Transformers 2: Michael Bay's Love Letter to the American Military

I had the opportunity to go see TF2 in Imax with a bunch of the ILM crew who worked on the film. I'm not going to say whether it was good or bad (my one word review when I got home late in the evening was "loud"). There were however a few interesting points that I felt like were worth a little comment.

This is the first (subtly) anti-Obama summer blockbuster. The "President" (as he is always only referred to in your good solid world-threatening film in which he does not play a character) is issuing ineffectual and meddling orders from afar, through his National Security Advisor. They are constantly standing in the way of the leaders of joint military alliance between US military and the Autobots (who though they can't prove why their opinions are right (they just *know* they are) the audience knows they're right). Unlike your usual action film though, made in a historical vacuum where the mention of a President's name can't date the film, there is actually one little mention of "President Obama" (he's being taken to an undisclosed location after a big Decepticon attack). So a text on civilian power meddling in military affairs they can't understand also becomes a little political jab.

Additionally, the military's capabilities seem to have drastically improved since TF1. Towards the end of the film there is (spoiler alert) a big battle (aren't you glad I warned you?). A deafening roar of hot metal-on-metal action with some bullets, grenades and tank rounds thrown in for good acoustic measure.



The difference here from the first film is that in TF1, the only way to kill a Decepticon was with an Autobot. It's pretty standard movie fare - if you're fighting an alien race, you can only BARELY defeat them with human ingenuity, UNLESS you are allied with the good half of that race, then only they can kill the evil half. In this epic (loud) battle sequence, the human unit commander calls in a special send-everything-we've-got strike force. And after a 1.5 minute montage of clips from Navy and Air Force recruiting commercials, the men and women of the US Armed Forces starting fighting the Decepticons. And doing so quite effectively. Tank shells seem to work the best, but also machine gun rounds seem to do some sort of trick.

The important difference in this film is that we are in a military alliance with the Autobots, and we are keeping up our end of the deal. They're not just protecting us. And of course it's no surprise that Michael Bay gets the unparalleled access to military kit that he does with a film like this. (My friend who worked on it says, and who knows if it's true, that the military sees recruiting spikes after every one of his movies.) No surprise also that one of the early posters for the film included the tagline "Roll Out".

Our digital panopticon

Last night my dear friend Chloe and I were discussing her dating life. Specifically that she was interested in identifying and seducing the head of a vanilla bean empire from a certain African nation. I recommended she just seduce that country's new 30-something president. Let's call this country "Adagascar-May".

True to form, Chloe tweeted our conversation.



Then, I find her tweet was re-tweeted:



Then I find a new follow-request in my email from this gentleman:



This just barely tops the time I caught hell from the guy who said Russia would rule the world in 2035. Well done, internets, well done.

The Dow as our leading indicator

I've been talking a lot lately about why I haven't understood why we care so much right now what the Dow is doing. It's arbitrary right? Not a day after I had that conversation with Robin, Tim at Snarkmarket posted: "The Stock Market is Not a Good Metric Here". Great minds...

Then last night I had the distinct pleasure of watching a full episode of The Daily Show and leave it to Jon Stewart to put these concerns exactly right - Why are we treating the Dow Jones Industrial Average as an opinion poll on the President's performance. Take it away, Jon.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

The Dow Knows All

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Bloggers vs. Journalists

I've been kicking around a few thoughts the last few days as my Twitter stream has been inundated with updates from former Wonkette blogger Ana Marie Cox. Cox is one of the shining lights of the DC blogosphere - someone who has been at it with a fervor since at least 2004 and who has now parlayed it into a reasonably successful career reporting on politics.

That parlay is the part I want to go into. For the last few years we've heard distinct lines drawn between bloggers and journalists - as if they were different creeds. (Working in citizen journalism, trust me, I've seen the line drawn even further.) But I think the line is far blurrier than anyone in traditional media is willing to admit.

Cox is a great example. She began as a blogger - such a capital-B-Blogger that the NY Times Magazine featured her in a cover story on the political blogosphere in the 04 campaign (in an ever so charming article full of come-hither photos, hard drinking anecdotes and nary a mention of her marital status). And even in 2008, after things didn't work out with Time mag, she was fund-raising through her blog to make it through the final legs of the McCain campaign. Yet everything that she was live-blogging and live-tweeting was all thanks to the access granted her by her press credentials. And today - her Twitpics of the Obama event in Ft Myers, again, are thanks to her new gig as Air America correspondent.



So I am going to advance an argument, and not one that I think is particularly new, but one that has larger implications for the folks further down the spectrum at the citizen journalism end of things: There is no hard line between journalism and the blogosphere. There is a messy gray area in which ethical questions become insoluble quandries that could easily end up ignored. Blogger is not a separate class anymore than 'freelance journalist' is any different than 'staff journalist'. And to follow Ana Marie Cox, blogger is just what you do in the minor leagues before you go pro.

Rough sketches on my part. Your thoughts?

The man who knows all the pirates

New favorite news source The Daily Beast has a fantastic article, (I think it's poorly named though I didn't do much better, did I) called The Pirate Whisperer. It's about Andrew Mwangura, a Kenyan negotiator who lives in a shack on a beach but is your go-to man if you need to get in touch with any Somali pirates.



Mainly I like this article because it's chockful of piratical facts I had no idea about.

"There are seven pirate clans in Somalia, and they do not go into each other’s areas. So the location of the ship tells us much about which group we were dealing with."

"But most of that money does not stay in Somalia. These young men carrying guns are just foot soldiers. Their leaders are in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Canada."

The lower god of the pantheon of the Wu-Tang Clan

Far be it from me to try to break on to the hip-hop blogging scene - but I really enjoyed this article on Slate - No Father to His Style: The spiritual journey of Ol' Dirty Bastard.

It's a pretty quick read - but just a window into the sort of complicated urban theology/mythology that makes me love our hodgepodge culture. This quote is not specific to Dirty, but I loved it:

Dirty's home in hip-hop was the Wu-Tang Clan, where—commercially speaking—NGE doctrine was part of the package, part of the plan. His cousin and fellow Five Percenter the RZA masterminded it on brooding solo walks around Staten Island, N.Y.: In order to conquer the world, Wu-Tang would have to be a world. Nine killer MCs pickled in late-night kung fu flicks, chess lore, Marvel comics, street life, weed cabbalism, and NGE slang eschatology—a hip-hop Middle Earth, with its own legends and grades of being. No other crew could match the sorcerous allure, the smoky Dungeons & Dragons vibe curling off those minimal Wu-Tang beats.

Snow in New Orleans

This is the sort of little moment of media that makes me love the Internet:



Thanks katy*art