Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlow

[Notice: This is my first message in 15 days, and while such tardiness can be excused as procrastination, I have a perfectly feasible explanation--honeysuckle.)

Film noir is one of those art forms that everybody--regardless of their background--seems to like. And who could blame them? The striking visuals, the delicious cynicism, and the wonderful, hard-boiled writing bring something for everyone on the platter. So it was always a mystery, really, that I had not invested more effort into film noir and classic crime fiction.

That all changed this summer, though. Upon the recommendation of seemingly every TV-viewer I knew, I began heavily watching the HBO series "The Wire." Two things: yes, it is as good as you have heard, and yes, I'll elaborate on that statement at a later date. Back to the big picture: my immersion in crime fiction, though, kick started my long subdued appetite for more of the genre, and I figured that there was no better place to start than the very king OF the genre itself, Raymond Chandler.

I should make one thing clear, though--Chandler did not create film noir or the detective crime thriller. While it is difficult to credit one single source for the creation of any art, film noir and its most defining characteristics had two major starting points in Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and James M. Cain's 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. It's all there--the hard-boiled, cynical leading man, the smoldering femme-fatale, and the post-modernist ending of gloom, doom, and inevitability.

So, Chandler did not create the very genre in which he laid. He merely offered a superior example.

Chandler fused the noir of Cain with the detective of Hammett, offering his debut novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939, and introducing his lead character and film noir idol Philip Marlowe.

Reading Chandler, the first thing that struck me about his writing was just how literate the guy was. When we think noir, we think of the more modern neo-noir examples of the genre, such as Sin City, the novels of James Ellroy (more on those at a later date) and any imitator of those trend-setters. And, we know of that style--fragmented, choppy and scant on adjectives. Chandler, though, writes with none of these characteristics.

Written from the first-person perspective of Marlowe, Chandler's prose is crisp, sharp and written with laser-like precision. Meticulous details are exuded on surroundings, rooms, articles of clothing, the physical features of pivotal (and not-so pivotal) characters, and nature, the latter of which occurs as a frequent symbolism in Chandler's work. Granted, the prose is still tough and the vocab hard-boiled, but it is damn well constructed.

After Chandler's prose, the next feature that hit me in the face like a glass of cold water was his dialogue, which is among the sharpest I have ever read. Cutting like a knife, the repartee between Marlowe and his various clients/suspects/villains leaps off the page, hitting you with an immediacy that is both shocking in its frankness and startling in its construction. Consider, for example, this passage of dialogue from The Big Sleep:

She took the photo out and stood looking at it, just inside the door. "She has a beautiful little body, hasn't she?"
"Uh-huh."
She leaned a little towards me. "You ought to see mine," she said gravely.
"Can it be arranged?"
She laughed suddenly and sharply and went halfway through the door, then turned her head to say coolly: "You're as cold-blooded a beast as I ever met, Marlowe. Or can I call you Phil?"
"Sure."
"You can call me Vivian."
"Thanks, Mrs. Regan."
"Oh, go to hell, Marlowe." She went on out and didn't look back.

Sharp, precise, and very, very good.

I mentioned symbolism earlier, and that aspect of Chandler's writing has been, for me as least, its most remarkable aspect. Crime fiction is not your typical genre where, for example, the rain plays an overarching role of symbolism, such as it does in The Big Sleep. Or, to cite another one of Chandler's books, the fantastic Lady in the Lake, water once again plays a important role, along with the dark wilderness and mysterious lake of a northern lake house resort.

And while these fantastical elements of Chandler's novels justify their masterpiece standing, the one lasting impression that his works leave is that of true film noir, that of the road not taken. Film noir, true film noir, takes us through a merry-go-round of human nature, exposing the dark underbelly of our race and reducing our actions to nothing more than animals in a cage, owned by a bleak and sadistic creator. Chandler write unblinkingly of these truths, making us sadder, wiser, and more nuanced readers as a final result. And can we really ask any more of literature?

Why offshore drilling is utter bullshit

Offshore drilling has become the latest GOP talking point, with Dubya lifting the executive ban on the process, urging Congress to do the same, and parading in press conferences that the government has responded to the gas crises by "removing the bans on offshore drilling!" These statements are so engulfed in bullshit that it can be difficult to summarize why they are so, but I think I can boil it down to three reasons:

1. Supply and demand. Instead of researching alternate sources of energy--which will be the only realistic way to lower gas prices and prohibit global warming--our leaders beg Saudi Arabia to increase their supply of oil, hoping the increase in supply will quench the unquenchable demand now running rampant in the global market. Offshore drilling, allegedly, will add to this supply, therefore lowering prices. What GOP mouthpieces fail to mention, however, are the GLOBAL numbers that dictate oil prices. There are roughly 86 millions barrels of oil being produced around the world. 86 million! Even with the rosiest projections for offshore drilling--let's say, 3 million barrels are excavated--the supply, in relation to the global markets, will be so minute that American gas prices will hardly budge, if at all.

2. Oil companies. I'm going to let you in on a little secret--when demand is high, you keep supply low, especially if you are selling a product with insurmountable demand that is likely to continue into the unforeseeable future. Nintendo does it with the Wii. Apple does it with the iPhone. Oil companies do it with their oil supplies. Something that Dubya never says about offshore drilling is that oil companies already claim substantive resources in several offshore areas; yet, in those reserves, only 21% of the potential oil has been tapped by oil companies. That's right--79% of that oil is just sitting there, waiting to be processed. Why are the companies waiting? TO KEEP SUPPLY LOW AND DEMAND HIGH! Exxon Mobile, this last quarter, posted the highest profits of any corporation EVER. I'm talking billions. In profits. The last thing we need is more oil in the hands of profit-hungry corporations, but the best thing they need is more leases from the Dubya Fascist Regime.

3. Time. This is probably the most ludicrous reality of the entire offshore drilling phenomenon. Dubya and his GOP cronies crow about how lifting the ban on offshore drilling will effectively answer calls to end the gas crises. There is a little, irritating caveat to this idea--any action by the government to stall gas prices needs to go into effect NOW. Offshore drilling is such a complicated, costly exercise that, I shit you not, oil reserves from those offshore sites could not surface until 2030. 2030! 22 years and millions of dollars to answer a problem that needs drastic action NOW.

And that, really, is the crowning jewel of irony in this whole thing. Global demand, mainly coming out of India and China, will never stop. The population of potential car-buyers in those rapidly industrializing nations is simply too big to assume demand will decrease any time soon, meaning, gas prices will continue to rise.* We will have $5 a gallon gas. Maybe even $6. And the only REAL answer to these problems, ideas that REAL leaders will front, will involve alternate energy and a decrease in dependence on foreign oil.


*Footnote: the only feasible way that prices will lower in the future is by strengthening the dollar. A weak dollar buys less in the global market, so naturally a weak dollar will go far less of a distance with a resource as valuable as oil; still, this is short term, as exchange rates are not the long-term answer to gas prices nor climate change.

FISA and Obama--a disappointing calamity

The FISA "compromise," which passed in the Senate with an overwhelming majority yesterday, is an unabashed assault on the American constitution, a heinous disregard for personal rights, and a shameful free-pass to criminal activity--and it was all supported by our presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party.

The new FISA regulations effectively give the government free reign to scoop up and analyze any "intelligence" they see as beneficial to the War on Terror, meaning, any phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. that you may make. Say that a terrorist suspect arises whose name is coincidentally "Peter Ricci." All of my various methods of communication can be spied on at will with NO REPERCUSSIONS FOR THE WARRANT-LESS SEARCH (even this petty, meaningless ramble). With the Senate ruling yesterday and the president's signing today, the Fourth Amendment took an unprecedented blow, one that basically flushes our civil liberties down the toilet. So enjoy those freedoms while you still can, because the government now has access to each and every one of them.

To better understand how disgraceful this is, consider this historical analogy--Richard Nixon and Watergate. Prior to the current administration, Nixon and his Watergate spy scandal served as the precedent for abuse of presidential power, a shocking and demeaning exercise in paranoia and fascism. Nixon wiretapped the DNC and the homes of Woodward and Bernstein. Bush has wiretapped the entire country.

Except with Watergate, Nixon and his co-conspirators faced serious criminal allegations, with Nixon resigning and his numerous cronies receiving jail time. What the new FISA ruling details is an EXPANSION of surveillance power and a RE-WRITE of the rules governing those powers! So the president can now spy with more gluttony than before, and the rules have been changed to exempt the president, his cronies, and the telecoms corporations who cooperated with the criminal acts from any such allegations. It's beyond belief.

And then there is Barack Obama, who, with his support of the bill, offered his first fully disappointing decision of the primary season. Obama's stances on these issues has been patently obvious. A constitutional expert who lectured on the artifact at the University of Chicago, Obama clearly understands the rights entailed by the Fourth Amendment and the outright abuse the new FISA bill enacts on those rights. A believer in civil rights and justice, Obama has also promised to filibuster any bill that included telecoms immunity, which, um, this bill did.

No filibuster, no grand speech on the abuse of the Fourth Amendment. Just, "I don't like the bill but I must support it because we need to have a FISA legislation intact."

I understand that Senator Obama is under considerable pressure as the presumptive nominee, not only as the undeniable front runner in the race but also as the first viable black candidate in United States history, a glass ceiling of epic proportions. Nobody can put themselves in his shoes.

However, the proof is in the pudding. This new FISA bill is nothing short of fascism, or, corporatism if we're going to honor Mussolini. Look at it this way: the rights of the corporations exceed the rights of the citizens, and our government will go to great lengths to protect those certain inalienable rights of the CORPORATIONS, protecting them from criminal scandal at the sake of the very citizens that put them into power. Founding fathers, I can feel you rolling in your graves.

And these are fairly obvious transgressions of the bill. No hidden language, no tricks. Hell, the GOP has been practically boasting on how unconstitutional this bill is. So where in the bloody hell is Barack Obama?

I'll admit, I fell under the guy's spell. Politics is a dark, dreary game, and it can be especially maddening for anyone who attempts to follow it with any level of zeal. The hypocrisy, the back-scratching, the cronyism, it seems out of control and shameful while homeless Iraq War veterans starve under bridges, Ohio residents lose industrial jobs to China, and lower-class families see their tax rates rise while high income families see their tax rates fall.

He's charming, he's eloquent, and he's one helluva candidate. But, as John Elder correctly pointed out to me last weekend, he's "still a politician," one who will cut corners and sell-out stances to gain points in electability. It's just with this case, with this politician, it seems to hurt that much more.

Wall-E!

The one word review for Zachary:

Superb.

The extended review for everyone else:

Pixar continues its unbelievable winning-streak with "Wall-E," a film that is the studio's most daring, audacious project yet and one of the most flat-out entertaining films I have seen in quite some time.

The plot is simple: Wall-E, or, the last remaining Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-Class on Earth, bides his time by compressing garbage into neat cubes and collecting the more valuable trinkets he comes across in a little museum he maintains outside of the city. This process is thrown out-of-whack by Eve, a sentry-robot sent to Earth to study its filthy environment and see if the planet is fertile to support life. I won't spoil any of the following plot points for those who have yet to see the film (and to those people: shame on you!).

The most remarkable aspect of "Wall-E," among the many remarkable aspects there are, is the almost-complete absence of dialogue from the film. The Wall-E character has no dialogue, as does Eve. All Pixar uses to advance the characters and plot is sound effects, actions, and subtle facial expressions from the robots. In fact, excluding the insertion of human characters 2/3 the way into the film, that's all there is. Beeps, groans, and physical comedy, yet that's the genius of Pixar--we can still feel for these rusty old machines like human characters, even if they haven't spoken a single word of English!

The animation, as expected, is flawless, but not perfect. Like the grimy, fuzzy visuals that "Finding Nemo" utilized for its water environments, "Wall-E" displays a dusty, garbage-infested earth, one piled sky high with trash and prone to violent sand storms. And the Wall-E character itself shows the same kind of detail, and the aged, slightly rusted exterior of his metal is juxtaposed by the shiny, sleek visual of the Eve design (for an example, just gaze at the picture I included at the top of this review, how Wall-E's fingers show such a subtle hint of dust and age, and how the edges of his body-frame show the beginning stages of rust).

One final note on the animation: Pixar continues to have the most sophisticated lighting seen in animated films today. The same gorgeous characteristics that struck me in "Rat." continue in "Wall-E," specifically in the scenes involving the museum of trash Wall-E lives in, where the source of lighting comes from strewn Christmas lights. The shot of the museum as the lights flicker on is among the prettiest images I've seen in a movie this year.

Just as Pixar is a studio of artists, it is also a haven of historians, like a Smithsonian of film history. Each Pixar film draws upon a wide range of films for inspiration, and "Wall-E" is no exception, using as its muse classic silent films from the golden era of Hollywood; as in, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and even Jacques Tati. Basically, the Wall-E character IS Chaplin's Tramp. Dirty, mangy, yet with a heart like gold and an unquenchable spirit that holds universal appeal. Also, it is no coincidence that Wall-E, like the tramp, never speaks.

Pixar's Chaplin-influence also extends to the film making. Never one to overwhelm his audience with technological gimmickry, Chaplin shot his films in two styles--far away for comedy, and close up for tragedy. Far away angles would perfectly capture the tramp's zany, unpredictable physical comedy, and close up would record every nuance and emotion of the film's conclusion. "Wall-E" follows this like an honors student, watching Wall-E's escapades with careful, far away detachment and letting the chaos develop into sublime comedy, while allowing the intimate scenes between Wall-E and Eve mature in close, compassionate quarters. Brilliance, I tell ya!

(Spoiler Alert! The following segment refers to plot developments discovered later in the film, so if you haven't seen it, close yer bloody browser!)

There is a specific reason that I love Pixar films to such a degree, and for Zach's honor, I have one word that describes it perfectly: complexity. Yes, complexity. Pixar films offer me an astonishingly large assortment of angles to analyze, from the animation, to the references, to the perfectly executed plot, to the perfectly developed characters. Yet below even all these levels is the true rhetoric of the picture, the underlying themes that Pixar subtly states. With "Wall-E," they take on consumerism.

In the film, Wall-E encounters a space-age Royal Caribbean cruise, a getaway for humans that has become permanent due to the overwhelming filth on earth. Yet on these cruises, humans have finally succumbed to machines, allowing them to do EVERYTHING. Mature adults sit on lounge chairs like large babies, with fat bulging out of every part of their body, with their appendages nothing more than inoperable blogs of mass, their fingers fat little sausages, and their necks turducken size platters. In the universe of "Wall-E," we've become our own worst nightmare--fat, lazy, and complacent. We have no ambition, no drive, and we are content with it...as long as the robots keep doing their jobs. And, we left earth because of a preponderance of trash, meaning we didn't care to change our ways and stop the accumulation!

In addition to this uncomfortable bulls-eye, the entire space colony in which these cruises preside is run by autopilots under the control of the "Buy 'n Large" mega corporation, a store whose overwhelming influence has given them control of the government. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Buy 'n Large is Walmart, and their takeover of the government is the kind of Corporate Fascism that liberal "loonies" like myself have been rallying against ever since the Reagan administration.

Now, this is painfully relevant satire, and it is important that these points be made; yet, "Wall-E" still works without this kind of examination. If you enter the film simply wanting to experience a flawlessly made animated film with big laughs, big heart, and memorable characters, "Wall-E" will suffice on an unlimited supply of levels. And that is Pixar's genius--films that offer something for everyone of every walk of life.

A clarification on 'This Land,' the PROTEST song

In light of today being the 4th of July, I feel that a special and important clarification should be made about the popular American Folk song "This Land is Your Land."

First, the obvious: "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie is, without a doubt, one of the greatest songs of 20th century popular music. A chief influence on the musical evolution of Bob Dylan, Guthrie brought a realism and sophistication to folk lyrics that had been all but absent from the art form.

Now the disappointing: "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie is, without a doubt, one of the most criminally misunderstood songs in the history of 20th century popular music.

It's a depressing, vile example of commercialism that must have Guthrie rolling in his tomb. "This Land." was originally written by Guthrie in 1940 as a protest song. Disillusioned with the Great Depression and the seemingly apathetic response from government and big business alike, Guthrie wrote the song as a protest of the powers that be. The song, therefore, is a declaration, a bold reassurance of the working-class Guthrie grew up in that this land, from California to the New York Island, was made for you and me, not Herbert Hoover and J.P. Morgan.

Additionally, "This Land." is a bitter satire, a savage parody of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." Guthrie's original title to "This Land." was "God Blessed America for You and Me," as he saw such a hokey, unrealistic declaration as the one provided in Berlin's song as an insult. Why, Guthrie proposes, should we pay homage to a God for help to a Depression he apparently led us into? or, that he refused to help us avoid?

Yet, despite the clear indication of Guthrie's intentions, the song still prospers as an anthem of American Patriotism. CDs abound with disgraceful renditions of the number, all with happy melodies and sing-song, gee-whiz harmonies. What these popular versions cleverly do, however, is remove the more incendiary passages of Guthrie's original song.

Guthrie was a folk musician in the truest sense, and as such, he would frequently improvise his material on stage, resulting in dozens of different versions of his most popular songs. "This Land." is no exception, but based on original studio recordings and Guthrie's own writing, a definitive version of "This Land." has been assembled, one of six verses, two of which are bastard children of the popular, gut-wrenching popular versions.

And I can't blame them. Here are those two verses:

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;

By the relief office, I'd seen my people.

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,

Is this land made for you and me?

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;

Sign was painted, it said private property;

But on the back side it didn't say nothing;

That side was made for you and me.

The context and tone is unmistakable. This is a protest song, one with anger and frustration on its mind and social change as its goal. And it's a disgrace to Guthrie's legacy, really, that it has become what it has.