for 18 January 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Live and Let Die Subject: "There is no acting underwater." Does this apply to Jackie Chan in Supercop? maybe not. Slapstick is more about over-acting than acting, I suppose. <John_Osmon@ Dell.com> When Jackie Chan or, say, Jerry Lewis in The Errand Boy, do underwater scenes, they're all about the condition of being underwater: what it can do to the human body, how it looks, what it feels like. They deal with it, they have a reason for doing it, it's about something. They at least try to come up with something original. In the Bond films, the underwater scenes are just there because they're supposed to be there. As I mentioned, Apted doesn't even deal with how his actors look underwater. He doesn't even go for the cheap Denise-Richards-gets-wet- in-tight-top shot that any other director wouldn't have been able to resist. (Do we live in such chaste times? Or would that have driven the budget higher?) Instead, Apted does nothing but cause yawns, cut to bad jokes, and wait for the sound of feet shuffling out of the theater to a theme song made out of samples from glory-period Bond music. The audience leaves feeling heavier, but in actuality, they're 9 bucks lighter. So, yes, I guess slapstick is a special case. Jackie Chan knows that action-adventure is practically the same thing as slapstick; the makers of the Bond movies think ... what? That tensionless scenes shot on obvious sets through portholes are entertaining? Beats me. Thanks for writing, Slotcar Hatebath  Subject: quick ... If the answer is 42, what was the question? ma x <JacobMrley@ aol.com> If this is a joke about how Russ Meyer made a movie called Up!, skip it. Slotcar Hatebath Subject: Please do something about Magnolia Agggghhhh! More of this "James Bond is so passé, he doesn't ride a snowboard" stuff — I'm sick of it! I admit that most critics are too well-bred to go after Apted, and Denise Richards stank with a capital S, but it was a James Bond movie — a weak one, but it had James Bond. If the series could bounce back from A View to a Kill, you know it can bounce back from the many weak moments in this new one. The real question here is when are one of you guys going to go after Magnolia? It's a complete bloated sacred cow, and it's just sitting out there being surrounded by ever-growing flocks of worshippers. And it's just this pomo version of Love, American Style, just like American Beauty was a pomo version of Married ... with Children! Aren't you guys going to do something? If you don't, who will? Richard Von Busack <regisgoat@earthlink.net> I never said that Bond was passé because he doesn't ride a snowboard. In fact, I don't give a rat's patoot about snowboards, and I resent that you assume I do. My piece was about how similar the new Bond flick is to a seemingly dissimilar one with which it shares its director. But if I didn't get that across to you, I didn't get it across to you. Critics would never go after Apted, it's true, but Denise Richards was without question the best thing in that movie, possibly because she was immune to the Aptedian boredom layer. You underrate A View to a Kill. Do the names Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, and Grace Jones not mean a thing to you? They should all be in Magnolia! It's true that Magnolia worship is annoying, but I haven't seen it yet. Whether it's good or bad, it's not the fact that a movie like American Beauty shares plot points with a sitcom: It's that it shares its attitude. It's not the genre but what you do with it that counts. The guy who made American Beauty gave us Happiness Lite with the shame a little sunnier — or was that just Kevin Spacey? The accolades for that picture still mystify. Maybe the director of Boogie Nights will get another genius performance out of Cruise like Kubrick did. If it's anything like Short Cuts, however ... Slotcar Hatebath Subject: 42 squared is ... oh, a hell of a lot Dear SC: Oh, come on now. Twelve people saw 42 Up, and I was in the theater with eight of them. Where did you find your copy? To compare it with the Bondian stuff is ... well; it's damn clever, and your points are good ones. Still, the Up movies are about social class, and to comment on them and to miss that point is to rather miss the whole idea. But yes, the Brits are very not-us. If we didn't happen to speak the same (or similar) language, we'd appreciate how very not-us they are. It was a clever piece. Thanks. Alan S Kornheiser <ASKornheiser@prodigy.net> I don't know where you caught 42 Up, Dr. K, but in my town, it played for two weeks in a limited run to rave reviews. I disagree with your idea that the Up movies are about class. Just because Apted says they are does not make it so. The group of subjects strikes me as pretty homogenous, frankly, even though one is a wealthy lawyer, one a forklift operator, one a formerly homeless councilman, etc. In fact, Apted homogenizes them and smooths over their differences to portray them as a cohesive group, which the Up series has to some extent made them. The entire last half-hour of 42 Up was so tacked on, and the discussion of class so perfunctory, that it could've been chopped off and not missed at all. That was just Apted patting himself on the back in a maddeningly reasonable way that cut off real discussion. I don't buy it. The reason the series can never be about class is because the concept was flawed from the get-go. It's just so uncinematic and experimental in a bad way. It's a gimmick, and like all gimmicks, it's a form of exploitation. If it were honest about this (or if it were a good gimmick), I could deal, but it can't be. It is blind; a problem in a documentary as far as I'm concerned. It's always good to read your views, and thank you for writing. Slotcar Heathbar Filler Subject: Dead can dance but deadheads ... C'mon, do you really think that "fans" of Dead Can Dance music dance better than whirling dervish hippies? I appreciate the music of both of these bands and kinda picture the "... Can Dance" crowd doing pretty much the same moves as Jerry's kids. Fare thee well. Daniel Corvino Trenton, New Jersey <DANCORV@aol.com> You just had to go and bring the handicapped into this, didn't you? I stand behind my original assertion. Sure, goths don't dance so damn well. But no one dances as badly as deadheads. They always look like they're trying to wriggle themselves out of one of those really skinny sleeping bags. Man, I hate those really skinny sleeping bags. As if anyone would want to keep their legs right next to each other all night. What a curse! I also hate hacky-sack. What an annoying game. I would never play it, personally, because I have no foot-eye coordination. But most of all I dislike watching people play it. Especially when they're trying to play it "with style." You know what I mean. I also dislike watching people play "Tangled Up in Blue." Particularly with one of those plastic Yamaha guitars, particularly with one foot on the coffee table, particularly with a faux-scratchy voice in the middle of an otherwise OK party with a faux-sincere look on their face, particularly when they insist on looking you right in the eye and singing right at you. Greg Carter is to blame for most of this stuff. Are you happy now, Greg? Are you? Anyway, rah rah to Trenton, New Jersey. Trenton makes; the world takes! Polly Dear Polly, I'm getting sick of having to pretend I have a positive attitude and forcing smiles toward my fellow co-workers. The only time they bug me is when they have a problem. Why is this so? Disgruntled Employee It's a bummer working with other people, isn't it? I, for one, hate it, as is well documented in three years of Filler. I particularly disliked working with Owen Thomas, who not only bugged me when he had a problem but also bugged me when he had something totally unimportant to say, something that had no impact on his or my immediate job duties but that compromised my ability to do my job and reduced my overall job satisfaction considerably. Now Owen tries to interrupt me in the same way via email, but luckily I have a filter on my email that sends all emails from Owen straight into a very special mailbox. Let's call it the Owen mailbox, just to be polite, but it also serves a more general purpose, so its actual name, in accordance with this more general function, is Trash. Anyway, I'm not sure why your co-workers bug you so much. Maybe your co-workers are annoying people, or maybe you're a real jerk just like me. Either way, I'd suggest you tell them to submit their concerns and problems to you via email, and then set up your email filters accordingly. Gruntled, Polly Polly, I stretched, yawned, and read filler. I crammed down three glazed doughnuts — not Krispy Kremes, but we have one in Arlington — and drank some water. Then I wrote these words to YOU. For crying out loud, "What size are the guns?" Nate Dallas No dumb Hotmail address I don't know what that means. Is that a lyric or some kind of timely reference I should know or some kind of a reference to something I wrote that I should really know? I don't know. I'm glad you're eating doughnuts, at any rate. Polly Subject: HELP! Reading your column gives me insight into the female soul. It's a lot like vertigo. Tim Hundsdorfer <timh@ucar.edu> Insight into the female soul? Good god, man. You should know I have no soul. But, speaking of females and vertigo, I was on a bus to the airport in Newark, New Jersey, about a week ago, and there were some high school girls sitting behind me on the bus, which was kind of interesting and slightly horrifying. They were looking at photos, and one of them kept saying, "Every. Single. One. of Josh's friends are soooo cute. I mean, all his friends are totally cute." This reminded me of this radio ad for a televised version of Sweet Valley High, in which the kids go on some kind of a vacation cruise, and this girl says to a boy in a very seductive voice, "I think you're the hottest guy on the boat." It used to be so simple, you know. You just picked the most attractive person in the room, and if he didn't like you, you'd go for the second most attractive, and so on. Knowing a "Josh" is justifiable cause for celebration, given the circumstances. When we got to their terminal, one of the girls said, "Are we, like, there?" Not, like, there, Polly Polly, you're wonderful. Tell your editor we want to hear more about how you were a cheerleader. Kirsten Emmott <kbemmott@ark.com> Cool! People like you really ruin the content around here for the rest of our readers, but oh well. Screw them. The best part about being a cheerleader was that it got me a date with a senior when I was just a sophomore. This was important, because everyone in my own grade remembered how disconcertingly unsexy I was in junior high, when my nose grew to its current size a full two years before the rest of my face caught up with it. In junior high I also had bad skin, the body of a pear, and the personality of a pet rock, but let's let bygones be bygones, shall we? Anyway, cheerleaders naturally get more booty. You know, you're wearing a little baby doll outfit, essentially, and that really appeals to teenage boys — and men, for that matter. Men love to see women looking very infantile and sort of silly and innocent. Naturally, this is somewhat disturbing to most intelligent women. But once all that feminist rage wears off and we can barely remember what Adrienne Rich was trying to say way back when, we use this situation to our advantage by wearing knee socks and go-go boots and the occasional pair of braids and by dressing up as Catholic schoolgirls for Halloween. It's a blatant manipulation, sure, and it's pretty unsavory. But if you've never dressed up as a Catholic schoolgirl and you'd really like to snag a man, if only for a few hours ... OK, so, I guess my point is: I'm most definitely NOT wonderful. Setting the record straight, Polly |
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