Writing from home tonight. I am off again for Easter weekend. Happy Good Friday, therefore, a truly miraculous day leading up to an even greater one on Sunday. Tonight I watched "Darkest Hour" (2017), the Winston Churchill biopic for which Gary Oldman recently won his Oscar. As biopics go, it's about what you would expect. English Director Joe Wright presents Churchill warts and all : he's a difficult personality, a political bulldog who rubs his fellow Parlimentarians the wrong way. He's very aggressive and an alcoholic, but he also suffers from insecurity. His wife and his trusty secretary bolster him up in his times of doubt.
The storyline takes place in May 1940. Churchill is chosen to replace the ineffective Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minster. The leaders he chooses for his War Council all want him to pursue a peace treaty with Hitler, whose troops are steamrolling Europe in all directions. The War Council are certain that England will be next. The siege at Dunkirk is taking place at the same time; the lives of the entire British Army are at stake (see "Dunkirk" as a companion piece to "Darkest Hour").
The tension in the film comes from the tug-of-war between the Appeasers - those who wish to give in to Hitler - and Churchill himself, who for all his flaws, including his overseeing of the Gallipoli massacre in World War One, has the understanding of the Fascist mindset to know that Hitler will not abide by any peace treaty England might sign. As it turns out and as history has shown, he was right. He was a flawed politician and imperfect man (aren't we all), but he was the right man to stand up to Hitler.
"Courage" was his byword. I remember as a kid, my dad had a plaque on the wall of our living room. On parchment, in calligraphic script, it read "Success is never final and failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts" - Winston Churchill. My sister has that plaque at her apartment now. Dad, as an American Veteran, was a big Churchill fan. Nowdays, there is a lot of opposition to his position of near-Sainthood in Britain by folks who claim all sorts of racist and Imperialist views and policies for Winston.
I don't know about any of that and haven't investigated it. The movie does show him as a bit of a brute, but mostly he is portrayed as wanting to stop Hitler, who he rightly saw as not merely an enemy but as a monster who could not be reasoned with.
For that correct judgement, and for his leadership during the "Darkest Hour" in England's history, he will be remembered and held in the highest regard, no matter his other failings.
Two thumbs up for "Darkest Hour". It's your basic movie biography, with nothing startling that emerges, just the history that you know. But Gary Oldman literally embodies Churchill, his Oscar was well deserved, and his performance brings new life to the oft-told story as well. See it.
I was reading back last night's blog, and I see that I went on a partially incomprehensible political tirade. Sorry about that, but I hope my overall point came through all the gibberish.
Tonight I am gonna avoid an outburst by making a list, which I haven't done in a while. Lists are innocuous, right? Even if you disagree with the listings? ("Hmmm, well....I dunno. Maybe").
Well anyway, the General Englishness of Things got me to thinking, what are the Greatest Progressive Rock Albums Of All Time? Then I thought, "wait a minute: you've certainly made this list before". I know I've done "The 25 Greatest Albums Of All Time". I did that one on FB in 2012, but that included all styles of rock music. This one is just for Progressive Rock.
It's late, so I might not elaborate on my choices, but if I don't I will try to expound in upcoming blogs. Writing about music might get me away from wrangling about politics for at least a little while.
Well anyway, let's start! We have one rule, that there can be only one album per band.
Here are the Top Five Greatest Progressive Rock Albums Ever Made. These are The Holy Grail.
1) "Brain Salad Surgery" by Emerson Lake and Palmer. Still sounds futuristic almost 45 years after it's release, as it will 100 or 1000 years from now.
2) "Selling England By The Pound" by Genesis. This is the distillation of every English musical and cultural influence and sounds like it was recorded in a thatched cottage while Robin Hood and his Merry Men went about their business in the background.
3) "In The Court Of The Crimson King" by King Crimson. Check it - this album was released in October 1969, six months before The Beatles broke up. It is easily the greatest debut album by a Progressive band, and it set an very high bar for any act to follow, both in musicianship and creativity. Ritchie Blackmore has said that he heard it as a member of Deep Purple when they were just beginning their career too, and he said to his band members, "what are we gonna do now"?
4) "Godbluff" by Van Der Graaf Generator. Once again a pure English amalgamation, featuring the champion of Shakespearean vocals Mr. Peter Hammill, and his brilliant lyrics. "The Undercover Man" alone could be considered one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, in my opinion. A high water mark for English artistry.
5) "Tales From Topographic Oceans" by Yes. This was the first Progressive Rock album I ever bought, partially because of it's bitchin' cover by Roger Dean (and it was only $4.99 on sale for a double album), but I had also heard it played in College Records, and although many Yes fans would choose "Close To The Edge" or "Fragile" as their picks on such a list, I choose "Topographic", the album that caused Rick Wakeman to quit because it was too weird, which is what I love about it. It is one of the most experimental Progressive Rock albums ever recorded.
So that's the Top Five. We will try to do more very soon.
Elizabeth, I hope you had a great week, and I will bet you are gearing up for the screening of your film next week at the festival. You are gonna have a sold out show, and you are gonna get a great reaction.
I am also seeing your other posts on FB, and I am glad to see you back. Remember that I am intuitive and that I always get the message.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Friday, March 30, 2018
"Rough Treatment" by Andrzej Wajda at CSUN
Tonight at CSUN we saw "Rough Treatment" (original Polish title "Bez znieczulenia) (1978) by Andrzej Wajda. As with "Man Of Marble", seen and reviewed two weeks ago, Wajda is again using metaphor to criticize the Communist/Socialist regime in Poland, and by extension the Big Bosses in the Soviet Union. Here we have a famous Polish journalist who has written and reported from political hotspots all over the world. He's had the same access as any Western journalist and has seen the same realities of war, hunger, poverty and disease. In his home country he is a celebrity and has authored popular books derived from his experiences.
The movie opens with a television interview of the journalist, whose latest book has just been released. As he speaks, however, he opens up too candidly about his own political views. His frankness is not confrontational, but he does cross the Official Party Line in blunt ways about world conditions and economic causes. He is not being defiant but merely basking in his fame for the TV audience, and he has let his guard down. He has revealed his own political opinions.
Now there will be repercussions.
He returns to his editorial position at a major newspaper to find that his desk has been moved to a smaller, cohabited office, and his subscriptions to American magazines have been cancelled. He asks, "Where are my Newsweeks"?
I must butt in as your reviewer to editorialize on this point myself. I grew up during the Cold War and read in the American press about Communism. In past blogs I have confessed to sympathy for the socialist cause when I was young, but I have also reported my obvious and expected horror of unadulterated Soviet Communism under Uncle Joseph, the Left Wing version of Hitler. In America, in the press, I am not sure we ever got an accurate picture of Eastern Bloc communism, and I was unaware until recently that, by the 1970s, there was no longer a total lockdown on the life of the citizens of Iron Curtain countries. I had always thought, for instance, that in those days, your kids were spying on you, and secret police were on every corner, and you had to whisper any personal conversation. That was the impression we got from American reportage.
This type of extreme control may have been prevalent in East Germany or Lithuania. I don't know because I did not live there, but those countries seem like the examples, in hindsight, for strongarm communist repression, where you would get sent to prison for voicing a contradictory opinion.
But in Poland, they took away your magazines. I was surprised by the pettiness of the Party Leaders as expressed in this movie. The journalist also loses his weekly lecture at a local university, which has his students in an uproar.
The main thing that is happening in his life, though, is personal. His wife is divorcing him. This is the main plot of the movie. Right away, from the first scene of the journalist giving his ill-fated TV interview, director Wajda cuts to another scene in an apartment, where the journalist's wife is watching the interview with her lover, a young hothead who is also on the newspaper staff where the journalist holds sway. The hothead resents the journalist; resents his fame, and his bourgeois opinions, which he feels have been gleaned through privilege. This interloper, who has charmed the journalist's wife, has the personality of a street fighter, which I suppose is another General Character that Wajda wanted to represent in his under-the-wire attack on the truly ridiculous political system he found himself living under.
The marital discord between wife and husband makes up the bulk of the story, but as Professor Tim explained tonight, and as Wajda himself elaborated on in a short documentary interview we saw before the film, this strife is really an allusion to the director's own feelings toward the Communists. He wished to divorce himself from them.
Say what you will about America, and right now there is a lot you can say, and much that I will agree with.
But in watching these films by Andrzej Wajda, who lived through the Communist system in Poland, what I get more than anything is that people were afraid to say what they really meant.
And I think that is, quite possibly, the greatest thing about the United States Of America, that our founding fathers included in our constitution a stipulation for Freedom Of Speech.
What does that mean, anyway, when you have to guarantee human beings the right to speak freely?
As a human being myself, I feel that right innately. I do not need any other human, be it a dictator or politician or whoever, to ascribe me the right to speak my mind.
My question would be to such people : "Who the F are you"?
But we see, over the course of history, that these people have always been the aggressive ones, the ones with a very high level of anger energy, and so, in certain political cases (especially in the 20th century), they established themselves through acts of revolutionary violence, as Titans and thus arbiters of their countries and their citizens.
They are, quite simply, Humans who have a maniacal drive to control other Humans, beyond any normal societal reason of setting rational laws that benefit the greater good of society.
I have veered far from my movie review, as I knew I would when I began my tangent, but I am inspired by Wajda's films, which stand up and present an artistic In Your Face to authoritarian a-holes.
I have been pressing, in my blogs, to treat people of an authoritarian bent as psychological cases, because it is clear that they have pathologies.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao.....Trump.
Think of Trump for just a moment. Here is a guy who is very overweight. He is said to eat nothing but fast food. He does not exercise but for a few golf swings.
And yet he has a pathological drive to rule over other humans that is seemingly unstoppable, and would be, were it not for our American system of justice and judicial process.
All that has prevented us from having a dictator is our system. Yes America is fucked up, but we are saved - for now - by our system.
But I present to you, because the movie got me thinking about it, a case for exploring why someone would want to be part of a system where Sheer Authority dominates the lives of average citizens.
What would cause a person to want such authority?
What would cause a person - and remember that all of us begin life as babies - to eventually seek as an adult to gain enough power to decide how others can live their lives, beyond the administration of the reasonable laws that we all need to live by?
The answer is psychological, and that is what Wajda is getting at.
He is depicting a system of people who have a deep-seated psychological and spiritual disorder that causes them to want to dominate others, and also provides them with the boundless physical and mental energy to accomplish their goal.
The most disruptive are also the most driven.
But their energy can be cancelled out by a non-reactive response of serenity, one that bypasses confrontation and supercedes petty authority.
I have probably gone way out on a limb here, and I apologize if I have disconnected from my argument or if I am making no sense. But these films from Andrzej Wajda have been very inspiring to me, because he lived under a repressive government, and now we have a government here in America that is trying to do the same thing : to turn out country into The Soviet Union Part Two.
That is why, for one reason, the Wajda movies resonate so much with me.
But also they are just plain great films.
Sorry if I did not complete my review in a satisfactory way this time, but I give "Rough Treatment" five stars and two big thumbs up. My highest recommendation.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The movie opens with a television interview of the journalist, whose latest book has just been released. As he speaks, however, he opens up too candidly about his own political views. His frankness is not confrontational, but he does cross the Official Party Line in blunt ways about world conditions and economic causes. He is not being defiant but merely basking in his fame for the TV audience, and he has let his guard down. He has revealed his own political opinions.
Now there will be repercussions.
He returns to his editorial position at a major newspaper to find that his desk has been moved to a smaller, cohabited office, and his subscriptions to American magazines have been cancelled. He asks, "Where are my Newsweeks"?
I must butt in as your reviewer to editorialize on this point myself. I grew up during the Cold War and read in the American press about Communism. In past blogs I have confessed to sympathy for the socialist cause when I was young, but I have also reported my obvious and expected horror of unadulterated Soviet Communism under Uncle Joseph, the Left Wing version of Hitler. In America, in the press, I am not sure we ever got an accurate picture of Eastern Bloc communism, and I was unaware until recently that, by the 1970s, there was no longer a total lockdown on the life of the citizens of Iron Curtain countries. I had always thought, for instance, that in those days, your kids were spying on you, and secret police were on every corner, and you had to whisper any personal conversation. That was the impression we got from American reportage.
This type of extreme control may have been prevalent in East Germany or Lithuania. I don't know because I did not live there, but those countries seem like the examples, in hindsight, for strongarm communist repression, where you would get sent to prison for voicing a contradictory opinion.
But in Poland, they took away your magazines. I was surprised by the pettiness of the Party Leaders as expressed in this movie. The journalist also loses his weekly lecture at a local university, which has his students in an uproar.
The main thing that is happening in his life, though, is personal. His wife is divorcing him. This is the main plot of the movie. Right away, from the first scene of the journalist giving his ill-fated TV interview, director Wajda cuts to another scene in an apartment, where the journalist's wife is watching the interview with her lover, a young hothead who is also on the newspaper staff where the journalist holds sway. The hothead resents the journalist; resents his fame, and his bourgeois opinions, which he feels have been gleaned through privilege. This interloper, who has charmed the journalist's wife, has the personality of a street fighter, which I suppose is another General Character that Wajda wanted to represent in his under-the-wire attack on the truly ridiculous political system he found himself living under.
The marital discord between wife and husband makes up the bulk of the story, but as Professor Tim explained tonight, and as Wajda himself elaborated on in a short documentary interview we saw before the film, this strife is really an allusion to the director's own feelings toward the Communists. He wished to divorce himself from them.
Say what you will about America, and right now there is a lot you can say, and much that I will agree with.
But in watching these films by Andrzej Wajda, who lived through the Communist system in Poland, what I get more than anything is that people were afraid to say what they really meant.
And I think that is, quite possibly, the greatest thing about the United States Of America, that our founding fathers included in our constitution a stipulation for Freedom Of Speech.
What does that mean, anyway, when you have to guarantee human beings the right to speak freely?
As a human being myself, I feel that right innately. I do not need any other human, be it a dictator or politician or whoever, to ascribe me the right to speak my mind.
My question would be to such people : "Who the F are you"?
But we see, over the course of history, that these people have always been the aggressive ones, the ones with a very high level of anger energy, and so, in certain political cases (especially in the 20th century), they established themselves through acts of revolutionary violence, as Titans and thus arbiters of their countries and their citizens.
They are, quite simply, Humans who have a maniacal drive to control other Humans, beyond any normal societal reason of setting rational laws that benefit the greater good of society.
I have veered far from my movie review, as I knew I would when I began my tangent, but I am inspired by Wajda's films, which stand up and present an artistic In Your Face to authoritarian a-holes.
I have been pressing, in my blogs, to treat people of an authoritarian bent as psychological cases, because it is clear that they have pathologies.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao.....Trump.
Think of Trump for just a moment. Here is a guy who is very overweight. He is said to eat nothing but fast food. He does not exercise but for a few golf swings.
And yet he has a pathological drive to rule over other humans that is seemingly unstoppable, and would be, were it not for our American system of justice and judicial process.
All that has prevented us from having a dictator is our system. Yes America is fucked up, but we are saved - for now - by our system.
But I present to you, because the movie got me thinking about it, a case for exploring why someone would want to be part of a system where Sheer Authority dominates the lives of average citizens.
What would cause a person to want such authority?
What would cause a person - and remember that all of us begin life as babies - to eventually seek as an adult to gain enough power to decide how others can live their lives, beyond the administration of the reasonable laws that we all need to live by?
The answer is psychological, and that is what Wajda is getting at.
He is depicting a system of people who have a deep-seated psychological and spiritual disorder that causes them to want to dominate others, and also provides them with the boundless physical and mental energy to accomplish their goal.
The most disruptive are also the most driven.
But their energy can be cancelled out by a non-reactive response of serenity, one that bypasses confrontation and supercedes petty authority.
I have probably gone way out on a limb here, and I apologize if I have disconnected from my argument or if I am making no sense. But these films from Andrzej Wajda have been very inspiring to me, because he lived under a repressive government, and now we have a government here in America that is trying to do the same thing : to turn out country into The Soviet Union Part Two.
That is why, for one reason, the Wajda movies resonate so much with me.
But also they are just plain great films.
Sorry if I did not complete my review in a satisfactory way this time, but I give "Rough Treatment" five stars and two big thumbs up. My highest recommendation.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, March 29, 2018
"Le Mariage de Chiffon" by Claude Autant-Lara
Tonight we got back in the van and reversed course to travel south, heading back to France. When we arrived we unloaded our Time Machine, hopped in and set the date for 1904. When we got there, we met up with our old friend, the director Claude Autant-Lara and his muse, the actress Odette Joyeux.
You will remember Autant-Lara from last month, when we watched and reviewed three of his romantic fantasies that were made in the 1940s during the German Occupation of France. These movies were part of a four film set that was recently released by Criterion, and as we stepped out of the Machine and acclimated ourselves to our new time zone - with some "jet lag" - we sat down with our friends and watched the fourth film of the dvd set, which we had ordered from The Libe several weeks ago.
The title of the movie is "Le Mariage de Chiffon". Odette Joyeux once again plays a variation of her Precocious Teenaged Girl Who Is Verging On Womanhood, and who desires to establish her own identity, having been brought up by, in this case, a domineering, wealthy mother who shuts down her independence. Now, as I said in a previous review last month, thank God our director is Autant-Lara, because this relationship between mother and daughter is not presented in a tragic or lurid way, but in the lightly comic and artistically sharp manner of American farce, albeit with a French Twist, as I also said last month. Mother is overbearing and haughty, but daughter Odette is - as always in these films - much smarter than given credit for and she is very attuned (as all teens are) to the conflicting emotional truths of the relationships between the adults who surround her in the grand mansion where she lives.
She is the bored but emotionally intelligent young woman who sees through the pretense of her elders, and calls them on it. She is in turn, in love with her "Uncle" Marc, who is 25 years her senior and who is not her Uncle by blood (more of a step-Uncle) so the romance, which may be mutual, is not forbidden in the familial sense. Still, she hides her love for "Uncle" Marc in her diary, while her grandstanding Grand Dame of a mother plots to have her married to a middle-aged Colonel in the army, who lives in a nearby hotel and who is also an old acquaintance of Uncle Marc. The movie begins with a night meeting, by chance and in the rain, between the older Colonel and young Chiffon (Joyeux), who has snuck out of the house for the evening, and is a play on the Cinderella story. Chiffon loses her shoe on the sidewalk and the chivalrous Colonel obliges to carry her home. He is gallant and to be trusted; he has no bad intentions (this is a French film from the 1940s, after all), but she is a Young Girl and given to romantic fantasy.......and aren't we all. That is why her character represents all of us, because she allows herself to believe that the fantasy is real, and as a youth, she has not yet developed any cynicism towards love, which has come to affect the lives of the adults around her.
Except for the Colonel, who is gallant and would never take advantage, and also her beloved Uncle Marc, who dotes on her and gives her "life advice", but in general behaves like an Uncle, which he is not, by blood at any rate.
Uncle Marc is also independently wealthy. He owns land and buildings, and he uses his resources to finance his true calling in life : To Fly.
The year is 1904, as previously noted. No mention is made of the Wright Brothers. For all we know, Uncle Marc, with his hand-built Biplane, will be the first man to fly, if he can just get his contraption off the ground, and, most importantly, if he can avoid his creditors in the process. It seems he has mortgaged his fortune on his experimental airplane and is verging on bankruptcy.
Chiffon is desperate to gain his romantic attention and also to see him succeed, and so she agrees to marry the Colonel in order to collect her dowry from her mother, which she plans to secretly use to pay off Uncle Marc's debts, so that he can keep his airplane.
Well, I have told you most of the plot, and I've gone beyond what I usually reveal, but it's because of the script.
Yet again - and I will mention this every time - there is so much happening in a movie of this type, and in particular in these four films by Claude Autant-Lara, that each script could fulfill enough story to play out two films, or to stretch these 90 to 105 minute films into longer excursions.
But Autant-Lara never does that, and that is part of his genius.
Listen up, you screenwriters and editors. Here is a filmmaker who had scripts with so much story that he could have made a miniseries, or sequels, out of each of the four films in this Criterion set. In those days of course, there was no television and no miniseries, and the franchising of motion pictures had yet to become dominant.
Stories were the thing, in all their emotional and human complexity.
Humans and their emotions, and the machinations that result when those emotions are repressed or not repressed, are the stuff of real human stories. Such was the blank page on which the early screenwriters had the chance to work and to create.
The result in films like these, was of a story that had as many facets as a fine diamond, turned and viewed by the human hand and eye.
There are many stories contained in 105 minutes of a film like "Le Mariage de Chiffon", and each facet of the sweeping story is portrayed with the same deft artistry by the actors as was used to direct the film and to write the script.
According to the pamphlets that come with the dvds, these films by the director Autant-Lara were made, and allowed by the German censors, to provide a romantic escape for French audiences, to give the audience an uplift in a time of World War and Occupation, much like the films of Shirley Temple were designed to lift American audiences during the Depression.
Autant-Lara succeeded with his films on a grand scale. Watching them, it's as if the war is not happening, nor the Occupation, and that the only thing at hand is the story he is telling.
All of the four movies are about love as seen through the eyes of the Odette Joyeux character who has no experience but sees all and knows all by studying the adults around her.
In all of the films, she triumphs, and the war does not exist.
My highest recommendation for this box set by Claude Autant-Lara. The films are deserving of ten stars, double the usual highest amount, and I will be looking for anything else I can find by him.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
You will remember Autant-Lara from last month, when we watched and reviewed three of his romantic fantasies that were made in the 1940s during the German Occupation of France. These movies were part of a four film set that was recently released by Criterion, and as we stepped out of the Machine and acclimated ourselves to our new time zone - with some "jet lag" - we sat down with our friends and watched the fourth film of the dvd set, which we had ordered from The Libe several weeks ago.
The title of the movie is "Le Mariage de Chiffon". Odette Joyeux once again plays a variation of her Precocious Teenaged Girl Who Is Verging On Womanhood, and who desires to establish her own identity, having been brought up by, in this case, a domineering, wealthy mother who shuts down her independence. Now, as I said in a previous review last month, thank God our director is Autant-Lara, because this relationship between mother and daughter is not presented in a tragic or lurid way, but in the lightly comic and artistically sharp manner of American farce, albeit with a French Twist, as I also said last month. Mother is overbearing and haughty, but daughter Odette is - as always in these films - much smarter than given credit for and she is very attuned (as all teens are) to the conflicting emotional truths of the relationships between the adults who surround her in the grand mansion where she lives.
She is the bored but emotionally intelligent young woman who sees through the pretense of her elders, and calls them on it. She is in turn, in love with her "Uncle" Marc, who is 25 years her senior and who is not her Uncle by blood (more of a step-Uncle) so the romance, which may be mutual, is not forbidden in the familial sense. Still, she hides her love for "Uncle" Marc in her diary, while her grandstanding Grand Dame of a mother plots to have her married to a middle-aged Colonel in the army, who lives in a nearby hotel and who is also an old acquaintance of Uncle Marc. The movie begins with a night meeting, by chance and in the rain, between the older Colonel and young Chiffon (Joyeux), who has snuck out of the house for the evening, and is a play on the Cinderella story. Chiffon loses her shoe on the sidewalk and the chivalrous Colonel obliges to carry her home. He is gallant and to be trusted; he has no bad intentions (this is a French film from the 1940s, after all), but she is a Young Girl and given to romantic fantasy.......and aren't we all. That is why her character represents all of us, because she allows herself to believe that the fantasy is real, and as a youth, she has not yet developed any cynicism towards love, which has come to affect the lives of the adults around her.
Except for the Colonel, who is gallant and would never take advantage, and also her beloved Uncle Marc, who dotes on her and gives her "life advice", but in general behaves like an Uncle, which he is not, by blood at any rate.
Uncle Marc is also independently wealthy. He owns land and buildings, and he uses his resources to finance his true calling in life : To Fly.
The year is 1904, as previously noted. No mention is made of the Wright Brothers. For all we know, Uncle Marc, with his hand-built Biplane, will be the first man to fly, if he can just get his contraption off the ground, and, most importantly, if he can avoid his creditors in the process. It seems he has mortgaged his fortune on his experimental airplane and is verging on bankruptcy.
Chiffon is desperate to gain his romantic attention and also to see him succeed, and so she agrees to marry the Colonel in order to collect her dowry from her mother, which she plans to secretly use to pay off Uncle Marc's debts, so that he can keep his airplane.
Well, I have told you most of the plot, and I've gone beyond what I usually reveal, but it's because of the script.
Yet again - and I will mention this every time - there is so much happening in a movie of this type, and in particular in these four films by Claude Autant-Lara, that each script could fulfill enough story to play out two films, or to stretch these 90 to 105 minute films into longer excursions.
But Autant-Lara never does that, and that is part of his genius.
Listen up, you screenwriters and editors. Here is a filmmaker who had scripts with so much story that he could have made a miniseries, or sequels, out of each of the four films in this Criterion set. In those days of course, there was no television and no miniseries, and the franchising of motion pictures had yet to become dominant.
Stories were the thing, in all their emotional and human complexity.
Humans and their emotions, and the machinations that result when those emotions are repressed or not repressed, are the stuff of real human stories. Such was the blank page on which the early screenwriters had the chance to work and to create.
The result in films like these, was of a story that had as many facets as a fine diamond, turned and viewed by the human hand and eye.
There are many stories contained in 105 minutes of a film like "Le Mariage de Chiffon", and each facet of the sweeping story is portrayed with the same deft artistry by the actors as was used to direct the film and to write the script.
According to the pamphlets that come with the dvds, these films by the director Autant-Lara were made, and allowed by the German censors, to provide a romantic escape for French audiences, to give the audience an uplift in a time of World War and Occupation, much like the films of Shirley Temple were designed to lift American audiences during the Depression.
Autant-Lara succeeded with his films on a grand scale. Watching them, it's as if the war is not happening, nor the Occupation, and that the only thing at hand is the story he is telling.
All of the four movies are about love as seen through the eyes of the Odette Joyeux character who has no experience but sees all and knows all by studying the adults around her.
In all of the films, she triumphs, and the war does not exist.
My highest recommendation for this box set by Claude Autant-Lara. The films are deserving of ten stars, double the usual highest amount, and I will be looking for anything else I can find by him.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
"The Unknown Girl" by The Dardenne Brothers (meh..) and The Fine Constant and The SB
Tonight I was back in Belgium with the Dardenne Brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc. I watched their latest film, "The Unknown Girl" (2016), made in the same realistic style as all their other movies, with handheld camera throughout, no music, lighting that looks like regular room lighting, and frequently somber characters. They don't come more somber than the lead character in this film, a young doctor who has just joined an established clinic. She is a rising star in local medicine but seems utterly devoid of anything resembling happiness, joy or even a sense of humor. A great doctor with a dour personality.
We see her examining her patients, mostly elderly townsfolk and recent immigrants. She works at a clinic, after all. One night, she is training an intern, and the buzzer rings. Someone is at the front door. It is after hours, though, and she is busy with her intern, so she tells him not to answer the buzzer. "It's not an emergency", she declares, "or else they would have kept buzzing".
The next day, two detectives come calling at the clinic. The dreaded French Police. They want to talk to the doctor, because a teenaged girl, an African immigrant, has been found dead at the edge of the river that runs past the clinic. It appears she has been murdered, and to make matters worse, the French Police have secured the video from the clinic's security cam, and it shows the young girl frantically running to the door and ringing the buzzer on the night in question - the night that the young doctor told her intern to ignore the buzzer.
Now the girl is dead, and the young doctor feels guilty. She thinks "if only I had answered that buzzer". Even worse, the French Police tell her that they are unable to identify the girl, who had no I.D. and as a probable illegal immigrant, has no family members who are willing to jeopardize their own security by coming forward to identify and claim her. She is thus "The Unknown Girl" of the title.
So there you have the set-up. Sounds like a good one, right?
Being that it was made by the Dardennes, you would expect it to be good, but in this case I'm afraid you'd be just a little disappointed.
The main problem is the performance of the lead actress, who is onscreen the entire time. While she is clearly talented and, in checking her IMDB, has appeared in quite a few recent French films, in this movie her character is such a depressing person that it was all I could do not to hit the "eject" button for the first hour of the film. She plays just a single emotion the entire time and presents, with minor variations, a stone face to the camera. In a Dardennes' film, which is supposed to be realistic, it is a very unrealistic portrayal. I thought, "why am I watching this? This woman is depressing me and it's only a movie". But I kept watching because of the murder mystery, which ostensibly made up the plot.
Two questions remained to be answered : 1) Who was The Unknown Girl, and 2) Who killed her?
The story becomes implausible when the young doctor takes it upon herself to play detective. She feels so guilty about the girl's death that she cruises the fringes of the underworld in the city of Leige in order to try to find anyone who knew the girl. She confronts some tough hombres in a Cyber Cafe, who wind up tailing her car and threatening her life. And still she exhibits a stone-faced reaction, with minor variations, when in reality anyone in real life would be freaking out.
So much for Realism in film. The Dardennes are good, but...........I'm not sure they are worthy of all the accolades they have garnered in recent years. I say this because, while I have seen several top-notch and excellent works by The Bros., I have also seen perhaps just as many substandard works.
Here's what The Dardenne Brothers should do :
Leave the politics out of their films.
Now, I know you are saying, "wait Ad, they already did that. There is no mention of politics in Dardenne movies.
Ahh, but there is, and the politics are subtly communicated. Europe has a tremendous psychological problem with it's immigrant influx. Cities have been inundated with refugees and illegals, and these people are desperate. They use fake passports, they turn to prostitution to make money to survive.
It's horrible.
Without going on a tirade I will just point out what you already know, and that is that the Quaint Europe we all think of was in actual fact the creator of the modern problems of society, because it was Europe that colonised Africa, and South America, and Asia. It was England and France and Spain and Belgium that did it the most. And now the chickens have come home to roost, in the form of refugees and other people in these forsaken countries like Gabon (wherever that is), who turn to their former rulers in Belgium, and emigrate there illegally, because that is the only political father figure they know. "Belgium will take care of us".
And so, to the Dardennes' credit, they are showing the effects of European colonization from 150-200 years ago on modern European society, and it isn't pretty.
Remind me not to move to Belgium, which in Dardenne movies looks less like a painting by Van Eyck, and more like a section of Van Nuys, here in the Valley.
So in that respect, they are trying to show the truth of the social decay in their country. Unfortunately, in their less successful films, they present the evidence through false prentenses of characterization. There is no way, in this film, that a 30 year old female doctor with a depressive personality would drive around into the Belgian criminal underworld to try and uncover the killer of The Unknown Girl, toward whom she feels so much guilt.
This was a movie that could have been excellent, like other Dardenne films have been, if only they had tried to write a believable story, instead of making the decision to have the main actress carry the entire film, which, likely through no fault of her own but the fault of The Brothers, she was incapable of doing.
I give "The Unknown Girl" One Thumb Sideways, watch it only if you are a Dardenne completionist.
I think that I am done with movies like this for a while. The so called "realism" being presented nowdays seems a bit contrived, especially in comparison to the total realism of the postwar era, where the genre began. Go back and watch some of the Italian Neo-Realist films to see the real thing.
Please don't mix the guilt politics of subsequent generations with formatted filmmaking. We know that Europe conquered the world, and we know that America followed suit. We know that both Empires dominated and subjugated entire continents and their peoples and cultures.
It is nice, and good, to make small pictures about local humanitarian situations in Belgium or wherever.
But please try to make these pictures as interesting movies.
Movies must be Interesting, or they must Entertain, or both.
The only thing they must not be, is Boring. Sorry, but I wish I had my two hours back.
Elizabeth, if you are reading, I was sorry to hear about The Fine Constant. I can remember all the way back to 2012, when you mentioned a girl who played guitar who used to come over to your house to use your printer......and it was Sarah. You guys have been friends a long time, and you have all accomplished a lot. Really, you have, you and Sarah and Steve and all of your friends.
I hope that both Sarah and Steve will continue to pursue music, and from his post it looks like that's exactly what they are doing, albeit separately.
Best wishes to them.
I am glad you guys are all friends and that you are all doing what you do.
Never stop.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
We see her examining her patients, mostly elderly townsfolk and recent immigrants. She works at a clinic, after all. One night, she is training an intern, and the buzzer rings. Someone is at the front door. It is after hours, though, and she is busy with her intern, so she tells him not to answer the buzzer. "It's not an emergency", she declares, "or else they would have kept buzzing".
The next day, two detectives come calling at the clinic. The dreaded French Police. They want to talk to the doctor, because a teenaged girl, an African immigrant, has been found dead at the edge of the river that runs past the clinic. It appears she has been murdered, and to make matters worse, the French Police have secured the video from the clinic's security cam, and it shows the young girl frantically running to the door and ringing the buzzer on the night in question - the night that the young doctor told her intern to ignore the buzzer.
Now the girl is dead, and the young doctor feels guilty. She thinks "if only I had answered that buzzer". Even worse, the French Police tell her that they are unable to identify the girl, who had no I.D. and as a probable illegal immigrant, has no family members who are willing to jeopardize their own security by coming forward to identify and claim her. She is thus "The Unknown Girl" of the title.
So there you have the set-up. Sounds like a good one, right?
Being that it was made by the Dardennes, you would expect it to be good, but in this case I'm afraid you'd be just a little disappointed.
The main problem is the performance of the lead actress, who is onscreen the entire time. While she is clearly talented and, in checking her IMDB, has appeared in quite a few recent French films, in this movie her character is such a depressing person that it was all I could do not to hit the "eject" button for the first hour of the film. She plays just a single emotion the entire time and presents, with minor variations, a stone face to the camera. In a Dardennes' film, which is supposed to be realistic, it is a very unrealistic portrayal. I thought, "why am I watching this? This woman is depressing me and it's only a movie". But I kept watching because of the murder mystery, which ostensibly made up the plot.
Two questions remained to be answered : 1) Who was The Unknown Girl, and 2) Who killed her?
The story becomes implausible when the young doctor takes it upon herself to play detective. She feels so guilty about the girl's death that she cruises the fringes of the underworld in the city of Leige in order to try to find anyone who knew the girl. She confronts some tough hombres in a Cyber Cafe, who wind up tailing her car and threatening her life. And still she exhibits a stone-faced reaction, with minor variations, when in reality anyone in real life would be freaking out.
So much for Realism in film. The Dardennes are good, but...........I'm not sure they are worthy of all the accolades they have garnered in recent years. I say this because, while I have seen several top-notch and excellent works by The Bros., I have also seen perhaps just as many substandard works.
Here's what The Dardenne Brothers should do :
Leave the politics out of their films.
Now, I know you are saying, "wait Ad, they already did that. There is no mention of politics in Dardenne movies.
Ahh, but there is, and the politics are subtly communicated. Europe has a tremendous psychological problem with it's immigrant influx. Cities have been inundated with refugees and illegals, and these people are desperate. They use fake passports, they turn to prostitution to make money to survive.
It's horrible.
Without going on a tirade I will just point out what you already know, and that is that the Quaint Europe we all think of was in actual fact the creator of the modern problems of society, because it was Europe that colonised Africa, and South America, and Asia. It was England and France and Spain and Belgium that did it the most. And now the chickens have come home to roost, in the form of refugees and other people in these forsaken countries like Gabon (wherever that is), who turn to their former rulers in Belgium, and emigrate there illegally, because that is the only political father figure they know. "Belgium will take care of us".
And so, to the Dardennes' credit, they are showing the effects of European colonization from 150-200 years ago on modern European society, and it isn't pretty.
Remind me not to move to Belgium, which in Dardenne movies looks less like a painting by Van Eyck, and more like a section of Van Nuys, here in the Valley.
So in that respect, they are trying to show the truth of the social decay in their country. Unfortunately, in their less successful films, they present the evidence through false prentenses of characterization. There is no way, in this film, that a 30 year old female doctor with a depressive personality would drive around into the Belgian criminal underworld to try and uncover the killer of The Unknown Girl, toward whom she feels so much guilt.
This was a movie that could have been excellent, like other Dardenne films have been, if only they had tried to write a believable story, instead of making the decision to have the main actress carry the entire film, which, likely through no fault of her own but the fault of The Brothers, she was incapable of doing.
I give "The Unknown Girl" One Thumb Sideways, watch it only if you are a Dardenne completionist.
I think that I am done with movies like this for a while. The so called "realism" being presented nowdays seems a bit contrived, especially in comparison to the total realism of the postwar era, where the genre began. Go back and watch some of the Italian Neo-Realist films to see the real thing.
Please don't mix the guilt politics of subsequent generations with formatted filmmaking. We know that Europe conquered the world, and we know that America followed suit. We know that both Empires dominated and subjugated entire continents and their peoples and cultures.
It is nice, and good, to make small pictures about local humanitarian situations in Belgium or wherever.
But please try to make these pictures as interesting movies.
Movies must be Interesting, or they must Entertain, or both.
The only thing they must not be, is Boring. Sorry, but I wish I had my two hours back.
Elizabeth, if you are reading, I was sorry to hear about The Fine Constant. I can remember all the way back to 2012, when you mentioned a girl who played guitar who used to come over to your house to use your printer......and it was Sarah. You guys have been friends a long time, and you have all accomplished a lot. Really, you have, you and Sarah and Steve and all of your friends.
I hope that both Sarah and Steve will continue to pursue music, and from his post it looks like that's exactly what they are doing, albeit separately.
Best wishes to them.
I am glad you guys are all friends and that you are all doing what you do.
Never stop.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Aliso Canyon, Yippee! + Wisconsin Glaciation, SB + Congrats
I finally made it up to Aliso Canyon this afternoon, hooray! As mentioned recently, I had not been there in several weeks, and it was so great to be back. I spent a lot of time looking at the ground, due to the influence "Forbidden Archaeology" has had on me. Now I wanna stop and pick up or dig up every embedded rock that has sharp edges. :) It was a wonder I got any hiking done, lol, but I just know that I am walking over buried artifacts - and maybe even some that are right there on the surface - every time I go up there. I'm just talking about old Indian arrowheads and tools, not stuff that goes back to Fred Flintstone's time, but I'll bet that if you dug down a ways, you could find some of his gear too.
I'm new to this stuff - paleoanthropology, or is it paleontology?.........maybe both. I don't know what to look for, but I'm gonna keep looking. At Aliso, just by looking at the old creek running through the park, you can tell that it's very old. And today I made a point to see if I could find an actual stratigraphic layer in the creek bed. Most of it, while ancient looking, just seems to be an 8 to 10 foot layer of mud and tree roots. But I did some looking, and I found a layer, maybe a foot thick, where you can see that a horizontal line of rocks are laid down, rocks of different material and shape but mostly of similar size, and they form a stratigraphic layer. Man, I would love to haul a geologist up there to tell me how old that layer is! It's right there in the creek bed. I know it's not prehistoric, but even if it was only a couple thousand years old, that would be mind blowing to me. Now I've got to know, so in lieu of finding a willing geologist I will do some Googling and see what I can come up with. Just four miles away we've got Santa Susana, with it's 80 Million year old rocks, so Aliso has gotta be at least a little bit old.
Sorry, but I'm all Geologied Out and also Archaeologied Out. I wanna discover something.
Most rocks just look like rocks, but you know something is down there. Man, now I'm never gonna get any hiking done. :)
Elizabeth, I am also reading in my book about some arrowheads and other implements that were found on an island in Lake Huron in the 1950s. These items were said to have been stratified (i.e. laid down and buried in a layer of stratum) during a period known as the Wisconsin Glaciation, which is broken down into three separate periods called Early Wisconsin, Middle Wisconsin and Late Wisconsin. In school, we would have been taught in general about The Ice Age of 10,000 years ago, but in the book, and in the science of geology, I am learning that the subject is broken down and described in a much more specific and localized way. Basically, however, the Wisconsin Glaciation refers to the last Ice Age, and to how far the Ice Sheet advanced down in to North America. This is of course how the Great Lakes were created, and I am reading also about something called a Glacial Till - like in "tilling" the Earth, where a glacier, when retreating or advancing, digs into the Earth and pushes a great mass of soil in front of it or in it's wake. A glacier tills the Earth in a humongous way, moving megatons of material, and when it did so during the Wisconsin Glaciation, which we now know went back to about 70,000 years ago, it buried a lot of stone artifacts that were dug up over the years, and most notably in the 1950s.
You have some amazing geology up there, SB. One day I will have to come up there and have a look for myself. You can show me around. :):)
I also saw, looking at your Facebook page today, that your film is gonna be shown at the Wisconsin Film Festival and also - it looks like - in San Francisco (mentioned by one of your friends).
I remember when you were working on it, with the dancer. He was dancing in nature, which was the idea if I have it right.
Huge congratulations on the festival screenings, Elizabeth. I am glad to hear of them and I know that these screenings will lead to more work for you. After the screenings happen, post about how things went, I would love to hear about it! :) :)
Well, that's all I know for tonight. I didn't watch a movie, but Grim came over to watch "Twin Peaks" Episode Five.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I'm new to this stuff - paleoanthropology, or is it paleontology?.........maybe both. I don't know what to look for, but I'm gonna keep looking. At Aliso, just by looking at the old creek running through the park, you can tell that it's very old. And today I made a point to see if I could find an actual stratigraphic layer in the creek bed. Most of it, while ancient looking, just seems to be an 8 to 10 foot layer of mud and tree roots. But I did some looking, and I found a layer, maybe a foot thick, where you can see that a horizontal line of rocks are laid down, rocks of different material and shape but mostly of similar size, and they form a stratigraphic layer. Man, I would love to haul a geologist up there to tell me how old that layer is! It's right there in the creek bed. I know it's not prehistoric, but even if it was only a couple thousand years old, that would be mind blowing to me. Now I've got to know, so in lieu of finding a willing geologist I will do some Googling and see what I can come up with. Just four miles away we've got Santa Susana, with it's 80 Million year old rocks, so Aliso has gotta be at least a little bit old.
Sorry, but I'm all Geologied Out and also Archaeologied Out. I wanna discover something.
Most rocks just look like rocks, but you know something is down there. Man, now I'm never gonna get any hiking done. :)
Elizabeth, I am also reading in my book about some arrowheads and other implements that were found on an island in Lake Huron in the 1950s. These items were said to have been stratified (i.e. laid down and buried in a layer of stratum) during a period known as the Wisconsin Glaciation, which is broken down into three separate periods called Early Wisconsin, Middle Wisconsin and Late Wisconsin. In school, we would have been taught in general about The Ice Age of 10,000 years ago, but in the book, and in the science of geology, I am learning that the subject is broken down and described in a much more specific and localized way. Basically, however, the Wisconsin Glaciation refers to the last Ice Age, and to how far the Ice Sheet advanced down in to North America. This is of course how the Great Lakes were created, and I am reading also about something called a Glacial Till - like in "tilling" the Earth, where a glacier, when retreating or advancing, digs into the Earth and pushes a great mass of soil in front of it or in it's wake. A glacier tills the Earth in a humongous way, moving megatons of material, and when it did so during the Wisconsin Glaciation, which we now know went back to about 70,000 years ago, it buried a lot of stone artifacts that were dug up over the years, and most notably in the 1950s.
You have some amazing geology up there, SB. One day I will have to come up there and have a look for myself. You can show me around. :):)
I also saw, looking at your Facebook page today, that your film is gonna be shown at the Wisconsin Film Festival and also - it looks like - in San Francisco (mentioned by one of your friends).
I remember when you were working on it, with the dancer. He was dancing in nature, which was the idea if I have it right.
Huge congratulations on the festival screenings, Elizabeth. I am glad to hear of them and I know that these screenings will lead to more work for you. After the screenings happen, post about how things went, I would love to hear about it! :) :)
Well, that's all I know for tonight. I didn't watch a movie, but Grim came over to watch "Twin Peaks" Episode Five.
See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, March 26, 2018
The Franklin Scandal + What Happened In Northridge + 1989
Sub-Zero tonight, with Gale Force Winds. It's almost April - what gives? What happened to our weather? Sorry I missed ya last night, but I couldn't come up with anything to write about. I watched a "Twin Peaks" instead of a movie; you already know about "TP", it's Weird, and there's not a lot you can write about to describe it. I couldn't base a blog solely on an episode of the show. Also, I didn't wanna just pick another subject out of a hat to go on a tirade about. I don't wanna become The Tirade Guy. "Hey! Look who's back again tonight - it's The Tirade Guy! Wonder what he'll be railing against this time"? That's not how I wish to be perceived, haha.
Now, that doesn't mean I will abandon tirades. No siree, because they are probably at least a minor drawing card, if I don't do 'em all the time and - most importantly - if I can keep 'em witty. If I can Skewer rather than simply Bitch & Moan about stuff. And also, there is occasionally stuff that is worth talking about, besides the same old political issues which go nowhere here in America.
The best Tirades are spur-of-the-moment. I can't premeditate 'em because then they sound forced, and it makes me look like a "Get Off My Lawn" Curmudgeon, which I am decidedly not.
Well, I think I am now tirading against myself, so it's time to change the subject.
We had good singing in church this morn. T'was Palm Sunday, the lead-in to Easter Week which is the most important period in the Christian calendar. I always enjoy singing at this time because the hymns that are chosen are the most famous ones that even non-churchgoers might recognize, and they have that English melodic framework that is also very familiar, which as a choir member I call "climbing the ladder". I pretty much get goosebumps singing the best hymns, and they are designed that way, to produce maximum emotion. Greg Lake is my idol, vocally, and though I can't quite sing like him I would like to be able to. If you want to hear my ideal, for Church Singing, listen to "Jerusalem" by Emerson Lake and Palmer. It's their version of the hymn by William Blake. Greg's voice on that song is what I would love to sound like, even a little bit lol.
Tonight I watched a "Rawhide" and began work on another drawing. This aft I went to Big 5 and bought a new pair of shoes, my standard White Sneakers (athletic shoes). Now I don't have to do my daily miles in my hiking boots anymore, which was killing my feet.
In addition to the fascinating book "Forbidden Archaeology" by Michael Cremo, I am also reading "The Franklin Scandal", with it's terrible subject matter. I must note that I previously misidentified the title of the book as "The Franklin Cover Up". That is a different book by an author named John DeCamp, who was the first person to write about the story. I have that book ordered from the Libe, and I got it's title mixed up with the similar title of the book I am actually reading, which is "The Franklin Scandal" by Nick Bryant.
At any rate, it's a horrible story that needs to be told, and it should have been broadcast on National TV, but instead it was buried by the Federal government, and the reasons are tragic because of the children involved. Nobody cared about them, except for the authors of the books, and a few investigators who had no power compared to the Feds, and the witnesses in Nebraska and Washington DC, who were marginalised and threatened, and told to shut up and change their stories, to say that they were lying about what they previously had described to investigators as having happened to them.
There is zero doubt that their story is true overall, and it was buried.
I am especially interested in The Franklin Scandal because it unfolded in 1988/89, in the same general timeframe as What Happened In Northridge.
George Bush was in office for both situations. In the situation of What Happened In Northridge, which I am the only person ever to have acknowledged, George Bush was not only the President Of The United States Of America at the time it unfolded (September 1989), but he was also the only person - as President - who could have authorized the overarching and unprecedented power play that shut down the Los Angeles Police Department's local authority, and more importantly, authorised the use of futuristic military technology that, among other things, caused many people who were involved in Northridge to experience amnesia to certain degrees : in my case it was total amnesia for four years, and I suspect in the case of many others it was enough - whatever was done to these folks - to get them to accept in their own minds that "it never happened", even though they know in their hearts that it did.
This is the power of the technology, which involves disrupting the hippocampus of the brain. If you wish to study the diabolical actions of the CIA in the MK Ultra years, you will discover that their lead scientists, who were a bunch of human monsters, learned through experimentation how the brain works.
The human brain is like a car engine to these people, and you can believe me 1000% when I tell you that they were evil personified.
This is the CIA of the Allen Dulles era, which I have already written about.
But you would think that, somewhere in the interim of thirty or so years between the 1950s and the 1980s - the time of The Franklin Scandal and also What Happened In Northridge, that somebody would have stepped up to the plate and rescued the CIA, and America, from these Horrible Monsters, these pedophiles and Satanists, who are documented to have been in place as being connected to that agency at that time.
A few people did step up to the plate - the lead investigator of Franklin was killed - but the end result was that the Satanists who had Federal power behind them suffered only mild consequences at worst.
The whole structure of Nebraska law enforcement was committed to burying this case, which involved child prostitution, whose clients extended to Washington DC.
These are not merely criminals but Monsters, and it is very important to note the difference. Criminals, however bad they may be, operate on a recognizable societal scale. They rob stores, or kidnap, murder, etc., and the police get them. Crimes are solved, or that is at least the operating principle.
But with these Satanic criminals at the Federal level, they do not operate by society's rules because there is no one who can bust them. They are the highest law enforcement authority, or to be more precise, they have the highest Federal authority in their pocket, and this is because of sexual blackmail.
You will remember what I mentioned the other night about human Demons (a real thing, not fantasy), who are possessed of tremendous Drive To Succeed and Attain Power. They have this drive because they are powered by Evil, which acknowledges itself within these people by their psychosexual drives.
These drives say to these people, "you need power, or you'll never get away with what you are doing". The Demon inside such a person drives them to acheive a powerful position of authority, so that they can indeed continue to get away with their compulsions, because when they have that authority, no one can shut them down.
When they are at the top of the Federal Investigative Agencies, and when they have Judges in their pocket, and Congresspeople, because they have blackmail on those folks, because those folks have the same sexual predilections, then there is nobody who can shut down their ring.
The local cops can't do it because they don't have the jurisdiction. Private investigators can't do it because the Feds have infinitely more money and power to shut them down and even kill them.
Newspapers can't do it because their reporters can never really get to the bottom of what has happened, and even if they do - as in Franklin - a Federal judge will shut the case down and close the books on it.
These are people at the Federal level who are willing to let children go down the tubes, to be sacrificed, in order that no one discover what their perverted brethren in Washington DC and in Hollywood, Nebraska, and wherever are up to. They are a network of Satanic pedophiles who have Federal authority, who keep secrets and protect one another.
It's no joke. The Franklin story took place 30 years ago. So did What Happened In Northridge. I am not saying that Northridge involved children, but it happened at around the same time, when Bush was President, and it certainly involved sex and drugs, including a violent sexual psychopath named Jared Rappaport. Gotta keep harping on him because nothing has ever been done about the guy. He should have gone to prison for life.
Well that's my blog for tonight. If these details are too strong for you, then please don't read. I write my blogs more or less according to what I am thinking about on any particular day. A lot of times I have a movie to write about. In the old days I was writing to the SB, who isn't around as much now. I don't want to just write about stuff like this, but it's kind of like the high school students in Florida, I suppose. They have to march about a very unpleasant subject in order to try to create a change in America, and they are up against a very treacherous opponent, the equally Satanic NRA organisation.
But those students are marching nonetheless. They are standing up to Evil.
And that's all I am trying to do, in my minor way, by writing about what I am reading.
And because What Happened In Northridge has parallels to Franklin, and because Northridge happened to me.
I am just trying to step up to the plate, and maybe I will inspire someone to do the same.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Now, that doesn't mean I will abandon tirades. No siree, because they are probably at least a minor drawing card, if I don't do 'em all the time and - most importantly - if I can keep 'em witty. If I can Skewer rather than simply Bitch & Moan about stuff. And also, there is occasionally stuff that is worth talking about, besides the same old political issues which go nowhere here in America.
The best Tirades are spur-of-the-moment. I can't premeditate 'em because then they sound forced, and it makes me look like a "Get Off My Lawn" Curmudgeon, which I am decidedly not.
Well, I think I am now tirading against myself, so it's time to change the subject.
We had good singing in church this morn. T'was Palm Sunday, the lead-in to Easter Week which is the most important period in the Christian calendar. I always enjoy singing at this time because the hymns that are chosen are the most famous ones that even non-churchgoers might recognize, and they have that English melodic framework that is also very familiar, which as a choir member I call "climbing the ladder". I pretty much get goosebumps singing the best hymns, and they are designed that way, to produce maximum emotion. Greg Lake is my idol, vocally, and though I can't quite sing like him I would like to be able to. If you want to hear my ideal, for Church Singing, listen to "Jerusalem" by Emerson Lake and Palmer. It's their version of the hymn by William Blake. Greg's voice on that song is what I would love to sound like, even a little bit lol.
Tonight I watched a "Rawhide" and began work on another drawing. This aft I went to Big 5 and bought a new pair of shoes, my standard White Sneakers (athletic shoes). Now I don't have to do my daily miles in my hiking boots anymore, which was killing my feet.
In addition to the fascinating book "Forbidden Archaeology" by Michael Cremo, I am also reading "The Franklin Scandal", with it's terrible subject matter. I must note that I previously misidentified the title of the book as "The Franklin Cover Up". That is a different book by an author named John DeCamp, who was the first person to write about the story. I have that book ordered from the Libe, and I got it's title mixed up with the similar title of the book I am actually reading, which is "The Franklin Scandal" by Nick Bryant.
At any rate, it's a horrible story that needs to be told, and it should have been broadcast on National TV, but instead it was buried by the Federal government, and the reasons are tragic because of the children involved. Nobody cared about them, except for the authors of the books, and a few investigators who had no power compared to the Feds, and the witnesses in Nebraska and Washington DC, who were marginalised and threatened, and told to shut up and change their stories, to say that they were lying about what they previously had described to investigators as having happened to them.
There is zero doubt that their story is true overall, and it was buried.
I am especially interested in The Franklin Scandal because it unfolded in 1988/89, in the same general timeframe as What Happened In Northridge.
George Bush was in office for both situations. In the situation of What Happened In Northridge, which I am the only person ever to have acknowledged, George Bush was not only the President Of The United States Of America at the time it unfolded (September 1989), but he was also the only person - as President - who could have authorized the overarching and unprecedented power play that shut down the Los Angeles Police Department's local authority, and more importantly, authorised the use of futuristic military technology that, among other things, caused many people who were involved in Northridge to experience amnesia to certain degrees : in my case it was total amnesia for four years, and I suspect in the case of many others it was enough - whatever was done to these folks - to get them to accept in their own minds that "it never happened", even though they know in their hearts that it did.
This is the power of the technology, which involves disrupting the hippocampus of the brain. If you wish to study the diabolical actions of the CIA in the MK Ultra years, you will discover that their lead scientists, who were a bunch of human monsters, learned through experimentation how the brain works.
The human brain is like a car engine to these people, and you can believe me 1000% when I tell you that they were evil personified.
This is the CIA of the Allen Dulles era, which I have already written about.
But you would think that, somewhere in the interim of thirty or so years between the 1950s and the 1980s - the time of The Franklin Scandal and also What Happened In Northridge, that somebody would have stepped up to the plate and rescued the CIA, and America, from these Horrible Monsters, these pedophiles and Satanists, who are documented to have been in place as being connected to that agency at that time.
A few people did step up to the plate - the lead investigator of Franklin was killed - but the end result was that the Satanists who had Federal power behind them suffered only mild consequences at worst.
The whole structure of Nebraska law enforcement was committed to burying this case, which involved child prostitution, whose clients extended to Washington DC.
These are not merely criminals but Monsters, and it is very important to note the difference. Criminals, however bad they may be, operate on a recognizable societal scale. They rob stores, or kidnap, murder, etc., and the police get them. Crimes are solved, or that is at least the operating principle.
But with these Satanic criminals at the Federal level, they do not operate by society's rules because there is no one who can bust them. They are the highest law enforcement authority, or to be more precise, they have the highest Federal authority in their pocket, and this is because of sexual blackmail.
You will remember what I mentioned the other night about human Demons (a real thing, not fantasy), who are possessed of tremendous Drive To Succeed and Attain Power. They have this drive because they are powered by Evil, which acknowledges itself within these people by their psychosexual drives.
These drives say to these people, "you need power, or you'll never get away with what you are doing". The Demon inside such a person drives them to acheive a powerful position of authority, so that they can indeed continue to get away with their compulsions, because when they have that authority, no one can shut them down.
When they are at the top of the Federal Investigative Agencies, and when they have Judges in their pocket, and Congresspeople, because they have blackmail on those folks, because those folks have the same sexual predilections, then there is nobody who can shut down their ring.
The local cops can't do it because they don't have the jurisdiction. Private investigators can't do it because the Feds have infinitely more money and power to shut them down and even kill them.
Newspapers can't do it because their reporters can never really get to the bottom of what has happened, and even if they do - as in Franklin - a Federal judge will shut the case down and close the books on it.
These are people at the Federal level who are willing to let children go down the tubes, to be sacrificed, in order that no one discover what their perverted brethren in Washington DC and in Hollywood, Nebraska, and wherever are up to. They are a network of Satanic pedophiles who have Federal authority, who keep secrets and protect one another.
It's no joke. The Franklin story took place 30 years ago. So did What Happened In Northridge. I am not saying that Northridge involved children, but it happened at around the same time, when Bush was President, and it certainly involved sex and drugs, including a violent sexual psychopath named Jared Rappaport. Gotta keep harping on him because nothing has ever been done about the guy. He should have gone to prison for life.
Well that's my blog for tonight. If these details are too strong for you, then please don't read. I write my blogs more or less according to what I am thinking about on any particular day. A lot of times I have a movie to write about. In the old days I was writing to the SB, who isn't around as much now. I don't want to just write about stuff like this, but it's kind of like the high school students in Florida, I suppose. They have to march about a very unpleasant subject in order to try to create a change in America, and they are up against a very treacherous opponent, the equally Satanic NRA organisation.
But those students are marching nonetheless. They are standing up to Evil.
And that's all I am trying to do, in my minor way, by writing about what I am reading.
And because What Happened In Northridge has parallels to Franklin, and because Northridge happened to me.
I am just trying to step up to the plate, and maybe I will inspire someone to do the same.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, March 24, 2018
SB! + Rob Reiner, "LBJ" and Phoney Baloney Hollywood Liberals
Hey, Elizabeth! It's great to see you back on FB and also to see your photo this morning. That was a gorgeous sunset over the water with the old pier in the foreground. Excellent framing as usual and beautiful colors. Are you in North Carolina on a job or just for fun? Maybe both. :) I hope you are having a blast and please post more pics if you feel like doing so. As always, I hope everything is going good. :)
The rain finally stopped here, and the Sun came out too. Hooray! We've had about six weeks of crummy weather, mostly cold and overcast, and then rain for the last week or so, but now we may be coming out of it, fingers crossed. I've only been on two hikes since late February (Towsley Canyon and Santa Susana), with no trips at all to Aliso, which I normally visit once or twice a week. Bad weather sucks! But now it looks like an extended period of sunshine is ahead of us, even if we are still chillin' in the low 60s. This definitely ain't normal SoCal weather, but I'll take the Sun over grey skies.
Tonight I watched a movie called "LBJ". You can probably guess who it was about. It starred Woody Harrelson as Lyndon Johnson. He was in full prosthetic makeup which was as accurate as possible given Woody's own facial features, and I thought he did a good job in his portrayal of the former President and psychopathic killer who masterminded the JFK assassination.
The problem with the film was that they did not portray any of that latter characterization of Johnson. Rob Reiner directed, and so the movie was more or less a whitewash.
I have promised myself, before I began this blog, that I won't go on any tirades about LBJ or Rob Reiner, but I'm not sure I'll be able to stick with it.
Rob Reiner was great as "Meathead" on "All In The Family", and beginning with "Spinal Tap" 34 years ago, he made a few classic films as a movie director, among them "Stand By Me" and "The Princess Bride". But then, around the turn of the century and millennium, he decided he wanted to be a force in politics, and he emerged as the kind of in-your-face pushy, ultra-liberal Democrat that I can't stand, because that type of politics is not much different than the Right Wing version. Reiner was in the news a lot back then, trying to shove his ideas down everyone's throat, most notably his anti-smoking campaign. On the surface, it sounds admirable to try to get people to stop smoking, right? But the way in which Rob Reiner went about it was straight Gestapo and very privileged on his part. I haven't the time or inclination to detail my objections for you, but I will tell you that I have lived in Los Angeles all my life, and I know it's politics, and I have come to loathe the Limousine Liberals just as much as I detest Right Wing Nutcases like Trump. Rob Reiner picked smoking as his #1 issue, and he went after cigarette smokers as if they were AR-15 owners. You can Google it if you want to. My Mom was a lifelong smoker, and she wasn't bothering anybody. She had cut it down to about half a pack per day by 1999 - ten cigs - and now here in the news was this movie director, the multimillionaire Rob Reiner, who was on a crusade to stamp out smoking in California and Los Angeles, who proposed huge tax increases on cigarettes, who wanted to ban smoking even on the sidewalk and in any public place. He wanted to do this all at once, but as assholeish as his proposition was, it wasn't entirely the anti-smoking campaign that caused me to detest him.
Instead, it was the Entitled Smugness with which he put it forth, because of his Hollywood money and power at the time. He was a Liberal Hollywood Asshole, and those guys are literally no different than Right Wing Assholes. They just have different agendas they want to shove down your throat.
You would have to do some Googling on Rob Reiner to see my point, because he gave up politics (and his movie career basically went down the tubes), but you can be sure that I am telling it like it was.
The guy was a pushy, over-the-top jackass, who had once been a very talented TV actor and had also directed a couple of very good movies.
But "ohh, the Ego of the Hollywood Celebrity Politician".
What a bunch of phoney-baloney assholes, and I am very sorry for the language but I absolutely cannot stand these people, because they are the same kind of people who enable a Weinstein or an LBJ.
And so you know that if Rob Reiner directed a movie about Lyndon Baines Johnson, that it was gonna be half-baked at best, which is what it was. He did present LBJ as the crude, boorish and calculating politician he was at the best of times, but he completely glossed over or forgot about entirely LBJ's certain involvement in murdering Kennedy, and just as importantly, he left out LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam War, which killed 52,000 American soldiers and millions of Vietnamise, Cambodians and Laotians. In the movie, Reiner only wanted to focus on LBJ's pushing through Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill, which Johnson had opposed until he became President and had control of it and could get the credit for it.
A total whitewash by Rob Reiner, who did present Johnson as a very flawed character but championed him at the end of the movie.
Folks, this is me speaking to you. I am lifelong Los Angeles. I know my Hollywood. I am in no way shape or form a Right Winger or Trumper or anything of the kind. But I am for sanity and for truth, and the truth is that Phoney-Baloney Hollywood "Liberals" like Rob Reiner are as bad as any Trump, because they think they know what's best for you, and they believe that their money and Hollywood power entitles them to make decisions and form policies that will decide how you live your life.
So guess what? Screw 'em both.
The Gun-Nut NRA-supporting Trumpers get a bigger Screw 'Em, but the Phoney-Baloney Cover Everything Up Liberals in Hollywood are running a close second, because they are all about money, too. And they don't give a hoot about the truth any more than the moneyed Right Wing Maniacs do.
Sorry about the tirade, but..........Rob Reiner (and his phony portrayal of LBJ).
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The rain finally stopped here, and the Sun came out too. Hooray! We've had about six weeks of crummy weather, mostly cold and overcast, and then rain for the last week or so, but now we may be coming out of it, fingers crossed. I've only been on two hikes since late February (Towsley Canyon and Santa Susana), with no trips at all to Aliso, which I normally visit once or twice a week. Bad weather sucks! But now it looks like an extended period of sunshine is ahead of us, even if we are still chillin' in the low 60s. This definitely ain't normal SoCal weather, but I'll take the Sun over grey skies.
Tonight I watched a movie called "LBJ". You can probably guess who it was about. It starred Woody Harrelson as Lyndon Johnson. He was in full prosthetic makeup which was as accurate as possible given Woody's own facial features, and I thought he did a good job in his portrayal of the former President and psychopathic killer who masterminded the JFK assassination.
The problem with the film was that they did not portray any of that latter characterization of Johnson. Rob Reiner directed, and so the movie was more or less a whitewash.
I have promised myself, before I began this blog, that I won't go on any tirades about LBJ or Rob Reiner, but I'm not sure I'll be able to stick with it.
Rob Reiner was great as "Meathead" on "All In The Family", and beginning with "Spinal Tap" 34 years ago, he made a few classic films as a movie director, among them "Stand By Me" and "The Princess Bride". But then, around the turn of the century and millennium, he decided he wanted to be a force in politics, and he emerged as the kind of in-your-face pushy, ultra-liberal Democrat that I can't stand, because that type of politics is not much different than the Right Wing version. Reiner was in the news a lot back then, trying to shove his ideas down everyone's throat, most notably his anti-smoking campaign. On the surface, it sounds admirable to try to get people to stop smoking, right? But the way in which Rob Reiner went about it was straight Gestapo and very privileged on his part. I haven't the time or inclination to detail my objections for you, but I will tell you that I have lived in Los Angeles all my life, and I know it's politics, and I have come to loathe the Limousine Liberals just as much as I detest Right Wing Nutcases like Trump. Rob Reiner picked smoking as his #1 issue, and he went after cigarette smokers as if they were AR-15 owners. You can Google it if you want to. My Mom was a lifelong smoker, and she wasn't bothering anybody. She had cut it down to about half a pack per day by 1999 - ten cigs - and now here in the news was this movie director, the multimillionaire Rob Reiner, who was on a crusade to stamp out smoking in California and Los Angeles, who proposed huge tax increases on cigarettes, who wanted to ban smoking even on the sidewalk and in any public place. He wanted to do this all at once, but as assholeish as his proposition was, it wasn't entirely the anti-smoking campaign that caused me to detest him.
Instead, it was the Entitled Smugness with which he put it forth, because of his Hollywood money and power at the time. He was a Liberal Hollywood Asshole, and those guys are literally no different than Right Wing Assholes. They just have different agendas they want to shove down your throat.
You would have to do some Googling on Rob Reiner to see my point, because he gave up politics (and his movie career basically went down the tubes), but you can be sure that I am telling it like it was.
The guy was a pushy, over-the-top jackass, who had once been a very talented TV actor and had also directed a couple of very good movies.
But "ohh, the Ego of the Hollywood Celebrity Politician".
What a bunch of phoney-baloney assholes, and I am very sorry for the language but I absolutely cannot stand these people, because they are the same kind of people who enable a Weinstein or an LBJ.
And so you know that if Rob Reiner directed a movie about Lyndon Baines Johnson, that it was gonna be half-baked at best, which is what it was. He did present LBJ as the crude, boorish and calculating politician he was at the best of times, but he completely glossed over or forgot about entirely LBJ's certain involvement in murdering Kennedy, and just as importantly, he left out LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam War, which killed 52,000 American soldiers and millions of Vietnamise, Cambodians and Laotians. In the movie, Reiner only wanted to focus on LBJ's pushing through Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill, which Johnson had opposed until he became President and had control of it and could get the credit for it.
A total whitewash by Rob Reiner, who did present Johnson as a very flawed character but championed him at the end of the movie.
Folks, this is me speaking to you. I am lifelong Los Angeles. I know my Hollywood. I am in no way shape or form a Right Winger or Trumper or anything of the kind. But I am for sanity and for truth, and the truth is that Phoney-Baloney Hollywood "Liberals" like Rob Reiner are as bad as any Trump, because they think they know what's best for you, and they believe that their money and Hollywood power entitles them to make decisions and form policies that will decide how you live your life.
So guess what? Screw 'em both.
The Gun-Nut NRA-supporting Trumpers get a bigger Screw 'Em, but the Phoney-Baloney Cover Everything Up Liberals in Hollywood are running a close second, because they are all about money, too. And they don't give a hoot about the truth any more than the moneyed Right Wing Maniacs do.
Sorry about the tirade, but..........Rob Reiner (and his phony portrayal of LBJ).
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, March 23, 2018
"Jimmy The Gent" starring James Cagney + The Magic Of Early Hollywood
All day rain and pouring as I write. Cold too. Hoping for warmth and sunshine soon. I did watch a movie tonight : "Jimmy The Gent" (1934), starring James Cagney and a young Bette Davis. Cagney made a bunch of pictures for Warner Brothers in the 30s in which he played variations on his fast talking, Tough Guy Persona. Very often he played gangsters or convicts, but he could also do comedy (and he could sing and dance, a very talented actor), and so Warners set him up in lighter fare too, like "Jimmy The Gent", a 67 minute screwball comedy about an unscrupulous private investigator (Cagney) who makes false claims on the estates of recently deceased millionaires who have no heirs. What he does is to create false "relatives" of the wealthy deceased person, by hiring local crooks and coaching them as to how they should impersonate a "newly discovered heir" to the magnate's fortune.
Bette Davis works for a rival firm. Her boss is an "heir chaser" too, but he is looking for real relatives, no matter how far removed. He sees himself as legitimate compared to Cagney, but in reality both men are in it for the money, the 50% cut they can get from winning a judgement in court. They create illegitimate inheritance claims so that the money of the deceased will not wind up in the government's hands but in their hands instead.
This being a Screwball Comedy (an early version thereof), there must be a Love Interest to play the two lead characters off of one another and to create dramatic tension. Here we have Cagney the Unscrupulous and Bette Davis the Honest Investigator, who actually tries to find a family relative to inherit the fortune in question. There is still self-interest on the part of Davis and her boss, who will net a hefty commission, but they feel altruistic about their pursuits. Bette Davis' character used to work for James Cagney; she quit because of his underhanded methods.......but she is secretly in love with him. And he knows it. And he is in love with her, too.
So that's what the movie is really about.
Cagney could easily play a Crook With A Good Heart Who Wants To Go Straight, if only he can Get The Girl.
These types of early Hollywood movies were short and to the point. There was a format back then of short films (not "shorts" which were only 20-30 minutes) than ran between 62 and 75 minutes. There were a ton of films of this length, most running right around 67 to 72 minutes. Perhaps they were produced to be shown as part of double features, I don't know. But the thing was, as always, a story had to be told, and with these movies it had to be told quickly but without feeling rushed. Directors had to work with quickly cut scenes and fast dialogue, and certain actors became very adept at working in this style. James Cagney was a master of it. Bette Davis, as she developed her talent, could play anything; she was the original Meryl Streep, but in "Jimmy The Gent", as Cagney's love interest and foil, she matches him note for note.
This is another movie where I am writing a long review, but it's worth it, not only for the performances (in a stylized studio movie), but also for the writing, which is always something I look at. In this case, a scheme is cooked up by Cagney to win Bette Davis back, and this becomes the centerpiece of the movie. It involves double and triple dealing in setting up fraudulent marriages to an heir to a fortune, who just happens to be a suspected murderer.
It is way too complicated to describe, and that is my point. This was the skill of these early screenwriters (and of Michael Curtiz of later "Casablanca" fame, who directed), that they were able to construct - in short bursts of rapid fire dialogue, usually between two characters - a fast moving storyline that moved forward with each scene. Action almost always took place indoors, in a room, and the camera focus was I suppose what would be called a "two shot". I didn't go to film school, so I am not certain, but the point is that a formula was in place for these films, to crank them out because Hollywood has always been a business, but by the same token it is clear that the artists involved in the making of the films wanted to present the best work they were capable of.
The whole point was to entertain, to tell a story, and to show what you could do, to show your style.
Huge credit must go to the early cameramen and lighting directors of Studio Era Hollywood, who created the whole concept of Movie Stars with their ability to light the actors to maximise their features and personalities. The directors and cameramen of the 1930s created the Larger Than Life Screen Actor that we still see today.
The actors supplied the Star Quality, and without them there would never have been a movie business.
It was the unique quality of each actor's image onscreen, as it was perceived by the audience, that created the myth of the Movie Star.
And it was because of multi-talented actors like James Cagney and Bette Davis and so many others that the magic of The Play moved from stage to screen, where charisma was magnified.
I love the Movie Stars, as you know, but it is important to remember how incredibly talented they were, and to remember what they created - an entire industry which has had world cultural influence - and it is also important to remember that, in the early scripts of the Studio System, the emphasis was on a happy ending, no matter what the characters had been through.
I mention these things because it is important not to simply go through each day by rote, but to instead think about your life in the Big Picture. That is what the creative artists of early Hollywood were trying to show : human stories in the Big Picture, which always had a resolution to problems, and which never ended with the characters just going through the motions.
Happily Ever After meant something.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Bette Davis works for a rival firm. Her boss is an "heir chaser" too, but he is looking for real relatives, no matter how far removed. He sees himself as legitimate compared to Cagney, but in reality both men are in it for the money, the 50% cut they can get from winning a judgement in court. They create illegitimate inheritance claims so that the money of the deceased will not wind up in the government's hands but in their hands instead.
This being a Screwball Comedy (an early version thereof), there must be a Love Interest to play the two lead characters off of one another and to create dramatic tension. Here we have Cagney the Unscrupulous and Bette Davis the Honest Investigator, who actually tries to find a family relative to inherit the fortune in question. There is still self-interest on the part of Davis and her boss, who will net a hefty commission, but they feel altruistic about their pursuits. Bette Davis' character used to work for James Cagney; she quit because of his underhanded methods.......but she is secretly in love with him. And he knows it. And he is in love with her, too.
So that's what the movie is really about.
Cagney could easily play a Crook With A Good Heart Who Wants To Go Straight, if only he can Get The Girl.
These types of early Hollywood movies were short and to the point. There was a format back then of short films (not "shorts" which were only 20-30 minutes) than ran between 62 and 75 minutes. There were a ton of films of this length, most running right around 67 to 72 minutes. Perhaps they were produced to be shown as part of double features, I don't know. But the thing was, as always, a story had to be told, and with these movies it had to be told quickly but without feeling rushed. Directors had to work with quickly cut scenes and fast dialogue, and certain actors became very adept at working in this style. James Cagney was a master of it. Bette Davis, as she developed her talent, could play anything; she was the original Meryl Streep, but in "Jimmy The Gent", as Cagney's love interest and foil, she matches him note for note.
This is another movie where I am writing a long review, but it's worth it, not only for the performances (in a stylized studio movie), but also for the writing, which is always something I look at. In this case, a scheme is cooked up by Cagney to win Bette Davis back, and this becomes the centerpiece of the movie. It involves double and triple dealing in setting up fraudulent marriages to an heir to a fortune, who just happens to be a suspected murderer.
It is way too complicated to describe, and that is my point. This was the skill of these early screenwriters (and of Michael Curtiz of later "Casablanca" fame, who directed), that they were able to construct - in short bursts of rapid fire dialogue, usually between two characters - a fast moving storyline that moved forward with each scene. Action almost always took place indoors, in a room, and the camera focus was I suppose what would be called a "two shot". I didn't go to film school, so I am not certain, but the point is that a formula was in place for these films, to crank them out because Hollywood has always been a business, but by the same token it is clear that the artists involved in the making of the films wanted to present the best work they were capable of.
The whole point was to entertain, to tell a story, and to show what you could do, to show your style.
Huge credit must go to the early cameramen and lighting directors of Studio Era Hollywood, who created the whole concept of Movie Stars with their ability to light the actors to maximise their features and personalities. The directors and cameramen of the 1930s created the Larger Than Life Screen Actor that we still see today.
The actors supplied the Star Quality, and without them there would never have been a movie business.
It was the unique quality of each actor's image onscreen, as it was perceived by the audience, that created the myth of the Movie Star.
And it was because of multi-talented actors like James Cagney and Bette Davis and so many others that the magic of The Play moved from stage to screen, where charisma was magnified.
I love the Movie Stars, as you know, but it is important to remember how incredibly talented they were, and to remember what they created - an entire industry which has had world cultural influence - and it is also important to remember that, in the early scripts of the Studio System, the emphasis was on a happy ending, no matter what the characters had been through.
I mention these things because it is important not to simply go through each day by rote, but to instead think about your life in the Big Picture. That is what the creative artists of early Hollywood were trying to show : human stories in the Big Picture, which always had a resolution to problems, and which never ended with the characters just going through the motions.
Happily Ever After meant something.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, March 22, 2018
"X-Files" + Gadgetry Sucks + Stand Up To Evil
No movie tonight. Grim came over once again, with a recent episode of "The X-Files" that he wanted to show me. If you've been following the new season (which had it's finale tonight), the episode we watched was the one about the nightmare of too much technology. Mulder and Scully are dining, all alone, in a fully automated Japanese restaurant, run entirely by computers and robots, but there is a malfunction with the checkout process and they are locked in. They barely escape from the place with their lives, and now find themselves under attack in their respective homes by a series of malevolent drones, Roombas, and a flock of creepy but colorful electronic butterflies, which seem to be surveillance devices. There are no other people in the episode but Mulder and Scully. It is one of those "stand alone" X-Files eps that have nothing to do with the main plotline (Smoking Man, Aliens, Supersoldiers, Conspiracy, etc). I thought it was a good one, reminiscent of Spielberg, who loves to use brand new gadgets in his films, and it was also an incisive comment on our gadget-addicted culture.....
....."He said, as he communicated his comments through the use of his Chromebook".
Yeah, I know. It's the same with me bitching to myself about traffic as I contribute to it by driving my car through congested Northridge thoroughfares.
But with gadgets I have a more legitimate beef, because I don't have an iPhone and probably never will, and I don't Tivo any shows, though Tivo is probably cool if you feel you need it. I don't want to ride in a driverless car, and I don't want to be spoken to by computer voices like Siri. I don't need a GPS to tell me where I am going because I can figure it out by myself.
I like being a Human, and I am good at it. I don't need the help of gadgets to assist me.
Well, maybe a microwave oven.
And old fashioned mechanical technology like refrigerators and washing machines.
Those things I do need. I don't wanna revert entirely to Cave Man status.
But there is a lot to be said for silence, and for introspection and for thinking your own thoughts, rather then being barraged by an onslaught of AI assistance all day long.
I will shut up now, because the "X-Files" episode was only a futuristic paranoid fantasy, even if the reality is much closer than it used to be.
Today was all day rain and cold. I am in a cycle of just wake up and do my job, sit out the weather, read my books and wait for 100 degrees and for an answer to my appeal.
Somewhere, there is an answer, because a question has been asked.
When a question has been asked, there can only be a response or silence, and the response, if there is one, can only contain an answer or a deception.
I am in a cycle of work, and waiting. I am waiting for an answer because I am not going to go away.
In the case of "The Franklin Scandal", people got killed when they wouldn't go away. The lead investigator in that case, a man named Gary Caradori, was killed when his plane crashed just as he was on the verge of a major breakthrough in the case of child abuse as it pertained to the people involved in the Franklin Credit Union swindle.
Gary Caradori was assassinated, straight up, because he was about to expose a bunch of child molesters who had ties to power.
It's plain and simple how these people work.
They will be exposed and shut down someday. In my sphere, Mr. Jared Rappaport still has the temerity to show his face at CSUN on occasion. He showed up at one of the Wajda films we are screening. He saw me there, however, and he hasn't been back since. He attended a screening of a Bergman film in November 2010, and saw me, and he never came back until the Wajda film seven and a half years later.
He is a Satanist personality and he is no different than Jerry Sandusky of Penn State infamy, and he is no different than the people identified in this book : "The Franklin Scandal".
It is an enormous shame on the Federal Government, and on local law enforcement, and on the administration of CSUN, that this man was never prosecuted for what he did to me, and that he was allowed to continue to teach at CSUN for approximately 25 years afterwards.
For shame on all of them.
But the thing is, I am stronger than any of those people or institutions are.
What needs to be exposed is the organisation of sexual perverts, be they from Hollywood, or from any other institution in American life. They organise through their common institutions.
Jared Rappaport likely organised himself through CSUN or his minor film connections - but the important point to remember is that the connection was not about the university or about the movie business. Those were just power structures to hide behind. What we are seeing, with Weinstein and even worse people like Jared Rappaport, is that there was an organised effort of these people to congregate underneath an umbrella of power like Hollywood or the California State University system - much like Jerry Sandusky hid his actions underneath his power as a coach at Penn State.
These people hide in positions of power. They are Satanic, whether they practice Satanism or not. They are aware of each other, and they cover for each other, because they know how truly evil they would appear to the public if found out.
In the long run, they are toast because God knows. But in the shorter run, I stress once again that it is important to tell the truth and not to just bury things and carry on as if nothing ever happened.
The young people in the Franklin Scandal stepped up to the plate and told the truth. Gary Caradori, the lead investigator, told the truth also. He was killed for it. But he did it anyway.
"The only thing necessary for Evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
....."He said, as he communicated his comments through the use of his Chromebook".
Yeah, I know. It's the same with me bitching to myself about traffic as I contribute to it by driving my car through congested Northridge thoroughfares.
But with gadgets I have a more legitimate beef, because I don't have an iPhone and probably never will, and I don't Tivo any shows, though Tivo is probably cool if you feel you need it. I don't want to ride in a driverless car, and I don't want to be spoken to by computer voices like Siri. I don't need a GPS to tell me where I am going because I can figure it out by myself.
I like being a Human, and I am good at it. I don't need the help of gadgets to assist me.
Well, maybe a microwave oven.
And old fashioned mechanical technology like refrigerators and washing machines.
Those things I do need. I don't wanna revert entirely to Cave Man status.
But there is a lot to be said for silence, and for introspection and for thinking your own thoughts, rather then being barraged by an onslaught of AI assistance all day long.
I will shut up now, because the "X-Files" episode was only a futuristic paranoid fantasy, even if the reality is much closer than it used to be.
Today was all day rain and cold. I am in a cycle of just wake up and do my job, sit out the weather, read my books and wait for 100 degrees and for an answer to my appeal.
Somewhere, there is an answer, because a question has been asked.
When a question has been asked, there can only be a response or silence, and the response, if there is one, can only contain an answer or a deception.
I am in a cycle of work, and waiting. I am waiting for an answer because I am not going to go away.
In the case of "The Franklin Scandal", people got killed when they wouldn't go away. The lead investigator in that case, a man named Gary Caradori, was killed when his plane crashed just as he was on the verge of a major breakthrough in the case of child abuse as it pertained to the people involved in the Franklin Credit Union swindle.
Gary Caradori was assassinated, straight up, because he was about to expose a bunch of child molesters who had ties to power.
It's plain and simple how these people work.
They will be exposed and shut down someday. In my sphere, Mr. Jared Rappaport still has the temerity to show his face at CSUN on occasion. He showed up at one of the Wajda films we are screening. He saw me there, however, and he hasn't been back since. He attended a screening of a Bergman film in November 2010, and saw me, and he never came back until the Wajda film seven and a half years later.
He is a Satanist personality and he is no different than Jerry Sandusky of Penn State infamy, and he is no different than the people identified in this book : "The Franklin Scandal".
It is an enormous shame on the Federal Government, and on local law enforcement, and on the administration of CSUN, that this man was never prosecuted for what he did to me, and that he was allowed to continue to teach at CSUN for approximately 25 years afterwards.
For shame on all of them.
But the thing is, I am stronger than any of those people or institutions are.
What needs to be exposed is the organisation of sexual perverts, be they from Hollywood, or from any other institution in American life. They organise through their common institutions.
Jared Rappaport likely organised himself through CSUN or his minor film connections - but the important point to remember is that the connection was not about the university or about the movie business. Those were just power structures to hide behind. What we are seeing, with Weinstein and even worse people like Jared Rappaport, is that there was an organised effort of these people to congregate underneath an umbrella of power like Hollywood or the California State University system - much like Jerry Sandusky hid his actions underneath his power as a coach at Penn State.
These people hide in positions of power. They are Satanic, whether they practice Satanism or not. They are aware of each other, and they cover for each other, because they know how truly evil they would appear to the public if found out.
In the long run, they are toast because God knows. But in the shorter run, I stress once again that it is important to tell the truth and not to just bury things and carry on as if nothing ever happened.
The young people in the Franklin Scandal stepped up to the plate and told the truth. Gary Caradori, the lead investigator, told the truth also. He was killed for it. But he did it anyway.
"The only thing necessary for Evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Happy Spring + "On Borrowed Time" with Lionel Barrymore
Happy Spring! Though it is not very Springlike here in Southern California and though we are supposed to have yet another gigantic rainstorm tomorrow, we still welcome Spring with wide open arms because Winter sucks.
Although......now wait a minute, Ad. We just finished with Winter, but overall the weather was pretty nice. 87 degrees at Christmas. The most beautiful first half of February in memory. January wasn't too shabby either, though the light quality is always a bit depressing at the start of the year. But yeah - how can you say Winter Sucks, when Winter was better, for the most part, than Spring is starting off to be?
Oh, hell. I don't know. Why do you bug me with this stuff? I can't keep up with Global Warming Weather anyway. You never know what you are gonna get, except for this year - so far - you can be sure that either the wind is gonna be blowin' or the stormclouds are gonna be gatherin', or both.
And our Summer last year didn't start until September. June, July and August were Spring.
I think I'm losing my marbles. :)
But I must have a few left, because I watched an excellent movie tonight called "On Borrowed Time" (1939), starring the great Lionel Barrymore, eldest member of the famed Barrymore acting clan. Man, do I love old movies, especially from Hollywood, because they created a mythology about a time of relative innocence in America. Now, it must be stressed that Americans of that era lived through two World Wars and The Great Depression, so how relative could that innocence have been, right?
The movies from that time show that the innocence was intact, all the way through the late 40s. It was the wars and the post-war politics that destroyed American innocence, but man could they ever portray the way it was in the old films. Movies from that era have a "Gee Whiz" quality that is very appealing now, in the time of Trump.
Lionel Barrymore plays a crochety old man who becomes the guardian to his beloved grandson after the boy's parents (Barrymore's son and daughter-in-law) are killed in a road accident. In his role, Barrymore is confined to a wheelchair as he was in real life. He played all of his "Dr. Kildare" roles in the chair as well. But anyway, he loves his grandson, who is about 9, and his grandson idolises him, because he has an "us-against-the-world" attitude. Though elderly and crippled, he relates to childhood, and his "screw convention" attitude rubs off on his little grandson, who would rather do "boy things" like dig in the ground for worms, than do "proper things" like go to church.
Grandpa is a rebel, and grandson worships him. They are two peas in a pod.
But there is a character who hovers around the edges of the story. His name is Mr. Brink, and he is an agent of Death (kind of like an assistant to the Grim Reaper). Mr. Brink is played by the great Sir Cedric Hardwicke (who could play anything), and he appears out of nowhere in the story, to collect people, usually elderly, whose time has come.
Lionel Barrymore is feisty, however, and when Mr. Brink comes calling for him, he turns the tables. Mr. Brink has already taken his wife, and his son. All he has left is his grandson, to whom he is closest of all. There is no way he is gonna let Mr. Brink separate him from the kid.
His grandson, being a child, believes in magic, and in things like wishes and magic spells, and he tells Grandpa Barrymore to wish Mr. Brink away. The spell they cast on him has to do with an old apple tree in their front yard. The two of them trap Mr. Brink in the tree, and thus Death is captured.
Mr. Brink is stuck in the tree and can no longer come calling for anyone. There is no more death, as long as Grandpa's spell is maintained.
"On Borrowed Time" was a Broadway play before being made into a film, and apparently it was a hit. You can see why in the relationship between Grandpa and Grandson, and their hold on the magic of life as viewed through the eyes of the child. Other adults in the film conform to the things that are expected of "adults", but only Grandpa Barrymore and his pal, his 9 year old grandson, can see the inevitability of death, and the wonder of this life, and can see through the cynicism that affects those who allow themselves to pass from childhood - to lose their childhood - to a forced vision of adulthood.
Meanwhile, Mr. Brink, ever the gentleman but running out of patience (because he is Death, after all), is still stuck in the apple tree, by the magic spell. There is no Death as long as he is stuck there.
I discovered "On Borrowed Time" from one of my usual library searches, and wow is it ever a fantastic movie on so many levels. Most folks probably would not watch a movie from 1939, that is based on a play and is very stylised to represent a bygone era of wholesome values, mythic or not.
But for those who would give such a movie a chance, you would not be disappointed.
Lionel Barrymore was, I think, the best actor in that famous family. His performances always had an energy of rebellion against the norm. He always displayed a cantankerous leadership in his wheelchair. When you see him in a movie you are seeing an America that existed almost a century ago.
That America existed in real life. It was mythologised by Hollywood, but the emotions and mannerisms that you see on screen were reflected in the populace at that time. That "Gee Whiz" quality in regular American folks was real. But there was also a rebelliousness against cynicism and conformity. There was an "F-You" quality, too, though it was presented in a clean-cut and non-violent way. In those days there wasn't near the crime or social decay of today. There was just an innocence in the way people displayed their personalities, even if some personalities conflicted with one another.
I give "On Borrowed Time" Two Huge Thumbs Up, and as you can tell from the length of my review, I loved it. It was a great find and is highly recommended. :)
That's all for tonight. See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Although......now wait a minute, Ad. We just finished with Winter, but overall the weather was pretty nice. 87 degrees at Christmas. The most beautiful first half of February in memory. January wasn't too shabby either, though the light quality is always a bit depressing at the start of the year. But yeah - how can you say Winter Sucks, when Winter was better, for the most part, than Spring is starting off to be?
Oh, hell. I don't know. Why do you bug me with this stuff? I can't keep up with Global Warming Weather anyway. You never know what you are gonna get, except for this year - so far - you can be sure that either the wind is gonna be blowin' or the stormclouds are gonna be gatherin', or both.
And our Summer last year didn't start until September. June, July and August were Spring.
I think I'm losing my marbles. :)
But I must have a few left, because I watched an excellent movie tonight called "On Borrowed Time" (1939), starring the great Lionel Barrymore, eldest member of the famed Barrymore acting clan. Man, do I love old movies, especially from Hollywood, because they created a mythology about a time of relative innocence in America. Now, it must be stressed that Americans of that era lived through two World Wars and The Great Depression, so how relative could that innocence have been, right?
The movies from that time show that the innocence was intact, all the way through the late 40s. It was the wars and the post-war politics that destroyed American innocence, but man could they ever portray the way it was in the old films. Movies from that era have a "Gee Whiz" quality that is very appealing now, in the time of Trump.
Lionel Barrymore plays a crochety old man who becomes the guardian to his beloved grandson after the boy's parents (Barrymore's son and daughter-in-law) are killed in a road accident. In his role, Barrymore is confined to a wheelchair as he was in real life. He played all of his "Dr. Kildare" roles in the chair as well. But anyway, he loves his grandson, who is about 9, and his grandson idolises him, because he has an "us-against-the-world" attitude. Though elderly and crippled, he relates to childhood, and his "screw convention" attitude rubs off on his little grandson, who would rather do "boy things" like dig in the ground for worms, than do "proper things" like go to church.
Grandpa is a rebel, and grandson worships him. They are two peas in a pod.
But there is a character who hovers around the edges of the story. His name is Mr. Brink, and he is an agent of Death (kind of like an assistant to the Grim Reaper). Mr. Brink is played by the great Sir Cedric Hardwicke (who could play anything), and he appears out of nowhere in the story, to collect people, usually elderly, whose time has come.
Lionel Barrymore is feisty, however, and when Mr. Brink comes calling for him, he turns the tables. Mr. Brink has already taken his wife, and his son. All he has left is his grandson, to whom he is closest of all. There is no way he is gonna let Mr. Brink separate him from the kid.
His grandson, being a child, believes in magic, and in things like wishes and magic spells, and he tells Grandpa Barrymore to wish Mr. Brink away. The spell they cast on him has to do with an old apple tree in their front yard. The two of them trap Mr. Brink in the tree, and thus Death is captured.
Mr. Brink is stuck in the tree and can no longer come calling for anyone. There is no more death, as long as Grandpa's spell is maintained.
"On Borrowed Time" was a Broadway play before being made into a film, and apparently it was a hit. You can see why in the relationship between Grandpa and Grandson, and their hold on the magic of life as viewed through the eyes of the child. Other adults in the film conform to the things that are expected of "adults", but only Grandpa Barrymore and his pal, his 9 year old grandson, can see the inevitability of death, and the wonder of this life, and can see through the cynicism that affects those who allow themselves to pass from childhood - to lose their childhood - to a forced vision of adulthood.
Meanwhile, Mr. Brink, ever the gentleman but running out of patience (because he is Death, after all), is still stuck in the apple tree, by the magic spell. There is no Death as long as he is stuck there.
I discovered "On Borrowed Time" from one of my usual library searches, and wow is it ever a fantastic movie on so many levels. Most folks probably would not watch a movie from 1939, that is based on a play and is very stylised to represent a bygone era of wholesome values, mythic or not.
But for those who would give such a movie a chance, you would not be disappointed.
Lionel Barrymore was, I think, the best actor in that famous family. His performances always had an energy of rebellion against the norm. He always displayed a cantankerous leadership in his wheelchair. When you see him in a movie you are seeing an America that existed almost a century ago.
That America existed in real life. It was mythologised by Hollywood, but the emotions and mannerisms that you see on screen were reflected in the populace at that time. That "Gee Whiz" quality in regular American folks was real. But there was also a rebelliousness against cynicism and conformity. There was an "F-You" quality, too, though it was presented in a clean-cut and non-violent way. In those days there wasn't near the crime or social decay of today. There was just an innocence in the way people displayed their personalities, even if some personalities conflicted with one another.
I give "On Borrowed Time" Two Huge Thumbs Up, and as you can tell from the length of my review, I loved it. It was a great find and is highly recommended. :)
That's all for tonight. See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
"Twin Peaks" with Grim + "The Franklin Cover-Up" (not for the squeamish)
Grim came over tonight to watch Episode 4 of "Twin Peaks, so that precluded any movie watching. Episode 4, which as you know I already watched two weeks ago, has no violence in it and is the most benign of any of the eps I've seen so far, so Grimsley reacted favorably to it. He was talkative following the show, discussing scenes, etc., as opposed to the first three eps when he walked out in silence. Grim likes Weird, but I don't think he likes Shocking, and I know for certain he doesn't like anything that is explicitly violent. I can't say that I do, either, but I am more hard core than Grim. If a genius like Lynch uses a handful of scenes to depict something horrible in the context of his story, I will tough it out.
Grim will not though, and I will be surprised if he makes it past Episode 6, which I have already seen and reported on just a few days ago.
It's funny because back in the mid-70s, when my friends and I were teenagers and Grim was about 23 (he is seven years older than me), he would drive us to see the now-sort-of-but-not-too-classic "B" Grade horror films like "The Toolbox Murders" or "Don't Answer The Phone", or - worst of all - "Don't Go In The House". As an aside, I recommend that you "Don't Go" to "Don't Go In The House".
But in those days, we did go. We saw every cheap-but-realistic horror flick that hit the theaters, and very often it was Grimsley who drove us. I always had a jaundiced eye for these movies and was able to suspend my disbelief as one must do. I saw them as thrill rides, like roller coasters, an update on classic horror of the 30s and 40s, modern monster movies if you will and even if you won't. Simply put, I just plain liked Horror Movies and I still do, except that now most of them aren't any good because there is no story or atmosphere and only the gore is emphasized. On that point - the use of gratuitous violence - I agree with Grim. But I am still harder core than he is and can sit through some extreme stuff and not flinch. I am a homicide detective; Grim is a hippie. I have no idea why he went with us to "The Toolbox Murders" 40 years ago.
Since I am writing in this vein tonight, I might as well mention that I have just begun a book called "The Franklin Cover-Up" by Nick Bryant. I discovered it through an Amazon recommendation, and when I saw that it was published by Trine Day, a small publisher that releases a lot of excellent and revealing material, I decided to give it a try. I found it in a library search, which once again goes to show that Freedom Of The Press is alive and well in America, which I say because the subject matter of this book is not for the squeamish : child abuse and pandering. Pedophilia rings. The story begins in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1980s, and though I am only 100 pages into the 500 page book, the author proposes in the introduction that this ring reaches far beyond Omaha to Washington DC, and to the highest level of power.
You might ask, why would I read such a book? The subject matter is horrific. I vaguely remember hearing about it at the time, a scandal in Nebraska involving a Savings & Loan, and the man who ran it, who embezzled tens of millions of dollars from it's revenues, through scams. This same man, one Larry King (not the TV interviewer) was also alleged by several youths to have been at the head of the ring in question. Mr. King, a multi-millionaire, was ultimately busted on financial charges, but all charges of child sexual abuse were dropped. The question the book asks, is "why"?
Why were those charges dropped, when multiple young women were giving similar accounts to the FBI and Nebraska State Police?
Apparently - and again I am only 100 pages in - but apparently the charges were dropped because they reached too high. The accused high roller Larry King had friends in DC, and so the testimony of the young people in Nebraska was quashed, and people who kept talking were threatened by anonymous phone callers.
You can Google "Larry King" and "Franklin" if you wish to go deeper into the details. The sexual aspect of the story was deemed a fraud in court. But in the book, though it is not very well written, a lot of details are brought to light that show, pretty much for certain I believe, that these young people were telling the truth. Nowdays, in the Harvey Weinstein era, we believe every story of abuse, because we figure "why would these women lie about such a horrible subject, a subject that puts them in the spotlight too".
But back in the 1980s, in Nebraska, it was not Hollywood women who were telling Me Too stories, but young black women who had been children when they were used as sex slaves by this ring of monsters led by Larry King. Their social workers believed their stories, which were consistent with one another, but nothing was done because the Nebraska State Police and FBI shut them down, because the child molestation led to higher levels, and all the way to Washington DC.
The book is not well written. A more skilled journalist could have done a better job. But the story is still presented, and it is very believable.
Why would I read such a book, with such a sordid, horrible story?
Because it is part of my research into my own case, that's why.
I am not a victim of child abuse or molestation, but I was a victim of a psychotic sexual pervert - Mr. Rappaport - who seemed to be part of a ring, perhaps centered around our neighborhood and/or involving other CSUN professors, and very possibly people higher up. Keep in mind that I was rescued by Federal Agents, headed up by BC.
I have no choice but to be hard core in my reading and in my research. As I have said many times, somebody has got to step up to the plate. I have tried to do so in my small way. I have written to the FBI, I have written to the CIA. I have sought answers.
We are now in a situation in our country where the Russians are blackmailing our so-called "President" over a sex tape he is said to appear in, but other stories about him are far worse.
There are people at high levels of our society who are not just "bad" or guilty of misbehavior, but who are downright Evil. Evil is no joke. It's not an adjective or merely a cliche to describe very bad criminals. Evil is a force that some people believe in and seek to usurp for themselves, and in doing so they become much different than you and I, and they do things that are beyond the pale of anything even most criminals would consider.
People who are possessed by Evil are also people who are extremely driven by their desires. That is why they often wind up in positions of power, because of that insane drive.
That insane drive sometimes includes horrific depravity.
I have seen it, and been a victim of it, and I've seen it covered up.
That's why I read about it in books like "The Franklin Cover-Up". I can't do anything about that case, because I have no power, but by reading about it I can hope to gain some more knowledge about the extent of the corruption and depravity that has been covered up in America for years and years.
It is important to know how organised it is, and how it is able to be covered up, when you would think that such people would be the first to be prosecuted in all of the annals of American jurisprudence.
Their secret is in their method of organisation, and the use of blackmail, and the fact that some of these bad guys reach all the way to the top.
That's all I know for tonight. Sorry about the subject matter, but I wanted to tell you about the book. You can Google it if you want to.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Grim will not though, and I will be surprised if he makes it past Episode 6, which I have already seen and reported on just a few days ago.
It's funny because back in the mid-70s, when my friends and I were teenagers and Grim was about 23 (he is seven years older than me), he would drive us to see the now-sort-of-but-not-too-classic "B" Grade horror films like "The Toolbox Murders" or "Don't Answer The Phone", or - worst of all - "Don't Go In The House". As an aside, I recommend that you "Don't Go" to "Don't Go In The House".
But in those days, we did go. We saw every cheap-but-realistic horror flick that hit the theaters, and very often it was Grimsley who drove us. I always had a jaundiced eye for these movies and was able to suspend my disbelief as one must do. I saw them as thrill rides, like roller coasters, an update on classic horror of the 30s and 40s, modern monster movies if you will and even if you won't. Simply put, I just plain liked Horror Movies and I still do, except that now most of them aren't any good because there is no story or atmosphere and only the gore is emphasized. On that point - the use of gratuitous violence - I agree with Grim. But I am still harder core than he is and can sit through some extreme stuff and not flinch. I am a homicide detective; Grim is a hippie. I have no idea why he went with us to "The Toolbox Murders" 40 years ago.
Since I am writing in this vein tonight, I might as well mention that I have just begun a book called "The Franklin Cover-Up" by Nick Bryant. I discovered it through an Amazon recommendation, and when I saw that it was published by Trine Day, a small publisher that releases a lot of excellent and revealing material, I decided to give it a try. I found it in a library search, which once again goes to show that Freedom Of The Press is alive and well in America, which I say because the subject matter of this book is not for the squeamish : child abuse and pandering. Pedophilia rings. The story begins in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1980s, and though I am only 100 pages into the 500 page book, the author proposes in the introduction that this ring reaches far beyond Omaha to Washington DC, and to the highest level of power.
You might ask, why would I read such a book? The subject matter is horrific. I vaguely remember hearing about it at the time, a scandal in Nebraska involving a Savings & Loan, and the man who ran it, who embezzled tens of millions of dollars from it's revenues, through scams. This same man, one Larry King (not the TV interviewer) was also alleged by several youths to have been at the head of the ring in question. Mr. King, a multi-millionaire, was ultimately busted on financial charges, but all charges of child sexual abuse were dropped. The question the book asks, is "why"?
Why were those charges dropped, when multiple young women were giving similar accounts to the FBI and Nebraska State Police?
Apparently - and again I am only 100 pages in - but apparently the charges were dropped because they reached too high. The accused high roller Larry King had friends in DC, and so the testimony of the young people in Nebraska was quashed, and people who kept talking were threatened by anonymous phone callers.
You can Google "Larry King" and "Franklin" if you wish to go deeper into the details. The sexual aspect of the story was deemed a fraud in court. But in the book, though it is not very well written, a lot of details are brought to light that show, pretty much for certain I believe, that these young people were telling the truth. Nowdays, in the Harvey Weinstein era, we believe every story of abuse, because we figure "why would these women lie about such a horrible subject, a subject that puts them in the spotlight too".
But back in the 1980s, in Nebraska, it was not Hollywood women who were telling Me Too stories, but young black women who had been children when they were used as sex slaves by this ring of monsters led by Larry King. Their social workers believed their stories, which were consistent with one another, but nothing was done because the Nebraska State Police and FBI shut them down, because the child molestation led to higher levels, and all the way to Washington DC.
The book is not well written. A more skilled journalist could have done a better job. But the story is still presented, and it is very believable.
Why would I read such a book, with such a sordid, horrible story?
Because it is part of my research into my own case, that's why.
I am not a victim of child abuse or molestation, but I was a victim of a psychotic sexual pervert - Mr. Rappaport - who seemed to be part of a ring, perhaps centered around our neighborhood and/or involving other CSUN professors, and very possibly people higher up. Keep in mind that I was rescued by Federal Agents, headed up by BC.
I have no choice but to be hard core in my reading and in my research. As I have said many times, somebody has got to step up to the plate. I have tried to do so in my small way. I have written to the FBI, I have written to the CIA. I have sought answers.
We are now in a situation in our country where the Russians are blackmailing our so-called "President" over a sex tape he is said to appear in, but other stories about him are far worse.
There are people at high levels of our society who are not just "bad" or guilty of misbehavior, but who are downright Evil. Evil is no joke. It's not an adjective or merely a cliche to describe very bad criminals. Evil is a force that some people believe in and seek to usurp for themselves, and in doing so they become much different than you and I, and they do things that are beyond the pale of anything even most criminals would consider.
People who are possessed by Evil are also people who are extremely driven by their desires. That is why they often wind up in positions of power, because of that insane drive.
That insane drive sometimes includes horrific depravity.
I have seen it, and been a victim of it, and I've seen it covered up.
That's why I read about it in books like "The Franklin Cover-Up". I can't do anything about that case, because I have no power, but by reading about it I can hope to gain some more knowledge about the extent of the corruption and depravity that has been covered up in America for years and years.
It is important to know how organised it is, and how it is able to be covered up, when you would think that such people would be the first to be prosecuted in all of the annals of American jurisprudence.
Their secret is in their method of organisation, and the use of blackmail, and the fact that some of these bad guys reach all the way to the top.
That's all I know for tonight. Sorry about the subject matter, but I wanted to tell you about the book. You can Google it if you want to.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, March 19, 2018
Fatty, Buster and The X-15
Back at Pearl's and tired beyond measure. Tonight let's call it Cretaceous Period Tiredness, first of all because we are having fun with that word, and secondly because we are always looking for new Tiredness Terms, and I think Cretaceous works because it was 80 million years ago, and it feels like that was the last time I got any sleep, haha. I actually got some good sleep yesterday, but I can't allow that to ruin my metaphor.
We had good singing in church this morn, then I drove straight to Burbank to take Sophie shopping, then right back to Pearl's at 4:30. This eve I had some downtime, and instead of a movie or a "Rawhide" I watched a couple of Buster Keaton shorts that he made when he was still under contract to FattyArbuckle. I wrote about Fatty and Buster last Fall when we were doing the Keaton Retrospective at CSUN. I think those guys were insane in the best sense, and I think I remarked at the time that, because these short "two-reelers" (20 minute movies) were made one hundred years ago, we as modern viewers may be surprised at the wildness of the characters, plots and action. We (or maybe just me) expect things from a century ago to be more sedate, or at least more conservative. It's like when you're a kid and you can't picture your parents ever having been wild and crazy kids, because.....they're your parents. I think it kind of works the same way with movies from 1918.
How could they have been this much over the top? It was 1918 for crying out loud.
But we see, with Buster and Fatty, that they were flat out nuts, and it's a lot of fun to watch.
I wonder if movies from the Cretaceous Period are as wild?
I also watched some more footage from my "X-15" dvd set, which as you may recall I purchased from a company called Spacecraft Films last year. The X-15 was the most famous of the supersonic rocket planes that set speed and altitude records in the 1960s. The Air Force filmed all of the test flights up at Edwards, and they are incredible to watch. It made me wish for another air show, which I am jonesin' for as much as I am for a trip to Disneyland. We used to go to Edwards all the time in the 90s and early 2000s, and I even got a picture of me standing next to the X-15 (which I probably already mentioned), and the thing is that it's just an awesome place and it blows your mind to go there. They used to have great air shows at Van Nuys Airport every Summer also, until 2007. My last Edwards show was in 2006. After that, all the budgets cuts kicked in, and our local air shows were no more. I think I wrote this same paragraph when I first mentioned the "X-15" dvd upon it's arrival last October, and if so, sorry about that. It was good to watch some Buster and Fatty, and some X-15 in any case, and I think they all sort of go together, wouldn't you agree?
Of course you would. You are probably halfway through The Harold Lloyd Collection and are already working on the Saturn V dvd set from Spacecraft Films. My goodness! You know I can't keep up with you. :)
Two days until Spring. 2018 seems to be going by very fast, but it's a weather thing. Once the heat kicks in, time will slow down. This is gonna be the year when something really good happens.
Trump is not forever.
My appeal to the CIA is still pending, for nearly four months. Surely if they were just gonna shine me on, they would have done so by now. So I figure they must be examining my case at the very least.
I've been trying to tell the truth about something important for almost thirty years now.
This has gotta be the year when something good happens.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
We had good singing in church this morn, then I drove straight to Burbank to take Sophie shopping, then right back to Pearl's at 4:30. This eve I had some downtime, and instead of a movie or a "Rawhide" I watched a couple of Buster Keaton shorts that he made when he was still under contract to FattyArbuckle. I wrote about Fatty and Buster last Fall when we were doing the Keaton Retrospective at CSUN. I think those guys were insane in the best sense, and I think I remarked at the time that, because these short "two-reelers" (20 minute movies) were made one hundred years ago, we as modern viewers may be surprised at the wildness of the characters, plots and action. We (or maybe just me) expect things from a century ago to be more sedate, or at least more conservative. It's like when you're a kid and you can't picture your parents ever having been wild and crazy kids, because.....they're your parents. I think it kind of works the same way with movies from 1918.
How could they have been this much over the top? It was 1918 for crying out loud.
But we see, with Buster and Fatty, that they were flat out nuts, and it's a lot of fun to watch.
I wonder if movies from the Cretaceous Period are as wild?
I also watched some more footage from my "X-15" dvd set, which as you may recall I purchased from a company called Spacecraft Films last year. The X-15 was the most famous of the supersonic rocket planes that set speed and altitude records in the 1960s. The Air Force filmed all of the test flights up at Edwards, and they are incredible to watch. It made me wish for another air show, which I am jonesin' for as much as I am for a trip to Disneyland. We used to go to Edwards all the time in the 90s and early 2000s, and I even got a picture of me standing next to the X-15 (which I probably already mentioned), and the thing is that it's just an awesome place and it blows your mind to go there. They used to have great air shows at Van Nuys Airport every Summer also, until 2007. My last Edwards show was in 2006. After that, all the budgets cuts kicked in, and our local air shows were no more. I think I wrote this same paragraph when I first mentioned the "X-15" dvd upon it's arrival last October, and if so, sorry about that. It was good to watch some Buster and Fatty, and some X-15 in any case, and I think they all sort of go together, wouldn't you agree?
Of course you would. You are probably halfway through The Harold Lloyd Collection and are already working on the Saturn V dvd set from Spacecraft Films. My goodness! You know I can't keep up with you. :)
Two days until Spring. 2018 seems to be going by very fast, but it's a weather thing. Once the heat kicks in, time will slow down. This is gonna be the year when something really good happens.
Trump is not forever.
My appeal to the CIA is still pending, for nearly four months. Surely if they were just gonna shine me on, they would have done so by now. So I figure they must be examining my case at the very least.
I've been trying to tell the truth about something important for almost thirty years now.
This has gotta be the year when something good happens.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, March 18, 2018
A Nice Hike At Santa Su + Cretaceous Archaeology + "SK1" + SB
I had a pretty good day off. Slept in until 11:30, then made it out to Santa Susana by 3pm. This was my first hike of any kind in three weeks, so I surprised myself by going all the way to the top of The Slide without getting winded. I'm not in the best hiking shape, but I guess my regular CSUN walks count for something. I was at the park for two hours, and this was my first visit since I began reading about eoliths and paleoliths in Michael Cremo's "Forbidden Archaeology". Those terms refer to stone tools made by early man. The sandstone formations at Santa Su are said to be from the Cretaceous Period - i.e. The Period Of Cretins - approximately 80 million years ago in the Mesozoic Era. I jest, but as we are learning in Cremo's book, stone tools have indeed been found in strata that dates back to the Eocene Period (hence the term Eolith), which goes back to 55 million years ago. I figure if humans were around that far back, and making tools to boot, then it's not too much of a stretch to say that they could have been here another 25 million years in the distant past. And, Cretins or not, maybe they were making some tools at Santa Su.
This was my first hike there where I spent a significant amount of time looking at the ground, and at the sides of trenches and gulleys. I realised that there are a lot of other types of rock there besides sandstone, which would not make for good tools. Most of the tools described in the book are made of flint. I don't know if there is flint in this area (perhaps it is underground and as-yet-unexcavated) but there is quartz and other colorful rocks that I can't name. I had fun looking for anything with a pointed shape to it. When I was little, my Dad told me about the arrowheads he had dug up as a boy in northern Indiana. That might be my best bet at Santa Susana, looking for 8000 year old Indian relics rather than 80 million year old Cretaceous relics. They have a sign at the front of the park, it's fairly new, that says "This Is A Protected Archaeological Site", and it stipulates "do not dig, remove, or displace any object", etc. And I would not do so. But it's fun to look, and if it's an archaeological site, then somebody must know something about what's buried out there. How come they don't do some digging themselves?
I did watch a movie this eve, a recent French Crime Thriller called "SK1" (2014). Before I tell you about it I have to interject to ask myself :
"What's up with the non-stop run of French movies, Ad? Surely there are some good movies from places besides France, right? So why are you doing this, and do you plan to change countries anytime soon"?
The easy answer to that question, the first question anyway, in the above paragraph, is that I have been slowly running out of great Hollywood movies for quite some time now. It has become increasingly more difficult to find old movies that I haven't seen. I know that TCM has a lot of rare films, but many have yet to be released on dvd, or aren't available at The Libe yet. So, early this year, I began to search for French movies. I was inspired to do so after watching the ten part Silent serial "Les Vampires" by Louis Feuillade, which I reviewed a couple of months ago. One thing led to another : I remembered Claude Chabrol; he led me back to the Dardenne Bros; they led me to some Crime Classics, and so forth and so on. Which led me tonight to "SK1", the "SK" of which unfortunately stands for "Serial Killer".
Gross, I know, and I don't ordinarily watch French movies like that. If I am gonna watch a movie about a serial killer, I usually strive for American Made. I watched it because I didn't have much else in the queue, an also because two of the stars were Olivier Gourmet and Nathalie Baye, who we have seen in recent Chabrol and Dardenne films. The movie was a police procedural about the hunt for "The Beast Of The Bastille" in the late 1990s, a real life serial killer who operated in and around Paris. The movie is plotted so that the identity of the killer is revealed early on, and that proves to be a problem as far as The Suspense Factor is concerned. The director made a decision to include social aspects into the story, like why the killer is the way he is, and of course it's the Usual Story : because he was an abandoned and abused child, etc. And while all of that is relevant in real life, it does not always make for a taut script if you drag out the particulars of the killer's childhood and try to humanise him while at the same time the French Police (second only to the LAPD in relentlessness) are out to nail him to the wall.
The intercutting just doesn't work. The director doesn't understand - you shouldn't mix genre in cinema. A crime thriller should be a Crime Thriller. Not interspersed with attempts at social work. Sorry.
The guy is called a Monster by the French Press, and his lawyer wants to show his human side.
Fine, that's her job, but way too much time was spent on this aspect, and the killer was a one dimensional actor anyway.
I have to interject again to ask, "What's the deal with France"? This is a true story of this killer. He was convicted in 2001. He murdered seven women, and he was sentenced to 20 years minimum, so he will be eligible for parole in 2020, including time served while he was on trial. I mean, I know that American psychos also get parole hearings after ten years or so, but in Europe they seem to let some of these guys out after 10 to 20 years. Check out Norway for example.
But with this guy in France, I trust that he will never be let go.
The movie itself was okay. I'd give it a minor Single Thumb Up. It could have been a lot better had the director made a Straight Up Solve The Crime Film rather than try to introduce the other stuff. But the main problem was to introduce the killer's identity within the first minutes of the film.
Goodbye suspense. I could have watched a "George Gently" instead.
Well anyhow, a successful day off I suppose. Man, I will soon be closing in on eight full years of working as Pearl's caregiver, and I haven't missed a single day of work, which for the most part has been 30 out of 31 days a month, with about four times a year when I get five days off a month.
Not complaining, because I am grateful for my job, but just saying....."whew"!
Elizabeth, I saw a few posts this morn about similar topics. Your friend Joel is right on the money (no pun intended) about managing credit and having discipline where spending is concerned. Another post (don't recall who it was from) said that "it's been a rough few months" and the person was headed to Costa Rica...
Once again I add a disclaimer, because I don't know nowdays how many posts are meant to communicate with me (but my intuition is still pretty good), and I would only say what you already know, which is that - in tight circumstances - just stick to your guns. You already know your talent. Sometimes you have to wind your way through issues other than creative work. All of those "other issues" usually boil down to needing money.
If that is a problem, have no fear, because you will get money.
What you have in your favor, to a strong degree, is that you are a focused and disciplined person. You know how to start and complete a project. That is a rare quality to have. You also have technical skills as well as a ton of creative ability and inspiration. Your friend Joel has a lot of good advice about credit and money management. All you need is one break, to get your foot in the door, and that is going to happen.
I can picture it, and so can you.
Spring is coming, and with it Good Things.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
This was my first hike there where I spent a significant amount of time looking at the ground, and at the sides of trenches and gulleys. I realised that there are a lot of other types of rock there besides sandstone, which would not make for good tools. Most of the tools described in the book are made of flint. I don't know if there is flint in this area (perhaps it is underground and as-yet-unexcavated) but there is quartz and other colorful rocks that I can't name. I had fun looking for anything with a pointed shape to it. When I was little, my Dad told me about the arrowheads he had dug up as a boy in northern Indiana. That might be my best bet at Santa Susana, looking for 8000 year old Indian relics rather than 80 million year old Cretaceous relics. They have a sign at the front of the park, it's fairly new, that says "This Is A Protected Archaeological Site", and it stipulates "do not dig, remove, or displace any object", etc. And I would not do so. But it's fun to look, and if it's an archaeological site, then somebody must know something about what's buried out there. How come they don't do some digging themselves?
I did watch a movie this eve, a recent French Crime Thriller called "SK1" (2014). Before I tell you about it I have to interject to ask myself :
"What's up with the non-stop run of French movies, Ad? Surely there are some good movies from places besides France, right? So why are you doing this, and do you plan to change countries anytime soon"?
The easy answer to that question, the first question anyway, in the above paragraph, is that I have been slowly running out of great Hollywood movies for quite some time now. It has become increasingly more difficult to find old movies that I haven't seen. I know that TCM has a lot of rare films, but many have yet to be released on dvd, or aren't available at The Libe yet. So, early this year, I began to search for French movies. I was inspired to do so after watching the ten part Silent serial "Les Vampires" by Louis Feuillade, which I reviewed a couple of months ago. One thing led to another : I remembered Claude Chabrol; he led me back to the Dardenne Bros; they led me to some Crime Classics, and so forth and so on. Which led me tonight to "SK1", the "SK" of which unfortunately stands for "Serial Killer".
Gross, I know, and I don't ordinarily watch French movies like that. If I am gonna watch a movie about a serial killer, I usually strive for American Made. I watched it because I didn't have much else in the queue, an also because two of the stars were Olivier Gourmet and Nathalie Baye, who we have seen in recent Chabrol and Dardenne films. The movie was a police procedural about the hunt for "The Beast Of The Bastille" in the late 1990s, a real life serial killer who operated in and around Paris. The movie is plotted so that the identity of the killer is revealed early on, and that proves to be a problem as far as The Suspense Factor is concerned. The director made a decision to include social aspects into the story, like why the killer is the way he is, and of course it's the Usual Story : because he was an abandoned and abused child, etc. And while all of that is relevant in real life, it does not always make for a taut script if you drag out the particulars of the killer's childhood and try to humanise him while at the same time the French Police (second only to the LAPD in relentlessness) are out to nail him to the wall.
The intercutting just doesn't work. The director doesn't understand - you shouldn't mix genre in cinema. A crime thriller should be a Crime Thriller. Not interspersed with attempts at social work. Sorry.
The guy is called a Monster by the French Press, and his lawyer wants to show his human side.
Fine, that's her job, but way too much time was spent on this aspect, and the killer was a one dimensional actor anyway.
I have to interject again to ask, "What's the deal with France"? This is a true story of this killer. He was convicted in 2001. He murdered seven women, and he was sentenced to 20 years minimum, so he will be eligible for parole in 2020, including time served while he was on trial. I mean, I know that American psychos also get parole hearings after ten years or so, but in Europe they seem to let some of these guys out after 10 to 20 years. Check out Norway for example.
But with this guy in France, I trust that he will never be let go.
The movie itself was okay. I'd give it a minor Single Thumb Up. It could have been a lot better had the director made a Straight Up Solve The Crime Film rather than try to introduce the other stuff. But the main problem was to introduce the killer's identity within the first minutes of the film.
Goodbye suspense. I could have watched a "George Gently" instead.
Well anyhow, a successful day off I suppose. Man, I will soon be closing in on eight full years of working as Pearl's caregiver, and I haven't missed a single day of work, which for the most part has been 30 out of 31 days a month, with about four times a year when I get five days off a month.
Not complaining, because I am grateful for my job, but just saying....."whew"!
Elizabeth, I saw a few posts this morn about similar topics. Your friend Joel is right on the money (no pun intended) about managing credit and having discipline where spending is concerned. Another post (don't recall who it was from) said that "it's been a rough few months" and the person was headed to Costa Rica...
Once again I add a disclaimer, because I don't know nowdays how many posts are meant to communicate with me (but my intuition is still pretty good), and I would only say what you already know, which is that - in tight circumstances - just stick to your guns. You already know your talent. Sometimes you have to wind your way through issues other than creative work. All of those "other issues" usually boil down to needing money.
If that is a problem, have no fear, because you will get money.
What you have in your favor, to a strong degree, is that you are a focused and disciplined person. You know how to start and complete a project. That is a rare quality to have. You also have technical skills as well as a ton of creative ability and inspiration. Your friend Joel has a lot of good advice about credit and money management. All you need is one break, to get your foot in the door, and that is going to happen.
I can picture it, and so can you.
Spring is coming, and with it Good Things.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, March 17, 2018
"Twin Peaks" Episode 6 + Clarifying The Writing Process + Let's Go See Alice Cooper
Writing from home tonight. I'm off until Sunday morning as usual. No movie tonight, but I did watch a "Twin Peaks" episode, #6. Agent Cooper is showing signs that he is very slowly beginning to remember who he is, and that part of the story is intriguing and very well acted by Kyle Maclachlan. He has a sort of "Forrest Gump" or "Rain Man" simplicity about him now, and he is also very vulnerable, which makes his scenes a little touching, something you don't normally expect from "Twin Peaks" or David Lynch. Episode 6 was great for the most part, except for two scenes with very explicit violence that did not need to be included and should not have been. One showed a little kid getting hit by a car. Sorry, but I had to mention it, because I don't know why Lynch would have filmed such a thing. Also, because "TP" was made for Showtime instead of broadcast TV like the original series, the writers - Lynch and Mark Frost - are making liberal use of the "F" word and even the "MF" word once or twice, and I feel that those words are not very "Twin Peaks". They didn't use 'em in the original and they don't need 'em now.
Still a great show. I'm just a little perplexed by tonight's brief though explicit violence and the overuse of bad language.
I was rereading last night's blog, and I see that I could have done a better job in making my point about communism, as it was alluded to in "Man Of Marble". I made a roundabout comment about "why would anyone erect a statue to a bricklayer"?, and when I read it back, I thought I sounded like a jerk. In the next paragraph, I attempted to explain myself, and I did an okay job, but as I've mentioned before, this occasional failure to make my point in a conclusive and satisfying manner is a fault of mine that results from three things, mainly. One is that, when I write, it is late at night and I am usually dog tired. Two is that my mind jumps around all the time, and my thoughts far outrun my ability to type, so I'll begin a thought and sometimes follow it only halfway through before finishing the paragraph with the beginning (or middle, or end) of another thought. I apologize for when I do that, and also for when I write in a vague manner, which I did when I tried to comment on Elizabeth's post last night. I wanted to make some very definite points about living through family dysfunction, and I didn't do too bad, but my sentences were not as clear as I would have liked. And that brings me to reason #3 of why my late night writing is sometimes less than crystal clear, and that is because when I am writing at 1:30 in the morning, I don't have time to go back and proofread and then edit and restructure my work.
My old blogs on Myspace usually featured proper sentences and paragraphs, and even though I still had back then the tendency to "mind wander" when writing, I had much more time in those days to go back and fix things so that everything read back properly as it was meant to.
I learned a lot about writing in the Myspace days, and what I learned that was most important was that printed words (i.e. text of any kind) must be elucidated much more specifically and in precise syntax and context, than spoken words. It's kind of like the two surfers having the "Dude"....."Duuuude"! conversation. When those guys are speaking to one another, person to person (and Dude to Dude), they understand each other perfectly. But if you were to transcribe their tete-a-tete into writing, no one would get it. You, as the writer, would have to do a lot of 'splaining.
And so that's what a writer must do every time he or she writes : explain things by constructing proper sentences and paragraphs, by finishing thoughts, and by trying to remain in context and not go off on multiple tangents (ahem.....Ad?).
I know how to do all of this, and if I were writing for hours at a time as I once did for Myspace, and if I had time to edit, and if I weren't writing in the middle of the night when I am half asleep as I do nowdays, I could promise fewer blogs where my point is unclear or poorly stated.
I will shut up now, as I always must, but thanks for listening, and thanks for understanding when a blog is somewhat muddled.
I had some fun tonight Googling some Beatles chord charts. I learned "She Loves You", and - a great one to strum - "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison. Both are easy to sing and play. As a bonus I learned "Show Me The Way" by Peter Frampton. That one's got a few tricky chords that are harder for me to hold down, but I can cheat on some of 'em anyway.
I got me a ticket for Alice Cooper at The Greek in August. I will be going alone, which sucks, but at least I'll be going. Elizabeth, if you are reading, Alice was just in Madison a couple nights ago, at the Orpheum. You probably already know that. :)
Still don't know if I'm gonna go to "Judas Priest" or not. I've been watching clips on Youtube from the start of the tour, and the music sounds okay.....and I know that it's compressed sound from a cell phone......but for God's sake, there were once two guitarists named KK Downing and Glenn Tipton that created a nuclear meltdown on stage every night, with Rob Halford leading the charge.
I don't wish to slag the new guys because they are just doing what they've been paid to do, and I know contracts must be fulfilled, etc., but this is not hardly Judas Priest. I guess that, if I go, it will be only to see Halford singing those songs one final time.
Man.....all our bands are going, going........(gone)
Except for Alice Cooper, Sparks, Van Halen and Todd Rundgren......and King's X, and Eric Johnson and Steven Wilson, and oh what am I bitching about. :)
I've still got French Organ Music anyway.
See you in the morning after a hopefully major-league sleep in. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Still a great show. I'm just a little perplexed by tonight's brief though explicit violence and the overuse of bad language.
I was rereading last night's blog, and I see that I could have done a better job in making my point about communism, as it was alluded to in "Man Of Marble". I made a roundabout comment about "why would anyone erect a statue to a bricklayer"?, and when I read it back, I thought I sounded like a jerk. In the next paragraph, I attempted to explain myself, and I did an okay job, but as I've mentioned before, this occasional failure to make my point in a conclusive and satisfying manner is a fault of mine that results from three things, mainly. One is that, when I write, it is late at night and I am usually dog tired. Two is that my mind jumps around all the time, and my thoughts far outrun my ability to type, so I'll begin a thought and sometimes follow it only halfway through before finishing the paragraph with the beginning (or middle, or end) of another thought. I apologize for when I do that, and also for when I write in a vague manner, which I did when I tried to comment on Elizabeth's post last night. I wanted to make some very definite points about living through family dysfunction, and I didn't do too bad, but my sentences were not as clear as I would have liked. And that brings me to reason #3 of why my late night writing is sometimes less than crystal clear, and that is because when I am writing at 1:30 in the morning, I don't have time to go back and proofread and then edit and restructure my work.
My old blogs on Myspace usually featured proper sentences and paragraphs, and even though I still had back then the tendency to "mind wander" when writing, I had much more time in those days to go back and fix things so that everything read back properly as it was meant to.
I learned a lot about writing in the Myspace days, and what I learned that was most important was that printed words (i.e. text of any kind) must be elucidated much more specifically and in precise syntax and context, than spoken words. It's kind of like the two surfers having the "Dude"....."Duuuude"! conversation. When those guys are speaking to one another, person to person (and Dude to Dude), they understand each other perfectly. But if you were to transcribe their tete-a-tete into writing, no one would get it. You, as the writer, would have to do a lot of 'splaining.
And so that's what a writer must do every time he or she writes : explain things by constructing proper sentences and paragraphs, by finishing thoughts, and by trying to remain in context and not go off on multiple tangents (ahem.....Ad?).
I know how to do all of this, and if I were writing for hours at a time as I once did for Myspace, and if I had time to edit, and if I weren't writing in the middle of the night when I am half asleep as I do nowdays, I could promise fewer blogs where my point is unclear or poorly stated.
I will shut up now, as I always must, but thanks for listening, and thanks for understanding when a blog is somewhat muddled.
I had some fun tonight Googling some Beatles chord charts. I learned "She Loves You", and - a great one to strum - "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison. Both are easy to sing and play. As a bonus I learned "Show Me The Way" by Peter Frampton. That one's got a few tricky chords that are harder for me to hold down, but I can cheat on some of 'em anyway.
I got me a ticket for Alice Cooper at The Greek in August. I will be going alone, which sucks, but at least I'll be going. Elizabeth, if you are reading, Alice was just in Madison a couple nights ago, at the Orpheum. You probably already know that. :)
Still don't know if I'm gonna go to "Judas Priest" or not. I've been watching clips on Youtube from the start of the tour, and the music sounds okay.....and I know that it's compressed sound from a cell phone......but for God's sake, there were once two guitarists named KK Downing and Glenn Tipton that created a nuclear meltdown on stage every night, with Rob Halford leading the charge.
I don't wish to slag the new guys because they are just doing what they've been paid to do, and I know contracts must be fulfilled, etc., but this is not hardly Judas Priest. I guess that, if I go, it will be only to see Halford singing those songs one final time.
Man.....all our bands are going, going........(gone)
Except for Alice Cooper, Sparks, Van Halen and Todd Rundgren......and King's X, and Eric Johnson and Steven Wilson, and oh what am I bitching about. :)
I've still got French Organ Music anyway.
See you in the morning after a hopefully major-league sleep in. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, March 16, 2018
"Man Of Marble" by Wajda + Hey Elizabeth
Tonight at CSUN we saw Andrzej Wajda's "Man Of Marble" (1977), another epic work running 164 minutes. Wadja is again using the storytelling format of "a film within a film", as he did in "Everything For Sale" which I reviewed a few weeks ago. In "Marble" a young documentary filmmaker, working in the present time (1976), is out to make her mark, and she chooses as her subject a bricklayer who had become a national Communist hero in Poland in the 1950s. She becomes aware of him when she and her crew happen upon a clandestine statue hidden away in the basement of a museum, where she is looking for old propaganda and newsreel footage. She is intrigued by the statue - the "Man Of Marble" - and she inquires to the museum director about what, or who, it represents. This sets her off on a quest to discover the story behind the formerly famous bricklayer, and also to see if she can find him 25 years later.
This is an anti-communist movie of a high order, and it is a wonder that Wajda was even able to get it made, considering that it came at the height of the Cold War. But then, he was Polish, and the Poles - as we have seen - were not as easily controlled by the Soviets as some of their other sattelites. Wajda went "in their face" with this movie, and though it was apparently banned by Polish censors, it nevertheless made it all the way to Cannes, and ultimately won a prize there.
I have to interject to confess once again that in my twenties I thought communism was "cool". I didn't follow it, and I didn't study it. It was just a reactionary opinion on my part, because I couldn't stand Reagan. So I thought, "well okay then........communism". But again, it was not something I thought much about. My politics in those days were centered on America.
But anyway, it took a long time for me to realize just how horrible the Communist Regime was, as it was headed up by the former Soviet Union. And it has been the films made by artists oppressed under that system - as opposed to American propaganda - that showed me the truth. In Wadja's films, you might wish you were in Hell as opposed to the barren muddy landscapes chosen as the sites for the massive and horribly depressing steel factories and the accompanying "worker's cities" that were erected in conjunction with one another. That whole way of thinking, of reducing people to worker ants, is so depressing - especially in a country where the Sun doesn't seem to shine - that it's just about unfathomable.
And where in the world, and under what kind of mind-controlled system, would a statue be made in honor of a bricklayer?
But wait a minute. Shouldn't there be statues to honor ordinary working people? Maybe a statue in honor of schoolteachers, or nurses, or firemen and policemen, or even garbagemen. And what about bricklayers? Why shouldn't they all have statues in their honor?
Of course they should, if the statue is put in place for honorable reasons. But as we saw in the Communist era, statues were erected as propaganda, as Iconography. In this case, the statue of the bricklayer is created to put forth a myth; that the bricklayer in question can work at a heroic pace. He is even filmed, in old newsreels, building walls and apartment foundations at a superhuman pace. These films were then distributed and shown to the workers as the new standard of what they were expected to achieve. The whole idea of communism seemed to be about factory workers and production, and hive thinking. But as Wajda shows, the workers weren't as dumb as all that. They knew how bad their situation was. And the bricklayer who has been made into a Hero Of The Proletariat sees through the lie also. He knows that he has created an impossible work standard for others to live up to. Communism under the Marxist theory was supposed to create a workers' paradise, but instead it created a wasteland of smoke-belching factories worked by virtual slaves, who - if they rebelled - were jailed or worse.
So we see, in flashbacks, the story of the bricklayer as he goes from manufactured "hero" to jailed rebel. And all of this is viewed through the lens of the modern 1976 documentarian as she works to complete her film.
It's quite a story, one that many critics and commentators are comparing to "Citizen Kane". I do not get that reference myself, because the man never becomes a world-beater or head of an empire. He rises to become a worker-hero with a nice apartment and that is it. But as far as his story is concerned, it makes for a great movie. I noted that last week's Wajda film, "The Promised Land", was a masterpiece even at almost three hours in length, and it was because it had no fat, no extraneous material.
In comparison, "Man Of Marble", almost as lengthy a film, was very good but not a masterpiece because it went on too long. Wajda should have ditched a lot of the "film-within-a-film" stuff, because it detracted from the main story. He should have simply bookended it, and had the modern day documentarian appear at the beginning and then again at the end of the film. Instead, by incorporating her search for the real bricklayer, a quarter century later, I thought he distracted from a very compelling story and made the film run on way too long as a result.
Very few movies should run over two hours in my opinion, and if you are gonna make a movie that is almost three hours long, you have to make absolutely sure you are moving it forward with every frame.
Two Thumbs Up nonetheless for "Man Of Marble". It's another Wajda Epic, except in this case he could have cut out most of the filmmaker stuff and just told the story of the bricklayer. Had he done so, he'd have had a two hour masterpiece.
Elizabeth, if you are reading, I saw the post about your friend Addison. She really got to the heart of what she wanted to say, and I mention it because you yourself haven't posted a lot these days, and so when you reference a post like that, I take note of it because it means something.
Her post was very personal and had to do with family dysfunction and the search for love, which were things I wrote about in my review of "A Nos Amours" last night. That may be a coincidence, but anyhow, your friend is a survivor of family dysfunction, as I am and as so many of us are, and she has apparently found her way through it, which is beautiful because that can always be the end result for anyone who has not been subjected to terrible abuse or anything like that. I am talking just about living through family conflict, which can be bad enough. I could write a book about it, and I once wanted to when I was about 25 or so, but I became a survivor too, and I was lucky enough to reconcile with my folks in the last years of their lives, and what I learned is that - in most cases - everybody loves everybody, despite what has occurred in the past.
Love is what counts, and love is the bedrock that underlies any overlaying period of trouble. Always remember that in your life, that love is your foundation. If you have trouble in any way, or a history of family dysfunction, those things are only distortions or abberant layers on top of the foundation of love.
The real test of this is if you feel love inside yourself, or if you feel a need to love or express love in some way, to another person or simply out into the world at large. If you feel that surge of love inside of you, even if you feel it as a longing in a melancholy way, then you know that you have a foundation of love in your life, and that the same foundation exists in others close to you, including your family members.
I don't know if you meant that post to be connected to me, because we don't communicate like we used to, but if you did mean it for me, then I say "Thank You" because it was not only right on the money but it also had a lot of details in it that were very beautiful.
Even though you aren't on FB much these days, I am still thinking about you and am always right here. And as in the past, I will respond whenever you feel like posting.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
This is an anti-communist movie of a high order, and it is a wonder that Wajda was even able to get it made, considering that it came at the height of the Cold War. But then, he was Polish, and the Poles - as we have seen - were not as easily controlled by the Soviets as some of their other sattelites. Wajda went "in their face" with this movie, and though it was apparently banned by Polish censors, it nevertheless made it all the way to Cannes, and ultimately won a prize there.
I have to interject to confess once again that in my twenties I thought communism was "cool". I didn't follow it, and I didn't study it. It was just a reactionary opinion on my part, because I couldn't stand Reagan. So I thought, "well okay then........communism". But again, it was not something I thought much about. My politics in those days were centered on America.
But anyway, it took a long time for me to realize just how horrible the Communist Regime was, as it was headed up by the former Soviet Union. And it has been the films made by artists oppressed under that system - as opposed to American propaganda - that showed me the truth. In Wadja's films, you might wish you were in Hell as opposed to the barren muddy landscapes chosen as the sites for the massive and horribly depressing steel factories and the accompanying "worker's cities" that were erected in conjunction with one another. That whole way of thinking, of reducing people to worker ants, is so depressing - especially in a country where the Sun doesn't seem to shine - that it's just about unfathomable.
And where in the world, and under what kind of mind-controlled system, would a statue be made in honor of a bricklayer?
But wait a minute. Shouldn't there be statues to honor ordinary working people? Maybe a statue in honor of schoolteachers, or nurses, or firemen and policemen, or even garbagemen. And what about bricklayers? Why shouldn't they all have statues in their honor?
Of course they should, if the statue is put in place for honorable reasons. But as we saw in the Communist era, statues were erected as propaganda, as Iconography. In this case, the statue of the bricklayer is created to put forth a myth; that the bricklayer in question can work at a heroic pace. He is even filmed, in old newsreels, building walls and apartment foundations at a superhuman pace. These films were then distributed and shown to the workers as the new standard of what they were expected to achieve. The whole idea of communism seemed to be about factory workers and production, and hive thinking. But as Wajda shows, the workers weren't as dumb as all that. They knew how bad their situation was. And the bricklayer who has been made into a Hero Of The Proletariat sees through the lie also. He knows that he has created an impossible work standard for others to live up to. Communism under the Marxist theory was supposed to create a workers' paradise, but instead it created a wasteland of smoke-belching factories worked by virtual slaves, who - if they rebelled - were jailed or worse.
So we see, in flashbacks, the story of the bricklayer as he goes from manufactured "hero" to jailed rebel. And all of this is viewed through the lens of the modern 1976 documentarian as she works to complete her film.
It's quite a story, one that many critics and commentators are comparing to "Citizen Kane". I do not get that reference myself, because the man never becomes a world-beater or head of an empire. He rises to become a worker-hero with a nice apartment and that is it. But as far as his story is concerned, it makes for a great movie. I noted that last week's Wajda film, "The Promised Land", was a masterpiece even at almost three hours in length, and it was because it had no fat, no extraneous material.
In comparison, "Man Of Marble", almost as lengthy a film, was very good but not a masterpiece because it went on too long. Wajda should have ditched a lot of the "film-within-a-film" stuff, because it detracted from the main story. He should have simply bookended it, and had the modern day documentarian appear at the beginning and then again at the end of the film. Instead, by incorporating her search for the real bricklayer, a quarter century later, I thought he distracted from a very compelling story and made the film run on way too long as a result.
Very few movies should run over two hours in my opinion, and if you are gonna make a movie that is almost three hours long, you have to make absolutely sure you are moving it forward with every frame.
Two Thumbs Up nonetheless for "Man Of Marble". It's another Wajda Epic, except in this case he could have cut out most of the filmmaker stuff and just told the story of the bricklayer. Had he done so, he'd have had a two hour masterpiece.
Elizabeth, if you are reading, I saw the post about your friend Addison. She really got to the heart of what she wanted to say, and I mention it because you yourself haven't posted a lot these days, and so when you reference a post like that, I take note of it because it means something.
Her post was very personal and had to do with family dysfunction and the search for love, which were things I wrote about in my review of "A Nos Amours" last night. That may be a coincidence, but anyhow, your friend is a survivor of family dysfunction, as I am and as so many of us are, and she has apparently found her way through it, which is beautiful because that can always be the end result for anyone who has not been subjected to terrible abuse or anything like that. I am talking just about living through family conflict, which can be bad enough. I could write a book about it, and I once wanted to when I was about 25 or so, but I became a survivor too, and I was lucky enough to reconcile with my folks in the last years of their lives, and what I learned is that - in most cases - everybody loves everybody, despite what has occurred in the past.
Love is what counts, and love is the bedrock that underlies any overlaying period of trouble. Always remember that in your life, that love is your foundation. If you have trouble in any way, or a history of family dysfunction, those things are only distortions or abberant layers on top of the foundation of love.
The real test of this is if you feel love inside yourself, or if you feel a need to love or express love in some way, to another person or simply out into the world at large. If you feel that surge of love inside of you, even if you feel it as a longing in a melancholy way, then you know that you have a foundation of love in your life, and that the same foundation exists in others close to you, including your family members.
I don't know if you meant that post to be connected to me, because we don't communicate like we used to, but if you did mean it for me, then I say "Thank You" because it was not only right on the money but it also had a lot of details in it that were very beautiful.
Even though you aren't on FB much these days, I am still thinking about you and am always right here. And as in the past, I will respond whenever you feel like posting.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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