I'm back. Hope your Thanksgiving was swell. I'll talk about mine later.

Sunday afternoon I saw the deathless swill that was Alexander. I don't know what's happened to Oliver Stone; he used to be such an interesting filmmaker. Even when his movies were terrible, you couldn't avert your gaze from the violent colors and swirling cinematography: you were stunned into narcotic bliss. Even a movie as godawful as Natural Born Killers, shot as it was alternately through Jell-O and LSD-induced creative fits, was a mindbending, suicidal hell no auteur would dare touch. Alexander, however, is a tamed marvel, with the requisite breathtaking vistas and soaring pans--nothing more evocative than an unedited Hallmark movie for the Lifetime network.

Anyway, hooo-weeee, what a load. Two handsful. And I ain't talkin' 'bout laundry.

1. Was Angelina Jolie's accent supposed to be Greek? Because she sounded like the Count on Sesame Street ("Philip cannot have two heirs to the throne! Two heirs! A ha ha ha ha ha!") or a waitress at a Transylvanian truck stop (where no waitresses resemble Nicole Kidman), or Maria Ospenskaya in The Wolf Man dishing out some anguished Shakespearean Method tongue. Every time her lippy puss surfaced on screen, usually coiled in snakes and sneering through gnashed teeth, I had to supress about 17 years of laughter climbing up my throat. She was fucking terrible. And why was she the only one with that particular patois? Her son had a nancy lilt and her husband spoke with the cadence of a West Hollywood car salesman.

2. Were the Dionysian parallels just coincidental, what with Val Kilmer prancing drunkedly around his kingdom with the stumblebum efficiency of a certain Lizard King we all once knew? At one point I expected him to address his subjects, flagon waving, "YER ALL A BUNCHA FUCKIN' SLAVES! LITTLE GIRL, SUCK MY COCK!"

3. My friend surmised that Alexander was trailed by a hawk (or was that an eagle) because the American Indian myth, one of Oliver Stone's favorite intellectual peyote placebos, did not exist at that time, so it would've looked silly for Colin Farrell to dive into battle with the spirit of a sage Cherokee warrior at his side.

4. The Persians were the ones with heavy eyeliner, with the exception of Jared Leto, whose longing deer-eyed looks were enhanced by heavy dark rings painted around his soulful orbs.

5. I never got the impression that Alexander was any great shakes as a leader of men, primarily because I could never tell what the fuck was going on in ANY of the battle scenes. The confusion and chaos of war works in a Vietnam picture, but not when you're trying to show an audience how a battallion of 40,000 troops can take down 250,000. I STILL don't understand how that happened. How was Alexander as a warrior? From what I gathered, lucky. His main trait seemed to be the ability to ride nostril-to-nostril up to an enemy commander without risk of injury.

6. Rosario Dawson, Rosario Dawson, Rosario Dawson. Congratulations, kid, on participating in a love scene that rivals the Elizabeth Berkeley/Kyle McLachlan writhe-about in Showgirls in utter hilarity. Colin hisses, she growls, they pound the crap out of each other, she pulls a knife, they rut like rabid beasts. This is to signify the carnality of their love. However, this is a movie about men for men, so she quickly gets criminally shuttled aside; Alexander doesn't give a shit about her, neither, apparently, does Oliver (Angelina Jolie, the film's other woman, is closer to a man in Oliver's world, so she gets a little more screen time, though inevitably she's thrown into the Ralph Macchio "Stay gold, Pony Boy" role as voiceover in correspondence to her wandering child). He'd rather shoot Colin and Jared coming this close to fucking, but never going further than warm compadre hugs, or Colin whispering words of encouragement to his horse before engaging in battle.

7. Oliver always draws parallels between his subjects and himself, and this is no exception. Though I would go even further and say Alexander's Babylon was Oliver's Platoon, and his India was Oliver's Natural Born Killers, with a sign of U-Turn in the initial Persian skirmish. Hopefully, he'll now have the sense, like Alexander, to go back home and die.




In other news, Robert Downey Jr. has recorded an album. That's right. And you have to buy it because I said so. What does it sound like? Imagine Peter Gabriel after an automobile accident that destroyed more than half his mind being dragged into a studio by a despotic Bruce Hornsby maniacally determined to record a jazz album reminiscent of those "cutting edge" "contemporary" numbers cut by "with-it" producers back in the 1980s. Robert does a version of Yes' "Your Move" that'll turn your stomach sideways.