WotD: at long last

In honour of meeting bengt for the first time.

1. (letzt)endlich
2. uiteindelijk
3. por fin
4. a la fi
5. enfin
6. ym mhen yr hir a'r hwyr
7. faoi deireadh thiar thall
8. wreszcie, w końcu
9. 마침내
10. 終於 zhōngyú, 總算 zǒngsuàn

My afternoon with the IFC

Did some laundry this afternoon and switched on the television set for some distraction. Top Chef Masters was all reruns and they weren't broadcasting the Cardinals game, so I ended up clicking through the movie channels. Only a couple nights ago, monshu and I were talking about scaling back the NetFlix because we basically never ever watch films any more. I said what we really needed was to make a regular spot in our schedule, and nominated Sunday afternoons. So call this a dry run.

First up was the concluding twenty minutes of so of Confidence, which I would've quickly recognised as slick garbage even without Ed Burns in the title role. No interest in seeing more of that. Then was a feature I'd never heard of called Kill the Poor about gentrification in Alphabet City circa 1982. The reason I never heard about it is that it seems to have been well and truly buried. (The release date is three years after the wrap date.) I'm not sure why or why it garnered such mediocre reviews given that the biggest strikes against it in my eyes are that (a) it's shot on digital video (which still says "shitty" to me more loudly than "edgy") and (b) as usual, the stories of the marginalised urban poor are told through the eyes of a white guy.

But on the plus side, David Krumholtz isn't too white and quite a bit of effort went into getting those stories right. One of them turns out to be the diagnostic for the classic Western: Without the violent efforts of the longest-standing resident to drive out junkies and dealers, the building which our protagonist moves into wouldn't be inhabitable by "people". But in the end, his violence (as well as the hostile behaviour of his wild son) makes him too much of a liability, forcing Krumholtz into the morally-compromising position of confronting him. Given such a setup, the amazing thing about the storytelling is that it isn't hamfisted or preachy. Everyone involved comes across as broadly sympathetic when taken on their own terms while still saying and doing plenty of asshole things. The son, for instance, is a callous little thug, but pretty much every aspersion he casts on his victims' motives and self-justifications is completely valid.

Once it becomes clear to the boy's father that they're to be forced out by the other residents, our anti-hero switches from taking a noble stand to seeing how much he can soak them for. Oh, and just for good measure, everything's told in a clever non-linear fashion which--thanks to very good editing--held my interest without getting on my nerves. The only two things that really bothered me were the protagonist's "political" marriage to a green-card seeking pole dancer, which is kind of an undernourished plot element, and a somewhat gimmicky and gratuitous offing of one of the characters (though god knows the scenes leading up to it had me gnawing through my fingertips).

All in all, it was an welcome counterpoint to Naked in New York, which I ended up watching most of in an effort to find out why I recall disliking it so much. I start out with little patience for passive protagonists, and that counts double when they're as obviously privileged as Eric Stolz's would-be playwright, whining his way through a series of show-business breaks that thousands would give up a major organ for. And then the movie compounds that bad will by making constant mealy-mouthed references to the importance of truthfulness in storytelling as a transcendent virtue (and one possessed in spades by the protagonist--so we're told, but never shown) all the while coming across as the fakest thing since Billy Joel.

I mean, when Ariel Dorfman and Richard Price are show talking at a swank party, it helps makes a humourous point about Stolz' adolescent bad attitude. But what is the point of throwing in Eric Bogosian (in person and on video), Lady Miss Kier, and Quentin Crisp as well? What exactly does two minutes of a legendary gay icon silently mixing a drink in the foreground add to your embarrassingly autobiographical film, Mr First Time Writer-Director, beyond a certain clumsy attempt to impress us with your hipster connexions? In fact, if the whole point is for us to admire the main character's supposed genuineness, then it actively undermines it. I kept looking for dramatic irony or at least a sense of self-awareness about the callow brat's narcissistic ineptitude and getting only precious and tiresome magical realist asides. ("Whoopi Goldberg appears as a talking mask" is all I really need say to damn this movie to the indie quirk hell it deserves.) I could go on and on, but that would only make me look like a bigger idiot for being unable to stop watching, so I'll point out that the Tony Curtis and Kathleen Turner kill as a jaded cruel-to-be-kind producer and the fading soap-opera star he recruits to "float the ship". Also, if you're the kind of person who enjoys seeing a fair bit of naked 32 year-old Eric Stolz, then there's a lot here to keep you happy.

Finally, as a palate cleanser, fifteen minutes of I'm Gonna Get You Sucka. Gawd, that movie is exactly as terrible as I would've expected from the Wayans (though when I saw it back in college, it was entertaining enough for a Friday night at Doc). But at least there was no Whoopi.