Hancock: wish this movie well

For those who haven't heard, Hancock is about a drunken-bum superhero played by Will Smith who wakes up on park benches hungover, flies drunk, smacks into buildings, topples telegraph poles, shunts trains, wrecks cars; when he lands he crashlands, the sidewalk buckling beneath his feet, like a kid on a carpet. "You want people to be pleased you've arrived," advises a wonderfully emollient Mark Bateman as a PR man who take it upon himself to rehabilitate the grizzled bum.

As Hancock is hauled before a podium to apologise to a large angry public, then sent to prison to serve time for the damage he has caused, the story takes on shades of OJ and Mike Tyson and Coby Bryant — all the black superstars who have taken the plunge from public disgrace to rehabilitation. He even seems at times to stand in for the Bush administration, villified by the press for his blunderbuss ways — "You are not above the constitution" harangues Nancy Grace, while a small French kid calls him an "asshole." Hancock picks him and sends the little squirt hurtling into the sky. In its portrayal of a rogue super-hero, learning how to wield his powers and win back an abused and distrustful public, Hancock could well turn out to mark the beginning of Obama's America, in the same way Rambo marked Reagan's.

In almost any other year this movie would probably have bombed. Early word had that it was a train-wreck, Will Smith's first big stumble, and reviews suggested a lumpen Last Action Hero for the new millennium. It's too slight for that. It has a skimpy, skit-like feel, shot in hand-held documentary style, with a skipping bluesy soundtrack. What it is is bonkers. There's a sliver of genuine craziness to this movie, particularly in its second half, after a plot twist involving Bateman's beautiful blonde wife (Charlize Theron) sends it hurtling off, at speed, into the thickets of taboo — to do with white women, black sexuality and the like — that American movies rarely go near, let alone plant a big grey-blue vinyl super-boot.

But the craziness is not the craziness of folly. Its the kind of hot mid-summer craziness that hits a nerve. I saw it last night with a large July 4th audience who sat there astonished, delighted and flabberghasted in rapid succession: there was a fair bit of head scratching as we left the theatre. Independence Day it ain't. But it is bold and original and I haven't a clue how well it will do. How often can you say that about a movie these days?

Non-stop election excitement!

Things are hotting up. New polls are coming every day. The networks all have 3-hour long marathons of election coverage that begin at 5 or 6pm and let up at 9 or 10pm every evening, with repeats going through until midnight. The press, meanwhile, have dispatched 24-hour reporter pools to cover the candidates' every dash for pizza ("MO and BO flirt. MO hits BO playfully three times in a row...The candidate went inside to change clothes to go to the gym. The pool sat across the street and waited on a wall, later discovered to be covered in fire ants...")

There's only one spanner in the works of this 24-hour, 7-day-a-week electathon: nothing actually seems to be happening.

It's a definite impediment, although not insurmountable. What we have instead is a series of stories hinging on pseudo-outrage from one candidate's surrogates at the not-quite-gaffes uttered by the other candidate's surrogates. The amount of offense-taking is positively Olympian. The latest flap: Obama says he may "refine" his Iraq exit strategy sometime in the next six months or so.

Seeings as its a war and all, and we still have to see out the end of the year before any strategy can even begin to be implemented, this seems like a jolly sensible idea, even an imperative one.

Not so. It is an outrageous "flip flop"! says the McCain campaign. Obama has effected the u-turn to end all u-turns! The man's principles have imploded utterly, leaving nothing but a spineless dark star of anti-mattter and dust! The news media, needless to say, has leapt onto the bandwagon with enthusiasm: How dare he promise to refine his plan! We want him top stick to the exact same plan he came up with six months ago! Who does he think he is, etc etc

The public, meanwhile, looks on, bemused. A recent poll by CNN found that 61% of people found that McCain had changed his mind about something and 59% of people suspected had Obama had changed his mind about something. The same poll also found that 63% of voters have a favorable opinion of Obama and 59% a favorable opinion of McCain. In other words: they couldn't care less. They want a pragmatist.

Happy July 4th, everyone!

Songs from Ohio

Normblog has complete a 50-state tour of the nation's song lyrics. The rules: a song is eligible for the list for any given state when the name of that state figures in either the song's title or in its lyric or both. The state may be used adjectivally, as in 'South Texas Girl'. But reference to rivers, where their names coincide with the names of states (Colorado, Mississippi, Ohio), doesn't count. Rivers run on and cannot be tied down so. And reference to some place in the state, like a city or a geographical feature, also doesn't count, unless the name of the place includes the name of the state adjectivally. For example, from Ohio:

Pancho and Lefty ("Lefty split for Ohio") — 1, 2, 3, 4.

Look At Miss Ohio ("'Oh me oh my oh, look at Miss Ohio") — 1, 2.

Dayton Ohio 1903 ("It's a real nice way / To spend the day / In Dayton, Ohio'") — 1, 2.

Ohio ("Four dead in Ohio") — 1, 2, 3.

My City Was Gone ("I went back to Ohio / But my city was gone") — 1, 2, 3.

Youngstown ("Here in northeast Ohio / Back in 1803") — 1, 2, 3.

To which I would like to add add Carry Me Ohio by Sun Kil Moon. Kate adds: Ohio Plane Show Crash, by Joe Henry, and Ohio, by Leonard Bernstein ("Why, oh why, oh why oh, did I ever leave Ohio?"). Scott adds: Devo's Jocko Homo ("I've got a rhyme that comes in a riddle / O-Hi-O! / What's round on the ends and high in the middle? / O-Hi-O!").

Best Songs of 2005: Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap

1. Hide and Seek — Imogen Heap

2. All I Want To Know — Stephen Merritt

3. Hope There's Someone — Antony and the Johnsons

4. Speed of Sound — Coldplay

5. Lyla — Oasis

6. Leah — Bruce Springsteen

7. Feel Good Inc — Gorillaz

8. Sunday Morning — Ani Difranco

9. Surface to Air – The Chemical Brothers

10. I Can't Seem to Make You Mine — The Clientele

• Best Songs of 2009
• Best Songs of 2008
• Best Songs of 2007
• Best Songs of 2006
• Best Songs of 2004
• Best Songs of 2003
• Best Songs of 2002
• Best Songs of 2001
• Best Songs of 2000

Hamas or hummus?

"They took us down winding stone stairs and through long corridors, ostensibly to have some make-up dabbed on our noses for the cameras, in fact to meet the interviewer and test his disguise. We confronted a tall, blond-ish man in his thirties, dressed in leather and studs, his face heavily powdered, his arms and chest shaven. He spoke in a heavy German accent, his movements and mannerisms ultra-gay. He tried to write down our names, but they came out dyslexic.

We had been asked to be interviewed for a documentary that would explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the youth of the world. A worthy cause. The producers explained that our interviewer, a German rock star, was the perfect person to establish strong communication with our audience. Then one of us mentioned Hamas, and the exchange that ensued went something like this:—

“Vait, vait. Vat’s zee connection between a political movement and food. Vy hummus?”

“Hamas,” we explained, “is a Palestinian Islamist political movement. Hummus is a food.”

“Ya, but vy hummus? Yesterday I had to throw away my pita bread because it vas dripping hummus. Unt it’s too high in carbohydrates.”

The Hamas-hummus confusion went on for several minutes. Then, the interviewer declared: “Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse.”

An encounter with Sacha Baron Cohen in the old city of Jerusalem, as reported in The Jewish Daily Forward

Drowning not waving

"You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it 'simulates' the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning" — Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair.

Watching the video you are struck by the eerie innocuousness of it all: Hitchens is led into a room, blindfolded, made to lie down, tied; towels are held firmly over his face, then someone sploshes water over his mouth from a plastic cannister, much as you might water a plant. Only once the blindfold is taken off, do you see the look of gasping asphyxia on his face. I guess this is why it's the tehcnique they're using. The psychological effects of torture on the torturer are well known ("Many young men have 'taken up the game' and have thereby passed from mental health and stability into terrifying states of decay, from which some will probably never recover," wrote Alec Mellor, in 1972, about the French use of torture in Algeria) but when someone is waterboarded, you don't hear anything, there is no blood, there is no struggle, you don't even see their face.

The sound of the crowd

"During the three-and-a-half hours Murray was on court, the ambient noise had thickened from a fretful buzz, through a gathering shrillness, to an unceasing cacophony of squeals, hworfs, baargs, grunts, yaps and yodel..... At one point in the third set, as Murray clipped an improbable backhand winner, one woman spectator emitted a chilling staccato shriek that sounded like a feral cat being fed slowly into the rotating blade of a combine harvester. By the end, each point was accompanied by its own distinct thunderclap of baying approval or wailing, primal lament....."
— The Gaurdian, on the Murray-Gasquet match

It's one of the things I miss least about England: the centre-court crowds at Wimbledon, who cheer whena n opponent double faults, and then giggle, in reaction to their own favoritism. It's such an English sound. Like the worst bully — smiling, as he squeezes your balls.