William F. Buckley is dead

Well, I've gone and done it again: allowed a great man to die without having read any of his books. It was Milton Friedman last year, WFB this year. Truly, I am too young to eulogize Buckley: he was a Cold Warrior and I was born at the zenith of his campaign: the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. By the time I was aware of the world farther afield than Rock Hill, South Carolina, Reagan had already faced down the Soviet menace at Reykjavik and the central struggle of Buckley's life had ended in victory. Historians today try to convince us that the Soviet collapse was inevitable - which must be why no one saw it coming.
Many obituarists have to remind their readers about the departed subject and what particular contributions for good or ill he made to modern civilization. In Buckley's case, his record speaks for itself. Modern Conservatism as a philosophy owes him an incalculable debt of gratitude - the sort of gratitude that we all owe our mothers - so absolute and sweeping that, in a strange way we almost take it for granted. Before WFB founded National Review, exactly what Conservative voices were influencing Americans by print and radio?
Rush Limbaugh often remembers 1988, when he came on the scene as a Conservative talk radio host in the wake of the fall of the Fairness Doctrine and WFB invited him to the annual National Review banquet. At that time, one banquet hall could easily hold all of the conservative columnists and public spokesmen of the day, but now we have so many that some of them attack each other, which is a wonderful luxury. We now have Hannity, Ingraham, Coulter, Boortz, Malkin, Beck, Steyn, O'Reilly, Krystal, Barnes and a cable network that does not feel the need to censor them, Fox News. We have The Weekly Standard, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Human Events, which was reported to be Ronald Reagan's favorite weekly newpaper. If this list is incomplete, thank you for making my point - the Conservative voices are too many to number aright.
Here is the crux of the matter: today, I observe one entire political party that wants our side to lose the War on Terror. In Cold War days, Buckley confronted one political party (the same one, in fact) in which many of its influential members wanted the enemy to win. I feel nervous about this situation in spite of all of the supporting voices of the Conservative movement just mentioned. Buckley faced a much more daunting situation and had no supporting cast. Still, he "stood athwart history yelling 'Stop!'" and altered American politics for the next half century at least.
Thank you, Mr. Buckley.

2007 Oscars: The Apathy Scale

Once again, I heard a news report that the Oscars earned disappointing ratings. That, and we will experience warmer temperatures in spring than we did in winter. Maybe it's also news that five-year-old continue to weigh more than newborns.
In the strictly American fashion, let's have three strikes for the Oscars and some good old fashioned statistics!
Strike 1: the Host. Jon Stewart is a political man. The Daily Show is officially comedy also, but it is really a televised equivalent of the Rush Limbaugh show: entertainment and news intended to support the host's viewpoint. Americans do not want political comentary mixed in with their movies - witness the epic bombs that the recent political and war movies have proved to be. In addition, Jon Stewart was a bad choice for host because the fans' favorite is still around. A recent poll by Entertainment Weekly found that 43% of respondents picked Billy Crystal as their favorite host, Stewart polling third at 17%. Crystal last hosted the Oscars in 2003 when The Return of the King won Best Picture.
Strike 2: the Nominees. The gap between what the fans watch and what the Academy deems watchable is widening considerably. I researched the respective grosses of the nominees at this site:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?page=1&view=releasedate&view2=domestic&yr=2007&p=.htm and found that the median gross for the 21 nominees for the seven major awards was $18 million. Assuming $7 per ticket, roughly 2.5 million people saw "Into the Wild," for instance. The Box Office Mojo site ranks the movies by gross from 1 to 150. Six nominees for major awards - picture, actor/actress, supporting actor/actress, director, screenplay - grossed so little that they fell below #150.
Strike 3: the Winners. Here is where the rubber meets the road: Marion Cotillard won Best Actress for "La Vie en Rose," which ranks 145th in box office gross. All of her fellow nominees except Ellen Page performed in similarly obscure pictures. Only buffs and historians like me will ever know who won Best Actress of 2007. Oscar's Best Picture, No Country for Old Men, is currently America's 40th-best picture, although it is still in theatres. It might exceed $50 million in gross.
If you compare my last posting with the reality, I predicted 6 of the 8 major awards correctly. Obscure movies were nominated, obscure movies won, and every critic knew obscure movies would win. Hence, so few viewers. The Academy has a chance to remedy this problem next year. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian will probably gross well over $100 million and rank in the top 10 in gross. Will it get big nominations, or just a few meaningless technical nods? We shall see.

Oscar Predictions

I'll check the winners on the internet Monday morning - I don't have enough of a dog in this fight to stay up until ungodly hours watching gimmicks precede Best Makeup and other such rot. I started making predictions in 2000, after reading a critic's Golden Globes picks and comparing his predictions to the reality. None - and I mean none - of his predictions bore fruit. After that kind of precedent, anyone can become a predictor.
This year, I have seen almost none of the movies, as usual. I took my wife to see "Transformers" because those huge special effects epics have to be seen on the big screen. (This could also explain why "Transformers" grossed more than all 5 Best Picture nominees COMBINED.)
Best Picture: "No Country for Old Men." Second Choice: "There Will Be Blood"
These two films own the buzz of the critics, which is what matters most at award time.
Best Director: Coen Bros. for "No Country for Old Men." Second Choice: Paul Anderson for "There Will be Blood"
I would be amazed at any other outcome for these two awards, but stranger things than an upset by "Juno" have happened.
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis for "There Will be Blood." Second Choice: Johnny Depp for "Sweeney Todd"
In this case, Day-Lewis has paid his dues. Remember "Gangs of New York?" That movie established his acting ability in grim, villainous roles. This one should pay off. One of these years, Depp will win for a role like "Sweeney Todd," but not this time. Last Best Actor award for a star in a musical: Rex Harrison, "My Fair Lady," 1964. It's been a while.
Best Actress: Julie Christie, "Away from Her." Second Choice: Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: the Golden Years."
Obviously, it won't be Ellen Page, so that leaves four roles that fewer than 3 million people saw. (assuming $7 per ticket on average) I understand Julie Christie's character has amnesia or some other mental ailment, which Oscar voters LOVE!! (eg. Shine, Forrest Gump, Rain Man...)
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men." Second Choice: None needed.
This ceremony is a formality for the villain who has won every preliminary award. The sentimental favorite, Hal Holbrook for "Into the Wild" is only actually sentimental for those old enough to remember "All the President's Men." The Academy never gives a career achievement award over a clear frontrunner like Bardem.
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone" Second Choice: Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"
I expect that my streak of accuracy in this category will end this year. Oscar loves nominating gender-bending roles, so Blanchett as Bob Dylan is also deadly attractive. Anything is possible, but my rule of thumb is picking out the role that is closest to a lead part. On that basis, I'll go with Amy Ryan.
For other predictions, I have "Transformers" and "Pirates" picking up two technical awards each, "Juno" and "No Country" taking the Screenplay trophies, "Elizabeth" and "Atonement" winning Costume Design; and Score and Art Direction respectively. "No End in Sight" will win Best Documentary and "Ratatouille" will claim Best Animated film.
Maybe next year they'll nominate "Prince Caspian" and I'll be interested in the show. Yeah, fat chance.

George H.W. is for McCain: another moderate

Our 41st President, George H. W. Bush, endorsed John McCain for president today, thus continuing McCain's No-Moderate-Republican-Left-Behind endorsement drive. Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger gave him his first endorsements, but H. W., like them, can hardly help McCain's effort to unify the party and attract conservatives. H. W. is the man who called Reagan's economic ideas "voodoo economics" during the 1980 campaign, and the man who broke his "read my lips" promise about no tax hikes. McCain already had the wobbly centrist voters who backed Bush in '80 and Dole in '96. I guess we can look forward to Bob Dole, Christie Whitman, Arlen Specter, Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe endorsing McCain next. (but not Lincoln Chafee - the erstwhile RINO-in-chief finally figured out that he never was a Republican and has endorsed Obama.)
RINO, for those of you in Metter, Georgia, is Republican In Name Only.
This election, we have to push conservatives for Congress as though it were an off-year election. No matter who wins the White House, we will need conservatives to counter the socialists in both parties.

Movie Review: Amazing Grace ***

"Amazing Grace" is the story of William Wilberforce and his campaign to outlaw the slave trade in the British Empire in the late 1700s and early 1800s. John Newton, former slave ship captain, author of the song, and elderly clergyman of some sort, is the source of some of Wilberforce's inspiration. The theme of youthful enthusiasm for earth-shattering reform makes a repeated appearance, as close friends Pitt the Younger and Willberforce try to persuade Parliament and spark a mass abolition movement among young English citizens. Much of the film transpires in flashback form, as a twenty-years-older Wilberforce looks back on the heady days when he should have caused a large enough stir in the people for slavery to be abolished. The key, the abolitionists find, is to raise the consciousness of the ordinary citizens by publishing diagrams of slave holds, displaying the manacles that restrain slaves and the boxes in which they cross the ocean in the holds of the ships. There is a girl who falls in love with Wilberforce, and so forth. As a movie, "Amazing Grace" takes nearly two hours' time, but it feels longer due to the inessential romance. A movie simply cannot capture all of the facets of a man's life. That is the office of books.
As a film, "Amazing Grace" has a good script and a functional cast, with Albert Finney's Newton the definite highlight. As history, I was disappointed by not surprised: it is not easy to make the slave trade appear worse than it was, but the creators manage it. I have read that slave ships experienced a mortality rate of 5-30%. The movie represents the idea that 2/3 of the slaves who left Africa died en route to the New World. Sailors doubtless dug through the masses of human remains in Kingston to call out, "I found another one breathing!" Of course, the black man who urges Wilberforce to advocate abolition mentions repeatedly, "I was a prince in my country." The myth that white men took armies to Africa to round up unsuspecting black innocents will not die, evidently. In fact, the vast majority of slaves suffered capture in a war with a rival tribe and the black victors marched them to the coast for sale to the white shippers.
One question the movie raises, perhaps without meaning to: Do we owe our National Anthem to the abolitionists? In a ploy to damage the slave trade, Wilberforce sponsors a bill to provide for the searching of ships flying the neutral American flag. Why not let the Privateers do his dirty work for him? A few impressments of American sailors and outcries from the Americans later, the War of 1812 was raging on the American Continent.

Heath Ledger: Death of an Insider

As is the case with all artists, we will measure the magnitude of Heath Ledger's accomplishments according to how long his art lasts and how many people remember him. By this standard, Ledger will live for another decade or so across this country and he will never die in Hollywood. Ledger did all of the things that an actor should do in order to curry favor with the Hollywood In-Crowd: he sought roles in Oscar-type movies, played a homosexual character in a movie, spoke out publicly about the need for America to normalize homosexual conduct, and did his mandatory stint with drugs and rehab. When he heard that West Virginia had banned "Brokeback Mountain," Ledger informed all of us for the first time that the West Virginians had been lynching black people in the 1980s. None were more surprised at that than the historians.
Why do such rich and famous people grow so dissatisfied with life and throw everything away doing drugs? After the last two weeks or so, the autopsy has been ruled "inconclusive" at least for the present, but drugs clearly played a part.
As to his legacy, no one outside Hollywood born after the year 2000 will know his name. I read an Entertainment Weekly article recently about young and promising actors who died untimely deaths. I had not heard of most of them because their movies are no longer popular. For Ledger, "A Knight's Tale" may maintain a certain cult following, but his teen movies, namely "10 Things I Hate About You" will soon enough be a source of mirth due to how "so '90s" they are. "The Patriot" was a hit, but its historical inaccuracies prevent the buffs from embracing it, not to mention that he played a rather silly part. In time, the buffs are the only ones who watch period films and we do not watch that one. Not many people saw "Monster's Ball" the first time, and those who saw it couldn't remember him for all the Halle Berry eye candy. The same can be said for his most recent works, "I'm Not There," "Candy" and "Casanova:" all gained some critical and insider acclaim, but none brought home box office money.
"The Brothers Grimm" is a genre movie that can hope for at best a cult following, but such a fate is unlikely. "Brokeback Mountain" grossed $80 million, but it was a passing fad. There will be more movies about homosexuals and only Hollywood insiders will memorialize "Brokeback" as a courageous trailblazer. "Brokeback's" fans will remember it as the first movie to express some degree of authenticity or relevance until the next movie comes along to be the first authentic and relevant movie. Does anyone else notice that every big movie with a strong liberal political message is the first of its kind? In a way, then, it is fitting that his posthumous movie will be the biggest success of his career. "Dark Knight" will likely gross $100-200 million, so Ledger will live behind the mask of the young Joker's paint for a little while longer.
Rest in Peace, young man. In a few months I will reach the age at which you departed this life. I wish you had found the love of Jesus Christ, who gives me a reason to want to live.

The Manning Show

This Super Bowl championship is the perfect antidote to what some sports commentators called "the year of the asterisk." The NFL had a close brush with an asterisk champion, but the Giants have spared us all of that. A few days ago, Spygate expanded to include Super Bowl XXXVI. Bellichick may have videotaped the Rams' practice on the day before the game. I don't know if he did, but I find the allegation believable in the extreme. The man is the ultimate "win-at-any-cost; nice-guys-finish-last; it-ain't-cheatin'-unless-you-get-caught;" school of thought. Add to him quarterback Tom Brady, the conspicuous consumption type, who dates supermodels and deserted his girlfriend after impregnating her. Fans who think themselves decent sportsmen have to despise the 2007 Patriots in the same league with Tark the Shark and Jimmy Johnson's Miami Hurricanes. Chalk it up: THE GOLIATHS DO FALL SOMETIMES!!! Tarkanian's Running Rebels fell in the Final Four to Krzewski's Duke Blue Devils in 1991 and Stallings' Tide rolled over the 1992 Hurricanes. HUA!!
Amazon.com was offering a "Dewey Defeats Truman" book titled 19-0. The link to it is here:
http://www.amazon.com/19-0-Historic-Championship-Englands-Unbeatable/dp/1600781500/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202098034&sr=1-1
After this victory, the Giants have changed the whole commentary narrative. We were asking, "Are these Patriots the best ever, having won a 4th Super Bowl and gone undefeated?" Now we can cheer the greatest upset in NFL history and revel with a decent kid who has now escaped the shadow of his brother. The talk next year will be, "Can a Manning win the Super Bowl to make it 3 in a row?" Everyone who loves the Mannings has to be on Cloud 9 now. Enjoy this moment. It doesn't happen often.