[3/30/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: The Anatomy of Grey's Anatomy Thursday's must-see jumped to ABC by Rebecca Cusey - If it’s Thursday night, it’s Grey’s Anatomy. ABC’s hit is consistently the most-watched scripted show on TV. Some 25 million people tune in each week to watch a gaggle of hot young surgical interns juggle unlikely medical situations and thorny personal relationships. At Seattle Grace Hospital, almost anything that can happen does, along with some things that can’t. This season has seen the death of a father, a patient with toxic blood, the loss of a mother to Alzheimer’s, engagements and marriage, a disaster with scores of casualties, and the temporary death of the main character, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo). Through the drama, a national dialogue takes place on the issues of love and marriage, family, abortion, and faith or lack thereof. [more at National Review]

[3/29/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: Hollywood Up in Arms by David Kahane

I was driving through Beverly Hills yesterday, on my way out to Malibu, and the signs in the yards caught my eye.

Not the “For Sale” signs. Nobody likes to talk about it openly, except when they’re celebrating diversity, but Beverly Hills is currently undergoing the greatest ethnic turnover since Harlem went from white to black in the 1930s. Nearly a quarter of the city’s residents are now Iranian, and 40 percent of the school kids. The last municipal election printed ballots in three languages — reconquista Spanish, Upper West Side English, and “Death to the Great Satan” Farsi. What the fall of the shah started, the rise of the mullahs will eventually finish, and 90210 will be just another precinct in Tehran, with the same taste in interior furnishings. [more at National Review]

[3/28/07]

[Streetsweeper] 7:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Opinion Sweepings: Despicable: Cathy Seipp was an acquaintance of CRO and even if she wasn't - and even if she were on the other side of the political divide... this is so wrong...

As Cathy Seipp Lay Dying, Her Nemesis Took His Parting Shot on the Web by Michael Y. Park

Cathy Seipp was dying.

The 49-year-old newspaper columnist and conservative blogger, who had come from Manitoba, Canada, to become the sharp-tongued doyenne of the Los Angeles media scene, was only hours away from losing her years-long fight with cancer, leaving behind a 17-year-old daughter, a lifetime of work as a plucky and plain-speaking wordsmith, and the respect of colleagues from both sides of the political spectrum.

But what was supposed to have been a dignified end for a long-suffering single mom instead turned into what friends called a disgustingly public travesty, an example of the current Wild West atmosphere of Internet privacy issues, and a sordid showcase of just how far a beef can go.

Just hours before her death, “Cathy Seipp” suddenly seemed to undo decades of hard work with an oddly written letter posted on the Web site, www. cathyseipp.com. In what came off as more bizarre rant than heartfelt apology, her supposed “very last blog entry” called her years of journalism a “shoddy,” “despicable” and “irresponsible” career as a “fourth-rate hack.” Her political stance? All a mistake... [more at Fox News]

[3/23/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: Captain America, R.I.P. As a superhero, he changed along with the country. by Jonathan V. Last - Last Wednesday morning while most people kibitzed about Scooter Libby over their morning coffee, Captain America was murdered on the steps of the federal courthouse in New York. Captain America (real-life identity: Steve Rogers) is survived by his crime-fighting partner, Bucky, and his girlfriend, Sharon Carter, who may have fired the fatal shots while under the control of the evil Dr. Faustus. Such are the perils of romance.

The death of Captain America became, quite improbably, a minor cultural event. According to Joe Quesada, the editor in chief of Marvel Comics, Marvel made the decision to kill Cap 18 months ago, while it was plotting the direction of its seven-issue limited series Civil War, which details the rift between heroes following a law that required superheroes to register with the government.

Marvel kept the decision to kill Cap secret. The final issue of Civil War was released in February, and last week issue #25 of Captain America arrived on the doorsteps of the nation's 2,000 comic-book shops. [more at Weekly Standard]

[3/22/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: '300' Therapy by Amanda B. Carpenter I’ve never been in therapy, but I can’t imagine anything could be more cathartic than watching King Leonidas and his mighty band of Spartans brutally massacre the thousands of jihadis that descended on them at the epic Battle of Thermopylae in the blockbuster hit 300.

Did I say jihadis? I meant Persians. Sorry, about that. The two are easily confused in light of current events. While watching 300 it’s tempting to mentally substitute the freedom-loving Spartans for dedicated U.S. soldiers and swap the occultist Persians for Islamic insurgents lusting to cash in their martyrdom for 72 virgins. [more at Human Events]

[3/21/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: True Thermopylaes The story behind Frank Miller's '300.' by Bill Walsh The battle of Thermopylae is one of the signal symbolic events in the history of Western civilization. Athens and Jerusalem are the standard shorthands for the West's cultural headwaters, but at Thermopylae, Sparta, that historical mystery of a superpower, played a role for which perhaps she, and only she, was suited.

The story is familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge in military or classical history. Xerxes the Great of Persia set about incorporating Greece into his empire with an army Herodotus estimated at 5 million, half under arms. Leonidas of Sparta, hampered by obscure religious and political considerations, was able to take only 300 hand-picked soldiers as the spearhead of an allied force to meet the Persians at Thermopylae--"the Hot Gates," a narrow pass where the Persian superiority in maneuver and numbers would be negated. The Spartans and their allies held off the Persians until a traitor named Ephialtes of Trachis revealed a secret path around their rear which allowed the Spartans to be encircled and defeated. When Leonidas got word of this, he released his allies, but he and his 300 men, joined by 700 brave Thespians, fought to the death, in willing submission to the Spartan law of no retreat, no surrender. [more at Weekly Standard]

[3/19/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: 300 Shocker Hollywood takes a detour to reality. by David Kahane - Okay, this is weird.

Since about, oh, September 12, 2001, every writer, producer, director, and suit in this town has known one thing to be true: Don’t make fun of our so-called “enemies.”

Don’t stereotype them as bad guys. Don’t mock their beliefs. Don’t even mention their names. And for heaven’s sake, don’t make them mad.

Instead, try to understand them. Celebrate their diversity. And realize that, in a world (as the voice on the trailer intones) in which black is really white, up is really down, an attack is really self-defense and self-defense is really a provocation, we ourselves are actually the enemy.

This made things really easy. Out went any script that ascribed anything but the purest of motives to Arabs, Iranians, and Muslims. Back came everybody’s favorite villains: ex- and neo-Nazis (I haven’t met any, but I hear they’re everywhere) and crazed Christian fundamentalists, lurking out there in flyover country, itching to pull the triggers to establish a theocracy in a country we all know perfectly well was founded by unarmed vegetarian multicultural atheists.

Not even Jim Cameron could get a picture like 1994’s True Lies — in which the current governor of California slaughters hundreds of Arab terrorists single-handedly — made anymore, and he’s the King of the World. Instead, we got things like Kingdom of Heaven, in which the Christian ruler of Jerusalem becomes a hero by surrendering the Holy Land to the noble Saladin.

So now along comes a bunch of schmucks nobody’s ever heard of — graphic novelist Frank Miller, director Zack Snyder, and a couple of other writers — to pull in $70 million over the weekend with a movie about a handful of brave warriors who stand up against the limitless central-Asian hordes, iron men vs. effeminate oriental voluptuaries, and patriots against robotic slaves. How was this picture allowed to be made? [more at National Review]

[3/16/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Opinion Sweepings: The Gods of Political Correctness by George Neumayr - As America careens from one artificial public controversy to the next, it becomes more and more obvious that politically correct liberalism dominates both parties, albeit in varying degrees of intensity. The Democrats represent full-throttle political correctness while Republicans stand ready to advance political correctness just a little bit more slowly.

One of the Democrats' most successful rackets is to label any Republican position, no matter how timid, "extremist." This ensures that skittish Republicans will eventually even step away from that timid position. The "conservative" position, under the pressures of this demagoguery, inevitably becomes the liberal one of yesteryear, and then a little time passes and that position is deemed outrageous. This is seen across the board -- such as when Democrats and Republicans squabble pointlessly over the rate of growth of federal programs that shouldn't exist in the place -- but it shows up most starkly on moral issues.

Look at the ginned-up outrage over Marine Gen. Peter Pace's opposition to homosexual behavior in the military... [more at Human Events]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: "300" Master Thespians Don't prepare for glory. by James S. Robbins - The runaway blockbuster 300 has prompted renewed interest in the classics. The movie has it all — heroism, sex, violence, good vs. evil — who knew dead white men could be so interesting? The historical inaccuracies in the movie are legion, as in many historical films (let alone those based on a graphic novel). But if the movie motivates people to learn about the true story then I’m all in favor. And for those who want to see in it an allegory of the Iranian threat, just consider what Xerxes would have done if he had a nuclear weapon. “Hot gates” indeed. [more at National Review]

[3/14/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: Can Movies Do More than Deliver a Message? Or should we just read the book instead? by Rebecca Cusey In the 1700s, when a small band of English activists founded an audacious campaign to end slavery, a pottery maker named Josiah Wedgewood created a round medallion designed to hang on the wall. Showing a shackled slave kneeling, pleading, “Am I not a man and a brother?” The Wedgewood medallion became the symbol of the abolitionist cause and a tool to turn hearts and minds toward the plight of the slave. Later, another abolitionist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an abolitionist book that President Lincoln famously credited with starting the Civil War.[more at National Review]

[3/13/07]

[Streetsweeper] 12:05 am [permalink]
Streetsweeper's Cinema Sweepings: It Takes a Family... ...to make an ethnic movie. by Louis Wittig I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s first book, Interpreter of Maladies: a collection of narrative portraits of Indian immigrants to America. Good writing. I consciously avoided her subsequent novel, The Namesake, about a young, Indian-American man who has a hard time understanding his Indian parents, and himself. [more at National Review]

[3/12/07]

[Joel Rosenberg - novelist] 12:15 am [permalink]
Netanyahu to meet with Cheney on Iran Nuclear Threat: With new polls showing Benjamin Netanyahu far and away his nation's choice to lead the next government, the Israeli opposition leader is heading for Washington, D.C. where he will speak at the annual AIPAC conference and meet with Vice President Cheney to discuss the Iranian nuclear threat....this morning, a highly-respected Israeli newspaper explains why Bibi is "surging toward a comeback" and publishes an intriguing interview with him....one important tidbit: Netanyahu says Syria's military budget has increased 10-fold and Damascus appears to be preparing for war....excerpts from the Haaretz article: "I'm convinced that the government will not live out its days," Netanyahu said in an interview with Haaretz, in which he accused [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert of being helpless in the face of the Iranian threat. "The nation is searching for leadership, and if the government doesn't gain its composure, the change will come," he added. "Time will tell whether it happens in a parliamentary or electoral process, but I am convinced that it is not just the will of the opposition, but the will of the nation."...."The Iranian regime is more vulnerable than it seems," said Netanyahu. "It's possible to act against it in a firm and focused way, to destabilize it, or stop the nuclear program, or both. Its major weakness is in the economic sphere.".....'The idea of imposing a 'secondary boycott' on the Iranian economy is at the center of Netanyahu's campaign. It involves convincing the managers of pension funds for civil servants in every state in the United States, which hold assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars, to pull their investments from some 400 companies, from European and other countries, conducting business with Iran. Such a boycott would threaten the Iranian economy and the stability of its government"...."Netanyahu also wants to send AIPAC activists to governors and state legislatures in a bid to get them to order the pension funds to impose the boycott. This week, he submitted a similar bill in the Knesset, which, if passed, would ban Israeli investment in multinational companies active in Iran. 'All who feared military efforts against Iran should welcome an economic means that can render military activity unnecessary,' Netanyahu said."...."In his latest travels in Europe, he presented this idea to members of the French National Assembly's foreign affairs committee and to members of the British parliament. He tells doves to support the boycott so as to prevent an attack on Iran; the hawks will support pressure on the Iranians anyway"...."It's not certain that the effort will succeed," Netanyahu admitted. "But even if it doesn't, at least public opinion will be prepared for tougher action.