The Ross Review

Disgusting.

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:37:00 +0000

Read this CNN article about the rise in teen violence against the homeless in America. I can't think of a better way to exhibit the increased callousness towards the poor in this country than the brutal murder of its most impoverished citizens by its most priveleged. No matter how many excuses are given for the perpetrators of these shameful crimes, be they peer pressure, alcohol abuse, violent video games, the fact remains that these kids equated their victim's diminished socioeconomic status with a sort of expendability. The illusion of meritocracy here in the United States is not a reason to treat the struggling as lessers, or, in this case, as subhuman targets. The way a society treats its poor is an important vital sign of its humanity, for mercy is nothing if not the recognition of a universality among men. As income inequality grows, we seem to be entering a dangerous period of class striation, of a return to "us" and "them". If our teens are unable to see their fellow man beneath the rags and grime - we're in worse trouble than we thought.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/19/homeless.attacks/index.html

Things to know about... SETI

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:47:00 +0000

Check out the article below, which makes a convincing case for the continued funding of SETI, or the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. SETI roams the night skies with sophisticated radio telescopes, hoping to find radio frequencies that would suggest an advanced civilization. The argument for its continued is existence is made on the grounds that SETI has just begun its work. In the Milky way alone there are millions and millions (cue Sagan's nasal drawl) of solar systems, one thousand of which SETI has thoroughly investigated. Basically, we're looking for a needle in a haystack and we've only looked at a tiny pinch of hay. While we at the Ross Review are skeptical of UFO kooks, we believe SETI to be a worthwhile endeavor. These sorts of pure quests for knowledge represent the best of humanistic scientific inquiry, and unless the cost is prohibitive, we are in favor of them in nearly every case. There's something undeniably sublime about people sitting up all night searching the heavens for signs of life. Even if, in a thousand generations, all we ever find is us.

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_shostak_surrender_070118.html

Extended Daily Manna! (2/13)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 04:27:00 +0000

First, a mini-review of sorts... 'The Lives of Others', a German language film directed by Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck, is an astonishing work. It tells the story of an officer in the East German Stasi, a secret police force numbering 100,000 at the peak of its powers. The main drama unfolds when our officer is ordered to begin surveillance on a famous playwright and his actress girlfriend, for they are suspected of sympathizing with the West. The odd, asymmetrical intimacy that forms between the couple and their silent observer forces the trio into some difficult decisions. As I sat there in the dark, watching the film unfold exquisitely upon the silver screen, the following thought occurred to me: freedom must be a special thing indeed for so much great art to be created in its tribute. For there in the steely greys, and suffocating tyranny of East Berlin, surely lies a wrenching love letter to liberty. This picture's ending provides a moment so pure in vindication, in white, hot joy, that it gripped me, full force along the neck with a rush of goosebumps. And yet, it is not the best moment this movie has to offer. That honor belongs to the scene, much earlier, when the playwright, upon hearing that a friend who has hanged himself rather than face continued persecution by the Stasi, plays a piano piece entitled 'A Sonata for a Good Man'. It is a sequence of quiet, true mourning, that will be immediately recognizable to anyone who has felt the cruel injustice of death having come too soon. The until-now rigid face of the spy, listening in on his prying headphones, breaks, releasing a single tear along his cheek, like the first drop of icy winter turned spring. In a way this movie is just like that: it lets us watch the first fissures, and then the cracking, dripping melt of a place that was once too cold for anything as precious as freedom.

Okay, moving along to that most excellent topic of foreign policy: reports indicate that America has reached a tentative deal with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for increased energy aid. This is an unqualified diplomatic victory for the Bush Administration, a frequent target here at the Ross Review, and we don't mind saying so. Kudos are in order, for if Kim Jong Il holds up his end of the bargain (not a certainty, as the recent past instructs us) the United States will have succeeded, peacefully, in ridding the world of its most odious nuclear power (Pakistan runs a close second). This development, however, will not suspend my consistent and vitriolic criticism of Kim Jong Il in this space. For with or without the WMD's, Mr. Jong's country is still a shameful, disgusting cauldron of human rights violations. And we will continue to mention that fact until the North Korean people are free.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-02-11-nkorea-nuke-talks_x.htm

Elie Weisel, distinguished chronicler of the Holocaust, and Nobel Laureate, was accosted in a hotel in downtown San Francisco this past week. The attack ended when Mr. Weisel shouted for help, spooking his assailant. That octogenarian Jewish intellectuals remian walking targets for violence in american cities is, at the very least, disquieting. Another reminder that the sad, ugly specter of antisemitism lives on, and that we are right to identify and ridicule it whenever it shows its ghastly face.

http://www.examiner.com/a-556256~Author_attacked_in_S_F__hotel.html

COMING THURSDAY (The DVD just arrived!): A better-late-than-never review of 2006's best film: Half Nelson

Mind Your Own Business, Sirs.

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 07:09:00 +0000

For those keeping score at home, this weekend saw two unwelcome comments on United States foreign policy by unqualified outsiders. First came Vladimir Putin, that wretched murderer of journalists abroad, accusing America of sparking a nuclear arms race with its unilateral military misadventures in the Middle East. Excuse us for bristling at being condescended to on the topic of nuclear proliferation by the likes of an increasingly undemocratic Russia. If Vlad were losing so much sleep over rogue nations hastening their efforts to produce nukes, you'd think he might change his position on sanctions for Iran. Indeed the mullah's and their hysterical charlatan president present the greatest current threat to igniting a regional nuclear arms race, and they do so under cover of an apologist Russia in the UN Security Council. North Korea, another nuke-ambitious nation enslaved to a ridiculous, cruel despot, can also boast of Russian protection for its march towards the ultimate deterrent. As late as June 2006, Russia was noisily threatening a veto of involuntary sanctions against Kim Jong Il. Months later the world witnessed as that incomparable madman tested, somewhat successfully, a nuclear weapon. However atrociously bungled the Iraq war has been, at the very least it can be claimed that it was fought precisely to prevent the globe's most devastating weapons from landing in the hands of its most vile dictators. In contrast with the United States, Putin's Russia has been quite slow in offering its treasure, or the lives of its young men, in the pursuit of that end. In fact, when given the chance, it seems to have diplomatically given its consent. It is with that fact in mind that I suggest that Mr. Putin has not yet earned the right to lecture America on this crucial topic.

As if that unsolicited meddling were not enough, on Sunday, John Howard, Australia's big mouthed conservative prime minister had the audacity to suggest that a victory for the democratic party, and in particular Barack Obama, would be a victory, or in the very least an occasion to be celebrated, for Al Qaeda. He offered this comment, ostensibly, as a response to Mr. Obama's stated aim to relieve our troops of their duty in Iraq by the close of 2008. What Mr. Howard so grossly misunderstands is that it is America, and its elected leaders, who will decide when its sacrifice has become too much to endure. Australia has, currently, all of one thousand troops in Iraq, many of those in non combat zones. If the Australian PM so passionately believes that a troop withdrawal in Iraq would be a boon for Al Qaeda, then perhaps he is prepared to offer his country's own military in the place of ours. February, a short month not even half over, alone has seen the sacrifice of 36 more of our boys. It's worth mentioning that I can't recall the last Aussie casualty in mesopotamia: surely its been over a year. Which is to say, to John Howard, thankyou for your actionless punditry but we'll decide when enough is enough.

Daily Manna (2/9)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:16:00 +0000

The Scandinavians reveal their superior genius to the world, again! (Kidding) Anyhow, the Norweigan government is funding an interesting project: a seed bank, comprised of the world's known agricultural crops, to be housed in a vault dug into the mountainside of a remote island near the north pole. The vault is designed to withstand all kinds of catastrophes, be they naturally occuring or manmande: asteroid impacts, a global nuclear war, ill effects from climate change, etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6335899.stm

Check out these pictures of a capsule hotel in Japan. With the global trend toward urbanization (in 2006, for the first time ever, more than half the world's population lived in urban areas) these kennel-like lodgings may be the future of the world's great cities.

http://knuttz.net/hosted_pages/Capsule-Hotel-20070207

Things to know about...

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 02:30:00 +0000

The Euston Manifesto.

Having searched high and low for a succinct, learned stating of the proper global, pro-democractic, humanist worldview, I believe I have arrived at it. The Euston Manifesto, assembled by a group of disenchanted leftist intellectuals in Britian, is an essay worth reading in its entirety. I struggled to find fault with a single principle espoused within it. It is notable, not just for its championing of oppressed peoples worldwide, but for its straightforward denouncement of anti-Americanism, a disturbingly prevalent theme in today's leftist literature. This is not a group where the comparison between an American President, and the world's worst totalitarian dictators, will go uncriticized. That's a distinction worth making again and again. And besides that, only when great, pluralist democracies like America are held up as the standard-bearers that they are, can they then be held to account. We enthusiastically signed on in support of the Euston Manifesto. Give it a look:

http://eustonmanifesto.org/joomla/content/view/12/41/

Daily Manna (2/8)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:25:00 +0000

Another day brings another shining moment for the right wing: The American Enterprise Institute (an Orwellian name if there ever was one), a lobby group funded by ExxonMobil with close ties to the Bush administration, has been accused of foul play. Accusations maintain that the group solicited climate scientists with ten thousand dollar bribes, in hopes they would pen articles de-emphasizing the severity of global warming. We cannot afford to have science, our very last vestige of objectivity and transparency, tainted by the agendas of political interest groups. This is a shameful abuse of power by the short-sighted behemoth that is Big Oil in America. Let's hope a comprehensive investigation is in the works.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2004230,00.html

Dictator Watch! Good, if temporarily bad, news on this front: Things in North Korea and Zimbabwe, two of the worlds most disgusting, backwards, liberty-smothering dictatorships, have gone into steep decline. The quality of life, as reported in the New York Times, in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe is plummeting, leading members of Mugabe's own party to shift their usually unquestioning support away from the "president for life". This is encouraging. In a similar sign of waning public patience, some 120 border guards defected into China from North Korea this past week. This is noteworthy for a few reasons. First, those border guards are responsible for containing the usual swell of would-be defectors: North Korean civilians that daily attempt to ilegally immigrate into China, to escape the barbaric conditions under Kim Jong Il. Secondly, Kim Jong Il is famous for coddling the military with cash and food, in effect bribing them to maintain his terror state. Thus, any sign of dissension among the ranks of soldiers there is encouraging, and is interpreted hopefully in the West as a sign his regime is crumbling. Godspeed to the glimmer of hope for freedom and representative government in those foul corners of the globe.

http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00400&num=1645

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/world/africa/07zimbabwe.html?ex=1328504400&en=5709ec03b6b62b0d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Goosebumps not included.

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 02:00:00 +0000

I thought the juxtaposition in the following clip, of the never-identified "tank man" from Tiannamen Square, and Mario Savio's famous "machine" speech at Berkeley was, well, perfect. I visited Beijing this past year, and am sad to report that, because China is still a totalitarian state without freedom of speech or press, there is no monument to the massacre that took place in Tiannamen Square. Nor is there any plaque to mark the spot where the still anonymous man bravely stood before the encroaching tank, in fact the tour guides there are forbidden to mention the incident at all. That act still stands as perhaps the most courageous ever to be broadcast, for the world to see, on live television: the ultimate, visually distilled meeting of the individual and the oppressive state. As for Savio, his speech here isn't nearly as famous as it ought to be. It's almost never aired in documentaries covering the civil rights movement, despite being among the most eloquent urgings to political action, in the face of tyranny, one is ever likely to encounter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Mf9j8co70

Things to know about...

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 03:48:00 +0000

Most of us are aware that in 1945 America dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities in Japan, to expedite the surrender of that country, in effect ending WWII. Without diving into the hornets nest of whether or not the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified (a question that turns, morally, on the likelihood of a Japanese surrender without that most excessive use of force) I think it's important to consider seriously the devastation wrought. This is a responsibility that is uniquely ours. To say nothing of the immediate cessation of some 250,000 lives, the ripple effects in Japanese society for the radiation scarred survivors have gone largely unexplored. Below is a selection of photographs taken in the aftermath of the two detonations, which shed some light on the scope of the ruin visited on those cities. As Americans, whether or not we think we were wholly justified in causing those twin atrocities, we owe it to ourselves to take a long look at the absolute destruction we left behind. The legacy of nuclear weapons turned on civilian populations is, at least for the moment, only ours. We cannot shrink from it.

http://fogonazos.blogspot.com/2007/02/hiroshima-pictures-they-didnt-want-us_05.html

Daily Manna (2/6)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:55:00 +0000

Read this obituary, published in that daily-manna-staple The Economist, of the late Abbe Pierre, a French activist for the poor who accomplished that rarest of feats: he lived out his principles. Cynics be warned, this is inspiring reading.

http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8625572

This article, in New Scientist, debunks the widely accepted view among supplement-takers that antioxidants promote good health. Many diseases are caused by "free radicals" in the body, which, in the test tube, are nullified by the presence of antioxidants. Unfortunately, in the body, they have no such effect.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125631.500

Surely this isn't the first place you're hearing this story - but on the outside chance you haven't - read the details of this bizarre case of a scorned astronaut and her jealous, cross-country, diaper-wearing, kidnap plot. I always thought astronauts were perfect!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6333975.stm

Letters From Iwo Jima (Review)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:56:00 +0000

The modern war film, whatever else it believes, is lately certain of one thing: that war is hell. Perhaps to reinforce this point, Clint Eastwood has set much of his dreary new WWII drama 'Letters From Iwo Jima" in subterranean caves, where fire rains down from above and the only available means of nourishment are earthworms dug from the soil. These visual allusions to hades, though potent, are not, however, the most striking feature of this film. Rather, the difference between this and any other gritty, realist post-saving-private-ryan war film is its perspective: it's told through the eyes of the Japanese.
The story of Iwo Jima is not a heartwarming one. The battle that raged there cost the United States some seven thousand lives, and Japan more than three times that many. It is principally remembered in the American psyche for the famous picture, taken by Joe Rosenthal, of five marines hoisting the stars and stripes up on Mount Suribachi. That event, and the shameful parading of its participants as war-hero-props by the U.S. government, was the subject of Mr. Eastwood's previous film about Iwo Jima "Flags of our Fathers". What's interesting about "Letters from Iwo Jima" is that it is not, as many dual-perspective stories end up being, an attempt to display two sides of an argument. It's after something more noble: the humanization of the enemy.
Indeed there is not much to argue about, the Japanese were outnumbered and undersupplied, and thus in a characteristic display of martial honor, dug themselves in and were brutally routed. One of the narrative failures of this film, is the utter lack of suspense with which we head towards this conclusion. From nearly the first frame of the picture, there are knowing asides and whispers among the top brass on Iwo Jima, that seem to suggest that this is a doomed mission and the likely place of death for nearly all involved. Our two chief companions, in this march towards utter ruin, are General Kuribayashi, head of the operation on Iwo Jima, and a young soldier, ripped from his pregnant wife, named Saigo. Both, I will say, give performances of considerable pathos. But that is not enough to make a great war film.
The general, an Eastwood study in hallowed male stoicism if there ever was one, arrives on the island and wastes no time in chastising an officer for being excessively brutal with the troops. In other words, he is immediately established as a compassionate leader, foreshadowing which, you would think, would mean the climactic battle is close at hand. No such luck. Instead we are made to sit through a seemingly interminable buildup towards the eventual, somewhat (if we're being honest) awe-inspiring American bombardment. Surely it wasn't Clint's intention that we should greet the sight of the encroaching yankee battleships with such relief, not out of saber-rattling patriotic pride, but out of sheer gratefulness that finally the main action is at hand. It's a pity because the device does work in some unexpected ways: so enveloped in the Japanese story do we become, that the southern drawl of the freshly landed marines sounds, at first, rather jarring. Foreign, you might even say. This contextualizing effect, unfortunately, is lost in the two plus hours of bookending drudgery that precedes and follows it. This would have been a much better film had that minor epiphany, the realization that anyone in the fog of war can be made foreign, been encased instead in a compelling storyline. Instead, this flick begins to resemble it's visual scheme: color-drained, and preaching, like a term paper and not a movie.
I will say, however, that in the final shot Eastwood accomplishes something profound: a concise, single-image statement of his thesis. The film ends with Saigo, our most beloved, and vulnerable, Japanese soldier, laid down in a row of stretchers by an American medic, his face streaked with blood. The faces next to his hail from both sides of the Pacific, and each has on it that particular agony, surely not confined to any nationality, of war. I suppose it might be too much to ask that the rendering of war as hell not be, itself, quite so much like eternal punishment.

Daily Manna (2/1)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:41:00 +0000

Read this article detailing (with some unnecessary editorializing) the rampant use of a surprising loophole being used in theocratic Iran: In order to make sure prostitution and sex slavery remain legal under the muslim state, "mini-marriages" so to speak, are being arranged between working girls and their clients. These marriages, which then excuse the carnal act they precede, can last as little as one hour. Will the hipocrisy of fundamentalist zealots ever cease to amaze?

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467739732&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Check out this video of police officers in St. Petersburg, Florida cutting down tents, used by the homeless for shelter, with box-cutters. Yikes. This elevates 'Florida Policeman' to just below 'Texas State Executioner' on the list of jobs done with a heavy heart. Have a nice night's sleep, fellas.

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=2115501&version=3&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1

Well, it seems Hugo Chavez' quest to turn Venezuela into a Castro-like totalitarian state will be completed well before any of his fiercest critics expected. You may remember Chavez from his charlatan rantings last fall before the U.N. General Assembly, calling Bush "Satan" and other assorted nonsense. After being elected democratically, on a populist platform, he has succeeded in grossly expanding his presidential powers, ostensibly to enact "revolution". This latest piece of legislation allows him to rule "by decree" bypassing congress (which is dominated by his party, anyway) and any other feeble checks and balances which now stand in his way. This is just one more reason for the world's free societies to pursue energy independence: without the staggering increase in the price of oil, Chavez would have been thrown out on his ass years ago. As it stands, he (alongside Vladimir Putin in Russia and Evo Morales in Bolivia) will continue to run their petroeconomies into the ground. Godspeed to the diminishing opposition party in Venezuela.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6277379.stm

The United States has developed a new, nonlethal crowd control weapon: a heat ray that can be used from up to 500 meters away. The ray is made to penetrate the skin, causing its victims to flee for cover, although (with wide testing) it has caused zero injuries requiring serious medical attention. Volunteer reporters who were subjected to the ray agreed about there being no risk of injury, although they also said they felt as though their clothes were about to ignite. It's hard to know where to stand on this issue: on one hand, we welcome progress in nonlethal, crowd-dispersal weaponry as it helps avoid the always-ghastly scenario of a police force turning its guns on the citizenry it's sworn to protect. On the other hand, the liberterian impulse is to be suspicious of any technology that is TOO efficient in the corraling of crowds. Just imagine if Hugo Chavez got his hands on one of these.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticnews&storyID=2007-01-25T000005Z_01_N24424593_RTRUKOC_0_US-WEAPONS-USA-HEATBEAM.xml

Things to know about...

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:42:00 +0000

The Grameen Bank & Microcredit

The Grameen Bank is perhaps the most successful Microcredit institution in the world. In the Microcredit industry, success is defined by the number of lives changed and not quarterly profits. Banks like the Grameen Bank make small loans to poor people, often women, in developing nations. Loans are made to people who wouldn't usually qualify for loans from traditional banks, and they're used by the borrowers, typically, for small entrepreneurial projects. Repayment, and proper use of the funds, is encouraged via weekly meetings with other borrowers and bank representatives. These meetings enforce a sense of community, and collective accountability. For example, a borrower who runs a food stand might take out a small loan in order to purchase a cooler, which allows them to store more food for selling, and thus increase profits. Once the first loan is paid off, they have the option of borrowing a slightly larger sum, in order to further expand their small business. These banks, these loans are revolutionizing economic development in the third world. In addition, most of these banks are financially self-sufficient, the small interest they charge on each transaction is enough to cover the cost of making the loans. That means, unlike other sorts of philanthropy, large grants and donations are not required annually to keep microcredit institutions afloat.
The Grameen Bank, founded in 1976 by Muhammad Yunus, is an excellent example. Here are some staggering numbers: The Grameen Bank has lent money to over 6 million people, 97% of which are women, for a total of 7 billion dollars. Their repayment rate has consistently been north of 99%. That, by any banking standard, is an astonishing success. Because of this kind of dollar for dollar efficiency, and clearly demonstratable progress, philanthropists are dumping money into microfinance. It's been described as the best hope, alongside the freeing of markets, for economic development in Africa, Asia, and South America. Good enough for me. We need to find a way to bandwagon on this - Stay tuned.

Itunes Nomad Part IV (Canada/Cuba Edition!)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:44:00 +0000

Broadcast - America's Boy

Can't you imagine this song being used, to great effect, in a film about the Iraq War by some hotshot young director in the year 2020? Picture it: the dissonant, screeching beginning, sounding like jammed radar, intercut with shots of troops in beige camoflauge braving a windstorm in that oil-rich, forsaken desert. The montage quickens, sectarian violence, beheadings, lopped off limbs, the felled statue of Saddam, mission accomplished, the looting of Baghdad... The marvelously spooky lyrics begin "Quaker toil, Texan oil..." protesters on the White House lawn, Cindy Sheehan, the furrowed, sweating brow of Donald Rumsfield... "Gun me down with yankee power/ Cockpit Tom with Army charm".... Guantanamo, Cheney, Abu Ghraib... "The eagle lands/ Cowboy corn and bugle horn". We hear echoed smippets of gunfire, distinctly military in its precise, blinding rapidity. And then the vicious, swirling build to the chorus, those haunting, clear and yet somehow detached, faceless words that make up the song's title, repeated, over and over, against a tight shot of the President, in full salute:

"American soldier, America's boy..."

Buena Vista Social Club - Chan Chan

Seeing as how to date I've only tackled those mainstays of contemporary youth cutlure, hip hop and alternative, this may be a somewhat unexpected foray into world music. From its bold, tone-setting first strums, this is a song you can breathe deep into your chest, like that other famous product hailing from Havana, the cuban cigar. Having completed, and then promptly forgotten in its entirety, only enough Spanish as required by the University of California, I can't claim to understand a single stanza of these lyrics. Yet somehow, I think I can hear the meaning, twirling around in those pained, smoky strings and horns: melancholy is universal. Leaving even the lyrical content aside, there's no denying that this is an awesomely evocative track. It's hard to listen and not to be transported, spirited away to some idyllic southern nightspot, overflowing with latina maidens in white salsa dresses, smiles glowing and shifting in hypnotic synchronization with the deep, indigenous cadence... Chan Chan indeed. Whatever that may mean.

Daily Manna (1/30)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:57:00 +0000

This will be a new feature of the Ross Review, where I'll try and highlight interesting articles/media available on the web. I'll try to limit the scope of my recommendations to the informative, as there are certainly more than enough humor sites on the web. My use of the term 'manna' is not, in this sense, accidental: I aim to nourish.

Check out this once-in-a-lifetime picture, snapped by amateur photographer John White in Southern Australia. He nailed a comet streaking across a lake just after twilight, backed by a starry sky. Impressive.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwhite/366649244/

Check out this article from last week's New Yorker, detailing Google's mythical quest to scan (into a web-searchable database) every book ever published. Sound ambitious? They've made much more progress than you might think.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070205fa_fact_toobin

Read this week's Economist cover story on the progressive "greening" of America. A renewed push towards environmentalism is occurring on the left AND right, and from unexpected sources like big business and the religious conservatives. The former because they know regulation is coming eventually, and they want a say in it, if it's inevitable, the latter because Christian leaders are beginning to take more seriously biblical verses requiring the "stewardship of the earth". Dominion, after all, does not only mean the license to destroy. With a green consensus taking shape nationally, it will be interesting to see if we adopt an emissions cap/trade system like the EU.

http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8586069

One more from the Economist, that overflowing fountain of knowledge: this piece takes on the fallout from China's decision last week to bring down one of its own satellites by way of a missile, which was interpreted as a veiled threat to the United States' satellites. America's GPS satellites, crucial for troop positioning and intel during times of war, are particularly vulnerable. No one, however, wants an escalation of space arms as it would certainly threaten current/future exploration by all countries. The article lays out some of the better options for managing this sensitive conflict.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8592950

This is Outrageous.

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:41:00 +0000

In this Reuters/AP article we learn that an astonishing 13% of Americans have not heard of global warming. This was the lowest level of awareness among the 42 countries surveyed, despite the fact that America is the largest producer of greenhouse gases on the planet. When I saw the link, I thought for sure it was an Onion spoof. No such luck. There is no question that President Bush's past casual attitudes towards this issue have played a role in producing this sort of humiliating national ignorance. I struggle now to recall a definitive quote, but I believe I recall Dubya smirking and laughing off global warming as late as the 2000 presidential debates, dismissively muttering something about there being no "scientific consensus". Sigh. A stubbornly scientifically-uninformed public: yet another charming feature of the Bush years!

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-29T164554Z_01_L29194410_RTRUKOC_0_US-GLOBALWARMING-SURVEY.xml

Class is in.

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:50:00 +0000

I happened upon an excellent website today (it seems the web grows richer in interesting destinations by the day) at www.oculture.com. The "o" in oculture stands for open, and the site serves as a collection and synthesis of the available free academic content on the web. Increasingly, it turns out, prestigious universities in the vein of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and UC Berkeley are offering recorded lectures from their courses on itunes. The recordings can be downloaded as podcasts, free of charge, and listened to at your liesure. The experience of downloading the lectures returned me immediately to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, reminding that uppity pony-tailed grad student that he'd "spent a hundred and fifty grand on an education he could have got for 3 bucks in late charges at the public library". And really, why should America's finest educators be the sole province of its most priveleged? Or, even assuming the selection process of elite universities is a meritocracy (which it surely isn't), why shouldn't the best minds and ideas have a broader audience? Particularly when technology makes for such a useful vehicle for those ideas. What an excellent step in the direction of that most ultimate of liberties: the democratisation of information. This (and not the sordid cameraphone shots of hanged dictators) is precisely the sort of outstanding convergence of free speech and technology we imagined the internet would bring to us. Power to the people indeed.

I'm starting out with a Berkeley course: "U.S. Foreign Policy after 9/11" taught by Harry Kreisler

You can DL it at:

http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/browserRedirect?url=itms%253A%252F%252Fax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewPodcast%253Fid%253D151323198

Join me?

The Vice Guide to Travel (Review)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:45:00 +0000

So I was at American Apparel on Saturday, a neat little shop that traffics in t-shirts and other fashion basics (whose somewhat high prices reflect the fact that they're made without the assistance of underpaid sweatshop workers), when a DVD caught my eye: The Vice Guide to Travel. Its hardcase advertised the fact that Vice (an "edgy" magazine) correspondents had ventured out to the most dangerous, rarely-visited corners of the world in search of grand adventure and ultimate truth. Okay I added the last part. Being an absolute nut for travel, and in particular travel to exotic locales, I scooped it up and then, this afternoon, popped it in for a firsthand glimpse of the globe's riskiest, far-flung wonders. Afterwards, in my living room, the sense of disappointment was palpable.
The film begins with a visit by Shane Smith, cofounder of Vice Magazine, to a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, Lebanon. It's clear his visit took place sometime after the cessation of that county's disastrous 15 year civil war, and before its brief, but highly destructive, war with Israel this past summer. Shane wanders the crumbling streets there, capping his visit with a trip to a "PLO Boy Scouts Center" where children are encouraged to sing songs comparing Israelis to dogs, and draw pictures of bloody knives puncturing the star of David. Unfortunately the penetrating footage, and commentary, ends there. There is archival video of Palestinian children throwing rocks at tanks, and the droning last-words-tapes of suicide bombers (I won't soil the word martyr by invoking it here). But that's it. The group seems to be satisfied to have made a suitably dangerous trip, and they produce the proverbial passport stamp, or roadside sign picture in the form of superficial documentary filmmaking. The segment ends with Spike Jonze, the experimental, albeit hollywood-celebrated, director and two correspondents sitting in a room vaguely bemoaning the complexity of the PLO plight, all they can muster is the bemused, stoned, fratboy's response in the face of great tragedy: "whoa". I watched, uninspired.
The next trip was at least somewhat more unusual. This time Shane Smith and his merry band of New Journalists set out for Sofia, Bulgaria, famed center of the nuclear black market. Why is it considered as such? This is crucial: because a French journalist was able to procure, and purchase a warhead back in 2003 from a rather enterprising Bulgarian named Ivanhoff. In my view, to follow in that journalist's footsteps is exceedingly touristy, if not outright derivative. Why not make an extended documentary detailing the surely-more-exciting travails of the French journalist? We'll never know. So they meet Ivanhoff, who alleges to have met Osama Bin Laden, and somehow in having heard that third-third-person account, we're supposed to be what? Enriched? Enlightened? Apart from some publicity, it seems to me that nothing in this peculiar journey added anything (and may have quite possibly diluted) to the original work done by the Frenchman. This was not a strong start.
Off to Chernobyl! This is, thankfully, the last segment in which Shane "Cofounder" Smith is along for the ride. During the trip to the Ukraine, where an area the size of Great Britian remains radioactive, we watch Mr. Smith carrying on with a pretty, young staffwriter with leery professor-flirting-with-grad-student creepiness. There is an interesting trip to a deserted, destroyed school, where coursebooks are found opened to the very lesson being taught when the reactor exploded some twenty years ago. The walls of the school are adorned with interesting bits of Cold war paraphenalia: charts used to help identify U.S. fighter jets in the skies, lest an invasion take place. The tourguide (yes, the tourguide) brings along a device used to measure radiation, at certain points it registers radioactivity some 100 times that of normal levels. But still, this has the feel of a zoo ranger telling you that the caged lion is the most dangerous animal to man. After all, how dangerous can it be with a sanctioned tourguide along for the ride? Cofounder and lackey conclude the segment by pretending to hunt wild boar, whom they imagine will have three eyes, in the "red forest", the most radioactive place on earth. They carry on like, well, like spoiled westerners, joking and laughing at the scene of enormous destruction and pain. Gallows humor indeed. That's those wacky, free-spirited new journalists for you!
From here, things improve. A correspondent ventures out to the northwest fronteirland of Pakistan, the tribal province the BBC calls the most dangerous place on earth. In addition to that distinguished superlative, this patch of land can also lay claim to being the largest illegal arms market in the world. Given the footage of wild-eyed peasants assembling pistols with their bare hands, and the militia required to set foot in town, this one feels legit. Finally, I thought, some gnarly shit. The tour is indeed intense. Our correspondent watches as men, in a particularly ghhastly incarnation of the try-before-you-buy principle, fire Russian assault rifles into the air on busy streets. Further, though our reporter is just a stranger, he is able to browse and purchase any number of assorted large weaponry. Each showroom resembles the armory of a major United States military base, complete with impoverished children sifting through mountains of gleaming bullets, like baby elephants sifting through piles of peanuts. We are left with the impression that Pakistan's ungoverned wilderness is a chilling hell to be avoided at all costs. Good enough for me.
There are a few more weak segments, including a perhaps-sarcastic trip to China which doubles as an expose on (gasp) fake watches and the eating of dogs. Yawn. Even more puzzling is a trip to the remote jungle in Paraguay where a Nazi-exile camp is alleged to exist. I suppose the discovery that it has withered up and died (but for two Nietzche-resembling, illiterate alleged cannibals) is a sort of moral victory: Nazism, at least in this corner of the planet, has been extinguished. And yet still, it feels empty. Thankfully, the filmmakers have reserved the two strongest, most illuminating journeys for last. The first of these is the dispatching of a waspy, yacht-jacket-sporting reporter to a Brazilian slum, like those featured in Fernando Meirelles' superb film 'City of God'. These slums live up to their treacherous reputation: our correspondent is on the ground less than 24 hours before having to flee the stray bullets of, you guessed it, corrupt police. This is the sort of first-person reportage of the third world we were hungering for (and the kind we feel we were promised by the packaging). Moreover, the reason for going is compelling: we are told that 2006 marked the first year where the world's urban population exceeded its rural population. Our correspondent explains that if this trend towards urbanization continues, all the world will be a slum, and so dammit he wants to visit one. Seems to us as good a reason as any. Brazil, we learn, is home to 50,000 murders a year. Most of these are carried out in the name of the slum-ruling drug lords, who are rumored to pull down a million dollars a week. Because that absurd income obviously elevates these criminals into the most powerful entities in the neighboorhood, they are also responsible for the community's entertainment. As such, they host giant, citywide dance-barbecues called 'Baile Funk' during which, among several other delights, there is exuberant, suggestive dancing along with violent mosh pits. By the limited footage we're able to see (the drug lords have been known to murder journalists attempting to record Baile Funk) the gatherings resemble something like supercharged raves. All of this is genuinely fascinating and one feels, for unfortunately one of the first times during the film, that we're being given privileged access. Perhaps its the lack of tour guides.
It is the final story, however, that best embodies the spiritual, freewheling kind of travel the film purports to record. We meet David Choe, a young American Asian man, in voiceover as he tells us about a legendary dinosaur reportedly still alive and thriving in a remote jungle of the Congo. This jungle, home to sweltering heat and all sorts of venomous creatures, is the only stretch of green earth to have survived the last ice age, and, in addition, is so dense that only 20% of it has been explored by man thus far. Now this, I remarked to myself is an adventure! David, in a hotel in Brazzaville, laments that some of his party have deserted the mission to pursue other story angles: principally the prolific, thriving pygmy prostitution business that dominates the Congolese capital. As evidence, in David's hotel room, we see a group of naked African women jumping on the bed to the great delight of his comrades. David, however, keeps his focus: he is here to see a lost dinosaur. Before setting out into the jungle, he pays a visit to the U.S. embassy where an official tells him, in a laugh-out-loud moment of understatement, that in this country "infrastructure is very challenging". He bribes a trio of unsmiling, machete-weilding pygmy guides to help him burrow into the canopy. At times the foilage is so thick that the tribesmen take to riding on David's back as they tridge through, giving them a better angle with which to hack away at the leafy mess. They arrive at a village, where David sets about inquiring after the dinosaur. The chief repeatedly, and fervently, asks whether he really wants to see the dinosaur. David is finally successful in convincing him of his sincerity, his intensity of desire to see the mythical beast. Fine, says the chief, but first he must take part in a ritual. The "ritual" consists of ingesting a vile hallucinogen, tasting of gasoline, which reduces David to a wobbly, paranoid mess. "It put me on my ass right away" he explains. In a candid moment, he says that he began to fear the pygmy's while under the influence, thinking they were evil mind-readers. After a time, when his intoxication is peaking, a man dressed in a dinosaur costume made of trees emerges from the jungle. David is not sure if it is the real thing. He sums up the fever dream experience with the following terrifying statement: "I thought I was fucked, when I was fucked, I knew I was fucked". Raw experience at last! Bathing in the lake the next day David relays his disappointment at having only discovered a dinosaur impostor. The poignancy of the bit is its lack of self-consciousness. David never treats this as an ironic quest, he doesn't hedge his bets with a smarmy, condescending sarcasm towards his mission, and as such, his sense of a letdown feels real. Had this movie contained more men like him, it would have been terribly compelling, a sort of 'Jackass 2' for the intelligentsia. Later, back in Brazzaville, David spray paints a crumbling city wall with an impressive graffitti mural, transfixing the locals and earning himself the nickname "white wizard". Its a wonderful moment, and one in which we feel, with a pained regret, what this film might have been.

You can buy The Vice Guide to Travel @ www.vicemagazine.com

Check Out...

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:43:00 +0000

Nick Davis' review of Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in 4 Acts" at:

http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/features_detail.html?id1=735

I recall going to my mailbox a few days following Hurricane Katrina (at this point, with that event now accorded its proper historic magnitude, the capitalization is due) and seeing the cover of that week's Economist. On it was a close up of an overweight, African-American woman, wailing tears and wearing a torn, two-sizes-too-large yellow shirt, with the wreckage of what looked to be a third world hovel in the background. The caption read: The shaming of America. Those succinct four words had seemed to me at the time an expression who's eloquence would go unsurpassed as a comment on Katrina and its aftermath. That was until I saw Spike Lee's film. Any insight I may have on that film is surely contained in, and exceeded by, Nick Davis' review. Please do read it, and see the movie while you're at it.

Alpha Dog (Reviewed) (In Brief)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 19:01:00 +0000

Tragedy, it is said, is most poignant when it can be shown to have been inescapable. It is not sufficient to to merely display, in gratuitous detail, a bad thing that has happened. The power is in the force, felt by your audience, of inevitability. On this count, as a rendering of tragedy, Nick Cassavetes' "Alpha Dog" is an abject failure. The film details the kidnap and eventual killing, by various unsavory but still innocent 19 year olds, of a young teen over a drug debt in the astonishingly negligible amount of $800. The story is littered with instances in which, to borrow a turn of phrase, cooler heads may have prevailed. This sense of avoidability makes the already unpleasant task of viewing the senseless murder of a likable 15 year old, an even more sordid affair than it should be. The effect is somewhat like watching a toddler wander outside a crowded party, only to drown in a pool. Your chief reaction, in lieu of shock or contemplation, is bound to be "will someone close the fucking door?!".
The film, however, is not without its charms. First of these is the unexpected screen presence of Justin Timberlake, the only character in this movie, besides the boy victim, worth (at moments) latching on to emotionally. Although even this is somewhat of a cheat. I had the sense, leaving the theater, that Timberlake's character was painted too nice, too sympathetically. He shows, for long stretches in the film, an affable decency, and it should go without saying that decent people do not stand by for the almost entirely unmotivated execution of an adolescent. The characterization and the story do not square. That contrivance aside, Timberlake onscreen displays a reserve of warmth not often found in young actors. I'll be checking for him in the future.
I also thought the film captured the giddy, hard-to-nail aimlessness of college-eschewing post-high-school white suburbans, with their petty pot dealing, often objectified girl props, and embrace of pseudo gangster melodrama. Cassavetes even got the framed Scarface poster right. A tiny part of you is prone to envying these hedonists, floating as they do in between the bookending worlds of parental structure and full adult responsibility. For at least this fleeting moment, the fun is all theirs.
I found it bizarre that the starpower of Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone were called upon for their pooled ten minutes of screentime. It seems to me that character actors would have sufficed. They play opposite poles, as far as parenting styles go, with Willis as the enabling, possibly mob-connected, drug-supplying father and Stone the definitive, shrieking overbearing mother. Much has been made of her final scene, a docudrama style interview, performed in a fatsuit, some five years after her boy was killed. I, for one, thought she was brilliant in that scene: a small, bitterly hard portrait of a human being shattered by a single moment of senseless violence. Her despair is palpable. They say it is the greatest injury to have to outlive one's child: in the hope-drained eyes of Ms. Stone, and in the film at large, we are made to feel that pain. A shame we are denied the opportunity to derive any meaning from it.

Itunes Nomad Part III

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 23:22:00 +0000

I've been asked, here and there, why it is that I choose to review songs in this space as opposed to full length albums. Simple really, much to the chagrin of the dying LP traditionalist, the way we experience music is increasingly song by song. This was bound to happen once downloadable MP3's replaced CDs as the preferred vehicle of purchased music. Sorry so-called auteurs, you too are subject to the will and whim of man's most energetic force: the market. What consumer wants to slog through mediocre filler tracks to get to the juicy nuggets? Want us to buy your album? Don't put shitty songs on it. In the meantime, I'll continue to write about music the way I experience it: selectively.

Jay-Z - Lost One

It is with great sadness and much wringing of hands that I report the following: 'Lost One' is the lone great song on Jay-Z's new album. It's almost as if the title of the track were a reference to its fish-out-of-water status among Jigga's soft, lazy comeback effort. Sorry apologists, but facts are facts, Jay fell off. Lest you think I'm a hater, friends of mine know I've long been a defender and indeed a champion of Hov. It is impossible to overstate the enjoyment I've derived, across all these years, out of his debut LP, Reasonable Doubt. Unfortunately, over time Jay has become a victim of what was once his greatest strength: being outrageously self absorbed. We once marveled at his verses, stylized interior monologues commenting superbly on rap's usual suspects: gritty urban life, new money triumphalism, the swift seduction of ho's, etc. Forgive us for being somewhat disappointed upon encountering an album detailing the not-so-universal struggles of being CEO, avoiding the paparazzi, and keeping Beyonce happy. It was cool when Jay first bragged about nailing Miss Knowles. We sang along enthusiastically to his "hottest chick in the game, wearin my chain" boastings, but, really, I don't want to know about her commitment issues, Jay. Really I don't. Name-checking Chris Martin and bemoaning the chasing, flashing cameras of magazine photographers further suggests that Hov is teetering close to the edge of that notorious artistic graveyard: irrelevance. Its not the end of the world. There can come a point, in this era of the ubercelebrity, when a successful artist's life so ceases to resemble the life of the average person that, he simply stops having anything interesting to say to us. We're grateful it took this long.
Anyhow, I said I wouldn't comment on albums and there I go providing a capsule review of Kingdom Come. Let's return to the song. The beat is spare, clear, riding a mournful, looped piano sample up and down. The effect, the inescapable temptation to nod one's head, is immediate. The first verse is a not-so-disguised farewell, bittersweet at that, to Jay's former business partner Dame Dash. Its okay. The second verse is more relationship-analysis drivel about his famous girlfriend. Were it not for the singsongy appeal of the hook, impatience might have gotten the best of us by now, sick beat notwithstanding. That hook, rendered in a voice more indigenous, foreign, than the usual motown-derivative stylings of rap choruses, ends in a swaggering statement of the song's title "You lost one...". At last, in the third and final verse, the Jay-Z of epochs gone by, returns to us. He tells the story of his nephew, who was, it appears, recently killed in a car accident. This is not just one more sophomoric, dead-homies lamentation that every rapper seems obligated to include on his album. Rather this is about the loss of innocence. There are some lyrical, resonant explorations of grief here. I admit to feeling the slow crawl of goosebumps along my neck, when, Jay pauses midverse, and switches tone, his voice creaking with hurt "Time don't go back, it goes forward/ Can't run from the pain, go towards it/ Gonna see you again, I'm sure of it/ Until then, little man, I'm nauseous". Tell 'em Jay. And speaking of lost ones, we'll miss you homie.

Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline)

This is a song marvelously unsuited to the itunes breed of track-sampling. The vocals do not start to work their sweet hypnosis until well after the thirty second window afforded by the try-before-you-buy double click. If it weren't for the pleasing, eliptical instrumental, and the suggestive, relaxing title of the song, I might have missed out on it altogether. For when those vocal do eventually kick in, they come courtesy of Leslie Feist, and they come hard. For me, this one peaks early. Its the aggressive questioning of the second verse, supplied in an ethereal moan. The effect is like hearing the soft, clear voice of a female confidant, your best friend, possibly a love you know you'll soon regret leaving, telling you you're dead wrong

"And you're walking away
But where to go to?
And youre walking alone
But how to go through?"

Here she kicks it up a notch, and there's a raw scratch to her voice, the plea becomes more intense, and somehow, more self-consciously beautiful. Only a fool could leave her voice, stranded there above the rushing guitar cacaphony. I listened hard, lovestruck.

"If you wanna get it right
You can own what you choose
But you wanna live a lie
And love what you lose"

Tell you what, somewhere behind those lyrics a story lurks, and on one end of it is a heart, in the long term, wrenched murderously in half. Tell you what else: its not the singer's. Oh yeah and the song is good too.

The Last King of Scotland (Review)

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 01:14:00 +0000

Be it a product of increased a-lister awareness, or the current vogue for exotic celebrity adoptions, Africa, that cradle and, more recently, scourge of civilization, is lately quite alive on America's movie screens. If I were in a more ambitious mood, I might style this as a survey of several recent films (most notably, The Constant Gardener, and Blood Diamond) that aimed to tackle the notoriously layered, complicated conflicts of the dark continent. In brief I will say that both of those films are principally concerned with the white, EuroAmerican experience of Africa, a mistake also made (though in smaller measure) in this film. Why the perspective of a foreigner is required to examine the person, and reign of Idi Amin, military dictator of Uganda between 1971-1979, is beyond me. I would have much preferred a character study uncolored by the lens of the outsider, but perhaps this will require an African director.
In the interest of full disclosure: this past January I visited Africa for a time of three weeks and fell deeply for its various charms, and thus today find myself highly susceptible to the nostalgic power of its images. I am just flat out predisposed to like, or rather to revel in, all things Africa. I could hardly wait to get an eyefull of this films generous, panoramic cinematography, as it lovingly dotes on the sights and colors I so fervently wish to return to. There are, however, times when the cinematography, rife as it is with those cliched visions of Africa-- its rust red roads dotted with sunset backed acacia trees, its inky, smiling-and-running natives-- becomes, I'm afraid, something more base: a pretty, superficial backdrop. Or worse, just another piece of a glossy pamphlet showcasing Forest Whitaker's performance. A performance, it needs to be said, that is the best performance you are likely to encounter this year, and indeed for many years to come. I liked Leo in the Departed. Hell, we all liked Leo in The Departed, but if Forrest doesn't hoist that golden statuette come Oscar time, I will be outraged. It will be the biggest, most shameful misapplication of the Best Actor award since Denzel Washington was, in 1992, robbed outright for his portrayal of, you guessed it, another complex, terrifying, charismatic black man: Malcolm X. For this is the sort of acting that exalts the profession, while also reducing, comparitively, the work of its many lesser practitioners to, as the saying goes, childs play. The glistening, haunting, alternatingly rage and charm filled face of Whitaker's Idi Amin stayed with me deep into the night. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
"The Lost King of Scotland" is ostensibly about Nicholas Garagan, a young Scottish doctor, freshly minted, who has come to Uganda with the usual naivete of twentysomething western idealists. He hopes to make Africa a better place, to have some adventure, and, rather less flatteringly, to get laid at every opportunity. With a few tweaks, he might have been a more sympathetic protagonist. As presently consitituted he is an unlikable, bungling, ethically reckless lad, who, amongst other head-slapping decisions, thinks it might be okay to sleep with Amin's youngest and most shapely wife. The friend with whom I saw "Last King" and I had a spirited discussion following the film over the astonishing implausibility of many of Nicholas' decisions: I mean, really, bang the wife of a murderous dictator? Just for kicks? Really? As is evident in the trailer, Nicholas falls in to a quick and easy friendship with Whitaker's Idi Amin, and becomes an advisor of sorts, a courtier at times, and, officially, his personal physician. As such he is witness to Amin's enormous force of personality and, increasingly as the film progresses, the murderous evil of his regime.
I will not go much further into the plot of the film in this space, so as not to spoil it, and also because, as I said before, the story here is Forrest Whitaker's Idi Amin. Rarely has a film character held such sway over his audience. Whitaker's presence on screen, is so magnetic, his scenes so terrifying and yet so greedily hoped-for, that I took to scheduling a trip to the theater restroom around what I thought would be a brief stretch in which he wouldn't appear. In a way our captivation at the hands of this most murderous of tyrants is analogous to the Ugandan people's. There's a scene early on in the film where Whitaker, as Amin, is addressing a large rally in the countryside, in an improvised venue among a vivid green field, his sermon on the mount, so to speak. He orates, like that other African king, the lion, in a bellowing, raspy roar "I may wear the clothes of a general, but underneath this uniform I am a simple man, like you". He is so convincing, so charged with energy and populist charisma, that it became elementary, in an instant, to see why Ugandans originally found him so compelling. This is a man you could fall for. Understand also that this is the mark of great acting: it illuminates. As the film goes on and Amin becomes progressively paranoid, and brutal, we never fully abandon him as a sympathetic character. We are stilll taken in by his lightning-fast switches between moods of screaming, sadistic fury, and gentle, self-deprecating wit. We, like the foreign press of the time, charmed to pieces, and indeed to sloppy, softball journalism, by Amin, make excuses for him. Indeed to the very last scenes, which play out in accelerated fashion the conclusion of his regime, we even hold out for his redemption. We tell ourselves that very worst of complicit, appeasing lies: this is Africa, land of the savages, who else but a strongman can run it? I submit to you that it takes a great actor to show the depth, and, more importantly, the biting falsity, of that ancient colonial assumption. I found myself, in the film's aftermath, wondering whether the movie around Whitaker's performance was just a shell, a bare housing, or whether the sheer intensity of his work just made it seem that way. In either case: Hats off, Forrest. See you at the podium.

Idol Premiere Part II - Highlights Edition!

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 05:30:00 +0000

The carnival that is American Idol Season 6 rolls on! Today 9,000 strikingly talentless hopefuls amassed in rainy Seattle, some complaining the moisture in the air was bad for their vocal chords. Ah, so that's what it is.

Good news! Paula has resumed assuming the movements and posture of a normal person. She, in severe contrast with yesterday, speaks in complete sentences and sits up in her chair for stretches of time exceeding three seconds. Her face, however, is still fast resembling Michael Jackson's.

A disturbing Season 6 statistic/fact: we are running at one Uncle-Sam-costume-wearing contestant per episode.

We meet, thrillingly, a person who calls herself "The Hotness". She doubles as a walking surgeon general's warning against collagen implants. Even the ordinarily charitable Paula loathes her. She tells the camera, and a terrified viewing audience, "Simon kiss this" before pirouetting away in a whirl of matted, cocker spaniel hair.

Amy Salgado, earns quote of the day for the following gem, declared shortly before her (unsuccessful) audition: "Its hard to go through life thinking that youre not good enough to do it, and then when it actually comes down to it, you're pretty good, and you can do it,and I just feel that I'm strong enough to do it, and I'm gonna do it". She doesn't do it.

I never, ever get sick of those reaction shots of bewildered judges during awful auditions.

Simon cruelly asks a woman wearing sheer, pink arm-tights, ostensibly to conceal what surely are the most disporportionately obese arms ever to appear on television, in HD no less, if she has a sunburn. A sunburn! Hey, I laughed.

A bright spot! We are introduced to an Indian family (brother, sister, papa) possessing three of the most disarming, toothy smiles I have ever seen. The brother, at 5'10", resembles Abu from Aladdin. No matter. He sings, of all things, a Stevie Wonder song and is easily passed. His sister passes as well, on the strength of an old jazz standard. The family celebrates by beaming dazzling grins at one another. We are uplifted!

Simon divides "obnoxious" into two words, as in "ob" (pause) "noxious". To great effect, I might add.

A woman as tall as Kobe Bryant (I do not exaggerate) sings Aretha Franklin's "respect". There are many moments in her reckless, swaying performance in which I fear for her immediate safety.

A new high for Season 6: Simon, without aby apparent remorse, compares the facial structure of a contestant to a monkey.

What has happened to Ryan Seacrest? Is someone shooting him with a tranquilizer dart before the taping of each episode?

A Taylor Hicks lookalike threatens to re-style simon's hair, with hairgel he had stashed on his person. When he gets within four feet of Simon, weilding his creams, bodyguards swoop in like the secret service. I was waiting for just this sort of spectacle!

I'm still waiting for a contender, someone I'm confident will make the top three. Week 1 of American Idol is in the books and we still haven't encountered the real thing, the genuine article. I'm starting to get nervous.

- Ross

American Idol - The Premiere

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 04:05:00 +0000

Ah, the holidays have gone by, the air remains crisp, and at last, American Idol has returned to us. There are few shows on television today ballsy enough to open with a neon-cartoon-man gripping a microphone backed by confetti and lightning bolts, camera swirling by, as Ryan Seacrest, acknowledged heir to Dick Clark, intones campily... "This. Is. Uh. Mare. Ick. Un. Idol!"
Its good to be king, isn't it? This 6th season of televisions top rated (by far) show is nothing if not a gloating, flag-waving victory lap for its producers and recurring participants. The successes of last season have not gone underreported, I needn't repeat them here. It will suffice to say that American Idol, despite running two and even three times a week at certain points, absolutely dominated its competition for viewers and marketing dollars, in 2006. No other show came close. So powerful is the show, so phenomenal its rise, that I take a good long look around the room, lest a fascist fan goon be lying in wait, before typing the following gross blasphemy... Has Idol peaked? Certainly the fear of talent drain is founded, for the show's success depends (whatever the charms of its judges) on its ability to locate and parade for our amusement, fresh, compelling batches of young performers, in possession of extraordinary singing voices. These do not grow on trees.
Many American Idol viewers skip, or skim these first few weeks of tryout episodes, awaiting the eventual narrowing of the field, preferring to see the show's democratic darwinism in its later, more talent-dense stages. Not I. To me, these are easily the most exciting weeks of American Idol, barring the final two or three episodes. For it is here that we enjoy the twin and opposite pleasures of trainwreck-viewing and, secretly, the hope that we'll catch a glimpse of a raw talent, a poorly-dressed, stylist-requiring diamond in the rough. A star.
Our judge panel remains, for the moment, intact. Yes Simon, Paula, and Randy are all here, all back, and all welcomed out of nothing else but warm, familial nostalgia by the viewing public. Sure, Randy may be a redundant hack, and Paula on the verge of a hospital visit for "exhaustion" but dammit they are our Randy and Paula, and they should never, even in fifty years time, be replaced. Jewel, the folk-slash-pop-singer joins the trio for this first episode. At shows end I reflected that it's possible that she failed to speak 15 words, in two hours. Quiet one, that Jewel. Looking at the judges table it was possible to consider this a study in contrasting teeth: Simon's glinting as if hours removed from the bleach trays, Jewel's as overlapped and sideways-pointing as ever.
As American Idol has ascended to cultural event on par with the Oscars, or the Superbowl, it occurs to me that (on this, a show of singing!) perhaps the national anthem ought to be performed at the beginning of each show. Instead, the show begins with an awkward transition: we are informed that because Prince performed on the show last year, and Prince is, you know, from Minnesota, this season's audition roadshow will begin in Minneapolis! Of course, I should have guessed it! The invoking of the Artist's show-stopping appearance from last season's finale has the stale odor of past glories being milked, rather embarrassingly, to the bone.
The first tryout of the new season comes to us by way of a fan who, having gotten wind of Jewel's presence, has come to worship her and at the same time display for an audience of millions a truely terrible Jewel-impersonation. She is mercilessly shown the door. The wrong door, in fact. The exit from this audition room is a set of double doors, one of which is immobile, meaning many of the freshly insulted will have to endure the further humiliation of seeming to be momentarily locked in the room. This Jewel superfan is the first, of several, to be told dismissively, on her briskly paced way out, "its the other door". I have to admit, its a nice touch. American Idol: it's the little things. Jewelfan and her family kick off the night's theme (absurdity) by treating the news of her rejection as if she'd been diagnosed with leukemia. Ryan Seacrest stands thoughtfully by, his brow furrowed as if on cue.
Things, on an aesthetic level, do not improve much from here. The evening plays out as a sort of pageant of the bizarre, its chief offender being Paula, who looks like a slumping, doddery old woman wearing a plastic, halloween mask made to resemble Paula Abdul. Also, is it rude to ask whether or not Ms. Abdul recently had several of her vertebrae unexplainedly disintegrate, for one can't help but notice that she cannot, for any duration of time, seem to sit up straight in her chair. She spends much of the night looking as she did in that woeful TV appearance in Seattle last week: shitfaced. Randy, while I'm picking on the judges, seems to be that rare breed of human who actually looks worse when he loses weight. His eyeballs grow bigger every year. That is not a compliment.
Song choice, a familiar lament of the judges, seems to have hit an all time low. A man named Jesse takes the stage and inexplicably launches into a reedy version of Celine Dion's theme from Titanic. Following him was a still more striking curiosity: a black man dressed as Uncle Sam (old glory top hat and all) wearing boxing gloves, and shadow-boxing while singing, I kid you not, opera. I feel that the phrase "only in America" sometimes gets tossed about a bit too frequently: I should not be offended were someone to invoke it here. Next, a steady string of poor singers forces Simon to reach deep into his arsenal of pained, impatient looks.
Finally! Our first Hollywood bound contestant! We know because we are treated to a long and heartbreaking story of Ms. Denise Jackson's struggle as a former crackbaby (her words, lest you think me insensitive) adopted, and raised by her grandparents. A sentimental backstory, aired for the public, is always a sure sign of advancement to the next round. Even American Idol is not so exploitative as to air a tragedy and then pillory its central figure shortly thereafter. Denise shines, but does not astonish, the judges give her the nod, everybody feels good. The good feeling lasts just moments before it is punctured by Denise's tearful declaration that now, she has become "the first person in her family to make something of herself". Yikes.
Meanwhile, the oddballs pour in by the dozen. These include a plump, pyramid-shaped girl who brags that she can impersonate, in song, the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz. I do not exaggerate. The "other door" gag becomes more amusing with each repitition. A self-professed Idol obsessive, who has the gross misfortune of resembling Miss Piggy dressed up in goth or perhaps a (barely) feminine version of Chris Farley dragged up from the grave, morturary makeup intact, blesses us with a barely recognizable version of "Under Pressure". Simon, ever one for appearances, asks her coldly, before having heard a single note of her awful voice, if she really thinks she can win.
Mercifully, another winner does indeed come along. Perla, a latina with an entire Ellis Island's worth of immigrant pluck crammed in her tiny denim capri's strides in, eliciting a perverty, pen-chewing, elongated "hiiiii" from Simon. No taller than 4'10", her heels resemble stilts, so much so that the line of her feet, in profile, might have been perpendicular to the ground. We, as well as the judges, are instantly charmed. Perla is breathlessly ushered on to the next round after being made to perform but a snippet of a Shakira hit. Matt Sato, who gave a refreshing, clean-voiced take on 'California Dreaming' a song I had previously thought impossible to sing without that echoing female backup which made the original famous, quickly squanders his audience goodwill by collapsing into a shrieking melodramatic fit of triumphalism, brought on by the realization that "she" his mother "was proud of him". Spare us, Matt.
And so Idol plays it by the book tonight, giving us a sprinkling of feel-good stories matched to above average voices (there is the obligatory military wife, around her neck strewn a laminated picture of her husband, who is in Baghdad, a place that could not keep its death toll beneath 100 today, all but the heartless will be pulling for her), but no stunners. We keep waiting, with each and every positively or neutrally introduced contestant, for someone with real pipes to blow. But wait further we must...

- Ross

An Announcement, and a Treatise on Pleasures, Guilty and Otherwise...

noreply@blogger.com (Filtered Sections) — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 18:00:00 +0000

I recall reading, some time ago, an article insisting that we do away with the phrase "guilty pleasure". Pleasure is pleasure, went the argument, why be snobbish and distinguish between various forms of it. I'm in agreement, insofar as its true that we ought not shrink away from our opinions, our taste. Its a sad thing to see a man put distance between himself and a thing he likes. For what? The approval of others? Shameful. Stand up and be counted. That being said, I think it's perfectly reasonable to grade, and arrange pleasures in a heirarchy. Surely the reading, and contemplation of great literature is more sublime, in fact is more superior to, the pleasing sensation of having my back scratched. Surely the vicarious, gossipy, voyeuristic thrill I get by flipping through the first 20 pages or so of US Weekly, is a less refined, a more base diversion than my perusal of say, the latest Malcolm Gladwell essay in the New Yorker. One traffics in the invasive ogling of pretty, or otherwise famous people, the other traffics in ideas. That is not a negligible difference. To sum up, I intend, in this space as in my everyday social existence, to embrace my lesser vices, to wear my gobbling desire for crude, pop entertainment proudly, as a badge upon my sleeve. And as proof of this, I will be blogging, in intricate detail and with (I hope) minimal condescension, that greatest of post-millineal popular entertainments: American Idol.