EclectEcon

Economics and the mid-life crisis have much in common: Both dwell on foregone opportunities

C'est la vie; c'est la guerre; c'est la pomme de terre . . . . . . . . . . . . . email: jpalmer at uwo dot ca


. . . . . . . . . . .Richard Posner should be awarded the next Nobel Prize in Economics . . . . . . . . . . . .

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Judge Kozinski Reviews (Pans)
A Constant Gardener

I must say, I thought the book, The Constant Gardener, was pretty dumb. Judge Alex Kozinski (of the 9th Circuit [note: this guy should be appointed to the Supreme Court!]) posted this review, saying the movie is at least as bad. Excerpted below is the intro to his review. Don't read the whole thing unless you don't mind spoilers, but here is what he had to say about the spoiler:
Please note, there are some spoilers, so if you plan seeing the movie, no matter what, and want to be surprised . . . .
Well, it's going to be hard to be surprised by this movie, if you have the intelligence of a turnip, but if you don't want to know the ending and such stuff, don't read the comment.
Here's the intro to the review:

I thought this movie would never end. The plot is a thinly disguised disinformation piece about how westerners, and particularly large drug companies, are taking advantage of Africans out of greed. No anti-western and anti-business cliché is omitted, and they are trotted out in a monotonously predictable fashion. Though the movie takes for-e-ver to plod through its torpid paces, there is no mystery here about how it will come out, or why. There are no plot twists, no startling denouements, nothing even mildly surprising. Endless camera shots--closeup and wide angle--of African poverty is supposed to give this movie higher meaning, but that motif has been done so much more effectively--and realistically--in other movies, like Hotel Rwanda, where the suffering is palpable. Here it is just a vehicle for carrying the movie's anti-western message.

 
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