martha stewart is home, michael jackson's trial has begun, the number of us soldiers killed in iraq passed 1500 this week, a united nations report said more than 80 million africans could die from aids by 2025 (if some sort of genocide or famine doesn't get them first, of course) and a teenage boy was arrested as a terrorist after his grandparents reported him for writing a story about his high school being overrun by zombies* and armageddon still isn't here. go figure
in other news, lars von trier said he'll cut the scene involving a donkey being killed from manderlay, his follow-up to dogville cause some folks complained**. nevermind that the meat went for food after. he went ahead and cut it because the political and social content of the film was too important to lose over the donkey bit. as limited an audience as the film's going to get anyway, i'd say keep it in, but i also supported that girl making art out of pieces of euthanized animals a few months back, so... i'm not exactly the average person, am i... of course, i am in the audience for von trier's trilogy about the us (of which manderlay is the second film)
now if that donkey had been killed in a high school in kentucky, he'd have a real problem on his hands
* cause, apparently, "anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function, it?s a felony in the state of kentucky"
** more than 300 letters from groups and individuals in the us (of course, cause we're all about the strongly-worded letter these days), germany, britain and denmark about the scene, filmed in sweden