The 28 Best Movies I Saw In Theaters In 2009

I did a final list of the best movies (that I saw) in 2009. The Oscars are coming up, and my predictions will be forthcoming, but for now, this is the final list of where I saw each film. Of course, my opinion certainly doesn't count, which is why you'll see (500) Days Of Summer as a top 5 film of the year, despite being snubbed entirely at Oscar time.

1. The Hurt Locker
2. Up
3. Up In The Air
4. (500) Days Of Summer
5. Inglorious Basterds
6. Star Trek
7. Avatar
8. Zombieland  
9. Away We Go
10. Adventureland 
11. Where The Wild Things Are
12. District 9
13. The Hangover
14. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
15. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
16. I Love You, Man
17. Sherlock Holmes
18. Pirate Radio
19. State Of Play
20. The Invention Of Lying
21. Whip It
22. Watchmen
23. Taking Woodstock
24. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
25. The Informant!
26. Funny People
27. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
28. Taken



In Defense Of Sarah Palin

I don't often jump to Sarah Palin's aid, as I generally feel that the holes she falls in are the ones she's dug, but the current controversy is so unfair that I couldn't ignore it any longer.

I'll catch you up on it, if you need it - this last Sunday, "Family Guy" premiered an episode called 'Extra-Large Medium,' the storyline of which was that one of the main characters, Chris, went on a date with a character with Down Syndrome.  I thought, in and of itself, it wasn't that bad an episode, but the Down Syndrome parts of it threw me. "Family Guy" clearly knew they were on thin ice and pulled all their punches - a few off-hand jokes during a song Stewie sang called "Down Syndrome Girl", and that was it - so the parts featuring the character were generally laugh-free in every aspect. I remember watching the episode and at the beginning saying "why do this?" and at the end saying "why do it this way? If you're going to do it, go for it and try to make people laugh, or don't do it at all. Why do it halfway?"  Apparently, the answer is: do it halfway so that you can end up being defended by the media and come out looking rosy on the other side.

There's a joke in the show where Chris asks the girl what her parents do, and she answers that her mother is "the former governor of Alaska." And there are ways that's not an offensive joke. If the joke is "Sarah Palin is stupid," then that's acceptable - Palin has that reputation and that's fair game for jokes. But that's not the joke. The joke is that Sarah Palin has a baby with Down Syndrome, which is probably caused by the fact that Sarah Palin is stupid. And that's truly offensive.

Despite what the media outlets reporting the story seem to think, Palin is well within her rights to defend herself about this. This isn't simply being thin-skinned - having a child with Down Syndrome is a tremendous struggle for a family, and regardless of whether or not Palin is a public figure, comments like this should always be off-limits. The reason people haven't gathered in her corner over this is because she's Sarah Palin, and somehow doesn't qualify for our outrage. The "Family Guy" characters aren't the only ones perceived as cartoon characters here.

Put it this way: if a more respected politician had a child with Down Syndrome - President Obama, for example - and there was a TV show that made a crack at that kid in even the vaguest way, can you even imagine what sort of holy hell would be unleashed upon them? People would be lining the streets in protest, and if Obama then spoke out against that show and denounced its insensitivity, the internet would flood with articles praising him as a brave father defending his children and the rights of children with Down Syndrome everywhere.

Instead, "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane went on "Real Time With Bill Maher" last night and laughed off Palin's comments, while Maher referred to Palin as "The Queen of Fake Outrage", referencing her calling out Letterman for making a joke about her fourteen-year-old daughter probably being pregnant by a thirty-year-old man (and how dare she make a stink about that?). Both seemed to feel that since the actress who played the character had Down Syndrome and was fine with the show, and seemed to be living a happy, contented life, Palin's arguments hold no water. Which, of course, misses the point entirely. What does the quality of life of the actress playing the character have to do with a harsh joke against a member of a politician's family, regardless of the fact that they have the same condition? It's terrible journalism to make that piece the focus of the story when the real issue is the joke, not the character.

Of course, if we're going to talk about bad journalism, we have to mention the fact that when the news broke that the actress who played the character, Andrea Fay Friedman, had called Palin out for having no sense of humor, it wasn't mentioned that the actress had the same condition as her character. Once that was uncovered, the stories started scripting the controversy as a Sarah Palin vs. Actress With Down Syndrome, as if that was really what's going on here. Most news stories are now running a picture of Palin and Friedman side-by-side, to give the impression that this is some sort of showdown between them. Naturally, the stories exempted anything that could sway perception in Palin's favor, such as:

a. Friedman seems to deeply dislike Palin, and almost every news outlet cut off the quote before her denouncement of the politician later in the letter, where she says "my mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes." Friedman is certainly entitled to her opinion here, especially on this issue, but of course that quote would never be reported since it means that Friedman couldn't be portrayed as a victim anymore. For all the posturing that "Family Guy" treated Friedman and her character like any other human being, news outlets haven't shown the same disgression.

b. Even if Friedman says "I was making fun of Sarah Palin, not her son," that doesn't take the show off the hook. She didn't write those lines, the show's writers did, and to put the actress' face on them in the press is disingenuous. It doesn't matter what her intent was, it matters what the show's intent was. Yet I have yet to read a single article that's addressed this in any way.  Apparently, once the actress spoke the lines, the show was absolved of all blame.

Not to mention that most articles have used this story to reference older Palin stories to discredit her - particularly her calling out Rahm Emmanuel for using the word "retard" but giving a pass to Rush Limbaugh - as if that had anything to do with anything. The throughline being "just in case you were going to side with Sarah Palin on this issue, here's a list of reasons she can't be trusted." And these are news stories. It's the equivalent of newspapers and news outlets covering the State of the Union by saying "President Obama, who once said he thought there were 57 states in the union and has consistently mixed up what exactly U.S. foreign policy has historically been in interviews, addressed Congress tonight to explain his plan for our government in the coming year." Evidently, we only notice a lack of journalistic integrity when it deals with politicians we like.

Two years ago, I though the Republican party was in complete disarray and didn't see any way that it could resurrect itself anytime soon. I now understand that the party doesn't have to do a thing: news outlets will just keep picking at it incessantly without justification until more than 50% of the country says "y'know, none of these arguments seem to hold any water. I think I'm gonna side with the other guys."

Death At A Funeral

I'm always uncomfortable to see people reposessing material to appeal to a different demographic. I suppose it's related to seeing mainstream music and culture being assimilated and imitated for commercial use by Christian bands and t-shirt companies.

But I'm more uncomfortable with this because Chris Rock is a stand-up comedian of the highest order, who assumably obeys that code that comedian's are famed to follow: never steal a joke. It's considered incredibly reprehensible within that fraternity. Remember Joe Rogan's campaign against Carlos Mencia for stealing his material (rather than just for his awful TV show and truly horrendous delivery)? I recall a fairly lousy "Studio 60" episode ("The West Coast Feed") focused entirely on this code, where comedians walked down hallways at high speeds, waving their arms and yelling "I never stole a joke in my life!"

It's one thing to re-make a movie for a different time, to update a story and give it new life. But Death At A Funeral was made in 2007 and just happened to be a film that not many people saw. Rock recast the film with black actors and is re-releasing it to a larger audience. It's almost the exact same film: shot in a similar location, with all the same jokes, even some of the same actors (though to be fair, who would you ever pick for that slot other than Peter Dinklage?). Check the trailers:

2007 Version:

2010 Version:

 Eerily similar, no? And having seen the original film, I can promise you that there are no jokes in this trailer that did not, in some form, appear in the first version. Which, just to remind you one more time, came out three years ago. Three.

One final note: you could make this same argument concerning television - the British and American "Office's", for example - but that's a unique medium. I could go on about this for a long time, but in brief, TV works based on the concept that original premise is simply the jumping-off point for characters. Writers adapt to the individual actors playing the parts and the producers adjust the series' tone as time passes. It's nearly impossible to truly recreate anything in television for more than a few episodes in a row. More importantly, TV creates a weekly relationships with its viewers, and that's something that can't be communicated through a DVD set released two years after the fact.

Everyone thinks I'm not handy, just 'cause I tend to break stuff

Over the past couple weekends, I've been working on redoing my apartment. This is a big step for me. I'm not the sort of guy who straps on his toolbelt and regrafts a table, or whatever the hell it is handy people do. Me, I do things the old-fashioned way. I buy cheap furniture from Target and ditch it when it falls apart, like the pioneers did.

But no longer. I have become a man's man, and I will regraft any tables I please. And to prove it, I'll let you know that it's not called a "toolbelt." It's called a "bag." Don't forget it.

And to prove it further, here's some pictures from the adventure.

This is what my apartment looked like at the outset:

Not an auspicious beginning. My desk is there in the back, and it's seen some good innings. I've had that desk since I was three, and I think it might have been a hand-me-down at the time. It's been through quite a bit - I tended to carve drawings onto its surface as a child - but I'm fond of it and want to hang onto it. Here's a couple closeups:

And here's a closeup on one of the drawers. I'd always thought they were black on purpose. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that it was just corrosion.

You can tell from the picture that I did all my sanding, staining, and painting on the Houston Defender, the excellent - and free - local black newspaper, of which I helped myself to a few dozen copies. In my defense, I did actually end up reading it, and I enjoyed it very much, especially the interview with charming character actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, of whom I am a longtime fan.

I sanded it down and added three coats of stain, sanding in between coats. I wanted to make it look attractive and well-maintained while keeping a lot of the character that made me like it so much (not that I needed to worry - nothing on this planet was gonna make that desk look new again). Here's the finished desk:

I also got handed down an old table and chairs from a friend that was vastly superior to my current setup, thought that certainly isn't saying anything (it's bad to have a glass dining room table you're afraid to put anything onto for fear it might collapse and shatter/kill you). I sanded them down and painted them a matte black, and added new seat cushions:

One of the major problems of my apartment was book space, so Claire and I went to Ikea on one of those biannual sales they're so known for, and bought a giant new bookcase. Then I sanded down my other two bookcases and painted them the same matte black as the table and installed them in the living room. Of course, that took some rearranging, so I ended up switching my whole living room back-to-front:

Which brings us to the fact that Best Buy's prices on the LG models finally dropped, so I also bought a brand-new HD TV, seen here. It's only 32", but I'm sitting four feet from the thing, so I can't imagine I'll need anything bigger.

I put the new Ikea bookcase in the bedroom and took down all my Star Wars posters (I couldn't bear to throw them out, so I moved them to the laundry room) and installed a set of paintings I bought from New York artist Steve Keene, whose gimmick is that he simply produces paintings in mass quantities. I spent $27, counting shipping, and received 18 paintings - ranging from an impressionist take of the famous Abe Lincoln photos to an Smiths album cover - of which I put up 12.

I guess that about covers it. I mean, I changed out a few other things here and there - I rebuilt my coatrack - but that's all the big stuff. And let me just say, I've gained a new respect for those people who are actually good at this stuff. I spent the week following this sick at work, as my body simply decided it had been through enough and wanted to spend every free moment lying down.

Of course, it turns out that when you don't have any sandpaper, brushes, paint, stain, and other relevant artifacts, fixing up an apartment can be just as expensive as just buying all new stuff, and while I think the thrill of accomplishment is worth the cash, it looks like I'll be eating in for a while.

At least I've got a table to eat it on.