Last week I saw M. Night Shyamalan's new movie, Signs. I will now review it in SPOILER-HEAVY fashion. I repeat: There WILL be SPOILERS. I shall make no effort to conceal any plot element of Signs that I think is germane to my opinion of the film. Got it? OK.

And for those who are still squeamish, I will include some blank space so as to require scrolling down to get to the actual review.




































That should be enough. From here on out, if you read this and you haven't seen the movie yet and you read something that you might not want to know prior to seeing it, I accept no responsibility.

Signs is, first and foremost, a very good film. Seeing it, I kept thinking: "This is how The X-Files used to be, back in its early seasons, before it became a Franchise for FOX." Or, even better, this is how Millennium was at its best: not merely scary but also thought-provoking, a meditation not just on What Is Out There Waiting For Us, not just on Things That Go Bump In The Night, but on what purpose there may be to everything. It seems to me that horror is probably the genre most suited to meditations on the problem of evil: Why would a good God allow so much Evil in his own universe? Of course, my own personal thoughts on this subject are not the focus of this article. Suffice it to say, Shyamalan's answer isn't totally satisfactory; in fact, in some ways I find it incredibly faulty. Even at the end, when things have played out the way they were supposed to and faith has been restored where before there was none, it still seems to me a bit capricious, a bit of whimsical action on the part of God. If God could set things up so that everything leans toward the outcome that Mel Gibson's son doesn't die, including his wife's dying words which at first seem so arbitrary as to send Gibson into a tailspin away from his faith but eventually turn out to be the key to everything, then why can't God set things up so that Gibson's beloved wife doesn't die in the first place? Shyamalan's film attempts to answer the question that bedeviled Job, but in the end I don't think he provides an answer at all, much less a satisfying one. Gibson seems to return to faith well before the key event in the film that is supposed to make it all possible. Is this a fault with the film? Not really. I rather suspect that it's a fault with the entire question of evil in the first place. I simply am not sure that there is an answer that satisfies all formulations.

So I don't think that Signs really works as a theological statement, but thankfully that's not really the level that I think it should be evaluated upon. In fact, in this day and age one almost gets positive yardage just for being willing to ask these questions in the first place. Signs is a horror film, first and foremost; and as such, it's probably the most effective one I have ever seen.

Much was made about the role of silence in Shyamalan's earlier films. (Actually, this seems true of The Sixth Sense; I never saw Unbreakable, however.) This is even more true this time out. There are long passages of this film where nothing more can be heard than the breathing of the characters, and Shyamalan likes to stretch out his silences. We know that the silence will be broken, and probably by something calculated to make us jump. Shyamalan does make us jump, but he does so in unexpected ways. The "jump" moments happen not just when characters are walking slowly through an area in which they are terrified to be, but during other moments when the "jump" moment can slip in under our radar. An early example involves a well-timed bark and snarl by a dog, during a scene where two characters are talking in fairly mundane fashion. It's not something jumping out at us in the midst of silence, backed by a fierce chord in the soundtrack; instead, we jump because it's so unexpected at that particular moment.

This careful use of unexpected moments, woven throughout the film, is how Shyamalan generates so much suspense. There is a scene where what may (or may not) be an alien is locked behind a door, and Mel Gibson picks up a butcher knife – not to use it as a weapon, but as a mirror so he can look under the door and catch a glimpse of whatever is behind the door. The film is full of unexpected moments like that, and they add to the suspense and the overall feeling of fear. He also uses humor at odd moments to defuse our fear, so that he can pop one of his unexpected moments at us again. There are some very funny moments in the film, some of them occurring during moments of high tension. The fact that they occur during moments of tension does not defuse the tension one whit, but somehow elevates it.

More interesting is the way almost nothing in Shyamalan's script is wasted. Nearly every single detail in the screenplay has some bearing on the outcome, even moments that in other films are generally used as "filler" or throw-away moments designed only to give us more information on a character. Gibson's brother (Joaquin Phoenix), for example, is a failed baseball player. This seems only to explain why he is so unfocused in his life, and why he has hung around his brother's farm for so long – until the film's climactic scene, when the nature of his baseball failure, coupled with the formerly inexplicable last words of Gibson's wife ("Swing away"), come together in startling fashion. Other details are easily overlooked: early on, we barely notice that Gibson chooses to call his human doctor rather than the vet for the family's ailing dog; only later on do we realize that he has a very real reason for not wishing to involve the local vet. Shyamalan's theme in Signs is the conflict between two worldviews: that there are no coincidences, and that everything is a coincidence. Since he comes down on the side that there are no coincidences, the structure of his screenplay – such that there are, in fact, no coincidences in his story – is all the more remarkable.

Signs works as a horror film. It is less than plausible from the standpoint of science fiction: how can the aliens fly across interstellar space but then be thwarted by wooden doors? if water is literally a corrosive poison to them, why would the aliens come to a planet that is three-quarters covered in the stuff? Questions like these, however, should not be asked. Nothing about the aliens is ever explained, and that is actually a strength, because we never know anything that the family in the film cannot also know. Again, the tension is heightened. I've rarely seen a film that displays as much calculation in every facet of its story and visuals as Signs. This film is a bravura performance by M. Night Shyamalan.

I have a fairly high threshold for things that are creepy and skin-crawling. This site, however, very nearly exceeds even my limit. There can now be no doubt: the King of Pop is the single strangest human being on the planet.

IMAGE OF THE WEEK





Frank Black (Lance Henriksen), Millennium. (Image links to The Millennial Abyss, a fine fan site for the show.)

This is one of my favorite television series ever. It was the second series from Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files, and it debuted to great fanfare in 1996 and had good ratings initially; however, over time its ratings dropped as the show's tone never varied much from the dark and grim atmosphere of the early episodes. The show centered on Frank Black, a criminal investigator who had a psychic ability to see into the minds of the killers he tracked. As he notably said in the pilot episode, "It's my gift....it's my curse." Thus Frank was torn in two directions, between delving into the darkest parts of the world in which we live and protecting his family from the darkness. Lance Henriksen played Frank Black with immense gravity, creating a character who was absolutely the moral center of everything that went on around him. Even now, three years after the show's cancellation, Henriksen's accomplishment on Milennium amazes me.

The general impression of the first season was that the show basically trotted out a "Serial Killer of the Week", and was thus a fairly hard sell. That criticism was partially accurate, but it downplays the general high quality of those first-season shows. In the second season of Millennium, the subject matter was expanded a bit to include a mix of serial killers, secret societies, Christian mysticism, and Biblical prophecy. Many fans of the series felt that Year Two was the show's best, and I agree; this was when Millennium displayed the most interesting storytelling, with excitement and emotional depth. The standout episode, for me, was the amazing "Midnight of the Century", in which Frank Black must come to terms with his mother's death in his childhood, through ghostly visits and visions. The second season was managed by executive producers Glen Morgan and James Wong, who were also responsible for some of the more memorable early episodes of The X-Files.

The third season of Millennium, though, was a seriously mixed bag that eventually fell apart completely. Part of the problem was the preceding season, which had ended with events of near apocalyptic horror; it is possible that there really was no way for the show to go on after that and remain convincing. Also, Morgan and Wong left for other pastures, and the writing that replaced them was generally nowhere near the quality of the first two seasons. The stand-alone "serial killer" episodes of the third season were not particularly well written; even worse, the "mytharc" episodes brought in all manner of X-Files-style conspiracies, ignored previously established continuity, turned former ally characters into villains with no justification (most egregiously, Terry O'Quinn's character of Peter Watts, a wonderful character from the first two seasons who became a Cigarette-Smoking-Man-style caricature in the third season), and generally foundered. Frank's wife, who had died at the end of Season Two, was replaced by Emma Hollis (Klea Scott), a new FBI partner for Frank who was never sharply drawn as a character at all. By the time Season Three was half-done, it was clear that the show would not be back for a fourth, and Chris Carter took quite a bit of heat from fans for seemingly abandoning a show that had had so much promise and had reached such heights during its first two years. Still, Season Three had some good moments, particularly a Christmas episode called "Omerta". Nevertheless, I remember Millennium almost solely on the basis of the first two seasons -- much like fans of the original Star Trek series, who will waste little time telling you how bad their Season Three was.

It was Millennium, coupled with The X-Files, that led to my re-discovery of the horror genre. For that alone I am forever in its debt.

This is who we are.

A few discussions have taken place lately -- here and here -- about the things that Stephen King says about plotting in his book, On Writing. Basically, King is very much against the use of outlines and making careful determinations of each event, as it is to happen, in his works prior to writing them. His approach is more spontaneous, and I was thrilled when I read it, because it mirrors mine quite nicely.

I don't generate outlines of my plot prior to writing a story, nor do I write character sketches of the main players. I start with one thing: a situation. This can take many forms, but generally it's a one-sentence statement of the fix that my main character either is in at the beginning of the story or that (s)he will get into early on in the story. Here are a few examples of situations I've used:

:: A book from the library happens to contain a note written by a woman who was murdered fifty years ago.
:: A pen collector's latest pen is haunted.
:: The new beer that a bartender has just started carrying is magical, with some very strange effects on the bar's patrons.

Now, there is a ton of leeway there for exploration, and the first thing that I have to establish is the main character. Basically, the question I ask myself is, "Now, what kind of person would get him/herself into this situation?" So, I decide who finds the note in the book (a lonely artist who has lost his inspiration), who is that pen-collector (an apostate Jew who fancies himself a writer but who can never finish a single work), and who owns the bar (a woman in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania). This isn't to say that these situations couldn't happen to someone else; in fact, they most definitely could -- these are merely the people who, in my mind, have ended up thus. And then, once I know Who has What Problem, I go from there, pretty much letting my characters determine their own actions. At least, that's how it feels to me. In each of my stories, I have at some point felt a certain bit of surprise at one or more junctures along the way -- and that's me, the writer, being surprised. I love those surprises, and they cropped up even when I was using outlines. Then, I would end up feeling slightly resentful either of the surprise, because to follow it meant shelving The Outline, or of The Outline itself -- because the surprise had just revealed it to be at least partially bogus. Thus, I stopped outlining altogether, except for a single project of mine -- a lengthy bit of self-indulgent Star Wars fanfic that I only work on very sporadically, and thus I find an outline helpful in knowing just what was going on when I stopped last time. Once I have my situation and my protagonist, I start writing with the protagonist, get him/her into the mess, and then watch him/her try to get out. As often as not, I will know the ending in advance; but even when I do know the ending, somehow it always turns out quite unlike what I had known would happen.

Now, this approach sometimes leads me to wrong turns. I started three drafts of the "pen-collector" story before I realized where I kept going wrong and subsequently finished it, and just this week I completely restarted the bartender story after I realized that I began it at the wrong point and had some of the events wrongly sequenced. Stopping and starting over, beginning drafts with no assurance that they will be finished, and sometimes having to shelve works for a while until I figure out what went wrong: these are all part-and-parcel of my writing process, a process which works for me and which I find enjoyable -- especially during those Eureka! moments of realization, when I recognize the correct resolution to an outstanding problem and, implementing that solution, have the rest of the story write itself. This isn't to say that this process will appeal to all other writers; far from it. To some writers, the approach I've described above is anathema. They look at this and say, "Good God, man! How can you stand to start a story and not know if that's the correct starting point? and how can you possibly write the beginning and middle of a story if you don't know how it ends?" To those authors I shrug and say, "Good God, man! How can you stand to just knock off the next part of the outline each time you sit down to write? and how can you resist it when a plot development that's not in the outline but would totally rock pops into your head?" Both of us would answer the same way:

"Well, it works."

That it does. So if Stephen King wants to start a novel with nothing more than the kernel "A teenager named Carrie, whom everyone hates, turns out to have psychokinetic powers", and if J. K. Rowling wants to write the last chapter of Harry Potter, Book VII before she's even finished Book V and started Books VI and VII, well, bully for both of them.

Well, now I have a reason for that roadtrip to Calgary that I've always wanted to take....

(link via Julie Winningham.)

I've caught up on some animated films during the past week. (When a member of one's immediate household is three years old, one quickly becomes conversant on animation.)

:: Dinosaur. This film, which combines computer animated dinosaurs with live-action backgrounds, is visually amazing -- and narratively boring. There is a wonderful opening sequence, detailing the "adventures" of an unhatched dinosaur egg after its mother is driven off and its brethren stomped upon. The egg is stolen by some kind of dino-mouse, taken into the woods where it is dropped into a stream, bobs along in the water somehow not being eaten by dino-crocs or stepped on by brachiosaurs (I think), and plucked from the edge of a waterfall by a pterodactyl. Then it ends up on a peaceful island populated by fuzzy, mammals that I think are lemurs. (I'm no paleontology expert; were there mammals during the time of the dinosaurs?) All this is told only through seamless visuals and a wonderful music score by James Newton Howard. However, then the egg hatches, and we then discover that all the animals speak English (except for the villainously ravenous carnotaurs, who only eat other dinos and roar a lot). And thus, after one of the more impressive opening sequences Disney has ever done, we're right back in the midst of what could almost be termed the "Standard Disney plot": plucky orphan with the heart of gold finds a loving family that is nevertheless not his own, and over the course of many adventures he saves his adopted family, learns his heritage, earns the respect of the Gruff Chieftain, and in the end has his own family. We get the obligatory "Young guy knows what to do, but the Gruff Chieftain won't listen to him and takes it as a challenge to his authority" business, and there are the obligatory outcasts and misfits who don't fit in but who end up being Our Hero's closest friends. It's all very slickly handled, although I felt a bit of a pall hanging over the proceedings -- after all, I know that none of it really matters because all of these beasties are going to end up dead, with some of their bones on display in a museum millions of years hence. The film is probably best for young kids who are fascinated by dinosaurs (what young kid isn't?) but who aren't ready to see other young kids nearly torn limb-from-limb in Jurassic Park. Dinosaur isn't bad, but it's really nothing special.

:: Hercules. I can't believe it took me this long to see this movie; maybe it had something to do with the baggage of that Kevin Sorbo television series or something. Anyhow, this is Disney's take on Greek mythology, and it's smart and funny. This is a frothy, light entertainment that is probably the most fun bit of traditional animation Disney has done since Aladdin. (Disney's best entertainments these days seem to be coming from the Pixar division, where the Toy Story films are made.) The film opens with portentious narration by Charlton Heston (very sad about Mr. Heston's illness, by the way) that is interrupted by the Muses, who demand to tell the story themselves. After Mr. Heston says, in that wonderful Heston fashion, "You go, girl", the Muses come to life and become a Greek Chorus by way of a Gospel Chorus, commenting on the action throughout the film. (A nice in-joke is that the Muses are first images on a Grecian urn.) You normally wouldn't think to hear Gospel-style music in a film about a Greek hero, which is part of the charm of this movie: it cheerfully mixes-and-matches so many genres, and is packed with so many witty asides and in-jokes that after watching it one almost wants to see it again immediately just to see what was missed. For instance: two children who are in danger before they are saved by Hercules yell out, "Somebody call I-X-I-I!!". Hercules has a personal trainer, voiced by Danny Devito, who is just like all those cynical old trainers in boxing movies, right down to the "This guy was my best, but he couldn't get it done" bit. (That "best guy" turns out to have been Achilles; later on, some townsfolk jeer him: "Hey, nice job with Achilles, especially his heel. Ya missed a spot!). The villain of the film is none other than Hades, the Lord of the Dead (above whose domain a sign reads "Over 50000000 Served), and he is voiced by James Woods. The drawing style of the film is markedly different from many of the other Disney films, and yet is somehow perfectly fitting with the story. The music and songs are surprisingly good. Hercules seems to be an underrated film in the Disney pantheon.

:: Kiki's Delivery Service. And then, we have a masterpiece. This Japanese anime is by the magnificent Hayao Miyazaki, who is sometimes called "the Japanese Walt Disney". The film tells the story of a young witch named Kiki, who has just turned thirteen. Thus, by tradition, it is time for her to leave home and go into the world. This she does, taking her cat Jiji with her as she flies away on her broom to seek her fame, fortune, or merely her life. She settles in a city by the ocean, where she is befriended by a pregnant couple who own a bakery. Moving in with them, Kiki starts a delivery service, making her deliveries by flying the parcels on her broom to their destinations. And, she makes friends: a boy who adores aviation and is totally fascinated by Kiki and her ability to fly via broomstick; an old lady who is blissfully unaware of her granddaughter's lack of appreciation for her; a painter who lives in the country. The locations of the film seem to be European, but it's a Europe where dirigibles are still in use and apparently World War II never happened. (None of this is really clear; one of the charms about the film is that it is totally convincing of its setting precisely by not spelling out any of its details, but by simply showing it and the people who live there.) Kiki is a charming character whose problems seem real and difficult, although not insurmountable. There is no evil threat here to be surmounted, only the normal difficulties that arise from maturity and dealing with other people. Miyazaki has a wonderful eye for the way people speak and behave; it's a testament to his skills that he can make a movie about a witch who comes to live in the city and not a minute of it feels contrived or implausible.

The animation is, of course, wonderful; that goes without saying in a film by the man behind Princess Mononoke and My Neighbor Totoro. Here, Miyazaki captures the essence of flight to such an amazing degree that I have to wonder if he actually has experience with broomstick flight. In any event, the way he depicts flight in this film is completely convincing, far moreso than the broomstick flights in, say, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

The Disney Company now owns the distribution rights in the United States for all of the Studio Ghibli films (Ghibli is Miyazaki's production company). They are bringing these films out fairly slowly -- they've had a dub of Laputa: Castle in the Sky in the can for a couple of years now -- and with relatively little fanfare, which I find surprising. (I only learned of the US release of Kiki when I spied it in the video section of my local supermarket.) Disney's intention seems to be to capture a fairly sizable share of the anime market in this country, but beyond that seems to have little interest in expanding that market by promoting Miyazaki's films as the first-rate family films that they are. Not all anime is about robots that fire lasers from their eyes and the cyberpunk teenagers who battle them; the films of Hayao Miyazaki not only reveal the breadth of anime but also provide beautiful alternatives to watching Peter Pan or The Lion King for the tenth time in one week. Princess Mononoke probably isn't appropriate for very young children, with its violence and fairly dark storyline, but Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro are family films in every sense of the word. So, for God's sake, see these movies!!!

I've added a permanent link to Terminus's blog. Thus far he's captured my interest.

In keeping with my recent retrospective on the James Bond films, I found this site -- linked by the picture above -- that is devoted to all manner of 007-related artwork, from the original covers of Ian Fleming's novels to the poster campaigns for each film and an analysis of the main title sequences of each film. It's a great site. I always wondered if the incredibly long legs on the poster for Octopussy were intentional; now I know. (They are, and the reason is one I wouldn't have suspected. It has to do with forced perspective when viewed from below.)

(By the way, playing Bond in the image above is an actor named Bob Simmons. His version of the "gunbarrel sequence" was used on the first three Bond films; a version wasn't filmed with Sean Connery until Thunderball.)

In the "Wild, Wacky Stuff" Department:

There was a young man hight Jaquandor
Who wished he were born in Numenor.
When advised it had drowned
He made nary a sound
But fell in a faint to the bar floor.

That was written by, of all people, Guy Gavriel Kay on the message boards over at Bright Weavings. It seems that GGK (as he is known to his fans) has a book of poetry, entitled Beyond His Dark House, coming out in April of 2003. This is exciting news, but not nearly so exciting as my finding myself immortalized in verse by such a fine writer as Mr. Kay. (Although, a limerick?! Of course, I brought it on myself by suggesting on the message boards my hope that none of his works begin, "There once was a man fron Nantucket...." I offered a bit of proper poetical response; the thread can be read here. Mr. Kay is from Toronto, by the way -- it's part of my joke.)

In the absence of a new novel by GGK (that will probably be another year to eighteen months in the offing), a book of his poetry will be fascinating. Here is a bit of his verse that I have loved since I first read it. It is from his novel, A Song For Arbonne (currently out-of-print, but a reissue in trade paperback is due out this fall):

Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake.

It's a funny thing about people who decide to tempt fate: what happens if they take up Pascal's Wager and lose?

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has existed for over one hundred years. How many of its musicians, in that time, have been African-Americans?

One.

And in what year was that musician hired by the orchestra?

2002.

That is simply amazing to me. More on it here, courtesy Norman Lebrecht.

Apropos of the decennial Sight & Sound poll of the top ten films of all time is interesting article by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, in which he describes his general ambivalence to these types of listing exercises. Basically, he feels that it is folly to attempt to distill a lifelong love-affair with film down to a list of ten, and only ten, films. Knowles is at his best when he gives full flower to the passion he holds for the movies, as he does here.

Ah, we're three weeks into NFL Training Camp Season. Rosters are being shaped, we're starting to get an idea of what our teams' weaknesses will be (in Buffalo, guess what? It's the offensive line....) as well as their strengths, and most importantly, the Tuesday Morning Quarterback has returned.

TMQ is the name of the weekly column by writer Gregg Easterbrook, who is a witty and knowledgable football observer. He is also brings a surprising amount of erudition to the table: this is a guy who composes haiku about football and peppers his columns with all manner of literary allusions. For a different slant on the sport of American Football, check his column out. (Fans of the Washington Redskins who are new to TMQ should check out next week's installment, when Easterbrook says he will outline just why he calls them the Chesapeake Watershed Region Indigenous Persons.)

I've linked to Steven Den Beste almost since I started this site, not because I agree with his viewpoints -- more often than not, I don't -- but because even when I disagree with him I find him very thought-provoking, and generally enjoyable to read. It's not uncommon for me to finish reading one of his posts and think, "He's wrong"; but not until the last few days have I read a post of his -- two, in this case, here and here -- have I said afterwards, "How disappointing."

Den Beste's strength is almost always in the formulation of his arguments. He presents his viewpoints with a great deal of logical rigor; he shows that he has carefully considered his premises and frequently he'll provide extensive justification for them alone before proceeding with his conclusion. This can lead to some very long posts indeed, but that's fine with me. (For the most part, anyway. His recent epic analysis of the scientific plausibility of the film Reign of Fire went over the top, but even he admitted so.) I find it sad, then, that he so eagerly employs rhetorical misdirection, non sequitur, and argumentum ad hominem in a recent flap with Demosthenes.

He recently announced that he was planning to search for "an intellectually honest antiwar voice in the blogosphere". Judging by the post in which this announcement appears, he considers "intellectual honesty" to consist of logical argumentation, presentation of alternative courses of action, and avoidance of fallacious reasoning and fuzzy thinking. And judging by the two posts that disappointed me, he has not found those things in Demosthenes. The problem is, he does not demonstrate this. Instead, he goes another route: he questions Demosthenes's sincerity and background, now basically insisting that because Demosthenes does not post under his real name, nothing can be known of his background and thus his arguments cannot properly be evaluated. But more than that, he ascribes certain motivations to Demosthenes for wishing to remain pseudonymous, motivations that he creates out of whole cloth. Steven says the following:

When someone won't even reveal his name, it should set off alarm bells unless he provides a legitimate reason for keeping it secret. If someone is confident about what they're saying, they should be willing to own up in public to holding those opinions. A person who debates anonymously may not be wrong, but you should certainly be far more skeptical about anything they say.

All of this is, though, totally irrelevant. A logical argument is a logical argument, regardless of who advances it or why. I am disturbed that Steven, who is normally so stringent in his own logic and insistent on similar rigor in his opponents' arguments, has drawn the line here. It seems to me that I should be equally skeptical of Steven and Demosthenes; not because one posts under his own name and one doesn't, or because one uses a quality commercial program to update his blog on a server that he himself owns and one uses a free (if temperamental) blogging tool to update his blog that is hosted on a free server, or for any other reason. I should be equally skeptical of both because both are advancing arguments. That is the only reason for skepticism.

Now, knowing someone's background can certainly illuminate their motives. Knowing the business background of George W. Bush, for example, I am skeptical of his motives for wishing to drill for oil in ANWR and for his general ambivalence about conservation strategies. But that still has no bearing on the actual question of whether we should drill there. Likewise, I am skeptical about President Clinton's decision to launch a military strike on the very day that the impeachment vote was to be held -- but that does not imply, in itself, that the military strike in question was unnecessary.

Secondly, Steven interprets Demosthenes's decision to use a pseudonym as "shame", as in, "D. is ashamed of what he writes". This is simply not borne out by what D. has written of his pseudonymity. It could be true; but then, I could also think of any number of other possible motivations based on what he has said on the subject. Thus, in the absence of a definitive word on D.'s motivations, Steven employs a Strawman. (And as he demonstrates here, he is quite aware of what a Strawman is.) And still, it has no bearing whatsoever on the logical validity of his arguments or, more importantly, the moral authority of his arguments. This seems to be Steven's real sticking point: he provides no analysis at all of D.'s arguments as logical constructs (at least, not in these posts; he has done so in the past and now I must wonder why he has suddenly stopped). Instead, he questions D.'s moral authority. This is a red herring. As Plato argued in the Euthyphro: "What is moral is not moral because the Gods love it; rather, the Gods love what is moral because it is moral." Or, put another way:

Moral authority does not come from whether or not one uses one's real name. Moral authority comes from advancing a view that is morally correct.

If D.'s position is the moral one, then that is all the moral authority that he needs. To insist that he provide background information, to properly demonstrate his moral authority, is to ignore the logic and instead focus on the person. This is utterly fallacious. In Steven's words: Demosthenes would, I suspect, respond to that: "Listen to the arguments, not to the arguer." But if the arguments are convincing, then why doesn't the voice who presents them act as if he believes them? Well, consider the reverse: if the arguments are not convincing, then why does it matter in the slightest how the voice who presents them acts? If a token of sincerity is to be demanded before an argument will even be listened to, then I wonder how Steven can justify disregarding what might be the ultimate form of sincerity: the willingness of the Palestinians to blow themselves up, as long as they take some Jews with them. But, as Steven adroitly points out here, logic has little to do with sincerity. Or some illusory standard of "moral authority".

Finally, I must ask one more thing: what would knowing D.'s real name actually prove? What would it establish? You don't really know anything about D. right now, and knowing his real name wouldn't change that (unless, of course, he happens to be someone famous -- but then that would probably fall under Steven's qualifier of "a legitimate reason" for pseudonymity). Steven says, By posting under a pseudonym, Demosthenes in his person is accountable to no-one. He can lie, cheat, distort, deliberately deceive, or libel with impunity, because there are no potential consequences for him in doing so. But all of this is true of people who use their own real names; witness some of the invective spouted by such shoddy thinkers as Jerry Falwell or Ann Coulter. A real name no more implies "truth" than a false one suggests the possibility of "falsehood". In fact, this is something that Steven once even admitted in this post, in which he writes in part: You don't know me. You don't know anything about me. You can't tell what kind of person I am from what I write here. I only show you what I want to show you, and some of what I show you is deliberately faked. You can't judge my behavior by what you see here, because you don't know what I do in real life. Steven, it appears, wishes to have it both ways: when convenient, he can claim, "You know nothing about me because I make some it up"; and when convenient, he can ignore an opponent on the exact same grounds.

And finally: I myself post under a pseudonym, which I assume is OK with Steven because I rarely if ever delve into the political world. But even so, I feel I should perhaps say why I do so. It's not out of embarrassment, shame, or anything else. I use this journal to explore my own ideas about art -- mainly books, music and film. Just about all of my close friends know about the blog, and they know who I am. My pseudonym is taken from a comic book from the 1980s called Six From Sirius; I started using it as an AOL screenname and I've grown used to it. I don't conceal my background, but I don't include a bio, either; perhaps I should. Suffice it to say, though, a casual reader of my blog knows that I write fantasy and horror (although I am as yet unpublished) stories and am working on a novel; that I live in Buffalo, NY; that I am a fan of the Buffalo Bills an the Pittsburgh Pirates; that I love figure skating; that Berlioz is my favorite classical composer; that I adore film music; that my favorite author is Guy Gavriel Kay; that my favorite movie is Star Wars (and that I consider The Phantom Menace a good movie); that I attended college in Iowa (specifically, at Wartburg College; that I majored in Philosophy and minored in Music; and that I am married with a daughter who is three. I've probably revealed even more than that about myself, and I'm sure I will reveal more as time goes on. I'm not "concealing" my name; I just don't find it terribly relevant to what I have to say here. Of course, that will change when I finally break into print, because I plan to publish under my real name -- at least to start with, because there are vagaries of the publishing world that make pseudonyms necessary for business. (To assume that writers use pseudonyms as a means of "avoiding the pressures of fame" is, quite frankly, an example of ignorance of realities in the publishing world. Many authors use pseudonyms because their early works, published under their own names, didn't sell and therefore publishers won't take the chance on publishing more under that name. It's an effect of the "blockbusterization" of publishing, where the backlist is nearly dead and the midlist is shrinking ever faster, and where authors used to be given six or seven books to get into best-seller territory, now they have to do it in two or three.) When that happens I will, of course, plaster a gigantic announcement to that effect here. And now, on with The Show.

A hearty "Welcome!" to people arriving by way of Demosthenes's link. As he points out, mine is not a political blog. I've outlined my reasons for avoiding politics in the past; although I am a fairly solid liberal, I choose to leave the political discussions in the hands of people like Demosthenes (and, from a different standpoint, Steven Den Beste) in favor of other pursuits. Mainly, I talk about books, music, films, sports, and the culture and future of my city (Buffalo, NY). I only dabble in political discussion on a very sporadic basis, and even then mainly when I read something that strikes me as particularly wrongheaded.

(Thanks to Demosthenes for the plug!)

I am attempting to add a commenting system to Byzantium's Shores. This is the test post; hence its complete lack of content.

Every ten years, a British magazine called Sight & Sound (the official magazine of the British film institute) polls a number of directors and critics to determine the greatest films of all time. Two lists are generated for each group, and it is interesting to compare the lists, note where the directors and the critics diverged, and realize that neither group lists a film made since 1980. Both lists name Citizen Kane as the top film of all time. For the complete lists, plus additional commentary and some samples of the lists given by the critics and directors polled, read Roger Ebert's column on the subject.

It's always a bit surprising to find an idea that one has had also occurring to someone else. It's particularly surprising to encounter it somewhere in the Blogosphere -- well, maybe not "surprising" per se, but rather "interesting" or "eerie". I'm tempted to ascribe it to the old canard that "Great minds think alike", but I've only discovered Terminus's blog today, and thus any such statement would be premature. Anyway, Terminus has started his own cycle of James Bond reviews. He's doing it one film at a time though, leading up to Die Another Day, as opposed to plowing through them all at once, as I did. He is also discovering, as I did in college when some friends and I decided to try watching the entire series in order, that it's hard to actually find them all at the video store.

(And apparently someone named Ed is doing a Bond retrospective. Hmmmm....)

Ah, the wonderful world of Buffalo politics. Current Mayor Anthony Masiello, who is in the first year of his third term as Mayor, has a new problem to deal with: his predecessor, James Griffin (who held the office of Mayor for four terms and was at the helm during the implosion of the Buffalo economy starting in the late 1970s) has produced a petition calling for Mayor Masiello's removal from office and the holding of a new election. Presumably this is because Masiello has, for the most part, been unable to stimulate any real economic development in the city. While Masiello's performance is far from admirable (and is barely adequate, if even that), it's laughable to see the former Mayor, a man whose administration was marked by all manner of cronyism and corruption, shilling for his ouster. It's yet another distraction that the city doesn't need.

James Bond Redux, conclusion.

Parts I, II, III, and IV.

:: The Living Daylights. After Roger Moore's departure from the role of James Bond, a casting search was begun for the next film in the series. Pierce Brosnan almost won the role at that point, but he was unable to escape his contractual obligation to NBC for the Remington Steele television series (which, incidentally, was cancelled soon afterwards). The role went to Timothy Dalton, who decided to base his portrayal of Bond more on the character as described in Ian Fleming's novels than as portrayed by Connery, Lazenby, and Moore. Dalton's Bond smirks less, and is a much more serious person in general. I greatly enjoyed his concept of Bond, and it would have been nice had he been able to do it in more than two films. In any event, once again the producers of the series decided to "dial it down a bit" after a pretty excessive installment. A View To A Kill had been roundly panned by critics and fans alike, and thus The Living Daylights was written to be a more streamlined espionage thriller, which it succeeds in being. This film is another high point in the series, presenting a story in which there is no villain bent on world domination but rather a trio of villains who are involved in a scheme involving diamond smuggling, gunrunning to Afghanistan, and disinforming British intelligence. The plot twists and turns more than is typical in a Bond film, which is rather refreshing. Bond is kept guessing throughout, and at times he has to trust his own instincts to get him through a certain tough spot. The heroine here is a lovely blonde cellist from Bratislava named Kara, who just happens to be the girlfriend of a Russian official who wishes to defect (or so he says). Bond is actually supposed to kill her early in the film, but he refuses to do so, and eventually she is drawn into his efforts to find out what is going on. (In a particularly charming scene, Bond and Kara are about to flee the KGB, when she realizes that she has forgotten her cello and insists on getting it. No real musician would ever leave their instrument behind -- especially when it later turns out that the instrument is a Stradivarius. This, of course, is revealed only after Bond has managed to put a bullet hole in the cello.) Her character is quite strong, as evidenced when she talks back to a Mujaheddin commander. Instead of a single villain, here there is a team of three: an American arms dealer named Whitaker, the defectee named Koskov, and an assassin named Necros. All are interesting and menacing characters -- particularly Whitaker, with his encyclopedic knowledge of war and weaponry and his hallway filled with statues of folks like Hitler and Genghis Khan. There is also a Russian general, played by the wonderful John Rhys Davies (Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Gimli in Lord of the Rings) who is caught in something of a crossfire. The action sequences are first-rate, including a teaser sequence featuring a trio of agents parachuting onto the Rock of Gibraltar and some amazing stuntwork involving a cargo-plane during the climax. John Barry's music score is one of the best in the series. The Living Daylights is one of the very best Bonds. (The Gadgets: Bond drives the Aston-Martin again, although its weapons have been upgraded. Instead of whirling tire-spikes, the wheelhubs fire lasers which cut through the chassis of a car alongside Bond. The car also fires missiles and carries outboard skis for snow-driving. Bond's other gadget is a key-ring finder equipped with lockpicks, an explosive charge that detonates at the sound of a wolf-whistle, and a stun-gas pellet that discharges if he whistles the opening notes of "Rule Brittania". This is everything a Bond gadget should be: simple, elegant, and when used cleverly, totally lethal.)

:: Licence to Kill. In my view, this is the most underrated of all the Bond films. It performed poorly at the box office when it was released in 1989, backed by a lackadaisical advertising campaign and tough competition from films like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon II, and even Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The film takes place entirely in the Caribbean and in Latin America, and it marks a stark deviation from the standard Bond formula. He is on no sanctioned mission for Her Majesty's Secret Service this time; in fact, he is acting totally on his own, at one point running from a meeting with M who has personally come to chew him out for his vigilante behavior. The reason for his actions is a druglord named Franz Sanchez, who has escaped US custody (Bond had helped put him there in the teaser sequence), killed Felix Leiter's young newlywed wife, and seriously maimed Felix himself. (The manner of Felix's maiming is actually taken from Ian Fleming's novel of Live and Let Die.) Bond goes after Sanchez, destroying parts of his operation before ultimately infiltrating it with the help of the beautiful CIA agent Pam Bouvier, played with terrific sass by Carey Lowell. ("Are you armed?" she asks Bond at one point. He shows her his Walther PPK, at which she shakes her head sadly and shows him her sawed-off shotgun.) Miss Bouvier is the strongest of all the Bond heroines; she is tough, fearless, and she gets to save Bond a number of times. There is palpable chemistry between her and Dalton; there is also great chemisty between Dalton and Robert Davi, who plays the evil Sanchez to the hilt. Davi's Sanchez isn't merely evil; there is a sense of honor behind the things he does. "This isn't personal; it's just business," he says to Felix Leiter before having him horribly injured. The film's closing action sequence, a gonzo chase scene down a series of dusty mountain roads involving a series of tanker trucks, is one the most exhilarating action set-pieces in any Bond film. The music is provided by Michael Kamen, and it's a surprisingly effective mix of Latin elements and Kamenesque action writing. (Kamen also did the music for the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard films.) Licence To Kill should be more popular than it is. (The Gadgets: Here Bond works with a rifle that responds to his palmprint alone, a tube of toothpaste that actually dispenses plastic explosive, and a lighter that is really a flamethrower. Q has his beefiest role in the series in this film; he comes to equip Bond after a worried Moneypenny begs him to, and he actually helps out in the field. He has two especially nice moments: one where he tries to console Pam Bouvier when Bond has gone off with Sanchez's stunning concubine, and one where he dresses as a farmer along the road as Sanchez drives by on the way to his hideout. In this latter scene, Q speaks into the broom he's holding, which is really a microphone, alerting Pam that Sanchez is on his way. Then, that accomplished, he tosses the broom aside and walks away -- a wonderfully funny character moment after all the times that Q has chided Bond over the years for never returning his equipment. Of course, I've always wondered: if he always wants it back, why does he almost always set it up so it explodes?)

:: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough. (Given that these films are the most recent, I'm lumping them together into a single capsule.) Due to legal wrangling there was a six-year gap between Licence To Kill and the next Bond film, GoldenEye. In that time Timothy Dalton decided to move on, and thus Pierce Brosnan finally took over the role, and he's had it ever since. As far as I am concerned, he's welcome to it until he's too old or he simply doesn't want it anymore. He brings to the part a blend of Dalton's seriousness, Moore's playfulness, Lazenby's emotion, and Connery's toughness. Some feel that Brosnan doesn't have the physical gravitas to really be convincing as Bond, but I don't agree. In fact, I think he's getting better -- his performance in TWINE was his best Bond yet. We'll know more in a few months, when Die Another Day is released.

As for the films themselves, I've enjoyed all three, although each has its faults. GoldenEye is quite good, although its setup takes too long, its music (by Eric Serra) alternates between merely functional and utterly horrid, and at several points it meditates on deeper aspects of Bond's character in a way that reminds me of the psychological baggage that has been pumped into the Batman character ever since Frank Miller's Dark Knight series came out. The heroine, a Russian computer operator played by Izabella Scorupco, is lovely and strong; Sean Bean's villain is excellent. His scheme, though, is a bit hard to swallow.

Tomorrow Never Dies is one of the most relentlessly paced Bond films; its emphasis is most definitely on action over plot. Bond is less a spy here than an action hero, and although the film works I'm not sure if that change is a good one. I'm of the opinion that James Bond should do more spying than heroics, but TND is chock-full of action set-pieces and the effect is generally overwhelming. Nevertheless, there is a lot to like in the film; Michelle Yeoh's heroine could be an action-star in her own right; Jonathan Pryce's media-mogul villain is in the best tradition of Bond-baddie-megalomania; David Arnold's score is a tremendously fun listen. TND is not a bad film, but pedal-to-the-metal really isn't the proper pace of a Bond film.

The World Is Not Enough. The title is an allusion to On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Part of that film's plot deals with heraldry, and "The world is not enough" turns out to be the ancestral motto of the Bond family. I found this film a mixed bag. Robert Carlyle's villain, a terrorist who is dying from a bullet in his skull that also has rendered him impervious to pain, is one of the creepiest of Bond baddies. Sophie Marceau may be the best femme fatale of the entire series. In this film, M actually figures in the action, giving Judi Dench something to do other than tell Pierce Brosnan what to do. Desmond Llewelyn plays Q for the last time, before his role is taken over by John Cleese, a perfect bit of casting if ever I've seen one. "Ah, there's the famed 007 wit," Cleese says. "Half of it, at any rate." (Tragically, Llewelyn himself died in a car crash shortly after the film's release. He was 85 at the time.) The film involves more espionage than Tomorrow Never Dies, but there are also some incredibly loud and over-the-top action sequences -- particularly a boat-chase on the Thames and the climax on a submarine that looks strangely like the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The plot's twists and turns are sometimes hard to follow, and at times Bond's actions are unexplainable. The worst thing in the film, though, is its heroine: Denise Richards has less charisma than any other leading lady in any other Bond film, by far. From the first moment she appears -- when the film tells us that she is a nuclear scientist, and her name is "Christmas Jones" -- her character is completely unbelievable. The World Is Not Enough gives me the impression of a film that needed one more draft of screenplay done, and one key role re-cast entirely. (Special note: this film would be an excellent instructive example for people who don't believe that letterboxing for home video is desirable. In the fullscreen video release, some of TWINE's action sequences -- most notably a fight and chase in a nuclear missile silo -- are all but impossible to follow. I don't know if the film is out on Widescreen DVD, but that would be the way to see it.)

:: Die Another Day. See you this winter. View the trailer here.