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I saw Munich the other day. I don't watch many "political" films (at least, the obviously political ones). I think I get too wrapped up in them and find that my opinions and feelings are a little too intense to separate the movie-going experience from the politics of the movie. Either I agree with the movie's point of view, and find myself angered by the things the movie is speaking out against, or I disagree with the movie's POV and I'm angered by that. So it's a no-win situation that I'd just as soon avoid. I'm not quite sure what I expected when I went to see this one. I'd heard all the positive reviews and critical raves, and bought into all the Spielbergian hype: "Hey, he's doing a serious movie, we'd better take it seriously!" I cannot explain my reaction, but when I left that movie, I was livid. I've tried for a few days now to reduce my reaction to something definable. It's not the politics of the film, per se...

Let's face it, from high school, where the smart kid always gets smacked around by the jocks, to politics, where a moron like George W. Bush can be President and intelligent candidates don't stand a chance because "they're not trustworthy", people in this country seem to have a tough time with intellect. In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous. — Robert G. Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899) A.Word.A.Day -- ad lib (Yes, I know Clinton was an intelligent man who got elected President. Guess that's the exception that proves the rule . And look what happened to him!)

Like that's news. But this IS pretty amusing… Legal Papers Prove She's No Einstein I'm perversely fascinated by all the interest in Hilton. I just don't understand it, but I've gotta say, she's got one hell of a publicist.  

When I first heard Avenged Sevenfold on KROQ a few months ago, I was struck by how bad they were. 'My god,' I thought, 'another wanta-be 80's hair band!' And I immediately changed the station. Time has not mellowed this reaction… if anything, my response time has gotten better, as I can recognize one of their songs in fewer notes and change the station that much faster. Then I recently read somewhere that they were being compared to Guns 'n Roses, thus reinforcing my original opinion of their music. I mean, do we REALLY need 80's headbanger rock today? (Judging from their lamentable success, I guess the answer is yes. But I don't have to like it. Nor listen to it.) Finally, this week on KROQ they were featured in their daily music news, talking about the Christian themes in their music. And I realized they're not just a a god-awful want-be 80's hair band… they're a god-awful, born again , wanta-be 80's hair band. Like I said. All the more...

Back when I was getting my theatre degree, I was forced to take a bunch of "history of the theatre" courses. (Most degrees are like that, I'm sure… there's always survey/history courses you have to take to "give you the basics" of the curriculum. I'm convinced they exist to weed out the uncommitted. If you can suffer through those stultifying classes, then you've got what it takes to complete the degree.) One of the things I remember from those history lessons was the "definitions" of classical comedy and tragedy. Comedy and Tragedy were very well defined in Classical theatre (for the purposes of this post, that's roughly the Greeks through Shakespeare). In Tragedy, the protagonist has some fatal character flaw which is his ultimate downfall. His destruction often brought others down with him, those implied or complicit in his guilt and his flaw. But, in the end, as the joke goes … "The bad end unhappily, the good, unluckily."...

I've been fascinated by this phrase since I came across it a couple of years ago in a WordSpy email. uncanny valley n. Feelings of unease, fear, or revulsion created by a robot or robotic device that appears to be, but is not quite, human-like. As the definition suggests, it's a term used by roboticists when discussing form and design, but it's one that also really applies to digital animation, I think. When I first saw this phrase, it was shortly after the Final Fantasy movie flopped so hard it took down Sony's new digital animation studio with it. At the time, I thought it applicable, but the more I think about it, the more I think FF's problems stemmed more from the "why bother" nature of the animation (why go to the effort to create a nearly photo-real presentation for a film that could EASILY have been handled with live actors and digital effects) and the untranslatable nature of the storytelling (you can translate the words, you just can't tr...

Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in US after 9/11, Officials Say Bush Vows to Continue Spying on Americans Cheney Defends Domestic Spying Cheney says the wiretaps were "part of a concerted effort to rebuild presidential powers weakened in the 1970s as a result of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War." Perhaps it was fear of abuse such as this that led to those "weakened" powers in the first place, Mr. Cheney. Rice Fails to Clarify US View on Torture I'm fascinated by the term "extraordinary renditions". Websters defines rendition as "obsolete" and "the act or result of rendering ." Click on that rendering link and you'll find several meanings, but the first definition is "to melt down… to extract by melting… to treat so as to convert into industrial fats and oils…" which seems FAR too appropriate when referring to an action used to facilitate torture. None of the other meanings seem quite accurate in te...

Then there's this guy, who looks to be on the opposite end of the grinch scale from my previous post's moron . CNN.com - Neighbors' yards cleared to create 'Snowzilla' - Dec 20, 2005

I was going to post some kind of cynical rant about the new spirit of Christmas, but really, this just says it all. CNN.com - Murderous Santa display draws stares - Dec 14, 2005 And may I just say… "bullshit": "It is a religious holiday, but they have turned it into a business. And it shouldn't be," he said. "We didn't put it up to offend anybody." Don't you just have to love (and by that, I mean detest) this kind of contemptible asshole?

…then cats must be teenagers. First off, I have to admit I enjoy making that "dogs are like children" comparison if for no other reason than I know it must annoy at least some of the people out there currently raising kids. But trust me, the parallels are amusing, if a bit scary. Take jealousy, for instance. We have two dogs, a male and a female. The female is a German Shepherd mix, a couple of years old. The male is a Rottweiler mix and he's about 9 months old. We got Athos (the Rottweiler) first, then Nala adopted us a week later. And we've been seeing jealousy issues between the two almost from day one. I'll take them out for a walk and, when we get back, Athos will race over to Nala's space to grab the bone she's left behind, then gleefully trot over to his space, where he's already got a bone. She'll come prowling into the house, find a toy he's been playing with, and take it out into the yard, stepping over the toys already littering the ...

I am NOT a huge System of a Down fan. Which is really something of an understatement, since I used to fall over myself trying to get to the radio fast enough to change the station when their first single was in heavy rotation on KROQ. So it's not terribly surprising that I'm not particularly taken by their latest work. But when the chorus for " Lonely Day " comes blasting at me with "…the most loneliest day of my life…" I'm whipped right back to "QUICK! CHANGE THE STATION!" mode. I realize how tragically un-hip this makes me sound (and how tragically un-hip "tragically un-hip" sounds, as well as how much I've overused both "tragically" and "hip/un-hip" in the past few days) but seriously… "the most loneliest day"? I notice that the song isn't called "Most Loneliest Day" or even "Loneliest Day". Makes my ears bleed, just hearing it. (*sigh* Yes, more hyperbole. Get over it.)  

Not that I really believe that. In 2415, There are Still Bad Hair Days I think the problem with this NY Times review of Aeon Flux is obvious in the first few sentences when the reviewer shows that he's not terribly interested in this film, nor particularly conversant in SF tropes (yes, there's that word again) nor, apparently, willing to put any effort into watching this film in order to understand it. And this is not a film that entails a lot of effort TO understand, if you ask me. (I just remembered that you have to register with the Times to read their reviews, so to spare you that annoyance, allow me to quote a pertinent example for you: Why - and, for that matter, how - did Sophie Okonedo replace her feet with hands? Who knew that garter belts, tulle snoods and spandex jumpsuits would come back into fashion in the 25th century? Does Frances McDormand live somewhere in Charlize Theron's digestive tract, and is that why she didn't comb her hair?… But I'm supp...

On CSI: NY tonight, about half-way through the episode, one of the character's cellphones starts ringing. It's playing Coldplay's new single "Talk" and we know that because the character tells this to the other actor in the scene, joking that it's (talking, we assume) something his girlfriend is good at. The scene ends, cut to commercial, and "you too can get Coldplay's Talk, the song you just heard on tonight's CSI: NY" downloaded to your cellphone! As blatant commercial tie-in's go, this one's gotta take the cake. Well, until 10 minutes later in the episode, when they use the same song as the background to one of the big reveal moments in the episode. And, once again, once the scene's over and the show goes to commercial, we get told how we can get Talk on our cellphone. Dani pointed out that it's the only way advertisers can get their messages out, since people are TIVOing right past the commercials now. And I remember read...

I’ve always been fascinated by this word. Film and SF critics seem to constantly refer to "tropes," but finding a definition that actually addresses that usage has eluded me. Websters' "a word or expression used in a figurative sense," for instance, is virtually useless. This Wordsmith.Org "definition" helps a little bit: The word tropism is related to trope, the term for rhetorical devices such as metaphor and irony. The idea is that the words in those rhetorical devices are turned in a special way. But I finally had to delve into Wikipedia to find a definition that really helps here: In literature, a trope is a familiar and repeated symbol, meme , style, character or thing that permeates a particular type of literature. They are usually tied heavily to genre. For example, tropes in horror literature and film include the mad scientist or a dark and stormy night. Tropes can also be plots or events, such as the science fiction trope of an alien invas...

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I just heard the DJ on KROQ talking about the Verve's song " Bitter Sweet Symphony ." I didn't know this, but apparently they sampled a Rolling Stones song for this track, which led to a long court battle with the Stones—one which the Verve eventually lost. So every time that song plays, it's the Rolling Stones that get the royalty check, and not the Verve. I'm pretty sure this was their only really BIG hit, so could truer words have ever been applied to a song title?  

I had to rent a truck this weekend and, while I was standing in line, I saw this product that's supposed to help you lift heavy items. The slogan on the product was "virtually makes your load seem lighter." Later in the day, I heard an ad for Target where they urged you to visit their "virtual website." Now, if we go with the colloquial definition of virtual, the product slogan is either simply redundant (it almost makes your load give the impression of being lighter?) or an outright contradiction, depending on how you see it. As for the website… well it's either a website or it isn't. I'm pretty sure there's nothing virtual about it. And if they're somehow pushing some virtual reality content (the probable reason "virtual" is now a buzzword), then that's some pretty ambitious content for a discount department store website. I'm not sure HOW virtual became such a buzzword, but I'm pretty sure this is the wrong word fo...

Angry Moms Boycott Eatery That Asks Kids To Keep Quiet I used to work in a restaurant in Irvine, and lost count of the number of times parents would come into the restaurant, ask for tables separate from their children and proceed to ignore them as they misbehaved and acted out, under the apparent assumption that it was someone else's job (presumably the waiter's) to mind their children for them. Maybe because I was raised to respect others, I don't find it terribly offensive to expect other people (and their children) to have a little respect in return. (It's called " socialization " people, and its one of the things that differentiates us from animals.) And I don't find much to complain about in asking kids to "use their indoor voices" in an indoor environment, especially one that might cater to MORE than kids. I may have to start patronizing A Taste of Heaven. God, I hate people these days.  

I have greeted the results of every election since at least the 2000 Presidential elections with a mixture of horror and contempt, so it was a refreshing feeling today to listen to the news and hear results I actually wanted to hear. The good news? In California, all 8 of the abominable initiatives in our special election got defeated, many of them by some pretty impressive margins . (For an interesting look at the results, click on the "map" link after each of those propositions to see how each county voted. It's really interesting when you get down to Prop's 78, 79 & 80.) The Governor's plans got repudiated and his popularity is at an all time low. (Yes, I most definitely consider that good news.) Outside of California, 2 states elected Democratic Governors, Maine rejected a bid to reverse their gay rights legislation, and all eight members of the Pennsylvania School Board that introduced the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution i...

Bush Declares: 'We Do Not Torture' So if we don't torture, why all the effort to oppose a Senate ban on torture? I'm just asking, you know?