Movie Reviews: Count Yorga, Vampire, My Son The Fanatic

Count Yorga, Vampire
directed by Bob Kelljan

This AIP movie is similar to what Hammer later tried to do with Dracula AD 1972. It updates vampires for the modern era. The difference is that Count Yorga ,Vampire takes its subject matter more seriously. This film is an example of how low budget doesn't necessarily need to mean low class. The special effects are few and far between. The blood looks fake as can be. But nevertheless this film gives a pretty good bang for the buck as far as scares go. In addition, this is a pretty interesting trip in time back to the days of doctors who chain smoked, women who found bras to be too constraining and men who thought that tight gaudy polyester pants just screamed out macho masculinity. So there's that. The early seventies were a different time. As the title gives away there isn't any real mystery as to who the bad guy is or what he is. Count Yorga (Robert Quarry) looking and sounding like a Continental mix (even though he's American) between Dracula and Hugh Hefner is the titular bad guy. Yorga's making ends meet as a medium and hypnotist. He claims to originally be from Bulgaria. Yorga is conducting a seance for a woman named Donna (Donna Anders). Donna wants to contact her recently deceased mother. Donna's mother died suddenly from anemia shortly after she became Yorga's girlfriend. The Count didn't come to the daytime funeral. But he did convince Donna to bury her mother instead of cremating her as her will instructed. Donna doesn't seem to find this strange. At Donna's request many of her friends attend the seance even though they don't take the seance or the strange count very seriously. As the seance gets going Donna sees something and becomes hysterical. Count Yorga calms her down and hypnotizes her to forget whatever it was she saw. He also takes the opportunity to implant some naughty post-hypnotic suggestions in her head. Needing a ride home Count Yorga prevails upon Erica (Judy Lang) and her boyfriend Paul (Michael Murphy) to offer him a lift. Paul's not crazy about the idea; he doesn't like the glances the Count is giving his woman. Erica seems oblivious. Arriving at the Count's neo-gothic LA mansion Paul declines the Count's offer to Erica and him to stay the night. Paul is anxious to be away, especially after seeing the Count's silent moronic looking servant Bruda (Edward Walsh). 

Leaving the estate their VW van gets stuck in mud which wasn't there before. Since this is before cell phones and neither of them wants to go back to the mansion they settle down to do what boyfriend and girlfriend normally do when they are alone. The Count crashes their party, throwing Paul out of the van and having his way with Erica. The next day neither Paul nor Erica can remember what happened. But Erica is sick. She has a sudden fondness for eating live animals. Even in the wild seventies this was beyond the norm so Paul calls his best bud Michael (Michael MacReady), Donna's boyfriend, and the aforementioned chain smoking hematologist Dr. Hayes (Roger Perry). It's a weakness of the movie that Hayes is very quick to seize on vampirism as the culprit. I mean if you visited your doctor and told him you had a sudden coughing fit would you expect him to immediately pronounce that you were infected by Aliens? To be fair though once you see a woman eating her pet I think you might be open to some unlikely theories.This movie is not really a remake of the original Dracula story but it is very similar to it. A group of men must protect their women from the foreign menace. Again, unlike today's vampire movies, this film isn't driven by special effects. There's a lot of talking punctuated by long bouts of silence. There's also a fair amount of cleavage. The Count is a strictly heterosexual vampire. Only women, and good looking ones at that, are among his victims. I mean if you're intending on living forever you might as well do it in style, right? The best that men can hope for is a quick death. Yorga's not into sharing his growing harem. Because the special effects are minimal, paradoxically this film, low budget and all, has its creepy moments. It extracts fear from things like finding someone watching you, missing a wake up call, or realizing that your vehicle is stuck. Robert Quarry doesn't have a lot to do but he does it well enough. This film is not action heavy. I believe I first saw this movie way back in the day on either Creature Feature or Thriller. This movie will likely only be of interest to horror movie fans.
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My Son The Fanatic
directed by Udayan Prasad

I think that the question of nationalism is going to be more, not less, important in the 21st century and beyond. Although there are some people who believe that nation states and their trappings are crutches which humans need to evolve beyond there are also those who think that a strong nation-state with sovereign borders and independent economies is still required. People do not organize themselves by markets and economics alone. I might have more to write on that on a later date since I tend to align more closely with the second group. Anyhow the reason I mention that is that those questions are becoming more and more urgent as poor economic prospects, weak states, the fallout from colonialism, overpopulation and even climate change drive more people to move from the Global South to the Global North. The problem with this is that people and cultures are not fungible. You can not move millions of people from Area A into Area B without problems. If Area B has traditionally been peopled by humans who do things very differently from humans in Area A there will be some issues. There will be conflicts. Some of these will be minor. But some will be pretty serious. We see that today in the controversies over immigration to Europe from Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean. We've also seen people from Eric Clapton to John Cleese point out that London doesn't look like it used to look (and they don't like it). The events in this older movie (it was made in 1997) presaged many current discussions about Belgium, France, the U.K. and even the United States. Why are some people who grew up with European citizenship rejecting it in favor of something else. My Son The Fanatic is also a pretty decent love story.

Parvez (Om Puri) is a Pakistani immigrant to the U.K. He's a pretty decent fellow. Maybe too decent. He drives a taxi. Parvez is happy to be in the U.K. and considers himself English--or at least Pakistani-English. He's a Muslim but he's not going to freak out if he should have bacon or drink alcohol on occasion. And because he sees himself as not like those people in Pakistan he won't automatically immediately take offense if white Englishmen or Englishwomen make accidental or even deliberate racist comments about Pakistanis. No, Parvez thinks that if you work hard and keep a positive attitude, good things will happen. His son Farid (Akbar Kurtha) was born in the U.K. So he has no basis for comparison to anything else. He has a much lower tolerance for racism, deliberate or not. Based mostly on his father's wishes Farid is betrothed to marry a white Englishwoman, the daughter of the local police chief. But although Farid is too young to have a midlife crisis he's still having trouble trying to define himself in a country which doesn't feel right to him. When Farid detects some racist condescension from his putative wife and in-laws he calls off the wedding, chastising his father for naivete and lack of pride. More ominously Farid re-dedicates himself to fundamentalist Islam, sells off his guitar, rejects Western culture and starts hanging out with some dodgy characters. The father and son realize that they don't know each other that well and may not like each other that much. Farid's frustrations are long standing. They are as much personal as they are ideological.

Parvez has met the call girl Bettina (Rachel Griffiths). He drives her around from appointment to appointment. He tries to protect her. They talk and start to hang out. The duo realize that they might have something more than a transactional relationship. But it's then that Parvez discovers that his angry and possibly violent son may not be wrong about everything. This is a movie that is full of humor and heartbreak, just like life. There's a lot to be said for how different generations respond in varying ways to conflict. This movie raises a lot of questions about assimilation and identity-religious, racial, national. Parvez is a jazz fan. He is a man of South Asian descent living in the U.K. He is a Muslim. Are those identities necessarily all mutually exclusive? Parvez thinks not. Farid thinks that he can find the answers to life by returning to a mythical lost past purity. He also thinks that he should be able to exert power over people who don't meet his religious standards. Nevertheless, this film is not as simple as tolerance good, fundamentalist bad. Give this one a look see if you can find it.
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Prince Dead at 57

The jacked up thing about getting older or perhaps about life in general is that eventually all of your youthful heroes pass away.  Prince died today at age 57. That seems far too young of course. But you never know what's going on in someone else's life. And like the Mississippi Fred McDowell song points out, no matter what your plans might be, when your time is up "You gotta move". Prince was a huge part of the soundtrack to my misspent youth. They say that people often keep a special spot in their heart for the music of their teens and early adulthood. I have most of Prince's albums. I definitely have everything he did in his classic period from the late seventies to the early nineties. This is sad but it is what it is. Prince was one of the most exciting and eclectic performers, composers, musicians and guitarists out there. I don't think he ever fully got the credit he deserved from the rock press, who often dismissed him as a "pop" star or "R&B" star. On guitar Prince could play circles around many people but I think his true instrument was his band. Condolences to his family.
(CNN)The artist known as Prince, who pioneered "the Minneapolis sound" and took on the music industry in his fight for creative freedom, died Thursday at age 57, according to his publicist. "It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer, Prince Rogers Nelson, has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57," said Yvette Noel-Schure.
Earlier Thursday, police said they were investigating a death Paisley Park studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Earlier this month, Prince said he wasn't feeling well, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and canceled at least one concert in the city. Some days later, he took the stage in Atlanta to perform. After that concert, the singer's plane made an emergency landing, Noel-Schure told CNN. At the time she said, "He is fine and at home."

Prince has won seven Grammy Awards, and has earned 30 nominations. Five of his singles have topped the charts and 14 other songs hit the Top 10. He won an Oscar for the original song score to the classic film "Purple Rain." 

The singer's predilection for lavishly kinky story-songs earned him the nickname, His Royal Badness. He is also known as the "Purple One" because of his colorful fashions.
Controversy followed the singer and that, in part, made his fans adore him more. "Darling Nikki," a song that details a one-night stand, prompted the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center. Led by Al Gore's then wife, Tipper, the group encouraged record labels to place advisory labels on albums with explicit lyrics.

Saudi Arabia's Threats, 9-11 and President Obama

You may recall that there was a Saudi connection to 9-11. Fifteen of the nineteen men who committed the attack were Saudi Arabian citizens. Saudi Arabia practices, underwrites and exports a fierce puritanical brand of Islam, one which is implacably hostile to all other religions including other versions of Islam. Thomas Friedman gets it mostly right when he writes that  Nothing has been more corrosive to the stability and modernization of the Arab world, and the Muslim world at large, than the billions and billions of dollars the Saudis have invested since the 1970s into wiping out the pluralism of Islam — the Sufi, moderate Sunni and Shiite versions — and imposing in its place the puritanical, anti-modern, anti-women, anti-Western, anti-pluralistic Wahhabi Salafist brand of Islam promoted by the Saudi religious establishment. It is not an accident that several thousand Saudis have joined the Islamic State or that Arab Gulf charities have sent ISIS donations. It is because all these Sunni jihadist groups — ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Nusra Front — are the ideological offspring of the Wahhabism injected by Saudi Arabia into mosques and madrasas from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia. And we, America, have never called them on that — because we’re addicted to their oil and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.
So I wasn't that surprised to learn that the Saudi Arabian government, alarmed at the possibility that the Congress might pass a bill allowing exceptions to foreign governmental immunity in the case where American citizens have been murdered, made some crude threats about selling off US assets were that bill to become law. "Nice economy you got here kid. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it. You savvy??"


Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation. Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts. 

Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy. But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States. LINK

While I don't like ambulance chasers or attorneys/organizations who seek nothing more than to shake down institutions with big pockets, I also don't care for foreign nations trying to insert themselves and their interests into US politics. Saudi Arabia is hardly the first or worst offender but it seems as if their concerns might have been better addressed privately. If there is evidence that some additional Saudi citizens, in or out of their government, knew about, planned, financed or assisted in the 9-11 attack then I would certainly want them held accountable, preferably criminally but civilly is fine. I have relatives and friends who worked in or visited the World Trade Center. It could just as easily been some of them there that day. This contretemps also shows that somehow Saudi Arabia has forgotten who is the superpower and who is not. It might be time for the President to remind Saudi Arabia of that rather than run interference against 9-11 families who want answers and/or possible recompense. This is a larger problem than Saudi Arabia. There is something wrong with our political establishment and foreign policy when so-called allies from Tel Aviv to Ridyadh feel free to inject themselves in American politics, skim off billions in financial and military aid, insult our leaders and tell our legislators what they'd better not do. This needs to be fixed. One way that the President could respond to the Saudi threats is to declassify the 28 pages from the Joint Inquiry Intelligence Committee report on 9-11 which, according to former Senator Bob Graham, outlines a Saudi network which allegedly aided and assisted in the attacks. For what it's worth, as a candidate Barack Obama promised to fully declassify this report but as President, he hasn't done it. So it goes. The President will be in Ridyadh on Wednesday. I hope that he has something positive to report afterwards but I'm not sanguine about that possibility. It is important to remember that no matter what, each country has and will pursue its own interests. Saudi Arabia is no exception to that rule. This would be an excellent time to redefine our relationship with that country.

Movie Reviews: Anomalisa

Anomalisa
directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson

This stop motion animated movie is simultaneously offbeat and very traditional. It's also adult and explicit in a way that probably would not have been possible with live action acting with these particular actors, although you never know I guess. It's a beautiful movie with a message that you've no doubt heard a million times before but in my opinion never gets old. Enjoy life. Expand your horizons. Live and love while you can because sooner than you think winter is coming for us all. I suppose how much you enjoy this movie depends on how amenable you are to hearing those particular bromides again. All of us should occasionally take the time to stop and smell the roses. As Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. If your inner child or young teen could see the adult that you've become would he or she be excited and joyful or revolted and frightened? Are you living your dreams? Are you just slowly hacking your way through a dull and boring life? Or worst of all, are you thoroughly consumed with self-loathing and thus depressed at the choices and compromises that you've made in order to get somewhere that you're not sure you want to be anymore. It makes a difference. Our mental and emotional states can influence our physical state and vice versa. Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is a middle aged, out of shape and somewhat jowly customer service efficiency expert. Michael writes books and gives lectures on how to be a better customer service agent. He doesn't like his work. He doesn't like traveling around speaking. He doesn't like his wife. He doesn't like people in general. Michael is a sad sack of a man.

One way that you know that Michael doesn't like people is that almost everyone else in the film that Michael hears or talks to sounds exactly the same. Men, women, boys, girls--everyone sounds identical to Michael. That's because they're all voiced by Tom Noonan. It is kind of weird hearing a man's voice coming from a depiction of a woman or child but it definitely pulls you into Michael's depression and strangeness. It took me a while to get used to this but it does what it's supposed to do. Michael is lonely. He lives in a gray half-world where nothing he does or says makes any difference anyway. Arriving in Cincinnati Michael can't stop thinking about an ex-girlfriend he dumped, Bella. He wonders what she's doing and how her life has proceeded. He meets her for drinks but can't really find the words to explain why they're apart or what he wants from her now. Things go about as well as you might expect. Fleeing back to his hotel from that scene of emotional carnage, Michael runs into two women, one of whom, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) touches something in him. Unlike everyone else in the film Lisa has her own voice. Both Lisa and her friend are customer service workers who are at the hotel to attend Michael's lecture. To them Michael is something of a rock star. Showing courage and a little gamesmanship he wasn't aware he still had, the normally inept Michael adroitly invites the shy, insecure, slightly pudgy but also perky Lisa back to his room. The duo has some things in common that go beyond their disappointments and missed chances in life. And that's enough plot description. This could be understood as a romance movie but there's more to it than that. I wouldn't call it a romance movie per se. This is a strange little film that may appeal to people who are looking for something different and yet familiar at the same time. But be aware that this is an adult movie in every sense of the word. It is pretty interesting technically that puppets and animation can capture so much emotion and humanity. This movie takes a few different steps than you might expect. 

It is a movie that jumbles romance, loneliness, heartbreak and the sadness and joy of being alive all into one big wonderful fractured story. It is an inside joke that Michael and Lisa are checked into a hotel named Fregoli. The Fregoli delusion is an actual disorder that causes the sufferer to believe that different people are really one single person who is out to get him. This is of course what Michael and the viewer will perceive until Lisa's introduction. Kurt Vonnegut also did something similar in his book Breakfast of Champions. This movie will make you think about the masks many of us wear in our day to day lives and how those masks hinder or help us. If you don't mind stepping off the beaten path in some aspects, check this film out. 
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2016 Presidential Race

Lately few of the five remaining major party candidates have been having a good time of it in the polls or on the campaign trails. Most of the candidates made some unforced errors or were baited into making mistakes by the media or their rivals. The candidates seem to be reaching a point where their irritation with each other and the entire campaign process becomes more evident each week. Each candidate is digging deep to find weaknesses in his or her rivals. This interminable process is made even more unpleasant by the 24 hour cable news and social media presence. For every statement you make there is someone eagerly waiting to call you and your supporters everything but a child of God. When Republican consultants are asking other Republican partisans if their preferred candidate pays them more for certain unusual sexual favors or Democratic consultants and media talking heads are trying to paint the other Democratic candidate as the Second Coming of George Wallace you know that people are getting nasty and desperate. So it goes. Nobody put a gun to their heads and made them run for President of the United States.

Donald Trump
Politics is not war. But politics and war have some things in common. In both war and politics you can attack in different ways. There's the air game where someone comes over the horizon at 800 mph, drops ordnance on the target and is gone before anyone can react. There's lots of explosions and people running around bemoaning all the destruction. The nice thing about the air game is that you're in and out quickly. Few people can meet you on equal terms. You can shift targets at a moment's notice. The air game looks great on video. 
In the ground game you have to, as Sonny Corleone might have said, get up close to someone and bada-bing shoot them right in the head. The danger with this is that even a less technologically advanced enemy can still hurt you once you're both rolling around in the muck.The ground game is slower. You spend more time doing things that don't get publicity or ratings. It's pretty ugly on video.

Donald Trump is a devotee of the air game in politics. It's worked well for him. He's a bombastic man who apparently becomes easily bored. Trump likes to drop the hammer on his opponents and/or the media and move on to the next target. So far he hasn't shown the patience for or ability to execute the long slow grind. This means building an organization that will ensure that his supporters (and children) are registered and ready, willing and able to vote, caucus or become delegates as the rules require. Someone has to know all the various state rules and loopholes about obtaining delegates. A winning campaign must put resources into making sure that all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed right down to the precinct level. This can be boring work. It's not as exciting as stream of consciousness pep rallies, nasty tweets about how ugly your opponent's wife is or calling into MSNBC or FOX and boasting about the size of your Wee Willie. If you're ignorant of the rules and ignore your ground game you'll find yourself losing Colorado and Wisconsin to Ted Cruz. That's annoying. This is why Trump hired strategist Paul Manafort to ensure that Trump gets every delegate to which he's entitled and to bring some structure to his campaign. The race will be closer than it should but most of the remaining Republican contests are on Trump friendly turf. I think Trump will be the nominee. And I think he will clinch the nomination before the convention. But if he doesn't my won't that be entertaining!


Hillary Clinton

Her aura of inevitability has been a bit damaged of late with a string of Sanders victories. However because of the rules of the contests and the choices of the voters, it's almost but not quite impossible for Sanders to catch up to Clinton in pledged delegates. For example over the weekend Sanders beat Clinton decisively in Wyoming. But Clinton walked away with just as many pledged delegates from that state as Sanders did. In order to lose to Sanders in pledged delegates Clinton would need to lose almost all of the remaining contests by insane margins (70-30, 90-10,80-20) which probably won't happen. Additionally Clinton still has a commanding lead among Democratic superdelegates. At this time, Clinton is leading decisively in New York. If she wins convincingly there the air could start to leak out of the Sanders balloon. That poll could be meaningless of course. But ultimately Clinton's campaign is the Borg model of Democratic politics. Resistance is futile. Your opinions are irrelevant. You will be assimilated. Absent her or her husband going off script and making some racial faux pas it would be the political upset of the century should she lose the nomination to Sanders when all is said and done. Sanders is certainly putting Mrs. Clinton through her paces. Her flashes of irritation and the constant charges of sexism emanating from her followers and media surrogates show that Clinton never expected to be in this sort of tussle with an old socialist from Vermont by way of Brooklyn. I still think at this time that Clinton wins the Democratic nomination. The important question is after Clinton wins the nomination will she and her supporters reach out to Sanders voters? Or will Sanders voters decide that they'd rather vote for someone outside of the Democratic party altogether? The snide back and forth between Clinton and Sanders over qualifications and the pompous expectation that Sanders voters MUST vote for Clinton in the fall show that Clinton may lead a still fractured party in November. Because her current range of possible general election opponents is so dismal, Clinton may not need every last single Sanders voter. As she is fond of pointing out, she HAS won the majority of Democratic voters. Sanders has not. There are some people who feel that Clinton is just a slightly left wing version of a establishment party that doesn't disagree all that much on things like foreign policy, privacy, law enforcement, monetary policy, capitalism, etc. Those people may say to hell with it and vote for another candidate.


John Kasich

There is no mathematical way that John Kasich can win the Republican nomination before the convention. He's too far behind. His only hope appears to be to stay in the race and win just enough to deny Trump or Cruz the nomination. Then, in a contested convention, Kasich will pour everything he's got into an argument to convince delegates that Cruz and Trump have too many negatives to win in the general election. So they should then go with a winner like Kasich. Kasich just all but called Trump Sauron and has made similar statements about Cruz in the past. There are some polls and other indicators that show Kasich doing better against Sanders or Clinton in the fall. But the ironic thing is that Kasich only appears moderate and mild tempered in comparison to Trump or Cruz. He's got his own history of personal harshness and hard right viewpoints. Of course Kasich could be angling for a VP spot. It wouldn't be the first time that a tough rival got the booby prize of American politics. The problem with Kasich's plan is that the nomination rules do not currently allow for him to be nominated. A nominee must have won the majority of delegates in at least eight states to be nominated. Kasisch hasn't done that and isn't likely to do it in the states remaining. So implicitly he's arguing to be selected as much as elected. But given the high negatives that Cruz and Trump bring, a little bit of convention chicanery might save the Republican party from itself in the fall. But be that as it may it doesn't mean that Kasich should benefit from it. The American electorate isn't clamoring for Kasich. And they've told him that already.



Ted Cruz

The Canadian Conservative Crusader has looked like he has the wind beneath his wings. He came across as human and even sympathetic in the dust up over Trump insulting Heidi Cruz's looks. And unlike Trump, who seems like the know it all blowhard who thinks he can guess his way through the multiple choice final exam, Senator Cruz comes across as the smarmy dedicated student who constantly asks for extra work, reminds an absentminded professor of the promised pop quiz and refuses to share his notes with fellow students who couldn't hear what the professor said. Nobody in the Republican establishment much likes Cruz but many of them appear to be signalling that they like Trump even less. It still remains a source of amusement to me that many of the diehard birthers who couldn't accept that President Obama was born in the US, could be voting for a man who was born in Canada. But that's life. Most people who know Cruz will tell you that he's a smart man. They may think he's a jerk but few people question his intelligence or political skills. Cruz could also be angling for a VP spot or other cabinet position though again it's hard to see how you work for someone who implied ugly things about your wife. Cruz won't catch Trump in the race but he definitely could prevent Trump from reaching the 1237 delegates needed to win the nomination. And if he does that, well then he can contest the convention by arguing that Trump's negatives with everyone, including Republican women, make it impossible to select Trump as the nominee. Left unsaid that while Trump is apparently not that invested in the pro-life, anti-gay marriage stance of many conservatives, Cruz definitely is. This could, properly framed in a general election, be devastating to a Cruz helmed ticket. Cruz is the hard right winger whom many conservatives say they've been waiting for. Perhaps it will take a beatdown of Mondalesque proportions for Republicans to realize that the hard right can't win a national election just by being well, hard right. We'll see.



Bernie Sanders

Sanders has been kicking around longer than anyone thought he could, maybe even Sanders himself. It's only recently that Team Clinton has started to take him seriously, perhaps because it's been a while since Sanders has lost to Clinton. Sanders made a critical mistake in not going after the black vote earlier. In the South the Democratic voter base is disproportionately black. Sanders was and still is easily caricatured as a clueless out of touch white liberal who is tone deaf to specifically black voter concerns. There might be something to that insofar as talking solely about class when people have interests that are touched by class, race and gender doesn't tell people what they want to hear. And you don't get people to vote for you by not telling them what they want to hear, at least some of the time. There are some Clinton supporters for whom blunt identity politics is the reason for voting for Clinton. As one Clinton supporter was quoted saying in the NYT, "It's time for someone with a womb" to be in the White House. Every politician panders of course but if some voters in the Democratic base won't support Sanders because of his race or gender then there's not much Sanders can do about that. People have criticized Sanders, in both reasoned and ridiculous ways, for his "pie-in-the-sky" plans and lack of details about working with Congress and the Courts. That's fair enough I guess. But let's remember that the current President told everyone after winning the nomination that his election would be remembered years later as a time when everyone looked back and realized that that was when the oceans stopped rising and the planet began to heal. Politicians make lofty promises. It's what they do. Anyway I don't think things look so good for Sanders going forward. His misguided but noble attempt to avoid getting negative with Clinton and his late outreach to black voters left him in a hole that's probably too hard to climb out from in the current atmosphere. New York could be his last stand. The poison arrows are flying fast and furious against Sanders. He's definitely shaking the pillars of heaven. People are worried that he could win or do serious damage to Clinton.

HBO Game of Thrones Season 6 Trailer(3)

Well well well. Another trailer drops. Apparently HBO has finally decided to throw us some more crumbs before the new season starts on April 24. Enjoy. Unlike the previous trailer, which was just expanded from what had been already put out there, this one has new footage. What do you think?
UPDATE: New clips are available below the jump.


          

Television Reviews: Bates Motel and Damien

Some stories don't lend themselves to rewarding and interesting prequels. Not everyone has the talent or desire to dream up new backstory for a pre-existing tale, particularly if he or she didn't create the original story. Since we already know the story ending, the narrative conclusion is fixed. The creator may be unable to hold interest with a prequel. But if the original story left previous events unexplained or only vaguely detailed, the creator could make a lavish backstory that's independent.  The creator can birth a new work that expands on and gives new insights into the original story. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't. Two A&E series, Bates Motel and Damien, provide different examples of prequel/reboot success. Bates Motel, a updated prequel of Psycho, featuring Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) and Norma Bates (Vera Farmiga) is an example of a prequel that works. It has its own energy and plot. Though it's apparently inexorably moving toward the day where Norman will commit matricide and live out his remaining days pretending that he's his mother and "talking" to her, Bates Motel has enough quirks to lure the viewer and get him or her excited and unsure about what happens next. We know the big picture, but the devil's in the details. The Psycho story is stuffed to the brim with Freudian and Oedipal overtones. The show's writing and incisive acting of the two main characters breathe life into a trope that's almost a cliche now. Although the displayed unhealthy mother: son relationship is mostly subtext it's still noticeable enough to make the viewer and some in-universe characters more than a little creeped out. For most parents not named Norma Bates there comes a time when certain parental behaviors or activities aren't appropriate with their child, particularly if the child is opposite sex and post-puberty. Norma Bates is not necessarily an evil woman but she is a manipulative, deceitful and frequently bossy one. In the current season Norma has finally realized that her son Norman is unwell. She can't protect Norman from the outside world or his own demons. 

Well actually, Norma is more worried about protecting herself from Norman. It must be a scary thing to know that a loved one who is physically stronger than you has gone round the bend. Or from Norman's pov it must be a scary thing to know that your mother sees you primarily as an extension of herself.

The viewer can decide if Norma knows that her mollycoddling of and frequent lack of modesty around Norman, recurrent sleeping with him in the same bed, or sudden bouts of rage have helped to further psychologically twist her son. Norman may have just been born bad. At this point (Season 4), Norman has murdered at least 5 people, some of whom Norma doesn't know about. Norma has all sorts of serious emotional damage of her own to process. As a young woman, Norma may or may not have been raped by her brother Caleb (Kenny Johnson from The Shield). The product of this act, Norma's first son Dylan (Max Thieriot) is the relatively reasonable member of the Bates clan. Dylan is surprisingly well adjusted considering that he's recently learned that his father is also his uncle. Dylan has a love-hate relationship with both of his parents.  Dylan tries to look out for his little half-brother Norman when he can. Dylan is also a low key drug dealer/producer/wholesaler with a heart of gold. But that's ok as Norma's new husband, the local sheriff Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell), is a ranking member of a local syndicate that primarily produces and distributes marijuana. The taciturn, sarcastic, and pragmatic Sheriff Romero is no stranger to murder either, as long as he can justify it by claiming to protect the town. For quite some time Romero has been carrying a torch for Norma while feigning indifference.  Romero agreed to marry Norma so that the couple can put Norman on the Sheriff's medical plan. Got all that? Good because having been guilt tripped by Norma into signing himself into a home for psychologically disturbed people, Norma has come to believe two contradictory things (1) he is Norma and (2) it's Norma who's doing all the killing. It probably doesn't help his fragile state of mind that when Norma's away Norman likes to play dress up. 

For a man who is frightened, resentful or disdainful of most people, ESPECIALLY women, prissy Norman ends up in far too many situations where good looking women want to share something special with him. This usually doesn't end well. So that's a wee bit unrealistic. Bates Motel could continue for another season before I would think it's just going through the motions. There are few signs of rot. Farmiga's Norma is a perfect maelstrom of repressed anger, touching naivete, unreasonable optimism, biting sarcasm, unearned entitlement and frightening coldness. Farmiga is a really good actress. I also believe she's a show producer and director. I freely concede the show can be melodramatic and well, cheesy. But it's good cheese. Maybe catch it before the mold takes over.

Where Bates Motel transitions beyond its source material, Damien takes a different approach. It quotes from the source material in every episode. It uses flashbacks and props from the first Omen movie. Damien tries to position itself as the heir to that movie. It's a sequel of sorts. Obviously the story must play around with the timeline a bit but just as Jesus Christ did not start his ministry until he turned 30, the AntiChrist or first Beast of The Book of Revelation won't discover his purpose until his 30th birthday. Now, given that according to the Book of Revelation, the AntiChrist, the Devil and all their assorted minions, worshippers and supporters will ultimately lose and spend eternity in hell, you might wonder why the forces of darkness would want to start the End Times. Either they are people who lack future time orientation or they think the prophecies are wrong, at least in terms of who wins in the long run. #TeamEvil is ready to throw down. Their putative leader , 30 year old Damien Thorn (Bradley James doing his best to impersonate Supernatural's Jensen Ackles) is an orphaned heir and war photographer who while caught in Middle Eastern turmoil, has an unexplainable experience with an old woman who speaks to him in dead languages. Before too much longer he's having strange dreams, remembering events from his childhood (the first movie), having odd people talk to him about the Beast, and seeing accidents occur all around him. This last is really the ONLY dramatic event that occurs in every episode. I'm serious. About a third of each episode is Damien emoting bewilderment, whining about his life or doing Biblical research. Another third involves people from #TeamEvil or #TeamGood wondering if Damien really knows who he is and if so what that means for their future plans.

And the balance of every episode depicts people who mean Damien harm or are looking too closely into his business coming to unpleasant, bloody and fatal ends. Often this involves Rottweilers. Big nasty silent Rottweilers. If you see a Rottweiler hanging around your house that is your final warning to stop looking into things the Devil doesn't want you to know. On those occasions where a Rottweiller is too obvious, corporate executive Ann Rutledge (Barbara Hershey) is always in the background to defend Damien and deflect attention away from him by any means necessary. She tells Damien, who doesn't remember her, that she's been there since his youth. Apparently she's also the representative of the Thorn estate. The sybaritic Ann is old enough to be Damien's mother but pretty obviously has some intense non-motherly feelings for him, which are not at this time reciprocated. Ann wants to make Damien aware of his true nature. Although Ann is a high ranking member of #TeamEvil, she's not in charge. She doesn't have the whole picture. There are other people aware of Damien's nature who have completely different ideas about how to proceed. But pretty much by definition you don't make your bones as a member of #TeamEvil without being willing and able to do a little judicious backstabbing when needed. And Ann's a vet. She combines a hidden fanaticism with real world wheeling and dealing skills. Like any good corporate player when faced with an order she finds displeasing, Ann will studiously ignore it or reinterpret it to her own advantage. 

Megalyn Echikunwoke provides some babe factor as Simone, the sister of Damien's deceased girlfriend Kelly. Simone didn't want to believe it at first but is starting to become convinced that Damien really is the AntiChrist. It probably won't be too long before Simone starts seeing Rottweilers hanging around her yard. Of course as the damsel in distress/babe you might wonder if she has narrative immunity. Look the first Omen movie was good. The gleeful suicide, ominous dogs, strange accidents, classical music and grim murderous nannies all made the movie work. But times change. In today's world where US allies rape little boys while US military personnel are ordered not to interfere, where people murder albinos for their body parts, where people bomb Easter celebrants just because, where people would rather spend scarce resources on nuclear weapons instead of preventing public defecation and resultant health issues, it might be difficult for some modern viewers to be frightened by the possibility of the Devil and his crew taking over. In some localities it looks like #TeamEvil is already firmly in charge. So this show tries and in my opinion fails to convince us why we should care if Damien accepts that he's Lucifer's son and Hell's champion. Whether it's the writing or the acting or both, James' Damien comes across as nothing more than an empty vessel. He's boring. Of course he's not the only one. Most of the characters are more symbols than people you care about (the clueless good friend who's being set up to be a sacrifice, the skeptical cop, the babe, the Big Bad, etc). 

Only Hershey brings some real brio to her role. It's unusual in American television to see a 68 year old woman vamping it up in a non-ironic or non-comedic role. All the same I don't see how this show makes it to a second season. My interest declined a bit with each episode. The subject matter doesn't lend itself to episodic storytelling.

Bates Motel Season Four Trailer
Damien Trailer