Review: Michael Clayton

I finally saw a DVD for the first time in months. I chose Michael Clayton, a film I wanted to see since it was released in mid-2007. It stars George Clooney, one of my favorite actors, who plays Michael Clayton. It's a film with great promise, and contains some wonderful performances, but it never reaches its potential. As a thriller the movie fails horribly because it relies on the audience to make a superhuman leap in logic.

Clayton is a lawyer by trade, but he’s mostly a fixer, or janitor, cleaning up messes created by clients of a super humongous law firm Clayton works for. A lawyer with great promise, Clayton is a recovering gambler, divorced, penniless, and in debt after a restaurant that was to be his salvation goes belly-up. Clayton wants out but he has no choice but continue to be the firm's fixer. A job he does very well a senior partner, played by the late Sydney Pollack, often reminds him.

Clayton's latest headache is when the firm's top litigator, Arthur Edens, played wonderfully by British actor Tom Wilkinson, decides to strip naked during a deposition and then run into the parking a lot. The client, a major agro-business, who is being sued for poisoning small farmers with its fertilizer, is not very happy about the turn of events. Clayton is sent to defuse the situation and bring Arthur in from the cold, so to speak. Clayton realizes Arthur, a manic-depressive, is not only off his medication, but is happily working for the plaintiffs, making their case. The corporation’s chief counsel, an ambitious lawyer named Karen Crowder, played by a rather underutilized Tilda Swinton, takes matters into her own hands. She employs a couple of thugs to murder the litigator and make it look like a suicide. Clayton is deeply disturbed by the litigator's sudden death, and finds out that he was murdered. Crowder decides it would be better to get rid of Clayton as well.

I guess we are suppose to hate Karen Crowder for the power hungry corporate tool that she is, but she comes off more pathetic than evil – lame rather than diabolical.

Clayton manages to survive a car bomb, but how he manages to make the connection to Karen Crowder is never bothered to be explored, leaving me, and the probably the audience, scratching their heads. It's a movie that clocks in around two hours, but the directors try to explain it all in the last five, failing miserably at it and leaving me with a bad taste.

The Gun Culture In Pakistan

From an editorial in The Pakistan Observer:

A BAG full of sophisticated weapons was found from a lawn of the Punjab University on Sunday. According to police, the bag containing five Klashnikovs, 12 hand grenades and 1100 rounds, was spotted by one of the gardeners of the university.

Only in the writer's deluded mind can Klashnikovs, which are made virtually everywhere, including Pakistan, be considered "sophisticated" weapons. But, then again, the whole editorial, the editorial board and the newspapers jingoistic owners are all deluded to begin with. Here'are some more delusions:

One of the main causes of the lawlessness and rising rate of crimes in the country is easy and free availability of weapons of all sorts. It is known to every body that almost every house in the tribal area is a gun-manufacturing unit and weapons produced there proliferate in each and every part of the country.

It's just not in tribal areas where guns proliferate. Like the editorial states, the gun culture dominates almost every corner of Pakistan. But this isn't some new phenomenon, but something that predates Pakistan itself. No where is the gun culture more revered, and rife, than in the NWFP, specifically the city of Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan.

The city is filled with bazaars selling all types of weapons conceivable, from homemade shotguns to cheap copies of Klashnikovs, like those found on the grounds of Punjab University. No one gives them any mind, of course. Here any terrorist group, domestic or foreign, can buy what they need without gaining any attention whatsoever. My guess is the culprits are somewhere there, if Pakistan can find them.

Why Help AIG?

Anyone who unflinchingly says the United States practices free market capitalism should get their head examined after taxpayers will have to pay $85 billion to bail out a company that made some bad business decisions. At $85 billion, there is nothing free about it, nor does it have to do anything with markets. I'm so pissed.

Review: Who Do The Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?

Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books is filled with interesting factoids about some of the most beloved books - both fiction and nonfiction - in the English language. The list is eclectic and, mercifully, limited only to 50 books. It's a canon, of sorts, I suppose. Everybody seems to be writing these kinds of books: about music, movies and, of course, books. This mania to create lists is mostly a male pathos, but women seems to be joining them in droves. Those familiar with literature will find this book a bore, but there are some interesting tidbits that have been underreported.

For example, did you know that the Guiness Book of World Records started out as a promotional item given out by the Guiness Brewery Company to pubs all over Britain to settle arguments on what and/or who is the fastest, tallest, mostest, and every other piece of trivia that are asked in a drunken stupor? It became so popular it was later reprinted and sold to the public. As of today, it is only second-best selling book in the world, behind the Bible.

And what's the deal with the title? Well, according to this news item, Pansy O'Hara was a precursor to Scarlet O'Hara, the heroine of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind.

J.D Salinger: Fomer Short Story Writer

Did you know that J.D. Salinger, before he wrote The Catcher in the Rye, was a prolific short story writer for a number of prominent magazines? And that these stories stories have yet to be collected in a book form? With the writer being such a recluse, it's no real surprise

A Typical Obama Supporter

Took this while driving: a Prius driver who supports Obama. Yeah, sounds about right.

Beijing Olympics: Smooth As Expected

I've been reading editorials about the recently-concluded Beijing Olympic games all day, and I'm surprised to read that many are surprised China did so well, both off and on the field. I'm not. When you spend $40 billion, not including billions spent on a state-supported athlete factories, and the ruthless ability to control every aspect of the games with little or no dissent, things should go smoothly. It would be a shock if things didn't go smoothly as planned.

Funny Clip

Still on hiatus, but I thought I share this funny clip from 30 Rock, one of the funniest shows on television:

On Hiatus...No, I'm Not Writing A Book!

I'm taking all of August off. Too busy to write anyway. Busy on a project at work, a lot of paperwork to do, errands to run, and completing items that have been on my 'to-do' list forever. No time for play except a few rounds of video games.

DillanTV: Episode 17

Doha Round Collapses: Everybody Loses

The Doha Round of trade talks have officially collapsed. These negotiations, which have been going on for what feels like forever, would have reduced or eliminated odious agriculture subsidies and tariffs and make trading of agricultural products simpler and cheaper. Who to blame for this failure? Depends on whom you ask. Here's an editorial from the The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper, who is blaming the developed world, specifically the United States and the European Union:

The final impasse was the demand from the G-33 which wanted special safeguard mechanisms to protect farmers in the developing world against temporary surges in cut-price imports of cotton and rice. When one considers that these safeguards would be the only thing standing between hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers and penury, to say nothing of the stability of billions throughout the developing world, it is hard to fathom the opposition.

What is really outrageous about opposition to this from the West is that it insist not only on its own tariffs but also on massive agricultural subsidies that protect its handful of farmers and massively distort the international price of goods, causing further hardship to farmers in the developing world.

But the developed world, in turn, and led by the West, is blaming the developing world for trying to have its cake and eat it too; all at the expense of their farmers. The Washington Post is leading the charge on this score:

Still, as last-ditch talks moved into last weekend, the United States and European Union had made some concessions on farm supports, and WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy had submitted a compromise plan that seemed to draw at least tentative approval from most participants. It was at that point that India and China essentially torpedoed the talks, asserting a broad right to raise tariffs to protect their poor farmers from "import surges," price drops and other vicissitudes of the world market. China, which had been relatively quiet throughout most of the talks, was particularly vituperative, blasting U.S. arguments as "absurd," even though Brazil and several other developing countries agreed with Washington.

China's role in the demise of the Doha Round is particularly dismaying, considering China has reaped huge benefits from global trade in the seven years since it joined the organization -- with strong U.S. support. Chinese exports have quadrupled from $300 billion in 2002 to $1.2 trillion in 2007, thanks in large part to free access to the U.S. market. U.S. supporters of Chinese inclusion in the WTO argued that drawing China into a system of multilateral give-and-take would mute its nationalistic tendencies. Evidently, the Chinese see the matter differently. They, and the world, will be poorer because of it.

It's safe to say that obstinacy on both sides led to the demise of the Doha Round. The developed world insists on paying subsidies to farmers, which in this era of high food prices is absurd. The developed world then demands open access to the developing world markets for their "cheap" food, giving local farmers an economic disadvantage. I believe the developing world has the right to protect its farmers as the developed world protect theirs.

At the same time, the developing world, led by China and India, insist on keeping mechanisms protecting its farmers against the onslaught on "cheap" food, even if the developed world ends its subsidies and tariffs. This will give developed world an advantage while penalizing western farmers for being more efficient and productive. This is a non-starter as well.

But ultimate loser in this fiasco are the consumers in both the developing and developed world, who will continue to pay high prices for agricultural products. It is also a defeat for free-trade, and a disturbing win for protectionism, which will only punish the entire world.

Ignoring Terrorism While Celebrating Nuclear Deal

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is busy basking in the glow of winning the confidence vote in Congress and getting the US-Indo nuclear deal approved. After all, this nuclear deal will be the showpiece of his legacy.

It's a dubious proposition given the fact the government seems to be spinning its wheels regarding the recent terrorist attacks in Ahmedabad and Bangalore. Indians care little for the nuclear deal because it does not impact them directly, but the risk of being blown up while walking through town has become a frightening reality. How the government will allay this fear will be Manmohan Singh's lasting legacy, in my opinion.

DillanTV: Episode 16

Humor: Chris Matthews And Obama

Great strip about Chris Mathews' infatuation, or man-crush, for Barack Obama:

India's Government Survives

The UPA government has survived a confidence votes, which I suspect Prime Minister Manmohan Singh knew ahead of time. For a cold technocrat, Prime Minister Singh has proven to be a wily political operator, outmaneuvering the Left Front out of power, and out of mind, without needing to call elections.

The Left Front, naturally, is shocked by the result. The CPI-M website and its mouthpiece People's Democracy, for example, are replete with baseless accusations against Manmohan Singh, even offering 'proof' that some MPs were bribed. The Left Front bitterness is obvious: they never had it so good and, hopefully, they never will again.