As he steps off the Rugby Field, Matt Damon discovers how much less simple life is in Eye-Raq than it was in Clint's version of South Africa. Murky, devious so-and-so’s wheel and deal, and even the line between right and wrong has gone bendy. The CIA have a safe full of million dollar packs and they’re the good guys for a change. Young interns swagger and binge around the pool, and the walls of the palace are lined with silly political slogans designed to persuade everybody, against the evience of their own eyes, that the whole thing is a rightous, er, crusade.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran was Washington Post man in the Green Zone. In Imperial Life in the Emerald City, he knoweth whereof he speaketh. As the streets descend into anarchy and GI’s do increasingly dangerous and dirty work, fantasy reigns in Halliburton’s neocon disneyland. Where once Saddam’s republican guard strutted their stuff, George W. Bush’s, er republican guard is depicted in a thoroughly believable way, strutting its stuff around the pool. Occasional flashes of French door furniture indicate that in this film Iraq is played by Morocco.
This action caper is based on, rather than drawn from,Chandrasekaran’s factual book. Matt Damon is an clean-cut GI over there to clear up those pesky WMD’s, round up Saddam like a Raccoon, etc. etc. Much of this flm is shot on a not-so-steadycam yielding an occasionally dizzying documentary effect like a computer wargame. This technique will engage and please the young more than bifocal wearers. Saddam has legged it, but not his chum General Al-Rawi who, it turns out, has his own interesting past with the U. S. Government. A lot of doors get kicked in and henchpersons shot, but the good guys kinda win in the end.
I suspect that unless you are a complete wargaming nut, in which case, enjoy, your reactions to the film will line up around your take on the Iraq war. If you believe that it was a good idea, and the prospectus on which it was started was decent, legal honest and truthful you will feel affronted that such a film could be imagined, let alone made. Fox News, which believes everybody should ignore the government at home paradoxically also believes everything republican governments do abroad is, ipso facto, decent, legal, honest and truthful.
Back on planet earth, it is becoming evident as the enquiries unfold that you can argue with the details, but a squalid and confused fantasy-based computer game is not that far away from the way historians will view the Iraq War. There were no WMD’s twenty minutes away from Cyprus. In this regard Saddam’s brutal regime was all mouth and no trousers. The war’s whole prospectus was dishonest, and our politicans knew it but lied to us. Brave people took big risks, money flowed like water, and several hundred thousand innocent civilians died. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
If you’re a maxed out Potterholic, or you’ve watched one too many black and white Estonian arthouse movies about mysterious old women who sing to the moon, you may find yourself hungry this summer for a simpler, homelier, all-American Disney entertainment experience.
A hearty chick flick, lightweight but good natured, could be the Answer. Something like The Proposal, Anne Fletcher’s latest.
It’s kinda His Girl Friday in reverse. She is an hard bitch editor, about to be deported back to Canada, the NY equivalent of being shot into space. He is an all round nice guy, from a good family who own half of Alaska — the non-Sarah-Palin half where old dears frequent stripclubs and prance around in the woods rather than going to bible study and playing the guitar badly for Church. I had no idea they had Tom Jones lookalike Hispanic strippers come general store owners and part time Ministers in Alaska, but what do I know? Ryan Reynolds is the decent, warm but essentially gormless rich boy estranged from his old dad; disturbingly more like the real young George Dubya Bush than Cary Grant, perhaps. There’s a kind of “Cary Grant Resurrection” feel about the speedboat scene, although, brrr, Cary would probably have dropped his gal off the boat in Florida not Alaska. Nothing wrong with that lot, but nothing stunningly right, either.
The closest it gets to LOL City is a scene in the garden with a yapping lapdog that indicates rural Alaska could do with a few more Korean restaurants. There’s as few belly laughs as belly dancers in the movie, but it’s relentlessly cheerful and good natured. Coincidentally, it saves you the time and money you otherwise might have spent going to an airport to have an innocent chuckle at a dim government official. I am struggling not to give too much away, because once the basic pitch has been formulated, it’s pretty much the plot. If you don’t want know, however, avert your eyes from the trailer, now:
The goods are competently delivered, spiced up by jolly devices like the frantic chase after the Romantic Other to say it's on after all, a Mama Mia type wedding scene in the garden, and a few kind pensioner laughs and hick jokes. It proclaims the power of home and family to melt the hardest heart. I tried to love it, and almost managed. So what’s not to like?
Given the general predictability of the formula, the script has a lot of grunt work to do sustaining enough “will they won’t they” to keep the aspidistra flying. This it doesn’t really do. I came away feeling the excellent leads deserved a slightly sharper script, especially Sandra Bullock, since she’s supposed to be the world’s most rapier-like editor.
This film will warm the cockles of your heart, but then all you’ve got, as Woody Allen once famously pointed out, is hot cockles. If that’s enough for you, this is a movie for you. It’s as good an excuse asany for an evening out with your lover and soul friend. It would probably go well with an airline meal. Coach class, though, enlivened by occasional flashes of chemistry.
This film is unlikely to win over hardened cynics to the genre, so if you like chick flicks, you’ll probably give it three stars out of five. Otherwise, whether you prefer Estonian arthouse movies or Big CGI, you’ll probably give it two. It’s a nice idea, competently delivered, but not quite all it might have been in the script department...
Secret Tweet is fascinating — people can post their inner secret thoughts for all to see, anonymously. Recent examples include “I’m alone in life and I hate it” and “I’m an an atheist, yet in times of desperation I plead with God.” That’s confession. There’s a screen for anonymous reactions. Is thatabsolution? ’fraid not. Many, but not all Comments are sympathetic. This second tweet drew fury from one ranting atheist:
I don’t wanna be anonymous! I’m @MissJia and I think you’re full of shit. You can’t call yourself an atheist, denouncing God but then reaching out to him in your time of need! That’s some ole selfish bullshit. Either you’re an atheist who doesn’t practice or believe or you don’t. But don't be wishy washy with God b/c that shit aint right.”
Remember Maurice Bendrix (in Graham Greene’s End of the Affair): “Oh God, I hate you so much. It’s as bad as if you existed.” Plainly atheists count among their number rabid fundamentalist bigots every bit as fiery and intolerant as the ones you get among Christians, Druids, Branch Dravidians and Druze. It’s one in the eye for the demonstrably false notion that it’s religion causes crazy fundamentalism, rather than human folly and wickedness.
Secret Tweet is the ultimte Twitter stream for nosy people. It’s definitely going into my talk on prayer next week in Chesham. This morning I noticed “I don't want to lose weight. I just want to find someone who loves me as I am.” Food for thought...
But finding someone ain’t the end of yo’ troubles. Steve and Leigh Buttell from Sydney, got married recently. Eighteen months and several thousand dollars later they experienced a dream wedding, followed by a A$3,850 wedding night in what turned out to be Indiana Jones’ Temple of Doom:
By the time the group left three days later, the newlyweds had allegedly found maggots described by the groom as "the size of chocolate bullets'' in their wedding bed and a dead bat, covered in maggots, above their bedhead.
One guest awoke at 1.30am with a reaction to what he believed were insect bites and spent the night on a couch. Other guests fled their room in the middle of the night when a bat emerged from the fireplace and "flapped around the room''.
The newlyweds abandoned their suite on the wedding night after allegedly pulling back the sheets to find maggots in their bed, believed to have come from the dead bat on a shelf above their bed. The couple sought refuge on a blow-up mattress on the floor of a cottage occupied by Mrs Buttell's father and grandparents...
The cottages' owner, Sam Haymes, waived the outstanding $1850 and gave a bottle of sparkling wine as an apology, but Mr Mason was not satisfied with the offer. The family said the complaint was not about money. Mr Mason said: "Mr Haymes was apologetic and polite and removed the dead bat, but in my view it shouldn't have happened.'
Quite. Finally for this morning, Marcus Warren twitters the dumbest Inaugural line ever uttered by a US President, before the 43rd President (43rd dimmest, as well) invented the Bushism, from one Richard Milhous Nixon in 1969:
The American Dream does not come to those who fall asleep.
And, of course, a dead bat above the bedhead is one way to stay awake after hours. That’s how Aussies do it.
As he steps off the Rugby Field, Matt Damon discovers how much less simple life is in Eye-Raq than it was in Clint's version of South Africa. Murky, devious so-and-so’s wheel and deal, and even the line between right and wrong has gone bendy. The CIA have a safe full of million dollar packs and they’re the good guys for a change. Young interns swagger and binge around the pool, and the walls of the palace are lined with silly political slogans designed to persuade everybody, against the evience of their own eyes, that the whole thing is a rightous, er, crusade.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran was Washington Post man in the Green Zone. In Imperial Life in the Emerald City, he knoweth whereof he speaketh. As the streets descend into anarchy and GI’s do increasingly dangerous and dirty work, fantasy reigns in Halliburton’s neocon disneyland. Where once Saddam’s republican guard strutted their stuff, George W. Bush’s, er republican guard is depicted in a thoroughly believable way, strutting its stuff around the pool. Occasional flashes of French door furniture indicate that in this film Iraq is played by Morocco.
This action caper is based on, rather than drawn from, Chandrasekaran’s factual book. Matt Damon is an clean-cut GI over there to clear up those pesky WMD’s, round up Saddam like a Raccoon, etc. etc. Much of this flm is shot on a not-so-steadycam yielding an occasionally dizzying documentary effect like a computer wargame. This technique will engage and please the young more than bifocal wearers. Saddam has legged it, but not his chum General Al-Rawi who, it turns out, has his own interesting past with the U. S. Government. A lot of doors get kicked in and henchpersons shot, but the good guys kinda win in the end.
I suspect that unless you are a complete wargaming nut, in which case, enjoy, your reactions to the film will line up around your take on the Iraq war. If you believe that it was a good idea, and the prospectus on which it was started was decent, legal honest and truthful you will feel affronted that such a film could be imagined, let alone made. Fox News, which believes everybody should ignore the government at home paradoxically also believes everything republican governments do abroad is, ipso facto, decent, legal, honest and truthful.
Back on planet earth, it is becoming evident as the enquiries unfold that you can argue with the details, but a squalid and confused fantasy-based computer game is not that far away from the way historians will view the Iraq War. There were no WMD’s twenty minutes away from Cyprus. In this regard Saddam’s brutal regime was all mouth and no trousers. The war’s whole prospectus was dishonest, and our politicans knew it but lied to us. Brave people took big risks, money flowed like water, and several hundred thousand innocent civilians died. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
