Where things go

Here's some random reading for Friday- an article about where your knives and nail clippers go when they are confiscated by airport security, and an article about what happens to fish when you flush them down the toilet. (For the record, please do not flush live fish down the toilet. As a fish keeper I recommend you euthanize them in ice water first.)

posted by Michael 11:19:18 AM

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VDH knows all

Victor Davis Hanson, March 7, 2003:

In hour one of the conflict, we are supposed to expect to see the deployment of weapons of mass destruction — which many in the world community still profess are not there. If the Iraqis use these agents of death, we are culpable for prompting such dangers; if they don't, then there was no real casus belli in the first place and the war will be deemed, post facto, as unnecessary.

posted by Michael 6:26:17 PM

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The Matrix Reloaded

In last year's Austin Powers in Goldmember, Mike Myers's creation Goldmember is a pretty simple character: his defining trait is that he's Dutch. "I'm Dutch! Isn't that weeiiird?!" Well, no, it's not, but the emperor's-new-clothes joke that there's nothing else to his character (and that the filmmakers know it) is certainly worth a smile if not a laugh. I thought of this conceit shortly after seeing the long-awaited The Matrix Reloaded because so much of the film seems to scream, "It's The Matrix! Isn't this coooool?".

Well, yes, it looks kinda cool... but cool for cool's sake only gets you so far. And while at times the effects in the film look good, the story is alternately muddled and flat, leaving you to wonder why things are supposed to matter during the admittedly cool, but far too sporadic, action scenes.

I enjoyed 1999's original The Matrix (***), but was never a "fan" or a huge booster of it. While good, it definitely qualifies as one of the more overrated films of recent years. As many critics, including Roger Ebert, have pointed out, it suffers from a failure of imagination as the film progresses: it starts with reimagining the entire world, but ends with a mediocre fistfight. That said, it is a tight action film that has plenty of story, real momentum, and good effects. The Matrix Reloaded seems to be going for more than that, and in the process achieves both more and less.

The film's opening passages were almost narratively incomprehensible to me. As Neo (Keanu Reeves) and his compadres prepared for a computer assault on the only remaining human city of Zion, a lot was being ponderously discussed, but none of it seemed to make much sense. This was repeated throughout the film, as "important" dramatic scenes had a real lifelessness to them. There was absolutely no punch to the dialogue, little humor, and nothing memorable. But the most problematic part was that the characters were dealing in philosophical arguments which did not seem to make any sense. Now, I am all for ambiguity and symbolism and allegory in films. I think I understood almost everything in the perplexing Mulholland Dr., for example, and in science fiction I enjoy the philosophical implications of such diverse films as my beloved 2001: A Space Odyssey to Schwarzenegger's recent The 6th Day. But even when characters were allegedly explaining things, it really made no sense - and I distinctly did not feel that this is was the filmmakers intended. There are extended discussions of "causality vs. destiny", but the discussions themselves are just talky and ultimately boring. Philosophy in film needs some zip to it: think Lawrence of Arabia's "nothing is written" or even Mamet's ridiculous-but-fun "what one man can do, another can do!" in The Edge.

The action scenes (except one) are also rather lackluster. They seem detached from the plot (which is difficult to follow to begin with) and are destined to be disappointing when you have to wait through the boring philosophical discussions to get to them. A rooftop fight featuring Neo against hundreds of copies of Agent Smith is somewhat interesting, but ultimately devolves into repetition. And the longer we watch, the more obvious it becomes that we are watching a computer generated image, not Keanu Reeves. And we never fully understand why this fight needs to take place. (You may recall I noted a similar problem in Wolverine's final fight in my review of this summer's X2: X-Men United.)

On the other hand, the highlight of the film is a thrilling, extended highway chase where we know enough to understand why the participants are fighting, the effects are good, and the overall impact is strong. This sequence is almost 20 minutes long, and it works not only because it is so technically accomplished, but because it integrates the elements of the Matrix into the action. Characters appropriately use their abilities to accomplish things that would be impossible in the real world (jumping from car to car, etc.) For awhile the audience is riveted... but then it's back to the rest of the movie.

One other sequence I admired showed the potential that this film had, but ultimately did not realize. After Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) gives a rally-the-troops speech to the population of Zion, we are given a frenzied Bacchanalian dance cross-cut with Neo and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) making love. The sequence works because the elemental and animalistic nature of what we are seeing reminds us that humanity itself is threatened by machines in the world of the movie. We see people at their most basic level and understand what is at stake. (It is also interesting that this action is portrayed somewhat glumly, not joyfully.) But the sequence is followed (or was it preceded by?) a ponderous discussion of man vs. machine by Neo and distracting character actor Anthony Zerbe. A cardinal rule of filmmaking is "show don't tell" - and boy do these two radically different scenes prove that maxim.

The Matrix Reloaded is a slow film that thinks it is insightful, but is really confusing and boring. To its credit it has a lot of ideas, but it is very inarticulate in expressing them (kind of like this review?). (If you don't remember Tron, it is worth revisiting to see how simply and clearly it states the implications of a world ordered by computers.) And as I said above, ambiguity is great, but much of this film is just bewildering, even on basic plot points. The highway chase, however, is one of the more exciting pieces of action filmmaking in recent years. It doesn't compensate for the long, slow stretches before and after, but perhaps it will be enough to get me into the theater one more time for The Matrix Revolutions in November.

** (out of ****)

posted by Michael 5:42:01 PM

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More on the "lying"...

The indespensible National Review Online has a lengthy article debunking the claims of "lies" by Bush and America's knee-jerk opponents. A particularly relevant section:

To the president's opponents, the mother of all Bush "lies" is the administration's case for going to war in Iraq, specifically the president's claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "So whose books were more cooked — Enron's accounts of its financial doings or the administration's prewar reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?" asked Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect, in a column published in the Washington Post. The administration's position, Meyerson concluded, was "as phony a casus belli as the destruction of the Maine in Havana Harbor."

It's an argument that's been heard more and more in recent weeks. "Does it matter that we were misled into war?" asked the New York Times's Paul Krugman. Bush's statements about weapons of mass destruction were "one of the administration's Big Lies of the war on Iraq," wrote The Nation's David Corn. And Democratic senator Robert Byrd has issued almost daily allegations that Bush lied about Iraq.

Such accusations are risky — after all, the search for Iraqi weapons is ongoing, and any day might bring a significant discovery, or evidence that weapons have been destroyed. Still, for the sake of argument, assume there is no discovery. Does that mean Bush was lying?

In the months leading up to the war, there was a bipartisan consensus that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; the real debate was between those who believed that Saddam would have to be disarmed by force and those who wanted to rely on U.N. inspectors to contain him. The world knew from those inspectors that, when last checked, Iraq had large stores of anthrax and nerve gas. The world also knew that before the first Gulf War, Iraq had an aggressive nuclear-weapons program. Last December, there was general agreement that Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons programs was grossly incomplete. And in January of this year, former Clinton administration officials Kenneth Pollack and Martin Indyk wrote in the New York Times that Iraq "must be made to account for the thousands of tons of chemical precursors, the thousands of liters of biological warfare agents, the thousands of missing chemical munitions, the unaccounted-for Scud missiles, and the weaponized VX poison that the United Nations has itself declared missing."

Such a consensus makes it extremely difficult to argue that the president lied about Iraq and WMD; if the administration's case was a lie, then everybody, including much of the political opposition, was in on it. Just as importantly, if it turns out that prewar estimates of Iraq's capabilities were incorrect, the Bush administration can say — truthfully — that it erred on the side of protecting American national security. One could argue that the White House paid insufficient attention to intelligence indicating a threat to American security before September 11. One could also argue that this administration was therefore determined not to underestimate future threats. "What 9/11 did was teach a generation of policymakers to interpret things in an alarmed rather than a relaxed way," says one former administration official.

Did that make the Iraq campaign a lie? The equivalent of Enron bookkeeping? Only the president's most fevered enemies would try to make that case.

It is not possible or wise to defend every word George W. Bush says. As the world knows, he can be remarkably inarticulate when speaking off-the-cuff. He sometimes mangles thoughts and misuses statistics in the manner of most politicians. But — outside of the editorial offices of The Nation, The American Prospect, and some quarters of the New York Times and Washington Post — few people believe he is a liar. They've seen that in the White House before, and they know better.

posted by Michael 5:30:04 PM

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Bush is lying! Bush is lying!

The above is representative of a large number of IMs and e-mails I get from my friends.

I don't really feel like debunking the arguments that "Bush misled America about weapons of mass destruction" or "Bush told the American people Saddam was behind 9/11". I don't think Bush did either, and if you're reading this, I've likely stated my case to you in an e-mail. In any event, I have a bunch of movie reviews to write, so I am not going to get into it in this space for the time being.

That having been said, even those readers who have not been a part of the debate would be well served to read this U.S. News article. It provides a fascinating, detailed account of the debates and work that went into crafting Powell's evidence presentation to the UN back in February. It is a very thorough examination of what kinds of evidence we had, and how that evidence was treated by POTUS, Defense, State and CIA.

Like I said, a must-read.

posted by Michael 1:58:34 PM

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The audience isn't listening

From: Michael C. Kingsley
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:22 PM
To: webadmin@thx.com
Subject: THX in Manhattan

Am I using your website correctly?

Are there really no THX-certified theatres left in Manhattan (i.e. New York, NY)? Your search engine at http://www.thx.com/mod/cinema/find.html produces no results for this search.

Thanks,

Michael

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From: John Dahl
To: 'Michael C. Kingsley'
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 2:33 PM
Subject: RE: THX in Manhattan

Yes, at present there are no THX certified theaters in Manhattan.

Regards,

John B. Dahl
Corporate Brand Manager
THX Ltd.

posted by Michael 3:01:10 PM

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