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Sunday, April 25, 2004 |
Two Good Movies
Two fun movies this weekend.
Pickup on South Street:
Richard Widmark and Jean Peters in a Samuel Fuller noir picture from
1953. Though it has a lot of familiar tropes of the genre -- hero who
turns good in the end, the tearjerker role of Thelma Ritter, the bad
commie Richard Kiley (but that's just the political correctness of the
time, and a device to move the story forward) -- the movie works very
well. Widmark is great, and though I don't remember Jean Peters as
anything else than Howards Hughes' wife, she's really effective here.
Fuller's direction is really good, lots of dramatic lighting (itself a
trope of the noir movie), fantastic music.
The Lavender Hill Mob:
One of the Alec Guiness/Ealing Studios pictures, from 1951. Guiness is
wonderful, in the way he exhibits different personalities depending on
who he's dealing with. Stanley Holloway is also really great. A very
funny movie, in a subdued way, with a great ending. Audrey Hepburn is
in the movie very quickly, at the beginning, in her third role.
Both these movies get great DVD presentations. You can see that when
you watch the original trailers on each DVD; the trailers are bright,
high-contrast, but the movies are clear and distinct, and the sound is
great, too. The quality of VHS was itself so poor, sometimes it wasn't
worth watching an old movie, but the new DVDs are really fun.
7:25:34 PM Permalink
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How to get out of Iraq
Long, unbiased piece on the disaster that is Iraq, from the New York Review of Books. I know Bush's people aren't paying any attention; I hope Kerry's are.
In the year since the United States Marines pulled down Saddam
Hussein's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square, things have gone very
badly for the United States in Iraq and for its ambition of creating a
model democracy that might transform the Middle East. As of today the
United States military appears committed to an open-ended stay in a
country where, with the exception of the Kurdish north, patience with
the foreign occupation is running out, and violent opposition is
spreading. Civil war and the breakup of Iraq are more likely outcomes
than a successful transition to a pluralistic Western-style democracy.
Much of what went wrong was avoidable. Focused on winning the
political battle to start a war, the Bush administration failed to
anticipate the postwar chaos in Iraq. Administration strategy seems to
have been based on a hope that Iraq's bureaucrats and police would
simply transfer their loyalty to the new authorities, and the country's
administration would continue to function. All experience in Iraq
suggested that the collapse of civil authority was the most likely
outcome, but there was no credible planning for this contingency. In
fact, the US effort to remake Iraq never recovered from its confused
start when it failed to prevent the looting of Baghdad in the early
days of the occupation.
6:03:27 PM Permalink
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Tour De Cure Time Again
As I did last year, this year I'm going to ride in the American
Diabetes Association's Tour De Cure in the Napa Valley. It's lots of
fun, and we try to raise money for a good cause. Below is the text of
the letter they suggest you send when you sign up for the Tour, and I
encourage everyone to sponsor me or someone else. Or, heck, even ride
in the thing!
Dear Friends and Family,
I recently accepted the challenge of cycling in the American Diabetes
Association's Tour de Cure fund-raising event. I am taking part in this
event because I believe in and support the Association's mission: to
prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people
affected by diabetes.
You, too, can help by supporting my fund-raising efforts with a
generous contribution. Your tax-deductible gift will make a difference
to more than 18 million Americans who are affected by diabetes and
another 20 million who are at risk for developing diabetes. It is
faster and easier than ever to support this great cause - you can make
your donation online by simply clicking on the link at the bottom of
this message. If you would prefer, you can also send your
tax-deductible contribution to the address listed below.
More information on the American Diabetes Association, its programs,
and diabetes in general can be found at the Association's Web site,
www.diabetes.org. To find out more information on our Tour de Cure,
please visit tour.diabetes.org.
Whatever you can give will help! I greatly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress.
Sincerely,
Steve Michel
To donate online, click here.
To send a donation:
Make all checks payable to: American Diabetes Association
Mail to: Steve Michel
1027 Pomona Ave
Albany, CA, 94706
Thank you,
The American Diabetes Association
3:20:39 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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