The Goals for This Country

Read aloud, with patriotic feeling
"The goals for this country are peace in the world. And the goals for this country are a compassionate American for every single citizen. That compassion is found in the hearts and souls of the American citizens."
—George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2002

Still can't wait to meet my government-issued compassionate American. From Slate via Ruminate This.

{ 5:17 PM }

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Song of the Year
2002

"Do You Realize"
from
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips
"It's storytelling acid rock," say The Flaming Lips, "and will render its listeners powerless to study or analyze it and enable them to sit back and — hopefully for a couple of minutes at a time — just simply be... entertained."

Album of the Year
2002

Sea Change
Beck

Runners Up

Vespertine
Björk

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips
I may add to this tiny list as I poke around and remember other contenders.

{ 4:45 PM }

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Once Jimmy Carter's speechwriter, Hendrik Hertzberg is evolving into one of the Left's most reflective voices, as profiled in Harvard Magazine:

Hendrik Hertzberg (known to friends as "Rick") returned to the New Yorker, where he has since become the most stylish liberal political essayist in America. The magazine's "Talk of the Town" section characteristically opens with a thoughtful reflection on some recent news event (under the red-ink heading "Comment") usually written by Hertzberg. Many of the New Yorker's 900,000 readers seize upon his witty, perspicacious columns as a kind of weekly map through the trackless turmoil of the news.

"He's the political voice of the magazine," says David Remnick, the New Yorker's editor since 1998. "Rick's writing has a kind of moral tone that is irreplaceable—he has tone control the way Billie Holiday had tone control, and his sentences are as well-timed as the most brilliant joke or song phrasing. Attached to this is his way of thinking, his lack of cruelty or cheapness. 'Comment' is the first thing people read when they open the magazine; it has to be just right, and it invariably is."

As one of those 900,000 readers who look forward to his columns, I'm in complete agreement. Link courtesy of Romenesko.

{ 10:05 AM }

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More film reviews...

With great power comes great responsibility. At last, an adolescent fantasy movie in which the special effects don't devour the actors. Spider-Man swings on the taut line between strength and vulnerability, between desire and duty, between temptation and justice. Big themes in digestible scenes, spiced with hormones and mythology.

The film is stylish and smart and equally generous in showing off its special effects as well as its actors (George Lucas, call your office). The film is extremely well cast, obviously with respect to Tobey Maguire, and equally so in the smaller roles right down the line. In contrast to so many other comic-to-movie adaptations, the bright palette of the scenes (green for Willem Dafoe's goblin, burnt orange for M.J.) feels rich rather than ridiculous. Spider-Man is the year's most thoughtful roller coaster.

Skimble says: 8 out of 10.

Julie Taymor's Frida takes a standard film biography and adds enough magic to lift you into the soaring realm of the artist Frida Kahlo's imagination while still staying grounded in the reality of her painful earthly existence.

Let's not discuss plot and exposition — that's the film's job. Taymor's stylistic risks in 2002 are tamer than Kahlo's were in the early twentieth century, but they are still wilder than anything else currently floating in the artist-biopic aquarium (e.g., the hideous alcoholism advertisement Pollack).

One of the most courageous aspects of Taylor's Frida, given the political spirit of our times, is her unflinching portrayal of Kahlo's and Diego Rivera's communism. Instead of portraying them as victims of a doomed ideological naivete, Taymor emphasizes the visceral idealism that fueled their lives and their relationships.

Skimble says: 7 out of 10.

{ 9:44 AM }

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I can't believe that I have now spent six hours of my life in front of this Lord of the Rings cinematic poo-pile. I did not enjoy the first one and like the second installment, The Two Towers, even less.

I am not part of the Tolkien cult — didn't read the books, too twee for my taste with the elves and so on. If I want meditations on power, there are thousands of less cutesy sources. Therefore I cannot judge the movies against their source material.

For all their visual sophistication, the movies are narratively retarded. I suppose you could say, "When scene after scene is that thrilling, who cares what's going on?" Well, I do, or, rather, I would if there was anything resembling a character up there on the screen. (Although I must admit a soft spot for the Gollum character — no, wait, that was an animation.)

In the movie, despite the truly thrilling visuals, the sight of the handsome Caucasian people battling the mottle-skinned, bad-dentistry bad guys was too much for me to stomach. The picture on the screen said, pretty loudly, "racial demonization."

Once again the mainstream media and their sycophantic reviewers fail us. Technologically spectacular and utterly inept all at once — a movie for our times.

Skimble rating: 4 out of 10.

{ 6:19 PM }

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