The State of the Union according to Bush

This was just too good not to post:


This guy is just delusional. It's sad and hilarious at the same time.

He really has turned into Baghdad Bob.

In Memoriam

I should have posted this earlier.

Last week, only seven days before the sudden death of Heath Ledger, we had lost another promising and very young actor to addiction and possibly depression, Brad Renfro (1982-2008).

I remember seeing him for the first time on film when he played the part of a young kid who witnesses a murder in The Client, alongside big marquee names like Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Mary-Louise Parker, and Anthony LaPaglia, and stealing every scene he was in.

Afterwards, I saw him in three other movies, Sleepers, Apt Pupil, and Bully, all very good films, and he was excellent in all of them.

The characters he played were often troubled individuals, so perhaps his own tribulations and inner demons helped him in tackling them.

One thing is certain, he was very talented and would most certainly have created many more indelible characters in the years to come.

He was only 25. His sudden and unexpected passing brings to memory that of River Phoenix, another promising and talented young actor gone too soon.

He'll be missed.

Juno

This is a very nice comedy from a writer I just discovered as the latest columnist in the pages of Entertainment Weekly magazine, Diablo Cody (odd name for a woman...)

The story is very simple: teenage girl and boy have sex, girl gets pregnant, decides to have the baby and put him/her up for adoption.

The execution is simple and carried out with a light touch by Jason Reitman, the director of Thank You for Smoking, another very good satire of our society that I just recently watched (and haven't posted about yet, oops...)

We've seen this type of story before, and often the mother to be ends up changing her mind and keeping her baby, a rallying cry for the anti-abortionists, so I was glad to see that in the end the baby is indeed given up and our heroine goes back to her teenage life, a little changed by the experience maybe, but still a young girl at heart.

My fear was precisely that Juno would end up changing her mind and wanting to keep her baby, which, at her young age, would be, in my opinion, the wrong choice.

The screenplay felt fresh and brisk, almost bubbly, and was very skilled at treating such a controversial topic in a very mature and at the same time innocent and very matter of fact way.

The actors are all really good, starting with the very promising Ellen Page, in the role of Juno, and Michael Cera, who turned out to be a pleasant surprise for me, since I feared that all the recent buzz about him was overrated.

In the supporting roles of Juno's parents, Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons are excellent, while I was left a little cold by Jennifer Garner, who still has to prove to me that she's a good actress, and Jason Bateman. Although maybe the coldness was intentional, given the plot developments...

The soundtrack deserves a mention too, since the songs are both cheerful and gloomy and feel very intimate. Quite a feat to pull off.

Anyway, a good comedy that has just raked in four Academy Award nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actress and Writer), besides winning a bunch of other awards along the way.

Grade: 8.5

In Memoriam

Heath Ledger (1979-2008) was found dead yesterday afternoon in a Manhattan apartment. The cause of death or the circumstances are still unknown.

Heath was a great actor, truly talented, and he'll be sorely missed by the artistic community. He was so young, and still, had already amassed an impressive resume.

Principal photography has just wrapped on the next installment in the Batman series, The Dark Knight, in which Heath played the Joker, a role brilliantly played by Jack Nicholson in the original Batman movie from 1989.

He will, however, forever be remembered for playing Ennis Del Mar in the achingly beautiful Brokeback Mountain, which won him many accolades, among which his first and only Academy Award Nomination.

Following is a beautiful montage of scenes from Brokeback Mountain.

How I wish...

... that Al Gore had been allowed to challenge the Florida vote back in 2000... How much better off we'd all have been if it had been him in the White House for all these years instead of that couple of douchebags no one will ever be able to tell.

But this video clearly shows how gays and lesbians (and all those who are pro-civil rights really) would have gained a lot from having him as #43:



What he says is so true and profound, it almost hurts to think he was denied the right to be President.

Less then a year!

Wow!! I just took this snapshot of my blog's little gadget whose only purpose is to remind me that the reign of terror of the WORST president of the United States ever is less then a year from being over.


Yes!! A year from now there will only be the ghosts of Bush and Cheney in the White House, and hopefully the new occupants will work hard to restore America's image at home and abroad.

Gays and Lesbians as role models

A new research has revealed that lesbian couples are emotionally closer than gay couples and gay couples are emotionally closer than heterosexual couples:

Psychologist and researcher Robert-Jay Green of the Rockway Institute and of Alliant International University in San Diego says the studies of lesbian and gay couples found that the homosexual couples had flexibility about gender roles and an equal division of parenting and household tasks.

In a series of studies Green conducted with Michael Bettinger and Ellis Zacks, lesbian couples were found to be emotionally closer than gay male couples who, in turn, were found to be emotionally closer than heterosexual married couples.

"It all comes down to greater equality in the relationship," Green said in a statement. "Research shows that lesbian and gay couples have a head start in escaping the traditional gender role divisions that make for power imbalances and dissatisfaction in many heterosexual relationships."

Heterosexual couples could learn from gays couples about sharing housework and childcare, using softer communication in conflict and having more nurturing behaviors toward one another and their children, the researchers conclude.

How is the religious right going to spin this one now?

Ah, yes, they'll just ignore it.

Earthshine

This picture, from Yahoo! is so cool. The caption:

One day past New, an early Waxing Crescent Moon is seen just after sunset, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2008 from Tyler, Texas. The 'nightside' of the Moon is seen lit by light reflected from the day time side of the Earth and is known as 'Earthshine'.

Children of Men

A very good movie by Alfonso Cuarón about a time in the near future when women cannot have babies anymore, a phenomenon stated but never really explained.

(SPOILER TAG) Given the fact that the population cannot grow anymore, instead of celebrating the oldest living individual, like people do now, the opposite becomes true, and the youngest living person is an international superstar, which interestingly turns the tables on us.

Terrorism is also widespread and countries, especially the UK, have started closing off their borders and rounding up immigrants to insulate themselves from potential threats.

It's in this police-state and suspicious environment that a young woman finds herself pregnant and looks for the best way and place to have her baby and not see it snatched away by the authorities for some propagandistic reason.

Clive Owen stars as the former activist who gets sucked back in the resistance by his ex-wife, an always good Julianne Moore, in order to help the pregnant woman. He succeeds at the task, but only by paying the highest price.

Owen is very good in a role that suits his brooding and masculine appearance, as is Clare-Hope Ashitey as his traveling companion. The movie works very well thanks to a constant background tension that never really lets go and always keeps the momentum going.

Cuarón is great at casting a very dark light on our future, both through the script and with the wonderful photography. The viewer is always engaged, both by the action sequences and by the characters, who are well fleshed out, never boring or stupid, and always interesting.

This is a modern and mature movie that makes you reflect on our future, makes you care about these people, and ultimately makes you hold out hope for them as well as for us.

A very good film, don't miss it.

Grade: 9

The perils of space

This article talks about a black hole that's blasting its super charged gamma rays towards a neighboring galaxy, populated by stars and planets that will surely suffer terribly from the influx of lethal radiations:

A black hole in a "death star galaxy" blasting a neighboring galaxy with a deadly jet of radiation and energy.
[...]
The telescope images show the bully galaxy shooting a stream of deadly radiation particles into the lower section of the other galaxy, which is about one-tenth its size. Both are about 8.2 billion trillion miles from here, orbiting around each other.
[...]
Tens of millions of stars, including those with orbiting planets, are likely in the path of the deadly jet, said study co-author Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.

If Earth were in the way -- and it's not -- the high-energy particles and radiation of the jet would in a matter of months strip away the planet's protective ozone layer and compress the protective magnetosphere, said Evans. That would then allow the sun and the jet itself to bombard the planet with high-energy particles.

And what would that do life on the planet?

"Decompose it," Tyson said.

"Sterilize it," Evans piped in.

This struck me because black holes, allegedly, form all the time, whenever a star massive enough implodes, forms a singularity, and then starts sucking in all the matter around it, feeding on it and growing in size and potency.

This means that at any moment, somewhere in space, a black hole might form and start spewing its deadly radiations towards the Milky Way galaxy, and if Earth were in that path, we'd be toast.

There is a silver lining, although maybe not for the potential life forms currently getting sterilized and decomposing under the influence of those gamma rays:

The good news is that eventually an area of hot gas that gets hit and compressed by this mysterious jet -- astronomers are still baffled by what's in it and how it works -- over millions and billions of years can form stars, Tyson said.

Losing the Amazon

This article is old, but the news reported is still more than valid and worthy of attention.

We will soon lose most of the Amazon due to global warming:

Climate change could speed up the large-scale destruction of the Amazon rainforest and bring the "point of no return" much closer than previously thought, conservationists warned today.

Almost 60% of the region's forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation, according to a report published today by WWF.
[...]
Destroying almost 60% of tropical rainforest by 2030 would do away with one of the key stabilisers of the global climate system, it warned.
[...]
The report's author, Dan Nepstead, senior scientist at the Woods Hole research centre in Massachusetts, said: "The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it's a massive store of carbon."

The reasons to save the Amazon seem endless, since this ancient forest influences the weather far beyond its confines, but we still do out best to destroy it it seems.

What our future looks like without the Amazon, apparently, only time will tell, and it won't take too long to find out.