Accidental Movie Review - Twilight

Through a Lemony Snicket set of circumstances, Bill Wood and I found ourselves watching Twilight.

We meant to see Quantum of Solace, but when we got there, it was sold out. We stood there looking at times, and the next showing of anything was Twilight. In retrospect, this was one of our mistakes. A minor mistake compared to some of the others, but a mistake nonetheless.

If you are not a teenage girl, this movie is not made for you. The wildly popular Stephenie Meyer books are crafted to push every teen female emotional button. My resident teen female was seeing this movie with her friends at roughly the same time. Of course, they were in a different theater across town, and managed to manipulate the parent chauffeur, Skip, into changing his plans and not watching the movie with them. How horrible would that have been, having a parent next to you while you savor one of the movie's themes, The Boyfriend Your Parents Would Never Approve?

Bill said that this movie was like a soap opera that wouldn't end after 30 minutes. The most interesting aspect of viewing this film, much of which was shot in Portland and the nearby Pacific Northwest, was to try and recognize where the various scenes were filmed.

My resident teen/Stephenie Meyer expert found the movie disappointing. She said that the movie plot oversimplified the book, left out scenes which she thought were critical to the story, and presented story elements out of sequence. Without her help, I never would have known that in one of the diner scenes, the woman at the counter typing on a laptop was Stephenie Meyer.

The Deregulation That Pushed Us Over The Edge

My father pointed out this piece in the Washington Post by Steven Pearlstein:

The combination of Citibank with Salomon Smith Barney under the bright red umbrella of Travelers Insurance was accepted with a regulatory wink and nod by the Federal Reserve until Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan could persuade Congress to make it legal. The hurdle was the Glass-Steagall Act, put in place during the Great Depression to prevent another market crash like that of 1929. Now that another market crash has required the government to rescue a commercial bank done in by its investment banking subsidiary, there will certainly be those who wonder whether the New Dealers didn't have it right all along.

Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999 and replaced by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act:

The bills were introduced in the U.S. Senate by Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and in the U.S. House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa). The third lawmaker associated with the bill was Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-Va), Chairman of the House Commerce Committee from 1995 to 2001. [2] On May 6, 1999, the Senate passed the bills by a 54-44 vote along party lines (53 Republicans and one Democrat in favor; 44 Democrats opposed).

Just a reminder, Phil Gramm is the guy John McCain wanted as his Secretary of the Treasury.

Bailouts R' Us

Many criticized the Big 3 automaker CEOs when they came to Congress asking for money, without a business plan for what they would do with it.

Great point. By the way, did anyone ask the financial institutions whose snouts are currently buried in the taxpayer-funded trough for a business plan before setting out that $750 billion slop bucket?

Remember a couple of weeks back when the government suddenly became aware of a problem, and they told us that $750 billion was needed to take "toxic assets" off the books of the investment banks, and it had to be done right away because taking the time to discuss it would .... what? Oh yeah, something unspeakable would happen.

So a couple of weeks later, Treasury Secretary Paulson has disbursed over $300 billion through purchase of stock, not in retiring "toxic assets." When asked to justify the difference between what he said he was going to do and what he actually did

He responded on Wednesday by saying that he would not apologize for "changing an approach or a strategy when the facts change."

What business do we have spending $750 billion of taxpayer money in an endeavor where the "facts" have a shorter shelf-life than pasteurized milk?

There is an interesting story in the Washington Post about how the government "regulators" defined banks, not taxpayers, as their customers, and their mission as to free their bank customers from regulation. As has been said before in the Bush administration, "mission accomplished." They said that no one could have foreseen this coming.

This guy saw it coming, and endured ridicule for years from those espousing the party line:

Tonight's Photo Shoot

How Cruel

Ruth's father is a staunch Republican. He would not have missed his opportunity to cast a ballot for John McCain, except for the fact that he spent election day in the ICU, comatose and on a ventilator.

When he regained consciousness a few days later, he began to ask all the "Where am I?" and "What has happened in the world?" questions.

That is when his sons told him that McCain had lost the election by one vote.

The Political Coverage/Analysis Industry

But the industry that has grown up to tell us about all this political stuff doesn't seem to go away when the contest is decided. That industry seems to have a lot of mouths to feed. All this stuff has been redigested so many times that it is like being in one of the stomachs of a ruminant.

The Moral Superiority of Vegetarians

Let me get this straight: they have decided to change their traditional place in the food chain, and think that their decision should be binding on the rest of the species?