Thief: Michael Mann's Masterpiece of Testosterone

On Saturday night I was halfway through a recently released cardboard crime drama starring Willem Dafoe and Matt Dillon when I decided to give up on it and go searching for something more authentic.

At first I cast about for a digital stream of To Live and Die in LA (1985), the movie, directed by the great William Friedkin, that helped launch Dafoe's productive film career.

Unable to find anything other than a Blu-ray Disc, one of the titles that did pop up during my search was Michael Mann's Thief (1981), probably because William L. Petersen is in both (in Thief he has a cameo as an out-gunned bartender trying to defend Tuesday Weld's honor from an angry James Caan):

I have seen Thief several times. The first time was not much longer after its theatrical release. I was a high-school student staying at a motel with the rest of the debate team during a tournament at the University of Oregon when HBO televised it. I remember vividly the shoot-out climax and immediately prior to the shoot out, during the scene where James Caan arms up and boots Tuesday Weld out, the cleanliness and modernity of the bathroom and bedroom of their home.

I have probably watched Thief a couple more times since that first viewing. It is two hours and there is plenty of excellent dialogue . This time I wore headphones to make sure I would capture all the audio. That helped. I picked up a lot of minutiae that in the past has blown by me.

Tangerine Dream provides the soundtrack. The opening heist sequence with all the electronic paraphernalia on display announces that, along with the score provided by Tangerine Dream, in 1981 we are in a new era.

James Caan is brilliant. His performance is timeless. Michael Mann captures the essence of the male search. How do I get what I want and stay a true warrior?

The answer?

Give up what you want.

The Unassailable Math of Climate Change: Gaius Publius Interviews Michael Mann

Naked Capitalism posted yesterday an interview by politics blogger Gaius Publius with climate scientist Michael Mann. The interview is a good primer on the carbon math of global warming. The standard marker established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is +2°C warming. As Gaius Publius says,

Most still think that 350 ppm (parts per million) CO2 is what’s needed to keep us at the upper end of Holocene (era of civilized human culture) temperatures. [Like Bill McKibben's 350.org.] For contrast, the ice ages averaged about 180 ppm CO2 at the bottom, and pre-industrial (pre-1750) concentrations were about 280 ppm CO2. Pre-industrial temperatures were at the bottom of the Holocene (post–ice age) temperature range, so there’s some headroom above that 280 ppm number. How much exactly? No one knows. 

It looks like we’re headed for a IPCC-”safe” 450 ppm CO2 unless we stop. Not safe, in my opinion, nor in Dr. Mann’s. For starters, this “450 ppm” measures CO2 only, not other GHGs like methane and nitrous oxide. The effective ppm in “CO2 equivalent” with those other added GHGs is higher if only CO2 is at 450. 

It’s thought that the original ice sheet formations of 35 million years ago, which gave us modern Antarctic, Greenland and Arctic ice, occurred in a cooling environment that crossed roughly below CO2 concentrations in the range of 550-400 ppm or so. 

First, that’s a wide range. Second, that’s no indication of what will happen going the other direction, where the warming tipping points are. Hansen writes, correctly IMO, that real climate sensitivity depends on (a) the starting point (i.e., how near we are to tipping points), and (b) the direction (effect of warming of X amount is not necessarily correlated to the effect of cooling of that same amount). 

Nevertheless, the massive uncertainty, plus the world-historical consequences, gives most of us pause. I personally worry that 450 ppm CO2 is ultimately a death sentence for civilized humans. Back to life as hunter-gatherers for our third- or fourth-generation descendants. And if worldwide social chaos takes over before we stop, the process could run to conclusion, which, the old IPCC A1FI scenario says, tops out at +7°C warming.

Science is a story based on measurement. For climate-science deniers, where's the math? What about the massive ice-sheet melt? To deny or ignore the science is to repeal the Enlightenment, pitching us backwards to the days when the churchmen ruled a flat Earth. That's what the ISIS response to the Arab Spring is all about, and what is planned for us all if certain reactionary political formations (like those backed by the Kochs) have their way.

Check out the Gaius Publius-Michael Mann interview.

Ignore A.O. Scott, Gangster Squad Is Good

Contrary to the scathing review by A.O. Scott of the New York Times that I saw online back in January, Gangster Squad is a topnotch action movie and thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. Directed by the young Ruben Fleisher, who did Zombieland (2009), Gangster Squad is a Seven Samurai (1954), The Magnificent Seven (1960) set in mobster Mickey Cohen's post-war Los Angeles. The Yul Brenner role is played ably by Josh Brolin. Ryan Gosling is terrific; his character's romance with Cohen's etiquette coach, played by Emma Stone, actually enhances the movie rather than bog it down.

The key to a good action picture is a believable villain, the character who creates fear. Sean Penn delivers as Mickey Cohen, the ambitious, ruthless former pug who is on the verge of controlling all the parimutuel betting on the West Coast.

Fleisher borrows heavily from Michael Mann and the Wachowskis. But this is a good thing. Gangster Squad is an excellent example of the action genre. (It makes me question the value of reading A.O. Scott.)