Oval Office Thunderdome: Ted Cruz Will Never Be President

The Republican Party has a problem. They have mastered the art of gerrymandering to the point that they can win the House every two years while receiving less total votes, by millions, than Democratic candidates. They have also been able to leverage the conservatism of less populous states to win control of the Senate, even though the Republican members of that body, over the course of the three election cycles that turn over the Senate, received less votes than their Democratic counterparts across the aisle, again by millions. But the story is different when it comes to presidential politics. Continue readingOval Office Thunderdome: Ted Cruz Will Never Be President”

The 2015 Shitty Movie Sunday Awards

I’ve written a lengthy column about what I thought was the best in film that I saw from this past year. Now it’s time for the worst — for the dark side of my cinematic experience to come forward. There won’t be as much structure here as in the Empty Balcony Awards. It doesn’t matter what year a film was released, or if I’ve even seen it within the last year. These are awards for film garbage. Continue reading “The 2015 Shitty Movie Sunday Awards”

The Third Annual Empty Balcony Awards for Movies I Saw From Last Year

I like a sense of inflated self-importance. It’s one of the reasons I maintain a website that has never managed to garner more than a few thousand hits in a month. (Except for that one time the site was hacked by someone in Russia and the increase in traffic crashed the servers. Sorry about that, Dreamhost.) Does anyone out there really care what I have to say, on any topic whatsoever? I’m sure there are a few people who do, here and there. But I’m only pretending that anything that appears in this space is more than just tiny words muttered into the vast information ether. I read somewhere, once, that we, here in the Information Age, are generating data at a per day rate that eclipses the accumulated data of the entirety of human history from before the internet. That’s a lot of noise, and no matter how relevant one’s contribution, that contribution still consists mostly of noise. Continue reading “The Third Annual Empty Balcony Awards for Movies I Saw From Last Year”

The Empty Balcony: Nightcrawler

Every serious actor has to do a film where they play a deranged freak — someone sociopathic or supremely bent who decides to interact with the people around them, much to those people’s distress. Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, Christian Bale in American Psycho, Joaquin Phoenix in The Master, Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast, and many others, all played men who were malignancies to every person they met. Jake Gyllenhaal has come close before, but with Nightcrawler, last year’s film from writer/director Dan Gilroy, he has gone full creepy. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: Nightcrawler”

We Are Irredeemably Stupid, Tin Foil Hat Edition

Former baseball great Chipper Jones has slipped into the outrage/persecution complex. His crime? He wrote something stupid on Twitter. This past Friday, Chipper wrote, referring to the Sandy Hook massacre, “So the FBI comes out and confirms that Sandy Hook was a hoax! Where is the outrage? What else are we being lied to about? Waco? JFK? Pfff...” The internet was quick to respond, and Chipper had to return to Twitter to type up an apology. A supplicant come on bended knee, Chipper had roused the fury of the internet irate, and offered his due penance. He shouldn’t worry. The attention span for matters like this, especially involving retired athletes who are normally far away from the public eye, is short. He could have gotten away with doing nothing, but that would have meant staying offline for a week or so. Who wants to do that? Continue reading “We Are Irredeemably Stupid, Tin Foil Hat Edition”

The Empty Balcony: The Equalizer

The Equalizer movie posterOnce upon a time there was television show called The Equalizer that ran on CBS. It was successful enough to last for four seasons and 88 episodes. I don’t know if that’s significant. Any show that runs on American network television for four years and 88 episodes is a success, but it’s not a smash. In fact, The Equalizer was and is somewhat of an anonymous show. It’s curious that in the age of remakes and reboots, someone in Hollywood chose to resurrect this show and make it a movie.

From last year, The Equalizer is an action film that tells the story of one man who systematically eliminates the entire Russian mafia operating in Boston. It’s an impressive display of murderous vengeance, I must say.

Denzel Washington is Robert McCall, an hourly schlub at a big box hardware store with a shady past. He lives a Spartan life in a one bedroom, and spends his sleepless nights drinking tea and reading classic literature at a local diner. There, he meets an underage hooker by the name of Alina (Chloë Grace Moretz). One night Alina runs afoul of her masters and ends up in intensive care. It was at this point that I thought I knew where the story was going. McCall had become a surrogate father to the young girl in sexual slavery. Mess with her, and one messes with McCall. She’s the classic damsel in distress. I pictured about an hour and a half of McCall chasing down some local hoods and what not. You know, movie by numbers. But I had heard good things about this movie. I had a hard time reconciling what I had heard with such a weak potential payoff. I shouldn’t have worried. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: The Equalizer”

The Empty Balcony: Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the GalaxyI think I may have seen too many movies. That’s the only reason I can think of to explain why I did not like Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Studios’ 2014 money machine. It hit all the right notes when it comes to action, pacing, and story. It kept things simple, avoiding all pretension, and at no point did it strive to be something greater than it was. But...

I think the movie showed a profound disrespect for its audience. Big action movies aren’t just simple anymore. Rather, they have been simplified, stripped of any sort of nuance or individuality in the pursuit of massive box office receipts. There is nothing inherently wrong in trying to maximize profit. But what it does mean is that, in seeing a movie like this, no viewer can expect anything beyond superficial uniqueness. There are new stories out there. But new stories require an entrepreneurial spirit that Hollywood is currently anathema to. It’s hard to explain how much the studio system has changed in a generation, so I’ll just give this example: Taxi Driver was a Hollywood studio film. That’s right. Taxi Driver. A film featuring a violent psychopath, who develops a crush on an underage hooker, as a protagonist. These days, the talents of that film’s young director, Martin Scorcese, would be steered into projects that are designed from the very beginning to be sanitized versions of past successes. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: Guardians of the Galaxy”

The Empty Balcony: Thief

Thief, the debut feature film from writer/director Michael Mann, is a bit of a relic. The 1980s were a weird time, when the progressions of style were suddenly upended and everything went day-glo. Even music changed, utilizing the cost-effective yet grating sound of synthesizers. Michael Mann embraced this decade with gusto, finding a ready home in all the glitz and glamour. His style of filmmaking is so intertwined with the 1980s that I can’t figure out which informed the other. The style is a distinctive one that viewers can readily recognize. But it all had to start somewhere. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: Thief”