Hell, you not only have a right to do it, but you have a right to have it federally funded through the NEA by the very taxpayers whose collective mind you intend to blow by getting so darn real.   It’s right there in the Constitution, amid the emanations and adjacent to the penumbras.  Oh, but if you accurately depict the acts leading up to the murder of nearly 3000 Americans, you’ve got to be stopped.  After all, the artistic elite can’t let you upset the Krugman-esque party line that 9/11 was really about Bu$Hitler and Company’s wars for oil or something.

The artistic community is anti-censorship right up until the second it decides it wants something censored.  Then it piles on.

A little background.

Steve Reich is a Pulitzer-winning composer who lived a few blocks away from the World Trade Center when the planes hit on September 11, 2001.  He was out of town at the time, but his family was home.  They barely escaped, but the experience was so emotionally traumatic that it was only as the 10th anniversary of this monstrous crime approached that he was able to finally express his feelings through his art.  You would think the artistic community would praise him – well, you would think that if you had not been paying attention and still believe that it possessed the capacity for shame at its own rank hypocrisy.

Reich’s composition was called “WTC 9/11.”  As described by Terry Ponick at the Washington Times, it “is a short, three-part work that blends live music with the actual recorded sounds of the day’s events playing in background and foreground.”  The CD was originally scheduled to be released on 9/11/11, but a completely unexpected (if you don’t understand the Left) uproar occurred.

The uproar?  Take a look at the original cover photo above.

Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?  The sight of that jet being guided straight into the South Tower as hundreds burn alive in the North Tower makes you think about how 9/11 was not just some random tragedy that befell us, as if by mere misfortune or a twist of fate.

It makes you think about how it was a calculated act of murder by people who wanted to enslave or kill us, and who still want to enslave or kill us.  And the artistic elite can’t let that thought cross your mind.

Slate’s Seth Colter Walls is suitably mortified that the simple image is so…simple:

Given the piece’s complexity, it is surprising to see that the first studio recording of WTC 9/11, due to be released by the esteemed label Nonesuch Records just days before the 10^th anniversary of the attacks, is being marketed with cover art that looks like something swiped from Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign press shop circa January 2008.

Yeah, it’s surprising that was piece called “WTC 9/11” and inspired by the events at the World Trade Center on 9/11 might have a cover that actually depicts the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Sorry, Seth, if it’s a little on-the-nose for you.  Now go complain about poetry that rhymes.

The “controversy” – to the extent rank censorship by self-appointed guardians of the public consciousness constitutes a “controversy” – over Reich’s chosen cover art has delayed the CD’s release until the 20th.  That will give the informal Ministry of Truth time to scrub away the cover image that might give rise to unapproved thoughts.

Here is the new cover:

Wow.  Wispy grey clouds – it could be a thunderstorm or perhaps some other act of nature.  Maybe smoke billowing from the factories of one of those corporate polluters we hear so much about.  It could be anything.

Anything except the Twin Towers and the plane piloted by jihadi cowards intent on murdering us.

Ponick of the Washington Times does an excellent job of explaining why the Left demanded this ritual sacrifice:

The grievance was almost certainly generated by hyper-touchy liberal New Yorkers who’ve appointed themselves guardians of 9/11 imagery, aided and abetted by the media coverage (notably Slate and NPR) of reflexively leftist scolds who don’t want to be reminded that the U.S. is not always the bad guy in the arena of human events.  And it’s this latter group that really made the album cover an issue.

Yes, it’s the Left being the Left being the Left. Of course their reaction to 9/11 is just the opposite of “never forget.”  They want us to forget the truth and instead impose a false memory more conducive to their agenda.  They prefer, “always remember America is the villain.”  And the original cover reminds us that America is not.  So it must be suppressed.

In the Los Angeles Times, August Brown fretted, wondering if “the subtlety of the piece accurately conveyed by this incredibly blunt and literal cover?”  Not surprisingly, the Washington Post’s Anne Midgette agrees that the cover should be changed:

It’s the right decision. But the debate is, for me, a red flag that, in the well-meaning wish to guard everyone’s feelings, we risk losing sight of the inherent transformative process of a work of art.

Of course, the “transformative process” the truth might initiate is to transform people from couch-bound lumps thinking in the passive voice about “the tragedy that happened” into furious citizens roused to righteous anger – and their own defense – against the threat that still faces us.

Is one album cover going to turn American culture 180 degrees from the weepy, passivity our liberal elite, spearheaded by the artistic community, wants to keep us trapped in?  Of course not.  And is Reich himself a fire-breathing warrior urging on the American people for further feats of martial achievement?  Probably not.  According to Midgette, his statement read:

As a composer I want people to listen to my music without something distracting them. The present cover of WTC 9/11 will, for many, act as a distraction from listening and so  . . . the cover is being changed.

Regardless, it’s sad that Reich feels forced to constrain his artistic vision not because it is wrong but precisely because it is right.  The elite is not trying to suppress lies but to hide the truth – that a gang of fundamentalist Muslim jihadis murdered 3000 Americans and would do so again, and that we either fight and win, or choose enslavement and/or death.  The latter is what the original cover says, and what it says is the truth, and the truth is precisely what they want to censor.

The artistic community doesn’t stand against censorship – it embraces censorship.  Crying “wolf” about censorship is a useful weapon to protect its untalented hack members who make crappy art off the largess of Uncle Sucker.  And it will not hesitate for even a second to use censorship against its own members when they cross the party line.

Next, maybe Reich can write an album about this incident and the community or artists that has abandoned him.  His only problem will be finding a cover art image that suitably evokes the concept of hypocrisy.

Some may ask why it should even be necessary to do so.  The reasons are plentiful.  Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it.  The human experience is intrinsically connected to the search for meaning, from which our collective purpose can be divined. In short, by seeking to understand, we become that much closer to each other and to God.

But there is a greater reason still.  You’ll find much of it contained in David Milch’s discussion of his intriguing (though flawed) HBO series John From Cincinnati.  Mr. Milch postulates that the media has abdicated its moral responsibility (fans of Big Journalism have known that for some time), and that television has created a surrogate existence for us, detaching us from emotional reality.  Specifically:

I think that the media have infantilized the expectations of the audience because of the lack of some sort of transcendent informing vision. I believe that the surrogate existence that is provided by television has come to supplant the genuine emotional life of the populace…the assault on the collective sensibility of 9/11 was such as to give the audience so much fear that the only way that they could be placated was with a television series [The Iraq War…which had] everything to do with the habituation of the viewing public to the shaping of human experience in distorted forms for which the media is responsible…we wanted to be narcotized in our reaction to the assault on the World Trade Center…There is a different drama which is enacting itself in our country right now and it has to do with a failure to acknowledge the necessary moral and imaginative predicate that has become an entirely virtual existence, which is, you know, people spend more than half their waking hours watching television. Just think about that for a second. That has to shape the neural pathways…”

In other words, Neo, “free your mind”.  We must reconnect with the emotional reality of our existence, and the emotional reality of 9/11.  Regrettably, we have indeed become narcotized to it — because we understandably want to be.  That alone permits our enemy to make further gains towards destroying us.

Thus, there is a necessity to find ways of reinterpreting the 9/11 experience into something we can make emotional sense out of.

But there’s a problem.  As I’ve written before, there are considerable obstacles when attempting to depict true evil in film.  Some horrific events so transcend the bounds of reason, or even reality, that they are literally impossible to put into words.  How, then, could they put into pictures?  Ah, but such is the power of art — high art, that is, not popular art.

It can be done, but it won’t be easy.  How will we recognize it when it happens? As per my article, “Does Hollywood Create Art?“, we will recognize it when it has its own form rather than merely a shape; when it elicits a response as opposed to a reaction; when it expresses emotion rather than creates simple emotional associations; and if we truly find ourselves in the work as opposed to see ourselves reflected in it.

Although, thus far, only documentary films about 9/11 fit these criteria, I do believe a few filmmakers have the ability to tackle the subject.  I’ll get to those in a moment.  In the meantime, I consider it vital that every American seek out films, books, music, and television that strives to be high art concerning 9/11.  I personally have seen very few.  It is vital not simply to bear witness, and to let our tears mingle with those who have suffered, but to further get our hands around this unspeakable event and contextualize it.

In the meantime, I urge you to see these two extraordinary documentaries that are worlds apart from each other.

9/11: The Documentary 

Two French filmmakers, the Naudet brothers, had intended to make a film about life in a NYC firehouse, Battalion 1.  They found themselves doing that on September 11th.  One of them was filming at the firehouse when the battalion was called in to assist.  They went along.  What follows is an extraordinary account of these heroes at the scene as everything unfolded.   You got into the depths of the WTC along with them.  You hear firemen’s accounts of that day.  You witness some events you have never seen before.  You will be moved like never before.

Man on Wire 

This is not actually a film about 9/11 at all.  Yet the events of that day inform every second of the film.  It tells the exuberant and thrilling tale of how Frenchman Philippe Petit, and a small group on cohorts, arranged to string a wire between the Towers in 1974 — so he could perform a high-wire walk between them.  The film is so expertly constructed that it unfolds almost like a heist movie, complete with the plan, suspense, things going wrong, and the most colorful mastermind you’ve ever seen.  It is totally engaging, funny, charming, and utterly delightful.

The reason why you must see this movie, in regards to 9/11, is because it never makes a single mention of the Towers’ destruction.  This is a movie that demonstrates the unlimited power of the human spirit.   It speaks to mankind’s ability not merely to dream, but to transform those dreams into a reality.  It is a reality not of fire, death, and rubble, but a reality of creation, of beauty, and of inspiration.

For me, Man on Wire accomplishes all the things that high art does. You will love it.

It is, for good reason, the best-reviewed movie at Rotten Tomatoes, earning a perfect score of 100 from 145 reviewers.

Where to from here? 

Can any other cultural experience achieve what needs to be achieved in regards to 9/11?  I believe so.  We’ve seen glimmers of it.   Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising comes close.  There may be books or symphonies I am not aware of.   As for filmed entertainment, I think only someone like Terrence Malick or David Lynch might be able to accomplish it, amongst a few others.

Despite detractors like our own John Nolte, Mr. Malick’s Tree of Life is arguably a masterpiece.  More to the point, it creates an impressionistic experience — of memory, of life, of emotional reality — in a non-linear narrative that accomplishes far more than any traditional storytelling method would have.  I’ll write more on this film when it comes out on DVD, but the approach Mr. Malick takes with that film, as well as with The Thin Red Line is arguably the only approach that could ever work in regards to 9/11.

I’m not hopeful.  Hollywood doesn’t spend money on movies like that.

I’ve experienced several historical events, but nothing quite like 9/11. I lived in D.C. when 9/11 happened and I used to drive right past the spot where the American Airlines jet crashed into the Pentagon. That particular day I passed by twenty minutes before it happened. I still remember the morning DJ joking about “some idiot who slammed a Cessna into the World Trade Center” (“how can you not see the World Trade Center?”), and I remember the horror in his voice when he learned it wasn’t a Cessna. Then there was actual panic and confusion and people talked about the Capitol being destroyed and the White House. It took me six hours to get home, fifteen minutes away, as they closed the bridges and soldiers set up road blocks.

I also remember the shock and disbelief that this was happening in our country. And I remember feeling sick upon seeing people jump to their deaths in New York. All of this is vividly etched in my brain as it is for so many of us.

When I heard that Oliver Stone would do a film about 9/11, I had high expectations. Stone is a leftist nut, but he had undeniable talent at one point. Platoon was brilliant, as was Wall Street. Platoon was so good it literally broke the Vietnam spell in our country and ended the tension between the public and the soldiers who fought in Vietnam. Wall Street (ironically) inspired an entire generation of kids to become Gordon Gekkos. Heck, even The Doors was great and turned me into a fan of the group. So I expected something pretty incredible from World Trade Center, even if it was likely to be liberal.

In fact, I expected something that would mirror the shock, the disbelief, the panic, and the horror that people felt. I expected something that highlighted the selfless bravery we saw on our televisions that day. I expected something that caught both the grand scale of what this meant to the country and also something that captured the personal effect this had on so many people and so many families.

Instead, I got a remake of The Towering Inferno.

It’s not that World Trade Center is a bad film as far as disaster films go, but it completely lacks context and it has nothing like the impact it should have had. It is a small film. It follows a small group of first responders, a brave group of Port Authority police officers, who arrive at the WTC after everything has already begun and it never moves beyond them. There is no doubt their story is heroic and deserving of being told, but this came nowhere near capturing the emotion of the moment. There’s never any sense of how shocking these events were, or how far ranging. There’s little attention given to the three thousand other people who were killed that day or the tens of thousands more who came close. Nor are the characters given much chance to become personal to us before they are thrown into the action. This is like doing a film about Pearl Harbor by focusing on a small group of firefighters aboard one of the battleships and starting the film after the battleship has already been hit without even explaining that the attack was a sneak attack and the country was at peace moments before.

For a guy with the talent of Oliver Stone, this was a total failure. For a film about an event that remains so raw in so many people’s minds, this was a total failure. For a film about a great national tragedy and outrage, this was a failure.

Obviously, I can’t read Stone’s mind, but I think he was afraid of this topic. Stone has tremendous talent, but he’s also got a horrible reputation. I think he feared that anything he did beyond the very narrow confines of this small story would result in a backlash by one side or the other, and he apparently wasn’t prepared to experience that backlash. But in succumbing to this fear, Stone blew his chance to do something truly inspired and that is the real shame here.

To this day, I think 9/11 still waits for THE film that will give Americans closure because something this horrible calls out for our culture to digest it and explain it to us in a form we can contemplate. But that film will take a lot more courage than Hollywood has shown in quite some time, because such a film will require showing real people and real suffering, and that will anger people and hurt feelings.

And admittedly, it might not even be possible for a film to compete with reality, now that reality comes with its own video images. Could a film really show the raw horror of people jumping to their deaths? I don’t honestly know. Seeing actors pretending to die certainly doesn’t have the same impact as seeing the real thing caught on tape. But Hollywood has some advantages. It knows what images have endured in the public consciousness and it can manipulate the story to be more coherent. And it can bring us closer to people we never actually met, but whose fates we know. I guess we won’t really know if this can be done until someone gives it a genuine try. But Vietnam was the first televised war and there are miles of footage about every aspect of it, yet we remain so fascinated with it that we still watch the movies about it.

I think 9/11 needs a definitive film. And if liberal icons like Stone can’t or won’t do it, maybe some young conservative screenwriters or directors should give it a try?

Thoughts?

Reese wanted George to hear a song they often play on their show that Drew and I had written in 2009 called “A Hero’s Creed” – a tribute to all the 9/11 first responders and our military members fighting the war on terror.  There was a line in the original version that said “Eight years have passed…no attacks on our land…we owe it to those who heed the call.” Sadly, since the new administration moved into our nation’s capital, we can no longer say that.

We needed to update the song, so we did.  Somehow, however, through a slight miscommunication regarding our updating of the song, Gadi was under the impression we were working on a brand new 9/11 tribute song and would have it ready in time for his 9/11 Tribute show on 8 Sep.  We knew we had to write a new song for Gadi’s show.

—–

It did not take long for us to come up with the concept for the song:  a young girl who lost her father – one of the 343 firefighters who died when the towers collapsed – who is now a young woman looking back with sadness on all that she lost that day and a determination to follow in her Dad’s footsteps and serve her country in uniform…knowing one day she would meet him again.

In just one week (a record for us), Drew and I took that concept, crafted the lyrics together in real time (Google Docs is great for collaborating online), and developed a basic melody.  I sent my raw vocals to him and had no idea what the track would sound like when he got finished with it, but knew he would more than do it justice.  I heard it for the first time a few hours before Gadi’s show Thursday evening.  I smiled as tears rolled down my cheeks.

As we pause to remember those we lost that day – the innocent civilians and the first responders – and those who have died since then fighting the war on terror, let us also lift up the youngest victims in prayer – the children left behind.

Godspeed brothers and sisters…we will never forget.

For many people, the images of commercial airliners hitting the Twin Towers, and of Manhattan engulfed in a huge dust cloud as they collapsed, looked like a Hollywood apocalypse-style movie.

But despite that — or maybe in part because of it — 9/11 has not generated as large a number of movies as previous epochal events such as World War II or Vietnam.

Industry insiders say experience shows that 9/11 movies just don’t work at the box office — adding that the attacks may even have pushed Tinsel Town to produce even more escapist movies than it normally would.

In the decade since, only two Hollywood studios have produced films directly inspired by the most deadly attacks ever on US soil: Universal with “United 93” by Paul Greengrass and Paramount with Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.”

This despite an initial surge of Hollywood interest following the September 11, 2001 attacks in Washington and New York.

“There was certainly an enormous amount of interest in 9/11 and the wars that happened afterwards,” said producer Bonnie Curtis, who has worked on films including Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.”

“I think that creatively, a lot of people started working on a material that normally wouldn’t even exist without the event itself,” she told AFP.

But there were also fairly quickly doubts about public appetite for films about such a traumatic event.

“There was a lot of conversation between all of us, like ‘Is it too soon’ to make a film about the events, will audiences have any interest in going and seeing that?,” Curtis said.

The answer was clear: “United 93” and “World Trade Center” were both relative box office failures when they came out in 2006. The first made $74 million worldwide, the second $161 million, modest numbers for Hollywood.

Full story here.

Contact Music.com:

“I must write how I feel: A blistering argument is taking place about building a mosque near Ground Zero. My son Peter argues that a free country should allow the mosque to be built. I have argued that it could be painful to the families of the many victims who died there. But I am confused because I have had several Muslim friends for many years. They are kind, generous, caring people – I value their friendship.

“But, a part of me says, the people who brought about such horrific destruction on the World Trade Center were Muslims that attended a mosque and who believed that America should die. Of course, I wish more Muslims, like my friends, would speak out and condemn those actions. I am confused.”

More here.

PS: No construction workers were actually verbally abused during the making of this video… Though one was lightly fondled.

On the one-year anniversary of President George W. Bush leaving office, let us recall his words spoken in the National Cathedral, September 14, 2001 (please take a moment to watch the video):

–

“This world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn.

It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves.

This is true of a nation as well… 

America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom’s home and defender, and the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.”

America had just suffered the horror of the evil terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. While our shocked nation mourned and scrambled for clarity in its aftermath, President Bush stood tall. 

He represented to our nation and the world that America’s beacon of Liberty and hope would recover and steadfastly endure this barbaric attack against civilization.  

Obviously, no man could have expected such enormous adversity so soon in his young presidency. 

Yet, this good man, by the Lord’s grace, met the gravest of challenges, persevered and succeeded far beyond the subversive expectations of America’s enemies and craven-wordsmith critics – described by Edmund Burke as, “the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.” 

President Bush effectively thwarted America’s enemies both foreign and domestic for the remainder of his two culturally intolerant terms in office. (Insects be damned). 

For his honorable service, for his dedication and strength in leadership, for his goodness and decency as a man, our nation owes him a debt of gratitude that it can never repay. 

In time, and with the benefit of “the distance of history”, objective chroniclers will no doubt cement President Bush’s collected record as Commander-in Chief as truly one of the greatest, albeit (as are all) imperfect, achievements in leadership and dignity that mankind has ever witnessed. 

Thank you for your service Mr. President. Thank you for your responsible vigilance on America’s watchtower of Liberty and Freedom. Thank you for answering the calling of our time. 

You are a great American individual to whom tens of millions of your fellow citizens will long extend their own goodness, grateful remembrance and love. You are indeed truly missed. 

May God continue to bless you, and your beautiful family. 

And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

What a crushing disappointment from one of our most original and imaginative filmmakers.

Set in 2154, “Avatar” is a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War. Sam Worthington is Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine Corporal sent to the planet Pandora after the untimely death of his brother. In a plot-thread built up to promise much that never pays off, Sully has none of the training his brother benefitted by: years of schooling in the Avatar Program to prepare him to infiltrate the indigenous species of Pandora called the Na’vi, who are the only things between Earth’s RDA (Resources Development Administration) and a precious energy resource “ironically” called Unobtainium.

Because the air on Pandora is toxic to humans, the RDA developed the Avatar Program to create clone-like avatars from both Na’vi and human DNA (which is why they need the untrained Sully) that allow for a human to transfer their consciousness into the 10-foot native blue beings and safely explore the planet. The scientists want to use the program to study Pandora, the military wants to conquer it, and the RDA wants to strip mine it. At first Sully’s unconcerned with these dueling tensions and agendas. Once a marine always a marine, and when his commanding officer, the beefed up genocide-happy Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), asks him to infiltrate the Na’vi and do recon for a probable attack, Jake is more than ready. Hoo-rah.

But before you can say I’ve seen this movie a thousand times before, Jake enters his Na’vi avatar and in a tired action scene straight out of the “Jurassic Park” trilogy, gets lost in the dangerous Pandoran forest only to be rescued by something else he’d like to enter, the beautiful (if you go for ten-foot tall gaudy blue females) Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) – a walking cliché of the tough, earthy, compassionate, oh-so wise love interest who can somehow speak English … but in that halting way that’s so gosh darned endearing.

And so begins the real Cliché-A-Thon…

***SPOILERS COMING***

Does Neytiri just happen to be the Chief’s daughter? Check! At first, does the tribe not trust Sully and want to kill him on the spot before Neytiri intervenes with wise explanations as to why it’s their tribal custom to take in strangers as one of their own? Chuh-eck! Is Sully then immersed in the native culture and put through a series of tests to prove his worthiness beginning with the sort of clumsiness that brings hoots of derisive laughter from the male warriors but endears him to Neytiri? Double check! Does Sully eventually become one of their strongest warriors and on the day he’s to be initiated as a full member of the tribe—GOD this movie’s tedious.

There’s nothing wrong with a simple, boilerplate plot. They’re boilerplate for a reason. But within that well worn template complicated characters involved in complicated and surprising relationships are an absolute necessity, and this is where “Avatar” fails miserably.

Within 15 minutes, the “liberal tell” spoils every story beat of Sully’s character arc. He’s as dull a protagonist as you’ll ever see. Sigourney Weaver plays a gruff-talking, cigarette smoking scientist with … wait for it, wait for it … a heart of gold. Giovanni Ribisi’s sweaty weasel of a corporate executive never moves beyond that and Col. Quaritch is all ‘roid rage, no humanity and his Big Speech about the necessity of “a pre-emptive attack to fight terror with terror” was as surprising as Cameron‘s use of a military “shock and awe” campaign to level the Na’Vi’s precious “Home Tree” as a tacky metaphor for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Oh yeah, he went there…

In supporting roles, Michelle Rodriguez and Joel Moore bring a whole lot more to their underwritten roles than the film deserves — you’d like to spend more time with them — but it’s always back to the film’s dullest characters: the one-dimensional Na’vi. You would think that with 15 years and a half-billion dollars, Cameron could come up an alien species that doesn’t drip with every Indian and African sacred-cow cliché imaginable.  These are creatures who worship the Great Mother Eywa, have a sacred relationship with the earth, shoot bow and arrows, ride horse-like animals, whoop it up in battle, and talk like this: “It has only happened five times since the time of the first songs of our ancestors.”

The Na’vi also apologize to animals after killing but before butchering them. So I guess that’s okay. Maybe if Quaritch had gotten on the loudspeaker and spoken a little mumbo-jumbo before dropping a daisy cutter on Home Tree all would be forgiven.

On top of that, the Na’vi are an awfully stupid species. After years of dealing with the “Sky People,” for some reason they still haven’t figured out that arrows are useless against giant military aircraft. And is it okay to mention how hard it is to keep track of who’s who, because the Na’vi, uhm … all look alike? Twice I was sure Sully’s avatar had been killed. Twice I was disappointed.

Cameron’s brainchild tribe is boringly perfect and insufferably noble … I wanted to wipe them out.

Visually “Avatar” doesn’t break any new ground.  It looks like a big-budget animated film with a garish color palette right off a hippie’s tie dye shirt. Never for a moment did I believe the Na’vi or the world of Pandora was something organic or real. The fairly pointless use of 3-D certainly doesn’t help, but Steven Spielberg’s sixteen year-old dinosaurs are light years ahead of “Avatar” in the reality department.

The one thing Cameron has always done well is to create busy, energetic, brilliantly choreographed action scenes that allow the audience to follow what’s going on. That’s not a small thing because it’s becoming a lost art in Hollywood as more and more filmmakers lazily trade coherence for the artless shaky-cam and hyper edits.  And while none of Cameron’s big battle set-pieces is ever able to overcome the “liberal tells” pre-ordained outcome and create a sense of suspense or peril, at least you don’t get lost in the precious wonder of it all.

Think of “Avatar” as “Death Wish 5” for leftists. A simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you freakin’ hate the bad guys (America), you’re able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all and still get off watching them get what they got coming.  

And if Cameron is able to make a profit spending a half-billion dollars on a little liberal bloodlust, more power to him.

UPDATE: More on “Avatar” vs. “Jurassic Park” here.

I kid. Those speeches never took place – because our enemies never tell us when they’re going to attack. But we’re different. Not only do we tell them when and where, but also, how long before we’ll go home. Terrorists? Alas, they have patience in spades. A few years is nothing when you`re looking at an eternity with 72 virgins.

But look: this is war, and we need to call it war, and when we fight a war, we must back the President. So I`m with him 100 percent. But I wish he`d, you know, embrace the damn thing – and say we`re going to destroy these bastards, minus the egg timer. And to me, the coach shouldn’t talk strategy out in the open until after the game, when we`ve beaten the pants off the other team.

Which is why I didn`t find the speech inspirational – and I wonder if those cadets did too. My guess is, they want to be led by a winner, not a cost manager. The speech was less a rallying cry, and more a statement by a CEO that “we`ve had a rough year, there will be changes, and you know, watch your expenses.” Even more, this is coming from a guy who will spare no cost when it comes to health care reform or global warming crud – and yet he’s worried about a few billion bucks to ensure the safety of our country and our brave troops? Those priorities should come before public options and carbon offsets.

But enough with the petty griping. When it comes to battle, we all stand together, and I congratulate the President in finally moving this ball forward. If General McCrystal is happy, then so am I.

Plus, I`m also grateful that I`ve finally learned how to pronounce Paki-STON, as well as Tali-BON!

And if you disagree with me, you`re probably a racist!

Tonight we’ve got Mike Baker, S.E. Cupp and Rob Tannebaum!