News

Even the official Academy Awards web site isn’t allowed to show trailers and clips from the official nominees. Score one for the studios?

So it’s another dreary Saturday (weather-wise) and I’m trying to make my way through this article, List of Pardons Included Many Tied to Power by Campbell Robertson (NY Times).

It tells of a traffic accident:

“Scotty Plunk, the driver of the truck, was killed. The driver of the Toyota, 19-year-old Joel Vann, had been drinking so much that he did not remember the accident.”

Plunk killed by teenage drunk driver, Vann. The story is about why Haley Barbour—notoriously corrupt governor of Mississippi—pardoned him.

“It is unclear what persuaded the governor to pardon Mr. Vann; his clemency application contains glowing references and a case study.”

The two parts of this sentence directly contradict each other. I’m almost certain the author meant to write “It is clear”. That’s a pretty major slip-up so early in the article (the part that even the worst editor will actually read). The next couple of sentences are even more mysterious. The letter applying for clemency came from Vann’s father and “traced [young] Vann’s path from rehabilitation through college, marriage and fatherhood”. That seems like a lot of living to pack in to 19 years. Either the guy’s age was given incorrectly at the beginning of the article or Vann did all of that either while pending trial or while in jail.

The article settles down after that and is quite an interesting read about the pardons made by Haley Barbour on his way out the door: “he issued 10 times as many as his four predecessors combined”. The people released were both overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly well-connected. “Many of the applications contain the type of recommendations that a poor person could be hard-pressed to collect: character references from state legislators or local elected officials.” One guy—“serving 33 years in prison for growing eight pounds of marijuana”—spent $1000 he barely had to apply for a pardon and never heard back.

The basic problem is that the law even allows such a sweeping override of the judgments of courts by an official. The problem with executive override also exists at a federal level. “Grants of clemency are solely at the governor’s discretion, and he is not obligated to give his reasoning.” Not only does the governor (or president) have final say, there is no way to prove corruption because he or she has power of fiat.

These are some thoughts I had as a read through the State of the Union 2012 – Transcript by Barack Obama (C-Span) (PDF).

The Synopsis[1]

1. The U.S. military is the awesome.
2. Soldiers are better than civilians.
3. American businesses have been wayward, but should be forgiven and paid to come home.
4. Americans are wicked smart and more enterprising than anyone else on the planet, but they have been chronically undereducated and under-trained
5. College costs too much; college tuition loans will kill us all
6. We need more fossil fuel energy; we need to subsidize those companies that promise to get more of it for us
7. America’s infrastructure is in bad shape. It would be great if it wasn’t.
8. Anyone with an underwater mortgage should be able to refinance it at an affordable and stable interest rate
9. We should totally go after financial malfeasance with renewed gusto (or any gusto at all)
10. Tax the rich, even Obama, who’s pretty rich himself. For God’s sakes, your position is utterly indefensible.
11. Out government is broken. But it’s totally going to fix itself. You just watch.
12. The Congress and Senate are full of millionaires who cheat and lie a lot. Corruption should no longer be legal.
13. Iran? Fuck those guys. Totally still hungry for nukes; don’t care what the facts are. More yummy sanctions for them!
14. And in conclusion: veterans are awesome, too. Did I mention that our military is the awesome? I think I might have.
15. God loves America more than any other country. So there.

Live Blog

These are just notes I wrote as I read through, with some light editing.

This year’s theme—as it is almost every year—is the promulgation of myths. The first one to be addressed—as it is almost every year—is how mind-bendingly awesome the U.S. military is, how selfless and efficient and goal-oriented and moral and all-out fan-fucking-tabulous everyone in the military is—to a man (or woman, presumably). And how they are, in fact, collectively worth every last penny spent on them and just about the ass-kickingest thing about being an American is knowing that so much of the taxes you pay on the pitiful income you get goes to supporting this unprecedented force for good.

I hope I’m not overstating here. I think I captured the level of Obama’s adulation and sycophancy pretty well.

They are, in fact, so awesome that we should all try to be like them (undereducated and mindlessly focused on executing orders regardless of how immoral? –ed.) Our left-wing peacenik liberal president just told the country that it should follow the example set by the military. Recent immigrants from the DPRK just got a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs. The beloved leader has spoken.

But the SOTU is about dreams—specifically an American one of an America that never really existed—and, while we’re dreaming, let’s spin a fantasy of what America could be like. The country to which Obama’s America aspires sounds suspiciously like pretty much any country in Europe, actually. But enough about cool things we could do. Let’s talk about something more American than apple pie: war. Let’s hark back to WWII—because, really, who wants to listen to a State of the Union where we don’t hear about how awesome America was just after WWII? Über-altruistic Marshall Plan for the win—anyone who doesn’t think so is a liar and a fool.

On to the economy!

“In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them. Banks had made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money. Regulators had looked the other way, or didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behavior.

“It was wrong. It was irresponsible.”

And yet, my administration hasn’t pursued criminal prosecution or asset-retrieval with even a hint of the alacrity that you would expect. Oops…he didn’t really say that, but if he has a soul at all, he was thinking it.

“And we’ve put in place new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like that never happens again.”

That is a lie. He knows it’s a lie. Every fatcat in the room knows it’s a lie. The entire media knows it’s a lie. The captains of industry, chortling into their rolls of fat like Jabba the Hutt—they’re laughing because they paid him to say it.

Hell, Chris Dodd—the co-sponsor of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act—is now president of the MPAA, so you can see how dedicated he is to keeping money and corruption out of Washington. The other co-sponsor—Barney Frank—was essentially gerrymandered out of a job this year. Glass-Steagal has not been re-instated, fines and settlements are still laughable wherever nearly non-existent regulation actually rears its pitiful head and so on and so forth.

Yeah, it was a lie.

On to the auto industry, which is, apparently kicking ass these days. Too bad we (the people) already sold back our stake, right?

“And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.”

When? Last year? In the three years since their bailout? And what kind of jobs are these? And just so we’re clear: the President is holding up Detroit—Detroit (just to be clear)—as a sign of hope for America. Unemployment in the Detroit metropolitan area is rampant, with various sources citing as low as 11.2% (government numbers) to just over 20% (Simply Hired) to almost 30% (HuffPo). Kudos to Obama for even daring to mention Detroit, but as a success story? What is Michelle growing in her organic garden? I thought Obama stopped smoking?

American companies should try to be a little nicer to America. We’re hurting over here, so companies, listen up:

“Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed.”

Great. It’s not rape if we ask for it, right? Cue the tax amnesty where companies can repatriate profits at almost no tax burden, cue the bills to remove pesky regulations on working conditions (how else are we supposed to compete with the Chinese?) Cue an accelerated race to the bottom.

But Occupy Wall Street has had some effect because Obama’s back at it, talking about the inequality of opportunity and relative tax burden.

“We should start with our tax code. Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world.”

So, how to solve this? I guess if we reduce the tax burden to 1%, some companies might be guilted into actually paying them. Better than nothing, right? And then they’ll be able to do that business at home, right? So abolishing corporate taxes completely would fill the bill? Sounds like a socialist plot.

“It’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized.”

Aren’t the slave labor markets to which we are trying so fervently to return much more of a problem? You know, when you talk about being “competitive”? And those foreign manufacturers just choked on their suppers when they heard America accuse them of heavily subsidizing their industries. Methinks the pot calleth the kettle black.

On to energy! How’s the green-energy president doing?

“Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my Administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.”

Yay! … wait, what? WTF?

“Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade”

Yay! Untold environmental damage in exchange for 2 months worth of jobs over the next nine years. Yay!

“And by the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of thirty years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock – reminding us that Government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.”

I have a question. What’s that technology called? F-something, no?[2]

“Help manufacturers eliminate energy waste in their factories and give businesses incentives to upgrade their buildings”

And here we go: more giveaways to big business because how are they supposed to declare gargantuan, untaxed profits when they have actually pay for their own businesses? Obama chastises the oil companies—“We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough.”—and now wants to subsidize other energy sources, not acknowledging that it’s almost certainly the same companies hoovering up the new subsidies. These are energy companies, not just oil companies. In almost the same breath as he promises to “end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable”, he pledges to bequeath a new subsidy of “$100 Billion […] over the next decade”.

That’ll show ‘em.

But where do we get this money, Mr. President?

“Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”

OMG that would be awesome. Except for two things:

1. How much money are we actually talking here? Didn’t the military budget actually go up again? When everybody whined and bitched about the military reductions, they were actually talking about a reduction in the amount it was expected to increase. Where did we save money?
2. I will believe that money will be spent on infrastructure rather than bombs when I see it. And even then I probably won’t believe it.

But Obama wasn’t done being tough on the rich yet.

“It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. […] So if you’re a big bank or financial institution, you are no longer allowed to make risky bets with your customers’ deposits.”

I am so sure that they are positively shaking in their boots. This is along the lines of a Dad telling his son: Junior! That’s the last time you burn down our house and get away with it. Your mother and I will be much stricter with you from here on out. Now go out and play, you little rascal.

“And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis.”

This is Obama’s “moon base”.[3]

“Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.”

And this is his “Mars mission”.[4]

“But no matter what party they belong to, I bet most Americans are thinking the same thing right now: Nothing will get done this year, or next year, or maybe even the year after that, because Washington is broken. ”

That’s where the safe money is, Mr. President. I don’t think you’re going to find anyone to take the long side of that bet. All of your financial industry friends shorted your administration long ago.

“Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact.”

That’s there the bar is now: a big promise—really sticking your neck out—in Washington these days is to get Congress to stop feathering their nests by means that would land anyone else in jail for a good long stretch.

And he probably won’t even get that.

Forget it. If that’s where we are, then I say we take a mulligan.

Hey! Guess what? We haven’t talked about the military in a while. With Iraq wrapped up, let’s talk about our next target:

“Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one”

Obama thinks crippling sanctions are “diplomacy”. He thinks strong-arming the Hague into a disastrous corner is “diplomacy”. The final parts of this speech are pretty much copied word-for-word from Hillary’s recent article in Foreign Policy magazine.

Oh, and Hillary and Obama are totally convinced that Iran’s going after nukes—not just nuclear capabilities, as they have repeatedly stated, as all IAEA inspectors have confirmed, as dozens of CIA and other agencies have reported again and again and as even neocon hawk and current Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta let slip recently. On top of that, Mossad and other Israeli government agencies have declared that Iran isn’t pursuing a weapon.[5]

But hell, that’s Israel and Obama’s shout-out wasn’t meant for them, it was meant for AIPAC and others, who won’t believe that Iran doesn’t have a weapon until 9 years after a U.S. invasion of it. Better to play it safe, right?

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

This movie is dedicated to Heath Ledger—he died halfway through the filming—who stars alongside Christopher Plummer as the eponymous Doctor Parnassus. Ledger was very good; Plummer was spellbinding. The remainder of Ledger’s role was filled seamlessly by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and finally Colin Farrell, who played the character in the “imaginarium” scenes, where reality was slippery anyway. It’s never possible to predict how a Terry Gilliam movie will go, but it’s always possible to point and say “that’s definitely a Gilliam movie”. Parnassum’s cart, his show, the imaginarium, every detail just screams it. The plot weaves different times and places together, shifting and mixing and matching things like old-timey carnivals and modern-day London into one scene and portraying the homeless as lost wanderers extruded into our reality by unfortunate circumstances that occurred in a much more exciting reality. Highly recommended.

The Wolfman (2010)

Benicio del Toro plays the main role as the scion of a family headed by Anthony Hopkins, who lives on the Blackmoor estate. His brother was recently killed by an unknown but extremely savage animal. Was it a werewolf? Well, duh, that’s the name of the movie. It’s a point-by-point remake of the 1940s film of the same name. It’s pretty decent, but not really scary at all and the plot, though relatively predictable, is ably driven forward by Hopkins and del Toro.

Lonely Hearts (2006)

Salma Hayek and Jared Leto star as the real-life lonely-hearts killers from the 19402. Hayek is clearly the out-of-control driver of homicide in the pair, though Leto is only superficially more stable. Travolta is very good (instead of the creepy, crazy, bombastic Travolta we’ve gotten used to) as is his partner Gandolfini (the other partner, played by Scott Caan is a total pain-in-the-ass). In real life, the pair were convicted of killing three people, including strangling one woman’s daughter; in the movie, they killed several more. It was a decent flick, punctuated by some good scenes with Salma Hayek, who was just ruthless. The side-story of Travolta’s life and dead wife, etc. was not very interesting or believable and Laura Dern as his love interest was wasted.

OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d’espions (2006) (fr)

The original 007-spoof, starring Jean Dujardin as Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, a French spy. He thinks he’s James Bond but he’s much more Inspecteur Clouseau. It called to mind Top Secret, both in the scenery and in that it was pretty consistently funny, funnier than I remember the sequel to have been. If you like the retro-50s spy-look and tongue-in-cheek spoofing of the Ian Fleming world of spies—and you don’t mind subtitles if you don’t understand French—this is the film for you. Jean Dujardin is really good. Recommended.

Brooklyn’s Finest (2009)

An excellent cast—Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes, Don Cheadle—stars in the story of a trio of cops on the drug beat in Brooklyn. Another movie with almost no women (unless you count Ellen Barkin, who plays a ridiculous caricature of a ladder-climbing police career woman…or any of the lucky actresses who got to play the dozens of whores and playthings in the film), it was a gritty tale of undercover work, thankless police work and the tensions of the job. Looked at from a certain angle, it told a tale of tragedy and suffering, the root of which was the drug war in America. Without the drug business, there would have been no movie. It was a touch long, but still very good overall. It actually ranked up there with The Departed as far as these types of stories go.

The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

Michael Gambon plays an almost unbelievably boorish know-it-all/know-nothing restaurant owner who simply will. not. stop. talking. The restaurant and kitchen are amazingly lush and fancy and detailed and look as if they’d come from the 19th-century rather than the 20th. The arrangement of food in the kitchen looks straight out of still-life paintings. Helen Mirren plays his wife, who’s already tired of him at the beginning of the film and her thoughts quickly turn to an affair with a more cultured man, who doesn’t have a line in the film until almost an hour in. The film is shot in a very interesting way, panning back and forth along from the alley to the restaurant to the kitchen to the pantry to the lavatory, each with its own color scheme and lighting—the alley is yellow and blue, the restaurant is red, the kitchen and pantry are green and dark, the lavatory white and brightly lit. Gambon’s violent and misogynistic performance is definitely not for the faint-of-heart, though. Neither is the naked couple forced to escape in the back of a meat truck filled with rotting wares. Mirren is a long way from the Queen and Gambon quite a long way from Dumbledore in this one.

There Will be Blood (2007)

Daniel Day Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, an oilman working in the early 1900s in the western part of America. The movie is ostensibly based on the book Oil! by Upton Sinclair but only the first half of the movie kinda sorta takes some parts of the plot from the book. The whole socialist struggle part that comprises 2/3 of the book is thrown by the wayside and replaced with a much stronger focus on the father rather than the son. The father, instead of a stalwart businessman who slides into piggish greed, starts off as pretty much a bastard and slides into drunkenness and violence.[1] The character of Eli (the preacher/healer) stays relatively true, but otherwise it’s a slow-moving and largely boring film. The book, alas, was much better, but it was about socialism and Paul and Bertie whereas the movie is about Daniel and Eli, with Paul sent off … somewhere … and Bertie transformed to H.W., who is deafened and exiles himself to Mexico. Not really recommended unless you’re a big fan of DDL.

Nothing But the Truth (2008)

Kate Beckinsale plays the Robert Novak role and Vera Farmiga plays the Valerie Plame role in a retelling of the outing of a CIA agent with a bit of Judith Miller thrown in. Unlike Novak though—and like Miller—Beckinsale actually goes to jail for it.[2] The jail looks absolutely horrifying, reminding me of the descriptions of immigration jails in the book The Power of Love. Matt Dillon is in hardass mode, David Schwimmer is in whiner-mode (big surprise) and Alan Alda and Noah Wyle are good as Beckinsale’s legal team. I’ve never seen Kate Beckinsale with so many spoken lines and so little cable-work and killing of vampires. All in all, a very tight movie with an honest message and a really good ending. Recommended.

Dogville (2003)

A truly unique film, directed by Lars von Trier, about a lonely little village in the mountains called Dogville. It stars Nicole Kidman as a young woman who comes to the town under somewhat suspicious circumstances, but is soon accepted by the townsfolk—played by various well-known actors—though under strange conditions. The set is like a stage set and extremely minimal, with buildings demarcated only by lines on the floor, some sparse furniture and only minimal walls and ceilings. The relationship between Grace and the town deteriorates as the woman become more abusive and the men start assaulting her (led by the ever-irascible Stellan Skarsgård) as they realize she is trapped and they make her a slave, refusing to even pay her wages anymore. Not only is she raped by the men, she is subsequently accused by the wives of seduction and punished. The self-righteous punishment is harder to take somehow, reminding me of the Puritans of The Scarlet Letter. The townsfolk reveal their true natures and it is ugly; they even chain her up and tie a bell to her collar so she can’t escape. Von Trier has a reputation for deviation and he does not disappoint; the ostensible protagonist is a self-serving bastard who’s deluded by his own goodness. A tough movie to watch—the first half is kind of boring, but it’s just waiting to spring the trap of the second half, which is harrowing. And then, after nearly three hours with no music whatsoever, the credits roll accompanied by David Bowie’s Young American.[3]

Antichrist (2009)

At first, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover seemed somewhat out there and extreme. Then along came Dogville with its bland innocence that tips into a tale of the casual evil and brutish selfishness of man. And then there’s Von Trier’s second entry in the weird sweepstakes, a horror film starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg which tells the tale of a couple who lose their son and try to get back to some form of sanity. She takes it pretty hard and he, the therapist, tries to help, though in a very arrogant way. Things spiral out of control with hints of satanism, the brutishness of nature, sadomasochism and, once again, a big, heavy wheel getting attached to someone—this time even more uncomfortably than with an iron collar (imagine away). The animals—representations of nature—are also at their worst, not threatening but just awful, awful images. I have to say that it’s a good movie, but only for people who can appreciate a film that plumbs the absolute depths of despair. Lots of nudity but not in an alluring way[4] and definitely not a date movie.

La Belle Noiseuse (1991) (fr)

The story of a budding young artist who pays a visit to his hero, who’s fallen on hard times creatively. After the young man and his enchanting accompaniment spend a long evening at dinner and visiting the old studios, it is decided that the old man will try once again to complete his masterpiece, using said accompaniment as a model. The scenery is so spot-on for the French countryside that you can almost smell the old stone, the dust. You can hear the grit from the old stones everywhere. The house is a huge old manor with towers surrounded by gardens and endless countryside. The crickets are incessant; it is high, hot summer. The studio has tables scattered throughout, each covered with the detritus of years of work. It oozes nonchalant authenticity from the simple breakfast table with bowls for coffee cups to the dusty old bottle of some bathtub cognac the men drink from in the studio. The pace is quite slow, but not agonizing, because each second is made to be important somehow. The camera lingers for long, long minutes on the sketchpad, on the canvas as the artist learns once again to create. The sound of his pen, pencil and Conté on the paper is unnerving as hell and you can feel the tedium emanating from Emmanuelle Béart—who plays the model Marianne—as she tries to hold her pose. She’s nude and the artist poses her like a doll, no sexual tension whatsoever, all business. The large drawings he makes aren’t very good, but the sketchbooks are much better. They discuss the process endlessly. She’s absolutely alluring, which is good because she’s on-screen a lot in this 4-hour–long movie, although her nudity is soon just as unremarkable for the viewer as it is for Frenhofer, the artist, who’s played pitch-perfect by Michel Piccoli. The others? Mostly moping about, with Julienne and Nicolas winning the prize in a brother-and-sister-tag-team of insufferable melancholy.[5]

Invictus (2009)

Morgan Freeman in the role he was born to play—Nelson Mandela—and Matt Damon as the captain of the Springboks—the South African rugby team. Directed by Clint Eastwood, this quite typical sports movie—(spoiler alert) crappy team inspired by nation to win World Cup—is a great yarn and all the more so because it’s true. It actually happened. Some of the minor details showing the thawing of animosity between blacks and whites were surely added for effect, but for the most part, it’s true: the rugby team did travel to townships to visit with kids and teach them the game; the security detail was composed of blacks and whites; and goddamn if they didn’t actually win the world cup right there in Durban, South Africa. It was Mandela’s way of starting to heal the nation, to move on from the past, and it worked. I can see how you might be in too cynical a mood for some of the details—young black kid creeps closer to two white cops listening to the game on the radio and they all celebrate together at the end—but Eastwood shows these details rather than having characters say them, so you’d have to be in a really, really bad mood.

You Don’t Know Jack (2010)

A riveting biographical film about Jack Kevorkian starring Al Pacino as Kevorkian, John Goodman as his friend Neal, Brenda Vaccaro as his sister Margo, Danny Huston as his fantastic and dedicated lawyer and friend and Susan Sarandon as Janet Good, another friend and partner and finally, patient. Kevorkian’s contribution was amazing and his logic and arguments impossible to refute without resorting to religion or some other humbug. Kevorkian is just about the only reason America isn’t completely in the dark ages vis à vis euthanasia, especially when compared to countries like the Netherlands or Switzerland. An excellent film with Pacino putting in a fantastic performance; a bit long, but the story had many chapters. The final court case illustrates very nicely how the courts are just a game to be played instead of a place to find justice. Everything’s ruled as irrelevant even for facts that are clearly relevant if one were to go by logic rather than games. The best part is when the ADs schemed to drop the assisted-suicide charge so that the family testimony can’t be used to elicit sympathy from the jury; with only the murder charge, Kevorkian can call no witnesses and has no defense. The judge is sanctimonious at best, pretending to represent justice even though it’s clear where her heart lies.[6] After reading The Innocent Man by John Grisham, I’m left with even less faith in the justice system in the States than I had; so very far from the witch trials we are not.

Caché (2005) (fr)

Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil star as a couple: he a moderately famous intellectual-round-table host on television and she in publishing. One day, they receive videotapes depicting their home and other familiar places, as if they were under surveillance. Who’s sending the tapes? Why? Is there some deep secret (un caché) from their past that someone is trying to push into the open? Slow but well-paced with each scene divulging another drab (soupçon) of information about the secret. Binoche is very good, as always. And the secret? Some of the videotape sequences are quite long and you have to really be absorbed to stay with it. If you’re easily bored—or you require the closure of definitely finding out the whole and entire secret—this is probably not the film for you.

Going the Distance (2010)

Justin Long and Drew Barrymore get into a relationship that turns long-distance. The first half is pretty good whereas the second kind of devolves into a bunch of tedious clichés involving a boatload of whining, mostly from Long, and insipidity, mostly from Barrymore. They so desperately want to be together that they have to figure out whether they’re going to live in New York City or San Fransisco. The cool thing is that she’s the one with a Master’s degree and a job opportunity in her career path, and he’s the one who works as a music scout for a shitty company he hates, but (at first) they decide that she will give up her job and wait tables in New York. That they even consider this option is ridiculous (and pretty sexist). The film is buoyed by two things: it’s rated R, so it’s a relationship/sex film about young adults with actual swearing, adult themes and some sex instead of a castrated PG-13 film about same. And the second thing is a pretty strong supporting cast: Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Jim Gaffigan and Christina Applegate in particular. Applegate has hands-down the funniest line—“Maya: statue!”—which she shouts to keep her daughter in line; the child responds by freezing in place. Sudeikis and Day are pretty good as relatively well-balanced bros and Gaffigan is good as Applegate’s disaffected husband.

Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008) (fr)

The story of an employee of La Poste who, like all other bank employees, wants to take his family to the Riviera, mostly because his hot wife wants it (cue the sexist caricature of shallow French wife). After a few mishaps, he is instead transferred to Bergues, far in the north of France, where it’s cold and where he’ll be going alone. The wife stays with their boy in Salon because she can’t go with him; they act as if he’s going to a gulag, which is pretty hilarious. Once he goes north, his wife appreciates his sacrifice for the family and refuses to believe anything but the worst of the region and will not believe that he’s actually starting to enjoy himself up there. The locals there have a very special accent, as exemplified by Dany Boon (who was also very good in Rien à déclarer and who grew up in the North, speaking that local dialect). The outrageousness of the accent varies, but some of the older folk are nearly impossible to understand (even with subtitles). The story is relatively simple, with the manager from the south trying to help a young genial postman (Boon) move on with his life. The day they ride the postal route together—ostensibly to teach Boon how to avoid taking all the drinks offered to him on his route—is worth the price of entry. Highly recommended.

La Pianiste (2001) (fr)

Another film from director Michael Haneke (he also directed Caché, above), this one starring Isabelle Huppert as a highly repressed piano teacher living with her mother (who’s an utter shrew, a relentless control-freak) and teaching at a conservatory in Paris. She has a dark side, with her passion squeezing through the cracks of her tight carapace in ways that are equal parts embarrassing, pathetic, illegal and painful. She is a ticking time bomb for all around her, including her students. Then she meets Walter, or rather, Walter pursues her. She acquiesces, but only on her own twisted terms. Little does he know that he’s fallen in love with a masochist; the part where he reads aloud her written instructions to him is really good; he’s angry but slowly realizes she is just as powerless before her desires as he is. That is, he realizes he can only have her on these terms—and that those terms aren’t even of her own choosing. She is just as trapped by them as he; that she has only desires but no experience means their encounter will be just as much of an unknown for her as him. Will either of them enjoy it? In such a carefully planned movie—carefully and lovingly shot, with careful dialogue and framing—how the hell did they think they would make a handsome, budding engineer, gifted pianist/hockey-player believable? Who does that? What is this, Buckaroo Banzai? At first it seems a story of a nearly completely unsympathetic self-destructing control-freak, but it is bigger than that: it is a story of obsession—unheeding, insatiable, destructive obsession.[7] Another film that’s not exactly for the faint-of-heart.

Micmacs à tire-larigot (2009) (fr)

A strange little comedy—again starring Dany Boon—with a wonderful look and feel to it, lovingly shot…Gilliam-esque, in fact (but perhaps with even higher production quality that he usually gets … it’s a really nice-looking film, is what I’m trying to get across here). Boon stars as a man who lost his father to a mine created by one arms manufacturer and who is an innocent bystander shot by the bullet from another. After his travails, he is homeless and is taken in by les Micmacs à tire-larigot, who are a hodge-podge cadre of similarly disadvantaged folks with unique talents (i.e. what the more-ungenerous might call freaks and outcasts). Together, they start a well-planned subversive campaign to bring down both firms (the film is pretty stridently anti-armament). The tricks and plans (and gadgets and devices and machines) are exquisite and executed to perfection (the final play is awesome) and without excessive violence, as has become de rigeur in this genre. Now this is a good action movie—forget the ludicrous over-the-top crap of The Losers or other such pap—this is the real deal.[8]

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

This film stars Brad Pitt as James and Casey Affleck as Ford and tells the story of the tail-end of James’s career and life, which ended, more or less, at the same time. Affleck plays one weird duck and the rest of the gang seems about as clever and sympathetic as Alex’s chums from The Clockword Orange (two of the more prominent ones are Jamie Renner and Sam Rockwell). James visits people and places as if he were Death itself, showing up like a ghost in the dead of night, full of menace and foreboding. The film purports to be semi-biographical and is partly told through a voice-over. The two leads are good, as almost always. This is a historical Western, not an action Western and it’s over 2½ hours long: it’s nicely filmed and interesting, but not that exciting. The shooting is depicted as a cowardly act almost gratefully set up and accepted by James himself, more an assisted suicide than an assassination. This is neither a hagiography of James nor Ford; the film is almost entirely bereft of sympathetic figures.

Crazy Heart (2009)

Jeff Bridges stars as Bad Blake, a country-western music star who, at 59, is on the downhill side of his career. He continues to tour the country, playing smaller and smaller places, almost—but, not quite—crippled by a drinking problem. Bridges pretty much knocks it out of the park with this performance (he was awarded an Oscar), drawling and slurring his way through the role so believably you can’t believe he is anyone other than Bad Blake. Colin Farrell is his protegé who’s moved on to a booming career of his own and their relationship is nicely handled, with Farrel’s character actually being much nicer than the reputation he has with Bad.[9] Maggie Gyllenhall looks even younger than ever as a cub reporter for a Santa Fe paper who interviews him—well, it’s more like they interview each other. They start to build a relationship despite his raging alcoholism and chain-smoking. He makes an effort and his music—as far as I’m concerned—improves markedly; by the end, he sounds more like Leonard Cohen than his initial twangy country/western. A well-made film with a riveting performance by Bridges, but it’s quite predictable, so don’t expect any surprises in either plot or dialogue.

88 Minutes (2007)

Another movie about a party animal/alcoholic, this one a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI played by Al Pacino. Pacino’s hair is distractingly huge. He’s got big fans and big enemies and an old case is coming back to haunt him. The 88 minutes refers to the amount of time he has left to live, according to the people plaguing/hunting him one morning. It’s one of those movies where every single one of his students is attractive as are all of his coworkers and research assistants.[10] Strangely enough, at no point do you worry that he won’t solve the case—basically we’re talking Sherlock Holmes as played by a short Italian guy with a goatee (I’m pretty sure Downey Jr.‘s not Italian, otherwise that description would match him too). Some of the acting is pretty wooden, with Leelee Sobieski taking first prize there. It’s not terrible and it’s entertaining enough, especially if you like crime/mystery movies, but it was more like a well-produced made-for-TV crime drama than a full-blown theater experience.

The Last Station (2010)

An amazing cast lifts this period piece set in early 1900s Russia above one’s expectations. James McAvoy plays referee/historian/amanuensis to Tolstoy and his wife, played by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, respectively. Tolstoy is surrounded by spineless, self-righteous, seriously repressed and psychologically damaged-if-not-outright-unstable sycophants—some of them are absolutely unbearable and are typical adherents who are capable only of understanding the great man’s work on a superficial level[11]—among them his daughter and Chertkov, played by Paul Giamatti, who’s scheming to get Tolstoy to follow his own teachings and give away his copyrights to the public domain. This is a laudable goal, but the suspicion is that he has ulterior motives and the countess, of course, won’t hear of it. Mirren and Plummer are fantastic. There are similarities between the depiction of Tolstoy and that of Frenhofer the painter in La Belle Noiseuse, as genuises who are both supported by their significant others. They cannot live without them, but also distracted by them. It’s utterly laughable that this movie was rated R for the single scene between Mcavoy and Kerry Condon, which lasts seconds and is possibly the sweetest deflowering—his—that could be filmed. Rated R for that. For boobies. For two seconds. The U.S. film industry is about as puritanical as the worst of the Tolstoyans.

Moneyball (2011)

Brad Pitt stars as Bill Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, and Jonah Hill as Peter Brand, who changed everything about how baseball teams are created, maintained and how a winning team can be created without superstars. They start to think in terms of buying runs rather than superstars, looking at the players as a market of players, with an emphasis on the undervalued ones. Brad Pitt is…well, he’s Brad Pitt playing his typical role, so he’s, well, awesome: the first meeting with his staff where Jonah Hill (the numbers guy) is also in attendance is absolutely wonderfully paced and executed. Once you see him in this role (based on the character from the book by Michael Lewis), you really can’t imagine who else would have played the character. Philip Seymour Hoffman is nearly unrecognizable as the coach, who has serious issues viewing the game as one of statistics rather than players. Probably one of the more interesting baseball movies I’ve ever seen. Recommended.

Edge of Darkness (2010)

This is how I picture script negotiations with Mel Gibson:

Director: How do you like the script, Mel?
Mel: Haven’t read it. I have a question, though.
Director: Shoot.
Mel: It’s a two-parter, actually. Is my character a former member of law-enforcement who’s now a slightly weird loner? And does my character suffer a horrific loss of his only close family member early in the film for which he can ruthlessly avenge himself throughout the film?
Director: Yes. And yes.
Mel: I have a follow-up question.
Director: Shoot.
Mel: Why not Liam Neeson?
Director: He’s too expensive.
Mel: Where do I sign?

Yes, Gibson channels De Niro at one point (while beating one suspect). And has he always been so short? And what’s up with naming the hero “Craven”? The last half hour makes up for a slow start, though. Much better than 88 minutes.

Modern Times (1936)

A (quasi-)silent film starring Charlie Chaplin as a worker in a state-of-the-art factory who tires of the tedium of being—quite literally—a cog in the machine and starts to cause trouble. He is arrested and sent to jail; he gets out and meets the lovely Paulette Goddard, who’s also a child of the streets. He and she go on to get jobs at a department store and so on and so forth. The film is composed of several skits: one of the best shows Chaplin rollerskating blindfolded in the department store on the fourth floor with no railing; the scene as a waiter in the cafè is also a marvel of physical comedy. The film is about hard-luck post-Depression America. It mirrors some of the stories from today: people desperately want to work and are driven to desperation to keep their heads above water. And The Man is always there to push you back under. It’s a comedy, but a dark comedy.

The Great Dictator (1940)

Another film—a talkie this time—starring Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard. This one’s a spoof of Germany, with Chaplin playing both a Jewish barber and the Führer himself. As the barber, he’s a soldier in the first world war who crash-lands and gets amnesia—for the next 25 years. He comes back to the ghetto to find that things have a changed a bit. As the Führer, he hams it up with his own made-up, Germanic-sounding and with English-intermingled language, the shortest phrases of which translate to paragraphs in English and vice versa. The barber eventually is swept up in a revolution, is captured and sent to a concentration camp. Some scenes bring to mind the films of Mel Brooks and the stormtroopers and other soldiers all remind me of the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz (actually quite a few of the scenes were reminiscent of that movie’s style). The scenes are more cohesive than in Modern Times (the shave set to Brahms’s Hungarian Dance 5 stands out). After some more misadventures, the film ends with a speech by the barber (now posing as the dictator), partially excerpted below:

“Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. […] Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men − machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! […] Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people.”

The Social Network (2011)

I hated everyone in this movie, except for the young lady who was Eisenberg’s girlfriend for the first five minutes of the movie. She was clever and destroyed him in that conversation. Sorkin’s dialogue has its moments and Fincher’s direction is good and Jesse Eisenberg plays a semi-autistic asshole quite well and Justin Timberlake plays a professional bullshitter quite well—bravo to both of them—but it’s not really pleasant to watch. Most of Eisenberg’s (Zuckerberg’s) outbursts felt like long-form l’esprit d’escaliers that people just like Eisenberg’s character think up for themselves when they’re feeling neglected and want to exact revenge on an unfair and inferior world with their overarching cleverness. Everybody in the Ivy League is hot and thin and fit, so they should be worshiped, I guess? It felt like watching a high-production-value version of Beverly Hills 90210. I have no idea what a line like “Bosnia: they have no roads but they have Facebook” is even supposed to mean. Is it supposed to make the girl who said it look ignorant? Or is it an extemporaneous comment made by the scriptwriter through a minor character? Who knows? Who cares? There are no heroes in this movie. Two offended princes of privilege met with Larry Summers[12] and I had no idea who to root for; they each got their shots in and none of it was satisfying.

This graphic Geeks versus Non-Geeks when Doing Repetitive Tasks (How-to Geek) illustrates quite nicely how programmers approach the world of problem-solving.

The chart does not show just much time must be spent before the programmer wins, that being dependent on the complexity of the task. The probability that the task will recur is also highly relevant, as automation of a smallish, one-time task is useless. Neither of those things will stop a determined programmer, though, who will automate no matter what.