Month: March 2010

Jeez, this was extreme even by Hollywood standards:

And Chris Orr was totally wrong.

Lively and engrossing Dish coverage and debate among military readers about the merits and accuracy of The Hurt Locker can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here and Graeme Wood's interesting take is here. For all the back and forth about its accuracy, I would have voted for it myself and am very glad it won. Avatar was amazingly beautiful and imaginative but utterly failed as a drama whose characters you might actually care about or understand.

Ezra pwns his propaganda on tort reform.

Selena Chambers yawns at Monster Lit:

I am a girl who loves her monsters, and also loves her nineteenth-century lit. So when Quirk books announced their mashup of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in early 2009, I, like the rest of the Internet, was ecstatic. Besides hilarity, the new Monster Lit seemed to promise two things: that it would get people to read classic literature who otherwise would not, and that the monsters would shed something new about the work, and vice versa. But after reading almost every title to come out of the new “genre,” it seems all Monster Lit really marks is the swan song of the literary tropes the aughties have been inundated with: zombies, vampires, and Austenmania. It also seems to celebrate the quick dollar. My first impression of PPZ — which was 80% Jane Austen, 20% zombies — was that publishers had found a fast and cheap way to make a profit by finding a gimmick viral enough to penetrate the Interwebs.

A reader writes:

This and this are why I read your blog every day that I can — usually checking in more than once. I am an active composer of so-called "modern classical" music, and that first post just drove me nutty. I know your point of view on pot, but I've never gotten the point of it. It doesn't help me to think or understand or be creative. No stimulant or depressant chemicals do.

When I read your comment that jazz is "impossible without weed", it was everything I could do to stop from writing you a scolding letter, since many of my friends who are working jazz musicians here in NYC simply don't touch the stuff. And, while I have no beef with your friend's use of pot to help him free up his inhibitions to do his job/art, I'm also sort of tired of the cliche that artists need weed or that weed can solve problems of writer's block. I write and compose every day without the help of chemical stimulation. So do most of my colleagues. We have learned to turn OFF that nagging inner voice of criticism by simply doing the work. It's that easy. (And that hard, too.)

But I didn't write that scolding email.

Instead, I went and did a bit of composing (working on a piece for saxophone quartet to be premiered in just a few months). Later, when I needed to take a little break (or, rather, procrastinate!), I surfed to the Daily Dish again to find the quote from David Foster Wallace. How beautiful. I followed the link and read the entire speech, which was even better than the quote by itself.

To sum up: your first post kind of annoyed me. Got me to thinking. Got me to get to work on a Sunday with a deadline looming. Your second post gave me great peace of mind. Got me to thinking, too. And will get me back to work in just a few minutes with just a little bit more of my self centered and at peace with the task of creating something from nothing.

And so, I'll keep coming back to this blog–usually checking in more than once.

Thank you.

… read this.

Goldens Bridge, New York, 1.41 am.

Despite all the recent hype for The Hurt Locker, Chris Orr predicts that the Academy will still cave to Avatar:

For the Academy to elevate so small a picture over one so big would be wildly out of keeping both with its recent, much-discussed desire to keep the Oscars "relevant" to a mass audience, and with its lifelong prejudice in favor of films that succeed commercially. To whit: Over the past 20 years, the highest- or second-highest-grossing of the five Best Picture nominees has won 19 times. The third-highest-grossing has won once-in 1999, when American Beauty's $130 million box office narrowly trailed The Green Mile's $136 million. The fourth- and fifth-highest-grossing nominees have not won a single time in over two decades. Where does The Hurt Locker stand in this year's overcrowded field of nominees? Number eight out of ten.

Or less than one-fiftieth of Avatar's domestic gross. I have to say that so far, this has to be among the dreariest, least funny, most tired Oscars I can remember. But I guess I block most of them out after a while.

It's still unclear whether Adam Gadhan has been captured in Pakistan, but there is confirmation of the capture of Abu Yahya Mujahdeen Al-Adam, whom the NYT describes as

having been born in Pennsylvania and who was thought to be affiliated with the operations division of Al Qaeda, commanding fighters in Afghanistan.

That's both a good in itself and with real and professional interrogation, rather than torture,  a potential boon for good intelligence in the Afghan counter-insurgency. It follows the capture of key Taliban leader Mullah Baradar, who is also now under serious rather than comic book interrogation. I don't pretend to know if we are seeing a real shift in Pakistan's attitude, but I do see a real shift in Washington away from the negligence and weakness of the Bush years. Lexington notes:

An anti-Obama bumper-sticker asked: “So you’re for abortion but against killing terrorists?” Most of these barbs are bunk.

Yes, Mr Obama favours trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of September 11th 2001, in a civilian court. But that is not a sign of weakness. Several terrorists were successfully prosecuted in civilian courts under George Bush. And though Mr Obama is willing to admit his country’s failings, he is quite ruthless about blowing its enemies to scraps. American drones fired missiles at suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas 55 times last year, killing hundreds of jihadists and who knows how many civilians. This year, the killing has accelerated; so far more than a dozen strikes have been reported. Mr Obama orders assassinations at a far brisker pace than George Bush ever did. Mr Obama orders assassinations at a far brisker pace than George Bush ever did. For some reason, his habit of blowing up alleged terrorists and bystanders from the air causes less global outrage than the smothering of a lone Hamas operative, allegedly by Israel, in a hotel room in Dubai. But whether you think it justified or not, it is hardly evidence that the president is “against killing terrorists”.

The trailer.

For what we are about to endure, may the Lord make us truly, er …