valid only where everyone is evil.
The quote of the day:
This is a man who does not want his sigil to gather dust.
Running news:
3.5 miles. I'm getting back into it: time to increase mileage.
For example: the US bombed Afghanistan and Sudan today. These are serious actions. Should we believe our fearless leaders when they tell us that going after terrorists on the grounds of other sovereign nations is the war of the future? This is a serious question and one that deserves debate. What does territorial sovreignty mean in those instances? What constitutes proof of guilt?
Cynical, knee-jerk response accomplishing nothing: "It's just like Wag The Dog."
I must applaud the movie Wag The Dog for its part in increasing public hesitation to accept everything Our Fearless Leaders--be they Bill or be they Newt--say to us.
However, if we're going to treat every major overseas occurrence as just another WTD, we're going to blind ourselves to what's really going on. We're not going to be able to judge what's going on. Particularly when every time a difficult decision--like deciding to bomb another fucking country--is made, the vox populi says, "Oh, it's just like Wag The Dog." You don't think Bill knew that was going to be said? Bill may have a zipper problem but one thing he is is canny.
And another point: the bombing in Afghanistan is not just like Wag The Dog. In case you've never seen it, the war in Albania is made up. We're dropping real bombs on Afghanistan.
Or hey: maybe we're not.
You want to take that chance? Go ahead: be cynical. This doesn't concern you.
So Darin, Fernando, and I decided to relax by going to see Your Friends and Neighbors, Neil LaBute's followup to In The Company of the Men, which I did not see but heard was one of the most thought-provoking or nerve-irritating (or maybe both) movies of the year.
We treated ourselves to one of the most cynical, ugly pieces of celluloid I've seen in quite a while.
The movie isn't thought-provoking; it's an exercise in "If you thought that was bad, let me show you this..." The movie's the story of the most improbable best friends in the world--I can't imagine one person in that very crowded theater last night believed that Aaron Eckhart and Ben Stiller were best friends for two seconds--and their friend Jason Patric and their various wives and lovers.
Basically, everybody screws everybody else over. There are two types of people in this movie: actively evil and passively evil. You choose.
Thanks, but there's more to humanity than that for me.
I'm sure that the soliloquy Jason Patric delivers in the sauna will be mentioned the most frequently as an example of the depths to which people can sink--to me it was the equivalent of a dramatic car wreck: who's going to stop to watch?
You never hear any character's name in the movie, and for good reason: LaBute decided to be cute and name the main characters Mary, Barry, Terri, Cheri, Cary, and Jerry. Isn't that fun?
And the movie ends with a completely unbelievable situation that does nothing to throw relief on what's come before--if anything, it confuses and undercuts the previous two hours.
Which is hard to do with what we've just seen, believe me.
You guessed it: I don't recommend this flick.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com