Syriana starring George C. Looney

All I know about the movie Syriana I learned today from these two articles.

James Lileks says this:

Entertainment Weekly, incidentally, has this synop of 'Syriana.' 'A dense, proudly complicated drama of geopolitical intrigue that has a lot of big, important things to say about big, important things [oil, the CIA, the media, everything] and doesn’t care whether audiences understand what’s being said. B-.

Translation: a didactic, incomprehensible mess based on the 437th post in a Democratic Underground post about Cheney, but it sticks it to the Man, so we can’t give it a C+.)

Here is a CNN article with some themes that James Lileks might think are incomprehensible and messy:

Writer/Director Stephen Gaghan:

I have a '66 GTO convertible with a 6.5-liter engine. The switch for me to…Priuses does not come terribly easy.

And the second hour, it's all thematics, about shared humanity, about the things buried in us in which we give ourselves a little moral out, little moral asterisks.

Oilmen who have seen the movie have been ‘weirdly positive’ – ‘nobody's against trying to improve ethical conduct’

Actor Jeffrey Wright:

[We have a system] that requires us to suck up the resources of the world to support our lifestyle. It's an indictment of all of us.

By the way the “437th post in a Democratic Underground post about Cheney” is actually a book, “See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism” by Robert Baer.

And then there’s this challenge described by Gaghan:

I've been party to so many conversations in New York and L.A. where people explain that the middle of the country won't do this, the middle of the country won't do that, the flyover won't get this, the flyover won't get that," he says, his voice rising. "I am the flyover. I'm from Kentucky. ... I am the red state flyover you are talking about, and you -- are -- selling -- me -- short.

I can’t wait to go and see if I’m as dumb as I’m supposed to be.