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 timeless articles by Christopher Hitchens and Dominick Dunne.

Yes, TV has lost most of its luster. Still, there are gems to be had and Donny Deutsch' interview yesterday with "conservative-libertarian" rockstar Ted Nugent and wife was absolutely priceless. There's no transcript of it online but if I find it I will link it. The bottom line: the Nugents enjoyed being thrown the kind of questions one can expect from a mainstream Manhattan media star who doesn't like gun ownership and "supports the war effor in Iraq, but ...". The Nugents, with a smile on their face, cruised comfortably through the interview while Deutsch was getting visibly irritated as he lost ground as the chat went on.

Next step for Nugent: a run to become Michigan's next governor. And Deutsch has political ambitions too.

Some of you felt that I wasn’t harsh enough in condemning the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Harold Pinter. That may be correct. On the merits of his past work, Pinter probably deserves this prestigious prize, as Roger Simon convincingly argued last Friday. It is however safe to assume that the Nobel committee has turned the prize into a platform for political statements, devaluing both the award itself and the oeuvre that it sought to honor in the first place.

All in all, a pretty unsavory spectacle and it is questionable if the Nobel committee will ever regain the high ground it once, in a distant past, held. In the meantime if there’s a Pinter play on in your local theater, don't worry too much about it and make the effort to go and see it.

Today the one for literature was awarded to Harold Pinter. Now, being somewhat familiar with Pinter's work I am not surprised that his name would have been on a shortlist, but did politics tip the scales in his favor? Judge for yourself:

In 2003, Mr. Pinter published a volume of anti-war poetry about the Iraq conflict, and in 2004 he joined a group of celebrity campaigners calling for Mr. Blair to be impeached.

“I'm using a lot of energy more specifically about political states of affairs, which I think are very, very worrying as things stand,” he said.

What once was a prestigious price has now been devalued to a platform of anti-Western, anti-American rhetoric.

UPDATE: Do read Andrew Stuttaford's Pinter's Poison.

The BBC initiated its own investigation into the alleged pro-Palestinian bias of the British public broadcaster. Further evidence that the Beeb is slowly coming to terms with a changed world emerged yesterday at a media conference in New York:

The avalanche of high-quality video, photos and e-mailed news material from citizens following the July 7 bombings in London marked a turning point for the British Broadcasting Corporation, an executive said Wednesday.

Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC World Service and Global News Division, told a conference that the BBC's prominent use of video and other material contributed by ordinary citizens signaled that the BBC was evolving from being a broadcaster to a facilitator of news.

"We don't own the news any more," Sambrook said. "This is a fundamental realignment of the relationship between large media companies and the public."

It will be interesting to see how, and how quickly, public broadcasters will adopt to these rapid changes. My guess is that they will try and adapt rather than disappear. This by the way was the same confence where Al Gore gave a speech on the changing media landscape.

The music industry as we have known it, is dying. So are movies and newspapers. May I add one more? TV. Cable has splintered the once powerful medium into tiny bits each catering to niche audiences, now competition from online media will over time make the "box" pretty much obsolete.

Interestingly, the trend to cater to more populist tastes in Europe is undermining the monopoly of the once powerful state-owned TV stations. An interesting piece in the FT looks how that is happening in Italy and The Netherlands:

On the side of the government is the indisputable fact that the system is hideously complex and imposes large costs on the adventurousness and autonomy of programme makers. But reform also means an acceptance that the Dutch “model” doesn’t work any more.

This represents an admission that parties, creeds and associations once deemed to express the richness of the society can no longer justifiably command time on the national broadcaster. This is a bitter admission for those who prize a tolerant, diverse society. As in Italy, it amounts to the sanctioning of an autonomous media power, with its own laws, rhythms and world view - and a political system that must learn to accommodate it.

Dutch public broadcasting was really diverse and was therefore able to sometimes offer excellent TV, but the way in which it excluded market forces was no longer defensible. The neverending flood of mass-market entertainment that is now replacing it is hardly encouraging, but I think that the online world will in time be the right venue for offering quality linear entertainment. The blogger of today is tomorrow's documentary maker.

UPDATE: Andres Gentry writes:

If writing something is the lowest rung of blogging, and Podcasts are the next, then perhaps these new PSP TV programs are the third rung of a citizen-run/based/focused civil society. With cheap digital video cams an enterprising video journalist or movie maker could bypass all the current distribution channels and make a name for himself. And if a group of people were especially adverturous, it might not be long before the next great TV series wasn't shown on actual TVs but instead was broadcast straight from the internet for a bare fraction of what Seinfeld or Friends cost.

The word for it, which I should have used in the original post is vlogging. Of course.

Norm Geras has finally released the much anticipated results of his moviestar poll and there are, as Norm says, quite a few surprises. For instance, the absence of Robert Duvall and Natalie Wood from a list of not less than forty-six moviestars is, to be frank, highly questionable. The poll results diverged significantly from my submission:

1. James Stewart
2. Robert Duvall
3. Greta Garbo
4. Edward G. Robinson
5. Anthony Hopkins
6. Clint Eastwood
7. Ingrid Bergman
8. Catherine Deneuve
9. Jessica Lange
10. Natalie Wood

Note that I divided my ten votes equally of five male and five female actors and that did have some impact on my final list.

Some movie industry experts weigh in on Hollywood's dearth of quality. The filmbloggers over at Libertas have some thoughts as does Roger Simon who today makes the clear point:

Hollywood box office is off this year by a fairly disastrous nine percent (accounting for ticket price inflation). Marketing people will give dozens of explanations but the reason couldn't be more obvious: The movies - with a few exceptions - are hugely predictable and unimaginative. In other words, who would want to go?

Time to take a risk and give a new generation of daring filmmakers and screenwriters a chance.

Earlier this weekend I finally got around to watching The Aviator, but the Scorsese epic left me deeply unimpressed. Decent script, some good acting but in the end not that special at all, certainly not worth all the hype it got when it was released. That unfortunately seems to be the case for many Hollywood productions these days and Michael Totten comes up with a very sound analysis of Tinseltown’s deteriorating and disappointing products. Downfall was indeed one of the better movies of the year, my review of it is here.

NOTE: Similar concerns are echoed at Jackson's Junction.

Cosh says it's guts vs. talent. This time I go with the talent: Carrie Underwood.

UPDATE: Yes!

Glenn is excited about what appears to be a pro-war movie from Iraq (Kurdistan to be precise) which premiered at the Cannes Festival. But before everyone starts cheering about a turn of events in Cannes, a controversial anti-war piece, "The Power of Nightmares" also appeared at the festival and it will likely spark some debate:

The film, a non-competition entry, argues that the fear of terrorism has come to pervade politics in the United States and Britain even though much of that angst is based on carefully nurtured illusions.

It says Bush and U.S. neo-conservatives, as well as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are exaggerating the terror threat in a manner similar to the way earlier generations of leaders inflated the danger of communism and the Soviet Union.

It's hard to comment on as I haven't seen it but taking on both the terror threat as well as retroactively qualifying the Soviet threat seems to be an ambitious undertaking.

Last week I went to see Downfall, the German film depicting life in Hitler’s bunker during the last days of the German Reich. Without serving up any new or terribly exciting facts the movie still was a riveting experience.

What was most intriguing about it was the role women played in the movie. Yes, Bruno Ganz delivered a stellar performance as Adolf Hitler, but the legs that carried the movie were Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge, his partner and last-minute wife Eva Braun and Goebbels’ wife Magda. Each woman represented a part of the reality that unfolded itself in the bunker. Magda Goebbels embodied the devilish fanaticism of the Nazi ideology that refused to give up and when forced to do so drives her to murder her six children, arguing that there’s no life after Nazism. Eva Braun was less fanatical; representing the middle Germany that basically went along for the ride and who at the end of the road could either die or survive, the outcome being a roll of the dice. It’s not a surprise that, it being a German movie, Traudl Junge survives in order to seek a new life in post-Nazi Germany, essentially representing hope. That’s also why the real Traudl returns at the very end of the movie with a startling admission about the role of ordinary Germans during the war.

So there were three options open to the upper echelons of Hitler Germany at the end of the war, but they equally applied to the rest of the nation. Nowhere is that clearer when the camera zooms in on life outside the bunker. Fanatic SS commanders randomly execute civilians that refuse to fight against the encroaching Red Army, the less fanatic but equally desperate group succumbs to excessive partying with lots of alcohol and sex, and one group just keeps a low profile hoping for life after the fall of Berlin. The juxtaposition of these three alternatives is the vital strength of the movie which as it progresses gets better allowing the characters to develop in the relatively short time they are given.

Critics have argued that the film has put too humane a face on Hitler and some of his close associates and I can see that without prior historic knowledge you can walk away from this movie with a somewhat distorted view of what happened sixty years back. Unfortunately, that is increasingly the case which is why genuine and emotive pieces of art such as Downfall should always be accompanied by some dry and sobering facts, packaged as simple history lessons.

From a political perspective it seemed a different Hollywood presented itself last night. On two separate occasions American troops were honored and applauded, Ronald Reagan was the first in the list of obituaries (with his unforgettable “win one for the Gipper” clearly audible in the short clip) and Chris Rock even allowed himself a hilarious swipe at John Kerry. Tentative steps, sure, but it seemed notably different from previous years although even in absence Michael Moore managed to get some applause.

So what about the awards? Having discussed the movie before, here and here, I was thrilled to see Million Dollar Baby picking up all of the key statuettes. It’s been a while since I have been this captivated by a movie and the actors that carry it. And no, there’s no underlying extreme liberal agenda being promoted as some have erroneously and foolishly argued. You can bet they will raise their voice again in the weeks ahead, desperately unwilling to see this year’s best movie for what it is: a beautiful and timeless piece of art.

Don’t click this link if you still have to go and see Million Dollar Baby (which I discussed here), but it neatly summarizes the controversy that the Eastwood movie has generated. Expect to see and hear more about it in the run up to the Academy Awards where both the movie and the lead actors are expected to do well. My take is simple: you don’t have to agree with everything in a film in order to like it, on the contrary, and Eastwood’s argument that the choices his characters make are rooted in the story itself is pretty compelling.

Went to see Million Dollar Baby yesterday, one of the favorites for a major sweep at this year’s Academy Awards. And with good reason. This is not just a boxing movie as some have argued, the sport is used as a metaphor for one of life’s deeper issues. It manages to not only explore that, but in the process also touches on religion and eventually takes on a controversial topic that has now ensured that the movie has entered the socio-political debate:

Conservative critics including Michael Medved, Rush Limbaugh and Debbie Schlussel have criticized the film widely on the air and elsewhere, with Ms. Schlussel calling the film "a left-wing diatribe" on her Web site, a somewhat unusual claim given Mr. Eastwood's status as a gun-slinging Dirty Harry and real-life history as a Republican former mayor of Carmel, Calif.

.

Revealing the plot would spoil it for some of you so I won’t elaborate on this too much, but to qualify the movie as a “left-wing diatribe” is utter nonsense. In fact the main theme of the movie would in my book easily qualify as the propagation of one of the basic Reaganist tenets of conservative-libertarian individualism. There you have it.

Eastwood not only directs, but as lead character Frankie Dunn he gives one of the best performances of his career. Oscar-winning Unforgiven was considered by some as the crowning piece of his long oeuvre but I think he has just added another jewel on top of that and at seventy-five the question is how many more of these gems Carmel’s oracle will give us. But it’s not just Clint. The movie is equally carried by narrator Morgan Freeman and in particular by Hilary Swank as the aspiring boxer Maggie Fitzgerald. Swank’s ability to transform herself into characters from the lower ranks of society was established by her Oscar-winning run for Boys Don’t Cry but what she delivers in this movie is nothing short of amazing. You’re captivated by her personality the moment she walks onto the screen in a way that very few present day actresses are able to do. Passion and perseverance, Swank's character blows you away completely.

Anyway, I you haven’t already, go see the movie and you will not only figure out the moral dilemma that has raised a storm but also learn the meaning of the Gaelic phrase “Mo Guishle”.

NOTE: Can’t resist pointing out the Dutch contribution to this epic, which is the appearance of the “world’s most dangerous woman”.

For some reason I discontinued the weekly Apprentice discussion, but other bloggers have been on the case. The Yin Blog has some sensible comments and argues that the final outcome, this coming Thursday, may be surprising. Heretics' Almanac takes a different approach and looks at a number of ways in which the show can be improved. I agree there’s ample room for that and I am especially receptive to the idea to get the candidates to do more than just “selling” tasks; it’s a surprise to me that after two seasons we have yet to see one investing challenge. Give each team $10k and get them to play the market and see who ends up with most cash after a two-day run on the stock market. Or better still, get some early stage tech firms that previously sought venture capital funding to present to the teams who will then have to decide in which ones to invest. If they start investing in companies that failed to secure VC funding that would indicate a lack of sound investment judgment, and no, you don’t need to understand the technology to make such a decision. Let's see if the Apprentice can get a bit more creative in season three.

When I have time I try to catch Aaron Brown but unfortunately I missed Jeff Jarvis debating Rebecca Hagelin on morality, TV and censorship. Hagelin apparently interpreted raunchy TV as evidence of a decline of American culture and argued for increased censorship. I can’t blame her for her assessment since I take a similar dim view whenever I visit my native Holland and look at what is on offer on TV. Censorship however is not the way to go, as a matter of principle but there's also good evidence as to why it's not even necessary.

This is one of the few areas where America is coming late to the debate. The explosion of commercial TV networks in Holland in the early 1990s resulted in fierce competition for a limited pool of viewers and the only way to capture a slice of that market was to come up with stuff that generates curiosity: sex and reality-TV. The latter and some of its exponents that are successful on this side of the ocean, Fear Factor and Big Brother, are Dutch creations. The liberal and pragmatic Dutch took full advantage of flexible broadcasting rules by littering the tube with dating shows early in the evening and never ending boobs late at night. Yet, a few years ago a turnaround occurred and there was a distinct move away from raunchy TV. The reasons were manifold: saturation, competition from other media, irritated advertisers. Glenn Reynolds points in the same direction:

To me, though, the whole debate seems a bit surreal. Broadcast TV is rapidly diminishing in importance, and broadcast radio isn't far behind.

In order to stay relevant broadcast TV had to move in a direction that allowed it to survive as a viable medium: less sex, enhanced reality-TV and more quality content. The Dutch experience shows that outside regulation by government entities like the FCC is redundant, both the market and society at large have an innate ability to self-regulate and determine the appropriate level of vulgarity on broadcast TV. So what we see on the box is indeed a reflection of our culture and how it moves over time although Rebecca Hagelin would no doubt like to influence the speed at which it moves.

Haven’t 'apprentice-blogged' in a little while, I wasn't really in the mood for it given all that was going on around the globe over the past few weeks. Yesterday was actually a pretty good episode and since I am still not keen to write about it, here’s a good review here (hat tip: Ann Althouse who stopped watching the show).

A mediocre episode I think, the most interesting part being the reshuffle of the teams. It will set the stage for the remaining episodes and it put into focus the players that will be facing most of the competitive pressure going forward: Maria, Stacy, Sandy, Andy and Raj. The assignment was unexciting – providing dog care in New York’s parks – and was geared more towards hard work rather than strategic thinking.

Both teams had to scrape the barrel to come up with a trivial amount of money and maybe it’s because I don’t like dogs but I just could not get excited about it. What it did however was unmasking those that are not prepared to get their hands dirty and Maria was lucky to have the exempt status going into the boardroom because she was, as Carolyn suggested, marketing herself rather than the business. Stacy’s lucky run came to an end and was rightly fired, Trump was getting exasperated and waiting for the right moment which presented itself last night.

UPDATE: Donald Trump confirmed earlier this week that a third season is now being filmed.

The Mosaic team last night replicated a failure that we witnessed in the first season of The Apprentice when one team banked its fortunes on an obscure painter and lost to the group marketing an artist that was, let's say, more mainstream. When you have to market a creative product, be it art or fashion, you can’t afford to take any high risks if you’re not in a position to do so. The entertainment industry is littered with expensive disasters. By going with the eccentric German fashion designer and selling her work at a relatively high price point the men set themselves up for disaster which unsurprisingly manifested itself at the end of the show.

John blundered by taking Andy into the boardroom where Kevin emerged – in both sessions – as the man of integrity stepping up to defend the inexperienced Andy. Together with Kelly they are now the men to watch. As for Apex, well they couldn’t afford to lose another round and they delivered. Their win may put an end to strife within the team although Elizabeth again clashed with Maria. That is explainable; the brainier Elizabeth is a far more solid player than Maria who together with Stacy and Sandy are the favorites to be the next women to be eliminated. I haven’t figured out Ivana but as a VC I have for now given her the benefit of the doubt.

UPDATE: As is usually the case, The Yin Blog has a good report on last's night episode as well.

Can’t resist this any longer: blogging the The Apprentice. Last night’s episode was centered on Pamela cracking the whip at the battered Apex team and she almost succeeded. The Mosaic team won by a mere ten bucks and despite Pamela arguing the contrary, that is not a draw. She not only mis-priced the product Apex was selling, she failed to secure a win with a much easier product to sell than Mosaic’s pricy Italian grill.

On credentials and attitude Pamela could easily have outdone both Stacy and Maria who she took into the boardroom. However, Pamela is an easy read, I have seen her type often when I participated in group exercises for executive selection, in my investment banking days and I continue to encounter them. They are either not hired or get fired. Well educated, aggressive and very determined the Pamelas tend to alienate the team they lead and usually fail to listen to the advice and feedback they’re getting. A frustrated team that doesn’t dare to challenge her follows in the wrong direction and the end result is often not pretty. That’s why Trump fired her. Again, it wasn’t a tie; better decisions on pricing should have secured an Apex win. Pamela should have looked at last year’s winner, Bill Rancic. He played it carefully in the earlier episodes, sometimes you barely noticed him, and when the field got thinner he moved forward in an affable way, having the respect from most of his teammates. Not always too exciting but it’s an enduring and winning approach.

UPDATE: The Yin Blog has a partial analysis of last night and wonders if it was the price or wrongfully assigning tasks that got Pamela canned. It's probably both and they are equal manfestations of Pamela's personality and overall managment style. Trump and Carolyn recognized that and that made the decision a lot easier.

This is how the Bush-hating left would spin it: given the choice between watching two rich spoilt kids who are both in a place where they don’t really belong, you would of course watch the prettier of the two. I don’t know why more Americans chose to watch Paris Hilton instead of President Bush (who was being interviewed by Diane Sawyer), in fact they were pretty close in terms of viewers. I have wanted to write something intelligent about the whole Simple Life phenomenon as Irene and I have found ourselves watching it regularly (although not last Tuesday, honestly) but up to now I can’t explain it, I am lost for words in the face of a reality TV-show that pushes stupidity and bliss to the extreme. Maybe it's impossible to write something meaningful about it. It’s just damn entertaining.

A monumental filmmaker passed away yesterday, Elia Kazan is dead at 94. His career will for always be tainted by him divulging names for the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, and I clearly remember how many in the audience during the 1999 Academy Awards refused to stand-up and applaud Kazan when he received the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. From today’s (and 1999s) vantage point it is very hard to pass judgment onto Kazan’s actions, and I found the way that some Hollywood personalities treated the old master during that ceremony despicable. Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro deserved praise for the way they supported Kazan during what must have been a difficult ceremony. Kazan in later life questioned the rightness of the decision to disclose names, but felt that at the time it was the correct one. As a former member of the Communist Party of the United States he knew first-hand of the top-down totalitarian practices of communism and he was rightly disgusted by them. That no doubt affected his difficult decision, a decision that haunted him for the rest of his life. His work however will forever stand as testimony to the unique filmmaker he was, irrespective of politics.

Johnny Cash was one of the greatest country and pop music legends. He was that because his music drew fans across a number of generations and there are not that many artists that can lay claim to such an achievement. But more than that his music often reached epic proportions, performing The Wanderer together with U2 completely blew me away and it still does every time I listen to it.

Yeah I left with nothing
But the thought you’d be there too
Looking for you …

Yeah I went with nothing
Nothing but the thought of you
I went wandering

The wander is over. Johnny Cash can now reunite with June. Rest in peace.