Letters to the Editor
Marie Montgomery
Published Letters: 39 Editor's Choice: 9
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Are there published statistics...
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...about how many ACTUAL "child pornographers" are nailed annually by the outstanding hypervigilence of our local citizen-cops, the photo clerks?
All of the letters justifying what this family went through seem to accept on face value the notion that somehow "children are being protected" when something like this happens.
"Yes, Sheila and Shane EveryClerk never miss the opportunity to phone the cops if just a wee bit of an underage butt cheek sneaks into a photo frame, and that's the way we LIKE it! You can't be too careful, after all..."
Has any true child pornographer dropped a roll of film off at the local Wal-Mart since the advent of digital?
These law-n-order types who think the "system" worked (and hey, it's not so bad to be investigated) really ought to go through it first. I saw a dear friend who loved his stepdaughter to death accused falsely by the kid's father in the midst of the messiest, nastiest divorce you've ever seen. He stayed on my couch for weeks (because he didn't want to even be in the house during the investigation, lest Ex-H/Dad might hurl more shit). He drank, and he cried, and he cursed. Six months later, the case was "closed" but "kept on file" (just in case, you know, everybody was lying and he really was a molester). He never quite recovered and died a few years later.
Get a grip, people. There are not child diddlers around every corner. (Well, maybe there are. But seizing family photos and plunging families into Kafkaesque realms of accusation, investigation, and months of uncertainty does nothing to find and stop them.)
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Yes (and a correction)
[Read the article: "The Illusionist"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to say I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer. When we saw this film in January, we were stunned by its lushness and eyepopping gorgeousness. You really do owe it to yourself to see it on the large screen. The story may be a bit trite, the characters a bit stock, and the twists a bit too predictable, but by the end, you simply don't care.
This is a near-perfect date movie. If it were food, it would be molten chocolate cake. So, go find a date already, and go see it.
Finally, I understand how another letter writer may have thought the illusions were mere CGI. But no. As impossible as it may seem to believe (unless the filmmakers were flat-out lying when I saw this film at Sundance), there is not one scrap of CGI at play in the film's magic. The illusions are all authentic. No digital trickery. All performed by Norton. Which is amazing in and of itself. He apparently worked his butt off to learn them all and does a breathtaking job.
Don't ask me how some of the illusions worked (the director basically said anybody who really wants to know can, of course, find that information through research into vintage magician's manuals). I don't know, and I don't want to know.
All I know is, very few films actually make me smile like a kid who just recieved a surprise lollipop. The Illusionist is one of those few.
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From an interview with Burger
[Read the article: "The Illusionist"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here](I misremembered and overstated; there is some CGI, but not as much as one would initially think. This is what the director has said in an interview about the film.)
"All the illusions that we did are based on real illusions and we tried to do them as much as they would have been done at the time… the audience is so sophisticated...about CGI and digital effects and things like that. How do we trick them into thinking that this is really how Eisenheim is doing them?...Edward did all his own sleight of hand and we did the illusions as much as we could as they would have done them then. And when we couldn’t do it as they did, we still did them in camera or practically or however."
Of course, there are no trained butterflies.
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Childish defensive foot-stompies much?
[Read the article: And the Buffy goes to...]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"A bad person wrote an article I don't like about a show I've never watched! Now I shall never, ever, ever, ever watch the show! And I shall hold my breath till I turn blue!"
Please.
And, uh, Gil Gerard and Twiki?
That was Buck Rogers.
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Is it too early just to shoot myself in the head?
[Read the article: A write-in candidate for Virginia?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]OK. Let me get this straight.
Polls are consistently showing that Americans are (finally) fed up with Republicans. So, what does this "Democrat" do?
He says he can "win the South" ("Republican Stronghold") by, I guess, trying to prove he's really a regressive, intellectual-bashing, ACLU-hating, "liberal"-scorning, backwater cretin who'll fit in real nice with all the crackerboys who use phrases like "macaca" and "welcome to America"?
I give up. There really IS no difference between the parties anymore, is there?
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Yes, a lovely essay, and yet...
[Read the article: Streams of consciousness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For 20+ post-menarche years, until I set myself free with a uterine ablation that I still remember with tears of utter joy, I was plagued with menorrhagia (that's insanely heavy menstrual bleeding for you, cryofan; it's a girlproblem.)
Every month, my body betrayed me, literally gushing uncontrollable floods of blood, clots, and mucus for 8-10 days at a time. I went through High School and University classes in utter terror that my my sadly inadequate triple-defense (super-plus tampons + two overlapping Ultra MaxiPads) would become soaked and overflow in the 90 minutes before I could get to another girls' room. It happened more times than I like to remember, causing me to eventually stop wearing anything but black on my lower body.
In light of this essay, am I to believe that somehow I would have been a bit more noble, a bit more admirable, a bit more fragile, a bit more literary, a bit more poetic, a bit more feminist, a bit more sympathetic if I'd opted to bleed all over everything in my path until my delicate, sensitive mind could wrap itself around the concept that I needed absorbtive equipment for my nether regions?