Slate eBook Club - Best of 2003

by Slate. com

  This isn't to say that I was unhappy to hear songs by the Ramones and the Modern Lovers in a movie that held the No. 1 box-office spot, or that I think bands like Led Zeppelin and AC/DC are worthless in comparison, but that the tensions between such bands help keep rock off life support in the first place. The music's preservation depends, in part, on their immanence. Like Slate's David Edelstein, I was charmed by School of Rock, but I left the theater thinking not of the rock films I grew up with but of more recent efforts to place broad swaths of American music in a museum: Ken Burns' Jazz or Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues also put up brave facades. And they, too, left me feeling that the sight of our elders being afraid for our music, rather than of it, was a sure sign of something amiss.

  If School of Rock gives us any indication of what rock might look like in another 50 years—and of what it's beginning to look like today—it's this: Wholly absorbed into the nation's bloodstream, rock continues to be played and appreciated by certain segments of the population, works its way into the American curriculum, and loses its sense of engagement with the culture at large. This makes Linklater's film something like the cinematic equivalent of an Irish wake or a New Orleans funeral—a good enough time is had by all that the corpse itself is soon forgotten.

  Assessment: Pixar

  The geniuses behind Finding Nemo are the next Disney. Uh-oh.

  By Chris Suellentrop

  Posted Thursday, June 5, 2003, at 11:23 AM PT

  Even if Pixar survives for 100 years and produces a library of films to rival Walt Disney's, the makers of Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo will never experience another weekend like the last one. Sure, they'll probably someday break the $70 million opening-weekend record that Nemo set for an animated film—in fact, next year's The Incredibles will more than likely do just that—but you can only cement yourself as a cultural phenomenon once.

  Finding Nemo is Pixar's 500th home run, its 3,000th hit, its third consecutive championship: a triumph that's more important for its relationship to an entire body of work than for its solitary pleasures. It's also a moment that has led critics to evaluate and admire that body of work. After five consecutive hits—Pixar's other two movies are the inspired Toy Story 2 and the middling A Bug's Life—the animation studio must now be considered "the most reliable creative force in Hollywood," wrote Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. (Move to the back of the line, Spielberg.) "Perhaps not since Preston Sturges made seven classic comedies in a row between 1940 and 1944 has one name been such a consistent indicator of audience and critical pleasure." The "next Disney" comparisons that have long been lavished upon Pixar and its creative head, John Lasseter, have become more emphatic: Now Pixar and Lasseter are compared not just to Disney, but to Disney during its "golden age some 60 years ago," as the Los Angeles Daily News put it.

  But in becoming the next Disney, can Pixar avoid becoming the next Disney? Being the Mouse, after all, involves more than simply delivering high-quality, family-friendly entertainment that lasts for the ages. There's a flip side to success on that scale: A certain minority will loathe you for your tyrannical omnipresence and your ravenous cultural imperialism. (Has anyone seen those Nemo Happy Meals?) "Disney is so good at being good that it manifests evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. Imagine promoting a universe in which raw Nature doesn't fit because it doesn't measure up," Carl Hiaasen wrote in Team Rodent: How Disneyland Devours the World. Critics like Hiaasen view Disney as the creators of a real-world Matrix, an inauthentic world that's dangerous because it's more seductive and appealing than the real one. "Disney has colonized our pleasures so thoroughly, we no longer recognize them as produced, manipulated, and constructed by Disney," Elizabeth Bell, a Florida communications professor, once told the Baltimore Sun.

  So far, even though Disney distributes and markets Pixar's films, the New Disney has avoided being tarred as an agent of the Evil that is the Old Disney. Only the tiniest hint of a Pixar backlash has surfaced: The Los Angeles Times' Turan knocked the studio's "weakness for whiny characters," the New Yorker's Anthony Lane feared "oversophistication" in bits "designed to flit over the head of younger kids and keep their parents happy, regardless of whether it has any logical place in the movie," and a handful of critics detected a whiff of formula in Finding Nemo. But whatever formula put together Nemo and the rest of the Pixar movies, it's a welcome alternative to the one that assembled Herbie Goes Bananas. And if Pixar does employ a blueprint, it's one that's proven difficult to duplicate. If it were easy to package an entertaining blend of celebrity voices, pop-culture references, and an evil kid who threatens our lovable characters, all set to a Randy Newman song, Disney wouldn't be putting out garbage like Treasure Planet.

  Disney's inability to replicate the Pixar magic, and its lackluster critical and box-office record since the overrated The Lion King, is why Disney chairman Michael Eisner predicted this week that the Pixar-Disney partnership will continue, despite rumors to the contrary. The two companies need each other. Disney needs Pixar's content: Of the great animated movies put out since The Lion King, not one has been an in-house Disney production. (The non-Pixar movies on the list would be DreamWorks' Shrek and Chicken Run, and Warner Bros.' The Iron Giant—and the director of that one, Brad Bird, now works for Pixar.)

  And Pixar, despite what its fans might want to believe, needs Disney. For one thing, Disney owns the rights to derivative works made from the first seven Pixar movies (including the forthcoming The Incredibles and Cars). By remaining in a partnership with Disney, Pixar can control the legacy that it has created—Pixar creatives must shudder at the thought of hack straight-to-video Toy Story sequels, which Eisner has basically threatened to create if Pixar walks. More important, however, Pixar needs Disney because that's how it outsources its Evil: The partnership enables Pixar to reap the rewards of its great movies, while Disney gets blamed for the Stepford theme parks filled with Woodys and Buzzes, the merchandising tie-ins at McDonald's and elsewhere, and the rapacious defenses of their shared intellectual property. Sticking with Disney is the best way for Pixar to ensure that the Lamp won't become as scorned as the Mouse.

  Cinema of the 'Stans

  Making movies after the death of the U.S.S.R.

  By Ed Finn

  Posted Monday, May 26, 2003, at 6:01 AM PT

  The screenings at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater this month show a world so alien from our own it might as well be Mars. "Films From Along the Silk Road: Central Asian Cinema" highlights cinematic work from the 1940s to the present. The films in the series run the gamut from pre-glasnost Soviet-approved productions to modern existential shorts with shoestring budgets and first-time actors. Set in the bleak landscapes of five countries in Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan—they display a mind-boggling range of styles and languages (not to mention inadequate subtitling). But nearly all the films, even the most recent ones, share a common thread: a striking mistrust of capitalism.

  Take, for example, Jamshed Usmonov's first feature, The Flight of the Bee (1998), about a poor village schoolteacher struggling to make ends meet in the new Tajikistan. Usmonov's trenchant critique of the country's fitful transition to capitalism is most apparent in a scene at a livestock market in which the teacher goes to sell two recalcitrant sheep, his last valuable possessions. The poor man is surrounded by a crowd of shouting merchants, one of whom grabs the teacher's hand and wrenches his arm in frenzied bargaining until the hapless scholar is bullied into accepting an unfair bargain. The happy resolution to Usmonov's modern fable is not the triumph of the schoolteacher's hard work or business acumen but a stroke of luck, and Usmonov leaves us with the feeling that in the tumultuous new Tajikistan, luck is all you can count on.

  The directors' suspicion of capitalism may seem strange, especially in the work of the youngest among them. Would
n't you expect these artists to be embracing their newfound creative freedom? Perhaps, but it's important to understand just what Central Asia is going through as it blunders toward democracy. After 70 years of Soviet rule and 10 years on their own, the countries in the region continue to struggle with moribund industries, corrupt officials (often the same ones who used to run the local Soviet Party branches), and tensions stemming from the Russian imperial policy of splitting ethnic groups among artificially drawn Soviet states. (In many cases, the leaders of newly independent countries were unable to speak their own ethnic languages.) When the empire collapsed in 1991, generations of Central Asians used to taking orders from Moscow were ill-prepared to turn rusting factories into competitive businesses. Chaos ensued as millions of people experienced the freedoms and pitfalls of capitalism for the first time. It turns out that for many of the directors, a lack of money seems a bigger problem than a lack of artistic freedom ever was. Censorship was something they could work around, but poverty is stifling.

  At a symposium during the first weekend of the festival, several of the directors spoke about their experiences with the business side of directing under post-Soviet regimes. Each speaker, after making a point of thanking the program's sponsors, unveiled their deep unhappiness with the new difficulties of financing their films. As Uzbek director Ali Khamraev lamented, "The investors want to give you the money in the morning, sleep with the actresses in the afternoon, and get a 100 percent profit by the evening." One after another, the directors noted that in the Soviet era, they could produce a film every year or two, whereas now five or 10 years might pass between projects. And in many of these countries, there is no market for art house productions, which means that the filmmakers are recognized in Paris and New York before they are (if they ever are) recognized at home.

  This is not to say that Central Asian cinematographers are pining for communism or for a return to the censorship of that era. (The directors are, after all, in New York promoting their work.) In spite of the painful transition to democracy—and in some cases, perhaps even because of it—they have produced some breathtaking works of cinema. Ardak Amirkulov's Fall of Otrar (1990), probably the most acclaimed film on the bill, is a gory historical epic about Genghis Khan's conquest of an opulent trading city. The story of Otrar, teetering on the fringe of the Khan empire, reminds us of the balancing act Central Asia's emerging democracies perform among China, Russia, and the United States. And more than any of the festival's films, Fall of Otrar explains that first metaphor of Central Asia, the Silk Road. These ancient overland trade routes, collectively known as the Silk Road, linked Europe and Asia and provided a conduit for goods, ideas, languages, and armies. The metaphor is apt: The age-old capitalism of the Silk Road, like the capitalism of these economically fragile post-Soviet countries, was one of long hauls and intense personal energy.

  All the films in the "Silk Road" series wrestle with the pressures of an uncertain future. We get the impression that the people of Central Asia live with a sense of displacement, as if their lives on the fringe of the Soviet empire have ended but life on the fringe continues. These are films about cultural nomads who have seen ideologies come and go along the Silk Road while their everyday existence remains almost unchanged. But there is hope, too, and some of these films document efforts to pull together new societies from the ruins of Soviet ideology and the first elements of democracy. At its finest, "Silk Road" captures the beauty of starting from scratch, of battling the poverty of the steppe with a kind of fierce, personal richness. Even while Central Asia weathers the winter of its free-market discontent, these filmmakers capture the simpler economies of fear and hope, set out against a landscape that has always demanded mighty deeds of self-expression.

  Slain, at Last

  The late, great Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  By Hillary Frey

  Posted Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 11:11 AM PT

  Tuesday night marked the end of an era. After seven years on prime time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was vanquished once and for all, like a demon impaled with a wooden stake. For those who've loved Buffy through romance and war, through hideously fringed jackets and ridiculously sleek up-dos, through life, death, and not one but two resurrections, the series finale was a dark hour. We said goodbye to a weekly dose of girl power; so long to Buffy-centric e-mail lists; farewell to ritualistic Tuesday night gatherings. But we also breathed a sigh of relief.

  This season of Buffy, well, sucked, and I, for one, am glad it's over. The show should have ended a year ago, when Buffy's witch-sidekick Willow, overcome by grief when her girlfriend was killed by a bullet meant for Buffy, nearly destroyed the whole world—an appropriately High Romantic ending to a series that revolved, dizzyingly, around the dangers of wielding power. (Willow's friend Xander, the erstwhile buffoon, managed to talk her out of it at the 25th hour.) Now we're forever stuck with memories of this last season—a Buffy-verse cluttered with too many new characters, inadequately explained plot twists, and endless, boring chatter. The series finale—an anti-climactic trip to "the Hell-Mouth," from which Buffy and most of her gang emerged intact—was a one-hour throwaway as poorly scripted as the worst of this season.

  In its early days, Buffy was wittier than your average show because it took the premise of every teen drama—life is a living hell—and turned it into allegory. Joss Whedon, the series creator, transformed insensitive jocks and nightmarish roommates into actual demons for Buffy to take down. As Buffy grew up, Whedon's social critiques grew riskier and more ambitious. In Season 4, Buffy became entangled with The Initiative, a government research project on demons, and the show provided a shrewd commentary on genetic engineering. All along, Buffy sparred with demons of the real-world variety, too—personal trials far more difficult to handle than any evil god or Übervamp. There were the doomed relationships—like many young women, she was drawn to the wrong men—first Angel, a hunky vampire as forbidden to Buffy as Romeo was to Juliet, and then Riley, a pawn of The Initiative. Then there was her mother's excruciatingly drawn-out death; later, her decision to sacrifice herself (literally) to save her sister.

  Of course Buffy was a feminist, too, and her superpowers ensured that she'd always stand up for herself and call the shots. But Buffy's vulnerability—a quality lacking in other iconic small-screen sirens like, say, Xena the Warrior Princess, or even Wonder Woman—helped the show become a cross-generational hit. When Buffy felt dead inside (after dying the second time), she sought out sex with Spike (one of the undead) in an attempt to feel alive. She regularly shut her friends out—especially in this last season—when she felt they couldn't understand her. (Not surprisingly, they turned on her.) Blending fantasy with social realism, Whedon made the least-condescending show about young adults to run on prime time in recent memory.

  But in Season 7, as Buffy took on The First—as in the first and most evil being ever—the complexity that once differentiated Buffy from Mutant X and other supernatural schlock vanished. A simplistic, apocalyptic, weirdly religious good-versus-evil narrative took over; subplots, aside from those concerning the urgent desire among the supporting characters to have pre-end-of-the-world sex, slipped away. For most of the season, Willow, arguably the show's best character, was stripped of her impressive powers (lest she attempt to destroy the world again). Buffy, instead of kicking ass, spent long minutes of nearly every episode preparing a gang of young, annoying, potential slayers for battle, with pious sermons about war and leadership that would barely have been tolerable coming from President Bartlet on The West Wing. With the exception of one or two episodes (most notably "Conversations with Dead People") this season of Buffy was leaden, slow, and overwrought.

  And yet like the declining Roman Empire, Buffy's influence on Western (well, American) civilization as we know it has only grown more ubiquitous in the show's final days. (The New York Times published an editorial today about the end of the show.) At one end of the pop spectrum, the show is a darling of the cultural studies crowd
: Buffy's interrogation of the ethics of power, violence, and gender (that eternally beloved triad) is explored on Slayage: The On-Line International Journal of Buffy Studies and in more than one essay collection—including, most recently, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy. At the other end, in the bathrooms of young men across America, Buffy has finally been appreciated for, well, its dazzling supply of eye candy; this month, FHM features "The Girls of Buffy" on its cover, focusing not on Buffy's metaphysical underpinnings but on a more important question: What is Willow's preferred form of bikini wax?

  But Buffy's legacy will endure beyond the groves of academe or the pages of men's magazines: The show's influence can be felt on scores of shows, from ABC's hit Alias to the canceled Dark Angel and Birds of Prey and the mysteriously enduring Charmed. Before Buffy, the only women who kicked ass on television did so metaphorically, in the courtrooms or in the ER. The show may have died last night, but its spirit, like its protagonist, will undoubtedly resurrect itself again. Luckily, like the vampires Buffy had yet to slay, the show crawled into its coffin just in time to stay alive in our memory.

  Clueless

  What do the new reality dating shows have in common with 19th-century literature?

  By Patricia Cohen

  Posted Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2003, at 8:01 AM PT

  Will Lisa Shannon find love and fortune? On tonight's finale of Cupid, CBS's latest reality dating show, fans will find out which suitor has been chosen to propose to the series's lovely 25-year-old heroine from among the remaining would-be romantics. If Shannon accepts the proposal, the couple will be married right then and there. And if they stay married for a year, they will receive a $1 million check.