http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sun, 31 Oct 2004 21:56:47 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/10/31/215647.php JostonIt's no fun having a blog if you can't make wild, unscientific predictions. I say John Kerry will win the Presidential election on Tuesday. Things being as they are, we may not know for months (or ever) if I'm right or wrong, but there it is. Readers can check back later to see how smart or stupid I am.I haven't based my prediction on any polling. I have ignored the polls as much as possible. It's close. That's all the polls say. No, I'm basing my election call on what I'm calling the Christoher Hitchens factor.My reading is that Hitchens is tentatively trying to reestablish his Left-wing credentials. If you read between the lines of his articles, he is looking a bit wobbly. He's declared himself a Kerry supporter (barely) in an Oct. 26 survey of Slate contributors. He's also said some critical things about Bush in an Oct. 2 article for the Mirror. I predict that Hitchens is about to jump back across the political divide and that a lot of other "liberal hawks" are ready to do so too.The strange political journey of Christopher Hitchens from Left to Right (and possibly back again) mirrors the confusion that has stuck the entire Left since September 11, 2001. The barbarity of that event temporarily stunned the Left into silence. I would say there was a dim understanding that abject moral relativism and a lack of confidence in liberal democracy was not going to be sufficient. The Left split into three camps. The first is what could be called the Sept. 10 camp, the flat-earthers. This group carries on as if Sept. 11 never happened. The second is the Michael Moore camp, the "peace in our time" crowd. This group was radicalized by Sept. 11, and blames American foreign policy for the attack, sometimes even to the point of wanting to appease terrorists. The last camp is the liberal hawks, of which Christopher Hitchens is the chief exponent, at least in terms of punditry.I think that people in this last group quickly decided that democracy, human rights, free speech, and all the rest of it are, in fact, things worth believing in and defending. But looking around for allies, the only people they saw willing to act were the neocons. The neocons shared their belief that democracy could, should, and would spread. "Viral democracy" is the term you sometimes hear. The Christoher Hitchens's of the world suddenly found themselves repudiating Michael Moore and talking up the finer points of Karl Rove.I'm going to get off the fence, here, and admit I thought the Iraqis would meet the American soldiers with flowers in their hair and then show them where all the nuclear weapons were hidden. The Iraqi people, overjoyed with freedom, would then elect a government of moderates, embark on a modernatization program that would make then the Japan of the Middle East, and democracy would sweep the region like it swept Eastern Europe in 1989.I was wrong.I don't know how bad things are in Iraq because I'm not there, and I'm sure they aren't as bad as some critics say, but nevertheless, nothing I read about Iraq convinces me that this was the way the Administration wanted it to happen or expected it to happen. The situation, while far from hopeless, is not going to conclude in a neat and tidy liberal democracy anytime soon. In fact, democracy in Iraq may fail altogether. Meanwhile, who's keeping an eye on the Taiwan Straights, the Korean DMZ, or Iran's nuclear program. Not this Administration.Because of this, I predict the liberal hawks will break their alliance of convenience with the neocons. Because it is unlikely that undecided voters are neocons and much more likely that they are tortured liberals, I also predict that the undecided voters will break in favour of Kerry. Politics21693@blogcritics.org Sun, 31 Oct 2004 21:56:47 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/27/010551.php JostonZhang Yimou's martial arts epic of two years ago, Hero, is finally getting its North American release. The movie is getting good reviews. But is anyone looking at its politics? North American audiences looking for kung-fu thrills may be walking into an elaborate justification for Tiananmen Square.The North American release of Hero is a trimmed down version, losing at least 20 minutes from the original Chinese version, and it's been poorly re-subtitled by the distributor. In spite of this, the reviews have all been glowing. It is a visually stunning movie. The highly stylized kung-fu choreography is enhanced by digital effects trickery to create many memorable set pieces. It's definitely a movie worth looking at. But what's it about? I saw one television critic who complained that the story was almost incomprehensible. I've seen the original full-length version on DVD (with better sub-titles) and I can assure you the story is murky even with all the parts present. The story is a series of Rashomon style flashbacks recounting the fates of the same characters over and over with important details changing as the truth become apparent. Each flashback brings us closer to understanding a cryptic statement written in perfect calligraphy by Tony Leung's character, Broken Sword. He writes: All Under Heaven. In that statement lies the meaning of the movie and perhaps also a terrible political purpose.SPOILER ALERTRead no further if you do not want to know what "All Under Heaven" is finally revealed to mean at the end of the movie.In the original sub-titling of the full length version, one that stayed closer to the original Chinese, a warrior called Broken Sword writes "All Under Heaven" in perfect calligraphy. He had previously sworn to kill the Emperor. The Emperor had been conducting a brutal campaign of conquest to unite the various parts of China under his single authority, and Broken Sword's family have all been killed in this campaign. Broken Sword comes very close to succeeding in a dramatic one on one battle with the Emperor. But after deep contemplation of the arts of swordsmanship and calligraphy, however, he distils a philosophy he has arrived at in one simple phrase: "All Under Heaven." He then gives up his mission to kill the Emperor. Another warrior, known only as Nameless and played by Jet Li, is also sworn to kill the Emperor for the same reasons. He comes within inches of killing the Emperor but when the Emperor himself sees the meaning of the phrase "All Under Heaven" and comprehends the true spirit of swordsmanship through the quality of Broken Sword's calligraphy, Nameless gives up his mission and submits to the Emperor.Confused? You should be. The link between swordsmanship and calligraphy takes years of Ch'an Buddhist training to understand. Just take that part as read. The essential question is, why does Nameless quit and refuse to revenge himself on this tyrant? Because the Emperor, while contemplating the phrase "All Under Heaven" as written in perfect calligraphy by Broken Sword comes to understand that the essence of swordsmanship is not to use the sword at all. It's at this conclusion that the terrible political message behind this movie began to dawn on me.Zhang Yimou's movies have always had a political subtext. More importantly, they have always had a subtext that the Communist Party of China would not censor. Raise the Red Lantern, for instance, could be read as a Marxist critique of a patriarchal capitalist order. Red Sorghum is about collective workers fighting Japanese imperialism. The Road Home is an idyll of pastoral life under Mao but before the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four. Some films, such as Not One Less and Happy Times point the lens at poverty and inequality in modern China, but even these movies are careful not to lay blame with the Communist Party.Hero, however, is probably the first Zhang Yimou film that could be read as an active endorsement of the Communist Party, rather than an attempt to just get round their censors.EXTREME SPOILER ALERTAfter Nameless realizes the meaning of "All Under Heaven" he also realizes that he must submit to execution by the Emperor. If China is to be united under one ruler, all of China under the one heavenly throne, then the Emperor is bound to execute him or anyone who will stop him. When Nameless sees that the Emperor comprehends the true essence of swordsmanship is not to fight, he is prepared to accept this death. He sacrifices himself so that the authority of the Emperor to unite China may be absolute. All of this could be read as just a load of pretentious art house plotting, but I find it hard to ignore the obvious comparison with Tiananmen Square. Only fifteen years ago, thousands died in a massacre so that the Communist Party could maintain its absolute rule. Is it possible that Zhang Yimou and his audience in China wouldn't have that in their minds watching this film? Perhaps Zhang Yimou means to emphasise the responsibility of the Emperor who knows he must ultimately rule without the sword, but that's a weak message after endorsing the bloody means by which he attains his throne. By that logic, Tiananmen Square was a necessity and the massacred were heroes, not for democratic expression, but for submission to the Party.Ultimately, the sacrifice and death of Nameless is a frustrating disappointment, both ideologically and as a piece of filmmaking. Where a real hero would have rebelled, this one just caves in. Apparently tragedy under totalitarianism has no catharsis. Video19120@blogcritics.org Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:05:51 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/05/19/112406.php JostonIf you could measure a woman's beauty according shipbuilding, where drop dead gorgeous equals one thousand warships and ugly is a canoe, then the woman who plays the mythical Helen of Troy in the new Wolfgang Peterson film Troy, Diane Kruger, is probably worth something with an outboard motor, but no more. The arch of her eyebrows is considerably more masculine than that of Patroclus, the not at all gay "cousin" of Brad Pitt's Achilles. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) But Helen's beauty, or lack thereof, is only one of the many things wrong with this movie.As far a summer blockbuster action goes, you will mostly get your money's worth. Director Wolfgang Peterson does a great job with the one to one combat. The final showdown between Hector and Achilles is beautifully choreographed. I've never seen spears and short swords handled better. The big set pieces with a cast of thousands, however, are handled with less skill. Impressive as it is to see an army of 50,000 Greeks laying siege to a city, the action is somewhat confusing to watch. At times, it is just too much helmet for eye to make sense of. Nevertheless, Troy serves up good battles. But you don't remake Homer's Iliad, one of the cornerstones of Western culture, because you want more of the blood sport that made Conan the Barbarian so much fun. There has to be more. And that's where the movie falls apart. Whenever the movie leaves the field of combat, the drama is painfully thin and contrived with too many scenes of ACTING, master thespian ACTING. Entire scenes collapse under the weight of their own ponderous seriousness.I don't want to beat up on the actors too badly, because I've seen many of them do wonderful things in other movies, and they are certainly selling the material here for all it's worth. The culprit is the script by David Benioff. He has taken the major plot arch of the Iliad, the wrath of Achilles and his grudge match with Hector, but unwisely ditched the unity of time and setting that made the Iliad a coherent work. The Trojan War lasted for a decade and none of it's most famous events -- the thousand ships launched, the Trojan Horse -- none of these are included in the Iliad. The epic scale of the Trojan War is captured in the Iliad by leaving most of it out. It's just too big. Imagine a ten-year war involving almost the entire known world and where armies consisted of every able-bodied man in each kingdom. For the ancient Greeks, the Trojan War was the First World War and more of its age. That's the epic scale you must imagine. When the Iliad begins, Achilles and Hector have already seen nearly a decade of battle. When it ends, the war and the killing still continues. The thing that started it all, the kidnapping of Helen, is almost forgotten. The warriors keep fighting and sacrificing because they have already sacrificed too much to just quit. The war has become it's own reason for war. By trying to tell the whole story of Troy, from the kidnapping of Helen to the eventual massacre of Troy's populace, the movie literally reduces the conflict to a single short siege of a few weeks. It fatally robs the movie of any moral weight it might have possessed. Take for instance, the aforementioned conflict between Achilles and Hector. In Homer's version, Hector, facing the mightiest warrior ever known, says to himself, "Shall I lay down my shield and helmet and lean my spear against the wall, and go to meet him alone, and promise to yield Helen..." There are nine years of bloodshed behind that doubt and hesitation before battle. When he sees Achilles in his armour he realizes it is nine years too many and turns and flees. Achilles chases him around the walls of Troy and slays him. It's tragic. In the movie version, there is a Matrix worthy smack down between two Hollywood hunks followed by a very irritating and overblown musical score that is (a) a failed attempt to rip-off the Gladiator soundtrack and (b) the cue for the audience to feel that war is a very bad thing. But honestly, would you have felt that war was so bad if, in Saving Private Ryan, the Americans had won the entire thing and gone home after the first week of battle? More likely you'd have felt that a movie can be a very bad thing.The most searing indictment of this movie, however, is not its lack of faithfulness to Homer's Iliad. It's the movie's total lack of faithfulness to today. The Trojan War was such a big event that there have been historical echoes of it for the last 3200 years. And yet not once during this movie did I think for a moment of the parallels between that endless war and the endless war we are currently in the middle of. Greeks versus Trojans was the first West versus East war. We've been fighting that damn war ever since. That's why Achilles is as well known today as he was then, and that's the great tragedy at the heart of Homer's Iliad. Wolfgang Peterson's Troy, however, is a mostly entertaining summer blockbuster. I expect his Achilles will be forgotten before the next Oscar ceremony. Video15790@blogcritics.org Wed, 19 May 2004 11:24:06 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/13/080959.php JostonIn a recent review of Mel Gibson's Passion, Christopher Hitchens wrote in Slate:"... think for a moment what will happen when Gibson reaps the residual and overseas profits from screenings of the film in Egypt and Syria, or in Eastern Europe, where things are a bit more raw. Who can believe that he did not anticipate, and intend, this result? Apparently seeking to curry favor, Gibson announced a few weeks ago that he had cut the scene where a Jewish mob yells for the blood of Jesus to descend on the heads of its children (a scene that occurs in only one of the four contradictory Gospels). Gibson lied. The scene is still there, spoken in Aramaic. Only the English subtitle has been removed. Propagandists in other countries will be able to subtitle it any way they like."Christopher Hitchens is correct when he worries about how Gibson's Passion will be interpreted in countries where anti-Jewish hatred and belief in Jewish conspiracies are commonplace.Take a look at this article from the Gulf News, a newspaper in the Middle East: http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/Opinion.asp?ArticleID=113661The author writes: "I don't know what Jews want Christians to do. Do they want them to eliminate the Gospels that narrate these historical facts, even when they interpret crucial notions of Christianity? ... Or are the Jews asking Christians to clear them, in past and present, of responsibility for Jesus' innocent blood and to solely hold the Romans guilty for his death? The fact is, Pilate, the representative of a cruel imperial power, was reluctant to crucify Jesus and finally washed his hands in front of the crowd to declare his innocence of Jesus' blood."The author of the article takes the inherited guilt of all Jews as a fact of history. He notes that they were forgiven in 1965 by the Pope. I personally don't believe that Jews needed to be forgiven, but the author of the Gulf News article questions whether they deserve to be forgiven. He writes: "forgiveness should be preceded by the acceptance of guilt, so had the Jews [who] repudiated the crimes against Jesus to deserve this forgiveness?"This is how the movie is interpreted in the mainstream Arab media. Doesn't it sound anti-Semitic to you? Video13674@blogcritics.org Sat, 13 Mar 2004 08:09:59 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/04/024509.php JostonIn 1985, a book about the Paris peace conference which followed the First World War and produced the Treaty of Versailles would surely have interested historians everywhere and non-historians not at all. It would have been a book about obscure persons in obscure places fighting for obscure principles. The deliberations of the various sub-committees of the conference would have sounded eye-glazingly dull with the long names of unrecognizably remote territories. Should Montenegro go with Croatia and Serbia to form Yugoslavia? Should the Ottoman province of Mosul become part of a new state called Iraq? During the long Soviet freeze of the Cold War, it is doubtful that even one in one hundred North Americans could have found these places on a map. The balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union had simply swept a multitude of smaller issues of the table. Perhaps we should all be forgiven for forgetting the powerful forces of nationalism that were unleashed during the Great War. By 1985, Yugoslavia was somnolent and the war Iraq was fighting with its neighbour Iran was not considered by anyone to be a threat to the West. (After all, we could get oil from the Saudis, our undoubted friends. No trouble there.) Who suspected what bottled anger and resentment the Berlin Wall really contained? When it fell, forces of nationalism that had been nearly extinct for decades once again flourished. What had been frozen once again burned.That's why Margaret MacMillan's recent book about the peace conference, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, is so much more than the dry work of history it should have been. It's hard not to read the later chapters on Arab independence and the creation of new states like Iraq without seeing the fuse being installed on a time bomb set for the year 2001.The Paris peace conference was like nothing that could be imagined today. The leaders of the great powers spent six months together in Paris and for those six months, essentially operated as the world government, handing out sovereignty and national borders to peoples across the globe.The book focuses on the three leaders that controlled the conference, Prime Minister Lloyd George of Britain, President Wilson of the United States, and Prime Minister Clemenceau of France. In addition to a discussion of the pros and cons of each man's bargaining position at the conference, the book includes details of the men's personal lives and how who they were shaped the way they represented their countries. The British Prime Minister is shown to be extraordinarily energetic and quick witted, but prone to vacillate in his position as he chased public opinion at home. We learn how President Wilson was a highly principled man, but completely inflexible and often arrogant. And we learn how the French Prime Minister focused so single-mindedly on keeping Germany down that perhaps he missed an opportunity to get Europe back up and running again.The book is divided into chapters for each of the nations or regions that the peace makers tried to set right. There are chapters on the the birth of Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the rest of the newly independent Eastern European states. There are chapters on the new Soviet Republic in Russia. There are chapters on China. There are chapters on the creation of Iraq and Jordan. There are chapters on how Turkey was created out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. And there is a chapter on an as yet unnamed Jewish homeland.The range of issues that the conference dealt with were so broad that reading this book will enlighten you to some degree about nearly every conflict in the world today.If the book has any flaw, it is perhaps its scrupulous fairness to all parties. I admire Margaret MacMillan's attempt (successful, I think) to put each leader's decision in context and show how difficult it was to know what the right decision was. The fact remains, however, that the three men who shaped the peace conference set the stage for World War 2 and for the "clash of civilizations" we see today. Living with the consequences, perhaps we have some right to be a little judgmental. Books12359@blogcritics.org Wed, 4 Feb 2004 02:45:09 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/02/064918.php JostonI read the phrase in the newspaper nearly everyday. Coalition of the willing. I'm never quite sure who the coalition includes until a brief article appears about Bulgarians coming under fire. Then I know that the coalition includes Bulgarians. For the most part, though, the media has not reported who is in the coalition or what they have contributed. Has the media completely fallen down on this issue and ignored international contributions to the war in Iraq because of an anti-war, anti-U.S. bias? Or is the coalition such as sham that the media does the Bush administration a favour by ignoring it?If you want to know who is officially in the Coalition of the Willing the list is published on the White House's website.The official list: www.whitehouse.govSome of the members invite ridicule. (I'm sorry Palau, but you can't play in the big leagues if you can't handle the wisecracks.) Other nations have purchased newfound respect and credibility, most notably Poland.Still, you will need to read more than a few New York Times articles and White House Press releases before you can figure out just what it is that each member of the coalition contributes.A freelance journalist based in Boston, Constantine von Hoffman, has done the research and put together a list of the coalition complete with facts and figures. Who sent troops and how many? Who's putting their money where their mouth is? It's all there.The Coalition of The Willing: Facts & Figures: www.areporter.com/sys-tmpl/thecoalitionofthewilling/The biggest partners in the coalition are, of course, the U.S. and the U.K. with 300,000 and 45,000 troops, respectively, in Iraq. Poland, which gets a fair amount of media coverage, has 200, but you may be surprised to learn that the Netherlands --- that's right, the pot-smoking left-liberal Dutch --- have 360 troops in Iraq. Twenty-five members of the coalition contribute nothing. Denmark has sent a submarine, (apparently being inspired by the frigate Canada contributed to the war against land-locked Afghanistan.)It's easy to mock the list, but, in all fairness to the coalition partners, there is no declared Coalition of the Unwilling. It's not known what Iran, Syria, and supposed allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are contributing to the Iraqi "resistance". Neither do we know what material support Saddam Hussein's regime received from Russia and France after the United Nations passed sanctions on Iraq.The Coalition of the Willing may or may not be an exercise in political silliness, but the Coalition of the Unwilling is no laughing matter. Politics11388@blogcritics.org Fri, 2 Jan 2004 06:49:18 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/31/181332.php JostonNew Year is the oddest of holidays. It's not entirely clear what is being celebrated. Christmas and Easter are overtly religious holidays (or, if you prefer, a great time to collect gifts.) Other holidays, like Canada Day or the Fourth of July, commemorate events of great national and historical significance. Other holidays, like the nameless Civic Holiday which Canadians celebrate in August, may not purport celebrate anything in particular (except the lack of holidays in August), but such faceless holidays don't carry a heavy weight of historical ritual. You can do whatever you please on such a day. They aren't rich in traditions, like the singing of Auld Lang Syne or kissing in Times Square, as on New Year's Eve. The New Year is a holiday that demands to be celebrated according to custom, just as Christmas or Easter, but the thing at the centre of the custom remains obscure. Explanations of the holiday that focus on death and renewal don't adequately explain it. Other holidays, like Easter or Thanksgiving, are much more overtly about death and renewal. New Year is the orphan holiday, a great celebration without a great meaning. Visit the author's blog at jamesboston.net Culture11370@blogcritics.org Wed, 31 Dec 2003 18:13:32 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/25/012323.php Joston'Tis the season for journalists to pseudo-philosophize about the meaning of Christmas.Some journalists have an affection for iconoclastic punditry. Christmas is all bunk they say. It's a pagan holiday, Saturnalia or Yule, usurped by the Church in medieval times. Or if it not that, then it's a marketing scam got up by Coca Cola at the turn of the century. And besides, who'd ever heard of Christmas before Dickens wrote a Christmas Carol? Before that, Christmas was an ordinary working day. (That's telling it like it is, pundit-style.)Other journalists discover a sudden call to proselytize. We've lost the true meaning of the holiday. It's not about eggnog and reindeer or - gasp! - buying gifts. It's about Jesus Christ. Well, not exactly Christ. That's too definite, too Christian, too exclusionary. But it's about God. Well, maybe not God, but something vaguely spiritual. And if not that, shouldn't we all just get along. (Journalists tend to get a bit weak in the knees and lose their convictions when talking about religion.)Christmas is also a time, at least for journalists, to celebrate partisan politics. As they see it, the modern celebration of Christmas represents everything that is wrong with globalization. Or maybe it's a laudable expression of American democracy. In either case, we can't let Christmas go by without considering the War on Terrorism. Christmas is a time to call for an end to the occupation of Iraq. Or if not that, then it's a time to support the troops. One or the other. Every newspaper reporter, every broadcaster, and every... um... blogger has an angle on Christmas.It's a brave and original pundit who can let Christmas Day pass without a comment.Merry Christmas and God bless us everyone. Culture11230@blogcritics.org Thu, 25 Dec 2003 01:23:23 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/22/131524.php JostonSince the capture of Saddam Hussein, there have been numerous stories questioning or contradicting the original account of his arrest. The original story is this: U.S. troop act on intelligence about Saddam's whereabouts and find him in a hole.Shortly thereafter, like an unstable piece of software, followed Saddam's Capture V2.0beta: Saddam was drugged.More recently, we have Saddam's Capture V3.0: The Kurds got him.As with all releases there is a version that incorporates the wildest features of all the earlier versions. Saddam's Capture V4000 Unlimited: Saddam betrayed, drugged and traded by Kurds.That particular version is available for download at Aljazeera.For an a list of all the possible variations on the arrest of Saddam, I suggest Conspiracy Theories Surrounding Saddam's Capture by Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli found at the Middle East Research Institute.As with most updates on a popular title, I prefer the initial release. Politics11168@blogcritics.org Mon, 22 Dec 2003 13:15:24 EST