Keitel's Mumbai, Florid

"Pakistan is no ordinary country."-- Benazir Bhutto's last preface.

One thing neither John Irvin nor his screen writer Ken Solarz answer for is the underlying cowardice of Stephen Dorff's character Skip Kovich in their latter day City of Industry. Dorff’s motivation for icing the heist crew put together by Timothy Hutton, who is seemingly in the preliminary stage of getting his lead role on Leverage, this woebegone every American kid of Taps and the brittle, frightening scenes in Ordinary People, invisibly axed in a jump shot by a snow cone Dorff, this flinty indifferent spree killer with scant principle to speak of, we’re to presume he fears Elliot Gould’s muscle, given the carnage that burns through the reel beyond the brief back story putting the figurines in place? He certainly fears being outnumbered.

Irvin’s transition from ensemble to allowing for the aging Keitel to absorb the weight of the lead and the pursuit remains intriguing, as is the relationship he develops between Keitel and Janssen in her role as the vulnerable brass tacks widow. The film itself is also transitional, between then and now. Not wholly a procedural of the past, with a signature detective rectifying matters, nor quite a gut wound graphic, such as we might see with The Following, or in Bryan Fuller and David Slade’s dark aesthetic. Little is left to the imagination, but the gore isn’t quite so pronounced as it would be for Tarantino.

The punishment that the elder Egan absorbs is a puzzling ambiguity, even somewhat fantastical, with Roy hovering between life and death as he fractures Skip’s skull. The agony Keitel projects is the only Dionysian passion he allows Roy Egan to have, as one wonders if he does die and is in fact reborn, miraculously defying his chest wound in these muted enclosures, Hutton’s fatal optimism dappled in Florida sunlight, with Roy’s pursuit of Skip moving in gradations from shadows to the expansive danger of a post midnight world. Does Irvin’s denouement suggest an escapism similar to Morrison’s hymn for her ravenous ghost?

Fantastical flights of fantasy can reinforce narrative meaning, as they do in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or they can make the moral gratuitous, as happens in Beloved. City of Industry wobbles on a balance beam between unifying impact and lack of responsibility for its glamorization, but it‘s worth examination.

Pakistan exists as a weak and marginally governable state because the British administers in Asia did not heed their literary masochist, EM Forster. Thanks to his novels the western hemisphere is a homosexual police state. If you know how Pakistani and Indian differ ethnically feel free to cue me in.

Narendra Modi

Minister Modi, congratulations on your victory for Bharatiya Janata: I am only an observer from afar of the British Empire's former crown jewel, and look on with mild perplexity on the sectarian strife between Indian Hindu and Muslim, but your rise as a nationalist intrigues me. I could engage in hyperbole toward other ends, but since I know India and Pakistani tensions are brittle and complex. all I will post is that conservative leadership needs to stand firm, and I hope you do so, and manage a great evolution for your ancient nation, its rich cultural heritage.

I am probably "not going to make it," to paraphrase the great American actor Spencer Tracy, from his last film. Everyone who is a movie buff knows about Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but I let it drift by until last week, and found it amazingly frank, sincere, without the false subversity of Spike Lee's Jungle Fever.

Asians know something about creative destruction, and would invariably suggest I find a way to accept that my last gasp of determination will not be enough, and that I bow to the will of "consumer model" compliance. This is gaining in popularity around urban areas like New Delhi, to my understanding. Classifications designed toward ease of designation. This discovery about my follower on this Blogger account is what so vainly disappointed me, after turning my tumblers, about him. I thought Ed lived here at Presby for medical reasons. Before 2012 this earned him my deference, my respect. He is Jewish, but I assume this is not an issue on the subcontinent. As there is the general term, consumer, which means shopper, so there is disabled consumer. Then mental health consumer. These are poisonous designations, and India's much maligned caste system, though I cannot speak for its efficacy, is admirably forthright. I do not know Ed that well, but he is evidently a nice mild mannered fruitcake, and embraces the consumer agency model, which is still relatively young in its systems development, only just created when I was in my twenties.

I know so much, so little of your country, all at the same time! I did not know Hinduism could even have a hard line, like right wing evangelicals. But now I will cause trouble: 1. Pakistan needs to be punished for killing Benazir Bhutto! Ineffective minister or not, she was still a Brahmin. 2. Stand firm, don't allow any massacres, lest progressives get hard ons about the natural rights of lemmings Make nice with China, and only then shoot to kill.