Tuesday, February 28, 2006
golden ticket
Posted by Jim Ridley on Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 4:35 PM
Next Thursday, March 9, Neil Young and director Jonathan Demme will be in town for a screening of the Ryman-shot concert doc Neil Young: Heart of Gold. It's at Green Hills, and it's a red-carpet event, as they say. Many more local and national celebs are expected, so stay tuned.
Sadly, Bob Costas will not attend
Posted by Claire Suddath on Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 12:45 AM
Haven't had enough of tiny women in tiny outfits that sparkle like your sister's Malibu Ice Barbie whose head you melted on the Webber grill right before your parents shipped you off to boarding school? How could the Barbie be a winter-theme doll and be from Malibu? These are the questions than plague mankind.
The Olympics are over but your love affair with Sasha Cohen doesn't have to be, for the Olympic skating stars are coming to an ice rink near you!
Specifically, the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. Specifically, May 21. Specifically, you can buy tickets at ticketmaster.com or championsonice.com. Specifically, they're $67.
According to a press release, Michelle Kwan, Irina Slutskaya, Sasha Cohen, Victor Petrenko and a bunch of other Eastern Europeans with oddly spelled names such as Oleksiy Polishchuk will be on tour for Champions on Ice.
The press release says nothing about gold medal champion Shizuka Arakawa. I don't know if she'll be there or not. But I like Irina Slutskaya the best anyway. She was adorable and Russian and she has both a dying mother and Vasculitis. How can you root against a dying mother and a Vasculitis? You can't.
The Olympics are over but your love affair with Sasha Cohen doesn't have to be, for the Olympic skating stars are coming to an ice rink near you!
Specifically, the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. Specifically, May 21. Specifically, you can buy tickets at ticketmaster.com or championsonice.com. Specifically, they're $67.
According to a press release, Michelle Kwan, Irina Slutskaya, Sasha Cohen, Victor Petrenko and a bunch of other Eastern Europeans with oddly spelled names such as Oleksiy Polishchuk will be on tour for Champions on Ice.
The press release says nothing about gold medal champion Shizuka Arakawa. I don't know if she'll be there or not. But I like Irina Slutskaya the best anyway. She was adorable and Russian and she has both a dying mother and Vasculitis. How can you root against a dying mother and a Vasculitis? You can't.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Tax and Spin
Posted by Bruce Barry on Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 1:10 PM
Is it a crime to pay no taxes when you don't owe any? Apparently so, if you later find yourself running for office. As Tom Humphrey notes in today's Knoxville News Sentinal (registration necessary), Republicans have joined Democrats in jumping on GOP Senate hopeful Bob Corker for paying no federal income taxes during a couple of years back in the 1980s. A spokeswoman for Van Hilleary tees it up: "Millionaire Bob Corker didn't pay taxes in multiple years. Candidate Bob Corker owes Tennesseans an explanation." Ed Bryant's press secretary piles on: "Bob Corker's ability to avoid paying taxes helps explain why it did not bother him to support a state income tax and to raise property taxes on Tennessee homeowners."
The Corker camp's response from campaign director Ben Mitchell: "It is not surprising to see the Democrat party make uninformed and false attacks, but it is surprising to see Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary follow the Democratic Party's lead." Perhaps it should be a non-story in a just and fair campaign world, but it isn't clear that the assault here (even if of dubious merit) is either "false" or "uninformed."
Corker's challenge is his lack of statewide identity--how many people outside Hamilton County can name the former* mayor of Chattanooga? Word on the street is he's weeks away from opening his $4 million campaign war chest for an ad blitz aimed (the theory goes) at overtaking Hilleary and Bryant, his better-known but underfunded GOP opponents. This 80s tax thing runs the risk, given wider attention, of building unsavory name recognition before Corker has the opportunity to buy the kind he wants.
*corrected
The Corker camp's response from campaign director Ben Mitchell: "It is not surprising to see the Democrat party make uninformed and false attacks, but it is surprising to see Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary follow the Democratic Party's lead." Perhaps it should be a non-story in a just and fair campaign world, but it isn't clear that the assault here (even if of dubious merit) is either "false" or "uninformed."
Corker's challenge is his lack of statewide identity--how many people outside Hamilton County can name the former* mayor of Chattanooga? Word on the street is he's weeks away from opening his $4 million campaign war chest for an ad blitz aimed (the theory goes) at overtaking Hilleary and Bryant, his better-known but underfunded GOP opponents. This 80s tax thing runs the risk, given wider attention, of building unsavory name recognition before Corker has the opportunity to buy the kind he wants.
*corrected
Friday, February 24, 2006
UAE 101
Posted by Bruce Barry on Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 9:47 AM
The deal involving management of six U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World (which may now be on hold at DP World's behest) has made for a hell of a political football -- it's not every day that Bill Frist and Hillary Clinton find themselves sharing a policy cuddle. Largely missing from the story, however, is discussion of the kind of political system in the country whose company will take over the ports. The White House wants us to see the United Arab Emirates as a reliable ally with relatively progressive values for the Middle East context, and frets that holding up the deal will send a xenophobic message to the Arab world. But DP World is not a company located in the UAE; it's a firm owned by the UAE government.
The UAE, in a nutshell, is a confederation of seven states, or emirates, each with a ruler who occupies the position by dynastic succession. The key constitutional authority is the Federal Supreme Council, made up of the seven emirate rulers. They pick a president, who in turn names the prime minister and all judges of the Union Supreme Court. The "legislature" is the Federal National Council, all 40 members of which are appointed by the emirate rulers. There are no political parties, and there is no sufferage.
You'd think a White House obsessed with spreading democracy throughout the Arab world would draw the line at turning over management of key public assets to an entity owned by such an anti-democratic regime.
The UAE, in a nutshell, is a confederation of seven states, or emirates, each with a ruler who occupies the position by dynastic succession. The key constitutional authority is the Federal Supreme Council, made up of the seven emirate rulers. They pick a president, who in turn names the prime minister and all judges of the Union Supreme Court. The "legislature" is the Federal National Council, all 40 members of which are appointed by the emirate rulers. There are no political parties, and there is no sufferage.
You'd think a White House obsessed with spreading democracy throughout the Arab world would draw the line at turning over management of key public assets to an entity owned by such an anti-democratic regime.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
lights, camera...?
Posted by Jim Ridley on Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 5:38 PM
Tennessee has drawn one step closer to challenging its neighboring states for a bigger slice of the Southeast's lucrative film and TV business. On Tuesday, bills were introduced in the state House and Senate to create an incentives package for film and television production—a package comparable to those in Georgia and Louisiana, and almost identical to one proposed Feb. 1 by a state-convened committee of industry professionals and government officials. Sponsored respectively by Sen. Mark Norris and Rep. John J. DeBerry, bills SB3513 and HB3356 can be found in full detail here and here.
Don't rent those tuxes just yet. The bills contain two sticking points liable to raise caution flags. One, found in Section 3, is a provision that gives "a motion picture production company" a full refund of sales and use taxes. Trouble is, it apparently doesn't specify how much the company has to spend to qualify—unlike the state's current provision, which kicks in after a production spends $500,000. Nor, apparently, does it distinguish between in-state and out-of-state companies.
The other is the controversial practice of transferable tax credits. Used by many states as a lure, transferable tax credits allow visiting production companies to sell their tax breaks at a discount to in-state businesses. Under the proposed package, Tennessee would offer film and TV companies up to a 22-percent credit, including provisions for spending and in-state hiring. But debate continues whether transferable credits are pitting states against each other in a poker game, with Hollywood as the winner—and no ends to the raises in sight.
The important thing is that the state is finally addressing a problem it has put off for too many years, at a measurable loss of tens of millions of dollars. Expect a lively debate in coming weeks.
Don't rent those tuxes just yet. The bills contain two sticking points liable to raise caution flags. One, found in Section 3, is a provision that gives "a motion picture production company" a full refund of sales and use taxes. Trouble is, it apparently doesn't specify how much the company has to spend to qualify—unlike the state's current provision, which kicks in after a production spends $500,000. Nor, apparently, does it distinguish between in-state and out-of-state companies.
The other is the controversial practice of transferable tax credits. Used by many states as a lure, transferable tax credits allow visiting production companies to sell their tax breaks at a discount to in-state businesses. Under the proposed package, Tennessee would offer film and TV companies up to a 22-percent credit, including provisions for spending and in-state hiring. But debate continues whether transferable credits are pitting states against each other in a poker game, with Hollywood as the winner—and no ends to the raises in sight.
The important thing is that the state is finally addressing a problem it has put off for too many years, at a measurable loss of tens of millions of dollars. Expect a lively debate in coming weeks.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
in the midnight hour
Posted by Jim Ridley on Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 5:30 PM
Whatever happened to the midnight movie? Twenty years ago, you could see cult movies almost every weekend at Sarratt at the witching hour. Even commercial theaters such as the now-defunct Cinema South and the old Belle Meade Theatre hosted midnight shows of Wizards, Shame of the Jungle, Street Trash and other offbeat films, to large, rowdy audiences. Somewhere I've still got the surgical mask they handed out at Cinema South to everyone who saw Basket Case.
For many reasons, I understand why DVD and superior home-entertainment systems have eroded other areas of the moviegoing experience. But not midnight movies. The sheer fact of being out at midnight with a bunch of other crazies while the timid sleep, watching the kind of movies that rouse extremes of passion or hilarity or bloodlust, is something you can't duplicate at home watching Fight for Your Life on mute. I refuse to accept that contemporary audiences are that lily-livered.
Maybe somebody locally could take a page from this guy's playbook. Colin Geddes runs the Toronto International Film Festival's awesome "Midnight Madness" program—the launching pad for Saw, Cabin Fever, Hostel and the mighty Ong-Bak. A true connoisseur of exploitation cinema, he does weekly shows of cult movies and a killer "Kung Fu Fridays" program devoted to martial-arts films, and he has his own Ultra 8 distribution imprint. He's built a big audience of people either hungry or nostalgic for that untamed communal movie experience.
Where would midnight movies show around here? What movies would be shown? And if they were shown, how would a theater build an audience for them?
2006 Olympics: Muscular Athletes Feud in Spandex
Posted by Claire Suddath on Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 5:19 PM
Last night, I watched a strained press conference between American speed skaters Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick. The two feuding athletes spoke about each other in the third person as if they weren't sitting three feet apart, brooding at the same conference table. Davis made a comment about Hedrick refusing to shake his hand after a race. Hedrick responded by taking a long drink of water and standing up as if he were about to walk over there and spit it all over his teammate. "Ooooh, no he didn't!" I said in my perfect Rikki Lake audience member impression when Davis said he could take Hedrick in a celebrity boxing match. "He did not just say that. No way. No way." I sat on my couch and thought to myself, since when did I care about speed skating? And then I remembered. Oh yeah, ever since they threatened to punch each other out.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
walk the reception line
Posted by Jim Ridley on Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 2:52 PM
Congratulations to Nashville sound mixer and recordist Peter Kurland, who picked up the British equivalent of an Oscar Sunday night from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). He won for his work on Walk the Line, as did hometown sweetheart Reese Witherspoon, who collected Best Actress honors for her role as June Carter. Here's hoping their luck holds out on March 5, as both Kurland and Witherspoon are nominated for Academy Awards.
Cool trivia: Kurland remains the only technician to work on every Joel and Ethan Coen film, from 1984's Blood Simple on.
Cool trivia: Kurland remains the only technician to work on every Joel and Ethan Coen film, from 1984's Blood Simple on.
forest: prime, evil?
Posted by Jim Ridley on Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 2:08 PM
Forget speed-skating or whatnot. If you want to see gold-medal competition tonight at its most white-knuckle intense, check out the cat-and-mouse duel going on between Michael Chiklis and Forest Whitaker on The Shield (10 p.m., FX). On a show that makes an art of undermining moral certainties, this season's hair-raising conflict puts faithful viewers through a wringer. Do we root for Chiklis' riveting anti-hero Vic Mackey—the thoroughly corrupt cop (and cop killer!) who nevertheless operates from a twisted code of loyalty and honor? Or do we cheer on his nemesis, Whitaker's internal-affairs bloodhound Kavanaugh, one of the most uniquely unsettling characters ever to appear on TV?
Neo Preen
Posted by Bruce Barry on Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 9:40 AM
The essay by Francis Fukuyama titled "After Neoconservatism" in Sunday's New York Times Magazine is must reading for foreign policy wonks and wonkettes. Fukuyama, a professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins and confessed neoconservative apostate, has the commentariat atwitter with his assertion that the Bush doctrine "is now in shambles":
