Blog
Welcome to my blog, which is intended as an informal forum for my thoughts, subject to corrections and updates, on a variety of topics and with links to other points of interest.
August 7, 2008
Health Care Interviews for L.A. Times
The Los Angeles Times has made two of my 1998 interviews available online for free. The first, an interview with a Los Angeles hospital president following a major scandal at the medical center, is dated—this was before the government changed Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)—though I think it holds up; we discuss managed care and whether health care is a right. Another interview was conducted with a local nurses’ union president.
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Back to topAugust 4, 2008
Movies & More
Disney’s Swing Vote is mediocre, though it has an upside. As a politically-themed comedy, the Kevin Costner vehicle tries too hard, oversimplifies and dodges important questions—such as which candidate gets the Costner character’s vote. The upside in this splotchy, overly sentimental picture—which rates a TV or DVD viewing—is the cast.
Mr. Costner—who shines in the sardonic The Upside of Anger and the heroic The Guardian—fits the bill. But the girl who plays his daughter, Madeline Carroll, steals the spotlight, carrying the movie, which pitches the traditional line that helping others is the point of political involvement through Mr. Costner’s apathetic single dad. It is always good to see the underused Kelsey Grammer as the President and Mare Winningham—who caught my eye with a powerful lead role in ABC’s TV movie Freedom decades ago—as the girl’s mother. Also appearing: Stanley Tucci, Nathan Lane, and beautiful Paula Patton. Each does their best with a mixed script.
Thoughts on other summer movies: Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E left me unimpressed. Though it had nice moments, a bleak undertone dominates the movie and WALL-E strikes me as another departure, like Enchanted, from Disney’s brand of depicting a knowable, benevolent world. I also did not care for Wanted, an assault on the senses. Mid-range movies with positive aspects: the occasionally witty Kung Fu Panda, which was fun to see with friends, and the bizarre French murder mystery, Tell No One.
Surprisingly, I was moved by most of the interesting Hancock, which I think deserves more credit for Will Smith’s multi-dimensional performance than his role in the disgusting I Am Legend. Mr. Smith’s transformation from hardened alcoholic to hero is quite good. I enjoyed Hancock. For top quality entertainment, catch Mamma Mia! (again, if you’ve already seen it).
I extend Get Well wishes to a great American actor, Morgan Freeman, who, as this goes to print, is apparently in serious condition after a car crash, according to CNN. The forementioned and recuperating Kelsey Grammer, whose work has given me countless hours of laughter and joy, is hopefully also on the mend. Get well wishes also go to actor Shia LaBeouf, who was injured in a car crash in which he was cited for drunken driving, and to actress Christina Applegate, who was diagnosed with breast cancer. They’re both young, hard-working artists who have what it takes to overcome.
I’m hearing from readers about my decision to leave Box Office Mojo and, while I am unable to respond to everyone, I read every letter. I must say I am grateful to have readers of your caliber. Thank you.
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Back to topJuly 26, 2008
Lady Still Sings the Blues
Diana Ross: Lady Supreme was on the bill last night at the Hollywood Bowl. After taking the subway to the Bowl, I walked into a near sold-out audience. The Los Angeles Philharmonic opened with Richard Rodgers’ ballet number “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” from the 1936 Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Broadway show, On Your Toes, and with a strong rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Harlem.”
Afterwards, Diana took the stage with her rock-tinged statement of self-assertion, “I’m Coming Out.” With the extensive backlog, favorite songs were sure to be left out of the routine. Among missing personal favorite tunes: “Endless Love,” “Chain Reaction” and the New Wave-flavored Darryl Hall-composed “Swept Away”. Miss Ross was in fine form, looking splendid in sequins and a yellow dress and performing a nicely paced 90-minute concert with minor vocal cracks.
The medley of Motown hits with the Supremes was a highlight—the band was excellent, especially on the boppy “You Can’t Hurry Love”—and she sang tunes from her movies Mahogany and Lady Sings the Blues. Though “Upside Down” was weak on electric guitar, it rocked the crowd and a smooth, flawless performance of “It’s My House” more than compensated. What a blast (and thanks again to Cynthia for pouring the wine). Cheers, Diana; your house is still built for love.
Diana Ross Official Web Site: http://www.dianaross.com/
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Back to topJuly 24, 2008
Movies
The Dark Knight—the sequel to Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins—competently dramatizes nihilism while the ABBA melody-based Mamma Mia! offers a brilliantly youthful depiction of romance.
Read my reviews here:
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Back to topJuly 23, 2008
Objectivist Conference 2008
Sorry about the delay in posting here. After an exciting several years at Box Office Mojo (BOM)—including our recent sponsorship of the Newport Beach Film Festival and my hosting Red River starring John Wayne—I have decided to move on. I wish the BOM bunch well in the future. This summer, I have been enjoying the Objectivist Conference (OCON) in Newport Beach, visiting Disneyland and the beaches of Malibu and working on other projects.
OCON 2008 was fabulous. The Ayn Rand Institute’s Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate delivered a lecture series on cultural change, which was very rewarding. In a related development, the opening of the new Ayn Rand Center (ARC) in Washington, D.C. was also announced.
OCON highlights included two optional courses—a comprehensive three-lecture class by Clemson’s Eric Daniels on the history of free speech in America and Virginia Tech Professor Shoshana Milgram’s extremely informative four-lecture course on Ayn Rand’s admiration for It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. That’s one of my favorite novels and I gained new insights. During the class, I also learned about Ayn Rand’s appreciation for her lawyers and I enjoyed several such sidebars. Her note to Ann Watkins comes to mind.
Leonard Peikoff’s Question and Answer was a real treat—as others have observed, he’s in top form—and, while I was unable to attend every lecture, I enjoyed the general sessions. Archivist Jeff Britting showed me the impressive Ayn Rand Archives and the conference staff was thoroughly professional (thanks to Dave and Bryan). I missed having an opportunity to enroll in a course by Craig Biddle, whose Science of Selfishness class at Telluride last year was excellent, and finding the Independence Day luncheon was not easy (Arwen Morton’s patriotic vocal performances were outstanding) but, as usual, OCON was worth every dollar.
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Matt Petit / ©A.M.P.A.S.
February 24th, 2008
Tonight's Academy Awards®
The gentle rain at this time is fitting for tonight’s Oscars®, which feature a slate of bleak, dreary movies. I’m scheduled as a guest for the Mark Isler Show on KABC 790 AM to discuss the movies and awards with other panelists—I’m on at 9 p.m. Pacific time for a few hours—having watched the telecast until then. The Best Picture nominations are as forgettable as last year's Best Pic winner (The Departed). My 2007 retrospective column will be published on Box Office Mojo soon.
Oscar's Best Picture nominations include the anti-moneymaking creed There Will Be Blood, which ends in the campiest meltdown since Mommie Dearest, the terribly self-important No Country for Old Men, which posits that nothing really matters, the inscrutable Michael Clayton and the bloated British soap opera, Atonement. Then, there's the overrated hit Juno. I think Juno might pull off a win since it’s conservative—no abortion for the pregnant girl, of course—and safe and popular, though No Country for Old Men dominates among the intellectuals. Atonement is the closest to the sort of classic epic Hollywood used to favor for Best Picture.
Juno
The title's pregnant teenager starts droning about her mundane life in a monotone that never lets up and it's obvious an artificially happy ending is pre-conceived. In the dreary nine-month meantime, deficient parents miraculously dispense sage advice and everyone speaks in clipped, cynical semi-sentences, like characters from Closer, Thank You for Smoking or The West Wing. Gnarly Juno eventually behaves like a decent person in an unrealistic and unremarkable transformation that is treated as if it's earned, only it isn't. Unless you get a kick out of watching a crude, nihilistic adolescent girl act like a crude, nihilistic adolescent boy, Juno is also not exactly a comedy.
No Country for Old Men
Javier Bardem's stone-faced performance as a hit man in No Country for Old Men is similar to that other nihilistically iconic picture, Pulp Fiction, in which the hit man is its moral center—a blank slate meant to convey the notion that nothing matters, evil is omnipotent and we are doomed. On its own terms, it works. The movie is totally absurd, with Texas deputies saying things like, "that's very linear, sheriff." No Country for Old Men is calculated, economical and as deep as an episode of the Seventies crime drama Cannon and it is definitely less linear.
There Will Be Blood
Like No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood trails off in conclusion. Instead of geriatric Tommy Lee Jones babbling in a downward spiral, Blood gives us Daniel Day-Lewis, focused as ever and quite effective, though talking Texan with an accent from another universe and playing up the histrionics at his highest pitch since he screamed "I'll never leave you!" in The Last of the Mohicans. The bizarre, anti-capitalist Blood, based on an Upton Sinclair novel, might have worked better had it eased up on demonizing the Day-Lewis oil baron and actually dramatized drilling for oil, an exciting, fascinating prospect that's barely shown. When it is—when something goes wrong, of course—it rocks the house. With an air raid soundtrack that recalls the Forbidden Zone music of the original Planet of the Apes and the temple siren of The Time Machine, There Will Be Blood purports to show how money (in exchange for oil) corrupts man and turns him into a monster. But it's fueled by the Day-Lewis performance, not by the script.
Michael Clayton
A ponderous, mildly interesting character drama that doesn’t amount to much. In this generic, anti-business conspiracy story, an attachment with the title character is never formed. George Clooney's Michael Clayton ends up doing what any third-grader with a decent upbringing would do without hesitation.
Atonement
The uneven but interesting Atonement is slow-moving and overdone. Aided by a visual flourish and an intellectual hook late in the process, it nearly compensates for the flaws. Actress Romola Garai as Briony keeps the laborious showcase from nodding off. The rest of the cast is as neatly arranged as the opening shot's marching toy animals. A mother with migraines—a leering brother—a frizzy-haired cousin named Lola—a friendly stranger—a pair of pudgy twins—and the story’s two passionate lovers—and each are affected by an act of profound (and implausible) injustice. Atonement's immersion in war dramatizes that man's life is finite, not automatic; it can be made—and it can be wiped out. Like a Shakespearean drama, the point is that a single act—a tragic flaw—can cause real, permanent damage. Not much new there, even with a last-minute switch in perspective that makes a subtle and thoughtful point about the role of art. The salient notion that life is not eternal—and love is not all you need—comes through intact and it's especially relevant in a world at war. But getting there is not entirely earned and it’s a real slog.
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communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, left, with communist Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev
February 20th, 2008
Cuban Dictator Steps Down
The Western hemisphere’s lone communist state, Cuba, announced this week that its ailing dictator, Fidel Castro, would step down. His brother, Raul, will reportedly take over the island nation.
Communist Castro ruled Cuba for 49 years—so much for Karl Marx’s withering away of the state—banning individual rights and torturing countless Cubans ever since. Today, even the Internet is banned in Cuba, a poor, struggling economy which depends on lurid European and Russian sex tourists that prey upon its starving young people, some natural resources, and money sent from relatives in the United States.
What happens now will be interesting. The Bush administration will probably squander this opportunity to advance U.S. interests, too. Castro, by himself, has never been what’s wrong with Cuba—a point lost on Cuban expatriates in Florida, who have demonized him for 50 years. Castro is merely another totalitarian thug and he can be replaced by another totalitarian thug. What's wrong with Cuba is its philosophy: communism.
In his final years, Castro formed alliances with an axis of evil, to use President Bush’s phrase, (the President did no more to counteract this axis than he did to stop the other famously proclaimed axis): Venezuela, China, and Iran. Castro is known for cutting secret deals with states that are hostile to the United States—remember the Cuban nuclear missile threat posed by the Soviet Union—and, with communist China controlling the Panama Canal and Venezuela’s close proximity, the Caribbean could become a geopolitical hot zone. Look for these anti-U.S. states—which are allies in oil and arms—to assert power in this Western state before Cuba’s dictatorship withers away.
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Back to topFebruary 17th, 2008
Guest Appearances on KABC's "Mark Isler Show"
I’ll be doing Mark Isler’s talk radio program on KABC 790 AM tomorrow night in Los Angeles and he’s asked me to come on to talk about the movies in a post-Oscars show next Sunday (Feb. 24). I’m booked on both shows from 11 p.m. to Midnight, though tomorrow night I might go on a bit earlier.
Mark is a rare voice in today’s talk radio: professional, kind, and intelligent. We did the same thing last year and I know I thoroughly enjoyed it. His listeners don’t miss a thing.
I first met Mark, an educator and businessman who’s been active in Republican politics for years, while I was writing newspaper articles and he was hosting a local television program. He’d have me on his panel discussion show to talk about issues or whatever I was covering and it was always a forum for thought-provoking ideas.
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Back to topFebruary 13th, 2008
Writers’ Strike Update
News broke this weekend that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike in Hollywood may be ended before members approve a final contract. According to the WGA, members will consider the three-year tentative contract during a ratification process before a final vote.
This puts the cart before the horse. Why end the strike, which began on Nov. 5, 2007, before the writers approve an agreement?
Hollywood’s establishment, especially the entertainment press, has tried to lay a guilt trip on the union since the strike was initiated. This argument was based on altruism—the idea that writers should put self-interest aside for the sake of those who have been adversely affected. There has been particular disdain for striking writers over whether the Academy Awards would be upstaged by the contract dispute, as if awards, not the creation of motion pictures, are what moves Hollywood.
The union’s demands, such as compensation for content used through new technology, are based on legitimate points (the studios never really made a case to the public) so ending the strike now blunts the union’s contractual gains. The WGA consistently put the writers’ position at the forefront of the debate and they succeeded in getting most of their demands met. But ending the strike without a member-approved contract deprives the writers of having the last word.
Disney Theme Park Changes
WGA President Patric Verrone’s statement acknowledged the efforts of Disney’s CEO, Robert Iger, who helped to broker the deal. Negotiating skills aside, Mr. Iger’s doing an excellent job running the Walt Disney Company these days, with a string of movie, cable and home video hits adding up to double digit returns on investments.
Last quarter, Disney’s theme park business spiked an impressive 11 percent in spite of the economic downturn and the New York Times published a major article on upcoming theme park changes at Disney’s California Adventure (DCA) in Anaheim, California. The piece focuses on a new attraction called Toy Story Mania, currently under construction, which sounds like a giant video game.
The name of the attraction alone is a turnoff to those who prefer Disneyland’s classic immersion in storytelling to manic, whim-worshipping perceptual assaults designed for the short attention span but read the article for a good sense of what Disney has in store.
Through the grapevine, I have heard that, while DCA changes will incorporate an attraction based on the brilliant 1989 animated classic, The Little Mermaid, DCA will not build the thematically superior version featured in computer simulation on last year’s Platinum DVD edition. That’s not a good sign.
Implementation of DCA’s proposed changes, which generally sound like an improvement, is a crucial test for Mr. Iger. If he’s as respectful of the Disney creative philosophy—that works be built around a high caliber story—as I think he is, he’ll rebuild the maligned park, Little Mermaid attraction included, in the bold spirit with which the studio’s founder built the original theme park, Disneyland.
Judging by his sharp, sober and optimistic interview on CNBC last week, Mr. Iger has all of what it takes.
Clinton vs. MSNBC
CNBC’s sister network, MSNBC—Microsoft’s joint venture with NBC News—punished political reporter David Shuster, for pointing out that the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign is using an adult Clinton relative to get nominated—he used a slang term—prompting an outraged response from the Clinton camp. What a crock.
That MSNBC suspended Shuster, who is a total professional, is the real outrage. How can anyone take seriously a campaign that employs another prominent relative—the former president who is the candidate’s spouse—who openly discussed his underwear on national television and despicably played the race card a few weeks ago? Informative Shuster, who already apologized for his choice of words, is an important part of TV’s best political coverage. He should be reinstated without delay.
Roy Scheider Dies
Roy Scheider has died. He was 75. Though known for his cop roles in The French Connectionand Jaws, he was underestimated for top performances in Robert Benton’s thriller Still of the Night, in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz and in the 1973 New York City action picture The Seven-Ups. Sad-eyed Scheider was a strong, reliable screen presence during five decades of motion pictures and he’ll be missed.
Related Links
- Writers Guild of America (West)
- ‘Will Disney Keep Us Amused?’
- ‘Clinton Blasts NBC Over Chelsea Comment’
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Back to topFebruary 6th, 2008
2008 Presidential Candidates
Mike Huckabee
The former Arkansas governor and Christian preacher remains relevant because religionists dominate the Republican Party. Huckabee swept the South on Super Tuesday, sneaking a dubious win in West Virginia by colluding with fellow religionist—make no mistake—Arizona Sen. John McCain and Huckabee’s is the true voice of the Grand Old Party (GOP). In the weeks ahead, he stands to gain, not lose, power. The religionist-driven Huckaboom has yet to fully reverberate.
Mitt Romney
The former Massachusetts governor is the most Reaganesque in terms of personality but his pragmatism—he enacted socialized medicine as governor—foils his credibility as the antidote to front-runner Sen. John McCain. There’s no sense that Romney stands for anything but folksy traditionalism (all three GOP candidates traffic in this hucksterism). Though Romney actually won seven states on Super Tuesday, including Colorado and Minnesota, his delegate tally is relatively low and it’s best for him to withdraw. Let Huckabee be the option to McCain; this will push McCain to be true to his religious roots and clarify a badly needed general election choice between the Democratic presidential nominee and another religious Republican who favors keeping our troops engaged in an endless mission of self-sacrifice.
John McCain
The Vietnam War veteran and Arizona senator is absolutely 100 percent a religionist. He opposes individual rights—he fathered the McCain-Feingold restrictions on free speech and he favors regulating video games and the Internet—and he’s against capitalism and McCain supports the Bush administration’s disastrous foreign policy. By my estimate, conservatives such as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh who have denounced McCain amount to a personality conflict that merely reflects a philosophical sameness between the religious right and the religious left. Indeed, Coulter reportedly says she will vote for Clinton over McCain. I interviewed Sen. McCain in San Francisco during the 2000 presidential campaign (I plan to post a longer transcript than was published in newspapers during the campaign) and there is no doubt that Sen. McCain is a real conservative.
Hillary Clinton
Like her husband, she will do anything to win an election. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is a pragmatist whose ideas are the same as the Republicans, differing only in degree, and her religious positions—banning divorce for couples with children, regulating video games and the Internet—should continue to attract religious voters. If Clinton doesn’t put a lock on the nomination before this summer, watch for her to manipulate the super-delegates at the party’s convention. She’s a ruthless candidate. I’m not convinced that her election will result in legislative gridlock, which would be good.
Barack Obama
I hold that Sen. Barack Obama is the choice for those opposed to the Bush administration’s military intervention in Iraq. The Democrat’s candidacy transcends usual political divisions; he’s promoted and perceived as the candidate that rejects the status quo and I think the perception may be warranted. Since he announced his campaign in Springfield, Illinois, Obama has opposed Iraq policy and made it a defining issue of his candidacy. An Obama general election victory will be a mandate to change America’s foreign policy first and foremost and a repudiation of the Bush/Clinton political philosophy, a mongrel mixture of Judeo-Christian pragmatic socialism. Obama won an impressive 13 states (a win in New Mexico, where he currently leads, would make it 14) on Super Tuesday. According to MSNBC, he has a slight lead in the delegate count. A McCain vs. Obama contest could present a clear philosophical choice to American voters. It’s a choice between more of the same religious socialism at home and abroad and an immediate change in U.S. foreign policy—a pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq, which will be the public’s barometer for measuring an Obama presidency’s success. At worst, an Obama victory stops Republicans from implementing new schemes for self-sacrifice and, at best, it does that and effectively guts the Republican Party.
Related Links
2008 Presidential Candidate Web Sites
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Back to topJanuary 31st, 2008
Primary Notes
Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s primary victory in South Carolina may prove to have been the turning point if he survives New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s conniving campaign to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination—no sure thing given the upcoming monster primary day, Feb. 5, in which 22 mostly Clinton-friendly states hold elections.
Whether Obama stays competitive, South Carolina is where, amid Deep South race-baiting (the Clinton camp despicably raised his race as an issue by insinuation), Obama’s call to depart from the politics of the past, i.e., to end 20 years of Bush and Clinton, decisively met with broad support. South Carolina’s response to the Clintons’ attempts to belittle an Obama win in advance: a bigger margin of victory for Obama than had been anticipated. The 27-point gap was a stunning rebuke of the Clintons.
Hillary Clinton is a Christian socialist; she is indistinguishable from the current Christian president. She represents status quo traditionalism—things as they are—particularly with regard to foreign policy. Like her husband, who refused to defend America against Islamic fundamentalists, and President Bush, whose foreign policy since the worst attack in U.S. history ceased to resemble a military defense of the nation long ago, Hillary Clinton is an altruist.
Her Iraq plan, like the Bush doctrine, emphasizes stabilization of, not U.S. troop withdrawal from, Iraq—where Bush chose to send American troops, thousands of whom have been sacrificed—for the purpose of helping others, not defending U.S. interests. Securing Iraq, as she puts it, not America’s self-interest, comes first. As she states on her Web site: “What I try to do every day is figure out how to help somebody. And that’s what I will do as president.”
Sen. Obama also favors helping Iraqis—he proposes an aid package and leaves room for troop deployment relative to Al Qaeda strikes in Iraq—but his approach is predicated, at least by implication, on some degree of the nation’s self-interest. As he told an Iowa audience in September 2007: “[I oppose a]n occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences. The full accounting of those costs and consequences will only be known to history . . . our direction must be out of Iraq.”
While it's still early in the campaign season and there’s more to learn about Sen. Obama’s views, his victory speech in South Carolina—enunciating the nation’s e pluribus unum motto: “out of many, one”—generally affirms his status as the only major candidate to take the strongest position on the most important single issue in this election: pulling our troops out of Iraq.
As far as rights are concerned, specifically freedom of speech, Sen. Obama also appears to be better than Sen. Clinton, an observation I made a year ago in my column for Box Office Mojo. Republican candidates are not a serious option for those who favor individual rights; they all either support the Bush administration’s self-sacrificing military intervention in Iraq or advocate some form of religious statism.
Heath Ledger Dies
How sad and shocking that actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his Manhattan home. I first noticed him eight years ago in a movie starring Mel Gibson as a barbaric American called The Patriot; it was a long, brutal picture improved by Ledger’s turn as an idealistic American revolutionary.
His abilities are more prominently on display in two outstanding performances in 2005; as a repressed, rural homosexual in Ang Lee’s aching Brokeback Mountain and as the playful Venetian lover in Lasse Hallstrom’s delightful Casanova. Ledger is brooding and mysterious as Ennis Del Mar in the former, awakening when it is too late, a broken man in the final frames. He is bright and spirited as the title character in the latter, his eyes dancing throughout the jaunty affair, in the end sailing into a lifetime of joy.
Looking back at Ledger’s television footage, he rarely seemed at ease. Practically every clip shows him fidgeting, tapping or touching his face and an overhead shot shows Ledger walking the red carpet with his then-lover, actress Michelle Williams, with whom he had a daughter, pausing to pose for photographs—and, a second later, nervously rubbing his hand up and down his leg, as if the attention is more than he wants to bear.
The handsome Australian—balancing the pressures of being an immigrant, a single father, and a leading Hollywood actor—struck me as a sensitive soul struggling to find his way in a troubled world.
At age 28, he evidently stumbled into a life filled with medication and the company of a masseuse whose first inclination, upon finding his lifeless body, was to call one of the Olsen twins—reportedly, four times—before calling an ambulance. What happened when the ambulance arrived in front of his apartment building is an indelibly sickening sign of our times: a cacophony of cellular phone cameras flashing while Heath Ledger’s body was being removed.
He had tremendous potential and it is tragic to have lost him. Those who missed him in Brokeback Mountain or Casanova or his other movies should see and make their own judgment; I’ll venture that Heath Ledger would have liked his work to speak for itself.
Related Links
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Back to top'Dark Knight' Director Chris Nolan on Batman
The Batman Begins director, in this 2005 interview, discussed the Caped Crusader, heroism, and what he watches with his family. . . .
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