The Imperial City And The World
We wish all readers (and non-readers, for that matter) a joyous and safe Festivus. The Stiftung likely will be on vacation until January 2nd. We plan to pour new steel reinforced concrete for the bunker to withstand the Campaign 2008 assaults. Naturally, we will interrupt this necessary but mind numbing task should breaking news compel comment.
See you when we see you!
One thing all our primary fuss omits is how the future president will handle civil-military relations in a post-Iraq, post Global Strike-fantasy world. Fixation on crosses and who is down with the flu or plays the faux-good ol’ boy card best merely highlights how detached the American people are from international affairs or their own military. This also applies to candidates who have exactly one year of federal national service to their name.
Hoffman’s piece above is a good start but only that. The next president will have to address this issue either by choice or forced circumstance. We suspect the latter. Especially if laying down a phat bass line or purposeful inexperience rule the day.
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* From the Tube
So he is Time’s “Person of the Year”. Its cache long since dead. Do you honestly read Time (or the bulk of it) anymore? Didn’t think so. It hasn’t ‘re-designed’ itself to mimic Entertainment Weekly entirely but it’s not far behind. We get it, flip through (sometimes) and toss – often in one fluid (we hope) motion. Kerchunck.
So Putin must take all of that into account. He (or his staff) surely must know that when the Corporal was “Man of Year”, Henry Robinson Luce strode across the American media — and New York Society — like a behemoth. Even when Gorby won in 1988, Time still meant something.
Today? Joe Klein, like battleships of yore, rages against those mosquito (airplanes to complete the analogy) bloggers. If Time sent Annie Leibovitz, Putin could at least get off knowing that via her camera he joined the immortal ranks of Lennon, etc. The cold plain fact is that “Man of the Year” is less important than People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” Both in media saturation and utility. At least People gives Putin some entre into studios and first pass on decent scripts. What can Time do anymore?
We could go into a long discourse about Putin’s political choices, not a little bit of American hypocrisy since 1991 and the like, but this is not the time or place. That conversation deserves both seriousness and, well, Henry Robinson Luce. Perhaps we will offer some musings later on. We just note in passing that if Time is irrelevant, so are calls for Petraeus or other minor historical functionaries to receive the ‘honor’. Might as well include Ashley Simpson or the like. Is this year’s choice any different from the infamous “you”? We’ll leave that to others to debate.
Putin has other worries on his mind such as the Russian “Man of Year” curse. Since he won in 1988, Gorbachev proved himself largely incompetent domestically but useful geopolitically to the Americans. (Baker’s coup de main bringing the entire intact Germany into NATO a historic diplomatic achievement (although Cher Condi may have written an article about it years later). At least Gorby knows that along with Schevardnadze he helped end the Cold War and the threat of global incineration. Today he hawks Louis Vuitton hand bags.
Vlad, don’t look down it’s a long long way to fall. We don’t see Putin doing Louis Vuitton. Or any of the Xtreme sports stuff. A Bentley anyone?
Something in today’s Zeitgeist calls for the doomed heroic last stand. You know the drill.
The genre’s latest is from Will Smith. It smashed box office records. His flick opened at over $76 million, beating previous record holder Return of the King. The take here is different from others such as ‘300’ in a variety of ways. Smith is alone for the first half hour sans any other human actor. It’s something noted by critics and predictable flashbacks to a perfect family do little to break the tedium. “Some people say” that this is is more faithful to the book by Richard Matheson.
We have only seen the kitschy Omega Man with Charlton Heston. That by all accounts is a failed interpretation of the book. The Stiftung name drops in passing we had a small dinner Heston in the UK; he was a delightful dinner companion, rifles in cold fingers aside. The scenes of him talking to the bust of Napoleon still bring a smile.
Back to Smith. What to make of this ginormous action movie where a German shepherd named Sam is the most convincing and memorable actor? (See D. Trowbridge’s comment infra). When almost every set-up is predictable a mile away? The ending did surprise us a bit because it was so pointless. Most was explained when the screen credits rolled. Akiva Goldman is listed as co-screenwriter.
The scenes of NYC were well done — whether by matte painting, back-lot or digital insert apparently New York has the grace and brains to shut down for the production. This is in sharp contrast to Los Angeles which initially refused to allow the movie Transformers to film in the very heart of the American dream factory. (When American story telling and production expertise is finally sent to Canada, Australia and Asia, who needs Los Angeles to manage intellectual properties?)
No wonder Times Square really did look like Times Square, as did the Intrepid Museum. Using the Intrepid Museum’s AR-12/SR-71 for a driving range a nice touch. We also approved of the limited ammo clip — no Bruce Willis infinite fire here. The hunting scenes for fresh game also gave a terrific feel to the movie. But so much remained unexplained regarding Smith’s Batcave and resources, etc. The co-actors who show up later have even less screen presence than the German shepherd. There also remained more potential for the relationship between the head bad guy and his apparent mate. Perhaps this a limit also in the book.
We won’t spoil the movie for you. $76 million means alot of people saw it. Perhaps your take is different. All we know is that if we were trapped in NYC alone with monsters, Shrek would not be our movie of choice.
We give it three Leos out of five.
Ignatius on the stuff you’ve seen here for free.