In the Valley of Elah - my TIFF review

So I went to my first film festival movie today at the Toronto International Film Festival. I saw Paul Haggis's new piece In the Valley of Elah. The general plot focuses on the father of a soldier in Iraq (played by Tommy Lee), and follows his quest to find his son after the soldier returns from Iraq but goes awol. Before launching into it, I should disclaim the fact that I really like Crash (not loved, just liked).

Well, this was just as heavy and preachy as Crash, without the cliches, and with Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron channeling their raw, concentrated emotions into you. It was brilliantly acted; really, really, well acted. My friend AB is sure TLJ is going to get the oscar nod, and I have to say, i could see this happening. Susan Sarandon briefly appeared a few times as the mom, and cried a whole lot. I deride her because I find most of her performances one smidgen over the top, but she did well here, with one particularly poignant moment when she sees her son's remains "is that it?..." she asks. Oscar nomination for TLJ, maybe directing nomination for Haggis, but no best picture I would say, the script was too loose for me. A few times I screwed up my face and went: huh? A few times the symbolism or dialogue felt too preachy, and at other times the clever humor felt inappropriate.

Anyway, the talk about this movie beforehand billed it as "one of the first films to explore the effects of war on the families of soldiers." Or something like that. Well first of all I disagree with the premise, in that it seems to me a lot of war films are about the effects of war on the families of soldiers. Second of all, the movie wasn't at all about the 'family effect' anyway, which is a good thing because that sounded kind of boring (although it was an enduring subtheme). To me the movie was about how this war morally corrupts those involved. Without a clear moral grounding, a real us vs. them, good vs. bad struggle, war quickly devolves into an all-consuming leviathan. Vietnam was like that. World War I was like that.

SPOILER ALERT





The climax of the movie, to me, was an amazing scene where a soldier confesses to killing Tommy Lee's son, not without remorse, but with a chilling detachment from the morality of the event. It was like he realized what he did was wrong, but wrong in the way that shoplifting a candy bar is wrong, or shooting a squirrel with a BB gun. His conception of the magnitude and gravity of the act of killing another human being had been totally skewed. The overwhelming power of the scene derives from the juxtaposition between the horrified shock of Charlize and Tommy Lee, and the almost cheerful narrative of the soldier. Awesome stuff. I would say a must see.

Memo to the NFL - get rid of the green dots!

So I sat down to my first solid wasted Sunday's worth of NFL football, only to discover that my beloved (and much maligned) league had snuck an obnoxious new feature into my favorite sport. The green dot on the back of QB's helmets. The first thing I realized was how often I saw the back of a quarterback's head, and therefore how often I was staring at an incongruous green blemish on otherwise pristine helmets (particularly egregious was the Spot on the chargers' white helmets).

For the 2007 season, apparently, the NFL has put large green dot stickers, about 1.5 inches across, on the back helmets of every quarterback on the field. The reason, apparently, is "to indicate which helmets have built-in headphones to receive play calls".

Ok, well this is amusing for several reasons. First of all, according to this Packers website, the rule was instigated:

because the league felt offensive teams had an unfair advantage on these plays because they could call in a fake at the last second, by having two quarterbacks (with communication ability with coaches) on the field at the same time.

What? What?!!! When does this happen? What examples of egregious manipulation of radio communications have unbalanced a game since these technologies were introduced? Did this happen last year? If not, are they just speculating? Should we maybe spread nets across the top of all open NFL stadiums in case Al-Qaeda/North Korean/Iranian/French paratroopers attempt to leap into a game in progress?

I have to stare at these stupid Spots for the rest of the season because someone fixed somethin that wasnt broke. So many other things about the NFL could be improved (see: HgH use, criminality, concussions, care of retired players), and some flunky at the league office chooses this. It wouldn't bother me so much, were the moronic dots not so conspicuous.

Ok, so lets take it as given that the Spot is necessary, for the one play a year in the many thousands of plays in which a team attempts to manipulate radio communications. For this one event, less than 0.1% chance of occurring, cant we just have refs paying attention? What does the dot ensure anyway? Couldnt you just have a functioning radio without the sticker anyway? If you're going to cheat, why is having to put a sticker on your helmet going to stop you? This is so stupid, Im putting it in the idiot file. And my blood is going to boil every time I see it this year.

On the nature of art

How pompous a title is that? Perhaps I should delete this post before I write it. Anyway, good piece from Slate, my favorite online mag, about Jack Kerouac's On the Road Again. While I haven't read the book (much to my friend MQ's disgust), my general point is simply not about the book, but on the general thesis of the piece:

Which is why it's no wonder that On the Road, a book that we've termed an
American Sacrament, is almost as widely and passionately viewed as an American
Sham. This started around the time the novel was published, when Truman Capote
insulted Kerouac's prose as "typing not writing," and has continued until this
afternoon, as shown by the profusion of readers' spitballs aimed at our rather
reverent discussion here. (One of these can be found under the heading
"Kerouac's 50 years of Crap," and it's not even the unkindest.) Would the novel
have been better as a memoir, you asked in your last note. Don't know. What I do
know is that there are countless detractors out there who don't regard it as a
novel at all but as a load of pretentious mental slobber. It might or might not
reflect true-life events, but it's still, to the skeptics, a bucket of foamy
word-slop that, for some devious or self-seeking reason (canny marketing by its
publishers? The doltishness of our nation's youth? The narcissism of baby
boomers who see the novel as their own creation myth?) has been borne along like
a chalice all these years and deserves, at long last, to be tossed back into the
gutter where its shiftless characters so often slept.

This discussion to me, while seemingly tangential, is actually the very heart of what the book was about. Or any book, movie, painting, poem etc. is about. It is not what the book says, or how it says it, or the detail of its prose, or the power of its central theme, or the detail of
its characters, or the passion of its writing. While all of these are independently worthwile, interesting, and engaging, to me the essence of art is simply that it got us going in the first place. I reject the notion that there is an objective 'good' or 'bad' about human art, yet I relish the argument about whether it is good or bad!

Even the haters in the above paragraph have emerged as better, more informed, more dynamic, more human after reading the book....even if they thought it was a huge piece of shit. People are thinking, and talking, and feeling, and debating about this book. They argue endlessly, and take positions, and think of new perspectives and new concepts. None of the actual opinions are material (at least to me), but it is the creation of those opinions that warms my heart, and makes me confident that the human race is in good hands. We'll be all right.

Before anyone gets too cheery

Here's a more sobering moment. From City Boy blog,

The young girls were raped before execution,
so they would not go to heaven.

A crime against humanity

Never even heard of this before...but now I have.

FDA shuts down company for illegally marketing their product as a drug....nice

Well, this is exactly what it is designed to do, grats to the FDA. From here:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a Warning Letter to Brian Manookian, owner of Melanocorp, Inc. in Hendersonville, Tenn. for the illegal sale and marketing of the product Melanotan II, which is not FDA-approved, on Melanocorp's Web site.

The website www.melanocorp.com is currently a blank page. Luckily we have the internet wayback machine.

The FDA letter is here. A great read. Essentially, they got nailed for saying their product was a drug, but more than that, by saying it was a NEW drug. Looking through the archive above, you can see they claimed it worked when it was "not generally recognized as safe and effective for its labeled uses"(fda words, great phrase).
But the FDA letter is worth a read more because it is so harsh, and they clearly dont believe the company have any valid claims, and have any chance of recovering.

Within fifteen working days of receipt of this letter, please notify this office in writing of the specific steps you have taken to correct violations . Include an explanation of each step being taken to prevent the recurrence of violations, as well as copies of related documentation. If you cannot complete corrective action within fifteen working days, state the reason for the delay and the time within which you will complete the correction. If you no longer manufacture or market Melanotan II, your response should so indicate, including the reasons, and the date on which you ceased production.

That bold part is my favorite. they're saying, "If this letter caused you to shut down, let us know". The height of FDA bureaucratic arrogance, however, and frankly hilarious to me, is the very last paragraph in the letter, which I feel is kind of like "ok buddy, nice try. If you want to make a real drug, you can learn all about that online at this website or write to these kind folks and they'll answer your questions":

A description of the new drug approval process can be found on FDA's internet website at http://www.fda . ,gov/cder/rep-ulatory/anplications/default htm . Any questions you may have regarding this process should be directed to the Food and Drug Administration, Division of Drug Information (HFD-240), Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, Maryland 20857 .