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- Moana - Disney's latest attempt to reinvent the princess movie takes two novel approaches: drawing on Polynesian folklore and mythology for its story, and recruiting Hamilton wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the film's songs. Heroine Moana (Auli'l Cravalho) is torn between her duties as the daughter of the village chief and her desire to roam the seas, but finds herself able to gratify both desires when she's tasked with restoring the heart of creation goddess Te Fiti, aided by Maui (Dwayne Johnson), the demigod who originally stole it. The plot is thus a picaresque, in which Moana and Maui encounter various dangers and challenges on their journey to Te Fiti, during which they also bond and help each other overcome their hang-ups. It's a similar structure to Tangled--still, to my mind, the best of the modern princess movies--but Moana lacks that film's multiple intersecting plot strands and broad cast of characters, and ends up feeling simpler and more straightforward. What it does have is genuinely stunning animation, especially where it draws on the scenery of the Pacific islands and the iconography of Polynesian cultures, and some excellent songs by Miranda, which pay homage to both the Disney and musical theater traditions while still retaining entirely their own flavor--I'm particularly fond of a scene in which Moana and Maui encounter a giant, jewel-encrusted lobster (Jemaine Clement), who sings a David Bowie-inspired glam-rock ballad, and then complains that no one likes him as much as The Little Mermaid's Sebastian. But pretty much every song here is excellent and memorable in its own right.
Even more importantly, the fact that Moana is a story about its heroine rediscovering her people's heritage of exploring and ocean-voyaging feels especially significant in one of Disney's rare POC-starring vehicles, and lends a particular poignance to what is ultimately a fairly conventional follow-your-heart-and-be-true-to-yourself message. Nevertheless, it's hard not to compare the relative simplicity of that message, and of Moana's story, to recent non-princess Disney projects like Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia, and feel that Disney is aiming low by merely refreshing this template with different world cultures. Girls--and non-white girls especially--deserve stories as inventive and complex as the ones being offered to boys, and Disney might serve them better if it put heroines like Moana (and her heritage) in those stories instead of sticking to the tried-and-true conventions of the princess movie.
- The Lobster - Yorgos Lanthimos's Cannes-winning sensation has a delightfully out-there premise--it takes place in a world in which the single are corralled into a resort where they have 45 days to find a partner, or they will turned into a an animal--and one of the many wonderful things about it is that it plays it completely straight. Our hero, David (Colin Farrell), checks into the resort after his wife leaves him, but when a putative romance goes horribly wrong, he runs away to join a group of singleton rebels who live out in the woods, amongst whom romance is strictly forbidden. This becomes a problem when David falls passionately in love with one of the rebels, played by Rachel Weisz. The Lobster is, first and foremost, an uproariously funny movie, not just because of how straight it plays its ridiculous premise, but because of how it develops it with even more absurd details. A major criteria for romantic happiness at the resort is that partners have compatible physical abnormalities, so David, who is short-sighted, is constantly on the lookout for a woman whose vision is similarly impaired, and seems genuinely to believe that he could never be happy with anyone whose vision is better or worse than his. The rebels, meanwhile, inform David that they only dance to techno music, so that no one can dance with each other and thus potentially commit a romantic infraction. And though the film never discusses its central fantastic concept, throughout its events the characters are joined by various exotic animals--peacocks and dromedaries and porcupines--who are clearly transformed rejects from the resort, and whom no one comments on or pays attention to. The sheer audacity of the film's conceit, and the fact that it is developed so well and with such imagination, carries you through most of it without stopping to wonder what the point of it all is (as does the delight of constantly finding top-tier actors in such a strange project: as well as Farrell and Weisz, the cast includes Olivia Colman, John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw, and Léa Seydoux). So when that point arrives, it cuts like a knife: the sudden realization that in a society that places absurd, arbitrary restrictions on what romance can look like, actual love is all but impossible.
- Star Trek Beyond - The third in J.J. Abrams's revamped-and-not-at-all-improved Star Trek series both benefits and suffers from its connection to its two predecessors. Benefits, because compared to the utterly lamentable Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, the fact that Beyond is merely tedious and predictable is enough to make it seem like something resembling a good movie, especially when you consider that Abrams has been replaced in the director's seat by Justin Lin, who at least knows how to stage an action scene as if he cares, even if none of the ones here are particularly memorable or exciting. And suffers, because Beyond, which co-writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung clearly envisioned as an attempt to bring the new Star Trek back in line with the franchise's roots, depends for this task on the previous two movies having established certain characters and relationships to be broadly in line with what they were in the original series and movies, which means that it's relying on a foundation that hasn't been laid, and which in some cases blatantly contradicts what Beyond wants it to be. William Shatner's Jim Kirk, for example, could (and in fact did) shoulder a storyline in which he becomes disenchanted with the Enterprise's mission of exploration and peaceful diplomacy, and considers leaving his command. The same can't be said of Chris Pine's Kirk, who never seemed interested in Starfleet for anything beyond the gratification of being judged worthy to captain a starship, and who despite that judgment continues to be genuinely awful at all of the things that make a good Starfleet captain--as demonstrated by Beyond's opening scene, in which he hopelessly botches what should have been a straightforward diplomatic mission due to what looks like a simple lack of preparation. The fact that Beyond constructs itself around this crisis is not, as the film clearly believes, a meaningful exploration of mid-life ennui, but yet another reminder that it has never been clear just why we should accept this Kirk as a hero--since he doesn't want to be one, and is in fact quite bad at it.
By the same token, the scenes between Zachary Quinto's Spock and Karl Urban's McCoy seem to expect us to assume a long, rancorous-but-ultimately-respectful friendship between the two characters which this version of Star Trek, and these actors, have never actually done the work of establishing. Beyond's screenplay makes a smart choice when it splits up the main cast into small groupings, each with their own storyline, after the Enterprise is attacked and destroyed over a mysterious planet (in yet another case of the reboot movies borrowing a major plot point from the original movies and not knowing what to do with it; it's not just that the Enterprise's destruction in Beyond lacks the resonance it had in The Search for Spock; this is a movie that can't even achieve the emotional heights of Generations). Some of these storylines, such as Uhura and Sulu taking command of the surviving crewmembers, or Scotty bonding with a feral but plucky castaway (Sophia Boutella, in a role that would be more enjoyable if it did not feel so out of place in the Star Trek universe, original or reboot), work well enough on their own. But when the time comes to tie them all together, it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that Beyond's story relies on us believing in the cohesion of its crew, and their faith in their captain, in a way that is simply unsupported by any of the films in the reboot universe, including this one.
Beyond clearly has pretensions of engaging with Star Trek's core philosophy, but like its predecessors it runs aground on the fact that no one involved with the film has any idea what that philosophy is. Characters spout words like "unity", "diplomacy", and "cooperation", but they seem bored even as they do so. In a particularly tone-deaf scene, the film's villain, Krall (Idris Elba), explains to Uhura that its peaceful ways have made the Federation weak, and that conflict is needed for any species to thrive. One might have expected that a Uhura, as a black woman, would be uniquely positioned to point out that the Federation's peace and harmony are hard-won treasures that humans only achieved after millennia of war, oppression, and genocide (a fact that is made all the more pressing when we learn Krall's true origin). But that would require anyone involved with this movie to actually understand why peace and cooperation are good, desirable things, and it's clear that no one does. Instead, the film treats Kirk's embrace of these ideals as a kind of favor he's doing to the universe, and then ends, as all the reboot films have done, with a single hero beating up on a single villain in order to save the day. For all its pretensions of returning to its roots, Star Trek Beyond is still the same reboot Star Trek--utterly unclear on what made this franchise worthwhile, and completely incapable of staking out a claim for its own relevance.
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Disney's first standalone in the Star Wars universe is very clearly an attempt to transform that franchise into something very like the MCU--a shared universe in which it is possible to tell stories in many different registers, genres, and scopes. Whether or not the Star Wars setting can support that kind of expansion, however, remains to be seen, even after Rogue One, because the problems of this movie have a lot more to do with the perennial sloppiness in how Hollywood (and Disney in particular) constructs its action-adventure stories, than in the specifics of this particular story. Rogue One's first half is quite promising, giving us a glimpse of the inner workings of the Rebellion, and of its internal rifts and disputes. We get to see the psychological toll of constantly living on the knife's edge, not knowing who to trust since anyone could be an Imperial spy, fighting amongst different factions of the Rebellion over the correct tactics, making morally compromising decisions for the greater good, and above all, living in the constant awareness that it might all be for nothing, and that the Rebellion could so easily fail in the face of an enemy as powerful and implacable as the Empire.
All of this creates the expectation of a tense heist/espionage story, as our heroes try to outsmart a much more powerful, organized opponent in order to retrieve the Death Star plans that will jumpstart the plot of A New Hope--something along the lines of a million WWII movies. Instead, Rogue One plumps for a generic extravaganza of explosions and special effects, as our heroes launch a frontal assault against an Imperial records facility that doesn't make a great deal of sense, and completely squanders the bleak, paranoid tone of the film's first half. It's not the first time I've gotten the sense that Disney's live-action division is weakest in its script department, and particularly those scripts that depend on something slightly more intelligent than fights and explosions (this has also been a problem of some recent MCU movies, chiefly Ant-Man and Civil War). And unlike The Force Awakens before it, Rogue One can't shake off its script problems by relying on charming, engaging characters. Heroine Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is meant to be the film's beating heart, as the daughter of the scientist who designed the Death Star, and the person who convinces a rag-tag team of resistance operatives that a mission to retrieve the plans is worth the risk. But Jones's polite, underpowered performance makes it impossible to believe that this is a woman who has been living on her own since she was sixteen, much less someone who could inspire the grizzled, morally compromised soldiers of the Rebellion to have hope in the impossible. (It's genuinely depressing to recall that Jones's chief competitor for the part of Jyn was Tatiana Maslany, who would surely have made a meal of this dark, gender-swapped Han Solo type.) Diego Luna, as the film's male lead, resistance spy Cassian Andor, has a great deal more presence than Jones, but his character arc is yoked to hers, requiring us to believe that she spurs a moral awakening in him, which I never did.
Far more successful are the film's supporting characters: Riz Ahmed as the fidgety but quietly heroic Imperial pilot Bodhi Rook, looking for redemption on Jyn's mission; Forest Whitaker as the semi-deranged, paranoid leader of a breakaway group from the Rebellion; most of all, Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang as former Jedi monks and probable married couple Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus, who squabble and watch each others' backs in equal measure. None of them, however, get enough space in the story to make up for Jyn's dullness, Cassian's muddled character arc, or the script's sloppiness. Rogue One thus ends up being very promising in parts, and very disappointing in its whole. If Disney wants to turn Star Wars into something like the MCU, it will have to stick to the more breezy, adventure-based genres, where unconvincing scripts and boring characters have less of a chance to register.
- La La Land - The best compliment I can pay Damien Chazelle's throwback musical is that while I was watching it, I found its candy-colored world, in which characters repeatedly break out in rhapsodies to Los Angeles, Hollywood, and the dream of it making it there, a little cute and overdone. And then when the credits rolled, I realized that I didn't want to step out of that world, with its melancholy, romantic tone, and its haunting musical refrains that I've kept on humming long after leaving the movie theater. When I say that, though, I'm talking more about the film's background--its loving, gorgeously-lit views of LA landmarks and vistas, or the way it captures the strangeness of that city, and of its dream industry, and makes something charming out of a world that we've been trained to think of as cynical and exploitative. I was a great deal less charmed by the film's main story, the romance that develops between aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) as they both try to get their big break. In the films that La La Land riffs off--everything from Singin' in the Rain to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg--we accept that the lovers exist in their own world that bends itself to accommodate their love story. But either Chazelle isn't quite able to believably create a world like that, or (more likely) the film's modern-day setting makes it impossible for me to believe in it. So the fact that Mia and Sebastian frequently engage in obnoxious, self-absorbed behavior--everything from standing up in a movie theater while the film is running, to constantly blowing off their loved ones because they can't be bothered to remember their appointments--made it really difficult to root for their happy ending.
I was, however, a great deal more interested in Mia and Sebastian's professional travails--she's trudging from one unsuccessful audition to another and wondering if she might simply not be good enough to make it, and he dreams of playing "pure" jazz at his own club, but is forced to take gigs at restaurants and house parties to make ends meet. I'm a sucker for stories that depict art as work, and artists as people who are working towards the perfection of their craft--trying to find their unique voice, and then struggling to find an audience for that voice. But the failure mode of stories like that is to depict "real" artists as people who are constantly saying no to opportunities (or who regret saying yes to them) because the work on offer isn't pure enough, and who thus spend their life waiting for the perfect opportunity to come along rather than taking any chance to develop their craft and do the work they love. La La Land falls into that trap rather frequently, chiefly in a subplot in which Sebastian joins a band led by John Legend, who combines old-school jazz with modern hip-hop sounds, to Sebastian's obvious dismay and disapproval. (There is also, obviously, a huge problem with a storyline in which a white man is the sole keeper of jazz's true soul, while a black man degrades it by combining it with a modern black musical style.) But in fairness to the film, it doesn't live in that mode--Mia, for example, makes the valid point that while she likes the music that Sebastian is playing, it's not worth it if doing so makes him miserable. In the end, it's hard to tell where La La Land falls on the selling out/doing work wherever you can find it question--perhaps because the film's fundamental romanticism means that both Mia and Sebastian end up achieving more of their dreams than actual people in their situation would probably get to. And it is that romanticism that stays with you when the film ends, and which makes its whole worthwhile despite my problems with its parts.
Thursday, January 05, 2017
Recent Movie Roundup 23
32 comments:
Since Passengers takes a dilemma in ethics and turns it into very problematic romance, I think we all know what the sequel will be.
"This Valentine's day, go off the rails. Kendall Jenner. Chris Pine. The Trolley Problem."
- January 05, 2017 8:51 PM
- Abigail Nussbaum said...
Well, except that the premise of Passengers does not represent an ethical dilemma. I mean, technically neither does the trolley problem - the purpose of the thought experiment isn't to decide which choice is correct, but to articulate the different possible definitions of morality. If you define morality as "minimizing harm" then you'll pull the level, and redirect the trolley where it will kill fewer people. If you define it as "minimizing bad acts" then you'll stand aside, because pulling the level is murder, whereas the deaths of the people the trolley is headed towards aren't the result of anyone's actions. What you think the right answer is says more about how you define right and wrong than anything else.
But again, that's not what's happening in Passengers, where there is absolutely no doubt what the right and wrong choices are. There is no moral framework under which Jim's decision to steal someone's life because he's lonely and unhappy can be described as a right or justifiable action. Now, obviously, there's a lot of drama to be wrung out of the story of a person who does something they know to be wrong because they're so miserable they can't help it, but that is not what Passengers has done, and therein lies the problem.
- January 05, 2017 11:24 PM
- Brett said...
Beyond just seemed to grow weaker, worse-paced, and less cohesive as a movie the longer it ran (and it didn't help that the villain was underwhelming). Into Darkness was a bad movie, but for me it's at least watchably bad compared to Beyond - Abrams might not know how to actually write a coherent Star Trek plot, but he can least cut it so the pacing is solid and the action flashy (aside from the last 10 minutes).
I think you're giving too much credit to Rogue One in the character department. All of them except the droid were forgettable - Jyn's boring as you pointed out, Cassian is not much better, and the rest of the characters felt one-note. Aside from possibly being a gay couple on screen, is there anything else particularly memorable about the blind samurai archetype and his loyal assistant?
- January 06, 2017 12:27 AM
- Brett said...
Sorry, "blind samurai/monk", not just "blind samurai".
- January 06, 2017 12:29 AM
- Kate Nepveu said...
Note to self: Abigail and I have wildly incompatible ideas of what's funny on screen. (I found _The Lobster_ grindingly, horrifyingly unpleasant.)
- January 06, 2017 6:02 AM
- Chris said...
I picked up the same thing about ST:B's "pretensions of engaging with philosophy," because there were a couple things in there that looked like they *might* have been attempts at social commentary. But I was never sure if they actually were trying to say something, or if they'd just accidentally stumbled onto (probably by ripping off older ideas) something that a more talented writer *could* have made into social commentary.
The most obvious is what you said, the way Krall dismisses peace and unity as the luxuries of the weak and decadent and worships conflict and strife... which is topical as hell, especially in 2016. Is there anything wrong with modern U.S. culture that *doesn't* come down to this, in some form or other? The social darwinist mad science experiment that the economy's been turned into, the NRA's utopia of a land where everyone goes everywhere armed and resolves their differences by Standing Their Ground, the idealization of lost golden ages before infrastructure or bureaucracy or all the other boring and dreary things that make life safe? You could even use the fact that Krall is masquerading as a stereotypical alien invader from the wilderness past the "frontier" to make some point about how, far from being the patriots they claim to be, what people like this want is to take your relatively healthy and functioning society and turn it into exactly the kind of failed states we regularly go to war with.
All of the above is just me trying to find meaning in the movie, though. There's not much in it that convinces me that this was meant as a commentary on our current problems, and it's at least as likely that they were simply throwing out random feel-good and feel-bad words ("peace" and "unity" as opposed to "war" and "conflict") which they kinda-sorta remembered from old Star Trek and old after-school-specials. And that Krall's identity was just concealed for most of the movie for the sake of a Twist (apparently the holy grail of modern movies).
Alternatively, the story of a professional warrior who can't transition to life in the Federation might make for an interesting point about the inherent tension between the martial virtues and the values of a liberal democratic society. Not new or original, but certainly refreshing in an age when soldiers and cops are hagiographied everywhere as the ultimate avatars of patriotism while limp-wristed bureaucrats with their "rules of engagement" and "civil liberties" are portrayed as traitors and backstabbers. But that suffers from the fact that 1) they just did that story in the last movie and 2) it was done terribly then, too, and it's not any better here.
- January 06, 2017 7:51 PM
- Abigail Nussbaum said...
Well, first, having a gay couple (or at least one that is very plausibly read as a gay couple) on screen in a Star Wars movie is a pretty big deal, as is the fact that pretty much all the main good guys in this movie were POCs. But I did think that there was some solid character work for the supporting characters - none of them have character arcs, but they all have character beats that hit home a lot harder than you tend to see in this franchise. I'd argue, for example, that Bodhi's scenes had a lot more emotional heft than anything The Force Awakens gave Finn. And Chirrut's unwavering faith in the Force even as he can't quite seem to access it is genuinely moving. As I say in my review, I would have liked the film to spend a lot more time with these characters (and certainly I could have stood to sacrifice all the Darth Vader fanservice in order to achieve that) but I think between the actors and some good character concepts, they achieved quite a lot.
The impression I got from Beyond's failure to engage with its central ideas - and this is, frankly, the same impression I got from Star Trek and Into Darkness - is that it was written by incredibly privileged people who have never been able to extend themselves to imagine what life is like for people who don't share their privilege. Hence the ability to think of peace and prosperity as something that might be holding you back. And the fact that the film puts that view in the mouth of a black man - and has a black woman hear it without being able to articulate the obvious comeback - feels like yet another extension of that privilege, the sort of thing that happens when POC characters are written by people who have never bothered to imagine their point of view.
As you say, there's potentially more to it than that - the idea of a soldier who can't adjust to life in the Federation is actually something that Star Trek grappled with more than once. But that's not at all what Beyond is trying to do. And ultimately, it comes down on the side of those couch-warriors you talk about, because the film's ending does conclude that the world can only be saved by a sufficiently manly man who punches someone.
- January 07, 2017 12:43 PM
- Rav said...
The strangest thing about Rogue One was the incredible disparity between the trailers and the finished project. I don't think I've ever seen a trailer before that was cut almost entirely from scenes that didn't make it to the big screen, and I suspect many of the gaps in Jyn's characterization are to be found on the cutting room floor. Her trailer line "this is a rebellion, isn't it - I rebel" was terribly hokey, but it also gave me a sharper impression of who she was than anything that was in the actual film. Though Felicity Jones's performance was also an issue (at least in the first half - I warmed up to her by the final act).
- January 08, 2017 2:56 AM
- GeoX, who is here to stay, like it or not. said...
I'll tell you what: given the rise of white supremacism in the US, I was happy to see the first Disney movie with an all-black cast. Also, I thought Rogue One was boring and dumb. That is all.
- January 09, 2017 9:23 AM
- Fangz said...
I would have thought the distinction between 50 Shades and Passengers is who the protagonist is? Like, Grey is very arguably abusive, but we inhabit the female lead, and thus our consent to see the film leads to an implied consent on behalf of the main character? Whereas in Passengers we inhabit the Pratt character, and perpetrate monstrosities.
I understand that there are books retelling the 50 Shades stories from the perspective of Grey, which makes me wonder how those would be received.
I guess gender flipped Passengers is basically Misery, right?
- January 09, 2017 1:11 PM
- Fangz said...
Also! On Rogue One, I think there's a interesting and not-very-examined divide in critical opinion between people like you and I who preferred the first half, and critics who said the film was uneven or merely okay but came together in the final third. I would certainly have favoured an expanded version of the first half of the tale, culminating in meeting with the father.
I somewhat liked the characters more than you did. For example, in my reading, I do not think it is necessary to actually believe that Jyn produced a moral awakening in Cassian. I think there's an inherent ambiguity in his actions - did he for lack of a better word, just become good? Or was he swayed by irrational attachment to Jyn? Or did he simply calculate at the end of the day that Jyn's plan was the most logical one for the good of the Rebellion and killed/died as a good soldier? There's a more cynical reading where Jyn does not inspire anyone very much - rather she convinces *herself* that Cassian's "rebellions are built on hope" is not just a platitude, that the robot serving them is heroic and not just carrying out its programming, that she's leading the rebellion - not just more fodder for a war that she wasn't interested in. It's interesting IMO to think that this is the nature of the 'hope' that is inherited by the original trilogy.
- January 09, 2017 1:28 PM
- Aonghus Fallon said...
Sounds to me as if the creators of 'Passengers' forgot the original context when they decided to do their riff on 'Sleeping Beauty' - in the original story, the castle's inhabitants fall under an evil spell. In 'Passengers' they voluntarily submit to being put in a state of suspended animation. That context dictates whether the hero's actions are good or bad.
A better angle would be to have Pratt as a roving space archeologist who finds the ship, which has been adrift for centuries with all its occupants still in a state of suspended animation due to a computer glitch. (Not that I actually saw the film, or intend to).
- January 09, 2017 2:13 PM
- Fangz said...
I feel the original Sleeping Beauty story has the benefit of ending pretty much the moment the Beauty wakes up.
- January 09, 2017 4:55 PM
- Aonghus Fallon said...
Maybe that was the problem? No second act, hence the re-jig?
Thing is, it would have been pretty easy to fix without overly affecting the existing structure - for example, the mc is drawn to the girl in the casket. He knows it's wrong to wake her, but ends up accidentally doing so anyway. In the interests of cause-and-effect, this is due to an act of clumsiness on his part, which in turn is due to his infatuation. This way you get to keep audience sympathy and have the same outcome.
I guess the real issue is that the producers didn't see it as a problem.
- January 09, 2017 5:58 PM
- Abigail Nussbaum said...
I think the version of Rogue One you're imagining is basically the one where the film carries the tone of its first half all the way to the end, and remains relatively cynical about its characters and their mission to the end. To be clear, I don't actually mind the shift away from pure cynicism - as I've said in other comments, I was very moved by some of the minor characters' stories, and by their attempts to be heroic in a world in which they do not have the kind of main character shielding that protects someone like Luke Skywalker or Rey. So though I definitely wanted the film's plot to be more small-scale, I also would have liked for it to sell me on Cassian's moral awakening, or Jyn's ability to inspire it, because that's what I think the story it's trying to tell is - how to live well and make a difference in a world that is fundamentally broken, and which doesn't really care about you.
Surely the crucial difference between Passengers and Sleeping Beauty is that in the fairy tale, waking the princess saves her, whereas in the movie, it dooms her?
If you read interviews with the scriptwriter, it sounds like there was a version of the script where the hero changes his mind about waking Lawrence's character, but at that point it's too late. To his (very minor) credit, he seems to have realized that that would be nothing but a copout, and more importantly, would undermine the point he was trying to make. Passengers is a story about a person who makes an unforgivable choice. It tells that story very badly, and ultimately can't overcome the fact that it does want us to forgive this character. But undermining his culpability was surely not a fix for its problems.
- January 09, 2017 6:47 PM
- Aonghus Fallon said...
Absolutely, Abigail (re passengers) - at least, that would be my reading of it - ie, that he saves her in the original fairytale, but dooms her in the reboot, and that most of us are wondering (legitimately) how the film-makers ever thought their version was a good idea.
- January 09, 2017 9:08 PM
- Retlawyen said...
@Moana: I really felt like they made the Maui redemption arc work. Too often movies fall into one trap or the other.
The first is where the character was never believably bad, but Maui is introduced to us as someone who doomed the world by stealing the heart, spends his first scene stealing the princess's boat and does his very best to ditch her. Finally, when the going gets tough and his hook is in danger, he bails. I bought him as a cad.
The second peril is when the redemption seems equally bogus. That is, when you buy that the other character is bad, but you don't think that the moral awakening makes sense. In this movie I thought that Moana did a good job of shoving Maui's face into the fact that she is the spiritual heir to the hero that he once was, and I can buy him regaining his heroic nature with that kind of spur.
Rogue One: I can't help but think that the main problem of this movie can be summed up in the exchange that Jyn has with the director at the end.
"Who are you?"
"You know who I am!"
But does he? Do we? Like, the movie cuts Jyn off at the knees.
She is active basically twice in terms of fight scenes. Her attempt to escape the jail when they are rescuing her and her fight scene in Jedah city. The first ends when the droid slaps her down. The second is overshadowed when more troopers showed up and she has to be rescued.
So her fighting technique isn't the point of her, that's fine, but then what is? She is an indifferent rebel, but we never see the free life that appeals to her. She is angry with Saw, but he is already narratively a spent force by the time they confront one another. When does Jyn win?
Everything special about her is based on something that someone puts on her. She is Galen's daughter, Cassian's muse, whatever, but at the heart of that there is nothing. If she just told a random rebel trooper that her father's pet name for her was stardust the finale would have been exactly the same if she just chilled out on Yavvin.
Most unforgivably, there is that finale. She comes face to face with the man who killed her father and mother...and she is helpless at his hands. Someone else shoots him.
- January 10, 2017 4:26 PM
- Chris said...
From Abigail:
"As you say, there's potentially more to it than that - the idea of a soldier who can't adjust to life in the Federation is actually something that Star Trek grappled with more than once. But that's not at all what Beyond is trying to do. And ultimately, it comes down on the side of those couch-warriors you talk about, because the film's ending does conclude that the world can only be saved by a sufficiently manly man who punches someone."
Yeah, and after the heavily-signposted "unity is not your strength. It is your weakness" villainspeak in the rest of the movie, I was half-expecting a cheesy Guardians-of-the-Galaxy-ish ending with all the heroes holding hands to defeat Krall, thus making the point that his philosophy is wrong. But they never do. It's jarring that they give the movie that kind of Treklosophy arc, but don't even bother to give it a payoff.
"The impression I got from Beyond's failure to engage with its central ideas - and this is, frankly, the same impression I got from Star Trek and Into Darkness - is that it was written by incredibly privileged people who have never been able to extend themselves to imagine what life is like for people who don't share their privilege. Hence the ability to think of peace and prosperity as something that might be holding you back."
I think the privilege is at least partly about time - on the one hand the U.S. moving farther and farther away from the times where there was no safety net and on the other hand the national ideology increasingly trying to erase all memories of that time. Or to put it another way, that even white men sixty years ago would've been able to relate to this better than we do now. I'll occasionally stumble onto an old movie that takes the same theme of civilization vs. the law of the jungle and actually takes it seriously, and think "this could never get made in the modern day. The writers wouldn't know what to do with a theme like this and the entire audience they're aiming for is unable to relate."
(This is separate from, but related to, the various LGM posts about Steve Rogers in his original context, versus the many modern readers who find it shocking and outrageous that he doesn't conform to post-Reaganite mythology, even though that would make no sense).
- January 10, 2017 4:31 PM
- Chris said...
"On Rogue One, I think there's a interesting and not-very-examined divide in critical opinion between people like you and I who preferred the first half, and critics who said the film was uneven or merely okay but came together in the final third."
There are any number of *ideas* in the first half of the movie that I thought were great, and would've loved to see more of. The quasi-Rebel warlord who's now on the outs with the Alliance proper and all the politics that must've gone into that, the collaborator-scientist working for the Empire but trying to monkey-wrench his own work behind their back, Jyn's own transition from lone outlaw to Rebel, the whole black ops side of the Alliance that wasn't there in the first movies. The execution just ends up feeling rushed, with lots of things jammed together, and lots of things left on the cutting room floor.
The second half of the movie, on the other hand, aims lower with what's basically a standard Star Wars battle with lots of special effects, but it delivers that pretty well, and let's face it, the SFX light show was always a big part of the draw of Star Wars. It helps too that TFA didn't have any battles in it that matched up to this one, making it a welcome return to form at least to me.
- January 10, 2017 8:06 PM
- Unknown said...
I liked the Rogue One battle. It depicted a combat as confusing, frightening and unpleasant for both sides. Really got the whole 'everything goes to hell as soon as the shots start being fired' feeling down. As opposed the other Star Wars movies, where the battle scenes are generally whacky hijinks.
That said, it was far too long and probably in the wrong movie. But taken on it's own, I thought it was good.
- January 10, 2017 8:37 PM
- Chris said...
Regarding Moana I think it's more than a tiny incremental improvement that there wasn't even the hint of romance throughout - not even brief eye-contact with a non-speaking background islander, just to reassure us that yes, Moana will have children once they get to the next island, obviously. And if the bare trappings of a princess movie are what marketing needs to get this film made, with all that is in it and not in any other films out there, well, maybe let the baby have its bottle. Especially if you subvert it by making the Designated Animal Companion dumber than a sackful of rocks.
I also thought - although this is probably reaching - that Maui was interesting as an example of how a certain type of masculinity doesn't have to be 100% negative. He could have turned out to be a liar, as well as conceited and boastful and prone to showing off just for attention (not that girls can't do those things as well, but at the age of the intended audience it's definitely more associated with boys). That there can be positive things about his approach to the world, that he does and knows amazing things, is a lesson I feel you don't normally get in Disney princess films, or most action-comedies (for some reason, Madmartigan keeps popping into my head) where it's more about the boy learning to just be less like a boy and more like someone who can sit down and shut up for more than two seconds. Whether that's a lesson more for the girls or boys watching I don't know, but it probably wouldn't hurt the boys watching to learn that just because they listen to a girl and help her doesn't mean they will be symbolically castrated. See? Reaching.
Plus, I'm a sucker for any story in which there's no real bad guy (the crab's just being himself as well), just a confused entity who needs to be talked, or sung, down by the hero. Instead of an old woman being mercy-killed by the Designated Animal Companion.
- January 11, 2017 11:07 AM
- Chris said...
Hey! You're not me. What's going on here?
But I couldn't possibly agree more about the welcome absence of romance. I tend to cheer whenever Hollywood accomplishes the unusual and writes a completely platonic relationship between male and female characters, not because I hate the romance but just because the other kind of relationship is harder to find.
Hadn't thought at all about the "masculinity" thing. That'll probably require a rewatch for an opinion to form.
- January 11, 2017 3:54 PM
- Chris said...
^ = (Harder to find in movies, not in real life, that is).
- January 11, 2017 3:54 PM
- Abigail Nussbaum said...
It's worth pointing out that there's been some significant pushback against the notion that Moana's absence of a love interest is a good thing, particularly from POC commentators. They make the point that pop culture frequently treats WOC as inherently unlovable - they might be sexy (or, more accurately, sexualized), but they're rarely treated as objects of romance. In that context, the absence of a love interest isn't necessarily empowering.
I'm personally agnostic about this argument - which is to say, I recognize that WOC characters are often treated as unworthy of romance, but I don't necessarily feel that Moana needed a romantic subplot to work or be empowering. But I have to say that the vehemence with which some reviewers and commentators have stated that the film's refusal to supply such a subplot is obviously a good thing and a sign of progress has been a little dismaying. There is, it seems to me, a significant gulf between "we shouldn't corral female protagonists into stories in which the only action is romantic, and their only achievement is to land a husband" and "no love interest = feminism!", which seems to be the prevailing mindset in a lot of reviews of Moana. I can't help but feel that the latter is rooted more in the way that our culture encourages us to devalue the experiences and desires of women - including romantic fiction.
That's not to say that we should swing back to having romantic storylines in all princess movies, but more that we should talk about what makes sense in each context. I would, for example, have liked for there to have been a cute boy (or, why not, a girl) in Moana's village whom she likes but doesn't quite know what to do about, and who disappears for most of the film while Moana goes off adventuring, and returns at the end of the movie when she's gained enough confidence to make the next step. If only because I've seen that story with a male protagonist so often that it would have been nice to see the gender-swapped version.
- January 11, 2017 10:32 PM
Abigail on Rogue One:
"So though I definitely wanted the film's plot to be more small-scale, I also would have liked for it to sell me on Cassian's moral awakening, or Jyn's ability to inspire it, because that's what I think the story it's trying to tell is - how to live well and make a difference in a world that is fundamentally broken, and which doesn't really care about you."
Although I agree with this sentiment, I'm sorry it still colours your overall view of the film, because I can't say I share this view. I personally found the movie very enjoyable and I wasn't looking at the deeper interactions and motivations of these characters.
But one almost-too-subtle transformation in Jyn's outlook on the Empire, Rebellion, and her role in the conflict was found in the scene where Saw played her father's holo-message to her - that was the beginning of change for Jyn, and set the tone for the rest of the film to follow, even if the second half may not have executed it particularly well.
And to echo another commenter's remark - the black ops and military sci-fi aspect/emphasis of the movie did it justice.
- January 12, 2017 11:05 AM
- Chris said...
Chris the Second here: I'm afraid that was not something I was aware of with Moana. I'm not going to argue against that obviously since I don't have that experience - I can certainly see, given the history, how lack of romance for this film might not just be annoying but devastating depending on who you are. And I will happily agree with the idea that in general lack of romance != feminism.
In the context of Disney princess films, however, I do think it's an improvement (although it just occurred to me to check Brave, since I have not seen that, and it looks like it's not a first). When you've got 10 films in a row where the princess falls in love and marries basically the first man who sings a song with her, and then one where the first man turns out to be a villain, and it's the second man instead, and also there's a second princess who doesn't get a love interest at all, then you've got expectations that are beyond those of general society. Sometimes people need to see things deconstructed before they can be reconstructed.
And in the case of the story Moana tells, I think adding even background romance makes it a worse film. The last three, Brave, Frozen and now this, seem to be making an effort to be about a young woman's relationship with someone other than their suitor. Mother (which I suppose is also a large part of Tangled, which also has a more standard romantic plot), sister, and now boastful male (brother? in spirit at least?). I can see how you write the island romance. But I think then even if you don't have to write the bit where Maui assumes romantic interest in him because you've made it obvious that this would be skeevy then the core of their relationship is still him teaching her about confidence so she can ask a boy out instead of teaching her about navigation so she can travel thousands of miles across the ocean and end up where she wants to be and you end up with Zootopian levels of confusion about what the actual message is. But I don't know - a lot of my context for this is seeing it with my daughters, and the eldest is especially at the age (10) in which she is beginning to be annoyed and upset and shut out by boys showing off and hogging attention. If I'm pleased that she might learn that they don't have to be the enemy because of that and that a bit of pride in your skills and knowledge, if not bragging, is a good thing I hope it's not because I don't want her to have romance and/or desire in her life. (The youngest spent the next week singing I AM... MOAAANAAA! and didn't think she was anything other than pure awesomesauce.) In any case, I'll try to be more careful about assuming anything is an unalloyed good in future.
- January 12, 2017 1:23 PM
- Fangz said...
FWIW, I expect Moana's lack of romance to be 'corrected' in a future TV series or Straight-to-Video moviesode.
- January 16, 2017 7:57 PM
- Arresi said...
"(This is separate from, but related to, the various LGM posts about Steve Rogers in his original context, versus the many modern readers who find it shocking and outrageous that he doesn't conform to post-Reaganite mythology, even though that would make no sense)."
Can someone tell where I can find these LGM posts? They sound pretty cool. (One of my annoyances with the MCU is the way it ducked out of the implications of their choices re: Steve Rogers.)
- January 18, 2017 2:58 AM
The most relevant post is here: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/10/steven-attewell-steve-rogers-isnt-just-any-hero. I personally think that if Cap doesn't come off as reactionary in some sense, he may as well come from Magic Sparkle Unicorn Land rather than 1945. But I see Attewell's point that he's not supposed to be The Comedian. Of course in the movies we know how Cap is reactionary - he supports hooded, masked vigilantes using lethal force without public oversight.
- January 18, 2017 6:27 AM
- Abigail Nussbaum said...
Also worth reading is Attewell's A People's History of the Marvel Universe (currently on hiatus, but hopefully not a permanent one), which I think emerged from that post. It discusses the often-progressive politics in which Marvel superheroes were rooted, and the ways in which politics shaped their development. This includes Cap but also touches on Magneto and the entire X-Men concept.
- January 18, 2017 12:51 PM
- Chris said...
As a coda, I would add this (http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/04/steven-attewell-abraham-riesman-doesnt-know-jack-captain-america) as a specific rebuttal of some D-bag whining that "shouldn't Steve Rogers be more like John McCain and less like Barack Obama?"
- January 19, 2017 7:52 PM
- Temmere said...
"I'm a sucker for stories that depict art as work, and artists as people who are working towards the perfection of their craft--trying to find their unique voice, and then struggling to find an audience for that voice."
I wonder if you ever saw the Studio Ghibli movie Whisper of the Heart. Based on this comment I think you'd like it.
- June 13, 2020 8:09 PM


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Contents - Previous - Next
This is the old United Nations University website. Visit the new site at http://unu.edu
The role of women in meeting food and nutritional needs
An international conference on the role of women in meeting basic food and water needs in developing countries was held at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA, 8 - 11 January 1978. The focus of the conference was on the United Nations World Food Conference's "Resolution on Women and Food," (Rome, 1974). The conference was sponsored by the Consortium for International Development (ClD), and partially funded by a grant from Women in Development, United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Two-hundred-and-fifty individuals attended the conference. Of these 44 women and 5 men were from 19 developing countries. The participants came from a wide variety of backgrounds and included representatives from UN agencies, private voluntary organizations, and numerous women's organizations.
The Conference participants developed a working consensus on numerous important issues. The major issues, and some implications for each, are summarized below.
1. The world's major food/nutrition problems are of very great, special concern to women, and they are not subsumed within the domain of any single discipline or interest group.
From this, several considerations follow.
First, if all people in the developing countries are to have a reasonable opportunity to meet their daily dietary needs, there is a place, i.e., a role, for every discipline, interest group, and individual, and women must be involved as equal partners with men in the process of development.
Second, from diversity can come strength in terms of the capability to analyze properly the food/nutrition situation and to design national approaches leading to self initiated, economically viable projects and programmes.
Third, when the common goal is adequate food for all people, general agreement is possible among people who view food and nutrition from very different vantage points.
Fourth, the system of developing-country and aid-agency planning, policy-making, and administration has produced inadequate results in the past, and it will produce no better results in the future. More people will be better fed when more women, people from developing countries, and clients of programmes are involved in the planning, policy-making, and administrative process. Also, a more representative mix between government and private sectors and the various disciplines is desirable.
2. The basic food/nutrition needs of all people could be met in the foreseeable future if the knowledge available today concerning how to grow, market, and equitably distribute food, and to manage consumption within the home, were properly utilized.
If the labour-saving, food-saving, nutrition-improving, and money-earning knowledge available in the world today became common knowledge among all members of the world community, malnourished people could overcome their food problems very soon, at modest cost, and with gratifying results. Information on alternative methods for meeting the basic food needs of all people simply has not been as widely disseminated as it should have been, and women, food producers, and traders make up the largest single group which has been short-changed. A re-evaluation of the current national strategies for development is in order, with the widespread, rapid dissemination of the relevant information to receive the highest priority. This would require greater emphasis on the right kind of educational effort in developing countries, and corollary changes in the assistance by private and international agencies.
The major emphasis in developing-country programmes (and development-agency policies), i.e., the first order of business, should be how people can meet their food requirements within their lifetimes-that is, now, in contrast to, for example, researching exotic potentials not likely to have any material impact before the 21st century. (Such research, however, was not regarded as being unimportant: the point at issue is the priority for alternative activities, given the funds and personnel limitations in developing countries and aid agencies.)
3. Hunger and malnutrition do not occur "on the average," but are, rather, the result of specific situations faced by families, individuals, and certain groups in definable geographic areas.
The Conference recognized that simply increasing the worldwide, or a developing nation's, supply of food may not mean that the number who go hungry is reduced. Families composed of both men and women-must produce their food or buy it in local markets. If the families' food/nutrition problems are to be solved, programmes and projects must be attuned to their specific needs. This led to a theme which was repeated many times during the Conference, namely, that more attention needs to be directed to local conditions-the small scale and simple forms of food production, storage, and marketing, which employ the bulk of the people in a developing country, and through which they obtain their daily diets. It is at this level where women are involved en masse in the food cycle. Also, much more attention needs to be given to household management. Storage losses can be reduced and better nutrition achieved from the foods readily available.
4. Hunger and malnutrition are the result of many causes, but inadequate real income for individuals and the family is the strategic one.
The major causes of poverty must receive priority attention if hunger and malnutrition are to be alleviated. Since those families, countries, areas, and subsectors of the economy which are poor are generally those where the productivity of the human element is low, i.e., women, men, and children work many days to produce and process a few kilos of sorghum, wheat, etc., increasing the productivity of the poor should be a major item in the attack on poverty. Providing opportunities for many more of the currently poor families to obtain sufficient income to cover properly basic food needs was recognized as a very difficult undertaking that would require many years, but societies could embark on the task, and in the short term there is much that can be done to make more food and clean, safe water readily available to those who need it.
The Conference participants noted that the agrarian subsistence subsectors of the national economies of developing countries, and small-scale, local trade, through which the poor generally obtain their incomes and food, were the parts of the national food production and marketing systems which have received disproportionately low levels of development assistance in the past. It is at this level where women are most frequently involved in food production and marketing. The low level of access this group in the food system has had to development resources reinforces women's lack of integration into the development process, and accounts for their worsening economic plight and the sheer drudgery so many must face every day of their lives.
The Conference participants recognized that inadequate diets and hunger are related to high fertility and the large families typically associated with poverty. The demographic factors that bear on the problems of food, nutrition, and family welfare are extremely important, and the remedy clearly must involve enhanced participation by women in designing and carrying out development strategies.
The Conference was united in the view that strategies for development in the developing countries should place more attention on the sources of income for poor people, especially local, indigenous food production, storage, trading, and household management. Examples of methods for raising real income that were given included the introduction and improvement of vegetable gardens; support for increased small-animal production, e.g., chickens, goats, pigs, and rabbits, the raising of which is often done as family enterprises managed by women, and which provide a needed source of protein; improvement of traditional foods such as cassava: protection of wild food: credit for local traders (often women); education and support for local cooperatives (to include women}; and improved local storage facilities. It was noted that small-scale, local production and trade activities are income-generating, and they increase demand for food and those goods and services which stimulate economic growth and development. They also foster monetization and commercialization of the economy.
5. The public and the policy-makers in both developing and developed countries have generally defined food/nutrition problems in too narrow terms.
Development planners, and others in strategic policy influencing positions, have not been properly framing food/ nutrition problems. The wrong questions have been asked, and too many programmes have been planned to impact on the wrong people in the wrong way. One problem is that in analyzing the situation, planners have used macro-analytical techniques which conceal who are the hungry, and why they are hungry. Such techniques preclude proper understanding of the plight of the family, the individual, and women; and they tend to eliminate from consideration many desirable ways to alleviate the most serious food/ nutrition problems.
The "costs" of inadequate problem definition include numerous developing countries utilizing strategies which have emphasized economic growth and longer-term investments at the expense of actions benefiting the rural poor and the other disadvantaged. To country leaders and the society at large, this is an important oversight, since the rural poor and other disadvantaged groups often are so numerous that they constitute a majority of the citizenry. Policies have failed to create political stability, and the instability in turn has reduced the national capacity to industrialize, to cope with hunger and nutrition, and to face other serious problems of human welfare.
The first vital step toward achieving proper problem definition is for developing countries to involve a wider range of people, especially local people, including many more women, in the process of determining local and national goals, identifying constraints to meeting those goals, and in preparing and implementing follow-up projects. The key phrase is "participatory development," and more recommendations concerning this subject were generated by the Conference workshops than were produced on any other single subject.
6. When large numbers of people are not getting minimum basic food/nutrition requirements, the national food marketing system is not fulfilling its proper role. It is through the analysis of the entire system, i.e., not through piecemeal analysis, that methods for improvement can best be determined.
The Conference participants agreed that improved management of the food production/marketing complex at all levels is needed in most countries, both developing and developed, but that all levels do not require equal attention. In the past, some parts of the system in developing countries have tended to receive a great deal of attention and support, e.g., export commodities (usually cash crops), while other parts of the system, such as subsistence crops or the small local trader, were largely ignored. Certain geographic areas, such as those providing food for urban areas, have received much attention, and low-cost, self-help projects relatively little. Big projects have been favoured over the small and the simple. One reason for the emphasis on large projects is that bilateral and international aid agencies, which control much of the development resources available to developing countries, now have project approval and implementation systems which are so complicated and costly that small, simple projects are not worth the effort.
Conference discussion clearly indicated that participants questioned the priorities which have been assigned to alternative approaches and types of activities. More systematic analysis is required if assistance is to be directed to those elements of the system that need it the most. One suggestion receiving considerable support called for the establishment of very broadly oriented, national food and nutrition centres to provide for a continuous evaluation of national food and nutrition situations, to co-ordinate research, and to supply policy and programme guidance. Such centres could provide technical assistance in physical and biological fields as well as on social and economic issues.
The emerging new international economic order is of great importance in the struggle against famine and poverty because it is a medium through which both the international and national systems can be evaluated, problems identified, and plans for improvement prepared and co-ordinated.
7. The family is an important income-earning and decision-making unit in respect to consumption in all the societies of all developing countries, and it should be a focal point for efforts to put adequate food within reach of all people.
Should development strategies view women primarily in the context of the family, or in some other manner? The statement by women from developing countries provided the basis for a consensus, one which had slowly been emerging but which was by no means supported by all of the participants. The consensus recognizes the role of women in the family and its importance-i.e., stresses the centrality of the family in the societies of developing countries-while giving proper weight to the need for equal rights and status for women as individuals.
8. If basic food and nutrition needs are to be met, developing countries must take into account the historic role of women in their food-production and marketing systems, and involve them as equal partners in the development process.
If a key word were to be designated for the Conference, "participation" would be a likely candidate Both by design and default, women in general, and major segments of the developing countries' economics in particular, have not been given equal opportunity to participate in the developmental process. The world is the poorer today as a result. Developing countries' strategies for development, and development-agency policies, for reasons both of social justice and of economic growth, must try to avoid repeating the errors of the past. Greater participation by, and cooperation among, women, programme and project clients, and Third-World personnel, as well as a wider range of discipline and interests within the developed countries, will be necessary if the future is to be more than a re-run of the past.
Recommendations on research needs in nutrition
At the Third Session, held in Rome, 14 - 16 March 1978, the ACC Sub-Committee on Nutrition (SCN) reviewed and endorsed the following list of research areas deserving urgent attention. In preparing this initial list, the Advisory Group on Nutrition (AGN) of the SCN emphasized that the recommendations refer only to the broad issues of global importance and do not include many basic questions requiring study and research in the areas of food production, post-harvest losses, etc. that are already receiving attention from various organizations and institutions. The sequence in the list below does not imply an order of priority.
1. Research designed to collect from different countries in different ecological regions more basic scientific and technical data:
(a) physiological data-energy and nutrient needs; and
(b) food data-nutritive value of indigenous foods, changes during storage and processing and formulations.
2. Research designed to produce more refined, simpler, and cheaper indicators:
(a) to identify groups at nutritional risk; and
(b) to provide for adequate nutrition surveillance.
3. The consequences of malnutrition, and levels, timing, and seasonality of intake as they affect adaptation and performance. Specifically:
(a) labour productivity;
(b) school performance in terms of learning, class attendance and participation, and absenteeism;
(c) pregnancy, fetal outcome and child rearing, breast-feeding;
(d) resistance to environmental stresses, mainly infections, deprivation, and tensions; and
(e) implications of less than severe malnutrition, including mild forms; differential benefits and costs; in general, the health returns for each dollar spent on nutrition.
4. Nutritional status and its relationship to poverty. Research on the structure and functioning of poor households and the impact of poverty on the nutrition of their members. Among the problems to be considered are the following:
(a) inadequate purchasing power;
(b) greater sensitivity of basic staples to price fluctuations;
(c) less time available for child care and stimulation, family well-being, nutrition education, and the use of local services; time as a key economic resource;
(d) opinions, beliefs, and attitudes in regard to food and nutrition; implications of nutrition education;
(e) household size and child spacing;
(f) household food production; and
(g) the dynamics of households or communities and their potential for change.
5. Evaluation of direct and indirect nutrition interventions. The need for a general methodology that should be included in a model to measure structure, process, and outcomes of all nutrition interventions. It is suggested that an assessment of available models and manuals should be made.
6. Research on delivery systems and their management.
The Sub-Committee on Nutrition noted that this was an initial list, subject to future additions.
Contents - Previous - Next


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Wet weather setting up for the weekend
Looks like Mother Nature is cutting us a break for our Friday with mild weather back in the forecast. Can I get an AMEN?!?!
We've got partly to mostly sunny skies in store for this morning, with increasing clouds by afternoon. But the best part is the warmth...try low to mid 60s for everyone this afternoon. Breezy southerly winds will help to boost those temperatures into the afternoon, but it may also provide for some limited fire danger too, so keep that in mind for your outdoor plans.
But for Saturday, it's a much different story. A cold front is poised to move through during the morning hours, bringing with it chances for widespread rain. Are we looking at anything ridiculously heavy? In short, no. We just don't have quite all the right ingredients in place for any kind of thunderstorm outbreak (which is usually where our heavy downpours would originate from), so I think it will be light to moderate rain showers that show up for us on Saturday. Those showers will linger through the afternoon and early evening before moving out, so I'd say take the umbrella with you and have it handy all Saturday long. Temps for Saturday will be in the mid 50s for highs before dropping into the upper 30s later on in the day. It looks like any kind of wintry precip will be staying a ways to our north, so if you have travel plans between here and Kansas City, you should keep an eye on conditions. Oh, and don't forget Daylight Saving Time starts up Saturday night / early Sunday morning, so be sure to set your clocks ahead by one hour before you head to bed. It's also a good time to replace the batteries in your smoke detectors and NOAA weather radios too.
We dry out Sunday and keep temperatures firmly in the 50s for the day. And then after the weekend, things really heat up (of course it has to happen AFTER the weekend is over). Monday and Tuesday look GREAT, with highs in the upper 60s and low 70s. And we'll take it! But the warmth is rather short lived...with our next batch of cooler air moving in Wednesday and dropping highs back down into the 40s.
So in this order....warm, wet, dry, warm, toasty, and cool. Got it?
Have a GREAT Friday, everyone and a fantastic start to the weekend!


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Amidst the ongoing recriminations concerning responsibility for the 2008 financial crisis, business leaders continue to be listed among the guilty. Of course, any objective analysis of the financial crisis soon indicates that politicians and central bankers were just as, if not more responsible for facilitating the financial perfect storm.
Still, the financial crisis has raised questions about the prevailing moral culture within the business community and the ethical formation they are receiving. As Professor Michael Jacobs astutely observed in the Wall Street Journal: "As we try to understand why our economy is so troubled, fingers are increasingly being pointed at the academic institutions that educated those who got us into this mess. What have business schools failed to teach our business leaders and policy makers? ... Would Bernie Madoff have acted differently if he had aced his ethics final?"
For several decades, there has been no shortage of ethics courses for aspiring business leaders at innumerable business schools. Naturally, as long as people have free will, no formation can guarantee that business executives won't sometimes make imprudent or simply wrong decisions. But the sheer number of bad decisions – and, in some instances, morally evil actions – by some business leaders before and during the financial crisis must surely cause us to reassess the content of business ethics classes.
A brief perusal of any number of business schools' curricula soon indicates that some are doing excellent work in this area. Generally, however, the picture is discouraging. Business schools have not proved immune from the tide of ethical relativism, and the political correctness that often substitutes for serious moral reflection, that has swept the West since the 1960s.
Far too many business schools consequently refuse to seriously engage questions of right and wrong, virtue and vice. Ethics is either reduced to "corporate social responsibility," which invariably translates into promoting politically correct agendas (and an often-implicitly negative view of business), or the attitude of "if it's not illegal, it's permissible."
Neither of these stances is adequate if private enterprise is to be allowed to assume its characteristics as a genuine vocation. They also encourage the development of technocratic mindsets within business schools. This leads to business students being turned into people who, theoretically, can be charged with managing any form of business.
Business, however, is about more than management. It also involves stewardship (inasmuch as managers have moral and fiduciary responsibilities to their clients and investors) and entrepreneurship – the actual creation of wealth. Many business leaders would be shocked to discover that studying entrepreneurship remains optional in many business schools today.
This underlines another problem for some business schools. It's not clear that all business professors are convinced of the morality of economies based on free enterprise, limited government, and rule of law. This ambivalence cannot help but be communicated to their students, which they take with them into the marketplace. It is very difficult for business schools to teach the moral habits associated with successful business when many business professors regard private enterprise and markets as, at best, useful but morally-insignificant phenomena.
Unexpectedly weighing into this discussion recently was Pope Benedict XVI. Affirming in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate that business executives' responsibilities go beyond – though always include (CV 21, 37, 38) – profit-making, the pope notes the contemporary plethora of courses, seminars, and research into business ethics. He remarks, however, that "the adjective 'ethical' can be abused"when "the word is used generically," and can "lend itself to any number of interpretations," many of which actually undermine human flourishing (CV 45).
Hence, though Pope Benedict speaks approvingly of the rise in ethics-consciousness in the worlds of finance and business, he cautions that simply attaching the label "ethical" to a given enterprise tells us nothing about the actual morality of its practices. What ultimately matters, the pope affirms, is the precise vision of morality – and therefore the understanding of the human person– informing not simply a particular business, but the entire economy (CV 45).
Obviously business schools that simply outline different "visions" of ethics and then leave the rest to chance in the name of tolerating all views (however incoherent) have little to offer here. By failing to engage morality in terms of determining the truth of the good or evil of particular business choices on the basis of right reason (and hence open to believer and non-believer alike), they merely lead their students into the intellectual and moral dead-end of "my opinion, your opinion, and everyone else's opinion."
Part of the genius of successful business is constant and prudent innovation and adaption to new circumstances. When it comes to reforming business ethics instruction, those institutions that educate so many business executives should be capable of no less.


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Tej Pratap and Tejaswi Yadav taking part in a cycle rally in Patna on Sunday.
Fans of Sushant Singh Rajput demanding a CBI probe in the death of the star.
RJD holding membership drive in Patna on Thursday.
Five robbers arrested; cash and other items recovered.
Bihar Congress leaders hold virtual meeting with Rahul Gandhi.
Authorities seal Patna City areas following many new Coronavirus cases on Friday.
Film and TV star Shekhar Suman and RJD leader Tejaswi Yadav holding a joint press conference in Patna on Tuesday.
Authorities engage in sanitization process on Govind Mitra Road on Tuesday.
Congress protest in Patna on Monday.
Children in Patna going to school on auto-rickshaw (file photo).
A vegetable shop in Patna.
RJD leader Tej Pratap Yadav in Aurangabad on Nov. 19, 2017.
Patna'ites endure intense heat in 2015.
Page 10 of 11


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Development Resources/Project Plan/XML
As per a resolution from the Board that led to bug 215301, all projects are required to provide their current project plan in the following XML format.
XML Template
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="http://www.eclipse.org/projects/project-plan.xsl"?> <plan plan-format="1.0" xmlns="http://www.eclipse.org/project/plan" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="Project Name"> <release projectid="technology.dash" version="1.0"/> <introduction> Some xhtml content here. Make sure to use the prefix before the elements </introduction> <release_deliverables> Some xhtml content here. Make sure to use the prefix before the elements </release_deliverables> <release_milestones> <preamble> Some xhtml content here. Make sure to use the prefix before the elements </preamble> <milestone date="7/1/2008" milestone="M1">optional html</milestone> <milestone date="8/1/2008" milestone="M2">optional html</milestone> <milestone date="9/1/2008" milestone="RC1">optional html</milestone> <milestone date="6/28/2009" milestone="1.0"/> <postamble>html content</postamble> </release_milestones> <target_environments> Some xhtml content here. Make sure to use the prefix before the elements <internationalization> Some xhtml content here. Make sure to use the prefix before the elements </internationalization> </target_environments> <compatibility_with_previous_releases> Some xhtml content here. Make sure to use the prefix before the elements </compatibility_with_previous_releases> <themes_and_priorities> <preamble> Some xhtml content here. Make sure to use the prefix before the elements </preamble> <theme name="Appealing to the Broader Community"> <description>...(optional) html...</description> <committed bugzilla="...(recommended) bugzilla search url..."> ...(optional alternate) html...</committed> <proposed bugzilla="...(recommended) bugzilla search url..."> ...(optional alternate) html...</proposed> <deferred bugzilla="...(recommended) bugzilla search url..."> ...(optional alternate) html...</deferred> </theme> <theme name="Design for Extensibility"> <description>...(optional) html...</description> <committed bugzilla="...(recommended) bugzilla search url..."> ...(optional alternate) html...</committed> <proposed bugzilla="...(recommended) bugzilla search url..."> ...(optional alternate) html...</proposed> <deferred bugzilla="...(recommended) bugzilla search url..."> ...(optional alternate) html...</deferred> </theme> </themes_and_priorities> <appendix name="Project Refactoring"> ...html... </appendix> </plan>
Note that the HTML content must be prefixed with the correct namespace prefix, and the XHTML namespace must be included. XHTML is required as it will allow for tooling to help with validation and editing support. Do not Wrap your XHTML content with CDATA. Anywhere it says to use HTML content, you should be using XHTML which is the XML equivalent of HTML.
When using the bugzilla attribute the url must be encoded with
& as the argument separator. Bugzilla seems to prefer just a
; but that will make the php script break when trying to render the plan.
Obviously, the milestone, theme and appendix elements can be repeated as many times as necessary.
Tools for Editing your Plan
Getting the WTP XML Tools set up is simple, and worth it since it provides instant HTML validation and content assist:
- From Eclipse 3.4, install the WTP XML Editor: Ganymede Update Site, Web and Java EE Development, Eclipse XML Editors and Tools
- Register the XML Schemas in WTP's Catalog. This will give you Ctrl+Space Content Assist as well as Validation Support and Automatic Closing of Elements in the XML Editor:
- Window > Preferences > XML > XML Catalog
- Add: Location=http://www.eclipse.org/projects/plan.xsd Type=Namespace Name Key:http://www.eclipse.org/project/plan
- Add: Location=http://www.w3.org/2002/08/xhtml/xhtml1-transitional.xsd Type=Namespace Name Key=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml
- Alternatively, for strict XHTML instead of (3) Add: Location=http://www.w3.org/2002/08/xhtml/xhtml1-strict.xsd with same type and key
Converting an older (non-namespace) plan
- The planconv.sh shellscript helps you converting an older (non-namespace) version of your XML project plan into the newer version (with XML namespace).
- Usage: planconv.sh myplan.xml
- Backup of old version is created (tested on Cygwin)
- What this script does, in case you want to add some manual editing:
- Replace the older <plan> element line by the new one (see the sample on this page)
- Replace each <![CDATA[ by this:
- Replace each ]]> by this:
- After the conversion, you'll need to make sure that your HTML is valid XHTML, that is: every  tag closed by  and the like. The WTP XML Editor will help you with its Validator to see what HTML is invalid -- an advantage over the previous opaque CDATA sections. See the other hints below for more info.
Hints for Editing your XML
- The XML plan must reside on the Eclipse Website. So, you'll need a local Eclipse Project which is shared with CVS Team Provider (Repository=:extssh:dev.eclipse.org:/cvsroot/org.eclipse, Module=www/your/project
- Create an empty XML file in your project ("myplan_1_0.xml"). Copy and paste the raw XML from an existing XML plan into your local project. There are two variants:
- Little HTML markup: RTSC and Project Dash use the project plan markup as the default namespace, which means that all XHTML needs to be qualified by the "html:" namespace tag. Use this if you anticipate little HTML contents.
- Much HTML markup: Project DSDP-TM uses the XHTML markup as the default namespace, which means that all Plan elements need to be qualified by the "p:" namespace prefix. Use this if you anticipate much HTML contents, e.g. because you are carrying forward contents from an older HTML based project plan.
- Start filling in the HTML contents and bugzilla queries. You can right-click > Validate to see if your document is valid according to the XSD. If you carry forward some older HTML, it might not be valid XHTML any more; there is tooling to automatically convert HTML into XHTML, e.g. http://valet.htmlhelp.com/tidy/
- Your bugzilla queries (hyperlinks) should be encoded by replacing each single "&" character by "&" in order to be a valid XML attribute. No other characters need to be escaped.
- Particularly note that XHTML does not allow the following constructs: nested tags inside
 elements; attributes like "width" or "background" in elements -- use a "style" markup instead.
- Enclosing your HTML stuff inside a single
 item which sets up the XHTML default namespace for the elements within it is one idea to avoid prefixing each element:

<big>Valid</big> Namespaced.

- When you think it's OK, commit your plan in order to get it rendered on the server. Note that you will need to register the Plan URL in the Portal, see #Specifying the Plan below.
- If you prefer checking it locally before commiting, this is also possible. You will need to copy the following files into the project that holds your plan: project-plan-render.xsl, project-plan-bugzilla.xsl, url-encode.xsl.
- Inside your local plan xml, change the header which points to the XSL to read
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="project-plan-render.xsl"?>. Now, open your plan XML with a browser like firefox and it should render correctly.
- If you want to have strict XHTML validation, download the plan.xsd file into your local project, then edit the WTP XML Catalog Preferences to point to your local XSD rather than the common one. In the local XSD, exchange occurrences of processContents="skip" by processContents="strict".
- Having the plan.xsd local, also allows you to right-click > Generate on it in order to generate a sample XML Template from the XSD. This is another option for starting your plan.
Note: In order for the plan to render, it MUST be valid against the schema it. It is highly recommended that you validate your XML against the schema. The Eclipse Web Tools project provides all the necessary tools to do the validation.
Bugs as Plan Items
The goal of the bugzilla queries is to support the use of bugzilla items for planning. The project team should assign target milestones to each bug, including both defects and enhancements. Additionally, the team should assign keywords (or keywords-in-titles) to each bug entry in order to classify them into themes. The bugzilla queries would then be, e.g., "all 2.6M1, 2.6M2, 2.6M3, ..., 2.6 bugs with keyword 'designforextensibility'", etc.
One option for mapping to the committed / proposed / deferred items is that all bugs with explicit milestones assigned are considered committed; those assigned a generic milestone or "---" are considered proposed; those assigned a milestone like "Future" are considered deferred. The DSDP-TM project uses this scheme, with keyword markup in the bugzilla subject line. Another idea is to only retrieve bugs with a "plan" or "investigate" keyword by the queries, or to only add bugs with specific priorities, in order to avoid flooding the plan with less interesting small items.
If a project chooses not to use bugzilla item for planning (contrary to collective wisdom of the senior Eclipse project leads), the project plan format allows arbitrary html text paragraph(s) instead.
Specifying the Plan
The project plan xml file is placed in the project's website CVS. The project meta-data item "projectplanurl" is then defined to point to that xml file. Use the portal to modify the project meta-data.
Note that in addition for specifying your "current plan" in the Portal, bug 238434 is open requesting an ability to render arbitrary XML project plans as HTML.
- Dash Sample
- Rendered as HTML
- Styled XML
- Raw XML (view page source for XML)
Known Issues
Some Bugs and Enhancement Requests are known in the projectplan renderer, follow the link into Bugzilla for more information.