The Republic of T.

As someone who watched both movies about the West Memphis Three several times, and read the book about the case, this is fantastic news.

Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, Jr. and Jason Baldwin, collectively known as the West Memphis Three, have been in prison since 1993 for the murders of 8-year-old boys Christopher Byers, Steve Branch and James Michael Moore. On August 19, 2011, they have been freed. A live stream of the WM3 public hearing in Jonesboro, AK is below.

The West Memphis Three’s sentences have been converted to 18 years with credit for time served, as well as 10 years SIS (suspended imposition of sentence), which is like parole without the restrictions. The WM3 just have to stay out of legal trouble for the next ten years to avoid returning to prison.

As you read this, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, Jr. and Jason Baldwin are being freed. The convictions of the West Memphis Three were not overturned. Instead, they agreed to what is called an Alford plea.

I walked in the door minutes ago, looked over the hubby’s shoulder, saw the headline and was stunned. It’s probably one of the best endings to this chapter of a long story that almost certainly isn’t over yet.

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I won’t watch a movie if I’ve missed the beginning, and I hate missing endings so much that I won’t start watching a movie I can’t see through to the end. As a writer, the beginning and end are two of the most important parts of the story to me. They answer two important important questions in any story: “How did we get into this?” and “How do we get out of this?”

Monday night, I watched Too Big To Fail — HBO’s eponymous adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book — from start to finish. Yet, I still ended up feeling like I’d missed the two most important parts of the story: the beginning and the end. Thus, I never got answers to those important questions: How did we get into this mess? How do we get out of this mess?

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I read the news today. Oh boy.

Elizabeth Taylor, the actress who dazzled generations of moviegoers with her stunning beauty and whose name was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 79.

The cause was congestive heart failure, her publicist, Sally Morrison, told The Associated Press.

In a world of flickering images, Ms. Taylor was a constant star. First appearing onscreen at age 9, she grew up there, never passing through an awkward age. It was one quick leap from “National Velvet” to “A Place in the Sun” and from there to “Cleopatra” as she was indelibly transformed from a vulnerable child actress into a voluptuous film queen.

In a career of more than 70 years and more than 50 films, she won two Academy Awards as best actress, for her performances as a call girl in “Butterfield 8” (in 1960) and as the acid-tongued Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (in 1966). Mike Nichols, who directed her in “Virginia Woolf,” said he considered her “one of the greatest cinema actresses.”

I’m not sure what I can add to all that has been and will be said. But here goes.

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I can’t remember why I suggested to Parker that he and I read the the Harry Potter books together. I’m sure it was in part because I wanted to continue to encourage in him a love of reading. That’s why Parker and I read together every night that it’s my turn with him at bedtime.

Being an avid reader myself, it’s something I want for both my sons — not just to be well-read, but to develop a love of reading for reading’s sake. In my life, I’ve found it makes learning a lot easier, but makes the world a bigger and more fascinating place, by extending learning throughout life.

Hell, the years I’ve spent since college could be considered a very long independent study program, based on what I’ve read. (Add what I’ve written about what I’ve read, and I’m convinced I could almost qualify for some kind of advanced degree.)

But that’s not the reason I recommended the Harry Potter books.

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I know I say this every time a favorite celebrity passes away, but this is one of those times when I mean it when I say a little bit of light went out of the world when Lena Horne left it last night.

Lena Horne, who was the first black performer to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio and who went on to achieve international fame as a singer, died on Sunday night at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She was 92 and lived in Manhattan.

Her death was announced by her son-in-law, Kevin Buckley.

Ms. Horne might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early, and languished at MGM in the 1940s because of the color of her skin, although she was so light-skinned that, when she was a child, other black children had taunted her, accusing her of having a “white daddy.”

Ms. Horne was stuffed into one “all-star” musical after another — “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “Broadway Rhythm” (1944), “Two Girls and a Sailor” (1944), “Ziegfeld Follies” (1946), “Words and Music” (1948) — to sing a song or two that could easily be snipped from the movie when it played in the South, where the idea of an African-American performer in anything but a subservient role in a movie with an otherwise all-white cast was unthinkable.

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If I were to summarize message Michael Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story in one sentence, it might be this: Capitalism is not a form of government. That’s the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the movie, via 1950s educational/propaganda films.

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On my way to the DC premiere of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, it occurred to me that we all know the story, because we’ve been watching the “prequel” — and starring in it — for a while now.

Hell, just as some segments of Moore’s movie can be seen on YouTube (go to the movie to see them in Moore’s context), so can much of the “prequel”. In fact, you could almost put together the “extras” for the DVD from video available online.

I’m still working on my review of the movie, but in the meantime I thought it’d be fun to put together, scenes from Capitalism: The Prequel.

Next up: The Foreclosures

On my way to the DC premiere of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, it occurred to me that we all know the story, because we’ve been watching the “prequel” — and starring in it — for a while now.

Hell, just as some segments of Moore’s movie can be seen on YouTube (go to the movie to see them in Moore’s context), so can much of the “prequel”. In fact, you could almost put together the “extras” for the DVD from video available online.

I’m still working on my review of the movie, but in the meantime I thought it’d be fun to put together, scenes from Capitalism: The Prequel.

Next up: The Biggest Bailout Bandits

On my way to the DC premiere of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, it occurred to me that we all know the story, because we’ve been watching the “prequel” — and starring in it — for a while now.

Hell, just as some segments of Moore’s movie can be seen on YouTube (go to the movie to see them in Moore’s context), so can much of the “prequel”. In fact, you could almost put together the “extras” for the DVD from video available online.

I’m still working on my review of the movie, but in the meantime I thought it’d be fun to put together, scenes from Capitalism: The Prequel.

First: The Bailouts

Tonight, I’m going to the Washington, DC premiere of Micheal Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story.

I know there are people who can’t stand Moore, but I’ve seen just about all of his movies.

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It was late last night, after putting the kids to bed and doing a bit of work, that I learned Patrick Swayze died of the pancreatic cancer he’d battled since last year.

Patrick Swayze, the actor and classically trained dancer whose role in the enduringly popular “Dirty Dancing” made him a movie star, one who struggled with the alienation of fame and against being typecast as a leading man, died Monday. He was 57.

Swayze, who also starred in the blockbuster film “Ghost,” died in Los Angeles with his family at his side, his publicist, Annett Wolf, said.

Early last year, Swayze learned he had pancreatic cancer, a diagnosis that came two weeks after production wrapped on the pilot of “The Beast,” an A&E series in which he starred as an unorthodox FBI agent.

Swayze has long been a favorite male celebrity of mine, ever since he caught my eye as a just-coming out, southern gay boy. So, I thought it appropriate to post my two favorite Swayze movie moments.

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Grey is the color of ghosts. Grey is the color of a dead garden. Grey is not darkness. It is the color of not-quite-dark, of just-enough-but-not-enough; just enough light to see the edges of your world, but not enough enough light to see way out; enough to see the edges of the world beyond yours, but not enough to see a way in. Grey is just enough, where the blinding nothingness of darkness would be a comfort. Grey is the color of giving up.

The darkest moment in HBO’s Grey Gardens — the hardest to see, and (for me) the hardest to watch — was appropriately grey.

WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP. If you haven’t seen it yet, and don’t want to know what happens in the “drama” part of the

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Two speeches from last night’s Oscars stood out to me.

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I’ve been thinking alot about one of my favorite movies lately; Amadeus. It’s been a favorite of mine every since I first saw it back in ’84, when it first came out. And yesterday I received some news that brought it back to mind again.

I find myself thinking about a few scenes in particular that projected on the back of my mind in an endless loop for the better part of yesterday evening.

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“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
- Harvey Milk, November 1977

I was probably sleeping at 1:20 a.m. on June, 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village, setting off several days and nights of riots now credited with launching the modern gay rights movement. I was four months old. Too young to know what was happening in New York or its significance to me, or that I would be among the beneficiaries of the fight started that night. I was probably more concerned with mastering the art of rolling over or holding up my head.

I was about three years old in 1972, when Harvey Milk opened his camera store in the Castro, which became the launching pad for a political career and — arguably — the next phase of the movement started at Stonewall. And, again, I was too young to know who Harvey Milk was, or that I would be among the beneficiaries of what he was starting.

But, one day, I would know.

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Some people might call Margaret Atwood paranoid, but you know — if you’ve been paying attention at all — that there are some people who’d move to the Republic of Gilead tomorrow, andwould drag the rest of us with them if they could.

I read The Handmaid’s Tale either during my senior year of high school or my freshman year of college. By then I’d already heard Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition recommend quarantining people living with AIDS in “cities of refuge.” I remember thinking then that it wouldn’t be a far leap to suggest quarantining gay people altogether, and that Lou would probably think it was a good idea.

Then I read about “gender treachery” and how it was punished in Gilead.

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Tell me it’s a lie. Tell me you’re not giving up acting!

Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix made a shocking announcement to “Extra,” saying, “I want to take this opportunity…to give you the exclusive … that this will be my last performance as an actor… I’m not doing films anymore.”

Probed further by “Extra’s” Jerry Penacoli, “Are you serious?” Phoenix, who was curiously being followed by his own camera crews, reiterated, “Yeah. I’m working on my music. I’m done. I’ve been through that.”

Penacoli, still suspicious, followed up with Casey Affleck who was standing next to Phoenix. Penacoli asked, “I take it that he’s kidding?” Affleck responded, “I don’t think he’s kidding. He’s got music and stuff.”

Today, “Extra” contacted Phoenix’s rep for clarification and got this response: “That is what he told me.”

*sigh* Well, I guess I’ll have to look forward to his next music release instead hi next movie.

Hollywood here I come!

OK. Not really. But I’m beginning to wonder if I’d actually have a future as a casting director, only because of that last post, and this description of the last Obama-McCain debate.

On the stage it looked like a President and the Richard Dreyfus character, a gnarly device to make a President look even more Presidential. Even, God forbid, an act of terrorism could not elect McCain. In wartime, voters are not looking for a geezer to save the day.

So, maybe my casting in that instance was spot on.

I’m with Liza. I’m totally going to see this.

OK. It’s not the cast I would have chosen. Who cares? This looks totally worth getting a babysitter for.

And now, just for fun….

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That’s how I’m gonna feel for the rest of the day. Even when you know it’s coming, sad news is still sad news.

Oscar-winning actor and philanthropist Paul Newman has died at home in Westport, Connecticut, of cancer. He was 83. See the Los Angeles Times obituary here.

The actor was famous for films such as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Exodus,” “The Hustler,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Sting” and “The Verdict,” but also for his many years of charity work.

Paul Newman co-founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, with author A.E. Hotchner in 1988. The international organization arranges free camping experiences for children suffering from cancer and other illnesses and gives aid to their families.

More than $200 million, all the after taxes profits from his food company, Newman’s Own, was donated to charity over the past 15 years.

Yes, he was a good actor. Yes, he was damn hot. But that’s not all.

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