I’ll put the first Mission: Impossible up against just about any modern action movie–it’s in my pantheon with Die Hard, The Fugitive, The Hunt for Red October, and a few other classics. Like all great action movies, M:I is all about economy of force. Every set-up has a pay-off. Every knife on a table gets used. It’s the product of ruthlessly spare writing, masterful direction, and then, as a bonus, it gives you both great set-pieces and great performances. (Vanessa Redgrave and Henry Czerny add all sorts of value.)

All of which is set-up to saying that the first teaser for M:I4 looks fantastic. Tom Wilkinson!

I never really understood the minor fascination over Jessica Cutler a few years back. Her stories seemed to be less than 100 percent legitimate. But more importantly, even if you took them as works of semi-fiction, they weren’t particularly good. Or rather, if she were going to make up sexcapades in the underbelly of DC, she should have done a better job.

This, on the other hand, is so golden that it doesn’t even matter if it’s true: The internet tale of a random hook-up with Quentin Tarantino. Everyone is focusing on the money-shot, but the real greatness lies in the details. Sample awesome:

Quentin: Wow so you really loved Reservoir Dogs, huh? Which of my other films do you like?

(this blatant arrogance is the type of douchebaggery that really gets my gourd about Hollywood, so now my film boner has turned to film hate fuck, and I feel the need to cheekily undermine Quentin.)

Me: Oh wow. You know, I really didn’t like Kill Bill…

Quentin: What? What do you mean? 1 or 2?

Me: Ehh, a little bit of both. I just didn’t care for them.

Quentin: Wow…I don’t think anyone has said that to my face about my seminal films.

Me: Perhaps it’s because you call them your seminal films. Shouldn’t you wait for someone else to say that?

And:

We get to the house, which is gorgeous, and Jamie Foxx takes off with his lady friend (I try to say bye to him and he doesn’t even look at me. Jamie Foxx could not have given 2 shits who I was. This is probably karma because I snuck into a screening of Ray in 2004 with my black boyfriend who worked at AMC at the time, instead of buying a ticket).

Who doesn’t want to read a novel from this gal?

Galley Hero Andy Ferguson’s NYT piece on Newt Gingrich is Michael Bay levels of awesome. Run, don’t walk. Sample greatness:

The book is a collaboration with Callista Gingrich, the wife (“whose support and love have made the adventure of our life together exciting, enjoyable and fulfilling,” Gingrich writes in “To Serve America”) who replaced the second wife, Marianne (“who made it all worthwhile” back in the day of “To Renew America”). Callista is unavoidable in all of Gingrich’s current endeavors. Having married a powerful man and suddenly blossomed in fields in which she earlier showed seemingly no interest or professional skill — writing books, taking photographs, making movies, overseeing her husband’s not-for-profit company — Callista has emerged as the Linda McCartney of the conservative movement.

A Lego Barad Dur (that’s the Dark Tower of Sauron to non-nerds).

It’s made of 50,000 blocks and stands just under 6′ tall.

I want one. For my office.

The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer attacks Ross Douthat’s review of Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection. In the course of his attack, Serwer claims,

* If “women’s empowerment” lead to sex-selective abortion, that would offer a powerful argument against abortion since everyone agrees sex-selective abortion is bad. The problem is that even abortion rights supporters think sex-selective abortion is bad . . .

* Perhaps it seems obvious, but that kind of blatant economic incentive against having female children doesn’t exist in the United States.

And then:

* . . . female children being aborted because they’re by definition a financial liability actually suggests that “patriarchy” is a pretty huge part of the story. Rather than “female empowerment” being the issue, the problem is that women are literally valued less than men, a problem denying women the right to decide when to carry children to term wouldn’t actually solve.

Serwer should read Hvistendahl’s book more carefully. If he did, he’d see that “everyone” does not think that sex selective abortion is bad. But more importantly, he’d see that even in America, where girls are not an out-sized financial drain on families, the sex ratios at birth are skewed for some ethnicities–and become more skewed at higher-order births.

Finally, Sewer seems to have misunderstood the origins of sex-selective abortion: It begins not with lower- and middle-class families, who need to worry about girls being a financial drain, but rather with wealthy elites, for whom finances are a much lower-order concern. The behavior then filters down the socio-economic ladder to the middle and lower classes, which do have to worry about money. Hvistendahl makes this all quite clear in her reporting.

Also, the problem isn’t just that girls have a “lower” value to these poorer families. As Hvistendahl shows, the sex imbalance also causes havoc once the shortage of girls gives young women a higher value. When the “value” of young women escalates, it causes all sorts of other problems, including forced marriages, mail-order-weddings, widespread sexual slavery and prostitution, and the danger of creating a permanent underclass of women. In other words, the women’s enhanced value becomes a danger to her, not an asset.

But maybe none of this matters to abortion supporters, for whom the only imperative is the unfettered abortion right.

Let’s pretend for a moment that the only source of the problem really is patriarchy. Well, then, you have two choices: Do you confront the slaughter of millions of girls by “fighting” patriarchical culture in some nebulous way that may, or may not, after several decades, pay off? Or do you outlaw abortion, enforce the ban pretty rigorously (by sending doctors who perform them to jail) and understand that while there will still be illegal abortions which slip through the cracks, girl babies won’t be targeted as widely and that the vast majority of those who would have been killed in the gendercide will be allowed life?

I think I can guess where Serwer would come down. Which is fine. But you must then realize that all the posturing about how terrible it is that girls keep getting aborted is really just a second-order concern. Again, that’s fine. But if that’s what you believe, you should have the courage to say it out loud.

The best email I got after I reviewed Hvistendahl’s book was from someone who quipped that we’ll start restricting abortion in America the day after someone develops and in utero test for “the gay gene.” Because if it turned out that certain classes of women were aborting babies exclusively because of their homosexuality, then the left would finally turn on abortion.

And maybe they would. But maybe not.

P.S.: There’s also this. I actually wonder how closely Serwer read Hvistendahl’s book.

P.P.S.: In case my first point isn’t clear, I’d point readers to page 243 of Unnatural Selection, where Hvistendahl talks with an abortion-rights advocate who tried to put on a conference to talk about sex-selective abortion. She writes:

“People had really mixed feelings about sex selection,” she recalls. Many of the activists at the session didn’t believe it was unequivocally wrong. Some believed sex selection was wrong only when it discriminated against girls; selecting for girls was another matter.

There’s more where that came from. Like this line from a paper in Reproductive Health Matters (on page 27):

“For women attempting to have a son and experiencing pressure to fulfill their ‘womanly duty’ by having a male child, sex-selective abortion can be extremely empowering.”

Etc. But you really should read the book. It’s great.

Final Update: Adam Serwer has responded! Let me help him out: My point was not that I “want ‘womens’ empowerment'” to be responsible for sex-selective abortion. In fact, I don’t think I mention “women’s empowerment” in either my blog post or my review. I’m pretty convinced by Hvistendahl’s work that the witches brew is enormously complicated and that there’s enough blame to go around for everyone: feminists, Western Malthusians, patriarchical cultures, the economics of development, meddling non-profits and NGOs, science, etc.

The argument I was making–and his non-response makes even clearer–is much less grand: I was merely pointing out that Serwer’s errors suggested that maybe he didn’t read Hvistendahl’s book very carefully. But maybe I’m wrong!

Here I am talking about a reasonably serious topic–the slaughter of 163 million baby girls–via web cam with the WSJ.

In the background you’ll note: a poster for The Dark Knight, Axis & Allies, a picture disc with Adam West riding an elephant, a basketball signed by Larry Bird, and–because why not?–an Emma Frost action figure. Not pictured: the Lego Batmobile.

Sigh.

It’s amazing my bosses let me have an office at all.

It starts slow, but I beg you to stay. The tag-line is worth the price of admission.

Via Galley Friend A.K., a series of birthday cakes made for a little girl who loves princesses, ponies, and Darth Vader.