Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Culture War
Not only is the 9/11 Commission report (well, the executive summary and key findings recap) available as an audiobook at the iTMS, but it’s free. Same goes for the speeches for the Democratic National Convention from day one and day two (so far). Free.
Seeing as how I missed some (okay, most) of the speeches, this seems like a damn good way to catch up.
I love media exposure as much as the next guy, but this isn’t quite the type of exposure I usually seek out: “An accident on the inbound Memorial Bridge has the right lane blocked; you’ll need to stick to the left to get by...”
Yep, for any of you listening in the Washington area, that was me. As if determined to demonstrate that my gripes about the beginning of the week were nothing, the fates decided to give me a lesson in true annoyance.
Now, before anyone starts worrying (as if you were anyway), I’m okay, the other driver is okay, Murphy is okay. In comparison, even my car is okay; I’ll have to get it checked out to be sure, but it looks like most of the damage is superficial. I was able to drive away, unlike the other driver. While my rear bumper did its job admirably, the same cannot be said for his front bumper. Alas, the bumper was demolished, the radiator was compressed back into what was left of the engine (which had decided to vomit a fair quantity of its contents onto the street below), and the hood was doing a fairly good impression of an accordion.
The police were quick to respond, and all told, we were out of there in about 45 minutes. Since he rear-ended me (I was stopped in the traffic waiting to exit), I wasn’t cited for being at fault. So other than the inconvenience of having to deal with the insurance company, being without a car for a few days while it’s repaired, and a little neck stiffness from tensing at the moment of impact (nothing so dramatic as “whiplash,” though I can’t help worrying just a tad), I came out pretty well.
But given the number of accidents I’ve had in the past few years — all the result of someone else’s inattention — I’m starting to wonder just when one of those accidents is going to be more serious.
Sorry, just feeling a little paranoid. I’ll get over it soon enough.
I don’t normally do recaps of my reading choices (well, other than giving the occasional Mil Millington plug). I can claim a certain above-average knowledge base in the area of movies, which (I like to believe) gives me at least some credibility when it comes to critiques thereof. But while I may be slightly more literate than the typical American, I am fully aware that given the cultural intelligence level of that typical American, that’s really not saying a whole hell of a lot. And since this readership also skews well above that abysmal level, I figure I’m usually better off just leaving the literary critiques to more qualified commentators.
In terms of comic books as reading choices, my literacy level rises a bit higher, but again, I can’t hope to compete with the ’net community at large. Still, I suppose I can rationalize this recommendation in that the book in question is currently being made into a movie. The work is Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the movie incarnation is most directly the result of an unusual “marketing” effort by (first-chair) director Robert Rodriguez.
Miller (whose epic Dark Knight Returns was entirely responsible for the Batman revival of the 1980s, culminating with Tim Burton’s movie version) had long said that after his disastrous experiences in Hollywood with RoboCop 2 and 3, he wouldn’t be having anything to do with movies in the foreseeable future (although in what may be a nice bit of turnaround, Miller’s cannibalized original script for RoboCop 2 has become a comic book). In fact, at a signing event I personally asked him about the prospects of Sin City making it to the big screen, and he told me quite plainly that it was going to stay a comic book; he had no desire to see some hotshot director or bottom-line-obsessed producer swoop in, take his work, and impose so much of an individual “vision” on it that it no longer resembled the original.
Knowing that Miller wasn’t likely to change his mind with a traditional “pitch,” no matter how eloquent, Rodriguez decided to show, rather than tell. He went ahead and shot what would be the first two minutes of the movie — a pre-credits teaser — with Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton as an assassin and his intended victim. He presented this “test footage” to Miller: If he liked it, they’d go ahead with the rest; if not, then he’d have one hell of a souvenir to show to friends at parties. Obviously, as evidenced by the fact that they are making the movie, Miller was singularly impressed.
But what is even more surprising is that Rodriguez insisted that this was Miller’s movie, and not his (or at least not exclusively his). In addition to referring to the project by the full name Frank Miller’s Sin City (reminiscent of Coppola’s insistence on Mario Puzo’s The Godfather), the two are co-directing the project. So determined was Rodriguez that Miller be given co-director standing that he was forced to renounce his membership in the Director’s Guild, which forbade the designation. (Oh, and they’re also receiving “special guest director” assistance from another little non-DGA member you may have heard of; guy by the name of Quentin Tarantino.)
They’re going out of their way to stay as close to Miller’s distinctive black-and-white (with occasional splashes of color) style as possible: Everything’s being shot against greenscreen, with sets recreated digitally to most closely retain Miller’s not-quite-reality style. Actors are being outfitted with prosthetics to make them look as much like their comic counterparts as possible. I’ve not seen the fabled “pitch footage” (which was shown publicly for the first time this past weekend), but what I have seen (an Entertainment Tonight blurb available here) shows a couple of shots straight out of the books. It remains to be seen whether this strict interpretation will actually work, but I am seriously excited about the prospect of finding out.
Of course, there’s no way to adapt all of the Sin City books into one movie, so they’ve chosen to focus on just three of the most popular tales, telling them in anthology format, à la Pulp Fiction (a particularly apt comparison). All three of the chosen tales share characters and environments, and even overlap in time a bit; the stories may end up being intercut to flow chronologically, but Rodriguez has said he’s shooting every scene from the comics (that is to say, those comics they’re adapting this time around), so as to include individually watchable, uncut versions of the individual stories on the DVD. That Yellow Bastard tells the story of John Hartigan, a detective on the verge of retirement forced to take the rap for a terrible crime in order to protect the very victim he saved. The Big Fat Kill focuses on Dwight McCarthy, a former photographer driven to cover up a murder that threatens to instigate an all-out street war. (A Dame to Kill For, which might be termed Dwight’s “origin story,” was originally considered but deemed too extensive to include.) And, of course, the original Sin City tale (renamed The Hard Goodbye for the movie’s purposes) introduces us to Marv, the well-intentioned but relentless killing machine, bent on avenging the death of a beautiful woman killed while lying in bed beside him.
The cast has been chosen with serious care to the character qualities of the original book, with Bruce Willis as Hartigan, Clive Owen as Dwight, and a beefed-up Mickey Rourke as the iconic Marv (featured in one of the film’s teaser posters here). Supporting turns — and there are a lot of them — are put in by (just for starters) Rosario Dawson as Gail, de facto leader of Sin City’s prostitute-ruled “Old Town”; Benicio Del Toro as the arrogant, brutalizing “Iron Jack” Rafferty; Jessica Alba as Nancy, an exotic dancer and the only one who believes in Hartigan’s innocence; Devon Aoki as the deceptively efficient killer Miho; Michael Clarke Duncan as Manute, a monstrous “bodyguard” more than happy to include murder in his duties; Elijah Wood as Kevin, an irredeemable psychotic protected by the powers that be; Nick Stahl as Junior, the deviant and predatory son of a well-connected Senator; and Jaime King as Goldie, the object of Marv’s all-consuming quest for vengeance. (A few more glimpses of some of the promotional posters — featuring King, Alba, and Dawson — are available here, though they’re just snapshots.)
As for the books themselves, I just finished rereading them over the weekend. All of them (between this and Star Wars, it seems to have been a weekend for revisiting complete collections). The other books in the collection are Booze, Broads, & Bullets (an anthology of short stories), Family Values (a further adventure of Dwight and his “Old Town” compatriots), and Hell and Back, which introduces the brooding artist (and trained killer) Wallace as he works to unravel a vast criminal conspiracy. Plenty of fodder for a sequel (if the first film works, of course). Or, as Rodriguez has suggested, a straight-to-DVD version of all of the Sin City stories.
For those of you unfamiliar with the books, read them immediately. Of course, that’s only if you’re not particularly squeamish. If the abbreviated character bios and story outlines I laid out above didn’t tip you onto the kind of subject matter we’re talking about, let me be more explicit: Sin City is one of the most singularly violent pieces of comic creation in recent memory, not to mention containing plenty of nudity and sexual content. Most definitely not for the kiddies; if they really stick to a strict interpretation, they’ll be venturing well into NC-17 territory. But in reality, I suspect that for simple viability, they’ll keep it within R-rating levels (though Jessica Alba’s no-nudity policy is already frustrating the fanboy contingent, and I somehow doubt it’s purely for “artistic purity” reasons).
Miller takes the hard-boiled detective stories of film noir and both updates them for modern sensibilities and translates them brilliantly to the comic book arena. His stark black-and-white style completely solidifies the illusion that this is a world of shadow — both literally and figuratively. (It’s especially interesting to see this style evolve over the course of the first tale, as Miller becomes more and more confident in his “vision” — either that or as the series’ success allows him to afford larger quantities of ink.)
A movie-to-comic-book “adaptation” will (obviously) be completely unnecessary (and given their tight turnaround, they’re usually crap anyway), but I’m hopeful that Miller will release a new Sin City story to coincide with the movie’s release. He’s said there will be more stories coming; perhaps we’ll finally see the long-awaited Sin City 1940 tale he’s mentioned in the past. It’s been far too long since I was able to pay a (new) visit to Sin City.
If not, I’ll just have to satisfy myself with the movie. But even there, the most depressing thing is that I have to wait another year to see whether the movie does the books justice. Though, according to one story, that pitch footage (adapted from the short story “The Customer Is Always Right”) will be available for download within the next couple of weeks. Time enough, I suppose, for another reading...
As if all of that weren’t enough, it looks like my Palm just died. Won’t accept any input from the stylus.
Perfect.
Tomorrow had better be an improvement, or I just might start getting pissy.
More than usual, I mean.
This is definitely Monday.
You’d think that after taking a three-day weekend (I was out Friday to take care of the girls), I’d be all rested and ready for the week.
First, I forgot my ID card, which means (at least in theory) that I can’t get into the building. Fortunately, I was able to sneak in from the garage behind an unsuspecting coworker (how I’ll get back into the parking garage is another story). Second, I forgot my lunch; normally, not critical, but remember, I couldn’t reenter the building were I to exit. And third, I just noticed that, having dressed in the dark this morning, I put on blue socks. White shirt, black pants... blue socks. And not subtle, close-enough-to-black-that-people-won’t-notice blue, but definitely blue.
I think I need to call it a day, go home, get some rest, and start again tomorrow.
That’s if I can keep myself from turning on the convention coverage tonight. And while I’m singularly unexcited about the convention — sorry, but there’s no actual information to be learned, and I was never much of a cheerleader — I do suppose I’m at least mildly interested from a strictly escapist entertainment standpoint.
Of course, once all the state delegations start opening their official awarding of delegates with ten-minute diatribes on the glories of their particular territory (“Shut up, Guam!”), I know I’ll be tuning out.
(P.S.: Credit where credit’s due — the Guam line was Kori’s. I’m just stealing it ’cause I’m too demoralized to come up with something on my own.)
I’ve been meaning to watch this for some time now. Ethan Hawke’s pet project: Tape, a Richard Linklater-helmed experiment in shooting with digital video. Not to mention that it reunited Hawke with his Dead Poets Society co-star (and, incidentally, my wife’s cousin) Robert Sean Leonard. Oh, and Uma Thurman to boot. What’s not to love?
Well, how about the movie itself? It does have a few things going for it, from a decent story to workable dialogue, to creditable performances all around. But that’s about it. If I didn’t know Linklater were directing, I’d swear it was slapped together by a couple of guys with their home movie camera and a copy of iMovie (okay, so maybe it’s a step above that level, but just one step). Ridiculously rampant cuts, awkward angle changes, and gratuitous use of “handheld” camera technique all scream not just independent, but rank amateur. All of which I could get past, even accept, if there were any reason for it. Why is this being shot on DV rather than film, other than the sheer novelty factor? Yeah, you can fit a DV camera into a much tighter space, theoretically opening your shooting options up, but it seems like Linklater was determined to try every funky angle at every opportunity without regard for the demands of the tale itself.
But even more than that, I was constantly thinking why is this a movie at all? The entire movie takes place (in real time) in a motel room, without a single shot beyond that one set. It’s a play, most emphatically not a movie. Okay, so it’s based on a play, but if you’re actually going to go to the trouble of making it into a movie, there has to be some rationale for doing so, something other than just the hell of it.
Normally, just the fact that Pam’s cousin’s in it would be enough for us to keep a copy of the movie on hand. Hell, we still have My Best Friend Is a Vampire in the closet somewhere. But not this time around; I just can’t imagine our wanting to watch it again. Though at least this effort fared better than Driven, which we managed to sit through about fifteen minutes of before turning it off in disgust.
Then again, even he couldn’t get through that one.
Ah, the holy trilogy — Star Wars (or A New Hope, as the revisionist Mr. Lucas dubbed it in its first rerelease), The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. And yes, I watched them all. Partly because I hadn’t seen them in some time, but also because my oldest daughter has now reached the age I was when I first saw the trilogy’s opening installment. She’d seen the films before, but hadn’t yet reached the point where she could really understand what was going on. (No, we didn’t watch them all in one sitting, so the “Movie Night” header might be a little inaccurate, but I decided to stick with convention this time.) In retrospect, our timing seemed particularly appropriate given this weekend’s announcement of the official title for Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (a nice throwback to the prematurely-released working title for Return of the Jedi).
While I’m still awaiting the DVD edition of these pictures, I wanted to catch the old VHS versions once more before that, and I really couldn’t stomach the idea of watching them too close to the upcoming September release date. Rumor (and at this point it may be more than rumor, but I’ve yet to confirm that) has it that George Lucas is making even more changes to the pictures at this point, including replacing Clive Revill with Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor in Empire and Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen as the ghostly apparition of Anakin Skywalker at the end of Jedi. There are a slew of other rumored “modifications” (and we’ll probably know more once the rest of the weekend’s announcements trickle out to the mainstream media), but at least those two are supported with alleged stills from the new versions (and yes, I know that in the Photoshop era, that means absolutely nothing, so I’m taking it with a very large grain of salt).
But you know what? I don’t really care. The fanboy purists are up in arms, screaming that their beloved childhood memories are being irrevocably desecrated. Okay, so Jabba looked ridiculously fake in his digital reinsertion. Greedo shooting first — in addition to being poorly executed — was just an old man’s sensibilities asserting themselves (no matter how much Lucas may delude himself, that is not what he intended all along). But on the whole, the “Special Editions” are more fun to watch. I’d much rather watch and enjoy a film without being distracted by the primitive effects than sit and reminisce nostalgically about how much more easily fooled we were way back when. And had they not been updated, the obviously outdated effects — which, let’s be honest, were more of a selling point than the story itself — would have cut off accessibility to future generations. Which, as I mentioned, was my objective this weekend.
Yeah, I know, from a film history standpoint, I’m speaking absolute blasphemy. But we’re not talking Citizen Kane here — it’s Star Wars. And if George wants to tweak things a bit more, I’m not going to freak out about it. Not that revision for revision’s sake is a good thing, but — as with so many other issues — we’re not talking about black-and-white extremes. There is a gray area here, and I’m willing to cut him a little slack.
Yesterday, I got my first official press pass. I attended the National Health Information Infrastructure 2004 Conference as a media representative from iHealthBeat — which is an on-line publication from California HealthCare Foundation, but is produced in partnership with The Advisory Board Company. (Got it all straight yet?)
In any case, we weren’t there for the whole conference, but just to tape opening presentations by HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and HCIT Coordinator David Brailer. Alas, Bill Frist postponed his speech until later in the morning, so we didn’t get to see him. Damn, I was so looking forward to that...
Seriously, though, I think I’ll avoid editorializing on the meeting itself. First of all, because I’m sure some folks here can do a much better job of it than I (at least with regard to certain of the participants), and second, because since my appearance was part of my day job, I’d like to avoid any ethical conflicts that may arise. After all, Prometheus Unleashed is hardly representative of the general political leanings of my employer.
I will, however, comment freely on what happened after we taped the conference. In order to post the video footage on the iHealthBeat website, we need to convert it into both Real and Windows Media formats (yeah, I know, QuickTime is infinitely superior to both of those, but that’s a battle we lost). Doing that conversion isn’t under my purview, but that of the publication’s Multimedia Editor; fair enough, she certainly knows what she’s doing.
But here’s the rub. She used to work using Premiere on the PC, but it proved so ridiculously unwieldy that she fought for and won the right to work on a Mac. Beautiful. Of course, with the advent of Final Cut Pro, Adobe killed development of Premiere on the Mac. All right, so you’d think it’d be a logical next step to transition to FCP; after all, that’s what I did, right?
I’ve got one word for you: Microsoft. Seems that good ol’ Billy Gates worked out a deal with Adobe that would allow for a Premiere plug-in to convert video into the hideous-yet-ubiquitous Windows Media format. But hmmm... Premiere for the Mac is dead. So the way it works now is as long as she stays using the old version of Premiere — under the no-longer-supported OS 9.2, no less — then all is well and good. ’Cause other than that, there is no way to create a Windows Media file on a Mac. None. It’s obviously not a technical limitation, since the Premiere plug-in proves that it can be done. But Microsoft wants to make absolutely sure that if you want to author media in the Windows Media format, you’re going to have to work on a Windows PC.
Premiere is buggy enough on the Mac — we ended up spending the whole afternoon yesterday just trying to get it to capture the video files. In the end, we were only partially successful — instead of the whole speeches, we were only able to capture snippets. To even consider going back to the PC would cripple productivity. But at the moment, that would look like the only option, at least at some point in the near future.
I’m less concerned about this specific problem than with the larger implications, given that Windows Media has been endorsed as a standard for the new HD DVDs. Gee, what do you think the chances are that Microsoft will make up some reason to bar the mastering of such discs on the Mac platform?
I’d put ’em at around 100 percent.
The Prometheus Unleashed archives are off-line for the moment. The files are there, but for some reason Blogger can’t actually display them. I’ll post an update as soon as I know more.
Update: All appears fixed now, though graphic links on the archive pages (which were relative links in the original posts) are broken across the board. I’ll have to fix that myself, but I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting...
Well, it looks like I need no longer consider my comparisons exaggeration — the Republican party (or at least the leadership thereof) has decided to stop pretending they’re not fascists.
Tom DeLay is spearheading legislation to remove from the courts altogether the authority to enforce the Constitution. As far as DeLay’s concerned, the Constitution is null and void — after all, if nobody has the authority to even hear cases about Constitutional violations, how is there any way to actually enforce that outdated piece of scrap paper?
As of tomorrow, it’s entirely possible that DeLay will have successfully staged the coup d’état he’s been working on for so long.
There’s a word for people like DeLay, and I’m not going to shy away from using it.
Traitor.
I thought I’d get one hell of a lot more accomplished this past weekend than I actually did. After all, Pam was taking the girls down to Virginia Beach for the weekend — I’d have plenty of time to get a lot of work done. Obviously, as evidenced by the past few entries, I managed to see four movies (way above my usual average), but that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
To be fair, I got a lot of yard work done, washed several loads of laundry, emptied the dishwasher, took out the garbage, gave the cat her insulin shots, bought more cat litter, picked up the second season of Project Greenlight on DVD, and cleaned out the air filter and dirt trap on the heat pump, but that’s not what I was hoping for either.
I’ve got a list of at least five writing projects on my immediate to-do list. And no, this doesn’t count as one of them. This is easy (well, at least relatively so); I just write whatever I want to. Sure, I recently set a goal for myself to write about the movies I watch (which I may yet come to regret), but it can still be pretty free-form; it’s not like I have to research a full-length review (and yes, a full-length review is one of those projects; three of them, actually). And let’s not consider that whole Senator e-mail address thing — sure, that took a lot of work, but mostly, I’m just babbling here.
Of those five writing projects, I finished... one. Yes, it was the one that I absolutely had to finish this weekend, so I suppose I’m capable of at least some prioritization. But I’m having some real trouble getting a lot of these off the ground. In reality, circumstances have allowed them to slide without real consequence (in other words, I’m not exactly learning a lesson here), but I want to get these done. And not just because I can check them off the daily list on my Palm (which reminds me — gotta pay that Diner’s Club bill). It’s seriously demoralizing to constantly have this list of unfinished projects on my plate.
At work, I’ve come to accept that some projects will just never get done; it’s been one of the toughest things to deal with, but one I’ve had to come to grips with in terms of being a manager — you do what you can, but you have to be realistic: If a client doesn’t care about a project, then it’s always going to be pushed to the bottom of the priority list. Until either the client forgets about it altogether or decides they actually do care about it, in which case it’s likely to be rethought to such a degree that it’s really a whole new project.
In any case, if you’re one of those people who’s waiting for me to finish one of those writing projects (and I figure that’s at least three of you reading this right now), I apologize. I’m not trying to stick your projects into that never-finished category, especially since, in the long run, it’s mostly myself I’m hurting by not completing them. But it’ll still be a while. (Especially since I don’t relish the thought of being apart from Pam and my little girls again in the immediate future. The cats are nice company, but I’m lonely; thankfully they return today.)
So much for my quitting my day job and becoming a writer on a full-time basis, eh?
No, come to think of it, it really is TV. It’s just better than most of the rest of TV.
After watching Blow Out last night, I caught a couple of season premieres on HBO that I thought were worth calling attention to. The first was the new series Entourage, which (if last night’s premiere is any indication) gives a pretty entertaining look at the life of Hollywood hangers-on. It also features some fine work from Jeremy Piven, of whom I’ve been a fan ever since I caught him in the short-lived sitcom Pride & Joy; here, as a Hollywood agent, he manages to be funny without going too far into caricature (as was sadly the case in the still-enjoyable Old School).
The other discovery was Da Ali G Show, now going into its second season. Having only a passing familiarity with it, I wasn’t particularly expecting to enjoy the show, but after catching a promising interview with creator/star Sacha Baron Cohen on The Daily Show, I thought I’d give it a look-see (as I had done with two new Comedy Central series, The Graham Norton Effect, and Crossballs, neither of which is making my watch list). Happily, I was pleasantly surprised; Cohen’s array of characters had me... if not rolling with laughter, then at least chuckling in near-continuous amusement. This episode’s encounter between “Kazakh journalist” Borat and two Mississippi wine-tasters is not to be missed. And I was pleased to see that Sam Donaldson — with whom I was able to chat a couple of years back after an introduction from David Bradley — managed to keep not only his composure but his sense of humor throughout.
Conventional wisdom holds that movies about “the industry” don’t connect with middle America. You know what? If that’s the case, then screw middle American sensibilities — I liked this movie.
Granted, Brian De Palma’s Blow Out is most assuredly a product of its time — 1981 — and has plot holes a mile wide (I’m sorry, but you don’t drive like a maniac through a Philadelphia parade and then just get on with your life afterward). And no doubt at the time, it was intended as just another star vehicle for John Travolta. But what makes this movie a fun ride is the story. Or, more specifically, the idea: An “earwitness” to a political assassination rather than the usual eyewitness.
The performances are serviceable, if not remarkable. John Travolta is... well, John Travolta, post-Saturday Night Fever, but pre-Look Who’s Talking. Future RoboCop co-star (and early De Palma regular) Nancy Allen holds her own in a role that really doesn’t require her to do much more than be there and act ditzy; Dennis Franz (also one of De Palma’s early stable of actors) puts in an appearance in an equally thankless role. Perhaps the best of the bunch is John Lithgow, back when he was still playing a wider range of characters — going in, I didn’t think I’d be able to get past the indelible impression of him as a comic actor, but you know what? He’s pretty damned scary when he wants to be.
In terms of De Palma’s work overall, this can’t come near to approaching the genius that is The Untouchables. And in terms of generating suspense, he doesn’t come close to Hitchcock level (though it’s still just as interesting an exercise to pick out his signature “moves” toward that end). But, as with his Body Double to follow, Blow Out does a great job of using movie industry conventions to make you look at things just a bit differently.
Or in this case, listen to things.
Also in the it’s-about-time category, I finally watched one of the few Hitchcock pictures I hadn’t yet seen: 1945’s Gregory Peck/Ingrid Bergman showcase Spellbound. And I think I’m about to tick off some film purists out there by saying... it was okay.
I love Hitchcock’s work, and from that perspective, the picture was by no means a disappointment. Everything from the story beats to the photography, lighting, pacing is definitively Hitchcock. (Not to mention the almost-requisite Hitchcock cameo, this time stepping out of a hotel elevator.) Gregory Peck manages to maintain an elegant composure while injecting his almost-trademark element of everyman vulnerability. And Ingrid Bergman is simply one of the most staggeringly beautiful leading ladies in history.
But where I had trouble is in how dated the picture is. Sure, it’s overtly sexist, but (at least in terms of the male characters’ behavior) that’s easy enough to get past, if for no other reason than it’s clearly appropriate for the time. It’s in the psychological aspect that it falls short. Not the film’s ability to play to our innermost thoughts, fears, and emotions — in that respect, Hitchcock is still in top form. No, I’m referring to the picture’s use of psychology as a story element. At the time, of course, the practice of psychiatry was substantially more of an enigma than it is today. While I won’t pretend that we laymen truly understand the intricacies of the science, we do — after decades of exposure to movies and other “entertainment” vehicles on the subject — have a great deal more sense of at least the basics of what’s involved. And for a picture populated by psychiatrists, the practicalities of the study come across as woefully simplistic. Today, a critic would scream that the writers needed to go back and research their film’s subject to a much greater degree. But even in the present day, a picture need not be wholly authentic, but just realistic enough to allow an audience to suspend disbelief — and the audiences of 1945 were no doubt perfectly willing to do so.
Then there’s the psychological basis for the lead characer’s actions. As a rule, Hitchcock’s pictures were never particularly complex in terms of human psychology (with the possible exception of Psycho). Sure, the picutres themselves fed us twists and turns, and never failed to maintain suspense, but we rarely emerged with a greater understanding of the motivations of human behavior. But in Spellbound, we have Bergman’s psychiatrist risking her entire career to “cure” the mentally blocked Peck in a matter of days — not as a professional challenge, but because after a single afternoon spent together, she’s fallen in love with him. Which, in turn, seems to have no real motivation other than that it’s what the story demands.
Hitchcock would return to the sudden-and-inexplicable-falling-in-love theme in later pictures (including one of my all-time favorite films, North by Northwest), but here, it truly comes across as forced, undermining our identification with Bergman as protagonist. At the time of the picture’s original release, this may not have been an issue — after all, she may be a doctor, but she’s also a woman, and we all know that women are prone to falling in love at the drop of a hat, right? Today, though, it’s just too big an obstacle to overcome.
The picture doesn’t fail to entertain, and even to experiment — for example, the use of Salvador Dali’s work as inspiration for its “dream sequences,” or the climactic shot of a handheld revolver in extreme close-up (in reality, an oversized prop) while action proceeds in the background beyond. And I’ll confess to being pleasantly surprised by some of the picture’s twists. But on the whole, while worth watching, I don’t think it’s going to make it into my personal “top films” list. Which, one of these days, I’ll actually get around to putting together in more than theoretical form.
So I finally got around to seeing the big summer blockbuster. And what can I say? They’ve outdone themselves.
And I say “they” rather than assigning primary credit to director Sam Raimi, because this is truly an example of an ensemble success. The performances are phenomenal (and kudos on bringing back even the supporting actors from the original picture). I can’t imagine how this would have turned out if, say, Tobey Maguire had been cut from the film (as was threatened at one point), or if J.K. Simmons had decided not to recreate his phenomenal blend of humor and villainy this time around.
All of this is not to say that the picture is flawless, but most such criticisms are minor. Just how strong is Spider-Man supposed to be? Isn’t John Jameson a little young to be an astronaut, let alone one who’s played football on the moon? Why doesn’t the assembled media react with some measure of amazement as Alfred Molina’s Dr. Octavius unveils his artifically-intelligent “assistants” (okay, so within the story, they’re just a means to an end, but they’re still revolutionary in their own right)? Wouldn’t Spider-Man start to lose one hell of a lot of his body mass continually leaving those webs all over the Manhattan skyline?
But where this movie succeeds best is in making you completely forget that it’s supposed to be an action picture. I found myself far more invested in the interpersonal relationships and internal struggles than in the “epic battle between good and evil” primary plot. Peter’s attempt to balance responsibility with personal desires, Mary Jane’s need to leave ambiguity behind and move on with her life, Harry’s alcohol-fueled obsession with avenging his father’s death. That’s what distinguished the original comic incarnation of Spider-Man from the larger-than-life superhero stories of its time: its humanity. No, it was never any more “believable” than its contemporaries, but it was far more credible in its treatment of character. The superhero/supervillain battles may be straightforward, black-and-white conflicts, but that was where the simplicity ended.
It’s all well and good to pretend that someone could carry on the whole secret-identity thing without personal consequences, but could anyone really expect a superhuman vigilante to be greeted with nothing but adulation? Spider-Man managed to add at least an element of the real world into its fantasy. And this picture, even more than its predecessor, manages to carry on that tradition.
(On the other hand, the filmmakers also succeed in no small part because they do not listen too intently to the fanboy contingent. A quick glance at any number of comic-oriented message boards will reveal a plethora of seriously disastrous suggestions — or, more often, “demands.” I’m happy they managed to pay homage to the rich history of the comic — sticking in appearances by Dr. Curt “Lizard” Connors and John “Man-Wolf” Jameson, for example — but movies are not comics, and different rules apply.)
But for those just looking for some entertaining summer diversion, rest assured that Spider-Man 2 still kicks some serious ass in the action department, not to mention showcasing a serious improvement in the arena of visual effects. Given the movie’s box-office performance to date, it’s probably safe to assume that most readers here have already hit the multiplexes, but if not, don’t wait much longer. The story will certainly play well on home video, but the visuals will suffer, particularly since Raimi opted to showcase them in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen (the original was 1.85:1).
Not that I won’t be first in line to pick up the DVD, but some things you really should see on the big screen.
A particularly well-written column by Colbert I. King in today’s Post on why merely voting little George out of office come November is by no means truly holding him (or his co-conspirators) “accountable” for the deception that led to the utter fiasco that is the Iraq war. Being held responsible for one’s actions is a staple of our justice system — and at least in theory, not even the chief executive is supposed to be above the law. Nobody balks at holding Naomi Lewis responsible for having weapons on school property — as connected with an incident in which (thankfully) nobody was injured — and yet this regime is nearing the 1,000 mark in U.S. soldier deaths (to say nothing of the thousands maimed, or the more than 11,000 Iraqi casualties) with virtually nobody of consequence clamoring for criminal indictments.
I understand that we need to fight one battle at a time, and right now, the most important battle is removing Duh-bya from office. But once that’s accomplished, I know at least one person who will be more than ready for the next fight.
Yes, you read that right. My movie of choice last night was none other than Rocky IV, the Sylvester Stallone-directed nadir of the Rocky series (and that’s saying something). By way of justification, let me make clear that I made no actual effort to watch the movie — it was showing on American Movie Classics (which does make me question their “classic” selection process). That also means we were watching a no doubt sanitized-for-television version complete with commercial breaks. In pan-and-scan format, no less. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even consider such a viewing to count in my little “movie night” series (for which the ratings are... well, about the same as every other entry here), but come on — it’s Rocky IV. Who cares?
There is, of course, absolutely nothing original about this picture; it adheres unswervingly to the formula established in the first Rocky picture (well, I suppose the real formula was established in the second picture, but since it relied so heavily on the original, I’ll give credit where it’s due). In fact, this movie is so light on story that it has to fill time with interminable montage sequences from the previous pictures, all cut to that absolutely charming eighties pop music.
So why on Earth did I watch it — again, as I had seen it in its original release (hey, cut me some slack: I was in high school)? Simple — because no matter how terrible a movie it may be, it is a fantastic window into the national mentality at the height of the Reagan era. Stallone, of course, was coming off the heels off his equally insipid (but ridiculously successful) Rambo, and it only made sense to bring that picture’s villains — the Soviets — over to his other franchise character. Remember, this was in 1985, and while we did have the Libyans as stock villains (see Back to the Future), the Soviets were still the ultimate baddies. This was shortly after Gorbachev came into power, well before we had any idea of the reforms he would implement; at the time, he appeared just another in a series of Communist strongmen.
And I must confess, I really enjoyed watching the movie; not just in so-bad-it’s-funny amusement, but in an “I can’t believe we thought like this” way. Not to minimize the threat of the Soviet Union, but the movie plays into every dehumanizing sterotype about the “evil empire.” The emotionless mien of the Russian power-brokers, the constant KGB (or perhaps it was the GRU — they sort of glide past any specifics) surveillance, the physical cold of Siberia (okay, it’s probably not supposed to be Siberia, but we get the idea), the omnipresence of the Red Army, the ubiquitous red (supplemented by a tasteful smattering of grey) in all of their decorating.
Of course, the picture insists on adding in a little message of hope at the end (I hope I’m not giving too much away, but... Rocky wins), when the Moscow fight crowd starts cheering for Rocky; all those poor, oppressed folks need is a taste of good ol’ American spunk and they’ll instantly forget any nationalist sympathies. Even the Gorbachev stand-in starts applauding for the little American underdog. Rocky — draped in an American flag — opines (in his Philadelphia street-speak, which he had somehow shed during the rest of the picture) that if he can change, and they can change, then maybe everyone can change.
Just as long as the American kicks the Russian’s ass first.
Better late than never, right? Okay, so technically, there wasn’t a vote on the actual merits of the amendment, just a failure to bring it to a vote. But since — with the exception of Kerry and Edwards, who are out campaigning — every senator took a stand on that issue, I’m calling ’em as I see ’em. And I love Patrick Leahy’s comment that Republicans “propose turning the Constitution of the United States from the fundamental charter preserving our freedoms into a kiosk for political bumper stickers.” Great line.
On a quick side note, I found it particularly amusing that the Log Cabin Republicans are saying they’re upset with Bush for supporting the amendment. Hello! You’re just getting upset now? Hey, I’m sympathetic, but you don’t exactly have a whole hell of a lot of credibiility. It’d be one thing if you called yourselves “Log Cabin Conservatives,” or something along those lines, but in your very name you’ve allied yourselves with a group that — and I’m not going to mince words here — actively hates you. Not dislikes you, but (on the whole) would be happier if you just died off; not that they’re actively going to kill you, but they’re not about to get in the way of God’s doing it (“Maybe the Lord brought down this plague [because] illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments,” and the like). Oh, I don’t mean that people who vote Republican necessarily hate you — after all, there are any number of issues at stake in a voting decision — but the Republican party as an organization long ago sold itself out to the extreme right-wing freaks. It started with big George’s pandering to them after losing to Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire, and gained momentum when Newt Gingrich took out his “contract on America,” but was pretty much a lock once little George got the GOP nomination. Now, to be fair, it would appear that the story that made such a big deal about this was a rebroadcast of an April story. Still, a little bit late to be blowing the whistle, there, guys.
And I’m not sure quite what to think of the campaign to out gay staffers of those who favor the amendment. It may not really be productive, but I don’t think “collaborators” throughout history have garnered a whole lot of sympathy when called on it. Judge for yourself, but I will point out the site to you: DearMary.com.
But without further ado, here are the villains of the hour — make sure to let them know just what you feel about them. (Seriously, do it — you have no idea how tough it was to track some of these e-mail addresses down.)
First we have our original bill sponsors, the lowest of the low: Wayne Allard, Sam Brownback, Thad Cochran, Larry Craig, Michael Crapo, Michael Enzi, Peter Fitzgerald, Bill Frist, Orrin Hatch, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jim Inhofe, Jon Kyl, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, good ol’ Zell Miller, Rick Santorum, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, and Jim Talent. Wouldn’t hurt to write ’em again, just to make sure they get the message (and if you didn’t write before, you owe two messages now — get busy).
Joining their Republican brethren are: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, George Allen and John Warner (who I used to think was okay for a Republican — no more) of Virginia, Robert Bennett of Utah, Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Conrad Burns of Montana, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Cornyn of Texas (man, this e-mail address was easily the most difficult to track down), Mike DeWine and Voinovich, George of Ohio, Elizabeth Dole (who I also used to respect) of North Carolina, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, John Ensign of Nevada, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Don Nickles of Oklahoma, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Craig Thomas of Wyoming.
And crossing over the aisle (though what political benefit this lot of scum thinks it’ll get is beyond me): Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
So there’s the list. Time to get cracking...
First of all, an aside: I heard a pretty good story on NPR this morning about the citation of foreign law in United States court decisions. When the story first began, my initial thought was, “Of course you can’t cite other nations’ laws in our court rulings.” But, as is so often the case, it’s not quite so black-and-white as I initially thought. Give it a listen.
But now, the call to arms: The time has come. The United States Senate has decided to forge ahead and defecate on the United States Constitution. (I’ll concede that my metaphors have become a tad scatological on this subject, what with my earlier assessment that little George was pissing on it. What can I say? The description is particularly appropriate.)
Now, in an effort not to dwell exclusively on the negative, I have endeavored to seek out something positive in this action, and I believe that — after a sizable amount of investigation — I have found it. There is a singular educational opportunity present here: While it is patently evident that any Senator supporting this bill is the paradigmatic example of scum, there are in fact two entirely separate sorts of scum involved here. I hold that a careful evaluation of the difference may prove edifying.
The first sort of scum is that which truly and wholeheartedly supports the notion of amending the Constitution to enshrine the actual prohibition of civil rights on a portion of the population. This despite the only historical precedent for such action — the one commonly referred to by the very word “prohibition” — having had a less than positive effect on the nation as a whole, to say nothing of the inanity of inserting a matter of ordinary stature law into the structural underpinning of the nation (an issue I have discussed previously). This is perhaps the more repugnant of the two varieties, in that — even ignoring the lack of respect for basic legal rights issue at stake — it shows neither understanding nor respect for the document that provides the very structure of our nation. A document that, when taken along with its amedments, is unique in its enumeration of the rights granted — not forbidden — to its citizens. In other words, this variety is actively anti-American, a quality which could be understood, if not endorsed, in the world outside our borders (to each his own), but certainly not in the very legislative representatives of the nation they — by their actions — profess to abhor.
The second variety, though perhaps in some respects less overtly vile, is in reality equally insidious. This is the variety that does understand that such an amendment is wrong (do please see the dictionary definition of “understatement”), but chooses to support it anyway, in a transparent attempt to appeal to the all-powerful right-wing extremist GOP “base.” Of course, perhaps my lessened condemnation of this variety is misguided, in that the sheer number of politicians of this stripe is so prevalent throughout history that familiarity has rendered them less vomit-inducing.
Voting is scheduled to take place tomorrow, and while the likelihood of any Senator actually being influenced by his consituents hovers somewhere around zero (if not venturing into the negative), I will still encourage one and all to do what they can to contact their Senators and make it clear that — while their decisions on this may not be swayed — the consequences of such a decision cannot be escaped. I find it most curious: While the term “un-American” is thankfully less prevalent in the present day, even rarer is the individual who would choose to affix himself with that label, as support for this bill most emphatically does.
Incidentally, if some Senators seem intent on defecating on the very fabric of the nation, I think it only appropriate to publish a “shit list” right here. The contact information will most likely be just that which is available to the public at large (though even so, it frequently requires digging around in some source code), but in the admittedly unlikely event that I’m able to come across a more effective way to ensure that your elected leaders actually see your messages (come on, do you really believe any Senator reads a single message sent to his “official” email address?), then I’ll be sure to pass that information along. Strictly in the interests of effective governance, you understand.
That said, I will refrain from “blacklisting” most Senators before the vote — after all, one’s intended decision can certainly change before tomorrow — but I feel no need to accord such a courtesy to those actually sponsoring this abomination. So please, pass along your most eloquent expression of eternal condemnation (but no threats, please — with as limited a readership as I have, I can’t afford to have any of you carted off to Gitmo by the secret police) to:
Senator Wayne Allard of “the Hate State” (though Virginia’s been giving it a run for its money of late) and initial sponsor of the bill, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Thad Cochran and Trent Lott of Mississippi, Larry Craig and Michael Crapo of Idaho, Michael Enzi of Wyoming, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, Bill Frist of Tennessee, Orrin Hatch of Utah (FYI, it took me quite a while to find that e-mail address; he’s gone out of his way to hide it, no doubt after his hypocritical endorsement of hacking attacks against software pirates — while his own website was using pirated software), Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Zell Miller of Georgia, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (he’s gone pretty far to hide his e-mail address as well, encoding all of the text in ISO entity numeric code — who does he think he’s fooling?), Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby of Alabama, and Jim Talent of Missouri. (I don’t think I need mention that — with the curious exception of Zell Miller — they’re all Republicans.)
Some of those addresses may not get through, since the majority of them were culled from the source code of the form pages the Senators have set up on their official sites. After all, why should they have to deal with the spam the rest of us have to wade through? And if that’s the case, feel free to visit their official contact pages to drop them a line. Not that those messages will get through either, but if life gets uncomfortable enough for the weasel who does have to read through them, it’s certainly conceivable that a message might get passed along...
Don’t be shy, now. Share with them the lessons we’ve all learned here today.
“Hold on, a rock concert in the middle of the day...? Wait a minute, what am I saying? Yeah, like that’s the most unrealistic part.”
Pam had the presence of mind to catch herself before she started anlyzing School of Rock all that deeply. Still, coming from director Richard Linklater (of Slackers fame), one might be forgiven for thinking this would be... if not serious, then that it would take itself a bit more seriously. But other than a very thoroughly researched and presented appreciation of the finer points of classic rock, the movie’s intended strictly as an entertaining diversion.
And divert it does. Yes, there are times when credibility is stretched well beyond the breaking point, but Jack Black’s ridiculously over-the-top antics remind you once again that yes, it’s only a movie. Just go with it.
And hey, the girls loved it (or at least our eight-year-old did — to be fair, it was a little beyond our youngest). Yes, it’s rated PG-13, but it’s a fairly mild PG-13. In fact, I find it hard to believe that this movie garners the same rating as, say, Jurassic Park; just goes to show you that the MPAA has its head firmly ensconced up its ass (or perhaps it’s indicative of the ludicrously skewed priorities of our nation as a whole, truly a scarier prospect). The picture never stoops to moralizing, but the “messages” (if one could really call them that) are invariably positive. Even the snotty little brown-nosing smarty-pants ends up having a valuable role to play (in fact, she ended up being my daughter’s favorite character).
Of course, her enjoyment means I’ve got a new mission: Find out if the movie’s signature song is available at the iTunes Music Store...
Nope. Oh, well. We’ll see how she takes it, but I might end up having to shell out a bit more for the whole soundtrack. Which, given a couple of the other tracks on it, might not be all that big a sacrifice.
Yeah, keep sticking to your story, little Georgie. Even the idiots are starting to realize you’re talking out of your ass.
Oh, and nice attempt to blur perception by claiming that Iraq was the real threat while posing with Libyan nuclear paraphernalia. Ridiculously transparent, but when you’re grasping at straws, I suppose you’ll try anything.
In the face of plummeting approval ratings, it’s only natural that Duh-bya’s cronies (or “unindicted co-conspirators”) should start brainstorming how they can steal this election as well.
“Hmmm... what if, at the last minute, we changed the election day? So if things were looking bad for little George, we could just say, ‘Sorry, folks, we’ve decided to have the election next week.’ Then we could have time to regroup, blame it all on the terrorists, whatever. Whaddaya think?”
While it’s certainly conceivable to imagine a scenario in which an election might have to be moved, it’s a bit of a stretch. What is an immeasurably more likely scenario is that they’ll start making up some vague, undefined “threats” (oh, wait, they’ve already done that part) that will necessitate postponing the election until things are “under control.”
And in this regime’s interpretation, since there is no end to the “threat,” the new election date will be... hmmm, let’s see... never.
It appears that in the course of looking into the Enron collapse, investigators have uncovered evidence that may show that all-around scumbag Tom DeLay is guilty of illegal fundraising as part of his whole effort to illegitimately redistrict Texas to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
If all goes well, he could be facing ten years in prison. One can only hope.
When is a thief not a thief? When he’s stealing from a bigger thief. The tagline for the original Rat Pack incarnation of the picture (which, for the record, I have not seen) was “In any other town, they’d be the bad guys.” That certainly holds true in Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven revision.
On the surface, it’s strange — the “villain” in Ocean’s Eleven isn’t living off of ill-gotten gains, unlike the more explicitly villainous antagonists in another recent heist picture, The Italian Job. He’s ruthless, to be sure, and rules his world autocratically, but substantively, he’s a legitimate businessman. So why do we, as viewers, have no moral qualms about robbing him to the tune of $160 million dollars?
It’s all about Vegas, baby. In Las Vegas, the normal definitions of right and wrong tend to fade away. Face it: The entire city is based on the notion of conning people out of their money. And while the current tenants may be legitimate, the city was founded (at least in its current form) by gangsters. Profiting from gambling may be legal there, but it’ll never be particularly ethical. Of course, the same applies (much more so) to state lotteries, which have odds so atrocious that they’d be shut down in a heartbeat in Vegas. “Let me get this straight: You’ve outlawed gambling because it’s immoral, and takes advantage of poor people who don’t know better, but somehow if you do it, it’s okay?” Talk about hypocritical. Gangsters who hold political office are no more ethical than gangsters who own casinos. Can anyone think of a (good) heist picture that focuses on the theft of lottery proceeds? If not, I may have a project to start on...
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that — in addition to being brilliantly written, acted, and directed — the picture is so clearly just plain fun, both for those making it and, by extension, those of us watching it. To be fair, much the same thing is said of the original — except that in the original, said “fun” included being drunk enough that the audience never felt in on the enjoyment.
I don’t know if Soderbergh and company will be able to recapture the pure joy they did this time around, but I can’t wait to find out.
Okay, so Love Actually is clearly not as important to the very survival of our way of life as Fahrenheit 9/11, but to be honest, I needed a little break after something so heavy.
I’ve loved Four Weddings and a Funeral since I originally saw it during its theatrical run, and I had high hopes for Love Actually, its being the directorial debut of the writer of Weddings (not to mention Notting Hill), Richard Curtis. Of course, being a good writer doesn’t make one a good (or even capable) director, but I was optimistic that his obvious understanding of both character and dialogue would at least give him a bit of an edge over, say, a Joe Eszterhas.
Obviously, I thought enough of it to pick it up on DVD (or at least to buy it for Pam on DVD). It’s far from flawless, but watching it last night, I think I found a bit of a counterargument against its most frequent criticism — that it tried to cover too much territory, to focus on too many individual characters and stories.
A fair criticism, perhaps, but not quite accurate... a bit of an oversimplification. With allowances for the occasional storyline confusion, the key question becomes whether or not any of the primary storylines are shortchanged. And in this case, the answer is no — surely, any of them could have more detail, I don’t think any of them requires it. It’s a moderately sophisticated romantic comedy, not a heavy drama.
Now, where the picture does fall short is in the secondary storylines, which range from the amusing to the implausible. While they’re consistently amusing, they’re all too different in kind from the primaries. They serve merely as filler pieces, without any of the character depth (or at least much less of it) than the remainder of the picture. Still, I would rather have kept those stories and developed them a bit more than to have them excised altogether.
In any case, a fun little holiday picture, and well worth an occasional revisiting.
First of all, the most important observation: No, I’m not actually in Fahrenheit 9/11. I did manage to spot a few coworkers (including Loose Ends star Nello DeBlasio, in what may be his big-screen debut, if being on for maybe 20 frames in the background of one shot counts), but alas, it would appear that I positioned myself poorly on the original shooting day.
But as for the picture itself, I must say that — while perhaps not the finest example of the art of filmmaking, it does stand as the single most important picture of the year, if not the decade. As for criticism, much can (and has been) leveled against it, from the picture’s disjointed structure (is its primary substantive focus meant to be the stolen 2000 election, the Bush-bin Laden family connections, or the motivations for waging war in Iraq?) to Moore’s skewing of (still substantively accurate) facts (that Bush spent 42 percent of his time in office before September 11 on vacation may be technically true, but that figure does include weekends). I myself found fault with the film’s glossing over of the role of the neoimperialist agenda and its proponents in leading to the Iraq invasion, instead focusing on why we did not invade rather than why we did. But to spend too much effort concentrating on those flaws is at best misunderstanding or at worst willful self-deception.
What is made abundantly clear is this: George W. Bush is not only the most incompetent person ever to hold the office of the presidency, but his actions are motivated purely by self-interest, with no regard whatsoever for the interests of the United States of America. I’ve often given little George a bit of a pass, if only because his obvoius idiocy has made him the target of flagrant manipulation by the soulless vultures around him; that lenience ends now. Are Bush’s cronies and handlers — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Harris, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, et al. — worse than he is? Most assuredly. But Bush is the only one of them ultimately answerable to the American public. Their relative level of evil may be different, but even as the least of them, Shrub does a pretty indisputable job of tipping the scales in that direction. I don’t believe in the existence of Hell, but if I’m wrong, this vile excuse for a human being has long ago earned an express ticket. However, since (even as an ordained minister) my ability to effect such a sentence is limited, I will do whatever I can to ensure that the lot of them spend the rest of their miserable lives behind bars (I hear Gitmo may have room pretty soon).
Removing Bush from office is no longer a matter of preference, but a matter of survival. This regime has made the world a phenomenally more dangerous one, not only failing to stem terrorism, but actively worsening it. By his actions, he has made American citizens not only the subject of worldwide derision, but the targets of a great many more extremists than when he took office.
Does Moore endorse another candidate? Not even in passing. This film is most emphatically not a pro-Kerry piece. What it is is a thought-provoking work, an absolute must-see. Argue, dispute, counter as you will — please do — but do not ignore it. I’d be exaggerating to say that your life depends on it (I knew how I was voting well before I saw this movie), but I don’t believe I’m exaggerating by suggesting that our collective lives do depend on our addressing the issues raised therein.
Bravo, Michael. You’ve done your nation a far greater service than anything George Bush has done or could ever dream of accomplishing.
Duh-bya and his cronies are coordinating the timing of international antiterrorist actions to give him the most favorable appearance in the upcoming elections.
No, the regime is (probably) not hanging onto bin Laden so they can trot him out right before November (and before anyone starts calling me irresponsible for the very suggestion, I wholeheartedly believe they’d do it in a heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it). But they’re sure as hell doing their best to make sure that the timing works out for them if they do capture him. And hey, if not him, then any of his al Qaeda buddies probably wouldn’t hurt — just don’t catch ’em before the end of July.
National (and international) security interests be damned — little George’s political aspirations have to take precedence.
In case it weren’t clear enough: The overtly fascist leadership of the House GOP is out of its collective goddamn mind (I figure they share maybe one brain between them), and they’re not above a little extortion to get their way, even if it means railroading those Republicans who can actually think coherently.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives took up a bill repealing certain sections of the largely reprehensible USA Patriot Act. Not trying to invalidate the whole thing, but just those provisions that gave Ashcroft’s Secret Police the near-unlimited authority to snoop around your library and bookstore records whenever they feel like it — all they have to do right now is whisper “national security” and they’re in. The bill had support on both sides of the aisle — not overwhelming support, granted, but a degree of bipartisan support nonetheless. After all, it’s hard to come up with a supportable argument for throwing people’s privacy rights out the window — especially when there aren’t corporate interests involved (which, as we all know, totally trump individual interests in the good ol’ GOP).
In fact, as the stated close of voting neared, the bill looked sure to pass: 219 for, 201 against. Not enough to overcome a threatened Duh-bya veto, but enough to ensure that he’d have to explicitly make that veto (well, there’s that pesky Senate to consider, but one battle at a time).
And then the vermin stepped in. The fascist wing of the Republican party decided to bully the more libertarian-minded members into changing their votes. Of course, they couldn’t do this in the time allotted, so they illegitimately kept the voting open until their threats had generated the votes they needed — 38 minutes instead of the mandated 15-minute time frame.
The Democrats started up a unified chant of “Shame... Shame... Shame...,” and rightly so. Not directed against those who initially voted against the bill — after all, they’re irredeemable fascists to begin with. No, the real shame lies with those who later decided to sell the nation’s soul to please the despotists.
I will say one thing for the right-wing freaks running the show: They’ve finally managed to unite the Democrats against what is truly the greatest threat to American freedom.
Them.
Okay, in a most likely doomed attempt to bring this column back around to its original not-strictly-political purpose, I think I’ll start adding a “movie night” feature. Basically, whenever I actually manage to sit and watch a movie — in the theater, on DVD, whatever — I’ll make a brief note of it and jot down a couple of quick thoughts. Nothing approaching a true “review” (’cause I’m already about six months behind on my official reviews), but just whatever little “nugget” crosses my mind.
Just to allay any incipient fears — I’m not about to start pulling a Harry Knowles, enumerating every nauseating little detail about my movie-watching experience. Just a few sentences about what I came away with. Nor do I expect this to be an all-too-frequent feature; since most of the movies I enjoy aren’t exactly child-friendly, my opportunities to watch — at least until the girls get older and can more readily occupy themselves during the evening hours — are frightfully limited.
So last night’s movie of choice was Christopher Nolan’s Memento. I’ve got the Limited Edition version of the DVD, which has been the subject of innumerable tirades against its near-incomprehensible navigation scheme. While I will say that it’s... difficult to navigate (I’m getting pretty good at this understatement thing), that’s part of the appeal; the disc’s layout perfectly sets the tone for the picture, a bit like an opening act for a stage performer. I absolutely love it, and wouldn’t have it any other way. I wish more discs took chances like this and produced something which truly enhances the movie-watching experience; given the disc’s overwhelmingly negative reception, however, I think the chances of that happening are somewhere akin to the odds of my (ever) voting Republican.
In essence, both discs open with what appears to be a memory test. The first disc — containing the movie itself — flashes an increasingly rapid-fire series of words, then presents a five-column list of words asking you to select those that were not shown previously (the second disc — the special features — does the same but with images). Of course, it’s impossible to remember the words that were displayed, as many of them lasted all of a single frame of video. A little patience will pay off, though — first of all, not all of the words can be selected. Second, only one word in each column really makes sense in context: “read” (subtitles), “listen” (audio options), “watch” (view movie), “chapters” (chapter selection), and “comments” (director’s commentary). And third, if you wait a few seconds, the wrong words will all dim to about half-opacity, making the correct options all the more obvious.
Admittedly, the second disc is more obscure — the pictures don’t make any intuitive sense, and don’t lead directly to the extras, but rather to succeeding “psychology test” pages. But then again, the extras are just that: extras. If you’re obsessive enough to want to watch all of them (as I am), then you’re likely to be sufficiently persistent in your investigations of the disc itself, in the process gaining a healthy appreciation for the massive amount of thought and creative artistry that went into the mastering. In the end, of course, that persistence will pay off — probably the best extra on that second disc is the ability to watch the movie in chronological order; if you haven’t actually seen Memento, that might not seem to make sense, but trust me, that’s a pretty illuminating feature. Better yet, don’t trust me — just go watch the movie.
All of which brings me to my real observation about the movie itself, a point which was driven home to me by the neophyte audience with whom I was watching. Yes, Memento is a fascinating tale in its own right, but what never ceases to amaze me is how such an amazingly complex storytelling method can at the same time be completely comprehensible. Whereas, say, Pulp Fiction played with chronology and generated no small amount of confusion in the process, Memento manages to keep the audience completely aware of where events fall in the film’s ordered world (or at least as “aware” as they need to be at any given moment).
Unfortunately, Pam wasn’t able to watch the movie with the rest of us last night, occupied as she was with getting the girls ready for bed. Which means she’ll want to watch it again later. And I’ll happily join her.
Remember, that’s not an oxymoron, it’s a contradiction in terms. Bet you’re thinking that with a headline like that, I’m gonna talk about the Ken Lay indictment. Nope. Too obvious.
Instead, I want to draw your attention to yesterday’s settlement between the FTC and the weasels at Gateway Learning (and by the way, if you were ever thinking of using the Hooked on Phonics program — Gateway’s signature product — I suspect you may rethink that decision shortly).
It seems that Gateway — after gathering a whole slew of personally identifiable data from its website — names, addresses, children’s ages and genders, etc. — decided to change its so-called “privacy policy” (perhaps more accurately called a no-privacy policy) to allow it to share all that data with marketers at will. Now, the only reason it became a legal issue is that the original privacy policy, under which the data had been collected, specifically disallowed any such sharing without explicit customer consent. No effort whatsoever was made to actually contact any of the existing customers to either inform them of the change or allow them an opportunity to opt out of such sharing.
That’s a pretty big problem — especially when you consider they’re gathering data about children. So you’d think the FTC would have thrown the book at them, right? Hardly. The case was settled for $4,600 — exactly the amount that Gateway allegely made from the original sale of data.
Well, wait a minute, you say (or I imagine you do, anyway); it’s not like they made a whole lot of money off of this sale — why should the fine be any bigger?
Let’s look at it from a corporate perspective. The FTC has just demonstrated by example that if you’re caught illegally sharing private, personally identifiable information, at worst you’ll have to pay back the money you got. Since the chance of being caught is less than 100 percent, your expected return on such a venture is clearly in the positive. Why not share the data, whatever your professed “privacy policy”?
There have, to date, been few efforts made to truly protect consumer privacy on-line. Opponents to any such legislation argue that industry self-regulation will work best. Of course, there’s a slight flaw in that reasoning: Judging by historical precedent, “industry self-regulation” never works. Why? Because in a capitalist system, there is no such thing as corporate ethics. They do not exist.
That’s not to say that some perfectly ethical people don’t run major corporations. I’ve met a few myself. But by its very nature, capitalism makes no allowance whatsoever for ethical behavior — it’s all about profit; all other considerations are insignificant. Now, in theory, competitive capitalism should produce behaviors that work to the benefit of society: Not just lower prices, but corporate behavior that consumers find palatable. After all — again in theory — consumers have the power to “shop elsewhere,” thereby motivating companies to change objectionable practices.
But only a blind fool could claim that this is how things work in the real world. First of all, we don’t have a truly competitive business environment — not even close. While the handful of major corporations that control any particular industry may not explicitly collaborate in unpalatable practices, there is sure as hell an implicit agreement to avoid “rocking the boat” until it becomes absoutely necessary. If my major competitor and I rely on child labor in, say, Pakistan, to produce our products, it is not in my interests to change that policy. Why? Because in the short term, I’ll be cutting my available labor pool down substantially, and therefore I’ll have to pay more, hurting my immediate bottom line.
But let’s assume for the moment that I’m a visionary CEO able to think beyond the immediate quarterly figures (a stretch, but we’ll allow it for the sake of argument). In the long term, should my strategy not prove viable — after all, objection to child labor is hardly the only factor in a consumer’s decision — my competitor will have a substantial advantage, and I’ll be out on my ass with nothing more than a multimillion-dollar severance package. But even if it does prove advantageous, I will have achieved at best a temporary advantage over my competitor, who will doubtless follow suit. Once he also abolishes child labor, we will both be paying more for labor — and doing so into the foreseeable future. Who wins in that situation?
In the end, that’s the major problem I have with the Libertarian outlook (or at least the version of it espoused by the party itself). The basic theory underlying it is perfectly sound — a government does not have the right to legislate against the rights of individuals until such time as the individual’s actions impinge on the rights of others. (We disagree about government’s role in providing overall benefit to society, but their position at least makes perfect sense.) Unfortunately, the tough part comes in figuring out where that line is drawn between acceptable individual behavior and harming others. Capitalism, as I’ve argued, is (or has the likelihood of being) harmful to others. Not that it’s all bad, by any means. To a degree, it does provide a number of benefits to society. But to pretend that in all cases it will do so is woefully naive. So even were I to accept the “hands-off” position (which I do almost wholeheartedly on social issues), I would say that absent governmental regulation of capitalist behavior, we will have crossed that line by miles.
I’m sorry, but a mean CEO-to-average-worker salary ratio going from 42:1 in 1982 to 301:1 in 2003 ($155,769 per week for the CEO, $517 per week for the worker) is in no respect ethical behavior. And there’s no chance that “industry self-regulation” is going to change that. It’s the “hands-off,” “greed is good” approach that got us there.
The moral of the story? Fire the asshole who’s acting as this nation’s CEO.
You knew I had to be getting around to that eventually, right?
According to a recent article in The New York Times, the DNC and John Kerry websites rely on open-source software.
The sites of Duh-bya and the G.O.P.? I’ll give you one guess.
That’s right. Microsoft.
(Thanks to Lisa K for the heads-up.)
And if I worked in Virginia, as of yesterday, I could now demand it (well, since I’m management, not really).
Whoops! Looks like Virginia — in an attempt to wipe out some of the notorious “blue laws” still on the books — inadvertently reinstated one of them. Namely, that all nonmanagerial Virginia workers have the absolute right to demand either Saturday or Sunday (or another day of their choosing) off as a “day of rest” for religious reasons. The mistake arose from the ostensibly simple wording of the bill, which while eliminating certain laws, also eliminated a series of exceptions to certain sections of the Virginia code (40.1-28.1, 40.1-28.2, 40.1-28.3 and 40.1-28.4) that the repealed laws had made. (Alas, because the Virginia code pages have now removed the repealed sections, I can’t easily check on the specifics of the exemptions, though I was able to find a PDF advisory summary.)
Business leaders in Virginia are in a panic, fearing that people will start demanding to be able to take a day off (most likely Sunday, given the largely Christian population), and legislators are scrambling to figure out the quickest way to solve the problem. But short of calling a special legislative session, there’s probably not a whole lot they can do about it right away.
The wording of 40.1-28.3 might be open to Constitutional challenge, as it explicitly mentions the observance of a particular religion — not to mention placing a much higher burden on the employee to prove that he or she observes Saturday as a “Sabbath,” as compared with the selection of Sunday as the day of choice (as delineated in 40.1-28.2). But even so, these laws have been on the books for a while now without anyone raising much of a fuss. All that’s changed now is that they apply to a much wider range of employees.
In theory, of course, I wouldn’t have a problem with the law — after all, what ethical argument can be made for working people seven days a week? But where it becomes an issue is the likelihood that — as people become more aware of the law — a vast majority of people will (as they should, all other things being equal) exercise their rights under the law. Which means — just running through the exemptions that were removed:
No more buses or taxis on Sunday (transportation systems are no longer exempt). No public utilities work or maintenance (there is an “emergency” exception, but it’s never been specifically defined). No publishing or book sales. No open gas stations. No movies, radio, or television. No medical services. No athletic events or recreational activities. No open nurseries or floral shops. No pharmacies or “baby supplies.” No “food warehouses” (I wonder if Wal-Mart counts). No restaurants. No janitorial services. No hotels or funeral parlors (why these two are grouped together I have no idea). No mining. No tobacco sales (I can hear the smokers panicking at that one). No drugstores (differentiated from pharmacies). No specialty stores (novelty shops, camera supplies, pet stores, etc.). No real estate. No automatic services (ATMs, perhaps?). No sales on pulic property. No commercial telephone operators (though these have largely been replaced by impossible-to-navigate automated systems now anyway). And — oddly enough — no nonprofit charity work.
Now remember, none of these are guaranteed to disappear. But any employee who chooses to take Sunday off can do so without penalty. In other words, there’s nothing to prevent all employees from demanding that day off. Nor can businesses hire people based on their willingness to work Sundays — as that could be construed as discrimination.
In reality, of course, a lot of these positions are filled by hourly as opposed to salaried workers — which means they’re perfectly free to exercise their right, but they won’t get paid. So for the most part, I don’t foresee a precipitous loss of workers.
But still, it just goes to show you that our legislators just might want to read what they’re voting for before they actually do so. Sure, not as horrifically appalling as, say, voting for the Patriot Act, but not exactly a shining moment.
Not only is Big Brother watching, but Big Sister, Mom and Dad, and the Neighbor Down the Block...
In what can only be described as a horrific assault on individual privacy, an Appeals Court in Massachusetts just ruled that e-mail is not subject to the same privacy laws that govern telephone conversation, regular mail, or other forms of communication.
That’s scary enough as it is, but the reality is that because the court used a rather narrow technical loophole as its rationale — the data is “stored” on a computer between when it is transmitted and when it is received — expect this argument to be applied to more traditional communications systems as well, as technological advances (IP-based telephony, for example) blur the lines between old and new methods.
That psycho John Ashcroft has got to be jumping for joy right now.
Update: This Post editorial says it more eloquently than I, but with no real mention of the “creep” into more traditional communication methods. Maybe I’m thinking too much about the possibilities, but I’d rather be wary than careless.
It always seems like these things hit you when you’re having what would otherwise be a fairly enjoyable day. Not one of your best days, to be sure — that would be too obvious — but one of those days when things generally seem to be going pretty well, when the weather’s not too cold, not too hot, nothing really to complain about, and you’re doing your best to hang onto a relatively satisfied mind-set.
That’s when life decides to see how far into the air it can launch you with a nice, swift kick in the balls.
There was a whole bunch of content in the middle here, basically going into the whole situation in excruciating detail, but on reflection, it’s probably best for me to keep it to myself for now. I had to write it, but I don’t necessarily need everyone to read it. If anyone is particularly curious, you can always ask me about it.
All I can do is say, Pam, I’m truly sorry. I am here for you, and if there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it. I love you.
William R. Coughlan is one of the founders of Tohubohu Productions (so even on pictures he doesn’t direct, he can squeeze in an Executive Producer credit) and in-house video producer for The Advisory Board Company. He dabbles in screenwriting, acting, 3-D animation, and writing autobiographical comments in the third person. He is also a published illustrator, has provided schematic graphics for several HBS case studies, designed the acclaimed Protégé clay poker chip line, wrote for the (now-dormant) online literary magazine Inkblots, and acts as editor for the MotherReader weblog (which is not-so-coincidentally written by his wife). He currently resides at a secret compound in Burke, Virginia, with his wife Pam and their two daughters.
All content © 2002–2006 Bill Coughlan.
Unless otherwise explicitly stated, all original material created by Bill Coughlan — including, but not limited to, writing, illustration, audio, photography, video and digital composition — included in this weblog and any related pages, including the weblog’s archives, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Some rights reserved.
The views expressed herein are strictly my own, and even that’s not a given all of the time. In any case, nobody in the remainder of the Coughlan family was even consulted on the content herein, so don’t even think about blaming any of them — they had nothing to do with this. (Especially not Pam. Seriously.) Come to think of it, neither did any of the folks you might hear mentioned, or any of the people at the other end of any links you may find here. You know, just to be safe, assume pretty much everything here is a load of crap. That’s probably safer for all concerned.
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Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
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