A pretty good year for Hollywood...

To my thinking, 2010 was a pretty good year for the movies.  We could be in for a pretty good Academy Awards, too, since some of this year's noteworthy flicks (True Grit, The Black Swan, The Social Network, The Kids Are Alright, Inception etc.) did pretty well at the box office.

Metacritic aggregated a bunch of critic's top ten lists and came up with this:

1	The Social Network
2	Winter’s Bone
3	Black Swan
4(tie)	Inception
	Toy Story 3
6	The Ghost Writer
7	The Kids Are All Right
8	The King’s Speech
9	Carlos (released on TV first, thus ineligible for statues)
10	127 Hours

I'll put out my own list after a few more visits to the megaplex, but  a few thoughts for now:

• It's remarkable how many good movies didn't make this list: True Grit, Howl, The Green Zone, Greenberg, Get Low and plenty more.  I'm not saying all of these were better than those listed, but there were plenty of opportunities to catch a flick and not leave disappointed.
• This was also a good year for popcorn flicks: the A-Team remake was a blast, as were The Expendables and Iron Man 2.  I've heard great things about The Town and Red from several people.  Get Him to the Greek was pretty funny.  Consensus seems to be that the Wall Street sequel was better than expected. Unstoppable wasn't earth-shattering but it was better than it had to be.  I look forward to seeing The American.
•  Two documentaries were widely-released and well-regarded: Client #9 and Inside Job.  Haven't seen either yet, but trailers for both look interesting.

 *Footnote:  I'm mostly talking about commercial cinema, but I want to recommend Sweetgrass, which is the best documentary I've seen in a long time (but be forewarned: it requires a bit more patience than your average doc.)

"And while I'm at it..."

Retiring diplomats' parting shots...

A Sign of the Times

I said it during the end of his presidency and I'll say it again now: I still like George W. Bush more than I like most prominent Republicans these days.  This is more a comment on the state of the Republican Party than it is on his Presidency.

At least Bush tried in earnest (relatively speaking) to do something about issues like immigration, prescription drugs for seniors, and AIDs in Africa. He was pragmatic in improving our relationship with India (and handled the Tsunami relief very well), and he helped curb prejudice against Islam in the wake of 9/11. 

Like most Democrats, I disagree with him on a lot of issues (particularly domestic ones) and I'm not convinced his temperament was the best fit for the job. But compared to Rick Perry, Pat Toomey, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry, he isn't looking so bad.

Slate-y Headlines

Any old rag spit out a smugly heterodox conclusions week after week (jus' playin, I still love you Marty Peretz!), but it takes Slate to really help fill in the gaps for us readers. Fortunately, of course, other publications are now using Slate-y headlines (which often begin with "how""why," or "what").  Which is convenient because just yesterday, I wondering what a New School adjunct might have to say about what Barack Obama could learn from the Chilean wine industry.

Also I just love those new political commentators they have (disclaimer: I didn't work on the Crimson with any of them).  Sometimes it takes a 25 year old with a bevy of unpaid internships under his belt to set a guy like Brad DeLong straight on monetary theory.  Also, I, for one, was glad to hear somebody finally point out the real reason  why healthcare reform took so long. 

Enter Ambien Man

Congratulations Dick Gephart, you're off the hook. This profile seems to confirm suspicions that Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) is now the most boring Presidential contender in recent memory.

What a line-up...

So the GOP's midterms lineup now includes:

• Nevada's Sharon Angle (Senate) who thinks black football jerseys are "thoroughly evil"
• Kentucky's Rand Paul (Senate) who supports the right of private establishments to discriminate based on skin color (and who apparently forced a coed to pray to "Aqua Buddha" when he was in college)
• Delaware's Christine O'Donnell who's so nutty that the Weekly Standard (!) won't even endorse her
• Arizona's Jan Brewer, who lied was mistaken about her dad's WW2 death survival and about Border Patrol finding decapitated bodies in the desert. She also canceled all debates after bombing the first one.
• Michigan's Andrew Raczkowski (Congress), who's a birther
• Arizona's Ben Quayle- see last post.  Imagine Stifler from "American Pie," only more entitled and much less charming
• Texas's Rick Perry- he's expressed secessionist sympathies, but he's not totally averse to government regulation; he mourned the outcome of Lawrence v. Texas

There are general election nominees. From both coasts and the middle. Most, if not all, of the above have actually won primaries and some are current officeholders.

A Chip Off the Old Block....

Ben Quayle, in his bid for office, proves that foot-in-mouth disease may have a genetic basis. 

Update:
Just learned that Ben played on his college lacrosse team (Duke, incidentally). Très shocking, no?

Bush and Putnam on Immigration

This short Independence Day op-ed by Jeb Bush and Bowling Alone sociologist Robert Putnam is worth a glance, if you're not busy.

Also, I'd be interested to hear how the piece came to fruition. My money says Jeb made the first call.

Around the Web

Quick non-sequitor: what a great Masters Tournament.

• Vanity Fair profile of General Petraeus praises his drive and competence but also portrays him as unyieldingly ambitious
• The latest salvo in Matt Taibbi's tussle with David Brooks.  Granted, Taibbi's writing tends to be a little hyperbolic.  But sometimes things are more fun that way. In this particular post, I don't think he's taking any unfair shots
• The Daily Show on the recent Catholic disgrace: “If any other organization had done anything close to what the Church is being accused of, they’d be done! the Church is barely showing any contrition - for God’s sakes, look how sorry Domino’s was just for their shitty pizza! They had a bad sauce recipe, (and) they’ve been out there nonstop - ‘Oh, we’re so sorry. Here, have some Crazy Bread!’”

Update:

Also,  the trailer for the new A-Team movie

ISI list of 50 best books...no big surprises

Ranking books, music and movies according to some notion of "quality" is gimmicky and best and foolish at least.  But, if these kind of rankings aren't taken too seriously, they can be fun and interesting.
The conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute has released their list of the 50 best books of the twentieth century.   Unlike a lot of other top books lists, this one omits literary fiction. While the list has a decidedly conservative/traditionalist tilt (which is no surprise, given the ISI's advocacy for "Great Books" curricula), I think most people would get a lot out of reading most of the books on the list.  There is more balance than you might expect (they include Autobiography of Malcolm X, for instance.)

Still there are some glaring omissions (what no Timothy Leary?*).  I think a few get an unfair ideological bump from likeminded editors, but there's plenty on there that I haven't actually read,  so this is just speculation.

Their worst books list is much more crassly political and not really worth reading.

*joking.

Around the Web

• An interview with Contested Will  author James Shapiro (the Shakespeare guy from the previous post)
• NY Times article on the passing of H. Edward Roberts, the inventor of the personal computer (and an alumnus of Oklahoma State University)
• Joshua Green (at The Atlantic) suspects Larry Summers is on his way out
• Senator Coburn (R-OK) surprises the folks back home with interesting thoughts on Speaker Pelosi and Fox News

Judging Characters

Some of these are kind of late.  I blame my work schedule.

•  This profile certainly makes Janet Napolitano seem like one of the cooler cabinet secretaries("Napolitano has been known to close down a bar or two in her time") 
• Brendan Nyhan easily deflates the Obama as "Polarizer in chief" narrative (credit Gary Jacobson with an assist on this one, or vis versa)
• Being a Blue Devil can be hazardous to one's political ambitions in the Bluegrass state
• It's about time somebody speaks up about the absurd growth of unpaid internships
• Jeff Toobin's article on John Paul Stevens (At the moment, most succession speculation revolves around Merrick Garland, Elena Kagan, and Diane Wood.  Tom Goldstein, who knows a lot about this sort of thing, is betting on Kagan. I like Garland's chances and I like what I've heard about him so far. I haven't read as much about Diane Wood but I like her Texas ties and I hear she's brilliant. She would definitely be the most interesting pick of these three.

To hell with Edward De Vere

I have to admit I'm one of those people who enjoys indulging in a little historical speculation when the opportunity presents itself. While a lot of the great mysteries have been uncovered in recent years (David Geffen and Mark Felt), there's still a big fish in the pond: the Shakespearean authorship debate.


It's a classic debate because it has so many different angles and because the heterodox opinions have some high profile champions. And from the looks of it, it's also a case that is about to be reopened.  James Shapiro has a new book out this month in which he explores the history of the authorship debate from a decidedly Stratfordian viewpoint (i.e. he believes Shakespeare was the real author). I'm pretty excited for this, as I hope it will finally put those snooty Oxfordians in their place.

The problem is fundamentalism not scrupulosity

In an interesting essay for the Chronicle of Higher Ed, Steve Asma argues that, for an increasingly large group of secular upper and middle-class liberals,  environmentalism has assumed on the guilt-inducing role once held by religion.  At first glance, this argument seems like a something torn from the pages of an Ann Coulter book. And, if history is any indication, it's ripe for selective quoting by the climate change skeptics.  Still, these objections, in and of themselves, don't amount to much in terms of refuting his thesis.

This is not to say that Asma gets it right.   Specifically, his emphasis on "green guilt" seems misplaced.  He seems to think that most in his latte-sipping cohort (his stereotyping, not mine) lead lives of constant self-denial, constantly flagellating themselves (emotionally, of course) for not composting as much as they should.  He even ends his article by encouraging his fellow green-conscious liberals to "temper their fervor" and basically stop feeling so damn guilty all of the time.

Now, I have trouble imagining that there is a substantial element of the population that is taking our environmental situation too seriously.  Perhaps Asma is part of a very small group of exceedingly admirable people, but I think for more people, environmentalism mimics religion in a much more self-serving way. I suspect that it is more common for the upper-income, green-conscious crowd to use environmental concerns as a pretext for personal indulgence. It would certainly feel better to spend 40% more on locally-grown, premium foods if the alternative is morally objectionable.  Likewise, I doubt many Motel 8s are LEED-certified.  

In most cases, I think these purchases of environmental indulgences are inadvertent.  But a lot of people inadvertently use religion to sanction indulgence also.  Generally-speaking, the problem isn't people taking their values too seriously, it's people applying them too narrowly.

I still have some friends on the hill and was able to get some hidden camera video of Democratic leaders' efforts to get Bart Stupak and his group to vote for the health care bill.


Bluto's Speech

Tyler Burch | MySpace Video

As you can see, it was a closely run thing.