I have written previously in this publication about the French film director Eric Rohmer (http://stkarnick.com/?p=4963) .  Rohmer (1920-2010) was a widely and deeply cultured man and his  marvellous cinema is one of the most beautiful and intelligent.  Its focus is on character more than plot and relies heavily on dialogue while at the same time is sensitive to the beauty of the world. Before becoming a full-time filmmaker, he was a critic and editor of Cahiers du Cinema, one of the most influential journals of film criticism.  This collection of eighteen interviews, chronologically arranged, published by the University Press of Mississippi, is a treasure trove for any admirer of Rohmer’s cinema.  The interviews, taken together, are wide-ranging in which plot, theme, philosophy, painting,  literature, and  technical issues all are discussed  For example,  his restrained and elegant  style is so evident that it is interesting to learn how hard he worked to vary dialogue or that he sometimes relied upon his actors’ improvisations.  In a late interview he talks about his view of the importance of chance  in film-making, “”If you want to dominate everything, it doesn’t work.”

As I have  said, Rohmer’s films are character studies (“finding a certain truth about each character”) but they take place within a world that he loves.  In one interview, he says, “It’s the cosmos as a perfect work of art and as a natural marvel which attracts me…This feeling about nature that I’ve always deeply felt I find difficult to integrate into my films which are always more psychological and morose.”  In a later interview he states, “…my love of cinema itself springs from my love of nature.”

Rohmer is an open interviewee, though he does not, thank Heaven, enter  the confessional mode.  He is not shy of admitting he is a Catholic and something of an environmentalist, but he avoids  didacticism in his films and these interviews.    He has definite tastes but does not think his way of making films is the only legitimate one. He often goes off on tangents and sometimes contradicts himself.  He is truly intellectual but not cut off from instinct and never dry or pedantic.  The sly wit so often encountered in his films sometimes manifests itself,  for example, when he says that one reason his films do so well in the U.S. is that the subtitles eliminate the nuance of the dialogue.

If we learn more about Rohmer’s cinema than Rohmer the man in these interviews, that is probably because that is what he wanted.  I once came close to meeting Rohmer but never did.  I am glad for the publication of this book as a kind of substitute.

 [Weather] said, “Look, whatever – I’m not talking about all of that. I’m talking about our daughter.”

“I know you are,” Lucas said. “And like I said, we’re all a little crazy, but basically, and overall, Letty’s okay.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s just like me,” Lucas said. “And I’m okay, mostly.”

I’ve praised John Sandford’s “Prey” novels, starring Minnesota state cop Lucas Davenport, more than once in this blog. It’s a pleasure to be able to report that Stolen Prey, the latest volume in paperback, maintains the high quality of a series that a lesser writer might have gotten lazy with.

My main complaint – though I think I understand his reasons – is that author Sandford starts the story off with a truly appalling crime – the torture and rape murders of a family of four in a suburban Minneapolis home. Gut-wrenching crimes have become an earmark of the Prey series, but I don’t think the story would have lost a lot if the kids had been left out of it. At least the family’s suffering is over by the time we arrive at the murder scene.

Having got past that, the rest of the ride is excellent. The police are convinced that this is the work of a Mexican drug gang, though they can’t figure out what the murdered father – an investment manager – could have had to do with that. The FBI and the DEA join in the investigation, along with a male/female Mexican police team.

Stolen Prey is a police procedural rather than a mystery – we know early on who did the murders and why – but there are still plenty of surprises neatly worked into the plot. An odd collection of American computer criminals, in above their heads, manage to be both comic, oddly endearing, and (mostly ) tragic.

There’s also a semicomic subplot about Lucas hunting – through his subordinate Virgil Flowers, hero of other Sandford novels – a couple of muggers who robbed him at an ATM and broke his arm. They are soon located buying large quantities of horse manure in southern Minnesota. Loud noises ensue.

The final showdown centers on Letty, Lucas’ adopted daughter, whose character and relationship with him have become part of what keeps this series fresh.

Another gratifying aspect of the story is that Sandford pauses, at a couple of points, to make comments on the mystery genre and his own characters that are rather illuminating.

Recommended, with cautions for language, violence, and disturbing content. There is also a religious character who may be troubling to some Christian readers, though I didn’t take his as a generalizable case.

Lars Walker is the author of several published fantasy novels, the latest of which is an e-book, Hailstone Mountain.

“It pains me to say I can’t speak to that one either. But that’s an —” Miller said.

“You don’t know whether or not that would be an appropriate question to ask an applicant?” Schock interrupted Miller.

“Speaking outside of this case, which I don’t know anything about, it would surprise me that that question was asked,” Miller said.

Note that Miller cannot bring himself simply to say that such a thing would be wrong. Perhaps it did not occur to him. Or if it did, he considered it too dangerous a thing to say. This is the Alice in Wonderland world in which we find ourselves when under rule by socialist-progressive statists.

This incident was just another in a series of appalling revelations of the Obama administration’s IRS targeting harassment against groups and individuals believed to be unfriendly toward the president’s political programs. Like the Benghazi cover-up and the illegal prying into business and personal communications of people employed by the Associated Press (done, according to reports, because the White House was incensed by the timing of an AP story), this record of government intimidation is simply corrupt Chicago politics on a national scale.

The essence of Chicago machine politics is simple: give plenty of taxpayer-extracted gifts to your friends (Wall Street, Hollywood, medical providers, Silicon Valley, auto unions, wind and solar power developers, teachers unions, etc., etc., etc., in the current president’s case) and punish your enemies ruthlessly, with your enemies defined as anyone who stands in the way of your agenda, in any way, regardless of any other considerations such as their innocence of actual wrongdoing.

Thus the IRS’s Chicago-style outrages: “Nice little nonprofit organization you got there, buddy. It would be a shame if . . . something happened to it” . . .

That is statism in a nutshell.

Lee would have to be mad to send his divisions across that field. And Hunt was sure he would do it.

When I finished reading Ralph Peters’ Civil War novel Cain at Gettysburg, I almost checked my clothing for blood spatter.

Up until now Michael Shaara’s epic novel The Killer Angels has been considered not only the best Gettysburg novel ever written, but the best possible Gettysburg novel.

It’s been a long time since I read Shaara’s book, but I’m fairly certain that, for all its virtues, it didn’t have anything like the impact on me that Cain at Gettysburg did.

Cain at Gettysburg is a tactile book. It’s written at eye level – sometimes ground level – and leaves a powerful – occasionally sickening – impression of the actual experience of the men involved, generals and common soldiers alike. We are never far from the smells of gunpowder and dysentery and decomposing bodies. We feel the itch of the uniforms, the burning heat of the July sun, and the thirst and hunger of men who can never get sufficient clean water or food.

The characters, most of them real historical characters, come vividly and cantankerously alive. If the book has a villain, it’s probably Gen. Daniel Sickles, the New York politician soldier who nearly loses the battle singlehanded on the second day through blatant disregard of orders. But another villain – in the sense of being responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths, is Gen. Robert E. Lee, out of sorts and short on sleep, and suffering from loose bowels. For all his genius and virtue, which are never denied, the man does not see the world as it is. Southrons must always defeat northerners, he is certain, because they’re simply superior, and Virginians are the pinnacle of all. That naïve faith leads him into disastrous decisions.

The hero must be Gen. George Gordon Meade, the dour, detail-oriented northern commander, an engineer who’d rather be building lighthouses. Meade sees everything in terms of numbers and angles of elevation, which allows him to choose his fighting ground effectively and make the most of his superior resources. The denial of his genius on the part of subordinates and historians is, in Peters’ estimation, “the worst injustice ever done to an American general.”

But we also spend plenty of time with common soldiers – a German brigade from Milwaukee saddled with an unjust reputation for cowardice. A platoon from North Carolina led by a sergeant embittered by betrayed love, whose story is raised to the level of metaphor through the persistent existential pestering of a cynical, syphilitic comrade. A company of Irishmen from Pennsylvania led by a sergeant who is nothing less than a sociopath, and all the more valuable for it.

All in all, Ralph Peters’ assessment of the battle is not greatly different from Michael Shaara’s. But the approach is far more visceral.

Cain at Gettysburg is not light reading, and it’s not for the weak of stomach. But if you’re a Civil War buff, eager to re-live the experience of the war from your armchair, you could hardly do better than this.

Cautions for all sorts of stuff.

Lars Walkaer is the author of several published fantasy novels, the latest of which is an e-book, Hailstone Mountain.

Leave it to President Obama’s Chicago pal and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to put it in its most deliciously post-modern form:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “All students should be able to apply for federal student aid within a system that incorporates their unique family dynamics…. [that] provide[s] an inclusive form that reflects the diversity of American families.”

Ah yes, inclusive. So important that we get rid of gender lest we come across as exclusive; can’t have that. And of course we must have diversity, lest we imply the world is still like 1950s conformity, that mother and father and kids stuff. Ain’t progress grand.

Both series began in the late 1920s and lasted for several decades. Both still have very enthusiastic followings (and somewhat separate ones) among current-day aficionados of mystery and suspense fiction. Exemplifying this continuing interest, a new TV series based on the Saint character is in production, which may have contributed to Amazon’s decision to reprint. Adam Rayner will play the title character, Eliza Dushku will appear as his love interest (and presumably be involved in his schemes), and Roger Moore will co-produce. Moore and fellow former TV Saint Ian Ogilvy also will have on-screen roles in the series.

The numbers: 49 titles in the Saint series, 65 Mrs. Bradley books, and 6 other books by Mitchell will be reprinted.

The books will be published under Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint beginning toward the end of this year.

h/t Mystery Fanfare

These professions have been dominated by left-liberals for decades, so what makes 2013 so different? Re-defining marriage has become the cause célèbre of our cultural elites, that’s what. The vehicle of redefining marriage has finally given these elites what they’ve always known and wanted to permeate into the general culture: Christians are bigots! They are narrow minded, hate filled, hypocritical, self-righteous bigots! See, Christians want to keep homosexuals from being happy, from having the same rights as everyone else. Now everyone can see what we’ve always known about these irrational religious fanatics.

I’m not sure when this became the agenda of the radicals that want to redefine marriage, or if it was always such. But at some point along the way in the last several years the redefine marriage PR project came up with the incredibly absurd term “marriage equality.” That pretty much gave the game away: how can any reasonably intelligent well meaning person be against equality! And for quite a few years, not sure exactly how many, before this became about “equality,” the redfiners have been comparing the poor homosexual souls who don’t have a “right” to marriage to blacks who suffered real discrimination and bigotry in America for over 200 years. Most blacks who are not knee jerk liberals take offense at such a specious comparison, but that hasn’t stopped liberals from using it.

The article I linked to above about Tim Tebow is what prompted this little blog post, because I read it right after I read the Wall Street Journal article about the military, and had recently read Hillsdale College’s latest Imprimis piece by R.R. Reno on religious liberty in America. We are coming to a point in American culture where the hatred of Christians by our cultural elites is going to start having real consequences. The vast majority of Americans do not buy into this perversion that Christians are evil bigots, but they are mostly powerless and too busy with their lives to worry much about it. And many of them buy into the business about redefining marriage being the only fair thing to do, ignorant of the heart of the radicals’ real agenda.

What’s amazing about how easily hoodwinked well-intentioned Americans have become on this, is that it is all based on an easily disprovable assertion: that homosexuality, or same-sex attraction is genetically no different than skin color (these people are an inconvenient fact for the ideologues). Think about the implications: I can’t help it, therefore it must be good and right and true, and the entire country must not only accommodate me, it must change to affirm me unequivocally. I can’t help it, therefore it must be hard wired into my genes from conception. I can’t help it, so you’d better accept me, celebrate me, or we will have you banished from polite society; we will bully you until you shut the hell up!

At some point this bizarre chapter in American history will be seen for what it is, and it won’t be the inevitable march of history toward enlightenment because, well, all these young people think it’s just a peachy idea. No, I’m convinced the truth can only be distorted and suppressed for so long, then reality will reassert itself. Much of Western cultural elite at one time thought communism was the inevitable march of history, and now there are only, sadly, a few pathetic outposts of communism left in the world.

Until then, my friends, I proudly wear the Scarlet “C” and the mockery and scorn of the “enlightened” of our time.

At present the market does not provide this option, the Wrap report notes, because the providers of popular content (such as ESPN, the Discovery Channel, and the like) force the cable and satellite distributors to take less-popular channels along with the more desirable ones. This raises prices for everybody. The Wrap’s wording implies that cable companies like this arrangement, though I greatly doubt that they do:

Under the current system, cable companies charge customers for bundles of channels. In turn, media companies package their content to cable providers so that they are forced to pay for  less popular channels in order to get access to more desirable ones like ESPN or AMC.

Instead of letting the market sort this out—which technological change is making inevitable as people’s TV viewing increasingly is done via the Internet instead of or in addition to cable, satellite, and/or broadcast services—McCain wants to put the burden mainly on one party, the cable and satellite providers:

The Arizona Republican is preparing legislation that would let cable customers buy channels individually, according to a report in The Hill.

That phrase “would let cable customers buy channels individually” is both telling and inaccurate. It’s revealing in the use of attractive wording to describe a government mandate, and it’s false in the implication that government can “let” cable customers do this. It cannot; it can only force cable companies to let cable customers buy the channels individually. That is a very different thing altogether, and it will have additional consequences, as we shall see.

McCain’s bill would put some pressure on some programming providers. It would forbid broadcast networks from forcing cable operators to buy the broadcasters’ non-broadcast cable channels in order to get the broadcast channels, thus making it easier to sell them separately. It would also end the sports blackout rule and pull the licenses of broadcasters who remove their programming from broadcast airwaves in order to avoid it being picked up for free by Internet redistributors, which some are considering doing.

McCain’s plan is certainly well-intended, but it would just be more clumsy government intrusion in things that don’t respond well to brute force. Requiring cable operators to offer channels individually, without also requiring all content providers (not just broadcast networks) to unbundle their programs will at best have no effect on prices and at worst will drive up prices and reduce access to programming. In fact, forcing unbundling will almost certainly reduce cable consumers’ access to programming.

Consider the microeconomics of the matter: the cable operator will have to offer the channels individually, but it will still have to pay for many channels en bloc, which means that someone will still have to eat the cost of the unpopular channels. That unlucky party will be the consumer, because what the cable operator will have to do is price the individually offered channels and/or customized tiers at a level that will ensure a profit or go out of business.

That means the customers will still end up paying for the unpopular programs, or the cable companies will shut down, reducing availability of the services. And to the extent that the scheme is successful in forcing unbundling, it will certainly reduce access to programming because the less popular channels will have much less appeal for the cable provider. That consequence, you may be sure, will result in further government intervention to force cable operators to provide the less-popular channels. Prices will “necessarily skyrocket,” in then-Sen. Obama’s famous words, or cable operators will have to leave the business altogether.

A more sensible approach would be for Congress to remove broadcast exclusivity, must-carry, and other such market-distorting laws and regulations and allow the providers and customers to determine what is offered and at what price points. That would provide the best services, lowest prices, and broadest access to programming, but it would require lawmakers to acknowledge that they’re not smarter than the cumulative choices of nearly 300 million people. Hence, it’s exceedingly unlikely.

Certainly a large majority of people who embrace traditional morality based on revealed religion do not accept the notion that marriage is a malleable social construct that can be willy-nilly defined any which way we choose. But redefining marriage is such a bad idea, and as importantly is being done in such a tyrannical way, that some nonreligious people are beginning to sound the alarm.

One such voice comes from Britain and the editor of an online magazine called Spiked, Brendan O’Neill. His piece and subtitle are as follows: “Gay marriage: a case study in conformism: Anyone who values diversity of thought and tolerance of dissent should find the sweeping consensus on gay marriage terrifying.” And he comes from, as he says, a “liberal, secular perspective.”

This is a unique position for a modern liberal to take: He actually is a liberal! How refreshing. Most modern liberals are a stultifyingly conservative lot whose worldview borders on the totalitarian (and I’m being nice). Dissent from the party line is not only frowned upon, but is simply not tolerated. What true liberal wouldn’t be horrified by such a state of affairs? Unfortunately, modern liberals are anything but.

It’s definitely worth reading the entire piece, but a couple paragraphs will give you a good sense of Mr. O’Neill’s perspicacity:

How do we account for this extraordinary consensus, for what is tellingly referred to as the ‘surrender’ to gay marriage by just about everyone in public life? And is it a good thing, evidence that we had a heated debate on a new civil right and the civil rightsy side won? I don’t think so. I don’t think we can even call this a ‘consensus’, since that would imply the voluntaristic coming together of different elements in concord. It’s better described as conformism, the slow but sure sacrifice of critical thinking and dissenting opinion under pressure to accept that which has been defined as a good by the upper echelons of society: gay marriage. Indeed, the gay-marriage campaign provides a case study in conformism, a searing insight into how soft authoritarianism and peer pressure are applied in the modern age to sideline and eventually do away with any view considered overly judgmental, outdated, discriminatory, ‘phobic’, or otherwise beyond the pale. . . .

[T]he extraordinary rise of gay marriage speaks, not to a new spirit of liberty or equality on a par with the civil-rights movements of the 1960s, but rather to the political and moral conformism of our age; to the weirdly judgmental non-judgmentalism of our PC times; to the way in which, in an uncritical era such as ours, ideas can become dogma with alarming ease and speed; to the difficulty of speaking one’s mind or sticking with one’s beliefs at a time when doubt and disagreement are pathologised. Gay marriage brilliantly shows how political narratives are forged these days, and how people are made to accept them. This is a campaign that is elitist in nature, in the sense that, in direct contrast to those civil-rights agitators of old, it came from the top of society down; and it is a campaign which is extremely unforgiving of dissent or disagreement, implicitly, softly demanding acquiescence to its agenda.

Season 1, Episode 37 (37th of 85 total).

First broadcast: 13 June 1952.

Cast: Esther Ralston (The Collector), Don Hanmer (Henry Judson), Jack Warden (Steve), Lewis Charles
(Tony), Sam Locante (Bartender), Bob Williams (Narrator).

Writer: Arthur C. Clarke (story, 1951). Director: Don Medford.

“No criminal in the history of the world had ever possessed such power. It was intoxicating…” — From the original short story.

In his stuffy office Henry Judson does no apparent work — which is understandable, since Henry is a
mid-level criminal sometimes referred to as a fixer. Like middle management in legitimate business, Henry
arranges for things to be done, usually without much personal involvement on his part. Whenever he sees an opportunity for criminal “enterprise,” he fixes things with still lower-level thugs who then do the dirty work.

But on this hot afternoon, he gets very personally involved with a strange but beautiful woman who is willing to give him a hundred thousand dollars to do a job, with another hundred thousand when he completes it.

The job? She gives him a laundry list of things to steal, which includes not only rare books but also some of
the most valuable paintings in the world. Just walk in, pick them up, and walk right out. Piece of cake.

Henry’s skepticism is understandable, of course — until the woman, who insists on being called “The
Collector,” shows him how it’s done.

When Henry woke up that morning he never remotely suspected that before the day was through he would
be using a bracelet to break into a museum and — even more importantly — agonizing over how to spend
the last few precious moments of his life.

Along the way, this story quietly raises a question: Can it be regarded as a crime if someone steals
something in order to save it?

Retrovision has “All the Time in the World” archived here.

Arthur C. Clarke’s original story is online here.

IMDb listing for “All the Time in the World.”

In his book, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, he writes: “This was my first story ever to be
adapted for TV — ABC, 13 June 1952. Although I worked on the script, I have absolutely no recollection
of the programme, and can’t imagine how it was produced in pre-video-tape days!”

——————————

Note: This article first appeared on Steve Lewis‘s Mystery*File weblog.