“Let’s get this straight McKay Hatch, you and your “Campaign Against Cussing” have crossed the motherfucking line with your recent attack on the Modern Family TV show and decent hardworking people like me are not going to take it anymore.
“We’re fighting for basic survival in the worst economic climate for the American middle class in nearly a century and you and your fellow religious nuts are worried about cusswords? Are you out of your intolerant 18-year-old mind?
“Look kid, I’m worried about paying the rent, high gasoline prices, and having a heart attack without health insurance. I don’t have time for this shit.
“The painful truth is that you have the legal and moral right to do a lot of fucked up shit in the United States. If you want to steal homes from little old ladies, you’re free to trick them into predatory mortgages; if you’re willing to prostitute yourself to business interests, we’ve got a seat for you in the U.S. Congress; and if you want to get rich on blood money you can deny care to the uninsured while showering senior citizens covered by Medicaid with unnecessary medical procedures. You can even start a needless war to help your political supporters raid the treasury.
“But you and your “Campaign Against Cussing” may not fuck with the Modern Family television show in my world just because you embrace a Mormon faith that demonizes gays and frowns on gay marriage.”

Really, he rarely curses in his other columns. This one was special.

http://www.cynicaltimes.org/articles/zealot-wants-modern-family-pulled/

“The mainstream media continues to advance knowing sins of omission in its economic reporting as evidenced by Friday’s erroneous report that 1.64 million new jobs were created in the United States in 2011. The real gain was more along the lines of 440,000 jobs.
“Why? Because zero is not zero in monthly job creation. It’s 100,000.
“That’s how many new jobs must be created each month just to keep pace with our fast-growing national population, which has expanded by 33 million people to 314 million since former President George W. Bush took office Jan. 1, 2000. Anything above 100,000 new jobs a month represents a “net gain.” Anything less represents a net loss.
“The Great Recession, which officially claimed 7.43 million jobs, began in December of 2007 and lasted 18 months. The true number of jobs destroyed during that time span is at least 9.33 million once the data is adjusted for the 100,000 jobs that must be created each month to keep pace with population growth.
“That’s 1.2 million new jobs every year just to tread water.
“Once we subtract that 1.2 million figure from the 1.64 million jobs created in 2011, we’re left with a net gain of only 440,000. At that rate it will take 21 years for the U.S. labor market to recover from the Bush presidency.
“Twenty-one years. Two. One.”

http://www.cynicaltimes.org/articles/spit-out-that-kool-aid-the-jobs-picture-still-sucks/

“(Washington) DC’s preference for convenient political lies over inconvenient truths has become so pronounced that it’s created hundreds of new jobs by giving birth to a genre of television shows that includes the The Colbert Report, Onion News Network, The Daily Show and Real Time With Bill Maher. The only reason they seem to lean left is because the right provides the best material.
-Did you know that radical Muslims are taking over the United States and replacing our legal system with sharia law?
Not.
-Did you know that Obama is advocating death panels and rationed medical care?
Not.
-Did you know that the American medical system is the envy of the world?
Not.
-Did you know that any oil drilled from the Arctic National Wildlife refuge would be sold at a discount right here in the U.S., rather than to the highest bidder in the global marketplace?
Not.
-Did you know that Wall Street isn’t slanted in favor of huge investors?
Not.
-Did you know that Congress is full of strong, principled, sacrificial leaders who come from the same backgrounds as you and me and are devoted to advancing the greater good?
Not.
-Did you know that cutting taxes for political donors stimulates more donations.
OK, that last one is true.
“The current crop of machine politicians seems to feel nothing but contempt for the decent, middle-class Americans who put them in office and their watchdogs in the Fourth Estate. They pity our attachment to the truth.”

“One of the side-effects of our bifurcated Society is that many machine politicians just don’t know the voters they’re supposed to represent anymore. That’s why Dems declared victory in 2008 and Republicans claimed a mandate in 2010.
“The painful truth is that neither side won in either election because most of the middle-class wasn’t voting Democrat or Republican. They were voting against incumbents in a bid to burn down two political machines that now seem to exist solely to serve themselves.”

Love Exposure

10. Sarah’s Key (France) – an admirably structured narrative succeeds in demonstrating how a historical mystery can shape current events, and our present-day moral choices. It’s a frequently-used motif, but director Gilles Paquet-Brenner, and veteran actress Kristin Scott Thomas, do the material proud. And I always like seeing Aidan Quinn getting good work. (Landmark Cinemas)

9. Senna (Brazil) – a great sports documentary on Formula One race car driver Ayrton Senna, told exclusively with actual at-the-time footage of his driving career, his interactions with business partners and family, and the other charitable work he did in Brazil that made him a genuine national hero. It may be one of the best sports docs ever. (Landmark Cinemas)

8. Silent Souls (Russia) – a quiet, urgent, reverent, bawdy, delicate and moving road trip movie. Two men commit to seeing off a dead loved one in their own solemn fashion, but there’s an enormous amount of hard-won joy here as well. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

7. The Mill And The Cross (Sweden / Poland) – The Passion is transported to the Spanish Inquisition in a landmark painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Lech Majewski animates the actual people, and humanized moral stakes, of the painter’s concept with astonishingly successful mastery of modern filmmaking techniques. It’s one of the most visually beautiful movies I saw this year. (Music Box Theater)

6. House Of Pleasures (France) – another gorgeous film that doesn’t shy from its darker aspects, here chronicling the last days of a turn of the 20th century brothel in Paris through the eyes of its workers. A rock-solid ensemble of actresses, and Bertrand Bonello’s sense of echoing nostalgia, canny social politics and contemporary perspective make this a beautifully haunting, cruelly matter-of-fact, uniquely involving film. That this wonderful film never got a Chicago screening is truly baffling.

5. The Artist (France) – an unapologetically unoriginal but masterfully executed celebration of the things we elementally love about movies, and how much of that has been neglected by our present-day corporate movie mills. This’ll be an easy one to see over the next few months – the Harvey Weinstein Oscars-marketing-machine is full-speed-ahead, and Jean Dujardin may give us a Marion Cotillard-like upset in the Best Actor race. (Now playing at the Landmark Cinemas, but it will later expand to many outlying theaters, I’m sure)

4. Le Havre (Finland / France) – Aki Kaurismäki’s uniquely stylized, eccentrically funny films aren’t for everyone, but this is easily his most accessible, and gracious, comedy. A resilient, browbeaten hero helps a young African boy find his way to a new home, with some help from his friends and foes. Kaurismäki draws from Keaton, Chaplin and Marcel Carné in mixing sentimentality with skepticism, but you can just enjoy it as a funny movie with a happy ending. It’s also one of the favorites for Best Foreign Film. (Music Box Theater)

3. Certified Copy (France / Iran) – Abbas Kiarostami has created a puzzle we’re happy to never solve – as long as we get to stay in the company of these two fascinating characters. Juliette Binoche and William Shimell create a couple that is vastly greater than the sum of its two parts, and their conversations in the lovely Tuscan countryside they’re exploring are sometimes enlightening, sometimes argumentative, sometimes downright illogical, but always engaging. And your own conversations after the movie will be just as rich, I guarantee. (Landmark Cinemas)

2. Mysteries Of Lisbon (Portugal) – a flat-out gorgeous historical epic with real Dickensian complexity and liberal dashes of Buñuelian surrealism, it’s a 4-1/2 hour film you’ll wish was twice as long. It follows young Pedro da Silva across his own specific family history, and ripples out across a number of profoundly interlinked generational adventures and intrigues concerning monastics and pirates, noblemen and beggars, nuns and libertines – sometimes as separate characters, sometimes the same person, cleverly, opportunistically disguised. This film is one of the best novels you’ll never be able to read. (Music Box Theater)

1. Love Exposure (Japan) – another long-form masterpiece, and my favorite film this year, combines the reckless abandon of youthful rebellion with black-market voyeur porn with profoundly spiritual introspection in a breathlessly engaging plot that Voltaire, or even Mary Doria Russell, would have been proud to have imagined themselves. How director Sion Sono could juggle this much transgressive hilarity with this much fervent religious extremism and still have a transcendently moving love story come out the other end is one of those honest-to-God filmmaking miracles that only happen once a decade or so. It’s not nearly as explicit as it sounds – it’d have a hard time earning an ‘R’ rating for anything you see, I suspect – but the subversive audacity of its ideas is thrilling. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Honorable Mentions: Amer; Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame; The First Beautiful Thing; Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life; I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You; Miss Bala; Nobody Else But You; Poetry; Point Blank; Shame; A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas; Undertow (Contracorrientes).

Unseen by me, but worth checking out: A Separation; Bullhead (Rundskop); Declaration Of War; Pina; Scheherazade, Tell Me A Story; The Skin I Live In; Special Treatment (Sans queue ni tête).

“…it would be nice to believe that people can take care of themselves without government help, but it just hasn’t proved true in the past: Programs like Social Security and Medicare — programs which run directly against America’s Jeffersonian/libertarian tradition — were necessary because people couldn’t take care of themselves. The elderly, especially, had trouble paying medical bills after their working days ended. The American people, through our government, decided to make a very rudimentary deal: to make sure that our parents didn’t starve or sleep in the streets or were unable to get medical care. There was nothing unconstitutional about that — just as there’s nothing unconstitutional about requiring people to have medical insurance now. The deal was made with the consent of the governed.”

http://news.yahoo.com/12-days-till-iowa-ron-paul-not-politician-105500522.html

“Ron Paul… is leading most polls in Iowa with a message of cutting government, including the defense budget, and staying out of wars.

“The problem isn’t that he’s saying it. Paul has been consistent for years. The problem for the GOP establishment is that the American people are now listening. And this threatens the coalition that can put Karl Rove and Wall Street and the Religious Right at the same table to slice the pie of power.

“I’m not endorsing Paul here. But you’d have to be blind not to see Republican bosses in panic. Because if Paul wins Iowa, his ideas might catch fire. And then the bosses won’t be able to feed as easily.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-1222-20111222,0,2711028.column

“The years following the 2008 market crash have been hard on many people. But due to other transitions in the economy and culture – the continued trickling-up of wealth to the very top, the “storm of innovation” unleashed by the Internet, a growing faux-populist disregard for expertise — certain sectors have been hit harder than others. Shop clerks, however erudite, don’t fit into the most influential definition of “the creative class” – urban scholar Richard Florida considers these folks members of the service class, about which he is not optimistic. But they’ve been, over the decades, important conduits between consumers and culture — and a training ground and meeting spot for some of our best writers, filmmakers and bands.

“These places speak to people outside urban bohemians. Poet and critic Dana Gioia, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, grew up in the ’50s, in the rough Southern California town of Hawthorne, with parents who lacked college degrees. “When I was a little kid, there was a used bookstore every 10 blocks,” he recalls. “There would be some grumpy old man running it: If you came in a couple of times he’d comment on your books — not in a charming way that you’d put in a movie. But it showed you that other people read and had opinions; it was a socialization. So much of culture is chance encounters between human beings.”

“There’s a bigger, more tangible dimension to all of this: The death of the clerk as cultural curator is part of a larger move by which computers are putting educated “knowledge workers” out of jobs. It’s not just the guy on the assembly line, now – it’s the autodidact at the bookstore. Next, they’re coming for librarians – many of whom are dreaded “public employees.”

“In a world of rapid technological advance, where even some highly trained lawyers and medical pathologists are in trouble, the humble clerk doesn’t stand a chance. The out-of-work video store clerk, blogging in his bedroom for free, may be a kind of canary in the cultural coal mine. We don’t always get warnings before our livelihood – or our lives – suddenly change. But the signs today, of a new kind of creative destruction, are getting harder and harder to ignore.”

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/the_clerk_rip/singleton/

“That a glamorous movie star whose day job involved hours of makeup calls and dress fittings would spend her off hours designing sophisticated weapons systems is one of the great curiosities of Hollywood history. Lamarr, however, not only possessed a head for abstract spatial relationships, but she also had been in her former life a fly on the wall during meetings and technical discussions between her ­munitions-manufacturer husband and his clients, some of them Nazi officials. Disturbed by news reports of innocents killed at sea by U-boats, she was determined to help defeat the German attacks.

“Over several years the composer and the movie star spent countless hours together drafting and redrafting designs, not only for the torpedo system but also for a “proximity fuse” antiaircraft shell.

“On Aug. 11, 1942, United States Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted to them for their design. But persuading the Navy to take it seriously proved insurmountable. Pentagon bureaucracy, coupled with the fact that the design’s co-inventor was a movie star, resulted in their idea being ignored. Hedy’s folly may have been in assuming men in government might overcome their prejudice that a beautiful woman could not have brains and imagination. But she lived to see similar versions of her invention be put into common practice, and in 1997, Hedy Lamarr, at the age of 82, and George Antheil (posthumously) were honored with the Pioneer Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/books/review/hedys-folly-by-richard-rhodes-book-review.html

Any time there’s a small salvo of serious movies about sexuality and/or prostitution, I can’t help but compare them to Luis Buñuel’s 1967 ‘Belle De Jour,’ his wonderfully thoughtful, dreamlike and funny exploration of how men and women reconcile their ‘civilized’ relationships, the give and take of gender politics, and the baser, more primal instincts that perpetually vex, or inform, the other two. It’s the tale of Severine (Catherine Deneuve), who has just married a handsome doctor in what would seem to be an idyllic marriage. But Severine is terrified of consummating – she even insists they sleep in twin beds. Nonetheless, she’s haunted by sado-masochistic dreams, and when she learns that a married mutual acquaintance is leading a secret second life as a prostitute, she takes the plunge herself. Buñuel’s depiction of Severine, her clients, her working situation, and the divergences between her shame and her sexual awakening, covers an enormous range of cultural, psychosexual, and psychoanalytical territory in a surrealistic context that never really allows us to pin down what’s real and what’s simply Severine’s fantasy/dream life. It’s a dissertation-worthy masterpiece.

Directors who try to portray these issues in highly stylized, fairly unrealistic ways, in order to create a comfortable distance, run the risk of not making real, identifiable emotional connections with the very audience they want to connect with. But overly realistic, earnest explorations of those same issues can be just as alienating, if not seeming downright silly (this is superficially interesting, but it has nothing to do with me). The depiction of real, physical sex between two people, generated from real, believable emotions, is one of the toughest things in the world for a film audience to suspend its disbelief about. In some ways, that’s too bad – sex-positive people are some of filmed erotica’s most ardent defenders – if it’s warts-and-all, psychologically messy, it can be cathartic; if it’s fantasy sex that could never really happen in our day-to-day lives, that can be cathartic too, for entirely different reasons. But in many ways, our discomfort, or distancing humor, about it simply reflects our own fear and reticence about addressing these issues clearly and unselfconsciously in our own real lives. And that’s a can of worms that no artist is going to solve from their own personal perspective no matter how much style or intelligence they bring to bear. I think Bernardo Bertolucci has come closest – ‘Last Tango In Paris’ and ‘The Dreamers,’ I feel, are both admirably serious, well-structured movies with credible, interesting people we come to care about, that prominently interweave serious sexual issues into their overall narratives. But people are lining up, as we speak, to tell me what pretentious pieces of Euro-trash crap those movies are. Needless to say, it’s pretty subjective.

One of the interesting dichotomies of ‘Belle Du Jour’ is Severine’s emotional devotion to her husband. She loves him, and will never leave him, but goes elsewhere to deal with longings she doesn’t necessarily understand but chooses to fulfill nonetheless. In Bertrand Bonello’s period drama House Of Pleasures (L’Apollonide (Souvenirs de la Maison Close)) (France, 2011), the prostitutes therein were recruited, or hired away from other houses, well before any of those domestic considerations ever became an issue. Clothilde (Céline Sallette) has been there for 12 years, and is still well under 30. Pauline (Iliana Zabeth), who’s just turning 16, has written a letter to the Madame of the house, Marie-France (Noémie Lvovsky), asking to be hired, expressing her admiration for L’Apollonide’s classy reputation, and accompanied by a note of permission from her parents. Many of the other girls are in their late teens or early twenties: Samira, the Algerian exotic (Hafzia Herzi), Léa (Adele Haenel), whose specialty is her doll/automaton guise, Julie (Jasmine Trinca), who’s blessedly discreet about how she acquired her nickname ‘Caca,’ and Madeleine, the Jewess (Alice Barnole), whose lovely face has recently been disfigured by a particularly sadistic client (she’s renamed ‘The Woman Who Laughs,’ a reference to the great Conrad Veidt silent movie ‘The Man Who Laughs;’ Heath Ledger’s Joker in ‘The Dark Knight’ pays the same homage). The only quest for fulfillment these women are on is the one that feeds them, keeps a roof over their head, and gives them the opportunity to create their own independent lives when they decide to retire. Working in the lush, well-appointed L’Apollonide is uniformly assumed to be a vastly better fate for them than prosaic ‘honest’ labor or consigning themselves to a practical marriage. L’Apollonide is one of many houses of ‘tolerance’ in turn-of-the-19th-century Paris, and despite its gorgeous furnishings and the upscale indulgences of its clientele, it’s struggling to compete with its contemporaries. And, as Marie-France calculates her expenses, and assesses her workers a seemingly fair share of the costs, they, like any other workers, can’t help but feel that they’re selling their soul to the company store.

'House Of Pleasures'

Bonello’s film rarely leaves the interiors of L’Apollonide – when the women treat themselves to a rare day out, it’s in a secluded woods, completely removed from the rest of the world. Their giddy relief is profound, as short-lived as it may be. Women are only allowed to leave the house with Marie-France or another man, it’s explained, otherwise they’ll be immediately nicked for solicitation. The film, then, chronicles their day-to-day lives, using the day to prepare for the evening, using the evening to indulge their customers and earn their livelihood, and sleeping it off to start the workmanlike day once again. They must keep themselves scrupulously clean, maintain their own wardrobes and cosmetics, and avail themselves of the hairdressers, and gynecologists, provided to them by Marie-France. They form solid friendships and firm allegiances to each other, and have a skeptical yet not-unaffectionate regard for their clients. When Léa no longer wishes to see a client, she sends a polite letter and encloses snippings of her pubic hair; she helps Pauline hurriedly wash up after she’s bathed in champagne with an earlier client. Samira does card readings to tell the fortunes of her compatriots. Madeleine, no longer available to the regular clientele, cooks, cleans, and devotedly assists the girls. When one of the girls contracts syphilis from a client she has genuinely liked and trusted, she confesses to the other girls that she misses him nonetheless. Far from idealized fantasy figures, sexual therapists or gold-digging opportunists, they are simply another manner of honest worker, with genuine responsibility and pride towards their labors, and vague but hopeful notions of where their earnest efforts might lead later.

I really liked this movie – for a male director, Bertrand Bonello has fostered a superb acting ensemble of irreproachably capable actresses, and it’s easy to sense that he and they are comfortable and cooperative in working with each other. Josée Deshaies’ cinematography and lighting are seamless and superb, and Bonello has collaborated well with editor Fabrice Rouaud to lend real temporal complexity to the narrative. At particular points of the film, flashbacks or motifs will double back on themselves, mirroring the repetitive nature of the daily grind, or the lingering emotional import of particular events (most notably Madeleine’s attack – again, he’s a regular customer whom Madeleine likes, and she relates an odd dream to him, vestiges of which echo throughout the film). He employs four-way split screen at times, and isn’t afraid to use boldly anachronistic music – mournful roadhouse blues, or even the weirdly appropriate ‘Nights In White Satin.’ I must warn you, however, that there’s one very quick but extremely disturbing shot in one of Madeleine’s flashbacks that, arguably, didn’t need to be indulged. Movieline’s Stephanie Zacharek, one of my favorite critics, has flatly stated that it ruined the entire movie for her. My reaction wasn’t so thoroughly damning for the whole of this otherwise admirable film, but I can’t disagree with Zacharek in the regard that I wish he hadn’t made that choice.

Bonello is relatively straightforward with who L’Apollonide’s women are, and the practicalities of their choices. Director Julia Leigh, in Sleeping Beauty (Australia, 2011) almost deliberately obscures the motivations of her protagonist, Lucy (Emily Browning, in an undeniably brave performance). In her press notes, Leigh repeatedly points to Lucy’s ‘radical passivity’ as the mental state from which she navigates her own life. Lucy doesn’t just submit to the wishes of her subsequent clients; she’s already relinquished a great deal of control over her own general fate to random circumstance. She does copying and clerical work for an office firm, she waits tables at a small café (although we only see her cleaning up at the end of her shifts, never interacting with customers), she’s a subject for medical research (which tests the particulars of her gag reflex – wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more…), and she turns the occasional trick for out-of-town businessmen at a downtown hotel – and yet still can’t pay the rent to her fellow student roommates. Whether her financial difficulties are real, or just a game she plays with her roommates, they nonetheless take a turn for the better – she answers an ad for “silver service” providers, a very exclusive set of female domestics who serve as waitstaff, in revealing lingerie or less, for a very exclusive, and indulgent, monied clientele. After proving herself adept and accommodating at that level, she’s promoted; the service she provides now involves being drugged into deep sleep for eight hours while the aging individual male clients are allowed to have their way with her, however they choose. The initial rule for the men (strictly enforced, somehow) is No Penetration Allowed, which is later amended to Leave No Marks, Either, after a particularly rough early session.

Lucy’s boss, or handler, or, let’s face it, pimp, is an elegant older blonde named Clara (Rachael Blake), who, while being very patient with, and kind to, Lucy, is obviously far more deferential, and interested, in her male clientele’s wants, needs, and faced fears. She dispenses Lucy’s drug as tea, and the short ritual is efficiently but delicately performed. Like Marie-France, she endeavors to create the safest possible environment for her employees, but it’s clear that the direct risks of the work are the girls’ own responsibility.

Emily Browning and Rachael Blake in 'Sleeping Beauty'

Julia Leigh hasn’t overtly made a film about sex – I think she’s made a film about the commoditization of everyday life, and how our submission to it becomes instinctual, rather than consciously chosen; at this point, the ethics or morality of it are no more germane than the ethics and morality of clothing or feeding ourselves, or sleeping, for Lucy or her clients. But her conception of Lucy as a model for that is, I think, deeply flawed. Emphasizing the sex and/or power aspects of the scenario raises a few more eyebrows, and certainly gets our attention, but Lucy’s choices elsewhere in the film, which I found to be far more intriguing, are given little if any import. She frequently visits an old friend called Birdmann, whose self-destructive substance issues are coyly hidden in plain sight. They’re intimate friends, but Lucy has chosen to withhold any deeper engagement with him. When he passes away, Lucy meets a mutual friend at Birdmann’s funeral. ‘Will you marry me?’ she forthrightly suggests. ‘Why now?’ he asks irritably. ‘You had your chance. Fuck you. I’m with Helen now. Helen is courteous. You should try it some time. Courtesy.’ Lucy is distanced, withholding, sometimes maliciously so, but we never get a sense of what she’s trying to protect or preserve; nor do we get a sense of her motivations on those few occasions where she chooses to give herself over entirely – if we don’t know what she values, then we don’t know what she’s relinquishing. When she’s given her first payment from Clara, she burns it. Does she always do this, or just here? Having been kicked out of her student apartment (because, presumably, she’s burning the rent instead of paying it), she rents a spacious and expensive apartment in a high-rise building downtown. When she turns tricks at the hotel, early in the film, she plays games about whether her favors will be withheld or not; but, later, the frankness and expediency with which she propositions a customer is both surprising and disheartening. The ‘I’m Submitting’ / ‘I’m In Charge’ signals get obscurely crossed, and we slowly get the idea that Lucy is just a vessel for Leigh’s own provocative but confused ideas; we tire quickly of the deck being so deliberately stacked against her, while Leigh struggles to convince us that it’s Lucy’s own nature. There’s far more relatable humanity in any one of five or six of Bertrand Bonello’s women, or even in Buñuel’s Severine, than Leigh is able to manage, at all, with Lucy. Leigh uses the transgressive ‘Sleeping Beauty’ gimmick, and the headlong fearlessness of Emily Browning’s performance, to reel us in, but the rest of her film is an untidy jumble of cautionary generalizations about women caught up in the paternal capitalist mill, either willfully or unwittingly.

At L’Apollonide, the women are a civilized indulgence the male clients can afford – the men are well-mannered, and even affectionate (and the one that wasn’t is dealt with in nasty fashion), but we’re also reminded that, ultimately, when things become too real, they’re sadly disposable. Lucy’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ clients are trying to retain their masculinity and a youthful, sensualist, intimate ideal that their bodies, and their lives’ experiences, will no longer support. In Shame (United Kingdom, 2011), we get a different story from the male point of view. Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) is a successful office-firm worker who is obviously well remunerated for his business smarts, alacrity with clients, and goodwill towards, and from, his co-workers. But at every slack moment, at work, or in the outside world, Brandon immerses himself in sex – pornography, pick-ups, prostitutes, internet video-chat, male hustlers; any port in a storm, and his whole life is the storm – sometimes he rides the waves gleefully, but mostly he’s terrified of drowning – but he needs the rush. We start to understand Brandon’s insatiable needs when his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), arrives and insinuates herself into his life; SPOILER ALERT – there have obviously been intimacies that they have shared in the past, but now regret – or, at least, he regrets them – but his proclivities henceforth have been driven by his need to duplicate the intimacy and intensity of that early experience. Like any addiction, whether it’s drugs or alcohol or, here, sex (and I’m in the camp that believes ‘sex addiction’ is an overly simplistic, reductive, inadequate phrase), Brandon is trying to reclaim that first feeling of panacea that accompanies the first few lines of coke, the first good happy-drunk benders, or, in this case, that first sexual connection with someone he can never possibly be that close to, that emotionally tied to, again. Hence, Brandon seeks out those feelings, but never lets feelings intrude on the search. For Sissy, it has lead to a kind of emotional promiscuity – she thinks nothing of bedding Brandon’s boss, or haranguing an earlier mate on the phone about how much she loves him and needs him. With Brandon, Sissy wants to make as much of a connection as she can, but she knows it’ll never be the same. Brandon is terrified that it might be the same, and refuses to go anywhere near that with her. Cissy wants those feelings back – Brandon wants everything else except that.

Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan in 'Shame'

I don’t feel like I’m giving too much away because the film wears its psychology on its sleeve – it all seemed pretty apparent to me. McQueen is smart to tie these propensities to such detailed characters – Mike Nichols always says the trick for actors is to turn presented psychology into behavior, and Fassbender and Mulligan succeed, delivering superb performances. There are some very formulaic structures to the narrative here, but Fassbender and Mulligan unerringly keep you tied in to their specific characters – nothing falls into mere functionality, symbolism or melodrama. Mulligan has far less screen time, but never squanders her opportunities, especially in a lounge-singing rendition of ‘New York, New York;’ rather than staking her claim, she’s actually pleading, cajoling with New York, almost begging it to accept her. Fassbender is phenomenal – he’s credibly irresistible, and he credibly doesn’t give a shit, as long as he gets what he needs (which, again, is far more than orgasms). And I’d be remiss to not point out a great sequence with Nicole Beharie as a fellow worker of Brandon’s, whose minimal but rock-solid choices, perfectly underplayed, serve as a foil, and ultimately dignity-saving defense, against his potentially heartbreaking personal failings. Brandon’s opportunism, and crippling sense of shame, victimizes no one but himself.

This is a man’s world, but it wouldn’t be nothin’ without a woman or a girl, stated one Mr. James Brown. Not JUST because of sex, but, far more importantly, because of the things that make the sex good – safety, security, trust, intimacy, and affection. L’Apollonide’s customers, and Clara’s referrals to Lucy and her cohorts, get all that – but those things have been turned into commodities, imposed conditions, services – they’re not fostered organically. In fact, the clients of those establishments have all but given up on those qualities as genuinely attainable within their own lives. The one element missing from that list – emotional connection – is the one ‘commodity’ that can’t be fabricated or faked. And that’s the one element that Brandon Sullivan doesn’t want to have anything to do with, leading him to eliminate the other five as well.

Contemporary filmmakers seem to be telling us that the real tragedies of sex and sexual relations aren’t gender-specific – for both men and women, a vital, elemental, emotional connection is being lost, or, at the very least, is receding quickly from our lives, from our culture. Those that can find it and keep it for themselves are exceptional, not typical, and their numbers are dwindling; but their sex lives are terrific. Bertrand Bonello and his filmed creations lament their own missed chances at it, and can see its impending passing, immaterial of their particular livelihood, or even the time period they live in. Julia Leigh’s characters have already resigned themselves to its passing – there’s no sense of what’s to move on to, or what to bring along, after this, besides death. Brandon and Sissy are two sides of the same dysfunctional coin, and they may never find another emotional connection between themselves that might allow them to help each other heal. Intimacy between people may have wildly divergent emotional import for each of them, but unless those emotions are honestly shared, or even, at least, mutually acknowledged, all the champagne baths, automaton dolls, sleeping beauties or porn-inspired threesomes in the world won’t fill that absence.

‘Belle de Jour’ is widely available on DVD, and enjoys frequent revival screenings. ‘House Of Pleasures’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ are both available on many cable and satellite pay-per-view services through IFC Films, and are currently screening in New York and L.A. ‘Shame’ is currently showing at Landmark’s Century Theater in Chicago.

All now know that the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction has failed to reach an agreement. While there will still be $1.2 trillion of spending cuts as guaranteed under the Budget Control Act, we regrettably missed a historic opportunity to lift the burden of debt and help spur economic growth and job creation. Americans deserve an explanation.
President Obama summed up our debt crisis best when he told Republican members of the House in January 2010 that “The major driver of our long-term liabilities . . . is Medicare and Medicaid and our health-care spending.” A few months later, however, Mr. Obama and his party’s leaders in Congress added trillions of dollars in new health-care spending to the government’s balance sheet.

Y’know, Jeb, if you’re going to quote Obama, it would be good if you didn’t completely ignore the phrase ‘long-term.’ Because that’s why MM&SS isn’t the priority right now. Creating jobs and growth in the short-term is. And that ‘added trillions’ a few months later wasn’t just whim – it was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (which you so endearingly refer to as ObamaCare), the major piece of legislation that your House of Representatives passed in large part because your party presented no other viable ideas.

Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president’s health law was off the table. Still, committee Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year.

Uh, yeah, that budget under which you held the debt ceiling hostage, and started your efforts to carve out the funding that would enable the Health Care provisions that BECAME LAW when ‘Obamacare’ passed. So, yeah, it passed, it’s legislated law, so it’s off the table.

The Medicare reforms would make no changes for those in or near retirement. Beginning in 2022, beneficiaries would be guaranteed a choice of Medicare-approved private health coverage options and guaranteed a premium-support payment to help pay for the plan they choose.
Democrats rejected this approach but assured us on numerous occasions they would offer a “structural” or “architectural” Medicare reform plan of their own. While I do not question their good faith effort to do so, they never did.

Private health coverage options = the same old song=and-dance – private ‘investment’ accounts, vouchers, starve-the-beast reimbursements, all of the greatest hits of the last two decades of Republican thought. That the supercommittee ‘Pubs actually think health care spending, let alone government spending, is what the American people want them working on here is mind-boggling to me.

Republicans on the committee also offered to negotiate a plan based on the bipartisan “Protect Medicare Act” authored by Alice Rivlin, one of President Bill Clinton’s budget directors, and Pete Domenici, a former Republican senator from New Mexico. Rivlin-Domenici offered financial support to seniors to purchase quality, affordable health coverage in Medicare-approved plans. These seniors would be able to choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget’s approach—except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.
This approach was also rejected by committee Democrats.

Because if the Republicans were going to take Rivlin-Domenici seriously, they should have done that months and months ago. What’s the point of following that model now, knowing that the Republicans have every intention of chipping away its effectiveness just like they’re chipping away at Obamacare now, and just like they’ll renege on the ‘sequestration’ cuts in the coming weeks.

The Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare trustees, and the Government Accountability Office have each repeatedly said that our health-care entitlements are unsustainable.

IN THE LONG RUN, YOU DOLT, NOT IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS. Criminy!!

Committee Democrats offered modest adjustments to these programs, but they were far from sufficient to meet the challenge. And even their modest changes were made contingent upon a minimum of $1 trillion in higher taxes—a move sure to stifle job creation during the worst economy in recent memory.

Because job creation isn’t being stifled NOW? “…tax receipts as a percentage of gross domestic product are lower than they’ve been since 1950.” I must have missed that Great Recession of the 1950s and 1960s. We must have been crippled as a nation back then…

Even if Republicans agreed to every tax increase desired by the president, our national debt would continue to grow uncontrollably. Controlling spending is therefore a crucial challenge. The other is economic growth and job creation, which would produce the necessary revenue to fund our priorities.

The tax increases proposed and rejected by you wouldn’t be the sole solution – it’s not zero-sum. The effects of the modest revenue hike would be beneficial to lower income consumers, i.e. it would help create demand. It would create projects that would create jobs, and get the whole extra-governmental supply chain moving again. It’s there that the economy will genuinely grow, not in government budget items. They’re just the catalyst. The Republicans, by the way, understand this perfectly – they’re just pretending it’s not true to keep YOU panicked.

In the midst of persistent 9% unemployment, the committee could have enacted fundamental tax reform to simplify the tax code, help create jobs, and bring in over time the higher revenues that come with economic growth. Republicans put such a plan on the table—and even agreed to $250 billion in new revenue by eliminating or limiting most of the deductions, credits, loopholes and tax expenditures mainly enjoyed by higher-income Americans. We offered this to avoid the even larger tax increases already written into current law that will intensify the pain Americans are feeling during these difficult economic times.
Republicans were willing to agree to additional tax revenue, but only in the context of fundamental pro-growth tax reform that would broaden the base, lower rates, and maintain current levels of progressivity. This is the approach to tax reform used by recent bipartisan deficit reduction efforts such as the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission and the Rivlin-Domenici plan.
The Democrats said no. They were unwilling to agree to anything less than $1 trillion in tax hikes—and unwilling to offer any structural reforms to put our health-care entitlements on a permanently sustainable basis.

He’s referring here to the Pat Toomey plan, which, indeed, would have cut back on “most of the deductions, credits, loopholes and tax expenditures mainly enjoyed by higher-income Americans.” What he fails to mention is that this would have been attached to a.) making the Bush tax cuts permanent, and b.) an overall reduction of personal tax rates to 28%. A huge overall tax cut, which would have primarily benefited whom, would you guess? Uh huh…

Unfortunately, the committee’s challenge was made more difficult by President Obama. Since the committee was formed, he has demanded more stimulus spending and issued a veto threat against any proposed committee solution to the spending problem that was not coupled with a massive tax increase.

You say massive, I say proportionate and long overdue. So do most of the American people. But you know better, right, Jeb?

Despite the president’s disappointing lack of leadership (IT’S NOT HIS JOB! YOU ARE THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH, BOZO!), I believe my co-chair, Sen. Patty Murray, and every Democrat acted with honor and integrity and negotiated in good faith to the end. It was, of course, difficult to negotiate with six Democrats who, as Democratic committee member Jim Clyburn said on Nov. 13, “never coalesced around a plan” themselves.

The Supercommittee was supposed to “coalesce around a plan,” not each party represented. Most of the reason this failed was because the ‘Pubs brought a plan they wouldn’t budge from, while the Democrats hoped to shape things within the committee. What a silly notion…

But I believe this failure was not due to lack of effort or commitment. Ultimately, the committee did not succeed because we could not bridge the gap between two dramatically competing visions of the role government should play in a free society, the proper purpose and design of the social safety net, and the fundamentals of job creation and economic growth.

A big reason it didn’t succeed is your listing those three priorities exactly backwards.People don’t give two shits about “competing visions of the role government should play” – where are the jobs? “The proper purpose and design of the social safety net” isn’t nearly as important now as job creation and economic growth. Get the damned economy moving, then fix MM&SS.

A great opportunity has been missed, but America’s fate will not be sealed by the failure of a temporary congressional committee. Spending cuts will begin anyway in 2013, but in a manner many of us, including our secretary of defense, believe could fundamentally harm our national security. I am committed to ensuring that full deficit reduction is realized, but Congress must work to achieve these savings in a more sensible manner that does not make us less safe.

In other words, you can count on me to try to screw up sequestration as much as possible.

As Winston Churchill said, “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” Despite my disappointment with the committee’s setback, I remain confident that we will yet again prove Churchill right.

Umm, Mr. Hensarling, he’s making fun of people like you.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204531404577052240098105190.html

CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow, as you may know, is a champion for the pro-corporate, unfettered-market, find-your-own-damn bootstraps-I’m-busy school of economics. The little-if-any-government corporate oligarchy is just fine with him; in fact, what the hell’s taking so long?

In fairness, I must also admit that Kudlow genuinely loves our country, and feels like his approach, if followed, will be in everyone’s best interest. I get to opine that he’s hypocritical in that belief, and that his view of Who-This-Will-Help is wildly, perhaps willfully, distorted, but I would never ascribe conscious malice to most of the things he supports.

For instance, Kudlow seems to have a permanent IV running, giving him substantial and consistent nourishment in what I (and others) refer to as The Myth Of Reagan – let the private sector keep as much of what they earn as possible, and we’ll never have to worry about having adequate government resources for the things we all agree the government needs to do (i,e., form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity). Most conservatives aren’t monolithically opposed to the providing of health care, family planning, support for the unemployed and the indigent, education, or corporate and/or financial oversight – they just don’t believe it’s the government’s job to materially provide those things. Planned Parenthood is OK, but the government shouldn’t pay for it if it can’t sustain itself. Umbrella programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security should be private enterprises, not government programs – market forces will do a better job of making it affordable and keeping costs down than a closed-end government budget will. Americans donate lots and lots of money to charitable and religious institutions that care for the less-well-off. Take your tax savings and give more to them – they’re better at it than the government ever will be. Don’t bail out banks and industries – if they can’t sustain themselves, they should close, and profitable banks and industries will flourish if you lower taxes on people, giving them more liquidity, and solving the problem of consumer demand. Government shouldn’t police Wall Street – Wall Street should police itself; it will cost them too much money if they do it badly, so you can trust them. I could go on, but you get the gist.

Liberals, or progressives, or whatever label Ann Coulter is shitting on this week, contend that Planned Parenthood serves a greater good than what the capitalist market will profitably sustain, and that public investment, through taxes, is worth it. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security “promote the general Welfare” in ways that capitalism isn’t structured to care about. And pumping up the private sector with money through lower taxes should theoretically result in ‘trickle-down’ to the rest of us – there’ll be lower tax rates, but more profits to tax, and more people will be inclined to pay them, so it’ll even out nicely – the problem is that historically, that’s never, ever happened. It remains theory, not fact. It only ‘worked’ during the Reagan years because the Reagan administration flat-out ignored the spiraling shortfall in government revenues. How many Republicans today will agree with Dick Cheney’s statement that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter?” Government deficits are practically ALL that matter to the Boehner-McConnell school of economics these days. They’ll still defend the theory, arguing that Reagan, did, indeed, raise taxes, and that was a mistake. But they have no real precedent to point at and say “Here, look, that’s when it happened, and it all worked out”

So I have both respect, and deep dread, for the poor fuckers on the SuperCommittee who will be lauded or blamed for what they eventually come up with. Case in point:

“The Texan (Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Tx) was referring to the Sen. Pat Toomey plan, which would lower the personal tax rate to 28 percent and head down from there, while at the same time putting limits on personal deductions (such as mortgage interest) for upper-income taxpayers. In other words, flatten the rates and broaden the base.
“Net revenues would go up in this scheme for two reasons: First, the reduction in personal tax breaks; second, the economic-growth impact would be positive. This calls on the research of Harvard professor Martin Feldstein, who urged Congress to trade off lower rates with fewer deductions since the incentive effect of taking home more after-tax income would benefit the economy.
“Trouble is, Democrats don’t buy into it — at least not yet. Senate supercommittee members Patty Murray and John Kerry have opposed real tax reform.”

Do you see what Kudlow did there? Lowering the overall tax rates will create more revenue, as sure as there’ll be a Friday tomorrow. Uh, I would say nope. He supports ‘mortgage interest’ as a crucial target for adjustment, veering you away from capital gains taxes, estate taxes, carried-interest tax breaks and offshore-profit boondoggles that should be the real targets. I’m OK with those full mortgage deductions if it’s based on the true value of the real estate, whether it’s a two-bedroom bungalow or Xanadu. You can graduate them, but do it fairly, proportionately. Democrats ‘don’t buy into it’ out of spite – it’s because this stuff, ultimately, has never worked. And don’t even get me started on ‘revenue-neutral tax reform,’ which HuffPost’s Jason Linkins rightfully compares to ‘cake-neutral baking’ or ‘cocktail-neutral bartending.’ “Why go to the trouble to do all that work, and not produce a cake?” Murray and Kerry don’t oppose real tax reform – they just know Einstein’s definition of ‘insanity.’

Read it for yourself. Your mileage may vary. It’s OK to argue against this stuff as long as you’re making a real effort to understand it, rather than just shouting it down because it’s not serving your own self-interest.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/11/17/a_super_tax_hike_spells_disaster_112095.html

“…Néstor Kirchner, an unknown governor of Argentina’s second-least-populous province, emerged to claim the presidency in 2003, promising to confront ”groups and sectors of economic power that benefited from unacceptable privileges during the past decade.” His budget stressed to the breaking point, Kirchner repaid the IMF, but he loudly ignored its demands for austerity and took a hard line renegotiating Argentina’s remaining debt. Western opinion leaders scolded, and global credit markets refused to lend.
“Kirchner cast these critics aside, pursuing his own heterodox recovery. He boosted government spending, subsidized fuel and transportation, and expanded manufacturing and exports. He distanced himself from the United State and kept the peso cheap to increase trade with other developing countries. Helped by rising commodity prices — especially for soy, the country’s new cash crop — Argentina experienced the sort of growth that even Tim Pawlenty wouldn’t dare to promise: nearly 9 percent a year between 2003 and 2007.
“In a ploy to avoid the constitution’s two-term limit, Kirchner decided to step aside in 2007 so that his wife (Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner) could run for the presidency in his stead. The boom times carried her to victory. Far from the political novice many of her critics portray, the former three-term senator has proven an adaptable leader. Two years ago, amid a temporary economic slowdown, kirchnerismo suffered a stark midterm defeat. In response — and especially since her husband’s unexpected death — Fernández moderated her combative tone, doubled down on her rhetoric of inclusion and strengthened her alliances, waltzing to easy reelection last week.”

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/07/argentinas_president_irks_u_s_pundits/

“There’s only one problem with home cinema: it doesn’t exist. The very phrase is an oxymoron. As you pause your film to answer the door or fetch a Coke, the experience ceases to be cinema. Even the act of choosing when to watch means you are no longer at the movies. Choice—preferably an exhaustive menu of it—pretty much defines our status as consumers, and has long been an unquestioned tenet of the capitalist feast, but in fact carte blanche is no way to run a cultural life (or any kind of life, for that matter), and one thing that has nourished the theatrical experience, from the Athens of Aeschylus to the multiplex, is the element of compulsion. Someone else decides when the show will start; we may decide whether to attend, but, once we take our seats, we join the ride and surrender our will. The same goes for the folks around us, whom we do not know, and whom we resemble only in our private desire to know more of what will unfold in public, on the stage or screen. We are strangers in communion, and, once that pact of the intimate and the populous is snapped, the charm is gone. Our revels now are ended.”

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2011/11/07/111107crci_cinema_lane