"Paradise Now" Topic of the hour: Is Hollywood providing aid and comfort to terrorists by even nominating Hany Abu-Assad's film about two would-be suicide bombers from the West Bank, which was nominated by a nation ("Palestine") that doesn't officially exist? The word "irony" gets misused a lot, but I suppose it was invented to describe situations like this one: "Paradise Now" was produced with money from various European countries, but it could most accurately be described as an Israeli film.

"Paradise Now" is a terrific film of unquestioned artistic integrity. It tells the story of two men who turn to violence with unclear motivations, and it neither judges them nor endorses their actions. That said, let's be honest: If my wife or children had been killed by a suicide bomber, I wouldn't like it too much either. And in fairness, the Israeli petition asking the Academy to un-nominate "Paradise Now" isn't suggesting that the film should be banned or suppressed, just that it shouldn't be considered for the industry's most prestigious award. I don't share that view, but it's not a ludicrous or loathsome position.

I don't blame outraged Israelis and American Jews, or offended anybodies, for this controversy. To coin a phrase, I blame the media. Some of the coverage has been beyond moronic. From Britain's Observer, we learn that the bomb attack that is about to happen in the film's last moments "is unarguably portrayed as heroic," since the perpetrator, Saïd (Kasi Nashef), is the film's protagonist. Hello? I guess that means Fritz Lang's "M" is telling us that murdering small children is heroic, or that, I don't know, "Lolita" and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and "Taxi Driver" are all ... you get the point.

The Observer article, which helpfully never asks Abu-Assad or anyone else involved with "Paradise Now" about their intentions, goes on to say that the real problem with Saïd's character is Nashef's "Hollywood looks," which create an atmosphere of "sexy jihad" around his attack. His friend Khaled (Ali Suliman) evidently refuses to commit mass murder because he's insufficiently hot. "Paradise Now" has less chance than it ever did of winning an Oscar (and it never had much). But that article deserves an award for cultural journalism at its most distinctively odious, combining slipshod reporting with half-baked postmodern theorizing. Odds on this one winning the Oscar: You have got to be kidding.

(By Andrew Hehir from Salon)