Mistier

I wrote about The Mist a couple of months ago when I saw it at the cinema. It’s a film which has stuck with me since, and I got to see it again on DVD again over the weekend. If anything, The Mist works better on DVD then it did in the cinema. The particular style of shooting (largely indebted, as Darabont himself says in the commentary, to the US cop show The Shield) suits the small screen and the monster effects which seemed so hokey when blown up to cinema-screen proportions are much better on TV.

Seeing it for a second time has also allowed me to appreciate just how good the cast actually are. Thomas Jane makes a solid centre, but he is surrounded by a gaggle of wonderful character actors who completely sell each moment. This may not be Darabont’s most elegant script, but he provides great moments for everybody and the whirling, constantly moving camera doesn’t give the director much of a chance to hide a poor performance. Thankfully, he doesn’t have it.

And even though there is little chance of it happening, I would still nominate Marcia Gay Harden for Supporting Actress for her role as Mrs Carmody. She is the scariest villain I have seen all year, a true crack-pot that Harden completely invests in. What makes the role even more horrifying is the almost implicit approval that her world view gets at the end of the film – she was more right then we, as viewers, wanted to believe. It is a brave performance and a mark of Darabont’s respect within the industry that he could assemble such a brilliant ensemble for what is in essence a monster movie.

Milk

After revealing myself to be a bit of a philistine while talking about preferring the English-language Quarantine in my post below, I am about to do it again.

The film I am most looking forward to seeing this year is Milk (and by year I mean ‘Oscar year’). I have watched the trailer a couple of times and it gets me every time. This, even more so than Brokeback Mountain, is a classic Hollywood story – the little man against the system, triumph and tragedy mixed with lashings of glorious gayness. Harvey Milk is an icon for our community and I am giddy at the thought of a big, award-worthy mainstream film celebrating it.

Van Sant gave an interview to Ain’t it Cool News over the weekend where he discussed that the plan was to originally make Milk in a more esoteric style, possibly following on from his work in films such as Last Days and Elephant. I respect Van Sant as an artist but a big part of me is glad that the film did not go in this direction. If ever a gay film needed to have the ability to connect with the mainstream without an alienating formal experimentation, then Milk is it. It comes at a precarious time in gay/straight relations, especially in the States, and the perfect storm of its story reflecting on current events is almost suspiciously prescient.

I want Mom-and-Pop types to go to Milk and be moved and swept up by it – I want them to feel big emotions, because that’s a powerful way to open minds. Brokeback helped by being a tragic love story. Milk is like Norma Rae or Erin Brokovich, a potentially rabble-rousing, big-hearted, but unapologetically gay drama. I was always afraid that Van Sant was the wrong guy to bring this to the screen. If circumstances forced him to err on the side of Good Will Hunting (a film which I admire and feel gets an unfairly rough ride) rather than Paranoid Park, then I am thankful for that.

Now I have to wait until January 9th to see the bloody thing!

Revolutionary Road

I am really looking forward to Revolutionary Road. While I haven’t loved everything that Sam Mendes has directed, I respect the guy’s talent, and more importantly, his taste. And the idea of Kate and Leo back together considering the huge growth in each performer’s abilities since Titanic is really exciting.

My one caveat was the material. The plot descriptions of Revolutionary Road make it sound like a hundred and one hell-in-suburbia stories. I don’t care particularly that Rev Road might actually be one of the first and finest – I have seen how bohemian dreams have been crushed under the heel of middle class conformity before. But the hosannas for Richard Yates’ novel were so intense that I decided to read it before seeing the film.

I am glad I did. Yes, there isn’t anything that is too surprising about the novel – it charts the slow spiritual death of Frank and April Wheeler as they ostensibly live the ‘American Dream’ in the Connecticut suburbs in the late fifties. They fight, have affairs, make desperate bids for freedom and are ultimately destroyed. This isn’t a happy book.

But it is sensationally well written. Frank and April feel completely, fully human – I hated them, pitied them, found myself rooting for them to succeed and devastated by their destruction. Though told largely from the male perspective, both characters are brilliantly drawn and while they aren’t exactly sympathetic, it is easy to empathise with them. It was a bit of a shock actually to read the book and realise, now that I have passed the 27th year milestone, that I am actually pretty close in age to Frank and April. And even though superficially, our situations couldn’t be any more different, I felt rushes of emotional connection to both, especially about how their dreams of a very specific future when they were younger slowly get clouded by the ‘responsibilities’ of having to become an adult. Their ultimate dilemmas resonated with me in a way that I don’t think would have been possible had I read this five years ago.

Yates is clinical and unsparing in how he charts the smallest of emotional changes. And while one plot element ( the crazy guy who tells the truth) felt a bit hoary, there is no denying the novel’s brilliance. Kate and Leo are brilliant choices for these roles, because both have the ability to suggest oceans of emotion without needing the crutch of dialogue. If the film is to maintain the subtlety of the novel this will be essential.

Quarantine

I managed to catch [REC] on DVD a couple of months ago. I had heard a lot of hype about how scary and effective the film was and, yes, it was rough but brutally effective. However, I don't think it was anything close to the masterpiece that some were hailing it as. The first half was clearly superior to the second, but the acting was poor throughout. I didn't think it would take long for Hollywood to remake it, and I was right. About 3 months later, Quarantine was released.

As horror remakes go I thought it was surprisingly decent. In fact I would go a bit further and say I actually found the whole thing much scarier. I am damning myself as a pleb for saying this I am sure, but I think the reason for this was because the actors were A) much better than their Spanish counterparts and B) speaking in English which made me empathise with them much more. [REC] moved at such a fast pace, that it was often a choice between reading the subtitles or trying to engage fully with what was happening on screen. I chose the latter, which I don't think ruined my sense of enjoyment but did mean that I cared less about who got killed. I thought the actors did a surprisingly decent job of feeling true and in the moment - in particular, the bantery scenes at the beginning of the film were better. It meant more to me to see them killed later.

This isn't a classic by any stretch but I had a lot of fun with both versions. I think we can retire the whole shot-from-a-live-cam-POV thing for a while, but [REC] and Quarantine are decent, if ultimately forgettable thrill rides.

OK, I'll Bite...

I haven't read any of the Twilight books. I have been vaguely aware of them as The Next Tweener Publishing Phenom but frankly, I had my fill of vampires and adolescence in the Whedonverse and I couldn't imagine there being much else to explore. The brilliant Laura Miller at Salon did a run down a couple of months ago which confirmed my suspicions;

"Bookstores have been known to shelve the Twilight books in both the children's and the science fiction/fantasy sections, but they are -- in essence and most particulars -- romance novels, and despite their gothic trappings represent a resurrection of the most old-fashioned incarnation of the genre. They summon a world in which love is passionate, yet (relatively) chaste, girls need be nothing more than fetchingly vulnerable, and masterful men can be depended upon to protect and worship them for it...Comparisons to another famous human girl with a vampire boyfriend are inevitable, but Bella Swan is no Buffy Summers. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was at heart one of those mythic hero's journeys so beloved by Joseph Campbell-quoting screenwriters, albeit transfigured into something sharp and funny by making the hero a contemporary teenage girl. Buffy wrestled with a series of romantic dilemmas -- in particular a penchant for hunky vampires -- but her story always belonged to her."

Now I am not one to turn down a good romance. I am a big sap for these types of things, but for for me to really engage with a story, to be able to lose myself completely, I have to believe in the strength of both parties. A weak or compliant female will end up pissing me off - I have to be able to put myself in either character's shoes and fully believe why they would love the other. That's why Buffy/Angel worked for me in a way that Buffy/Spike never quite could. Buffy/Angel were a true romantic pairing - Buffy/Spike had far too much baggage to be swept away by. Likewise, from how Miller described these books, both Bella and Edward are ciphers, repositories of traits without being full blown characters. If Bella is quite as pathetic as Miller describes her, then I have to question how anybody could fall for her.

However, that doesn't change the fact that I am actually quite intrigued by the film. Firstly, I respect Catherine Hardwicke as a director, and especially her ability to give voice and texture to teenagers on film. If anybody could take this material and allow it a little breath, it should be her. I especially like Kristen Stewart in the lead - there is something tremulous about her beauty (which seems to have been a pre-requisite for the role of Bella) but she is also an actress who projects a certain level of no-bullshit strength and centredness. That gives me hope that she can give some inner-life to Bella. The trailer is quite effective and some of the reportedly worst aspects of the film (the special effects have come in for some pretty withering comment) are carefully avoided.

I don't think there should be a gender or age divide between recognising a good or poor romance. And especially for teen romances, the visual shorthand of cinema can improve mightily on author's clumsy attempts to put into words feelings and urges which are basically hormonal. So I'll be in line to see the film - along with the rest of the TwiHards.

Queer Words

Ta Nehisi-Coates has become one of my new favourite writers. I started reading his stuff during the election and I love his style – he writes from a personal perspective, but at his best, he speaks universally.

I particularly liked this post where he talks about the use of the work nigger. Coates is black and he revels in the multitude of uses that the word has;

Labor's case for nigger is basically my own. Frankly, as I've said, I think it's a beautiful, protean, magical word. I love the ATCQ's slur "sucka nigga." I love the retort, "Nigger please." More than that I love, the trivializing disrespect of, "Nigger,what?" I love the fraternity of "Thar's my nigger." I had a buddy whose grandfather used to walk with a cane. But he called the cane his "Nigger-be-cool" stick. because he'd use it as a club, if he had to. My mother used to call brothers who stood on the corner "If I hadda had my gun niggers." She got this from one of my Dad's old Panther buddies who was always talking big about what would have done to some dude who disrespected him if he'd had his gun, "That motherfucker wouldn't have said that if I hadda had my gun." The point was that these were people who lived in this theoretical, coulda, shoulda, woulda world. But to my sixteen year-old ears, "If I hadda had my gun niggers" really came across as something I didn't wanna be. My Moms was a master of deploying language to motivate kids.
Anyway, the point is I love the word, like I love all words. I hate it's overuse, just like I hate the overuse of hot-sauce, sugar or wasabi. But I don't hate wasabi. I basically have decided that the whole "who can and who can't say nigger" should be left to individuals. It's generally true that black people don't like white people using the word, and the case for that is quite obvious--just because my best friend gets to call his wife honey, doesn't mean that I also get to call her honey. They have a particular relationship, based on a shared history. Ditto for blacks.

I don’t think there is ever a situation where I would personally feel comfortable using the word, but I appreciate how Coates talks about it. I guess it is a similar way to how I feel about how I feel about the use of the word faggot or queer. I loathe the word faggot but recognise that a lot of my gay friends use fag quite a lot. My issue with faggot (or its shortened use) is that I have never heard it used in a positive sense, even amongst gay people. It is always a slur, and an ugly one at that. And its use by straight people is almost guaranteed to make me see red.

Queer is more difficult since it has academic, political, positive and defamatory uses. I actually really like the word, because of its flexibility, but again it really is all about context (I couldn’t imagine many of my straight family members in Ireland using it in anything but a negative context but maybe I am being narrow minded).

Homer has a memorable line in the John Waters Simpson’s episode;

Homer: No I'm not, Marge! They're embarrasing me. They're embarrassing America. They turned the Navy into a floating joke. They ruined all our best names like Bruce, and Lance, and Julian. Those were the toughest names we had! Now they're just, uh...
John: Queer?
Homer: Yeah, and that's another thing! I resent you people using that word. That's our word for making fun of you! We need it!! Well I'm taking back our word, and I'm taking back my son!

Re-appropriating words within a community doesn’t remove all their negative connotations but itcan be an empowering experience.

Anger Management

I have been completely inspired by a lot of what is going on in the gay rights movement in the US at the moment. The grass roots action allied to the pain and anger over the passing of marriage amendments in 3 separate states this month. I have to admit that I look at the activism in these pictures (25,000 people marching in San Diego - how friggin' cool!) and have a longing to be there and experience that.

But it does beg the question of what this means for gay activism in England. Is there a space for anything like that sort of politically engaged action over here? Rightly or wrongly, the passage of civil partnership legislation effectively killed the marriage equality debate in the UK. The large legal battles have been won thanks largely to a sympathetic ear in Labour and the equalities legislation in the EU. What is left is the long slog to change social attitudes - such as Stonewall's admirable campaign against homophobic bullying in schools and calls for better and more open representation in mainstream pop culture.

A friend of mine said that there is no anger on this side of the Atlantic anymore. I tend to disagree - I still get angry, but it tends to be more diffuse, an anger without a specific cause to harness. It's an anger at continued homophobia, both in small areas and large but rarely 'actionable'. Past legal and political fights allowed a channelling of that generalised anger towards some larger positive goal. Now I just wait for the pissiness to go away.

Community activism is a way to feel like you are making a difference. I haven't been able to do switchboard volunteering for the past few months due to illness, and I miss it a lot. It gave me a great sense of being connected to something larger then my own immediate world and was a constant reminder that the relative security and safety in which I live is not the norm for so many other people.

Hairspray to Prop 8 in one simple move

Last night, for my birthday, I got to see Hairspray. For a third time in a year.

Sure laugh if you want.

Hairspray is easily the most joyous, life affirming night out on the West End at the moment. In all its calculated exuberance, cartoon garishness and panto-level humour, there is something innocent and vibrantly alive about this production. Hairspray’s cast is hands down the best I have seen in a long time, and they work their asses off. The score is stuffed with memorable tunes, not only the big show numbers like You Cant Stop the Beat or Run Tell That (where the actor playing Seaweed almost brings the house down), but the sublime You’re Timeless to Me, where the chemistry between Michael Ball and XX brings the show a surprising amount of poignancy and earthy, adult humour.

When I first saw Hairspray (in January) I avoided Michael Ball. Myself and a friend purposefully chose a night when he was on Xmas holidays because we both hated the idea of Ball in the role. And we were wrong in so many ways, that I may just preserve that decision to be used as a benchmark for future wrongness. I forgive Ball all the times he has annoyed me with his smug sanctimony in the past. He is warmer, more open-hearted and freer as a performer playing a woman than he ever was as a man. He has a flair for both the broad comedy and the disarming sweetness in the role. I love, love, loved him and am quite happy never to see him in anything else ever.

But more than that (and this is where I get to make a nice-if-tenuous link to Prop 8), the show does resonate. In all its superficiality, despite the many nuances of gender, class, race and body image that the shows glosses over, it does suggest a kernel of truth – we would, as a world, be much happier if sometimes we could just shut up and dance together. It was a part of what made a lot of the imagery of the Obama victory so inspiring – a sea of hopeful, multi-cultural faces finally connecting together in a moment (if only for a moment) before those nuances inevitably began to put back up walls of understanding.

I don’t meant to claim that Hairspray makes a grand political statement, but its sense of acceptance is perhaps the queerest part of the entire show (and I mean queer in its full political context).

X-Phile

I had a bit of a nostalgia-fest at the weekend. First, I re-watched all of the first season of X-Files. What started out as a plan to just watch 2 or 3 episodes turned into an epic, 2 day viewing marathon.

I had forgotten how much fun this show actually was and how quickly it found its feet and form. There are already hugely memorable episodes in that initial 24 episode run – real edge of your seat thrillers like Tooms and Ice. And the banter between Mulder and Scully, which developed so deliciously over the first couple of seasons (before, like most TV relationships it became too played out) felt fresh and engaging from the beginning.

There were a couple of shows (all American) that I completely associate with growing up in the 90s. The X-Files was definitely one of them (the rest including The Simpsons, ER, Friends and my beloved Buffy) and it’s nice to be able to look back on the very earliest episodes and realise that I wasn’t viewing the show with rose-tinted specs. It was genuinely fun and scary and intriguing. It had good actors who would create iconic characters. For about five years there wasn’t much else on television that could beat its weekly mix and the ways in which the show was able to deepen and expand its vision was shown in the marvellous season one episode Beyond the Sea.

Scully’s father dies early in that episode and her grief about his passing (and her insecurity about how he felt when she joined the FBI) dovetails beautifully with the main plotline about a death row inmate claiming psychic powers in order to save two kidnapped teenagers. Despite being half way through its first season, the show effortlessly flipped its dynamic, allowing Mulder to be the incredulous one and Scully struggling with her battle between what she believes and what she knows empirically. Anderson is marvellous in the episode (and a special mention to Brad Dourif as the prisoner should also be made). Some of the best X-Files moments would include its focus on Scully’s contradictions and crises of faith

I need to watch season 2 desperately now.

Proposition H8

Question: What would it take for gays and lesbians to come out fighting?

Answer: Fuck with their marriage rights…

The election of Obama was an unbelievably exciting and encouraging occasion. While many have spoken eloquently about the racial line crossed, for me it also felt generational. Barack is the first president, or really the first major politician, to feel like he swims in the same cultural pool as I do (granted, two decades removed but the actual chronological times feels far less). He wasn’t a member of the boomers, and for the first time, people of my generation mattered. I was incredibly moved by the sight of thousands of young, multi-ethnic Chicagoans celebrating their own sense of democratic power. That Obama seems worthy of their trust just makes it all the more gratifying.

But, that excitement and happiness was partly ruined by the passage of Proposition 8 in California, as well as similar measures in Florida, Arizona and Arkansas. Simply put, these measure were amendments to state constitutions to ensure that gays and lesbians would be treated as second class citizens and denied the right of civil marriage (and in the case of Arkansas denied the right to foster a child). However, it is specifically Proposition 8 which has become a lightning rod for controversy, which rather than dimming as exploded within the gay community since its passage.

Simply put, this summer the Republican dominated Californian Supreme Court ruled that under the state constitution, gays and lesbians could not be denied civil marriage, nor could they be fobbed off with ‘separate but not-really-equal’ domestic partnerships. This is important – they stated that the Constitution already grants them this right without any amendments being made. Jubilation followed the decision, and about 20,000 couples got married in the space of a couple of months.

These scenes are dangerous to fundamentalists. The sight of happy, devoted gay and lesbian couples undercuts their projected stereotype of gays and lesbians, that of disease ridden sadness or out0of-control partner swapping. A ballot initiative was successfully brought to put a Proposition on election day to Californian voters – would they amend the Constitution to specifically take this right away from gays and lesbians by amending the state constitution to define marriage as strictly between one man and one woman.

I see two things as being important here. The first is that this Proposition would take away rights which are already guaranteed. Secondly, the Court was ruling on a civil matters – churches would not be forced into giving their blessing to gays and lesbians if they did not want to.

The Propositions supporters were the usual motley bunch of homo-haters but with a big new twist. The Mormon Church decided that this was a fight they wanted a big part of – to the tune of about $20 million. The reason California became such a hotspot seems to be down to two reasons. The first is the state was considered a sure thing for an Obama victory, so this became the election fight. And secondly, the fundies thought that a victory in liberal California would set the marriage rights fight back decades. So they poured resources into the fight, bolstering the anti-civil rights crowd that already existed.

Their campaign was dishonest fear mongering from the start. They couldn’t really come out and say that they were against gay marriage because it was icky, so they talked about how it would effect churches (um, it wouldn’t) and, more importantly, how it would indoctrinate all their children into the joys of Babs and kd lang (and if those cultural touchstones seem out of date, then they aren’t nearly as out of date as the tired old arguments of the Yes campaign).

Unfortunately, instead of being met with a vigorous push back from the No campaign, they were met with timidity. From what I have read, it seems that the No people ran a pretty traditional campaign, which failed to emphasise the civil rights issues involved and mostly failed to even highlight gay people and their stories. The result was the passage of the amendment by 52% to 48%.

Except, that wasn’t the end of the story. To begin with, you had 20,000 couples who are married and are suddenly in legal limbo land. And more importantly, there was an explosion of anger and hurt from the gay community that has spread nationwide. It seems after 20 years of patiently waiting for straights to acknowledge their humanity and civil rights, working in traditional ways through the courts and legislators, hearing election promises then seeing them crumble (hello Clinton triangulism), something may have snapped.

Tens of thousands of people have poured onto the streets to protest against the amendment. Gay people, who were largely kept invisible by their own campaign, have taken full ownership of this issue. Donators to the Yes campaign (including individuals and companies) are experiencing major blow-back. And the Mormons, who invested so much in this fight, may suddenly think that the attention it has brought them from the mainstream media is not quite what they envisioned.