James Bond: Sky Fall

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of James Bond on film. To mark this momentous occasion, we have the latest release in the franchise Sky Fall, starring Daniel Craig. This is the third production in which Daniel Craig has played the title role of James Bond. Although I’ve not followed the franchise on a regular basis over its 50 years, I think I’ve seen productions involving most all of the previous Bonds, especially Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan, and to my mind, the Daniel Craig productions are the best of them. Instead of the suave and ironic character that Brosnan provides, Craig appears to be a street tough and savvy operative. In the Craig productions, Bond’s given more character, more depth, and more flaws. He isn’t exactly Alex Lemus, but it does a better job than prior productions. On the other hand, all of the Bond formulas are included in Sky Fall, from chases, to gadgets, to martinis (shaken, not stirred).

In addition to Daniel Craig’s gritty performance as an aging, steely eyed Bond, he is joined again by Judi Dench playing the role of ‘M’. Dench is one of those British actresses whose been acting for what seems to be an eternity, and her on-screen persona always seems to work whatever the occasion. In addition to these two regular cast members, Ralph Fiennes, perhaps the current reigning heavyweight among British actors, joins the cast. Javier Bardem gets the role of the villain and provides an effectively creepy performance. Thus, you know that the acting will be strong. Oh yes, less to disappoint anyone, we also have a couple of beautiful new young Bond babes.

For all of this, however, the film didn’t work very well for me. The formula can get tired. I came out of this film feeling much the same way I felt about the third of Matt Damon’s Bourne movies: the energy and intrigue it been lost and to try to make up for it, the directors and producers had simply attempted to add more chases, more action, and more speed. I understand that the Bond and Bourne franchises aren’t intended to match Le Carre for character, depth, intrigue, and nuance; however, at a certain point even with an old classic, you miss those additional features.

In fact, when I get down to it, I found myself a little annoyed after seeing the movie. Some things occurred to me were just a little too great a leap of fantasy to accept. I kept asking myself, doesn’t James Bond have a cell phone? Aren’t the British Marines every bit as tough savvy, and capable as US Navy SEALs? And when Javier Bardem, playing a really slimy and oleaginous villain, is racing after James Bond, does he rent his attack helicopter online or over the phone? Does that come with mounted machine gun and cartridge belt standard, or those features additional? Finally, does Bardem rent his thugs locally, or does he arrange transport to remote locales on the British Isles? I suppose I am perhaps sometimes a bit too practical thinking in my assessments of these types of niggling issues, but they do begin to gnaw on me when I find that the action has become a bit too repetitive.
It was fun seeing Bond, even here in remote India, and we had the chance to see and speak with some other Americans prior to the film (and I assume some of the other folks we saw were Brits), so is a worthwhile outing, but in the end, I didn’t come away satisfied.

Iain McGilchrist's The Divided Brain & the Search forMeaning

This book that sells for $1.50 as a Kindle book is a real deal. It's a shorter considertion of the issues addressed in McGilchrist's The Master & His Emissary. 

But wait, before doing forward with any review, if you haven't done so already, you should review the RSA that I'd done a short while ago but forgot to post. (It is now the post immediately preceding this one.) The short Youtube piece provides a concise overview of what this book and The Master & His Emissary go into. 

How important is this stuff? Incredibly so, I think. It takes us beyond the old left brain-right brain dichotomy for beginners, but more importantly, it shows us how the human brain evolved to serve two different types of needs. One focused and manipulative, the other broadly focused and in search of understanding. The revolutions occurring in neuroscience provide us with new insights into our human condition and how and why we act as we do, for good & ill. McGilchrist sees a woeful imbalance in Western thinking, which, from other sources, I would trace back to Descartes at least, but perhaps we should go back as far as the Greek rationalists. In any event, this book is a quick overview of McGilchrist's important thinking on this crucial project. I highly recommend it.  

Better Than TED Talks? RSAnimate & The Divided Brain

Two topics here:

1. Is RSAnimate better than TED talks? Of course, it's not a contest, but this type of presentation I find very lively & engaging. The visual (a skill that I deeply admire, probably because of my lack of talent) really adds to the presentation without dumbing-down the presentation.

2. The brain & neuroscience research is a fascinating topic & one that continues to grow and give us insight. The idea--a flawed one I believe--that divides Reason & Passion goes back at least to Plato in the West, with a big boost from Descartes along the way. But while it has some metaphorical value, taken too literally it's false. This view, better than the old Left Brain-Right Brain exact division of function, gives us a new view of ourselves that should prove very useful and practical.

Found courtesy of a Jonathan Haidt Tweet.

The New Yorker’s Endorsement of Barack Obama : The New Yorker

The New Yorker’s Endorsement of Barack Obama : The New Yorker

This is a terrific statement of why we should re-elect Obama. I urge everyone to read it and consider it.
My only complaint? I wish I was this articulate!
Then after reading, vote. 

Movie Review: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Iowa Guru and I watched the film version of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It was worth seeing. Iowa Guru has had read the book, and spoke very highly of it. My sense of the film is that like most attempts to turn first rate literature into film, a great deal comes up missing. When an author like Foer deals with characters so mainstream in some ways and so marginal in others, and the complex interaction between them, I think it’s extremely difficult to make the transfer. Ask yourself, how many great books have I seen translated into great films? That’s my sense of this film, worth seeing, well- acted (and extremely well-acted by the boy who plays Oskar), and thoughtful. One comes away with a sense that I ought to read the book. But, given the line of books I have yet to read, the film will do for now, and I can recommend it to others.

Eric Ambler's Background to Danger

Before Graham Greene (and his in his so-called “entertainments"), before Len Deighton, before Robert Ludlum, before John Le Carre, and before Alan Furst, there was Eric Ambler. Ambler is often credited as the father of the contemporary thriller. Perhaps, John Buchan deserves the title, but Ambler is the recognized master. Ambler, who started writing these the 1930s, sets the tone for fast-paced, international intrigue. Many years ago, I read Ambler's ACoffin for Dimitrios, which I enjoyed, so I was happy to find a copy of Background to Danger and plunge back into Ambler's work. I was not disappointed.

Background to Danger starts with an international correspondent who's lost most of his money gambling, and finds himself sharing a compartment on a train with a stranger who claims to be a Jewish refugee escaping Nazi agents with some important documents. I won't go into further detail, as the plot moves quickly from that basic premise. Ambler’s writing is fast-paced and clear, with enough character to draw in the reader. His plot lines, as you may recognize from the brief teaser I just gave you, would suit perfectly for an Alfred Hitchcock movie. In fact, that's a good question, whether Hitchcock ever used any of Ambler’s works for any of his movies. He certainly could have.

You don't get the characterization and depth in Ambler that you do in Greene or Le Carre, but you do get the fast-paced intrigue at a level similar to what we find currently in Alan Furst. If you're looking for a fine read of intrigue set in the volatile Europe of the 1930s, you would have a hard time doing better than Ambler’s work.

The Sad State of Civil Liberties - Why Nations Fail — whynationsfail.com — Readability

The Sad State of Civil Liberties   - Why Nations Fail — whynationsfail.com — Readability

This blog deserves more than a Tweet. I have held this fear of a decline in out civil liberties for some time, and this article reinforces that fear. Should we have attempted to capture Bin Laden and tried him? I realize the immense practical difficulties that this would have presented. Could he have received anything approaching a fair trial? Was he not guilty by his own boastful admission? So OBL, I'm not quite so troubled by. But I am troubled deeply by those that we keep in Guantanamo. Most are no doubt guilty of some serious crimes, but to allow them to languish there indefinitely is consistent  with the actions of real tyrants. Also, let's face it, the American public has shown a high degree of cowardice about having the prisoners held in the U.S. mainland, not to mention holding trials here. Shame on us! 

In my Tweet about India posted just a short while ago, I see the effects of an insufficient state, one without enough money or will, and with too much corruption, to create as good a place to live as this country should enjoy. So here's a case of state weakness, but the other end of the matter is excessive state authority. Lord Acton wasn't kidding, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This might be thought a cliche by now, but we ignore this at our peril. Too bad we don't have more principled civil libertarians, as these folks should come from both the right and the left. But too many self-styled political 'conservatives' are really authoritarians. I'm okay with conserving, and I recognize legitimate and rational authority, but too many take this too far. 

Civil liberties have been ignored as an issue in this election, which probably is an indication of how poorly the Obama administration has done on this count. Karl Rove, even from the sidelines, would have been raising the fear alarms to high decibels as he did in the Bush administration if he had anything to work with there. Not good that they're not raising a ruckus! 

Namaste

 

Movie Review: The Green Mile

In addition to picking up some light reading that the local bookstore and with Iowa Guru away for a couple days, I bought some movies that I think she wouldn't enjoy. Among those that I picked up was The Green Mile. I picked up The Green Mile because it starred Tom Hanks, because it was based on a book by Stephen King, and because I read that it had been nominated for Best Picture the year it was released. I'm not a big horror fan, but I'd recently viewed the movie version of King’s The Shawshank Redemption, and it made me realize that King could work outside the horror genre as well as having become the master within it. In addition, I recalled Stand By Me, another compelling King movie without elements of horror or the supernatural.

The Green Mile is a carefully told story with a number of different elements ranging from the humorous and lighthearted to the cruel, violent, and harsh. The setting is a death row in a Louisiana penitentiary in 1935. One could probably not think of a bleaker setting, but King ameliorates the situation by creating four of the most humane prison guards imaginable. The fifth, I assure you, is a sadistic bastard. Within this setting, King places the character, John Coffey, a huge African-American man, who becomes the Billy Budd figure in the film.

It's a long film with various subplots, elements of miraculous healing, and personifications of evil. But King and his adapting screenwriter-director, Frank Darabont, did not over power the film with elements of the miraculous or supernatural. Instead, they used these effects to highlight the very human dilemmas and characters that populate the film.

This is really a fine film. It's harsh, at times violent, at times cruel, but in the end, it's about humanity. In some ways it reminds me of the work of author Roald Dahl, who's given license with the fantastic because he writes for children. But the dilemmas and repercussions of what happens in Dahl’s The Witches, for instance, can be very troubling because of cruelty and bitter outcomes, but the sadder aspects are redeemed by the humanity of the characters and their heroic sacrifices. So it is with this particular work. For all the cruelty and harshness, for all of the moral dilemmas, it is an essentially redemptive theme that dominates the film.

Soft-Boiled Detective: Robert Parker's The Professional

Sometimes there is nothing better than a serendipitous trip to the bookstore. With some additional reading time here in India, and with Iowa Guru away for a couple of days, I went back to the local chain bookstore to check it out in a leisurely fashion. I came across a couple of detective novels that caught my eye, one author whom I'd enjoyed before and one new one. This genre usually provides entertaining and quick reads with enough literary talent to keep you engaged if you pick carefully. On this occasion  I picked up one by Robert B. Park, the author I'd heard of but had never read before. I tried Parker's The Professional (a Spenser mystery). After reading only a couple of pages, I was hooked. 

The setup is a common one in classic American detective fiction. The opening scene as an ex-cop turned private eye, Spenser, sitting in his office waiting for someone to come in and lay a case on his desk. It happens right away, and the action moves quickly from there. Parker's  prose is concise, with most of the pages consisting of dialogue. The dialogue is snappy and literate in the best tradition of American detective fiction, similar to that found in one my favorites, the John Marshall Tanner series by Stephen H. Greenleaf.

But what really sets this Spenser book apart is that for all of his ability with his fists, his quick wit, and his knowledge of the underworld, Spenser is an awfully nice guy. More specifically, in contrast to his promiscuous and jaded clients in The Professional, Spenser is a man  who enjoys his mate  (although they're not so conventional as to have tied the knot). In fact, the dialogue and interaction between Spenser and his consort Susan, who is a Ph.D. psychologist, provides some of the most enjoyable  and distinctive scenes in the book. Spenser is a guy with dealing with all kinds of problems in a seedy world, but he's really a romantic softy around his honey (although the dialogue never turns from snappy to sappy).

So would I read another Spenser? Sure. You can imagine this guy you like to be around to enjoy the pleasure of his company as well as his adventures with the darker side.

P.S. Based on this character, A television series, Spenser: For Hire, ran in the mid-80's. I never saw it, so I don't know how well it translated onto the big screen.

Rick Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President & the Fracturing of America

One of my more recent posts reviewed Robert Caro's The Passage of Power--The Years of Lyndon Johnson, and I found it a remarkable work. That reading prompted me to go back to a book that I started but had left, although I had found it quite engaging, Rick Perlstein's Nixonland. In short, one great book led me to another. 

However, before I get into the crux of my review, two points by way of an introduction. First, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson were the two most influential and significant politicians of post-WWII America during their time in office. (Ike was really a relic of an earlier era, and JFK was like a streaking meteor, significant but so brief). Second, I think that I need to digress into my personal history to help the reader understand my fascination with Nixonland in particular.

In 1960, I supported Richard Nixon for president. 

I was in the second grade. 

I had attended a Nixon campaign stop in Red Oak with my parents. They supported Nixon, of course (my mom's Catholicism notwithstanding). My parents woke me after I'd gone to bed to tell me that Nixon had lost.

From there, my Republican bona fides continued as follows: sometime in 1961 or 1962, Republican Governor Norm Erbe came to our house, and he gave me an autographed copy of the Iowa Official Register.  (I thought it a great gift.) I attended election returns with my father at  KMA, the local radio station, in 1962. In 1964 I was at the Republican national convention in San Francisco that nominated Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate. I'm happy to report that we attended because my father worked for rival candidate William Scranton, then governor of Pennsylvania.

Also, sometime that year, I attended the Page County Republican convention, where there was a move afoot to oust my dad as Page County Republican Central Committee chairman by the Goldwaterites. He prevailed, despite his connection with the moderate Scranton. In 1966, I served as a page at the state party convention. In 1968, I attended the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach with my father (who went to sell political surveys, run a charter group, and hobnob with party leaders). That convention nominated Richard Nixon for president, and later that year he was elected. I was a sophomore in high school. 

When Nixon ran for reelection in 1972, I was a sophomore college at the University of Iowa, a very different place from Shenandoah in Page County--very different. I had been exposed to a lot of new perspectives, and I changed many of my perspectives, although not radically so. I worked on behalf of the moderate Republican congressman in that district, Fred Schwengel (he lost). Jack Miller, the U.S. senator, was also up for reelection, but I pulled the trigger for his Democratic challenger, Dick Clark. (I'd met Miller, too, but by that time I thought him a dud.) And for president, I had to choose between George McGovern and Nixon. When I went to vote . . .  I couldn't mark the ballot for either one of them because I found both of them deeply flawed. I left it blank. 

Less than two years after that lop-sided election, Richard Nixon fell from power. I got married about a week later, and I continued my gradual drift toward the political left. The Republican Party, in the meantime, began lurching to the far right, where it is today. 

I share all of this with you to help you understand why I found this book so fascinating. Much of it recounts events that occurred while I was in grade school, junior high, and high school. And while I followed politics much more closely than my peers, I was also quite caught up with sports, school, friends, and (eventually) girls (one in particular). I can look back on this era and realized how crazy, out of control, and momentous it all was. How Richard Nixon was truly the figure of Shakespeare's Richard III, who could "set the murderous Machiavel to school." The liberals (most Democrats and even some Republicans), on the other hand, were naive, foolish, and given to the greatest hubris. Middle America was scared, and rightly so.

Perlstein presents this history using the figure of Richard Nixon as the central barometer of the age (the "plastic man" as Garry Wills dubbed him). Perlstein recounts a wide variety of events: urban riots, Viet Nam protests, civil rights demands, and cultural changes through reviewing the original sources, such as newspaper accounts, as well as going back and reading what the many commissions and investigations reported (and which were overwhelmingly ignored). Events like the Chicago Democratic Convention was marked by radicals, clowns, mobs, and police riots (yes, you read that correctly). The political world was in chaos. The Democrats were a mess. 

If all of this wasn't scary enough, the election of Richard Nixon marks the ascent of a deeply troubled--and troubling-- man into the White House. Nixon said (and did) some things in public that seemed eminently reasonable and rational. He figured himself a Disraeli-like reforming Tory, but in private, he was, as he always had been, a "serial collector of resentments" (a term that someone coined but I can't recall whom and I don't have a copy of Perlstein's book to check the reference. Sorry.) He was nearly paranoid and often vengeful. And from this, came the incredibly stupid, venal,  and disgraceful matter of Watergate. Perlstein deals with it all, step by step. 

All of this is relevant today. History is the flow of the river of time, and what occurs upstream flows downstream, adulterated and reduced, but in this case, still visible. The culture wars seem to have played themselves out, at least as an outcome determinative matter in elections, and economic issues will likely be the measure of this election. Also, there appears to be the growing perception that Obama is a man of restraint and moderation. Romney, on the other hand, must carry the ideological baggage of the political right while he sees the world through the eyes of privilege at the highest levels of society. Many voters seem to sense the disconnect. Anyway, how we arrived at the political environment today comes through this turbulent era and through this vexing man Richard Nixon. Pearlstein does a superb job of recounting how it all unfolded. 

A terrific book.

One of Perlstein’s most important and acknowledged sources is Garry Wills’ Nixon Agonistes, one of my all-time favorite books. The Inscrutable Panda tells me it’s still recommended for students of American politics by faculty at her university, to attest to its measure. If you find this topic engaging, I highly recommend this book to you.

Ryan-related Quiz

I take this quote from this New Yorker profile of Ryan by Ryan Lizza:

He presented it not as a dry policy plan, with just numbers and actuarial tables, but as a manifesto that drew on the canon of Western political philosophy as interpreted by conservative intellectuals. The document’s introduction referred to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, Hayek, Friedman, Adam Smith, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Georges-Eugène Sorel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Charles Murray, and Niall Ferguson. Ryan himself seemed intent on entering the canon. “Only by taking responsibility for oneself, to the greatest extent possible, can one ever be free,” he wrote, “and only a free person can make responsible choices—between right and wrong, saving and spending, giving or taking.”

Now for the quiz: does anyone know, without looking @ Google or some print source, who in the world is Georges Sorel? (The other names are recognizable to most students of social science & contemporary thought). I know the answer because (and here's a hint) of my Modern France (1815--present) course with Professor Alan B. Spitzer & my Modern Political Theory course with Professor Lane Davis. I wrote a paper on him for Spitzer & a comparison of his thought with that of Frantz Fanon for Davis. And now I have to go read the Roadmap (which I know I don't like) just to see how Sorel got in with the other, mostly usual suspects. 

P.S. Anyone who successfully give a satisfactory answer will receive a prize to be determined.

Repeal & Replace the 2nd Amendment

It's time for a serious bout of sanity on the issue of guns. I understand that sanity and thinking about guns do not often go together, but they should. The first order of business is to repeal and replace the 2nd Amendment, the  "right to bear arms" amendment. The amendment as written is unclear at best, and at worst--and Supreme Court rulings are making it worse--it harms the public good. Let's repeal it and start over. The Founders were human beings, not gods, and some things they didn't get right. Slavery in the land of the free?  So here's my suggestion, a first draft if you will, of a replacement for the 2nd Amendment:

Congress and the states may regulate and restrict firearms and other weapons. In adopting any regulations and restrictions, Congress and the states must consider and balance the public welfare and the interests of those who want to own and use firearms for sporting, recreational, and personsal safety. Any regulation or restriction reasonably related to a person's history of serious criminal conduct or serious mental illness is a lawful basis for regulation and restriction. The regulation and restriction of firearms and other weapons intended primarily for military purposes or for which potential uses exceed those of legitimate recreational, sporting, or personal safety purposes is deemed an an inherently reasonable and lawful basis for regulation and restriction.

There you have it. Now tell your elected officials that you've had enough, and stand-up to the NRA and those idolators who worship at the altar of guns.

Addendum 23 March 2021: I stand by the above. In fact, taking an action--drastic as it is--is more important than ever. Do I stand alone? I recently came across this interview given by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren (appointed by Richard Nixon in 1969) where he calls the interpretation of the Second Amendment offered by "specials interests" a "fraud." Amen. 

 

A Great Book: Robert Caro's The Passage of Power

I don't think that I call a book "great" too often, although I usually find those that I am quite enthusiastic about (if I finish it, it's held me). But for this book, the combination of the author and the subject (LBJ) is a perfect storm of a biography. In this volume, the fourth in the "Years of Lyndon Johnson", Caro follows his subject  from 1958 to about mid-1964. During this time, Johnson went from serving as the dominant figure in the Senate as the Senate majority leader, to a failed presidential candidate (and a reluctant and belated one at that, despite his longing to reach the presidency). Then, out of nowhere seemingly--and much to the chagrin of his brother Bobby--John Kennedy chose Johnson as his veep. While John Kennedy seemed to respect Johnson, Bobby Kennedy hated and despised him. Johnson knew this, and he reciprocated the feeling. As Garry Wills noted in his review of the book, this hatred brought out the worst in both men.

As vice-president, Johnson languished, excluded from the Kennedy inner-circle and ignored even in congressional matters, where his knowledge and experience could not be matched. LBJ could only watch as Kennedy's legislative program went nowhere. By 1963, the Bobby Baker scandal was brewing, while former Johnson protege John Connelly was governor of Texas and feeling his own oats. Things looked bleak for Johnson, he'd even lost his clout in Texas. Then, as he rode through the streets of Dallas behind John Kennedy, shots cracked and Johnson was shoved the floor of his car. Not long after, Kennedy aide Ken O'Donnell came into a room where Johnson has been secluded by the Secret Service, and told him, "he's gone". With this Johnson became president, and a changed man.

Caro, from this point forward, details the steps that Johnson took to make his succession work. From the swearing in with the blood-stained Jackie Kennedy at this side to his wooing of Kennedy aides, Johnson orchestrated the passage. Through talks with governors, congressman, and others in government, Johnson worked to keep the power of the presidency in tack and working. While the nation grieved and watched the spectacle of the Kennedy last rites, Johnson worked.

After this immediate time of abrupt change, Johnson realized that he could now accomplish things, that he was no longer a bystander, no longer another Southern senator. As Caro describes it, Johnson's passions now matched his ambitions, and one of his passions was justice for the poor and downtrodden, including those black and brown. Johnson immediately began to work to get the Kennedy tax cut through Congress (by making a deal with Harry Byrd, the budget watchdog from Virginia), and Johnson, despite warnings to the contrary, pushed the civil rights bill--and got it passed. It was an amazing and under-appreciated display of political mastery that left the nation better off.

Caro foreshadows the fall that Lyndon Johnson would suffer after his election later in 1964. Many of the traits that marred him, which he'd suppressed during this transition, came back to the forefront. Vietnam, of course, lurks as a monster that we know comes to devour Johnson and the peace of the nation. But for now, we have this amazing portrait of redemption and success, one brief shining moment, if you will, when in the dark time of mourning, Lyndon Johnson did the right things. Happily, this extraordinary biographer, who maps the arc of Johnson's life, has proven equal to the task. Pray that Caro enjoys long life so that we can read the next chapter, the tragedy, that we know befalls our protagonist.