Wall-E and The Dark Knight were the two movies this year that many average filmgoers really liked, and thought were pretty decent flicks...

So, natch, this riles up the sensibilities of the snobbish "Only indie-movies can be great" critics like yourself. Your reaction in this column is so sorely predictable...a knee-jerk reflex toward a film that the unwashed cinema masses dared to enjoy, if not necessarily love.

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I understand that your typical gay Croatian indie flick or obscure Hong Kong artsy anime probably ends with total downer bleakness - double suicides, animated decapitations of large-eyed heroes with blinding green dragon swords, etc....

I also understand that as a alterna-film sycophant, such endings speak to you of "cred", man.

But I actually applaud Wall-E's ending, even if the story arc certainly has some flaws. Why?

Because this is fuckin' Pixar we are talking about. If you actually claim to have seen Cars, Ratatouille, or ANY OF THEIR MOVIES, you'd understand why the Wall-E ending has the studio's signature all over it.

The ending is about hope. That maybe, just maybe, we humans can learn from our past, be humbled by what we hath wrought...and actually correct our mistakes.

That's not some tacked on, artificial rom-com happy ending.

That's the good people at Pixar trying to actually communicate with its audience...and shamelessly, boldly, unapologetically offering a message of hope.

Ratatouille's ending was no less unlikely that that of Wall-E, but it sold the same message with more pathos and fuckin' heart that most films out there...mainstream OR indie.

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I'd suggest Salon look to hire a movie reviewer who has a balanced attitude towards films of all kinds...both mainstream / popular and alterna-indie.

That would leave O'Hehir to keep doing an admittedly fine job on raising awareness of obscure and/or foreign films - while ceasing with this almost involuntary scorn-smearing of pop culture films.

One more thing: just because a lot of folks like a movie - whether it be the Dark Knight or Wall-E - doth not make those people members of a 'cult'. What a deeply insulting term of elitist snob generalization.

And yes, I am getting both of the movies on Blu-Ray.

Rant complete. Feel free to return to your unsubtitled Gay Croatian tragi-comi-serio-epic. It's a masterpiece, no doubt.

With that headline, you beat even the erstwhile Onion to the punch! Bravo!

Headline that we may never see...unless Barack can really be the second coming of FDR:

U.S. to bail out its hardworking, law-abiding, non-millionaire citizens!

You think the USA clad itsself in patriotism after 9/11?

You ain't seen nothing yet.

India is a proud emerging market whose population can embrace nationalism on a level Westerns can hardly appreciate.

And the Islamists didn't just set off a nail bomb in a rural village this time. They attacked the f@#$%in' crown jewel of New India: Mumbai....which is somewhat analogous to New York and L.A. rolled into one.

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These Paki-supported Islamists must have certainly been itching for a fight, weren't they?

Well, when you strike India, you are sure gonna get one.

My predicted emperature in Kashmir before the end of the year: a balmy 10 million degrees Celsius...

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/SimonFung.shtml

is as useless as:

Mick without Keith

Robert without Jimmy

Steven without Joe

David Lee without Eddie

Freddie without Brian

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Front men, respect your axe-wielding brothers. Nuff said.

As far as I myself am concerned: if someone randonly gave me 5 bucks, or picked up my lunch tab, or, hell - even offered a hug (I'm often lonely), I wouldn't be creeped out or suspicious at all. I'd happily accept it - randomness and all - and pay it forward somehow.

However, I can understand how some people are put off (or at least thoroughly confused) by random kind acts.

The solution?

Simply look for targeted, non-random situations where you can pay it forward; a previous poster had a good example of the guy in your grocery line who's a dollar short...

You'd send this cartoon to the families of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Go ahead. I dare ya.

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As I understand it, black folk say they were celebrating O.J.'s acquittal in '96 because it was a celebration of Johnny Cochran's legal talent...and NOT because a black man got away with killing two whiteys.

Well, if we non-black folk did any celebrating over O.J.'s sentence for his current ills, it was only because an egomaniacal, wife-beating, murderous asshole finally got a tiny sliver of just desserts.

Any questions?

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Great. Y'all can go back to (righteously) celebratin' Obama's win.

And may the black man they call Michael Vick one day get castrated by the jaws of a pit bull.

{Yeah, I went there.}

The charging and sentencing of this case was all about revenge on a rich black man who (may ha...nope, definitely) murdered his blonde wife and her boyfriend.

Exactly. Why should it be otherwise?

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I am an ethnic minority immigrant living in the US.

I've gotten a taste of racism, xenophobia and prejudice. Many times.

(Lemme put it this way: I'm East Indian, but I can/do get mistaken for Mexican, Arab or Native American...

Which, to your garden-variety bigot, either makes me an "illegalito", "terrorist" or "drunk homeless Injun"...)

But ya know what?

If an Indian-American killed two people and got away with it, I wouldn't cheer. Hell, I'd feel disappointed that he/she would be seen as representative of our ethnic group.

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The bottom line: Identity politics helps no one. It does nothing to end racism and prejudice...

...and can even end up hurting the causes of oppressed groups.

I for one changed my views on the black American community after watching 'em cheer the first OJ verdict. Can you imagine then how white Americans responded?

At least most of the community learned its lesson when Michael Vick's case came around...