Some Kind of Mazzaro World

Continuing with “the list” here are numbers 80-61.

And don’t forget to check out Andrew Brenner’s list. He’s getting prolific with this stuff.

No more ado. Here we go.

NUMBER 80 - L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997)

Here’s another film like The Royal Tenenbaums that is just perfectly put together. The casting is almost a dream, and the performances are fantastic (Kim Basinger in an Academy Award winning role, plus Russell Crowe, Guy Peace AND Kevin Spacey all shine.) Director Curtis Hanson must be independently wealthy—he’s only made 4 films in the decade since L.A. Confidential. Either that or he put all he had creatively into this one. Either way, this film is alive. The sets and set decoration capture a vibe of 1950’s L.A. leaping right out of stock footage and the pages of pulp magazines and tabloids (it should come as no surprise that Hanson based a ton of what he did visually on old videos, photographs, and postcards.) But seeing those scenes come to life with actual, three-dimensional characters, and one heck of a well-imagined thrilling story, is just icing on the visual cake. To me this film is a masterpiece because the story works so well you don’t even notice everything else that went into the film technically, and yet you can really appreciate it merely for the technical aspects as well if you choose to (the DVD notably has a “music only” audio track, the only such track I’ve seen on a DVD.)

The film’s “Welcome to Los Angeles” 2:45 opening sequence perfectly sums up exactly the style and tone this film succeeds at on the highest level. One of the best films of the 90’s.

NUMBER 79 - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008)

which of these things does not belong...

My first impression of this film is that the narrative was perfect. Is it slightly attenuated? Sure. Is it a little over the top? Maybe. But those questions are just obliterated from your mind due to the mastery of pace and photography in this film. So many people I’ve talked to about the film remark that they can’t believe that the poverty in India is so desperate (it’s probably worse.) Others talk about the film’s wonderful fairy-tale love story. Still others have marveled at the wonderful performances of completely unknown young actors. For me, the film succeeds in all of these ways, and the sum total of these fantastic elements is a film where the strengths completely outshine the weaknesses. The story is sweeping, the locations epic, and it is the narrative structure that is both a fantastic (and somewhat unique) device and why this film works so well. The division of the story allows it to be so many things–drama, romance, action, thriller–without spending too much time becoming just one of them.

Director Danny Boyle creates consistently interesting and unique films (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions) that don’t rely on star power or $150 million budgets. That he does so with such skill and deft hands also speaks to why this film works so well as a culmination of his work to date. He still looks funny as hell (and completely superimposed) in this picture though…

NUMBER 78 - THE EXORCIST (1971)

Legitimately the scariest film of all time. And it makes its bones on atmosphere—lighting, songs, sound, not merely on effects (though Linda Blair’s head spinning around remains freaky to this day, and the effects are notable.) This is a masterwork of horror. It’s psychological. It’s freaky. At its time, it was something truly new in terms of the levels of disturbance it captures. Adjusted for inflation, it’s the highest-grossing R rated film of all time. It is scary because it’s at least partially believable—Warner Brothers had to hire private security for Linda Blair after she received death threats for her portrayal as the possessed 13 year old girl that is the subject of the title action. Yes, a 13 year old actress got death threats. And Billy Graham claimed there was an actual demon living in the celluloid reels of the film. Quite simply, this is a disturbing, impactful, horror flick. It wasn’t even available in the UK until 1999!

Nominated for 10 Oscars (a horror film nominated for 10 Oscars) including acting, writing, directing and others related to the fantastic production of the film. This one is just uber-disturbing. It stays with you.

NUMBER 77 - BLOWUP (1966)

Sometimes reality is the strangest fantasy of all. That’s the tagline from the original trailer for this film, and it’s a perfect summation of what this film captures so perfectly.

Director Michelangelo Antonioni is a forgotten master of the art film, the film that is free to leave open-ended questions in its narrative and mean different things to different people. Blowup is a fantastic example of such a film, centered around a London Fashion photographer who may (or may not) have captured a murder in some random still photographs he took. I saw this in a theater with three other people. Two of us were completely blown away by it, one person was completely befuddled, and the other person was angry. It’s a rare film that engenders such varied and passionate responses, responses that closely mirror individual responses to our own reality.

This is admittedly not a film for everyone. But it stands as a landmark to me for what it says about our view of reality, or, rather, what we say about it, why we say it, and how that manifests in our actions. Antonioni chose a London Mod Fashion photographer in the late 60’s because of the somewhat-warped reality that scenario already presents. Where he goes with it will either bore you to tears, or really put you in an existential mood for a week or two. Like reality, it depends on how you interpret it.

NUMBER 76 - THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (1966)

I consider this to be one of the most all-around well made scenes in film history. This movie almost makes this list on this scene alone. Warning, this is from the end of the film. Contains spoilers.

In case you haven’t noticed by now, I am a big fan of music, sound, camera. Dialogue is way down on the list of why I appreciate films. This scene is incredible for the integration of different camera angles, the editing to the pace and build of the music, and the use of cuts to build intensity and emotional involvement.

The whole film is this way, an incredible harmonic convergence of sight, sound, song, and performance. It has been hailed as the greatest Western of all time, and several well known directors have labeled it the best directed film of all time. It deserves every ounce of praise it gets. I honest to God get chills watching that scene every single time. I don’t know if they shot it then scored it, or shot it TO the score. I like to think it’s the latter. If I made movies, this is absolutely how I would make them. So much of the Western genre is wrapped up in location, natural sounds, etc. This film does everything it should and is absolutely a top example of America’s most personal genre.

NUMBER 75 - THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG (1927)

An early Hitchcock classic. And if you haven’t guessed it, there are going to be a ton of Hitchcock films on this list. That this checks in as the lowest-ranked one should not be seen as me somehow thinking it deserves less than stellar praise. It’s also the first, though it won’t be the last, silent film on the list.

Part of the reason I value this film so much is that it is silent. Hitchcock, known to all as the master of suspense, without sound or score (though most versions are scored) shows how simple camera work, lighting, and editing can build suspense. This is like listening to Beethoven create a masterpiece with just the piano and viola. You really appreciate the individual parts more when some of them are removed. Why THE LODGER is also important is while so many silent films make their bones on grandiose themes, or melodramtic acting or situations; THE LODGER is a straight suspense story told by a master.

It’s a technically instructive film, but it’s also a great one if you’re into suspense. The story is so renowned that it has been made into several films—this is the best of the bunch. And the full title should be appreciated, “A Story of the London Fog”. Hitchcock realized that this film isn’t just about the characters, or, rather, he realized that the city ITSELF is a character. That’s the sort of realization that takes his entertainment to the level of art.

You can watch all of THE LODGER on youtube, in 9 parts.

NUMBER 74 - A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)

12 Academy Award nominations. An outstanding cast playing roles they were born to play, and first played on stage. A director in Elia Kazan who understood how to build the tension and raw emotion of the film in small ways, having directed the stage show himself prior to helming the film. A fantastic score and a film that is just filled with sensuality and natural heat. It’s fitting that the film is set in New Orleans, and fitting that the lead character, portrayed incredibly by Vivien Leigh, are so full of passion that a film can barely contain them.

There is so much in this film that is just absolutely pitch perfect with the performances of the actors. In fact it won three Academy Awards for acting alone, a near rarity in cinematic history. And, notably, this is the film that basically introduced the force of nature that was/is Marlon Brando to audiences. The performances absolutely hum because of another rarity—nearly the entire Broadway cast was used in the film. It’s a tribute to the talent of Vivian Leigh that her stellar performance was the only main role with a replacement actor from stage to screen. It can’t have been easy to step into a well-oiled machine like that.

Kazan is a master of the little things. Little things like how the set of the Kowalski apartment actually gets smaller as the film goes on to heighten the suggestion of Blanche’s increasing claustrophobia. Little things like shooting this masterpiece in under 40 days. His touch is deft, not heavy-handed, and the results are fantastic. There just aren’t too many films where the performances of the actors shine so amazingly, so legendarily. Mix in an incredible score and some of the most memorable dialogue in film history, and you have a screen classic.

NUMBER 73 - NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

The film is memorable for so many things—the lack of a score, the fantastically chilling performance of Javier Bardem, the film’s theme of the unstoppable nature of evil. But it’s this scene, the ending, that means the most to me. Spoiler free.

This is a film (and a wonderful book by Cormac McCarthy) that has more to do with its title than people realize. The film seems to be about drug money and the dogged pursuit of a real life cowboy in a game of finders keepers with one of the purest forms of evil in cinema history. On its surface, it’s a pure chase movie with good guy and bad guy lines fairly clearly drawn. But what it is really about is how this has always been and always will be no country for old men. The scene above, and the scene where Tommy Lee Jones meets with a retired sheriff and they wax poetic about how, even in 1900, this was no country for old men, are the sum of the film to me. That there are forces of nature like Javier Bardem’s character in the world is nothing new. That the older people in society feel time has passed them by is an eternal theme. To the Sherrif Ed’s of the world, things always used to be better.

Why I love this film, why it works so well to me, is in the face of that theme, the film does wonders to make me yearn for the world of MY childhood, that is, the world depicted in the film. The world where small towns, independent drug, furniture, and department stores existed. A world of roadside non-chain motels. A world without Wal-Mart. This is the world of No Country For Old Men. And even though it is inhabited by really, really depraved souls like Anton Chigurh, I found myself yearning for it as I watched the film. So while Tommy Lee Jones’ character yearns for the past, and Josh Brolin’s character has hopes for the future, I find myself yearning for the time in the film. This is one that has a very personal reaction for me. It may not play the same for everyone else.

NUMBER 72 - LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997)

A whimsical comedy set in a concentration camp, and its interplay and meaning with the film’s title, are what makes this film a classic. The setting of the second half of the film seems unconventional for a comedy, but it is this tragic setting that allows the film to do what the very best comedies do—punch us in the gut as they tickle our ribs. Benigni spins a perfect story featuring both sides of the tragedy/comedy coin. In fact he spins this so well that what results is a something new—like the thanatropic Victorian cards with a bird on one side and a cage on the other that create a new image when spun.

The story, a father who convinces his son through fables and lies that the horrors going on around them during holocaust era World War II are part of one big game, is sweet. The father is played so well with equal parts tenderness, self-delusion, hilarity, and poignancy by Benigni himself that it’s tougher to say which deserves more renown–his acting or his direction.

This film plays like a bittersweet fable. Like a lyrical poem that flows in waves of emotion (both “good” and “bad”) and challenges the viewer to find the good in the bad. The title is not preachy, in fact it’s subtle. If a father can watch the horrors in a concentration camp and find ways to clown for his son to make him laugh, then certainly life is beautiful. Benigni will be remembered for his Oscar acceptance antics (leaping onto the tops of seats, jumping on stage and telling Sophia Loren that he wanted to be with her in no uncertain terms, crying like a baby, you know…being Italian), but he should be remembered in general for his joie de vie. He seems like a man who truly lives the belief that life is beautiful, and with this film he’s made a masterpiece that should help us feel the same way.

NUMBER 71 - JAWS (1975)

Not to spoil the rest of the list, but you aren’t going to find a Speilberg film anywhere on it other than this one.  What that means more than anything is I appreciate how well made this film really is. Considering most of his other films for me are big budget disappointments, this film shows that, at least at some point, Speilberg knew how to make movies as something other than a hack who uses the same old tricks dressed up with the newest CGI and special effects.

This is not to say I don’t appreciate the difficulty of managing a production with a huge budget. It’s more to say that Speilberg gains more of my respect as an artist with a film like Jaws.  Here he generates the suspense through camera work (including the famous p.o.v. of the shark) and legendarily memorable score. He gets the most out of every inch of his sets, namely boats, and his actors. There’s a reason Jaws is better than Deep Blue Sea, a film with better effects and a much greater budget. That’s because Speilberg, rightly, recognized that the suspense is in the filmmaking style, not in the effects.

Alfred Hitchcock legendarily opined that to make a film involving the Titanic disaster and have it have any real suspense, he would open the film with a shot of a single rivet and pull back the shot slowly to reveal the entire boat. The suspense comes from how the effects and sets are presented, not the effects or the sets themselves, and not even always the story. Speilberg knew this in Jaws. He knew he would not be able to make the shark itself convincing to the point of horror, so he made the specter of the shark the source of the terror. He made the suspense and terror psychological, not merely shocking. And he does it so well in Jaws that it is clear this child of America’s “Golden Age” of Radio/TV/Film knows how to work it, which only makes his later films that rely on devices and effects aka big budgets all the more frustrating. I’m not sure he’ll ever do better than Jaws.

NUMBER 70 - THE GENERAL (1927)

Building off of how a master can work within small spaces, or with situations to create things wholly new and fantastic, we have this true comic masterpiece from the Silent Era. It’s enjoyable both from a sheer entertainment standpoint, and it’s a completely fantastic spectacle from a cinematic and comedic standpoint.

The film centers around a chase sequence featuring two trains on the same track. You know, the kind of chase sequence where the pursuer can never overtake the pursued. But this doesn’t matter to Keaton at all, nor does the limited space in which he is able to ply his trade during that sequence. Instead, as a director, he keeps coming up with new situations for his character to make the audience laugh. As an actor he’s a true artist of found comedy—rather than creating it as other masters like Chaplin do, Keaton simpy creates low-key, reliable characters who find themselves in situations that produce laughs. He’s not better than us yet one of us like many great artists, he’s actually one of us. He’s understated. He’s subtle. And this film more than any of his show why he’s a comic genius.

There are so many notable shots and sequences in this film. Films today that are so dialogue heavy to generate laughs are funny, but few films, comedic or otherwise, contain the ingenuity of Keaton’s. It’s been noted that his films mesh perfectly and flow so well that they are like music. To have said that about a silent film speaks to Keaton’s genius as well. This film makes the list because it contains what I feel is his best story, his most daring stunts, and some of his most truly ingenious comic scenarios. In the silent film era, many scenes were written around gags—pratfalls, physical comedy, props, etc. But in this film you won’t find just that. Instead you will find situations in which an everyman finds himself and is faced with opportunities and dangers. Where Keaton finds laughs in those situations is what makes this film legendary.

Can be viewed entirely on youtube, but the quality isn’t great.

NUMBER 69 - SCARLET STREET (1945)

Another thing that will become clear in this list is how my favorite genre is film noir. Some films are on this list because of what they do to evolve that genre. Some are on the list because they take some elements of the genere and play them on the grandest stages and the most outrageous scenarios imaginable. But this film makes the list because it’s one of the single best “pure” noir films of all time. The conventions that other films use to evolve the genre or change the game are acrchtypeal in this film.

I can’t write all I want to about this film without spoiling large elements of the plot. I will cut this entry short and just say that this film is unsettling. Like other films discussed above, some films make clear distinctions between black and white moral choices, this film is cast in shades of grey. You end up feeling sorry for the main character, then being angry with and for him, then hating him, or maybe not. Film Noir typcially presents characters with choices that end up as a choice between the lessor of two evils. In this film, the choices are amplified, are far-reaching, and have terrible consequences. Even the ones that seem like “good” choices.

This one is unsettling, especially if you’d rather your films have clear outcomes and “good” results. This one is much more like life. Bad decisions spiral out of control, bad choices have continual bad results. Its value is in the perfectly visioned archtypeal characters and situations. Director Fritz Lang has three films on this list, all three very different and yet similar. This one is an outstanding genre pic that with Lang’s touch becomes a landmark one, at least for me.

NUMBER 68 - NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955)

It seems fitting that the next film is also unsettling—completely and totally unsettling. While not a pure film noir, the undeniable presence of evil is manifested by Robert Mitchum in one of screen’s all time dark performances.

The plot centers around a self-labeled preacher/convict looking for money his old cellmate has hidden for his wife and children. The preacher, played with nearly unnatural primal urgency by Mitchum, is as evil as evil gets. Check out the primal scream at 1:15 or so into this clip:

The clip, and numerous other youtube clips available from the film, should also show just how hauntingly beautiful this film is. Director Charles Laughton brought his extensive knowledge and experience from the stage to all aspects of this film. Especially notable are the lighting, framing of shots, and use of shadow. It’s a brave and bold choice for a director to make such a brooding, dark, expressionistic film. At the time of its release, this style partially hamstrung the film and led to it being a critical and commercial failure. However, in the years since, it is this very style that has earned the film constant heaps of praise, including this recent entry as one of the top 100 most beautiful films of all time.

Roger Ebert summed it up perfectly in his review : “It is risky to combine horror and humor, and foolhardy to approach them through expressionism. For his first film, Laughton made a film like no other before or since, and with such confidence it seemed to draw on a lifetime of work. Critics were baffled by it, the public rejected it, and the studio had a much more expensive Mitchum picture (”Not as a Stranger”) it wanted to promote instead. But nobody who has seen “The Night of the Hunter” has forgotten it, or Mitchum’s voice coiling down those basement stairs: “Chillll . . . dren?”

NUMBER 67 - THE CONVERSATION (1974)

This film is really a bookend to the number 77 film on my list, Blowup.  Both films are about how a closer inspection of what we think we saw/heard might reveal something different, about how our own views distort reality, and about how magnificently cinematic the struggle between whether we are a product of our reality or whether our reality is a product of us can be.

It’s no secret that Coppola borrowed heavily from Blowup in making The Conversation. Why this film ranks higher on my list than the masterpiece it owes so much to has to do with several things. The lead performance of Gene Hackman is outstandingly uncomfortable. As the lead character Harry Caul, he plays an audio surveillance expert who is at the same time hyper connected and therefore completely disconnected with reality. Hackman does a masterful job of making Caul’s paranoia palpable through the little things—pauses, eye clicks, physical shifting. The film would be completely empty without his performance.

The soundtrack of the film is also notable, especially for its minimalistic bent and often-atonal nature. It absolutely enhances the paranoia and discomfort in ways only perfectly-designed film scores can. It’s especially interesting that the score was written before the film, then tweaked and changed as the composer saw how to better enhance the visual images. This sort of “open source” collaborative effort only makes for a more impactful film.

Blowup captures a moment in time of a certain seemingly-unrealistic mod scene, The Conversation taps into a feeling, or scenario, still being played out as we press on into the information age. It appears at first glance as a comment on the Watergate-era, but notably it predates much of the scandal and coverage. It covers ground we are still experiencing, or will be experiencing. In that way it is as powerful as it is prescient.

NUMBER 66 - REBECCA (1940)

Alfred Hitchcock, master of film and he of direction of at least ten of the films on this list, only won one Best Picture Oscar. One. And it was for this fantastic film.

If you’re expecting the usual Hitchcock–taut suspense, sequences of frantic pacing, plot twists and turns–you are probably going to be let down. Instead of unfolding in typical Hitchcockian fashion, this film unfolds like a dream, and slowly turns into a nightmare.

The film finds a newly-married young woman completely over her head as wife in charge of a house that’s epically mammoth, and a staff that sees her as  poor replacement for the recently-deceased ex wife of her new husband. The husband, played by Lawrence Oliver in his brooding best, seems incapable of love. The entire film is haunted by the specter of the deceased wife, who plays a vital role in nearly every interaction, and yet is never seen on camera. But how did she die?  And what influence does she have, even from beyond the grave, of the fate of the newly married couple?

The sets are glorious, and the characters, especially the Head of Staff Mrs. Danvers whose feelings for the deceased wife simmer in ways unspeakable in 1940, are three dimensional and vibrant. The amazing house, pictured here, is a character in and of itself, so that the first line of the film is evocative and memorable. A beloved classic of literature, with a director and a legendary producer make this Best Picture winner from 1940 a memorable film.

NUMBER 65 - STALAG 17 (1953)

NUMBER 64 - LAURA (1944)

NUMBER 63 - SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

NUMBER 62 - YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)

NUMBER 61 - CITY LIGHTS (1931)

Bored with our final semester of law school, Andrew Brenner and I decided we’d create, and post, our top 100 films of all time lists.

Our undertakings will be different, though the goal is the same–amass a list of the 100 films that mean the most to us. I won’t speak for the criteria Andrew is using to make his list, but I can speak the criteria I’ve used.

-These are the films that mean the most to me.

-These are the films I find the most impactful-both on cinema and my life.

Good Film/Movies/Cinema is a rewarding experience for me.  I get just as much entertainment from a well-written, well-made drama as I do from laughing the entire time at Will Ferrell movie. So this list isn’t necessarily full of movies I enjoy on a sheer entertainment level. A movie is just as likely to be on this list for messing with my head for weeks after seeing it, challenging the way I view the world, or being one of the best in a genre as it is just for making me smile. Not every legendary film is going to make my list because some of them just don’t mean as much to me. This whole exercise is subjective.

All this is to say, Anchorman just missed the list. Sorry.

So without further ado, here’s numbers 100-81. The rest will be revealed, 20 at a time, in four additional posts. Don’t forget to view Andrew’s list as well. I think you’ll get a glimpse of how two people with very similar tastes can sometimes view things very differently.

The list begins after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

MyHeritage face recognition - celebrity matches - MyHeritage.

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Blank family tree - Free family tree charts

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

YouTube - Danny Boy.

Note to Vince Offer. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape…

PITCH OFF!

YouTube - Billy Mays calls out Vince on the Adam Corolla Show.

Testing Video Embed

YouTube - M. Ward Chinese Translation.

Took these notes stream of consciousness as the brackets were announced. I reserve the right to change my mind, probably at least 45 times between now and Thursday at noon.

-A gift to Arizona to keep their streak. Awful road team. No really big time wins. Playing horribly. KY is probably in based on this bullshit.

-BC’s gotta be hating seeing USC there. You’d much rather see a sinking 10 than a rising one.

-WVU/Dayton should be a good one.  Dayton playing in the A10 hurts them because WVU has played three Number 1 seeds. Dayton has played Xavier. But WVU is so young so more prone to stumbles. Plus it’s a Huggs team. They will be out by round 3.

-This region sucks. Louisville can be beaten, they are far from dominant. MSU could be tough.

-How is Purdue a 5? They seem like a 4 at least.

-Same rising team problem for Wash facing Miss St. You’d rather see a team that barely gets in than a team who is clicking at the right time.

-Memphis/UCONN is a much more dangerous region than MSU/Louisville.

-Maryland a 10? I don’t see it. St. Mary’s had better be in…

-Missouri is going to crush Cornell. Of course I know nothing about Cornell. But Missouri a 3? Second round special right there…

-Utah St can take Marquette esp without James. Utah State is tough. In fact, they have an outside shot at the sweet 16. I think they can take Missouri too.

-OK ST/Tenn should be great. I think OK St should take it, but Ten has the talent. Either one is going to be a bitch of an out in round 2.

F-l. St. should rock Wisco. But it’s a 5/12 so who knows. I think FLA St. can score well enough to win a 60-50 type game If Fla St beats Wisco, I don’t think X has a prayer against Fl. St. Fl. St is the kind of team that can made a run.

-UCLA has to HATE getting VCU. That’s almost a death sentence. Almost. And I like UCLA  a lot. But VCU is so well-coached. I’d be shocked if they do anything other than play their best game. I have been reading up on VCU because it’s been whispered their coach is the next big get, so I’m looking at whether he’d be an upgrade over Cronin.

-LSU is an 8? Wow.  That’s a screwjob to get Butler. Butler could be tough for UNC, let alone LSU. LSU should’ve been a 4-6 seed tho. 8 is retarded.

-WKU upset special. Everyone will pick it. Let’s see if it happens. I love them. This is their game to lose.

-Gonzaga is under the radar this season. If that’s even possible for them anymore. But they could really get on a run.

-Blake Griffin, more than any single player, could use this tourney to make a personal run at glory ala Kevin Love.

-Cuse all the way to a three! Their zone is gonna kill Stephen F. Austin and should carry them into the sweet 16. Who knows what they have left in their legs after the BEAST Tourney though.

-St. Mary’s gets jobbed, especially for bullshit Arizona.

-My top 5 rooting interest teams in this order 1) WKU 2) WVU 3) Morehead 4) Louisville 5) UNC. Most hated in this order 5) Syracuse 4) USC 3) tOSU 2) Duke 1) Xavier. If Cuse didn’t have Devendorf, they’d be in my top 5 rooting interest teams.

MIDWEST

- OSU/Louisville will be tough (assuming Siena doesnt take out OSU, which I’m not sure is a safe assumption)

-Wake could get to the elite 8 or even all the way to the final four depending on the breaks. If Lousiville is on their game, they should run this bracket. MSU is always a tourney fave of mine, so I’ll be looking long and hard at them as well. Lou goes through stretches where they can’t score, but their defense has really gelled. I’d expect that to carry them through the bracket.

Initial Reaction:
Sweet 16 teams Lou, Wake, WVU, Msu

Final 4 - LOU

Dark Horse - Wake
Upset Special - Siena, ND St., USC.

WEST

-Uconn cakewalk to the final four is my first reaction. My guess is Memphis could be upset, but I don’t see the team down there to do it. But Uconn can waltz. I will have to look and see if any of the teams they could face compare favorably to Pitt. Otherwise they should roll.

-The rest of this bracket sucks. Good upset games in it though.

Sweet 16 - Conn, Purdue, Utah St, Cal
Final Four - Conn

Dark Horse - Purdue (but I don’t see it as very likely though their shooting is tough.)

Upset Specials - Cal, Utah St, Miss St.

EAST

-Pitt could go down in round 2 or go all the way.

-This is the bracket most full of teams who could make a run. I could conceivably see any one of the 1-6 teams as a final four team. And I could see any of them getting beaten before the Sweet 16 except Duke.

-Pitt is going to be screwed in round 2. The Big East will either have taken it out of them to the point of loss or battle tested them enough to win it. Either way it’s a screwed up game for them.

-Duke’s gotta be loving it’s half of the bracket.

-I like VCU a lot as I said above. Nova too. And Fl. State to the sweet 16.

-Best round 1 game OK/ST Tenn.

Sweet 16 - Pitt, Fl. St, Nova, Duke.

Final Four - Duke

Dark Horse - Nova or VCU could make a run. Heck, UCLA could too.

SOUTH

-God I am already creepily drooling over the possibility of seeing Griffin/Hansborough.

- UNC has the mother of all nightmares with LSU or Butler in Round 2. Man the 8/9-1 games are tough this time out.

-I love WKU. But Gonzaga is a Dark Horse for me big time. If UNC somehow loses in round 2, the Zags could just keep going into the final 4. UNC should take them though. Cuse is almost guaranteed into the sweet 16 I think. Temple could be tough because they shoot so well, but they will have to take out an angry ASU team which I don’t see happening.

-I don’t know enough about OK’s guards to call them vs. Cuse. But if their asst numbers are high, I think they can beat the zone enough. The zone will neutralize Griffin to an exent. Then it becomes about the counterpunch.

Sweet 16 teams
UNC, Zags, Cuse, OK

Final Four
UNC

Dark Horse
Zags, Cuse

Upset Specials
LSU or Buter, WKU.

Final Four
Since day one of this year I’ve thought it’s UNC’s year.

But any one of about 5 or 6 more teams could beat them. If they play their best ball, almost no one can.

I’ll be updating a lot more frequently. Carry on.

(contains spoilers)

Somewhere around the midpoint of the newly-released second installment in Director Christopher Nolan’s brilliant reimaging of the Batman film series, Gotham City DA Harvey Dent urges Gotham citizens to look at the chaos and despair around them with the mindset that it’s darkest before dawn. If this is true, even as dark as this film is, there’s probably more darkness in store for the caped crusader in chapters to come.

The film, punnishly entitled “The Dark Knight”, is dark and morose in a way befitting its title. Batman, the character, has mostly been dark and morose–his response to the depravity in the world around him is to go to his dark place and deal with it, usually with violence. Or maybe it’s his happy place, like a bat, he’s obviously most comfortable in deep, dark, quiet places.

But Batman, the movies, have always toed that line between darkness and light, they have always stayed in the mouth of the cave and never truly gone in deep without a light.

Until now.

Batman films in the pre-Nolan days were cartoonish, their characters archtypes displaying the stark difference between black and white rather than the similarities in shades of grey. Nolan eats his lunch on the greyscale. He plies his trade in a world where the moral centers are as shifty as a politician.  In his non-Batman films (Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige), Nolan has made a living playing with the characters’ (and the audience’s) sense of reality. In his Batman films, especially this one, reality plays with the characters’ senses.

And so it should come as little surprise that he and his brother, who co-wrote the script, found such a worthy canvas as The Joker (and an equally worthy actor in Heath Ledger) upon which to paint their bleak and twisted tale.  Ours is not to reason why The Joker menaces as he does throughout the film. The point is that he does. It doesn’t really matter how he gained his scarred visage, it only matters that he did. He’s willing to do pretty much anything to pursue his sense of what he wants out of the world. If that means vamping around in a fright wig and a nurse’s outfit so he can destroy an empty hospital, so be it. If it means lying down with the dogs in order to gain a dual sense of equality and superiority, so be it.

What’s so brilliant about this film is the greys, because the preceding can also be said (with one line uncrossed until the finale) about Nolan’s Batman. Batman and The Joker aren’t different sides of different coins, they are different sides of the same coin. But maybe sometimes they are the same side. And maybe sometimes they are different sides, with chance being the only thing that differentiates one from the other.  And the same can not only be said for Batman and pious District Attorney Harvey Dent, but also for Dent and (Commissioner) James Gordon, whose own willingness (aka weakness) to look past the moral weaknesses of others leads to so much havoc in the film. Put simply, no one is ever just heads and no one is ever just tails. Everyone spends a little time face down.

But this isn’t just normal character arc stuggle here. This is the stuff of the Ancient Greeks. This is tragey writ beautifully and large with explosions to rival any in film history.  It’s greek theater without the comedy masks, except for the grotesque physical one The Joker sports to mask some sort of inner pain (or does he wear it to prevent any real happiness from emerging?)  What’s bold and refreshing about the choices Nolan and his actors make is exactly what makes the film unsettling. There is no happy ending, just as there’s no happy beginning, and no happy middle. In a film that begins with a bank robbery and ends with what amounts to the public crucifixion of the title character, there aren’t too many bright spots along the way. There are few daytime exteriors (a funeral parade notable among them), and even fewer moments of a sense of clam or contentedness. The whole film, and all of Gotham, is dread and foreboding.

This, of course, has to frustrate Batman. In Batman Begins, he essentially saved Gotham from complete and total annihilation.  Unfortunately doing so has its consequences–saving Gotham from instant death subjects it to death of the slow and painful variety.  It’s clear from the jump that saving Gotham had absolutely zero impact on curing it.  What has happened instead is actually a turn for the worse. One time top-billing worthy baddie The Scarecrow is reduced to the role of glorified drug dealer, and dispatched in an ignominious way not 25 minutes into the film, never to be heard from again. That’s not to say fighting crime is easier for Batman. His old suit will no longer suffice. His old standby the Batmobile is reduced to a catastrophic mess, which he discards in a crumpled heap on a nameless city street. He needs newer gadgets to keep up with the Jokers of the world.

But that’s not all he needs. In order to keep up with The Joker, he has to dance to the circus music playing in The Joker’s mind. In Tim Burton’s world, the Joker tosses a line “Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?” and you sense his evil. But when Batman tosses it back to him later, it’s to appear macho and ironic. In Christopher Nolan’s world, there is little room for irony because there is little understanding of what has happened and even less expectation of what was supposed to happen.  It isn’t until far too late that Jim Gordon realizes that The Joker was 15 moves ahead of him, and that what appeared to be good policework was all part of a grand scheme. Reality bites, or in this case creepily shifts its tongue across its teeth. And, though it’s not revealed, you have to suspect The Joker wired the detonators on the cruise ships so that a choice to destroy the other ship actually would result in destroying your own. He played a similar morality shell game with Dawes and Dent. It isn’t about there being a right choice, it’s about not making the wrong one.

It is in this world without obvious irony that The Joker crafts his masterpiece of mayhem.  And so instead of it being ironic that those who attempt to do good end up causing harm, it ends up sour serendipity, as though the outcome is both unintended and exactly what we and the characters should’ve expected to happen. Alfred, the butler, observes this to Bruce Wayne after the death of Rachel Dawes, essentially saying if you play with fire, you get burned. And, as is often observed in the film, you make your own luck. The problem is, not all luck is good. Put another way, chance favors the prepared mind, but if the mind is warped, it’s not necessarily a good chance. One can’t help but see undertones of the current political climate, especially in Iraq, in this observation. Good intentions don’t always equate to good results.

What Nolan does with our “hero” Batman, and the city the Wayne Family has championed for decades, is show how difficult it is at certain times and in certain places, even with good intentions, to do more good than harm. Batman is being impersonated by other vigilanties, lacking both his physical acumen and mental harshness.  Many to most of these Batmen end up arrested or in one case murdered simply to be used in effigy. It’s as if the film is saying that once you stray from the truly straight and narrow path, you’re but one step away from the truly dark part of the forest.

This is true not only for Batman, but also for Harvey Dent, stopped from a brutal torture session he’s administering by none other than a knowing Batman. Batman’s message to Dent displays a knowledge of self and knowledge of weakness. Dent has to be the White Knight for Gotham, because Batman never will be. And without even that hint of light, there is no hope for ending the dark night and retiring The Dark Knight.

Dent, that hint of light, is snuffed out, first with fire to the face, then with a mind fuck on par with any Cold War era “reprogramming”, ultimately ending with his death. And when Dent dies a villain’s death, the only scintilla of hope remaining in Gotham lies in making Batman Public Enemy Number One. When your best hope dies and your best chance after that is casting aspersions on your other best hope, well, that’s when you know your dark night is not yet just before dawn.

And so the Dark Knight, and the dark night, live on. The question posed by Rachel Dawes in the film, one that could forever remain open ended, is whether there will ever be a point without Batman, either because the world, or Batman himself, is no longer in need. Nolan creates a world so bleak, in which good actions snowball so quickly into awful results, that it’s tough to say whether there will always be Batman because there is evil, or whether the evil will always be more desparate and depraved because there is Batman. There may be a sraight answer in Nolan’s disjointed world. But it won’t come any time soon. And while that’s bad news for Batman, that’s great news for viewers. One man’s pain is another’s pleasure. The coin has two sides.

I first remember politics with my parents. Children of the 40’s and activists of the 60’s, the 80’s for them were like a menagerie of shattered dreams. The messages of unity, change, volunteerism, and true inspiration from the 60’s had given way to the lies and cynicism of the 70’s and the new Conservative frontier of the 80’s.

Before I was even old enough to know what I wanted out of my politicians and for my country, I knew disappointment. My parents‘ frustration was mine—as an eight year old, a nine year old, a ten year old. Oh they did their best to hide it, but I remember them yelling at the nearly-animatronic President Reagan on television. I remember being in DC with my father on a family vacation during the presidency of Bush the Elder and watching him seethe at (and boo) an awful Congressman spewing hate toward Ted Kennedy in a speech on Capitol Hill. My father was not the sports fan I am, this was as passionate as I’d ever seen him about anything.

It was with pride I volunteered with them for Bill Clinton in 1992, and cast my first-ever vote for him in 1996. But I remember my parents wanting more. I didn’t get it at the time, but while Bill Clinton offered the charisma of some of the dynamic leaders of the 60’s, he didn’t offer the leadership of those people. He was never able to win a simple majority of voters in either of his campaigns. He was not able to build a coalition—to get America past the things that divide us and bring us together to face our greatest issues.

Because of this failure to unite, he failed the American people on many levels. He failed to take even small steps toward universal health care. He tapped out to conservatives and signed the Defense of Marriage Act; he signed NAFTA into law without Human Rights or worker protection provisions, and allowed sweeping welfare reform to pass that left millions without emergency safety nets at the state and local levels. While he was in many ways a good president and to be admired, he did not build the bridge to the 21st century he’d hoped to, because he was unable to rally the support to do so. He played the game with the same pieces, and gained many wins, but ultimately he was playing the SAME game.

Throughout the incredibly divisive presidency of Bush the Younger, we’ve suffered further as a country. We’ve become more polarized, more likely to look upon each other with scorn and disdain. More likely to look at things we can’t do, instead of focusing on the things we can. What was a conflict of color—white and black—became a conflict of Red and Blue in the first decade of a supposedly marvelous 21st century. We went to war on the strength, or rather because of the weaknesses, of those conflicts. We’ve been so busy pointing fingers at each other that we haven’t taken the time to point them at our leaders and hold them accountable.

And then….along comes Barack.

Like just about everyone else, before the 2004 Democratic National Convention I had not even a scintilla of an idea who Barack Obama was. But on that night he delivered the Keynote address, he became something special to me. Growing up in a “Red” state with decent people who happened to think like me on many issues and differently on a maybe a scant but important few, it had become very hard to just consistently revile Republicans and blame them of all of life’s problems. As a person who one day hopes to affect change in my home state, it became abundantly clear to me that the only way I’d ever be able to do that is to find common ground with people and work from that to create change.

Barack’s rhetoric that night—there is not a Black America, a White America, a Latino American, an Asian America…there is the United States of America—hit me like an 18-wheeler. Not only did it touch on what I was feeling about my future and the future of my state and Country, but for the first time as an adult—in the face of both Democratic and Republican leaders who continuously demonized each other to the long-term benefit of no one but themselves—I felt hope.

Hope for the future of the nation, and of the world. Hope for the future of my family and friends, and hope that there was something more to politics than just the opportunity to help people on a grand scale. I finally had hope that my dreams were more than just dreams. His words, if anything, gave wings to my dreams. Those wings stabilized what had been my up and down gliding, and allowed me to soar to new heights.

When he won nearly 80 percent of the vote in the 2004 Illinois Senate race in a year that saw Democrats take it on the chin pretty hard across the country, he got more attention. The country was not ready to unseat Bush in 2004, but the people who heard Barack’s message believed in and were ready for something different. He has not stopped convincing people since then.

In so many campaigns on which I’d worked in the past, the Democratic candidate placed all their hope on getting people to vote who had not previously shown a commitment to voting, or who had never voted in a campaign before. It was from the ashes of the disenfranchised that many a campaign had hoped to rise. None had, including the Kerry campaign in 2004 even with the hundreds of thousands of new voters registered.

Even though my support for Barack’s message and ability to lead carried me through all of last year, it wasn’t until he won Iowa based primarily on supporters who had never caucused, who had never supported a campaign, that my hope began to become a reality. As any of you who have spent a long time trading in hope will know, when hopes actually come to being in reality, there really is nothing sweeter.

For the first time, we have a leader who promises change, and delivers. For the first time, we have a leader who promises unity, and delivers. For the first time we have a leader who looks at the Washington of BOTH parties and knows to truly get things done we have to change the way we operate. And on top of all this, he’s a Democrat! He opposed the war in Iraq from the start; he’s a strong advocate for women, and for the future of our nation. What he’s doing is bringing the middle of the political spectrum to the Progressive agenda instead of bringing the Progressive agenda to the middle.

Now I know there are those of you who have supported other candidates. Hillary has experience; there is no doubt about that. But her experience is the experience that brought us the same failed solutions that led to job loss with NAFTA, that led to the knowledge deficit in American Schools, and that lets the drug and oil companies write health care and energy policy. Her experience is experience in a system that is fundamentally broken for so many in our country. She has openly stated she thinks the lobbyists who work for corporations and special interests in Washington, the same lobbyists who often get in the way of anything substantive getting done, represent the views of real people. To me, that’s trickle down politics. You can either listen to the corporations and their surrogates tell you what is good for the people, or you can just listen to and represent THE people in general. One way directly helps, the other leaves far too much to chance. It’s trickle down government at its worst.

To those of you who support Senator Obama now, thank you; we have miles to go before we sleep. But there are many of you to whom I am sending this who I know do not, or have not, supported this campaign. Some of you support other Democrats, some support Republicans, some support no one.

To you all especially I say, now is the time.

Now is the time to make the calls, to hang the signs, to canvass the neighborhoods and to do as I do in sharing your support.

Now is the time to give your energy, your heart, your soul, and yes, a little of your money as an investment in our nation and planet’s future.

Now is the time to get past the concerns about this candidacy. Obama won 93 percent white Iowa and steamrolled through South Carolina with the support of black voters as well. He’s drawing winning support from all age groups, and has more votes, more delegates, and a broader coalition than any candidate. He’s winning Democrats, he’s winning Independents, and yes, check the exit polls, he’s winning Republicans. And he’s done it all without taking the corporate or special interest dollar, without lying or distorting the record of his opponents. He’s done it by bringing people together across all the lines other candidates and campaigns for the last few decades have used to divide us. He transcends those labels and those divisive lines, as should we.  And look at his Super Tuesday results! America supports him. America is ready.

I know some of you have concerns about his experience. But it is exactly his lack of too much of the taint of Washington that makes him such a transformational leader. He certainly has incredible support and surrogates, from many of the Clintons’ own White House advisors to Senate anchors like John Kerry and now Ted Kennedy. At some point, it has to stop being about specific experience and start being about THE RIGHT experience, and the right person to lead. Barack has the right experience, and Barack is the right person to lead.

My friends, now is the time. It starts tomorrow after Super Tuesday. It will not end until we have written a new chapter in American History. We can’t do it without you.

Barack and his amazing wife Michelle in many ways remind me of my own parents. My father, a social worker and educator who taught me from a young age to see the dignity in everyone and to celebrate our diversity in meaningful and powerful ways, not to let it create chasms between people. Even though he passed away before realizing the full extent of his dreams, the lessons I learned from him echo throughout the rhetoric and life of Barack Obama. My mother, an outspoken and passionate female attorney struggling even in the 80’s to fight for equality for everyone, especially women. One need only know my mother, who has persevered in the face of incredible obstacles and is my true hero, and hear and see Michelle Obama speak to understand why I find both so inspiring. Though Barack and Michelle share not an age, racial label, or even generation with my parents, their message finds fertile ground in the seeds planted over the years of my life by loving parents who always challenged their son, with care, to do better. I have no doubt Barack and Michelle will do the same for this nation.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and for considering supporting Senator Obama.