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Tuesday, November 25, 2003
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Erotic Thrillers, 3A: Color of Night
I have bronchitis. So, enjoy this summary of the last movie from the Subliminal Cinema chapter on Erotic Thrillers, Color of Night, starring Bruce Willis, Jane March, and Bruce's penis:
COLOR OF NIGHT (1994)
Directed by Richard Rush
Written by Matthew Chapman, Billy Ray, and Richard Rush.
An agitated patient tells shrink Bruce Willis that she hopes his "cock shrivels up," thus introducing the main theme of the movie: Willis’s willie. She is so upset by Bruce’s penis that she jumps through the window and plummets 200 stories to her death. Through a clear panel in the sidewalk we watch her blood pool artistically. When the blood turns gray we realize that Dr. Bruce has been stricken with hysterical color blindness! He has lost his red!
Bruce is all broken up about causing the death of a patient with a litigious family, so he slinks off to L.A. to stay with fellow psychologist Scott Bakula. Scott introduces Bruce to his therapy group, which consists of sexaholic Lesley Ann Warren, dorky Brad Dourif, dour Lance Henriksen, masochistic artist Casey, and big-eyed, bucktoothed, effeminate Richie.
On the drive home, Dr. Bruce diagnoses the members of the group, based on his five minutes of contact with them. Dr. Scott gets chills from Bruce's uncanny insight, but Bruce modestly claims that he was "born with it, like a psychic tuning fork." Scott confides that he has been getting death threats, and he thinks they are coming from inside the group! He hopes Dr. Bruce, the Amazing Kreskin of the A. P. A., can help him pick out the genuine nut job from the people who just need lots of expensive therapy.
Sadly, Bruce’s metaphysical flatware failed to tell him that a killer really is after Dr. Scott. After the next session we hear high-pitched giggling as a figure dressed in black leather stabs Scott repeatedly. Yes, Scott has been killed by Olivia Newton-John from Grease!
The following day, the sexist, racist, and obnoxious Detective Hector Martinez, the most likable character in the movie, questions Bruce, asking whom he thinks killed Dr. Scott. Bruce declines to answer due to doctor-patient confidentiality, which he likens to "the Miranda Oath" (you know, the vow cops take to never recite lines from The Tempest to suspects). Hector says that if his friend had been murdered, he would perform anal sex on Miranda. Not that it would help, of course, but I guess that it would take his mind off his grief.
Bruce is on his way to break the news about Dr. Scott to the group when his car is rear-ended by Jane March, a big-eyed, bucktoothed lass. She says her name is Rose. (Rose! Get it? It's a color in the red spectrum!) Rose begs Bruce to not report the accident. She refuses to give him her last name, address, or phone number--which might make a lesser man suspect her reliability, but since Bruce's amazing "tuning fork" indicates she doesn't wear panties, he agrees to let her "make it up to him."
The group invites Bruce to be their new therapist (notwithstanding how he killed his last patient, and can't see red, and is crazy and everything). When Bruce tells Hector he is taking over the group, Hector expresses concern for Bruce's dick, which he predicts will get chewed off if Bruce keeps sticking it in with barracuda. Bruce accuses Hector of wanting him. Clearly Bruce's dick is quite the coquette.
Bruce goes home to gaze moodily at the swimming pool. Rose appears, wearing a bright red dress. She kisses him, they fall into the pool, and her dress just kinda dissolves (due to high chlorine levels) to reveal a decided lack of underwear. Bruce's clothing also melts (except for his socks and shoes). As they squirm and flop in the water, you can see Bruce in all his splendor (at least in the unrated version of the film). Um, for a movie designed around a penis, it isn't really all you might have dreamed of.
Rose cooks dinner in the nude (gaining an unfair advantage over the other contestants on "Iron Chef"), and then she and Bruce take a shower. We see that Rose has a rose tattoo on her butt. We also see that Bruce's butt is pallid and rather repellent (one of these butt things is a plot point, so pay attention)!
To be continued . . .
1:14:40 AM 
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Combatting Food Stamps of Mass Destruction
From Newsweek: Show Me the Money
In Las Vegas, the Feds used a little-known provision in the Patriot Act that allows them to quickly obtain financial records of suspected terrorists or money launderers. Law-enforcement agencies can submit the name of any suspect to the Treasury Department, which then orders financial institutions across the country to search their records for any matches. If they get a “hit”—evidence that the person has an account—the financial institution is slapped with a subpoena for the person’s records.
The Feds might have gotten the same records even without the new law—but only if they had hard evidence that a suspect was doing business at a particular bank. In effect, the Patriot Act allows the Feds to search every financial institution in the country for the records of anybody they have suspicions about—the very definition, critics say, of a fishing expedition.
It’s the Patriot Act’s money-laundering language that has allowed the Feds to stretch the way the law can be used. Essentially, money laundering is an effort to disguise illicit profits. But it’s such a broad statute that prosecutors can use it in the pursuit of more than 200 different federal crimes. Treasury Department figures reviewed by NEWSWEEK show that this year the Feds have used the Patriot Act to conduct searches on 962 suspects, yielding “hits” on 6,397 financial records. Of those, two thirds (4,261) were in money-laundering cases with no apparent terror connection. Among the agencies making requests, NEWSWEEK has learned, were the IRS (which investigates tax fraud), the Postal Service (postal fraud) and the Secret Service (counterfeiting). One request came from the Agriculture Department—a case that apparently involved food-stamp fraud.
I wonder if the feds have considered using the Patriot Act to get more info on suspected money launderer and terrorist Rush Limbaugh.
1:01:45 AM
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I Don't Think I HATE Him, But I Certainly Don't Love Him
Just finished reading Time's very interesting cover story on President Bush: The Love HIm, Hate Him President. It discusses why Bush is the divisive President of recent times. The authors says that partly its the man. Bush is confident, and for people looking for certainty in an uncertain world, this is comforting. However, for people you describe him as "smirky" and "cocksure," this certainty, especially when he doesn't seem to know know what he's talking about, is maddening. And partly, it's his policies: on Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, breaks to big businessm, etc.
It's also party the modern political system, where congressional districts are so solidly for one party or the other that their reps don't have to do any compromising. It's also a product of our divise times. The proliferation of media, allows people to never hear opinions that differ from their own (unless these opinons are being cut down). Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, and the rest preach "My side, right or right, your side are all traitors." And so on.
Anyway, here are a few favorite bits:
George Bush is the son of a President who couldn't convince the country that he stood for anything. He succeeded a President whose survival depended on the public's capacity to divorce what it thought of his personal values from what it thought of his public ones. Bush has done the opposite of both. He has wrapped his presidency in who he is and what he believes. So it's no surprise that the theme of Bush's first presidential ad of the campaign is essentially: I, George Bush, am the war against terrorism. "Some are now attacking the President for attacking the terrorists," the ad suggests darkly. After him, the deluge.
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The President claims not to follow the polls or even read the newspapers. On issues from tax cuts to Iraq, he refuses to flinch when the numbers and sometimes the facts are against him. When he changes course—creating a Department of Homeland Security after he dismissed the idea or speeding up his timetable for giving Iraq its sovereignty—he is loath to concede there has been any correction at all.
And if he cannot be wrong, it follows that those who disagree with him cannot be right. For him, governing is a zero-sum game because it's not about compromise, it's about truth. "In an age of relativism—to my glee, but to others, it's jarring—he talks about enemies and good guys and bad guys. He paints stark visions of the choices he faces," says Christian activist Gary Bauer, who ran against Bush for the 2000 Republican nomination.
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Yes, Bush's malaprops and mangled syntax have given the late-night comedians as much material as Bill Clinton's sex life once did. But what's most revealing—and what drives people into one corner or the other—is the words he doesn't stumble over. Dead or alive. Bring 'em on. And then there's the phrase that comes up so often in his public pronouncements, the one that some hear as a measure of confidence and others as one of smug disdain: "I expect." He expects the Congress to act, he expects the U.N. to show some backbone, he expects Arab nations to be his partners in making peace in the Middle East.
In scary and uncertain times, this kind of forcefulness is what some people want more than anything else. In Hialeah, Fla., a largely Hispanic city next to Miami, teacher Rose Ramirez, 57, declares, "It's about time we have a President that has the balls to do the right thing. People forget about 9/11." Bush's supporters increasingly worry about what they see happening in Iraq, but they stand behind him because he himself has not wavered. It's as though they support his certitude more than his policies, his self-assurance more than his programs. "I like that he's decisive, and I think that he has the country's best interests at heart," said one respondent to the TIME/CNN poll. "I may not agree with what he chooses to do; it's kind of like having a boss who has the best interests of the company in mind, but won't give you a raise."
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Whereas Bush prided himself on building bipartisan coalitions in Texas, he has done little to stop G.O.P. congressional leaders in Washington from all but shutting out Democrats from the negotiating process—depriving them of any say, or credit, for such crucial legislation as a Medicare prescription-drug benefit and an energy-policy overhaul.
This piece reminds us that for years pollsters said that America was 40% Republican, 40% Democrat and 20% independent. Now, they say, it's a 45-45-10 nation -- and everybody wants that increasingly small 10%.
In a race as close as the one in 2000, where five states were decided by less than 1% of the vote, even tiny numbers of swing voters can be an electoral tipping point. Both sides hope that if they can expand their own ranks, they will build a cushion against the shifting and unpredictable allegiances of that small handful of late deciders.
But characteristically, Rove and his untimid President want to play for all the marbles. They have increased Republican Party registrations, especially in the South and key battleground states, and boast of "hiving off" chunks of Democrats into their camp. What Rove is looking for is something Bush did not get in the last election: a mandate. They are already laying plans for the ambitious things they want to do in a second term—Social Security overhaul, tax reform, Medicare restructuring and even more tax cuts.
So, scary stuff. Anyway, an interesting article that you might want to check out, if you haven't already.
12:41:23 AM
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Last update: 12/1/2003; 4:56:11 AM.
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