Playing a journalist, of course, which only a pampered movie star could consider a heroic career choice.

Oh yeah -- and even in a film set in Nazi Germany, the Americans are the bad guys.

Mr. Clooney is no Bogart, no matter how many rumpled trench coats he borrows from studio wardrobe. Too pretty to get slashed, shot, pistol-whipped, beaten and hacked into raw hamburger every time he enters a room, he learns nothing but just keeps coming back for more. What a meathead. What’s the big secret that Lena’s husband knows, that the U.S. Army is willing to disfigure George Clooney’s billion-dollar face to hide? There’s a preposterous plot twist every five minutes, a muddled point (even a good German hasn’t got a chance against the evil villains in the American government), and the ending—replete with a propeller, a rainy airport runway and Mr. Clooney in another trench coat—is stolen right out of the final four minutes of Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. None of it makes any sense, and even the black-and-white newsreel footage of ravaged war zones and the faces of the decimated German people is boring. You lose sleep thinking of all the ways The Good German goes wrong. Where is Hitler? Where are the tanks?

Hitler is absent because his presence would deflect attention away from American Evil.

It's being savaged by most, garnering a 30% positive rating on RottenTomatoes' survey, which is preposterously bad for 1, a prestige picture and 2, a liberal-pleasing fantasia.

Even the uberliberal Village Voice hates it:

The movie is lovingly framed, carefully lit, and fatally insipid. The direction is slack; the pacing is perfunctory. While the mysteries of Blanchett's past proliferate, Clooney never has much trouble finding her (or her file).

In his most fatal re-creation, Soderbergh closes with an homage to Casablanca. It's a dark and misty night. The getaway plane is on the runway. Blanchett is wearing an Ingrid Bergman cloche hat and Clooney is desperately trying to think for the both of them. But if Casablanca was the acme of wartime romanticism, The Good German is its self-conscious antithesis. Soderbergh wants to show the birth of postwar moral relativism. It's hard to believe in anything—his characters most of all.

There's a quote I like but can't remember. It goes something like, "Sophistication is the process by which you take your childhood jewels and exchange them for ash."

Something like that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (34)
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I'm looking. I'm just not seeing.

Barak Obama has a scandalously non-scandalous scandal cooking. Trust me, it's lame.

That's one of the bigger stories out there.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (64)
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Who slipped Snow the soy?

David Gregory is a partisan, and an obnoxious one. Snow should be undermining more of these guys by labeling them for what they are -- unpaid volunteer DNC consultants.

Posted by: Ace at 08:10 AM | Comments (49)
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I smell Oscar:

Hayward, who is a fellow at the Pacific Research Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, said he hopes to counter some of the "alarmist" claims that supporters of global warming catastrophe theories make.

He began his 40-minute presentation by extending an olive branch to Gore, saying that "much of what Vice President Gore says about climate change is correct. The planet is warming; human beings are playing a substantial role in that warming."

But, Hayward quickly added, "The vice president and a lot of other people make some extreme claims about what is likely to happen in the future that are not backed up by science."

...

There is also no consensus on the status of ice caps and glaciers, he argues, noting that some scientists point to receding or melting ice in western Antarctica while others point to thickening ice in eastern Antarctica.

...

Hayward also criticized Gore and others for presenting what he called "extreme claims about what's happening." He cited an image published in Vanity Fair which shows New York City flooded after an 80-foot rise in seas levels caused by the complete melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic.

According to predictions released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001, however, the worst-case scenario shows sea levels rising by fewer than three feet in the next 100 years. And, he said, the IPCC's upcoming report, scheduled for release next year, will likely cut that prediction in half.

Here's another piece debunking Al Gore, Cosmic Joke.

Posted by: Ace at 07:58 AM | Comments (25)
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Calls her a warmonger and questions her feminity.

I guess not having a career really unburdens you to speak your mind.

It really frees you up to think of really super-smart ideas like winning the war on terror by abolishing (not reforming or toughening up) the CIA:

"There is an answer to this problem," Baldwin informed. "There is a way to defeat terrorism while building new and better alliances in the Arab world. It will be an enormously complex and difficult diplomatic puzzle. But the first step might be oddly simple. Get rid of the CIA, which has outlived its usefulness and is an embarrassment to this great country, and rebuild and reform U.S. intelligence capabilities to fight this new type of threat. I think our hopes must begin there."

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (117)
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For starters, fine. How about disbarrment? And how about jail time?

A violation of someone's civil rights, if proven, is criminal and jailable.

It would be sweet justice.

A North Carolina congressman wants the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong committed "prosecutorial misconduct" and violated the civil rights of the three Duke lacrosse players accused of raping a dancer at an off-campus party last March.

Third District U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C.,3rd, sent athe letter Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, saying he acted in response to "serious questions" raised in recent months by constituents and the media about the dancer's allegations and Nifong's handling of the case.

Repeated efforts to contact Nifong for comment on Jones' letter were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Let him share a cell with his whore perjurer "victim."

Posted by: Ace at 02:24 PM | Comments (138)
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On the other hand -- serial killers tend to go after prostitutes, because they're well away from police and usually willing to go off to dark and deserted places with them.

But invesigators are eyeing the possible tie:

Police investigating the brutal "Ipswich Ripper" murders of five prostitutes in England...

Can I just say that while there are certain analogues to the Ripper, this guy is definitely not a ripper at all? He's a strangler.

Ah, well. Whatever.

... will examine possible links between those killings and the murders of four prostitutes in Atlantic City, N.J., last month, FOXNews.com has learned.

Ipswich Police spokeswoman Shelly Spratt said contact with authorities in Atlantic City "is an avenue we will go down." She said investigators already have discussed making that contact, but because more bodies turned up on Tuesday they had not opened discussion yet.

"We can use all the help we can get," Spratt said.

...

In Atlantic City, police continue their investigation into the seemingly ritualistic murders of four prostitutes whose bodies were found in a watery ditch behind a seedy motel outside the gambling mecca.

The bodies were found within a few hundred feet of each other, all face down in several inches of water, heads turned east — toward Atlantic City — wearing clothes, but no shoes or socks.

At least one of the victims died of strangulation; another, officials said, died by asphyxia "by unspecified means."

...

The known similarities of the Ipswich and Atlantic City cases are:

— The victims all are known prostitutes.

— They range in age from 19-42, with most being in their 20s.

— Autopsies have determined that three of the nine victims died of strangulation or asphyxiation. Official cause of death is pending on two of the Atlantic City victims, and four of the Ipswich women.

Here's the part where they note that prostitutes are one of the favorite prey of serial killers:

...

The U.S.'s most notorious prostitute killings were committed in the Pacific Northwest by a single attacker who came to be known as the Green River Killer. In pleading guilty in 2003 to the murders of 48 prostitutes, Gary Leon Ridgway told a judge he targeted streetwalkers "because I thought I could kill as many as I wanted to without getting caught."

"They were easy to pick up, without being noticed," he said in court. "I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be reported missing."

I think there are some theories that say Jack the Ripper migrated to New York after the murders. Or the Carribbean. Or both. I forget the details.

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (279)
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Thanks, Nancy!

Posted by: Ace at 02:09 PM | Comments (25)
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So far it's neck and neck.

You can try to qualify for the match ups by taking this quiz, supposedly.

Thanks to RayF.

Posted by: Ace at 01:54 PM | Comments (12)
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Great bit. Contains some cursing.

Thanks to Drew.

Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (29)
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