When Scarlett Johansson announced she was going to release an album of Tom Waits cover songs, she was just the latest in a long line of celebrities who have “crossed over” from one media form to another—in her case, film to music. Celebs have been doing this for a long time, but these days it is happening with increasing frequency, it seems. Indeed, the “media-specific” star is pretty much dead; instead, we have “transmedia” superstars—those stars who transcend media forms and disseminate their personality in a multiplicity of forms and outlets.

It’s easy to see why this type of star is increasingly the norm. It has to do with shifts in the industrial landscape of Hollywood and the entertainment business. In a word: conglomeration. Disney was the first Hollywood “major” to introduce the concept of horizontal-integration back in the 50s, when it began cross-promoting Disney’s brand on television, in film, and in theme parks, earning money from each but also from the synergistic effects of the whole enterprise. Then in the 80s, government deregulation paved the way for more and more entertainmnent companies to combine and form massive conglomerates, so that one parent company (Viacom, for example) had control over film companies, TV channels (both network and cable), record companies, book publishers, etc. The result was an explosion of cross-promotion and intertextual dialogues: films based on television shows, television shows featuring the music by so-and-so, books based on films, etc… Throw in the Internet and it all adds up to a convergence in which media forms more fluidly relate to each other, telling the same stories just in different, though complimentary, ways.

Success in this sort of environment lives and dies on the strength of brand—namely brands that are strong enough to thrive on a multitude of media platforms (think The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, or Sex and the City)—and what better brands are there than celebrities? When you see a celebrity’s name on a movie poster, you know what that movie will offer. Quentin Tarantino is a brand. So is Beyonce. And Oprah, well, she’s the mother of all celeb brands.

For these celeb-brands, it makes sense (both for themselves and for the industries that finance them) to expand to as many media forms as possible. If I’m Oprah and I know millions of people will do whatever it is I do (or say), why not have a TV show, an entire TV channel, a magazine, some made-for-TV movies, a book club brand, and so on… In this day and age, there are no longer “movie stars” or “TV stars” as much as there are just “stars”… famous people with their hands in a little bit of everything.

American Idol epitomizes this whole idea. The point of the show isn’t so much to make music stars as it is to make stars. It’s a show about how to become famous; and once famous, its offspring can make money in a variety of ways. Idol alums have sold a lot of records, obviously, but they’ve also made a lot of money for FOX as TV stars, and some of them have become movie stars (Jennifer Hudson), Broadway stars (Clay Aiken, Tamyra Gray), and so on…

Obviously some transmedia careers are better than others, and some “brands” are just not strong enough to thrive in multiple platforms (and sometimes the talent isn’t there). As an example of this whole phenomenon, here’s my list of the best and worst of the transmedia superstars:

Best
Beyonce - Media conquered: music, movies, fashion, Jay-Z
Miley Cyrus - Media conquered: music, television, movies, live concerts, theme parks, awards shows, magazine covers, basically the whole world.
Justin Timberlake - Media conquered: music, movies (he’s actually a very good actor), MTV.
Oprah - Media conquered: everything imaginable.
Jared Leto – Just kidding! Though he has been in some good movies (Fight Club, Requiem for a Dream) and good TV shows (My So-Called Life), his rock band (30 Seconds to Mars) is pretty terrible.

Worst
Jewel - Media conquered: music. Media failures: movies (she wasn’t bad in Ang Lee’s Ride With the Devil, but it was totally a one-and-done for her as an actress), poetry (A Night Without Armor, anyone?).
Britney Spears – Media conquered: music. Media failures: movies (Um… Crossroads), television (Britney and Kevin: Chaotic was a disaster, though she was pretty good on How I Met Your Mother), motherhood…
Paris Hilton – Media conquered: nightclubs, television (The Simple Life), adult video, prison. Media failures: music (one and done with the self-titled Paris), movies (House of Wax), and general classiness.

The Fall is as cinematic a film as you will ever see. And this is fitting, because The Fall is essentially a love letter to the form—an outpouring of expressive sound, image, space, movement, and color, strewn together in delicately messy bursts and flourishes of filmic passion.

Helmed by Indian director Tarsem (whose only other film, 2000’s The Cell, was also hyper-stylized but ultimately little more), The Fall is set in the early years of cinema—circa 1915—and centers around a paralyzed movie stuntman (Lee Pace of ABC’s Pushing Daisies) who befriends a wide-eyed five-year-old immigrant (Catinca Untaru) who is a patient in the same hospital. The film moves back and forth between this “real” world and the fictional fantasy world of a swashbuckling tale the two conjure up together to help get through their convalescence.

A descendent of films like The Wizard of Oz, Big Fish, and even Pan’s Labyrinth, The Fall reminds us of the power of the moving image to provide both an escape from the harsh realities of life but also a means whereby humans can better understand themselves, and each other. In the “real life” scenes between Pace and Untaru, a partial language barrier makes it difficult for the two to always understand one another (indeed, the young and heavy-accented Untaru is often unintelligible). But when they “escape” to their shared and ongoing narrative fantasy, they achieve a transcendent understanding through the limitless possibilities of imagination.

The title of the film is not some allusion to Eden (though there are some shots and one tree in particular that might invite some such interpretations). Rather, it is a film about literal falls: the physical act of succumbing to gravity. The two main characters are in the hospital because of injuries suffered from falls, and time and time again there are dramatic, slow-mo falling shots in which characters fall into pools, off balconies, off bridges, etc. (reminiscent of the famous “kicked into the abyss” shot in The 300). The film revels in such highly expressive moments of intense action and vivid imagery. Indeed, the film is really just a collection of isolated moments and movements, following the form of a vaudeville revue, evoking the nascent cinema’s tendency to be what Tom Gunning called a “cinema of attractions.”

Eschewing CGI and digital fall-backs, Tarsem aims to capture the thrill and beauty of actual materiality, manipulated through old-fashioned filmmaking techniques to create transformative flights of fancy. Here again he pays homage to early cinema, where people like D.W. Griffith first realized the expressive potentials of cinematic storytelling: things like parallel and non-linear editing, varying shot lengths, and the ability to play “tricks” on the audience to make physical impossibilities appear possible.

The narrative of The Fall also references early cinema, which focused on episodic spectacle and serialized melodrama. The swashbuckling, globe-trotting adventures of The Fall’s fantasy world reflect the spirit of silent cinema’s first attempts at melodrama: serials like The Perils of Pauline, The Hazards of Helen, and The Exploits of Elaine. Those serials featured exotic locations and villains (often sheiks or Indians) with frequent literal cliffhangers, daring stunts, and other such (yes!) falls. Such early serials inspired later exotic adventures like Tarzan, Indiana Jones and The Mummy—films that were about, at least in part, the magic of cinema itself.

Tarsem has a strong command of the moving image form and a distinctive visual style honed through years of commercial and music video work. His career path mirrors style-centric directors like David Fincher and Spike Jonze, who serve as “presented by” marquee names for this film. The aesthetic of The Fall is a mixture of Dadism, surrealism, and naturalistic exoticism (with stunning location shoots in places like India, Namibia, and South Africa), and Tarsem seems to invoke people like M.C. Esher, Man Ray, Sergei Eisenstein, and Salvador Dali in his evocation of a pre-WWI modernist expressionism.

The result is a trip, to be sure, but one that is more accessible than, say, David Lynch’s Inland Empire (another film that thrills in pushing the boundaries of the cinematic). It isn’t perfect (the acting can at times be a tad too saccharine), but The Fall is certainly one of the most unique films of the year—a cinematic journey that is both thoroughly modern and strikingly classical.

I’ve been a fan of Scarlett Johansson ever since The Horse Whisperer. And while her film career since then has not been totally pristine, she’s definitely proven herself one of the most talented young stars in Hollywood, with fantastic performances in Ghost World, Lost in Translation, Girl With a Pearl Earring, and Match Point (we can forget The Island).

The main reason I love Scarlett, however, is that she is the consummate Hollywood hipster… and oh do I love my hipsters. I remember turning down an invitation to attend an art gallery opening several years ago in Hollywood, only to find out later that it was Scarlett Johansson’s party and that she had greeted all guests. It’s one of my biggest regrets, but it underscores the artsy nature of Ms. Johansson, which made me like her even more. Sure, she’s now engaged to Van Wilder himself, Ryan Reynolds (negative hipster points), but she’s also an active campaigner for Obama (positive hipster points) and she’s perfected the 50s-glam combination of cat-eye sunglasses and bright red lipstick (uber hipster!). She also has that raspy, cynical voice that gives her even more hipster cred. Did I mention she was in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation?

Imagine my glee, then, when it was reported last year that Scarlett was planning to crossover to music with an album of Tom Waits covers! Could there possibly be anything more hipsterish for a Hollywood starlet to do? It’s almost as if she’s making a mockery of the Lindsay Lohans and Hilary Duffs of the world, who parlay their acting success into useless pop music as if it were some sort of ingénue rite of passage. This is Scarlett differentiating herself from the Hills stereotype: Lindsay Lohan and friends have probably never heard a Tom Waits song in their lives.

Scarlett has made no secret of her ambitions to transition to the music world. She appeared in then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake’s video for “What Goes Around Comes Around” last year, and then she starred in a lovely Bob Dylan music video for his song “When the Deal Goes Down.” Last year she even performed with The Jesus and Mary Chain at Coachella (for the song “Just Like Honey,” naturally). On May 20 her own album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, comes out, and let me just tell you right now: it’s shockingly good. Not good as in “perfect voice and easy listening” pop good… but good as in “a strangely progressive interpretation of Tom Waits” good…

The album kicks off with the triumphant instrumental “Fawn,” an organ-and-horn blasted revisioning of Waits’ shrieking-string original. The thick wall of sound sets the stage for an album that revels in meticulous instrumentation and jazzy noisemaking, aided in no small part by the producing skill of TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek. The next song, “Town With No Cheer,” introduces us to ScarJo’s voice, which is as musky and low-register and imperfect as we expected (and hoped!) it would be. The third song, “Falling Down,” is also the first “single/video,” which you can watch here to get a sense of the sound.

Scarlett knows she is not Cat Power, and thus she wisely stays close to the melody in her singing. The songs become “new” in the way they are arranged and pumped full of airy, droning electricity and shoegazer ambience. Indeed, the album’s self-defined genre classification—“designer shoegazing”—is totally apropos. This is an album full of atmospheric white noise and walls of synthy fuzz. It’s Tom Waits’ low-fi folk interpreted through an 80s British drug music lens. It’s clear that Scarlett is a huge fan of The Jesus and Mary Chain (I wonder if this predated Lost In Translation, which forever married her to the song “Just Like Honey”?) and she offers a nice 21st-century spin on it here.

The album is strong and cohesive, but there are some definite standout tracks. The title track, a Pharrell-meets-My Bloody Valentine adventure, is a curious little gem. The lovely “Fannin Street” benefits from David Bowie (yes, David Bowie!) backing vocals, and the melancholy “I Wish I Was in New Orleans” utilizes a persistent music box and “sweet little girl” mood to beautifully contrast with Waits’ ragged, frog-in-my-throat original. It’s the song that (perhaps) improves the most on the original. That is, until the next song, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up,” which employs a drum machine, handclaps, and shimmering keyboard riffs to create what is undoubtedly the album’s best song. Even the one original track, “Song For Jo,” is impressive: an ethereal dream that fits in perfectly with the rest of the album.

This is not the best album of the year, certainly, but it’s an impressive debut—a ballsy effort that actually works, paying homage to one of the strangest (and most awesome!) American songwriters of the last thirty years. It’s an album that will turn a lot of people off, but it’ll also give Scarlett even more of that most precious form of celebrity currency: hipster cred!

In an impressive display of solidarity, intelligence, and single-mindedness, a group of Evangelical leaders recently drafted “An Evangelical Manifesto” which attempts to “address the confusions and corruptions that have attended the term Evangelical” and “to clarify where we stand on issues that have caused consternation over Evangelicals in public life.” The document was officially announced and released in Washington D.C. on May 7.

It’s a breath of fresh air at a time when the term “Evangelical” is coming under assault both inside and outside the church. In contrast to many of the “emerging church” folks who are ready to abandon the much-maligned term, this group is holding fast to the E-word: “We boldly declare that, if we make clear what we mean by the term, we are unashamed to be Evangelical and Evangelicals” (notice the capitalization of Evangelical). On the other hand, the document strongly repudiates the hyper-politicized nature of contemporary Evangelicalism, hoping to expand the concept of “Evangelical” beyond the social issues (abortion, gay marriage) that have preoccupied it in recent years (at least in the perceptions of the media).

Among the 80+ signers of the document are Os Guiness, Richard Mouw, Kelly Monroe Kullberg, Mark Noll, Ron Sider, Miroslav Volf, and Duane Litfin (President of my alma mater, Wheaton College). Notably absent are several evangelical stalwarts like Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, and James Dobson, who likely were not comfortable attaching their name to a document so critical of the evangelical right’s militant engagement in the culture wars.

I’m happy to sign my name to the document, and I did.

It’s a beautifully-written piece of prose, a comprehensive and timely articulation of how the Church can unite and thoughtfully proceed in this rapidly changing culture. It’s full of great ideas and great passages, so I urge you to read through the whole thing. Here are some of my favorite parts of the 19 page document:

• “Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.” (4)
• “To be Evangelical, and to define our faith and our lives by the Good News of Jesus as taught in Scripture, is to submit our lives entirely to the lordship of Jesus and to the truths and the way of life that he requires of his followers, in order that they might become like him, live the way he taught, and believe as he believed.” (5)
• “The Evangelical message, “good news” by definition, is overwhelmingly positive, and always positive before it is negative. There is an enormous theological and cultural importance to “the power of No,” especially in a day when “Everything is permitted” and “It is forbidden to forbid.” Just as Jesus did, Evangelicals sometimes have to make strong judgments about what is false, unjust, and evil. But first and foremost we Evangelicals are for Someone and for something rather than against anyone or anything.” (8)
• “Evangelicalism should be distinguished from two opposite tendencies to which Protestantism has been prone: liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism.” (8)
• “To be Evangelical is earlier and more enduring than to be Protestant.” (10)
• “We confess that we Evangelicals have betrayed our beliefs by our behavior. All too often we have trumpeted the gospel of Jesus, but we have replaced biblical truths with therapeutic techniques, worship with entertainment, discipleship with growth in human potential, church growth with business entrepreneurialism, concern for the church and for the local congregation with expressions of the faith that are churchless and little better than a vapid spirituality, meeting real needs with pandering to felt needs, and mission principles with marketing precepts. In the process we have become known for commercial, diluted, and feel-good gospels of health, wealth, human potential, and religious happy talk, each of which is indistinguishable from the passing fashions of the surrounding world.” (11)
• “All too often we have disobeyed the great command to love the Lord our God with our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, and have fallen into an unbecoming anti-intellectualism that is a dire cultural handicap as well as a sin. In particular, some among us have betrayed the strong Christian tradition of a high view of science, epitomized in the very matrix of ideas that gave birth to modern science, and made themselves vulnerable to caricatures of the false hostility between science and faith. By doing so, we have unwittingly given comfort to the unbridled scientism and naturalism that are so rampant in our culture today.” (12)
• “We call for an expansion of our concern beyond single-issue politics, such as abortion and marriage, and a fuller recognition of the comprehensive causes and concerns of the Gospel, and of all the human issues that must be engaged in public life. Although we cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman, we must follow the model of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emptiness, by promoting reconciliation, encouraging ethical servant leadership, assisting the poor, caring for the sick, and educating the next generation.” (13-14)
• “Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology, and nationality, we Evangelicals see it our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, or nationality. In our scales, spiritual, moral, and social power are as important as political power, what is right outweighs what is popular, just as principle outweighs party, truth matters more than team-playing, and conscience more than power and survival. The politicization of faith is never a sign of strength but of weakness.” (15)
• “Our commitment is to a civil public square — a vision of public life in which citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, but within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths too. Thus every right we assert for ourselves is at once a right we defend for others.” (17)
• “We utterly deplore the dangerous alliance between church and state, and the oppression that was its dark fruit. We Evangelicals trace our heritage, not to Constantine, but to the very different stance of Jesus of Nazareth. While some of us are pacifists and others are advocates of just war, we all believe that Jesus’ Good News of justice for the whole world was promoted, not by a conqueror’s power and sword, but by a suffering servant emptied of power and ready to die for the ends he came to achieve.” (18)

Yes, that David Cook. Did you know he’s already released a solo album? It’s called Analog Heart, and a few weeks ago it was the #1 downloaded album on Amazon.com, even ahead of Mariah Carey’s new album. If you want to track it down today, however, it is mysteriously absent. Both iTunes and Amazon yanked the album, no doubt at the request of Idol powers-that-be. Seems unfair to me. Why not let Cook continue to accumulate wealth from his independently-released album? My guess is that Idol suits (in their characteristically totalitarian fashion) are counting on David Cook winning and, thus, being bound to a contract with the Idol record label. They probably are hoping to repurpose some of Cook’s songs from Analog Heart or even reissue the whole album at some point.

Anyway, I downloaded the album and listened to it… So what’s the verdict? Well, let’s just say David Cook has some room to grow as an artist. The album is in the vein of Three Doors Down-esque throat-clearing rock, which is normally my least favorite genre of music. Still, I like David Cook (he’s by far the best talent on Idol this season) and Analog Heart is at least as good as any pre-Idol album Chris Daughtry ever released. The album is earnest and shows some songwriting skill and rock bravado, even when it sounds a bit off-key (flat) 90% of the time. The opening two songs, “Straight Ahead” and “Don’t Say a Word” are fairly catchy rock tunes, with nice riff throwbacks to mid 90s alt-rock (Verve Pipe, Goo Goo Dolls, etc) and occasional splashes of 80s-era Cure. There are a few mediocre rock ballads, like “The Truth” and “Makeover,” the latter of which contains this charming lyric: “She fell out; her broken legs won’t let her walk away / From this town that couldn’t give a single shit either way.”

The best song on the album is probably “Searchlights,” a driving angsty rant with lyrics like “You are, for contradiction’s sake / Everything I remember that I swore I’d forget” (granted, hardly poetry, but better than most of the lyrics of its genre). It’s a song that I could see being a radio hit, with some serious studio finessing. The worst moments on the album are when Cook sounds a little too much like bands like Staind (songs like “Porcelain,” “Stitches,” “Let’s Go”), which is not a good sound for his voice. He’s much better when he doesn’t strain and instead plays it down a little, focusing on notes and melody rather than being just another angsty jock rock copycat. His rendition of “Music of the Night” a few weeks ago on Idol proves he’s got a great voice, but on Analog Heart it’s crowded out by excessively noisy guitar and drums.

In any case, I hope David Cook wins Idol. His renditions of “Billy Jean” and “Always Be My Baby” were among the season’s high points, and of all the contestants left on the show, he has the potential to be a real artist (in the loose sense of the word). I’ll be interested to hear what he can do within the glossy, hyper-produced world of Idol recording. All I know is that he really needs to beat David Archuleta, the stage-dad-controlled automaton who appears to be the other major contender for the Idol crown.

Iron Man is the best super-hero movie I’ve seen in a long time, perhaps since Batman Begins. It’s fun, thrilling, witty, romantic, even a little provocative. It’s all you could really want from a summer blockbuster (and how nice it is that we’ve entered the “summer blockbuster” season!)

Robert Downey Jr. is absolutely perfect in the role of Tony Stark—a billionaire/superhero with a characteristic spotty past and a “save the world” complex (essentially a more ironic, more cyborgy Bruce Wayne). Jeff Bridges is also superb as the nemesis Obadiah—a big-business weapons manufacturer selling tech secrets to Afghan terrorists. Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow (so nice to see you again, Mrs. Martin!) deliver terrific supporting performances as well. The cast is appropriately high caliber, because this is a very high caliber film.

Perhaps the best thing about Iron Man is its show-stopping sequences of special effects. It’s almost passé to applaud special effects in blockbuster films anymore, but it is certainly appropriate here. The Jetsons-esque robots and gadgets and inventive weaponry displayed in the film make Transformers look cartoonish by comparison.

But beyond the superb visual rendering of the film’s stylish techiness, the thing that most fascinated me about Iron Man was the way that it subtly (perhaps unintentionally) commented on the contemporary relationship betweens humans and technology.

On one hand the film has a nostalgic, ultra-modernist flair that hearkens back to Cold War sci-fi films: technology as tool and ultimate embodiment of human science and progress (or else the sign of man’s self-induced apocalypse). But Iron Man is not a film from the 50s. It is fully aware of its 21st-century context and the attendant shifts in the way we relate to and speak of technology. No longer is it just a tool to help us improve efficiency, fight wars, get to the moon, etc… No, it is much more personal than that. Technology today is a crucial extension of who we are. Some of the most striking scenes in the film involve Stark bantering with his team of robot “friends” in his workshop. They have personalities, senses of humor, and “get” Stark much more than most humans do. Indeed, Stark’s do-everything digital assistant, Jarvis (voiced by Paul Bettany), seems to know the superhero better than just about anyone. It’s a metaphor for our own hyper-mediated lives: we relate to the world and understand ourselves chiefly via technology.

Iron Man, as the title implies, is about the fusion of man and machine. It’s the ultimate cyborg fantasy—though it’s not so much a fantasy as it is a reflection of how we (increasingly) define our identity.

I agree with film theorist Vivian Sobchack, who in “The Postmorbid Condition” suggests that our society increasingly has a technologized view of the body and flesh. Our bodies, she argues, are becoming simply well oiled machines that we must perfect and equip for utilitarian purposes. We’ve become obsessed with “maintenance” and “repair,” as seen in the current obsessions with working out and cosmetic surgery. We spend hours in gyms and health clubs, we pop pills and vitamins, consume protein bars and energy drinks, and we take drugs and medicines that can pretty much make our body do anything we want it to. Some of us take steroids and performance-enhancing drugs to push our bodies even further beyond their natural capabilities.

Iron Man is just the latest (and most literal) super-human action film to reflect the technologized view of the body. Of course we can also look back to RoboCop, The Terminator, and any number of other sci-fi films to see this as well. The “cyborg film” is an interesting genre, and it’s not all that difficult to understand why it’s appealing. Our culture fetishizes technology, and has for a long time; what would be better than to literally fuse oneself with the technology we so idealize?

One of the most common complaints I hear from others when they watch the “art” films I recommend is that they are “too slow.” Indeed, it seems that our increasingly hyperactive, fast-paced culture considers any film paced slower than a John Grisham novel to be impossibly languorous. Thus, it’s an uphill battle to win over converts to such films as Flight of the Red Balloon (which I reviewed earlier this week), or anything from directors like Terrence Malick or Gus Van Sant. Still, I think that if people try to sit through and attend to the beauties of these films, they will find them ultimately rewarding. Film as art (as in any art form) requires active attention and openness on the part of the audience. There are a lot of wonderful films out there that require some patience to sit through, but that reward the viewer immensely. Here are just a few (ordered by year):

Diary of a Country Priest (1954) – Robert Bresson
Bresson is one of the most widely acclaimed French auteurs, but his films are among the hardest to watch. They are about as far from the conventional Hollywood narrative as you can get. Still, there is a striking authenticity and meditative realism to the mundane worlds he portrays—especially in this beautiful film about the everyday struggles of a young priest in rural France.

Scenes From a Marriage (1973) – Ingmar Bergman
Though it is broken up into segments, this 167 minute domestic drama seems to go on and on, and in true Bergman fashion, it is an arduous, methodical descent into nihilistic flagellation. Nevertheless, the performances and themes here are utterly compelling and strikingly rendered by one of cinema’s greatest artists.

Paris, Texas (1984) – Wim Wenders
Like Gerry (see below…), this classic Wim Wenders film provides a captivating “wandering through the dessert” experience. It’s a dry, dusty, subdued sort of existential western. Harry Dean Stanton plays a broken down man, wandering the Texas landscape in search of himself. There are few words in the film, and even fewer conventions of Hollywood storytelling. But it is a memorable experience nonetheless.

Down by Law (1986) – Jim Jarmusch
This is a challenging film. More a mood piece than anything else (set in the Louisiana bayou), Down by Law eschews traditional plot and character development in favor of visual and sonic oddity. Quirkiness rarely makes for a compelling two hour experience, but this film is an exception: it’s a joy to watch. The unexpected trio of John Lurie, Tom Waits, and Roberto Benigni are unforgettable in this film—one of Jarmusch’s best.

The Thin Red Line (1998) – Terrence Malick
The challenging thing for audiences who watch The Thin Red Line is that they’ve watched too many war movies, and the understanding is that a war movie should be exciting, action-packed, and emotionally-wrenching. Personally I think Terrence Malick’s film is as emotionally-wrenching as any film I’ve ever seen, just not in the traditional ways. Give this complicated film a chance. It’s one of the most beautiful ever made.

Gerry (2002) – Gus Van Sant
This film pushes the limits of even the most patient filmgoer. The whole thing is essentially a silent observation of two hikers (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) who get lost in the unforgiving desserts of the American Southwest. There are scant more than a couple dozen lines of dialogue to be found in its 103 minutes, nothing like a “plot” to speak of, and yet—and yet—something about Gerry is utterly spellbinding.

The Son (2002) – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
“Slow” could be a designation given most all Dardenne Bros films, but they are all worth sitting through. The Belgian filmmakers have a way of withholding any catharsis for the audience until the final moments of their films, and never is this more clearly exhibited than in The Son, a beautiful relationship portrait of fathers and sons.

The Five Obstructions (2003) – Jorgen Leth and Lars von Trier
There were a number of Lars von Trier films I considered for this list (Dogville, The Element of Crime, etc), but I settled on this film—a documentary jointly made with Jorgen Leth—because, well, I think it needs to be seen. I’m actually not sure how anyone could call this film “boring,” but the sheer conceptual headiness of it is certainly unpalatable to many. Still, Obstructions is totally unique and features a stunning “twist” ending—if you make it that far.

Into Great Silence (Two-Disc Set) (2007) - Philip Gröning
This film is the exact opposite of “commercial” cinema. It is nearly three hours long, pretty much silent, actionless, and repetitive. But it is a documentary about the ascetic life of monks, and as such, it should be a challenge to watch. But if you let yourself be still, silent, and contemplate just what it is you are watching, then Into Great Silence can become more than cinema. It can be a truly worshipful experience.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) – Andrew Dominik
The most recent addition to this list goes to last fall’s Jesse James “biopic,” which turns out to be more a phenomenological contemplation than a narrative of the famous bandit’s life. Indeed, the 160 minute film leaves many wondering “when are the great shootouts and action sequences going to come?” Answer: never. But instead, you get an immersive, mood-driven photo essay; and again, a wonderful coda sequence at the end.

By now you’ve all probably heard about Yale Abortion Girl, right? Her name is Aliza Shvarts, and she’s a senior art student at the esteemed Ivy League school. She made international news last week when her outrageous senior art project was made public.

According to Shvarts, her project is a documentation of a nine-month process in which she artificially inseminated herself (from a number of sperm donors) “as often as possible” and then took herbal abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. The actual project was to be an installation of a large cube suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition hall, filled with the menstrual blood from her supposed litany of miscarriages. Recorded video of her experiencing the miscarriages in her bathtub was to be projected on each side of the cube.

Schvarts initially defended the project by saying, “I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity… I think that I’m creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be… It was a private and personal endeavor, but also a transparent one for the most part… This isn’t something I’ve been hiding.”

But as news circulated beyond Yale and outraged criticism came pouring in, Yale put a kibosh on the project, which was supposed to be installed for the senior art show last week.

“I am appalled,” said Yale College Dean Peter Salovey. “This piece of performance art as reported in the press bears no relation to what I consider appropriate for an undergraduate senior project.”

School of Art Dean Robert Storr also denounced Schvarts’ project, saying that while Yale “has a profound commitment to freedom of expression,” the University “does not encourage or condone projects that would involve unknown health risks to the student.”

Soon after the initial hubbub, however, the University officials announced to the press that Shvarts had privately denied actually committing the acts in question, and that the whole project was nothing more than an elaborate hoax—a “creative fiction” meant to highlight the ambiguity of the relationship between art and the human body.

Shvarts responded by calling the University’s claims “ultimately inaccurate,” and refused to sign a written confession saying that the whole thing was a hoax. Instead, Shvarts began a “no one knows the truth except me” campaign of meta-meta-meta critique. And arguably, this is when her “project” kicked in to high gear.

Shvarts told the press that throughout the nine months she never knew if she was ever really pregnant or not (she never took a pregnancy test), and in a column for the Yale Daily News, Shvarts wrote that “The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading.”

Huh? Being pregnant is a matter of reading? This is where it becomes clear what Schvarts is really up to—an amped-up deconstructionist exercise in sexual semiotics.

“The part most meaningful in [the project’s] political agenda … is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood,” Shvarts wrote in the same column. “Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether there was ever a fertilized ovum or not.”

“This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body,” she wrote. “…To protect myself and others, only I know the number of fabricators who participated, the frequency and accuracy with which I inseminated and the specific abortifacient I used. Because of these measures of privacy, the piece exists only in its telling.”

Ahh, the crux: the piece exists only in its telling. With no more metanarratives, no external “Truth,” we can only trust individual perceptions, personalized accounts of experiential contingencies. What a wonderful world.

There is a lot to be disturbed by in this little viral provocation. Of course, the cavalier treatment of pregnancy and abortion (as mere tools in an artistic creation—even if just on the conceptual level) is one thing; and the notion that anything so disgusting (a cube of menstrual blood from self-induced abortions?) could be considered art is another…

But the most frightening aspect of this whole thing, for me, is that it shows just how inaccessible (and out of fashion) truth is in the academy today. When someone like Shvarts can blatantly lie to the press and write it off as part an academic project, what does that say about our academic standards? Where would she get the idea that education (formerly known as the search for truth) can be founded on lies and the privileging of ambiguity?

Hmmm, well, she can get that idea from at least 20 years of critical theory, for starters. This is the strain of scholarly thought that puts truth on the backburner (if it doesn’t dispose of it entirely) in favor of a view of reality as a contested space in which nothing is certain, everything has to do with power imbalances, and ambiguity (re: “complicating, problematizing…”) is the end of all academic pursuit. She also gets this idea from radical feminism, which in saying “the personal is the political” situates the human body in a discursive battleground of contextual ideologies that laughs off the idea of transcendent morality or gender.

Shvarts’ project shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, then, and Yale should look no further than their own professors if they want someone to blame. If we teach our students that all reality is perceptual, all morality personal, and all truth a narrativized fiction, “Abortion Girl” is the least we should expect.

So I was in at the local arthouse movie theater last week and was struck by one of the pre-show ads that presaged the ten minutes of indie film trailers. I really liked the ad, and felt almost moved by it at times… until the last few seconds, when it was revealed what the “ad” was actually for. Apparently the rest of the audience was caught off guard as well, because they all erupted in laughter upon the brand reveal. Here, you can see the ad for yourself:

When I was first watching it, I kept thinking: is this a trailer for some new Babel-esque film that takes place in multiple countries? Or maybe it’s just a small little short film of some kind? I never expected that it would be a Louis Vuitton ad… but perhaps I should have.

It got me thinking: should I respect Louis Vuitton for making such a lovely, aesthetically astute advertisement? Or do I loathe him for coopting “art” and exploiting my indie-film sensibilities? (just as he did in The Darjeeling Limited last fall, which prominently featured an array of Marc Jacobs-designed Louis Vuitton luggage pieces). I guess I can’t fault Louis Vuitton too much, because the ad (LV’s first television ad) is simply doing what advertising has always done: associating a product with a “life experience” or emotion and suggesting that one’s existential satisfaction is tied to overpriced consumer goods.

By using a theme that any self-respecting yuppie has a major weakness for (travel), and highlighting an assortment of poetic little questions (“Does the person create the journey? Or does the journey create the person?”) and proverb-sounding quips (“A journey brings us face to face… with ourselves”), the ad mimics an array of familiar cultural images, sounds, and feelings that all should appeal to the style-conscious upper classes (or wannabes).

The soft images of blue-tinted, misty explorations (that appear to be vaguely SE Asian) evoke an eco-friendly exoticism of the “I vacation in Thailand!” variety. Other images capture a sort of Lost in Translation aesthetic. Indeed, several shots in the ad (people looking out of highrise windows at a city skyline, a woman peering longingly out of a taxi window) are direct quotations of Sofia Coppola’s beautiful travelogue. What to make of this?

Perhaps the biggest question we should ask is this: are the people for whom “life is a journey” really going to spend thousands of dollars on LV handbags? If those who are existentially attracted to traveling (which is what the ad is appealing to: not the “jet-set” type of travel, but the “spiritual journey” type) have a few extra thousand to spend on consumer goods, will they spend it on designer luggage? Probably the money would go to various travel indulgences (airfare, nice hotel, ethnic souvenirs, etc) or something otherwise “experiential” rather than material/utilitarian. But then again, rich people who travel do need luggage… so why not Louis Vuitton?

I spent Sunday afternoon at Santa Monica beach (something I do frequently on Sunday afternoons), and let me just say: this is one of the most unique and complicated places you can encounter. The twin beach towns of Santa Monica and Venice (about 15 miles west of downtown Los Angeles) make up a unique beach community that stands out among a coastline of “stand out” beach towns. Something about the combination of people (tourists, hippie locals, every ethnicity imaginable, celebrities, vagrants), material environment (art deco architecture, open air promenades, seagulls, cheesy tourist shops), and history (Route 66, the pier, the legendary surf/skateboard communities of the 60s/70s) make this a place with (seemingly) more character than a lot of places. But in the end, aren’t all places equally complicated and unique? What defines a “unique” location? Is a Kansas farmtown any less complex and character-filled than Paris or Shanghai? I was wondering these things as I was at the beach.

Fittingly, I decided to catch a movie at the beachfront arts theater—a documentary called Bra Boys. I say fittingly, because this is a documentary that addresses the question of place very directly and engagingly. In this film (which I highly recommend), the ostensible subject is a group of ragtag Australian hoodlums/surfer dudes nicknamed “Bra Boys.” They are a multi-ethnic gang (or “tribe,” as Australian surfer gangs are often labeled) made up of troubled teens/twentysomethings, thick-necked rugby players, and a few professional surfers (Koby Abberton, most notably). They are joined by a love of surfing, fraternity spirit (they all have “Bra Boys” tattoos), and the fact that they all live and surf the beach waves of Sydney suburb Maroubra. And in the end, this film is not so much about its characters or even the sport of surfing (though it is about this), but rather it is about Maroubra—a place quite unlike any other.

Narrator Russell Crowe makes this clear from the get go, as the film begins with an extended narrative montage of the history of Maroubra—from the colonial days (New South Wales was created, as we know, to be a massive prison for exiles of the Empire) to the relatively recent (1990s-onward) problems of gang violence. From there the film expands into a full-fledged, beautifully-rendered portrait of a very rough, very tight-knit community. It’s also a very personal portrait, as the film is directed by a Bra Boy and Maroubra native, Sunny Abberton (who, along with his brothers Jai and Koby, are the film’s chief character subjects).

Maroubra has had a difficult history, with a lot going against it from very early on. The town is flanked on its three non-ocean sides by a massive prison (Long Bay Jail), the biggest sewage plant in the southern hemisphere, and a rifle range. It’s also a hotbed for low-income public housing, drugs, broken families, and violence (stabbings, shootings, beatings) of all kinds. Out of this overlooked neighborhood (and others like it along the suburban Sydney coast) arose territorial surfer tribes/gangs—more violent, testosterone-filled versions of Santa Monica’s legendary “Z Boys”—who fight each other and defend their communities with vicious tenacity.

Bra Boys is fascinating in its exposure of a strident localism that is little-seen in our increasingly “flat,” globalized world. Maroubra is a place well-defined by its people and history, bound by the driving pastime of surfing on its expansive beaches. Indeed, without surfing, this roughshod neighborhood might collapse in on itself—its residents bound to cycles of poverty, drugs, and incarceration. Instead, it is a place that—through surfing and community—motivates its underprivileged youngsters to rise above their circumstances (almost all of the Bra boys are fatherless, for example) and make something of themselves. I suppose it is an intrinsic logic of any place to find productive outlets wherein the circumstantial disadvantages of its citizens can be overcome, but Bra Boys makes the argument that Maroubra does it better than most.

I’m not sure the film works as an argument for the virtues of Maroubra as a socializing force, but it definitely works as a compelling snapshot of a specific place and culture. There’s something powerful about the singularity of Maroubra’s character—fueled by a common love (surfing) and common enemy (its own fierce localism). Places, I think, are stronger when they have a shared, clear identity, when disparate forces and the dangers of diversity don’t undermine but rather enhance a collective goal or telos. I’m not sure how many Maroubras there are left on earth—or even if we need them anymore. But it’s nice to see one so alive and functional, even if the observance seems somewhat elegiac.