How else can you explain Mac and Me? In case you’re wondering, there’s a creepy alien in the bear suit.

“It’s asking for a lot to top a film where Sir Ben Kingsley (Academy Award for best actor in “Gandhi,” 1982) is the bad guy who wants to remove the Eyeball of Power that Kristanna Loken, a lady-vampire with no need for human blood, has somehow managed to absorb directly into her lady-vampire skull. And that’s just one part of the milkshake of insanity that is this movie’s plot. “

It’s actually been rumored that Herr Boll’s entire career has been nothing but a tax scam, some complicated scheme where he purposely makes terrible films and then somehow profits off of their loss, ie the Producers. He has actually challenged critics of his movie to a boxing match (and won!)

When Googling him before I wrote this, I actually found not only one site dedicated to the awfulness of the oeuvre of Uwe Boll, but a litney of them, including an online petition to prevent him from ever making movies again.

Anyway.

There’s a little movie coming out on May 22, an installment in a film series about an archeologist named Henry Jones, Jr. (”Indiana was the dog’s name!”). Uwe Boll ain’t afraid of little Stevie Spielberg. To wit: a press release from Mr. Boll:

On the Indiana Jones weekend – May 23 – we will go out and destroy Indiana Jones in the Box Office! We all know that Harrison Ford is older as my grandpa and his time is up – would Michael Moore say! … Spielberg gets sloppy. We saw that with War of the Worlds (why the fuck the older brother survived?) and also in parts of Jaws, E.T., Munich etc.! My performance in Postal as ‘Nazi Theme Park Owner’ outperforms easily Ben Kingsley in Schindler’s List!

As a fan of the underdog, I would typically cheer on such a moronic idea. Except for the fact that I agree that Uwe Boll is about the worst director in the 111 years of cinema (maybe a close second to Michael Bay), and that I have been waiting for the new Indiana Jones movie for oh, 18 years.

Incidently, the petition has 18,068 signatures. 18,069, now that I have signed it.

This is what they look like, in case you are wondering.

Do I think that Star Trek is anti-semitic? Not at all. That show has had a long history of preaching tolerance and acceptance (and as people love to point out, the first interracial kiss on television happened between Kirk and Uhura). So how can something like the Ferengi pass unnoticed? It doesn’t even seem very subtle to me.

I wrote a paper in college about this same issue, what I feel is unconscious racism. It may have something to do with the use of cultural shorthand to convey an idea without too much information, but when that cultural shorthand stems from something unsavory, well, it no longer becomes a valid shortcut.

Some examples.

I’ll start with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. This movie is full of them.

George Lucas is not an anti-semite. He’s best buddies with Steven Spielberg, who is hardly quiet about his heritage. So how do we then end up with this guy?

A hook-nosed, conniving merchant/ slave trader. And what’s more, he kind of SOUNDS Jewish. You half-expect him to start complaining about his mother.

We also have the Neimoidians, who look and sound like villains from a Charlie Chan episode.

Let’s not even get started with this jive talking, cowardly dreadlocked guy.

Have you seen the new Transformers movie? Speaking of jive-talking, we’ve got a robot named Jazz that speaks with an urban African-American voice, dances at strange moments, and of course is the first one to die. I’m aware that he was originally a character from the cartoon, but I’m willing to forgive the Japanese for that. I’m imagining that the black population of Japan in the early 80’s was probably limited, so they had very little material to work with. But how the hell did he get into the movie? It’s not like there weren’t another 10,000 other Autobots they could have replaced him with.

(If you wait until the end of this clip, you can see Jazz jive and dance)

That’s not to mention these other faces we might recognize.

(above two images from hongpong.com)

I don’t have any answers for you here, just questions. But when you’re watching something on TV or seeing a movie, and you’re thinking…something about that character bothers me…you are possibly right.

He did so again in Ratatouille. It was once again at a moment of high emotion, one that I’ve never seen expressed in a film before, let alone an animated one. I will try and discuss this very vaguely, for those of you that haven’t seen the movie. This is what happens:

A character takes a bite of a dish prepared by the chef (who happens to be a rat). The customer puts the food in his mouth and freezes. He recalls a memory of his from childhood, one where he remembers eating the same dish. It flashes back to the present, and he slowly chews the food, tasting it, savoring it. It is by far the most visceral food moment I’ve ever seen in a movie, and the most accurate.

This may come off as a load of bunk if you’re not a food person. It’s okay, I don’t think any less of you. I only feel bad, because there is so much in life that you’re missing out on. I’m sure there are things in life that I’m missing out on, too, like the pleasures of Nickelback and NASCAR.

This moment of the movie rings true to anyone who has ever really tried and tasted food. Where it becomes something more than sweet/savory fuel to keep you from feeling hungry. Think about it for a moment. What was the last great thing you’ve tasted? The last thing that you wanted to grab someone by the shoulders and shake them and say “You won’t believe what I just ate!!!” Maybe it was a perfectly cooked piece of salmon. Maybe it was a Hot Pocket (I really hope not).

I ate brunch yesterday (and today, too in fact) at a restaurant in my neighborhood called Lula Cafe, which I believe to be one of the best restaurants in the city of Chicago. It’s not the most expensive, it doesn’t have the fanciest waiters or most formal service, but what it does have are two chefs, a married couple, who both prepare the food, cooked from mostly locally produced and/or organic/sustainable ingredients. The menu changes weekly, to reflect what is in season, and many of the farms are noted on the menu along with the ingredients they provide.

Yesterday, I ate French toast there. It wasn’t regular French toast, of course. It was brioche French toast, stuffed with mascarpone, served with Klug Farm blueberries and peaches, with some sort of creme anglais on the plate. It was incredible. The berries more than likely had been picked no more than a day or so before, transported only two hours to the restaurant, where they ended up on my plate. The dish used the mascarpone and creme anglais in the place of more traditional maple syrup, the creaminess offset by the tartness of the fruit.

This is what I had for breakfast.

It was great because of the ingredients, of how it was prepared, because of where I ate it. But one of the most driving reasons why it succeeded in going the distance is that it evoked memories of my childhood.

On Sundays, my Dad would make French toast for all of us. Nothing fancy, he’d use wheat bread from the supermarket, eggs, and that’s really it. We’d put syrup on it (I’m not sure if it was even real maple syrup…is Aunt Jemima even real maple syrup?). The extra egg left over would be scrambled and we’d eat that too (a little left over for the dog). Eating the French toast at Lula brough back memories of those Sunday mornings with my family, before we all grew up moved on. My parents weren’t much older than I am now, and I am now typing on the table that we used to eat those meals on. There’s history there. There’s history in my breakfast. There’s those sight and smells and sounds and tastes and sensation that harken back to more innocent days, and when art is able to tap into those, it succeeds in creating a reaction exponentially stronger than what it could do on its own, more powerful, more memorable.

I’ve never seen a movie show that so accurately. They were absolutely right, and I thank them for sharing that emotion with me.

Now I know, and knowing’s half the battle.

Efron makes his feature debut in “Hairspray,” which New Line releases Friday.

From Variety

At some point this week, I’ll write about something else. Honest.

And he’s voiced by Jason Lee. That’s one Scientologist/Professional Skateboarder who is about to enter my Punch In the Face List.

Sometimes wrongly dismissed as KidLit or young adult fare, His Dark Materials is as dense and philosophical as anything I’ve read in the last few years. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about, other than it could be considered a fantasy novel, but that would be wildly underestimating its density and breadth of scope.

I’ll put it to you this way. I like the Harry Potter books (to which they are often compared). They’re well written and entertaining. But they are to His Dark Materials as Danielle Steel is to Milan Kundera.

New Line took a big plunge and invested a lot of money to make this first movie, The Golden Compass. The trailer looks great, but I have my concerns about statements the director, Chris White, has made. Apparently all references to God and religion have been removed, when the book is very acutely focused on those themes (those and free will and self-determination). However, in the trailer, the word ‘heresy’ is spoken, which is in keeping with the book so who knows?

Check it out. And if you don’t believe me about the intellectual heft of these books, read this interview with Pullman from the New Yorker.

Yes, that is really an image of Rorschach from the nearly in production Watchmen, based on the limited comic book series from Alan Moore. It doesn’t start shooting until September (according to IMDB), so this isn’t an actor but a stand-in wearing the costume of Rorshach in a test shot that was apparently hidden in the R-rated 300 trailer (the director of both is Zach Snyder).

Let’s hope they don’t fuck it up, or there will be some very angry fans out there. Sin City ended up being good, so I don’t see why this can’t be, too.