Nun crucified.

A 23-year-old nun was literally crucified in a botched attempt at exorcism -- in Romania.

"God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil," AFP quoted the priest as saying.

"I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this. Exorcism is a common practise in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests," Father Daniel added.

Irini Cornici, who grew up in an orphanage, suffered from schizophrenia. She "was denied food and drink throughout her [three-day] ordeal, had been tied and chained to the cross and a towel pushed into her mouth to smother any sounds."

UPDATE: Indictments.

On blogging about Batman without comic book expertise.

Anthony Rickey has a problem with this post of mine about “Batman Begins."

He seems to think I must have gone to the movie knowing not only that Scarecrow was the villain but also that Scarecrow’s modus operandi is steaming people insane. I hate to tell you but I hadn’t the slightest idea who the villain was, and I’d never heard of Scarecrow. I like to see movies without knowing the story, so I use methods of finding out only as much as I need in order to decide whether I want to see it. Thus, since I’m interested in the director Christopher Nolan (from “Memento”) and I saw on Rotten Tomatoes that his movie had 82% "fresh" reviews, I read nothing more about it.

Rickey takes issue with another post of mine about the movie. I wrote:

I noticed a right-wing edge to some key statements: "Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's understanding." Take that, you Gitmo critics! And it was quite clear that we were supposed to think about the criminals as al-Qaeda. Here was this "League of Shadows," based in Asia, bent on destroying "Gotham." We were nudged constantly to make this connection.

He writes:

OK, look, can I make a deal with folks like Prof. Althouse? If we leave things like the First Amendment in their bailiwick, can they please not drag their politics into our comic books?

Hmmm.... Fanboys and their comic books! They're possessive, aren't they?

Let me just quote David Denby again: the movie is “so overdone and underfelt that [it’s] hell to sit through.” Having endured that ordeal, I’ll blog whatever observations I happen to have. The whole point of this blog is to drift in and out of my bailiwick as the spirit moves me.

I don’t go to the movies that often, but when I do, I post in my own style. And I don’t review movies. I blog about them. Here’s the prototype for my movie-blogging, a post about “House of Sand and Fog,” written on January 15, 2004, the second day in the life of this blog. And here’s my post on “Kill Bill: Volume 2.”

Anyway, Rickey shares his comic-fan expertise in an attempt to refute my observation that the terrorists in the film represent al Qaeda:

Ra's al Ghul started off as a Batman villain in the early '70s, long before anyone had even considered something called al-Qaeda. And far from shoving an al-Qaeda riff down our throats, the movie does everything it can to move the film away from anything vaguely Islamic. He's played by Ken Watanabe, for crying out loud. The scenes with him in it (or, see spoiler below) seem to be set in Nepal instead of Arabia. And the "Society of Shadows"--a fanatical organization devoted to his will--is part of the character of Ra's and has been, so far as I know, since his creation.

Obviously, the filmmakers didn’t do everything they could to eliminate the al Qaeda feeling, since they kept the Arabic name Ra’s al Ghul (“the demon’s head"). (And we were certainly familiar with Arab terrorism back in the early 70s.) I didn’t go out of my way to think about al Qaeda. I don’t care whether the original comic writers meant to say anything about al Qaeda, the filmmakers would be obtuse if they didn’t see the connections people would make. Just attacking New York City is enough to push us down that particular thought path. As for using Nepal: it was reminiscent of Afghanistan, the source of most of our al Qaeda imagery.

But what really interests me is not whether we moviegoers see a terrorist group and think al Qaeda – of course, we do – but whether Batman is right wing. The line I quoted – "Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's understanding" – struck me as distinctly right wing. But Batman, in this film, had some lefty instincts too. He was concerned with the roots of crime in poverty. On the other hand, he gleefully extracted information from a man by using torture (dangling him from a tall building and letting him drop part way).

Rickey points me to this old post of his in which he compares the politics of Spiderman and Batman, so it’s not that he objects to analyzing the politics of the film. He just seems to think you have to know the material from the comic books to analyze the movie. I can’t see why that would be. Movies based on books, including comic books, usually deviate from the books. Who feels they need to know the book to talk about the movie?

The blogger's favorite phobia.

Fear of editors.

I love to write, but I feel an unspeakable dread when faced with editing. Like right now. Just forming a mental picture of a FedEx envelope makes me feel bad. I'm sure some people dread publishing without having anyone check their work first. These people are not bloggers.

Basement rock.

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Originally uploaded by John Cohen.

The basement chez Althouse was a favorite practice spot for many years. Now, everyone's dispersed, but much of the chalkings and posters are still there.

The Loft in Madison.

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Originally uploaded by John Cohen.

Remember the Loft, the old Loft, now sacrificed to the very posh Overture Center? They had a cool Battle of the Bands every year. I took this picture once when Four O'Clock Tragedy played. My son John partly visible behind an amp.

Four O'Clock Tragedy.

~~~
Originally uploaded by John Cohen.

Another musical picture I took a while back that John -- the boy in the shadows here -- scanned the other day. This was taken at the Loft here in Madison.

ADDED: The post title is the name of this band, a different band -- very different -- from Toy Gun (in the previous post).

Toy Gun.

~~~
Originally uploaded by John Cohen.

Just a little band that used to practice chez Althouse. I took this picture a few years back. Only one of these is my son.

Film fakery.

I went looking for some reviews that expressed what I thought of "Batman Begins" and found this, from David Denby:

This is an overly methodical and heavy-spirited movie—pop without rapture. Bruce comes back to Gotham and slowly assembles the elements of his costume, his vehicle, and his mode of operation—the kind of equipment fetishism that used to be tossed off in a few barbed exchanges between Sean Connery and Desmond Llewelyn’s Q in the old Bond films. And I miss Anton Furst’s urban-grotesque production design from the first movie—the curious, malign details pulled out of the night. Most of this movie is just dark, and the familiar trope of a high-flying passage through Gotham’s bunched skyscrapers isn’t as thrilling as it was years ago. The young Welsh-born actor Christian Bale is a serious fellow, but the most interesting thing about him—a glinting sense of superiority—gets erased by the dull earnestness of the screenplay, and the filmmakers haven’t developed an adequate villain for him to go up against. The return of Liam Neeson late in the movie is a bust, and the action climax, in which the water supply threatens to combine with a vicious white powder floating around the city (the mixture will drive everyone crazy, or at least make them sneeze), is cheesy and unexciting.

The real failing is Nolan’s. There’s very little sense of Batman’s awesome surveillance of the city from the heights; he just drops out of nowhere, thrashes all the bad guys in a whirl of movement that is shot too close, and edited too rapidly, for us to see much of anything, and then elevates out of the frame. In “Memento,” Nolan and his editor, Dody Dorn, created a new syntax for movies. It’s depressing to see Nolan now relying on the same fakery as everyone else.

Yes, exactly.

And about that crazy-making steam... Wouldn't that have been a great choice for the threat in an extremely low budget movie? Blow in some steam and have the actors act crazy.

"A latte a day on borrowed money? It's crazy."

Students shouldn't go to cafés? The Washington Post weighs the question and points to a website that does the calculation: "a five-day-a-week $3 latte habit on borrowed money can cost $4,154, when repaid over 10 years."

How bad is that, really? You might easily blow $4,154 on a single vacation after college or getting a few extra options on your car. By contrast, it seems extremely sensible to buy years of a daily pleasure, which gives you some nutrition and focuses your mind and which gets you out of your little room or the library and puts you in a bustling, social environment, where you have your own little table and can get some good studying done.

A café is not just the coffee. It is an entire hours-long experience that contributes to your success as a student. It's true that to be financially savvy you have to realize that you spend a lot of money by spending a small amount of money on a daily basis, but there are much worse daily expenses that call out to students: bars, movies, cigarettes, fatty snacks.

I think the café-going student is operating at a high level, making a good choice. Do the calculation for yourself and think about whether Future You approves of that expense. I think the answer will be yes!

Do Segways increase or decrease air pollution?

As the New York State Legislature considers whether to classify the Segway as a motorized vehicle (like a car) or a a "personal assistive mobility device" (like a wheelchair), environmentalists are taking the position that the Segway increases air pollution by troubling pedestrians, pressuring them to switch to using cars.

I switched from walking to work, which I did for fifteen years, to driving, in part because I got quite annoyed by people bicycling on the sidewalk. Bicyclists at least know they are wrong, but rationalize that they need to protect themselves from cars. But Segways supposedly belong on the sidewalk, yet on most sidewalks, if two people are walking together, there is not enough room for the Segway to pass them. The thing clearly seems capable of knocking you down. There don't seem to be enough of them right now to matter much. They simply haven't caught on. (Because you look like a dork riding one?) People are tolerant of carelessly driven motorized wheelchairs -- which I see a lot of -- but insensitively driven Segways are going to drive pedestrians crazy.

Which is an environmental problem.

"Replacing one right-winger for a right-winger."

Senator Kennedy spouts opinions about replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist. If President Bush were to attempt to elevate either Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas to the position, it "would be completely troublesome," and Thomas -- only Thomas -- would surely be defeated.

Intriguingly, Kennedy said that of the three oft-mentioned, younger appeals court judges who are candidates for the chief justice slot - J. Michael Luttig, John Roberts or Michael McConnell - one would be acceptable. "I'm not going to get into which one" because that would be "the kiss of death" for that person, he said.

Hmmm.

Two posts on movie trailers? Althouse, have you finally gone to the movies again?

Why, yes, I have. Yes, I have. Impulsively, I darted out to see "Batman Begins," as you might have guessed from my first post today.

And? How was it?

Well, it was a big messy melange of things. No opening credits, so I had to wait to the end to go, oh, so that's Katie Holmes. Not that I had never read that she was in this movie. Just that I forgot. I knew it was Christian Bale, looking baleful. Looking a bit like Tom Cruise actually. Holmes looked a lot like Drew Barrymore. The School of Crooked Smiles acting. Morgan Freeman, I recognized him. He's always someone who's boringly solid and good. Does that piss him off? Oh, I have to be that guy again. Liam Neeson, Michael Caine -- I recognized them -- pouring great ladlefuls of talent on undersized roles.

Lots of shadowy black-and-grey sets with smoggy mists and glinting puddles. You could play a game of counting all the hidden bat-shaped images in various shots.

The Batmobile was the ugliest Batmobile ever. More like a super-clunky SUV than a great sports car. It seemed to handle really badly. But, implausibly, it could fly. The flying car in the trailer for "The Dukes of Hazzard" was more convincing.

I noticed a right-wing edge to some key statements: "Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's understanding." Take that, you Gitmo critics! And it was quite clear that we were supposed to think about the criminals as al-Qaeda. Here was this "League of Shadows," based in Asia, bent on destroying "Gotham." We were nudged constantly to make this connection.

The beginning of the movie was interestingly scenic in a "Lord of the Rings" way, and involved a lot of learning how to fight, Asian-style, in a "Kill Bill: Volume 2" way. But why did Bruce Wayne learn all about swordplay, and then concoct a Batman persona who has nothing to do with swordfighting? And what was Christian Bale holding onto at the end of that ice slide that kept him from falling over the precipice? Somebody conveniently installed a handle, apparently.

And why was the speech on the soundtrack all muddled? Whenever Batman had his costume on, his voice was altered in a supposed-to-be scary way that seemed to belong in a children's movie. And when they identified one of the villains early on as "Ra's al Ghul," I was all, what did he say? Al Gore?

Willie Wonka ≈ Michael Jackson.

Did Johnny Depp base his Willie Wonka character on Michael Jackson?

Based on the trailer, I'd say so. An apt choice, isn't it? The Chocolate Factory ≈ Neverland.

UPDATE: Chris emails:

Why didn't you mention in your Johnny Depp post that this is the second consecutive role in which he seems to indirectly be playing Michael Jackson (the first being Finding Neverland)? I agree that he looks eerily like Jackson in the trailer.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's my conclusion, after seeing the movie, about whether Depp based his character on Michael Jackson.

"Quirky situations."

Since when is that a basis for giving a movie a PG rating?

(Seen on the trailer for the movie "Sky High," which looked insufferable. Doesn't "quirky" imply some charm? I saw none.)

"The evident rush of adrenaline that comes from confronting America's boneheaded middle class."

Virginia Heffernan looks at Suze Orman.

Consider just one typical exhortation, derived by Ms. Orman from the given importance of people over money. She recently told the daughter of a mooch that she ought to leave her father to his bottomless debt, just as the woman's mother had done.

Speaking of the mother, Ms. Orman said, "She had the courage to look at the man that she loved and say, 'Sweetheart, you're going down the drain, but you're not taking me with you!' " This, she told the tremulous girl, is what she should also say to her father: down the drain with you.

Heffernan doesn't resist referring to "her hectic manner and garish appearance" and "the kick she gets from divining the straits her guests are in - "Crossing Over"-style."

Orman has invented a pretty cool TV niche for herself, hasn't she? What do you think? Can't switch channels fast enough? Or do you mean to click past but find yourself strangely fascinated?

"You can't get more desperate than that."

From Stephen Holden's review of "The Perfect Man":

The wittiest character [is] Jean's co-worker Lenny Horton (Mike O'Malley), a weepy lug obsessed with the band Styx who falls head over heels for his vanilla yogurt dream girl the moment he lays on eyes on her. Even after he screeches "Lady" under her window, Jean is so desperate for a husband that she refuses to rule him out as a possibility. You can't get more desperate than that.

Surely we can think of a few things more desperate than that ... even in movies.

And by the way, how many movies have a guy singing outside a woman's window? You'd think they wouldn't be able to get away with using that anymore.