Standard warning: possibly contains MILD possible spoilers. Read at your own possible risk. You have possibly been warned.

Let’s get this part out of the way first. If you’re only reading “Jacket” reviews to find out if you really get to see Keira Knightley topless in this, here is your answer: Yes, two partially-obscured sideviews in the 2nd act, but it’s quick enough that most of you will have to wait for DVD (or for MrSkin.com) to see anything.

Here we have Adrien Brody in his first big high-profile “mainstream” release post-“Pianist” and pre-“King Kong,” in a metaphysical psuedo-scifi film that, for a change, is actually much more accessible and “normal” than the trailers would lead you to believe. Those who go in anticipating a “Slaughterhouse Five” or even eXistenZ”-level mindscrew may even find themselves dissapointed to instead confront an almost “routine” time-travel yarn which finds it’s “hook” not in what it adds to the paradox-toybox but rather in what it leaves out: The “mechanics” of time-travel; and the explaining, contradicting and re-explaining of which typically forms the bulk of any time-travel story; are almost nowhere to be found. The film presents a roughly-defined “procedure” through which a character is able to leap back and forth in time that works simply because the film says it does, and beyond that is chiefly content to sit back and observe how it’s characters react to the situation.

The time-skipper in question is Brody as Jack Starks, a Desert Storm vet accused of a murder in 1992 (where/when most of the film takes place) for which he may or may not have been framed. Believed to be suffering from Gulf War Syndrome, he’s committed to a hospital for the criminally insane where a doctor (Kris Kristofferson) uses him as the subject of a strange experiment wherein he is pumped full of powerful drugs, bound in a strange restraint-jacket and left inside a mortuary drawer for hours at a time. For reasons unknown, these stays in the drawer send him hurtling into the year 2007, where he continually crosses paths with a young woman (Knightley) whom he met as child back in 1992 before he was committed. Soon, he’s hopping past-to-future regularly, trying to prevent his (2007-confirmed) death or at least figure out the cause of it. A second, more-ethical doctor, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh is also on hand in what would be called a red herring role if this were the whodunnit-thriller the trailers are pitching.

And… thats really about it. Not a lot happens in “Jacket,” plot-wise, which is going to grate on a lot of people’s nerves. The premise here seems to be less about exploring the possibilities or theories of time travel and more about exploring what Starks’ ability to jump through time does to his relationships with the characters around him, and vice-versa.

Much of the 2nd act is devoted to Jack meeting 1992-people as their 2007-selves, being told about some amazing life-altering insight he offered them back in 1992, learning what it was, then going back to 1992 and offering it to them, just like he’d heard himself do… in a standard time-jumper movie the whole plot would spin out from trying to unravel that kind of circular-paradox, (“if he told them in the past what he knew from the future… but then how did it happen the first time… because if he…”), but “The Jacket” skips over any such discussion entirely (perhaps in the interest of keeping the majority of audience members’ brains from liquefying and running out their noses) because it really just doesn’t care “how it works.” It just works, and with that taken care of the film stays on it’s main track of watching the changes characters go through when confronted by a man who has met them both before AND later.

“The Jacket,” then, is an unusual film being billed as an out-and-out “weird” one, which will probably be to it’s detriment. There’s a lot less going on than many people will want, and a lot more than others will be able to take. I reccomend it, but with a caveat: Don’t go expecting it to be one thing or another, just let it “be.”

FINAL RATING: 7/10

The word for the day is: METATEXT

“Metatext” has become a film buff/geek word, for the most part, referring to a distant cousin of “subtext.” Subtext, of course, being the “buried meaning” underneath the “main” story of a film (or any story, really, but four purposes a film.) For example, “main” story of the “X-Men” movies is about the clash between “good” and “evil” Mutants, but the subtext is the innevitable clash of philosophies on the question of how any oppressed minority should assert itself in a hostile society. “Subtext” is real, an intentional part of the story fixed-in by the storyteller.

Metatext, (as in “metaphysical,”) is an “extra meaning” that could be said to “hover over” a film, a genre and actor, whatever; and is really only “there” in the eyes of those who’ve seen it. Example: Bruce Lee thought up the TV series “Kung-Fu,” but was not allowed to star in it because he was Chinese. His replacement, of course, was David Carradine. Now, could there be something “metatextual” about “Kill Bill,” in that Carradine plays as a white gangster who has surrounded himself with (and perhaps corrupted?) iconography of Japanese and Chinese martial-arts culture. This character is eventually killed by another character, who arrives armed with fighting skills learned from proto-Lee action-star Gordon Liu and a magic sword forged by Japanese samurai-staple Sonny Chiba and is clad at least once in a costume identical to Lee’s from his unfinished final film “Game of Death?” Could the “metatext” of the “Bill” films be the spirit of Bruce Lee getting one-up on his Kung-Fu replacement after all these years?

Fun thing about metatext: Whatever you come up with, there’s no way for it to be “wrong.”

I bring this up only because “Be Cool” is ALL about it’s metatext. Almost every “name” actor (or singer) who shows up is wearing their previous hit films and public personas on their chests like badges of honor, while those less-than-name actors on hand are mostly playing ultra-recognizable “types.” We’re supposed to let our memories of films-past leak into this one and redraw our reaction-map as the scenes go, the film is counting on it. In some films, this kind of casting can get tiresome, smug, and obnoxious (see: “Ocean’s Twelve”) but in the right kind of film (see: “Ocean’s Eleven,”) it can be just the right ingredient. “Be Cool,” in my opinion, is thankfully the right kind of film.

It’s a sequel to “Get Shorty,” and if you don’t recall that film in any great detail you really ought to see it again before you see this. Not because there’s any kind of continuing plot to keep track of, but because “Be Cool” is hinging most of it’s appeal on the audience being pre-familiar with John Travolta’s character of Chili Palmer, a former underworld loan shark who in “Shorty” stumbled gracefull into the role of a movie producer.

Presupposing not only that Chili Palmer got all the development he needed in the first film, but that the audience will remember said development, “Be Cool” plows ahead with the plot while framing it’s lead character the way the best “Superman” writers always known to frame theirs: We already know he’s unstoppable, we already know he’s going to win, the real story will be HOW he does it. (Travolta, remember, was once considered to play “Superman,” there’s that metatext again.) The film (and, I think, a good portion of the audience for it) considers it a given that Palmer is a consumate master-planner, that he always knows every angle, that he always makes the right move, says the right thing, calls the right help, etc., and even as the film piles on more and more bad guys it seems to sit back in it’s chair and giggle “boy, are you ever gonna get it!!!!” at them like so many Brainiacs and Bizzaros.

Oh, but to the story: Fed up with Hollywood politics, Palmer decides to take a swing at the music business after he swoops in and saves Lois La…, er, I mean a young ingenue singer from her loutish manager (Vince Vaughn.) Immediately convinced that he can make her the star she dreams of being, he enlists a record-producing old pal (Uma Thurman, again with the metatext) and we’re off to the races. Standing in the way of the heroes (or standing in place as Chili’s unwitting pawns, or both) are a plethora of bad guys with criss-crossing agendas, including Vaughn as the repellant ex-manager, The Rock as his gay actor-wannabe bodygaurd, Harvey Keitel (metatext anyone?) as Uma’s rival-producer, a Suge Knight-esque rap mogul (Cedric the Entertainer) and his armed gansta-rap group “Dub-MD” fronted by real hip-hop star Andre 3000, the Russian Mafia and the late Robert Pastorelli in his final role as a hitman.

This is all a heck of a lot of fun, if eventually a little too relaxed and “what the heck” about it’s tension. The cast is comfortable and cool, and surprisingly for a film so reliant on “of course that’s so-and-so-from-such-and-such” outside-film familiarity there’s seldom a noticable break in character. The standout is, I think, The Rock, who once again proves himself to be the last rising star anyone should underestimate. This is his broadest comedy role to date, and to say he pulls it off is to do him a diservice: He nails it. This character could easily have been a tired, broadly-offensive cliche (“haw haw, we’ll make the tuff guy gay, cuz it’s funny!”), but Rock turns him into a three-dimensional figure who’s “quirks” are all about subtle mannerism and the ability to convey a man who’s self-awareness and self-ignorance seem permanently turned against his best interests. (And, in keeping with the metatextual goings-on, the Samoan Rock’s character is said to have once thrown a man off a building, a fate which was met by another Samoan in “Pulp Fiction” in a story told by John Travolta. See? It’s fun!)

Brass tacks: This is the best of the new comedies right now. It’s smart, it’s funny, the in-jokes all land nicely and the star-packed cast all brough their A-game. No, it’s finally not quite as good as “Shorty,” but it’s pretty darn good. Reccomended.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

Standard warning: Talking about movies you might’ve not seen yet, spoilers may come up, consdier yourself warned.

Ever heard of Dr. Ted Baehr, (as in “Teddy Bear,” get it?,) and his organization, “Movieguide?” Well, let me aquaint you:

Baehr is yet another culture critic who calls himself “conservative” but is actually by action a pro-censorship advocate with a religious agenda, in other words an ideological kinsman of Michael Medved and L. Brent Bozell, whom frequent readers of this blog are no-doubt familiar with. You know the drill by now: His website, “Movieguide.org,” purports to offer film-content reviews “for families” but mostly is a forum for Baehr and company to advance an anti-choice, anti-gay, religiously-biased agenda in the guise of film criticism.

You can guess what my overall opinion is of Movieguide’s activities, and you’d be correct. So let’s skip the hyperbole and get down to brass-tacks: Baehr is, expectedly, perturbed about the Oscar results. Read his brief summary of the show here:
http://www.movieguide.org/index.php?s=articles&id=42

Let’s look at some quotes. First up, his opening paragraph:
“Death overcame life at the 77th Annual Oscars® and, in a town that abhors Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Germany (for good reason), neo-national socialist movies took home several of the top awards.”

Hm? Reference to some kind of “irony” in Hollywood’s hatred of Nazism in particular, right off the bat. What’s that about? Is it just an odd left-field reference, or is this meant to be some kind of subtle dig at the large Jewish segment of the Hollywood community that (we’ve been told again and again) are behind the “conspiracy” to suppress “The Passion?” Could go either way, I guess, but doesn’t it just feel a bit… “off” to lead with that? Hm.

“Instead of giving the Best Picture Oscar®, or even Best Foreign Language Film, to Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, those awards went to two movies advocating euthanasia, a eugenics policy reminiscent of the murderous propaganda of Hitler’s henchman Dr. Joseph Goebbels.”

“Movieguide” has been involved in the religious-movement subculture of the entertainment biz long enough to know better than this. The accusation above omits the fact that “The Passion” couldn’t have won either category because it wasn’t nominated in the first place, and could not even have been nominated in the Foreign category because of rules stipulating eligible films must be in the non-english national-language of their country of origin, and “Passion’s” Aramaic is a dead language, not a foreign one.

Now, lest you think I’m just picking on Ted Baehr out thin air, rest assured I’ve made a study of his antics in the past. Unfortunately, many of Movieguide’s older reviews are closed-off to those who aren’t “members” of the larger site, but let me show you a couple things…

Now, NOTHING gets under Baehr’s skin like a film that he feels is “attacking” Christianity. Now, honestly, that’s fair. Attacking a faith is serious business, and if anyone does it cavalierly and without a higher purpose than those who follow said faith are well within their rights to get annoyed or even downright furious. Baehr has gotten so about films like “Saved!” and “Dogma,” and while you may disagree (and I do) that he had a reason to be upset about those, to FEEL attacked and respond in kind is his right.

Now, here’s the problem: When it comes to attacking the faiths of OTHERS, Baehr doesn’t practice what he preaches. Look at what he had to say about one of Christianity’s fellow members of the “world’s biggest religions club,” Buddhism, in this “news” story on Movieguide about Jennifer Lopez claiming that Richard Gere introduced her to the philosophy:
http://www.movieguide.org/index.php?s=news&id=55

Money quote: “Buddhism is a dangerous false religion that has led millions of people to eternal damnation.”

You read that right. These are the folks, by the way, who get oh-so-angry when they are accused of being “intolerant.”

Oh, and naturally “Movieguide” and Baehr claim to despise movie-violence… but can you GUESS how they felt about “The Passion?”

Yup, you’d be right about that, too.

Blah blah blah mild spoilers blah blah read at your own risk blah blah…

In case you didn’t hear, this currently “the number one movie in America,” a grandiose statement that boils down to: “It was the only new comedy in America, and everyone already saw ‘Hitch.” So some of you who were either not planning on seeing this or, more likely, were not even aware this existed, might now feel compelled to see it. Well, I just saw it and I have one immediate reaction to share with you:

Wow.

Followed, naturally, by a more wordy followup to my initial immediate reaction:

…What the HELL did I just watch!?

To imagine how profoundly “WTF!?”-inducing “Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman” is, I first ask you to imagine a hypothetical movie: Imagine, if you will, comedian Mike Meyers writes and agrees to co-star in a serious, issues-oriented drama. His film is about a young woman dealing with heartbreak, and is full of scenes of wrenching, important material. I’m talking marital problems. Spousal abuse. Endangerment and betrayal. Drug-addiction. Families torn apart, the whole deal. At about midpoint through the movie, Meyers’ young heroine (played, of course, by a talented up-and-coming ingenue) decides she needs some help with her problems. So she heads out to find her friends, knocks on their door and out steps… into a previously totally-seriously melodrama, remember… Mike Meyers. As Austin Powers.

Can you imagine how inane that would be? How instantly and immediately wrongheaded it would feel? How mind-bogglingly dopey it would be? Well, that’s pretty much what happens in this movie.

Tyler Perry is a playwright, one of those hugely-successful Black cultural-phenomenons with legions of fans and hugely-profitable personal empires that 99% of white people have never, ever heard of. His shows, (I’m told), big hits on the Christian theater-circuit, are a fusion of sitcom-broad humor, self-performed characters, Gospel music and old-time homespun life advice. His most popular character is Madea, (as in “My Dear” with a Southern accent,) a large-and-in-charge black grandma caricature who packs a gun, cusses a blue streak and espouses angry philosophy of rage, retribution and responsibility. As is so often the case, this character is played by a male comic in drag, Perry himself in this case. Madea is Perry’s cash-cow character, and he’s already parlayed her into a couple of made-for-video movies and tries to work her into as many of his projects as possible. “Diary,” which began as another stage-show, is the latest of these.

If you can believe it, what we have here is a Christian-Gospel-Black-Feminist-Revenge-Redemption-Cautionary-Comey-Romance-Courtroom-Crime-Drama, starring Kimberly Elise (of T.D. Jakes “Woman, Thou Art Loosed!” which Perry co-wrote) as a rich black woman who finds herself thrown out of her home by her lout of a husband after 18 years. Destitute (she’d signed a prenup) she reluctantly heads back to her poor-neighborhood roots for support from her family, which turns out to include Perry-as-Madea as a grandmother, Perry-as-and-old-man as an Uncle, and Perry-as-himself as a brother-in-law with his own problems (wife has become strung-out heroin junkie roaming the town) and assorted hangers-on for large party scenes. Egged-on by Madea, she’s encouraged to “empower” herself by trashing her former husbands house, getting a real job, reconnecting with her working-class roots, getting more Jesus in her life and finding love with a Bible-quoting, impossibly-noble steelworker (Shermare Moore.)

To put it mildly, the film is a colossal mess. It careens from soap-opera melodrama in it’s opening scenes to slapsticky drag-show comedy once Madea shows up to drippy romance with Moore… and since that’s not enough we get courtroom crime-drama with ex-hubby lawyer defending a street hood from his past, a drug-tripping scene, several barbeques, a subplot where a main character becomes caretaker to another character who had wronged them after they are paralyzed and a launches into a Takeshi Miike-like torture sequence (seriously) and, somehow more improbably than anything else, the arrival of the Elise’s character’s mother who spouts Biblical wisdom that is somehow meant to turn the whole grab-bag of scenes and styles into some kind of Christian parable.

What’s especially troubling here is that so much of this actually works. In peices. The jacked-up melodrama of Elise’s scenes with the husband character, full of screeching and shouting a declarative gesture, play as deftly-replicated soap opera hyperbole. Perry’s comic talent is without question, and Madea is a great achievement of character-creation (if, it must be said, not so great an achievement of makeup.) The cutsie-poo romance stuff works here and there, as do the requisite “large extended family barbeque” scenes. Even the blunt Evangelical-moralizing, though it’s the precise-opposite of my cup of tea, is sincere and heartfelt. It just does not add up.

Only one of the disjointed story-threads really works, and tellingly it’s the one most removed from the rest of of the film: Perry’s third character, the brother-in-law, is raising two kids on his own after his wife turned into the town junkie. Strung-out on an unidentified narcotic (Heroin is most-strongly implied,) she was once an aspiring singer but now wanders the town and only appears occasionally late at night to beg her husband for money and food. He wants to help, but she resists, and it’s taking it’s toll on the children as yhe daughter has inherited her mother’s vocal talent, but dad forbids her joining the church choir because music had led her mother to drugs. There are real, honest, heartbreaking scenes here: The mother showing up at night with another vauge promise to “change,” a renunion between Elise’s character and her strung-out sister, and an extraordinary sequence where the daughter sees her mother on the steps of the local drug-house and orders dad to stop the car so she can say hello. These scenes speak volumes about the world Perry’s characters and stories are coming from, and he gives his own best performance amidst his own best writing. A whole stand-alone film could have been made from this subplot, and it would’ve been a hundred times better than the one it instead occupies.

This sort of tone-jumping and genre-mixing can work in the heightened-reality of live theater, but on film there needs to be something to join the disparate elements together which is simply missing from this movie. Madea does not fit in the rest of the film taking place outside her home, and likewise elements from the rest of the film do not work when they seep into Madea’s world. Elise doesn’t just change clothes as she moves between her rich/poor self, she changes her whole performance, twisting from a yowling harpy to a broken angel and back again and never once convincing the audience that there is a plausible logic for the switch. This kind of filmmaking-by-blender requires MASTERS of directorial and writing control at the helm, and while Perry’s effort is admirable his results are less so. This isn’t like “Kill Bill,” where Quentin Tarantino was able to merge kung-fu, samurai, western, sleaze, crime, melodrama, horror and comedy staples and iconography into a solid narrative existing in a “world” of it’s own; there’s no sense that any of this is happening for any reason other than “thats what comes next in Mr. Perry’s script.”

I expect to be told, as Roger Ebert was for his negative review of the film, that I don’t get or am incapable of getting the film because I am white, and the film is “made for a Black audience.” Frankly, I find that to be slightly offensive and short-sighted: This film was not made for “a black audience,” it was made for “an audience of existing Tyler Perry fans,” who already know the rythyms and the gags and may even be ACHING for Madea to waddle onto the scene. I have a respect for the Black Evangelical religious community in this country, in as much as it’s leaders (like T.D. Jakes) seem to see their Christian ideology as something designed to help people with their problems instead of the “do it because the book SAYS SO!” version of Christianity espoused by most of the media-prominent white evangelical leaders. If this community is Perry’s “niche,” then more power to him; but in the same spirit I’m afraid my verdict on the film must be that it’s unlikely to win any new converts since it spends most of it’s time preaching (literally) to the choir.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

P.S. Here’s Ebert defending his review from what was apparently a great outpourring of angry disagreement. A good read:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050302/ESSAYS/50301001

And HERE is some of the actual angry disagreement, which it must be said got INCREDIBLY ugly. Roger Ebert can be called a great many things, and not all of them flattering, but a racist he is most definately not:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050301/ESSAYS/50303001

Disagree with me? Agree? Cool. Hit the “comments” button and let’s talk about it.

Let’s try something new. I won’t be reviewing every DVD I see, but when one comes along worth talking about it I’ll do one of these. There’s got to be more to blog about than new releases and FCC politics, right?

Anyway…

“Taegukgi” is a Korean “Saving Private Ryan.” Normally I wouldn’t be so crass as to describe a movie as simply being another movie in a new location, but here I find it appropriate because it’s hard to see the film and not discren that “Korean Private Ryan” is exactly what the filmmakers were hoping to achieve. “Ryan’s” combat sequences rewrote the definition of what a “serious” war movie is supposed to look like, and ever since it’s release the International Cinema landscape has been overflowing with films who’s makers are doing their darndest to graft the “Ryan” asthetic onto their country’s unique experiences in war, and “Taegukgi” gives no indication that it’s inception was any different: It exists firstly to give Korea a “Ryan” to call it’s own, and secondly to be an engaging film in it’s own right.

Opening amidst the unearthing of remains from a Korean War battlefield in which some artifacts are found seeming to belong to a still-living elderly veteran named Jin-Seok, the film flashes back to the war itself where Jin-Seok finds himself drafted into the South Korean resistance army against his will. His older, rough-hewn brother Jintao follows him into the army to keep him safe, and becomes convinced that if he throws himself into “above-and-beyond” battlefield heroics he can earn the clout to petition the generals to send his younger brother home. But as Jintao plows ahead into ever-more-harrowing and risky situations, and becomes a Medal of Honor contender, he earns Jin-Seok’s resentment and begins to lose grip first on his sanity and, eventually, on his humanity.

There’s no doubt that the films looks great, another in Korea’s recent slew of entries proving their intent and ability to become major players in the big-budget World Cinema stage. And when the story is focusing on the story of Jintao’s inner-conflict between his vauge mission to earn his brother’s discharge and the sudden status of hero it confers upon him it has all the drama and suspense of a classic war film in the making. It’s middle-act, a long and punishing chronicle of important battles in the pre-Chinese-involvement era of the war, is a marvel of military-genre filmmaking.

Unfortunately, the film eventually shows signs of having the same problems as most of the other “Ryan”-progeny: It piles on too many battles and “we can do this, too!” scenes of thousands of people in period costumes, shaky-cam battlefield clashes and jittery montages of flying mud, clattering bayonets and air-mortars sending stuntmen and props into the air; the film proves that it can hang with the big-boys in terms of war scenes after about 40 minutes, but then it doesn’t stop trying to prove it and soon comes off as trying too hard. Also, the filmmakers seem too eager to touch on every major idea and event associated with the war, and the plot contorts itself into an increasingly soap-operatic shape in order for Jintao and Jin-Seok to encounter old friends conscripted into the Northen enemy army, civilians suspected of communist-sympathies being murdered, POWs, defection, attrocities on both sides and just about anything else you can think of; and by the last act the film starts to play more like a time-compressed miniseries than a single epic.

This is a good film, but a flawed one. It’s hard to criticize a movie for trying too hard, but overall “Taegukgi” doesn’t quite rise from being “SPR’ in the Korean War” to being an important Korean War story in it’s own right. Still, it’s a well-made war movie and it’s hard not to be moved by the scenes that really do work, and there are plenty of them. War movie afficionados should definately give it a look:

FINAL RATING: 7/10

What people miss about the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is that they aren’t actually “responsible” for the censorship or (lack thereof) of radio and TV. They only really “step in” when compelled to do so, and like most governemt entities they do their best to “work” as little as possible. For the most part they are merely enforcing laws previously decided upon by Congress or (as is more often the case these days) responding to pressure from agenda-driven lobbyists and/or “watchdog” groups like the Parents Television Council or the American Family Association. (You can read my full expose of the PTC at the link below:)
http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2005/02/your-freedom-is-in-danger-plus-meet.html

The FCC has been in the news again for the last few days, following their decision that “Saving Private Ryan” can run unedited if broadcasters so desire:
http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20050228-000618-1628

Now, firstly, this is an enormous victory for common sense in the Culture Wars, and represents a major setback for the finger-wagging Puritanism that has gotten so uppity since the manufactured controversy of the Janet Jackson Halftime Incident. Let’s put it this way: Saying that a network cannot air “Ryan,” a patriotic ode to WWII heroics because of foul language used by characters playing soldiers under fire is so blatantly moronic an idea that even the PTC’s professional-prude leader L. Brent Bozell thinks it should be left alone:

“We agreed with the FCC on its ruling that the airing of ‘Schindler’s List’ on television was not indecent and we feel that ‘Saving Private Ryan’ is in the same category. In both films, the content is not meant to shock, nor is it gratuitous.”

Lest you think Bozell is going soft on us, though, the PTC this week is launching a campaign against the “CSI” franchise. True to form, what finally tipped the scale wasn’t “CSI’s” celebrated gorey violence, but an episode centered around kinky sex fetishism. At least they’re consistent.

So the PTC is cool with “Ryan,” but the even MORE radical fringe of the Religious “Right” isn’t. The “American Family Association” is mad as hell:
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/afa/12005c.asp
You can check the AFA’s official website here:
http://www.afa.net/

There’s nothing too special or imporant about the AFA. Most have never heard of them, and they aren’t taken that seriously even on the censorship circuit. They’re pretty cookie-cutter as these things go, like most religious groups with “family” in their name they have very little to offer in the way of family-help and dedicate most of their time attempting to undermine the First Ammendment and spread hatred for gays and lesbians. The only interesting thing about them is that their founder is one Donald E. Wildmon.

Wildmon was a big wheel on the Christian pro-censorship movement back in the 80s, but he lost essentially all mainstream credibility when he went to battle against Mighty Mouse because he was positive that the cartoon hero was a cocaine addict. No, seriously, that’s what happened. Read all about it in THIS expose on Wildmon:
http://www.mediacoalition.org/reports/wildmon.html

But since that expose is long, here’s the topical part:

“In the disputed episode, Wildmon charged Bakshi with portraying Mighty Mouse as experiencing drug-induced exhilaration after inhaling the petals of a flower. Mighty Mouse had sniffed cocaine, Wildmon contended.”

Somehow, the term “religious nut” suddenly seems so… inadequate.

Anyway, here’s why I think the FCC still got this wrong: In making their decision, the FCC came down heavily on the side that “Ryan” got a pass because of the “context.” In other words, “these are still naughty words, but it’s an important historical movie so that makes it okay.” Now look, I’m all for anything that helps point out how pointless and wrong any of the broadcast decency laws are, but the plain fact is, the context shouldn’t matter.

If these words are inherently harmful, which is the entirely wrongheaded, unproven and unprovable “logic” on which the whole decency-laws concept is founded, then it should not make them “less bad” if presented in a film about WWII or the Holocaust. Likewise, if Tom Hanks cussing in a movie is okay, then one of the Desperate Housewives doing the same should be okay too. If this was a court case, allowing “SPR” to use “harsh language” on TV would free up everyone else’s right to do it on TV as well, (fair-and-equal treatment, remember?)

The FCC is right to allow networks the right to run “Ryan” uncut, but they were wrong to stop there. By reaffirming the intangible of “context” as a mitigating factor, the FCC has ensured that broadcast “standards” will continue to be run through an ideology of complete hypocrisy.

Let’s just say it: The show was good, but predictable and nothing Earth-shatteringly interesting happened. I really don’t have much more to say about it than what I posted last night right afterwards, but as expected a score of entertainment pundits were out in force to post their views on the show as a whole; and some of these I do indeed have something to say about. So let’s get to it…

AICN’s Harry Knowles weighed in on the show today, and like myself he’s mad-as-hell about the short-shrift given to the technical awards in the “new format” this year. It’s a tangent, but it’s a passionate one:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=19520

Speaking of angry, the “Passion” boosters are still trying to spin righteous talking points out of a controversy that just hasn’t materialized for most of us… the public at large just isn’t all that upset that a C-list actor getting whipped in a Jesus costume was deemed unworthy of a Best Picture nominee. Still, Bozell and company as a culture-critics have refined grasping at straws to the stature of a martial-art, and so here presents his scathing indictment of the evening: The audience applause sounded a little louder, apparently, for Chris Rock’s jokes about “Fahrenheit 9/11” than for Chris Rock’s jokes about “The Passion.” Bozell’s “Media Research Center” apparently finds this to be of such incredible importance that it made the top-entry of their latest “Cyberalerts” posting:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2005/cyb20050228.asp#1

Another unhappy fellow is Dr. James Hirsen. Yes, the Dr. James Hirsen. What? Never heard of him? Wow, what a surprise 🙂

Hirsen is basically an E!/National Inquirer-style celebrity/Hollywood gossip journalist with not one but TWO regular columns on the Far-Right website Newsmax.com. His schtick is covering the same “juicy” Hollywood scandal-rag stories as every other entertainment psuedo-journalist out there, but slanting every story towards “proving” his belief that the creative community is swarming with Weirdos and Freaks who (no doubt) need more Church in their lives. His thoughts on the show:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/2/28/10449.shtml

Money quote: “But after hearing from countless numbers of folks, I suspect Rock’s attempts did nothing to assuage the rage that people felt regarding the disgraceful dismissal of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

“Rage?” Folks, if you or anyone else is feeling anything that could be described as rage over the lack of “Passion” nominations, then you really need to sit back and take stock of your priorities. Those of you who would define yourselves as Christians may want to consider what Christ might have thought about His followers feeling rage about a crappy movie based on His death being denied a trophy. You may even want to reaquaint yourself with His actual philosophy and teachings on the subject of priorities, rage, etc… though you’ll have to rent a different movie because none of that was considered worthwhile for inclusion in “The Passion.”

And hey, were you wondering what Robin Williams putting that peice of tape over his mouth was all about? Well, turns out that the show’s producers had nixed Williams’ plan to sing a song trashing James Dobson and other so-called “conservative” religious leaders who’d been attacking cartoon characters for appearing in a schoolroom “pro-tolerance” video that they feared might inspire the coming generation to disregard the Christian Right’s hatred of gays:
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-oscars-williams,0,3155460.story?coll=sns-ap-entertainment-headlines

Of course, as you saw, Williams proceeded to rip the tape off of his mouth and got in his digs at the Culture Warriors’ expense in spoken-word form. Bravo to you, Mr. Williams.

More of these little vignettes of punditry as I find `em, but that’s all for now…