June 1 move to Cork Factory lofts in the 'burgh

I just toured the Cork Factory Lofts in Pittsburgh. They have openings for around 800 sq ft, more than I need. Kinda pricey, about $1200 month, but it comes with heat, 24 hr concierge and coffee bar and fitness center, outdoor pool and Jaccuzi and fire pit (? sacrifices to the money god?) and all appliances, incl washer/dryer. 2 blocks from Smallman street, 3 blocks from Penn Ave, right in the heart of the strip district. I can even walk to St. Stan's for mass. I have a 3 day schedule fall semester, so maybe I would only have to drive to campus 3-4 times a week. For visiting guests there is a fully equipped one bedroom apt for rent $80 a night - better than the presidential suite at the Hilton!

Uri Grossman's dad continues to seek peace for Israel

David Grossman's novels have been described as the "left's conscious " for example one of his books is entitled On Killing : The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society But his latest book is the most amazing, most tragic novel. Until the end of the Land tells the story of a tank commander and his experiences surviving physically and morally in action on the West Bank. The novel is based on the experiences of his youngest son, Uri. Tragically, Uri was killed when his tank blew up in the last offensive during the 2006 Lebanon war. After a peace treaty was arranged with the UN, PM Olmert called for a final offensive and that is when many Israeli soldiers (IDF) were killed. As you may recall, the 2006 elections provided the new Likud party with a majority coalition, only to have its existence challenged by the way the 2006 war was executed. I believe (but I am not sure) that most Israeli's view the recent war as a mistake, esp how it was carried out (reserve IDF soldiers were not supplied or equipped properly) esp the offensive at the end of the war. My own opinion? Israel with the help of US and UN should negotiate a peace treaty with Syria and the Palestinians, withdraw to 1967 borders, create a Palestinian state, unite Gaza with West Bank with a transportation tunnel, and use $ as the final payoff factor. Think of the money we have spent on Iraq - if we instead spent that paying off Palestinian refugee families for land and property they lost in 1948 or afterward, that would be a great incentive to bargain. Here is what a cab driver in Dubai said about the Taliban (or about any terrorist): "Trap a man in a room with no way out and he will fight, give him a way out and he will take it."

Susan doesn't think she exists...

The Edge Foundation asks, “What do you believe is true, even though you cannot prove it?”

Susan Blackmore, psychologist, visiting lecturer, University of the West of England, Bristol: author of Meme Machine

It is possible to live happily and morally without believing in free will.

As Samuel Johnson said, “All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience is for it.” With recent developments in neuroscience and theories of consciousness, theory is even more against it than it was in his time, more than two hundred years ago. So I long ago set about to systematically change the experience. I now have no feeling of acting with free will, although the feeling took many years to ebb away.
But what happens? People say I’m Lying. They say it’s impossible, and so I must be deluding myself to preserve my theory. And what can I do or say to challenge them? I have no idea, other than to suggest that other people try the exercise, demanding as it is.
When the feeling is gone, decisions just happen with no sense of anyone making them, but then a new question arises: Will the decisions be morally acceptable? Here I have made a great leap of faith (or the memes and genes and the world have done so). It seems that when people throw out the illusion of an inner self who acts, as many mystics and Buddhist practitioners have done, they generally do behave in ways that we think of as moral of good. So perhaps giving up free will is not as dangerous as it sounds. But this too I cannot prove.
As for giving up the sense of an inner conscious self altogether, this is much harder. I just keep on seeming to exist. But though I cannot prove it, I think it is true that I don’t.

Israeli jewish Film Festival Pittsburgh

I just attended the Israeli Jewish Film Festival in Pittsburgh - great! We saw the film Noodle which is about a woman in Tel Aviv whose illegal chinese maid leaves her 6 yr old son with her for one hour, only she is apprehended and deported, and the Israeli woman is left with her son. The Israeli woman has many wounds, - both her husbands have died, and she could not conceive a child, and when she tells the 6 yr old boy this, he says, "oh..." each time. he understands her sorrow. She begins to understand his. She is a flight attendant on El Al, the Israeli airline, so she "arranges" a way to reunite boy with mother. Its a confusing film, because I am not Israeli, there is something going on between the woman and her sister, who is temporarily living with her because of marital problems. I assume that jewish or Israeli sisters have issues? Perhaps I didnt understand that. (Update: one of the sisters has lost both husbands due to military service, and she had no children. I think her character is shared by many Israeli women who have experienced loss of a son, husband, father. That she had no children is another thing to identify with: the idea that there is someone missing from your family, a child never born, or a child lost, or a family member who stayed in Russian instead of coming with the family to Israel.) Any way, the film is great, tear jerker. After ward a reception, there was 150 Israeli flags hanging from ceiling, great food and snacks, wine, Israeli folk dancing, and a great middle east band, Ishtar so I had a great time. It was only $35 but I had to somehow get to South Side Works from Slippery rock, which took at least 1 1/2 hours - way out of my way. the thing is I cant (wont) try Pittsburgh downtown traffic so I always look for a way to avoid it, and this time i went way out of my way. But I found it. Israeli films are so much fun - I think my jewish DNA attracts me to the films. I mean, my great great grandparents were jews living in Alsace Lorraine (France) until their son, Isaac, moved to chicago (he was a butcher, moved to the meat packing capitol of the world). I really enjoyed the folk dancing - it was great. wonderful evening.

We keep finding reasons for not invading Iraq

I love it! Our intelligence agencies have analyzed all sorts of secret files from Mr. Hussein, and we can't find any reason for invading his country! 5 years after the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Bush is still trying to find a reason for justifying the invasion. This is the greatest debacle in US history....

President Bush said lots of things about Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq War. But few of his charges grabbed more attention than an unscripted remark he made at a Texas political fund-raiser on Sept. 26, 2002. "After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad at one time," Bush said. The comment referred to a 1993 claim by the Kuwaiti government—accepted by the Clinton administration—that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) had plotted to assassinate President George H.W. Bush during a trip to Kuwait that spring. Ever since, armchair psychologists have suggested that personal revenge may have been one reason for the president's determination to overthrow Saddam's regime.

But curiously little has been heard about the allegedly foiled assassination plot in the five years since the U.S. military invaded Iraq. A just-released Pentagon study on the Iraqi regime's ties to terrorism only adds to the mystery. The review, conducted for the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command, combed through 600,000 pages of Iraqi intelligence documents seized after the fall of Baghdad, as well as thousands of hours of audio- and videotapes of Saddam's conversations with his ministers and top aides. The study found that the IIS kept remarkably detailed records of virtually every operation it planned, including plots to assassinate Iraqi exiles and to supply explosives and booby-trapped suitcases to Iraqi embassies. But the Pentagon researchers found no documents that referred to a plan to kill Bush. The absence was conspicuous because researchers, aware of its potential significance, were looking for such evidence. "It was surprising," said one source familiar with the preparation of the report (who under Pentagon ground rules was not permitted to speak on the record). Given how much the Iraqis did document, "you would have thought there would have been some veiled reference to something about [the plot]."

The failure does not, of course, prove that the Iraqis were not planning such an operation. "It would not have surprised me at all if the Iraqis expunged any record of that—it was an utter embarrassment for them," says Paul Pillar, the CIA's former top analyst on the Middle East. But others have wondered whether the original allegations were exaggerated. The Kuwaiti claim grew out of the arrest of a band of whisky smugglers near the Iraq border that spring. Kuwaiti authorities also recovered a Toyota Land Cruiser containing 175 pounds of explosives connected to a detonator. After several days in Kuwaiti custody, the smugglers' ringleader, Wali al-Ghazali, confessed that he had been dispatched by an Iraqi intelligence agent to blow up former president Bush. Amnesty International questioned whether al-Ghazali (the only one to claim that Bush was the target) had been tortured. But when an FBI team concluded that the detonator and explosives closely resembled other Iraqi bombs, President Clinton ordered a Tomahawk cruise-missile strike on IIS headquarters. Years later Kuwait's emir declined to sign al-Ghazali's death warrant and commuted the sentences of four of the six convicted plotters. "It was always a circumstantial case," says Judith Yaphe, another former CIA analyst on Iraq. A White House spokesman declined to comment, but a U.S. intelligence official said, "It remains our view that Saddam's government had a hand" in the 1993 plot, and that information since the war "lends further credence" to that view.

Evidence of the Bush plot wasn't the only thing the Pentagon researchers couldn't find. There were also no records showing what the report called a "smoking gun" connection between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda—one of the principal claims made by the White House to advance the case for war. The report did find plenty of evidence that Saddam's regime had close ties to other (mainly Palestinian) terror groups and had maintained contacts with some radical Islamic movements—including, according to one 1993 document, Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Last week Vice President Dick Cheney said the document showed there was a "link between Iraq and Al Qaeda." But Pillar notes the Egyptian group—headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri—didn't merge with Al Qaeda until years later. "This is the same kind of word game they played before the war," Pillar says.

Perhaps most revealing of all was a tape of Saddam's conversations with his ministers after the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993—a plot linked to a group of Islamic radicals, one of whom, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was an Iraqi-American who fled to Baghdad after the attack. For years Bush administration officials like Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz charged that Iraq had given "sanctuary" to Yasin, suggesting that the regime may have been complicit in the 1993 bombing. But the newly discovered tape shows that Saddam and his ministers were puzzled by the bombing and wondered whether the "Zionists" or U.S. intelligence were secretly behind it. They also were deeply suspicious of Yasin, whom the Iraqis had in custody and were interrogating. Yasin, Saddam says on the tape, is "too organized in what he is saying and is playing games." The Pentagon researcher said the exchange shows how "paranoid and suspicious" the Iraqis were about their adversaries. They may not have been alone.

Voter registration by democrats record levels in PA

Democratic Party enrollment surged past the 4 million mark Monday, setting a state record on the last day Pennsylvanians had to register to vote in next month's presidential primary.

The figures, which showed modest declines in the ranks of Republicans and independents, reflected intense interest in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and recruitment efforts by both candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Since last year's election, which featured races for judicial and municipal offices, the number of Democrats increased by more than 161,000, or more than 4 percent, to at least 4,044,952. No political party in the state had previously reached the 4 million threshold.

The largest percentage gains were concentrated in the Philadelphia suburbs and the state's central region, mostly in counties where Republicans still outnumber Democrats.

I will bet that the increase in registration, esp in suburban areas that are traditionally republican, shows that Obama supporters are registering as democrats so they can vote in the primary april 22. Go Obama!

trip to NYC

I drive to ft lee nj friday and spent the weekend with my son noah. We had a great time, visiting NYC saturday and taking a techno music concert at the Japan Society. While waiting for the concert, we ate at a walk in middle east restaurant that also sold pizze - I had a falafel sandwich and pizza, noah had pizza and a falafel plate dinner. great food, best pizza I have tasted in a long time. We also discovered the Bhutan mission to UN office, and toured outside the UN - noah said the guards were giving me the evil eye, probably that black leather Macy's jacket I was wearing. anyway, the concert was great, I have never heard a "laptop" performance. In addition to the laptop (on one song the laptop was accompanied by another laptop), there was a harp and electric harp, drums, piano and percussion (the most amazing things used as percussion, like a hand held calliope that the performer blew in, and the sound was really unusual) and all the music was like a jam session. The pianist would play some chords and suggest a beat, and then everyone else would join in. It reminded me of the drumming circles I have been in (yes drum circles). Anyway, great time. we took subways, and we encountered many unusual people on the subway, preachers, blind beggars, musicians and you name it. Noah kept telling me not to look at them, ignore them - he buses to NYC everyday so is used to the strange characters. Someone else told me something similar: never make eye contact with anyone in NYC while you are driving or on public transportation. These pictures are of the Bhutan mission flag, and of the Raoul Wallenberg memorial, since this hero's body was never found, only his briefcase is shown. So very sad, this man saved so many jews during the holocaust, only to disappear in Soviet detainment. All in all a great trip - we also got haircuts at a japanese salon, very hip.

The ultimate "how to" book

This book tells you how to relieve yourself around the world. Supposedly, squat toilets and wiping with your left hand, and washing hands after, is the way the majority of humans take their dump.

Ashley Dupree

here is the slideshow for Ashley Dupree, Gov. Spitzer's girlfriend of choice. Not a bad song, not snoop dog quality, but not bad.

4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days

What a movie! Otilia is best friend with Gabriella, and Gab is pregnant. This is a Romanian film, set in the last year of communist rule. By 1958, Romania had the occupation of its country by the USSR ended, and Romania was "free," free to be a part of the Warsaw Pact, or a country that was part of the USSR coalition against NATO. Nicolae Ceauşescu,the premier of Romania, pursued some independent programs without approval of the USSR, and there were some moments when Romania suspected that the USSR might move its army back in, esp after Hungary of 1956 and Czechoslovakia of 1968. Anyhoo, Ceausescu embarked on some economic hardship programs in the 1970's and this resulted in many hardships for the people. The birth rate declined. Ceausescu then decided to "reward" women who had babies, giving them a "bonus pay" and other benefits, and declaring abortion illegal. Women who were forced to have unwanted children could give them up to the state - and these orphanages were underfunded, and poorly cared for these children. It is estimated that 2 million Romanians were killed under the communist dictatorship - Ceausescu and his wife were shot after the revolution in 1990. This film shows Romania of 1989: grim apartments, dirty run down little cars, lines of women waiting outside shops, and the only thing in supply was sugar (from Cuba). The abortionist shows up, "Mr. Bebe," and doesnt want money, he wants to have sex with Gab and Otilia. With grim detachment, Otilia goes first and then Gab. Mr. Bebe I think is symbolic of the state: he exploits their situation, rapes them both, and then kills the child inside Gab. That was the status of women in Romania at that time: they were treated like wombs, the gov wanted their wombs, just like Mr. Bebe. What a bastard. After the fall of Ceausescu, many international orgs assisted with the many orphaned children that were poorly treated under Ceausescu. There is a long awkward dinner scene with Otilia's boyfriend's family, a professional family of doctors, which I think showed how some privileged people did well under Ceausescu - but the contrast between Otilia's life outside in the dark trying to get back to Gab to check on her with the affluent family having dinner shows the opposing ends that existed in the communist dictatorship. What i find fascinating is how ancient the country of Romania is, home of the earliest European settlement by homo sapiens - and the beauty of the countryside, and the castles. After reading Alan Furst spy novels, I really would like to visit Romania, Hungary, Czech and Slovak republics and Poland. Very grim movie though - 2 hrs of tension, rape, abortion, throwing the fetus down a trash chute - as I waited for the movie to begin, I wondered if the audience (a very old crowd) knew what they were about to see.

constant gardener

This truly a great movie - its almost identical to the book. the book was great, the movie great too. Ralph Fiennes does a great job acting - the book by John Le Carre is also very well written. Such a powerful movie - absolutely great.

5,500-year-old human sacrifice evidence unearthed in Sudan

This was a headline occurring at the same time that Tibetans are being burned to death in Lhasa, the capitol city of Tibet. Our policy toward China makes no sense to me: of course, International relations is not my field. I have read that morality has no place in international relations: that we have no "friends" only interests. My understanding is that morality plays no part in international relations. Only interests. Condoleezza Rice comes from a christian background and i suspect she knows the bible better than me, however, her approach to IR is definitely the Henry Kissinger approach (did you know he researches the international laws of countries he visits because he has been indicted for war crimes by some countries?) China is of course an important part of our economy - what would WalMart be without china? How could they deliver those low prices? Hillary clinton served on WalMarts board (thats part of her 35 yrs of experience). So china is part of our economy, and we cant screw with china. Their human rights violations are clearly at a level with Iran: so why dont we have sanctions against china? Because china is in our "interest" and Iran is not. If Bush is really for freedom he would change our china policy. But he isnt: every time he brings morality into IR, I cringe. He is either a pathological liar or he is just stupid. I think we should research the "human sacrifice" that is happening in Tibet, we should bring sanctions against China, we should cancel our involvement in the Olympics, and that Bush should make a press conference about human rights violations in china.

Iraq Violence Drops but for How Long?

read the following article based on the headline above, and then decide for yourself if iraq violence has dropped. No where in the article is there any evidence that the surge has ended violence, if anything, there is information in the article that suggests otherwise, for example, the awakening councils. We are paying $ to sunni's to stop attacks and fight against foreign militants. In fact, the article ends saying that the cause for the reduction in violence is unclear. What kind of journalism is this? Report on something the military press secretary gives, and then question the accuracy at the end of the article? This is really poor journalism.


The surge of U.S. forces has driven down insurgent attacks in Baghdad but violence elsewhere in Iraq raises questions about whether killings will continue to drop as American forces begin to leave, the United Nations said Saturday.

As security improved in Baghdad, violent attacks spread last year to other parts of the country, including Diyala Province and Mosul, al-Qaida's last urban stronghold, according to the report from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq.

"The government of Iraq continued to face enormous challenges in its efforts to bring sectarian violence and other criminal activity under control against a backdrop of political instability," the report said.

The U.S. military has said a 60 percent reduction in attacks followed the surge.

"This is a window of opportunity for Iraq," Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. chief in Iraq, said at a news conference in Baghdad.

The U.S. military in Iraq did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Thousands of U.S. forces went sent to Iraq starting last year as part of a strategy by Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to secure the capital and give Iraq's politicians breathing room to cut deals that would bring minority Sunni Arabs into the government and weaken the insurgency.

De Mistura said so-called Awakening Councils, groups of Sunni former fighters who have accepted U.S. backing to fight al-Qaida in Iraq, also have played a role in reducing violence.

But the U.N. report cautioned against concluding the surge was a success because "the extent to which the decrease in violence was sustainable remained unclear." And violent attacks have grown more frequent in recent weeks.

Twelve U.S. soldiers have been killed in the last week, five of them in a single suicide attack in central Baghdad. A week ago two massive bombs hit Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood, killing 68 people.

On Saturday, Iraqi security forces clashed with a breakaway faction of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Kut, leaving five dead and 15 wounded, police said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information.

Obama's minister Jeremiah Wright and "blowback"

Here is what Rev. Wright has preached: "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Wright said. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Remember what Malcolm X said after Pres. Kennedy was assassinated? "America's chickens have come home to roost." Elijah Muhammad, then leader of the so called "black" muslims, ordered Malcolm to apologize, and then demoted him. So what is Rev. Wright thinking? He MUST remember what malcolm X said, but he said it anyway! He must have known it would get attention, since Barack is a member of his church. So why did he say it?

Frankly, he is correct. We did worse than drop two atomic bombs on japan, we fire bombed their major cities even though we knew japan was defenseless. Just because japan's leaders were fanatics didn't mean we had the "right" under war to burn innocent civilians. But still, to blame the victims of 911 for their own deaths is just dumb. i don't think most Americans understand US policy toward palestinians, nor do they realize the type of warfare we fought during WWII that included firebombing civilians, nor do they realize how we refused some jewish immigration prior to WWII, nor do they realize the US was aware of concentration camps and so forth...

I do think that 911 was "blowback" - that is, the unintended consequences of covert operations. In other words, our gov does stuff that it keeps secret from citizens, but its no secret to those it is done to. We support dictatorships in middle east like Saudi Arabia, because we need the oil - but Saudi citizens are disenfranchised. So some radical Islamic nut decides to get back at the US for supporting the Saudi royal family, and the end result is 911. American people think, whoa! why would someone hijack airplanes and do such a criminal act? we dont understand the policies that the US has pursued that precipitated the terrorist acts.

But blowback is not the fault of its victims: its the fault of politicians.

suspect in North Carolina shooting

So above is the picture of the main suspect in the killing of the 22 yr old student body president of Univ of North Carolina. I am sure you have seen her picture: beautiful young woman, volunteered with children in latin american countries over summer, unlimited future. If this guy shot her, it unfortunately reinforces a stereotype of young black men: they are gang bangers, crack addicts who shoot young white girls for their purse, atm card suv. I just saw the disney movie, College Road Trip, with martin lawrence as an overprotective father (police chief) who wants his daughter to go to the local Northwestern univ instead of her choice Georgetown. Its a comedy, really lame. Aimed at very young ages, pre teens and their parents. I was confused about how the black family was protrayed against typecast: no african american slang, no hip hop, no baggy pants: both the daughter and her brother were intelligent very well behaved children. Then I see mr gang bang hip hop suspect in this young woman's murder - connection? I am relieved to see a movie that recognizes family values among african american families - there are plenty of black families out their who value marriage, children, careers, who have high expectations of their children, like Barack and michelle Obama, right? In Get On the Bus, Spike Lee had a line that said something about how Hollywood portrays black men in film as the 4 R's "rap, riot, rape,rob." In College Road Trip,the young men that the police chief's daughter meets are all handsome, well groomed, respectful young black men (they say "yes sir" to daddy martin lawrence). I am truly sorry that killers like the above guy are out there making it hard for black people everywhere to be taken seriously and not stereotyped - and its great Disney Inc is doing its part in showing the best of us, the Barack and Michelle Obama's of the country. College Road Trip has been criticized as a lousy movie, but on another level, it represents a better Hollywood - I am tired of Hollywood movies that show black people "rapping, rioting, raping and robbing" - I have had young black men students who I have been very proud of and what they don't need is more racist Hollywood images to challenge them.

3 am Hillary Ad backfires!

teenage girl who appeared in Hillary's "3 am in the morning and the phone in the oval office rings" ad when she was 8, turns out to be an Obama supporter and precinct worker. read about it more here at Huffington.
I think that ad may have helped her temporarily, but it has played against her in the long run. Also, the latest suggestion of a Hillary / Obama ticket is stupid: who is advising these idiots? First off, if Obama is so inexperienced he cant be trusted with a phone call in 3 am, why is he qualified to be VP? Duh? John Kerry immediately called the suggestion absurd - even demo party leaders wonder what kinda cool aid hillary and bill are drinking. Hillary's campaign is so lame, even if she gets the nomination, with her track record McCain should have smooth sailing. Again, this Hillary campaign is turning the Demo nomination into a slow moving train wreck. The longer she stays in the worse Demo chances are in Nov. her campaign is about her Narcissism (and bill's too).

Lost in Translation - great movie

I never "got" Lost in Translation, but Noah told me it was about different cultures and so forth...well I finally got it. Murray and Johannsen hit it off because they were both lonely and searching for happiness, and Japan was the right place for them to reflect upon their lives - it has just enough difference to allow 2 americans to reflect upon their lives "back home." So japan was a place that allowed them to reflect - and the scenes on the street in japan were great! the video shops, the scenes of Mt Fuji - I cant imagine living in japan and seeing Mr Fuji without being overwhelmed each time - what an incredible image. I must visit Japan soon. Perhaps I will meet my own Scarlett Johannsen! Great movie, you are right noah - absolutely great movie.

red state blue state projected results

Here are the projected states and electoral vote for McCain against Obama, and against Clinton. This is based on March 6th polling data.

barnes and noble

I drove to pittsburgh in an ice storm to buy some books - barnes and noble in squirrel hill has the best collection of fiction in the city. I bought the novel Persepolis, about a young woman growing up in the islamic revolution in Iran: it is a comic strip novel, now made into an animated movie (which I havent seen yet, but it is definitely something I will buy and show in political film...if I am still here in the fall to teach political film). Also bought Candy Girl, a non fiction novel about Diablo Cody's experience as a stripper and sex worker - she also wrote the screen play for Juno (which i ordered from B&N online - I must read that script because it is so original, the dialogue so amazing). Thundercats are Go! Phukit, Thailand!

Wolverine discovered

A researcher with a motion detector camera obtained a picture of a Wolverine in the high sierras in California. This may affect plans for selling logging contracts on federal land - Wolverines at high altitudes were considered extinct. Now they could be protected by federal law, and their forest protected too. This cute wolverine (cute?) doesnt know his picture was taken, or the political and economic debate he has created. Very cool! Phukit, Thailand! Thundercats Go!

Juno - perfect movie

I really enjoyed Juno - I liked her character, and i liked the dialogue. In fact, every character in the film is unique, incl mr and Mrs McGruff. I really couldnt tell how the movie would end until the end. Some viewers complain about the teenage slang but I think its great: I am not sure if teens talk that way, but the point for the screenwriter is to make dialogue that is unique, entertaining, memorable. I mean, do people really say "Phukit, Thailand?" Phukit. I like it. I also liked the music very minimalist. many reviews talk about the controversy over teen pregnancy: the pregnancy was the story line, what the story was about was love...the movie is about love...the love juno feels for her dad and step mom, for Paulie her boyfriend, and for the child within her. So go and see Juno, and make sure you see it with someone you love.