Manipumentary
The other night I picked up a movie called "Breach" because I'm a fan of the leading man - Chris Cooper. Normally, of course, he does what people know as "character roles" (a term I believe I coined when I was a child) because he's got one of those faces that just looks beaten/resigned/irked and slightly menacing. Always with the menacing looks that Chris Cooper is. Like he'd just as soon kill everybody in the room and then himself as pass around the hors d'oeuves.
Anyway, "Breach" turned out to be about Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who was caught after spying for the Russians for years - even though his last name has that "double s" common to all double agents.
Hello? FBI? Anybody home?
As far as movies go, it pretty much blows. The young agent isn't Matt Damon, who is supposed to play the young agent in these movies, but instead is that actor named Ryan Witherspoon who recently left Reese because her career is so much hotter'n his and he JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT! In the movie, he is so flummoxed and confounded by his bitter and paranoid boss that it's hard not to keep shouting at the screen, "He's spying for the Russians! He's spying for the Russians!"
Meanwhile, young numbnuts has the ubiquitous movie girlfriend back at the apartment who is always there waiting for him to come in from the cold and act all whiny and squishy-faced so she can stare tearfully back at him and ask, "What's happening to you?" At one point they entertain the boss and his wife - both devout whackos - and later she's like, shocked, that such a wingnutty weirdo would be a big wig at the FBI.
Uh. Yeah. Because normal FBI-ers parade around in women's clothing after hours - riiiiiight, young agent's girlfriend?
The movie ends with Chris Cooper getting caught (the make-up department deserves a Raspberry for its work in "Breached", by the way) and asking the young guy to, "Pray for me". Which he clearly didn't because he got 30 years in the slammer, 23 hours a day to be spent in solitary confinement.
Yeah. That's right. Welcome to America, Comrade. I mean, Geez Louise, I read that final bit (it's just before the movie credits) and almost threw up with the anxiety of thinking about this guy spending 23 hours/day for the next 30 years in solitary confinement. Why the hell would a so-called civilized country isolate ANYBODY for 23 hours/day? Why? What kind of demented, twisted reason could there possibly be for condemning someone to 30 years in prison and solitary confinement for 23 hours/day?
Gawd. Fuckin' whackjobs.
By the way, the wife of Chris Cooper in the movie doesn't know it but he's been making pornos of the two of them having sex together. So she's in the movie, not just as the devouted religious wife, but also as the internet rough sex lady. The girlfriend I've already described. But there's another woman in the movie (which is otherwise pretty much homo central). The boss of the young agent, the woman who has sent him to spy on the rogue spy, is played by Laura Linney. She doesn't have much of a part but her sign off number is a doozy. When the young agent comes into her office at the end to say he's leaving, he's out, he's gone - she just smiles that bitter sad smile of the barren, yet golden handcuffed, her dried up womb a testament to the tough, but losing, choice she made to claw her way up the FBI ladder only to find that the men at the top all have wives and families or are spying for the Russians.
So yeah. I don't know where people get the idea that Hollywood is wild and crazy with liberalism. Because it isn't. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how women are so nowhere in the movies, always playing the supportive girlfriend, wife, mother - that I really wanted to rip up my movie rentals card. I mean, really. It's such a turnoff, all these blinking girlfriends and sterile bosses. Do you suppose all the scripts are by women haters?
I do.
The other movie we saw was "Shortbus". I liked it:
FornicatingAlert!FornicatingAlert!FornicatingAlert!
And I thought Sook-Yin Lee was pretty cool. I mean, THAT'S brave - masturbating on camera for... thousands? of viewers. Nevermind beautiful actresses who wear ugly make-up to play serial killers - Sook-Yin Lee takes the Bravery in Acting Award for 2006.
Next up was Debbie Melnyk's and Rick Caine's movie about Michael Moore "Manufacturing Dissent":
I Would Have Called It "Michael and Me"
I thought it was really good. I'm a fan of the duo (they did "Citizen Black" and "The Frank Truth") and they didn't disappoint with this "manipumentary" of Michael Moore - as I had worried they might in an earlier SooeySays:
CouldYouBlogMoreAboutRick&Debbie,Sooey?
And I say "manipumentary" in the most complimentary of ways because, although Ms. Melnyk claims to have set out to make a documentary and get an interview with Michael Moore, it's pretty obvious to me - even from her own movie which she must have edited - that she wasn't REALLY trying to get an interview with Michael Moore at all. She was, in fact, doing to Michael Moore, exactly what Michael Moore did to Roger Smith. Except instead of leaving the interview on the cutting room floor, she made sure she didn't get one at all. I mean, see for yourself. I'm not a REAL journalist, but even I would be pushier'n Ms. Melnyk is in the movie when she lamely asks/says, "I'd like to do a real sit down interview?" and pretty much leaves it up to Michael Moore to say, "Uh... no?" in various ways on several occasions.
Still, the movie reveals him to be just the person most of us figured he was - that super obnoxious smart alecky student shitdisturber all grown up and playing in the big leagues, not really to his surprise, but very much to the surprise of anybody who knew him back when. But it also shows up all his opponents as... well... kind of jealous. There's really only one guy in the movie who sums him up in that generous, open-minded way that I would, "Yeah, he's an asshole. So?"
But that's the thing about Michael Moore. Whatever shifty bullshit he gets up to, he also takes on the U.S. establishment and really makes a mockery of it - like nobody else does, because most anybody else who can - won't. It takes a big set of balls, if you ask me to go up against Bush Inc. - and even bigger set to do it at a time when Patriot Acts and Yellow Alerts are the order of the day. And the real kicker is that he explains his passionate crusade so simply, "I'm an American".
And he is. He's also the American success story. And we all know how Americans REALLY feel about American success stories.
So rent, "Manufacturing Dissent". It's fun and whether you're left or right (and the makers of the manipumentary lean to the left, I'd say) you'll be entertained. The incidental footage of the political scenes that surround the attempts by Ms. Melnyk to interview Michael Moore is very compelling stuff - it really adds up. Some lefties might be mad (the video store guy was, "I don't give a shit how he does it - just that he does it!") but I wasn't. I like it when fancy pantzes are exposed by other fancy pantzes - especially when they can take it. (And some might argue here that Michael Moore CAN'T take it, but I'd argue otherwise. I think he knows he's a huckster - you can hear it in his voice when he says, "It's a mooooovie!")
Yes indeed. Always be there to cheer on somebody else taking down the guy who makes it to the top, I say. No matter your politics, the bigger they come, the harder they fall, and it's important to take time out to laugh at them as they pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and go make another manipumentary.
