Zero Dark Thirty Movie Review

I’m coming at my review of Zero Dark Thirty after it has become a lightning rod for criticism and charges that it depicts torture as having elicited a positive outcome in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, overplaying the role of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” in tracking down the world’s most wanted terrorist. Director Kathryn Bigelow’s defense is as reasonable and accurate as you can get: depiction is not the same as support. But the specific charge is that the story, as laid out in Mark Boal’s screenplay, has the chain of information leading to bin Laden coming from facts gleaned through torture. I recognize this is problematic, made more complicated by the fact that Boal and Bigelow have touted the journalistic nature of the film.

Another from the Celebrity Death Pool Bites the Dust

Many years ago I heard about these celebrity death pools in which people throw their money into a pool to bet on which celebrities will die in the next 6 months. The younger the celebrity who dies and the sooner within the 6 months, the more points you earn. It's a sick game. It's morally depraved at best, but it was so intriguing. I thought about throwing myself into the thick of it and made up a preliminary list of those likely to die.