.blindness.

from my PBT.

I love conspiracy films and hate investment bankers, so this seemed appealing. What I got was a slick, well-made action/thriller that unfortunately resulted to some of the most clichéd, formulaic tropes imaginable. Clive Owen is adequate, I guess, playing 'the investigator who doesn't play by the rules'. Naomi Watts is the 'sympathetic, attractive colleague' and there's numerous heavily-accented baddies. At least I was spared any of Owen's character's personal drama, as the film eschewed any family/emotional stuff in favor of making him single-minded and one dimensional. This was a good thing; more time for boring chase scenes. In addition to many scenes and dialogue taken straight from an episode of CSI, we also get 'the assassin with the telltale deformity'. However, despite my griping I'll say that the long shoot-out scene set in the Guggenheim is one of the most dazzling action sequences of recent cinematic memory and definitely the high point of the film - it was a distraction from the muddy political plot at the core. Towards the end the film finally gets some guts and raises some decent questions. I'm glad this film questions the futility of attempting 'justice' (or even defining the term, really) within the structures of capitalism though it's critique falls far short of something like The Wire. Of course, The Wire has over 60 hours to explore these themes while The International relegates them to a 5-minute speech by a minor character. This compression makes it feel like the fil has borrowed it's philosophy (or maybe just it's heavy-handedness) from The Dark Knight. It's kind of amazing that this film came out in the midst of a huge investment banking crisis/scandal, as these once-ignored puppetmasters are now the recipients of much derision from "average Americans", so this should be successful (if anyone pays attention to it). Even better is the current public debate about torture, which also applies to this film - not directly, as there is no torture in the film, but indirectly through the idea of having to sacrifice your own beliefs and values in order to achieve something, which the Bush administration was more than happy to do. The film's denouement is set on a rooftop landscape in Istanbul, and it's easy to ignore the cop-out Hollywood morality because the photography is so stunning. The closing credits suggest that good can triumph over evil, and I would expect nothing less from a product of the same system the film is (sort of) critiquing. Overall I found this to be a good two hours of entertainment and I will again mention the amazing action sequence in the Guggenheim; but when compared to a truly masterful film in the same genre, such as The Constant Gardener, I can only think about The International's many flaws.

This is awesome if only because it's made some good political news to counter the swine flu. I may live in Finland but I vote absentee in Pittsburgh still so he is my senator. I don't trust him one bit and this is clearly a career-saving move, but the thought of potential cloture votes on EFCA, health care, and any other bit of progressive legislation is just too exciting. Of course, I doubt that the Democrats are capable of getting their own ranks together enough to actually pass anything worthwhile. But at least there is no more excuse: the Republicans are completely powerless now, as they deserve to be, and any failures now are going to be purely the fault of the Democrats.

I was playing a character in a movie and simultaneously watching the movie. I planted plastic explosives in a restaurant and blew it up (at night, when no one was there). Then, the next day, I went over to the police investigation because I was a part-time detective or an informant or something. Then, I went to my other part-time job, which was at a call center located above the restaurant. I had planned the blast perfectly so right under my desk was a big hole to the restaurant below. While answering call-center calls, I could reach down into the hole and grab huge handfuls of cash money. I did this all day while working.