Aladdin

With the situation in the Middle-East becoming worse and worse every day, I have to ask myself, what would I do if I had three wishes regarding the region?

First wish: a long-lasting truce between the Palestinians and the Israelis. 

It's sad because it seemed like one was developing before the Palestinians butchered the 1,200 Israeli settlers. Now, after Israel's over-the-top reaction, it seems like peace is a long long long ways off, although there was a time when it seemed like England and France would never stop going to war.

Second wish: moderate life-affirming governments replace the bloodthirsty rulers of Israel and Iran.

I imagine most people in Israel and Iran just want to do what most people everywhere just want to do, that is, work a solid day and then relax with friends and family afterwards. Unless they're extremist nutjobs, they likely don't want to fight in a war that will only profit other extremist nutjobs. So it goes decade after decade in the Middle-East. Israel exists. And it's quite the cool place I hear. 

Third wish: the countries of the Middle-East forge a lasting peace through the creation of an interconnected trade union whose continuous maintenance benefits everyone.

If only they could do what most of Europe has already done. It's not too late for Russia to join. After signing a lasting peace deal with Ukraine. 

Mirror Mirror

Possessing a self-aware mischievous aloofly focused reflexivity which takes interpretive postures narratively to heart, Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror playfully reimagines Snow White and infuses it with lighthearted billowing charm. The Queen (Julia Roberts) is certainly wicked, the princess (Lily Collins), beautiful. Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer) bumbles along unwittingly thrust between the two and the seven dwarves provide voyeuristic commentary and transformative benignity which constructively pluralizes the action by creating an audience within an audience.

It's totally web 2.0.

Economic matters haunt the film as the Queen brutally taxes her subjects to pay for her ostentatious whims. The dwarves have taken to robbing those who pass through their section of the forest due to the fact that they were expelled from the village because the Queen found them ugly. The villagers didn't stand up for the dwarves which has lead to resentment. When they rob a royal coach carrying funds obtained through taxation they therefore have no desire to return them. But Snow White sees things differently and returns the levies and gives the dwarves the credit.

Thus we have a situation where a capricious exception was made which divided the struggling populace. Feeling helpless and seeing no way of securing a lasting productive solution on their own, this exception lapsed into criminal activity. Then, after taking into their care a royal outcast, a solution presents itself necessitated by the underhanded activities they were forced to engage in.

Unfortunately, this solution was brokered by the outcasted royal rather than the people themselves. Had they remained united, perhaps they could have taken steps to frustrate the villainous Queen and would not have had to rely upon accidental august interventions.