Snake America 106: GQ
Today's letter is on GQ.com!!!!! As usual!!!!! Read it here:
https://www.gq.com/story/snake-america-nike-airhorn
https://www.gq.com/story/snake-america-nike-airhorn
https://www.gq.com/story/snake-america-nike-airhorn
https://www.gq.com/story/snake-america-nike-airhorn
https://www.gq.com/story/snake-america-nike-airhorn
Here are what the auctions I write about look like:
For more information on these items, go on GQ.com. Where do I stand on these items? Any hilarious anecdotes? I'm afraid that's all on GQ.com.
Here is some light film criticism (by me) if you feel like reading something else after reading my letter. Which, like I said is on GQ.
THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988, USA) (review from June 2018):
The first scene in this movie Harvey Keitel calls Jesus a disgrace, and it gets better from there. What a fine film. Before watching this film--last June--I immersed myself in Christian lore twice before: first when I bought a New Testament comic at the (Hebrew school) bible book fair in the second grade, which my dad made me return the next day. Second after buying Emperor’s "Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk" in high school, I was so impressed by the lyrical imagery that I looked up New Testament passages online, seeking similar linguistic sensations, which pissed off my mom. I have been watching a lot of Scorsese movies this past month--like I said, last June--mostly because they’re so long. So many are so very good. Ebert said The Departed was about being Catholic and obviously this one is about that too. Everyone in this movie except Blonde Jesus has curly black (or red) hair. I appreciated that. His disciples also have New York accents and locution. Shot in Morocco, it looks like Israel and some shots were prettier than anything I’ve seen there first-hand. Which makes sense.
In the scene where Jesus begins to spread his gospel, he comes off as crazy but the crowd goes along with it after a beat. Maybe Willem Dafoe looks crazy when he’s excited, but I was surprised the villagers believed his schtick so quickly. The villagers then go on to believe everything Jesus says for the rest of the film; the story is better when Jesus is not hamming it up for the crowd. Mark Singer wrote about Scorsese and Catholicism at length in his profile of the director from 2000. Which is such a good profile, one of the best ever in The New Yorker and no one talks about it. I think one real sign Hollywood is working is Scorsese keeps making these big movies every few years, all covering the same central theme. This film is 30 years old. That’s how art and the art system should work—talented workaholics running the themes they’re most obsessed with into the ground and getting paid. If they’re real artists, then they grow as people and approach that one theme differently, and then you have a body of work. Call me an idealist. I also think filmmakers’ oeuvres should be assessed like dancehall musicians, on the strength of their hits, with their duds ignored. But that’s something for another review.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018, USA) (review from May 2018):
I think this was the worst movie I have seen in my life, it felt longer than Lawrence of Arabia and more deadening than the local news or an episode of Survivor. I have not been tortured by art like this in some time. This is a four-hour long television episode of alternatingly uninteresting, grating and blankly attractive characters overreacting and not understanding each other and acting not only irrationally but in a super wack way.
I watched this at Cobble Hill Cinema, sitting by the back, and because it's a family theater, and the film is four and a half hours long, children and their parents (which made up most of the crowd) kept getting up and opening the swinging door to go to the bathroom, and coming back in, swinging the door. For the middle three hours of the movie it felt like I was at the table closest to the door at a Dunkin Donuts during the morning rush.
I used to enjoy seeing comic book movies in theaters and never, including this film, have I had any expectations besides some action and the movies' naked telegraphing of success. I like how nihilistically descriptive and conservative these films are: the characters live in exactly the most desirable neighborhoods, dress in the blandest way and approach their work humorlessly and full of sacrifice. This didn't even have that. I went in with such low expectations, and was let down like I have not been let down in a while. Shockingly bad, this will go down as one of the most cynical and plainly empty and bad pieces of commercial culture released since the Cold War. Really, really bad.
Avengers: End Game (2019, USA) (reviewed this morning (by me)):
Not as bad as the last one, but absolutely not good. They stopped trying to make Captain America dress rockabilly-adjacent and he just wears normal clothes now. There's a part in the movie where ... I want to say Thor ... yells out "where are they," just like Jerry Lewis' character in Hardly Working (USA 1980). It takes 90 minutes before we find out what the gang is doing. I like seeing movies in air conditioned theaters, but it's been pretty chilly out lately. Even though I had nothing better to do Wednesday night, seeing this movie was a mistake.
Thanks for reading. Happy mother's day to my mom -- I don't have children.
Snake