Spielberg: Artificial Intelligence: A.I. part 2
Act I of A.I. ends with the news of Monica’s son Martin awakening from his sleep. Act II (30:00 – 52:00) then deals with the consequences of that development. It also represents a first for a Spielberg movie — the narrative switches protagonists at the act break. Up to this point, it’s looked like Monica is the protagonist of A.I., but in the fade that occurs at 30:00 the point of view shifts decidedly to David, and will remain there for the rest of the movie (although it could be argued that it shifts again at the beginning of Act V).
Spielberg: Artificial Intelligence: A.I. part 1
WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT? David is a little-boy robot who has been programmed to love a woman he believes to be his mother. When she rejects him he vows to do whatever it takes to gain her love. This, to his little-boy-robot mind, involves tracking down "the Blue Fairy," a character from Pinocchio, so that he, like Pinocchio, can become a "real boy." The result is Spielberg’s strangest curveball, a movie that combines the solid, earned, heartfelt sentiment of Spielberg with the cold, wicked, despairing cynicism of Kubrick (who developed the movie for years before turning it over to Spielberg). Parts of it are almost unbearably sad, other parts are almost as unbearably creepy. Like many "important" Spielberg movies, it has five acts.
Rudy Casoni for Sarah Palin
In the interest of bi-partisanship, I present Toby Huss, longtime friend from New York, Cotton from King of the Hill, General Treister from The Venture Bros, doing his best "bastard son of Frank Sinatra" character Rudy Casoni in praise of Sarah Palin. Toby is one of the most talented people I know, and if you ever have the chance to see a Rudy Casoni show I recommend you do so (and urbaniak will probably be in it as well).
The video shows off some of the Los Angeles area’s best locations, from the Capitol Records building in Hollywood to the bike path in Santa Monica, and ends with Rudy casting himself into the sea as he croons to his favorite vice-presidential hopeful. What more could a candidate wish for?
(Thanks to Lt. Ant from Brooklyn for bringing this to my attention.)
To the undecided voter:
If Colin Powell’s endorsement didn’t sway you, if Obama’s economic policies don’t convince you, if his sure and steady demeanor in the face of crisis doesn’t assure you, if his dedication to repairing our country’s reputation doesn’t inspire you, if his plan for combating global warming and reducing our dependence on foreign oil doesn’t make you proud, if his soaring rhetoric doesn’t thrill you, if his good looks and charisma don’t attract you —
— won’t you at least please heed the call of the good people of Obama, Japan?
Some thoughts on Burn After Reading
I know I’m really late to the party on this movie, but I finally got a chance to go see Burn After Reading the other day and since several of my readers have asked me to post my thoughts about it, I hereby oblige. Please read no further without seeing the movie first (something I highly recommend under any circumstances).
Suppress the Vote
The Republicans aren’t waiting for November to steal the election this time around — they’re attempting to do it right now, as you read this. For decades, the Republican philosophy has been: we will run as populists but rule as aristocrats. If people understand who we are, they will never vote for us, so we must lie to them about who we are. If they still don’t vote for us, we will steal the election. If we can’t steal enough votes to win the election, we will challenge the vote-counters to throw out all the Democratic votes we can. If it looks like even that won’t be enough, we will, on no legal ground whatsoever, force the issue to a court we are confident will support us — especially if the judges on that court were appointed by a Republican. If it looks like even that won’t be enough, we will brazenly attempt to disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters, using the most underhanded, dishonest, illegal tactics imaginable, all the while pretending that it is, in fact, we who are being wronged. Finally, if all that fails and a Democrat actually wins an election by an overwhelming majority, we will immediately seek to remove that Democrat from office by any means necessary.
(This is, of course, why Republicans hate Clinton — after years of concentrated effort to remove him from office, he stubbornly refused to go.)
(I cannot account for the crazy digital-zoom in the beginning seconds of this piece — either someone at MSNBC was drunk, or else the person who posted this on Youtube was messing around.)
I’m on a deadline at the moment, so it will be a few days before regular screenplay-analysis blogging resumes. I thank you for your patience.
Why I’m voting for Obama: part 3
In 2000, I supported Gore, although he, like Dukakis, like Mondale, was a better man than he was a candidate. It was painful to watch the debates between him and Bush, with Bush stumbling over simple sentences and Gore tetchy and schoolmarmish. I didn’t hold my nose when I voted for Gore, but I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about it. Bush horrified me from the very beginning. And hey, does anybody remember the John McCain of 2000? That guy might have had a shot. I remember seeing him on SNL in 2002 and thinking "Hey, this guy isn’t so bad, if he had run against Gore that would have been a real contest."
From tiny ACORNs…
…great big piles of bullshit one day grow.
I don’t want to make this an all-Rachel-Maddow-all-the-time blog (although I can think of many worse things for a blog to be), but the GOP is using the ACORN thing to try to steal the election before it even takes place. It’s an important story you will hear more of as the election moves forward, and you will find no better summary of the issues involved than this segment of Maddow’s show where she discusses the whole thing with Jonathan Alter.
I heart Rachel Maddow
Seriously, as long as Rachel Maddow is on television, I may have a reason to turn it on now and again. I love this encounter with National Review guy David Frum, who decides, for some reason, to try to ambush Maddow on her own show. Maddow, obviously not one to be cowed, performs some admirable televisual ju-jitsu on Frum, easily deflecting his attack, turning it back on him and making him look like a complete idiot. Frum, after eight years of ramming his obscene neo-conservative agenda without the slightest question from the media, now warns that the media must clean up its act and stop all this bad feeling — now that he’s losing, he means.
This clip also, coincidentally, segues nicely into the next (hopefully last) part of my thing about why I’m voting for Obama, specifically regarding the national media’s part in distorting our political picture.
UPDATE: For those interested in pursuing a more ongoing love affair with Ms. Maddow (televisually, anyway) MSNBC posts the best bits from her show every night right here.
Why I’m voting for Obama: part 2
In the middle of the Carter presidency, for reasons unrelated to national politics, my mother died and my family was bankrupted. I was sixteen, and almost overnight I went from living in a middle-class suburban household to living in my car, a 1971 Vega that was a hand-me-down from my brother. I ended up in a trailer in southern