Dominatio Per Malum

Inglourious Basterds (2009) 8/10

Inglourious Basterds marks a return to form for Quentin Tarantino after the lacklustre Death Proof. It is one of the more accessible Tarantino films and Basterds contains many of Tarantino’s favourite themes and stylistic influences. It should come as no surprise that Basterds is a loquacious film. Those who watched Basterds because of its marketing might well be under the impression that it was a WW2 action film, seeing how Brad Pitt is used prominently in its promotion. In truth, Brad Pitt doesn’t really have that much screen time, and there are few action sequences. Instead, in true Tarantino fashion, the film is one long talkfest chock full of black humor, obscure references and non sequiturs. In other words, its bloody brilliant.

The film is full of Tarantino’s little stylistic flourishes, from its excellent soundtrack, the use of chapters to bookend each segment and its generous use of gore. It is almost amazing how, at the end of the film, you realise that you have spent the better part of two hours watching characters just chatting. Granted, the dialogue sometimes feels meandering and lacking in focus, but when it is good, it is golden. At its best, the dialogue zings and sizzles and Tarantino expertly manages to craft tension from the most mundane of conversations.

The ensemble cast is excellent, none more so than Christoph Waltz, one of the most menacing SS officers ever put on screen. He completely steals the scene in two major sequences, the first being the excellent opening scene of the film and the second being a chance meeting with Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent).

At every turn, Tarantino surprises and even thrills the audience. Even the boldly ahistorical ending will likely polarize audiences. This is a film in which i honestly could not have predicted how the scene would have played out. It is a testament to Tarantino’s craft that Basterds, which is closest in form to Pulp Fiction, is an enjoyable, sometimes over the top film that appeals the film lover rather than to studio expectations of more skin and more explosions. One final praise needs to be given to the cinematographer who cloaks the film in beautiful vibrant colors with the color red taking especial prominence. I loved the way the film turned out and i can unreservedly proclaim Basterds to be one of the best films of 2009. Watch it.

New York Times Article

http://justiceharvard.org/

Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Nearly one thousand students pack Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre to hear Professor Sandel talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.

This course aims to help viewers become more critically minded thinkers about the moral decisions we all face in our everyday lives.

In this 12-part series, Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing to do.

He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios. The result is often surprising, revealing that important moral questions are never black and white.

Sorting out these contradictions sharpens our own moral convictions and gives us the moral clarity to better understand the opposing views we confront in a democracy.

Something to stimulate and provoke riots in our hearts and minds.

A true story about a letter from iwo jima.

Ashes of Time Redux (1994) 7/10

The first time i watched Wong Kar Wai’s 1994 masterpiece, i thought it was beautiful but plodding, poetic but pretentious. Rewatching the “Redux” version a few years later, i am once again impressed by the visual beauty of WKW’s creation. This time, i understand the film better, and perhaps it may be attributable to better editing in the Redux version. Not that the story makes any sense because it still doesn’t. But like a poem, and indeed most WKW films, it is more important to appreciate the feel and mood than to make sense of what it all means. Beautifully languid and possibly even zen, Ashes of Time is the only time wuxia flicks and existential will appear on the same sentence. Like a bottle of wine, Ashes of Time is a film that ages better with time and as you grow older you better understand the existential angst that underlies the film. The themes of memory, unrequited love and lost chances play out in a hazy, poetic canvas. What does it all mean? Is there a point to this film? Well, with Wong Kar Wai, the experience is more important than the destination.

City of Life and Death (2009) 7/10

Director Lu Chuan who is easily one of the more exciting directors from China, follows up his excellent Kekexili (2004) with a sobering and powerful take on The Nanking Massacre. The City of Life and Death (known as Nanking! Nanking in its chinese title) would seem like the sort of film that would lend well to easy moralising especially since it is a Mainland Chinese film. But to his credit, Lu Chuan is a far more nuanced director and doesn’t take the easy cinematic short cut of caricatured villians and saintly good guys. The solid black and white cinematography is beautifully shot, but i question the need to use black and white when a color version would be better. Using black and white for a WW2 film almost seems like aping Schindler’s List and unless you can use it to great effect, it seems like an unnecessary gesture. It is not that B&W doesn’t work for the film, but rather that i think color would have been better.

Still Lu Chuan crafts a great ensemble tale, with no one character being a plot device and each contributing to the tale in their own way. This is good because these supporting actors really shine when given the spotlight, with chinese actor Wei Fan making a memorable impression as Mr Tang. However, the disadvantage is that stars like Ye Liu don’t have much screen time for character development. The cast is uniformly solid, but i felt that the Japanese lead Hideo Nakaizumi as Kadokawa is too one dimensionally nice for my liking.

While City of Life and Death isn’t quite Schindler’s List, it is however an excellent retelling of the Naking Massacre seen through the eyes of both the Chinese and Japanese. And considering how the film strives to be balanced rather than jingoistically patriotic, the film is truly another feather in the cap of Lu Chuan who delivers a powerful and compelling movie experience and history lesson all wrapped in one.

BBC News

They call themselves the most hated family in the US and they picket funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. So what did Louis Theroux make of the Phelpses after three weeks?

In any country, let alone one as patriotic as the US, few actions are as provocative as protesting at a soldier’s funeral.

The Phelps family pickets mourners across the country, to mark what it describes as God’s revenge on the US for tolerating homosexuality.

Their actions are in the name of the Westboro Baptist Church, which numbers 71 and is headed by “Gramps”, preacher Fred Phelps. The church, which is based in Topeka, Kansas, mostly comprises his extended family.

Louis Theroux, himself no stranger to people with unconventional views, says the Phelpses are the most extreme people he has ever met. But in the following interview, he reveals how three weeks with them left him perplexed by their motivation.

Watching the documentary elicited, not anger or disgust or even contempt as i had initially thought, but pity. Despite their medieval beliefs and insensitive and downright appalling actions at the picket, they too are victims in a cult that they cannot extricate themselves from. They have been so thoroughly brainwashed by religious dogma that there very existence is defined by the Church. The Church itself is sustained by its message of hate that it makes right wing fundamentalist Christians look perfectly sane in comparison. It is perhaps proof that given the right environment, people can be persuaded to believe in anything. What is sad is that many of the young people, especially the children could have been so much more. The documentary by BBC is well worth a look.

District 9 (2009) 7/10

District 9 could have been a great film, but instead settles for merely being a good film. Its premise is intriguing and a refreshing twist on sci fi conventions. See, aliens are broadly categories into nice (ET) or monstrous (Alien trilogy, War of the Worlds etc). In District 9, Aliens are an insectoid race which while possessing strength and agility is generally dumb. Sort of like Zombies. This is itself an unusual take on sci fi to present them as largely stupid, mindless beings which can barely fend for themselves. Of course, this is explained by the aliens being worker aliens with the hive mind being somehow destroyed leaving the remnants to fend for themselves.

The exposition which sets out these details in the first act is masterfully done and the film weaves social commentary in a pseudo documentary fashion that deliberately parallels apartheid and the various concentration camps and gulags that we have created. But the film takes a dramatic shift in tone in its second act, turning its focus exclusively on one character and the film becomes a sort of The Fly meets The Fugitive. This shift is unfortunate, because the film becomes predictable and the film abandons the compelling social commentary it built in the first act. The film is somewhat redeemed in its action packed final act which while predictable at least provides brainless popcorn entertainment. Still one cannot help but lament that if the film continued and went along the compelling premise it constructed in the first act, District 9 could well have become a great film. Nevertheless it is still a far better summertime choice than GI Joe or Transformers 2.

In The Loop (2009) 8/10

In the Loop is what The Office wants to be. Sharp, sardonic and an absolute blast to watch, the film skewers the political process and shows politicians for what they truly are: screwups who are trying desperately not to blow the whole world up. Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) puts in a mesmerizing and commanding performance in an expletive filled performance. It is a virtuoso display of foul-mouthed eloquence the likes of which has been rarely seen. A sharp, witty and engaging dialogue which has one of the highest laughs per minute of any film i have watched and a brilliantly absurdist plot makes this one of the best films of the year and an excellent showcase of Brit humor.

New York Times

There is a long and remarkable article in the current New Yorker about a man who was executed in Texas in 2004 for deliberately setting a fire that killed his three small children. Rigorous scientific analysis has since shown that there was no evidence that the fire in a one-story, wood frame house in Corsicana was the result of arson, as the authorities had alleged.

In other words, it was an accident. No crime had occurred.

Cameron Todd Willingham, who refused to accept a guilty plea that would have spared his life, and who insisted until his last painful breath that he was innocent, had in fact been telling the truth all along.

In a recent discussion with a (Christian) friend, he made 2 claims which i felt compelled to rebut, not least because it perpetuates a flimsy understanding of History and Geography.

The first claim was that people in Biblical times had a longer lifespan compared to modern day people. Now, both of us agreed that lifespans were fairly low before the Industrial Revolution until developments in medical science and sanitation brought about the significant improvement in life expectancy. The difference was that whereas i estimated the life span of the average person hundreds of years ago to be say 30-40 years, he disagrees and argues that in biblical times, life spans where actually higher than current life spans. For the record, the current global life span average is about 67 years and in developed countries it is typically is in the 70-80s range. Thus the argument is that hundreds of years ago, people lived to such age. Meaning the average life span. We are not talking about the exceptional individual who is ahead of the curve but average life expectancy. Naturally, i couldn’t let such a ridiculous statement pass. Answer in Genesis actually argues that biblical ages are in fact true and that :

Today, man’s maximum life span is about 120 years, and our average life expectancy is still only 70–80 years—just as it was when the 90th Psalm was written 3,400 years ago!

In short, we are actually supposed to believe that people regularly lived till hundreds of year old in the olden olden days.

Wikipedia gives a far more believable list of life expectancies which range from 18 (bronze age) to an upper limit of 60 (bronze age, sweden). A quick look at the chart quickly shows that in the olden days, an average life expectancy of 30-40 years is a fairly good estimate about the life expectancy of people in olden days. In the Upper Paleolithic era (approx 40,000 to 10,000 years ago) the average life expectancy is around 33 years.

The second statement was that Sodom and Gomorrah existed and that ruins of which have been found. Again a most controversial claim. A BBC article on the subject notes that:

“There’s no agreement among archaeologists, scientists and Biblical scholars that Sodom, and its sister town Gomorrah, existed at all - let alone that it came to a sudden and apocalyptic end.”

Assuming the existence of such a city, accounts as to how it can/ was destroy is mixed at best with an “earthquake” theory and an “asteroid” theory being possible ways in which to enact destruction.

US judge ‘ignored death row plea’

A judge in Texas has gone on trial accused of refusing to let lawyers for a convicted murderer on death row lodge a last-minute appeal.

Sharon Keller is charged with professional misconduct.

The prisoner, Michael Wayne Richard, was put to death hours after she allegedly shut the court, despite being told an appeal was imminent.

Half of all executions in the US last year were in Texas and Judge Keller has earned the nickname Sharon Killer.

She is known for her tough stance on the death penalty.

This is just sad. Access to justice is a fundamental human right and brings with it the right to lodge appeals. It is appalling that such a judge can preside over the Texas Court of Appeal

Because I realise that I have yet to weigh in on the 10 best films of 2008, here are my picks in a very strong year which saw a resurgence of comic book superheroes, excellent animated films and one of the strongest top 10 crops in a very long time. Films which just missed the cut include: Waltz With Bashir, Revolutionary Road, Doubt, Slumdog Millionaire, Speedy Scandal, JCVD, Redbelt, WALL-E, Transsiberian and Penelope.

NUMBER 10
The Chaser

A serial killer movie with a twist, The Chaser doesn’t ask who did it, but why did he do it? A box office hit in Korea, The Chaser is one of the most exhilarating films in 2008 and well worth your time.

NUMBER 9
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

For all of Hollywood’s excesses, Ponyo proves that the future of animation does not lie only in 3D extravaganzas. Hayao Miyazaki’s lush and whimsical tale is a triumph and narrowly beats Pixar’s WALL-E for a slot in my Top 10.

NUMBER 8
Tropic Thunder

Easily the funniest film of the year, Tropic Thunder uses is farce at its most brilliant. Featuring a memorable and unrecognizable performance by Tom Cruise and yet another stellar turn by Robert Downey Jr. who already has IRON MAN in his cap, Tropic Thunder is a must watch.

NUMBER 7
The Wrestler

It is Mickey Rourke’s redemption, and Darren Aronofsky’s statement that he can make a good film without theatrics.

NUMBER 6
In Search Of A Midnight Kiss

This year’s indie pick, In Search of a Midnight Kiss has echos of Before Sunset but carves a charming niche as a romantic film that is actually believable and engaging.

NUMBER 5
Dear Zachary

It will make you cry.

NUMBER 4
Let The Right One In

I love this film alot and it is unfortunately cursed by a Hollywood remake that is almost certainly going to suck. Bah why can’t they let good enough be?

(more…)

Judges’ Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising : New York Times

It took just 80 words for a federal appeals court to deny Kevin Cooper’s most recent plea to avoid execution. But attached to that order was a forceful 101-page dissent by a judge, all but pleading to spare Mr. Cooper’s life.

“The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man,” it began.

The judge who wrote the dissent, William A. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, argued that the police and prosecutors had withheld and tampered with evidence in the case for decades; Judge Fletcher even accused the district court of having sabotaged the case.

Compared with the dry, mannerly prose found in many opinions, Judge Fletcher’s passion in Cooper v. Brown is startling. But these kinds of fervent, lonely dissents, urging that a prisoner’s life be spared, have noticeably increased in the last decade, compared with previous years, according to a review of death penalty opinions by The New York Times, as confirmed by experts in the field.

In dozens of capital cases in recent years, appeals court judges, some of whom have ruled in favor of the death penalty many times, have complained that Congress and the Supreme Court have raised daunting barriers for death row prisoners to appeal their convictions, and in many cases the judges have taken on their colleagues.

“There is an increasing frustration among federal judges throughout the system,” said Eric M. Freedman, a critic of the death penalty who teaches on the subject at Hofstra Law School.

Dissents are common in US cases, but even then, an impassioned, forcefully argued dissent that spans 100 pages is indeed exceptional. Judge Fletcher’s stirring dissent in Cooper v Brown is eloquently argued and deserves to be read. It starts with a stark sentence: “The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man.” (page 2) and then goes on to present a series of judicial failures and police negligence that has led to this unfortunate event. It is not simply a last ditch desperate attempt by a man on death row, but a forceful indictment of a justice system that has gone horribly awry.

Commenting on how the district court had utterly failed to uphold justice, Judge Fletcher had this to say [at page 5]:

There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and flouted our direction to perform the two tests. As will be described in greater detail below, the district court impeded and obstructed Cooper’s attorneys at every turn as they sought to develop the record. The court imposed unreasonable conditions on the testing the en banc court directed; refused discovery that should have been available as a matter of course; limited testimony that should not have been limited; and found facts unreasonably, based on a truncated and distorted record.

It is a rare for appellate courts to issue such a stinging rebuke upon the incompetence of a lower court. In his concluding paragraphs, Judge Fletcher doesn’t merely state his dissent, he even goes as far as to suggest innocence of the accused:

Kevin Cooper has now been on death row for nearly half his life. In my opinion, he is probably innocent of the crimes for which the State of California is about to execute him. If he is innocent, the real killers have escaped. They may kill again. They may already have done so. We owe it to the victims of this horrible crime, to Kevin Cooper, and to ourselves to get this one right. We should have taken this case en banc and ordered the district judge to give Cooper the fair hearing he has never had.

Fletcher J. is not the sole dissenter in this case. Joining in his dissent were Justices Wardlaw, Peregeson, Reinhardt, Thomas, Berzon, Fisher, Kozinski and Graber.

In Justice Reinhardt’s dissent, he opines that:

I concur in Judge Fletcher’s thorough and highly persuasive dissent, as well as in Judge Wardlaw’s pithy summary of the judicial failures that infect this case. I would add, however, that the failures are not solely those of the district court. Our own handling of the matter, some of which has been made public and some of which has not, leaves much to be desired, and is a cause of considerable regret. There is no purpose, however, to looking backward at this point. What matters is that we have an obligation to afford Kevin Cooper a full and fair judicial hearing, and that once again we fail. By denying en banc review, we add to the prior systemic judicial malfunctions, and this time, we do so under a cloak of secrecy.

How can it possibly be safe to institute the sentence when so many judges have expressed reservations about the accused’s guilt? Whilst the American Death Penalty often takes a very long time with accused typically lodging multiple appeals, its strength is its willingness to give the accused the opportunity to challenge its conviction. Once upon a time i used to favor the death penalty but with time i have increasingly moved towards an abolitionist position. While not quite a true blue abolitionist, i think that the Cooper case is one clear situation where the accused can and should be given the benefit of doubt. The power to execute is too grave a sentence to be applied without absolute certainly of a person’s guilt.

Take the Magic: The Gathering ‘What Color Are You?’ Quiz.

TIME

“In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn’t as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one.

The basic problem is that while it’s true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn’t necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

Somehow, this makes me feel soooo much better.