1. "Oscar-winning film "Crash" heads for TV": Mother of mercy. Oh, and the state of the union? It's fucked, I mean, great!

[""Crash," the racially charged drama that won the Oscar for best picture of 2005, is coming to the small screen later this year as a TV series for the Starz network, the pay cable channel said on Monday."]

["But this time the Siren watched, and Canada Lee tore her heart out of her chest. Lee's character, Ben, serves as the ethical anchor for Garfield's ambitious fighter. That wasn't a new role for African Americans in the movies; Mammy serves the same purpose in Gone with the Wind. The role of the black angel on the white character's shoulder persists to this day, as a matter of fact. But Lee reaches beyond the character, to meet Garfield as another man, equally yearning for success, equally bitter about his treatment. Ben's description of what it was like to win a fight, to walk down Lenox Avenue and bask in the admiration, becomes a window into the yearnings of all people for respect. What a shot of adrenaline it must have been in 1947, to see a black man form a genuine friendship with a white man on screen."]

["That's Friday and we're still getting very few ballots when compared with previous years. Do I have to beg? Please, pretty please. In 2006, we did a survey to determine the best and worst of the Oscar-winning best pictures. Last year, we turned our focus to the best and worst of the leading ladies. This year, it's the leading men's turn. "]

["Many reviewers from top media outlets assured reporters that they would start watching the Peabody Award–winning show just as soon as the first season reaches the top of their Netflix queues."]

["Even in the exuberance of the film's early section, Satrapi and Paronnaud, without fuss, make political points that implicitly criticize U.S. and British foreign policy. A man jailed by the Shah tells party guests, "Our torturers were trained by the CIA. They certainly knew their stuff." Much later, when the adult Marjane returns home from Vienna after the eight-year Iran-Iraq conflict, her father laments, "People don't know why we had a war. The West sold arms to both sides." As he speaks, we see soldiers shooting at one another across a trench, yet all tumbling into the same grave—a shrewd assessment of war's futility."]

_____________________________________________________
"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.