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MUST-READ 'PASSION' LINKS: Some of

MUST-READ 'PASSION' LINKS: Some of them are repeats from before, but worth sharing regardless:
- Sheila O'Malley's review- mostly positive, and including a long discussion of whether or not the guy playing Pilate is “a babe."
- And here’s Bill McCabe’s, and he also (rightly) chastises people for bringing their babies to this film. I wish the other seven people we went with had written reviews, but they don’t have blogs.
- Leon Wieseltier’s TNR review, one of the most scathing film pieces I’ve ever read- though I appreciate his reference to a hypothetical “Upper West Side Sanhedrin.”
- Here’s a great Village Voice piece by Jessica Winter from last November, which looks at Gibson’s previous work and argues that he has a “martyr complex.”
- Roger Ebert’s four-star take, which seems rooted in nostalgia for his own Catholic upbringing- though I’m surprised to see Ebert, who normally worships at the altar of liberal message movies, love the conservative-endorsed “The Passion” as much as he does.
- Andrew Sullivan, in five paragraphs, goes from praising Gibson’s film to calling it “a deeply immoral work of art.” And as always with the Sage of South Goodstone, there are too many worthwhile follow-ups and reader e-mails to mention.
- Also in TNR, Sullivan’s protege Reihan Salam breaks down the pundits, naming NYT columnist Frank Rich “the Pope of pointy-heading cultural elites,” and declares that “if sneering were an Olympic sport, Rich… would be so heavily laden with gold medals as to render him immobile.” Also, the Muslim Reihan makes fun of the Catholic William Donohue for using the Jewish word “chutzpah.” Only in America!
- Dong Resin gives us a typically hilarious paragraph of “things not to say on your cell phone outside the Jesus movie.” Of all the links in this entry, his is the only one which mentions bukkake.
- New York Press unfortunately didn’t let Armond White near this one, but Matt Zoller Seitz contributes a lengthy but very interesting review. I had always assumed Seitz was Jewish but I guess he’s Catholic; he generally praises the film except for pointing out longtime homophobe Gibson’s apparent fixation on machismo and queer-ish characters (the androgynous Satan, Herod and his "La Cage" entourage, etc.)
- And lastly, once again, I can’t recommend the Jon Meacham Newsweek article enough.
Sorry for being all-"Passion"-all-the-time these last few days, but whatever you say about the film, it's not one that gets out of your system easily.

UPDATE: Got time for one more?: Christopher Hitchens takes a few whacks at Gibson too.