South Korea has placed robots with machine guns along the North Korean border. The most interesting/troubling quote:
“Techwin spokesman Huh Kwang-hak was quoted as saying by Stars and Stripes: ‘But these robots have automatic surveillance, which doesn’t leave room for anything resembling human laziness. They also won’t have any fear (of) enemy attackers on the front lines.'”
Yes, can’t leave that sort of thing up to the meatbags, can we?
Roger Ebert was named the “Webby Person of the Year” for his “contributions to the craft of online writing and journalism. In addition to his film criticism, which remains as eloquent as ever, his online journal has raised the bar for the level of poignancy, thoughtfulness and critique one can achieve on the Web.”
“Film criticism”? “Eloquent”? Give me a break. This guy gave Avatar four stars, and then has the guts to say that video games aren’t art. One can almost hear the Roger Eberts of a century ago complaining that “it’s not art if it’s captured on film!” The arrogance is appalling… which is probably why he liked Avatar so much.
As for “raising the bar for thoughtfulness one can achieve on the web”, well… over to you, John Nolte!
Okay, it’s a little thing, but it irritated me. In his review of the video game-based movie “Prince of Persia”, Darin Miller writes: “Given that the film’s underlying premise is a video game, it’s no surprise that the story is a little weak.”
It is true that most video game-inspired movies are pretty awful. And yes, from what I can tell, the story of “Prince of Persia” the game wasn’t exactly a brilliant one. Heck, it’s even true that most video game plots really do suck. But there’s something about the way he phrases it that suggests to me that he thinks all video games are like that.
And, after all, can anyone claim that most movie plots nowadays aren’t “a little weak”?
A glimmer of hope for the art of movies here. But let us be clear: Sequels aren’t the problem–laziness is.
(Hat Tip to Big Hollywood.)
This is bizarre. He claims to have been doing this for 70 years.
I assume that it’s some sort of hoax, though it’s hard to see how he’s pulling it off.
On the other hand, if it isn’t a hoax and everyone learned how to do it, the decrease in demand for food would probably cripple the economy, so I figure the Indian government will probably hush it all up,send the guy somewhere secret, and hide all the relevant studies in a giant warehouse; like at the end of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Roger Ebert says no. Hot Air speculates that Ebert hates them because they many of them involve fighting terrorists, like the seemingly never-ending Call of Duty series. (I like Call of Duty, but it is not art–it is, however, more intellectually challenging than some may realize.) They speculate that the lack of nuance and depth in games–which they seem to like–is what repels Ebert.
Ebert is completely and utterly wrong. Hot Air is sort of right, except that they fail to realize that they are succumbing to the same sort of bigotry as Ebert.
“No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets. [sic]” Ebert writes.
Then I shall do so now:
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Those games are all at least as powerful as any movie, any poem or any novel.
(Hat Tip to Big Hollywood.)
At the end of the film The Wrath of Khan, when Spock is exposing himself to deadly radiation in order to save the crew of the Enterprise, he reminds Kirk that: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.Or the one.” When I saw this, my first thought–probably because of reading Ayn Rand–was “this is a rather neat description of Socialism.” It’s the sacrifice of the individual for the collective. And it is this notion from which all the other aspects of Socialism derive.
Supposedly, this idea is alien to the United States of America, where we value individualism. Part of the idea of “American exceptionalism” is that we are more friendly to the rights of the individual than other nations; hence, Socialism is a philosophy that Americans seemingly reject.
Or do we?
In an earlier post, I said that “War is a fundamentally Socialist undertaking.” And, indeed, it is in wartime that the Socialists and anti-individualist philosophies gain the greatest acceptance in the United States of America. Witness Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, the efforts at managing the war economy in World War I, or even the very idea of conscription. All these sacrifice the rights of individuals for the purpose of winning a war.
One of the redeeming factors of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism is that he seems to have grasped this point. It sort of undermines his own thesis, of course, but nonetheless he figures out that the United States is, historically, susceptible to this sort of socialistic mood. Of course, Goldberg calls it “fascism”, and he may be right about that as well.
I have said in the past that “Fascism is nothing more than a particularly militaristic brand of Socialism”, and while I’m no longer sure if that’s the only difference, I think it’s clear that fascism is more militaristic than socialism. So, perhaps I should rephrase my earlier statement: war is a fundamentally socialist undertaking–and it’s called fascism. Again, Goldberg makes something of a decent case that socialism and fascism have some similarities that people don’t know about. (Of course, he seems to think they’re almost interchangeable.)
I realize this post is somewhat disjointed and confusing–it’s a combination of a post I’d been working on for a while, plus the stuff about Goldberg’s book that I was reminded of by this–but what I’m ultimately trying to do here is figure out just what the hell fascism actually is, and how it relates to socialism. Anyone care to help? So far, the best explanation I’ve read is here.
Generation Zero is a new documentary about the financial crisis. Apparently, it claims that the baby boomers caused the stock market crash in some way that I can’t figure out yet. I haven’t seen it, but it’s stocked with so many mainstream Republican/neo-con types that it makes me suspicious of just how much new information is in it. Based on the trailer, it looks a lot like Zeitgeist for Republicans.
I was going to write more, but instead I’ll just post this.
Fascinating interview with James Cameron about Avatar‘s message. He says: “The movie is designed to work as a straightforward adventure and a romance, and if that’s all you want from a movie, that’s fine, but the message isn’t going over people’s heads.”
I doubt this highly. The message is, as so many people have pointed out, not in the least bit original, nor can anyone claim it is even the best execution of this story. I knew how the whole thing would play out the minute I saw the ads. The only reason I saw the thing was to see what the special effects were like. I strongly suspect the same was true of most people. Furthermore, because of how radical the message is (at times, anyway) I strongly doubt most people fully get it.
Cameron, of course, can’t admit this, even to himself. If he did, it would mean he was simply a shallow magician, not an artist. He is merely making people ooh and ahh over pretty effects. He is in no way advancing any new ideas.
As for the idea that the movie is about something other than the Iraq war; this is partially true, but partially misleading. It is obvious that the “shock and awe” reference is supposed to evoke Iraq, but it is likewise obvious that I doubt his point about harming the environment relates to the Iraq war. Even if you think the Iraq war was entirely about oil, it’s hard to claim it ruined the pristine beauty of the country, since someone would drill for the stuff anyway. I assume the jungle setting for the story–which Cameron is said to have been thinking about since he was a teenager–is based on the Vietnam war; although no resources were involved in that war as far as I know.
Actually, for all the talk about environmentalism, the movie’s “message”, such as it is, has little to do with environmentalism. One of the central points about being environmentally friendly is that if you change one part of the ecosystem, it affects the whole planet. But this is not true once you are talking about affecting ecosystems on other planets.
The message of Avatar is not pro-environmentalism, but rather anti-colonialism. (This is, of course, an even older theme.)
As for the is-Avatar-pro-or-anti-military issue, I don’t think Cameron himself knows. I suspect his worldview is such that he can’t decide which is worse: the army or a private corporation. So he makes it a private mercenary army, so as to have it both ways. This, apart from any other considerations, doesn’t work dramatically because he never decides if he’s satirizing gung-ho militarism or private greed.
He also says that part of the message is “‘Listen to what your leaders are saying. Open your eyes. And understand what the run-up to war is like, so the next time it happens, you can question it.’ “
Alright, nice message. Except that the hero, Jake Sully, doesn’t actually ever question anything. I don’t believe he ever makes any attempt to discuss anything with the villainous Colonel. It would not be productive, of course, because the Colonel is a one-dimensional character; but that is no excuse. If Cameron can’t even write a scenario in which his own message can be put across properly, it means he needs to brush up on his writing.
What Avatar represents is a mish-mash of vague leftist ideas masquerading as a satire. It’s a satire of Iraq when it wants to be, then lurches into being a morality play about the treatment of Native Americans, and from there into something about environmentalism. These issues are different, of course, but what does Cameron care? When Cameron was told the movie “seemed like the story of the Taliban told from the movement’s point of view,” the article says that Cameron “finds that kind of literalism ‘egregious’ and ‘willfully ignorant of the power of allegorical storytelling.'”
Actually, it is very cognizant of the power of allegorical storytelling. But because Cameron’s script is wide and its targets constantly changing, he can always say “Well, that bit wasn’t about the Taliban.”
To be continued…
Thanks to Big Hollywood for discussing this interview.
