Jere dug up a fascinating piece (original) describing the contents of a laptop formerly used by Al Qaeda. I sorta hope the journalist made sure the government had a copy of the hard drive while he was investigating, but either way, it’s a great article.
If you were in the mood to get a taste of some cool Asian movies, there are two film festivals coming up in New York and San Francisco. New York has the New York Korean Festival (original), running from August 13th to the 22nd. I haven’t seen any of those movies, but I do hear good things about Memories of Murder (original). The Uninvited (original) also got good reviews at FantAsia. Meanwhile, over in San Francisco on the same dates (original), the Four Star is running the 8th annual Asian Film Festival (original). Note in particular Battlefield Baseball and Azumi. Hm, and not one but two Shaw Brothers flicks: One-Armed Swordsman and Lady General Hua Mulan. Old school 60s swordplay movies, both of them. Plus they’ll be showing both Ju-on and Ju-on 2. ...
On the Kill Bill: Volume 2 DVD, there’s a deleted scene — Bill throws down with Michael Jai White. The scene was intended to show how bad-ass Bill was, but Tarantino decided that it wasn’t really necessary. He was right, but it is a true pleasure to watch anyhow.
I just realized that you can subscribe to specific del.icio.us tags just like you can subscribe to specific users. So now any time someone posts something and tags it as “coh”, it shows up in my inbox. Sweet.
Kerry’s advocating a neighborhood watch program to keep an eye out for terrorists. This wasn’t so palatable (original) back when it was Ashcroft’s idea (original), and it isn’t so palatable now.
This is a follow up to my earlier post on Jim McCarthy and Off Wing Opinion (original), in light of further contemplation on my part and Eric’s post-mortem post (original). On reflection, I’m pretty comfortable saying that there are potential issues here. Blogs may not be newspapers, but allow me to quote Jim on using blogs for PR: “Blogs opened up a new front. It was a process of germination. The plan was to construct ideas with the media that would act as a filter so they would read subsequent pieces of information with the lens that you created.” ...
An Iraqi judge warrant was issued for Ahmed Chalabi’s arrest today, on charges of counterfeiting. A warrant was also issued for his nephew, Salem Chalabi, for murder. There are two basic possibilities here. One: Ahmed Chalabi is guilty, in which case it’s about time we started admitting that the guy behind a lot of our evidence against Iraq (original) is a liar and a crook. Those Iraqi defectors? He found them. He made up the meeting between Muhammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague. He may have been slipping information to Iran. He made up wacky stories about Saddam (original). He had the New York Times in his back pocket. Talk about a brilliant con man… ...
Now, see, we’re back to the joys of genre films that don’t wink at the audience again. After Harry Knuckles I was kind of resigned to Enter… Zombie King! being another semi-pro cheese-fest. (Note to self: get some info for this movie entered into IMDB, stat.) As it turns out, Stacey Case is a serious fan of zombies and wrestling and his movie rocks hard. It’s the same basic precept. Once you accept a world in which masked wrestlers are superstars of justice and zombies roam the earth, there’s nothing in the movie that sacrifices the plot for the sake of laughs. Occasionally the wrestlers serve as top secret consultants for the government, and that’s cool too. Since the movie takes itself seriously, it works. ...
This clip (original) is pretty surreal. A Fox news host is quizzing Disney’s president about the new Disney computer for kids, and he takes a sudden right turn into attacking him for sponsoring Gay Days (original) at the theme parks. That’s what I call good clean utterly insane fun.
Shaolin Soccer is playing this weekend at the Brattle — anyone interested in a Saturday showing, say 7:30? (Friday at 9:30 would also work for me.) They’ve also got Last Life in the Universe coming up, which won Best Overall Film (Jury Prize), Best Asian Film (Jury Prize), and the AQCC Award at FantAsia (original). Gotta make sure I get out to see that.