Mom v. Movie House

[matthew]

How about something more positive than what I wrote last night?


President Obama
                                                     
By Gwynne Dyer

        On the assumption that President Barack Obama survives for a full
four-year term -- for it is generally assumed that, as the first
African-American president, he will face a higher than average risk of
assassination -- what changes will he bring to the United States and the
world?  It is remarkably difficult to say, for no president since Lyndon
Johnson has come to office with so few commitments to specific policies.
Oh, all right then, since Gerald Ford -- but neither of those men was
actually elected to the presidency.

        It is now a near certainty that Obama will be the next US
president. The media will try to maintain the illusion of a race for the
Democratic nomination until Senator Hillary Clinton finally retires from
the race (which may not be until the convention in August), because it
helps to fill the awful gap between the 24-hour news cycle and the actual
amount of news available. But as leading independent pollster John Zogby
put it on Wednesday, "To all intents and purposes the race for the
Democratic nomination is over."

        After last Tuesday's North Carolina and Indiana primaries, there is
no mathematical chance for Hillary Clinton to win a majority of the
delegates to the Democratic convention, and the flow of money for her
campaign is already drying up. It is unimaginable that the so-called
"super-delegates" (senior Democratic party figures who get an automatic
vote at the convention) would reject the verdict of the primaries by opting
for Clinton, so the case is closed.

        Having seen off the Hard Man of the Democratic party, Obama must
now defeat the Hard Man of the Republican party in November.  (Clinton
promised to "obliterate" Iran if it attacks Israel; Senator John McCain has
proposed threatening North Korea with "extinction.") But it will be hard
for Obama to lose while the United States is plunging into a deep recession
and the Republican candidate is still shackled to the Bush administration's
war in Iraq.

        About the only thing that would give McCain a chance of winning is
a big terrorist attack on the United States that drives voters into the
arms of those who promise security through endless war. Al-Qaeda would be
happy to oblige, for the presence of American troops in Iraq is its best
recruiting tool and McCain has said he would be willing to see US troops
stay there for a hundred years. But al-Qaeda in its current state probably
lacks the resources for such an ambitious project.

        So Obama gets the presidency -- and then what? A longish honeymoon,
in all probability, while Americans congratulate themselves on having
transcended the racist legacy of their past, which means that Obama will
have a better chance than most new presidents to change the way things
work. Moreover, he will probably be able to depend on Democratic majorities
in both houses of Congress.

        On the other hand, he will inherit a ravaged economy and a lost
war, so he has little room for expensive domestic reforms or dramatic
initiatives abroad. Getting American troops out of Iraq will take several
years and use up a lot of his political credit at home, even if it does
wonders for America's reputation in the rest of the world. And he will not
be able to cut bloated US military spending at the same time, so there is
no early "peace bonus" waiting for him on the fiscal front.

        Indeed, there is little that any American president can do about a
recession in the short run except to wait it out. Like Bill Clinton before
him, Obama will ultimately have the job of repairing the huge budget
deficit bequeathed to him by his Republican predecessor, but the only step
he can take in the short run is to roll back the huge Bush tax cuts for the
rich. So what else can the Democrats do in the meantime that doesn't cost
too much?

        Reversing the Bush administration's assault on the constitutional
rights of American citizens and the human rights of non-Americans --
closing Guantanamo, ending official support for torture, and restoring the
civil liberties that were destroyed by the Patriot Act and subsequent
legislation -- are high-priority tasks that are practically cost-free. And
creating a genuine national health-care programme would not cost that much
in the early years, provided that you break the stranglehold of the
insurance companies at the same time.

        Barack Obama has said very little about this during his campaign
(and Hillary Clinton, haunted by her failure to reform health care in her
husband's first term as president, has said even less). But the fact that
about one-sixth of the American population has no access to high-quality
medical care is an astonishing failure in a rich democracy, and Obama has
travelled enough to see it for the scandal that it is.

        Obama may be unconvincing as a gun-loving, truck-driving,
fast-food-addicted son of toil, but he is the candidate of the American
poor even if many of the white poor don't recognise him as such. No single
reform would do so much to improve the lives of poor Americans as a fully
comprehensive health-care system that is free at the point of delivery.  He
has given us few clues about his intentions, but my money says that that
will be his first priority in domestic affairs. He might even succeed.

[matthew]

Actress Natalie Portman hates a sex scene she filmed for movie 'Hotel Chevalier' because critics and reviewers focused on her nudity and not the film itself.
The star recorded the scene last year, and admits she regrets stripping off on the big screen as her picture ended up on pornographic websites.
She says: "It's not that I regret the film, but it really depressed me that half of every review on the film was about the nudity. It made me think I shouldn't have done it.
"I'm not prudish about nudity. I think it's beautiful in films, and sex is such a big part of life. My issue is that I feel it takes something away from what you're doing when
the focus is put on the wrong thing. My picture ended up on porn sites, and that's the dilemma."

(ignores rest of what she said focusing only on "sex is such a big part of life" line)

[Tripp]

What the fuck did she think everyone was going to focus on?

[bebopbalogna]

i was focusing on my grip.  but then again, i only saw it on the porn sites.

[Bizarro]

I moved Crappitystock and Alcoholica to the main category. Just trying to keep Geek isles from being overloaded.

[matthew]

So...I watched Iron Man, Charlie Wilson's War, The Orphanage, There Shall Be Blood, and Southland Tales over the long weekend.

I found Iron Man to be absolutely dreadful and never want to watch another Marvel Studios film again as long as I live.

Charlie Wilson's War was surprisingly watchable and factual for a Hollywood film. It is actually manages to be a solid, basic primer on the subject of how the U.S. involved itself in the radical Islamists they now find themselves at war with. My only complaints would be that it is suggested that the CIA did not foresee the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when the truth of the matter is the they were intimately involved in deliberately precipitating it. The film opens in the 1980s and I wondered if this was out of PARTISAN concerns, pinning the blame entirely on the Reagan Era, despite the fact that Wilson was a Texas Democrat. The truth of the matter is that soft noble pacifist Democrat Jimmy Carter was the one who began the program, at the behest of king shit Zbigniew Brzezinski. A good close to the film would have been Clinton, in defiance of the embargo, flying C-130s full of weapons and mujahideen fighters from Afghanistan to Bosnia to fight the Serbs and smash Yugoslavia to pieces for the benefit of NATO control of Eastern Europe. The immediate predecessor to the 9-11 attacks, the so-called Bojinka plot was the work of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who had also worked to arm and fund the Islamists fighting in Bosnia. "Bojinka" is a Serbian word for explosion. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not Serbian. The London Bombings were also connected to Bosnia. None of this is in the film, but I do understand that they were only following Wilson's tale. Anyway, the film moved along at a popcorn movie clip and yet had its facts relatively straight.

El Orfanato is exactly what you would expect from a film produced by Guillermo del Toro. In many ways it is a retread of territory covered by The Devil's Backbone, but I have no urge to slam it for this - ghost stories are ghost stories and this one is well told.

There Shall Be Blood was very strong in almost every way except the story by Sinclair (which I have no read) was either not well adapted or simply did not lend itself to film. Like No Country for Old Men it attempts to part with convention and sorta fumbles the ball in the last ten minutes. If it were not for the fact that I realized I was not emotionally involved in the story unfolding in front of me I would give it eight or nine stars.

Southland Tales.Uh...pass?

[captqitn]

I want to pull a freaky friday scenario with this fellah.   Let him sadly moan and whimper under flourescent lighting for a while.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St_4vYCPax4[/youtube]

[captqitn]

   I"M ON DA SWIDE AGAIN!!!

[matthew]

I want to pull a freaky friday scenario with this fellah.   Let him sadly moan and whimper under flourescent lighting for a while.

Yeah, what gives with this weather and this (apparent) cold? I have an ear infection and the weather is rainy and windy and cold. Feels like fall. I worked 26hrs over the long weekend and then four more hours and since then the weather has been shitty and I have been half-deaf.


(didn't I post the waterslide dog before? not a complaint, I just want to remember if I did)

[matthew]

Um...where is everybody?

[captqitn]

woof woof brooowowwrrrrrr woof

[full blown possession]

WHERE AM I, I, I?))))

we can do this, with or without your snide ass attitude
you made a mess now impress me


im lost in all the hallways and cant find anyone, information overload

[full blown possession]

she moves and I taste her
yeah, yeah, I taste her





mmmh yeah

[full blown possession]

'til the U.S. Army crashed in to me

[Doctor Rock]

Boy... Slow day for the cleaners, eh?