Pain and Gain

While Michael Bay originally conceived "Pain & Gain" as a "small movie" that he would make before his most recent "Transformers" sequel, nothing about Bay's new film is little. As we're repeatedly reminded throughout the film, "Pain & Gain" is based on a true story: Between 1994 and 1995, three Floridan body-builders tried to get rich quick by robbing and killing. 

In "Pain & Gain," Bay's typically vile brand of chauvinism is amplified in order to make a silly but grand cynical statement about the scam that is the American dream. Everyone in "Pain & Gain" is corrupt, decadent, or stupid because anyone involved in an American institution is participating in a giant pyramid scheme, including the Florida Savings and Loan, the Miami PD and the gum-chewing blonde at the local Home Depot. 

Bay and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ("The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe") don't hold back any bile here: With one striking exception, all of the film's characters are immodestly pathetic. "Pain & Gain" is irrepressibly sleazy, frequently exhausting and sometimes as bitterly funny as its creators think it is.

When we're first introduced to Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), he's running from a SWAT team in slow-motion as ropes of spit fly from his gaping mouth. After getting hit by a car, Lugo insists that it's the responsibility of all Americans to realize their potential. "All my heroes are self-made," Lugo burbles enthusiastically, adding that anyone who "squanders their gifts" is simply "unpatriotic." Lugo's delivering a sales pitch to us, and the product he's selling is the story of his failed get-rich-quick scheme. 

Together with fellow strongmen Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) and Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), Lugo plots to kidnap and rob slimy entrepreneur Victor Kershsaw (Tony Shalhoub), a client at Lugo's gym. But Doorbal, an anxious man with steroid-shrunk gonads, and Doyle, a cocaine-addicted born-again Christian, are as simple-minded as Lugo is short-tempered. So while Lugo's failure is foretold in the film's opening scene, it's also treated as the inevitable conclusion to his story because almost everyone in "Pain & Gain" is a narcissistic dimwit. 

Throughout "Pain & Gain," anyone who aspires to authoritatively represent something bigger than himself is dismissed as a dumb shill. Priests are horny, weapons salesmen are Christian rock-listening tools, cops are presumptuous racists, and even Kershaw, the film's victim, is a loudmouthed opportunist. Kershaw is what Lugo wants to be, an aspiration confirmed when he sneers that salad was invented poor people. That's a Lugo-worthy line if every there was one. 

The teasing promise of more power, status, virility and money makes everyone myopically foolish. Bay rams home that point by juxtaposing the science-fair-worthy neighborhood watch poster boards Lugo makes to dupe his neighbors with the presentation that the Miami police chief gives to his men. In their own crude way, the film's creators are constantly howling about the pervasiveness of cultural indoctrination. They even go so far as to implicate themselves, if only just to prove they're not taking themselves seriously, when Lugo tells Doyle, "I watch a lot of movies, Paul. I know what I'm doing." 

The only competent/intelligent character in "Pain & Gain" is retired private detective Ed Du Bois (Ed Harris). Du Bois is unhappy in his retirement and doesn't like the idea of whiling away his remaining years playing golf or going fishing. He doesn't pursue Kershaw's case out of a sense of responsibility, but simply because it's a way to break up the tedium of his life. But even Du Bois is not infallible; to prove it he's afflicted with back pain, if only momentarily.

The pervasive juvenile nihilism inherent in "Pain & Gain" is mitigated by its creators' zeal for destructive social criticism. Bay makes some far-out creative decisions, like his sporadic use of randomly-timed inter-titles such as, "This is still sadly a true story," or a list of potential side effects of cocaine use, including anxiety and ejaculation. 

For his ostensibly small movie, Bay experiments with harness-rig digital camerawork and ostentatious tracking shots that pull viewers through pinhole-sized openings in walls and windows. As ambitious and vibrant as it is ugly and scattershot, "Pain & Gain" is the most charming Michael Bay movie in a long while.

Read More

It's a Disaster

Seven friends and one newcomer gather for a Sunday “couples brunch.” Because most of them have known one another for years, and because they are fairly petty and duplicitous, they embed covert barbs and hidden agendas in almost everything they say and do. Conversations appear familiar and convivial on the surface but carry a disconcerting undertone of cattiness that’s almost a private language.

Even before they sit down to a feast of mimosas, Tracy’s vegetable crockpot stew-that-started-out-as-soup and Emma’s vegan quiche (Lexi’s new trendy thing is not eating animal products, so everybody has to suffer), they are annoyed to find that the smartphone reception in the neighborhood is spotty and the cable is out. Then the electricity goes off. A neighbor in a bright yellow hazmat suit stops by to borrow some D batteries and informs them that several dirty bombs have been detonated a few miles away, in downtown Los Angeles. Hedy, the scientist in the group, estimates they have about three hours before enduring slow, agonizing deaths by tasteless, odorless VX nerve gas. It’s the start of a really awkward afternoon. 

“It’s a Disaster" is a comedy. The casting of David Cross (“Arrested Development,” “Mr. Show”) and several Second City Chicago alumni, should tip you off to that. But I’m not sure I’d describe the movie as a “black comedy,” although the specter of imminent annihilation is, I grant you, a little on the “dark” side. This is more like a comedy of manners — really bad manners. The humor is indirect and relatively low-key, like the random sirens outside that nobody pays any attention to. (Why would they? They’re just sirens. Only later do the insistent wails of emergency vehicles take on greater significance.)

The movie’s funniest touches are quiet flashes of character, expertly timed and nimbly played by a deft ensemble. “It’s a Disaster” is consistently funny, but you wince more often than you laugh out loud. It’s like a Christopher Guest improvisational farce with the volume turned down to 5. 

Hosts Emma (Erinn Hayes) and Pete (Blaise Miller) are preparing to drop their own relationship bombshell on their friends. Hedy (America Ferrera) and Shane (Jeff Grace) are stuck in a six-year engagement with no end in sight. Lexi (Rachel Boston) and Buck (Kevin M. Brennan) fancy themselves as free-spirited rebels (she plays the glockenspiel, man). Nervous Tracy (Julia Stiles) is introducing her friends to mild-mannered Glenn (Cross) on their third date. 

The movie’s sense of humor is expressed in its opening credits, which appear over a slow reverse-zoom on a vintage black-and-white photograph of a tropical beach, with palm trees and a couple of rustic, thatched-roof shelters in the foreground. At some point you notice a huge column rising out of the water in the distance. Eventually you see that it’s topped by a mushroom cloud. It’s an image of the 1946 Bikini Atoll nuclear test. That’s the way things detonate in “It’s a Disaster”: gradually building up to climactic revelations (like Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” and Ravel’s “Bolero” on the soundtrack), always teetering on the brink of … disaster. 

The film’s premise appears to have been adapted from Luis Buñuel’s famous 1962 satire “The Exterminating Angel,” in which a group of aristocrats gather for dinner and then find themselves inexplicably unable to leave the dining room. “It’s a Disaster,” written and directed by Todd Berger, traps its privileged Angelenos in a handsomely remodeled California bungalow, the plausible rationale for their confinement being the presence of deadly nerve gas outside. The crows don’t seem to be bothered by it, but you know crows. Probably nothing can kill them.

I read somewhere (and sentences that begin like this one are the stuff of which awkward brunch conversations are made) that Berger’s comedy was rooted in the characters’ inappropriate reactions to their situations. But I don’t think that’s quite accurate. What’s funny is that, apart from acknowledging the whole impending death thing, they do exactly what most people do all the time: They lapse into denial and retreat into the familiar patterns of behavior they’ve become accustomed to, as if stubbornly determined to act just like themselves even under the most extreme of circumstances. It’s easier to get outraged over some newly discovered relationship betrayal than it is to wrap your head around a possible alien invasion or nerve gas attack, which you can’t really do a whole lot about with a single roll of duct tape, anyway. 

While it’s always bad form to give away a comedy’s jokes, in this case there isn’t much that anybody could give away because the best material isn’t dependent on punch lines. Julia Stiles and America Ferrera prove themselves adept comedic actors, and they’re in good company. While we know that David Cross is a genius of funny, it’s still amazing how much he can get out of an inconsequential throwaway line like, “Mmmm, good carrots.”

Read More

Next vacation, how about a nice hotel?

For some 30 years now, small clusters of movie teenagers have made the journey to various cabins in various woods. The return ratio for such trips is one surviving, bloodied, traumatized, hospitalized teenager for every 10 dead friends left behind. And the ratio of entertaining, original movies about attractive young people and the hideous monsters that stalk them is about the same. For every clever remake or freshly twisted spin, there are innumerable gore fests with nothing original to say.

Hello, "Evil Dead," 2013 edition.

This isn't a strict remake of Sam Raimi's hugely influential 1981 horror classic, but it does include the basic framework and some visual nods to the original. On its own, it's an irredeemable, sadistic torture chamber reveling in the bloody, cringe-inducing deaths of some of the stupidest people ever to spend a rainy night in a remote cabin in the woods.

Shiloh Fernandez is the dull and dimwitted David, who returns to the family's old cabin along with his new girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore); his former childhood friends Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Olivia (Jessica Lucas), and his little sister, Mia (Jane Levy). Even before we learn Mia's trying to kick smack, we know this kid has problems because she's got a bit of a goth look going, she believes in the spirit world, and she likes to sketch.

Like most cabins in the woods, this cabin in the woods seems to be miles away from any other cabins or any signs of life. Gee, the family must have had a blast there, especially with Mom battling insanity, and Dad — well, we never hear about Dad.

Within a few hours, the dog finds a blood-covered trap door leading to a basement filled with strung-up cat carcasses and a book of evil curses. Soon after that, Mia starts having visions and speaking in a demonic voice. Yet these morons stay put. (When they finally do try to leave, there's a conveniently biblical-style rainstorm flooding the exit road.)

Olivia's a registered nurse, but she doesn't seem smart enough to know how to register for Google Plus. Eric, who for some reason is groomed and dressed as if he'd just come back from a Kurt Cobain look-alike contest, opens a book that says "leave this book alone" and starts reciting a chant that should never be recited. Geez, whose idea was it to invite Eric on this trip?

Enter the she-bitch from hell, who's possessing Mia and intent on offing everyone in sight in the most disgusting, prolonged manner possible. Cue the ominous score, the cheap scares and the increasingly moronic behavior by David and his dunderheaded friends. The gore factor goes all the way to 11, with admittedly impressive makeup and special effects. Over the course of a rainy night that seems like it'll never end, we're treated to multiple scenes of projectile vomiting, dozens of nail-gun shots penetrating flesh and bone, black ooze and blood everywhere, dismemberment and stabbings. All shown in excruciating detail.

Save for a few darkly funny one-liners, there's almost no wicked humor here, and there's certainly nothing original about the plot. The actors do a pretty fair job of conveying terror, but the characters they're playing are such one-dimensional idiots, you begin rooting for the demonic she-bitch from hell to take 'em out.

I love horror films that truly shock, scare and provoke. But after 30 years of this stuff, I'm bored to death and sick to death of movies that seem to have one goal: How can we gross out the audience by torturing nearly every major character in the movie?

Read More

Love is blind and so's this sociopath

"Simon Killer," a maddeningly short-sighted character study about a disturbed young American in Paris, is consistently unsettling, but not always for the right reasons. Writer-director Antonio Campos ("Afterschool") takes great pains to establish his antihero protagonist, Simon (Brady Corbet), as a voyeur with a very limited field of vision. The film's rocky first half hour establishes Simon as a socially awkward, self-involved character with a myopic worldview.

But Simon's inconsistency of vision isn't entirely his fault: while being a narcissist certainly doesn't help, Simon can only know so much because he can only perceive so much. Campos accordingly presents the film's events from a chilly, deliberately limited third-person perspective typified by slow-moving camerawork, and claustrophobic framing that reveals only fragments. In other words, we're frequently prevented from seeing characters' heads, shoulders, knees and toes. So, we're meant to feel as trapped in the film's obtuse world as Simon does.

A bad break-up sends Simon fleeing to Paris, where he agrees to housesit for Carlo (Nicolas Ronchi), a family friend. Within a week, Simon develops a relationship with Marianne (Constance Rousseau), a prostitute he meets in a bar-cum-brothel. Simon believes Marianne when she tells him that having sex with Simon will be a real pleasure as he's much more attractive than her usual clientele.

But while Marianne's troubled past explains her attraction to the deceptively shy Simon, that doesn't make their relationship is believable. There's no great chemistry between them. Still, their romance is supposed to be tentative, so the ambiguous nature of their relationship is intentional, if not wholly successful. Marianne eventually agrees to Simon's ill-conceived plan to blackmail some of her wealthier clients.

Campos overzealously frustrates his viewers' need to understand what motivates Simon and Marianne. He only shows viewers as much as he feels is necessary for any given scene. It's equally hard to watch Simon wander around Paris, as we're constantly reminded that we are seeing events through a strictly-maintained aesthetic filter. Campos combines partial, behind-the-back views of Simon with a blaring electronic soundtrack only serves to over-emphasize the film's constricted point of view. Yeah, we get it.

The best scenes in "Simon Killer" get out of the sociopathic title character's way and allow him to speak for himself. This is particularly true of some direct, unsparingly honest conversations between Simon and Marianne. In their first meeting, one of a handful that put Rousseau and Corbet together in the same shot, is effectively ambiguous without being overbearing. It's an exception in a film that can otherwise be described as a relentless and largely unrewarding descent into an ostensibly personal hell.

Read More

A mysterious sci-fi relationship primer

A romance, a thriller, and a science-fiction drama, "Upstream Color" tantalizes viewers with an open-ended narrative about overcoming personal loss. It's the long-awaited follow-up to the equally sophisticated 2004 time travel drama "Primer" by American indie wunderkind Shane Carruth, and it's every bit as good. A young couple are connected by a singular, mysterious experience, a form of hypnosis caused by body-snatching maggots that alienates them from everyone around them.

"Upstream Color" is about pattern recognition, but it's also about how a couple's inexplicable attraction is fostered by (shared?) trauma. Immediately after Kris (Amy Seimetz) is introduced, she's abducted and, for lack of a better word, hypnotized. For reasons that are never made explicit, a thief subjects Kris to mind-and-body-controlling maggots. The experience completely throws her routine out of whack: She loses her job, and bankrupts herself without knowing why. Once that ordeal is over, she finds herself weirdly drawn to Jeff (Carruth), a man she initially feels no connection with, but soon can't stop bumping into.

Post-brain-washing, Kris and Jeff's intertwined lives are presented through a drunken haze. Their relationship develops at a brisk pace, and while it's ambiguous to what extent Jeff and Kris have had the same thing happen to them, the two keep bumping into each other. Their motives are not always clear, even to themselves, but that's because they're never not struggling to figure out what's happened to them, and why everything now seems alien and menacingly opaque.

Kris and Jeff's bond is established and developed by small, telling gestures. Carruth bombards viewers with information, but he does this in small, unassuming ways, like the first time Kris hears Jeff describe a scene from his childhood. While they eat dinner, Jeff tells a story from his past. Kris interjects a detail, then lets him excitedly continue while she quietly wonders why his past sounds just like her own. This is the first of several conversations where Kris and Jeff seem to share each other's memories. In a later even, Jeff describes with photographic accuracy exactly where in his old office building Kris is as she tries to exit. And in an even later scene, after several heated conversations about grackles and starlings (it might also be just one conversation that goes in several different directions) Kris accuses Jeff of confusing his memories with hers. Eventually, it's uncertain whether Kris is retracing Jeff's steps, or vice versa.

The complex bond between the two characters is defined by questions that they don't ask each other, and gestures that don't have meaning outside the relationship itself. "Upstream Color" is about how, once co-dependent attachments are formed, people create new contexts for their lives, effectively distancing themselves from their identities as individuals. Kris and Jeff aren't just themselves anymore, they're a couple, redefined by their shared experiences, including those from before they met -- like when Jeff connects himself with Kris by describing what it was like to be ostracized by his peers after making bad business decisions that even he can't fully explain.

It's unclear how Kris and Jeff are linked to Sampler (Andrew Sensenig), a man who runs a pig farm and makes ambient noise music by distorting natural sounds on a synthesizer, or how Sampler facilitates the growth of the maggots. But finding answers to these questions is of secondary importance compared to watching the effect that certain triggers, like the color blue, or passages from Thoreau's "Walden," have on Kris and Jeff. As a couple, Kris and Jeff advance towards a new future together, one characterized by abstraction, but defined by a genuine sense of wonder.

Read More

Remembering the Roger I knew

Werner Herzog and Roger Ebert at Ebertfest, 2007. Photo by Jim Emerson

Roger Ebert's last review is on the screen in front of me and I can't quite bring myself to deal with it. I'd like to get it posted right away because I know that's what Roger would want under the circumstances. ("We'll be getting a lot of traffic!") Actually, he filed two or three other reviews before his condition took a sudden turn for the worse. But this final one -- sent March 16 and labeled "FOR USE as needed," is of Terence Malick's "To the Wonder," which (spoiler warning) he liked quite a lot. Publicists might object that it hasn't opened in Chicago yet, but Roger wasn't just a Chicago movie critic (though he certainly was that). I can imagine his email now: "Who's going to complain? It's three and a half stars!"

In his 46 years as film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger wrote more than his share of obits and posthumous appreciations on deadline -- hardly ever in advance, like the ones most newspapers have on file, ready to publish at a moment's notice, but off the top of his head on the day the news broke. For years, I did that for other papers and web sites, too. But this isn't just another obit; it's one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. Still, I know he'd want me to do it -- and to get it online ASAP so he could, as he said, "socialize" it -- tweet it and Facebook it.

I honestly expected Roger to outlive me. As Pablo Villaca, one of Roger's "Far-Flung Correspondents" (or FFCs as they are affectionately known), wrote this afternoon: "We are orphans now." And that's the way it feels. (Oddly, my own father died six years ago on this very day -- which Roger would acknowledge is a kind of apt coincidence, though not anything of "woo-woo" supernatural significance.) But I want to avoid anything maudlin or sentimental because he hated, hated HATED that sort of thing.

The bond between a writer and an editor can be a surprisingly intimate one, and for almost 10 years Roger and I ran RogerEbert.com as basically a two-man operation. His Chicago Sun-Times editor for 20-plus years, Laura Emerick, edited all of Roger's writing that appeared in the paper, and we always tried to use her expertly edited versions online, but sometimes he'd write other stuff exclusively for the site, or that would appear on the web first, and I would edit those myself. At first our site also had the support of the Sun-Times, including Catherine Lanucha, John Cary, Jack Barry and the company's webstaff, but budget cuts and layoffs at the paper eventually left us with no day-to-day resources but ourselves: the only two employees of RogerEbert.com, as we liked to joke. But it was true. (BTW, nobody edited Roger's blog; it was direct from him to you, which is what a blog should be.)

Mostly, I maintained the site, reading, formatting and publishing reviews and articles new and old -- forever correcting typos, import errors and formatting glitches in the thousands of reviews in the database that went back to when Roger started reviewing for the Sun-Times in 1967.

Above all, I read and responded to emails from Roger -- thousands and thousands of emails (all archived, because I would often need to reach back years to remind him of how and why we'd made certain decisions, or to clarify matters). They ran the gamut of subjects and varieties -- questions, ideas, notifications, requests, bug reports, jokes, philosophical musings. It wasn't unusual to get 10 or 20 in a 14-hour stretch. And they were sent, and replied to, at all hours of the day and night, 365 days a year -- Roger using his MacBook in Chicago (or Cannes or Toronto or Telluride or Park City or Mexico or Los Angeles or Pritikin or wherever he happened to be) and me working mostly from home in Seattle.

As his output amply demonstrated, Roger wasn't just a recovering alcoholic (one of his favorite topics, along with Darwinian evolution), but a workaholic. He would invariably insist on writing something that just had to be posted on July 4 or Christmas Day (even though it had nothing to do with American independence or Christmas and could just as well have waited). He was oblivious to the concept of weekends, holidays or any limitations on working hours. He really liked to write. But, if you read him, you know that. (One Oscar night I got mad at him because Laura and I were waiting for the final version of his Oscar story and I discovered he was tweeting about other things while we were on a tight deadline. That's when I found out he was using a Twitter-scheduling app, so he could load up his tweets in advance and it would post them automatically. Yes, he practically worked round the clock, anyway -- but even when he wasn't working, he got software to do the tweeting for him.)

Now, I hate those "In Memoriam" pieces in which the writers overstate their closeness to the deceased. I started working with Roger in 1994, when I was the editor of Microsoft Cinemania, then became his web editor when we founded RogerEbert.com in 2003, and have remained so ever since -- the longest time I've ever held a single job, although the job kept changing and I stayed put.

I'm not so presumptuous as to say I knew All About Roger -- but I knew certain aspects of the guy probably as well as anybody, particularly when it came to his thoughts and feelings about various things that were dear to him, like the newspaper business, movie criticism and various ethical and philosophical issues. You don't read and correspond with somebody (particularly a writer) every day for 10 years without learning something about their tastes and sensibilities, their use of language, the principles they believe in, and how they prefer to conduct themselves in the world. But he had many, many different sides to him -- some of which he shared, some he didn't. I often learned personal details, particularly about his health, when he'd write something on his blog months or years after the fact.

I'm most grateful for Roger's friendship, trust, and generosity. As much as he lived his life in public, he was also intensely private. But he loved to gather people around him. In 1997 he extended the invitation for me to join the Floating Film Festival as one of its critic/programmers. It was helmed by Dusty and Joan Cohl, who quickly became two of my favorite people. He introduced me to the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO, where he conducted the week-long Cinema Interruptus (now the Ebert Cinema Interruptus) program for more than 30 years and asked me to join him in the process. A few years later, after he lost his ability to talk, I was able to step in and continue the tradition he had started.

And, of course, there was Ebertfest, where I instantly bonded with film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, now good pals, and befriended Roger's Far-Flung Correspondents (the formation of which was an urgent inspiration he had one Thanksgiving weekend when I was in Oregon trying to have dinner with friends) and The Demanders.

For Roger, the ideal life was a moveable party, with him as the host, seated at a big table with a circle of friends and colorful characters. That's basically what Ebertfest was, but I sat at that table many other times in many other places, from the Red Lion, a lodge in the hills above Boulder, to ships cruising the Caribbean or the Panama Canal during the FFF. As much as he would sometimes complain about being a "celebrity," or being noticed because of "that damn TV show," nobody thrived in the spotlight more than Roger (with the possible exception of Quentin Tarantino).

I'm tempted to say that if Roger had never written a word, he'd be known for bringing people together. But the writing was what made Roger Roger. He wasn't just generous with those close to him. He told everyone a lot about himself -- sometimes, I think, more than he knew -- in the words he published: his reviews, his op-ed pieces, his interviews, his blog, his memoir -- even his tweets.

At this moment, I know that thousands of others all over the world are collecting their thoughts and memories of Roger. I often felt awkward and out of place, like I was just in the way, when I tagged along with him in public and he was surrounded by fans, well-wishers and gawkers -- and I feel that way now. I'm overwhelmed -- with affection, gratitude, regret, sadness. So I'm getting back to work.

In one of Roger's last emails, responding to my concerns that he was firing off messages that were garbled or didn't make sense, he said he sometimes felt that way himself, but wanted to assure me that he was still in possesion of all his marbles.

"JIm, old friend, I'm in bad shape. I type on my lap in a hospital bed. I'm on pain meds.  Did the review of 'To the Wonder" make sense e to you? Such a strange movie.

"I need your help."

You've got it, R.

- - - - -

P.S. Last night, when I was publishing the new reviews for the week as usual (I haven't had a Wednesday off in years!), I wrote a headline for my review of "Room 237": "A whole world lies waiting behind door No. 237." I was going to call it to R's attention because he'd recognize the reference. It's from a song written by Jimmy Buffett and Steve Goodman, and Roger was a big fan of the latter. I think it would have made him smile.

Read More

A few characters in search of transcendence

This was the last movie review Roger Ebert filed.

Released less than two years after his "The Tree of Life," an epic that began with the dinosaurs and peered into an uncertain future, Terrence Malick's "To the Wonder" is a film that contains only a handful of important characters and a few crucial moments in their lives. Although it uses dialogue, it's dreamy and half-heard, and essentially this could be a silent film — silent, except for its mostly melancholy music.

The movie stars Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko as a couple who fall deeply, tenderly, transcendently in love in France. Malick opens as they visit Mont St. Michel, the cathedral perched on a spire of rock off the French coast, and moves to the banks of the Seine, but really, its landscape is the terrain is these two bodies, and the worshipful ways in which Neil and Marina approach each other. Snatches of dialogue, laughter, shared thoughts, drift past us. Nothing is punched up for dramatic effect.

Marina, a single mother, decides to move with her little daughter, Tatiana, to America with Neil, and the setting suddenly becomes the flatlands of Oklahoma, a land seen here as nearly unpopulated. Oh, there are people here, but we see few of them and engage with only a handful. Again there is the hushed serenity as in France, but differences grow between them, and there is anger now in some of their words. Neil reconnects with Jane (Rachel McAdams), an American girl he was once in love with, and romantic perfection between he and Marina seems to slip away.

In Oklahoma, we meet Father Quintana (Javier Bardem), a priest from Europe, whose church is new and brightly lit. We can almost smell the furniture varnish. His faith has been challenged, and many of his statements are directed toward Jesus Christ, as a sort of former lover. Quintana visits prisoners, the ill, the poor and the illiterate, whose dialogue is half-understood even by themselves.

As all of these relationships intertwine, Malick depicts them with deliberate beauty and painterly care. The mood is often similar to the feelings of the early small-town scenes in "The Tree of Life." Malick has a repertory of fundamental images he draws upon.

We don't need to be told Malick's in an autobiographical vein here; these memories surely belong to the storyteller. In both films, he is absorbed in living and dining rooms, looking out upon neat lawns and neighborhood pastoral peace.

As the film opened, I wondered if I was missing something. As it continued, I realized many films could miss a great deal. Although he uses established stars, Malick employs them in the sense that the French director Robert Bresson intended when he called actors "models." Ben Affleck here isn't the star of "Argo" but a man, often silent, intoxicated by love and then by loss. Bardem, as a priest far from home, made me realize as never before the loneliness of the unmarried clergy. Wandering in his empty church in the middle of the day, he is a forlorn figure, crying out in prayer and need to commune with his Jesus.

A more conventional film would have assigned a plot to these characters and made their motivations more clear. Malick, who is surely one of the most romantic and spiritual of filmmakers, appears almost naked here before his audience, a man not able to conceal the depth of his vision.

"Well," I asked myself, "why not?" Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn't that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?

There will be many who find "To the Wonder" elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.

Read More

A whole world lies waiting behind door No. 237

What is "Room 237" really about? On the surface, Rodney Ascher's documentary exhibits the theories a few obsessive fans have put forward to reveal what they think Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" is really about. According to them, Kubrick stashed "hidden meanings" in the vacancies, hallways, ballrooms, bathrooms, walk-in storage areas and hedge-mazes of the Overlook Hotel in his 1980 horror film.

Trouble is, the "Room 237" conspirators — er, contributors — don't seem to realize that those meanings are either not hidden, not meanings or not remotely supported by the secret evidence they think they've uncovered. "Room 237" isn't film criticism, it isn't coherent analysis, but listening to fanatics go on and on about their fixations can be kind of fun. For a while, at least.

Five off-screen narrators pitch various interpretations of "The Shining," accompanied by stock footage, illustrative recreations and clips from Kubrick's filmography. For Bill Blakemore, the subject of Kubrick's "Masterpiece of Modern Horror" is the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans by white European settlers; for Geoffrey Cocks, it's about the Holocaust in Nazi-dominated Europe; for Juli Kearns, it's an exploration of an impossible, Escher-like maze called the Overlook Hotel.

John Fell Ryan has discovered some interesting juxtapositions that occur if you project two prints of "The Shining" on top of each other at the same time, with one running forward and the other running backward. Jay Weidner, who characterizes himself as a "conspiracy hunter," insists "The Shining" is Kubrick's belated, life-risking confession/apology for faking the television footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing on the sets for "2001: A Space Odyssey" at the behest of the U.S. government.

"Room 237" could easily be (mis)taken for a comedic satire of fervent movie-geekery if the theories it presents — some more cockeyed than others — hadn't appeared on the Internet years ago. That's where Ascher found the inspirations for his documentary.

It starts off with a visual trick: In a digitally modified clip from Kubrick's final film, "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999), Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) stands outside the Sonata Cafe in Greenwich Village, which is actually a set at Pinewood Studios near London (which is the source of a little in-joke: The location is identified as "EUROPE"). But instead of inspecting a display featuring his old friend, pianist Nick Nightingale, he's looking at promotional materials for "The Shining." You could say that "Room 237" is based on a similar illusion, getting us to see things in a movie that either aren't there or aren't what they appear to be.

Let's rewind: Back in 2010, Ascher made a notably similar short film called "The S From Hell," a parodic inquiry into the off-the-wall proposition that the Screen Gems logo, which appeared after episodes of popular TV series such as "Bewitched" and "The Partridge Family" from 1965 to 1974, was so frightening, it traumatized a generation of unsuspecting children. Maybe you don't recall being terrified by this or any other logo? Me, neither. But we could've repressed it.

The goofy premise of "The S from Hell" is no less unlikely than some of the blarney put forward in "Room 237." The movie doesn't judge the relative merits of its subjects' opinions, probably because that might be construed as favoritism. That's understandable. But as a result, the movie lacks examples of sound critical thinking. All we have here are do-it-yourself interactive fan games.

In "The Shining," the genial hotel manager (played by Barry Nelson) mentions that the Overlook was built on an ancient Indian burial ground — a familiar horror-movie trope. Sure enough, the hotel decor is inspired by Native American motifs, as we can plainly see. But what, then, is the movie supposedly saying about the genocide of Native Americans? That their vengeful spirits might come back and kill people at a hotel? As the saying goes, that's not subtext, it's text.

The proponents of the Holocaust and staged-moon-landing scenarios undermine their own hypotheses by backing into them. They start with extraneous information (Kubrick wanted to make a Holocaust movie but could never figure out how; nobody was in a better position than Kubrick to fake moon footage in 1969). Then they scour the nooks and crannies of "The Shining" for anything that could be construed to support, or at least reference, their chosen preconceptions.

So is the recurrence of the number 42 (on Danny's jersey; in the movie "The Summer of '42" on TV) an allusion to 1942, the year of the Wannsee Conference when Nazi officials met to plan the Final Solution? What about that German typewriter? And is Danny's hand-knit Apollo 11 sweater linked to the ultra-scary Room 237 because the average distance between the Earth and the moon is 237,000 miles? Even though it isn't 237,000 miles, but let's not allow facts and a few extra zeroes to spoil a juicy conspiracy plot. What if the first word in the famous typewritten "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" manuscript could be read as "A11" — as in "Apollo 11"?! What if, indeed.

The double-projection trick isn't a theory at all, just a nifty experiment in randomness somewhat less remarkable than the discovery that Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" produces some striking juxtapositions when played along with "The Wizard of Oz." Likewise, it's sorta neat that the Outlook does not have an intelligible floor plan, as it fits with the movie's "lost in the maze" motif. But there's nothing unusual about it. That's the way movie sets are usually built — in disconnected bits and pieces, not as integral units.

Kubrick's longtime assistant and collaborator Leon Vitali (who played Lord Bullingdon in "Barry Lyndon") recently said that "Room 237" had him "falling about laughing most of the time" because he knows these ideas are "absolute balderdash." The Adler typewriter, for example, belonged to Kubrick himself, and that particular model was once as commonplace as late-model iPhones.

Any movie is the product of forethought, accident and improvisation. In the end, once the film is released, the filmmakers' intentions don't really matter anymore because it belongs to the audience. At that point, if something's there, it's there. "Room 237," regrettably, isn't all there.

Read More

A Constitutional Argument Against the So-Called "Monsanto Protection Act"*

How awful is a new GMO law amendment you’ve probably heard
derided as the Monsanto
Protection Act?

To answer that question, I’ve turned to page 199 of my dog-eared
2001 copy of Examples & Explanations: Administrative
Law by William F. Funk and Richard H. Seamon. There, the
section on the availability of judicial review of federal agency
actions begins with a quote from Marbury v. Madison
(1803), America’s most important Supreme Court decision.

“[W]hat is there in the exalted station of [an executive]
officer,” writes Chief Justice John Marshall, “which shall bar a
citizen from asserting, in a court of justice, his legal rights, or
shall forbid a court to listen to the claim…?”

Funk and Seamon rightly conclude this portion of
Marbury v. Madison stands for the proposition that “the
substantive statutory limitations on an agency’s authority found in
its statutory mandate would count for little if the threat of
judicial review was lacking.”

If a federal agency has the power to bar a court from
overturning or halting the actions of that agency—an administrative
rulemaking body to which Congress delegates far too much power
already—then that body may (and will) act with impunity. The power
of such an agency would, in fact, exceed that of Congress
itself.

Such a law would be worse than almost any that preceded it in
this country. Under no theory of agency with which I'm familiar can
one delegate more power than one has. And yet this new amendment to
the GMO law appears to place some USDA powers almost entirely
outside the scope of judicial review.

In effect, this amendment gives the
USDA the power to ignore a federal judge’s ruling in some cases. It
would take the power of judicial review out of the hand of judges,
crumple it up, toss it on the ground, step on it, and set it
ablaze.

The law states that in the event a federal court invalidates
USDA approval of a particular GMO crop, the USDA must still
“ensur[e] that growers or other users are able to move, plant,
cultivate, introduce into commerce and carry out other authorized
activities” for an “interim period” of entirely unspecified
duration.

"In the event that a seed is approved by the USDA but that
approval is challenged by a court ruling, the seed can still be
used and sold until the USDA says otherwise, according to that new
law,"
writes ABC News.

While the law itself sunsets in six months, some previous
enumerated USDA “interim” periods have lasted for
at least two years. Unenumerated ones? The sky could be the
limit.

Though it’s difficult in this case, please ignore if you will
the deafening bluster from
detractors and
supporters of GMOs alike. I’m
neither, and I find this background noise distracts from the
real issue of judicial review.

(For the smartest, most balanced piece I’ve read on the GMO law,
read Dustin Siggins’s
excellent post over at the Tea Party Patriots blog. Thanks to

Michele Simon, who’s quoted in the post, for pointing out
Siggins's post to me.)

Greg Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who I often
agree with, gets it wrong when he
claims the GMO law “does not give USDA any new authority” and
that the agency is merely implementing rules that reflect the
Supreme Court’s holding in the 2010 case of
Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms—in effect “codify[ing]
existing case law and agency practice.”

The Court in that case, which is very much on point here,
actually held just the opposite.

“First, if and when” a USDA action “arguably runs afoul of” the
regulations at issue in the case, the Court held in
Geertson, a plaintiff “may file a new suit challenging
such action and seeking appropriate preliminary relief….
Accordingly, a permanent injunction is not now needed to guard
against any present or imminent risk of likely irreparable
harm.”

But the USDA has now foreclosed on that option.

While a plaintiff may still “file a new suit challenging such
action,” the USDA may overrule a judge’s decision to grant
“appropriate preliminary relief” even with a showing of “any
present or imminent risk of likely irreparable harm.”

While the rule under the amended law is temporary, word is its
supporters are already moving to make it permanent. And you’re
naïve or stupid if you think other federal agencies won’t be
seeking the same power to override judges' decisions they don’t
like. That's why groups like the ACLU oppose the measure.

Judicial oversight is one of the few things that keeps us from
absolute tyranny. It doesn’t mean that courts always get it right.
They don’t. Far from it. It also doesn’t mean that frivolous suits
don’t flourish. They do.

But to say that courts should do a better job of weeding out
frivolous lawsuits is a far cry from arguing that the Legislative
Branch, in cahoots with the Executive Branch, should usurp the role
of the Judicial Branch.

Apparently, even USDA secretary Tom Vilsack shares some of these
concerns about the amendment’s unconstitutional nature.

“Secretary Vilsack has asked the Office of General Council (sic)
to review this provision,” the USDA
told Politico this week, “[a]s it appears to pre-empt judicial
review of a[n] action which may make the provision
unenforceable.”

Decisions about whether GMOs (or any other food product) are
awesome, terrible, or somewhere in between should be left to the
greatest extent possible up to individual producers and
consumers.

In that vein, I find it ludicrous that companies like Monsanto
are required
to petition for USDA approval for many GMO crops before they’re
sold and planted. That sort of Precautionary
Principle creep no doubt rests at the heart of this new GMO
amendment. But the right answer here isn’t to handcuff the
judiciary. Instead, revoke the approval requirement.

Consumers, farmers, and others who have a justiciable claim that
a farm or food product has caused them harm must have judicial
recourse. No agency may bargain away that right. The Constitution
(or, at least, 210 years of constitutional interpretation) demands
it. No food, no government, no corporation, and no person--even one
in the "exalted station” Chief Justice Marshall identified in
1803--is above judicial review in this country.

*Column title changed to reflect the fact several
liberartarians, including those noted in this article, support the
measure and several progressives, including those noted in this
article, support a constitutional argument against the GMO law.

Read More

Covered at Reason 24/7: Former FCC Leaders Want Even More Television Censorship

There are a number of folks out there
who feel the team name for the NFL's Washington Redskins is
culturally insensitive. Racist, even. Since the team has thus far
clung to their controversial mascot, some former FCC leaders are
proposing forcing their hands by trying to punish television
broadcasters who say or air its name.

Politico reports:

In a letter to
Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt,
former Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Nicholas Johnson, and
others contend that an indecency case could be made against
broadcasters who air the offensive name.

“It is impermissible under law that the FCC would condone, or
that broadcasters would use, obscene pornographic language on live
television,” they write. “This medium uses government owned
airwaves in exchange for an understanding that it will promote the
public interest. Similarly, it is inappropriate for broadcasters to
use racial epithets as part of normal, everyday
reporting.” 

Never using the team’s name, they chastise broadcasters for
using a name that is equivalent to the “n-word.”

But networks can use the “n-word,” too, if they want to. It’s
the cultural pressure and consequences that stopped the use of such
language, not government demands or fines.

Follow this story and more at Reason 24/7.

If you have a story that would be of interest to Reason's
readers please let us know by emailing the 24/7 crew at
24_7@reason.com, or tweet us stories at @reason247.

Read More

Isn't it Time You Read a Fun, Nanny State-Mocking Book?

Peer into the future. Not
our future (hopefully), but a future in which Michael Bloomberg's
most feverish dreams about saving us from ourselves have come true.
That's the premise of
Bacon and Egg Man by Ken Wheaton, a novel
that should be satirical, but really is just an extrapolation down
the path set by smoking bans and soda restrictions. In Wheaton's
mid-21st century, the northeastern United States seceded from the
union under the leadership of a "King Mike" who was primarily
motivated by the desire to be the biggest fish in a small pond.
After years of creeping nanny-statism, the rest of the country was
only too happy to tell King Mike and his Northeast Federation of
States not to let the door hit them in the ass on their way out —
and to insist they take California with them. This set King Mike
and friends loose to mold a new nation using all of the tools
available to elitist control freaks with no checks on their
power.

Wheaton's hero, Wes Montgomery, is a journalist with a sideline
as the leading black market dealer of banned foods on Long Island.
The fun begins when he gets busted and coerced into participating
in an undercover operation against his counterpart in
Manhattan.

The premise of the book is similar to that of F. Paul Wilson's
"Lipidleggin',"
which was written when the whole idea of a diet-controlling,
therapy-mandating, Big Mother-ish government seemed oh-so
far-fetched. I asked Wheaton about that, and he'd never heard of
the story. He's a Louisiana native though, and a few years of
living under King Mike's smothering hand while working for Ad
Age in New York City were likely all it took to have him
pining for an America that had quarantined militant aerobicizers
and haters of trans-fats.

While we're on the subject of satirical
novels about the nanny-state future, let's not forget Scott Stein's
Mean Martin
Manning. Consistently funny and, yes, mean, the novel
follows misanthropic Martin Manning, who hasn't left his apartment
in years simply because he wants to be left alone. He's not
neurotic, or phobic, or troubled in any way. But he is ill-tempered
— and perhaps just a little more than the aggressively caring
minions of the nanny state counted on when they set out to "help"
those who neither want nor need anything of the sort. What's that
about waking sleeping giants? How about pissing off  a pit
viper?

Mean Martin Manning was published in 2007 and deserves
much more notice than it has received. Like Bacon and Egg
Man, it captures all of the awful presumption of the nanny
state, and then just sets it down its own logical road, to where
the nanny staters are not only likely, but certain, to go if
allowed free rein.

I'm a big believer in the value of both culture and fun. I
recommend these books not just because they celebrate freedom, but
because they're enjoyable to read and work in and of themselves as
novels. We have to participate in the culture and contribute of
ourselves if we're going to nudge it in a healthy direction, and
both Bacon and Egg Man and Mean Martin Manning
are worthy contributions in that direction.

So, of course, is
High Desert Barbecue, the rollicking, thug-thumping
novel of outdoor adventure, penned by yours truly. Thrill as
conspiracy, arson and ineptitude threaten the desert West, and only
a misanthropic hermit, a subversive schoolteacher and an unemployed
business writer stand in the way. I may not address nanny staters
to any great extent, but my book deals at great length with
tree-huggers and bureaucrats. There are plenty of larfs and
violence. I should have added more sex.

High Desert Barbecue was a Freedom Book Club book of the
month. Like the other two novels featured here, I like to think
that it stands on its own merits.

Read More

Baylen Linnekin on the Libertarian Argument Against the So-Called "Monsanto Protection Act"

While the rule under the amended law is
temporary, writes Baylen Linnekin, word is its supporters are
already moving to make it permanent. And you’re naïve or stupid if
you think other federal agencies won’t be seeking the same power to
override judges' decisions they don’t like.

View this article.

Read More

Can Computers Replace Teachers?: Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward

"Will computers replace teachers? Dear god I hope so," says
Katherine Mangu-Ward, managing editor
of Reason magazine.

At Reason Weekend 2013, the annual donor event for the nonprofit
that publishes this website, Mangu-Ward discussed the future of
education, how technology can change the classroom for the better
and why she loves computers more than people.

About 21 minutes.

Filmed by Alex Manning and Meredith Bragg. Edited by Alex
Manning.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe
to ReasonTV's
YouTube Channel to receive notification when new material
goes live.

Read More

Vid: Can Computers Replace Teachers?: Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward

"Can Computers Replace Teachers?: Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward"
is the latest offering from Reason TV.

Watch above or click on the link below for video, full text,
supporting links, downloadable versions, and more Reason TV
clips.

View this article.

Read More

The Greatest Column By Roger Ebert Had Nothing to do With Movies

It was
about the late movie critic's memory of eating, written after he
could no longer eat or even talk.

It's
filled with elegies for crap food that are by turns haunting
and hilarious:

Another surprising area for sharp memory is the taste and
texture of cheap candy. Not imported chocolates, but Red Hots, Good
and Plenty, Milk Duds, Paydays, Chuckles. I dreamed I got a box of
Chuckles with five licorice squares, and in my dream I exalted:
"Finally!" With Necco wafers, there again, the licorice were the
best. The peculiar off-purple wafers were space-wasters. As a
general rule in candy, if anything is black, red or green, in that
order, I like it.

This got carried so far one day I found myself googling White
Hen-style candy with the mad idea of writing an entire blog entry
on the subject. During visits to a Cracker Barrel I would buy paper
bags filled with licorice, root beer, horehound and cinnamon drops.
Searching for Black Jack gum, I found whole web sites devoted
licorice in its many forms. I even discovered and downloaded a
photo of a basket that seemed assembled from my memory, and it is
below.

And then there's slow-burning,
power-chord finish:

I came across this sentence in its web review, and it perfectly
describes the kind of place I like: " A Greek-style chow joint
replete with '70s wood paneling, periwinkle padded booths, a chatty
wait staff and the warble of regulars at the bar. Basically, if
you've ever had it at any place that starts with Grandma's, Uncle's
or any sort of Greek place name, you can find it here." Yes. If a
restaurant doesn't serve tuna melts, right away you have to make
allowances.

So that's what's sad about not eating. The loss of dining, not
the loss of food. It may be personal, but for, unless I'm alone, it
doesn't involve dinner if it doesn't involve talking. The food and
drink I can do without easily. The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments
and shared memories I miss. Sentences beginning with the words,
"Remember that time?" I ran in crowds where anyone was likely to
break out in a poetry recitation at any time. Me too. But not me
anymore. So yes, it's sad. Maybe that's why I enjoy this blog. You
don't realize it, but we're at dinner right now.

Read
the whole thing.

Ebert also wrote
memorably - and movingly - about depression, boozing, and his
AA connections.

Read More

Alabama Legislators Need to Fix New Eminent Domain Law

Last weekend, Reason

broke the news that Alabama has rescinded its strong statutory
protections against the use of eminent domain for private
development. I stand by that claim, but based on subsequent local
news
reports, SB 96 appears to be an inartfully crafted law rather
than a nefarious attempt to bring back Kelo-style land
grabs.

According to one legislator, any expansion of eminent domain
authority was inadvertent and will be excised. Legal minds in
Alabama are
split, however, on whether the new law, which offers tax
subsidies for manufacturers willing to locate their operations in
the state, does indeed expand the state's eminent domain power.

To me, this language is pretty
unequivocal (italics denote SB 96’s changes to existing law):

It is further found and declared that the powers conferred by
this chapter are for public … and private uses and
purposes imbued with a public interest … and the power of
eminent domain and police power exercised, is hereby declared as a
matter of legislative determination.

Those private uses include:

Automotive, aviation, medical, pharmaceutical, semiconductor,
computer, electronics, energy conservation, cyber technology, and
biomedical industry manufacturing facilities.

Since there is uncertainty about what this passage means, a
quick legislative fix is in order. According to Dana Berliner, a
senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, “If the legislature
truly did not intend to authorize eminent domain with this bill,
they need to fix it immediately.”

Otherwise, it will be up to judges to determine what the law
says, which means forcing property owners to defend their homes and
businesses in court when local officials with an expansive view of
SB 96 decide to replace a neighborhood with an industrial park.
 

Disclosure: I am a former employee of the Institute for
Justice.

Read More

President Obama Apologizes to Kamala Harris, Can Still Mislead on Guns, Sequester, Propose a Budget No One Likes

On Wednesday in Denver, the
president made
several misleading comments about gun policies. The mainstream
media is increasingly
picking up on the fact that sequestration isn’t the
calamity his administration
promised. Both Republicans and Democrats are upset by the

president’s budget proposal, which also came two months late.
So what did the president apologize for today? Calling California’s
Kamala Harris, “by far the best looking attorney general in the
country.” Was Jack Conway
upset?

In fact, Jay Carney said the president called her to apologize
for the distraction the comments caused. Obama’s not a stranger to
the wheel of outrage, having apologized in 2008 for
calling a Michigan television reporter “sweetie.” At the LA
Times, Robin Abcarian
offered that the president’s remarks were more “wolfish” than
“sexist” but then pointed out the obvious, that looks matter. She
concluded by repeating that no one would’ve cared what the
“gorgeous” Sarah Palin had to say if she didn’t have good looks, a
familiar
trope used to diminish Palin’s political positions. Obama, of
course, didn’t do that this time. He even prefaced his comments on
Harris by calling her “brilliant” and “dedicated.” But he
apologized anyway.

And you can say you were there, when the president apologized

for innocent drone deaths
his foreign policy
his economic policies getting some things
wrong drawing attention to his opinion on a
politician’s good looks.

Read More

De-Extinction Would Be Really Cool

The current issue of Science has an
article on the
costs and benefits of de-extinction, i.e., using biotechnology
to resurrect species. The article by Stanford University scholars
Jacob Sherkow and Henry Greely note that extinct species might be
brought back to life by means of back-breeding, cloning, or genetic
engineering.

Back-breeding would use selective breeding of species closely
related aim at producing the phenotype of the extinct species,
e.g., the Tauros
Project is working to revive the auroch. Cloning could be used
if a sufficiently well-preserved nucleus from the tissue of an
extinct species could be tranferred into the enucleated egg of a
similar species and then implanted in a surrogate. So far this has
only been attempted with the recently extinct
Pyrenean ibex. A kid was born but died of lung malformations
soon after.

Perhaps the more promising, though more technically difficult
route toward de-extinction, would be to isolate DNA from preserved
tissue of an extinct species and then sequence it, e.g., a wooly
mammoth. Then that information could be used to alter the genetic
sequences in a closely related species, e.g., an Indian elephant,
resulting in a wooly mammoth.

The authors observe:

De-extinction is a particularly intriguing application of our
increasing control over life. We think it will happen. The most
interesting and important question is how humanity will deal with
it.

They suggest that some might object to de-extinction on the
grounds that the resurrected creatures might be exploited, vectors
for pathogens, invasive, examples of "playing god," or lessen
people's concerns about extinction. On the benefit side, the
authors them as ...

... falling into five categories: scientific knowledge,
technological advancement, concrete environmental benefits,
justice, and “wonder.”

To my mind, those benefits clearly outweigh the rather
insubstantial objections cited by the authors, especially the last
one. As the authors write:

The last benefit might be called “wonder,” or, more colloquially
“coolness.” This may be the biggest attraction, and possibly the
biggest benefit, of de-extinction. It would surely be very cool to
see a living wooly mammoth. And while this is rarely viewed as a
substantial benefit, much of what we do as individuals—even many
aspects of science—we do because it’s “cool.”

Yes.

See below 1933 footage of the last Tasmanian Tiger.

Read More

Covered at Reason 24/7: Despite Focus on Gun Restrictions, More States Move To Loosen Laws

Almost all of the media attention is on
states like New York, Connecticut, Colorado and Maryland that have
moved to restrict self-defense rights by making it harder to
legally own and use firearms. But some scribblers at the West
Coast's dear old newspaper of (scratchy) sort-of record peeked up
over their cubicle walls and noticed something unexpected: Even
more states are moving to protect the right to bear arms,
and even to loosen restrictions on guns. Howdatappen? As
reporters Mark Z. Barabak and Melanie Mason put it, "[t]he result
is a significant disparity between states — some side by side — as
President Obama pushes for new federal gun controls." Not just a
significant disparity, you should note, but a growing divergence in
the legal treatment of self-defense rights at the state level.

From the
Los Angeles Times:

The first state to act after December's Sandy Hook shooting was
New York, where Republicans control the Senate and Democrats the
Assembly. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, worked with lawmakers of
both parties to pass a sweeping bill that beefed up the state's ban
on assault-style weapons and required universal background
checks.

Other states have moved in the opposite direction, loosening
restrictions on gun ownership and increasing the number of places
where firearms are permitted. Many have Republican governors, a
Republican-run statehouse or both.

In Michigan and Ohio, lawmakers have made it easier to obtain a
gun. Arkansas, Maine and Mississippi have passed laws to protect
the privacy of gun owners. Wyoming enacted legislation allowing
judges to carry weapons in the courtroom, and South Dakota passed a
law authorizing school employees to carry guns on the job.

More than a dozen other states are considering legislation that
would enhance gun rights, including Texas, North Carolina, Missouri
and Georgia.

As you might guess, not all state-level control freaks are happy
that their counterparts elsewhere are moving law in a
less-authoritarian direction. But, you know, tough shit.

Follow this story and more at Reason 24/7.

If you have a story that would be of interest to Reason's
readers please let us know by emailing the 24/7 crew at
24_7@reason.com, or tweet us stories at @reason247.

Read More

What Other Types of Guns Can Sen. Feinstein Fail to Ban? What About Ones Made of Pixels?

Having
all but failed in her ill-considered, poorly argued efforts to
ban assault weapons (the usual caveat: whatever “assault weapons”
are), now California Sen. Dianne Feinstein seems ready to fail and
fail harder going after violent video games.

At a speech in San Francisco on Wednesday, she took her typical
aim against the National Rifle Association. But then she all but

joined the NRA in complaining about the
glorification of violence in video games. Via the Associated
Press:

Feinstein also encouraged the entertainment and video game
industries to take voluntary steps to produce products that do not
glorify big, powerful guns before Congress feels compelled to step
in. She mentioned that Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old man responsible
for the Sandy Hook Elementary School slayings, practiced shooting
both at a range with his mother and on a video screen.

Video games play "a very negative role for young people, and the
industry ought to take note of that," she said. "If Sandy Hook
doesn't do it, if the knowledge of these video games this young man
played doesn't, then maybe we have to proceed, but that is in the
future."

Well, we can all look forward to that future failure as well.
One: Just as with movies, the video game industry has a voluntary

ratings system that thoroughly documents a game’s contents and
recommends appropriate ages. Two: The Supreme Court has ruled that
the contents of video games are
constitutionally protected free speech in a case that
originated from Feinstein’s own state.

The idea of video games playing “a very negative role for young
people” is just unsupported nonsense without
foundation. Yesterday, when I wrote about film critic’s

Roger Ebert’s awkward relationship with the creative culture of
video games, I noted the gap between Baby Boomers and the younger
generations over the role of the medium in their lives. The
industry took Ebert’s dismissal of video games as a potential art
form as a challenge.

Feinstein’s poorly chosen words and vague threat will likely not
inspire much introspection. She doesn’t understand the medium at
all and clearly has no interest in understanding the medium. But
unlike Ebert, Feinstein has the power to shape government policy,
or at least try to, anyway. It would be interesting to see how the
heavily California-based video game industry would respond to
Feinstein actually trying to go after them.

Below, Reason TV highlights several extremely stupid
Congressional hearings where politicians presumed to justify
censorship against various forms of media:

Read More

In Memoriam: Roger Ebert

The
late Roger Ebert's writing would have left a mark if he had never
gone on television in his life, but it was his TV show with Gene
Siskel that made him a celebrity. You wouldn't have expected that
from their
first show together: two writers droning on, not always sure
where exactly they should be looking, with no excitement beyond the
possibility that Siskel's 'stache will start eating his face. But
it wasn't long before they perfected the bickering-brothers dynamic
that made their show more entertaining than at least 60% of the
movies they reviewed. Instead of suppressing their offscreen
rivalry, which is on display in various outtakes
floating around the Web, they channeled it into arguments about
movies; and made those arguments meaningful by actually giving a
damn about the pictures they were rating. They also had a healthy
sense of self-aware humor about their personas, as their inevitably
entertaining guest spots on
Letterman and other shows proved. The act could be
imitated but it could never be equaled, as countless other programs
-- including, eventually, Ebert & Roeper -- would
learn.

But if the TV show ensured that Roger Ebert was
famous while he was alive, it's his writing for newspapers and the
Web that should ensure he'll be remembered long after he's dead.
For one thing, he was an exceptional stylist. I might disagree
strenuously with Ebert's opinion about a movie; I might bristle at
a factual flub or two about the plot; but I was almost always awed
at his prose, which was thoughtful, graceful, funny, and
accessible. He didn't just write about movies: He had been a
sportswriter early on, and an interview he did for his college
paper with the left-libertarian author Paul Goodman was good enough
to get reprinted in
one of Goodman's books. (He invoked Goodman in at least one of
his reviews too -- a thumbs-up
take on Paul Schrader's underappreciated Blue Collar
-- and there was a time when I had hopes that underneath it all
Ebert was some sort of anarchist. Alas, when he unleashed his
political-pundit side late in life he turned out to be a
standard-issue liberal.) In the last few years he wrote many
wonderful memoirs for his website, and then a much-admired
autobiography. But of course it was his movie writing that
defined him, and it was here that he made his other great
contribution to American culture.

Ebert, you see, didn't care about those old
highbrow/middlebrow/lowbrow distinctions that occupied so many
debates about criticism in the middle of the 20th century. If you
were interested in learning about cinema as a high art, he could be
your gateway to the greats, writing capably about Bergman and
Welles and Kurosawa and other filmmaking giants. (I'm pretty sure I
first heard of Fassbinder in a Roger Ebert essay. Or, at least,
that essay was the first time I wanted to run out and rent a
Fassbinder movie right away.) On the other hand, if you wanted
to know if the latest spy flick was exciting or if the new Mel
Brooks movie was likely to make you laugh, Ebert was perfectly
capable of waxing enthusiastic about those kinds of films too. It's
not that he liked everything, you understand. (Check out his

evisceration of Priest.) It's that he was
capable of liking everything, or at least everything that
was done well. Even when he joined in the chorus denouncing the
slasher genre in the '80s, -- he had to confess that yes, he
was the guy who gave three and a half stars to
Last House on the Left.

And that
leads us to what may be my all-time favorite Roger Ebert review: a

joyful little essay about the pleasures to be found in even the
most indefensibly trashy pictures. The subject is a
blink-and-you'll-miss-it release called Rapa Nui. I've
never seen it, and I don't think I even would have heard of it if I
hadn't read Ebert's review. He gives it just two stars, and much of
the piece consists of a litany of everything ridiculous about the
picture. But then he says this at the end:

Concern for my reputation prevents me from recommending
this movie. I wish I had more nerve. I wish I could simply write,
"Look, of course it's one of the worst movies ever made. But it has
hilarious dialogue, a weirdo action climax, a bizarre explanation
for the faces of Easter Island, and dozens if not hundreds of
wonderful bare breasts." I am however a responsible film critic and
must conclude that "Rapa Nui" is a bad film. If you want to see it
anyway, of course, that's strictly your concern. I think I may
check it out again myself.

My head can't bring itself to believe in an afterlife. But my
heart hopes that Ebert gets another chance to see it.

Read More

Reporter Faces Jail Time Over Source for James Holmes Notebook

FoxNews.com reporter Jana Winter is
being pressed by James Holmes’ defense attorneys to reveal her
source for information about a notebook Holmes sent to his
psychiatrist before the Aurora theater shooting. Defense attorneys
contend her source must have violated a gag order by the judge. In
a hearing in December, 14 law enforcement officials were questioned
about the notebook, but none admitted to being the source. The
judge wants
one more detective questioned before compelling the reporter to
take the stand. Winter could face up to six months in jail if she
doesn’t identify her source in that case; she’s
indicated through her attorney that she doesn’t intend to
reveal her source in court.

Winter is theoretically protected from being forced to reveal
her source by shield laws that exist in both New York and Colorado,
as well as a plain reading of the First Amendment, as Judge Andrew
Napolitano, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst and a Reason
contributor,
noted yesterday:

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to
stimulate and protect open, wide, robust debate about the policies
and personnel of the government. Truth is essential to that
stimulation. Putting reporters in jail for revealing the truth
while protecting their sources is profoundly contrary to that
purpose and highly offensive to the values the First Amendment was
written to protect and we have all come to enjoy.

A New York judge signed off on the Colorado judge’s subpoena of
Winter, who showed up in court Monday but did not yet have to
testify. Her attorneys are looking to avoid her returning to
Colorado all together, or at least until a court in New York has
reviewed their appeal. As I noted about this case
last month, New York’s shield law is more robust than
Colorado’s, which allows a journalist to be compelled to reveal her
sources if all other avenues of uncovering the information have
been exhausted. The information sought also has to be substantially
relevant to the case, which Winter’s attorneys argue it is not.
Journalists, of course, need to be able to protect their sources’
confidentiality across the board in order to be able to secure
confidential sources for any stories, it’s a necessary foundation
of free press. When the government takes for itself the power to
compel a journalist to break the confidentiality of their sources
or newsgathering methods, it erodes that foundation.

Read More

A,M. Links: Obama Unveils Overdue Budget, Puerto Rico Reforms Pensions, South Koreans Not Rattled by the Nuke-y North

• President Obama, just a few
  months late, will
  unveil a budget including tax hikes (surprise!) and cuts to
  Medicare and Social Security.


• Add Maryland to the list of states taking advantage of public
  panic over Newtown to
  restrict self-defense rights. Meanwhile, a Texas non-profit is
  
  arming people who live in high-crime neighborhoods but can't afford
  guns.


• Reforming wildly underfunded public pensions may be beyond the
  ability or interest of most state lawmakers, but Puerto Rico's
  legislators
  voted to do just that. The plan raises the retirement age,
  increases worker contributions and reduces benefits. It also
  transitions over from a defined-benefit system.


• Scott Brown may run for office again, but
  this time from New Hampshire. Well, he wouldn't be the first
  Bay Stater to head north.


• As France's politicians stake their reputation on taxing the
  hell out of everything, the revelation that now-former Budget
  Minister Jerome Cahuzac evaded taxes
  threatens to bring down the Socialist government.


• A little more accustomed to crazy neighbors than most, South
  Koreans
  aren't letting the nuclear saber-rattling to the north bring them
  down.


• Ohio courts
  still routinely jail people who fail to pay fines and fees,
  even though that was long ago ruled illegal.

Have a news tip for us? Send it to: 24_7@reason.com.

Follow Reason 24/7 on Twitter: @reason247

Follow us on Facebook
and Twitter,
and don’t forget to sign
up for Reason’s daily updates for more
content

Read More

Obama Claims Adam Lanza Used a Machine Gun at Sandy Hook

Yesterday I
noted that President Obama continues to conflate so-called
assault weapons—i.e., semi-automatic guns defined by
functionally unimportant, military-style features that offend
politicians—with the rifles carried by soldiers, which can fire
automatically. In Denver on Wednesday, Obama described the guns he
wants to ban as "weapons of war" and inaccurately identified one of
the firearms used in last year's massacre at a movie theater in
nearby Aurora as an "assault rifle," which is a selective-fire
weapon that can fire automatically (continuously) as well as
semi-automatically (once per trigger pull). Obama was at it again
last night, claiming in a
San Francisco speech that the rifle Adam Lanza used to
murder 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School
in Newtown, Connecticut, last December was "a fully automatic
weapon." This was no slip of the tongue; Obama initially called the
rifle "a semi-automatic weapon," then immediately "corrected"
himself:

I just came from Denver, where the issue of gun violence is
something that has haunted families for way too long, and it is
possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that
respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters
and sportsmen, but also make sure that we don’t have another 20
children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon—by a
fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly.

Fully automatic weapons, a.k.a. machine guns, are strictly
regulated under federal law, and it will come as news to anyone
following this case that one was used at Sandy Hook. Police have

identified Lanza's gun as an M4-style
carbine made by Bushmaster, specifically the Bushmaster
XM15-E2S. Bushmaster explains
that designation this way (emphasis added): "XM for Experimental
Model, 15 for semi-automatic and E2S is second generation
receivers with added reinforcing." Not only is this gun not "a
fully automatic weapon"; it did not even
qualify as an "assault weapon" under Connecticut law (or under
the federal "assault weapon" ban that expired in 2004, which used
similar criteria). We know that because police say Lanza's mother
purchased it legally in Connecticut. (Bushmaster has a whole
line of "state-compliant" rifles.) When the Connecticut General
Assembly
expanded the state's "assault weapon" ban this week, it added
Bushmaster XM15 rifles to its list of
guns that are prohibited by name. The new, broader
"assault weapon" ban introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.) and endorsed by the president likewise specifically
prohibits the manufacture or sale of Bushmaster XM15
rifles. 

Is it too much to expect the president to know which guns he is
trying to ban? Does Obama actually think that machine guns are
readily available to civilians, that they are legal in Connecticut,
and that Lanza's mother bought one there for her collection? After
more than two decades of debate about "assault weapon" bans, does
he honestly not understand the difference between those arbitrarily
prohibited firearms and machine guns? Or, since the misconception
that "assault weapons" fire more rapidly than other semi-automatic
firearms seems to be one the main reasons people think it makes
sense to ban them, is Obama deliberately misleading the
public? Is it appalling ignorance or calculated deception? The
clues suggest the former, but I'm not sure which is worse.

[Thanks to Robert Woolley for the tip.]

Read More