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I saw a woman on the street today, wearing a T-shirt that said [geek] (except with real pointed brackets, which LJ apparently doesn't like you to use if you don't mean them). Why didn't I like it? Because it didn't say [/geek] on the back. Sloppy coding, says I.
And I read a case that referred to "a bountiful harvest for those of us who now walk the same interpretive path," and thought, shouldn't that be "those of us who now raid the interpretive larder"?
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night and found it painful, but not in a bad way, if that makes any sense. I hadn't realized how vulnerable I still am to Sept. 11 images. As a filmmaker, Moore has better and worse moments, and for me one of the best was when he kept on showing the fragments of paper blowing in the wind and smoke, long enough that, though I was still crying, I could also see the image as an image as well as evidence of this horrendous act. Just about as emotionally painful were the Iraqi woman asking what she & the people around her had done to deserve being bombed and killed, and the Michigan mother whose son was killed in Iraq. The contrast between those segments and the talking heads/politicians was intense, and when Moore let that contrast speak for itself or at least left you to finish connecting the dots, the film was extremely powerful. Moore's song choice was notably good in some segments; I especially liked his use of the Greatest American Hero theme when Bush was on the aircraft carrier with that later-embarrassing "Mission Accomplished" banner (if you weren't as geeky as me -- see, on topic -- you might not remember that the theme includes the line "It should have been somebody else") and his use of "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World" over the end credits. What seemed like a cheap trick at the beginning -- showing all the politicos having their hair fixed and their noses powdered in preparation for going "live," which made them look ridiculous -- was turned into a nice bracketing device when the end showed the same people pulling out their microphones, though ultimately it was still also a cheap trick; identical footage could be found for Bill and Hillary, I'm sure.
Moore's hints of explicit deals with the Saudis were unpersuasive, and the repetition of pictures of the Bushes with Saudis eventually began to seem xenophobic. (It also detracted from the later revelation that high-level officials met with members of the Taliban to discuss oil.) He was much better when he was suggesting that habits of mind formed by long association with the House of Saud made the Bushies unwilling to challenge their family friends and unwilling to ask the members of the bin Laden family who were in the US until Sept. 13 to stay & chat a while. His elaboration of the Saudi billions invested in the US -- 6-7% of the US economy, by one estimate -- cuts against the idea that the Saudi ruling family wants to destroy the US, it seems to me, though I don't doubt that they're happy to support fundamentalist regimes elsewhere even if that has the ultimate effect of harming the US.
The one moment that made me gasp out loud in disbelief was when Bush made a typical statement about how everyone needs to support the US in the fight against terrorism and we have to be strong in this dangerous time -- and then turned, said, "now watch this!" and hit his golf ball. The shift was unbelievable, as if someone had turned a dial from "gravely concerned and resolute" to "carefree." I really couldn't believe that he remembered what he'd just been talking about.
Also, to finish on a lawyerly-geeky note, one of the ads before the movie was for C2, Coke's new half-sugar half-Nutrasweet beverage, and the thing that really interested me about it was that the low-carb craze hit so fast that Coke didn't have time to register "C2" as a trademark; all it had was the TM next to it, and not the (R) of a registered trademark. Z. was highly amused that this was what I found most memorable about the ad. He thinks C2 is not so much about carbs as it is about tapping into the guy market, because most guys won't buy Diet Coke, but they might try something that comes in a black can. Evidence for this proposition comes from the steps outside the school, where a bunch of people including me were waiting for the fire alarm to end so we could go inside -- a group of people were discussing low-carb stuff, and one mentioned C2. The guy in the group said, "I bought that. I didn't even know what it was at the time, but it had a wicked can." He didn't say what he thought of it qua beverage. I guess image isn't nothing, after all.
And I read a case that referred to "a bountiful harvest for those of us who now walk the same interpretive path," and thought, shouldn't that be "those of us who now raid the interpretive larder"?
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night and found it painful, but not in a bad way, if that makes any sense. I hadn't realized how vulnerable I still am to Sept. 11 images. As a filmmaker, Moore has better and worse moments, and for me one of the best was when he kept on showing the fragments of paper blowing in the wind and smoke, long enough that, though I was still crying, I could also see the image as an image as well as evidence of this horrendous act. Just about as emotionally painful were the Iraqi woman asking what she & the people around her had done to deserve being bombed and killed, and the Michigan mother whose son was killed in Iraq. The contrast between those segments and the talking heads/politicians was intense, and when Moore let that contrast speak for itself or at least left you to finish connecting the dots, the film was extremely powerful. Moore's song choice was notably good in some segments; I especially liked his use of the Greatest American Hero theme when Bush was on the aircraft carrier with that later-embarrassing "Mission Accomplished" banner (if you weren't as geeky as me -- see, on topic -- you might not remember that the theme includes the line "It should have been somebody else") and his use of "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World" over the end credits. What seemed like a cheap trick at the beginning -- showing all the politicos having their hair fixed and their noses powdered in preparation for going "live," which made them look ridiculous -- was turned into a nice bracketing device when the end showed the same people pulling out their microphones, though ultimately it was still also a cheap trick; identical footage could be found for Bill and Hillary, I'm sure.
Moore's hints of explicit deals with the Saudis were unpersuasive, and the repetition of pictures of the Bushes with Saudis eventually began to seem xenophobic. (It also detracted from the later revelation that high-level officials met with members of the Taliban to discuss oil.) He was much better when he was suggesting that habits of mind formed by long association with the House of Saud made the Bushies unwilling to challenge their family friends and unwilling to ask the members of the bin Laden family who were in the US until Sept. 13 to stay & chat a while. His elaboration of the Saudi billions invested in the US -- 6-7% of the US economy, by one estimate -- cuts against the idea that the Saudi ruling family wants to destroy the US, it seems to me, though I don't doubt that they're happy to support fundamentalist regimes elsewhere even if that has the ultimate effect of harming the US.
The one moment that made me gasp out loud in disbelief was when Bush made a typical statement about how everyone needs to support the US in the fight against terrorism and we have to be strong in this dangerous time -- and then turned, said, "now watch this!" and hit his golf ball. The shift was unbelievable, as if someone had turned a dial from "gravely concerned and resolute" to "carefree." I really couldn't believe that he remembered what he'd just been talking about.
Also, to finish on a lawyerly-geeky note, one of the ads before the movie was for C2, Coke's new half-sugar half-Nutrasweet beverage, and the thing that really interested me about it was that the low-carb craze hit so fast that Coke didn't have time to register "C2" as a trademark; all it had was the TM next to it, and not the (R) of a registered trademark. Z. was highly amused that this was what I found most memorable about the ad. He thinks C2 is not so much about carbs as it is about tapping into the guy market, because most guys won't buy Diet Coke, but they might try something that comes in a black can. Evidence for this proposition comes from the steps outside the school, where a bunch of people including me were waiting for the fire alarm to end so we could go inside -- a group of people were discussing low-carb stuff, and one mentioned C2. The guy in the group said, "I bought that. I didn't even know what it was at the time, but it had a wicked can." He didn't say what he thought of it qua beverage. I guess image isn't nothing, after all.
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I thought the long "Shiny Happy People" sequence was too long... and a bit silly, since a still photo of two guys shaking hands isn't really "shiny happy people holding hands." I'm guessing he did it for visual resonance... but I didn't think it worked that well. That said, I didn't see it as racist... maybe because Moore humanized the Iraqis in a way the mainstream news almost never does.
About that shirt... there's another t-shirt that says on the upper right chest, and then on the lower left chest. That amuses me, although I don't think I'd buy it. First off, my geek credentials aren't that good... second, who knows if they'd place the screen pattern properly for my boobs? What if it cut them off early? ;)
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