Quelap

I just watched the trailer for the Coen brother’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s violent novel, No Country for Old Men. Javier Bardem looks fantastic as the Judge Holden like Chigurh (a name that McCarthy apparently just made up). Tommy Lee Jones, the well-known fan of Blood Meridian, also looks fantastic – as always. It’s also nice to see Scotland’s Kelly Macdonald cast in the film – impressive as she was in The Girl in the Café.

Coming off the interview with Oprah (which I think was disappointing), No Country for Old men is sure to get more viewers than some of the Coen brother’s other recent films. I’ve already given away a couple copies of No Country for Old Men to friends who have never read any McCarthy before (though I wish they had already read Blood Meridian, Suttree and Child of God). I also noticed at my local bookstore, where just a month ago there were over a dozen books by McCarthy, all of his books were gone – including Outer Dark, The Orchard Keeper and any version of the Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain).

Will the fact that more people are discovering McCarthy have much of an affect on the book market? I doubt it. But there is a chance that after experiencing McCarthy, more readers will see that words aren’t just there to tell a story – they can also be crafted to have their own beauty and power. Sometimes the power of that beauty is at odds with the horrors they describe (Blood Meridian and The Road), but sometimes that beauty can just be hilarious (as in many instances of Suttree).

Now if only I could find some online video of a production of Sunset Limited – a novel in dramatic form, as it’s described on the cover – and an absorbing conversation between just two characters – Black and White – about god, God, religion and death.

If you want to see more scenes from No Country for Old Men click follow this link.

While watching the last episode of the Sopranos my wife and I just kept marveling at how clever and funny it was.  Time and time again, we (the audience) were set up to expect a certain outcome – and then it just wouldn’t come.  Tony’s burly driver, whom we saw again and again, more often than usual, dozed in their safe house – and hardly looked prepared to pull a gun on anyone walking in through the front door – much less one of their own guys who was just being careless.  There was also the scene of AJ, sitting in his yellow SUV with his girlfriend, looking exposed and vulnerable – a perfect moment for the car to blow up, right?  And the car does blow up – but that’s when the brilliance came into the show yet again.  AJ’s SUV goes up in flames, not because of some violation of the no-family rule, but because AJ parked on hot leaves.  That scene could serve as a summary of the entire episode – it wasn’t so much about Tony as a mob boss, but about Tony as a man, as a family man, more precisely.

A quick survey of the show recalls quick scenes of Carmela in her tub, Carmela commenting on an abundance of mail, and Carmela telling Tony that Medow had to get new birth control.  I’ve come across a couple responses to these scenes wondering why?  What were they there for?  And what do they mean?  To me, they were all just part of the final reminder – most aptly summarized in the dinner scene – where the Sopranos meet for a meal – it’s about family.

Just like any dad, Tony Soprano has to deal with his disappointment at some of his son’s decisions – the bewilderment at his son’s attitude toward a destroyed car, and his son’s rebellious attitude toward the current administration.  In the end, all these bad men (and sometimes women) were true to their historicity – and even within the roles they inherited by being born into crime families, they continue to play the essential roles of fathers and sons.

When Phil had his head crushes by yet another SUV – we didn’t see his head being spread like asphalt at the gas station.  Instead, we saw his two grandkids – sitting in their car seats – while we hear their grandfather’s head get crushed.  So despite all his evil ways, this man who wanted to kill the beloved and nefarious Tony, was himself a man of family – and he died as such.

For Chase to end the Sopranos so abruptly with a song by Journey – and for a man in a Member’s Only jacket to walk past Tony and into the bathroom, is like a generous way to remind the audience that Tony – in so far as he lives on in their imaginations now – will always have to be looking over his shoulder.  Because of his choices, because of the life he was born into and managed to master, his family would have to live with the consequences of his actions – and those consequences are always present in the shadows of men wearing USA baseball caps, urban kids that look like they might want to kill Tony themselves, and men in Members Only jackets that keep staring at Tony because they either recognize him – or because it is time for Tony to die.  But we just don’t get to see it.

While reading through Lou Dobbs’ latest rant against illegal immigration, I noticed something was missing from his article, “A peculiar day of immigration rallies.” As most people know, these nationwide rallies were done mostly in support of the rights of illegal Latino immigrants. Here in Los Angeles, home to the embarrassing situation involving police and protesters, a lot of people went with their families – as a way of showing support for an issue that affects many of them personally – and most of those families were Latino. Read through the Lou Dobbs piece, however, and you might never know that. Dobbs somehow manages to write an entire “commentary” on the rallies without once mentioning Latinos, Hispanics, Chicanos, Mexico, Central America, or Spanish. He does, however, offer this sparkling summary of what he thinks thes e “illegal immigrants” and their supporters oppose:

“If yesterday’s demonstrators and their supporters in Congress and corporate America are serious about their deep desire for American citizenship, why don’t we hear any of them clearly say they’re willing to give up dual citizenship? Or that they’re willing to learn English and surrender demands of bilingual education? Or declare they embrace English as our official national language? Or demand that illegal employers of illegal aliens pay for the social, educational and medical costs now borne by the taxpayers?”

What troubles me about the way Lou Dobbs frames his assertions is that he pretends to be the new voice of reason at CNN. He has both conservative and moderate points of view, and he expresses them clearly and with a well-conceived mask of reason. Underlying that mask, however, is the very same kind of Manichaeism that feeds far too many dangerous assertions about “our” country and “our” people. Take a look at these two paragraphs from Dobbs:

“I couldn’t help but wonder as I watched monitors bringing images of the marches and demonstrations from all across the country, who should really be protesting on May Day. What about the millions of legal residents who followed the long, drawn-out process to secure a visa to enter the United States lawfully? Maybe they should be protesting. What about the seven-figure backlog at the Citizenship and Immigration Services agency of people who are following the rules. Should they demonstrate?

What about all of our fellow Americans who are being marginalized by the massive importation of illegal, low-cost and mostly uneducated labor into this country? Perhaps those citizens should take to the streets. And what about the more than 250 million Americans who make up our middle class and those who aspire to it whose wages have stagnated and who are paying for the social, medical and economic costs of illegal immigration? That’s a big march.”

In the first paragraph, Dobbs seems to forget that many of the people who waited and got their residency status legally might also be related to people that arrived illegally. His empty rhetorical questions do little more than try to set up illegal immigrants as the bogey men for so many of the ills visiting our nation (in particular the middle class). Look at that second sentence – isn’t it nice for naive racists to know that a powerful media figure like none other than Lou Dobbs also thinks they’re marginalized by “illegal, low-cost and mostly uneducated labor”. Remarkable that Dobbs can clump so many people into such a profoundly negative collective. He doesn’t stop there. Dobbs goes on to claim that illegal immigration is the main culprit behind the struggles of “more than 250 million Americans who make up our middle class.” Apparently, it’s illegal immigrants who have forgotten about America’s middle class – not the super wealthy that have gotten wealthier, or the current administration – which has made it so easy for people to ruin themselves while aspiring to the dream of home ownership. Really, Mr. Dobbs, what are the “social, medical and economic costs of illegal immigration”? And why didn’t your rant include a single word about the actions of police in Los Angeles?

Cormac McCarthy is without a doubt one of the finest living American writers. I reread Blood Meridian at least once a year, and still discover new things in the amazing Suttree. The Road - which I reviewed shortly after it came out - is astounding in its spare descriptions of a burnt landscape and the quiet, profound relationship between father and son in the aftermath of an apocalypse. But an Oprah book? Perhaps this is Oprah’s way of distancing herself from the embarrassment of those easy pieces - or the sillyness of that “Secret”. Will McCarthy make an appearance on Oprah to talk about the book? I doubt it - and I hope not. If you haven’t read “The Road” yet, go out and get a copy - but read it as a brilliant work that deserves attention - not just as a book that Oprah made popular…

I had the chance to see El Laberinto Del Fauno a few weeks ago, and my review of the film is available at the Batanga Web site.

There’s also a ton of useful information and some beautiful screen shots at the official Pan’s Labyrinth Web site.
As I mention in my review, one of the things that impressed me most about Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece was his understanding of the structure of fairy tales, and his sensitivity to the chasm between reality and hope that is often filled with the fruits of the imagination.

Del Toro has been quoted as saying that the film is allegorical as much about the suffering under Franco as it is about the current (or pre-election) situation in the US - where the choice and voice of the people seemed compromised in service of the powers that be. Whether or not one agrees with Del Toro’s allegory doesn’t affect the impact of the film - as the film maneuvers the landscape of the imagination with an astonishing degree of confidence and poise. The acting throughout the film is stellar - in particular Sergi Lopez as Capitan Vidal, young Ivana Baquero as Ofelia and the amazing Doug Jones as the Faun and the Pale Man (Child-eating monster).

Once Pan’s Labyrinth is playing in your town, make the effort to see it. This remarkable achievement is well worth the money - and makes it seem like bargain to pay the same amount to see it as you might blow on something like Black Christmas.