Month: November 2009

Saturday Night At The Movies

Fissure and sun: 2012 opens wide

By Dennis Hartley

Prime beachfront property! Low, low prices! Going fast!

Day after day, more people come to L.A.
Ssh! Don’t you tell anybody-the whole place is slipping away.
Where can we go-when there’s no San Francisco?
Ssh! Better get ready to tie up the boat in Idaho.
-from Day After Day (It’s Slippin’ Away) by Shango

Depending on who you talk to, the numbers 12/21/12 signify either a) The Day the Earth Gets Hosed, or b) A day in 2012 that will be preceded by December 20th and immediately followed by December 22nd, in the course of which we will all go about our daily business as per usual. According to 2012 director Roland Emmerich, when Winter Solstice, 2012 rolls around, we better get ready to not only tie up the boat in Idaho, but to hang ten in the Himalayas as well. It’s gonna be a doozey (best get your affairs in order).

Taking full advantage of all the ballyhoo surrounding the upcoming terminus of the ancient Mayan calendar, the Master of Disaster has once again assembled a critic-proof, populist spectacle, unencumbered by complex narrative or character development (then again, one doesn’t board a roller coaster for the express purpose of engaging one’s mind).

So…it’s been, gosh, what…at least 12,012 years since his last film (10,000 B.C., which I reviewed here). Let’s see if we can catch up. For one thing, in the Future, loincloths and spears are no longer de rigueur. However, I have some good news, and some bad news. Good News first? It appears that humans are much less likely to suffer getting crushed by mammoths and/or mauled by saber-toothed tigers, since both of those species are now extinct (yay!). The Bad News is, humans are now in imminent danger of becoming extinct themselves, because the sun is bombarding the planet with neutrinos, which is seriously compromising the stability of the Earth’s crust-or some kind of pseudoscientific scenario to that effect (oh, crap). At any rate, any and all pending natural disasters you could envision are now likely to all come at once. And that can’t be good. An international consortium of scientists and world leaders are in the loop, but in compliance with Rules and Regulations Regarding Mandatory Plot Points for End of the World Movies (rev. 2007), it’s kept strictly off the record, on the Q.T., and very hush-hush.

After the obligatory prologue set in a remote corner of the world, where we are given an inkling that a global threat might be brewing and/or a cosmic mystery is afoot (a requisite since Close Encounters of the Third Kind) the scene shifts to the good ol’ USA, where the Concerned Preznit (Danny Glover) receives grim counsel and furrows his brow (just like Concerned Preznits Bill Pullman and Perry King did in Emmerich’s two previous end of the world epics, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow , respectively).

And no such doomsday narrative is quite complete without its rumpled Everyman protagonist, embodied here by John Cusack, divorced father of two who still sorta has a thing for his ex-wife (even though she’s now married to a smarmy yuppie), and who happens to have custody of the kids on the very weekend that the Apocalypse is scheduled for kickoff (see: Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds). And guess where Dad is taking us all camping this weekend, kids? Why, Yellowstone Park, of course…Ground Zero for the caldera of one of the largest known super-volcanoes in the world (I don’t want to spoil anything for you…but I think Yogi and Boo-Boo are fucked).

What ensues is a mash-up of Dante’s Peak, The Poseidon Adventure and When Worlds Collide, peppered with every disaster movie cliché extant. The special effects are quite spectacular, and there is a pulse-pounding, show-stopping (if highly improbable) escape sequence early on (as L.A. experiences the mother of all earthquakes). However, by the time the third, fourth, or fifth pulse-pounding, show-stopping, highly improbable escape sequence rolls around, with no substantive narrative sandwiched in to give you a breather in its two and a half hour running time, it becomes a case of mind-numbing overkill. Maybe a mystery angle involving the Mayan prophecies would have added something?

The cast slogs through as best they can, considering that most are relegated to cardboard caricatures taking a back seat to the CGI wizardry. Cusack has his moments, but you definitely get the sense that this is only a paycheck gig. Woody Harrelson briefly livens up things a bit, as a conspiracy nut talk show host (most likely modeled after Art Bell), but talented players like Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor are wasted.

If you enjoyed the director’s previous films, I suppose this one is no better or no worse; you will probably want to see it no matter what the critics say. If you are intrigued by the premise, but not so intrigued about parting with your ten bucks, I’d say wait for the DVD. Or- just hold out until 12/21/12. Who knows? It could be more entertaining than the film.

Previous posts with related themes: Top 10 End of the World Movies

Britannia rules the waves, Pirate Radio waives the rules

Philip Seymour Hoffman rehearses his BTO tribute band.

So if you’re not in the mood to watch the world get blowed up real good, there is another film opening this weekend that is much more down to earth. Okay, it does have its characters weathering some stormy seas, but at least the Earth’s crust remains intact. Pirate Radio is the latest entry in the British invasion of feel-good, “root for the underdogs” comedy-dramas that have been coming at us over the last decade (The Full Monty, Still Crazy, Brassed Off!, Billy Elliot, Kinky Boots, Bend It Like Beckham, etc.).

Released in the U.K. earlier this year under a different title (The Boat That Rocked) and with a substantially longer running time (more on that shortly), the film is based on true-life events surrounding Britain’s thriving offshore rock’n’roll pirate radio scene in the mid-to-late 60s (Radio Caroline and Radio London were probably the most well-known). The hugely popular stations came about as a rebellious counterpoint to the staid, state-controlled BBC based programming that otherwise monopolized the British airwaves (which didn’t begin to loosen up until the emergence of the legendarily innovative DJ John Peel in 1967, who had a knack for championing unknown but soon to be important artists and gradually encouraged BBC-1 to offer up a more eclectic, free-style format).

The film, not so much an illuminating history lesson as it is a “WKRP on the high seas” romp, breezes along in an amiable fashion, buoyed (sorry!) by an engaging cast. We are introduced to a bevy of wacky and colorful (yes, I said “wacky and colorful”) characters through the eyes of young Carl (Tom Sturridge), who has been put out to sea (in a matter of speaking) on the pirate broadcasting ship, “Radio Rocks” by his free-spirited mother, who is at a loss as to how to deal with his recent expulsion from college. She hopes that the boat’s captain/radio station manager, who is Carl’s godfather (played by the ever-delightful Bill Nighy) will be able to straighten him out. It quickly becomes apparent that one would be hard-pressed to locate any traditionally “upstanding” role models for the impressionable lad among the motley crew at hand, being that most onboard activities eventually circle back in one form or another to the pursuit of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Philip Seymour Hoffman has a grand old time hamming it up as the lone American DJ on the staff, who gets into a pissing contest with a “legendary” British air personality (Rhys Ifans) who has been coaxed into joining the station after taking an extended sabbatical from the biz. They are soon united against a common enemy, when an ultra-conservative government minister (Kenneth Branagh, in full Snidely Whiplash mode) decides to make it his mission in life to take the broadcasters down by any means necessary. Also featured in the cast: January Jones (best known as Betsy Draper from AMC’s original series, Mad Men), Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz ) and Ralph Brown (who is forever cemented in my mind as Danny the drug dealer, from the 1987 cult film Withnail and I).

Writer-director Richard Curtis has a knack for penning clever, bawdily amusing repartee (he scripted one of my all-time favorite romantic comedies, The Tall Guy, which I wrote about here) and the cast is game. I would have liked to have seen him work a little more of the historical context into the story; a large chunk of the movie gets lost in fairly standard bedroom farce (there’s a lot of, uh, “jolly rogering” going on, if you know what I’m saying). There are also a few jumps in the timeline that I found slightly confusing; although I suspect this may be attributable to the fact that some 30 minutes or so of footage has been excised from its U.K. cut (which I hope will be available on DVD). The movie sports a great period soundtrack, from the likes of The Who, The Kinks and Cream (although I could swear that I caught a couple tunes that the DJs were spinning which actually had not yet been released as of 1966, which is the year this is supposed to be taking place; again, this could have something to do with the chopped version of the film we are seeing in the U.S.). It’s fluff-but it’s immensely entertaining fluff. Sometimes, that’s all I require from a film. And a bag of freshly popped corn. Mmmm…popcorn…

Previous posts with related themes: Talk to Me

DH
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White Like Me

by digby

So Beck invited every black wingnut in the country on his show to rap about bein’ a conservative brotha. This is an example of the conversation:

Beck: How many people here identify themselves as African Americans? (About a third raise their hands) OK — Why?

Payne: It’s interchangeable.

Beck: But wait, wait. Why not identify yourself as Americans?

Fritsch: Well, people can look at you and tell you’re black. You can’t escape that.

Beck: Yeah, but I don’t identify myself as white, or a white American.

And that was the smart stuff. Pour yourself a drink or dunk yourself a teabag and go read Neiwert.

As Atrios says, “it burns.”

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Maggie May I

by digby

Before the Larry King debacle, I felt a little bit sorry for Carrie Prejean in that she’s obviously in way over her head. This interview with Christianity Today certainly did her no favors:

Looking back now, I’ve become so much more educated. In fact, Perez Hilton wasn’t even correct when asking the question. He said, “Vermont recently legalized same-sex marriage. Do you think other states should follow suit? Why or why not?” Actually, the people in Vermont didn’t even vote. It was the legislature that voted. It’s funny, looking back now; obviously I’m a lot more educated [now]. I’m not a spokesperson for traditional marriage, but looking back now, it was such a biased question. For a judge to ask that question and have his own agenda, and if you don’t agree with him, [he will] call you every name in the book and then mock you for seven months? That’s just crazy.

Poor thing.

But it turns out that aside from being uninformed, reflexively intolerant and foolishly exhibitionistic, she’s actually quite a mean person:

She arrived with an entourage of five, (for cable news Green Room context, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., never arrives with a group that large) and barked at a studio operator for touching her hair while setting up her microphone.

After her appearance in which she dubbed King “inappropriate” and attempted to exit the set, Prejean accused the staffer of lying to her, saying King’s producers promised no phone calls. She belittled McAusland saying, “Is the intern talking to me? Oh look at the little intern, look at the little intern trying to explain!”

“I’ve never been treated so poorly in my whole life,” McAusland, who recently accepted an executive producer position at Newsie.com of Media Convergence Group, said.

And, needless to say, Prejean’s hypocrisy is downright stunning in light of the revelation that there are several self-made sex tapes out there. (She can’t even claim she was exploited by a bad, liberal man.) But that didn’t stop her from writing this in her book:

“Unfortunately, pornography has become mainstreamed — it rushes at us through big screens, portable screens; soft-core porn is on mainstream TV cable stations, hard-core porn is just a mouse click away on the internet, and the envelope of what seems acceptable seems to get pushed farther and farther as more and more people are exposed to this material.

The result is that girls grow up in a culture where it is hard to have an innocent, healthy, normal view of themselves, how they should behave, how they should act, and how they should dress.”

Come on.

I don’t actually care about Prejean and her troubles. She seems like a fairly common sort of party girl I see all the time here in southern California — spoiled and confused. I think her decision to throw in with the wingnut crowd when she got criticized for her rote statement on gay marriage was a far worse decision than doing the sex tapes and one which she will come to regret.

But this woman, Carrie’s staunchest defender? She’s not confused at all. She’s just a terrible hypocrite in her own right:

Carrie Prejean’s probably should have listened to Gallagher’s edict, “If you are going on the moral attack, wash your own hands first.” Of course, Gallagher is a corrupt hypocrite herself, so perhaps Prejean can be forgiven for not understanding the Christian Right’s “do as I say not as I do” moral compass.

Prejean may be a mean little opportunist, but Gallagher has made even worse hypocrisy her life’s work. Prejean should count her lucky stars if Gallagher abandons her for being a nasty girl. It’ would be the best thing that could happen to her.

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Coming And Going

by digby

Far be it for me to question the motives of a religious leaders, but this does seem like something that should at least be part of the argument:

The justifiable anger at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for lobbying on the Stupak-Pitts amendment overshadows what is possibly the bigger motive for the Vatican: the billions of dollars at stake for the church’s hospitals.

The scale of the church’s involvement in the rapidly growing $2.5 trillion dollar American health care industry is staggering.

What the Stupak-Pitts amendment does for the Catholic health care system is omit a competitive advantage secular and other religiously-affiliated hospitals without doctrinal restrictions can use to simultaneously market their services to both the expected influx of newly insured patients and the outpatient medical professionals who will treat them.

By restricting insurance coverage of women’s reproductive health care, the competitive barriers faced by Catholic institutions will be eliminated — provided the amendment is not stripped out of the final bill that emerges from House-Senate health care reform conference committee. Which is why pro-choice advocates should expect nothing short of a full-frontal attack by the Vatican on conservative Senators.

And in the case of an industry that accounts for 18 percent of the gross domestic product and is expected to double in less than 10 years, it’s absolutely critical to follow the money.

And once again, we see the problems with government funding of “faith based” programs in general. Money tends to muddy up the whole argument, doesn’t it?

I doubt seriously that anyone will have the guts to even bring this up. Religious correctness is far, far more prevalent than anything the PC police could ever gin up. But it does bring up the wider issue of fungibility. We are told that insurance companies cannot keep these funds separate because money is fungible. When do you suppose they figured that out? Faith based programs are all premised on the idea that religious organizations would keep government funds separate from those which are used to proselytize. In fact, there are dozens of examples of private contractors keeping federal money separate from their own private funds and 17 states do it even in the case of medicaid for abortions.

If the churches want to use this fungibility argument, bring it on. It’s hard to see how even the Roberts Court could uphold this double standard. And I can’t see how the churches benefit if they don’t.

I personally think the whole thing is absurd. Money is fungible and all the protestations of the churches over the years that they weren’t using my tax dollars to spread their word never made any sense to me. And it’s not my “moral objections” that rule in this case (although I do have them) it’s the US Constitution which clearly intends that the government not be involved in the religious sphere. Churches aren’t taxed for just that reason — separate spheres, no taxes, no interference. The churches and their adherents, however, not only want to be tax exempt, which most people agree with, they want taxpayers to actually fund them. And now they also want to determine how tax dollars are spent, including those spent on constitutionally guaranteed rights.

At some point some legal decisions are going to have to be made one way or the other. Either federal money is fungible or it isn’t — and either the constitution allows government money to be spent on abortion or it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways on those issues. This silly pretense that just because some people really, really don’t like abortion means they get an exception to every rule that guides federal and state or private partnerships in other circumstances is ridiculous.And why government money can’t be spent for a constitutionally sanctioned medical procedure just because some people feel strongly about it makes no sense. Churches have many privileges in society and there are very few people who would argue that they shouldn’t have them. But they have limits as well.

And the fact that they also have huge financial stakes in the outcomes of these moral decisions should not be ignored. Money is power and power is money and there’s no doubt that a rather large incentive exists to tilt the playing field to those who can control the political system. Anyone who thinks that the Christian tradition isn’t riddled with political ambition and financial corruption hasn’t been paying attention.

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Not Playing Faaair

by digby

That commie bastard Al Franken broke the rules. He actually had the temerity to introduce a bill that made Republicans look bad when they voted against it. Somebody’s going to have to talk to that guy. That’s very uncivil.

When Al Franken ran for the Senate last year, the former “Saturday Night Live” star had to reassure skeptics that the fierce partisan attacks he lobbed at Republicans as an author and radio host wouldn’t define his style as a legislator.

But because of one of his first pieces of legislation, Democrats now have their most brazen attack line of the emerging 2010 campaign season: that Republicans are insensitive to rape victims.

The charge stems from a Franken-sponsored amendment that would prohibit the Department of Defense from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve workplace complaints — including complaints of sexual assault — through private arbitration rather than the courts.

Is the “charge” wrong? Are those Senators not insensitive to rape victims? It’s quite obvious that they are.

The good news is that the Republican senators have learned their lesson:

Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment. And several aides said that Republicans are engaged in an internal blame game about why they agreed to a roll-call vote on the measure, rather than a simple voice vote that would have allowed the opposing senators to duck criticism.

Right, they forgot to hide their misogyny. (Man, you let your guard down for one minute and those bitchuz are all over you.)

Politico seems to agree that this was all a matter of bad politics — for Franken especially. See, the Republicans may have left themselves open to criticism by going on the record against rape victims when they could have been against rape victims in secret but Franken is the one who made the really huge error in bringing up this issue at all. Apparently people in Minnesota are super nervous that he’s going to embarrass Republicans.

And the Republicans are shocked, simply shocked:

“I think the whole purpose of that amendment in my opinion was to create a vote which they could use to attack Republicans,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who was himself confronted by a liberal blogger with a video camera questioning his vote.

If only they were that good.

By the way, Politico mentions several times that a “liberal blogger” got Republicans on tape behaving like jackasses on this issue, but can’t be bothered to name him or link to his site. Very nice.

It was, of course, the redoubtable Mike Stark, and you can help support him by signing this petition

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Helpmates

by digby

Chris Hayes has an excellent piece up about the mind-bogglingly silly reporting about the deficit which perfectly expresses my feelings:

The discussion about deficits and debt in Washington is so colossally stupid and disingenuous that even engaging it makes me despair. But today’s Politico so expertly packages together every conceivable Beltway Establishment inanity about “spending” and “deficits” into one glib little piece of analysis that I can’t help myself. (Well, I could help myself but was bullied over Twitter into writing about it here.)

There’s one big maddening conceptual error at the heart of this piece (whether committed in good faith or bad I can’t say) which is to confuse relatively substantial pieces of domestic legislation with a spending “binge.” See, a government, like any organization, institution, or firm has expenditures and revenues. Miraculously, it can increase its expenditures, without increasing its deficit, if it also increases its revenues. This is called “deficit neutral” and it’s what the current health care bill, in all its incarnations, is. It is what the cap and trade bill will also be. read on ….

None of that matters. What matters is that the Villagers believe that Americans must suffer. It isn’t about economics, it’s about some sort of religious sacrifice. They’ve been leading up to this since Obama’s election.

Here’s an example from last January:

MSNBC commentator: … The subtext of all of this [call to service] is “hey Americans, you’re gonna have to do your part too. There may be some sacrifices involved for you too.” Do you think he’s going to use his political capital to make those arguments and will it go beyond rhetoric?

Andrea Mitchell: It does go beyond rhetoric. He needs to engage the American people in this joint venture. That’s part of the call. That’s part of what he needs to accomplish in his speech and in the days following the speech. He needs to make people feel that this is their venture as well and that people are going to need to be more patient and have to contribute and that there will have to be some sacrifice.

And certainly, if he is serious about what he told the Washington Post last week, that he wants to take on entitlement reform, there will be greater sacrifice required from a nation already suffering from economic crisis — to ask people to take a look at their health care and their other entitlements and realize that for the long term health and vitality of the country we’re going to have to give up something that we already enjoy.

Americans aren’t suffering enough, you see. At least according to millionaire television celebrity Andrea Mitchell who will presumably be asked to give up paying higher taxes as her “sacrifice.”

The deficit is the bludgeon used by the wealthy bondholders to beat liberals into retreat on doing anything that might make average citizens feel that democratic government might be a better guarantor of economic security than their rich overlords (who are doing “God’s Work” allegedly on their behalf.)

The press corps and the political establishment are happily doing their bidding and the fact that they are actually blabbering on about the deficit while we have more than 10% unemployment proves that we have gone down the rabbit hole — and they are filling it in behind us.

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Story Time

by digby

The Democrats seem to be having trouble telling the story of what’s going on in the economy and the press is typically obtuse, helping the Republicans talk up “the deficit” like it’s the most important issue facing the country and giving the completely incorrect impression that it’s somehow the cause of the current economic stress.

But Dr Elizabeth Warren tells the story very well and it would behoove Democrats to listen to her narrative and get prepared to provide some answers to the people — or somebody very hostile to everything they believe in will provide it for them:

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Friends And Allies

by digby

A good idea from CredoAction:

Did 20 pro-choice Democrats forget what happens when women are denied access to abortion?

Why did pro-choice Democrats vote to approve the Stupak Amendment, the most serious assault on abortion rights in a generation?

According to FiveThirtyEight.com, 20 of the 64 Democrats who joined Republicans to pass the measure are nominally pro-choice. We’re telling these 20 Democrats — all of them men — to reconsider their vote and urge Congressional leadership to do everything they can to ensure the health care bill that comes out of committee does not take us back to an era of coat hangers and back alley abortions.

Sign our petition and we’ll send a coat hanger to the 20 formerly pro-choice Democrats who voted to take away women’s rights.

No money required, just a signature to remind these allegedly pro-choice men what they have done.

And that’s not all. Here’s Howie:

Working Assets will also donate $1 to Blue America for each signature we gather (up to $5000) towards a fellowship to support a blogger. We got to choose who to support and we can’t think of anything more deserving than the incredible work of Mike Stark. So, please, sign the petition here.

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If Only It Were So, Joe

Joe Conason has a column about professional xenophobe Louis Dobbs who, in a spectacular demonstration of the truth that the incompetent don’t even know they’re incompetent, apparently intends to run for president.* (See also Digby’s post below.) Conason writes:

Having observed the former CNN anchor for many years, including a number of recent appearances on his nightly broadcast, I suspect that he may well nurture ambitions to run for president, as reported in the trade press — and could mount a formidable campaign drawing upon the same resentful remnant that Republicans hope to mobilize in 2012. Except that he probably won’t be running as a Republican.

And why not? Conason continues:

It is true that LouDobbs.com provides much of the same right-wing rhetoric available from Rush Limbaugh or Fox News Channel, featuring guests such as Mike Huckabee, Bill Donohue and Frank Luntz. Glancing at the Web site or listening to him on the radio makes Dobbs appear to be a “lifelong Republican,” as he has occasionally described himself in the past. He lambastes ACORN, the “national liberal media,” Nancy Pelosi, “government-run healthcare” and, of course, Barack Obama, all in the usual frothing style.

Yet there is much about his fundamental outlook that simply cannot fit within the Republican party today — and in no fewer than three bestselling books, he has poured scorn upon the GOP and its free-market idolatry. His skepticism of open borders has long extended to trade as well as immigration, and he has fervently denounced the corporate greed that led to the outsourcing and offshoring of millions of American jobs. That pugnacious attitude won him the George Kourpias Award for Excellence in Labor Journalism from the International Association of Machinists in 2004. (“We would canonize him if we could,” said the union’s president as he presented the award to Dobbs.)

He despises corporate lobbyists, complains about corporate tax evasion, and has supported public financing of elections. He blasted the banking and credit card industries for pushing through the bankruptcy “reform” that ruined families while fattening their profits.

As if Dobbs is somehow incapable of tailoring his “fundamental outlook” to please the boys with the bucks. In fact, as Joe Conason himself notes:

In the past he has even criticized Republicans for promoting cultural warfare over abortion and gay marriage, although he recanted last September with a groveling address to the Values Voters Summit (another possible signal of an incipient candidacy).

So, Dobbs is, according to Conason himself, a duplicitous flippy-floppy far-right opportunist whose morals stink as bad as an industrial hog farm. In other words, he’s just one more standard issue 21st Century Republican nutcase.

If he runs, he will want to win – no tokenism for Dobbs, ever. So while he surely is incompetent, he is, as Conason realizes, one cunningly nasty piece of work (Conason calls him “smart” but I think this is closer to what Conason means) and it takes hardly any cunning at all to know you don’t win nothing running third party. You’re gonna see Dobbs change his tune but fast. Oh sure, he’ll probably have the GOP put in planks to the platform decrying “corporate greed,” – using as examples prominent Democratic businessmen – but he’ll privately assure America’s Greediest they needn’t fear him.

If Dobbs does get in the race, he will be a formidable opponent, not because he’s qualified, of course, and not even because he’s glib. He’ll be formidable because he’s One Of Their Own, the way Patrick Buchanan is. They’re going to give “Lou” a free pass to say anything and be as ignorant and vicious as he can be, just as they treated “Pat.” The difference is that Dobbs has a less deranged mien that crazy Buchanan. And so it will have a far greater impact than it did with Buchanan.

Another reason he’ll run as a Republican: they got no one remotely as popular or likable. Tim Pawlenty? Oh, please.

*I try not to use diminutives, like “Mike” or “Lou” or “Arnold” for politicians class, or even first names: it creates a false sense of intimacy and I think it’s importance to maintain a rhetorical, as well as a real, distance from these people, especially those on the far right. “Lou Dobbs” now is clearly a “Louis.”

Where At Least I Know I’m Free

by digby

h/t to fb

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