Phawker

“Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear.”

RADIOHEAD: Nude
[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN]

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REWIND: 2008 The Year In Yoon 2008

 [Photos by TIFFANY YOON]

[Photo by SUSAN ANDERSON]
BY DAVE ALLEN It might sound like an insult to call a band’s sound cartoonish, but in the case of They Might Be Giants, it’s really not. I first encountered their music on the FOX cartoon show Tiny Toon Adventures in a kind of music video where the character Plucky Duck acts out the song “Particle Man,” getting pummeled by a variety of heavily-muscled of the professional wrestler-meets-comic book superhero type. The band’s wry, funny lyrics mesh with the arch musical sensibilities of the two core members, John Flansburgh and John Linnell — organ, accordion and drum machine have always figured prominently in their sound — and create something that’s more adult than it seems, in the way that the adventures of cartoon ducks and bunnies appeal to kids’ tastes while giving the parents providing the suggested supervision a laugh. In advance of tonight’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza at the TLA — two shows, one at 7:30 and one at 11:30 — the band’s two Johns spoke with me in the balcony of the venerable South Street institution, reminiscing about on-stage collisions, yearning for free coffee and donuts, and reaping the rewards of a certain much-lauded music award.

PHAWKER: You started out your career in 1983. You’ve seen a lot of bands come and go in 25 years in indie and alternative rock…

JOHN LINNELL: Those bands were no good!

PHAWKER: What’s the secret to your longevity?

JOHN FLANSBURGH: That’s a really good question. We started the band when we were, like, 23, basically, and being 23 is really different than being 18.

PHAWKER: You’d been to college, you’d seen the world a little bit…

JL: I would guess that part of it was that we didn’t have an expectation of a particular kind of success. We didn’t have a specific goal in mind. We had an idea of what we were doing, a sense of the purpose of the band, but we didn’t have this thing like “One day, we’re gonna blah-blah-blah…” And since we didn’t define it, we’ve never really reached that point. Really, what motivates the band is this compulsion to write songs and record them and sing them in front of people, and there’s not an end to that. There’s not some point where we go, “Well” (dusts hands) “mission accomplished.”

JF: And we certainly really didn’t start the band to get famous or get signed or get rich, or a lot of those things. For a lot of people doing music, it’s the means to an end. I don’t mean to self-aggrandize by comparing ourselves to another band, but the sense of purpose that a band like Fugazi puts out just in their mission statement, I think when we started, even though we didn’t make big public declarations of where we were at spiritually and culturally with what we were doing, I think we actually had a very clear notion of what was worth doing and what wasn’t worth doing, and it spared us a lot of really kind of jive experiences. We barely ever opened for people, which is a very normal track to take. If you want your band to be known, opening for a band that’s ten times bigger than you is a pretty tried-and-true way to do it. But I think, since pretty early on, what we were doing had a self-selected audience.

JL: Also, I think we’re emotionally fragile about playing in front of a crowd that’s not our own. It’s really demoralizing to open for a band where their audience is pretty much waiting for you to stop playing and leave.

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[Photos by TIFFANY YOON, JONATHAN VALANIA, PAUL PUGILESE, MICHAEL DONOVAN, JEFF FUSCO, DAVE ALLEN]

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BREAKING: Court of Common Pleas Judge Idee Fox just ordered Mayor Nutter and the Free Library of Philadelphia to halt their plans to shutter 11 branch libraries after 5 p.m. tomorrow. MORE

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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR

While his Office character may take himself seriously, actor Rainn Wilson seems to be all about the laughs. Wilson plays beet-farming, archery-loving middle-management kook Dwight Shrute on the NBC hit television series. Now, Wilson is trading his crossbow for a guitar in the new film The Rocker. In The Rocker, Wilson plays a failed hair-metal musician. After he’s kicked out of his band, the group goes on to achieve great success. But when he joins his nephew’s garage band, he gets a second chance at fame. Wilson made his breakthrough as an actor playing an eccentric mortician on the HBO series Six Feet Under. He has also appeared in the films Almost Famous, Galaxy Quest, and Juno. PLUS, Jenna Fischer may be best known for her role as Pam, the receptionist on the NBC comedy series The Office. In this interview, Fischer tells Terry Gross about creating all those pained looks and knowing smiles — and about how her five years as an office temp helped to prepare her for the role.

WARNING: Extremely beautiful.

WIKIPEDIA: Anna Pavlovna Pavlova (Russian: А́нна Па́вловна Па́влова) (12 February 1881 [O.S. 31 January]–23 January 1931) was a Russian ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th century. She is widely regarded as one of the most famous classical ballet dancers in history and was most noted as a Principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev. Pavlova is most recognised for the creation of the role The Dying Swan and with her own company, would become the first ballerina to tour ballet around the world.

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[Image via INDIE ROCK OLYMPIC SKETCHES]

PEOPLE: Zooey Deschanel [pictured, left] is ready to walk down the aisle, PEOPLE has learned. The actress and singer, 28, and Death Cab for Cutie singer Ben Gibbard [drawn, above], 32, who is also in the indie band the Postal Service, got engaged before the holidays, a source confirms. Deschanel, currently starring in Yes Man opposite Jim Carrey, also released her first album, Volume One, in March with her band She & Him. Her rep was not available for comment. MORE

 CELEBRITY BUZZ: There has been some confusion over who, exactly, has won the heart and hand of indie lust object Zooey Deschanel. For the record, it is Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard and not AFI bassist Hunter Burgan. It should also be noted that the Ben Gibbard report has not been confirmed, so Brooklyn, put the weeping and wailing on hold. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: She & Him Live At The Trocadero

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PINK FLOYD: The Great Gig In The Sky

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: The end of the world as we know it. Beautiful, chilling, already happened six times. Wow.

Now playing on PHAWKER RADIO!

WALL STREET JOURNAL: It’s been a big week for R&B performer Raphael Saadiq, whose critically acclaimed new album, The Way I See It, has just been named iTunes #1 Best Album of 2008. With an average customer rating of four-and-a-half-stars, The Way I See It is praised in an iTunes online review for “inhabit(ing) the atmosphere of late-Sixties Motown and Philadelphia International, incorporating the distinctly echo-laden drum shuffles of Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye, as well as the swelling string choruses of the Delfonics and the Stylistics … music pours from this performer as easily as it did from Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder before him.” On Wednesday night, Raphael Saadiq, whose groundbreaking sound combines the best elements of traditional and contemporary Rhythm & Blues, garnered three Grammy nominations including Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals (for “Never Give You Up,” a key track from The Way I See It featuring Stevie Wonder & CJ Hilton); Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance (for “Love That Girl,” another deep groove from The Way I See It) and the big one: Best R&B Album for The Way I See It. MORE

PHAWKER: But Dad, it’s SMOKEY!

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TONITE: Good Samaritan Time

LINDA COHEN is a Philadelphia Musician and Teacher (at Classical Guitar Store) She has been a staple of the Philadelphia music scene since the late 70′s. She has lost many wages due to her dealing with Lung Cancer. We are trying to raise money to cover these loses. KEN KWEEDER is one of the greatest unknown singer-songwriters. Kweder hails from Philadelphia, and has been writing songs since the early seventies. Also known as the Mayor of South Street, he plays folk/rock music. His voice is edgier, and has more energy and power than your average folk singer. He had offers from major labels, but declined. He has had a career of complete freedom and has no regrets. PLUS, the folk/ tropical/psych folk of LIZ FULLERTON and visuals by VJ MARGE (aka RICH WEXLER). VJ MARGE has been a video artist/ VJ since 2000. Large Marge started Vjing avant-garde footage, commericals, stop motion animation, 70′s and 80′s videos, Found Films and more to create live projections for DJ’s and bands.

BY JONATHAN VALANIA So, just got back from holidaying at my sister’s down in the Dirty South. (Oh, it was lovely, thanks, you’re a lamb for asking) And as is the Christmas tradition, Uncle Jon gave his sister and her hubbo a 2.5 hour respite from the rigors of parenting and took my nephews (ages 8 and 10), niece (age 4), and my mom (age 68) to the movies. We went to see Marley & Me, the movie version of Inquirer columnist John Grogan’s best-selling book, based on his reportedly wildly popular newspaper columns about life with Marley, AKA the worst dog in the world, possibly the universe.

Everyone loved it — hell, the film already banked $51.7 million worth of box office, making Marley the 800 pound gorilla of the multiplexes, trouncing big dawgs like Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Clint Eastwood in the Christmas blockbuster sweepstakes — everyone that is, but me. What’s not to love you ask? The lovable, stonerific Owen Wilson as John Grogan? Check. Likable Everygirl Jennifer Aniston as his long-suffering, ever-patient wife? Check. The always great Alan Arkin doing his best desert-dry deadpan drollery as Grogan’s editor? Check. A Labrador retriever, named after reggae icon Bob Marley, that spends two and half hours pissing in, shitting on, leg-humping and, ultimately, eating everything that moves and then everything that doesn’t? Check. How can you lose with that premise, you say? Just, rinse and repeat, right?

Right. Over and over again, for two and half hours. And $51.7 million later…Ka-CHING.

So why then, in my estimation, doesn’t this dog of a comedy hunt? Well, for starters the only meaningful insight into the human condition this shaggy dog tale affords us is this: Parenting ever-multiplying newborns is HARD when your dog is a world class asshole. But at the same time, succeeding in journalism is EASY when your dog is a world class asshole because you get to write column after column about his assholic exploits — defecating in the ocean, demolishing like a hurricane Grogan’s car park with just his jaws and claws, literally eating his way through walls, traumatizing a post-pubescent babysitter half his size with his boorish bullying, and practically reducing a bitch-on-wheels obedience school instructor [a cartoonishly severe Kathleen Turner] to girlyman tears with his implacable insubordination.

I could forgive the fact that Wilson spends the whole movie enabling the worst instincts of his maladroit mutt, and Aniston spends the whole movie grinning-and-bearing her human chewtoy existence, that is when not quitting her career as a journalist to pop out a succession of babies. I could forgive the fact that Arkin spends most of the movie doling out specious wisdom along the lines of: ‘Oh, your wife is mad at you? Buy her some jewelry, broads are suckers for that crap.’ I could forgive the fact that Grogan’s journo pal, Sebastian Tunney, is a hard drinkin’ skirt chaser invested with all the humanity of a cardboard cut-out lobby display who is too wrapped up in his stupid investigative journalist career to make time for having babies and raising a world class asshole of a dog. I could forgive the fact that newspapers are portrayed as irrelevant dinosaurs filled with nobody-bothers-to-read stories about boring things like Desert Storm and Pablo Escobar that every now and then publish Grogan’s hilarious, must-read columns about his world class asshole of a dog. I could forgive the latter in particular, because, sad to say, this is largely true in the eyes of many.

But what I cannot forgive is the fact that the audience is expected to fall in love with, root for, cheer on, and above all, laugh at the slobbery sociopathic exploits of this dog named Marley that NEVER — not even once — does anything remotely redeeming. Lassie saved people from burning buildings. Beethoven had a keen ear for Ludwig van’s “Fifth Symphony”. The Shaggy DA fought organized crime. Scooby Doo built gravity-defying Dagwoods. Cujo mauled without prejudice. These were canines with redeeming social value, that (excepting Cujo) did things that helped people, or at the very least softened the harshness of life with the big wet hairy tongue of their unconditional love. Marley is all take and no give. The closest he gets to a good deed is playing wingman for Sebastian in his tireless pursuit of unsuspecting beachside bimbae — which is hardly the stuff of Boy Scout merit badges. As such, the movie limps along, getting by on poop jokes, Wilson’s laconic charm and Aniston’s indomitable cuteness. At the end (SPOILER ALERT) Marley dies, presumably from eating too many things God never intended for dogs to ingest, and we are expected to, like, feel bad about this.

Hmmm. Yeah, not so much.

I know, I sound like a crank. What am I getting all worked up about, you say? It’s just a stupid feel good holiday dog comedy that tickles the funnybone of little kids and grandmothers and gives your sister and her husband two and a half hours of relief from the iron lung of parentage and maybe a chance to have non-procreational sex, which if true, I DON’T EVEN WANNA KNOW ABOUT IT, right? Well, true. But two things come to mind. First, I’ll never get those two and a half hours back. Never. And towards the end I will well and truly regret their absence from my thinning sheaf of days. Just sayin’. Second, even people who like stupid feel good holiday dog comedies that shamelessly pander to the lowest common denominator deserve better than this.

INQUIRER: Three shootings yesterday in Grays Ferry, Kensington and West Oak Lane left three dead and three in critical condition, police said. All the victims were male, and all were shot on the street. No arrests had been made as of last night.

Just before 6 p.m. in the 1300 block of Harmony Street in Grays Ferry, two men in their 50s were shot. One, age 56, was shot once in the head, the other on the right side of his body.

Both were pronounced dead at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

About 6:30 p.m. on the 800 block of East Thayer Street in Kensington, police said, a 30-year-old man was shot in the back and taken to Temple University Hospital. He was listed in critical condition.

And a triple shooting on the 7200 block of Ogontz Avenue in West Oak Lane at about 8:45 p.m. left a man in his early 20s dead with a bullet wound to his head.

Two others, an 18-year-old hit with multiple bullets and a 19-year-old shot once, were in critical condition at Albert Einstein Medical Center, police said.

There have been 329 homicides in Philadelphia this year, compared to 392 in all of 2007. MORE

UPDATE: Six people are dead and three are injured – including an 18-year-old man who police say may be paralyzed – after a bloody post-Christmas weekend throughout the city.

RELATED: The number of young black men and teenagers who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen at an alarming rate since 2000, a new study shows. The study, to be released Monday by criminologists at Northeastern University in Boston, comes as FBI data is showing that murders have leveled off nationwide. Not so for black teens, the youngest of whom saw dramatic increases in shooting deaths, the Northeastern report concluded. Last year, for example, 426 black males between the ages of 14 and 17 were killed in gun crimes, the study shows. That marked a 40 percent increase from 2000. Similarly, an estimated 964 in the same age group committed fatal shootings in 2007 _ a 38 percent increase from seven years earlier. MORE

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ASSOCIATED PRESS: A man enraged by a noisy family sitting near him in a movie theater on Christmas night shot the father of the family in the arm, police said. James Joseph Cialella [pictured, right], 29, of Philadelphia, faces six charges that include attempted murder and aggravated assault. He remained in custody Saturday. Police said Cialella told the man’s family to be quiet, then threw popcorn at the man’s son. The victim, whom television reports identified as Woffard Lomax, told police that Cialella was walking toward his family when he stood up and was shot. MORE

READ ALL ABOUT IT: South Philly Assclown Shoots Man For Talking Over Brad Pitt Movie, Becomes Global Headline

SIXSHOT.COM, SWITZERLAND: What A World: Man Shoots Moviegoer For Talking

SABAH, TURKEY: ABD’de Noel tatilinde oğluyla sinemaya giden adam, canından oluyordu. Brad Pitt ve Cate Blanchett’in başrolünü paylaştığı “Benjamin Button’ın Tuhaf Hikâyesi” adlı filmi izlemek için Philadelphia’daki bir sinemaya giden adam vuruldu. MORE

SHORT NEWS, GERMANY: Man Shot in the Theatre for Talking During Movie

THE INQUISITR, AUSTRALIA: Don’t talk during movies in South Philly – it can get you shot

BODOG BEAT, BARBUDA & ANTIGUA: Benjamin Button Talker Drives James Cialella to Shoot

THE SCOTSMAN, UNITED KINGDOM: Father shot in cinema after row over noisy family

P2PNET.COM, CANADA: Movie rage rears its head: man shot

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL: Police: Irate movie patron shoots talker

PEREZ HILTON, HOLLYWOOD: Man Shot At Brad’s Film

NUMBER OF NEWS STORIES ABOUT MAN SHOT AT A BRAD PITT MOVIE: 462 

NUMBER OF NEWS STORIES ABOUT THREE MEN SHOT DEAD IN ONE DAY, TRAGICALLY NOT AT A BRAD PITT MOVIE: 1

[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN]

PREVIOUSLY: WHO WANTS TO KILL A MILLIONAIRE: Fatcats Continue To Lead ‘Life Of Riley’ On Taxpayer Dime

BY AARON STELLA Welcome back happy campers to another edition of my so-called ‘you-wouldn’t-believe-it-if-I-told-you’ life story. Last time around, I mentioned that I was developing a relationship with a family with ulterior motives unbeknownst to me. I also mentioned that they would eventually become my family. Things get kind of wild from here on out folks, so hold on to your hats! The year is 2001. I’m a sophomore at the Catholic high school in Cullman, AL, practically friendless, and in thrall to a feeling of powerlessness among my peers and family members. Giovanni, the German exchange student that had been living with my family, and with whom I had become fast friends, went back home. To make things worse, rumors of my sexual deviance had begun to spread among the Catholic families in the area, which pretty much posited me as an ‘undesirable.’

So to combat the ostracism, I doubled down on my various clandestine activities: gay chat rooms, midnight phone trysts, and pornography became the order of my nocturnal diversions. In GAYDAR’s last edition, I mentioned the befriending of one named Andrew and his ostensibly well-intentioned family. Aside from satisfying my raging teenage libido, I took a lot of joy in my visits to see Andrew and his family. In my eyes they seemed healthy, loving, orderly, and respectful of each other. Sure, they were a bit eccentric—but so is everybody, right? Frankly, I was so jazzed by being welcomed that I didn’t really pay any mind to their quirks. Anything seemed normal compared to my family.

At the end of my sophomore year, my mom approached me with a starling proposition: that she thought it best that I move out of the house. Now, being all of 16, practically 17, gay, anti-establishment, and horny as hell, I was beset by a blizzard of emotions in response to this request. On the one hand, I had felt so estranged from my family for so long that doing completely without them wouldn’t be much different from the usual. On the other hand, hearing your mother say that she was basically throwing you out was crushing. Now, it wasn’t as if I’d be left out in the cold. My mother knew that, judging from the liking Andrew’s family’s had taken to me, it wouldn’t be much to ask them to take me in. And so, she did. Andrew’s family happily accepted. And thus concluded my residency with my blood family.

Life with Andrew’s family was a dream come true. For the first time in my life, I had a family who listened to me and took my thoughts and opinions into consideration. We did everything together; talked together, joked together; and when the occasion called, sorrowed together. Andrew’s father was the first person I ever really consciously respected in my life, not to mention my first real father figure. Out of everything, I was totally convinced that Andrew’s family loved me unconditionally — and I don’t have to expound on what that does for somebody’s self-esteem. However, I received a few unexpected perks, so to speak, from the love that took me by complete surprise. I’d only recently grown out of bedwetting: it’d been about a year or so since I had an accident. But all throughout my childhood and most of my adolescence, I would soil my bed sheets nightly. Obviously, this made sleepovers very awkward. And on top of that, I often went without an allowance since my parents argued that they had to use it to cover the extra water bill accumulated from washing my sheets everyday. Yeah, because, you know, daddy’s gross income, which was $200,000+, definitely couldn’t afford a bigger water bill. I think they did this to punish me for what they perceived to be feigned incontinence.

But I digress. Outside of waking up in damp sheets every night, I experienced chronic bouts of hotness in my ears and other extremities, particularly on the palms of my hands and soles of my feet. My hands and feet I could handle, but the hotness in my ears drove me crazy, which eventually got me into the habit of strapping blue ice packs (you know, the kind you used to put in your lunch box) to my ears. Lastly, ever since I was five, I was on a cocktail of anti-depressants and ADD medications, which wreaked havoc on my appetite and pretty much turned me into a zombie. Well, after about two months of living with Andrew’s family, my bedwetting began to subside along with my hot flashes (hehe), and I was able to completely wean myself off my medication. Very, very interesting.

A quick note: it wasn’t until recently that my mother divulged her true feelings about why she felt it was best for me to move out. For one, she saw that I wasn’t happy, and that dad was, in so many words, abusing me. So, at that time, the best answer to her was to separate us, and since she couldn’t very well kick the bread winner out, she was left with no choice but to remove me from the premises. Now that I have some distance from time, I understand her dilemma, but I’d be lying if I said I was without reservations. I may have mentioned this before, but I was the scapegoat in the family. I had my faults — absolutely — but for the most part, the I was blamed for more than I should have been held accountable for. But fate has an interesting way of working things out (and sometimes, exacting justice) as you shall soon see. After four very happy months of living with Andrew’s family, I received a letter from my mother explaining that she had delivered divorce papers to my father. “Well, well, well,” I thought, “What a coincidence. Ha! Now that the family scapegoat is gone, my father has no one to hide behind.”

Needless to say, I was somewhat elated and empowered with the feeling that justice had been serve and that all ill perceptions of my character had been eradicated. In my excitement, I divulged the particulars of my family’s dysfunction to Andrew’s family — in great detail. Ah, I was so young and foolish. Now I see it as clear as day, the way Andrew’s family’s eyes lit up as I expounded on my years of anguish and estrangement. I failed to take note of the almost kneejerk response they gave me, as they increased their efforts to goad my anger. As time went on, Andrew’s family brought up my family more and more for the very reason of exacerbating my already festering fury. It wasn’t too long before they started to suggest that I had been a victim of abuse, such that I could seek legal action against my family if I so wanted. I did feel abused at that point in my life…and for the first time in my life, I was convinced people cared about me, for real. Once Andrew’s family noticed that I was buying into their game, they began to actively encourage me to take action so that they could gain legal custody of me. And thus began the long walk down one of the darkest halls of my life…

EDITOR’S NOTE: Interested newcomers to the ongoing saga of Aaron’s outrageous autobiography can read the whole thing beginning to end after the jump.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS: Bruce and Sylvia Pardo started the new year in 2006 with all signs pointing to a bright future — an upcoming marriage, a combined income of about $150,000, half-million-dollar home on a quiet cul-de-sac and a beloved dog, Saki. But things quickly turned sour and divorce documents paint a bitter picture of Bruce Pardo’s increasing desperation as he lost first his wife, then his job and finally the dog. By fall 2008, Pardo was asking a judge to have his ex-wife pay him support and cover his attorney’s fees.

Pardo’s downward slide ended Christmas Eve, when the 45-year-old electrical engineer donned a Santa suit and massacred nine people at his former in-laws’ house in Covina, where a family Christmas party was under way. He then used a homemade device disguised as a present to spray racing fuel that quickly sent the home up in flames.

Pardo had planned to flee to Canada following the killing spree but suffered third-degree burns in the fire — which melted part of the Santa suit to him — and decided to kill himself instead, investigators said. His body, with a bullet wound to the head, was found at his brother’s home about 40 miles away. The rented compact car he had driven to his former in-laws house was rigged to set off 500 rounds of ammunition and later exploded outside his brother’s home. MORE

ASSOCIATED PRESS: This undated photograph provided by the Covina, Calif. Police Department shows a device that suspect Bruce Pardo brought with him to the Knollcrest house where he allegedly shot and killed at least nine people. This photograph shows the tank from a compressor, below, where the actual compressor mechanism has been removed and replaced with a smaller tank. Police believe the smaller tank held high octane racing fuel and the larger of the two tanks held compressed air. Pardo is suspected in a Christmas Eve massacre where the recently divorced man dressed as Santa allegedly shot indiscriminately at partygoers and destroyed his former in-laws’ house with a homemade device that sprayed flammable liquid. (AP Photo/Covina Police Department)

GRAN TORINO (2008, directed by Clint Eastwood, 116 minutes, U.S.)
VALKYRIE (2008, directed by Bryan Singer, 120 minutes, U.S.)
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008, directed by David Fincher, 167 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC

Our country’s economic future may be starting to resemble a three-card monte game but those brave and handsome Captains of Industry are standing tall at multiplexes this Christmas. Uberstars Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt are all front and center on big movie posters this Christmas, marketing heroes who are protecting the poor, thinking traitorous thoughts and getting hotter with every day that passes.

During pre-production, Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino was being rumored as the last chapter in the Dirty Harry saga and one of its strengths is that with a few tweaks the project very well could have been. Here Clint plays Walt Kowalski, a dying widowed vet and former auto worker, living on the last orderly patch of whiteness in a Michigan ghetto. He sits warily on his front porch, a step away from his shotgun while he has watches his neighborhood become populated by a Hmong community displaced during the Vietnam war. When his pristine 1972 Gran Torino has been targeted for theft by a young Asian gang his soldiering instincts once again kick into gear .
This gives the 78 year old Eastwood perhaps his last possible opportunity to pull out a large pistol while sneering threats through clenched teeth, which is Clint’s trademark much like John Wayne’s was punching people in the face. Clint does this act one last time and it is hard not to love him for it.

Along with gun-slinging the issue that is on Clint’s mind is race, though as you might fear, the 78 year old Republican grandfather’s worldview lacks subtlety . Clint remains blind to the basic idea that respectful social interaction demands that we allow people to decide the name they wish to be addressed. Instead, Clint breaks out SarahSilverman’s act, but without the cute part. While the script is part Death Wish-style revenge thriller and part social comedy, the comedy part mainly involves Clint sneering every foul name ever spit towards an Asian person, with each scene revealing a new ugly slur doled out to give the it a “zing”. Like a shock jock, no dog-eating gag is too low and the name-calling isn’t left as a colorful aside, it becomes the character’s most prevalent trait. It’s Eastwood as Imus.

The sequence where he teaches his young Hmong neighbor to be less sensitive to his slurs by observing Walt and his barber winkingly refer to each other as “Pollacks” and “Wops” is the type of education Archie Bunker might serve up. Despite the fact that Walt incites violence with the local youth gang, the Hmong neighbors roll their eyes and love this crotchety racist anyway, leaving mountains of Asian cuisine on his doorstep to honor their protector. When Clint takes his character unashamedly to a crucifixion finale the distinctions between Clint and his persona blur. Regardless, someone up on screen is displaying the ego of ColonelKurtz, making Gran Torino play like a voyage upriver to witness a old man gone all batshit crazy among the natives.

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Tom’s got his own martyr to play in Valkyrie and he dares us not to root for him, even if he’s a Nazi! Wait a minute, I know what you’re thinking: you don’t know what to think of Tom Cruise these days but you definitely do not like Nazis. Not so fast! Tom may be a Nazi, but he’s a best Nazi ever, a Nazi so good, he’d kill Hitler if he had the chance! Will he get the chance?

If you know history you know that he does get the chance and he blows it (“Do we Americans have to do everything for you!” you can almost here the audience scream) and failure is something Tom Cruise doesn’t do. The star magnitude of Tom Cruise is exactly what dooms this project though; this tale of scheming in the king’s court begs to be about character and suspense, instead the story has been inflated to fit the stature of myth of Tom.

Cruise , with the uncredited aid of a black eye-patch, plays the disillusioned Colonel Von Stauffenberg, recruited by a team of men who can assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Reich before the U.S. can bring the destruction of the turning tide. Armed with actors of the caliber of Tom Wilkerson, Terrence Stamp and KennethBranagh you might expect a claustrophobic drama of men nervously seeking out other traitorous comrades. Instead, Singer defaults into grand epic mode, forever craning up into big spectacular shots while the action is happening in small closed corners. Singer’s version of Nazi Germany shares thecartoony-ness of the Indiana Jones saga, and you almost expect the X-Men to swing in and supply extra help to the plotting Nazis.

The idea of committing treason against a government responsible for war crimes bounces around the film without ever threatening relevance (should we worry about it inspiring more shoe throwing?), instead the film seems to exist to show us how good Tom Cruise looks in vintage military garb and to polish up some old-fashioned Nazi-fetishism. It succeeds in both these small ambitions but otherwise this story of things that almost happened in WW2 remains slightly unfathomable as to its very existence.

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I can empathize with the fantasies in the above films, sure I’d like to crack wise and shoot criminals and sure, I’d like to blow up history’s most explodable dictator but I’m left perplexed by what fantasies people are exploring in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Loosely based on a F.Scott Fitzgerald novel, Benjamin Button more closely connected to the conservative fable-spinning of Forest Gump, which shares the same screenwriter in Eric Roth. Just because the film can be summed up in one high-concept sentence (“Brad Pitt is a guy who ages backwards”) doesn’t mean we’re examining man’s primal issues here. Instead the story seems designed to wow us with special effects and present a world so benign even a sixty year-old with the mind of a teenager can’t get into much trouble.

Born in the body of a tiny old man in Louisiana in 1918, Benjamin’s disgusted father abandons the shriveled little guy to the local Seniors home. Benjamin grows up there, soaking up wisdom from his black mammy named Queenie and quietly loving Daisy, a girl whose heart is the same age as his although their bodies are eighty years apart. After flirting with a little wartime drama in WW2 (when Brad looks like a little Ben Franklin with a comb-over) the film finally settles into being a ill-fated love story, with the heavilyCGI’d Button quietly pining for Daisy (who grows into Cate Blanchett) to meet him in middle-age so they can properly become lovers.

For all the attention paid to aging Brad Pitt, the character of Benjamin himself could not be more empty; he appears to be without employment, skills or a life-long dream and his purring New Orleans accent doesn’t take much to philosophizing. Mainly we just gaze at Benjamin while he sits around looking beatific as the century drifts by for darn near three hours. Fincher’s direction takes on more of the rambling formlessness he exhibited in Zodiac and the closest thing to a real climax is when the make-up and effects are finally dispensed of and Benjamin Button finally emerges as the movie star hunk Brad Pitt really is.

When they try to de-age him further into his twenties and you sense the movie producers’ excitement with the idea of freezing stars digitally as their twenty-something selves. Even while leaving his smooth face in the shadows the effect looks unconvincing, the magic of Hollywood computers still unable to conjure the allure of a naturally-achieved Brad Pitt. That why the stars are still paid the big dollars; as ill-conceived as each of these vehicles is, without their bigger-than-life names-above-the-title, these films would be hardly worth discussing at all.