A Non-Commercial Decade Of Dominance!
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Bylines Essays: Title/Subject/Author
NEW ESSAYS!
1348) Hatebook/Essay/Len Holman It now seems the height of naiveté to have believed we could embrace all the platforms which are called, collectively, “social media” and not run afoul of a cherished American ideal: free speech. We all believe in free speech the way a child believes in Santa Claus, or the way a conspiracy buff believes Castro or the Mob had something to do with John Kennedy’s death, or the way desperate, lonely people believe that a computer algorithm can match you with your soul mate. This is not just happening here in the U.S. Governments across the globe regularly close off internet access, public spaces, and news organs—all to keep that beast—free speech—from getting too rambunctious....
Yea!
1349) David Foster WallaceNothing/Jackson Hawley In the contemporary literary paradigm, it would be difficult to find a figure more sacrosanct than that of the late David Foster Wallace. Since his 2008 self-hanging, his reputation seems only to have waxed, his work and person lauded in Academia and book store alike, culminating in a 2012 biography by author D.T. Max. (One can only guess how soon we’ll see a big-budget biopic.) While the man never moved units like Stephen King nor Dan Brown, his work still sold quite well for somebody so self-consciously “artsy” in approach, particularly among college-age individuals and Academics (though research suggests that his posthumous, unfinished collection of novel fragments, The Pale King, sold rather more poorly than his earlier works had, despite the hype). He seemed to be the literati’s dream come true – a well-educated man with a background in literature and philosophy -references to the works of Wittgenstein and Derrida, as well as authors like Dostoevsky, abound in his corpus.....
Nothing plus nothing equals ?
1350) Joni Mitchell/Glenn Tilbrook/Dan Schneider One might think that if one did a documentary on a subject that was good, that the resulting documentary would, likewise, be good, or better. But, this is not usually the case. And watching these two documentaries on musicians- Joni Mitchell: Woman Of Heart and Mind and Glenn Tilbrook: One For The Road- is a good instruction on why this is so....
So-so.
1351) Uncle Mortie's Picnic/Essay/Len Holman By now, everyone knows that the U.S. government is—with the very kind assistance of the nation’s data carriers and the ubiquitous social media, The Patriot Act, and secret FISA courts—watching us as we go merrily on our electronic way through cyberspace. Some of us are outraged, but not too many. It is for the good of the country we are told. We have foiled at least one terrorist plot, we are told—but since everything is secret, we don’t know the details, and we never will, so we’ll just have to take our government’s word for it. The thing is, to me, not the total and arrogant and slimy pretense of protecting America....
Good riddance.
1352) We Still Produce Them/Essay/Len Holman A young man, 29 years old, has thrown the intelligence community, the political establishment, and the social punditocracy, into frenzy. He was a contractor for the CIA (some estimates are that about half of the CIA’s hired help is contracted out). Edward Snowden is apparently holed up somewhere in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, a keeper of many secrets, purveyor of newspaper bombshells....
Yes, we do.
1251) Expelled
From Eden/William T. Vollman/Dan Schneider Fans
of David
Foster Wallace, relax! Your fair haired (and still dead)
boy is still the most terrible, overpraised, overhyped, PoMo,
omnibustial critic’s darling of a hack writer out there.
Having read Expelled
From Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader,
edited by
Shit.
1252) Look Outside/Essay/Len Holman It’s a bright, sunny, warm day here in the upper desert. The jackrabbits are nosing around trying to find something to eat; the ravens are making a racket, zooming through the air, and it’s so quiet up here, an observer can hear their wings beating the air. There is little traffic and looking out across the desert from my porch, I see nothing out of place in this small corner of the universe....
Lo!
1253) The Publishers' Fetish/Essay/Ben Smith How many times need you read The Complete Poetry of E.E. Cummings before you understand what e.e. is all about? Of course, this is a trick question, and the answer is, as it were, half-a-time. Yes, one need only read half the book to not only “get the gist,” but be dizzy with the punctuation’s play and the parting and parenthesizing of words; you may have even gathered the reasoning behind why he capitalizes and why he doesn’t here and there. You may even know his best from his worst. Well now, imagine you encountered a poetry journal requesting that you submit e.e. cummings-inspired poetry. After reading half of his Complete Works you’ve got the idea, you know e.e. in and out; now time to get to work. But get this, the journal asks not for a solitary e.e.-inspired piece but three-to-five of them....
Yucky!
1254) A Theory Of Poetic Aesthetics/Essay/Ben Smith We know that verse is made up of many elements, music, metaphor, lyricism, wit, enjambment (how often this element is overlooked) and the entirety of rhetoric. We can often say when evaluating a poem that it has a promising beginning or an excellent ending, two very important pieces of a quality poem. We can look into a poem’s tropes and their development. We can see its symmetries in both word and meaning, and we can examine its contradictions, whether they are ironic, paradoxical, or just contradictions in and by themselves. Yes, we have these many elements....
Workin' it out.
1255) Labels/Essay/Len Holman As Orwell, Sapir, Whorf, Boroditsky, Confucius, and every politician and corporation have noted before this election, labels are important; language is key. What you call a thing impacts how you act toward it, and how you act toward it impacts what you call it. For example, a “new and improved” product is supposed to catch the customer’s eye and make him say, “Wow! I was gonna buy some other brand, but THIS one says it’s new AND improved…I’LL GET IT!” It may be that the “New and Improved” part of the product is just the label itself....
Rev it up.
1256) The Problem Of The Pantheistic Poet/Essay/Ben Smith First questions first: are all poets drawn to nature as a subject pantheists? I would say no but! But most such poets are pantheistic in their inclinations. Indeed why dedicate oneself to nature with such devotion? One could argue, and this will actually explain a lot about the lesser writers of the pantheistic strain, that there may be some sort of social limitations in such a person. I say this because without a doubt the most interesting and complex creatures on our planet are humans, not plants, not nature, nor Nature....
Always problems....
1257) Good Faith, Stupidity, And The Internet: Part 6/Cults Of Personality (Part 2)/Dan Schneider As has been the case with all the rest of these prior essays in the GFSI series, this one will deal with much of the accumulated stupidity since the last essay, almost two years ago. In that essay I promised that this next installment would deal with mainly the cult of personality known as the cult of the self, and, indeed, the vast majority of the folks exposed in this essay will be shown to be guilty of the narcissism at the center of a cult of the self that dominates online culture in 2012, and since the rise of the internet in the mid-1990s. Of course, not much has changed over the two years, save that there are even more and more idiots online and their delusions and stupidity get more and more blatant....
Tearing the asses new ones!
1258) Free Speech Is A Lap Dance/Essay/Len Holman Amid the instant analysis of the Supreme Court’s last decisions of its term, the breathless wonder at Chief Justice Roberts’ support of Obamacare and the get-your-knickers-in-a-bunch speculation about the Arizona immigration law, one issue has largely escaped much attention. It is the Montana case which the Court refused to hear, the one in which the Montana Supreme Court upheld a state law limiting independent political spending by corporations, the one which continues the idea that the Citizens United decision, which has transformed American politics into a commodities exchange, is the firm, unequivocal law of the land....
Bring on the speech!
1259) Indy Novels/Peter Damian Bellis-Ara 13/Dan Schneider I recently read two novels, unpublished by major houses, from two writers who share commonalities, in that neither one’s skills nor work are as good as they effusively claim, and that neither writer is actually primarily practicing the very sort of fiction they claim. I was thrust into the twenty odd year quest of Peter Damian Bellis to get his so-called Magical Realism novel, The Conjure Man, published when, as detailed here, I got a series of increasingly bizarre, self-laudatory, and philosophically impoverished, emails from the man declaiming that the book, written in the early 1990s, which he has spent the better part of two decades trying to get published at a big house, and which did get published, in 2010, by a de facto subsidy/self publishing press called River Boat Books....
Wave that dick, why don't ya?
1260) Good Government By Accident/Essay/Len Holman It would be nice to imagine that government is in the business of helping a country’s citizens, and that it sees a problem, and works fiendishly hard to solve it; at least it would be pretty to think so, as Hemingway once wrote. In fact, government just seems to bumble along, doing what “leaders” think is right—even when they think that because it benefits them—with no thought to the consequences....
Or Intelligent Design?
1261) Mad Men/TV Review/Dan Schneider Recently, the AMC cable network finished airing the fifth season of their highly acclaimed advertising agency soap opera, set in the 1960s, called Mad Men (industry slang for the men who work on Madison Avenue, in Manhattan). I’ve yet to watch that season, as I lack cable tv, but, over the last few weeks watched the first four seasons (covering about 5½ years chronologically- 1960-65) on Netflix, due to the laudatory comments I’ve heard from others (the fifth season should be due soon for streaming). The good news is that it is, indeed, a well written and well acted show, for the most part. The bad news is, contra to most claims, it is not a great nor culturally significant television show- despite its Emmy stash....
Good.
1262) Slaughterhouse-Five/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Sometimes luck is better than skill, as the apothegm bemoans. Film director George Roy Hill likely would have agreed with this sentiment, given the arc of his career. Hill was basically a journeyman director of television who got a lucky break into the film industry, then mined a decent career in that field, despite, at best, yeoman’s level work, in terms of visuals, narrative, and overall directorial skill with actors and scripts. Now, years after his death, his name is best recalled for films like 1982’s The World According To Garp, 1973’s The Sting, or 1969’s Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. But, while those films garnered acclaim and popular appeal, none of them were innovatory....
Excellent.
1263) Giant/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Director George Stevens’ 1956 film Giant is one of those grandiose soap operas that were popular back in the Golden Age of Hollywood, but one which has not aged particularly well. Yes, it did, and still does, offer more than the similar epic, Gone With The Wind, but Giant still lacks heft, despite its immense length (200 minutes) and large subject matter (the rise of Texas as an economic powerhouse in the early 20th Century). Having said that, the film has no glaring bad points, just as it has no particular high points one might call great....
Solid.
1264) Morality/Lisbeth Salander/T. Patrick Hill What is to be said of the morality of Lisbeth Salander?[i] In an already unjust world, she certainly endured more injustice than most of us could ever imagine: a sadistic father, a sadistic public guardian, and illegal institutional confinement by the state....
Woe.
1265)
Camille Paglia/Fraud/Ben Smith
This
choppy piece of writing began as a challenge I posed to a
friend. One was
offered the opportunity of counting the number of cases of
lying, dishonesty, misrepresentation, false claims,
stupidity, and general disingenuousness committed by Camille
Paglia in several hours of footage of her recorded public
appearances. Since
this is foremost a mere listing of such incidences, one
should not expect an exegesis of the good lady’s works.
Although I may pursue such an examination of her
works in a manner not too unlike my current study, such will
certainly be of a higher caliber, and will avoid the
constant repetition of noted offenses the current writing
provides. I, in
fact, look forward to it.
From what I have seen of her works so far, her
writings are even more egregious in their lack of integrity
than her speeches.
Taking on the Bitch Goddess!
1266) Pre-emptive Strike/Essay/Len Holman Not to be outdone by Iran, Israel, or the U.S., the queen of England, Elizabeth II, has launched a pre-emptive strike. This strike was, however, on one of her own, the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. In the Royal Household’s Order of Precedence, just updated by the queen, Kate is required to curtsy to “all blood princesses” in the royal family, including Camilla Parker Bowles, and a couple of other princesses (I really can’t keep them straight). Remember, Kate was a commoner....
Yowza!
1267) 6 Food Documentaries/Film Reviews/Dan Schneider I recently watched six documentaries on Netflix detailing the nature and causes of the poor eating habits of the American public: Fed Up!; Food Matters; Food, Inc.; The Future Of Food; Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead; and Killer At Large: Why Obesity Is America’s Greatest Threat....
Mixed bag.
1269) A Narrow World/Essay/Len Holman There is something to be said for living in the moment: peace, tranquility, appreciation of the world around you, and the contentment of just being alive. This means not only stopping to smell the roses, but realizing there ARE roses to smell. It doesn’t mean—as certain very conservative politicians seem to believe—that the world should be narrowed down to the misogynist, intolerant, ignorant and foolish parameters of a very restricted world view. It doesn’t mean that one should be stuck in amber and petrified for all time. Actually, “world view” isn’t even close to an adequate phrase....
A large earth?
1270) Dancing With Horses/Essay/SuZi Art is both a way of seeing the world as well as communication of that perception—it is a language of envisioning. If it is understood that dance is art—is a dialect of that language of envisioning—then works of art are not always static, are not always fixed in space or in time, can exist in the ether....
The tango in 4 hooves.
1271)
Georg Trakl/Essay/Ben Smith
What
is the best way to approach the strange poems of Georg Trakl?
Well, first of all, since I speak not a word of
German, I must read him in translation, but looking at
Alexander Stillmark’s translation, I compare the German, making out a good portion of the words
with the help of the internet, and I see that the English is
very close, almost unaltered.
Perhaps Trakl’s style lent itself well to
translation; in general, it lacks rhyme although it has some
music, it relies heavily on lyricism, and he does not adhere
to any regular meter that I can make out.
So, now that we have his dark images in English, I
need to figure out how to figure him out.
Mad?
1272) Tech Addiction/Essay/Len Holman I do not have a smart phone. I do not have a phone which talks to me like a friendly neighbor, which directs me to the nearest chocolate croissant, or which has a brilliantly-colored application for finding the North Star. I do not have a phone which plays games and keeps me posted on the latest from the Kardashians. My computer is not very new and I use it sparingly. I have no tablet. I have minimal contact with the digiworld...
What?
1273) Allen Ginsberg/Poet To Pedophile/Ben Smith I really wanted to write a piece on Ginsberg, dealing primarily with his poetry, with the angle that he experienced a decline as an artist as he grew older. Although I still believe this to be true, the artistic decline that is (although it’s swifter than I first thought), I am having difficulty deciding how to depict this, for, as you most likely know, Ginsberg’s works of note tend to be exceedingly long, and I am writing an essay, not an entire book. To show the decline in his poetry, I have chosen two of his less celebrated works, both of medium length (in terms of Ginsberg’s works). These works, although they are not the lauded poems one expects to read....
Why?
1274) In Search Of A Problem/Essay/Len Holman Last week, a state judge refused to block a Pennsylvania law which requires voters to display a current government-issued photo ID at the polls. This happened even though the state’s lawyers admitted they “were not aware of any incidents of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania” and conceded that it was not “likely to occur in November of 2012.” Democrats say that this Republican-sponsored law is designed to disenfranchise likely Obama voters, while the other side says it makes sense to keep elections fair and free of corruption—even though there hasn’t been any. Voter fraud is so minimal, that some states don’t even have statistics on it....
Where's Godot?
1275) Underworld/Don DeLillo/Dan Schneider Having heard the hype, for years, about Don DeLillo’s long 1997 novel, Underworld, and its being a Postmodern ‘masterpiece,’ I was thinking the work would be something in the unreadably puerile vein of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, perhaps involving parodies of the sort of goombahs from a bad Martin Scorsese gangster film. Were that the case I would have started this essay with something along the lines of: Support the arts- do NOT buy this book! Thankfully, it was not. In fact, the book is not even, in any remote sense, a Postmodern novel....
Potential wasted.
1276) The Corrections/Jonathan Franzen/Dan Schneider Having read Jonathan Franzen’s melodramatic 2001 novel, The Corrections, after having recently read Postmodern tripe by William Vollmann, Thomas Pynchon, and so-called Postmodern-cum-classic prose by Don DeLillo, I wondered how in the hell anyone could think that this book was good, much less great. Yes, Franzen can hold a narrative, unlike Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, or that ilk, but it is wholly shorn of depth, gets worse as it goes- being a merely competently written melodrama, larded with stereotypes of WASPs and their WASPy pseudo-problems that morphs into a cliché-ridden sub-soap opera that is almost as bad, in its subgenre, as anything put forth by the writers named above. Franzen is wholly in the T.C Boyle and Joyce Carol Oates camp of being able to craft a narrative structure, but not one of any depth, novelty, nor interest....
Rivaling Richard Russo?
1277) Gravity's Rainbow/Thomas Pynchon/Dan Schneider Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 quasi-sci fi novel, Gravity’s Rainbow (named after the trajectory of German V-2 rockets), is not remotely a good novel, and, in places, the 300,000+ word book is a horrible novel, on a par with David Foster Wallace’s ridiculously bad sci fi novel Infinite Jest (in fact, that hack and his horrors, actually were spawned by this earlier monstrosity) and James Joyce’s pointless and ridiculously bad Finnegans Wake. It crests a little bit higher than those works because it ascends to intellectual coherence, if nothing else, on a few occasions, and this is not what most Postmodern novels even seem to strive for- base level coherence or imparting anything of lasting cultural, intellectual, and artistic value....
Ker-plunk!
1278) Charles Bukowski/Fraud/Ben Smith Yes, Bukowski has what could be called a huge cult following. He is famous. But for what? For his prose and his poetry, or for the legend that was his life? Charles Bukowski, a “laureate of American lowlife,” as Time Magazine said of him, wrote his own legend and legacy. He is known to have written thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels. Yet, one who knows about this man knows of a little film called Barfly, in which Mickey Rourke acted the role of Bukowski, the movie based on semi-autobiographical material from Bukowski’s own work. Yet some may or may not know the talent of Mickey Rourke, who, although he had major lulls in his career, played some well-acted parts, and this is one. It could be claimed that Rourke himself, along with the directors and producers and fellow-actors involved in the film (Faye Dunaway), made the legend of Bukowski something much more than his works alone had done. Debatable, but not to anyone really in the know. Okay, for me, at least, the movie is the only thing Bukowski I find worthwhile....
Truth?
1279) Mitt & Co./The Election/Dan Schneider Did you ever get lost? Did you ever set out to get to your destination, get wrong directions or read the map incorrectly or take a wrong turn somewhere? If you did, then you drove in supreme and ignorant bliss for a while before you realized you had passed that same tree twice before. You pulled over, got out, looked around, scratched your head, and muttered, “How the hell do I get back on the right road?” Right now, that’s the Republican problem. Romney and Ryan want to talk about how it would have been better to let the car companies go under and save a few bucks, but they’re stuck talking about abortion rights. In fact, they are passing the same tree the primary candidates passed: social issues which make the electorate queasy....
Shut yo' mouth, fool!
1280) Parable For The Death Culture/Essay/SuZi Human beings are brutal, cruel: it is this which distinguishes us humans from the other beings of our home, our beleaguered planet. Many assert that it is the use of tools that distinguishes humans, but is not the careful weaving of materials into a nest a cradle, has not enough documentation of twigs used as forks by other primates sufficient to show that humans are not the only tool users—let it be so. Humans are brutal: they kill for pleasure. Even the virus that kills its host, does so because of rapacity –which humans also possess in the form of colonization, over-population, resource exhaustion and environmental toxication. Since the cultural shift generally called the Industrial Revolution, human violence has escalated to the point of planetary toxicosis....
Butler did it.
1281) Once Upon A Time In Anatolia/DVD Review/Dan Schneider A few years ago, while reviewing Turkish film director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2006 great film, Climates, I wrote: Climates is a masterpiece, but it is more than that. It is also possibly an augur to even better things cinematically. It is not an overstatement to declare that Ceylan may be the best living filmmaker today. And, if one argues with that claim, then one might only add that he’s the best still at the height of his powers. Yes, Angelopolous’s Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow was great, but he’s been at a high level for decades now....
Great.
1282) The Turin Horse/DVD Review/Dan Schneider I often wonder what occurs to an artist when their work is willfully misinterpreted by stolid critics, or anyone, for that matter? I write this being in a position to know the answer, at least for myself, because, aside from being a critic of art, film, literature, and other things, I am also an artist, writer, and poet. But, the stereotype that dogs most artists- that of the immature, self-centered , irrational, mentally ill (or nearly so) person does not apply in my case, and from everything I’ve ever read or seen of Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, he likely does not fall into that trap either...
Great.
1283) The Frantic Force/Book Review/Dan Schneider If I had the money and time to be self-employed, or live off of my own writing, I might have the time to indulge in all the partaking of art I am proffered. From countless small time publishers offering me free copies- print and cyber- of their latest releases, to almost as many small time film sites and companies that somehow my name and email addresses somehow, and inevitably, make their way onto. Add to that the endless submissions of essays and poems- especially from the Indian Subcontinent which, in almost mind-boggling fashion, seems to mint a quarter million or more English language and literature MFAs and PhDs per year, and to whom my name, and my website, Cosmoetica, invariably end up as one of the top targets....
Good.
1284)
Lyn Lifshin/Essay/Ben Smith
Lyn
Lishin, yes her. Shall
we? I think we
should. Why?
Because shit should not live forever.
Horrors.
1285) Kim, Confucius, And A President/Essay/Len Holman A few weeks ago, Kim Kardashian settled a lawsuit with the Old Navy clothing chain over an infringement of her “publicity rights.” This is Mom Kardashian, Kim’s manager and all-around Keeper of Kim’s Millions, at her finest—settling for a reported 15 to 20 million dollars. It seems that Old Navy ran an ad featuring a woman named Melissa Molinaro. Kim is worried that shoppers will confuse Melissa with Kim, since they “look alike” and since Kim has her OWN clothing line, she worries that consumers will be confused and think (horrors!) that Kim is endorsing Old Navy. If they do, then they’ll be tempted to go buy stuff at Old Navy (because consumers are, after all, just sheep) and take away the much-needed income Kim and her klan desperately desire to maintain their public lifestyle....
Bitches....
1286) They're Called 'Debates'/Essay/Len Holman Soon, on October 3 (significantly close to Halloween), the activity we call the “Presidential Debates” will begin. There will be three for Romney and Obama and one for Ryan and Biden. More than enough. In fact, if it were up to me, I’d do away with them altogether because they are to voter information as the Mars expedition is to a fifty-seat shuttle flight to Baltimore. What will happen is what always happens: each candidate will give his set-speech talking points, despite the questions which are asked, and viewers with a very low tolerance for political theater will only tune in—if they do, if they’ve fed the cat, taken out the garbage, cleaned the toilet, and waxed the car—to see if any of the two makes a major mistake. Other than that, there is no reason to watch them....
Yes they are.
1287) It's A Dog's Life/Essay/SuZi From an academic standpoint, judging by the contents of composition-oriented textbooks, literature has been subsumed by nonfiction writing; especially noticeable is a species of hybridized memoir, where the author creates a structure that is a chain-dance between scientific data and first-person observation to support whatever didactic thesis is intended....
Woof!
1288) Almost-Free Speech/Essay/Len Holman There is plenty of free speech around these days. I mean, there is a lot of mentioning of free speech. President Obama, at the U. N. made it “perfectly clear” that the values and norms of the U.S. require America to cherish, protect, and advance the cause of, free speech. But President Morsi of Egypt also mentioned free speech, except for the part where such speech mocks, degrades and insults Islam. Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey also thought free speech was a nice concept in theory, but should be restricted if it would lead to violence—read: disrupting the social order....
Yes.
1289) The Big Bagel Theory/Essay/Howard Bloom It took me fifty three years to realize it, but a new theory of the beginning, middle, and end of the universe I hatched in 1959 predicts that the end of the universe may come sooner than you and I may think. Standard cosmologies predict that the end of the cosmos will not arrive for hundreds of trillions of years. But the Big Bagel—The Bloom Toroidal Model of the Universe—predicts that the end may be as little as 1.68 billion years away....
Where's the cream cheese?
1290) Theater Of The Absurd/Essay/Len Holman I did not see the first Presidential debate because I was exfoliating my elbows (I think global warming is ruining my skin—or is it my age?), nor did I watch the V.P. debate between Uncle Joe and the Kid From Minnesota, but I want to thank all the pollsters, pundits, patriots, partisans, and panderers out in Mediaville who have told me who “won.” Now I know who is the better candidate because 1) I have been told by experts in the biz who is more likeable....
Really?
1291) She Gods Of Shark Reef/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Some films are so bad they are good. Think Plan 9 From Outer Space. Other films are so bad they are really bad. Think any film directed by Steven Spielberg. Others are bad, but weird, in a way that makes them difficult to classify, and virtually critic-proof. Case in point is B film legend Roger Corman’s 1958 color classic, She Gods Of Shark Reef. Ok, classic may be too strong a word for the 62 minute film. For the title? Yes. But the film? Eh. What’s bizarre is that this film, to be found in the 50 DVD pack from Treeline Films, is listed as a Sci Fi Classic. Ok? Except it’s not science fiction....
Land ho!
1292) Tucker: The Man And His Dream/Film Review/Dan Schneider Watching Francis Ford Coppola’s 1988 film, Tucker: The Man And His Dream, was like watching a bit better version of the more recent Greg Kinnear film, Flash Of Genius. The main difference is that the later film was about how corporate America crushed a man who had an invention to improve a small part of the standard automobile, in the 1960s, whereas Tucker: The Man And His Dream is about how corporate America crushed a man whose invention was a better whole automobile....
Ok.
1293) American Apartheid/Essay/SuZi America’s bloody and racist legacy, it’s condition of continued apartheid, is one of the more shameful aspects of her culture--all the more shameful because of the society’s hypocrisy of covert practices while trumming self-congratulation for pluralism that barely exists....
Again?
1294) God Must Love Football/Essay/Len Holman Some Texas cheerleaders took to the football field last month with banners displaying Bible verses and, predictably, all hell broke loose. The battleground was Kountze, Texas (why does this stuff always seem to happen in Texas?), where the school district prohibited the cheerleaders from displaying the banners. This edict was based on the Supreme Court case, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, which established that that prayers led by students at football games were unconstitutional. Inevitably, 15 middle and high school cheerleaders and their parents sued the district on the grounds that the district violated their free speech rights....
Hut, hut....
1295) Pleasures Of The Flesh/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The two most obvious influences on Nagisa Oshima’s 1965 color film, Pleasures Of The Flesh (Etsuraku), are not those first posited upon its release: soft core Japanese porno films, called pink films, nor action thrillers (usually yakuza/gangster films. No, in retrospect the clear influences seem to have been Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime And Punishment and Rod Serling’s sci fi anthology television series The Twilight Zone. The former because of its theme, and the latter because of the film’s structure an execution....
Interesting.
1296) Romney's Secret Language/Essay/Howard Bloom If Mitt Romney wins next week’s Presidential election, it may be not be because of his brain and his policies. It may be because of his body. And because of body language....
Et tu?
1297) 5 Documentary Wackos/Film Reviews/Dan Schneider I recently watched a run of five biographical documentaries on Netflix streaming video that were about, well, assorted wacky folks in the arts and sciences. The five films were Scott Walker: 30 Century Man; Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey; Transcendent Man; Limelight; and Lenny Bruce: Without Tears....
Weird.
1298) Taxing By Fortune/Essay/Neil Hester In most general addresses to the American people, Romney and the Republican party justify the preservation of current tax rates for the rich by stating that “overtaxing” the rich actually hurts the poor and the middle class, since rich people create jobs and opportunities for everyone else. This justification is a direct appeal to non-rich voters, but also an indirect appeal to rich voters whose enthusiasm for lower taxes does not stem from their increased power to expand the economy, but rather their indignation at the fact that their hard-earned money might be siphoned away by a government....
Get'em!
1299) If Not Nelson, Then Joan/Essay/Len Holman The election of the next President of the United States swept down upon us like locusts on the Pharaoh’s kingdom. Someone lost, someone won, and we are pleased that our system “works” (though some of the more thoughtful among the electorate wonder who it works FOR). But if there is one thing we have learned, if we’ve learned anything (which is problematic) is that America’s sense of humor—if it still exists—is puerile, scripted and very unthreatening....
God wot!
1300) Repulsion/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Narrative is immanent in art. One simply cannot extricate it from any art form. One cannot dispose of narrative, only retard it. Often when one reads an essay about or review of a work of art, and the reviewer cannot get the art work, he will claim it has no narrative. If the work of art is bad it will have a narrative, merely a poor one. But a poor narrative is not a lack of narrative. If the work of art is great, and the reviewer does not get it, he will claim it has disposed of narrative. But it will have a narrative, and a great one; but one that pushes the boundaries of what narrative is. Good examples of this can be found in a film like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or Chris Marker’s La Jetee....
Great.
1301) The Whites Of Our Eyes/Essay/Norman Ball These crappy politicians insist everything must bow at the feet of their campaign schedules. Why? What larger issue could there possibly be than the preservation of power? As for the People's business, well, it sort of gets squeezed in from time to time. However we plebes must be patient because we’re in political season which as everyone knows has officially become all seasons....
Look.
1302) No Predicate/Essay/Len Holman General Petraeus, former head of the CIA, is in trouble. He has resigned because he had an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. OK, not too bright for a career military man and a politically wise guy, which a general who wants to stay in business and thrive must be in today’s climate (just ask Gen. MacArthur about that). The story is salacious, messy, embarrassing for almost everyone concerned, and potentially dangerous to—I hate to say it—National Security....
No way.
1303) Rocco And His Brothers/DVD Review/Dan Schneider There are great films that revel in poesy and their artiness- think the canons of Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick, and there are films, and then there are films that achieve greatness via their being great ‘prose.’ Such a film is Luchino Visconti’s 1960, 176 minute long, black and white film Rocco And His Brothers (Rocco E I Suoi Fratelli), easily the best of the handful of Visconti films I’ve seen, and in the first rank of prose masterpieces on film. Its greatness is not only in its great parts, but in its lesser facets, too. There is not only a realism that flows from the roots of the Italian Neo-Realism born in the 1940s....
Great.
1304) White Heat/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Raoul Walsh’s 1949 black and white gangster film, White Heat, is often mislabeled a film noir, but it’s clearly nothing of the kind. Films noir have ambiguous anti-heroes and the things that they engage in is ethically shady, not out and out evil. This certainly does not describe Walsh’s film, featuring Jimmy Cagney as Arthur ‘Cody’ Jarrett, a thinly disguised Arthur ‘Doc’ Barker, the notorious gangster from the 1930s. Jarrett has little shading; he’s pure evil, with a sadistic streak, and all the things he is involve din are likewise pure evil. He’s a murderer and psychopath, but he’s not psychotic, as many bad critics claim. The two terms are not synonyms....
Classic.
1305) Black Everyday/Essay/Len Holman One guy threatened to stab someone for pushing his kids. People got into fistfights and shoved each other around like commuters being loaded onto a Japanese bullet train. People who have no acquaintance with nature except to go outside to put their trash in the cans by the curb camped out for days in tents a Sherpa might admire. People stood in various kinds of inclement weather, suffering the awful depredations of snow and rain and cold, armed with nothing more than their smart phones, MREs and insatiable greed for flat-screen TVs and Furbies....
Amen.
1306)
Mr. Magoo's Christmas
Carol/Review/Dan Schneider The
best ever.
Great.
1307) A Distant Drummer/Essay/Len Holman A lot has been going on—and continues to do so. There have been our Presidential elections, more done strikes, hurricanes and flooding, an Egyptian president who wants to be Pharaoh, the imminent financial disaster which awaits the middle class (another disaster, that is), the tempest in a teapot concerning the veracity and culpability of our U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, in the matter of the burning of our consulate in Benghazi, with the loss of life of our ambassador there and three others, along with the nation of Syria coming apart like a rotten burlap sack...
Go get'em!
1308) 3 Werner Herzog Films/Film Reviews/Dan Schneider I recently streamed and watched three recent films by the great German filmmaker Werner Herzog. The first was a fictive film- My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?- which, despite my expectations and others’ reviews, turned out to be the best fictive film Herzog’s done since the end of his collaborations with actor Klaus Kinski, and the other two were highly lauded documentaries (a form Herzog has excelled in over his half century long career)- Cave Of Forgotten Dreams and Into The Abyss- which were, oddly, not nearly as good as the criticism received....
Good.
1309) Rape And Revisionism In Soap Operas/Essay/Dan Schneider As an artist, writer, and critic of both, I have had a long involvement with, what for lack of a better term, can be called serial fiction, in all its forms across varied media. As a young child, I read comic books, which, as the successor to comic strips, were the most popular serial fiction of the first third of the 20th Century. Before comic strips, the serialized novel, most popularized by 19th Century titans like Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, made them into the closest thing to today’s film and music celebrities. By the middle of the 20th Century, serial fiction surged in popularity with the movie serials of the 1930s through early 1950s....
On General Hospital.
1310) When Life Begins/Essay/Len Holman “Life begins at conception.” It is an article of faith among conservatives, a mantra which is repeated over and over to explain and justify their lack of interest in women’s health care and their constant attempts to shred protection of a woman’s right to choose what happens with her body. It seems that what is meant by this expression is that once sperm and egg unite, presto! there is a human being and any attempts to purge this being from a mother’s womb is murder, the same as if someone walked up to Warren Buffet....
?
1311) A Letter/Adam Lanza/Norman Ball As the years go in, I realize to my horror I am becoming an elder within this travesty we still flatter—by dull habit, world-weariness or lack of follow-on description—with the ennobling term, SOCIETY. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t die....
Outrage!
1312) Arm The Deer/Essay/Len Holman It’s happened again: another mass shooting to rival the one at Virginia Tech, one to horrify more than the one at Columbine or the Aurora movie house. A man went into an elementary school in Connecticut and murdered 20 children and six adults, after killing his mother. He then shot himself, and the shock and anger and recriminations began....
And rabbits!
1313) Negativity/The MFA Mafia/Dan Schneider Not long ago a reader of my website let me know of a 2008 essay from The Kenyon Review, simply titled No. Its writer is a career Academic named Brian Doyle, whose CV is gratuitously displayed below the article: Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author, he thinks (some of them are small and quick and hard to see in the underbrush), of thirteen books of essays, poems, nonfiction, and fiction, notably the sprawling Oregon novel Mink River....
Suck it, bitches!
1314) Man On A Wire/The Wildest Dream/Dan Schneider I recently watched two documentary films on adventurers, a 2010 film called The Wildest Dream: Conquest Of Everest, directed by Anthony Geffen, and 2008’s Academy Award Winning Best Documentary, James Marsh’s Man On Wire. It was one of those synchronicities that just happened while trolling about Netflix. Only in retrospect did I make a connection between the themes of the two films. Not only were they about adventurers, but in the former film, the film’s subject failed in his quest to be the first man to scale Mount Everest, yet is lauded in death, while, in the latter film, the film’s subject succeeded in his quest to tightrope walk between the North and South Towers of the now fallen World Trade Center, got fleeting fame, then fell into obscurity until this film resurrected his achievement....
Good.
1315) Responsible Procreation/Essay/Len Holman Next spring, the Supreme Court is going to hear oral arguments in United States v. Windsor, which is a case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). One argument sure to be used by the lawyers defending DOMA is one with the whimsical title of “responsible procreation.” This is a code phrase for indicating the utter contempt for LGBT couples who want to (gulp!) get married. It is code for anyone who dares to love outside society’s norms, outside God’s mandate, as mandated mostly by a church whose history is replete with irresponsible fornication. It is syllogistically interpreted as meaning that—since gay people have sex but not babies, and the state has a vested interest in protecting and encouraging the birth of babies, and discouraging the lack of said babies, then the state has a vested interest in keeping non-procreative people from marrying....
Good God!
1316) Chaplin/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Every so often, when I look up the historical critical context of a film, I am surprised by what I find. Most often I see films that are schlock get undue praise, but since most of anything in life is bad (lest we’d not notice the good). This is not unusual. Then there are good or great films that are severely dissed. Almost every Stanley Kubrick film, post-1970, falls into this category. But, then there are films which are nice little films, not particularly bad, but also nowhere near great, that just elicit an off reaction from critics. Such a film is Richard Attenborough’s 1992 film, Chaplin, on the life of filmdom’s first true superstar....
Solid.
1317) Automatic Writing/Essay/Len Holman The headlines were everywhere. In one form or another, they said this particular thing: “Obama Signs Fiscal Cliff Bill.” Except he didn’t sign it—an auto-pen did. The President was in Hawaii and was not available to fulfill the requirement in Article I, Section 7, of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that a bill must be presented to the President and if “he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it.” And you thought that signing something meant being there in person and putting a hand to a writing implement and, using your cursive (do they still teach cursive in school?), writing out your name....
Gotcha!
1318) The Kids Are Alright/Essay/Len Holman On Wednesday, President Obama, flanked by schoolchildren from Sandy Hook elementary School and Vice President Biden, made an appeal to Congress and the American public, to end gun violence—which of course is patently ridiculous in this country, since we kill each other with astonishing rapidity and regularity. And we don’t do it by throwing cream pies. The modest executive orders Obama signed mostly concern background checks and research into gun violence, but he wants the congress to pass legislation to curb assault rifles and large-capacity magazines....
Lack and load?
1319)
Manifest Destiny, Redux/Essay/Len
Holman I
tuned into the massive prayer meeting on Monday, and to my
surprise, an inauguration ceremony broke out. There,
in colors vivid and sounds bravely ringing in the cold air,
was a massive spectacle of patriotism and Christianity
intermingled into a potent, poisonous revisiting of the
doctrine of Manifest Destiny. I’d never heard God
(the Christian one) invoked so many times since I was nose
to nose with an ogre-clone and nearly-speechless-with-
Oy!
1320) The MFA Mafia/Essay/Dan Schneider Recently, film critic Roger Ebert, who has a distressing habit of 3-4 times per year, swallowing his own foot on his Chicago Sun-Times blog, posted a piece titled Books Do Furnish A Mind, wherein he bemoaned the state of reading in our republic, and pinned the blame on everything other than the biggest cause of the problem- the fact that MFA writing programs have, since their inception after World War Two, tried to commmoditize writing to the point of becoming assembly lines churning out bad, soulless writers and books that, duh?, no one actively chooses to read, not even the ever diminishing clique of bad MFA writers....
Apologias aplenty.
1321) Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?/DVD Review/Dan Schneider What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? is one of those films that almost everybody has a wrong opinion of, from critic to fan to hater. First, it’s simply not a Grand Guignol film. Why? It simply does not play out on a large enough scale. Second, it’s not really a camp film. Some of the later films its two stars and rivals, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, were in were definitely camp, but not this film. It does, however, have a low budget film feel, in a very good way, because it deglamorizes its two stars, and thus humanizes them, removing them from their earlier career modes as screen sirens. Third, there are a few other misconceptions about the film....
Solid fun.
1322) Sisters In Arms/Essay/Len Holman America’s Secretary of Defense has lifted the official military ban on women in combat, which means that gender equality has taken another staggering step sideways. Eventually, women will be encouraged to kill the enemy with the same brio which now emboldens men to do the same—and we will call that “progress for women’s rights.” It’s not as if women have not served in dangerous war zones before—many American nurses died in Vietnam, for instance....
Bitches, harch!
1323) The Never Ending War/Essay/Len Holman We are at war. We seek the enemy wherever he or she is and we kill that enemy before something bad happens to us. We use all sorts of weapons and personnel to do this and we are very good at it. So good, in fact, that we know beforehand what will happen; we know beforehand who is going to conspire to terrorize us and we know beforehand, when and where he or she will do these things, so we kill them before they do anything, even if the “enemy” is one of us. It’s “Minority Report,” the Drone Edition, currently available in the Oval Office....
On and on....
1324) Now It's Zombies/Essay/Len Holman In the annals of American Fear Archetypes, there have been quite a few Jungian Shadows to indicate what the American public is afraid of, what dark and secret fears it has, and what it will do to assuage those fears, to eradicate them, and to produce policies to deal with them. Our pop culture is a good mirror of this world, a reflection of our most horrifying and ineradicable nightmares. In this PopLand we’ve had, first, the Red Man, who was in the way of our Manifest Destiny, and whose ideas were so un-European as to be more Martian than Native American. Newspapers and dime novels chronicled the savagery and complete foreign-ness of the Indian, while extolling the virtues....
Meat!
1325) The Story Of Film: An Odyssey/Film Review/Dan Schneider I recently got through watching a 15 part, 900 minute long 2011 documentary on cinema titled The Story Of Film: An Odyssey, directed and narrated by Irish film critic and historian Mark Cousins, on Netflix, based upon his book of the same name. As might be expected of such a large undertaking, the film has highs and lows. The highs are quite good, but the lows are equally glaring, making the overall project a worthwhile, albeit often draining and droning film series....
Good.
1326) Making It Easier/Essay/Len Holman It’s not enough that the social networking sites and the search engines (Google, this especially means you!), and all those must-have-the-latest smart phones all either track—or have the capability to track, or deny tracking—most of America. The gun lobby constantly frets that the so-called “universal background check” is just a ruse for registering every gun owner in the country so all 300 million-plus weapons can be confiscated personally by President Obama going door-to-door....
Indeed.
1327) 3 Political Docs/Film Reviews/Dan Schneider It’s odd how often one finds oneself watching a string of documentary films on related subjects. Such was the case, recently, when politics dominated my watching. The first of the documentaries I watched was by Alex Gibney, who previously wrought the superb Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, in 2005. In 2010 he released another great documentary on American capitalism, called Casino Jack And The United States Of Money....
Good films.
1328) The Next Step/Essay/Len Holman Did anyone but the most diehard liberal really believe that it wouldn’t or couldn’t happen here, that the government wouldn’t take the authority upon itself, that—sooner or later—the hubris and wrong-headed thinking of the movers and shakers in the U.S. government wouldn’t influence those with the joysticks in their hands to get around to flying drones with lethal payloads in the skies over America in search of terrorists....
Strike One?
1329) Butterflies And Republicans/Essay/Len Holman It seems that there is trouble in Mexico. The Monarch butterfly population is down and this should worry us all, since butterflies are pretty damn good pollinators. The trouble is, of course, humans: farmers in the states where these creatures feed before they migrate are using genetically-modified crops which are resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, which allows farmers to use the poison to kill milkweed—which is the Monarchs’ essential food....
Again?
1330) Smash His Camera/Film Review/Dan Schneider One of the most unintendedly hilarious arcs of Leon Gast’s 2010 bio-documentary of New York paparazzo Ron Galella, Smash His Camera, regards opinions about his actual ‘art,’ since the 87 minute film reveals that many of the more than 3 million images he’s collected in a fifty year career are now residing inside the walls of some of the more prestigious art galleries of the world. The debate is seen in roundtable amongst fellow photographers- some whom are photojournalists like Galella and others who fall more into the Diane Arbus art photographer side. While both sides make points, to the average viewer one has to come down emphatically on the side of Galella when Chuck Close sneers at Galella’s work....
Fun.
1331) Selling The Cola/Essay/Len Holman The boardroom was packed. On one side of the huge polished table sat the cola executives just making their bones in the company, studying the latest sales figures. On the other side of the table were the veterans and true believers of the company, and they, too, had those same figures. Standing before them was the chairman of the Super Cola Company’s parent company, the Great Old Patent Corporation....
What if?
1332) State Of Nuttiness/Essay/Len Holman OK, it’s official: the planet has lost its mind. The North Koreans have officially declared a state of war with South Korea, which is about as meaningful as the local middle school football team challenging the Baltimore Ravens to a game. Kim Jong Un is issuing threats almost daily, and WE, the United States of America, the world’s most intrusive superpower, are responding with almost-daily preparations for a war that can never happen, barring a major, stupid, unconscious blunder.....
Ok?
1333) Hillary's Horror/Essay/Len Holman President Obama has made it much harder for the (at this early stage, at least) presumptive 2016 Democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton. He has worn out his welcome on the left, and the right smells blood—especially after the President’s millionth effort at being nice to Republicans, as represented in his latest budget. His “hope and change” mantra now sounds like a cruel hoax on the expectant American voter and his legacy will come down to “being the first black President,” a noteworthy fact, but that’s about it. The “hope” part is still resonant, but the “change” part has become a grisly joke—candy snatched away from the baby’s outstretched hand....
What could be?
1334) 4 Crime Documentaries/Film Reviews/Dan Schneider I recently watched four documentaries involving criminal scandals of assorted varieties, and each film had pros and cons. The four documentaries under examination are Trudell; The Eyes Of Tammy Faye; Mario’s Story, and Inside Deep Throat....
Ok.
1335) Walter, We Miss You/Essay/Len Holman The media is in a constant state of frenzied misreporting, interrupted only with celebrity non-news, sinkholes in Florida, videos of the seemingly endless winter storms, and other non-breathless trivia. The latest round of trouble, which seems to delight the American media as much as Mickey Mouse delights young visitors to Disneyland, has given our media diarrhea of the mouth. An op-ed piece in the L.A. times last week posits that all of the frenzied activity—real, imagined, speculative, and misinformed—is a product of our collective desire to be a “player not a spectator;” a desire “not to be left out....
Yes we do.
1336) Mad Men/Season 5/Dan Schneider Just a week or two before AMC’s hit 1960s era soap opera, Mad Men, started its 6th season, its 5th season was finally released to stream on Netflix. While still a good show, in comparison to most of the dreck that fills the several hundred channels of relentless ‘content’ driven cable television, the 5th season was a definite drop in quality from the first four seasons. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the season’s first four anomic episodes. Literally, in these episodes, the characters just stand around and act like the caricatures they verge on becoming. The series drives on through the 1960s, but nothing really changes....
Ok.
1337) Bang The Drum Slowly/DVD Review/Dan Schneider I had been a fan of the old baseball film, Bang The Drum Slowly, which came out in 1973, for many years. It was not a great film, but it entertained, and was one of the early pre-The Godfather films that showcased the talents of a young Robert De Niro. But, it certainly wasn’t great cinema, more or less a baseball version of the football melodrama Brian’s Song, or a non-musical, more dour version of Damn Yankees! It followed a year or so in the life of a dying backup catcher for a pro baseball team, the New York Mammoths, obviously modeled after the New York Yankees....
Solid.
1338) Pinpricks And The Elephant/Essay/Len Holman The recriminations, outrage, second-guessing, speculation, diaphanous fantasizing, and just plain wrong “facts,” continue in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, and the American viewing public is once again being subjected to the noise machine which is called “media news coverage.” This putative coverage is never-ending, with a Russian connection being explored, and the horrified commentary of the Fox News pundits that this is the tip of a big conspiracy to blow up New York....
Prick.
1339) The Death Of Roger Ebert/Essay/Dan Schneider I went to sleep one afternoon (I usually work overnights), being informed that film critic Roger Ebert’s cancer had returned, and woke up that evening to learn that the man had just died. That day, April 4th of 2013, is now almost a month gone, and in the interim, some of my fans and readers have suggested (some more strongly than others) that I needed to chime in my own two cents on the man, his life, his criticism, etc., and the reason for this is that they feel that since the man wrote a lengthy 2009 article on me, on his highly trafficked blog....
Rest in Peace, Roger!
1340) Landmarks/Essay/Len Holman I live in a rural area of the California high desert. Sometimes, when I am coming home at night, even after living in the same house for seventeen years, I lose track of where I am and miss the dirt road I have to take to get to my house. It’s dark out here at night out in my part of the world; streetlights are few and far between, and they are not very bright. If I’m not really paying attention, I lose track of the few landmarks there are out there which indicate where my turn-off is: that small brick wall painted yellow; that flagpole with a ragged American flag; those mailboxes on the side of the road. After missing all my marks, and realizing I am driving to Nowhere, I pull off and curse and slowly turn around, trying not to get stuck in the soft sand which lines the narrow pavement on both sides....
Lo!
1341) Dad's In Heaven With Nixon/Film Review/Dan Schneider I’ve seen enough documentaries, especially those that regularly stream on Netflix, to recognize the hallmarks of what I can only label ‘vanity documentaries,’ in the manner that the term vanity has been applied to subsidy presses. By this I mean that the filmmaker is an amateur- often wealthy, with too much time on their hands, who decides to make a film on some member of their family, or on some so called ‘tragedy’ that has befallen the clan. Yet, none of the people in these films has any achievements of note, nor are their tragedies anything that most of the viewers of the film will not have experienced, and many will have experienced far worse. Most of these films never see the inside of a movie theater, and usually end up on a cable tv channel. Such is the case with the Showtime documentary Dad’s In Heaven With Nixon....
Yawn.
1342) Almanac Of Fall/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Having already seen Bela Tarr’s later film canon, it was an interesting excursion back in time, to see his 1984 color (yes, a color film from Tarr!) film, Almanac Of Fall (Öszi Almanach). It’s not a great film, and is claimed to be the link between his earliest ‘realist’ films and his later black and white psycho-films, but it is an interesting film, and well worth a watch; even if one will not be pounded by the depths of films like Satantango or Werckmeister Harmonies. The film is, in many ways, rather simple....
Good.
1343) The Grateful Dead/Essay/Len Holman The disposition of the dead is fraught with emotional, political, social, psychological, legal, and mythological (including the realms of the sacred) issues. Because we presently don’t have the technology or money or will to fire a rocket filled with corpses into the sun, we find ourselves dealing with the problem of dealing with the dead in some more appropriate or convenient way. Usually, this is a matter for familial consideration—a time of remembering, grieving....
Sleep.
1344) The Blackboard Jungle/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Any film that stars Sidney Poitier is going to rise and fall on the basis of his presence. He is one of those classic actors, like a Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy, or John Wayne, that simply captures the attention of an audience, for good or ill. Oftentimes its for the good, but in this film it’s not for the ill, simply for the pointless. Yes, there is context, and in the mid-1950s, when The Blackboard Jungle came out, Poitier was the only black film star of any heft and seriousness. Yet, he still seems wasted in his role as Miller, a juvenile delinquent in North Manual Trades High School, a good kid gone wrong, and one whom teacher Glenn Ford, as Mr. Dadier, seems intent on rescuing. And to top it off, he simply looks (and acts and talks) way to old to be convincing as a high school student....
Solid.
1345) A Big Shock/Essay/Len Holman The Obama administration is involved in several “scandals,” though this word is loosely, and inaccurately, being used—especially by conservatives, who would seem to want to have Cotton Mather as President and Sitting Bull behind bars. It seems that the Internal Revenue Service is accused of targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, that the Justice Department is accused of “chilling” free speech by collecting phone call records of AP reporters without notification, as is required by law (under a “national security” exception), and that Obama is suspected of somehow allowing the ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, to be killed....
Not really.
1346) 3 Docs on Female Athletes/Review/Dan Schneider I recently streamed three Netflix documentary films that dealt with females in dubious sporting events. These three films were Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies Of Wrestling; Blood On The Flat Track: The Rise Of The Rat City Roller Girls; and Brutal Beauty: Tales Of The Rose City Rollers....
Ugh.
1347) Fewer Boots/ Less Robots/Essay/Len Holman Have you heard of the X-47B? No? Well, you will, or will hear of its progeny. It’s the Navy’s entry into the Robot Wars Against Terror, a drone the size of a jet fighter which can take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. The prototype cost $1.4 billion and can carry weapons and provide round-the-clock intelligence and targeting—who it targets and where it gathers intelligence is not public knowledge. The keen thing is that—because it can leave and arrive via aircraft carrier....
Ok?
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