CULTURAL BIAS IN INTELLIGENCE TESTING. You have to put up with some obvious leftist bias (e.g. attributing to Western "acquisitiveness" what seems at least equally attributable to social trust) and I admit I already agreed with the basic point this site is making. But the alternative intelligence mini-tests are intriguing and a memorable way to make an important point.

BODY AND SOUL: What makes the difference between a tradition and a cliche?

Sucker Punch, at the Studio Theater through April 8, is your basic boxing movie translated to 1980s race-riot Britain. This is definitely not a criticism! The play is full of life and although its situations are all ones we've seen before, they feel completely fresh and new.

This is a story about the temptations of success, the pull of communal loyalty, the inevitable destruction of youthful hopes, and the waste and pity of violent, thwarted masculinity. So... it's a boxing movie, is what I'm saying. A terrific one. Predictable (the broken-down white coach has a drinking problem) yet still able to take the audience on an emotional journey. I heard actual sniffles by the end. The climactic fight scene, staged in slow-motion, is incredibly intense and physical. The actors are all fantastic--I'm pretty sure the only one I'd seen before was Dana Levanovsky, one of the stars of That Face. This is a raw, real play, and if it works familiar territory... isn't that where most of our lives are led?

...SO FAR FROM THE UNITED STATES:

...This attitude is fairly common among African-Americans addicts in poor neighborhoods in most large US cities; ironically, while the biggest complaint about AA and NA among skeptical middle-class white addicts is the dependence on a Higher Power, in urban black communities 12-step recovery groups are marginalized because they aren't explicitly allied with any church. In addition, the confessional mode of "sharing" that defines the AA fellowship is alien to the ethic of African- neighborhoods, where airing your dirty laundry in public is disappoved of rather than viewed as a method of establishing trust and fellowship. For the same reason, professional psychotherapy is frequently dismissed as a "white" treatment; given the church's influence, mental health issues are widely viewed as caused by a lack of faith remedied by more regular attendance at Bible study.

When I was new to doing social work in the black community, this widespread attitude confused me and frustrated my efforts to help my black clients. An an ex-junkie, I could vow for the benefits to be gained from both recovery groups and therapy. A North Philly church lady coworker set me straight. “A lot of black don't feel that AA and therapy are alien to everything they know," she told me. "If you got problems you just go to church on Sunday and scream your head off and then everything’s fine."

But for Susan, it turned out, everything wasn’t fine. While Jesus and the church were pulling her in one direction, the judicial system had made an unwelcome appearance and was pulling her in another. The entire time Susan was in prison, the state of Pennsylvania was running a tab on all the welfare dollars her mother received in her children’s names. Consequently, per state law, Susan was held responsible for the total amount upon her release, and soon the welfare department came calling to get its money back.

In our sessions, Susan showed me a raft of increasingly threatening official letters with eye-popping dollar figures that had her practically hyperventilating. The state wanted in excess of $25,000, and wanted it now.

A hearing was scheduled at the Bucks County Courthouse, where Susan was asked to provide documents proving that she had a job and could start paying her child support debt or face returning to jail in contempt of a court order. Obviously, on her janitor’s survival wages Susan had absolutely no capacity to both pay the state and keep a roof over her head. This Sophie's choice is a common dilemma for tens of thousands of single mothers returning to the community from prison who owe the state for the dollars their children depended on in their mother’s absence.

Many states require the moms behind bars to assume the burden of child support if they wish to keep their children from being lost in the foster care system. Yet the vast majority are like Susan, devoid of resources except the pennies she might ear from her prison job—and what loving mother (it need hardly be noted the crack addicts and prostitutes do not negate materal love) would even think twice about "defrauding" the system to provide her children with at least minimal security?

This cruel no-win predicament drove Susan to desperation. “Do they know how hard it's going to be to hold down a job if I wind up in a homeless shelter?” she asked me. “Don’t they understand that I’m walking with the Lord and trying to get my life together?”

I accompanied her to the courthouse intending to speak with the judge and explain Susan’s special circumstances. I hoped that the court would grant leniency and allow me to continue working with Susan; she was off the streets, off drugs, back in housing, back to work. She was a success of the system. How could Bucks County not do the right thing and hold off on onerous monthly support payments until she was a little more stable?

But the judge, a middle aged, white Republican appointee in a county notorious for its GOP family court judges with a special beef againstblack women from Philadelphia running up welfare bills on their county’s tab while sitting in jail, refused even to give us a word at the bar of the court. He asked Susan for documentation proving her employment status and when she told him her job at the church was paid under the table, he snarled derisively, “Isn’t that the American way?” clearly insinuating that Susan was not only a common criminal, but a tax-dodging welfare mother, too.

Susan protested the high amount of the monthly support payment, explaining that if she paid the debt she couldn’t afford a place to live. I will never forget how painful it was, watching this woman, who had never in her life caught a single break, have to stand before the American justice system and nearly beg for mercy. But for this black woman in this white judge's courtroom there was no mercy to be had. Her criminal record of violent crime, her drug addiction, her prostitution—all of her vices outweighed the spiritual transformation and personal rehabilitation she had experienced in prison, not to mention her clean-as-a-whistle record in her new life.

The judge merely mocked her, saying, “You’ve got a place to live now: Bucks County Correctional Facility for 90 days.” The public defender tried to interject but the judge was already calling for the next case.

more (the title is really not what the piece is about, actually)

UNCONVENTIONAL: I couldn't sleep after Black Caesar, so I decided to just throw on The Nun's Story and watch until I decided to go to bed. I ended up watching, totally engrossed, until the entire huge long movie was over.

Audrey Hepburn plays a Belgian girl who enters a religious order, hoping to be sent to the Congo as a nurse. The movie follows her deep spiritual struggles, mostly but not entirely revolving around questions of pride and obedience. The harshness of the religious regime under which she lives isn't prettified, but this story goes far beyond easy "individualism vs. repression" conflicts. This comes out most clearly when World War II breaks out--the nun's obedience is tested even more deeply, but at the same time she's also struggling with vengefulness and refusal to forgive her enemies.

The major flaw of the movie is that the racism of the Belgian Catholics isn't just portrayed, but basically embedded in the movie's narrative. The easiest example is the way in which all of the supporting characters are vivid and memorable except the one Congolese character with a speaking role, who is a pious cartoon. But that example is just the most obvious sign of a problem which really runs throughout the Congo sequence, even though the culture of the people is presented with quite a bit of affection and some respect.

Hepburn is fantastic. Like I said, I'd assumed that I would watch maybe an hour and then hit pause. I just couldn't. I couldn't stop watching her. Many of the supporting actors are as vivid as their characters, but this is really a one-woman show.

I'M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKER-PUNCH: So I went in to Black Caesar thinking it would be your typical blaxploitation fare: a social consciousness, definitely, but mostly just righteous fun. Friday Foster for dudes.

Do not do this, people! Good grief. Black Caesar is a terrific movie, but it is a real punch in the face. The racism depicted is brutal and nearly constant, and although the devastation criminal activity causes in families can be seen in a lot of blaxploitation movies (like Foxy Brown) it seemed especially raw and painful here. This left me feeling sad and kind of shattered.

Again: It's a great movie. But wow, like reaching in for your Cracker Jack prize and getting your hand chewed off.

SOMETIMES I REALLY HATE IT WHEN I HAVE THE PERFECT TAGS FOR A POST:

Several days have now passed since Alabama's anti-immigration law, the harshest and most abusive in the nation, came into full effect. HB 56, a de facto criminalisation of migration, replaces any sensible immigration policy with the favorite solution these days: let's put them behind bars– and we might as well make a profit out of it.

The negative consequences of such shameful legislation have been felt immediately. Within hours, it had claimed its first victims – from the detention of a man who later turned out to be residing legally, to the massive fleeing of migrant workers and school children, to even cutting off water services to families or individuals who can't prove their legal status. It is the most draconian and oppressive set of provisions that this country, which claims to be the bastion of liberties and rights, has seen since the era of segregation.

Because anyone lacking the proper immigration papers is considered to be committing a crime, also entering into a "business transaction" with the individual in question would prompt criminal charges. ...

The difference between Alabama and adjoining states is that it is willing to go further down this track. Recently, John McMillan, agriculture commissioner, proposed that the farm work left behind by immigrant workers be supplied with inmate labor. Decatur, a private detention center about 50 miles to the north-west of Alabama, which had been unable to find jobs for inmates, has now witnessed record numbers of requests for labor (for an estimated 150 detainees a day).

more (via WAWIV)

NO ALIEN INVASION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION! Last night I saw Attack the Block with a couple friends, and I absolutely, relentlessly loved it. It does exactly what it promises--aliens attack a British housing project, working-class/underclass community bands together to save their home--and does it with tons of energy and heart. It's sort of sf/horror/comedy, and real comfort food, giving you every cliche of its genres but giving them to you with style and love. Demi-spoilers in what follows.

I was really interested in the gender issues, in part because unlike the race/class issues they were never raised explicitly. All the men in this movie are gangsters, mini-gangsters, or layabouts. The women are much more responsible, and the girls are both drawn to the local guys and deeply mistrustful of them. That felt pretty real to me.

One friend suggested that the movie overturned the "action hero" archetype: A man doesn't become a hero by killing. He becomes a danger by killing. He becomes a hero by risking his own life to save others. I think that's sort of true (and the "carrying the evidence of your sin on your back" scene actually reminded me of the amazing waterfall scene from The Mission--that's how much this movie believes in its characters), although it is mostly a feel-good movie and that limits how much it can overturn worldly ideals of heroism.

This is a really, really funny movie, which never takes itself seriously; and yet it's also a movie with a really strong emphasis on redemption, forgiveness, and the need to attempt understanding of others. I was hugely fond of it.

SHADES OF BLACK: Akashic Press has a demi-fascinating series of books called _________ Noir, where ________ is the name of a city or area. The idea is that each volume has stories which are in some sense "noir" and which capture some essential element of the setting. I've read almost all of Moscow Noir (didn't finish it because I somehow lost the book in a Whole Foods in Tenleytown, which is pretty much the least noir place in the entire world) and all of Indian Country Noir, so here are a couple thoughts on how those books differ. Wild overgeneralizations ahead!

Moscow Noir is basically roughed-up stories about roughed-up men, with the occasional girl in cheap lipstick. It has a lot of self-consciousness about its noir elements, a lot of explicit references to Hollywood. The men are all low-level thugs, life's losers, and the overall atmosphere is Tenement, Half-Drunk. I liked it a lot! Fans of LA Confidential might check it out.

Indian Country Noir is much more varied in tone. There are several revenge stories, and that revenge is often at least somewhat satisfying for the reader, as vs. Moscow Noir where revenge is always a failure which leaves the reader feeling thwarted and sad. The political elements, the specific nature of racism and oppression, are much more explicitly-named here than in the Russian book.

Native religion is a real, viable option for these characters, whereas Russian Orthodoxy is only mentioned in one story in Moscow Noir and is treated with a certain half-respectful acidity there. Several ICN stories are written as if Native religion is true, real, the actual story of the world. Sadly, I think if those stories received a contemporary genre classification they'd be called "magical realism," because mainstream lit-fic isn't allowed to believe in God or the gods anymore. On a perhaps-related note, peace is a more explicit theme in this book than in Moscow Noir, although I'm not sure it's ever presented as a real possibility.

You could say that the Moscow book is noir because what consistently fails is the protagonists' struggle for success or at least escape, and the Indian Country book is noir because what consistently fails is the protagonists' struggle to make peace. That's reductive, but I do think it might be a bit illuminating.

"WHY BLACK MEN ARE WEARING PRISON JUMPSUITS IN CHINATOWN": The Museum of Crime & Punishment consistently has the most trivializing, jokey-worship-of-a-police-state advertising I've ever seen, so this is really not surprising. I suppose I've never seen them use a prison-rape joke so... that's something! But really, when a tacky tourist sinkhole like the Spy Museum outclasses you on a regular basis, you should rethink your choices.

Link via Racialicious.

HEY, JOE, I'M ALREADY THERE: Have you ever wanted to watch a John Hughes movie in which the Sex Pistols are played by Bikini Kill?

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains!

Look, it really is a John Hughes movie at its heart, so there are cartoonish racial/ethnic things which are clearly meant to parallel the class and sexual exploitation the moviemakers really understand, and which are therefore kind of attempts at empathy but which come across as gross funhouse mirrors. The class and sex issues are incredibly heartfelt though--the fluorescent colors are used to paint real, raw emotions. You can see it in the mother's-forgiveness scene but it's present from the very first scene.

It's a morality tale as well, and in no way a subtle one. Chasing fame and money is bad even when it's understandable due to a home life which led you to think that escaping your origins is an immeasurably-valuable and almost-unattainable goal. There's a bit in the liner notes for Chumbawamba's Shhh! album where they say something like, "Poor but honest just meant always having less than everyone else"; you're set up to fail somebody, sacrificing either your own integrity or your family's welfare. I see this a lot at the pregnancy center. People learn to work the system because where else can they work? So yeah... this movie knows why that happens, and also why the zero-sum game of "I've been jerked around so I can do whatever I want" is still cruel and disloyal. Again, it's a primary-colors morality tale, but not an entirely stupid or unsympathetic one. The "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" scene in this movie actually manages to be rawer than the true-life original.

Diane Lane, apparently just 15 when this was filmed, is perfect; actually all the actresses are perfect. The men not so much, but oh well.

The "professionals" song is pretty clearly based on the Raincoats' terrific "Off-Duty Trip."

The final MTV version of the Stains' big, stolen hit is so amazingly perfect that I could almost hear Casey Kacem introducing it. "Q-107, Washington's top 40! That was 'Karma Chameleon'; now here's the Stains!" Absolutely incredible pastiche. About to listen to the first of two commentary tracks.

>HOLY CATS THIS LOOKS GREAT. I was already kind of excited for this aliens-vs.-the-council-estates flick, but now I want all of it, right now.

AND PRETTY GIRLS MAKE...: Having just seen House of Gold, the JonBenet Ramsey play, I am not convinced that it adds anything to that one chapter from The Brothers Karamazov other than exploitation. Please do argue with me if you think differently, but for right now, I don't know why this needed to happen.

ETA: The preceding should not be taken as a slam on the actors (or the director except insofar as I question the decision to stage this at all), who were all serviceable to excellent. Kaaron Briscoe as JonBenet was exceptional.

A LIST OF COSTUMES SEEN TONIGHT (THIS LIST IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE): Pirate, white guys as a cowboy and an Indian (...really?), kung-fu master (an actual Asian), man-vampire, lady-vampire (unrelated to previous), sexy bumblebee, sexy NYT crossword puzzle, something green on head, trashy black wig, bearded lady or possibly male nurse, Joker, heterosexual jellyfish couple, Captain America, flapper, Red King, a Democrat, possibly a spoiled child???, and my personal favorite, a satyr in a sport coat.

COTTON-GIN PUNK.

DECADENCE AND THE A.M.E. CHURCH: A few thoughts, not a review, about Passing Strange. It's the story of a young black man from LA who seeks himself, or meaning, or something, through Amsterdam and West Berlin and finally home. ETA: It's at the Studio Theater through August 8.

1. I loved this! I loved it well beyond reason. I loved it in part because it really connected with the audience Friday night. I get that it's easy to be cynical about whitefolk toe-tappin' at musicals about black identity. But that isn't what happened here. What happened was more like when I went to see Marlon Riggs's film Black Is/Black Ain't, and at the end credits we heard the opening strains of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing"... and the whole theater, black and white and read all over, started to sing.

If this city is your heart then this play will take you home.

2. The insistent decadent aesthetic was amazing! I don't know if I've ever seen such a complete assimilation of decadence to the American experience, which is so often presented as sincerist, outside a specifically gay narrative... with one exception. The fact that the exception is Invisible Man should tell you how thrilled I was by the way this play and this production negotiated the ways in which masks melt into the skin, culture can but can't be rejected (one of the characters makes the point I made somewhat idiotically here!), and America is an absent but inescapable parent.

I loved that even the complacency and hypocrisy of the mainstream black church was presented as a possible vehicle for becoming "real." It didn't work for the narrator, but I genuinely didn't feel like the play blamed Mr. Franklin (the PK, who uh... maybe I think plays the organ, if you see what I'm sayin' here) for being a halfway house rather than a home for the narrator. There was just a lot of generosity in this script. Everyone's masks were honored even though the show also acknowledged the genuine poignancy and power of the rhetoric of "realism."

It's really fascinating to compare this play to Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, which I also saw at the Studio. Christianity is a named thing here, a live option in a certain sense, which it never is for Stoppard's characters. And yet the specific form of Christianity is kind of intriguing: Words like identity, meaning, and love are very much central to the Christian possibility, but words like sin, grace, redemption, forgiveness, and salvation are totally absent. That's in no way a criticism of the show! I mean it says so much and works so well.

3. Oh Lord, the pastiches were so perfect! This is a musical, so yeah okay it gets sentimental in the end. But before then, the pastiches of bougie church life ("Baptist Fashion Show") and '79/'82 punk (wow I don't even know which song this was, but the lyrics "I'm a business motherfucker" probably help you remember it!) and '80s West German punk style are just so loving and forgiving.

4. Rock 'n' Roll is much more cross-generational than this play. There is no next generation here. There is no pregnancy, no child, no humiliation as our own rebellions are deployed against what we really do think is now our greater wisdom as adults! There's no need to show what it feels like to grow up.

And yet unchosen obligation is still the throbbing heart of this show. When it gets sentimental, which believe me, it jumps into with all its musical-theater gross Grizabella make-it-cute heart... even so it's at least sentimental about unchosen loves. In fact, the play is adamant that the most blunt forces in love are most powerful, love without understanding, mother and son beyond any kind of intellectual or even intelligible connection. She is his and at last he is hers and and no one can tell anybody why. Motherhood is handcuffs locked on both ends. (There's no mention of the protagonist's father. I honestly didn't notice this until at least the intermission, even though it's my actual job. I think that speaks to a level of realism in the play itself; it isn't playing to the skybox.)

But yeah, I kind of missed the depiction of what might happen to this guy, with his complex relationship with unchosen obligations in general and parenthood in particular, if he became a parent. Why is this play so contracepted? Aren't there more interesting stories to be told in the unchosen future?

DISCO PURGATORIO: I have finally listened to all of Janelle Monáe's Metropolis: The Chase Suite, and I can tell you what I was pretty sure I'd tell you: You need this. Monáe is an opera-trained lady nerd who's created an amazing pop album centered on the story of an enslaved android who falls for a human, endangering both their lives.

"Many Moons" is still the standout, unstoppable song. You can get a taste of the song, with amazing video, here; the album version is actually better, believe it or not. But "Cybertronic Purgatory" is beautiful and haunting, and in general, Monáe's versatility of style makes this album a unique history of the past fifty years. ("Smile" I like mostly for the quick Elvis "thank yuh" at the end, but that gesture retroactively reshapes the whole song, makes it even sadder and even more obviously an attempt at reclamation of and reconciliation with the American past.)

"Mr. President" is a classic of retrofuturism, as if the 1970s had time-traveled into the Obama administration. I'm not sure it succeeds as a song, rather than a document, but Lord how it made me ache--and ache, also, for Obama himself, who is called upon to be "Moses" and who is generally treated, here, like a Shakespearean king and not an American president.

Anyway, I'm about to order the new album, "Archandroid," about which I've heard nothing but good. "Metropolis" is an amazing reinterpretation of more or less everything I love, Metropolis itself crossed with Invisible Man (the Ellison one) crossed with BET's Gospel programming. Philip K. Dick and Octavia Butler and Q107, Washington's Top 40!... and the black man at Union Station with the saxophone, playing "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms."

"JOKING, OF COURSE": Three more quick thoughts about The Comedians and "Greeneland."

1. Honky-Talk Heroes: It's possible that you've heard the phrase, "What these people need is a honky!" It's usually used to describe a particular kind of movie--I haven't seen either of these, but Dances With Wolves and Avatar are pretty frequently cited as culprits--in which a nonwhite or coded-as-nonwhite culture can only stand up to its oppressors once it's been shown the way by the white-ass honky man. He is the best rebel of them all!

The Comedians both exploits and subverts this cliche, and I'd say it's about 30% exploitation and 70% subversion. So if you're interested in how white-dominated/mainstream movies presented race in the '60s, this is an Interesting Case. This is not the movie a black Catholic would make, and I think that's pretty obvious just from the casting and assumed audience. But it's still pretty intent on subverting this specific trope.

2. He Do the Priests in Different Voices: Graham Greene is really hard to take seriously. He gets overpraised by Catholics who envy the mid-20th-century moment when we seemed to be gaining the literary respect we really deserved in 1890. He then gets underestimated by people who think he's just a catechism with moving pictures.

What he really is, I think, is good enough. The basic elements of the Greene novels I've read are: This world is absurd and cruel, and you are helpless against its cruel absurdity; England is Haiti is Africa is everywhere, there's no geographical escape and white men are just scraped black men; justice is Hell; the Eucharist is mercy, but mercy must be accepted freely; the Catholic Church is the universal cynosure and everyone in the whole wide world thinks She's important.

Some of these points are obviously controversial! And I get that the specific way in which Greene lays the Church on with a trowel alienates many readers. It often doesn't work for me, because he tends to move too quickly from the character point--this actual character would say this actual prayer--to the symbolic. I'm hoping that I've learned from him, in my own Catholic novel (of which more in the next couple of days), how to integrate what characters do and what authors cry for.

But honestly--if nothing in Greene's Catholicism moves you, I think you are missing some basic point of philosophy, some basic moment in what it is to be human. He is not a zoetrope catechism. He's a Catholic man of the twentieth century, with all that implies. He's a weird man who wants to be a weird saint but can't figure out how; he's a person who wants to be real.

3. Does Anybody Remember Laughter? I think I would pay huge amounts of money I don't have to anyone who would compare and contrast the use of "comedy" and "comedians" in this movie, vs. the use of ditto in Watchmen. Because I'm honestly not joking (...of course) when I say I think they're doing the same thing. Both works are, I think, assertions--in Greene's case explicit, in Moore's case denied--of meaning against the obvious sick joke of this world.

The punchline, which comes like a gut-punch, is: There is a God.

ETA: Argh sorry, that was overstated and misleading. Of course Watchmen is an atheist comic book and an anguished one. But I do think that among the various philosophical stances its characters put forward, there's a strong assertion that justice is more than the exercise of will, and therefore meaning is given rather than created. And I don't really think that stance makes sense without God, as I've said a bunch of times, even though again, Watchmen doesn't go there. But anyway, just wanted to clarify what I meant. I'm more interested in the compare/contrast in the use of "comedian" imagery, & shouldn't've overstated the rest of it....

DON'T LOOK NOW: Mini-reviews, mostly horror. I realized that there are a lot of books and movies I'm glad to have read or watched, even though I don't have enough to say about them to warrant a full-length post here. So this is a roundup of a bunch of things you might want to know about.

Hugh Kennedy, Everything Looks Impressive. Yale in the '80s; is the protagonist supposed to be unlikable and unwilling to learn? Class resentment, demi-dykery, survivor guilt. I've been reading a lot of college novels lately, and I'm surprised by the regularity with which survivor guilt surfaces as a theme. I note that Everything Looks Impressive is oddly reminiscent of The Sterile Cuckoo, a college novel written some 30 years earlier. The books' narrators are equally narcissistic, but Kennedy's guy isn't as sexist in his narcissism, so... that's something?

Bonus POR mention on page two or three, as a "neo-fascist organization." I love you too!

Recommended for Yale obsessives (boola boola!) and people with my intense interest in the college-novel genre.

Deadgirl: I watched this on Netflix Instant Viewing after reading this description at Kindertrauma. This is a horror flick with a truly rancid premise: Two high-school losers are exploring an abandoned asylum when they find a naked woman strapped to a bed, behind a door which hasn't been opened in so long that it rusted shut. What follows is gross and cruel and immensely sad.

This is a horror movie about misogyny, and abuse of power more generally, which isn't itself misogynist. It's extremely hard to watch. I found it totally effective. (I'm not convinced that it fully earns its ending, but I also don't think it could really end any other way, so I'm willing to go along.) The color scheme is appropriately raw, moldy, and corrupt.

Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching: Experimental horror novel in which a house in Dover, England develops a malevolent power and personality, which it uses to destroy the local immigrants and the women of the house. There are some real shivers here, and the fragmented, multiple-narrator style makes the mystery more compelling and frightening rather than serving to distance the reader from the events.

Sudden Fear: Joan Crawford's husband is trying to kill her! She's so fantastic in this, with her giant eyes and man-face and her telenovela acting style. There are some nice noir shots as well, including a gorgeous shot from above as Crawford runs down a dark street. Very easy to watch despite the relative predictability of the story.

The Experiment: German suspense flick based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. Moritz Bleibtreu is terrific! Unfortunately, the film doesn't get over the most basic hurdle: It's really hard to make a fictionalized version of the actual events which is even as horrifying as what really happened. So despite some raw moments and tough-to-watch scenes (I was struck by the early glimpse of the prisoners' feet unprotected in sandals while the guards wore heavy boots) the movie still feels tarted-up and tinfoil compared to the visceral events on which it was based. The romance subplot is also distracting and kitschy.

My Little Eye: Fluffy C-level horror movie about a group of twentysomethings recruited for a reality-show webcast which requires them to live in a creepy old camera-riddled house together for six months. If anyone leaves, everyone forfeits the million-dollar prize money. I enjoyed the Breakfast Club echoes, both explicit and implied.

I'M DANCING AS FANCY AS I CAN: I really loved the movie of The Business of Fancydancing. I mean, I loved it more than I loved The Toughest Indian in the World; I loved it more than any description could really justify, I think maybe.

One big part of my love was the star: Evan Adams. He's got a cocky, vulnerable, punchy grace. If you like Robert Downey Jr. but thought, "What if he were brown?" then I think this guy will push your buttons. The supporting actors are also really lovely but this movie is carried by its star.

But also. I know I missed a lot in this movie. I only listened to part of Sherman Alexie's commentary track, but even that short bit emphasized how many nuances I missed. What I saw was a movie about how we negotiate our unchosen identities, especially those identities which our surrounding culture lies about and tells us not to love. I saw a movie about the inevitable betrayals of the writer: Philip Roth territory (is "Agnes Roth" a callback? it must be), only with even more dead people in the wake of the writer. I saw a movie about loving someone with privilege you don't have, and how you can love him and reject him and evade him, and how he doesn't know what he's doing. (I've been on both sides of that maypole dance and I recognized both.)

By now you want to know what this movie's actually about, and I can't blame you. A gay American Indian writer who has transformed his, and other people's, reservation experiences into pricey lit (Quality Paperbacks with bright white pulp) returns to the rez for a friend's funeral. It's an experimental movie with some Marlon Riggs touches. I don't think the camera needed to swirl quite so voraciously during some of Seymour's (the author's) interview with a combative black inquisitrix.

But overall... this movie showcases the way the given order breaks your heart, only the movie has better pacing and more consistent acting. I don't know if I'd call it subtle. I'd definitely call it brilliant, and that matters a lot more.

"I AM A MAN."