Tuesday, March 31, 2009
"The mainstream media is the Catholic Church"
Great podcast with ESPN.com's "sports guy" Bill Simmons interviewing ombudsman LeAnne Schreiber, in which they talk about everything from women in the media to the future of the mainstream media itself. Simmons' podcasts usually only focus on entertainment or sports, so it's nice to see him doing a more thoughtful interview. And Schrieber - a former sports editor and longtime journalist - has some wonderful thoughts on the future of Internet journalism.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Obama will spend own $$$ to redo White House
CNN.com reports on the pressing issue of President Obama'a traditional redecoration of the White House. Actually, it is kind of notable in the Obamas are foregoing the alloted federal funds for the redecoration, appropriate considering the times.
The Obamas are using their own money to redecorate the White House residence and Oval Office, the White House confirms, forgoing the $100,000 in federal funds that is traditionally allotted to new presidents for such renovation projects. The first couple — who made well over $2 million in 2008, largely from book revenues — is also turning down money from the White House Historical Association, the organization that financed a $74,000 set of china for the Bushes.
The president will also keep Bush's Oval Office rug, installed for $60 grand. It seems pricy for a carpet...but I have to say I can't really blame Bush for wanted to replace Clinton's carpet...considering.
The Obamas are using their own money to redecorate the White House residence and Oval Office, the White House confirms, forgoing the $100,000 in federal funds that is traditionally allotted to new presidents for such renovation projects. The first couple — who made well over $2 million in 2008, largely from book revenues — is also turning down money from the White House Historical Association, the organization that financed a $74,000 set of china for the Bushes.
The president will also keep Bush's Oval Office rug, installed for $60 grand. It seems pricy for a carpet...but I have to say I can't really blame Bush for wanted to replace Clinton's carpet...considering.
Drops in the Ocean
Two recent experiences have me thinking a lot about how our society handles criminals - both in the criminal justice sytem and in our own minds.
I'm involved in restoring the late-19th century schoolhouse building in Bethania, headquarters of the Bethania Historical Association (on whose board I serve) and a rare example of extant architecture from that period in rural North Carolina. Early on, a consultant recommended that we hire a work crew from the Dan River Prison Work Farm, mainly because it would save our small group a lot of money. I was pretty reluctant, remembering how prison laborers have been used in the past almost as slave labor, and to undercut full-wage workers. What convinced me was hearing how, for many of the inmates at the minimum-security prison, their off-site jobs were coveted chances to earn real-world work skills. The inmate workers have all the safety protections of state workers.
So the crews started out at Bethania a few weeks ago, painting and replacing the building's wooden siding. Members of the community provided their meals every day. When my grandfather called to thank me for taking them a lasagna, we had an interesting conversation. Now, Grandpa may be a life-long Democrat, but he's hardly a bleeding-heart liberal. He can be pretty hard on people. He told me how much he enjoyed talking to the inmates, and how surprised he was to find that they weren't much different than any other construction workers we would have hired: they were hard-working, clever and thankful for the work. Grandpa remarked that they weren't bad people at all, just men who hadn't had the opportunities he'd had in his own life, and that they all seemed anxious to turn their lives around.
The other experience happened tonight. A professor at the college where I work started a class focused on re-entry to society. But rather than talking about this in a classroom on our tree-lined campus, the students head out to Guilford Correctional once a week to work with actual inmates. The superintendent of the minimum-security prison (a Guilford alum) is enthusiastic about re-entry programs. Tonight, several of the students and inmates spoke movingly of what the course has meant to them, joined by Greensboro's mayor and police chief (whom I hope liked what they heard). (BTW, we also have a prison literacy program where, for 10 years or so, students tutor inmates.)
The class looks at what inmates need when they leave prison - a support network, job contacts and basic skills like writing a resume, plus the more intangible gifts of confidence and a belief that the system cares about their success. Right now, all the state gives them is $45 and a list of homeless shelters. Is it any wonder that two-thirds of paroled inmates are back in prison within three years? Aside from the waste of their lives, that's extra crime victims that don't have to be. Programs like the one at Guilford Correctional help break that cycle.
Unfortunately, Gov. Perdue's budget plan would close Guilford Correctional, along with several other prisons. To be fair, she would also slightly increase the budget for probation and parole programs. But without minimum-security step-downs like GCC - who can more easily provide re-entry programs than, say, a max-security facility - how effective will those additional dollars be?
One of the students who spoke tonight is a former offender himself, now on his way to a law degree. He opened his comments with a quote from Gandhi: "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." This isn't true just of our total population, with its small number of people who choose to rob, assault or kill. It's true of individuals, too. One bad action, or even many bad actions, do not negate that person's ability to lead a moral, productive life. It doesn't help us to convince ourselves that all prison inmates are irredeemable criminals, ignoring the reality that most of them will be out among us again someday - and they'll need some way to support themselves that doesn't involve hurting another person.
I'm involved in restoring the late-19th century schoolhouse building in Bethania, headquarters of the Bethania Historical Association (on whose board I serve) and a rare example of extant architecture from that period in rural North Carolina. Early on, a consultant recommended that we hire a work crew from the Dan River Prison Work Farm, mainly because it would save our small group a lot of money. I was pretty reluctant, remembering how prison laborers have been used in the past almost as slave labor, and to undercut full-wage workers. What convinced me was hearing how, for many of the inmates at the minimum-security prison, their off-site jobs were coveted chances to earn real-world work skills. The inmate workers have all the safety protections of state workers.
So the crews started out at Bethania a few weeks ago, painting and replacing the building's wooden siding. Members of the community provided their meals every day. When my grandfather called to thank me for taking them a lasagna, we had an interesting conversation. Now, Grandpa may be a life-long Democrat, but he's hardly a bleeding-heart liberal. He can be pretty hard on people. He told me how much he enjoyed talking to the inmates, and how surprised he was to find that they weren't much different than any other construction workers we would have hired: they were hard-working, clever and thankful for the work. Grandpa remarked that they weren't bad people at all, just men who hadn't had the opportunities he'd had in his own life, and that they all seemed anxious to turn their lives around.
The other experience happened tonight. A professor at the college where I work started a class focused on re-entry to society. But rather than talking about this in a classroom on our tree-lined campus, the students head out to Guilford Correctional once a week to work with actual inmates. The superintendent of the minimum-security prison (a Guilford alum) is enthusiastic about re-entry programs. Tonight, several of the students and inmates spoke movingly of what the course has meant to them, joined by Greensboro's mayor and police chief (whom I hope liked what they heard). (BTW, we also have a prison literacy program where, for 10 years or so, students tutor inmates.)
The class looks at what inmates need when they leave prison - a support network, job contacts and basic skills like writing a resume, plus the more intangible gifts of confidence and a belief that the system cares about their success. Right now, all the state gives them is $45 and a list of homeless shelters. Is it any wonder that two-thirds of paroled inmates are back in prison within three years? Aside from the waste of their lives, that's extra crime victims that don't have to be. Programs like the one at Guilford Correctional help break that cycle.
Unfortunately, Gov. Perdue's budget plan would close Guilford Correctional, along with several other prisons. To be fair, she would also slightly increase the budget for probation and parole programs. But without minimum-security step-downs like GCC - who can more easily provide re-entry programs than, say, a max-security facility - how effective will those additional dollars be?
One of the students who spoke tonight is a former offender himself, now on his way to a law degree. He opened his comments with a quote from Gandhi: "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." This isn't true just of our total population, with its small number of people who choose to rob, assault or kill. It's true of individuals, too. One bad action, or even many bad actions, do not negate that person's ability to lead a moral, productive life. It doesn't help us to convince ourselves that all prison inmates are irredeemable criminals, ignoring the reality that most of them will be out among us again someday - and they'll need some way to support themselves that doesn't involve hurting another person.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
More retro movie thoughts...
(And, finally...also from August '07)
I'm treating Netflix as my own private film school. I've gotten really annoyed with Blockbuster, who A) only stocks 40 copies of the latest Lindsay Lohan movie, B) overcharges and C) randomly cuts scenes it finds to be offensive. (Always involving sex, and never violence. You know, I would respect it if they just refused to stock certain films, but re-cutting what the writer, director and studio produced? How is that even legal?)
"Lantana" (2001)
A wonderful little Australian drama/thriller starring Anthony LaPaglia, Barbara Hershey and Geoffrey Rush, directed by Ray Lawrence. It's difficult to describe without giving away to many details of the plot…but let's just say it concerns a half-dozen or so characters interacting due to the disappearance of a woman. (Most of the reviews at the time it came out went ahead and said exactly which character disappeared, but since it doesn't happen until halfway through the movie, I think it's important not to spoil it. Also, the film does a great job of setting up a couple of different possibilities as to which female character it is…you'll enjoy it more if it's left open.) See it because of the lovely character-driven plot (reminded me a lot of John Sayles' "Lone Star") and the phenomenal acting. That last bit might be unfairly hurt if you're used to watching LaPaglia on "Without a Trace," where he plays a very similar character to the depressed detective he plays here. This is one you'll want to watch more than once.
"The Bourne Ultimatum" (2007)
Or, as I like to call it, "The Bourne Disequilibrium." If you're bad about motion sickness, you might want to wait for video on this one. I was forewarned and so I sat on the back row at the theatre, and it still made me queasy. As we all know by now, this is the third (and last?) of the film series starring Matt Damon as an amnesiac killing machine trained by the U.S. government. Since this is a new release, you can find a zillion other reviews of it, so these are just my observations: Shaky cam: why? Fighting is chaotic; we get it, move on. Do not go to the restroom during the film – the plot moves so quickly, you'll be completely lost by the time you get back. The acting is great, of course. This one follows a trend in action films that I happen to like, where we see the hero exhibiting physical and even emotional vulnerability. For those of us who thought "Terminator 2" was more interesting than the first one, this is a good thing. Completely worth your $7. One quibble: what happened to Julia Stiles? She throws off more heat in one frame of "10 Things I Hate About You" than in the entire Bourne trilogy. Maybe she's going for cold and rational, but she just comes across as wooden. For a better portrayal of the cold/rational thing, see Exhibit A: Allen, Joan.
"Live Free or Die Hard" (2007)
I saw this directly after seeing Bourne…interesting double-header. I love Bruce Willis, and I've always had a soft spot for the "Die Hard" movies, believe it or not. Something about the fact that they had him running around barefoot through most of the first film…this man is no cyborg. Again, you can read plenty of reviews, so I'm just going to give you my reactions: Timothy Olyphant as bad guy…something's not working here. I loved him as the sketchy/sexy drug dealer in "Go," but when I see him try to be a bad guy here or in his "angry" scenes in "Deadwood," I just don't believe it. One of the things that worked best about the first two "Die Hard"s was the sense of claustrophobia, which they lost a bit in the third film. Even though this takes place in several cities over a, what 36-hour or so period? it still had that urgency for me. Throwing car into helicopter: cool. Riding fighter jet to the ground: preposterous, especially for a senior citizen. When people are shouting, "Oh, come on!" at a "Die Hard" movie, you know it's out there.
"Secretary" (2002)
Can I just say I'm developing a major crush on Maggie Gyllenhaal? Not in a sexual way; I just think she's awesome. And I loved this movie. She plays Lee, an emotionally disturbed young woman, recently out of the mental hospital, who still struggles not to cut herself in between making stabs (oops!) at starting a normal life. She lands a job working for a delightfully OCD attorney played by James Spader. (Now, really…when you read "delightfully OCD," could you really picture anyone but James Spader?) It's the quirkiest of the quirky love stories, even if the ending is a little too neat (and even if Spader swallows half of his dialogue). My girl Maggie is just a joy to watch; you don't even realize how the character's gaining strength throughout until you go back and watch her at the beginning again. A lot of people may hate this one and find it horrible and demeaning, but I loved it because I identified so much with Lee, thanks to Gyllenhaal's performance. Do not see if you have no appreciation for S&M; it figures pretty prominently in the plot.
"Layer Cake" (2004)
I put this one on my queue after seeing "Casino Royale" – I want to see everything Daniel Craig's ever made, including the home movies. This one's a British crime/thriller also starring British crime/thriller go-to guy Colm Meaney and the guy who played Katanga in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," along with New Dumbledore (a.k.a Michael Gambon) in a key role. Craig plays a straitlaced, routine-oriented drug dealer with plans to get out early and clean, until the "layer cake" of the criminal life sucks him in. Very splicy plot, sometimes hard to follow…just roll with it; I promise it all makes sense in the end. In the meantime, there are some fun matched edits to enjoy. Also a little Sienna Miller (before she exploded), if you're into that sort of thing. It's the first time I'd seen her in a film, and I was kind of turned off because she looks like a drugged-out Jessica Simpson in her first scene, but I'm sure she's a lovely person. I didn't like the ending – thought it was too gimmicky/look how clever we are, a la "The Departed". If you get the DVD, there are two alternate endings, and I liked the second one better. Overall, a fun, well-written film that I can't believe I missed the first time around.
"El Mariachi" (1992)
My Robert Rodriquez-love cannot be complete until I've seen it…and now I have. This one comes on a DVD with the better-financed sequel "Desperado," as well as Rodriguez's early short film "Bedhead." This is the studio version, of course, after more than the legendary $7,000 it took to shoot had been spent cleaning it up and distributing it. Fortunately, the DVD includes sequences of the original video (which Rodriguez used to edit), so you can still see what he produced. No, it's not perfect. The female lead, Domino, supposedly has this "ferocious body" which we never get to see because every shot of her is a freaky full-face close-up…Too many shots cut off the speakers' chins and mouths…One set, a bar, is lit differently every time, which wreaks havoc on our sense of time (now it's day time, now it's not…)…Said bar's interior and exterior match up not one bit. Still, it's a phenomenal accomplishment. Rodriguez shot this with literally no crew, which, if you've ever been on a film set, is just mind-boggling to think about. It's worth it to watch a second time with his commentary – he's great about explaining all the tricks you can use to shoot a low budget film. (Hint: a little bit of planning goes a long way. A lot of edits go even further.) What was interesting to me was that he shot at least large chunks of it MOS (without sound), like Francois Truffaut did with "The 400 Blows." That's a great way to save time and money, because you don't have to worry about keeping the set totally quiet while you shoot. However, it means that you have to go back and record audio for every scene after it's shot and then try to sync it up. That's one reason why there are so many cuts in this one – every time the actors start to look like they're in a Samarai film, he just cuts away, even if it's in the middle of a line. If you're a film geek, this one's a must-see.
That's it for now…I've got "Borat" in the queue, as well as a bio-pic of Francis Bacon that allegedly features some Daniel Craig frontal nudity (woo-hoo!), so stay tuned…
I'm treating Netflix as my own private film school. I've gotten really annoyed with Blockbuster, who A) only stocks 40 copies of the latest Lindsay Lohan movie, B) overcharges and C) randomly cuts scenes it finds to be offensive. (Always involving sex, and never violence. You know, I would respect it if they just refused to stock certain films, but re-cutting what the writer, director and studio produced? How is that even legal?)
"Lantana" (2001)
A wonderful little Australian drama/thriller starring Anthony LaPaglia, Barbara Hershey and Geoffrey Rush, directed by Ray Lawrence. It's difficult to describe without giving away to many details of the plot…but let's just say it concerns a half-dozen or so characters interacting due to the disappearance of a woman. (Most of the reviews at the time it came out went ahead and said exactly which character disappeared, but since it doesn't happen until halfway through the movie, I think it's important not to spoil it. Also, the film does a great job of setting up a couple of different possibilities as to which female character it is…you'll enjoy it more if it's left open.) See it because of the lovely character-driven plot (reminded me a lot of John Sayles' "Lone Star") and the phenomenal acting. That last bit might be unfairly hurt if you're used to watching LaPaglia on "Without a Trace," where he plays a very similar character to the depressed detective he plays here. This is one you'll want to watch more than once.
"The Bourne Ultimatum" (2007)
Or, as I like to call it, "The Bourne Disequilibrium." If you're bad about motion sickness, you might want to wait for video on this one. I was forewarned and so I sat on the back row at the theatre, and it still made me queasy. As we all know by now, this is the third (and last?) of the film series starring Matt Damon as an amnesiac killing machine trained by the U.S. government. Since this is a new release, you can find a zillion other reviews of it, so these are just my observations: Shaky cam: why? Fighting is chaotic; we get it, move on. Do not go to the restroom during the film – the plot moves so quickly, you'll be completely lost by the time you get back. The acting is great, of course. This one follows a trend in action films that I happen to like, where we see the hero exhibiting physical and even emotional vulnerability. For those of us who thought "Terminator 2" was more interesting than the first one, this is a good thing. Completely worth your $7. One quibble: what happened to Julia Stiles? She throws off more heat in one frame of "10 Things I Hate About You" than in the entire Bourne trilogy. Maybe she's going for cold and rational, but she just comes across as wooden. For a better portrayal of the cold/rational thing, see Exhibit A: Allen, Joan.
"Live Free or Die Hard" (2007)
I saw this directly after seeing Bourne…interesting double-header. I love Bruce Willis, and I've always had a soft spot for the "Die Hard" movies, believe it or not. Something about the fact that they had him running around barefoot through most of the first film…this man is no cyborg. Again, you can read plenty of reviews, so I'm just going to give you my reactions: Timothy Olyphant as bad guy…something's not working here. I loved him as the sketchy/sexy drug dealer in "Go," but when I see him try to be a bad guy here or in his "angry" scenes in "Deadwood," I just don't believe it. One of the things that worked best about the first two "Die Hard"s was the sense of claustrophobia, which they lost a bit in the third film. Even though this takes place in several cities over a, what 36-hour or so period? it still had that urgency for me. Throwing car into helicopter: cool. Riding fighter jet to the ground: preposterous, especially for a senior citizen. When people are shouting, "Oh, come on!" at a "Die Hard" movie, you know it's out there.
"Secretary" (2002)
Can I just say I'm developing a major crush on Maggie Gyllenhaal? Not in a sexual way; I just think she's awesome. And I loved this movie. She plays Lee, an emotionally disturbed young woman, recently out of the mental hospital, who still struggles not to cut herself in between making stabs (oops!) at starting a normal life. She lands a job working for a delightfully OCD attorney played by James Spader. (Now, really…when you read "delightfully OCD," could you really picture anyone but James Spader?) It's the quirkiest of the quirky love stories, even if the ending is a little too neat (and even if Spader swallows half of his dialogue). My girl Maggie is just a joy to watch; you don't even realize how the character's gaining strength throughout until you go back and watch her at the beginning again. A lot of people may hate this one and find it horrible and demeaning, but I loved it because I identified so much with Lee, thanks to Gyllenhaal's performance. Do not see if you have no appreciation for S&M; it figures pretty prominently in the plot.
"Layer Cake" (2004)
I put this one on my queue after seeing "Casino Royale" – I want to see everything Daniel Craig's ever made, including the home movies. This one's a British crime/thriller also starring British crime/thriller go-to guy Colm Meaney and the guy who played Katanga in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," along with New Dumbledore (a.k.a Michael Gambon) in a key role. Craig plays a straitlaced, routine-oriented drug dealer with plans to get out early and clean, until the "layer cake" of the criminal life sucks him in. Very splicy plot, sometimes hard to follow…just roll with it; I promise it all makes sense in the end. In the meantime, there are some fun matched edits to enjoy. Also a little Sienna Miller (before she exploded), if you're into that sort of thing. It's the first time I'd seen her in a film, and I was kind of turned off because she looks like a drugged-out Jessica Simpson in her first scene, but I'm sure she's a lovely person. I didn't like the ending – thought it was too gimmicky/look how clever we are, a la "The Departed". If you get the DVD, there are two alternate endings, and I liked the second one better. Overall, a fun, well-written film that I can't believe I missed the first time around.
"El Mariachi" (1992)
My Robert Rodriquez-love cannot be complete until I've seen it…and now I have. This one comes on a DVD with the better-financed sequel "Desperado," as well as Rodriguez's early short film "Bedhead." This is the studio version, of course, after more than the legendary $7,000 it took to shoot had been spent cleaning it up and distributing it. Fortunately, the DVD includes sequences of the original video (which Rodriguez used to edit), so you can still see what he produced. No, it's not perfect. The female lead, Domino, supposedly has this "ferocious body" which we never get to see because every shot of her is a freaky full-face close-up…Too many shots cut off the speakers' chins and mouths…One set, a bar, is lit differently every time, which wreaks havoc on our sense of time (now it's day time, now it's not…)…Said bar's interior and exterior match up not one bit. Still, it's a phenomenal accomplishment. Rodriguez shot this with literally no crew, which, if you've ever been on a film set, is just mind-boggling to think about. It's worth it to watch a second time with his commentary – he's great about explaining all the tricks you can use to shoot a low budget film. (Hint: a little bit of planning goes a long way. A lot of edits go even further.) What was interesting to me was that he shot at least large chunks of it MOS (without sound), like Francois Truffaut did with "The 400 Blows." That's a great way to save time and money, because you don't have to worry about keeping the set totally quiet while you shoot. However, it means that you have to go back and record audio for every scene after it's shot and then try to sync it up. That's one reason why there are so many cuts in this one – every time the actors start to look like they're in a Samarai film, he just cuts away, even if it's in the middle of a line. If you're a film geek, this one's a must-see.
That's it for now…I've got "Borat" in the queue, as well as a bio-pic of Francis Bacon that allegedly features some Daniel Craig frontal nudity (woo-hoo!), so stay tuned…
My love for Daniel Craig is the Devil
(From August 2007)
Yesterday I dropped a ridiculous amount of money on DVDs at Target...but it was something I had to do. I *never* buy movies anymore - probably two-thirds of my movie collection is still on video. Most of what I bought yesterday are DVDs of stuff I own on video already, so now I can take the videos to Edward McKay (best store in the world) and get some money out of them. So I'm enjoying those, and Netflix is still being good to me.
I did a post a while back writing about several movies I'd seen lately, and I mentioned that I was waiting on a film where my new future husband Daniel Craig (aka The New James Bond), supposedly gets naked. Like, completely. Obviously, it went straight to the top of the Netflix queue. Well, I watched it today, and I still can't decide if it was worth it. Yes, you see everything Craig has to offer (and not one of those poorly-lit split-second jobs, either. It's up there for several seconds.)...but you have to sit through a pretty horrible movie to get there.
The film is Love is the Devil (1998), which is NOT a biography of 20th century Irish painter Francis Bacon. A biography covers the subjects entire life, or at least a substantial portion of it. This film focuses on Bacon's relationship with working-class George Dyer, whom he claimed to have met when Dyer burgled his house. I didn't know much of anything about Bacon before seeing the film, and you don't get much of an orientation. I generally dislike films that operate this way when telling a story based on a real-life person or incident. They seem to expect that the viewer already knows the players and all the implications of their various relationships. But, if you're only telling a story for the people who by and large already know it, then why bother telling it at all?
So it's not a very accessible film. It's meant to be visually stunning, but to me all it looked like was every Film School 101 parlor trick regurgitated onto the screen with no rhyme or reason. You've got your drugged-out fantasy sequences, your reverse shots from places no point-of-view could logically go, your distorted angles - and one entire scene shot reflecting from fishbowl-style glasses. (If I never see another scene where we only see the character reflected in 14 different mirrors - ooh! He's having identity issues! - it'll be WAY to damn soon.)
None of those prentensio bells and whistles would bother me if there were a plot here - which there isn't. It's sad, because Craig and Derek Jacobi, who plays Bacon, are both marvelous and totally believable. But really, I ended up fast-forwarding through the last 45-minutes or so, just because I wanted it to be over. And that's huge for me - I NEVER quit on a movie.Later, I Googled Francis Bacon. This article from Wikipedia has most of the basics, as well as several images of Bacon's paintings. One thing I read made me even more pissed at the movie. Bacon was so devastated after Dyer's death, he spent the last 20 years of his life obsessing over him, even doing a triptych painting of the last few minutes of Dyer's life. But in the movie, Bacon seems to just blow off Dyer's loss, and we never really see its impact on him...at least not sufficiently enough for it to fit for me.
I think you can learn as much if not more from movies you don't like as you can from movies that you do. And what I learned from "Love is the Devil" is...I will do just about anything for the chance to see Daniel Craig naked, including sitting through an excruciatingly pretentious art-house BBC television movie.
But in case you don't share my sense of sacrifice, it happens at the 1 hour, 4 minute mark. You're welcome.
Yesterday I dropped a ridiculous amount of money on DVDs at Target...but it was something I had to do. I *never* buy movies anymore - probably two-thirds of my movie collection is still on video. Most of what I bought yesterday are DVDs of stuff I own on video already, so now I can take the videos to Edward McKay (best store in the world) and get some money out of them. So I'm enjoying those, and Netflix is still being good to me.
I did a post a while back writing about several movies I'd seen lately, and I mentioned that I was waiting on a film where my new future husband Daniel Craig (aka The New James Bond), supposedly gets naked. Like, completely. Obviously, it went straight to the top of the Netflix queue. Well, I watched it today, and I still can't decide if it was worth it. Yes, you see everything Craig has to offer (and not one of those poorly-lit split-second jobs, either. It's up there for several seconds.)...but you have to sit through a pretty horrible movie to get there.
The film is Love is the Devil (1998), which is NOT a biography of 20th century Irish painter Francis Bacon. A biography covers the subjects entire life, or at least a substantial portion of it. This film focuses on Bacon's relationship with working-class George Dyer, whom he claimed to have met when Dyer burgled his house. I didn't know much of anything about Bacon before seeing the film, and you don't get much of an orientation. I generally dislike films that operate this way when telling a story based on a real-life person or incident. They seem to expect that the viewer already knows the players and all the implications of their various relationships. But, if you're only telling a story for the people who by and large already know it, then why bother telling it at all?
So it's not a very accessible film. It's meant to be visually stunning, but to me all it looked like was every Film School 101 parlor trick regurgitated onto the screen with no rhyme or reason. You've got your drugged-out fantasy sequences, your reverse shots from places no point-of-view could logically go, your distorted angles - and one entire scene shot reflecting from fishbowl-style glasses. (If I never see another scene where we only see the character reflected in 14 different mirrors - ooh! He's having identity issues! - it'll be WAY to damn soon.)
None of those prentensio bells and whistles would bother me if there were a plot here - which there isn't. It's sad, because Craig and Derek Jacobi, who plays Bacon, are both marvelous and totally believable. But really, I ended up fast-forwarding through the last 45-minutes or so, just because I wanted it to be over. And that's huge for me - I NEVER quit on a movie.Later, I Googled Francis Bacon. This article from Wikipedia has most of the basics, as well as several images of Bacon's paintings. One thing I read made me even more pissed at the movie. Bacon was so devastated after Dyer's death, he spent the last 20 years of his life obsessing over him, even doing a triptych painting of the last few minutes of Dyer's life. But in the movie, Bacon seems to just blow off Dyer's loss, and we never really see its impact on him...at least not sufficiently enough for it to fit for me.
I think you can learn as much if not more from movies you don't like as you can from movies that you do. And what I learned from "Love is the Devil" is...I will do just about anything for the chance to see Daniel Craig naked, including sitting through an excruciatingly pretentious art-house BBC television movie.
But in case you don't share my sense of sacrifice, it happens at the 1 hour, 4 minute mark. You're welcome.
More Retro Pic of the Week
(This one's from Sept. 2007)
"Amelie" (2001)
This one has been on my list for a long time, and I know I'm going to get struck by lightning or something for saying this…but I was disappointed. Only mildly! And my disappointment probably has more to do with my high expectations, and shouldn't reflect on the quality of the film. It's beautifully put together, and a sweet little story. But you have to understand that every single person I know who's seen this movie talks about it with the same fanatical devotion that you see in people who've just found Jesus. It's very good. But not that good. [::ducking the tomatoes::]
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet also made "The City of Lost Children" (1995), which grabbed me emotionally far more than "Amelie," and "Delicatessen" (1991), which is on my Netflix queue. Jeunet's films are known for their visual sophistication, and "Amelie" certainly has that in spades. It's about a somewhat emotionally stunted young woman who, through an overly fortuitous series of events, decides to devote her life to making better the lives of others. Nice…especially since devising these Byzantine plots keeps her at a distance from actual emotional involvement. But for whatever reason, maybe just my own worldview, it didn't click for me. We see a young Amelie so sensitive that her suicidal goldfish drives her to hysterics, and an adult Amelie who can't even meet in person the man she loves (but who sleeps with him within 30 seconds of their eventual introduction)…Didn't buy it. Watching Amelie's increasingly over-the-top strategies to engage The Guy, I wasn't rooting for her to succeed because her character deserved it, but because I knew it would mean the movie would finally be over.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm a horrid Scrooge with no soul. Again, not saying it's a bad movie, because it isn't. I just don't think it justifies the rabid "this film will change your life" hype.
(You know what got to me? Amelie's secret pleasure – sliding her hand into a barrel of dry beans at the market. I could completely identify with that. Everything else about her – not so much.)
"Saved!" (2004)
Loved, loved, loved it. I was reasonably sure I would at least like it, and it far exceeded my expectations. If you're a Christian with a sense of humor, you'll appreciate this one. Almost-all-grown-up child star Jena Malone plays a star student (the oh-so-subtly named Mary) at a Christian school whose world is turned upside down when her stalwart Christian boyfriend tells her he thinks he might be gay. Oops. Apparently his hobby – figure skating for Jesus – didn't raise any red flags. Mary has a vision of Jesus himself telling her to "cure" her BF, and by the first day of her senior year BF is exiled to a fundy rehab and Mary's starting to feel a mite queasy in the mornings. Leave it to the worldly lone Jewish student (Eva Amurri – Susan Sarandon's daughter) to figure out the obvious. Perfect little Mary has a bun in the oven.
This film will resonate with anyone who's ever spent much time with the Bible-study crowd ("Let's get our Christ on! Are you down with the G-O-D?"). I was pleasantly surprised to see a Hollywood film tackle religion with both accuracy and sensitivity – the big confrontation with the school's pastor at the end is a scene that should be required viewing and discussion for every church in America. It's got a lot to say about the hypocrisy to which even the most devout Christians can succumb, while being immensely entertaining. Mandy Moore is incredibly fun to watch as the Queen Bee warrior for Jesus, Hillary Faye. Really, the only mildly weak link is McCauley Culkin as Hillary Faye's wheelchair-bound brother – he's just kinda there.
"Borat" (2006)
Sigh. Another disappointment. Again, not a bad movie, just not really enough to justify the hype. How hard is it to get Middle Americans to do stuff that will look silly when taken out of context on camera? The whole time I'm watching this, one expression kept rolling through my head like CNN's man-bites-dog news ticker: "like shooting fish in a barrel." It's more notable for the fact that so many people (non-New Yorkers, at least) were polite to Sacha Baron Cohen, rather than kicking his ass. I mean, the man insults the wife of his dinner host and brings a hankie full of shit to the table, and it takes him inviting a call girl to dinner for his hosts to (politely) ask him to leave. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
"Stardust" (2007)
Go see it. You may have read reviews comparing it to "The Princess Bride" – not a totally off-base comparison. "Stardust" didn't sweep me away like "The Princess Bride," but it's still a great story. Quick notes – I can't stand Claire Danes, but I loved her here. I won't spoil the "twist" in Robert DeNiro's character if you don't already know…it works for the story, but I don't know if it works for him. What am I saying? I should be grateful that DeNiro's stretching himself as an actor, which he hasn't done in 10 or 15 years…oh, hell, he's miscast, what can I say? But still, go see it. Now.
"Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962)
Even if it weren't any good, this one would still be worth a watch thanks to the rare spectacle of two of Hollywood's legendary bitches on wheels go at it. Bette Davis (my new hero) and Joan Crawford play sisters. Davis is Baby Jane Hudson, a former brat-star whose vaudeville act lost its steam when she hit puberty. As luck would have it, that's when her sister Blanche started developing a solid career as a film leading lady. Blanche tried to be gracious, she really did. She even required her studio to make one film with Jane for each film they made with her, which is pretty much the only reason Jane got work. (Imagine if Julia and Eric Roberts had the same arrangement.) But then there was that mysterious car accident…Now, 30 years later, Blanche is in a wheelchair, and the increasingly unstable Jane is her only companion in their decrepit mansion. Once the pesky housekeeper is dispatched with a hammer, and Blanche's pet bird turned into "din-din," that is…Jane's fun that way.
It's a bit overlong, and a bit frustrating (are there no police in Wilshire to call???) but still great fun. Especially when you think about how much the two lead actresses antagonized each other on-set, while never letting their animosity interfere with production (I love the anecdote that Crawford filled her pockets with rocks so that, when Davis had to drag her in one scene, she strained her back. Davis kicked her in the head, though, so I guess they're even.) And the guy who shows up in three scenes with an appallingly bad British accent inexplicably got an Oscar nomination…but Davis's demented performance makes it all worthwhile.
"All About Eve" (1950)
Yes, I think I have a full-blown crush on Bette Davis. This is the legendary film that got 14 Oscar nominations and, more importantly, saved Davis's acting career. It's got a scary-good script by Joseph L. Mankiewicz ("Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night." "You can put that award where your heart ought to be." And a million other lines of dialogue I'd kill to be able to write.) Davis is an aging theatre actress who hires an earnest young fan (Anne Baxter) as her assistant, only to see her charity case usurp her mantle in a matter of months. For half the film, Baxter's Eve walks the line so well that you can't be sure if she really is the wholesome, corn-fed, star-struck theatre-lover she claims to be, or the most seriously conniving succubus ever put onscreen. Lots of well-drawn and well-acted characters, particularly on the female side. And the last shot just gives me chills. It's easy for us cynical post-modern movie-watchers to diss the old classics, but trust me…Yes, it really is that good.
"High Art" (1998)
No, it's really not that good. What's supposed to be a character study of an ambitious young editor (Radha Mitchell) and her relationship with a troubled art photographer (Ally Sheedy) is just tiresome. Most of the reviews at the time the film came out focused on Sheedy's allegedly mesmerizing performance, marveling at the former Brat Pack-er's ability to make a film that didn't involve Molly Ringwald. Condescending much? She's not bad, but – yet again – another case of the hype dooming the actual product. I just found her twitchy, falling back on the same mannerisms she broke out in "The Breakfast Club." And yet I can see how, in conjunction with the rest of this cast, Sheedy could come off like Meryl Streep. I give Sheedy props for mustering any heat playing opposite Radha "Black Hole" Mitchell. (God help us if Mitchell ever makes a film with Orlando Bloom – the theatre screen might suck itself into a vortex of blanditude, from which not even Johnny Depp could save us.) This is a film that can't even use Patricia Clarkson appropriately, and that uses heroin-snorting as a time-killing bridge. It can't even make a lesbian sex scene hot. If you're neck-deep in the NYC photography snobocracy, it might resonate with you…but if not you're better off with "Amelie."
Pic of the week: "All About Eve." At 2 hours and 20 minutes, it still felt like it's 90 minutes long. An absolute classic - don't even presume to call yourself a film buff if yu haven't seen it.
"Amelie" (2001)
This one has been on my list for a long time, and I know I'm going to get struck by lightning or something for saying this…but I was disappointed. Only mildly! And my disappointment probably has more to do with my high expectations, and shouldn't reflect on the quality of the film. It's beautifully put together, and a sweet little story. But you have to understand that every single person I know who's seen this movie talks about it with the same fanatical devotion that you see in people who've just found Jesus. It's very good. But not that good. [::ducking the tomatoes::]
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet also made "The City of Lost Children" (1995), which grabbed me emotionally far more than "Amelie," and "Delicatessen" (1991), which is on my Netflix queue. Jeunet's films are known for their visual sophistication, and "Amelie" certainly has that in spades. It's about a somewhat emotionally stunted young woman who, through an overly fortuitous series of events, decides to devote her life to making better the lives of others. Nice…especially since devising these Byzantine plots keeps her at a distance from actual emotional involvement. But for whatever reason, maybe just my own worldview, it didn't click for me. We see a young Amelie so sensitive that her suicidal goldfish drives her to hysterics, and an adult Amelie who can't even meet in person the man she loves (but who sleeps with him within 30 seconds of their eventual introduction)…Didn't buy it. Watching Amelie's increasingly over-the-top strategies to engage The Guy, I wasn't rooting for her to succeed because her character deserved it, but because I knew it would mean the movie would finally be over.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm a horrid Scrooge with no soul. Again, not saying it's a bad movie, because it isn't. I just don't think it justifies the rabid "this film will change your life" hype.
(You know what got to me? Amelie's secret pleasure – sliding her hand into a barrel of dry beans at the market. I could completely identify with that. Everything else about her – not so much.)
"Saved!" (2004)
Loved, loved, loved it. I was reasonably sure I would at least like it, and it far exceeded my expectations. If you're a Christian with a sense of humor, you'll appreciate this one. Almost-all-grown-up child star Jena Malone plays a star student (the oh-so-subtly named Mary) at a Christian school whose world is turned upside down when her stalwart Christian boyfriend tells her he thinks he might be gay. Oops. Apparently his hobby – figure skating for Jesus – didn't raise any red flags. Mary has a vision of Jesus himself telling her to "cure" her BF, and by the first day of her senior year BF is exiled to a fundy rehab and Mary's starting to feel a mite queasy in the mornings. Leave it to the worldly lone Jewish student (Eva Amurri – Susan Sarandon's daughter) to figure out the obvious. Perfect little Mary has a bun in the oven.
This film will resonate with anyone who's ever spent much time with the Bible-study crowd ("Let's get our Christ on! Are you down with the G-O-D?"). I was pleasantly surprised to see a Hollywood film tackle religion with both accuracy and sensitivity – the big confrontation with the school's pastor at the end is a scene that should be required viewing and discussion for every church in America. It's got a lot to say about the hypocrisy to which even the most devout Christians can succumb, while being immensely entertaining. Mandy Moore is incredibly fun to watch as the Queen Bee warrior for Jesus, Hillary Faye. Really, the only mildly weak link is McCauley Culkin as Hillary Faye's wheelchair-bound brother – he's just kinda there.
"Borat" (2006)
Sigh. Another disappointment. Again, not a bad movie, just not really enough to justify the hype. How hard is it to get Middle Americans to do stuff that will look silly when taken out of context on camera? The whole time I'm watching this, one expression kept rolling through my head like CNN's man-bites-dog news ticker: "like shooting fish in a barrel." It's more notable for the fact that so many people (non-New Yorkers, at least) were polite to Sacha Baron Cohen, rather than kicking his ass. I mean, the man insults the wife of his dinner host and brings a hankie full of shit to the table, and it takes him inviting a call girl to dinner for his hosts to (politely) ask him to leave. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
"Stardust" (2007)
Go see it. You may have read reviews comparing it to "The Princess Bride" – not a totally off-base comparison. "Stardust" didn't sweep me away like "The Princess Bride," but it's still a great story. Quick notes – I can't stand Claire Danes, but I loved her here. I won't spoil the "twist" in Robert DeNiro's character if you don't already know…it works for the story, but I don't know if it works for him. What am I saying? I should be grateful that DeNiro's stretching himself as an actor, which he hasn't done in 10 or 15 years…oh, hell, he's miscast, what can I say? But still, go see it. Now.
"Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962)
Even if it weren't any good, this one would still be worth a watch thanks to the rare spectacle of two of Hollywood's legendary bitches on wheels go at it. Bette Davis (my new hero) and Joan Crawford play sisters. Davis is Baby Jane Hudson, a former brat-star whose vaudeville act lost its steam when she hit puberty. As luck would have it, that's when her sister Blanche started developing a solid career as a film leading lady. Blanche tried to be gracious, she really did. She even required her studio to make one film with Jane for each film they made with her, which is pretty much the only reason Jane got work. (Imagine if Julia and Eric Roberts had the same arrangement.) But then there was that mysterious car accident…Now, 30 years later, Blanche is in a wheelchair, and the increasingly unstable Jane is her only companion in their decrepit mansion. Once the pesky housekeeper is dispatched with a hammer, and Blanche's pet bird turned into "din-din," that is…Jane's fun that way.
It's a bit overlong, and a bit frustrating (are there no police in Wilshire to call???) but still great fun. Especially when you think about how much the two lead actresses antagonized each other on-set, while never letting their animosity interfere with production (I love the anecdote that Crawford filled her pockets with rocks so that, when Davis had to drag her in one scene, she strained her back. Davis kicked her in the head, though, so I guess they're even.) And the guy who shows up in three scenes with an appallingly bad British accent inexplicably got an Oscar nomination…but Davis's demented performance makes it all worthwhile.
"All About Eve" (1950)
Yes, I think I have a full-blown crush on Bette Davis. This is the legendary film that got 14 Oscar nominations and, more importantly, saved Davis's acting career. It's got a scary-good script by Joseph L. Mankiewicz ("Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night." "You can put that award where your heart ought to be." And a million other lines of dialogue I'd kill to be able to write.) Davis is an aging theatre actress who hires an earnest young fan (Anne Baxter) as her assistant, only to see her charity case usurp her mantle in a matter of months. For half the film, Baxter's Eve walks the line so well that you can't be sure if she really is the wholesome, corn-fed, star-struck theatre-lover she claims to be, or the most seriously conniving succubus ever put onscreen. Lots of well-drawn and well-acted characters, particularly on the female side. And the last shot just gives me chills. It's easy for us cynical post-modern movie-watchers to diss the old classics, but trust me…Yes, it really is that good.
"High Art" (1998)
No, it's really not that good. What's supposed to be a character study of an ambitious young editor (Radha Mitchell) and her relationship with a troubled art photographer (Ally Sheedy) is just tiresome. Most of the reviews at the time the film came out focused on Sheedy's allegedly mesmerizing performance, marveling at the former Brat Pack-er's ability to make a film that didn't involve Molly Ringwald. Condescending much? She's not bad, but – yet again – another case of the hype dooming the actual product. I just found her twitchy, falling back on the same mannerisms she broke out in "The Breakfast Club." And yet I can see how, in conjunction with the rest of this cast, Sheedy could come off like Meryl Streep. I give Sheedy props for mustering any heat playing opposite Radha "Black Hole" Mitchell. (God help us if Mitchell ever makes a film with Orlando Bloom – the theatre screen might suck itself into a vortex of blanditude, from which not even Johnny Depp could save us.) This is a film that can't even use Patricia Clarkson appropriately, and that uses heroin-snorting as a time-killing bridge. It can't even make a lesbian sex scene hot. If you're neck-deep in the NYC photography snobocracy, it might resonate with you…but if not you're better off with "Amelie."
Pic of the week: "All About Eve." At 2 hours and 20 minutes, it still felt like it's 90 minutes long. An absolute classic - don't even presume to call yourself a film buff if yu haven't seen it.
Pic of the Week: All B& W edition! (from 9/2007)
(I'm re-posting my older movie reviews from my old blog, because I'm really tired of dusting off MySpace to go hunt for them...)
I really should've saved "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" and "All About Eve" for this one…but since I didn't get the idea for an all B&W movie column 'til tonight when I was halfway through "Bad Seed," oh well. I'll just have to fill in with one or two movies that I haven't actually watched in the last week. Forgive me for fudging a little. First up, the one that's freshest in my mind…
"The Bad Seed" (1956)
Hoo, boy. You might have seen the quasi-remake of this one – 1993's "The Good Son," which featured McCauley Culkin desperately trying to shed his "Home Alone" image (he says the F-word! Oooh!). Trust me, the original – even in all its studio-era Hays Code glory – is still WAY better. Patty McCormack plays abnormally perfect eight-year old Rhoda, a pioneer in the Creepy Little Kid Actors' Guild that would later include Haley Joel Osment and that cyborg-looking boy from "The Ring." Rhoda's starched crinolines (perfect for curtsying) and heavily engineered platinum pigtails convince almost all the adults in her life that she's this well-mannered little angel. Unfortunately, Rhoda has a barely-concealed antisocial streak, and she doesn't like to lose. I mean, she really doesn't like to lose. As in, when one of her classmates beats her out for the class penmanship prize, they find him the next day floating in the lake…with these mysterious bruises on his head and hands…bruises that perfectly match the metal taps on the heels of Rhoda's favorite shoes… Rhoda's mother Christine has an inkling that her daughter might be slightly…off. She solicits advice from her father, a retired crime writer, as well as yet another crime novelist who happens to be a friend of the family. (Christine's landlord is also an amateur psychoanalyst. These relationships allow for many convenient ruminations on the criminal mind). Dad says criminals are made, not born; crime writer B disagrees, saying that some people are just born bad. Either way, if Rhoda is in fact a psycho killer, it's going to reflect badly on Mom. The film is based on a play which is in turn based on a book, and it wasn't translated very well to film: too many scenes are overly stagey, and it's more talky than it needs to be. Also, the aforementioned Hays Code Office happied up the ending, as they did with many a film of the era. Still, the acting is fantastic – especially McCormack, who got an Oscar nomination. Worth a watch.
"Baby Doll" (1956)
I have this book called "Great Movie Moments," a coffee-table book with classic still shots from hundreds of movies. That was how I came to "Baby Doll" – this one black and white photograph of Carroll Baker curled up in a baby bed, sucking her thumb. That's how her husband Archie Lee (Karl Malden) sees her in the early minutes of the film – watching his teenaged bride through a hole in the wall of his falling down Southern mansion. Basically, Archie Lee and Baby Doll married a few years earlier, with the understanding that he would A) provide for her financially, and B) not have sex with her 'til she turned 19. (I think it's 19…it's been a few months since I saw it.) Their already volatile relationship comes to a head when Archie Lee's business rival Mr. Vacarro (Eli Wallach) decides to use Baby Doll to get back at Archie Lee for…oh, I don't want to ruin it. Being that Tennessee Williams wrote the script, you know there's a lot more to what seems a deceptively simple plot. I don't want to give too much away, because so much of the fun comes from having your sympathies for each character shift as you learn more about their motivations. For something that came out in the 50s, it surprised me that this film was as hot as it was. (Maybe the Hays Code Office fell asleep on this one…) Honestly, if it were released today, it would be pretty controversial. It holds up surprisingly well – and bonus points for making Eli Wallach – dare I say it – sexy. There's a great article about "Baby Doll" in this summer's Oxford American Southern movie issue that does far more justice to "Baby Doll" than I can here.
"The Lady From Shanghai" (1947)
Another one I saw solely because it was featured in "Great Movie Moments." Well…that and my obsessive crush on Orson Welles. I love Orson Welles – even the 300 lb. right-before-he-died Orson Welles. The man was just a genius ahead of his time. Looking at pretty much every film he made after "Citizen Kane," one has to wonder what Welles could produce if he were working today and were not so dependent on studios to get his films made. "The Lady From Shanghai" – which is not a bad film – would likely have been infinitely better. Welles stars as Michael O'Hara, an Irish seaman who's only Irish so Orson Welles can break out an Irish accent…not that there's anything wrong with that. He's somewhat hoodwinked into taking a job on the yacht of wealthy Arthur Bannister, who wants to sail from NYC around to San Francisco. That's not the problem. Bannister's much-younger wife Elsa (played by Rita Hayworth, at the time married to Welles) is the problem. There are clandestine kisses, a murder plot and other various twists and turns. It all culminates in an elaborately staged shootout in an amusement park glass house – a scene that's so "filmic" it would probably piss me off it anyone other than Welles tried to pull it off. Welles gets a free pass from me for the same reason as Robert Rodriguez – when they do these things, I feel like it's coming from a place of gee-whiz love of movie magic, rather than a superior "look what we can do"-ness. Welles and Hayworth have great chemistry, though their marriage was falling apart at the time. Imagine if this were remade with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the leads, and you have some idea of the heat I'm talking about. It must have been thrilling for audiences at the time…and it still is, for the most part.
"Raging Bull" (1980)
I don't care if Scorcese punted the ending of "The Departed;" he built up so much good movie karma with films like "Raging Bull" that it all evens out. I first saw "Raging Bull" when I was about 15 and was just discovering Robert DeNiro, and I just bought the special edition two-disc DVD, which has several commentaries, including one with the (female) editor, which I think is cool. It's a biopic of intensely dysfunctional boxer Jake LaMotta, who was active in the 1940s and 50s. Most actors know this movie because of Method man DeNiro's legendary weight gain for the scenes of LaMotta's later life. But there are so many other fascinating tidbits: it was the last B&W movie nominated for a Best Picture Oscar until "Schindler's List" in 1993. Cathy Moriarty, who plays LaMotta's wife Vicki, was only in her late teens when she was cast (her character ages from 14 to her mid-30s) in this, her first movie role. Most people rave about the realism of the boxing sequences, but they're actually deliberately stylized. It reminds me of Renaissance painters: someone like Donatello paints with mathematical precision and balance, yet DaVinci's slightly distorted proportions just feel more real, because they have emotional truth. "Raging Bull" means a lot to me because it got me through some very hard times. To this day, if I'm feeling down, I can watch it and it makes me feel better. I know that's incredibly weird…I figure it's because, no matter how screwed up my life is, at least I'm not chipping the jewels out of my championship belt to make bail. Either that, or seeing something so well-made just makes me happy.
Pic of the Week: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956). See the original, with its moody lighting and heavy anti-Communist allegory. I won't even acknowledge the current Nicole Kidman remake, which not even my future husband Daniel Craig can induce me to see. How can you not love the film that gave us the term "pod people"?
I really should've saved "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" and "All About Eve" for this one…but since I didn't get the idea for an all B&W movie column 'til tonight when I was halfway through "Bad Seed," oh well. I'll just have to fill in with one or two movies that I haven't actually watched in the last week. Forgive me for fudging a little. First up, the one that's freshest in my mind…
"The Bad Seed" (1956)
Hoo, boy. You might have seen the quasi-remake of this one – 1993's "The Good Son," which featured McCauley Culkin desperately trying to shed his "Home Alone" image (he says the F-word! Oooh!). Trust me, the original – even in all its studio-era Hays Code glory – is still WAY better. Patty McCormack plays abnormally perfect eight-year old Rhoda, a pioneer in the Creepy Little Kid Actors' Guild that would later include Haley Joel Osment and that cyborg-looking boy from "The Ring." Rhoda's starched crinolines (perfect for curtsying) and heavily engineered platinum pigtails convince almost all the adults in her life that she's this well-mannered little angel. Unfortunately, Rhoda has a barely-concealed antisocial streak, and she doesn't like to lose. I mean, she really doesn't like to lose. As in, when one of her classmates beats her out for the class penmanship prize, they find him the next day floating in the lake…with these mysterious bruises on his head and hands…bruises that perfectly match the metal taps on the heels of Rhoda's favorite shoes… Rhoda's mother Christine has an inkling that her daughter might be slightly…off. She solicits advice from her father, a retired crime writer, as well as yet another crime novelist who happens to be a friend of the family. (Christine's landlord is also an amateur psychoanalyst. These relationships allow for many convenient ruminations on the criminal mind). Dad says criminals are made, not born; crime writer B disagrees, saying that some people are just born bad. Either way, if Rhoda is in fact a psycho killer, it's going to reflect badly on Mom. The film is based on a play which is in turn based on a book, and it wasn't translated very well to film: too many scenes are overly stagey, and it's more talky than it needs to be. Also, the aforementioned Hays Code Office happied up the ending, as they did with many a film of the era. Still, the acting is fantastic – especially McCormack, who got an Oscar nomination. Worth a watch.
"Baby Doll" (1956)
I have this book called "Great Movie Moments," a coffee-table book with classic still shots from hundreds of movies. That was how I came to "Baby Doll" – this one black and white photograph of Carroll Baker curled up in a baby bed, sucking her thumb. That's how her husband Archie Lee (Karl Malden) sees her in the early minutes of the film – watching his teenaged bride through a hole in the wall of his falling down Southern mansion. Basically, Archie Lee and Baby Doll married a few years earlier, with the understanding that he would A) provide for her financially, and B) not have sex with her 'til she turned 19. (I think it's 19…it's been a few months since I saw it.) Their already volatile relationship comes to a head when Archie Lee's business rival Mr. Vacarro (Eli Wallach) decides to use Baby Doll to get back at Archie Lee for…oh, I don't want to ruin it. Being that Tennessee Williams wrote the script, you know there's a lot more to what seems a deceptively simple plot. I don't want to give too much away, because so much of the fun comes from having your sympathies for each character shift as you learn more about their motivations. For something that came out in the 50s, it surprised me that this film was as hot as it was. (Maybe the Hays Code Office fell asleep on this one…) Honestly, if it were released today, it would be pretty controversial. It holds up surprisingly well – and bonus points for making Eli Wallach – dare I say it – sexy. There's a great article about "Baby Doll" in this summer's Oxford American Southern movie issue that does far more justice to "Baby Doll" than I can here.
"The Lady From Shanghai" (1947)
Another one I saw solely because it was featured in "Great Movie Moments." Well…that and my obsessive crush on Orson Welles. I love Orson Welles – even the 300 lb. right-before-he-died Orson Welles. The man was just a genius ahead of his time. Looking at pretty much every film he made after "Citizen Kane," one has to wonder what Welles could produce if he were working today and were not so dependent on studios to get his films made. "The Lady From Shanghai" – which is not a bad film – would likely have been infinitely better. Welles stars as Michael O'Hara, an Irish seaman who's only Irish so Orson Welles can break out an Irish accent…not that there's anything wrong with that. He's somewhat hoodwinked into taking a job on the yacht of wealthy Arthur Bannister, who wants to sail from NYC around to San Francisco. That's not the problem. Bannister's much-younger wife Elsa (played by Rita Hayworth, at the time married to Welles) is the problem. There are clandestine kisses, a murder plot and other various twists and turns. It all culminates in an elaborately staged shootout in an amusement park glass house – a scene that's so "filmic" it would probably piss me off it anyone other than Welles tried to pull it off. Welles gets a free pass from me for the same reason as Robert Rodriguez – when they do these things, I feel like it's coming from a place of gee-whiz love of movie magic, rather than a superior "look what we can do"-ness. Welles and Hayworth have great chemistry, though their marriage was falling apart at the time. Imagine if this were remade with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the leads, and you have some idea of the heat I'm talking about. It must have been thrilling for audiences at the time…and it still is, for the most part.
"Raging Bull" (1980)
I don't care if Scorcese punted the ending of "The Departed;" he built up so much good movie karma with films like "Raging Bull" that it all evens out. I first saw "Raging Bull" when I was about 15 and was just discovering Robert DeNiro, and I just bought the special edition two-disc DVD, which has several commentaries, including one with the (female) editor, which I think is cool. It's a biopic of intensely dysfunctional boxer Jake LaMotta, who was active in the 1940s and 50s. Most actors know this movie because of Method man DeNiro's legendary weight gain for the scenes of LaMotta's later life. But there are so many other fascinating tidbits: it was the last B&W movie nominated for a Best Picture Oscar until "Schindler's List" in 1993. Cathy Moriarty, who plays LaMotta's wife Vicki, was only in her late teens when she was cast (her character ages from 14 to her mid-30s) in this, her first movie role. Most people rave about the realism of the boxing sequences, but they're actually deliberately stylized. It reminds me of Renaissance painters: someone like Donatello paints with mathematical precision and balance, yet DaVinci's slightly distorted proportions just feel more real, because they have emotional truth. "Raging Bull" means a lot to me because it got me through some very hard times. To this day, if I'm feeling down, I can watch it and it makes me feel better. I know that's incredibly weird…I figure it's because, no matter how screwed up my life is, at least I'm not chipping the jewels out of my championship belt to make bail. Either that, or seeing something so well-made just makes me happy.
Pic of the Week: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956). See the original, with its moody lighting and heavy anti-Communist allegory. I won't even acknowledge the current Nicole Kidman remake, which not even my future husband Daniel Craig can induce me to see. How can you not love the film that gave us the term "pod people"?
Pic of the Week: War is Hell edition
(thus ends the first – and hopefully last – time I’ll ever quote General Sherman in this blog)
I don’t really get into war movies, for the same reason I don’t really get into Westerns – namely, it’s almost always a bunch of white guys being macho and killing each other in horrible ways, with a tedious good guy-bad guy dichotomy that doesn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. But in my recent viewing, I noticed a trend, so hear goes:
“Grace is Gone” (2007)
This one got lumped into that year’s tiny spate of Iraq War-themed movies along with “Lions for Lambs” and “Rendition” – unfairly, if you ask me. Because “Grace is Gone” is only just barely about Iraq. It could be about any war, really, or any non-war loss of a loved one. John Cusack plays a milquetoast middle-management Army vet whose wife, an Army sergeant, is killed serving in Iraq. He finds that he can’t break the news to their two pre-teen daughters, and so he takes them on an impromptu road trip to Florida to stall for time. It got mixed reviews at the time, with the dislikers complaining that there’s no big message. But that’s what I kind of liked about it. It’s a very quiet film, with understated, realistic acting from Cusack and the actors who play his daughters. I really felt like I was eavesdropping on a real-life military family that was trying to balance its immense pride in the wife/mother’s service with their tangible stress over the same thing. I didn’t see it as a statement about the entirety of the war; it’s just a portrait of one family within that war’s context. Contrast this with Cusack’s “common man” composite (aka “total plot device”) character in…
“Fat Man and Little Boy” (1989)
I added this to my Netflix queue because I’m rereading a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, the head scientist of the Manhattan Project. I bumped it to the top of the queue after the death last week of Natasha Richardson, who plays Oppie’s mistress Jean Tatlock in the film. It’s very definitely the Hollywood version of the development of the atomic bomb. And no, I do not mean that as a compliment – or an insult, either; it just is what it is. Paul Newman plays General Leslie Groves, the military head of the project, who recruits and then repeatedly clashes with Oppenheimer and the other idealistic geniuses at Los Alamos. The problem is that director Roland Joffe wants to have a study of the fascinating real-life characters, their relationships and motivations, AND a standard Hollywood drama. The result is unfocused, trying to tell too many stories and therefore telling none of them well. We get fictionalized events designed to bring Newman’s character to the center of the action (because, hell, he’s Paul Newman), totally fictional characters and a BS love story that I presume was put there to make me, a humble earthling, contemplate the moral implications of nuclear weapons. But just in case I’m too thick, we also get what feels like hours and hours of Deep Conversations. It’s as if the writers had a meeting where someone said, “You know what this flick needs? A scene where the characters talk about the ethics of power, and playing God, and all that”…….. and then had that meeting another 47 times. It ends with a shot of planet Earth, for crying out loud. Planet. Frakking. Earth. And the music sounds like something out of a GI Joe cartoon.
Yes, I’m being hard on this one…It’s not a bad movie. Just one that annoyed the hell out me because, knowing the actual story, I wonder how much stronger a film it could’ve been if they’d just stuck to the facts.
“The Fog of War” (2004)
This documentary – really an extended interview with Kennedy and LBJ defense secretary Robert McNamara – telescopes McNamara’s long career into 11 “lessons” that reflect incidents in that career. McNamara, kind of a stat junkie, worked with the military during World War II to make bombing sorties more efficient, then brought those same stat skills to Ford Motor Company (introducing the radical concept of market research) before Kennedy tapped him to be Secretary of Defense. In that role, he oversaw the introduction of “military advisors” to Vietnam, and later (under Johnson) the troop deployments of the Vietnam War. Being the daughter of a four-time wounded Vietnam veteran, I was prepared to hate McNamara. But damned if the son of a bitch didn’t make it all make sense. He’s helped by archival audio recordings of Johnson urging him to bomb the shit out of Vietnam and lie to the American people about doing it – okay, so it wasn’t ALL his fault. He’s obviously an intelligent, introspective man…It’s remarkable that he can admit that one of the “lessons” that defused the Cuban Missile Crisis – empathize with your opponent – was pretty much ignored in Vietnam (the U.S. saw it as a chance to defeat communism, while the Viet Cong thought the U.S. just wanted to colonize them. Miscommunication, oops!). Though McNamara is self-reflective, even self-critical, it bugged me that he’s the film’s primary source. Take this not as a complete history of our defense policy during the 1960s, but only of one man’s view of it.
“Hart’s War” (2002)
I rewatched this one not long ago, a film I originally rented thanks to my unhealthy crush on Colin Farrell (don’t you judge me!). Okay, so while I’m not going to give this any Oscars (I totally have that power, by the way), it’s hardly the crapfest you might have been led to believe. I think the problem is that this was marketed as “The Great Escape”-lite, when it’s actually “To Kill a Mockingbird” in a POW camp. For starters – Bruce Willis? Not the good guy. He and Colin? Not on the same side. So stop reading the back of the DVD box and just give “Hart’s War” a chance. Preferably over pizza. It gets bonus points for giving that guy from “Entourage” a horrible death, and loses said bonus points for indulging in the same kind of “this character is only here to prove a point and make you THINK” crap that annoyed me in “Fat Man and Little Boy.”
“Tigerland” (2000)
This drama stars Colin Farrell --- okay, I can hear you, and you know what? Kiss it, ‘cause this is actually a good movie. It’s a Vietnam movie that never gets within a continent of Vietnam, and yet somehow captures the ambivalence of the soldiers who were forced to fight that ambiguous war. Farrell is a much-court martialed private uncomfortably discovering his latent leadership skills in a training camp that’s the last stop before shipping out to Vietnam. We may justifiably knock Joel Schumacher for putting nipples on the Batsuit, but you have to admit that the man can spot on-screen talent (see also McConaughey, Matthew, and the entire cast of “Flatliners”). Aside from this being a gripping, well-acted film with lots of young character actors you may recognize from other things, this – Farrell’s first American movie – makes you understand why Hollywood fell in love with Colin Farrell. (If you get it on DVD, watch it with the director commentary, at least up until the sex scene about 15 minutes in – it’s kind of unintentionally hilarious how Schumacher makes the transition.)
(Tangent: wasn’t McConaughey originally cast as the evil KKK brother in "A Time to Kill" before getting bumped up to the lead, leaving Keifer Sutherland to play the bad guy? Am I the only one imagining if this had never happened, and McConaughey and Sutherland switched career paths? Can’t you just totally see Jack Bauer as a naked bongo-playing stoner? Maybe this is just me…)
“Atonement” (2007)
Another movie I’m about to be very hard on because it’s based on one of my favorite books. In my defense, parts of “Atonement” really do blow pretty hard. It’s not a bad adaptation of the book – the plot follows the novel’s closely, but more importantly, the filmmakers made good choices as to which of the novel’s events to depict. Basically, in the years immediately prior to World War II, a young girl from a wealthy English family who aspires to be a writer spots her older sister (Keira Knightly) and a working-class family friend (James McAvoy) having some sort of altercation she can’t understand. Because, at 13, she’s obviously the world’s leading expert on everything (this part was very accurate), the girl blunders into a situation and sucks everyone in with her, and the consequences ripple on for decades. It’s a deeply moving study of human fallibility. The problem is that it’s directed by Joe Wright, the guy who turned “Pride and Prejudice” into a frakking Harlequin romance. For its first half, “Atonement” is restrained, and I don’t think I’d change a thing about it. Then suddenly Wright flips a switch, and we land in this over-stylized melodrama, epitomized by a roughly half-hour-long tracking shot of the beach at Dunkirk just before the British evacuation. (Michael Bay called, he wants his DeMille Complex back.) That scene is meant to overwhelm me with the war’s human toll, but all it did was distract me by making me wonder if the camera operator got the extra cookie he so richly deserved. I didn’t realize just how much of a momentum-suck that Dunkirk scene was until later, when a character refers to “Queen Elizabeth,” and I stopped the movie to call my mom (my source for anything English) to double-check that QE II didn’t actually take the throne until the 50s, so was this a flub? Or maybe the Queen Mother’s name is Elizabeth, too? Which meant that I had to go Google – at which point it occurred to me that “Atonement” had lost me. I’m thinking I should be invested enough in a film’s story NOT to be thinking about such things right in the middle of it. From there on out I was just waiting for it to be over. (By the way, the ending of the book is SO much more powerful.) (Also by the way…….it’s Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. You’re welcome.)
I don’t really get into war movies, for the same reason I don’t really get into Westerns – namely, it’s almost always a bunch of white guys being macho and killing each other in horrible ways, with a tedious good guy-bad guy dichotomy that doesn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. But in my recent viewing, I noticed a trend, so hear goes:
“Grace is Gone” (2007)
This one got lumped into that year’s tiny spate of Iraq War-themed movies along with “Lions for Lambs” and “Rendition” – unfairly, if you ask me. Because “Grace is Gone” is only just barely about Iraq. It could be about any war, really, or any non-war loss of a loved one. John Cusack plays a milquetoast middle-management Army vet whose wife, an Army sergeant, is killed serving in Iraq. He finds that he can’t break the news to their two pre-teen daughters, and so he takes them on an impromptu road trip to Florida to stall for time. It got mixed reviews at the time, with the dislikers complaining that there’s no big message. But that’s what I kind of liked about it. It’s a very quiet film, with understated, realistic acting from Cusack and the actors who play his daughters. I really felt like I was eavesdropping on a real-life military family that was trying to balance its immense pride in the wife/mother’s service with their tangible stress over the same thing. I didn’t see it as a statement about the entirety of the war; it’s just a portrait of one family within that war’s context. Contrast this with Cusack’s “common man” composite (aka “total plot device”) character in…
“Fat Man and Little Boy” (1989)
I added this to my Netflix queue because I’m rereading a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, the head scientist of the Manhattan Project. I bumped it to the top of the queue after the death last week of Natasha Richardson, who plays Oppie’s mistress Jean Tatlock in the film. It’s very definitely the Hollywood version of the development of the atomic bomb. And no, I do not mean that as a compliment – or an insult, either; it just is what it is. Paul Newman plays General Leslie Groves, the military head of the project, who recruits and then repeatedly clashes with Oppenheimer and the other idealistic geniuses at Los Alamos. The problem is that director Roland Joffe wants to have a study of the fascinating real-life characters, their relationships and motivations, AND a standard Hollywood drama. The result is unfocused, trying to tell too many stories and therefore telling none of them well. We get fictionalized events designed to bring Newman’s character to the center of the action (because, hell, he’s Paul Newman), totally fictional characters and a BS love story that I presume was put there to make me, a humble earthling, contemplate the moral implications of nuclear weapons. But just in case I’m too thick, we also get what feels like hours and hours of Deep Conversations. It’s as if the writers had a meeting where someone said, “You know what this flick needs? A scene where the characters talk about the ethics of power, and playing God, and all that”…….. and then had that meeting another 47 times. It ends with a shot of planet Earth, for crying out loud. Planet. Frakking. Earth. And the music sounds like something out of a GI Joe cartoon.
Yes, I’m being hard on this one…It’s not a bad movie. Just one that annoyed the hell out me because, knowing the actual story, I wonder how much stronger a film it could’ve been if they’d just stuck to the facts.
“The Fog of War” (2004)
This documentary – really an extended interview with Kennedy and LBJ defense secretary Robert McNamara – telescopes McNamara’s long career into 11 “lessons” that reflect incidents in that career. McNamara, kind of a stat junkie, worked with the military during World War II to make bombing sorties more efficient, then brought those same stat skills to Ford Motor Company (introducing the radical concept of market research) before Kennedy tapped him to be Secretary of Defense. In that role, he oversaw the introduction of “military advisors” to Vietnam, and later (under Johnson) the troop deployments of the Vietnam War. Being the daughter of a four-time wounded Vietnam veteran, I was prepared to hate McNamara. But damned if the son of a bitch didn’t make it all make sense. He’s helped by archival audio recordings of Johnson urging him to bomb the shit out of Vietnam and lie to the American people about doing it – okay, so it wasn’t ALL his fault. He’s obviously an intelligent, introspective man…It’s remarkable that he can admit that one of the “lessons” that defused the Cuban Missile Crisis – empathize with your opponent – was pretty much ignored in Vietnam (the U.S. saw it as a chance to defeat communism, while the Viet Cong thought the U.S. just wanted to colonize them. Miscommunication, oops!). Though McNamara is self-reflective, even self-critical, it bugged me that he’s the film’s primary source. Take this not as a complete history of our defense policy during the 1960s, but only of one man’s view of it.
“Hart’s War” (2002)
I rewatched this one not long ago, a film I originally rented thanks to my unhealthy crush on Colin Farrell (don’t you judge me!). Okay, so while I’m not going to give this any Oscars (I totally have that power, by the way), it’s hardly the crapfest you might have been led to believe. I think the problem is that this was marketed as “The Great Escape”-lite, when it’s actually “To Kill a Mockingbird” in a POW camp. For starters – Bruce Willis? Not the good guy. He and Colin? Not on the same side. So stop reading the back of the DVD box and just give “Hart’s War” a chance. Preferably over pizza. It gets bonus points for giving that guy from “Entourage” a horrible death, and loses said bonus points for indulging in the same kind of “this character is only here to prove a point and make you THINK” crap that annoyed me in “Fat Man and Little Boy.”
“Tigerland” (2000)
This drama stars Colin Farrell --- okay, I can hear you, and you know what? Kiss it, ‘cause this is actually a good movie. It’s a Vietnam movie that never gets within a continent of Vietnam, and yet somehow captures the ambivalence of the soldiers who were forced to fight that ambiguous war. Farrell is a much-court martialed private uncomfortably discovering his latent leadership skills in a training camp that’s the last stop before shipping out to Vietnam. We may justifiably knock Joel Schumacher for putting nipples on the Batsuit, but you have to admit that the man can spot on-screen talent (see also McConaughey, Matthew, and the entire cast of “Flatliners”). Aside from this being a gripping, well-acted film with lots of young character actors you may recognize from other things, this – Farrell’s first American movie – makes you understand why Hollywood fell in love with Colin Farrell. (If you get it on DVD, watch it with the director commentary, at least up until the sex scene about 15 minutes in – it’s kind of unintentionally hilarious how Schumacher makes the transition.)
(Tangent: wasn’t McConaughey originally cast as the evil KKK brother in "A Time to Kill" before getting bumped up to the lead, leaving Keifer Sutherland to play the bad guy? Am I the only one imagining if this had never happened, and McConaughey and Sutherland switched career paths? Can’t you just totally see Jack Bauer as a naked bongo-playing stoner? Maybe this is just me…)
“Atonement” (2007)
Another movie I’m about to be very hard on because it’s based on one of my favorite books. In my defense, parts of “Atonement” really do blow pretty hard. It’s not a bad adaptation of the book – the plot follows the novel’s closely, but more importantly, the filmmakers made good choices as to which of the novel’s events to depict. Basically, in the years immediately prior to World War II, a young girl from a wealthy English family who aspires to be a writer spots her older sister (Keira Knightly) and a working-class family friend (James McAvoy) having some sort of altercation she can’t understand. Because, at 13, she’s obviously the world’s leading expert on everything (this part was very accurate), the girl blunders into a situation and sucks everyone in with her, and the consequences ripple on for decades. It’s a deeply moving study of human fallibility. The problem is that it’s directed by Joe Wright, the guy who turned “Pride and Prejudice” into a frakking Harlequin romance. For its first half, “Atonement” is restrained, and I don’t think I’d change a thing about it. Then suddenly Wright flips a switch, and we land in this over-stylized melodrama, epitomized by a roughly half-hour-long tracking shot of the beach at Dunkirk just before the British evacuation. (Michael Bay called, he wants his DeMille Complex back.) That scene is meant to overwhelm me with the war’s human toll, but all it did was distract me by making me wonder if the camera operator got the extra cookie he so richly deserved. I didn’t realize just how much of a momentum-suck that Dunkirk scene was until later, when a character refers to “Queen Elizabeth,” and I stopped the movie to call my mom (my source for anything English) to double-check that QE II didn’t actually take the throne until the 50s, so was this a flub? Or maybe the Queen Mother’s name is Elizabeth, too? Which meant that I had to go Google – at which point it occurred to me that “Atonement” had lost me. I’m thinking I should be invested enough in a film’s story NOT to be thinking about such things right in the middle of it. From there on out I was just waiting for it to be over. (By the way, the ending of the book is SO much more powerful.) (Also by the way…….it’s Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. You’re welcome.)
Happy B-Day, Three Mile Island
Thirty years ago today, an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in eastern Pennsylvania released small amounts of radiation into the surrounding area. Fortunately, it turned out to be not nearly a disaster on the scale of the Chernobyl meltdown, but the incident showed that nuclear power - even though it's low-emission - still has its risks. (It also means I'll turn 30 next year...)
I can see how the Three Mile Island leak would freak America out to the point where people backed away from nuclear energy as a power source, even coming so close after the Arab oil embargo taught us that we couldn't always rely on foreign oil, either. But instead of shifting resources to developing yet another energy source - solar power, wind-generated power, geothermal - this country fell back to gas and coal, energy sources whose production and emission can be just as devasting as what could have happened at Three Mile Island. And now, 30 years later, we're still having the same debate. I think that's very sad.
Funnily enough, I'm re-reading a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, the lead scientist on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs used in World War II. After the war, Oppie became an outspoken champion of atomic regulation and nuclear disarmament, to the point where the U.S. government stripped him of his security clearance in the 1950s. So, to re-cap, the guy who oversaw the science behind and application of the weapon that won us WWII (and possibly the Cold War) thought that very technology was too dangerous to exist. Shouldn't that tell us something?
(By the way, almost a third of the power in the Phillipines comes from geothermal. The frakking Phillipines. You're telling me America can't get it to work?)
I can see how the Three Mile Island leak would freak America out to the point where people backed away from nuclear energy as a power source, even coming so close after the Arab oil embargo taught us that we couldn't always rely on foreign oil, either. But instead of shifting resources to developing yet another energy source - solar power, wind-generated power, geothermal - this country fell back to gas and coal, energy sources whose production and emission can be just as devasting as what could have happened at Three Mile Island. And now, 30 years later, we're still having the same debate. I think that's very sad.
Funnily enough, I'm re-reading a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, the lead scientist on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs used in World War II. After the war, Oppie became an outspoken champion of atomic regulation and nuclear disarmament, to the point where the U.S. government stripped him of his security clearance in the 1950s. So, to re-cap, the guy who oversaw the science behind and application of the weapon that won us WWII (and possibly the Cold War) thought that very technology was too dangerous to exist. Shouldn't that tell us something?
(By the way, almost a third of the power in the Phillipines comes from geothermal. The frakking Phillipines. You're telling me America can't get it to work?)
Thursday, March 26, 2009
What's your motivation?
Once upon a time, I went with my church youth group to a small town in the mountains of West Virginia to to work at a misson that ministered to this impoverished community where coal mining employed fewer and fewer people. Aside from the oppressive heat, a nearby (and quite vocal) chicken with insomnia and the ever-present coal dust, my strongest memory of that week is taking a walk through a local neighborhood our first evening there. In front of one of the rundown former "company houses" was a souped-up Mustang, about 10 years old. One of the kids made a snarky comment about spending our time helping people who chose to spend money on cars rather than food, clothing or housing. So we had a talk about what "charity" means, and how if you approach service with an attitude of accusing and judging those you're supposed to be helping, then your heart isn't really in the right place.
In that same state, lawmakers want to subject people who receive unemployment benefits, food stamps or other welfare to drug testing. Okay, first of all, the last time I checked you couldn't buy pot or meth or even beer with food stamps, so this isn't remotely about making sure that the state's money isn't abused. Instead, I think it's more about moralistic shaming of poor people who - despite what this asshat thinks - are in fact forced into using these social programs by virtue of the fact that the state unemployment rate jumped by more than a percentage point in the first month of this year. (In McDowell County, where my church went, almost one in 10 adults are currently out of work.)
I'm really tired of politicians who make public pronouncements without any examination of how their ideas work in reality. What happens to the children of the unemployed parent who tests positive for marijuana use? (Don't even get me started on how unreliable these drug tests are...)
But more than that, this singling out of the poor pisses me off. Do we drug test the guys on Wall Street who've gotten billions in federal aid, or the auto industry executives? Of course not, because only poor people use drugs. Horseshit. Maybe we should test Congress and state legislatures...yeah, there's an idea.
Drugs are bad, m'kay? But this is not how we get people off of them. It's more feel-good anger-fueled populist hooey that does jack to fix the real problem, and hurts a lot of innocent people in the process.
In that same state, lawmakers want to subject people who receive unemployment benefits, food stamps or other welfare to drug testing. Okay, first of all, the last time I checked you couldn't buy pot or meth or even beer with food stamps, so this isn't remotely about making sure that the state's money isn't abused. Instead, I think it's more about moralistic shaming of poor people who - despite what this asshat thinks - are in fact forced into using these social programs by virtue of the fact that the state unemployment rate jumped by more than a percentage point in the first month of this year. (In McDowell County, where my church went, almost one in 10 adults are currently out of work.)
I'm really tired of politicians who make public pronouncements without any examination of how their ideas work in reality. What happens to the children of the unemployed parent who tests positive for marijuana use? (Don't even get me started on how unreliable these drug tests are...)
But more than that, this singling out of the poor pisses me off. Do we drug test the guys on Wall Street who've gotten billions in federal aid, or the auto industry executives? Of course not, because only poor people use drugs. Horseshit. Maybe we should test Congress and state legislatures...yeah, there's an idea.
Drugs are bad, m'kay? But this is not how we get people off of them. It's more feel-good anger-fueled populist hooey that does jack to fix the real problem, and hurts a lot of innocent people in the process.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Judge: FDA must reconsider Plan B
Woo-hoo! In the continuing cheeseburger therapy to the hangover that was the Bush Administration's war on science, a federal judge ruled today that the Food and Drug Administration must change its rules regarding the emergency birth control medicine known as "Plan B." Under pressure from Bush's anti-abortion buddies, the FDA grudgingly approved Plan B without a perscription for women over 18. Now women aged 17 will also be able to get Plan B without a perscription. (It's still sold from behind the counter, and not accessible in a lot of places.)
I think a lot of the opposition to Plan B comes from people not understanding what it does. Plan B DOES NOT cause abortions for women who are already pregnant. It's merely a super-high dosage of the same oral contraceptives that many women take every day. Like those drugs, Plan B's instructions explicitly state that if a woman could possibly be pregnant, she should not take it. All Plan B does is prevent ovulation. It's not got nothing to do with implanting an already-fertilized egg.
A lot of Plan B's opponents say that making it more available will only encourage children to have sex (an argument used against most forms of birth control, as if no one ever had sex before the invention of condoms). I call BS - what proportion of Plan B users are children? (Keeping in mind that the state of North Carolina will let you screw at 16). No, this isn't about protecting the kids from their hormones. It's about policing the sexual activity of adult women, who some people continue to believe can't possibly have the capacity to make informed decisions.
Speaking of informed decisions...my best buddy in middle school taught me how to jimmy a bathroom condom machine, but I still didn't become sexually active until I was in my 20s. Why? BECAUSE I HAD PARENTS. Parents who were honest with me about the responsibilities that come along with sexual activity - teachers and church youth leaders, too. Until the FDA comes up with a pill for that, the head-in-the-sand right wingers need to stop harping on us evil feminists and see to their own houses.
I think a lot of the opposition to Plan B comes from people not understanding what it does. Plan B DOES NOT cause abortions for women who are already pregnant. It's merely a super-high dosage of the same oral contraceptives that many women take every day. Like those drugs, Plan B's instructions explicitly state that if a woman could possibly be pregnant, she should not take it. All Plan B does is prevent ovulation. It's not got nothing to do with implanting an already-fertilized egg.
A lot of Plan B's opponents say that making it more available will only encourage children to have sex (an argument used against most forms of birth control, as if no one ever had sex before the invention of condoms). I call BS - what proportion of Plan B users are children? (Keeping in mind that the state of North Carolina will let you screw at 16). No, this isn't about protecting the kids from their hormones. It's about policing the sexual activity of adult women, who some people continue to believe can't possibly have the capacity to make informed decisions.
Speaking of informed decisions...my best buddy in middle school taught me how to jimmy a bathroom condom machine, but I still didn't become sexually active until I was in my 20s. Why? BECAUSE I HAD PARENTS. Parents who were honest with me about the responsibilities that come along with sexual activity - teachers and church youth leaders, too. Until the FDA comes up with a pill for that, the head-in-the-sand right wingers need to stop harping on us evil feminists and see to their own houses.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
State of the State
Oh, boy! The N.C. General Assembly is back! We still have a Democratic majority (which I think we've had my whole lifetime), and we've got a brand-new Democrat governor, Bev Perdue (continuing the tradition of Democratic governors in all but four years of my lifetime). I love Democrats, as you know. But I also love competition, which usually makes for a better result. And that's the problem with my state's Democrats. They don't have real competition, and as a result their ideas are sometimes........well, kinda lacking.
Case in point: Rep. Larry Womble, from right here in Forsyth County, continues to push for reparation payments to the victims of NC's eugenics laws, as he has for many years. I applaud Womble for bringing attention to the law that, until the 1970s, allowed the state to forcibly sterilize people (many of them still children) whom it determined were "unfit" to bear children. There was an undeniable element of racism in many of those cases, but even setting that aside - it's absolutely appalling, stomach-churning, to think of a room with a board of government officials deciding whether or not the state should cut out a woman's reproductive system against her will. (Irony of ironies - at the same time that many of those same officials were working overtime to outlaw abortion rights.) About 2,600 of those victims are still living. Womble wants direct reparations to the tune of $20,000 per, at a total cost of $56 million. Gov. Perdue's new budget proposes $250,000 to start a foundation for their support. I prefer the governor's idea - I'm a non-profit person, and I like that a foundation would be able to solicit funds beyond the stae's budget. Plus, Womble's $20 grand is both too insufficient for the victims and too pricy for the state in total.
Womble also proposes a bill that would mandate any company wanting a state contract to disclose any profits it made from the slave trade. Hoo, boy. This is one of those things that sounds great in the abstract but, when you start trying to apply it to the real world, starts getting more and more problematic. Let's go ahead and stipulate Womble's argument that slavery was terrible and everyone should critically examine its consequences. Okay, now...How do we enforce this? Does the state employ an army of researchers to investigate every contractor's history to make sure they're telling the truth? All of my employers have been museums or colleges, so we tend to be big on the whole archive thing - but what about a construction company, or a bank? What about the businesses that didn't use slave labor themselves, but later acquired those that did? (I can think of a couple right now...For instance, the city's visitor center is in the Brookstown Mill area, along with Brookstown Inn - buildings that were part of a mill operated by a slaveowner. My alma mater's endowment was started with a gift from that same slaveowner's family. If you're wearing a t-shirt made by Hanes, congrats, you owe Womble a letter. Does Michael Jordan profit from slavery, too?) Why stop at 1865? Certainly NC businesses exploited African Americans for many years after (as were white workers, but let's not talk about them for the moment). All around, a very poorly conceived bill. Knowing that Womble is an intelligent person, it's that much more frustrating to see him wasting tine on this fruitless, pointless vote-grabber ephemera knowing that one out of ten adults in our region are unemployed.
Which brings me to Gov. Perdue's budget. Bev wants to hike taxes on tobacco products by $1. Our state has some of the lowest tobacco taxes in the country. (Side note: I stopped for gas today and the station had a sign at the register apologizing for the increased cost. Apparently tobacco companies have already upped their prices in anticpation of the federal tax that won't take effect for another few months.) Mmmmmmm..........again, a "sin tax" sounds good - smoking is bad, hell yeah they should pay more! - but I hestitate once I read the fine print. We're not talking about a tax to discourage behavior (which I'm not convince the government should do anyway...). We're not talking about taxing smokes to create revenue for anti-smoking programs, or to pay for the health-related costs of tobacco abuse, both of which I could get behind. But taxing cigarettes to pay for roads and teacher salaries? That just seems like bad policy. What if higher taxes inspire scores of people to quit smoking? Great! Now we have less revenue for those roads and teachers. Ooops. I feel like this is an extremely short-term solution.
Case in point: Rep. Larry Womble, from right here in Forsyth County, continues to push for reparation payments to the victims of NC's eugenics laws, as he has for many years. I applaud Womble for bringing attention to the law that, until the 1970s, allowed the state to forcibly sterilize people (many of them still children) whom it determined were "unfit" to bear children. There was an undeniable element of racism in many of those cases, but even setting that aside - it's absolutely appalling, stomach-churning, to think of a room with a board of government officials deciding whether or not the state should cut out a woman's reproductive system against her will. (Irony of ironies - at the same time that many of those same officials were working overtime to outlaw abortion rights.) About 2,600 of those victims are still living. Womble wants direct reparations to the tune of $20,000 per, at a total cost of $56 million. Gov. Perdue's new budget proposes $250,000 to start a foundation for their support. I prefer the governor's idea - I'm a non-profit person, and I like that a foundation would be able to solicit funds beyond the stae's budget. Plus, Womble's $20 grand is both too insufficient for the victims and too pricy for the state in total.
Womble also proposes a bill that would mandate any company wanting a state contract to disclose any profits it made from the slave trade. Hoo, boy. This is one of those things that sounds great in the abstract but, when you start trying to apply it to the real world, starts getting more and more problematic. Let's go ahead and stipulate Womble's argument that slavery was terrible and everyone should critically examine its consequences. Okay, now...How do we enforce this? Does the state employ an army of researchers to investigate every contractor's history to make sure they're telling the truth? All of my employers have been museums or colleges, so we tend to be big on the whole archive thing - but what about a construction company, or a bank? What about the businesses that didn't use slave labor themselves, but later acquired those that did? (I can think of a couple right now...For instance, the city's visitor center is in the Brookstown Mill area, along with Brookstown Inn - buildings that were part of a mill operated by a slaveowner. My alma mater's endowment was started with a gift from that same slaveowner's family. If you're wearing a t-shirt made by Hanes, congrats, you owe Womble a letter. Does Michael Jordan profit from slavery, too?) Why stop at 1865? Certainly NC businesses exploited African Americans for many years after (as were white workers, but let's not talk about them for the moment). All around, a very poorly conceived bill. Knowing that Womble is an intelligent person, it's that much more frustrating to see him wasting tine on this fruitless, pointless vote-grabber ephemera knowing that one out of ten adults in our region are unemployed.
Which brings me to Gov. Perdue's budget. Bev wants to hike taxes on tobacco products by $1. Our state has some of the lowest tobacco taxes in the country. (Side note: I stopped for gas today and the station had a sign at the register apologizing for the increased cost. Apparently tobacco companies have already upped their prices in anticpation of the federal tax that won't take effect for another few months.) Mmmmmmm..........again, a "sin tax" sounds good - smoking is bad, hell yeah they should pay more! - but I hestitate once I read the fine print. We're not talking about a tax to discourage behavior (which I'm not convince the government should do anyway...). We're not talking about taxing smokes to create revenue for anti-smoking programs, or to pay for the health-related costs of tobacco abuse, both of which I could get behind. But taxing cigarettes to pay for roads and teacher salaries? That just seems like bad policy. What if higher taxes inspire scores of people to quit smoking? Great! Now we have less revenue for those roads and teachers. Ooops. I feel like this is an extremely short-term solution.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
House votes to tax the hell out of bailout bonuses
Oh, SNAP! The House of Representatives voted today on a bill that would tax any executive bonuses from companies who accept(ed) more than $5 billion in federal bailout money - to the tune of 90 percent. (It's still got to clear the slightly more deliberative Senate before it becomes law.)
The move was no doubt prompted by the news this week that execs at AIG - including several in the division that caused the firm's problems to begin with - were getting $165 million in bonuses. Or, as Rep. Barney Frank called them, "people 'who had to be bribed not to abandon the company' they had nearly ruined."
While I was marveling at the bill's bipartisan support and wondering if this was legal, I recollected a recent appearance by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on one of the Sunday talk shows, where Newt warned that any tax hikes on the wealthy would discourage the best and the brightest (as we know the very rich to be, always) from using their collective acumen to make money that would then trickle down to us drooling college-dropout and raised-by-single-moms masses. That sounded kinda funny to me...I had trouble picturing myself sitting around coming up with surefire million-dollar ideas, only to conclude that the taxes weren't worth it, so, oh well, I should just go back to unemployed beer pong.
Republicans in Congress can play at populism all they want - but ridiculous executive salaries are a direct outgrowth of the Reaganomics notion that the rich have a moral obligation to get richer, no matter what the cost to anyone else.
The move was no doubt prompted by the news this week that execs at AIG - including several in the division that caused the firm's problems to begin with - were getting $165 million in bonuses. Or, as Rep. Barney Frank called them, "people 'who had to be bribed not to abandon the company' they had nearly ruined."
While I was marveling at the bill's bipartisan support and wondering if this was legal, I recollected a recent appearance by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on one of the Sunday talk shows, where Newt warned that any tax hikes on the wealthy would discourage the best and the brightest (as we know the very rich to be, always) from using their collective acumen to make money that would then trickle down to us drooling college-dropout and raised-by-single-moms masses. That sounded kinda funny to me...I had trouble picturing myself sitting around coming up with surefire million-dollar ideas, only to conclude that the taxes weren't worth it, so, oh well, I should just go back to unemployed beer pong.
Republicans in Congress can play at populism all they want - but ridiculous executive salaries are a direct outgrowth of the Reaganomics notion that the rich have a moral obligation to get richer, no matter what the cost to anyone else.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Boundaries, and a lack thereof
I've gone back and forth over whether to do a post on the reported break up of Bristol Palin and her boyfriend Levi Johnston. A few days after Palin's mother, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, joined Senator John McCain as his running mate last year, the campaign announced that Bristol was pregnant and intended to marry Johnston, the father. While the personal issues of two teenagers were off the table for me (and for the Obama campaign), this does matter because of Gov. Palin's stated opposition to comprehensive sex-education in public schools. I have no idea what the Palins taught their own children about sex, but the governor has said that programs which teach anything other than abstinence "will not find my support." And those programs don't work, to the point where states are actually turning down federal funding for them. For me, the issue was - I don't want to say "hypocrisy," because that implies some intent on the governor's part. How about "cluelessness"? Oh, well, I didn't vote for her. And anyway, that's been covered by people who are a lot smarter than me.
Here's what I do know. It's disingenuous, maybe a little sleazy, the way this whole story has been handled in the press. It was sleazy for the governor to drag her pregnant teenage daughter out as a selling point, and it's really sleazy for "Good Morning America" to ambush Johnston in his truck to pick over the dirty details of his relationship with Bristol and their infant son. This kid is 19 frakking years old. Bristol is 18. Do you remember what it was like to be that age? I do. And I didn't even have anything like the stresses these two kids are under. Neither of them deserve to see their lives hashed out in the national press.
My question is this - does Gov. Palin not have any people? You know, people in my job, people who can advise her that when she runs for national office the media are going to pick over every aspect of her life, and the lives of everyone in her orbit, like little old ladies at a yard sale? You have two options in this situation: extensive media training (I've been through a small amount, and it kicked my ass), or drilling into everyone's heads that you do not talk to the press under any circumstances. (Well, and a third option: Hey, I'm not up for this, so maybe I shouldn't run for vice president...but we won't go into that.)
Obviously we can't rely on the national media to show some restraint here. So in my opinion it would fall to the governor's "people" to lock down the personal lives of the governor's family. The flip side of that is that Gov. Palin and her "people" can't expect to protect her family and simulanteously use them to prove her conservative bona fides.
In the meantime, my heart goes out to two very young people trying to find the best way out of an impossible situation. Media scrutiny isn't going to make their lives any easier.
Here's what I do know. It's disingenuous, maybe a little sleazy, the way this whole story has been handled in the press. It was sleazy for the governor to drag her pregnant teenage daughter out as a selling point, and it's really sleazy for "Good Morning America" to ambush Johnston in his truck to pick over the dirty details of his relationship with Bristol and their infant son. This kid is 19 frakking years old. Bristol is 18. Do you remember what it was like to be that age? I do. And I didn't even have anything like the stresses these two kids are under. Neither of them deserve to see their lives hashed out in the national press.
My question is this - does Gov. Palin not have any people? You know, people in my job, people who can advise her that when she runs for national office the media are going to pick over every aspect of her life, and the lives of everyone in her orbit, like little old ladies at a yard sale? You have two options in this situation: extensive media training (I've been through a small amount, and it kicked my ass), or drilling into everyone's heads that you do not talk to the press under any circumstances. (Well, and a third option: Hey, I'm not up for this, so maybe I shouldn't run for vice president...but we won't go into that.)
Obviously we can't rely on the national media to show some restraint here. So in my opinion it would fall to the governor's "people" to lock down the personal lives of the governor's family. The flip side of that is that Gov. Palin and her "people" can't expect to protect her family and simulanteously use them to prove her conservative bona fides.
In the meantime, my heart goes out to two very young people trying to find the best way out of an impossible situation. Media scrutiny isn't going to make their lives any easier.
Meghan McCain, for the win!
I have to say, I'm building a small girl-crush on Meghan McCain. During her father's presidential campaign last year, she kept a running blog; while I disagreed with her politics, I had to applaud her for communicating 21st Century-style (something the rest of the McCain campaign couldn't seem to get going...). McCain's been blogging for The Daily Beast, and emerging as a popular voice for younger, non-crazy conservatives. For instance, she recently wrote that she doesn't like Ann Coulter.
In response to that, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham had this to say about the daughter of the U.S. Senator and Republican presidential nominee: she's a "valley girl gone awry," and she's "plus-sized."
MCCAIN (on MSNBC): And I think there’s an extreme on both parties and I hate extreme. I don’t understand. I have friends that are the most radically conservative and radically liberal people possibly ever and we all get along. We can find a middle ground.
INGRAHAM (mocking): Ok, I was really hoping that I was going to get that role in the Real World, but then I realized that, well, they don’t like plus-sized models. They only like the women who look a certain way. And on this 50th anniversary of Barbie, I really have something to say.
I was going to write a long post about the tendency to try and shut women down by insulting their appearance rather than arguing against their actual positions, and maybe point out that if Meghan McCain weighed 400 pounds and had a goiter and pox all over her bald head, she'd still have a right to express her opinion. But I thought McCain herself put it well.
It's also pretty sad that any political "expert" would so automatically dismiss the voice of a woman who - unlike Ingraham - was actually out on the campaign trail interacting with real live voters for most of the last year. When politicians - conservatives AND liberals - cling to idealogy and demonize people who think differently and lose, and when those who build coalitions succeed, just maybe it's not a bad idea to listen to the kinds of thing Ms. McCain is writing.
And by the way, if she's fat, then I'm an orca whale.
UPDATE: Ingraham just won't quit. In this blog post, she calls McCain a "useful idiot" and posts the full segment from her show that I referenced above, apparently thinking that airing MORE of her mocking is some kind of defense. Fascinating.
In response to that, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham had this to say about the daughter of the U.S. Senator and Republican presidential nominee: she's a "valley girl gone awry," and she's "plus-sized."
MCCAIN (on MSNBC): And I think there’s an extreme on both parties and I hate extreme. I don’t understand. I have friends that are the most radically conservative and radically liberal people possibly ever and we all get along. We can find a middle ground.
INGRAHAM (mocking): Ok, I was really hoping that I was going to get that role in the Real World, but then I realized that, well, they don’t like plus-sized models. They only like the women who look a certain way. And on this 50th anniversary of Barbie, I really have something to say.
I was going to write a long post about the tendency to try and shut women down by insulting their appearance rather than arguing against their actual positions, and maybe point out that if Meghan McCain weighed 400 pounds and had a goiter and pox all over her bald head, she'd still have a right to express her opinion. But I thought McCain herself put it well.
It's also pretty sad that any political "expert" would so automatically dismiss the voice of a woman who - unlike Ingraham - was actually out on the campaign trail interacting with real live voters for most of the last year. When politicians - conservatives AND liberals - cling to idealogy and demonize people who think differently and lose, and when those who build coalitions succeed, just maybe it's not a bad idea to listen to the kinds of thing Ms. McCain is writing.
And by the way, if she's fat, then I'm an orca whale.
UPDATE: Ingraham just won't quit. In this blog post, she calls McCain a "useful idiot" and posts the full segment from her show that I referenced above, apparently thinking that airing MORE of her mocking is some kind of defense. Fascinating.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Stewart vs. Cramer: "It's not a f***ing game"
In an interview that evoked his epic "Crossfire" smackdown, Jon Stewart finally met "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on "The Daily Show" last night. I have to give Cramer kudos for having the guts to appear on Stewart's turf, but - bless his heart - he got killed.
Check out the full, unedited interview:
It seems that Stewart is pissed off less at Cramer personally, and more at CNBC for flaking off when it came to reporting on the financial crisis. (As Stewart said earlier this week, it's like the Weather Channel reporting from the middle of a hurricane, mystified because it's raining.) A lot of Stewart's critics dismiss him, saying that he's "just a comedian" and shouldn't cover such serious issues. I think Stewart would agree...which begs the question - how sad is it that it took a comedian to ask these questions?
There's a reason the news industry is collapsing. Reporters and editors (in print, TV, everything) have failed to balance their access to inside sources with their obligation to dig through the spin and tell as much of the truth as possible. And yes, I say this as a professional spinner myself. It's my job to express information in such as way that's advantageous to the organization that pays me. It's the media's job to take my information with a grain of salt and not run it as gospel truth without independent corroboration.
Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest sympathy for the reporters and editors I work with, whose higher-ups are more concerned with media as a business model than as a public service. But when the MSM look around wondering how a guy on a basic cable comedy channel developed more credibility than them, I think they'd be better served by taking a hard look in the mirror.
Check out the full, unedited interview:
It seems that Stewart is pissed off less at Cramer personally, and more at CNBC for flaking off when it came to reporting on the financial crisis. (As Stewart said earlier this week, it's like the Weather Channel reporting from the middle of a hurricane, mystified because it's raining.) A lot of Stewart's critics dismiss him, saying that he's "just a comedian" and shouldn't cover such serious issues. I think Stewart would agree...which begs the question - how sad is it that it took a comedian to ask these questions?
There's a reason the news industry is collapsing. Reporters and editors (in print, TV, everything) have failed to balance their access to inside sources with their obligation to dig through the spin and tell as much of the truth as possible. And yes, I say this as a professional spinner myself. It's my job to express information in such as way that's advantageous to the organization that pays me. It's the media's job to take my information with a grain of salt and not run it as gospel truth without independent corroboration.
Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest sympathy for the reporters and editors I work with, whose higher-ups are more concerned with media as a business model than as a public service. But when the MSM look around wondering how a guy on a basic cable comedy channel developed more credibility than them, I think they'd be better served by taking a hard look in the mirror.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Great moments in Winston-Salem jurisprudence, #487
I don't believe this. A murder case here in Winston-Salem has ended in a mistrial because "one juror would not budge from her position that even though the defendant was guilty, she would not agree to a guilty verdict because it would send him to prison for life."
At the moment, I'm involved in a citizen group that wants to reform our local justice system, and we're frequently met with skepticism from people who insist that there's nothing wrong with our methods of law 'n order. So, Juror #9, while I think you're a freaking idiot.......thanks, I guess? For proving our point? (Thus ends my attempt to find a silver lining in this situation.)
Here's the thing: when you're on a jury, you take an oath to base your decisions on the law, not on your personal opinions or intuitions. You sure as hell don't base something as serious as a murder verdict on whether you felt like you got a "spark" from the guy's momma's testimony. If this juror felt on principle that she could not send a man to jail for life, then she had a legal and moral obligation to say so during the selection process. For instance, I'm opposed to the death penalty. If I'm ever called to jury duty where the death penalty is on the table, I'll have to make clear that I could not apply the law in that situation. And then I would be sent home.
But wait, says the radical activist. You have a golden opportunity to get onto the jury and ensure that the death penalty/life sentence won't be applied - shouldn't you engage in this little bit of civil disobedience? I say no. I say, if you feel that something in the law is wrong, have the courage to say so in front of a courtroom full of people, lobby your elected officials, hell, stand on the sidewalk waving a protest sign. But don't waste public time and money and drag a crime victim's family through hell to prove your little point.
I don't actually think that Juror #9 is an anti-felony murder statute activist. I think she's an imbecile. Which begs the question - how did she get on a jury in the first place? Isn't there some sort of screening process that covers basic reading comprehension or - I dunno - non-stupidity? I want everyone in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County to read this article - twice. And then, the next time you get the urge to shrug off Daryl Hunt's 20-year "oops" or the "procedural errors" in Kalvin Michael Smith's case and insist that it's impossible for innocent men to be sent to prison or guilty men set free, I want you to read it again. And then tell yourself there's nothing wrong with the system.
At the moment, I'm involved in a citizen group that wants to reform our local justice system, and we're frequently met with skepticism from people who insist that there's nothing wrong with our methods of law 'n order. So, Juror #9, while I think you're a freaking idiot.......thanks, I guess? For proving our point? (Thus ends my attempt to find a silver lining in this situation.)
Here's the thing: when you're on a jury, you take an oath to base your decisions on the law, not on your personal opinions or intuitions. You sure as hell don't base something as serious as a murder verdict on whether you felt like you got a "spark" from the guy's momma's testimony. If this juror felt on principle that she could not send a man to jail for life, then she had a legal and moral obligation to say so during the selection process. For instance, I'm opposed to the death penalty. If I'm ever called to jury duty where the death penalty is on the table, I'll have to make clear that I could not apply the law in that situation. And then I would be sent home.
But wait, says the radical activist. You have a golden opportunity to get onto the jury and ensure that the death penalty/life sentence won't be applied - shouldn't you engage in this little bit of civil disobedience? I say no. I say, if you feel that something in the law is wrong, have the courage to say so in front of a courtroom full of people, lobby your elected officials, hell, stand on the sidewalk waving a protest sign. But don't waste public time and money and drag a crime victim's family through hell to prove your little point.
I don't actually think that Juror #9 is an anti-felony murder statute activist. I think she's an imbecile. Which begs the question - how did she get on a jury in the first place? Isn't there some sort of screening process that covers basic reading comprehension or - I dunno - non-stupidity? I want everyone in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County to read this article - twice. And then, the next time you get the urge to shrug off Daryl Hunt's 20-year "oops" or the "procedural errors" in Kalvin Michael Smith's case and insist that it's impossible for innocent men to be sent to prison or guilty men set free, I want you to read it again. And then tell yourself there's nothing wrong with the system.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
CNN.com headline: FAIL
CNN.com headline: Boy sleeps with two teachers?
Let me fix that for you...When an adult (or, in this case, two adults) has sex with a 13-year-old, we don't call it "sleeping with" or "having an affair" or any other cutesy Harlequin romance euphemism. We call it statutory rape. (Even if the child in question is a boy.)
Correct headline: Two teachers rape 13-year-old.
Let me fix that for you...When an adult (or, in this case, two adults) has sex with a 13-year-old, we don't call it "sleeping with" or "having an affair" or any other cutesy Harlequin romance euphemism. We call it statutory rape. (Even if the child in question is a boy.)
Correct headline: Two teachers rape 13-year-old.
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