Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 540 Editor's Choice: 79
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Witless, boring, slow
[Read the article: "King Kong"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I usually agree with SZ but this movie was a giant disappointment. I knew we were in trouble in the screening room scene. What the hell kind of accents were those characters supposed to have? New Yawk? They stunk! It felt totally inauthentic, not even campy or amusing.
And yes, I know this is a fantasy, but if the police were after them, a cutter would have headed that tramp steamer off before it left the New York harbor. Likewise, the playwright could have radio'd ashore and had someone come take him off the ship. But it didn't matter, because he was paper-thin.
As was everyone else. The characters were sketched in and there was no dramatic or psychological follow-through. Even Naomi Watts was more of a surface, though she was worth watching most of the time. Most of the time. The much-ballyhoo'd scene where she "entertains" Kong was hardly convincing or amusing. And like too many scenes in this film (like the dinosaur stampede), it went on too long. And if that wasn't enough, we'd get slo-mo shots to make this bloated, witless film even longer.
The movie had two speeds: frantic or glacial. The hysteria would stomp and scream and boom on so long it had the opposite effect from what was intended. It became dull.
Things picked up a bit in New York, but by the end, I was rooting for the bi-planes. At least the movie would be over. Alas,they kept turning and diving, turning and diving, Watts kept climbing and emoting.
What a wasted afternoon.
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Consider the source
[Read the article: The war on "Munich"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's a question (or two). The film is based on the book "Vengeance" by Yuval Aviv & George Jonas. Why did someone as meticulous as Spielberg choose this source when a court case revealed that Aviv never--as he claimed--served in the Mossad or any other Israeli intelligence agency? In fact, he was merely a guard for El Al airlines. Arguments about the film's POV aside, if the source is bogus, doesn't that shape the end product? And shouldn't all reviewers mention the shakiness of the source material, whatever they make of the film?
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Brash?
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm Second Generation (or 2G as we call it in the US), and have published extensively about the Holocaust and its after-effects on children of survivors. I have to disagree with the side-swipe on "The Piano." I've seen it twice and find it far more powerful and emotionally pointed than even "Schindler's List" because of its focus on one family and one man in the midst of chaos and disaster. I would never class Adrien Brody's character as "brash." He was assimilated and cultured, and "The Piano" achingly captures his descent from Chopin-playing radio star to a hollowed-out survivor reduced to the heavy sorrow of the body (a phrase from Joyce Carol Oates). He loses family, home, friends, culture, even language in a relentless and beautifully filmed movie. I've read the novel, too, and as powerful as it is, the movie takes the book to a higher level while managing to be faithful to the letter and spirit of the book--quite an achievement. None of this is meant to derogate the review of "Fateless," but to defend "The Piano," which still haunts me in ways that other Holocaust movies haven't, and which I plan to see again, soon.
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Why God?
[Read the article: Pat Robertson: God is punishing Ariel Sharon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I, too, have never understood why people after hurricanes, etc. claim that God is behind their survival. So that means God slew everyone who didn't survive, right? What arrogance to make such claims, but then that's just what one expects of Robertson who is a junior league Elmer Gantry. What's especially disturbing, though, is the way the MSM plays into this rhetoric and routinely reports about "miracles," jsut as they're calling the surviving miner "The Miracle Miner." It's degrading and sensationalistic and as cheap as running segments on windows or dish pans that supposedly show the face of Jesus. We are more and more a nation of boobs and yahoos.
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Oil Vey!
[Read the article: Samuel Alito and the holy oil]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The mind reels.
First, can't they be charged with defacing public property? Oh, never mind. If the Constitution can be shredded, what are a few chairs.
But the real question is: what kind of oil? Olive oil in honor of the judge's heritage? Was it blessed? How and by whom, and where? How much oil? How was it applied? Did they use a spray?
On a darker note, it's possible that this confession was meant to blind us to a more nefarious purpose. Perhaps the real aim was to make certain people at the hearing either stick to their seats or slide out of them. . . .
We want the facts!
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G_d
[Read the article: What's in a hat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a Jew I have never understood the way some other Jews (observant or not) leave out the "o" in God. Yes, I understand that we don't pronounce the the four-letter name of God and substitute Adonai (Lord) for it wherever YHVH appears in texts.
But there is no matching taboo in English about saying or writing "God." And more curious still, G-d or G_d doesn't in any way substitute for saying or thinking or writing God because it's impossible to look at that odd construction and not think, say, or read God. It's a very odd affectation.
As for Abramoff wearing his hat? He's ashmed now, he says, but he should have been ashamed when he was bilking people and it shouldn have stopped him. And while he may be frum (I don't know and I don't care), I've seen plenty of file footage of him not even wearing a mini-kipa. For all his frumheit, he's a rank crook.
His religiosity is w-rthless.