His taxi driver didn't kill to save the teen prostitute. And when the media made him a hero, Scorsese lets you know he'd gotten a pass to kill again.
In telling the story of the goodfellas, he showed gangsters are compatible in an America where strength is measured by dominance. After the illusion of freedom is dispelled, the survivors discover they held nothing.
The grace of his raging bull is matched by the grotesque state all his beatings leave him in.
Scorsese brings his criticism of masculine aggression closest to America in his remake of Cape Fear. Nick Nolte's Sam Bowden leads his wife and daughter into further and further jeopardy by attempting to discourage his stalker with escalating aggression. The Bowden women find their salvation in shaking off the Southern patronage of their husband and father by taking the initiative in their own safety.
As presented in Scorsese's latest, the Aviator, Howard Hughes was a kook whose mother was all things to him. As the heir to the family fortune, he mortgaged everything to make a movie about WWI airplanes into something everyone wanted to see -- all while building faster and faster aircraft.
He found a kindred spirit in Katherine Hepburn, with whom he was free to be a kook, and with his flying could drive to exclaim things like "golly!" and "hot dog!" But as he was discovering he couldn't be all things to Kate, he met with her family in whom he discovered, while free to be kooks as idle rich, also lacked the kind of drive that would take them to breaking speed records. Despite her warnings that his growing notoriety would invite increased scrutiny, Hughes neglects Kate and breaks from the shelter of her love to embrace the pretense of playboy-industrialist-daredevil.
When, at the end of the film, Hughes, as a child, vows to make the biggest movies, fly the fastest planes, and become the richest man in America, we know he is damned. So seductive are his victories that even the smart movie-watchers may have to think twice before deciding whether its the kookiness that damns him, or the burden of living in hiding to pretend to be invulnerable.You mean you killed off real heroes so that you could pretend to be one?
America has just experienced a presidential election with the largest voter turnout in our history. Americans are in need of relief, and we've elected the man 51% of us believe will provide it.
The Bush administration pulled a lot of shit, and they were called on a lot of shit in return. They retooled taxes and entitlements so that the economic recovery they celebrate would be harvested almost exclusively by the wealthy, and they've invaded a contained, oil-rich, Muslim country that was free of al-Qaida's influence. (The only other, or should I say, the remaining Muslim country free of al-Qaida's influence is Syria.)
Their campaign's relief to the American voters? "We will know America is strong by our dominance."
The Kerry campaign also experienced shit, but they made the mistake of stopping at merely addressing concerns raised over their agenda. The Senator responded to his home-state's permission of gay marriage by disavowing it -- but with no clear offer of relief, even the simple departure from tradition (by association) became overwhelming.
If you voted for Kerry, and are packing up your household to move to Canada, one possible break you could give yourself in the meantime is to go see The Incredibles. It's a two-hour-long advertisement for the follow-up video game. Ok, it's a long commercial for your kids -- but it's worthwhile because of the relief it offers to all of its audience, not just those who play video games.
It's a relief reminiscent of John Kennedy: we know we are strong, not because of our dominance, but because of the risks we accept that are difficult.
Now, in all honesty, there are a few inconsistencies that lead me to think the filmmakers weren't consciously aware of this theme. The movie was, after all, made before the election. (Although this movie was released after the election by the same Disney that thwarted distribution of Fahrenheit 911.) And it's a lesson even other Kennedys, who are known for high-risk indulgences when our country faces no shortage of creative challenges, often get wrong. But from how well the point was made otherwise, I believe it's a point the movie's makers agree with.Update: Now that I think about it, my initial impression could apply to the appeal of most superhero stories. Rigidity in the genre may indicate a short-term appeal for future attempts of this kind of movie, or a slide into a fanbase that doesn't require much further innovation.
For The Incredibles specifically, Mr Incredible's ordeals were created initially because he chose to put demonstrating his own strength as a solo interest -- even thanking Elastigirl for knocking out a purse-snatcher for him was a challenge -- above concern over what the hell Buddy the sidekick-wannabe was going to do when he was left alone. Mr Incredible was a tactical thinker (less negligent in action than in agenda), and Buddy wasn't (he needed QA), so Buddy's potential for creating trouble was dismissed.
Mr Incredible couldn't even be bothered to add Buddy to Batman's list of troublemaking hacker-punks on the Batcomputer. Jeesus.Almost three quarters of a century after the release of Birth Of A Nation, during the climbing viewership of "The Cosby Show," Bill Cosby was deploring the state of television in an interview. He was asked what redeeming social value "I Spy" had, and replied that I Spy presented a black man to America who carried a gun, but who wasn't a criminal.
Considering the political merits of a modern stoner-comedy may carry its own pretension, but no less so for the millions of dollars needed to film something released into the mainstream of Loews theaters in Manhattan. Sympathetic male Asian-Americans have been withheld from film for almost a hundred years.
In "Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle" we see Harold and Kumar get high, begin a quest for White Castle hamburgers, get chased into the women's room by campus police only to get caught in a scatological competition between sculpted co-eds, have their car stolen by Neil Patrick Harris of "Doogie Howser"-fame, and attempt to complete their quest by riding an escaped cheetah.
We also see Harold intimidated by co-workers whose work he surpasses, wondering what the hell his attractive neighbor makes of him, and he and Kumar assaulted by "extreme" fratboys.
Harold and Kumar are likeable characters perfectly suited for an otherwise conventional stoner-comedy with an underlying grail-quest structure -- who are Asian-American. The reason so many seasons of remakes have taken place before the release of "Harold And Kumar" can be attributed to fears movie audiences are populated mainly by the extreme fratboys depicted in the movie. An effective principle in storytelling is that you must torture your characters. However the convention has been Asian-Americans can't be shown having a hard time not brought on by Chinese gangsters or a dong that is also long and a duck.
The conservative conventional-wisdom is to question whether there even is such a thing as racism anymore -- addressing race automatically becomes grounds for dismissing a position simply by exclaming "race card!" "Harold And Kumar" is a silly, entertaining movie especially worthwhile for addressing the extreme pretenses that shelter, among other things, governing administrations that continue to foist record-breaking debt on the children of Americans who benefit least from the status quo. Better to receive your gratification from burgers than King Arthur's court.I know people who intend to vote to reelect George Bush who believe he's never publicly told a lie.
No matter what your definition of "is" is, George Bush defaults to lying to get what he wants, and the cheap shots Moore takes in this film make it more difficult for BC04 to lie during their campaign. Good for him.Spider-Man, if you need to hear it after 40 years, is a super-hero retelling of the Biblical Jonah swallowed by a whale as he attempts to retreat from his divine calling. This sequel in which Spider-Man retreats from his public role is well-suited by Chabon's contribution. The ancient fable of divine calling is modernized with issues of repressed identity.
The pressure to censor comic books has handicapped the super-hero genre in ways it isn't handicapped in films. More feared than the primitive power-fantasies of comic books is the exploration of identity the genre is allowed in films. In the X-Men sequel, Ian McKellan is seductive simply asking about the public persona of a young mutant meta-human -- what's your real name.
Sam Raimi addresses the issue of identity visually, employing the imagery of falling things in his earlier films like "Army of Darkness" -- suddenly slowing down the fast-paced confrontation between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus by taking the time to show them free-falling as they fight.
In addressing his struggle to turn his back on his role as Spider-Man, the movie comes up with enough themes for nine really good sequels -- and perhaps one really bad one. Peter's Aunt May addresses the inspiration a hero creates in others -- and you only need to hear the news stories of medal of honor frauds (or even about people who lied about volunteering to go to Vietnam) to know what a bad idea that is.
Train passengers confronted with their own mortality show surprise that the unmasked Spider-Man is just a kid, evoking themes from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Frank Miller's portrayal of Batman and Robin of how all wars are fought with children. Their attempt to then protect the vulnerable Spider-Man with their own bodies settles for the moment whether the question of who you really are is inherently one of self-indulgence.