Word: parkers
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...year's first surefire blockbuster lives up to its hype. Having saved Gotham while battling a severe case of teen angst, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is now a citywide celebrity as Spidey, with a swelled head to match. Enter a mess of nemeses, some old (James Franco as Harry Osborn), some new to the film series (Topher Grace as Venom, Thomas Haden Church as Sandman). For all the zippy fights and persuasive visual effects, SM3 is essentially a relationship movie, and a very sensitive one, about male-female and male-male bonding--it must set an all-time record...
...them, and must be punished for that mistake. Villains see themselves as victims. Actors in these roles are obliged to locate the ache or delusion at the core of the character. "The danger of playing a villain," says James Franco, who as Harry Osborn has been one of Peter Parker's nemeses in the Spider-Man films, "is that you ham it up and it becomes silly." Plausibility counts...
...rights advocates now believe they have set off a ticking time bomb that will prevent the Democrats from avoiding the gun question in the 2008 presidential election. On March 9, in a case called Parker v. District of Columbia, the federal appeals court in Washington struck down the city's ban on private handgun possession at home, one of the most extreme gun-control laws in the country ever since it was passed in 1976. Only Chicago and a few other Illinois communities have similarly sweeping handgun bans on the books; no state has followed Washington's lead. Gun-rights...
Polls on guns are hotly contested. But national majorities have consistently opposed sweeping bans, however rare, on handguns while supporting the more moderate gun-control measures that are common in many states--including waiting periods and background checks. That's why the Parker litigation, spearheaded by Bob Levy of the libertarian Cato Institute, seems like the perfect Supreme Court test case for gun-rights supporters. "We picked the D.C. law because it is so extreme," Levy told me. Now that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has been replaced by Samuel Alito, Levy is "cautiously optimistic" of victory next June...
Levy calls himself an incrementalist and says he is not interested in challenging waiting periods and background checks. But a Supreme Court decision in his favor might have effects far more sweeping than he intends. To rule for Levy in the Parker case, the court would have to repudiate its long-standing view that the Second Amendment protects nothing more than the collective right of states to arm their militias. Instead, it would have to embrace the view that the amendment protects a fundamental right of individuals to arm themselves for private uses like self-defense...