Button Tapper

Living in Austin, one of the perks (or downsides, depending on how you view traffic jams and industry insiders taking over your town) is being around for the annual SXSW festival. Having never been to this mega-fest in years past, and always looking on rather enviously, I’m now actually living at Ground Zero for some of the year’s big reveals in the music, film and tech industries.

In the words of Keanu Reeves: WHOA. (And also: DUDE!)

My husband is getting really excited about the music stuff, and has even started a website to profile some of the seemingly millions of kick-ass bands that will be here. We are both miffed by the amount of Canadian has-been bands on the roster (uh… Sum41, anyone?), but aside from that, it’s pretty exciting to know that lesser-known (yet TOTALLY AWESOME) experimental and avant-garde musicians like Zoë Keating are going to be here alongside heavyweights like Broken Social Scene and hometown heroes Spoon to play for an audience of appreciative geeks, nerds and industry insiders.

THE GOOD

I’m also pretty pumped for the film festival side of things, although the amount of “badge required” parties is annoying me at the moment. Obviously, I’m drawn to the “Midnighters” category, described on the official site as “Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – provocative after-dark features for night owls and the terminally curious.” (I mean, hello? Cannibal Girls?!) The Headliners Get Low (starring Bill Murray and Robert Duvall), Mr. Nice (starring my favorite wacky Welshman, Rhys Ifans), and The Runaways (Dakota Fanning in a Joan Jett biopic?! and directed by Floria Sigismondi??!??) are all on my Must-See list as well. And even though I really have no idea what connects barbershop quartets to punk rock, I am totally down with seeing interviews with my idols Henry Rollins and Janeane Garofalo in Barbershop Punk.

THE BAD

I am already convinced that Leaves of Grass (starring Edward Norton x2 as identical twin brothers and Richard Dreyfuss [?!] as a drug dealer [?!?] in Oklahoma [!!?!!]) is going to be a pretentious pile of wank. Prove me wrong, but you heard it here first: naming your film after an interminable Walt Whitman transcendental poem is really just too much.

THE FUGLY

Oh, and as for the fugly? I’ve never been able to make it through an entire Harmony Korine film, so Trash Humpers is on my list here. It’s not that I don’t think it’ll be entertaining or worth seeing, exactly. It’s just that Korine is one of those filmmakers that tends to rub me the wrong way. I guess that’s the point of everything he does, but his shock tactics doesn’t really rate with me. I don’t think art necessarily has to be beautiful to be worthwhile, but all doom and gloom all the time isn’t exactly honest, either, is it?

So yeah, SXSW is in the air, and I’m really hoping that the weather here in Austin clears the hell up before the fest gets started, because honestly? Snow in February is a big ol’ mood-killer for this gal, and you better believe no visitors to our fair city will stand for that white crap!

MORE HELPFUL HINTS

Still need a place to stay? I know a joint or two. Let me hook you up with $20 off a 6-day stay at the Extended Stay Hotels in the area. Hey, what’re friends for, yo? Besides, they’ve been spamming the hell outta me since I stayed two weeks with them, so I might as well return the favor…

SXSW runs from March 12-21, 2010. For more info on how to organize your personal SXSW to-do list, read Laura’s Gifted Travel piece here. Be sure to follow Laura on Twitter @originaloflaura to get up-to-the-minute info on all the latest parties, buzz and events!

I just saw Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, and somebody’s got to say it: Werner Herzog doesn’t know diddly-jack about New Orleans. After reading a particularly complimentary review from the peeps at the Alamo Drafthouse (calling it “the best and most unique film of the year”), I went to check it out, but I found myself hugely disappointed.

First, some disclosure: I have never seen the original Bad Lieutenant, starring Harvey Keitel and directed by Abel Ferrara, but according to my husband, it’s both brilliant and disturbing—the kind of film that will “scare straight” anyone who’s not on the right side of the law, and will make you realize just how depraved people can be.

Secondly, I have never seen any other Herzog flicks, so I cannot compare and contrast his entire oeuvre. This review is solely based on what I saw in Bad Lieutenant (POCNO).

Enough with the disclaimers: on to the review!

As stated above, I found Bad Lieutenant (POCNO) to be a majorly flawed flick. There are plenty of reasons for this, but perhaps the most egregious was the simple fact that the “bad guys” just weren’t bad enough. I mean, you’ve got Xzibit as the main baddie, a drug dealer by the name of Big Fate. All I could think, throughout the film, was “Why don’t you go ‘Pimp My Ride,’ fool?” Sorry, Xzibit, but you just can’t convince me you’re a bad-ass when I’ve seen you making snide remarks about peoples’ jalopies.

But even if Xzibit was just hugely miscast, the real problem here was Nicholas Cage, who couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag on a good day, and certainly isn’t “bad lieutenant” material in my book. For one thing, I didn’t believe that his jumping into a pool of water somehow screwed up his back enough to require vicodin for life, nor that he went from vicodin to coke in 6 short months. Maybe I’m naïve, or maybe I’ve seen too many episodes of House, but it seems to me that it takes a little more trauma and a little bit longer to become a full-on dope fiend, to the extent of stealing rocks from the evidence room and scoring off junkies that you’re arresting.

Even leaving that plot quibble aside (which is really more a script issue than the fault of Cage himself), the things this “bad lieutenant” does aren’t terribly shocking. I mean, yes, he does cut the air supply off of an elderly woman for long enough to make her gasp for breath, and yes, he does a boatload of coke, but this is all just junkie behavior, not “bad lieutenant,” seriously crooked cop stuff. He’s trying to score at any cost; we get it. But the dude doesn’t even kill a single person, and more importantly, the hammer never really comes down on him. He doesn’t ever get caught. And [MAJOR PLOT SPOILER AHOY!] he’s even promoted to the rank of captain; how ironic! Or, it would be if we couldn’t see it coming a mile away. How is it that all the stars continue to line up for this schmuck, no matter how outrageous his behavior, and even though his gun and badge are taken away? Pure luck, mostly. Where’s the moral in that?

While I don’t believe that all films must have morals, I kind of thought that was the point of this one. I mean, he’s a BAD LIEUTENANT! Isn’t he supposed to get his come-uppance? Isn’t that the idea of the film? Or, if not, shouldn’t all of the police force be crooked, to demonstrate just how out of whack New Orleans really is, post-Katrina? Furthermore, why is this movie even set in post-Katrina New Orleans? What makes it any different than anywhere else in the world? There isn’t a single reason to believe this movie couldn’t have taken place anywhere else in the U.S., and to me, that’s a huge failing. There is plenty to be said about post-Katrina New Orleans, and Herzog gives us nothing.

Unless you count that bullshit Cage gives his girlfriend about digging up a silver spoon as some kind of a commentary, which I don’t.

Werner Herzog doesn't know diddly-jack about New Orleans

As mentioned in the beginning, Werner Herzog clearly doesn’t know diddly-jack about New Orleans. He has obviously never lived there, hasn’t dealt with the aftermath of Katrina personally, and doesn’t seem to have any clue about what it may have been like either before or after that fateful storm. What local flavor do we really get, aside from a dying croc in the middle of the road? A friend of mine was particularly angered by this film, having lived in the city both before and after, and having witnessed the devastation, the poverty, and the crime first-hand. He says it’s a great place to set a film about a bad lieutenant, and there are plenty of points to be made, but Herzog passed them all by.

If you’re going to make a movie about New Orleans, then go to the city and live there for six months. Talk to people who were there. Get witnesses to tell you about the looting, the flooding, the rapes and murders and full-on KKK-style racism. That kind of thing is real, and sadly enough, a lot of it has nothing to do with the devastation Katrina caused; it’s simply endemic. Herzog’s film is a Disney story about a guy who gets away with everything but murder. And to what end? What’s the take-away message? That everything’s fine and dandy in New Orleans unless, god forbid, you’re a foreigner who has to sell drugs to get by? Nonsense. New Orleans is far more screwed up than that, and the fact that Herzog didn’t even scratch the surface is more than disappointing, it’s embarrassing for a filmmaker who has never backed away from showing audiences gritty realities and uncomfortable truths.

Show us the hard truth, Werner, or don’t even bother making movies at all.

Today, I really wanted to write a haiku based on a photo of Brad Pitt’s buttcheeks (hence the title of this post), because I was reading an interview with the male castmembers of the new film Couples Retreat, and they had basically been making the point that their male nudity is all for laughs.

Which made me wonder: why is male nudity mostly just for laughs? Don’t we ladies want to see hot naked men as much as men want to see hot naked women?

Why should we suffer through naked Vince Vaughn and naked Jason Bateman and naked Jon Favreau, and not get any naked Brad Pitt?

So I announced to my husband that I was doing a Google image search for “Brad Pitt’s buttcheeks.”

“NO!” he shouted.

“Why not?” I asked, thinking he was jealous.

“Because that’s one of the most virus-laden searches on the Internet!” he cried.

I remembered him mentioning this a few weeks earlier, but I had paid it no mind. After all, I’m not really in the habit of searching for supposed nude pix of celebrities (firstly, because they’re almost always fakes and secondly, because I’m not really the “celebrity crush” type), so it didn’t really register as something I should avoid. Don’t download torrent files? Check. Don’t click the links to pr0n? Check. Don’t open emails from strangers promising Viagra? Check and check. But n00d celebs?

Dammit, I want to see Brad Pitt’s buttcheeks! Why must you crush my dreams with horrible, scary viruses, Internet? Why?

So, to make a long story short (too late!), there are no pictures of Brad Pitt’s buttcheeks in this post, despite the teasing title. I can, however, offer you a shot of Jon Favreau’s buttcheeks… but you probably don’t want to see ‘em. Instead, let us all imagine the gold, glowing orbs that could be Brad Pitt’s buttcheeks. After all, fantasy is sometimes better than reality.

smooth gold, glowing orbs
Brad Pitt’s buttcheeks, tanned and
toned, like a Greek god’s