Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Despite some negative reviews, I was still looking forward to this latest from Kevin Smith. His last film, Clerks 2, was his best since Chasing Amy, and maybe since the original Clerks, and the film’s title had the same ring of why-didn’t-I-think-0f-that comedy gold as The 40-Year Old Virgin. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations.

I figure there are two ways Smith could have gone with this premise. He either could have “taken it more seriously,” or gone totally over-the-top and perhaps risked a NC-17 or X rating. By “taking the premise more seriously,” I don’t mean that he should have turned the film into a drama. I simply mean that he should have cleaved more accurately towards what it might really be like to make amateur porn. Nowadays, if someone is going to make amateur porn, they’re probably going to post it on the internet before they market it to video, and they certainly wouldn’t have the cinematic pretensions that Zack and Miri have in this movie. Of course, some will retort that their cinematic pretensions are what paint them as innocents and make the movie charming, but this is where I wish the movie had gone over-the-top.  Besides more nudity, more crudeness, and hopefully, more laughs and weird charm, the film also could have indulged in more romance, and morphed into something more unique and more compelling within the rom-com genre. Instead, the movie tries for the best of both worlds — charming rom-com and social commentary — and largely fails on both counts.

Besides all this, the film is laden with Smith’s typical homophobia and sexism. I thought that he’d kind of turned the corner on this with the ending of Clerks II, which was actually mildly compelling in its working through of the homophobic anxieties that are so common in white, suburban, working-class men, but in Zack and Miri he’s back to his typically sophomoric standard with the characters Bobby Long and Brandon St. Randy. Disappointing. As well, it’s curious to note how even when presenting otherwise loving portrayals of women, like Miri, the latest cycle of gross-out comedies (i.e. anything in the Judd Apatow universe) also seems morbidly compelled to include the most offensive female stereotypes (the other porn actresses in this film).

For me, Kevin Smith movies are always funny, always a nostalgia trip, but he continues to leave me at a loss when explaining his nasty side.

Same Shit, Different Day

This Thomas Freidman editorial is the #1 most popular piece at NYT.com today.

Heidegger said the same shit in 1954, Marx in 1848. Motherfuckers need to wake up. Mother Nature has been dead for the past hundred years (at least). And who cares about Mother Nature when people are suffering? It’s incredibly weird that Freidman’s editorial laments ecological disaster as though it’s a novel phenomenon whilst barely shedding a tear for the billions of global poor suffering right now at the hands of capital. Freidman and the ecologists have their heart in the right place, but generally, their sociology is incredibly weak.

The most important philosophy book of the next ten years will square Heideggerian ecology with a Marxist theory of social change.

Lil Wayne’s “Prom Queen”

I actually think that this song is going to be a huge hit. With the release of a music video yesterday, it’s obvious that the original version that we heard on the Hottest N** Under the Sun mixtape and various internet leaks was somehow incomplete, either a demo version or unmastered. (I think if you listen hard enough you can actually hear a click track.) Listening to the music video version, with a much tighter drum track, boosted guitars, and (I think) a tweaked vocal, I can easily see kids dancing to this song at frat parties and high school dances. For those who prefer the Lil Wayne of “Georgia . . . Bush” and “A Milli,” the song may be pretty lame, but we aren’t necessarily the people who have made Wayne a star. As a point of comparison, when the The Carter III came out last year, I remember a lot of reviews dissing “Get Money” as the worst track on the album, and I pretty much agreed with them, but now, after the mainstream audience made the song a big hit, I recognize its original brilliance as one of the most fun songs of the album, if not necessarily the best.

I may be the only person in America looking forward to Rebirth.