A heavily ‘caveated’ thumbs up: Except perhaps for The Passion of the Christ, I can’t think of a film I’ve seen that is more deserving of its “R” rating than Team America: World Police which I saw Friday night while the rest of the family is out of town. There is plenty in this movie to offend everyone and I strongly encourage those who are offended by, well, everything you can imagine that’s offensive (and some creatively offensive stuff you haven’t imagined yet), to skip it. However, for those who process the world as I do — a little off-key and out-of-focus, then the absurdity of the film results in one of the most ironic celebrations of uniquely American freedom of expression I’ve ever witnessed. (I’ll get back that in a minute.)

Again, before you interpret what I’m saying as encouragement for you to see the film, let me repeat once more that it is filled with sophomoric goof-ball stupidity (probably only enjoyed by Three Stooges and South Park fans) and content guaranteed to offend you and anyone else who is straight or gay or of any ethnic background or gender. It wallows in vulgarity, crudeness and violence and sex (involving puppets). You will likely hate it and wonder why I had anything positive to say about it. But I do, and not because it is rumored to be “anti-Michael-Moore.” Indeed, there’s been lots of pre-release build-up that right-wingers will love the movie because it mocks Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin and the whole pretentious Hollywood leftist cartel. And while the movie does those things (to put it mildly), there is no way the right-wingers I know will love a film skewering American foreign policy as one characterized by a doctrine of blow-up first, ask questions later (nor, for that matter, will they be receptive to a running joke about multiples of 911). This is not a film that will please the anti-Michael-Moore crowd despite the graphicallly pleasant way the marionette version of Moore, a suicide bomber, is blown to smithereens (and this is one of the less-puppet-violent scenes in the film).

At its core, the movie is less a political polemic than it is a chomping satire of Hollywood action films — of boilerplate plot lines, cinematic devices, big-time genre directors, musical scores and, in hilarious fashion — the use of montages to communicate in a couple of minutes how the central character is transformed from inexperienced into expert. There are so many baseball-bat-to-the-head slams at Hollywood cliches, it is impossible to keep up with them. A wonderful example of the depth of the filmakers’ Shermanesque approach to torching Hollywood is a song that compares how much the singer loves someone to how bad the film Pearl Harbor was. And, if you sit through the entire ending credits, you’ll be treated to a short ditty called, “You’re Useless, Alec Baldwin.” Members of the Film Actors Guild (FAGs) are portrayed as unwitting puppets (metaphorically and literally) of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il who is one of the funniest characters in the movie.

The Nashville crowd I saw the movie with were especially moved (to tears of laughter) by the parody of a Toby Keith pro-America, kick the rest of the world in the butt, anthem, the title of which is, well, Cheneyesque.

Again, while I encourage you to skip seeing it if you’re the least put-off by, say, the longest vomit-scene in movie history, this film is a celebration of a brand of artistic freedom that is uniquely American and, frankly, hard to understand by others. I say this because it is a big-studio, big-time production that is clearly intended to be hugely profitable by pandering to those who like to drink crudeness at a firehose, where profit motivations far outweigh the chances that all involved with the movie will likely have a death-sentence issued on them by some fundamentalist cleric somewhere. As this film is viewed around the world, the international audiences will both laugh “at” the stereotypically American xenophobe, portrayed as trigger-happy cowboys who will blow up the Louvre in order to kill four terrorists. Still those international viewers will be unconsciously (or perhaps knowlingly) confronted by the extraordinary fountain of creative freedom that allows such work to be produced and released in the U.S. (However, come to think of it, it could be produced other places, which reminds me of a joke Ronald Reagan used to love to tell [second paragraph from bottom].)

Magavents: Myrna Blyth (wasn’t she a silent-film star?) of the NY Sun notes that “New York is a Magazine Town” because of all the magazine-branded bridal shows and flea markets going on there this weekend.

However, if you’re in Nashville Saturday night and want to do something magazine related (granted, not as hip as, say, a flea market), you may want to drop in on the “Found Party,” a “performance play” with readings from the book Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World (Fireside) by Davy Rothbart, “founder” and editor of Found Magazine. Here’s a story about the event from today’s Nashville City Paper that I found on the ground outside Starbucks. Like a copy of the City Paper, the event Saturday night is free.

From the City Paper:

What: Found party, with readings; a performance play, Art + Architecture; and music by Davy and Peter Rothbart
When: 10 p.m. Saturday (October 16,2004)
Where: 922 Acklen Ave.
Cost: Free
Info: 615-260-0446

Lad foot: Matt Nauman of the Mercury News profiles the new American Media automobile magazine, Maximum Performance Horsepower (MPH) Magazine (not to be confused with the old American Media automobile magazine, Auto World Weekly that was published from 2000 to 2003 before getting mercy-killed). [Oh, and I almost forgot: Here is a contextual commerce link to subscribe to MPH.] Here’s how Matt starts out:

Think of MPH, a new car magazine from the publisher of the National Enquirer, as part Maxim and part Car and Driver.

No thanks, Matt. I’d rather not.

In his story, Matt quotes MPH editor-in-chief Eddie Alterman’s take on the current titles in the category:

They’re just not fun,” Alterman said. `”There’s nothing that’s entertaining about them. The captions aren’t funny. It’s picture-word-picture-word.” And that’s just wrong because “the car is the most fun product in people’s lives.”

So, here’s what MPH is going to do in their efforts to blow those other century-old auto-magazines off the newsstand:

…”It’s more visually driven. The stories are easier to read. The stories are shorter,” Alterman said. And, it’s full of pictures of pretty young women and risque, sophomoric humor.

Alterman points to the recent success of the “lad magazines,” such as Maxim, Stuff and FHM, and talks about “a real magazine revolution,” fueled by those titles and others like Arena, Spin and Blender. (Obviously, Alterman missed news of the post-revolution bubble-busting at lad magazines like Maxim.)

As I’m “too gray” to be in the target audience (also, my interest in cars relates to transportation rather than fun and self-definition), I obviously am not equipped to judge the prospects of this magazine. However, as one who spent a little time in ones less gray days hanging out in the garage of a filling station or two, the belief that there is something new about pictures of “pretty young women” in auto magazines is a rather quaint and historically naive notion.

Even if nominated: Lileks puts to rest any blogger-induced-meme suggestion he might run for Senate in 2006. If he changes his mind, I will consider moving to Minnesota just for the opportunity to vote for him. Just think of the reports he’d file from smoke-filled rooms.

Secrets of the rich and famous media brands: I’m planning in the next few weeks to blog a short review of the book Media Monoliths: how great media brands thrive and survive, by Mark Tungate (click on this handy contextual commerce link to an easy-way-to-purchase the book while creating a revenue stream for the rexblog), but thanks to mediabistro.com, you can read an excerpt today.

Actually, I’ll excerpt the excerpt and give you the take-away gem (yet grammatically-challenged gem, but hey, I’m not one to talk) from the entire book:

“It’s incredible how few of the media monoliths grew out of a team effort. When you probe into the history of the world’s greatest media brands, you realize that, more often than not, a single individual created them, as well as putting in place the values that still drive them today.”

Read the excerpt.

Headline of the Day: A NY Post hed on a story about the ratings drop of shows like, “The Apprentice”: “TV Audiences Decide Reality Bites.”

Too much fun: I’m having too much fun being crunched up against a magazine deadline to blog much today about magazines. Sorry that I can’t answer the several questions and comments I’ve received about blogging stuff. Will get to it all later. Thanks.