Beltmann

You honestly don't see the difference between Obama's point about excessive media coverage and McCain's insinuation about empty celebrity? It's fair to say that Obama has the same degree of celebrity fame that Paris Hilton does, but it's not fair, or accurate, to say that he's famous for the same reasons.

There's nothing wrong with using "Hussein" the same way people once used "Herbert Walker" or "Jefferson" or "Milhous." The problem is, often Obama's opponents use "Hussein" not that way but with a contemptuous sneer, clearly intending to use negative connotations to smear the candidate. It's both transparent and stupid.

Good grief... that was really lame. I know McCain thinks he's being clever and funny with this type of ad, but he's stunningly tone-deaf. Worse, there's nothing funny about a once-honorable politician stooping, over and over again, to such juvenile, condescending, desperate tactics. It's just embarrassing.

I'm willing to believe that the ad in question wasn't intended to be racial. (Most likely, the ad uses those two particular girls not because they are white but because they are America's most recognizable symbols of empty celebrity; they are airheads who just happen to be white girls.) Still, in this age of carefully tested messages and sophisticated, subliminal marketing, it seems foolish to deny the possibility that the McCain campaign was aware of the racial overtones. Accidents are rare in this kind of marketing.

I wasn't crazy about King Corn.

Silver City is basically John Sayles' lampoon of George W. Bush, made a few years back. Overall, it's a mediocre movie--but I'd say it's worth watching just for Huston. When I was a kid, I thought of him mostly as the director of Mr. North. (I liked that movie a lot back in the day.)

One of my favorite Danny Huston performances is in Silver City. Underrated actor, that one.

Wish I had caught this on the big screen...

Yeah, I agree. I think that's similar to what Matt called an anesthetic, and what Huxley called soma. By design or not, the end result is a dangerous kind of complacency.

That chimp (and Garroway) were in the movie Quiz Show--a movie that, among other things, pointedly attacks how money (the bottom line) has warped the national discourse.

The incentive for conditioning the public could be that fluff and commentary is easier, faster, and cheaper to produce than real journalism. If the networks can convince us to prefer the cheapest product, that maximizes profit.

Apparently it's a sequel set 20 years later, when the city decides to revive the RoboCop program. If Aronofsky's on board, then I'm curious.

Good post, as always. My question, though, is how did the public become so disinterested in real journalism? To what degree has the media helped condition us to prefer fluff, propaganda, and opinionated blowhards? To what degree is the media responsible for persuading us to care about trivial matters? I don't know the answers.

Revisited War of the Roses today. Still like it a lot.

As a researcher I love IMDb and use it every day, but the weirdest thing about that article is that people actually care about user rankings at an internet database. Now, my eyebrow might raise if Dark Knight replaces Godfather on the Sight & Sound poll...

When he kicked the grandmother in the face, my wife laughed so hard she embarrassed both of us.

Today: Hold Steady, Dr. Dog, Sloan. It's been a good day.

Agreed. The movie asks sophisticated questions about heroism, justice, and ethics but the niftiest thing is that it doesn't provide easy, neat answers.

Gotcha... I should have put that together.

It does when ineptitude on the field is largely related to size of market. Milwaukee will never have access to resources and revenue comparable to New York or Chicago. Right now we're in a good stretch, but once these young players are due the big payday, things will most likely unravel. In a market like Milwaukee, success is very difficult to sustain for any length of time. The comparison to the Cubs is ridiculous. The Cubs have the ability to be among baseball's top spenders year in and year out; Milwaukee does not.

As a lifelong Brewers fan, I snort at the idea that rooting for the Mets or Red Sox, two teams that are usually competitive, has an underdog appeal. If the Red Sox are underdogs, then what do we call the Brewers after 25 years of total ineptitude? Lepers?

Little Fugitive / Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin / 1953 Tricked into believing he has killed his older brother, a young boy takes off and for two days wanders around Coney Island. Part of the movie's beauty is its childlike point-of-view--here is a movie that understands the magic of cotton candy--but since the filmmakers focus on capturing the ambience and rhythms of Brooklyn and Coney Island, the movie also feels like a vital recording of a bygone era.

Ouch. The last Levinson film I saw in the theater was Bandits--although I should have thrown in the towel after Jimmy Hollywood. (Liberty Heights was decent, I guess.) There was a time when Levinson represented quality screenwriting in Hollywood, and his 1982-1991 career was a pretty good run. Diner and Avalon are two of my favorite movies.

I almost watched that over the weekend. What the heck happened to Barry Levinson?

Mad Detective / Johnny To and Wai Ka-Fai / Hong Kong How mad is the detective? In the opening sequence, he orders himself zipped into a suitcase and tossed down a staircase, and also presents his own severed ear, sliced on the spot, to a fellow officer as a retirement gift. Eventually we learn that this lunatic has the ability to see the "inner personalities" of people, which enables him to envision the truth of any crime scene. The central mystery concerns a murdered cop and missing pistols, but the film focuses instead on issues of identity, weakness, and delusion. It's all very fast,