Category Archives: Film

Annual Oscar Offal

Aesthetics, Britain, Celebrity, Film, Hollywood, Music, Pop-Culture

The Oscar’s self-aggrandizing crowd is too much for me to stand, not even for you the reader. There will be some unfunny shtick. A precocious crappy kid will make a debut. At least one aging actor will be honored (in 2011, the distinction was Kirk Douglas’) and retired—Hollywood performs professional geronticide on the old—and hackneyed scripts filled with loud-mouthed, humorless, self-referential hedonists will abound.

The closest I’ll come to watching the 85th Academy Awards ceremony is “Fashion Police,” a sartorial send-up by Joan Rivers. She’s the only comedian and great wit who can get men to watch a program about fashion. Like me, my husband hates all “estrogen oozing” TV programing, but greatly appreciates Rivers. And rightly so. She’s lethal.

Adel’s monotone will be G-d awful, and while we will be spared Jennifer Hudson’s primal screams, Barbra Streisand will more than make up for the reprieve.

Other than lessons lost, “Les Misérables” represents great literature reduced to schmaltzy jingles, belted out by Hollywood starlets. The lesson lost: The “Les Misérables” I read as a kid was about France’s unfathomably cruel and unjust penal system, and the prototypical obedient functionary who worked a lifetime to enforce the system’s depredations. A similar power (Uncle Sam) and its enforcers recently hounded Aaron Swartz to death.

For those who care, here are the predictions. I’ve watched none of them. I’m most likely to watch “Flight” with Denzel Washington. The film got bad reviews, but I like the “disaster film genre,” although nothing will ever come close to Airport (1970) and its sequels.

Restless—I caught it on the Sundance Channel—is a BBC One production directed by Edward Hall of “MI-5” fame. With all its faults, Restless makes you realize that any British film, even a mediocre mini-series, is better than the American equivalent, big-screen productions included. (Britain retains the edge in this department.)

Today, ‘The Americans’ Would Be Ordinary In Their Un-Americanness

Aesthetics, Communism, Feminism, Film, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pop-Culture

“A simple morality tale—and one conservatives should especially relish. … an unalloyed cheer for America … hagiography of the Gipper … Paranoid thriller … a staple of the Cold War and War on Terror life. …” That’s the left’s take on “The Americans,” a new “FX anti-Soviet drama.”

Writes National Journal’s Matthew Cooper:

In The Americans, there’s none of that, just a celebration of American values. Phil considers defecting to America, which he lauds in cheeky but sincere tones. “The food’s pretty terrific. There’s plenty of closet space.” We like the Soviet spies only because they were created by a monstrous totalitarian system and are struggling to break out. (Elizabeth was not only programmed to be a spy but was raped during her training.) Keri Russell was given her start in the chick drama Felicity by J.J. Abrams, and he cast her Mission: Impossible III, where she showed her high-kick bona fides.
By contrast, the America of the Gipper is free, recognizes the Soviet threat, and is even progressive. Beeman has a minority FBI agent partner, Chris Amador (Maximiliano Hernandez), who offers proof that the FBI is dropping is crew-cut ways and becoming less cloistered, and the show notes that “there are only like two or three of them so they can’t get fired.”

As readers know, not for me are today’s chick-centric action dramas, where, “With enough will-power, an 80-pound waif will wallop a 200-pound gangster, sustaining no punctures to the silicone sacks. Her hulking cop partner is made to trot after the Great Woman obediently, stepping in to save the day only when crime and firefighting are impeded by stilettoes on the job, and a lack of physical prowess .. all in the tradition of the men-are-buffoons; women-are-brawny-and-brainy narrative…”

I am unable to become engrossed in such a parallel universe.

Hollywood had its Golden Age, back when well-written scripts reflected well-developed, multi-faceted characters. Today, Tinseltown is a monolithic, left-liberal automaton, marching in thematic unison, and subjecting the viewer to the same impoverished, error-riddled, preachy themes.
The evidence is in. Activism and abreaction have replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories in the repertoire of the pretty, pea-brained community.
A giant digit wagging above a captive audience: that’s Hollywood.

While, National Journal is correct that the series is “cartoony and a bit cheap,” and, “In its Manichaean view of the world, more like World War II movies than the nuanced thrillers of the postwar era”—it’ll hold the attention of conservatives, more so because it depicts a much happier America, one (oddly, apparently, to NJ) still dominated by the much-maligned (small “m”) moral majority.

However cute, Keri Russell, however, has an all-American look. She does not resemble a Russian beauty. The Slavic women—perhaps the most beautiful in the world—look nothing like the all-American Russell.

Milla Jovovich would have fit the mold.

‘Les Misérables’: Lessons Lost, Great Literature Defiled

Art, Celebrity, Film, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Intellectual Property Rights, Literature, Pop-Culture, The State

The musical is a loathsome form of entertainment. To debase a great literary work like “Les Misérables” by putting Victor Hugo’s words to catchy, schmaltzy jingles, belted out by Hollywood starlets—this reflects on the miserable state of the culture.

Not that I follow the Golden Globes Hollywood awards itself, but I believe the production called “Les Misérables” was nominated in the “best musical or comedy” category.

It’s quite probable that the self-reverential (and self-referential) crowd involved in the “Les Misérables” production had not read or understood the book.

One Fox News anchor mentioned that this song-and-dance was based on a book written in the 1600s. “Les Misérables” was published in 1862. I doubt Victor Hugo was 200 plus at the time of publication.

As a child, I read “Les Misérables”; Harry Potter type literature was not around (or rather, not in-vogue) to contaminate the mind and the imagination with poorly written phantasmagorical folderol. There is nothing like an historical novel penned by a master, to both teach and excite the imagination.

I do not recognize the book I read way back, in the gush and tosh being disgorged in pixels and on paper about “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo. I’m sticking to the version I remember.

The “Les Misérables” I read as a kid was about France’s unfathomably cruel and unjust penal system, and the prototypical obedient functionary who worked a lifetime to enforce the system’s depredations.

A similar power (Uncle Sam) and its enforcers recently hounded Aaron Swartz to death. (As a lefty, Swartz would not have defended my rights to be left alone by government, but then we libertarains are not like them. And more of us (libertarians) than them (leftists) understand that “Patents And Copyrights Undermine Private Property.”)

The Comfort of Strangers

Family, Film, Hollywood, Ilana Mercer, Race, Racism

Thank you all, on Facebook and beyond, for wishing me a happy birthday in so many nice ways.

These many wishes, mostly from strangers, made me think of the one and only message I took away from Gran Torino, an awfully mundane, politically correct flick, in which the white old veteran is depicted as the rank racist; his Hmong neighbors—a South-east Asian minority that contributes significantly to crime in the US—act as founts of multicultural wisdom.

Walt Kowalski, “played with grandstanding gusto and unfakeable star quality by Clint Eastwood,” is treated with callousness by his family and great kindness by the cloistered Hmong, who, paradoxically, attempt to rid the old American of his biases.

Consequently, the veteran character bequeaths his worldly goods, including his prized ride, to his Hmong friends. That made good sense to me.

So often the greatest kindness comes from unrelated strangers.