Yes we have been watching American Idol over the past few weeks, we still like it a lot, but I will refrain from weekly comments on it. There are others who do that far more skillfully.

Still, the phenomenon intrigues me to no end and I was pleased to see that the anti-political correctness blog Fried Brains attempted to do engage in a bit of socio-economic analysis in demonstrating that the show is anything but PC:

To sum up, American Idol has proven:

- that the majority of white people are not racists otherwise black people wouldn’t be winning.

- that women and minorities do not need any kind of affirmative-action-type assistance to make it in this world.

- that people want and enjoy free speech, even offensive insulting speech, otherwise American Idol’s ratings would be low.

- that left to its own devices, without government or political-correctness intervention, the market can successfully decide for itself. In other words, no artificial mechanism has forced American Idol’s ratings upwards, and no one has forced people to vote for any particular person. This is true democracy and free-market principles at work.

Couldn't agree more although make sure you read the entire piece as there are some concerns about the show's ability to maintain its un-PC character.

What I will let you know is that my current favorite is Gina Glocksen, but realistically either Lakisha or Melinda will win this year's edition.

From Roger Simon.

And TNR runs a dedicated blog: Oscar Wild!

UPDATE: Yes, I am pleased. And what a classy acceptance speech:

" For 50 years and more, Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hairstyle. She's had her feet planted firmly on the ground, her hat on her head, her handbag on her arm and she has weathered many, many storms. I thank her because if it wasn't for her I most certainly would not be here. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Queen!"

Tomorrow is Academy Award night and Helen Mirren is the favorite to take home the Oscar for actress in a leading role, for The Queen of course. I have been a longtime fan of hers and looking back the Prime Suspect series comes to mind as unrefined Mirren, giving life to the stoic and dispassionate detective Jane Tennison. Out of the entire series, Prime Suspect 2 is by a wide margin the most eerie and depressing, and therefore the best.

From that second season, a gut wrenching ten minutes to get a feel for the unforgettable and somber age of Tennison:

" Nothing lasts forever. Even the longest, the most glittering reign must come to an end someday "

A brilliant actor passes away at 72.

More here.

His masterpiece and a must-see for any art lover, political buff or Anglophile is of course To Play the King. In tribute, I'll be watching it tonight, once more.

While we were in the queue for The Queen - reviewed below - I couldn't help but pointing out to Irene the billboard for Because I Said So, arguing that it would be just the movie for her. Why? Not entirely sure, but Slate has a column by Dana Stevens explaining why Smart Women Love Dumb Diane Keaton Films. There is indeed an answer to everything.

This weekend we went to see The Queen, a movie that’s been around for a while but judging from the theater that was packed to capacity the six Oscar nominations continue to give the film enormous momentum.

And deservedly so. The struggle between elected politicians and the hereditary rulers of Britain – like in the inimitable series of fictional PM Francis Urquhart – is solid material for real drama. As I often explain, some European royal families continue to wield significant power and it is an absolute thrill to see the young and freshly elected Tony Blair balancing the strong wishes of Britain’s sovereign against the more popular feelings as they are channeled through his office.

The film puts its finger on the madness that ensued following Princess Diana’s tragic death. It takes Prince Phillip – another cool and steady performance by Babe and LA Confidential star James Cromwell – to point out that as nutty as his royal family is perceived to be, the general unhinged behaviour on London’s streets during that first week of September in 1997 is as disturbing. That painful truth manages to put the entire saga in a very different perspective.

As a result, Queen Elizabeth is somehow rehabilitated by this movie as a human fallen victim to her own sense of duty and tradition as well as her almost justifiable dislike of the late Princess of Wales. Even her emotional encounter with a stag that will eventually die at the hands of a hunter does not really bring home the point that a dead deer moves her more than a dead former daughter-in-law. Indstead Helen Mirren’s performance gives Elizabeth wings to a point where the septuagenarian royal transcends the status of a grey stodgy lady to an attractive and sensitive woman who has just been dealt a most unfortunate card.

There is lots for political buffs in this film too. A poignant moment is Blair ignoring a phone call which according to one of his aides is “Gordon” as is the Queen’s apt prediction that the fresh prime minister too will eventually fall from grace. That piece of wisdom comes at the end of the movie where the Queen and her prime-minister in an amicable way evaluate what actually transpired during that fateful summer. At that point the Queen acknowledges that she never really understood why the aftermath of Diana’s death unfolded in the way it did. Director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Peter Morgan’s masterpiece – which I will not hesitate to put it my top-ten all-time favorite movies - gives you an idea as well as an unexpected amount of warmth and sympathy towards her majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

Just to remain fair and balanced, it's not just the Muslim community that tries to curb freedom of expression:

Amsterdam prosecutors said they had decided not to press charges against US singer Madonna for blasphemy in relation to a concert she gave in the Dutch capital in September.

The youth wing of the orthodox Christian SGP had applied for the singer to be charged.

A scene in her act in which Madonna wears a crown of thorns and is raised on a cross during the song 'Live to Tell' caused offence across Europe during a tour last year.

Three thoughts:

1. Well, they used the courts.

2. It reminds me of this affair.

3. 'Live to Tell' is one of Madonna's weaker songs, I still prefer 'Holiday' but that could be of form of warped 80s nostaglia.

Question: Whoever said the Dutch were godless?

The first review of the Buscemi remake of Theo van Gogh's Interview is in – it’s playing at Sundance - and it isn't all that enthusiastic. There probably will be more comments on the film in days to come, all worthwhile stuff sure, but personally I am far more interested in how the media circus will deal with the fact that this is a Theo van Gogh movie.

UPDATE: A more positive review here.

Related Posts
Interview, Van Gogh & Buscemi
Risky Business
Remakes and Remembrance
Hollywood does Van Gogh

And for newcomers, the entire Theo van Gogh file is here.

Some of my readers - always generous with feedback – compelled me not to stray into that tempting morass of being the political blogger that likes Idol. But I do like it, and from time to time I will throw in my two cents about Season 6. Slate in the meantime is going big with Jody Rosen running a link-filled Idol blog. And of course, there is a political angle as he discovers:

Then there's the developing singers-in-arms subplot, with two members of the military already advancing to the next round. Rachel Jenkins, an Army reservist from Minnetonka, Minn., whose husband is currently in Baghdad, might be the stronger vocalist of the two.

But the smart early money is on Jarrod Walker, a Naval intelligence specialist with a pleasant Andy Griffith air about him, who won the USS Ronald Reagan's "Reagan Idol" competition, and sailed through to Hollywood, singing the Rascal Flatts weepie, "Bless the Broken Road." Might Americans purge their guilt about souring on the Iraq war by "supporting the troops" in the Idol competition?

It’s more than a coincidental sub-plot it would seem. The entertainment industry does have - against popular conservative perception – a vested interest in a good relationship with the troops. Cowell, ever the savvy marketer, must have figured that one out.

I've received a number of e-mails from readers asking about Steve Buscemi's remake of Theo van Gogh's film Interview. Well, it's done and you can go and see it this week at the Sundance Festival. More details here.

New York Magazine has a preview of Buscemi at Sundance:

In Hollywood, Steve Buscemi is the comic you recruit to pepper your star vehicle with some jittery laughs; he’s the nervy villain in your action movie; the virtuoso weirdo in your Adam Sandler comedy; the guy standing next to Nicolas Cage. But at the Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off January 18, Buscemi is an indie god among video-store clerks: patron saint of character actors, working stiffs, and last-true-believers everywhere. In L.A., the paparazzi might miss him, but in Sundance, they hound him—and this year, he knows how they feel.

I will link to any reviews that come out in the next week and if any of you happens to be at the festival and see 'Interview', let me know and I will post your comments.

Here is what I wrote about the media and OJ Simpson a year ago:

Ten years have passed. Simpson still hasn’t completed his mission to find the real killers and instead he has reappeared in California this week to market his celebrity, which amazingly is still intact for some. The failure to produce a just verdict will continue to cast a dark shadow of embarrassment and regret that even the civil trial couldn’t eradicate. And the media? They’re probably more sensation and celebrity driven than ever before, but it’s doubtful if the mindless celebration of popularity would ever embrace an icon like Simpson again.

Well, the state of the media is such that some didn't even hesitate to try and blatantly resurrect Simpson himself. It must have been another period of grief and anguish for the Goldman and Brown families, in what News Corp. now admits was an ill-considered project.

Andrew Sullivan notes the tension between markets and integrity:

With free markets comes great freedom but also some responsibility: to publish books worth publishing, to air TV shows actually worth airing, to care about content as well as ratings and sales. Those criteria are distinguishable from what the market will reward. That distinction has been lost in many places. It is not a criticism of the market; it is merely a reminder that markets also require integrity among those who work in them. That point deserves recovering.

There are no signs that the mindless celebration of stardom and the pursuit to make money off it have ended with this affair. The market continues to be too rewarding a place for this sort of work, but it is nevertheless good to see that a pre-market moral test still exists although Fox needed some outside pressure to diss Judith Regan's tasteless project.

Paul Kedrosky has lots of comments on the Google-YouTube deal, most notably the realization that Google is no longer a tech company, but a media company. With that, competition over online content distribution will intensify and we'll probably see more consolidation down the road. Given my background in finance, I am always intrigued by the numbers, which are compelling:

But only one venture capital firm — Sequoia Capital — got in on what has turned out to be one of the hottest Internet deals since Google went public in 2004.

Sequoia, which is among the most successful venture firms in Silicon Valley, invested a total of $11.5 million in YouTube from November 2005 to April 2006. It may be walking away with more than 43 times that amount. Its stake in YouTube has been estimated at roughly 30 percent, which would give it a value of $495 million.

Such multiples are rare and are unlikely to be replicated for a similar deal soon. However any company or individual that can figure out how to amass and sustain large online audiences while leveraging them competitively will do very well.

UPDATE: Read Jeff Jarvis' take too. Excerpt:

"In the explosion of the new television, what we need now is not more content or distribution — we have plenty of both on YouTube alone. What we need is a way to find the good stuff, the the stuff we want to watch"

... is Muslim.

(hat tip: Myrtus)

Michelle Malkin writes about how the Bratz culture is corrupting our young girls and how we need to find better role models. Couldn't agree more. But she ends with a remarkable mea culpa:

Not that it's so easy. I confess I broke down and let my 6-year-old daughter have a Bratz lunchbox. Now she wants to be a Bratz doll for Halloween, an idea that warrants only one word (a word not said often enough): "No."

And sure enough, what did the Dorsmans do a few months back after being pressured by a six and four year old? They made a Bratz birthday cake for the four year old. It was a Baby Bratz one, but still. Bad, bad, bad.

Tonight the Emmy’s are handed out, you can review the list of nominees here. Normally this is not exactly a Peaktalk item, but neighbor and friend Clara George is up for one in the category "Outstanding Made For Television Movie", as producer of Flight 93, the made for TV movie about United 93 that preceded, well, United 93. We're keeping our fingers crossed for her.

UPDATE: Alas, the award went to "The Girl In The Café"

Christopher Hitchens destroys Mel Gibson.

NOTE: The above quote is from an actual non-Gibson Hollywood movie. Can you guess which one?

In my opinion, unfair and unwarranted and if you read Ann Althouse’s comment section it is clear that various conspiracy theories are doing the rounds. Not sure about that, but I do think Katherine McPhee benefited from the “I feel sorry for her vote momentum”. She has a great voice, but she has to still discover her sweet spot so to speak. Over the top and Whitheyesque renditions can still bar her way to getting to the final two.

Interestingly people googling "Chris Daughtrey future" will end up on this site which comes out on top of the searches. It was the one thing that kept me busy last night following his dismissal from American Idol, but I do believe he has one. He was the best singer of the remaining three male singers and has enough character to recover from this setback and get a record deal or a contract. In addition, he is a likeable guy with integrity. He will get there.

Loved Paris Bennett right from the start, but in the group of remaining candidates there was no way she could stay. Her future though looks bright, great voice and the right attitude. The final two in my mind are still Katherine Mcphee and Chris Daughtrey, with the latter being the likely winner.

Here's a long but fascinating piece by Martha Bayles on how America could potentially polish its cultural image abroad:

During the Cold War, the battle for hearts and minds was conceived very differently from today. While threatening to blow each other to eternity, the United States and the Soviet Union both claimed to be defending freedom, democracy, and human dignity. Without suggesting for a moment that the two sides had equal claim to those goals, it is nonetheless worth noting that America’s victory was won on somewhat different grounds: security, stability, prosperity, and technological progress.

Our enemies today do not question our economic and technological superiority, but they do question our moral and spiritual superiority.

My comment to this would be that the absence of moral and spiritual coherence in our society is something that plays into our enemies' hands in two ways. In the first place, Islamic purism provides an alternative but more importantly, the lack of a strong moral compass prevents us from effectively waging a battle, be it a physical one or one of ideas.

Hat tip: The Cunning Realist

NOTE: Martha Bayles blogs about film and culture over at Serious Popcorn.

For some obscure reason I always find myself going through the morning of 9/11 step by step, minute by minute, hijacked plane by hijacked plane. Even now there are days when I try to relive it and bring some order into that chaotic morning. If you go and see United 93 – which I did yesterday – you will go through exactly the same, an almost real-time experience of reliving of what happened that morning. And order you need to create as the movie reveals the chaos and confusion that governed the various flight control centers, something brought home poignantly by the fact that a number of the actors are in fact the actual people that manned these centers on 9/11.

Walking out of the theater there wasn’t the feeling that there was anything new or revolutionary, no; all the facts were very clear and transparent before and after watching the film. The advance question was what director Ron Greengrass would make of it all, and it is fair to say he delivered, even in the parts where speculation was required to fill in some of the factual blanks. While everyone is hyped over the contrast between the praying hijacker and some passengers reciting the Lord’s Prayer, I was taken aback by one other peculiar confrontation. It’s the moment where one of the flight attendants hurries back to the center of the plane to help a severely injured passenger – knifed by one of the terrorists – and flashes the Red Cross emergency kit in front of a terrorist with a look on her face saying, “Please”. The hijacker relents and allows her to treat the dying man, but it was probably the one area where Greengrass’ creative license was used a little too generously.

Yet, it did a number of important things. It highlighted that the hijackers struggled with a degree of uncertainty, it pinpointed the religious aspect with the obvious Red Cross crusader connotation, but above all it allowed the viewer to distill a measure of hope that things might work out well – something that defies logic and yet you’re tempted by it. It gives you something to cling to during the final minutes: there is hope; maybe the airliner will land safely after all. That expectation is fueled by the presence of a pilot with one-engine experience among the passengers who bravely declares that with radio help from the ground he could possibly land flight 93. You’re drawn into the possibility that the passenger revolt might actually work.

So my re-piecing and re-ordering of events may after all be a subconscious attempt to find that redeeming shard of information that will somehow transform 9/11 into something more palatable, something that can neutralize the fear and uncertainty created on that day. Yet, I know better but the omnipresence of the question “Is it too soon?” over the past week indicates that many actually think that the shrill reality of that day can not be revisited again. It points to a feeling that America is still busy looking for facts that can sanitize the horrendous attacks into something that won’t be as haunting, something that won’t repeat itself.

And therein of course do we find United 93’s ultimate strength. The savage and dreadful way in which the plane falls into the hijackers' hands, the ultimate futility of the resistance and the definitive crash into that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, throws the bare facts once more in front of America and the world at large. There are no redeeming points, there was no hope on that day and any group that is capable of hijacking and crashing four commercial airliners within a few hours is no doubt poised for more in the future. But that knowledge remains something that many would like to blot out conveniently, something which we have also witnessed in Europe following its first encounters with jihadist terror. The justifiable and positive instinct to move on has a nasty fellow traveler called the willingness to forget.

So, there can’t be enough United 93-type films. The test will be in how they evolve over time. Not only will more facts see the light of day, but our attitudes and perceptions will develop to a level where again the events of that morning are reworked and reinterpreted. As long as we keep doing that there is hope that we can face and fight that very real and lethal terrorist threat. But, if we give in to sanitizing history and creating false expectations we are lost. Greengrass' film provides a sliver of hope that we will not give in and have the ability to fight, but the story of 9/11 needs to be retold relentlessly before I can really begin to believe that.

NOTE: There is a huge round-up of blogger reviews over at Hot Air.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I did review one other Greengrass film earlier: Bloody Sunday. That by the way was not exactly a balanced and overly factual piece of work, but it proves the point that filmed entertainment has indeed an unusual capability to rewrite history.

There was little time to dive into the American Idol issues of this week, but there is a good round-up over at PJ Media. As for the result tonight, Dean Esmay is a very pleased man, and rightly so.

A very enjoyable night it was, with the help of Rod Stewart who I remember as a wayward Scottish rockstar and football fan, but who now tops the charts with the Great American Songbook. My point about Katherine McPhee I think was proven beyond any doubt, she absolutely nailed "Someone to Watch Over Me". Together with Chris Daughtrey and Paris Bennett she will most likely make it to the final three and deservedly so. Loser tonight was Kellie Pickler who I think has reached the outer limits of her singing abilities. But the Albemarle blonde is not untalented, look out for her as a comedy or soap actress.

Usually and to the horror of some, I sing along with most of my favorite music, but I hardly ever sing Queen songs. Why? They’re just too hard, too difficult to sing. And that was very clear tonight on American Idol where practically none of the participants came close to meeting the requirements of the night. Chris Daughtry with ‘Innuendo’ – which is a brilliant song - Paris Bennett with ‘The Show Must Go On’ - a fitting tribute to Mercury himself - and Elliott Yamin with the perennial ‘Somebody To Love’ stood out as the best of the night. Katherine McPhee picked the song I would have picked but somehow it was too much voice, too much singing to really nail it down to the essence. And while Pickler started out very promising, she somehow failed to bring it home although it must be hard to cram ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ into one minute and twenty seconds.

Ace Young is the man to go after he royally screwed up ‘We Will Rock You’, the best version of which I believe was performed by Axl Rose at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.

UPDATE: Sheila O'Malley has a very detailed assessment of the eight performances (via PJ).

So we’re down to the final eight American Idol contestants which also means that the show is increasingly subject to blog coverage, check out Dean Esmay who has been all over it for a few weeks now. A particularly good post is to be had over at Ann Althouse’s who echoes most of my sentiments including the one that next week’s episode with the music of Queen as a theme will probably be one of the best ever. As you some of you know I am a dedicated Queen-fan and got very excited the moment I heard the first notes of "We Will Rock You" on the show tonight. The question is of course who will do the best Freddy Mercury impersonation, not an easy task for a group whose average age was 9 the year he died.

My money is still on Katherine McPhee, but I fear that the one female singer to make it to the final two will be The Pickle. It’s not that I don’t like her singing, it’s a good solid country voice, but it's all a little bit too packaged.

Even though the subject matter is not Islam, the mere association with Theo van Gogh tends to be a risky undertaking according to this news snippet:

A bodyguard will protect Sienna Miller against attacks from fanatical Muslims during the making of her new movie.

The actress is to star in Although Interview, a remake of a film by Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who was brutally murdered in 2004 for making a film about Islam and women.

Producers therefore fear that Miller and her co-stars could be targeted by similar politically-Islamic fanatics.

An insider on the movie – which begins filming next week – said: "We'll ensure that Sienna and her co-star Steve Buscemi get protection."

Moviestars and crews these days always have the benefit of some sort of security detail so I do not think we should be making too big a deal out of this. However, if the eventual release of this production is accompanied by an intense media focus on the maker of the original and his unorthodox views - which by the way will serve as an eyeopener for Hollywood - then it may well attract some hostile reactions.

I've argued before that vulgarity on TV or radio tends to be subject to a self-correcting mechanism. Call it humanity's inborn tendency to act decent.

The FCC does not believe that such a mechanism exists, on the contrary, it considers itself to be the ultimate arbiter of good taste. And we're not even talking vulgarity here, no the extreme measures of censorship have resulted in outlawing that very innocuous, every day term: bullshit. Too much for Jeff Jarvis who is mighty angry.

She has been somewhat under the radar because here enemies are not Muslim, but Hindu. Still, Deepa Mehta is a highly controversial moviemaker in India and her experiences are another instructive tale of how artists have to tread carefully these days. Even when "the script had been approved by the Government".

Further to Pieter's comments on the Oscars, I offer a few nuggets.

Variety tries to put a positive spin on dismal Oscar ratings. Basically, they're really bad. But not the worst ever!

George Lucas meanwhile, predicts that the era of blockbusters is over. Lucas predicts that "by 2025 the average movie will cost only $15 million." Um, what? Surely there is a happy medium between $15 and $200 million? Lucas uses "King Kong" as a cautionary tale. But hang on. Look at the top grossing films of the last 12 months. See a pattern? Harry Potter? Narnia? (And yes, King Kong.)

This tells me what I already know. That people see "big" movies on the big screen, and wait to see character-driven dramas on DVD. I know I do. At $12 a ticket (not to mention popcorn), I may suck it up to see Narnia in all its CGI glory. But is it really worth it to see Crash on the big screen? My parents actually saw Brokeback Mountain in the theater, and pronounced it "OK", but not worthy of the ~$40 the evening cost them. (My mother's chief complaint was that for a love story, it wasn't particularly romantic.)

The only one of the Best Picture nominees I'd seen in advance was Crash, and I agree with Pieter's assessment that it wasn't worthy of a Best Picture. Of course, I thought that about Gladiator too, but I actually enjoyed that one.

The Oscar-debate continues and digesting the various comments and assessments - including the conspiracy theories surrounding best film winner Crash - is truly an amazing experience. It is also one where the right-of-center bloggers are wide off the mark, at least in my opinion. Consider the final word from Libertas, the conservative film blog:

The problem is that the films stink - and that the liberalism in Hollywood has reached its reductio ad absurdum. Politics now rules everything in Hollywood.

Hollywood has hit a rough patch with declining box office receipts and the ratings for the Academy Award show itself are in a downward spiral as well. But that can hardly be explained by the perception that the movie industry is built around forcing a ‘liberal agenda’ on Middle America. That is patent nonsense. A far better explanation may be that demographic shifts, the increasing availability of alternative sources of entertainment and the fact people are increasingly working longer hours are to blame for Hollywood taking a reduced piece of the entertainment pie. In addition to that, linear entertainment goes through phases of creative droughts, and as it happens we are right in the middle of one. No big deal, it’ll come back.

The bulk of Hollywood productions continue to consist of apolitical and commercial works, designed in particular to satisfy the tastes of the average consumer, in America and beyond. Gene Stone brings a far healthier perspective to it all when he says that:

The movie business is always a decade or so behind the rest of the country. They can't afford to break ground. They are all owned by large conglomerates and have to make profits; thus their movies are always safe, bland, and homogenized. That's their agenda -- to bring in cash.

And at the moment that ability is under some pressure, but to assert that a political agenda is to blame for that does not make any sense. Movies are not subject to politics. They’re subject to the need to turn a profit and to manage the risk that studios and independent producers take on. As such they’re subject to cyclical and competitive pressures, just like any other business. The odd movie about gays or any other topic not perceived to be mainstream are exceptions that confirm this very basic rule.

Lots of commentary and observations, including a take on tonight's fashion statements over at Pajamas Media.

UPDATE: Well, I watched the second half and two things are worth mentioning. Firstly, Reese Witherspoon more than deserved to win for her role as June Carter. I liked her from the day I first saw her as go-getting Tracy Flick in Election which was an absolutely brilliant movie, and her acceptance speech tonight should stand as an example for us all and certainly for the rest of Hollywood. Poise and character, mixed with a sane dose of modesty. Very impressive.

Secondly, the best picture award for Crash. To be frank, the work in itself was not original; it is eerily reminiscent of Magnolia which - save for the raining frogs – was a highly creative and original piece of work. Nor does ‘race’ in my mind qualify as highly original material either, especially given the fact that some Angelenos have pointed out that things may not be as stark as projected in Crash. Still, Haggis’ script was clever and captivating and the film had a few memorable moments, but best picture material in my mind it was not.

In the run up to the Academy Awards there is an avalanche of commentary about Tinseltown's bias and it's hard to discover any original thoughts. Even Krauthammer is predictable.

Bridget Johnson however today brings an important point across and that is - despite what conservatives think - that to the rest of the world, Hollywood in essence is a major exporter of American values and as such, an important target for terrorism. And that no doubt influences some of the decisionmaking or, that lack of interest in paying any sort of tribute to a filmmaker who had less time for carefully calibrating his messages.

Getting ready for Oscar Night? The LA Times notices that each of the best-picture nominees left quite a bit on the cutting-room floor. The more I read and see, the more I am beginning to believe that the real controversial movie this year is not 'Brokeback', but 'Crash':

The conceit of "Crash" and the Oscar-nominated L.A.-bashing movies it borrows liberally from ("Magnolia," "Short Cuts," "Grand Canyon") is that they have the guts to portray the real Los Angeles. In truth, they tell us far more about the neuroses of their directors — and the prejudices of academy voters — than about our actuality.

Maybe, although I did like Magnolia and was hopeful we'd see P.T. Anderson collect an Academy Award some day. Whatever happened to him?

Here's a list of fifteen great country songs that promote conservative ideas. There are few on the list that I am really familiar with and only one - the inimitable Stand by Your Man by Tammy Wynette - that made it to my personal all-time top twenty-five. (via Patterico)

Kate reminds me that every now and then it is time for some lighter fare on the blog menu. Agreed, and the Dorsmans have been watching American Idol too, although it conflicts with our deep calvinist ethics of working and doing something useful with our spare time. Watch TV? Read a book!

Following a bunch of teenagers and twenty-somethings sing and sitting through Paula Abdul's endless platitudes is hardly that, but somehow this stuff performs an important role in our lives too. So much that we will probably be checking regularly on the journey of our favorites which in my case is definitely this one.

Girls shouldn't be too competitive. That's the basic message in an opinion piece by frequent commentator Father Raymond de Souza in today's National Post. Our team may have won the Gold, but they did it by winning too big. He agrees with Don Cherry, who said last week that "To run up a score like [16-0], that is wrong. It's not the Canadian way." (Good thing the score wasn't 33-0, like it was in the most lopsided game in Olympic history, as the Canadian men whupped the Swiss in 1924.)

But see I can't remember Don saying anything like that when he runs across a lopsided NHL score. No one seems to suggest that it's un-Canadian to kick a NHL team when they're down. Maybe I missed where Don thought that empty net goals should be disallowed because they're just mean?

Of course, Cherry claims the real issue is that without competition, the IOC might decide to remove women's hockey from the games. (Such musing took place before Sweden took the silver, proving that at least one other team is competitive.) De Souza meanwhile, is all in favour of such a move. Somehow, goes his thinking, girls in Europe will play hockey in greater numbers if the pressure of dreaming about the Olympics is removed. Or something.

I don't know how other teams would ever become competitive without major international competition, but of course that's not the point. His thesis is that it would be rude if we were the host country and our girls were so unsportsmanlike as to actually win big.

Maybe I'm wrong but I can't honestly imagine such a discussion about men's sport. More importantly, to call our women unsportsmanlike is just devastatingly wrong on so many levels. As Mark Spector points out elsewhere in the Post, our women worked extremely hard to achieve this gold medal. Unlike their highly paid male counterparts, who are giving up a couple weeks of golfing to represent their countries, our women gave up jobs and lives to be in Calgary as a team. They took part-time jobs at the Home Depot and elsewhere to feed themselves while the rest of the time they played hockey. They played boys teams, they played the Americans, they did whatever was required to get themselves ready.

And when the hard work was over and Games finally here, instead of support they had to hear Canadian commentators chide them for doing their best, instead of going easy on the competition.

Is that really the message we want to give our daughters? Winning is okay as long as you don't win too much or too big? And for goodness sakes' don't go so far as to try your best. That would be unseemly. Unfeminine even.

Lively lunch-time discussion today over the nature of sport, and whether any activity which is judged on purely subjective qualities can possibly be called a sport. This topic of course was a natural evolution of a discussion on Olympic figure skating. More specifically, the scoring.

If you've watched even a few minutes of the olympics this year then you know that figure skating has completely overhauled the way the sport is scored because of The Scandal.

Forget the old, complicated system open to fraud, which allowed "perfect" scores even if a skater fell.

Todays skating scores are...more random. A statistician with perhaps too much time on his hands has determined that the new method of randomly selecting 9 of 12 judges, and then tossing out the high and low scores, means that the selection process might toss out 3 higher scores, or 3 lower scores etc.

Scoring aside, I'm sticking to my original position, which is that any activity, no matter how athlectic or difficult, in which your costume factors into whether or not you win cannot truly be a sport.

Yes, that goes for synchronized swimming as well.

I recently discovered photographer Amir Normandi's photo and art blog Testing Human Rights with a special sub-page on his No is Veil Required exhibition. In the current climate probably explosive work, some of it reminiscent of Submission, yet all of it beautifully moving.

Frank Sinatra recorded "I've Got You Under My Skin". So what? Mark Steyn explains:

Artie Shaw once asked me, rhetorically, how we know Mozart’s any good. Because he’s lasted. When a piece of classical music endures 200 years, we know it has value. As Shaw pointed out, his records still sound good after 60 years, which isn’t bad for something as ephemeral as pop music. The Sinatra-Riddle-Bernhart record of “Under My Skin” will still be heard in another half-century, and most every night between now and then at some joint somewhere or other some wannabe-Frank will be singing that arrangement, hoping to deflect just a little of its sheen his way. If you saw Frank Sinatra on stage, chances are, right at the end of the song, you heard him direct this question at some gal in the crowd:

Where does it hurt you, baby?

And then the answer:

Under my skin.

If you, like me, are a Sinatra-aficionado I recommend you the read the whole thing. And if you're not, maybe you should, just to understand why this is such a timeless song.

When I read last week’s Time Magazine and in particular Spielberg's interview about his new film Munich, I made a mental note to say something about it. Mind you, just about the interview for I haven’t seen the movie. But, The Augean Stables beat me to it and they have an excellent post about Spielberg’s comments and the implications they have for defining and fighting terrorism:

By giving the Arab and Muslim world a pass, by making them the beneficiaries of a grotesque moral affirmative action that “understands terrorism” we only encourage the worst. And that will not — Steven Spielberg’s best intentions aside — lead to peace.

My advice to the great filmmaker: If you wish to be the great storyteller of this critically misguided generation — and you could be — if you want to help us find a way through the heavy whitewater and jagged shoals of early 21st-century globalization, and towards a properous, responsible, peaceful and pluralistic world, tell the tale of Muhamed al Durah. It might help you recognize that, like everything, film can be used for good and for evil; that evil really does exist; and that disguising it in liberal egocentrism only makes it stronger.

It’s a lengthy post, but definitely worth your time.

Gloom and doom in France? The Independent Sources blog disagrees. Strongly.

The left has discovered Pajamas Media, at least the posts I discovered via Gates of Vienna appear to be one of the first salvo’s I have seen. Don’t worry; these are harmless and somewhat hilarious attempts to smear our new media adventure. Incumbents don’t like renewal or competition.

Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott has determined that this blog is part of an “inveterate stirpot whose presence all decent men and women should shun until proper disinfectant can be found”. Wolcott is probably more upset by David Corn joining the PJ editorial board rather than anything else and if that’s his take, so be it. But there’s more.

Representatives of the North American, historically ignorant as they are, use the term ‘fascist’ whenever they see someone who thinks outside the omnipresent politically correct constraints. Toronto Star’s Antonia Zerbisias is no exception, at least that’s my analysis after she branded Corn the “token non-fascist” on the PJ board. In addition, Zerbisias was able to confirm, in case you didn’t know, that this blog is exclusively serving up “White House talking points”. Not sure what she means, or what Wolcott is on about, but could it be this post?

DISCLOSURE: The Dorsman household has a huge collection of old editions of Vanity Fair. There was a time when we read it religiously and purchased it almost every month. The increase of insignificant actresses on the cover and the repetitive Tom Cruise hagiographies put an end to that and now they’ve become collector’s items. The kids clip the Hollywood starlets whom they believe are princesses and Irene and I re-read the timele