Category Archives: Film

UPDATED: “The Secret In Their Eyes”

Aesthetics, Art, Film, Hollywood, Pop-Culture

Imagine a film without loud-mouthed, humorless, self-referential Hollywood hedonists, congratulating themselves on their American exceptionalism (and sensitivity). Imagine a film with a plot you don’t figure out in the first minute of the movie (because it’s a fairly typical ad hoc abomination, like “Salt,” with Angelina Jolie). Imagine actresses sans silicone who act rather than act-out. Imagine actors who transport you into a world that goes beyond their bathroom mirrors (and every other surface that reflects … their image). Imagine no political correctness—no invisible wagging finger suggesting The Right Political Perspective; no ideology, only a story, and interactions between the sexes that are positive and natural; the kind that happened before women became menaces and men were made over in their image.

“The Secret In Their Eyes,” directed by writer-director Juan José Campanella, is such a film. It “won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards [2009], making Argentina the first country in Latin America to win it twice …” (Wikipedia.)

The New York Times’ review of this exceptional film did not do it justice. American film reviewers labor under the chauvinistic impression that Hollywood is where it all begins, and that there is no filmic life outside it. I guess this could blind a reviewer to excellence elsewhere.

The New Yorker gets it, writing that this “legal thriller” is “powerfully and richly imagined: a genre-busting movie that successfully combines the utmost in romanticism with the utmost in realism.”

Writer-director, Juan José Campanella, working with the screenwriter and novelist Eduardo Sacheri, sends us deeper into mystery and passion; the movie presses forward with a rhapsodic urgency and with flashes of violence and pungent humor. “The Secret in Their Eyes” is a finely wrought, labyrinthine entertainment whose corners and passageways will be discussed by moviegoers for hours afterward as they exit into the cool night air.

Watch it. It’s achingly beautiful and deep, “an effortless mastery, from moment to moment, of whatever the dramatic situation requires.”

UPDATE: And imagine wit and humor, organic to a situation— as people use colloquially—instead of the American, “I kicked him in the butt, ha, ha, ha, ha. I’m Brad Pitt.” Funny conversational lines from the better-than-decent effort that is “The Secret In Their Eyes”:

“Hurry up or you’ll find not a crime scene but a wake.”

The hero’s “antic partner,” Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), answers the phone in the criminal-court office (he doesn’t really want to answer): “No, wrong number, this is the sperm bank …”

The love object, the lovely Irene Menéndez Hastings (Soledad Villamil), a judge’s assistant, must get hero Benjamin Espósito (Ricardo Darín) off the hook for his investigative zeal. She mentions having had to win some official over with her smile (she’s being self-deprecating). Espósito (who loves her deeply and desperately), a subordinate, teases her gently: “What is this smile? Have I seen it?”

There is a powerful scene in which Irene walks in on Espósito’s interrogation of the killer. It’s amateurish if penetrating compared to the American power protocol.

Sensitive woman that she is, she catches the creep undressing her with his eyes. Then and there “she turns the questioning into a sexual duel, taunting Gomez’s manhood, her words more wounding and more effective than a beating with brass knuckles.” She’s brave, smart and politically incorrect.

There is also considerable depth to perceptions related; ordinary conversation which make you say to yourself, “That’s so true.” The victim’s husband, “a bank employee named Morales (Pablo Rago), who remains obsessed with his dead wife for the rest of his life,” is relating to Espósito how he knows no longer if his memories of his beloved are true memories or memories of memories. (How often have you wondered whether what you remember even happened?)

Sandoval, a drunk, gives his life for his friend, Espósito. An opportunity presents itself, and out of the delirium of drunkenness, Sandoval finds the presence of mind to do a great thing. Or did he really? So subtle and unassuming is this act of sacrifice performed by a flawed, if delightful, character, that it almost goes unnoticed. It is certainly not accompanied by the soaring, sentimental f-cking sound/music/noise that masks similar, but staged, moments in your typical Hollywood production.

I don’t want to sully my impressions of this gem of a movie, but watching “Salt” last night was unsettling. America’s XBox, special effects, language-less movie culture reflects a certain reality-averse atavism. Up-close, Jolie the star is frightening. She has cultivated a comic-book look with a newly sculptured nose and cheekbones that might have been enhanced. Her mouth is hemorrhoidal. The chick is scary. And her come-hither glances! A CIA agent, or whatever she is supposed to be in this moronic movie, struts her stuff in a skirt slit up to her panties, which she promptly removes to make a bomb (an underwear bomber). My G-d; that’s not even Avatar-like clever. (Well, they say Avatar was clever. I don’t know; I would never watch such far-removed rubbish about a blue people fighting for their invaded fairy forest.)

Fashion Police (http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/fashion/index.html)

UPDATED: MUNICH (and More)

Film, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, Psychiatry, Terrorism

This is the time of the year when one desperately needs relief from the fare television offers. It’s essential to make a trip or two to Blockbuster during the holiday season for some mindless entertainment—which is a step up from the stomach-turning, sappy, deeply silly Xmas films whose screening began as early as late in November.

As it is, it’s impossible to watch the assorted estrogen-oozing action dramas and crime series inflicted on the TV viewer. The phony heroine lords it over meek meterosexuals with fussy falsettos. Men know their place. Dare-devil women run the show, which makes the show dull, because 90 pounds of botoxic, silicone-plumped flesh in stilettos can’t run very fast (in real life, and I’m a sucker for reality). And you just know that back on terra firma, the 200 pounder she’s cuffing with seeming ease would have flung her as far as the equator, or coshed her to death.

A leading man is invariably a mentalist (I don’t know what that is), a gentle doctor suffering from low-sperm count, or a buffoon (“Burn Notice”).

Did you know that Daniel Wroughton Craig is quite a capable actor? Since I’m not a fan of the film industry, discovering that the latest James Bond is more than a Pierce Brosnan (although not nearly as good looking) or a Timothy Dalton and Roger Moore was a pleasant surprise.

I mention Craig, as we were watching Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas, Barbara Amiel’s first husband.

Munich has a decent script and actors, their main attribute being that they are not American, so the acting is understated, not ego-centered and embarrassing. A bit of that unique Israeli humor is captured occasionally. Munich “shows how a squad of assassins, led by former Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana), track down and murder a list of Black September members thought to be responsible for the eleven Israeli athletes’ murders. The second part of the film, which depicts the Israeli government’s response, has been debated a great deal by film critics and newspaper columnists. Spielberg refers to the film’s second part as “historical fiction,” saying it is inspired by the actual Israeli operations which are now known as Operation Wrath of God.”

Daniel Craig plays Steve, the South African get-away driver. He manages a heavy South African accent the likes I’ve never heard before. At first, I did not recognize him and thought Craig was an obscure actor from the Old Country. From their non-existent acting repertoire, younger American actors exclude accents. (It’s “too much like hard work, besides; doesn’t’ everyone speak English with an American accent?”) An East European dialect in “Law and Order SVU” sounds like the “Direct TV” commercial.

The depiction of the Munich massacre is hard to take for those of us who remember the lack of German security, the free pass that government gave the butchers, and the same peoples’ decision to continue the fun and games in the aftermath of the gruesome murders.

An excellent series also well-worth renting is “In Treatment.” Reading the credits, I saw the words, “Betipul,” which is Hebrew for “In treatment.” It figures that these nuanced portraits of people in therapy were adapted for the small screen from a foreign script. It has nothing of the Oprah, Phil filth—the two charlatans whose worldviews guide interpersonal relationships in the US.

Wikipedia confirms that, “The program’s format, script and opening theme are based on, often being word for word translations of, Hagai Levi’s successful Israeli series BeTipul, which won every possible award for a drama series at the Israeli Academy Awards.” I seldom watch TV becasue I get so bored. “In Treatment” is riveting TV. It’s deep but not labored.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): My thanks to Nora for fleshing out the context of Munich’s release. You can see how far behind I am in my film viewing. As we were watching, I did mutter to my husband about the facts that had been omitted (see above). It’s my understanding, however, that both Spielberg and Jonas are pro-Israel. Jonas most certainly is. And Spielberg is behind an enormous Holocaust project, so he is most sensitive to the arguments for Israel’s founding and survival. The Palestinians were definitely the butchers of the film; Israelis were the bunglers—I did get the impression of a inexpert mission, but then technology was primitive in those days.

To repeat, the Israelis were the sympathetic parties in the plot. Any statement to the contrary in the German press must have been a product of that press’ wish-fulfillment projections. Some of “the other side” came through in the rather smug, second-rate arguments presented during a chance meeting between the Israeli protagonist and a Palestinian terrorist. The Israeli came out on top.

All in all, it’s a decent effort. The horrific replays of the Munich massacre displayed the heroism of some of the Israeli athletes. Perhaps not enough.

The "Real Rush" Joins The Blogoshpere

Celebrity, Communism, Film, Hollywood, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Pop-Culture

My good friend and WND colleague Erik Rush has joined the blogosphere. Erik is the author of the column titled, “The Other Rush.” But he’s the “Real Rush” to me. Erik’s is a great-looking blog. I’m looking forward to checking it out daily.

Beings super squeamish, however, I almost fainted at the image Erik has posted of a Hollywood celebrity undergoing the mandatory commie programming. From the spouse this photo will elicit the kind of laughter he lets out when we’re watching one of our a favorite programs, “1000 Ways to Die.” (Mr. Rush likes it too.)

Or “Thinning The Herd,” as we call it. (You just know that the writers and editors of “1000 Ways to Die” would have adopted that title, but there’s just so much these good folks can get away with.)

Alas, as fabulously brutal and graphic as Erik has been in “Why Entertainers Go Left: The Real Story,” I’m less inclined to the school of thought that holds liberalism to be a mental disorder, or a condition developed under duress. Sadly, because it has such strong emotional appeal—the masses seem to experience a rush at the ideas of collectivization and confiscation—left-liberalism is probably the default position of humanity. A hostility to reason and reality guarantees liberalism’s top-dog position in political philosophy. This, of course, relates strongly to intelligence, but, dammit Erik, that’s too much to brood over on the Sabbath.

I strongly recommend Erik’s important new book, with this unbeatable title: “Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal – America’s Racial Obsession.” When I catch my breath, I will treat you to a Mercer Interview (click the Interview Category in the Search Window for a sample) with Erik about “Negrophilia.”

Don Draper In Love

Feminism, Film, General, Hollywood, Pop-Culture

“It’s refreshing to see a Golden Age of Hollywoodish leading man like tall, dark, and handsome Jon Hamm, who plays creative director Don Draper as the strong, silent type” in “the cable period drama Mad Men.” So wrote Steve Sailer.

The character Hamm plays is a complex character. And he does not talk a lot. My favorite people ration speech.

The nostalgia the production triggers is also “nostalgia for the days when women had soothing, soft voices, spoke in complete sentences, and seemed so much smarter and refined than their modern-day, emancipated shrew sisters.”

Now, Don Draper finds himself in love with just such a lady.

Dreamy.