Monday, December 02, 2002

[Colin Glassey 6 PM] More Movie Review I rented Y tu mamá también yesterday. Second time I've seen it. I liked the film a great deal. One reason is that this is the first film I've seen which actually depicts Mexico of today. Hollywood seems to have given up showing us much aside from California and Toronto (the current stand-in for any normal American city). Older Hollywood films seem to have spent more time outside of California. I certainly know the Mexico from the old films. Modern Mexico isn't like that any more. Y tu mamá también actually shows a fair bit of Mexico, from the modern urban landscape of Mexico city to the still impoverished rural lands. The main characters are enjoyable to watch and listen to as well. Good film, glad it was made. The exploration of the modern state of a nation I thought I knew is also found in the wonderful film Monsoon Wedding. This film is set in a big city in modern India, New Dehli (if I'm not mistaken). It also shows a culture and a city that is not like you see in the old films set in India. Both films certainly broadened my horizons. 5:56:49 PM     [Colin Glassey 2:30 PM] Movie Reviews On a lighter note, I enjoyed both new franchise movies, the new James Bond film (Die Another Day) and the new Harry Potter film (Chamber of Secrets). Of the two, the Chamber of Secrets was the bigger surprise as I expected it to be very, very dull. The new Bond film was a lot of fun, about what I expected, a bit more frenetic but entertaining. The Chamber of Secrets was good fun. Much better than the first film which only had one good sequence in it (the first visit to Diagon Alley). By contrast, this film was an adventure in which Harry Potter acts heroicly while his companions are sidelined. Of special note was Ken Branagh as the foppish Gilderoy Lockheart. He was funny just about every time he said something. Given that I had forgetten the plot of the book, the twists in the movie were something of a surprise to me. Special note also goes to Christian Coulson playing Tom Marvolo Riddle. Nice job. The new Bond film had a large number of entertaining set pieces and some clunkers. It was clear to me that the writer had seen Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and so included sword fights. I like sword fights. The first one was good fun, between Pierce Brosnan and Toby Stephens. The second, between Halle Berry and Rosamund Pike was a failure, doubtless because neither woman could actually use a sword. I enjoyed the car fight between Bond with his secret-agent car and Rick Yune with his secret-agent car. However, as they end up driving around in circles inside the ice palace, it went on way too long (and was silly to boot). Still, a good Bond flick, even better than Tommorow Never Dies (though Halle wasn't as good as Michelle Yeoh, prettier though). 2:23:47 PM     [Colin Glassey 1 PM] On Cultural Relativism Here is a great essay by Eric Raymond on Today's treason of the intellectuals. He argues it is a treason by intellectuals to argue: revolutionary relativism — the position that there are no moral claims or universal values that can trump the particularisms of particular ethnicities, political movements, or religions. In particular, relativists maintain that that the ideas of reason and human rights that emerged from the Enlightenment have no stronger claim on us than tribal prejudices. He continues saying: postmodernism — the ideology that all value systems are equivalent, merely the instrumental creations of people who seek power and other unworthy ends. Thus, according to the postmodernists, when fanatical Islamists murder 3,000 people and the West makes war against the murderers and their accomplices, there is nothing to choose between these actions. I'm in agreement here, this is a treason against 2500 years of Western thought. I have long argued that some cultures are absolutely better than others. I've long used the Aztec culture as an example of a culture that was bad, evil, worse than nearly all others. The Aztecs were hated by all their neighbors because the Aztecs believed in the necessity of ritual sacrifice of humans on a daily basis. For the dedication of some of their grand temples, thousands of people were murdered, one after the other. Naturally, most of the people the Aztecs killed were non-Aztec, i.e. people from surrounding areas which they captured in battles and raids so they could murder them later. If, in the face of this example, anyone can argue that the Aztecs were no worse and no better than anyone else, then I have nothing further to say to such people. Either you live in a world where killing thousands of people for the glory of your gods is wrong, or you don't. In other words, if this isn't a self-evident case, then nothing is. 12:51:46 PM     [Colin Glassey 1 PM] The Future of Europe A lengthy and well thoughtful article about the Future of Europe by Karl Zinsmeister in the American Enterprise (thanks to InstaPundit for the link). Summary: Europe is in trouble on three major fronts: Economically, Europe is following a path that seems (based on the last 30 years) to be a failure. Militarily, Europe has traded real force for treaties and diplomats. This, based on the last 2,000 years of human history, is a certain failure just waiting to collapse. Demographically Europe is getting older and smaller. With replacement rates way below what is needed to sustain the population of many major countries, Europe as a whole is likely to be unchanged 50 years from now (about 360 million), while the United States is likely to be at 550 million people. Bottom line: it doesn't seem like Europe is very important in the future. They are following a path that seems wrong in fundementally important ways. 12:37:19 PM

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