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LGF notes : During Israel’s war against Hizballah, at LGF we were continually outraged by the media’s uncritical promulgation of terrorist propaganda, and their overwhelming bias against Israel. The barrage of staged and manipulated disinformation culminated in the infamous Adnan Hajj fauxtography incident ; and it can be argued that the culture of tacit cooperation with terrorists was at least partly responsible for that stunning case of phony news. How could Reuters’ experienced editors miss a fake picture that was so bleeding obvious, at every step of the way toward publication? Answer: because they just didn’t care. [...] Now the Harvard Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, hardly a bastion of neocon wingnut thinking, has issued a paper that absolutely skewers the media for their outrageously biased and terrorist-enabling behavior. Maybe this will be a little harder for them to ignore: How the Media Partnered With Hezbollah: Harvard’s Cautionary Report ....

This is how it begins:  The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace. Source: The Big White Lie by Andrew Klavan, City Journal Spring 2007 . Worth reading in its entirety. HT: Libertas .

Okay, this excites me. I have only seen two of Satoshi Kon's previous works, Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress , and am in search of a third, Tokyo Godfathers . He illustrates perfectly how animation isn't just for kiddie tales. Perfect Blue , for example, is in the best Hitchcock tradition and most definitely not for kids. Paprika looks to be in that vein. It looks dazzling and I'm hooked on the music in the trailer. The only question is whether it will ever see the light of day in the Sacramento valley, or even San Francisco, or is LA and NYC only. Which means waiting for the DVD. Of course, I'm still waiting for the Sky Blue DVD release, another film which never had a theatrical run in my neck of the woods.

Let us cut to the chase, shall we? Hot Fuzz is the funniest film you'll see this year, and is the funniest I've seen in a long, long, long time. It's not perfect, but I laughed until I hurt while I was watching it, and continue to giggle whenever I think about it. Hot Fuzz rules. The film is brought to you by the same crew that did Shaun of the Dead . If you have never heard of that film, I'm sorry. For you. It's an excellent film. The idea behind Shaun was to take the horror movie premise, remain faithful to that premise and genre, and produce a comedy. Thus, Shaun has all the usual horror film moments with the bonus that you're laughing your butt off. Fuzz is the same basic concept: Take the police action/buddy film premise and layer in the laughs. The plot involves Nicholas Angel ( Simon Pegg ), who is the best cop in the world, or at least within the London Metropolitan Police Force. He's so good he's making everyone else look bad, so he gets ...

I'm anti-abortion. Have I made that clear before? I am, therefore, in the minority of men, because more men support abortion than do women. Check the surveys. Abortion is sold as a benefit to the woman unready to raise a child, but its major supports are guys wanting to avoid child support payments. Since I'm anti-abortion, my support for the Court's ruling in Carhart shouldn't be surprising. What surprises me is the uninhibited and irrational hysteria flowing from the MSM and the abortion industry. Is hysteria the new style of politics and discussion? Must be, judging from how much of the media has either responded to or "reported" the responses to the Court's ruling. First, some relevant facts: At least 1,000,000 abortions are performed in the United States each year. At least 90% of those abortions are performed during the first trimester. With Carhart we're dealing with a procedure that involves the remaining 10%. It is, mostly likely, a ve...

Regarding the horrors of the Virginia Tech murders, a staggering array of inanities have been uttered. This will probably continue into the foreseeable future. Among my favorites was a comment over at the HuffPo, made to a Jane Smiley entry, that said right-wingers should acknowledge that "people with guns kill more people than people without guns." How trite. My response: In a violent confrontation, people with guns save more people than people without guns. It's a mix of common sense and horrific logic, but killers choose places like schools for their sprees because they know they won't encounter armed resistance. We have enshrined schools as "gun-free zones". We have taken this to logical absurdities. Virginia state law allows citizens, with proper training and background checks, to carry concealed weapons, but Virginia Tech regulations forbade this practice. In California, the law is written in such a way that even a police officer, on campus as a stud...

Officer: "I pulled you over, sir, because I thought you might be in need of medical assistance." Driver: "No, I'm fine. What made you think I needed help?" Officer: "Because you were driving with your head so far up your ass I assumed you were suffocating." True story.

All ye hybrid enthusiasts, see here : The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer. Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. ... My favorite part is describing the area around where they mine the metal for the batteries: The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles. Oh yeah, save the planet. Uh huh, yup. Meanwhile, I'll remain truly green and continue to ride my motorcycle.

Chloe, Chloe O'Brian. Oh, the real-life Mary Lynn Rajskub might not be as tech-savvie, but.... What a name, what a face, what a great grip on those guns. She's even a comedian and is, at least in part, Czech. Excellent! (Picture courtesy of Geek Monthly .)

I finally caught up with this film on DVD and it's more than a little frustrating to write about it. Much like The Sixth Sense , the enjoyment with The Prestige lies in not knowing how it's going to end. How do I write about a film when the very thing I most want to write about gives the entire thing away? Trying to write about The Prestige without giving something away is, at best, difficult. Christopher Nolan continues to impress me, but he has this obsession with non-linear story telling. This sometimes works brilliantly, as in Memento ; in Batman Begins , however, it was annoying. Here he strikes a happy middle ground. He achieves here with I think he tried to do in Batman , and now it works. The jumping back and forth in time work to reveal the parallels between main characters and when all of the timelines, as it were, converge, there's a marvelous and honest sense of inevitability. Where the film fails is having a protagonist you give a hoot about. Between Christ...