Quote of the Day
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damn fool about it.”
-Groucho Marx
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Saw this low-key, charming, happy/sad Chinese film last night after a trip to the video store didn’t yield anything else. I’m glad I did. The details of the plot are best left for you to discover, but it’s definitely what I’ve taken to calling a “Hollywood antidote” movie, where its lack of attention to American movie clichés is refreshing, like a sorbet between courses.
One thing that struck me, despite having to spend a lot of energy following the subtitles, was the brightly colorful and evocative photography. In that way it reminded me of Mike Clarke’s photos on Hunkabutta, so full of color and life.
Recommended.
“Art is a lie that tells the truth.” -Pablo Picasso
I’m a little late in writing about how they covered up the reproduction of Picasso’s “Guernica” at the U.N. just days before Colin Powell arrived with his vial of fake anthrax to make the U.S. war case against Iraq. As they put it in Art Daily:
A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings.
The irony is funny at first. But is anyone else seriously scared by what this represents?
Shanghai Knights
Amiable goof of a comedy with relaxed, good-hearted performances by Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. Especially Wilson, who has an almost magical way with the throwaway ad-lib. Don’t expect it to make logical sense, just go with the flow, and you’ll probably enjoy yourself quite a bit. Recommended.
I’ve been struggling to figure out what to write about the Michael Jackson interview rebroadcast on 20/20 Thursday night. On the surface it reminds me of the Anne Heche interview: wacky celebrity shows us all how truly wacky they really are.
But unlike Anne, who we could chuckle and shake our heads at and move on, this is sad, tragic, disturbing, and not at all funny. Jackson is the physical embodiment of our obsessions with race, celebrity, wealth, and outward appearance. And what’s truly tragic is how he is passing the scars of his terrible childhood on to his own children, all the while thinking he is doing the opposite. Those kids don’t deserve to pay for their father’s illness and pain.
I’ve been feeling defeated and demoralized since the State of the Union address, wondering if there was anything I or anyone else could do to affect the course of this impending war. I wrote Arthur, who has been my anti-war idol, asking for his advice. What he said was so fantastic, I wanted to share it here.
Adam,
I admit that I feel the same way. I’m sure that one of the reasons I’ve all but abandoned give love:get love is that “spitting into the wind” feeling.
I don’t know what we can do. Sometimes I view it like this battle is lost but maybe the war can be won in the long-term. Other times I think of my money killing people around the world and it really bums me out.
I’m lucky enough to have a Congressman who is vehemently opposed to the war, but I feel like I might be more powerful if my Congressman disagreed with me and I could use my vote (and my peers’ votes) as leverage to convince him that working for peace would get him re-elected.
Being visible and active may be the only power we have. I’m going to miss this weekend’s peace rally in SF because of Frisbee practice in San Diego, but I think going to each rally is now extra important. I know of so many people who agree with the peace rally but don’t feel strongly enough to go. They are not counted.
Since the media is so distorted, maybe another thing we can do is use our economic power. Bowling For Columbine really clinched my decision to ignore the news and to choose my information sources from scratch. Maybe we should boycott news outlets who parrot the party line and whitelist news organizations that actually do journalism. Write to advertisers of bad news outlets telling them their products are being tainted by associating themselves with low quality journalism. If a couple dozen evangelical Christians can keep mildly sexual content off the air through their complaints, we should be able to do better since there are more of us.
Assuming it hasn’t been obliterated by then, I’m going to Italy in September for the freestyle world championships. In thinking about what to wear, I feel like I have to bring some slogan t-shirts. My latest idea is “on behalf of America, I apologize” in addition to the usual “dubya is not my president” and “I do not support war”. Some friends were in Thailand over Christmas and they said people came up to them, knowing they were Americans, and politely asked “why is America acting like this?” The world is scared of us, and that’s not a good thing.
Then there’s always the option of moving out of the country, but then I’d be leaving all the good things for people who don’t really deserve them.
I’m feeling hopeless myself, and I wish America would wake up and see these jokers for who they are. Maybe all we can do is live good lives and set an example. Maybe that’s enough in the long term.
Arthur
Since the administration doesn’t think we’re off-balance enough, they’ve decided to tell us there’s another credible terrorist threat. Or at least lots of “chatter” on all the tapped phone lines from those thousands of terrorists they can spy on but not apprehend. On the national TV news tonight, they said, the terrorists could be targeting Wall Street, the Capitol, the Pentagon, or other nationally-significant targets. Or, possibly, “shopping malls, hotels, or apartment buildings.”
After all, not everyone lives in the Pentagon.
Still playing around with Celestia. It’s easy to get lost in this stuff. You can turn on planet orbits, which helps in getting oriented. You can zoom in on objects like the International Space Station (above) and track their movements. You can turn on constellation outlines. You can make time go 100,000 times faster than normal. And on and on. Unbelievable for a free program.
Sometimes I just zoom in on the space station and keep the program running in the background, watching as the station inches across the sky.
The Recruit
Do you ever wish movies were just a little smarter? I’ve said this before, but when was the last time a movie really surprised you? “The Recruit” is an entertaining experience, with good performances by Al Pacino and Colin Farrell. It’s never boring. But when you figure things out in the first half hour, it’s a little hard to maintain the same interest in a movie that’s supposed to be about secrets and hidden agendas.
The best thing about the movie is it never gets too big for its britches – it’s a modest spy thriller and knows it. This is leagues better than overblown crapfests like “Mission Impossible” and “Minority Report,” movies that reach for the sky and end up looking foolish. I just wish Hollywood scripts these days tried a little harder not to give us the same old thing.
Caught a couple minutes of Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N. today. I noticed right away that he says “nu-klee-ur,” *not* “nu-kyu-lur” like the Commander in Chief. I also noticed he says “SOD-um,” not “Sa-DAHM,” similar to how the previous President Bush said the evil one’s name. I always thought Bush Sr. did it to remind people of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Now that I think about it, I don’t know how GWB pronouces Saddam. But I’ll be listening for it.