p e n g u i n d e v i l

While, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I have both giving’s and misgiving’s about both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton… And I’m in no place to vote for either in the primary anyway… I feel like either one of them could be quite good possibilities for President. Sure, in an ideal world, Gravel, Nader, Kucinich or (my favorite) Peter DeFazio would be front runners, as they have ideals far beyond anything realistic for a national politician, and far beyond anything felt by Clinton or Obama… But in terms of realistic candidates, it is shockingly great that the two front runners are beyond the pale of what is expected from a population living under this contrived umbrella of racial and sexual bias that one expects to permeate our national dialogue… But, aside from the vast amount of political experience held by Clinton (which I can handily see how it an be perceived as both a positive and negative aspect), I honestly don’t know how any woman, republicrat, independent or otherwise, could rightfully do anything but vote for Hillary Clinton. Yes, Obama is a man of high ideals and great charisma and could be a breath of fresh air and, quite possibly, help to break down the facade of lies that is the concept of “race”, and yes may drag us even quicker out of that facade of greed that is the Iraq situation… But he is yet another confident and persuasive male politician in a stream of a quarter of a millennium of American presidential candidates.

Hillary Clinton winning the presidential election would be (bar none, I think) the greatest event in the cause of equality for women since Sufferage and, in fact, would be the culmination of all of the great struggle that was Sufferage and the work leading up to it. For any woman to not vote for Hillary, regardless of ones personal feelings about her or ones political beliefs, would seem to me to be a denial of the suffering, discrimination and marginalization that has been forced upon women in American history, and of their relegation to the sidelines the history of national and social dialog.

What I also view harshly is that, while Hillary is ahead in the battle for the Democratic Nomination, the media are treating her as if she is behind and is struggling to catch up… It seems to me that to have a woman as the front-runner (by however a small margin) for the white house should be something to be applauded and honored by all women, instead of being treated as if she’s barely holding on. I mean, sure Obama is gaining on her but it is unfair (and sexist) for the media to be writing her off as if she’s a has-been when she is actually in the lead. Plus, she does stand for (at least currently) some very good things. She has been one of the most vocal proponents of health care reform and she does claim that she is for the withdrawal (I think she said “in 60 days” on 60 Minutes) of our Iraq Invasion forces. Neither one of these will ever be done to my satisfaction, but she does publicly support the right ideals.

A music scene where there are thousands and thousand of bands from scores of countries, no major labels involved and a fairly small fan-base who tend to share a distaste towards anything that gets too popular, leads to a deafening variety of music… Styles, bands, languages… There is so much going on in that genre that it’ almost too much. I think about it after spending too much time browsing around at last-fm. One thing that I like to do is look at the different Groups that one can join to see what bands the group members are listening to. What always strikes me is that I seem to come across three types of groups. The biggest one is where the band listened to by the most members in the last week is always “Radiohead”. This seems to be regardless of the attempted musical focus of the group. It just seems that everyone out there listens to Radiohead. But then there are the second group, sadly the common style for people interested in Vinyl collecting, where the top two bands listened to always seem to be Bob Dylan and The Beatles. I am always relieved to check out the Black Metal Groups where, when you go to their playlists, it seems that no one there listens to any of those bands. Frequently, there is such a wide range of bands listened to on those groups that I haven’t even heard of more than half of them. The whole notion of Pop music, especially national or international, seems so dull. I mean sure, there are bands that are good enough with a widely appealing sound who have worked hard enough to deserve widespread listening and recognition, but it seems like most music listener’s never seem to even look beyond top-40 or what their friends are listening to, and with the vast variety of music out there in the world, it just seems sad.

Since we’re on the subject of music, I happened to glimpse a bit of the Grammy’s tonight. Something that I haven’t done for many, many years. It seems very odd that they spend so little time actually televising the awards. It’s one crappy overblown “music” production after another. Then the occasional award being given to a bunch of dull music. And while I have to give props to Aretha Franklin, they needn’t have played her gospel piece, or they at least could have made it a bit shorter… But the whole concept is lost on me. I mean, what does it really mean to call one album “the best rock album of the year”? Is it the one that the people who voted listened to the most? The one that will have the most influence on future music? The one that had the most ground-breaking style? The most pleasant sounding one? The one with the songs that will get stuck in your head the most? The one that the most work went into? It’s all very strange.

Tonight we were suprised to recieve The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. I had long wanted to see this, being a fan of Tommy Lee Jones (though not always of his role selection), but I had forgot that I had queued it. Strangely enough, we just sat right down and watched it! I really liked it alot. Tommy is Pete, a cowboy about a Texas border town who befriends a Mexican cowboy looking for work. Of course, this fellow, Melquiades Estrada, meets with a sad fate and it is up to old Pete to try and make things right by giving him the burial that he would have wanted.

Of course, Pete’s way ends up getting him pursued by the sheriff and the border patrol. And there is all sorts of gun fire and bad tempers. It’s is a good film, a quiet film, so the pursuit isn’t one of those dumb Hollywood things with cars racing around and sirens blaring, instead it’s mainly horses riding through big scenery in Texas and Mexico. There is lots of scenery (Mexico, by the way, looks much nicer than Texas, and seems to be just a better place), though the dead still need tending to wherever they are.

There is some good casting: everyone does good here. Tommy has a great character, played in a very subtle, yet powerful fashion, and Dwight Yoakam as the local Sheriff is a scene stealer, and, of course, Barry Pepper is unpleasantly great as the Border Patrolman who gets dragged out on the journey that is bound to change his life..

I also started watching Heaven’s Gate. For years I have only known it as being one of the biggest flops ofall-time, but I hadn’t known anything else about. So naturally I thought I should give it a shot. My impressions from a partial viewing? Well, though they made a mis-step with the beginning (spending the first twenty minutes covering two speeches and a dance from a nineteenth century Harvard graduation celebration is not a way to get folks involved with what is going on), but I still don’t think it is all that bad a movie. It sure gets off to a slow start, but then Kris Kristofferson ends up out west, as a good guy in a county where the businessmen (led by Sam Waterson) have decided to put death warrants out on the local European immigrants who are farming the area. The hire a gang to carry out these warrants (lead by Christopher Walken) and bad things are in the air and Kris is there to try and stave it off. Sadly, I was to about the halfway mark here (about 2 hours in) and I’ve been waffling on finishing it. And I don’t think I will. But, if you are up for a slow, four hour movie serious “western”, give it a shot.

Feeling that Hitchcock feeling, we finally got around to watching Dial M for Murder. I’m always surprised at how many Hitchcock films I have yet to see, and though I think I’d seen some of this on TV when I was young, it was a welcome experience to watch the movie. A great story of infidelity, a well set-up murder and plans gone wrong, quite wrong. Ray Milland is perfectly gentlemanly as Mr Wendice, who “enlists” the help of an old college classmate (played by Anthony Dawson of Dr. No) to murder his two-timing wife, Grace Kelly, who is both wealthy and who also had the misfortune to receive a letter from her lover. A lover who end up finding even more ways to make himself into a nuisance for Mr Wendice. When the plan goes wrong, Mr Wendice must use his wits to cover up his nefarious plot… Will he overlook anything or will his failed plot be successful beyond his wildest dreams? And what does Chief Inspector Hubbard really believe? The plot is quite clever and everyone is quite charmingly decent. The film does start off pretty slowly, but then it really picks up and becomes a great thriller with a great dramatic feeling. As the playwright, Frederick Knott, wrote the screenplay, so it still feels much like a play, with a small cast and taking place almost entirely in the two rooms of the Wendice’s apartment.

On the other hand, maybe if you see a marquee (ok, a dvd box) listing Ed Gein, Michael Berryman and Kane Hodder, you might think that for whatever its weaknesses, the viewing will be worth the hour and a half. Well, in the case of Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield, you’d be wrong. Sorely wrong. This movie is terrible! The dull and bumbling story follows some dull, bumbling young sheriff deputy as he wanders around feeling concerned about missing people, and telling his wife and girlfriend to be careful. On top of that, the movie is supposed to be in the 1950’s, but all they do to instill that feeling is to use period cars, the clothes are all wrong (the police uniforms are closer in style to CHiPS than to the Andy Griffith Show), the most unconvincing period setup… It’s bad. The acting is terrible, and the plot is filled his historical inaccuracies. But worst of all, Hodder’s portrayal of Gein seems to have no similarity (except for biographical details) with Gein. He’s a lumbering, blood spattered grump who creeps everyone out. Movies “based on” Ed Gein are a dime a dozen and of varying degrees of similarity to his story (putting Anthony Perkins into the house of the 1974 Chainsaw would probably be the most accurate version), but if you actually give the character the same name and time and place as the real guy, you kind of need to represent that person somewhat accurately, or it just looks like you don’t know what you’re doing.