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Religulous
Bill Maher is an American liberal or even libertarian comedian, who recently got out his movie “Religulous”. He tries to show, by interviewing believers of different denominations, how absurdly and sometimes ridiculously untenable the fabric of their beliefs is. He especially targeted Christians and Jews. Of course, being a comedian, he is constantly looking for the laughable.
No doubt about it, the film is controversial. A boycott has been organized immediately after it has been released. Most of conservative and religious US of A seems to be in arms. Though some Rabbi’s for instance enter the discussion in a very reasonable way. They try to “deconstruct” Maher’s ‘documentary’. It’s not a face to face exchange of arguments, but it makes clear that even rather cool, sophisticated believers have a problem with direct answers to the questions Maher raised. But at the same time they do score several points.
I’m partisan because I distrust the certitude of faith and think Bill Maher is essentially right about that. But, well, judge for yourself. The trailer doesn’t really give away what the quintessence of the film is. Therefore I add an interview of the comedian by Jimmy Kimmel and as an antidote the “deconstruction” by the three Rabbi’s.
Stone on Bush
I didn’t even see one scene of the movie, actually “W” hasn’t even been launched here, yet it already taught me a lesson. These relieving words are what director Oliver Stone told his interviewer Oliver Burkman yesterday:
“I just want to say you’ve got to laugh, a little bit, about this whole thing. It gets so painful that humour is the only antidote. If you didn’t, you’d go bonkers. You’d become a raging lunatic on a blogosphere, writing anti-Bush screeds“.
Okay, point taken. I will not make that mistake. Let’s save our breath and all our grim humour for the terrible lady from Alaska if she, God forbid, should get elected.
PS: To be honest I’ve seen the trailer. So why shouldn’t I share it with you:
Europecinema- Part 2: Foreign Food
To be honest: this post more or less is the intellectual property of Rick de Gier (author of film reviews in a Dutch Weekly and this site). This week he wrote about movies which deal with food, in connection to the release of this Brazilian-Italian movie called “Estrômago“. It promises to be a black comedy about a weird guy who even in jail shows he really commands the art of cooking. This is the trailer:
According to De Gier it is in the category of food movies in which gastronomy is made sexy. He points out that “The wayward cloud” (2006, Taiwan), a semi musical, in which watermelons play an important part, can be labeled in the same way. It is one of the ten characteristics he distinguishes to make a success out of a food movie. In the process he proves that apart from European, non European cinema also contributed several distinguished movies on the subject of food. Summarized De Gier’s essentials of good food movies are when it deals with: