Closer, A Review

Critical darling, Closer, doesn't deserve the praise. As an adaptation of a play, it fails on nearly every level to be a good movie: its characters are unlikable, its dialog not even vaguely resembling real life, and its emotional outbursts carefully manipulated until they have only a tenuous connection to ongoing events in the movie.

Jude Law and Julia Roberts come out of the wreckage reasonably well. They play a couple of people with serious personality and fidelity issues who do their best to ruin their own lives and the lives of those people around them. Clive Owen, a fine actor, has moments where he is not unutterably bad, although some of the worst emotional ping-pong moments belong to his character. Natalie Portman has no such redeeming moments. She is miscast, her performance is poor, and her character is written ridiculously.

It is hard to blame the jasminlive actors when the script is truly hideous. The dialog is stilted and unintentionally hilarious. At one point, well into the film, Natalie Portman's is tasked with asking, ''Do you still fancy me?" The line may have worked well on a London stage, but from her mouth it simply sounded goofy and overdone. Ditto the ''do you desire me/ no I do not desire you" exchange even later in the movie.

Sometimes dialog can be unrealistic while remaining compelling. The characters in The Royal Tenenbaums, for instance, often sound nothing like real life people having a conversation. Yet the dialog is clever enough, and funny enough, that the conceit comes across well. Closer has neither the charm nor wit, and the writer didn't have the talent, to carry off the stylized dialog.

Instead, almost every line is a reminder that this, which may have worked wonderfully on stage, is just a bad adaptation. Stage plays have a kind of cadence that is anything but natural, and Closer never feels anything close to natural.

The movie is empty of moral depth or happiness, preferring to be cynical and knowing and utterly unpleasant. It is populated by an incestuous, manipulative group of selfish , untouched by anything outside of their insular little foursome. Dumb, reprehensible, shallow, poorly done, and miserable.

Please, don't bother.

In Case You Were Wondering...

1. Andy, (possibly) Matt, and I will be deciding the location of the Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash tomorrow night. So be looking for the announcement of the venue (along with directions and stuff) Thursday morning.

There is still time to let us know that you'll be coming (especially if you plan to buy me shots--and I know you do).

2. ''Carry Home." If I ever write a screenplay, I want this song to be on the soundtrack of the multi-gazillion dollar mega hit that I'm sure to have penned. It's a cover of the Gun Club song, although it takes on an entirely new feel in Mark Lanegan's version. The rest of the CD, I'll Take Care of You, is just as good and well worth the purchase.

I thought it would be nice to share.

3. I have fond memories of the ol' blog-city version of ResurrectionSong. Which is only one of the reasons I'm going to point y'all to Combs Spouts Off--the other of which is that he engages in telling me how wrong I was about some of my Best of Heinlein picks and comes up with some good answers of his own.

4. So the Mayor Ito of Nagasaki thinks that nuclear deterrence as a strategy for keeping the peace is a bad thing. Man, I'm feeling a serious 80's vibe on this one; it's almost worth ignoring.

But he asks and I feel obligated to answer for myself (your mileage may vary).

"We understand your anger and anxiety over the chaturbate memories of the horror of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Yet, is your security actually enhanced by your government's policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying out repeated subcritical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of new mini nuclear weapons?" Ito asked.

The answer, of course, is yes. Yes, I do feel safer knowing that my country has the power to project its will incrementally from diplomatic pressure in the UN to a single SEAL team involved in the most surgical of missions to the punishing air strikes that kept Libya quiet for so many years to the kind of military expedition that can topple the majority of the world's governments in just a matter of weeks to the threat of nuclear devastation that ensures that people take our words seriously.

Honestly, there isn't another country in the world that I would trust with that much power and I hope that Americans realize that it is always in our best interest to keep our government on the shortest possible leash. Using the right tool to support our international interests is vital; but the knowledge that we have an impressively stocked tool chest most certainly is a comfort.

For that matter, I think that it could be argued that the only thing that kept the Cold War from becoming hot enough to destroy Europe in another World War was the nuclear deterrent.

Deadbeat Dads

Ignore, for a moment, the plight of the man who doesn't want to be a father. While his girlfriend/wife/girl he met in the bar all have the legal opportunity to bail out of their parental duties (and here in Denver, for a few days after a is born, it is even legal to abandon the infant if the abandonment happens at one of the state sanctioned ''please do something about this nuisance so that I don't have to actually deal with my own responsibilities and actions, thanks a bunch" stations) while the dad has little to nothing to say about the blessed event. But, hey, we're leaving that to the side, right?

Now, what about the state labeled father who is nothing of the sort? That is, he isn't the father, but the state still gets to hold him partially financially responsible for the life of a .

Well, those guys get really screwed according to Matt Welch's article in Reason that should have your blood bubbling gently in your veins.

What Pierce didn't realize, and what nearly 10 million American men have discovered to their chagrin since the welfare reform legislation of 1996, is that when the government accuses you of fathering a , no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. Federal law gives a man just 30 days to file a written jasmine live challenge; if he doesn't, he is presumed guilty. And once that steamroller of justice starts rolling, dozens of statutory lubricants help make it extremely difficult, and prohibitively expensive, to stop—even, in most cases, if there's conclusive DNA proof that the man is not the 's father.

This stacked deck against accused dads has provoked a backlash movement, triggering ''paternity fraud" legislation and related legal challenges in more than a dozen states. Combined with advances in genetic technology, this conflict may end up changing the way we define parenthood. For now, the system aimed at catching ''deadbeat dads" illustrates how a noble-sounding effort to help and taxpayers can trample the rights of innocent people.

Here's how it works: When an accused ''obligor" fails, for whatever reason, to send his response on time, the court automatically issues a ''default judgment" declaring him the legal father. It does not matter if he was on vacation, was confused, or (as often happens) didn't even receive the summons, or if he simply treated the complaint's deadlines with the same lack of urgency people routinely exhibit toward jury duty summonses—he's now the dad. ''In California, you don't even have to have proof of service of the summons!" says Rod Wright, a recently retired Democratic state senator from Los Angeles who tried and failed to get several paternity-related reform bills, including a proof-of-service requirement, past former Gov. Gray Davis' veto. ''They only are obligated to send it to the last known address."

Because, yeah, legal parental obligations that could potentially result in decades of obligations should be decided with little in the way of actual proof.

Attack Dog Politics

The rumors of this new Hillary book coming out are making me a bit queasy. Drudge has been running teasing links about it for a few days now, and I can't get past the little niggle in the back of my head that doesn't like what looks like a blatant attempt at character assassination.

I'm not sure what is actually going to be in the book, I don't know what these supposedly Hillary-destroying accusations are going to look like, and I certainly don't have a handle on how true the allegations will be. But I do know that, unless there is something truly damning, I would rather see conservatives mount attacks on her ideas instead of her past deeds.

Rumors that the book ''won't be pretty" and is brimming with ''new dirt" have circulated in the New York press for the past four months.

Yesterday, online newshound Matt Drudge claimed the project was dubbed ''Hillary in the Raw," with content so explosive it could jeopardize Mrs. Clinton's candidacy.

''New dirt." Instead of stooping to National Enquirer style politics, how about reminding people about Hillarycare? Anyone with even marginal fiscal conservative leanings or with a small government bent would quake in fear at the idea of President Hillary Clinton. Her nationalized health care idea would have made Bush's exceptionally costly pill bill, our already overburdened Medicare/Medicaid expenses, and the giant IOU known as the Social Security trust fund look miniscule in comparison.

Unless there is something truly, surprisingly, relevant, I would much rather see authors going after her policy ideas than her personal life.

Curious and Doing Research

I have a new client--a non-blogger--who wants to join the podcasting revolution. I'm doing research right now on what it will take to add a feed to his site and also what it will take for him to actually create the podcasts.

Keeping in mind that the client isn't particularly tech savvy, here are the questions I need to answer:

How can I not only add the RSS feed to his site, but automate the updating of the feed?

How can the client easily create and upload podcasts in a way that doesn't strain his technical abilities? This is, it need to be taught easily.

So, I'm starting with a Google search that has lead me to a few organizations that might be helpful. While I'm going over documentation, though, I thought it might be useful to ask you all if you have any practical experience with podcasting and if you would be so kind as to share with me what tools you were using.

Bumper Stickers That Irritate Me

It wasn't the ''Pro Choice, Latte Loving, Volvo Driving Liberal" sticker that got me. That just seemed like fair warning.

I didn't even mind the little symbol proclaiming ''No Patriotic Red, White, and Blue Elephants," although I admit to being confused about the driver's antagonistic attitude toward elephants. Apparently targeted animal cruelty is just fine (which doesn't sound like something that a good PCLLVD Liberal would be saying, but I'm open minded about these things).

No, the sticker that got me was the ''Pro Cure" sticker. I mean, it seems that ''pro cure" would go without saying. The grand majority of American citizens are solidly in the corner of curing whatever it is that ails you. Cancer, AIDs, baldness, bad taste in music--we all hope that some day they find a cure for these things.

Anti Cure, on the other hand, would be pretty meaningful. Not a popular stance, but definitely brave.