Earth to Inhofe? Earth to Inhofe? Nope, no answer. While several GOP leaders are turning on Dubya (and Rumsfeld) after recent events, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is not among them. To the contrary, he lost it in committee today, proclaiming that he is “probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment” of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. (For their part, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) disavowed Inhofe immediately.) One would be tempted to write Inhofe off as simply a crank, until you peruse the many similar responses emanating from the Right about the relative newsworthiness of US soldiers engaging in torture and assorted other depravities. Mind you, these are the exact same Defenders of American Values who wore moral outrage like a cheap cologne all through l’affaire Lewinsky…some people have no shame. Update: Sure enough, the Right rallies around Inhofe.
Author: KcM
Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The ten minute preview of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban, shown Sunday night on ABC, is now online. Not much to see here…all of the actual scenes shown look like a vast improvement over the Chris Columbus outings, but there’s a lot of filler to wade through first.
Tide Bandits.
Reports suggest Terry Gilliam’s next film (after The Brothers Grimm) will be Mitch Cullin’s Tideland. If the book blurb deeming it a “modern gothic version of Alice in Wonderland filled with ghosts, spirits, and magic” is correct, then it sounds like a great fit for Gilliam.
Tyler and Benny.
In related news, David Fincher has also picked a new project, and it’s F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Benjamin Button, about a man who begins aging backwards at the age of 50. Well, I haven’t seen a second of it, and it’s already more interesting than Panic Room.
Ring around the Rummy.
With Rummy on the ropes, Dubya and Cheney rush to the defense of their man in Defense. Hey, hold him to your breast as long as possible, Mr. President…maybe then, you’ll all go down together come November.
Justice Delayed.
Almost fifty years after his brutal murder for whistling at a white woman, the Justice Department reopens the case of Emmett Till.
UnFree Spin.
“Manufacturers design games primarily for women over 55 with lots of time and disposable income, and casinos near retirement communities…operate small fleets of jitneys that shuttle back and forth to assisted-living centers. As a come-on, one casino advertises free oxygen-tank refills for its players, and heart defibrillators are increasingly becoming standard equipment inside casinos…As one old Las Vegas hand put it, the country’s casinos are now providing ‘day care for the elderly.’” The NY Times Magazine delves into the fantastic rise of slot machines as the casinos’ prime cash cow.
Dead on Arrival.
Writer-director Stephen Sommers had best lock his doors at night, ’cause I have a feeling a very angry and very dead Peter Cushing may just be thinking of paying him a visit. Some movies are bad-funny, others are bad-bad…However much it may seem like one of the former from the previews, Van Helsing emphatically falls in the latter category. This movie is so loud, dumb, and nonsensical that it makes Kate Beckinsale’s last vampire movie seem like The Shining. In short, I’m ashamed that my ten+ bucks helped this godawful piece of claptrap make $54.2 million over the weekend.
What else is there to say, really? One of the early AICN reviews summed Van Helsing up as a “big, gawdy, dumb disaster,” and I think that pretty well encapsulates it. Hugh Jackman, so promising as Wolverine, seems bored and distant. Kate Beckinsale and Richard Roxburgh duel it out for the lousiest accent this side of Don Cheadle in Ocean’s 11. David “Faramir” Wenham’s bookish friar sidekick might’ve worked in a different movie (John Hannah played the same part in The Mummy)…it doesn’t here. And the CGI throughout — particularly that of the Wolfman and Dracula’s demon incarnation — is cartoonish and terrible. We’re talking Hanna-Barbera .
But I guess you can’t fault the actors and FX guys too much for phoning in such a terrible script. After all, everyone’s forced to chew out extended passages of completely clunky exposition, except during the long, interminable bouts of rope-swinging. The amount of time CGI characters spend swinging, flying, or falling in this film (with the camera invariably positioned just behind their CGI shoulder, so as to complete the roller-coaster effect, I guess) is flat-out ridiculous, and particularly given that the laws of physics never seem to once apply. And the denouement — which takes forever and a day to finally happen after all the flying, swinging, and falling — makes no sense in a number of ways. (How long is midnight again?) Trust me, Van Helsing is as terrible as you’ve heard…Abandon all hope all ye who enter here.
Leap of Faith.
Pollster John Zogby believes Kerry will win in November. That’s good to hear, and I’m inclined to believe him…but I also think that the issue that will define this election has yet to occur, for good or ill. Either way, Kerry’s current press slump is nothing to write home about. There’s always a dry spell for challengers between the end of the primaries and the choosing of the veep. Um, so who is going to be the veep, anyway?
Stupid like a Fox.
“As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he’s something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.” Slate writer and collector of malapropisms Jacob Weisberg psychoanalyzes Dubya’s mental deficiencies and finds that Bush is less simple-minded than he is just intellectually lazy…and the Daddy issues don’t help.