Category: Personal

Frank Rich makes, in Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush, an amazing assertion about the beliefs of Bush supporters that would not have occured to me in a million years:

Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God’s essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth.

These people are not only serious, they’re deadly. MetaFilter, for instance, has the occasional thread/debate on religion, particularly religion in a public space, and most frequently the (almost always Christian) people posting comments favorable to the religious viewpoint keep saying that those on the opposite side are overstating the influence of fringe-level public figures or undervaluing the contribution of belief.

Then I look at the people in positions of power in the US these days and think to myself (since the people of faith never directly respond to such comments) that my fellow MeFites are kidding themselves or being intentionally obtuse. Seriously, who is kidding who? If the Universe actually has a Creator, there is no way in hell (so to speak) that such a being would choose a loser like George W. Bush as a vehicle. I’m not perfect nor are any other members of my species but on any scale you care to use for measuring there are far better candidates. Mysterious ways my ass.

In the old days, news of a major release like Sun shipping a new version of Java would get big, enthusiastic commentary all over the web. And though it’s not like there’s none, I just don’t feel the passion that accompanied the availability of, well, earlier releases of Java, Windows 3.1, Borland Delphi and so forth. Maybe the geeks are just a little burned out in this dotbomb era.

Even though I enjoyed the 95 minutes, give or take, I’m not surprised that 2001’s Who Is Cletis Tout? slipped through the cracks and was immediately forgotten. What we have here is (an attempt at, or what is commonly characterized as) a comic take on the slippery criminal story told to in flashback a la The Usual Suspects, with Christian Slater in the Kevin Spacey role and Tim Allen(?!) in the Chazz Palminteri role, though Allen is a hit man rather than a cop.

But Cletis lacks the subtlety and elegance of that film’s story within a story, layered with lies and misdirection; instead we get something more along the lines of a criminal 1001 Nights where Slater tries, as Allen puts it, to make the hit man forget his mission in the grips of a terrific movie. Critical Jim, Allen’s character, is a classic movie fan and the script gives him mainly a combination of recognizable lines and studio exec chatter for his dialog. We open, for instance, to the closing scene of Breakfast at Tiffanys on a small TV and end with Allen spouting lines from it, and he also quotes The Dirty Dozen, Deliverance and The Great Escape. Even Slater’s natural resemblance to Jack Nicholson doesn’t go unnoticed by Allen.

Writer/director Chris Ver Wiel does an okay job overall, at least enough to keep me from hitting the delete button. Richard Dreyfuss, Portia de Rossi and Billy Connolly are not bad in supporting roles though RuPaul and Peter Macneil don’t do much for me. Allen doesn’t quite have the mien, if I’m using that word correctly, for his role while Slater does a bit better, but then he also has a more active role.

mildly recommended

Too late: Bush Disputes Charge of Favorable Treatment in Guard [via Garret]

Just finished reading Freehold by Michael Z. Williamson and stumbled on this review. Pretty much elaborates what I think about it though overall I seem to have enjoyed the book more than this guy. Short take: Very good writing but 2/3rds of the first 300 pages should have been edited out; on the other hand, after those 300 pages are finished, I read the last 350 in one day.

Teledildonics

That was the last time the 49ers were shut out in a regular season NFL game before today’s 34-0 loss to the Seahawks. Probably the last time the team had such a pitiful effort too. Seemed fairly comparable to last night’s Earthquakes match except the Niners’ opponents came to play. Bonjour tristess, indeed.

Doc on American reaction to Haiti’s hurricane crisis to Caribbean commentary on the Forbes 400 to the NY Times on multinational inner city gangs to Trudy Lieberman [via Garret] on the unlocked doors that are our borders. Seems only a matter of time, and a short time at that, until our neighbors and frequent guests bring Robb’s Bazaar Dynamics into our neighborhoods. Throughout history, “now” has always been the scariest time to be alive, and “the future” always bleak.

I really don’t know what’s wrong with the Quakes lately. Tonight they played as if their bodies were wrapped in cold fish, and that’s typical of the whole season really. No Ching and Derosario could only manage a final 20 minutes, which didn’t help, but Landon had only one play on goal. Chris Brown, the other starting forward, was stuck up top all alone for most of his time, vainly tracking down 40 yard passed with his head and no other players in support. Fortunately the Galaxy had crap for energy and creativity themselves. The point does get us out of the division cellar, on goal difference with the Burn, and three matches left: at Colorado, Kansas City and at Dallas.

A lot of people liked this movie. Not enough for it to make a profit but a lot of, um, the right people, the cool people, the people who were into the post-NewWave English music scene of the early ’80s. For them Twenty Four Hour Party People is a trip home, I guess, but for me wasn’t even worth finishing. I couldn’t connect with the dark humor and not being a fan of Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge TV character nor the bands involved (Joy Division, New Order) so I hit the delete button after about 45 minutes.

not recommended

In Australia, even the sports stadiums have their own fight songs!

What I’ve seen so far of the new shows (using this list as a reference):

• LAX: We could only watch about 20 minutes of the first episode before turning it off–will this be Heather Locklear’s first series failure?
• Father of the Pride: You must be kidding
• Veronica Mars: First episode was good, very promising but whether the creative staff can keep up the complexity and lack of teen soap are reasonable questions. Given the lack of time slot competition I expect to watch and see.
• Hawaii: Um, I prefer the Five-0 repeats on the Hallmark Channel
• Quintuplets: Andy Richter can’t save this mess because–look at the title–he isn’t the main character and Fox should have never cancelled his Controls the Universe.
• Joey: A guilty pleasure for this Friends fan
  
• Jack & Bobby: After two episodes, I like the future documentary snippets more than the teen years main acts but for now am willing to give it a chance.
  

Returning shows worth a mention:

• The Wire: Justifies the $10/month for HBO all on its own
• Smallville: He flew, he flew! But only sorta. I like Lois Lane but wonder where the producers are going with the Chloe’s not dead idea.
• Two and a Half Men: Not really new but I did finally check it out the other day for the episode with Elvis Costello and Sean Penn. Despite the star power, I don’t get the appeal.
• NYPD Blue: Good start for the last season. I can tell already that I will despise the new Lieutenant by the end of the next episode.
• Law & Order: The formula is intact although I wonder how the comments on the new detective’s wad of cash and fancy Benz will distract.
• That ’70s Show: Hyde is half black? Amusing twist for an aging show.
  

I won’t be watching, not including reality shows since I don’t watch any of them:

• Listen Up: Didn’t like the guy in high school or Seinfeld
  
• North Shore: OC-wannabe
  
• Second Time Around: Girls rule but not me
  
• Rodney
• Method & Red: Stupid hip-hop is still stupid
  
• The Mountain: Teen soapicide
  
• CSI: NY: Melina Kanakarides’ nose makes me nervous
  
• Savages: A Mel Gibson production, need I say more
  
• dr. vegas: uh-oh
  
• Medical Investigation: Don’t like CSI, why would I watch this imitation
  
• Boston Legal: Didn’t like The Practice, can’t see this being any better
  

Yet to be decided:

• Lost: Time slot competition means this interesting show from the creator of Alias is unlikely to survive long enough to get eyeball time
  
• Kevin Hill: Best reviewed new show of the season but…
  
• Desperate Housewives: Lots of hotties, might give it a whirl
  
• Clubhouse: Dean Cain, thumbs up; baseball, thumbs down.

More later, as more shows are watched.

11/16: Part 2

Rolling Stone interviews Springsteen on his involvement with Act for Change and next month’s concerts; he is, not unexpectedly, very eloquent on why and why now.

If Kerry cannot make a case to the voters along the lines in this Alexander Zaitchik article, then perhaps America deserves what it gets. Really, people can be silly in very dangerous ways but this level of willfull blindness is just too much for me. What about you? [via Garret]

My my my. Who would ever have thought that the Bush Administration would go to such lengths? Well, besides me and Michael Moore, that is. This time we see that banks should make excess profits instead of funding more student loans while low income families in cities like New York face being tossed in the streets so the Administration can cut housing subsidies.

Somehow, though, the latest poll from Zogby shows the incumbent and challenger in a dead heat. Polls, like media news reporting, should be taken with a grain of salt but I remain amazed at the capacity of my fellow citizens to ignore simple facts and thereby threaten our future with a second term for a man who, well, let’s just not go there.

My top frustration is that every day, nearly, I see new evidence that the Bush crew have certain… objectives and operating processes that are so far away from anything I consider right or reasonable and yet do not lose supporters. The latest key demographic, for instance, are the security moms, women who’ve moved on from driving their kids to soccer, yet these women seem to utterly ignore the difference between the Administration’s situational spin and reality.

But then, these security moms are not the people who need Section 8 housing subsidies and don’t see the shenanigans being pulled by banks and the Department of Education.

Why you want to take hurricanes into consideration when deciding on a building location.

Why you want to walk every day.

Why you want to wait as long as possible before buying a digital camera.

Why you’re never too old.

Wherefore you want to get your web sound on.

An appealing summary and since Character won the 1997 Oscar for Best Foriegn Film, I figured what the heck and watched. I don’t agree with the user comment on IMDB that this Dutch film (yes, that means subtitles) was the best film of that year bar none (Good Will Hunting was far superior IMO) but it wasn’t bad; I’m thinking that the subtitles probably didn’t translate the subtleties of the original dialog all that well.

Summary: The meat of Character is set in the 1920s in the port city of Rotterdam where Jacob William Katadreuffe has grown up with a stern, silent mother and apart from his stern, silent, violent father; the parents never married (each other or anyone else, though the father did ask, coldheartedly and repeatedly) and in fact the boy seems to be the product of rape, to the extent that could be inferred). Mostly self-taught, Katadreuffe finds his way to the office of a friendly lawyer, De Gankelaar, who becomes a mentor and employer. The father, Dreverhaven, is well-known man in the city, a court bailiff who used his office to accumulate a sizable fortune but is never willing to share as much as a penny to help his son.

The film, which is told in flashback after the opening scene in which we see father and son in heated argument and then see Dreverhaven taken off in a body bag, mainly concerns the son as he grows from repeated confrontations with the father. A subplot with a beautiful woman in the law office primarily serves as a device to emphasize the futility of conflict.

Perhaps this is an artifact of the subtitles, but I felt the characters and dialog were very flat, straight and overly dramatic. Even though, for example, I had to read the subtitles to understand the dialog, I was still listening to the actors for tone of voice and such. Studies such as this ought to try and capture the complexities and vagaries of reality rather than use simplicity to make an obvious point, and director Mike van Diem hasn’t done that well. The acting was very strong, though, and I also enjoyed the unfamiliar time and place, which seemed well recreated.

moderately recommended, more so if you speak Dutch

Old, old complaint, that referees and umpires cannot follow the action properly, fast enough and without bias, and their imperfections change the outcomes of games and seasons. Watching today’s Liverpool-Manchester United match, I heard one of the announcers say the old saw is that these errors even out over the course of a season.

Tell that to Ron Zook, football coach at the University of Florida, who lost a key game and probably a shot at the national title when the officials made two key errors in the same sequence at the end of this past Saturday’s game at Tennessee. First the official, who was standing not five yards away from the players and clearly saw the entire interaction, ignored one player’s foul but not another in throwing only one yellow flag. Cost Florida 15 yards and if not a first down (I don’t remember precisely), then certainly important field position. Second, the officials did not properly restart the clock on a play, giving Tennessee an extra 20-25 seconds of play. Between them these mistakes gave the Vols a shot at a last bit field goal which was made to win the game 30-28.

In today’s EPL match the key error was awarding a corner kick to ManU in the 66th minute, when the ball clearly went over the end line off a Red Devils player, and they scored when Mikael Silvestre got his head on the kick and went net. That was the winning goal!

So, old news. Today, though, we have sensor technology and software that can easily overcome many of the human imperfections. Who touched last, is the ball in or out of bounds, is the player offside? All can be measured with better than millimeter precision. Hook a rules engine into the official clock and starts and stops are no problem, not to mention determining whether the offense in (American) football snapped the ball on time or got a shot off before the shot clock expired.

On SportsFilter and elsewhere people complain that using technology will ruin the games or at least remove a necessary human element, that humans are imperfect and so errors should be part of sport. Call me a geek but all I see is that such usage will allow the players to play the game without mistakes by officiating which is at best a necessary evil in my eyes.

Despite the obvious chickflickness, we were definitely anticipating Mona Lisa Smile–how can a film starring Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Styles, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Dominic West and directed by Mike Newell not be great? Sadly, this movie shows exactly how.

Generally compared to the much-better Robin Williams Dead Poets Society, Smile is the story of new Wellesley art history prof Roberts and her difficulty fitting into the conservative college environment for the 1953-54 school year. West is the Italian professor who screwed the promiscuous Gyllenhall the previous semester before hooking up as Roberts’ love interest and the other women are her students. Why seniors would be taking an introductory art history class is just one of the many questions never answered, by the way.

The core problem with this movie is the absence of a defining conflict. Saying that Roberts’ character does not fit in is far too abstract to drive a movie and the writing team of Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal try to throw in a bunch of smaller issue to hide this but simply fail. A prime example of form without substance, the acting and most othe aspect are just fine but cannot overcome such a deficiency.

Newell, especially, has a long history of quality including Into the West, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco; his effort here does make me wonder, though, about his upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. After about 40 years as a director you’d think he would see this problem screamingly no later than early editing cuts. Oh well.

not recommended

The letter writers responding to Wolfowitz’s column or, realistically, the writers the Times chose to publish agreed with me. Amazing how some people are able to get into places they just shouldn’t be.