MISCmedia for 11/15/00
Losing Vision

THE ART-HOUSE MOVIE HIT of the season is Dancer in the Dark, a partly locally-shot musical by Danish director Lars von Trier in which the leading lady (played by singing sensation Bjork) steadily retreats into a fantasy world as she steadily, irreversibly, loses her eyesight.

A similar decline in vision and withdrawal into fantasy is befalling the bigtime movie biz.

We've already mentioned the vast oversupply of umpteenplex movie theaters in this country. Even when there are hit titles out, they can't possibly fill all those seats.

And when there's a dearth of hits, like there's been this month, the industry gets even more pathetically desperate.

It retreats further into already worn-out formulas, trying to recapture audiences increasingly tired of the same-old perky "romances," violent "heroes," and gross-out "comedies."

As an extra added detraction, we get election-year trash talk about the studios pushing violence and profanity onto Our Innocent Kids (as if kids hadn't always been fascinated with that sort of thing), and you get the potential makings of an even more timid, fear-driven Hollywood establishment than we've already got, churning out even blander and dumber fare. At least until the threatened actors' and writers' strike next spring.

One note of sanity in all this comes from a Boston Globe reviewer who asks, "Too much sex in movies? Give me more."

He notes that what passes for sexuality in Hollywood films these days usually has nothing to do with beauty, passion, or love, but rather with smirking and ultimately embarrassing gags aimed at a horny/frustrated adolescent-male zeitgeist. Any positive screen sex would be life-affirming, about bringing people together instead of keeping them apart.

As filmmakers around the world (and a few notable Americans) have shown, this kind of screen sexuality can be used for drama, for farce, for plots heavy and light and everything in between.

But today's Hollywood (and the theater chains, and the film-publicity and advertising businesses) can't deal with that (cf. the censored U.S. release of von Trier's Idiots).

IN OTHER NEWS: Acclaimed Florida-corrupation novelist Carl Hiaasen on recount-mania: "That the future occupant of the White House might be decided by a single county in South Florida is spine-chilling. Given our ripe history of scandal and skullduggery, the rest of the nation is wise to be worried."

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS: Florida crime writer Edna Buchanan on Miami's history: "A steady stream of sun seekers and pirates, con men and hucksters have been drawn to the sea-level city at the bottom of the map. They still are. Geography makes it a magnet for people on the run."

IN OTHER OTHER OTHER NEWS: "Manuel Recount Tired of All the Election Jokes" (found by Fark)

TOMORROW: What, besides recent big-budget movies, might not even possibly be entertaining.

ELSEWHERE:

• Comic-book ads circa 1983....
• One of the main disciplines of modern life, how to pack a carry-on suitcase (found by Larkfarm)....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Why people write, and read, book reviews.
• We meet some of our new fictional alter egos.
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• The war on drugs as a drug.
• The election aftermath.
• Should we pity the San Franciscans yet?
• Our first annual pre-election rant.
• The Clash, Motown, and indie-pop ideology.
• A sort-of defense of negative campaign ads.
• Parts one and two of a Halloween look at Bremerton's graveyards and pit-bull factories.
• Pondering why old fake architecture is more fun than new fake architecture.
• The war on drugs as a drug.
• What's to like about Northwest Bookfest.
• Parts one and two of a guest columnist's apologetic for moving to the 'burbs.
• Ralph Nader's serenaders.
• Some of the ingredients in a successful magazine.
• Looking at a few former rock clubs.
• Fun at the High Tech Career Expo.
• Whither CNN?
• Imagining the effects of a movie-industry strike.

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