because i don't have a blog of my own, i'm going to take this space to say that i saw king kong last night and it rocked my little world. i felt the way i felt when i saw the first jurassic park and was blown away by cg dinosaurs much more realistic than i had ever seen before. there were maybe 3 shots that felt untrue to me w/r/t cg but the ape was as much a character as gollum. and the action scenes were more inventive than I can remember ever seeing - i usually get bored in the middle of extended action sequences. not here. constantly amusing. and i don't think anybody could get away with jack black's character except jack black - and he gets away with it splendidly. so go see the movie.

sorry for the abuse, marco.

you know the ape was done exactly the same and with the same actor as gollum, right? i think that's cool.

i thought there was a resemblance and wondered that during the movie, but possibly wrote it off to a common trait of the effect (which I'm assuming is facial expression mapping).

more than that: it's complete body expression mapping.

Er, not to deflate this, but just to return to Syriana for a minute- so I really liked the movie, possibly liked it more than you did, Marco, based on your post about it. And I read that interview you posted with Gaghan and found it very interesting. I in no way thought the movie was flawless, but I think it dealt really well with subject matter that most people would shy away from trying to portray (and would be right to do so). I'll read his blog post in a second, but I just wanted to mention that my professor brought up an interesting criticism that hadn't really crossed my mind (I think I was too swept away by the intricacy of the intrigue): the movie doesn't address religion in America at all. When I thought about this point she raisedd, I agreed taht it was problematic because: the way the movie tries to set up these parallel scenarios for consideration, I think it really would have done well to acknowledge that religion is a MAJOR factor in our politics as well, and not in any more or any less 'rational' a manner. In this way Syriana does sort of buy into the idea that our concerns are, to put it hastily, post-god and sort of more 'advanced,' more directly political, if you will. Also, possibly in place of this consideration is what you mentioned in your post- the lengths the movie goes to to obscure what's really at work for as long as possible (the whisper in the movie theather that the audience doesn't hear...)
You might disagree with my assessment of this- I'd be interested to hear. It might be obvious that I don't have it totally worked out yet. I really wanna see the movie again.

er, yeah, forgot: deferring the resolution of the plot to the degree that it does is really predominantly an aesthetic consideration, and I think that to defend it as more would really be simply to excuse it.

Religion may be a factor in domestic policy and in the leaders who are elected, much as I may dislike it, but how much international policy do you think is the result of particular religious doctrine? I can maybe see an argument for Israel policy being that way - once upon a time I remember reading that Bush is particularly concerned with Israel because he believes all the Jews should go there for the rapture to happen (or they will go there when it does happen, i forget the true cause/effect pattern). But there's just as much non-religious or anti-islamic-fundamentalist reason for US support of Israel, and seems a little more sane. I can't think of any other action or policy that isn't capitalist or "pro-democracy" motivated. And it's even hard to make too much of a case for domestic policies coming out of a specific religious influence. I think religion influences individual members of congress/executive/judiciary and that in turn influences the bills they sponsor, but what comes out the other end is necessarily going to be muddled, so much so that it's hard to say what doctrine inspired it. Jesse, were you thinking of some specific policy?

A particular religious doctrine? I'm not a religious scholar, so it would be folly for me to pretend to answer that. But first of all, how do you separate policy towards Israel from policy towards the Muslim world (a flawed concept itself) in general? Also, isn't part of the rhetoric that the the spread of democracy, and in turn the war on terror, is part of America's god-given mission? That's some chosen people bullshit if I ever did hear it. And the question of quantifying sanity is something that always makes me hesitate, regardless of the context (which is not to say I think something like schizophrenia doesn't really exist).

I don't disagree for a second that these are incredibly hard things to prove on any particular scale, but that's not to say it can't be done. One logical case to make to move towards a position of pure politics seems to me to be that politicians say what they feel is expedient with regard to voters- so it's what's behind the rhetoric that is REALLY what to look at. But two things: one, exactly the point my professor was making is that it's not always easy to say what's on the surface and what is underlying. Just like you said, a muddle.
Two, and in my opinion more importantly- it seems to me that with regard to pure politics you need to then make a historical case for yourself. At which point how do you draw lines to say where history begins? Capitalism is not a-religious, I don't think. To be in a position to 'separate' politics from religion is, I think, to be historically in a position of power, because religion has almost always been somehow tied into the struggle for power- here I could be wrong, but I don't mind if people tear it apart, it's interesting to me. The thing is, it's not some pure, mystical religious conviction that I'm arguing for- it's the often-indistinguishable mingling of politics and religious belief that I'm getting at.

So to bring it back to the movie- I don't think it should EQUATE religion in the US, or the West, and religion in the Muslim world. I just think it needs to be a part of the story on both sides.

> I can’t think of any other action or policy that isn’t capitalist or “pro-democracy” motivated.

Last I heard, the Bush administration's policy on funding overseas NGOs was essentially "we don't give money to people who even mention abortion." It's not a major part of US policy, but I don't think we can attribute an economic motive to it.

I have to see Syriana again in order to even have a chance of understanding it (I think the flu had already set in). But it seems to me that the movie was specifically trying to tell us that the people who make these decisions are not ideologically motivated.

Nice! Particulars!

Oh, sorry for all this posting, but one more thing- while I think Gaghan is a really really smart dude, his blog post started out really interesting only to turn a bit trite. Because I believe in integrity where he believes anyone can be bought, and I believe in a massively complex problem (solvable, yes, because I BELIEVE it can be solved, but massively complex) where he believes in 'springing forth.'

I take it back. The NGO funding is most definitely a religious-inspired foreign policy. But it's still nothing like, say, Iran's refusal to even recognize israel and to call for the Israelis to be pushed into the sea (or relocated to europe).

As for capitalism being religious or not, well adam smith's giant hand was ostensibly connected to some giant body up there, but other than that I don't think there's a notion of a god-given scripture with arbitrary rules being followed, which is what i mean by religion influencing policy. So I'd say it's more or less a-religious, but not totally. I think we agree on US policy being a muddle w/r/t religious politics. Iran on the other hand is pretty clearly religious, and that's pretty borne out by the movie.

aids. africa. abstinence. word.

Alright, i don't know if anyone cares about this anymore, but- while I in no way want to mount a defense of Ayatollah Khomenei, how could you PROVE that he BELIEVES in the teachings of the Koran any more than Bush actually BELIEVES in the teachings of the Bible? On a functional level, it's still about power, so I don't know how to really quantify a difference or, more importantly, how you would define rationality versus irrationality in this case. In a lot of ways it comes back to an argument that has fallen by the wayside lately, about moral equivalency. Have you ever, in losing a game, sorta spun out of control and started making moves that ultimately would only serve to hasten your defeat? I'm pretty sure I have.