It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen at the Brattle did not disappoint, as usual. While I usually think of Starbuck’s as the Mr. Potter of coffee shops, they did, without much prior fanfare, pay for everyone’s tickets at today’s screening and give everybody a $5 gift card, and I know it was just advertising, but it still felt nice.

In other Brattle-ish news… If you weren’t sure that Bradley of Bradley’s Alamanac was a civic treasure (and  international, what with the interweb),  he was at the David Lynch Q&A last weekend, and has posted mp3’s.

I’m surprised that the Brattle isn’t showing Wings of Desire this year. They were showing it every holiday season for a while there, and this year people might be inclined to go, given that the A.R.T is putting on a stage version. Or maybe they are thinking that people will be all Wings of Desire-d out.
(We’re going to the A.R.T. production next week; I’m not sure whether it’s going to be great, like 90% of everything the A.R.T. puts on, or whether it’s just not going to translate to the stage. The cinematic technique is part of the point: the use of black and white stock, shot from high camera angles lets you see as the angels see; the overdubbed thoughts of the people on screen lets you hear what the angels hear. I have no idea how they’re going to pull that off. I wonder if that’s why Wim Wenders decided not to get involved— he’s a film director and might really not really have an idea of how to bring it to the stage.)

Anyway, I am also a little disappointed to see that It’s A Wonderful Life is relegated to two 1pm matinees next weekend. I have fond memories of the year that they served cookies and cider after one of the evening screenings.

And I’m really disapointed with myself for being too slow on the draw to get tickets to see (Brattle boardmember) David Lynch do Q&A after his new film premieres tonight at the Brattle. All I get is this YouTube video of him with a cow (which is pretty great: “Oh, my God, it’s f***ing David Lynch! What is David Lynch doing with a f***ing cow on the corner of LaBrea and Hollywood?!”).

I haven’t seen the movie, but given that you can’t open a newspaper or magazine or turn on a television set or radio or computer without seeing stupid Sacha Baron Goddamn Cohen doing his goddamn Borat act, I have seen enough of Borat to not want to see another second of him, and to suspect that the film is like one of those Saturday Night Live acts that stops being funny after the first 10 seconds, but ends up getting made into a movie and that you have to hear every stupid jackass in the country doing an impersonation of for the next year.

Isn’t Borat just a lukewarm microwaved leftover of Andy Kaufman’s “Foreign Guy” schtick, which got old after about half a season of Taxi? Ha ha: those zany foreigners talk funny. Even the confrontational “media hacking” aspect of Borat, and the fact that Cohen’s doing all his media appearances in character are both ripped straight out of the Kaufman playbook.

Actually, that Dig article nails what I think is worst about Borat:

With each declaration that we’re entering “sexy good time,” the sharp satire in the movie gets duller and duller. Soon the racism in the movie isn’t funny because it exposes people’s prejudice, it’s funny because “throwing the Jews down the well” is catchy song and a Jew disposal method that maybe we should start considering more seriously.

It’s another example of the inherent limitations of satire: at the same time you are poking holes in something, you are also validating its existence. As Peter Cook said about his Establishment Club in the 60’s, it’s modeled on “those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War”. And when asked to explain why he stopped doing satire, satirist par exellence Tom Lehrer said, “The audiences like to think that satire is doing something. But, in fact, it is mostly to leave themselves satisfied. Satisfied rather than angry, which is what they should be.”

This is so great. The Brattle Theater’s schedule, in iCal.

I would have just stuck this brief Time interview in my del.icio.us daily links (feed) but I noticed that it mentions that he just finished a film project which is based on a Mircea Eliade story, and thought Steve might care (if he indeed still reads this).

Looks like a site is up. I’m really glad that it’s going to be animated.

It’s a relatively healthy Saturday pattern we’ve started. Wake up as late as we can on Saturday (which today was about 9), putter around and do chores until noonish, go to the gym, head to Darwin’s for a healthy lunch. Today, Terri is doing some worky work, and I am puttering with Ruby, this time for a game I’m calling Fake Palindromes (yes, after the Andrew Bird song). The Exquisite Corpse project is somewhat becalmed since March or so. I have a real prototype working, built in Ruby on Rails, and Editrix and Summervillain actually played it and gave me feedback, and I haven’t touched it since. (In my defense, I was without the computer it was on for a month and a half).

We’re off to see Pandora’s Box at the Brattle with Ms. Trix and Mr. Villain in a bit. It may or may not materialize into a double-feature with A Scanner Darkly (which is currently playing at Coolidge Corner along with Waking Life, which I never saw). If not, it will be the second time this week I will almost have seen it (Josh offered me a free ticket to a preview on Thursday, but we were booked for Camera Obscura).

On the rotation this time was Hank Williams and a new favorite, The Mountain Goats.

I’m actually excited about a summer movie: Richard Linklater’s adaptation of A Scanner Darkly.

This is why I love the man.

Picture my disappointment as I realized that, for all the pizzazz of “Superman Returns,” its global weapon of choice would not be terrorism, or nuclear piracy, or dirty bombs. It would be real estate. What does Warner Bros. have in mind for the next installment? Superman overhauls corporate pension plans? Luthor screws Medicare?

and even better:

“Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and superman—a rope over an abyss.” That is Nietzsche, coiner of the Übermensch, and in “Thus Spake Zarathustra” he scorns what he calls “extraterrestrial hopes” in favor of those, rooted on earth, who struggle to overcome the weakness of their own humanity. That is a proper, if perilous, subject for grownup cinema, and I for one have grown tired of supermen, and superwomen, who start with such a flagrant advantage over the rest of us. Mind you, if Superman is such a paragon, how come he wants to save a species so universally dumb that not a single member of it recognizes him when he puts on a pair of glasses?

Bookslut points out a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story saying that the Mysteries of Pittsburgh movie might not be shot in Pittsburgh. That’s crazy. Pittsburgh used to be where people shot movies because New York was too expensive. And they just have to get the real Cloud Factory in there. When I read about that place, I knew exactly where it was; it’s a little factory in the ravine behind the Carnegie Library, and I used to park near there on Friday mornings in high school when I had that internship at Pittsburgh Filmmakers (just two years after TMOP was published, though it seemed like such a longer span of time then). I’ve had so many “Pittsburgh moments” within a quarter mile radius of there, I would just be personally wronged if the film Cloud Factory were in British Columbia.

But. What possibly irks me more is that the screenplay apparently munges the characters Cleveland and Arthur. That’s just not right. It’s been a while since I read it, but if I remember correctly, the two really kind of need to be distinct. Cleveland is an unschooled live-fast-die-young Neal Cassidy type. Arthur is a sassy, articulate gay bookstore co-worker of the hero (not really Allen Ginsberg-like, but let’s go with the parllel). The young hero is still figuring himself out and is attracted to both for different reasons, and that’s kind of a major part of the novel.

Oh, and it’s directed by the guy who did Dodgeball. What’s up with that, Mr. Chabon?