Always remember the MSM is superior to the Shadow Media, because they painstakingly verify all of their claims before putting them into print, unlike we rank amateurs and pajama-wearing shut-ins and lunatics.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (8)
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Sigh. It's not like we didn't see this coming. Sort of.

Knowing that the first two were weak, I severely lowered my expectations for this one. I went in hoping for some eye candy, a passable script, and the HORRIFYINGLY TORTUROUS DEATH OF JAR JAR. All I came out with was the eye candy.

Someone needs to inform George Lucas (who I now officially despise) that special effects SUPPLEMENT a script, they don't replace it. You need good writing. All the big explosions, CG characters and lightsaber fights in the world aren't going to hide the fact that you have BAD DIALOGUE. Not to mention the ham fisted and completely unsubtle political commentary that absolutely welds the once-timeless fairy tale to the current political situation. Great job there George - you got your jackass political point across at the expense of the mystique of the series. Thanks for that.

Speaking of mystique... one of the things that made the original series cool was the fact that there were no (or very few) Jedi left. We knew they were cool; and we saw them doing some cool things. But Lucas was good at only giving out subtle cool stuff at first, and then escalating it, slowly, to really cool stuff, like Luke's acrobatic wire-fu lightsaber skills on Jabba's skiff.

For a kid, the hint of something cool is often more interesting than actually seeing something cool, because of course it's like waiting for presents on Christmas. What you hope your toys will be is always much better than what they turn out to be.

But this entire first series -- nevermind the fact that we know how it's going to end, and that everyone seems to just show up to quickly do the bullet-point action required of him to "set up" the already-made first trilogy -- has lots of Jedi. Doing lots of cool things. All of the time.

And I have to say I prefered the mystery better. As it's sometimes sexier to imagine someone naked than to actually see them naked.

There's no mystery here, no questions to be debated (like we all wondered-- could Yoda really fight, if he had to? -- that little question was asked endlessly by schoolboys when I was a kid; now we know the answer, and the answer turns out to be "Yes, but he looks ridiculous doing so," as we'd always supected he would). Lucas just dispenses of mystery -- and the Campbellian mythos, the deeper resonances he's always nattering on about -- and just throws a lot of stunts and lightsabers and stupid looking monsters at the screen.

I much preferred Luke's quest to be a Jedi, not knowing quite what a Jedi was, to seeing Jedi every three minutes, and even getting into the rather boring politics of the Jedi council.

Heart of Darkness made a point in its first few pages, which proved true for the book (and of course for Apocalypse Now as well): It's always the question that's more interesting than the answer, the mystery that's more compelling than the actual solution.

Maybe Lucas should have read less Campbell and more Conrad.

This is going to suck.

I was right to have a bad feeling about this.

Just Like Siskel & Ebert, Except Both Retards Update: "Someone" disagrees with Marc's review:

I saw it. Dude, this is way off.

My reaction to all the "political message/bad dialogue/bad acting" whinge posts...

There was dialogue in that movie!? Fight, fight (pause for breath/bad dialogue/bad acting), fight, Yoda moment, fight, fight, slaughter, fight, fight. Repeat. Anakin's turn is handled well. Then a very good ending.

People are getting worked up over, what, a total of 3 minutes of the movie? Wow.

Your mystery point is right, but unavoidable. This can't be the view-from-the-fringes underdog story of the original movies. Lots of fans still haven't come to grips with that.

Fair and balanced here, kids. Fair and balanced.

Posted by: Ace at 09:11 AM | Comments (41)
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A surprisingly balanced piece from the NYT.

Key bits:

In his opening remarks, Dr. Frist said Democrats had "radically" altered the traditions of the Senate by blocking votes on 10 of 45 appeals court candidates put forward by Mr. Bush. Even as a bipartisan group of senators sought to head off a climactic vote, Dr. Frist said the filibuster must be brought to a halt either by allowing the Senate to decide the nominations or changing the rules to ban such tactics. "We must restore the 214-year-old principle that every judicial nominee with majority support deserves an up-or-down vote," Dr. Frist said.

Democrats, alternating in speeches on the Senate floor with their Republican counterparts, were quick to note that Dr. Frist had himself voted to filibuster one judicial nominee in Mr. Clinton's administration, and that Republicans had employed procedural tactics of their own to stall as many as 70 candidates put forward by Mr. Clinton.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said that both parties were at fault. "These filibusters are the culmination of a power struggle between Republicans and Democrats as to which party can control the judicial selection process through partisan maneuvering," Mr. Specter said, adding that Democrats saw the filibusters as "payback time" for the way the Clinton nominees were treated.

...

Though the showdown has been building for the past two years, some senators of both parties had hoped it would never come, sparing them a difficult choice between party loyalty and Senate tradition. A bipartisan group of senators huddled in meetings that shifted among Senate offices, trying to strike a side deal that would forestall a vote. An agreement that would satisfy both sides remained out of reach on Wednesday night, though those involved promised to keep talking.

"We are just going to keep working together," Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska and a leader of the negotiations, said as he left an afternoon meeting between 7 Republicans and 4 Democrats.

...

Senior Congressional officials of both parties said the question of how to handle the Supreme Court issue was a main sticking point of the compromise negotiations.

Three officials, who would speak only without being identified because of the confidential nature of the talks, said Republican negotiators had offered to withhold their votes on the rules change but reserved their right to back it later if Democrats filibustered a nominee Republicans deemed acceptable. Democrats say the threat of the rules change must be eliminated for this session.

Negotiators also continued to wrestle with which disputed judges should have floor votes. Because of withdrawals by some candidates and Democratic offers to allow votes on others, the number of pending nominations at issue has been whittled to five, including that of Justice Owen.

A number of Republicans said a compromise that blocked votes on any of them was unacceptable. "I think there will be an uproar on our side if we throw anybody overboard," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

...

Given the ongoing efforts at compromise and the difficult votes that may be ahead, several senators said they had no inkling how the fight was ultimately going to play out - a rare uncertainty in the Capitol. "It is when Congress is at its most interesting," said Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire.

Again, at least they're serious. But those 7 (seven!) Republicans seeking a compromise -- as opposed to four Democrats seeking one -- fills me with heart-ache.

Not because I necessarily reject a compromise (depends on the compromise, of course), but because the Democrats will hold fast on partisan loyalty and we cannot lose more than five Republicans.

Let me propose my own compromise:

These seven wavering Republicans can vote to kill the filibuster but preserve the right of the minority to block unacceptable judges by simply voting with the minority when they believe the minority has a good case.

But of course they'd like to avoid that... John McCain would prefer to allow the Democrats to block judges without getting his hands dirty by assisting them in that task. He still has this goofy notion that he can be President.

Maybe he could cobble together an electorally viable ad-hoc "centrist" coalition against a weak Democrat and weak Republican candidate, but that's a low-probability play.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (22)
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...by Muslim prisoners at Gitmo, as a form of protest.

Question for Silly Bitch Sullivan: Did this, too, constiute an "obscenity"? Is Human Rights Watch on the case? Shouldn't these prisoners be excorciated by the world press for desecreating the Koran?

Kevin McCulloch mentioned this in the post I linked yesterday, but I guess my newsjudgment wasn't all that sharp, because I failed to make mention of it myself.

Ah, well.

I don't do this for a living.

Thanks to Utron for knocking me in the head and letting me know I really should have said something about this.

Posted by: Ace at 07:29 AM | Comments (17)
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Ward Churchill's "proof" of Indian ancenstry has always hung by three very thin threads. You may think I'm joking about the first two because I don't have a cite. Well, my cite is the Brit Hume show last night. Brit read them with that near-chuckle of his that he's finding increasingly difficult to stifle.

Ward Churchill's claim to be an Indian is based on:

1) The fact that he thinks of himself as an Indian.

Look, I spent a very profitable summer touring, um, clubs as the Indian as part of a Village People cover band (we were called "Hang Out With All the Boys"), and yet this fact alone did not warrant Colorado University hiring me as an Indian studies professor.

2) Other people think of him as an Indian.

Again: I sold it. In my head-dress and fringe jacket, I was an Indian, damnit, and I've got the tips to prove it.

And:

3) The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians gave Ward Churchill an "honorary associate membership."

Okay, I didn't have that. So maybe he really is an Indian. Right?

Wrong.

An Oklahoma Indian tribe says an embattled University of Colorado professor whose claim of Indian heritage is under investigation "could not prove any Cherokee ancestry."

In a statement on its Web site, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians said it gave Ward Churchill an "honorary associate membership" because he promised to write a tribal history.

Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies who could lose his job over allegations that he lied about his ancestry and plagiarized others' work, said Wednesday the tribe's statements are false.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Churchill said the United Keetowahs' membership committee twice confirmed he has Cherokee ancestors before he was made an associate member. He said the tribe has a right to disenroll him or ask him to resign, but that it hasn't done so.

Ah. The tribe he "belongs" to is lying. All of them. Every last one of those dishonest redskins is lying.

Now, I don't want to speculate, but could it be that Ward Churchill has been, err, misrepresenting the import of this silly little junior G-Man card this tribe gave him, pretty much just to be nice and get him off their tits, for years and years? And that it's only now that someone thought of contacting the tribe to ask if the "honorary associate membership" actually meant anything at all?

If I'd known they were giving out "honorary associate memberships," I would have applied for one myself. Believe me, I earned it that summer with Hanging Out With All The Boys. Things happened on the tour bus between Key West and Miami I still can't talk to a therapist about.

You want to talk about a Trail of Tears? Don't even get me started.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 06:31 AM | Comments (26)
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There, I said it. It's what everyone's thinking.

Nick Kronos reminds me of this typically unhinged bit of hysteria from everyone's favorite Shrieking Violet:

A simple question: after U.S. interrogators have tortured over two dozen detainees to death, after they have wrapped one in an Israeli flag,

Horrors.

after they have smeared naked detainees with fake menstrual blood,

Fake menstrual blood, you say? Surely we have ceased to be a Republic.

after they have told one detainee to "Fuck Allah,"

Gob-smackingly vile. they told a religious-fanatic mass-murderer to "Fuck Allah"? The beasts! The swine! This is worse than the Nazis!

after they have ordered detainees to pray to Allah in order to kick them from behind in the head,

I'm outraged. And Lord knows I'm not the easiest person to offend.

is it completely beyond credibility that they would also have desecrated the Koran?

No, it's not.

I think they probably did it.

And here's the funny thing: I don't give a shit, Sullivan.

And I will continue not giving a shit no matter how shrilly you cry out. I don't give a wet shit about how many "Eeek! A mouse!" conniptions you go into over this.

You mistake your rather florid emotional outbursts for persuasive discourse.

It's not persuasive. It's just sad. And it begins to make me suspect you are actually a somewhat unbalanced person.

What I find most offensive about the Al-Newsweek story is that this is such a fucking nothing of a story, having nothing to do with "torture" or anything even close to it, and yet would harm America's security's interests if disclosed, and still these rotten bastards felt they had to get this "important" story out there anyway, sourced or unsourced.

Let us conclude:

Yes, Newsweek bears complete responsibility for any errors it has made; and, depending on what we now find, should not be let off the hook. But the outrage from the White House is beyond belief. It seems to me particularly worrying if this incident further intimidates the press from seeking the truth about what the government is doing in the war on terror. It is not being "basically, on the side of the enemy," as Glenn Reynolds calls it, to resist the notion of government-sanctioned torture and to report on it.

Read the above. Does any of that sound like "torture" to you? In only one case is there actually a mention of beating (the kicking). Everything else is psychological pressure.

What the fuck does this little screaming-ninny pussy think we're fucking doing here?

Now, I grant you, some terrorists died in captivity.

And I can't tell you how much that saddens me.

Well, I could tell you. But I'd be lying.

Godzilla v. Megalon Update: Apparently Instapundit punched up Excitable Andy over this conflation of mere psychological pressure into torture.

Sullivan apparently whined for a retraction, to which Godzilla responded:

He asks me to correct the record; I wish instead that he would try writing on this subject with the clarity and seriousness that he has shown himself capable of in the past. All evidence suggests, however, that I am likely to be disappointed.

Oh, dear, Andy. Sometimes it must be so gob-smackingly vile to be the only person in the entire world who understands you, yes-yes?

Posted by: Ace at 01:58 PM | Comments (83)
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Confederate Yankee covers the Trump-proposed Twin Towers II with some eye-catching rhetoric:

The people of New York and America at large, all wounded to some extent that day deserve, no demand, than a new Twin Towers rise like a pheonix from the ashes of the old; bigger, stronger, and better than it was before. The City That Never Sleeps should be home to nothing less than the Towers Than Would Not Die.

Manhattan can never move forward with a lesser skyline. Trump must build.

Posted by: Ace at 01:27 PM | Comments (35)
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In prison, once someone's punked out someone else, aren't the other guys supposed to respect that?

Well, NRO's a big nasty gang -- Jonah Goldberg has Max Cady-style tattoos all over his back, but they say things like "Death to Crapweasels" and "Immanuelize the Escatology" or whatever the hell that nonsense slogan is -- so I guess they can do what they want.

And what they want to do, I guess, is to punk out my bitch Andrew Sullivan without so much as offering me a carton of Pall Malls in return.

Oh, well, we'll see, Jonah. Maybe you'll just wake up one morning to find a nice portable radio lying in your bed. That's right, Jonah, just hold that radio right up to your ear and groove to the music...*

Thanks to NickS, who's got my back and who's a master with the shiv.

* Where? And what actor?

If He Bothered To Link Me, He'd Be Filled With Disgust and Heart-Ache Over This Update: The increasingly dour scold Andrew Sullivan would have a conniption if he (admitted he) read this post.

So let me just go on the record: I think prison rape is horrible, and I think conservatives ought to vigorously oppose it for law & order reasons (as I repeat after the jump).

Still, I don't think it's an endorsement of something just to joke about it in a silly manner.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (11)
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I swiped the below Venn Diagram pic from Demure Thoughts, but I think that's okay, because I can link to something even better: her link of training-sequence footage from Batman Begins.

They finally got it right.

I got so psyched for the Michael Keaton Batman back in 1989 (was that the year?)... but it sucked.

I'm getting psyched for this one. And I don't think I'll be much disappointed.

Everyone praises Tim Burton, but he shot a lame script and used over-the-top theatricality and cartoonishness to create what some mistakenly call a "dark" version of Batman. It wasn't dark, any more than a Vegas show is "dark." It was a self-indulgent exercise in production design run wild (and run towards the silly and campy-- precisely what he claimed he was trying to avoid).

It distanced the audience from the film. I've said it before and I'll say it again: For a superhero film to work -- really work -- the director/producer/screenwriters have to take the myth of the superhero seriously. Not spoof or camp it up. If the filmmakers don't believe the ridiculous premise, how can the audience suspend their disbelief?

Movies that took the genre seriously-- the first two Superman movies, both X-Men movies, both Spider-Man movies. And they worked, more or less.

Tim Burton and, egads, Joel Schumacher did not take the Batman story seriously, and they turned it into a big gay-camp costume revue. I didn't believe for a second I was watching a movie about real people in a real situation (okay, an implausible one, but whatever). I was aware at all times I was watching a movie, and a movie that continuously called attention to the fact that it was, in fact, a movie.

Now, of course, some movies take the superhero premise seriously and still are pretty damn bad -- Daredevil, The Punisher, The Hulk. Taking it seriously -- and I don't mean grimly seriously or without humor; I just mean taking the basics of the story seriously and not seeking to undermine the suspension of disbelief by archly spoofing the very story you're telling -- is a necessary element of a good superhero movie.

But not a sufficient one. Another necessary but not sufficient rule would be "No f'n' Ben Affleck."

Posted by: Ace at 01:12 PM | Comments (24)
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From Sploid.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Comments (5)
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