(no subject)

[prog]

"Day off" today, though I ended up spending some time putting out fires in the game finder... which, mind you, I set myself.

I saw "Syriana" and liked it a lot. Not surprised that it's been out for well over a month, maybe two, and is still commanding a full house at the Harvard Square Loew's. Buncha commies. I would recommend this movie to anyone. I want to go back and see "Traffic" now, from the same creators.

Some disconnected thoughts about it:

* Some parts are quite brutal and hard to watch, but was made more uncomfortable by a stranger sitting next to me who was literally whimpering during those scenes, and later started whimpering more as the story's overall tension came to a head and you knew that very large awful things were going to happen. I do not say "whimpering" lightly here. As the whimpering occurred, I thought: oh my gosh, this is real full-scale whimpering. I squirmed to see another adult in such distress, or anyway to hear it, since I never actually looked at her. So this weird discomfort chain going on between me, her, and the movie-people.

* I find it interesting that there are at least three more-or-less mainstream movies in theatres now that feature terrorism not in the more comfortable Tom Clancy/Die Hard way, but as an attempt to take a deeper look at real-life terrorism. There's this movie, "Munich", and the smaller one about Palestinian suicide bombers whose title I cannot recall. "Syriana" isn't primarily about terrorism but one of its sub-threads does look at it dead-on. I think that the path that character took seemed rather rushed, but they may have been trying to tell his story in shorthand... I know enough about the culture portrayed to understand what was being represented there.

I reflected how differently the portrayal of these characters in the film is from their popular portrayal in American conventional wisdom, that these are one and all freedom-haters whose primary drive is lust for their 72 virgins. The rejection of this caricature is probably a central reason why (my own mental caricature of) neo-conservatives probably hate this movie.

* I am not great at recognizing actors, and didn't catch any of the big names in this one, not knowing who they were going in. I must have subconsciously recognized Matt Damon, but totally missed George Clooney, despite his being probably the most interesting character in the picture.

* The people in the movie (both in speech and in subtitles) referred to the primary language of Iran as "Farsi". Never once did a busybody pop up to say Arrggh NOOO in English the language is called "Persian" you ignorant fools, proving that the movie was not the Internet.

Comments

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Some parts are quite brutal and hard to watch
My girlfriend ("The SST") had to leave the theatre during one of the scenes. You really don't expect that much closeup detail in something that's not pitched as a slasher movie for teenagers.

one of its sub-threads does look at it dead-on.
I'm still somewhat confused about that character in the terrorist sub-thread. Yes, his story arc was definitely shorthand, but still made sense. But I don't understand why his handlers chose that particular target...Unless the target was linked with the older, reform-minded, brother? But I thought the younger brother was dealing with the Chinese government, not the Texans.

[prog.livejournal.com]

My impression was that the cleric who plotted the attack actually didn't care about the country's politics, and that it was really just a flashy act of anti-Western violence on a suitable target.

I actually was a little confused as to why the whole sub-plot was in the movie at all, since it does end up somewhat unconnected from the main events, even if it starts out connected (via the transaction gone awry seen at the beginning).

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Yes, that sub-plot clearly follows from the transaction gone awry. But that just seems to be a connection of convenience (they had the material) and I can't see how it connected back to the George Clooney plot.

Okay, maybe it would have been trite for it to have been connected back to George Clooney. Remember the goat traffic jam? I was expecting the connection there. But the culmination of that whole sub-plot didn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the movie at all.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yes! I was expecting the same thing. I dunno if that was an intentional setup for a bait-and-switch with the Nameless American Situation Room guys.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

The people in the movie (both in speech and in subtitles) referred to the primary language of Iran as "Farsi". Never once did a busybody pop up to say Arrggh NOOO in English the language is called "Persian" you ignorant fools, proving that the movie was not the Internet.

Proving that people in the movie understand the Law of English: "All words are English words."

Seriously, "Pukka sushi compadre" is an English sentence. Disbelievers are invited to consult www.m-w.com or the equivalent for confirmation of this fact.

Farsi is just another English word for the Persian language.

[daerr.livejournal.com]

The ethnologue lists Farsi as the preferred name. The language classification for Farsi is "Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Western, Southwestern, Persian". As you can see, Persion is a larger group that includes Farsi and 8 other languages.

(And yes, I see that Persian is listed as an alternate name for Farsi.)