Movies I’m watching: Oliver Stone’s W.

Someone please tell me what the point of this movie is. If it’s meant to be satirical, which it is in spades, couldn’t it have been more LOL funny like SNL? If it’s meant to be some kind of historical political biopic, then all i can say is too soon, too soon. The gags, the famous Bushisms—they are still cringeworthy but somehow contrived to the point that they don’t make for much of a punch-line. Of course, much of this has to do with where this particular viewer is situated in time and history—no doubt that future generations won’t “get it” the same way that we do.

The placement of the famous lines are a bit awkward: consider the “rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?” Bushism–though I am not sure, it seems to have been placed at the wrong time: when Bush was running for governor, instead of president. The other one is “i read, i smoke, I admire”–which is supposedly what Laura said to her future mother in law, Barb Bush, but in the movie she says it to W. when they first meet.

I’m not a stickler for historical accuracy in these matters, but as mentioned before, it comes off, as someone who’s watched this history first-hand, as being contrived.

There were some other annoying and/or intriguing parts to this movie: Thandie Newton as Condi Rice. HEr first lines are terrible, mostly because she’s trying really hard to emulate an American accent, but her high-pitched voice just grates. And I honestly don’t know or care to remember what the real Condi sounds like, but Newton is just too affected. However, it gets better as the movie goes on. The other thing that is terrible is that they make her so homely, which is perhaps accurate, but which is painful for any devotee of Newton’s hotness to stomach. I just saw her in Rock N Rolla not too long ago, and the memories of her hotness remain fresh to this very day.

The other bit that is interesting is Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell. I love Wright but he just completely *lacks the gravitas* to be Colin Powell. He’s of a more slight build, not quite as stout and solid seeming as the General, and simply adding some fake white hairs doesn’t improve the situation a whole lot. Furthermore, he’s always talking in some kind of low, guttural voice which sounds every bit as painful and affected as Newton’s accent.

And how about that ongoing philosophical spat between Powell, the military man who knows the realities of fighting, versus Rummy and Cheney, the hawks that have never killed anything with two legs. The ongoing debates are a bit tedious, I have to say. I have no doubt that such debates went on in real life, but in the dialogue in the script is incredibly trite, with Powell going so far as to mention Cheney’s deferments from Vietnam, and the diabolical Cheney trying to use Powell’s military experience to his rhetorical advantage. They come across as two schoolboys in debate tournament. Then there’s a bit where they have a slideshow showing a map of Iraq and Iran with American flags covering the neighboring countries–illustrating the American-friendly sphere of influence in the mideast–and again, it just comes off as being too satirical, very much Wag the Dog or War, Inc. or Starship Troopers-esque.

Another strange portrayal was that of Tony Blair, whom we see on a visit to Crawford before the start of the Iraq invasion. He looks too young and acts a bit too naive to be the real Tony Blair, and just comes across as a total boob. I never liked the man but the portrayal here is just plain weird.

Then there was the whole thing with W. and his father, the whole you’ll never be good enough, Jeb is my favorite son dynamic which just, whatever its relation to the real life people, just comes across as a monumental cliche. James Cromwell—you can’t help but think of him in 24, so I guess he’s been type-cast as the creepy father. However, he comes across as a much more normal and smooth George Senior than the real life one, who always seemed to me, like, well, a wimp. In any case, this dynamic runs throughout the whole movie, and gets a bit tendentious after a short while. In a movie where there is little care for psychological realism, what is the point of showing this whole dynamic. Is it to offer some kind of theory for why W., the perennial underachiever, ended up as president? Is it to somehow humanize him? In any case, being a Bush-hater, i don’t think the film helped his case any, and I doubt that it was Stone’s intention to in the first place.

Mediocre.

Movies I’m Watching: The Wrestler

I’m glad that Mickey Rourke won a Golden Globe for his performance in The Wrestler, because although the movie tends to be fairly predictable overall, this was one of the most honest performances I’ve seen in a while. Now everyone is talking about the Mickey Rourke comeback tour, which made me curious enough about the actor (I haven’t seen his other films) to get 9 1/2 weeks when i came across it at the DVD store. I don’t have anything particularly new or interesting to add to what’s been said about The Wrestler, but i think there are some interesting tidbits about how the movie has been received in other quarters: the Iranian government considers it insulting, after a fictional wrestler in the movie named The Ayatollah gets his Iranian flag smashed by Rourke’s character, while the folks at the WWE, a professional wrestling organization, aren’t too happy with what they considered the stereotyped and negative portrayals of certain wrestling circuits.

Director Aronofsky thinks that professional wrestlers do get shafted when it comes to their working conditions: he considers them actors and entertainers — and believes that they ought to be unionized and eligible for the same types of benefits that SAG members receive. Yet in reality, many wrestlers exist in some kind of legal limbo, not quite athletes, and not quite actors — and when things go awry, or when they simply exhaust their youth, bodies, and 15 minutes of fame, they are left, like Randy the Ram Robinson, out in the cold — oftentimes in desolate places, like New Jersey, the setting for this film.

Anyhow, that’s quite an interesting issue that i would not have ever been aware of otherwise. But good on Mickey Rourke – I’m glad that his career is picking up and that he is being given a second chance to share his talents with the world.

A final note: Marisa Tomei — yowzer, does that woman just get hotter with age?

Movies I’m Watching: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I’d heard a lot about this one before actually watching it. It wasn’t a bad movie, all in all, but there wasn’t anything particularly moving about it. It’s based off a F. Scott Fitzgerald movie, which explains some of the richness with which the period–the people, places, zeitgeist of the early 20th century–is depicted. The effects that made the transformation of Benjamin Button from wrinkled and gnarled looking baby to a newborn old man was quite interesting. There is one scene where he leaves home, and although the old on the outside Benjamin already faintly looks like Brad Pitt, his body is still hunched and shriveled, which makes you wonder how they did it, how they grafted Brad Pitt’s face and expressions onto this wizened little body. It must have been similar to what they did for the Hobbits…

In any case, charming fable, but nothing particularly moving, despite the film being about love, life, loss, and the wonders of the human condition, vagaries of destiny, fate, love, all of that.

Performance by Brad Pitt was reasonably good, nothing extraordinary. Cate Blanchett seems to me to excel at whatever role she is given, and this one is no exception, though after seeing her in movies like “No One’s There” or whatever the Dylan fictional biopic was called, where she set a new bar for herself (if not the art of acting in general), this kind of role can only be disappointing in comparison.

Businessweek on what is wrong with Lenovo ads in the US (and a collection of Lenovo ads)

Lenovo’s Olympic ads – BusinessWeek

I think they use completely different ads here in China. The sumo wrestler/Xpad 300 ad is this one:

Here’s even more bleeding edge avant-garde one for the Z60:

And here’s a Chinese one featuring Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi from way back when:

This Xpad 300 one is rather tepid by comparison:

Here’s another Chinese one that is snazzy but not quite as avant-garde as the newest ones:

Here’s yet another dated, sports-related one from China:

You can tell the Chinese ones and the US ones are quite different in style. I suppose that reflects a change in their marketing strategy, maturation of the brand, and perhaps change in commercial production personnel…anyway, Business Week thinks that these are perhaps too edgy for the Olympics and are better suited for the Superbowl…

Movies that I’ve watched: Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park

One of the better movies that i’ve seen in awhile. The film, shot like a documentary, takes place in 1970s America, where the Vietnam War wages and on a cultural schism has opened up between those that support the establishment and those that were against the war. What English filmmaker Watkins did was to add a pinch of dystopia to reality. In this alternate-universe USA, dissent has been criminalized and the establishment is even more heavy-handed in its tactics than history was itself. Watkins took the worst aspects of US political history and culture–and extrapolated from there. He took the torture and internment camps and created “Punishment Park”, a place where “criminals” (eg draft-dodgers, organizers, hippies, peaceniks, writers, artists) are taken and given a chance to go free.

Punishment Park is located in what appears to the be the Death Valley or Joshua Tree National Park area in southern CA. It’s scorching hot desert, and the criminals are told to find their way to some American flag about fifty miles away. If they reach there without getting caught, they can go free. If they are caught then they must serve the sentence they were originally handed.

The sentences they hare handed out are manifestly and quite exaggeratingly unjust: they are given 15-20 years, even life sentences, for their dissent. The “tribunal” they face is a kangaroo court, of course, though the senators and housewives and factory workers–who represent the status quo–seem to be genuinely baffled as to why the young people of the 60s are so maladjusted and misbehaved. They believe that these young people are inciting others to violence, for the dastardly purpose of overthrowing the US government.

It’s quite obvious where Watkins stands. He creates this dystopia for this very reason. But what is more interesting is how the psychologies of the characters show the rift in America. The tribunal members characterize the hippies as spoiled kids on the dole who would rather see America destroyed by her communist enemies from within and without rather than lift a finger to help. It’s quite similar, I think, to the cultural divide that we now dub “red” and “blue.” There are bien-pensants on both sides, there are slogans and shibboleths. The DVD was re-released recently and not surprisingly, some of the other commenters on the web have talked about how germane the film’s politics are in the Bush, Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay world. (
The film was released for only four days in the US before being pulled from theaters.)

A note on the role of the fourth estate: the film crew starts out by asking fairly basic and standard questions of both prisoners and police in Punishment Park (and briefly, of the tribunal members). After one of the policemen at the park is found dead, the policemen get riled up and aggressive, and as a result you get the typical police brutality scenario: threatened cop shoots first and asks questions later, innocent people die needlessly. ONe of the camera/sound guy gets held hostage and is killed by a sniper. The camera continues to roll as billy clubs and guns are used against the criminals. THe camera man is forced out of his moral Switzerland behind the camera: he begs the police to stop, he tries to communicate with the prisoners, and as the killings get more senseless, he protests more vehemently. Finally, he starts cursing the police and telling them that their deeds have been captured on camera for the whole world to see. The cops, at this point, shout back that they don’t care and that journalists just do it all for ratings and money.

I think this is quite interesting, because the question that I believe Watkins seeks to ask: when do those of us who have not yet taken a side have to take a side? Is it our moral obligation to do so?
What should we be doing as we see this drama unfold before our eyes.

Anyhow, I will quote, by way of conclusion, a passage from another short essay on the “Punishment Park”:

Where the hell are we? We’re in the highly radicalized, politicized, and deeply angry world of British filmmaker Peter Watkins, probably the greatest filmmaker that you’ve never heard of. Watkins’s Punishment Park (1971) is his deepest incursion into the American psyche, and the centrality of violence in American political and social life. At the center of Watkins’s films is his foregrounding of style, and key to Watkins’s style is the borrowing of documentary tropes for his quasi-documentary fictions. Beginning with his stunning first two features, The Battle of Culloden (1964) and The War Game (1965), and continuing through his most recent work, the incomparable six-hour epic La Commune: Paris 1871 (2000), Watkins persistently draws attention to the films’ “reality,” which leads savvy viewers to see their patent lack of documentary truth, which in turn brings a realization of the films’ dedication to a truth deeper than documentary, reached through the false screen of doc mise-en-scène. Witness The War Game, where the combination of impassive narration and a verite-style camera reveal the unbearable reality of nuclear catastrophe better than a hundred On the Beaches could ever manage. Watkins is dedicated to two principles above all: returning the blood to the lifeless corpse of history and an uncontrollable need to speak truth to power.

I think the last sentence says it quite well.

Where have all the gringos (of Miami) gone

Just caught this on iconoculture.com regarding the demographic changes in Miami. As someone that has only been there on vacation, the Cuban and Latino culture was less obvious, mostly because we were in South Beach with tourists from around the world. The rest of what I know is just what I read about anti-Castro folks and refugees…so this little piece of information about English speakers leaving seems interesting. I was reading a NYT travel piece not long ago about the Latino Quarter of Chicago, which sounds like a fantastic place, but perhaps that was the writer’s intention (travel=puff, most of the time). At least for a displaced Californian, anything that sounds remotely authentic Latino food will engender some kind of Pavlovian response. I feel my gastric juices moving already.

OBSERVATION
As Miami becomes a one-language city, non-Spanish speakers leave

WHAT’S HAPPENING
Throughout Miami, Spanish has replaced English as the dominant language in everyday business and personal life. A downside: English speakers are leaving the area.
Español is heard in upscale malls, corner stores, banks and supermarkets, as well as in hospitals, post offices and health clubs; Spanish is needed even to ask directions (Iconoculture observation 6.2.08). Spanish-language billboards are everywhere. Almost all of Miami’s top-rated TV and radio stations broadcast in Spanish.
In 2006, the Census Bureau estimated that the number of non-Hispanic whites in Miami-Dade County was only 18.5%, and in 2015 it is forecast to be 14% (AP 5.29.08).
WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS
Businesses in Latino areas must have bilingual employees, marketing campaigns and signage to make English-only customers feel welcome.
In Latino-dominated regions, some people who don’t speak Spanish and can’t find work move to other cities or states.
In places like Miami, diversity takes on a different meaning, with differences rooted in Latino nationality, acculturation levels and generation.

Greenpeace halts illegal e-waste shipment on its way to China

Just something I saw in China CSR.com…this thing was on the way from Oakland to China. I guess there are some loopholes in Hong Kong law that allow e-waste to get through, even though it’s technically illegal. Technorati Tags: china, greenpeace, hong kong, oakland, US, e-waste, waste, environment, computers, electronics

Old Stranger article about why musicians are moving from Seattle to Portland…

I dont know why but Portland has been figuring on my mind lately. Probably because I am thinking if there is something better than becoming a lifer in Shanghai or some kind of nomad. As much as I would just love to be able to roam , i think it would get old–maybe it already has, which is why I am thinking along these lines now. Here’s that article from The Stranger on why a lot of Seattle based musicians (and folks from other walks of life I’m sure) are heading south of the border to Portland.

Seattle’s Hottest New Hood – Music – The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper via kwout

Criminals in the Bush administration: the unofficial list

Criminals In The Bush Administration « Suzie-Q via kwout

Read it to believe it. This is a list of all the criminals in the Bush administration. And they didn’t even include all of them. You can find the exact methodology and standard of inclusion from the link.

Tariq Ali on the life and death of Benazir Bhutto

I didn’t know this, but Tariq Ali actually knew her. This is piece from the Guardian, reprinted in Truthout:

A Tragedy Born of Military Despotism and Anarchy
By Tariq Ali
The Guardian UK

Friday 28 December 2007

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto heaps despair upon Pakistan. Now her party must be democratically rebuilt.
Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto’s behaviour and policies – both while she was in office and more recently – are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.

An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In the past, military rule was designed to preserve order – and did so for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief justice and eight other judges of the country’s supreme court for attempting to hold the government’s intelligence agencies and the police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements lack the backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest into the misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully organised killing of a major political leader.

How can Pakistan today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It is assumed that the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be true, but were they acting on their own?

Benazir, according to those close to her, had been tempted to boycott the fake elections, but she lacked the political courage to defy Washington. She had plenty of physical courage, and refused to be cowed by threats from local opponents. She had been addressing an election rally in Liaquat Bagh. This is a popular space named after the country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was killed by an assassin in 1953. The killer, Said Akbar, was immediately shot dead on the orders of a police officer involved in the plot. Not far from here, there once stood a colonial structure where nationalists were imprisoned. This was Rawalpindi jail. It was here that Benazir’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in April 1979. The military tyrant responsible for his judicial murder made sure the site of the tragedy was destroyed as well.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death poisoned relations between his Pakistan People’s party and the army. Party activists, particularly in the province of Sind, were brutally tortured, humiliated and, sometimes, disappeared or killed.

Pakistan’s turbulent history, a result of continuous military rule and unpopular global alliances, confronts the ruling elite now with serious choices. They appear to have no positive aims. The overwhelming majority of the country disapproves of the government’s foreign policy. They are angered by its lack of a serious domestic policy except for further enriching a callous and greedy elite that includes a swollen, parasitic military. Now they watch helplessly as politicians are shot dead in front of them.

Benazir had survived the bomb blast yesterday but was felled by bullets fired at her car. The assassins, mindful of their failure in Karachi a month ago, had taken out a double insurance this time. They wanted her dead. It is impossible for even a rigged election to take place now. It will have to be postponed, and the military high command is no doubt contemplating another dose of army rule if the situation gets worse, which could easily happen.

What has happened is a multilayered tragedy. It’s a tragedy for a country on a road to more disasters. Torrents and foaming cataracts lie ahead. And it is a personal tragedy. The house of Bhutto has lost another member. Father, two sons and now a daughter have all died unnatural deaths.

I first met Benazir at her father’s house in Karachi when she was a fun-loving teenager, and later at Oxford. She was not a natural politician and had always wanted to be a diplomat, but history and personal tragedy pushed in the other direction. Her father’s death transformed her. She had become a new person, determined to take on the military dictator of that time. She had moved to a tiny flat in London, where we would endlessly discuss the future of the country. She would agree that land reforms, mass education programmes, a health service and an independent foreign policy were positive constructive aims and crucial if the country was to be saved from the vultures in and out of uniform. Her constituency was the poor, and she was proud of the fact.

She changed again after becoming prime minister. In the early days, we would argue and in response to my numerous complaints – all she would say was that the world had changed. She couldn’t be on the “wrong side” of history. And so, like many others, she made her peace with Washington. It was this that finally led to the deal with Musharraf and her return home after more than a decade in exile. On a number of occasions she told me that she did not fear death. It was one of the dangers of playing politics in Pakistan.

It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political party that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people. The People’s party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the activists of the only popular mass movement the country has known: students, peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69 to topple the country’s first military dictator. They saw it as their party, and that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this day, despite everything.

Benazir’s horrific death should give her colleagues pause for reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a political organisation. The People’s party needs to be refounded as a modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any halfway decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete proposals to stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can and should be done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any more sacrifices.