Israel vs. Le Media

LGF notes:

During Israel’s war against Hizballah, at LGF we were continually outraged by the media’s uncritical promulgation of terrorist propaganda, and their overwhelming bias against Israel. The barrage of staged and manipulated disinformation culminated in the infamous Adnan Hajj fauxtography incident; and it can be argued that the culture of tacit cooperation with terrorists was at least partly responsible for that stunning case of phony news.

How could Reuters’ experienced editors miss a fake picture that was so bleeding obvious, at every step of the way toward publication? Answer: because they just didn’t care.

[...]

Now the Harvard Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, hardly a bastion of neocon wingnut thinking, has issued a paper that absolutely skewers the media for their outrageously biased and terrorist-enabling behavior. Maybe this will be a little harder for them to ignore: How the Media Partnered With Hezbollah: Harvard’s Cautionary Report.

About time.

Why I like being a conservative....

This is how it begins: 

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Source: The Big White Lie by Andrew Klavan, City Journal Spring 2007. Worth reading in its entirety.

HT: Libertas.

Coming Soon: Paprika

Okay, this excites me.

I have only seen two of Satoshi Kon's previous works, Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress, and am in search of a third, Tokyo Godfathers. He illustrates perfectly how animation isn't just for kiddie tales. Perfect Blue, for example, is in the best Hitchcock tradition and most definitely not for kids.

Paprika looks to be in that vein. It looks dazzling and I'm hooked on the music in the trailer. The only question is whether it will ever see the light of day in the Sacramento valley, or even San Francisco, or is LA and NYC only. Which means waiting for the DVD.

Of course, I'm still waiting for the Sky Blue DVD release, another film which never had a theatrical run in my neck of the woods.

Film: Hot Fuzz

Let us cut to the chase, shall we? Hot Fuzz is the funniest film you'll see this year, and is the funniest I've seen in a long, long, long time. It's not perfect, but I laughed until I hurt while I was watching it, and continue to giggle whenever I think about it. Hot Fuzz rules.

The film is brought to you by the same crew that did Shaun of the Dead. If you have never heard of that film, I'm sorry. For you. It's an excellent film. The idea behind Shaun was to take the horror movie premise, remain faithful to that premise and genre, and produce a comedy. Thus, Shaun has all the usual horror film moments with the bonus that you're laughing your butt off. Fuzz is the same basic concept: Take the police action/buddy film premise and layer in the laughs.

The plot involves Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), who is the best cop in the world, or at least within the London Metropolitan Police Force. He's so good he's making everyone else look bad, so he gets transferred to a sleepy little town that has a crime rate somewhere south of zero (one major investigation involves a runaway goose). There he is teamed with Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), the chief inspector's son, who is a bit of a doof and a huge fan of police action films. All seems perfectly boring to Angel but he soon realizes that something sinister is afoot. (Shades of The Wicker Man; I guess the producers couldn't completely escape the horror genre.)

Fuzz is brilliantly directed by Edgar Wright (who also co-wrote the film with Pegg). I enjoyed how the they made sure to bring everyone along. For example, Danny makes a reference to one police action flick or another, and Angel groans in frustration. A portion of the audience might get the reference, or not, but that's okay because later Danny shows that film bit to Angel, and now everyone's on the same page. When the payoff comes still later the audience roars. It might sound redundant but it works to hilarious effect.

I found myself laughing out loud at the music and camera work, and I mean that in a good way. David Arnold's score starts innocuous enough but by the end has mutated into a brilliant rip on every Hans Zimmer score ever ripped for every Michael Bay film that Jerry Bruckheimer has ever produced. The highpoint to me is when the music swells as the camera spins around Angel and Danny a la Bad Boys II and it's deliriously funny. I generally hate how Bay has his music swell, the camera twirl, and all the cut scenes, but Fuzz matches all of that so damn well it's a comedic high-point, especially during a "high-speed" chase, as cars going flying over houses. See the film, you'll know what I mean.

I appreciated that clues as to what's actually going on are right out in the open, almost from frame one. You just can't see them because you're not insane, like the film's villain, but during the genre-mandated explanation sequence I was again laughing out loud because it shows all the clues that were right there all along.

Some have complained that the film doesn't translate well, being very British and all. No problem for me, because I was an original fan of Monty Python, not to mention all the inane Brit comedies that used to come our (US) way. And no problem for the audience I saw the film with. They roared with laughter, so obviously they understood what was funny. In fact, this is the third comedy I've seen in recent months and this film, by far, garnered the best audience reactions.

Some gags do go on a little too long. The result is that the film, overall, is longer than it needs be. This seems to be the trend, though, so it's hard to condemn Fuzz for being one of the crowd. Only, of course, that it's so above the crowd in all other respects. It also reflects the cinematic philosophy of the late Francois Truffaut, who stated that a film should either reflect the joy of filmmaking or the agony of filmmaking. In this case, the sheer thrill the filmmakers must have had in making this film shines from every frame.

In sum: The writing is smart, the acting is spot on, the parodies are brilliant, and the film is funny as all get out. Rated R because bad boy cop films demand F-bomb language and the murders are, out of necessity for the plot (honest), over-the-top gruesome.

Gonzales v. Carhart

I'm anti-abortion. Have I made that clear before? I am, therefore, in the minority of men, because more men support abortion than do women. Check the surveys. Abortion is sold as a benefit to the woman unready to raise a child, but its major supports are guys wanting to avoid child support payments.

Since I'm anti-abortion, my support for the Court's ruling in Carhart shouldn't be surprising. What surprises me is the uninhibited and irrational hysteria flowing from the MSM and the abortion industry. Is hysteria the new style of politics and discussion? Must be, judging from how much of the media has either responded to or "reported" the responses to the Court's ruling. First, some relevant facts:

• At least 1,000,000 abortions are performed in the United States each year.
• At least 90% of those abortions are performed during the first trimester.
• With Carhart we're dealing with a procedure that involves the remaining 10%.
• It is, mostly likely, a very small fraction of that 10%.
• No medical justification has been given for the procedure at issue.

The news always says the ruling deals with "a procedure that opponents call 'partial-birth abortion'". They never say what proponents call it, and they certainly never describe how it's performed. "Partial-birth" precisely describes the procedure. Dilation is induced, the child is partially delivered, killed, and the body is extracted. In medical terms, it's a "dilation and extraction" or D&X; this is the term the Court has used, both in Carhart and earlier cases.

It has a close cousin known as "dilation and evacuation", or D&E. With a D&E, a much more common procedure than D&X, the fetus is chopped up in the womb and then the pieces are evacuated, i.e., sucked out.

The Carhart ruling -- indeed, the very law in question -- doesn't deal with the D&E procedure, or any first trimester abortion method. Right off the bat, therefore, you see that the law is narrowly tailored to leave alone close to 99% of all abortions performed. It focuses on D&X, i.e., partial-birth abortions.

The 2003 Federal ban on partial-birth abortions -- the statute at issue in Carhart -- was based in large part on a Court ruling authored by then-Justice O'Connor. In striking down an earlier ban, her opinion created a road map for the legislature to follow if they wanted to make a Constitutionally valid regulation. They did, and the 2003 statute was born. True to Justice O'Connor's advice, it has now been found to be constitutionally valid.

Senator Reid finds the ruling appalling, which is hilarious given that he voted in favor of the law. Is he saying he deliberately voted for an unconstitutional law?

The complaints are rolling in from the usual crowd, blindly and uncritically supported by the MSM. If the law had been struck down they would be singing the praises and heralding the wisdom of the Court. No one looks at the issue, no one analyzes the ruling. That, you see, would require effort and the application of critical thinking.

Face it, the abortion industry wants nothing less than any abortion at any time for any reason. They are ideologically focused on that result. Since they cannot win that debate before the American public -- which, while generally supporting a right to an abortion, has never supported a right to any abortion at any time for any reason -- they turn to the courts.

Under the abortion industry's framework, any restriction is cause for terror, which reflects their utter lack of understanding of Roe and Casey. Both affirmed the state's ability to regulate abortion to one degree or another; neither said abortion couldn't be regulated. Carhart, in short, upheld that state right, as granted under both Roe and Casey, focusing exclusively on banning the D&X (partial-birth) procedure. It follows Court precedent, especially as expressed in Casey.

A little more honest analysis would be nice. So would a little less hysteria from the pro-abortion side.

Guns 'n Violence

Regarding the horrors of the Virginia Tech murders, a staggering array of inanities have been uttered. This will probably continue into the foreseeable future. Among my favorites was a comment over at the HuffPo, made to a Jane Smiley entry, that said right-wingers should acknowledge that "people with guns kill more people than people without guns."

How trite. My response: In a violent confrontation, people with guns save more people than people without guns.

It's a mix of common sense and horrific logic, but killers choose places like schools for their sprees because they know they won't encounter armed resistance. We have enshrined schools as "gun-free zones". We have taken this to logical absurdities. Virginia state law allows citizens, with proper training and background checks, to carry concealed weapons, but Virginia Tech regulations forbade this practice. In California, the law is written in such a way that even a police officer, on campus as a student, cannot bring a firearm onto school grounds.

Since so many are speculating on the efficacy of laws that disarm law-abiding citizens, let us also speculate on how things might have happened at Virginia Tech if someone in Norris Hall had been able to shoot back. It's doubtful if the death toll would have been so high.

This is not just idle speculation. We have an example of what might have happened. In 2002, at the Appalachia Law School in Virginia, someone started going on a killing spree. Armed students interceded and the killer was apprehended. He was stopped and arrested by armed students and faculty, not the police.

Police cannot watch over us day and night in anticipation of some harm that might befall us. Indeed, as a free society we shouldn't want that sort of "protection". The very nature of the Second Amendment is to allow the citizenry to provide for its own defense. Virginia Tech illustrates why.

Cop Humor

Officer: "I pulled you over, sir, because I thought you might be in need of medical assistance."

Driver: "No, I'm fine. What made you think I needed help?"

Officer: "Because you were driving with your head so far up your ass I assumed you were suffocating."

True story.

O Holy Prius, thou environmentally sucketh...

All ye hybrid enthusiasts, see here:

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.

Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. ...

My favorite part is describing the area around where they mine the metal for the batteries:

The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

Oh yeah, save the planet. Uh huh, yup. Meanwhile, I'll remain truly green and continue to ride my motorcycle.

Chloe!

Chloe, Chloe O'Brian. Oh, the real-life Mary Lynn Rajskub might not be as tech-savvie, but.... What a name, what a face, what a great grip on those guns. She's even a comedian and is, at least in part, Czech. Excellent!

(Picture courtesy of Geek Monthly.)

On DVD: The Prestige

I finally caught up with this film on DVD and it's more than a little frustrating to write about it. Much like The Sixth Sense, the enjoyment with The Prestige lies in not knowing how it's going to end. How do I write about a film when the very thing I most want to write about gives the entire thing away? Trying to write about The Prestige without giving something away is, at best, difficult.

Christopher Nolan continues to impress me, but he has this obsession with non-linear story telling. This sometimes works brilliantly, as in Memento; in Batman Begins, however, it was annoying. Here he strikes a happy middle ground. He achieves here with I think he tried to do in Batman, and now it works. The jumping back and forth in time work to reveal the parallels between main characters and when all of the timelines, as it were, converge, there's a marvelous and honest sense of inevitability.

Where the film fails is having a protagonist you give a hoot about. Between Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, I found myself pulling more for Jackman's character. You may feel different. It feels as though you're supposed to like Bale more because he's more earthy, more working class, but he's such a shallow jerk.

Maybe.

In either case, neither is all that loveable, admirable, or even embraceable. These are two men obsessed with themselves, their own fame and self-aggrandizement. They were friends, now they are enemies, obsessed with stealing secrets from each other and unraveling the performances of the other. Their rivalry will be their mutual undoing.

Possibly.

Herein lies the problem with writing about the film. What is safe to be told? Has enough time passed, as with The Sixth Sense, that we can discuss how this film ends? Probably not, so I will politely, respectfully defer.

What impressed me most about The Prestige is that it is fundamentally honest with its audience. Contrast this with The Illusionist, another magician film that came out about the same time. The Illusionist just lies its butt off. You see tricks that are possible only because you're watching a movie, and routines are pulled off just because the film needs them to be pulled off. The final reveal is a cheat.

The Prestige, on the other hand, shows you how each gag is done. Sometimes the setups stretch credibility, but at least you're seeing an effort toward explanation. This holds true all the way to the very end. Nolan wrote the screenplay with his brother, Jonathan Nolan; they deserve applause (and Jonathan's on board to write Spielberg's Interstellar, which instantly gives that film some credibility).

But at film's end there's the end, and I had figured out the major turn about two-thirds of the way in. Despite that, there was still a surprise up Nolan's sleeve. You may or may not buy it. It worked for me because, again, the film was honest; everything you see is foreshadowed and setup in advance.

If I had given a hoot about either (or both) of the antagonists, the final reveal would have truly been haunting, the stuff of nightmares. Since I didn't, however, I am left appreciating the craft and little else. The final reveal is disturbing, and leaves you with a simple question: Are you the man in the box, or are you the prestige?

Because I didn't care for either character, I just didn't care what the answer was. "Good widdance to bad wubbish," as Elmer Fudd would say.

Rated PG-13, no doubt for disturbing imagery, mild sexual banter, some violence, and little birds crushed in little cages.