Until recently, the Build-A-Bearville website (part of the Build-A-Bear Workshop) featured online videos telling children about manmade global warming and the dangers it holds for the North Pole. In the videos, little animals learn about the problem and teach Santa Claus about it. The right wing has been outraged over the antics of these bears and penguins. One conservative called for a boycott of Build-A-Bear, and another said the the videos amount to “indoctrination.” In response to this right-wing pressure, Build-A-Bear has taken down the educational videos.
The scientific consensus remains as strong as ever that manmade global warming is real. In the past, conservatives have also attacked the popular movie “Wall-E,” saying that it was filled with “leftist propaganda” and taught children that “human beings are bad for planet earth.”
1. Who would you change places with in this world if you could?
2. With the love you show for all the ladies, who would you most like to be attached to on a daily basis.
3. What would you design as a saw trap for you most hated enemy. Who would that enemy be and why so specific at death?
In the second test, Jigsaw's puppet informs William that he must choose to save either his file clerk or secretary, named Allen and Addy (Shawn Ahmed and Janelle Hutchison) respectively, and let the other die. In the end, William chooses to save Addy, and Allen is hanged by a barbed wire noose when his platform retracts.
4. What moment in your life, knowing what you do now would you most like to redo? and why?
5. Who would you most like to have lunch with that is living today? What would you ask them?
Senate Republicans have agreed to end their filibuster of health care reform “early Christmas Eve morning, allowing for a vote on the package at 8 a.m.” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) told the Oklahoman that “the vast majority” of Senate Republicans supported ending the filibuster in order to go home for the holiday. “We’ve had all the fun we’re going to have” debating the bill, said Inhofe.
See? (1987)
Do YOU want to be interviewed?
Interview rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the
questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview
someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them [me] five questions.
once I see it.Saw; including all sequels.
They did this (among other ways) by giving their central character John Kramer, sometimes known as Jigsaw, just that: Actual character. As opposed to, say, the vicious dog on two legs that is Jason Vorhees.
What's weird is, by the filmmakers own admission, a lot of that has been luck. Actors like Shawnee Smith and Tobin Bell, who have become important to the series (in Bell's case, damn near indispensible--he plays John Kramer), were cast before anybody had any idea what would be asked of them in the sequels.
These movies, when they're written by writers and played by actors who take their work and their craft seriously, have actually let us see the effect that the Jigsaw character has on others.
Some of this is arguably for good, most of it for evil, but they let us see it--and they let him see, and be affected by that as well.
For these and other reasons, at their best, the sequels have actually built on each other rather than just turning into bloodier and bloodier rehashes. Even the least of them.
Although, this--along with a lot of what I've praised above-did start to slip a little by Saw IV. And a lot in Saw V, which is the least creatively succesful film in the series to date (good start, good ending, one good scene in the middle--whooooole lotta filler).
VI was a much better, even choice in many ways, film; as I've noted previously, it received the best reviews since the original. Still, I'm not exactly sorry to say that word is next years Saw VII will be the end.
BTW...this is another place where you could question the status of these movies as "American" films. Saw was created by a couple of Australians, and after the first movie (which filmed in LA), all the sequels have been filmed and co-financed in Canada.
(until VI, which actually split its money between four countries...which might explain why VII was fast-tracked: Less risk, to more financers...plus the fact that no film in the series has been unprofitable)
Moving on (I heard those of you who said, "Thank god...")
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Okay. I granted up front, including this as a contemporary American film is arguable--roughly half of the stars are from England or Australia, the director and co-writers are from New Zealand, where it was also shot.
But, it was co-financed with American money. And come on, what was I going to do, leave it out?
This is a movie that schooled Lucas--or should have--on how to make an epic without sacrificing storytelling. (I've regained much of my interest in Lucas' contemporary films-the prequel trilogy-thanks to seeing them again through my nephew's eyes. But, you'll notice that none appear in this list.)
I gotta give Fellowship mad props.
Now I want to talk about my two "animation directors of the decade-plus," Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton. Bird made The Iron Giant, Ratatouille and The Incredibles. I like The Incredibles and love Ratatouille, but Iron Giant is better than either of them.
It's a film about which I always tell people: If you read comic books when you were 10...you're gonna cry when you reach the end of this movie.
Andrew Stanton made Finding Nemo and Wall-E (as well as co-writing the Toy Story films and Monsters, Inc).
(Strange to say, I didn't realize until just when I was writing this draft of this long-in-the-works post how much the broad strokes of Stanton's Wall-E resembles Bird's The Iron Giant, another fun movie about a robot, with heart.)
As I say, I liked both The Incredibles and Ratatouille when I first saw them in the theater, but on subsuquent viewings I've cooled on The Incredibles while my affection for Ratatouille has only grown.
It's some kind of genius.
Animation is one of the few things in which I actually have a lot of national pride. I feel the best animated cartoons are and have always been made right here in America.
For the past 10-15 years or more, all the best American animated cartoons with but one exception have been made at Pixar.
As for that exception, it was Iron Giant (good guess) and Pixar themselves liked it and Bird's other work enough to bring him over to work there. It's top of the list; I consider it the last great "2D" animated film. (I hear good things about Princess & the Frog, but I haven't seen it)
Gone Baby Gone
For the love of god, see this movie.
It is the story of one man's struggle to do what he thinks is right, within a moral nightmare, and it is a good fucking movie about people, including us, who have lost their way.
I hate to think people didn't see it because Ben Affleck directed it.
He made a heartbreaking film that's at least as good as Mystic River and even better (yes, better) than The Departed.
Sideways.
I think Sideways is a good movie despite (because of?) the fact that it is at times a very uncomfortable film for me to watch. It's uncomfortable because, like Paul Giamatti in the movie, I like to close my eyes to reality.
My standard line, tho, is that it could've been made for me: I'm a frustrated writer who's been in love with Virginia Madsen since 1985.
And she's wonderful in it.
As an aside: Madsen is one of I don't know how many actresses, but it can't be more than a few, to succesfully "graduate" from the sexpot roles she was doing 20 years ago.
Not that she's not still hot (look down). Actually, she should be a role model in how to use things like Botox sensibly.
But in the mid-'90s, you could've been forgiven for thinking she was going to have-well, the career that Sharon Stone's had in the past decade....
Avatar plunges into the Uncanny (Unimaginative) Valley
Let's dispense with the story, the characters and the dialog. Cameron certainly does...
The CGI canvas is larger, but there's little you haven't already seen in better Cameron movies.
