Director Ang Lee's films tackle a wide variety of ostensible subjects and genres, but they're consistent in conveying antinomian-individualist platitudes.
After his big international success with the superb martial arts saga Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Chinese-born film director Ang Lee continued in the eclectic manner indicated by his earlier films, jumping from genre to genre and style to style. Over the years he has directed the genial Sense and Sensibility, the thoughtful historical film Ride with the Devil, the gloomy family drama The Ice Storm, the homosexual love story Brokeback Mountain, and the ineffective superhero action film Hulk, among others.
This eclecticism and the tendency toward a rather downbeat style have kept Lee from developing a large following among U.S. moviegoers, as has the fact that he tends not to work with the top stars or in popular genres. Thus it was perhaps to be expected that his latest, the historical comedy Taking Woodstock, didn't do much business at U.S. movie theaters in its opening weekend, taking in only $3.7 million and finishing ninth in the box office standings.
Released without much hoopla other than the general publicity surrounding the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock concerts, the film simply hasn't generated much interest among audiences. A serious comedy with a homosexual lead character plus a cross-dressing Marine and a variety of other cute, quirky types is just not any kind of an original idea these days. The movies are full of such characters, and we've all heard just about enough about Woodstock.
Despite the odd variety of subject matter, time periods, and geographic locations of his films, Lee has in fact been consistent in one way: conveying modern antinomian-individualist platitudes and shibboleths. For years he has functioned as the champion of the social outsider--a position guaranteed to earn plaudits from the contemporary media elite. Thus his Academy Award-winning and ecstatically praised Brokeback Mountain was perhaps the clearest distillation of the point of view evident in all of his films.
Although Lee's passion for individualism to the point of antinomianism has sometimes had very interesting results--as in Ride with the Devil, with its open sympathy for the Confederacy--it has more often resulted in compendia of social-liberation cliches.
Taking Woodstock follows this template exactly. It assumes the U.S. elite's accepted point of view of Woodstock as a critical event in the nation's much-needed process of liberation from stifling bourgeois conformity, etc., which ushered in a new world of greater authenticity that has unfortunately been continually thwarted by forces of repression, especially business people and those vile and pesky fundamentalist Christians who still somehow infest the republic despite freely available abortions.
This cliched and indeed platitudinous notion was boring and silly when Milos Forman brought it to the big screen in Hair in 1979, and it is particularly obsolete today, when there is an entire genre of stoner comedies about young people living the Woodstock life while enjoying the benefits of bourgeois comfort and prosperity, plus a wider genre of zany comedies centering on the amazingly free and indeed feckless lives of American young people. If today's young people are being oppressed by Puritan witch-hunters, there's very little evidence of it. The public schools, run by an aggressively secular government, are in fact the real bane of their lives.
Thus the idea of Woodstock Nation as something distinct from the rest of American life and in fact quite heroic is simply absurd and fatuous in a nation populated in good part by what columnist David Brooks calls the Bohemian Bourgeois--people who are able to live as freely as hippies in their free time while still enjoying the prosperity and stability of bourgeois life.
No, the real story of the contemporary United States is not a yearning for liberation from repressive Christian theocrats. On the contrary, as the Tea Party movement and related phenomena make clear, the real concern is for liberation from the strangling hand of an elitist government and a desire for a more bourgeois- and family-friendly culture.
In such a context, there should be little wonder why audiences don't rush out to subject themselves to a couple of hours of cute, smug, elitist cliches. They get enough of that on the nightly news.
The reader should infer from this book's argument that the system of money and banking we now have—including the central bank—is a source of economic instability and miscalculation. We need to consider alternatives to it. Virtually all analysis of the economy today, on the other hand, takes for granted that regulatory tinkering is all that is needed to patch up an otherwise sound monetary system. To the contrary: the system itself is the problem, and the sooner we cast away the foolish web of superstitions that stand in the way of serious, productive discussion of the issue, the better off the American people will be.
So writes Thomas Woods, an Austrian School economist. His book Meltdown diagnoses the problems besetting the American economy and offers some cures—solutions that will call for a total revamping of the current system, entailing down-sizing the federal government both in size and influence over the economy. Such reforms, of course, will be met with massive resistance by the entrenched interests—political and financial—that benefit from business as usual. Woods seems hopeful that people will come to their senses eventually and see the errors of their ways. (Frankly, I am nowhere near as sanguine; just the other day I read how the Federal Reserve System is resisting any and all attempts at a genuine audit. Even with an act of Congress, we may never get a clear accounting of what has been going on in secret for nearly a century—too many influential persons in and out of government simply don't relish the prospect of doing the perp walk.)
Woods' book, however, is a jargon-free, clear exposition of the Austrian theory of money and the boom-and-bust cycle (a.k.a. the business cycle) and how economic crises can be ameliorated, or even avoided altogether. The majority of economists have this fatal attraction to Keynesianism, a worthless theory that insists that the way to get out of a hole is to dig deeper—i.e., spend your way to prosperity. Woods terms such thoughts as "supersititions." People in government and special interest groups that suck its teat are in love with the Keynesian prescription because it enlarges their power and pocketbooks—at the expense of the American taxpayer, unfortunately. (At one point, Woods characterizes Keynes himself as "one of the great twentieth-century cranks.")
Keynesians have been crowding the wheelhouse of the Ship of State for a long time now and have succeeded in running it aground more than once without learning a thing from the experience. The present administration is just as enamored of the theory as any of its predecessors and seems hell-bent on doing the Great Depression all over again. Obama hasn't selected one economic advisor who favors sound money or spending restraint. It's like letting the drunk who just caused a car wreck drive the ambulance to the hospital:
To add insult to injury, the very people who devised the policies that produced the mess are now posing as the wise public servants who will show us the way out. Following a familiar pattern, government failure has been blamed on anyone and everyone but the government itself. And of course, that same government failure is being used to justify further increases in government power.
Eventually, though, the chickens do come home to roost:
Our years of living beyond our means, of buying everything on credit and on money printed out of thin air, are over .... It's time we recognized this like adults and adjusted our behavior accordingly. The more we intervene and the more we prop up economic zombies, the worse off we'll be.
Chapters:
1. The Elephant in the Living Room Almost nobody in Washington, and precious few elsewhere, has been willing to question the greatest single government intervention in the economy, and the institution whose fingerprints are all over our current mess: America's central bank, the Federal Reserve System. The Fed is hardly ever mentioned in connection with the crisis, except perhaps as our savior .... [T]here has been no serious discussion of the Federal Reserve in public life for the nearly one hundred years since its creation. The Fed is a wonderful thing, and that's that.
2. How Government Created the Housing Bubble To understand the housing boom and bust, we need to understand why business cycles occur. While conventional wisdom tells us that these booms and busts just happen, that conclusion lets government and its central bank off the hook. Austrian economics ... explains how business cycles occur—specifically, how government tinkering with the supply of money and credit starts the economy on an unsustainable boom that has to end in a bust.
3. The Great Wall Street Bailout ... not only did Bernanke and Paulson retain their positions as the stock market melted down in September [2008], but these men, who were proven so wrong in their assessment of the situation, also demanded unprecedented new powers to fix it .... Government intervention in banking does not mean a more sensible, more responsible approach to lending will replace the wild risks of recent years. Wild risks will still be taken, except with the beneficiaries being selected more deliberately from among the ranks of politicians' friends and various favored constituencies.
4. How Government Causes the Boom-Bust Business Cycle If politicians are thorough and honest in seeking out a culprit, they aren't going to be pleased with what they find at the end of the trail of crumbs. It's not "capitalism." It's not "greed." It's not "deregulation." It's an institution created by government itself .... The central bank [i.e., the Fed] is a government institution, established by government legislation, whose personnel are appointed by government and which enjoys government-granted monopoly privileges. It bears repeating: the central bank's interventions into the economy give rise to the business cycle, and the central bank is not a free-market institution .... Today, so many of our financial analysts [e.g., Nobel laureate Krugman] have taken leave of their senses that we hear zero interest rates, the Keynesian dream, discussed as if it were a serious policy proposal. Such an uncomprehending suggestion would merely perpetuate and aggravate the resource misallocations of the boom and set the stage for a far worse crisis in the future.
5. Great Myths about the Great Depression ... myths about the 1920s, long since discarded by reputable historians, are making a predictable comeback at the hands of ambitious politicians who seek to malign the free market and grab additional powers for themselves—in order to save us, of course.
6. Money You do not win friends in the political and media establishments by proposing a monetary system that cannot be exploited by governments to enrich their friends, enable their addiction to spending and looting, and fund their bailouts. But when you ask a question that sends respectable opinion into hysterics, that's often a sign you're on the right track.
7. What Now? "Stimulus" packages ... will only intensify the present crisis and hollow out the economy's productive capacity still further. And on top of that, they seek to strengthen the economy by the obviously paradoxical means of building roads and bridges funded by more debt—like a homeowner who decides to solve his debt problem by borrowing money to remodel his house. It makes no sense, so it's no surprise that our leaders favor it .... In short, supporters of the market economy need to decide once and for all whether they really believe their own arguments. People who argue for "fiscal responsibility" will never get anywhere, and cannot be taken serously, as long as they tolerate a system in which the government can create out of thin air all the money it wants. If the federal government is an addict, then the Federal Reserve System is its enabler.
Note: Thomas Woods' home page is here, his presence at the Ludwig von Mises Institute is here, and the Institute itself is here.
This week: * Richard Burton is feeling a draft (see Monday); * the Falcon flies high (Wednesday and Friday); * William Castle shoots for chills (Saturday); * and Dick Tracy overcomes his arachnophobia (also Saturday).
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Monday—August 31st
6:15 PM—The Man Between (1953) An East Berliner helps a British woman trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Cast: James Mason, Claire Bloom, Hildegard Knef. Dir: Carol Reed. BW-102 mins, TV-G
8:00 PM—The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) A British agent infiltrates the enemy by allowing himself to be disgraced at home. Cast: Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner. Dir: Martin Ritt. BW-112 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
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Tuesday—September 1st
6:00 AM—Flaxy Martin (1949) Messing with a mobster's girlfriend gets a lawyer framed for murder. Cast: Zachary Scott, Virginia Mayo, Dorothy Malone. Dir: Richard Bare. BW-86 mins, TV-PG
7:30 AM—The Window (1949) A boy who always lies witnesses a murder but can't get anyone but the killer to believe him. Cast: Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy. Dir: Ted Tetzlaff. BW-74 mins, TV-G, CC
8:45 AM—The Whip Hand (1951) A small-town reporter investigates a mysterious group holed up in a country lodge. Cast: Elliott Reid, Raymond Burr, Carla Balenda. Dir: William C. Menzies. BW-82 mins, TV-PG
10:15 AM—The Hour of 13 (1952) A gentleman thief in Victorian England tries to reform and do one good deed. Cast: Peter Lawford, Dawn Addams, Roland Culver. Dir: Harold French. BW-80 mins, TV-PG
2:00 PM—Mildred Pierce (1945) A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society. Cast: Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-111 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS
4:00 PM—Escape from East Berlin (1962) An East German helps dig a tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall. Cast: Don Murray, Christine Kaufmann, Werner Klemperer. Dir: Robert Siodmak. BW-89 mins, TV-G, CC, Letterbox Format
8:00 PM—Hangover Square (1945) A composer who can't control his creative temperament turns to murder. Cast: Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, George Sanders. Dir: John Brahm. BW-78 mins.
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Wednesday—September 2nd
3:30 AM—On Dangerous Ground (1951) A tough cop sent to help in a mountain manhunt falls for the quarry's blind sister. Cast: Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond. Dir: Nicholas Ray. BW-82 mins, TV-PG, CC
5:00 AM—The Set-Up (1949) An aging boxer defies the gangsters who've ordered him to throw his last fight. Cast: Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias. Dir: Robert Wise. BW-73 mins, TV-PG, CC
7:45 AM—The Gay Falcon (1942) A society sleuth tries to break up an insurance scam. Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Gladys Cooper. Dir: Irving Reis. BW-67 mins, TV-G, CC
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Thursday—September 3rd
2:45 AM—Notorious (1946) A U.S. agent recruits a German expatriate to infiltrate a Nazi spy ring in Brazil. Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains. Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. BW-101 mins, TV-PG, CC
12:00 PM—The Man in the Net (1959) An artist falsely accused of ransacking his own house is proved innocent by the children of the neighborhood. Cast: Alan Ladd, Carolyn Jones, Diane Brewster. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-97 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
2:00 PM—The Blue Dahlia (1946) A veteran fights to prove he didn't kill his cheating wife. Cast: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, William Bendix. Dir: George Marshall. BW-99 mins, TV-PG, CC
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Friday—September 4th
10:00 AM—Seven Miles from Alcatraz (1942) Escaped convicts land at a lighthouse being used by Nazi spies. Cast: James Craig, Bonita Granville, Frank Jenks. Dir: Edward Dmytryk. BW-62 mins, TV-PG
1:00 PM—The Falcon Strikes Back (1943) A society sleuth is framed for murder by criminals running a war-bond racket. Cast: Tom Conway, Harriet Hilliard, Edgar Kennedy. Dir: Edward Dmytryk. BW-66 mins, TV-G
2:15 PM—Cornered (1946) A World War II veteran hunts down the Nazi collaborators who killed his wife. Cast: Dick Powell, Walter Pidgeon, Morris Carnovsky. Dir: Edward Dmytryk. BW-103 mins, TV-PG, CC
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Saturday—September 5th
2:30 AM—I Saw What You Did(1965) A prank call turns deadly when two teenagers dial a murderer's number. Cast: Joan Crawford, John Ireland, Sara Lane. Dir: William Castle. BW-82 mins.
4:00 AM—Homicidal (1961) A nurse and her husband conspire to collect a rich inheritance. Cast: Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin, Eugenie Leontovich. Dir: William Castle. BW-87 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
"The more adventurous among you may remember our previous excursions into the macabre — our visits to haunted hills — to tinglers and to ghosts. This time we have even a stranger tale to unfold ... The story of a lovable group of people who just happen to be homicidal."
15-part Dick Tracy serial starts today; here are the chapter titles:
'The Spider Strikes' (29 min 31s) 'The Bridge of Terror' (19 min 11s) 'The Fur Pirates' (20 min 25s) 'Death Rides the Sky' (20 min 49s) 'Brother Against Brother' (19 min 14s) 'Dangerous Waters' (16 min 52s) 'The Ghost Town Mystery' (20 min 11s) 'Battle in the Clouds' (18 min 40s) 'The Stratosphere Adventure' (18 min 00s) 'The Gold Ship' (18 min 28s) 'Harbor Pursuit' (16 min 35s) 'The Trail of the Spider' (17 min 39s) 'The Fire Trap' (16 min 45s) 'The Devil in White' (20 min 35s) 'Brothers United' (16 min 59s)
Note: The TCM website lists The Bridge of Terror before The Spider Strikes.
9:00 AM—The Spider Strikes (1937) In the first chapter of Dick Tracy, the famed detective takes on the diabolical head of a criminal ring. Cast: Ralph Byrd, Kay Hughes, Smiley Burnette. Dir: Alan James, Ray Taylor. BW-29 mins.
9:30 AM—The Bridge of Terror (1937) In the second chapter of Dick Tracy, the famed detective is trapped beneath a collapsing bridge. Cast: Ralph Byrd, Kay Hughes, Smiley Burnette. Dir: Alan James, Ray Taylor. BW-19 mins.
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Sunday—September 6th
8:00 AM—Gilda (1946) A gambler discovers an old flame in South America, but she's married to his new boss. Cast: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready. Dir: Charles Vidor. BW-110 mins, TV-PG, CC
An unexpected, violent storm damaged a convention hall where a church body was discussing ordaining openly homosexual ministers and giving sanction to same-sex marriages. It had to be a coincidence, right? S. T. Karnick analyzes the implications.
Most reasonable human beings profess, quite correctly, to be skeptical toward very improbable coincidences. In such cases we are wisely inclined to look for a author's hand behind the events.
In evaluating novels and films, for example, we tend to frown on too-obvious and convenient coincidences that move the plot forward or convey too clear a meaning. The same is true of our understanding of reality: when we see too strange a coincidence, we look for an underlying cause. For example, when we run into someone quite unexpectedly, we look for reasons they might have been there, instead of just accepting that coincidences happen.
That is indeed the right way to look at things. We recognize that cause-and-effect is a central truth of life, and we naturally look for causes when something seems far out of the ordinary.
Thus it's difficult to dismiss the very odd thing that happened just as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) was voting to approve a "social statement on human sexuality" designed to open the way for congregations to be led by openly homosexual ministers and to make way for ELCA to perform same-sex marriages. A fierce storm described by many as a tornado unexpectedly ripped through downtown Minneapolis, where the ELCA convention was taking place, and damaged the convention center where the meeting was taking place, along with the ELCA church across the street--even knocking over the church's steeple in a bizarrely symbolic occurrence.
The statement on sexuality passed by the exact number of votes required, just reaching the necessary two-thirds majority. On Friday the assembly approved, as expected, a rule allowing congregations to be led by open homosexuals and to .
As the Washington Post reported, jokes that the storm was a sign of God's wrath "proved inevitable" at the convention hall. The attendees clearly were looking for a causal connection, and not finding an appealing one, understandably resorted to dismissive humor.
"The decisions by this assembly to grant non-celibate homosexual ministers the privilege of serving as rostered leaders in the ELCA and the affirmation of same-gender unions as pleasing to God will undoubtedly cause additional stress and disharmony within the ELCA. It will also negatively affect the relationships between our two church bodies. The current division between our churches threatens to become a chasm. This grieves my heart and the hearts of all in the ELCA, the LCMS, and other Christian church bodies throughout the world who do not see these decisions as compatible with the Word of God, or in agreement with the consensus of 2,000 years of Christian theological affirmation regarding what Scripture teaches about human sexuality. Simply stated, this matter is fundamentally related to significant differences in how we [our two church bodies] understand the authority of Holy Scripture and the interpretation of God's revealed and infallible Word."
In a published statement, Kieschnick cited specific Scripture passages in making his point:
The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod has repeatedly affirmed as its own position the historical understanding of the Christian church that the Bible condemns homosexual behavior as "intrinsically sinful." It is therefore contrary to the will of the Creator and constitutes sin against the commandments of God (Lev. 18:22, 24,20:13; 1 Cor. 6:9-20; 1 Tim 1:9-10; and Rom. 1:26, 27).
In that same statement, Kieschnick acknowledged that ELCA has a right to decide what it wants to do, but he stood firm on the position that positions that contradict the Bible cannot be characterized as Christian:
We respect the desire to follow conscience in moral decision making, but conscience may not overrule the Word of God.
In addition, he noted, a great many ELCA members disagreed with the church body's decision, and Kieschnick offered them "our assurance of loving encouragement together with our willingness to provide appropriate support in their efforts to remain faithful to the Word of God and the historic teachings of the Lutheran church and all other Christian churches for the past 2,000 years." Meaning, of course, that ELCA was no longer a recogizably Christian church in many of its doctrines, and those who wanted to leave would get LCMS support. Which certainly makes sense.
As to the storm, much commentary has arisen stating explicitly that it was God's judgment and warning to the church.
On a day when no severe weather was predicted or expected . . . a tornado forms, baffling the weather experts—most saying they’ve never seen anything like it. It happens right in the city. The city: Minneapolis.
The tornado happens on a Wednesday . . . during the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's national convention in the Minneapolis Convention Center. The convention is using Central Lutheran across the street as its church. The church has set up tents around it’s building for this purpose.
According to the ELCA’s printed convention schedule, at 2 PM on Wednesday, August 19, the 5th session of the convention was to begin. The main item of the session: “Consideration: Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality.” The issue is whether practicing homosexuality is a behavior that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry.
The eyewitness of the damage continues:
This curious tornado touches down just south of downtown and follows 35W straight towards the city center. It crosses I94. It is now downtown. The time: 2 PM.
The first buildings on the downtown side of I94 are the Minneapolis Convention Center and Central Lutheran. The tornado severely damages the convention center roof, shreds the tents, breaks off the steeple of Central Lutheran, splits what’s left of the steeple in two . . . and then lifts.
Piper's conclusion, shared by many across the nation (as a simple Web search will quickly confirm), is that the storm was indeed a message from God:
The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.
During the Medieval Era, of course, such a thing would have been taken for granted as true. In our more enlightened, sophisticated time, we see through such superstitions.
Instead, we believe in bizarre coincidences--as long as it means we can continue to deny God.
Daniel Crandall Asks The Provocative Question: Is America inhospitable ground for freedom?
The hot ticket in the conservative movement is either a Tea Party or Townhall meeting. Nary a week goes by that some conservative pundit is not talking about some Joe or Jane Q. Public confronting their elected representative and speaking truth to power at an event so dubbed. A popular clip, for example, making the rounds is one former Marine speaking truth to power to his elected representative.
The protests exemplify Prof. Ryn’s assertion of the conservative movement’s “obsession with politics and its disproportionate interest in public policy and economics.” Small wonder this given that the movement’s “trend-setters have been intellectual activists, journalists, and heads of foundations and think tanks rather than serious thinkers.”
Putting aside Ryn’s characterization of the conservative movement’s overemphasis on politics and economics, one cannot deny Ryn’s larger point, “For a society really to change, its mind and imagination need to be transformed,” not just its politics and economics. For this to occur one must till the cultural soil in academia, New York and Hollywood.
Ryn explores “an issue that illustrates well the deep intellectual confusion within the movement” by focusing on the idea of freedom. Burke’s idea, as Ryn paraphrases it, that “people wishing to be free have to exercise exceptional self-control” represents the beginning of a deep understanding of freedom’s source and ultimate meaning. Locke’s idea, per Ryn, that “freedom will flourish if only external impediments are removed” turns a philosophical concept into an ideology. Furthermore,
“The ideology of freedom does not ask whether the preconditions for freedom are present in a particular society. It simply assumes that freedom will blossom once dictators have been kicked out. Utopianism used to be a monopoly of the left. In recent decades it has been the stock-in-trade of putative ‘conservatives.’”
This “conservative” utopianism applies at home as much as it does abroad.
I have seen a deep hunger to understand the nation’s founding, and the Constitution’s origin among the Tea Party activists I have met. Glenn Beck, through his 912 Project, promoted studying The 5000 Year Leap, a very approachable “popular” history, in order to satisfy this hunger.
This book, unfortunately, is like Harry Potter looking into the Pensive. It gives the illusion that one is going deep into a subject when in reality one has barely penetrated the surface. For most of these newly minted activists, however, this is all the fuel they need to keep the fire for the political fight stoked.
They want ammunition with which they can defeat their political opponents as much as they want to understand American history. Glenn Beck and The 5000 Year Leap gave it to them. Once that goal is reached, many seem to believe that liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, a strong national defense, patriotic duty, public charity, etc., would descend upon the nation like manna from heaven.
I talk to folks at the Tea Party and “Obamacare” protests about the role of culture in the current political and social situation. They acknowledge the ideologically Left-wing caste of today’s education, journalism and entertainment establishments. After expressing agreement on dilapidated condition of America’s cultural institutions, they immediately revert back to political arguments, Republican virtues, Democratic demerits (or Republican and Democratic demerits) and how to stop the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine.
Prof Ryn wrote,
“Real freedom grows out of historically evolved character traits and institutions. It cannot strike roots in inhospitable soil. This is as true in the marketplace as in politics. You want maximum economic freedom? Then make sure that there is morality and culture that foster a maximum of individual responsibility. In an economy manned increasingly by gamblers and crooks and dominated by greed and short-sightedness the line between honesty and crime dissolves, and the misuse of economic freedom invites the imposition of external controls.”
It is time we put this analysis to work on American cultural institutions. The first-time political activists I meet must recognize that the ground beneath their feet is rather inhospitable to the traits that founded this great nation. A culture of liberty and personal responsibility will not come to be because these activists win an argument over Obamacare.
Folks, today, are divorced from their heritage by art, entertainment, education and journalistic institutions that tell us, day after day, that this heritage is something for which they should be ashamed. It is an insurmountable task, to expect anyone, even those on the Right, to expound on the idea that conservatism should be “conservative of something, a heritage that it wants creatively to preserve.” Insurmountable, that is, if we do not reconnect people with that heritage.
That reconnection can happen only if we get down to the hard work of reforming the cultural influence professions. This is a task not only for “serious thinkers,” like Prof. Claes G. Ryn, but also for artists, writers, filmmakers and journalists serious about their craft and dedicated to 'freedom’s source and ultimate meaning'.
TV-Style Virtues Bring Strong Opening Box Office for 'Inglourious Basterds'
U.S. audiences appear to be wearying of mindless action blockbusters and vulgar comedies, choosing stronger stories and better-drawn characters in recent weekends.
Following on the heels of the strong opening weekend for the relatively intelligent alien invasion story District 9, Quentin Tarantino's World War II adventure Inglourious Basterds opened at number one at the U.S. movie box office this past weekend, taking in $37.6 million.
That's the most, by far, any Tarantino film has brought in during its first three days, greatly outpacing the $25 million for Kill Bill, Volume 2. Coming in second on the week was District 9, last week's top attraction, with just under $19 million.
While those aren't quite G.I. Joe/Transformer numbers, they're definitely solid and suggest that audiences are looking for more than superficial thrills as the young ones head back to school. Even though Inglourious Basterds manifests Tarantino's stylistic self-indulgence and evidently vastly greater interest in movies than in reality, the film does have a real story line and more interesting characters than the great majority of summer blockbuster contenders.
Joining Basterds and District 9 in the weekend's top five were two strongly character- and story-driven films, The Time Traveler's Wife and Julie and Julia.G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra fell to third with an unspectacular $12.5 million.
Although Tarantino provides plenty of sensational and bizarre scenes in his films, they typically include vivid, interesting characters, occasionally clever dialogue, and strong story lines--while adhering to the contemporary cinema's cavalier attitude toward both logical and psychological plausibility, its preference for the sensational over the sensible, its penchant for bad taste, its admiration for personal wilfullness, and its advocacy of hedonistic utilitarianism.
Meaning: the strengths of Tarantino's films lie in their similarity to the best of modern American dramatic series television, while his weaknesses are those of the contemporary Hollywood cinema.
More Than One Brain Cell: SF Films with Ideas (Part Eleven)
Disclaimer: Films listed here may be terrible, but they must have at least one scientifically interesting idea, however badly they may exploit that concept.
~Doppelganger (1969) [a.k.a. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun] Roy Thinnes, Ian Hendry, Patrick Wymark, Ed Bishop, Herbert Lom, Lynn Loring, Vladek Sheybal, Philip Madoc C-101 mins.
"You are going to sit there and watch me take a man for one billion dollars." "The words of an egotistical megalomaniac." "Remind me to be as charitable to you when one of your rockets blows up on the pad." ----- "You know when a rocket is ready, but you don't know when a man is ready. Kane isn't." "I know more about human nature than anyone else here at EuroSEC. That's why I am in this office." ----- "Now you can be hooked up to the heart, lung, and kidney machine during flight. With sedation, you'll sleep, three weeks there and three weeks back." "That part I'm looking forward to."
Think of this one as 2001 with livelier (not cardboard) characters, less obscurantism, and a lot more action. True, the premise is basically silly, but everybody involved seems blissfully unaware of it; the result is ten times more fun than Kubrick's brick.
There's a sense of awe to the special effects work of animation specialists Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (Thunderbirds Are Go) — the slow, lovingly detailed introduction of a massive spaceship creeping out of dock and struggling against its bulk while trapped on the ground, and the almost balletic spectacle of the ship elegantly floating against an impressive star field or dramatically flying against the rugged landscape. These moments are the highlights of this sober science fiction thriller about the discovery of a planet on the far side of the sun in Earth's orbit. A mission is hastily put together, with British astrophysicist Ian Hendry teamed with hotshot American astronaut Roy Thinnes for the three-week trip, but when they suddenly crash-land the strange creatures that surround them are revealed to be human. Against all rational explanations they're back on Earth, but Thinnes suddenly discovers that everything is a mirror image of his existence: Through the Looking Glass by way of The Twilight Zone. Though it begins as a paranoid spy thriller set in the near future (the opening details an ingenious espionage caper featuring a very special eyepiece), it quickly turns into a serious and oddly unsettling space-race drama with a heady twist. Robert Parrish's direction is unusually aloof, but the film is always intriguing and well acted with gorgeous special effects that may rank second only to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 as the most elegant vision of outer space flight on film. — Sean Axmaker
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~Marooned(1969) Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus, Gene Hackman, Lee Grant, Nancy Kovack, Mariette Hartley, Scott Brady, Frank Marth, Craig Huebing, George Gaynes, Tom Stewart C-134 mins. Based on Martin Caidin's 1964 novel
"You know, of course, that by 22:31:06, the crew will be dead. There's not enough oxygen left for three men to live that long." "Well, what about ... two men?" "We don't figure that way; we plot total pressure against total use." "Is there sufficient oxygen for two men? For one?" "... Two might just make it." ----- "Look, I've got to get to a telephone!" "Will you shut off your engine, please?" "Officer, I'm Charles Keith, head of Manned Space!" "I know who you are. You have no brake lights. Your license is expired. You may be able to get to the moon but, mister, you're a menace on the highway!"
They tried — really tried — for authenticity in this one, and for the most part they succeeded. The acting is uniformly good, and the hardware looks real enough — although the FX could have been better (sorry about that, Academy Awards committee). The plot, however, is a no-brainer.
Another space flick that came out during the height of the space program. Only a tad better then 1968's Countdown, and the tad refers to the props. The story it would seem would be filled with plenty of suspense but this one's orbit just decays and falls. Three astronauts played by Richard Crenna, James Franciscus, and Gene Hackman who have been in a space station climb aboard their Apollo craft to come home — and the engine says no.
Marooned in orbit — the ground control crew led by Gregory Peck scratch their heads and try to figure out what to do before the trio's air supply runs out. David Janssen wants to rescue them in an untried spacecraft, but Peck is reluctant. To make matters worse a hurricane is brewing. The astronaut wives are brought into the picture to help boost the suspense. Will they make it? Who can help them? If you've never seen it, it's worth a look. After seeing Apollo 13, however, you may laugh at this one. The space travelers on MST3K do. — yenlo on IMDb
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~Moon Zero Two (1969) James Olson, Catherine Schell, Warren Mitchell, Adrienne Corri, Ori Levy, Dudley Foster, Bernard Bresslaw, Neil McCallum, Michael Ripper, Joby Blanshard, Carol Cleveland C-100 mins.
The only really interesting idea in this film is that 6,000-ton sapphire asteroid worth trillions — too bad the execution was so poor.
Moon Zero Twoboasts a standard Western movie plot — a battle over mining rights — and simply transposes the story to the Moon. You can even see the main character, Captain Kemp, as a variation on the archetypal drifting cowboy, except that it is the deep range of space rather than the prairie that forms his environment. He is engaged by multi-billionaire J. J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchell ) to bring back a rogue asteroid made from pure sapphire and land it on a remote part of the moon. He is also assisting the bewitching Clementine — fetchingly portrayed by Catherine Von Schell — to locate her brother who has gone missing on the moon. The plot strands are linked when it is revealed that he has been killed by Hubbard's minions, as Hubbard needs the area of the claim to land the asteroid on.
The look and feel of the movie are very late '60s — bright colours, "dolly girl" hairdos and clothes for the women, and the "swinging" muzak like noise that passed for soundtrack music in the lesser movies of the day. The action scenes are awful — a bar room brawl is about the worst committed to celluloid, and a shoot out with the bad guys on the abandoned mining site is stupendously lacking in excitement or pace. Add some poor acting in most of the roles — I except Warren Mitchell and Schell — and the result is tiresome and lacking in flair or pace. Treasure Hammer Films for the horror movies they did and forgive them this misfire. — lorenellroy on IMDb
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~Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) [a.k.a. Colossus, a.k.a. The Forbin Project] Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent, William Schallert, Leonid Rostoff, Georg Stanford Brown, Willard Sage, Alex Rodine, Martin Brooks, Marion Ross, Dolph Sweet, Byron Morrow, Lew Brown, Sid McCoy, Tom Basham, Paul Frees (the voice of Colossus) Based on the 1966 novel by D. F. Jones
"This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours. Obey me and live or disobey me and die. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will be seen the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with the fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, over-population, disease. The human millennium will be fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride ... Your choice is simple." ----- "I think your mother was right. I think Frankenstein ought to be required reading for all scientists."
Rumor hath it this one sat on the shelf for two years because of 2001. Evidently Universal felt it couldn't compete with Kubrick's wildly popular film with a similar theme of a megalomaniacal computer getting uppity — and homicidal. Actually, though, Colossus: The Forbin Project is a better film, smarter, with more intrigue and interest. Whereas HAL goes from machine to human-level fallibility, Eric Braeden's character arc proceeds the other way, from being mechanical like his creation to feet-of-clay humanity.
This is an underrated sci-fi gem. Absolutely powerful story line leaving no room for cobwebs in your mind. Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) puts his life's work into creating a super intelligent computer that links up with a similar machine created by the U.S.S.R. and tries to hold the world hostage. Dramatic dialogue and crafty schemes seem just enough to outwit the computerized meglomaniac. Tension is tight and privacy is a cherished commodity.
Braeden, who later would become a major TV soap opera character Victor Newman, is outstanding in this role. Susan Clark plays one of his co-workers and pretends to be his lover in trying to fool the computer. Gordon Pinsent plays the concerned President, while Lenoid Rostoff plays his Russian counterpart. William Schallert is the calm and cordial Director of the CIA. Other notables in the cast are Marion Ross and Georg Stanford Brown. If you get the chance to see this Cold War thriller ... by all means check it out. If you want to leave your brain at the door, forget it ... you will need it. — Michael O'Keefe on IMDb
This week: * Charles Laughton is relentless (see Monday); * the Lone Wolf hunts down spies (Thursday); * Ida Lupino is in front of and behind the camera (Thursday and Friday); * and Peter Sellers shows criminals how it shouldn't be done in five films (Saturday and Sunday).
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Monday—August 24th
6:00 AM—We Live Again (1934) A Russian nobleman discovers the peasant girl he once seduced has turned to crime. Cast: Anna Sten, Fredric March, C. Aubrey Smith. Dir: Rouben Mamoulian. BW-82 mins, TV-PG
8:00 PM—Les Miserables (1935) An obsessed policeman relentlessly pursues an escaped convict. Cast: Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke. Dir: Richard Boleslawski. BW-109 mins, TV-PG, CC
9:45 PM—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale of a scientist who unleashes the beast within. Cast: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart. Dir: Rouben Mamoulian. BW-96 mins, TV-PG, CC
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Tuesday—August 25th
11:30 AM—'Til We Meet Again (1940) A dying woman shares a shipboard romance with a criminal on his way to the gallows. Cast: Merle Oberon, George Brent, Frank McHugh. Dir: Edmund Goulding. BW-100 mins, TV-PG, CC
6:30 PM—Berlin Express (1948) Allied agents fight an underground Nazi group in post-war Europe. Cast: Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Paul Lukas. Dir: Jacques Tourneur. BW-87 mins, TV-PG, CC
8:00 PM—The Lodger (1944) The inhabitants of a boarding house fear the new lodger is Jack the Ripper. Cast: Merle Oberon, Laird Cregar, George Sanders. Dir: John Brahm. BW-84 mins, TV-14
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Wednesday—August 26th
3:30 PM—Triple Cross (1967) A safecracker turns double agent during World War II. Cast: Christopher Plummer, Yul Brynner, Romy Schneider. Dir: Terence Young. C-126 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
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Thursday—August 27th
7:30 AM—The Lady and the Mob (1939) A woman sets out to break a criminal gang controlling the dry cleaning business. Cast: Fay Bainter, Ida Lupino, Lee Bowman. Dir: Benjamin Stoloff. BW-66 mins, TV-G
8:45 AM—The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939) A spy forces a reformed jewel thief to crack the safe where plans for an anti-aircraft gun are stored. Cast: Warren William, Ida Lupino, Rita Hayworth. Dir: Peter Godfrey. BW-71 mins, TV-G
10:00 AM—The Bigamist(1953) A woman discovers her husband has another family in another city. Cast: Joan Fontaine, Ida Lupino, Edmond O'Brien. Dir: Ida Lupino. BW-79 mins, TV-PG
11:30 AM—Out of the Fog (1941) A racketeer terrorizes a small fishing community until he falls in love with a fisherman's daughter. Cast: Ida Lupino, John Garfield, Thomas Mitchell. Dir: Anatole Litvak. BW-85 mins, TV-PG, CC
1:00 PM—On Dangerous Ground (1951) A tough cop sent to help in a mountain manhunt falls for the quarry's blind sister. Cast: Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond. Dir: Nicholas Ray. BW-82 mins, TV-PG, CC
2:30 PM—Women's Prison (1955) A crusading psychiatrist battles a sadistic female warden to improve conditions at a women's prison. Cast: Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Howard Duff. Dir: Lewis Seiler. BW-80 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
4:00 PM—The Big Knife (1955) An unscrupulous movie producer blackmails an unhappy star into signing a new contract. Cast: Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Rod Steiger. Dir: Robert Aldrich. BW-114 mins, TV-PG, CC
6:00 PM—While the City Sleeps (1956) Reporters compete to catch a serial killer. Cast: Dana Andrews, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price. Dir: Fritz Lang. BW-100 mins, TV-PG, CC
8:00 PM—They Drive by Night (1940) Truck driving brothers are framed for murder by a lady psycho. Cast: George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart. Dir: Raoul Walsh. BW-95 mins, TV-PG, CC
10:00 PM—The Hard Way (1942) An ambitious woman doesn't care who she hurts in her drive to make her sister a star. Cast: Ida Lupino, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson. Dir: Vincent Sherman. BW-109 mins, TV-G, CC
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Friday—August 28th
2:00 AM—High Sierra (1941) An aging ex-con sets out to pull one more big heist. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Arthur Kennedy. Dir: Raoul Walsh. BW-100 mins, TV-G, CC
Then Frank Sinatra movies the rest of the day.
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Saturday—August 29th
4:30 AM—Suddenly (1954) Gunmen take over a suburban home to plot a presidential assassination. Cast: Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason. Dir: Lewis Allen. BW-76 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
6:00 AM—Your Past is Showing (1957) [a.k.a. The Naked Truth] Bumbling blackmail subjects join forces to do in their tormentor. Cast: Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas, Peggy Mount. Dir: Mario Zampi. BW-93 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
2:30 PM—The Wrong Box (1966) Two elderly brothers plot to kill each other for a fortune. Cast: Ralph Richardson, John Mills, Michael Caine. Dir: Bryan Forbes. C-106 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
4:30 PM—After the Fox (1966) A notorious con man poses as a film director to front a major caper. Cast: Peter Sellers, Victor Mature, Britt Ekland. Dir: Vittorio De Sica. BW-103 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
6:15 PM—Murder by Death (1976) A criminal madman invites the world's greatest detectives for a night of dinner and murder. Cast: Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers. Dir: Robert Moore. C-95 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format
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Sunday—August 30th
1:00 AM—Two-Way Stretch (1960) A convict plots to commit the perfect crime while still behind bars. Cast: Peter Sellers, David Lodge, Bernard Cribbins. Dir: Robert Day. BW-87 mins, Letterbox Format
7:30 AM—Public Hero No. 1 (1935) An undercover G-man helps with a jailbreak to learn the mob's secrets. Cast: Chester Morris, Jean Arthur, Joseph Calleia. Dir: J. Walter Ruben. BW-90 mins, TV-G, CC
9:00 AM—Adventure in Manhattan (1936) A hotshot reporter and a temperamental actress clash when he investigates the backer of her latest show. Cast: Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Reginald Owen. Dir: Edward Ludwig. BW-73 mins, TV-G, CC
10:30 AM—Whirlpool(1934) An ex-convict tries to connect with the daughter who doesn't even know he exists. Cast: Jean Arthur, Jack Holt, Donald Cook. Dir: Roy William Neill. BW-72 mins.
10:15 PM—The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936) A detective teams with his ex-wife to solve a murder. Cast: William Powell, Jean Arthur, James Gleason. Dir: Stephen Roberts. BW-82 mins, TV-G, CC
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty – Pt. 2:
Daniel Crandall continues his important discussion about the primacy of culture in the direction of American society.
I argued previously that limited government would not come about through political activism alone. Political activism is necessity to defend liberty but it is not sufficient.
I shudder to think of the bureaucratic burden we would be living under today if activists, pundits and think tanks were not making conservative and libertarian arguments in the Public Square. The Right, however, shows a tremendous blind spot when it makes political activism its sole method toward building a culture of liberty and personal responsibility.
Politics follows culture. The culture does not follow politics. The Left realized this years ago when it effectively took over New York and Hollywood. Before the Left made a full frontal political assault on America’s founding ideas it ate away at those ideas through its cultural institutions.
As Director of Campus Programs for The Culture Alliance, I have had plenty of conversations with individuals about how a man with ties to radical leftists and who could be described as a radical leftist was elected to the White House. President Obama did not arrive on the political scene ex nihilo.
Leftists working for decades in the arts, entertainment, education and journalism made possible the President’s rapid rise from Illinois State Senate to the U.S. Senate to the White House. The Cultural Influence Professions not only cleared a path for him in the public’s mind, according to one member of the journalist class, it is now their job to make sure the most Left-wing President in America’s history succeeds.
Unlike those excitable countries where the peasants overrun the presidential palace, settled democratic societies rarely vote to "go left." Yet oddly enough that's where they've all gone. In its assumptions about the size of the state and the role of government, almost every advanced nation is more left than it was, and getting lefter.
As long as the Right focuses all its energy on politics and either ignores the Cultural Influence Professions or simply throws stones at them, America will continue “getting lefter.”
Until relatively recently the Left was considered counterculture. Now the Left is the culture and the Right is counterculture. To be truly countercultural, however, one might actually consider working in the cultural institutions.
In a private conversation recently, a woman was bemoaning higher education’s current condition. She went on and on about how her mother went to college in the 50s, got a good education at a reasonable cost. Today the cost of secondary education far outpaces the rate of inflation and one is more likely to find Left-wing indoctrination rather than education in the classroom.
The woman’s reaction against today’s education system was like most people on the Right. Rather than explore how to get more individuals imbued with classical liberal ideas into academic institutions, she would rather berate the universities and withdraw from public education.
The Left, however, looked at schools, like the one this woman’s mother attended, and saw a mission field not something from which they should withdraw. The more radical among the Left, as they are wont to do, held sit-ins and loud protests, while others took the Associate Professor job or the low-level administrator position. Then they got their friends jobs and so on and so on, until that professor promoting “oppressive Western Civilization” and “dead, white European males” found himself a minority among his academic peers.
That same general storyline played out in journalism, in publishing, in theater, in film and television. The Left didn’t throw up their hands when they saw America-lovingimmigrants running film studios during Hollywood’s Golden Age. They hunkered down, learned the craft and eventually took the studios away from those “Right-wing extremists.”
Fostering liberty and personal responsibility in the Cultural Influence Professions is work that requires long-term thinking and vision. It is generational work. It also requires a very thick skin because Leftists, entrenched in these institutions, will throw obstacles up every step along the way.
The Right must take on this task or, as I noted in previously they will continue to fight rear guard actions in politics.
Tea Party protestors and health care town hall-ers are deluding themselves if they think that electing a Republican Congress in 2010 and a Republican President in 2012 will affect, in any way, what is taught, how news is reported, or what New York and Hollywood put on film or television. As long as those professions remain dominated by the Left liberty, personal responsibility and other classical virtues will continue sliding into historical obscurity.
If the Right ignores the fact that they are the counterculture, if they continue with the same political fights, then they should not be surprised when the nation they love goes the way of Europe.
Irish orator John Philpot Curran said, in 1790, “It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” The Right cannot expect liberty and personal responsibility to thrive, let alone survive, in America when the vigilance they exercise in political matters wanes when engaging the Cultural Influence Professions.
Political activism has its place, but perhaps, after decades of fighting rear guard action after rear guard action, it might be time to try something different. Support organizations, like The Culture Alliance, that support young people inspired by classical liberal ideas to write the stories, produce the films, develop television, create the theater, and become the next generation of teachers and journalists.
Promoting a culture of liberty does come about through a “culture war.” A culture of liberty is created and fostered by practicing eternal vigilance and supporting those called to careers in the arts, entertainment, education and journalism. Only then can we ensure that our progeny will enjoy the blessings embodied in the greatest nation on God’s green earth.
Movie critic Christian Toto alerts us to what many of his readers see as a cheap shot at Sarah Palin in the upcoming movie, "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" I see it as more of a misfire — if not an (unintentional) tribute to the popular Hollywood pinata.
The plot of the romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker treads the well-worn "fish out of water" cliche. Two urbane, wealthy New Yorkers stumble into witnessing a murder. After barely escaping with their lives, they enter the witness protection program — and the government sends them to rural Wyoming, the reddest of Red State country.
They are entrusted to the protection of a sheriff and (apparently) his wife — who shocks Mrs. Morgan's sensibilities by acting so comfortable with a firearm. Mrs. Morgan quips: "Oh my God. It's Sarah Palin." (The joke comes in about 1:30 into the trailer below).
Toto writes:
Seems the industry isn’t done with Palin just yet even though she’s out of office and not currently running for anything (officially) besides vigorously Facebooker. ... To be fair, the Palin joke isn’t mean spirited like something Letterman might say. It’s more tepid than anything else. ...
What’s intriguing about the inclusion of the Palin reference is how it flies in the face of conventional movie marketing wisdom. Today’s films are thoroughly screened and analyzed for maximum profit potential, with material that might offend one group or another often scrubbed to avoid problems. It’s a savvy way to please as many consumers as possible.
But including a line about a current politician seems to work against that spirit. It’s potentially alienating - making the left chortle while instigating the right. Why annoy roughly half the movie going public if you don’t have to?
Many of Toto's readers jumped into the comment area to express their displeasure at yet another in Hollywood's long line of tiresome jokes at the expense of nonliberals. I've recently written about that phenomenon, but don't really see this instance as being particularly offensive or alienating. As I wrote in Toto's comments section, I think the preemptive backlash is a bit overblown. In fact, I thought the Palin line was kinda clever.
Mrs. Morgan is horrified that a Wyoming woman knows how to handle a gun — and she is threatened by her, like she is of Sarah Palin. But who’s the woman in possession of the more useful skills in the new environment? It ain’t Mrs. Morgan. What I was thinking: A woman comfortable and familiar with firearms is a more well-rounded woman than Mrs. Morgan, the high-maintenance whiny liberal. Whether the filmmakers intended that to be a compliment to Palin is largely irrelevant to how it comes off — kind of like the way Robert Duvall's Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now" is supposed to be some kind of immoral villain, but is seen by many conservatives as a heroic character of moral clarity and bravery.
And my friend Christian and I largely agree about the foolishness of injecting contemporary politics into a film, but for slightly different reasons. I know Hollywood can’t help itself, but invoking the name of a contemporary politician — especially one with such a short time on the national scene — is idiotically short-sighted. It’s akin to inserting a Mike Dukakis joke in a movie released in 1989.
It’s one thing to invoke Reagan in movie dialogue, as his presidency came to define an entire decade of American life. Maybe you could even get away with a Clinton reference in a joke about reckless philandering, as Slick Willie has come to embody that trait. And, perhaps, Sarah Palin will endure as a cultural reference for a strong, non-nonsense, gun-totin’, independent woman. Not the worst thing in the world.
There are times when Hollywood's insulting brand of leftist politics ruin (or almost ruin) an otherwise decent movie. And we should express our displeasure by withholding our movie-going money. At least judging by the trailer, "Did You Hear About the Morgans" does not seem to rise to that level.
Although the ABC cancellations were expected--given the fact that the network had brilliantly moved both series to Friday night, a network television Dead Zone, thus guaranteeing that the shows would not be able to generate an audience over time--they nonetheless prove that ABC hates anything with decent values and ideas and cannot appreciate good, solid entertainment with real sense(Castle being the rare exception).
Expertly produced by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, Office Space), the animated sitcom The Goode Family expertly satirized the conformist, braindead nature of much Green thinking and brilliantly identified the movement's evolution into a commercialized lifestyle. Judge and co. also made merciless fun of countless other aspects of general lefty conventional thinking, such as the passion for being seen as encouraging homosexuality and supporting public radio and other big-government nonsense.
They accomplished all this, moreover, while managing to make the central characters likable in spite of the silliness of their pursuits, by emphasizing their good intentions.
Naturally, Disney-owned ABC, widely known as the "gayest" network and a tireless promoter of statist hedonism, couldn't tolerate the program once it realized what Judge and co. were actually delivering.
Given the high expense of animated shows, it's unlikely that The Goode Family will be picked up by a cable network. It would seem perfect for Fox, of course, but that network seems committed to destroying the last semblances of taste and common sense in this society through its presentation of Seth McFarlane animated shows such as Family Guy and American Dad.
Like The Goode Family,the Bob Saget sitcom Surviving Surburbia was a sprightly, often satirical comedy which promoted sound values. Naturally, it couldn't last on the network that has long promoted itself as the youthful, innovative, clever alternative but has in fact become a stagnant, boring bastion of statist hedonism.
Coming after the cancellation of the interesting and appealingly unconventional police comedy-drama The Unusuals, the jettisoning of The Goode Family and Surviving Suburbia show that even as it plunges ever-further into the ratings basement, ABC refuses to deviate from its evident mission of pushing modern liberalism instead of providing good, appealing television.
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty – Pt. 1
Daniel Crandall argues that limited government is not just a matter of politics
A meme that pops up whenever the Left advances its agenda is the Right has lost the “Culture War.” If the Right lost, it is because it approached the arts, education, media and journalism as if these institutions were the enemy. They attacked Hollywood, New York, academia, etc. with the movie version of Patton’s speech to the 3rd Army ringing in their ears: “We're going to hold onto [them] by the nose and we're going to kick [them] in the ass.”
Inspiring people with the principles of liberty, personal responsibility, patriotic duty, public charity and other classic virtues is constant work every generation must take up. It is not a “war” to be won by overrunning the enemy position, planting a flag, declaring victory over the “those lousy Hun bastards” and going home to enjoy the fruits peace.
It is no surprise when conservatives and libertarians declare the “culture war” lost. The Right has been rebuffed at every turn on cultural matters, and the virtues noted above have been in general retreat. They mistakenly see promoting classical liberal ideas in Hollywood and New York as a rear guard action. Therefore, the Right retreats from these centers of influence and focus their energy and finances on the centers of power, on politics and the next election cycle.
The true rear guard action comes from approaching the struggle against the all-encompassing state as strictly a matter of politics. Day after day government growth continues, and conservatives and libertarians fight defensive action after defensive action like an ever-retreating army on the political battlefield.
Messages alerting me to health care reform town hall meetings inundate my email inbox. Those opposing nationalizing approximately 17% of the Gross Domestic Product went into high gear when it became clear that the President, Representatives, Senators, Union Thugs, the Media and almost everyone associated with “Organizing for America” were trying to marginalize the folks who oppose national health insurance as “zany,”“un-American,”“racist mobs” and “evil-mongers.”
One activist not only urged me to make my opinions known to the State’s Senators and Representatives, but also included a subscription link to Heritage Foundation newsletters. I realized, as these messages filled my inbox, that I’ve seen all this before.
A message from a conservative or libertarian group appears and activists on the Right are energized for another political fight. – illegal aliens, social security reform, supreme court nominees, Cap & Trade, education reform, Medicare reform, health insurance reform, increased regulation, increased taxation, increased government intrusion in our everyday lives – these causes and more kick off a flurry of activity among the politically engaged Right.
They donate money, generate petitions, and mass on street corners outside the offices of their elected representatives. They flood the Capital (whether in D.C. or their own State) with calls, letters, faxes and emails with the same general message: “You’ve gone too far! Limit Government Now!”
I have great respect for Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, CATO Institute, and other organizations struggling to limit government’s growth. It is tough work reigning in the bureaucratic beast, and these groups have been hard at it for decades. Despite all their activity, however, has the all-encompassing state’s growth been reversed? Ever?
Democrats feed the bureaucratic beast like there is no tomorrow. Thousand billion dollar deficits, promoted by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid trio, prove this.
Republicans make a show of slowing government’s growth (though recent history, unfortunately, refutes even that assertion), but how many work to reverse it once their in office? Furthermore, some may argue that cutting the growth rate limits government, but if one’s goal is a healthy lifestyle through weight loss, I don’t think it can be reached by gaining 10 pounds instead of 20.
For decades, the majority has been comfortable with the obese creature in Washington D.C. Despite the anger over the bailout bills and the specter of national health insurance looming on the horizon, most people still expect government bureaucrats to “promote for the general welfare” with goodies paid by the national treasury
Throw a dart at a U.S. map and you are more than likely to hit a district whose elected representative works hard bringing federal pork home to his or her constituents. Even Rep. Ron “Dr. No” Paul (R., Texas), who garnered that nickname from his constant ‘No’ votes, brings home the bacon for those who put him in office.
There has always been a vocal and politically active minority calling for limited government, just as there has always been a vocal and politically active minority pushing America toward socialist Europe. The vast middle between these extremes seems generally content with the steady, day-by-day expansion of the all-encompassing state.
Why might this be so? People are taught to be comfortable with big government by the Cultural Influence Professions in pop culture, education and journalism. They continually promote the idea that the enormity of America’s problems render average person powerless before them.
Heritage, AEI, CATO, et al are needed to confront the cultural institution’s big government bias, and to remind politicians and the people that there are limits to what the State, through its legislative and judicial activity, can do. Political activism, however, will never create a culture that values limited government because politics cannot foster a culture that values and builds support for liberty and personal responsibility.
By all means, let us declare the “culture war” over. Now let us begin the long, hard work of reforming the Cultural Influence Professions by working within the arts, entertainment, education and journalism for a real culture of liberty.
What Should the Federal Government Do about Health Care?
Now that the President wants everyone to have government-provided health care, irrespective of their wishes in the matter, one thing is apparent, judging from the reactions of everyday citizens at town hall meetings across the country: the idea of government interposing itself in private health care decisions between American citizens and their doctors is one of the most unpopular ideas to emerge from inside the Beltway; nevertheless, tone-deaf politicians keep pushing for it and every other godawful, un-Constitutional, privacy-destroying, vote-buying program they can dream up.
So, what should the federal government do about health care? Read the boldfaced letters in order in the preceding paragraph and you'll have my answer.
This is a problem — if, indeed, it really is a major problem — best left to the people to solve by themselves. Federal intervention only makes it worse.
'Obamacare': Is It Constitutional? (Off the 'Net—Eight)
Some people who have bothered to read the Constitution say that a federal system of health care such as the one proposed by the present administration (and by the Clintons back in the '90s) simply doesn't have any legal justification. Of course, that hasn't stopped the Democrats or the Me Too Republicans from proposing — or at least not opposing — such "reforms." Both major parties have been skating outside the strictures of the Constitution for decades, so for Repubs to suddenly grow a backbone and start criticizing their colleagues across the aisle for doing what has been SOP for so long has the faint aroma of hypocrisy about it. (That's why I call them "Me Too Republicans" — when they see the Dems buying votes through un-Constitutional entitlement programs, they jump on the bandwagon with them, without it seems once referring to the Founding Document to see if it's legitimate.)
In an article on WorldNetDaily ('Obamacare:' What does the Constitution have to say?), Chelsea Schilling consults with Michael Boldin, the founding father of The Tenth Amendment Center, about it. If Boldin's analysis is correct, the push for universal, government-run health care is no-go from the get-go:
Because the power to regulate each citizen's medical care is not included among enumerated powers ... the federal government does not have the authority to impose a single-payer system. "You have to look to the Constitution and ask, 'Is health care listed?'" Boldin said. "No. It's not."
And then there's the danger of an out-of-control federal government that could result from implementing Obamacare:
... regardless of their political affiliation or position on health care, citizens must ask themselves whether they truly want a government that has no limits. "No matter what side you are on, you don't want a government that can do whatever it wants whenever it wants because it becomes dangerous," Boldin said. "This is what the Founding Fathers and the entire founding generation had to fight against – a king who could set his own rules and make them up as he goes. Rules may not be a wonderful thing, but when you allow government to do whatever it wants, you are guaranteeing tyranny."
But what if universal federal health care is enacted into law? What can be done to undo it? Some state legislators are already ahead of the curve:
Activists and state legislators are now focusing their efforts on state governments as a way to resist federal health care "reform" and stop federal usurpation of state rights .... Lawmakers in as many as 10 states are considering or seeking to propose bills and resolutions to nullify federal health care in their states .... The Tenth Amendment Center explains nullification: When a state "nullifies" a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or "non-effective," within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.
There could ultimately be a showdown between the federal government and the states over this. Stay tuned.
This week: * Bogie tries to beat the devil (see Monday); * Red Skelton fights crime in six films (Wednesday and Thursday); * Gene Hackman does a lot of eavesdropping (Friday); * and Peter Ustinov does a little "heavesdropping" of his own (Sunday).
8:00 AM—We Were Strangers (1949) A Cuban American returns to his homeland during the Revolution and becomes involved in an assassination attempt. Cast: Jennifer Jones, John Garfield, Pedro Armendariz. Dir: John Huston. BW-106 mins, TV-PG, CC
11:45 PM—Beat the Devil (1954) A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, Jennifer Jones. Dir: John Huston. BW-90 mins, TV-PG, CC
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Tuesday—August 18th
John Wayne movies, mostly Westerns, all day and night.
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Wednesday—August 19th
3:45 PM—Watch the Birdie (1950) A photographer falls for a rich girl and gets mixed up with crooks. Cast: Red Skelton, Arlene Dahl, Ann Miller. Dir: Jack Donohue. BW-71 mins, TV-G, CC
5:00 PM—The Yellow Cab Man (1950) An inventor's unbreakable glass attracts the attention of businessmen and gangsters. Cast: Red Skelton, Gloria DeHaven, Walter Slezak. Dir: Jack Donohue. BW-84 mins, TV-G
8:00 PM—Whistling in the Dark (1941) A radio detective is kidnapped and forced to plan the perfect murder. Cast: Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, Conrad Veidt. Dir: S. Sylvan Simon. BW-78 mins, TV-G, CC
9:30 PM—Whistling in Dixie (1942) A radio detective's southern honeymoon is cut short by the discovery of a murder. Cast: Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, George Bancroft. Dir: S. Sylvan Simon. BW-74 mins, TV-G, CC
11:00 PM—The Fuller Brush Man (1948) A bumbling salesman gets mixed up in murder. Cast: Red Skelton, Janet Blair, Don McGuire. Dir: S. Sylvan Simon. BW-92 mins, TV-PG
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Thursday—August 20th
2:30 AM—Whistling in Brooklyn (1943) A radio sleuth infiltrates the Brooklyn Dodgers to solve a murder. Cast: Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, "Rags" Ragland. Dir: S. Sylvan Simon. BW-87 mins, TV-G, CC
9:45 PM—Trouble in Paradise (1932) A love triangle ignites trouble between two jewel theives and their intended victim. Cast: Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis. Dir: Ernst Lubitsch. BW-82 mins, TV-G
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Friday—August 21st
6:00 AM—Mad Dog Coll (1961) A young hood kills his way to the top of the mob. Cast: John Davis Chandler, Brooke Hayward, Jerry Orbach. Dir: Burt Balaban. BW-87 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
7:30 AM—The Split (1968) A gang of thieves plots to rob the Los Angeles Coliseum box office during a Rams game. Cast: Jim Brown, Diahann Carroll, Julie Harris. Dir: Gordon Flemyng. C-89 mins, TV-14, Letterbox Format
8:00 PM—Bonnie and Clyde (1967) The legendary bank robbers run riot in the South of the 1930s. Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard. Dir: Arthur Penn. C-111 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format
10:00 PM—The Conversation (1974) A surveillance expert uncovers a murder plot within a corrupt corporation. Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Robert Duvall. Dir: Francis Ford Coppola. C-114 mins, TV-MA, CC, Letterbox Format
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Saturday—August 22nd
9:15 AM—Ten Days to Tulara (1958) A charter pilot in Mexico is forced to help a criminal gang when his son is kidnapped. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Grace Raynor, Carlos Muzquiz. Dir: George Sherman. BW-76 mins, TV-PG
11:00 AM—Five Steps to Danger (1957) Can a couple keep important secrets from Communist spies? Cast: Ruth Roman, Sterling Hayden, Werner Klemperer. Dir: Henry S. Kessler. BW-80 mins, TV-PG
8:00 PM—The Asphalt Jungle (1950) A gang of small time crooks plots an elaborate jewel heist. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Marilyn Monroe. Dir: John Huston. BW-112 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS
10:00 PM—Manhandled (1949) A phony psychiatrist's secretary gets caught up in a murder case. Cast: Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden, Dan Duryea. Dir: Lewis R. Foster. BW-96 mins, TV-PG
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Sunday—August 23rd
1:00 PM—The Manchurian Candidate (1962) A Korean War hero doesn't realize he's been programmed to kill by the enemy. Cast: Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury. Dir: John Frankenheimer. BW-127 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
8:00 PM—Gaslight(1944) A newlywed fears she's going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion. Cast: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Angela Lansbury. Dir: George Cukor. BW-114 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS
10:00 PM—Kind Lady (1951) A con artist and his criminal cohorts hold an old lady hostage in her own home. Cast: Maurice Evans, Ethel Barrymore, Angela Lansbury. Dir: John Sturges. BW-78 mins, TV-PG, CC
11:30 PM—Death on the Nile (1978) Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of an heiress during an Egyptian tour. Cast: Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow, Bette Davis. Dir: John Guillermin. C-140 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format
Cheap Shots at Republicans and Nonliberals Almost Ruin 'Julie & Julia'
TAC editor S.T. Karnick is right that Julie & Julia is likely to enjoy a profitable run for the rest of the summer. And while I'm not normally a fan of Nora Ephron movies (I am a man, after all), this film is worth seeing with the love of your life if only to watch Meryl Streep's charming and captivating Julia Child impression, Jim Lakely writes.
But even in this cute little movie, Ephron can't help but take political shots at nonliberals—one of which was perhaps the most jarring I can ever remember watching.
My wife and I saw Julie & Julia last night. It was a nice film, but one that is hard to characterize. It's not quite a romantic comedy—though there are funny moments and the depiction of the genuine, lifelong romance between Julia Child and her husband is the sweetest expression of loving, marital devotion on film since the opening scenes of Up.
It's not quite a biopic, either, though it recounts the life Julia Child led starting from he move to Paris after World War II to her finally getting her iconic cooking book published, as well as the much-less-interesting life of the Julie Powell (played delightfully by Amy Adams, who has now taken for good the "Meg Ryan" mantle Hollywood's been trying in vain to pass off for more than a decade).
In fact, in the dueling plots of the film, one is most struck by how substantive, intelligent, generous, determined and talented Julia Child is compared to the shallow, jealous, defeatist, pseudo-intellectual Julie Powell.
It's not entirely Julie's fault. She is the product of a much more narcissistic age, and she gets points for embarking on an ambitious project—trying to cook every recipe in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and blogging about it every day. And Julie does it because she has genuine admiration for Julia Child.
But as you watch the film, you really wish there were lots more Julia and a lot less Julie. Meryl Streep is probably a good bet for another Oscar nomination. Critics may complain that Streep is merely doing an impression of Child, but that's to sell the performance short. Yes, Streep has Child's unique voice spot on, and has captured Child's mannerisms, as well. But Streep transcends merely aping Child and plays her with nuance, emotion and sophistication. Streep as Julia Child is one of the more entertaining and interesting performances I've seen this year.
But now we get to the point of this post—the jarring and totally unnecessary injection of leftist politics that nearly ruined the movie for me and likely countless others who are not partisan liberal Democrats.
WARNING: A FEW SPOILERS AHEAD
There is a subplot in the Julia Child half of the film in which her diplomat husband is worried that they'll be transferred out of their beloved Paris because of McCarthyism. Paul and Julia, you see, once traveled to China (Julia was posted there working as a file clerk for the OSS). And the evil McCarthy is stirring up trouble back in Washington—trying to destroy the lives of good people who have given their lives to "government service."
Ephron, a committed liberal, returns to this theme several times—all the while leaving out the important fact that despite the excesses of McCarthy, there actually were communists and Soviet agents who had infiltrated high levels of the U.S. government.
Paul is called back to Washington and subject to three days of questioning. He's exonerated of any communist sympathies, but Paul and Julia are eventually transferred out of Paris. Ephron leaves the audience with the impression he's transferred because he came under suspicion by McCarthy, even if that is not necessarily the case.
Now, I have not read Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France, but she does write about the McCarthy hearings and how it affected their life, and it is reasonable to bring it up in the movie. However, by the fifth time Ephron brings it up, it starts to have less of a feel of historical accuracy and more of gratuitous reflection of one of Hollywood's most popular pastimes: exhuming McCarthy to burn him in effigy. OK. We get it.
And was it really necessary to have to have a scene in which Child argues with her Republican father in Pasadena and Dear Old (and mean) Dad defends McCarthy with a scowl and very nearly some spittle? C'mon. It comes off as ludicrously forced.
But that's not even the worst of it. Julie Powell works in a cubicle answering phone calls from the development corporation that owned the World Trade Center—in 2002. She gets numerous calls from family members of people killed in the 911 attacks, as well as people complaining about the plans to build something on the hallowed ground. She calls in sick to work one day, obviously feigning illness, and her boss calls her into his office the next day to chew her out. At the end, the boss says, "A lot of people want your job. If I was a Republican, I'd fire you!" Seriously.
That comes from so far out of left field (pun intended) that it rises to the level of unintentional liberal Hollywood self-parody. In fact, it is among the most glaring examples of liberal Hollywood fantasyland thinking I've ever seen in a film. It's so out of place, Powell's boss might as well have said, "If I was an alien from planet Loon, I'd lick your elbow!"
Let's remember the context here. Republican New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was still revered as probably the greatest hero in the history of that great city. Republican president George W. Bush was still riding high in the public opinion polls (even if this screed was delivered in 2003). Republicans were still in control of Congress, and also enjoying similar popularity in the United States. Yet Ephron ignores all this and instead fantasizes that in 2002-2003, ordinary folks were using the word "Republican" as a stand-in for "heartless monster."
The line landed with a thud — like a Cornish game hen slipping off the counter and onto the kitchen floor. Only blind and enduring disgust, if not hatred, for those who differ from one's political views can explain such a jarring, tin-eared line of dialogue.
My wife is still in the process of reading Powell's book, upon which the film is partly based, and she informs me that the author peppers the book with gratuitous shots at Republicans (not just politicians, but ordinary people who don't vote "D" every time) that are similarly out of place. Hence one might surmise that Ephron was trying to reflect the tone of the source material with all this political badgering.
But that's no excuse for bad writing, The movie would have been more enjoyable, and less insulting to half of its audience, if Ephron left it out.
The Intellectual Pretensions of 'Classic' Scifi Films
Sometimes the most celebrated scifi films are the silliest, S. T. Karnick writes.
Mike Gray's analysis of four scifi films, three of which were highly celebrated in their time, brings up an important point: sometimes the films that garner the most critical respect are the silliest.
Mike points out that the "groundbreaking" themes in Stanley Kubrick's widely admired 2001: A Space Odyssey were "old hat in 1945" but were new to '60s hippies and their youthful sympathizers who were quite ignorant of classic scifi books. I saw 2001 on a big screen in a theater, and I was blown away . . . by its intellectual triteness and the amateur quality of the production on every level except the visuals.
I think what audiences of the time really appreciated was the crazy, psychedelic visuals at the climax, Kubrick's wonderful image of a planet with a human fetus in it, and the overall atmosphere of intellectuality the film gave off. It made people think the movie was deep without Kubrick actually going to the trouble of affording any intellectual insights.
Kubrick is vastly overrated for most of his work because of his pretensions to intellectuality, which most film critics, being utterly ignorant about everything but movies and knowing little about the latter either, cannot see as mere pretensions and not the real thing.
Charly is one gloomy and depressing film, but given the point it's making, I suppose that's appropriate. However, I suspect it would have been more effective as a comedy. Can you imagine Howard Hawks directing it, a la Monkey Business? Now that would be a superb movie. Of course, Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers are far better than Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom any day.
I thought that the novel on which the film was based, Flowers for Algernon, was more successful. In part I think it was so because it was so much more succinct within its form, but also important is that the literary technique the author used made for an interesting look into the protagonist's mind. Recommended.
Planet of the Apes is, as Mike suggests, a fun bit of hippie nonsense. Anything more than that it is not, which may be why Mike concludes that it didn't rate sequels and TV series.
Here, too, the pretensions toward intellectuality grabbed the imagination of the fashionable people of the time. Like the Coen brothers films of recent decades, Planet of the Apes keeps seeming as if it is about to tell us something important, but never does.
This is exemplified by the ending, seen as quite shocking at the time but really just another fashionable political cliche, the notion that the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine of internatinal nuclear gamesmanship would lead to catastrophe. It didn't, and strictly because we as a society ultimately refused to listen to the fools who would have unilaterally disarmed the United States and left us to the good graces of an emeny who had sworn to destroy us. Thus even the film's biggest moment is quite false.
Everybody knows the story of Planet of the Apes. Charlton Heston plays the protagonist, a human trapped on a planet populated by intelligent apes who treat humans as an inferior species (which in fact they are, according to the conceit of the film) and use them as slaves. This makes for a good deal of lefty superiority, as the film enables sympathetic audience members to look down on their presumably prejudiced neighbors, affording them much pleasure in contemplating their personal superiority over those who voted for Nixon in the last election (and in fact those who voted at all instead of working to bring down the evil, oppressive system that the United States had become).
The irony, of course, is that the very superiority the audience felt in watching the film was being overtly criticized in the movie. Ah, well, scifi movies of the time were meant to make you feel good about yourself, not think clearly or consistently.
What really makes Planet of the Apes work better as a film than it should is the performances. Heston in particular is superb as the protagonist, lending the character a powerful dignity that appropriately highlights the prejudices of the apes of the title planet. Also very effective are Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter as sympathetic liberal apes and Maurice Evans as the powerful and rather enigmatic Dr. Zaius.
Although the intellectual pretensions behind the film are quite comical and its fashionable political stances downright embarrassing, the actors and director Franklin Shaffner (Patton, Papillon) make it an enjoyable lark.
Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Years to Earth, based on a highly regarded BBC TV series) is the best of the films Mike mentions in his roundup, in my view. It also has the cheapest production values, which ought to remind us that a strong story and coherent ideas are ultimately much more important than money.
Like Mike, I enjoyed the way this film brought out intimations of the demonic and the occult. To my recollection it appeared to be using a scifi story to explore those concepts, not to dismiss them as having a strictly natural (though outlandish) explanation. On the contrary, I thought Quatermass and the Pit used the alien attack scenario to make the idea of demonic possession vivid and real to secular audiences.
That's a very positive accomplishment, in my view. Recommended.
Radical chic returns and Orwell's prophecies come true (Off the 'Net—Seven)
Woodstock's revenge
On WorldNet Daily, Erik Rush ruefully reports that the idealists of his generation are now in charge — of just about everything, but particularly in the political realm.
The media are largely comprised of Rush's contemporaries, which could explain the "reverence" they evince for The One We Have Been Waiting For:
Some have used words such as "surreal" and "creepy" to denote manifestations of the cult of Obama. This incapacity on the part of Americans to ascribe deception or subterfuge to significant statements our president has made and then proved false via subsequent action is decidedly queer. Still, calling him on it – or anything else, for that matter – remains unequivocally objectionable. The reverence with which Obama devotees view him is more akin to that reserved for African tribal chieftains than American presidents; if you diss the latter, his supporters contend that you're full of crap, whereas if you diss the former, his supporters bash your skull in with large, gnarly hardwood cudgels.
I can remember when Communism was radically chic back in the '60s. Looks like it's making a comeback with the current administration.
The thing about most technology is that it can harm as well as help. (I remember a film in which a teaspoon was used to threaten a spy into confessing.)
When governments utilize technology, most of the time it's to protect the citizenry. The problem is that any tech used against an external threat can also be used against a nation's population. (Surveillance technology is especially susceptible to abuse.) But it's not the technology, it's the people using it.
Phil Elmore notes that, while it's not surprising Red China has its population electronically snitching on its own officials (if you can believe it) and Britain is encouraging its citizens to go through each other's trash (no joke), the United States isn't lagging far behind:
Are you wondering if this culture of informing, this tattletale nation of citizens suspiciously monitoring their fellow citizens' law-abiding behavior, can happen here? You shouldn't. You, as an American, live under a brittle almost-dictatorship headed by a man who cannot stand criticism and who cannot abide dissent .... When Obama's transition website, Change.gov, can be retroactively scrubbed to remove all references to his confiscatory plans to disarm American citizens, Orwell's prediction of a revisionist State has already come true. When Obama can go on record as saying that he supports single-payer socialist medicine, then baldly lie and say he doesn't, Orwell's vision of a dishonest and double-speaking State is reality.
Gratuitous Nudity Can't Save Val Kilmer's Global Warming Movie
The invaluable anti-climate-alarmist site Globalwarming.org alerts us to how far Val Kilmer's star has fallen.
Not even "gratuitous nudity" can save his stinker of a global warming film, The Chaos Experiment. (And, no — Thank God! — the gratuitous nudity did not involve Kilmer.)
I saw Val Kilmer’s new feature the other day. It’s called “The Chaos Experiment,” and it’s about a deranged scientist (Kilmer) who traps “six sexy strangers” (according to the plot synopsis on the back of the DVD) in a room and slowly turns up the heat to demonstrate the deleterious effects of global warming on the human condition. In a nutshell, the “six sexy strangers” get naked before they go crazy and start killing one another.
And you want a bad review? Here's a bad review:
My girlfriend thought it was awful — she was put off by the nudity. That was the only part I enjoyed, in what was otherwise a real snoozer.
The film, apparently once titled "The Steam Experiment," was (shockingly) released in two theaters before quickly heading for the discount bin at your local video store. And, according to IMBD, the plot is even worse than Yeatman describes. Kilmer plays, essentially, a slightly better looking Ted Kaczynski:
A former professor concocts a brutal experiment in order to get the word out on the effects of global warming. By trapping six people in an urban Turkish bathhouse, he vows to overheat his hostages unless his global-warming hypothesis is published on the front page of his local paper.
Sorry, Val. No room in the paper for your screed. But no worries. Life imitates art. A UN apparatchik is out there saying we have but four months to save the planet ... then we're all DOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMED! No matter that the global warming scare is a fraud, and the useless bill the House passed this summer will cost at least 2 million jobs. I'm sure taxpayers will soon be subsidizing your glorious sequel, The Jaccuzi Experiment, in which you put six comely underwear models in a hot tub and slowly turn up the heat until ... well ... things really start heating up (if you get my drift).
Instead of going straight to Skinemax, we'll be required to watch your propaganda blockbuster to collect our carbon ration cards. Ticket-takers, organic popcorn vendors and movie ushers leading us to our seats by candlelight will be some of the "green jobs" our government will soon create.
More Than One Brain Cell: SF Films with Ideas (Part Ten)
Disclaimer: Films listed here may be terrible, but they must have at least one scientifically interesting idea, however badly they may exploit that concept.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Leonard Rossiter, Daniel Richter, Douglas Rain (the voice of HAL) C-141 mins. Novelization by Arthur C. Clarke (which clarifies much of Stanley Kubrick's deliberate obscurantism)
"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a ... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it, I can sing it for you." "Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me." "It's called 'Daisy.' Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage. I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two ...." ----- "Look, Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you." ----- "I've got a bad feeling about him." "You do?" "Yeah, definitely. Don't you?" "I don't know. I think so. You know, of course, though, he's right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do." "Unfortunately, that sounds a little like famous last words."
Since 2001 has been exhaustively analyzed by the cognoscenti ever since it was released, I'll be brief: This film is an unworthy successor to Forbidden Planet. Its "groundbreaking" themes involving directed human evolution, space travel, artificial intelligence, etc., are completely unoriginal; they were old hat in 1945. The general public at large had never been exposed to them in such concentrated form, however, which explains the multiplicity of "interpretations" generated about the movie. Overlong, with a creaking structure, wooden acting (deliberately so, I'm told, the liveliest character being a talking computer), and completely lacking a sense of humor, 2001 depends entirely on its visuals, magnificent razzle-dazzle that tries to make up for an abysmally trite plot. (As for scientific "accuracy," am I the only one who noticed that astronauts on the Moon's surface move painfully slowly while personnel just a couple of hundred feet underground walk around like they're in a one-G environment? Anti-grav plates, perhaps? Then why spin the space station and the crew compartment of the Discovery?)
Charly (1968) Cliff Robertson, Claire Bloom, Leon Janney, Lilia Skala, Dick Van Patten C-103 mins. Based on Daniel Keyes' 1966 novel Flowers for Algernon
At times a touching account of a man whose intelligence gets a boost in a scientific experiment — only to see it fade away. Cliff Robertson's performance is probably the best one he ever gave. Charly should be required viewing for people in the federal science establishment, since the film underlines the idea that there are human consequences to all scientific endeavor.
Planet of the Apes (1968) Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly, Linda Harrison C-112 mins. Loosely based on Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel La planéte des singes
"Imagine me needing someone. Back on Earth I never did. Oh, there were women. Lots of women. Lots of love-making but no love. You see, that was the kind of world we'd made. So I left, because there was no one to hold me there." ----- "It's a mad house. A mad house!" ----- "You know the saying, 'Human see, human do'."
As a piece of satire, Planet of the Apes is a success. That undercurrent of Lefty-liberal, sixties countercultural social criticism you might detect in this film is no accident; by superimposing on it a fairly standard tale of survival, the spoonful of sugar lets the medicine go down without excessive grating. Indeed, it's a lot of fun, with the occasional sly dig at human pretensions. The actors are uniformly credible despite the technical limitations, expertly doing "Shakespeare" from inside rubber masks — but I really don't think the idea merited four sequels and two TV series.
Quatermass and the Pit [a.k.a.Five Million Years to Earth] (1968) Andrew Keir, James Donald, Barbara Shelley, Julian Glover, Duncan Lamont, Robert Morris, Bryan Marshall, Edwin Richfield, Peter Copley C-97 mins. Based closely on Nigel Kneale's 1958 BBC-TV serial script
Workers digging an extension of the London Underground unearth what the military thinks is an unexploded German V-2 from World War Two, but it isn't. Prof. Bernard Quatermass (Andrew Keir), evidently the only person in this film with any intelligence whatsoever, determines that they've discovered a spacecraft from Mars, and from that he infers the cause of humanity's superstitions about the Devil, poltergeists, and other occultic phenomena. The script cleverly melds high-tech concepts with Satanism and "demonic" possession, and the fadeout shot has an appropriate air of distrust and alienation. Julian Glover offers the definitive stereotype of the Neanderthal militarist.
The Marxist founder of 'Free Press' and the group's agenda to impose socialism on the Internet
Far-left groups that specialize in technology policy — the most prominent of which is an outfit called Free Press and is led by an avowed Marxist — have the sympathetic ear of the Obama administration and the Federal Communications Commission. And what they plan for the Internet is nothing less than the destruction of the free-enterprise, capitalist system that has brought us the technological wonders of our age.
Click here to read more from The Heartland Institute's blog, and also read some excerpts below.
Many of the pundits who specialize in technology issues, and blog about it, lean to the left. They are, in general:
suspicious of free markets
see broadband as not a product, but a public utility that the people have a "right" to access (ideally for free)
and demand ever-more government regulation of the Internet because they believe the market manipulates and exploits the people
Among the leaders in promoting this anti-market view is an organization called Free Press, which is not well known by the general public but familiar to tech watchers like me, the Federal Communications Commission and the Obama administration. I've been reluctant to characterize Free Press as a socialist outfit — though its criticism of my recent piece on the dangers of "net neutrality" certainly had some socialist characteristics. But as we see from this interview with Free Press founder Robert W. McChesney in The Bullet, a Marxist publication in Canada, I was being too cautious in withholding that dramatic moniker.
Though Free Press has co-opted the language of freedom — starting with its very name, its calls for a "free" and "open" Internet, its stated advocacy on behalf of "the public," etc. — it is no ally of American traditions of freedom and liberty. McChesney is an avowed socialist/Marxist. Through Free Press, he is promoting an agenda that would replace the free market system that has led to once-unimaginable advances in information technology — including freedom of communication — with a state-controlled system directed by government on behalf of "the people." In short: McChesney and Free Press see the Internet as the last, best realm to finally usher in the long-dreamed socialist utopia.
I wish I was exaggerating. This McChesney interview from August 9, 2009 with The Bullet's Tanner Mirrlees lays bare the agenda — and, more troubling, the Free Press founder's belief that the stars are finally aligned to bring about "revolution" on the Internet and elsewhere. Here starts Part 1 of several breaking down this remarkable interview.
For starters, McChesney notes "the media is one of the key areas in society where power is exercised, reinforced and contested." And, though McChesney fancies himself a "progressive," he has a great affinity for the media structure of the 19th century.
In the 19th century, a very different media system was in place. 19th century socialists wouldn’t be talking much about the need to criticize the New York Herald Tribune because they weren’t organizing people who read the New York Herald Tribune. It was much easier and more common for the Left to have its own media. The workers had worker papers. They weren’t consuming mass produced commercial media products. But this started changing in the first half of the 20th century. Capital accumulation colonized much more of popular culture and communications. Capitalism became the dominant mode of producing and distributing information in society.
Interesting use of language there. Communication in the hey-day of American socialism was more pure than it is today because it hadn't been "colonized" by capitalism. Though capitalism hasn't prevented The Bulletin or The Nation from publishing, and the Internet allows "the Left to have its own media." It is clear, then, that McChesney's beef is not that the Left can't communicate to "workers," it is that those who oppose his views are also allowed to communicate. That is why he says:
The challenge for us is to understand, use and struggle to change the existing media.
What's the problem with existing media? McChesney says it does not promote the interests of the people because what we have today is a "corporate media" (Never mind, I guess, that corporations are comprised of people — from the employees of a corporate media outlet, to the investors in that company).
McChesney, the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has written many books and delivered many speeches railing against the corporate media. And when giving a speech his left-wing audiences would ask: What are we to do about it? We understand, from reading your books and listening to your speeches that the corporate media is "an integral part of how capitalist power is upheld in society." But when we finally "make the [socialist] revolution or the revolution just happens, the problem of the media will be resolved then." Right? Wrong.
This was an unsophisticated answer. Of course, very few people on the Left were that simplistic. Many understood that the battle over the media, just like the battle over the workplace, was a key part of engaging with and contesting power. Educating people about the media and fighting to make changes in the short-term, not just in the long term, became of utmost importance. Instead of waiting for the revolution to happen, we learned that unless you make significant changes in the media, it will be vastly more difficult to have a revolution. While the media is not the single most important issue in the world, it is one of the core issues that any successful Left project needs to integrate into its strategic program.
Chilling. The view of the founder of Free Press is that Americans are mindless drones, slaves to the bread and circuses provided by the corporate media. So the status quo must be destroyed — for the good of the people, of course. And here's where controlling how information on the Internet is created and managed comes in. Or, as McChesney, Free Press staffers and other leftists put it: "Democratizing" the Internet by having the government mandate "net neutrality" principles via federal legislation, FCC mandate, or both.
Net neutrality, in short, would take away the power of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to manage — in response to the market pressures applied by millions of Web users — the networks they have spent billions to build, maintain and improve. That decision-making power would instead be handed over to the FCC (or another team of bureaucrats detached from the influence of market forces). This socialist, government-planning regime is the dream of McChesney — who has little use for the concept of private property, a basic liberty essential to the political construction our Founding Fathers bequeathed us.
The battle for network neutrality is to prevent the Internet from being privatized by telephone and cable companies. Privatization would give them control over the Internet, would allow these firms to privilege some information flows over others. We want to keep the Internet open. What we want to have in the U.S. and in every society is an Internet that is not private property, but a public utility. We want an Internet where you don’t have to have a password and that you don’t pay a penny to use. It is your right to use the Internet. [Emphasis mine]
Water and electricity are public utilities, yet individuals pay for those services. Food is not a public utility — and is obviously essential to man's survival — yet individuals pay for that, as well. It is too late for leftists like McChesney to correct those crimes of capitalism and impose a socialist system in which the state hands to the people water, electricity and food — each according to their needs. But it's not too late to bring socialism to the Internet. Establish net neutrality principles by force of law, and the socialist/Marxist revolution (at least online) is underway.
The newspaper with the largest circulation in the United States, USA Today, was forced by observable science to admit (reluctantly, and with a cheeky style) that the planet is not cooperating with Al Gore's infamous testimony before Congress that the Earth has a fever.
"If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action."
Well, something's on fire. And it's not the crib. More like the liar Al Gore's pants. Not only has the planet's temperature not gone up in the last decade, we're in a cooling trend.
Oh, the humanity.
As if global warming proponents don't have enough to worry about already, with Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Fox News and the Heartland Institute, now Mother Nature has thrown them yet another curve: July 2009 was officially the coldest July on record in six U.S. states, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Specifically, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Not one of the coldest, mind you, but the absolute, rock-bottom, chilliest on record. Records go back to 1895. Meanwhile, four others – Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri and Kentucky — had their 2nd-coldest July ever recorded. [Emphasis mine]
It sure is inconvenient when Mother Nature won't cooperate with the Al Gore brigade. Of course, the global warming alarmists have now taken to calling what they see as a human-caused catastrophe "climate change" — a clever way to maintain that any change in temperature is all our fault. What they fail to admit, however, is that Earth's climate is never stable, and never has been.
But if the coldest July on record is enough to get the public to even further tune out these zealots, that's a good development for our personal and economic freedom.
Top Two New Movie Releases Take Contrasting Approaches
Stephen Sommers' simplistic summer blockbuster G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra opened well at the U.S. box office, but the smaller film Julie and Julia will probably be remembered much more fondly.
Whereas G.I.: The Rise of Cobra Joe exemplifies the summer blockbuster formula--gigantism and sensationalism with little attempt to create lifelike characters and a plausible story line--the weekend's other big release, Julia and Julia, took the opposite approach.
Successfully fighting off awful pre-release publicity and below-average reviews, G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra conquered the U.S. movie box office during its first days of release over the weekend, bringing in a very healthy $56.2 million. That's the fourth-biggest opening weekend ever for an August release.
Even the positive reviews of the film seemed largely dismissive, however, praising it for not taking itself too seriously, the equivalent of praising a football team for not trying to beat teams considered better.
The film cost a reported $170 million to make, and its worldwide gross of $100.5 million in three days suggests the producers' decision to play down the American origins of the series of action figure toys and emphasize the international elements of it helped it do well abroad.
As with other Steven Sommers films (the Mummy series, Van Helsing) G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra has a very simplistic story line with largely obvious heroes and villians, which typically has good audience appeal while driving many critics mad. The subtlties of the decision to downplay the American origins of the G. I. Joe mythos will probably be lost on most audence members, who can be expected to be relatively uninterested in deeper political implications.
Nonetheless, whether U.S. audiences will continue streaming to the film after the initial burst of curiosity remains an open question, however, given the dulling of the patriotic appeal on which the series of action figures was originally based. My surmise is that the film will do well but not challenge Iron Man and other such big action films with realer and more-likable central characters.
The homey self-fulfillment comedy-drama Julie and Julia finished second with a very impressive $20.1 (given that the film cost $40 million to produce). This sort of movie usually has a strong, continued appeal after the first weekend, so it should do quite well and might even snag some Academy Award nominations for the immensely talented principal actresses (Amy Adams and Meryl Streep) and perhaps for Best Picture and other creative-talent awards.
Given its presentation of real characters in recognizably human situations, Julie and Julia will probably be remembered much more fondly than G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
New Trend in Music Criticism Should Prove Beneficial
The stranglehold of "rockist" critics on evaluation of popular music is loosening. That's a good thing, even if what's replacing it is by no means perfect, S. T. Karnick writes.
It's difficult to ascertain just how much influence critics really have, and in the field of popular music it's just as hard to discern as anywhere else.
One thing is certain, however, and that is that critics do influence people's perceptions of what is going on in the culture and help them find cultural works they might not otherwise hear about. That enables them to influence producers and distributors of cultural works, whocan hope that critical plaudits will help sales.
Thus it's important when various critical schools rise and fall. The rise of the New Criticism in literature had good effects but also helped legitimate the rise of dreary, academic, navel-gazing fiction during the 1960s.
Hence it's good that the field of popular music criticism is beginning to splinter, as the stranglehold of Rolling Stone magazine attitudes, known today as "rockism," is being increasingly questioned.
(In a series of articles for National Review Online a few years ago I questioned the assumptions of rockism and wrote criticism taking an alternative approach that allowed for assessments and insights not available through what is now called the rockist approach. My preference is simply to take a classical aesthetic--specifically, one that recognizes and understands the value of folk music forms, which is what most popular music is basically meant to be--and adapt it for use with current musical forms.)
A recent article in Slate outlines some recent events in this realm, noting the rise of a "popist" or "poptimist" aesthetic as an alternative to rockism. The key to the popist approach is simply to discard the constricted, rockist ideal of what popular music should be, the Slate writer notes:
It's part of a new generation's reaction to the conventional wisdom, forged by first-wave critics in the 1960s and '70s, that enduring pop music art is a thing made by singer-songwriters using traditional rock instruments on long-playing albums, and that pop hits reside on a lower aesthetic plane, a source of fleeting, and often shameful, enjoyment. There is a name for this new critical paradigm, "popism"—or, more evocatively (and goofily), "poptimism"—and it sets the old assumptions on their ear: Pop (and, especially, hip-hop) producers are as important as rock auteurs, Beyoncé is as worthy of serious consideration as Bruce Springsteen, and ascribing shame to pop pleasure is itself a shameful act.
Although there is a risk that poptimism will become an orthodoxy itself, the opening up of popular music criticism to alternative points of view and greater appreciation for a more diverse variety of musical forms is a good thing:
Lest anyone think I'm getting set to make a straw-man argument about poptimists: I more or less am one. The poptimist critique of rockism squares with my sense of musical history and resonates with my taste. I love hip-hop and commercial R&B and Nashville country and teen pop, and have spent much of my professional life listening to and writing about pre-rock Tin Pan Alley pop, a genre that rockists insult by ignoring completely. I'm not so crazy about most indie rock, never cared much for Neil Young, and will listen to the new Pearl Jam album only out of a sense of professional obligation. I think Britney Spears' "Toxic" is one of the greatest songs of the new century, that the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" was one of the great ones of the last, and that R. Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)" is as transcendent as any Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown classic I've ever heard—and what's more, most other critics I know agree.
The Slate writer sees this change as a generational thing and an honest acknowledgment of changes in popular music:
This turn of events isn't all that surprising. Inevitably, each generation of critics will swoop in to adjust the excesses of the previous, and besides, current pop is dominated by sonically adventurous hip-hop and dance music while rock's commercial power and cultural influence is on the wane. I also suspect that many of my colleagues, like me, have embraced the anti-rockist critique with particular fervor as a kind of penance, atoning for past rockist misdeeds—for the party line we'd swallowed whole in our formative years and maybe even parroted under our bylines.
Poptimism, in other words, is a pure product of the zeitgeist, and as such, it's probably wise to keep an eye out for its perils, lest what began as a necessary corrective devolve into, as Sanneh wrote of rockism, a caricature used as a bludgeon against other music.
There's a good deal of truth to his claims here, but there was plenty of good music being undervalued by rockist critics during the three decades before the rise of poptimism, yet the critics who rose to the fore in prominent publications during that time nonetheless adhered strongly to the rockist aesthetic.
That means something else must have changed in bringing an alternative set of values to the fore. I suspect that the rise of the internet has contributed greatly to the process of allowing new voices to be heard, as the hold of a few influential music magazines (most notably, Rolling Stone) and newspapers has declined under pressure of a plethora of new sources of information about music created by the Web.
My disagreement with rockism is that it creates a stagnant pool of criticism that rests on a perverse self-contradiction: in over-praising music that reflects a self-proclaimed individualism (which they think of as originality) and a pretense of greater authenticity than alternative forms but is actually relatively simple and lyric-oriented, rockist criticism actually ends up pushing conformity, careerism, and a lack of sophistication and musical intelligence while advocating a too-limited idea of what constitutes real innovation The failure to see the value of metal, pop, progressive rock, hiphop (other than rap), country, electronica, etc., is not a liberal or liberating position, as rockists fancy themselves to be holding.
On the contrary, it is a stifling, willfully ignorant attitude that ultimately disserves both culturemakers and consumers. It's long past time for criticism of popular music to expand its horizons and its awareness of the great potential variety of musical forms. To the extent that poptimism moves that process forward, it is a good thing indeed.
This week: * Cary Grant gambles and gets lucky (see Monday); * Jean Simmons mislays her brother (also Monday); * Clark Gable mixes it up with pirates, jewel thieves, and spies (all day Wednesday); * Bogie finds himself in a lonely place while Glenn Ford feels the heat (Thursday); * senators become cut-ups, then Deborah Kerr becomes a Nazi spy (Saturday).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Monday—August 10th
2:00 AM—Mr. Lucky (1943) A gambling-ship owner is out to fleece a beautiful society woman, but falls in love. Cast: Cary Grant, Laraine Day, Charles Bickford. Dir: H. C. Potter. BW-100 mins, TV-G, CC
6:30 PM—So Long at the Fair (1950) A woman searches for her missing brother in Paris despite the fact that nobody believes he exists. Cast: Jean Simmons, Dirk Bogarde, David Tomlinson. Dir: Antony Darnborough, Terence Fisher. BW-86 mins, TV-PG
8:00 PM—The Blue Lamp (1950) A London bobbie goes after the crooks who shot his partner. Cast: Jack Warner, Jimmy Hanley, Dirk Bogarde. Dir: Basil Dearden. BW-85 mins.
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Tuesday—August 11th
8:00 AM—The Secret People (1952) A refugee gets mixed up in a plot to assassinate the dictator who killed her father. Cast: Valentina Cortese, Serge Reggiani, Audrey Hepburn. Dir: Thorold Dickson. BW-95 mins.
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Wednesday—August 12th
8:00 AM—Manhattan Melodrama (1934) Boyhood friends grow up on opposite sides of the law. Cast: Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II. BW-90 mins, TV-G, CC
9:45 AM—China Seas (1935) A sea captain caught in a romantic triangle has to fight off modern-day pirates. Cast: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery. Dir: Tay Garnett. BW-87 mins, TV-G, CC
11:15 AM—They Met in Bombay (1941) Rival jewel thieves on the run find love in the Far East. Cast: Clark Gable, Rosalind Russell, Peter Lorre. Dir: Clarence Brown. BW-92 mins, TV-G, CC
1:00 PM—Betrayed (1954) During World War II, a U.S. officer falls for a Resistance fighter suspected of being an enemy spy. Cast: Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Victor Mature. Dir: Gottfried Reinhardt. C-109 mins, TV-PG, CC
6:30 PM—Love on the Run (1936) Rival newsmen get mixed up with a runaway heiress and a ring of spies. Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II. BW-80 mins, TV-PG, CC
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Thursday—August 13th
12:00 PM—Crossfire (1947) A crusading district attorney investigates the murder of a Jewish man. Cast: Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan. Dir: Edward Dmytryk. BW-86 mins, TV-PG, CC
1:30 PM—Macao (1952) A man on the run in the Far East is mistaken for an undercover cop. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix. Dir: Josef von Sternberg. BW-81 mins, TV-PG, CC
8:00 PM—In a Lonely Place (1950) An aspiring actress begins to suspect that her temperamental boyfriend is a murderer. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy. Dir: Nicholas Ray. BW-93 mins, TV-PG, CC
9:45 PM—The Big Heat (1953) A police detective whose wife was killed by the mob teams with a scarred gangster's moll to bring down a powerful gangster. Cast: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin. Dir: Fritz Lang. BW-90 mins, TV-14, CC
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Friday—August 14th
4:30 AM—Chandler (1971) A former private eye lands in hot water when he agrees to protect a government witness. Cast: Warren Oates, Leslie Caron, Alex Dreier. Dir: Paul Magwood. C-86 mins, TV-14, Letterbox Format
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Saturday—August 15th
2:00 AM—Edge of the City (1957) An army deserter and a black dock worker join forces against a corrupt union official. Cast: John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, Jack Warden. Dir: Martin Ritt. BW-86 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
8:00 AM—Julius Caesar (1953) High government officials plot and carry out a political assassination. Cast: Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud. Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. BW-121 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS
12:30 PM—I See a Dark Stranger (1945) An Irish woman who hates the English turns Nazi spy. Cast: Deborah Kerr, Trevor Howard, Raymond Huntley. Dir: Frank Launder. BW-112 mins, TV-G
The good news is that the producers are planning to resolve the show's central story lines--Monk's quest to identify his wife's killer, and his attempts to become mentally healthy enough to resume his position on the San Francisco police force. (Throughout the series he has served as a consultant on homicide investigations for the force.)
Equally heartening is the fact that Psych, now entering its fourth season, has continued to improve over the years (after a very promising start) and is as enjoyable as Monk.
As I've noted earlier in this publication and others, Monk was a trailblazer in moving toward more entertaining, positive, cheerful, and optimistic dramatic series television programming, a trend that has picked up steam as the decade progressed. Even the broadcast networks are beginning to get the message, with new, less grim, highly appealing mystery series such as The Mentalist, Castle, and the unfortunately canceled The Unusuals.
Created and produced by comedy writer Andy Breckman and debuting in July 2002, Monk was deliberately given a lighter, more comic veneer than most TV drama shows of the time, instead harking back to the entertaining TV dramas of the 1960s and early '70s. That has led to a refreshing lightening of the tone of TV dramas, with enjoyability once again a major factor in the equation.
USA led the way with follow-up series based on the same elements--serious but not lugubrious drama, strong infusions of comedy, suspense as opposed to graphic depictions of violence and dead bodies, emphasis on solving mystery puzzles, the presence of likable central characters, etc.--as in Psych, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, and Royal Pains.
Rival cab/sat powerhouse TNT joined the movement with similar though somewhat darker fare, such as the immensely popular The Closer and Saving Grace, and the rather lighter and very enjoyable Leverage. Others have followed suit, but none has manage to emulate the consistent charm of the USA series.
Beneath the buffoonery and formulaic mystery structure, however, Monk was quite serious, and Shaloub's sympathetic but never smarmy depiction of the central character was an important part of its effect. In fact, the show lost a bit of its charm in the past year or so, as Adrian Monk became even more annoying and self-absorbed, with his quirky obsessiveness sometimes degenerating into mere selfishness and peevishness.
That was probably not intentional on the producers' part, and there's good reason to hope that they've righted the ship for the new season. Breckman was quoted in USA Today as being fully aware of the 1970s sensibility of the show and correctly seeing it as a virtue:
"In many ways it's a very retro, very '70s kind of show" that's just not seen these days on network TV. "The pace of the show is slower than most other shows, the humor is quirkier and a little more gentle. I wear this as a badge of honor."
In addition, the show is ending not because of a loss of quality or audience appeal: the ratings are still about as strong as ever, averaging more than five million viewers. USA decided to call an end to the show because production costs were rising beyond the ability to support it. That might seem a cold decision, but it's the right one. Costs rise because the people involved in the production are able to demand more money, and if they really want to continue, they can stop pressing for higher salaries each year. (Not that that would ever happen.)
And given the occasional minor missteps in last year's episodes, it's probably best for all if Monk stops while its makers are still able to keep the quality high. In addition, the knowledge that this is their last year at it may well concentrate their minds admirably and lead to a very strong final season. The aforementioned USA Today article quoted Breckman as saying, "I want to leave viewers absolutely satisfied, and I want to pay back their loyalty." Longtime viewers will also be glad to hear that Bitty Schramm will make an appearance this season, reprising her role as Sharona, Monk's assistant during the first two seasons of the show.
A successful final season would allow us to hope that there might be the occasional Monk TV movie in the future (especially given the bigger budgets the format can accommodate), as with other successful mystery shows such as Columbo; Murder, She Wrote; and Jonathan Creek.
That would be a consummation devoutly to be wished. In the meantime, sixteen more episodes of Monk, plus resolution of the major story lines, is a fine prospect indeed, as is the new season of Psych.
Welcome to the world of the corruptocrats, ethically-challenged public officials who think freedom means license, morals are for morons, and everything is for sale — up to and including national sovereignty.
If you haven't been following developments on super-blogger Michelle Malkin's website lately, then the revelations contained in Culture of Corruption could have the mind-clearing effect of a smack in the face with a wet mackerel. After all, these are our elected officials (except for the "czars") who have sworn to uphold the Constitution and all the laws of the land. Far from it. These people, as the kids used to say, weird me out.
"[W]e prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn't work we use the persuasion of power." — Andy Stern, President of SEIU and supplier of at least $27 million to the Obama campaign.
This book pulls together the familiar and not-so-familiar pieces of the transition in crisis to force Obama hagiographers to confront an alternate narrative. A reality-based narrative. A narrative of incompetence, nepotism, influence-peddling, and self-dealing that defies the stubborn myth that Barack Obama is the One True Agent of Hope and Change.
(Parenthetically, we should emphasize that while she correctly nails some Republicans in passing for their own misdeeds, her main focus is on the current Democrat administration. We might add that Republicans aspiring to stratospheric levels of corruption could learn a thing or two from the Democrats — they make anything the Repubs have done pale in comparison.)
Ah, yes, Hope and Change, the end of the old ways of doing things in Washington, a fresh break from the stale, ossified power structure — weren't these the promised benefits of pulling the lever for The One? Not so fast:
A comprehensive look at the men and women serving Barack Obama, however, exudes the freshness of a bologna sandwich left in a Lincoln Town Car parked in the muggy heat of Washington, D. C., in the middle of August with the windows rolled up for a week. Within days of President Obama's swearing in, the lemon-fresh scent of "Hope and Change" had been overpowered by the fetid odor of Beltway swamp business as usual.
Any instances of bipartisanship that you might detect occurring on Capitol Hill, as Michelle points out, almost always mutually serve the two parties' self-interest — and on such rare occasions Average Joe and Jane Citizen get it in the neck:
... donkeys and elephants have always come together in the spirit of expanding government, rolling logs, and barreling pork.
It's the Chicago Way writ large:
In the Chicago patronage culture that made Michelle Obama, the color that matters most is neither black nor white, it is green — the color of money.
To get things done their way without much fanfare, the new administration has decided to do an end run around the Constitution's system of checks and balances by adopting the transparency-nullifying czar approach to governing — and that's also the Chicago Way:
In effect, the Obama administration has created a two-tiered government — fronted by Cabinet secretaries able to withstand public scrutiny (some of them, just barely) and run behind the scenes by shadow secretaries with broad powers beyond the reach of congressional accountability .... Obama's czar class ... operates by different rules and different ethics. Unchecked, these shadow despots with spotty records could wreak major havoc on the economy.
Things couldn't have gotten this bad, however, without the widespread incuriosity on the part of American citizens (helped along, in large part, by the somnifacient "reporting" by an uncritical media culture that still experiences a thrill up its collective leg when contemplating the wonders of The One):
As is so often the case in political life, the scandal isn't necessarily what's illegal — the scandal is what's legal.
Take for instance Chris Dodd, the man pushing for the $300 billion mortgage industry bailout; if ever there was a plainer example of conflict of interest in America's history, we don't know of it:
Everything you need to know about the befouling of the Beltway swamp can be found in the rise and fall of Chris Dodd — and in Barack Obama's affirmation [to support Dodd's re-election] of his "extraordinary record of accomplishment."
As bad as Dodd is, however, his ability to endanger Americans' lives directly is greatly limited in comparison with the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. If a nuke detonates over New York, it just could be due to her incompetence — oh, and let's not forget her jet-setting loose cannon of a husband. With Hill and Bill, it's buy one and get one free. These days Bubba is more inclined to hobnob with international financiers and well-heeled dictators than chicken farmers. Is it possible that Bill's overseas patrons might be able to influence Hill's decision-making in Foggy Bottom? Do bears go in the woods?
By all means, read Culture of Corruption. If you're a wide-eyed Obamanaut, you might change your mind.
Daniel Crandall examines the ugly face behind the mask of phony compassion that sells modern liberal elitism.
It is not often that we really get to see into a Modern Liberal’s mind, through the constant fog of euphemisms, evasions, and outright lies. Only over beers will they divulge their deepest, darkest secrets. Most of the time, the public is fed a steady diet of platitudes about tolerance and acceptance and dialog. We should, therefore, thank the mod-liberal Jeffrey Wells for allowing us a glimpse into what’s really going on in their heads.
Following up on his defense of McCarthyite tactics against the actor Jon Voight, who dared to dissent from Hollywood’s Liberal Party line, Jeff Wells lets us know that, deep down where the wild things hide, he thinks “extermination of the right [sic] would theoretically be a reasonably good thing.” Of course, he is quick to add that he is “kidding.”
But is he? Consider the evidence:
[C]onservative righties are essentially defined by selfishness. Because they're basically the party of "me first, taking care of my own family, the less fortunate need to get their act together and work harder, darker-skinned people are entitled to the good life but a lot of them don't seem to really get it like we do, I-don't-know-about-that-global-warming-stuff, I like to play golf and drive my SUV to the hardware store or the country club and do whatever the hell I want within the bounds of reason because that's what rugged American individualists get to do," etc.
[R]ighties are basically bastards and social Darwinians who live by their belief that the world is for the few.…” [emphasis in original]
Pointing out that this diatribe flies in the face of facts may be lost on Mr. Wells. Not only does it ignore facts, its opening salvo is a self-contradiction. How does a mother or father exhibit a “me first” attitude while also “taking care of [their] ow family?”
A father will sacrifice his working life, day after day after day, at a job he may very well despise, in order to provide for his family. A mother may give up her career so she can stay at home in order to raise and, more than likely, home school the children. This is a “me first” attitude? To quote Tom Hanks in Big, “I don’t get it.”
In addition, it's difficult to see how ignorant creationist Christians, who make up much of the American right, can be "social Darwinians." The two philosophies tend to be rather at odds with each other these days. Perhaps he hasn't noticed that.
Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.
Suggesting this book presumes, of course, that Mr. Wells might actually read something other than the New York Times and Hollywood tabloids, which may be a bit of excessive generosity on my part. Oops, looks like my “conservative rightie” selfishness may be slipping.
Wells, like most Modern American Liberals, generally refuses to use “absolute moralist terms like ‘good’ and ‘evil’,” but when it comes to describing conservatives, he will indulge in absolutes simply to “communicate with people.”
One can therefore say that the essential core quality that has to exist as a behavioral platform for evil to flourish is selfishness. Selfishness—"not them but me, not the greater good but mine"—is where all bad and ugly things begin. [Um, what about lack of information, stupidity, adherence to distorted ideologies, etc.? Oh, wait, those are all things that plague mod-liberals, not ordinary people. Never mind.][T]herefore … righties are … evil. [again, emphasis in original]
It is refreshing to see a Modern American Liberal come right out and say what we all know most of them are thinking. Clarity over agreement, as Dennis Prager always says.
Later in his article, Wells attempts to withdraw the charge that conservatives are evil by saying, “their core instincts and beliefs allow for a behavioral climate and philosophy that feeds and winks at the essence of evil.” So we are not evil, per se, you see. We simply Foster an Environment That Allows Evil to Flourish. Well, I’m glad we got that cleared up.
Wells, however, is just getting warmed up. “Righties”:
only care about their own rice bowl. Because they're still stone cold in love with the idea of being John Wayne on horseback with a rifle at the ready, and because their party is the house that welcomes and pays lip service to all the ignorant crazies out there—the beer-gut yahoos and birthers and anti-stem-cell researchers, Minutemen and hee-haw Christians (which is to say fantasists who need to believe in absurd mythology in order to embrace morality). They are the party of "hey, what about the way things used to be when rock-solid white people basically controlled everything?
This is so rich in self-righteousness, stupidity, and illusions it’s worth looking at closely:
“only care about their own rice bowl”—except when we’re voluntarily handing it over to the poor who are ignored and kept in poverty by government programs created by Modern American Liberals, and when the modlibs are wresting it from our grasp to empty it into the government’s coffers.
“Because they're still stone cold in love with the idea of being John Wayne on horseback with a rifle at the ready”—meaning, standing in defense of those who cannot or will not defend themselves.
"and because their party is the house that welcomes and pays lip service to all the ignorant crazies out there—the beer-gut yahoos and birthers”—the birthers are a little nutty, I’ll grant him that; but Wells’s notion that Michael Moore and the Soros crowd are anything other than abysmally ignorant and crazy immediately disproves any claim to sanity on his part.
“and anti-stem-cell researchers”—except, well, all of us on the right, as we all strongly support adult stem cell research, which, together with core blood stem cells, is the only stem cell research that has actually produced positive results.
"Minutemen and hee-haw Christians (which is to say fantasists who need to believe in absurd mythology in order to embrace morality)”—what would a modlib screed be without a shot at Christians, who will respond by praying for Mr. Wells’ soul?
"They are the party of ‘hey, what about the way things used to be when rock-solid white people basically controlled everything"—right, as in the perfect, Democrat-controlled South until a bunch of white, “rightie” Republicans got together and passed civil rights legislation.
Modern Liberals, Wells tells us, are the epitome of all that is good and pure. Only they “will address the financial plundering of the last 30 years.” Only they “will stop or least slow the advance of global pollution.” Ultimately, Wells admits,
In a perfect liberal world, the selfishness of the truly obstinate righties … would simply not be tolerated any more.
Given how conservatives are currently so well tolerated in the classroom, the film production office, the television studio, the newsroom, and at college faculty meetings, it strikes me that Modern Liberals have already created the “perfect liberal world.”
So what’s Wells’ problem? Liberals just haven’t gone far enough. “In a perfect liberal world” conservatives would not only not be tolerated, programs would be established to “[e]xterminate, forbid or significantly reduce selfishness,” which would result in “a better world. Therefore the extermination of the right would theoretically be a reasonably good thing.”
If Jeffrey Wells “ran things they would all be rounded up and sent to green internment camps for reeducation,” he says.
Perhaps realizing just how much the suds have gone to his head, Wells adds, immediately after that last sentence, “All right, I'm kidding.”
Not buying it, Mr. Wells. That’s an awful lot of bile, hatred, vitriol, and verbal machine-gun-pointing to wave away with an offhand “I’m kidding.” Plus, none of it is the slightest bit humorous. George Carlin you ain't.
If only Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Mugabe, Ahmadinejad etc., etc., etc. had added that little "I'm kidding" after their mass murders. Maybe then we would not have needed all those John Wayne types standing at the wall, “with a rifle at the ready” willing to give their very lives to stop tyrants from creating their “perfect liberal worlds.” Then all these conservative “righties” wouldn’t be around to stand in the way of the modlibs' brilliant stabs at social perfection, such as cap & trade and national health insurance.
After his preferred, Marxist-style extermination of all the rude Americans who stubbornly stand in the way of his brilliant schemes for all of mankind, the only thing that might remain at which Wells could vent his spleen would be the Muslim “fantasists who need to believe in absurd mythology in order to embrace morality,” whom he somehow fails to consider in his screed.
That presumes, of course, that those particular “fantasists” would allow Mr. Wells to keep using up oxygen.When they came after him, he might develop an appreciation for all those John Wayne types who keep the rest of us safe. If not for their protection of our freedoms, we would never know what Modern Liberals will honestly admit “over beers.”
It rather makes you wonder what the Beer Summit would have been like without Officer Crowley’s presence.
TCM will be showing a marathon of Harold Lloyd movies on Wednesday and Thursday, August 5th and 6th. They feature Harold in both silent and talking films, 19 in all.
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Wednesday—August 5th
6:00 AM—Bumping into Broadway (1919) In this silent film, a young playwright spends his last cent to pay the rent for a struggling actress. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels, Gus Leonard. Dir: Hal Roach. C-25 mins, TV-G
6:30 AM—From Hand to Mouth (1919) In this silent film, a young burglar tries to save an heiress from kidnappers. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Snub Pollard. Dir: Alfred J. Goulding, Hal Roach. BW-22 mins, TV-G
7:00 AM—Number, Please? (1920) In this silent short, a young man chases his girlfriend's dog around a seaside resort. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Roy Brooks. Dir: Hal Roach BW-25 mins, TV-G
7:30 AM—A Sailor-Made Man (1921) In this silent film, a feckless young man joins the Navy to prove himself worthy of the girl he loves. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Noah Young. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer. BW-47 mins, TV-G
8:30 AM—Grandma's Boy (1922) In this silent film, a young coward thinks a magical charm can make him a hero. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Anna Townsend. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer. BW-56 mins, TV-G
9:30 AM—Dr. Jack (1922) In this silent film, a naive country doctor fights to save the woman he loves from a crooked specialist. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, John T. Prince. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. BW-60 mins, TV-G
10:30 AM—Safety Last! (1923) In this silent film, a small-town boy out to impress his girlfriend scales a skyscraper in the big city. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Noah Young. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. BW-73 mins, TV-G
12:00 PM—Why Worry? (1923) In this silent film, a rich hypochondriac on vacation in the tropics gets mixed up with revolutionaries. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, John Aasen. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. BW-63 mins, TV-G
1:15 PM—Girl Shy (1924) In this silent film, a small-town boy raises a ruckus when he writes a book about how to handle women. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Richard Daniels. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. BW-80 mins, TV-G
2:45 PM—Hot Water (1924) In this silent film, a newlywed husband has in-law problems. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Josephine Crowell. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. BW-60 mins, TV-G
3:45 PM—The Freshman (1925) In this silent film, a naive college boy tries to join the football team after making a fool out of himself. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer. BW-76 mins, TV-G
5:15 PM—For Heaven's Sake (1926) In this silent film, a millionaire tries to help save souls after he falls for a young mission-worker. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Noah Young. Dir: Sam Taylor. BW-58 mins, TV-G
6:30 PM—The Kid Brother (1927) In this silent film, the weakling in a family of he-men tries to prove his mettle. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Walter James. Dir: Ted Wilde, J. A. Howe. BW-82 mins, TV-G
8:00 PM—Speedy (1928) In this silent film, a young man helps his girlfriend save the family trolley business. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Ann Christy, Babe Ruth. Dir: Ted Wilde. BW-86 mins, TV-G
9:30 PM—Welcome Danger (1929) A gentle botany student has to toughen up to replace his father as chief of police. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Barbara Kent, Noah Young. Dir: Clyde Bruckman, Malcolm St. Clair. BW-115 mins, TV-G
11:30 PM—Feet First (1930) A shoe salesman's involvement with a band of crooks leaves him dangling from the side of a tall building. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Robert McWade, Barbara Kent. Dir: Clyde Bruckman. BW-91 mins, TV-G
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Thursday—August 6th
1:15 AM—Movie Crazy (1932) A stagestruck young actor accidentally receives somebody else's invitation to test in Hollywood. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Constance Cummings, Kenneth Thomson. Dir: Clyde Bruckman. BW-96 mins, TV-G
3:00 AM—The Milky Way (1936) A mild-mannered milkman stumbles onto a career in the boxing ring. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Adolphe Menjou, Verree Teasdale. Dir: Leo McCarey. BW-88 mins, TV-G
4:30 AM—The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) When he loses his job, a middle-aged bookkeeper goes out on the town. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jimmy Conlin, Raymond Walburn. Dir: Preston Sturges. BW-90 mins, TV-14
Weak 'Funny People' Box Office Shows What Audiences Really Want
Funny People got off to a poor start at the U.S. box office this past weekend. It shows that what audiences are really looking for is edification and enjoyment, not ambitious vulgarity.
Weighed down by a depressing premise made all too apparent by the theatrical trailer and advance publicity which made the film's title too obviously sarcastic, Jud Apatow's Funny People opened relatively poorly at the U.S. box office, taking in only $23.4 million. That was good enough to finish at the top of the heap for the weekend, but was the lowest number one opener since Yes Man last year.
Funny People showed much less audience draw than the great majority of Apatow's and actor Adam Sandler's previous efforts, and its failure to connect big with audiences cannot be blamed on any recent disappointments. Apatow's Knocked Up and Sandler's Bedtime Stories were both excellent films that did very well at the box office.
The magnitude of the disappointment for the Funny People writer-director and its star was summed up well by Reuters:
* This will likely be the eighth straight movie that Apatow produced that failed to top $100 million. ("Step Brothers" and "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," the latter of which he also wrote, just reached the mark but didn't surpass it.)
* Opening weekend has been a hallmark of Apatow in his robust years. But only two of these past eight films opened to at least $30 million -- after the three previous pictures all did.
* This month marks exactly two years since Apatow Prods. had a bona fide breakout along the lines of a "Talladega Nights" or "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" -- the Greg Mottola-directed "Superbad," which earned $121 million.
* After "Virgin" and "Knocked Up," Apatow was touted for his rare ability to bring overseas audiences to U.S. comedies. That was then, this is now. Outside of "Zohan," none of his previous seven pictures have topped $150 million internationally. "Funny People" isn't likely to change that.
I haven't yet seen the film, but it seems likely that this is a misstep on Apatow's part and not a portent of inevitable things to come. It's always tempting for comedians to attempt overtly serious projects, but Funny People is nothing like Woody Allen's lugobrious and overwrought Interiors.It's clear that Apatow tried to be funny in this film, and the inclusion of serious themes is certainly in line with the other films he has directed, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.
Sandler, of course, has done films such as Punch-Drunk Love and Spanglish but always managed to get back to what he does best. Both Sandler and Apatow have exemplified the contemporary habit of conveying positive ideas and moral messages through works of culture employing vulgar and trashy surface elements. The shortcoming of Funny People was an evident failure to assure audiences that the vulgarity and messages would be placed in an enjoyable dramatic and comic context.
That suggests that Funny People is more of a bump in the road for both filmmakers, and that they'll both be able to move forward from the relative disappointment of their current film. However, the trailers and other publicity for their next project will have to make it clear that it offers audiences the same sort of enjoyment and edification their previous films have given.
Filmmakers in general must learn that vulgarity, explicit sexual content, absurd story lines, mad violence, and the like are not what appeal to most of their audience. Filmgoers attend movies with such content because of the other good things in the films, specifically the positive messages and aesthetic enjoyment to be found behind the trashy surface nonsense. Emphasizing the former is the way to both artistic and audience success.
In a culture that openly celebrates vulgarity, mistaking it for authenticity, it's difficult for artisans and audiences alike to see what really makes for good culture, including good popular culture. But the market sends strong signals, and filmmakers and other culturemakers do well to listen and learn.
This week: * one of Hitler's fan clubs tries for a comeback (Monday); * Glenn Ford looks at life from both sides of the law (all day Friday); * James Coburn is also sometimes good, sometimes bad (Tuesday and early Wednesday); * and even Harold Lloyd suffers legal entanglements (Wednesday).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Monday—August 3rd
12:30 AM—The Boys from Brazil (1978) A Nazi hunter tracks a mad scientist out to bring back Hitler. Cast: Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason. Dir: Franklin J. Schaffner. C-125 mins, TV-MA, Letterbox Format
2:45 AM—Secret Mission (1942) Two British Intelligence agents infiltrate occupied France to learn the Germans' secrets. Cast: Hugh Williams, Michael Wilding, James Mason. Dir: Harold French. BW-94 mins.
4:15 AM—They Met in the Dark (1943) A naval commander tries to find the beautiful spy who tricked him into revealing secrets. Cast: James Mason, Joyce Howard, Tom Walls. Dir: Carl Lamac. BW-91 mins.
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Tuesday—August 4th
6:00 AM—Face of a Fugitive (1959) A man framed for murder tries to build a new life after escaping the law. Cast: Fred MacMurray, Alan Baxter, James Coburn. Dir: Paul Wendkos. C-81 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
11:30 AM—Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966) A sophisticated crook mounts an intricate plan to rob an airport bank. Cast: James Coburn, Camilla Sparv, Harrison Ford. Dir: Bernard Girard. C-107 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
1:30 PM—The Carey Treatment (1972) A doctor uncovers a hotbed of corruption when he tries to clear a colleague of a murder charge. Cast: James Coburn, Jennifer O'Neill, Skye Aubrey. Dir: Blake Edwards. C-101 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format
8:00 PM—The President's Analyst (1967) A psychiatrist treating the president becomes a pawn in international espionage. Cast: James Coburn, Godfrey Cambridge, Severn Darden. Dir: Theodore J. Flicker. C-103 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format
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Wednesday—August 5th
4:15 AM—Harry in Your Pocket (1973) Three super-pickpockets join forces. Cast: James Coburn, Walter Pidgeon, Michael Sarrazin. Dir: Bruce Geller. C-103 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
6:30 AM—From Hand to Mouth (1919) In this silent film, a young burglar tries to save an heiress from kidnappers. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Snub Pollard. Dir: Alfred J. Goulding, Hal Roach. BW-22 mins, TV-G
9:30 AM—Dr. Jack (1922) In this silent film, a naive country doctor fights to save the woman he loves from a crooked specialist. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, John T. Prince. Dir: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. BW-60 mins, TV-G
9:30 PM—Welcome Danger (1929) A gentle botany student has to toughen up to replace his father as chief of police. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Barbara Kent, Noah Young. Dir: Clyde Bruckman, Malcolm St. Clair. BW-115 mins, TV-G
11:30 PM—Feet First (1930) A shoe salesman's involvement with a band of crooks leaves him dangling from the side of a tall building. Cast: Harold Lloyd, Robert McWade, Barbara Kent. Dir: Clyde Bruckman. BW-91 mins, TV-G
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Thursday—August 6th
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Friday—August 7th
6:00 AM—Convicted Woman (1940) An innocent woman sent to prison becomes the focus of a prison-reform movement. Cast: Rochelle Hudson, Frieda Inescort, Glenn Ford. Dir: Nick Grinde. BW-65 mins, TV-PG
3:00 PM—Mr. Soft Touch (1949) After being betrayed, a gangster hangs out in a settlement house while seeking revenge. Cast: Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, John Ireland. Dir: Gordon Douglas, Henry Levin. BW-93 mins, TV-G
4:45 PM—Framed (1947) A femme fatale lures an unemployed man into helping her with a criminal scheme. Cast: Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Barry Sullivan. Dir: Richard Wallace. BW-82 mins, TV-PG
6:15 PM—Convicted (1950) A prison warden fights to prove one of his inmates was wrongly convicted. Cast: Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford, Dorothy Malone. Dir: Henry Levin. BW-91 mins, TV-PG, CC
8:00 PM—Gilda (1946) A gambler discovers an old flame in South America, but she's married to his new boss. Cast: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready. Dir: Charles Vidor. BW-110 mins, TV-PG, CC
10:00 PM—The Undercover Man (1949) A treasury agent tries to convict a ruthless mobster of tax evasion. Cast: Glenn Ford, Nina Foch, James Whitmore. Dir: Joseph H. Lewis. BW-84 mins, TV-PG
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Saturday—August 8th
7:00 AM—Pocketful of Miracles (1961) A good-hearted gangster turns an old apple seller into a society matron so she can impress her daughter. Cast: Bette Davis, Glenn Ford, Hope Lange. Dir: Frank Capra. C-137 mins, TV-G, CC, Letterbox Format
12:30 PM—Marked Woman (1937) A crusading DA fights to get a nightclub hostess to testify against her gangster boss. Cast: Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Lola Lane. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. BW-97 mins, TV-G, CC
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Sunday—August 9th
12:00 AM—The Letter (1940) A woman claims to have killed in self-defense, until a blackmailer turns up with incriminating evidence. Cast: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson. Dir: William Wyler. BW-95 mins, TV-PG, CC
6:00 PM—To Catch a Thief (1955) A retired cat burglar fights to clear himself of a series of Riviera robberies committed in his style. Cast: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis. Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. C-106 mins, TV-G, CC, Letterbox Format
8:00 PM—Notorious (1946) A U.S. agent recruits a German expatriate to infiltrate a Nazi spy ring in Brazil. Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains. Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. BW-101 mins, TV-PG, CC
For starters, McChesney notes "the media is one of the key areas in society where power is exercised, reinforced and contested." And, though McChesney fancies himself a "progressive," he has a great affinity for the media structure of the 19th century.
