BEST of 2012

1. DJANGO UNCHAINED!Some films this year were loftier or more intellectually advanced, but none provided the pure visceral cinematic euphoria of DJANGO UNCHAINED! And none have as much to say about this country (the USA) and balls and the N word.What this year's election showed us, incontrovertibly and probably permanently, is that when minorities and liberals and freaks like me stick together we can finally and forever outvote the repressive white...

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Yes Virginia, the World DID End Yesterday

Dear Virginia,Yes, you called last night and gloated that no aliens landed, no volcano erupted, no meteor crashed, no new anything happened yesterday, and yes, haltingly I stumbled like an off-guard republican at a press conference, seizing up in my Martin Sheen Dead Zone arms all sorts of rationalization nation children shields against your Walken seer reproachment ammunition. I should have cried, or conveyed my sadness, which was even then too...

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The Psychedelic Scrooge Satori Pocalypse

Nothing gets us in the holiday spirit more, perhaps, than reformation, enlightenment, the sudden game changing glow that turns misers into open, generous souls... what magical formula is at work, and how can we slip some in the coffee of, say, Mitch McConnell or the Koch brothers? Whatever it is, whatever the ghost of Bob Cratchit slipped into Scrooge's watered-down soup, it worked, producing three spirits of Xmas, one symbolic death / ego dissolution,...

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Drug of Choice: 4:44 - LAST DAY ON EARTH (2012)

The apocalypse, or at any rate the end of the Mayan... thing, is Friday. Some preparation may be in order, and if you're reading this blog that means movie choices. What's the ideal apocalypse film you want to be watching at the very moment of apocalypse? I've already seen mine. Just the other night. Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth. It couldn't be more timely! Especially if you live in New York City, and are a permanently drug-addled...

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Skeeved by an Asian: THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, BROKEN BLOSSOMS, DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, FU MANCHU, etc.

In the early pre-code 1930s the Asian menace was a hot topic. China was in a bloody civil war; newsreel scenes of exotic people in various states of distress brought the mystery of the orient into movie audience's laps; 'miscegenation' fantasies popped up, always proportionate in intensity to the the fantasizing culture's racism. The white male viewer was presumably all alight with lust for the beautiful Asian ladies they saw, whether via the...

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