Dogs Bark

A Simple Twist of Cable - - Djúpið [The Deep](2012, Iceland) - - 23 June 2014

Recommended.  This well-made film, offered by Iceland for last year’s Foreign Language Oscar, is based upon the true - - medically inexplicable - - 1984 story of Guðlaugur (Gulli) Friðþórsson, a Westmen Isles fisherman who, after his fishing boat capsized, survived a six-hour swim to land in 41-degree water. He only escaped alone to tell us. Unlike Ishmael, or Rose Dawson, his great ship went down with an almost comical lack of pomp. The Deep wasn’t nominated for an Oscar. It’s not The Perfect Storm and Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur (2 Guns) seems intent on this plain-spoken authenticity.  Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (True Detective), as Gulli, contributes much of this, particularly the movie’s final third when British physicians are mystified by his medical good fortune. Gulli banks his core temperature against his love of village life and stubborn desire to go home. As Oscar Wilde never said . . . physiology is rarely pure and never simple.

Princess Of Darkness - - Maleficent (2014, USA/UK) - - 8 June 2014

Recommended.  In recent history, Disney Studio’s role in the semiography of female empowerment - - from the original Sleeping Beauty onward - - has been problematic but unique. Thus, to approach the good and bad of its latest offering, Maleficent, is daunting.  Good things first, Angelina Jolie’s performance is as stunning as her physical beauty. She invests the part with all of her personal grief and triumph and in the end, commands the picture and audience, the best sort of diva. The production values, particularly the aerial battle scenes, also overwhelm. Chris Lebenzon (Top Gun, Pearl Harbor), master choreographer of aeronautical mayhem, edits brilliantly. Sadly, Linda Woolverton’s (Beauty And The Beast) script (extensively re-written during production) and Robert Stromberg’s direction do not match these other parts of the whole and Elle Fanning’s (Super 8) Aurora never dawns below the crepuscular shadow of Ms. Jolie . . . a huge problem for this frustrating, but still fascinating, motion picture.

Once You Go Orange - - Orange Is The New Black (2014, USA) - - 6 June 2014

So are we really at the end of days?  Is the appropriately triskaidekaphobic year 2013 the moment when feminism finally pulled its broomstick out of the closet, cackling the queer authored anthem, “We are the Champions, my friend.” That would be the year the last big-screen TV, purchased by Red Sox Nation, was converted into an on-line lesbian porn monitor by Netflix and the vast left-wing conspiracy began to fill America’s virgin eyes with Orange Is The New Black. OMG! Phyllis Schlafly was right all along! Much tossing and turning in the Petrie twin beds.

This is it. There is a marvelous scene in Episode 7 where superbad-lezbo Alex Vause (Laura Prepon, That 70’s Show) attempts to shut up the cracker, Jesus tweaker, Tiffany Doggett (Taryn Manning, Hustle And Flow), by explicitly describing how she will orally rape her in her sleep . . . and make it so gooooood that Doggett will LIKE it. Laura Prepon’s devil tongue is the nightmare that wakes up Ms. Schafly at 3AM; the image definitely keeps me up at night.

In fact, the entire first season of OITNB plays the boogie-dyke card, even the delectable Laverne Cox, current trans-Cover Girl. Lesbian Nation is open all night, even to men, with a few metrosexual modifications.  Trans-lesbianism must be the most challenging of all the 58 new Facebook genders.  It’s one thing for Laverne to be a sissy but if she’s actually getting all the best pussy  . . . well, that’s just not fair. 

In fact, it must be insufferable to be Dennis Miller right now, watching these unshamed queer women frolic about the covers of the magazines.  Does the National Review even bother to run a television column anymore?  Truth out, they lost the culture wars a long time ago, possibly before Bill Bennett even unsheathed his sword. They lost it not because of a liberal bias in the publishing, journalism or academic worlds. They lost it on the field of talent. Our writers killed, their comics bombed.  They lost it because God was a no show at the Oscars, down the street playing clarinet with Woody.  Orange is also the new funny.

To the victor, goes the Nielson share but now that the bitch has caught the car, what does she do with it?  With the events in Isla Vista last month, misogyny is also all over the tube and transgender women of color are still murdered at a rate alarmingly higher that the general population, 44% of all gay hate killings, according to one count (National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects).  So a victory in the realm of entertainment may actually degrade the spoils of political success.

The answer, most certainly is tolerance. I don’t like Elvis but I can tolerate the fact that most people do.  Tolerance is a big deal for Piper Chapman all through the first season - - tolerance and real empathy, as a New York liberal actually has to sleep next to the people she once only saw through the windows of a hired car.  She hasn’t won over many of the guards or inmates at Litchfield but she’s surviving the ones that still hate her.  And while feminism certainly can’t tolerate misogyny and mayham, perhaps there are other smaller abuses that can be. Good girls like Piper don’t crush the competition. Perhaps orange can also be the new accommodation.

To An Athlete Dying Not So Young - - The Swimmer (1968, USA) - - 2 June 2014

Recommended.  The Swimmer has been unavailable on DVD, or anywhere else, for many years to the dismay of the cultists who adore it. I too, wanted to revisit what was remembered to be a completely unique movie. Eleanor Perry (Diary Of A Mad Housewife) scripted John Cheever’s (who has a cameo) short story into a movie that follows Ned Merrell (Burt Lancaster, The Professionals) as, apparently on a whim, he tries to swim in every pool between his location at the opening and his home in suburban Connecticut.  This is one of the 60’s self-delusional movies (Mirage, Mister Buddwing) that pull back the drapes on upper-class New York smugness. Lancaster’s acting takes Ned from god-like poise and beauty to a more neurotic and weak version, as we learn his dark secret. Younger versions of Joan Rivers and Marvin Hamlisch make their big-screen debuts and Frank Perry (David And Lisa) directs.