the films that are playing in the first week. You should also be aware that all of the films this year are screening within blocks of each other, primarily at the AMC River East 21 and 600 N. Michigan Ave. 9 theaters. A few special presentations are also playing at the Harris Theater at the north end of Millennium Park. W. If Oliver Stone hadn't felt the need to push this film into the public eye prior to the November presidential election (a decision I fully support if that's what he wanted to do, but I in no way understand that call) and he'd spent an extra two or three months filming and editing his latest work W., we would have ended up with a much different movie. And I think that movie would have been a better movie than this admirable but still very much surface treatment of our current president. I get it: he's a career fuck-up with daddy issues and a misguided sense of faith. He's not much for that fancy book learnin' but he excels at being a people person. None of these elements is particularly earth-shattering news. I remember shortly after George W. Bush took office in 2001, I saw a documentary that followed him on the campaign trail. I was so impressed with him as a networker. I remember a particular sequence of him on a plane with a coach class full of reporters, and how he would typically walk back into coach just to talk to reporters in a laid-back, casual fashion. If he couldn't win them with his politics, he'll win them with his charm. It seemed to be working. Before I write another word, let me make it clear that I really did enjoy most of W., especially for a handful of truly awe-inspiring performances, which I'll get into shortly. The film jumps back and forth between the events leading up to and including the Iraq War and Bush's adult life, beginning with his intense hazing in the hands of his fraternity brothers. Immediately, we learn how and why Bush seems intent on sticking everyone he knows with a nickname, even foreign leaders. It's a great moment early on. The curious thing about W. is that I don't think Republicans or other Bush supporters will take any great offense at much of what is presented here. Rather than dive head first into an exercise in muckraking, Stone's approach is remarkably and sometimes disappointingly even handed. Early trailers led us to believe this film might approach farce proportions, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sure there is the occasional zinger or attention drawn to classic Bush-isms, but for the most part this is a straightforward biopic. Stone inserts the recurring image of Bush in an empty baseball park (in which he can still hear the roar of the crowd cheering on his every move... until he can't). Josh Brolin seems to have been born to play this part. He's so good and so nails this character in voice, gestures, faces and personality that you stop noticing how good he is early on. He just becomes George W. Bush, and he plays him at every age with just the right level of righteous intensity mixed with stubbornness and a dash of playfulness. James Cromwell plays his father, George H.W. Bush as a disapproving father who resents the royal screw-up and obvious alcoholic this son has become. Instead, the elder Bush favors brother Jeb. As much as I enjoyed some of Stone's Psych 101 profile of Bush: The Early Years, the more modern-day stuff is far more compelling. There is a War Room meeting in the middle of the film where Bush and his key advisors decide whether or not to invade Iraq, and the scene stands as one of the greatest I've seen all year. This scene spotlights a couple of the supporting players better than any other. First and foremost, Jeffrey Wright's Colin Powell is mind-blowingly great, as the lone man against going in because the proof of that nation's WMDs just wasn't there. He still went down with the ship when he decided to go before the United Nations and present unsubstantiated evidence. And then there is Richard Dreyfuss' scarily real Dick Chaney, who is accused of spelling out the plan not just to get rid of Sadaam and free those under his tyrannical lead, but also as the mastermind behind plot do a little empire building in the Middle East. He's Iago, whispering words of friendship and guidance into his king's ear but clearly holding him in the lowest regard. Toby Jones' portrait of Karl Rove is fascinating, and probably deserves its own movie. He clearly has very close friendship with Bush, but the root of their connection is unclear. Rove comes across as the nerd who is just so happy to fall in with a cool crowd that he will do anything the leader of that crowd asks. Bush likes Rove because he takes his thoughts and turns them into words that the media will eat up. There's a sequence set outdoors during Bush's run for Texas governor where they pair are running through anticipated questions from the media. Some of the answers are answers, some are attacks, and some are clearly avoidance techniques. Rounding out some of the film's most interesting performers is Elizabeth Banks' take on Laura Bush, who is transformed from a strong Democratic supporter into the wife of George Bush. It almost feels like there are missing scenes with her. Did he literally charm her away from her convictions, or were they simply never that strong to begin with? I wanted to learn more about the First Lady, and Banks is such a gifted actress (soon to be seen in two very different films in the coming weeks — Zack and Miri Make A Porno and Role Models), it's a shame Stone didn't explore here a bit more. Although W. doesn't approach the greatness of some of Stone's other films — in particular Nixon, which also presented a disliked president in a fairly sympathetic light — it is a film worth seeing for its attempts (albeit pedestrian at times) to humanize a man who many believe is far too human to begin with. George W.Bush is as easy a target as some of the characters Bill Maher goes after in Religulous, another film I truly liked, but I think Stone could have dug deeper and expanded his scope. I was particularly shocked that there is no scene in this film showing the immediate Bush reaction to the attacks of 9/11. And I can think of a half-dozen other moments that I wish he'd included, any of which would have been more telling about the kind of leader Bush is than yet another scene where he fights with his father. When Stone puts us behind the scenes of some of the most important decisions made in modern history is when he's at his best. The movie opens with the meeting in which the term "Axis of Evil" was coined, and it's quite funny. Even for what it lacks, I'm still glad Stone didn't turn his profile of Bush into a complete lampoon of the man. Brolin's thoughtful performance moves it from simply being a "Saturday Night Live" spoof and into a realm that more closely resembles reality, or at least a version of it. This is a flawed piece that Stone might very well continue working on long after its release date (I'd say the odds are better than 50-50), and I look forward to seeing future versions that will dig a little deeper into this person who is both simple to understand and impossible to know. Sex Drive I judge teen sex comedies pretty simply. If I find myself laughing more than 50 percent of the film's running time, I recommend it. If I only laugh 51 percent of the time, the recommendation isn't particularly strong, but it's still a passing grade. If the laughs are accompanied by a solid story with characters fleshed out enough to make me care about them, well then, I'm in heaven. I'm unfamiliar with director and co-writer (along with John Morris) Sean Anders' first film Never Been Thawed, but I've heard it's solid material, and I will seek it out. His latest work, Sex Drive, had me laughing a great deal, howling on several occasions, and in a near-constant state of glorious cringe from all of the indignities that are thrust upon its unsuspecting cast, led by Josh Zuckerman as Ian and Clark Duke as Lance, who steals absolutely every scene he's in, which is nearly all of them. High school dork Ian is tempted by an online hookup with a woman he knows as Ms. Tasty. He's only seen photos of her and she lives hundreds of miles away. Still, Ian thinks the guarantee she's given him that he'll score if he makes the journey to see her is enough to steal his brother's car (James Marsden as the loudmouth, homophobic, bully brother is a scream), snatch up his buddy Lance, as well as his best friend Felicia (Amanda Crew), to make the drive with him. The film is a classic road movie and delves to the depth of vulgarity that films like American Pie and Harold & Kumar have also traveled. But I happen to love those movies, and how they combine the sick humor with some truly silly shit. The group's Odyssey-like journey takes them to an Amish village, where they meet the world's only sarcastic Amish man, played to perfection by Seth Green; a sleazy roadside carnival; and a trailer park where Lance learns a new sexual practice — the rolling brown-out. In the end, Sex Drive is cast in the classic "guy needs to lose his virginity ASAP" mold. We know the premise, now it's the filmmakers' job to impress me with the creativity of their comedy, which they absolutely do. The Mexican donut is only a fraction of the humor. Marsden and Green are only a part of it. Clark Duke, in many ways, is the beginning, middle, and end of all that is good about this movie. I liked the sweet crush between Ian and Felicia, but that storyline plays out right on schedule. Lance is a lose cannon whose Hefner-like qualities are apparent only to the hundreds of ladies that's he's seen occupy his bed. He's an inspiration to us all. I'd love to just say Sex Drive is a big, dumb comedy that you can just shut off your brain and enjoy. But the fact is that the movie is secretly smart; the characters aren't exactly deep, but they're well-written enough to make us care about what happens to them; and there's a sweetness to the film that serves as the true heart and soul of the movie. I realize a comedy with few name stars is a tough sell in this day and age, but the fact is that if you plop down your money and get your butt in that seat, you'll love this little comedy morsel. I predict massive DVD popularity, and maybe that's a good thing, but a good time will be had by anyone seeing this with a paying crowd, I promise. Max Payne I'm rally mad at this movie, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time picking it apart. I'm not saying this would have made it any better, but we have a movie call Max Payne, featuring potentially some of the rawest violence and most sultry women (including Mila Kunis and soon-to-be James Bond sidekick Olga Kurylenko, and director John Moore (who did the remakes of Flight of the Phoenix and The Omen) delivers a PG-13 crap that culminates with Mark Wahlberg's Payne going from room to room blasting away everything in site, much like, hmm, a video game? OK, so the idea from the film originated from a videogame and I'm sure there's an R-rated cut coming to DVD in a few months, but that doesn't mean it has to feel so two-dimensional. There's no humor, there's no heart, there's no fun here. Everyone is so glum, drugged out of their mind, or sneeringly evil that there are no surprises and no investment on my part in these characters. Even the lovely Kunis, who is the heart and soul of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, can't save herself in this poorly written douche chill of a movie. No matter how many skimpy leather outfits they strapped her into, I wasn't buying her as a tough lady any more than I was buying Wahlberg as an emotionally damaged cop looking for his wife's killer, or Beau Bridges as the laughably over-played head of security for Payne's dead wife's employer, or Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges as Internal Affairs detective Jim Bravura, the only cop keeping an eye out for Payne's best interest. Every performance falls flat, the movie smells of stale bird shit, and the art direction looked so standard-issue dark and gloomy, I wanted to set a fire in the theater just to illuminate the place. Forced atmosphere never works, and this movie failed to generate any heat from my loins. Stay far away from Max Payne. Moving Midway One of most unexpectedly wonderful documentaries I've seen all year slips into the Gene Siskel Film Center beginning today. Directed by Godfrey Cheshire (best known as a New York-based film critic), this is the story of Cheshire's extended family, whose roots are deep in a former plantation in North Carolina called Midway, owned by his eldest cousin and square in the middle of a future community development. Rather than be surrounded by a new Target and Home Depot, as well as a housing development and busy highways, the cousin decides to literally pick up the rather large home and move it to a larger, quieter plot of land a few miles away. What I thought was going to be an interesting look at the physical process of moving such a large home by contractors turned into something far more meaningful (and we still get to see the house jacked up and placed on trucks!). What comes to light in the months before the actual move is that this very white Southern family has an entirely African-American branch to its family tree, which dates back to the original builder of the house who had a liaison with his cook. Although very few of the black descendants knew just how far back their white roots went, Cheshire sheds light not only on his family but the myth that there is even such a thing as a pure white or black Southerner. Apparently, the South is as much a mixing pot as anywhere else in the country, they just don't talk about it much. Being the consummate film critic, Cheshire brings in the effect of films of the first half of the 1900s which perpetuated the Romantic myth of Southern culture, plantation living and the "happy" slave. Movies like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, Jezebel and even Song of the South get an airing out in Moving Midway unlike any they've gotten before. And the defining moment in modern black culture — the first airing of the "Roots" miniseries — set the stage of hundreds of thousands of African-Americans to look into where they came from in America and abroad. The film unlocks the power and binding force that is genealogy, while examining the way modern-day Southerners justify or excuse the practice of slavery, the Klan, and the reasons behind such practices as Civil War reenactments (with no black players to be seen). The film shows us the birth of lasting friendships between men and women who would never normally run in the same circles, but blood is thicker than water or color, apparently, and Moving Midway is one of the finest examinations of who and what defines "family" that I have ever seen.

It's The End of the World As We Know It, and I Feel Mildly Terrified

2008-10-15T00:02:40-06:00

Before we proceed, remember this: those people Tom Brokaw dubbed The Greatest Generation, on the eve of the Great Depression, were drinking moonshine, banging flappers, and sitting on poles. OK. I'm bored, partisans, you're boring me. Your attempts to blame this current economic crisis — actually, that expression is boring me, too, so I'm going to start calling it The Great Money Kerfuffle — on each other is boring me. It is meaningless to blame The Great Money Kerfuffle on Republicans or Democrats, on conservatives or liberals. A philosophy that sets "a free market" as the standard for proper social policy is the cause, and there can be absolutely no denying this wonderful fact, unless you appeal to some utopian, unfalsifiable argument (like, for example, "The Market wasn't free enough!"). Both sides of the aisle have gleefully held hands and skipped to that tune, and the fact that only one of them actually skipped off the cliff is due to a matter of degrees, not a contrast of philosophies. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to participate in the sort of false equivalency that the right thrives on and say that blame can be meted out equally. Insofar as the economic snake-handling represented by decades of radical right-wing economic philosophy is the preferred legerdemain of Republicans, blame can rest more heavily on their shoulders. But we can't just ignore that the repeal of the New Deal era Glass-Steagall Act in the form of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 was passed by a Republican Congress but with overwhelming majorities, and it was signed by President Clinton (there were veto-proof majorities, anyway). So, sorry Democrats! No dice. You don't get to run away from the New Deal for 20 years and then claim its mantle. For nearly a generation, Democrats have joined in the maniacal and dangerous utopianism pushed into the mainstream by the radical right (via stooges like recently sainted nitwit Ronald Reagan). They have assiduously reinforced the idea that social policies that manage competition are "class warfare" or "anti-jobs" or whatever ridiculous theme. (PS: You're also boring me with your murder of the once-interesting word "meme.") Frank Luntz pretended to focus group the week prior. That collaborationism did not just come about because the country became more "conservative" (true conservatives have really gotten a bad rap by hanging around with these radical right nutjobs), but because a generation of the left turned their back on class issues in the wake of the identity politics of the 1960s. So while true conservatives were being dragooned by a generation of right-wing cults both religious and economic, the leftists were pretending that class no longer existed to appear more "serious," participating in arguably self-defeating identity politics that emphasized transactions over fundamental change. This is a generational, not a partisan, failure. The rancid ideas, moral relativism and weak stomachs of a confused and thoughtless generation got us here. Now, The Great Money Kerfuffle of 2008 is upon us. With no minorities to blame (although they have tried, by erroneously or disingenuously blaming the housing bubble on government-backed minority lending), the partisans are blaming each other. But neither side is to blame, really. A failed generation of leadership has more to do with it than a single political party or general policy program ("conservative" or "liberal"). We can foresee one thing, though: The Great Money Kerfuffle could be — and should be — to Market Fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to that other maniacal utopian scheme, Marxism-Leninism. No false equivalency there. Both are philosophies that promise freedom but lead to authoritarianism, that require orthodoxy in the face of material evidence that contradicts it. And both are beloved of semi-intellectuals with cult heroes (Lenin and Marx; Rand and Friedman). I use the word "kerfuffle" not to trivialize what could end up being an immensely traumatizing economic disaster. For all we know, our generation — those of us born since the late '60s — might end up having to survive a Great Depression of our own — though hopefully not another World War, because they were drafting dudes into their thirties for that war. That is a mildly terrifying thought; I don't want to have to be a Greatest Generation. I mean, all those stories about the perseverance of the human spirit are great, but the process of perseverance is a pretty big drag. Don't get me wrong — I don't think we're not up to the gig. We're humans; we'll survive however we have to, and more likely than not, we'll cooperate in order to do it. The Greatest Generation weren't born ready to be the Greatest Generation. Like I said at the outset, on the eve of the economic disaster, people our age were daringly bobbing their hair and pretending to understand Gertrude Stein and jazz. If they did it, we can do it too. It will just be really, really, shitty. I'm also a little worried about the Europeans. When we got knocked down, we came back with Franklin Roosevelt, the Wagner Act and the New Deal. The Europeans came up with Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. Say what you want about Europeans, but their seeming first response to epochal economic trouble may be building camps for their various national scapegoats. Aren't they forcibly fingerprinting Roma in Italy now? And while we're all busy talking about the Chinese menace, I'd keep an eye on India. The US came out of the Great Depression and the Second World War as the preeminent power on the planet. With a billion people, a growing technology sector, improving infrastructure, and the fact that they are the largest democracy on the planet, I'd say the Indians are punching below their weight class right now. They may just be ready to step their game up, given the right opportunity. There are plenty of reasons to be very worried about where the economy is headed, and it is important that we understand the causes so that we can properly fix the problem. But it's not the end of the world: just the end of the world as we know it. And frankly, the world as we know it is pretty messed up. There's plenty wrong with it. Maybe this is our opportunity, our generation's opportunity, to remake that world, certainly better than the previous generation remade it. The world, Thomas Jefferson taught us, belongs to the living. That's right, I brought Jefferson back into it. Sitting in his drawing room, or parlor, or wherever it was they sat, in 1789 Paris, Jefferson was watching the utter collapse of French society. Not a political reformation, but an economic disaster (much of it brought on by the national debt, natch). The social order seemed to be crumbling — the world as Frenchmen and Frenchwomen knew it was ending. In the midst of this, Jefferson wrote a ponderous letter to his fellow Virginian James Madison, in which he said, "The Earth belongs in usufruct to the living." After forgiving Jefferson for his use of the word "usufruct" (a legal term similar in sense to "easement"), we can thank him for this unbelievably brave and optimistic bit of wordsmithery. The world is ours to remake however we wish, so long as we do so in, um, "usufruct," which really just means we shouldn't "fruct" it up while we're in charge. We have a model of how not to do that. This Great Kerfuffle, in tandem with the breakdown of the international order and the intractability of our domestic politics, is not merely a final repudiation of Market Fundamentalism, but of the entirety of the political and social leadership of a generation. Given that repudiation, it comes to a new generation to decide how we want our society to look. I'm going to be fully honest with you. That letter I'm quoting from is a little odd. Jefferson went on to literally press his point, and used some estimations of the average Virginian generation to figure out how often land literally should come to the sovereignty of a new generation, and settled on 19 years as the ideal length of a Constitution. He was also a terrible debtor his whole life, so much of the letter is devoted to decrying the fact that one generation should owe debts incurred by previous generations. But bubbling up amidst the full, somewhat bizarre discussion in the letter is Jefferson's ultimate point — that each successive generation "derive these rights not from their predecessors, but from nature." We aren't bound by the failures of previous generations, as though their decisions, systems and philosophies are the natural ways of human society. We have a natural right to order things however we see most fit. That's an exciting prospect. So while we face the prospect of giving up our moonshine and flappers, we can take some comfort in the fact that we don't have to live by the ferkakta decisions of a previous generation; we only have to endure them. And, once endured, to make the world again. "The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please."