All the Way

Shame is the best art movie I've seen since Exit Through the Gift Shop, but a lot more minimalist. It's a film by director Steve McQueen, originally an installation artist in England, who's got a tremendous eye and a way with getting actors to commit. His first movie, which I did not see, similarly starred Irish/German actor Michael Fassbender (Magneto!) and had a one-word title, Hunger, with Fassbender as real life figure Bobby Sands, Irish nationalist who died on hunger strike in a British prison. That one looked too grueling to me. This one has a lot of nudity without the emaciation.

Brandon lives in NYC and has a super power: his gaze. Without seeming to do anything but focus his attention, his unwavering gaze, on a pretty young woman on the subway train, he can charge her erotically, to the point where her arousal turns into shame, and a chase, a predator and object of desire.

We see him, intercut with the subway as it all starts, getting out of bed and walking through his stark, stylish NYC apartment after having had sex, his shoulder's broad, penis flopping, long shot where we can see his bare feet to patterning hairline, shadowy figure emphasizing the feral. Sex is, after all, what we have in common with the beasts. Brandon the beast, as are all the other bodies he couples with, seen in beautiful silhouettes and appreciation for human form, in extended take foreplay-to-coitis, in fast-cut electroshock reaction to tortured moments of real human feeling.

Brandon is, as they're treating the movie in PR, a sex addict, and while the movie takes that seriously as a heart attack, this is no after school special. In fact, the question of whether Brandon has learned anything is open to the last frame, and I think it's meant for us to go deep in ourselves, what we believe is possible about our own capability to break out of those mechanisms we use to block feeling because, as the movie makes clear in both elliptical and visceral ways, feeling so often is about pain.

So this (incredibly well built and well-hung) sex addict (in a successful job) in Sexhattan is seducing or buying or onlining it every free moment, even in the stall at work. He seems to assume he's covering his tracks well enough, or maybe not being seen unless he so wills it, but when his sister, Sissy, comes to town, everything starts falling apart, and Brandon's addiction is exposed at work and to her.

McQueen's eye is brilliant, with surfaces reminiscent of Michael Mann's great L.A. version in Heat, but much more in mastershots, often one long Steadicam or static take with actors improvising dialogue, or sex, almost like a cinematic play, unfolding unbroken, in real time before us.

There's man times when it's reminiscent of Antonioni, where the architecture of the modern city traps the characters in defined spaces, or dwarfs them, trapped and alienated, from their own souls. There's a bravura tracking shot, something like ten blocks of jogging at night in the city, ending up at 32rd & Madison Square Garden and a broken sign that shows the lengths our addict is going to escape his shame. But as we all know, New York City is at all times the city of where fornication never sleeps.

James Badge Dale is very different than he's been in that I've seen before, playing Brandon's married hound dog boss, Nicole Beharie makes a huge impression as an office fling, as does Lucy Walters on the subway in a what's essentially a silent film performance. All the actors seem completely natural to the world, noir, distanced, darkly glamorous, almost sci-fi noir. And, yes, they're great to look at.

Fassbender carries every scene, so completely committed to every revealing inch of the role, running a slow burn gamut that leads him all the way down to hell. Several times in the movie he hangs his head (in shame, of course) so low that, shot from behind, he appears to be the headless man. Man lowered below the beast, because he knows of his sin.

But it's Carrie Mulligan who breaks out completely in this. As Sissy, the ne'er-do-well sister just looking for love and shelter but getting ditched and burned at every turn, nowhere in sight is that prim core that's even in her character in Drive, let alone An Education. She there's naked, flawed, the most human thing in the movie. She sings an almost unbearably slowed down version of "New York, New York," revealing a hell of a voice and holding an infinite close-up, her eyes breaking our hearts, and her brother's.

What is it they share? What has caused him to run away from even her, and her to run to everyone? It's only obliquely referenced, just enough of a hint, but you can use your imagination. There's an element of horror Shame, that thing that at times makes it closer to Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom than Last Tango in Paris, that the past hints at and the present dreads.

Because Shame equals loneliness, and loneliness is it's own shame. A cycle of love and pain. Shame, as my mother liked to say, one of the great twin gifts that a parent gives a child.

The other being guilt.

Occupy the Holidays

I was hoping to take the kids to see Occupy Wall Street in NYC next week, but that tourist attraction is now undetermined. It turns out the Federal government colluded with over a dozen cities to set the movement of the parks today, most notably NYC where the 12th richest man in America, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, must be cleaning up in advance of the first wave of holiday tourism next week.

The good news is that it isn't working everywhere and, more importantly, the protesters have already changed the national conversation from the GOP deficit talking points. Deficit reduction is for the 1%; taxing the rich is for the 99%.

To top it off, the movement occupied the offices of the owners of NYC's Zuccotti Park tonight in Washington, DC:

The conversation continues.

NYC Police Brutality

While clearly not indicative of all police even on the scene of the crackdown on the Wall Street protesters, this video shows one of their member, probably of rank due to his white shirt rather than patrolman blue, pepper spraying several unarmed female protesters in clear violation of NYC police rules:



Once again, I wonder why the ridiculous Tea Partiers aren't on the front lines protesting Wall Street but instead focus their anger on the President and Democratic Party. Just identity politics at its worst, I guess. As for these protesters:

Since Sept. 17, a few hundred protesters have occupied Zuccotti Park on Liberty Street and Broadway, seeking attention for what they say is a financial system that is unjust and flawed. They have embarked on a series of daily marches near Wall Street, but their march to Union Square on Saturday was their largest and most ambitious.

Returning to the financial district from Union Square, many protesters used University Place, and the demonstration spilled into the street with protesters walking against traffic. The police put up mesh nets to prevent them from going any farther down University Place, and many of the demonstrators ended up on East 12th Street.

Well, it's not the first time the NYC cops have started some trouble. They did created the Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988.

And 1874.

BlizzCon

It's snowed hard back East and it's making a couple of careers, tarnishing a few others.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in NYC didn't seem prepared, and there's some accusations of budget cuts having left the city that way. Thank God for Twitter, relief for people stuck on tarmacs.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, not only did battlin' Gov. Chris Christie spend his blizzard in Florida with Mickey Mouse, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno took vacation in Mexico at the same time and didn't bother returning. Useless, I guess.

It's been all to the benefit of NJ State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat acting as Governor by law in lieu of the two Republicans. He's handled himself well and it may give him more power against Christie in the new year.

But the best PR has been self-generated by Newark Mayor Cory Booker who used Twitter with great effectiveness to help target snow relief in his town. Per Sean Gregory at Time:

Booker's frantic Twitter feed reads like an action novel. "I have a snowpocalypse crush on @CoryBooker," wrote one of Booker's million-plus followers. "He's like a superhero with a shovel." The mayor was out clearing snow until 3 a.m. on Dec. 28 before heading back out three hours later after a few winks. "This is one of those times you're just pushing," Booker told TIME while riding around Newark early Tuesday evening, anxiously awaiting a Twitter response from a Newark resident who said her 82-year-old grandmother was shut in by snow. A few minutes earlier, Booker, who played football at Stanford, helped dig out a New Jersey transit bus. "It's an endurance test." This is not the first time Booker has responded to distressed citizens on Twitter. He shoveled the driveway of an elderly man last New Year's Eve after the man's daughter tweeted about his predicament. He also hit the streets during snowstorms last February.

Check out his Twitter stream here.

Yes, social media is the hero once again. Tweet-tweet!

Dis-Order

Cancel that Order. That is, that Law & Order:

NBC confirmed on Friday that another cherished New York brand was moving to Los Angeles. The network canceled the original “Law & Order” series after keeping it on the air for 20 years. In its place, NBC is ordering a new drama, “Law & Order: Los Angeles,” moving the franchise to a place where there are presumably more murders to investigate.

One year shy of the Gunsmoke record, but does it really count as cancellation as long as other L&O franchise shows are on?

The big loss is for NYC production:

A total of 456 “Law & Order” episodes have been produced since the series had its premiere in 1990. Spotting the cast and crew filming on the city streets is almost a rite of passage for New Yorkers.

Fred Berner, an executive producer of the show, called the cancellation “a devastating blow to the New York City production community.”

Thousands of people are believed to be employed, albeit many indirectly, by the series and its two spinoffs. The series has been especially important to the many Broadway and Off Broadway actors who make appearances as guest stars.

Mr. Berner was standing outside a Broadway theater when he was reached on his cellphone on Thursday evening. “I guarantee you, every name in the playbill will have appeared on ‘Law & Order,’ one of the three shows,” he said.

Dum-dummm.

Just Like I Pictured It

NYC awesome, with a thanks to Phase.

Good Fun

Frank Rich asks "Who's Afraid of Barack Obama?":

The Washington wisdom about Mr. Obama has often been just as wrong as that about Mrs. Clinton. We kept being told he was making rookie mistakes and offering voters wispy idealistic sentiments rather than the real beef of policy. But what the Beltway mistook for gaffes often was the policy.

Mr. Obama’s much-derided readiness to talk promptly and directly to the leaders of Iran and Syria, for instance, was a clear alternative, agree with it or not, to Mrs. Clinton’s same-old Foggy Bottom platitudes on the subject. His supposedly reckless pledge to chase down Osama bin Laden and his gang in Pakistan, without Pakistani permission if necessary, was a pointed rebuke of both Mrs. Clinton’s and President Bush’s misplaced fealty to our terrorist-enabling “ally,” Pervez Musharraf. Like Mr. Obama’s prescient Iraq speech of 2002, his open acknowledgment of the Pakistan president’s slipperiness turned out to be ahead of the curve.

Then there's Jackie and Dunlap's pretty funny redneck take on this week's GOP debate. Favorite line:

"And Romney got a question on black on black crime, his area of expertise..."

Oh, and the Cheney/Bush Administration wants to slash anti-terror grant programs to major cities, like NYC, in half.

Ha, ha, terrorist threat.

Busted

The walls are starting to cave in on former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.

Back in the day when Rudy was running for reelection, a friend of mine -- the wife of a close buddy -- told me there was no way she was going to vote for "that fascist." Indeed, Rudy did his NYC clean-up with a lot of force, also his opening up to real estate developers, but was absolutely terrible on race relations (eventually alienating even those who had supported him earlier) and even tried to use his office to censor works of art and punish the museum for their noteworthy British "Sensation" show:

Giuliani asserted that he found a portrait of a black Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung and photographs of genitalia to be the most offensive. Other works that outraged the mayor include a bust of a man made from his own frozen blood, the use of dead pigs and cows sliced from head to tail in a tank of formaldehyde, and a painting depicting the murder of children that took place in England in the 1960s.

Although threatening to withhold public funds for the Brooklyn Museum, he only succeeded in making British artists Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili et al the most famous contemporary artists.

So inside of the authoritarian, that one trait which most endears him to the average Republican voter, does it necessarily go hand-in-hand that he would cheat on his wife, and let her and her kids learn that he was divorcing her from the television set in Gracie Mansion?

It's a man who's only in it for himself, of course. His own ego. His sexual gratification. His yearning for power.

Hence no surprise that, while still married to second wife Donna Hanover and engaging in an affair with eventual third wife Dr. Judith Nathan, he had people on the city tab squiring around his mistress like it was his own kingly taxi service, all on the public dime.

It's the same thing that took down NY State Comptroller and mayorial hopeful Alan Hevesi. It's a felony.

None of it any surprise. Rudy's fatal flaw is actual more about his legal background, and how he lies like the bad lawyers that make people hate all of 'em. He just says whatever he wants to bolster his rhetoric, like it's the College Republican club, a vicious advocate who cheats on the facts. Anything to win.

I'm guessing that since he was coming off a "rumored" longterm affair with his press secretary, Cristyne Lategano, imagining that much of their erotic time would have been spent alone in workplace settings, it was probably second nature to integrate his new affairlette into his official life and quarters. After all, he was a very busy man.

So what if maybe he made them build the terrorism command center, against expert recommendations, close enough to City Hall that he could go down there and shag with Dr. Nathan. Busy men have to be efficient with their time.

Giuliani isn't the first executive politician who thinks he's popular enough that he owns the city or the state enough to take liberties for personal pleasure. But what's been so dissonant during this run up to the GOP primaries is how flagrant he was with his amorality, yet it's gotten virtually no play among the party faithful. Media blackout, maybe. Narrative interference (Mr. 9/11), maybe. Willful self-delusion, certainly.

The key indicator to watch during this scandal is Fox News, run by Giuliani's very own ex-campaign manager, Roger Ailes. If they show people in the heartland giving up on Giuliani based on what they're learning about the real Rudy during these next few news cycles, his goose is cooked. But they'll be his staunchest hagiographers to the end.

Watch Rudy sink like a rock in the upcoming GOP polls. He was wearing badly last night in the Florida debate, and the party faithful are breathing a sigh of relief that Mike Huckabee appears ready for primetime.

All that's left is face-saving so he can duck back into the private sector and keep the brand intact enough to get clients. Expect him to drop out by March. New affair twelve months hence.

America's Mayor.