Saddam

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Saddam’s capture is a great thing for the Iraqi people, and a great thing for our troops. I hope he’s tried by Iraqis or by a world court, and not by the U.S. But the inescapable fact is: Saddam captured alive + no shots fired = A Good Thing.

At the same time, I hate the thought of the political hay that the Bushies will make of capturing a man who had nothing to do with the War on Terror (if we even know what that is anymore).

But that’s OK. My friend Lisa says it’s all right for me to have mixed feelings about this. And I trust Lisa’s advice in all things.

Scoring movie reviews

Steve has suggested that I use a rating scale (stars? numbers?) in my movie reviews. In the past I’ve specifically avoided that; I think a movie deserves discussion, not just a number attached to it. But if enough people want me to start doing this, I will. (I definitely won’t do just a “thumbs up/thumbs down” thing, though.) Let me know what you think of in the comments.

The Last Samurai

Tom Cruise tries hard. In every role he plays, you can almost feel his effort oozing out of every pore. You can imagine him in front of the mirror in his trailer, repeating “I *am* a disillusioned Civil War hero!” over and over. He never relaxes, and that gets tiring. He’s trying so hard *not* to be the instantly-recognizable Hollywood star that he actually is, he doesn’t let us in.

That’s less of a problem with contemporary movies like “Jerry Maguire” or futuristic ones like “Minority Report,” where Cruise’s teeth-grinding intensity can be used to better effect. But he’s wildly miscast in this “epic,” another non-Western story told with a Western white male as its protagonist. I couldn’t stop thinking, whenever he was on screen, “There’s Tom Cruise!” That’s deadly for a historical drama.

Not that this movie doesn’t have other problems. It’s two and a half hours long, and includes (conservatively) 3,613 impalings. It goes through the motions of an epic, with its hero learning the value of honor blah blah blah. But it feels plastic, no matter how beautiful the rural Japan landscapes may be. There’s no beating heart at the core of this story.

One example: we’re often treated to voice-over readings of Capt. Algren’s diaries kept while in Japan, where he talks about how the samurai are “an intriguing people” and some such. Memo to screenwriters: show, not tell.

It’s not a particularly bad movie, and there are some interesting and fun performances from supporting players (Timothy Spall as the translator, and a woefully underused Billy Connolly as Algren’s military colleague). But there isn’t anything all that good about it, either. It’s another product of the Hollywood epic machine, which should have clogged itself up years ago.

But hey, if you love Tom Cruise, go for it. And if you love impalings, this is the Movie of the Year.

Word of the day

crampon

“Adam could have used some crampons during his walk around the neighborhood, since the sidewalks were dangerously icy.”

Now I believe

Bill Kristol’s latest column should be titled “How Dean Will Win.” Stunning truth-telling from smirking Fox News Sunday panelist Kristol.

Bring in on, baby. Bring it on.

Timeline

I want a catapult for Christmas.

That said, this movie would have been good if it had had decent acting, passable writing, competent production design and respectable direction. It had none of those things.

The biggest failing of this Michael Crichton time-travel “epic” is its deadly dullness. And how can you make the combination of time travel and medieval combat dull? Bad acting, writing, production design and direction, that’s how. I was especially struck by how cheap and thrown-together everything looked – it was like “Excalibur” put on by third graders. The whole movie felt like a bunch of rehearsal scenes strung together at the last minute when the final takes were destroyed in a fire.

Give this premise to, say, James Cameron, and replace the it-insults-wood-to-call-him-wooden Paul Walker with someone interesting (dare I say Colin Farrell?), and you might very well have something. This, not so much.

Quote of the day

Right-wing convert Christopher Hitchens, on 9/11 (via Atrios):

“Watching the towers fall in New York, with civilians incinerated on the planes and in the buildings, I felt something that I couldn?t analyze at first and didn?t fully grasp (partly because I was far from my family in Washington, who had a very grueling day) until the day itself was nearly over. I am only slightly embarrassed to tell you that this was a feeling of exhilaration [emphasis mine. -AJB]. Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.”

Amazing that right-wingers are finally admitting, as Atrios put it, that 9/11 “gave them a big stiffy.” This sickens me. But it’s the elephant in the room – the thing that everyone knows but no one, on either side, is willing to admit: 9/11 was the best damn thing that ever happened to the neocon agenda.

I think I’m going to go throw up.

Deconstructing spam

Today I received the following spam message:

Girls + Farm Animals = Naked Girl with Farm Animals

Now this seems pretty straightforward at first glance. But upon further examination, I have to take issue with the mathematics. First, did all but one of the “girls” leave? Because on the left it says “Girls,” but on the right it says “Girl.”

Then there’s the issue of “Naked.” Do girls automatically take off their clothes when they see farm animals? Because it seems to me they’re not naked on the left, but they are naked on the right.

And combining the numbers issue with the naked issue, this is the only way I can see that this makes sense: A group of girls walked up to the farm animals, and one of them got so aroused that she whipped off her clothes, while the others watched.

Don’t even get me started on the meaning of “with.”

It’s all very confusing. Maybe I should click on the link…

That’s the ticket

How about this for a Democratic ticket in ’04:

Dean/Feingold

What do you think?

Average Joe finale

“At least I hope he’s terrible in bed.”

–David, commenting on the “Average Joe” finale last night

I must admit I was stunned when Melana picked the vacuous, childlike model Jason over funny, rich Adam. And it takes a lot to amaze a grizzled reality show veteran like me. Plus, I fell for the old “Survivor” editing trick, where Adam got so much more screen time than Jason, and the dating show editing trick where you think the first guy will be the one rejected. Damn. They even showed Jason peeking out from a window on the getaway jet as Adam got on the bus. Bastards!

This show surprised me throughout, by taking a middling premise and making it interesting from beginning to end. I don’t think Melana was all that interested in either of them, so she just thought, well, I might as well take the pretty one for a ride! Good luck with that, sweetheart.

I don’t shed too many tears for Adam, though. As my friend Wendy said last night, the millionaire day trader TV star (at least in the 15-minutes way) won’t be hurting for female attention after this. And that’s the best part of this whole show, if you ask me.