The latest entry in the romantic haunting mini-genre started by Ghost, Just Like Heaven
, is a surprisingly sweet and effective little treat.
What the haunting means, and how the pair deals with it is a lot of fun, although whenever the focus expands to include other actors, particulary Mr. Napoleon Dynamite, the movie wavers somewhat.
In the end, this wasn’t as romantic or compelling as Truly, Madly, Deeply, a warts-and-all British entry in the genre, but Just Like Heaven will likely put smiles on a lot of faces. (Heck, the cover versions of the title song by the Cure made me smile all by themselves.)
Recommended for fans of Reese Witherspoon or Ghost.
Well, I was right: A ton of people did show up at tonight’s Hesperia City Council meeting, and it did go longish. I counted two extra rows of folding chairs put out for the audience and a total turn-out just shy of 150 residents, not including city, fire and police staff who have to be there. But not everyone spoke, and I got out of there at what would be an early time for a school board meeting.
Memo to self: Be very happy that I don’t write editorials, just news stories.
More on the Danish Mohammed cartoons: Syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall blasts the “nanny media” for failing to print the Mohammed cartoon. (For those who don’t know his work, Rall is a left-of-center cartoonist.)
As the only syndicated political cartoonist who also writes a syndicated column, my living depends on freedom of the press. I can’t decide who’s a bigger threat: the deluded Islamists who hope to impose Sharia law on Western democracies, or the right-wing clash-of-civilization crusaders waving the banner of “free speech”–the same folks who call for the censorship and even murder of anti-Bush cartoonists here–as an excuse to join the post-9/11 Muslims-suck media pile-on. Most reasonable people reject both–but neither is as dangerous to liberty as America’s self-censoring newspaper editors and broadcast producers.
“CNN has chosen not to show the [Danish Mohammed] cartoons out of respect for Islam,” said the news channel.
“We always weigh the value of the journalistic impact against the impact that publication might have as far as insulting or hurting certain groups,” said an editor at The San Francisco Chronicle.
“The cartoons didn’t meet our long-held standards for not moving offensive content,” said the Associated Press.
Bull—-.
If these cowards were worried about offending the faithful, they wouldn’t cover or quote such Muslim-bashers as Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens or George W. Bush. The truth is, our national nanny media is managed by cowards so terrified by the prospect of their offices being firebombed that they wallow in self-censorship.
Precisely because they subvert free speech from within with their oh-so-reasonable odes for “moderation” and against “sensationalism,” the gatekeepers of our national nanny media are more dangerous to Western values than distant mullahs and clueless neocons combined. Editors and producers decide not only what’s fit to print but also what’s not: flag-draped coffins and body bags arriving from Iraq, photographs of Afghan civilians, their bodies reduced to blobs of blood and protoplasm, all purged from our national consciousness. You might think it’s news when the vice president tells a senator to “go f— yourself” on the Senate floor, but you’d be wrong–only tortured roundabout descriptions (like “f—“) make newsprint. “This is a family newspaper,” any editor will say, arguing for self-censorship–as if kids couldn’t fill in those three letters in “f—.”
As if kids read the paper.
(My mom sent me that link. When you’re a reporter, everyone you know eventually turns into a media critic. Fortunately, most of the people in my life no longer blame me for something that CNN said — or didn’t say — or whatever idiocy occurs on the LA television news shows.)
Interesting, the Columbia Journalism Review, one of the most respected (and most harsh) of media critics, has been silent on the issue, despite banging the drums for better journalism on every other subject (including lots of chatter about the Cheney shooting coverage). That’s both surprising and disappointing.
On the cutting edge of 2004, a prostitutes’ political action group (supply your own jokes here) wants Grand Theft Auto banned, because of how it portrays those employed in the world’s oldest profession:
Though the organization admits to being “adamantly opposed to any and all forms of censorship,” as concerned parents themselves, they “wish to inform other parents of the potential danger extremely violent video games pose to children.” Likewise, in the interest of promoting the rights of sex workers, the organization is opposed to the depiction of the rape and murder of prostitutes.
In the games, players can solicit “services” from prostitutes by driving their cars slowly near them. No sexual acts are in clear visible view, but during the “transaction,” the player regains health and loses money. Though the player cannot actively rape prostitutes in the game, a possible rape is alluded to once during the storyline of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The prostitutes, like every other character, are also subject to homicide at the hands of the protagonist.
You know, I’d like to think of a funny punchline here, but really, reality has me outgunned this time around.
It’s either a good sign or a bad sign, depending on your view of such things, that 90 percent of the dialogue in Wedding Crashers sounds like the stuff I heard around the fraternity house back in college. That goes for both the mature stuff and the immature stuff alike.
Now, some folks will read a paragraph like that, and go screaming for the door. Bye!
The others will go to the door, pause, and wonder “mature stuff?” Come back on in, folks. We’ve got a juvenile comedy about getting your ya-yas off and then growing up.
Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson (and the luminous Rachel McAdams and the kind of fascinating Christopher Walken) absolutely sell this buddy movie, about buddies who have discovered, they think, the ultimate way to hook up with girls. But crashing weddings and nailing emotionally vulnerable women only works until the guys fall for some of the girls. And when that happens, the emotionally retarded is totally unprepared to deal with the consequences.
Wonderfully and believably profane while still being sweet and even kind of smart, Wedding Singers is a great movie for every aging frat boy out there, and those that love us despite all that.
Strongly recommended.
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