ON THE COVER OF THE ROLLING STONE (TERRORISM EDITION)

I gather you all know about the kerfluffle over the latest edition of Rolling Stone, which features a cover story on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and has managed to offend Decent Americans Everywhere by using a photo that makes him look like a rock star.

Like this.



As opposed to the New York Times, which made Tsarnaev look like a proper terrorist.

Like this.



See the difference?

Needless to say, I think the whole thing is silly. When I saw the RS cover, it never once occurred to me that they were trying to make Tsarnaev look awesome.

Okay, I do get that part of this is simple context. Most people tend to think of Rolling Stone as a rock music magazine, even though RS does frequently delve into investigative political journalism, and even puts it on the cover from time to time. That tends to confuse people. It’s also why certain people (by which I mean conservatives) tend to dismiss RS political stories as tripe, because what do a bunch of rock critics know about Important Political Issues?

Blah blah blah.

So yes, a lot of the disconnect is simply from people who don’t read RS and assume it’s all about rock-star glamour, therefore anyone who makes the cover must be considered a rock star by RS. Never mind the actual subhead describing him as a monster on the cover. Never mind the article itself, which starts with this:

Our hearts go out to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, and our thoughts are always with them and their families. The cover story we are publishing this week falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone’s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day. The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens. –THE EDITORS

The furor over this is based solely on the fact that Tsarnaev is on the cover of RS looking pretty – therefore RS thinks terrorism is cool!

Or something.

Like I say, it’s silly.

And now I’ll direct you to sensible commentary from Matt Taibi and The Big Slice, who do a good job of dissecting the ridiculousness of it all.

And of course, I recommend reading the actual article itself. 

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,

This is dF

GIANT ROBOTS, GIANT MONSTERS, FAST ZOMBIES

I haven’t seen many of this year’s summer blockbusters. Hardly any, in fact. But I have seen these two right here.

Pacific Rim

Guillermo del Toro’s love letter to giant-monster/giant robot films, in which giant monsters start emerging from a portal in the ocean floor and attacking coastal cities. Humanity fights back with giant robots. Said fights are epic.

There’s so much wrong about this film – technological silliness, bad decision making, and acting ranging from standard to hammy – and yet it works so wonderfully. In fact, my only two real complaints are: (1) Hong Kong being made to look like a scene from Blade Runner (again), and (2) too many night fights that make it hard to see what the actual monsters and robots look like. One of the cool things about those old giant-monster films was being able to identify different types of monsters. If you asked me to describe any of the monsters in this film, I couldn’t do it without referring to Cloverfield.

Anyway, yes, it’s basically epic cartoonish monster/robot fights and epic cartoonish destruction woven together with a basic cartoonish storyline and cartoonish science. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Which is all anyone really asks of both a summer blockbuster in general and a giant-monster/giant robot film in particular. If you were hoping for a serious film that makes a cartoonish premise realistic and believable, yr going to be disappointed. If you only ever watched those films to see giant robots and monsters smash shit up, this is right up yr street.

World War Z

Between the reports of a zillion rewrites and reshoots, and the fact that the trailers suggested it would be nothing like the book, it seems a lot of the reaction to World War Z has been, “Wow this didn’t suck nearly as much as I thought it would.” Personally, I was unaware of the production issues, but I have read the book, and while I understand the problem of staying faithful to a book intended to read like a UN report, I was a little put off by the CGI zombie swarms.

Anyway, my reaction is similar to the “wow, it didn’t suck after all” category. Some of the zombie chase scenes are quite intense, and WWZ makes a decent attempt to put a global face on the zombie epidemic, even if it falls a little short. On the other hand, it does veer into ludicrousness (the airplane scene in particular), and the ending probably could have used a little more explanation as to why that would work even by pub-science logic.

For all that, it’s a decent film, but one you can’t help thinking could have been so much better and used the WWZ concept as a platform for taking chances, especially with things like AMC’s The Walking Dead raising the bar for the zombie genre. On the other hand, WWZ isn’t really your standard zombie film – there is a noticeable lack of gore compared to other zombie films, which makes a kind of sense in that WWZ plays more like an apocalyptic disaster film than a horror film. (That said, I’m assuming it’s also because the studios wanted a mainstream PG-13 film.) So you should modify yr expectations accordingly.

Ain’t got time to bleed,

This is dF