Film Review: "Live Free or Die Hard"

Pick Your Poison: Fists or Fireballs

Bruce Willis reprises his character as the super-cop John McClane.

By MANOHLA DARGIS

The New York Times
Published: June 27, 2007

The gasping, grunting and oozing hard-body slab that muscles, and sometimes crawls, through "Live Free or Die Hard" sure looks like John McClane. Older if apparently no wiser, the blue-collar super-cop from the "Die Hard" franchise has lost his hair, his foul mouth and apparently his nicotine itch, but he still has the same knack for trouble, the adrenaline-pumping, cheerfully anarchic kind that causes cars to ignite, bodies to fly, eardrums to pop and hearts to race and gladden. He's also lost his sneer, but sneering is cheap, and movies are expensive, especially when your star has pushed past 50 and slid off the power lists.

A lot has happened in the 12 years since Bruce Willis yippee-kai-yay-ed in "Die Hard With a Vengeance" with a glowering Samuel L. Jackson in tow. During that time Mr. Willis's star has expanded and collapsed through hits and duds and plenty of personal off-screen noise. The world has changed too, of course, and with it the action-flick coordinates: for one, Arnold Schwarzenegger runs California, while the sober, nonwisecracking likes of Matt Damon's Bourne rules the bad-boy roost. For another: Mr. Willis has become an increasingly appealing character actor, the kind who punches up a scene or two ("Alpha Dog," "Fast Food Nation") or an entire movie ("16 Blocks"), mostly by playing it not so nice and very easy.

Life or age or something has mellowed Mr. Willis. He no longer enters a movie like God's gift, as he did almost two decades ago in the first "Die Hard," lips pursed as if he alone were in on the joke — which, given the fat salary he was earning, perhaps he was. In "Live Free or Die Hard" he enters swinging, fist smashing through hard glass and sinking into soft flesh. He's making a point and so is the movie, namely that McClane (and Mr. Willis) is ready to earn our love again by performing the same lovably violent, meathead tricks as before. And look, he's not laughing, not exactly, even if the film ends up a goof.

An unexpectedly funny goof, at that, despite everything, including the mayhem and somewhat creepy plot. The screenplay attributed to Mark Bomback, who shares the story credit with David Marconi, has the whiff of multiple writers, as action-driven productions generally do. It originated with a 1997 story (dubiously titled "A Farewell to Arms") by John Carlin in Wired magazine about the potential for a cataclysmic, nation-crippling "information war," which mutated and stalled, picking up new writers and equally doubtful names ("WW3.com," "Die Hard 4.0"). Somewhere along the development line, the real world intruded, which is why the original idea about an information war now includes a plausible-sounding or at least not entirely outlandish hook to Sept. 11 — hence, the creepiness.

In most Hollywood action movies, references to Sept. 11 as well as to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are often tacked on or displaced, used for decorative flag-waving or scenes of torture. "Live Free or Die Hard" tries to engage the real world more directly than most studio-made fantasies, with a logic-defying plot involving a disgruntled government security expert. That would be Thomas Gabriel, who seems partly inspired by the counterterrorism expert Richard A. Clarke and partly informed by Bill Gates and is wholly played by the pretty Timothy Olyphant, dressed in black and wearing Maggie Q on his arm. Mr. Olyphant has many charms, but annihilating menace is not one of them. Mr. Willis nonetheless keeps any incredulity in check along with his sneer.

Despite its jaw-jutting title, with its evocation of revolutionary America and radical individualism, "Live Free or Die Hard" keeps a tighter rein on McClane, dialing down his man-against-the-world attitude to a low hum. He's still more or less alone, at least existentially, though, as per the action playbook, he quickly picks up a sidekick and audience surrogate in the hacker impersonated by Justin Long (flicking between annoyance and amusement).

But McClane is also unequivocally playing for team America, helping the F.B.I. and its no-nonsense, supremely capable deputy director, Bowman (Cliff Curtis), who runs the sillily named cyber division with blinking monitors and scurrying minions. Heroic in deed and in acquaintance, Bowman knows to side with McClane, saving his contemptuous looks for the guy from Homeland Security.

Nothing on Len Wiseman's résumé — he previously directed the two "Underworld" flicks, wherein the Goth kids really are vampires — suggests that he could wrangle both Mr. Willis and this new film's nerve-jangling action to such satisfying effect. At least on the second count he has received terrific help from a sprawling cast of stuntmen and -women (and the stunt coordinator Brad Martin), who do a great deal to advance the film's old-school mayhem. The use of Parkour during several fight scenes is particularly tasty, proving that when cinematic push comes to shove, the French, who originated this ultra-cool rough-and-tumble, which finds performers bouncing like balls from wall to wall, rooftop to rooftop and many hair-raising points in between, are definitely in the coalition of the willing.

"Live Free or Die Hard" is rated PG-13. (Parents strongly cautioned.) Extremely brutal violence and mild obscenities.

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Len Wiseman; written by Mark Bomback, based on a story by Mr. Bomback and David Marconi; director of photography, Simon Duggan; edited by Nicolas de Toth; music by Marco Beltrami; production designer, Patrick Tatopoulos; stunt coordinator, Brad Martin; produced by Michael Fottrell; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 130 minutes.

WITH: Bruce Willis (John McClane), Timothy Olyphant (Thomas Gabriel), Justin Long (Matt Farrell), Cliff Curtis (Bowman), Maggie Q (Mai) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Lucy McClane).

Daniel Pipes: Salman Rushdie and British Backbone

Daniel Pipes
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
June 27, 2007

Is the knighting of Salman Rushdie, 60, by the queen of England "a sign of the changing mood" toward British Muslims, as Observer columnist Nick Cohen wrote? Is it "a welcome example of … British backbone," as Islamism specialist Sadanand Dhume described it in the Wall Street Journal?

I think not. Rather, the knighting, announced June 16, was done without heed of its implications.
Most of the uproar against the honor is taking place in Pakistan, as it did in 1988, when Sir Salman's novel, The Satanic Verses, was initially published. "We deplore the decision of the British government to knight him," a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said The lower house of parliament unanimously passed a government-backed resolution calling Rushdie a "blasphemer."

Most extraordinarily, Pakistan's minister of religious affairs, Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, endorsed suicide bombing against the United Kingdom. "If someone exploded a bomb on his body, he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the ‘sir' title." Ijaz ul-Haq later added that "If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honor of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified."

A trade union offered a $160,000 reward to anyone who beheads Rushdie. Iran's speaker of parliament, Gholamali Haddadadel, threatened that Muslims "will not leave this imprudent and shameless act without response."

Such reactions from on-high spurred Islamists to the streets in many cities, including London's, burning effigies of Rushdie and Queen Elizabeth and chanting slogans such as "Death to Rushdie! Death to the queen!"

Fortunately, some Muslims decried these reactions. Canadian writer Irshad Manji noted that the Pakistani government had nothing to say about "assaults on fellow believers" in Kabul and Baghdad, where Islamist terrorism killed more than 100 Muslims. "I am offended that amid the internecine carnage, a professed atheist named Salman Rushdie tops the to-do list," she wrote.

These Islamist threats extend a drama begun on Valentine's Day, 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini issued his death edict against Rushdie, stating that "the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses – which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur'an and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly."

That very day, I went on television and predicted that the novelist would never escape the edict. He, however, experimented with appeasement in 1990 and with self-delusion since 1998, when the Iranian foreign minister declared his government no longer intent on murdering him. Rushdie wishfully deemed this "a breakthrough," concluding that the Khomeini edict "will be left to wither on the vine."

I warned Rushdie in 1998 against his giddy insistence on being in the clear. For one, the edict remained in place; Iranian leaders do not believe themselves competent to undo it (a point reiterated by an ayatollah, Ahmad Khatami, just the other day). For another, freelancers around the globe could still nominate themselves to fulfill Khomeini's call to action.

But Rushdie and his friends ignored these apprehensions. Christopher Hitchens, for example, thought Rushdie had returned to normal life. That became conventional wisdom; such insouciance and naïveté – rather than "backbone" – best explains awarding the knighthood.

I welcome the knighting because, for all his political mistakes, Rushdie is indeed a fine novelist. I wish I could agree with Dhume that this recognition of him suggests "the pendulum has begun to swing" in Britain against appeasing radical Islam.

But I cannot. Instead, I draw two conclusions: First, Rushdie should plan around the fact of Khomeini's edict being permanent, to expire only when he does. Second, the British government should take seriously the official Pakistani threat of suicide terrorism, which amounts to a declaration of war and an operational endorsement. So far, it has not done that.

Other than an ambassadorial statement of "deep concern," Whitehall insists that the minister's threat will not harm a "very good relationship" with Pakistan. It has even indicated that Ijaz ul-Haq is welcome in Britain if on a private visit. (Are suicide bombers also welcome, so long as they are not guests of the government?) Until the Pakistani authorities retract and apologize for Ijaz ul-Haq's outrageous statement, London must not conduct business-as-usual with Islamabad.

Now that would constitute "British backbone."

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).

Voices Heard, Sides Taken

NFL Disability Plan Testimony Stirs Passions on Capitol Hill

By Les Carpenter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 27, 2007; E01



Brian DeMarco, right, who suffers from a severe back injury, is comforted by another ex-player, Mike Mosley, during a news conference before hearings.


By the time the members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law moved to their second round of questioning in Room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building yesterday, the lawyers sent by the NFL and the players' union looked ragged.

For almost an hour, lawmakers asked questions about the league's disability plan, listening to former players and a trial lawyer who leveled allegations of a rigged claims system, lengthy waits for news on benefit applications and repeated trips to doctors who seemed determined to reject their applications.

Then Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) a member of the Judiciary Committee but not the subcommittee itself, asked Douglas Ell, counsel for the NFLPA and the disability plan, how many players actually receive disability payments.

"317," Ell replied.

Out of how many, she asked.

Ell said there are roughly 8,000 retired players.

"In one of the most dangerous sports in the history of mankind, only 300 players are receiving disability payments?" Waters said, her voice rising.

Such is how it went for Ell and NFL senior vice president Dennis Curran. Waters wondered how the plan could spend just $20 million out of a $1.1 billion fund for disability and pensions. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) repeatedly interrupted Ell's and Curran's answers before telling the men they should not rely on a board of three owner-representatives and three NFLPA-chosen representatives to make final disability decisions. He said they should instead choose professionals with no ties to either the league or the union.

The issue of retired pro football players and disabilities has been percolating for more than a year after many ex-players were angered by a statement by NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw, who told the Charlotte Observer that he did not represent retired players. Although retired players do not choose the union's leader, the words rankled them.

Soon, stories came out describing players who had been denied benefits despite serious football injuries that left them unable to work, and with the complaints came old allegations that the union under Upshaw has become a pawn for the league.

Former Minnesota Vikings guard Brent Boyd, suffering from the lingering effects of concussions suffered while playing football, testified yesterday that he had been told by NFLPA official Miki Yaras-Davis that his doctors' reports and brain scans would not be considered because "the owners would not open that can of worms" by approving disability for a brain injury.

Before he began speaking, Boyd asked the subcommittee to be patient as he delivered his comments. "I do have brain damage; when under stress my brain gets less blood," he said, then added that he considered testifying before Congress to be a stressful activity.

Boyd complained that the plan required him to fly across the country to see a doctor in Baltimore, who Boyd said did not examine his brain and then rejected him for disability. "If this is not fraud and corruption, we need to remove fraud and corruption from the dictionary," he said.

In the face of the players' often emotional testimony, Ell and Curran stuck to defending the plan. They were testifying because Upshaw had planned to be out of the country this week and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who attended a rookie symposium in Florida on Monday, chose not to come. This left Ell and Curran to take the subcommittee's questions.

Later, Ell said much of the public impressions of the plan are the result of a lack of understanding of the policies. "You have very skilled trial lawyers misrepresenting the facts," he said. He added, for instance, that former Jacksonville Jaguars tackle Brian DeMarco, who attended the hearing despite a severe back injury, has not applied for disability despite the player's pleas for help.

Of the legislators gathered in Room 2141, Waters has perhaps the most interest in the subject of the disability plan. Her husband, Sidney Williams, is a former NFL player and she said she watched one of Williams's friends, former Redskin Jim Shorter, waste away several years ago. She said she called the NFLPA several times for help but was treated rudely. As his disability application was being considered she stormed into the retirement board's meeting in Santa Cruz, Calif., to plead his case. But he was turned down because he had taken early retirement, making him ineligible for the disability.

"I think the process is rigged and made to be confusing," Waters said after the hearing. She said she is looking into whether the NFL's antitrust exemption could be modified to let Congress control the disability plan.

As the room nearly cleared, Waters was approached by former Chicago Bear Dave Duerson, who is one of the union-appointed board members who makes decisions on disability claims. He told her the NFLPA was trying to create programs to help retirees. As he spoke, Bernie Parrish, the unofficial leader of the retired players seeking assistance, stepped in and alleged that the programs were doing little more than creating more money for Ell.

The 46-year-old Duerson and the 71-year-old Parrish began shouting at each other and were soon separated. As they were tugged into the hallway, Duerson wagged his finger at Parrish and said "you were probably one of those guys who never showed up for the [union] meetings."

Parrish, an NFLPA executive in the 1960s, was pulled away before he could respond.

Ex-NFL players address Congress

Retirees seek change in league's disability benefits system

By Jeff Barker
Baltimore Sun Reporter
Originally published June 27, 2007



Joe DeLamielleure

WASHINGTON- It was a day of tears - but also relief - for retired NFL players who hope their accounts of debilitating football injuries will move Congress to demand reform of a "broken" disability benefits system.

"Thank God for Congress. Maybe they're going to do something," Hall of Fame guard Joe DeLamielleure said after a House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittee heard from four former players, an NFL representative and others.

Members of the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law listened to former players, including Hall of Famers Harry Carson and Mike Ditka. Some lawmakers expressed sympathy for retired players' plights and said they would study possible reforms. Several lawmakers said they would consider legislation strengthening ex-players' rights to be part of union activities, while others said they wanted the arbitration process speeded up.

Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat whose husband, Sidney Williams, played in the NFL (including one season with the Baltimore Colts), said she was alarmed to learn that little more than 300 players currently qualify for disability benefits. Since up to 10,000 have played in the league, "that does not compute. Football is a dangerous game," Waters said.

Douglas W. Ell, counsel to the players' retirement plan, said the system has been unfairly maligned.

"Unfortunately, a great deal of what has been said or written about the benefits available to NFL players has been wrong or misleading," Ell told the panel. "The players association and the NFL have created the most generous disability benefits in professional sports, and possibly the entire business world," he said.

The retirement plan's fund contains $1.1 billion and covers retirement, disability and death benefits. Retired players can receive $110,000 per year if they are declared "totally and permanently disabled" within 15 years after leaving football. There are also various levels of partial disability.



Harry Carson

Former players apply for benefits through administrators in Baltimore. The applicant is sent to a retirement board-approved physician. If the player disagrees with the decision, he can appeal to a retirement board composed of three NFL management representatives and three players union representatives.

"The door is then slammed shut on the player," said Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat. "The door is shut and there is no one there."

Of 1,052 initial claims since 1993, 675 have been denied at the initial stage, according to written testimony provided to the panel.

Thirty-two players have sued to try to win benefits, and almost none have succeeded. Seven such lawsuits are pending.

"It's right versus wrong, period," Ditka told the panel. "Do the ethical thing or do the wrong thing. And they've chosen to do the wrong thing."

Dennis Curran, an NFL senior vice president, said the league is open to revisiting the rule that says players have a 15-year window after retirement to file certain claims.

"Fifteen years is really a joke," said Carson, who is 53. "Having been out of the league 19 years, I'm starting to feel things. The whole post-concussion thing has manifested itself over the years."

Earlier in the day, a dozen retired NFL players appeared at a news conference to promote their cause. One by one, they walked or were assisted to the National Press Club lectern.

There was former Jacksonville Jaguars lineman Brian DeMarco, who cleared his throat and apologized for becoming "emotional" as he described being homeless three times in recent years. He said he has rods and screws in his back and can barely walk but that he has been in a long fight over benefits.

There was Garrett Webster, the son of the late Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who said his father "died cold, alone, on the floor" and addicted to painkillers. He was dead by the time a federal judge in Baltimore awarded his family significant new pension benefits in 2005.

There was Bernie Parrish, a white-haired former Cleveland Browns defensive back, who said: "We have been betrayed, and we're not going to take it anymore."



John Unitas

And there was Sandra Unitas, the widow of Baltimore Colts legend John Unitas. She held up a hook with a rubberized handle that she said her Hall of Fame husband used to button his shirts because of an injury dating to a 1968 preseason game.

DeMarco, Webster, Parrish and Unitas said they believed there were troubling holes in a system that some called "broken." Parrish said he and others had lost faith in the NFL Players Association's resolve to defend their interests. Gene Upshaw, the union's executive director, declined an invitation to attend the hearing, the committee said.

Sandra Unitas, 63, said her husband was "very, very disappointed" that his disability claim was denied for a tendon injury in his famous right arm - a rejection the NFL says was warranted because Unitas was healthy enough to hold a job.

Former Miami Dolphins running back Eugene "Mercury" Morris said he saw a message in the treatment of Unitas. "If they did that to Johnny Unitas, then they'll do that to anybody," Morris said.

jeff.barker@baltsun.com

Deroy Murdock: Open For the Enemy

If They Can Make It Through the Border

June 26, 2007 7:00 AM

http://www.nationalreview.com

“America is still the land of opportunity,” Senator John McCain recently said. “And we’re not going to erect barriers and fences.”

Unlucky us.

Along with Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy, the Arizona Republican cosponsored immigration legislation currently crawling through the Senate. McCain should recognize that without a barrier or fence, the U.S./Mexican frontier will continue to welcome Islamic extremists pledged to America’s doom.

This is not hypothetical.

“Members of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terrorist organization, have already entered the United States across our southwest border,” declares “A Line in the Sand,” a January report of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, then-chaired by Texas Republican Michael McCaul.



U.S./Mexico border in New Mexico. Click photo to enlarge.

The study cites FBI Director Robert Mueller’s March 2005 congressional testimony confirming that, “there are individuals from countries with known al Qaeda connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish, and pretending to be Hispanic immigrants.”

Zapata County, Texas Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez told a House International Relations subcommittee last July 7: “If smugglers can bring in tons of marijuana and cocaine at one time and can smuggle 20 to 30 persons at one time, one can just imagine how easy it would be to bring in two or three terrorists or their weapons of mass destruction across the river and not be detected.”

In Fiscal Year 2005 alone, the latest data show 3,308 aliens got caught sneaking into America from nations the State Department considers state-sponsors of terrorism: 3,262 Cubans, 25 Iranians, four North Koreans, four Sudanese, and 13 Syrians. Assuming the Cubans all were pro-American anti-Communists, 46 people remain from terror-supporting nations. A group that size could staff another September 11 more than twice over, or populate seven more Lackawanna Six Islamic-fanatic conspiracies.

Others who were collared that year departed nations in which terrorists thrive, though without government assistance: three Saudis, seven Lebanese, seven Yemenis, 11 Algerians, 15 Afghans, 17 Egyptians, 22 Somalis, 25 Indonesians, 27 Jordanians, and 101 Pakistanis. Let’s hope these 235 individuals tried to break into America to harvest broccoli.

Of course, these are folks the Border Patrol arrested.

“Federal law enforcement entities estimate they apprehended approximately 10 to 30 percent of illegal aliens crossing the border,” that House report states. If true, aliens from terrorist-laden nations successfully penetrated America’s perimeter in numbers three to ten times those above.

May those we have missed be unlike those we have caught:

* As children, Dritan, Eljvir, and Shain Duka illegally headed north into the United States across the Mexican border near Brownsville, Texas in 1984, a federal law-enforcement official told Fox News May 9. These Muslim Albanian refugees moved to New Jersey, and eventually became serial traffic offenders. Dritan’s driver’s license was suspended 11 times. Shain’s was suspended on 19 occasions, while Elvir received 24 suspensions. Local sanctuary laws prevented cops from inquiring about the Dukas’s immigration status or subsequently reporting them to relevant U.S. agencies.

Nonetheless, the Dukas’s notoriety deepened. Last May 7, authorities arrested them in the Garden State for advancing a suspected Islamofascist conspiracy to kill “as many soldiers as possible” with machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades. As such, authorities say, the illegal-alien Duka brothers represent half of the Fort Dix Six.



As children, Fort Dix Six suspects Eljvir and Shain Duka — seen here last month in Camden, New Jersey’s U.S. District Court — reportedly crossed illegally into America from Mexico in 1984 with their accused-terrorist brother, Dritan.

* Mahmoud Youssef Kourani pleaded guilty in March 2005 to providing terrorists material support. After bribing a Mexican diplomat in Beirut for a visa, Kourani and another Middle Easterner’s Mexican guides shepherded them into America. Kourani settled in Dearborn, Michigan’s Lebanese-immigrant enclave, where he raised cash for Hezbollah.

* Federal agents arrested Neeran Zaia and Basima Sesi in September 2004 for smuggling more than 200 Middle Easterners — mainly Iraqis, Jordanians, and Syrians — through Latin America and Mexico into the U.S. Zaia previously was convicted of alien-smuggling.

* Tijuana café owner Salim Boughader Mucharrafille was arrested in December 2002 for smuggling into America more than 200 Lebanese, including suspected Hezbollah associates.

* Beyond Islamic prayer mats among the cacti, Jim Hogg County, Texas Border Patrol agents found a jacket with Arabic-language patches. One reads, “martyr” and “way to immortality.” The other depicts a jet flying into a skyscraper.



Military patches found along the Texas border. Click photo to emlarge.

Despite September 2006 congressional vote to fence off 700 miles of the southern border, the Senate now backs only a 370-mile partition. This is especially discouraging, since that frontier’s condition is, officially, dismal:

“DHS does not as yet have a wholly satisfactory methodology of determining whether a portion of the border is considered under control from a system-wide, defense-in-depth, and continuously enforceable perspective,” laments a May 1 Homeland Security congressional update. “In the end, gaining control of the border requires gaining control of the entire border, so that as illegal immigration is stopped at one location along the border, it can find no alternate crossing point.”

In the end, Congress quickly must stitch the gaping wound across America’s underbelly. While the U.S./Canadian boundary is worrisome, 1/24 as many illegals traverse it, versus its southern counterpart. While most illegals come here to work, which presents its own challenges, others endure extreme heat and dodge Gila monsters to come here and kill us.

It remains Washington’s solemn duty to stop them.

— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.

Music Review: "Easy Tiger" by Ryan Adams

Boy wonder eases up: only his 9th LP in 7 years


By his own prolific standards, Ryan Adams has been strangely quiet of late. Since the drowsy 29, a weak finale to the flurry that sired Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights in 2005, he appears to have eased down almost completely.

There were clearly things that needed shaking from the system. Continuing to plant soul and hip-hop oddments on his website (under the various guises of DJ Reggie, Were Wolph and Rhoda Rho), he hasn’t exactly been kicking his heels, but it’s his interim work with others that seems to have the biggest influence on Easy Tiger.

Having chummed up with the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh, Adams also produced Willie Nelson’s Songbird last year. And here, both influences are evident from the off. Opener "Goodnight Rose" – recently stretched to eight-and-a-half glorious minutes on US TV’s The Henry Rollins Show – could be Nelson trembling through a turn-of-the-‘70s Dead tune. The same goes for "Tears Of Gold", another beauty, set to pedal steel. And though Adams mined the Dead’s "Truckin’" on 29’s title track, he now seems to know where to take it.

But the real triumph of Easy Tiger is less rooted in the sound, more in the attitude. With the unfussy production of Jamie Candiloro (engineer of Rock And Roll), the newly sober, cleaned-up Adams appears more at ease in his own skin, soothing himself into these thirteen songs rather than straining hard.

"Rip Off", for instance, with its lovely mandolins and gentle guitar, is as careworn and rumpled as anything by John Prine. FM juggernaut and recent live favourite "Halloweenhead" is about as rocking as it gets. With the Cardinals back on board (drummer Brad Pemberton, bassist Chris Feinstein, steel player Jon Graboff and guitarist Neal Casal), Easy Tiger feels like a more assured follow-up to the countrified Cold Roses.

All in all, a break seems to have done Ryan Adams the power of good. Shrewdly edited, filled with good judgement, this is simply great work, from a rejuvenated musician

ROB HUGHES

Uncut Magazine, July 2007

TV Review: "Rescue Me"

BLAZE OF GLORY In its fourth season, Rescue Me's black comedy is still white hot (Jennifer Esposito and Denis Leary, pictured)

By Clark Collis Clark Collis

Clark Collis is a senior writer for EW

Cancer. Drug use. Mammary autographing. Christmas-flavored vomit. All appear in the fourth-season premiere of the dramedy Rescue Me, which tracks the frequently less-than-heroic activities of a fictional New York firehouse crew. Actually, all appear before the opening credits, which serves as a reminder that Rescue Me co-creator, co-writer, and star Denis Leary is not a man afraid to investigate life's less wholesome avenues. True, there is nothing here as shocking as the scene from last season in which Leary's alcoholic firefighter, Tommy Gavin, rapes his own wife (Andrea Roth). But there are plotlines about a nymphomaniac nun and the sex drive of a mentally challenged man, and Gavin finds himself facing the possibility of a spell behind bars — although not, significantly, for the aforementioned sex crime.

For those who like their comedy coal black, Rescue Me remains scabrously funny, thanks principally to the motormouthed Leary and to Tatum O'Neal, who just gets better and better as Gavin's nutjob of a sister. But the show has become even more deft at jackknifing from jollity to deadly serious depictions of the risks its (anti)heroes take while fighting fires. Indeed, there is a point in this episode when you genuinely believe Leary has followed through on an idea he floated to EW last year about the series abruptly terminating midseason with most of the cast dead in a blaze. That would make for some unforgettable TV. But it would also rob us of a show that is a long way from burning out. A-

Posted Jun 04, 2007
Entertainment Weekly

A farewell fit for fans

Crowd cheers Griffey's homers, Seattle's victory

By C. Trent Rosecrans
Cincinnati Post
June 25, 2007



Ken Griffey Jr. waves goodbye to fans as he leaves the field after the eighth inning of Sunday's Reds-Mariners game at Seattle's Safeco Field.


SEATTLE - All series long, the Seattle fans seemed conflicted by cheering for their favorite team and their favorite son.

Sunday, the fans who littered the stands in Reds jerseys and Mariners caps finally got their desired outcome, as Ken Griffey Jr. hit two home runs and the Mariners beat the Reds 3-2 in the finale of Griffey's three-game return to Seattle, where he began his Hall of Fame career.

"Jay (Buhner) actually called today's game - he said on (Thursday), 'Knowing your luck, you're going to hit a couple of home runs and lose 3-2,'" Griffey said. "(The series) was everything I thought it would be and more."

The game followed one of the familiar scripts for the Reds, as the team had several chances to blow the game open early, but failed to capitalize and allowed the other team to do just enough to pull out the victory.

Reds starter Bronson Arroyo pitched as well as he has all season, but allowed two runs in the sixth and another in the seventh and the Reds' offense could only muster Griffey's two home runs.

"It comes down to not getting a run in early when he had a chance," Reds manager Jerry Narron said. "I would have liked to have won the ball game with Griffey having the game he had."

Griffey's solo homers came with two outs in the first and fifth innings. The Reds left runners in scoring position in the second, third, sixth and eighth innings.

Cincinnati's best shot at taking the lead came in the third when following a single by Griffey, Adam Dunn came up with runners on first and third and one out and struck out. Dunn has struck out 27 times with runners in scoring position this season - nine times have been with fewer than two outs. After Dunn went down swinging, Mariners starter Miguel Batista hit Edwin Encarnacion to load the bases, but Josh Hamilton popped up to the second baseman to end the inning. Catcher David Ross stranded runners on first and third in the second and sixth innings.

In a similar situation - two on, two outs - Mariner right fielder Ben Broussard doubled two runs in to tie the game in the sixth.

"I've faced him a lot and I've had pretty good success against him," Arroyo said. "(With the count at) 3-2 I only had two choices, a breaking ball down the middle or a cutter in on his hands, and I threw the heater in there and he hit it well and tied the game."



The Mariners used a suicide squeeze by left fielder Willie Bloomquist to take the lead in the seventh before Arroyo got out of a bases-loaded jam.

"He was crisp, real crisp," Ross said of Arroyo. "Maybe it was a couple of bad pitches and that seems to be the ongoing theme with us this year, a couple of bad pitches and the other team is taking advantage of it. It's one of those things, I thought he threw really well and had a better idea."

Dunn led off the eighth inning with a single, but following a Juan Castro sacrifice bunt, the tying run was stranded at second.

With his 55th career multi-homer game, Griffey moved ahead of Dunn for second place in the National League with 21 home runs. In the first inning, Griffey tied Mark McGwire for seventh on the all-time home run list with 583. He then passed him in the fifth inning.

"It was just one of those things that happen, you play long enough and hit a few out, you catch people," Griffey said.

Up next is former Red Frank Robinson, who is sixth all-time with 586 home runs.

Not too many people, Griffey included, realized he had tied McGwire in the first inning. With two outs, he sent Batista's 2-0 offering to left-center field and Bloomquist ran into the wall and appeared to catch it. Griffey stood between first and second to try to figure out what happened.

"I didn't see any of the umpires give the home run sign, and I didn't see any of the infielders or outfielders running off the field," Griffey said. "And finally the second base umpire (Mike Winters) said, 'Let's go.'"

There was no confusion about the second homer, when Griffey sent Batista's first-pitch fastball 428 feet to right field off the advertising sign in the second deck of Safeco Field.

Griffey's heroics weren't limited to the batter's box. Although he was initially penciled in as the Reds' designated hitter, he asked Narron if he could play the field for the fans of Seattle. Narron obliged, scratching Norris Hopper from the lineup and inserting Javier Valentin as the DH.

In the second inning, Griffey made a back-handed sliding catch on Adrian Beltre's blooper into right and was able to double up Broussard at first.

Griffey also ended the eighth inning with a routine catch on a fly ball from Yuniesky Betancourt. As he jogged off the field, Griffey received his final standing ovation.

With the Reds trailing and Griffey's spot in the order six spots away, both Griffey and the Seattle fans knew it was probably the last step he'd take on this trip to Seattle. Griffey stopped short of the dugout, waved and tipped his cap to the sellout crowd of 46,064. All three games were sellouts.

"I turned around and waved, just my way of saying thank you for coming out and supporting me," Griffey said. "It was every inning that I ran out there, but they probably knew it was my last time coming out. I wish it could be like that all the time."

Even though the Mariners took the series, the entire three days belonged to Griffey. Every at-bat, every catch, every move was cheered by the Seattle fans and Griffey seemed truly moved by the response.

"It was a lot of fun," Griffey said. "A lot of great memories, a lot of family I haven't had a chance to see in a while, a lot of familiar faces. I've always thought I'd be back. I didn't know when, I'm just glad the people of Seattle welcomed me like this."

Ben Stein: Our Founding Father

Special Report

Ben Stein

The American Spectator

Published 6/25/2007 12:09:58 AM

Time Magazine: November 3, 1967

What would the world be like if there had been no William F. Buckley?

I can well recall even as a high schooler that Republicans were considered Midwestern stolid reactionaries with no ideas except to oppose generosity and kindness. I can well recall when being a conservative meant being without ideas and simply in opposition to those who had ideas. Or if conservatives had any ideas, they were just that them who had should continue to have and those who had not should rot.

Then came William F. Buckley, seemingly out of the forehead of Zeus. He said that conservatives had more ideas and better ideas than leftists. He said that conservatives' ideas comported better with the basic dignity of the human personality than did socialism. He said that man would not only be richer under conservative principles, but happier, more moral, and prouder of himself.

He said these things when the powers that be laughed at him. He said these things when the Revolution came (I have always thought George Wallace played an immense part in that Revolution, but then that's just me) and Americans started to realize that they, like the man who had been speaking prose all his life, really were a lot closer to Buckley's ideas of God and man than to Galbraith's. He spoke principles of human dignity, human service before the Almighty, respect for law, respect for life, and he was not afraid to speak them to whoever was running the show, Republican or Democrat.

When Democrats did the kowtow to the Soviets, Buckley was not afraid to say so. When Republicans did the same kowtow to wage price controls, he was also unafraid.

The amazing thing is that Buckley had these great ideas from Burke and Hamilton and Jefferson, and then, like a one man band traveling around the country in a bi-plane, he showed up at any county fair or cow college or Ivy League sanctum sanctorum where he could find a room, and talk and talk and talk. Always unafraid, never wearying.

He preached the human soul, exalted by freedom but always under God, and he preached it on TV for decades, in lecture halls. In his columns, in his books, in his commentaries, he never shut up about how pressing was the need for freedom. And thank God for it.

Like the late immortal Milton Friedman, he would never give up. He brought the often infantile, feuding, neurotics of the conservative movement together and lashed them into their finest work. And he always did it as a gentleman. And still somehow he sailed around the world, skied like a champion, was a stellar father and husband, and always came back for more.

Buckley made conservatism intellectually respectable, resilient, even sexy. He let us know that if James Bond could vote, he would vote Tory. (The old Tory, not the new, pro-Palestinian Tory.)

I am thinking all these thoughts because I am once again browsing through John Coyne and Linda Bridges' masterful Strictly Right, about Buckley and the whole conservative movement. I keep thinking that if we have a free republic instead of a socialist people's republic, credit first goes to our fighting men and women who offered up their lives. But right up there are the men and women who realized it was a battle of ideas, were not afraid to fight it, never retreated, and gave us the legacy of freedom.

The old saw used to be, "If you can read this, thank a teacher."

The more basic truth would be, "If you woke up in a free society today, spare a thought for William F. Buckley, a patriot and a founding father of freedom for all his life." There never was a truer friend to the human spirit. Long may he wave and never waver.

Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He also writes "Ben Stein's Diary" for every issue of The American Spectator's monthly print edition. Click here to subscribe.

Emily Yoffe: Gloom and Doom in A Sunny Day

The Washington Post

Monday, June 25, 2007; Page A19

It was a mild January evening, and people had filled the restaurant's outdoor patio. As our group walked past the tables, one of my friends said, "This terrifies me." I don't know if she was reassured later by the chilly April, but we are all supposed to be terrified of the weather now.

In "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore tells us that unless drastic global changes are made, our cities will be inundated and those of us who haven't drowned will face a world wracked by cataclysmic weather and swarming with pestilence. One of his devotees, actor Leonardo DiCaprio, is coming out with his own environmental horror movie warning of human extinction if we continue living as we are. This would have a negative effect on the box office, but extinction might be preferable to the future Gore envisions.

I, however, refuse to see the apocalypse in every balmy day. And I think it's wrong to let our children believe they'll be swept away before they get a chance to fret about college admissions. An article in The Post this spring described children anxious, sleepless and tearful about the end; one 9-year-old said she worried about global warming "because I don't want to die."

Usually we want to protect our children from awful events, adjusting the message to suit their age. Certainly we tried to do that after Sept. 11. But an essential part of the global warming awareness movement is the belief that scaring us to death is the best way to spur massive change. Gore explicitly compares warming to the Nazis of the last century and terrorists of this one.

And a recent New York Times profile of Gore tells that we are to be flooded with "An Inconvenient Truth." It is going to be shown in schools; book versions for children and young adults and a children's television show are planned. The global Live Earth concerts scheduled for July 7 are expected to raise millions, going to a three-year public relations effort, headed by Gore, to deluge us with bad news.

All this is not to say that it's not getting warmer and that curbing our profligate environmental ways is not a commendable and necessary goal. But perhaps this movement is sowing the seeds of its own destruction -- even as it believes the human species has sown its own. There must be a limit to how many calamitous films, books and television shows we, and our children, can absorb.

It doesn't seem sustainable to expect people to remain terrified by such a disinterested, often benign -- it was so nice eating out on the patio! -- and even unpredictable enemy. (I understand we're the enemy, but the executioner is the weather.) Recall that the experts told us last year would be a record-setting hurricane season, but the series of Katrinas never materialized.

Since I hate the heat, even I was alarmed by the recent headline: "NASA Warns of 110-Degrees for Atlanta, Chicago, DC in Summer." But I regained my cool when I realized the forecast was for close to the end of the century. Thanks to all the heat-mongering, it's supposed to be a sign I'm in denial because I refuse to trust a weather prediction for August 2080, when no one can offer me one for August 2008 (or 2007 for that matter).

There is so much hubris in the certainty about the models of the future that I'm oddly reassured. We've seen how hubristic predictions about complicated, unpredictable events have a way of bringing the predictors low.

It's also hard to believe assertions that the science on the future of our climate is settled when climate scientists can't agree about the present -- or the past (there is contention about the dates, causes and even the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age that followed). Now, Gore and others say that Katrina was a product of global warming and that we can expect more and bigger storms. But there is actually brisk scientific debate over the role global warming plays -- if any -- in the creation of hurricanes.

A study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution last month, looking at 5,000 years of Atlantic hurricanes, found "large and dramatic fluctuations in hurricane activity, with long stretches of frequent strikes punctuated by lulls that lasted many centuries" -- with the stormier periods occurring during cooler ocean temperatures. But talking about Earth's constant, and still inexplicable, climate changes and cycles is not useful if you're trying to shock.

In his new book, "The Assault on Reason," Gore denounces what he sees as today's politics of fear. Yet his own campaign of mass persuasion -- any such campaign -- is not amenable to contradiction and uncertainty. It's about fright and absolutes. But just because something can be plotted on an X and Y axis does not make it the whole truth.

Emily Yoffe is a contributing writer to Slate.com. Her e-mail address isemilyyoffe@hotmail.com.

Paul Kengor: Fidel's useful idiots

The Washington Times

June 24, 2007


Learn what the new Cuba offers its people — and its neighbors. To its people, peace, democracy, prosperity. To its neighbors, friendship, and the cooperation of men who respect each other. ...

— Daily Worker, Dec. 13, 1959

Unfortunately I was standing, not sitting, when I glanced at a periodical rack that displayed the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine. The question emblazoned across the cover should have been preceded by a warning to readers to sit before they read further. Instead, the innocent were accosted by this headline: "Was Fidel good for Cuba?"

Foreign Policy is published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a prestigious, left-leaning, and at times thoughtful foreign-policy voice in Washington. It is rarely noted by the likewise left-leaning Washington establishment that the Carnegie Endowment was once headed by Alger Hiss, the communist spy who served the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin's Red Terror. The sophisticated set in Washington considers it inappropriate, impolite, and, of course, a form of McCarthyism, to make reference to this inconvenient fact concerning the endowment.

Yet, as I stood speechless at this inconceivable thought on the cover of FP, I couldn't help but think of Hiss. I had an eerie feeling his ghost was back at the endowment running its publications, maybe with his wife and partner Priscilla again behind the typewriter. Worse, much like a motorist passing a car wreck, I couldn't help but open the pages to peer at the carnage inside.

To be fair, FP aims to be unpredictable and to challenge its readers, and this question was posed in a debate format with differing perspectives, plus an accompanying on-line forum, where, amazingly, 77 percent of the periodical's respondents surmised that, yes, Fidel was good for Cuba. Indeed, Alger Hiss' presence lingers.

Here's the reality: Whether Fidel was good for Cuba is not a matter of debate, even if FP scares up the usual suspects to pay homage to the dictator's personal trinity of "free" health care, collectivism and wealth redistribution. Fidel's failures are too numerous to recount, beginning with his 48-year postponement of elections or the tens of thousands of murdered victims or the countless dead at sea who tried to escape from an island prison forced to ban boats. Of course, the best evidence for resolving the debate would be a simple poll of everyday Cubans — if only such polls were permitted.

That said, the single most significant factor that should forever put to rest this absurd question is one that always get ignored by Mr. Castro's sympathizers: If Fidel Castro had his way in October 1962, Cuba would literally have ceased to exist. This is not an exaggeration. Fidel recommended to Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev that Cuba and the Soviet Union together launch an all-out nuclear attack upon the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even urged Khrushchev to do so if U.S. troops invaded the island.

This is no secret. Mr. Castro has openly admitted it many times. Robert McNamara, President John F. Kennedy's defense secretary during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was taken aback by Castro's candor when the two men discussed the incident years later. Fidel told him flatly, "Bob, I did recommend they [the nuclear missiles] were to be used."

In total, there were 162 Soviet missiles on the island. That, however, was not the sum total of missiles that would have been subsequently launched. The United States in turn would have launched on Cuba, and also on the Soviet Union. Kennedy made that clear commitment in his nationally televised speech on Oct. 22, 1962: "It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union." In response, of course, the Soviets would have launched on America from Soviet soil. Even then, the fireworks would just be starting: Under the terms of their NATO and Warsaw Pact charters, the nations of Western and Eastern Europe would also start firing.

Once the smoke cleared, there would be hundreds of millions dead, possibly more than a billion, with Western civilization in its death throes. Given his way, Fidel Castro would have precipitated the greatest slaughter in human history.

Would that have been good for Cuba? Fidel has weighed in on that one, stating the obvious to Mr. McNamara: "What would have happened to Cuba? It would have been totally destroyed."

Fidel didn't care, and neither did his comrade Che Guevara, a cult hero to Hollywood and to college students brainwashed in anti-Americanism. Fidel and Che were ready for martyrdom, with Cuba the eternal triumphant symbol of the glorious fight against capitalism and American imperialism. As Mr. McNamara said of Fidel, "He would have pulled the temple down on his head."

Even the Soviets were stunned. Khrushchev quickly realized he was dealing with a lunatic and better immediately bring the missiles home.

Fidel Castro has been a madman and a menace for a long, long time. What explains his defenders? Why do they continue to defend the indefensible?

Paul Kengor is author of "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism" (HarperCollins, 2006), professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.

Asra Q. Nomani: A Mighty Shame

It's the Story of Our Search for Danny Pearl. But in This Movie, He's Nowhere to Be Found.

Daniel Pearl is seen in this photo released by his abductors on January 30, 2002. (Inset) His wife, Mariane.

The Washington Post

Sunday, June 24, 2007; B01

On Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2002, I stood at the gate of my rented house in Karachi, watching my friend Danny Pearl juggle a notebook, cellphone and earpiece as he bounded over to a taxicab idling in the street. He was off to try to find the alleged al-Qaeda handler of "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in Pakistan. "Good luck, dude," I called, waving cheerfully as he strode off, a lopsided grin on his face. His pregnant wife, Mariane, stood smiling and waving beside me as the taxi pulled away. A gaggle of parrots swooped through the trees above, squawking in the late afternoon sun.

That was the last image I had of Danny until late last month, when a PR executive for Paramount Vantage pulled up to my house in Morgantown, W.Va., in a black Lincoln Town Car. She was carrying a DVD of "A Mighty Heart," the just-released movie, based on the book by Mariane Pearl, about the staggering events that unfolded after that innocuous moment in Pakistan: Danny's kidnapping and eventual beheading.

With my parents and a friend beside me, I pressed "play" on my DVD player and settled in to watch. Slowly, as the scenes ticked by, my heart sank. I could live with having been reduced from a colleague of Danny's to a "charming assistant" to Mariane, as one review put it, and even with having been cut out of the scene in front of my house in Pakistan. That's the creative license Hollywood takes. What I couldn't accept was that Danny himself had been cut from his own story.

The character I saw on the screen was flat -- nerdy, bland and boring. He's not at all like Danny, who wrote "ditties" about Osama bin Laden while he was investigating Pakistan's nuclear secrets and jihadist groups as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. On screen, he's warned three times to meet with Sheik Mubarik Ali Gilani -- the man with whom he thought he had an interview -- only in public. But off he goes, ignoring the warnings. The message: Reckless journalist.

That was nothing like the Danny I knew. As the credits rolled, I murmured to my mother, "Danny had a cameo in his own murder."

For me, watching the movie was like having people enter my home, rearrange the furniture and reprogram my memory. I'd known it was a gamble when I agreed to help with a Hollywood version of Danny's kidnapping, but I'd done it because I thought the movie had the potential to be meaningful. I'd hoped it could honor the man I'd worked alongside for nine years at the Journal by explaining why he was so passionate about his work as a reporter. I'd hoped that it would tell the story of the unique team of law enforcement agents, government officials and journalists -- of varying religions, nationalities and cultures -- that had searched for him. And I hoped it could spark a search for the truth behind Danny's death.

But the moviemakers and their PR machine seemed intent on two very different and much shallower goals: creating a mega-star vehicle for Angelina Jolie, who plays Mariane, and promoting the glib and cliched idea that both Danny and Mariane were "ordinary heroes."
I think Danny would have rolled his eyes at that.

In the prologue to her book, Mariane wrote to her son: "I write this book for you, Adam, so you know that your father was not a hero but an ordinary man." In a movie voiceover, that dedication becomes: "This film is for our son so he knows that his father was an ordinary man. An ordinary hero."

But there weren't any real heroes in the story of Danny's tragedy. Danny would have said he was just doing his job. When he went off that day in Karachi, he didn't give any impression that he thought what he was doing was especially dangerous. He just had a story he wanted to pursue and an interview he thought would help him. After he vanished, I don't think any of us, not even Mariane, did anything particularly courageous, either. We each had a duty to try to find him -- either as professionals or because of the bonds of friendship or family.

I know that movies need a dramatic arc and that there has to be room for artistic license in the telling of a true story, because reality is often so chaotic. I know that it's natural to search for a compelling narrative structure to make sense of tragedy and pointlessness. And I do believe that Danny's last moments, as he declared his Jewishness for his kidnappers' video camera, showed his strength of character.

But recasting a story just so we can tell ourselves that we've found a hero is too easy. It's the quickest way to convince ourselves that what happened wasn't such a bad thing, that it had redeeming value, that we can close the book on it and move on with our lives. We do it too often -- with television shows about ordinary people with extraordinary powers, with magazine features that extol the "heroes among us" and with our impulse to elevate every story -- think Jessica Lynch, ambushed and wounded in Iraq -- to one of heroism.

For me, "A Mighty Heart" and all the hype surrounding it have only underscored how cheap and manufactured our quest for heroism has become. Paramount even launched an "ordinary hero" contest to promote the movie. "Nominate the most inspiring ordinary hero," its Web site shouts. "Win a trip to the Bahamas!"

Lost in the PR machine and the heroism hoopla is Danny, whose death is at the center of the story. After all, as one person involved in the production candidly told me: Danny can't do interviews. So in the Associated Press review, he amounts to nothing more than a parenthetical phrase.

But Danny was not parenthetical. He deserves to be remembered fully. He was charming and charismatic. He was an outstanding investigative reporter with an irreverent streak. The year before he died, I'd taken a leave from the Journal to work on a book, and he faxed me an article from an Indian magazine that he thought would help with my research. "From your assistant, Danny," he scrawled across the cover sheet, in his self-deprecating style.

He observed the media machine with a contrarian, skeptical eye. In November 2001, after the war in Afghanistan had begun, he wrote to me: "I'm getting to Pakistan just in time for the lull between 'well, more bombings, more deaths -- who cares now?' and 'shit, it's December, we have to round out our prize packages' " with big articles for awards such as the Pulitzers. "Okay, no more cynicism from here," he signed off. "I'm going to be a father and must maintain an idyllic view of the world."

Danny had me teach him how to say "Do I look like a fool?" in Urdu so he could tell off Mumbai taxi drivers who tried to overcharge him. Once, shortly after arriving in Peshawar on an assignment, he wrote me: "I'm at the Pearl Continental, wasn't able to get a free room despite my argument that I was the owner."

Don't look for that personality in the movie. You won't find it.

I know I'm guilty of assisting in Hollywood's mythmaking. In the fall of 2003, I went with Mariane to the Los Angeles home of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, where we ate bagels and drank coffee by the pool while listening to their pitch for buying the movie rights to her book. When Mariane decided to sell, Warner Bros. Pictures sought my "life rights," too. I agreed to sell them, even though a friend told me that making a movie about Danny's death seemed exploitative.

A year passed. Pitt and Aniston got a divorce. Pitt and Jolie got together. The movie rights passed to Paramount Vantage. Paramount hired British director Michael Winterbottom. And a script emerged.

When I read it last summer, I felt as though I'd been punched in the gut. I sat across from British actress Archie Panjabi, who had been dispatched to my home in Morgantown to learn to play me. I lamented that none of the characters were fully developed, least of all Danny.
When I watched the movie last month, I was relieved that I wasn't a servant girl, as I felt an early script had it. So I wrote to a producer, "Thumbs up okay on my end." But I wasn't being true to myself. I was reacting to the power and seduction of Hollywood.

A few days later, when I saw the photos of stars in evening gowns and tuxedos floating down the red carpet for the Cannes premiere of "A Mighty Heart," Danny's not-quite-5-year-old son among them, I had that sinking feeling again. Other friends of Danny's said they did, too. It was so not Danny.

Worst of all, the pomp came at the same time as a chilling reminder of his death. On the night of the Cannes premiere, the Daily Times, a Pakistani newspaper, ran a photo of an emaciated man said to have been the owner of the plot of land where Danny had been held and where his remains had been buried. The accompanying story alleged that the man had been held in the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, then released to Pakistani intelligence authorities, who had recently dumped him at his family's home. The headline: "Most wanted man in Daniel Pearl case: Saud Memon dies."

On the eve of the movie's New York premiere earlier this month, I was in Phoenix at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference. I was there to announce the establishment of the Pearl Project, a joint faculty-student investigative reporting project at Georgetown University that will aim to find out who really killed Danny and why. It's my own way of honoring him. His story isn't over for me. I set up the project because -- despite a confession from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11 and of Richard Reid's failed shoe-bombing, that he killed Danny -- I believe we still don't know the real truth behind what happened to him.

After the conference, I had to decide whether to go to New York for the premiere or head back home. I went home. In my home office, I stood in front of a copy of the chart I had started in Karachi to make sense of everything that happened after that January day in 2002. At the center is a single name: Danny.

pearlproject@georgetown.edu

Asra Q. Nomani teaches journalism in Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies.

Mike Lupica: It's getting hot in here

New York Daily News

Sunday, June 24th 2007, 4:00 AM


We could have had an emotional reunion of two of the BALCO All-Stars this weekend in San Francisco if Jason Giambi, who has gotten hurt a lot over the last few years, hadn't gotten hurt again - a bad foot this time - and ended up on the disabled list. Surely there would have been a fantastic photo opportunity of Giambi and Barry Bonds on the field during batting practice, maybe the two big guys giving each other a big hug.

But Giambi wasn't there. Gary Sheffield, another of the BALCO All-Stars, is an ex-Yankee, now swinging for the fences and doing a real good job of it with the Tigers. So it is Bonds against the Yankees all by himself, and Giambi against the world right now.

Giambi is the one who gets clipped for steroids finally, not in front of the BALCO grand jury, but in the place Looie Carnesecca always called Macy's window. Giambi is the one who admits to steroid use, Giambi who agrees, under duress, to speak with former Sen. George Mitchell, even though no one knows what kind of answers he will actually give to Mitchell.

Baseball gets Giambi for now.

It doesn't get Bonds, at least not yet.

But July has a chance to be one of the most unusual and dramatic months in baseball history. Not because Bonds keeps getting closer to the great Henry Aaron's all-time home run record. Because Scott Schools, the interim U.S. Attorney in San Francisco and the one who has inherited the Bonds case from Kevin Ryan - one of the U.S. attorneys whose firing has put Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' job in jeopardy - has to make a decision next month on whether to indict Bonds or drop the case against him.

Either way, Bonds might not yet be in the clear, and as always, we're not talking about the kind of steroid “clear” you can rub all over your body and think it's flaxseed oil.

Bud Selig was prepared to suspend Giambi, who finally admitted to steroid use in a newspaper interview, even if he called it “stuff,” if he did not become the first active player to cooperate with Sen. Mitchell. It is almost impossible to believe that he won't do the same to Bonds if Bonds gets indicted for perjury.

What becomes almost as interesting is this: Bonds doesn't get indicted, Schools calls off the grand jury, and baseball doesn't have to steer clear - that word again - of Bonds because he is not under federal investigation any longer.

Is it impossible to believe that Selig doesn't then throw the book at Bonds - the book in this case being “Game of Shadows” by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams with its meticulous and ferocious detailing of Bonds' steroid use, a book where the word “alleged” does not appear - and tell him that he is the next one in Giambi's seat across from George Mitchell, or else?

You can say now that Bonds won't do it, even if Selig is prepared to suspend him. Nobody thought Giambi would sit down with Mitchell, either, not even after he said what he said in USA Today.

This isn't over with Bonds yet, as much as people want it to be, as much as people still want this to be about race and not illegal drugs. Bonds is the godson of Willie Mays, who came along four years after Jackie Robinson and became one of the most celebrated and admired players of all time, hitting 660 home runs in the big leagues, doing that at a size that now makes Willie Mays look small as a jockey when he stands next to the modern medical marvel that is Bonds.

Bonds is a black American trying to break the record of a black American and somehow we are supposed to believe that it is because he is a black American.

We are also supposed to believe Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams made it all up. Five people have been convicted in BALCO and one of them is Bonds' former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who currently follows his guy's pursuit of Aaron from a jail cell.

Bonds could break Henry Aaron's record in July. He could get indicted. He could get suspended. There have been other home run chases. Not like this. Not where the guy giving chase is getting chased himself, by a U.S. Attorney and by the commissioner of baseball.

Still.

Film Review: "Day Watch"

Day Watch (4 stars out of 5)

Dazzling visuals and gritty action show Russians are masters of the vampire flick

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel Movie Critic
June 15, 2007

Movie details...
Cast: Konstantin Khabensky, Mariya Poroshina, Galina Tyunina, Viktor Verzhbitsky.
Director: Timur Bekmambetov.
Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Rating: R for violence
Genre: Horror, subtitles
On DVD: TBA

There's no need for any more movies about vampires, shape-shifters and a battle between the forces of "darkness" and the forces of "light." Not after Day Watch, the sequel to Night Watch. The Russians have that subject covered. And how.

Set in a snowy (in most scenes) modern-day Moscow, Day Watch is pretty much the ultimate Dark vs. Light combat movie.



Like Night Watch before it, it is about the real Cold War - Apocalypse Any Day Now.

A centuries-long peace between supernatural villains and super-natural-ish heroes is coming to an end, all because a weak man visited a witch to curse his ex-wife 12 years ago, leading to his son's birth and cross to the Dark Side.

Now, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) chain smokes and rides the mean streets in the utility trucks of the Night Watch, donning sunglasses to see the hellish "Gloom" that the Dark Others inhabit.

The Dark Others are allegedly also watching the Light Others during their Day Watch, giving the whole movie a mutually-assured-destruction, East-vs.-West veneer.

Anton is training the fetching Sveta, played by Mariya Poroshina, a striking Catherine Deneuve-blond. He is to handle her with kid gloves. She may be the Great Other, whatever that is.

The villainous Zavulon is trying to set Anton up to take the fall for breaking the peace. Alisa (Zhanna Friske), a Day Watcher, is in Zavulon's thrall, but she smells a rat in the murders of a couple of Dark Others.

If only Anton can find this "Chalk of Fate" that the great warrior Tamerlane *once possessed, chalk that allows you to rewrite the past to fix the present.

Got all that?



Sergey Lukyanenko's source novel is a Tolkienesque font of arcane names and nomenclature, which the movies give us in head-popping detail.

But director Timur Bekmambetov balances all that mumbo jumbo with eye-popping visuals, dazzling us with imagery, from the Medieval battles of Tamerlane and frenetic car stunts (up the sides of buildings) of today to the very end of Moscow as we know it.

It's a deliriously playful film, with droll Russian one-liners and a body-switching man-woman bit that seems to exist for no other reason than to promise hot girl-on-girl action in a shower.

Even the printed subtitles (it's in Russian, save for a prologue) are jokey - melting like snow, dripping as blood down a wall, shattering, all to mimic the words they're translating or action they're in the midst of.

The acting is gritty, grim and resolute, with the women, in particular, standing out. Galina Tyunina, as Olga, a woman who takes on Anton's body and has to keep her cool while Sveta confesses her love for Anton to her, is particularly good.

The effects aren't Hollywood-sharp and the continuity isn't all it could be - sunny, bare street days morph into overcast snowy afternoons.



But as Tamerlane's horsemen thunder across snowy steppes, trucks face off in epic games of chicken and Moscow's landmarks are assaulted by silver tinsel yo-yos (don't ask), you have to acknowledge the demented genius of this enterprise, certainly the biggest thing to come out of Russian film since the Soviet era.

Maybe they didn't invent the vampire movie. In the old days, the commissars would have insisted that they did. But thanks to Night Watch and now Day Watch, the Russians certainly have the last word in it.

Mark Steyn: We've replaced Rushdie in hiding

Sunday, June 24, 2007
Orange County Register

A year or so after the Ayatollah Khomeini took out an Islamist mob contract on Salman Rushdie in 1989, the novelist appeared, after elaborate security arrangements, on a television arts show in London. His host was Melvyn Bragg, a longtime British telly grandee, and what was striking was how quickly the interview settled down into the usual cozy, literary chit-chat. Lord Bragg took Rushdie back to his earlier pre-fatwa work. "After your first book," drawled Bragg, "which was not particularly well-received."

That's supposed to be the worst a novelist has to endure. His book will be "not particularly well-received" – i.e., some twerp reviewers will be snotty about it in the New Yorker and the Guardian. In the cozy world of English letters, it came as a surprise to find that being "not particularly well-received" meant foreign governments putting a bounty on your head and killing your publishers and translators. Even then, the literary set had difficulty taking it literally. After news footage of British Muslims burning Rushdie's book in the streets of English cities, BBC arts bores sat around on talk-show sofas deploring the "symbolism" of this attack on "ideas."

There was nothing symbolic about it. They burned the book because they couldn't burn Rushdie himself. If his wife and kid had swung by, they'd have gladly burned them, just as the mob was happy to burn to death 37 Turks who'd made the mistake of being in the same hotel in Sivas as one of the novelist's translators. When British Muslims called for Rushdie to be killed, they meant it. From a mosque in Yorkshire, Mohammed Siddiqui wrote to the Independent to endorse the fatwa by citing Sura 5, verses 33-34, from the Quran:

"The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land."

That last sanction apparently wasn't an option.



Britain got so many things wrong during the Rushdie affair, just as America got so many things wrong during the Iranian embassy siege 10 years earlier. But it's now 2007 – almost two decades after Iran claimed sovereignty over British subjects (Rushdie), almost three decades after they claimed sovereignty over American territory (the U.S. Embassy in Tehran). So what have we learned? I was with various British parliamentarians the other day, and we were talking about the scenes from Islamabad, Pakistan, where the usual death-to-the-Great-Satan chaps had burned an effigy of the queen to protest the knighthood she'd conferred on Rushdie.

I told my London friends that I had to hand it to Tony Blair's advisers: What easier way for the toothless old British lion, after the humiliations inflicted upon the Royal Navy sailors by their Iranian kidnappers, to show you're still a player than by knighting Salman Rushdie for his "services to literature"? Given that his principal service to literature has been to introduce the word "fatwa" to the English language, one assumed that some characteristically cynical British civil servant had waved the knighthood through as a relatively cheap way of flipping the finger to the mullahs.

But no. It seems Her Majesty's Government was taken entirely by surprise by the scenes of burning Union Jacks on the evening news.

Can that really be true? In a typically incompetent response, Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, issued one of those "obviously we're sorry if there's been a misunderstanding" statements in which she managed to imply that Rushdie had been honored as a representative of the Muslim community. He's not. He's an ex-Muslim. He's a representative of the Muslim community's willingness to kill you for trying to leave the Muslim community. But, locked into obsolescent multicultural identity-groupthink, Mrs. Beckett instinctively saw Rushdie as a member of a quaintly exotic minority rather than as a free-born individual.

This is where we came in two decades ago. We should have learned something by now. In the Muslim world, artistic criticism can be fatal. In 1992, the poet Sadiq Abd al-Karim Milalla also found that his work was "not particularly well-received": he was beheaded by the Saudis for suggesting Muhammad cooked up the Quran by himself. In 1998, the Algerian singer Lounès Matoub described himself as "ni Arabe ni musulman" (neither Arab nor Muslim) and shortly thereafter found himself neither alive nor well. These are not famous men. They don't stand around on Oscar night, congratulating themselves on their "courage" for speaking out against Bush-Rove fascism. But, if we can't do much about freedom of expression in Iran and Saudi Arabia, we could at least do our bit to stop Saudi-Iranian standards embedding themselves in the West.

So many of our problems with Iran today arise from not doing anything about our problems with Iran yesterday. Men like Ayatollah Khomeini despised pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser who attempted to impose a local variant of Marxism on the Muslim world. Khomeini figured: Why import the false ideologies of a failing civilization? Doesn't it make more sense to export Islamism to the dying West?

And, for a guy dismissed by most of us as crazy, Khomeini made a lot of sense. The Rushdie fatwa established the ground rules: The side that means it gets away with it. Mobs marched through Britain calling for the murder of a British subject – and, as a matter of policy on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity, the British police shrugged and looked the other way.

One reader in England recalled one demonstration at which he asked a constable why the "Muslim community leaders" weren't being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer told him to "f--- off, or I'll arrest you." Genuine "moderate Muslims" were cowed into silence, and pseudo-moderate Muslims triangulated with artful evasiveness. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who went on to become leader of the most prominent British Muslim lobby group, mused about the Rushdie fatwa: "Death is perhaps too easy."

In 1989 Salman Rushdie went into hiding under the protection of the British police. A decade later he decided he did not wish to live his life like that and emerged from seclusion to live a more or less normal life. He learned the biggest lesson of all – how easy it is to be forced into the shadows. That's what's happening in the free world incrementally every day, with every itsy-bitsy nothing concession to groups who take offense at everything and demand the right to kill you for every offense. Across two decades, what happened to Rushdie has metastasized, in part because of the weak response in those first months. "Death is perhaps too easy"? Maybe. But slow societal suicide is easier still.