After having spent the last four years using up just about every
excuse not to drive in L.A., I finally caved last week and now have
a car to call my own.
Anyway, driving sucks. Driving in traffic, especially, always
gives me visions of T.S. Eliot’s description of the lonely
masses in “The Waste Land”: “A crowd flowed over
London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so
many. / Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, / And each man
fixed his eyes before his feet.”
Imagine if he’d seen the 405 on a Friday evening.
The Los Angeles traffic jam is the ultimate microcosm of modern
man’s isolation. You sit alone among countless others, shut
off from the rest of the world. No one wants to be there, but here
we all are, and God forbid someone make eye contact and acknowledge
human connection of any kind.
This gives rise to some strange behavior ““ we all become
detached commentators on the outside world.
Someone will be rolling up right next to you, windows down, and
you’ll turn to your friend and say something nasty like,
“That guy looks exactly like what would happen if Kermit the
Frog and Miss Piggy had a kid together, only uglier.”
There’s also, of course, checking out the opposite sex.
These are things you’d never say to people in the real world.
The last time I crossed a street in front of a car, the driver was
probably screaming, “Today!” in the safety of his
air-conditioned bubble.
So the automobile offers the opportunity to say whatever you
want about what you’re observing. If only arts writers were
so brash. Har.
But, you’re in good luck, because this is my last column,
and I’m going to go ahead and say everything I wanted to
publicly state but never did, for whatever reason.
Prepare for a series of unrelated and contentious proclamations,
a kind of amalgam of Oscar Wilde’s preface to “The
Picture of Dorian Gray” and masturbatory Xanga entries:
Not that I don’t enjoy reading them, but I really
don’t care whether these three critics like a film or not:
Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Owen Gleiberman (Entertainment
Weekly) and Richard Corliss (Time).
I mean, Ebert is the O.G. (Original gangsta) and all.
Gleiberman, on the other hand, is most definitely not, despite his
initials, but I appreciate him more for his knowledge and passion
than his actual opinion of a film’s merit.
Major film studios are more evil than major music labels.
“The Big Lebowski” makes me laugh more than any
other movie. Now, the Coens aren’t exactly the Marxes, but I
grudgingly admit that that makes “Lebowski” the
funniest movie I’ve ever seen (My favorite comedy, on the
other hand, is probably “Manhattan.” Or maybe
“Dr. Strangelove,” or “Bringing Up Baby,”
or anything Billy Wilder ever made.)
The Oscars do matter.
Blockbusters are the most overrated kind of film. Critics hand
out free passes when a big-budget movie contains just a shred of
imagination or creativity because it’s not supposed to aim
any higher. This summer alone we’ve had “War of the
Worlds” and the new “Star Wars” get by on so
little.
A great film about Sept. 11 has already been made, and
it’s called “The 25th Hour.”
“Better Luck Tomorrow” was pretty forgettable. I was
supposed to like it, see, because I’m Asian American, and
that means the media makes me hate myself. And when an admirably
intentioned movie comes along that puts us front and center, I
should support it. Which I did ““ and I’m fine with that
““ but it’s nothing I’d ever see again.
“Singin’ in the Rain” is God’s gift to
misery.
I’ve never seen a truly great anime film outside of Studio
Ghibli, and I doubt one exists. This includes “Akira”
and “Ghost in the Shell” and whatever else you want to
throw out. There’s a lot of good stuff, clearly, but
I’m never going to confuse Oshii with Ozu.
I’ve never cried during a movie (maybe when I was a little
kid), but I should have during “La Dolce Vita” or
“Au Hasard Balthazar.”
Finally, Clint Eastwood ain’t all that. This is coming
from a pretty big fan of both “Unforgiven” and
“Mystic River.” Though he’s one of the most
celebrated American directors today, I would hesitate to call any
of his films great. Just because they’re solemn and no-frills
doesn’t mean they contain any depth. Call me heartless, but I
thought “Million Dollar Baby” was cheap. And his scores
are awful.
Well, that’s that. Now, if you’ll excuse me while I
duck and run. Or hop into my Honda.
In over a year as a columnist, Lee has never received hate
mail. Make history by e-mailing him at
alee@media.ucla.edu.