MAN // MACHINE ON FIRE (FINAL FOUR)
plus de niro, sharon stone, and the *life is disappointing* general theory of scorsese
My goal with this newsletter is to write about new films as they reach general release, along with seasonally appropriate commentary on other cinematic events and interests. This week I’ve got an essay for Perisphere about Martin Scorsese’s Casino (sort of - read on) and the unveiling of the MAN // MACHINE FINAL FOUR. This newsletter comes out every Friday, which this week, for better or for worse, means Friday.
If you’re here just to vote for the M//M FINAL FOUR, go down about halfway for more information. Or if you think you know what you need to do, press this button and vote:
I’ve been working hard this week on an essay for Perisphere about Martin Scorsese’s Casino, and when I scheduled out my posts this month I had planned to link it here. Unfortunately I was looking at a November calendar and realized too late that it won’t be published until Sunday. Pretty soon these words will be irrelevant and there will be a *link right here*, but if you’re receiving this in email form you’ll have to come over to substack.com in a couple days to click on it.
I’ve had a Stephen Dedalus-esque general theory of Scorsese in my head for awhile now, but this is the first time I’ve gotten it into legible words. It ties in with the characterization-as-self-exposure stuff I’ve been writing about lately, and it obviously relates to the feelings dredged up by Mr. Scorsese. If you’re sick of this (I know at the very least my brother is) then skip on to MAN // MACHINE updates and come back next week for a review of The Secret Agent and the M//M CHAMPIONSHIP. If you’re a Scorsese fan and interested in grand theories of artistic careers, cruise over to Perisphere and read it.
And - if you’re in the Twin Cities and want to see Casino in glorious 35mm, head over to the Trylon next week. It’s screening Sunday 21 December through Tuesday 23 December. They’re also showing my favorite Sharon Stone movie, Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead, starting this Sunday. Get your snow tires out and your thermal layers on and come check it out.
The votes have been counted, and the FINAL FOUR have arrived. The races were tight, but clear winners pulled ahead in all four divisions. A lot of brackets are now officially cooked, but there are a solid handful with at least half of the Final Four in play. Anything is possible.
VEHICLES // CONTRAPTIONS: Speed v. Office Space
Jan de Bont, Speed (1994). Speed has been close to my heart ever since my friends and I tried to recreate it in a Honda Odyssey in high school. We changed the rules to 5 mph and skipped the part where you have to slide onto the tarmac on a metal door, but we did have to jump into reverse a few times to avoid red lights. A couple years later I took the Speed bus line from downtown LA to Venice and back on a memorable Thanksgiving excursion - it took about four times as long as the movie’s runtime but the background cast is remarkably similar to the actual ridership (I was the guy who, when things get tense, starts crying about how he doesn’t have a wife; my visiting friend was definitely Alan Ruck). Not long after that I became one of the only people in history other than Dennis Hopper, Keanu Reeves, and Sandra Bullock to take the LA subway. There are a lot of points of emotional entry for Speed, and there was no chance it wasn’t going to make it to the Final Four. It might not teach us very much about our interactions with MACHINES, but it’s a highlight of a bygone era when beautiful stars, a ludicrous premise, and coherent cinematography were all you needed to land a hit.
Mike Judge, Office Space (1999). It’s hard for me to assess the enduring value of a comedy was about as funny as it got when I was sixteen. I wonder how well Office Space will translate to a new generation of white-collar workers who spend way more time on Microsoft Teams than they do in cubicles. From Y2K worries to memo jokes to having a crush on Jennifer Aniston: of the many 1999 movies in this bracket, this is the one that feels most like a relic of a bygone era. But plenty survives: layoff consultants, bullshit jobs, affection for staplers, loathing for scanners, dreams of grift, the simultaneous desires to do nothing and to burn the factories of finance capital to the ground. I don’t know if it’s a masterpiece, but some things resonate forever.
ROBOTS // COMPUTERS: Blade Runner v. The Matrix
Ridley Scott, Blade Runner (1982). Whenever someone asks me what cinematic universe I would most like to live in, my go-to is Blade Runner, which is probably a really lousy answer because the Blade Runner universe is objectively awful. But who cares, it looks so good. Coca-Cola has never been more effectively advertised. Street noodles have never looked tastier. And the Bradbury Building has never been put to better use - as bad as things might get, at least architectural preservation societies have survived into the future. As for the MEN and the MACHINES? I’m eternally charmed by Harrison Ford’s insistence, against all evidence, that Rick is a human. I think Rutger Hauer’s concluding speech is nonsense, and now that we live in a world featuring AI-generated creative writing I find this 100% believable. I think Sean Young is real pretty. I don’t have or want to have any more thoughts than this. I have no idea how they made a movie look this good in 1982 and I don’t really want to find out. There’s only so much movie magic left out there and I’m going to hang onto it.
COMPUTERS WINNER: The Wachowskis, The Matrix (1999). I maintain that The Matrix has very little worthwhile to say about technology or the nature of existence. But it a.) has very cool fight scenes, b.) provides a useful series of metaphors for types of dumbasses on the internet, c.) re-taught the world how to love Keanu Reeves, and d.) features the only correct cinematic deployment of Rage Against the MACHINE. If the Wachowskis got anything right philosophically, it’s the sense that the then-novel internet had the capacity to make anyone feel like they could be anyone - and that this liberation would always be undercut by forces that manipulate that capacity to control you (I think Foucault wrote a book about this). But I don’t really watch this movie to think. The later sequels undercut, and then deepen, the romanticism of the original, but the sweaty sweetness of saving the world by irl kissing your internet girlfriend is about as lovely as a MAN v. MACHINE movie can get.
BRACKET LEADERS:
Sam S. // Mike H. (99 pts)
Katie F. (98 pts)
HOUSE (97 pts)
Watch all these movies and make your vote. All of them are entertaining, none of them are particularly depressing, some of them might be almost profound. The Championship will be announced next week.
Thanks for reading *life is disappointing.* If you found this newsletter slightly less disappointing than the rest of your life, consider liking, commenting, sending me money (thanks!) or subscribing. Subscribing will get you exactly what you get here but sent to your email inbox. We’ll be back next week with The Secret Agent and the MAN // MACHINE CHAMPIONSHIP.