The Depart­ed. Dir. by Mar­tin Scorsese.

Why is it not sur­pris­ing that the Amer­i­can ver­sion of this film felt a lit­tle bloat­ed? Damon and Wahlberg in a cop dra­ma set in Boston? Shock­ing! How do you like dem apples indeed! And why Frank Costel­lo, and not just some rel­a­tive­ly anony­mous rack­e­teer? Dude would’ve been dead before the open­ing scene!

Yet what you’ve heard is true. It is Scors­ese’s best since Good­fel­las, and his return to seri­ous good guy/bad guy dra­ma is pret­ty enter­tain­ing if you’re will­ing to look past any num­ber of exag­ger­at­ed per­for­mances. Cred­it Alec Bald­win and Mar­tin Sheen for their sup­port­ing roles as career cops, who, if han­dled dif­fer­ent­ly could’ve been filed under “scenery”. More­over, Leonar­do DiCaprio near­ly fit in Tony Leung’s shoes, albeit minus, grace and ease, charm and wit, and more in the style of a bodice rip­per with a crew cut and a cellphone.

• O.k. so the RSS fea­tured in the meta tag — low­er right — works. Com­ments still appear to be fucked, but that’s get­ting looked into. Addi­tion­al changes forth­com­ing, like an events cal­en­dar, last.fm pro­file, and oth­er Web 2.0 heavy hit­ters. For clar­i­fi­ca­tion pur­pos­es, Web 2.0 should­n’t read like even so much as a tac­it endorse­ment of Bub­ble 2.0, which seems to be in the off­ing. Has every­one for­got­ten say 1999–2001? Is that owed to the cash buzz and con­se­quent coke haze of fin de siècle US of A? [Looks like man­u­fac­tur­ing could be the next bub­ble — unsus­tain­able eco­nom­ic fads, while unre­li­able, can be excit­ing, huh?
• Since com­ments are down, don’t hes­i­tate to be in touch [email top left; now func­tion­al] about what you like, and what you’d like to see more of, apart from more writ­ing, which has been insuf­fi­cient, spo­radic and unfo­cused late­ly. No excuses.
• Speak­ing of com­ments, mine here earned me a very rea­son­able response from Mr. RffM­rkt him­self, fol­lowed by a pret­ty sweet ad hominem attack by proxy! And I just stum­bled in by chance as a reg­u­lar Wayne & Wax read­er — hell, I even updat­ed my link!

Wel­come to Black­mail Is My Life, 1.5. For­give me in advance for the present appear­ance, but keep an eye out for all things Web 2.0 in the com­ing days, as well as a stead­ier pub­lish­ing sched­ule [like some­times, instead of seldomly.]

And yes, hope­ful­ly the com­ments will be fixed soon! [Com­ments are active!]

Down­load: Ser­e­na Maneesh — Can­dle­light­ed

I asked Emil Niko­laisen [Han sagde: Naa, maend hvor­dan har du det? Og jeg gen­t­age: Meget godt, tak, maend du maa nok lige unskylde mit Dan­sk. Det er daarligt lige nu] if Ser­e­na Maneesh had begun record­ing any nye musik last night before their show at First Uni­tar­i­an Church. He said that with all the tour­ing there just has­n’t been time, and men­tioned anoth­er thing very impor­tant to Scan­di­na­vians [and oth­ers, mind you]: ro, or peace. Their out­sized tour­bus idling out­side impressed upon me the pres­sures to pro­duce new mate­r­i­al, so much hype, etc. not to men­tion play­ing Philadel­phia for the sec­ond time since March [SXSW & CMJ can actu­al­ly help…then hinder!]

Ser­e­na Maneesh played what seemed like an abbre­vi­at­ed set to the small, but enthu­si­as­tic crowd that gath­ered in the base­ment. Abbre­vi­at­ed because when they last vis­it­ed, every­thing went late, very late, past one a.m. in fact, which is uncom­mon for the venue. This time the set last­ed lit­tle more than half an hour, forty min­utes maybe, and not quite as long as Bar­do Pond, whose set pre­ced­ed theirs. There was part of me that was hun­gry for anoth­er epic set of droney psy­che­delia, but that’s a lot to ask — too often bands try to deliv­er quan­ti­ty and fail for any num­ber of reasons.

For­tu­nate­ly, Ser­e­na Maneesh were able to main­tain high ener­gy and accom­plished some­thing few bands do in that base­ment: have good, dis­tinct sound, with excel­lent sep­a­ra­tion and nuanced lev­els for vocals with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the thump and bump in their rhythm sec­tion. It was more than a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing to see the crowd thin out as Bar­do’s set thud­ded into the night and I could­n’t help but think how much bet­ter served both the band and audi­ence might’ve been at a small­er venue.

See also: [Ser­e­na Maneesh @ F.U. Church on Flickr]

Half Nel­son, star­ring Ryan Gosling and Sha­ree­ka Epps. Direct­ed by Ryan Fleck.

Ryan Gosling plays D.C. Berman as Robin Williams [who was real­ly Leo Strauss] in Dead Poet­’s Soci­ety: The Urban Years! Think: Crash meets Akee­lah & The Bee [and there are actu­al­ly cast mem­bers from sea­son four of The Wire, too. Don’t get excit­ed. They get two lines between them. Inci­den­tal­ly, it’s Donut and Michael Lee.]

Haven’t there been enough mes­sian­ic teacher dra­mas about sav­ing the chil­dren already? [Espe­cial­ly in a class­room so unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic that the kids can only spit out the “right” answers? There’s a whole lot of epis­te­mo­log­i­cal non­sense going on, and like Williams’ O Cap­tain my Cap­tain, the teacher remains the unques­tion­able know­er. Except this time, dude’s got a major crack habit, Williams’ own sub­stance abuse notwithstanding.]

[Let’s not talk about the nau­se­at­ing hand­held shots meant to impart “real­ness” to the telling.]

Did all the best mes­sage movies come out last year? Can’t Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma be bet­ter than this? Half Nel­son has the pol­i­tics of Air Amer­i­ca radio! [And was twice as iner­tial with it’s “what should I do’s”. For starters, try some­thing oth­er than pathet­ic lib­er­al navel-gaz­ing. And attempt­ed rape, which to me sig­ni­fied what this car­pet­bag­ger as sav­iour was real­ly accom­plish­ing, which was lit­tle more than occu­pa­tion (no pun.)]

Like so many movies about the inner city and pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics, the effort to be even-hand­ed results in a lose-lose out­come where it’s not pos­si­ble for things to change. The vocab­u­lary of the “cul­ture of pover­ty” is so pow­er­ful that no one can resist its ide­o­log­i­cal pull, nor its tau­to­log­i­cal basis, the sort of “May the cycle remain unbro­ken” sort of cyn­i­cism and burnout that plagues both soci­ol­o­gy and social work.

The result is a neutered Hull House men­tal­i­ty of do-good­erism that is both total­ly impo­tent and moral­ly rel­a­tivis­tic, e.g. there’s no use in “sav­ing” these kids — they live by stan­dards and codes whol­ly dif­fer­ent from mine — and through this per­verse iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics there can be no such thing as sol­i­dar­i­ty, just dif­fer­ence as fetish.

[Inci­den­tal­ly, “cul­ture of pover­ty” and “under­class” are more fla­vors of bull­shit than I care to taste.]

As a belat­ed post­script, Bro­ken Social Scene still total­ly suck.