I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims… These, in fact, were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought… I hope this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was, and is, an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with mutual respect.

— Pope Benedict XVI, apologizing for the now widely publicized comments he made during a lecture in Germany last week.

The Pope quoted the 14th-century emperor Manuel II Palaeologus during the speech he delivered to scholars at the University of Regensburg, and he presented some of the Byzantine emperor’s comments about the relationship between religion and violence.  Critics, screaming accusations of Islamophobia, have leapt onto the Pope’s quotation of Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, during which the emperor declared his belief that the promulgation of faith was incompatible with violence: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Taken out of its academic context and bandied about piecemeal, the Pope’s comments have had a disastrous effect — churches were shot at in the West Bank and Gaza, a 70-year-old nun was shot dead in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, and livid protestors demonstrated in India, Turkey, and in the Iranian holy city of Qom, where cleric Ahmad Khatami addressed the massed protesters. While the Pope is certainly more than an a pure academic, to strip him of any claim to intellectual discourse would be to reduce him to an ineffectual figurehead.  

Mimi Hanaoka

I’ve been a fan of Project Greenlight since its inception a few years ago, spearheaded by Live Planet, a company created by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Chris Moore.  If you don’t know, PG is an Internet contest for inspiring filmmakers and allows the winners of both a screenplay and directing contest to make their own movie, low budget of course.  To finance the contest, Live Planet sells the rights to air a reality show that follows the making of the film — full of drama as the novice filmmakers are pressured to perform in front of millions of viewers.  

The first two films that came out of Project Greenlight weren’t big successes and only moderately well received by critics.  The third installment of the contest/TV series gave us a unique director in the form of John Gulager, a schlep of a guy, 40-something, introverted but with a great visual eye.  He comes from a family of show people, with an acting father whose credits seem to include almost every show on television during the 60s and 70s.  Gulager won the contest because of his talent, certainly not because of his personality (Matt Damon was his champion).  But it was his stubborn, family-oriented, and determined qualities that not only made him interesting to watch and root for during the airing of the TV series but allowed him to work within the confines of the mini-studio system to make a great film in an oversaturated genre.

The winning script, Feast, was written by the team of Patrick Melton and Marcus Dustan as a big tent pole, horror action picture that would have cost on the high side of $40 million if changes were not made from the original winning script.  Dimension Films (part of the Weinstein Company) only gave them a few million and they picked up some more cash from Vegas hotel magnates the Maloof Brothers, but even so, the script had to be pared down tremendously for this production.  The writers did an excellent job, and I can’t see how throwing more money at it would have made the film better.  The low budget made the writers and director Gulager use more Hitchcockian techniques that create more tension from what you don’t see than from anything very graphic. Though, the faint of heart are advised to stay away from this film because there is plenty of gore, blood, and guts flying every which way you can imagine.

Feast isn’t a remarkable film and has many flaws, but considering it was made with a bunch of cameras capturing all the scrapes, scuffles, and tiffs that go on during the production of any movie, the filmmaking team did a fine job.  The film depicts a night in the middle of the desert as a clan of cannibalistic creatures of unknown origin descends to have dinner at a run-down roadhouse.  The only thing is, they have a penchant for human flesh.  It’s up to the low-lives, drifters, and wayward drunks to try to stay alive, barricaded inside the bar as the creatures try every means to get inside and eat them. Gulager smartly doesn’t take any of this quite seriously and, though the characters are serious, the tone of the film winks at us in the audience to let us know it’s okay to chuckle.  Those who love the thrill ride of such horror slasher films as this won’t be disappointed for there are plenty of scary moments that make you jump out of your seat.

Having watched the TV series, then the film, and finally interviewed the director, John Gulager, I am more impressed with the film than I thought I would be.  I am certainly not a big fan of gore-fest horror films but, because this one has fun while the blood splatters, that makes it okay to watch.  I had some problems with the editing and flow of the scenes, but knowing how they needed to cut here and change there from direction of the studio and the test audience reactions, it’s understandable that a low-budget film would have such problems.  If you like horror films and gory ones at that, then Feast is the perfect date night film (if you’re trying to get your girlfriend to grab on to you or hide her face in your chest).

Feast will be released as a midnight movie on September 22 and 23 across the nation.  It’s scheduled to come out on DVD on October 17 just in time for Halloween.  The film stars Balthazar Getty (Alias), Henry Rollins (The Henry Rollins Show), Jenny Wade (8 Simple Rules), Krista Allen (Paycheck), Judah Friedlander (Zoolander), and Clu Gulager (Wagon Train, The Gambler) with a cameo by Eric Dane (X-Men, Grey’s Anatomy).  I urge you to go to the theater to watch the film in support of Project Greenlight.  Maybe a strong showing at the box office will help keep PG going in the future.  The film is rated R for obvious reasons.

Rich Burlingham

Honor killings — in which a family member murders another member of the family for ostensibly disgracing the family — are justified, according to 10 percent of young British Asians. The BBC’s Asian Network reported that in its survey of 500 British Asians, aged 16 to 34 and including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Muslims, 10 percent of the respondents said that they would condone an honor killing in their family.

Although there are officially only 13 honor killings in the UK per year, there are undoubtedly other successful or failed attempts that go unreported. The gory case of 25-year-old Samaira Nazir’s murder at the hands of her brother and his cousin brought to light the phenomenon of honor killings in Britain. Azhar Nazir and his cousin Imran Mohammed took four knives to Samaira Nazir’s throat and body and stabbed her to death with her father’s complicity. Azhar Nazir’s two daughters, aged 2 and 4, were forced to watch and were covered in blood when the police arrived. Samaira Nazir was murdered for asking to marry an Afghani asylum seeker.

Mimi Hanaoka

Since its release, An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary chronicling Al Gore’s quest against global warming, grossed $22,409,945 in the U.S. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby has grossed $127,806,521. Inherent in these numbers is Al Gore’s point: indeed there is something inconvenient about global warming and the truth in general — it is easier to ignore. Titled aptly, response to the movie shows that the truth isn’t sexy, funny, or a snake on a plane, and the public doesn’t care, more content to plod along in a land of digital cable, high-speed Internet and fast-food restaurants.  

But, it isn’t just a lack of entertainment value that makes the truth inconvenient. Box office numbers scream a larger problem, the reason why the truth is most inconvenient, not to the people in the theaters but the people who own them; the truth doesn’t sell, it doesn’t make money. Thus, I would like to ask a question, a question that might have an inconvenient answer.

Since 1981, more than 25 million people have died of AIDS. Each year, five million people are infected. According to UNAIDS/WHO data, there are over 39 million people living with HIV/AIDS right now.

Why hasn’t a vaccine been discovered yet?  

It is entirely possible that the science is not there yet. But, maybe that is too convenient an explanation. On February 9th, 2006, The New York Times reported a 45 percent fourth-quarter increase in profits for GlaxoSmithKline. The profit for the quarter was $1.96 billion with revenue at $10.33 billion. GSK manufactures and sells six types of anti-retroviral drugs and the average cost for a years’ worth of AIDS medication is $15,000. GSK is only one pharmaceutical titan. Combined, the market for AIDS medicines is a multi-billion dollar business. Maybe it is more profitable for enormous pharmaceutical companies not to find a vaccine for HIV.

Consider the response to avian flu where there is no market in treating the disease but an ever inflating one for a vaccine. As an airborne disease, there is certainly a need for this vaccine, but the market is waiting to be monopolized without any threat to current market shares. Since 2003, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed 140 people. Today, 6,000 people under the age of 24 contracted HIV.

Maybe the science is not there, or maybe the truth is inconvenient.

Aaron Charlop - Powers

I grew up and spent all my life living under authoritarian regimes and I know that these things happen. But I’m shocked that they happened to me here, in the U.S.

—Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi architect, speaking yesterday about being asked to remove his shirt, which had the slogan “We will not be silent,” written on it in Arabic and English, when he was flying on August 12th on a JetBlue flight from New York back home to California. Although he had successfully cleared the security checkpoint at the airport, Mr. Jarrar was later approached and asked to remove and change his shirt, on the basis that several passengers — who were jittery because they could not read the Arabic on his t-shirt, regardless of the fact that the slogan was written in English and in Arabic — had asked that he change his t-shirt. Mr. Jarrar eventually wore another t-shirt, which was purchased for him at a store within JFK airport. What was  JetBlue’s response? “We’re not clear exactly what happened.”

Compounding the sheer racism and ignorance of this incident is the origin and use of the slogan, which was written bilingually on Mr. Jarrar’s t-shirt: opponents of the war and occupation in Iraq and other conflicts in the region have rallied behind the slogan “We will not be silent.” The slogan may have originated with the student resistance White Rose group, which opposed the Nazi regime in Germany and allegedly used the phrase in 1942, claiming “We will not be silent, we are your bad conscience; the White Rose will not leave you in peace!”

Mimi Hanaoka

While the release of Bishop An is a good sign, there are six more bishops in jail… We hope that this release is not an isolated case.

— Joseph Kung, head of the U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, referring to the recent release of Bishop An Shuxin, 57, who languished for more than a decade in the Chinese prison system.

Bishop An Shuxin is an underground bishop who led some of China’s eight million Catholics, according to the Vatican’s estimate (or, by the Chinese government’s significantly more conservative count, five million believers).  In 1951 China severed ties with the Holy See, which recognizes Taiwan, to China’s great annoyance. Chinese Catholics must be members of the state-sponsored Catholic church that functions independently of the Vatican and the Pope. Bishop An Shuxin now has a permit to serve as a bishop, but he nevertheless continues to be under observation.  

Mimi Hanaoka

The TV season has begun as Fox gets out of the box first with the new serial drama Vanished.  It’s a little bit CSI, with a pinch of Without a Trace and a dash of 24.  The gist of the Monday night show revolves around the disappearance of the second wife of a prominent Georgia Senator who turns out not to be who she’s pretending to be.  The pilot purposely gives out clues that seem to implicate everyone who is close to the beautiful woman named Sara, including the Senator, his kids, and even the ex-wife, who has yet to be revealed on screen.  

The stock characters include an angst-ridden FBI agent named Kelton, played by Gale Harold (Deadwood), who is trying to cope with a past botched kidnapping retrieval situation that caused the death of a young boy.  His reliable partner Lin Mei, the always-sharp Ming-Na (ER), is leaded with the task of keeping Kelton grounded.  Near the end of the pilot episode it’s revealed that Kelton had written a memo to his bosses that he was against the tactic used in the attempted retrieval of the kidnapped boy that ended in tragedy.  In a cheesy bit of dialogue, the Senator, who unleashes this information, tells the agent that he doesn’t want him to write any memos, just do what he thinks will find his wife.

Vanished was created by a veteran of CSI, Josh Berman, and partially executive-produced by feature director Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker, Deep Impact), who also directed the pilot and seems to try too hard to grab the audience with clichéd plot introductions instead of building with interesting characters we haven’t seen before.  Shows become hits when the audience becomes enamored by the characters and invites them into their homes week after week, such as with other Fox dramas like the already mentioned 24, House, and the surprise hit Prison Break, which proceeds Vanished on Fox’s primetime schedule.  

Not to poo poo on the casting director, but none of the actors stand out, at least not yet.  The most intriguing character is the kidnapped victim herself, played by Joanne Kelly, in a quietly subdued but compelling performance.  The only problem is Sara vanishes during the first half-hour of the pilot and only reappears in flashbacks or snippets of imagery.  It is my hope that in subsequent episodes, she isn’t relegated to a ghost character, much like Laura Palmer, the victim at the central core of the bizarre, early 90s, David Lynch series Twin Peaks.  She needs to be front and center and a key figure in the dramatic action.

Plot wise, they have concocted enough twists to rival the real-life JonBenet Ramsey murder case.  Whether they can sustain this form of storytelling without becoming maudlin, trite, or repetitive, like ABC’s Lost has successfully done over the last two seasons, is yet to be determined.  They were successful in keeping my attention for the full hour and making me want to return next week to see how the case is moving, though Twin Peaks was able to string out Who Killed Laura Palmer for a whole season (but the weirdness factor wore off by season two and the show died a slow, ugly death).  I also hope the producers and Fox execs aren’t just trying to duplicate 24’s success by trying to force us to fall in love with the FBI agent character, à la Jack Bauer, so that we will continue year after year to tune into his out-of-the-box ways of finding missing persons.  I call it the MacGyver Factor, where you love a character no matter how convoluted the situations are that they get themselves mixed up in.  It has been critical to hit shows of the past such as The Fugitive, The X Files, and of course, the namesake MacGyver, always getting himself out of trouble with a stick of gum and a paperclip.  

Vanished is well-written, well-produced, and warrants at least a sampling for a few episodes.  You’ll either get bored quickly or the show will draw you in each week with anticipation.  Given that it takes 24’s timeslot for the fall, what do you have to lose as you’re already used to watching something at this time anyway?  So take a chance on Vanished until Jack is back in January.

Vanished, Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox (check local listings).

Rich Burlingham