Poseur Alert

Dern

"How Nikki and the other characters wind up in these rooms ‚Äî how, for instance, the pampered blonde ends up talking trash in a spooky, B-movie office ‚Äî is less important than what happens inside these spaces. In ‘Inland Empire,’ the classic hero’s journey has been supplanted by a series of jarringly discordant scenes, situations and setups that reflect one another much like the repeating images in the splintered hall of mirrors at the end of Orson Welles‚Äôs ‘Lady From Shanghai.’ The spaces in ‘Inland Empire’ function as way stations, holding pens, states of minds (Nikki’s, Susan’s, Mr. Lynch’s), sites of revelation and negotiation, of violence and intimacy. They are cinematic spaces in which images flower and fester, and stories are born.

Each new space also serves as a stage on which dramatic entrances and exits are continually being made. The theatricality of these entrances and exits underscores the mounting tension and frustrates any sense that the film is unfolding with the usual linear logic. Like characters rushing in and out of the same hallway doors in a slapstick comedy, Nikki/Susan keeps changing position, yet, for long stretches, doesn‚Äôt seem as if she were going anywhere new. For the most part, this strategy works (if nothing else, it’s truer to everyday life than most films), even if there are about 20 minutes in this admirably ambitious 179-minute film that feel superfluous. ‘Inland Empire’ has the power of nightmares and at times the more prosaic letdown of self-indulgence," – Manohla Dargis, on David Lynch’s new movie, New York Times. (Hat tip: JPod.)

Zarqawi’s Fruit

A reader writes:

Thanks for your provocative Gathering Storm post, which was scary and sad but a great assessment. An exhausting fight between Sunni and Shia thugs with their Al Qaeda and Iranian allies will set some of our enemies upon one another. The tragedy, of course, is that thousands more innocent Iraqis will die in the process, and we‚Äôll be partly culpable. 

Still, we have to recognize that Zarqawi (remember him?) succeeded in his goal of preventing our preferred outcome in Iraq, by provoking a civil war. And, we should take solace from the fact that this strategy came at a price for Al Qaeda. By bringing the sectarian schism within Islam to the forefront, Zarqawi demoted Al Qaeda from an almost mystical movement that stood up to the west in a fight for an idealized Islamic world, to just another brutal, sectarian faction killing Muslims in Iraq.  He’s also taken the Islamic jihadist focus off the United States and even made a Syrian-Iranian alliance more difficult over the long term.

Superman Returns

Chris Orr has a good review of the movie, now out on DVD. We watched it the other night, after Aaron had insisted I sit through the "Donner cut" of Superman II. (He’s a purist). I’ve never been a big fan of comic book movies, but if you’re going to do one, Bryan Singer is obviously the go-to guy. My only quibble with Chris is his assessment of Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane as "a sprightly presence." She was bland and dreadful. But who can rival Margot Kidder? Or is that the gayest sentence I’ve written in a long while?

I splurged the book advance on a 46" LCD TV. So we’ve been slumped in front of it recently. Two DVD highlights: Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Ice Age: The Meltdown." Yes: vastly different. But technically both masterpieces, I think. Kubrick’s vision remains ravishing, untainted by the passage of time, the most spiritually absorbing movie I have seen in ages. I was a big fan of "A.I.", as well, but irritated by Spielberg’s sentimental meddling.

Oldest Priest Dies

He was 109. Here’s the Brit obit. Money quote:

At his 109th birthday celebrations, for which he said mass in the convent chapel where he spent his last years, Fuchs joked about his fragile start in life. "My mother told my father: ‘Let’s just give him your name ‚Äî he’s only going to die anyway’," he recalled. The baby was so tiny and frail his mother was convinced he could not survive…

On his last birthday, his eyesight failing, he expressed his sadness to the local newspaper that he was no longer able to read the Bible from beginning to end "one last time".

The HIV Travel Ban

Here’s some more information, related to my post earlier. Bill Clinton did sign the travel ban into law in 1993, but it was first proposed by (drum roll) Jesse Helms in 1987. A reader remembers the timeline better than I do:

I started working on this issue when it first surfaced – after the ban was created by the Reagan Administration in 1987. (I started working in the House, for then-Rep. Norman Mineta, earlier that year.) A little research on your part would have shown you this history:

The Reagan White House pressured the Public Health Service to include HIV on the list of excludable conditions in 1987. They did. There were protests about that, as the vast majority of public health experts believed that only active tuberculosis belonged on the list. In response, and in order to make sure the PHS’ decision was protected, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) authored an amendment in the Senate to put HIV on the list statutorily. The Senate adopted it on a voice vote, with Democrats thinking that because HIV was already on the list, the amendment was redundant.

We tried to get rid of it in the 1990 immigration bill by mandating that the list would henceforth be maintained by the CDC, and that it would include only conditions with a solid medical justification. To his credit, President Bush (41) signed it into law, and his CDC issued a rule in 1991 knocking everything off the list except tuberculosis. There was a revolt in the Republican Conference in the House, led by then Rep. Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA). The CDC pulled the rule and the INS kept the old list in place.

Clinton campaigned on a promise to remove the ban. Shortly after he got to the White House, in February of 1993, Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK) offered an amendment to the NIH reauthorization to keep the old list. Ted Kennedy tried to offer an alternative, but it failed 42-56. The Nickles Amendment then passed 76-23.

(All 23 “no” votes were Democrats. Notably, Joe Lieberman was one of the “yes” votes – one of the many early examples of his cozying up to Jesse Helms on gay rights and AIDS/HIV issues.

When the House and Senate went to conference on the bill, then-Rep. Tom Bliley (R-VA) offered a motion to instruct conferees to agree to the Nickles Amendment.  It passed 356 to 58. Again, all 58 who voted ‚ÄúNo‚Äù were Democrats (plus Bernie Sanders). At that point, both chambers of Congress had voted to block Clinton’s planned executive order by veto-proof margins.  When Congress sent Clinton the NIH authorization in June of 1993, he signed it.

The countries that have a similar ban on all HIV-positive tourists, travelers and immigrants are Armenia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldavia, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Sudan and the U.S. Great company, no? This president has an opportunity to finish what his father started, and remove the irrational stigma that treats HIV like TB for immigration purposes. Let’s hope Mark Dybul continues the great start he has made.