Misc. Reviews

Scarface — 5

Full Metal Jacket — 5

A Few Good Men — 3

The Wire (Season 1) — 4

The Wire (Season 2) — 4

The Wire (Season 3) — 5

Blue Jasmine — 5

5 Centimeters Per Second — 5

Google Talks: Salman Rushdie — 3

Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2013: David Simon, ‘Some People Are More Equal Than Others’ — 5

FODI 2013: Lawrence Krauss & Peter Rollins, ‘New Atheism vs. New Religion’ — 4

FODI 2013: Panel, ‘Death Gone Wrong’ — 3

‘this emotion was a little e-book’, Tao Lin — 4

Some more catching up on some movie classics I had somehow managed to miss until now. I definitely get what the big deal is about Scarface.

The Wire is a series I’ve been hearing about for years but hadn’t gotten around to yet, which is particularly shameful considering how much I’ve followed and admired creator David Simon’s various writings and public talks. The show really does live up to the hype, and is without a doubt some of the best criticism of the continued War on Drugs, for which the label ‘failed’ is an understatement of abysmal proportions. The characters and writing are brilliant, as is the overall pace and production. I actually surrendered all forms of self control and dignity a few days ago and marathoned the entirety of season 3 in a single day; it really is that good, the epitome of ‘just one more’ addiction. David Simon’s background as a journalist comes through very strong, and is the mechanism driving all the gritty and realistic minutiae that make the show truly singular.

Blue Jasmine was absolutely fantastic, the best Woody Allen in a long while and by far his best cast that I can remember. Cate Blanchett rightfully gets the lion’s share of praise for a perfectly affected portrayal of a genuine nervous breakdown of life-crumbling proportions. Baldwin and Louis CK are very enjoyable and the presence of Sally Hawkins (who I fell completely in love with in Happy-Go-Lucky) pushes the entire film over the top for me in the best ways possible.

5 Centimeters Per Second is easily the best animated film I’ve seen in years, visually pristine and aesthetically wealthy in all the ways needed to carry through to make what would in most hands a bland and cliche trio of vignettes.

I’d never quite say Salman Rushdie is disappointing as a speaker or reader, but he really does just..lose something, when off the page. The writing of his I know (not enough) is the real deal, he studies everything with a writer’s mind and imagination that is childlike yet with the matured patina of someone who has been the target of and answer to some of the most visceral anger and violence on offer in the modern world. His talk at Google about his memoir (that I loved) was all right but nothing terribly interesting to anyone who has read the book or even been enough a follower of his life to want to.

Been slowly working through all of the YouTube recordings of this past year’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas, which is always worth anyone’s time and always offers a genuinely complex range of topics. David Simon’s dark and only slightly hopeful critique of the lack of any social contract at all between America’s capitalistic balloonings of wealth and its people as a whole (i.e., the 99% vs. 1% dynamic) is thorough and emotional and uncomfortable, and I’m afraid that he’s almost certainly right in saying that, on the whole, it’s all going to get much worse before it gets better, and the turning point will be some kind of very real revolt, something along the lines of the Arab Spring meets Occupy Wall Street.

The ‘New Atheism vs. New Religion’ debate/discussion was all right but a bit flat. Lawrence Krauss is a fine speaker and getting better all the time, and represented himself well and did right by, I think, most anyone who could be called part of the ‘movement’. I had never seen Peter Rollins speak before and I get why he’s so popular — young, very charismatic, with a perfect sense for cadence and performance. Sadly, while markedly more enjoyable to listen to than Deepak Chopra, his pseudo-intellectual ramblings are equally hollow. Like Chopra he’s borrowed just enough jargon to weave together some admirable rhetorical stunt-pilotry that goes precisely nowhere — there’s just no there, there. His severely watered-down take on theology makes it so palatable even secularists might find it interesting, but it’s like popcorn, mostly air and quickly unsatisfying past his verbal theatrics.

Review: ‘The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice’, by Christopher Hitchens

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Christopher Hitchens has arguably (no pun intended!) done more slaughtering of sacred cows than any journalist or polemicist in recent memory. This book is no disappointment and is a testament to the danger of the kind of zeitgeist-wide acceptance certain cultural figures have been privilege too without, seemingly, much if any close critique.

Hitchens brings to bear very specific criticisms of a few of Mother Teresa’s doctrinal and political views that should make any decent person uncomfortable as well as larger, more philosophical criticisms. Chief among these is a dismantling of the narrative that Mother Teresa did terribly much for the poor and sick, but actually celebrated these tragedies as blessings from God to be spiritually cherished–a searing hypocrisy for a woman who, Hitchens notes, was quick to take herself into the comfortable and expensive clinics of the world when falling ill herself. After finishing this slim but thorough thrashing, it’s hard to think of Mother Teresa as worthy of attention or applause, much less sainthood.

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Review: ‘The Happy Atheist’, by PZ Myers

The Happy Atheist by P.Z. Myers
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

While it admittedly sounds harsher than I really intend, what I want to say about this book is that I don’t have much to say at all, because neither does PZ Myers. By this I don’t mean at all that he is unintelligent or inarticulate in his criticisms and observations; he is obviously both of these things and has a relatively commensurate following in the skeptical community. Arguably worse, this book largely commits the cardinal sin that the late and indelible Christopher Hitchens warned against above all others: this book is boring. ‘Chapter’ (edited blog post) after ‘chapter’, the same metaphor kept struggling to take shape in my mind — something about low-hanging fruit that wasn’t quite right, but more something along the lines of PZ Meyers wandering alone in the fruit orchard that has been picked clean. He’s not looking for a new orchard, or planting new trees, so to speak.

Every single criticism here is well worn, every argument is an argument rehashed, every snarky aside not only a second act but a second act that can’t live up to the first. I honestly cannot locate one point raised here that is either original or at least an entertaining and engaging re-interaction with a point familiar to Myers’ audience. Anyone remotely familiar with the work of the New Atheists will feel, probably, both bored and shorted, page by page. Missing both depth and any rich rhetorical work, it just feels like a hollow collection of prose. Revisit Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, Krauss, Stenger, et al, and feel assured you’ll find the same ground and find it better guided. It’s not that Myers is wrong or bearing any great argumentative faults, and I’d argue if he were it’d actually make for a more worthwhile book. But it seems that Myers shies away from anything but the most superficial and cozily familiar ground, doesn’t seem to want to step more than a couple feet into the more challenging terrain. His writing and personality have never struck me as terribly lazy or insecure, so I’m at a loss to explain this. I’d like to see someone of Myers’ intellect and at least affected confidence put more skin in the game and dig a little deeper. It’s certainly telling that I am about as deep in his targeted audience as one could be and I couldn’t force myself to finish the last 1/4 of the book out of sheer disinterest.

‘The Happy Atheist’ is like a third-rate cover band; loving the original only makes you all the more disappointed, and you wish the frontman would apply himself a bit more.

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Obama Endorsed by 76 Nobel Prize Winners

http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/10/american-nobel.html

You are fully welcome to think you are smarter than me — you probably are.

But 76 Nobel Prize winners? That’s a tougher sell, no matter who you are.

They have a lot to say on how the Bush administration single-handedly destroyed America’s position of dominance in the scientific community, and mention how this has directly affected America’s current and future financial situation.

In other news, I just received a forwarded e-mail from my mother that, in so many words, blamed our current financial crisis on Nancy Pelosi.

Hmm. E-mail forwards from conservative family members, or 76 of the world’s brightest minds?

At some point some of you people out there have to take your moral principles and look at what truly constitutes the ‘big picture’. While you’re raising arms over the semantics of ‘when life begins’, the rest of the world is laughing at us and passing us by.

I don’t care if you like Obama, or agree with his abortion policy or the color of his skin or his perceived sense of inexperience — when 76 Nobel Prize winners say that he is the best chance of America regaining its scientific dominance in the world and very directly the strength of our economy, you need to stop for a moment and think about whether you think you know more about what we’re talking about here than -76- of the most intelligent and well-informed human beings on the planet.

These people are not partisan. They aren’t looking for your vote, they don’t want your money, they aren’t ‘biased liberal media’ who want your attention for ratings. They want to see this country succeed, and once in a while it’s okay to admit that 76 Nobel Prize winners are smarter than you are, and perhaps, just maybe, trust their judgment.

So if need be, go have a chat with your imaginary sky person of choice, but come down off the high moral horse, put the moral compass back on the shelf, and realize that the only reason you get to argue over moral points instead of begging for food is because you have a job, and your vote next Tuesday may very well determine if you still have that job in the years to come.

We used to be a superpower. Our military has been squandered, our economy is on a very precarious edge (many nations no longer technically consider us a ‘superpower’ because our economy is so weak right now), we are the laughingstock of the global community, as if we weren’t laughed at enough as it was. Some of the most ambitious and intelligent and willful youth are coming home not with paths to a better life, but in bodybags.

Change can be very scary. But sometimes the status quo is far more terrifying. Tell me if any of you can honestly tell me that you can sleep at night reconciling som sense of moral obligation, that is questionable at best and foolish at worst, with four-to-eight more years of The Same.

And yes yes, I’m sure ‘God will provide’, right? Well, I have a record number of Americans living at or below the poverty line that would like to have a word on that subject. But they’re probably all just horrible heathens or something, right? Or perhaps dying of starvation on American soil is apart of his great loving plan?

Palin: Iraq war ‘a task that is from God’

Headline from this article on Yahoo.

I don’t try to be actively political on this blog because frankly that’s not why it’s here, but I read this and while I’ve been trying to ignore it, it keeps coming back up, not unlike experiences I’ve had with undercooked fish.

I love the hypocrisy here. With all the talk surrounding Islamic extremists and their ‘holy war’, yet we have a potential Vice President saying that our war in Iraq is, almost literally, the exact same thing?

And how’s this for hypocrisy: McCain has been blasting Obama for months as being a candidate with with weapons-grade charisma but very little substance — and Palin is his VP choice? I’ll be the first to admit she’s charismatic and engaging, but.  .  . really? All their talk about substance and experience and they pull Palin out like some kind of trump card because she’s a good speaker, young and easy and the eyes, etc. ?

The RNC delegates, post-Palin speech, said she was the ‘quintessential American’. The audacity of this kind of political masturbation almost has me getting off by proxy.  If this is true, can someone remind me how much it costs for a passport?

Keep pushing that ‘maverick’ image, McCain, maybe eventually people will start forgetting that you voted with Bush’s policy more than 90 (N I N E T Y) percent of the time.

Back to the headline: You. Can’t. Say. Shit. Like. This. You can’t. If you’re a preacher and you want to say that feeding the poor with a soup kitchen next Wednesday night is ‘a task from God’, you can, because you’re not exactly stepping on anyone’s toes with it. All the power to you. I don’t care if you’re going to feed them because you have some make-believe parent figure wagging his finger at you from 2000 years ago — you’re doing good work. I’d rather you do it because it’s, you know, the right thing to do, but that’s a whole other blog post.

The point is, when it comes to spending absolutely stunning amounts of money that could be used on OUR infrastructure, advances in alternative fuels, health care, education…when it comes to killing thousands of troops that to some extent represent the most intelligent and ambitious youth America has to offer, when it comes to destroying our global image (which does matter, because we weren’t always and won’t always be the biggest kid on the block, and eventually we’re going to push our luck and someone will remind us), then you better have something better than ‘We’re on a task from God.’

No. We’re in a clusterfuck from Bush, and that old dude that just pulled you from the frozen tundra of obscurity voted with that moron more than 90% of the time.

Ignorance and Irony

*

For those too lazy to watch, it’s a story about a school considering banning Fahrenheit 451 because one daughter / father complained. One of the father’s complaints, and I’m not even remotely kidding here, is that the book ‘talks bad about our firemen’.

I’m speechless. It is people like this that make me want to pour a little more chlorine into the gene pool, or vouch for the concept of forced sterilization. What can you say to these kinds of people?

My advice to the father: put your precious, unique little snowflake into a private religious school, or better yet home school her to ward off any potential reading whatsoever outside of The Bible, and rest assured she’ll grow up to be as ignorant as you, carry on your apparent family legacy of contributing next to nothing (save, perhaps, tax revenue) to society, and with a little luck, find someone who would somehow think it a good idea to help her produce offspring, thus ensuring the perpetuation of the type of people that make many parts of the other world laugh at this country.

To the people at the school voicing their support through a petition and other demonstrations, for fuck’s sake, thank you.

/soapbox