This movie might have been something had director Jacques Audiard bothered to give it a shape and some conciseness. I love Marion Cotillard; she reminds me a bit of Nadia Sibirskaia, though there’s a smidge of Gollum in there as well. She would have been great in silents; you’re never not sure what she’s thinking. Matthias Schoenaerts, who plays the thuggish street fighter, is good too. I like how his eyes are too close together, like they’re on the verge of breaching his nose and blobbing into one another; it lends his face a suspenseful quality that’s lacking in more conventionally handsome actors. (Schoenaerts seems destined to star in “The Vladimir Putin Story.”) But his character’s narrative is largely extraneous; I kept wondering why I was being asked to care about his relationship with his son and his involvement in an illegal surveillance scheme. (A scene in which he saves his son from drowning is good but unintegrated — it’s like a little movie unto itself.) Acting aside, the best thing about “Rust and Bone” is its treatment of Cotillard’s baser instincts. She’s a sensualist who finds a sort of erotic solace in her interaction with big, uncontrollable forces (whales, fighters, the ocean), and the movie doesn’t try to explain that away or apologize for it. And bless Audiard for avoiding the claptrap that typically accompanies movies dealing with the disabled. If anything, Cotillard becomes less noble upon losing her legs: precariously perched inside a nightclub, she looks at the slender gamines in their tiny miniskirts, and shades of envy glide across her face.

• Listen, I’m the last guy to complain about a statue of RoboCop, but isn’t it kind of amusing that Detroit — the postercity for fuckupitude — is getting such a monument? While the city crumbles to the ground, internet denizens around the world are donating to a Kickstarter campaign devoted to memorializing a science fiction character. That’s gotta constitute some new watermark for popcult irony.
• Next week it’ll be revealed that he was against recycling.
• There’s the E Ticket and then there’s the Victim Ticket. Hilarious story. Shameless one percenters, eh? But I wonder: Is using your association with a disabled person in order to bypass lines really so different from pretending you’re an Indian in order to get tenure at Harvard?
• Are women naturally more crazy than men? My totally biased and highly unscientific opinion: yes!
• Is the age of the hetero movie romance over? If so, why? Seems to me that hetero romance fantasies involving things like vampirism, bondage, and Chechens are thriving. Maybe female tastes have simply changed? Or maybe hetero guys have become too lame?
• Juggalos go gigolo. (H/T Enzo N.)
• The most racist countries evah! Maybe we can use this as an excuse to invade and subjugate India?
• White male privilege: it’s the secret sauce of everything!
• A concatenation of some of my favorite things: movies, books, and cute girls having orgasms.

I believe in fitness.

Pain & Gain, the new true crime caper movie from Michael Bay: Uncouth Reflections Movie of the Year? Movie of the Decade? Movie of All Time? Its subject is excess, and it’s catching, so forgive the hyperbole, though this is easily one of the best Hollywood movies I’ve seen in a while. More importantly for present purposes, it deals with a number of topics that are probably of interest to UR readers: crime, steroids, the plight of low IQ losers, immigration, sexual economics, bogus self-help gurus, the mania for physical fitness, rageaholics, the porn industry, various forms of addiction, and Florida-as-national-freakshow. The movie sees all of these items through its vision of America as a culture choking on its own excess. Pain & Gain reminds me of the kind of movies William Wellman made for Warner Brothers in the early 1930s: it doesn’t feel like it was put together by people following a how-to-write-a-screenplay guide, but, rather, it’s full of digressions and sidetracks that seem to have come directly from observation of and insight into how we live now, which are conveyed through a playful, expressively cinematic style. It ends up being about a lot more than what it’s about from a strictly “What is the major theme?”-English Lit 101 perspective.

The argument that Michael Bay represents some kind of nadir of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking has always struck me as betraying the sensibility of a hysterical, middlebrow manboob. Yes, his movies are loud, overblown, and juiced on consumerism, but they’re hardly alone in that, and at least Bay has some visual style and a quirky sense of humor that leads him to cast people like John Turturro and Steve Buscemi. Those two qualities combine in one of my favorite Michael Bay moments: when we’re introduced to John Malkovich’s character in Transformers: Dark of the Moon with a shot of Malkovich’s giant, 3D floating head. Trust me, sister: there are films and filmmakers out there far, far worse than Michael Bay.

On the other hand, I’m suspicious of the highbrow defenses of his work, which, even when they use ten dollar words, still strike me as coming down to “Michael Bay is great because teh awesome – hardee, har, har…”

To me, a somewhat more realistic take on Bay’s work is that he’s a talented guy, with a limited, narrow sensibility, who has made some pretty good action blockbusters (The Island, The Rock, and Armageddon), at least one outright terrible movie (Pearl Harbor), and a couple of others that are somewhere in between. All of which is preface to say, No, I’m not surprised that Pain & Gain is such a great film: Bay IS talented, and the material is right up his alley. I liked this movie a lot: see it on as big a screen as possible.

Related

• Here’s Richard Brody’s very highbrow take on the movie. I agree with most of what Mr. Brody is saying, though I’d probably put it differently. I do agree that part of Michael Bay’s greatness is that as an image-maker he “takes a sudden and even self-surprising pleasure in seeing what he’s filming.”
• Here’s the tumblr for the Vulgar Auteurist movement: they’re big fans of Bay’s work, although I tend to think they’re being a little condescending. Or maybe just ironically condescending: it can be hard to tell these days. And here’s the original Vulgar Auteurism Guide, from egghead movie site MUBI.
• Back in the day, Michael Blowhard had nice things to say about Bay’s The Island, which was my favorite Bay flick until this new one came along. (Pain & Gain is the “smaller picture” that Bay has been threatening to make for years.)

In case you were in any doubt about what our state religion now is: A too-big-to-fail bank has just ordered me, a random ATM user, to “unite behind diversity.” If I’ve got this right, I’m not being urged by a fellow citizen to stand up to the Powers That Be in order to demand our rights. Instead, I’ve been commanded by a top-down soul-crushing part of the Plutocracy to stand WITH the Powers That Be in order to stifle dissent and impose a trendy and unrealistic ideal. Hard to imagine why I wouldn’t want to get on board with that particular program …

FWIW, I enjoy living a life in the genuinely diverse style. I’m based in Greenwich Village, which is bursting with gays and Jews, and which is located in NYC, where only 45% of inhabitants are white. Unlike our betters, though, I’d never dream of imposing diversity on others. (I don’t see my preference for leading a life in the “diverse” style as anything but a personal taste.) Why? Well, for one thing, I recognize that many people prefer to live among people more or less like themselves. Whereas the champions of diversity-as-an ideal see any indication of irregularity as suspicious, if not damning, I see clumping-together as what most humans normally tend to do. Why fight it?

For another, managing a “diverse”-type life is a lot of trouble. Every day involves numerous micro-negotiations that simply don’t crop up when you’re among people with whom you share background, language, assumptions and (who knows?) ethnicity. There can be payoffs — my “diverse” life is a pretty darned entertaining and interesting one. But the cost of it, sheesh … Leading the “diverse” life can be extremely wearying; it can really grate on the nerves even if you’re reasonably sophisticated and prosperous. I can only imagine how dispiriting the diverse life can get to be if you don’t enjoy a bit of spare money, space and time. (If, in other words, you don’t have the resources it takes to enjoy the benefits of diversity.) Why impose additional annoyances on people whose lives are already challenging enough?

For a third: I’m just not into forcing utopian ideals on others. Let people live their lives as they choose to the extent that’s possible (and they’re able), you know? And if, in the normal course of events, one neighborhood (or workplace, or province, or country) winds up being more Asian, and another more black, and another more Mexican, and another more white — and another more gay, and another more straight, and another more female, and another more male — why stress about it? Let people sort their lives out as they see fit. Besides, our rulers really do (IMHO) have more urgent things to give their attention to than bulldozing their way into the arrangements we’ve made for ourselves and disrupting them in the name of a silly ideal that people will be laughing about in a decade or two. Ahhhh — banking — choo!

My final thought about diversity this morning is a defense of diversity itself. If every neighborhood/workplace/country needs to be broken into and then re-made into some bean-counting bureaucrat’s idea of “diverse,” isn’t the overall result going to be about as un-diverse as can be imagined? Isn’t the final result, in fact, inevitably going to be something we might reasonably call “uniformity”?

Besides, if you throw all the ingredients in your fridge into the food processor, what you wind up with is inedibility itself. I’d much prefer that life resemble a tasty meal — a banquet of different (maybe even “diverse”) flavors, textures and experiences — than a pot of uniform green/brown sludge.

Short version: It’s possible to enjoy diversity on a personal level and dislike the way our elites are making use of the concept. It’s also possible — heck, it’s even easy — to use the cause of genuine diversity to undermine our elites’ diversity campaign. (“Diversity”-imposers are like “tolerance”-fanatics — giant targets just begging to be shot full of holes.)

I’m reminded of a pair of cartoons by the great Léon Krier:

I found these cartoons in this wonderful book.

Related

• Read more about Krier’s book.
• Learn more about Léon Krier.
• Peter Wood’s “Diversity: The Invention of a Concept” is a smart and nifty introduction to the way diversity has come to be the predominant political — perhaps even religious — ideal of our age.

Curious to hear what others are making of our masters’ determination to use the ideal of “diversity” to crush real diversity.

The Question Lady and I were in giggly, semi-camp heaven watching this solemn exercise in literary-workshop-style hypersensitivity.

Agnes Bruckner stars as a midwestern girl from a sad, broken family who has a knack for poetry; Margaret Colin is the girl’s overwhelmed, trying-not-to-be-bitter, snappish mom; David Strathairn is the handsome high-school English teacher whose interest in his student’s talents may be a little too personal.

The actors are all good, and despite my irreverence I’m also happy to acknowledge that the film is classily done. (It was directed by Karen Moncrieff.) It’s what it is that made me hoot. Divorce; quiet miseries; vague yearnings; misplaced love; “family” as an “issue”; clever-but-not-Hollywood dialogue; loads of indirection; the suburbs portrayed as an inane version of paradise; metaphors-and-coincidences standing in for story structure; the cluelessness of adults whose lives haven’t lived up to their hopes … Every cliche of this inevitably slim, wispy, overbaked, narcissistically-compassionate, never-delicate-enough, estrogen-befogged, microtrauma-lovin’ genre is dotingly dwelt-on and artfully-presented, as though the package had both real literary significance and immense sociological resonance.

Tasteful-indiepic bliss.

Related

• Don’t miss Blowhard, Esq.’s definitive review of tasteful-indiepic classic “Margot at the Wedding.”

• The Soviet erotic alphabet.
• Great to see that the smart and cantankerous Will S. is blogging again.
• More on Bitcoin. The alternative-currency meme has really become something.
• Joys of multiculturalism, cont. And more.
• The things some people do to get themselves off …
• Smart pooch.
• Now even the New York Times is comparing Obama to Nixon.
• Has Yahoo ruined Flickr?
• How do women’s hormonal cycles affect their political views?
• Netflix Instant Recommendation Du Jour: “Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus.” Proof that scrappily likable exploitation filmmaking isn’t entirely a thing of the past, this shot-in-two-weeks 2010 cheapo action spectacle revels in so-bad-it’s-good effects, acting and storytelling, and it does so without falling into the trap of being excessively knowing or cool. It’s got a lot of the frantic, damn-the-torpedoes, we’re-going-to-tell-our-story-despite-everything sweetness of early Roger Corman movies. FWIW, my own imagination and giddiness kicked in about twenty times more watching this shitty movie than it does when I watch the usual slick, huge-budgeted, big-studio action fantasy. Hmm, maybe that means that “Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus” is a non-shitty movie …

We Americans think we are pretty cool with our wild weekend events like the upcoming Urban Beach Weekend in Miami Beach.  The city seems to have battened down the hatches for that.  It is bound to be a serious fest.

But the Germans are no slouches in the Department of Weekend Celebrations.  The annual Goth Festival just wrapped up in Liepzig.  As Der Spiegel writes, no one does Goth quite like the Germans.

Race riots in Sweden?  It would appear that the vaunted socialism of every leftist’s favorite socialist state is breaking down along racial lines.  How many remember the stern rebukes of Swedish commentators on America’s racial issues and later on those of the British?  I can still hear the ringing tones of Gunnar Myrdahl as he lectures his inferiors and scornfully contrasts America and its class system with that of peaceful Sweden.  Too bad the SOB didn’t live to see what his dimwitted buddies have done to Sweden.  I’m not hearing too much tut-tutting from them these days.

• So Yahoo! bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Like many Tumblr users, my main hope is that Yahoo! won’t ruin the service, i.e. let us keep all of our filthy and disgusting porn. But really, Yahoo! has no reason for being at this point, right? If my parents and those like them ever learn how to change their home page, Yahoo!’s traffic will instantly vanish.
• A comprehensive Dark Enlightenment reading list.
• The 50 Greatest Matte Paintings of All Time. (H/T Matt Zoller Seitz)
• La Paglia on how gender theorists are ruining the study of BDSM.
• I fully expect that, sometime in the not-too-distant future (like, next week), I’ll wake up and everything around me will be Star Wars-modded.
• It’s true.
• 5 reasons being a lawyer sucks and, yes, this guy nails it. I plan on writing more about this, specifically the failure of law school to actually prepare you to be a lawyer, in a later post. (H/T Paleo Retiree)

After reading Paleo Retiree’s ultra-groovy interview with De De Mollner about her days as a go-go dancer in 60s L.A., I couldn’t help but wonder about some of the Sunset Strip locations she mentioned. A few of the places I was familiar with, but many names were new to me. Do these places still exist? What’s there now? Camera in hand, I went out one Sunday to see for myself.

Here’s a key to the map. The only place I didn’t get a chance to visit is Grape Place up in the Hollywood Hills.

Our first stop, Dan Tana’s, isn’t on Sunset, it’s on Santa Monica Blvd. and Doheney, right near the border of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. It’s one of the few places De De mentioned that’s still around. It’s a couple doors down from The Troubadour.

Alright, now over to Sunset Blvd. proper. Here’s The Whiskey, where bands such as The Doors, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield made their names. X, Guns ‘n Roses, and Mötley Crüe also started their careers here.

Although De De didn’t mention this next place (because it didn’t exist yet), it’s only a couple blocks from The Whiskey and I felt it should be included. This was the old location of Tower Records, one of the coolest record stores ever. So cool that John Lennon himself cut a commercial for it. The Whiskey, The Roxy, and The Viper Room are all within walking distance, not to mention it’s at the base of the Hollywood Hills, so musicians and celebrities would shop here all the time.

Just down the street are the former locations of the Trocadero and The Trip. The Trocadero was approximately where the H&M is while The Trip was located where the white building to the right now stands, which is currently an indoor cycling club called SoulCycle. From leggy cigarette girls and honeys dancing the night away to cheap disposable clothing and yuppies futilely peddling like hamsters to stave off their inevitable deaths. Yet they want me to believe civilization is progressing.

While walking down the street I came across these kids doing a photoshoot at an abandoned building.

Mel’s Drive In, a branch of the restaurant made famous by American Graffiti.

The old Ciro’s has been The Comedy Store since the early 70s. This is where Leno and Letterman got their starts.

In my comment to Fabrizio’s post about movie arthouses, I mentioned the Laemmle Sunset 5, which was located below and is now the Sundance 5. This site, located at Sunset and Crescent Heights, was the former location of the old Schwab’s drug store where Lana Turner was supposedly discovered. The Schwab’s was razed in 1988 to build this.

Across the street from that rather undistinguished shopping center/theater, is this even shittier strip mall. I thought this was the location of Pandora’s Box, but later research revealed the traffic island I’m standing on while taking this shot is where Pandora’s was located. Anyway, this shopping center does have a certain claim to fame — it’s where Michael Douglas shoots up the phone booth in Falling Down. (As the camera pans, you can see the structure above in the background.)

The Chateau Marmont is about two blocks away. This is of course where John Belushi died and where Sofia Coppola’s recent Somewhere is set.

Another quick detour. Clockwise from the top left is the Crossroads of the World, Sunset Sound, Amoeba Music, and the Cinerama Dome. The Crossroads of the World, where Danny DeVito’s character in L.A. Confidential had his offices, is this weird mix of German storybook and Streamline Moderne. Sunset Sound is where the Stones recorded their overdubs for Exile on Main Street, where the Beach Boys recorded Pet Sounds, and pretty much every other pop and rock album over the last 40 years. Amoeba Music makes the old Tower Records look like quaint village shoppee. The only movie I’ve ever seen at the Cinerama was Star Trek IV when I was 11.

As I’m driving down Sunset and I go past the studio, I put on Exile because why not? Later I found out that the Stones were in town that very day and performed a show at the tiny-for-them El Rey Theater that they announced only on Twitter.

OK, back to De De’s beat. This is the present-day location of what used to be Martoni’s Italian restaurant on Cahuenga. At least, I think it is. I have two different addresses for this place, but I think the location De De frequented was here. The other location was about half a block south. Regardless, neither of the buildings that housed Martoni’s survived.

The Brown Derby on Vine is long gone too. Modern condos instead.

The world-famous intersection of Hollywood & Vine. Y’all know the Capitol Records building, where Sinatra recorded many of his masterpieces.

By this point I was starving. I headed down Hollywood Blvd. to a another landmark, Musso & Frank Grill. Chaplin, Griffith, Arbuckle, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Chandler all ate here regularly. How was the food, you ask? Wow, just think about all that history!

Alright, we now leave Sunset and head south to Melrose Ave. Lucy’s El Adobe is still around.

Lucy’s is directly across the street from Paramount Pictures. There was some art/photography exhibit going on that night, which is why there are so many cars.

Due to technical difficulties beyond my control, I didn’t get a shot of the former KHJ studios that are now Paramount offices. But hey, not to worry, I just went on Google Street View and took a screencap. (Which I guess I could’ve just done from the beginning and saved myself all this trouble LOL)

Nickodell’s Restaurant was right next door to KHJ, now it’s nothin’.

It was the late afternoon and I was pretty tired from walking and driving all over town. Hey, it’s Sunday, so traffic shouldn’t…be…too…

…goddammit.

More

• A history of the Sunset Strip in 21 photos.
• Comedy writer Ken Levine shares his memories of the Sunset Strip.
• Long live Tower Records!
• Via Salon, “Mötley Crüe, Slash, Lita Ford, Dokken and more share the wildest stories from the heyday of L.A.’s Sunset Strip.”
• Finally, check out the video below. That Bank of America building at 2:18 look familiar?