{"id":119,"date":"2006-04-03T08:35:45","date_gmt":"2006-04-03T08:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/?p=119"},"modified":"2006-04-03T08:43:41","modified_gmt":"2006-04-03T08:43:41","slug":"syriana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/?p=119","title":{"rendered":"Syriana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another rainy day in the &#8216;Rut.  Again our plans of far-ranging exploration were dashed.  Instead we had a quiet brunch with all the embassy people and expats at Casablanca before taking a brief, damp walk on the corniche.  It&#8217;s nice to see that Sunday on the corniche is such a ritual for some families that many were still making a go of it despite the somewhat dismal weather.<\/p>\n<p>On our way home, we got a new membership at this funky little video store.  Our friend Ben (who has since gone back to Baghdad) turned us onto it, describing it as a little piece of entrepeneurial ambition by two brothers, featuring lots of bootlegged new releases.  We rented <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0365737\/\"><i>Syriana<\/i><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0418819\/\"><i>Land of the Dead<\/i><\/a>.  I enjoyed the former, but it was a little hard to follow, especially since our copy had volume issues.  Also, the text below would periodically appear across the screen:<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\">This Copy Is Property Of Warner Bros.<br \/>\nLoaned For Award Consideration Only<\/div>\n<p>I had to set up some crazy audio rig to make it listenable.  As Amy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/?p=150\">mentioned<\/a>, the Beirut parts were interesting.  Definitely not enough cars.  I&#8217;d like to see it again at some point to fill in the pieces I missed, as I had to relinquish attempts at understanding certain parts of the movie so that I could focus on others.  Kind of like in college when I resolved myself to failing Engineering Economics so I could pass Calculus.<\/p>\n<p><i>Land of the Dead<\/i> was satisfying as zombie movies go.  It had some interesting new ideas, but was kind of lazy otherwise (I guess when you&#8217;ve basically invented the genre, as George Romero has, you get a little soft).   A funny excerpt from the featurette: Romero relates a conversation with Dennis Hopper in which Hopper is describing how he&#8217;d like to play his corrupt overlord character.  &#8220;So Dennis said, &#8216;I was thinking Rumsfeld&#8230;&#8217; and I said, &#8216;Exactly!'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Laptop connected to the M-Audio MobilePre connected to a car cassette adapter in the tapedeck of a &#8220;jambox&#8221; (as Amy and all the other Texans would call it).<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/images\/soundsystem.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" class=\"blogPhoto\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Coda: On the topic of Ben&#8230;we were glad to see <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/4870494.stm\">Jill Carroll<\/a> released and going home.  Ben was kind of friends with her apparently, and had told us the heartbreaking story of her capture when we went down south <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/?p=142\">a few weeks ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another rainy day in the &#8216;Rut. Again our plans of far-ranging exploration were dashed. Instead we had a quiet brunch with all the embassy people and expats at Casablanca before taking a brief, damp walk on the corniche. It&#8217;s nice &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/?p=119\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/ethan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}