Are you kidding me????

[mood7.livejournal.com]

The most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly has an article on the Mel Gibson controversy.

Direct quote from that article:

Since the arrest, Gibson has acted like a person who would like to make amends: He announced on Aug. 1 that he has "begun an ongoing program of recovery." The next step will likely be the Official Talk Show Contrition Tour. After that it's anybody's guess, but in a few years, an apolitical lowbrow action movie - the type that made him a matinee idol and a multimillionare - might not be a bad idea. As one producer contacted by EW noted, Hollywood is the town that gave convicted child molester Victor Salva a second chance and saw Roman Polanski feted at the Oscars.

We're here to tell you it's not going to work - at least right now. The violence of Gibson's words won't allow it."

Are they serious??? They're comparing Mel Gibson's anti-semitism, as bad as it is, to a child molester and a statutory rapist?

Am I the only one that finds this appalling? Oh, and what the hell does him being a multi-millionaire have to do with anything?

Book rec: Crichton, 'State of Fear'

[lemonlye.livejournal.com]

Has anyone else here read Michael Crichton's State of Fear? I just finished it and thought it would be a good one to mention to this group.

The story itself is rather over-the-top and silly--car chases and elaborate eeevil schemes and massive conspiracies and all--but the bad guys are eco-terrorists and their lawyers. And in between the car chases, Crichton unloads all kinds of data, which is real and is backed up by a bibliography in the end pages, to show that global warming is possibly not even happening at all. Or, if it is, that it cannot be definitely linked to human industry's carbon dioxide emissions.

Perhaps most relevant to this community (and this is a spoiler but it doesn't really matter), he has one character, an obnoxious self-centered actor, who likes to harp on the virtues of the natural environment and how everyone should return to simple, "natural" village living. The guy ends up getting eaten by a tribe of cannibalistic headhunters in the South Pacific. :D

As you can imagine, the reviews on Amazon.com include plenty of "Crichton is just a right-wing industry stooge!" remarks, which meant I needed to mention the book here to y'all. I might even add him to our interests list.

P.S. Unrelated mod reminder: please feel free to tag your entries in this community as you make them, using our new handy-dandy and ever-growing list of tags! Will save us some librarian work later. Thank you! Off to tag this one myself...heh.