Is This A Sick Joke?!

Has anyone seen this enjoyable movie?

Now hands up who thinks it’s full of shit?

Heh. That’s what I thought!

Important Question

Important to me at least, because I’m intrigued and it’s bugging me.

Is “A Mighty Heart” worth watching at all?

I have suspicions that Hollywood would have completely destroyed the true story of Daniel Pearl and what happened to end his life in such a horrific fashion, but I thought I’d ask for reviews rather than watching it and destroying my TV.

Tips/Hints and especially opinions are greatly appreciated!

Super-Mega-Hyper-Legend Charlton Heston Has Died

Talk about an increasing man-deficit disorder in Western culture.

Fuck! How the hell do I insert images now? Is this the wrong blog?!

Thanks WordPress, for taking a simple system and adding about a dozen clicks to it.

Anyway, my uncle is an Endowment Member of the NRA, which means Life Members genuflect when he walks by. He called Mr. Heston, “Charlie” and sat at his table along with Wayne Pierre for about the last twenty years or so of NRA events. So, though I never met him, I heard my share of Charlton Heston anecdotes. Nobody with a brain and a sense of humor didn’t absolutely love the guy.

I hope they bury Charlie with a handgun in his “cold, dead, fingers.” It would be fitting.

Godspeed, Mr. Heston.

Remember, “Soylent Green is People!” and “Damn You All to Hell, You Blew It UP!” He got some good lines.

Network Solutions Suspends Site of Anti-Islam Film

h4rm0ny notes the furor over an anti-Islamic movie due to be released on the Web in the next week. After Pakistan disrupted YouTube worldwide over an interview with right-wing Dutch MP and filmmaker Geert Wilders, Network Solutions, acting as host as well as registrar, has suspended Wilders’s site promoting the 15-minute film “Fitna” (a Koranic term translated as “strife”). The site now displays a notice that it is under investigation for possible violations of NetSol’s acceptable use policy. According to the article the company’s guidelines include “a sweeping prohibition against ‘objectionable material of any kind or nature.'” The article describes the site’s content before NetSol pulled the plug as a single page with the film’s title, an image of the Koran, and the words “Coming Soon.” No one but Wilders has seen the film to date. The Dutch government has distanced itself from the film, fearing Muslim backlash. A million Muslims live in The Netherlands. Wilders’s party, which controls 9 of 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, was elected on an anti-immigration platform.

Slashdot

Way to show backbone, people. The Dutch government, has fought Islam, just not in it’s own country.

via

NETWORK SOLUTIONS SHUTS DOWN A WEBSITE under Islamist pressure. I’m guessing they wouldn’t respond to complaints from Baptists quite so readily.

UPDATE: Reader Antoinette Aubert emails: “Baptists don’t blow people up for disagreeing with them. Heck Baptists don’t even sue you for disagreeing with them. Thus does multi-culturalism make cowards of us all.” Or encourage violence and litigation.

Instapundit

Review: Children of Men, or how would you feel about the end of the world?

I’ve just finished watching a movie called Children of Men on HBO (yes, I participate in all the sins of this century, HBO, AOL, Microsoft Office, mea culpa). It stars Clive Owen and Julianne Moore, among others, and is based loosely (very loosely, IMO) on the novel by P.D. James, not her usual since she’s best known as a mystery writer, and this is definitely in the realm of science or “speculative” fiction.

The basic story is this: for some unexplained reason, the women of the world have become infertile, and no children have been born for eighteen years (in the book, it was the men who were infertile). A woman gets pregnant, the usual way of course because we’re not talking supernatural miracles here, only ordinary natural ones, and the protagonist Theo is tapped to get her out of the country (still England in both book and movie, the last “functioning” society, although it doesn’t very well) to a supposed sanctuary called “The Human Project”. Of course Theo has lots of baggage and doesn’t want to do it, but he signs on when he realizes what’s at stake. There’s war and repression, escape and betrayal, noble self-sacrifice (lots of that), complete self-interest, and an ending that is meant to be ambiguous, but isn’t depending on your point of view. Alfonso Cuarón , co-writer of the screenplay, and director, had this to say:

“We wanted the end to be a glimpse of a possibility of hope, for the audience to invest their own sense of hope into that ending. So if you’re a hopeful person you’ll see a lot of hope, and if you’re a bleak person you’ll see a complete hopelessness at the end.”

The book was called a “Christian fable” by James herself, and concerned itself with the end of humanity, and what might happen if a woman got pregnant, thus providing hope that humanity might not end after all. But Cuarón crams all kinds of contemporary PC imagery and references into it. For instance, the mother is an African woman (who wasn’t even in the book); the government has collapsed into a dictatorship bent on deporting all immigrants, and torturing and murdering those who won’t go, and those non-immigrants who dissent; there are pointed scenes illustrating the damage to the environment by pollution; casual drug use and homosexuality are given their usual approving nod (not that I object to homosexuals, but I’m really tired of the entertainment industry hammering it home in movie after movie); the detention scenes are meant to recall the Holocaust; and the war scenes remind of nothing so much as the seige of Sarajevo. There are many other visual and verbal references, some I’ve forgotten, and some I haven’t figured out quite.

Despite all that, it’s a well-written and well-paced movie, and the acting is superb. Taken on its face, I watched spellbound, and would recommend it to anyone who isn’t squeamish and enjoys war/action movies.

Which brings me to the point of all this: If my grandchildren, God forbid, all died, I think my stake in humanity would be over. There would be nothing left to feel or do, which was an underlying theme in the movie. Some might consider that they have more to contribute than just progeny, and that’s certainly true. I’m not one of those who believe that your life is “unfulfilled” if you never have children, and I wouldn’t urge procreation on everyone, because it’s a dirty, sometimes heartbreaking, job that you can, if you aren’t careful, screw up tragically. But my children and grandchildren are the latest in a long, long line of survivors of everything that has tried to wipe out mankind. If they were gone, I feel in my heart my own personal reason for being would have been wasted. I’m not a great artist, or scientist, or teacher. When I go, few outside my family will notice my passing. Beyond any inadvertent inspiration I might have given by word or deed, I’ve already made the most important contribution I can make to the future of mankind. And I’m okay with that.

So, since I saw hope at the end of the movie, I must be one of those hopeful people. That’s kind of comforting.

Worst Shark EVER

Call me sick, but this movie is so bad that it’s hilarious.