Sherman Cafe, in Union Square, has free wireless. The coffee is pretty good, too. Good place to hang out on a Sunday afternoon.
Month: March 2004
You either like Charlie Kaufman movies or you don’t, and if you do, you’re already going to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so no big review here. It’s in the top half of Kaufman films for me.
OK, OK. Better than Human Nature and Adaptation, and on a par with Being John Malkovich. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind I sort of put off on the side because it’s a different beast.
I thought it was completely comprehensible. The narrative wasn’t particularly chronological on one level, but on another level it was mostly linear, albeit with one big giant flashback in the middle. It’s all well and good to talk about how messed up a narrative is, but you’d think some people had never read any time travel stories…
Oh, right.
Also I liked the hard core of truth at the middle. There were moments when I worried about a saccharine ending, but not at all. One icicle in particular is perfectly chilling and painful. Kaufman and Gondry have a pretty good understanding of all the ways love can result in people hurting other people.
This happens to be that movie Jim Carrey’s been trying to make where you can forget that he’s Jim Carrey for a little while, by the by. That’s nice too. And Elijah Wood is good, and Kirsten Dunst is good, and so on. But you either like movies written by Kaufman or you don’t.
The Celestial Pictures DVD restoration of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is maybe the clearest print of a Hong Kong movie I’ve ever seen. It’s beautifully vivid. The only thing that’d beat it would be Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and I’m not sure I can count that.
OK, look, it’s this pretty:
Look at those reds and blues. They pop. In fact, my only complaint may be that it’s a little too vivid, but I’m not sure that’s not just my modern eyes watching a 70s Technicolor epic.
The first fight scene is pretty decent too, albeit a little slow for someone weaned on John Woo and Tsui Hark. But I still liked it.
And there you have it. As per my speculation yesterday, Zapatero’s threat to pull out his troops has Bush leaning back towards a UN resolution. Nicely done on Zapatero’s part.
Now I’m going to go be sick s’more. Blah. You can tell I’m not well because I’m loopy enough to bitch about being not well here.
The popular right-wing talking point of the moment: "Spain did what Al Qaeda wanted." This is all very well and good, except that Spain is not pulling out of Afghanistan and that Spain is willing to stay in Iraq under certain conditions — mainly a Security Council mandate.
This actually looks like pretty smart diplomacy to me. To the degree that Bush needs Spain to stay in the coalition, he needs to bend to their demands. This would mean giving more say to the UN than he’d like, but those are the breaks of the game, right?
Indeed, one might claim that if Bush fails to make these accomodations, he’s doing Osama’s bidding. One would be a wingnut, mind you — because it’s pretty insane to claim that a world leader is dancing on Al Qaeda’s strings simply because his sense of the right thing to do happens to be something Al Qaeda wants done. You’ve got to consider the entire picture.
Further reading: kos on the US pullout from Saudi Arabia and Josh Marshall on the whole situation.
Another mashup from Kirt "Loki" Dankmyer today: “Hotel California”, by the Eagles. Read the lyrics, remember the times when they seemed like the deepest thing in the world, and… mash!
There appears to be a small uprising in Northern Iran. A little more information can be found here. The first link is to a site on the right side of the ideological spectrum, by the by, so you have to discount the people who are under the impression that this will immediately turn into a vast popular uprising supported by US troops.
(Via Tacitus, whose commenters suffer in part from the same optimism. Ah well.)
Mark Schmitt makes an excellent catch over at The Decembrist. Bush is using photos from the FY 2005 Federal Budget in his campaign material.
This may or may not be illegal; it seems to me like it might be, but Schmitt knows better than I and he doesn’t think it is. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think government documents are protected under copyright, so Bush has the right to remix those photos however he likes. Kinda shady of him to get the government to pay for the photos if he intended to use them later, though. And if he had his own private photographer pay for them and give them to the government, well, why is the government publishing campaign photos? No matter what happened, though, it’s definitely a slight erosion of the barriers between the campaign and the government. Not a scandal, but definitely an indication of character.
[That was odd. Sorry about that.]
I rarely have many objections to Mamet, or for that matter to Val Kilmer. Keep that in mind. Still and all, Spartan measured up. Twice I saw the wires on which the god was lowered from the machine, but the tense taut moments more than carried me through. And who knew Mamet could direct an action movie? It is an action movie. It’s also a spy movie.
Hollywood doesn’t make that many spy movies. It should, if they’re going to be this good.
I just read the last issue of Cerebus. That’s it; ain’t any more.
For an insane guy, Dave Sim sure draws a pretty comic. It never stopped being gorgeous. I wish I could say kinder things about it; I am staggered by the weight of it. Thousands upon thousands of pages. There have been few such extended achievements.
When both he and Gerhard are dead, Cerebus will enter the public domain. He has arranged for the negatives to remain with trustworthy custodians, and they will be available to those who wish to reprint any portion of it. The attentive will notice that those two statements are not entirely congruent. Who knows?
I’m going to spoil the end now.