Category Archives: Film

Column of the Day

From “Why No Oscar Love for ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’?”, Tim Treman, The Daily Beast:

“This is a film about loss and grief, and not making it — themes that without a looping back narrative of success and transcendence do not resound with Academy members.  The most significant character next to Isaac’s is off-screen, dead, a best friend who has taken his own life.  Davis is not only rootless, he is lonely without hope.  Typically in films you root for the hero to overcome staggering odds, to pilot a plane to safety or endure cruelty on a horrific scale.  During Inside Llewyn Davis you just wish Davis had a warm coat and that someone would answer when he rings on their doorbell.

“Throughout, you feel the bone-chilling cold of the streets and Davis’s loss.  This isn’t a film about conquering demons or surmounting impossible odds, it is a film about losing and losing more, the chipping away of character and of hope.  It is about losing your dreams, not achieving them, life shrinking, hope diminishing, aspirations dissolving.”

http://thebea.st/1eLqiLT

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Glenn Beck is planning to build a $2 billion Libertarian residential community in Texas called Independence Park.  It will produce its own food and energy and do TV and film production.

Also, fake historian David Barton will create a “national archive” where children can be “deprogrammed.”

I think we know how this ends — a long line of folks waiting for their cup of Kool-Aid.

Can you imagine what it’s like to be inside Glenn Beck’s head?

 

 

Are the Coptic Christians Fall/Front Guys?

Morris Sadek is a Coptic Christian living outside Washington, D. C., who lost his Egyptian citizenship this year for anti-Islam activities.  On September 4, he emailed a link to “Innocence of Muslims,” to a newspaper reporter in Egypt, Gamel Girgis.  Girgis covers Christian Egyptians living abroad and had an ongoing relationship with Sadek as a source for stories.  Sadek told Girgis he produced the video.

At first Girgis didn’t want to write about the video, but Sadek pushed him, and on September 6, Sadek published a three-paragraph story.    The next day an Islamic web forum referenced the Girgis article, and more newspapers began writing about the video.

But there wasn’t much attention until Sunday the 9th, when a Salafist TV station showed part of the video.  Then Facebook pages popped up, calling for protests on September 10.

Then these planned protests became the story, widely reported in newspapers on September 10.

So the protests began in Cairo on September 11 and quickly spread all over the Muslim world.

For more, see “Anti-U. S. outrage over video began wit Christian activist’s phone call to  a reporter,” Nancy A. Yousset and Amina Ismail, McClatchy Newspapers

What I want to know is if the production and publicizing of this video is strictly the doing of Egyptian Coptic Christians living in the U. S., or if there are ties to the American political right.  Is this just about religion or is it about politics, specifically the presidential election?  Are the Coptic Christians we’re being told about just fall/front guys?

Disney Glorifies Rebekah Brooks

Why is Disney glorifying Rebekah Brooks?  The heroine of Disney’s new animated feature Brave may be called Merida, but she looks exactly like Brooks.

Why would Disney want to  make a role model of a power-mad woman who flattered and toadied to prime ministers and media moguls to get ahead, her ethics and morals as tousled as her riotous red locks, who would interfere with the murder investigation of a child to further her demented ambition?

Becky Brooks makes Becky Sharpe look as selfless and virtuous as Melanie Hamilton Wilkes.  Becky Brooks belongs in a prison cell, not an animation cel.