HUGO (2011, directed by Martin Scorsese, 127 minutes, U.S.) THE DESCENDANTS (2011, directed by Alexander Payne, 115 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK After six years, director Alexander Payne is back with his fifth feature, The Descendants. Payne has written and directed some of the most insightful American satires of the last fifteen years, including Election, Citizen Ruth, and his last film, Sideways. With this tale showing George Clooney as a Hawaiian real estate mogul who through tragedy becomes closer with his daughters, Payne seems to stumble a bit from his high perch. After she is seriously injured in a boating […]
MUST SEE TV: Woody Allen Boxes A Kangaroo
Verging on animal cruelty by today’s standards, but like meat, it’s already dead so let’s not waste it. Besides, this was prime time stuff in 1966. Woody never lays a glove on him, but the kangaroo gets a few licks in. At the end he goes kinda buck wild, and Woody says ‘fuck it’ and jumps out of the ring and declares victory, while the kangaroo registers his extreme displeasure with the referee/animal handler.
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A MIDDLE-AGED MAN: A Q&A With Cartoonist Dan Clowes
EDITOR’S NOTE: To mark the occasion of yet another swell New Yorker cover by Mr. Clowes, we are re-running our interview with him from last spring. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Daniel Clowes’ 30-plus-year career as a cartoonist/graphic novelist/screenwriter has seen some remarkable reversals of fortune. Back in the mid-80s, when Clowes was fresh out of Pratt and looking to take the graphic design/illustration world by storm, he couldn’t get art directors to return his phone calls. These days, post-Ghost World, the New Yorker and The New York Times plead with him to return their calls. When not busy cranking out […]
WORTH REPEATING: Blowback’s A ‘Bitch’
[Artwork by BIGBOITHOMAS84] Pitchfork: What kind of reactions have you received since? ?uestlove: I’ve seen some really colorful epithets in the past four days, but “nigger fuckhead ghetto stick” is probably the one that takes the cake. I’m still trying to get my head around that one. Blocking 3,500 tea party extremists [on Twitter] in a three day period is no fun, especially when you’re a drummer dangerously close to carpal tunnel. In the end, was it worth it? Absolutely not. Pitchfork: Was there a moment when you were scared that you might get fired? ?uestlove: Yeah, last Wednesday, the […]
Frank Luntz, The Dark Lord Of Obfuscating GOP Euphemisms, Says He’s Scared Sh*tless By #Occupy
YAHOO: The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street? “I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation’s foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances […]
MUST SEE TV: They Shoot Eat Horses Don’t They?
Last week President Obama quietly signed into law legislation that restores funding for USDA inspections of horse meat, effectively ending a five year freeze on such inspections and green-lighting the slaughter and sale of Trigger and Mr. Ed for human consumption. Those wacky animators at NMA break the news to the Pacific Rim in typically surrealistic fashion, no doubt getting a little payback for all those dog-eating jokes us Yanks like to crack. RELATED: Officials are seeking the owner of a horse that was abandoned earlier this week in a vacant lot in Kensington. The Pennsylvania SPCA’s Humane Law Enforcement […]
WORTH REPEATING: Man Who Knew Too Much
MOTHER JONES: [This is] from Daniel Ellsberg’s book Secrets, and the setting is a meeting with Henry Kissinger in late 1968 when he was advising him about the Vietnam War. The idea of Kissinger seeking out Ellsberg for advice on Vietnam initially seems a bit unlikely, but in 1968 Ellsberg was a highly respected analyst on the war who had worked for both the Pentagon and Rand, and Kissinger was just entering the government for the first time. Here’s what Ellsberg told him. Enjoy:”Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I […]
NOT KIDDING: Dog Shoots Man In The Ass
WASHINGTON POST: A Utah bird hunter was shot in the buttocks after his dog stepped on a shotgun laid across the bow of a boat. Box Elder County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Potter says the 46-year-old Brigham City man was duck hunting with a friend when he climbed out of the boat to move decoys. Potter says the man left his 12-gauge shotgun in the boat and the dog stepped on it, causing it to fire.It wasn’t clear whether the safety on the gun was on at the time. Potter says the man was hit from about 10 feet away with […]
SIDEWALKING: The Twilight’s Last Gleaming
#OccupyPhilly, 15th & Samson, 2:10 AM by CHUCK RAMSEY PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: Occupiers stopped at several points throughout the night—at 16th and Market, between Market and Chestnut on 15th, at 12th and Market, other spots—to mic check and taunt the police. The night wore on and more scuffles between protesters and police erupted in pockets around the general marching area. As they did, all demonstrators around those scuffles raised their hands in the air and began chanting, “This is a nonviolent protest,” which it was. To an extent. Someone poured water on a female officer and a fight broke out around […]
HE KNOWS IF YOU’VE BEEN NAUGHTY OR WHITE: AZ Gun Club Let’s Members’ Guns Get Their Picture Taken With Santa Claus
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like Santa Claus and an AK-47 — at least to members of one Arizona gun group. The Scottsdale Gun Club is coming under fire for a holiday offer to patrons and their families to create Christmas cards posing with St. Nick and a cache of weapons. “Santa’s back with his bag of goodies,” the promo on their Website reads. “Get your holiday picture with Santa and his machine guns!” One image shows Santa in a chair with an $80,000 machine gun. Next to him is a man standing behind a boy holding […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR How the Fourth Amendment — and the other amendments to the Constitution — should extend to quickly changing technologies is unclear. Recently, Jeffrey Rosen and his colleague Benjamin Wittes asked leading legal scholars to imagine technologies that might be developed in the next few decades that would challenge current constitutional laws. Their hypothetical scenarios, collected in Constitution 3.0, address questions about a variety of topics, including security, free speech, privacy and the constitutional right against self-incrimination. Rosen describes one privacy scenario, imagined at a conference by Google public policy chief Andrew McLaughlin, in which websites like Google and […]
Let’s End The Military Industrial Welfare Complex
MARKET WATCH: If you follow the headlines, and believe them, you would probably think that defense spending is about to be slashed to the bone following the collapse of the “super committee”. Defense secretary Leon Panetta is warning of a “doomsday” scenario for national security spending. Congressman Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, warns that automatic cuts will end up “crippling our military.” There’s just one problem. It’s total nonsense. What Washington calls a “cut” is really just a more modest increase than you were expecting. Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason […]