Looks like you can watch the entirety of Jesus Camp — a rather frightening look at the extreme religious right — for free on Google Video right now. I hadn’t seen it before and am currently cringing under my chair.

I was actually very tempted to write something recently based on the Wired article about the “New Atheism”. As an atheist and former tape-burning Bible-thumper, I’ve come to realize that religion isn’t the problem. Faith isn’t the problem. Extremism is the only problem, whether it comes from an Islamic Jihadist, a fundamentalist Christian or one of the “evangelical” atheists referenced in the article.

Dear Sirs/Madams:

I realize that you are likely inordinately busy with your efforts to stem the tide of rampant piracy that’s likely costing you tens of dollars of profit and literally taking the food out of the mouths of set dressers if those insipid, pandering missives you used to show before paying customers in theaters are to be believed, constructing newer and more powerful technologies to make your Academy screeners harder to copy (or, as it happens, even watch), and your endless lobbying of Congress to ram legislation through that would essentially make any activity involving a movie that constitutes anything more than “press play” illegal. However, I’d like to take the time to provide a couple of points I think might help your audiences actually enjoy your movies a bit more. These observations sprung into my mind following my recent viewing of The Family Stone, a fairly representative example of the kind of dreck you regularly spew out and then have the temerity to complain that, of all things, piracy is the single cause for movie attendance to be down.

1. You may be unaware of this, but you really don’t have to include every demographic in each movie. Having said that, it was rather impressive seeing you work in a homosexual, interracial couple. That must have taken chutzpah! You are blazing trails! But it did set up that extraordinarily painful “conflict” when, believe it or not, your acerbic, uptight stereotype character got to start up an apparently unintentional (wink-wink) bigoted conversation. Not only was she picking on gays, but she also got in something that could be construed as racist! Brilliant!

2. If you need to add emotional weight to a movie, for the love of everything holy, come up with something more original than “one of the parents has cancer and will die by movie’s end.” It’s pathetic when, as Diane Keaton’s face came on the screen in the first scene in the movie I said to myself “I bet they’re going to kill her off.” He shoots he scores!

3. “Hamfisted” doesn’t begin to describe your dealing with the “main” relationships in this movie. So the two non-relationship couples spend a few hours with each other, then at the dénouement (AKA “okay, 15 minutes of celluloid left, let’s wrap this shit up!”) they’re so comfortable with each other that one “couple” is snuggling in bed together and the other “couple” is shown resting their heads together in a moment of tender intimacy? Really? Like an hour after they decide not to get married? Three cheers for believability!

A personal response to Dan Glickman

So, Danny here, the chairman and CEO of the MPAA, by the way, wants to correct some misinterpretation of their desire to close the “analog hole.” Alrighty, Dan. Here’s his letter and my response.

Hollywood isn’t the bad guy in content flap

Your Dec. 30 editorial, “Congressional copycats,” regarding proposed content-protection legislation resorts to the tired and perplexing premise that Hollywood is working overtime to prevent customers from watching our movies. In fact, the bill simply corrects a technical glitch that opens the door to theft of copyrighted material by individuals with the technical savvy and disposition to do so.

Hollywood is the only bad guy in content flap

Well Dan, that sounds somewhat akin to the MPAA resorting to the tired and perplexing premise that putting in technical limitations on what people can watch, when, and where is somehow good for your customers.

It would not prevent technological innovation. To the contrary, protecting copyright will speed innovation and ensure consumers have more options for viewing programming.

To the contrary, it will give you the impression that you’re protecting your business model while causing the average consumer to have fewer options for viewing programming. Furthermore, the people you purport to desire to stop, the ones with “technical savvy” will actually not be hampered in the long run. As has been shown repeatedly, the “technically savvy” will always find ways around whatever bastardized protection scheme with which you come up. Therefore, the only ones you’d end up hurting in the long run are the technically unsavvy customers that actually pay for your product.

The preferred approach to content-protection issues is private-sector solutions, and we have made great efforts to subject the analog-hole issue to public scrutiny and debate, particularly among technology companies. The legislation introduced in Congress reflects the output of that discussion.

Yes, the public is able to scrutinize the technology involved in plugging the analog hole. They are, of course, required to pay $10,000 for the privilege of scrutinizing this technology and then are unable to discuss — or debate as you so thoughtfully put it — their findings anywhere.

The analog-hole legislation levels the playing field for manufacturers in a narrow and limited fashion. Without this legislation, movies and TV shows cannot be securely delivered to consumers in the wide variety of viewing options they desire.

With this legislation the number and variety of viewing options would shrink and the level of functionality would decrease. Until you realize that the best way to win viewers and, oh, by the way, make money is to provide more functionality and value to your customers such that they are compelled to pay for it and instead maintain the “tired and perplexing” stance that the only way to keep your customers is simply to make sure that the same old shit is “securely delivered,” your industry will continue to slide.

DAN GLICKMAN

Chairman and CEO

Motion Picture Assn. of America, Washington

COLDFORGED

Movie Watcher and Paying Customer

The people that you rely on to make payments on your Mercedes, Raleigh

From today’s Penny Arcade:

I can’t imagine how counterproductive those MPAA clips before movies have proven to be. It may be that you have not yet been insulted by one of these, but the only way to one-hundred percent guarantee that you will be harangued thus for piratical acts is to enter a theater and see movies legally.

How could he speak greater truth than this?

It must be said that when Javahead and I bravely attended the midnight showing of the latest Batman spectacle — aside: a spectacle that it must be said was well received by all parties — what should be distinctly missing but the PIRATING MOVIES CAUSES INSIPID CROTCHROT AND BLOODY INDIGESTION schlock? That’s right, it wasn’t shown. Could this mean The Industry has finally realized that belting out these missives to the people that just paid an increasingly ludicrous sum of money to see their fare is, possibly, preaching to the wrong congregation? Might we be seeing a bit of respect from a conglomerate that has only us, the paying public, to thank for their continued employment?

Sure. It’s far more likely that the stoner reel flipper forgot to hit a switch at some point, as he did by leaving all of the seemingly endless stream of commercials stuck in the wrong aspect ratio and causing actual ocular pain in us poor oldsters huddled there at midnight to see this damnable flick. But I guess I can hope.

The Good

• Connections with the original trilogy. Nicely dovetailed.
• Light-saber scenes were entertaining!
• Must I say that the special effects were good? I thought not.

The Bad

• 15 minute useless action scene to start the movie? Check.
• Jar Jar was sighted.
• “Noooooooooooooooooo!”

The Ugly

• An asthmatic robot. No, I don’t care how you explain it, it’s an asthmatic robot.
• “I’m trying to do the right thing.” “Yes Master, I’ll kill children!” From confused idealist to psychotic killer in 3 screen minutes. A new record!
• “Hold me, Anakin! Hold me as you did by the lake on Naboo!” A master of subtle, touching dialogue Lucas is not.

I have a long and storied past with being a Metallica fan. In 1986 I bought Master Of Puppets on tape. I walked out of the music place, got in my car, put the tape in my tape deck and started driving being aurally assaulted by the opening song, “Battery.” I sold that tape at a loss to my friend that same day who thought I was crazy. I just didn’t get it. I was from the Def Leppard school of “heavy metal” so the utter viciousness of Metallica simply sounded like so much noise.

Fast forward 2 years. I’d just graduated from high school and was in Washington DC with a good friend celebrating. We went to the Monsters Of Rock concert at JFK Arena and were roughly as far from the stage as we could get without being outside. For those uninitiated, the Monsters Of Rock tour brought together the likes of Kings X, Metallica, Dokken, The Scorpions, and Van Halen for an all-day marathon. So, enter Metallica. The crowd and two of the friends (two more came up to DC with us just for the concert) with me loved them. I sat and mocked them. “The only thing I can hear is Kirk’s guitar.” That should show you how much I knew, as most likely it was James that was prominent. Strike two.

Somehow, in some way the influence of those two friends over the next few years got me to a point where I liked Metallica. As a guitarist, I started appreciating the skill it took to do the things they were doing on guitar. Pieces of the arrangements — like the truly stunning little interlude in the song “Master Of Puppets” — showed me that there was more to their music than just unrelenting mayhem and seemingly uncontrolled noise. Actually, far from being uncontrolled they really are extremely tight which is hard to appreciate at first.

I’m not one of the infamous “Black Album haters.” I think it has some very good work on it and there are some songs that I enjoy to this day. However, I am one of those fans that started losing interest, and doing it quickly at that, with the release of Load. Concerning their most-recent release, St. Anger, well… I’ll let my initial comments speak for themselves.

The Documentary

Metallica being Metallica apparently can’t resist having their every move recorded for posterity. You could perhaps consider that unfair, but between the A Year And A Half In The Life Of… video set covering the recording sessions and subsequent tour of The Black Album and now this new thing that I hear about, Some Kind Of Monster I have a bit of proof on my side. I enjoyed the previous one a great deal but then I was a pretty big fan. I’ve since cooled, so I wasn’t too keen on seeing Some Kind Of Monster honestly. Then I started hearing things about it. Things that said that maybe this wasn’t the typical self-aggrandizing style of production.

And it’s true. This video is not “Sex, Drugs, And Rock and Roll in the studio.” It’s a vision of a band on the verge of collapse, a depiction of a group of people trying to overcome years of a certain status quo that simply wasn’t working for them any more. It shows trials and frustrations and genuine weaknesses in people that, especially in James’ case, we as outsiders never really suspected or imagined. I was really amazed that Metallica wanted to have these deeply personal interactions shown.

A few things verge on the tragic. They hire one of those personal coach types of people, the scharmy “thank you for sharing that, James” kind of guy to the tune of $40,000 a month to help them in their interpersonal relationships and other things that are getting in the way of their creativity. This guy is with them for over 700 days, so you do the math on that. The amount of dependence on this relationship that the filmmakers conveyed was rather astonishing, with James at one point admitting there was a bit of the “father figure” type of feel for him, and then with Lars admitting that they were just about to tell him that they were going to start cutting back on their time with him but that they then backed away from that because of the fear that developed. Toward the end there’s a bit of an awakening that seems to take place on the part of James and Lars and the relationship takes a different turn, but it’s still hard to imagine Metallica being so reliant on anyone.

The meeting between Lars and Dave Mustane was incredible. I can’t imagine the complex relationships between James, Lars and Dave, but that scene was intense. Imagine feeling like a failure for nearly 20 years because you got kicked out of Metallica, despite having your own extremely successful band. As successful as Metallica? No, not on your life. But successful in its own right. But Dave still apparently harbors some pretty extreme resentment which definitely comes through.

I thought Lars’ father was a total hoot. Here’s this bearded, thin Swedish guy, relatively soft-spoken but definitely aware. Watching him listen to the possible cuts for the album when things start to fall apart — apparently there were some pretty good tracks and some relatively weaker ones — was priceless. There’s one shot where his eyes kind of cut over to Lars as if to say “really?” He’s honest, not even brutally honest, but his words had the impact of a freight train. And, honestly, he was right. As was the Q Prime guy who came in and basically said “you’ve got 4 good tracks and the rest simply aren’t.” Again, I haven’t heard the album aside from the one song that played on the radio, but even that song didn’t hit me right. I heard some things in the video that had some of that Metallica feel and some other stuff that had me wincing.

If you’re looking for a Rock documentary, this isn’t necessarily your thing. I think that’s a compliment, personally. If you’re looking to see what it’s like to have almost unimaginable success and have that success start slipping through your fingers, or to see real people with real problems having real relationships and trying to find a way to keep everything together, this is definitely your thing.

I may even have to give St. Anger a listen now that I know what went into it.