the top 10 movies of the 21st century, minus one

The list thus far (in no particular order):

Ghost World
No Country for Old Men
City of God
Lives of Others
Requiem for a Dream
Team America: World Police
Notes on a Scandal
Sexy Beast
Lost in Translation

Having a hard time deciding on the final flick, though I’ve pretty much made up my mind.

Here’s the films I had to choose from, based on my original nominees:

American Psycho
Gosford Park
Y tu mamá también
21 Grams
Shattered Glass
Collateral
Brokeback Mountain
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Bourne Ultimatum
The Dark Knight

Which one would you’ve picked?

“because you’re on television, dummy!”

“Network,” relevant as ever, raises difficult subjects and resists easy answers. God bless the polemic!

Take Howard Beale, introduced as a prophet — the voice of righteous indignation — and revealed as a fraud. Good rarely encounters evil anymore; better vs. worse, at best.

the blatant dishonesty of professional partisans

Overheard on Larry King …

1. A Democratic strategist, assessing Sarah Palin’s brief media tour: She did great in her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Hannity, though admittedly she had a couple of “rough moments” in her sitdown with Katie Couric.

Why does the media acommodate propaganda? Strategists are paid by parties and/or candidates, and they give a shit about objective analysis. Their job is to prop up their employer, and if that means calling Sarah Palin a formbidable adversary, so be it.

Don’t blame the whores for pushing. Blame the lazy media for buying.

2. Liberal talk shot host Ed Schultz: Obama delivered 2/3 of House Democrats for the bailout measure.

Obama didn’t deliver anyone, for or against. He has remained distant throughout the process, and though he says he supports the plan, Obama’s done little or nothing to ensure its passage. A phone call from Obama to, say, John Lewis, one of the bill’s opponents, might’ve made a difference. Obama was able to convince him to rescind his endorsement of Hillary in the primary — maybe he could’ve influenced Lewis again.

Instead, Obama voted “present.”

worse than we thought

Of concern to McCain’s campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin’s interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing.

The Palin aide, after first noting how “infuriating” it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.

There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.

paging howard beale

Prescient as hell, and appropriate, considering today’s events.

i got a house you can foreclose

I don’t know whether the bailout should’ve passed or not. But when I hear what caused it’s defeat, I’m outraged. Once again, the children prevailed.

The first middle finger of blame points to Nancy Pelosi, whose partisan grandstanding apparently swayed House Republicans to vote against the plan.:
Outstanding leadership, Miss Pelosi! But I have two middle fingers, and the second points to those same House Republicans who based their votes on little more than sophomoric indignation.

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the whip, estimated that Pelosi’s speech changed the minds of a dozen Republicans who might otherwise have supported the plan.

Way to stand on principal!

What a disgusting display.

better be nice to our sarah

Can’t decide what’s more offensive about this clip — the McCain flak’s “warnings” to Thursday’s debate moderator, Gwen Ifill, or the naked bias of Fox anchor Steve Doocy, by far the biggest doofus on cable TV. And that includes CNN’s Rick Sanchez.

where’s the accountability?

I guarantee you more Georgians will be asking that question of the UGA football coach (after a humiliating defeat by Alabama) than of their state’s governor.

Perhaps that makes sense, considering Georgia ranks below Alabama in SAT scores, thanks in part to Sonny Do-Nothing’s lackluster leadership. (Don’t overlook his pandering to the teacher’s union back in 2002 when, in a bid to get more votes from teachers, he opposed reasonable standards pushed by the state’s then-Democratic governor.)

Now in his second term, Sonny hasn’t accomplished much except for promote fishing (tough break with that ensuing drought) and register his righteous indignation with the AJC for a headline that accurately described a different Bulldog drubbing.

Sunday’s sports page headline (“Dogs get put in their place,” referring to Georgia’s 51-33 loss to Tennessee, College Football, Oct. 8) is an indication of the way The Atlanta Journal-Constitution views Georgia. From the front page to the business page and now to the sports page, it is as if the AJC gleefully awaits lousy news about all things Georgia and pounces with their poison pens whenever bad things happen to the good people of our state.

Nice to see the governor squeeze in some official buisness in between his screeds to the newspaper and calls to the Bulldog Hotline. 

Somehow he coasts by, even after his remarkably out-of-touch assessment of Georgia’s worsening fuel shortage.. Around 1 a.m. Sunday I counted 32 cars waiting at the lone gas station in Cumming with fuel.

Here’s Sonny’s response from a few days ago, with the near-crisis well into its second week. Keep in mind that he had yet to speak about the problem, and apparently would’ve remained mum had he not been asked. I’m guessing he wishes he wouldn’t have answered:

“There is ample fuel in the city,” he said. “It’s not everywhere it needs to be, but we do not have a crisis in the sense that we don’t have fuel coming in.”

A “self-induced panic,” he called it.

We can only hope his limo ran our of gas tonight on the way home from Athens. Of course, he’d still be more upset by the final score at Sanford Stadium.

the summation

the most devastating piece of satire in ‘snl’ history

Tina Fey, as Sarah Palin, answered the faux Couric’s question about the bailout with the exact words Palin used in the actual interview.

NBC Universal has already pulled a copyright claim on the YouTube clip (way to exapnd your audience, GE), but no matter. Fey and Palin look alike, sound similar and, in this case, speak the same gibberish.

rip paul newman

We lost a true role model today, as I observed back in June after learning Paul Newman had been diagnosed with cancer.

The Times’ obituary is excerpted below:

But the movies and the occasional stage role were never enough for him. He became a successful racecar driver, winning several Sports Car Club of America national driving titles. He even competed at Daytona in 1995 as a 70th birthday present to himself. In 1982, as a lark, he decided to sell a salad dressing he had created and bottled for friends at Christmas. Thus was born the Newman’s Own brand, an enterprise he started with his friend A. E. Hotchner, the writer. More than 25 years later the brand has expanded to include, among other foods, lemonade, popcorn, spaghetti sauce, pretzels, organic Fig Newmans and wine. (His daughter Nell Newman runs the company’s organic arm.) All its profits, of more than $200 million, have been donated to charity, the company says.

Much of the money was used to create a string of Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, named for the outlaw gang in “Butch Cassidy.” The camps provide free summer recreation for children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Mr. Newman was actively involved in the project, even choosing cowboy hats as gear so that children who had lost their hair because of chemotherapy could disguise their baldness.

Class act.

1972 revisited?

Chief Gunderson‘s performance in the Katie Couric interview reminded me of Adm. James Stockdale‘s unfortunate lack of “ammunition” in the 1992 VP debate.

The comparison ends there.

Unlike Palin, Stockdale — one of the most highly decorated naval officers in history who, after spending seven years in a Vietnam POW camp, returned home to forge a distinguished career as an academic and author — had nothing to prove, nor did he have time to formulate a credible case.

Stockdale (who assumed, after Ross Perot temporarily exited the race, that he was no longer on the ticket) had but a week to prepare. “I never had a single conversation about politics with Ross Perot in my life; still haven’t,” said Stockdale after the 1992 race.

He was sent out to face the wolves without as much as a new battery for his hearing aid. Al Gore and Dan Quayle were barely qualified to shine his shoes, but Stockdale, Dennis Miller observed, “committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television.”

Here’s conservative columnist Kathleen Parker’s take on Palin:

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.” …

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

Parker suggests Palin should step aside to “spend more time with her family,” which would secure her another place in the history books, though I doubt she’ll be thanking Thomas Eagleton for paving the way.

I’m certain McCain doesn’t want to be compared to George McGovern, but if Palin performs even half as poorly versus Biden as she did with Couric, the GOP ticket is doomed.

At least she has low expectations on her side.

just obfuscate, baby!

“That pick was so bad I thought Al Davis made it.” 

Chris Rock on John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin.

what do sarah palin and martin sheen have in common?

Three years ago Sarah Palin was anointed (with garlic?) to protect her from witchcraft and, I suppose, Harry Potter novels.I thought her pastor looked familiar (at least he’s dropped that freaky habit of rolling his eyes back in his head)

base preference

They’re selling fast. Do conservatives even even give a shit about competence?