The Law Movie Review blog.
And here I was thinking I was the only non-practicing lawyer obsessed with movies…
Updates from January, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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..broken down by someone who knows a thing or two about producing political ads.
I remember reading a long time ago that no one sets out to make a bad movie. I think that’s true – and the same goes for any audiovisual work. It takes so much effort, first of all, that no one would embark on such an enterprise if they weren’t expecting to create something good. Alas, the best of intentions rarely results in excellence.
To paraphrase Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan in Magnum Force, a filmmaker’s got to know his limitations…
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And other Leftie narratives, as collected by Ed Driscoll.
You can add a new one to the list: “Obama embraces Reagan.”
And that’s not from The Onion, either…
UPDATE: Speaking of Ministries of Truth: Chinese TV uses Top Gun footage in real-life air force news segment. I would have gone with Iron Eagle
, personally. But that’s just me…
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11% less viewers compared to 2010′s audience.
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State-owned-media Moment of the Week: Obama lunches with Chris Matthews et al.
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UPDATE: Related: O’Donnell beats Olby’s ratings, but can’t beat O’Reilly (of course).
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My dog Junior, awesome canine companion of 14+ years, died today of natural causes – quite suddenly – during a walk around the block. He aged quite a bit in the last 12 months. In fact, every day he was more lethargic; and seemed to move with more difficulty. He wasn’t chronically ill or suffering from any injury. It was just his time. Still, he had a lot of spirit right to the end. And he died while engaged in one of his favorite past times: the afternoon walk.
I rescued him when he was 9 months old, back in 1997. We had a lot of history together, full of good times. My wife loved him just as much as I did. She met him back in 2006, when we started dating.
As the cliche goes, there’s no way to prepare for this sort of thing. We knew it was coming, but it hurts a lot. I rushed him to a local emergency pet hospital. Resuscitation was attempted, but to no avail.
Rest in peace, Junior. You are – and will be – missed.
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WaPo is boycotting news of Palin for a month and wants others to join them. Ha! Watch them fall off the wagon real fast.
Palin-phobes sure get personal, but their hate for Palin is not merely personal; and it’s about a lot more than Palin herself. It’s only one manifestation of their hate for political views they can’t stand. She’s one more Goldstein in their personal Oceanias, exactly what their many Minitrues want her to be.
Lefties couldn’t go Palin-free even for a day. When it comes to hating all that they perceive as contrary to their political goals, they can’t help themselves. So I doubt their allies in the MSM can do better.
Besides, they’re not supposed to go Palin-free. It’s against the rules.
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Featuring the overstatement of the year: “Countdown is done.”
It was done a long time ago, if you ask me…
Maher, interestingly, seems to blame the audience. What audience?
UPDATE: TMZ‘s sources say Olby got fired by the incoming Comcast brass, a result about which Olby-watchers have long speculated.
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Lawrence O’Donnell is taking over. In other words, everything is staying exactly the same at MSNBC…at least for now…
UPDATE: Right turn for MSNBC?
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A PBS documentary about actor Jeff Bridges that you can watch online for free, in its entirety.
Via Anne Thompson.
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BigGovernment: First Black Tea Party Forms In Houston.
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Could their version of the BBC’s Skins
be considered child pornography under federal law?
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And starring Sacha Baron Cohen!
The Dictator is based on Saddam Hussein best-selling novel, Zabibah and The King, and is described as “the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.”
It’s not April Fool’s yet; and Anne Thompson’s blog is not known for pranks. We’ll see…
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Better for the consumers of Jalapeño poppers, that is…
That’s not me. I buy peppers for my salsa recipe.
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It’s Rube Remembrance Day: So forget the Leftie vitriol for a minute and have a good laugh for a change.
Get it? ‘For a change’!
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On the e-pages of Counterpunch. And – naturally – he calls for a Stalinist solution to the “civility” problem.
I’d actually visited Counterpunch‘s website before, by coincidence, while Googling something or other. It reminded me of the radical literature you would find here and there around Greenwich Village, back in my college days.
Note that the title of the publication is not very civil at all. But then, I doubt Counterpunch is as interested in civility as it is in censorship. Which is probably the reason why they’re publishing Fidel’s thoughts on the matter in the first place…
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You can add “in a can” to the list of choices…
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…in its entirety, to commemorate MLK Day.
Meant to post earlier, but it’s been a busy day at work. No holiday for us. It’s the day after the Golden Globes, so there was plenty to do…
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A friend just alerted me to how bad our cultural elite is at spelling the name of what must now be the most talked about city in the U.S.
Credentialed, not educated.™
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CNN: Snow present in 49 of the 50 U.S. states.
Even Hawaii has snow!
Dude, where’s my global warming?
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FSR: “Let’s just attempt to break down the hallmarks of a good action film. No matter what differences they may have, action films share a lot of things in common.”
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From Snowcare.
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Of course they are. But they’re wasting their time. Everybody knows that you can’t successfully coach a narcissist.
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CBS Poll: Most Americans Feel Rhetoric, Tucson Shooting Unrelated.
The Left is going to need a bigger Sorosphere…
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How much will Democrats and the Left benefit from the attempted murder of one of their own yesterday in Tucson? This is not a crowd that lets a crisis go to waste, as we well know. And – like clockwork – they pounced on the tragedy the minute the news broke, as they often do when such tragedies strike.
But as the Left attempts – rather clumsily – to pin the blame for yesterday’s mass killings on right wing activism, invariably a magnifying glass has come to be focused on activism, punditry, and political rhetoric in general. It’s been inevitable, what with website whitewashings here, here, and here following the removal of Palin’s own infamous “crosshair” map from one of her websites. The terms “target”, “enemy”, and “dead” evidently are words of some currency among Democrats and the Netroots.
Even the White House could be said to participate in this culture of vitriol: Gateway Pundit recounts President Obama’s multiple appeals to violence (via Ed Driscoll). Hmm. Suddenly, this Newsweek cover starts to take on a different meaning. Doesn’t it?
Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the violent imagery the Left has been injecting into political debate in this country for years now, as has now become abundantly evident following yesterday’s tragic events in Tucson.
But that’s who they are. That’s who they are supposed to be according to their late, great teacher Saul Alinsky, who must be spinning in his grave. In their own sanctimoniousness and arrogance, Lefties have unsuspectingly set themselves up to have Alinsky’s Rule 4 applied to them, all because of their obsession with Sarah Palin. Of course, it doesn’t help that the alleged perpetrator of yesterday’s horrible crime is not much of a conservative.
Another one of Alinsky’s Rules that the Left has failed to observe in all this is Rule 2: “Never go outside the experience of your people” (to be applied in conjunction with Rule 3). In other words: don’t have your activists implement tactics of which they know nothing. Well, today’s Left doesn’t know anything about civility, so how could anyone expect them to agitate successfully for their side while condemning uncivil conduct?
Speaking of Alinsky, if there is anyone responsible for introducing the view that our political adversaries are something to hit, it’s probably Alinsky himself. The term “target” is a key part of his Rule 12. And the word “enemy” is also an important part of Rules 1, 3, and 4.
Alinsky, the community organizer from Chicago. Talk about glass houses…
UPDATE: LonelyConservative links with related content. Thanks!
MORE: Evidently, Rachel Maddow knows her Alinsky well.
ANOTHER ONE: Ed Driscoll and Prof. Douglas both link with related content. Thanks!
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I don’t know what’s sadder: the Left’s woefully unsuccessful attempts to score political points over the Tucson massacre or the fact that far more important stories related to this tragedy are getting buried under the spin of how this is all Sarah Palin’s fault.
Lord knows political debate in this country took on a poisonous tone before Sarah Palin achieved any level of prominence. Heck, even before Obama started injecting death-imagery into it. Of course, it’s not just politicians who like to talk like that. And who can forget this gem?
Seriously, who are they trying to fool?
UPDATE: Et tu, Markos?
MORE: Howard Kurtz gets it right – just in part – but certainly way more than others.
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Plus, a number of scholarly papers on the topic of young vampires in the movies.
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The Magazine Death Pool. Which publication will go next?
I don’t seem to have time to read magazines anymore. I’m certainly reading plenty of magazine-like content on the web, but still I subscribed to Texas Monthly (which I used to read religiously in the early 90′s) and Wired last year. I love both magazines, and yet the issues just pile up without me even touching them. It’s a struggle to find the time to sit down and read either one.
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I was running errands with my wife when I heard of the mass killing in Tucson. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and friends.
Later on, I saw much insinuation on the web of this tragedy being the responsibility of some hateful Tea Partier. But there were no outright accusations. The finger-pointing was rather oblique, which led me to suspect – just as this other time – that the shooter wasn’t exactly a conservative. Turns out that was in fact the case.
However – lucky for the Sorosphere – Sarah Palin’s choice of graphic design here intersects eerily with the Tucson tragedy. Crosshairs equal murder. Sure, why not? Now Lefties everywhere are having an orgiastic Palin-phobic hatefest like we haven’t seen in a while.
Hey, maybe under all that vitriol they have a point. Perhaps we shouldn’t see our political opponents as something to hit (not that that was literally the meaning of Palin’s map).
But unfortunately – not just for the Left’s rhetoric but for all Americans – President Obama disagrees.
UPDATE: Professor Douglas links. Thanks!
And at Instapundit there’s a nice round-up of the Sorosphere’s best efforts to either capitalize on the tragedy or stretching the truth to the point of breaking it. Your pick. My favorite links therein: the Democrats’ very own gun-violence-fomenting map…from 2004! (scroll down) It includes the word “Enemy” in its caption. Also, note how Arkansas has a target over it. This is where two U.S. servicemen were shot back in 2009 – one of them fatally. And you know how servicemen tend to vote. Connect the dots. Then check out this other map, from a cached link I dug out because the DCCC already sent it down the memory hole….to be replaced with this very incongruous message.
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Though perhaps a little too ambitious: Def Leppard Tribute Band Seeks One-Armed Drummer.
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That and many more notable pieces of graphic design on paper at Letterheady.
UPDATE: Wrong link! Just fixed. Sorry about that…
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…when you have Vice President Joe Biden?
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THR: “The NPR Board of Directors announced today that it has completed its review into the facts and circumstances leading to the termination of NPR’s contract with senior news analyst Juan Williams.”
The results? Ellen Weiss, the executive who fired Juan Williams over his comments about Muslim terrorists on The O’Reilly Factor has “stepped down”. CEO Vivia Schiller got punished, too, though she’ll be keeping her job.
Evidently, the whole Williams kerfuffle brought unwanted attention to NPR that it could afford to do without. Heads had to roll.
How much you wanna bet that Schiller’s biggest sin in the Board’s eyes was to suggest that NPR could survive defunding by Congress?
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Jon Stewart vs. Glenn Beck.
Sounds to me like Stewart’s writers weaved Star Wars into their rhetoric more skillfully. Still, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t get the whole thing wrong. Of all the Star Wars characters, Sarah Palin most resembles Obi-Wan Kenobi, because they both have a particular experience in common.
As to whether Obama is like Luke Skywalker, there are some parallels. The TelePrompter is like Obama’s lightsaber. However, Luke was as adept at using his Jedi powers whether he was wielding a lightsaber or not. Obama – on the other hand – is not very skilled at exercising executive power, despite his skillful use of the TelePrompter.
The above aside, there is a bit of Star Wars dialogue that describes the Obama presidency so far with a great deal of accuracy: Han Solo’s immortal words: “It’s all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.”
Related: The Weekly Standard: Why everything you think you know about Star Wars is wrong.
UPDATE: Ed Driscoll links, with more. Thanks!
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“Cameron’s House” is on the block for $1.65 million.
Dr. Wife went to college in that neighborhood. Nice area, she tells me…
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Some of them, at any rate. It’s like the movie geek version of Where’s Waldo?
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I haven’t posted much lately. Sorry. It’s been busy. At work, the holidays forced me to get my projects done in less time than I am usually alotted. Then I did some travel, including a lightning fast trip to L.A. to get the rest of my and my wife’s things. In fact, we spent New Year’s Day driving through Arizona, and most of January 2 driving through New Mexico.
I hope to blog regularly again soon…
