Monday, April 03, 2006

Gitmo Makes Me Mad, Al Qaeda, and Three Movie Reviews

I had a great birthday day. I took Girl Kid out of school, and we all went off for a Two Movie Day. I love seeing more than one movie in a day, especially if they are good ones. It's a little vacation in my brain. We went to V for Vendetta again, and it was even better the second time around. Towards the end, I started thinking about the whole Guantanamo Bay thing, in fact I was sent into a murderous rage right there in my seat. Why are we detaining people without representation, and for indefinite periods of time? Sure, we were attacked, but it’s not as if terrorism was a new thing on 9/11. It’s not even as if it was the first time, or the worst time, that we here in the US were attacked (if you include Pearl Harbor). But “Oh no!”, because of 9/11 we are ready to give up what made America so supposedly great in the first place—our civil rights.

I cannot express how sad it makes me to hear the stupid evil morons in the Bush administration try to explain away their illegal actions by stating that it’s okay to wiretap Americans because they might be talking on the phone to someone somewhere else who might once have met a guy who met a guy who was once in the same room as the woman who does Osama Bin Laden’s laundry. If you use this argument, then you’d have to wiretap everyone, because we can have no idea what crimes the person on the other end of the line might have gotten up to. Of course, that is exactly what the Bush administration wants—to be top dog in a police state where everyone is a suspect and everyone is afraid and compliant.

What the hell are we going to do about this situation? It’s one thing to feel rage, but what am I going to do about it? Sadly, the answer is that, other than voting, I will probably do nothing. I have chores, and movies to see, and books to read…and the excuses pile up and up. All of us have lives, and so we sit in our beakers like laboratory frogs while the water heats up until we boil to death. We won’t get our rights back either, because all that power will be too tempting for the government to give up. But, I know I won’t do anything effective to stop it. I suck.

Are Bush and Friends Funding Al Qaeda?
As I was pondering illegal wiretapping and Gitmo, an evil thought popped up that I couldn’t shake. We all know that the Reagan administration trained Osama Bin Laden and his buddies during the Soviet/Afghanistan thing in the early 1980’s. This is back when Bush Senior was Vice President; and prior to that he was head of the CIA. This is a man who had an animal taken off the endangered species list just so he and two of his buddies could hunt it in Kenya; which makes me think that there really is no depth to which he and his friends and family might be capable of sinking. So the question remains, what if we never stopped funding Bin Laden? What if Al Qaeda is a covert American operation?

It’s occurred to me before that 9/11 played right into the Bush administration’s hands. If 9/11 was a homicide, the first thing the police would do is to figure out who would benefit the most from the death and make that person their prime suspect. In the case of 9/11, it’s hard to avoid the thought that the tragedy helped the Bush administration’s global agenda. We know that prior to 9/11 they were trying to figure out a way to gain control of Afghanistan, because Halliburton was developing plans to build an oil pipeline through the country. We know they wanted to control both the Middle East and its oil by gaining control of Iraq and then spreading out from there. Richard Clarke and others have publicly stated that plans to invade Iraq were already being worked up before 9/11. And now we are rattling sabers at Iran and Syria. Normally “we the people” wouldn’t have supported this kind of warmongering and hubris from our government, but because of 9/11, we handed them a blank check. I’ve had the evil thought before that maybe Bush and Buddies were somehow involved in 9/11, but now I can’t shake the horrible idea that maybe they’ve been funding Al Qaeda all along. Think about it: the case could be made that every Al Qaeda attack around the world over the years has benefited Team Bush in some way. Yeah, it’s an insane and treasonous idea, but still….

Movie Reviews
We also saw Inside Man on my birthday, and man oh man, was it fun. Spike Lee redeemed his last few mistakes with this one. I’ll even forgive Mr. Lee for covering up Clive Owen’s face for half the movie. The story is about a bunch of robbers who pull off the perfect bank heist, and oh boy, do they pull it off with style. I’d worry that the film will give real bank robbers ideas, but you couldn’t really pull this one off. For one thing, where would you find a Nazi collaborator bank owner? The script is really tight, and they thought of everything, right down to a twist late in the movie that fixes the cop’s relationship with his marriage-minded girlfriend. See, the bank robbers have hearts of gold, and everything works out for everyone. No one gets hurt, except financially, and even then, they deserved it. It’s the perfect crime. Jody Foster plays a hard-ass “fixer” with killer pumps and no morals, and you could cut cheese on her cheek bones. Because he’s usually so far up his own ass, I’m not normally a fan of Denzel Washington, but he’s good here, mostly because his character is not trying to be the hero. And Clive Owen, as always, is hella fine, plus the boy can act. I loved it. Verdict? Fun on a Bun. If you have the time for a two movie day, Inside Man would make a great double bill with Sixteen Blocks (but make sure you see SB first).

Thank You for Smoking
The kids and I had been panting like lab rats testing the new Virginia Slims to see this one, and it was worth the wait. Aaron Eckhart plays a lobbyist for Big Tobacco, and ooh ooh ooh, does Mr. Eckhart deliver a great and smarmy performance. I normally don’t go for hunky “good looking” guys, but I’ll make an exception for Aaron, because he has such a moveable face and you know how much your Mistress loves a man with facial range. I won’t bore you with annoying details; the title is basically all you need to know. Go see it. Verdict? Thank you indeed.

Basic Instinct 2
Yeah, I when ahead saw this stinker early in the day when Girl Kid was in school. This is a fun movie, but not for the right reasons. I was in the theater with about twelve older guys, all spaced out evenly so as not to come into eye contact with each other, which was a bit creepy. I’m sure none of the old perverts who came to see Sharon Stone display her ass-ets appreciated me laughing out loud all through the movie. And boy, is this one a hoot fest. I won’t bore you with the plot, but I have to wonder why any of the fine British actors in this thing bothered to show up. The psychiatrist in the story is supposed to be unable to resist his possibly murderous client’s cunning wit and beauty, but a real shrink has to deal with transference issues all the time and so would be plenty immune to Ms. Sharon’s throaty, yet laughable, attempts at seduction. I had to wonder how many lozenges Ms. Stone went through during this production, because she has only one delivery throughout—husky and deranged. As for the “bits” everyone is wondering about: no, you don’t see Sharon’s crotch this time around. Or rather you do during a full-frontal hot tub scene, but it’s from a distance, and artfully placed shadows conceal anything more risqué than the now-mandatory boob shot. Moments later, the viewer is treated to a closer look at said boobs as they bob in the hot tub water. This scene definitively answers the question you didn’t actually ask: yes, those things are fake. Sure, Sharon still looks pretty good for her age, but what’s up with that mullet? Yuck. Verdict? You’ve got to be kidding. If you must see Sharon’s ass, the original Basic Instinct had a lot more sex and nudity. Save this one for home viewing, in fact, have some friends over and make a drinking game out of it, because righteously hammered is the only way to see this awful flick; and as an added benefit, of course the DVD will include more of the “sexy” bits excluded in the theatrical release. Just try not to invite a bunch of aging pervs.

Well, I should do something productive today, like try to find a job. Sigh. Soon we will be homeless and living in Girl Kid’s van. Fortunately, it is roomy.

1 Comments:

At 11:04 AM , Blogger Lasky said...

I wish I'd had a 2-movie-day Mom! My Dad was the main movie-goer in the family, and he'd usually sneak me out of the house (to avoid weekend chores) and we'd catch a movie and go for Chinese food after. I don't think we ever saw 2 movies in a day. We would have caught hell from my mother and brother, who were at home doing chores. We'd play dumb: Oh we didn't know you wanted to weed the garden today...

Sounds like you picked two good movies for your birthday. I'm going to have to catch them on DVD..

 

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