With three weeks to go until Election 2010, it’s time for the biennial “campaign ads are more negative than ever before” piece. This one hits all the buttons, including scrupulous evenhandedness, requisite historical context and a “to be sure” opening in the penultimate paragraph. See you again in 2012, Most Negative Ads Ever article!

by Sean McTiernan

“Basket Case 2” and “Basket Case 3” are not typical sequels. They don’t really have the same tone as the first movie and both take the most unexpected turn possible. This is especially weird considering they’re horror sequels. One thing I love about horror is the constant borrowing-re-invention and multiple fictions fold in on themselves. This weird nebulous place where somehow “Night Flier” (an upcoming entry in this series) and “Twilight” can share some of the same conceits. Very little of “Night Flier” is about Mormonism though, so maybe that’s an unfortunate comparison.

This is especially true in horror sequels. Because the brief for a horror sequel is usually along the lines of “hey make that again, but with more of the thing that people liked.” Some of the genre’s most interesting movies come from weird attempts to reinvent the wheel (with gayness! Or as a cartoon!).

But all people wanted Frank Henenlotter to do was make another “Basket Case,” considering the minuscule budget and huge success it had. And although Frank’s movies are all tributes to the sort of schlocky stuff that used to be stock and trade in cinemas on 42nd Street, they also have so much of his own unique voice in them. None of his movies are plotted that conventionally; none have the same sort of beats and characters. So when Henenlotter had to, for funding reasons, revisit Duane and Belial Bradley, he more or less told the wheel to suck it.

Made ten years later but picking up the day after the original ended, the premise of “Basket Case 2” is that Duane and Belail Bradley survived their supposedly fatal fall at the end of the first movie and also managed to escape the hospital. They are now tabloid curiosities and also wanted for the murders Belail spent the first movie committing. Luckily they are taken in by a kindly old lady who happens to care for “unique individuals.” Obviously people like this don’t get left alone, so the plots of both sequels revolve around people trying to get at them. In “Basket Case 2” it’s journalists (the most evil creatures known to man) and in the third, it’s cops (because who likes cops right?).

Where the real strength of these movies lie though, is in the aforementioned “unique individuals.”

Granny Ruth’s community is chock full of bizarre characters. They don’t say much but these “freaks” have more than enough aesthetic charm to make up for that. While Belial was pretty impressive, albeit poorly animated, nothing about the first movie indicated that the sequel would feature a large number of equally mutated beings, all of whom are gifted with far superior character design. Really, these guys could each convincingly support an episode of “Are You Afraid Of The Dark” (and some are even a bit Eerie, Indiana, a tall order).

There’s a man who has a giant face in the shape of a moon, his name is Fernando and he plays the trombone. What more encouragement could you possibly need?

The biggest freak across either movies is Duane Bradley. In the first “Basket Case,” he was an outwardly normal guy who was trying to fit into the society that his loyalty to his brother had kept far from. In the sequels, Duane is constantly flipping between being an inconsiderate madman and a needy dickhead. For all the caution he displayed in “Basket Case,” all the problems in both sequels stem from moments of carelessness on his part. You see, while his job used to be to look after his brother, now Belail is fitting in really well in the community. He’s even sparked a bit of a romance with the lady version of himself, called Eve. Yes there is a sex scene and yes, it is exactly as gruesome as you’d imagine vigorous sex between two befanged testicles to be.

So Duane feels like an outcast and grows more and more resentful of them. He also falls for Susan, Granny Ruth’s outwardly normal assistant. Of course this is a Henenlotter movie, so Susan has a bizarre problem that I won’t spoil but will also tell you that whatever you’ve guessed, you’re severely underestimating the situation.

Duane’s discovery that Susan, whose normalcy he fetishised, is indeed a freak makes his mind snap completely. He throws Susan out of a window (nice going, dude) and then races to Belail and knocks him out. The film ends on a classic Henenlotter shock, with Duane forcibly sewing Belail back on to his side in the hopes it will make everything right again. Fittingly he spends the third movie mostly in a straight jacket (and from the second he gets out of it, he just messes things up for everyone again).

Duane being a moron and an asshole is helped in no small part by Kevin Van Hentenryck’s inexplicably crawly and odd approach to acting. Van Hentenryck did many things between the first and second “Basket Case” movies. Getting better at acting definitely did not number among them. His needy, squawky performance as Duane makes him the fulcrum for a lot of the weird energy these two movies have. He seems to think intensity of emotion is tied directly to how wide you are opening your eyes and that when things get really serious you can always move your head like a child asking for sweets to add emphasis to every word. His off-kilter approach to acting comes to the fore in the scenes where he is leading unsuspecting journalists to their death. His forced and sinister mock sincerity is actually more disquieting than any of the disfigured people that are ready to attack.

There’s a good amount of death in the second half of both “Basket Case” sequels, but especially the third which manages to match the brutality of any of Henenlotter’s other offerings. It’s treated really oddly though. People get seriously injured or killed and then it’s sort of brushed off, not in the usual “we must save OURSELVES!” horror-movie way. Rather it’s like everyone just immediately forgets what happened.

For instance, much is made in the third movie of Uncle Ben, the kindly doctor who is going to help Belail’s lady (?) give birth to her kids (?). Then, halfway through the surgery, Belail realizes a doctor is pointing a needle at his special lady and immediately rips the doctor’s face off. Instead of massive outrage, the doctor is carted upstairs and only the vaguest of allusions are made to him for the rest of the movie. Even his mutant adopted son, seems more and less cool with the fact his benefactor got Nicholas Caged. Said son, the gigantic Little Billy, also has a bizarre, presumably improvised and hilarious reaction to the birth of Belail’s babies, which are delivered in precisely the same comedic style as every scene in a Will Ferrell movie that runs too long and ruins said movie.

This dreamlike treatment of the violence, which only matters when it needs to, actually fits quite well. The moral waters of these movies are deliberately murky. The viewer is constantly bombarded with the message that these “unique individuals” (or “freaks” if you’re a journalist or cop) are still people and should be treated with respect. But leaving it at that would be too easy. These movies also show how damaged these individuals are from how society treated them and how this has made them both clannish and quick to resort to physical force. The zeal with which Granny Ruth defends her oddball tribe is disquieting. She’s quick to turn to to violent retribution-witness when she takes Belail to murder a daft old coot (one of the better coots of the last 20 years of schlock cinema actually, and playing the coot is an underrated artform) who has a fake Belail skeleton in his obviously fake sideshow.

(Not) funnily enough, the cruelest moment in all three of the “Basket Case” movies comes when Duane admits to his brother that he hopes he and Susan can be together. In movies where as soon as anyone admits to liking someone, another character will kill them almost immediately. And so the cruel, scornful way Belail laughs will cut to your core deeper than any of the various face-ripping murders he commits.

These two movies have all the Henenlotter trademarks. There’s the odd, tight plotting that goes in unexpected directions. There’s the inexplicable snippets of human interaction that are off-the-wall-enough to be somewhat plausible (in the third movie, the sherrif’s daughter is an oblivious girl next door until she is alone in the jail with Dunae, and then she strips off to her leather underwear, produces a bullwhip and becomes a salacious and obviously experienced dominatrix with a fetish for incarcerated criminals). Oh and both movies go completely insane in the last 15 minutes (Steampunk Cyborg Belail? Check. Freak Insurrection? Check).

“Basket Case” 2 and 3 are unusual feats. Sequels that go in a completely different direction to the original, under the careful guidance of a director with a fierce appreciation for thinking outside the box. Or outside the basket, as the case may be.

Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.

by “David Shapiro”

after work i walk to the whole foods in tribeca where you can just walk in and go upstairs to the seating area and use two hours of free wifi, even if you don’t buy any food, and i post a blog entry and then mike meets me and we eat dinner and then he brings me to an art party in Nolita, on Prince St. and either Elizabeth St. or Mott St., and when we get there i see some fashion models smoking outside and i try to comb my hair with my hand but it won’t stay in the position i move it into so i put a cap on and then we walk in

the art party is at an elementary school that is no longer in use. inside the school is a lot of art hung up on the walls and sitting on pedestals in the hallways. on the school playground, which is just a big concrete rectangle, a big mural is painted on the walls. in one corner of the schoolyard is a big artificial wall that lists all of the event’s corporate sponsors, in another corner is a one-woman indie rock band playing on a stage and behind her is a big list of the event’s corporate sponsors, and then in another corner is a table set up dispensing beer and wine and i can’t see a list of corporate sponsors near the beverage table but i’m sure there’s one somewhere. i would like to thank the event’s corporate sponsors for one beer and one glass of red wine, they were excellent

so right now i am standing in the schoolyard and there are about 200 fashion and art people standing here also, and they look comfortable and attractive and mostly they are either smiling or listening intently to each other talking, and sometimes when the women laugh they throw their heads back. there are women in their twenties dressed elegantly and running around with headsets and walkie talkies and clipboards and blackberries, passing the walkie-talkie and the blackberry between their hands. i am standing behind my friend mike, who brought me, and he works for a magazine and one of the publicists is telling him all about this event

the publicist does not look at my face or address me even though i am right next to her, which i understand because her job is to get writing about this event into magazines and i do not work for a magazine so i’m not holding her refusal to acknowledge my presence against her. what i glean from listening to her is that this art party is a benefit for something that has to do with children and art that i didn’t fully understand, it’s for like raising money to get children more art supplies or more art appreciation instruction or something. that’s why it’s in a school i think. i can’t imagine that all of the rest of the attendees here have studied the fine print of who this event benefits either but maybe i am being cynical and they are very passionate and well-researched about this whole thing

the publicist leads mike up some stairs and into the school and through the school, and i walk right behind him, and on the way we pass a large bust of Abraham Lincoln with the words DEAD PREZ XVI underneath his head

the publicist leads us into a room and tells us that we are standing in front of a Shepherd Fairey painting. i know who Shepherd Fairey is because two nights ago i watched a documentary about street art called Exit Through The Gift Shop, made by the famous street artist Banksy, so now i know that Shepard Fairey is a famous street artist and a friend of Banksy’s, so his painting of a wave cresting in the middle of the ocean that i am looking at (which maybe has some larger meaning that is going over my head) must be worth a lot of money. a few feet away from the Shepherd Fairey painting is a skateboard hanging up on the wall that has some electronic apparatus attached to the bottom of it and that is a valuable piece of art also

the publicist tells mike that the art in the show was donated, and it took the artists a lot of time and effort and they could have sold this art for a lot of money, but they didn’t, presumably because they are true believers in children getting more art. she tells us some other stuff that sounds like a press release but she is saying it off the top of her head i am wondering if she believes what she is saying or if she is a publicist so she needs to act like she believes it, but again maybe i am being cynical

after a few minutes i try to make eye contact with her because it’s getting a little weird that she is pretending i am not standing right next to my friend who is standing three feet away from her, and also i am listening to her conversation and taking notes on what she is saying. so she finally makes eye contact with me and introduces herself to me and acts very warm and friendly and includes me in her conversation. then i tell her i write a blog about music and ask her, “what’s the name of the band that’s performing outside?” she thinks for a second and can’t remember and she seems embarrassed that she can’t remember, like she has come up short as a publicist, or like if you are at a restaurant and the waiter is reeling off the specials and suddenly he forgets whether the creme fraiche is part of the seared tuna dish or the braised duck dish, and she presses down the button on the headset microphone and asks for the name of the performer and tells me and looks apologetic that she didn’t know it right away

then one of the guys who put the event on (and has been living in the school building for weeks because he was setting up the event) comes over to the publicist and the publicist introduces him to mike and mike asks him a question that i can’t hear and he reels off some buzzwords about the purpose of the event, noting that the artists are “using their voices, coming together, stepping up… generating content, generating energy” and then he pauses and looks contemplative for a second and then says “it’s about generating energy”

eventually mike finishes talking to the event organizer and the publicist has to go back downstairs and so we thank her and she leaves and we start walking around the school and looking at the art. we turn a corner and we see a man who is about 5’5″ and asian and has a shiny shaved head and is wearing an all-white suit with white shoes and white sunglasses and he is flanked by two tall women, and one of the women is holding a clipboard. mike says, “you should talk to him” and i say “who is he?” and mike says “terence koh, the artist. he was in the cover story in new york magazine this week” and i say “oh shit, i think i went to one of his gallery shows one time? is that possible?” and mike says “yeah i guess, and you should definitely talk to him” and i say “okay”

also we notice that terence koh is carrying a tote bag which mike later tells me is actually filled with lavendar, which is quite fragrant, and also his suit is a few sizes too big on him. when he speaks he gestures with his hands and arms but you can’t see his hands because the suit arms go a few inches past his fingertips so when he talks and gestures it looks like he is flapping his arms around like flippers in his suit jacket

anyway so i go up to him and stand near him and wait until his conversation reaches a lull and say “hi my name is david and i write a blog about music, could i ask you two questions for my blog please?”

and he giggles and says “yes” and i say “what music do you listen to when you are working?”

and he giggles again and says “maria callas”, who is an opera singer. he pronounces maria as “mariah”, like mariah carey, and i don’t know if that’s correct but usually i’ve heard people pronounce it like people regularly pronounce maria, but i don’t double check with him. and then i say “who would you say ‘runs new york’”? and i put up air quotes while i say “runs new york”

and he looks at me, and says “my god”

and at first i think that he’s taken aback by the question because he says “my god”, but he isn’t, and he sees that i don’t understand what he’s trying to say so he touches his fingers to his chest to point to himself and he says “MY god runs new york”, and then he giggles again and i can smell the lavendar in his bag

then i thank him and me and mike walk away and go downstairs and then i have to leave so i thank mike and say goodbye to another friend that we ran into, who asks me if i am going to Don Hill’s later, which is a club where bands sometimes perform, and i tell him that i’m not and i ask him who is playing tonight and he says “Robert Plant’s son” and i tell him i can’t go because i have to go uptown, but i would love to see Robert Plant’s son play, and then i leave and get on the subway

and where i am going is to the opening of the Showpaper gallery on 42nd Street. Showpaper is a listing of local DIY shows that comes out as a single-sheet newspaper and the covers are frequently designed by cool artists. part of the reason i am going to this event is that a few months ago i did this reading with the rap group Das Racist and Victor, who is one of the rappers in Das Racist, got there after i had already read the thing i had written, so then today Victor texted me, “Heyo its victor from das racist. Realize the txt i sent u the other day just went 2 pending n never sent. Think u cld snd me the thing u read at that reading?”

and i texted back “I would prefer to print it and have you read it on paper, i don’t really want it floating around on the internet” and i thought about this newspaper story i read today about this girl at Duke University who wrote something embarrassing and sent it to a few people and then it was floating around on the internet and then a lot of people saw it and she got in a lot of trouble and The Today Show said that she “disgraced her school” and other people say that she disgraced herself

and he wrote back “Sure im djing at 217 42nd at around 10 if u want 2 meet me there? Never got 2 hear u read it but folks told me it was good and ive been wanting 2 read it”

so i said “Okay can i hang out and maybe write about it? I might ask you some questions but would try to not bother you”

and he said “Yea sure. Thanks man”

so i get off the subway and walk to the Showpaper gallery and the space is a big room and a long hallway extending back from the big room. there are video game consoles set up in the long hallway area, and some of the video games are games that you can’t really win but they present existential crises or makes you run forever and stuff like that. they are art video games

there is a concert promoter who does not like me who is here, so i keep an eye out for him because i don’t want him to see me because he is running the event and could kick me out, and i talk to a friend who is working at the gallery and then an acquaintance who is filming the video game consoles for a technology website. the people here are young and friendly and awkward and scrappy, some have beards, some of the girls are wearing t-shirts and backpacks. i fit in better here than at fashion or art parties and i am more comfortable. i go to the CVS on the corner of 42nd and 3rd Avenue and buy a 24 oz. Coors light and bring it back into the Showpaper event and open it and then i see Victor from Das Racist

he is about 5’8″ or 5’9″ and wearing a bright 80s track suit top and has a thick beard and long hair and is wearing glasses that look lawyerly. he is crouched over a mixer, DJing off a really old iPod in the corner of the room, and i go up to him and tap him on the shoulder and say “hi” and he says “yo” and goes back to DJing and barely acknowledges me, and then he turns back around after a second and looks at my face and and says “oh shit it’s you!” and gives me one of those handshakes that turns into an embrace, you know what i mean i hope

and we talk about DJing for a little while and then i start asking him questions and i say “okay so has anything changed for you guys since your pitchfork review?” i am asking because Das Racist got an 8.7 out of 10 and a coveted Best New Music designation (i guess the most powerful imprimatur in American independent music) for a mixtape which contains a song that is explicitly about how record labels won’t sign them. when i talked to the other member of Das Racist, on the day after his mixtape got the 8.7 review, he expressed frustration about not being signed to a record label. and then i say, “like have you guys had more label offers since the review?”

and victor smiles and says “yeah, we’re talkin to some more labels now. the main difference is that we can get away with asking for more money to play shows, and also more colleges want us to play. yeah, definitely more colleges”

and i smile too because i am glad to hear that they are getting attention from labels and colleges, and then we look around the room and he picks some more songs and i finish my beer and plan to leave because it is getting late. we talk about how when you are DJing it always seems like a great idea to play the song Genius of Love by Tom Tom Club, which is the Tom Tom Club song that Mariah Carey sampled for her song Fantasy, but it’s not a good idea because about a minute and a half into the song someone starts yelling JAAAAAAMES BROOOOOOWN, JAAAAAAMES BROOOOOOWN over the song in a really guttural way and people stop dancing because the yelling is too abrasive

i ask victor, “does being in das racist get you laid? has it helped you get laid more since you got Best New Music?”

and he looks a little surprised and looks at me and then looks at the Showpapers hanging on the wall and thinks about the question for a while. we look around the room while he thinks and listen to the song that he’s playing, which is a Beenie Man song, and kids are singing along and dancing, there is a photographer standing on a stage by the front of the room taking pictures and there are kids playing video games around us, and then Victor starts saying something about how when you are in a fairly popular indie rap group and girls see you on stage, you sort of have an automatic advantage, but then he stops himself and looks down at my Blackberry screen, where i am taking notes, and realizes that maybe he doesn’t really wanna give away trade secrets or sound like an asshole and he indicates that he doesn’t want to answer anymore and then he smiles and i say “okay i understand”

and then he looks sort of uneasy and says “talking about game kills game, you know?”

and then he thinks again and says “but maybe we owe it to women to talk about game in front of them?”

and then he looks at my Blackberry screen where i have written “maybe we owe it 2 wmn 2 talk abt game in front of them tho” and he points to it and says “yo that sounds corny in print!”

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews provides 100% accurate/undeniable coverage of pitchfork reviews, etc.

Photo by C. E. Shore from Flickr.

What would Back to the Future have looked like if it had starred the guy who played the mime in Singles instead of Michael J. Fox? Take a peek.

by Garland Grey

When you’re young, everything is one big joke. You hide behind layers of disaffection and eye-rolling to shield others from the things you care about. You define yourself by your obsessions, set yourself against the rest of the world with the artifacts of a burgeoning internal life; you ardently defend these things from other people. Caring is weakness and apathy is strength. And in growing up, the very least that is expected of you is that you recognize the courage of earnestness.

“Swanlights” is the fourth studio album from Antony & The Johnsons, the band lead by the British-born, American-raised singer Antony Hegarty. Hegarty’s work can be best understood by considering the life and art of the Australian-born performance artist Leigh Bowery. Bowery used his art to push himself past his own personal shame-by adorning his body in ways that were grotesque or bizarre, by opening himself up to ridicule and surviving the scrutiny of others, he sought to transcend humiliation. Along with the drag performer Divine and the Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, Bowery is one of the artists Hegarty most often mentions in interviews.

To call the first three albums by Antony & The Johnsons confessional is almost insulting, given the tawdry Tales of Romance tint the word has accrued. Hegarty sings about gender identity, dreams of transformation, the equation of pain with love and all the ways people have been gutted by life. Every single song comes out wet and heavy with a painful courage.

“Swanlights” is different. It represents the work of an artist who has shed so much pain and remorse that he is no longer held in the thrall of this emotional molting. It creates a fossa, a space, between word and emotion, and examines the things that exist there. The tension between unspoken intangibilities and the failure of language to bound them is the soul of the entire album. Everything Antony Hegarty has done now seems conventional by comparison. It isn’t simply enigmatic; it defies scrutiny.

The album begins with an ending, with the lyric “Every, everything. Everything is new,” and alternating variations of this line, with wordless vocalizing. And it ends with a beginning, with “Christina’s Farm,” which concludes with “everything is new, every sock and shoe, tenderly renewed, everything is new” bringing us back by a commodius vicus of recirculation* to the opening. He has mirrored the theme of the album, continual rebirth, in the structure. It vacillates between obscure lyrics that allude not simply to things, but to other allusions, and small, brief moments of clarity. Trying to consider any one moment of Swanlights is difficult; it seems to only exist while you are listening to it.

With an artist like Antony, the danger of your love turning sour is ever present. You brace yourself before listening to each new album, wondering, “Is this the end?” You can sense within the first listen if this is a bold, fresh shock of something new, a necessary precursor to something greater, or the start of some stagnation. The artists you love like this are ones who carry a creative fire, who kindle something new into the world. Eventually all visions falter or run themselves out, and the artists stand at a crossroads, casting about for another vision. More often than not, if they’ve found commercial success, they realize how little is expected of them, and they can stop moving toward an intangible opus and start creating memorabilia to supplement their earlier work. My greatest fear was that “Swanlights” would break no new ground or would be a simple extension of “The Crying Light,” the last album.

“Swanlights” is full of pieces of songs, elongated, shortened, presented without context. “Violetta” is a little snatch of melody that could have nestled at the front of a perfectly nice “Antony Hegarty” song. “Thank You for Your Love” is all chorus, all exultation, with the barest trace of lyric as garnish. The title track begins with the audio in reverse, flowing into Antony’s voice, subterranean under a wavering vibration. His voice breaks the surface, several versions of himself working in tandem, before sinking below again; it is like divining the workings of a great machinery by the shadows it throws upon a scrim. Throughout the album, Hegarty disassembles the different parts of his songwriting, taking apart everything he’s ever done. In “Fletta,” the Italian word for “slaughter,” he fades into the background behind an ever-radiant Björk; it is the best song they have ever done together.

“The Spirit Was Gone” is the song that most recalls his earlier work. It is a delicate story, in which the narrator mourns the death of a woman, singing “It’s hard to understand” and raising his voice in a wail. It is so unlike the rest of the album, so like the minute tragedies and elegies of “I Am A Bird Now” and his self-titled album. It is the final gasp of his earlier creative period, an acknowledgement that while he is still able to create portraits of trembling and pain, he has to move into the unknown to remain an explorer.

Garland Grey is a writer from Texas. He blogs for Tiger Beatdown and maintains DREAMZONES. Your world frightens and confuses him.

“A federal judge has issued a nationwide injunction stopping enforcement of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, ending the military’s 17-year-old ban on openly gay troops.”

“Osaka-based game software and graphics developer Proge Inc. has created a free software application to help smokers roughly determine how many years they have left on this planet based on their age, the number of cigarettes they smoke each day and how many years they have been slaves to nicotine. Users input the data into the ‘Death Meter’ and a countdown until their likely demise appears on the screen over the image of mocking Grim Reaper with a cigarette between his boney fingers.”
-Or you could just look at the phlegm you cough up each morning and figure it out that way. I mean that’s how I do it. Seriously, there does not need to be an app for everything.

$#*! My Jew Says

Tablet is assembling a list of English words that only Jews say. As someone who has used “gallivanting” in the past, I guess I am on board with this.

Let us add to our modern vocabulary of new concepts (both serious and silly) of “the outrage economy” “the currency of attention” and “metafilm” and “mansplaining” and “metaenabling” and the like yet one more: “story torture”: “Story torture is the media strategy of taking a news item and torturing every possible angle out of it. Like real torture, the key is not letting the story die, instead slowly beating it from every last possible angle.”

If you’re curious about haemolacria-blood in tears-step right this way. Noted: “Women can have small amounts of blood in their tears during menstruation and pregnancy.”