Movie Reviews-R.I.P.D, The Last Days On Mars, Guys and Dolls

R.I.P.D.
directed by Robert Schwentke

Sometimes you can get fooled into watching a movie because you see some noticeable names in the cast and assume that well that must mean there's some minimal level of quality. That was certainly the case with me and the movie R.I.P.D. I foolishly thought that a film that had Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, and Mary Louise Parker in it would have no problem reaching a basic level of distinction. Well that was a mistake. Actors and actresses can go slumming and/or do things strictly for the paycheck or to repay a favor or simply to get their name out there just like the rest of us. The other reason I wanted to watch R.I.P.D. was that it was based on a graphic novel with which I wasn't familiar but had heard good things about. Hmm. Well if the movie was in any way faithful to the source material I no longer have any interest in reading the graphic novel. The only good thing about this movie from my perspective was watching the Sports Illustrated model turned actress Marisa Miller bounce around. Pulchritude alone couldn't save a really bad stupid movie. I'm glad I didn't see this in the theater and am seriously considering if I can get a refund from my cable company on the grounds that this movie really stunk.

R.I.P.D. appears to be a low rent ripoff of the Men in Black franchise with a shout out to Ghost. It's got the old grizzled cop with a strange name (Bridges) and the smart mouth young rookie (Reynolds).  Even though they don't much like each other they have to Overcome Their Differences To Save The World. When people die most of them go to heaven or hell. As with any rule though there are some exceptions. Some dead people, generally the ones who would have gone to hell, decide that they'd rather stay on earth. I mean earth is better than hell, right. And if you were going to heaven you wouldn't stick around on earth would you.

In order to fight these creatures, known as deaddos, Heaven or some other otherworldly bureaucracy, has formed the Rest in Peace Division (R.I.P.D.) which is made up of talented former cops who weren't quite the worst of the worst but weren't good enough to go immediately to heaven either. So in a sort of limbo, they get a chance to work off their sins and avoid going to hell, by capturing or destroying deaddos. The Boston division of this group is overseen by Captain Proctor (Mary Louise Parker). She explains all this to the newly dead Boston detective Nick Walker (Reynolds) and pairs him up with Old West Marshal Roycephus Pulsipher (Bridges). Off they go to Save The World which will involve stopping the nefarious plans of Nick's former partner Bobby Hayes (Bacon) who murdered Nick, is putting the moves on Nick's widow and is apparently a deaddo. In order not to frighten their former loved ones or permit them to get attached to the world again, every R.I.P.D. officer is given an avatar, which is how normal humans see them. Bridges' avatar is Marisa Miller. Reynolds' is James Hong. Proctor evidently once had a thing with Roy, which he at least would like to restart. Skip this movie.
TRAILER






The Last Days On Mars
directed by Ruairi Robinson

Zombies in space. If this concept appeals, then this film might work well for you. It is the typical sci-fi/horror concept of putting people in an enclosed dangerous environment and having one of them get infected. So in that aspect it's quite similar to The Thing or Alien. I like these sorts of movies, especially when they're well done. This one is adequate. It's not necessarily a must see but there are worse ways to spend your time. It's believable for the most part which is more than I can say for a lot of films in this genre. There is an international manned excursion to Mars. This mission is coming to an end. The scientists have been on Mars for six months and are eager to be on their way back to Earth. They are irritable. They bicker with each other over minor issues. One of the scientists, a slimy fellow named Marko (Goran Kostic) manages to wheedle the mission captain Brunel (Elias Koteas) into letting him and another astronaut go back out onto the Mars surface after they are supposed to be preparing to leave. Marko lies and says that he didn't set a monitor properly. As the by the book captain doesn't want to hear it from his supervisors, he assents to the request.

This infuriates one of the other scientists Kim (Olivia Williams), who is a rival of well, just about everyone. She has already been shown to be a difficult woman when she was working with the mission second-in-command Vincent (Liev Schreiber) and his girlfriend Rebecca (Romola Garai). Kim correctly intuits that Marko is not exactly an altruistic or super responsible sort, perhaps because she isn't either, and hacks into his surveillance feed. It turns out that Marko is nowhere near his monitor. Instead he has gone to a canyon where he believes he's found evidence of viral or bacteriological life. He wants all the credit for himself. Unfortunately for Marko there's some kind of earthquake or rather marsquake and Marko is seemingly swallowed up in a newly opened crevice. When the team arrives they can't find Marko and don't have the proper equipment to bring back what could be Martian life. So they leave a team member there to look for Marko while they all go back to base. Well as you might guess one or more of the team is infected with this Martian life. The impact is to turn them into ravening zombies. And infection is easily passed to other humans.

Unlike The Thing there's not really a whole lot of paranoia if only because there's not a huge delay between the time of initial infection and the onset of ravening mad dog behavior. You don't have time to casually wonder, worry and fret as to who might be infected because you'll know soon enough. There are some desperate attempts to come up with a cure and worries about whether or not the party should even try to make it back to Earth. Obviously no one has any guns or other weapons. And getting caught outside with a damaged or broken suit is also an immediate death sentence. Mars has no breathable atmosphere and a much lower atmospheric pressure than is suitable for human life. As usual a few people do some stupid things to keep the story moving but that aside I still liked the film because it did capture the immense sadness of possibly dying alone on a planet that's anywhere from 34 million to 250 million miles away from Earth. The special effects and the reddish haze that one would expect from the Red Planet are well done. 
TRAILER






Guys and Dolls
directed by Joseph Mankiewicz

This is a droll fifties musical based on similarly humorous gangster tales by the writer Damon Runyan. In this world the gangsters are tough guys but they're really not bad guys. They might be bad boys though, which could of course explain why they're never lacking in feminine company. But there are no shootings, beatings, pimping, drug dealing, extortion, union racketeering or anything else like that. No in this milieu the extent of their crime is that they're gamblers. Other activities are either not mentioned or only very very obliquely referenced. The men in this film are tough guys with hearts of gold. This is an old school movie which in its way endorses very traditional ideas about marriage and gender roles. Where Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew featured a proto-feminist woman who refused to be married eventually coming to learn the joys of marriage and the wisdom of obeying her husband, Guys and Dolls comes to the same conclusion via its focus on men. Wild men, bachelors and players, must at the end learn to settle down, be responsible, sober and proper and learn to say "yes dear" to their new wives. Women are understood to "civilize" men and supposedly both genders are better off for it. In its way I suppose this film is really not all that different in source material and message from modern romantic comedies. There is a humorous "conflict" which, after some jokes and some soul searching, is solved so that everyone on both sides of the gender line wins. What could be better than that. And no one dressed as an overweight sassy black woman either. Go figure.

The dialogue, much of which was adapted from the stage version and the book, is really sharp, comic and often confrontational. Everyone is a wiseguy or a sharp dame. Obviously there's no profanity and no nudity though there are some depictions of showgirls in costume. 
Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) is a gambler who can't seem to find a spot to host his usual craps game. The heat is on from the cops, particularly the nasty and sarcastic Lieutenant Brannigan (Robert Keith) who has been eager to put Nathan away for good for quite some time. Most of Nathan's normal hosts have turned him down flat. Nathan finally finds someone to host his game but the fellow wants a much larger than normal hosting fee. In advance. This Nathan does not have. Nathan is also starting to hear it from his fiancee Adelaide (Vivian Blaine), who has become dissatisfied with their FOURTEEN YEAR engagement. She wants to get married immediately. She also wants Nathan to go straight. Nathan doesn't want to talk about either his future business or romantic plans, thank you very much.

Nathan runs into a similar soul, the dapper, debonair and INCREDIBLY self assured Sky Masterton.(Marlon Brando) It was odd to hear echoes of what I think of as the Godfather's voice emerging from a much younger man. Like Nathan, Sky is not exactly interested in settling down anytime soon. As he snidely notes: "I am not putting the knock on dolls. It's just that they are something to have around only when they come in handy. Like cough drops." Unlike Nathan, Sky CAN'T resist a bet. Knowing this and needing the seed money for his game, Nathan bets Sky that Sky (who considers himself a player par excellence) can't take a woman of Nathan's choosing to a dinner date in Havana. (The unspoken is also implied.) Sky agrees to the bet. Nathan chooses Sister Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) , an uptight, good-hearted leader at the local Save-A-Soul mission, who has also been getting on Nathan's nerves. Sarah preaches against vice, gambling and all that it includes. She's no fan of the sporting life. But her mission is empty as Nathan and his crew certainly aren't listening. If she can't get some people to come in to the mission and change their wicked ways, her supervisors will close down the mission. They don't think it's worth wasting time and resources on people who are inveterate sinners. Sister Sarah's also a little lonely. The predatory Sky soon finds a struggle between his desire to win the bet and protective or even much gentler emotions he didn't know he had.

This was from the golden age of Hollywood musicals and it shows. The sets and color are extravagant. People break out into song at just the right moment. Brando was placed into this movie because he was the up and coming star of the time but he also did his own singing and dancing. He wasn't too bad. The film is full of mugs with colorful names like Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Big Jule, Benny Southstreet, Society Max, Liver Lips Louie, and Harry the Horse. Everyone's got an angle to play but all in all these are well meaning people. It is interesting to watch a film made in the fifties which interprets characters from the twenties through the forties and yet realize that the more things change between men and women in the dance of life, the more things stay the same. The movie's predominant mood is one of light humor so if you're looking for that experience, here you are.

Well I used to be bad when I was a kid but ever since then I've gone straight as has been proved by my record. Thirty three arrests and no convictions!
-Big Jule

Luck Be A Lady Tonight    Adelaide's Lament  Adelaide

Original Film Trailer

Crackhead Mayor Rob Ford

Cocaine is a hell of a drug

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who recently admitted that yes he really had smoked crack, after a long time of denials, was recently seen on video in a highly agitated state threatening to kill an unspecified person. Now I don't much care what people do in their personal lives but I don't think it's too much to ask that the mayor of your city refrain from ingesting illegal drugs and vividly demonstrating his intention to commit bloody mayhem. But apparently that's just me. Plenty of people seem to like him. In fact his approval ratings had gone up before his latest admissions and the revealing of the latest strange video. You do wonder what it would take for some people to question if Rob Ford is the right leader for the city of Toronto.  In fact, as a Facebook friend pointed out, similar actions by former Mayor Marion Barry of Washington D.C. were used as prima facie evidence of Barry's utter unfitness for office, the stupidity of people who had voted him into office and as another good reason why the people in Washington D.C. did not deserve statehood.  Hmm. What could be the difference between the two mayors? In any event here's to hoping that Mayor Ford finds the help he needs to stay away from mood altering substances, including carbohydrates. Because watching him throw his tantrum I was rather surprised he didn't have a coronary on the spot.

Above the text, Ford — the mayor of Toronto — beamed out at readers from the news conference where he had just admitted smoking crack cocaine. In a drunken stupor. “Probably, approximately about a year ago.”

Despite the controversy, Ford is clinging to office, confounding critics and delighting supporters who say he’s done plenty of good for the city — despite headlines around the world that have splashed a bit of mud on the image of the gleaming lakeside city that’s arguably the cultural center of English-speaking Canada.“He’s human. We all make mistakes,” one resident told Canadian broadcaster CBC Toronto.

“If he smokes and saves me money, I’ll vote for him — even if he’s a bum,” said another. In fact, some polling data suggested Ford’s approval ratings had actually climbed in the days before his stunning announcement Tuesday after months of denials — as they had in September with the scandal in full swing.

Halloween and Blackface-Just Say No

When I was growing up long ago when dinosaurs walked the earth and Osborne Computers were state of the art products Halloween was something that as far as I could tell was primarily for young children. Because of religious/cultural reasons my family didn't celebrate Halloween so I never dressed up in costume or got to eat candy (another thing which was forbidden). But aside from teachers that would dress up along with their young, pre-high school, students I don't seem to recall a lot of adults or even older teens getting involved in the celebratory atmosphere. They could have been of course since being a kid I wasn't quite privy to much of what was really going on.  And perhaps I was just living in the wrong neighborhood. But that's just not what I recall. These days things are different. Halloween seems to have become much bigger and much more politically and adult oriented. Rather than a child dressing up as Spiderman or a Count Dracula, now children are dressing up as Klansmen. And rather than teens or adults dressing up as television characters or naughty maids, some people just seem to want to go for shock value and dress up in blackface.

Greg Cimeno posted a picture of himself dressed as George Zimmerman, with his friend, William Filene dressed in Blackface wearing a hoodie with a bloody bullet hole in the center of the chest.George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murder after fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin through the heart on February 26, 2012.The girl in the disturbing images, Caitlin Cimeno, also posted the horrifically racist and insensitive picture and described it as “just for fun.”

Blackface has a long history in American and European culture. It's never good. It can't really be separated from ridicule and hatred of blackness itself. For an apparently sizable number of white people, blackness remains something to be mocked. Evidently Halloween has become a time for some folks when they can literally let their hair down and share with the world the racism they've been holding on to all year. When people get called on this as they usually are once the pictures and/or videos leak out there are occasional half-hearted apologies but just as often one is likely to see or hear unrepentant admonishments of other's so-called "political correctness" or ridiculous appeals to "free speech". This last was promulgated by a supposed left-leaning civil liberties loving attorney who really ought to know better. It makes one wonder about the cultural sensitivities extant in this country when Ebay can be shamed into ceasing the sale of Holocaust memorabilia with apparently no pushback from those sordid folks who really really wanted that concentration camp uniform with the ever so slight scent of Zyklon-B but apparently it's an affront to freedom to suggest that people refrain from mocking an entire race of people.

As we've discussed previously all free speech means is that within certain restrictions the government is not able to write a law telling you what you can or can't say, act like or dress like within the boundaries of your own home (or other people's homes). The government shouldn't and can't send you to prison or to re-education camps for having the wrong racial views, as one thoroughly asinine commenter on Turley's site claimed. I don't advocate any such thing. If you want to be a racist or traffic in racist tropes, I say knock yourself out.  It's actually sometimes easier for me to deal with a white person once I am clear beyond all doubt that he or she has nothing but contempt for black people. It's a free country and like everyone else people wearing blackface can say what they like. Free speech however doesn't mean that you are free from other people's criticism of your speech or actions. And it certainly doesn't mean that your employer can't decide that your speech, even if it took place outside of work hours, is something with which it doesn't want to be associated. 

But the deeper question, which people defending blackface depictions can't answer, at least to my satisfaction, is what is so humorous about being black to some white people in the first place? Why is it that some whites or other non-blacks year after year wish to have ghetto parties, or dress like a n***** parties?  What apparently deep itch are they scratching?

A University of Michigan fraternity is under fire after scheduling a “Hood Ratchet” themed party.Theta Xi created a Facebook event for a November 7 party, entitled “World Star Hip[-]Hop Presents: Hood Ratchet Thursday.” “Started from da bottom now we here but now we goin back to da hood again!! [sic]” the since-removed invitation read.The event sparked outrage among minority students by specifically inviting: “rappers, twerkers, gangsters (no bloods allowed), thugs, basketball players, bad b*tches, ratchet p***y.”

Evidently there is something which is self-evidently tremendously humorous about being black. But I'm not getting the joke. Anyone care to explain. Generally speaking, and I've been around a while, I can't recall too many instances where black people have thrown a "Dress up like a white person" party and shown up in whiteface or stereotyped "white" clothing whatever that might be. No this racial mocking seems to mostly go one way. And the fact that it pops up consistently year after year lets even the most clueless observer know that racism is far from a thing of the past. It's part of the country's DNA and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I think that some of this might be reaction to the election and re-election of President Barack Obama. But most of this is just good old fashioned bigotry handed down from mother to daughter and father to son. The issue is that many of the people depicted will be in the future or are currently in positions of power whether we're talking hiring and firing, law enforcement or of course juries. If this is how they see Black people, and they are telling us that it absolutely is, how could any black person expect fair treatment. If you can mock Trayvon's Martin's death and you're on a jury with a black victim or a black defendant, can you really do justice. I doubt it. The reaction to a woman's Boston Marathon Halloween costume and the mainstream collective shrug to blackface/slave costumes tells me all I need to know.

Some whites talk a lot about the alleged racial divisiveness caused by Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or the other bete noire du jour. These blackface pictures are much more racially divisive. I don't think I've ever seen Jesse Jackson in whiteface...

Africa Themed Halloween Party

h/t Rippa

Thoughts?

President Obama and ObamaCare Statements

The problem with simple definitive statements is that if you make them, e.g. "Read my lips, no new taxes" or "We were not trading arms for hostages, nor were we negotiating with terrorists" or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" they need to be true. They don't need to have legal disclaimers added on at the end written in very small print or read aloud in a hurried cadence and low volume voice. And when it comes out that not only were the statements you made untrue but that also you may have had reason to know they were untrue but that you or your advisers decided that the greater good required you to continue making them, well maybe that's just good old fashioned politics. Politicians don't necessarily get elected by telling people things that people don't want to hear. Remember President Perot? Indeed. But for someone whose brand is that he's not like all the other snake oil salesmen politicians, definitive confident assurances that "If you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan. Period." are risky things to say right before hundreds of thousands to millions of cancellation notices are sent out.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe my eyes and ears deceive me. Perhaps the President was, as he recently implied, merely misunderstood by people who heard him speak on the PPACA. I know sometimes that people in my circles of work associates, family or friends didn't hear what I said or claim I said something different. So I can certainly sympathize with the President if that's what happened to him.

Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really like that plan, what we said was you could keep it, if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed,” he said. “We wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard, they’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan that they’re selling.”

Check out this video. I'm no policy wonk nor am I any sort of legal mind. But a slow Midwestern rube like me can certainly see how someone might have gotten the false idea that they could keep their health care plan if they liked it. Period. I wonder where they got that false idea from. Maybe it was John Boehner?? Hmm. Good for us that the President was here to straighten us out. After the fact of course. But better late than never I always say....

Book Reviews-The Damned Busters, Operation Family Secrets

The Damned Busters
by Matthew Hughes

This is a quirky book that was a fun read. Like many books these days it is first in a trilogy. I'm not quite sure that everything couldn't have been wrapped up in one book. The reader will however be curious as to what happens next. I am reading the second book now and hope that the series doesn't go the way of The Matrix trilogy. Matthew Hughes is a British-Canadian writer. Though this story takes place in an unnamed and presumably American Midwestern city it still has the kind of sardonic dry humor that I often find more common among British writers. I liked that. It's a little long and occasionally repetitive in one or two spots but hey no one is perfect.

Chesney Arnstruther is a low level actuary. Even among actuaries, who generally aren't the life of anyone's party, he is introverted, shy, socially inept and somewhat easy to push around. This last is the result of being brought up by his strict, religious, domineering mother Letitia Arnstruther. Letitia spends her free time writing letters promising hellfire, brimstone and damnation to anyone who offends her and especially anyone who is listed as a bad person by the TV preacher Rev. Billy Lee Hardacre. The self-righteous and almost frigid Letitia has an unadmitted crush on the Reverend. Chesney is also most likely a high functioning autistic. His world is dominated by numbers, statistics, doing what's right, and comic books. He calls those things his "pools of light" or areas in which he has a frightening amount of knowledge and can speak with total authority. Most other things he's either not interested in, unaware of, or fearful of getting involved in. The last category includes women. Chesney likes women and will often arrange his Sunday lunches in the park to watch women jogging or exercising. He has NO idea how to talk to women.


While Chesney is arranging a poker game at his house for his so-called friends (who only play with him because he's a horrible poker player) he accidentally hits his thumb with a hammer and bleeds over the five sided table. He swears but not with any recognizable profanities as growing up with a mother who washed his mouth out with soap for cursing cured him of that. Chesney lets off a stream of gibberish while his blood drips on the table.

It turns out that stream of gibberish just happens to be an incantation to summon a demon from Hell. And by bleeding over the pentacle, Chesney has done just that. The demon asks Chesney what he wants. Chesney refuses to ask for anything as this was all a mistake. Annoyed, the demon states there are rules governing such things. Chesney refuses to budge as actuarially speaking, selling your eternal soul for brief pleasures on earth is a very bad idea. He's adamant even as the demon and its supervisors tempt Chesney. Hell is now unionized. Chesney's summoning of the demon meant that it couldn't meet its daily quota of tortured souls and with no new contract to bring back, demonic management refused to lower the quota. So Hell goes on strike. This turns out to be a mixed bag for Earth as violence and crime drop but so does productive economic activity. Without Hell's tempters urging Pride, Greed, Envy and other of the Seven Deadly Sins Wall Street plummets. 

The Rev. Billy Lee Hardacre negotiates a settlement with Satan and the International Infernal Brotherhood of Torturers and Fiends. The agreement allows Chesney to keep his soul and do what he really wants to do, which is to be a crime fighting superhero, just like in his comic books. Satan assigns the demon Xaphon (who was last on Earth in the 1920s, was good friends with Al Capone, and talks and dresses like someone in a classic Warner Bros movie) to give Chesney superpowers and assistance for 2 hours each day. Disguised as The Actionary, Chesney sallies forth to fight crime. However he finds that crime fighting is not as easy as it looks. Things get more complicated when in both his Actionary guise and his real life identity Chesney is noticed by his boss' daughter, a tremendously beautiful but spoiled and mean woman for whom he has a THANG and by one Melda McCann, one of the women that Chesney watches on Sundays. The plucky and direct Melda is NEVER without her can of mace, something Chesney learns the hard way. The Rev. Billy Lee Hardacre also has an idea about what's going on, something which may require a revolutionary reinterpretation of all religion, science, morality and of reality itself. Neither Satan nor Chesney like this idea. But the reader will be delighted with it.






Operation Family Secrets
by Frank Calabrese Jr. and Keith Zimmerman

I had been wanting to read Operation Family Secrets for a while but had some mixed feelings about it afterwards. Frank Calabrese Sr. was a soldier/captain in the Chicago Outfit, who over time became one of the Outfit's most reliable enforcers, murderers and occasionally torturers. Although he occasionally gave lip service to separating business from family, he also brought his brother Nicholas and to a lesser extent his sons, Frank Jr. and Kurt into the mob life. More ominously Frank Sr. didn't really make a lot of distinctions between the threats and intimidation that he dealt out to other mob members or mob victims and people in his own family.
Corporeal punishment is still legal. Certainly a child or even a pre-teen or teen living at home might get a whipping from his father without too many people raising an eyebrow. But imagine that same father doling out not spankings or whippings but punches and beatings to his fully adult son. Imagine opening the door to your home right now as an adult only to have your father punch you in the face because of some mistake you made, something he wrongly thought you did, something somebody else did for which he blamed you or just because he's in a bad mood.

To hear Frank Calabrese Jr. aka Frankie, tell it that was his life. Most children grow up and get some level of separation from their parents. As children mature most parents reduce and ultimately put away authority that they exert over their children. This apparently wasn't the case in the Calabrese household. Of course it's easy to read this book and wonder why Frankie didn't either take matters into his own hands physically or just move away. Perhaps the first question can be easily answered by the fact that his father was a stone cold killer who when angry could and did threaten the lives of relatives. And killing someone in the mob without permission, even your own abusive father, would likely require retribution from the mob. That still leaves the second question though. Frankie was in the mob. He wasn't just a peripheral associate. He was involved in drug dealing, extortion and loan sharking among other things. Perhaps as a teen or young man you could excuse those things as activities he was bullied into by his father, which would be true. But as a grown man he had responsibility for what he did. 

Maybe I'm blaming the victim here but it was difficult for me to empathize with Frankie, because his familial experiences were 180 degrees different than mine. More than that I lost any sympathy when Frankie stole a huge amount of his father's money (I'd be tempted to throw someone a beating over that, family or not) and under the guise of family reconciliation in prison, taped his father's criminal admissions and musings. Frankie ultimately testified in court against his father. Frank Calabrese Jr. received a life sentence and died in prison. It's ugly read about how much a son hated and feared his father but then again this is the true face of organized crime. There are not any gravel voiced protective patriarchs running around in this story. When he was at home the senior Calabrese could not turn off the ugliness and brutality that he used at work. This cost him his relationship with his wives, siblings and children and ultimately cost him his freedom.

If you are interested in how the modern era Chicago Outfit works this was a good read. But obviously it's written from Frankie Calabrese's POV and by the end of the book I didn't care for him that much. He wasn't as bad as his father and that's all I can say. The FBI operation which grew out of Frankie's frustration and anger with his father ended up with a 43 page indictment and convictions of eleven Outfit members. Although this didn't destroy the Outfit, it put a huge dent in its operations. Who would think that they would need to check their son for a recording wire?

Movie Reviews-Sunlight Jr., The Conjuring, Pacific Rim

Sunlight Jr.
directed by Laurie Collyer

This movie is extremely well acted, written and directed. It's Oscar bait. It also takes a left turn (pun definitely intended) to put itself firmly on one side of a social question. This happens in the film's denouement. I was blindsided but some other people who saw the film thought that the twist was incredibly obvious and that I evidently simply hadn't been paying attention to earlier events. Either way afterwards I felt a little manipulated. But sometimes those are the feelings that a good writer/director brings forth right? YMMV on the ending. It made clear poverty's cost. It also might make you think just how far are you from a much reduced standard of living? This is a pretty bleak film that doesn't pull punches on what impoverishment does to people. There are choices that people make that are informed or rather deformed by lack of money. 

Anyway.

Melissa (Naomi Watts) is a convenience store clerk who lives in a motel with her boyfriend, former construction worker Richie (Matt Dillon- who seems somehow not to have aged at all over the past twenty years-good genes and clean living or deal with the Infernal Powers?). Richie is permanently crippled and lives off his small disability check. Richie's got a good heart. He is mechanically handy but also likes to drink. He hasn't fully accepted that he can't do the things for his girlfriend that he'd like to do, and no I'm not talking about sex as Richie and Melissa have a pretty active intimate life. I'm talking about simple things like buying his girlfriend a working umbrella or leaving the motel. Richie doesn't like that Melissa is the breadwinner or that his car runs out of gas as he drives her to work. Richie never feels sorry for himself and refuses to let anyone else do so.

This film, much like Collyer's past work (Sherrybaby), examines the lives of the working poor. These are people for whom a $800 unexpected bill might as well be $80,000. They don't have the money. Low wage jobs are all they have. They obtain food from food banks and store rejects and buy clothes at secondhand stores.

Melissa claims to be interested in a company college scholarship program and occasionally nags her officious and callous boss, store manager Edwin (Antoni Corone) about the opportunity but he's not interested in helping her succeed. His primary interest is in keeping the store staffed. The store is open 24-7. His second interest is in bossing Melissa around. He's the sort of low class person who really enjoys exerting power over other people. And his third interest, though he rarely makes this too obvious, could be in Melissa herself. It's close to sexual harassment. He says things to her that he would not say to a woman at his level precisely because he knows that Melissa has little choice but to accept such verbiage. 

Melissa's previous boyfriend, the volatile, abusive, and cunning Justin (Norman Reedus),a small time drug dealer, decides that he wants Melissa back (his restraining order has expired). Her nos don't matter to him. He certainly doesn't think a wheelchair bound Richie can stop him. This frustrates Richie as Justin is exactly the sort of punk he would have (and may have) beat the dogs*** out of before his accident. And wheelchair or not Richie is still game to throw Justin a beating. Justin's harassment of Melissa is also complicated by the fact that the entrepreneurial Justin is Melissa's mother Kathleen's (Tess Harper) landlord.

You can watch this movie and consider the differences between the ideals of masculinity and femininity and the real way in which men and women live their lives. If masculinity means providing and protecting, something which Richie has trouble doing, how does his "failure" impact his relationship with Melissa? And if femininity means being protected and having the ability to be soft, how does poverty impact Melissa's views of herself and Richie, since with few exceptions she has to be hard and brusque to protect herself as Richie can't quite do that. I liked the camera work here. You rarely felt that you were watching a film. It was almost like a documentary.

The way the film was shot brings home the claustrophobia and diminished expectations of everyone in the movie. Whether it's Melissa ruefully noticing that Kathleen's home/foster care is infested with roaches and bedbugs (which have hurt the children) or Kathleen attempting to bond with her daughter by awkwardly pointing out that at least Richie was never physically abusive, you get the consistent feeling that everyone here has a very very low bar for what they consider success. Richie and Melissa do have one sweet moment that hints at future happiness. There are some relatively explicit sex scenes, some extremely intense emotional moments and a few physical fights. You may know people in Melissa's and Richies's situation or even be in their situation. Hopefully this film will help lower the contempt for the poor that seems to be almost de rigueur in some circles. No black people were stereotyped in the making of Sunlight Jr. though the movie still can't resist throwing in a streetwise Latina who is Melissa's co-worker and best friend. Kathleen's husband is black and only wants some peace and quiet when he gets home.
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The Conjuring
directed by James Wan

Although I am certainly not opposed to explicit gore or sex in horror films, usually I find that the best horror films, the ones that really scare you don't always go over the top with explicitness. Some films do so quite well, like the infamous scene in Reanimator with a doctor who's lost his head but many of the classic films are more famous for what they don't show than for what they do. Curse of the Werewolf had a lot of erotic appeal for both genders though no actor or actress was ever shown naked. Horror is in the mind and the terrors or delights the mind can dream up are far more fantastic or frightening than another gallon of spurting blood or another starlet du jour taking her top off. Ironically the director of The Conjuring, James Wan, is someone who is equally adept at both styles as he directed both the so-called violence porn in Saw and the quiet frights of Insidious.
The Conjuring then is a definite throwback to the less is more school of thought regarding horror movies. There's no explicit sex. The obvious special effects don't make an entrance really until the final third of the film and even then they're quite subdued. Despite the scarcity of blood, this creepy little film is something which is both engaging and frightening as hell.

And it was frightening even as it mostly hewed to the normal processes found in movies like this. Supernatural evil attacks people who must find someone to help. The heroes have some issues of their own around their job but when the evil attacks someone close to them it becomes personal!
I don't mean to dismiss the movie because I enjoyed it but once again I found myself asking what would Supernatural's Sam and Dean Winchester do in a situation like this? This movie is understated and claims to be based on a true life story. This is a great film to be watched in the dead of night when you're all alone. You might think differently about that noise you heard on the steps or wonder what did the dog really see that made it bark so urgently. The next morning, is that knife on a different kitchen counter than where you left it? If you hear something but your significant other or children swear they didn't say anything are you okay?

Roger Perron (Ron Livingston), his wife Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and their five daughters move into an old home in Harrisville, Rhode Island. Perron is a truck driver. He has put almost all the family's money into a home large enough for his family. But almost from the start there are some odd occurrences. The family dog flatly refuses to enter the home. Birds crash into the side of the home and die. The family finds a boarded up entrance to the basement and re-opens it.  Carolyn starts getting strange bruises over her body that can't be explained by vigorous sex while her daughters hear or see things that aren't there. Once the dog dies, things get even worse, culminating in a seeming poltergeist experience, which Carolyn sees for herself. I'm sure that fictional dogs are tired of trying to protect or warn their humans. Just ask Sounder, Old Yeller or Grey Wind.
The family gets in contact with Ed (Patrick Wison) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) Warren, seasoned paranormal investigators, demonologists, researchers and psychics. Lorraine is the psychic of the couple. She's often frustrated by her husband's attempt to protect her after an exorcism that went very bad for her. If you're a movie or paranormal buff you may also recognize their names from The Amityville Horror phenomenon. They investigate the home and find (or in Lorraine's case) see evidence to convince them that there is a supernatural presence therein. After some research of local history and property records they even think they know what the presence is and what it wants.

The next step is to get a Catholic priest to do an exorcism. But the problem with discussing your plans in a haunted house is obviously that the presence which haunts it now knows all your plans and how to counteract them. So that sets up an epic knock down drag out fight between the Warrens, Perrons and their allies on one side and an unclean Satanic spirit on the other.
Great work, occasionally chilling, and always weird. Whether it's a sleepwalking daughter banging her head into a chest of drawers or a creepy doll that has a mind of its own this film brings the thrills with judiciously used special effects and lots of old fashioned camera work. If you avoid horror movies because you can't let go of your disbelief, this might work for you as it is quite grounded in realism. The sense of impending dread permeates this film. It is the scariest movie I've seen in a while. Even though Wan is using techniques that have been parodied by other movies and which we've all seen a million times before, in his hands they still manage to give the viewer a jolt. As mentioned this is based on a true life story. YMMV. But the Warrens strongly believe in heaven and in hell. Their statements and their real life pictures (shown at film's end) add to the seriously disturbing verisimilitude. The music is suitably creepy. It helps maintain the sense of unease that this film draws forth. Livingston does a great job as a young father who's just trying to protect his wife and family.
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Pacific Rim
directed by Guillermo Del Toro

This is an extravaganza of a film directed by someone who really knows how to do such things. It could be described as the thinking man's Transformers in some aspects I suppose. It's an action movie, loud and full of macho cliches, but under Del Toro's direction these work a lot better than in Bay's hands. There are no slow motion or down blouse shots of Megan Fox but there's also no irritating Shia LeBoeuf. So I guess that's a fair deal. Also despite some surface similarities, it's a completely different movie. The macho cliches work but on a different level they're also reversals of those cliches. At over 130 minutes Pacific Rim runs a little long but like all good movies you hardly notice it. I was surprised after watching it that that much time had elapsed. With only one small exception I didn't think the movie dragged at any point in time. 

In the year 2013 an interdimensional portal opens up in the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately however humans don't have the time to examine the physics of something that until recently was only theoretically possible or wonder about the question of why didn't all the water fall through the wormhole or what is the impact on the earth's gravity or tides of having what is essentially a black hole inside the planet. No, see the film is unconcerned with those questions because you see gargantuan monsters called Kaiju come through the portal and start wrecking everybody's stuff. These things are like Godzilla, if he was on steroids and crank and in an even worse mood than normal. The Kaiju have come to kick a$$ and chew bubblegum. And they're out of bubblegum. The usual weaponry like fighter planes, artillery, tanks and such take too long to work against the Kaiju, are cost-prohibitive in terms of lives or money or just plain ineffective. And throwing nukes against them would obviously get rid of too many humans. 

So being nothing if not inventive humanity comes up with something called Jaeger (German for hunter) machines. Jaegers are massive humanoid machines that have the mass and strength to go toe to toe with Kaiju and physically beat them down and rip them apart. Jaegers are also outfitted with oodles of cool weaponry including but not limited to howitzer autoguns, rockets, flamethrowers, and most memorably, swords. Jaegers are operated by a two man crew. Jaegers are generally too powerful and complex for one man to operate. And even two people can only operate them by linking their brains together in something called the drift. While in the drift the human will is greater than the sum of its parts. The drawback to the drift though is that you have immediate and permanent access to all of your drift partner's memories, fears, secrets, their entire conscious and unconscious, going back to birth. There is no privacy or separation or ego in the drift. Obviously most people can't tolerate this so drift candidates tend to be people with EXTREME self-control and/or people who are already emotionally intimate with one another on a primal level: siblings, spouses or parents and their children.

Got all that? Good. Because the Kaiju are coming in faster and larger than the Jaeger teams can kill them. Increasingly it's the Jaegers who are on the losing end of battles. In fact the human civilian command team thinks it's time that the Jaeger program was shut down while humans experiment with massive walls to keep the Kaiju out. Note the symbolism of the walls here because it's important, if a little overt. Separation doesn't work. Integration does.

The military commander of the Jaeger program Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba in a extremely Alpha male role) doesn't think closing the program is a good idea. Deprived of public resources he takes the program private. He's looking for good Jaeger pilots and thinks he's found one in Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam). Raleigh is a former pilot who's now working on building the wall. He used to work with his brother before his death and isn't sure he's got the stuff any more. He's nonetheless intrigued by Pentecost's challenge to his masculinity and more so by Pentecost's adopted daughter Mako (Rinko Kukuchi). Mako oversees the pilot training program and wishes to participate in the war herself though Pentecost forbids it.

The film's resident eggheads are Dr. Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Dr. Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), two rival scientists and Kaiju experts who have competing theories about the best way to defeat the Kaiju and what the Kaiju even are. They provide most of the film's laughs. They also get to play against the Hong Kong gangster Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), one of the sources of funding for Pentecost's program, a dealer in black market Kaiju organs and someone who, according to Pentecost, should never be trusted. Clifton Collins Jr., Robert Kazinksy, Max Martini, and Ellen McLain also star. This was a really fun goofy movie. Leave your skepticism behind and just have a good time enjoying the flick.
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Why Black People Generally Don't Vote Conservative

If you read what the blog members have written here, over time you will find a wide variance of opinions. Some people are strong feminists; others are skeptical of or hostile to feminism. Some are adamantly pro-life; others are just as profoundly pro-choice. Some are quite supportive of expansionary activist government; other people look askance at increased executive authority. Some are anti-war; others support increased drone strikes at America's enemies. Some people are gung ho about gay marriage while others think that linking gay issues to black issues is somewhat opportunistic and ahistorical. Some people's views evolve or change over time; others remain as rigid as Mount Everest. And so on. In short, just like every other black person in America, the black people on this blog have different views on different issues. And that's also reflected in and among the blog readership regardless of race or gender. That should not be a surprise to anyone.

Occasionally you will hear some conservatives (usually but not always white), express frustration and even outrage that in presidential elections, the black electorate usually supports the Democratic candidate. In fact since 1964 the Republican Presidential candidate has struggled to get more than 10% of the black vote and sometimes has gotten as little as 3-4%.

Such conservatives wonder then since black people also tend to show greater levels of religiosity and occasional adherence to "traditional values" why more black people don't vote for conservatives, especially social conservatives. There is a very easy answer to this which is embedded in the picture at the top of this post.

The post-Goldwater modern Republican party has made peace with and actively sought the vote of numerous whites who, as Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg first noted in his landmark 80s study of Michigan Macomb County Reagan Democrats, often have a profound distaste for black people and any public or private policy they think is likely to help black people. In a follow up recent focus group study on tea party conservatives and evangelicals and their attitudes about the President and the shutdown Greenberg found that race was still key.

We expected that in this comfortable setting or in their private written notes, some would make a racial reference or racist slur when talking about the African American President. None did. They know that is deeply non-PC and are conscious about how they are perceived. But focusing on that misses how central is race to the worldview of Republican voters. They have an acute sense that they are white in a country that is becoming increasingly “minority,”and their party is getting whooped by a Democratic Party that uses big government programs that benefit mostly minorities, create dependency and a new electoral majority. Barack Obama and Obamacare is a racial flashpoint for many Evangelical and Tea Party voters.

LINK

This hostility to black people flows through conservative thought. And as history is often just propaganda by other methods this animus has attached itself to the new film 12 years a slave. Investors Business Daily, a rabidly right-wing paper claims that much of the film is exaggerated, a white man wrote the book to try to start the Civil War, slavery wasn't that bad and that all this film will do is get the Negroes riled up. Seriously.

But historians suspect much of the story — which recounts cringingly graphic tales of skin-stripping floggings and paddle-breaking beatings — is apocryphal. They found the book was actually written by a white abolitionist who exaggerated slave mistreatment as part of a propaganda effort to bring about the Civil War.

To assure the historical accuracy of the film, producers hired Harvard professor and civil-rights activist Henry Louis Gates Jr. You may recall the name: He's the Friend of Barack who cried racism after police detained him at his Cambridge townhome a few years ago, inspiring the famous White House "beer summit" between the president and the cop he called "stupid." Predictably, Gates doesn't question the veracity of the slave memoir.

Slavery and Jim Crow were bad enough without Hollywood fictionalizing what actually happened in order to further a political agenda. Distorting reality only fans the flames of racial hatred. Hollywood should be careful not to give creative license to racial arsonists who leave truth on the cutting room floor.

LINK

This isn't quite the same as Holocaust denial but it's in the same universe. Hollywood usually puts out a Holocaust/WW2 movie about every five years or so. There are books about it released more frequently. Not counting Pat Buchanan can you think of any prominent conservatives who will publicly question if the Holocaust was really that awful or if a movie about the Holocaust ought to have showed the human side of an overworked SS Sturmbannfuhrer, who after all wasn't that bad if you got to know him. Probably not.

The Tea Party candidate for Mississippi Senator is seeking the support of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel (R), the recently announced primary challenger for Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-Miss) Senate seat, spoke at a neo-Confederate conference in Laurel, Mississippi in August, according to Mother Jones. The conference was hosted by the Jones County Rosin Heels, a local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Invitations for the event described it as a "Southern Heritage Conference" intended for "politically incorrect folks."

Actually, Mother Jones also noted, that event was the second Jones County Rosin Heels event he recently attended. In June McDaniel was the keynote speaker at the Division Reunion in Jackson, also hosted by the Jones County Rosin Heels.The Jones County Heels have been pretty clear about its secessionist sentiments, Mother Jones further noted. The group's newsletter said in September said that "we are living in the times that Jefferson Davis predicted would one day come" where the disagreements that resulted in the Civil War arose again.

McDaniel is considered a top-tier challenger to Cochran. Almost immediately after he entered the race, he was endorsed by the Senate Conservatives Fund, The Madison Project and the Club for Growth.

LINK
And lastly just as I was finishing this post a North Carolina GOP Precinct Chair was forced out for among other things complaining that whites couldn't say "n*****" and boasting that if the new voter id laws would "hurt a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything" that was fine with him.

     

The Daily Show
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There's more but I think the point is clear. I do not think that every Republican is racist. That's obviously not the case at all. But the Republicans as a group have jumped in bed with some very ugly people. Like anyone else who's made some questionable social decisions, they're infected with something that's not so easy to get rid of. Until Republicans can find the political equivalent of Valtrex, most black people, even if they really really LIKE the idea of low taxes, limited government, unlimited corporate power, no social net, strong military, and traditional social values, are going to reject any Republican seductions during Presidential elections. Many* black people finding themselves on the same side as people waving the Confederate Flag and yelling the South's gonna do it again, are going to immediately recheck their mapquest and get back on the highway.

*-doesn't apply to Dr. Ben Carson, Herman Cain, or Star Parker among others...