Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 542 Editor's Choice: 79
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Still musing
[Read the article: "Casino Royale"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was not as wild about this as SZ and a day after seeing it, I find the film not quite as entertaining as while I watched it.
Honestly, my first feeling was one of relief: Craig was good, damned good. Tough, sexy, and yes, a true heir to Sean Connery. His performance is layered and exciting, as is the relationship between him and the Bond Woman. The chases are thrilling and gravity-defying, the script is actually witty and substantial.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the central set-piece card game is too long and too dull and too American. Have the film makers deliberately dumbed it down from baccarat? Did they think American audiences would not be able to stand the French "neuf à la banque," etc.? Whatever the case, visually, it doesn't pack enough of a punch, and the idea that these international high livers would put 10,000,000 down just to play seemed risible.
More importantly, the plot line isn't clear enough. I accept that with "Syriana." I've seen "Syriana" twice, partly to untangle the threads. This is no "Syriana," even though it shares an actor with that film. I kept feeling that "Casino Royale" was a three-hour film cut to just under 2 and 1/2, and that it tried to make up in speed what it lost in coherence.
The Bond franchise is in fairly good hands with Craig as the new hero, but what would be wrong with a tight, clear 2-hour sequel?
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Napoleon
[Read the article: George W. Bush on the lessons of Vietnam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LaurieNY. For the most part, Napoleon was a brilliant tactician, able to calculate in his head the supplies, munitions, etc. needed for any size army over any period of march. Not that he always made the right decision, but he was a military genius for the most part. He shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence as our fearless leader.
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Living longer/living well
[Read the article: Diet your way to a long, miserable life!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's the point of living in a caloric police state where you're the dictator, secret police, and Star Chamber? You could do quite well simply reducing portion size and getting regular exercise, and food stays your friend, not your enemy. Maybe you won't live to be 125, but you'll have more fun en route.
Some years ago my spouse and I worked with a trainer to reduce body fat and we ate very "clean." Very high protein, supremely well-balanced meals, no snacking, planning ahead when we ate out. It became almost obsessive. Yes, I got down to 9% body fat (friends said I looked good but worn), but it was too rigorous a way to live, it made me too watchful of my diet. I love to cook, I love wine, I love to celebrate life and my love with both.
It was good to know I could do change my body comp, but it was a boring way to live.
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High Five. Pause. Not!
[Read the article: "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you watched the original Ali G. shows, you marvelled at Cohen's ability to do guerrilla comedy in three such different personas. Better still, none of the segments went on too very long, and so your squirming (or occasional boredom) was not intense. I was actually glad there weren't that many per season; his shtick was a one-trick pony, repeated three times per episode.
The Borat movie is not half so dazzling, brilliant and original as reviewers are saying. have they bothered to watch the show? The movie is actually not much more than a compilation of Borat skits very much in the style of those on the Ali G. show, loosely strung together to make a picaresque, with the added ingredient of gross-out humor to attract fans of road trip/American Pie movies. That latter strategy is perhaps the deftest aspect of the film, its writing and marketing.
The movie, like those built out of SNL skits, does not hold together well, nor does it sustain its humor. It feels very badly padded. The entire nude wrestling sequence, about 10 minutes perhaps, was utterly pointless. Wow, people fleeing an elevator with a fat nude man in it, that's original. Wow, nude fighters being evicted from a banquet. Deeply imaginative. And a black bar to cover his "chrum"--cute.
The antique store episode was another example of wasted film. What was the point--to set up the pubic hair joke? Lovely.
We also more than got the point in New York. People on the subway resisted his attempts to kiss them hello, ditto on the streets. It went on too long, and I was actually--as a born New Yorker--starting to hope someone would deck him. The whole movie lasted too long; you can't make this kind of sketch satire work as a full-length movie, or Cohen didn't, anyway. You're undermining a key ingredient--brevity that
leaves you wondering how he got away with it. After a while, in the movie, you stop caring.
Any one of the best sequences, the frat boys, the dinner was like a segment of the show, which I watched some episodes of before and after. The show did Borat much better.
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Serious Security Concerns
[Read the article: "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]ABC News reports that:
"Thursday night, an ABC News producer was able to walk into their hotel unchecked and engage Barbara Bush in conversation while she checked her e-mail on a computer in the lobby. Jenna sat talking with friends on a sofa nearby. No Secret Service agents were anywhere to be seen in the lobby, according to ABC News' Joe Goldman."
How is this possible, unless they dismissed their security team? How reckless is that?
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MM81
[Read the article: "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Fine, everyone in the lobby was on their security team, MM81. That doesn't explain how someone can just walk up to one of the twins and start talking to her. Especially after the purse incident. And it says nothing about their refusing to go home despite the Embassy's requests.
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What, Me Worry?
[Read the article: Bush: I feel the power of prayers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There. We've heard it from the President himself: "Don't worry about me." I guess that means all those millions should stop praying.