Short Cuts

Some more reviews of movies I was either too busy or too lazy to review before. Enjoy.

G.I. Joe: Not your daddy's G.I. Joe movie. America is mentioned in passing once or twice, but this revamp of the Joe team is headed by...NATO. Giggle at will. A lot of effects, not much acting, but a few skin tight suits to keep the boys happy. Since all of the West's real enemies gave up at the end of the Cold War, Hollywood has had to invent bad guys and heroes or just steal them from fifty-year-old comic books. Iraq? Iran? Afghanistan? North Korea? International terror? Come on, you can't make a movie about those boring subjects. We need something ripped from the headlines. Hence, this movie.

The Taking of Pelham 123: Highly enjoyable thriller with John Travolta and Denzel Washington. Does the original Pelham (starring Walter Matthau) justice. Travolta and some henchmen hijack a subway car and hold the people inside hostage. Mayhem ensues. Travolta is great. Washington is quite good, too, but Travolta has the better part. Always more fun to play the bad guy.

Crank 2: Completely implausible and totally over-the-top. Also fun as hell. Check your incredulity at the door and just enjoy. Jason Statham plays a guy who has an artificial heart which needs to be shocked every few minutes or he'll die. As if that's not enough, he has to find the guys who have his real heart while dodging cars and bullets along the way.

Antichrist: Great, great movie, but not for everybody. If you hated anything by Bergman, then you'll hate this flick. A man and a woman (they remain nameless throughout) lose their child in an accident. The man takes the woman to the woods to help her recover. He's a therapist. She's a decidedly uncooperative patient. There's blood and violence, but the horror is mostly of the psychological kind. This movie pulls no punches. Beware.

Two Fists, One Heart: Paint-by-numbers Australian flick about a boxer and his desire to please his father. And his girlfriend. And himself. This has Redemption Theme written all over it. You've seen it all before, but it's an okay movie.

Surrender

Whoa.

This is a huge shift in foreign policy:

AP: President Barack Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future and appears inclined to send only as many more U.S. troops as needed to keep al-Qaida at bay, a senior administration official said Thursday.

The sharpened focus by Obama's team on fighting al-Qaida above all other goals, while downgrading the emphasis on the Taliban, comes in the midst of an intensely debated administration review of the increasingly unpopular eight-year-old war.

McChrystal wants troops. The President doesn't want to send them. Solution? Don't declare the war's over - declare an enemy isn't an enemy.

As for the "increasingly unpopular war" stuff, it doesn't always mean what the media wants it to mean. If they mean "increasingly unpopular and pull out now," they're wrong. If they mean "increasingly unpopular with the way it's being fought," then they're on the money.

Eight years ago, the Taliban provided a haven for fanatical religious thugs to get boned up on how to shoot guns and knock down buildings. Eight years later, the US is prepared have them involved in Afghanistan's political future. Spin it any way you want, but this action only has one label: surrender.

Time: Last month, Taliban fighters in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, hijacked two NATO fuel tankers. The robbery escalated into an international incident because NATO aircraft, following a German request, bombed the two stranded tankers while civilians were siphoning free fuel. The death toll — more than 125 Afghans perished, nearly half of them civilians — overshadowed the gruesome fact that the Taliban had beheaded one of the tanker drivers. Beheadings and killings of NATO supply drivers are a common occurrence, according to several private security contractors.

Wonderful ally, that Taliban. Man, the outlook for the political future in Afghanistan looks pretty good, huh?

The Most Trusted Name in News

Via Hot Air.

The guys at CNN are unbelievable.

Here's Wolf Blitzer (the man who went -$4600 on Celebrity Jeopardy) and crew fact checking an SNL skit about Obama. Talk about sticking up for your guy. Fact checking a negative comedy skit about a politician? CNN's more transparent than a window.

At the end of the clip, they find time to pull out SNL's take on Sarah Palin, which they call..."dead on."

My favorite CNN/YouTube clip is underneath this one.



Fast forward to 1:23 to see your Fact Checker in all his glory:

The Bus Idles - McChrystal

From the Telegraph:

According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.

The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid...

Word is the president is furious over McChrystal's speech. A taste:

[McChrystal] told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to "Chaos-istan".

When asked whether he would support it, he said: "The short answer is: No."

He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."

That may be, General, but it isn't your problem. Your problem is to follow orders from your civilian commanders. Public support and long term strategy are concerns of the president. Your job is to carry out orders until you retire or get canned.

I may agree with McChrystal's assessment, but you can't have a military commander mouthing off in another country about how much smarter he is than the president. It smacks of insubordination and brings up memories of MacArthur vs. Truman. Didn't end so well for MacArthur.

One more speech like this and expect the bus to arrive for McChrystal.

The Hyperbole Bus

It looks like Obama isn't alone in jumping aboard the Hyperbole Bus today.

Here's Peggy Noonan, with more of her insipid flowery prose:

Who are The Elders? They set the standards. They hand down the lore. They're the oldest and wisest. By proceeding through the world each day with dignity and humanity, they show the young what it is that should be emulated. They're the tribal chieftains. This role has probably existed since caveman days, because people need guidance and encouragement, they need to be heartened by examples of endurance. They need to be inspired.

Who are these Elders-with-a-capital-E of which she speaks?

Newspaper reporters and TV anchormen.

She begins the piece with this:

When William Safire died the other day, we lost one of the Elders of journalism and the argumentative arts. We've been losing a lot of them lately: Walter Cronkite, Bob Novak, Don Hewitt, Irving Kristol. "The stars seem to be going out one by one," said Howard Stringer at Cronkite's memorial.

No, the piece isn't satirical. Yes, Pegs really believes this stuff.