Links for 2011-03-25

"Consider this account of the rebuilding and re-engineering of Galveston. Consider the scope and audacity of the project -- the cost, the labor, the years it took. Does any American city, or America itself, still have the courage, vision or capacity to attempt such a thing? I don't know. I doubt it.

We seem to have become a small-minded people obsessed with smaller government, smaller visions, smaller aspirations -- a crimped, cramped people from whom it seems unimaginable to expect or ask for this kind of hard work and investment and long-term foresight."

"When I picked up the pink leaflet advertising a meditation class, I was reaching for something. I'd tried a bit of meditation from a book and it had given me some kind of peace for a few moments; being an identity-panicked teenager, the fact that alternative lifestyles were in fashion among my peers but that nobody had tried meditation was not an insignificant factor. But it wasn't the casual interest of an experience seeker or a confident woman; it was the desperate grab of a girl who needed something and couldn't think of anything else. Before I ever attended a class, I was committed.

What I didn't know at the time was that the leaflets weren't left there by some visiting advertiser. The shop and the classes were run by the same organisation - the same organisation that ran cafes, a publisher, and numerous other 'right livelhood' business with a turnover of several million pounds a year."

"Cheesy? Plodding? Badly written? Laughably acted? Showily directed? Absolutely. A piece of shit? Not at all, because the film, however significant its flaws, delivers where it matters--in epic swordfights set against striking backdrops, in the outsized emotions (okay, bombast) suggested by the Queen soundtrack, and in the man-of-destiny sweep that's been the lifeblood of modern fantasies from The Matrix to Harry Potter. It's hard to speculate on this--and maybe you Highlander die-hards can help me out in the comments below--but I'd guess that cultists would concede that the movie they love is far short of perfect. But as a piece of fantasy, its sheer centuries-spanning grandiosity has few equals: Just the idea of Highlander carries it a great distance, no matter how shabbily that idea is supported."

"Sucker Punch bears the unmistakable mark of hyper-auteur Zack Snyder, but it could just as easily have been willed into existence by the collective geekocracy. It's as if the filmmakers took a poll at Comic-Con of all the elements attendees seek in a movie--starlets in skimpy outfits adept at hand-to-hand combat; Nazi robot monsters; elaborate fantasy worlds; a wise mentor figure who adopts many forms; cabaret-style covers of New Wave hits; and why not throw in Don Draper while you're at it?--then combined them all in the ultimate fanboy mash-up. Snyder has described it as "Alice In Wonderland with machine guns," but it's more like The Pussycat Dolls Present Steampunk Kill Bill, only more assaultive and pandering than that description suggests."