Web sightings

New Yorker has an article on the debts of JRR Tolkien to Wagner. Alex Ross writes that although Tolkien vehemently denied any connection, one "could see 'The Lord of the Rings' as a kind of rescue operation, saving the Nordic myths from misuse—perhaps even saving Wagner from himself."

US News notes how Yale alumni are crowding the democratic presidential race in the US. They must be all encouraged by precedence. Come to think of it, Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, all graduated from Yale. The candidates though never mention their having attended the preppy university, bad for masa credentials. Even the inimitable Howard Dean, I found out, come from Yale, or as he demurely put it, from a college in New Haven, Connecticut.

Asia Times reviews Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai, and sees parellelisms between Koizumi's Japan today and Japan three hundred years ago when it first opened up to the world. The review notes that
"Hollywood's East-meets-West samurai epic makes an attempt to detail the historical clash between Japan's traditionalists and its modernizers - a story still playing out today. But with its cliched dialogue and predictability, even Tom Cruise's good looks can't make this action flick-meets-historical drama what it should have been." Oh well. What can we expect? Even the trailer looked like B-moviesh, like those of another fading star by the name of Van Damme.