Better far than a metaphor could ever, ever be

Once or twice over at the old blog, I've linked to articles by the editor of rogerebert.com, Jim Emerson. This morning he's got a good piece on the politics underneath the scares of Spielberg's "War of the Worlds". It still doesn't make me want to go out and plunk down seven dollars for a ticket, but it does make me more likely to "risk" the three bucks for a rental.

Any movie worth its popcorn salt is always a (mixed) metaphor for something
else – often several something elses. Maybe they aren’t followed through, maybe
they’re more like allusions or references than fully developed motifs or
metaphors, but because movies consist of complex patterns of fluid, intertwined
images they can’t help but suggest something beyond the photographic reality of
what is literally captured in the frame (which is why the word “literally”
doesn’t even really apply to movies, because they continually move and change as
they unreel and can’t quite be nailed down. After all, they’re movies).