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Megalopolis – masterpiece or mish-mash?

Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded Megalopolis is an ambitious film. I found it to be a commentary on the times we live in, a meditation on the role of the artist, an excessive hodgepodge, sometimes tedious, and sometimes delightful. Coppola pulls out all stops. The finished product is a film that perhaps needed tighter editing, but its off-the-beaten-path-ness makes it a film worth seeing.

You’re a visionary guy, Francis.

In a futuristic fusion of the United States and ancient Rome, Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) is an architect who wants to build Megalopolis on a parcel of land in New Rome (New York, essentially), clashing with Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who has other plans for the site.

An early scene of a press conference at the building site sets up the tension. The scaffolding upon which the press conference is conducted appears none too steady, amusingly commenting on the instability of the situation at hand and the milieu of the film in general. Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) is a reporter who covers the scene. Also on hand are Hamilton Crassus III (John Voight) a wealthy banker, and Nush ‘The Fixer’ Berman (Dustin Hoffman).

Mayor Cicero’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) later pays a call on Cesar and comes to view him as a visionary, not as her father’s nemesis. She later surreptitiously surveils Cesar has he makes a night drive in New Rome (with his right hand man, Laurence Fishburne!), where we are treated to the vision of a statue of Justitia begin to lean against the side of a building, then drop her scales and collapse.

Crassus weds a much younger woman (I won’t say whom – I’ve already perhaps said too much) and the ensuing reception is a typically Roman affair, complete with chariot races and a three-ring circus. Cesar abuses drugs and alcohol, leading to trippy sequences as he freaks out. The reception ends in a debacle, where Cesar is arrested, given a beat-down, and ultimately exonerated.

The rest of the film deals with the attempt of Crassus’ wife to get control of his bank aided by Clodio , Cesar’s jealous cousin (Shia LaBeouf). We see Clodio’s rise as a demagogue, Crassus’ revenge, and Cesar’s oration to the masses.

I really want to champion this film – it is daring and audacious. This is the man who made who made part of “One From The Heart” by holing up in an Airstream trailer, an extremely unusual approach. This is the man who made “Apocalypse Now” in an environment of heat, humidity, bugs, mosquitoes, and knee-deep mud. “One From The Heart” was a box-office failure, while “Apocalypse Now” made its money back. Coppola is a director who tends to bite off more than he can chew. This is a guy who takes chances. At the same time, I find “Megalopolis” overlong and incoherent in part. If given the scissors and asked what to cut, though, I would be flummoxed. What’s on the screen is apparently what Coppola wanted on the screen, a film free from executive interference. In this regard, it is the product of an auteur.

I will have the opportunity to see the film again in September. Will I view it again? Maybe. Then again, maybe its all-over-the-map feel will put me off.

Where are ya, Winston?

Our Ma Calnan thought that Winston Churchill was practically a saint. ¹ She had lived in London during the blitz and to her (and to many other Britons), Churchill had been a stalwart that buoyed up England’s spirit, encouraging Britons to stay strong in the face of Nazi aggression. According to her account, Churchill frequently lampooned Hitler in his radio addresses, referring to him as “Schicklgruber, the sign-painter” and exhorting his listeners not to fear a sign painter.

Wanna call a guy sign-painter, Winston?

We need a latter-day Churchill (or at least a really good Project Manager) to to come to the fore. This time around it would be the American people needing encouragement to remain steadfast. This time however, the sign-painter is not a foreign aggressor, but a US president. I’m unsure how to push back against an administration that seems bent on destroying long-standing American institutions while further enriching the already fabulously wealthy. Having a Project Manager would give the folks who oppose Trump’s attempt to establish oligarchy as the US form of government a way to focus their efforts. (Let’s face it, it’s already like an oligarchy, but Trump seems to want to cement it.)

What are the options? Well, some of ‘em are:

A National Day of Strike
Pro: Sounds great – would show the government that we the people influence the economy. Not coming to work for one day and refusing to shop would have an effect on the economy, even if only for one day.
Con: Difficult to organize. You might get fired if your boss supports Trump.

A National Day of Not Buying Stuff
Like the first option, with only the not-buying stuff option.
Pro: Sounds great. Maybe target only the large corporations, not local merchants.

Protest Marches
Pro: Sounds great (these all sound great.)
Con: These have to be large to be effective. Must be well-organized. Must guard against violent folks trying to co-opt or otherwise disrupt the event.

Showing Up at Politicians’ Town Meetings And Voicing Your Displeasure
Pro: Sounds great (‘cause it is.)
Con: None, except that some politicians are chicken and don’t announce their Town Meetings in advance.

Writing Letters to the Editor
Pro: Reminds people that not everyone is jake with Trump’s agenda.
Con: You may be timid and not want your name in a publication or on a web site. Maybe get over your timidity (or listen to you gut if this approach is not for you.)

Waiting ‘Til the Solar System Ends and Doing Nothing
Pro: 100% guaranteed to work. In 5 billion years, the Sun will expand into a red giant and likely consume the inner planets including Earth. Nothing stops a political agenda like the planet burning up.
Con: You might decide that a team of destructive chuckleheads needs to be stopped now, not later. Also, the planet might be ecologically ruined even before then.

Those are my suggestions. We need an experienced Project Manager to keep us on track and help us implement the most effective techniques for opposing the orange guy’s agenda. If you’re out there and you’re a Project Manager, your country needs you!

1. Some say Churchill was not. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/29/asia/churchill-bengal-famine-intl-scli-gbr/index.html

Triumph of the Wealth

As I write, Donald Trump slouches toward D.C. once again to be inaugurated. His second coming speaks to the old adage that even a guy from a rich family, through old-fashioned American values like inheritance and the mentorship of Roy Cohn can become president, not once but twice. It also calls to mind H.L.. Mencken’s oft-paraphrased observation that “No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

Andy Warhol

To a non-MAGA observer (that would be me), the apotheosis of the man is truly perplexing. I always thought of Trump with a combination of bemusement and amusement; he seemed to think a lot of himself, even though no one else seemed to have noticed. At last he entered the political arena, and still he seemed like a clownish interloper. Until he wasn’t – his combination of xenophobia and populism struck a cord with voters. When the dust settled, Trump was the Republican nominee. Even then, many (that would also be me) doubted that he could win. In the end, even a tape of Trump bragging that he could grab women’s genitalia without consequences failed to sink his candidacy. Trump won the election, albeit in the Electoral College, if not the popular vote. It could have been Hilary Clinton’s sense of entitlement that doomed her candidacy. It could have been the fact that she is a woman that was the deal-breaker. It could have been blowback from her husband’s sexual indiscretions, we’ll likely never know. However, Trump was now running the show, that at least was certain.

Fast forward though Trump 1.0, where Trump said and did many notable and notorious things, to his attempt to overturn the election on January 6, 2020. Despite entreaties from his own family and staff, Trump fails to make attempts to quell the melee for several hours. His claim that he won the election (he didn’t) is still an article of faith among his base to this very day.

Fast forward though the Biden presidency. Cases related to Trump’s January 6 behavior, hush money payments, attempts to influence Georgia’s vote count, and possession of classified documents make their way though the courts. Judge Aileen Cannon is slow to act in the documents case. The Supreme Court treats the question of presidential immunity with no real urgency. Biden’s lackluster performance in a June 2024 debate with Trump prompt calls for him to drop out of the race and Kamala Harris becomes the 2024 Democratic nominee. Trump’s prosecutions ultimately come to nothing. Trump wins the 2024 election.

So here we are. There’s a lot left out here, but several things seem evident to me.

1. We can retire the adage that “No one is above the law.” The new one should be, “No one, except those who are wealthy (or backed by those who are) is above the law.”
   
2. The United States is now, no question about it, a full-on oligarchy. Corporations stand to get a lot richer during Trump 2.0 – they know it and they’re counting on it. He will not disappoint.
   
3. In the United States facts are not particularly relevant; the one who can delay, deny, and spin well enough is the one who will prevail. This takes wealth to pull off.
   
4. The law is for people who lack sufficient wealth to manipulate it – the rest can evade it.
   
   

Awright, awright, I can hear ya now. You’re saying “Where have you been, guy? It’s always been that way! You’re just waking up to this now?” I hear ya, and I take your point – none of this is new. It’s just that it has seemingly never been so above board, so out in the open before. Judges no longer bother to hide their partisan leanings, politicians’ are defiant when shown clear evidence of their misconduct, and the public seem to accept credulously politicians’ assurances of impartiality when conflicts of interest are exposed.

To me, the way to fight back is not to sit back and decide that the current state of affairs is inevitable. It may be – Trump’s victory (his first, by the way) may well mean that corporations and and 1 per cent now have complete control over the American political system, but then, again they may not. Blog about it, talk to your friends, write your representative and your senator telling them you’re not buying the narrative you’re being sold . Trump is counting on a complacent populace to pull off his extremist agenda. Don’t buy stuff from companies that back Trump. Don’t be complacent. Trump will no doubt commit more crimes and expect to get away with them as he always has. An engaged citizenry can prove him wrong.

Books from the Past: Philip K. Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon

Clans of the Alphane Moon is Philip K. Dick’s 1964 novel about a caste system on a moon of a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. It also manages to be about marital discord, mental illness, the CIA, a telepathic slime creature, alien designer drugs, people with psychic talents, a TV comedy host, and perhaps the most hapless hero Dick ever created. As the novel begins, the titular clans of the Alphane moon have convened to discuss an issue that threatens their continued existence.

Meanwhile back on Terra, Chuck Rittersdorf’s wife Mary is in the process of divorcing him. Mary is a professional marriage counselor. Chuck makes a so-so living at the CIA, programming humanoid simulacra to go forth and propagate the US world view to Communist countries, such as Red Canada. Chuck enjoys his job and manages to bring a certain wit to the polemics he programs into his artificial ambassadors. Mary wants Chuck to ditch the job for a lucrative career writing sketches for TV comic Bunny Hentman. Chuck isn’t interested. Mary cleans Chuck out financially, and he is forced to live in a seedy apartment (or ‘conapt’ as the novel has it.) She has accepted an unpaid position as a psychologist on the aforementioned Alphane moon. Such are the circumstances as the story gets going.

This novel reminds me of some of A.E.Van Vogt’s work in that at times the plot seems to follow the irrational logic of dreams. (Example? A cleaning woman shows up at Chuck’s run down apartment to help him organize his things. Her other job as a ‘Psi’ doesn’t pay much – she can reverse time by 5 minutes in a small area. This comes in handy at accident scenes where a person has just died. Doesn’t pay much?) I have probably already said too much about the novel’s plot, but it gets much weirder than that.

In this novel, Dick brings in religious themes that he would later explore more fully in novels such as VALIS. Later in the story, Chuck opines, “I think perhaps the Paraclete [the Holy Spirit] is back.” Dick hasn’t established that Chuck is particularly religious, so this proclamation seems to come from nowhere. Nevertheless, this is an indication that Dick was already thinking about these themes in 1964, even if the introduction of these in this novel seems abrupt.

There is a palpable sense of poverty and despair, especially early in the novel. Though it is set in the future, Dick wrote the novel during Cold War times. The film Goldfinger was released that same year, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E and Secret Agent debuted on television in 1964 as well. There is a lot of intrigue in the novel, and it’s tempting to think that Dick was partly influenced by the popular culture of the times as he wrote Clans of the Alphane Moon.

Pia Mater, Dura Mater

It’s Mother’s Day, so I thought I’d say a few words about our mum. I use “our” instead of “my” ‘cause I’m also speakin’ on behalf of my brothers, too. Our mother was an odd mixture of a proper English lady and a street tough.

Her father was Irish, but she was born in England after the pandemic (the one with the Spanish flu, not Covid-19.) Her adulthood coincided with World War II, when many retreated to the Underground (subway) tubes when the air raid sirens would sound.  She declined to join her fellow Britons, saying that if she were to die, she’d prefer that it not be in the Underground. During this war she would meet and marry the US serviceman who would bring her to the US.

Money was plentiful in the household, at least until the day the spigot turned off.  Bill collectors called the house demanding payment. “All right,” she told one particularly obnoxious collector.  “I’m coming to your office to dump the payment on your desk – all in pennies!”

This is Mother Jones, not our mum. So sue us!

The school we attended brought back the old-fashioned paddle thinking that corporal punishment was the way to make the boys toe the line (this practice did not extend to the girls.) My younger brother fell victim to the paddle’s blows and our mum went to the school to have a word with the Assistant Principal. She told him that disciplining her children was her purview, not his. He insisted that he was within his rights to paddle the boys if they stepped out of line. “How old are you?” she asked. The AP did not see why his age was relevant. “I have another son who is around the same age as you,” she said. “If you paddle one of my sons again, the same thing will happen to you.” The startled Assistant Principal accused her of threatening him. She concurred with this assessment.

The lesson that our mother taught repeatedly was the necessity of non-capitulation to people who would push others around. However, the thing I most remember about her is her toughness in the face of her own death. In her mid-eighties her health declined suddenly and she was hospitalized. During one of my visits, she looked at the various monitors connected to her.

“Let it all go!” she said.

“Let all what go, Ma?” I asked.

“All of it!” she responded.

She seemed to be telling me that she didn’t want to prolong her life by heroic measures. I teared up a little. She would have none of it. “Oh, come on now,” she said.  “Let’s not play silly devils.”

She entered home hospice and died soon after. Her sons planned her memorial service – no priests, no trappings of religion. Our mother had been religious, but institutions did not impress her.

Do I present our mother in a warm, nostalgic light? Have I created a mythologized version of her? Certainly. That same toughness of spirit could be maddeningly exasperating at times. Nevertheless, her refusal to capitulate to others’ terms stays with me.

Were she here today, I’d say “Happy Mother’s Day, Ma!” She would dismiss this by opining, “Mother’s Day is a holiday in which forced tribute is paid.“  She would then add, “I want none of that.” That’s our mum.

Andy Warhol Looks A Scream

Netflix has 7 part series about Andy Warhol. I’m not a big Andy Warhol fan – I always found his art a bit cold. At the same time, I’m not not an Andy Warhol fan. I started watching the series ’cause I was intrigued and wanted to find out what made the guy tick.

The series is based on the Andy Warhol Diaries, edited by Pat Hackett. Warhol started keeping a diary, but soon stopped writing it himself – he spoke with Hackett every morning via telephone and dictated the diary to her. The documentarists, with the approval of the Warhol Foundation, synthesized Warhol’s voice, thus we hear the entries as Warhol himself may have read them.

In the first episode, we learn that Warhol (family name Warhola) left Pittsburgh in 1949 and headed for New York. Warhol’s voice talks about walking up 7 flights of stairs with his sketches. It’s mentioned that Warhol was an artist for Glamour, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, we see a few magazine covers, a few shots of illustrations of women’s shoes, and next thing ya know, it’s the 60s and Warhol is a sensation.  Wait, what? What happened during intervening years before Warhol made a name for himself?  The series never really explores this.

Then there’s the part where Warhol is shot, nearly fatally. (The fact that Warhol survived is almost miraculous – he had to wear a surgical corset for the rest of life.) Myself, I wanted to know more about the motives (if any) of his would-be assassin, but this angle went unexplored. I then read that the woman who shot him was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and shot Warhol because he had apparently lost her copy of a play she wanted him to produce. The play was so vulgar that Warhol thought he was being set up for entrapment.

The documentary explores the men in Warhol’s life, particularly Jed Johnson and film executive John Gould. Warhol seems to have crafted an image of himself as a celibate (he was not) gay man, perhaps to appear non-threatening to the rich and powerful into whose circles he was invited. Warhol received many commissions from wealthy patrons for warholized images of themselves. (I decided that the man had sold out.  My daughter Violet then pointed out that during the Renaissance, most artists made their living from rich patrons, so in that regard, he was in good company.)

In 1971, David Bowie met Warhol at the Factory (and would later play him in a film), but if this was mentioned, I sure missed it. The series says nothing about the song “Andy Warhol” from Bowie’s album “Hunky Dory” or what its subject thought of the song. I had to rely on Wikipedia to learn that Warhol apparently hated it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol_(song)

The later episodes deal with Warhol’s collaborations with graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the AIDS crisis of the 80s and Warhol’s death in 1987 after gall bladder surgery. The series would have made a great, say, three to five part series. Instead, it’s stretched over 7 episodes, but oddly, sometimes it’s what’s left out that’s puzzling (his aforementioned early career and the attempt on his life, for example.) I felt it could have been more tightly edited.

I didn’t come away knowing what made the guy tick, but that is not a fault of the documentary.  Warhol emerges as a shy man who nevertheless sought the limelight, a profoundly lonely and a not particularly happy man. He is a study in contradictions – an artist whose work was too raw and too underground for the mainstream (discussing Warhol’s early films, John Waters, no stranger to controversy himself, points out “you’d go to prison for that.”)  He hobnobbed with the wealthy and powerful. His pop art images were ubiquitous and made him a household name in the 1960s – decidedly not underground. I’m going to try to figure it all out over a bowl of Campbell’s soup…

“The Menu”, Mayhem, and Me

I haven’t written anything here in over a year, so this post essentially recalls this defunct ol’ blog to life. I like to talk about film, and the last one I saw is “The Menu”, starring Ralph Fiennes and directed by Mark Mylod. I deliberately avoided reading anything about the film before writing this, but I saw it described as a “black comedy horror film.” That seems about right, ‘cept to me, it’s a little light in the comedy department and a bit heavy on the horror (and the nihilism, which I’ll get to later.)

The film begins with a group of gourmands boarding a boat to the fictional Hawthorne Island. (Perhaps a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose “House of the Seven Gables” deals with a curse on a family? Tune in tomorrow to Reading-Too-Much-Into-It Theater to find out.) where Chef Slowik (Fiennes) has his restaurant. (Is Slowik a play on “slow wick?” Tune in tomorrow …) We get our first glimpse of the characters, including Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), a foodie wannabe and his date, Margot (played by Anya Taylor-Joy, whose wide eyes look like they were drawn by a Disney animator.)

Once on the island, the diners are given a tour by Elsa (Hong Chou), Slowik’s right-hand woman. The chef’s assistants live in a cramped Quonset hut and endure a grueling daily schedule (think Julia Child Meets Jim Jones.) This gives us our first inkling that things on the island are just a mite odd. Once the meal begins, things go from quirky, to weird, to downright unhinged as each course is served.

She’s not gonna take your guff, Mr. Fiennes!

I’ll get to the point; with any film, the question comes down to, “Did you like it?” I am forced to say no, I really didn’t like “The Menu”, despite having liked it in part – Fiennes always turns in a good performance, Taylor-Joy steals the movie, and there’s some great interplay between their characters; Margot is not cowed by Slowik and lets him know it. Truth to tell, though, I found the film, well, nihilistic. I’m not a fan of movies that paste on an upbeat ending, but “The Menu” is an overcorrection. Yes, I know, there are elements of satire in the film, which could be viewed as a commentary on those who bust their asses for a living and those who (in this case literally) consume the results of their labor. Nonetheless, in the end, nihilism is nihilism.

Maybe the real issue is that I’m just not in the target audience of this film, which I imagine to be a younger, hipper, horror-loving crowd. Perhaps it’s that the film has a gaping ”so-what?” factor. If you watch the film in its entirety, notice your reaction at its end. Mine was something like, “So what? I’ve watched this picture to its conclusion, endured a cinema of cruelty, and this is where we end? There are ultimately no surprises here. I figured it’d end on a note like this halfway through the movie. You’ve pursued a nasty premise to its nasty conclusion and the result is lighthearted and fun. (Just kidding – it’s actually nasty.)

As always, don’t take my word for it – your reaction may be completely different.

The Sycophant in the Room: An Open Letter to U.S. Representative Tim Walberg

Dear Tim,

Hi there! I thought I’d post this open letter to you because I know from experience that it does no good to write to you – you invariably respond with a form letter that ignores the substance of the original letter. (Don’t get me started about your telephone town halls – they’re a joke! ) To get to the point, Tim – your January 6 challenge to certifying Biden’s win was a craven act of sycophancy.

As Trump-enablers go, you’re a second-stringer, maybe even third string. You lack the notoriety of fellow Trump lackeys like Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes in the House and Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham in Senate, but in challenging the vote certification, your obsequiousness was first rate!

• 

  Nice fish, Tim!

The form letter I received on January 21 makes a vague reference to “irregularities and the overstepping of state laws” in the 2020 Presidential election, but you seem curiously reluctant to be specific. You must know that of 62 lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 Presidential election, 61 were dismissed. The only lawsuit that the Trump team won failed to change the result of the Pennsylvania election – Biden still won the state. Trump’s own Justice Department stated that no serious fraud had occurred. Coming from William Barr, the quintessential Trump enabler, that says a lot. As I write, Chris Christie (hardly a liberal) said the same on TV this morning.

After the debacle, you attempted to cover your own arse. On your Web page you wrote: “I strongly condemn this reprehensible behavior and call for all violence to cease immediately. Everyone who illegally breached U.S. Capitol grounds should be held fully accountable for their lawlessness.” What did you think was going to happen, Tim? Well before the election, Trump was selling the humbug that he could lose only if the voting process were rigged. Egged on by Trump’s incessant repetition of this lie (not to mention his incitement to insurrection on Jan. 6), the more violent members of Trump’s base stormed the Capitol. You aided and abetted the lie by stating beforehand that you’d object to the vote certification and by doing so even after the violence had occurred.

I would imagine that you want your constituents to forget your collusion in this tawdry affair. No doubt you want your vote against the Violence Against Women Act and your endorsement of birtherism to be forgotten as well. (In 2010, you called for measures “up to and including impeachment” if Obama did not reveal his birth certificate, which he had done in June 2008.) Though you may want to bury these things, my goal is the opposite – I would like to keep your actions in the minds of your district’s voters should you decide to run again in 2022.

Lastly Tim (and this question extends to the Republican party at large), why have you been so willing to fawn on Trump? You got a taxpayer-funded ride on Air Force One for which Trump may have expected your fealty in return, but if so, it doesn’t seem worth it. Trump may run again in four years, but that’s not guaranteed – with all the lawsuits he’ll be facing, it’s not impossible (though admittedly unlikely) that he’ll be in the slammer come 2024. And sure, Trump can do no wrong with his diehard base, but some former enablers are not so enamored of him now – I note that Moscow Mitch McConnell has already cut him loose. He knows that Trump can no longer help him confirm judges (including the 10 who received a “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association.) He also knows that some corporations are pulling contributions to lawmakers who objected to the certification. MMM’s ability to follow the money is inversely proportional to his ethics – if he’s ditching Trump, so should you!¹

Well, I’ve said most everything I wanted to say, Tim. I gotta admit though, I’ve been wrong before – I didn’t think a con man like Trump could clinch the Presidency to begin with. I also didn’t foresee that some lawmakers would shed their integrity to be Trump’s willing stooges. I was wrong on both counts.

Your reluctant constituent,

Harry Calnan

1. Update: On January 6, 2021, M³ stated, “The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever.” Today (February 13, 2021), Moscow Mitch voted to acquit Trump. It seemed for a while there that Mitch was developing a late-blooming moral compass. No such luck.

Lurching Through Longmire

Blood platelet donation takes about two hours. With a needle in both arms, you can’t read a book, so the Red Cross came up with a brilliant solution – donors can watch Netflix as the platelet machine whirs. Last summer a nurse in a hijab prepared me for donation while I perused the Netflix offerings. When it came time to place the needles, I still hadn’t decided. “Ah”, she said, “That’s the trouble with Netflix – no one can decide what to watch. Here’s a show about a sheriff. He has a Native American friend that he’s known since childhood – you might like it.” With that, she started the first episode of “Longmire”, a show I’d never watched. I was about to protest that I hated crime shows, I disliked Westerns, and I preferred movies over TV shows. As I was not the only donor this busy nurse needed to take care of, I decided that I’d watch an episode or two of this show even though I hadn’t chosen it. I watched the first episode, and most of the second, until the machine dinged and my donation was complete.

Back at home I turned on Netflix and finished the second episode. Over the days and weeks that followed, I stuck with the series. Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) is your basic laconic Harrison Ford type, sheriff of the fictional county of Absaroka Wyoming. His best friend is Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips), owner of the local watering hole.

I stared to really get into the show – there’s tension between Walt’s office and Mathias (Zahn McClarnon), the sheriff on the local Cheyenne reservation. Mathias has a bee in his bonnet ’cause Walt sent his old boss Malachi (Graham Greene!) to prison for corruption.  Walt is not one to bend the rules unless it’s absolutely convenient, but in time the two develop a grudging respect. But wait, there’s more!  Jacob Night Horse (A. Martinez) wants to build a casino, a move that Walt’s late wife opposed. If that wasn’t enough, one of Longmire’s deputies, Branch Connally (Bailey Chase), is running against him for sheriff.  Walt’s other deputies are Victoria Moretti (Katee Sackhoff), who has come to Wyoming to escape her past in Philadelphia and Archie (the Ferg) Ferguson (Adam Bartley), a hapless chap that Walt hired as a favor to the Ferg’s father.

OK, I watched the show and all, but there were elements that bugged me – as the series went on I was never comfortable with the not-so-subtextual sexual tension between Deputy Moretti and Longmire. This seemed particularly creepy in light of the fact that Longmire’s daughter Cady (Cassidy Freeman) is approximately the same age as Moretti and because of the boss/employee dynamics involved. Yes, I’ve read that this tension plays out in Craig Johnson’s novels upon which the series is based, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy.

Cut the creepy stuff, willya?

On the positive side, I liked the episodes where Lou Diamond Philips became a Zorro-like character and the ones where Graham Greene figured prominently.  The latter makes a really good bad guy. At times, the show contains elements of magical realism, as in the works Gabriel García Márquez.

You’re a heckuva bad guy, Graham!

If you decide to watch the series, avoid the last episode like the plague (or at least the part after all the gun-fightin’.) In my humble opinion, the final episode makes the unwise decision to tie up all the story lines into one big happy ending. I wanted to gag.

All in all, Longmire is a mixed bag – the show seldom achieves greatness, but it frequently achieves pretty-goodness.

Mulholland Drive: A Lynchian Labyrinth

David Lynch is not usually my cup of tea, but when my adult daughter suggested I view Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”, I decided to take the plunge. I’d seen “Eraserhead” in my 20s but I don’t recall leaving the theater with a song in my heart. I’d also seen “The Elephant Man” (1980) and liked it well enough. Dune (1984) was the only other David Lynch film I’d seen, and that one had been a misfire from the word go. I was too chicken to see “Blue Velvet”, “Wild at Heart”, or “Lost Highway”, but what the heck, “Mulholland Drive” it would be.

“This movie sure is weird”

This is a film that is more fun to talk about than it is to actually watch. That sounds like a criticism, but I honestly don’t mean it that way – it is really fun to discuss this film with others after viewing it. It’s a film that’s hard to pin down. One could say that it is a psychological drama, or perhaps a hodgepodge of film genres (gangster films, Hitchcock thrillers, mysteries, musicals, Westerns.) You could call it a disjointed tale with kitschy symbols (keys, boxes, a surreal theater) and other scenes that have little relationship to the story(ies) of its two main characters. Is the first part of the film a dream that Naomi Watt’s character Betty Elms has in the “real” world of the second part of the film? At one point, I thought of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.”

On the other hand, that may be taking this film too seriously. Is the film just an intriguing put on? There are several darkly funny scenes that are tangential to the main drama. In one, a man describes a frightening dream he has had while sitting in the very restaurant that the dream took place. In another, a semi-competent hitman bungles the job and has to improvise. What the heck is Lynch doing?

Maybe the answer is that Lynch is doing both – the darkly comic scenes and the story of the films two female leads are both part of the fabric of Lynchland. I never watched the “Twin Peaks” television series, but I remember avid fans describing lovingly photographed shots of donuts on trays as an essential part of the whole Twin Peaks experience, along with dancing little people and the White Lodge.

The principal actors, Naomi Watts and Laura Harring both turn in strong performances, especially Watts, who is called upon to change the most radically. I also enjoyed seeing the final film performance by Ann Miller (Easter Parade.)

Mulholland Drive is a troubling, dark film and I didn’t exactly like it, per se. At the same time, I definitely didn’t hate it. The film is, among other things, an unsentimental look at Hollywood. In one scene, Watt’s aces her audition. After she leaves, the filmmakers are jubilant – they’ve found their leading lady. We then learn that the picture has almost no chance of actually being made. That’s show biz.