Week Ending 18th November, 2001 Page 3 2 1
One Of These Is Halal Food, The Other Is A Cluster Bomb posted 16 Nov 2001
After an epic six week road trip, I'm finally back in "civilisation". And what have I come back to?... The war-on-terror-with-terror seems to be getting somewhere (the people of Afghanistan are revelling in a respite from oppression... but don't expect it to last long. Pretty soon, factional bickering will take over and the the Northern Alliance may become the new enemy of freedom...); Little Johnny Racebaiter is back for another three years; an ex-abattoir worker has found a way to take cooking shows into uncharted territory; and a jeans company has announced that the "enhanced lunchbox" is this season's must-have... Time to escape into the world of film...
Everywhere people are digging up their television sets posted 16 Nov 2001
What's the first thing you do when the Northern Alliance liberates your town from Taliban rule?... Dig up your TV and VCR. Or at least that's what Mohammad Asif did... When the Taliban captured his hometown of Taloqan 2 years ago, they immediately outlawed all televisions. In response, Mohammad and many of his fellow townsfolk buried their beloved sets in the backyards. Now, they're being exhumed and Mohammad is dusting of the video collection. And the first flick he's chosen to watch?... Titanic
Hollywood Vs Washington : Truce Declared, Troops To See Harry Potter posted 16 Nov 2001
After years of attacking Hollywood for wallowing in violence and vulgarity, it appears that Washington has called a truce and is now actively seeking to enlist the Dream Factory into the war effort... Current demands are far more modest than you might expect though... The only concrete request to emerge from a recent meeting with studio moguls was more first release videos and DVDs for frontline troops - specifically Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings.
This one looks like it might have some consensual sex in it posted 16 Nov 2001
Film Cement has never been averse to the occasional posting that ventured into the seamier depths of the porn world, but here's one that will take you to a place that I suspect few of you wish to go - a midnight-to-dawn Japanese animated porn fest... On this odyssey of demon rape, panty fetish and blue cats with oversized genitals, nerve.com's Jack Murnighan was joined by the usual assortment of pasty-faced ex-D&D gamers and women in technicolour wigs...
Errol Flynn Drowns Vincent Price posted 16 Nov 2001
And while we're in the vicinity... www.menunderwater.com is the Internet's premier gay porn site devoted to pictures of... ahem... men underwater. But it's not just synchronised swimming with Tom Of Finland. They've also compiled a very comprehensive list of men underwater in films. It has everything from Errol Flynn drowning Vincent Price to Javier Bardem copping a perv of some "sea snake".
Saving The World For Mom : Lessons From Indian Cinema posted 16 Nov 2001
According to Vamsee Juluri, Hollywood could learn a thing or two about dealing with national psyche rupturing tragedy from Indian cinema. Rather than showing frenzied hyper-males who save the world for some distant, dimly-felt cause, she offers up the Bollywood vision of a good, brave son who saves the world in the name of family... Does this have relevance to America's current trauma?... Your thoughts?
AFI Awards : Oscar-fied Format, Oscar-fied Price posted 16 Nov 2001
Well, they're on again this Friday night - our Oscars - the AFI awards... And this year, the comparison is probably more pertinent than ever. Channel 7 have picked up the ceremony and are promising lavish-o-rama, complete with their resident court jesters, Roy and HG. As is fitting for such a night-of-nights, the ticket price is being bumped up to a riff-raff-excluding $275... So if you're a young up-and-comer hoping to rub shoulders with Russ or Cate or Geoff or Heath... FORGET IT!
Clint Eastwood & Philosophy 101 posted 16 Nov 2001
Eastwood sees that life isn't so simple, that it isn't just good and bad, but that there are a lot of grays in between... Which is why he should gravitate toward someone like Heidegger. Heidegger might very well lead him in the direction of Wittgenstein, but I don't think Eastwood would make a career out of either one of them... All this and more from this loving and quite humourous paean to Clint Eastwood by Bruce Jay Friedmann.
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