Salon.com > Movies

Salon.com > Movies http://www.salon.com Wed, 16 May 2012 14:18:27 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Sacha Baron Cohen’s dark political farce http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/sacha_baron_cohens_dark_political_farce/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/sacha_baron_cohens_dark_political_farce/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12921015 What exactly is Sacha Baron Cohen up to? This question, stupid as it may appear on the surface, has intrigued me ever since "Da Ali G Show" began airing in the United States. It's a stupid question because Baron Cohen is a comedian; as "edgy" or "controversial" as his topics and material may sometimes be, his job is to make people laugh. But most comedians don't try to get laughs by interviewing Pat Buchanan or Boutros Boutros-Ghali ("Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali," as Ali G introduced him) under false pretenses, or by leading a group of unsuspecting Arizona nightclubbers in a rousing chorus of "Throw the Jew Down the Well."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/16/sacha_baron_cohens_dark_political_farce/feed/ 45 American influx at Cannes http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/an_american_influx_at_cannes_global_glamour_fest/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/an_american_influx_at_cannes_global_glamour_fest/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 15:30:00 +0000 http://http://www.dev12.salon.com/2012/05/15/an_american_influx_at_cannes_global_glamour_fest/ CANNES, France (AP) — Despite the mood in Europe, don't expect any austerity at the Cannes Film Festival, the annual Cote d'Azur extravaganza where glamour is wrapped in world cinema fervor and gauzy Mediterranean sunshine.

Except for the Oscars, it's the flashiest red carpet in the world, a ruby staircase flanked by tuxedoed photographers — and a world away from financial turmoil.

Yet Cannes, the 65th edition of which starts Wednesday, fetes its directors as much as it does its stars. This year, there are plenty of both: esteemed international filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Michael Haneke to big-name talent like Brad Pitt and Nicole Kidman.

Among the 22 films in competition, there's a particularly large American contingent, starting with the opening night film, Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom." The movie about adolescent love on the run brings a few new actors (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton) into Anderson's carefully orchestrated world.

Later, there's David Cronenberg's Don DeLillo adaptation "Cosmopolis," starring Robert Pattinson, and Walter Salles' ("The Motorcycle Diaries") anticipated adaptation of Jack Kerouac's beloved "On the Road." That film, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, stars Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund, but has attracted more attention for its supporting roles, including Pattinson's "Twilight" co-star Kristen Stewart as Dean Moriarty's girlfriend.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/an_american_influx_at_cannes_global_glamour_fest/feed/ 1 Whitewashing, a history http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/whitewashing_a_history/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/whitewashing_a_history/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913742 All I have to say is that whitewashing has been going on since as long as Hollywood has existed -- it's a tradition -- and rather than non-white people complaining about it, they should embrace it. It will make going to the movies so much easier and more fun. But there are just a few things you need to understand.

First, stop watching movies as ethnic people and start watching them as white people. There's nothing that white people like more than seeing other white people in movies and on television. When you go to the movies with your ethnic "judgment" eyes, you miss my point. Watch as a white person, and suddenly your outrage turns to understanding and laughter.

Take a minute to walk to your limousine in my Gucci shoes, and you'll realize that I'm just trying to make people smile. Mickey Rooney with buckteeth and a crazy accent in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"? It's so much funnier than finding a real Chinese actor just talking like himself. Then you'd have to get a screenwriter to actually write genuinely funny lines for that character. You get so much more comedy bang with buckteeth and a funny accent. I mean, it made me laugh. Many people, including myself, were also convinced that Charlton Heston truly was a Mexican/Native American/Egyptian/Ape who talked to God. And I think I convinced a lot of Asians that Genghis Khan really did look like John Wayne back in the '60s. "Short Circuit" was one of my biggest hit movies and I was completely convinced that Fisher Stevens was Indian. Who knew he was a Jewish guy from New York? That accent was spot on!

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/whitewashing_a_history/feed/ 91 New Yorker profile? No, thanks http://www.salon.com/2012/05/13/new_yorker_profile_no_thanks/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/13/new_yorker_profile_no_thanks/#comments Sun, 13 May 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12919099 Last year, The New Yorker ran a long, flattering profile of the director Andrew Stanton, the Pixar veteran who was engaged at the time in reshoots for the troubled "John Carter." The article, by Tad Friend, noted some of the studio’s concerns about the initial cut of the film, which was Stanton’s debut in live action, but for the most part, its tone was highly positive, portraying Stanton as nothing less than Pixar’s resident storyteller: “Among all the top talent here,” an executive is quoted as saying, “Andrew is the one with a genius for story structure.”

Six months later, "John Carter" became one of the costliest flops in Hollywood history, and while the film may have its redeeming qualities, story structure isn’t among them. Read in retrospect, the Stanton profile now seems laden with irony, and it isn’t alone: A striking number of recent New Yorker features on movie directors and actors have been followed by embarrassing setbacks for the artists in question, usually involving the very projects that the articles are extolling.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/13/new_yorker_profile_no_thanks/feed/ 31 Child acting’s new golden age http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/child_actings_new_golden_age/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/child_actings_new_golden_age/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 21:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12919070 "Never work with children or animals" is an old W.C. Fields chestnut that, for a while in the '90s and '00s, everyone outside of children's entertainment seemed to be holding sacred. Child actors were off on their own in a parallel entertainment universe created by Disney and Nickelodeon, while adults held down the fort in dramas and reality shows. There were some notable exceptions, like Haley Joel Osment and Christina Ricci, but by and large, children were almost entirely absent from grown-up entertainment.

Things are very different today. Kid-targeted movies filled with teenage actors like "The Hunger Games" and the "Harry Potter" franchise have found a huge adult audience, while actors like 15-year-old Chloë Moretz (who stars in the new movie "Hick," opening this week) and the Fanning sisters are given prominent roles in serious dramas. On TV, children have become a regular part of many casts, from sitcoms ("The Middle," "Modern Family") to dramas ("Shameless," 'The Walking Dead"). Child actors, once a sign of cheesiness and unprofessional conduct, have become integral to the success of a large number of critically respected and commercially successful entertainment properties. And not only that, many of these child actors have gotten really, really good.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/child_actings_new_golden_age/feed/ 31 Global horror takes a new “Road” http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/global_horror_takes_a_new_road/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/global_horror_takes_a_new_road/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 20:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12919256 Is there any country on earth -- at least any country with its own cinema tradition -- that doesn't produce its own homegrown horror films, spiced up with a little local gruesomeness? Every time I write about horror, I get at least a couple of letters from people who see the cruelty, bloodlust, misogyny and so forth found in many such movies as a symptom of contemporary culture's descent into depravity and brutality. On one hand, I always want to leave room for divergent tastes and opinions, but on the other -- that's just not true. The appetite for gore and terror that finds its modern expression in horror movies is nothing new: Check out the uproarious Brothers Grimm tale "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering," in which an entire family is destroyed in a pointless orgy of violence. You can certainly argue that you find horror movies repellent, or that they reflect deeply unpleasant aspects of human nature -- but you don't get to blame any of that on Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. (Seriously, I've heard that argument.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/global_horror_takes_a_new_road/feed/ 3 Pick of the week: Childhood adventure from a Japanese master http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/pick_of_the_week_childhood_adventure_from_a_japanese_master/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/pick_of_the_week_childhood_adventure_from_a_japanese_master/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12918567 "I Wish" is an old-fashioned kind of movie about a subject that might sound, at first, both worn-out and a little retrograde: the dislocating and disorienting effects of a family breakup. It's also a movie whose principal actors and characters are children, that tries to view the world from a child's point of view -- and that's an enterprise so perilous, so prone to easy gags, cheap tears and nauseating sentimentality, that hardly anyone ever gets it right. But "I Wish" is a wonderful adventure film that's no less thrilling for its modest scale, and a film whose emotional power and intelligence sneak up on you. Thoroughly accessible and rewarding, it might finally mark the mainstream breakthrough (relatively speaking) of Hirokazu Kore-eda, one of the finest living Japanese directors. I should add that "I Wish" is that rarest of fauna in the international art-house market, a genuine family movie that will charm both adults and children, albeit for somewhat different reasons. If your kids have the patience for a picture with subtitles where nothing explodes, don't hesitate to bring them. (There's no sex or violence.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/pick_of_the_week_childhood_adventure_from_a_japanese_master/feed/ 6 Johnny Depp’s delirious “Dark Shadows” http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12917547 Early in Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows," Victoria Winters, the proper-looking aspiring governess played by lovely young Australian actress Bella Heathcote, arrives at the gates of Collinwood, a decaying family mansion in rural Maine. (She's gotten there by riding Amtrak, while we listen to "Nights in White Satin," which is somehow exactly right.) Vicky, whose real name is something else entirely, has always been a strange girl who sees things, and who is dramatically out of step with the pot-smoking, rock 'n' roll youth culture of today (and by today I mean 1972). A strange force has drawn her hither! Could it be the bizarre charisma of the undead monstrosity who (as we already know) lies entombed and enchained, almost beneath her feet? As the door to Collinwood creaks open revealing the idiot caretaker (Jackie Earle Haley, who is priceless), we glimpse a powerful, almost Proustian totem leaning against the front porch: A Schwinn kids' bicycle, with a banana seat. I had already suspected I was going to love "Dark Shadows," even before that moment. But that's when I knew it for sure.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/feed/ 40 Bobcat Goldthwait: Let’s kill all the mean people! http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/bobcat_goldthwait_lets_kill_all_the_mean_people/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/bobcat_goldthwait_lets_kill_all_the_mean_people/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 23:40:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12916971 Bobcat Goldthwait is something like the id underbelly of Michael Moore, with every pretense of journalistic objectivity and reasonableness stripped away. While Moore has a background as a reporter and editor, Goldthwait has always been an entertainer, who began doing stand-up comedy as a teenager in the late 1970s. Both guys present as rumpled, middle-aged heartland Americans with blue-collar roots -- Goldthwait is from Syracuse, N.Y., where his dad was a sheet-metal worker -- who are angry about the debasement of political life and public dialogue in their beloved country.

But I feel pretty confident that even Moore would not make a movie about a laid-off worker who hits the road with a runaway teenage girl and goes on a killing spree aimed at right-wing talk-show hosts, obnoxious reality-TV subjects and people who talk on the phone in movie theaters. "God Bless America" is Goldthwait's fourth film as a writer-director -- I'm going clear back to "Shakes the Clown" in 1991, often described as the "'Citizen Kane' of alcoholic-clown movies" -- and it's definitely his most coherent and most consistently hilarious, perhaps because its canvas is so large and the world it depicts so insane. It plays a little like "Network" mixed with Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" mixed with "Natural Born Killers," and in the very first scene its main character, the depressed, divorced and soon-to-be unemployed Frank (Joel Murray), does something completely unforgivable.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/bobcat_goldthwait_lets_kill_all_the_mean_people/feed/ 22 Breaking down “The Avengers’” box office take http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/breaking_down_the_avengers_box_office_take/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/breaking_down_the_avengers_box_office_take/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 22:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12916346 Ten years ago, "Spider-Man"shocked the industry by grossing more than $100 million in a single weekend. Five years ago, "Spider-Man 3" broke the $150 million weekend barrier. This weekend, "The Avengers" has blown through the $200 million barrier, delivering a record opening weekend of $207.1 million in high style. Yes, the number is beyond huge, besting "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II" by $38 million. But the total weekend number only tells part of the story. Arguably as important as the massive three-day figure is the manner in which it was earned.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/breaking_down_the_avengers_box_office_take/feed/ 15 Kate Hudson’s cancer horror show http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 18:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12914370 Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to mourn a sad loss. A luminous, unique presence who ably graced our lives and then was snuffed out far too early. A moment of silence, please, for Kate Hudson's career.

It seems like only yesterday we were beguiled by the lively, bohemian Penny Lane in "Almost Famous." But it's been a painful decade since, as I know many of you gathered here can bear witness. Those of you who steadfastly supported Hudson over the years, who paid good money for "Bride Wars," for "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," for "Raising Helen," "You Me & Dupree," "Fool's Gold," "My Best Friend's Girl," "Alex and Emma," "Le Divorce," and "Something Borrowed" -- you know what I'm talking about. You're heroes for sticking around this long. That's why it's both tragic and necessary to come to the end of our journey now, to let her go off to a better place. The D-list. It's called "A Little Bit of Heaven."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/kate_hudsons_cancer_horror_show/feed/ 21 “The Avengers” and Hollywood’s gender wars http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_and_hollywoods_gender_wars/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_and_hollywoods_gender_wars/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 23:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913831 I don't think I'm breaking any news if I tell you that "The Avengers," Joss Whedon's ensemble action-adventure that unites an entire posse of Marvel Comics superheroes, will be far and away this weekend's No. 1 film at the box office. (In fact, "Avengers" is already the eighth-highest grossing film of 2012, with more than $260 million in global revenue before its North American release.) Or that a large majority of those ticket buyers will be teenage boys and young men. Like most summer "tent-pole" productions -- those designed to support franchises, and ensure the financial future of major studios -- "The Avengers" is aimed squarely at guys under 35, long the demographic, psychological and economic bulwark of the movie industry. In the weeks ahead, we'll see a whole bunch more male-centric, big-budget releases: "Battleship," "The Dictator," "Men in Black III," "Prometheus," "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Dark Knight Rises," potentially the biggest of all.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_and_hollywoods_gender_wars/feed/ 57 “The Avengers”: Will superhero movies never end? http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_will_superhero_movies_never_end/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_will_superhero_movies_never_end/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913153 If you're new around here, this is how the script goes: I damn "The Avengers" with faint praise, observing that the (supposed) culmination of the long, laborious Marvel Comics movie franchise is a competent but pointless popcorn entertainment that's being wildly overpraised simply for existing without being incoherent and terrible. Some readers sniff from behind their digital copies of the Atlantic: Why did you even bother? Others lament that, once again, a non-fan of comic-book movies was sent to review something whose true significance, as with a sacred scroll written in Tocharian B, is yielded only to a coterie of gnostics and believers. (An enormous coterie, in this case.) Someone will invoke the ghost of Pauline Kael to instruct us that movies are meant to entertain, and someone else will suggest that the editors send me back to covering films about lesbian sheepherders made in Azerbaijan.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/the_avengers_will_superhero_movies_never_end/feed/ 116 “Sound of My Voice”: A tense sci-fi puzzler http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/sound_of_my_voice_a_tense_sci_fi_puzzler/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/sound_of_my_voice_a_tense_sci_fi_puzzler/#comments Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12911337 David Lynch likes to talk about "movies that make you dream," and he's made his share of them. (Whether any sane people wanted to share the dream that was "Inland Empire" is another question.) I've always preferred a more prosaic phrase: Movies that mess with your mind, using another verb in place of "mess." My personal view is that even when cinema apparently depicts the most quotidian reality, it poses a sort of epistemological challenge: How do we tell the difference between image and narrative and reality, when all we ever have to work with are mental constructions of those things anyway? There are the crowds who (supposedly) ducked in terror while watching the Lumière brothers' 1895 film of a train arriving at La Ciotat, and there are people who have Internet arguments about what "really happened" in "Memento" or "Mulholland Drive." Both are caught on the horns of the same dilemma.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/sound_of_my_voice_a_tense_sci_fi_puzzler/feed/ 21 “Whores’ Glory”: A riveting, humane prostitution documentary http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/whores_glory_a_riveting_humane_prostitution_documentary/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/whores_glory_a_riveting_humane_prostitution_documentary/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:42:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12910555 Prostitution isn't just the world's oldest profession. It's also a longtime focus of cultural obsession, across many historical periods and on every continent, from the poetry of Catullus to the woodblock prints of 19th-century Japan. There's such a long history of male artists, writers and filmmakers who depict prostitution in erotic, romantic and sentimental terms that it's only natural to approach Austrian documentarian Michael Glawogger's "Whores' Glory" with suspicion. Indeed, in the film's opening scene, Glawogger's camera directly engages the lurid allure of sex work, showing a group of scantily clad young women in a Bangkok brothel called the Fish Tank as they try to attract clients: Pretending to make out with each other, pressing their breasts and buttocks against the window, using a laser pointer to pick out likely-looking men on the street. But those are just the opening moments of a long journey, a daring, novelistic and unforgettable account of the real lives of female prostitutes in three very different countries and social contexts.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/whores_glory_a_riveting_humane_prostitution_documentary/feed/ 38 “Season of the Witch”: Nicolas Cage’s ludicrous medieval mashup http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/season_of_the_witch/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/season_of_the_witch/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:13:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/01/05/season_of_the_witch So if I tell you that a medieval action-adventure starring Nicolas Cage, directed by the guy who made "Gone in Sixty Seconds" and released in January -- traditional burying ground of cinematic failure -- is kind of trashy and stupid, I'm guessing you're all, like, yawn. I mean, Cage, who seems compulsively unable to turn down a role, playing an overamped tough guy in a bad movie? Surely not! Now, if I add that the movie in question, which is called "Season of the Witch," resembles a Hollywood-by-way-of-Hungary remake of Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" filtered through the B-movie aesthetic of, say, Roger Corman, then maybe I can get your attention for a couple of minutes.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/27/season_of_the_witch/feed/ 41 Jason Segel talks about love http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/jason_segel_talks_about_love/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/jason_segel_talks_about_love/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12910256 To follow Jason Segel's career is to feel, more than with most actors, that you're watching someone grow up and fumble his way through the stages of young adulthood. As the sweet stoner Nick Andopolis in "Freaks and Geeks," he weathered high school heartbreak, humiliation and a brush with disco, while by "Undeclared" he was the guy from home jealously keeping tabs on his girlfriend at college. In "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," which he co-wrote, he recovered from a brutal breakup by (unsuccessfully) fleeing to Hawaii, while in "I Love You, Man" he navigated a grown-up friendship with as many emotional ups and downs as a romance.

And as Marshall Eriksen, his character on "How I Met Your Mother," prepares for the birth of his first child with longtime love Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), Segel's film roles also seem to trend toward men who are ready to settle down -- well, except for the title character in "Jeff, Who Lives at Home," who never went anywhere in the first place. "The Muppets" ends with Segel popping the question, and "The Five-Year Engagement" begins with it, as his character Tom charmingly flubs an elaborate plan to propose to his girlfriend of a year, Violet (Emily Blunt), who of course says yes anyway.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/jason_segel_talks_about_love/feed/ 3 “Safe”: Ultra-violent ’70s action flicks are back! http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/safe_ultra_violent_70s_action_flicks_are_back/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/safe_ultra_violent_70s_action_flicks_are_back/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:44:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12909712 It's easy at first to draw comparisons between today's America and that of the 1970s -- economic struggle, a widening gulf between rich and poor, a persistent sense of national crisis -- but as those who actually lived through that storied decade can tell you, once you get to the details it all falls apart. The '70s was a decade of explosion: Exploding inflation, exploding crime rates, terrorist bombings all across the Western world. Civil society itself seemed to be collapsing back then, whereas today we have an almost opposite set of problems: low crime, low mortgages, low wages, and an intrusive, all-seeing security state that keeps disorder to a minimum.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/safe_ultra_violent_70s_action_flicks_are_back/feed/ 14 Jack Black on his killer role http://www.salon.com/2012/04/25/jack_black_on_his_killer_role/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/25/jack_black_on_his_killer_role/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12908827 Like so many performers whose professional lives are spent expending immense amounts of energy and making people laugh, Jack Black is rather subdued when he's out of the limelight. I met the voice of "Kung Fu Panda" and hard-rocking leader of the band Tenacious D a few days ago in a dark and austere corner of a midtown Manhattan luxury hotel, where we both struggled to read the fine print on a package of DayQuil. (Black was battling a cold.) Meeting journalists one after the other in a neutral and featureless setting, I suggested, might not be the most fun part of a movie actor's job.

"This is what they pay you for, really," Black responded. "But then, on these little independent films, they don't really pay you. So why am I even doing this?"

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/25/jack_black_on_his_killer_role/feed/ 16 “The Day He Arrives”: Slacker cinema, Asian style http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/the_day_he_arrives_slacker_cinema_asian_style/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/the_day_he_arrives_slacker_cinema_asian_style/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12899891 You can find various lists of the greatest "slacker movies" with a little searching, ranging from undisputed classics of the genre -- like Kevin Smith's "Clerks," or, well, "Slacker" -- to learned discussions about whether Cheech & Chong's "Up in Smoke" or "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" actually count. (No and yes, I think.) But if you start asking about international slacker cinema, things get ridiculous really fast. For one thing, isn't the slacker archetype just an Americanized version of the 19th-century European bohemian, and even more specifically the Parisian flâneur? Wikipedia claims that French word has no English equivalent, to which I say nuh-uh. Some years ago in the New York Times, Angeline Goreau explained it this way: "The flâneur, according to Le Robert [a leading French dictionary], is an artist of impressions, circumnavigating the city as whim dictates, giving himself (or herself) over to the 'spectacle of the moment.'" I.e., a slacker.

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