« March 2005 | Main | May 2005 »
Terrific article on the continuing communist cover-up in Hollywoood
How strange for Stalinists, Marxists, Communists and other flavors of socialist to make a home in one of the most lucrative industries our capitalist society has to offer.
Or is it?
via The Blogfather
Elegant Distractions welcomes new contributer Godshatter. Look for mind-bogglingly incisive entries and perhaps a disagreement or two. Nothing like a good spat to get people's attention, eh?
I, for one, am anxious to see what comes of this!
I was intrigued by this post on 43 Folders.
Given the choice between a fractionally tedious task that will save hours of effort, and something capitivating and challenging, we’ll bunk off the former.
Hunters were used to be bored. They played skill-developing games, made weapons improvements, then went out to hunt. Put a Hunter in a farming situation and he goes crazy.
Modern Hunters don't have to be after game animals. You will find them on the playing fields as often as they can get there. Or in front of a game console, or hacking their computers.
Today even Hunters have to deal with Farmer tasks every day, filling out forms, working in a Farmer-like job, being responsible (read: Farmer-like) so as to attract a mate and these times can be like a bear trap around the leg. Accept the pain, do the task and get on with Hunting.
Shawn Alexander remains a Seahawk after draft day. Not for lack of trying on the part of the team but nobody was interested in him for what the Hawks were willing to take in return.
I tend to agree with the idea of grooming a new center while Tobeck is still servicable. Still, I found the draft largely underwhelming.
Common Sense Junction links to an article at Tapscott's Copy Desk about more Lily Tomlin reporting (her little brat-girl character Edith Ann said, "I don't lie. I make up the truth."). The question is raised why the number MSM reporters caught in lies seems to be growing -- or a least failing to subside.
The answer is as simple as this: blogs. In years past, a reporter could write whatever the hell he/she wanted. At the worst the reporter would have to endure a few angry letters to the editor. Today there are literally millions of editors and fact-checkers and they are all connected via little wires.
Apparently some haven't gotten the memo that the gig is up. They still operate under the old ROE, marching out in straight lines wearing red tunics while the bloggers hide behind rocks and trees. The war is over the truth and they are losing.
From Born Fighting by James Webb:
"...[He] represented the best which the new West could breed in the way of capable and self-reliant individualism, and the backwoodsmen loved him for the enemies he made, and backed him loudly in his fight against the aristocratic East."
The quote refers to Andrew Jackson but reminded me a great deal of Dubya, especially in the aught-four election.
Perhaps most frightening to the Eastern blue-nosed socialists is just how out-numbered they are, now that the Web has given an outlet for all those formerly-bottled-up voices.
From Daddy's little Angel...
...to this beautiful woman in the flutter of a hummingbird's wing.
The most painful part is moving away from the center of her life. That place is taken by another man. Rightfully so but wrenching nonetheless.
I'm going to rate the possibility of the Seattle Seahawks trading Shawn Alexander on draft day as 60%. If they can find both a taker for the flamboyant runner and position themselves to pick up a top replacement in the first round, they will take the leap.
Why trade one of the most touchdown-and-yardage producing running backs in the league? It isn't because he's a prima donna -- that comes with the territory. Heck, you want players who want the spotlight. No, it is more about the plays where he isn't featured.
When you watch him run you realize that Alexander is only interested in the big gains. When holes close up he hits the turf instead of pounding for two yards. Unless, of course, the goal line is on the other side of those two yards then the glory hound can't be stopped.
See, sometimes two yards in the middle of the field are important to keep a drive alive but he is very uninterested in those kinds of yards. If he had been, the whining about missing the rushing title by one yard would have been unnecessary.
I like what Alexander has done for the team but if they can get a hard worker (who will pass protect as well) then the Seahawks should pull the trigger.
The Blogfather points us to this interesting article on a juvenile deliquent asteroid that may crash the party here on earth.
This is the story Armageddon should have been. Defeating rogue asteroids is the work of decades, not weeks. A close call is hundreds-of-thousands of miles not glancing off the atmosphere at physics-defying angles.
If you think the story can't be told on film, look at Apollo 13, the real-life story which is being honored today. A skillful storyteller can keep your heart pounding even when you know how it will turn out in the end.
I guess the Spousal Unit and I will have to put this one on the to-do list. Nobody else will tackle it, I'm sure.
UPDATE: fixed broken link to the original article.
This is an earnest film that tries so hard to be important that it forgets the audience. It also steps carefully to avoid following the tracks of Backdraft. Perhaps too carefully.
The primary drawback is that the protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix) pursues no goal, and therefore is never opposed by a viable antagonist. In this case, a likely candidate for antagonist would have been fire itself but fire has been reduced to a supporting role, going about it's job as the firefighters do theirs.
Which is all too bad, since this movie has a level of authenticity you can sense even when you lack first-hand knowledge of fighting fires. Not a lot of physics-defying leaps or running through thousand-degree infernos.
John Travolta puts forth his typical charismatic performance, this time in a restrained fashion. Does he ever play a follower?
This is a film that could have been terrific but the story is just a series of events rather than a journey for the protagonist.
Took the Spousal Unit to see Sin City on Friday. Let's just cut to the chase: she hated it. "It was the first movie in a long time that I couldn't wait to end," she said shortly after the credits rolled. If you think this is a girly reaction see below.
Read somewhere (William Goldman, perhaps?) that the use of narration is the first sign of a weak script. This film didn't use narration so much as internal dialog. Far more of that than words between characters. While I wouldn't say I enjoyed this aspect I did get used to it.
Our daughter said the story structure mimicked Pulp Fiction and she is right, of course. (We taught her to be right about these things.) Multiple short stories that touch each other ever-so-slightly.
This would be OK if the short stories had maintained some semblance of classic structure. The audience often had nobody to empathise with, although Bruce Willis' Hartigan worked well for a short period.
Visually, the film looked like a noir Sky Captain. I found the style appropriate while the occasional use of color had me searching for a pattern. Didn't find one, except to draw attention to some aspect of a scene. Most of the blood was white so that when it was red the violence felt more pronounced.
My wife asked what the point of the movie was? If a theme exists, it may be expressed as, "People live mean, pointless lives and trying to do otherwise is equally pointless."
As pointless as the movie itself.
Let me explain something about my wife. She grew up a tomboy to a certain extent, sometimes even wishing she were a boy. You know that beer commercial where the bride catches the groom in the coat closet watching sports only to join in? That's my Spousal Unit.
She will often prefer Terminator over more girly fair such as Ella Enchanted.
That she is very much a girl is something I have appreciated for many years now even when she gets in the mood for a good romance. So, I dropped Spanglish into my NetFlix list.
Pros
How about a nice round of applause for making a father who is neither a jerk, a philanderer, an incompetent fool, nor an ogre (in the non-Shrek sense). Brave and daring stuff these days. How far have we come that this rates as an original concept?
Cons
Glorifying and normalizing illegal immigration. Nobody ever questions the status of this little family. The housekeeper's daughter gets a scholarship to a private school, later applying to Princeton all while living illegally in this country. Nobody bats an eyelash.
Normalizing extramarital affairs. While this film doesn't simplify or attempt to smooth over the pain of an affair, it does when it comes to reconcilliation. A few tears, hugs and promises and before long it's like nothing happened. Anybody outside of L.A. buy that?
Remarks
Tea Leoni has abs like I never did, even playing high school sports. Yoga, it would seem. She also happens to be a fun actress to watch. Adam Sandler stayed more in control than usual. Cloris Leachman was the real treat and nearly stole the show.
The scene, played in trailers, where Leoni cries,"Good guy [pointing at Sandler], bad guy [pointing at herself]" rang familiar to me. My wife complained on more than one occassion that moms have to deal with the nitty-gritty daily mess only to have dads swoop in like fun super-heroes.
Not a bad movie but I'm glad I waited for the DVD.
Welcome to Elegant Distractions. Those who have been familiar with Young Enough will find that all the posts on that blog have been successfully imported here.
Blogger was a good place to start but the performance issues became unbearable when it took nearly a week for email entries to be posted. Sometimes just logging in was painful, so I moved into this new space.
Every year the principle of the sanction of the victim from Ayn Rand becomes more evident as the anti-[fill in the blank] forces work desperately to disassemble Western Civilization. (Number Five says, "No disassemble!")
Today's example come from this post from Roger L. Simon. He suggests that the Left is converting to capitalism:
"So politics today is a battle between capitalist forces with the moveon.orgs of the world acting as cannon fodder for one side. Sure they will be paid off to some extent (e. g. academic tenure) if this quasi-left is victorious, but I doubt to any significant degree. We are in an era when capitalism (the market) has won and the spoils are being divided."No, Roger, I think what you are seeing is the exploitation of capitalism by those who would destroy it, freedoms being subverted by those who cry for diversity, the military getting 'support' from the very people who chase recruiters from college campuses.
These people, in a similar fashion as the terrorists, use the virtue of their victims as a weapon against them. They take the power, freedom and wealth of a capitalist society only to spend those resources to tear down the very structures that gave them such capabilities.
To borrow the motto from Forbes Magazine, capitalism has become the socialists' tool.