Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix) does not on the face of it seem like the kind of man who would end up with two attractive lovers at the same time. He is in his mid-thirties and lives with his parents. He works as a delivery man for his father’s antiquated dry cleaning business. He takes black [...]
Archive for April, 2009
Magnetic suns and moth balls
Posted in Film and documentary, tagged gwyneth paltrow, james gray, joaquin phoenix, two lovers, vinessa shaw on April 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Crime without punishment
Posted in Foreign affairs, History, U.S. Politics, tagged Fujimori, Obama, prosecutions, torture on April 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
A moment of great rejoicing for human rights activists and champions of the rule of law came at the beginning of this month as former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in jail for “crimes against humanity”, having authorized murders, kidnappings, and torture as part of a severe anti-terrorist campaign in the [...]
International Under-achievers
Posted in Foreign affairs on April 24, 2009 | 1 Comment »
As in high school, so in the international arena, there are over-achievers and under-achievers. Stephen Walt draws ups a list draws up a list of countries that punch above their weight (Canada, Sweden, North Korea, Israel, Singapore) as well as global slackers (Japan, Germany, Russia, India, Brazil). Walt has some interesting speculations as to why [...]
Ignatieff: le mot juste
Posted in Uncategorized on April 21, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Paul Wells links to an inadvertently funny video interview with Michael Ignatieff. I juusst know you’ll enjoy it!
Commentary on Genocide Prevention
Posted in Foreign affairs on April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Commentary has an interesting essay on international efforts to prevent genocide in Darfur and elsewhere. The author, Tod Lindberg, does a persuasive job rebutting many of the conservative arguments against genocide prevention. It is refreshing to see a conservative endorse the concept of responsibility to protect (R2P). As Lindberg notes, to date the idea has [...]
J.G. Ballard: The Literature of Happiness
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, tagged Crash, Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World on April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
J.G. Ballard’s most famous novel: another happy tale?
The late J.G. Ballard had a reputation as a glum and depressingwriter, obsessed with apocalypse and disaster. And it’s true that the subjects of his books — car crashes, life in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, world-destroying catastrophes — are rather on the sober side.
But Ballard saw himself as [...]
Talking Comics
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics on April 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Kent Worcester and I were interviewed about our new book A Comics Studies Reader by the radio show Inkstuds. You can listen to the program here.
It’s a fairly wide-ranging discussion, not just about our book but really about the state of comics. Among other topics touched on:
1. How reading Marxist cultural critic C.L.R. James influenced Kent’s comic [...]
Banner image
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, tagged Roland Petersen on April 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A detail from Roland Petersen’s “Picnic with 6 figures and flag” (2004). The San Francisco Bay Area painter recently turned 83; in World War II he served as a gunner on a destroyer, the USS Rooks, and bombarded Japanese positions on Iwo Jima. At Officer Candidate School, Petersen began to take art classes on the [...]
Obama Vs. Darth Vader
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics on April 4, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Via Katha Pollitt, an Obama action figure from Japan.
Some more images of the action figure:
We’re doin’ it for the kids
Posted in Asia, Foreign affairs, tagged Afghanistan, peace process, taliban, women's rights on April 2, 2009 | 1 Comment »
A very interesting article appears today in the Independent, discussing some policy concessions proposed by representatives of the Taliban who have been quietly negotiating with Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government. Among the proposals: a commitment to refrain from banning the education of girls, measuring the length of beards, or making the wearing of burqas compulsory.
This [...]
