Cinema

James Cameron's mega-blockbuster Avatar seems destined to win the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director (as well as the technical awards). Peter Suderman explains why: So despite its genuinely impressive technical innovations, Avatar isn't much a movie: Instead, Cameron's cooked up a derivative, overlong pastiche of anti-corporate clichés and quasi-mystical eco-nonsense.

I watched Tunes of Glory again last night. It's one of my favourite films*. During it, Basil Barrow, the newly-arrived Colonel of the battalion, played by John Mills, mentions his experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War: Oh they gave me time, all right. Again and again. When I was in the prison camp, they nearly drowned me, then they brought me round. Then they put a wet cloth over my mouth and kept it wet until I nearly drowned again. And the only thing that pulled me through was the thought that one day I'd come back and sit in the middle of that table as colonel of this battalion, like my grandfather and his father before him. Only I was going to be the best of the lot. In other words, he was waterboarded.

It's a bank holiday weekend, so what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than by watching Zulu one more time? Granted, the movie is riddled with historical inaccuracies but so what? 'Tis grand, stirring stuff. And the "sing-off" between the Zulus - "Well, they've got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that's for sure" - and our Welsh heroes is splendid, ranking behind only the superb rendition of the Marseillaise in Casablanca.

A tip of the stetson to Radley Balko for reminding (that is, telling) me that today is the thirtieth anniversary of John Wayne's death. It's tough to pick one's favourites from a great career that spanned 171 movies but, though I know that in many ways The Searchers and Stagecoach are the greatest of the Duke's movies, my five favourites are: Red River She Wore a Yellow Ribbon The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence Rio Bravo The Horse Soldiers What are yours? Below the jump, some clips! UPDATE: James Joyner joins the party. I second his endorsement of Rooster Cogburn.

Has anyone at the Republican National Committee actually watched Goldfinger? Apparently not. My friend Garance Franke-Ruta picked up on a web video posted on Youtube by the RNC which compared Nancy Pelosi with Pussy Galore. And this is supposed ot be an attack ad? Sheesh, when did being compared to Honor Blackman become a bad thing? I take no position on the question of whether or not the CIA misled Congress - the ostnesible subject of the ad - but this wilful ignorance of all matters Bondian cannot be allowed to stand. Do these people not realise that Pussy Galore is the movie's heroine? Granted, her coversion to the cause is only confirmed after, literally, a roll in the hay with Sean Connery but from that point forward she's one of the Good Girls.

Stephen Walt and Dan Drezner each list ten films they think merit inclusion in a Foreign Policy Film Festival since they shed some light, one way or another, upon international relations. Well, that's a parlour game everyone can play. No need to hold tenure! Professor Walt suggests that war movies, spy capers and propaganda films ought to be excluded so, playing only moderately fast and loose with his criteria, here's another list: The Man Who Would Be King (1975): You must have an Afghanistan movie these days and this is the best there is. Kipling's tale of imperial adventure, folly, ambition, lunacy and greed is also a great buddy movie and the only time Connery and Caine appeared on screen together.

Oscar commentary is outsourced to the always-splendid Peter Suderman: The half-calculated, half-panicked seesawing between self-important Art and anxious populism means that the Oscars aren’t really an indicator of quality anymore, but rather an indicator of Oscarness. Oscarness does, admittedly, overlap with quality (see last year’s awards), but it is not the same thing. Undoubtedly, the biggest triumph for Oscarness this year was Sean Penn’s Best Actor win for his portrayal of Harvey Milk. It’s part political statement, part Hollywood politics, and part bias toward the self-important and showy.