The grateful undead
President Obama. Let’s just ponder that for a while.
Okay.
As I pointed out a couple of postings ago ,
all of this was foreshadowed by the switch in Hollywood’s undead preference from
zombies to vampires, which should be more than evident when “Twilight” sets
some box office records its opening weekend on November 21. Flesh-eating,
lumpen proletariat walking corpses are out. Sexy, superhuman, elitist revenants are in.
The McCain campaign tried to smear the Obama team by
suggesting that they were vampiric
elitists who live off the toil of regular Joe the Plumbers, hoity-toity
aristos who believe they are better and smarter and more attractive than
everybody else. The problem was that maybe that’s what people wanted. Maybe,
they thought, it was time to have someone who was a cut or two above the
average rather than below in the White House,
given the track record of the past 8 years.
Anyway, as fate would have it, one of the more troubling vampire
movies of all time, Claire Denis’s “Trouble Every Day” (2001), is screening
this Saturday at the Harvard Film Archive.
Denis, who is one of the greatest little known European filmmakers around, will
be on hand for the screening to discuss. In a sense, “Trouble Every Day” tends
to contradict my undead argument, for although it stars some pretty sexy actors
— Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dalle — it might be one of the worst date movies
ever made. One scene in particular will make it very clear why. You might want
to ask Denis about it.
And if you’re intrigued and want to see more of her films,
and I highly recommend it, the Saturday screening is just part of an ongoing
retrospective of Denis’s films screening at the Archive. She’ll also be
attending a screening Friday of her rarely screened 1994 films “U.S. Go Home”
(a sentiment that might have changed after last night’s election) and her 1991
short “Keep It for Yourself.”
Meanwhile, for those of you interested in seeing some real parasitic elitists, tonight at 6:30 p.m. at the
Brattle Theatre members of the National Society of Film Critics will be
conducting a panel discussion of
their organization’s new book, “The B List: The National Society of Film
Critics on the Low-Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics
We Love”
(remember, a lot of these guys get paid by the word). Brattle director Ned
Hinkle moderates and those attending will include Ty Burr from “The Boston
Globe,” Jay Carr from NECN, James Verniere from “The Boston Herald” and myself.
See you there.