profil de Douglas Doepke

Emergent Voice, Juil 13 2004

Compact, highly readable, survey of neo-con strategy for a new American century. The booklet is simply too condensed to be either weighty or deep, nor do the respective sections on Terrorism and Iraq cohere well, (oddly, there is next to nothing on Afghanistan, a logical bridge between the two). That being said, Mahajan emerges as a consistently sharp-eyed critic of Washington's pretentions at doing something other than building a particularly ruthless and self-serving world empire. That is the book's core and its main virtue. The historical facts are presented cleanly and effectively, much like an extended op-ed piece with footnotes. I particularly like the way Mahajan refuses to pull… Lire la suite

Gumshoe, '60's Style, Jui 25 2004

The screenplay (Leigh Brackett) of The Long Good-bye is unusually well thought out and coherent. For a private-eye movie, that's an exception, and I suspect it's that very tightness which forced the famously anarchic Altman into a disciplined groove. It also helped produce this, his most accomplished, film. Then too, only an audacious film-maker of Altman's calibre could have brought such an irreverent approach to the screen.

Small wonder Chandler purists detest this 1960's version of Phillip Marlowe. Like others of that period, the film sets about subverting an icon of the popular culture. Elliot Gould's Marlowe is anything but the hard-boiled professional audiences have come to admire… Lire la suite

House of Ill Repute, Jui 14 2004

The Bush - Saudi connection. No surprise that these two privileged families from oil rich locales would hook up in some back-scratching fashion. However, what starts out in the early 80's as a fairly innocuous business partnership, deepens over the years into an affair of state and ultimately into a sinster backdrop to Pearl Harbor II. Unger charts the evolution in workman-like fashion. Names are named and financial dealings specified. All of which come together in the penultimate chapter "9/11", where we get a good idea of how the Bush-Saudi family alliance came to trump national interest. The section on al-Qaedi's Abu Zubaydah is particularly intriguing, and if true, opens up a… Lire la suite