Stop Frame

I have a modest proposal regarding "comprehensive immigration reform". The answer to approximately 60% of the illegal immigration problem is clear. I'm not quite sure how to clean up the remaining 40%, but the majority, that 60%, can be handled simply by invading Mexico. The 31 separate Mexican states would then be incorporated into the existing 50, making for 81 United States of America. (The next logical step would then be to take over Canada, forming the United States of North America, but that's for another day.) Let's face facts. Illegals come swarming up out of Mexico because of corruption, crime, and unemployment within Mexico. They come here for work which they can't find there, and in general they don't get shot for talking back to their supervisor. They work within a pseudo-hidden economy that is kept from view because "pro immigration" groups like it that way. These speakers for the little guy co-opt opponents of illegal immigration,...

If we are all very, very lucky, this will be the final Pirates of the Caribbean film. At World's End isn't awful, but it tries to be. It tries really, really hard. Curse of the Black Pearl was a shocker. It was an almost-perfect combination of adventure, romance, horror, and comedy. Johnny Depp earned his Oscar nomination, and IMO should have won. As I wrote previously, CotBP was honest about pirates, especially as embodied by Jeffrey Rush's Barbossa. They were brutal and mean, and if they were occasionally comical it was to give them some redeeming characteristic. This was a high bar to match; neither sequel does. Dead Man's Chest was a half-hour or more longer than it needed to be and turned its characters into clowns. Nice action sequences, though. AWE tops that. AWE is at least an hour longer than it needs to be and turns all the clowns into idiots, and assumes everyone in the audience is an idiot, too. It has plot convolutions that serve no purpose other ...

Simply amazing to see, neatly choreographed and one long, single take: HT: Alarm! Alarm! Update: Details on Leslie Feist and this video, right here .

The end begins...today! Over at National Review Online , Frederica Matthewes-Green concludes her generally positive  review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End thus: Less likeable is the absurd opening premise, that the East India Trading Company has gathered so much political power that they can suspend the laws on a Caribbean island and execute anyone who befriends a pirate. Perhaps we need a refresher course in what pirates are. Just as a carjacker steals your car, pirates steal your ship. A pirate ship would come alongside their victim, invade it, then kill and rape and throw overboard at random, keeping cargo and valuables for themselves. [...] [T]he inference that the British government killed civilians in order to save merchandise from pirates is outrageous; governments killed pirates in order to save civilians, and it’s a good thing. ... This attempt to recast the underlying story as a conflict between romantic pirates and powerful corporations undercu...

I like Christopher Hitchens, or at least as much as you can like someone you've never actually met. I enjoy what he writes and I like to hear him speak. There's a lot he and I disagree on (especially the subject of religion), but at least I know he'll have a well-thought position on whatever the topic is. He illustrates that you can disagree with someone on some points without loathing the entire person, which is the norm pervading much of the blogosphere and elsewhere. Michael Novak makes much this same point in his review of Hitchens's latest, God is Not Great . Novak's review  begins: One of the writers whose courage and polemical force I highly admire is Christopher Hitchens. He gives frequent proof of a passionate honesty, which sometimes has obliged him to criticize ideological soul mates when he thinks they are wrong on some important matter. Many of our colleagues today pretend publicly to have no enemies on the Left out of a panicky fear that they might ...

Mark Steyn comments on the death, last weekend, of Bernard Gordon . In later years, the screenwriter led the protests against the very belated Oscar awarded to Elia Kazan in 1999. As Gordon wrote of Kazan in The Los Angeles Times, “He helped to support an oppressive regime that did incalculable damage to America and abroad.” Interesting choice of word: "regime". And what about the regime you supported? While commenting on Gordon, Steyn reproduces a column he wrote on the occasion of Kazan 's death in 2003, which notes in part: Kazan can make a claim to be the father of modern American acting, the man who brought Stanislavskian techniques to Broadway and then to the silver screen. Insofar as the young lions of our present-tense culture aspire to emulate any of the old guys, it’s not David Niven or even Jimmy Cagney who resonate, but Marlon Brando, James Dean, Rod Steiger – on all of whom Kazan was the greatest single influence. And, aimed straight at modern liberal...

It's telling when one of the warmest and kindest comments regarding the death of Jerry Falwell comes from a pornographer: I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling. So said Larry Flynt. Flynt rose to prominence when Falwell sued him for a parody ad that Flynt published in Hustler . The ad was, shall we say, less than flattering of Falwell. It's considered a landmark First Amendment case, in the respect that it created a parody defense against libel and slander suits. What else Flynt said is even more amazing: My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. I find that an amazing comment on both men. Falwell clearly hated sin but, ...

Oh yeah, completely hooked by this . Bring it. I'm ready. The preview alone looks better than all of Spider-Man 3 . (And I was never a fan of the original TV series...)

Jeff Kirvin writes on technology, PDA's, and the craft of writing. In these areas, his writing is often insightful, thoughtful, and even provocative. When he writes about politics, however, his writing becomes of a decidedly different nature, lacking insight, not very thoughtful, and purely reactionary. An example is his May 7th screed for gun control. In prior posts, Jeff has complained loudly about government intrusions into personal liberties, but here his liberal ideology insists that this principle of personal liberty be shunned. You see, you don't need guns, only the government needs guns. Start with his analysis of the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, which he says is not an individual right at all. It speaks of a militia, and therefore me and thee don't get to own or possess firearms. Take that reasoning to its logical end. There is no right to privacy in the US Constitution. That "right", however, is foundational to Roe v. Wade . If t...

In light of events back at Fort Dix, what Andrew McCarthy writes should be mandatory reading:  Al Qaeda is a powerful force. It is a sprawling, atomized, international network of cells. It has proved quite adept at orchestrating savage attacks. But the main danger it poses has never been the orders its generals give to its colonels and on down some regimented chain-of-command. If we had only to worry about members of al Qaeda carrying out orders of al Qaeda, the war on terror would be neither as uphill nor as infinite as it seems to be. The principal challenge posed by al Qaeda is that it spearheads the spread of a strong, though noxious, ideology. It's not just about who we're fighting in Iraq and elsewhere, it's what we're fighting. Read the whole thing.

It was Sam Raimi and Spider-Man who successfully brought a lone comic book hero to the big screen. More than Donner 's Superman , more than Milius 's Conan the Barbarian , more than Burton 's Batman , Raimi's Spider-Man was the perfect translation of comic book to big screen. His achievement was only matched by Bryan Singer 's X-Men , which had an entire crew of superheroes. Raimi then did the incredible: He topped himself with a sequel, Spider-Man 2 (much as Singer did for himself with X2 ). Sequels, by definition, are never better than the original. And yet that's exactly what Spider-Man 2 was. Alas, lightning does not strike twice. Spider-Man 3 isn't horrible, but it comes close. It is horribly disappointing. X3 had the excuse of being turned over to a hack director. Spidey 3 is just Raimi reaching a villain too far. The plot goes something like this: Parker has become content with his dual nature and has come to love the adulation the city gives ...