Ah, Ms. Zacharek:

To the magician's confederate in the audience, the work of the illusionist onstage is all technique and no wonder.

I often disagree with your reviews because, well, to be frank, it seems like you don't like very many movies. It's as though your life as a film critic has made you so overly familiar with the art form of cinema that you can no longer enjoy a movie -- because all you can manage to see is the technique that went into it. What a terrible shame.

I suppose it's the dilemma of the critic: to love something so dearly that you study it down to the cellular level, and then are unable to zoom back and look at the whole organism the same as before.

I'll admit that I've seen Daniel Day-Lewis chew the scenery a time or two over the years, but I think he was absolutely fantastic in this role, and I have a hard time imagining anyone else playing Daniel Plainview. Who would do it better? Spacey? Clooney? Keitel? A Brolin?

I'm finished now.

Best regards,
Michael Carmody
Wichita, Kansas USA
Air Capital of the World

Hi.

I grew up with a mentally-deficient mother and an abusive, alcoholic, evil hillbilly stepfather. We were often starving, and there was no such thing as a "soup kitchen" in our small, rural town out on the vast prairies of the Midwest. We relied on the kindness of my mother's parents when we could, and the rest of the time Mom would shoplift hot dogs and other foodstuffs from grocery stores and the restaurants where she would occasionally work.

In my adult life I struggled for years to "get my shit together", so to speak, and after dropping out of college I spent many hours waiting in lines at food banks, plasma donation centers (I sold roughly 200 liters of my body's blood plasma over the years), welfare offices, church-run medical clinics, etc., etc., etc. Sporadic homelessness segued into a couple decades tangling with severe depression, OCD, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, up-and-down weight gain/loss (sometimes 60 pounds or more at a time) -- even a couple of suicide attempts.

Yet this wretched wreck I just described also spent this period working in skilled creative positions at respected commercial design firms, on the editorial staff of numerous publications and -- despite my lack of degree -- in academia. I was married twice and step-parented two wonderful children. I played in several popular local bands and enjoyed a wide circle of truly great friends. People loved and admired me. By all surface appearances, my life was something to envy.

I guess my point in all this is that it's not shameful to be poor, or to run out of money and/or food before you run out of month. The author has three healthy children, an expensive education, talent as a writer and I'm sure much more in her "blessings" column; so why is it so degrading for her to have to accept a little help when she's going through a hard time? It can -- and does -- happen to anyone, especially when a Republican administration's been at the wheel for most of a decade, raiding the federal coffers on behalf of the richest of the rich.

Don't be so hard on yourself, Ms. Ryan. A little humility is good for you now and then -- and your daughters, too. I wish you the best of luck, but I hope you'll get over this feeling of inadequacy. Remember that wisest of all bumper stickers: SHIT HAPPENS.

Best regards,

Michael Carmody

Oh, dear...

Downey is not playing a black man. He's playing a white character who is playing a black man. That's an important distinction, enough so to negate this entire article.

As you were.

Hello:

I live in Wichita, Kansas. Last night after the convention broadcast, my 85-year-old (white) grandmother, who grew up in small-town Oklahoma during the Depression, called me to gush over Mrs. Obama's speech. She was impressed with everything from the content of the text to the speaker's easy eloquence -- not to mention the adorable Obama children.

My grandmother is not a racist, necessarily, but is a product of her times in that she still distrusts immigrants (thanks most recently to her TV boyfriend Lou Dobbs), and even though she has always been wonderful to my friends of different ethnic backgrounds and skin tones, she continues to cling to the notion that people of different colors shouldn't marry (because it's hard on the kids), as well as antiquated notions about how black people sure are athletic & good dancers, etc.

A couple months ago she told me she had misgivings about the Democratic Party (of which she is a lifelong member) running a black man and a woman as its leading presidential candidates. The people in her circle, mostly senior citizens, spent a lot of time discussing which would be most (or least) electable, and they feared the Dems were ready to hand over another election to the hated GOP.

But now, with the convention in swing, it's interesting to hear the optimism in my grandmother's voice over the phone. If Barack Obama can top his wife in his speech tomorrow night, I think a lot of old-timers will feel a lot more secure about the man himself and the party's chances for victory in November.

Ms. Walsh:

Don't feel bad for poor Governor Palin. She's digging her own political grave by playing to nothing more than the basest fears and prejudices of the knuckle-draggin'est subgroup of voters in the country. She has earned every knock she's received in the press, and deseves more. And she can take that secessionist/fundamentalist poison back to Alaska and leave us Real Americans to run the country we love.