Ben Affleck Details Magazine

REVIEW: With ‘Argo,’ the Film’s the Thing

As of this writing, Ben Affleck’s Argo is exceeding expectations at the box office, which is great news; this is probably the most important film about American foreign policy, specifically our devolving war with Islam, in recent memory.  No, scratch the ‘recent.’  Make that just ‘in memory.’

Right from the start, using semi-animated storyboards and old photographs to aid exposition, Affleck ensures that both sides of the struggle between Iran and the U.S. are given a fair hearing.  As the film flitted through images, guided by an Iranian-American woman’s voiceover, I was as impressed as ever at Hollywood’s ability to condense so much complexity into a series of pithy loglines that can be instantly understood even by those with no knowledge of what Iran’s modern history has been or, more importantly, what our nefarious role was in causing the Islamic Revolution.

The Santorum Sanitarium

THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW

by James Killough

When the compassionately irreverent sex-advice columnist Dan Savage proclaims in a Tweet on March 13, after the big upset in Dixie, “Santorum… officially not funny any more,” maybe we should consider taking Rick’s own Cirque du Ridicule seriously.  After all, it is Savage who hammered a sizable dent in the Republican candidate’s reputation when he created the wildly popular neologism that Santorum means “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”

Even after her success with the royal wedding, Burton is killing with her own brand of McQueen.

While I understand Savage’s alarm, the situation is actually funnier than ever, especially if you follow it with enough detachment not to get sucked up into any sort of panic.  True, there are various scenarios wherein the inmates could take over the asylum, but they are unlikely enough that we shouldn’t live in fear of them ever transpiring.