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The December Comfort Watches 2025, Day Ten: Swimming to Cambodia
Dec. 11th, 2025 01:39 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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It’s difficult to explain Swimming to Cambodia to anyone who hasn’t seen it. More accurately, it’s actually very easy to explain Swimming to Cambodia to someone who hasn’t seen it — literally, it’s actor/writer/monologuist Spaulding Gray sitting at a desk and talking for an hour and a half — but it’s difficult to explain how him sitting at that desk for an hour and a half is so compelling and watchable. Is it because Gray himself is watchable and compelling? Yes he is, in a blue blood nebbish sort of way, but it isn’t that (or not just that). It’s also because what he’s doing, monologuing while sitting, is almost entirely at odds with the very idea of a motion picture. Spaulding Gray just sits there, talks into a microphone, occasionally gesticulates and at a couple points pulls down a map to point to things. And it’s magnetic.
Spaulding Gray himself was something of a character, a New Englander in birth and education who drifted west after college to be part of an “intentional community,” only to drift east again to New York, and a life of writing and theater, becoming a co-founder of The Wooster Group. Eventually Gray started doing one-man shows based on his life, monologues with him and chair and a desk, and a notebook with outlines of what he wanted to say but (as I understand it) no hardened script. He would just go in the direction he would go, and hopefully he would take the audience along with him. Occasionally he would do a movie or some television, because, you know, if you could, why wouldn’t you.
One of those movies was The Killing Fields, a Roland Joffe film about Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge era, and two journalists, one American and one Cambodian, caught in the crossfire. Gray did not play the American journalist (Sam Waterston did); Gray played a minor bureaucrat who gives Waterston’s character an important piece of information. A small role, but as your high school drama teacher undoubtedly told you, there are no small parts. Certainly Gray didn’t think so; he played a minor role in the film, but the film and his experiences as part of the cast gave him enough material for a new monologue, Swimming to Cambodia, which was first performed live in 1985 and then published as a book in 1986 before becoming this movie in 1987.
When I first watched Swimming to Cambodia in college, I was trying to find some familiar slot to put it in. Surely there have been “one man shows” committed to film before, albeit usually in the form of some TV special where Hal Holbrooke was portraying Mark Twain, or some British actor was glaumphing about insisting they were Charles Dickens or Winston Churchill or some such. Occasionally, and again mostly on TV (and here in the US, mostly on PBS) you might see some illustrious Shakespearean actor talk about his life, interspersed with a monologue or two from the bard.
There were also, of course, comedy concert films, of which the ones with Richard Pryor are probably the most memorable: one comedian up on a stage with a microphone and ninety minutes to two hours to kill, and an audience to slay. There are even one-man dramatic movies, although those are rare too, quirky films like Robert Altman’s 1984 film Secret Honor, where Philip Baker Hall portrays Richard Nixon rattling around his private office, offering a stream-of-consciousness monologue about how it was he came to resign.
Swimming to Cambodia was like these movies and also not like them at all. Gray is not portraying some historical personage or plucking choice words from playwrights; he’s not pacing the stage or wandering a set. He is sitting at a desk, saying his own words, talking about his own experiences. Those words are funny as often as not, and Gray, a professional storyteller, know how to pace his material like the best comedians might. But this is not a comic performance — any performance that goes into great detail about the horrors of the Cambodian auto-genocide is not one that one would (or should) describe as a nonstop laugh riot. It’s not a concert film, with that call-and-response energy that concert films, musical and comedy, often have.
So: Not precisely a one-man show, not precisely a comedy concert, but a heretofore secret third thing involving one man and his own words, done in a way that, as far as I could remember, really hadn’t been done before and, excepting Spaulding Gray himself, who did more films like this, wasn’t done again, at least not theatrically. Spaulding Gray was and is sui generis as a cinematic genre.
Of the four monologue films he did do (not counting a monologue-laden documentary after his death), Swimming to Cambodia is the first, and, to my mind, the best. It is only Spaulding Gray on the stage, but it’s not only Spaulding Gray making the film. It’s directed by Jonathan Demme, who three years earlier directed Stop Making Sense, one of the greatest concert films ever made, directed Something Wild right before this, Married to the Mob right after this, and The Silence of the Lambs right after that. There may be greater movie directors in the history of American cinema, but few have such a willfully quirky stretch of their career.
Of all of these films, it’s Stop Making Sense that Swimming to Cambodia shares the most DNA with, which is funny to say considering that in that film, the members of the Talking Heads never stop moving, and in this film, Spaulding Gray never once leaves his desk. But just because Gray is relatively stationary doesn’t mean filming him can’t be kinetic. Demme finds his ways to make movement happen, through camera choices, lighting and set design. There is a lot happening here, even if the one person onscreen isn’t moving from his chair. That kinetic style is what makes this pair well with Stop Making Sense, even if they are otherwise polar opposite films in Demme’s filmography.
Again: I can’t think of another film quite like this one, not starring Spaulding Gray. I wonder why that is, and also I don’t wonder at all. Lots of people are comedians, and lots of actors can hold a stage even without the support of another actor. But to do this sort of studied monologuing is an odd duck middle ground, and I don’t think a lot of people do it, or can do it. I don’t think a lot of people have the temperament for it, for one thing: Spaulding Gray, gone more than twenty years now, did the monologue thing on the regular, doing it before this film, and doing it well after. I saw him do it myself in the 90s, when he was touring (touring!) with his monologue, Gray’s Anatomy, which would become his fourth and final monologue film (directed by Stephen Soderbergh, as it happens).
He had a real commitment to the form, which other people don’t have, or perhaps, have not have had with the same amount of success. Perhaps it was the case that even a nation as capacious as the United States could only sustain a single breakout monologuist at a time. Gray died in 2004 and no one has climbed into the role of the nation’s monologuist since, or if they have, I regret to say I have not been made aware of it. This is a shame. The United States needs many things right now, and perhaps a monologuist is one of them.
Of all the films in this “Comfort Reads” rubric, I think Swimming to Cambodia might end up being the most divisive and even the most unpopular. I don’t think it takes any great power of observation to understand why I, who have frequently written about myself and my life, and who even takes to a stage now and again to read to people things I have written, would find this film fascinating. I, too, monologue! (Not at his level, to be clear.) But I don’t know if other people who don’t do these things will find it as interesting, and as rewatchable.
But here’s the thing: like, love or loathe Swimming to Cambodia, you’re not likely to see another film very much like it. Of all the films I’m writing about here, this one is probably the most unique. It’s worth seeing for that alone.
— JS
Wrote a note said be back in a minute
Dec. 10th, 2025 09:29 pmslacktivist_feed‘Good will to all’ rejected as ‘political’ and ‘divisive’
Dec. 9th, 2025 10:38 pmslacktivist_feedThe December Comfort Watches 2025, Day Nine: Strictly Ballroom
Dec. 9th, 2025 05:23 pmscalziwhatever_feed
A personal story to begin: I was a film critic at the Fresno Bee newspaper when Strictly Ballroom came out in 1992. My review of it was an unqualified rave, and I said something along the line that people who loved old-fashioned movie musicals should go out of their way to see it. Then, on opening day, I took my friend Kristin to see the film at a matinee showing at the Fig Garden theater, which was at the time the “high-toned” theater in town.
I didn’t expect there to be much of an audience for a small Australian film about ballroom dancing on a Friday afternoon, but the theater was packed, and mostly with older folks. Kristin and I took our seats and as we did so an older gentleman in the row in front of us, who I assure you did not know I was there, turned to his seatmate and said, “If John Scalzi is wasting my time I am going to find him and kick his ass.”
That’s when I knew that this entire audience was there because I, as the local film critic, has promised them a good old-fashioned time at the movies. And if they didn’t like it, and found out I was there, there was going to an actual geriatric riot as they tore my body apart, slowly, and with considerable effort, limb from limb.
Reader, my ass was not kicked.
And this is because, while Strictly Ballroom is, actually, not at all an old-fashioned movie musical, the vibe, the feel, the delight and, yes, the corniness of an old-fashioned musical is indeed there — that deliriously heightened space where nothing is quite real but everything feels possible, including the happy ending that’s just too perfect, and you know it, and you don’t care, because you’ve been there for the whole ride and that’s just where it had to go, and you’re glad it did. That’s what Strictly Ballroom nails, just like the musical extravaganzas of old. All it’s missing is the Technicolor.
Plus! It was the feature film debut of Baz Luhrmann, the Australian filmmaker who has gone on to give the world some of the most movies of the last 30 years, including Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby. Everything that made those movies the gonzo experiences they were is here, in primordial, smaller, and much less expensive form. Luhrmann could not yet afford more here. But he was absolutely going to give the most with what he had, which was three million dollars, Australian.
And also, a humdinger of a story about Australia’s delightfully weird ballroom dancing subculture, where men dress in tuxes with numbers attached to them, swinging around women wearing dresses that look like they skinned a Muppet and added sequins. The opening sequence, filmed in documentary style, introduces us to Scott Hastings (Paul Mercurio), a ballroom dancer whose path to the top of the field is all but assured — until, that is, Scott does the unthinkable: He starts improvising, and adding… new steps!
Which is just not done, ballroom dancing has standards, after all. Scott’s act of insurrection costs him, to the consternation of those around him, including his mother. But Scott is a rebel! He doesn’t care! He wants to dance his new steps!
No one believes in Scott and his new steps except for Fran (Tara Morice), a gawky beginner to the ballroom dancing scene, yes, but one who has some moves of her own from outside the ballroom world. Scott is intrigued, first by the steps and then for other reasons. Naturally Scott and Fran will be beset on all sides by disapproval of parents, institutions, the expectations of others, and ultimately, their own selves. Will they live a life in fear? Or will they dance their way to that promised happy ending?
It’s not even a little bit of a spoiler to say that there will be a happy ending — this movie was not made in the early 70s, after all, where the rebellion against cinematic norms would dictate that everyone in the film would have to be hit by a train or something. The interest of the film is how it gets to the happy ending. The answer is, with a lot of comedy, a lot of dancing and a couple of not-surprising-in-retrospect twists that are, the first time you see them, nevertheless a bit of a surprise. Scott is a classic pretty boy dancing rebel, Fran is a classic ugly duckling, and the two of them ultimately have their big dancing scene that we’ve been waiting for the whole film, which totally feels earned, even if it’s all a little ridiculous, in a good way.
And to be clear it really is all ridiculous, in a good way. Baz Luhrmann, who also co-wrote the movie (based on a play he put together, which in itself was based on his own experiences in the ballroom dancing scene) is not here for your cynicism or your snobbery. He knows the ballroom dancing world is something that can look silly and even foolish from the outside, but if you’ve decided to put yourself on the outside, that’s a you problem, now, isn’t it? It’s clear Luhrmann has deep affection for the scene and the people who are in it, and if the characters in the movie are a little too into it all, wrapping themselves up in it to the exclusion of much else — well, what are your passions? What weird little insular groups do you belong to? Speaking as someone who is extremely deep into the world of science fiction, and its conventions and its award dramas, which are in their way no less ridiculous (and also has had its own movies parodying its scene, more than one, even), not only am I not going to cast the first stone, I am going to claim a kinship. We are all a part of a ridiculous scene, and if we are not, we’re probably really boring.
I love that Baz Luhrmann loves ballroom dancing here, and lets us see his affection with an unwinking eye. I love that Scott is serious about his new steps as a way to crack open the moribund field he loves. I love that Fran unreservedly wants to be part of Scott’s revolution. I love that, in this small, bounded nutshell of a universe, this is all life-and-death stuff. I love that we see it all portrayed with a light touch, great comedy, and some genuinely fantastic dance scenes.
In fact, I will say this: Strictly Ballroom is, in its way, an absolutely perfect movie. Is it a great movie? Is it an important movie? Is it an influential movie? Honestly requires me to say “no” in all those cases. But those are not the same things! For what Strictly Ballroom is, it is genuinely difficult for me to imagine how any of it could have been done a single jot better. Everything about it works as it should, and does what it is meant to do. Everyone in the cast is delightful being the characters they are. In a movie about ballroom dancing, there isn’t a single step out of place, even the steps that are out of place, because they are meant to be where they are.
How many movies can you say that about? That you look at them and say, “yes, you one hundred percent did the thing you set out to do”? There are damned few, in any era. There is a reason this film received not one but two fifteen-minute standing ovations at the Cannes Film Festival, and won a bunch of awards around the world, and still holds up thirty-some-odd years after it was released. It’s because it’s a perfect little jolt of joy.
As a coda, another personal story: A few years ago I was in Melbourne for a science fiction convention, and as I was in my taxi from the airport, we passed a theater showing Strictly Ballroom, the musical. Well, I knew what I was going to do with my evening; I went and bought one of the few seats remaining (in the balcony! Center!) and enjoyed the hell out of the theatrical version, nearly as much as the cinematic version. Then, walking back to my hotel, I tore a muscle in my leg stepping off a curb and had to go to a hospital to have it dealt with.
It’s possible if I had not gone to see Strictly Ballroom that night, I wouldn’t have torn my muscle. But I did, and I don’t regret it. It was worth it.
— JS
The December Comfort Watches 2025: Day Eight: The Kingdom of Heaven
Dec. 9th, 2025 12:08 amscalziwhatever_feed
There have always been “director’s cuts” and “extended cuts” of films, particularly in the era of the DVD and Blu-Ray, when a film’s distributor could slap in a few scenes that were cut out of the theatrical because the movie would be too long, or too laggy, or both, herald it as an “Unrated Director’s Cut” and eke out a few more bucks from the movie’s fans. Most of the time, this additional material did not change the course of the film in any substantive way — even the extended cuts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy mostly only added detail, with only one significant deviation between cuts that I can think of (that being the final disposition of Saruman).
Then there is The Kingdom of Heaven. The changes between the theatrical release, out in May of 2005, and the Director’s Cut, released on DVD in December of that year, are significant enough that in many ways they are different movies. The backstory of the hero is significantly changed, as is his relationship to characters shown early in the film; previously unknown children show up to play significant roles in the plot; and the final disposition of at least one major character in the film is entirely changed. Ridley Scott, who directed the film, called the extended version “the one that should have been released.”
So why wasn’t it? Well, because the extended version was three hours and ten minutes long, and in 2005, really only two filmmakers not relegated to arthouse status could get away with three hour films. One was Peter Jackson, whose non-extended The Return of the King clocked in at three hours and twenty minutes, and the other was Jim Cameron, who spent three hours and fifteen minutes sinking the Titanic. Everyone else, even Ridley Scott, needed their films shorter, preferably not longer than two hours, thirty minutes. The theatrical cut of The Kingdom of Heaven? Two hours, twenty-four minutes. Scott, no stranger to “director’s cuts,” (see the multiple extended versions of Blade Runner that are out in the world), waited for the home video release for the longer cut.
Most cineastes, fans of the film and apparently Ridley Scott himself will tell you that the extended cut of this film is the one to see, but today I am going to file a modified minority report. I think the theatrical release is perfectly good — and indeed in some places better than the extended version — and it’s the version that I end up rewatching, not the lauded longer version.
In both versions of this tale, the following is true: A French blacksmith named Balian (Orlando Bloom, trying to make the transition to serious actor after his franchise hits) is grieving the death of his wife when a noble named Godfrey shows up, declares himself Balian’s father, and bids him join his entourage as they journey to the Holy Land, which is, momentarily at least, between crusades. Balian passes, but then, one significant crime later, he’s on his way.
In the Holy Land, Balian quickly finds favor with the Jerusalem’s Christian king Baldwin, who is managing a tenuous peace with Saladin, his Muslim counterpart; he also quickly befriends Sibylla (Eva Green), Baldwin’s sister. Sibylla’s husband Guy dislikes Balian, which is not great because Baldwin is dying and Guy will be king soon, and when he is king, he’s going to pick a fight with Saladin. Devotees of history will know how this went for him, and it goes similarly in the movie. Suddenly it falls to Balian to defend Jerusalem from Saladin’s forces.
Now, going all the way back to my days as a professional film critic (now — lord — 35 years ago), I’ve always warned people never to confuse cinematic historical dramas with what actually happened in history, even when, as is the case here, an actual historic event (the Siege of Jerusalem) is being portrayed. Given the choice of historical accuracy and engaging drama, filmmakers will go for drama every single time.
This is absolutely the case here; in both versions of The Kingdom of Heaven, the very broad strokes of history are (generally) correct, but almost all the details are fictional as hell. The extended cut does not gain any substantial accuracy for being longer; indeed it takes a couple of opportunities to be even more historically incorrect because it’s interesting for the story. Balian did exist! He did defend Jerusalem! Everything else you should consider as being subject to artistic license.
With that noted, the drama portion is solid — the story of Balian, from humble beginnings to defense of Jerusalem, is engaging, and Orlando Bloom is on point personifying him. 2005 was still an era where people were trying to make Bloom happen as a leading man, a thing that didn’t get much traction outside of him being an elf or a pirate. I don’t think that’s Bloom’s fault, and definitely not here. He’s working as hard as he can to sell it, and he’s holding his own against folks like Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis and Edward Norton. If there’s any flaw in the character, it’s one noted by other characters in the film: He’s possibly too good (in a moral sense) for the world he’s in. But that’s the fault of the writers, not Bloom.
Where the film really shines for me, however, is the overall political milieu of the film. Surprise: the Holy Land has been a place of contention for millennia, a fact that (to put it mildly) continues to this day. The Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t shy away from the complexity of having a single place desired and claimed by, and fought over, both the Christians and Muslims. There are lots of places where the film could have easily tipped over into jingoism — this was the early 2000s, when the US’s 9/11 scars were still fresh, and we, a nominally-secular but de facto Christian country, had boots on the ground in Muslim nations — and bluntly it might have been substantially more successful financially if it had been.
Scott and screenwriter William Monaghan didn’t take that route, instead showing (among other things) the Muslim leader Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) as a man of integrity and moral force, keeping the hotheads in his own host in line, and showing respect and even kindness, first to King Baldwin, and then to Balian. The Christians in the film run the gamut, from honorable to despicable, and all of their range is given context in the story. Again, the story should not be seen as accurate history. But as an examination of how the high ideals of religion can run aground in the ambition of base humans, it has some striking moments.
Add to this the fact that Ridley Scott has a knack for visuals that has been near-unparalleled for more than 50 years, and you have a film that is a joy to look at.
To come back to the issue of the theatrical release vs the extended cut, here’s my thought on that: the extended cut is better for understanding the wider story Scott and Monaghan were trying to capture, but the theatrical cut is better paced and presented, and is a more engaging cinematic experience. “More” isn’t always better; often it’s just more. I’ve seen the extended cut and, having seen it and internalized the bits that aren’t in the shorter version, I can keep them in the ledger of my awareness while I’m enjoying the version of the film that actually, you know, moves at a compelling pace.
This is caveated with the acknowledgement that I saw the theatrical version first, liked it perfectly well, and then saw the extended version; it’s possible that if I had seen the extended version first I might prefer it more. But honestly I don’t know if I would have. Bluntly, I want my movies to feel like movies, not like a slightly-compacted miniseries.
That said, both versions are worth seeing, even if only one is going to be on my repeat-viewing list. I appreciate Ridley Scott making a handsome movie about a complicated plot of land, no less so now than in the time the film is set, and not pretending that, either then or now, there is anything easy or simple about the struggles there. I don’t think this film will convert anyone who wants to argue otherwise. But I’m glad Scott made the attempt.
— JS
Say you can’t sleep, baby, I know
Dec. 8th, 2025 02:30 pmslacktivist_feedEllie Bartowski’s ‘DEI’ wedding and Huck and Jim
Dec. 8th, 2025 12:00 pmslacktivist_feedI don’t even know the words to that song ‘Louie Louie’
Dec. 7th, 2025 11:35 pmslacktivist_feedThe December Comfort Watches 2025, Day Seven: Moana
Dec. 7th, 2025 11:34 pmscalziwhatever_feed
I will begin this piece noting that I am not unbiased in my thoughts about Moana, as my friend, the Oscar-nominated writer Pamela Ribon, helped write a significant chunk of this film’s story. I found out about her involvement after the fact, namely, by sitting there in the theater watching the credits when the movie was done, spying her name, and saying “Oh, shit! Pamie!” out loud, thereby confusing the friend I went to see the film with. How much Pamela’s involvement in this film raises my estimation of it is difficult for me to quantify, but I can assure you I liked it very much before I knew she was involved with it. So, there, you have my disclosure.
And in fact, I do like Moana very much. It’s my favorite film out of Disney Animated Studios in the last decade, and even (barely) edges out Coco when you include Pixar in the mix (Coco is wonderful, though, you should absolutely see it if you have not). Moana does many things well, both technically and in the story department, but what I like most about it is that, without making an overt fuss about it, it’s the most feminist and woman-forward animated film that Disney Animation has made.
Disney, mind you, has been mining the “girl power” vein for a while, most overtly since the Disney Renaissance era that began with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. The Disney canon is so replete with these characters that they’re even their own marketing category within Disney itself: The Disney Princesses. The problem with the Disney Princesses, however, is one clear enough that Disney itself parodized it in a scene from Wreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet (written — again! — by Pamela Ribon):
Moana is in this scene, but of all the “princesses” in here (not excepting Vanellope!) she is the one whose journey’s intersection with men (and more broadly, with patriarchy) is of a different quality. Men exist in and are even essential to her path through the story, but at every juncture of the story, she is the captain of her own fate. She is continually self-motivating, self-rescuing, and ultimately, the instrument of the story’s resolution in a way that does not depend on a man (it may depend on an ocean, which is never gendered, but let’s not get into that now).
I don’t think Moana, either the film or character, overtly makes a big deal out of any of this — there’s no point where Moana (voiced by a remarkably assured teen named Auliʻi Cravalho) has a story-stopping “girl power” moment, and the only person who explicitly calls out her princess-ness is a dude who does it as a winking fourth-wall crack, and the fact is never really brought up again. Moana’s not rubbing your face in its feminist bona fides. It’s not to say they aren’t there.
In any event, at no point is Moana’s womanhood presented as a disadvantage. She is early on explicitly tapped to be the next leader of the only village on a Polynesian island of no specific provenance (the voice cast of the film is primarily Polynesian, but from varying places in the Pacific: Hawai’i, Samoa, and New Zealand/Aotearoa most prominently). This ascent to leadership is something that Moana accepts with some reluctance, for while her people have lived contentedly on the island for centuries, their antecedents once roamed the waves in big boats, and Moana sees her destiny out there. This fact is a subject of some exasperation to her father, who wants her to focus on where she is.
The issue gets forced when a blight hits the island, killing both the fish and the coconut palms the villagers rely on. This blight, Moana is told by her grandmother, is the result of the trickster demigod Maui stealing the (literal, not figurative) heart of the goddess Te Fiti, inadvertently starting the blight as well as being the cause of the pause in sailing between islands. The good news is, as a baby Moana was chosen by the ocean! For what? Well, as it happens, to leave the island, find Maui, and force him to return the heart of Te Fiti. Simple enough, yes? Well. No.
It does not pass my attention that in this film the initiating problem, and the various obstacles that Moana encounters, originate with men, and the aid and advice she gets is at the hand of the women characters (there is the volcano demon Te Kā, who is coded as a woman, but hold that thought). Again, the film doesn’t dwell on any of this — and both Maui and Moana’s dad have understandable and defensible reasons for what they do — but it’s there. Men in this film, in ways large and small, exist to be routed around and made to understand that they are supporting, not main, characters in this tale.
No one exemplifies this more than Maui, played by Dwayne Johnson in a frankly delightful bit of typecasting. If ever a movie star exuded “main character energy,” it’s Johnson. That same sort of heedless self-regard oozes through Maui, who despite being in exile for a thousand years, settles back into his own internal spotlight the second someone else gazes upon him. That Moana is having none of his guff is neither here nor there to him; she whacks him with an oar with seconds of meeting him and he reacts with mild puzzlement rather than comprehension. His signature song, “You’re Welcome,” is a literal paean to how awesome he is, and it’s perfect that Johnson’s singing voice is, how to put it, deeply imperfect. Maui wouldn’t care if he was off-key. Being on key is for people who aren’t demigods.
But the fact is, this isn’t Maui’s story, it’s Moana’s, and Maui’s journey will be to learn that being of service — the thing he’s always prided himself on — is not about filling the hole in one’s psyche.
Moana’s journey is also one of service — she wants to save her island and her people. She doesn’t know if she can do it, and there are times when she is sure that she can’t, but she is determined to anyway, and besides there is no one else who can do it. She’s learning on the job, so to speak, and what I like about her his that her doubts and fears and acknowledgements of her own deficiencies are right there in her story… and she keeps on regardless, and will do it all by herself if she has to. What saves her, and by extension saves everybody, is her ability to see, not where she has a chance to be a hero, but where she has a chance to heal what has been broken. It’s her story but it’s never been about her, or, rather, just about her.
This is a fairly subtle piece of storytelling — a story where the “big bad” isn’t defeated, or even redeemed, but is restored, from a harm perpetrated long ago. And the hero’s reward? Not riches or fame, or true love’s kiss, or a man in any shape or form. She just gets to go home, with the knowledge there is a home to go back to. This is a hero’s journey, to be sure. But it’s a different hero’s journey than we usually get, and one that I don’t think we often get to see when when the hero is a man. This is what Moana does, that the other “princess” movies up to that point didn’t really manage to do.
(Mulan comes close. But, Shang.)
I think it’s important that, while the film was directed and largely written by people who were not Polynesian, the filmmakers actively consulted and collaborated with Polynesians and Pacific Islanders about the movie, and listened about a number of things, like Maui’s appearance and why Moana wouldn’t be disrespectful regarding coconuts. Likewise, while Lin-Manuel Miranda is the marquee name for the movie’s songwriting, he collaborated with Opetaia Foaʻi, a Tokelauan-Tuvaluan composer and songwriter. I’m not qualified to say that the filmmakers got Polynesia “right” — please listen to others with better knowledge on that score — but at the very least it is good that there was an acknowledgement they were telling a story in a milieu that people currently exist in, and to which they owed respect.
I have not seen Moana’s animated sequel, which came out in 2024 and shoved lots of cash into Disney’s coffers, and bluntly, other than the obvious “for even more money,” I am confused why Disney thinks it’s a good idea to do a “live action” version of the story a mere decade after the animated movie hit theaters (actually, I do have a theory about this — the “live action” remakes of the animated movies serve the same function as re-releasing the classic Disney animated films did before the age of home video: bonding another generation of children to Disney’s character and stories, the better to keep them in the economic chain that continues on to Disney’s theme parks and cruises. Even so). I don’t imagine I will be going out my way to see the “live action” version anytime soon.
But that doesn’t decrease my appreciation for Moana, the original film. Disney doesn’t need me to tell them they got this one right. But they did. Of all the “Disney Princess” movies, this one, in theme and story, is the true queen.
— JS
The December Comfort Watches 2025, Day Six: Trading Places
Dec. 6th, 2025 11:34 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Trading Places takes place within the holiday season, with two of the big moments happening on Christmas and New Year’s Eve; does this make it a holiday movie? I suppose it might, although unlike Die Hard and a couple of other films, no one has ever made make a huge stink on the Internet about it. The Die Hard question was solved once they started making Hans Gruber advent calendars, although ironically it is Trading Places that is actually all about someone’s fall, albeit in personal circumstances, not from the top of a skyscraper.
The fall in question is that of Louis Winthrope, a smug young man from old money, played by Dan Ackroyd at his most unctuous. Winthorpe is the classic example of someone being born on third and thinking he’d hit a triple. He’s got a job as a commodities trader at the venerable Duke & Duke firm, has a great townhouse complete with butler (both paid for by his company), and he’s affianced to the sleek-haired Penelope, who looks like she models for the LL Bean catalogue (and as Kristin Holby, who played her, was indeed a fashion model, she may well have). Everything’s coming up Winthorpe!
Until he literally bumps into Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy, in his second movie role), a fast-talking but not especially successful street con. Valentine’s trying to avoid the police when he collides with Winthrope, and he picks up the trader’s fallen briefcase to return it to him. Winthorpe panics because he’s a soft white man, and screams for the police. Valentine runs into the stuffy private club Winthorpe just came out of, and finds himself arrested; Winthrope, who demands to press charges against Valentine, is hailed as a hero by his fellow finance bros.
None of this escapes the attention of Mortimer and Randolph Duke, the heads of the firm. Randolph in particular believes that Billy Ray’s general misfortune is the product of his deprived environment; Mortimer, the more openly racist of the two, thinks it’s due to race. The two make a wager on it: They will raise up Valentine and humble Winthorpe, and see whether circumstances make the man, or not.
And thus does Winthorpe fall, and hard. And equally, Valentine rises, to become the toast of Philadelphia’s financial elite. obviously, Winthorpe and Valentine are destined to collide again later in the film, as the facts of what has happened to them both, and why, come out.
Trading Places is a very funny movie, but there are lots of very funny movies that don’t end up being the fourth-highest-grossing film of their year, in a year that also has a Star Wars movie (Return of the Jedi) and a James Bond flick (the egregiously-named Octopussy). Funny or not, neither the story nor script of Trading Places is so revolutionary or consistently hilarious that in themselves they should have been expected to be near the top of the end of the year charts.
What Trading Places had going for it was heat, particularly in the form of Eddie Murphy. It’s hard for the couple of generations of adults who know Eddie Murphy from the Shrek franchise and/or a run of undistinguished and indistinguishable comedies in the late 90s and early 2000s to really appreciate just how much of a generational talent Murphy was seen as in the 80s, especially in the first half of the decade. He was to comedy what Michael Jackson was to music (a comparison that doesn’t sound that great here in the third decade of the 21st century, admittedly, but still apt). Trading Places got him on the upswing of that, coming in hot from the critical and commercial success of the film 48 Hours, and from him being literally the only reason people watched Saturday Night Live in the early 80s (sorry, Joe Piscopo).
Murphy was so hot in this era that when he branched out into a pop music career in 1985, his (deeply underwhelming in retrospect) song “Party all the Time” actually went to #2, stopped only by the pop behemoth that was Lionel Richie. Not everything Murphy touched in this era turned to gold (see: Best Defense, or, actually, please don’t), but it took a lot for it not to, and Trading Places was more than good enough on its own.
Also! The film was directed by John Landis, who was himself in the middle of a run of remarkably popular films, starting with Animal House and continuing on through The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London, and Dan Ackroyd, while less white-hot than his director and co-star, had seen a big hit in the Landis-directed The Blues Brothers and had residual audience affection from his SNL days. Jamie Lee Curtis, as Ophelia, the streetwalker who takes pity on Winthorpe, was mostly known as a “scream queen” but was ready to show her range, and her body, in this film. Neither were to be discounted.
Basically, everyone involved would have had to work really hard to fuck this one up. They did not.
More than that, it turned out that Ackroyd’s ability to project smarmy self-satisfaction first contrasted and then meshed perfectly with Murphy’s antic hustle, with Curtis’ surprising warmth grounding the two of them. Landis’s direction doesn’t show the hallmarks of greatness here, but with this cast it didn’t have to; it mostly had to not get in the way. The story hits all the marks in Winthorpe’s and Valentine’s respective fall and rise, their eventual understanding of what’s happening, and their decision to set things right — through insider trading, as it happens. What a gloriously ambiguous way to secure a comeuppance!
But the comeuppance is what we’re here for, and it’s what resonantes in the film, first in the Reagan era and now in our oligarch one, and what makes it a fulfilling rewatch.
Viewers coming new to this film in 2025 or later are hereby put on notice that there are several parts of this film that have aged extremely poorly, none more than the film’s fourth act, which features Dan Ackroyd in blackface, sporting a frankly terrible Jamaican accent, not to mention non-consensual encounters with great apes. This is a recurring curse of 80s comedies, where casual racism/sexism/etc is part of the background radiation of the time.
The flip side of this is that some folks might grump that this is why “you couldn’t make this film today,” which is nonsense, and not true — none of the casual racism, sexism, etc is needed for the story, and could be chucked aside for new and better jokes and writing. The intentional racism of the film, in the form of the Duke brothers and their terrible bet, on the other hand, is at the heart of the tale, and is, alas, as relevant today as it was 40 years ago, now that we have tech dudes running around trying to make eugenics happen all over again.
In fact, it might be time for another filmmaker to take a new swing at the Trading Places concept, this time having it take place in Silicon Valley, with the bet makers being tech bros who wager a single crypto coin, or whatever. I think there would be an audience for seeing some of this new generation of terrible rich people getting theirs at the hands of the people whose lives they are trying to destroy. These days, as in the 80s, you would have to work real hard for that not to be a hit. Set it during the holiday season, too. Let these turkeys get stuffed.
— JS
The December Comfort Watches 2025, Day Five: Dredd
Dec. 5th, 2025 10:59 pmscalziwhatever_feed
I think it’s important to note, when writing a series of essays about “comfort watches,” that not every movie on that list is going to be a comfortable watch. Some of them might even be hard-“R” movies with lots of violence, portraying a decaying civilization where law is rare and order is even more so, and where everyone in the movie is pretty much just hanging on by their fingernails. These movies are not nice! Nevertheless there is something relentlessly rewatchable about them, something that makes you just settle in on the couch for a couple of hours with a smile on your face, maybe because you’re sure glad you don’t live there. For me, Dredd is one of those films. The world of Mega-City One is a terrible place and I hope never to take up permanent residence, but I’m happy to visit. That is, from behind a pane of bulletproof glass.
For those of you not familiar with the 2000 AD comic feature on which the film is based (and have otherwise and correctly blocked the painfully bad 1995 Sylvester Stallone film made from the same source material from your brain): The world is fucked and irradiated and almost all of it is a wasteland, except Mega-City One, with 800 million people stretching across the Acela Corridor of the United States. Most people there live crappy lives in “megablock” apartment complexes that can house 50,000 people, and along with residents, are filled with crime and drugs. Law enforcement is sparse and in the hands of “Judges,” empowered both to stop and punish crime at the same time. Basically, life sucks, and if you do crime, you’re likely to get away with it, but when you don’t, some extremely well-armed dude is going to shoot you in the head about it. Fun!
The titular character, Dredd, is a judge, who never takes off his helmet and rarely speaks more than a sentence at a time. He’s assessing a trainee judge named Anderson, who also happens to be psychic (in the Judge Dredd mythology there is a whole thing about mutants and such, and it’s not really more than waved at here). Dredd and Anderson enter a megablock after a drug-related crime, which for various reasons annoys the local drug lord named Ma-Ma; she locks down the entire megablock and puts a hit out on the judges. From there, things get real messy, real quick.
As noted earlier, this comic book material was made into a movie before, in 1995. It just did not work, not in the least because it was far more of a Sylvester Stallone vehicle than a Judge Dredd movie — here’s Stallone galumphing around without his helmet so you can see his face, complete with overly-blue contacts, here’s Stallone tromping through a bunch of sets that look like sets, not slums, here’s Stallone bellowing Dredd’s catchphrase “IYAMDELAW” with scenery chewing abandon, and being saddled with Rob Schneider as comedy relief because it was the 90s and apparently that was just what was done back in the day. This movie was made by Hollywood Pictures, which at the time was Disney’s off-off-brand, and while the movie was rated “R,” every inch of it gave off a soft PG-13 vibe. This was a movie that yearned for its hero to be made a figurine in a McDonald’s happy meal.
Dredd, which came out in 2012… is not that. From the opening moments, Dredd makes it clear that this future, shot on location in South Africa, is literally trash; everything is run-down, nothing is new, the color scheme is graded heavily into sicky yellows and greens (except for the blood, which is super, super red). This Mega-City One doesn’t feel like a bunch of sets; it’s ugly and tired and feels all-too possible. Dredd himself, played by Karl Urban, is night and day from the Stallone iteration. When he says “I am the law,” it’s not a bellow. It’s a deeply scary intonation of facts. And he never takes off his damn helmet.
It helps that Dredd isn’t trying to do too much. The movie isn’t trying to jam in seven different storylines and five movies’ worth of worldbuilding into a single film. It keeps to a single story, a single day, and, mostly, a single location. After a brief opening voiceover, you learn about the world diagetically. For longtime fans of the Judge Dredd world, there are little easter eggs here and there but nothing that winks at the viewer. For everyone else, you learn just enough of what you need to get through the story, and everything else is atmosphere. The story is economical, partly because it had to be — the film had a budget of no more than $45 million, half of what the 90s version had to work with more than two decades earlier — but also partly because Alex Garland, who wrote the script (and who largely edited the movie after it was shot) was smart enough to realize every thing he wanted and needed to say about this world could be done with one, admittedly extreme, bad day in the life of its protagonist.
And what is there to say about Dredd himself? Largely that Urban plays him not as a star vehicle but as an archetype. Urban’s Judge Dredd could hang out with Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name quite handily. The two of them wouldn’t say much, but they wouldn’t have to; like understands like. Dredd doesn’t explain himself, has no extended monologues that are a journey into his interior life, and there is no indication that, when he is off the clock, he does anything but stand in a room, silently, waiting for his next shift. In the movie, Dredd isn’t focused on anything other than what’s directly in front of him, and Urban isn’t focused on anything other than getting Dredd to his next scene. Now, you can argue whether Urban’s low and mostly emotionless growl in this film constitutes good acting in a general sense. I don’t think you can argue it isn’t just about perfect for what the character is supposed to be, in the context of the film.
Judge Dredd, the comic book, is known to be a satire of both US and British politics and both nations’ rather shameful but continual flirtation with fascism, but as George S. Kaufman once said, satire is what closes on Saturday night. Even when one acknowledges that satire doesn’t have to be overtly funny, and is often more effective when it is not, there is nothing about Dredd that feels particularly satirical. Garland’s version of Mega-City One doesn’t present as satire or even as a cautionary tale; it just feels like a fact. Shit went bad. This is what’s left.
There is no world in which individuals should be walking around, embodying an entire legal process whole in themselves. “I Am The Law” is the very definition of authoritarianism and in the real world should be actively and passionately fought against. In Dredd’s world, however, this battle has already been fought, and lost. You get the law you get, piecemeal and not enough of it, and if you’re not actively a criminal, you’re happy with what little you get at all.
This is not a world I ever want to live in, and I will be happy to spend the rest of my life fighting against anything like it. But as a spectator, it’s fascinating, and in Dredd, it feels close enough to real to pack a punch. Everything in Dredd is some flavor of bad; everyone in Dredd is some level of desperate. No one is happy and everyone is looking for an escape of some sort. In this context, Judge Dredd is a strange and compelling constant. He’s not happy or sad, or fearful or mad. He is, simply, the law. That’s all he is. That’s all he needs to be.
— JS
If you hear any noise, it ain’t the boys
Dec. 5th, 2025 07:59 pmslacktivist_feedLBCF: Humbert Steele
Dec. 5th, 2025 04:04 pmslacktivist_feedThe 2025 Whatever Holiday Gift Guide, Day Five: Charities
Dec. 5th, 2025 01:46 pmscalziwhatever_feed
For the last four days, the 2025 Whatever Gift Guide has been about helping you find the perfect gifts for friends and loved ones. But today I’d like to remind folks that the season is also about helping those in need. So this final day is for charities. If you’re looking for a place to make a donation — or know of a charitable organization that would gladly accept a donation — this is the place for it.
How to contribute to this thread:
1. Anyone can contribute. If you are associated with or work for a charity, tell us about the charity. If there’s a charity you regularly contribute to or like for philosophical reasons, share with the crowd. This is open to everyone.
2. Focus on non-political charities, please. Which is to say, charities whose primary mission is not political — so, for example, an advocacy group whose primary thrust is education but who also lobbies lawmakers would be fine, but a candidate or political party or political action committee is not. The idea here is charities that exist to help people and/or make the world a better place for all of us.
3. It’s okay to note personal fundraising (Indiegogo and GoFundMe campaigns, etc) for people in need. Also, other informal charities and fundraisers are fine, but please do your part to make sure you’re pointing people to a legitimate fundraiser and not a scam. I would suggest only suggesting campaigns that you can vouch for personally.
3. One post per person. In that post, you can list whatever charities you like, and more than one charity. Note also that the majority of Whatever’s readership is in the US/Canada, so I suggest focusing on charities available in North America.
4. Keep your description of the charity brief (there will be a lot of posts, I’m guessing) and entertaining. Imagine the person is in front of you as you tell them about the charity and is interested but easily distracted.
5. You may include a link to a charity site if you like via URL. Be warned that if you include too many links (typically three or more) your post may get sent to the moderating queue. If this happens, don’t panic: I’ll be going in through the day to release moderated posts. Note that posts will occasionally go into the moderation queue semi-randomly; Don’t panic about that either.
6. Comment posts that are not about people promoting charities they like will be deleted, in order to keep the comment thread useful for people looking to find charities to contribute to.
All right, then: It’s the season of giving. Tell us where to give to make this a better place.
The December Comfort Watches 2025, Day Four: Defending Your Life
Dec. 5th, 2025 02:21 amscalziwhatever_feed
There are many ways to die in this world, roughly as many ways as there are to live, but there is one thing I know for sure: I do not wish to die the way Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) dies in Defending Your Life. One, he dies on his birthday, which, while it makes for a tidy headstone, is a terrible way to spend the one day of the year that is all about you. Two, he’s just bought a car, and he’s not going to get to enjoy it. Three, he dies listening to Barbra Streisand, and, no disrespect to Ms. Streisand, but there’s nothing in her oeuvre that I wish to slip the surly bonds of Earth to. The last song Daniel hears is “Something’s Coming”; the title, at least, turns out to be prophetic.
And then Daniel is dead, and where he goes is neither heaven nor hell, and not even purgatory or limbo. He has arrived in Judgment City, which looks rather a bit like Orange County, and which processes all the dead of the Western United States. Judgment City has some nice perks, like the fact that humans who arrive there can eat all the food they want and never gain weight, and also it’s the best food they’ve ever had. But there are drawbacks, too, like the fact that everyone has to wear bulky white caftans, and also that one has to make a good argument for how they’ve lived their life on Earth. If it goes well, they move on. If it goes poorly, they go back to Earth. If it goes really poorly, the universe throws them out.
You’re on trial for your life, in other words, and because this way station is both bureaucratic and strangely Calvinistic, there are subtle hints about how your trial is going to go before you even step into the courtroom. To begin, how is your hotel? If you’re at the afterlife equivalent of the Four Seasons, you’re probably fine. If you’re at something like a bog-standard Marriott, it could go either way. If you’re at the equivalent of a Motel 6, get ready to go back. Likewise, the number of days of your life that the trial will examine is a good hint how things will go; the fewer the better.
Daniel, who is a sharp study, immediately wants to know where he falls on the “go on or go back” spectrum, which amuses Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), his appointed counselor. Mind you, everything about the humans coming through Judgment City amuses the staff there; they are ascended beings who use forty to fifty percent of their brains, unlike the humans, who use five percent at most. The staff of Judgment City look at humans like humans look at clever pets or precocious toddlers. They want good things for them! But they’re not going to socialize after hours or anything.
What Daniel mostly gets from all of this is that some people are shoo-ins to move on, and some people are, to put it nicely, going to have to work for it, and Daniel is in the latter category. Daniel was not a bad person on Earth; he was nice enough and well-liked by co-workers, even if he didn’t have a lot of what you would actually call friends. But in Judgment City, there’s the belief that when you use as little of your brain as humans do, you are ruled by your fears, and Daniel… well. He’s very human.
There’s more going on in this movie, including a budding romance between Daniel and Julia, a woman who may be too good for him, the first clue of that being that she is played by Meryl Streep. But what makes Defending Your Life work for me is both the teleology and the philosophy of Judgment City, as laid out by Brooks, who in addition to starring in the film, also wrote and directed it. Brooks has posited possibly the most practical afterlife ever, a fact that I think is easy to overlook as the story chugs along.
I don’t personally believe in an afterlife, but if I were going to believe in one, this is very close to the one I would believe in — not a place of perfect peace or eternal damnation, but basically a performance review to see how you did in the place that best suited your personal development. If you go on, great — the next place has a new set of problems and challenges for you to experience, solve and learn from. If you need more time back on Earth, that’s fine too — like the California Bar, not everyone passes the first time, and there’s no shame (at least at first) going back and trying again until you get it right. Is there a God? Who knows? Judgment City is not here to answer that. What it’s here to answer is: Are you ready for what comes next?
Well, that’s nothing new, I hear you say, that’s just Buddhism with extra steps. And, well, maybe it is, and if it is, then it makes sense that fear would be the thing that reattaches you to Earth, the thing you have to eventually let go of in order to move on. We are at this moment living in an era where large numbers of people are motivated by their fears, and others derive their power by making people afraid of other people, including their neighbors. I think if the afterlife is anything like it’s depicted here, there are going to be a fair number of people who currently live well who, in the afterlife, are going to be surprised to be staying at a seedy roadside motel, looking at a month’s worth of days of their life. At least the snacks will be great.
Brooks may or may not just be giving the eternal wheel of suffering a new spin, but whatever he’s doing, he’s being smart and funny about it. Brooks’ Daniel is a slightly depressed everyman who is more clever than he is good, someone who is willing to settle even when, in his heart, it’s not what he wants. It gives Daniel a sort of melancholy that’s both approachable (you can see why his co-workers like him) and also a lot to deal with (which is why he doesn’t have a lot of friends).
He’s relatable, and I think a lot of us can see at least a little of ourselves in him. As director, writer and star, Brooks only rarely goes for the laugh-out-loud moment in this film. But over and over again, there are rueful chuckles. You’ll laugh with this film, and you might wince in self-recognition as well. Ultimately, Daniel will have to work for his happy ending, and it’s never obvious whether or not he will get it. And that, too, is like life.
Defending Your Life makes me laugh, but it’s also made me think about my own choices and my own fears in this life. I can say that there have been a few times where I thought about this film when I was on the verge of having to make choices about where my own life was heading. There is a scene in the film where Daniel is up for a job, and he wants a specific salary. He has his (then) wife pretend to be the job interviewer, and they spar over the salary he will accept. Then he goes to meet the actual guy, and takes the first number thrown out at him, even though it’s far below what he actually wanted. We see his face when he realizes what he’s done. He let his fear get in the way of what he wanted, and he knows it.
I thought about that scene a few years later, when I was working as a film critic at the Fresno Bee newspaper. At one point, I was up for a film critic job at the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, and it came down to me and one other writer. I had informed the Bee that I was up for the job, and they were waiting to find out whether I would take the job or not. If it was offered to me, it would come with a largeish bump in pay, which was something I kind of needed; the Bee was a lovely place to work, but they didn’t pay me a lot and weren’t inclined to give me more.
Spoiler: I did not get the job. When I didn’t, I could have just gone back to work like nothing ever happened, without the raise I wanted and needed. Or, I could raise on a busted flush — after all, the Bee didn’t know (yet) that I didn’t get the job. I went into my Managing Editor’s office to tell him what happened with the St. Paul offer, and the first thing I said to him as I came through the door was “give me a twenty-five percent raise and a weekly column, and I’ll stay.” If he said no, I was screwed, because I had implied I had gotten the other job. But I chose to stuff that fear down, and ask for what I needed and wanted.
Second spoiler: He said yes to my proposal and told me he was glad I was going to stay. I thanked him, went to the men’s room in the hall, slipped into one of the toilet stalls, sat down and had a nice five-minute nervous breakdown before going back to my desk and back to work. I had faced my fear, and I had got what I wanted. And it’s made a difference in how I’ve lived my life since then.
I owe Daniel, and Albert Brooks, and Defending Your Life for that. We’ll see what sort of hotel upgrade that gets me in the afterlife. I’d still rather not be listening to Streisand when I go, however.
— JS
The Inner Ring (C.S. Lewis on the Epstein lists)
Dec. 4th, 2025 10:51 pmslacktivist_feedFor the least they can possibly do
Dec. 4th, 2025 03:13 pmslacktivist_feed