"What [James] Cameron did was not inspiration, it was extraction. He took the unique biometric facial features of a 14-year-old indigenous girl..."

"... ran them through an industrial production process, and generated billions of dollars in profit without ever once asking her permission."

Said the lawyer for Q’orianka Kilcher, quoted in "James Cameron stole my face, actress claims/Q’orianka Kilcher, who is of indigenous Peruvian descent, is suing the director, alleging that he and Disney violated her rights for the blockbuster franchise" (London Times).

Kilcher claimed that Cameron had told her at an event in 2010, one year after Avatar’s release: “I’ve admired your activism work in the Amazon.” She said he later gifted her a signed one-off sketch of the Avatar character with a handwritten note that read: “Your beauty was my early inspiration for Neytiri. Too bad you were shooting another movie. Next time.”

"Avatar" is the highest-grossing movie of all time, so you can see how Kilcher must feel that she's owed something or that Cameron will be persuaded to give her more than that sketch and the compliment. That "Too bad/Next time" must hurt her! And it must hurt him now to be accused of making a movie "that presented itself as sympathetic to indigenous struggles, all while silently exploiting a real indigenous youth behind the scenes."

The law in question is California’s right of publicity law. Here's the text.

I'm giving this my "lawsuits I hope will fail" tag, but I could be talked out of it. 

"Facing down this digital firehose of – pardon the Silicon Valleyese – 'content,' how does Hollywood now decide what merits a cinema release?"

"Facing down this digital firehose of – pardon the Silicon Valleyese – 'content,' how does Hollywood now decide what merits a cinema release? What executives are looking for – at least at Sony, according to one of its partner producers I spoke with recently – is 'theatricality.' By that term, the company means films with 'the urgency to get people to leave the comfort of their homes, he says. Working out what urgency – or 'theatrical intent,' to use the marketing lingo – means is the current Hollywood obsession. Tom Cruise, for instance, interprets urgency literally – banking on personal peril in the form of old-fashioned, non-CGI stunt work to pack in the punters. It worked for 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.... His proselytisation of real thrills in real cinemas is one way of defining theatricality – though the danger is the approach relies only on fading muscle memory of blockbusters past...."

I'm reading "All hail Avatar! How event movies are trying to bring back the box office blockbuster/Ahead of James Cameron’s latest Avatar sequel hitting the big screen, we look at how studios aim for ‘theatricality’ to get streaming film fans from sofa to cinema" (The Guardian). 

From the depth of my memory came a question that sounds like an entry for a new Dictionary of Received Ideas: Who was that French theorist who said theater must be spectacle? I believe he died putting on his shoes.

Such raw thoughts are — I think — good AI prompts. I immediately had the name: Antonin Artaud. Here's his Wikipedia article. He wrote a manifesto about what he called the Theatre of Cruelty. Here's a Grok-made chart to help you compare him to the Hollywood execs:

"On Avatar Forums, he found others who felt trapped, who yearned for a chance to start over on Pandora or dreamed of leading a Na’vi lifestyle here on earth...."

"He started reading philosophy. He devoted more time to communing with nature. 'I would go out into the woods and spend time there hiking,' he says. '"Avatar' made me feel like I could sit out in a forest and just be.'... Though 'Avatar' altered the course of his whole life — arguably more than even James Cameron’s — he doesn’t really think there’s anything that special about the movie. It was just the thing that happened to cross his path at the moment when he was already searching.... The story of 'Avatar,' however hacky it may be, still suggests that humanity can save itself in the face of rapacious profiteering. This is something we have a moral imperative to keep believing....."

Writes Jamie Lauren Keiles in "'Avatar' and the Mystery of the Vanishing Blockbuster/It was the highest-grossing film in history, but for years it was remembered mainly for having been forgotten. Why?" (NYT).

I've never seen "Avatar," but I am a huge fan of the HBO show "How to With John Wilson," and I feel satisfied — and more — with his plot summary:

"One family. One room. Four screens. Four realities, basically."

"While it may look like some domestic version of 'The Matrix' — families sharing a common space, but plugged into entirely separate planes of existence through technology — a scene like this has become an increasingly familiar evening ritual. As a result, the American living room in 2011 can often seem less like an oasis for shared activity, even if that just means watching television together, than an entangled intersection of data traffic — everyone huddled in a cyber-cocoon."

It's a NYT culture article.

Is there a problem here? If a family of 4 were sitting around together reading books, it would seem better than if they were all watching the same show on TV. And yet, with books, you wouldn't be able to IM stuff to each other.

With either books or computers, if you're with other people, you can easily read something out loud to the people in the room and start a conversation. My grandfather used to do that with the newspaper, and I've come to think of it as a kind of proto-blogging.

These days, if I'm reading something and finding it interesting, I might blog it to the whole world and try to start a conversation on line, but we still interact in real space. Meade might read something out loud to me, and that might lead to a long conversation, or it might get one of my all-too-typical responses: 1. "IM me the link," 2. "I already blogged that." 3. "I'm blogging that right now."

Tina Brown entices Robin Givhan...

... to leave the Washington Post for the new Newsweek. What a coup!

Ms. Givhan spent 15 years at The Post, most notably as fashion editor, the job that earned her a Pulitzer in 2006 for criticism....

Her writing was famously provocative and punchy. She once described Vice President Dick Cheney’s outfit at a solemn Auschwitz memorial as “the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.”

(Link added. Picture of Cheney in his embarrassing parka at the link.)

In a column about  Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, Ms. Givhan wrote about the images of sex and power that Ms. Rice’s  high boots and fitted dresses conveyed. “Rice looked as though she was prepared to talk tough, knock heads and do a freeze-frame ‘Matrix’ jump kick if necessary,” wrote Ms. Givhan.

(Link added. Pic of Condi at the link. Hey, let's see the new Secretary of State try that.)

When First Lady Michelle Obama’s sleek attire turned heads at the 2009 Inauguration, Ms. Givhan declared “the era of first lady-as-rectangle had ended.”

(Link added. With pic — showing that the era of first lady-as-Glinda had seemingly begun.)

ADDED: Above are the examples of Givhan's writing that the NYT selected. Law folk are most interested in this one about John Roberts — on the occasion of George Bush announcing his nomination to the Supreme Court. Givhan took a shot at Roberts's wife and children —  "groomed and glossy in pastel hues -- like a trio of Easter eggs, a handful of Jelly Bellies, three little Necco wafers."

There was tow-headed Jack -- having freed himself from the controlling grip of his mother -- enjoying a moment in the spotlight dressed in a seersucker suit with short pants and saddle shoes. His sister, Josie, was half-hidden behind her mother's skirt. Her blond pageboy glistened. And she was wearing a yellow dress with a crisp white collar, lace-trimmed anklets and black patent-leather Mary Janes.

(Who among us did a double take? Two cute blond children with a boyish-looking father getting ready to take the lectern -- Jack Edwards? Emma Claire? Is that you? Are all little boys now named Jack?)

The wife wore a strawberry-pink tweed suit with taupe pumps and pearls, which alone would not have been particularly remarkable, but alongside the nostalgic costuming of the children, the overall effect was of self-consciously crafted perfection. The children, of course, are innocents. They are dressed by their parents. And through their clothes choices, the parents have created the kind of honeyed faultlessness that jams mailboxes every December when personalized Christmas cards arrive bringing greetings "to you and yours" from the Blake family or the Joneses. Everyone looks freshly scrubbed and adorable, just like they have stepped from a Currier & Ives landscape.

Yeah, that was mean — but deliciously so. (Mmmm.... Necco wafers.)

Yeah, it was political. Note that Cheney was underdressed, the Robertses were overdressed, and First Lady Michelle Obama was just right.

I hope that, teamed with Tina, Robin gets even meaner and more political. I love the fashion-politics-culture genre, and I want to see Givhan do her thing. And stop fawning over Michelle Obama!

Shall we watch the Oscars together?

I don't know if I can do my usual live-blogging, but I will try to watch, and I'll put numbered comments up if I think of anything amusing. The main point of this post is to give you a place to comment if you're so inclined.

1. Loved Penelope Cruz's red dress.

2. Have you noticed how many of the men are chewing gum? Morgan Freeman, etc.

3. Sarah Jessica Parker is chewing gum. She's 44 and she looks 60, but she's sweet and enthused about the Chanel column of gold satin. Meanwhile, no one wants to talk to Matthew Broderick, who's gone gray and portly.

4. "I like seeing all my friends cleaned up and looking good" — Meryl Streep on what she likes best about the Oscars.

5. Yikes. This production number is more painful than the crap they make "American Idol" contestants do on elimination night. (Elimination... crap... hmmm....) Men in suits singing, surrounded by scantily clad showgirls waving feather fans... what is this, 1962? So retro. So pre-women's movement. Oh, phew, it's over. Now, the talking. Yeeze. Steve Martin looks like Spencer Tracy in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" ... i.e., just before he died.

6. Christopher Plummer looks way better indoors. Somehow the lighting bestows an artificial tan. Outdoors, he looked diseased.

7. Ah! Penelope Cruz again, in that dress. Lovely! She was last year's Best Supporting Actress, so she's giving the Best Supporting Actor award.  Dialogue chez Meadhouse: "Is that Robert Duvall?" "No, Woody Harrelson."... "Everyone knows Christoph Waltz is going to win." And he does. "Oscar and Penelope. That's an uber-bingo."

8. So the first predictable thing has happened. Will all the other predictable things happen to?

9. Sandra Bullock is "a member of the NRA" and "always packing"... according to the clip show of "The Blind Side."

10. Meadhouse dialogue: "IPad ad. Oh, man! Ohhhhhh!" "Still want one?" "Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh."

8a. "Up" wins animated pic. Predicatably.

8b. "The Hurt Locker" wins screenplay, not "Inglourious Basterds." That's not what was predicted, right? I wanted "A Serious Man." The acceptance speech is anti-Iraq-war, btw.

11. Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick introduce a tribute to John Hughes (who died in the past year). "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." Beautifully done. Genuinely touching. That made the argument that pop culture is, in fact, deep.

8c. "Precious" for adapted screenplay.

8d. Best Supporting Actress, Mo'Nique. Predicted. But she says something interesting and unexpected: "It can be about the performance, and not the politics."

8e. Art Direction, "Avatar."

12. The tribute to horror movies ends with a cut to Quentin Tarantino loving it all. Nice. As for the clip show, I think it was argued that the 2 greatest horror flicks of all time are "Psycho" and "The Shining"... with music from "Psycho."

13. Sound editing... does anyone care? Did I mention costumes earlier? No. Then, mindcrushingly, sound mixing, a separate award. "Hurt Locker" with its amorphous, ponderous music, wins both. [NEXT MORNING CLARIFICATION: I know this award isn't about the music. I'm just complaining about the theme music the band played for this movie.]

8f. "Avatar" wins Visual Effects. Whoever this guy is who accepts the award says the movie is a film about "learning to see the world in new ways" and that sets me off cursing incoherently. 

14. In Memoriam, with James Taylor singing "In My Life." They gave Karl Malden the final spot, and that was not predicted. People thought it would be either Patrick Swayze (who was put first) or Natasha Richardson (who was tucked in the middle). Only one choked me up, Brittany Murphy. She was so young. Malden was 97. Nothing to be sad about. It's not, then, what's saddest. It's a tribute to life. "In My Life," not in my death.

15. I'm recording this with my DVR and pausing, then fast-forwarding. Otherwise it would be intolerable. Right now there's a dance routine (that's supposed to showcase the scores). It's ghastly. I watched a second, sped ahead, watched a second, cursed, paused, and am now waiting for enough time to pass for more fast-forwarding. Why must they waste our time with this musical crap?

16. I love film documentaries, but I don't care about any of these nominees. What the hell happened to this category?

17. "The White Ribbon" doesn't win best foreign film. I was all ready to do an "8g" entry. Wow. Thrilling. Hell. Get me out of here.

18. Wait. A good joke! "I want to thank the Academy for not considering Na'vi a foreign language."

8g. Come on, give Jeff Bridges the Best Actor award and get me out of here. Oh! The blather, praising each of the nominees. There's an insipid reference to "courage." I scream. Ah, finally, Kate Winslet comes out, in a dress made of steel — or fabric that looks like it — and she gives the award, of course, to Jeff Bridges. He whoops. He looks heavenward and addresses his parents. He says "groovy." He's going on too long. I groan. Meade says "He's The Dude."

8h. Another predictable one: Sandra Bullock gets Best Actress. She's wearing bright red lipstick and a pretty dress, beaded and sparkling. She rattles off a prepared speech. She chokes up and cries appropriately when she gets to the part about not thanking her mother.

19. "Oh, no!" "Why? Why?!" — another Meadhouse dialogue... as Barbra Streisand takes the stage. She's giving the Best Director award (for some reason). I guess this one isn't predictable, other than that it's one of 2, James Cameron or Kathryn Bigelow. "Well, the time has come," Barbra says, meaning that for the first time, a woman has won Best Director. It's Kathryn Bigelow.

20. The band plays her off the stage with "I Am Woman." Gag.

21. Tom Hanks does his part to nail the time. With 2 minutes left to go to the top of the hour, he blurts out "The Hurt Locker."

22. For all this honoring of "The Hurt Locker," did anyone say anything valuable and worthy about the war in Iraq? Bigelow praised the troops and wished for their safe return, but that's not what I mean. There's a lot of talk about the bravery of the filmmakers making the film. There was never anything said in support of the fighting in Iraq, but, to be fair, there was never any opposition to it expressed. In fact, I don't think there were any political statements tonight at all, unless you count Mo'nique's anti-political statement: "It can be about the performance, and not the politics." So: modesty. It's film art. Art, not politics.

MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: Wow. I did not enjoy that show at all. Surely, nothing made me want to go see a movie — or even look for it to come up on my cable Video on Demand. The actresses with their hard, frozen faces and their sinewy bodies encased in lavishly ruffled dresses showed that movies are no longer a source of fresh inspiration about beauty, femininity and womanhood. And frankly, I'm not sure what Mo'nique meant by "It can be about the performance, and not the politics." Maybe she just meant that she totally deserved the award on merit, and there were no "political" considerations in the sense of how career and business interests weigh into people's decisions. At the time, I thought that she meant that voters were able to appreciate the artistic value of the movie "Precious" instead of rejecting it because it isn't politically correct to depict black people as lowlifes. That was the only memorable thing that anyone said last night, and it's just a Rorschach test.

Did they really pull Sacha Baron Cohen skit from the Oscars just because it might irk James Cameron?

"... Baron Cohen planned to appear onstage as a blue-skinned, female Na’vi, with [Ben] Stiller translating 'her' interplanetary speech. As the skit went on, though, it would become clear that Stiller wasn’t translating properly, because Cohen would grow ever more upset. At its climax, an infuriated Baron Cohen would pull open 'her' evening gown to reveal that s/he was pregnant, knocked up with Cameron’s love child, and would go on to confront her baby daddy as if s/he were on Jerry Springer."

Maybe the problem was just that it's bad — or not good enough to justify lowering the taste level. We (might) laugh at the Jerry Springer show, but the Oscars are immensely glamorous, and crudeness is out of place. Out of place can generate humor, but who should be permitted to appropriate the glamour for comic effect and what are the costs? Isn't it mostly women who enjoy the Oscars? Quite aside from how James Cameron will feel, how will the show's natural audience feel?

But let me go one step further. Here's my theory: The Hollywood elite want the Democrats health care bill to make it through, and one stumbling block is abortion. The producers have therefore deemed this not to be a good time to highlight and laugh about undesired pregnancy. The unwanted unborn child is an overwhelmingly serious matter for people who care about the right to life. Don't antagonize them with edgy, blatant material. Not now.

The producer of "The Hurt Locker" is banned from the Oscars for emailing members to disparage "Avatar."

Nicolas Chartier broke the rules. He might win an Oscar — it's the producer of the Best Picture who gets the statuette — but he won't be able to take the stage to proclaim himself the King of the World or whatever the hell he might like to do.

A Drudgtaposition about streetfighting and a disquisition about "Disney Eyes."

Let's analyze Drudge's photos and headline juxtaposition for the Oscars:

I think he thinks it's funny to picture these 4 characters in a street fight. I'm saying 4, because I'm not counting the secondary figures in the bottom photographs, especially that female "Avatar" character, whom we don't enjoy picturing in a street fight, for reasons hilariously well-stated here:



(More of that sort of movie analysis at the RedLetterMedia YouTube page.)

"Avatar"...

... it might kill you.

Live-blogging the Golden Globes.

1. Oh, why not? Ricky Gervais is here, hosting, making jokes about the tininess of his penis and how it looks big in his small hands where it usually is. That might sound funnier if it weren't 7 pm (Central Time) on network TV. Then, here's Nicole Kidman looking great with red hair and a light pink dress featuring prominent tiny nipples. She reminds us about Haiti, then hands out the best supporting actress award to Mo'nique, who is overdraped in gold satin and fabulously made up with ultralong eyelashes. Mo'nique loves God and all the other actors in her movie "Precious."

2. Most of the women are wearing asymmetrical dresses, and Julianna Margulies, who won the TV actress award, looked like she got confused getting into the straps of hers. Michael C. Hall, who won the TV actor award, has on a wool stocking cap for some reason. As a tribute to victims of the Haitian earthquake? I don't know. [ADDED: I'm told Hall has cancer. I'm sorry.]

3. The set is orange. I'm tired of looking at orange. Is it supposed to be "golden"? Hey, suddenly: Cher! She looks statuesque and hourglassy. It's the song award. Paul McCartney is nominated and there, but he doesn't win.

4. Meryl Streep wins best [comedy/musical] actress for "Julie and Julia." She's shrouded in a big black dress clamped on with a thick buckled belt. But she has one naked shoulder left out of the shroud, so she's on the asymmetry kick with everyone else. She pretends she didn't remember what she wanted to say and stammers her way into a tribute to her mother and a mini-breakdown over all the suffering in the world.

5. Drew Barrymore gets a TV actress award for "Grey Gardens." She's wearing the best outfit for the day, but it's quite silly, covered in crystal pimples with a glitter hedgehog at one shoulder and the opposite hip.

6. Samuel L. Jackson introduces "a real-life movie star" — Sophia Loren. She's got a beautiful symmetrical dress. It's black, outlining her famous breasts and nipping in at her should-be-equally-famous waist, and it has sheer sleeves that are shaded at the shoulders with a sprinkling of black beads for an ombre effect. She gives the foreign film award to "The White Ribbon."

7. "Mad Man" is the best TV show. The best TV actress is Chloe Sevigny (for "Big Love"). Cool. I like her. She's wearing an insane widely-ruffled mauve dress and she's gasping about ripping it, not that she ripped it in any kind of an interesting way.

8. Halle Berry looks sharp and sleek in a tight black dress with little cap sleeves and a giant plunge down the chest. Her hair is crisply modern too — short and sticking up on top. She gives the supporting movie actor award to Christoph Waltz, who was so wonderful as the Nazi in "Inglourious Basterds."

9. "Marty eats, drinks, and sleeps film. I hear there are videos on the internet of Marty having sex with film." It's Robert DeNiro, talking about Martin Scorsese, who's getting one of these lifetime awards. Cool clip show, reminding me, among other things, of how much I love...  "After Hours"... and "King of Comedy"....

10. Oh, they love Jodie Foster. She's wearing a plain black dress, that makes it's nod to asymmetry with a slit up the left leg. She's not giving an award, just presenting one of the films. Gervais, sipping from that beer he's got at the lectern: "I like a drink as much as the next man... unless the next man... is Mel Gibson." Here's Gibson, acting drunk, for fun... supposedly. The category is director, and the award goes to ... suspense... James Cameron. He doesn't say "I'm the king of  the world." He tells us he's got to "pee something fierce."

11. The best TV show is "Glee." That's nice, I guess. "This is for everybody who got a wedgie in high school."

12. Ah, we're almost done. It's the best comedy/musical award. "The Hangover." Mike Tyson is involved. Strange!

13. Arnold Schwarzenegger! The actor. It's as if that whole thing about him being governor was just some crazy dream. He presents "Avatar," which looks really annoying. Then Mickey Rourke comes out — in a cowboy hat — to do the drama actress award. It's Mickey because he won best actor last year, not because he's the height of Hollywood glamour, which he's not. The winner is Sandra Bullock, and Mickey looks really disappointed. Sandra is wearing a very filmy, very purple dress.

14. Sally Hutton announces the drama actor award. She's wearing a nutty short dress. It's Robert Downey Jr.! I've always loved him. He's got a whole standup routine going. He's not going to thank anyone... but he does. "Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms." [ADDED: Oops. That was the comedy/musical actor. Hmm. Sherlock Holmes is comedy? Or was there music?]

15. The best drama actor is actually Jeff Bridges. The presenter was the lovely Kate Winslet, who's wearing a simple black dress with one thick vertical strap on the right side. Asymmetry. Jeff gets a standing O. Why? Because he's The Dude? "You're really screwing up my 'under appreciated' status," he says.

16. The best drama movie — presented by Julia Roberts, who thought it was cute to tell her kids to go to bed — is "Avatar." James Cameron warns us that now he has peed, so he's going to blabber. He loves his job. We have the best job. "Give it up for yourselves." He says that twice. Because "that's the most amazing thing." Jeesh. "'Avatar' asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other, and us to the earth."

17. And us to bed!

"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed."

"Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.'"

***

"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning... It just seems so ... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep ... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."

***

When I was younger — I'm 59, starting today — movies had a very strong effect on me, but it wasn't that it turned the world disappointingly gray. When I walked out into the light after a great movie, my experience was that things seemed sharpened, intensified, and refreshed. The real world felt newly real. It was more in color — the opposite of depression.

Is it something about the movies that has changed? Is our relationship to film different now? Are young people today different from the way we were then? Maybe nothing has changed, and there were post-film depressives then as now.

How is that 3-D working out for you?

If you've seen "Avatar," please comment on whether the 3-D effects are working properly for you. I haven't seen it, but my 26-year-old son Chris has seen it (in the IMAX version). He iChats:

just trying to look at the 3d and get it to look right was pretty much the entire experience of it...

it never reaches the point of looking like reality, and looks less real than 2d...

the main thing is, nothing in the extreme foreground ever looked in focus...

the only way things ever looked like they popped out of the screen would be if i focused on something that seemed to be in the middle ground, and things could pop out that i wasn't looking directly at...

i don't think 3d ever looks like the true 3-dimensions of the real world, i think at best it looks like a very big hologram...

"God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, 'Enough.'"

Said Prince, as told by Claire Hoffman in The New Yorker:

Prince padded into the kitchen, a small fifty-year-old man in yoga pants and a big sweater, wearing platform flip-flops over white socks, like a geisha....

Limping slightly, Prince set off on a walk around his new bachelor pad. Glass doors opened onto acres of back yard, and a hot tub bubbled in the sunlight. “I have a lot of parties,” he explained....

Seven years ago, he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He said that he had moved to L.A. so that he could understand the hearts and minds of the music moguls. “I wanted to be around people, connected to people, for work,” he said. “You know, it’s all about religion. That’s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.”

Prince had his change of faith, he said, after a two-year-long debate with a musician friend, Larry Graham. “I don’t see it really as a conversion,” he said. “More, you know, it’s a realization. It’s like Morpheus and Neo in ‘The Matrix.’ ” He attends meetings at a local Kingdom Hall, and, like his fellow-witnesses, he leaves his gated community from time to time to knock on doors and proselytize. “Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they’re really cool about it,” he said....

When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”

Back when Prince was much more popular, his music powerfully enticed us into what he now considers sin. If God is keeping score, Prince should be worried. I think he'd need to go door to door for millions of years to undo all that damage (if damage it is).

Via Gawker, which notes:

If Prince wants to get attention for his views, airing them amid nationwide demonstrations against the passage of a California anti-gay-marriage initiative will probably do the trick. What that does for the "celibate" musician's sales and popularity is another matter.

Celibate, eh?

Tonight, that mood of isolation permeates Prince's luxurious 30,000-square-foot Tuscan-style villa, perched high in a gated Beverly Hills enclave. The royal one, clad in a filmy white sweater over a black shirt and slacks with (shocker!) flip-flops, lives solo in the nine-bedroom home, where a cook is upstairs preparing food for a post-midnight gathering with friends and bandmates.

"I'm single, celibate and sexy," he says with a laugh. "I feel free."

No one promoted sex more than Prince, and now he's celibate. That's rich.

There's lots to talk about here, but don't overlook the assertion that the music moguls of L.A. "all have the same religion." I hope that means that commerce is a religion for business folk.

UPDATE: Prince retracts!

What movies have you walked out on?

This is a topic that came up in the comments thread here. Rather than add my own contribution to what was — let's be honest — a thread hijack, I'm starting a new thread.

For reasons I can no longer recall, I walked out on the 1968 movie "Petulia." Trailer:



The walk-out took place circa 1970, and I just wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing. I can't remember why. Oddly, I stopped walking out on movies, so for many years, this was the only movie I'd ever walked out on. I was giving everything a chance, or maybe I felt like I was wasting money if I didn't consume the whole bad/boring/pointless thing. And I must have averaged a movie a week for the next 30 years.

Then in 1998, I went to see "Antz" — a computer-animated movie voiced by Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, and others. The giant closeups of the ant faces were literally making me ill — even angry. I walked out, and I have never viewed another computer-animated movie, even on TV. Channel-surfing, I've occasionally glanced at a few minutes of some highly praised thing like "Finding Nemo" or "Shrek," but it has only reconfirmed my visceral hatred of the medium (which extends to live-actor movies with a lot of CGI).

The other movie I walked out on was Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam." This was 1 year after I walked out on "Antz." I was watching an opening sequence with a couple of ordinary people in a car, and I knew the story was that they were going to be murdered. I didn't want to sit there and watch. I'd paid good money to watch a movie I thought was going to be good and to my taste, but I suddenly felt that I didn't want to be subjected to it, and without wasting any time thinking about it — I had to decide quickly or I'd see the murder — I got right up and left.

I kept going to movies in 1999, which turned out to be one of my all-time favorite years: "The Matrix," "Being John Malkovich," "Fight Club," "Man on the Moon," "Election." I thought we were entering a golden age. But the next year seemed entirely different to me. Was CGI leaking into everything, making me sick? That was the year of "Gladiator" and "The Perfect Storm" (which I avoided). I saw some things that were praised that I hated, like "Traffic" — which I didn't walk out on. After that, I became a lot more selective, and I haven't had to walk out on things. In fact, I force myself to go through with the experience once I've selected a movie. For example, this past year, I saw "Into the Wild" and "Across the Universe." (I'm a sucker, apparently, for titles that begin with a preposition and end with "the [something vast].") With both of them, I had to struggle not to give in to my urge to escape, and there were some good things I would have missed if I'd indulged my ever-present desire for flight.

What have you walked out on? When did you conquer a strong urge to flee and did you regret your submission? Oh, I'm only talking about movies, you know. Unless you want to hijack this thread too.

What if we had to choose a President based on knowledge of pop culture?

What Stephen Bainbridge would want:

• Knows which wine to match with the foie gras-stuffed quail being served at a state dinner
• Won't wink at the Queen
• Doesn't hunt, fish, or go with girls who do
• Smokes cigars
• Is sometimes accused of having a metrosexual streak
• Only drinks beer with foods that would score at least 10,000 on the Scoville scale
• Can credibly debate the relative claims of The Matrix, Star Wars, Bladerunner, and Star Trek II to be the greatest science fiction movie of all time
• Can credibly debate the relative claims of the Who and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band to be the world's greatest rock and roll band

(More items at the link.) I'm going to assume these are all things that are true of Stephen Bainbridge, who is mainly sick of all the Southern pop culture in presidential culture. But, frankly, he's got a few in there that would be disqualifiers for me. "Claims of the Who and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band to be the world's greatest rock and roll band"? And you just know he means the 70s Who. I want my President to take a firm stand preferring pre-"Tommy" Who to post-"Tommy" Who. And I don't care if he -- Bainbridge's character is clearly a guy -- winks at the Queen, but I do want to see him do a karaoke performance of "We Are The Champions."

ADDED: Speaking of metrosexuals, this is pretty funny.

I'm glad to see that Robin Givhan won a Pulitzer Prize.

Here's the report in her newspaper, The Washington Post. The category is Criticism. Criticize all you want, but she's my favorite bloggable columnist. There was that column on Condoleezza Rice's stiletto boots:

As Rice walked out to greet the troops, the coat blew open in a rather swashbuckling way to reveal the top of a pair of knee-high boots. The boots had a high, slender heel that is not particularly practical. But it is a popular silhouette because it tends to elongate and flatter the leg. In short, the boots are sexy.

Blogged here:

Robin Givhan... heavy-breathes about the sexuality of Rice's clothes, even though all we're really talking about here is that the outfit was all black ("The darkness lends an air of mystery and foreboding"), that the boots had high heels ("Heels … alter her posture in myriad enticing ways, all of which are politically incorrect to discuss"), and that women often dress much less attractively ("She was not wearing a bland suit with a loose-fitting skirt and short boxy jacket with a pair of sensible pumps").

Women with power easily unleash ideation about sex -- and sex and power. If the woman can't be contained by the thought that her powerfulness has removed her sexuality altogether, then the thought becomes that her sexuality has merged with her power. In the case of Condoleezza Rice, who has a high position of power and is distinctly attractive, she seems to become a strange new being -- a superhero – like Neo in "The Matrix"!

Is it wrong to talk about powerful women this way? I say no. Image, fashion, and beauty are all important. And we certainly didn't refrain from talking about how the male candidates for President looked in 2004. We obsessed over their ties, their hair and their makeup, and the bulges under their clothes. So go ahead and spout your theories about the meaning of Condoleezza Rice's high-heeled boots.

Mine is: these boots are made for running for President.

There was the one about John Bolton:

The fulsome silhouette of the mustache makes for a particularly dreary distraction and seems to pull his whole face downward. It makes Bolton, who is only 56, look hoary and dour. For a man who has shown little evidence of a capacity to charm -- an ability that can come in handy for an ambassador -- the mustache makes him appear unwelcoming. For all of the testimony about his spiteful dealings with both colleagues and underlings, and his denials of such behavior, he managed to look mean.

Blogged here:

Well, that goes along with my longtime opinion of mustaches: they make men look mean. Charlie Chaplin might be the only exception. Please men! Let us see your philtrum! Nothing makes a man more adorable than a well-shaped philtrum. And nothing uglifies like a mustache!

There was the one about what Judith Miller and Li'l Kim wore for their sentencing walks:

The women seemed acutely aware that the sentencing walk -- like its predecessor, the perp walk -- defines them in the public's mind. In its execution, it is not enough to stand straight and hold one's head high. This is a powerful visual image capable of conveying subtleties and broad strokes. Both women were playing to their fans.

Blogged here:

Givhan goes on to describe the effect serving time will have on the two women's careers. Since Li'l Kim is a rap artist, according to Givhan, it can only help. For rap fans: "The prison term seems less an ordeal than a right of passage." Well, you can argue about whether that's politically incorrect, but it sure is a usage error. Where are the WaPo proofreaders?

(Whoops.)

There was the one blogged here:

"Why dress in 'ho gear' and risk being treated like a hooker?"

Oh, come on. You're not going to blog every single essay Robin Givhan writes, are you?

Well, I don't know, maybe I should. You know she does ask some pretty tantalizing questions:

If clothes function as semiotics, where does the power lie -- with the sender or the receiver? And what happens when the sender is purposefully offering up misinformation?

Yeah, you find those questions tantalizing?

Uh, no, I guess not. Now that you mention it.

There was the one about Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish:

All of ["The Comeback"]'s nuances are reflected in Cherish's most distinctive physical characteristic, her long red hair with its painstakingly organized curls that have been flipped back and away from her face. That hair is gloriously thick and the waves fall with an unnatural precision. The hair appears Breck Girl clean, devoid of the styling products now used to give hair an informal, slightly messy appearance. Hers is hair meant to be tossed in slow motion during the opening montage of "Baywatch."

In constructing the character, Kudrow has said that Cherish's hair color was a calculated decision. In Cherish's mind, "blond is dumb comedy, red hair is smart, sexy comedy." And, presumably, brunette isn't funny at all.

Blogged here:

Givhan doesn't mention it, but red hair and comedy are indelibly associated with Lucille Ball. But of course, Cherish is wrong about a lot of things, so Kudrow's analysis of how Cherish thinks must be understood in that light. But I have a feeling Lisa loves Lucy....

Why is red hair so meaningful?

There was the one blogged here:

"Standing alone, Mrs. Bush looked lovely."

"But next to Camilla, whose Robinson Valentino blazer and skirt made her look like a large rectangle, the first lady reminded one of a radiant bride shining brightly next to a dutifully bland bridesmaid." That's the description from WaPo's Robin Givhan, who also takes note of the President: "The president looked handsome in his tuxedo. For once he didn't have the body language of a kid with a bad sunburn forced to wear a wool suit."

The one blogged here:

Saddam on trial -- in a Western suit with a pocket square but no tie!

Robin Givhan wonders what that means:

The pocket square was a particularly distracting flourish. Paired with a tie, a pocket square tends to make a man look more formally attired. But without that accompaniment, it can look almost jaunty and rakish -- like Sinatra or Dino in Vegas.

Hussein's style choice throws the viewer off balance. Is his modest paean to the Flamingo a simple reflection of his hair-dyeing, gold-leaf-loving, frightful vanity? Or has he decided to beat the "occupiers" from within their own system? Take it over, or mock it?

There was the infamous slam at the Alitos, as blogged here:

"They often looked as though they had coordinated their ensembles in the manner of a family heading off to the Sears photo studio."

WaPo's Robin Givhan analyzes the Alitos from the fashion standpoint:

He and his wife of almost 21 years wore similar wire-rimmed glasses. His were only slightly more angular than hers. They both have short-cropped brown hair....On the first day of hearings, her red suit with its contrasting piping matched his red tie. On the second day, she echoed his pale blue shirt with her blue sweater, which fell discreetly to mid-thigh. On the fourth day, her white jacket over a red dress mirrored his white shirt and red tie.

Givhan skirts very close to sneering, but in the end, she seems rather admiring. Or is that patronizing?

Earlier she'd written about the more perfectly dressed John Roberts family, in a column called "An Image a Little Too Carefully Coordinated":

Dressing appropriately is a somewhat selfless act. It's not about catering to personal comfort. One can't give in fully to private aesthetic preferences. Instead, one asks what would make other people feel respected? What would mark the occasion as noteworthy? What signifies that the moment is bigger than the individual?

But the Roberts family went too far. In announcing John Roberts as his Supreme Court nominee, the president inextricably linked the individual -- and his family -- to the sweep of tradition. In their attire, there was nothing too informal; there was nothing immodest. There was only the feeling that, in the desire to be appropriate and respectful of history, the children had been costumed in it.

Reading about the Pulitzer Prize reminded me first of that column, which I was suprised to see I didn't blog about. Didn't everyone blog about that one? Looking back at my blog from that time, I can see why I didn't get to it. I was incredibly busy dealing with the nomination itself.

Givhan put down Hillary Clinton too:

After eight years as first lady wearing innumerable skirt suits that did little to flatter her physique, she now wears pants almost exclusively. As a matter of personal style, this is a good thing. The senator looks more streamlined and elegant.

Oh, don't say that's not a putdown. No woman wants to hear a compliment like that! Blogged here (getting to the subject of men in skirts).

Most recently, she caught my eye with this one about the way they dress on "American Idol," blogged here.

So congratulations to Robin Givhan! Keep up the richly bloggable work.

"Elevator to the Gallows."

Today, I saw this brilliant poster:



This 1957 film will play at the Orpheum soon. Here's an NPR segment from last summer about the newly restored film. They've got the original poster over at that link. Here it is:



Don't you love Jean Moreau? Don't you love Louis Malle? This is one of his first films. An early Malle film that we love chez Althouse is "Zazie Dans Le Metro." A later Malle film, which happens to be my favorite film ever, is "My Dinner With Andre."

By the way, this is a pretty great poster too:



Would you see a film on the strength of the poster? I wouldn't. But the poster could be a strong factor. If "V for Vendetta" were playing in a theater here, I would have gone out to see it today, based on the poster and the fact that I still have enough love left over for the Wachowski brothers, even though I suffered through "The Matrix Reloaded." "Bound" and "The Matrix" were quite something. But, alas, "V for Vendetta" is not playing in Madison, and by the time it comes around, I'm sure my feeling for seeing it will have dissipated. That's either a good or a bad thing about living in Madison.

CORRECTION: "V for Vendetta" is playing in Madison now. The website I checked this morning was pathetically un-updated.

Judge Posner is blogging!

Over at lessig blog. So far it's all about copyright. Copyright and "The Matrix" is his favorite movie. It's "a portent of one of the directions in which technology is moving us."

About those movies....

Tonya's talking about my profile: she hasn't read any of my favorite books and she hasn't seen any of my movies. She thinks I may even have made up a fake title in "Grave of the Fireflies." And she thinks the profile function would be a good way to find a boyfriend ... except that clicking on my movie links either gets you only me or gets a bunch of 18 to 21 year old guys. Guys younger than my sons. Guys who like geocaching, which actually sounds like fun but about which Tonya says "What the hell is that? Is Mark into some freaky stuff?" I think we can safely say Googling is not one of Tonya's interests.

If I wanted to use my profile to search for boyfriends, would I come up with this as a list of favorite movies? Note that it looks like I have a taste for madmen (My Dinner With Andre, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Crumb, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Dr. Strangelove) or maybe just geeks (Fast Cheap & Out of Control), or lovable old clowns (Limelight, It's a Gift), and I am a feisty outcast (Grey Gardens, The Nights of Cabiria) who enjoys immersing myself in the saddest movie ever made (The Grave of the Fireflies).

Several of those movies make it part of the way into my heart with music: My Dinner With Andre, Crumb, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Fast Cheap & Out of Control, Limelight, The Nights of Cabiria. To a lesser extent: Aguirre the Wrath of God, Dr. Strangelove.

Several of them affect me because they are about a person profoundly dedicated to art: My Dinner With Andre, Crumb, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Limelight.

Three of them are about war, but very different aspects of war, all very moving in different ways: Aguirre the Wrath of God (delusional conquest in the jungle, looking for an unknown city, attacked by an unseen enemy), Dr. Strangelove (horrible, hilarious mistakes and nuclear weapons), The Grave of the Fireflies (the struggle to survive in the aftermath of firebombing and defeat).

Anyway, those really are my movies. (If I wanted to seem more serious than I really am, I wouldn't blog about American Idol all the time.) Of Tonya's recent favorite movies, I also love Election and Memento. (A couple other movies I love that are Memento-like are Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, and The Matrix.)

Tonya mentions Wonder Boys, but I have to steer clear of that because I loathe Michael Douglas. Why don't you like Michael Douglas, you might ask, but the question really should be: What is it about everything else you don't like that reminds you of Michael Douglas?