There is nothing that says “expert on Middle Eastern conflict resolution” more than playing an alien on television. So, the consummate expert has penned a missive to Americans for Peace Now on how he sees an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Spock has spoken.

Leonard Nimoy has called for a two state solution for which, in deference, several notables (amongst them Israelis), have called.  Nimoy does make a telling statement about the whole idea of two separate states.

“In fact, there is an end in sight. It’s known as the two-state solution – a secure, democratic Israel as the Jewish State alongside an independent Palestinian state.”

He does deserve some credit for seeing Israel as a Jewish state but, if you notice, there is only one democratic state mentioned here. It isn’t expected that another Muslim Arab state will be democratic. As a matter of fact, as always, Israel is expected to remain multicultural andrespect the rights of all its inhabitants, yet the proposed Arab state would, like all the other Arab states, not be open to Jews. Not that many Jews would like to live in an Arab state, considering the centuries of slaughter and pillage that have been the lot of Dhimmi Jews in Arab lands.

This is pretty par for the course, but what is even more egregious is his call for the division of Jerusalem.

“Their plan includes a Palestinian state alongside Israel with agreed-upon land swaps. The Palestinian-populated areas of Jerusalem would become the capital of Palestine; the Jewish-populated areas the capital of Israel.”

(more…)

“Is the ecstatic truth actually a religious term?”

That question was posed to Werner Herzog a few weeks ago in an interview with the German broadsheet Die Zeit (The Time). Those of you who tuned in last week know that ecstatic truth is Herzog’s way of describing the poetic, transcendent heights of illumination to which his films aspire. “Yes, there is something of that there,” Herzog replied, “something of late medieval mysticism.”

However, he immediately provided a caveat, one that should warm the cockles of conservative hearts everywhere: “But I want to get away from the religious, from the mystical,” he stressed, “because it leads all too quickly to the cloudy waters of the New Age, which is the most horrific thing you can possibly imagine in the spiritual realm.” And then, the coup de grace: “And this is something you see in a film like Avatar, by the way.”

Whoops — guess Herzog didn’t get his marching orders this awards season! (more…)

Oliver Stone’s latest desperate grasp at relevance is a new cable series that, among other things, promises to finally place der Furher into der context.  Now, this is where I’m supposed to be outraged, but I’m just not feeling it.  Ollie, I know you’d like us to believe that this isn’t just a pathetic stunt, that this brainstorm was inspired by some peyote-spawned fire demon’s whisperings inside your drug-addled cerebellum and that if we’re truly edgy we won’t dare ignore your remarkable vision.  But I think you’re once again just trying to freak out the squares and this square, for one, is mighty bored.

Stone’s scripts for Midnight Express and Scarface blew our collective minds with staggering violence and raw language.  Then he directed Platoon – an awesome film if you dig sophomore-level meditations on the duality of good and evil leavened with gunfire.  JFK came along and demonstrated that Kennedy was murdered not by the commie misfit who actually did it, but a conspiracy made up of big business, the government, the military, the Trilateral Commission, the Knights Templar, Prince Olaf of South Ruritania, and everyone else on Earth except Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK himself – or was he in on it too?  After that, Stone was ready to completely abandon the constraints imposed by concepts like “story,” “characters” and “coherence.”  Natural Born Killers was the result, the perfect Oliver Stone film – all controversy, great visuals, and nothing that made anything remotely like sense. (more…)

The crime is complete. Judgment has been passed. The killing stones are in hand. As per the harsh stoning penal code of Iran’s Islamist thugocracy (for however long that lasts) where the crime took place, my stones are not so big as to kill right away, not so small you can’t call them stones. And I’m winding up like Nolan Ryan. Feel free to pick up a stone of your own. But wait for it!

And let me make this perfectly clear, even if they do say Jehovah!

Sentence must be read before being carried out. And unlike Soraya M., the board members of the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges will deserve every rock that’s thrown their way. I also believe that, in light of events in Iran today, the following commentary will stand out in much starker prominence than it did when I first started reporting on them in early March, when Team Oscar first set off for the Unfriendly Skies of Islamist Iran. (more…)

During the Cold War, a slew of movies came out that dealt with the possibility of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. This is not surprising since the atom and hydrogen bombs were the most powerful weapons ever devised by man. Well, almost.

I’ll get to that somewhat nervy assertion in a bit, but first a little background.

Among the cinematic slew released during those years of cold, are two of my favorite films, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Both dealt with strikingly similar themes, unintentional nuclear holocaust, yet in entirely different tones.  But cold war themes weren’t that varied by their very nature, since inevitably the worst case scenario was the best case plot device and nothing brings down the house like bringing down the house.

With that said, still, there’s so much similarity between the two stories that law suits were indeed filed and production schedules slowed. This worked out to Stanley Kubrick’s advantage as his Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was released almost a year ahead of Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe. In my opinion Kubrick’s is a better film than Lumet’s and not due to slowed schedules, either. But both are magnificent, and because of their approaches to the topic, very different  and essential part of the genre. (more…)

The film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is just out on DVD this week, and I confess I was eagerly anticipating its release, having missed its run in theaters. I rented it and watched it Wednesday evening.

Based on the children’s novel of the same name by John Boyne, it tells the story of eight-year-old Bruno, whose father is a high-ranking Nazi. Dad is transferred from his post in Berlin to head a work (read: final solution) camp, and the family is uprooted to the countryside. Bored out of his skull after a few weeks of little to do and no one to play with but his older sister, Bruno defies his mother’s orders to stay in the front yard and sneaks out back to explore. He comes upon the camp, which he thinks is a farm (Bruno is sheltered from the realities of his father’s work) and meets Shmuel, a boy his age on the other side of the fence, wearing what Bruno thinks are “striped pajamas.” Despite being separated by electrified barbed wire, the two boys strike up a friendship that holds fast despite the obvious adversity and future problems that arise. (more…)