http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:19:55 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Anthony Wilson is killing me softly with his words. from http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/137 In the summer of 2002, Mexico became a democracy, again. Via a peaceful transfer of power, the PRI lost control over the executive branch for the first time in 70 years. No such transition can take place without a significant cultural shift: the kind represented by the 2000 film La Ley ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/136 a few weeks ago i wondered if the Olympics would be the environmentalist blockbuster of the summer. a blockbuster? without a doubt. environmentalist? sorta. last Friday on Korean television i caught sight of not just fake trees around the Olympic stadium but even faked high-rises.* the buildings were real enough ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/133 very rarely will i have the kind of nightmare i just had now. a prolonged, disinterested narrative set in a post-apocalyptic city where zombies (they sleep during the day) and vigilantes (there is no law) set each scene in motion. all dreams are a response to the gaps that form ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/132 The 1949 Mexican noir film Aventurera is tightly crafted, progressive, sensational, at times experimental and completely modern. Related: ¿A Quién Le Importa? by Alaska y Dinarama. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/130 While on a garden tour it occurred to me that gardens have four components: sight, smell, temperature and time. Time, because as living organisms, they look, smell and affect the air differently depending on their life cycle. weeks later: and there's a fifth element, perhaps. they either contribute or take away ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/129 Nick Dewar on petroleum identity politics Christoph Niemann on upside down loans http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/127 SpaceCollective http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/125 Jen Stark Noriko Ambe http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/124 Superbad is the most vulgar movie I've seen in a while. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It proudly belongs to a genre that intends to cross the line (the hair gel in Something About Mary, the baked goods in American Pie). But apart from some great acting, I ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/123 Thanks to a commercial on TV, Ana and I have been playing this song all week long. It's very well done. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/121 Seeing is believing. I am watching a movie on hulu with limited commercial interruptions. It really works. Now, if only they added an EQ to boost the audio... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/120 Gone Baby Gone is a chilling exploration of moral reasoning, as sober as the law and as tender as prayer. It poses a seemingly simple question: is it ever just to take the law into one's own hands? (No.) But in answering the question it pokes holes in every argument ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/119 Incisive letter from a reader of Talking Points Memo. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/117 Concession stand sales spike with screenings of Pineapple Express. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/116 There are 1,321,851,888 Chinese and one Premier. There are 301,139,947 Americans and one President. The Chinese political system has to endure over four times the stress of the American. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/115 On the heels of the brilliant WALL•E, another environmentalist blockbuster: the Olympics. I suppose there's also a one-percent possibility that the international embarrassment will be a Chernobyl-type stimulus toward truly radical environmental action in China and around the world. But maybe that's fooling myself too. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/114 Jane Mayer in the The New York Review of Books: ...at almost every turn along the way, the Bush administration was warned that whatever the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism, it would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and Americas interests in ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/113 New York Magazine via Josh Marshall: The alternative, of course, is to get on offense, to batter McCain for his gaffes and incoherence, hammer him for his flip-flops, highlight how his maverick status is a thing of the past, and turn him into a combination of Bush and Grandpa Simpson. God ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/112 I love this illusion. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/111 From a recent post on Slashdot: ..."Batman can't really afford to lose. Losing means death — or at least not being able to be Batman anymore." I had never thought of it before, but, yes, the implicit pleasure in any such masked hero movie is that he cannot lose. Losing means ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/110 Batman: The Dark Knight. 152 minutes. PG-13. All the people who made the movie must have gotten paid by the minute. Except for the writers.* (Their share may have been siphoned off to the MPAA.) It's a great movie in the tradition of cinema as experience (the IMAX version is doing gangbusters) ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/109 It had been at least a dozen years since I last saw Paris is Burning and it was even better than I remembered it. A clear portrait of a powerful culture, the movie is tightly structured with brilliant, pithy interviews. One of the most important movies I've seen and one ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/108 This is what happens when you have a real opposition party: Over the last ten days or so, the President and the McCain campaign (who are clearly working in coordination, as they're entirely entitled to do) have been systematically drawing back from their positions on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran and either ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/107 El Cantante: a montage in search of a screenplay. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/106 This morning as I was driving our stick shift car to work I heard a noise from the clutch. I was on the freeway so I raised the windows and listened more carefully. There it was. A short white noise, like the sound of windshield wipers making a single pass. ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/104 This is cursory judgment but no less informed than much of what I hear from pundits on television. According to this book review, cited by Matthew Yglesias, the new book by Jane Mayer on America's descent into the ranks of states that imprison without due process and torture without aim is: 1) ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/103 Ouch: Yet, now that he is the presumptive nominee, Obama is standing not with Feingold, but with Bush and the special interests Obama once denounced. He says he'll vote for a White House-backed FISA rewrite -- which is likely to be taken up by the Senate this week -- in opposition ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/102 We just threw away $7 of perfectly good chicken because it was left out during a bbq and the thought of the waste is killing me. You can take the boy out of Cuba... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/101 There are so many brilliant, disarmingly beautiful moments in WALL•E, I want to watch it – or at least the first chapter – a few more times to begin to understand what I've seen. The plot is easier to recall, especially as it's a series of precise political punches. The EVE ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/100 from Wired: For instance, Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics. It didn't pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising — it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right. Almost everything I get paid ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/99 http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/97 What happened next in the life of a small-time revolutionary after he was given $25 million and was repatriated to the U.S. with a new identity, might make for quite a show: The hunt for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed involved the entire American intelligence establishment, with its billion-dollar arrays of spy satellites ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/95 to the victor the spoils (of the GWOT): And of course if I were Barack Obama it's very possible that I wouldn't think giving the executive branch unlimited surveillance powers was a bad idea at all -- I'm going to be president in a few months. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/94 Is it possible to send both a contribution and a rebuke all at once? What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He's supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/93 I'm so naive, it never occurred to me that people did this in real life: There are reports from very reliable sources that Hoyer, after engineering this "compromise" and ensuring it has enough votes to pass, will then vote against it so he can claim it's not his fault (as will ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/92 We would never permit a network to physically beat people in order to report on the beatings as sensational news. The body politic is another story. Frank Rich: The fictional scenario of mobs of crazed women defecting to Mr. McCain is just one subplot of the master narrative that has consumed ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/91 World tips Hollywood on its axis: The studios may be Hollywood-based, but their conglom parents are thinking globally, which affects every business and creative decision. In the past, each country's box office was a mix of Hollywood blockbusters, U.S. midrange and indie pics, and local fare. Recently, the midrange pics have been ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/90 glenn greenwald: Just in the first three months of 2008, recent lobbyist disclosure statements reveal that AT&T spent $5.2 million in lobbyist fees (putting it well ahead of its 2007 pace, when it spent just over $17 million). In the first quarter of 2008, Verizon spent $4.8 million on lobbyist fees, ... http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/89 Almost. Orangutan escapes pen at US zoo – Zoo officials say the animal was easily sedated and captured. http://www.josemarquez.com/xsml/archives/88