NEW REALITY IN THE GRASS

The "Celestial Cinema," Maui Film Festival

The nicest film viewing experience I've ever had has been under the stars in Wailea, Maui, at the 2002 Maui Film Festival, among an audience of only several hundred people and a cool wind in from the Pacific Ocean after sundown.

I managed a quick stop at this year's (2004) Festival but hope to attend the full Festival in 2005, next June. This year, the world has suddenly discovered the once quiet film and family meet, and it's been reported that several thousand folks showed up this month on Maui, compared with the past many hundred -- which I believe, what with the second traffic jam I've ever seen on Maui, taking place this last week. Good for Maui's economy, good for the films being shown, not so good when what I remember as the best experience on the grass on Maui under the stars has now become more regulated, formal, pronounced, crowded.

Still far nicer, though, than any other film festival, anywhere. But, if there's anything difficult or challenging about the Maui Film Festival, it's that once you're there, it makes it all that more difficult to accept the alternatives. But, best to find out for yourself, next year: June 16-20, 2005.

O.K., now I'm tired of Bill Clinton.

The mistake that's being made with Clinton and the press is that he and his book ("My Life," by Bill Clinton) have been and are being marketed as if he's an author who's written about politics, instead of a politician who's written about being an author. Oprah and Larry King interviewing the author, Bill Clinton, worked as great stand alone spots, but that's where it appears that literary criticism has stepped in and called the politician what he is.

More Moorgery

I'm curious how long it's going to take those same literary critics to come to their senses where Michael Moore is concerned. I hear the reasonable voices on various television broadcasts (Lisa Meyers on MSNBC Friday, guest journalist [name?] on yesterday's "Meet the Press" on NBC, to name two), and, read numerous writers in print, but so far, those reasonable voices don't catch the amount of heat that marketers like, and so what remains, instead, in most print are the "(Moore's) 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Breaks Box Office Record" -- while the "box office record" that's been broken isn't easily explained unless you read between the lines.

I anticipate a fizzle out for Moore among everyone except the urbanites and especially younger audiences, radical groups even (radical to me, radical to the average moviegoer in the U.S.) and especially if Ray Bradbury makes a good case for moral decay here. Um, rather, literary decay.

I hope so, that he does. I agree that Moore's "fact checked" his details; it's the strings that Moore's woven that are checked but it's not the weaving. Too bad more people can't and don't sew, or at least, write novels or make films. Because, if they did, they'd have clearer vision where this thing Moore's created is concerned. More of that urban appeal thing, people drawn and attracted to labels first, disregarding weave.

And, the value of any fabric is in the weave, not in unwoven threads, or, worse, there's devalue in threads woven randomly, without cohesion. As is Moore's (self labelled at various times) "Op-Ed/entertainment/comedy"/political propaganda piece. That last part, he's not included in the labelling, but, many of the rest of us have.

Read more Moorgery: Wizbang Blog, "Your Logic Does Not Resemble Our Earth Logic"

"Six Feet Under," this season, on HBO, has married "Gigli."

The one and only character on the entire Series (well, there are two, but about the first, I explain here), "Arthur," has now left the Series, departed from the Fisher Family Home and Mortuary, or, both. Without Arthur, performed so incredibly well by actor Rainn Wilson, it's a show-and-tell of vanity proportions, some sort of greedy extension toward the Creepy, which always results to my view as just Plain Creepy, uncomfortable because of solicitousness. The Best Creepy isn't solicitous, it just is. Any Creepy that needs affirmation of creepiness, isn't Creepy -- and I get the impression that "Six Feet Under" has moved into the "love me, I'm creepy -- aren't I?" stage.

Indications of this: drains expelling spent human blood, feces in mailed Tupperware gift packaging, the constancy of infedilities, vanities and insecure affections, the fervent and ongoing random, overemphasized and often meaningless sexual escapades that always look to me as if the director, cast and writers got lost on their way to the local Pie Eating Contest Down By the River.

Ah, well, HBO was great while it lasted. "The Sopranos" won't resume production until 2005, with no public announcement available, yet, as to when that means there will be the final, Season Six to view (undoubtedly, late 2006). By then, I hope that David Chase and all have managed to also produce or begin production on a feature film adaptation of "The Sopranos," because HBO without the Series is now floundering -- everything else in the Original Series category is anticlimatic.

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I liked "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines".

I was incredibly ready to resist and laugh at this film, but I couldn't. Obviously, I wasn't in a theatre to see the film, but only watched it recently on a movie channel, out of some sort of guilt for having avoided it these many months since it's theatrical release.

I liked, and very, very much, the performances by Nick Stahl, Ahhnold and Claire Danes -- in that order -- and even watched this film several times over before I was satiated with the experience. Nick Stahl is a fabulous actor, just fabulous. His voice-over in the first few scenes of the film was also fabulous, for lack of a better superlative, and serves to exemplify.