SCRAPBOOK

In a 'Talk of the Town' piece, Lauren Collins talks about the Heimlich maneuver and Choking Man, a new film opening at the TriBeCa Film Festival. In the movie, Mandy Patinkin's character "says to the shaken customer, who has just vomited, in a cinematic slow-mo arc, all over his shirt, 'You know, Elizabeth Taylor was Heimliched. You're in good company. ' Elizabeth Taylor, it turns out, actually belongs in both categories. Twenty-two years before choking on a chicken bone, she saved Montgomery Clift from swallowing his own teeth."
-- The New Yorker May 8, 2006

United 93

Demonstrations against the war in Iraq Saturday, against genocide in Darfur Sunday, against felony imprsisonment for illegal aliens today--it looks like the Left is coming to life. After a showing of United 93, which features suicidal jihadists on 11 September 2001, a woman shouted "God bless America!" Then another shouted "Rot in Hell you bastards!" The seat in the movie theater felt disconcertingly like a seat in that airplane. There seemed to be no actors; this was cinema verite, and if unity of place was violated, you sure got unity of time. A charismatic star like Elizabeth Taylor would have had difficulty fading into the action. United 93 was a good movie which nonetheless left me depressed.