rm | Elvis and some unrelated linkies

So it's really bad. Terrible script, and yeah, JRM's performance is as mindblowing as all the critics said, but the script is so bad, the performance is more than too much for everything else going on around it. But it's eerie. Because aside from it being a perfectly good representation of Elvis, it also has that ineffable JRM quality tacked over the top of it, which is heedless ambition -- cruel if it weren't so naive -- it's what made Brian Slade work in Velvet Goldmine, it's what makes him crackle as an often minor villan in all sorts of other things. And it makes the performance here far more eerie than just a really good Elvis mimic, because it's like Elvis in the universe right next door, and it makes you marvel at the phenomena, the frenzy, that such a thing could have happened here or anywhere, now that pop-culture is just so damn expected.

Mesmerizing article on Dubai: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/travel/08dubai.html