links of interest

[the_grynne]

An above-average "America is the new Rome" piece, this time by Gary Kamiya at Salon.com:

"There is no reason to believe that "Rome's" creators were thinking about contemporary affairs when making the series. Nonetheless, it's hard not to think of the nihilistic horror show in Iraq when watching "Rome." Brutal civil wars, shifting alliances, the machinations of the powerful -- it's all happening again. Some historians have made an explicit comparison between America at the start of the third millennium and Rome at the start of the first."

Philip Kennicott at the Washington Post on Anna Nicole Smith:

"'Courtesan,' which in a different age is probably what she would have been labeled (even though she was married), is a category we don't have much use for anymore. The woman who makes sexual alliances for money, who was less than a blushing bride but not so fallen as a prostitute, was once a vigorous cultural type, at least through the 19th century."

Robert Humanick at The House Next Door compares two WWII movies told from the Axis powers' perspective, Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front and Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima:

"Even without explicitly addressing the political particulars of their time, both films balance an awareness that war can be a necessary evil and a conviction that its very existence signifies a failure of government."