Vice and Violence! (And Birthdays!)

You're all invited to help me celebrate my 32nd birthday. (Did I just type "32nd birthday"? Great googly moogly.) On Saturday, January 6, at 8:00 pm, come see Sam Fuller's Underworld U.S.A. at the LaSalle Bank Cinema at 4901 W. Irving Park Rd., then join me across the street for Mexican food at Artemio's after the show. (No gifts, please, aside from your wonderful company.)

Goatdog on the Big Screen (again)

Unauthorized and Proud of It: Todd Loren's Rock 'n' Roll Comics, a documentary I associate-produced (I called a lot of people—a lot of them), is having its Chicago premiere at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Friday, January 5, at 8:15 p.m. It's opening their "Stranger than Fiction" series of new documentaries. It will also be playing on Monday, January 8 (happy birthday to me!) at 6:00 p.m.

Click on the poster to download a larger version. Print it out! Stick it on your work refrigerator! Maybe even at the U of C Press!

Two Oscar Vehicles

I need to get cracking on my review site, which I've been neglecting, but in the meantime here are brief impressions of a couple of 2006 releases vying for Oscar attention.

Half Nelson is a testament to the power of two great actors (Ryan Gosling as a crack-addict teacher and Shareeka Epps as his troubled student) to elevate material that's not sure of itself. Gosling deserves an Oscar; he gives the best male performance I've seen this year, although the competition is limited, and I still haven't managed to watch The Last King of Scotland. 3.5 goats.

In Babel, slice-and-dice structure-junkie Alejandro González Iñárritu tones down his weed-whacker enough that his actors' performances cohere into something you can recognize as a performance instead of simply a collection of disjointed scenes. However, the four interlocking storylines don't hold together as well as he wants them to, and I got the feeling that he thinks of actors as unfortunately necessary vehicles for his mediations on chance. 3 goats.

Best Swag

Since this is the first year I've received swag, this is my first chance to give a special Goatie at my year-end awards: Best Swag. Here's an update on the campaigns for this prestigious award, which is all about campaigning.

Little Miss Sunshine started off in the lead, having sent me my first-ever swag, a pack of eight postcards celebrating the movie. They're still holding a slim lead over the competition, Fox Searchlight having recently sent me a shooting script. It includes an essay entitled "How to Write a Sundance Hit in Nine Easy Steps," which is actually a little distressing.

Running a close second is Thank You for Smoking, for which I received one of my first screeners. In the same package as the Sunshine script was a shooting script for this film, which doesn't include any distressing essays, but lacks "extras" in general. That and the fact that I didn't really care for the film (but this isn't supposed to be about quality of film but quality and quantity of swag) are all that's keeping this one from taking over the lead. Could they pull ahead by sending me a pack of TYFS brand cigarettes? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Half Nelson: I received only a DVD, and a burned one in a plain plastic jewel case at that, but I requested this one, which makes it a strong contender. I heard that other critics were getting DVDs, so I emailed ThinkFilm and requested one—and they sent it!

Other contenders include The Illusionist and The Last King of Scotland (a DVD for each); The History Boys (a book that includes both the shooting script and the playwright/screenwriter's diary of the filming); and Notes on a Scandal (a screenplay).

Studios, if you're reading this, certain things could buy you this award outright. They include, but are not limited to: actual invitations to preview screenings of any of your films, tickets for ten to the Oscars, or a remote control car driven by scale models of your characters.

Pre-Oscar Awards

I realized that I don't really care about the National Board of Review. (Let me take this opportunity to remind folks that the NBR started out as the New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship; they changed their name, but not their method, as they chopped, cut, and excised "objectionable" material from films. Sure, they were an effort to stave off government censorship, but censorship for a good cause is still censorship.) I honestly don't care about the Los Angeles, New York, Omaha, or Chicago film critics awards either, except as they might affect the biggest prize of all—the Golden Globes. Er, I mean the Oscars.

I don't mean that I'm not keeping track of the awards, mind you. I just mean that I don't intend to spend a lot of time writing about them. I'd much rather read about them at places like Nathaniel's Film Experience Blog and Nick's Flick Picks. I'll obsess vicariously through these two this season.

Legal Goatbeagle

When I used to edit astrophysics articles, I picked up an odd and likely useless assortment of facts and factoids about astrophysics. Now, in my new job as a proofreader of court decisions, I'm picking up some interesting things about the law:

1. I learned the following words or phrases: cicerone (n: a guide for sightseers), ambit (n: sphere of influence), parol (n: something stated, adj: given by word of mouth), laches (n: negligence in observation of duty, specifically undue delay in asserting a legal right or privilege), contumacious (a: stubbornly disobedient), and in medias res (adv: thrown into the middle of a sequence, as in a narrative).

2. I learned that I unwittingly demonstrated an understanding of statutory interpretation when I was a kid: "Expressio unius est exclusio alterius" means "expression of one thing is the exclusion of another." My mom would say "Don't set the house on fire while I'm away," and I'd follow the letter of the law and dutifully not set the house on fire. Of course, she didn't say I couldn't do back-flips on her bed or jump off the roof like Superman, which means they must have been acceptable because they weren't on the banned list.

3. I learned that watches can be enemies of the people. In 2004, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard an unusual case. The plaintiff was the United States of America. The defendants were 2,164 watches, more or less. Really. The case was United States v. 2,164 Watches, More or Less, Bearing a Registered Trademark of Guess?, Inc. 366 F.3d 767 (9th Cir. 2004). What on earth could it have been about? Why "more or less"? Were they moving too fast to count? I have no idea. I could look it up, but I'd rather not. Instead, I relish comedy routines in my head of the courtroom scenes.

4. I learned that under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i), an alien can be deported for any admission or conviction for a violation of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. § 802), other than, specifically, a single offense involving possession for one's own use of 30 grams or less of marijuana. Now, in some states, possession of drug paraphernalia is a felony, and as such, is considered a "crime of moral turpitude" under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(i), and is grounds for deportation. In summary, an alien cannot be deported for possessing marijuana for personal use, but can possibly be deported for possessing a pipe to smoke it in.

Update: Apparently the Supreme Court read my blog, because today they decided that minor drug offenses that are felonies under state law but misdemeanors under federal law are not grounds for deportation.

5. Can a police officer stop you on the street and demand to see your identification? Well, it depends. Terry v. Ohio (1968) says that a police officer can stop people on the street and search them if he or she can "point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant an intrusion." Michigan v. Long (1983) clarifies, saying that such a search is acceptable if "a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger." Then Hiibel v. 6th District Court of Nevada (2004) says that states can statutorially authorize the demand for identification during a so-called Terry stop (after Terry v. Ohio) and can also require compliance with that demand. It's up to the states to decide if there will be penalties for refusing such a "reasonable" and "prudent" demand by an officer. In Illinois, you can be arrested for obstructing an officer for refusing to present ID, under 725 ILCS 5/107-14 (2006). So the answer is, it depends on where you live.

6. Finally, I learned that during jury selection, if a prosecutor strikes a potential juror for reasons the defense suspects are race-related, the defense can challenge the strike. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), outlines the process of the challenge. (1) The defense must establish a prima facie (apparent, on the face of things) case that the strike was race-related. (2) The prosecutor must present a race-neutral reason for the strike. (3) The judge assesses the credibility of the prosecutor's assertion. As summarized in United States v. Montgomery, 210 F.3d 446 (5th Cir. 2000): "The ultimate inquiry is not whether the counsel's reason is suspect, or weak, or irrational, but whether counsel is telling the truth in his or her assertion that the challenge is not race-based." Meaning, even if the judge thinks the strike was in fact race-based, he or she can only judge whether the person doing the striking thinks it was race-based.

Warning: This should not be considered legal advice. Goatdog is not a lawyer, barrister, counsel, soliciter, advocate, attorney-at-law, jurist, jurisprudent, legal adviser, legist, counsellor, or procurator; he is not licensed to practice law or give legal advice in Illinois, Florida, New York, Ohio, or any of the rest of the 50 United States, including the District of Columbia. This is presented in a "hey, isn't this neat?" manner, not a "you'll hear from my lawyer" manner. If you get arrested and begin a sentence with "But Goatdog said," they will laugh at you and throw you in the chokey.

A Fountain of Goodness

Hi. I just saw the best film of the year. Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is a rapturous, gorgeous, fearless, and sometimes incoherent paean to Love and Forever (with capital letters). It hasn't a trace of cynicism; Aronofsky bares his soul and dares us to look away. I couldn't. It's cinematic poetry in an age when poetry is considered quaint. It's pretty amazing. I'm babbling. 5 goats. 4.5 goats. Once the intial rush wore off, I realized that I have too many problems with certain parts of the film to give it 5 goats, but it's pretty damned close.

"But where's the review, Goatdog?" I haven't written it yet. Here it is. However, in the interim, feel free to read some other recent reviews:

Catch a Fire is a pretty good film about an apolitical South African black man who is turned into a revolutionary when he's mistakenly arrested as a terrorist. It slips up in its earnestness and desire to draw parallels to current events (and Tim Robbins's accent slips quite a bit), but it's still worth watching. 3 goats

Casino Royale is the best Bond movie I've ever seen. Of course, I haven't seen all that many, but I prefer its seriousness and muscular action to the slickness and camp of the earlier films. It's Bond with a soul (and a six-pack). 4 goats.

Tender Mercies is a non-event, a timid and polite film that tries really hard to be uninteresting, and succeeds. It's mild, very mild, but fails even to be all that insightful. It was a Best Picture nominee in 1983. Why? I don't know. 2 goats.

And Elevator to the Gallows is an almost unbearably delicious French noir from 1958. Louis Malle blends three distinctively French storylines (one of which seems to have influenced Godard's Breathless). 5 goats.