tammytoes

I spent last evening doing the final cleaning on my old apartment, gathering last remnants of what I’ve come to think of as the “old life” (although, clearly, there is no perfect delineation between this so-called “new life” and the old one, and it’s just an artificial distinction I have created in an effort to try and reconcile so much change and transformation, but anyway…) It’s a strange thing, moving out and on. I spent four years in that apartment, making it as much of a home as possible, and here I was last night trying to make my presence as invisible as possible. Scrubbing the oven affords some clarity about the reality of the situation. It’s done and over and like everything else, it all just has to be cleaned up. But there was a moment that I simply touched the wall of my former living room and felt absolutely shattered to the core. And then it was over and I started wiping down the refrigerator.

It was a good, cozy apartment and I hope that the next tenants find it to be a warm and wonderful place to be. I feel, though, like I should offer them the following proviso:

“This was a complicated home. There was much happiness and creativity here, along with anger and sadness and pain. I hope that you find more simple happiness here than I did, but I wouldn’t feel bad if you experienced much of the pain, too. Because, after all, the mess of our lives makes a home real.”

And then:

“P.S. I would smudge the holy hell out of this place if I were you.”

FYI: I love my new house and I can’t wait to share some of the roomie adventures.

I was skeptical of the latest installment in the X-Men series but, true fan that I am, I made the pilgrimage to the midnight showing on Thursday anyway.

Sigh.

The rumors are true, friends. It was suckville. And it sucked in a way that needs to be shared with the world. So here’s my spoiler-filled deconstruction of the suckiness of X3. Stop now if you’d like to be surprised by the many way it sucks.

Let me first start with a few things that were good. It’s a fine cast of actors and that translates into fine performances, even though everyone clearly knew and understood how shitty their dialogue was.

Some of the additions to the mutant roster were great. The film gave a nice nod to the Storm-Callisto rivalry from the comic books, but the character of Callisto herself was totally wasted. It was nice to see Beast and Juggernaut and Kitty Pryde. In fact, the best sequence in the film belonged to Juggernaut and Kitty.

Frankly, folks, that’s about it. The rest was suck. Extra-particular points of suck:

Where the eff is Nightcrawler??? He was a major character in the last film and the narrative of the film suggested a romance with Storm and him joining the X-Men. Alas, he was nowhere to speak of. In fact, nobody even spoke of him. It’s the kind of screenwriting that believes that we’re too stupid to remember that he was in the last film and we don’t notice him gone in this one. Did he rejoin the circus? Join the seminary? Teleport into the wall? Or is there some rule that there’s a maximum of three blue people allowed on screen in any one film? What’s the deal?

Cyclops deserved a better end. Okay, I know he’s the prissyboy of the team, but he was the LEADER. And nobody seems the least bit upset that he gets offed in the first 15 minutes of the film by his former dead girlfriend. And he doesn’t even get to fight. If I were James Marsden, I would be pissed.

Same deal with Mystique. But Rebecca Romin actually does seem pissed and good for her. She was, after all, the surprise badass of the second film. Rendering her powerless within the first 30 minutes is meant to up the stakes of the battle over the mutant “cure,” but since there’s absolutely no emotional center to this film, she just becomes another casualty of bad screenwriting.

And X3 has just about the worst movie score I’ve heard in years. It’s the kind of movie music that doesn’t underscore the action on screen, it overdetermines your response. It’s like the laugh track on a sitcom. Oh yeah, we’re supposed to be responding to this highly emotional moment on the screen, but since nobody who wrote or directed this film gave a shit about the characters, we don’t either! Let’s watch Brett Ratner blow something else up!

Seriously. This is the kind of hackneyed directing job that can’t even allow its strengths (flashy special effects and loud things) to just be. After Magneto picks up and moves the freakin’ Golden Gate Bridge so that the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants can walk to Alcatraz, the film has to throw in a scene of the President commenting, dramatically, “Oh my God!”

Uh, no shit. But we’re obviously too stupid to process that spectacle for ourselves. Somebody needs to tell us how cool it is. (And it’s not really that cool, after all. It’s just really big. X2 made the most compelling use of Magneto’s powers during his prison escape – just making him move something really big doesn’t impress anymore…)

And Pheonix herself is a big problematic disappointment. For being the most powerful mutant around, she sure isn’t very decisive in the last stand. In fact, she doesn’t do anything to further Magneto’s cause. She just gets mad and shreds everything. What a terrible comment on female power: her strength is based on her emotions, which she just can’t handle. She gets get really cranky or horny, so she just kills everything. Stupid women, they just can’t control themselves.

And then there’s Rogue. What a cryin’ shame that the film has her choose the mutant cure and dares to suggest that there’s something triumphant in that. They had so many options with her. In the comic books, she discovers that she can fool around with Colossus (what an interesting adolescent love triangle that would have set up) but even within the logic of this film there was a better opportunity for her. Why not have her show up at the 11th hour, suck away some of Pheonix’s powers, and do some epic battle with her? Yeah, take that you fuckers who don’t want mutant powers! Oh, but wait, that would mean we don’t get another scene of a shirtless, tortured Wolverine screaming from his heart about the loss of his loved one.

And even Wolverine just seemed so not-tortured in this film. Super sigh. He’s delivering locker room speeches instead of being moody and mean.

And then there was Angel.

I was so excited to see that Angel was going to be in this film. These adaptations of X-Men to film have always seemed to me pretty macho. They’ve privileged the brooding, rugged manly mutants, but the first two films at least played with that convention in an interesting, occasionally risky way. This culminated in the second film, when Bobby comes out to his parents. What an awesome moment for an action film, a thoughtful and considered approach to what the idea of alienation and difference means. But forget about all of that in X3. Even Cyclops gets to be the tortured ubermale on motorcyle in this film.

Angel is an X-Men from a different era, an older generation that didn’t seem to recoil so much at potentially effeminate, graceful and – yes – beautiful male mutants. And he is a creature of beauty in this film – gorgeous, blonde, young, and full of innocence. And when he refuses his father’s mutant cure and the film gives us an opportunity to see his wings with their amazing power and beauty, it’s a moment that should inspire awe. Give that moment some subtlety, a nice understated score, and just let it speak for itself. But that would require a director with some ability whatsoever, so what we get instead is a truncated moment, the worst refrain of blazing trumpets possible in film (“Hey look!” the movie screams at us, “He’s doing something really heroic!!!”) and a terrifically unspectacular shot of a tiny Angel flying through the air. Really, people. Sacrifice a couple of scenes with the really stupid, tattooed porcupine mutant and spend a few dollars giving Angel his due. He is beautiful and he flies! How cool is that?

But here’s the thing about x3 – the filmmakers just don’t think their frat dude audience can handle Angel. Oh my gosh, that kind of beauty and grace and power – that’s so gay! And so they commit a terrible infraction against him by not taking him seriously. Better to just blow some more shit up.

I could go on for hours here, but you get the idea. I hope that Bryan Singer makes the best freakin’ Superman movie EVER. I really hope so. Because we deserve some cinematic justice.

A pity.  We were such a goodAnd loving invention.An aeroplane made from a man and wife.Wings and everything.We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

- Yehuda Amichai

“Frankly, life is not amusing.”
- Flaubert

Friends,

I’m thinking of taking a little trip to the Site of Reversible Destiny. Who’d like to join me?

Love,
Tammy