Category: Culture

William Cork is keeping a very good blog on The Passion. I pretty much concur with his thoughts on the movie, which are summarized here.

I still think Mel Gibson is a well-meaning individual, but until he takes a deep breath and acknowledges that his father is a lunatic and that his movie is going to inspire hatred, it really doesn’t matter what his motivations are. Take a look at some Hutton Gibson quotes from the link above (via Orcinus):

“I don’t know what their [the Jews’] agenda is except that it’s all about control. They’re after one world religion and one world government. That’s why they’ve attacked the Catholic Church so strongly, to ultimately take control over it by their doctrine and make one world religion and one world government.”

And:

“To a Jew a Christian commits idolatry every time he looks at a crucifix and says a prayer. You know they’re in control and they’re going to get in control the way things are going. Because they get all of our people…They killed several generations of us Americans [referring to WWI and WWII] … The Jews weren’t in the army much in WWI that because they were fomenting a revolt in Russia. America had no right to fight in foreign wars.”

This is purely and utterly sick. Expect to see more of it. The white supremacists are coming out of the woodwork on this one; the silver lining to all this is that it’ll get some of them out from under their rocks.

The Apprentice has been pretty much enh for a couple of weeks — one team was clearly better, and they were destroying the other team. There was some amusement value from watching Jessie stab Kristi, and then get fired the next week. (Kristi: “What should I do?” Jessie: “Oh, don’t say anything until Mr. Trump talks to you.” Kristi: “OK!” Later, Trump: “You’re not very assertive, Kristi. You’re fired.”)

Oh, and the bit where Troy carefully manipulated the Fab Five into giving him a good item for a charity auction? That was great. He told the camera what he was gonna do and say, he did it, and it worked like a charm. But there weren’t a lot of good moments like that.

This week, on the other hand, ruled. It was a nice simple contest; the two project leaders negotiated for their choice of two apartments, each team renovated the apartment they wound up with, and the side that got the best percentage increase over the base lease price for the apartment won. For the first time, you had two contestants negotiating with each other, and Troy destroyed Katrina. In the end he got what he wanted by the flip of a coin, but I’d say he still wound up with an advantage because Katrina was seriously pissed off about it. If he’d lost, he would have shrugged it off.

Side note: the real question was not which apartment looked nicer, but which apartment had a lower base lease price. A hundred dollar increase over the base price means a lot more if the base lease price is low. Because the show isn’t really about business, nobody mentioned that.

Tammy sucked down the loss for being disloyal, which is a recurring theme. Also because she’s been startlingly non-effective in general, but mostly because she wasn’t loyal to her team.

It’s getting down to the smart people. Right now I’m betting on Troy and Amy, or perhaps Nick. Most likely winner is Troy, because he’s a very good manipulator. He had a better chance before Amy wound up on his team, though; he was going to slip right through till the end but now he has real competition on his team.

Why are you not reading Broog’s film criticism? Do you not know what it is that you are missing?

The mighty cinematic edifice which is the human Jackson’s rendering of Tolkien’s classic novel grinds to its imperial conclusion in the third film, “Lord of the Rings: The Fat Jolly Hobbit Saves Middle Earth And Everyone Is Nice To His Whiny Friend”. The movie follows the exploits of Sam as he hauls his limp and apparently pointless companion across the dark desolation of Mordor, struggling against hunger, despair, orcs, giant spiders, Gollum, and what must surely be an overpowering desire to slap Frodo until he resembles a hubcap.

Now you have no excuse.

“Dave Sim is the only person out there who can tell us what it’s like to self-publish your own wholly idiosyncratic black-and-white comic book for 25 years straight while delivering massive polemics on esoteric issues, and from points of view that most people find indefensible. He’s a wholly unique individual. And while you could argue that EVERYONE is wholly unique, and I’d have to agree, that doesn’t mean they have wholly unique things to say. Dave does.”

My college friend and housemate Tasha works for The Onion A.V. Club. (She writes reviews, conducts interviews, and generally gets to live a life full of interesting people and things.) She spent a chunk of yesterday trying to convince Dave Sim to let her interview him, and then blogged about the phone conversation. It’s brilliant.

I got three comments (on the same entry) in my Livejournal mirror encouraging me to go see The Passion of the Christ. This does not, in fact, convince me to adopt the recommended course of action.

This is pretty much the sort of thing that I anticipated: I don’t think Mel Gibson set out to make a dangerous movie, but I thought that it was the kind of movie that would encourage poor behavior unless he took counterbalancing steps. Spam comments aren’t dangerous, but they do show a distinct disregard for social mores. I expect more of the same, and possibly darker actions. Call me a cynic.

(Anonymous comments are still enabled over there, and I still don’t track IP addresses there, but I do screen anonymous comments. I won’t screen anything but spam.)

Last week’s Apprentice was intensely dull, so I’m only just now getting around to writing about it. Executive summary:

Sex still sells and the women are still using it. The contestants are stuck in the mode of individual achievement these days; they can’t stop running around long enough to delegate to non-contestants. Nick used some pretty good tactics to buy himself an out, and they worked. Bowie got kicked out for no good reason. Omarosa is smart enough to turn people around and get them to like her in one week flat.

This week’s, which I haven’t watched yet, scrambled the teams.

The prelim Nebula ballot is up, with links to many of the nominees in full. Three out of the four novelettes were published on-line first.

And the nominees are…

Biggies (i.e., the ones I care about):

Best Actor
Johnny Depp — Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
Ben Kingsley — House Of Sand And Fog
Jude Law — Cold Mountain
Bill Murray — Lost In Translation
Sean Penn — Mystic River

Depp is the surprise nomination here. I still think he was better in Once Upon A Time In Mexico, but what do I know? Bill Murray would be my pick for the Oscar.

Best Supporting Actor
Alec Baldwin — The Cooler
Benicio Del Toro — 21 Grams
Djimon Hounsou — In America
Tim Robbins — Mystic River
Ken Watanabe — The Last Samurai

Alec Baldwin is the trendy cool nomination. Lotta quality performances here; this is a really strong field. Baldwin is deserving, Robbins is deserving, and Watanabe is deserving. I’d bet Del Toro is deserving too.

Best Actress
Keisha Castle-Hughes — Whale Rider
Diane Keaton — Something’s Gotta Give
Samantha Morton — In America
Charlize Theron — Monster
Naomi Watts — 21 Grams

Trendy choice: Keisha Castle-Hughes. Winner: probably Charlize Theron. Shamefully, I have seen none of these.

Best Supporting Actress
Shohreh Aghdashloo — House Of Sand And Fog
Patricia Clarkson — Pieces Of April
Marcia Gay Harden — Mystic River
Holly Hunter — Thirteen
Renée Zellweger — Cold Mountain

I dunno. Shamefully — you know the rest. (OK, I saw Mystic River. Marcia Gay Harden was good.)

Best Animated Film
Brother Bear
Finding Nemo
The Triplets Of Belleville

Triplets is a bit of a surprise. This year, the voters will decide if this award is a prestige award or an award for the big US film (which is not to say Finding Nemo isn’t good, but it’s a perception thing). So far it’s gone both ways, with Shrek and Spirited Away.

Best Director
City Of God
The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Lost In Translation
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
Mystic River

HEY. I guess City of God is eligible this year after all. It’s not gonna win but possibly it should.

Best Screenplay (Adaptation)
American Splendor
City Of God
The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

I’m torn between Mystic River and Return of the King. I guess you gotta go with the latter as a recognition of the trilogy, but the Mystic River screenplay was a superlative adaptation of a difficult book.

Best Screenplay (Original)
The Barbarian Invasions
Dirty Pretty Things
Finding Nemo
In America
Lost In Translation

Dirty Pretty Things. Not that I didn’t love Lost in Translation, but it wasn’t the screenplay that made it a great movie.

Best Picture
The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Lost In Translation
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

All good choices. Return of the King gets it, again for the trilogy, although I can’t say it was a better movie than Lost in Translation.