LJ-World Rant of the Week / Bizarre "Best of the Year" Choice of the Week: Fast Five

Our favorite editorial this week comes from a reader who's finally had just about enough of...FDR.

"The [Pearl Harbor] bombing, of course, precipitated World War II and allowed one of our most incompetent Presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to assume a larger role in history than he deserved...His now-famous “Day of Infamy” speech should have included a mea culpa for this hubristic putridity...Roosevelt, who would die in a room with his mistress — not his wife — should be relegated to the lower tier of U.S. presidents, a rather despicable creature for whom Hell no doubt would open wide its gates."

Chip: "This seems like a cogent argument, but I tend to feel that the limited space of the LJ-World editorial section should be devoted to more contemporary or local anti-liberal screeds."

The letter also elicited this great rejoinder from Cato_the_elder:

"No FDR apologists out there to respond to a very provocative letter impugning the integrity and reputation of a liberal Democrat icon? Too early in the morning, or have all of the juvenile leftists who post on this forum never heard of FDR?"


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We continue scouring Best of the Year lists and our favorite bizarre inclusion this year (thus far) comes from TIME's Richard Corliss, who lists Vin Diesel's Fast Five in his tenth slot with this explanation:

"The dialogue, characterizations and acting are irrelevant to the success of this first great film of the post-human era. As if recalling the epochal heist in 1903′s The Great Train Robbery and, a decade later, the auto carnage of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops, director Justin Lin goes back to basics with another train robbery and vehicular violence in police rides — souped up and stripped down like stock cars in a death race — on the streets of Rio. A carnival of roguish heroes and pretty girls, car chases and cliffhangers, Fast Five is as much a tribute as The Artist or Hugo to the cinema’s primal thrills."

Post-human era, eh? We're pretty sure that most films (including this one) still contain humans: isn't Vin Diesel technically a human?

Chip: "When I saw The Artist, the sound and color in the theater was off almost the entire time."

Richard: "The Artist is a silent film in black and white, Chip."

Chip: "That can't be right, can it?"