powdalounge.com

The nightmare before 40 realized. From Autumn Leaves blown steadily forward into and through winter in a shell of a vehicle sliding over slippery CT roads… hacking cough consistent one cubicle ahead… your hopes, your dreams reverberate to New Order hooks it seems to play poignantly… but there’s nothing I regret… #40 a hash tag post away, tweet… flash riot mob write to rid of. A time for gifts and replacements, things we miss from years ago. Mirror morning tells you to move on know it’s inevitable. This is ain’t right right here. I’m not right. But what is? Dawning of the 2012. This year’s I2K a year away. Certain doom. Endless predictions of the wrath and fury we surely deserve any paid-for-preacher will beseech you to repent now or forever not repent. How sweet to see the young head on. Like once I could and did to make a time of it. And then you reflect on perspective. Shake your head at the vain attempt of making sense. Today things go BOOM and we still sit and watch, maybe F5 to full screen to see it in HD. We’ve a preference for electronic communiqué. Che’s in the ether still, causing havoc with the tubes. Well, right now you live here and you work there and you’re tired of the places you frequent, the tasks you set and the people you know. You wish you would go but you have and it’s always a wreck. No Boston-Miami-New York can set me free. It just takes my money. All what little of it exists. Ask me about my credit. Yo bebo el te y el humo pasto. In praise of the synthetic opiate. The thrill of the pain kill. Shuffle Kind of Blue on iTunes and feel the narcotic drip through “Freddie Freeloader” then hit with full force into “Blue in Green”… dark grey late winter landscape never imagined so beautiful. In this the pill of our need marks the ambiguous ascent into another century… able to control all emotion, all thought and all fear, perhaps a bloody masterpiece in chalk on a blackboard with a chemical equation writ large. I drive on roads I grew up on and the feeling is failure. My dawning of nothing. Nihilism is just an ism with precise definitions. Fade in on <home>, a place you park, a walk you take and the familiar surroundings. A real human being.

New York Giants 21  New England Patriots 17

Mario Manningham makes a catch in the 4th quarter

Patriots last gasp attempt falls incomplete

Giants are the only team to beat Tom Brady in the Super Bowl... twice

That's not your confetti Jones, stop looking

Darth Vader
Star Wars

The dark lord of the Sith may have ended on a heroic note, but he did throw the Emperor down the new Death Star core before asking Luke to remove his mask and prove his humanity. Never mind the hatchet job Hayden Christensen did as the young Anakin Skywalker, Vader, voiced by James Earl Jones and acted by David Prowse, was the epitome of a classic villain complete with black metal outfit, cape and red light saber. Great Vader moments include cutting off the breath of those that exasperate him by using his thumb and forefinger, blocking Han Solo’s blaster shots with his hand and of course telling Luke, barely hanging from a bridge, that he is in fact his father. It also doesn’t hurt to have the ability to fly short distances, make objects move with a wave of his hand and be accompanied by menacing theme music.

Hannibal Lecter
Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal
Dr. Hannibal Lecter was a cerebral villain, using psychology and dark humor to play his enemies as pawns in a twisted game of mental chess. Never rattled, always in control and able to instill fear into even the most hardened FBI agents, Lecter taught all those he met how easy it is to manipulate from the inside out. Wonderfully played by actor Anthony Hopkins, great Lecter moments include cutting off the face of a Tennessee policeman to fool doctors in his escape, feeding Justice Department spokesman Paul Krenler his own brain during dinner at Paul’s weekend home and of course telling Agent Starling how her good bag and cheap shoes make her look like a rube. And for good measure, Lecter took revenge out on Migs, who defiled Starling by hurling his own semen at her, by whispering into his cell until the madman swallowed his own tongue.

Anton Chigurh
No Country for Old Men
“Who is this guy supposed to be, the ultimate bad ass?” Perhaps. The stalking, menacing and brutal Chigurh, who uses a cattle euthanizing machine that features compressed gas and bolts and a shotgun with a silencer to stealthily track down Llewellyn Moss in search of the $2 million Moss found at a drug trade gone badly, comes complete with funny haircut, baritone voice and a high threshold for pain. Though Carson Welles (Woody Harrelson) describes Chigurh, played by Spanish actor Javier Bardem,  as not having a sense of humor, Anton provides creepy comedy in how he deals with befuddled victims and a completely bewildered gas station owner. Great Chigurh moments include stepping over his handcuffs to put them in front and then using the cuffs to strangle a deputy, pretending to be a cop to pull over a driver and before stealing his car plugging him with the cattle bolt and after killing Welles smoothly raising his boots from the floor to avoid any stains. He is meticulous about his boots, also inspecting the soles after leaving Carla Jean Moss’ home after what was most likely another murder. The ending is poignant with Chigurh pulling himself from an accident and giving a Texas boy $100 to use the boy’s shirt as a sling and to keep the kid from telling the cops he ever saw him.

(continue reading…)

In film you usually have two types of heroes: the invincible comic book freak of nature and the humble, flawed and nondescript guy next door who just happens to rise to the occasion. Actor Jeremy Renner, quickly becoming a household name and A-list star, is the unsung champ who can carry a film with such nonchalance and ordinary methods that you almost forget he’s saving the day. From his emerging role as Brian Gamble in S.W.A.T. to his critically acclaimed performance as Sergeant First Class William James in the Academy Award winning The Hurt Locker, Renner has carved a reputation for being a regular guy in uncommon circumstances and making his character so normal it stuns with unremarkable candor.

Renner’s characters mix both heroic efforts and uncanny realness to create the guy next door who just happens to be responsible for saving your life. This is evident early in his career when he took on the role of Sergeant Doyle, Delta rooftop Sniper in the underappreciated 28 Weeks Later, a perfect follow up to the horror classic 28 Days Later. As one of the few surviving members of a unit ordered to exterminate with extreme prejudice Doyle bails on his commander, abandons his post and seeks refuge with the civilians in order to escape the execution of Code Red. In so doing he teams up with an army nurse who believes the two kids she is in custody of contain a clue to stopping the Rage virus. Doyle acts as security as they race to safety. When Doyle turns to the younger boy after running from the infected he asks if the boy is tired. The kid nods yes to which Doyle replies, “Yeah, me too”. In one brief quip Doyle lets the audience know he’s doing his job, nothing more. He’s tired, lucky and just as scared as the group he’s bravely protecting.

For Renner it’s this ability to look a certain part and act a particular way while still connecting on a real level that makes each performance so gripping. In Ben Affleck’s crime thriller The Town Renner is no hero, taking on the role of psychopath James Coughlin, a Charlestown hood with a murder to his name and plenty more to come. In this role we don’t get Renner the protector but rather Renner the renegade, a role he embraces with the same uncompromising regularity that shines through in all his work. When Affleck’s character utters the famous line “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we’re gonna hurt some people”, Renner thinks for a moment and replies, “Whose car are we gonna’ take?” Again, with a simple question Renner reveals more about Coughlin than all the bravado we expect from a street tough punk from Boston. Renner’s performance in The Town is a testament to back story, every action and look revealing everything that is never told in the script. This is what separates actors from movie stars.

But it is in the mesmerizing role of William James, bomb specialist in Iraq in The Hurt Locker that Renner captures the essence of his acting brilliance. From slowly talking Specialist Owen Eldridge out of a panic during an ambush to get him to clean blood stained bullets to staring blankly at a wall of cereal in a local supermarket when he returns home from his mission, Renner brings such quiet passion to his character’s dilemma of not knowing how else to act that it is strikingly apparent how war can change a man. Though James is seen by others as a cowboy and reckless lunatic with a death wish Renner slowly draws the audience in to the mind of someone who has to live each moment within a slip of being shattered into a million pieces. Living on that edge doesn’t take a hot shot it takes a regular guy doing an extraordinary thing, something Jeremy Renner has down to a science. When the film ends with James returning to Iraq for another tour the audience doesn’t ask why, there’s no need. Where else is he going to go?

Though Renner will play Hawkeye in the upcoming film The Avengers don’t be surprised if his super hero comes with a human condition not often found in the ranks of Batman’s and Spider Man’s. What else can one expect from an actor so bold one of his first major roles was bringing some kind of life to the notorious serial killer and super-predator Jeffrey Dahmer? Renner is that rare breed who doesn’t super size the roles he takes, rather he lets the cliche work it’s magic and is simply an ordinary man doing extraordinary things.

First it was real estate. Then it was treasury bonds. Now China, the not so crouching tiger and hardly a hidden dragon, wants in on the Hollywood game. And if recent history has taught us anything it won’t be long before the economic powerhouse is exporting films to the US instead of the other way around. As it stands China took in $1.6 billion last year at the box office and while that pales to the $10.6 billion generated in the United States it represents a 64% growth from the year before for the Chinese market (see the Bloomberg article here).

In addition to a growing fan base in China for films there is also a strong push by Chinese studios to lure big names and productions to the country. The upcoming Bruce Willis futuristic action flick Looper was co-funded by China’s DMG Entertainment in return for having the location of the movie moved from France to China and also including Chinese film star Xu Qing. Slowly China is making its moves. While Hollywood is more than happy to shoot in China with big names stars like Willis the Chinese are careful to include their own talent in the scripts to pave the way for a future in which their viewpoint is directing the action. Currently China only allows 20 films a year to be imported into the country. Unlike Russia twenty years ago China is not opening a floodgate for western pop culture so don’t expect the Jersey Shore to be clubbing in Shanghai anytime soon.

Any film made in China has to pass the censor gauntlet that strikes out excessive sex, violence and of course anything seen as portraying the communist party in a negative light. What China is allowing, though, are joint China productions that include studios from around the world to circumnavigate the import restriction and give the burgeoning Chinese market more of what they crave: big movie hits. Knowing it lacks the experience and technical abilities of Hollywood’s best and brightest China is testing the waters with joint productions that allow it to add a star here and a plot line there to slowly export Chinese culture to the world.

Making films in China will boost local economies and give the Chinese a valuable internship on the art of blockbuster film making that will be used in short time to produce everything from 3-D martial arts flicks to historical period pieces that may have a slightly different perspective than what US audiences are used to. China has a rich film history but what it lacks is a Star Wars or Batman franchise that doesn’t just rake in hundreds of millions of dollars but also becomes part of the fabric of a given society. Just as there is more to Jamaica than Bob Marley the Chinese are eager to show the world there is more to their history than Bruce Lee. China’s economic emergence is more than just factories and electronics. They want their culture to share spheres of influence too and what better way to infuse a way of life than through the soon to be omnipresent Imax screens.

In 1992 Geoffrey Wright gave movie audiences an unflinching look into the world of white supremacist skinheads by way of a controversial film called Romper Stomper. In addition to launching the career of Russell Crowe (Hando), the stark and violent story also took viewers into the turbulent and contradictory world of angry nationalists who live on the dole and resent the steadfast work ethic of Vietnamese immigrants. From the telling opening scene where Hando and his crew beat down several Vietnamese teens in a Footscray subway station to the climactic ending where Hando and his right hand man Davey (Daniel Pollock) square off for love or glory, Romper Stomper is one of the most honest portrayals of the hate, confusion and fear that make up skinhead culture.

While other films have tackled the charged atmosphere surrounding the society of racist skins Romper Stomper does so with no explanation, no apologies and no reason to show any growth in main characters. While Davey does distance himself from Hando it’s only for the sake of Gabe (Jacqueline McKenzie), a troubled teenager who herself is trying to distance herself from her abusive father. Hando, the lightning rod for the film, sticks to his white pride right up until the moment Davey stabs him in the back of the head on a vacant beach. Hando leads the lost crew of malcontents made up of Cackles, Sonny Jim and Bubs and pushes all of them to the disastrous ending that involves arrests and death. The drunken thugs that bash their way through the industrial suburb of Melbourne, Australia have no chance at redemption.

Many film fans would want to see change, to believe that underneath all his neo-Nazi bravado that Hando has a heart and soul. He does, but it is as ironclad as the menacing ink that covers his fit frame including a full arm sleeve in block black bones. Hando believes he is a soldier in the ongoing struggle of the white race and regardless of the fact that he refuses to get a job and ridicules those around him that do find work (a former skin named Flea joins the Navy to which Hando asks if he enjoys being “cannon fodder for the system”) he is convinced that the immigrants who come to Australia for a better life do so at his expense.

Unlike American History X Hando has no intention of learning or being taught. Even if he was locked up in a cell with a polar opposite there is no chance he would sacrifice his beliefs for reality. A man who squats in an abandoned warehouse, quotes diligently from Mein Kampf and stares down a menacing horde of Vietnamese men hell bent on revenge has no place in his heart for understanding. Hando will prevail or die trying. That is what makes Romper Stomper so mesmerizing, the audience won’t follow a character arc because there won’t be one. Hando is a creation of hate and he believes in war. The only conclusion for a monster of his ilk is death.

Romper Stomper was banned in several countries and was likened to Stanley Kubrik’s A Clockwork Orange, but without the intellect according to Australian film critic David Stratton. In Kubrik’s tale of ultra-violence, also banned from England for 27-years, there is change but at what cost? Alex DeLarge is reformed but through aversion therapy and is hardly a model of successful rehabilitation. With Romper Stomper, Wright offers no cure for Hando’s belligerence and psychopathic behavior, he is the epitome of self-loathing hatred and the only remedy is to put the animal down.

Perhaps the enduring legacy of Romper Stomper is the fact that people like Hando exist and as much as we want to see someone grow and change it’s not for everyone. Hando won’t be Darth Vader asking Luke to take his mask off or a bank robber that buries millions of dollars for a victim to find later. He will be stabbed in the back and die an inglorious death, alone.

Life is pretty direct: we’re born, we live and then we die. In between we look for closure and meaning but rare is anyone who find its and those who do are often delusional. Yet we ask of art, in particular film, the idea of giving us a happy ending that explains it all. Even the noted screenwriter Syd Field claimed “the days of ambiguous endings are over”. However, movies don’t owe us anything and if a film ends with more questions than answers so be it. Too many films ruin terrific stories by wrapping everything up in the end to satisfy some unwritten rule that everything has to have a point. But if art is to imitate life it should be like life, a head-scratching experience of questions and few answers. Limitless, written by Leslie Dixon and directed by Neil Burger, is that enjoyable cinematic experience that ends with a raised eyebrow but also a smile.

The protagonist in the story, Eddie Morra (played by Bradley Cooper, also co-executive producer) is a struggling writer who comes across a life-altering drug called NZT that is pushed on him by the brother of his ex-wife. When ingesting his first dose Eddie claims in his voice over, suddenly “I knew what I needed to do and how to do it”. He sets out to finish his novel in four days, turns $2000 into $12,000 on the stock market and beds his landlord’s wife. It’s much like the first bump of crystal methamphetamine, everything is possible and life makes sense.

Revelation

On a decadent holiday with some fabulous new friends Eddie dives off a cliff into sparkling blue water and has a revelation that more is meant for him than just writing books. He gets a $100,000 from a loan shark and sets out to make his name in the high stakes game of big finance. He crosses path with Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro) and declares, “I don’t have delusions of grandeur I have a recipe for grandeur”. Van Loon is skeptical but impressed. A major deal is in the works when Morra encounters every junkie’s dilemma: what happens when the stash runs dry.

The film takes several twists and turns that involve Morra coming clean to his girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish), eluding a strange stalker in the know about NZT and dealing with the loan shark Gennady (Andrew Howard) who got a taste of the drug and obviously wants more. Limitless is a fast ride on an ego trip that is both fun and wild. Morra experiences time lapses that leave him unable to account for 16-hours of a day and wondering if he killed a model. His inability to explain his secret to stock success has Van Loon nervous. Gennady won’t leave him alone and Lindy can’t handle the dual personality of Morra the blue-eyed genius and Morra the junkie.

Who is Eddie Morra?

The film ends with Morra running for senate in New York, check-mating Van Loon over who owns who and reuniting with Lindy. But the beauty of the end is that it leaves the audience wondering… is Morra still on NZT, did he figure out a way to taper off and retain the brilliance he discovered, will the three murders he committed (albeit two in self-defense) come back to haunt him and will Lindy stick with him? We don’t know and that’s what makes Limitless good. If all of this illumination happened under the influence of a pharmaceutical drug that was never approved for release then who knows how it will end. Morra is the guinea pig a lab tech warned about, he is the walking clinical trial and all we need to know is that he’s still flying high when the curtains fall.

Ambiguity is possible

Cooper is terrific as Morra and DeNiro is in a good position to land the lead in any movie about Bernie Madoff, he has the look already. But the real star of this adrenaline rush is the ambiguity of the ending. Some critics panned it but how many of them spent 4-days on a meth binge? That’s life in a parallel universe and just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it can’t end like that. In Limitless, it does and it works.

Of avant garde wars and precision art. Leveraged parties, Iran, Pakistan and the gist of the Internet under attack from so many sources and central parent companies. I quote from Bloomberg.com Dec. 21, 2010, “Google Inc. and other providers of Web content aren’t contributing enough to the costs of telecommunications networks and may be forced to pay, the French minister responsible for the Internet said.” To be the French minister responsible for the Internet is about as aristocratic a tech title one can have. That one being a Monsieur Eric Besson, he’s French.

It goes on to say “These companies are based in foreign countries, don’t pay any tax in France, and occupy at the same time very dominant positions in the French market,” Besson said. “The digital economy is developing thanks to the investments of operators.”

Warning shots fired from and purposefully across the bows of boardroom desks. “A related debate, over whether telecommunications operators can interfere with subscribers’ Web service to manage the flow of data, is currently playing out in the U.S. The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on so-called net neutrality rules.”

A series of challenges, legal filings and media wiring. Julian Assange is granted bail but will be watched carefully pending a trial in Sweden. The US Air Force and the Pentagon block their employees from accessing Wikileaks but also deny access to the sites that carry leaked info from Wikileaks including The New York Times and The Guardian UK.

Meanwhile this holiday season the United States unemployment will be at or near 9.8%. This puts America’s job demise in a record 19th consecutive month with over 9% unemployment. Therefore Assange, of course, fears extradition to the United States. Forget Osama bin Laden, give us the head of that hacker that makes us look ridiculous.

Or vice-versa, kinda cyclical

“What you know” is what has governments, banks, majority shareholders of serious corporate stock and emerging nation-states concerned. CLASSIFIED no longer applies in a transparent future. But can the masses, all those mindless jackasses grazing at screens in malls, salons and pubs grasp and understand the reality behind planned obsolescence, the science of population control and menthol? Soon the military will be ordered to provide homeland security in neighborhoods and then state images of jeeps with heavy machine-guns and armored personnel carriers will pop-up on our community of Internets, smart phones and televisions.

Right here at home...

Of course, maybe someone, a real patriot by definition with a good lawyer, idling on a rooftop with a grenade launcher will welcome the soldiers home with a damn perfect shot that detonates when the APC rear gate drops. Man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. himself. Those were the three taught. Consider: man vs. machine and man vs. State. In an era where enemies are sparse. United States, Russia, China… and everyone else descending in order of money spent on defense.

Regarding Guantanamo… The Huffingtonpost has “Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Association, agreed that ‘more review is better.’ But he said that an executive order would only ‘normalize and institutionalize indefinite detention and other policies,’ that were set in place by the Bush administration.”

“If there is one thing to write on any life form you can score for it’s this: keep your bags packed at all times and be ready to travel on.” William Burroughs, The Ticket that Exploded. Background music a concert featuring Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.

Here’s a Representative from Florida in “favor” of censoring news outlets that “collaborated with Wikileaks and there’s Joe Lieiberman and Independent Senator from Connecticut urging an investigation of news outlets involved in “enabling” people to view the Wikileaks info. As we’re finding out, whether or not information is readily accessible or even common knowledge is besides the point; it’s unknown in the eyes of money and security ergo no one knows… got it? Consider it a re-mix of those TV ads that concluded “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you”. Y’all should be able to fathom such simplistic corruption, right? With the markets bought and the trust sold the only thing left is your mind, and for that we present the Information War.

Julian Assange

You look like Andy Warhol. You move like a shadow. You’re a modern day Dillinger stealing the shallow thunder of the rich and powerful and letting everyone in on the game. Some would say you got guts, others would say you’re nuts but anyone who can scare the powers-that-be in the manner you do is fine with me. Just a hacker from Australia with the cojones to slip past the digital gates of heads of state, banks and the diplomats running up tabs of cocaine and whores on taxpayer funds. I don’t know if you’re doing right or wrong, I don’t know the difference, like love and hate it’s just the perspective of emotions we cling to that creates some sense of security.

I enjoy watching you on the internets, leaking secrets, crossing borders and using friends and associates to pass undetected in the middle of nights and across broadband daylight. They say you did some raping in Sweden but hey, who hasn’t? I don’t think you did but no one consented to invading Iraq and Afghanistan and in the grand scheme of life I can’t imagine your sexual crimes quite match the body count on freedom’s bloody hands. Us puppets mimic lies and are told to despise state violation of our rights but the these same vile clowns hold those very same “rights” hostage with taxes, police and hedge funds. I wish you would hack into news outlets and swipe the emails and documents that would prove the political agenda behind today’s journalism. Then you could bitch slap the cowards at Amazon for caving in to Congress and shutting down your hosting but I bet you’re boasting that would be too easy.

Hey Amazon...

You have to know the CIA, FSB, Mossad, MI5 and FBI want you dead. Snipers the world over probably have your white head in the cross hairs of Heckler-Koch rifles ready to squeeze the trigger and make you a modern day martyr. But as Obi-Wan so succinctly said “strike me down and I become even more powerful” and should your stealthy image disappear without a trace let me state I will gladly take my place in the war on/at/of & within information.

So Pretty

Julian Assange you intrigue me. I know almost nothing about you but I think I like you anyway. Pretty Boy Floyd, George “Baby Face” Nelson and Bonnie & Clyde run wild in my childhood dreams with the Clash riffing “Bankrobber” to black and white stock footage of Ma Barker cocking a loaded revolver and telling the pigs to get off her fucking land. Run, rabbit, run. I’m buying your myth. If you need a place to stay in the USA Powda has a lounge free from CCTV. Sit down for some blunt talk and ask about me books. You silly crook, you make us look and that is just the beginning.

61 god damn tries against a beginner level computer program but finally a win and two draws. Sunday cool and sunny. More WikiLeaking telling nothing anyone with common sense didn’t already know. Saudi Arabia wants Iran attacked… really? The over privileged sons and daughters of family-money-power are failing to protect their computers from hackers who probably enjoy nothing more than exposing hypocrisy? Diplomats are superfluous at best and dangerous at most? Exposure. Light. Take a snapshot of how we operate and what our allies think when supposedly no one is listening. Idiot savants been playing poker so long all they know is bluff… well that just ain’t tough enough when nuclear missiles are being deployed. Worked for JKF but he got shot anyway and anyway it’s today. Not 1963. Me be scared seeing we fold like a deck of cards the moment life gets hard. But the strategist can sense his opponents moves well in advance. Food. Clothing. Shelter. Name brands or generic it all serves the same purpose. Get by. Make it to tomorrow. Maybe North Korea and South Korea can end this with a pay-per-view battle royal for reunification – then China can have all the smoldering ruins. Are two of you really necessary? Insider trading all over the hedge fund world. Corporate bets come back in infinite jest. Winter nearing this here Yankee state. Brace for the cold harsh wind and hard snow that will blanket this place. Bailouts, flame outs, don’t ask and no one will tell what he’s really thinking. Unless a decoding system can enter your mind’s program and decipher absolute truth. Colored squares, diagonal moves, the pawn and rook shook the king and he got spooked when he saw his oil and gold on the scales of justice. We may only be human but we know the logic behind our bold maneuvers.