“And, worst of all, they’re eating all of our sand.” A whole lot of B-movie crazy in the most recent trailer bin: Astronauts Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid awaken from hibernation to fight off what would appear to be Morlocks in the final trailer for Christian Alvart’s Pandorum. (I originally thought this was going to be more of a “madness in deep space” psychological thriller. Now, it just looks bad.) Speaking of madness, Nicholas Cage returns to full-Vampires’ Kiss mode — and tries to out-Keitel Keitel — in the trailer for Werner Herzog(!)’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, also with Eva Mendes, Xzibit, and Val Kilmer. And hope of mankind John Conner (Christian Bale) tries to protect us all from a sinister invasion of robot toys in the clever mash-up trailer for Transforminators. It’s funny because it’s true.
Month: May 2009
Roberts et al, meet Sotomayor.
Naturally, conservatives are getting their opposition ducks in a row (with some help from Jeffrey Rosen’s recent dubious hit piece in TNR.) “But some Senate GOP officials privately conceded that, barring a major stumble, the judge will probably be confirmed with relative ease. ‘You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that we need to tread very carefully,’ said John Weaver, a Republican political consultant who advised Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for years. ‘The only way we’ll find ourselves in a political predicament is if we don’t treat her with the same respect that other nominees received.’” Yeah, good luck with that.
In any case, early word on Judge Sotomayor is that she is very far from the liberal activist of right-wing nightmare, but rather a “highly capable technocrat,” and exactly the sort of hypercompetent and moderate — perhaps to a fault — pick one would expect from this president. “‘She’s a lawyer’s lawyer,’ said Paul Smith, a partner at Jenner & Block who participated in the call…She’s a cautious lawyer…who was a corporate lawyer herself…She reads statutes narrowly.”
A Kraftwerk Orange.
Not exactly the Avatar story we’re all waiting for, but nonetheless: In the near future, where cybernetics has advanced by leaps and bounds but hairpiece technology isn’t doing so hot, Bruce Willis tries to catch a murderer “offline” in the new trailer for Jonathan Mostow’s Surrogates, also with Radha Mitchell. Even before you throw in rasta Ving Rhames and (the underused) Rosamund Pike as the age-inappropriate wife — she’s 24 years Willis’ junior IRL — this screams “what’s on TNT after the game” B-movie to me. (Then again, that pretty much sums up all of Mostow’s oeuvre. But, hey, ya never know.)
And, speaking of “the return of Bruno,” this has been out for awhile but has recently been officially released domestically — the trailer for Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat follow-up, Bruno. It looks like Ron Paul needs better advance people.
Passing the Buck.
“It’s funny. Johnny Marr has a place there, and we are kind of friends. I walked into this ice cream shop, and the guy goes, ‘Jesus, what a weird day.’ He goes, ‘Johnny Marr walked in here like 20 minutes ago, and now you. Is this like indie guitar 80s day or something?’” While cutting a few demos in the Portland area, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck discusses the band’s songwriting process, and his aspirations for the next record. “There are some really pretty acoustic things, some really total noisy rock, and some kind of poppy stuff. It runs the gamut. Ideally, if it were me making all the decisions, I’d say the record would be a lot broader than the last one. But still, I want to do it really quickly and immediately and not do a huge amount of overdubs.“
Down and Out in Catalonia.
“I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. I only twice remember even being seriously angry with a Spaniard, and on each occasion, when I look back, I believe I was in the wrong myself. They have, there is no doubt, a generosity, a species of nobility, that do not really belong to the twentieth century. It is this that makes one hope that in Spain even Fascism may take a comparatively loose and bearable form. Few Spaniards possess the damnable efficiency and consistency that a modern totalitarian state needs.”
Apparently, Chariots of Fire director Hugh Hudson is now set to make a film version of Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell’s autobiographical account of the Spanish Civil War. “The film will highlight the relationship between Orwell and Georges Kopp, the charismatic commander of the brigade. Colin Firth and Kevin Spacey are attached to star as Orwell and Kopp.” Hmm. That relationship isn’t what I remember taking away from the (excellent) book, and that casting actually sounds pretty terrible to me. (For Orwell, I’d go with someone like Paddy Considine. For Kopp, I’d go with someone who isn’t Kevin Spacey.) But let’s see how it goes.
The District Thirteen.
“Some of the 13 manipulated the federal bureaucracy and the legal process to ‘preauthorize’ torture in the days after 9/11. Others helped implement torture, and still others helped write the memos that provided the Bush administration with a legal fig leaf after torture had already begun…Between 9/11 and the end of 2002, the Torture 13 decided to torture, then reverse-engineered the techniques, and then crafted the legal cover. Here’s who they are and what they did.“
Triskaidecaphobics, beware: From the bookmarks and in her debut for Salon, blogger Marcy Wheeler lists the thirteen officials most responsible for the Dubya-era torture regime. A baker’s dozen of orange jumpsuits, please.
Not this time, Luthor.
I’m unclear as to what the GOP thinks will happen if we move these detainees into our regular prison system (other than that it’ll probably be harder to waterboard them.) What kind of fantasyland do these yokels reside in? These detainees aren’t Lex Luthor or the Joker. They have no vast army of misguided goons waiting to help them in the Big House. (In fact, I think they’ll find they don’t have much in common with your run-of-the-mill hard time lifer.) Nor have they concocted any diabolical master plans to escape from these extremely secure institutions. Newsflash: Those supercriminal types you read about in comics don’t actually exist. (And, while we’re debunking conservative fantasies, forget what you saw Jack Bauer do: “ticking time bomb” scenarios don’t in fact happen either, and, even if they did, torture is in no way effective as a means of obtaining the information you’d need. Not that its efficacy matters anyway, because it’s a war crime regardless.)
Absurd. Blatantly absurd. And altogether irritating that, once again, too many Democrats in Congress are not only taking these inchoate lunacies seriously, but grimly echoing them as if there’s even a modicum of sound reasoning going on here. Can these conservatives and their Dem enablers distinguish between the Real World and their bizarre, half-baked realm of nightmares anymore? At this point, I half-expect Chuck Grassley and Harry Reid to tell me they’re imprisoning Zubadayah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, et al in a pane of glass and shooting them into the far reaches of space. I mean, it worked for General Zod in Superman II, right?
A Consumers’ Republic.
“The Federal Reserve was supposed to do this, but they were asleep at the switch.” In light of recent shenanigans, the Obama administration contemplates creating a new regulatory commission for the financial services industry. “Responsibility for regulation of consumer financial products is currently distributed among a patchwork of federal agencies. Some of these regulators regard consumer protection as a low priority. And some financial products are not regulated at all. The proposal could centralize enforcement of existing laws and create a vehicle for imposing tougher rules.” Sounds alright by me.
We Control The Verti…ooh, new Tweet!
Or, as Matt Johnson put it 25 years ago, I’ve been filled with useless information, spewed out by papers and radio stations…Another year older and what have i done? All my aspirations have shriveled in the sun. And don’t get me started on blogs, e-mails, youtubes, and tweets. In a New York Magazine cover story, Sam Anderson runs the gamut from Buddhism to Lifehacking to ascertain whether technology has really propelled us into a “crisis of attention”. (By way of Dangerous Meta, a blog that’s invariably worth the distraction.) And his conclusion? Maybe, but thems the breaks, folks. There’s no going back at this point. “This is what the web-threatened punditry often fails to recognize: Focus is a paradox — it has distraction built into it. The two are symbiotic; they’re the systole and diastole of consciousness…The truly wise will harness, rather than abandon, the power of distraction.“
Which just goes to show, the real key to harnessing distraction is…wait, hold on a tic, gotta get back to you. There’s a new funny hamster vid on Youtube.
Nine Walkers…Again.
