Month: April 2009

“Glad to be weirdly close.”

I watched a couple of movies this weekend.

On Saturday, I watched Synecdoche, New York, which writer-director Charlie Kaufman describes on the DVD as like “going through a dream reality — even though it’s not a dream.” I feel like I need to see it again. I’m just not yet sure that I want to. I liked it a lot — it’s clever and funny and breathtaking and strange — but what it’s not is immediately accessible. It’s a challenge, a movie that makes you really work to understand it — which probably sealed its fate at the box office. In a roundtable discussion by bloggers included on the DVD extras, the film gets compared briefly to David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive, and I think the comparison is incredibly apt. Yet Kaufman’s is a much warmer and more humane surrealism than Lynch’s, less interested in peeling back a facade to reveal the seedy, nightmarish reality beneath than in lifting back the layers of our shared nightmare to reveal the humanity within.

On Sunday, I watched State of Play, which I don’t think I’ll need to see a second time, but which I also quite enjoyed. It’s a smart, funny, and tense political thriller — maybe not the best of its kind, or even as good as the original BBC miniseries*, but well acted and a lot of fun. It does fetishize print journalism and make fun of news bloggers maybe just little too much — and Scott Tobias isn’t wrong abut the “the politics of [t]his political thriller get[tting] muddled in all the rug-pulling” — but none of that really bothered me. It’s a lot of fun for what it is, and it’s kept moving by some tense scenes, smart dialogue, and engaging performances.

* So I hear, anyway.

Happy thoughts (3)

It wasn’t too hard to find happy thoughts today, what with the gorgeous weather and my decision earlier in the week to take off from work. My mother came home from the hospital yesterday, and while she’s still fairly achy, tired, and on a low-fat diet, she’s doing well. Thanks again to everyone for the kind words and thoughts, especially earlier in the week before her surgery.

I spent most of today prepping copies of Kaleidotrope, which — god willing and the creek don’t rise — will get mailed out tomorrow morning. That and just enjoying the start of my three-day weekend.

“Let me tell you how it will be”

Andrew Sullivan is right:

But it seems odd to describe this as anything but a first stab at creating opposition to the Obama administration’s spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush’s. The tea-parties are as post-partisan as Reynolds, one of the most relentlessly partisan bloggers on the web. When you see them holding up effigies of Bush, who was, unlike Obama, supposed to be the fiscal conservative, let me know.But the substantive critique must remain the primary one. Protesting government spending is meaningless unless you say what you’d cut.

If you favor no bailouts, then say so. If you want to see the banking system collapse, then say so. If you think the recession demands no fiscal stimulus, then say so. If you favor big cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, social security and defense, then say so. I keep waiting for [Glenn] Reynolds to tell us what these protests are for; and he can only spin what they are against.

All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.

Via Mark Evanier

And for a little more perspective, Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M – Th 11p / 10c
Nationwide Tax Protests
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Economic Crisis Political Humor

Friday various

  • Very minor 24 spoiler warning. The show is moving to New York next season. I wonder if this means I should start watching it again. I haven’t watched an episode in over four and a half years, but it would be interesting to see if I spot anything I recognize. [via]
  • Is your favorite television show in danger of being canceled? Well then don’t watch it — at least, not on television. It’s a compelling argument. If you’re not a Nielsen family, it’s maybe better to watch online (legally) where your viewership is counted. [via]
  • Then again, if cable companies like Time Warner have their way, pretty soon watching online won’t be economically feasible for most people.
  • Unless, of course, we get the sort of jobs that only pay well on TV. I can see this much from experience, editorial assistants don’t make anything like they seem to make on Ugly Betty. Heck, most editors don’t either.
  • Finally, photographer Chino Otsuka digitally added her modern self to childhood photos. It makes for a weird sort of time travel. I quite like it. [via]