More From Future POTUS Chris Christie
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Chris Christie on Neil Cavuto, it is amazing how far a little common sense can go.
by Leo Grin from BigHollywood
In a town where screenwriter William Goldman famously stated, “Nobody knows anything,” Pixar evidently knows something. It began its life in the early 1980s as part of Lucasfilm’s struggling computer division, then later was spun off into the hands of Apple visionary Steve Jobs. The debut of Toy Story in 1995 finally rocketed the fledgling studio into the public’s consciousness, and since then every one of its eleven films has become a monster hit, both critically and commercially. It’s a winning streak unmatched by any other studio in Hollywood history.
Countless articles and interviews have attempted to divine the alchemy that turns everything Pixar touches into box-office gold. Some see an increasingly tired formula at work under the hood of each film, in which only the surface trappings change. Others see a genuine creative ethos guiding the minds responsible for each picture, something almost akin to a filmmaking religion, complete with its own commandments and proscriptions.
1. No studio interference. Pixar films are kept firmly in the charge of writer-directors with strong creative visions. The spectacle of studio executives offering reams of script notes to trained and proven artists (the equivalent of used car salesmen telling Porsche designers how to build their next model) is unheard of there.
2. Pixar University. The company has developed a formidable in-house education facility, where employees improve their skills and artistry via over a hundred courses covering a wide variety of artistic subjects and disciplines. This reminds me of the old studio system, where young actors, writers, and directors were meticulously groomed into the stars and artisans of tomorrow. It’s an idea long overdue for a comeback in Hollywood.
3. No songs. I’m a great fan of quality musicals featuring tunes worthy of inclusion in the The Great American Songbook, but the kiddie pap that adorns the typical animated movie doesn’t qualify. To date, Pixar has resisted this insipid siren call, and is on record as especially despising the dreaded “Happy Village” songs that routinely pollute modern children’s films. Good for them.
4. Likable characters. Pixar’s heroes have their faults and foibles, but at the end of the day they remain heroes, imbued with a latent Judeo-Christian sense of morality, ethics, sacrifice, and justice.
5. “Animation is a medium, not a genre.” These words of wisdom come from Pixar director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille). Pixar’s films are always, first and foremost, cinema. Their makers insist that their stories match, in every soulful, poetic, and dramatic detail, the best that live-action dramas have to offer. Which inexorably leads to the notion of. . . .
6. Not for kids, for everyone. Pixar’s movies are great favorites with children of course, due in no small part to their G (and only occasionally PG) ratings. But we too often forget that G doesn’t stand for “Grownups Not Allowed,” but for “General Audiences.” Pixar makes movies for adults, children, families, liberals, conservatives, Americans, foreigners — everyone. They don’t pander, or needlessly exclude, or revel in the poor triumph of a political or religious cheap shot. Every few years we are reminded via some mega-hit that any story can, with intelligent adjustments, be made universally attractive to paying audiences. Pixar makes these adjustments as a matter of course, every time.
7. The Golden Rule, Pixar’s homegrown Hippocratic Oath: Do No Harm. As in harm to the audience. It’s one thing to address the many difficult subjects that make up Real Life, things like loss, death, and failure. It’s quite another to let audience members leave the theater, as so many nihilistic and mean-spirited modern movies do, with those issues still hanging unresolved in their psyches like an open wound. Pixar, in following their own personal Hays Code like the classics of yore, brings audiences safely through the darkness.
Hollywood has a lot of profit awaiting them should they ever come around to embracing the Pixar Rules for the bulk of their live-action slates. That’s not to say that there’s no room in the marketplace for R-rated or niche films, but such outliers — designed to appeal to a comparative sliver of the potential audience — should be budgeted and marketed accordingly. A full 90% of what Hollywood makes are pictures that executives hope will appeal to the widest possible audience. Given the rank mediocrity, offensiveness, and clichéd idiocy that permeates so much of that product, a better formula — one that attracts “General Audiences,” promotes healthy values, and above all Does No Harm to their customers — would be a grand thing.
Oh well, one can dream. Until they wise up, we have Pixar: an American success story worthy of the highest praise, and a veritable beacon of hope and renewal shining across our wine-dark cultural sea.
911 Call: Man Claims He Saw Bigfoot
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North Carolina man claims he saw bigfoot on his property twice in one night. Right.
Barack Obama: Dreamer in Chief
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by Charles Krauthammer from NationalReview.com
Pres. Barack Obama doesn’t do the mundane. He was sent to us to do larger things. You could see that plainly in his Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill. He could barely get himself through the pedestrian first half: a bit of BP-bashing, a bit of faux-Clintonian “I feel your pain,” a bit of recovery and economic-mitigation accounting. It wasn’t until the end of the speech — the let-no-crisis-go-to-waste part that tried to leverage the Gulf Coast devastation to advance his cap-and-trade climate-change agenda — that Obama warmed to his task.
Pedestrian is beneath Obama. Mr. Fix-It he is not. He is world-historical, the visionary, come to make the oceans recede and the planet heal.
How? By creating a glorious, new clean-green economy. And how exactly to do that? From Washington, by presidential command, and with tens of billions of dollars thrown around. With the liberal (and professorial) conceit that scientific breakthroughs can be legislated into existence, Obama proposes to give us a new industrial economy.
But is this not what we’ve been trying to do for decades with ethanol — which remains a monumental boondoggle, economically unviable and environmentally damaging to boot — as with yesterday’s panacea, synfuels, into which Jimmy Carter poured billions?
Notice that Obama no longer talks about Spain, which until recently he repeatedly cited for its visionary subsidies of a blossoming new clean-energy industry. That’s because Spain, now on the verge of bankruptcy, is pledged to reverse its disastrously bloated public spending, including radical cuts in subsidies to its uneconomical photovoltaic industry.
There’s a reason petroleum is such a durable fuel. It’s not, as Obama fatuously suggested, because of oil-company lobbying, but because it is very portable, energy-dense, and easy to use.
But this doesn’t stop Obama from thinking that he can mandate a superior substitute into being. His argument: Well, if we can put a man on the moon, why not this?
Aside from the irony that this most tiresome of clichés comes from a president who is canceling our program to return to the moon, it is utterly meaningless. The wars on cancer and on poverty have been similarly sold. They remain unwon. Why? Because we knew how to land on the moon. We had the physics to do it. Cancer cells, on the other hand, are far more complex than the Newtonian equations that govern a moon landing. Equally daunting are the laws of social interaction — even assuming there are any — that sustain a culture of poverty.
Similarly, we don’t know how to make renewables that match the efficiency of fossil fuels. In the interim, it is Obama and his Democratic allies who, as they dream of such scientific leaps, are unwilling to use existing technologies to reduce our dependence on foreign (i.e., imported) and risky (i.e., deepwater) sources of oil — twin dependencies that Obama decried in Tuesday’s speech.
“Part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean,” said Obama, is “because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.”
Running out of places on land? What about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the less-known National Petroleum Reserve — 23 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope, near the existing pipeline and designated nearly a century ago for petroleum development — that have been shut down by the federal government?
Running out of shallow-water sources? How about the Pacific Ocean, a not-inconsiderable body of water, and its vast U.S. coastline? That’s been off-limits to new drilling for three decades.
We haven’t run out of safer and more easily accessible sources of oil. We’ve been run off them by environmentalists. They prefer to dream green instead.
Obama is dreamer in chief: He wants to take us to this green future “even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet precisely know how we’re going to get there.” Here’s the offer: Tax carbon, spend trillions, and put government in control of the energy economy — and he will take you he knows not where, by way of a road he knows not which.
That’s why Tuesday’s speech was received with such consternation. It was so untethered from reality. The Gulf is gushing, and the president is talking mystery roads to unknown destinations. That passes for vision, and vision is Obama’s thing. It sure beats cleaning up beaches.
by Rick Reilly from ESPN.com
Here are the top 10 most annoying things about watching the World Cup already:
1. That pesky cerebrum-blowing incessant buzzing sound coming from the TV set. "Babe, something's wrong with the TV," my wife said Saturday. But there wasn't anything wrong. It was the dreaded vuvuzelas, the yard-long plastic horns (voo-voo-zella) that South African fans blow all the time, without rhyme nor reason, when something is happening and when it's not (it's usually not), during timeouts and time ins, during halftime and at the breakfast table and while they're on the bus and while doing their taxes, until you just want to stab two fondue forks deep into your ears and stir. They never stop. It's like having a desk in the center cubicle at American Bee, Inc. They sound like 80,000 yaks getting sick. They are the leading cause of Tylenol sales in the world today.
2. The embarrassing photographer bibs the guys on the bench have to wear during the game. They're very purple and dorky. My God, who knew you could make a World Cup team and be made to look like a geek? Hey, are you on the American national soccer squad or do you throw bags for Northwest Airlines?
3. The Twinkie-fingered gloves goalkeepers wear. No wonder the English goalkeeper allowed that easy shot to give America a 1-1 tie in the Group C opener. You couldn't stop a beach ball with those big goofy things. What, is Hamburger Helper a sponsor? Why must they be so huge? Doesn't Roger Rabbit need them back? And where do the batteries go? How are goalkeepers expected to hang on to the ball with them on? And is it difficult to play goalie while also taking things out of the oven?
4. The godforsaken vuvuzelas! Make them stop! One of the charms of soccer is the singing that fans do. There is always loads of singing and chanting because every game is 1-nil, so there's plenty of time for singing and chanting. Soccer fans sing and chant inane hilarious things like, "We are from Norway! We came on a plane! And we are very drunk!" But we don't get to hear the singing and the chanting because of the horrible, hideous, heinous vuvuzelas! My god, they should take them into the mountainous caves region of Pakistan and play them until Osama bin Laden comes running out, screaming, "OK, OK! I give!"
5. All the faking. I haven't seen this much bad theater since I saw former "American Idol competitor" Ace Young starring in "Hair" on Broadway. These guys collapse as though they've just caught a javelin in the groin every time an opponent so much as asks them for the time. These guys make Paul Pierce look sincere. Sell it somewhere else, Sven. We live in the U.S., where hockey players pop their eye back into their socket without missing a shift. This will be the new rule when I'm made president of FIFA: If you stay on the ground longer than 30 seconds, you're out of the game; 45, you are taken directly to the nearest hospital; 60, you get a telethon.
6. The yellow cards. I love the way the refs come running up to the player as though he has just taken out a chainsaw and sawed somebody's hand off. The ref looks very stern and upset. And then all the ref does is snap his little yellow piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and stick it in the offender's face, as though the little yellow card has some kind of superpower. As if to say, "Ha! you are powerless against my little yellow piece of paper, which shows your less-than-average marks from third grade!" I'd love to see that in the middle of an NBA fight. Can you imagine seeing some ref come running up to Rasheed Wallace after laying out Carmelo Anthony with a roundhouse right and sticking that yellow card right in his face? He'd soon be digesting it through his ear hole.
7. The ties. In the NFL in the past 10 years, there have been two ties. As of Tuesday morning, in the first 11 games of this World Cup, there have been five ties. You will not see more ties at a J.C. Penney's Father's Day sale. I hate ties. Doesn't anybody want to win in this sport? All these ties are about as exciting as a Jonas Brothers roundtable on sex.
8. The World Cup itself. Really? All this running and vuvuzela-ing and pulling off shirts for that trophy? It looks like somebody soldered it together in their basement -- after drinking a handle of Jack Daniel's. It looks like something you'd use to prop open your Tuff Shed door during spring cleaning. It's gold and small and looks like somebody accidentally melted it somewhere along the way. I mean, there IS chocolate in the middle of that thing, right? Maybe I just don't get it.
9. Stoppage time. Why can't we know how much time is left? Why must it be such a mystery? Whose idea was this? Why do only the refs get to know? Wouldn't it be more exciting if we all knew? You tell me which is more exciting:
A. "Ten seconds left now! Kaka needs to get a shot off here or it's over! Five seconds! Kaka wheeling! Two seconds! There's the shot! And … "
B. "Well, the ref should be calling this game shortly. A minute or two. Maybe more. Actually, I don't know. Nigel, do you know? Kaka seems confused. He's dribbling. Wait. Now he's stopped to examine a small scab, and well, that's it. The ref says it's over. I guess that's it, then."
All we get is B. Somebody needs to put some stoppage to stoppage time.
10. The vuvuzelas from eardrum-hellas! Don't tell me it's discrimination to want them to stop. Don't tell me it's an essential part of South African culture. If it is, it's an annoying part of their culture. Yes, I know that centuries ago, the vuvuzelas were made from animal horns to call the village elders in for a meeting. And I'll bet you five wildebeests that when the elders finally got to the meeting they said, "Would you STOP already with the blowing? You're making me crazy!" I've been to Africa four times. They do some of the most beautiful singing you can imagine. At the World Cup, I'm hearing no singing. I'm hearing no chanting. I'm hearing 80,000 kazoos on steroids.
But it still sounds better than Ace Young.
"The Democratic Party has chosen their nominee, and we have to stand behind their choice," Greene said in response to party officials asking him to withdraw from the race after they learned he is facing a felony charge for allegedly showing a college student pornography. "The people have spoken. We need to be pro-South Carolina, not anti-Greene."
Alvin Greene-South Carolina Democratic Candidate for United States Senate
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