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Saturday Night at the Movies
It is always the quiet ones that you need to be wary of. I’m sure you’ve watched enough nature documentaries on the National Geographic Channel to figure that one out. Lions will sit patiently for hours, waiting for the right moment to pounce. As casual and disinterested as they may seem at times, they never lose their focus. They are studying your every move, all the while visualizing how nicely you will fit on today’s fresh sheet.
Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s new film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (adapted from John le Carre’s classic espionage potboiler by Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan) is chockablock with such animals. However, these are not creatures of the four-legged, furry variety that you will find in the sun-drenched African Savanna, lurking about in tall grasses. These are creatures of the bipedal, D-deficient variety that you will find in the fog-shrouded British Isles, usually lurking in musty offices with nicotine-stained ceilings.
The story is set in 1973, against a Cold War backdrop. Our unlikely hero is not so much a leonine, but rather an owlish sort of fellow. His name is George Smiley (Gary Oldman), and despite the fact that he would look more at home behind a library check out desk than behind the wheel of, let’s say, an Aston Martin, he is a seasoned intelligence agent for MI6. Actually, Smiley’s long-standing career with a branch known as “The Circus” is not going so well. When his boss, known simply as Control (John Hurt), gets booted out for a botched operation in Hungary, Smiley finds himself out of a job as well (more as a scapegoat). It seems that the office politics of the Circus are nearly indistinguishable from the acrimonious and paranoia-fueled spy games played in the field with “enemy” agents.
Smiley’s forced retirement doesn’t last too long (it can’t…we wouldn’t have a film!). He is summoned to a meet with a government under-secretary (Simon McBurney), where he is sasked to come back to work (in secret). There are suspicions that there is a double agent amongst the higher echelons of the Circus, who has been feeding sensitive intelligence to the Soviets for a number of years. Smiley’s mission, should he decide to accept it, is to smoke out the mole. Interestingly, it was Smiley’s former boss, Control (now dead), who originally sniffed out this possibility, narrowing the field of suspects down to five men in the department (including Smiley, now in the clear). Given that he didn’t seem to have too much going on outside of his job (apart from brooding about his estranged wife), Smiley jumps at this chance to get back in the game. And of course, as the movies have taught us, the Crusty yet Benign (city editor, senior lawyer, police inspector, seasoned beat cop, or in this case, Master Spy) needs an Ambitious Young Apprentice to be his eyes and ears (Benedict Cumberbatch as the up-and-coming agent).
What ensues plot-wise is much too byzantine and multi-layered for me to synopsize here. Besides, it’s always much more gratifying to solve a Rubik’s Cube yourself than to have someone hand you an EZ step-by-step cheat sheet, no? And when I say “byzantine and multi-layered”, I mean that in the best way possible, thanks in no small part to that rarest of animals found at the multiplex these days: The Intelligent Script (#1 on the endangered species list). Not only do Alfredson, his writers and actors refuse to insult our intelligence, but they aren’t afraid to make us do something that we haven’t done in a while: lean forward in our theatre seat to catch every nuance of plot and character (it’s been so long that I think I pulled something). Not to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but more often than not I find myself pressed back in my seat, cowering in a semi-state of shellshock from the aural overkill and ADD editing in most Hollywood fare (so at what point did going to the movies morph from an act of enjoyment into a feat of endurance?).
That is not to say that this is a static and somber affair. There’s a bit of “action” here and there (people do occasionally get hurt in the spy biz), but it’s not calculated and choreographed for maximum impact; Dr. No’s island doesn’t blow up at the end. When violence does occur, it’s ugly, ungraceful and anything but cinematic (as it is in real life). Most of the “thrills” are drawn from the arsenal of the skilled actor; a sideways glance here or a subtle voice inflection there can ratchet up the tension as effectively as someone holding a gun to your head. And there are many skilled actors on board. This is Oldman’s best performance in years. It’s nice to see him take a break from playing cartoon villains and getting back to where he once belonged (his bespectacled, enigmatic characterization harkens back to another Cold War film spy hero for those of us of “a certain age”, Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer). Rounding off a top-notch cast are Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong (a standout) and the wonderful Kathy Burke (who, with a world-weary sigh, nails 2011’s best movie line concerning middle-aged malaise: “I don’t know about you George, but I’m feeling seriously under-fucked.”).
DP Hoyte Van Hoytema (who also photographed the director’s moody 2008 vampire tale, Let the Right One In 
Baby, it’s cold outside: Funeral in Berlin 
Previous Posts with related themes:
Burn After Reading
The Good Shepherd/638 Ways to Kill Castro
Fair Game
Breach
Charlie Wilson’s War
The Good German
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Disqualified
by digby
I’m sure you’ve heard that Newtie and Perry couldn’t get their acts together enough to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, which pretty much disqualifies all of them for president as far as I’m concerned. Seriously, if you can’t even get on the ballot in all the primary states you’re running in … well.
But they’re not the only people who are disqualified today. The very handsome Niall Ferguson has made a total cake of himself as well:
I get that self-avowed “neo-imperialist” historian Niall Ferguson relishes his gig as academia’s most celebrated colonial nostalgic/conservative reactionary. But this is too much:
I just read the transcripts of some lectures [Newt Gingrich] gave in the 1990s on “Renewing American Civilization.” They positively fizz with historical insights and brilliant brain waves. They make the case against big government as vividly as anything you’ll ever read.
This nugget of praise, apparently written in all seriousness, appeared in the December 19th edition of Newsweek, where Ferguson writes a weekly column. I too read these transcripts as part of an assignment for The New Republic (learn all about it here if you’re a print subscriber) and they simply don’t warrant this level of praise.
Here’s an example of the “brilliant brainwaves”
I would assert that no civilization can survive with 12-year-olds having babies, 15-year- olds killing each other, 17-year-olds dying of AIDS, and 18-year- olds getting diplomas they can’t read.
They’re nothing more than typical 90s era GOPAC cartoon agit-prop.
I think Ferguson’s disqualification may be worse than Gingrich’s. After all, he can’t lay blame for it on his bad staff or mismanagement. Those silly words of praise are his and his alone.
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Effective persuasion
by digby
Matt Yglesias wrote something this week that I wanted to post today. It’s just a quick observation:
Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein are back to debating the hoary counterfactual of whether the Obama administration could have gotten a larger stimulus bill out of Congress had they fully recognized the depth and breadth of the recession they were facing. One thing I want to say about this is always that insider testimonies on this subject provide sort of poor evidence. This is often discussed in terms of arm twisting or political pressure, but administration officials who were there assure me they did everything they could and I more or less believe them. But maybe they could or should have been more genuinely persuasive? Presumably if Ben Nelson sincerely believed that appropriating hundreds of billions of extra dollars in stimulus spending would meaningfully imprve the American economy, then he would have voted for it. Pressure is nice, but on some level there’s no substitute for sincere conviction which means there’s no substitute for effective persuasion.
The problem in our politics isn’t just money, it’s cynicism. And that goes for activists as well as politicians. Persuasion is the very essence of politics and at some point, if you believe in representative democracy, you just have to get down to it and elect people who believe as you believe. Persuasion always beats coercion for the long term.
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When Glenn met Norman
by digby
One of my favorite Blue America candidates is Norman Solomon. If he wins the seat vacated by Lynn Woolsey in Northern California we’re going to have another Bernie Sanders in the congress.
Solomon wrote it up for Common Dreams:
When I picked up a ringing phone Monday morning, the next thing I knew a producer was inviting me to appear on Glenn Beck’s TV show.
Beck has become a national phenom with his nightly hour of polemics on CNN Headline News — urging war on Iran, denouncing “political correctness” at home, trashing immigrants who don’t speak English, mocking environmentalists as repressive zealots, and generally trying to denigrate progressive outlooks.
Our segment, the producer said, would focus on a recent NBC news report praising the virtues of energy-efficient LED light bulbs without acknowledging that the network’s parent company, General Electric, sells them. I figured it was a safe bet that Beck’s enthusiasm for full disclosure from media would be selective.
A few hours later, I was staring into a camera lens at the CNN bureau in San Francisco while Beck launched into his opening. What had occurred on the “NBC Nightly News,” he explained, “was at best a major breach of journalistic integrity.” And he pointed out: “The problem isn’t what NBC is promoting. It’s what they’re not disclosing.”
A minute later, Beck asked his first question: “Norman, you agree with me that they should have disclosed this?” The unedited transcript tells what happened next.
SOLOMON: “It’s a big problem when there’s not disclosure. I’m glad you opened this up. And I wouldn’t want any viewers of this program to be left with the impression that somehow General Electric is an environmentally conscious company.
“On the contrary, they have a 30-year history of refusing and actually fighting against efforts to make them clean up the Hudson River, which GE fouled with terrible quantities of horrific PCBs, other rivers as well. People told they can’t fish in the Hudson River. General Electric still lobbying to not have to clean up.
“General Electric, even today — and this report is very timely — General Electric is lobbying to get Congress to pass $18 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for a huge GE product which is General Electric components for nuclear power plants. So we should not be fooled in any way by efforts to greenwash General Electric or any other company.”
BECK: “You know what’s amazing to me? GE has a bigger budget for — special interest budget than all of the oil companies combined, and yet nobody says anything. Let me reverse this.
“Norman, do you think if I got on as somebody who says I don’t know what we can do about global warming, I’m not sure man causes it, and I certainly don’t want to have laws and regulations on this, if I got on and said that but I was being — my corporate — my corporate parent was Exxon Mobil, do you think I’d get away with that for a second without that being on the front page of the New York Times?”
SOLOMON: “Well, other networks, including General Electric’s NBC, have been very slow on global warming. And in fact, General Electric has major interest in components and products used by the oil and gas industry.
“I think if you look across the board, all the major networks, even so-called public broadcasting, which has Chevron underwriting its ‘Washington Week’ program every Friday, there is a problem, as you say. I think your words are very apt, ‘promoting’ but ‘not disclosing.’
“But let’s be clear about this, Glenn. I have a list here, for instance, that I jotted down.
“ABC, owned by Disney. ABC doesn’t disclose in their relevant news reports about Disney’s stake in sweatshops.
“Fox News — and now as of the last couple of days now, Wall Street Journal owned by the same entity, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp — they don’t disclose that the ownership is entangled with the Chinese government to the detriment of human rights but to the advancement of the profit margin of the parent company.”
BECK: “See –“
SOLOMON: “We would be remiss, Glenn, if we left out CNN, because CNN has a huge multi, multibillion-dollar stake in Internet deregulation and the failure of the Congress to safeguard so far what would be called net neutrality. So every time CNN does a news report on the Internet, on efforts to regulate or deregulate or create a two- or three-tier system of the Internet, CNN News should disclose that Time Warner, the parent company, stands to gain or lose billions of dollars in those terms.
“And one more thing.”
BECK: “Real quick.”
SOLOMON: “A major — a major advertiser for CNN is the largest military contractor in the United States, Lockheed Martin. So when you and others –“
BECK: “I got news for you, Norman. Norman –“
SOLOMON: “– promote war — when you and others promote war on this network –“
BECK: “Norman — Norman –“
SOLOMON: “– we have Lockheed Martin paying millions of dollars undisclosed. So I would quote you –“
BECK: “Norman — Norman –“
SOLOMON: “Promoting but not disclosing is a bad way to go.”
BECK: “Norman, let me just tell you this. First of all, Lockheed Martin is not a — not a corporate overlord of this program.”
SOLOMON: “It’s a major advertiser on CNN.”
BECK: “That’s fine. That’s fine. Advertisers are different. But let –“
SOLOMON: “Well, it is fine, but it should be disclosed.”
BECK: “Norman, let me just tell you something. If you think that it’s warmonger central downstairs at CNN, you’re out of your mind. But that’s a different story.”
SOLOMON: “Well, upstairs, when I watch Glenn Beck, in terms of attacking Iran, it certainly is. It’s lucrative for the oil companies, as well as for the major advertiser on CNN, Lockheed Martin.”
BECK: “But we’re not talking about advertisers. We are talking about –“
SOLOMON: “Well, you don’t want to talk about it. So let’s talk about the Internet stake.”
BECK: “No, no, no. Norman –“
SOLOMON: “Let’s talk about the Internet stake that the owners of CNN have. Huge profits to be made or lost by the parent company of CNN depending on what happens in Washington in terms of Internet regulation.”
BECK: “Norman, let me tell you something.”
SOLOMON: “That should be acknowledged, don’t you think?”
BECK: “Absolutely. And if it was on this program, it would be acknowledged.
“I thank you very much for your time.
“That just goes to show you, you’ve got to beware of everybody who you’re getting your news from. Wouldn’t it be nice if once in a while somebody came on and said, you know, I don’t really have an agenda except the truth? It’s my truth. If you don’t like it, you should go someplace else.”
During the back-and-forth, I’d understated the present-day role of Chevron as a funder of key news programming on PBS. Actually the Chevron Corporation, which signed on as an underwriter of “Washington Week” last year, no longer helps pay the piper there — but the massive energy firm does currently funnel big bucks to the most influential show on PBS, the nightly “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”
The corporate funders of the “NewsHour” now include not only Chevron but also AT&T and Pacific Life. There must be dozens of journalistic reports on the program every week — whether relevant to the business worlds of energy, communications or insurance — that warrant, and lack, real-time disclosures while the news accounts are on the air. Meanwhile, over at “Washington Week,” the corporate cash now flows in from the huge military contractor Boeing and the National Mining Association.
And that’s just “public broadcasting.” On avowedly commercial networks, awash in corporate ownership interests and advertising revenues, a thorough policy of disclosure in the course of news coverage would require that most of the airtime be devoted to shedding light on the media outlet conflicts-of-interest of the reporting in progress.
And what about Glenn Beck? The guy is another in a long line of demagogues riding a bull market for pseudo-populism. Brought to you by too many corporate interests to name.
That was 2007, folks. He’s been talking this talk for decades and he’s not going to change once he’s in Congress. He’s the real thing.
You can support the campaign, here.
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Best New Show: Chris Hayes
by digby
Now we know:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I don’t think most people know all that — which is why everyone should watch this show. It’s the only political show that’s going to make sure they do.
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Some RedLetterMedia fun on Christmas Eve
by David Atkins
If you’ve been living under the Internet equivalent of a rock, you might have missed RedLetterMedia’s now legendary eviscerating YouTube reviews of the Star Wars prequels. Rogert Ebert has Roger Ebert has highlighted the reviews on his blog. For a taste of RedLetterMedia’s unique brand of humor and insight, here’s Part 1 of their Phantom Menace review:
Well, the RedLetterMedia team has done it again with a biting take on the fourth Indiana Jones film.
There’s a lesson here for progressives about emotional communication as well, for those with an ear to hear it. Simplicity and emotional directness win the day in politics as in art.
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Bo-Gate— where will it end?
by digby
Just an FYI: Kevin Drum is the go-to source for all related Bo-Gate News. (If you’ve been off the grid, you may not know that right wingers have discovered evidence that the President flew the first dog to Hawaii and then brought him back for a photo shoot at taxpayers expense — or maybe not.) Anyway, it’s a scandal that makes Watergate look like child’s play.
Need I say more?
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Daddy’s boy?
I thought about this supposed influence after reading today’s story in the Times about Mitt Romney negotiating for himself a big cut of Bain Capital’s profits from the buyout deals that the firm has made after he left the firm in 1999. Because this is one area where George Romney was distinctly different. From another fine Times piece in 2007 by David Leonhardt, contrasting Mitt Romney’s wealth — then estimated at $350 million — with his father’s far smaller fortune:
“George Romney, on the other hand, voluntarily turned down $268,000 in pay over five years when he was chief executive, which was equal to about 20 percent of his total pay during that time. In 1960, for example, he refused a $100,000 bonus. Mr. Romney had previously told the company’s board that no executive needed to make more than $225,000 a year (about $1.4 million in today’s dollars), a spokesman for American Motors explained at the time, and the bonus would have put him above that threshold.”
That’s a perfect illustration of the difference between old school American capitalists and the Randroids who populate the boardrooms today. Mitt Romney is definitely one of the latter.
I suspect that it was the depression that produced George’s philosophy. Smart investors and business executives learned that gilded age practices eventually lead to bad results —and not just for poor people, but for everybody. The riverboat gambling ethos had been beaten out of them by an economic disaster.
One might even say that this is why bailing out all these executives by letting them keep their obscene bonuses and coddling them like a bunch of Ming dynasty princesses becomes a —- moral hazard. Instead of coming to understand what George Romney understood back in the day, they end up spouting this drivel:
In less than a year, the American people will go to the polls and choose a new president. A matter of great moment is at stake in this election. The question we will decide is this: Will the United States be an Entitlement Society or an Opportunity Society?
In an Entitlement Society, government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to innovate, pioneer or take risk. In an Opportunity Society, free people living under a limited government choose whether or not to pursue education, engage in hard work, and pursue the passion of their ideas and dreams. If they succeed, they merit the rewards they are able to enjoy.
The heir who parlayed his famous name into a big job as a vulture capitalist merits 350 million while the rest of the entitled parasites, looters and moochers who need such trifles as Social Security or unemployment insurance don’t. That’s quite a leap from the way George Romney looked at things. (I don’t think he’s the one who was brainwashed.)
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Latinos feeling taken for granted
by David Atkins
I’ve written before about the silliness of the Republican belief that they can demonize minorities while it’s advantageous to them, and then turn around quickly and win them back by installing a minority figurehead as their standard-bearer. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked with African-Americans, and it won’t work with Latinos, either.
But that doesn’t mean Democrats can sit on their heels and take minority groups for granted. As a new Ipsos/Telemundo poll shows, President Obama’s support among Latinos, while still in positive territory, is dropping precipitously:
Although President Obama still enjoys higher job approval ratings from Hispanics than he does from the public at large, a new Ipsos-Telemundo poll shows the president’s support among Hispanics continues to decline.
A majority – 56% — said in late November and early December that they approve of how the president is handling his job. By comparison, 86% of Hispanics approved of Obama in April 2009, and 62% approved in June.
According to an Ipsos analysis of the poll, the results “suggest that while President Obama’s approval has been dropping since he took office, the disillusion among Hispanics is more pronounced than among the general public.”
The six-percentage-point drop since June is double the drop among the public at large, according to the poll.
That’s hardly surprising, given the Obama’s Administration’s record number of deportations, as well as the failure to even attempt to do something significant about immigration reform, one of his key election planks in 2008.
They’re not going to switch to the GOP, but if their issues are ignored, they may very well leave the Democratic Party and stay home as “independent voters.”
At which point, of course, a bunch of caterwauling “post-partisan” blithering idiots and corporate tools will claim that Democrats need to move more to the center and avoid “divisive issues” in order to please “independent voters.”
It’s the autocatalytic cycle of “independent” politics, Latino Democrat edition.
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