Hey Elizabeth! I was glad to see your photos today from your hike. I recognize that park by now from the stretch of river that I have also seen in past pictures. That is such a beautiful spot and in the photos it looked like a nice day, with the puffy clouds in the sky. I am happy that hiking season is back in Wisconsin because I always like to see your photos of the landscape, so.....as I always say......
Keep posting! And keep hiking and taking pictures, whenever you have the opportunity. :):)
I hope everything is going well, and that you are having a chance to work on your dance film too. ////
Tonight I did watch a movie : "Vice" (2018), the Dick Cheney dark comedy biopic that was nominated for a few Academy Awards this year. Grim had recommended I see it. Before Donald Trump there was once Dick Cheney as the most hated man in America, at least among Democrats, or just people like me who can't stand power mad psychos. When my friends and I were all in our twenties, back in the Reagan years, we used to nominate an annual Most Dangerous Man In America. We would choose guys like Edwin Meese, Alexander Haig or Caspar Weinberger, all of whom paled in comparison to Cheney, when he became George Bush's Secretary Of Defense in 1989. He was a guy you just got a gut feeling about, that he was truly sinister. That feeling wound up being shared by a majority of Americans, I think, and this is reflected in the movie.
Cheney's hold on the country was so complete during the Bush 2 years, when he was Vice President, that he was genuinely a man to be feared. It was clear he was running the show for Dubya, and he presided over the aftermath of 9/11, speaking as if he was the President when he announced, just a few days later, that he knew exactly who was responsible. His explanation was a complete crock, and I remember thinking that as I was watching him say it. But the message was also in the delivery, in that sneering look of his and his matter-of-fact authoritarian voice.
What is it about some men that makes them natural born A-Holes who aspire to power? The movie asks this question of Cheney, who began his adult life as a Yale dropout (who was kicked out) and who wound up as a 22 year old drunk working on power lines for the telephone company. That in itself cannot serve to disparage him; many a young man has had problems finding his way in life, myself included, but the question with Dick Cheney - which the movie fails to answer - is how did he go from a Wyoming telephone lineman to working as a White House assistant just ten years later?
This quantum leap is never explained, for in the beginning of the movie he is presented as little more than a stumblebum.
I found "Vice" to be well made but rather depressing, simply because I lived through the Cheney era. He was the original Donald Trump, as far as being an a-hole is concerned, and there was nothing really to redeem him, except perhaps for the sympathy generated by his fragility from having multiple heart attacks, and his unwavering support for his gay daughter, which the movie accurately portrays.
But overall, his grab for power showed his true nature, then he started the Iraq war and we are still dealing with the consequences today. Hundreds of thousands dead on all sides, in large part because of the personality and internal psychological drive of this one man. We see that his drive for power was prompted by his wife Lynne, an evil b-word if there ever was one. Any Adams nails her narcissism. Without her, Cheney might've remained with the telephone company, but his a-hole belligerance combined with her ruthless ambition to almost cause a catastrophe on America, and we still don't know who was really responsible for 9/11.
It is safe to say that Dick Cheney was one of the most destructive men who has ever held high office in this country, and that he was, along with Donald Trump, the most power mad.
Christian Bale basically recreated him for the movie cameras. You know Bale's reputation as an actor who disappears into his roles. He is Dick Cheney in this movie. Unfortunately, though the movie entertains and is never boring, thanks also to Sam Rockwell's G Dubya Bush, it still comes off as a replay of events from a very depressing time, and it remains depressing because we still don't know the truth about what Dick Cheney lied about. This is the real nature of a bad man, the secrecy with which he goes about his business and the deception that results.
So the movie asks, "where does such a man come from"? - meaning a truly bad man, who rises to power seemingly out of nowhere, and I think the answer may be that he was destined to come, simply because of his yen to have power over other people.
Cheney was a warmonger, lesser in comparison with a madman like Henry Kissinger, but it wasn't for lack of trying on Cheney's part. Where do such men come from, indeed, who desire to start wars with no given reason, and who have to manufacture a reason to get what they want?
That's what "Vice" is asking.
I give it Two Thunbs Up, although it is overlong and the subject in question is decidedly unpleasant. See it for Bale's performance and for the historical value, though it does us no good now as we learned nothing and have Trump in the freaking White House.
Remind me to stick with my old movies, lol. I can't stand politics. :)
Good singing was had in church today and I will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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