Michael J. Totten sympathizes with a scriptwriter who thinks her screenplay, which contains Arab terrorists, is being suppressed by the evil Hollyweird liberals. Totten takes the opportunity to launch into a diatribe against "Political Correctness," clearly hoping to activate the balloons and claim the door prizes awaiting the ten millionth columnist to address the subject.

"THE MAN HAS A GUN; HE KNOWS HOW TO USE IT" – Got me some classic Lou Reed on the CD player, so what better time to do some mid-week bullet pointing?

• After a somewhat understandable post-election lull, the writers at The Daily Show appear to've happily rediscovered their voice. This week's entries – which have featured a sharp return to the Land of Mess O' Potamia, the spottily funny Samantha Bee's risible take on the online hunting craze, plus Steven Colbert's even more deeply daggerly look at the Bush cabinet resignations – has shown a return to satiric form. But will someone please tell Lewis Black to never never never show that steroidal nutcase with the swollen arms again?
  
  
• Recently picked up a copy of the new Donnas' release, Gold Medal (yup, just another horny geezer with an eye toward ogling these skin-tight una-named babes), and while it's not the equal of the band's best albums (I like the grrls when they're more balanced 'tween punk and hard rock – these days, they tilt toward the latter), it's still a fun piece of disposa-rock. Also love the fake black velvet cover that's included as a part of the package (would've been cooler if they'd included a unicorn in the background, though), but I've got mixed reactions to the idea of DualDiscs. A flipper CD that contains the audio CD version on one side and a DVD version of the same material on the slip, the DualDisc format is confusing and more than a little suspect. After four or five times of successful, the audio CD now inexplicably cuts off thirty seconds into the final track – a problem that is consistent on all three of the CD players I've tried. Which leads me to question the user friendliness of this sparkly format.
  
  UPDATE: As Johanna notes in the Comments section, it turns out that the DualDisc version of the Donnas’ release is indeed being recalled because of a defect in the final track. The disc has since been issued in standard CD format, only without the kitschy velvet cover.
  
  
• I've gotta admit that, as a longtime music junkie with pop cultish inclinations, I've had decidedly mixed reactions to Dick Clark. I have fond memories of watching the early American Bandstand in the pre-British Invasion days (the era memorialized in Hairspray with the "Corny Collins Show"). But outside of such outré moments like the day that Public Image, Ltd., appeared on Bandstand, the man grew steadily less connected over time to my personal view of that old-fashioned rock 'n' roll. These days, when one thinks of Clark, it's just as likely to be related to his stint hosting opposite Ed McMahon on TV's Bloopers And Practical Jokes or his days as a quizzzzmaster on the $10 - 100,000 Pyramid. Those few times I've stopped to watch part of Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, I felt decidedly un-rocked.
  
  But if Clark's relevance to the music that aided his entrance into the big broadcast world significantly shrank over the years, the fact remains that his contribution to the mainstreaming of that faddish r-&-r thang can't be overlooked. Here's hoping his recovery from a recent stroke is quick and complete. . .
  
  
• For the holiday season, I'm currently reading Kindaichi Case Files' "The Santa Slayings." (My wife dresses up like Kris Kringle for charity; I read manga murders mysteries that allude to St. Nick – that woman is way too good for me!) "Santa" gets its title from the story's prime suspect: a red-bearded figure who is called the (obviously) Red-Bearded Santa and who is somehow connected to a series of murders that takes place among a theatrical troupe. In a lot of ways, the set-up seems similar to an earlier Kindaichi mystery (The Opera House Murders), with its cast of neurotic drama types and the skulking presence of a mysterious menacing figure who may-or-may-not-be-dead. Despite its title, the mystery only has the slimmest relation to the holiday. But, be that as it may, I'm still getting a kick out of the book. Kindaichi strikes me as one of the commendably denser manga reads in the way it forces you to carefully scan each page, looking for visual clues.
  
  
• After reading in Tom Spurgeon's comics newsblog about the Air Pirates-like fracas over Peter Kuper's Stripburger "Richie Bush" parody (be aware that the animated version of the strip in this link contains some calculatedly foul-mouthed dialog), I couldn't help thinking about the appearance of a Richie Rich figure in an upcoming ep of Drawn Together (the boy billionaire playing Donald Trump in an animated parody of The Apprentice). The Comedy Central animated series has snuck other cartoon parodies into its first season (Charlie Brown in bondage gear, fr'instance), though, of course, the teleseries isn't subject to perusal by the same U.S. Customs officials that stopped the Eastern European published Stripburger. So, I guess, if you're gonna screw around with heavily controlled comics properties, do it on television, babe!

More later.

(Background Music for This Go-Round: Disc Three of the Lou Reed boxed set, Between Thought And Expression.)

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Tuesday, December 07, 2004
      ( 12/07/2004 09:21:00 AM ) Bill S.  

"AREN'T YOU PETER SELLERS?" "NOT TODAY!" – If Roger Lewis' show biz bio is to be believed, The Life And Death of Peter Sellers were hollow things, indeed. As portrayed by Geoffrey Rush in Stephen Hopkins' HBO telemovie the brilliant British comic actor was less than the sum of his characters: it's telling that the one figure he felt the most affinity to was the hero of Being There – a project that the actor pushed to get lensed, we're meant to see, because Sellers envied Chauncey Gardiner’s emotion-free blankness.

Despite a rollicking cartoon opening meant to recall brightly colored sixties era comedies (done to the bellowing strains of Tom Jones' "What's New, Pussycat?"), Life And Death is pretty grim fare: Portrait of The Artist as An Empty Vessel. Reared by his grotesque show biz mama (Miriam Margolyes, looking as ever like a John Tenniel caricature) into infantile pursuit of perpetual self-gratification ("Peter always got the last cake," his father sez in monologue, "even off someone else's plate!"), Rush's Sellers is never so appealing as when he's playing one of his comic creations. Even when he's within his family, the actor regularly retreats into a series of funny accents and poses. Stripped of all his covers, he's an abusive spoiled brat.

Director Hopkins and book adapters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely work overtime to capture the living contradiction was Sellers, though it'll probably come as no surprise to anyone that a gifted comedian could be an overly needy ass in real life. Hopkins sprinkles 60's confectionary imagery throughout to contrast with the messiness of Sellers' personal life, while each of the major figures in his life also gets to walk off the film set and deliver a face-the-camera monologue. In a what th-? moment that initially comes across clever but ultimately falls apart by the time it's used for Sellers' dying mother, each off-set version of the character is played by Rush-playing-Sellers-playing-the-real-life-person: per the movie, playing dress-up was the only means that Sellers had of controlling the world around him. In one of the movie's sadder scenes, the comedian is visited by his mater while he's working on the filming of Dr. Strangelove. The whole time the two visit, Sellers, dressed as the title character, refuses to break out of his German accent as he delivers veiled insults to his mother. When later asked how her visit with Peter went, Ma Sellers responds, "I don't know. I didn't see him."

As the Sellers, Rush (no mean chameleon, himself) is an inspired casting choice, even if he does look a bit too full in the face in spots. The rest of the cast is fine, though as someone who once had a big ol' Sophia Loren poster on his dorm wall, I didn't quite accept Sonia Acquino as the Italian actress. John Lithgow has crisp fun overplaying Blake Edwards, Sellers' most successful long-term collaborator, while Stanley Tucci recreates soft-spoken control-freak Stanley Kubrick in a more subdued mode. Both directors find themselves victimized by Sellers' erratic off-camera behavior: in the latter case, the actor ducks out of playing a fourth role in Dr. Strangelove by passive-aggressively "spraining" his leg (Slim Pickens'll forever be indebted to this act!), while in the former, Sellers indulges in a squirmingly prolonged unplanned "roast" of director Edwards at the premiere party for a Pink Panther film. Of the many women in his life (Sellers was married four times – though we only meet two of 'em – and was not averse to sixties-style "swinging" either), Emily Watson and Charlize Theron play familiar roles as first wife, Anne, and second spouse Brett Eckland, respectively. Theron's Eckland gets a strong fight scene with Rush (as egomaniacal-sized photos of the two actors look down on the proceedings), but it's divine sufferer Watson who most sticks with you.

Like most movie bios, Life And Death can't help but raise questions about just how true it all is, though to their credit, both writers and director encourage this by throwing their own filmmaking artifice in the viewer's face. In one moment, for instance, a post-Strangelove Sellers has a dream patterned after the ending of 2001, with the comedian surrounded by visions of all the characters he’s played. In another, what we first take to be a conversation in a moving car turns out to be a movie car with rear screen projection.

For me, Life And Death best works the closer we get to the actor and the movies he made. We learn, for instance, that he was not Blake Edwards' first choice to play that most-enduring character, Inspector Clouseau, and that he was offered this star-making role only after Peter Ustinov turned it down. At first reacting to the offer as if being given "sloppy seconds," Sellers sniffs that the title Pink Panther "sounds like a bloody strip club!" On the set of the big-budget disaster, Casino Royale, the actor initially refuses to play any of his "characters," instead portraying one of the movie's multiple James Bonds straight. When this inevitably fails, he retreats to Clouseau-ian pratfalls.

Unfortunately, the movie most hedges its bets when it comes to actually detailing Sellers' comic craft. Though it's clear from so much of the unfunny material surrounding his scenes in ensemble flicks like the first Pink Panther or Royale that the comedian's gift for improv lifted many a movie, the degree to which this was true is never clearly examined. (Why no reference to Blake Edwards' The Party, a comedy that was supposed to be primarily improvised? Is it because the movie isn't very good?) Even if it is true that the key to Sellers' ability to inhabit so many great comic characters resided in his barrenness as an actual human being, that doesn't really get to the core of his success as a movie comedian. If only Hopkins' bio flick had focused just a little bit more on this most enduring part of the Life of Peter Sellers. . .

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Monday, December 06, 2004
      ( 12/06/2004 10:31:00 AM ) Bill S.  

BETTER WATCH OUT – A Sign O' The Times: something my darling wife Becky does at this time of year is dress up as an old-fashioned Kris Kringle and make appearances at several not-for-profit organizations' holiday events. She's been doing it for thirteen years now, for organizations like the Arthritis Foundation's "Jingle Bell Run." Her Kringle, as the photo to yer left should show, isn't the traditional red-suit Santa, but a gentle white robed figure with staff and sash. Perhaps the white costume is less threatening, but she’s rarely had to deal with little kids bursting into bawls of terror whenever they were carted up to Kringle by their parents, though occasionally one of 'em will be unsure as to who this decidedly non-traditional figure is supposed to be. This year, for example, she had a five-year-old ask, in all sincerity, "Are you Osama Bin Laden?" Makes you wonder what kind of holiday stories that kid is hearing from his parents. . .

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Sunday, December 05, 2004
      ( 12/05/2004 08:09:00 AM ) Bill S.  

"I FEEL IT IN MY FINGERS/I FEEL IT IN MY TOES" – Watched an airing of Richard Curtis' Love, Actually last night: an Altmanesque roundelay of loosely intertwining romantic comedies that at its best provided some solid laughs (Bill Nighy's dissolute rocker trying to squeeze a hit out of a lame holiday reworking of the same Troggs song Curtis recalled in Four Weddings And A Funderal; novelist Colin Firth's halting romance with a Portuguese maid who doesn’t speak English) and at its weakest came across like a series of sequences out of Love, American Style (a subplot involving one English lad's trek to America in search of hot babes to bed was too overdone to be funny), only with a more prestigious cast. Curtis' plot involving British prime minister Hugh Grant ("Love And The Prime Minister"!) contained an intriguing political subtext that caught me by surprise, though: visited by the horndog American president (Billy Bob Thornton), Grant's politico is driven to draw a line in the sand of political relations when he happens upon the president snatching a kiss from his comely young assistant. The details may've been dubious, but imbedded within this silly little subplot were some pretty blunt points about presentday Anglo/American political dynamics. Not something you expect to find in a lightweight holiday soufflé like this.

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