Let Me In

With few exceptions, a Hollywood remake of a foreign film results in a five fold budget mutilation of artistic expression to produce the cinematic equivalent of Walmart. At worst, we get travesties like The Vanishing (1993), but more often than not we simply get louder explosions, fancier special effects, more expensive sets, and performances by actors going through the motions for the money.

Almost always, remakes are about the money, so we put Bridget Fonda and Gabriel Byrne together for La Femme Nikita (1997). We put Al Pacino in Insomnia (2002) and Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge (2005), Jessica Alba and Alessandro Nivola into The Eye (2007), and so on.

They’re after the money, and by and large, they suck.

Note that I said with few exceptions, because Director Matt Reeves has successfully created a remake, Let Me In (2010), that actually rivals the original film, the extraordinary Swedish work by Tomas Afredson, Let the Right One In (2008), based on the 2004 novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist. I posted Blood in the Snow immediately after seeing the original.

(The Hug Shot - Above in the original film and below in the remake) Let Me In is good cinema that effectively captures what worked in the original film, in some cases enhances it, and cuts what detracts. Both films effectively create a somber, unsettling edge that comes from character ages so low (12) that innocence and young affection accentuate the violence and sexual tension. I don't think I have ever heard the line, "Do you like me?" pack such weight.

Both films move at a slow pace (incurring the wrath of many film critics), but they do so for the same reason understood by few film critics, which is that done right, slow cuts deeper. That said, without question the remake shifts in the American direction, most noticeably in the intensity of the vampire's violence. With sound design at volume reinforced by more graphic imagery, what this little girl is and can do requires far less imagination.

Let Me In is a remake of Let the Right One In, and without question it regards its source with great admiration and respect, seeking to match and improve upon the original's intent. Many shots and scenes are almost carbon copies down to the last detail. For cinema aficionados, watching both films and noting the contrasts is entirely worthwhile, in particular the swimming pool climax scenes in each.

Cyber Violence Escalating

Almost three years ago I posted Cyber Violence Is Real when the world learned that Lori Drew, using a fabricated MySpace account, posed as a 16 year old boy and wrote Megan Meier, "The world would be a better place without you."

Meier responded with a message reading "You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over" and hung herself. She was 13.

In the three years since Meier's suicide it has gotten far worse. Everyone now knows about the recent suicide of 17 year old Tyler Clementi. Without his knowledge, a roommate used a web cam to record some dorm room intimacy highlighted with Twitter commentary.

CNN on Cyber Bullying

The plot thickens dramatically with Facebook, which introduces a great deal of complexity. Someone who is NOT your FB friend but knows someone who is can rather easily (often just by asking) use their FB access to see everything you have shared. I know a case where this happened, and rather personal content regarding an evening's activities taken from FB got published on a widely read blog ("enhanced" photos included) and sent out as an email blast to everyone working at a particular company. No one was fired, but certain people were mortified, and one of those in one of the photos resigned in humiliation.

Also, those who think FB friends don't care who they friend, or who they like, or what comments they post at whose pages, are naive. Your FB friends watch who you friend, and in some cases they care, in particular established, feasible, or even "in your dreams" romantic interests. If you have a partner or are dating someone even if still casually, know damned well they click on the link of anyone you friend. If the wife is an FB friend, and you friend six attractive sweeties over three days, expect a chat. I know a college student who was berated and abused by an FB friend who saw that he friended someone apparently on the former's "If you are my friend then don't you dare friend" list. Laughing? This is no joke.

A man killed his girlfriend when her FB activity led him to believe she was seeking someone else. Another man killed his ex-wife after she taunted him on FB for not paying child support. Another man killed his wife (they were separated) when she changed her marital status to single. In a similar incident, Tracey Grinhaff posted to her FB friends that she was going to leave her husband. Her husband Gary saw the post, killed her, and then shot himself. They had two children, aged 14 and four.

What is generally considered the first Twitter murder occurred last January.

Cyber Violence can occur even when no one is intending any harm. I was bloodied up pretty badly when two FB friends cheerfully posted about going to a beginning of the school year party that evening. I was a member of the group having the party! No one told me about it. I was NOT invited. WTF?!

Remember FB 101. These two KNEW I would see what they posted. They were consciously telling me about a party when I had been excluded. Not being invited hurt enough, but it just killed me that these two, people I liked, could be so cruel or at best, so unbelievably inconsiderate. I had a HORRIBLE weekend trying to make sense of it. I later learned that all thought my name was included in allstaff@domainaddr and believed I was invited and could attend if I wished. This would render what they had posted harmless. Of course, learning all of this and finding the clerical error on Monday didn't help me Friday night. Little imagination is necessary to extrapolate this scenario. Change the characters, the event, the venue, and add some guns and alcohol.

Another component of cyber violence to be noted involves the production of malicious content the very viewing of which inflicts damage. I am talking about the content deliberately designed to injure the viewer.

Those over the age of forty will remember the notion of the "snuff film," i.e. real footage of a person being killed. Decades ago, the concept seemed like a big deal and the 1978 film, Faces of Death, which showed people being killed by animals, plane crashes, executions, as well as gruesome killing of animals, shocked audiences and was banned in many countries. The 1999 film 8mm involves a pornographic snuff film and regards it as a very significant event.

In just ten years we have moved to where real footage almost as intense is being shown on national news. CNN, ABC News, etc. now show footage of American soldiers shredding Iraqis. Yes, that's different from a snuff film, but it gets murky. One could argue that the whole world watching Neda die in raw cell phone video helped the cause that had her in the street.

That said, there is definitely a line, and on the other side I hurt myself watching the unedited video of what preceded the photo to the right. Done with a small knife, Eugene Armstrong's beheading took three minutes. Okay, I was an idiot, but the key distinction is that YOU DON'T KNOW, not really, what is on the other side of that click. I was trembling, dizzy, nauseas, shaken, and messed in the head for days, no exaggeration. I was INJURED.

I don't think the raw video I saw is available anymore (good), but real footage of beheadings is easy to find with a simple search. Got kids?

I suspect all of this will get worse before it gets better. I wish I could say it surprises me that there are websites devoted to such material. Click at own risk over to JustSickShit.com, but consider yourself warned. I didn't click on anything over there, including the footage from Bolivia of dogs strung up on wires and tortured to death.

The Real Tragedy

Josh Brodesky has a rather elegant Rio Nuevo piece in the Sunday Star that provides a telling perspective on the nature of the Cloth and the way it usurps the public good for its own gratification.

Brodesky interviews former Mayor George Miller. I encourage folks to read the article as well as the comments it provoked. No need for me to repeat, but the following is worth emphasizing:

The wasted money is outrageous. The project is an embarrassment. But the real tragedy of Rio Nuevo is that our leaders didn't just fail us - they ignored us. They traded in our trust for fancy renderings and consultant bills, and even now they don't seem to get it.

Rarely do so few words say so much. Parts of his language translate directly to the language used here.

His words: They ignored us.
Those here: They serve themselves.

His words: fancy renderings and consultant bills
Those here: glossy pamphlets and consulting fees

His words: Even now they don't seem to get it.
Those here: They serve themselves.

Congratulations to Josh for an excellent piece of work, and thanks to former Mayor George Miller for making the piece possible. We can't go back in time and recover what has been squandered, but we can get clearer and clearer about what's in the way of actual progress.

A Nation in Decline - Potpourri

This week is the American Library Association's Banned Book Week, and all of the books in the photo have faced efforts to have them banned from libraries. Know anyone who believes books should be banned from libraries?

During the 2008 election, there was noise that Sarah Palin banned quite a list of books from the Wasilla library. In truth, she only inquired about banning books and backed off when the librarian went ballistic. From an article at the time:

"She asked the library how she could go about banning books," ..."The librarian was aghast." ... news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

The Texas Board of Education has banned social studies books they allege are biased towards Islam and against Christianity. How did they conclude that this bias exists? They counted the words on each subject. The Islam word count was slightly higher. The material itself was not considered. The move was symbolic, as none of the books involved were still being used anyway.

Returning to Sarah, no doubt the inquiry was only academic. The Tea Party is about individual freedom and liberty. Banning or burning books would be completely anathema to its followers. Never mind the bit about Nickel and Dimed (Local Press).

Meanwhile: Fifth of USA thinks Obama is a cactus

In California, we see the Koch brothers fighting legislation to reduce the state's dependence on oil. From big oil to big pharma to big HMO to big finance, we see the fat cats scrambling to keep the system rigged so 2% of the country owns 80% of it. When we pass legislation banning outrageous bank fees, they invent others. We started screwing the middle class with Reagan in the 80's. Clinton provided some relief, but then Bush quadrupled the size of the screw.

America's hegemony is slipping as we fail to address real problems. While China, whose leadership has a lot of scientists and engineers, moves forward, the US is crippled by blathering about gays, abortion, evolution, guns, and textbook word counts. While our country faces a struggling economy and crushing unemployment, Republicans in Congress devote resources to an effort to execute homosexuals in Africa. Here, they filibuster any effort to address anything.

The brilliant mathematician John Nash rigorously refuted the Adam Smith notion that individuals pursuing self-interest optimize the utility of all.

No, they don't.

From Kaletsky's terrific Times piece: The Asian nations’ interest in American politics stems not just from America’s standing as the sole global superpower, but also from a growing belief among Asian leaders that the era of United States hegemony will soon be over, and that the polarization of its politics symbolizes America’s inability to adapt to the changing nature of global capitalism after the financial crisis.

The frogs must figure out how to get the scorpions to realize the greed fest cannot be sustained.