journal features

movie review - Brokedown Palace

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Sydney, 2000.06.30

This one was pretty dull, I have to say. It's about two girls who are arrested for drug possession in S.E. Asia. One of them - the bad girl - spends the rest of her life in prison. The other - the good girl - gets to go back the good ol' US. It's beautifully shot but I suspect that behind this thing there was a much better book and the best of that didn't make it to the screen.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton