Tag Archives: Movies

I have to stop reading Yahoo news…

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In the past two days, Scotland is thinking of seceding from the UK. Not too bad but I remember from my history that it had a lot to do with who was going to be the Rightful King than an anarchistic, freedom type of thing, when the two Kingdoms were combined in the first place.

The Chimp is critcizing Iraqis for the latest hangings. Like he didn’t have a thing to do with it.
Yesterday the Pentagon said that Iran has been continually buying military hardware through Surplus Auctions.

They mentioned a Pakistani arms dealer who was convicted in 1987 of dealing to Iran…. and who is now facing charges of doing it again as soon as he made parole… They throw a lot of names around but strangely not Ronald Reagan nor his merry band of pirates. The Pentagon has taken the Tomcat fighter out of service, so there is concern that, since Iran is the only other air force in the world which uses that particular model, might want to get their hands on some choice spare parts at a reasonable price.

They didn’t have a usable internet back then, but when Reagan got selected for president the first time, after spending four hundred plus days talking all kinds of smack about the Iranians and Jimmy Carter is a Wimp and he would handle things differently if he were president or by gosh his name wasn’t John Wayne ooops another Right Wing Hawk who never wore a uniform except in the movies.

Then the Ayatollah, who had sworn to bring down Carter with the hostage crisis just handed over the hostages as soon as Reagan took office, and we had this huge embargo on high tech stuff like airplane parts for the Iranians.

But then, for several years afterward they kept on flying Tomcat fighter jets, and anybody who mentioned the fact that news reports from the Iraq-Iran war kept showing Iranian Tomcats indicated that they were getting parts from america, specifically the General Dynamics plant in Ft Worth Texas.

But we ain’t supposed to go and get all nosey about these deals, no sir.
If we do we are conspiracy theorists and nuts.

Hannibal, Somalia

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NMT- US war planes bombed Hollywood again yesterday in an attempt to kill feared criminal mastermind Hannibal Lector. Human Rights advocates point out that Lector’s guilt has never been established in a court of law. Though his heinous crimes are documented in three blockbuster movies, Lector’s culpability is considered alleged until he has received his day in court. Military strikes meant to assassinate persons suspected of crimes are considered by international legal authorities to be extra-judicial executions. Still others insist that Hannibal is a fictional character played by a Sir Anthony Hopkins who has nothing to do with al-Qaeda, crime or masterminding. Spokesmen for the Defense Department first denied the raids but now admit that Hopkins’ Hannibal was not hit but for the uncounted civilians now dead who were in the way.

Scorched journalist policy

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Shall we speculate as to who is killing journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan? (141 to date in Iraq.) Well, the who is documented, much of it labeled “friendly fire.” Shall we speculate about the why? Forgive me if it feels like I am connecting the dots with a crayon.
 
A recent documentary interviewed some Iraqi journalists about their inconsistent use of flack jackets. The journalists said they choose not to wear protection around fellow Iraqis because they don’t want to be mistaken for working for the occupiers. But walking beside American soldiers the journalists do wear flack jackets because they are fearful of being shot …by the Americans.

Witness to a crime
We’ve all seen it in the movies: the protagonist is accidental witness to a crime and becomes targeted by the perpetrator lest he live to testify. Or the victim begging for life, vowing in exchange not to go to the police. Both victim and criminal know it’s an offer the villain cannot risk.

Massacres usually intend to leave no survivors because the dead tell no tales. Countless war movies have depicted the war correspondent happening upon a war crime in progress, recognizing immediately that a “stray bullet” will be eminent.

Kill Boxes
We’ve learned over the course of two Gulf Wars that our military employs such tactics as “Kill Boxes” and “Free Fire Zones.” Both describe a similar US M.O.. The first is Air Force lingo for an area bounded by given coordinates inside of which everything is considered a target. The airmen are tasked with killing everybody in that box. They have the discretion not to shoot something, but they will be held responsible for whatever they leave, authorized as they were to annihilate all.

Photo shown across the world except in the USA renowned Kill Box in 1990 was the Highway of Death, where thousands of Iraqi soldiers fleeing from Kuwait were incinerated in their vehicles. (American viewers were spared the graphic images.)

The Hague Conventions forbid firing upon soldiers who are no longer attacking you. Even cowboys know you don’t shoot somebody in the back. Both the Hague and Geneva Conventions outlaw the indiscriminate killing of civilians and other non-combatants.

Free Fire Zones
Kill Boxes violate all international conventions. They are as illegal as the US Army’s Free Fire Zone in which soldiers are ordered to fire freely at “anything that moves.” Civilians are expected to know beforehand to get out of the way. They figure it out when our snipers begin popping their family members’ heads off in their gardens. IED detonations now trigger automatic Free Fire Zones around the radius of the blast. An American reputation for ruthless overkill now precedes us. As a result, when IEDs explode, Iraqis have learned to run for their lives. Our soldiers lie to themselves that the escaping figures must be responsible for the IED, and are thus combatants. American Humvees carry extra shovels to plant on the bodies of the slain civilians to paint them as bomb laying insurgents.

The US has deliberately shot civilians since the Korean War, though this has only recently been revealed. In No Gun Ri, entire masses of refuges were machine-gunned to prevent fighters from passing amongst them. This policy continued in Vietnam, the My Lai massacre being unique only for having been uncovered. In war, Collateral Damage has always been a tragic unintended consequence, but by no stretch of a JAG’s imagination can it be a sanctioned consequence.

Secret and Confidential
Let’s speculate here… If military manuals exist with instructions for Kill Boxes and Free Fire Zones which explicitly require the killing of civilians and non-combatants, how do you suppose the instructions read for dealing with uninvited members of the press? The US military seems quite preoccupied with how its actions appear in news broadcasts. How might US soldiers be instructed to deal with journalists who stumble upon the bodies and capture the unbecoming bloodshed with their cameras? We’ll find out someday when a witness survives.

Neocon regalia

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Neocon Bald-faced EagleFor decades after the Second World War, German vets would get together in beer halls to remember the great days of the Third Reich. The Nazi cause may have become perverted, but its ideals were certainly grandiose: a Germany reborn as the worker’s utopia, a master race unshackled to bring order to a never-before united Europe.

My father grew up in occupied Norway. He remembers the incomparable German swagger. To this day he judges the authenticity of war movies based on whether the actors capture the arrogance of the German officers in their walk. I remember reading a Wehrmacht soldier’s autobiography reflecting on the initial ease with which Germany had overrun its neighbors. “It was impossible in those days not to feel immense pride in being a German.”

German regalia is highly collectible now, though my father remembers the days immediately following the war when Norwegians wouldn’t deign to pick up the Nazi medals, ribbons and flags strewn outside the German headquarters in newly freed Oslo.

Of course the German WWII regalia is collected fervently also because it was esthetic. A deliberate malevolence was courted by the fascists, a darkness amplified by the visual design of their uniforms, equipment and printed material. Albert Speer and Leni Reifenstahl were widely condemned for their contributions to the glorification of Nazi culture.

So when old SS veterans are clanging their glasses in memory of Germany’s grab for the brass ring, the nostalgia has quite a bit of pomp and polish. It was an Aryan dream in smart costumes and effective looking machinery.

Are ex-American servicemen going to look back at the U.S. adventures in Fascism with equal nostalgia? What trappings do the Neocons offer to distinguish their racist machinations? Wrap-around Oakleys? Kneepads and leggings? The mercenaries’ gold chains and Hawaiian shirts? And what stateside? Yellow ribbons? Cheap suits? Americans exude nothing but our simpleton arrogance I’m afraid. Yankee Fascism has probably required banality to disguise it. Later Americans will have to own up to our inhumanity and hubris with the additional shame that we couldn’t even transcend our ugliness for the occasion.

Holey Statistical manipulation, Batman!

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I know, the first word is apparently mispelt. Fear not.

I was re-reading the America drowning in corporate legal issues thread. I had a nagging thought to the back of my mind as to something being horribly wrong with the premise stated about halfway by our Resident Provocateur the lawyer. Michael put in a reply using verbatim an OPINION piece written by a man who Michael assures us is black, as though that makes a hell of a difference, but supposedly proves the good nature and all the good things capitalism has done for us.

The writer comes up with some startling “factoids” which look remarkably like the “why do liberals hate america?” bullpoopoo the right wing comes up. The first so called fact was on the lines “everybody knows Hollywood is making anti-business movies”. Ahem.. Everybody knows? Isn’t that an exclusive term, used primarily in statements you know from the beginning are going to be bigoted? Since I speak fluent RightWing Lunatic Fringie, I will pretend to be a conservative thinker and answer with the standard “well, everybody but YOU, obviously.”

And which businesses are being slammed? I haven’t seen many movies lately, but since a little later in the piece the writer was crying about all the middle class type businesses, and in what movies I have watched, even the more radical ones, these guys aren’t portrayed as villains, I see no point to that slam.

Then something about the Average Hollywood Star makes more money than the vast majority of businessmen.
Oh Kay.
Leave me correct the misusage of the English language here. Average and Star is comparable to using the adjective Stupid to describe the noun Rocket Scientist. Or combining two adjectives (Star can be an adjective as well, like star player) like “pretty ugly” or “awful good”.
And which exact Average Stars? Since the entertainment business is in fact a Business, complete with business agents, corporations, and indeed is tied closely with the other information media commonly refered to as the Press, wouldn’t condemnation of their businesses and corporations mean that he himself is Anti Business?

If he meant the Average Producer or Average Actor or Songwriter or Scriptwriter then he is talking about a group of people who make less money off their acting or producing or whatever careers than people make by panhandling in Acacia park.

The nature of the business, as with all capitalism, is that the vast majority don’t become rich.

If I go much further with this, it will be really really extremely long and I will wind up writing St Paul type sentences that last for a long long time and never seem to find an end and speaking of which don’t you just hate people who go on and on and on and never seem to shut up …

Kind of like republican commentators whining about how those poor International Corporations are so badly maligned, and that anybody who thinks otherwise is just plain abusive and anti everything.

Libraries public no longer

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Public libraries have become daycares for the homeless. A recent front page article in the Gazette waxed poetic about the sanctuary libraries provide for itinerants. The idyllic photograph of an prenebriated gentleman scholar was as inviting as a panhandler on the street corner actually. So, up for an afternoon at the library? Do you want to drop your kids off there and let them wander the shelves unsupervised? Followed by the odd mental-outpatient? Do you want them sharing desks and chairs surfaces with the quite less hygienic?
 
The public library is not for you and me anymore. And you know who doesn’t care? Barnes and Noble. Borders. I have a bookstore too, so I don’t care either.

The decay of the American library system plays right into the hands of bookstore owners. Let citizens buy their books. Let ’em buy their coffee while they hang out looking at books they have to BUY.

Those who can’t afford new books? Let them catch lice from the homeless. They’re about as good as a homeless person to the bottom line of the economy.

And let the libraries spend their budget on bestsellers and DVDs. Whatever the public wants. When they need something, a reference item, an item for their own personal edification or continued education, they’ll have to come to the book store!

The rest of the library crowd will be left reading dreck. Another base motive of the capitalists in charge. A healthy democracy requires an educated public.

And I’d like to be more clear. I do care. I’m in the used book business. We sell good books to people who read. Our customer base is not served by communities whose public libraries give them movies instead of books, bestsellers instead of good books. And no children are nurtured well if they grow up having to avoid the library.

Drumsticks for a New Year

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Drumsticks
On the right drum stick: Mario Savio’s famous 1964 rallying cry.

On the left hand sticks, a phrase from Dylan Thomas and two from William Blake:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Drive your plow and your cart
Over the bones of the dead.
 
No bird soars too high
If he soars with his own wings.

Here’s the complete text of Savio’s December 2, 1964 address at the sit-in of UCB’s Sproul Hall:

You know, I just wanna say one brief thing about something the previous speaker said. I didn’t wanna spend too much time on that ’cause I don’t think it’s important enough. But one thing is worth considering.

He’s the — He’s the nominal head of an organization supposedly representative of the undergraduates. Whereas in fact under the current director it derives — its authority is delegated power from the Administration. It’s totally unrepresentative of the graduate students and TAs.

But he made the following statement (I quote):

“I would ask all those who are not definitely committed to the FSM cause to stay away from demonstration.”

Alright, now listen to this:

“For all upper division students who are interested in alleviating the TA shortage problem, I would encourage you to offer your services to Department Chairmen and Advisors.”

That has two things: A strike breaker and a fink.

I’d like to say — like to say one other thing about a union problem. Upstairs you may have noticed they’re ready on the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall, Locals 40 and 127 of the Painters Union are painting the inside of the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall. Now, apparently that action had been planned some time in the past. I’ve tried to contact those unions. Unfortunately — and [it] tears my heart out — they’re as bureaucratized as the Administration. It’s difficult to get through to anyone in authority there. Very sad. We’re still — We’re still making an attempt. Those people up there have no desire to interfere with what we’re doing. I would ask that they be considered and that they not be heckled in any way. And I think that — you know — while there’s unfortunately no sense of — no sense of solidarity at this point between unions and students, there at least need be no — you know — excessively hard feelings between the two groups.

Now, there are at least two ways in which sit-ins and civil disobedience and whatever — least two major ways in which it can occur. One, when a law exists, is promulgated, which is totally unacceptable to people and they violate it again and again and again till it’s rescinded, appealed. Alright, but there’s another way. There’s another way. Sometimes, the form of the law is such as to render impossible its effective violation — as a method to have it repealed. Sometimes, the grievances of people are more — extend more — to more than just the law, extend to a whole mode of arbitrary power, a whole mode of arbitrary exercise of arbitrary power.

And that’s what we have here. We have an autocracy which — which runs this university. It’s managed. We were told the following: If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn’t he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received — from a well-meaning liberal — was the following: He said, “Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his Board of Directors?” That’s the answer.

Well I ask you to consider — if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something — the faculty are a bunch of employees and we’re the raw material! But we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to be — have any process upon us. Don’t mean to be made into any product! Don’t mean — Don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We’re human beings!

And that — that brings me to the second mode of civil disobedience. There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!

That doesn’t mean — I know it will be interpreted to mean, unfortunately, by the bigots who run The Examiner, for example — That doesn’t mean that you have to break anything. One thousand people sitting down some place, not letting anybody by, not [letting] anything happen, can stop any machine, including this machine! And it will stop!!

We’re gonna do the following — and the greater the number of people, the safer they’ll be and the more effective it will be. We’re going, once again, to march up to the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall. And we’re gonna conduct our lives for awhile in the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall. We’ll show movies, for example. We tried to get Un Chant d’Amour and [they] shut them off. Unfortunately, that’s tied up in the court because of a lot of squeamish moral mothers for a moral America and other people on the outside. The same people who get all their ideas out of the San Francisco Examiner. Sad, sad. But, Mr. Landau — Mr. Landau has gotten us some other films.

Likewise, we’ll do something — we’ll do something which hasn’t occurred at this University in a good long time! We’re going to have real classes up there! They’re gonna be freedom schools conducted up there! We’re going to have classes on [the] 1st and 14th amendments!! We’re gonna spend our time learning about the things this University is afraid that we know! We’re going to learn about freedom up there, and we’re going to learn by doing!!

Now, we’ve had some good, long rallies. [Rally organizers inform Savio that Joan Baez has arrived.] Just one moment. We’ve had some good, long rallies. And I think I’m sicker of rallies than anyone else here. She’s not going to be long. I’d like to introduce one last person — one last person before we enter Sproul Hall. Yeah. And the person is Joan Baez.

Special effects masked King Kong’s erection

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When I came across the headline MIRACULOUS SPECIAL EFFECTS MASK KING KONG’S MIGHTY MEMBER I thought, that explains a lot.
 
Virginal maidenHollywood convention:
Innocent white maiden
displayed for the taking
against her will
by large beast.

Promotional posters for Peter Jackson’s KING KONG remake show a Naomi Watts, even fully dressed looking every inch desabiller, facing an admiring Kong looking every missing inch a eunuch. What’s up with that?

What is Kong’s interest in his little friend supposed to be about in the first place? I don’t know, is Naomi the mouse who removed his thorn? Is she like KOKO’s kitten? Is she simply an aesthetic beauty with which Kong is so enthralled he must possess her? (Would art-loving in itself be necessarily platonic? I don’t know, can someone pay 58 million dollars for a Van Gogh and not masturbate to it?)

If this primate is in fact infatuated, even if he knows he can’t copulate with his tiny Fay Wray, it would seem only primal that were he to set his petite ami down anywhere to gaze at her, it would not be atop his hand.

And so there it is, the film is about fluff. There is no Mrs. Kong, there are no Kong hormones, there is nothing in Peter Jackson’s Kong world, like the Middle Earth trilogy before it, that has anything to do with sex, with the sexes, with what life is about. It’s like a film about race cars without wheels, not going anywhere useful.

You may tell me that I’ve missed the point, you may ask what do I think Fay Wray is screaming at, you may say that King Kong is sex, but I’ll tell he is not. The Empire State Building may be about sex, but having a hairy ape climbing to the tip of it is not about sex, with a partner at least. And what about all the dinosaurs for God’s sake! (If you think I’m a kill-joy, I’ll tell you that if the part of the virginal maiden had been played by BENJI, I would not have an issue.)

So this is a tale for children, western children, who needn’t grasp a sense of the real world until they are sensibly grown apparently. But there cannot be much good in perpetuating children’s stories to adults.

The problem with storytelling in modern times is bigger than Kong’s erectile disfunction. From today’s Saturday morning cartoons to the typical Hollywood blockbuster, there’s a distinct lack of telling any actual story. There’s an adventure usually, a road story at best, but never anymore a transformation or a lesson or something which an audience could take home with them to illuminate their own life experience.

And not only is there a lack of lesson or insight, there’s deliberate disinformation.

A not very profound example might be Hollywood’s interesting take on how to shoot a gun. Every gang banger has learned from the movies that a handgun is fired sideways, just as you would throw down a gang gesture. A hand extended straight out looks like you’re wanting a handshake, putting your elbow out to the side projects a dancer’s ambivalence of gravity, thus attitude.

Doubtless a gun held sideways is more attractive to film, you can get more of the actor’s face in the shot, but it’s impossible to aim a gun that way. Weight, recoil, even the gunsight conspire against you.

A simply nefarious example of movieland disinformation is sexless male aggression. When Wes Craven makes a film like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, or Sam Peckinpaw makes STRAW DOGS, or Stanley Kubric makes A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, community leaders are outraged, and those filmmakers are vilified!

But the studios are all strangely comfortable with American horror villains like Freddy Krueger of HALLOWEEN and Jason of FRIDAY THE 13TH, both on fruitless psychotic rampages. Even SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE features an intruder bent on killing, not raping the girls. Has there ever been a serial killer who was not motivated by sex, however disfunctional? Hannibal Lecter exudes all of the sadism of a believable predator, without any of the biology. Vampires used to represent sexual malevolence, back when there was just Dracula. Now vampires abound but they’re all zombies.

Am I intending to say that I wish American horror films were more pornographic? Absolutely! The violence is pornographic, why not throw in the sex? Does this exclude children from being able to watch? Certainly!

But I mention these horror films chiefly as examples of villainy depicted out of context. Villainy abounds in the real world, much of it disguised. Villainy abounds in the movies, and usually without a human face. It’s often mega-maniacal or psychotic, far removed from the reality of despotic patriarchs. This is one reason perhaps why President Bush finds it an easy sell to describe terrorists as simply evil-doers. Few in his audience seem to question that terrorists might have any plenty obvious motivions.

Why not describe a real motive or two in the movies? Maybe the world’s 800 pound gorillas don’t want to offer too many clues lest their real world villainies be rooted out. A culture informed about sexual aggression might better understand and respond to problems of gender violence, human trafficking, war atrocity and systemic abuse.

In truth, Shakespeare pioneered the archetype of the faceless villain with Iago, whose plotting against OTHELLO seemed all the more evil because Iago had no discernible motive. But Shakespeare’s devices highlighted his insight into humanity. Hollywood offers not even artifice. Its fables are just plain dumb.

Not that it is terribly brilliant to worry that Peter Jackson’s KING KONG misrepresents what gorillas have in mind with minuscule waifs. The marked absence here of King Kong’s genitalia may not be the most egregious case of cinema-verité violé, but I have to say I’m curious that it may have been pretty big.