The Great Movies: "Detour"

Detour
Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945.

The important thing to realize about The Great Movies, the Roger Ebert book that I've been serially second-guessing on this blog, is that it doesn't claim to list the 100 greatest movies of all time. It's just a list of 100 movies that Ebert really likes or admires, for one reason or another. It includes a healthy handful of films that, Ebert is quick to admit, are a long way from total cinematic excellence.

Such a movie is Detour, made in six days on what was very obviously the sparest of budgets. Detour features cinematography that could best be described as "affordable," acting that is only a notch away from the soap operas, and editing that calls attention to itself. It has an abrupt, ungainly beginning, and it ends abruptly just when things seem to be getting interesting. And yet, Mr. Ebert finds it memorable and charming.

Well, so do I. The story line is a fairly simple and well-trod ~Guy Gets In Trouble, and Then Gets In Deeper~ sort of formula, but it is an effectively crafted (although not especially plausible) version. Plus, we are yet again in film noir territory, and there's something about cheap production values that is kind of ennobled by noir, or vice versa. It brings out the grit. You've got the jazz, the weak man, the femme fatale, the dark secrets, all told with a hard-boiledness that you can either enjoy on its own terms, or take as campy fun, depending on your preferences.

Plot: A guy hitchhiking out to the West Coast to get back together with his girlfriend gets picked up by a mysterious stranger. Dark things happen, a woman with a wealth of inconvenient knowledge shows up, and pretty soon they face that question that we all must so often deal with: whether to just ditch the evidence, or to try for the big score.

The movie is told in flashback, and can accommodate two readings. The narrator could be telling the truth, or, he could be lying through his teeth. You assume the former while you are watching, since you are seeing the action that goes with his story, but the plot actually makes more sense if he's lying.

Visuals: Cheap! Cheap! But competent.

Dialogue: The great thing about B-movie noir dialogue is that it is so darn euphemistic. Characters who would in a natural setting be swearing like rappers couldn't say so much as a "damn" in 1945, so screenwriters had to get really inventive to come up with invective for them to hurl at each other. It's fun to watch.

Prognosis: You can live without seeing this one, and if you are allergic to black and white, you might as well. If you like noir, though, this is (as I just found out myself) a good entertainment for a rainy day.

The Monday Quiz XXI

Orbital Bodies



1.


2.





3.

4.

5.

Submit your answers in the comments.

Weekend Edition

The Funnies


Fairly conventional funnies this week.... Niece #2 introduced me to "Basic Instructions" last summer, and I've been following the strip online since. It's a twice-weekly sort of affair. Drawn by Scott Meyer in a spare, text-heavy style, and always addressing an issue of practical concern ("How to Confound Your Alien Captor"), the 'Instructions are usually pretty amusing.

The Weekend Diversion

I have spoken of Dice Wars before in this chronicle, but it returns now as the Weekend Diversion. I have not been able to stop playing this game in the half-year since I discovered it. The intoxicating feel of a sprawling "4x" strategy game, but it only takes about 10 minutes. What could be more practical for Today's Busy Lifestyle?

The Quiz End-of-Season Wrap-Up

At the end of previous Quiz seasons, I've prepared a visual representation of the leaders' trophy cases. But frankly, that took forever. Besides, there's the L&TM5K Leaderboard now, so you can always check out who's who anytime you want. But still, this is a good time to salute the leaders:

The Thursday Quiz

After thirty Thursday Quizzes, Rex Parker still holds a strong lead in total number of Stars, with 15. Behind him is Mrs.5000, with 11; Rebel, with 9; and drschnell, with 8.

In the third season (TQXXI-TQXXX), drschnell led the way in Star production, with 6. Mrs.5000 and Cartophilia trailed a bit behind him, with 4 apiece; Boo had 3.

It's still a tie in the overall race for Gold Stars, with Blythe, Phineas, and Cartophilia locked in at 3 apiece. In the third season, though, Cartophilia set the pace; all three of his Golds came in the last ten quizzes, with the remaining seven Gold Stars split between seven different contestents.

The Monday Quiz

After twenty Monday Quizzes, Mrs.5000 has collected an impressive 7 Exclamation Points. Phineas and Chance are behind her with 5 apiece, and Becky and d right on their heels with 4 apiece.

Mrs.5000 and Phineas split the second season honors with 4 Exclamation Points apiece; behind them, there were six contestents with 2 E.P.s to their credit.

And...

With that, we will roll seamlessly into MQXXI on Monday.

Speculation

I am willing to bet that, because I used the Roman numeral for thirty, the recent post titled "The Thursday Quiz XXX" will become the L&TM5K post most often accessed through random Googling. If my prediction is correct, it will replace the post "Indulgent Uncle, Preteen Nieces," which is currently far and away my most Googled item. Yes, friends, there are some real creepy folks among us, here on the Internet.

The Semiotics of Facial Hair: An Album

I started last Saturday looking like this:

There were many stops on the way to the clean-shaven state. At each of them, I felt more or less the same inside, but would, I think, have seemed like a much different kind of person to an independent observer.

Facial hair, and its shaping, conveys powerful messages about one's social position and conceptions. There are styles of facial hair that, combined with a certain range of personalities, create a sort of semiotic dissonance.

And then there are styles that, because they have acquired special signification through historical associations, are really just not a good idea for anyone.

I finished the afternoon looking like this. Was I still the same person I had been two hours before?

Happy Weekend!

We Caught Dengue Fever

There's been a lot of buzz about Dengue Fever floating around with the release of their third album, so the day may yet come when you don't have to give a lengthy description of the concept every time you want to talk about them. But I hope not, because explaining the concept is kind of fun.

So what it is, is, that these rock guys in L.A. found some old records from the garage rock scene in Cambodia, of all places, in the 1960s. They really loved the sound, and wanted to recreate it. Problem was, they didn't speak Cambodian. So, they knocked around in L.A.'s Southeast Asian community until they found a young singer with awesome chops: Chhom Nimol, who is actually a well-known traditional singer among Cambodian-Americans and, people in the community tell me, among Cambodian-Cambodians as well. Then, all they had to do was convince her to commit to, you know, singing rock music for drunk people in clubs for very little profit, for an indefinite future and with little hope of sucess. These guys should have been in sales.

I love Dengue Fever -- Mrs.5000 and I had their first record playing at our wedding reception -- but it's tough to describe their music in words. The official band line is that it is Cambodian garage rock crossed with Ethiopian jazz, but, you know, whatever. A Thai friend once demanded to know where we had got our hands on "Thai country music," and was then surprised when we pointed out that the lyrics aren't in Thai. It's really kind of like cheesy surf music, except awesome. It is played with great precision and inventiveness. And then you've got Nimol's voice, which flares out over the songs with groovy unexpected Southeast Asian tonalities. Well, like I said, it's hard to describe in words.

It's fun to see them live. Everybody in the band always seems like they are having fun, which I like a rock show. Nimol dresses to the nines, whether they are playing some closet of a bar or a larger venue; the show we caught last Friday was at the very cool Wonder Ballroom in Inner Northeast. She adds a repertoire of Asian dance moves to a basic girl-group performance style, the effect is sexy and wholesome and loveable all at the same time. She was having some trouble with her voice and had to give up some of the high notes on Friday, but after an evening of whooping encouragement to the band I had some trouble with my own voice over the weekend, too, so it all evens out.

The opening band was Black Moth Super Rainbow, who essentially played ambient music really, really loud as stupid video clips were projected on a makeshift screen over their heads. Their music had some merit, but a little of it went a long way. Mrs.5000 reported that, "from the bar, they sounded like a train going by."

The Thursday Quiz XXX

The Thursday Quiz!

The Thursday Quiz is an "Is It or Isn't It" game. From the list of twelve items, your job is to determine whether each IS or ISN'T a true example of the week's category.

Remember always the Principle of Common Law:

No research, Googling, Wikiing, or use of reference books. The Thursday
Quiz is a POP quiz. Violators will have to make it on their own.

This Week's Category will take it all the way to, well, you!

Real and Bogus at the (U.S.) Supreme Court

These are all important Supreme Court cases, all right. Except some of them happened more or less as described here, and others have been extruded through the michael5000 plausible nonsense machine. Which ones are correct as described?

1. Marbury v. Madison (1803) The case itself involves relatively trivial issues about the commissioning of Justices of the Peace, but the implications of the case will be huge. In Marbury, the Court asserts its own ability to declare laws unconstitutional. This pretty much defines the role the Supreme Court has filled in more recent times, a role that however has no particular basis in the Constitution.

2. Dred Scott v. Sandford, the "Dred Scott Case" (1857) A Court split largely along regional lines finds that African-Americans who live or have lived in free states are full citizens entitled to equal protection under the law. Because this decision threatens the practice of slavery, it will be a direct cause of Southern succession and the Civil War.

3. The Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States (1890) The Court upholds an Act of Congress that dissolves the Mormon church and authorizes the seizure of its assets and property because of its advocacy of polygamy. Later that year, the church's president has a religious vision that instructs him to denounce the practice. He does, and the LDS church is allowed to reincorporate and retain its property.

4. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) In a case testing state laws that required the separation of blacks and whites in public places, the Court finds that the notion that segregation is in any way unfair is downright silly. For the next 60 years or so, "separate but equal" is the law of the land in the Southern states.

5. Korematsu v. United States (1944) The Court rules that internment camps set up to imprison Americans of Japanese descent during World War II are "an unconscionable violation of citizens' rights" and therefore unconstitutional. Deliberately slow implementation of the Court's order to disband the camps will mean that inmates are released only two weeks before the end of the war.

6. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court now rejects the idea of "separate but equal" with respects to education. Schooling students separately on the basis of their race, the court says, is an inherently discriminatory practice, and therefore unconstitutional.

7. Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) Considering a seldom-enforced Connecticut law against selling contraceptives, the Court finds the law unconstitutional because it violates a right to privacy that, although never directly stated, is kind of implied by the Bill of Rights.

8. Miranda v. Arizona (1966) The Miranda Case establishes the right of law enforcement officials to search any private or public property whenever a "reasonable person" would suspect that a crime had either just occurred or was "imminent."

9. Roe v. Wade (1972) In a case that turns on the question of whether a fetus is or is not a citizen, the Court decides that it is not, and that therefore the states may not enact any laws restricting the availability of abortion.

10. South Dakota v. Dole (1987) In this case, the specifics of which deal with highway funding and legal drinking age, the Court declares that the Federal government can not under any circumstances use its financial resources -- the so-called "power of the purse" -- to force states to enact particular laws.

11. Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000) The Court determines that the Boy Scouts organization was within its rights to dismiss a gay assistant Scoutmaster. The organization's Constitutional right to freedom of association, which implies the right to exclude as well as include members, was held to outweigh the Scoutmaster's protection, by state statute, against discrimination.

12. Bush V. Gore (2000) Faced with an ambiguous vote in Florida upon which the 2000 Presidential election hinges, the Court dictates that the principle of "One Man, One Vote" and the essential nature of democracy require that every effort be made to determine the correct result of the election. As a result, the nation endures a long, grueling recount before an unambiguous winner of the Florida popular vote is finally declared.

Submit your answers in the comments while the Justices interupt you every five seconds.

Life's Stupid Landmarks

The story thus far:


Stick around, I've got more.

The Monday Quiz XX

Sport

1. These men are playing ____________.

2. These people are playing ________________.

3. These American women are ________________.

4. These Irish men are ________________.

5. These men are not playing rugby. They are playing ___________________.

Aim well and true, and submit your answers in the comments.

Note: The correct answer for number three and for number four will be the name of a sport (which is in both cases also the active verb form for participating in that sport), not a smart-alecky adjective.