Film reviewer should take a 2nd look
I am intrigued when I read the review of a film and the critic sees a completely different movie than I did.
In his review of “Summer Storm” published in the May 5 issue of Dallas Voice, Steve Warren spends a lot of time debating the popularity of Tobi.
Does it matter to the story? And he seems critical that when Tobi gets together with Leo their relationship does not endure.
Well, just maybe, this is not a love story. Warren labels the storm an “old-fashioned melodramatic cliche.” I find this questionable.
Finally, Warren criticizes the filmmaker (in his twenties) for being preoccupied with sex. Does Mr. Warren remember his teen age years? There is no explicit sex or display of genitals and very little nudity.
I saw a heart-warming film about the struggle young men have coming out. I felt that the audience enjoyed the film. I heard laughter. I think it was probably caused by our own memories of coming out and of being a teenager. We may be older now but hopefully have not forgotten what it was like. I highly recommend “Summer Storm.”
Jeffery Weber
Dallas
Varnell got it wrong
In his column titled “LeVay gets it wrong again,” published in the May 12 issue of Dallas Voice, Paul Varnell thoroughly misrepresents the point of my recent New Scientist essay on the value of differences between partners in gay relationships.
Readers who would like to form their own opinion on the topic can read the essay on my website at https://members.aol.com/slevay
Simon LeVay
West Hollywood, Calif.
Politics has changed since the 1960s
When I was a teenager in the 1960s, dabbling in politics, my mom and dad left the Democratic Party. They’d had enough of street protests and flag burnings and made for the shores of the party of Eisenhower and Nixon. They’d seen Democrats try to solve all problems by throwing away money, but government, they reasoned, should conserve.
They were conservatives. They didn’t like the idea of government being in debt and were aghast at this new thing called a “trade deficit.”
The 1994 “Republican Revolution” would’ve especially thrilled them. Small government and welfare limits would’ve been right up their alley. But they were true conservatives: Yes, keep government out of your pocketbook, but also out of unnecessary wars, your bedroom and your telephone records.
If they were alive today, they’d be appalled at the number of Republican congressmembers under investigation for corruption.
They’d have just called it stealing. They would have found the Republican’s trillion-dollar boondoggle in Iraq just as offensive as the useless Democrat-led government agencies of their own day.
And the idea that a Republican President would move America from a surplus to this yawning, endless deficit would’ve made them furious. After all, isn’t that what “tax and spend” Democrats did? But Democratic spending was drop in the bucket compared to current Republican pilfering.
No wonder commentators like George Will have long claimed that Bush and the current Republican crop, with their mounting legal bills, are not conservatives at all.
Me, I’m a liberal, a bit homeless in the current climate, but if my parents were alive, they’d feel just as adrift in today’s “Party of Abe Lincoln.”
Lawrence Mings
Dallas
Just a thought on immigration reform
Latin America did or in reality didn’t do one thing the USA did. It did not put its native peoples, the Indians of Mexico and South America, on reservations. So we need to ask the American Indians living on reservations what they think of all this political maneuvering.
Robert Reynolds
Los Angeles
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition, May 19, 2006.