The Right Has Writer’s Block

By Alec Horowitz

My mother called me up and asked why there were people in a nearby town having a tea party. I said it was probably some angry Republicans holding their tea party. Yes, you heard me right, Republicans held tea parties across the country. They where all preparing for April 15^th, official tax day, when the National Tea Party will be held. Fox News has already announced that they will be on hand across the country covering the tea parties. Yes, Fox News is so fair and balanced. Their new host, and a mystery of the universe, Glenn Beck, has been actively promoting the tea parties on his show. So has syndicated radio show host and Fox News star Sean Hannity, who put out a press release, said he would be returning to his “second hometown” Atlanta (since when?) to broadcast his radio show and TV show live from the tea party. So, why is the right doing this? According to the official website, where you can sign up to help with right wing tea parties, it is protest the government abusing their power by raising taxes.

So, this is what the right has come to? Tea parties? Oh jeez. Is it just me or has the right really had writer’s block lately? I mean, the tea parties are just the tip of the iceberg. Over the last year, look at some of the unbelievable stuff the right has been pulling. For example, Michael Steel has the official title of head of the Republican Party, but the actual people in the Republican Party. Their common people members have really elected a shock jock as their leader. The people in the right have elected syndicated radio shock jock Rush Limbaugh as their leader. Remember his speech at C-Pac? Him standing behind a podium, wearing a black shirt, looking likes a fat nightclub bouncer. Now, the very people who made Rush Limbaugh a millionaire, and elected George W. Bush, are holding tea parties. Over on the Fox News website, they are running a video of tea parties that have occurred. They claim on their website it’s a website to protest tyranny.

Government spending is tyranny? How? Wasn’t torture by the Bush administration tyranny? Oh never mind. Thus, lays the problem with right wing Republicans. They have one issue. Torture? That’s ‘enhanced procedure’. Not tyranny. Spying without a warrant? Oh, that’s not tyranny either. Taxing people? Tyranny! Off with their heads! Of course, the conservatives like to hide the fact that they have one issue but making up what they call ‘moral’ issues. I think the American people have had enough. Let the Right have their tea party. I’ll have my tea, reading The New York Times and sneering at their stupid efforts to win back this country.

Though, I laugh now, but don’t laugh too much. An article released by both the Associated Press and the news website, The Huffington Post, reported that the Department of Homeland Security has recently said that right wing extremism is on the rise in America. According to the AP, the report warns of violent militia groups forming in the United States. Though, they aren’t talking about Mulism extremists. They are talking about right wing groups. Hmmm. So, how about those tea parties, huh? Lets fight tyranny with tea parties. You should watch the right wing do what they do best. Claim they love America. Than they treat America like child’s play and push America to its limits. Yes, it’s all about saving a buck and promoting violence, while Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Tea Party volunteers laugh it up.

Previously published in The New Paltz Oracle.

And You Think Your Family’s Not Lively

By Alec Horowitz

Neil Gaiman’s new book ‘The Graveyard Book’ has shades of his other young adult novel ‘Corlaline’. Even, more ironic is that its main character seems to resemble the character Wybie. Wybie wasn’t Gaiman’s creation, even though he appears in the film, ‘Coraline’, based on Gaiman’s novel. He was added to make the film more adaptable to the screen. Wybie, I felt, was a wonderful character and very relatable. He was that lost, awkward kid in all of us.

The main character is a young boy who was adopted by ghosts as a baby, after his family is murdered. The most charming moments in the book are the simplest. Moments like the warmth of Ms. Owen, who died quite a while ago, but is now a ghost, deciding to adopt the nameless baby as her own. Gaiman weirdly doesn’t seem to use his adoptive parents enough. He instead has them come in and out, and misses an opportunity to paint a supernatural family that would be been quite charming. I would of loved to see a parent teacher conference when the child, they name Noboby Ownens, goes to school, with ghost parents showing up or a scene where they are at a dinner table in the grave yard. Of course, his adoptive parents don’t eat. It would of helped with chemistry if Nobody called them mom and dad once in a while, which he doesn’t. Gaiman could of played more with that, but on the other hand, Gaiman doesn’t write charming kids. Often writers will write kids as charming just because they happen to be kids. Gaiman doesn’t believe in this, and instead makes his young characters charming in small doses, but makes them more realistic in their attitudes. Coralline wasn’t very charming either.

In ‘The Graveyard Book’, Gaiman introduces us to what is really a collection of short stories with the same characters. Nobody Owens ages from a baby to a young man in the book. One of the more charming things about ‘The Graveyard Book’ is watching Nobody Owens grow up. He can be a fussy little kid, who always threatens to run away, causing pain to his overprotective adopted mother and going against the advice of his guardian, Silas. The reader might thing Silas is dead, but in fact, Silas has some abilities that even the other dead in the graveyard seem to lack, which shows that Silas is something else. Silas tries to guide young Nobody Owens and keep him in line; at times being affectionate and other times growing quite mad with him. Gaiman recently revealed in an interview that Silas is a vampire, but the word ‘vampire’ is never mentioned in the book. The people in the graveyard generally care for the little living boy, while also being frustrated with him. He is frustrated himself, as he isn’t able to ever leave the graveyard.

Nobody wants to learn how to get revenge on the people who killed his family. He brings it up throughout the book. The feel of the murder at the beginning of the book felt like it happened in a shadowy old town, or that’s how I felt about it. As much as I did like many elements of this book, what I didn’t think worked was the reasoning the murderer gives later on in the book for why he killed Nobody’s family. It had to do with an ancient society. That idea is only talked about in one chapter and with the feeling of most of the novel, taking place in a graveyard, which felt out of place. It should have been like an old time British killer. Come on, Neil, that’s just random. With the fantasy feeling of the novel and the tone of the book, it doesn’t seem to fit.

The nature of the book is quite wonderful when Gaiman keeps the tone of a fantasy world. There are little pieces of modernity that come into the book, but very little. He brings in the modern stuff with the supporting character of the girl he meets from the village. We see her twice in the book, once as a young child and next as a tween, who keeps looking back at the time she spent with Nobody, thinking she made him up. Their interactions are quite nice at times and are also realistic. They aren’t meant to be together. They are two kids in bad situations who get stuck in one certain situation and probably won’t see each other again.

Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Graveyard Book’ is a fantasy and horror genre remake of ‘Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book’, with a little boy being adopted by the forest animals, but this time it happens to be the graveyard ghosts. It’s a children’s novel, so it’s probably good for kids twelve and over to read. The language is relatively simple. The plot is really short stories instead of a straight narrative. Still, like the big twelve year old I am, the ending still made me tear up a bit.

Thoughts On This Year's Oscars

By Alec Horowitz

The set to the Oscars was puzzling this year. They tried to make the set look smaller and less glamorous. The opening number by host Hugh Jackman openly acknowledged this. He used what looked like paper cutouts to show to show the Oscars where going to be toned down and Hollywood was more in touch with America. Ok, let me just say this. If the Oscars wanted to look more in touch with America, than they minus will of just took ‘The Reader’ out of the best picture category and replaced it with ‘The Dark Knight’. Come on, this is the Oscars. I don’t want them to be in touch with the unglamorous picture painted by a speech by President Barack Obama on the economy. I want my Oscar’s big and glamorous. I want to feel like I’m sitting in a movie theater during the great depression, as I forget my troubles, and the biggest problem in the world is Gene Kelley needs to find a way to make rain fun.

There where some lovely moments, though. Heath Ledger’s family was lovely. They weren’t overly ghoulish, and they didn’t break out into tears. They where moving about the way they spoke how Heath would of liked to be honored by his peers. Though, most of this night was kind of a disaster. The idea of having each presenter take us through how a movie is made wasn’t a good idea. I mean, the truth is movie buffs already know this and those watching for escapism don’t care. I did like having each actor or actress say something about each nominee. I thought it was wonderful to see long shot Richard Jenkins get nominated. He looked slightly uncomfortable sitting there in the audience, but for me, that’s part of his charm. His performance in ‘The Visitor’ was wonderful. Though, I was surprise to see Sean Penn win the Oscar for Best Actor, because of all the hype that was surrounding Mickey Rourke. Rourke gave an over the top and wonderful performance in ‘The Wrestler’ but Sean Penn gave the performance that deserved to win.

Also, it was nice to see ‘Frozen River’ nominated for best original screenplay. I was happy to see ‘Milk’ win for best original screenplay as well. Best improvement over the overrated indie clichéd filled script that won an Oscar last year (do I even need to say it?) Though, this was clearly ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ night and rightly so. While there where other wonderful films nominated that year, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was unique. The night, though, wasn’t very good. The feeling of the Oscars just didn’t feel like the Oscars. There’s nothing wrong with escapism, and the Oscars are the ultimate escapism. Go over the top, Oscars. Be distasteful, and I encourage the Oscars to discard good taste with regard to the rest of the nation. This is why people go see movies. While the rest of the world is falling apart, at least we can be told stories, and that’s wonderful.

So, next year, take my advice, Oscars. Go over the top. We watch to escape. We don’t watch to be remained. Though, there are some important points made during the Oscars, as the point made by Dustin Lance Black about the unacceptable treatment of homosexuals in America. It’s a perfect example of why the escapism is important, because sometime’s it's possible to escape but also learn something as well and that’s important. The crop of Oscar nominated films this year where socially aware. When was the last time you thought about India? Homosexual rights? Or illegal immigrants? (Frozen River and The Visitor, the two indies nominated this year) It’s painfully important. Stories are important. Never forget film is important.

Vetting, Vetting, Gone

By Alec Horowitz

The Obama Administration has been having a ton of problems with vetting lately. Their first choice for Security of Commence seemed like a slam-dunk, and as we know by the Bush Administration’s use of the word, slam-dunk is not a good thing. Bill Richardson, former Presidential candidate, popular Hispanic governor of New Mexico and someone who looked like Santa Clause with the bread added. He seemed good when he first stepped foot into the appointment, but soon has to resign because he was being investigated by the federal government. Uh, ok. Well, it’s one mistake. Obama can overcome this! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes, we can vet the next person right. Yes, Tom Daschle can!

Tom Daschle was appointed to be security of human health and services, and seemed like a great choice. He was long known as a great advocate for universal health care. Universal health care! Yes we can! Yes we can! As he stood behind the microphone, answering questions during the vetting process, it seemed the only thing wrong with Tom Daschle was his choice of pink glasses. Who told him to wear pink glasses? Seriously? Pink glasses? Hey, though, this was going to be the man who is going to get us universal health care. Than something came up that wasn’t expected. A little problem called back taxes came up. It seemed there was something in his past. An evil monster called back taxes. Scary, I know.

So, than Daschle had to step down and Barack Obama felt like he was in the movie ‘Groundhog Day’. He just went through a similar episode with Timothy Geithner, who did get in as Secretary of the Treasury. Though, Geithner happened not to pay his back taxes. Than Barack Obama had a brilliant idea. If the Democrats weren’t paying their taxes, maybe the Republicans paid their taxes. Plus, appointing a Republican would go with his whole message of change. Lets bring the people together! Democrats and Republicans! Together at last in a bipartisan way! So, Barack Obama tried to appoint Republican senator Judd Gregg into his cabinet. Of course, Judd Gregg was on board for a little while until he saw that the cool kids in the Republican Party weren’t letting him eat at the lunch table of the congressional building. He got upset, because Rush Limbaugh’s mom always packs the best cookies and he shares it with his friends at the cool table, so he ended up turning down Obama’s offer to join.

So, there was obviously nothing left for Obama to do. He has had some successful appointments. Hillary Clinton was doing a great job as Security of State. Joe Biden was a good choice for the Vice President. See, these where some good appointees. Though, he might have to appoint some new people to do his vetting. Some of the people he has appointed to vet didn’t do a good job and don’t get how they glossed over some of the obvious problems some of the people vetting had. Obama got up from his desk, and picked up a small white box.

Obama went to his security of ‘chill’. He didn’t have to do too much vetting when he appointed this guy during college. Anything shady about this representative was found out years ago and no one seemed to care about it anymore. He told everyone that he stopped doing business with this representative, but it was one lie that wasn’t the end of the world. No, it wasn’t that shady real estate dealer in Chicago. He told the secret service to stand outside the back alley of the White House, because President Obama needed to have a meeting with Representative Joe Camel. Representative Camel didn’t require any vetting, just a match.

Great Movies: As American As Apple Pie

By Alec Horowitz

The 1999 film, “American Movie” by filmmaker Chris Smith is the ‘Spinal Tap’ of the independent film world. Unlike “Spinal Tap’, that 1984 mock documentary by Rob Reiner, “American Movie” is a real documentary and these are real people. The film opens with Mark Borchardt driving through a high way in Wisconsin, looking at street lamps and car dealerships, as he says in his narration “I keep thinking about the American dream…” What’s Mark’s American dream? To live out his life’s goal making successful horror movies. Of course, what follows from that humble set up for Mark’s story is a picture of no just someone with an American dream, but a picture of real Americans?

Mark Borchardt lives with his parents, writes local radio dreams, and is considered a screw-up by his brother, who dresses up in a Hooters t-shirt for his interview in the film. Borchardt goes to his uncle Bill, begging him to help him fund his short film, Coven. Borchardt hopes to use the sales for Coven, to finance his life long project, a script titled Northwestern. Uncle Bill lives in a trailer park and is retired. She speaks in a low tone matter and is the last person Borchardt has to turn to. His best friend is a stoner type named Mike Schank, who talks in monotone, has a small bread, a overweight man who sis on his bed with a guitar on his lap and says “Me and Mike used to party a lot, but we don’t party anymore”. Borchardt also has about eight kids with some girl he knew from the local bar scene. In one scene where all the children are lined up sitting on plastic chairs, the offcamera filmmaker askes them what was the last film daddy took them to see. One of his kids replys in a child’s voice “Apocalyse Now”.

The film is considered to be one of the greatest documentaries ever made. One of my favorite scenes is a quiet one that shows Mark’s desire to be truly a creative force but also shows what most creative people stuck in places without titles like New York or California do to try to work with what they got. He sits in his car looking out at the Wisconsin airport, writing on a pad, saying the quiet helps him be creative. My favorite scene though in the entire film is a testament to independent filmmaking. Borchardt tells one of his actors that the stunt will be safe. I guess you could guess how that went?

The film, though, does have something that Spinal Tap doesn’t really. At times, it can seem goofy, but it’s also ultimately touching. Uncle Bill leaves Borchdt money in his will to help him fund his feature film. I’m not sure if his film was ever finished, but as Uncle Bill says about death, considering the people who have surround ring him in his life, “Do they smoke and have cigarettes up in Haven? I don’t think so…I don’t think so”.

I find this film to be inspiring, though, for anyone who dreams. Brorchdt is everyone who ever dreamed, and is every kid with a camera, running around, dreaming of that ultiment goal of being a storyteller. What's more American than wanting to make a movie, askes Mark Brorchdt. Watching in the beginning Brochdt's bookshelf full of books on film, than he pulls out a piece of junk mail and says "Sweet! I've been approved for a credit card". I think to myself how symbolic that scene is. Dreams and approval of a credit card in the junk mail? What's more American than that?

Great Movies: God Is Luxury I Can't Afford

By Alec Horowitz

Woody Allen’s 1989 film “Crimes and Misdemeanors” is a film about our belief in God and why it doesn’t seem to stop us from committing sins. Judah (Martin Landau) is an example of a man who uses what society gives him to look like a moral man. He is a respected doctor and a pillar of the community. He makes a speech, everyone claps and comments on the donations he’s given to charities. He’s a respected figure, of which friends and family look to with the highest moral regard. Ironically, though, Martin does charitable things to make his image look good in the community. The things he does in private are the things that would really hurt and perhaps even those he destroys. When his mistress Dolores (Angjelica Huston) starts to send him letters, he becomes concerned for the first time in a while about his moral image that isn’t shown to the community. Martin tells a Rabbi that his wife, Miriam “won’t forgive him” because she idealizes him. A tragic story starts to unroll about how Judah starts to dig him self deeper and deeper into sinful behavior and the toll it has on him.

A memorable scene is when Judah is driving his car through a bridge. The camera zooms into the bridge, which quickly cuts to a Jewish temple inside Judah’s mind. Woody Allen also has another story taking place in this film, which I suppose would be the misdemeanor. Judah is the one guilty of the crime. He laces a light romantic comedy into the dark drama. Well, as close to a romantic comedy, and ‘light’ is all in relative terms when it comes to Woody Allen. Woody plays a filmmaker named Cliff whose marriage isn’t working out, and his desire to enter a relationship with another one (Mia Fallow) who works for Cliff’s brother and law, Lester (Alan Alda). Lester is the idealization of every Woody Allen finds evil about show business, a multi millionaire who Cliff has to make a documentary about in order to play some bills. Lester has made millions from his light weight sitcoms.

The two stories about two people who really have nothing do to with each other is also used in the other classic Allen picture, ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’, a film that many including critic Roger Ebert wanted to be the first picture nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. “Crimes and Misdemeanors” is special though, and might be the greatest screenplay ever penned in my opinion. I have always felt Woody Allen was the greatest screenwriter of the 20^th century, and to quote Ebert, “the poet of New York City”.

There are so many memorable scenes in this dark drama/comedy. A rabbi goes blind, perhaps due to his own faith. Judah confronts his mistress in the rain, at a Shell gas station. Judah’s brother offers to have his mistress taken out. Things go wrong, and they go wrong. They don’t really go right. This isn’t that kind of film. This is such a complex film. It’s so many facets, like a good novel. The thing with Woody Allen films is often the smaller scene he has in his films. In one scene, Cliff goes to visit his sister, who is a widow. After Cliff takes her daughter out for the day, when sitting alone with Cliff, she confuses she went out on a date with a man who defecated on her. Cliff is repulsed, and shows shock, but we see the moral good in Cliff. The scene shows Cliff cares about something, and so does his work documenting a holocaust savior.

Perhaps this film can be best summed up by the most famous line said by Lester as sits on a bench in a park in New York. He looks at the camera, and smugly explains why he is so successful at making people laugh. “Comedy is tragedy plus time”. That explains an important element of this film, though the line that has stayed with me the longest is when Judah is talking to the rabbi and rabbi asks him about his morals and a higher power. Judah looks at him as it starts to rain outside. This is Woody Allen's morality play, where he dares to ask the question of if morality is really rewarded or is immorality the one who is rewarded? We have two men. One more moral than the other and two different stories.The wealthy New York City doctor says, “God is a luxury I can’t afford”.

Great Movies : Flying Into Adolescence

By Alec Horowitz

Some films never leave. You might of left the movie theater or had that VHS collecting dust, but they stay with you. They stay in your heart, and soul. Some movies don’t need to have a political or very personal message that stays with you. Sometimes it’s just a story that does. One of those movies for me is ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’, the 1989 picture by Japan’s master animator, Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki makes cute films you can’t use the word cute to describe because cute wouldn’t do justice to them. Every time Kiki’s Delivery Service comes on the TV set, I stop what I am doing and sit down and prepare to join a little girl and her cat (voiced by comic legend Phil Hartman in the English dub) as they fly in the sky in the opening scenes away through the clouds. Every time I watch it, I can’t help but smile, and as then smile some more. I feel a lot of affection for Kiki through watching the film, because Kiki is more realistic a kid then most kids in American animation.

‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ is a film where flying is a metaphor. We are all like Kiki, flying into different stages of our lives. Kiki flying to a place where she needs to feel accepted. She is flying into her adolescence years. “Without even thinking about it” says Kiki, “I used to be able to fly. Now I’m trying to look inside myself and find out how I did it”. There was a time we where all able to fly. We just felt right with the world and let our joys just fly. Isn’t it ironic, you can find yourself asking while watching the film, that when Kiki is finally let to go fly as she take her broom and head into the sky, that she will face her biggest problems. Did I mention that Kiki is thirteen years old? Flying on a bloom for Kiki is the fantasy version of a parent letting their tween stay out longer at night and eat at the local pizza shop.

Kiki is a skinny girl wearing a big red bow on her head and a skirt that blows up a bit too much. Her cat Jiji sitting nervously on the broom next to her like some nervous adult next to their teenager daughter in the car. The broom itself is a testament to the warmth and reliability of Miyazaki’s script based on the novel by Eiko Kadono, a Japanese author of children’s books. Miyazaki has gone to darker places in films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. What is so special about Kiki’s Delivery Service is the pure warmth it gives off. She drives her broom like a teenage girl through the road, often not going straight where the clouds are telling her she is supposed to even seeing a older witch and asking her questions like a freshman to a senior in high school. Its little details like that let Miyazaki’s work rise above mere fantasy. She ends up in a town where she rents a room for exchange of work being a delivery witch for a local bakery, which proudly has a little wooden witch symbol in their window.

‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ is a film about finding where you belong. On a deeper level, it can be augured that it’s even more important for witches to find their belonging then even us mortals. After all, Kiki’s mother was a witch who married a human. In an early scene in the film, Kiki’s mother sits with an older women, who at first we can assume is Kiki’s mother’s mom but it is never said in any piece of dialogue. We have the suggestion that this woman is actually a mother figure. Not biological but a gentle person who helped Kiki’s mother when she was a young witch herself. “All young people want to do something different,” she says. The older women starts to talk about how she remembers when Kiki’s mother showed up as a young girl on a broom, a confused young witch. Kiki runs exactly to the window where her mortal dad is preparing a camping trip and she proclaims she is leaving tonight because it’s a full moon. The full moon she refers to is truly meaning the dawn of adolescence.

Kiki’s parents aren’t portrayed as anything but loving in those opening scenes. Her friends not snotty, innocently asking her to say hi to the boys for them. The people she meets who hire her to deliver food don’t take advantage of her. It’s one of those rare films without a villain for the kids to jeer at. Instead everyone is warm, and wonderful. Every frame in a piece of art by Miyazaki, and this is on full display when Kiki has to put to the test of becoming a heroin as a bump starts to crash into the city and it’s up to Kiki to save the day. Flight is a very important element in this film. The flight serves as a metaphor in so many ways. A beautiful metaphor the film is for teenage years. Kiki’s love interest is a boy around her age, who wears glasses and looks like a pre Harry Potter, who is fascinated by Kiki, but not just because she’s a girl. He’s fascinated because he loves flight. Of course, her being a girl doesn’t hurt. Some of the most beautifully animated sequences in this picture are just this boy on his bike riding next to Kiki as she does a delivery. On the street, beautifully animated grass on the side.

What is it about Hayao Miyazaki? So many of his hero’s in his pictures are little girls. There are very few filmmakers who strike that balance between the innocence we love about the female gender and that willpower we want them to have. We love Kiki, because she’s a cute little girl. At the same time, we also want her to succeed and become strong as she enters her teenager years. We want her to save this boy who has a crush on her. We want him to be grateful to her. There’s such wonder in the beautifully animated world of Hayao Miyazki. There’s such pure joy and just pleasure in the colors and wonderful feelings one gets from spending time in his world. At the same time, there can also be said there is a feminist under text that lets us cheer on young female characters who act as the hero’s in his stories. Through his fantasy, there is so much said about love, acceptance and growing up.