Clear-eyed confrontation versus voyeurism

Review: The Killer Inside Me
from http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/review-the-killer-inside-me-when-we-meet-you-will-see-i-will-destroy-everything-of-beauty.php

Director Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me is many things. It’s a beautifully shot glimpse of how sordid small-town life can be. It’s an unflinching look into the mind of a killer. It’s a brutal and uncomfortable display of violence, particularly against women. It’s an example of absolutely brilliant acting, and it’s an incredible movie, but often one to be endured rather than enjoyed. I’ll warn you that it’s a difficult film to review without revealing spoilers, but most of what will be spoiled takes place in the first act of the film.

The Killer Inside Me, based on the 1952 noir novel by Jim Thompson, is about Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a quite, unassuming, friendly guy who helps his friends, has a lovely girlfriend, Amy (Kate Hudson), and is a complete, unrepentant psychopath. Of course, no one knows this, although he’s well aware of it. Ford is a narcissistic, egomaniacal, cold-blooded killer, whose past is littered with dirty, bloody secrets. One day his boss, Sheriff Bob Maples (Tom Bower) sends him to gently run a newly-relocated prostitute out of town. Joyce (Jessica Alba), the lady in question, mocks and spurns Ford, bringing the beast out of him — and thus a strange, twisted bond is formed, based on a love of S & M and rough sex. Joyce is strangely attracted to the devil that squirms beneath Ford’s skin, and Ford is provided an outlet for some of his baser appetites.



Of course, things come to a head when the town magnate, Chester Conway (Ned Beatty), becomes victim to a blackmail scheme by Ford and Joyce. The payoff goes bad, and Ford, in an effort to keep his hands clean, goes on a violent rampage that leaves two people very, very dead. This turn of events spirals into a series of more and more crimes that Ford commits to cover his tracks, determined to remove all traces of criminality that could lead back to him. Along the way, he has to deal with a crooked union boss (Elias Koteas) who sees through his act, a dogged county attorney seeking the truth and with his own suspicions (Simon Baker), and an itinerant hobo who’s smarter than he appears.

It’s all gloriously dark, pulpy stuff, mixed with a healthy dose of cops and killers, dames and molls and back-alley deals. Set in the ’50s, Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, A Mighty Heart) successfully recreates that bucolic, small-town-from-another-era feel, creating a dry, dusty landscape that seems as harsh and unforgiving as the film’s subject matter. Full of tight close-ups of its characters and wide shots of the barren-looking landscape, it’s a film that truly captures the atmosphere of its time and place.

The acting is all top-notch, which in the cases of Alba and Hudson came as a massive surprise. Affleck had already proven his mettle in Gone, Baby, Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and his range and ability is only magnified here. Affleck’s unassuming and almost-shy good looks are actually perfect for the part of Ford in terms of appearance, but it’s when he shows the character’s darker side that you can really see how excellent an actor he really is. Ford’s not a raving lunatic — he’s not prone to lengthy monologues on the nature of evil, or self-exploration of why he is what he is. Even his narrative inner monologues are done in calm, measured tones. He clearly understands what he’s doing, and makes no attempt to explain it to the viewer. Instead, you’re left to simply accept what he is — a completely unscrupulous sociopath with a taste for sex and violence and absolutely no conscience. It is totally chilling to watch the switch flip, not because he suddenly transforms into some demon of rage, but because . . . nothing changes. He doesn’t start yelling, spittle flying. Instead, he simply steadily and methodically destroys everything in his path. It’s that very lack of atavistic fury that makes it all the more disturbing.



Of course, therein lies the biggest criticism of the film, and discussion of it is inescapable. The film is a violent one, to be sure, but not overwhelmingly so. It doesn’t have prolonged gunfights or action scenes. But when it does become violent, it’s harsh and uncomfortable — mainly because the worst of the violence is inflicted on women. This (and here’s the spoiler-y part) is most painfully depicted in the film’s first 20 or so minutes, when Ford slowly, calculatedly, and mercilessly beats Joyce to death. It’s a decidedly unpleasant scene that the presenter at IFFB actually warned us about, and that several people could not watch. It’s a prolonged series of shots where punch after punch after punch lands, and her face is slowly reduced to so much bloody, devastated meat as she begs for mercy. The second of such scenes, towards the film’s end, is also inflicted on a woman, and while it’s not quite as brutal, it’s hard to watch for different reasons.

I’m not sure where I stand on the debate as to how “necessary” such scenes are. Yes, it is unquestionably brutal and misogynistic, but is that a reflection of the writer (John Curran wrote the screenplay), the filmmaker, or simply a depiction of the character himself? Jim Thompson’s novels frequently have a similar disdain for women, an almost Peckinpah-esque misogynistic bent to them. Winterbottom, in filming The Killer Inside Me, has successfully translated that feeling on the screen — it’s a near-perfect adaptation of the mood and flavor of the novel. Is that a good thing? I don’t know. I know that I didn’t like watching it, but I also know that by filming those scenes with such viciousness, yet also with an almost clinical detachment, Winterbottom removes any sense of anti-heroism from the character, forcing you to recognize what an unsympathetic monster he is. You don’t root for Lou Ford. You can’t. He’s not even a charismatic psycho like Hannibal Lecter, because you know all too well what goes on in his mind. Lou Ford has a hornet’s nest where his heart should be, and a dark black void in his head. He’s amusing in parts, but never truly likable.

That bit of distinct unpleasantness aside, it’s a stellar film. Affleck is joined by an outstanding supporting cast. particularly Elias Koteas as the cleverly slimy Joe Rothman and a surprising Simon Baker (who previously has never really impressed me). Alba and Hudson perform their roles gamely, but they don’t have much to work with. They’re simplistic depictions based on Thompson’s rote characterizations of women. Joyce is the damaged whore, Amy is the nice but occasionally shrill virginal sweetheart. That said, despite those oversimplified personae, they both do very good work with what they’re given. The writing is excellent, with strong dialogue and impressive cinematography. And while the finale is a bit overdone, I found it to be strangely satisfying.



The Killer Inside Me is one of the more troubled productions of recent history, going through several directors and producers and actors (it was also previously made into a film in 1976 — another excellent version, starring Stacey Keach and directed by Burt Kennedy). Once Winterbottom got to work on it, it was then plagued by the fact that no one wanted to touch it due to its brutality, and a distributor couldn’t be found. As of right now, it’s slated for a limited release in June 2010, though I don’t know what it will eventually be rated. Regardless of all of that, it’s a superb film, a harshly immersive experience that you truly do need to see to believe. Affleck solidifies his status as one of the best actors working today, and Winterbottom creates something that, while controversial and at times disturbing, nevertheless contains some truly exceptional film-making.

The debate rages on

Anatomy of an Epidemic: The hidden damage of psychiatric drugs; An award-winning science reporter looks at the history of mental illness in America---with disturbing results

by Jed Lipinski

from http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/04/27/interview_whitaker_anatomy_of_an_epidemic/index.html

In the past few months, the perennial controversy over psychiatric drug use has been growing considerably more heated. A January study showed a negligible difference between antidepressants and placebos in treating all but the severest cases of depression. The study became the subject of a Newsweek cover story, and the value of psychiatric drugs has recently been debated in the pages of the New Yorker, the New York Times and Salon. Many doctors and patients fiercely defend psychiatric drugs and their ability to improve lives. But others claim their popularity is a warning sign of a dangerously over-medicated culture.

The timing of Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic, a comprehensive and highly readable history of psychiatry in the United States, couldn’t be better. An acclaimed mental health journalist and winner of a George Polk Award for his reporting on the psychiatric field, Whitaker draws on 50 years of literature and in-person interviews with patients to answer a simple question: If "wonder drugs" like Prozac are really helping people, why has the number of Americans on government disability due to mental illness skyrocketed from 1.25 million in 1987 to over 4 million today?

"Anatomy of an Epidemic" is the first book to investigate the long-term outcomes of patients treated with psychiatric drugs, and Whitaker finds that, overall, the drugs may be doing more harm than good. Adhering to studies published in prominent medical journals, he argues that, over time, patients with schizophrenia do better off medication than on it. Children who take stimulants for ADHD, he writes, are more likely to suffer from mania and bipolar disorder than those who go unmedicated. Intended to challenge the conventional wisdom about psychiatric drugs, "Anatomy" is sure to provoke a hot-tempered response, especially from those inside the psychiatric community.

Salon spoke with Robert Whitaker over the phone about the reasons behind the pharmaceutical revolution, how "anxiety" became rebranded as "depression," and what he thinks psychiatrists are hiding from the American public.

Psychiatric drug use is a notoriously tough subject for writers, because of all the contradictory research. Why wade into it?

In 1998, I was writing a series for the Boston Globe on abuse of psychiatric patients in research settings. I came across the World Health Organization’s outcomes study for schizophrenia patients, and found that outcomes were better for poor countries of the world -- like India, Colombia, Nigeria -- than for the rich countries. And I was startled to find that only a small percentage of patients in those countries were medicated. I also discovered that the number of people on disability for mental illness in this country has tripled over the last 20 years.

If our psychiatric drugs are effective at preventing mental illness, I thought, why are we getting so many people unable to work? I felt we needed to look at long-term outcomes and ask: What does the evidence show? Are we improving long-term outcomes or not?

But you claim in the book that psychiatrists have long known that these drugs can cause harm.

In the late 1970s, Jonathan Cole -- the father of American psychopharmacology -- wrote a paper called "Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?" that signaled that antipsychotics weren't the lifesaving drugs that people had hoped. In it, he reviewed all of the long-term harm the drugs could cause and observed that studies had shown that at least 50 percent of all schizophrenia patients could fare well without the drugs. He wrote, "Every schizophrenic outpatient maintained on antipsychotic medication should have the benefit of an adequate trial without drugs." This would save many from the dangers of tardive dyskinesia -- involuntary body movements -- as well as the financial and social burdens of prolonged drug therapy. The title of the paper poignantly sums up the awful long-term paradox.

Why didn't this change people's minds about psychiatric drugs?

Psychiatry essentially shut off any further public discussion of this sort. And there’s a reason for this. In the 1970s, psychiatry felt that it was in a fight for its survival. Its two prominent classes of drugs -- antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines like Valium -- were coming to be seen as problematic and even harmful, and sales of these drugs declined. At the same time, there’d been an explosion in the number of counselors and psychologists offering other forms of non-drug therapy.

Psychiatry saw itself in competition for patients with these other therapists, and in the late 1970s, the field realized that its advantage in the marketplace was its prescribing powers. Thus the field consciously sought to tell a public story that would support the use of its medications, and embraced the "medical model" of psychiatric disorders. This took off with the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III in 1980, which introduced many new classes of “treatable” disorders.

In a recent New Yorker article, Louis Menand suggested that anxiety drugs were rebranded as antidepressants in the '80s, because anxiety drugs had acquired a bad name. Is that really true?

Depression and anxiety are pretty closely linked. Before benzodiapenes came out, the discomfort that younger people and working people felt was seen as anxiety, by and large. Depression was seen as less common, a disease among the middle-aged and older. It was this deep thing, where people are putting their heads in their hands and can’t move. But when the benzodiazepines were proven to be addictive and harmful, the pharmaceutical companies said, in essence, "We have this market of people who feel discomfort in their lives, which we used to call anxiety. If we can rebrand it as depression, then we can bring a new antidepressant to market." It was a reconceptualization of discomfort, and it opened up the giant market for antidepressants as we see today.

And yet many studies have shown that antidepressants can treat depression, especially in severe cases.

In severe cases, you do see that people benefit from antidepressants, and that shows up consistently. But you still have to raise the question, even in that severe group: What happens to those medicated patients in the long term, compared to what happened in previous times? One thing that surprised me, looking at the epidemiological literature from the pre-antidepressant era, is that even severely depressed, hospitalized patients could with time expect to get well, and most did. Today, however, there’s a high incidence of patients on long-term drug therapy that become chronically ill.

What about stimulants used to treat ADHD. How effective are they?

These stimulants alter behavior in a way that teachers can appreciate. They subdue finger-tapping and disruptive symptoms. But in the 1990s, the National Institute of Mental Health started looking to see if things like Ritalin were benefiting kids with ADHD, and to this day they have no evidence that this drug treatment improves long-term functioning in any domain -- the ADHD symptoms, lower delinquency rates, better performance at school, et cetera. Then the NIMH studied whether these drugs provide a long-term benefit, and they found that after three years, being on medication is actually a marker of deterioration. Some patients’ growth has been stunted, their ADHD symptoms have worsened. William Pelham, from the State University of New York at Buffalo and one of the principal investigators in that study, said, "We need to confess to parents that we’ve found no benefit." None. And we think that with drugs, the benefits should outweigh the risks.

What's so risky about Ritalin?

For one, a significant percentage -- between 10 and 25 percent -- of kids prescribed medication for ADHD will have a manic episode or psychotic episode and deteriorate in such a way that they’re diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A similar study in 2000 on pediatric bipolar disorder reported that 84 percent of the children treated for bipolar illness -- at the Luci Bini Mood Disorders Clinic in New York -- had been previously exposed to psychiatric medications. The author, Gianni Faeda, wrote, "Strikingly, in fewer than 10 percent of the cases was diagnosis of bipolar disorder considered initially." The reality is that until children were medicated with stimulants and antidepressants, you didn't see juvenile bipolar mania.

But if these studies are so groundbreaking, why have they gone unreported in the media?

Because the NIMH didn’t announce it. Just as they didn’t announce the 2007 outcome study for schizophrenia patients. In that study, the recovery rate was 40 percent for those off meds, but only 5 percent for those on meds. I checked all the NIMH press releases for 2007, and found no release on this study. I found no announcement of it in any American Psychiatric Association publication or textbook. Not a single newspaper published an account of the study. And that’s because the psychiatric establishment -- the NIMH, the APA, even the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy organization -- did not put out any press release about it or try to alert the media in any way.

Are you suggesting that psychiatrists are beholden to pharmaceutical companies?

Not exactly, although most of the leading academic psychiatrists act as consultants, advisors and speakers for them. The problem is that psychiatry, starting in 1980 with the publication of the DSM-III, decided to tell the public that psychiatric disorders were biological ailments, and that its drugs were safe and effective treatments for those ailments. If it suddenly announces to the public that a long-term NIMH-funded study found that the 15-year recovery rate for schizophrenia patients was 40 percent for those off meds and 5 percent for those on meds, then that story begins to fall apart. By not reporting the results, psychiatry maintains the image of its drugs in the public mind, and the value of psychiatrists in today’s therapy marketplace.

So do you think psychiatric drugs should be used at all?

I think they should be used in a selective, cautious manner. It should be understood that they’re not fixing any chemical imbalances. And honestly, they should be used on a short-term basis. But beyond this, I think we should look at programs that are getting very good results. This is what I love about Keropudas Hospital’s program in Finland. They have 20 years of great results treating newly psychotic patients. They see if patients can get better without the use of meds, and if they can’t, then they try them. It’s a best-use model, not a no-use or anti-med model. It fits with our studies done in the 1970s that found if you use this model, you get better outcomes, and a good number of people get better and go on with their lives.

Oh, Barry. Can we *please* rethink the off-shore drilling thing?

Vote early! Vote often!

only two weeks left 'til the polls close!

who will it be?

clive

matthew

clive in matthew mask

It is perhaps appropriate that I should be so drawn to a book of this title

A Cinderella from Southern France: Fernanda Eberstadt tries something very different; a fairy tale

by Claire Dederer

from http://www.slate.com/id/2251664/

For most of her career, Fernanda Eberstadt has written novels that are nothing if not grown-up, deliciously messy affairs that deal with market capitalism, with art, and with the bitter ways that romantic love can disappoint. She seems blessed with just the CV to springboard a writer concerned with rarified worlds. She was born in 1960 to parents who were art-collecting Park Avenue fixtures. One grandfather was a famous financier; the other was Ogden Nash. She went to Brearley. As a teenager she worked at Andy Warhol's Factory and for Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum. She graduated from Oxford. She published her first story collection at the age of 25 to great acclaim.

She proceeded to write what she knew. When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth (1997) explored the life and times of a genius painter roaming at large in the 1980s New York art scene. The Furies (2003) told the story of a wealthy heiress and her quest to promote global capitalism.

Eberstadt, who has lived in southern France for many years, recently made a sharp turn in trajectory with Little Money Street (2006), a nonfiction book about the Gypsies of Perpignan. In her latest novel, she continues her exploration of marginal living in the South of France. Rat is told from a child's point of view. Like a little girl in a fairy tale, the title character moves through a mysterious world where unseen forces are at work.

Rat (real name Celia) and her mother, Vanessa, live by the sea in the Pyrenees-Orientales. It sounds romantic, but it's not, really. The coast is a "harsh blazing Mediterranean flatland of marsh, delta, bulrushes, sandy plain. This plain is Rat's home. Its blistering sun is her sun; its thistles, parched hummocks, and reeds are the only vegetation she knows." This is the kind of landscape where the winds are so strong, so bitter, and so unrelenting that they have names.

Fifteen-year-old Rat roams as she pleases and comes home to a funky setup. She and Vanessa live in the old wine cellar of a farm that has been broken up into apartments. Again, this sounds romantic, but closer inspection reveals a flooded living room, a backed-up toilet. Rat, though, loves her home. The tenants of the old farm make a kind of informal commune, an extended family.

Vanessa makes her living as a brocanteuse, buying and selling old stuff. She is part of a French tradition of scavenging for a living, which dates back to the gleaners—women and children who for centuries have picked over harvested fields for whatever seeds and food were left behind. Vanessa, in other words, is a magpie. She loves old magazines and photographs—glamour trash. "The walls of her apartment are plastered with the kind of things she loves: printed cocktail napkins from a bar in Spain, a leopard-skin carnival mask with gold whiskers, photo spreads from old magazines."

A lot of these old photos are of Celia Kidd, "a top model in London in the 1960s," who happens to be Rat's grandmother. Kidd and her son Gillem stayed in the area many years ago; they became objects of fascination to the local teenagers. Young Vanessa seduced Gillem—some of his mama's allure rubbed off on him—and Rat was the result. Gillem is long gone, although, unbeknownst to Rat, he has been sending child-support payments, which Vanessa has been squirreling away in an account for Rat's adulthood.

In these happy, if somewhat shabby, circumstances of Rat's life, Eberstadt has created an exotic corner not quite cut off from time, but almost, and we know it won't last. When Vanessa's friend Souad dies of AIDS, her young son Morgan comes to live with Vanessa and Rat. At first Rat resents sharing her mother, but Morgan calls forth an unexpected protectiveness in this feral girl. "She had a sense of order that was rudimentary but still more intact than her mother's. … If Rat noticed that Morgan had been wearing the same socks for a week or that his toes were gray with dirt, it got to her."

It's interesting to see Eberstadt writing about a child. In her earlier novels, she has been entirely unafraid to sit in judgment on her characters and their choices. With Rat, a child in a difficult situation, Eberstadt is unfettered by her usual preoccupations with morality. The result is a dreamily sensuous mode—set in relief when Eberstadt trains her more characteristically critical eye on Vanessa: She's the quintessentially irresponsible, post-hippie, flaky single mom. She's missing only one element of the cliché: an abusive, marginal boyfriend. Eventually, she acquires one of these. Thierry is barely employed, dresses like Johnny Cash, smokes, drinks, and, worst of all in this crowd, is no fun. It seems inevitable that Thierry would go after one of the kids. Early one morning Rat discovers him doing something—she's not quite sure what—to Morgan.

It's here that Eberstadt seamlessly shifts register. Her fascination with marginality turns into pursuit of archetypal meaning. Rat and Morgan set off without asou to find her father in England. This odyssey, which takes up the middle of the book, is half giddy freedom and half ugly hardship, like the rest of Rat's life. All along, Rat's story—the girl who's secretly a kind of princess—has had fairy-tale overtones. As she and Morgan move through the French landscape, Eberstadt uses their journey to open the book into the resonant terrain of the folk tale. The children become heroic questers. They even encounter the requisite folk-tale characters—a donor, a helper, and so forth.

Rat experiences a letdown when she arrives in England, and Eberstadt's writing flattens as well. When Rat—who has fantasized all along about the new life she'll find in England—finally meets her father, she finds an upper-middle-class artist living in a London terrace. Gillem is married to a mumsy, kind woman. They have an overprotected little whiner—and perhaps Eberstadt draws the contrast between this weeny kid and Rat a little too starkly.

Eberstadt has placed us squarely back in the world of arty, moneyed people. Here, she tries to see it anew through Rat's eyes, but somehow it just doesn't work. We lose both the freshness and immediacy of Rat's experience, and the knowing perspective of the earlier novels. It's as though Eberstadt can't quite maintain the chimerical spell she's woven so far, but can't quite bring herself to conjure up that old grown-up glamour, either. When Rat briefly meets Celia Kidd—the queen to Gillem's prince thus far, but now struck with Alzheimer's—the encounter feels scanty and weightless.

Despite the saggy bit at the end with the biological grandmother, the book is as tight as a fairy tale, so deftly woven with imagery that you realize that Rat is both Cinderella and the Frog Prince. The emergence of her hidden fineness is inevitable, and no less thrilling for it. Like a folk-tale hero, she moves simply through the world toward her goal: self-knowledge.

Rat's simplicity is hard-won, the work of a writer who knows exactly what she's doing. But I, for one, miss the old messiness. Eberstadt's previous novels—her novels of adulthood—were brave and a little eccentric in their moral investigations. Her characters played on fearsome, glittering stages, and their choices had big consequences. Focusing, laserlike, on the story of this one girl, Eberstadt has created a rigorous, elegant piece of art. But she has also turned away from her own special knowledge of her own very, very large world. In a strange way, she was closer to the gleaners themselves in her New York books. Like a magpie, there Eberstadt was drawn toward what was gold.

Eff ewe

Lazy post

I don't feel like wading through the formatting issues that come with reposting this entire article, but I do encourage you to check it out for yourselves. It addresses a very important issue: accepting a woman's power, women accepting their own power. A good reminder for all of us feminists. You boy-type feminists who respect women, too.

Here's the bit (quoted from another piece partially reproduced in the article) that got me:

I’m a woman, and I have accordingly been taught my entire life to view myself as lesser-than, to devalue my own accomplishments, to accept it when other people treat me as lesser-than and devalue me, which they (if they are men, especially) have been taught to do. And I refuse. I say no. I tell you, I’m Sady fucking Doyle, and I expect you to believe it. Being a woman who likes herself, is proud of herself, is impressed with herself, in public: There might not be a more subversive act.

Payce.

Because god forbid we let a bunch of homo perverts desecrate the holy institution of marriage . . .

Here Are the States Where You Can Marry Your Cousin

from http://gawker.com/5525702/here-are-the-states-where-you-can-marry-your-cousin

It's a map and it is surprising! Interestingly enough, godless liberal Midwestern enclave Iowa is the only state where you can get a homo-dog marriage but not a convenient and family-reunion-airfare-cost-efficient cousin marriage.

Also, note the states (Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming) that won't perform a cousin wedding but will recognize it if you do it elsewhere. These are states that don't do the same thing for gay unions. Whee, terrific, America! States' rights in a globalized world.

A little flick to keep on your radar screen

Yours Is Not a God of Love

8: The Mormon Proposition / TK
Film Reviews | April 27, 2010

from http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/review-8-the-mormon-proposition-yours-is-not-a-god-of-love.php

8: The Mormon Proposition is a stirring, tragically depressing documentary about the Mormon Church’s massive efforts to support and pass California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative (also called the California Marriage-Protection Act), which in 2008 redefined marriage in the state of California as being only between a man and a woman, effectively making marriage between same-sex couples illegal and unrecognized. Depending on which side of the debate you stand, you will find it either silly and pointless or obscenely infuriating and find yourself filled with a sense of righteous fury.

I found myself in the latter category. If you’re looking for an impartial review, I confess that you won’t find it here.
It’s an unbelievably in-depth film, covering the history of the Mormon Church, a good bit of their philosophies and ideologies, and then their concentrated efforts to pass anti-marriage laws in both Hawaii and California. The film comes at the topic from several angles — from that of Matt and Tyler, a sweet and sympathetic couple who both come from Mormon backgrounds who live in San Francisco; from Fred Karger, a reporter and political activist who does the bulk of the investigative journalism thanks to an anonymous source within the church; and from numerous fascinating interviews with current and former Mormon church members, politicians (including the current and former mayors of San Francisco), community leaders and other gay citizens and activists. It’s an engrossing, sometimes over-the-top and slightly propagandist, film that achieves two unfortunate goals — it creates a sense of anger and frustration and ultimately sadness, and it gives an unprecedented look deep inside the Machiavellian undertakings of the church to force their beliefs into the lives of innocent, loving couples.

The story of Matt and Tyler is particularly tragic, though no more so than the hundreds of other couples who woke up that morning in 2008 to find out that their marriage was no longer recognized. The film starts with interviews of them, footage of their marriage at City Hall, and then slowly creeps toward the tragically inevitable realization that Prop 8 is going to pass. Their devastation is palpable and gut-wrenching as they sobbingly watch protests by Prop 8 supporters who hurl the vilest of epithets at them and then have to deal with the aftermath of the bill’s passing and the hideous gloating that came with it. They’re supported by Tyler’s adoring mother, but much of the rest of their family has abandoned them. I’m not the cry-at-the-movies type, but I admit that their story left my eyes a little shinier than usual.

Meanwhile, Karger vigorously investigates the church’s efforts to promote Prop 8. From creating and funding what are essentially PACs and ambiguously named organizations that don’t have plainly apparent links to the church, to organizing protests, to cajoling, persuading, and sometimes outright bullying parishioners to donating to the cause, they became a juggernaut of self-righteousness and bigotry, raising literally millions of dollars and mobilizing tremendous numbers nationwide, both Mormon and not, to rally to their cause. It’s all supported by documents, e-mails, and transcripts that Karger obtained, all showing the insidious, devious, and in many ways ingenious methodologies devised and used to achieve their goal. Adding weight and support to Karger’s claims are the interviews with former church members who explain the hard-fisted ways that they were pressured into helping, even when such help was beyond their means.

Coupled with this, Karger and directors Reed Cowan and Steven Greenstreet use much of the readily available marketing materials that the church created — fliers, videos, etc., all talking about how somehow gay marriage will affect the rights of regular people to free speech and free assembly and will ultimately endanger their rights and beliefs. Much of it was crazed exaggeration. Much of it was just outright fucking lies.

Finally, the aftermath of the bill’s passing is shown, as well as statistics and demonstrations of what can only be described as a holy war on homosexuality and gay rights. Statistics and interviews about the staggering rate of suicide, drug abuse, homelessness, and prostitution among young gays, and particularly among young gays in Utah, all speak to the sad consequences of their endeavors.

In the end, of course, films like 8: The Mormon Proposition would hopefully change people’s minds by giving them a chance to see the effects of Prop 8 and the innocent lives left ruined in its wake. For those like me, it was preaching to the choir, so to speak. Because (and excuse me while I toss any semblance of impartiality out the goddamn window), this film has taught me, or rather reinforced my belief, that Proposition 8 was a well-funded, well-coordinated, brilliantly organized, and masterminded effort to destroy human happiness and create suffering out of its ashes. There is simply no other way for me to see it. No amount of explanation or justification or proselytizing can convince me otherwise. To try to justify it by saying it’s God’s will, or that gay marriage somehow threatens or weakens or makes illegitimate or less important your marriage is so baffling and idiotic that it makes me grind my teeth down to the roots.

I can’t imagine how I would feel if I woke up tomorrow morning to find out that through nothing but ignorance and bigotry and someone else’s beliefs my marriage to my wife somehow no longer was the equal of others. To take away the right to marry is not only hideously unfair but also mindlessly and brutally cruel. It mystifies me that people can maintain that their beliefs are ones generated out of love when they’ve made a conscious decision to not only cast their vote but to give their time and money to try to persuade others to cast their vote for a ballot initiative that serves no practical purpose other than to create misery and to take away the from people what could be the happiest moment in their life. It is one of the few times in modern American history that people have voted to remove people's rights. It is prejudiced, viciously hateful, and unconscionable, brought upon us by a venal small-mindedness and a refusal to understand or recognize people’s humanity.

[Deep breath]

Pardon me. Things got away from me there. In any event, the sad truth is that Proposition 8 passed, and now there are people left in its wake trying to figure out what to do next. But of equal importance is to understand how and why that happened, to know and understand the gathering of ideas and minds that put a cleverly orchestrated plan into effect that led us to this place. 8: The Mormon Proposition is a heartbreaking film that exposes some very real and frightening truths but also helps people come to grips with those realities, and teaches them to dust themselves off and get back in the fight.

8: The Mormon Proposition will be released in theaters and on IFC On-Demand in June 2010.

"Why did the whale cross the road?

. . . To get to the other tide."

my brother-in-law put up this site the other day to catalogue the wisdom of his seven-year-old son, for whom he used an alias---Bug, a nickname he's had since he was a little baby. my nephew said, "but, dad, i like being famous on the website." dear jesus. we're going to have a real paris hilton on our hands.

Soliciting all captions

Positively brilliantine!

dj wrote:

he looks so *cute* when he's well groomed.

herf wrote:

palpitations. srsly, how old is that picture?

kibble wrote:

It's possible that his bad grooming is the only thing preventing a total meltdown of the female population. It's a national security issue. Every morning the MI5 comes to his house to disable the showerhead and spray him with motor oil.

For your attention

The 10 Television Shows You Should Be Watching and Maybe You Are

A Seriously Random List / Dustin Rowles | April 22, 2010

There’s nothing more infuriating for some people to be told, “You have to watch this show.” For a lot of folks, that’s exactly how you get them not to watch the show. I have no doubt I’ve driven as many people away from watching “Friday Night Lights,” as I’ve encouraged others to see it (let it be known, however, that those who do break down and give in to it are not disappointed). So, you know what: Watch whatever the fuck you want to watch. If you come home after a hard day at the office and just want to plop your ass down in front of “Hoarders,” and wallow in the misery of others, who am I to discourage that? I don’t care what you watch. It’s your life. If “CSI: Wyoming” does the trick for you, then let it be, man. To each their own.

But I’ll tell you this much: As much as we like to bitch and moan about the shitty state of the movie industry, there are a lot of great television shows on your small screen. Many of them are free, even. There are, in fact, more than 10 really good shows on TV right now, enough actually to make this list somewhat difficult to put together. (Notice: I did leave off “Lost,” but that’s only because it’s ending its run in May, and if you haven’t been bull-whipped into watching it already, then I very much doubt you’re about to start. Just ride it out until June, when everyone will stop talking about it). So, watch your “NCIS” and your “RuPaul: Drag Race” and don’t feel the least ashamed our guilty about it. Crappy shows need love, too. The rest of us, we’ll just be over here enjoying our low-rated television programs and praying that they all get picked up for another season. You can just bask in your “Celebrity Apprentice,” knowing that NBC will never take away your Trump.

Assholes.

10. Glee: I put this show on this list reluctantly and almost against my better interests. There are weeks, yes, where “Glee” deserves to be called one of the ten best shows on TV right now. But then, there are others where it doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near this list. There are just some episodes where the acting is over-the-top cheesy, the drama is rushed, and the musical numbers are forced. Then, there are other weeks where the exact same things hold true, but it just works. Auto-tune or no, I actually admire the ability of the performers to learn the choreography and lay down the tracks, week in and week out. If being a regular on “Law & Order” is a 12-hour a day job, I can only imagine what it must be like to learn your lines, record three songs, and learn the dance moves to four more. But the one thing that does remain consistent throughout “Glee” is Jane Lynch’s Sue Sylvester, who elevates this show to a whole different level whenever she’s on screen. I get frustrated and bored with this show from time to time, but those great episodes — and Sue Sylvester — make suffering through the rest of it an easy decision.

9. Community: “Community” has a genuine mix of the glib and sweet. It’s not as esoterically hilarious as early seasons of “30 Rock” or “Better Off Ted,” or as biting and relatable as early seasons of “The Office,” but it’s a superior show to both of those NBC comedies now. Joel McHale is hilariously wry, and no “bromance” has been as good as the one between Abed and Troy since old-school J.D. and Turk on “Scrubs.” Chevy Chase is brilliant, and Gillian Jacobs as Britta is actually different from most sitcom love interests. Hell, “Community” is different from most sitcoms. It’s a fresh premise with an unusually fresh perspective.

8. Justified: Timothy Olyphant is gripping in the role of U.S. Marshall reluctantly dropped into his hometown, and he’s a pleasure to watch. Frankly, if the show were nothing more than him wandering around towns, gun by his side, Stetson on his head, I’d probably never complain. Luckily, however, the show looks to have a bit more going for it. One of the smart things about taking the big city Marshall and dropping him into a small pond is that in Kentucky, the Marshalls don’t have specialties, because “everybody does everything — witness relocation, judicial protection, prisoner transport, fugitives.” This promises that the series can play with a lot of different types of weekly storylines, while still exploring whatever larger character and plot arcs may come into play. How can you do better than a 21st Century Seth Bullock? — Seth Freilich

7. The Inbetweeners: I’m not even sure we’ve ever even mentioned this show on the site prior to this, but I caught both seasons of the BBC show a couple of months ago, and it is unbelievably hilarious. It follows a socially ill-adjusted British teenager dropped into public school and how he manages to cope with humiliation after humiliation. It’s a coming-of-age sitcom, something like a British version of “The Wonder Years” with the language of In the Loop crossed with, well, American Pie (in concept, only). It’s also something akin to the comedic version of “Skins.” Bonus: There have only been two six-episode seasons (25 minute episodes), so you can catch up on the entire run on a Saturday afternoon.

6. Sons of Anarchy: Currently on hiatus after wrapping up a phenomenal season two, “Sons of Anarchy” is the motorcycle gang version of “The Sopranos,” and while it doesn’t quite have the dramatic gravitas of “The Sopranos,” the plotting is tighter, the stories are more emotionally driven, and the characters are as compelling, starting with Katey Sagal’s phenomenally acted matriarch. I didn’t think that Charlie Hunnam (“Undeclared”) had it in him at first, but he’s improved markedly over the course of the series, and plays superbly off of Ron Perlman. “SoA” has solid supporting cast, to boot, and that season two cliffhanger has had a lot of us aching hard for the next season.

5. Modern Family: This single-camera, faux-mockumentary sitcom over on ABC follows three suburban families: The traditional one, with a neurotic uptight mother (the glorious Julie Bowen, who is the best actress on television that can’t hold a steady job) and the-thinks-he’s-cool Dad (Ty Burrell), in what is essentially a version of “The Office’s” Michael Scott as a father (only considerable less needy), and their three children. Then there’s an older man (Ed O’Neil) in a track suit, married to a sexy younger woman (Sofia Vergara), who brings her child, a chubby junior-high wannabe Lothario into the marriage. Finally, there’s also the hilarious gay couple (Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet), who have just adopted a Vietnamese baby. “Modern Family” is winsome. It’s genuine. And it’s really fucking funny, though the humor is understated and often deadpan. It’s “Arrested Development” without the screwball zaniness.

4. Breaking Bad: Billed as a dark comedy, “Breaking Bad” is certainly far from upbeat. It’s about as dark and deadpan as you can get within the genre. Although the character of Jesse does provide some much needed comic relief, most of the comedic moments are subtle — often leaving you feeling somewhat uncomfortable as to whether or not you’re supposed to laugh. Walter White is an utterly desperate guy with absolutely nothing to lose. His actions, while sometimes bordering on deranged lunacy, are purely motivated by the love for his family, and the frantic, driving need to provide for them. And the result is a poignant, and at times, downright heartbreaking series. — SF

3. Friday Night Lights: Heading into Season Four (on NBC, at least), after the set of perfect endings “FNL” gave many of its departing characters at the end of last season, the writers — just as they have done before — have taken the puzzle of high emotions and plot strands that they so meticulously and perfectly pieced together last season and smashed it — along with our hearts — to fucking bits. They’ve turned our heroes into massive underdogs once again. By the end of the opening episode of this season (which begins May 7th) there’s not a silver lining in sight, although rock-bottom hasn’t yet been hit. And it’s soul crushing. But while the students of Dillon (and East Dillon) may change, inarguably, the best element of the show remains the relationship between Coach Taylor and Tami. Each week, those two put on a clinic in marriage and parenting — they are to marriage what “The Wire” is to police procedurals. Everything about their marriage is amazing, and after 20 years together, the love they still feel for one another is palpable.

2. Doctor Who: There’s not much I can say about “Doctor Who” that hasn’t been written by Steven Lloyd Wilson already (add to that the now weekly recaps of the latest season). If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you to give it a shot. It is to sci-fi shows what “The Wire” is to cop shows, what “West Wing” is to political dramas, and what “Deadwood” is to Westerns. And I say that as someone who really doesn’t like to own up to his inner geek. Watch three episodes; it willown you after that, as many of the readers here can attest. It is a remarkably fun, emotional adventure show, and with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan (the British Felicia Day), along with the new showrunner, Steven Moffat, the new “Doctor Who” shows absolutely no signs of slowing.

1. Treme: Yes, we’re only two episodes into “Treme,” but it’s already apparent that David Simon is going to do for post-Katrina New Orleans what he did for Baltimore in “The Wire.” We’ll have our own official review of the show up soon, but Dan perfectly captured the gist of it over on The Houston Press, when he wrote: “If [“The Wire”] was about seeing a city in decline in the aftermath of the death of the American dream, then this show is the reverse of that, a story of the forced rebirth of a culture that outsiders are doomed to misinterpret. “The Wire” asked what would happen if a city fell apart and nobody noticed; “Treme” talks about what would happen if a city fell apart and the whole world watched. Spoiler alert: Both answers are pretty sad.” This show is going to rock your pants off, folks. And maybe, this time, some of you can pay attention from the beginning, instead of hearing about it for years before you cave in.