Ben Barnes (a.k.a. Prince Caspian) goes more than a little Wilde in the bedrooms and backalleys of London in in the teaser for Oliver Parker’s Dorian Gray, also with Colin Firth and Rebecca Hall. Looks a bit Red Shoe Diaries, to be honest, but Ms. Hall is always a draw. That being said, why already show Dorian’s doppelganger?
Month: August 2009
Frere Jacques, Dormez-Vous?
z'[W]ith Reagan, the prophecy appreciation part of his brain functioned quite independently of the part that started wars (there’s nothing in the Old Testament about Nicaragua or even Grenada). Bush seems to have taken the threat of Gog and Magog to Israel quite literally, and, if this story can be believed, to have launched a war to stop them.“
One rather frightening story from a few days ago: As if the recent “Onward Christian Soldiers” war reports in GQ weren’t Crusadery enough, it appears that Dubya explictly invoked the End of Days to convince Jacques Chirac to get involved in the Iraq War, making his appeal Christian-to-Christian about the unholy dangers of Gog & Magog. Uh, really? (Apparently, Chirac has confirmed it.)
Snake Oil Salesmen.
“The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.“
You know the GOP has gone too far when they start ticking off the business columnists: The WP’s Steve Pearlstein reads Republicans the riot act for their shameless lying on health care reform. (See also USA Today‘s attempt to set the record straight this morning, and Politifact’s evisceration of Sarah Palin’s bizarre “death panel” claim.)
I’m not going to get into all the current Democratic in-fighting over health insurance reform here (although I will say that I’m none too happy about this Billy Tauzin deal.) But, notwithstanding the Republicans’ recent penchant for astroturf (see also the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot and last April’s teabaggery), we already watched them road-test this reprehensible strategy — riling up scared, angry, and occasionally nutty people to alarm with hatred and patent untruths — last October. This is just more of the same, and I have every expectation it will backfire massively as it did then — hopefully before any serious violence breaks out.
A Republic, If You Can Keep It.
In other words, Attorney General Holder’s big plan appears to be snag a Jack Lint (re: Lynndie England) or two, while retroactively legitimizing the real criminals who set these thoroughly un-American torture policies in motion, and then call it a day. This is not justice, nor is it change we can believe in.
Civil libertarians across the board are livid at today’s news, and for good reason. Worse, this is just the most recent chapter in the Obama administration’s blatantly terrible record on civil liberties issues over these past six months. The President’s nudge, nudge, wink wink stance on all this last April — these aren’t “really” our policies” — looks ever more mealymouthed and insulting with each new revelation. That dog won’t hunt anymore.
Whatever happens with health insurance reform, and let’s hope it passes with real teeth, the president’s civil liberties record thus far counts as a real moral failure for this administration. Their enthusiastic continuation of Dubya-era policies on this front does violence not only to the reasons why many of us voted for Obama in the first place, but to the founding principles of our increasingly aggrieved republic. For shame.
Something Wild.
Wild Thing, I think I love you: The full trailer for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are is now online. It’ll be hard to sustain the mood of this trailer for two hours, I’d think, but this looks just about perfect.
Some Kind of Wonderful.
Update: “None of the films that he made subsequently had the same kind of personal feeling to me. They were funny, yes, wildly successful, to be sure, but I recognized very little of the John I knew in them, of his youthful, urgent, unmistakable vulnerability. It was like his heart had closed, or at least was no longer open for public view. A darker spin can be gleaned from the words John put into the mouth of Allison in ‘The Breakfast Club’: ‘When you grow up … your heart dies.‘” By way of Listen Missy, Molly Ringwald remembers John Hughes in the NYT. An interesting companion piece to Alison Byrne Fields’ pen pal blog entry making the rounds soon after the untimely news.
Heavenly Creature.
A murdered Saiorse Ronan settles into her own personal Heaven — as her family languishes in purgatory — in the long-awaited trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, also with Mark Wahlberg (not Ryan Gosling), Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Rose McIver, Amanda Michalka, and Michael Imperioli. I wasn’t a fan of the Alice Sebold novel, to be honest, but I’m very curious to see what PJ & Fran (& Brian Eno) have come up with here.
Space Oddity.
Not much stuff blows up real good in Moon, which seems to have irked a few critics out there — Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called it “agonizingly, deadeningly, coma-inducingly, they-could-bury-you-alive-accidentally boring.” and Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor argued “It just may be the most boring movie ever made – period.” (Note: don’t click through to those reviews if you know nothing about the movie — they gave away a key plot point, which I knew going in, but which is probably best left as a surprise.)
But, frankly, those guys are bonkers — I don’t normally say this of critics, because, obviously aesthetic opinions will always differ. But I can’t believe, particularly in this economy, these guys are actually still paid to write about film. (In his review, Rainer also says 2001 is “the greatest boring movie ever made,” which suggests, to say the least, that we come at the hard sci-fi genre quite differently.) Well, whatever. Sure, I probably saw this film under ideal conditions for the subject matter — by myself at the 11:45pm showing — but I was riveted by it. And if you’re a science fiction fan (or a fan of Sam Rockwell, who’s showcased here to great effect), Moon is a must-see.
If I’m talking more about the critics than the movie here, it’s because Moon feels like a film it’s best to know very little about going in. I will say this: In what seems like the near-future, some sort of miracle energy source has been discovered in the sunlight encased within lunar rock. As such astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is finishing up a three-year solo stint on the far side of the moon, monitoring four big lunar harvesters for some Big Energy Company. With no one to keep him company but Gertie, the resident HAL 9000-like AI (Kevin Spacey), and the very-occasional time-delayed message from his wife and daughter, Sam is getting dangerously close to cracking out of sheer loneliness. (If you ever played old Infocom games, you’ll remember the occasional warning: “Talking to yourself is a sign of impending mental collapse.” — If so, Sam here is in a heap of trouble. Let’s just say the protein pills clearly aren’t working so hot.)
In any event, one day (or is it night?) Sam, suffering from delusions at this point, inadvertently wrecks his moon jeep while making his rounds. He awakens in the base several hours — or days — later, being tended by Gertie. But how did he get back from the accident? Why is Gertie now keeping him on lockdown? (Very possible answer: He’s “got to keep the loonies on the path.”) And who’s that rascally robot talking to when Sam’s back is turned — or is he still just hearing voices?
If this sounds like I am Legend with a robot instead of a dog, well, it starts out that way. But, soon, Sam finds himself facing one of those classic science fiction quandaries, and the mind games begin in earnest. What I found particularly impressive about Moon is that never once does Sam seem to do anything just to move the plot forward — everything here seems surprisingly well thought-out. I only have one minor complaint, and that is, at the very end, [Spoiler — Highlight to read…and see the movie first!] why send the harvester to knock out the jamming tower as Sam-Prime is leaving the station? I know he’s trying to help out Sam-Prime-Prime and every iteration thereafter, but doesn’t it ruin all the secrecy the Sams have been trying to establish for the past hour, and won’t it assuredly be fixed by the repair guys who just showed up?
That quibble aside, Moon is a rare treat for hard sci-fi fans, and suggests there’s a lot more to Duncan Jones than just “David Bowie’s kid.” If you get a chance, definitely check it out. (And remember: There is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact, it’s all dark.)
