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Remembered for the wrong reason, like that shop teacher from 8th grade.
I've been up to less than I should have been -- spiraling in depression and self-doubt, wasting time with freemium tablet games, skipping meals or eating too much depending on the day. I did pull weeds from the back yard for 45 minutes this morning, and if plants had any decency the unpulled weeds would just die out of respect for my effort. And movies. Lots of movies.
This being Awards Season, I am doing my annual attempt to see all the movies that get Oscar nominations for Picture, Director or any acting performance -- since the awards won't be announced until tomorrow (1/15), I've been pro-actively seeing anything that's getting "buzz," like Selma or Whiplash, both excellent movies. Weird thing is, what I'll remember longest is a piece of complete garbage. It's called the Judge, and I only went because Robert Duvall is supposed to get a Supporting Actor nomination for it, and he damn well better, since it wasn't playing anywhere closer than Cupertino, and I drove 60 miles round trip to see it. But what made it memorable...
...not its craptitude, really, but the way it was bad. On the surface, firmly in the Estranged Child & Parent Forced Together by Circumstance & Come to Realize They Still Love Each Other genre, and on that level serviceable; certainly Duvall & Robert Downey Jr. go through all the tired motions adequately. What was indelible was the world this story was set in -- and how blind the film (and the flimmakers) seemed to their bigotry.
It's set in a small Indiana town, where Duvall has been on the bench for 42 years, a stultifying, airless town from which Downey's hot-shot lawyer escaped as soon as he could -- but of course Fate has other ideas, and Downey has to come back & defend Dad from a charge of murder. It's a strange place, where people fall into one of two groups -- the ruling elite, who dress well, behave courteously and have excellent skin. On the other side, the town's underclass, sallow-complexioned, rotten-toothed yahoos who smell of cheap beer and use foul language. Seriously, there doesn't seem to be anybody in between. The murder that the Judge is accused of? One of the hicks -- and a hick that the judge treated leniently years ago.
And you know what happens in this kind of story when an authority figure goes soft on a hick? Yep. The hick turned right around and committed a horrible crime, for which the judge secretly blamed himself... so, years later, judge takes adantage of a dark road and a rainy night, and runs the guy over.
Judge is guilty, and that isn't really a spoiler. Guilt or innocence isn't the suspense point here -- we're supposed to be worried that the old coot will be held accountable for his actions. In the world of this movie, holding a member of the ruling elite accountable would be a bad thing... especially since he was just trying to right a wrong and correct his only mistake, the one time he was too lenient. Agatha Christie seems positively liberal.
So, blindly bigoted storytelling -- but not racist, since the upper class & lower class in this podunk town are nearly exclusively white, the kind of white people who visit New York City and are frightened by the Italians. In most of the USA, we are so used to class lines being deliniated by ethnicity, but that's not always the case... and it's fascinating to see class prejudice so naked, and unalloyed by racism, in a Hollywood movie.
My brother would say, why do you have to make everything political? But am I making it political, or just noticing that it is? Not everything is political -- Selma certainly is, and more power to it, but Whiplash deals with issues of power and coercion on an individual level, and doesn't seem political at all. Those are both great movies, and highly recommended; and while I wouldn't recommend the Judge for a moment (not even camp value), I won't forget it -- because it encapsulates something you don't see in movies very often. Something truly ugly that needs to be addressed.
But maybe not by rich Hollywood millionaires!
This being Awards Season, I am doing my annual attempt to see all the movies that get Oscar nominations for Picture, Director or any acting performance -- since the awards won't be announced until tomorrow (1/15), I've been pro-actively seeing anything that's getting "buzz," like Selma or Whiplash, both excellent movies. Weird thing is, what I'll remember longest is a piece of complete garbage. It's called the Judge, and I only went because Robert Duvall is supposed to get a Supporting Actor nomination for it, and he damn well better, since it wasn't playing anywhere closer than Cupertino, and I drove 60 miles round trip to see it. But what made it memorable...
...not its craptitude, really, but the way it was bad. On the surface, firmly in the Estranged Child & Parent Forced Together by Circumstance & Come to Realize They Still Love Each Other genre, and on that level serviceable; certainly Duvall & Robert Downey Jr. go through all the tired motions adequately. What was indelible was the world this story was set in -- and how blind the film (and the flimmakers) seemed to their bigotry.
It's set in a small Indiana town, where Duvall has been on the bench for 42 years, a stultifying, airless town from which Downey's hot-shot lawyer escaped as soon as he could -- but of course Fate has other ideas, and Downey has to come back & defend Dad from a charge of murder. It's a strange place, where people fall into one of two groups -- the ruling elite, who dress well, behave courteously and have excellent skin. On the other side, the town's underclass, sallow-complexioned, rotten-toothed yahoos who smell of cheap beer and use foul language. Seriously, there doesn't seem to be anybody in between. The murder that the Judge is accused of? One of the hicks -- and a hick that the judge treated leniently years ago.
And you know what happens in this kind of story when an authority figure goes soft on a hick? Yep. The hick turned right around and committed a horrible crime, for which the judge secretly blamed himself... so, years later, judge takes adantage of a dark road and a rainy night, and runs the guy over.
Judge is guilty, and that isn't really a spoiler. Guilt or innocence isn't the suspense point here -- we're supposed to be worried that the old coot will be held accountable for his actions. In the world of this movie, holding a member of the ruling elite accountable would be a bad thing... especially since he was just trying to right a wrong and correct his only mistake, the one time he was too lenient. Agatha Christie seems positively liberal.
So, blindly bigoted storytelling -- but not racist, since the upper class & lower class in this podunk town are nearly exclusively white, the kind of white people who visit New York City and are frightened by the Italians. In most of the USA, we are so used to class lines being deliniated by ethnicity, but that's not always the case... and it's fascinating to see class prejudice so naked, and unalloyed by racism, in a Hollywood movie.
My brother would say, why do you have to make everything political? But am I making it political, or just noticing that it is? Not everything is political -- Selma certainly is, and more power to it, but Whiplash deals with issues of power and coercion on an individual level, and doesn't seem political at all. Those are both great movies, and highly recommended; and while I wouldn't recommend the Judge for a moment (not even camp value), I won't forget it -- because it encapsulates something you don't see in movies very often. Something truly ugly that needs to be addressed.
But maybe not by rich Hollywood millionaires!
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Somebody (NOT ME) has been posting the entire Firesign Theater albums to YouTube, which seems questionable from the intellectual property angle, so you better download them now while you can, even though you already have the albums!
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