tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39005933268723891832024-03-05T10:34:33.821-08:00 A Film Over RealityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-48759101905394001032022-09-03T17:34:00.012-07:002022-09-10T14:25:11.416-07:00for a noirish Labor Day: The Breaking Point (1950)<p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> <span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">header photo: Patricia Neal, John Garfield and Juano Hernandez</span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">“if you believe I’m not workin’ hard all day, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">Just step in my shoes and take my place …” <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">“Just Got Paid,”
ZZ Topp</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Film noir is subversive in showing American war heroes
returning home, only to be denied the rights and opportunities they’d supposedly
been fighting for on far shores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile,
they're tantalized by flush criminals and malign office-holders, often allied, one hand washing the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In <i>The Breaking Point</i> (1950), John Garfield is Harry Morgan,
hardworking captain of a rental boat, who descends to dealing with gangsters just to
keep his business viable amid regulations and a sputtering local economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The moral compromises</span> alienate his wife, played by Phyllis Thaxter, who tells him supporting his
family is “the real war.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harry drifts
back to his wartime identity, a man good with a gun, but ultimately must pick a side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Both this film and 1944’s <i>To Have and Have
Not</i>, the first Bogart-Bacall teaming, are loosely based on Ernest Hemingway's <i>The Breaking
Point.</i>)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Most criticism on the Red Scare dutifully avoids specific
films, except the few explicitly mentioned in primary sources surrounding the
Blacklist, but this is mere legalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chronically
divided, we’ve become obsessed with sticking to “proven facts,” as if all Americans
work in a courtroom before retiring to home laboratories (or vice versa).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The <i>truth</i> extends beyond <i>proof</i>, and any discussion
that ignores this is timid and incomplete. In my opinion, the Hollywood Blacklist was provoked <i>specifically</i> by
film noir, an inherently, insistently <i>socialist</i> genre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The alternative is to assume the U.S. Establishment could not tolerate
the occasional advocacy film about farming (<i>The Good Earth</i>, <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i>, <i>Our Vines Have Tender Grapes</i>, et al.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">John Garfield had already made enemies with the leftist, classic
noirs <i>Body and Soul</i> (1947) and <i>Force of Evil</i> (1948), about corruption in professional
boxing and urban rackets, respectively (we could footnote the privation and
adultery driving <i>The Postman Always Rings Twice</i>, <i>Humoresque</i> and <i>Daisy
Kenyon</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The former pair</span> were produced by
Garfield’s own Enterprise Pictures; for the studios, at least, acting as his own producer was salt-in-the-wound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Garfield’s
collaborators were later blacklisted: Robert Rossen (<i>Body and Soul</i>) and
Abraham Polonsky (both films).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Polonsky
fled to Europe, but Rossen tried to save himself by naming names, only to die
embittered in 1966, age 57.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As the winds changed, Garfield, a premier star of the 1940s,
was subjected to withering pressure but refused to buckle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he died of a heart attack at 39, in 1952,
friends blamed the anti-communist witchhunters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As lawyers say, however, correlation is not causation: Garfield had a bout with rheumatic fever as a youth, which left heart damage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Younger viewers, especially, might be interested to note that Garfield,
whose politics would be very liberal even today, felt no need to “play perfect.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Compare Ethan Hawke’s character in <i>Brooklyn’s
Finest</i>, who punches out a fellow cop, as I recall, for making a racist comment
— at a late-night poker game — in his filthy basement.) Garfield’s Harry is indecisive
and morose, snaps at his wife and daughters, and ultimately, breaks his word (like
virtually everyone in this film).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>And</i> he disrespects other ethnicities, as when,
after an abortive smuggling run, he implies Chinese immigrants smell bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Garfield himself reportedly called Patricia
Neal “whore” on-set, as character traits spilled over into real life.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I enjoyed looting the Criterion of <i>The Breaking Point </i>for the above details (and don't mean to ignore director Michael Curtiz, who so embodied the "well-made film" he seems anonymous), watching most of the elegant film twice to understand Harry’s too-simple
motivation: he’s <i>broke</i>. I’ve
lived a middle-class existence, taking the financial safety-net for granted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Harry has a safety-net, too: friends and
loved ones who’ll stand by him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> His way out is to realize </span>he's not alone (an acquaintance of mine says, “If you don’t need help, you’re not trying hard
enough.”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> There's no shame if his</span> wife takes in piece-work, or if he can’t give his friend (Juano
Hernandez) steady employment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s a
decorated veteran, dammit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Everyone has his battles (like the chronic fatigue that kept me from this blog for almost a year). Not everyone enjoys loyal friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It may even be that w</span>ar persists, in part, to give young men a bonding
experience that stays with them for life, stiffening the spine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">At other times, mutual sacrifice takes a (more) peaceful form, as in a labor union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Even i</span>n a
solitary era that claims a "gig economy," union
membership can be as profound a bond as that between soldiers in war, or forged
during years of marriage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the case of an employee union, the consummation
is spelled S-T-R-I-K-E.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-4195845805031957402021-10-30T19:36:00.005-07:002021-12-06T07:27:15.169-08:00underseen for Halloween: Body Bags (1993)<div><i>If we presently feel an inward relief, give thanks to the season, the sole one to grant a certain license: we relinquish the pretense of opposition to a "culture of death." </i></div><div><i>Light and life arrange and justify themselves; it is our vain struggle against dying that needs framing by phrase and fable.</i></div><div><i>Though immersed in an ambitious essay, which I hope to publish while Sol still burns and gravediggers dig soft earth, I pause for my yearly charge, and post for the dreadful day. </i></div><div><br /></div><i><div><i><br /></i></div>Body Bags</i> is an intriguing <i></i>title, if only from the mystique of movies made-for-TV, so often elusive after the initial window. This was a bid for an anthology series for John Carpenter, who'd hammered his way to horror’s 2nd-tier,
thanks to the (still underseen) TV slasher <i>Someone’s Watching Me!</i>, cult faves
like <i>The Fog</i>, and the franchise-furthering <i>Halloween</i> and
<i>The Thing</i>. As Carpenter acolytes, we appreciated his horror populism -- forgiving an excess of published
interviews -- and the way he came back swinging after
creative failures (<i>Village of the Damned</i>, any <i>Halloween</i> with a
number appended).
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOUfawtS6JROqTN2YL0dvaWqA2ScCyGJzzBzlJsaUNu9Mord_Ns9LGqbdtiBNVeA8zq5QY-dG6E-J0NK9mg6lZXzHYky8lRLeThrK4ythHyDPuwTEassITzo_sYq8ectLd45SIHkJ9Ftw/s1200/Body_Bags.PNG" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOUfawtS6JROqTN2YL0dvaWqA2ScCyGJzzBzlJsaUNu9Mord_Ns9LGqbdtiBNVeA8zq5QY-dG6E-J0NK9mg6lZXzHYky8lRLeThrK4ythHyDPuwTEassITzo_sYq8ectLd45SIHkJ9Ftw/s320/Body_Bags.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the pride of Kentucky, John Carpenter<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>As written by the horror duo Billy Brown and Dan Angel (they'd go to series with <i>Night Visions</i>, and with R.L. Stine-based <i>Goosebumps</i> and <i>The Haunting Hour</i>)<i> Body Bags</i> is “worth a look,” successful in the modest goal
of a fun, E.C. Comics gross-out. Still, every subgenre demands a certain amount
of sweat: production values and pacing are good, but the stories
have structural flaws that should’ve been addressed. </div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7S3xDoE_VqO1rIct6-IDVzfwUTIpBgSXZoA4sxCu27rCtvDX6sa67sOsmAbQvoEpBCiP09EZCjEY479lA2oR2pju9dUta-NzREKSuy7Nq1U0_jJQGXAq-Y0Srbgmdzx9FmQ_apjWn69C/s1322/Body+Bags+1993_Datcher.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="1322" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7S3xDoE_VqO1rIct6-IDVzfwUTIpBgSXZoA4sxCu27rCtvDX6sa67sOsmAbQvoEpBCiP09EZCjEY479lA2oR2pju9dUta-NzREKSuy7Nq1U0_jJQGXAq-Y0Srbgmdzx9FmQ_apjWn69C/s320/Body+Bags+1993_Datcher.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anne digs in</td></tr></tbody></table>The opening is the
most cinematic, set at night at a modern gas station (picture a sprawling version of that in the opening of 1953's <i>Crime Wave</i>). The
point-of-view belongs to the improbably attractive young woman in the plexiglass
shelter ringing up customers. Director Carpenter provides high style, as new-hire Anne
(Alex Datcher) fences with late-night customers, from the disarming (David
Naughton of <i>An American Werewolf in London</i>) to repulsive (Wes Craven in a
cameo as a drunk creeper). </div><div><br /></div><div>Datcher is black, Naughton's white, and “The Gas
Station” raises hackles with interracial flirting, but the later violence may be unrelated:
the bad-<span></span>guy seems to kill based on opportunity no motive needed (the twenty-years-past trauma is a cliche, but it works). Still, the villain's real-life lineage touches the origins of horror
cinema, and he meets a satisfying end: even at this full-service shop,
he'll be beyond repair.</div><div><br /></div><div>From here, <i>Body Bags</i> turns to body parts,
first “Hair,” with Stacy Keach. Richard seems to
have it all -- nice apartment, young girlfriend -- but thinks only of his
thinning hair. His solution provides the excuse for memorably grotesque special
effects.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br />
</div>The real problem is the girlfriend, hot-Scot Sheena Easton (initially a singer, Easton was not-bad as an actor but couldn't hide the <i>burrrrr</i>). Like George Costanza, Richard needs a
pre-emptive<i> </i>breakup. Instead he consults an expert, as the script weakly spoofs "the Hair Club for Men,” then a stand-up comedy staple. After a
blissful interlude (think Jack Nicholson in <i>Wolf </i>or Wendell Pierce in "Something With Bite"), experimental plugs are revealed as mere
(scalp) cover, leading to a CGI freakshow, a pocket <i>Starship Troopers</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div>The
hairmonger is David Warner as “Dr. Locke,” nudge. The filmmakers even revive the Cronenbergian casting-for-name (ever notice? it's Samantha
<i>Egg</i>ar having <i>The Brood</i>, Stephen <i>Lack</i> as the prodigal weirdo
in <i>Scanners</i>). Locke’s assistant, naturally, is Debbie Harry (the Blondie
singer). <i>Body Bags'</i> ender "Eye" is a chronicle of baseball
decline; the presence of Britain’s erstwhile supermodel “Twiggy” may be another elbow-to-the-ribs. </div><div><br /></div><div>The connecting theme here is the decline of white-American men (if that’s not too much gravity for a TV-movie with a male Medusa). Descent
continues with the ballplayer, played by Mark Hamill (better known as Luke Skywalker), another bright-horizons space-hero scapegoated into spoof and satire: there’s
William Shatner, of course, but also Adam West,
from<i> Robinson Crusoe on Mars</i> and <i>The Outer Limits</i> "The Invisible
Enemy" to <i>Batman</i>; Martin Landau, from <i>Space:1999 </i>to
<i>Ed Wood</i>; and the<i> Naked Gun</i> franchise's Leslie Nielsen (<i>Forbidden Planet</i>), Tim O'Connor (<i>Buck Rogers in the 25th Century</i>), Fred Ward (<i>The Right Stuff</i>)
and (speaking of horror) O.J. Simpson (<i>Capricorn One</i>). </div><div><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLiSrRpscwy76FJgPN6_JUNVaBcFtlfA4zWThIZbEHxWLHP2-_aw7jU8rIEPn8_JleS8Zobyl27ii8VTW4NWL-ihmNyT61pmh3jBvC1M6_2whC3h6Lu5gnLEQK5JMGoOJywXb0RtnjS3iY/s1600/Body+Bags+1993_Hamill.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="918" data-original-width="1600" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLiSrRpscwy76FJgPN6_JUNVaBcFtlfA4zWThIZbEHxWLHP2-_aw7jU8rIEPn8_JleS8Zobyl27ii8VTW4NWL-ihmNyT61pmh3jBvC1M6_2whC3h6Lu5gnLEQK5JMGoOJywXb0RtnjS3iY/w320-h184/Body+Bags+1993_Hamill.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">have your doctor take a look </td></tr></tbody></table><div>Note the fantastic genres are rarely kind to baseball, a past relic in <i>The Twilight Zone</i> ("Extra Innings") and <i>Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; </i>in <i>The X-Files </i>"The Unnatural," the midcentury game has been infiltrated by aliens. Closer to <i>Body Bags </i>is the infamous E.C. story where human parts provide the diamond essentials (bases, etc.). </div><div><br /></div><div>This "Hands of Orlac" update gives Hamill's character the "Eye" of a dead serial killer, with flashbacks to the killer's abusive childhood. Directed by Tobe Hooper, "Eye" may be the
most "rounded" of the three stories, with a decent setup and payoff. </div><div><br /></div><div>The horror-anthology feature film became rare in the 1990s, perhaps because horror was more common on television. In retrospect, the inception of horror series with continuing characters (<i>Werewolf</i>, <i>Twin Peaks</i>, <i>Millennium</i>) was a sign of our (ongoing) apocalypse. Sustainable ratings remained elusive, so genre anthologies migrated to the thunderdome of cable-TV. </div><div><br /></div><div>A fantastic anthology is the most subversive TV format. In its hit-and-run episodes, <u>anything</u> can happen, to the destruction of the human
race (a frequent indulgence of the 1990s <i>Outer Limits</i>). It's a tempting crystal ball for creatives: George Romero produced <i>Tales from the Darkside</i> and <i>Monsters</i>; restoration would reveal the best as art-TV (my next post: rec's for <i>Darkside</i>). Wes Craven served on the 1980s <i>Twilight Zone</i>, and stabbed at a
semi-anthology with <i>Nightmare Cafe</i>; David Cronenberg directed an episode of
another semi-anthology, Canada's millenarian
<i>Friday the 13th: The Series</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Body Bags</i> seems relatively unambitious, as if Carpenter's best hope for a
series was to feint toward parodic crap, promising a Showtime
equivalent to <i>Tales from the Crypt</i>. Such a disguise may permit brilliant tragedy or social satire, and his proposed title may allude to the <i>Nightmare on Elm Street</i>/<i>Twin Peaks</i> motif "wrapped in plastic." Like most attempts, though, <i>Body Bags</i> was discarded, to fill a single morgue-drawer of evidence. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-76319417979622623002021-03-29T12:21:00.054-07:002021-04-10T10:00:06.942-07:00Island City (TV movie pilot, 1994) score: 2 of 4<p _msthash="348309" _msttexthash="147885296">In this <a href="https://www.popmatters.com/sci-fi-tv-of-the-disco-era-the-grounded-astronaut-2495431670.html?rebelltitem=1">post</a> to <i>Pop Matters</i>, I reviewed Gene Roddenberry's Pax TV movies, in which a post-apocalyptic Earth is ministered to by Pax, a sort of post-U.N. The viewer surrogate is Dylan Hunt who, like Buck Rogers, wakes up after centuries of suspension. In a classic of network passive-aggression, three of these supposed pilots were commissioned, aired and rejected, 1973-5. (Dylan Hunt's story <i>did</i> go to series, sort of: that's the name of the revived hero of <i>Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda</i>, one of two posthumous series developed from Great Bird outlines.)</p><p _msthash="348310" _msttexthash="44514951">In the first PAX movie, 1973's <i>Genesis II</i>, Hunt<i> </i>is played by Alex Cord, with his usual pornstache. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEU0S42LnsXsGw4fMpLgKlyXrzTT-fwvn5CXveeRie7BJnFvFqeq9bVnr2tId75mv50BZhm9RNB4_NOoIByiqRHXKZ1hlTDqIzyJ4lIlHsR_BdzswlZoAvoHR3Pz-n7yVwaH3XK_l0gT22/s968/GenesisII.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="968" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEU0S42LnsXsGw4fMpLgKlyXrzTT-fwvn5CXveeRie7BJnFvFqeq9bVnr2tId75mv50BZhm9RNB4_NOoIByiqRHXKZ1hlTDqIzyJ4lIlHsR_BdzswlZoAvoHR3Pz-n7yVwaH3XK_l0gT22/w200-h149/GenesisII.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td _msthash="32461" _msttexthash="746577" class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dylan Hunt before his long sleep</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> More substantively, I wrote, the suspense is undercut by the <i>name</i> of an otherwise mysterious civilization, the "Tyranians." Their subsequent villainy seems as inevitable as that of <i>the</i> <i>Decepticons</i>. </p><p _msthash="348311" _msttexthash="30610554">Flash-forward to 2021: midway into a history doc, my ears reddened, when I learned of the <i>Tyrrhenians</i>, legendary precursors to the Etruscans (and the Mediterranean between mainland Italy and Sicily/Sardinia is known as the Tyrrhenian Sea). <i>d'ho.</i></p><p _msthash="348312" _msttexthash="118783262">At the risk of self-justification, I <i>still</i> think it doesn't work for <i>Genesis II</i>, in putting the average viewer ahead of the script, if only by an accident of phonetics (the movie never spells the word). Granted, it's Roddenberryesque to veer to controversial theories of Etruscan origins: his was a restless intellect (he named <i>Star Trek: TNG</i> characters after <a href="https://ling.yale.edu/about/history/people/benjamin-lee-whorf">Benjamin Whorf</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Guinan">Texas Guinan</a>). Still, the intriguing backstory would've been better developed for the pilot <u>or</u> saved for Season 1. </p><p style="text-align: center;"><b _msthash="348313" _msttexthash="533520">back to the forbidden zone </b></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div _msthash="46541" _msttexthash="147905355" style="text-align: left;"><span _msthash="969943" _mstmutation="1" _msttexthash="912548">All of which came to mind because 1994's </span><span _msthash="561691" _mstmutation="1" _msttexthash="122689320"><i _istranslated="1" _mstmutation="1">Island City</i> is undone by a similar mistake. It's another TV-movie pilot, with another valiant, post-apocalyptic team sworn to restore civilization. The inventive twist: the catastrophe was neither martial nor ecologic, but side effect of an anti-aging serum, which makes millions into "Recessives," i.e. latter-day cavemen prone to violence. Why not test the wonder-drug more thoroughly? As Sherman Fraser charges in <i _istranslated="1" _mstmutation="1">Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan</i><span _msthash="1506648" _mstmutation="1" _msttexthash="1449240">, "even for TV sf, the science is awfully sloppy."</span></span></div><div _msthash="46541" _msttexthash="31045443" style="text-align: left;"><span _mstmutation="1"><br /></span></div><div _msthash="46541" _msttexthash="31045443" style="text-align: left;"><span _mstmutation="1">The utopian goal of greatly increased longevity </span><i _mstmutation="1">is</i><span _mstmutation="1"> attained, but only for an elite, their lives complicated by a large, hostile underclass. The dynamic varies </span><i _mstmutation="1">Planet of the Apes</i><span _mstmutation="1">, or </span><i _mstmutation="1">The Twilight Zone</i><span _msthash="1512823" _mstmutation="1" _msttexthash="1634646"> "Eye of the Beholder," with aging instead of looks. </span></div><p></p><p _msthash="348315" _msttexthash="57726266" style="text-align: left;">As a series, <i>Island City</i> would've focused on the "normals" who defend their eponymous outpost. The pilot movie spreads itself thin, with action, soap, humor and the figurative commentary for which TV sci-fi is known. It's unwieldy, but the humor is essential: as in the Geico commercials (and short-lived sitcom), modern-day cavemen = funny.</p><p _msthash="348316" _msttexthash="78472290">Even before getting to plotting, flaws: the fx are rather primitive for the '90s, including the backlot-armored vehicles, which recall the Pax movies, or the disposable, Saturday a.m. likes of <i>Ark II</i>. The patrol scenes resort to a disused quarry (or similar), like <i>Blake's 7</i> and <i>Star Trek: Deep Space 9</i>. One character has a teen son hooked on VR (a '90s buzz-concept), while staying within family-show rails. </p><p style="text-align: center;"><b _msthash="348317" _msttexthash="170872">curate's egg</b></p><p _msthash="348318" _msttexthash="103569375">Like the <i>Genesis II</i> name-drop, <i>Island City</i>'s bigotry parallel is intriguing in itself. The team soon adds a sympathetic half-Recessive who, like Spock and Worf, struggles with identity. All of which had become fairly standard (see also the soulful Diggers of <i>Seaquest</i>, the defensive androids of <i>Tekwar</i>), but there's further provocation, in that most of the elite still <i>use</i> the youth drug, necessitating mating-restrictions (compare the art-house <i>Code 46</i>). </p><p _msthash="348319" _msttexthash="71164132">Unfortunately, the pilot merely sideswipes this moral tangle, dropping hints of terrorism, as some norms abstain from the drug on political grounds. Granted, the filmmakers run out of <i>time</i> as they introduce the premise and a half-dozen regular characters. Still, it's all set-up without payoff. It didn't work in 1973, it wasn't going to work in the busy syndication market of 1994. </p><p style="text-align: center;"><b _msthash="348320" _msttexthash="452218">before their big breaks</b></p><p _msthash="348321" _msttexthash="156530374"><i>Island City</i>'s talented cast features an amusing Hollywood synchrony: Brenda Strong and Veanne Cox play long-lost sisters (tough officer and man-hungry refugee, respectively). Each would soon make an impression on <i>Seinfeld</i>, Strong as "braless wonder" Sue Ellen Mischke, and Cox as Toby, the excitable editor. Sitcom viewers will also recognize Gregg 23 (better than clones #1-22, but clumsy) as Eric McCormack of <i>Will and Grace,</i> and trooper Seall is Constance Marie, Angie on <i>George</i> <i>Lopez</i>. One team member persevered in service: Kevin Conroy voiced the animated <i>Batman</i>. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-32788191160179669472021-01-23T13:34:00.009-08:002021-02-06T05:47:09.642-08:00Cloned (1997 TV movie) score: 2.5 (of 4 stars)<p style="text-align: center;">**<i> this review contains spoilers </i>**</p><p>We all have the vices of our virtues, and medical doctors tend
to objectify human beings. Slowly, they may be making the world a de facto unpaid study. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Skye Weston (Elizabeth Perkins) backtracks in the watchable 1997 TV-movie <i>Cloned </i>(dvd out-of-print but available). She and husband
Rick (Bradley Whitford) lost their son a year ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they debate trying again, she glimpses her boy in a shopping district.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(The moment of uncanny echoes <i>Duplicates</i>, a 1992
TV-movie with Gregory Harrison and Kim Greist).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A smart professional, Skye sleuths, finding
evidence of multiple women with identical sons. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She posts to the (primitive) Internet for
help, and when she finds a slew of responses, it remains chilling, despite dial-up
graphics.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Cloned</i> was an NBC film but could pass for
Lifetime. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> As</span> Cascades Gothic, its plot is
less involved than a typical <i>X-Files</i>, which may alienate fans. Still, the movie's frank with the horror of a woman betrayed when most vulnerable, as well as the difficulty in preventing (the return of) human commodification. <i>Cloned</i> was made by veterans of TV-movies, not speculative fiction; perhaps they confused sci-fi with <i>comic book</i> storytelling. If so, their muckraker lacks the scope and visual interest of the latter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Still, it'</span>s grounded by an impressive Perkins, a star of the era (<i>Big</i>, <i>The Flintstones</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Her </span>Skye is stuck in “Anger” stage, though she's not just a scorned mother: the rage issues, we feel, go back. She snaps to See-the-manager mode, her comments more offensive than necessary, as Rick contains the damage. She's actually refreshing, and the film's passive community doesn’t <i>deserve</i> better. <i>Cloned</i> wasn't a pilot (going by Fraser Sherman's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cyborgs-Santa-Claus-Satan-Television/dp/078640793X/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fraser+sherman&qid=1611514462&s=books&sr=1-4">Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan</a></i>), but this Skye may've supported another transit.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Not all's </span>dire: Enrico Colantoni (<i>Just Shoot Me</i>, <i>Veronica Mars</i>) is amusing as security guard Rinker, the cheerfully-evil hired-muscle. (Note the production felt compelled to also cast a <i>good</i> bald man, a federal agent.) Roger Cross, following Ernie Hudson and Joe Morton as “black sci-fi guy," is another security guard, Tina Lifford a white-coated tech, and Scott Paulin the bottom-line shark. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Cloned</i> followed buzz about Dolly the
cloned sheep, named for
Dolly Parton, as modern priests appropriated celebrity to sell vexatious fertility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly, the villains in <i>Cloned</i> aren’t mad scientists but aggressive capitalists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a scene
evoking the same year's <i>Alien: Resurrection</i>, it’s revealed cloning is practice
for the <i>real</i> business, growing replacement organs (the alarm-cycle broadens to <i>The Island of Dr. Moreau/</i>1996, <i>Dirty Pretty Things/</i>2002, and <i>Repo Men/</i>2010). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> When the s</span>ellout fertility expert, Dr. Kozak (Alan
Rosenberg), claims ends justify means, Skye fires back his own words: “First, do no harm.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-20872770552082566122020-10-13T13:53:00.024-07:002021-01-23T08:07:37.649-08:00underseen for Halloween, 2020 (from behind the mask)<p><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;"><i>This year's encomiums include a pair of television-plays of 1973, but with no regard </i><i>to proceedings lately before the eldership in America. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;"><i>As ever, the plays are mere hoarfrost amusements, or if the reader prefers, admonishments before "</i><i>red hour," the tricks or treats. </i></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">Dying Room
Only</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;"> (1973)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">The late Richard
Matheson was one of television's most reliable: he wrote for <i>Twilight Zone</i> and <i>Night Gallery</i>, created the </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">underrated </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">Circle of Fear</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">, and supplied teleplays for various Dan Curtis productions, including both "Kolchak" features. </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">Like the Matheson-Spielberg </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">Duel</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"> (1971), </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">Dying Room Only</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"> is a desert-gothic <i>and</i> a precursor to </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">The Hitcher</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">, </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">The Vanishing</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">Breakdown</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">. More modestly scaled, <i>Dying Room Only</i> has, in addition to Matheson's craft, striking desert photography, and a cast including two Oscar winners.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">An “ordinary”
couple is returning from a road-trip vacation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Wife </span>Cloris Leachman wants to drive 100 miles out-of-the-way to get photos of a native "wikiup" for a school project (the kid's back home). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Husband Dabney Coleman resists; their quarrel is horror's trigger-sin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">In a
culture dependent on racial identity, it’s not unusual for an
American film to be about race even when all characters are <i>white</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> This spousal conflict, referencing</span> Indians, evokes national anxiety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Later, Cloris </span>pokes into a dark storeroom, as if in the national unconscious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">Handled
correctly, such notes create an edge, especially for white viewers: for the conservative, the characters are endangered by their soft-minded <i>disloyalty </i>and<i> condescension</i>. And regardless, they've been identified with <i>genocide</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">When Coleman
disappears, Leachman runs up against clannish locals Ned Beatty (just off the implicitly racial <i>Deliverance</i>) and Ross Martin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Malignity is gradually exposed, in </span>unnerving fashion. The narrative is so hard on the female lead, some may object. Early in 2nd-wave feminism, equality was <i>dead</i> serious -- she's on her own.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">Frankenstein:
The True Story </span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">(1973) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">This film is charged <i>mislabeled,</i> because not faithful to Mary Shelley’s novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Without researching the makers' intent, it's </span>frustrating: if <i>faithfulness</i> were the claim, they could’ve billed it “Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein” (available, in 1973).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">Perhaps the
subtitle is more in reference to <i>metaphor</i> cheek-by-jowl with <i>reality</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Frankenstein: The True Story</i>, originally a prestige miniseries, is very much <i>costume</i> horror. Amid the shocks and trading for parts, we see 17<sup>th</sup> century industry draw motley
laborers from all points, to form new, roiling communities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Historically, t</span>he communities became Frankenstein <i>cultures</i>, often appalling, disowned and self-loathing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> A cultured appreciation for history helps this version be a worthy cousin to Hammer's Frankenstein, then completing its impressive run.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">The cast includes Michael Sarrazin as the Creature and David McCallum as Clerval; Jane Seymour is memorably erotic as Prima.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Top billing goes to James Mason, who'd already been <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i> and on a <i>Journey to the
Center of the Earth</i>, and would groom <i>The Boys from Brazil</i> (these credits bely Charlton Heston as <i>first</i> science-fiction star).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">Mason plays Polidori, a new character (by teleplay writer Christopher Isherwood) named after a real friend of the Shelleys. Although this senior scientist is more
consequential than those in most Frankenstein films,</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"> Polidori does nothing to discourage Victor’s recklessness.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif; mso-spacerun: yes;"> Perhaps the name was too good to waste: a</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"> professed love
of </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">all</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"> implies an </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">actual</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"> love of no one.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif; mso-spacerun: yes;"> This Polidori is an</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">omnivore</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">, waiting for one like Victor to dare the jealousy of God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">With these provocative threads, and the miniseries form still largely untested, a touch of self-sabotage
should not surprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first minutes shatter the fourth wall, as Mason hosts clips that give away too much of the plot (skip to 5:44 to avoid spoilers).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">We</span>ll, it’s not as if we're unfamiliar with the major beats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Since at least James Whale in 1931, Shelley's novel has likely been on-the-boards <i>somewhere</i> on any given day. <i>Frankenstein</i> is a modernist liturgy, a ritual of </span>egomaniacal science transgressing and punished. The <i>universal</i> refusal to <i>marry</i> Shelley has kept her narrative <i>electric</i> and <i>viral</i>. And we need the catharsis, when the creature so rarely completes circuit back to his creator ... this
side of the mirror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">Extraordinary
Tales </span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">(2013)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro",serif;">This is an impressive animated anthology of Edgar Allan Poe, evidently for all ages. As such, the<i> Tales</i> are among the most familiar, and will elicit varied responses. The animation style is more like book illustrations than anything "cartoony," and reminded me of the classics <i>The Selfish Giant</i> and <i>The Woods</i>. Voices heard include those of Bela Lugosi (reading "The Tell-Tale Heart") and Christopher Lee. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia Pro, serif;">Caveats: some screens are busy with CGI; the pace is too fast in the first two stories. It's understandable to schedule for parents, with content more challenging as we go (kids-to-bed before "The Masque of the Red Death"), but the opener, "The Fall of the House of Usher," plays like "Rod Usher's Greatest Hits." It's especially regrettable in that the medium seems ideal for multiple<i> versions </i>of a film. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia Pro, serif;">Still, it's an impressive set, especially the wry horror of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," and the quietly terrifying "The Pit and the Pendulum." These are reason to see <i>Extraordinary Tales</i>. "Valdemar" may be the best English-language version; certainly, it's flights above George Romero's misbegotten <i>Two Evil Eyes </i>(1990). W<span>hile worthy Corman-Poe, </span></span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"><span>Tales of Terror </span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"><span><span>(1962) commercializes "Valdemar" with a romance.</span><span> </span></span> (</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">Reviews discourage consideration for </span><i style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">The Mesmerist</i><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">, a 2005 black comedy with Neil Patrick Harris.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"><i>Extraordinary Tales </i>is wrapped in an original frame: a Continental-accented Lady Death tries to seduce Poe (as a raven) from his attachment to life. If their dialogue is "therapy-speak," it is, at least, perceptive: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lady Death: You have devoted so many pages to my name ... All veiled love letters, addressed to me. You <i>fear</i> me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet you are insatiably <i>attracted</i>. Come with me … it's time.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Poe: No -- it cannot </span><span>be. I don't <i>want</i> to be forgotten. I was buried in a common grave. My writings were <i>forgotten</i> for years.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia Pro, serif;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>Lady Death: ... </span><span>Come now, Poe. You <i>love</i> me! You've been a corpse walking amongst the living for a <i>long time</i>, Edgar. It must ha</span></span><span>ve been quite a <i>strain</i> ... </span> <span>Look at your final acts: they all succumb to my prowess.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span>The poor, the weak, the rich, the powerful.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span>Everybody bows before me.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">There's nothing unusual in Poe being temporarily forgotten, it was the same with H.P. Lovecraft. That which is most challenging to the culture triggers a quarter-century denial (where needed, the period is indefinite). Similarly, the films we revisit from any era are almost never the hits.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia Pro", serif;">If Edgar Allan Poe triumphed over death, it was from insight. He knew the optimistic, utopian, forward-thinking society protests too much, its national poet <i>should</i> write "horror stories for boys" (critic Leslie Fiedler's phrase). And so the obscurity pitched into a pauper's grave has 392 credits on the IMDb. </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-6597624512549029642020-05-10T07:23:00.001-07:002020-05-10T13:11:57.581-07:00Deep Red (1994 TV movie) score: 2 of 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUdqoDzUlxa-2mH5idzVl58OuwbbrG2vLWnj-X4YUVAnfW3QVcU45uYLrL-cjrEyWs-ydwDZ6cFE1-fkK8auyttMVXzMEUZ5tfIptlKq4miu_z1QuSpW8iOWQZebJC9HKX9rabvQ-EVoNv/s1600/DeepRed_kid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUdqoDzUlxa-2mH5idzVl58OuwbbrG2vLWnj-X4YUVAnfW3QVcU45uYLrL-cjrEyWs-ydwDZ6cFE1-fkK8auyttMVXzMEUZ5tfIptlKq4miu_z1QuSpW8iOWQZebJC9HKX9rabvQ-EVoNv/s320/DeepRed_kid.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Haun as the first human to benefit from "Reds"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwqbYJWdXw6_CDpeJO5XxhRL83qqN7J9INhugPg-mma1nc8yZTrk3kKljc4HUyBf9Tg931i9OUXyb2YVKqcMrC43TsDrgvSY2JljKieGGk34j_bHQ1_33T2qAzOCJrXOZbLe9dyzZvi7YR/s1600/DeepRed_Argento.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="148" data-original-width="341" height="84" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwqbYJWdXw6_CDpeJO5XxhRL83qqN7J9INhugPg-mma1nc8yZTrk3kKljc4HUyBf9Tg931i9OUXyb2YVKqcMrC43TsDrgvSY2JljKieGGk34j_bHQ1_33T2qAzOCJrXOZbLe9dyzZvi7YR/s200/DeepRed_Argento.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">not <i>that </i>Deep Red</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In a prologue that evokes <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i> (1978) and <i>The Thing</i> (1982), an alien ship disintegrates in Earth's atmosphere. As tiny shards spray a park, one pierces a girl's face (as an adult, Lindsey Haun would have a recurring role on <i>True Blood</i>). She not only recovers, her club foot is <i>healed</i>.<br />
<br />
Duly impressed, scientist Newmeyer (John de Lancie) seizes the alien nanotech, dubbed "Reds," as a lucrative panacea/fountain of youth. ("<i>Deep</i> Reds" are the upgrade, or something.) He's opposed by the girl's mother (Lisa Collins), herself revivified, but also reeling from the murder of her husband (Newmeyer's erstwhile colleague), played by future-Jigsaw Tobin Bell.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNZTMG3VV5b8rUbExRgPE9E49sP98YdllRtU8GtV5O3VBT9TYBq47ygFTSQdzTXi9j1XI9vke0gZr4Zfjz0wgyHC36bhFE3Ck4kMXvJkqwJCsSbPlDb3sSBedqhGIUU16nNSkwcrjxIoyL/s1600/DeepRed_cast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="978" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNZTMG3VV5b8rUbExRgPE9E49sP98YdllRtU8GtV5O3VBT9TYBq47ygFTSQdzTXi9j1XI9vke0gZr4Zfjz0wgyHC36bhFE3Ck4kMXvJkqwJCsSbPlDb3sSBedqhGIUU16nNSkwcrjxIoyL/s320/DeepRed_cast.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the goodies: Collins, Pacula & Biehn</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
All of which might be<i> too </i>much premise for a mock-serious neo-noir with a dangling subplot about killer milkmen. It might've worked as a self-spoof, but even the humor could've used Deep Reds (and milk).<br />
<br />
As noted on <a href="http://www.moriareviews.com/sciencefiction/deep-red-1994.htm">Moria</a>, <i>Deep Red</i> is confusing: we expect the aliens to show up (again) -- they never do -- while the indulgent character-morphing might force a rewind. Script fixes would've been rather simple, raising questions of what happened, and, perhaps, the prospect of a redemptive remake.<br />
<br />
Michael Biehn is well-cast as Joe Keyes, a dissolute P.I. hired by Collins. Keyes has been down, ever since a colleague's wife was killed on his watch, which sounds like backstory for a series. The cast also includes conspiracy vet Joanna Pacula, Steven Williams as a sketchy police contact, and John Kapelos, in basically his <i>Forever Knight</i> role. Further "pilot" evidence: the nanotech isn't<i> </i>discredited by the end, as the new (very healthy) family drives to sundown.<br />
<br />
Amusingly, as <i>Deep Red</i> begins, it seems everyone in this Dark City has a shingle, outside dirty office with desk and chair, like a comic variant of "Demon with a Glass Hand." There are such glimmers, but like the pieces of the alien craft, they disperse. <br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-61455557363519030312020-03-26T18:23:00.001-07:002020-03-27T18:54:18.464-07:00bats left (no, right), throws right (no, left)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>My work is rarely to-the-minute, and I rarely consider <u>when </u>a piece will be read. I started this post long before Covid-19 and the consequent postponing of the baseball season. If it doesn't elevate, nor </i><i>replace peanuts and Cracker Jack, it is, I hope, of interest. </i><i> </i> </div>
</blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmhyA1w4F5TJGlooq8ToeJCoacY5WzzuwX_VV1BKEqvbRFFbDBb_Kyj8dAdGxz1Es7_mYBT9x3xY6dePzNiriWxml9GXTZW0GdsQrySCcezVQatMx-k5V8byGiWF4VRP1sKCwDa98tt_YY/s1600/field_of_dreams_field.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="177" data-original-width="284" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmhyA1w4F5TJGlooq8ToeJCoacY5WzzuwX_VV1BKEqvbRFFbDBb_Kyj8dAdGxz1Es7_mYBT9x3xY6dePzNiriWxml9GXTZW0GdsQrySCcezVQatMx-k5V8byGiWF4VRP1sKCwDa98tt_YY/s320/field_of_dreams_field.jpg" width="320" /></a>Over the winter, news of an actual MLB game to be played at the location for 1989's <i>Field of Dreams </i>(left) summoned one of the all-time film flubs: Shoeless Joe Jackson hitting <i>right-handed</i>. Ray Liotta, playing Jackson, failed badly to hit left-handed despite pro coaches on set (per this <i>New York Post</i> <a href="https://nypost.com/2004/05/23/catch-it-again-liotta-wasnt-clueless-he-just-couldnt-hit-like-shoeless-joe/">interview</a>). Finally, Liotta was given permission to switch sides. It doesn't explain why the filmmakers didn't prioritize accuracy from the start.<br />
<br />
The 1919 White Sox added disgrace to poverty when they threw the World Series. 70 years on, the "Black Sox" were in the zeitgeist: 1988's <i>Eight Men Out </i>had D.B. Sweeney as Jackson. According to MLB Radio's Ryan Spilborghs (in a special devoted to <i>Bull Durham</i>), the athletic motions in <i>Eight Men Out</i> are "terrible." Even so, <i>that</i> Joe Jackson hit lefty, at least. Filmmaking is tough, but faking a base hit is still easier than the real skill (hitting a round ball with a round bat). Faking is Hollywood's <i>job</i>.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB7rw8o7EB_tJpPzx5mVpRpGyxfYea9J1Y_EeYg9zXi6nDX7nFasVVDV9GHBfBfRB27EnFW_zMEwfRU9zyZA5F8IlSEOB5VkR_ZJQDODmRD-fwzptgZjmgvx4s2Lfxit0bm_Fo_RVWWuYN/s1600/Shoeless_Joe_Jackson2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB7rw8o7EB_tJpPzx5mVpRpGyxfYea9J1Y_EeYg9zXi6nDX7nFasVVDV9GHBfBfRB27EnFW_zMEwfRU9zyZA5F8IlSEOB5VkR_ZJQDODmRD-fwzptgZjmgvx4s2Lfxit0bm_Fo_RVWWuYN/s200/Shoeless_Joe_Jackson2.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shoeless Joe Jackson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYut2M_LITMXcDXPB8wz3wYBNMs70zkvJwPNcdsvfuJVszZmjhkQjg-Bmfr22IoVxVmA2IFu5NO7LIeJwfN6Jp7FPZglLCEJ-p2ojmFhUgHFwr3NDhNN0pRjEWepeeZorSRo70LKoXiEk/s1600/field_of_dreams_Liotta_smirk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
It's not that Ray Liotta was perfect casting otherwise: he doesn't look or sound like Jackson, who was from South Carolina. (Actually, Jackson looked more like top-billed Kevin Costner.) The production makes matters worse in the field: Jackson threw right-handed, but Liotta's Jackson throws left-handed (again, the actor's preference). Effectively, the switch draws the attention of anyone still oblivious. (<i>Field of Dreams </i>also flips Moonlight Graham left to right as a batter, as the redemption-mad narrative grants a sympathetic washout his first big-league at-bat.)<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYut2M_LITMXcDXPB8wz3wYBNMs70zkvJwPNcdsvfuJVszZmjhkQjg-Bmfr22IoVxVmA2IFu5NO7LIeJwfN6Jp7FPZglLCEJ-p2ojmFhUgHFwr3NDhNN0pRjEWepeeZorSRo70LKoXiEk/s1600/field_of_dreams_Liotta_smirk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="165" data-original-width="305" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYut2M_LITMXcDXPB8wz3wYBNMs70zkvJwPNcdsvfuJVszZmjhkQjg-Bmfr22IoVxVmA2IFu5NO7LIeJwfN6Jp7FPZglLCEJ-p2ojmFhUgHFwr3NDhNN0pRjEWepeeZorSRo70LKoXiEk/s200/field_of_dreams_Liotta_smirk.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liotta as Jackson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Thus, we've had non-answers regarding <i>Field of Dreams</i> and its Bizarro World Joe Jackson. As with Marco Rubio's awkward lunge (addressed <a href="https://afilmoverreality.blogspot.com/2018/08/everything-has-reason-marco-rubio.html">here</a>), the baseball flick's "epic fail" may be rooted in polarization trauma.<br />
<br />
If so, the filmmakers added <i>their own </i>reason for anxiety. Their message is memorably spoken by James Earl Jones (as author Terence Mann):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The one constant through all the years ... has been <i>baseball</i>. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball -- has marked the time. This field, this game ... (is) a reminder of all that's good, and could be again. </blockquote>
Fans can only forgive the script's worst sabotage: the school-auditorium meeting. <i>All </i>the parents arguing for exclusion of Mann's indecorous book (from the school library) fit the Hollywood-and-Left stereotype: they're ignorant, resentful, repressed. As Annie Kinsella, Amy Madigan warns them not to be like "the Nazis." Just as young Ray (Costner) insulted his father (who died before Ray could apologize), the film picks a side from which to decry division.<br />
<br />
Even with this regrettable scene, <i>Field of Dreams</i> delivered a plea for unity. It went unheeded, but we should have self-mercy. Polarization, I've come to believe, is part of the <i>normal</i> operation of the United States. The owner of a high performance car should expect road noise and greater maintenance; a nation based in diversity, democracy and ambition is comparable. (Reading on 3/27, this is ~trite. But who makes it so?)<br />
<br />
If we get twitchy around moves left and right, we need the distraction. The existential unknown may be displaced to a Jack Nicholson movie: "what if <i>this </i>is as good as it gets?" How would we ever react, to the honest conviction all our American plans are good for a laugh.<br />
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<div style="text-align: right;">
<i><span style="color: #444444;">This blog doesn't feature comments, but I very much appreciate your reading. </span></i></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-45720688157328188772020-03-22T08:54:00.000-07:002020-03-25T04:48:08.914-07:00checkdown: Brooklyn's Finest (2009) score: 1.5 (of 4)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>"Checkdown" is overheard lingo from American football: a play called at the line-of-scrimmage. Thus, a checkdown review is relatively quick and rough, an attempted end-around perfectionism. </i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6YLe4nnkoCKjGLEwVKW-JvQHJRzW70wpkq-FFwbmX3s_3eDLruPBXaK4NszEoUHpgShfdNe16UI-rlHjHTFWqLA4pwYo5G0OC_f1qKioAKik1YPUUc4qLv3WDrvk9txteFFfGnifhzAAS/s1600/Brooklyn%2527sFinest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1494" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6YLe4nnkoCKjGLEwVKW-JvQHJRzW70wpkq-FFwbmX3s_3eDLruPBXaK4NszEoUHpgShfdNe16UI-rlHjHTFWqLA4pwYo5G0OC_f1qKioAKik1YPUUc4qLv3WDrvk9txteFFfGnifhzAAS/s320/Brooklyn%2527sFinest.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cheadle and Snipes posture in<i> Brooklyn's Finest</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A tragedy of Hollywood is that the established filmmaker may be subjected to <i>more </i>pressure than the first-time director. It can ruin an otherwise well-made film, like this one by Antoine Fuqua (<i>Training Day</i>, <i>Olympus Has Fallen</i>). That it fools some (6.7 IMDb) doesn't make it less ridiculous.<br />
<br />
<i>Brooklyn's Finest</i> is about men, as portrayed by stars, those being Wesley Snipes, Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle, Richard Gere, even Will Patton. Over the course of the film, the characters <i>plan,</i> <i>allude </i>to<i> </i>and are <i>accused </i>of transgressions, but we hardly see them <i>do</i> bad. Repeatedly, the movie stops short: Hollywood stars are notorious for demanding likable, admirable characters.<br />
<br />
And so Snipes is a <i>compelling</i> drug kingpin, for whom an undercover Cheadle nobly <i>bleeds</i>, while Hawke's up-against-it cop <i>can't </i>quite grab the loot once he has the chance, and consequently winds up shot. Hawke's edgy NYC detective also won't allow ethnic <i>jokes</i> at his poker game. As for Richard Gere's character, he seems well-preserved and virile, for a disgraced alcoholic. He remains a cop for the pension, but redeems himself saving abused women.<br />
<br />
Apparently, writer Michael C. Martin and Fuqua couldn't fit a scene with a cat up a tree. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-16748628419841815562020-02-28T14:00:00.000-08:002020-03-02T05:01:38.772-08:00Legion (1998 TV-movie) score: 2 (of 4)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>** minor spoilers only **</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i>Legion </i>gets a nod in <i>Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan</i> by Fraser A. Sherman, so I braved a stuttery stream. A modest Sci-Fi Channel production (not yet "Syfy" in 1998), the tale of future war is like a facetious episode of the contemporary <i>Outer Limits</i>. It doesn't quite work, but with points of interest.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJpqsh9QGv3REQacERV5aNGLFIOqisHGcJrR2Qt-Ezh1bx7ftBZ-XC_nnf3gx7hJF6JpfnXrsmUldqP55VSvlFcY-PR_OeYrYfEcnEQu5D4Tlq6gAl7FDF0jlQHce67CR-qqSMz54IkiuZ/s1600/Jadzia_Dax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="196" data-original-width="257" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJpqsh9QGv3REQacERV5aNGLFIOqisHGcJrR2Qt-Ezh1bx7ftBZ-XC_nnf3gx7hJF6JpfnXrsmUldqP55VSvlFcY-PR_OeYrYfEcnEQu5D4Tlq6gAl7FDF0jlQHce67CR-qqSMz54IkiuZ/s320/Jadzia_Dax.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Terry Farrell in more familiar guise</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Moonlighting from Deep Space 9, Terry Farrell is Major Agatha Doyle, who's tasked with leading a dirty-dozen military offenders against an enemy "fuel processing plant" in a civil war for the solar system. Her platoon of "scum" all have the requisite vital specialties and tragic backstories, e.g., Parker Stevenson's an officer cashiered for desertion. There are multiple psychopaths (one a needle addict), a saboteur fragger, and a colorful distaff column: a nympho traitor, a rape-revenge case, and a religious fanatic.<br />
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<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
Farrell doesn't convince as a hard-bitten officer, but it's partly the script: Doyle is so one-note tough, I suspected she was an android. An interesting cast also includes Rick Springfield and Trevor Goddard. Corey Feldman may be cast to type, but he gives a lazy, selfish performance as a (brainy) con.<br />
<br />
The team starts 10-strong, and as they split up for patrol, the viewer may conflate. Most turn out to have been falsely accused and/or acting in self-defense, suggesting the script/movie might've started as a pilot.<br />
<br />
These heart-of-gold badasses don't know just <i>what </i>they're fighting, except that it's big and bad and leaves piles of uniformed corpses behind. Once revealed, the foe makes an impression (less so, for those who've glimpsed the box art), but <i>Legion </i>takes too long getting there. Worse, there's little progressive learning, though the viewer may triangulate from the premise, title, and Troy Donahue's character.<br />
<br />
In a mystery-thriller, half the fun is <i>matching wits</i> with the protagonists as they strategize. Without intell, Farrell in particular is left hanging, as Doyle incongruously agonizes over her fitness to command. The all-at-once ending seemed confusing -- or maybe I checked out. <br />
<br />
These flaws <i>could </i>have been fixed, rather easily; it may've been (self-) sabotage. While the film<i> </i>superficially resembles <i>Space: Above and Beyond</i>, the relatively gung ho Fox series, these <i>Legion-</i>aires are entirely victims of their own command. This cheeseburger of a TV-movie dares portray an <i>American </i>military on <i>imperial </i>business (pointedly, the flag is unseen until a likely suicide errand). Even when tongue-in-cheek, subversive content draws flak.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-65926423481467323392020-02-08T10:11:00.004-08:002020-02-14T08:28:25.254-08:00War Machine (2017) rating: 3 of 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>War Machine</i> is a dramatization of Michael Hastings' book about the Afghanistan war, <i>The Operators</i> (which expanded the 2010 <i>Rolling Stone</i> piece, "The Runaway General"). This film is welcome evidence Hollywood is still capable of satire (after <i>Southland Tales</i>, <i>American Dreamz</i>, <i>The Joneses</i>, <i>Salvation Boulevard</i> and <i>Butter</i>).<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkj-FqX7o2ci94nt1xRjvC_KenKeL8ys7KDTwpvAC3f3Aidv8t651XBuz8IZ96Wst3H2NwBQNG4agp5IjQ39yWdLa3OSnLgruDnNFSRO3iExTgIUkG6O7r1EiVMhNfLkPYwsP3GphYlme0/s1600/War_Machine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkj-FqX7o2ci94nt1xRjvC_KenKeL8ys7KDTwpvAC3f3Aidv8t651XBuz8IZ96Wst3H2NwBQNG4agp5IjQ39yWdLa3OSnLgruDnNFSRO3iExTgIUkG6O7r1EiVMhNfLkPYwsP3GphYlme0/s1600/War_Machine.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brad Pitt as"MacMahon"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
General Glen McMahon -- Brad Pitt, playing a cartoonish version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- seems more concerned with projecting affirmative masculinity than strictly military objectives.<br />
It's a funny turn: ready with a buzzword, McMahon has a hilarious, stiff gait even when jogging. Brow perpetually furrowed, his hands claw for odd emphasis. But he rarely loses his temper, leaving it to a sycophantic posse.<br />
<br />
As commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, his job isn't so much waging war as lobbying governments. As said by a German official (Tilda Swinton in a lucid cameo), careerism renders McMahon oblivious to whether American goals in the region make any sense. When a U.S. soldier vents about the surreal conflict where medals are given for "courageous restraint," the general tells him "<i>get un-confused</i>."<br />
<br />
The overall tone is sadly wry. Though well-acted, some of the supporting characters smack of manipulation: the visiting wife (Meg Tilly) would be equally lonely during a <i>necessary </i>war; Ben Kingsley appears as the corrupt puppet-ruler of Afghanistan, but we don't see Hamid Karzai <i>before</i> the dubious office.<br />
<br />
The pivotal scene is an airplane encounter between McMahon and Pat Mackinnon (Alan Ruck as a fictionalization of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry). After one-or-more drinks, Mackinnon breaks down the general's task:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You're not here to win, you're here to clean up the mess ... (to) show everyone ... a nicer set of graphs. Either that, or get yourself fired. </blockquote>
These lines, along with McMahon's lack of "face time" with the president, illuminate the casual disrespect, reported by Hastings, of those up the chain of command. Of course, President Obama soon fired McChrystal.<br />
<br />
When a person or group consistently fails to achieve stated goals, we should question the <i>desire </i>to succeed. Despite its wit and value as history, <i>War Machine</i> is ultimately disingenuous, in assuming American shortfalls in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East are <i>problematic</i> ... for anyone other than soldiers and the host nations (the word "insanity" is prominent). The opposite may be true, in the context of U.S. global dominance and, especially, the Pentagon's yearly allowance of over $500 billion.<br />
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<i><br /></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-21874234139640936712019-11-18T04:36:00.000-08:002019-11-20T15:01:29.324-08:00underseen for Halloween 2019, Part 3: The Doctor and the Devils (1985)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">(spoilers throughout)</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> Roger
Ebert <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/memoriam">called </a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Doctor and the Devils</i>
“unredeemed, dreary, boring, gloomy dreck.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> gloomy. It's also mournfully distinctive, for this writer, and<i> </i></span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">beautifully
produced, both painterly and disgusting.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The last helps earn the horror tag, though it’s as much a period
dramatization. It's a based-on-truth Frankenstein
movie.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIO81UVjA8VBTyPEFSFTWWhbtcGludB9YPJoKdsJ66knHb1S9hoIlkdmrNZ4JthX4fYw-QQG5dHCfvOtmTFBN7lbkGAnlbBimYxDOk773KqNL5C98JM9OdmoorQTc4f1AD45lfFSQs856Q/s1600/Doctor_And_the_devils.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1273" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIO81UVjA8VBTyPEFSFTWWhbtcGludB9YPJoKdsJ66knHb1S9hoIlkdmrNZ4JthX4fYw-QQG5dHCfvOtmTFBN7lbkGAnlbBimYxDOk773KqNL5C98JM9OdmoorQTc4f1AD45lfFSQs856Q/s200/Doctor_And_the_devils.png" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> from Shout! Factory</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">Despite the billing, the focus is the working class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In early-19th century Britain, outdated mores forced a black market in fresh cadavers (for medical research), when the enterprising Fallon (Jonathan Pryce) and Broom (Stephen Rea) take up shovels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before it's done, at least one is a serial-killer avant la lettre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their patron is
Dr. Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton), a progressive surgeon secure in his own virtue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rounding the eclectic cast are Julian
Sands (who’d become a minor horror star) as a naif who falls for a bleak-minded
whore (played by ‘60s model Twiggy), with Patrick Stewart as Rock’s fuming rival.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">The milieu may evoke Orwell’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nineteen
Eighty-Four</i> (and Michael Radford’s), though the Orwellian hell is
government surveillance, which could've helped here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Also, we may </span>recall Dickens, Dostoyevsky, and
true-crime biopics like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Cold Blood</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As were the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Body-Snatcher</i> (1945) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Flesh and the Fiends</i> (1960), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Doctor and the Devils</i> was inspired
by the real Burke and Hare, suppliers to one Dr. Knox. (Fiction can’t improve on the names.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">Mostly, this
film gets mixed reviews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Slant</i>, Chuck Bowen ends a mostly
positive <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/the-doctor-and-the-devils/">review</a> thus: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: windowtext;">The
Doctor and the Devils</span></i><span style="color: windowtext;"> shares
Rock’s problem: decrying the state of humanity while displaying precious little
of its own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbP7uxx0Y-jtGnhNqALSw8A_K_rO6siij8SDh1AqvQSmuKVST1LtWlFaetbDx26G9zM6XtP-d70aqZmUtMIYoiYyJqdWjwFQKx18Lwfl9WhOw8rMSxCodEVQOe8LLBzXKWlB9OiXbYArDA/s1600/Doctor_devils_Fox_dvd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="960" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbP7uxx0Y-jtGnhNqALSw8A_K_rO6siij8SDh1AqvQSmuKVST1LtWlFaetbDx26G9zM6XtP-d70aqZmUtMIYoiYyJqdWjwFQKx18Lwfl9WhOw8rMSxCodEVQOe8LLBzXKWlB9OiXbYArDA/s200/Doctor_devils_Fox_dvd.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the Fox release</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DVD Savant</i> Glenn Erickson <a href="https://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1722doct.html">charges</a>
Freddie Francis with indifference: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">there's
no indication of a director doing anything more than illustrating a script. …
this picture just plays out in a flat line. It's handsome and intelligent, but
it doesn't grab us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: windowtext;">Well, it’s a hothouse
flower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Still, d</span>egrees of success
shouldn’t prevent wonder at what's <i>attempted</i>: it's a rare film that disclaims Manichaeism, portraying modernity as an exploitation matrix. (It seems hard to deny; I've written of our moral entanglement, as in this <a href="https://brightlightsfilm.com/sopranos-finale-cut-black-2007-mafia-analysis/#.XdKNTNVKjZ5">essay </a>on <i>The Sopranos</i>.) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">The film's pedigree is impressive, and instructive. Poet Dylan Thomas's screenplay was a pre-Black List item, unproduced for 30 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Producer Mel Brooks
reportedly wanted major changes, but director Francis lobbied for a
faithful adaptation, leading to revisions by Ronald Harwood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixlox2utCF6TiKxXMG5XgmV_530niZzHANsGI5tMIjrGJUyEVET84v5PDxu6r7jUm6UnwokC3WysgSBPizZsARYbcZkrzQrBHftm7570IDnnCVBhcrphjY-6YewJeRMQ3ebITh6ocGlbMw/s1600/Doctor_Devils_book_cutouts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1087" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixlox2utCF6TiKxXMG5XgmV_530niZzHANsGI5tMIjrGJUyEVET84v5PDxu6r7jUm6UnwokC3WysgSBPizZsARYbcZkrzQrBHftm7570IDnnCVBhcrphjY-6YewJeRMQ3ebITh6ocGlbMw/s200/Doctor_Devils_book_cutouts.jpg" width="134" /></a></div>
<span style="color: windowtext;">Harwood, best known for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dresser</i>, also wrote a series of plays and films about 20<sup>th</sup>
century celebrities in relation to Nazi Germany, including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Pianist</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Doctor and the Devils</i> contains
intimations of genocide, as do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Elephant
Man</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Fly</i>, other Mel Brooks
productions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Of course, Mr. Brooks is
Jewish. He served in the U.S. military during World War II, later daring to make <i>The Producers</i>.)</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdk6e7YQdLPFhV8FceSpzj3DGIA0kwDFcq4GFjzbBZFuugNOTVzitA0kW1rgTnPgLpXWPHCmW-YPohxttX-yqtOatkiEzAGdWd_ebWXpqXySHDOF4NjVMjt4puwWYJoYtPNYJOGGJ6_sUB/s1600/Doctor_and_devils_book_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="298" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdk6e7YQdLPFhV8FceSpzj3DGIA0kwDFcq4GFjzbBZFuugNOTVzitA0kW1rgTnPgLpXWPHCmW-YPohxttX-yqtOatkiEzAGdWd_ebWXpqXySHDOF4NjVMjt4puwWYJoYtPNYJOGGJ6_sUB/s200/Doctor_and_devils_book_cover.jpg" width="118" /></a><span style="color: windowtext;"> As Jim Knipfel <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/burke-and-hare/231494/burke-and-hare-at-the-movies">describes </a>on <i>den of geek</i>, several narrative films stay reasonably close to Burke and Hare. Accuracy aside, and even with a </span><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">tacked-on reprieve for the Twiggy character, </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">The Doctor and the Devils</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;"> is the least <i>pandering </i>version. The o</span><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">thers carefully delineate characters from viewers, as in casting the doctor: in <i>The Flesh and the Fiends</i> it's</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> Peter Cushing, already known as Dr. Frankenstein, and it's uber-unnerving Henry Daniell in </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">The Body-Snatcher </i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">(in an insipid subplot, Daniell </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">initially refuses a disabled girl a needed operation</span><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">). </span><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>Thriller </i>"The Innocent Bystanders" (1962) is disgraceful, as it exaggerates a story that's terrible to begin with. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">In each of these, one of the killers is made a (literal) moron, and a prominent victim, a beautiful woman. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>The Doctor and the Devils</i> skips the doctor's noble, half-false confession (another trope), leaving him haunted by memories and conscience. And if Dr. Rock was willfully ignorant of the origins of same-day deliveries, are we so different? </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">The three films reviewed in these Halloween 2019 posts are prophetic works, and have been knocked about:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s
Alive</i> was dumped by Warner Brothers, but Larry Cohen persevered, and it became a
hit three years after initial release.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vampire Circus</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Doctor and the Devils</i> suffered late
cuts. The critics hedge, e.g., Danny Peary condemns <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s Alive</i> for a “shameful
premise.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> According to </span>Peter Nichols, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vampire Circus</i> isn’t so much a good film
as a good bad film” (whatever that means).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">However
different in style — having the aspect of Fellini-gazing
horror, </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">grindhouse sick-joke,</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">and PBS adaptation — the films share a moral perspective.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">They lack villains, excepting the vampires
(who only do-what-vampires-do), and heroes, vessels for the innocence of
viewers.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">If they overreach — if </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Doctor and the Devils</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> is
self-serious, </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Vampire Circus</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, a bit overfed, and if Larry Cohen made a motion picture about an action figure —
prophets also self-sabotage. He wants to <i>protect </i>his culture, almost as much as he wants to damn it.</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-27368963209134906872019-10-31T12:25:00.004-07:002019-11-20T16:44:16.820-08:00underseen for Halloween 2019, Part 2: the It's Alive trilogy (1973-86)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRjUw6-g_TUIyKG12qD3B_cqvGVosEAFE9mS_QZiJMMYN7aGwRawjNr8jClP947s4P8N98kI2bWfTEypkrHjCLmEvxQ5oQYZb5mbWiA7-MOYeSt8aXpvW4rPlpOP9YcxOR-AWwcBAKjDbo/s1600/its-alive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="802" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRjUw6-g_TUIyKG12qD3B_cqvGVosEAFE9mS_QZiJMMYN7aGwRawjNr8jClP947s4P8N98kI2bWfTEypkrHjCLmEvxQ5oQYZb5mbWiA7-MOYeSt8aXpvW4rPlpOP9YcxOR-AWwcBAKjDbo/s200/its-alive.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ballyhoo: "one thing wrong ...<i> It's Alive</i>"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">(Spoilers throughout.)</span><br />
<div>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> 20</span><sup style="text-indent: 0.5in;">th</sup><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> century history seemed to destabilize, with new
technologies, mass migrations, and a range of time-limited phenomena from
rock n’ roll to genocide. Industrialization, effectively, made us test subjects.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> The f</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">luctuations called for nervous
parody.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-indent: 48px;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Larry
Cohen, the late exploitation auteur, typically used high-concept as a stalking
horse, building a provocative film around some scary-funny threat (e.g., revived Aztec god </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Q</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, addictive dessert </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Stuff</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">).</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Recalling the shock of a baby’s tantrum, Cohen invented a movie-monster for the cocooning, post-Vietnam U.S.:
homicidal infants.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> Cradled in</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> a Bernard
Herrmann score, the blunt-headed metaphor remains morbidly funny (for some of
us) half-a-century later.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The
first and best of a trilogy, </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It’s Alive</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (1973) is the singular fertility narrative of Frank and Lorene Davis (the first-names evoke horror
history).</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Suburban and white, they’re
habituated to television, prescription pills and cow’s milk — a motif, as when
the Carnation man becomes prey — and live in California, where trends start.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> Americans believe in </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“progress," and the new parents seem fairly indifferent to causes.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The smartly satiric horror film ends dropping-the-mic: “Another one’s been born in Seattle.”</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikYm-jUvyCdqlOmjAJNCvj1EnsnP9ScWW4MgUvfNUgr2L2-h7rjTYX5LzwJL2rdX49izjzuX0HAGUF0IOotHPD7vT9sd6ObAqM7Ed9l_2XVcz6mDbdaAMFRtVirDZIHu-wIcUxYpqbsZmK/s1600/It%2527s_Alive_toughest_job.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikYm-jUvyCdqlOmjAJNCvj1EnsnP9ScWW4MgUvfNUgr2L2-h7rjTYX5LzwJL2rdX49izjzuX0HAGUF0IOotHPD7vT9sd6ObAqM7Ed9l_2XVcz6mDbdaAMFRtVirDZIHu-wIcUxYpqbsZmK/s320/It%2527s_Alive_toughest_job.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">toughest job in the world ...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">While
acknowledging the comic angle, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s Alive</i>
centers on John P. Ryan’s titanic performance as Frank Davis, as he's betrayed by friends
and fate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, he can’t erase
his issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His Job-like travails deliver
twin themes for the franchise: Americans have become fatalistic; the parent-child bond is nearly unbreakable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The themes mutually reinforce, e.g., repeated speculation the mutants have superior resistance to pollution, similar to the children in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">These Are the Damned.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">The series is less interested in
the babies than in society’s reactions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night of the Living Dead</i>, most
characters are comically quick-to-adjust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> As writer-director of the trilogy, Cohen favors </span>canted-angle shots of figures darting here and there:
the “normal” characters are as flighty and reflexive as the babies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the sequels are less nimble than the
original, and repetitive, that might also be the point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">It Lives Again</span></i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
(1978) posits a hidden colony, for humane study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Despite help from new dad Frederic Forrest, the rogue pediatricians are themselves
too geriatric to manage their charges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meantime,
the genetic shuffling seems to multiply, e.g., a birthday party where tykes
crawl under low branches, and the birthday-girl looks like a boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The location is </span>a memorably cinematic
hillside, symbol of the scramble for supremacy.</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg8V4WeN8n1E2GKFnALMswkWhxAQvZJl0ixc1DyjtlyTCxT6JcTAp0HR5JZVOF__dpeZXhDSDb-xcH4fQQUKbw8JtX0KPnzCC7wdP1ZE4fjnp3qcC-XAL3RTgVUQiblViGT1l25E2HGBT6/s1600/It_Lives_again_hillside.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg8V4WeN8n1E2GKFnALMswkWhxAQvZJl0ixc1DyjtlyTCxT6JcTAp0HR5JZVOF__dpeZXhDSDb-xcH4fQQUKbw8JtX0KPnzCC7wdP1ZE4fjnp3qcC-XAL3RTgVUQiblViGT1l25E2HGBT6/s400/It_Lives_again_hillside.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="color: windowtext;"> The babies are unnerving (models designed by Rick Baker), but the filmmakers never
solved <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">movement</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granted, the babies do more in the third film, but in the commentaries, Cohen cites Val Lewton, in saying both sequels showed too much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tone was a challenge, too: the premise is inherently
funny, but Cohen wanted <i>monster</i> movies, first, so each suspenseful scene has to be (a little) funny, and vice versa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> He </span>masters tone for the first two, but the third unravels, perhaps from
anxiety over the series' misanthropic overtones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">In the larkish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s Alive III: Island of the
Alive</i> (1986), a new regime gives the babies an island to themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, these are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">babies</i>, and the reparation is folly (compare <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Clockwork Orange</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time, the tragic dad is Steven Jarvis
(Michael Moriarty, pre-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Law and Order</i>), a struggling actor with an antic sense of
humor. He takes to grandly introducing himself as “father of the monster.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: windowtext;">Disillusioned with community </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">— the movie begins in church, courtroom and '80s comedy club </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">— Jarvis signs on </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">for an expedition to the baby-island (Hawaii locations).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s
Alive III</i> becomes a stoner comedy, as Jarvis loses any interest in
the social contract: imagine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apocalypse
Now</i> if Willard (Martin Sheen) and the </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">photojournalist</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> (</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Dennis Hopper) were one person.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">It’s Alive III</span></i><span style="color: windowtext;">
isn’t the inspired lunacy of Cohen and Moriarty’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Q</i>, but has its charms, as the latter sings sea shanties,
threatens to defect, and muses on the babies’ telepathic
potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The story </span>defaults to an ending from midcentury space-invasions: an everyday element as deus ex machina.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, the viewer is free to imagine a next
generation with stronger resistance.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitUy_0d7XiSlrj5pdDkUVjl1gBIoc6jInPxRR1gOd6pruTNMTWWOWMcQ1TSqgqxC0rw-jJ4g59RNL7vklKNTfXE3s87khUXjteqyv9EXRsGGJPTdPMV5Au1l3yWAQzdDekuMGkfwtBE0hE/s1600/It_Lives_Again.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="764" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitUy_0d7XiSlrj5pdDkUVjl1gBIoc6jInPxRR1gOd6pruTNMTWWOWMcQ1TSqgqxC0rw-jJ4g59RNL7vklKNTfXE3s87khUXjteqyv9EXRsGGJPTdPMV5Au1l3yWAQzdDekuMGkfwtBE0hE/s200/It_Lives_Again.jpg" width="158" /></a><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> Nature gave </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">"</span>Larry's kids" a biting chance, whether or not in </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">response to </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"><i>our </i></span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">behavior. Pollution, a</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">bortion, and m</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">edication usage</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> are only a few of the troubling
associations.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> Easier to miss: </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">clawed and fanged babies are kin to Wolverine,
Freddy Krueger, Ninja Turtles foe Shredder, and now, "baby sharks." </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Like superheroes as a class, such forearmed characters may allude to </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">narcissism</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, which seems increasingly common, even adaptive.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">(If
Americans dislike narcissists, why elect them president?)</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 48px;"> Larry Cohen died in March, aged 82. In assembling an impressive (if spotty) body of work, he had the disarming knack for <i>seeming </i>less subversive than he was. He's been deceptively influential, witness the Cohenesque likes of </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Gremlins</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">, </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">They Live</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">, </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">The Addiction</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">, even </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Velvet Buzzsaw</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">. He also pioneered movie franchising, in devising </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Return of the Magnificent Seven</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">, </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Hell Up in Harlem</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> (sequel to his </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Black Caesar</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">), </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">and the </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Maniac Cop</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> series.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZiwJNeN_bPqbl-SnYb0ydxnH7aOGbGxuVf_-xlVxaHH8x-AFStCzHBioj0cRO2I8YuTmYaJ7D-RxvSpR8g8mVP_HhgQhV37C9PRWSzpXHVQrUhBFhDLOUV0kAOAFIcXM71j7PPtPmAixo/s1600/It%2527s_Alive_boxedSet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZiwJNeN_bPqbl-SnYb0ydxnH7aOGbGxuVf_-xlVxaHH8x-AFStCzHBioj0cRO2I8YuTmYaJ7D-RxvSpR8g8mVP_HhgQhV37C9PRWSzpXHVQrUhBFhDLOUV0kAOAFIcXM71j7PPtPmAixo/s1600/It%2527s_Alive_boxedSet.jpg" /></a><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> Like those films, the <i>It's Alive</i> trilogy </span></span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">helped validate small-budget, self-referential sequels, like the “dead” series of George Romero and Sam Raimi.</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">In</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> having</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> scientists study the mutants, the<i> </i>sequels are comparable to </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Children of the Damned</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">, </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Day of the Dead</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> and </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Terminator Salvation</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">.</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> Finally, a</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">s in various franchises, notably the contemporaneous </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Planet of the Apes </i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">cycle, we're shown key engagements in what may be a global revolution.</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-31375112552508530162019-10-27T18:49:00.002-07:002019-11-20T19:26:12.132-08:00underseen for Halloween, 2019: Vampire Circus (1972)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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These Halloween posts accumulate more hits than the others combined (my thanks to all who've read). It seems to have provided inspiration, resulting in enough text for (a planned) three posts, the last for All Soul's. </div>
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On usage: "underseen" can be contested, of course, but these titles merit attention amid a wealth of choices. </div>
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Spoilers throughout.</div>
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<i style="text-align: left;">V</i><i style="text-align: left;">ampire Circus </i><span style="color: windowtext; text-align: left;">(1972)</span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbZS7gwUzYN2ffv_LyHi9H5-DI9iB2rnHAQJQKyHRcBSmDPjZTkA3LII1Syw-cZNYsccAxKE84I58e9LF2pmp4Feu5g_hk04Okf6mbp9sOAOdlG30nqpp7oP33ImNK6yjikDCbfunjswqB/s1600/Vampire_Circus_weirdo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="289" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbZS7gwUzYN2ffv_LyHi9H5-DI9iB2rnHAQJQKyHRcBSmDPjZTkA3LII1Syw-cZNYsccAxKE84I58e9LF2pmp4Feu5g_hk04Okf6mbp9sOAOdlG30nqpp7oP33ImNK6yjikDCbfunjswqB/s320/Vampire_Circus_weirdo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">he may know a way out ...</td></tr>
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While more of an art film, and closer to didactic than
Hammer’s usual line, <i>Vampire Circus</i>
is typically sumptuous in evoking an indeterminate past. It has a liquid
quality, like stepping into a river. It
seduces the viewer, as Count Mitterhaus seduces Anna, and Emil, Rosa.<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: windowtext;"></span><br /> “a hundred delights! the Circus of Nights!” </h3>
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<span style="color: windowtext;"><i>Vampire Circus</i> caps the horrific-circus/carnival trend of midcentury: <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i>, <i>Nightmare Alley</i>, <i>Circus of Horrors</i>. In being seasonal, on the edge of town, the
Dark Carnival stands for a liminal threat, possibly genocide. Of its title ruin, dialogue in <i>Carnival
of Souls</i> says, "The law has placed it off-limits." This pavilion is contrasted with what is "safe," "reasonable" and "seemly." Shtettel (the spelling varies), the town in <i>Vampire Circus</i>, is Yiddish for “town.” </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Another
trope, with similar meaning, has survivors crossing paths with perpetrators, as
in </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Seventh Victim</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Seven Men from Now</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Last House on the Left </i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">and </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Eden
Lake</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">. Here, both terms apply to both groups, humans and vampires. </span><br />
<i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"></i><br />
<i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"></i>
<i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Vampire Circus</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
is tough on Anglo-Americans, its trigger-sin crouched in our blind spot.
The townsfolk can be deceitful and waspish, but their damning trait is <i>division</i>. They’ve had time: after the execution of bloodsucker
Mitterhaus, 15 years pass before vengeance -- modernity descends -- as half the town decides vampires don’t exist. </span><br />
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<span style="color: windowtext;">“We make our own luck.” </span></h3>
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<span style="color: windowtext;">Early rationalists, Dr. Kersh and schoolteacher Mueller
scoff at the notion of vampires. </span>The teacher is an intellectual feather: after losing his family and killing Mitterhaus, he reverts to scientism, but still can say of the circus folk, “they <i>are</i> death.” Later, he redeems himself, by believing in what he can’t understand. <br />
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<span style="color: windowtext;">Divisions between men tend to leave a divided <i>population</i>. Inevitably, an opposing residence becomes hostile territory, as couples and families assume entitlement to (toxic) privacy. Parents become unaccountable, then suspect. Thus, the revolutionary insight of <i>Vampire Circus</i>:</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> estrangement from traditional religion as a <i>cause </i>of sexual frustration.</span><br />
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The town’s
young adults also assume a type of rabies to be the only plague. (Indeed, rabies may be the origin of vampire lore: science and folklore interrelate, despite attempts at segregation.) Only as the skeptics recover faith (intellectual humility) </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">can the town defend itself. The humility should be in the context of a supernatural: it's too easy to own <i>ignorance </i>if never actually <i>wrong</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="color: windowtext;">“it’s not life, just
distortions …” </span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPXQC3g4ntt1MaMiriRtn_M5AAJTU48ZUVi0Ndh-8jZHRjv8BMH4BExEkoNdIr50T8ti0P-c9zZCWaVKQ72wcxat5r1Fw5caTStkaWivyMJ310SnVLMutStrs-dTeGfMoWhiKJG_DthPdV/s1600/vampire-circus_Serena.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1097" data-original-width="1600" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPXQC3g4ntt1MaMiriRtn_M5AAJTU48ZUVi0Ndh-8jZHRjv8BMH4BExEkoNdIr50T8ti0P-c9zZCWaVKQ72wcxat5r1Fw5caTStkaWivyMJ310SnVLMutStrs-dTeGfMoWhiKJG_DthPdV/s200/vampire-circus_Serena.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the protean Serena</td></tr>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;">Filmed narratives about demonic encroachment don't necessarily </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">specify </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">demons, e.g., <i>Circle of Fear </i>"Earth, Air, Fire and Water," </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Twin Peaks</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">. The horror films of John Carpenter assume a force of pure evil, malignant to humanity. In both </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Prince of Darkness</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> and </span><i style="text-indent: 48px;">Vampires</i><span style="text-indent: 48px;">, the Catholic Church is uneasy ally of the protagonists. Carpenter is an atheist, but his movies at least flirt with the idea of the Church as hedge against </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">something even worse</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">. </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><br /></span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">Like Twin Peaks, Shtettel seems to <i>have</i> no church, and everyone’s lying to someone. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">After
her son is snatched from danger, the mayor’s wife kisses the rescuer,
humiliating her husband. A splinter
group negotiates passage from the barricaded town, and is killed. Dora, Mueller’s surviving daughter, is safely “in
the city,” but journeys home unannounced and unescorted. Rosa’s mother keeps her daughter’s secret, the affair with Emil. </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Two boys
sneak to the circus after hours, joining those snared by the hall of mirrors. (</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">If funhouse reflections are a door to evil, it questions my daily, four-hour gaze.) These vampires are magicians and shapechangers, with an</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> (unremarked) immunity to sunlight, and </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">implied psychic powers (the film gets choppy late, reportedly from budget cuts). </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Kersh slips the barricade but, unlike Ivy in </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Village</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, gets revelation. Now, unanimous belief in vampires gives the townsmen a fighting chance: "Without a vision [<u>no plurality]</u> the people perish." </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">Shtettel has the advantage of a </span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"><i>common heritage</i></span><span style="text-indent: 48px;">, including a recent (cultural) memory of faith. Still, those attempting “a new kind of nation” should gird for failure. </span><br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
“If your wife’s in there,
maybe she <i>wanted</i> to go.” </h3>
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<span style="color: windowtext;">The film's beginning is both mythic and horrifying: Anna Mueller's fall isn’t <i>frightening</i>, but we know the <i>horrible </i>has happened. Though soon interrupted, her debauch leaves
no doubt why she'd </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">bring her daughter for slaughter. Here, evil is </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">thrilling </i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">and </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">erotic</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">; this </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">isn’t soft-serve </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Schindler’s List</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> or </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">12 Years a Slave</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The ending, which is too busy, reveals the circus-leader to be a disguised Anna, even as she saves Dora. Despite this partial redemption, Anna made the town a target, by placing personal desire above commitments to (original) family and tribe. </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">So</span><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">me
films are social-critically </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">present</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">
to the point of (evidently) crippling the careers of filmmakers, including </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">Freaks</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">, </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">Sweet Smell of Success</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">, </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">Peeping
Tom</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">, </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">Dirty Little Billy</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">, </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">Ganja and Hess</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">The Sopranos</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">The pattern
may help to explain the obscurity of the </span><i style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">Vampire
Circus</i><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;"> duo, director Robert Young and screenwriter Judson Kinberg. </span><span style="color: windowtext; text-indent: 0.5in;">Their film attempts to collapse the walls between art and entertainment, sensation and narrative, the erotic and the dramatic. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-2682655363845560832019-09-10T12:49:00.001-07:002019-09-24T13:10:36.456-07:00Deadly Messages (1985 TV-movie), 2.5 of 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Kathleen Beller has haunted me since 1980, when I saw the PBS film of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter." (She plays the title character, left.) Only recently, I recognized my avoidance of her <i>other</i> work. Of course, I'd cherished the memory.<br />
<br />
Beller's credits show an impressive run: for a decade, she was TV-movie royalty. Granted, <i>Deadly Messages</i> is considered middle-of-the-pack (nor is it helped by the marginal dupe currently on YouTube). It's a pleasantly wry DePalma pastiche, evoking <i>Body Double </i>especially.<br />
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The gaslighting subgenre is both timely and venerable, reaching back at least to the eponymous film (1940, and the Hollywood remake of 1944), Hitchcock's <i>Rebecca</i>, <i>What Lies Beneath </i>and others (and <i><u>The </u>Others</i>). In this form, the viewer guesses along with the female protagonist about who (if anyone) is menacing her, and why. Here, the title alludes to a Ouija board which may or may not have supernatural powers. The twisty ending comes somewhat abruptly, as it vaguely offers a sequel or series.<br />
<br />
Thomas M. Sipos <a href="http://horrorfilmaesthetics.blogspot.com/2017/03/poor-scriptwriting-in-deadly-messages.html">pans</a> <i>Deadly Messages</i> as illogical, e.g., detective Dennis Franz discredits Beller's murder report only because she can't present a corpse. This critique ignores the movie being an expressionist <i>female </i>nightmare, especially common in the era (<i>The Stepford Wives</i>, <i>Demon Seed</i> and many TV-movies, notably John Carpenter's <i>Someone's Watching Me!</i>). Note that in <i>Deadly Messages</i>, the men all seem to resemble each other (variously ethnic-urban, proletarian). Fraught as ever, Beller asks understanding, as she wonders about trusting any of them. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPw39oDbFzJ9ZxA3dw1G-5NW-sej0QFKNXJ9wYPufzh4vslUIExVUukjB9it0bohifNjz36SugaOowenSJj_tUT0mPxgh1FsBfYzQbm_aGQiQKP7cho8ClEJkySGiFpUs3RdErQVh2eL71/s1600/Beller_Kathleen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="167" data-original-width="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPw39oDbFzJ9ZxA3dw1G-5NW-sej0QFKNXJ9wYPufzh4vslUIExVUukjB9it0bohifNjz36SugaOowenSJj_tUT0mPxgh1FsBfYzQbm_aGQiQKP7cho8ClEJkySGiFpUs3RdErQVh2eL71/s1600/Beller_Kathleen.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">in the 1981 TV-movie, <i>No Place to Hide</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The oddest thing about <i>Deadly Messages</i> is the way Beller is presented, almost as if to conceal her figure. Was she hiding a pregnancy? The choice may (also) reflect career anxiety. Hers had depended on ingenues in hothouse romances, even in a feminist era. By 1985, America had besmirched this baby-madonna with two years on the prime-time soap, <i>Dynasty</i>; there was no returning to the virginal victims of assault (as in <i>Deadly Messages</i>, and 1978's career-defining <i>Are You in the House Alone?</i>), stalking (<i>No Place to Hide</i>), or dying young (<i>Mary White</i>, <i>Promises in the Dark</i>). Post-<i>Deadly Messages</i>, Beller made short-lived series and a few obscure features, before retirement in the early '90s.<br />
<br />
In the fog that is fannish admiration, I imagined an exotic fate for Kathleen Beller, as in the decamp to Europe, or hie-to-a-nunnery like Dolores Hart. Coincidentally, her last film, <i>Legacy </i>(1993, 55 minutes), was produced by the Mormon church, for internal use. The actual bio is both appropriate and heartening: she married musician Thomas Dolby in 1988, they have three children. (Dolby's 1982 hit "She Blinded Me with Science" is a gentle spoof of just such tales as <i>Rappaccini's Daughter</i>.) Beller's IMDb page teases the cultist with a 2016 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfUopRy6lz4">horror short</a>, her first credit in 22 years.<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; font-size: x-small; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Note: for various reasons, this blog does not include comments.</span></i></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; font-size: x-small; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">However, I very much appreciate your reading.</span></i></b></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-57586871016649386852019-09-01T09:51:00.004-07:002019-09-02T05:23:53.861-07:00Pharaoh's Army (1995) 3 stars of 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here's a modest, neglected gem, evoking the historical films of John Sayles as it dramatizes a minor, telling incident from the U.S. Civil War. It's rather stately (excuse the pun), but worth seeing, as U.S. history and for the ravishing beauty of the Appalachian forest (thus evoking the Jesse James subgenre, including <i>The Long Riders</i> and <i>The Return of Frank James</i>). It's the best-known film of Southerner Robby Henson (he wrote-directed 2002's <i>The Badge</i>, with Billy Bob Thornton and Patricia Arquette).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgPoelhdhk-fQGZf11K4zxtaz9TNOlt0BrUL2it28uj1vLUsUl9203QgGT8G1GJ26d-M8p9kzKSk0lLHokyvyvdJf77zud44munXYq-dYHwH2s71KQ3IYu8YQ149LbN2BFmgRyencEy3gF/s1600/pharaohs_army_1995___59499181c7ac7.mp4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgPoelhdhk-fQGZf11K4zxtaz9TNOlt0BrUL2it28uj1vLUsUl9203QgGT8G1GJ26d-M8p9kzKSk0lLHokyvyvdJf77zud44munXYq-dYHwH2s71KQ3IYu8YQ149LbN2BFmgRyencEy3gF/s320/pharaohs_army_1995___59499181c7ac7.mp4.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Pharaoh's Army</i>: war violates the Southern interior</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Advancing through Kentucky hollows, Captain John Abston (Chris Cooper) leads his Union troop on the farm of Sarah Anders (Patricia Clarkson) and son. With Sarah's husband away fighting for the South, the Yankees help themselves to livestock and provisions.<br />
<br />
One of the-boys-in-blue has a fateful fall from a hayloft. His recuperation means an extended break for the rest, who have yet to "see the elephant" (or in today's military slang, "get some"). Rodie, restless Northerner who's lost a brother to the war, will accuse Abston of cowardice and "just wanting a poke." The latter can only be true (Patricia Clarkson), but Abston's no coward, just old enough to know war is a mess left by sleeping Senators and not worth getting shot over.<br />
<br />
Appalachia was border country (West Virginia exists because the Virginia mountains went Union). Brother-against-brother was nowhere more common than in Kentucky and Tennessee, where bitter loyalties alternated town to town, man to man. Here, Kris Kristofferson is a South-leaning neighbor who, hearing of the Union incursion, sends his slave to snipe. Completing a sketched culture clash, the Yankees mock the patrician not doing his own fighting; Kristofferson ignores them (he also speaks the title phrase, referring to the Union Army). The intransigents acquainted, tragedy unfolds, as regional rivalry leaps generations.<br />
<br />
In addition to the excellent cast and cinematic setting, the film has a mournful (and presumably authentic) score. Among recent films peripheral to the Civil War, <i>Pharaoh's Army</i> is superior to the rather stilted <i>The World Made Straight </i>(2015), and nearly as attractive as the large-canvas <i>Seraphim Falls </i>(2006).<br />
<br />
A late, Leftist article-of-faith insists America's Civil War <i>was </i>fought over slavery, after all. Some desire a <u>flattering</u> national history, but the truth hurts: the War Between the States decided regional dominance of a growing imperium. Slavery was the flashpoint, at most.<br />
<br />
If slavery <i>caused </i>the war, surely, it begins with John Brown's<i> martyrdom</i> (as he intended), not waiting 1<span style="font-family: "agency fb" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">½</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> years</span> for Fort Sumter. (Even today, Brown's the hero of <i>radicals</i>, not Americans per se.) Most white Northerners <u>did not care</u> about slavery (any more than the recruits of 2001 could find Afghanistan on a map), as they assumed blacks <i>inherently inferior</i>. Having a <i>moral </i>investment in African-Americans, surely, they didn't <i>abandon </i>them 12 years later, as7th Cav mass-suicide rationalized a culturally-bonding, <i>consensus </i>slaughter, and as Reconstruction reconfigured to Jim Crow reign of terror.<br />
<br />
The progressive British, having banned slavery in 1834, were nevertheless poised to support the <i>Confederacy, </i>given reasonable encouragement, especially at (northern battles) Gettysburg or Antietem. (To my way of thinking, the South couldn't afford to win either, thus at Antietem, a runner lost<i> </i>Lee's-orders-'round-3-cigars, i.e., <u>"hey, here's a gift!")</u> Such a bellwether would only have meant immediate<i> </i>mobilization for the North's full, vastly superior population, and General Lee has an (even earlier) date at Appomatox Courthouse.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-19198218551351172682019-08-21T14:13:00.004-07:002019-09-01T04:37:46.977-07:002012 addendum: Romney's no-show<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">In </span></b><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim;"><a href="https://afilmoverreality.blogspot.com/2018/04/everything-has-reason-mccain-picks.html"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #43279d; text-decoration: none;">this post</span></b></a></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";"> of April 2018, I
suggested John McCain's rash choice of Sarah Palin signaled ambivalence to the
prospect of defeating Barack Obama. If McCain had become president, his
greatest victory would've been credited, by some, to racism. He would've
governed with the Illinois senator and Great Black Hope ("The Chosen One,"
per t-shirt) over his shoulder. If that sounds manageable, our 2019 is
also dire.</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCt47a7WVv4psIH7M_1VRv5qOWZ8jtlTB8AnzR-myQ4cyg3_RRga84jftCG62T-jnSvl771LiMwfGIs9PIFFbmMG3Gn8wN0LEyoKL43q0Kt3aRQD-IfhUesOKsdb3cL3yfTXIJu-MJwt2P/s1600/053012_an_romneys_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="128" data-original-width="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCt47a7WVv4psIH7M_1VRv5qOWZ8jtlTB8AnzR-myQ4cyg3_RRga84jftCG62T-jnSvl771LiMwfGIs9PIFFbmMG3Gn8wN0LEyoKL43q0Kt3aRQD-IfhUesOKsdb3cL3yfTXIJu-MJwt2P/s1600/053012_an_romneys_2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mitt and Ann Romney, 2012</td></tr>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">If <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Senator McCain</i> was torn in 2008, what of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Governor Romney</i> in 2012? There's no narrative film about the
Romney campaign (so far), no <i>Game Change</i> on HBO; any
self-sabotage would likely be less spectacular.</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
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<span style="background: white;">That said: <i>TV Guide</i>'s issue of
Nov. 12, 2012 devotes a half-page (page 8) to "Mitt Romney's Pop-Culture
Picks," a themed tradition for the periodical. Problem: Election Day
was November 6, <i>before </i>this issue reached most readers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(President Obama's rec’s appeared in the Nov.
5 issue).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">An editor's note explains:</span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--></span></b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Romney's campaign representatives missed our
pre-election deadline<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">Still primarily
print-on-paper, <i>TV Guide</i> appeals to aging, less educated
readers, which makes it seem irrelevant — until we recall 2016.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <i>TV Guide</i> brand
reportedly sold for $1 in 2008, but by 2012, was called a </span></b><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim;"><a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2013/10/24/tv-guide-still-exists-yep-and-its-profitable/"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #43279d; text-decoration: none;">comeback story</span></b></a></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";"> with about 2 million
subscribers.</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Romney's lateness seems unfortunate, given
responses which are <u>surprisingly humanizing</u> (of one regularly
compared to a mannequin). In addition to predictable fare (sports, <i>Justified</i>, <i>NCIS</i>),
he claims the left-leaning sitcoms <i>30 Rock</i> and <i>Modern
Family</i>, the latter being his and wife Ann's "favorite show to watch
together." As a non-partisan -- and if it matters, viewer of <i>30
Rock</i> seasons 1-4 -- I remain favorably surprised.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Following on the McCain piece, an earlier
version of this post cited the Obama mystique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Finally, </span>I remembered <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mitt</i>,
the 2014 documentary. After viewing, I’m
flipping (in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mitt</i>, Romney repeatedly contests his reputation as a “flip-flopping” Mormon).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span> <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">Admittedly, there’s nothing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mitt</i> to support my original thesis,
although Republican voters may’ve shown ambivalence by nominating a
place-holder. Somehow, after 93 minutes, I don’t like Romney any more
than before, despite the film’s obvious bias: like <i>Going Upriver: The
Long War of John Kerry</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mitt</i> is friendly
to its subject. Both John Kerry and Mitt Romney are driven, wealthy and
rather dull, but whereas Kerry has <i>inspiring </i>achievements on his
resume, Romney's record is merely <i>impressive </i>(he's a wealthy
businessman).</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
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<span style="background: white;">Nevertheless, <i>Mitt </i>alleviated my tunnel
vision, in recalling his worst gaffe. Implicitly, the film tries to
re-frame his slam of the "47% of Americans” receiving government
assistance. That won’t happen, as there’s nothing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">revelatory</i> here, whereas "47%" <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">describes</span> the speaker. So does "I like to fire people"
(capitalism as moral framework).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So does
"binders full of women" (people as commodity).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">After the 47% gaffe, Romney claimed concern for
"all the people," which is belied by his rhetoric, dominated by the usual
cries for relief from taxes and regulations. Like many conservatives,
Romney is preoccupied with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entrepreneurs</i>.
Wealthy conservatives need to believe the working and middle class <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can</i> become wealthy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
A punitive perspective on American life grows from the guilt and puritanism
in the national character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such an
attitude is best understood in a religious context, with the American religion most
evident not in churches, but in sacred texts, for example, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wizard of Oz</i>: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If you
did not wear spectacles the brightness and glory of the Emerald City would
blind you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are locked on, for Oz so
ordered it when the City was first built … all of the spectacles … had green
glasses in them.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To survive in the U.S., we wear glasses the color
of money, even though the entire city, even the sunlight, is <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">already green</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Superheroes, many of them essentially orphans like Dorothy Gale, reveal connecting mythology: </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Superman's glasses allow his concealment of identity. The Green Lantern uses the namesake artifact, such that its light will be seen. I</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">n <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They
Live</i> (1996), custom spectacles reveal alien capitalists. The far future of H.G. Wells's <i>The Time Machine</i> includes the Palace of Green Porcelain. Each narrative suggests the mystical renewing of American culture.</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s easy to forget the pointed sadism of the first Oz book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Wicked Witch of the West describes her
prey: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">one is
of tin, and one of straw, one is a girl and another a lion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of them is fit to work, so you may tear
them into small pieces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the U.S., work means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not being torn to pieces</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Don’t be like freeloading crows: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">another
crow flew at him, and the Scarecrow twisted its neck also.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were forty crows, and forty times the
Scarecrow twisted a neck, until at last all were lying dead beside him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><b><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another foundational text: the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little House</i> books by Laura Ingalls
Wilder, further hymns to self-sufficiency and pioneer spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wilder and her daughter and editor, Rose
Wilder Lane, would today be called libertarians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As recounted by Vivian Gornick (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Republic</i>, Dec., 2017), they were
enraged by the New Deal: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The more
I see,” Rose declared in a letter, “the more I’m reluctantly concluding that
this country’s simply yellow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our people
are behaving like arrant cowards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
it’s absurd.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She saw nothing
“fundamentally wrong.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the very time
Rose was writing this, in the early 1930s, 13 million workers lost their jobs,
leaving nearly one-quarter of the country unemployed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">For these two women, forged in
a Great Plains crucible, New Deal farm bills were the work of the devil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Compare Mitt Romney’s evocations of
inundation, as he realizes he’ll lose in 2012: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">I don’t think this is a time for soothing … I can’t believe
that he’s (Obama’s) an aberration in the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe we’re following the same path as
every other great nation, which is we’re following greater government money,
tax the rich people, promise more stuff to everybody, borrow until you go over
a cliff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>… I think we have a very high
risk of reaching that tipping point in the next five years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">Nowhere does Romney specify why
the 20-teens will be the breaking point for those in our queue of weak creditors. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">I started this post by comparing
McCain and Romney, but there’s a difference in their challenges to Obama: in
2012, we'd <i>had </i>an African-American president. Another difference
between the losing candidates: McCain had a notorious temper and sharp tongue, as
when he damned anti-Kissinger protesters as "lowlife scum." Everyone
knew when McCain was angry (so did he). In his even temper, Mitt Romney
is more like Ronald Reagan or, for that matter, Barack Obama. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
<span style="background: white;">I still believe Romney's lateness with the <i>TV
Guide</i> response, seemingly trivial, is significant. Based on the
above, however, his motivation was not any particular ambivalence about
defeating Obama. Like Hillary Clinton, candidate Romney sought the
support of the <i>right</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> kind</i>
of voters. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif";">Call us 47% or deplorable, we
are too many to lightly dismiss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prick
us, we bleed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of us work, whether
or not (well) compensated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We'll keep an annual commitment
on the first Tuesday after the first Monday. </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Note: for
various reasons, this blog does not include comments. </span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">However, I very much appreciate your reading. </span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "lucida sans" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Narkisim; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-3082641453011241852019-06-30T16:46:00.004-07:002019-07-07T06:44:24.894-07:00Joe Biden tries to photobomb history <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="text-align: left;">President Barack Obama governed not to lose. It's a virtue, to supporters: Obama's job was proving an African-American could lead the United States (and as such, the planet). How to prove what shouldn't need proving? By being judicious, avoiding large mistakes; by compensating with an occasional gamble (bin Laden); and of course, by avoiding even the </span><i style="text-align: left;">perception </i><span style="text-align: left;">of favoritism to Americans of color. Mission accomplished (too well, some say). </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">In choosing President Obama's worst mistake, then, we'd give varied answers: the bailouts, Fast and Furious, the health care site debacle. With inevitable exceptions, however, Obama was masterful at tone-setting, dignified to a fault (while inevitably compared to Lincoln, in presidential style he may be closer to George Washington). </span><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZU1uKg0vszz2cgQs6ajeJqVIF4MNO8HDDh5ckP07kCI70Kf4Sad6fsSzgr0JnwxNlARtvSX4Mu2t8Xym1AsRw89qvWoaeCY7NH1TKDFDoCeW0Uvp0OYgQVxwya8_AuHX_SDUb2vI_p0r7/s1600/Biden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">\<img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZU1uKg0vszz2cgQs6ajeJqVIF4MNO8HDDh5ckP07kCI70Kf4Sad6fsSzgr0JnwxNlARtvSX4Mu2t8Xym1AsRw89qvWoaeCY7NH1TKDFDoCeW0Uvp0OYgQVxwya8_AuHX_SDUb2vI_p0r7/s1600/Biden.jpg" /></a><br />
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Effectively, Obama ruled so the <i>next</i> president of color might be (simply) "president." Even in 2008, there were grumbles: a black man takes center seat only with an <i>elder white male</i> as backup/spotter. To avoid doubts over precedence (after Dick Cheney), V.P. Biden had to be typically ceremonial. To his credit, he kept place.</div>
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Still, with continued racism among existential threats, Biden's 2020 candidacy is problematic. Unfair or illogical as it may be, his nomination could make Obama seem more, not less, like the beneficiary of a cynical bargain. Obviously, Biden can't be historic in the same way, but a Biden presidency puts Obama in his shadow, at least temporarily. The prospect is exacerbated if Biden is a notably <i>great</i> president, or a <i>bad</i> president or, even, a <i>mediocre </i>president during especially crucial times. </div>
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Many resist such esoteric analysis: we (should) choose a leader based on <i>substance</i>, on fitness, not from supposed hypersensitivity over past associations. Nevertheless, the Democratic race, so far, has been characterized by notable <i>hostility</i> to Joe Biden -- arguably, more than expected -- with offense taken to his word and deed.</div>
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In this light, even with his bold-print resume, name recognition and confidence to spare, Biden <i><u>can't </u></i>be president -- not because he lacks ideas -- not because "handsy" -- from circumstance. The chip on his shoulder, lately, might suggest he <i>knows</i> (his "Wise Mind" knows). Like the gaffe-prone John McCain and Mitt Romney, Joe Biden runs against Barack Obama, if only in the American imagination.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-53178273260565596892019-05-25T07:10:00.001-07:002019-05-27T04:28:57.275-07:00everything has a reason: lensing Apocalypse Now in the Phillipines<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The good thing about a compulsion: there's always next time to get it <strike>wrong</strike> right.<br />
<br />
The Vietnam War was eerily similar to U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: a quagmire in a far off, developing, non-white nation, sold with lies and testosterone. The major difference was (is) the military draft. The calling-up of 2 million men to serve in Vietnam inspired mass protests during the war, and thereafter, survivor's guilt. The guilt, in turn, fed the war on terrorism, initiated by non-combatants George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.<br />
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The survivor's-guilt boom left traces in our movies. Initially, Vietnam vets on-screen tended anti-social and/or violent (e.g. <i>The Enforcer</i>,<i> Black Sunday</i>, <i>Lethal Weapon</i>, <i>The Indian Runner</i>). The scapegoating didn't take, not for lack of trying, but Vietnam was a <i>national </i>disgrace that couldn't be shunted to a subset.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-XRpEOt2CDxl3PpaUpVEw5zXQZeWaxF5Nm4WGwDroL6mWqHLntYKNCl-y6wYMBUyzhixzTKXtXacnHOvDy88VtKUg2mkBI9t98X3UX3zUNWGQIfwKxTbtn8KcFoQpLkQbq11ndLKvtl6g/s1600/Vietnam_DC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-XRpEOt2CDxl3PpaUpVEw5zXQZeWaxF5Nm4WGwDroL6mWqHLntYKNCl-y6wYMBUyzhixzTKXtXacnHOvDy88VtKUg2mkBI9t98X3UX3zUNWGQIfwKxTbtn8KcFoQpLkQbq11ndLKvtl6g/s1600/Vietnam_DC.jpg" /></a><br />
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We embraced veterans in the mid-1980s: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (right; opened 1982), <i>Platoon </i>(1985, by veteran Oliver Stone), <i>Hamburger Hill</i> and <i>Full Metal Jacket </i>(both 1987), and on TV, <i>Tour of Duty</i> and <i>China Beach</i>. The debt settled, on-screen vets turned comfortably cartoonish, whether frankly (<i>The Big Lebowski</i>) or not (<i>Forrest Gump</i>). <br />
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The signal year, though, was 1978. That cycle played it both ways, with sympathetic soldiers or vets nevertheless defined by mental and physical breakdown. <i>The Deer Hunter </i>won Best Picture, and <i>Coming Home</i>, Oscars for Jon Voight and Jane Fonda, but <i>Apocalypse Now</i> may have aged best. It inspired a celebrated documentary (1991's <i>Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse</i>, by Eleanor Coppola), as well as a substantially longer director's cut in 2001.<br />
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As <i>Hearts of Darkness</i> documents, survivor's guilt informs even the <i>publicity </i>around a Vietnam film. The filmmaking-as-combat conceit was mocked in 2008's <i>Tropic Thunder</i>. Still, <i>Apocalypse Now</i> came oddly close: the planned 16-week shoot lasted over a year, the obstacles including a typhoon, Martin Sheen's (near-fatal) heart attack, and the Filipino government's repossession of helicopters and pilots (to fight a communist rebellion). As in Vietnam, there was drugs and alcohol. Armchair doomsayers decried the ballooning project, its commander due for a fall (Coppola was coming off the<i> Godfather</i> films and <i>The Conversation</i>).<br />
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These troubles were largely predictable. Various locales can double for Vietnam; the troubled Philippines was the director's <i>choice</i>. In <i>Hearts of Darkness</i>, George Lucas recalls warning friend Francis: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If you go over there as a big Hollywood production, they're gonna kill you. The longer you stay, the more in danger you are of getting sucked into the swamp.</blockquote>
Excise "Hollywood," and these words apply to the Vietnam War. But maybe that's the point: epic-film production as masochism, to exorcise survivor's guilt. If such motivation was (largely) unconscious, it didn't stop Coppola capitalizing once the film was done. The ringmaster's immortal words at Cannes, 1979:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My film is not a movie. My film is not <i>about </i>Vietnam. It <i>is </i>Vietnam. It's what it was really like ... the way we made it was much like the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle -- there were too many of us -- we had access to too much money, too much equipment -- and little by little, we went <i>insane</i>. </blockquote>
It's not just the movie's director, star and co-writer John Milius (reputedly blacklisted after his militaristic <i>Red Dawn</i>, 1984): various figures would receive displaced punishment. Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst spent a year as a domestic terrorist, then 22 months in prison. CBS and Mike Wallace were sued by General William Westmoreland; years later, Dan Rather was baited with fake documents. Bill Clinton was impeached; Colin Powell, recruited for deception. Others caught hell for exaggerating their service (Tim Johnson, Richard Blumenthal). Jane Fonda got off easy: an apology, and penitential aerobics.<br />
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As voters, we avoided a vet as president (John Kerry, John McCain). As ticket buyers too, we'd avoid triggers: males of draft-age became stars only in their mid-30s (examples include Ed Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones, Patrick Swayze and James Woods). Other than Oliver Stone, the most prominent (real) veteran in Hollywood seems to be Dennis Franz (<i>NYPD Blue</i>).<br />
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If Francis Ford Coppola wanted to show appreciation to veterans, he could have merely <i>talked </i>to them, and, perhaps, arranged film-industry internships. Americans aren't particularly known for restraint or self-awareness. If so, we might've avoided the quagmire of 2032.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-47332902734098780922018-12-28T08:07:00.001-08:002019-01-20T12:40:41.346-08:00everything has a reason: the corporate mind of MLB<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This series attempts to illuminate human behavior, while assuming each choice has sufficient rational motivation, if not always (entirely) conscious for the actor.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFEDt2MDSdKHNRUeaMtzWepHFR8hvqVWwhmGkYggsIBVyu_CkXqlccLY655TGkQ_9zL-G3jTFHT5DTftvcr37gIQVBgoKBCSe0emnSyDw0xXMr3HO6Qjov2MaXNliNWfG-29xpBBiPEm96/s1600/Robinson_Cano.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFEDt2MDSdKHNRUeaMtzWepHFR8hvqVWwhmGkYggsIBVyu_CkXqlccLY655TGkQ_9zL-G3jTFHT5DTftvcr37gIQVBgoKBCSe0emnSyDw0xXMr3HO6Qjov2MaXNliNWfG-29xpBBiPEm96/s200/Robinson_Cano.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">meet the Mets: Robinson Cano</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We don't make mistakes, then: we prioritize one motive over another. It feels good to vent, but people don't suddenly become lazy-crazy-stupid, and even lust, anger and greed have nuances.<br />
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(Note: this post strays from film/TV to baseball, but is worded to include the non-fan.)<br />
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The recent New York Mets trade for aging, overpaid Robinson Cano (coming off a suspension for Performance-Enhancing Drugs, or PEDs) is part of a web of decisions sketching the game's prospects (disclosure: I'm a diagnosed Mets fan). This trade has renewed talk of the Designated Hitter¹ coming to the National League, but is only the latest of such indicators:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>baseball's fixation on power (home runs, the strikeouts that go with them)</li>
<li>1997: the inception of interleague (regular-season) play, breaking a 95-year custom</li>
<li>1998: the Milwaukee Brewers become a National League team, after 29 years in the AL</li>
<li>2013: the Houston Astros become an American League team, after 51 years in the NL</li>
<li>beyond Cano, aging sluggers on NL teams include Yoenis Cespedes (Mets), Joey Votto (Reds), Ian Desmond and Daniel Murphy (Rockies), Buster Posey (Giants) and Josh Donaldson (Braves)</li>
</ol>
The Midwest switch (#3 and 4) made little sense: Milwaukee and Houston sit at roughly the same longitude, why not leave it alone? Like interleague play, however, the switch defrayed league identity, already withering from free-agency and the resulting player mobility. To put it another way: it adds a major market, Houston, to those with a DH history. Of the greater metropolitan areas in MLB since 1965, only four have <i>no</i> experience with the DH: St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.<br />
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There's DH resonance, too, in December's surprise Hall of Fame selections (by a Veterans' Committee, the second chance for players overlooked by the Baseball Writers of America). The belated election of Harold Baines and Lee Smith leverages the need for inclusion (both are African-American) on behalf of marginalized <i>positions</i>: the Designated Hitter (Baines) and the closer (Smith).<br />
<br />
Many experts say Baines, especially, isn't a valid Hall of Famer (these include <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/whitesox/ct-spt-white-sox-harold-baines-hall-of-fame-controversy-20181210-story.html">Jon Taylor and Darren Rovell</a>). Still, his election may've held too many benefits to be denied. Not least, it suggests the elevation of a dozen-or-so borderline hitters, such as Dale Murphy, Don Mattingly, Gary Sheffield and Edgar Martinez. Those admissions would, in turn, provide disarming context in the (likely) event the Baseball Writers, increasingly Generation X and Millennials, anoint their childhood heroes (but PED cheaters) Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez.²<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz5qyVyU_UQykXyAjYvH4G0aUUlR3wkoyfBMPvJJcaWyYW-gZm95FDyQwK8moxtRr0V0THvySfhvMZ2HQil3HNot9YVTHRkZGtNUWq7-TuJdiYcY_erqQKfb40TSMBOQ-dL0XOkdFveSR0/s1600/Earl_Wilson_pitcher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="246" data-original-width="205" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz5qyVyU_UQykXyAjYvH4G0aUUlR3wkoyfBMPvJJcaWyYW-gZm95FDyQwK8moxtRr0V0THvySfhvMZ2HQil3HNot9YVTHRkZGtNUWq7-TuJdiYcY_erqQKfb40TSMBOQ-dL0XOkdFveSR0/s200/Earl_Wilson_pitcher.jpg" width="166" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Earl Wilson, A.L. pitcher pre-DH,<br />
hit 35 career home runs</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As a fan, I oppose the DH. I'm reminded of the epigram (credited to Eric Hoffer), "you can never get enough of what you don't need." The DH makes fans power-addicts, impatient for the next "jack."<br />
<br />
Devil's due: MLB is going about it the right way. Increasingly, MLB acts like a (single) multinational corporation, and if the Cano move is questionable for the Mets, it's perfect for MLB. It bestows a redemptive halo on a high-profile PED casualty, while giving a major NL-market instant rooting interest in DH-expansion.³ (Cespedes doesn't do that: his contract ends in 2019.)<br />
<br />
The DH in the NL fits a larger plan. According to veteran commentator Mike Francesa (WFAN New York), baseball's owners won't shorten the (bloated) regular-season unless salaries also shrink, a third-rail for the player's union.<br />
<br />
Given the above, the likely method to protect the game's Golden Goose, the overworked players, is to lessen the travel schedule. The evident way to do <i>that</i> is realignment, junking NL and AL for an East-West scheme like basketball and hockey. (Baseball's league structure dates from the early 20th century, when the westernmost teams were in St. Louis.)<br />
<br />
The idea of abolishing the venerated leagues would've been scandalous even 10 or 20 years ago, but at this point, who cares? MLB has been bumping the heat under the (fan) frog's pot. All clubs play each other in-season, and conveniently, teams including the Red Sox, White Sox, Giants and Cubs broke their respective (World Series) curses, further acclimating fans to epochal change. Expect announcements in the next 3-5 years.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #444444;"><i>1. Since 1973, the Designated Hitter rule has a tenth player take the pitcher's at-bats (pitchers tend to be weak hitters). Excused from playing defense, the DH can be ideal for an aging slugger. The National League is the holdout: everywhere else uses the DH </i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #444444;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #444444;"><i>2. In the name of control, younger writers seem bound for irreparable harm to this revered Hall of Fame.</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #444444;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #444444;"><i>3. (Edit, 20 Jan.) A boom in aging sluggers helped inspire the DH to begin with. According to 2004's </i>All Bat, No Glove,<i> by G. Richard McKelvey, players whose careers were lengthened "a few more years" by DH inception include "Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda, Tommy Davis, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Frank Robinson, and Billy Williams" (p. 87). </i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-73269299734678138082018-10-28T10:30:00.001-07:002019-02-11T07:00:12.418-08:00underseen for Halloween, 2018<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Busy with else, I for a time forgot All Hallows' Eve. Fortunately, I neither tarry long, nor stray far from the darkness.<br />
A quartet of amusements for a season of the witch:<br />
<br />
<i>Horror Hotel</i> (1960)<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkDles6Acb1i5q1ZWY8cHSHHl3q618WLpGzatbXOe5gXlBS8obgHw5KtosyvJcSwEln7yFgQy2gQRVlsUwVR4pUAyUV2ws9rvyLtZK8lALLk_pRysbecCb_siEG7O-J0mR4RpQWGWBsHsc/s1600/Horror_Hotel_1960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkDles6Acb1i5q1ZWY8cHSHHl3q618WLpGzatbXOe5gXlBS8obgHw5KtosyvJcSwEln7yFgQy2gQRVlsUwVR4pUAyUV2ws9rvyLtZK8lALLk_pRysbecCb_siEG7O-J0mR4RpQWGWBsHsc/s1600/Horror_Hotel_1960.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">spiritual, not religious</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This mini-classic still falls below radar, into the monochrome shadow of <i>Psycho</i>, <i>Black Sunday</i> and <i>Carnival of Souls</i>. It's not helped by a generic title, sometimes edited to the no-better <i>The City of the Dead</i>.<br />
By any name, it's a quick-paced tale of revived witchery in a depopulated New England hamlet, with only notes of wry parody to tell British origin.<br />
<br />
Also in the neighborhood: various episodes of Karloff's <i>Thriller</i>, and 1962's <i>Burn, Witch, Burn</i>, although <i>Horror Hotel</i>'s studly professor (Christopher Lee) is no skeptic. Journeyman director John Llewellyn Moxey may've neared the horror pantheon, but for later work being made-for-TV. <br />
<br />
Public-domain versions exist -- buyer beware -- but this isn't so bad on YouTube. I wished for a version with a different score, rather than nudge-nudge jazz undercutting considerable atmosphere.<br />
<br />
<i>The Vault of Horror</i> (1973)<br />
The co-writer of <i>Horror Hotel</i>, Milton Subotsky, later co-founded Amicus, a Hammer competitor best known for anthology films. These were inspired by EC Comics, banned in the '50s and destined for HBO's '90s <i>Tales From the Crypt </i>series. <br />
Dating from an era of Anglo-American guilt and surrender, the watchable tales deal punishment to characters who really aren't so bad, making viewers nervous. Amicus films surrender, too, to inevitable TV comparisons, such as <i>Night Gallery</i> and <i>Hammer House of Horror</i>.<br />
I choose <i>The Vault of Horror</i> partly for "This Trick'll Kill Ya," a weird white-guilt-trip looking to "Amelia," the tiki-doll horror from Dan Curtis's <i>Trilogy of Terror</i>. Curt Jurgens plays a high-handed impresario who barely has time to regret pursuit of the Indian rope trick. We're still whistling past the graveyard with such stories, where dominance of the world economy ends in shards, like <i>Flightplan</i> , <i>The Lost Room</i>, and anything by J.J. Abrams.<br />
Look also for Anna Massey of Hitchcock's <i>Frenzy</i>, and dynamic Tom Baker as a pre-<i>Dr. Who</i> rotter in "Drawn and Quartered."<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Fortress</i> (1985)</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8nXNuGtF_tUIyuPlLL8Ev-Wkco1Pms-DSp1Rp9JGqErAWQPQfOv5Un0p0hyT69lOswa5MtD3LPXQ16jcbC9ZIUCjgiMX3BMyrcoX9XjeWhrMjnVsqHuh_L1IAV57oyEQRY6cYg-cYe0ga/s1600/Fortress_1985.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8nXNuGtF_tUIyuPlLL8Ev-Wkco1Pms-DSp1Rp9JGqErAWQPQfOv5Un0p0hyT69lOswa5MtD3LPXQ16jcbC9ZIUCjgiMX3BMyrcoX9XjeWhrMjnVsqHuh_L1IAV57oyEQRY6cYg-cYe0ga/s320/Fortress_1985.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">unscheduled field trip</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One of many worthwhile films made for HBO during the long, hungry years pre-<i>Sopranos</i>, <i>Fortress</i> is a home-invasion variant boasting the natural beauties of Australia, including Rachel Ward. She's the lone teacher at a remote schoolhouse, a temptation for miscreants.<br />
Again, we see earlier turns for tropes: intruders in animal masks; victimized characters show steel under pressure; and the bit where survivors stumble on perpetrators.<br />
Still,<i> Fortress </i>seems less from another time as another culture. The genre hardly scans in the U.S.: a harsh thriller for family audiences. While it may not be frightening, it's impressively edgy for a film about, and presumably for school-age children. Australia remains close to pioneer past, evidently, making this one right for brats needing a booster of gratitude, with a lesson in fending for themselves. (The film has moderate violence, and brief nudity.)<br />
<br />
<i>The House of the Devil</i> (2009)<br />
In the 1970s, horror relocated from cobwebby castles to small towns and suburbs. In recent films, the realm is so disconnected, intruders come and go almost at will: <i>You're Next</i>, <i>Martha Marcy May Marlene</i>, <i>The Strangers. </i><br />
Similarly, Jocelin Donahue never meets the real owners of <i>The House of the Devil. </i>As college student Samantha, she takes a sketchy babysitting job, for rent money to ditch her slutty roommate. Her trigger-sin is materialism: not just greed, but a skepticism that becomes its own sort of gullibility. Tom Noonan's character doesn't try to <i>touch</i> her, after all, and pays cash. As for the lunar eclipse, surely: news-radio trivia.<br />
Built around a sympathetic lead performance, <i>The House of the Devil</i> is an uber-creepy slow-burn with several jump-scares. Like <i>The Fields</i>, it's set decades past, to resonate with causes for the-way-we-live-now.<br />
<br />
The American communities of midcentury had been condemned, but they <i>were </i>communities; not all the excluded were victims. The retirement of <i>Father Knows Best</i> evoked competing proposals, but while we argued, the world doesn't stand still. Some beliefs don't petition for approval. One thing leads to another. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-32643143314145876072018-08-01T14:53:00.001-07:002018-08-01T14:58:26.604-07:00everything has a reason: Marco Rubio reaches for water, 2013<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">This post develops an observation so obvious, it took five years to notice.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrHXWSjUk2_XrnM1I34RXVUh_UEbfP5U-rNuf5qaNDeCT8fwv-LKMRJqHvrWb18hxLol-FEi9Lsw03YshzeBb5yVm6VHZ7CHlStnY7IqdhRLOkhrtDUvpPL1hG9mpCwEURn9bw9jk7ZoBm/s1600/Rubio_Time_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="259" data-original-width="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrHXWSjUk2_XrnM1I34RXVUh_UEbfP5U-rNuf5qaNDeCT8fwv-LKMRJqHvrWb18hxLol-FEi9Lsw03YshzeBb5yVm6VHZ7CHlStnY7IqdhRLOkhrtDUvpPL1hG9mpCwEURn9bw9jk7ZoBm/s1600/Rubio_Time_cover.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Time, February 18, 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">As reported by <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/marco-rubio-love-water-216441">Politico</a>, Senator Marco Rubio (R, Florida) had a "water thing" before 2013 (despite his attempts to laugh it away):</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Like Richard Nixon’s perspiring or John Boehner’s crying, Rubio’s need for constant hydration is a bodily quirk that impinges on his political life.</span></span></blockquote>
Contextualizing Rubio's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ZxJVnM5Gs">post-State of the Union flub</a>, writer Ben Schreckinger includes <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">grousing from "a longtime Rubio associate":</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">(Rubio) says he just gets thirsty, but it’s clear it’s just a nervous tic. (Water is) something he just has to have around, like a security blanket or something. </span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">On sweating: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">I don’t think Marco sweats that much more. But Marco thinks he does. He’s always wiping, wiping, wiping sweat — even if he’s not sweating. It can drive you crazy if you’re watching him closely.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Analysis of the water-bottle moment overlooks a possible accelerant. In <i>The Atlantic </i>(Feb. 12, 2013), Elspeth Reeve is merely <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/marco-rubio-state-union-response-drink-gifs/318382/">droll</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As he sips, he seems to think he's doing something wrong, but he can't stop.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Getting <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/marco-rubios-water-bottle-moment">closer</a> is Ian Crouch in <i>The New Yorker</i> (Feb. 13): </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">he made a gamble and reached for a water bottle offscreen: he lurched down to his left and fumbled a bit, making a terrifyingly intimate moment of eye contact with the audience before taking a quick sip from an unfortunately tiny bottle ... </span></blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg1Y1VSWRr0-X1VC8Gj0kGR8r9SVUoRp3TwVgqeNhYL7FgrtrPn5IgraEuMDNs1HXG3Ek6WzJxsFX5PcZHvYoCGj_Y-eyXsAUZw64JkAcpvLGvp0ckXqpD4SnIJVc9hr7KBEUqs6HXIZGV/s1600/Rubio_water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="182" data-original-width="277" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg1Y1VSWRr0-X1VC8Gj0kGR8r9SVUoRp3TwVgqeNhYL7FgrtrPn5IgraEuMDNs1HXG3Ek6WzJxsFX5PcZHvYoCGj_Y-eyXsAUZw64JkAcpvLGvp0ckXqpD4SnIJVc9hr7KBEUqs6HXIZGV/s200/Rubio_water.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">There it is, what-could-be-worse for a conservative candidate: <i>down to his left</i>. If only the bottle were to his <i>right</i>. As it happened -- consciously or not -- the ingenuous senator seems torn by dread/desire of the sinister revelation (he's wearing a <i>blue </i>tie). Could it be American polarization, then, to render water-break operatic betrayal, with guilty delays and fidgets and desperate gaze. Perhaps t</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">he misplaced bottle <i>caused</i> the dry-mouth, during a short, 14-minute speech. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ultimately, Senator Rubio's exit-stage-left is like many of the (creative) gaffes by presidential aspirants: reason to wonder if he <i>wanted </i>the top job. The presidency goes to the candidate with the least effective self-sabotage. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-64345713784843132632018-07-04T13:35:00.001-07:002018-07-05T11:57:31.756-07:00everything has a reason: The Sopranos cuts to black (2007)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In November, I published this <a href="http://brightlightsfilm.com/sopranos-finale-cut-black-2007-mafia-analysis/#.Wz0GHNVKjZ5">essay</a> on <i>Bright Lights Film Journal</i>. (My thanks to editor Gary Morris for the presentation, and for patience with endless revisions.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLDGa-9634ZOYzXpjCDOzU8ZcXvnX2y6JCN4iDLvBgjGECQHbz-gGJ4muBZtNcUbE35E43azNnSmzCNeCeCUvd9YpKKKNI-sw9fEqQIcQywqpqWhzVIb7cI-Hi7v-SkljwgRn-Fr91s_0T/s1600/1sopranos-statue-of-liberty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="230" data-original-width="500" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLDGa-9634ZOYzXpjCDOzU8ZcXvnX2y6JCN4iDLvBgjGECQHbz-gGJ4muBZtNcUbE35E43azNnSmzCNeCeCUvd9YpKKKNI-sw9fEqQIcQywqpqWhzVIb7cI-Hi7v-SkljwgRn-Fr91s_0T/s320/1sopranos-statue-of-liberty.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The essay is 11,000 words and tough to summarize. That being said, I examine the series-ending cut-to-black from three angles. In critical context, the cut means parity, as it places Hollywood television beside the New Wave (e.g. <i>The 400 Blows</i>, <i>Bonnie and Clyde</i>), and foreign series such as <i>The Prisoner</i>.<br />
<br />
An artistic nugget unearthed too late for inclusion: The Beatles "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is a likely formal influence on the Holsten's scene, each using a guillotine ending. According to Wikipedia, the song's overdub session was the last time the four Beatles worked together in the studio. (Edit, 7/5: <i>Sopranos</i> creator David Chase is a fan, and remembered "fab" in 2012's semi-autobiographical <i>Not Fade Away</i>.)<br />
<br />
In terms of closure, psychology and spirituality, the cut-to-black confronts viewers on identifying with <i>these </i>characters. Along with the reminder to savor "the good times," the finale promotes humility: if we won't forgive Tony, why should anyone forgive us? On the bedrock level of plot: if the cut-to-black symbolized Tony's death, why did Chase <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/sopranos-ending">say</a> it was "disgusting" fans wanted to <u>see</u><b> </b>Tony die? Is there so much difference?<br />
<br />
Chase said the finale was meant to have a "sense of foreboding." This is the political aspect: Americans have reason to identify with an entitled clan wrestling decline. The attentive viewer may be left feeling like Tony as he retreats from his final visit to Uncle Junior.<br />
<br />
Originally, my goal was to dispute glib assertions that a) Tony is dead or b) the ending is false or otherwise disappointing. I ended up solving the cut-to-black, to my own satisfaction, at least. By their nature, some things can't be proven, but may have the ring of truth.<br />
<br />
"Is Tony dead?" is the wrong question (as David Chase has said). At this remove, the question, for America: Is Meadow in that doorway? </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-39252182436327496832018-06-01T16:55:00.002-07:002019-03-29T07:34:10.841-07:00everything has a reason: the Michael Richards outburst (2006)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaK7YIPn0VECn3wPuePcAyYAHAGJFwBXceJ5EOAF0hOvTqB_kQPWzeY6MKfUSjjsIuUZST-3fes3AMOltybHqhKEgpZdtyqecMY6GeiH7GB3c5H3Jfc-WQydyR0nx0d5kjCscYE2Xwb-Hg/s1600/Kramer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="192" data-original-width="204" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaK7YIPn0VECn3wPuePcAyYAHAGJFwBXceJ5EOAF0hOvTqB_kQPWzeY6MKfUSjjsIuUZST-3fes3AMOltybHqhKEgpZdtyqecMY6GeiH7GB3c5H3Jfc-WQydyR0nx0d5kjCscYE2Xwb-Hg/s200/Kramer.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Looking at some of John
F. Kennedy's speeches, I got that feeling: this was <i>our </i>president.
Today's leaders can only represent half of us, and we seem to have little use
for figures evoking bipartisan support: they write books like Chesley
Sullenberger, give lectures like Valerie Plame. Michael Jordan owns </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">the Charlotte Hornets, among other business </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">interests (and he reportedly likes to gamble). Similarly, Henry
Aaron, Cal Ripken and Derek Jeter stick to baseball. Stephen King was an
impressive critic, but seems to have retreated to fiction. Mark
Zuckerberg says, “start a company," Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos run
theirs. Most film stars are actually selective with political
comments.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If success is hard,
moral leadership might be hardest. We know the checkered history of
famous preachers. David Letterman stumbled under the mantle of Paar,
Allen and Carson. Mel Gibson kept a lid on his considerable issues
until <i>The Passion of the Christ</i>. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">EDIT: add Lance Armstrong, Stephen Collins, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer.</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
<br />
Roseanne Barr made an unlikely bipartisan leader. A gay-rights pioneer,
she became leery of the extremes of the modern Left, and is a Trump
supporter. Certainly, she disappointed her fans, this writer included,
with her pathetic tweet. </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">EDIT, 12 August 2018: This is why I usually avoid writing about recent events. Roseanne now says she thought (Obama advisor) Valerie Jarrett was <i>white</i>, as if to excuse (arguably, this makes the tweet <i>worse</i>, an attempt to sneak by a racial insinuation). As someone who enjoyed <i>Roseanne</i> (1988-97), I'd prefer to assume its star is experiencing mental deterioration, may she find the humility to fall silent. END </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the same time, it’s hard to wake up
every day on-thin-ice. That truth informs the following piece, written
in 2017, mostly about events of 2006. (I'll return to Roseanne at the end
of the post.)<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Coded
Race and the Richards Outburst</span></u><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
</span></u><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ty Cobb was a charter member of the
Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. He was also hypersensitive and a
brawler, and the center of an anecdote that illuminates American
racism. On May 15, 1912, Cobb climbed into the stands in New York to
beat up a disabled fan who’d called him a “half-nigger.” (This
incident seeded the idea of Cobb as virulent racist, a fabrication according to
Charles Leerhsen, author of <i>Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty </i>(2015).) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The 106-year-old
anecdote seems very American: we’re still violent, racist and baiting each
other. Nevertheless, it benefits from annotation: in 1912, many
considered race more essential than skin color or facial features, and the “one
drop of blood” rule classed a person “black” if they had any black
ancestry. This attitude factored into American resistance to
Darwinian science (the "Scopes monkey trial," creationism), in that
Darwin suggests — in these terms — we’re <i>all</i> black. The
racist (of any color) is self-loathing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
The fan’s insult points to a question for media criticism: can a character’s
race be coded? The following recreates my own train of thought, and
therefore may not be complete, while parts may have been covered by other writers
(although searches yielded little, as noted below). I'll focus
on a single combination: white actors as coded black characters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A knowledge of science fiction gives an advantage, e.g. <i>Star Trek</i>’s Spock
has (traditional) Asian characteristics, layered with Leonard Nimoy’s Judaism
(the Vulcan salute derives from rabbinical practice). In the 1980s, at
least one critic compared <i>E.T.</i>‘s appearance to that of starving
African children, a then-current image in Western culture. <i>E.T.</i> launched
a cycle in which white leads befriend innocent aliens (<i>Starman</i>) or A.I.
(<i>Short Circuit</i>). Sometimes, a black actor plays the alien:
Joe Morton in <i>The Brother from Another Planet</i>, Louis Gossett, Jr.
in <i>Enemy Mine</i>, Damon Wayans in <i>Earth Girls Are Easy</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Any discussion of race and science fiction brings up <i>Star Wars</i>.
It's rarely mentioned that James Earl Jones was originally uncredited as
the voice of Darth Vader. Jones was known in 1977, and has a
distinctive bass voice — everyone knew it was him, but he and George Lucas
playfully left doubt. Or maybe not playful, given accusations of
racism aimed at the franchise, decades before Jar-Jar Binks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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This may sound comically conspiratorial, but we get caught up in what
was/wasn’t intentional. Both Jones’s non-credit and the <i>Chasing
Amy</i> parody distract from the obvious: Darth Vader <i>is</i> a
“black villain,” with the voice of an African-American then known for
provocative roles. Jones played the first black president in <i>The
Man</i>, and based-on-truth films paired him with white women: he played the
Jack Johnson figure in <i>The Great White Hope</i> (Best Actor nod)
and the paranormal witness in <i>The UFO Incident</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Like the black hat in a Western, Darth Vader at least nods toward an
African-American villain, relatively rare in Hollywood’s sound era (if more
evident than black heroes). The end of 1983’s <i>Return of the
Jedi</i> reveals a pale wretch, but the tickets and toys had been sold,
concurrent to the extended tease that Anakin might be African (note also the CW’s short-lived <i>Star-Crossed</i>, about the Atrians).
Similarly, J.K. Rowling was a billionaire before declaring Hermione
Granger black. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
Bo Derek was unknown when cast as an idealized female in <i>10</i> (1979),
source of comic anxiety for Dudley Moore. The <i>10</i> trailer
pushes mystery: as we first see Derek with cornrowed hair, the narration says
Moore “doesn’t know … where she comes from.” Again, the implication is
she’s not-quite-white, but in this case it’s tantalizing. Derek soon
filmed <i>Tarzan</i>, perhaps the most racialist English-language classic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Like James Earl Jones, Boris Karloff was uncredited in the 1931 <i>Frankenstein</i> (the
credits have “?” opposite “The Monster”). Like Derek, Karloff was
not well-known. He was British (born William Henry Pratt) but had
adopted a stage name that (ultimately) matched an intimidating creature, in an
era when the Slavic enemy was often demonized. Karloff reportedly
had Anglo-Indian heritage — his skin was variously described as swarthy,
yellow, etc. — he played the title villains in <i>The Mummy</i> and <i>The
Mask of Fu Manchu </i>(both 1932). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Race is a background theme in any Frankenstein narrative. As the daughter of prominent intellectuals, Mary Shelley had
lifetime exposure to debates about slavery. Whether they admitted so or not, Europeans had to suspect Africans were their distant
relatives. Whereas Dr. Frankenstein tries to abandon his sudden kin,
whites enslaved Africans — both were hounded by judgment.<br />
<br />
We’ve had media criticism exploring race (gender, class) for at least 50
years. It’s hard to know if it’s doing more good than
harm. At times the writer (or reader) oversimplifies, or seems
motivated by resentment or overcompensation. In the remainder I try
to locate understanding, if only for one person.<br />
<br />
Michael Richards played Kramer on <i>Seinfeld</i>; he’s also known for his
racist outburst/rant (in 2006) when confronted by a black heckler at a comedy
club. Richards’ famous role may have been a contributing
factor. Although originally based on a white man (Larry David’s
former neighbor, Kenny Kramer), and sometimes characterized as a slacker (nut, "pod,"
hipster-doofus), TV’s Kramer has much in common with the “coon” stereotype of
minstrel-show tradition, as described by sociologist David Pilgrim:<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The coon was portrayed as a lazy, easily
frightened, chronically idle, inarticulate, buffoon. … The coon differed from
the Sambo in subtle but important ways. Sambo was depicted as a
perpetual child … the coon acted childish, but he was an adult; albeit a
good-for-little adult.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">(from the site of The Jim Crow Museum of Racist
Memorabilia)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Like the coon, Kramer
has distorted beliefs and comical fears, and penchants for wild schemes and
fresh fruit. Like the “Urban Coon” subtype, he’s a sharp dresser
despite lack of conventional employment. Admittedly, Kramer is
smarter than typical. Richards:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The real key came about eight or nine shows
in. I had been playing Kramer as if he were slow-witted … Then I
learned to play him as if he were blocks ahead of what everyone’s saying, and I
had him.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There are various ways
this argument may be misunderstood; for one, I am not defending abusive
speech. Granted, I will omit various Kramer traits and storylines,
but even among other influences, the parallel seems clear. I'm assuming
any use of the stereotype was unconscious on the part of the white boomers
producing the series (it would hardly have remained unremarked,
otherwise). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Like various plotlines,
the casting of Richards plays into a race-bending subtext, in that he’s a large
man with kinky hair. In “The Fusilli Jerry,” Kramer errantly
receives “ASSMAN” vanity plates, but soon adjusts to the persona. In
“The Wig Master,” circumstances leave him an evident pimp. In “The
Burning,” he’s an actor for a medical school, and is typecast as gonorrhea
patient. Kramer is an effortless seducer, a recovering gambling
addict, and afraid of clowns (they wear whiteface). He favors Cuban
cigars; also Hennigan’s scotch, because it leaves no smell. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Several misadventures
involve skin and/or color: in “The Wife,” Kramer falls asleep in a tanning bed,
after which he appears to be in blackface. In “The Abstinence,” his
home smoking-lounge damages his skin. In “The Butter Shave,” the
mistake is butter as tanning lotion. In “The Chicken Roaster,”
Kramer can’t sleep due to the brilliant (red) sign of a new Kenny Rogers
Roasters. After switching apartments, Jerry starts behaving like
Kramer, but it’s Kramer who’s addicted to the chicken. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">According to Donald
Bogle’s standard reference <i>Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks:
An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films</i>, the foremost
screen-actor of coon roles was Stepin Fetchit, who was known for physical
mastery —a Richards specialty — and being unfazed by criticism (when in character),
also like Kramer. Bogle notes two 1934 films: in <i>The World
Moves On</i>, the character finds himself in the French Army — compare Kramer’s
bumbling into jobs in “The Bizarro Jerry” and “The Summer of
George.” In <i>David Harum</i>, the character does dishes while
soaking his feet — Kramer prepares salad in the shower in “The
Apology.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Seinfeld</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> was slow to address Kramer’s lineage, but
what’s there connects. In “The Nose Job,” he needs a jacket from the
apartment of his mother’s imprisoned friend. Elaine pretends to be
the man’s daughter, “Wanda Pepper,” while Kramer poses as her
fiancé. The cover is blown when the building’s manager disparages
Babs (Kramer’s mother) as “nasty,” a “drunken stumblebum” who’d typically get
loud as she “drank Colt 45 from a can.” (In the U.S., Colt 45 malt
liquor is associated with African-Americans, as in ad campaigns with Billy Dee
Williams and Snoop Dogg.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In “The Switch,” we meet
Babs (Sheree North), a bathroom attendant who tells Kramer she has “two years
clean.” The episode ends with Babs discovered in bed with Newman,
the unappealing postman. Per traditional stereotypes, Babs is the
sort who’d have sex with non-whites. Considering all of the above,
the buried implication is that Kramer is (part) black. And regardless
of origin, the surname cooperates, by suggesting “creamer,” thus a lightening
in color. (Coffee is a theme for Kramer, e.g., he’s hooked on café
lattes.) Finally, in <i>Curb Your Enthusiasm</i>‘s arc about
a <i>Seinfeld</i> reunion (2009), Michael Richards fears he has
(fictional) “Groat’s disease”; to raise his spirits, the Kramer-like Leon
(African-American actor J.B. Smoove) claims to have Groat’s. (Of
course, the plan goes awry, giving Richards the chance to express anger
respectfully.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The 1990s was a comeback
decade for the coon, inspiring Spike Lee’s despairing <i>Bamboozled</i> (2000). I’m
suggesting neither moral equivalency, nor that Richards was victimized in any
way. Nevertheless, the sampling of a powerful stereotype could cause
identity issues for the actor playing Kramer for a decade. Turning
the screw, the character became an icon to a young generation known for
hypersensitivity to prejudice. The actor would have to be the
perfect cosmopolitan. (Kramer’s first name is Cosmo.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Novelist Milan Kundera
suggested vertigo is the fear of falling meeting the desire to
fall. In 2006, Michael Richards lived a white-American nightmare,
but he received compensation: in addition to affirming his own whiteness, he no
longer had to fear ruining his career with a racist outburst. This
payoff becomes more tempting if the career is essentially over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Given an imperfect
memory, I recall one critic citing a coded black character: in <i>Planet
of the Apes as American Myth</i>, Eric Greene discusses the title character
in <i>Edward Scissorhands</i>. (I was unable to find references
to Kramer in this context.) Apparently, for our talk of racism, we
make the essentialist assumption that a white actor always plays an (entirely)
white character. We diminish the reefs; American race-consciousness
is fathomless. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">afterword (2018)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ll attempt an updated
conclusion, while planning to address these matters at greater
length. Also, please note that for various reasons, comments are disabled on this
blog. I apologize to any who might otherwise have left (civil) comments. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In his classic <i>Wayward
Puritans</i>, Kai T. Erikson explained that a society gets the deviant
behavior it expects. Sometimes, we overreact: troubled by Quakers (1650s),
the Puritan fathers banished these dissenters “on pain of
death.” The policy was “an invitation to disaster, for
nothing could so satisfy the Quakers’ call to persecution as a chance to suffer
on the gallows for the sake of conscience.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This dynamic,
definition-of-deviance vs. behavior, evolved because it strengthens the
community, assuming a consensus majority. The
Puritan authorities prevailed, of course, until later
centuries. Today, we are precisely divided, as between those who
consider Roseanne’s tweet deviant, and those more troubled by (what they consider)
the overreaction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Like Michael Richards,
Roseanne became wealthy and famous playing a working-class individual with poor
boundaries. As with Richards, we can assume some degree of identity
whiplash. Roseanne’s career wasn’t over, of course, she’d made
a comeback. In any case, she’s a 65-year-old, on medication, has profusely apologized, and she deserves a second chance. (EDIT: No, she probably doesn't, in the absence of real contrition.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our excess condemnation
stems from the overarching myth addressed by Steven Pinker in <i>The Blank
Slate</i>: “the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be
inscribed at will by society or ourselves” (page 2). And in his
preface: our “refusal to acknowledge human nature is like the Victorians’
embarrassment about sex.” This becomes “the mentality of a cult,”
with one inevitable result being “a ‘politically incorrect’ culture of shock
jocks … emboldened by the knowledge that the intellectual establishment has
forfeited claims to credibility in the eyes of the public.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The mistake made by
scientific writers, including Pinker, is to presume logic can <i>ever</i> hold
sway, society-wide. History suggests societies run on <i>myths</i>,
not facts or logic (perhaps for the same reason no driver expects a terrible
accident: reality is too much). Even when we remold the community to
be fairer than in the past, we must compensate with new myths ... or a stealthy
return to old ones. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Like good utopians,
Americans are constantly declaring the <i>end</i> of old myths and
customs, but with a fatal inability to agree on <i>new </i>(or newly strengthened)
ones. Our usual self-evaluations — tolerance, freedom, free markets,
voting — don’t work <i>here</i> because essentially negative (<i>don’t</i> infringe
on my rights), and too nearly-global to serve as national/cultural
identity. The syndrome helps explain the runaway wealth gap: even as
traditional values fade, we <i>value</i> money. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As Pinker implies, we
are neo-Victorians, with speech taking the place of sex, and those with poor
(verbal) impulse-control the “perverts." This exchange leaves
American racism as our primary existential threat. C</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">racking down on </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">speech </i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">is understandable: unlike systemic racism,
we can (often) identify the guilty. But it doesn’t seem to help, indeed,
it may not be coincidence that mass incarceration paced political
correctness. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">As Van Jones comments in </span><i style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">13<sup>th</sup></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (1:22:30),
criminal justice reform will trigger substitute abuses. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">There is
nothing audacious about false hope. We’re in bad trouble, and no one
is coming to bail us out. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-89475011141841749512018-05-18T15:41:00.001-07:002018-07-08T10:08:21.686-07:00everything has a reason: Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal, 1995-99 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCVHdW2euNw1goHCiAiyhJ_aEOD2t2GWYP4D59-3nJOZId78Ty15xpKowLtubsGltFJhIL5t3UKFXBYN05SFOgIrSVHalI1Pe_zxwXzp-P6HDqoxYyEsDrgLjAFlD2aPE-TxOQa5Lb8b2d/s1600/Clinton_Bill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCVHdW2euNw1goHCiAiyhJ_aEOD2t2GWYP4D59-3nJOZId78Ty15xpKowLtubsGltFJhIL5t3UKFXBYN05SFOgIrSVHalI1Pe_zxwXzp-P6HDqoxYyEsDrgLjAFlD2aPE-TxOQa5Lb8b2d/s1600/Clinton_Bill.jpg" /></a></div>
In his introduction to <i>When Presidents Lie</i> (2004), author Eric Alterman explains his inattention to Bill Clinton, whose<i> </i>lies should've been<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"no one's business but that of the liar and his intimates. ... Clinton lied publicly ... only because he was being pursued by a fanatical group of politicians and ideologues who sought -- with the unlimited resources of the Independent Counsel's office -- to make his private life public, something that had happened to no previous president ... Clinton lied about his adulterous behavior to spare himself and his family further public humiliation." </blockquote>
If the above is true, there's still something missing: after many years doing a pretty-good-job covering his adulterous affairs (little or no incriminating evidence such as photos, letters, etc.) why did Bill Clinton get stupid? Why did he cheat not only in the White House but the Oval Office, making revelation radioactive? Why with a woman too unworldly to be trusted with secrets? There's no avoiding, it wasn't Monica Lewinsky's great beauty. We can assume people, even presidents, have discreet sex in the White House (the following from the White House Historical <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/questions/how-big-is-the-white-house">Organization</a>):<br />
<br />
<ul style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #eeedeb; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #252525; font-family: CalendasPlus, "Helvetica Nueue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 1.75; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 25px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 10px 75px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">The White House has 132 rooms, including 16 family-guest rooms, 1 main kitchen, 1 diet kitchen, 1 family kitchen, and 35 bathrooms.</li>
<li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 10px 75px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Floor area (total of 6 floors) approximately 55,000 square feet.</li>
</ul>
<br />
The site chastely omits bedrooms, but per this Quora <a href="https://www.quora.com/How-many-bedrooms-does-the-White-House-have">thread</a>, there are at least 11, depending on utilization. A <i>Business Insider</i> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_913270900"></span>list</a> adds such features as the Workout Room, Family Theater (42-seat), Solarium and Private Study. FYI: in 1997 the Clinton Administration set a record with 36 Christmas trees in the White House.<br />
<br />
Less-touted: the Kennedy Administration employed "Fiddle and Faddle," two secretaries who serviced the president. Granted, scrutiny has increased greatly since the early 1960s, but Bill Clinton knows to find the quiet corner of a sprawling mansion. Like any president, he has a Secret Service detail sworn to protect him and his secrets.<br />
<br />
So: do lust and hubris sufficiently explain Clinton fooling around, in the Oval Office. With a starstruck 22 year-old. Who'd attended Beverly Hills High School. Whose mother had written a "gossip biography" (per Wikipedia) on <i>The Private Lives of the Three Tenors</i>, dropping hints she'd had an affair with Placido Domingo.<br />
<br />
Alterman is right: Ken Starr was out to get Bill Clinton on any pretext. As I noted in a <a href="https://www.popmatters.com/national-sweeps-the-merger-of-tv-and-presidential-elections-2495408575.html">piece</a> for <i>Pop Matters</i>, Clinton was an existential threat to the Republican Party, because he re-branded Reaganism as Democratic and hip. None of which explains delivery of a sex scandal with a big-red-bow.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">As in my last post, on the selection of Sarah Palin in 2008, I'll propose a "motivation theory." First, a few disclaimers: </span><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">Whether attributing the unconscious to Freudian denial or computer-like efficiency, the mental health profession acknowledges its role in decision-making.¹</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">Psychologists and psychiatrists have little incentive to address matters of national interest, leaving these open to any with the requisite interest and insight. </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">The supposed dichotomy </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">"conscious vs. unconscious" is at best a convenient reduction. Intent is a slippery scale, notoriously hard to prove, and mysterious even to the actor.² </span> </li>
<li>T<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">o</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> reject motivation theories <i>mainly </i>on grounds of absence of proof is a fallacy: the appeal to ignorance. </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">A</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> motivation theory is an unusual angle on familiar events; it may have been broached before. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">Our chronic resistance to the twilight of consciousness is reflected in our vocabulary and rhetoric. The suggestion "New Orleans effectively cleansed itself of poor people by its lack of preparation for Katrina," will likely be challenged: "Are you saying it was conscious?" Well, waiting on <i>that </i>knowledge delays the charge indefinitely. Casual talk is more likely to concede reality, as in</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> "accidentally-on-purpose." </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">Another instance: O.J. Simpson and the Low-Speed Chase. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">In 1991, when </span><i style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15.4px;">TV Guide</i><span style="font-size: 15.4px;"> asked for memorable TV-viewing moments, Simpson recalled true-crime, celebrity and altered perceptions: </span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">"The live coverage of the (1974) SLA/Watts shootout. There had been much speculation about (Patty Hearst's) innocence and the political implications ... (but) the viewing audience came to the realization of the criminal acts of the SLA." </span></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">In </span>1994, the media-savvy ex-running back <i>inverted </i>the SLA shootout, thus painting himself a victim of fate and the LAPD. I</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">n the wake of Daryl Gates and Rodney King, Simpson</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> effectually staged a long, sympathy-generating perp-walk</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">. (Edit, 8 July 2018: After her career as a bank-robbing terrorist, heiress Patty Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison; the sentence was commuted after 22 months.) </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">What if Bill Clinton had committed a crime(s) worse than a failed real estate deal or running around on his wife? In any case, his administration was mired in scandal by 1995, investigated not only by the Independent Counsel but both houses of Congress. In October, the Senate Whitewater committee issued 49 subpoenas. In November, Clinton began his affair with Monica Lewinsky. In January 1996, Hillary Clinton was the first wife of a sitting president to be subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">President </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">Clinton had no reasonable way of stopping Ken Starr, or he would've done so. Consciously acknowledged or not, the Lewinsky scandal might have been least-of-evils: a distraction so spectacular as to stop Starr's investigation, for the same reason a gorged python stops eating. The affair revealed, Bill Clinton</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> was subjected to scorn and condemnation -- but also sympathy and forgiveness. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">And as difficult as impeachment was, it had relatively little to do with shady loans, or with </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">Juanita Broaddrick, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">Bill Clinton, l</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;">ike O.J. Simpson,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> was acquitted. He then completed his second term. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lato"; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">1. In psychology known as Dual Process <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory">Theory</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2. In February 2015, in his <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/hard-truths-law-enforcement-and-race">speech</a> on race and law enforcement at Georgetown University, then-FBI Director James Comey noted "much research points to the widespread existence of unconscious bias," but also, "racial bias isn't epidemic in law enforcement any more than ... in academia or the arts." </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3900593326872389183.post-72699406263584302852018-04-14T03:15:00.001-07:002018-04-14T03:20:27.050-07:00everything has a reason: McCain picks Palin, 2008<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
** This post reviews <i>Game Change</i>, the 2012 made-for-HBO film **<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigHd1kZRDSkclV0BuLwUhDfXtPaknPUYUrZohfZ0xQa2V25_wVuTt3js3sPJwzRN6GR9QNcoK9UV61CMno40_KqlPpSN1uNyj5dxmWsUkNgu8K50n5wSkZy5lHMjn4ZBDQwdLXZbx_ffzZ/s1600/Game_Change.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="269" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigHd1kZRDSkclV0BuLwUhDfXtPaknPUYUrZohfZ0xQa2V25_wVuTt3js3sPJwzRN6GR9QNcoK9UV61CMno40_KqlPpSN1uNyj5dxmWsUkNgu8K50n5wSkZy5lHMjn4ZBDQwdLXZbx_ffzZ/s320/Game_Change.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Game Change</i> is the fascinating, Emmy-darling account of Sarah Palin's role in the 2008 election. Although not a flattering portrait of the then-governor of Alaska (played by Julianne Moore), it makes clear she was (also) victim to a careless campaign. <i>And </i>she was 2-3 gaffes short of respectability.<br />
<br />
Though based-on-fact (Nicolle Wallace called the film "true enough to make me squirm"), <i>Game Change</i> is also prophetic: even as Palin becomes a laughingstock her popularity soars among the base, leading to defensive egomania and the "going rogue" (reclaimed) pejorative.<br />
<br />
As depicted here, John McCain grew to fear<i> </i>Palin, even as he inched away from the loose-screws showing up at GOP campaign events. It could've been worse: with Palin hapless at debate prep, her desperate team noted her acting skills and wrote lines for her to memorize (it worked).<br />
<br />
<i>Game Change</i> offers psychological nuggets. Near the end of the first hour, campaign latecomer Wallace (Sarah Paulson) has this epiphany about the hurried vetting process: "You guys didn't grill her because you wanted it to <i>work</i>." Of this failure, adviser Mark Salter (Jamey Sheridan) later says, "It haunts me."<br />
Finally, the beaten candidate (Ed Harris) confides to strategist Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson as the film's protagonist) that his (McCain's) father and grandfather lost will-to-live after their respective service to country, thus "I <i>can't </i>quit."<br />
<br />
So: Why Palin? The usual explanations -- youth, gender, conservative credentials, her sons (one bound for Iraq, another with special needs), a lagging campaign needed disruption -- explain her being <i>considered</i>, not the inattention both to her insecurities and ignorance of world affairs. If the campaign was out of time, well, why did a major-party campaign wait until out-of-time?<br />
<br />
When behavior seems incomprehensible, we often resort to insults, but Senator John McCain and staff were neither stupid nor crazy. Comprehending irrational behavior requires acknowledging the role of emotions -- the psyche -- with "conscious vs. unconscious" being largely a dichotomy of convenience. Conversely, to reject unconscious motivations primarily for lack of proof is a fallacy, the appeal to ignorance.<br />
<br />
There are enough dots in <i>Game Change </i>for an arrow pointing to McCain's choice, especially in light of subsequent history. All concerned are amazed by the adulation greeting Barack Obama (Palin gropes for a metaphor: "I didn't know we were running against a Greek god"). At the end, when Schmidt seeks to block Palin's intended "concession speech" -- unprecedented for a V.P. candidate -- he forbids disrespect to the election of the first African-American president.<br />
<br />
Inevitably, the Obama moment aggravated conservative-party anxieties in a browning America. This anxiety naturally manifests in vice presidents (nominees), at once a ceremonial position and source of future presidents. In 1968, Richard Nixon chose Spiro Agnew -- whose Greek Orthodox father made him diverse for the era -- overlooking corruption that forced Agnew to resign in disgrace a year before Nixon. The need for young blood led to Dan Quayle's nomination in 1988, nearly as misguided as Palin's. The 2000 GOP opted for denial, with mainstay Dick Cheney appointing himself George W. Bush's running mate.<br />
<br />
As much as John McCain wanted to be president, he looked across barricades at an historic phenomenon. <i>We </i>know Obama's election didn't fix America, but in 2008 it seemed possible. On the contrary, a McCain victory would've been anticlimactic -- and widely attributed to racism. (Note: McCain insisted on a clean campaign, to the point of barring use of Reverend Jeremiah Wright in campaign ads.)<br />
The above considered, the McCain camp wanted to <i>win</i>, but with a condition (however unconscious): they wanted victory <i>by act of God</i>. Thus, they let the spirit move them, ignoring protocol, to the obscure but deeply religious (and female) Sarah Palin.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0