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The new Spider-Man movie is superb, the best superhero movie to-date, by far. Far better than Batman and Superman I and II, and their unwatchable sequels. I have been a Spider-Man fan for over twenty years, and thoroughly enjoyed this adaptation. James Lileks has written an excellent review (except for his reasons about why Spider-Man is the movie of the year–“because it sums up who we wanted to be. ” I think that’s a bit much–but judge for yourself). The swinging and action scenes were great. I loved the way Spider-Man moved–the way he would squat low to the floor when he landed, alert for danger, just as the comic illustrations always suggested. The organic webshooters were an inspired idea, in fact it probably should have been that way from the beginning, in the comic.
Other reviews have been generally positive, but way off base in the criticisms they apparently felt compelled to come up with. Roger Ebert, for example, inexplicably criticizes the action sequences: “‘[the] action sequences […] zip along like perfunctory cartoons. Not even during Spidey’s first experimental outings do we feel that flesh and blood are contending with gravity. Spidey soars too quickly through the skies of Manhattan; he’s as convincing as Mighty Mouse.” This is absurd; the web-swinging and related action sequences are very well-done, and impressively visualized what comics the fluid and tumultuous action that still comic panels can only suggest. Ebert also implies that the Batman and Superman moviews are superior to Spider-Man: “The appeal of the best sequences in the Superman and Batman movies is that they lend weight and importance to comic-book images.” This is ridiculous. Batman was almost painful to watch (Michael Keaton?!), and took itself way, WAY too seriously; Superman, even the first two, was hokey and campy (remember the fumbling Ned Beatty?).
Charles Taylor’s otherwise largely excellent review in Salon goes off-course in trying to analogize Spider-Man’s web-shooting with teenage ejaculation: “Koepp and Raimi do some sly comedy of their own in the scenes where Peter tries to get his web-spinning abilities under control. The gummy white fluid that shoots out of his wrists becomes a metaphor for the other thing that teenage boys often can’t control.” Beware of any high-falutin’ critic who uses the term “metaphor” (Taylor does it twice–the second time, he claims that the scene in which “Spidey’s mask is half torn off” is “an elegant little visual metaphor for the divisions in the character”. Spare me.). The link between Spidey’s web and semen is perverse and unwarranted; and Taylor is wrong about this scene, when he writes: “Peter invokes every superhero slogan he can remember (‘Sha-zam!’ and so on) to take charge of the webs as they fire wide of their target.” No; Peter invokes these slogans to try to get his webs to fire, not to get them under control. A. O. Scott of the NY Times bizarrley refers to Willem Dafoe’s amazing performance as the Green Gobling “uninspired and secondhand”; it is not, Taylor rightly calls it “perhaps the single best piece of screen work Dafoe has ever done” and even the somewhat critical Ebert admits, “there’s an effective scene where Osborn [Dafoe] has a conversation with his invisible dark side”.
Forget the critics. Listen to Lileks. The movie is great.
While listening to National People’s Radio this morning, some state or federal law enforcement official was being interviewed about the recent pipe bombings. When asked whether the pipe bombings constituted “terrorism,” a difficult-to-define concept, the official said something like, “Well … I’m not sure if it was terrorism … I mean, it bothered a lot of people.” My spasms of laughter made it difficult for me to hear the rest.
Several interesting articles on the growing influence and popularity of blogs. Google Blogs: How Weblogs Influence A Billion Google Searches A Week points out that frequently-updated and link-rich blogs have increasing influence on Google search results: “how else would blogger Dave Winer outrank humorist Dave Barry in a Google search for Dave? Or journalist Deborah Branscum outrank Debbie Gibson in a Google search for Deborah?” So I tried it out myself: A Google search for “kinsella” found StephanKinsella.com at #3; searching by “stephan” found it at #5. I also tried it out on my favorite site, the very popular, paleolibertarian news site LewRockwell.com: a Google search for “lew” turns up this site as the #1 hit! LewRockwell.com is #6 in a search for “rockwell”.
Other interesting pieces: A blog’s bark has bite, by John Leo; The Power of the Blogosphere, by InstaPundit Über-blogger Glenn Reynolds (and post2); Is Weblog Technology Here to Stay or Just Another Fad?, NY Times; Law Meets Blog: Electronic Publishing Comes Of Age, by Denise Howell (LLRX); and
Let’s Blog! (May 2002 Texas Bar Journal).
A fascinating use of blogs is googlebombing. For example, Google Time Bomb: Will Weblogs blow up the world’s favorite search engine? discusses the googlebombing of a telemarketer called Critical IP who made the mistake of getting a googlebomber’s telephone number off of WhoIs and calling him during dinner. A campaign to googlebomb Verisign is discussed here.
Further info at my blog links and resources.
Nice blog by libertarian Gene Healy, who says: “One of the most disappointing aspects of blogworld’s response to the Francis Fukuyama attack on libertarians is that virtually every big-name blogger has conceded that Fukuyama is basically right about foreign policy.” Hey Gene, this big-name blogger didn’t concede it! 🙂
KinsellaLaw.com was featured in an article in the May 2002 issue of the Texas Bar Journal.
If you read nothing else this month, read: Grow Up, Canada, by Ralph Raico. A stunning article, and one of the most insightful and beautiful things I’ve read in some time.
Nice column by Wendy McElroy, The Bill of Intellectual Rights, advocating civility, tolerance, and respect for diverse opinions, and opposing a feminism whose “politics of rage […] depicts men as political enemies of women,” which has replaced “reasoned argument with ad hominem onslaught”. Among the “intellectual rights you should demand: [] You have the right to not care. Perhaps anorexia in America is being blamed on Calista Flockhart for the 100th time. If the topic is boring, you have the right to state, ‘I don’t want to talk about this further.'” and “You have the right to not understand something without being made to feel stupid. A feminist may be excoriating white male culture for the lack of women in Congress. You have the right to say: ‘I don’t understand. Since more women vote than men, how can men be blamed for election results?'” Another: “You have the right to form an opinion and to express it. You do not need a diploma, permission from your spouse, dispensation from the Church, or a birth certificate listing the ‘correct’ sex. Simply by being human, you have a right to reach conclusions and state them. For example, men have a right to independent opinions on ‘women’s’ issues like abortion.”
I’ve recently updated my KinsellaLaw IP Links page, including the list of Obscure/Ridiculous/Curious Patents and related matters.
Interesting article in RedHerring: Patents, long the tech world’s currency, come under attack. Subtitled: The patent office has been criticized for allowing a ticket of patents to grow in recent years; by Julie Landry, April 19, 2002. More info on patents.
One of my favorite quotes is this one by Walker Percy (though it is too cynical): “How can the great suck of self ever hope to be a fat cat dozing in the sun?”, from The Second Coming (more text).
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Although I hate its silly, hand-wringing cynicism, and also dislike silly “existential dread” stuff… and stuff like the following:
- Nietzsche handwringing about the “horror and absurdity of existence” … “One man will be enthralled by the Socratic delight in knowledge and the delusion that it might heal the eternal wound of existence”. The Birth of Tragedy
- Sartre and “Nausea“
- Adorno’s concept of “damaged life” or “damaged existence.” Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life.
- Nozick’s ridiculous and self-absorbed narcissism in his non-rigorous, hyperbolic statement that “I believe that the Holocaust is an event like the Fall in the way traditional Christianity conceived it, something that radically and drastically alters the situation and status of humanity … I do not claim to understand the significance of this, but here is one piece, I think: It would not be a special tragedy if humankind ended, if the human species were destroyed in atomic warfare or the earth passed through some cloud that made it impossible for the species to continue reproducing itself.” Robert Nozick, The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (Simon & Schuster: 1989) pp. 237–39.
Great column by the great Joe Stromberg, Liberventionism Rides Again. Discusses the problematic war/defense views of various libertarians and groups, including Brink Lindsey and others discussed here in recent blogs. For another critique of Lindsey, see Look Ma: Invisible Hands, by John T. Kennedy.
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