Buscemi, Turturro, and Tucci

Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, and Stanley Tucci are remaking three of van Gogh's films in English. Van Gogh, you may recall, was the Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by an Islamic extremist angered by the message of one of van Gogh's films. It is gratifying that the final result of that murderer's actions is to gain wide distribution of van Gogh's message while the murderer's name is forgotten even as a footnote. And what a power team of independent filmmakers.


http://www.azstarnet.com/accent/192217.php

Explosions are no fun.

It's not fun when there's an explosion in a major city during rush-hour. Trust me on this one. But we can thank Bloomberg for accidentally giving us a little deadpan:

"there was cold water getting into the pipe, and cold water apparently causes these to explode"

Send Cars, Oil, and Media

It is terribly frightening that Russia appears to be returning to the secretive, thuggish, and dark internal politics. During and just after the cold war, much popular political theory contended that the black market and gang activity in Russia was an innate result of communism's attempt to control the uncontrollable. (You have to have a deep trust in capitalism and markets for that to make sense. I happen to, but if you don't you'll have to just take my word for it.) Now, with Putin throwing his weight around and the country apparently comfortable with that, we have to wonder if the heavy-handed politics and corruption is more accurately an aspect of Russian culture.

On the lighter side, from this article on the attempt on Berezovsky comes the sentence:

Mr Berezovsky built a fortune after the Cold War ended in car sales, oil and the media.

I love that this is true either way you read it. Not the tearing down of a wall and a weekend coup d'état--the USSR's last gasps were suffocated by Cal Worthington.