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Apocalypto
Liberal pundits hate it because it's a Mel Gibson flick. Conservative pundits hate it because it's got all the sadomasochism of The Passion of the Christ with none of the Jesus. Still others hate it because it makes the Mayans (currently in vogue with the neo-spiritual set) out to be no less a pack of bloody-minded lunatics than the Aztecs, despite having cooler earplugs and being covered in tribal tattoos, organic paint and Darren Aronofsky's jism.

But it's a bloody marvelous movie... admittedly, with an accent on the bloody.

I walked into this flick expecting to be utterly underwhelmed and come out with some snappy little comments about the religious imagery, but I got nothing. Sure, if you go looking for religious parallels you'll find them. The Mayan war-leader dragging his pack-train of slaves across the river looks everso like Moses trying to part the Red Sea for the Israelites... 'cept the river doesn't part. There's a prophecy about the hero, but it's uttered by a plague-ridden little girl looking (and sounding) more like Alia from Dune telling the Emperor that brother Paul is coming to kill him than a John the Baptist. One of the Mayans jokingly names Jaguar Paw (the protagonist) 'Almost'... String a bunch of these together and you could make an argument for the Catholic missionaries with the arriving conquistadors being the fulfillment of true prophecy of salvation as opposed to the false and cynical religions practiced by the Mayans and natives. You could, but you'd be bringing something to the story that truly isn't there. The Spaniards (absent from all but the briefest moments of the film) bring no salvation, but rather a new and dangerous variable to a life already being turned upside down for the hero. If Jaguar Paw is supposed to be a Christ figure, then he's a Christ who kills and worships pagan gods. Believe it or not, Apocalypto is not a Christian movie.

What it is is an engaging and visually impressive chase scene strung out for the length of a feature film and managing to touch base on filial love, social order, man vs. nature, duty, religion, etc in the process. Yeah, it has its flaws. Mel seems to have reticence about showing the bared breasts of the actresses and will often go out of his way to hide them despite their nakedness - long hair, necklaces, odd beaded breast-baskets (I can think of no other word for them. You'll see what I mean.) People also seem to have some very mixed notions of clothing. Some of the children are naked, some wear little loincloths, some full sackcloth tunics. The clothing that does appear is almost all tattered - as if the culture used to know how to sew but uniformly lost the knowledge about 20 years prior. There's a couple close-ups where you have to wonder how a group that could sew such a fine tight weave couldn't thatch huts worth a damn. And, of course, even in the damp jungle anything you apply fire to will burst into flame like dry tinder. But that's nitpicking.

The acting is marvelous, the dialogue flows naturally despite being in a language that, if anyone, only a few of the extras would have spoken natively, the piercings, tattoos and scarification all first rate, the scenery is lush (though some shots are marvelous, he could have done better with a cinematographer with a better eye - but Sempler's been with Mel since the Mad Max days, so he makes some points back for loyalty).

Ignore the reviews. Go and see it on a big screen.

Current Mood: contemplative

Bye bye, PBJ. Hello, hypoallergenic nutrition bars.
When I was a kid, the only people I knew with allergies were adults who had hay fever. Everybody in my class ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and had a thermos of milk for lunch. Nobody went into anaphylactic shock. Nobody got the shits so bad they had to stay home.

In high school, my best friend was so allergic to bees that he had to carry a little "My First Heroin Addiction" self-injection kit. This was considered to be way cool and bizarre. Peanut butter had gone out of vogue, but Planters dry-roasted peanuts hadn't and were still a popular care package item. Milk was out, but milkshakes were in. And we all ate pasta. Nobody died in the cafeteria.

In college, I bumped into my first Celiac sufferer - but she was rail thin, pale and a vegan to boot. Definitely in the "not healthy" category. Even so, half of us thought she was just faking it to get off the meal plan. Peanut butter was back in, since now we could choose to eat it and even assign doing so some kind of pomo-ironic meaning, milkshakes at Chick'n'Ruth's were way in but even I was beginning to feel the tummy rumblings of a lactose intolerance that would still take more than a decade to identify.

Post-college, most of the people that I knew still lacked any food or environmental allergies (except it was now vogue among the annoying birdish-looking non-smokers, especially girls, to claim to be "allergic" to cigarette smoke. Yeah, whatev.) But then suddenly the late-Boomer parents and early-GenXers were starting to report really bizarre allergies in their kids. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were now lethal weapons. If the nuts didn't get 'em the wheat gluten would. And the lactose-free milk industry started booming, springing up just in time to offer gastric relief to the teeming millions (myself included) who had begun to find that a simple glass of milk could turn them into toxic gas factories.

Between 1997 and 2002 alone, the rate of children suffering from peanut or other nut allergies in the US rose from 0.4% to 0.8% - doubling in only five years to one out of every 125 kids - and up from practically 0% in the 1970s-1980s. It's gotten so bad that some schools are considering adopting official "nut-free" policies. Gluten intolerance now effects 1 out of every 133 Americans. Lactose intolerance is up from 1 in 19 in 1983 to 1 in 9 (11%) just 25 years later. By some estimates, Irritable Bowel Syndrome now affects almost 10% of Americans to one degree or another.

Folks, something ain't right. I don't know if it's the aluminum in the cans, all the preservatives, or the high-fructose corn syrup, but we're killing ourselves. Worse, we're denying our children the joy of noodles with spicy peanut sauce and a mango lhassi.

Current Mood: hungry

They tell all you chil'en the devil's Chris Gillen, well it ain't necessarily so.
In the end, the Death Cab for Cutie tix went to

eyelidlessness. We met in the Hurricane parking lot, me in the Pathfinder, he on bike and wearing a kaffiyeh as promised. In return, I got a bottle of mocha porter homebrew which is chilling at the moment and on which I will report tomorrow evening. What I can tell you now is that contrary to his icon he indeed possesses eyelids and appears not one whit a painted and primitive tribesman, which after recent viewing of Apocalypto was both a disappointment and a relief.

Meanwhile, I get a few more story points. I can now say honestly that a strange man in traditional Palestinian garb has handed me a mysterious item with the instructions to treat it carefully lest it explode. Sadly, there are no Israeli checkpoints nearby. Happily, that means I won't have to share a drink with the IDF.

Current Mood: amused