Gitmo Judge Bars Pentagon Official From Trial
Pentagon lawyer is ordered to stay out of trial of bin Laden's driver
Defense lawyer says ruling could complicate other prosecutions
Ousted adviser reportedly urged use of evidence considered tainted or unreliable
A military judge's ruling that a Pentagon lawyer improperly pressured prosecutors could hurt efforts to try top al Qaeda suspects held at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, a defense lawyer said Monday.
The ruling called allegations that Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions, exerted improper influence on the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan "troubling" and ordered Hartmann to stay out of the prisoner's prosecution.
Defense attorney Charles Swift said the ruling is likely to stall the pending case against Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard, and complicate the prosecutions of other al Qaeda figures before the military courts set up by the Bush administration.
"It would seem that they need to go back to Square 1 wherever the HVD [high-value detainee] charges are concerned or risk the fact that they may be so tainted from the start that they will never survive," said Swift.
Friday's ruling by Navy Capt. Keith Allred follows the testimony of Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. Davis resigned in October, saying the prosecutions had become "deeply politicized," and appeared as a defense witness for Hamdan at a hearing in late April.
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The Pentagon had no comment Monday on the ruling.
Hartmann, an Air Force reservist, is the legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions, the Pentagon agency set up to try suspected al Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo Bay. Among those prisoners are more than a dozen "high-value detainees" -- including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, accused of planning the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Swift, a former Navy lawyer, won a landmark 2006 Supreme Court ruling on Hamdan's behalf that threw out an earlier Pentagon-devised system for trying suspected terrorists.
He said Hamdan's case was largely prepared before Hartmann became the legal adviser to the military commissions and that the implications of last week's ruling "are probably far greater in other cases than in Hamdan's."
"Mr. Hartmann has been at the center of putting together the charges on the HVDs, and his conduct is no different when it comes to that," Swift said. "If anything, based on the testimony that's been put out there, he stepped over the line even further than when Mr. Hamdan was involved."
Hamdan has refused to take part in his trial, and his defense team has asked the Supreme Court to delay the proceedings until after it rules on the larger question of what legal rights non-citizen prisoners have.
In the 13-page order, Hartmann's actions include efforts to push Davis to use evidence "considered tainted and unreliable, or perhaps obtained as the result of torture or coercion" and pushing Davis to bring cases he considered "sexy" over lower-ranking suspects. Hartman also complained about the slow pace of the trials, the order said.
Allred found that prosecutors complained that Hartman "nano-managed" their cases, and said the attention drawn to his performance jeopardized the appearance of fairness in the entire military justice process.
Davis, who is scheduled to retire from the Air Force in October, said Monday that Hartmann "had a hand in drafting the charges" against Mohammed. And he said his complaints about Hartmann's interference may have scuttled a plea agreement last year in the Hamdan case.
"His job was to provide neutral, independent advice to the convening authority," he said. "He was supposed to be neutral, and he basically suited up and played for the prosecution."
Capt. Prescott Prince, the military attorney appointed to represent Mohammed, said the decision makes Hartmann's role in other cases "snakebitten."
Prince said he expects to meet with Mohammed this week at Guantanamo Bay, where the prisoner was transferred in September 2006 after three years in CIA custody. It will be his second meeting with Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003.
Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 5/13/2008 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
How The World's Oceans Are Running Out Of Fish
The future of our seas has never been more precarious. Ninety years of industrial-scale overfishing has brought us to the brink of an ecological catastrophe and deprived millions of their livelihoods. As scientific guidelines are ignored and catches become ever bigger, Alex Renton tells why the international community has failed to act
A tuna transport floating tank being towed from the fishing grounds off Libya to tuna ranches off Sicily, Italy.
It is early morning in Barcelona's La Boqueria market and the fish stallholders are setting out their wares. Mounds of pink and grey glisten down the dim alleys - shoppers and tourists peering at the fins and tentacles. It is not like any fish shop in Britain - some stalls sell five different species of squid and cuttlefish, half a dozen types of shrimp and prawn, 10 different cuts of salt cod. It is a fish eater's haven in the heart of a city that eats and sells more fish than anywhere else in Europe.
Anyone who cares about where their fish come from - and this should mean anyone who wants to go on eating them - should take two tools when they visit the fishmonger. One is the handy guidance provided by the Marine Conservation Society, Fish to Avoid and Fish to Eat (the latter is still the longer); the other is a ruler. My ruler is the type handed out to commercial fishermen by the international advisory body, Incofish, and has pictures of key species with marks indicating when they can be considered mature (and, thus, OK to catch).
So I set about lining up my ruler against the La Boqueria fish, starting with the mackerel (should be 34cm), the plaice (39cm) and the redfish (45cm). All turn out to be mere babies. The mackerel is half the designated length. A glance around the stalls shows 10 or more species on the MCS's Avoid list, including hake, swordfish, monkfish, bluefin tuna and, of course, cod.
I don't spend much time doing this because the Catalan fishmongers don't like my ruler - or me. They don't want to talk about why they are selling tiny hake (one of Europe's most endangered species) and why not a single fish in the market has any 'sustainable' labelling.
One old lady asks me what I'm after. 'I want to know why the Spanish are eating so many undersized fish from populations that are running out,' I say. 'It's simple,' she says. 'We like fish and small fish taste better.'
Is anyone not aware that wild fish are in deep trouble? That three-quarters of commercially caught species are over-exploited or exploited to their maximum? Do they not know that industrial fishing is so inefficient that a third of the catch, some 32 million tonnes a year, is thrown away? For every ocean prawn you eat, fish weighing 10-20 times as much have been thrown overboard. These figures all come from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which also claims that, of all the world's natural resources, fish are being depleted the fastest. With even the most abundant commercial species, we eat smaller and smaller fish every year - we eat the babies before they can breed.
Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at York University, predicts that by 2050 we will only be able to meet the fish protein needs of half the world population: all that will be left for the unlucky half may be, as he puts it, 'jellyfish and slime'. Ninety years of industrial-scale exploitation of fish has, he and most scientists agree, led to 'ecological meltdown'. Whole biological food chains have been destroyed.
Many of those fish you can see in such glorious abundance in Spanish markets - and on our own supermarket shelves - come not from European seas but from the coasts of the continents of the poor: Africa, South America and parts of Asia. Fishermen have always roamed far afield - the Basques began fishing the great cod populations off Newfoundland at least 500 years ago. And when serious shortages in traditional stocks around Europe began to be commercially apparent 30 years ago, the trawler fleets began to move south.
Strangely one of the first international attempts to conserve fish stocks, especially for the more easily exploited nations, also became part of the disaster. The United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, signed in 1979, extended national rights over fisheries to 200 miles from a country's coasts. But it included a provision that, if fish stocks in that zone were surplus to national needs, the country could sell its rights to outsiders. That convention allowed cash-strapped and sometimes corrupt countries in west Africa to raise funds by letting the industrial trawler fleets in. Since 1979 the EU has negotiated deals on fishing rights with a string of impoverished African countries. Despite the EU's own studies indicating massive and quite possibly irreversible damage to fish stocks off west Africa, these deals continue to be struck.
In 2002, the year an EU report revealed that the Senegalese fish biomass had declined 75 per cent in 15 years, Brussels bought rights for four years' fishing of tuna and bottom-dwelling fish on the Senegal coasts, for just $4m a year. In 2006, access for 43 giant EU factory fishing vessels to Mauritania's long coastline was bought for ﾣ24.3m a year. It's estimated that these deals have put 400,000 west African fishermen out of work; some of them now take to the sea only as ferrymen for desperate would-be migrants to the Canary Islands and Europe. And among the millions of Africans who depend on fish as their main source of protein, consumption has declined from 9kg per year to 7kg.
North Atlantic fish stocks have been in decline for well over a century. Callum Roberts points out in his recent book The Unnatural History of the Sea that it was obvious from the 1880s that fish stocks were in decline. Fish catch records from the 1920s onwards show that, despite the enormous improvements in boat design and trawling technology and better refrigeration, catches of the great Atlantic species, such as haddock, cod, hake and turbot, remained constant or slowly declined. As they have ever since.
Unlike global warming, the science of fish stock collapse is old and its practitioners have been pretty much in agreement since the 1950s. Yet Roberts can think of only one international agreement that has actually worked and preserved stocks of an exploited marine animal - a deal in the Arctic in 1911 to regulate the hunting of fur seals on the Pribilof Islands. So why has the international community failed so badly in its attempts to stop the long-heralded disaster with our fish?
'Quite simply,' Roberts says, 'agreements and deals brokered by politicians will never be satisfactory. They always look for the short-term fix.' He and his team at York University did a survey of the last 20 years of EU ministerial decisions on fish catches and found that, on average, they set quotas for fishing fleets 15 to 30 per cent higher than those recommended as safe by scientists.
'What that figure doesn't tell you is that often, for less threatened species like mackerel or whiting, they have set quotas 100 per cent higher than the science recommended. So, in their efforts to pacify the industry, they are bringing populations that could be sustainably fished into the risk zone,' he said.
The fishing industry, Roberts feels, has exerted excessive influence on politicians in Europe's Atlantic nations since the 18th century - when it was necessary to keep the fleets well manned, as a source of seamen for their navies when war broke out.
Europe is by far the worst criminal among the developed nations. It is in the Far East, in Japan and Korea, that most fish are eaten, per head - the Japanese eat 66kg each a year, as opposed to Spain's 44kg and Britain's 20kg. But the Chinese (at 25kg) alone eat around a third of the world's fish, and, as with meat, the fish proportion of their diet is soaring as the population gets more wealthy. (The fact that much Asian fish is farmed is little consolation - their feed may often be derived from wild fish.)
According to Greenpeace, Chinese fishing fleets are among the most rapacious when it comes to hoovering up the stocks of small nations in the Pacific and Atlantic. But in no Asian country is the notion of sustainable fishing much developed among consumers - and it is from consumers that any demand for change must come. Because, as Roberts and all the green lobby groups note, the structures and organisations set up by politicians and industry to control fisheries, or even preserve the most endangered species, have entirely failed.
The Observer went to see one of these bodies in action in Tokyo a few weeks ago. ICCAT, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, is an obscure - if you're not in the tuna business - Madrid-based organisation that spends some ﾬ2.3m (ﾣ1.8m) of EU taxpayers' money a year collating and commissioning scientific research, and holding meetings for the 45 nations with an interest in the tuna-type species in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. These include the US, Japan, China and the UK. If you work for ICCAT, it's a high air miles life: Tokyo in March, Florianopolis, Brazil, next month. This is all in the cause of conserving tuna, of course. Which ICCAT, all observers agree, has utterly failed to do.
In fact, the commission is a joke: known in the business as the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tunas. Sergi Tudela, the World Wildlife Fund's head of fisheries for the Mediterranean, doesn't find it funny. 'ICCAT is a treaty, and some of its contracting parties pervert the spirit of it to ensure their overfishing of tuna continues,' he says. Roberts agrees. 'ICCAT doesn't do what it says it does - it doesn't conserve. Instead it presides over the decline and collapse of tuna stocks.'
After the first day's talks the Japanese government threw an ICCAT party. Delegates - fishermen, industry moguls, scientists, lobbyists and fisheries ministry reps - stood around chatting politely, sipping their drinks, in a grand carpeted conference room. Some very senior EU fisheries people were there, but not Mitsubishi, the enormous Japanese company that buys most European tuna. It pulled out at the last moment.
Silver plates in hand, the delegates tackled the buffet. Among the crabmeat pilaf and stewed chicken, there were several platters of sushi. There were nigiri rolls with slivers of raw-red belly meat on top - probably bluefin tuna, the most endangered commercially exploited fish in the world and most likely brought to Japan by Mitsubishi. Bluefin is also the world's most expensive fish - a tuna that was sold in Tokyo's Tsukiji market this year went to a Hong Kong-based trader for the price of a top-of-the-range Mercedes.
Tudela, who'd been hopeful of this meeting, seemed depressed when we caught up with him in Tokyo. The Japanese had talked of reining back their Mediterranean operations. It is they who buy much of the bluefin tuna which is caught in the eastern Atlantic, often outside quotas; or caught young and fattened in cages in the Mediterranean. 'The Atlantic bluefin fishery is unsustainable in every way - economically, socially and ecologically,' said Tudela. 'But the fishing fleet keeps getting bigger. There are six new reefers [large tuna-catching boats] linked to the Japanese in the region. I think the fishing industry is starting to feel really hijacked by the Japanese.'
ICCAT may be the most ineffective international organisation of all time. In the course of its 42-year life, several tuna species in the Mediterranean and Atlantic have come near disappearing, and nearly all are in grave danger. Despite the endless conferences and scientific studies sponsored by ICCAT and member nations, WWF's analysis shows that catches of bluefin tuna, a 'critically endangered species', according to the standards of the respected World Conservation Union, are 'dramatically higher' than the quotas set. And that catches are consistently under-reported, or not reported at all.
While EU ministers promise action on illegal fishing of tuna, they also continue to underwrite the tuna fishing industry through massive subsidies: ﾬ16m (ﾣ13.1m) has been spent in recent years on the European purse seining fleet alone, according to the international lobbying group Oceana.
Xavier Pastor, its director in Europe, says bluntly: 'The over-exploitation of the bluefin tuna has been promoted and financed by European taxpayers and continues through the subsidising of operating costs, such as fuel.'
The problem for many observers is not just that ICCAT is ineffectual, but that it may be doing more harm than good. 'If you announce, as ICCAT did two years ago, an "emergency fisheries recovery" plan, then you are telling the concerned public that something is being done about the problem. But it isn't - the fisheries recovery plan is a misnomer,' says Roberts.
ICCAT refused requests for an interview, telling us to go and look at its website instead.
Is there any hope for fish? If we cannot sort out the problem of bluefin tuna - a highly prized fish, whose life cycle is well understood, and whose fishing is closely monitored - what hope is there for the other stocks? Will our children eat wild fish or only farmed? Tudela sees some encouraging movement in Europe - the French, major tuna fishers, have for the first time prosecuted some quota-busting fishermen. At European Commission level, he thinks the problems are being taken a little more seriously.
Roberts has one solution: marine reserves. Protecting up to 40 per cent of the world's oceans in permanent refuges would enable the recovery of fish stocks and help replenish surrounding fisheries. 'The cost, according to a 2004 survey, would be between ﾣ7bn and ﾣ8.2bn a year, after set-up. But put that against the ﾣ17.6bn a year we currently spend on harmful subsidies that encourage overfishing.'
Reserves must not be ruled by politicians, says Roberts. 'The model of industry-political control for regulatory bodies just doesn't work. It's like central banks - put them under politicians' control and they make dangerous, short-term decisions that result in economic instability. Put them under independent control, and they make better-judged, more strategic decisions.'
The Newfoundland cod fishery, for 500 years the world's greatest, was exhausted and closed in 1992, and there's still no evidence of any return of the fish. Once stocks dip below a certain critical level, the scientists believe, they can never recover because the entire eco-system has changed. The question is whether, after 50 years of vacillation and denial, there's any prospect of the politicians acting decisively now. 'It is awful and we are on the road to disaster,' says Tudela. 'But the collapse - in some, not all the situations - is still reversible. And it's worth trying.'
Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 5/12/2008 at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
20 Great Movies to Watch with Mom this Mother's Day
In between all the hugging, eating, and her asking you when you're going to move on to the next stage of your life, here are 20 movies perfect to watching with her -- and five you should avoid at all costs.
MOONSTRUCK (1987)
Husband Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) is cheating on her and daughter Loretta (Cher) has fallen in love with the estranged brother (Nicolas Cage) of her fiance (Danny Aiello), but ever-calm matriarch Rose Castorini (the great Olympia Dukakis) is the glue that keeps her family together. She also offers her daughter sage advice about men: 'When you love them, they drive you crazy because they know they can.' Erin E. Stevenson
FINDING NEVERLAND (2004)
In Finding Neverland, Kate Winslet plays Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, widowed mother of four boys who befriend the eccentric playwright J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp). You and Mom will bond over this biopic of the Peter Pan author, from the film's honest depiction of a mother's struggle to raise her children while faced with her own mortality, in addition to her mother's (Julie Christie) sometimes interfering efforts to protect the family. Joy Piedmont
ALIENS (1986)
What, you don't see how this is a mom-appropriate film? In case you've forgotten, Aliens is about a woman named Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), reeling from the discovery of her own daughter's demise, who finds herself having to play surrogate mother to a young orphan named Newt (Carrie Henn). Yes, there are vicious extra-terrestrials with acid for blood that are hell-bent on impregnating humanity with their brood. And, yes, there's a whole bunch of heavily armed Colonial Marines who blow stuff up real good. But at its core, James Cameron's movie is about two women learning to reconnect. Marc Bernardin
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)
You think you and your mom have it bad? Grab the Kleenex box and bond over the ups and downs of a prim, stubborn widow (Shirley MacLaine), who falls for a randy ex-astronaut (Jack Nicholson), and her free-spirited daughter (Debra Winger), who has a rocky marriage, an affair, and then a terminal illness. Erin E. Stevenson
MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING (2002)
Wacky aunts, awkward family gatherings, and a lot of hairspray it's impossible not to identify with the 2002 sleeper hit. Amidst all the film's endearing craziness, though, is a lovely Mother's Day-friendly message: as Toula (Nia Vardalos) says, no matter how insane your family, 'wherever I go, what ever I do, they will always be there.' (Say it with me: Awww). Plus, what mother-child pairing couldn't bond over their mutual admiration for John Corbett? Kate Ward
THE SECRET OF NIMH (1982)
If this were a Disney animated film, the hero would be anything but a single mother, and a widow at that. But that's precisely what Mrs. Brisby is, a woman sorry, a mouse alone with three children, one of them sick, and facing eviction from her cinder block home. For help, she turns to her late husband's friends: ultra-intelligent rats who escaped from a research lab. Top that, Rescuers Down Under! Marc Bernardin
THE QUEEN (2006)
When Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) begins to defend the Queen's (Helen Mirren) cold response to the death of Princess Diana, Cherie Blair (Helen McCrory) suggests that her husband is treating the monarch as a substitute for his deceased mother. Regardless of whether you buy this bit of psychoanalysis, The Queen will certainly make you grateful that your mother wasn't the moral figurehead for an entire nation. With that kind of responsibility, its no wonder Prince Charles passively emphasizes Diana's superior mothering during a country drive with Mum. Joy Piedmont
STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989)
Everyone cries at the funeral scene, when Sally Field's M'Lynn finally breaks down, but for me the waterworks start even earlier: the scene where Shelby (Julia Roberts) has a diabetic fit in a beauty parlor on her wedding day, and M'Lynn calmly jumps into action, wielding a cup of juice and a tough-but-somehow-soothing manner that helps her daughter through it. And when Shelby recovers and whimpers that she's ruined her hair, it's a touching reminder that even as adults, we still need our mommies. Dawnie Walton
Source: Entertaiment Weekly Online
BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (2003)
Mrs. Bhamra (Shaheen Kahn) and her husband (Anupam Kher), Punjabi immigrants living outside London and working at Heathrow, just want their daughter Jesminder (Parminder Nagra) to become a lawyer and perfect her cooking skills so she can settle down in a traditional Indian marriage. Is that so wrong? It is for Jess, who loves soccer and her handsome white coach (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Family turmoil ensues. Erin E. Stevenson
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006)
If Mom still secretly yearns for the days of 'Over the River and Through the Woods' medleys and license-plate-game marathons, this zany family road-trip flick will surely set her straight. The dysfunctional Hoover family, determined to enter precocious daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) in a far-away California kiddie pageant, take to the highway in their beat-up VW bus, where porn-loving police, a dead grandpa, and a busted clutch are all that stand in their way. Though Olive doesn't take home the crown, the family's comedy of errors odyssey still seems so worth it. Amy Wilkinson
THE OTHERS (2001)
While her husband is away fighting in WWII, Grace (Nicole Kidman) moves into a new manor house with her two children, both of whom suffer a skin disease that renders them overly sensitive to light. But all is not well in that British mansion, as the hiring of new servants reveals that something spooky's going on. The lengths that Grace goes to protect her brood is inspiring...if futile. If Mom's in the mood for a scare, this is the right fare. Marc Bernardin
JOY LUCK CLUB (1993)
Your mom is happiest when she's making you miserable, but you can't blame her because her life was tougher than yours in ways you can't imagine. The women in this movie may be Chinese-Americans, but that's a message that resonates across all cultures. Gary Susman
THE FAMILY STONE (2005)
This surprisingly melancholy Christmas movie reinforces what we've so begrudgingly learned to accept: Mom (almost always) knows best. When eldest son Everett (Dermot Mulroney) returns home for the holidays hell-bent on using his grandmother's ring to propose to uptight Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker), wise mama Sybil (Diane Keaton) refuses to hand over the rock. Good thing, since Everett finds a much better match in Meredith's sister Julie (Claire Danes). Thanks mom! Amy Wilkinson
THE NAMESAKE (2006)
Ashima (Tabu) doesn't understand her son Gogol (Kal Penn) he likes rock music, complains about having to go visit his relatives in India, and dates girls who, in her mind, aren't suitable. But no matter what, she's there for him, just a phone call away and always ready to welcome him home. Moving stuff for those who have long-distance relationships with their moms. Dawnie Walton
FATHER OF THE BRIDE (1950)
Sure, Spencer Tracy gets all the attention as the dad who's apoplectic over having to pay for daughter Elizabeth Taylor's wedding, but Joan Bennett has the tougher job: calming Tracy, smoothing over disputes with the future in-laws, and trying to ensure that her daughter's wedding is lovelier than her own modest nuptials. Hey, at least she and Tracy didn't have to plan and pay for Taylor's next seven weddings. Gary Susman
KILL BILL, VOL. 2 (2004)
What begins as a pure revenge saga of a woman (Uma Thurman) left for dead by her friends and her lover becomes so much more. Not to give too much away, but when it is all said and done, this Quentin Tarantino movie may be the most violent custody battle ever put on film. Marc Bernardin
FREAKY FRIDAY (2003)
The easiest way to silence those 'my life is harder than yours' arguments is putting in the Freaky Friday DVD and not leaving the couch until the credits roll. The 1977 version, starring a fresh-faced Jodie Foster, is great for nostalgia, but watching a freckly Lindsay Lohan trying to act like an adult is pure magic. Mark S. Luckie
A RAISIN IN THE SUN (1961)
'What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up...like a raisin in the sun?' Langston Hughes asked that question in his poem 'Harlem', and this adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play seeks to answer it. The Younger family, led by matriarch Lena (Claudia McNeil), tries to claw its way out of financial ruin by buying a house in a white neighborhood much to the chagrin of the neighbors, who want to buy them out, and Walter Lee Younger (Sidney Poitier), who's got riskier things he wants to do with that money. A stirring portrait of a family teetering on the edge of salvation. Marc Bernardin
REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES (2002)
America Ferrera comes of age in this heart-warming tale of a Mexican American teen juggling her weight, family obligation (her mother's sewing factory), and personal ambition (a full ride to Columbia University). No, this gem of a movie isn't a prequel to the hit sitcom Ugly Betty, but it's just as good. Youyoung Lee
MRS. MINIVER (1942)
Greer Garson defines British stiff-upper-lipness and matronly martyrdom as she guides her family through the tragedies of the home front during World War II. Be glad, though; her travails are easier to endure than the epic-length, record-setting acceptance speech Garson gave for the Best Actress Oscar she won for this role. Gary Susman
MOVIE NOT TO WATCH WITH MOM
THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN (1987)
I confess: My super-awesome mother was the first person to introduce me to the hysterically inappropriate Billy Crystal-Danny DeVito film inspired by Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train ('Criss-cross!'). But unless your mum is like mine and actually enjoys watching a film complete with familial frying-pan blows to the head and a plot to kill one's own mother, you may want to stay away from this one for the holiday. Kate Ward
THE GRADUATE (1967)
This one is for you, young readers. Even in this day and age of cougars, nothing will gross you out more than thinking of your mother as a Mrs. Robinson-type, seducing your maladjusted partner. Nothing. Youyoung Lee
MOMMIE DEAREST (1981)
Why can't you give your mother the respect that she's entitled to?! Why can't you treat her like she would be treated by any stranger on the street?! In other words, if you must sit down for another disturbing helping of this Joan Crawford biopic (featuring a wildly over-the-top performance by Faye Dunaway), pick one of the 364 days this year that isn't Mother's Day. That is all. Michael Slezak
THIRTEEN (2003)
As 13-year old Tracy, Evan Rachel Wood flips out on her terrified mother (Holly Hunter) as she bands together with the coolest girl in a Los Angeles school. Keep this movie as far away from Ma, who might suddenly erupt into an overbearing parent and keep you locked inside the house. But with an every-mother's-nightmare assortment of body piercing, adolescent sex, drugs on display in the film, who could blame her? Youyoung Lee
SERIAL MOM (1994)
Maybe your mom wouldn't approve of a movie with a housewife protagonist (Kathleen Turner) who makes obscene phone calls to neighbors, mows down her child's troublesome teacher in a school parking lot, and considers wearing white after Labor Day an offense punishable by death. But if mommie dearest's sense of humor is delightfully deranged dark, then John Waters' camp classic might just be the perfect antidote to the Hallmark cards, bouquets of flowers, and other frilly accouterments you pile on her every year. Michael Slezak
Source: Entertainment Weekly Online
Posted by: Ms_Hodge_Podge on 5/11/2008 at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink