A Decade in Review: 2001

January

NEWS

• George W. Bush is inaugurated as the 43^rd President of the United States in Washington. He is the first son of a former President to take the office since John Quincy Adams.
• A guar antelope named Noah is born. He is the first successful clone of an endangered species.
• Earthquakes hit India and El Salvador, killing over 12,000 between them.
• Wikipedia officially launches.
• Joseph Estrada is forced out as President of the Philippines.

SPORTS

• The Baltimore Ravens defeat the New York Giants 35-7 in Super Bowl XXXV. The Ravens defense, led by Ray Lewis, has one of the best seasons of any defense in history and the team wins the championship despite at one point going six games without scoring a touchdown.
• The Oklahoma Sooners win another NCAA football championship in a rather tragic Orange Bowl by a score of 13-2 over Florida State.

February

NEWS

• Ariel Sharon is elected Prime Minister of Israel.
• The Iraq Disarmament Crisis continues. The US and Britain carry out air raids in an attempt to disable the Iraqi air defense network.
• FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested and charged with spying for the Soviet Union for 15 years.
• An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK causes widespread craziness.

ARTS

• Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman divorce.
• Anthony Hopkins returns to the role of Hannibal Lecter in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal. Julianne Moore takes over for Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling. Results are decidedly mixed.
• The first Canadian hip-hop formatted station starts broadcasting.
• Jennifer Lopez is the first female artist to have the number one album (J. Lo) and movie (The Wedding Planner) the same week.
• Fidel Castro attends a concert by the Manic Street Preachers in Havana. They become the first Western rock band to play in Cuba since the Revolution.

SPORTS

• Dale Earnhardt crashes during the Daytona 500 and dies.
• The Xtreme Football League, a very sad attempt at competing with the NFL, debuts. It will last only one season.

March

NEWS

• The Space Station Mir’s orbit finally decays and it crashes into the Pacific near Fiji.
• It becomes clear that President Bush has no intention of following the terms of the Kyoto agreement to combat Global Warming.
• California suffers rolling blackouts, theoretically to save power. It later comes out that there’s no real shortage and there is evidence of collusion among power companies, including Enron.
  

ARTS

• Gladiator wins Best Picture at the Oscars, with its star Russell Crowe winning Best Actor. Julia Roberts wins Best Actress for Erin Brockovich. Steven Soderbergh wins Best Director for Traffic, one of his two entries in the category.
• Two Japanese pop albums, Hikaru Utada’s Distance and Ayuma Hamasaki’s The Best, are released the same day and end up at #1 and #2 on all-time first week sales charts, shattering records.

SPORTS

• Bob Knight is hired as Men’s Basketball coach at Texas Tech, but never achieves the same success there that he did at Indiana.

April

NEWS

• Former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is arrested in Belgrade and charged with war crimes.
• An American military plane and a Chinese military plane crash into each other in mid-air over Chinese airspace, and China keeps the American plane’s 24-member crew as hostages for 11 days before releasing them.
• A white police officer shoots and kills an unarmed black man in Cincinnati, precipitating widespread rioting.
• Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger denies rumors that he plans to run for Governor of California in 2002.
• The Netherlands becomes the first nation in the world since the Roman Empire to legalize same-sex marriage.
• The first “space tourist”, Dennis Tito, blasts off from Kazakhstan.

ARTS

• Joey Ramone dies.
• Comedy Central takes the bait and attempts to turn the White House into a sitcom with That’s My Bush! This last a month and a half.

SPORTS

• Duke wins another NCAA basketball championship.
• Albert Pujols makes his major league debut for the St. Louis Cardinals. He goes on to perhaps be the decade’s greatest player.

May

NEWS

• Industrialist Silvio Berlusconi and his “House of the Liberties” party win elections in Italy.
• Chandra Levy, an intern on Capitol Hill, disappears, and the resulting investigation turns up a story that sounds a lot like a political thriller.

ARTS

• The ridiculous, overblown mess that is Pearl Harbor, a naked attempt to tap into the same audience as Titanic, opens in theaters. Perhaps unfortunately, it does not quite manage to kill Michael Bay’s career.
• A much bigger hit is the animated film Shrek, first in a continuing series, which everyone in America seems to have seen by now.
• Walker, Texas Ranger, 3^rd Rock From the Sun, and Star Trek: Voyager go off the air.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer, still my favorite show of all-time, airs its final episode on the WB before moving to UPN in the fall. To honor the occasion, it (temporarily) kills off its main character.
  

SPORTS

• Bayern Munich wins the UEFA Champions League title.

June

NEWS

• President Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut makes it through Congress.
• Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, is executed.
• Crown Price Dipendra of Nepal kills his father, mother, and other members of the Nepalese royal family with an assault rifle in the royal palace before killing himself.
• Tropical Storm Allison strikes the Houston area, causing billions of dollars in damage and killing over 20 people.
• Tony Blair wins re-election as Prime Minister of Great Britain.
• An American missile strikes a soccer field in Northern Iraq, killing 23. The U.S. claims it is actually an Iraqi missile that malfunctioned.
• Pervez Musharraf becomes President of Pakistan.

ARTS

• American Gods by Neil Gaiman is published.
• Baz Luhrmann somehow manages to revive the musical with Moulin Rouge!, known for its creative uses for modern pop songs in its 1800s French love story.
• “Lady Marmalade” from the Moulin Rouge! Soundtrack reaches #1 on the Billboard charts, and later wins the MTV Award for Video of the Year.
• The original The Fast and the Furious film is released. It spawns an unlikely franchise.
• A Stanley Kubrick project directed by Steven Spielberg, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is released. It becomes one of the major debate points of the decade for critics.
• Six Feet Under premieres on HBO.
• Jack Lemmon and Archie Bunker die.

SPORTS

• Allen Iverson all by himself turns out not to be quite enough, and the Philadelphia 76ers fall to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals.
• The Colorado Avalanche win the Stanley Cup.
• France continues its era of dominance in International soccer by winning the Confederations Cup, held in South Korea and Japan.

July

NEWS

• China and Russia sign the “Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation”, setting a new standard for treaty naming.
• A 60-car train derailment occurs in a Baltimore tunnel, sparking a fire that lasts for days and virtually shuts down downtown Baltimore.
• A G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, is characterized by continuous mass protests against globalization. At least one protestor is shot and killed by police.
• The U.S. House of Representatives votes to ban human cloning, despite this procedure not yet ever having been performed.
  

ARTS

• Mariah Carey suffers an emotional breakdown and spends time in a New York hospital.
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is released. It draws raves for its ground-breaking ability to create nearly photorealistic humans through animation. The story does not draw many raves.
• A.J. McLean enters rehab and the Backstreet Boys never really recover, which I suppose is sad.

SPORTS

• Beijing is selected to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
• Cal Ripken, playing in his final All-Star Game, hits a dramatic home run off of Chan-Ho Park.

August

NEWS

• President Bush announces a rather convoluted policy allowing for “limited federal funding” of stem cell research.
• The President’s daily briefing on August 6 is titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S.” No known action is taken.
• Congressman Gary Condit admits that he had a “very close relationship” with Chandra Levy.
• Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has a 2.5 ton monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments installed in the rotunda of the state Judiciary building. Later he is sued, acts belligerent, and is removed from office, in one of the most famous modern church and state cases.
• The island of Anjouan tries to declare its independence from the Comoros, but is crushed rather summarily by the nation’s military.

ARTS

• Pop singer Aaliyah dies in a plane crash.
• Former President Bill Clinton is paid a record $10 million for his memoirs.
• The Hugo for Best Novel controversially goes to J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, published the previous year. Fantasy and young adult books go on to dominate the decade in genre publishing.

SPORTS

• The San Jose CyberRays win the first championship of the doomed Women’s United Soccer League.
• Dave Winfield and Kirby Puckett are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

September

NEWS

• On September 11, members of the radical Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda hijack four passenger airliners. They crash two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City and a third into the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth plane, United Flight 93, crashes in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after an attempt by passengers to retake the aircraft. Its target was apparently the U.S Capitol Building. Both towers of the World Trade Center collapse. 2,995 people die, though a surprising number make it out alive, partly due to the heroic efforts of rescue personnel.
• The days after September 11 are characterized by an outpouring of world support for the United States, as well as a national resurgence of patriotism that has both good and bad aspects. Blood donations go through the roof, hate crimes against Muslims are reported, and “I’m Proud to Be an American” is played every morning on my High School’s announcements.
• The national air network is grounded for days following the attacks, and even when air service resumes passenger levels plummet. Several airlines go bankrupt within the next few years.
• Packages containing Anthrax spores are received by several prominent U.S. political and media offices. 22 get sick and five die. It is assumed at the time that they are connected to Islamist terrorists but the letters turn out to have been mailed from Princeton, New Jersey, probably by a disaffected scientist.

ARTS

• The collapse of the World Trade Center towers is shown on live televison, a moment most famously narrated by CNN anchor Aaron Brown, paradoxically, with the line “there are no words.” Most American networks abandon regular programming for at least a week after the attacks.
• Fox News starts continuously scrolling headlines across the bottom of the screen so viewers can follow news of the attacks. This soon becomes permanently common place on news networks.
• Film critic Pauline Kael dies.
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen is published. The author refuses to allow Oprah to name it as her book of the month.
• The Life of Pi by Yann Martel is published. It is the greatest book ever written about being trapped in a life boat with a tiger.
• A music special entitled America: A Tribute to Heroes is aired across all major U.S. networks.
• System of a Down’s hit “Chop Suey!” is among a list of songs deemed “inappropriate” by Clear Channel in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
• Several TV shows are hurriedly re-written to address the September 11 attacks, most notably The West Wing.
• CBS debuts The Amazing Race, probably still the best idea for a reality show anybody’s produced. Also premiering this month is Alias.

SPORTS

• Michael Jordan announces he is returning to basketball to play for the Washington Wizards.
• New England Patriots QB Drew Bledsoe is injured and is replaced with a little known back-up named Tom Brady.
• All major sports are canceled in America for several days following the terrorist attacks. This is the first time the NFL has called off a weekend’s games since the Kennedy Assassination.

October

NEWS

• The United States begins air strikes in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and the other leaders of al-Qaeda are thought to be in hiding. The resulting “War in Afghanistan” continues to this day.
• President Bush signs the USA PATRIOT Act (which actually stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). This gives widespread powers to investigatory agencies in an attempt to prevent terrorism, though many believe it violates the Constitution.
• The spacecraft Galileo passes within a hundred or so miles of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io.

ARTS

• Scrubs, Smallville, and According to Jim debut on American networks. All are destined to live much longer than they have any right to.
• Meanwhile, a singing competition TV show called Pop Idol debuts in the UK. It will eventually threaten to become the monster that ate worldwide TV.

SPORTS

• Barry Bonds breaks Mark McGwire’s single-season home run record, ending the season with 73. Meanwhile, the Seattle Mariners break the single-season wins record with 116. Neither gets close to the World Series.
• Derek Jeter of the Yankees makes the famous flip to get Jason Giambi of the Oakland Athletics at home plate in the Divisional Playoffs.
• Pardon the Interruption debuts on ESPN. It is among my most-watched shows of the decade.
• An Ontario newspaper reports that Major League baseball plans to “contract” the Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins after the World Series. This plan is scuttled after the resulting public outcry.
  

November

NEWS

• President Bush signs an order allowing Military Tribunals to try foreigners suspected of connections to actual or planned terrorist attacks within the United States. It is the first such act since World War II.
• After 15 years of intense negotiations, the People’s Republic of China is admitted to the World Trade Organization.
• Heavy rains in Algeria result in massive mudslides that kill 900 people.
• American Airlines Flight 587 crashes just after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, killing 260 and setting off widespread panic among skittish New Yorkers.
• The U.S. government, fearful of biological terrorism, begins a widespread effort to train emergency workers to recognize the symptoms of smallpox.

ARTS

• George Harrison dies.
• 24 debuts on FOX, bringing a new frontier of serialization to modern TV.
• The film adaptation of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is released. It is the year’s number one film and makes stars of many of its young cast members, including Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson as Harry and Hermione.
• Monsters, Inc. has the biggest opening weekend at the box office for any animated film up to this point.
• Britney Spears becomes the first female artist to have her first three albums debut at number one with the release of Britney.

SPORTS

• Luis Gonzalez singles in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 off Mariano Rivera to lift the Arizona Diamondbacks over the New York Yankees in the World Series, thus saving us from perhaps the most mawkish sports moment in history. The three games at Yankee Stadium are played under a tattered flag from the World Trade Center. Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson dominate for the Diamondbacks. It’s the first World Series completed in November.
• Seattle Mariners OF Ichiro Suzuki becomes only the second player to win both the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards, ushering in a new wave of Asian stars to the major leagues.

December

NEWS

• The Taliban government in Afghanistan collapses under pressure from Western military forces. A few weeks later Hamid Karzai is sworn as President of an Afghan democracy.
• Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden releases a video tape in which he brags about the September 11 attacks.
• Enron files for bankruptcy, destroying the 401(k) plans of most of its workers. Many of the executives later go to jail as it becomes clear just how ridiculous their behavior was. To this point this is the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
• A flight from Paris to Miami is diverted to Boston after Richard Reed attempts to ignite explosives hidden in his shoe. This is why I still have to take off my shoes prior to getting on a plane.
• New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is picked as Time Magazine’s man of the year.
• The U.S. indicts Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20^th hijacker” in connection with the September 11 attacks.
• Islamist terrorists attack the Parliament of India, killing 12 and precipitating an international crisis. Many are convinced war between India and Pakistan is inevitable.
• President Bush announces that the U.S. is withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

ARTS

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is released in movie theaters, first of a blockbuster trilogy of three-hour epics from director Peter Jackson that, through some miracle, are as good as the books they are based on.
• The ridiculously star-heavy remake Ocean’s Eleven is a surprisingly fun box office hit.

SPORTS

• Nebraska QB Eric Crouch wins the Heisman Trophy. He ends up playing Safety in the NFL.

A Decade in Review: 2000

At first I was going to do a very extensive list of my favorite movies of the 2000s, but eventually I decided it would be more rewarding to go back over the decade as a whole. It's easy to forget how much has changed and how much hasn't. Time has called this "The Decade from Hell", but for me it's the formative years of my life. When it started I was 15 and now I'm 25. When it started stocks were reaching record highs, America was the sole international super-power, and boy bands were all the rage. I should point out that this was partly inspired by a vaguely similar feature going on over at Deadspin, though theirs is obviously much more sports-centric. Anyway, without further ado...

2000

NEWS

• The world does not explode due to Y2K. Celebrations around the world for the Millennium go off without a hitch, except for those naysayers who insist it’s not REALLY the millennium.
• America Online reaches a deal to buy Time Warner, forming AOL-Time Warner. This works out well for everyone.
• The “Dot Com Bubble” reaches its peak. This is the heyday of the Pets.com puppet.
• Meanwhile, Wall Street closes early due to Rage Against the Machine. There’s a story there, but I think I’ll just leave it at that.
• The last known Pyrenean Ibex is found dead, having apparently been killed by a falling tree.
• Dr. Harold Shipman is found guilty of murdering 15 of his patients.

SPORTS

• The St. Louis Rams defeat the Tennessee Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV, after Titans WR Kevin Dyson is tackled at the one yard line with no time left. This is still my favorite Super Bowl of all time.
• The Oklahoma Sooners win the NCAA football championship.
• -Dan Marino plays in his final game, a 62-7 loss to Jacksonville. He never wins a championship.
• Brazilian soccer club Corinthians wins the first World Club Cup. Someday this will matter.
  

February

NEWS

• The race for the Republican presidential nomination heats up. John McCain upsets in New Hampshire but loses to George W. Bush in South Carolina amidst allegations of dirty tricks by the Bush campaign.
• Tarja Halonen is elected the first female President of Finland.
• Torrential rains in Africa leads to mass flooding in Mozambique, killing 800 people.

ARTS

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers is published.
• Charles Schulz dies, and the final original “Peanuts” comic strip is published soon after. It still can be seen in re-runs in newspapers everywhere ten years later.
• Santana wins 8 Grammys in one night, tying Michael Jackson’s record. Christina Aguilera wins Best New Artist.

SPORTS

• Superstar Ravens LB Ray Lewis is arrested outside the Super Bowl and charged with murder. He is eventually acquitted.
• The Mariners trade Ken Griffey Jr. to the Cincinnati Reds.

March

NEWS

• Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia.
• The NASDAQ collapses. The DotCom boom is officially over. The NASDAQ has yet to get close to these levels again.
• George Bush and Al Gore continue to emerge victorious in various primaries and caucuses in the presidential race.
• Pope John Paul II makes the first official visit by a Catholic pontiff to Israel.
• Nupedia, the predecessor to Wikipedia, is launched.

ARTS

• American Beauty is the big winner at the Academy Awards, taking home Best Picture, Director, and Actor for Kevin Spacey.
• Budweiser starts running the “Whassup?” commercials. I’m sorry for reminding you.

April

NEWS

• The entire Elian Gonzalez drama occurs in Miami. He is eventually repatriated after a predawn raid. The entire business turns parts of the South Florida Hispanic community againt the current administration, which would prove crucial in the upcoming elections.
• The state of Vermont legalizes same sex marriage.
• Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi suffers a stroke and dies soon after.
• Microsoft is ruled to have violated US anti-trust laws, though not that much really ends up changing.
  
• Richard Baumhammers goes on a 2 hour racially-motivated shooting spree in Pittsburgh, killing 5.

ARTS

• Metallica sues Napster, quickly followed by Dr. Dre and Madonna. It’s the beginning of the end for the free music service.
• *NSYNC’s album No Strings Attached sells 2.4 million copies in its first week, more than doubling the previous record.
• The film version of American Psycho, starring Christian Bale, is released.

SPORTS

• Michigan State wins the NCAA basketball championship behind Mateen Cleaves. This is the last time to date that I successfully pick the winner in my tournament bracket.
• The NBA approves the sale of the Dallas Mavericks to Mark Cuban.

May

NEWS

• Israel withdraws its forces from southern Lebanon after 22 years.
• The ILOVEYOU virus, originating in the Philippines, spreads quickly throughout the computers of gullible e-mail users everywhere.
• The one billionth resident of India is born.
• Boo.com, a joint British-Swedish venture attempting to sell branded clothes on the internet, collapses after burning through $160 million in six months.

ARTS

• Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP is released and becomes a spectacular success. Rap is never quite the same, for better or worse.
• Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is released in theaters, single-handedly bringing back the sword-and-sandals epic and setting trends for movie scores that are still going on.
• Britney Spears’ Oops, I Did It Again is released.
• Party of Five and Beverly Hills 90210 go off the air.
• The Tate Modern Gallery opens in London.
• Lars Von Trier’s quasi-musical Dancer in the Dark, starring Bjork, wins the Palm D’Or at Cannes.

SPORTS

• Real Madrid wins their eighth European club soccer championship.

June

NEWS

• Scientists announce that they have what is essentially a rough draft of a fully-mapped human genome.
• Photos reveal that there is real water on Mars.
• “Section 28”, a law prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality, is repealed by the Scottish Parliament.

ARTS

• 9 die at a Pearl Jam concert in Denmark due to overcrowding.
• “405 the Movie” becomes the first short film to be widely distributed on the internet.
• Bon Jovi releases Crush, their first album in over 5 years. It is wildly successful.

SPORTS

• The Kobe Bryant/Shaquille O’Neal edition of the Los Angeles Lakers wins the NBA championship.
• The New Jersey Devils win the Stanley Cup four games to two over the Dallas Stars.
• Steve Young retires from the NFL.

July

NEWS

• The Republican Party holds its National Convention in Philadelphia, nominating Texas Governor George W. Bush for President and former Bush Defense Secretary Dick Cheney for Vice President.
• Vicente Fox is elected President of Mexico, ending a rather ridiculous 71 years of rule by the PRI party.
• A leaking petroleum pipeline in Nigeria explodes, killing 250 locals who were scavenging gasoline.
• The Concorde explodes on take-off from Charles de Gaulle Airport, ending the halcyon days of the transatlantic supersonic service. 109 people are killed, with four additional fatalities on the ground as the plane’s remains crash into a nearby hotel.

ARTS

• The first X-Men film, starring Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, and Patrick Stewart, among others, is released and becomes a huge success, ushering in the Decade of the Comic Book Movie. The first Scary Movie comes out one week before.

SPORTS

• France wins the European Soccer Championships, held jointly in Belgium and the Netherlands. They become the first team to hold the European and World championships simultaneously.
• Pete Sampras wins his record 13^th Grand Slam title. No one cares because he’s boring. (I’m only sort of kidding about this)
• ABC announces it’s hiring Dennis Miller as an announcer for Monday Night Football.

August

NEWS

• The Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles nominates Vice President Al Gore and Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut for President and Vice President, respectively. In the future most alternate histories of this decade will probably center around these two.
  
• A Russian submarine sinks in the Barents Sea, resulting in the deaths of all 118 on board.

ARTS

• Dora the Explorer debuts. I find her too demanding.
• Richard Hatch, perhaps best described as a gay con-man nudist, wins the first season of Survivor. The era of Reality TV is upon us.
• Kirsten Dunst stars in Bring It On, probably the greatest cheerleading movie ever made, for whatever that’s worth.
• Alec Guinness dies.
• Vernor Vinge is awarded the Hugo for A Deepness in the Sky.

SPORTS

• Tiger Woods becomes the first golfer since 1953 to win three majors in one year with his victor at the PGA Championship.

September

NEWS

• Tuvalu joins the United Nations.
• Microsoft releases Windows ME.
• The Global Millennium Summit is held at the United Nations in New York City.

ARTS

• Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous is released. More than one person later describes it to me as “maybe the most perfect movie ever made.”
• Madonna’s Music is her first number one album since Like a Prayer. It makes the people come together.

SPORTS

• The Summer Olympics are held in Sydney, Australia. Ian Thorpe and Cathy Freeman star for the home country. Marion Jones dominates women’s running events, though many years later her medals will be stripped. The United States tops the medals table.
• Indiana fires Bob Knight as their Men’s Basketball coach.

October

NEWS

• The USS Cole is badly damaged by two suicide bombers while in port at Aden, Yemen, killing 17 soldiers. The bombing is linked to a terror group known as al-Qaeda.
• Slobodan Milosevic leaves office as President of Serbia after widespread protests.
• October 30 is the most recent day (and for all we know maybe the last day ever) without a human presence in space. The next day a rocket launches from Kazakhstan carrying a crew to the International Space Station.

ARTS

• The PlayStation 2 is released, beginning the “Next Generation” of video game consoles.
• CSI, Gilmore Girls and Curb Your Enthusiasm debut.
• Meet the Parents is number one at the box office.
• Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot-Dog Flavored Water breaks records for a rock album debut, though it is not close to *NSYNC numbers.
• Rage Against the Machine breaks up when Zak de le Rocha announces he is leaving the band.

SPORTS

• The Yankees beat the Mets 4-1 in a “Subway Series”. No one west of the Delaware cares, and the Series gets record-low ratings. The Series is best remembered for Roger Clemens throwing a broken bat at Mike Piazza.

November

NEWS

• The US Presidential Election ends in what is for all practical purposes a tie, despite Vice President Gore clearly winning the national popular vote. The campaign comes down to approximately 200 votes in Florida, over which the representative of each campaign battle for a month. The phrase “hanging chad” enters the national vocabulary.
• Meanwhile, in Iraq, Saddam Hussein throws out UN weapons inspectors, precipitating an international crisis.
• Hillary Clinton is elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, becoming the first First Lady to hold public office.
• An Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama loses his run for the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Hillary’s husband Bill becomes the first sitting U.S. President to visit Vietnam.
• Jean Chretien and the Liberal Party are re-elected in Canada.

ARTS

• M. Night Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable” is released, sparking debates among geeks that go on to this day.

December

NEWS

• The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bush v. Gore, stopping the ongoing recounts in Florida. This gives the state and the Presidency to George W. Bush. The die is cast for a lot of the rest of the decade. Somewhere a polar bear cries.
  
• Deadly bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines kill dozens.

ARTS

• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the first Chinese film to crossover to the American box office,
• The Smashing Pumpkins play their final concert prior to breaking up in Chicago.
• Madonna marries British film director Guy Ritchie in Scotland.
• The film O Brother, Where Art Thou is released. Its soundtrack is credited with reviving national interest in traditional bluegrass music.
• Adult Swim premieres Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, and Sealab 2021. Stoners and fans of dadaist comedy everywhere rejoice.
  

SPORTS

• The Texas Rangers sign Alex Rodriguez to a ten year, $252 million contract, shattering records.
• Pitcher Mike Mussina signs a contract with the New York Yankees. The Baltimore Orioles, among the top teams of the late nineties, have not been competitive since.
• Mario Lemieux announces his return to the NHL after a three year retirement.

"Avatar" Review

If the question about "Avatar" is "is it a game changer?" I think the answer might be yes. The special effects and 3-D technology fully live up to their billing. In the middle of the movie, my eyes started to ache a little; having been trained on movies for my entire life, they had no idea how to react to this. This is something new. After a while, thankfully, I think they got the hang of it. I was also surprised by how well the story worked for me, considering there is not a single moment of it that is not completely predictable. If Cameron were just a little bit better writer, "Avatar" could be an all-time great movie. As it is, it is a very good movie, and when you put the spectacle on top of that, it's a seismic event.

The 3-D is never used just for its own sake. Nobody paddles a ball in our face. At some points in tight-shot indoor scenes, there is a little of that sense of objects occupying a series of flat planes that is what you usually get in modern 3-D. However, when the camera is allowed free range out in the forests of Pandora, we get a complete sense of depth, a sense very similar to what we'd get from watching something in person. I don't see how one could improve this short of putting me in a VR suit. I think the reason my eyes had trouble adjusting was that in most films, the movie does the work of focusing for your eyes... some parts of the screen are in focus and some are not, so there's no question for your eyes what they should be focusing on. In this immersive 3-D, everything is usually in focus; it's once again our own eyes responsibility to figure out what to focus on. There were several times where action was taking place in many different places on screen and I found my eyes straining to flit from one focal point to another. They were reacting not like they would to a movie, but as if I actually was fighting a battle while riding on a dragon. I think it might just take getting used to.

Cameron's greatest technical achievement may be the Na'Vi, the film's blue aliens (with whom we probably spend the majority of the film). It's not 100% perfect, but the moments where we lose the sense that they're completely physically real are very rare. Cameron has completely solved the biggest bugaboos of motion-capture/animated people, and somehow never once falls into the so-called "uncanny valley". Normally, our brains are very good at realizing when a facsimile of a person is not real, that there's nothing behind those eyes, no soul. This is why "The Polar Express" is so gosh-darn creepy. It is also extremely hard to make them move like real people... when Grendel swings Beowulf around in Zemeckis' film, he seems to lose substance and moves like a rag doll. The Na'Vi play completely as real sentient beings, both in how the move and in that feeling that there are real people behind their eyes. If this can be done for non-astronomical sums of money and in shorter time frames, the applications are mind-boggling.

The story is pretty simple. Future human colonists are mining the beautiful moon of Pandora, where the atmosphere is toxic, the wild-life is proliferate and deadly, and the natives are fierce. In order to move freely and gain the native's trust, the colonists have their "avatar" program... bodies grown with both human and Na'Vi DNA. "Drivers" get into a CAT-scan type machine and can essentially download their consciousness into an Avatar body.

One of these drivers is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who is in a wheel-chair in normal life but not when he's an Avatar. To make a long story short, he begins the gain the trust of the tribe (who realize he is not like them but do not seem to fully understand what this means. They call him a "dreamwalker"), and is given the task of getting them to move from their home in the giant "Home Tree", which sits on a huge mineral deposit. However, he begins to realize he may be at more at home among the Na'Vi, and falls in love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana, who plays the female lead in the year's two biggest and best SF films). In the end, Jake must lead the Na'Vi in a final battle with the human invaders.

The rest of the review is going to contain SPOILERS, so don't go further if you care.




This story has been compared to "Dances With Wolves", but I think it transcends its influences because its fantastic setting lends itself to a sense of greater universality. It is not about the Europeans genocide of the Native Americans. It's about all native peoples and their relationship to more advanced invaders, in a larger sense. When the over-the-top military colonel villain played by Stephen Lang orders the Home Tree felled, there is a sense as it crashes to the forest below that somehow all of man's inhumanity towards the Earth and its environment is concentrated into this one pointless act. It almost made me sick to my stomach, but in a good way. In a way that means I'm really caring about the story, and that it's having an effect on me.

The film has more than one weakness, however, and the biggest is that its story is very straight-forward. It goes exactly how you think it's going to. Pretty much every element that's introduced is eventually paid off. Though some of the characters have genuine arcs, nobody ever reacts to anything in a way that surprises you. Sigourney Weaver plays a character who seems interesting on the surface, a chain-smoking scientist who wears a Stanford T-shirt even when she's an Avatar. But the way Weaver plays her (and I'm not sure it's her fault), she completely lacks layers. She's a blue, smoking Jane Goodall. The Colonel, meanwhile, is such a mustache-twirling villain that he might completely sink the movie if he had a touch more screen-time. As things are, he mostly disappears for the film's middle third, and really seems to only exist to be a physical antagonist. Giovanni Ribisi does a wonderful job as the slick company exec in charge of the mining operation, a role I would not have pegged him for. We get a tangible sense as the film continues that he knows he's gone too far, that something inside him knows he is not the hero of this piece, but he continues because he does not see any other options open to him. That had to be hard to portray.

One might rail against the way the film, like so many these days, descends into a long action sequence for the home stretch. The climax is a violent struggle starring people who constantly insist that they're fighting for peace. However, Cameron is so good at this that it's almost refreshing. Michael Bay is an easy target, but he's not the sole offender. So many modern action sequences lose their impact because they fail to make sense visually. There is no sense of what is where. Cameron knows how to show us the action so that we can tell what it is gong on: it is awe-inspiring enough without desperate cutting to increase "energy". This film must have a much longer average shot length than your average modern action blockbuster.

There has been some talk that the film wears its political aspirations on its sleeve, and I suppose this is not untrue. For me this helped to add reality to this world, that it had similar problems to those I experience. We learn in the first ten minutes that Jake's spinal condition is treatable in this future, but that he is not rich enough to afford the operation. (he even says "not in this economy") And the Colonel is fond of Bushisms, like "we'll fight terror with terror" and "shock and awe", and the soldiers in a hostile environment dealing badly with natives who don't want them there raises obvious parallels to Iraq and Afghanistan. Beyond all this, of course, is the environmentalism. Here Cameron cheats a little: the metaphors "tree-huggers" use, about everything being connected and about Gaia having a soul, are all made literal on Pandora. Everything on the planet is connected by a sort of living fiberoptic network, making for a kind of world mind. Cutting down trees on Pandora really is murder. So the film's Pandora environmentalism, in the end, is sort of a writ-large metaphor for our Earth environmentalism rather than a straight parallel, and I think it may be difficult for some to make that distinction.

This is already longer than I meant to make it and I think I'll stop here. I do want to answer a question someone asked Roger Ebert in his last mailbag, asking whether the film was appropriate for children. He said there was "nothing objectionable", but that it might be too scary for younger kids. I think it is probably worth mentioning that Na'Vi ladies do not usually wear shirts, though perhaps blue boobs don't count. (Neytiri spends much of the movie wearing some rather strategically-placed necklaces) There's also a (rather tasteful) 3-D alien sex scene. And "Avatar" may have the highest S-word count of any PG-13 movie I've ever seen. (I could swear when I was a kid you couldn't swear at all in PG-13 movies) All that said, I sat directly in front of a rambunctious group of younger kids. They drove me nuts all through the previews, commenting and laughing about every tiny thing. But once the movie started, they were dead silent throughout. I'm pretty sure it worked for them. It definitely worked for me.

The Best TV Lines of '09

I ran across a twitter meme with the title above today, to which all my favorite critics contributed their own picks. Later in the day it got hijacked by Chuck fans a bit, but it's still definitely worth checking out. It seems a little early, as Glee proved tonight. But it's a worthy endeavor, and here are some of my favorites. Those who say there's nothing on TV right now are silly curmudgeons. Spoiler warning, I suppose, though everything here's out of context.

Community

"Sorry, I was raised on TV. I was conditioned to believe that every black woman over forty was a mentor of some kind."

"I thought you were like Bill Murray in any of his films, but you're really like Michael Douglas in any of his films."

"I'm not having a conversation with someone who emerged from a bush."
"Because I'm right?"
"No, because I'm not in a commercial for breakfast cereal."

"I'm saying you're a football player, its in your blood"
"That's racist."
"Your soul?"
"That's racist"
"Your eyes?"
"That's gay."
"That's homophobic."
"That's black."
"That's racist!"
"Damn!"

"Abed, it makes the group uncomfortable when you talk about the group like we're characters in a show you're watching."
"That's sort of my gimmick, but we did lean on that pretty hard last week. I can lay low for an episode."

"My knowledge is going to bite your face off!"

"If I stay, there can be no party. I must be out there in the night, staying vigilant. Wherever a party needs to be saved, I'm there. Wherever there are masks, wherever there's tomfoolery and joy, I'm there. But sometimes I'm not cause I'm out in the night, staying vigilant. Watching. Lurking. Running. Jumping. Hurtling. Sleeping. No, I can't sleep. You sleep. I'm awake. I don't sleep. I don't blink. Am I bird? No. I'm a bat. I am Batman. Or am I? Yes, I am Batman. Happy Halloween."

"Attention everyone! If you have sex tonight, do not use a condom. I repeat, do not use a condom."

Doctor Who
(which had exactly two episodes this year thus far)

"State your name, rank, and intention!"
"The Doctor. Doctor. Fun."

Dollhouse

"You have to admit, I am very British. I don't say hard Rs."

"Carrots! Medicinal carrots! Personal use medicinal carrots that were here when I moved in and I'm holding it for a friend!"

"Right. New, superior people. With a little German thrown in. What could possibly go wrong?"

"Did I miss anything?
"Just the vodka, thank god."

"Imagine John Cassavetes in The Fury as a hot chick."
"Which you know I often have!"

"Given that you're a raping scumbag one tick shy of a murderer, I can't recall, do you take sugar?"

Glee

"He's cheating off a girl who thinks the square root of four is rainbows."

"This is Ohio. If I have a pregnant girl doing a handspring into a double layout, the judges aren't going to be admiring her impeccable form, they're going to be wondering if the centrifugal force is going to make the baby's head start crowning."

"It was a message from God: Rachel was a hot Jew and the good lord wanted me to get into her pants."

"I like minorities so much, I'm thinking of moving to California to become one."

"I don't trust a man with curly hair. I can't help but picture little birds laying sulfurous eggs in there, and it disgusts me."

"I'll often yell at homeless people: 'Hey, how is that homelessness working out for you? Try not being homeless for once.'"

"'Who's Josh Groban?' KILL YOURSELF!"

"That was the most offensive thing I've seen in 20 years of teaching — and that includes an elementary school production of Hair."

"You think this is hard? Try waterboarding. That's hard!"

"I will go the animal shelter and get you a kitty-kat. I will make you fall in love with that kitty-kat. Then some dark cold night I will steal away into your home and punch you in the face."

Lost

"Time travel's a bitch."

(I've always felt like things that feel like really good lines on "Lost" wouldn't be notable on other shows. That doesn't make it a bad show, just... weird.)

Modern Family

"I got Luke a video game, but it's about math. So, I guess we're that kind of uncles."

"We were called "Fire and Nice." I was "Fire" because of the red hair and Claire was "Nice" because it was ironic and she wasn't."

"I'm sort of like Costco. I'm big, I'm not fancy and I dare you to not like me."

"Ahhh we have been together for, guh, five-- five years now? And uh we-- we just decided that we really wanted to have a baby. So we initially asked one of our lesbian friends to be a surrogate but--"
"Then we figured, they're already mean enough, can you imagine one of them pregnant?"

The Office

"The fire is shooting at us!"

"Stanley! You can't die, Stanley! Stanley, you are black! Barack is President, Stanley!"

"I hate the idea that someone out there hates me. I even hate thinking that al-Qaeda hates me. I think if they got to know me, they wouldn't hate me."

"Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"The KGB."
"The KGB who?"
"WE WILL ASK THE QUESTIONS!"

"Jim is my enemy, but it turns out that Jim is also his own worst enemy. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So Jim is actually my friend. But, because he is his own worst enemy, the enemy of my friend is my enemy. So actually, Jim is my enemy. But—"

Parks & Recreation

"If I had to have a stripper name, it would be Equality."

"It's like taking peyote and sneezing slowly for six hours."

"I'm a simple man. I like pretty, dark-haired women and breakfast food."

"I honestly believe that she was programmed by someone in the future to come back and destroy all happiness."

South Park

"The Disney purity ring venture will most likely now prove a marketing bust, as Mickey returns to Valhalla to slumber and feed."

30 Rock

"FEMA paid for these flowers... because this show is going to be a disaster!"

"My mom used to send me articles about how older virgins are considered good luck in Mexico."

"It's about as useless as the Winter Olympics ... This February on NBC."

"And no making fun of me for using outdated pop culture references. Are we cowabunga on this?"

"A book hasn't caused this much trouble since Where's Waldo went to that barber pole factory."

"I want to welcome you to Season Four ... the restaurant where you can get the very best food in the rest of America!"

"She went crazy. She bit off my nutsack, that I kept tied around my belt to feed the squirrels."

"Do you need a sex tape released? 'Cause I got a weird one; it's night vision and you can see that his buddy is robbing me."

"You know how you told Tracy not to go into your bedroom? Well, naturally, we assumed you were a serial killer, and as you can imagine, your bird is dead."

"What is this, Horseville? Because I'm surrounded by naysayers. Wordplay! "

"I really don't think it's fair for me to be on a jury since I'm a hologram."

Torchwood
(which had a total of five episodes in 2009)

"If she's anti-terrorist, I would not mind being Uncle Terrorist."

True Blood

"It's like if a tree falls in the woods it's still a tree, ain't it?"

"All this alpha-male posturing. Why don't the two of you just f*** each other and get it over with? I could watch."

"Sometimes you need to destroy something to save it. That's in the Bible... or the Constitution."

"Did you know your boyfriend hit me over the head with a 52 inch plasma television earlier tonight? Everyone says they're so thin and light, but let me tell you, when wielded properly, they're quite a weapon."

"On the final day of reckoning we'll see who goes to heaven and who goes to hell."
"I reckon I've already been to heaven... it was inside your wife."

"If God always punishes sinners, explain Europe to me!"

"SMITE ME, MOTHERF***ER!"

"What are you?
"I'm a waitress. What the f*** are you?"

The Venture Brothers

"How can you say that about Hitler? I love Hitler, and Hitler loves me! He's not so bad - Hitler just need someone to believe in him! Can't you just give Hitler a chance?"

"Torrid's a d**k. Who does that? Who opens up Hell? Honestly?"

"Score?"
"85%."
"Get out! Where did I blow it?"
"Well, for one, you killed Matthew Lasko."
"That was... well, he was wearing punctuation on his suit. That's a total bad-guy suit!"
"He helps people get free money from the government. That is a good guy. It's reflected in your score."

"Next thing I know, I'm blowing lines of voodoo powder off the back of a monkey's paw I bought in Calcutta. Now I'm all out of wishes."

"And here we are. Alone. What would the neighbors think?"
"The neighbors are AuntiMatter, who's a spinster who shape shifts, and Flying Squid, he's pretty self-explanatory. So I don't think they'd find this weird."

"Alright, we're going to have to do this commando style."
"You want me to... take off my underwear?"

"I can cross "stab Hitler to death" off my list of cool crap I thought I'd never get to do."

"Au contraire, I am Tony Danza to your spunky Alyssa Milano. I am full on Charles In Charge of you."

TV & Movie Reviews Omnibus

I've been wanting to write about a lot of things here lately but haven't gotten around to it. So I'm going to keep things brief and discuss a couple recent films I've seen and then even briefer as I discuss various new-ish TV developments.

Three Kings is my defining film of the first Gulf War, capturing the tragedies, the triumphs, and the absurdities that characterized it. The Hurt Locker will probably be the defining film of the second, longer Iraq War. In a lot of ways (but certainly not all) it's a descent into despair, following a memorable character, Jeremy Renner's Sgt. James, who is only at home when he's risking his life. The film is essentially a series of long set pieces, following the various missions of a three man bomb squad in Iraq circa 2004. This is a world where any local could be an Insurgent, and often is. Director Kathryn Bigelow (this a rare movie directed by a woman that almost entirely concerns male characters) understands suspense, that it's not about action but about the threat of action, and some of these sequences are completely masterful. My only caveat is that the shaky-cam takes over a little too much, and I had to look away a few times just to keep from getting a headache. Note to film-makers: no good movie is improved by making it impossible to watch what's happening on screen. There's no longer any artistry in the shaky-cam. I'm not really sure there ever was. Please stop it.

I recently had a chance to watch Away We Go, which I really wanted to like. I liked Garden State and still haven't apologized for it. But I really couldn't, for the simple reason that I found pretty much every character involved grating, with the possible exception of the couple in Montreal. I get that some of them (Maggie Gyllenhaal) are supposed to be. Thing is, I'm not sure what the point of this movie is. I don't need to be spoon-fed a story, but if your movie's about ideas there need to be some ideas. This movie simply observes the existence of a bunch of caricatures and seems to think that by the end it's arrived at some truth that it never reveals.

To really commit blasphemy, I had a better time watching Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, third film in the rather ridiculous Underworld franchise. It features Michael Sheen (he of The Queen and Frost/Nixon), who somehow works as an action star. We also get Bill Nighy and Rhona Mitra, among others, and they all know what movie they're in. It's all shot through a blue filter, vampires and werewolves fight their ancient war, the art direction is ridiculously over-the-top, and it's all played oh-so-deadly-serious. It made me smile.

Okay, TV shows. This is probably the best year for comedies that I've seen. The debate on the interwebs seems to be about which of the two great new shows is better, ABC's Modern Family or NBC's Community, with the corollary of whether the winner is better than some more established shows like The Office or 30 Rock. I'm not sure why it matters, they're both really funny, funny for the right reasons, reasons that come out of the characters. Modern Family is essentially The Office set at home amidst a functional (but just barely) extended suburban family. Community is more like a somewhat more humanistic 30 Rock, set among the quirky characters of a study group at a community college. Both have been uneven at times, but have started to find themselves more and more. Meanwhile, Parks & Recreation has greatly increased in quality in its second year, and many critics will tell you it's the best comedy on TV right now. I haven't quite fallen in love with it the same way as the four shows I mentioned above, mostly because I think it has fewer laugh-out-loud moments. But it is still a lot of fun to watch, and very well done.

SyFy Channel's Stargate: Universe is a strange beast, and it's caused some spectacular fights on internet forums. It is not like anything I've seen, not the previous Stargate incarnations, and not Battlestar Galactica, which it was often compared to initially. It moves at its own pace much of the time, almost floating around the corridors of its vast ship the way the camera balls do on the show. My view is that it started off flailing, not really sure what it wanted to be, but has found itself the past few weeks as an ensemble drama with several interesting, though all flawed to say the least, characters. Thus far, the more I've learned about all of these people, the more I've been interested in them. However, the show has waited too long to do some of this and I think lost a lot of people. Last week's episode, "Time", was a particular bold stroke. I wanted to watch that show rather than the one I saw the first few weeks.

V is not really worth it, I think, and is at the point where it needs to earn my continued viewership. Unfortunately, next week's will be the last episode for a few months, so we'll see where we are after that. This has all taken some work, because it's an alien invasion show with a spectacular cast. This is a show with three different "would watch them read the phone book" actors for me in Elizabeth Mitchell, Morena Baccarin, and Alan Tudyk. But it sometimes feels like one big anti-Obama Tea Partier fantasy, and spends most of the rest of its time just foundering in a lack of imagination. This is a show that seems to fail to realize that the entire point of an alien invasion story is THE ALIENS. Morena Baccarin's alien leader Anna's the best thing about the show, but we don't spend nearly enough time with her. I did like the third episode better than the first two, so maybe there's some hope.

You know what else is back? The Legend of the Seeker. I reviewed it a year ago when it first started and was sort of dismissive of it. However, unlike a lot of shows, I never questioned whether I should keep watching it. It's found itself over time, while growing more and more complex and involved in its mythology. This is a show based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth books, which are sort of okay at the beginning and apparently later descend into objectivist crazytown. I have a feeling the show is much better than the books. We follow a band of heroes riding majestically across New Zealand fantasyland, casting magic spells and sword fighting dark lords. This is High Fantasy, the only High Fantasy on TV right now, and it's actually done pretty well. The second season premiere, currently on Hulu, places our heroes in various morally ambiguous situations caused by their victory at the end of last year, and sets the stage for what looks like it could be a big improvement in the show. And it doesn't hurt that we get what looks like will just be the beginning of a continuing larger dose of the fetishtastic order of hot chick torturers, the Mord'Sith, probably the most infamous aspect of the show. There's even a completely random Charisma Carpenter guest starring role. Basically, this is the closest any of us will ever get to a Lord of the Rings TV show, and we should enjoy it.

And finally, I wanted to mention the latest Doctor Who episode, "The Waters of Mars", which serves as show's return from a several month hiatus and the beginning of David Tennant's final arc in the title role. Gosh, I love this show. I watch TV, in the end, to be entertained, and Doctor Who likes to push all my buttons. This particular episode was pretty interesting, taking the Doctor to emotional places that were completely new and yet felt totally earned. That said, about twenty minutes in I thought I was going to write something about how none of this was working as well as anyone involved seemed to think it was, except for a few good lines for the Doctor. Then things got really epic all of a sudden, and I had to pause the video and hop around the room I was so excited. I could do a spoileriffic deep analysis, but I don't really feel like it right now.

That's all I got in me tonight. I'll do a books one like this in a couple days when I finish my current read. See y'all.

Identity, the Internet, and the Dollar Movies

It seems that a couple of strong themes have run through most of the TV, books, and movies I’ve consumed this fall, and I think they’re related to some of our current societal anxieties, as is usually the case.

One is identity, and how it relates to society at large. How do we define ourselves in a world where we know better than ever that all we are is DNA and firing synapses? It would seem that we’re more able to let others know who we are than ever, but at the same time there’s this fear that we have no control, that someone else is pulling our strings. Maybe this is part of the fear that the Glenn Becks and Michelle Bachmanns of the world tap into, that we have no control over our lives. And to an extent it’s true: never before has every detail of our lives been visible to our bosses, our government, and our enemies in the way it is now. This is the price we pay to make the world traversable in an instant, to have friends and business partners on other continents, to live in a world where anyone can be instantly famous.

Which brings us to another theme, that of our relationship to the media and the internet. Something is reaching critical mass, I think, and we’re now quite literally in Andy Warhol’s future, at least in America and Europe and a few other places. At the same time, we’re seeing objectivity disappear in our news media, replaced by opinion. This may not be a good thing, but what I think this environment of blogs and Fox News has given us is one huge conversation, a huge town hall meeting about everything all the time, rather than speeches by talking heads at set times. What does that mean? And is fame, more easily attainable for the average joe than any previous time in our history, one of the only ways to make your voice count more than someone else’s? And what is the price for that?

This is all brought on by a handful of stories, some of which are spectularly good and some of which are pretty awful. I’ll write about some more of the books I’ve been reading another time. As for TV, there are a large number of shows on right now, but I think the one that makes me think the most is “Dollhouse”. The show is not going to last beyond its current 13 episode Second Season, but that is fine, and it is worth enjoying while it is here. The show, which I’ve reviewed here before, had the best episode of its season so far this past week, focusing on Dichen Lachmann’s character, Sierra.

The episode, and to a certain extent the show itself, is about rape, and what it does to us on a personal and societal level. There is a scene near the beginning where the man we met in “Needs” who put Sierra in the Dollhouse prepositions her. She refuses and tries to leave. He physically prevents her. The entire party (which is mostly made up of Dolls) stands around and does nothing. The Dollhouse is (metaphorically) about how society inexorably “programs” us to take on certain roles… in a way are we all responsible when things like this happen? Of course, there’s more to the episode than this, it’s full of spectacular performances and feels like a step forward for the show’s mythology. io9 has a detailed review here: http://io9.com/5389040/rape-is-one-tick-short-of-armageddon-on-dollhouse

At the dollar movies, where movies usually appear not long before they go to DVD (a window which closes a little further every few months), I saw two SF movies this week. The first was “District 9”, which gives itself a sense of reality by appearing at least part of the time to be some sort of documentary. The story is about a group of aliens (refugees?) that appear above Johannesburg, and are settled in a camp known as District 9. Those familiar with South Africa will notice strong parallels with apartheid and the more recent influx of refugees to the country from Africa’s more impoverished areas, which has led to some violence. The film is cast almost entirely with local South Afircan actors, with unknown Sharlto Copley cast in the lead role, a petty bureaucrat who gets involved in events beyond his control.

The film’s biggest strength is Copley’s character, Wikus van der Merwe, who, as one “talking head” notes, “took the choices available to him.” He’s not really a good guy by choice. When we see the aliens, they’re a lot like people, subject to depravity, violence, and pointless addictions. There are good aliens, but they seem to be few and far between… the implication is that we are the same way. The film observes all this dispassionately, helped by the documentary format. Except it seems to really want us to hate Nigerians, for some reason.

The issue of identity comes up because (POSSIBLE SPOILER) van der Merwe finds himself infected with an alien “fluid” that is gradually changing his own DNA from human to alien. He finds himself fitting in nowhere, both a pariah and incredibly valuable in the view of the both “sides”. (END SPOILER) The media is omnipresent throughout the film, as it seems to me it now is in most people’s lives.

The movie is extremely well made, with the CGI aliens completely photorealistic with distinct personalities despite a budget of “only” $30 million (the film made this back and then some on its first weekend). The “documentary” style is used to serve the story rather than distracting with overly swirly shots. However, the film’s villains (especially the Nigerians) can be a little too over the top at times. Also, the third act turns into one long action sequence, which is not really what I was looking for from such an intelligent film.

Tonight’s film was “Gamer”, a fitting cap to a week where the two really memorable stories for me were “The Hunger Games” and “Dollhouse”, as the film strongly contains elements of both without managing to be nearly as good as either one. In the near future, the big popular media phenomenon is games where people control other real people. A weird southern guy played by Michael C. Hall (chewing large bites of scenery throughout) invented “Society”, which is essentially “Second Life” if your avatar was a real person. As Hall’s character, Castle, notes, people pay both to be controlled and to control, though it seems that at least some of the “I-Cons” are there because they’re desperate and they’re getting paid. Now Castle has invented “Slayers”, in which gamers control death-row inmates in pitched “battles”… a FPS with real deaths. These battles are incredibly popular just to watch, and the top gamers make millions.

And that’s pretty much it. The movie is from the writer/director team that gave us “Crank”, and it has the same feel of gratuitous sex and violence being presented in a way that shouts “Look how gratuitous this is!” I enjoyed “Crank” because it was so ridiculous and completely unexpected. “Gamer” has more there there, so to speak, but not that much, and while here the boobs and blood seem to actually have a further message behind them, the movie is still an exploitative violent media offering of nearly the same kind it is critiquing.

The action sequences are presented with the camera shaking crazily, completely preventing us from having any sense of the geography of any of the action sequences. Perhaps fortunately, this took away some of the effect of the violence for me. The movie feels like an extension of this, presenting its concept so frenetically we are prevented from caring or even being impressed. There are, however, two sequences I will remember for a long time. One is the opening minute or so, in which we get a sense of this future world, with “Slayers” advertisements writ large across skyscrapers, even on the Great Pyramid, all set to Marilyn Manson’s cover of “Sweet Dreams”. (“Some of them want to use you/Some of them want to be used by you.”) The other is the climax, which (SPOILER) includes a completely random musical number just when we’re expecting a big showdown. I’m not sure it was a good idea, or even well executed, but by that point I was very happy that they tried it.(END SPOILER).

Interestingly, both “Dollhouse” and “Gamer” deal with the concept of the powerful literally reprogramming the less powerful, and both of them come to the conclusion that this means the end of everything. Of course, since both take the concept literally, both show it leading to the literal apocalypse, when, at least today, this takes place more in a figurative way, so what these are both really saying is that what this does is rob our lives of their beauty and meaning.

Notes from the Dan Sessions: A New Era Begins

It's been some time since I've posted, and that's because I've been incredibly busy, and when I haven't been busy I've been exhausted. And when I haven't been exhausted I've been trying to squeeze in as much self-entertainment as possible. But I want to keep this up, and I had the very strange idea to post these. "These" are notes I make, as a track listing as much as anything else, for the mix CDs I like to make. Most people listen to their MP3s on their headphones, but I'm perfectly happy with my portable CD player and an album of my own devisement. I call these CDs "The Dan Sessions", and each ends up with a pretentious subtitle. Think of these as a strange chronicle of my life in song, or as simply music recommendations. And I don't have to come up with them, because they're already written!

A New Era Begins

This disc was made during a period of change in my life that ended a sort of bout with despondency, which was also a period in which I didn't make any mixes. It immediately became a staple of long bus rides and quick-paced walks down wide, empty, condo-lined streets.


1. Saliva – “Ladies and Gentlemen”
And the “New Era” begins with a song that’s one three-and-a-half minute proclamation of forthcoming awesomeness. It’s silly and ludicrous in its brashness (“Your ears and your eyes may be bleeding”), but it rocks and somehow it makes it believes that whatever’s coming will deliver on the anticipation. Saliva isn’t anybody’s favorite band; usually they produce generic rockers, but this time they went with their instincts and delivered a genuine pick-me-up that uses phrases like “explosion of catastrophe.”
2. Fujiya & Miyagi – “Collarbone”
Every once in a while we meet something genuinely different, and it’s love at first sight. Or listen. What is this? Alternative Rock? A strange cousin of rap? Low groove jazz? A children’s rhyme? Who the heck are these guys? Their names sound Japanese. There’s a weird moment in the middle where he rolls the heck out of an “r”. There are sections whispered over bass and claps, mixed with pseudo-beat boxing. And then atonal guitar craziness. What really matters is that the first time I heard it I knew it was something special, and this ended up as one of the most-played tracks on my dearly departed radio show. Try walking down the street to this one.
3. Foo Fighters – “The Pretender”
The Foo Fighters, more than almost any band today, are capable of creating albums full of mainstream rock hits while still appealing to those who like to think of themselves as having discerning ears. This song rocks hard, but it also has a soul. “What if I say I will never surrender?” Was well onto my playlist before it showed up over the first “Dollhouse” trailer, which of course it was perfect for.
4. Vampire Weekend – “Oxford Comma”
I recently read someone, not really in a derisive way, proclaim Vampire Weekend “the Whitest Band in the World.” And yes, their biggest hit to date is about commas… sort of, anyway. It’s also about butlers and chap-stick. This is a song that seems laid-back and angry at the same time, barely contained behind the vaguely calypso rhythm. “Why would you lie about something dumb like that?” Another song that introduced me to something genuinely new.
5. PJ Harvey – “Down By the Water”
What the heck is this song even about? It’s like a low growl, wretched and lonely. It gets under your skin like an itch. PJ Harvey can do that. And it ends with a stretch nobody who hears it ever forgets, that whispered chant: “Little Fish/Big Fish/Swimming in the water/Come back here and give me my daughter.” There are strings here, guitar, drums, but they all seem under Harvey’s hypnotic spell, barely alive. A work of amazing power.
6. Matchbox Twenty – “How Far We’ve Come”
Rob Thomas is one of the greatest songwriters living. Yes, Matchbox Twenty has become so mainstream they get played on easy listening, but that’s hardly their fault, and this is a candidate for best song of the year. It’s been used in every trailer, ad, montage you can think of, but that’s because it the kind of song that genuinely works on myriad levels. It’s driving, it’s urgent, and it delivers its intended feeling with surgical precision: This is the end of this, and that is worth being sad about, but the ride delivered, and we should be dancing.
7. Flobots – “Handlebars”
I heard this song one day on the radio and it was probably the highlight of that week. It’s a song about the sin of pride, and not just that it’s a sin but why it’s a sin. It dramatizes the loss of innocence. This is a song that explains Hitler from Hitler’s perspective. That’s a lot to ask of a short piece of music, but somehow it manages it. Some people will hear it and say “there’s rapping on the radio,” as my mom always likes to. They’ll be missing something transcendant.
8. Sea Wolf – “You’re a Wolf”
For a relatively low-key song, this is one that sure gets stuck in my head a lot. There are about five lines in the whole song, but between the song manages between the quietly insistent guitar and the loping cello to keep itself feeling fresh. It pulls you in, like the semi-mystic encounter with a gypsy woman that its lyrics seem to describe. An indie gem.
9. Cold War Kids – “Hospital Beds”
This is a weird song. Cold War Kids are high-pitched and sparse, and the piano bits seem more to twinkle than play an actual tune. Much of the song seems like a sort of chant, a plea for help, but other times a strange joy seeps in. Somehow it feels to me like something out of World War I, with scenes from Atonement, though that would seem contradictory because it possesses the DNA of alternative rock, and makes no particular effort to be retro. It brings us into something so well that we’re almost startled when we’re let out of it five minutes later.
10. A Fine Frenzy – “Almost Lover”
There is no song that can bring me to the edge of tears so easily. It is almost ridiculous, how emotional this song can make me despite having no particular event in my life to tie it to. There are production pieces shimmering occasionally in the background, but it’s essentially just the singer’s voice and her fingers on the piano keys. I love sometimes just to feel; it brings me out of my life and into a place of startling beauty and sharpness. This song, especially in the startling crescendo of a bridge, does that as well as anything I’ve run across.
11. Scissors for Lefty – “Ghetto Ways”
Strategically placed to bring us out of the previous song’s mood, we have a weird, nearly incomprehensible piece of dance music. It’s like listening to a party through the wall. The chorus seems to just be a strange sort of heavy breathing… but it’s infinitely relistenable. It’s minor key enough not be jarring, but it’s still reminiscent of The Killers… after they dropped acid.
12. Rufus Wainwright – “Going to a Town”
A song written and performed with anger, sadness, and longing by an openly gay artist, this is an extremely slow build of piano rock that makes us really feel the repeated line “I’m so tired of America.” When I first heard this song, Obama was barely a blip on the radar screen, and it seemed like we were living in the last days of Rome, overrun with prejudice and malaise. Even before Wainwright starts singing about “bathing the body of Jesus Christ in blood,” he’s captured that feeling better than any other artist I’ve heard.
13. The Swell Season – “Falling Slowly”
This is a sweet little tune that somehow becomes, over the course of its length, about nothing less than everything. Male and female voices swoop over plaintive strings, lamenting how little time we have. It was from the soundtrack for the film Once, but it became much bigger than the little-seen movie it came from, and ended up winning an Oscar and putting its indie-darling creators squarely on the mainstream map. Glen Hansard makes us believe he’s falling in love and it’s making him cry, without irony and with total conviction.
14. Gomez – “How We Operate”
I discovered this song about a week before it went mainstream, largely due to an appearance on “Grey’s Anatomy”. Its main instrument is a banjo, at least for the opening minute or so, and the voice is almost country, but this is unmistakably a rock song. A rock song not quite like any other rock song. It’s like a night drive in the desert, gradually gaining momentum, adding layers, while something truly meaningful twinkles just out of reach. There are ghosts here, and sweeping strings.
15. Maximo Park – “Books from Boxes”
Maximo Park is one of those ice-cold bands with a low, melodic voice, like Longwave or Idlewild, and like most of those that are successful they somehow manage to be catchy, at least on this track. This didn’t make my collection for any special reason other than that I think it’s really good, and don’t seem to tire of it. In the first verse we hear “We can beat the sun as long as we keep moving.” And I for one believe it.
16. The Wombats – “Let’s Dance to Joy Division”
First of all, there’s a band named The Wombats. Second of all, someone wrote an entire song about listening to “Love Will Tear Us Apart” with an ironic ear. It’s peppy and fast, the single punkiest song on this disc. It made my regular playlist, and then somewhere in there it took on several more layers. This is my song about making the best of it in today’s economy. “It can all go so wrong, and we’re so happy.” It ends in laughter.
17. Fleet Foxes – “White Winter Hymnal”
This is the unlikeliest of indie hits. Time recently named it the third best song of 2008, and called it “choral roundelay.” It feels like the Beach Boys through a glass darkly, and it’s very very pretty. In only a few minutes, we’re once again in another world, this one snowbound and quiet. For all that, there’s a surprising amount of rock here, and I would hardly characterize this as a “slow song.”
18. IAMX – “President”
I never heard of IAMX before this song, but I have to seek out more of them. Like “Going to a Town”, this is a minor-key epic of piano rock. But unlike that tune, this one is post-Obama, and comes off more as an insistent proclamation of hope, a march to victory for the little guy. In a year where I found myself vaulted into politics, this song feels like where I’ve been and where my twisted dreams are going. With a circus-organ thump thrown in for good measure. It ends like a foreboding of the future.