Word: film
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...frank positioning of the GOP as the God Party - even more than in past conventions, speakers were free with Scripture citations, religious exhortations and mentions of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Other Republicans received video tributes - Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and, of course, Ronald Reagan. There was a film and abundant praise for the president's father, former President George H.W. Bush, whose appearance in the hall with wife Barbara brought the drowsy crowd of delegates to its feet. They chanted "Forty-one! Forty-one!" in honor of Bush Sr.'s place in the parade of the nation's chief executives...
While Hurricane Gustav was chewing up Cuba and storming toward Louisiana, the screen of the Venice Film Festival's Sala Grande was showing a very sweet tsunami. In the animated movie Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, the swelling waves take the form of dolphins, and when a Japanese coastal village gets submerged no one is killed or hurt - just amusingly displaced. The rising up of the marine world is not insurrection against humanity but gently cautionary instruction for it. Treat the oceans with respect, the movie says, and they will provide you with food and wonder...
...briefly tasting his blood, she starts to become human. She sprouts rudimentary hands and feet; for an instant she looks like a child's drawing of a chicken. She also develops a taste for the things humans eat. Mmmm, ham! - more savory than plankton. And in one of the film's many wonderful vignettes, she enjoys her first sip of honeyed tea. Ponyo is accepted into the household by Sosuke's mother Lisa (Tomoko Yamaguchi), who works in a Senior Center; the boy's father, Koichi (Kazushige Nagashima), is a fisherman whose job keeps him at sea for nights...
...storm, the movie forgets about him - perhaps because he's doing a bit of illegal whaling. Fujimoto's wife, Gran Mamare, is a magnificent sea goddess, with the perfect posture and forehead jewel of a Bollywood queen, but she doesn't show up till late in the film. Miyazaki also creates a tsunami that, however fantastical and benign he portrays it, can't help recall the fatal force of nature. By American animation standards, these are plot holes, which the guys at Pixar, Disney or DreamWorks would caulk in an afternoon's brainstorming session. But Miyazaki, though highly esteemed...
...Except for the suspense about the brothers' aims with their latest movie. Film critics aren't supposed to confess bafflement at the end of a review, but that's what I feel here. Either the Coens failed, or I didn't figure out what they're attempting. I must be like Harry or Osborne, pretending to a sophistication I lack. Burn After Reading is a movie about stupidity that left me feeling stupid...