January 15, 2008

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN @ REPUBLICAN CONVENTION

earlier tonite i saw the savages, another movie where philip seymour hoffman demonstrates how he is probably the best american actor since william hurt. found this clip oh god, this national republican nightmare has been this long.

7 comments:

dan said...

i'm pleasantly surprised by the lack of smugness on display here. i hate it when people stage stuff like this just to have a laugh at the heartland. i usually find it counter-productive to the american left, which ought to re-claim its rightful place as "populist".

you get a sense that hoffman is a lot like he is in the movies, only less sad-sack, i guess.

2000 does seem like a long time ago.

jay said...

i'm tired of this polite tolerance of moronic rhetoric coupled with the bewildered sense of defeat watching this gives me. i appreciate that he's trying to understand what's going on, but this has about as much life as the kerry and gore campaigns did. it's strange to me how a ludicrously laissez-faire pseudo-republican whose against having a minimum wage like ron paul and a borderline neocon hawk like chris hitchens can be some of the most ballsy commentators on the state of the world right now. has anyone seen "there will be blood"?

jay said...
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dan said...

you've been watching the wire, haven't you, hustles?

i think that show (and david simon in general, who is a total badass in interviews) is saying a lot of things that need to be said right now in a pretty unapologetic way.

jay said...

that's true. i love the wire. i even liked sicko, which was a great piece of agitprop. 'there will be blood' is great. go see it. the last scene made me almost pee my pants with nihilistic glee that it didn't end up on the cutting room floor. if i'm feeling sickened by the world, hugo chavez and evo are always next door. fuck, angela davis is alive and kicking in california. no more moping, dammit.

jay said...
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dan said...

i like evo a lot better than hugo, myself. all that consolidation-of-power, censor-the-press type stuff freaks me out. there are legitimate reasons people fear "communism" and those are two of the biggies... ultimately though, i'm beginning to feel ashamed of my own lack of an understanding of economics. i get the sense that i don't know who to believe. i mean, obviously the neo-liberal ideologues are fucking things up royal, but i'm not sure "the coalition of the good" etc. is effectively equipped to face up to them? i dunno.

btw, i just finished mike davis' planet of slums the other night which is an effectively relentless assessment of the global scene right now. a short read too! give it a look...