Book Reviews- The Berkut, Bran Mak Morn, This Side of Glory

The Berkut
by Joseph Heywood

In 1945 with vengeful Russian soldiers less than a mile away from his bunker, German dictator Adolf Hitler committed suicide. He had no intention of being captured alive and strung up like his good friend Mussolini, or worse yet turned over to the tender mercies of a legendarily merciless former ally, Joseph Stalin.

That is what happened as far we know. Because of the inability to bring Hitler to justice, the murkiness of Hitler's demise, and the belief that the profoundly selfish Hitler would be unwilling at the end to take his own life, there have always been theories that Hitler somehow survived and escaped from the bunker in those final days.

The Berkut picks that idea up. It combines real life history with just a few minor speculative changes to look at what would have happened if Hitler DID escape the bunker. It's a sad truth that once some vengeance was taken both the Russians and the Western Allies were VERY interested in getting their hands on Nazi medical and scientific research and of course the Nazi military intelligence and weaponry. This meant making deals.


NASA as we know it would not have been possible without the input of several former Nazis, most famously Werner Von Braun. Under Operation Paperclip, Project Odessa, and other such initiatives, Nazis with something to trade or with some wealth either escaped to South America or joined Western military/intelligence organizations. This book uses that real life history to imagine that Hitler was well aware of such programs and had set up his own escape ratline well in advance of Germany's defeat. The Catholic Church also assisted.

The book is primarily told through the viewpoints of two highly skilled operatives on opposite sides: SS Colonel Gunter Brumm, who has been tagged to rescue the man they call "Herr Wolf" from the ruin of Germany and spirit him away to safety, and Special Operations Leader Vasily Petrov, who is one of Stalin's most trusted warriors and has been assigned to disrupt the SS operation and bring Hitler back to Moscow-alive. When Stalin orders something, failure is of course, unthinkable.

The American OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) gets wind of the plots and has its own man on the scene to try to snatch Hitler. This was a long (600 pages) book but I thought it was worthwhile. If you like mystery, intrigue and are interested in that time period you may enjoy this book. There is a fair amount of sex, double crossing and last stands.

Bran Mak Morn-The Last King
by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is a favorite author of mine despite his many literary and personal faults. Howard was of primarily Scots-Irish ancestry. Interest in his heritage runs throughout his works. Most of his heroes are stand-ins for Howard and have similar backgrounds. Bran Mak Morn is the last king of the Picts , in our history a pre-Celtic people that mostly lived in Scotland.

In this collection of stories Howard altered Pictish history somewhat so that the Picts were both aboriginal inhabitants of the British isle, pushed out by the Celts and later the Romans and Saxons, and a sort of uber-Celt, a representative of fierce Celtic resistance to Roman colonization.

In any event Bran Mak Morn is the Pictish king but he is king of a dying people-a people who are physically degenerating and who will not be long for the world. Nevertheless he leads resistance to both the Romans and the Saxons in Britain (Howard loved mixing up time periods in one big mashup).

The two best short stories in this book are  1) Worms of the Earth, in which Bran Mak Morn uses supernatural means to take his vengeance on a Roman tribune who cruelly executed a Pict as a disguised Bran Mak Morn watched, powerless to save his countryman and 2) Kings of the Night, where the hopelessly outnumbered Picts and Celts call upon their ancient ancestor, King Kull, to aid Bran in a last stand battle against Romans and Saxons. Howard REALLY didn't like Romans.  This is fun reading for Howard geeks and I am one. Because of the setting it lacks Howard's usual racism. The stories are short, to the point and easy to get through. There are of course battles in just about every story. They leap off the page. This book also has some of Howard's poetry, which could either be described as moody (the man did after all commit suicide at a very young age) or pugilistic.


This Side of Glory
by David Hilliard and Lewis Cole

I love The Black Panthers. Lord knows they made plenty of mistakes but when I think about what they tried to do and what they were up against I just have to give them much respect. Also keep in mind that like with any other revolutionary movement, these were generally young people-from 66-73 much of the leadership was in its late teens to late twenties.

With any movement there will be tons of different perspectives. This Side of Glory gives David Hilliard's. The book opens with Hilliard's learning of Huey Newton's murder. Hilliard and other former Panther leaders are invited on various news shows to talk about the Panthers and Newton's life. Out of respect for Newton and loyalty to his memory at first they try to downplay his struggles with addiction and the sordid circumstances of his murder. That becomes untenable and as they try to give a more nuanced and honest view of Newton's life, Hilliard feels compelled to do the same of his own. He details his love and hate for Newton. He discusses his own struggles and shortcomings. He explains how and why the Panthers came to exist. Hilliard knew Huey Newton as a child and was later one of Newton's earliest recruits to the Panthers. This is as much an autobiography of Hilliard as it is a discussion of his time as a Panther. Hilliard makes clear the Panthers could not have existed without the strong family ties among the various southern black migrants to the West Coast and a fierce commitment to justice and resistance to racism.

As police repression increased Hilliard would later be forced into a leadership position, something for which he was not really suited. From Hilliard's own viewpoint he seems to have been more comfortable in a secondary, behind the scenes position. Like many other stories of this time, This Side of Glory details the inevitable tensions in any organization-the jealousies, rivalries, infidelities-all of which were greatly magnified by open police attacks and more subtle COINTELPRO manipulations.

The book also describes the fall of the Party into thuggery, gangsterism, factionalism and ultimately political irrelevance. Hilliard is honest about his own role in this, particularly his later struggles with drug addiction. This is a pretty powerful book. Some of it is contradicted by other Panther memoirs and biographies but no one ever has the same memory or perspective on events that took place 40 or more years ago. Again, this book really pulls the cover off the "Officer Friendly" depiction of the police. After one arrest, Hilliard wisely gives a fake name. Upon arriving to the station a higher up police official recognizes him and angrily tells the arresting officers who he is. They start to beat him telling him "Motherf*****!! We'll kill you. You never would have made it here if we had known!". That's America.

Sympathy for the Devil?

Martyrs to Intrusive Government or Racist Abusers?

Do you have sympathy for the Devil? You may remember that in New Jersey, just about two years prior, this Mommy Racist and Daddy Racist tried to get a ShopRite to make a birthday cake that read "Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler". The store refused and the goobers had to go elsewhere. A Wal-Mart agreed to their request. Go figure. At the time the only controversy was over the right to freedom of expression and the right to refuse service.
However these parents appear to be neo-Nazis (though they deny it) and white supremacists who have given all of their children Nazi inspired names-Adolf Hitler, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie. The incident with the cake evidently placed them on the radar screen of local child protective services. They lost their children. And so far they haven't gotten them back.

The 5-year-old boy, named for the infamous Nazi leader, and his two sisters were taken by New Jersey child welfare officials in 2009.An appeals court ruled last year that Heath and Deborah Campbell should not regain custody of the children, citing the parents' disabilities and the risk of serious injury to their children.

A family court previously found that there was evidence the children had been abused or neglected, but the details were not released because of a gag order.The Campbells, who picketed outside of a child services office in Flemington on Tuesday, have repeatedly spoken out, claiming the children were taken because of their names and nothing more.

"The judge and [the Division of Youth and Family Services] told us that there was no evidence of abuse and that it was the names!" Heath Campbell told NBC 10 News in Philadelphia. "They were taken over the children's names."

LINK
It appears that someone is lying here but because of the gag order and family privacy it's not easy for an outsider to determine which party (the state or the parents) is telling the truth. Obviously anyone who abuses children shouldn't be around them and ought to be locked up ASAP. The Penn State tragedy brings that home in a very real way. So if there's actual abuse or neglect then the state is absolutely doing the right thing by removing the children from the home. I think we'd have 100% agreement on that.

On the other hand what if the state is doing an end-run around the concept of abuse or neglect in a physical or sexual manner, and making the claim that merely giving children those names and presumably teaching them hatred is in and of itself abuse or neglect? We know that sometimes states can be rather presumptuous and hasty in deciding to remove children from their home based on rather flimsy evidence or just plain and simple dislike of the parents' lifestyle.

There are many people who grew up in homes that had political, religious or racial beliefs that were far outside the mainstream. That's not enough to take someone's children away from them.  If I want to teach my child to hate someone based on the color of their skin or their religion or heritage, that's an immoral decision, but it's one that a parent gets to make with impunity. It's not the state's business.

I don't have a good take on this incident one way or the other.

Questions
1) Abuse allegations aside, have these parents proven to be unfit?
2) Should the state be able to veto certain names for children?
3) Do we have the proper balance between protecting children and familial independence?

Movie Reviews-Captain America, Horrible Bosses and Blood Creek

Captain America:The First Avenger

Marvel is moving merrily along making movies out of all of its major and some of its minor comic book superheroes, with an eye towards releasing a later Avengers movie (a sort of supergroup of superheroes-kinda like if the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Hendrix and The Beatles all got together to save the world). So Captain America was next on my list to watch. If you're not familiar with the storyline, well first of all where have you been for the past 40-50 years. Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a literal 90 lb weakling in wartime Brooklyn New York. He has no luck with women and is constantly picked on by bullies. Steve never backs down from a fight though he often has to be saved by his best friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) a much larger US soldier who has been cheerfully rescuing Steve since they were kids. But their friendship is about to be interrupted as the patriotic but sickly Rogers can't convince any Army recruiters to accept him. Fortuitously, Rogers' plight is discovered by the secretive German refugee Dr. Erskine, (Stanley Tucci) who is working with the Army on a super-serum to produce soldiers of fantastic ability. Rogers undergoes the treatment and goes from zero to hero in a matter of minutes. Now he's ready to go to war for real, not only because it's the right thing to do but also because the painfully shy Rogers finds that he wouldn't mind getting to know (and impress) British Bombshell agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). And if that means leading suicide missions behind enemy lines, gosh darn it he's ready to do it.


Of course every hero must have an opposite and Captain America's is of course The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) a Nazi who has discovered and collected magical and scientific artifacts to produce super-weapons for Hitler, but mostly of course, for himself.
I liked this movie. Unlike Thor, which looked good but had a pretty sleepy storyline with not much chemistry between the male and female leads, Captain America has more action with much better interplay between Atwell and Evans. The only drawback of this film is of course its selling point-the complete and total ahistoricity. There were women officers in WW2 but few and far between. They certainly weren't involved in training male combat soldiers. There were virtually no black combat soldiers or airmen; Blacks were all segregated, no matter their role. Black officers were extremely rare and were generally placed so that no whites had to take orders from them-period. Whites attacked black soldiers in the South. There were also racial incidents between black and white Americans when they went overseas. Black officers were NOT allowed to use the officer's club-that being reserved for whites.

The film happily ignores all of this for an integrated team that is reminiscent of Hogan's Heroes. I guess this is good if we want to make the audience as big as possible and have every viewer feel included. The film does that well. But I wonder if we shouldn't keep the uglier truth in mind. How you feel about this will depend on your preference for escapism. Chris Evans plays Steve Rogers as totally unironic. He is serious about always doing the right thing. Captain America is very entertaining and about 20 minutes too long. This film also stars Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Derek Luke, Dominc Cooper, and Neal McDonough.
Trailer




Horrible Bosses

This film has a story which has been told before but it's usually fun to watch.
Three friends, Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) are all in bad situations at work. Nick, an MBA, works for the tyrannical Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) who enjoys humiliating people if they are 2 minutes late to work. Dale, a little mouse of a man engaged to be married, labors as a dental assistant for the sexually voracious Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Anniston in a very provocative role-yowsa!!) who makes it clear that she wants Dale in every way a woman could want a man and then some. And if Dale wants his job he had better rise to the occasion. Kurt, an account manager at an industrial chemical supply company, had a good spot as heir apparent to his boss Jack Pellitt (Donald Sutherland) but things go south when Jack dies and power passes to his drug-addled, hair-plug wearing, prostitute patronizing son Bobby (Colin Farrell-initially almost unrecognizable) who deeply resents Kurt for being a better son to his father than he was. The film outlines most of this in pretty broad strokes. It moves a little TOO quickly in detailing the characters' frustrations and building a case as to why they don't simply get new jobs. So I didn't quite believe that murder was the only way out. And as Nick and Kurt constantly remind Dale, his situation is only a problem because of his fidelity, because they would certainly love to be chased around the office by a beautiful woman in cleavage revealing outfits. Anyway the trio agree to the plan and after a few abortive attempts at trying to hire a hit man, they go to the black area of town (that of course makes total sense because everyone knows blacks are more criminal, right) where they hire a "murder consultant" Jones (Jamie Foxx) who will walk them thru the difficult steps of killing someone and getting away with it.

Obviously things start to go belly up and unforeseen events muck up their original plans. All three men make some critical mistakes and it appears that they may wind up in prison. This causes an argument to break out as to who among them would be the most likely to be assaulted in prison. And there is similar such crude raunchy humor throughout the film. It was quite funny at times. This won't win any Oscars but if you are just looking for something silly to watch this could fit the bill. Kevin Spacey played a similar role in Swimming with Sharks. Anniston seems to be doing her damn best to show Brad Pitt he made a mistake. Assuming that's all her and not body doubles I might have to agree. Spacey and Anniston almost steal the show. Bateman's sly subtley and understated delivery is a nice little contrast to the over the top Spacey/Anniston/Sudeikis roles. This film was well cast. Ioan Gruffudd, Wendell Pierce, Isaiah Mustafa, Julie Bowen, Ron White, and Bob Newhart also have roles.
Trailer




Blood Creek

This was another film directed by Joel Schumacher that I may not have watched if I had known he was the director. Unlike Trespass though, this was actually a halfway decent film. The Nazis were interested in the occult and speculative science. So this film has the benefit of being at least somewhat based in reality. In 1936, a West Virginia German-American family, the Wollners, is contacted by the German embassy to ask them to host visiting scholar Richard Wirth (Michael Fassbender). Wirth is not only a scholar but also a scientist/magician very much in the mold of the Red Skull. He has identified places around the globe where Viking Runestones of great magical power are located. One such place is this farm in West Virginia. For the man who knows how to use these powers, time and death are no longer meaningful. In modern day West Virginia Evan Marshall (Henry Cavill) is stumbling around depressed because his big brother Victor Marshall (Dominic Purcell) disappeared on a hunting trip two years back and hasn't been seen since. So imagine his surprise when one night a badly wounded Victor stumbles in, asks for a drink and tells baby brother to get all the guns he has and follow him, they have some people to kill. And no, he can't ask any questions. Ultimately this turns into a siege movie and slows down near the end but it was fun. The 1936 movie scenes are in black and white which adds to the creepiness.

Motor City Assault on Bus Driver

Incidents like this are exactly why I no longer live in Detroit or go too far out of my way to constantly defend it against vindictive people who would seek to say that this is typical of all Detroiters. For the record, it's not typical of all Detroiters or even most Detroiters. Like anywhere most Detroiters are people just trying to make it to the next day.
That said though, Detroit obviously has a crime problem. It's out of hand not just because of the number of crimes-assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, rapes, etc but because of the random nature of these crimes. They can literally happen anywhere. What a bitter ugly irony that an assault on a Black bus driver just trying to do his job takes place in a center named after the late Detroit heroine, Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks died for this nonsense.



Watch Video Here

A walk-out by at least 100 Detroit Department of Transportation bus drivers today has crippled service for bus riders across the city of Detroit.

DDOT passengers have been left stranded throughout the city as drivers say they are afraid to board the buses after one was attacked on a bus Thursday.

Gaffney said two officers inside the station did not help, and Detroit Police officers arrived 30 minutes after the beating started. The driver was taken to a local hospital, where he was treated and released, Gaffney said.

"One of my drivers getting beaten down in the middle of the Rosa Parks Transit Center -- that's what's crazy in this city," Gaffney said. “I don’t know what’s going on with Detroit. Detroit is just going to hell to tell you the truth," said Horace Adams, 60, of Detroit, as he waited at the Rosa Parks Transit Center today. "Ain’t nothing running right."   Full Article

"Ain’t nothing running right"-That pretty much sums up the city. Now of course things like this can and do happen anywhere but the fact of the matter is they are more common in Detroit-and via the media-have become virtually synonymous with Detroit. Southeast Michigan always ranks among the top 10 most segregated areas in the country, something which brings other economic costs to the region. Bottom line, racist or not, no one wants to live or work in a city where there's a good chance they'll get assaulted doing simple things like buying a newspaper, dropping a child off at school or driving a bus.

Until the perception and reality of crime is dealt with in the city we will never see any true revival. More and more people will move out and Detroit will be left with an unwieldy core of dead-ender nationalists, public sector workers, suburban hipsters, and people who are literally too old or too poor to move. This would not be a good thing. This perception and reality of crime in Detroit also impacts the surrounding suburbs as black flight and white flight play themselves out from generation to generation while outsiders, leery of the entire area, question locating businesses in SE Michigan-ESPECIALLY Detroit.

Now I know the probable underlying reasons for this activity-lack of self love, internalized racism, inability to define masculinity outside of violence, short tempers calculated to show potential predators that you're not prey, low education, lack of jobs, blah, blah, blah. And FWIW I mostly believe in those causal factors. But of course I am sure that none of that was going through the bus driver's mind while he was being assaulted. All he wanted was for it to stop. And in my experience the only way to stop such incidents is by either the immediate application of a superior amount of force or by the fear of such force being applied.

QUESTIONS
So how do you get these things to stop?
Is it time for a Giuliani type mayor to be elected in Detroit?
Does Detroit need massive numbers of police fanning out to shake down Detroiters in search of warrants or other illegal activity?
Should bus drivers be allowed to carry weapons? Should National Guardsmen be called in?
If you were on that bus or in the area would you have intervened?

The US Senate -It's a Man's World

The US Senate has often been described as a club, a boy's club.  There are 17 women in the Senate. Some people wish to increase that number and are deeply worried about the coming elections. For some activists, political analysts and female Senators, the prospect of having a US Senate with fewer women is just horrible. Worse it's bad for democracy.

Ok. I have no issue with stating that representative institutions should try to be, well representative. That's fine. However as usually is the case when these kinds of discussions pop up the people agitating for more women in the US Senate fall back on hyperbolic claims that the US Senate or democracy itself would somehow be transformed for the better because women somehow have special insights or are just more moral than men.

"When women are part of the negotiation and are part of decision-making, the outcomes are just better," said Gillibrand. "When we have our dinners with the women in the Senate -- the Democrats and Republicans -- we have so much common ground. We agree on so many basic principles and values. I think if there were more women at the decision-making table, we would get more things done."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) echoed that sentiment at Fortune magazine's "Most Powerful Women" dinner in April 2010.

When asked about progress on regulatory reform legislation, Feinstein replied, "Well, I actually think that if we had all women [in the Senate],we would solve the problem."

 Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who was sitting in the front row at the event, enthusiastically clapped in response.

"There was a moment there at the end of the debt ceiling [debate] that some of the women, on a bipartisan basis, were talking about, 'We need to take this over and get this done,'" said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who is running for her second term in 2012. "I think we are, by our nature, nurturers and negotiators. We want people to get along, we want to find a solution, we want to move forward. I think sometimes there is a tendency to like the fight for the fight's sake every once in awhile with some of the guys. So I think having more women involved will help."

Huffington Post Article

Horsefeathers! 

Senator Feinstein's comment stood out to me, not only because of its obvious chauvinism but also because Feinstein was and is in my opinion one of the more ethically challenged people in the US Senate. She is exactly the sort of person that both the Tea Party and the 99% movement would likely agree on as an example of the odious nexus between big money, big government, war profiteering and private enrichment at the public trough. If we had more women like Dianne Feinstein in the US Senate this country would be in even worse condition than it is.

I've been in the world a while now and although there are obvious deep differences both physically and socially/emotionally between men and women I think these are dwarfed by the similarities. And whatever differences I have noticed between men and women certainly haven't been MORAL ones.

I've worked with women bosses or co-workers that: 

• were racist or bigoted
• were bullies
• used sex appeal or sex to get ahead
• used seeming weakness to manipulate people
• were greedy and shortsighted
• were lazy
• were unqualified for their position
• were unable to work well with others or admit mistakes
• were emotionally crippled
• were more dedicated to their job than anyone else
• were gracious and kind
• went above and beyond to help me and others succeed
• were extremely smart
• were incredibly talented hardworking people

In short the women I work(ed) with ran the entire gamut of humanity, just like men did. HOW they expressed themselves might differ a bit from men on average but WHAT they expressed did not. Not at all.

Now Senator Feinstein's and Senator McCaskill's comments, much like Justice Sotomayor's "Wise Latina" crack may not be noticed or may be excused as understandable hyperbole-coming from women that is. It's a minor bigotry as such things go.

But what if say Rick Santorum or Rick Perry stood up and said 

"I agree with Senators Feinstein and McCaskill. Women are more nurturing and that is exactly why we need fewer of them in the Senate. The Senate is not a place for nurturing. It is a place for sober reflection, cold logic and deliberate hardball negotiation. And men are by our very nature, tacticians and philosophers."

Obviously that would be a career limiting move to say the least. But that is one logical outcome of the statements about nurturing.

My fundamental belief is that people are generally the same, morally. I don't believe that women are better than men, that whites are better than blacks or whatever. If the Knesset and Hamas and the PA were made up of all women there would still be rockets and bombs flying back and forth between the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. The only difference is the bombs might have pink ribbons attached.

For whatever reason, whether it be biological or sociological there are more men that want to run for office. So more men get elected. As long as their voters are satisfied with the outcomes I don't think their gender is relevant. And the idea that because a slight majority of the population is women means that the Senate representation should be 50-50 or close to it makes no sense to me. Because so many of the people who state that or imply it are not concerned about the increasing decline of men in college or the workplace. It's as if where women are less than 50% of a given population there must be changes made to bring women in but where women are more than 50% of a given population , well that's wonderful progress. Heads I win, tails you lose.

There are some nations in the world which have legally required or informal quotas for female representation in their legislative bodies. I don't think that's going to happen here, fortunately. I think that over time we will see more women in the House and Senate. But I don't think that's something that is going to be imposed from above. And I also don't think it will make a tremendous amount of difference in how the system is run. Again, as Feinstein shows, it's money that makes the world go round..

QUESTIONS

1) What's your take? Do you think the US Senate needs more women?

2) Would a Senate made up of all women be better for the US?

3) Why don't more women run for office?

Movie Reviews-Trespass, Honey Dripper and more

Trespass

The movie Trespass showed me a few things I already knew.

• Nicole Kidman has a great pair of legs.
• Nicolas Cage loves to overact.
• It's a very bad idea to let strangers into your home.

Trespass emphasizes these three points over and over and over and over and over again. And then one more time just in case anyone who was really dim missed it. Trespass tells the story of the Miller family. It's barely worthwhile to list character names because you never for a moment forget that this is Kidman and Cage-for the reasons listed above. Anyway Mr. Miller (Cage) is a diamond broker. He and his family reside in a spacious mansion with state of the art security. He's on his cell phone 24-7 making deals. Miller is literally tethered to a secure briefcase from which at day's end he removes items which are carefully placed in a safe. 

Mr. Miller is so busy that he hasn't noticed that Mrs. Miller (Kidman) has made his favorite dinner and is wearing his favorite skintight black dress in anticipation of some spousal Miller Time later that night.  He declines her offer. He has business. She hints at divorce. Their daughter is an unpleasant teen who (against orders) sneaks out to party with her trampy and druggy friends once her bickering parents stop bothering her and start bickering again.

So initially Daughter Miller misses the fun. Before Mr. Miller can depart on business he foolishly buzzes in some people claiming to be police. Ahem. He NEVER SEES THE FACES of the supposed officers before he allows them in his house or even finds out what they really want. Right. If you lived in a million dollar home with surveillance up the kazoo because you carry diamonds and cash with you, you're just gonna let anyone who says he's a cop into your house.  And you have no guns, dogs, panic room or onsite security detail of your own. Smart move, that.

Of course the folks aren't cops. And what they want, besides listening to some shouting from Cage and watching Kidman's dress ride up, is the Millers' money and diamonds. But Mr. Miller isn't willing to give. Mrs. Miller may know one of the assailants. The criminals seem angrier with each other than they are with the Millers.

Joel Schumacher directed this. I probably wouldn't have watched this film if I had known he was the director. It is stylish but it's really a quite empty flick. This film has several instances where characters behave stupidly so that the story can continue. Your tolerance for this movie may depend on how much you enjoy Cage's shouting his lines or Kidman's increasingly manic characterization of a desperate housewife. Funny Games, which I need to get around to reviewing one of these days, was a much better take on the whole "home invasion" trope. 
Trailer





Honeydripper

In both subject matter and pacing this film is somewhat similar to Big Night and takes place in about the same time period. But rather than portray 1950's Italian-Americans in New Jersey trying to make a failing restaurant work it depicts 1950's African-Americans in Alabama trying to make a failing nightclub work. And it's also utterly different.


The early fifties was when the older blues and R&B of people like Charles Brown, Muddy Waters, Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker and others began to transition into the rock-n-roll of people like Ike Turner, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley. Director John Sayles brings that story to life as well as a few other subthemes. 


Honeydripper tells the story of one saloon/nightclub owner, a Mr. PineTop Purvis (Danny Glover) who runs his club (The Honeydripper) as an old school blues joint.  As might be expected from his name, Purvis is himself a talented blues pianist. His primary musical attraction is the singer Bertha Mae (real life blues/gospel artist Mable John) who belts out pre-war blues tunes. Unfortunately few people-especially younger people-want to hear that old timey stuff any more; Purvis has lost most of his customers to a  competing juke joint that offers modern R&B and jump blues via jukebox. Purvis' wife Delilah (Lisa Gay Hamilton) is a proud Christian woman who wants to make Purvis choose between her and the blues.


An young itinerant musician Sonny (real life Blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr.), arrives in town only to be immediately arrested by the genially racist sheriff Pugh (Stacy Keach) who accuses and convicts Sonny of vagrancy. As by coincidence it just happens to be harvest time Sonny is sentenced to pick cotton. During his VERY rare down time Sonny wanders into the Honeydripper where he tries to convince Purvis and his right hand man Maceo (Charles Dutton) that he can play his guitar-a homemade solidbody electric guitar. Skeptical of his skill and disbelieving of anything so crazy as an electric guitar the older men show him the door. And a protective Purvis warns Sonny away from his stepdaughter, China Doll (Yaya DaCosta).


Between organized crime extortion, bigotry and bank liens, Purvis is just about to lose the club. He calls in a few favors and arranges to have famous New Orleans guitarist Guitar Sam (a homage to real life Guitar Slim) appear for one big night where Purvis hopes to make enough to pay off all his debts. But for whatever reason Guitar Sam doesn't arrive. Desperate, Purvis starts to wonder if that nutty kid with the weird guitar can actually play...


This was a slow moving deliberate movie until the last 20 minutes. This was a good choice I think. The Sheriff's racism is downplayed a bit too much for my taste but that wasn't this film's focus. Keach plays it almost tongue in cheek. Vondie Curtis-Hall, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Patrick Thomas and real life musicians Keb Mo and Eddie Shaw also appear in this film. 
Trailer







The Big Sleep

This is one of the greatest movies of all time, not just film noir. The Big Sleep was directed by Howard Hawks and based on a story by Raymond Chandler. It is also at some points almost impossible to follow. Supposedly when the screenwriters and director got confused about who actually committed a murder and whether or not a character was dead they called up Chandler, who after some thought, had to admit that he didn't know either.


So it is occasionally bewildering in the details. But the reason to watch it is to see one of the coolest actors of all time, Humphrey Bogart, at the top of his game with the woman he loved, Lauren Bacall. I mean these two are some really suave people..just suave. You can tell that they had a lot of fun acting in this movie. And of course some of this wasn't acting. This movie is famous for its convoluted story, Hawks' use of lighting and shade, the ominous sets, the gray morality and seedy environments but one of the things it's most famous for is the infamous "horseracing" conversation between detective Phillip Marlowe (Bogart) and Vivian Rutledge (Bacall). They are flirting, confronting and evaluating each other all at once.

Vivian: Tell me: What do you usually do when you're not working?

Marlowe: Oh, play the horses, fool around.

Vivian: No women?

Marlowe: I'm generally working on something most of the time.

Vivian: Could that be stretched to include me?

Marlowe: Well I like you. I've told you that before.

Vivian: I like hearing you say it. But you didn't do much about it.

Marlowe: Well, neither did you.

Vivian: Well, speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're front-runners or come from behind, find out what their hole-card is. What makes them run.

Marlowe: Find out mine?

Vivian: I think so.

Marlowe: Go ahead.

Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.

Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.

Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?

Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but, uh...I don't know how - how far you can go.

Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle. Go ahead Marlowe, I like the way you work. In case you don't know it, you're doing all right.

Marlowe: There's one thing I can't figure out.

Vivian: What makes me run?

Marlowe: Uh-huh.

Vivian: I'll give you a little hint. Sugar won't work. It's been tried

This HAS to be heard to fully appreciate the humor, double-entendres and wit involved. I don't know how that got past the censors in 1946. Phillip Marlowe, a short hardbitten wiseacre detective, is hired by wealthy General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) to stop the blackmail of Sternwood by  the gambler and gangster Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt) to make Sternwood pay gambling debts. This blackmail is centered around Sternwood's younger daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers), who is something of a sexpot. 


Sternwood also wants Marlowe to discover the whereabouts of his former employee Sean Regan, who recently disappeared and may have had a relationship with Carmen. Marlowe is watched and shadowed by Sternwood's eldest daughter, Vivian (Bacall) who has her own game to play and is quite capable of holding her own with Marlowe. Before the film is over the viewer is taken through a murky underworld of pornography, prostitution, drugs, aberrant (by the standards of the time) sexuality and murder. The film does all this with no nudity, no bad language and most violence off screen. It's all in the reflexes, as old Jack Burton might say. If you do decide to watch this do not under ANY circumstances see it in color. This MUST be seen in glorious B&W. Again, the interplay between Bogie and Bacall is just magnificent. 


Prank call     Trailer




Lair of the White Worm

What's Halloween without a cheesy cult horror movie? And The Lair of the White Worm, directed by Ken Russell, based on a short story by Bram Stoker, definitely fits the bill. This is a lush movie with lots of atmosphere, shock moments, hints of decadent sex and plenty of mordant humor. It really doesn't have a lot of gore.


It's only 90 minutes and moves quickly. A Scottish archaeology student named Angus -Peter Capaldi (and yes he does play bagpipes in a memorable scene) is working with his girlfriend/assistant Mary (Sammi Davis) in an excavation on a English Midlands property owned by Mary and her uptight sister Eve (Catherine Oxenberg). Angus finds a pre-Christian and possibly pre-Roman temple that appears to venerate some sort of snake god. He also finds an ancient reptilian skull which is not easily categorized.


The enigmatic Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) shows up at her estate again-she tongue in cheek claims to have been hibernating. She is very interested in what Angus has found. She also looks a lot like the previous Lady Marsh and the one before that as well.


There are plenty of local legends of how the ancestor of the current Lord D'Ampton (Hugh Grant) fought and killed a wyrm (Anglo-Saxon term for dragon) centuries ago in a cave that is not too far from Lady Marsh's home. The Trent sisters' father disappeared some time ago but suddenly his watch is found near the same cave. And the fossil vanishes from the Trent girls home. Suspicious, Angus and Lord D'ampton decide the time has come to see just what's in those caves and investigate just who (or what) Lady Marsh really is. This is a fun movie that is made more so by Russell's visual stylings, the English estate settings and Donohoe's lavish costumes and over the top performance.

Pat Robertson thinks GOP too extreme

I rock for Jesus, baby!!!!

You know you have a substance abuse problem when Robert Downey Jr. says he's worried about your drug intake.

You know you have a weight issue when Oprah says you could stand to drop a few pounds.

You know you have an extremist issue when Pat FREAKING Robertson says you've gone too far to the Right.

That's right. Pat FREAKING Robertson, the hateful religious fraud last heard claiming that the Haitian earthquake was punishment for a slave revolt inspired by the devil and that divorcing a spouse with Alzheimers is the right thing to do thinks that the current GOP candidates are slipping too far to the right, and that this will hurt the GOP in the general election.

I believe it was Lyndon Johnson that said, ‘Don’t these people realize if they push me over to an extreme position I’ll lose the election?’” he said. “Those people in the Republican primary have got to lay off of this stuff. They’re forcing their leaders, the frontrunners, into positions that will mean they lose the general election…They’ve got to stop this! It’s just so counterproductive!

I mean think about this. Pat FREAKING Robertson thinks the GOP candidates are too far to the Right.

This is the man who 

• Had lucrative diamond mining business with former Liberian President and accused war criminal Charles Taylor and former Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
• Agreed with Jerry Falwell that liberals, atheists and feminists had brought on 9-11 as God's Punishment. Robertson explicitly also made his own statement that his God had lifted his protection from the US as a result of engaging in or allowing non-Pat Robertson approved activities.
• Thinks that Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke as God's Punishment for being willing to cede land to the Palestinians.
• Thinks that "gay days" at Disneyworld will bring about God's Punishment
• Said that Hurricane Katrina was likely God's Punishment for US abortion policies.
• Predicted terrorist mass killings in 2007 in the US as, you guessed it, God's Punishment.

And there's plenty plenty more here and here

However the sun shines on a dog's butt every now and again. And even a nutty loon (or is it a loony nut) like Pat FREAKING Robertson may have a point. Perhaps the Republicans would be well advised to listen to the crazy "religious" man in this instance. Because if anyone knows crazy ugly extremism, it's Pat FREAKING Robertson. If you're guzzling down shots at the Crazy Bar and Robertson pulls your coat to whisper, "Hey, you've had enough to drink-let's go", maybe you should step away from the counter and not call for another round. 

QUESTIONS

Do you think Robertson is correct and Republicans are tilting too far to the Right?

Were you aware of Robertson's previous loony statements?
Does this mean the evangelicals may not turn out in force for the eventual Republican nominee?