Category Archives: Movies

Slight delay in the end of the world

A couple of quick pop-culture references, and Kathryn will be grateful that neither is to “The Godfather” (don’t worry, fans, I’m sure I’ll get back to the Corleones soon enough). The first is that I’m feeling sort of like Billy Jack…

I want you to know… that I try. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me that I’m supposed to control my tendency to be a wiseacre, and be passive and respectful of other people’s beliefs like they are, I try. I really try. Though when I see this guy… who should know to keep quiet after this weekend… and I see him speaking up again, and getting quoted, and I think of the number of months that we’re probably going to have to keep hearing about it… I just go BERSERK!

I’m referring, of course, to the news that this Harold Camping guy is saying, Oops, the Rapture’s gonna come in October now.

The second cultural reference is more obscure. It’s to The Dirty Dozen. No, not the movie, but the (much superior) E.M. Nathanson novel on which it was based. The novel is so little-remembered that I had trouble finding a full preview of it on Google Books to check my quote. But near the end of the book, when Samson Posey, a Ute Indian, tries to perform a Sun Dance to get the weather to clear over Normandy, and one of the other 11 guys starts making fun of him, suggesting he’s doing a rain dance by mistake, an Army chaplain standing nearby says “Don’t mock him, fellow! Whatever your beliefs — if you have any — do not mock him!”

Which I’ve always thought was a pretty good thought to live by. (Look, if you want a blog that quotes Shakespeare, there are plenty of them out there.) A lot of people believe a lot of unlikely things. In this case, we have some people believing something that is directly refuted by the Bible. Which is inexplicable. OK, so Camping isn’t a biblical literalist. Cool. But we’re talking about a quote attributed to Jesus Christ himself saying No one knows the day or the hour…

But I try, I really try, not to make fun. You’ll note that I did not do so last week.

But this guy is really, really trying my patience, and my resolve to be tolerant and respectful…

Bush was Sonny; Obama is more like Michael

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I said this as a comment back on a previous post, and liked it enough to say more prominently…

After reading that quote I cited in the WSJ about how the Obama administration is, ever so quietly, without saying anything overt, taking advantage of its stunning effectiveness in taking out bin Laden:

This month’s military strike deep inside Pakistan is already being used by U.S. officials as a negotiating tool — akin to, don’t make us do that again — with countries including Pakistan thought to harbor other terrorists. Yemen and Somalia are also potential venues, officials said, if local-government cooperation were found to be lacking…

… I got to thinking how this was similar to the effect that Bush’s invasion of Iraq had on thugs like Moamar Qaddafi — for a very brief time, before everybody around the world figured out that (given our internal dispute over that invasion) W. wasn’t likely to get the chance to do that ever again…

And then it hit me: In terms of the politics of projecting a credible threat that gets others to do what you want (an idea that I realize makes a lot of us squirm), George W. Bush was like Sonny Corleone. The blusterer, the guy you just know is going to jump in the car and come after you in a mad, blind rage if you touch his sister. The guy who doesn’t want to negotiate; he just wants Sollozzo dead. And ultimately, the guy who has trouble achieving all his goals.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is more like Michael. The clean-cut college kid who was never involved in the muscle end of the business, who held himself aloof from that, even expressed distaste for it. The guy who was supposed to be “Senator Corleone, President Corleone,” and not a wartime don. The guy who speaks softly and reasonably, and never utters a threat. The guy who takes out the heads of the other four New York families in one stunning stroke, right when you’ve forgotten about the bad blood. The guy who keeps on speaking reasonably after that, but nevertheless everybody respects him now, in the uomo di rispetto sense…

Not that, you know, I’m saying either president is a criminal. Far from it. I’m just using very familiar fictional characters in order to draw a comparison…

Oh, I guess we really CAN do stuff like that

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Channel-surfing over the weekend, I noticed that Wolfgang Petersen’s “Air Force One” was showing. I didn’t stop to watch it. I own it on Blu-Ray — so I can actually hear Gary Oldman saying “smart bomb” in his extreme Russian accent any time.

But it reminded me of something.

Back in the late ’90s, I mentioned that movie in a conversation with then Secretary of Defense William Cohen. I was in Washington on one of those things where senior government officials invite journalists from the boonies to interviews as a way of trying to bypass the Washington press corps and speak straight to the people — or relatively so. The idea being that we’re less cynical, or more gullible, or something.

Anyway, at one point I suppose I confirmed Cohen’s faith in my lack of sophistication — thanks to my own odd sense of humor. There were several of us at the table speaking with the secretary, and someone was talking about some intractable international situation — Saddam Hussein, perhaps, or maybe Moamar Qaddafi — and expressing the American people’s supposed frustration. There was an implication in what this guy was saying that there was some simple solution that the Clinton Administration was simply failing to employ. I couldn’t resist facetiously saying, “Yeah, after all, everyone who has seen the opening of ‘Air Force One’ knows we can just send in a SEAL team and snatch a troublesome foreign leader neatly and cleanly and with no U.S. casualties, right out of his own house, any time we want to.” (To see what I’m talking about, start at about 2:50 on this clip.)

I expected Cohen to get that I was kidding, that I was making fun of Hollywood and the way it can unrealistically shape public expectations, and give me an ironic smile before patiently explaining reality to the other guy. Instead, he looked at me and explained very patiently and without a crack of a smile that it wasn’t that easy in real life.

I was so embarrassed that he thought I was that unsophisticated that I didn’t realize how difficult and rare, even impossible, such a coup de main operation can be. I think I muttered something about, “I was kidding…,” but I don’t think it did any good.

But here’s the wild and ironic thing: Cohen and I were both wrong. The bin Laden raid proved that — conditions being right — we CAN do stuff like that. This thought has occurred to me a number of times since May 1, and I was reminded of it again over the weekend.

Tell you what, though — I still don’t think a man swinging back and forth as he dangles from a parachute can shoot a guard on a roof in the back of the head with one shot, from hundreds of yards away — laser sight or no laser sight…

Great movie scene (which I missed when it first came out)

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When it came out in 2004, I had little urge to see the latest Hollywood interpretation of “The Alamo” — the one with Billy Bob Thornton portraying Davy Crockett. Partly because I was almost half a century past my coonskin-cap phase, partly because I had heard that the portrayal of Davy was somewhat… postmodern… which I didn’t really need even if I had put Davy-worship behind me, and partly because I just generally didn’t hear much good about it. On Netflix it only gets about two-and-a-half stars.

That was a mistake on my part. I caught some of it on TV recently, and have now ordered it from Netflix so I can see the first third or so, which I had missed.

The centerpiece is the portrayal of Crockett, which is really awesome. It’s deep, and appealing. And very human. This is the iconoclastic politician who (as confirmed by my favorite-ever historical plaque, on the courthouse square in Jackson, TN) told voters who had refused to re-elect him to Congress, “You can go to hell, but I am going to Texas!” This was one of the nation’s first larger-than-life celebrities.

I don’t know whether the real man was anything like this, but watching this movie I am persuaded by Thornton that he IS Davy Crockett. Even more so than Fess Parker, which means a lot coming from a child of the ’50s.

This scene, in which Davy muses on the price of living up to public expectations, encapsulates the performance well. Check it out. The interplay between Jim Bowie’s taunting cynicism and Davy’s sincere, patient self-awareness is pretty powerful. And in case this violates any copyright — come on, guys, I’m trying to get people to check out your movie!

Geronimo, bin Laden, history and popular culture

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That headline sounds like the title of a college course that might be briefly popular among those trying to fulfill a requirement in history or sociology or the like, doesn’t it?

Just ran across this WashPost piece from six days ago, stepping away from emotion over the use of “Geronimo” as the name of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, and noting the parallels between the U.S. military’s pursuits of the two men. I found it informative, so here it is. An excerpt:

The similarities are not in the men themselves but in the military campaigns that targeted them…

The 16-month campaign was the first of nearly a dozen strategic manhunts in U.S. military history in which forces were deployed abroad with the objective of killing or capturing one individual. Among those targeted were Pancho Villa, Che Guevara, Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein.

The original Geronimo campaign and the hunt for bin Laden share plenty of similarities. On May 3, 1886, more than a century before a $25 million reward was offered for information on bin Laden’s whereabouts, and almost 125 years to the day before the al-Qaeda leader’s death, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a joint resolution “Authorizing the President to offer a reward of twenty-five thousand dollars for the killing or capture of Geronimo.”

In both operations, the United States deployed its most advanced technology. Whereas a vast array of satellite and airborne sensors was utilized in the search for bin Laden, Gen. Nelson Miles directed his commanders to erect heliograph stations on prominent mountain peaks, using sunlight and mirrors to transmit news of the hostiles. Neither system helped anyone actually catch sight of the man who was sought.

Small raiding forces … proved more decisive than large troop formations in both cases. In 1886, Lt. Charles Gatewood was able to approach the 40 Apache warriors still at large with a party of just five — himself, two Apache scouts, an interpreter and a mule-packer. He convinced Geronimo and the renegades to surrender on Sept. 4, with a deftness that would have been impossible with 5,000 soldiers. Similarly, the United States could never have deployed the thousands of troops necessary to block all escape routes out of Tora Bora — the deployment of 3,000 troops three months later to Afghanistan’s ShahikotValley in Operation Anaconda failed to prevent the escape of the targeted individuals from similar terrain — but a lightning strike by a few dozen commandos was successful.

Both campaigns also demonstrated the importance of human intelligence to manhunting. Gatewood was alerted to Geronimo’s location near Fronteras, Mexico, by a group of Mexican farmers tired of the threat of Apache raids, but he also needed the assistance of Apache scouts familiar with the terrain and with Geronimo’s warriors to close in on his quarry. So, too, according to administration officials, did the success in finding bin Laden depend upon the interrogation of his former confederates in al-Qaeda and upon the efforts of local agents in Pakistan to track the courier who led U.S. intelligence officers to the Abbottabad compound….

And so forth. By the way, on a related topic, here’s a piece written by a paratrooper on the history of U.S. soldier’s tradition of yelling that name when jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. Apparently, it all came from a 1939 movie starring “Chief Thundercloud,” a.k.a. Victor Daniels (not to mention the immortal Andy Devine!).

And talk about your coincidences… I had been clicking around through my Netflix instant queue one night recently and watched a few minutes of the ubersilly “Hot Shots Deux,” starring Charlie Sheen and Lloyd Bridges. (Hey, in small doses, I very much enjoy the whole “Airplane!” comedy genre — even when Leslie Nielsen is absent.) The scene below was part of what I saw. The very next morning, I first read of the controversy among some American Indians over the “Geronimo” operation… Seemed ironic. You know, what with Charlie Sheen being such a paragon of sensitivity and all.

Oh, and what do I think of it? The same thing I think about the Redskins, the Braves, et al. It’s a tribute, not a sign of disrespect. You really have to want to be insulted to take it that way. But as you know, I have little sensitivity toward — or, admittedly, understanding of — the complex resentments than can be felt by people to whom Identity Politics is important. And I hate arguing with people like that, because I’m willing to grant that in many cases such people DO actually feel hurt, with or without justification that makes sense to me. But it seemed like it would be a cop-out if, after bringing up the subject, I didn’t share my own opinion, for what little it’s worth, and however lightly I may hold it.

40 Years of Living Dangerously: 1st impressions of Qaddafi

God Save “the King,” and congrats to Firth et al.

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I could go on a tirade here about why I don’t follow the Oscars, and revisit the fiasco of 1998… Actually, I will revisit it, just to this extent:

Why I don’t watch the Oscars.

There was a time when I did, avidly. I love movies, to a degree indicative of really messed-up priorities. As in, a man with priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve such a fine automobile. For instance, you’ll hear me quoting movies irrelevantly, seemingly at random. I love to read, have loved reading good fiction all of my life. But I think maybe movies are my very favorite art form. And yes, I know that’s kind of lowbrow, but it’s true. So be it.

Once, I used to go out of my way to at least see all of the movies nominated for Best Picture, and take an inordinate interest in which one won.

No more. My interest came to a crashing end in 1998, when “Shakespeare in Love” won Best Picture. That was the last straw.

I didn’t care that it beat out “Elizabeth” or “The Thin Red Line,” because they were both lame (especially that wretched adaptation of James Jones’ classic novel).

No, what got me was that “Shakespeare” was chosen over “Saving Private Ryan” (which sometimes makes my Top Five best pictures ever, depending on how I feel that day) and the wonderful “Life is Beautiful.”

Not that “Shakespeare” wasn’t fun. It was. As much fun as fluff can be. And that’s what it was. Worse, it was self-referential fluff. That was a movie for and about movie stars, transported to the 16th century. It made actors look cool, and fun, and clever, and way historical, meaning we should take them seriously. They adored it, because it made them feel great about themselves.

Which, come to think of it, is what the Oscars are about. Which is why I don’t watch anymore.

But all of that said, I’d still like to wish Colin Firth, et alia, joy of their triumph last night. Because, even though Mr. Firth was implicated in the fiasco, he certainly deserves this latest award.

And “The King’s Speech,” to my own admittedly limited knowledge, clearly deserved “Best Picture.”

I say “admittedly limited,” because, well, I had only seen four of the nominees. (Of which there appear to have been 10 — didn’t it used to be just 5? This is what happens when you stop following these things…)

Also, one more disclaimer. “The King’s Speech” is probably elevated a bit in my estimation because, well, I saw it in England. On my last night in the country, which happened to be the opening night in that country (oddly, this quintessentially British flick had opened in the States first). We saw it at the Odeon on Magdalen Street in Oxford. J and my granddaughter had had high tea at the Ashmolean, while I ducked over for another quick glimpse of the Pitt Rivers and then grabbed a quick bite at the McDonald’s on Cornmarket (just to prove that not everything I did was all touristy). Odd thing about ketchup in Britain, by the way — it’s much sweeter and less tangy; I don’t know why.

Bottom line, it was the best film I’d seen in the past year, and I suspect better than the nominees I haven’t seen, from what I’ve heard (and frankly, you’d have to pay me to get me to see, for instance, “127 Hours”). Perhaps I should provide a quick comparison to the few I have seen:

Inception — Biggest movie disappointment of the year for me. The trailers had done a good job of selling it to me, and it was one of the few that I meant to actually see in the theater, but didn’t make it in time. So I waited anxiously for its appearance on Netflix (and what is it with Netflix’ inability to get movies as soon as they’re available at WalMart, huh?), and then was disappointed. I mean, it was basically a play on the bad plot device of “and then the little boy woke up,” only taken to an exponentially greater point. I’m at the point of really wanting it to be over, and then… what? yet another dream level? gimme a break? It was like watching Twain’s “The Great Dark” translated to film — the years at the end that he skims over in the story.
The Kids are All Right — This was pretty good, and it has Julianne Moore naked (I say that not so much because it was significant to me, you understand, but in case lesbians are thinking about seeing it, which they may be), but in the end, I was disappointed. Actually, more specifically, I found the ending disappointing. I hated to see Mark Ruffalo’s character shut out at the end. My wife explained that I wasn’t supposed to feel that way, that he was a ne’er-do-well, etc. (in fact he was, technically and literally, a wanker — that was his importance to the plot), but I was still disappointed for him. Perhaps because he was the only character in the film with whom I could remotely identify. In any case, not the best of the year.
The Social Network — Ballyhooed by many as the best film of the year, my own estimation was only slightly higher than that of my younger son, who said “I’d heard it was a movie about inventing Facebook. And that’s what it was.” Yes, I appreciated it as social commentary on the way technology is changing our world and even our brains, but most of that had to be inferred. It was a good flick, just not as awesome as I had been led to expect.

And yes, it’s presumptuous to say I wouldn’t have liked the ones I didn’t see (and I still DO look forward to “True Grit” coming out on DVD — not because I liked the John Wayne one, which I didn’t, but because I continue to hold out hope for the Coen Brothers, in spite of “Burn Before Reading”). But hey, all I can do is go with what I have.

Oh, one last political observation on “The King’s Speech.” On the morning of the day I saw it, I read this review in The Guardian over my traditional English breakfast at the B&B, and uttered a Toryesque “harrumph” over this line: “Not everyone’s going to like this film: some may find it excessively royalist…” (There was also this online “poll” asking, “Is The King’s Speech royalist propaganda?” A slight majority said no.)

One thing I disliked when I ran across it during my brief sojourn in that country was when Brits apologized for anything touching upon their essential British identity. Fortunately, I didn’t run across it nearly as much as I expected. There was a museum exhibit about the brouhaha over “Britannia” as a symbol on the coinage, and that line. But I still harrumphed.

I mean, if you’re the sort who gets offended by such, don’t see the bleedin’ film. The rest of you, if you haven’t already, see it as soon as you can.

My exchange with “Jayne Cobb”

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Today, we descend into the dubious ground of celebrity name-dropping…

One of my favorite things that’s ever been on television was “Firefly,” the space western (you have to watch it to grok that description) that lasted less than a season several years ago — which says about everything that needs to be said about commercial television.

My favorite character on the show was Jayne Cobb. Actually, he’s my public, admitted favorite character. My actual, secret favorite is Kaylee, but being a happily married guy, I don’t want to admit that, so my official favorite is Jayne.

Jayne is, that is, was played by Adam Baldwin, who has a Twitter feed that differs from other Hollywood actors’ in that you won’t read Tweets like, “Yoga class was awesome today! Off to a lunch, then rehearsal.”

Mr. Baldwin tweets about politics, and from a decidedly, shall we say, muscular conservative perspective (even though he apparently once Tweeted this).

Last night, I saw this post:

@adamsbaldwinAdam Baldwin

“Repressive Tolerance”: http://bit.ly/efIXeq ->http://bit.ly/fVwiF -> http://bit.ly/18ScHT ->http://bit.ly/fivqAt = #RepressiveCivility

This really impressed me. I hadn’t heard that phrase since I had studied the absurd theories of Herbert Marcuse, the intellectual father of the New Left, who game up with the Orwellian-sounding concept of “repressive tolerance.” Which, in my paraphrase, means that liberal societies are repressive because they manipulate people by being… tolerant. In other words, they absorb, co-opt and redirect revolutionary fervor by not particularly caring about it. This makes people who really, really want to be angry revolutionaries even angrier, of course, because it makes it impossible for them to keep others angry. You’re a revolutionary — red rag on your head and everything — and you’re like, “We demand reform!” and the maddening liberal society goes, “OK, here’s your reform,” and next thing you know, nobody cares enough to show up at your revolutionary cell meetings, and you’re like all ticked. OK, go read another definition if you don’t like that one.

We UnPartisans are often amused by the silly things that theorists come up with on the right AND the left, and Marcuse was one of the leading unintentional jesters of the left.

Anyway, I was impressed enough to reTweet this:

@BradWarthenBrad Warthen

Wow! A TV actor citing Marcuse! RT @adamsbaldwin: “Repressive Tolerance”:http://bit.ly/efIXeq -> http://bit.ly/fVwiF->…

And to my amazement, I quickly got this reply:

@adamsbaldwinAdam Baldwin

@BradWarthen Herbert Marcuse, an #IntellectualMoron –> http://bit.ly/5NyBMx

So I’m like:

@BradWarthenBrad Warthen

@adamsbaldwin Oh, I agree, Adam. I just thought it was cool that you mentioned him. Haven’t run across his silly concept since college…

Because I’m thinking, “I don’t want to tick off Jayne Cobb. You know how he is.” And then he’s like:

@adamsbaldwinAdam Baldwin

@BradWarthen Seen this one:http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Rules%20for%20Revolution%20(2).pdf

Of course, the Obama/Alinsky connection wasn’t new to me, although I don’t fret about it the way people on the right do. But I then answered with these two Tweets:

@adamsbaldwin Nope, but that reminds me. I’ve been meaning to read the recent biography of Alinksy, “Radical” http://j.mp/dIka9R

@adamsbaldwin Of course, since it’s written by Nicholas Von Hoffman, it’s an “homage.” But if you know that, it still can be informative…

I figured I’d better add that last bit, since he was likely to dismiss it from such a source, and I wanted to head that off.

Then, I went home for the day, and didn’t get any more Tweets from Mr. Baldwin. Nor did I send any. But I enjoyed it while it lasted. And now, I’ll be interested to see whether an exchange like that with someone with almost 50,000 followers will boost my own followership (and ultimately, blog readership, which for me is the point of social media).

Can’t tell yet…

Here’s where that path leads, Lindsey

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Just to elaborate a bit on that last post, in which I wrote about how once-sensible Republicans are dancing with madness these days…

I’d just like to point out to Sen. Graham where all this “hate Obamacare to the point that we’ll hurt actual South Carolinians by blowing it up” stuff leads.

Continue down that path, and you cease to be that voice of reason you’ve always been in Washington, that Gang of 14 guy, the guy who took a bullet for comprehensive immigration reform, the guy who at least for a time fought for the Energy Party platform at great personal political risk, the guy who could get President Obama to listen to reason on national security. You cease being all that (which is a national tragedy, because the nation NEEDS you to play that role), and you end up being state Sen. Lee Bright. I mean this guy:

Sen. Lee Bright: SC should coin its own money

Continuing a pattern of attempts to assert South Carolina’s independence from the federal government, State Sen. Lee Bright, R-Roebuck, has introduced legislation that backs the creation of a new state currency that could protect the financial stability of the Palmetto State in the event of a breakdown of the Federal Reserve System.

Bright’s joint resolution calls for the creation of an eight-member joint subcommittee to study the proposal and submit a report to the General Assembly by Nov. 1.

The Federal Reserve System has come under ever-increasing strain during the last several years and will be exposed to ever-increasing and predictably debilitating strain in the years to come, according to the legislation.

“If there is an attempt to monetize the Fed we ought to at least have a study on record that could protect South Carolinians,” Bright said in an interview Friday.

“If folks lose faith in the dollar, we need to have some kind of backup.”

The legislation cites the rights reserved to states in the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings in making the case that South Carolina is within its rights to create its own currency…

Thank Bud for bringing that to my attention. I hadn’t seen coverage of it. But the Boston Globe has noted it. And these guys are applauding it. (This really embarrassing stuff tends to come to my attention this way. While SC media is trying to look the other way — or rather spending its time covering legislation that might actually pass, which sounds better — the rest of the country is chortling. When Mike Pitts proposed doing away with the Yankee dollar and replacing it with gold and silver, I first learned about it from Burl Burlingame and The Onion.)

Sen. Bright, by the way, was last seen pushing broader legislation to protect South Carolina’s “rights” (which rights were under siege was unclear, but then it usual is) from encroaching federal power in general. You may or may not recall that I wrote about it in a post headlined “These guys cannot POSSIBLY be serious.” I led with a reference to that scene from “Gettysburg” with the Confederate prisoners speaking nonsensically about fighting for their nonspecific “rats.” You know how I like movie allusions.

Anyway, that’s where you could end up.

You don’t want to go there, do you, Lindsey? I didn’t think so. But that’s where this “seceding from Obamacare” stuff leads…

Promise to Egypt: All your dreams will come true

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Since it’s way historic and all, I thought I’d put something here about the news that’s been breaking in recent minutes (you’d have seen it earlier if you followed me on Twitter), so y’all can talk about it even though I don’t have time to say much right now:

Military says Mubarak will meet protesters demands

By MAGGIE MICHAEL
Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — President Hosni Mubarak will meet the demands of protesters, military and ruling party officials said Thursday in the strongest indication yet that Egypt’s longtime president may be about to give up power and that the armed forces were seizing control.

Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo area, told thousands of protesters in central Tahrir Square, “All your demands will be met today.” Some in the crowd held up their hands in V-for-victory signs, shouting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” a victory cry used by secular and religious people alike.

The military’s supreme council was meeting Thursday, without the commander in chief Mubarak, and announced on state TV its “support of the legitimate demands of the people.” A spokesman read a statement that the council was in permanent session “to explore “what measures and arrangements could be made to safeguard the nation, its achievements and the ambitions of its great people.”

The statement was labelled “communique number 1,” a phrasing that suggests a military coup…

OK, the military coup part may give us pause — more about that later when we know more — but what a heady moment for all those folks who’ve taken to the streets.

How about that quote?

“All your demands will be met today.”

Reminds me of Pedro’s extreme, over-the-top, meant-to-be-seen-as-ridiculously-hyperbolic campaign pledge (which was recommended to him by campaign consultant Napoleon Dynamite): “Vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true.”

Perhaps the general is overselling as well — and again, it remains to be seen how the people would feel about a junta (you might say that, like Pedro, the military is offering Egypt its “protection” — but if Mubarak is stepping down, that’s something Egyptians had hardly dared dream a month ago.

So, wow. This is quite a moment.

Green Zone: good flick, if you take it for what it is

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Just in case I haven’t provoked my anti-war friends on the blog enough lately…

I saw”Green Zone” over the weekend, and it was a corking good thriller. Just as long as you don’t take the premise seriously.

No, wait — I need to refine that: As long as you don’t take too seriously the one spectacular conceit that does the most to drive the action, which is this… There’s this Iraqi general who is sort of the movie’s Great White Whale, only there’s no one Ahab — EVERY character is frantically pursuing him, with each character having a different motive for doing so. Matt Damon’s character wants him because he thinks he knows where the WMD are, and it’s his (Damon’s) job to find them (he plays a chief warrant officer named Miller). An idealistic one-legged Iraqi (his other leg is in Iran) wants to find him because of what the general and his ilk have done to his country. A CIA officer wants to find him because he believes the Army is the key to preventing the insurgency. A Wall Street Journal reporter wants to find him because he is the mysterious source Magellan that a Pentagon official has told her has provided intel on where the WMD are — reports that she has passed on uncritically in the paper. The Pentagon official, played by Greg Kinnear, want to find him and kill him before he tells everybody the truth.

What truth? This “truth” (SPOILER ALERT!): We eventually learn that before the war, Poundstone (Kinnear’s character) had secretly met the general in Jordan, where the general told him there WERE no WMD. And Poundstone returned to Washington and told everyone that the general had told him the exact opposite, even telling him where to find the weapons. So we invade Iraq, and Miller’s unit risks their lives going to these supposed WMD sites and coming up empty.

This makes Poundstone the Great White Whale of all those antiwar folks who believe “Bush lied” — the perfect representation of the supposed great misrepresentation. He, Poundstone, KNEW the truth and deliberately lied. No mere wishful thinking. No making a mistake (the mistake made by pretty much the whole world — the debate about the invasion wasn’t over whether the WMD existed, but about the best way to get them out of Saddam’s hands). A big, fat, montrous lie.

Which, of course, didn’t happen. If something like that had happened, someone of the millions of people who would love to find out such a thing and tell the world — from the antiwar Democrats who now control our government and have access to all its secrets, to Julian Assange, to the director of this movie — would have let us know by now.

So… the bad news is that people will see Green Zone and think that such a thing happened. And that’s bad even if you are deeply opposed to the war and want to avoid such conflicts in the future, because it keeps you from confronting whatever REALLY happened and realistically assessing how to keep it from happening again. Politically attractive fantasies are just dangerous all around — as the antiwar folks would no doubt say about the delusion that there were WMD.

The good news, though, is that it’s a great action flick. And the other questions the movie raises — including some serious ones that deserve answers — are intelligently, provocatively and even realistically portrayed. Where the movie falls down is wherever it touches upon the Poundstone character. And I mean this in an artistic, esthetic sense as well as political: Kinnear’s character is cartoonish, the portayal more suited to low farce than to serious drama. When he’s on screen, the quality drops. NO ONE would believe this guy; if he told you your mother loved you, you’d say “What’s his angle?” He’s just ridiculous. He might as well be wearing a black cape, stovepipe hat and Snidely Whiplash mustache.

Everybody else is credible; everybody else feels real. While comparisons to the Bourne movies are inevitable (with Damon and the director of the second and third films in that trilogy on board), this film is far more believable, in that there are no superheroes like Bourne in it. (The flaw that it shares with those films is the aforementioned fantasy plotline about a vicious government conspiracy — a great plot device, as long as you don’t start thinking stuff like that really happens.) In fact, the closest thing to Jason Bourne is the Special Forces guy who promptly beats the stuffing out of Damon’s character when he fails to give him what he’s after. And that violence is realistic, not balletic.

Other things that are good, and deserve more explication, are such things as the issue of whether we should have worked with the Iraqi army rather than banishing it into insurgency. If the director wanted a political point, that would have been an excellent one to stick with.

Perhaps the most provocative questions raised surround the frantically earnest one-legged Iraqi, “Freddy.” He tries to approach harried soldiers to give them critical information, and gets knocked around for his trouble. He is forced into suicidally dangerous (for a guy who has to live there) situations in order to help the Americans. In the end, (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) he raises the film’s most provocative question when he takes matters into his own hands with deadly force. Damon’s character, persuaded by the CIA that the general must be found so we can work with him to prevent the insurgency (I REALLY MEAN IT — MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!), manages to get to him before the Special Forces guys who have been sent to kill him. You think Damon has won the day. Then out of nowhere comes Freddy with a pistol and blows the general away. Freddy then says to Damon — and I don’t have it in front of me, so this might not be verbatim — “YOU don’t get to decide what happens here.”

If you want a good antiwar message, one you can chew over productively, that would be it. But the whole Poundstone thing is offensively ridiculous. You want to talk about a Big Lie, suggesting that anything that clearly duplicitous happened qualifies.

That’s particularly insidious since we are told this story is based in nonfiction. Oh, and if you don’t want to believe me, believe Richard “Monty” Gonzales, upon whom Damon’s character Miller was based, and who acted as technical adviser on the film:

“Green Zone” contains several messages, an unavoidable consequence of making a film of this genre. Critical blunders preceding the invasion, chiefly the bad intelligence that led us to war, made certain that no quick victory would be achieved and certainly undermined U.S. credibility around the world. Later, the U.S. directed a de-Bathification policy which disenfranchised a massive section of the population and helped fuel an insurgency. Consequently, any hope of victory in Iraq was made vastly more complicated and costly — as the last 7 years have proven. I believe this is true.
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However, “Green Zone” also suggests that we were lied into the war in Iraq; a subtext that is unfortunately being twisted by some in order to give credence to a bumper sticker I deplore, the mantra which has become the left’s version of the war — which is well on its way to becoming the Iraq conflict’s official history — “They lied; people died.” As intriguing as that idea may be, it’s simply not true.

Today’s meaningless coincidence: 3 Days of the Crowe

Speaking the same language, but only technically

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You know how I just got HD? Well, this process all started with me wanting a Blu-ray player so I could watch Netflix without waiting for the discs to come in the mail.

That part of the project has been… tricky. I’ve spent several late nights in the past week trying to get that one simple thing done.

I thought I’d share with you my conversation — excuse me, “chat,” which isn’t the same thing — about the problem with a tech at Sony. As you read it, imagine unexplained pauses of five or 10 minutes while I wait for short, incomplete answers from the tech. Of course, when I took a couple of minutes to go try what the tech suggested (going through the process on a different browser), I got “Please acknowledge my question, so that I can assist you better.”

Note that, while it’s all in English, there is a distinct… disconnect… in the flow of communication. I get the sense that each comment is being run imperfectly through a translator. And it was amazingly frustrating. I was so desperate to work effectively with this person that I even slipped into a stilted version of English myself, hoping it would facilitate things (“Yes, it persists.” To which I got another deadpan, Hal-9000 answer):

Corinne_ > Hi Brad. Welcome to Sony Online Support. I’m Corinne. Please allow me a moment to review your concern.

Brad Warthen > Here is a full description of the problem:

Brad Warthen > I’m trying to get Netflix on my new Blu-ray player. I have an internet connection, but when it tells me to go to internet.sony.tv/netflix on my computer and enter a password, I run into trouble. That address asks me for my e-mail address and a password. So I enter my e-mail address, and the password that the Blu-ray player told me to use, and I get “The password you entered is invalid. Please enter a valid password.” So I try the password I created when I registered my player, and I get the same message. So I click on “Reset or Forgot your Password” and follow the directions, and you send me a new, temporary password. I’ve done this THREE TIMES now, and each time I enter the new, temporary password minutes (sometimes seconds) after receiving it, and I get “Your temporary password has expired. Please change the existing password at SonyStyle website.” Every time, same message. So what in the world am I supposed to do now?

Corinne_ > I am sorry that the BD Player can not be registerred in the Sony Essential website.

Corinne_ > Thanks for waiting, Brad.

Corinne_ > I’ll be happy to assist you in this regard.

Corinne_ > Do you have a SonyStyle account?

Brad Warthen > Yes.

Corinne_ > Did you try using different Web Brower?

Brad Warthen > No. I just used Firefox.

Brad Warthen > Hello? Are you there?

Corinne_ > Yes, I am online.

Brad Warthen > I said no, I just used Firefox. Is there a preferred browser?

Corinne_ > Brad, it is recommened to open the Eseential website in either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox 3.6.

Corinne_ > Please check the operation with a different web browser.

Brad Warthen > I’m using Firefox. 3.6.10. But I’ll go try IE as well.

Corinne_ > Sure, please go ahead.

Corinne_ > Please let me know if the issue persists.

Brad Warthen > … that is, assuming it still works… I never use IE; I always use Firefox or Chrome…

Corinne_ > Please let me know the result after using Internet Explorer.

Corinne_ > Please acknowledge my question, so that I can assist you better.

Brad Warthen > Yes, it persists.

Brad Warthen > I tried all my passwords, then requested a new one. When I entered the new one, I got “Your temporary password has expired. Please change the existing password at SonyStyle website. ” Again.

Corinne_ > I am sorry to hear this.

Corinne_ > Thanks for the additional information.

Corinne_ > I am really sorry for the delay in response.

Corinne_ > This is a dead lock issue.

Brad Warthen > What does that mean?

Corinne_ > This deadlock issue can handled by our next level of support over phone.

Brad Warthen > OK, what’s the number?

Corinne_ > They are our next level of support and better eqipped to help you resolving the issue.

Brad Warthen > OK. What’s the number, so I can call them?

Corinne_ > They are available at: 239-768-7547.

Corinne_ > Their hours of operation is:

Corinne_ > Mon-Fri 8:00AM-12:00AM (Midnight) ET

Sat-Sun 9:00AM-8:00PM ET

Brad Warthen > OK, I’ll call, and tell them it’s a “deadlock issue.”

Corinne_ > I am sure that they will be more than happy to further assist you resolving the issue.

Corinne_ > Please mention that you have contacted Chat Support Team for the same regard before while contacting the.

Corinne_ > Hence, theyb will be further assist you fixing the issue.

Corinne_ > Thus, you can access Netflix fine in the BD Player.

Corinne_ > Are you able to take it from here?

Brad Warthen > Yes. I was trying to copy the text of this chat so that I’d have the number and times, but the text box doesn’t allow me to select it. Could you e-mail me the info?

Corinne_ > Sure, Brad.

Corinne_ > I’ll forward this chat transcript to your Email ID for future reference.

Brad Warthen > Thanks. Goodbye.

Corinne_ > This Chat Transcript has been sent to: brad@bradwarthen.com.

Corinne_ > You are most welcome.

Corinne_ > It was really nice chatting with you.

Corinne_ > Have great time ahead!

Corinne_ > Good-bye and thank you for contacting Sony Online Support.

Corinne_ > Analyst has closed chat and left the room

So I guess tonight, I’ll be on the phone for several hours.

“Again with the negative waves, Moriarty!”

5 Replies

Again with the negative waves!

Once again, the media are filled with negative vibes about our economy, utterly heedless of the fact that the central tenet of the Warthen School of Economics is that “the economy” is an utterly abstract and theoretical thing built from collective emotions, and that the greatest single cause of “bad economic conditions” is negative thoughts regarding the economy.

This time, my beef is with this headline in the Columbia Regional Business Report:

Final accounting for S.C. fiscal ’10 paints grim financial picture

Thing is, the story (by my old friend Jim Hammond) is actually about what already happened with the state budget, which is fine. What gets me is that the headline implies bad economic times ahead. At least that’s the way I erroneously read it. And headlines are enough to make things bad.

To end with the words with which Oddball ends the above serious of clips, Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

And yeah, I’m kind of being facetious here. I just wanted an excuse to run the Oddball clips from “Kelly’s Heroes.” This, by the way, was what I was looking for earlier when I ran across the Kerouac clip.

Go see ‘Inception’ — even I plan to do so

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Why am I recommending a movie I haven’t seen? Because of this: It’s being held up as a big gamble on originality in a time when studios don’t want to bet on anything but mind-numbing sequels to proven money-makers:

The $160 million surreal thriller, based on an original screenplay about dreams and a group of thieves who steal them for profit, represents something of a rarity in an era when movie executives are choosing to base their biggest summer films on remakes, comic book characters, videogames and toys.

If “Inception” succeeds—and a lot of people in Hollywood are rooting for a hit—it could mark a new turn for an industry that loves to think of itself as delivering fine art to the masses. The film embodies Hollywood’s aspirations of melding high-concept art and high-flying commerce, with all the risks and potential rewards such a combination can entail.

“I think everybody is looking to this movie as proof of concept that new franchises can succeed and you don’t just have to re-tread old material,” says Stephen Prough, co-founder of Salem Partners, a boutique investment bank with a specialty in media and entertainment.

Never mind that the movie might not be any good, as this review indicates in the same edition of the WSJ in which I read the above. The thing is, if studios are thinking, “If this makes money, we’ll take a chance on original scripts more,” then I want them to make money. It’s a rather simplistic calculation, but hey, we’re trying to influence fairly simplistic people here (the backers of movies).

I figure, if they make money on this, maybe we’ll see some original flicks that are actually good. It’s worth the price of a ticket to try, anyway.

Normally, I don’t go to the theater to see anything — I wait for Netflix. But I figure, if we can encourage the studios in this, maybe the choices on Netflix will get better.

Burl’s tribute to Harvey Pekar

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Burl Burlingame posted this over on his blog. It’s something he did about Harvey Pekar and “American Splendor” at about the time the movie with Paul Giamatti came out. Way back

Bet you didn’t know Burl was this multi-talented. Well, he always has been. Back in high school, he published his own underground newspaper which included his own cartoons. And you should hear him play harmonica.

Anyway, I dug the Pekar piece, and thought y’all might, too.

Where’s Leighton? There he is!

2 Replies

Did you ever see Antonioni’s “Blow-Up”? If you haven’t, you should — it’s a classic. It’s also wonderfully goofy after all these years to see the ’60s notion of a hip young professional photographer in swingin’ mod London. See him drive around in his convertible sports car while talking on his extremely cumbersome car phone! Oooohhh. (David Hemmings’ character was one of the influences on Mike Myers in his creation of Austin Powers.)

Anyway, to summarize the plot (spoiler alert!), basically it’s about a photographer who takes some perfectly innocent pictures in the park, but when he processes the film and makes a print, he notices something odd in the background, in the bushes about 50 years behind his subject. So he blows it up. Then he shoots the print, processes that film, then blows it up again. And again. (Thereby severely straining the capabilities of 35 mm film, but hey, he’s a professional.) I won’t tell you what he saw, because I don’t want to spoil the plot entirely.

To my point: I often have that experience of finding unexpected things going on in my photos. It happened when I used film because film is a big mystery until it’s processed. Shoot a crowd or action when there’s too little time for your brain to take it all in, and the film will reveal secrets to you after it’s processed. For instance, take a look at the photo at right, which I shot on film at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. (This was a time of technological transition. I was shooting rolls of film at the convention, then taking the rolls to a Duane Reade to be processed and put on a CD for me.) I had just asked Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog to pose for a portrait (there I go name-dropping again), but only later did I notice Larry King in the background. At least, I think it’s Larry King. The grain and focus are such that I can’t be entirely sure, just as the character in “Blow-Up” had trouble being certain about what he was seeing.

Today, this happens with digital photography for a different reason. Sure, you can immediately look at what you just shot. But you can’t see detail unless you zoom in, and besides, who has time to stop and look at individual exposures? I certainly don’t, because I am shooting so many. I used to go through a roll of film in minutes, but that’s nothing to the number I shoot now. Film at least imposed some fire discipline; there was always a sense that your film was finite. But with an 8-gig card in my camera, discipline is gone entirely.

So it could be hours, days, or longer before I go through the images on my laptop and see what I have. And I find little surprises.

For instance, at the Gamecocks’ victory parade Friday, I happened to turn and take a picture of the two ADCO interns standing behind me in the crowd. I needed a picture of them to post on ADCO’s site, and this was an opportunity.

Only later did I spot our erstwhile candidate for attorney general, Leighton Lord, behind them. At right you can see what the picture would have looked like when Hemmings’ got through blowing it up (and yes, I created the blur, grain, and b/w effect in PhotoShop — the original was much sharper, even blown up).

And when I saw him, the irony struck me: Alan Wilson was much in evidence at the center of attention. He and his Dad had a regular convoy of vehicles in the parade — at least three, with kids passing out campaign stickers left and right. (I didn’t get a picture of Alan — I was too busy shooting the cars, especially the beautiful red T-bird — but here’s one of him from another parade over the weekend. Those Wilsons love a parade.)

But there is Leighton Lord, standing alone, looking away. Ironic. Poignant, one might say. Except that the camera doesn’t tell all. Actually, he was talking to his father-in-law Gayle Averyt, whom I spotted next to him in yet another exposure.

I’ve got so many thousands of exposures like this of crowds, sometimes with famous people here and there in them. Maybe I should do a “children’s” book for grownups, only instead of “Where’s Waldo?” it would be “Where’s Rudy Giuliani? Where’s George Bush? Where’s Bill Clinton?” and so forth. Think it would sell?

Fun Post I: Abe Froman tribute

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This promises to be a long and hairy day, with GOP lawmakers in the House poised to knuckle under to a discredited governor’s indefensible vetoes.

So I thought I’d start it with some fun, to give us the strength to bear it all.

I’ll start with this really awesome tribute video I found on YouTube last night. How did I find it? Well, I was posting that item about the death of Jimmy Dean, and I said something about him being the Sausage King of America, which of course was a play on Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, and I went looking for a link to explain that for those of you who are not well schooled in Ferris Bueller, and I ran across this. (And yes, I linked to it yesterday, but y’all don’t always follow links.)

Enjoy.