Category Archives: Film

Evocative Ad That Wouldn’t Wash At The ‘Toilet Bowl’ Halftime

Aesthetics, Art, Business, Film, Music, Technology

It’s a beautiful and evocative ad, which explains why you didn’t see it during the ‘Toilet Bowl’ halftime.

Music makes an event, an ad, a movie, even a marriage. Who among us oldies can forget the sound track to the French film “A Man And A Woman,” directed by Claude Lelouch? Not me. This dates me—both as an oldie and an incorrigible romantic.

The fact that I identified the voice and song of Edith Piaf in “The Daring: No Regrets,” a new ad for the 2016 Cadillac CT6, dates me too. The text is good, the sound track beautiful—I can’t believe I used to mock Edith Paif’s overly emotional delivery. I guess it takes decades of Beyonces, Jay-Zs, Madonnas, Iggy Azaleas, Katy Perrys, and Coldplays; a Nicki Minaj, a Kanye West, and a Missy Elliott to make one appreciate a tune, a voice, instrumental proficiency; chord progression and composition, in general, to say nothing of the emotion music is meant to evoke.

Enjoy the music and the message. Steve Wozniak makes an appearance to drive it home. A shame that the slogan, “Dare Greatly,” comes courtesy of statism by FDR. To be expected, I suppose.

As expected, Cadillac has taken the next step in rebuilding its image by releasing a new ad entitled The Daring: No Regrets. First airing during the 87th annual Osca

BRAVO.

Bum’s Rush For Allison Williams (Daughter Of Brian Williams)

Film, Gender, Hollywood, Morality, Pop-Culture, Relatives, Sex

The phrase a “bum’s rush” means “throw the bum out!” Libertarians, the tinny kind that ignores the cultural aspect of liberty and civilization, will attack this post with hackneyed lines, such as that, Allison Williams, daughter of disgraced NBC anchor Brian Williams, is making her way in the free market. Leave her be. Don’t like what she does for a living? Don’t consume her crappy, pun intended, products (movies).

For one, it is arguable that Ms. Williams would be where she is were she not “a member of the media circle jerk,” courtesy of her father. For another, I never watch filmic effluent like “Girls,” in which Allison Williams apparently stars. All I know of this rubbish comes from perusing news headlines.

Like a lot of north American females, this girl acts and talks dirty (highlighted below). I’m no prude; do what you may in the bedroom, but why coarsen the public square? Whatever happened to privacy? Via Mediatie:

While we all watched the Golden Globes on Sunday evening, Gawker noted that HBO’s Girls began its fourth season with Allison Williams‘ character Marnie on the receiving end of some ol’-fashioned “booty eating” from her new beau.***

In advance of the episode, Vulture had a reaction from Allison’s father, NBC newsman Brian Williams, who gave pretty much the same answer he does every time his daughter is involved in a sex scene:

She’s always been an actress. For us, watching her is the family occupation and everybody has to remember it’s acting, no animals were harmed during the filming, and ideally nobody gets hurt.

For her part, Williams told EW about the scene’s creation, in which no butts were actually eaten:

I had a couple of days talking to wardrobe and makeup to get ready to rig the thing that I wore for the ass motorboating. It was an engineering achievement! I would manufacture it if more than one person a year needed it. [Laughs] It was so elaborate—it involved Spanx that we cut away and glued down and involved menstrual pads and two of those weird thongs. I’ve had to do scenes like this twice now.

The moment below, in GIF form here.

And head on over to Gawker if you want to view the actual scene.

***Prediction: This article’s comments section will be full of the predictable “this is disgusting” outcry, but take note, fainting-couch frequenters: The activity known as “booty-eating” is currently experiencing a cultural renaissance. [This is a non sequitur: An activity doesn’t become laudable just because the masses engage in it—ilana]

UPDATE II: The ‘Selma’ Or ‘Sniper’ No-Brainer

Affirmative Action, Film, History, Hollywood, Just War, Military, Race

“Sniper” Or “Selma”? Which flick would you rather see? I will pass on both. However, if forced to choose between a 2-hour long, historically inaccurate guilt trip, laid on thick by the MOPE (Most Oppressed People Ever), and an action movie about an all-American “son, husband, father, and, most of all, decorated military man”; I can see why “American Sniper” is a box office sensation, while “Selma” circles the drain. “Sniper” grossed $105.3 Million on the week-end of its release; “Selma” $11.5 million.

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the subject of the “Clint Eastwood’s biopic,” in my opinion, squandered his talents as an assassin for Uncle Sam. Kyle’s claim to fame, by the news media’s telling, is that he “held the record for number of kills by an American sniper. The Pentagon has confirmed more than 150 of his kills. The previous record was 109.”

As I wrote at the time the SEAL passed away, “live by the sword, die by the sword. Or in hippie speak: Kyle had bad karma.”

I’m quite comfortable stating that poor Kyle was not in the business of defending American liberties, as the mouths on neoconservative media insist. That the war over in Iraq saved lives stateside is a dubious proposition at best. To the contrary, there is more proof of the opposite; that picking off women and children and other invaded species, “when he [thought it] necessary,” increased the danger to Americans stateside from the victims’ community. (Unfriend and unfollow me all you like; that doesn’t change this immutable truth.)

Still, if “American Sniper” is an apolitical rendition, a human story about a controversial, conflicted assassin for the state—much like “The Hurt Locker” was—I can see the appeal.

UPDATE I: A day after I wrote “Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword” (02.03.13), Ron Paul tweeted out the same (02.4.13). He was denounced, of course.

UPDATE II: Writes pat Buchanan, in “Selma, 50 years on”: … “The era of marching for civil rights was over, and the era of Black Power, with Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown and The Black Panthers eclipsing King, had begun.”

UPDATED: A Sad Christmas Story (Letter From Assistant Director Of ACS)

Christianity, Crime, Family, Film, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION

“A Sad Christmas Story” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Described by a critic as “one of those rare movies you can say is perfect in every way,” “A Christmas Story,” directed by Bob Clark, debuted in 1983.

Set in the 1940s, the film depicts a series of family vignettes through the eyes of 9-year-old Ralphie Parker, who yearns for that gift of all gifts: the Daisy Red Ryder BB gun.

This was boyhood before “bang-bang you’re dead” was banned; family life prior to “One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads,” and Christmas before Saint Nicholas was denounced for his whiteness and “merry Christmas” condemned for its exclusiveness.

If children could choose the family into which they were born, most would opt for the kind depicted in “A Christmas Story,” where mom is a happy homemaker, dad a devoted working stiff, and between them, they have zero repertoire of progressive psychobabble to rub together.

Although clearly adored, Ralphie is not encouraged to share his feelings at every turn. Nor is he, in the spirit of gender-neutral parenting, circa 2014, urged to act out like a girl if he’s feeling … girlie. Instead, Ralphie is taught restraint and self-control. And horrors: The little boy even has his mouth washed out with soap and water for uttering the “F” expletive. “My personal preference was for Lux,” reveals Ralphie, “but I found Palmolive had a nice piquant after-dinner flavor—heady but with just a touch of mellow smoothness.” Ralphie is, of course, guilt-tripped with stories about starving Biafrans when he refuses to finish his food.

The parenting practiced so successfully by Mr. and Mrs. Parker fails every progressive commandment. By today’s standards, the delightful, un-precocious protagonist of “A Christmas Story” would be doomed to a lifetime on the therapist’s chaise lounge—and certainly to daily doses of Ritalin, as punishment for unbridled boyishness and day-dreaming in class. Yet despite his therapeutically challenged upbringing, Ralphie is a happy little boy. For “Progressives”—for whom it has long been axiomatic that the traditional family is the source of oppression for women and children—this is inexplicable.

Perhaps the first to have conflated the values of the bourgeois family with pathological authoritarianism was philosopher Theodor Adorno. …

… Read the complete column. “A Sad Christmas Story” is the current column, now on WND.

UPDATE (12/28): A Treasured Letter From Assistant Director of “A Christmas Story.”

Hi Ms. Mercer,

I want to thank you for the article you wrote on “A Christmas Story”. Bob would have really loved your opening paragraph.

My name is … I was a friend of Bob’s in addition to being his 1st Assistant Director on most of his movies, including “A Christmas Story” and “Porky’s.

Both Bob and Jean Shepard had “Jewish” sensibilities and there were plenty of the tribe working on the set and in the executive substructure.

In fact, the sign of the Chinese restaurant that the Parker’s went to was called Bo Ling. I mention this because the name of that restaurant was Bob’s recognition of my MOTHER’s contribution to his career.

The story of Bo ling occurred when my family was driving from NY to south Florida in 1961. It was getting late and we were all hungry when my mother shouted that there was a Chinese Restaurant at the next exit. Dad pulled off and as we drove up to the building we all realized that there was no restaurant but a bowling alley with the neon light of the “L” was not lit, hence Bo ling was later immortalized in the movie.

The only critical point that I would make is I think you should have mentioned that Bob and Arial were killed by a drunk driver, who happened to be an illegal alien. [

Again, I really enjoyed reading your article. Even after all these years it is still in the public consciousness and Bob would have loved that too.

REPLY:

Dear KG,

This note means a great deal; it’s of historic significance.

Thanks for the pointer against my point on illegality. Here is my counter to it, excerpted from an older article:

Bob Clark, director of one of the most delightful films ever made, “A Christmas Story,” and his 24-year-old son were both killed by a drunk, unlicensed, allegedly illegal alien. Geraldo and Jacoby, the teletwits of amnesty, both asserted that the illegality of the perp is irrelevant to the crime. “It’s not an illegal alien story; it’s a drunk driving story,” Geraldo noodled on “The Factor.”
Geraldo was serious, although he should not be taken seriously. So here’s my next question: For the Geraldo/Jacoby crushingly stupid claim to stick, they would have to demonstrate that had this drunk, illegal alien been stopped at the border or been deported, his victims would have nevertheless suffered the same fate.

Thus illegality matters to this story of lives lost. Had the Overlords in DC not facilitated the unleashing of this illegal individual, Bob and his son would be alive, at least on that day.

Warm regards,
I.