NYCweboy

Needles And Pins... Ah.

We're back in Miami after a week of cruising... and frankly, I'm a bit cruised out. I highly recommend Norwegian and their amazing Epic cruise ship... but entertainment on that scale is work, for both the staff and the guests.

As you might guess - and surely if you know me - I am one for some pretty intense pampering, and my vacation involved a lot (too much, really) spa time. Massages, a hydro spa (including a sauna with an oceanside view)... just let me at them.

And then... I also tried acupuncture, for the first time.

If you, like me, are generally not pro-needles, your reaction to the idea of being pinned in a number of places may be as averse as mine generally has been. But years of back pain - in part from scoliosis - and a sudden burst of jaw pain led me to look at any possibility. And one look at me, and the acupuncturist said "you need acupuncture."

Sure, that's to be expected from someone selling a service, but after three treatments on my back and left leg, and two on my jaw, I have to say the stuff seems to work. And how. In the last four days of cruising, and since returning, I have ease of movement and freedom from pain in my back and legs like I haven't had in years. And the pain in my jaw has lessened substantially. And much of the stress and tension I carry in my body - especially in my neck and shoulders - is largely gone.

I'm not trying to oversell the prospects - for one thing, I'll need more treatment, and probably more time with a chiropractor. And acupuncture is expensive (as is chiro). Moreover, I won't lie: some of the sessions were uncomfortable, and some of the needle insertions really, as they say, "struck a nerve." Your acupuncturist has ways to "dial back" the intensity, and should be attuned to your comfort. Acupuncture is meant to help, not punish, the patent.

Still, I was surprised about how minimally uncomfortable the needle insertions were, and thrilled with the results. And I'm not shy about believing, firmly, that there's something to alternative treatments for what ails us - because of the acupuncture I won't be seeking out painkillers, or seeing a doc to talk about surgery, or considering some sort of radical dental procedure on my jaw.

Sure, I feel like a starlet with a new pet cause, but I'm not asking you to call me now and order your pins for the low price of $29.95; I just wanted to pass along the effects of an interesting new experience. Really, I never thought I'd just agree to lie down and be stuck with a lot of needles. And even more amazingly... it worked.

The Good Earth

Just to continue a thread I brought up before I started my travels, I wanted to expand on some thoughts about the environment and environmental concerns.

I took some time during the trip to sit and watch (for me, a vacation is a great time to catch up on media like films I may have missed) the documentary Cool It, about Bjorn Lomborg, a self described "environmental skeptic." I'd seen trailers for the film, and intended to see it in theaters, but it came and went too quickly for me to actually follow through.

Having seen it, I've decided that Lomborg - a Danish professor - gives the kind of summary about the environment and what we can do about it that really dovetails with my own sense of things. Rarely have I heard anyone sum up the concerns I have about the environment while reflecting the doubts I share that a lot of what the "progressive" left proposes to do about it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Lomborg spends much of the film taking apart, and thoroughly criticizing the kind of environmental alarmist mentality of films like An Inconvenient Truth. The idea of worldwide floods that are just disasters waiting to happen, hurricanes and other disasters that supposedly show how terrible things have become... these are scientific issues that Lomborg, with substantial help from some very knowledgeable scientists, takes apart and generally debunks. He also makes a convincing case that much of the "personal change" approach to environmentalism - where we all drive Priuses or use those new lightbulbs - won't make much of a dent in energy consumption, or reducing global temperature.

More pointedly, the film lays out a strong case that "cap and trade" - the system of taxing carbon emissions and allowing companies to trade pollution credits - is a dicey scheme that probably won't work. Just as pointedly, Lomborg points out that some 20 years of worldwide meetings on climate change and discussions to substantially reduce carbon emissions have led to absurd proposals that no one will follow and are probably wildly unrealistic, counterproductive, and again, unlikely to make much of a difference in reducing global temperature.

As I said, rarely have I seen a film that so thoroughly confirms, with actual scientific backup, much of the kind of views I've come to about environmental issues. Like Lomborg, I think global warming is a real, serious problem... but I just don't think much of what's proposed to address it makes much sense, seems awfully expensive, and unlikely to work. Meanwhile, other, simpler solutions (like providing more targeted funds to research and development in solar, wind and other technologies), are ignored or barely addressed.

It's easy to blame a lot of this on corporate interests and lobbying influence... but the film does a nice job of breaking down the related idea that scaring people - particularly people who live comfortable lives in developed countries - is a generally effective way to put an issue into public discourse and that much of the scare mongering is also probably a well meaning, but misguided attempt to get people to pay attention to an issue that matters, in many ways, to us all.

Sine I started writing this blog, I've become far more sensitized to the reality that scaremongering and fear driven decision making explains a lot about American politics and so much of why we can't seem to find sensible, practical solutions to the problems we actually face. It's easier, really, for both sides to name call and paint ugly pictures about how terrible the other side is; already that dynamic is beginning to take shape as a driving force as we head towards 2012. Though I didn't spend a lot of time following the news (far less than usual), I saw the birth certificate silliness unfold, and all the backlashes, finger pointing, and recriminations. I still stand for the proposition that we need more voices trying to ratchet down the language of fear and distrust, and look more towards generating ideas and positive discussions about how to approach the problems we face. If that seems pollyanna-ish, or compromising, or "centrist", so be it. IU'm more interested in figuring out the ways we can positively change people's lives, than spending time feiguring out just who is awful, how much, and how often.

At the very least, take a minute and watch Cool it. And consider the kind of environmental discussion we could have if we stopped screaming about imminent floods and telling people to use eco-friendly lightbulbs. That's the kind of environmentalist I'd like to be, and for now, it's the one I am.

Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Greetings from Nassau. :)

We've been having a lovely cruise around the Eastern Caribbean. I thought I might try and write - a little - while onboard, but a preference for leisure very quickly took over, and happily, my pooter seemed most comfortable stored away.

Tomorrow the dream ends, and we are back to real life, and real time.

It's the sense of time that's struck me a lot on this trip - the time we have, the time we waste, how much people can try to cram into a day. And how hard that becomes when there are no clocks.

Like many cruises, and resorts (and, if you never noticed, Starbucks), the Norwegian Epic has almost no clocks anywhere. Not on most of the public decks, no clocks in staterooms, and so it can become a mystery just what time it is. This is fine, say, if your day majinly consists of lying around by the pool... but this is a ship full of activities and options. There's a (fabulous) spa, an awesome gym, and lots of dinners and shows to choose from. All at scheduled, specific times. 

And no clocks.

It's enough to make one buy a watch (and thanks to a very large onboard shopping plaza, lots of nice watches at deep discounts to American retail prices)... but it's also kind of a pain. A 10:00 gym class, a 12:00 massage... what time is it again?

So far, I've nearly missed one reserved only lunch, and two spa appointments, not to mention nearly missing the boat trip I'd arranged to join from St. Thomas to St John. My phone has become a lifesaver in terms of keeping track... but in St. Thomas and St. Maarten, my phone decided we were in the next time zone... and I gained an hour. And generally thought I was late. Or early. Or something.

Sure, time is a luxury problem - and so are those spa appointments - but it's the sense that time should have no meaning, on a rigorous schedule, that's really striking me as odd. Culturally, I think the tension between a vacation where time doesn't matter, and the heavily scheduled leisure of a cruise trip, are a good example of how confused Americans can be when it comes to leisure and time off. Have a great time, take it easy... but try to be on time.

And now, I probably have to go off to an appointment somewhere.

Las Palmas

I've been prearranging my posts this week for my actual vacation - as you read this, Mom and I are cruising in the Caribbean - and we started out, as we do, in Miami, to catch the cruise.

Don't get me wrong, we've had a lovely dat and half here... but every trip to Miami reminds me of just how stage managed the American landscape can be... and puts a much finer point on the environmental problems we face.

I'd been thinking, for a few weeks, about writing a darkly cyincial (and rehashed) point about the failure of the "green" movement to really make effective inroads in the American psyche, but being here kind of stopped me cold (or, er, warm). I am sitting in a hotel overlooking carefully manicured palm tree lined vistas surrounding man-made lakes. And it's not the artificiality, but the sense of the sheer amount of labor involved to manufacture this that has me flabbergasted.

Up in New York, I live in and around the woods. And some of it, clearly is artificial creations - we have resevoirs and dams and carefully manicured estates galore in Westchester. And yet, in a way, it all feels kind of organic. Many of the lakes were already there. The woods already existed. We've moved some things, built some walls, planted some trees... but much of it came that way.

Miami is swampland. Sea level property and mud flats that have been carefully filled in and paved over and dug up and dressed up to look like a tropical paradise. The sense of waste is palpable. The reality that it's unsustainable strikes me as obvious. And that's before we talk about the tornadoes and the hurricanes.

Lying by the pool yesterday (on Earth Day!), nar the artifical waterfall, facing those palm trees and fake lake, I was at once comfortable, staisfied... and unnerved. I don't like the idea that we have to change so much of our American culture to get things more envronmentally correct. But on the other hand, there's something just kind of twisted and sad about the lengths you would go to make an office park where every building fronts a lake. And I can't say I'm opposed to stopping that.

I've long thought that the environmental movement is a failure both because it tends to have the goal of making us all feel worse about ourselves and it proposes unrealistic things that don't really solve our problems. I'm not especially impressed with anything I've read about carbon emission taxes. I don't feel like there's enough focus on ending sprawl and scaling back suburbs. We need better urban planning because we really could do more with less; re-centralize our cities, make them more walkable and approachable, reduce the need to drive and our lust for excessively artificial spaces. Or we can live in the actual woods. But this thing about living surrounded by palm trees and fake lakes... it's creeping me out, man. Seriously.

...Or We Could Pretend There Isn't Any Debt.

I'm not an expert in debt financing, bond issuance, and I don't have a degree in economics, so I can't claim anything close to being expert (all of which, I find, is more than, say, Ezra Klein will admit), still, one thing I'm pretty clear on is that we do have a financial problem in this country because our government has issued a lot of bonds, and will need, at some point, to pay them off.

In all the talk about whether and how we need to address the "budget crisis", there's a growing line on the left that, in fact, the debt crisis is simply made up. Deficits aren't a problem, it is argued, America's ability to issue bonds is not a problem, and, if some are to be believed, the debt is mythical because the government can simply put more money into "the system" and there won't even be any debt.

Like I said, I can only do a layman's analysis of all of this... but I think denial, generally is a dangerous thing, and liberals would be better served taking at least some aspects of the actual budget problems we actually have more seriously. Deficits do matter. Eliminating them would be a good idea. Reducing our nation's reliance on bond issuance would help.

And you can admit all of that... and still disagree with everything coming out of Paul Ryan's mouth.

There has always been more than one way to address our debt problems in this country. We can, and should, end all of the "Bush Tax Cuts", not just on the "very rich". The artifical reductions made in 2001 have done exactly what was predicted: ruined the government's ability to match revenue and outlays, and exploded the budget deficit. I don't buy that the right has a "starve the beast" theory (because I think the right also lacks the will to make the hard choices required to drastically cut spending), but it's clear that the current conservative tagline about "we have to solve the budget crisis" is aimed only at cutting a certain kind of government spending, and that's one reason, among many, it's likely to fail.

But there's a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that taxes shoud be raised and some spending should be reduced. Defense spending needs to be cut. Some of our military operations need to be drastically cut back. And we do, clearly, need to do more to address the unreasonable, endless growth of healthcare costs, which probably means some major adjsutments to how Medicare pays for care, and probably also means an expended federal role in Medicaid. In a government system spending billions and billions of dollars... there are surely millions and millions of dollars that could be cut.

Pretending that we don't have a debt problem - that government bonds are some fantastical financial instrument that don't, basically mean the government is borrowing current funds against future receipts - is a fanciful exercise fueled by deep seated distrust of opaque institutions like the Federal Reserve. I strongly agree with the propositions that we need both greater transparency and far more oversight of the Fed and the financial system... but some of the more adventurous theories on the left about bond policy and debt planning border on conspiracy theory.

Nothing about the debt problems we have means, conclusively, that we have to stop protecting seniors from a horrible fate in their final years - not ending Social Security, or tampering with Medicare or Medicaid til they're all but useless. But if liberals plan to mount a full on defense of these crucial social policies, then we all need to work harder and take more action to actually make the case that while we do, yes, have some debt and deficit problems, they are solvable, and not on the backs of the poor and needy. It's okay to say we have a debt crisis... because we do, in fact, have one. Admitting we have it is a key step in figuring out how to fix it. Or we can pretend there's no debt problem... and watch the right eviscerate much of anyone's future.

Hop: What Was That Thing About Children And Animals?

In need of a break last week - and with a couple of weeks there of some pretty weak cinema choices - Mom and I went to see Hop. And I'm not saying we didn't have a nice time - even with the screaming kids; if I thought we suffered, one look at the audience leaving Limitless convinced me that one can wait - but Hop was the movie equivalent of cotton candy: a little goes a long way, and you can find yourself hours later wondering "what have I done?"

An Easter themed combination of live action and animation, Hop's heart is in the right place... but almost nothing else is. A big bag of script trouble, weak performances and carelessness surrounds Hop, and the film that manages to escape probably shouldn't have.

Hop is the story of the Easter Bunny, an inherited position, apparently, among one family of rabbits (none of whom seem to have a mother), and how the latest heir to the title doesn't want to be the Eatser Bunny, he wants to be a drummer. In a band... no wait, a bahhhnd, as one can only say in slightly Cockney-fied English. They're English bunnies apparently... and they live on Easter Island. Heh.

EB, our bunny hero, flees the island - just before Easter - and heads to Hollywood... where he meets Fred O'Hare (are you feeling the cheese yet? Huh? Huh?), an aimless young slacker who believes, most of all, in the Easter Bunny, who he saw once, as a kid, and...

Oh... what the hell... just trying to explain this mess takes too much effort.

At every turn in the plot, Hop is just lazy. The ostensible frame for this story is that the bunny and the slacker both have daddy issues and each wants kind of what the other has... except not exactly, and anyway, Daddy Issues are so 2008. There's some equally lazy business about an Easter chick who wants to be the head Easter Bunny, which gives the film a bad guy and a sense of danger... but it's all kind of dopey and confusing and doesn't make a lick of sense. And I don't think any of the film exectives cared, since mainly the film seems designed by focus group polling data. It's kind of like The Chipmunks, and it's kind of like a sassy Disney film, and it's kind of topical like Shrek... and that's funny, right?

In the nearly thirty years since Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, one thing I don't anyone has appreciated enough is that film's really creative thinking about the relationship between live action and animation. Unlike many films, the interactions between humans and cartoons in Roger Rabbit, while broadly comic, isn't excessive - there's not much shameless mugging by the humans, and their performances seem realistically pitched to the toon characters. It's hard to do, and the current vogue for mixing computer animation and humans tends to underline why - with nothing to really play against, many actors wind up overacting, and it's usually painful to see.

James Marsden is a handsome, talented presence on films, with plenty of quality work to show for it (and one would think, reasonably well paid for it)... so what he's doing in Hop as the O'Hare character is something of a mystery. Less of a mystery, given my Roger Rabbit point, is that Marsden's performance nearly wrecks the film - all shameless mugging and overdone triple takes. More sadly, he doesn't particularly have a charcter to play, just some unfocused, and frequently unfunny ideas about being a slacker and lacking purpose. Much of it is of the "so bad, it's painful to watch" variety.

Much has been mde of Russell Brand's turn as the bunny - and the fact that, a week after Hop, Brand was back as Arthur in the remake of the Dudley Moore film, which promptly bombed - and some of it is a little unfair. Brand, as he can be, is easily the best thing in the movie, an easy, natural presence (and it's just his voice!) who gives EB a playful, relaxed vibe. Everyone else may be running around madly, tripping over themselves and shouting, but Brand just quietly underplays the thing and reels off plenty of "did he just say that?" asides. He's aided immensely by the fact that when you look like a cute fuzzy stuffed rabbit, saucy lines don't sound nearly so dirty.

Ultimately the problem with Hop is as simple as the fact that there isn't, really, an "Easter Bunny" myth with any real structure... which leaves miles of room to go in and invent one. Which, if Hop bothered to do that work, might make for at least an inetersting exercise. Instead, Hop is just a lazy amalgamation of focus-group assembled ideas (Daddy issues! Physical comedy! The internet! Asian kids! Stir!) that don't make a lot of sense, held together in a candy colored eggshell. One tap, and it just falls apart.

A Valley Of Pine, A View Of Llan

I'm part (and parcel) of the generational shift of soap operas from "women's daytime television" to a more teen driven demographic, so the announcement that ABC is cancelling All My Children and One Life to Live hits a little closer than it otherwise might. But it's that very change in audience -and the fact that, like many kids my age, I gave up on soaps pretty much after graduating college - that makes this news more or less overdue... and proof that the Women's Movement actually won a battle here.

People will talk about "shrinking audience share" and the need for more profitable programming, but underlying the cancellations is the story of feminism and how it changed our nation. One part - the obvious one - is the fact that large numbers of women started working instead of staying at home to raise kids. The other, less noticed part, is that at home or not, women stopped, in large numbers, looking to television shows that reinforced quaint, outdated notions of social expectations and mores. Once soaps started loosening their morals and chasing a more sophisticated, and jaded, audience, the die was pretty much cast. And ever since, it's just been a matter of time before the whole thing petered out.

Even now, the soap that probably did the most to up-end the traditional notions of soap morality - the category killing The Young and The Restless - soldiers on, still leading the evr shrinking, ever weakening pack. When Y&R first burst on the scene, it was clear that something had shifted. But the shift probably happened years before that.

Starting in the mid-sixties, there was actually a wholesale revamping of the midday soap schedule; that's when Another World, General Hospital and The Edge of Night, among others, began to appear. Another World, with its focus on psychological insights (the "other world" was inside the mind), was especially significant, and successful, in revamping how soaps told the stories they told. They were followed, in the early seventies, with the arrivals of All My Children and One Life to Live, cementing the success of Agnes Nixon, a writer of soaps, who moved into the role of creating new ones.

All My Children was one of the first shows to wade into "contemporary" political issues as part of their storytelling, with a Vietnam storyline and a son missing in action, leading to an impassioned speech from the actress playing his mother (who went on to win the first Emmy given to any daytime performer). Like the other shows, this was merely a reflection of the times and the shifting landscape of women's lives. It was in the seventies that soaps started reflecting the women's movement, sending more of their female characters into the workforce, and making them more independent. That, in turn, naturally led to a more frank depiction of sex and sexuality.

I started watching soaps as a kid for tow reasons: one was my Grandmother, and her sister, both of whom had their "stories", which dated, honestly, back to radio. I remember my Grandmother watching Search For Tomorrow, one of the real warhorses of daytime drama dating back to the fifties. And as my mom worked, I had babysitters afterschool, all of whom watched programs. And after school, I naturally joined in.

That's how I wound up watching General Hospital, and at times, AMC and OLTL. And the shows noticed the demographic changes as well, subtly shifting to storylines involving younger characters, the teen children of their established stars. Luke and Laura didn't just happen by accident. Or Patch and Kayla. Or dozens of others.

In colege, it was unsurprising to see people arrange classes to leave time for lunch and an hour of soaps - Y&R, or Days of Our Lives, or AMC, usually. Each show had a lounge somewhere. And budding VCR technology allowed for recording of one's faves for later viewing, just as DVR and the Soap Network have now made "time shifting" a part of everyday (and ratings) reality.

The overarching reality, though, is that fter college, abandoning soaps became all too easy; the realities of work and a scoial life overhwlemed following even one show, even with recordings. Audiences dropped, then fell off cliff after cliff. And really, the shows had become unmoored from nearly every aspect of everyday life. By the time Passions arrived, with its preposterous plotting, talking dolls, and witchcraft, what was noteworthy was the desperation, not the fact that it was over the top. All the shows - clones! mystery islands! - had given over to impressive absurdity.

It's a shame to lose soaps - more than anything, in New York, it means the collapse of an industry that made it possible for thousands to spend their lives as the working actors they wanted to be - but the driving impulse that created them and sustained them is gone. The need to convince women that their lives at hiome were not so bad, that they wer important and valuable, evaporated as middle class women took control of their lives and went out into the world. Soap Operas - what a quaint term - died their death long ago. What we've been watching, really, when we bother to watch these days, is the decaying, rotting remains. And the real failure here is creative; we still need drama, just a different kind of drama, more reflective of the world where we actually live and the lives we actually lead. And we don't live in Pine Valley or Llanview. Not any more.

Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

Atlas Shrugged: Dag's Bag

It's pretty clear where Atlas Shrugged is going wrong in its first few minutes, and it's not the self involved selfishness at the heart of Ayn Rand's famed "objectivist" thinking; it's the blinkered "futurism" of her's, and the film's, worldview.

Rand vaguely set her novel in the "future" but not very far away from the era (the thirties) in which she wrote it. The film's creators have tried - lovingly, it must be said - to flash forward the whole exercise to "2016". They needn't have bothered - either way, this alternate reality isn't gaining realism by being slightly more current.

Futurism is, at best, a dicey exercise - it's a fanciful mix of projection and fantasy, combined with dragging along certain (usually negative) elements of the present condition. Such predictions are rarely accurate, and mostly because they tend to ignore both some of the obviousness of human nature, and the weirdnesses of random events. I made a similar point about why Watchmen - with its similarly downbeat views of Where We're Headed - wasn't so much depressing as depressingly wrong.

Atlas Shrugged ("Part 1"! - as it helpfully threatens us in subtitle), on the other hand, isn't depressing; indeed, if one can separate the politics and the messaging from the film's storytelling, the film is way more fun than it has any right to be. A preposterous tale of business heroics and self involvement on a grand scale, the film is remarkably handsome for something done on the relative cheap, and as mentioned, incredibly loyal to its source material... which just hapens to be absurd, didactic, and pontlessly long.

"Who is John Galt?" is the message that hangs over the film, but Atlas Shrugged is the story of Dagny Taggert, a self described "engineer" (at least, she has  "a degree in engineering") who is trying to save her father's succesful railroad company from imminent immolation at the hands of her feckless brother, Jim. To salvage a key rail line the family operates in the west, she enlists the (business) help of steel magnate Hank Rearden, who has developed a stronger, lighter steel that makes possible faster high speed rail, giving Taggert Transportation a competitive advantage. Only the "touchy feely" apologists and equalizers (read: liberals) in government are trying to eviscerate competition and private business success.

Or something. A thrilling movie opposing communism and celebrating the innovative genius of railroad and steel tycoons probably made sense for a film in 1946, less so today. Just as ludicrous are the film's interpersonal dynamics - the dismal relationship between Dagny and her brother, or the icy, loveless marriage of Hank and his wife (or the creepy homoeroticism that hangs in the air when Dagny isn't center screen). Everyone here has a motive, and behind that another, more subversive motive... and the intrigue isn't all that intriguing.

Mostly, though, Atlas Shrugged is something of a sloppy mess because it lacks a clear cut, central villain; think Dynasty without Joan Collins' smashing Alexis (don't believe me? Watch Season 1 on DVD). Without a villain, just a vague argument against collectivism, the especially heroic heroine and hero of Atlas Shrugged don't quite have enough to do, especially since, for much of the film, Dagny and Hank are too noble to screw. And when they finally do, heck, they do that nobly, too (it's easily the most chaste sex scene I've seen in any film made after 1950).

Rand's sexual politics are curious enough (Rearden's high moral compass is his main selling point, yet he's easily persuaded in the end to forget his wife and take up with Dagny), but it's really of a piece with the general confusion that reigns in Rand's sense of what makes the rich and powerful admirable and worthy of emulation. She celebrates an idiosyncratic notion of "captalism" unfettered from regulation, surely driven by her own experiences with, and opposition to, communism... but lacks the vision of the Western European Protestant Ethic, which grounds the free market in a sense of shared responsibility for the community and world we share. She suggests a kind of class superiority in business leaders who act purely for the profit of their business, but neglects to consider the damage caused when reasonably self interested people's personal motives clash (for example, railroads look great... when there are no airplanes). The only mistake she can see in her worldview is caring too much... and the real downfall of her argument is not the idea of caring too little, it's the struggle to figure out what happens when good people fail, no matter how ruthless their motives turn out to be. Failure, in Rand's view, doesn't seem to be an option.

Rand's curious mix of philosophy, fiction and allegory is almost impossible to replicate, and the dilemma comes down to whether to err on the side of the argument or the entertainment. Thankfully, the film's creators have erred much the way Rand did, about 2-1 in favor of "entertaining" which leads to a surprisingly engaging, if wildly preposterous, story. The film looks handsome - though not as purely "modern" as Rand's instinctive design sense - and moves along at a snappy pace, even if it's going mostly nowhere fast.

Of the performers both the relative unknown leads, Taylor Schilling (Dagny) and Grant Bowler (Hank) are probably as imposing as Rand intended - striking looking, handsome creatures who stride purposefully across the landscape. Schilling, in many ways, has one of the best dominant female roles to play in a recent film, and she's quite good, even if Dagny's every emotion and motivation is business driven. Bowler is wonderfully, classically square (think Heston or Kirk Douglas), and the camera just eats him up. If the effect is vaguely, well, Aryan, you may find comfort in the nice black man who plays Dagny's assistant, or her Mexican ex-boyfriend. Outside of that, the cast is one square jawed white face after another (except the mealy mouthed representatives of collectivist liberalism, who tend to look shifty and nervous).

I could try and explain who John Galt is, or why it remotely matters... but why spoil the mystery and the surefire appeal of the almost requisite sequel? Atlas Shrugged is an interesting, even luxurious, curiosity - but unlikely to change a mind or usher in a fresh renewal of Rand's tired moralizing worldview, no matter how well she caught, for a moment, our inherent American tension between our goals of self determination and personal success, and our sense of collective purpose and responsibility. If communism is no answer, neither is the selfish, mean spirited thoughtlessness at the heart of Rand's Objectivism. Not that this movie really knows much about what to do about either one - like Rand, the film is way too attracted to the surface appeals of beautiful objects. Not that there's anything wrong with it... but it's hard to spend so much time on the surface while claiming to be deep.