Stephen King's The Dark Tower series has been made into a film which opens on August 4. The trailer looks interesting. I have not read the whole series which inspired this film. I understand that the series touches many (most?) of King's other works. I believe that King once wrote that this series contains many hidden and not so hidden sequels to some of his best loved novels. Certainly in many of his novels there are references to the Dark Tower and some of the characters within. Additionally, if I remember correctly, King also updated The Talisman and Black House to fit within the Dark Tower universe. The series touches on just about all of King's interests. It's not just horror. This movie is something that will be on my radar screen for the fall. This film will also provide an example of color reversed casting. The Gunslinger in the books is Caucasian. Idris Elba is not. Although an older white person I know tentatively expressed some concern over this I don't think that will make a tremendous difference in how most people approach the story. Either the movie will be good or not. From what I've read the film is not a straight adaptation of any of the books in The Dark Tower series but instead takes high points from the first and third books as well as mixing in stuff from the final book.
I like that the book and movie accept that revolvers are just better. There is something particularly and peculiarly American about the longcoat clad gunslinger standing alone against onrushing evil. It's fascinating how creative types use our common myths and archetypes to spin brand new stories that yet seem so familiar.
You might ask yourself why some white cops are so quick to use deadly force against unarmed Black men and boys. You then might ask yourself how long it would take the cops to arrest a non-police officer who fired shots into a police car that was moving away from him. And after you pondered those questions you might wonder if the system would indict a cop who killed a child for no reason at all or if the jury would convict such a cop or if the judge would give such a cop the same punishment that he or she would grant to any other similarly situated criminal. But this is 2017 America so if you're honest with yourself you probably already know the answer to those questions. But hope springs eternal. We shall see what happens to Balch Springs Police Officer Roy Oliver who, upon responding to reports of a disturbance at a house party, shot dead an unarmed 15 year old black boy, honor student Jordan Edwards, who was a passenger in a car that was leaving the location. Oliver and/or his police department initially *misspoke* (lied) and claimed that the car was backing up aggressively towards the officer. But apparently the video shows otherwise. The police department has since fired Oliver, who of course is trying to get his job back. At the time of this writing there hasn't been any arrest of Oliver. It's important to point out that Jordan Edwards was killed in front of his brothers who were also jailed for absolutely no reason. Imagine, as a child, watching your sibling die in front of your eyes, killed by the very people who are sworn to "protect" you. What sort of issues are you going to have throughout life?
Clearly former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton hasn't gotten over losing the election to Donald Trump. There's nothing wrong with that I guess. I'd be upset as well if I lost something I had been lusting after the better part of two decades to someone who apparently capriciously decided he wanted it after a dressing down at a dinner. That loss would burn any of us. Despite what her detractors might say Clinton is all too human, just like everyone else. No the worry for Democrats ought to be that the next Democratic Presidential candidate, whoever that might be, will spend too much time inhaling Clinton's sense of entitlement and grievance, and not enough time recognizing that people outside of the coastal areas, even white ones, get to cast their votes along with the rest of the nation. And no matter what you might see on MSNBC the Electoral College wasn't a Trump conspiracy cooked up just in time for the 2016 election. Clinton gives lip service to the idea that she could and should have done some things differently but what obviously still grinds her gears is alleged Russian influence in DNC hacking and the resulting investigation of her private server by FBI director James Comey.
Hillary Clinton delivered her most forceful critique of President Donald Trump's 2016 victory on Tuesday, taking personal responsibility for her failed campaign but also pointed to the timing of a letter from FBI Director James Comey and Russian interference as factors.
"If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president," she told CNN's Christiane Amanpour at a Women for Women International event in New York.
President Trump recently revealed his preferred tax plan. It is something that is as many people said, unserious. Of course that description depends on your perspective. The plan was something that many Republicans would support. Among other things the tax plan would radically cut taxes on businesses and the well off, eliminate some funding for ObamaCare, end federal deductions for state and local taxes, and eliminate the estate tax. If you earn a lot of money or have a lot of wealth then there's a lot for you to like in this plan. People who earn in the high six, or better yet, seven or eight figures, would make out pretty well if this plan were to be adopted as is. People opposed to the plan have spent and will spend a great deal of time going over the plan and pointing all the various ways in which the average taxpayer will get hosed, to use a verb that is safe for work. Detractors will say that this proves that all the people who voted for Trump are dummies. They will alternate between mocking the stupidity of the Trump voter and wondering how long it will take before that moron sees the light, if ever. They will enjoy this. And so on.
That's all good as far as it goes. As Jonathan Haidt has pointed out people on the progressive side of the spectrum tend to value the moral concerns centered around "care" and " fairness" very highly, even occasionally to the exclusion of all else.
Every culture and religion has slight to extreme different ideas about right and wrong. In most cases these differences of opinion are minor. People avoid discussing them. Or if the subject can't be dismissed people often take a live and let live attitude. In other instances though these different concepts simply can't exist in the same polity. One side must win. One side must lose. An example of this sort of dispute is the ugly practice of Female Genital Mutilation, which may involve a number of different cuttings to young girls' genitalia, whether it be snipping of the labia, cutting or total removal of the clitoris or narrowing/tying of the vaginal opening. It differs from culture to culture. But in Western culture, specifically American culture, this practice is looked upon with horror and outlawed. But as greater numbers of people arrive in America from areas where this custom is normal there will be more conflicts between those who are convinced they are living up to their religious and cultural requirements by having their young girls cut and those who seek to stamp out something they see as a horrific infringement on a girl's body. Two Southeast Michigan doctors were arrested for performing a banned procedure on two seven year old girls from Minnesota. The doctors, at least one of whom is an American citizen, are apparently both South Asian descent Shiite Muslims from a sect known as Dawoodi Bohra. If the case goes to trial it will be the first ever federal trial for FGM in the United States.
Sleepless
directed by Baran Bo Odar
This is a crime thriller movie which despite a talented and energetic cast suffers from some languid direction and a couple lazy stereotypes. Movies with black leads are few and far between but nevertheless I'm glad I skipped this in the theaters. It wasn't a horrible film but it turned out to be nothing that I hadn't seen done better before. Regarding stereotypes how many times do we need to see the aggressive female cop with a chip on her shoulder who's eager to prove she's just as tough as the boys? How many times do we need to see an angry black woman with an attitude who thinks that she knows everything? How many times do we need to see aggressively alpha male pugnacious hillbillies going out of their way to show how insane they are? At least once more according to this film I guess. The film's hero was far from invulnerable but that didn't make me see him as relatable. I've mentioned it before in other reviews but my experience growing up all those years ago was that black parents were generally less tolerant than other parents of anything involving disrespect from their children. In my circles if a kid even looked like he was thinking about talking back that kid would have a serious problem on his hands. And from the black parents I know today it seems to me that cultural expectations of deference towards parents haven't changed all that much. In Sleepless the kid yells at and almost curses out his Dad with no repercussions. Yeah. Well maybe. But not in my neck of the woods.
There were better ways to show the family issues. If the film had had a black writer perhaps it might have found them. Sleepless moves quickly, primarily because there's not all that much to to the story or plot. Visually it's ok. A lot of it takes place in darkness. It has the blue filter that many of these films like to use.
I've written on this before but it's an issue which is worth revisiting. The University of California at Berkeley, which is a public university, has gotten something of a reputation as ground zero for battles over free speech in the past and the present. University students and others have used the threat of violent reactions or actual violent reactions to prevent or shut down speeches by conservatives such as David Horowitz, Milo and others. The latest skirmish in this battle involves conservative writer and provocateur Ann Coulter, who had planned to speak at Berkeley on April 27. Berkeley required a number of conditions for this speech to proceed, all of which Coulter claimed she followed. Nonetheless UC Berkeley said that it simply could not guarantee Coulter's safety nor that of its students or other people so they cancelled the April 27th speech. After some negative reaction UC Berkeley backtracked and stated that an early May date at a different venue might be possible. That also happens to be when many students would most likely be in finals or off campus, so the possible audience for Coulter's speech would be much smaller. At the time of this writing Coulter is stating that she will give a speech on April 27 as originally planned. Period.This sets up a possible showdown between Coulter and campus or city police. This is of course probably exactly what Coulter wants.
As part of this generalized controversy over conservative "hateful" speakers being prevented from speaking at public universities, former Vermont governor and DNC chairman Howard Dean tweeted that "hate speech" was not protected by the First Amendment. Some writers and intellectuals that I otherwise appreciate and respect actually agreed with him.
