The Baytown Outlaws is an ultra-violent thrill ride that also happens to be a good bit of fun, assuming you’re into that type of thing. This movie has no interest in tugging at your heartstrings or making you go all gooey between the thighs. From the opening frame, Baytown‘s very honest intention is to kick the goddamned door down; to shake you and wake you from whatever Amour-induced coma you may have been suffering.
To that end, The Baytown Outlaws hits its mark. This despite the once-venerable Billy Bob Thornton masquerading about as some uber-bad-ass kingpin. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Thornton sure does sound the part. And he acts the part, as well. But he simply does not look the part, what with those steamed-vegetable arms of his, and something akin to a loose twig for a waist. This … This is not the look of a man who strikes grave fear into the hearts of his enemies, let alone a man who would just as soon kiss you as kill you.
That aside, Baytown Outlaws is a gory, gruesome, gratuitous good time – a slick little engine that hums its way straight across the Bible Belt and back again. Perfect for all those lonesome winter nights when there’s absolutely nothing else to order OnDemand.
(The Baytown Outlaws arrives for a limited engagement at New York City’s Cinema Village on January 7th, and is currently available via YouTube and VOD.)Continue reading →
Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer
All pics taken with a metallic-blue Canon PowerShot A495 digital camera, the bottom left-hand side of which is held together with a big ole’ piece of duct tape.
“When you started writing, in high school or college, it wasn’t out of a wish to be published, or to be successful, or even to win a lovely award like the one you’re receiving tonight. It was in response to the wondrousness and humiliation of being alive. Remember? You were fifteen and standing beside a river in wintertime. Ice floes drifted slowly downstream. Your nose was running. Your wool hat smelled like a wet dog. Your dog, panting by your side, smelled like your hat. It was hard to distinguish. As you stood there, watching the river, an imperative communicated itself to you. You were being told to pay attention. You, the designated witness, special little teen-age omniscient you, wearing tennis shoes out in the snow, against your mother’s orders. Just then the sun came out from behind the clouds, revealing that every twig on every tree was encased in ice. The entire world a crystal chandelier that might shatter if you made a sound, so you didn’t. Even your dog knew to keep quiet. And the beauty of the world at that moment, the majestic advance of ice in the river, so like the progress of the thoughts inside your head, overwhelmed you, filling you with one desire and one desire only, which was to go home immediately and write about it.”
Sure, The Dark Knight Rises was brimming with plot holes. But the movie also worked on several levels, chief among them the ability to provide a fairly tight ending to what is – for now – the greatest superhero trilogy of all-time.
Lincoln feels like it was written for the stage, but Daniel-Day Lewis is so overwhelmingly convincing in the title role it tends to compensate for whatever shortcomings one might find in the screenplay.
In a year teeming with documentaries about wrongful conviction, this one takes the cake. And it does so because the stakes are so astoundingly high – a fact that seems to have led to the very unlawful incarceration of five teenage boys more than two decades prior.
This is Wes Anderson’s most charming film. The palette alone is worth the price of admission. As an aside, I hope Universal builds an entire museum full of Wes Anderson set pieces some day.
Arbitrage is a phenomenal sleeper that succeeds on more levels than I could possibly delve into here. In fact, it’s a tragedy Arbitrage didn’t fare better at the box office. But it’s available on DVD now, and should be watched with all distractions cast aside. Richard Gere is aging remarkably well, and there’s even a quick cameo by Maria Bartiromo. Who could ask for anything more?
This is the Osama Bin Laden movie we had every right to expect, only not until a good 10-15 years from now. To have constructed such a stunning examination of the hunt for Al Quaeda’s number one this soon after his assassination … well, the feat is as stunning as the film itself. Forget about the controversies. Films like Zero Dark Thirty are designed to court controversy. It’s a sure sign they’re doing their job. And this film does its job remarkably well.
1. Django Unchained
Django Unchained starts off slowly. But, man, oh, man, if this movie does not provide the perfect crescendo, unfurling in the form of an explosive climax that’ll stick with you for days to come. Leonardo DiCaprio takes a major risk here – a major risk any actor of his caliber does not really need to take, quite frankly. And yet, it pays off in spades. From the moment DiCaprio appears on screen, the intensity rises to a whole nother level. And it does not dare step back until well after the credits have rolled.
It’s difficult to put a finger on what it is about a Tarantino film that makes it so unique. The answer would require something more along the lines of a formal essay. Perhaps the best way to put it in perspective is to admit that If I was asked to put together a list of the top 10 movies of all-time, none of Tarantino’s films would appear on that list. That said, if I was asked to put together a list of the 200 greatest movies of all-time, at least four of Tarantino’s seven feature films would appear on that list. All of which is to imply that Quentin Tarantino has always been consistently great.
It’s been quite a time, wandering about town with my Canon PowerShot in tow, lo, these past 12 months. While the only camera I own may have jammed up like a cheap gun and run through AA batteries like thin juice through a straw, it also provided ample company on a dozen or more lonesome afternoons straight through last winter and back again.
What can I say about photography? Well, I suppose I could say that photography is a perfect excuse to get out of one’s own head, while simultaneously seeing the world from a whole different perspective. Over the course of the past 12 months, what I’d inevitably find was – more often than not – a running theme would present itself to me, based on the time, or season, or even some type of general vibe in the zeitgeist. The beautiful thing about seeing the world through a lens is it tends to magnify the point, breaking through reams of clutter to extract some hidden element at its core.
The best part about taking pics: I have absolutely no idea what the fuck it is I’m supposed to be doing out there, which is – of course – the most exhilarating aspect of any endeavor.
Here now, in that spirit, are 41 of the best images I’ve taken with my bad camera over the past year. I look forward to the prospect of sharper images with a slightly better camera in the weeks and months to come. That’s all for now. Over and out.
Today is Saturday, December 3rd, 1993. I am sitting alongside Meghan’s family in the Wildwood Catholic High School Auditorium. Meghan is sitting with her classmates in the front row.
“A reading from the Book of Ephesians,” a junior named Donna Dipaola declares. “Be completely humble and be gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called.”
A dramatic pause. The sound of an old man clearing his throat.
I walked to the auditorium this morning from an apartment I recently moved into one block west of here. I am subletting a room in that apartment from a couple who charge me $100 a month. Meghan’s older sister, Lauri, lives across the street from me. Lauri shares an apartment with her fiancé, John. John owns a sandwich shop in town.
Meghan’s Junior Ring Mass ends, prompting families to adjourn onto the high school lawn. I offer to take pictures as an excuse for not having to appear in any. Looking west along the block, I notice an ambulance and several police cars are pulling up in front of the apartment where Meghan’s older sister lives. Rather than alarm anyone, I keep this to myself.
Around noon, I accompany Meghan to her father’s house, where the answering machine is overrun with messages. “Something is happening over at Lauri’s apartment,” I hear someone saying on one message. “You should get in touch with Lauri’s fiancé,” I hear someone saying via another. Meghan’s father makes a few phone calls, and an initial report is confirmed. Meghan’s older sister has been pronounced dead by way of an indeterminate cause.
***
That evening, Meghan follows through with set plans to attend her junior ring dance. She wears an emerald dress with low-cut heels that match her eyes, and I wear a navy blazer with faux-gold buttons that jingle off the cuff. I maintain my distance throughout the evening, allowing Meghan ample room to socialize, or to be by herself. People offer warm wishes and regrets. Meghan and I only dance together once.
The ring dance ends. Meghan and I dig our coats out from a pile. Meghan leads me out through a back-door exit in the school cafeteria. We are wandering east now, toward the boardwalk. Once there, we sit on a bench and we talk.
“Maybe something good will come of this,” I say.
“Like what?” Meghan says. She pulls her collar tight.
“Like, I don’t know,” I say. “Like, maybe there’s an opportunity here, y’know? Like, maybe this is a chance for you and your mom to reconcile. I mean, I know things have been rough, and I know you say a lot of that is actually your mom’s fault. But what if you could just kind of take the first step, y’know? Like, be the bigger person. I imagine your mother’s got to be hurting right now. Maybe if you could just do something as simple as, say – ”
“STOP TELLING ME HOW TO DEAL WITH MY FAMILY!” Meghan howls.
Dueling echoes, wall to wall.
“You have no right,” Meghan continues. She lights a cigarette. “I mean, you don’t even talk to your parents, Bob … either of them. In fact, you run away from your parents every chance that you get. And now you’re gonna sit there and condescend to me about how I should work things out with my parents? Here? Tonight? On this night? I don’t think so.”
Meghan is crying.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Meghan. “Everything I just said was out of line.”
“I know it was,” Meghan tells me. She leans into me for warmth. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
And so we sit, and we smoke, and we listen to the ocean’s tide.
***
I arrive at Meghan’s father’s house for Lauri’s funeral the following Monday. I am wearing the same blazer I had worn to the dance. Meghan is still getting ready, so I take a seat in the living room. Lauri’s fiancé is sitting alone at a dining room table, approximately 15 feet to my right.
I ride with Meghan’s aunt to the Church of the Assumption. Once there, Meghan requests that I stand next to her in a receiving line. I spend two hours greeting mourners, the majority of whom have no idea who I am. The viewing is followed by a mass, during which a priest describes Lauri as a remarkable athlete. The mass includes responsorials, and it includes somebody reciting a poem by Lauri’s fiancé entitled “My Princess Is Gone Now.” The service is attended by more people than I can count.
The mass gives way to a procession, a nearby burial, and then a reception at the Peter Shields Inn in Cape May. I eat lunch in the main dining area, and then I go outside. It is Christmastime, and the B&Bs along Beach Avenue have each been decorated with ice-white lights and velvet bows. I cross the street; I cross the sand onto a jetty where I light a cigarette. The ocean seems so sedate throughout winter, as if unphased by the blistering cold. The sun hangs low, and the daylight’s fading. I finish my cigarette, and I hurry back into the inn.
I find Meghan. She is sitting beside her mother in an enclosed porch that overlooks the southern lawn.
“Are you almost ready?” Meghan says to me. She does not look up. Meghan is leafing through an old family album full of pictures of her with her sisters and her mother and her father, all of them existing as a single unit before the divorce.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” I tell Meghan.
It is time to go home now.
Meghan says goodbye to her mother. Meghan’s mother remains seated on the porch.
“Songs carry emotional information and some transport us back to a poignant time, place, or event in our lives. It’s no wonder a corporation would want to hitch a ride on the spell these songs cast and encourage you to buy soft drinks, underwear, or automobiles while you’re in the trance. Artists who take money for ads poison and pervert their songs. It reduces them to the level of a jingle, a word that describes the sound of change in your pocket, which is what your songs become. Remember, when you sell your songs for commercials, you are selling your audience as well. When I was a kid, if I saw an artist I admired doing a commercial, I’d think, ‘Too bad, he must really need the money.’ But now it’s so pervasive. It’s a virus. Artists are lining up to do ads. The money and exposure are too tantalizing for most artists to decline. Corporations are hoping to hijack a culture’s memories for their product. They want an artist’s audience, credibility, good will and all the energy the songs have gathered as well as given over the years. They suck the life and meaning from the songs and impregnate them with promises of a better life with their product. Eventually, artists will be going onstage like race-car drivers covered in hundreds of logos. Stay pure. Your credibility, your integrity, and your honor are things no company should be able to buy.”
