Film

Public Service Announcement: the news that the CIA has taken to destroying videotape of its interrogations depresses but does not surprise. It also reminds me that you really ought to see Alex Gibney’s new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side when it is released in January. It’s a dispiriting, devastating indictment of the Bush administration’s detention and torture policies that have done so much* to destroy the United States’ reputation around the world (as well as, of course, increasing the dangers faced by captured US servicemen). Anyway, loony tunes conservatives will be able to ask why the Academy Hates America whe the movie is, as I’d bet it will be,

Matthew d’Ancona makes a pretty sweeping claim this morning. Sir Michael Caine is, he writes: almost certainly the Greatest Living Englishman. My first reaction was that this was pretty strong mustard. But then again, now that Bill Deedes has gone, who are the other contenders? Your nominations please… And if Sir Sean Connery can be labeled the Greatest Living Scotsman, perhaps it’s appropriate that his old partner from The Man Who Would Be King be accorded the crown south of the border. In the light of recent developments in Scotland and England, readers are also invited to speculate, as wildly as possible, upon the potential political consequences and significance of

Chris Orr decries Mickey Kaus’s decrying of The Bourne Ultimatum as “anti-American”. Chris is right to observe that the film’s good guys are also American government officers and that Joan Allen’s character says of water-boarding etc that “This isn’t us” but ultimately (ha!) I can’t quite agree with his conclusion. I thought it a rather searing indictment of the United States, albeit for rather different reasons. As my friends know I’m generally a pretty pro-America kind of chap. Some of my best friends are American, don’t you know. Even so, there are limits. What The Bourne Ultimatum did capture was an arrogance that gives the United States a permanent right