Stone Has Her Chinese Dixie Chick Moment

It's probably not going to have much negative impact on her pretty much washed up career, but Sharon Stone is persona non grata in China:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Sharon Stone's "karma" is having an instant effect on her movie-star status in China.

The 50-year-old actress suggested last week that the devastating May 12 earthquake in China could have been the result of bad karma over the government's treatment of Tibet. That prompted the founder of one of China's biggest cinema chains to say his company would not show her films in his theaters, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter.

"I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else," Stone said Thursday during a Cannes Film Festival red-carpet interview with Hong Kong's Cable Entertainment News. "And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"

Ng See-Yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, called Stone's comments "inappropriate," adding that actors should not bring personal politics to comments about a natural disaster that has left five million Chinese homeless, according to the Reporter.

UME has branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou, China's biggest urban movie markets.

It's easy to ridicule the supercilious inanity of Stone's world view -- "I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else" -- but, hey, anyone who smacks down China, no matter how inanely, is OK with me.

But Sharon, do you think maybe you could add a bit of criticism to the Beijingoists for "being unkind" to China's long-suffering Christians? Don't they deserve the attention of your all a-glitter Hollywood self?

Sunday Scan

A Personal Hero Revisited

I earned my degree at Ernie Pyle Hall, Indiana University's journalism school, so this story moved me:

NEW YORK — The figure in the photograph is clad in Army fatigues, boots and helmet, lying on his back in peaceful repose, folded hands holding a military cap. Except for a thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, he could be asleep.

But he is not asleep; he is dead. And this is not just another fallen GI; it is Ernie Pyle, the most celebrated war correspondent of World War II.

As far as can be determined, the photograph has never been published. Sixty-three years after Pyle was killed by the Japanese, it has surfaced — surprising historians, reminding a forgetful world of a humble correspondent who artfully and ardently told the story of a war from the foxholes.

"It's a striking and painful image, but Ernie Pyle wanted people to see and understand the sacrifices that soldiers had to make, so it's fitting, in a way, that this photo of his own death ... drives home the reality and the finality of that sacrifice," said James E. Tobin, a professor at Miami University of Ohio.

Read the rest at USA Today.

I think Pyle would have taken umbrage at the line, "... not just another fallen GI." There were no "just anothers" among the soldiers Pyle wrote about in his columns from the front lines of the war, which you can read in Brave Men or Here is Your War: The Story of GI Joe.

Pyle might just have been the last great journalist, were it not for men like Michael Totten and Michael Yon, who ignore the directives from the military's PR men and put themselves at risk, as Pyle did, to report the noble, inspiring and heartbreaking stories of our great soldiers doing their great work.

Now, 63 years later, we see Ernie Pyle at rest, and it is a moving, powerful photo. How tragic that often this is bravery's reward; how reaffirming that six decades on, we still care.

Unwelcoming Worlds

Be thankful that you're from Earth, not a planet in the RS Ophiuchi binary system, the red giant/white dwarf system rendered here by a NASA artist.

Here's why:

"We were getting ready for a routine engineering run when all of a sudden the nova went off. It was very bright and easy to observe, so we took this opportunity and turned it into gold," says team member Marc Kuchner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. ...

The Keck Nuller [astronomical instrument] was undergoing tests on February 12, 2006, when a nova flared up in the constellation Ophiuchus. The system, known as RS Ophiuchi, consists of a white dwarf and a red giant. The red giant is gradually shedding its massive gaseous outer layers, and the white dwarf is sweeping up much of this wind, growing in mass over time. As the matter builds up on the white dwarf's surface it eventually reaches a critical temperature that ignites a thermonuclear explosion that causes the system to brighten 600-fold. (Science Daily)

Talk about your global warming!

But what's a mere super-nova among friends? What makes the RS Ophiuchi system just so darned inhospitable is that similar events were observed (counting backwards) in 1985, 1967, 1958, 1933, 1989 and who knows how many more times back through the history of the universe.

Those time spans of nine to 34 years were astronomical quick blinks; nearly constant and instantaneous by the way galaxies time things.

RS Ophiuchi is a mighty hymn to the incredible splendor of the universe, and testimony to the infinite creativity ... and maybe even humor ... of the Creator.

I mean, really, doesn't this whacked-out solar system remind you just a little bit of the Three Stooges, forever knuckle-heading, slapping and poking each other? You ... I oughtta ... nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!

Gore Gorged ... Again

The next time you bump into Al Gore, you might want to tattoo this across his forehead:

A warming global ocean — influencing the winds that shear off the tops of developing storms — could mean fewer Atlantic hurricanes striking the United States according to new findings by NOAA climate scientists. Furthermore, the relative warming role of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans is important for determining Atlantic hurricane activity.

The article, to be published on January 23 in Geophysical Research Letters, uses observations to show that warming of global sea surface temperatures is associated with a secular, or sustained long-term increase, of vertical wind shear in the main development region for Atlantic hurricanes. The increased vertical wind shear coincides with a downward trend in U.S. landfalling hurricanes. (source)

Researchers did an amazing thing in this study. Instead of stoking up the computer models and filling the models' cyber-heads with silliness, they actually went back through historical records and tracked real landfalls from the late 1800s on. Imagine that!

Of course, the study finds the oceans have warmed, which supports global warming. But it also shows that we know far too little about what its effects may be to start taxing ourselves in order to fund government programs willy-nilly. If this study is true, people along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts might not be too keen on paying a carbon tax to curtail the forces that are making their lives safer.

Taxes To Beat The Axis

Ymarsakar has posted this Donald Duck cartoon from the 1940s to show how Hollywood's approach to wars has changed.

clipped from ymarsakar.wordpress.com

As Y says,

This is an interesting example of how Hollywood was for the war in WWII, due to the fact that there was no reason to be against Hitler, given Hitler’s betrayal and attack on Soviet Stalin.

Hollywood seems to have forgotten that the Islamic world that they're defending through their current round of movies overwhelmingly was on Hitler's side in WWII.

Like Father, Sort-Of Like Son

Hamza bin Laden is following in the terrorist footsteps of his father, although it appears he may be more willing than pops to actually put his personal safety at risk in the name of jihad.

AP has obtained a draft of Benizir Bhutto's autobiography, due out later this month, which contains this passage:

"I was told by both the Musharraf regime and the foreign Muslim government that four suicide bomber squads would attempt to kill me," Bhutto reportedly says in the book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy & the West.

"These included, the reports said, the squads sent by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud; Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden; Red Mosque militants; and a Karachi-based militant group," she is quoted as saying.

Mehsud has been blamed by Pakistan intelligence for the attack, but his mouthpieces deny his involvement. Bin Laden & Son are similarly silent -- knowing, perhaps, that this is one act of terror they're better off not taking credit for.

The Consequence Of Being Unread

I wouldn't put Vladamir Nobokov's Lolita on my recommended reading list, but let's face it, it's a good thing to have some awareness of the literary world around us. Otherwise, our world is vulnerable to this sort of silliness:

LONDON (Reuters) - A chain of retail stores in Britain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that the name was synonymous with sexually active pre-teens.

Woolworths said staff who administer the web site selling the beds were not aware of the connection.

In "Lolita," a 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov, the narrator becomes sexually involved with his 12-year-old stepdaughter -- but Woolworths staff had not heard of the classic novel or two subsequent films based on it.

Hence they saw nothing wrong with advertising the Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a whitewashed wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard intended for girls aged about six until a concerned mother raised the alarm on a parenting website.

It reminds me of a little girl I saw on TV once named Temptress. The shocked show host asked the girl's mom if she knew the meaning of the name, and she didn't. She just thought it sounded nice and had something to do with "pretty."

Just like whoring has something to do with sleeping, I suppose.

Dem Voter Guide

In closing, I'd like to offer an olive branch to my Dem readers (all two of you!) by providing you with this handy-dandy Dem Voter Guide for the upcoming primaries.

Edwards supporters are free to give their votes either to Jimmy Carter #1 or Jimmy Carter #3. (hat-tip Doug Ross via What Bubba Knows)

Sunday Scan

Cloverfield, Nevada Style

The film Cloverfield has used viral internet marketing to become quite a sensation -- but at its heart, it's just a Godzilla movie, with a big mean monster wreaking havoc in New York.

And yesterday, a little, pale monster wreaked havoc in the glitter gulches and dusty desert towns of Nevada. And today, just as I predicted, we are suffering through the media coverage of it:

Boy, oh, boy! Hidden behind all the hoopla, headlines and the Nevada caucus victories of Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton is one little-noticed but stunning political development and number:

Ron Paul, the one-time Libertarian candidate and 10-term Republican congressman from Texas, was in second place. That's right, Second Place. The 72-year-old ob-gyn who's always on the end of the line at GOP debates or barred altogether, was running ahead of John McCain, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, in fact, ahead of....

all other Republicans except Romney, who easily captured his second state in a week after Michigan.

Uh-huh. But let's keep our heads on straight. It was Romney with 51% of the votes (all 22,659 of them!) followed by the pale imp with 14%, attracting a whopping 6,087 to his cause -- a full 436 more people than John McCain attracted.

Photo clipped from: Dino's Forum

Marking History

They laid an historical marker outside a house in Port Arthur, Texas today. Here's the story.

In that house there once lived a little four-year-old girl who grew up to live far too short a life as Summer of Love diva Janis Joplin. There was another house she lived in earlier, but it's gone now, so this is her official childhood home.

The marker was placed today as opposed to any other day you might think of because it marks what would have been Joplin's 65th birthday.

Whoa, am I feeling old.

I was 17, I think, when I first put Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills on my little stereo and heard her gravely voice. And I'm still 17 in my head when I think about her ... how could she have been born 65 years ago?

New Euro-Islamist Threat

This is not something I'm quite prepared to think about:

The source implied that the [Spanish intelligence agency] CNI had specific information on itinerant terrorists heading for the UK, France and Portugal.

The squib, from a London Times article, troubles me not just because Incredible Daughter #1 is in Paris, but because I've never seen the words "itinerant terrorists" before. We have in America a tradition of itinerant preachers and judges; from sick Islam, we get itinerant terrorists, travelling from place to place, killing innocents in the name of Allah.

Terrorists Get 72 Raisins?

Amidst a lengthy and interesting story at Act! For America covering the suppression of ancient Islamic texts in Germany, so anyone interested in a revisionist view of the Koran cannot get access to them, was this interesting tidbit:

According to an Islam tradition, Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But some Koran scholars point to a less sexy paradise. While beautifully written, Islamic texts are often obscure. The Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and growing evidence suggests that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic.

Specifically, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get "hur," and the word was taken by early commentators to mean "virgins," hence those 72 concubines. But in Aramaic, hur actually meant "white" and was commonly used to specifically mean "white grapes."

It's easy to crack a joke over this, but if there's any question at all about the nature of so critical a text -- a text that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents a year -- why does the keeper of the archive, Angelika Neuwirth, protect them from anyone other than pro-Islamist researchers?

For more on this fascinating story, see Andrew Higgins' WSJ article, The Lost Archives.

hat-tip: What Bubba Knows

Pulling The Plug On Terrorists

Just wait 'til some Palestinians start crying about having to eat cold falafels in the dark -- oh, how the anti-Israeli press will rain an ink-storm on Israel. Here's the story, from Sky News:

Large parts of the Gaza Strip have been plunged into darkness after its main power plant shut down.

It comes after Israel blocked fuel supplies to the Hamas-run territory and closed its borders.

Israel says the blocklade is a response to rocket attacks by militants.

It claims 230 rockets have been fired at border towns in a new wave of aggression.

"It claims?" I don't suppose we can expect the media to actually report that rockets are falling like locusts on Israel.

Already, the Palestinian PR machine is busy maximizing the impact:

"The catastrophe will affect hospitals, medical clinics, water wells, houses, factories, all aspects of life."

Oh, boo hoo. First, stop sending rockets into civilian neighborhoods, especially when there's no war going on. And second, get your act together, Palestine. You've had 60 years to provide for yourself, but here you are, dependent on Israel for your power ... with fuel purchased by Europe.

How these people garner so much sympathy and so little criticism amazes me.

Human-Animal Embryo Research

Two research companies in England have been granted licenses to mix up human and animal embryos, reports Science Daily.

One is going to take the genetic matter out of cow embryos and mix 'em up with human embryos, in a quest for better human stem cells.

The scientists would attempt to extract stem cells from the blastocyst after six days. Stem cells are building blocks that can grow into any type of tissue such as liver, heart and muscle cells. The quality and the viability of stem cells would then be checked to see if nuclear transfer technique has worked. The scientists would also be observing the way that the cells are reprogrammed after fusion to see if there are useful processes they could replicate in the laboratory. The embryo would have to be destroyed at 14 days old in accordance with the licence.

I have to admit, this all goes way, way over my head. I understand that there's nothing about this license that will allow any intermingled animal/human embryonic material to (1) live or (2) get into humans, but the research is taking the science to another new level, and after that will be another new level.

At some time, a mistake will occur or a license will be granted that shouldn't have been. That's just the way it goes with us inquisitive humans. All this going too far will make a great novel ... and it's one work of nonfiction I hope I never read.

George Clooney, Messenger Of Peace

Position to fill: International shell game operator needs good looking individual with real swoon-power, a hard-left orientation and a history of supporting the wrong side in global causes to cover up organization's myriad global failures.

Position filled! The Rosett Report reports:

As Hollywood buffs and UN money-raisers already know, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has just named actor George Clooney as the UN’s newest Messenger of Peace, with a “special focus on UN peacekeeping.” Clooney, currently visiting Sudan, is expected to “receive his designation” Jan. 31st at UN headquarters in New York.

Oh, great. We get to see even more of Clooney opening his mouth and letting his politics spew out. Rosett's not expecting much good of it to come, either:

This would all be great if UN peacekeeping actually produced peace. But the illusion that the UN is a grand force for good in this world deserves to be catalogued somewhere between World’s Most Amazing Scams and Believe It-Or-Not Best-in-Special-Effects. The reality of today’s UN is more like a cross between “Animal House” (the movie, with John Belushi) and “Animal Farm” (the book, by George Orwell).

Her post is a gem. Do read the whole thing.

Anti-War Hollywood Update

It just dawned on my I've been terribly unfair to Redacted, Brian De Palma's strident anti-war flick. I last wrote that it opened 50th at the box office in limited release, but I never checked back to see how it's doing in broader release.

Guess what? There is no broader release.

On Box Office Mojo's rankings for the last weekend, the film simply does not appear at all. Box office oblivion.

But there is this expected fact: International box office is now almost 300 percent of U.S. box office for the film. Beware,though, because you can play statistical mischief with small numbers. The film's U.S. box office is a stunning stunted $25,628; it's global take is now at $71,968.

Adding insult to infantile anti-Americanism, the film's ranking among BOM's readers slipped from D- to F.

Meanwhile, the most successful of the anti-war films, Lions for Lambs, fell 61% over the previous week, dropping from 8th to 13th. Not even Redford, Streep and Cruise can keep this diatribe running for more than three weeks.

BOM readers gave it a D, by the way.

Redacted: Opening With A Bullet (To The Brain)

OK, it was in limited release -- just 15 screens -- but Brian DePalma's long-awaited dreaded anti-war flick Redacted opened in 50th place, according to Box Office Mojo.

We simply won't know whether it will be the worst anti-war box office bomb of all time until (if) it achieves greater release, but the reviewers at Box Office Mojo think it may be headed that way, giving it a score of D-. And that's among an audience of Hollywood-types.

Four of the site's on-line reviewers gave it an A. Then things got bad. One B, no Cs, 2 all too kind Ds ... and 34 Fs.

Really, isn't that an F+?

Hollywood's Sacrificed Dead Things

Here's a quiz for you:

What's 26 million, 24.3 million, 19.2 million and 6.7 million?

If you answered 76.2 million, you're right ... but not for the purposes of this quiz. For this quiz, the answer is the weekend take of Bee Movie, American Gangster, Fred Claus ... and in a distant, distant fourth place, Lions for Lambs, the whacked but star-packed anti-war flick.

Hollywood has not yet realized that their fervid anti-war film making is not lions for lambs, but lambs for lions: movies that are mere sacrificed dead things, reflecting their tiny views in a tiny mirror for tiny audiences.

Hollywood's KoolAid Fest Continues: Wimps For Lambs

UPDATED
I just went to the Lions for Lambs Web site to find out how bad it really was but it was so bad I couldn't even get into it without posting first.

The home page presents a bunch of phrases that fly at you before fading away like NanPo's leadership -- world peace, alternate energy, healthcare, no more wars. (I'm not sure how "no more wars" is different from "world peace," but perhaps I'm not nuanced enough.)

The phrases stopped flying and a little window opened, saying "What do you stand for? Type your answer here."

So I did: Free market capitalism and defeating jihadists.

Happily I clicked "enter," only to be confronted by the ugliness of liberal censorship (a.k.a. "tolerance"):

THANK YOU for your submission!
Check back to see if it is approved.
Approved submissions may be posted on the site.

"THANK YOU for our submission?" They must have something dreadfully wrong. I'm not submitting to this crap, not ever!

Just in case you're still curious, I offer you this review, from the Daily Kostic:

It has taken some time, but Hollywood is finally taking the gloves off and punching hard at the administration with unveiled force. Buoyed by artists, actors and producers passionately committed to promoting a serious political message of desperate straits and a need for public activism, this newfound courage has resulted in at least one film that deserves highest praise both for artistry of cinema, depth of emotion, and complexity of message.

Oh Mia Madre! I can't wait ... until it, too, bombs at the boxoffice. And here I thought the Hollywood elite were against bombing.

The Token Dem from our office is excited about this movie, however, as I learned the other day while we were waiting for a plane in San Francisco when Robert Redford came onto Larry King Live.

“That’s going to be a good movie,” he said.

“I’m not going to see it,” was my immediate and utterly unthought reply.

When did this happen? When did Hollywood become so divisive that such see/don't see decisions are made at such a visceral level?

Token Dem pointed out that the shoe used to be on the other foot, with a conservative Hollywood blacklisting Leftists and churning out movies that supported the American status quo. The Left, I assume, reacted just as viscerally to certain stars and certain movie genres, staying away in droves. Mini-droves, perhaps, but droves nonetheless.

But now, put Alec Baldwin, Robert Redford, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney or Sean Penn in a movie and half of America will instantly decide not to see it. Perhaps we conservatives are too extreme; perhaps Hollywood is too extreme – which is it?

Neither, entirely, because you can't answer this question in Hollywood. To answer it, you have to go to Boston. I believe the divisiveness stems back to the alliance of Hollywood and the Dems we saw during the 2004 Democratic campaign, and specifically on the reception Michael Moore received at the Democratic convention.

Acceptance of Moore equated with acceptance of Bush complicity in 9/11 and an America too dreadful for most of us to imagine. Yet there he was, given the blue ribbon treatment, seated in the best seats – next to an ex-president, for crying out loud – and gushed over by the Dem political, policy and fundraising elite.

Already, most conservatives had stayed away from Fahrenheit 911, unwilling to fatten Moore’s portly bank accounts; then the convention served to tie that emotion to the Democratic platform. In the campaign that followed, we saw liberal Hollywood at its worst, reaching its nadir when Cameron Diaz, snot and tears aplenty, blubbered to a national television audience that the re-election of Bush would lead to a big, legalized gang bang.

With the war, the Left in Hollywood built on Moore’s paranoid, nasty vision of America and began churning out movies like Jarhead, Rendition and In the Valley of Elah that were to feature films what Fahrenheit was to documentaries: agenda-heavy, intolerant and wholly unenjoyable for a significant percentage of Americans.

How unenjoyable? Here's Joshua Goldberg in USA Today:

So far, these movies are tanking. Rendition opened on 2,250 screens, with three Oscar winners in the cast, and it was beaten its opening weekend by a re-release of the 14-year-old A Nightmare Before Christmas. Elah was a bigger bomb than those used in the "shock and awe" campaign. The Kingdom earned less than $50 million, and surely only did that well because it was marketed as an action movie rather than an anti-war one.

Hollywood is drinking its own KoolAid. Even though none of these movies fared well, they satisfied a hungry need shared by the producers, directors, writers and actors to be part of the anti-Bush, anti-war movement, in a blind faith that they would finally be the anointed one who would open the eyes of an America to stupid to see the light.

Now we’ve come to the point when a pointless piece of fluff like The Game Plan makes more at the boxoffice than the last crop of antiwar movies combined, and Lions for Lambs is greeted not with anticipation, but with speculation that perhaps Tom Cruise has ruined his career by signing on.

I believe all this is attributable in part to a dumbing down that has swept Hollywood. It takes intelligence and finesse to be subtle and nuanced but any buffoon can crank out a heavy-handed diatribe. We have had no Dr. Strangelove for the Iraq war; we have not even had an Apocalypse Now.

Finally, it is also attributable to the lemming mentality of Leftist Hollywood, where no one dares to write or fund or shoot or distribute a patriotic, pro-American, pro-military film, even though there is an untapped market.

In Hollywood, it is better to miss the market the approved way than to achieve success outside Hollywood's prescribed bounds, and that's turned so many of us off we won't give our $8 to their cause, we won't give our time to their messages, and we won't support anything about their effort to dishonor our cause.

Rendition: The "Loud Voice/Small Mind" View

Disclosure: I am not going to see the film Rendition, but I have plenty to say about it nonetheless. This is a legitimate position because I'm not setting out to be a movie critic, but for the last three years and three days (I seem to have just missed noting C-SM's third anniversary) I've become a noted (by a few hundred folks, at least) social critic.

The story line of rendition, as told us by that trusty source, Reuters, is pretty straightforward:

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon, "Rendition" tells the fictional story of an Egyptian-American engineer abducted by U.S. customs at Washington airport, deported to a North African jail and tortured under the eyes of a CIA agent.

Witherspoon plays the man's pregnant wife desperately trying to track him down, while Gyllenhaal is the reluctant CIA agent asked to supervise his brutal interrogation.

The more you read about this film, the more you see how South African director Gavin Hood has gone out of his way to create a sympathetic victim. The renditionee, Anwar El-Ibrahimi (played by Omar Metwally) is described by LA Times reviewer Carina Chocano as "He lives in a Craftsman house in the Chicago suburbs and makes $200,000 a year. He's handsome, athletic and expensively educated," and to top it off, he has a cute blond American (pregnant yet!) wife. The CIA agent, Gyllenhaal, is "reluctant" because he's not clear what the rules are, and he thinks they're being over-stepped.

Any other approach and Hood would risk losing what little audience the movie will attract. If Metwally's character had a level of suspicion around him significant enough to trigger rendition, if his wife were a Muslim equally suspicious in her nature, if the CIA agent knew the rules and made sure they were applied (which is, after all, his job), Hood would be left with a limp story. Instead, he's got himself a pulpit-flick, and he admits it:

"(It's) not just the people to whom it happens but the people who are involved in having to do this and they don't quite know what the rules are ... We don't have the answers but I think we ask people to ask the questions and I hope the film contributes to the debate."

"Debate" being the key word. Anyone who has ever been on a debate team knows the ploy of deliberate overstatement in order to emphasize a point. That's a fine and well-worked strategy, but I'm not going to pay $8 to watch it done if there's no rebuttal offered.

I feel the liberal media breathing down my neck even as I write this simple request for a balanced movie on the issue. I turn around with a start. Sure enough, it's A.O. Scott of the NY Times:

Given the tenor of political discussion these days, it is inevitable that someone with a loud voice and a small mind will label “Rendition” anti-American. (But look! A quick Internet search reveals that some people already have, many of them without even bothering to see the movie.) It is, after all, much easier to rant and rave about treacherous Hollywood liberals than to think through the moral and strategic questions raised by some of the policies of the American government. But it is just these questions that “Rendition” tries to address, in a manner that, while hardly neutral — it may not shock you to learn that the filmmakers come out against torture, kidnapping and other abuses — nonetheless tries to be evenhanded and thoughtful. “Rendition” may be earnest, but it is hardly naïve. Rather, it tries to be thoughtful and respectful of complexity while at the same time honoring the imperatives of commercial entertainment.

So I have a small mind and a loud voice because I want to hear the issue from someone who hasn't come out against "(undefined and surely ill-defined) torture, kidnapping (but hardly of innocent kids) and other (unnamed, but let your imagination wander) abuses."

"The imperatives of commercial entertainment" Scott mentions are what I kicked around at the outset: Sympathetic heroes who are not terrorists, a nasty enemy willing to shred not just lives but the American Way, and an agent caught in the middle. Would that it were true, but if the records of rendition were suddenly opened, we would find unsympathetic targets, interrogators doing their best to protect people like Hood, Gyllenhaal and Witherspoon from terror attacks -- and a lot of internal pushing and pushing back regarding how far we should go with this particular tactic, then a scrupulous following of the defined rules.

Instead, Hood has created a predictable plot upon which to set his pulpit. His hapless victim has done nothing at all wrong in the world except have a name that's one letter off from a terrorism suspect who's been implicated in a bombing that just occurred, killing an American operative. I'll let the LAT reviewer pick it up from there:

The man's death leaves a young and inexperienced Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) in charge and sends CIA honcho Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) into a retaliatory frenzy. Local officials in North Africa, led by an intimidating Abasi Fawal (Igal Naor), are happy to oblige with Whitman's request that the prisoner be squeezed until he talks, to the free-thinking Freeman's growing discomfort. Meanwhile, the hugely pregnant Isabella (Witherspoon) starts knocking on doors, starting with that of an ex-boyfriend named Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard) who works for a powerful senator (Alan Arkin).

Does it sound like every anti-American, anti-war film you've ever seen, including the fun but nasty Bourne Ultimatum? Streep's character, the CIA agent who refuses to follow the rules, is a fine Hollywood construct because it allows Hood and his ilk to quickly do away with the fact that there are rules. And of course the Senator is played by Alan Arkin, the most glitterati of the Hollywood libs, who is so excellent at playing slithery politicians.

But in the end, it's all a plot sham designed to preach, not entertain, and the American people have stayed away in droves. It limped into ninth place in the weekend box office, behind even a re-issue of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas and a Disney re-issue I've never even heard of.

That's fine, as far as it goes, but it's irrelevant. Hood will make his producers rich when the film opens in Europe and the Middle East, where it will do further harm to the world opinion of America. Hood and Hollywood attackers of America will be the winner, and America, which is only trying to defend the world from Islamist terrorism, will be the loser.

A Big Hollywood Tip To Hillary -- Plus A MoveOn Slam

It's a funny political world we live in when one of the nation's top timber processors newspapers leads off the day's coverage with:

Director Rob Reiner, one of liberal Hollywood's most courted presidential fence-sitters, said Wednesday that he has decided to endorse New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. (LA Times)

Yes, Meathead is even going to throw Bill's gal a 60th birthday party/Hollywood fundraiser, the equivalent of giving her his ring. And it's big, big news from Malibu all the way to the Hollywood Hills.

The article is a hoot -- and a piece of one-sided Hillary boosterism -- that's a fun read. We learn of the other Hollywood fence sitters and their response to the news of the Meathead endorsement. You can almost hear paparazzi jostling in the background.

Reiner began telling his friends about his decision last week. He ran into [former studio exec Sherry] Lansing on Friday evening in the valet line at Morton's restaurant, a film industry favorite, where he sprang the news.

"He said, 'Have you made up your mind yet?' " Lansing said. She told him that she was still busy fundraising for all the Democrats and she didn't plan to make a decision until after she holds her own event for Edwards. "He said, 'Well, I'm coming out for Hillary.' I told him that I think it's great. I think she's wonderful," Lansing said in an interview Wednesday.

Reiner also informed [irritating has-been Norman] Lear, considered by many as political Hollywood's elder statesman, about his decision. Lear was supportive, although he said he was not yet ready to pick a candidate.

Brace yourselves Breck Boy fans, because the next paragraph contains some bad, bad news for your boy.

"I certainly support Hillary," Lear said. "I certainly support Obama, and I support Edwards. It will take me a little more time."

Lear, man of nuance.

What's interesting in this Hillaryfest is that the LATimes -- self-professed chronicler of "The Biz" -- failed to mention anywhere in the story of David Geffen's early endorsement of Obama, his bitter comments about the unusually finely honed lying ability of the Clintons, and Hil's subsequent hissy fit.

How can you write about self-effacing, society-debasing Hollywood luminaries and not write about Geffen? You can't, unless you're pretty sharply focused on promoting Hil for prez.

BTW, the story contained this gem:

[Reiner] said Wednesday that he found it "deplorable" that MoveOn.org recently characterized Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, as "General Betray Us" in a controversial New York Times ad. "This is a guy who is a military officer who is working hard to do his job," said Reiner, who has made ads for MoveOn.org in the past but is not sure if he will in the future.

Kudos, man. What a blessed relief to find at least one icon of the Left that is ready to stand up to the despicable anti-Americanism of MoveOn.org. As we all know, Clinton couldn't find it in her to criticize the hardcore left of the party about the ad.

Which goes to show that Rob is a better man than Hillary.

Al Qaeda ... The Summer Comedy Hit?

National Lampoon has a little vote going ... should they make a movie about horny two college doofuses who join the frat with the "cursive Greek" name so they can get 72 virgins. They want you to vote.

Of course the movie is already made, given the extensive preview you can view here.

As you can imagine, it's infantile, disgusting and hardly humourous. But as LGF points out, if there's one thing the Islamists can't stand, it's any lampooning of their religion. So hold your nose, gag twice and click the "make it" button.

Or save the electrons and don't. They've already made it and you know it'll be in theaters soon enough, seeking belly laughs from terrorism.

My head hurts.

Troop Shortage? I Have A Solution

The MSM are reporting troop shortages in Iraq. I don't believe it.

The gist of the coverage is that some brigades will have to stay longer and some will have to deploy sooner to meet the troop levels needed for the surge. But that's been the plan since the outset -- it's not news. Faced with victories even before the surge takes hold, the media is scrambling for bad news, and has presented standard troop management as bad news.

No surprise there, so let's move on.

Even if MSM are exploiting the situation in their never-ending quest for negativity, given the situation we're in, it's pretty obvious that this world calls for more troops, not fewer.

How are we going to get more troops if every day the news is full of news of defeat, of injuries poorly treated, of discouragement and blackness and doom. Not exactly the stuff that drives guys down to the Recruiters to sign up.

Enter 300.

Speaking for the anti-war Left, Slate columnist Dana Stevens laments that it's just too gung ho -- too much brotherhood among the Spartans, too much sickness among the Persians, too much heroism and willingness to sacrifice for what's right. Too much clarity about who's right and who's wrong.

I saw the movie yesterday afternoon, and it has all of those things, and too much of none of them.

300 is a rousing, bloody, victorious celebration of men fighting for their country and famiies against an enemy that is strong, intimidating and evil. The parallels with today are profound. The Spartans fought for freedom against a society that preferred repression. They fought against "mysticism" that came with Persia, a codeword for Islam, even though Islam did not exist at the time.

The 300 Spartans also fought against anti-war sentiments at home, despite Stevens' myopic claim that there wasn't an anti-war theme in the movie. And in 300's presentation, one side in the anti-war debate is right and one side is wrong -- guess which is which.

There were a lot of young guys in the theater with me, and they dug the movie. A lot. While 300 alone might not drive recruits into the military, it certainly won't turn the spigot further off.

Now, how about a movie about our soldiers in Iraq that isn't all muddied with negative questions and misrepresentations, a movie that just shows good guys kicking bad guys butt?

Propaganda, you say? No way. Every day, good US soldiers are fighting the good fight against really bad guys in Iraq, living in real life screenplays for really amazing movies.

Surely somewhere in Hollywood there's a renegade production company with the courage to stand up to the establishment and make contemporary, pro-American war movies.