Oh dearie, dearie me. So as if it wasn’t appalling enough that over half of ‘Murca’s state governors (Republicans all, save one) have banded together to stand their ground against the invading Syrian hordes, esteemed Republican presidential hopeful Cardinal Richelieu Ted Cruz has suggested that we take in Christian Syrian refugees only. Because, you know, there’s no such thing as a Christian terrorist.
On Friday, July 22, 2011, at around 3:30 p.m. local time, a 2,000-pound homemade fertilizer bomb planted in a car exploded and ripped through the central area of Norway’s capital, Oslo, blowing out windows in government offices, killing 8 people, and wounding dozens more.
As police and rescue crews rushed to the scene, 33-year-old Anders Behring Breivik had already begun to make his way to a small island called Utoya, which is about 25 miles northwest of Oslo and was at the time hosting a camp for youth members of a Norwegian political party. […]
At approximately 6:34 p.m., he surrendered without a fight to police. He had killed 67 people and wounded 33 more by then. Two more people eventually died in the hospital. He later said in court he had hoped to kill all 600 on the island.
Remember him? Interestingly, he and Sen. Cruz share some views:
In Internet postings attributed to Breivik, he blamed Europe’s left-wing parties for destroying the continent’s Christian heritage by allowing mass immigration of Muslims.
Yeah, but that was Europe, you may be thinking. There’s no history of God-fearin’ members of America’s religious right engaging in acts of terror, right?! OK, a few. Alright…maybe enough for a top dozen list.
But aside from the 2009 Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting, and the 2010 Texas IRS attack, the assassinations of abortion clinic doctors Barnett Slepian (1998) and George Tiller (2009), the 2014 Jewish Community Center murders, the 2012 Sikh Temple shooting, the 1997 Olympic bombing, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, etc., what have you got? Surely those are anomalies; merely hiccups.
Besides, what good could ever come from taking in a Syrian refugee?
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 14, 2015)
In my 2012 review of the French dramedy Little White Lies, I wrote:
In 1976, a Swiss ensemble piece called Jonah, Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 unwittingly kick-started a Boomer-centric “midlife crisis” movie subgenre that I call The Group Therapy Weekend (similar to, but not to be conflated with, the venerable Dinner Party Gone Awry). The story usually centers on a coterie of long-time friends (some married with kids, others perennially single) who converge for a (reunion, wedding, funeral) at someone’s (beach house, villa, country spread) to catch up, reminisce, wine and dine, revel…and of course, re-open old wounds (always the most entertaining part).
Not unlike Little White Lies, Francesca Archibugi’s An Italian Name (Il nome del figlio) nestles betwixt The Group Therapy Weekend and Dinner Party Gone Awry. And as in many Italian films, there’s a lot of eating, drinking, lively discourse…and hand gestures.
The dinner party of note is a cozy and casual late night get-together at the home of school teacher Betta (Valeria Golino) and professor hubby Sandro (Luigi Lo Cascio). There are only three guests; Betta’s brother Paolo (Alessandro Gassman, son of the late great actor Vittorio Gassman), his wife Simona (Michaela Ramazzotti), and childhood friend Claudio (Rocco Papaleo), a bachelor, musician, and…referee (once the fur begins to fly).
If there’s one thing longtime friends know how to do best, it’s how to push each other’s buttons. It’s apparent that these five have known each other a long time; and once Betta and Sandro have sent the kids to bed and cracked open a few bottles of wine, the evening begins to take its inevitable course. Paolo, whose preternatural good looks and easy charm have undoubtedly led to his success as a high-end real estate broker, is a bit of a prankster, who enjoys winding up brother-in-law Sandro. The lovely Simona, the best-selling author of a Jackie Collins-style novel, is pregnant. Paolo announces with a straight face that the couple have come up with a name for the baby (if it’s a boy)-Benito. Sandro, a pompous, left-leaning academe, takes the bait…and so the (verbal) bloodletting begins.
There are echoes of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? throughout the evening’s proceedings, as dormant resentments resurface and new revelations come to the fore; the main difference here being that the overall tone isn’t as vitriolic. The smart, witty, rapid-fire repartee is executed with flair by the wonderful ensemble (in fact the dialog is so rapid-fire that I found it a challenge keeping up with the subtitles…and I’m a fast reader).
The breezy 94 minute film plays like a tight, one-act play; which apparently (as I learned after the fact) is what it was in its original incarnation. Director Archibugi and co-writer Francesco Piccolo adapted their script from a play by Alexandre de la Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte. I was also blissfully unaware that de la Patelliere and Delaporte directed their own screen version of their play (released in France in 2012 as Le prenom), so I’m in no position to say whether the Italian remake is better or worse. One thing that I can say for sure…An Italian Name is one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen this year.
Bless me father, for I have sinned. I did a bad, bad thing. Something I haven’t done in a long, long, time. Something that made my thumbs go numb, and left me feeling so…dirty. Out of morbid curiosity, I recorded all of those circle-jerk pundit shows this morning. I wanted to confirm that the Republican candidate reaction to the Paris attacks was on schedule. It was. Now I’ve worn out the “FF” button on my DVR remote. I should have stuck with my default, which is to turn to my pal Digby for a recap, instead of suffering the tortures of the damned (she’s made of sterner stuff than I). To save you even more time, here’s a distillation of all the right wing nuttery this morning:
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 7, 2015)
In my review of Sam Mendes’ 2012 James Bond adventure, Skyfall, I wrote:
I’m sure you’ve heard the old chestnut about cockroaches and Cher surviving the Apocalypse? As the James Bond movie franchise celebrates its 50th year […] you might as well add “007” to that short list of indestructible life forms. […] Love him or hate him, it’s a fact of life that as long as he continues to lay those gold-painted eggs for the studio execs, agent 007 is here to stay.
Mendes set the bar pretty high with his first stab at the venerable legacy; in fact I was impressed enough with his Bond installment to include it in my top 10 films of 2012 list. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Mendes may have set the bar too high; or perhaps by saying “yes” to Spectre (Bond #24, if you’re counting) he baited the sophomore curse. Whatever the reason, I found 007’s new outing to be a bit shaky, and not quite so stirring.
Unless you live in a cave, I’m sure you’re aware that Daniel Craig is back on board, as are Skyfall screenwriters John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, joined this time out by Jez Butterworth, who co-scripted the 2010 political thriller Fair Game (my review).
The story picks up with Bond still grieving the loss of his mentor, M (Judi Dench). As foreshadowed in the previous installment, 007 now answers to a freshly anointed “M” (Ray Fiennes), with whom he is already at loggerheads (as we know, he’s a great agent in the field, but has “issues” with authority figures). An enigmatic “last request” from the late M sends Bond gallivanting off to Mexico City for an unauthorized hit job. This sets up the traditional jaw-dropping action sequence opener, which doesn’t disappoint (…yet).
The plot gets a little murky from here; Bond next heads for Rome, long enough to, erm, pump the lovely widow (Monica Bellucci) of a nefarious hit man for information regarding a shadowy international cabal of assassins, spies, terrorists, extortionists, gypsies, tramps and thieves who generally engage in Very Bad Things, and crash one of their board meetings…where he is recognized and called out by its CEO (Christoph Waltz) and subsequently run out of town and dogged all over Europe and North Africa by a hulking henchman named Hinx (Dave Bautista). He is soon joined on his escapade by the lovely daughter (Lea Seydoux) of yet another recently departed nefarious hit man.
Back in London, M is embroiled in an inter-agency scuffle with (to my recollection) a new character in the Bond canon, “C” (Andrew Scott). “C” is the type that our friends across the pond might refer to as a “smug git”. He views M and his agents as anachronisms; much too “analog” in an age where there are so many high-tech surveillance/operational alternatives (you get the impression that this guy would feel right at home with the NSA).
One of the main problems with the film is that it never quite gels for either of these two distinct narratives; when Bond’s exploits in the field and M’s political woes back at the home office do finally converge, it feels tricksy and false in a curiously rushed third act.
It frequently seems as if this film wasn’t being directed by a “person”, but rather by an evenly divided focus group of Bond fans; half of them the adrenaline junkies who really dig the gadgets and the babes and the chase scenes and the shit blowing up, and the other half (like yours truly) who have applauded Bond 2.0’s sense of grittiness, intrigue, and character development that (arguably) flirts more with John Le Carre than Ian Fleming.
But by trying too hard to please everyone, you end up with both sides getting short shrift. The action fans will probably start looking at their watches every time the story moves back to HQ (I couldn’t help noticing that many people at the full house promo screening I attended chose those moments to take their restroom breaks), and those longing for a bit more complexity may view the action pieces as distracting and perfunctory this time out.
Ultimately, Spectre plays more like a “greatest hits” collection than a brand new album.
Speaking of which…Sam Smith is obviously a talented fellow and has some great pipes, but “Writing’s on the Wall” has got to be, hands down, the most ponderous and overwrought Bond theme of all time. It goes on longer than the Old Testament. Seriously:
If you managed to make it through that entire video, please accept my condolences. You deserve a palette cleanser now, so here are my picks for the Top 5 Bond movie themes:
The White House, 1970: Two great recording artists meet at last
I’ve never been a huge Elvis fan, but like most ‘murcans who have strolled this planet since mid-century last, I have a sizable portion of his catalog burned into my neurons (how do I know all these lyrics?). But the people who are really into Elvis? They are really into Elvis.
I can’t deny that he’s an icon. Some have suggested he literally is:
The Statue of Liberty thing is spooky; some point even further back:
I digress. This crossed my desk at the radio station the other day:
The sticker on the shrink wrap read: Elvis is back! Really?! You mean all that Weekly World News stuff wasn’t complete and utter shash? The cover photo was obviously archival, but I flipped over the jewel case and sure enough, there it was: copyright 2015, RCA Records. 14 tracks, spanning Elvis’ career, but remixed with the addition of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Conceptually, it’s a comedy premise:
I was intrigued enough to give it a spin, and…it sort of works, depending on the track. For example, “Burning Love”, does not work; “Hunka hunka burnin’ love” and “lush string arrangement” should never appear together in the same sentence, much less the same mixing console (ditto the cover of James Taylor’s “Steamroller Blues”).
On the other hand, “Love Me Tender” is beautiful; the reflective ballad transforms here into lovely chamber pop, in the vein of The Beatles’ “Yesterday” (or George Martin’s orchestral enhancement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” demo for the Beatles Love remix). Unfortunately, the deeper you go into this collection, the more exploitative and schmaltzy it feels. Rabid fans will likely adore it; speaking for myself …let the man rest in peace.
If I Can Dream-Elvis Presley with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 24, 2015)
Is it any wonder I reject you first? Fame, fame, fame, fame Is it any wonder you are too cool to fool Fame (fame)
-from “Fame”, by David Bowie
Back in the early 90s, I shared a train ride with David Bowie. It was the least likely celebrity sighting I’ve ever experienced. I was visiting my parents in upstate New York. During my extended stay, I took a side trip to NYC via Amtrak. On the return trip to Albany, I boarded the train at Grand Central. As I was settling in, I shot a textbook double take at the gentleman sitting across the aisle from me (I nearly gave myself whiplash). Could it be? No, that’s too weird. All by himself…no handlers, no entourage?
Why would David Bowie be taking a train to Albany? It had to be a look-alike. However, since it took several hours, I had ample time to (discreetly) confirm…yep, that’s him (the different colored eyes sealed the I.D.). Internally, I was freaking out (I’m a huge Bowie fan), but I always hold back and respect people’s privacy in such situations, because I dread coming off like the embarrassingly star-struck interview host Chris Farley used to play on SNL (“Do you remember when you were with the Beatles? That was awesome!”).
With the clarity of hindsight, why wouldn’t David Bowie take a train from NYC to Albany? There’s no law that says David Bowie can’t take a train to Albany, if he should so desire. For all I know, he was planning to shuffle off to Buffalo. And why would I assume a famous person never travels without handlers or an entourage? After all, he’s just another human being. He takes his pants off and puts them on the same way I do.
But “fame” is a funny thing; as Bowie himself once sang, it “makes a man take things over”. Among other things, it “puts you where things are hollow”, and if you’re not careful, “what you get is no tomorrow.” Apparently, in some cases, “to bind your time…it drives you to crime.” Which brings us to a twisty French thriller called Number One Fan (aka Elle l’adore), a rumination on fame, fandom, crime, punishment, and erm, wax jobs.
This is a film that is difficult to review without inadvertently divulging spoilers, so I will do my best not to. Sandrine Kimberlane stars as Muriel, a divorcee with two teenagers who works as a beautician. Muriel is attractive and outgoing, but a bubble off plum. She regales friends, family and co-workers with bizarrely concocted anecdotes (like the time she “recognized” one of her customers as Klaus Barbie’s daughter halfway through a treatment, and promptly sent her packing sans one waxed leg…under threat of revealing her identity to the other customers).
She is also a big fan of pop idol Vincent Lacroix (Laurent Lafitte). Her apartment is chockablock with Vincent’s CDs, collectibles, posters, and photos (one of them autographed “To Muriel, with love”). We see Muriel backstage after one of Vincent’s performances, hoping for a brief audience or an autograph. “Not tonight, Muriel,” his handler tells her, implying she’s a frequent lurker. You could say that she is…obsessed.
Imagine Muriel’s surprise when she answers her door late one night, and sees her idol standing there. While she’s still processing whether or not this is even really happening , he tells her he desperately needs her help. Vincent’s done a bad, bad, thing. It was an accident, but he needs a civilian to be his, you know, “cleaner”. I can say no more.
This is the directing debut for actress Jeanne Herry (who also co-wrote the screenplay, with Gaelle Mace) and it’s an impressive first feature, with excellent performances, effective atmosphere, and a unique piano score by Pascal Sangla. I detected a touch of Hitchcock in the film’s central themes of obsession and duplicity (I believe it has been a rule since Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black that every French thriller is required to have a touch of Hitchcock). The film makers also make keen observations about the cult of celebrity. Most notably, there’s acknowledgment of the ever-odious duality of “justice” systems everywhere: the fact that there’s one for the rich, and one for the poor.
And here’s “number one fan” Chris Farley, in a classic SNL skit:
Did the prime minister of Israel really say that? The Washington Post:
In a speech here Tuesday evening, Netanyahu sought to explain the surge in violence in Israel and the West Bank by reaching for historical antecedents. He said Jews living in what was then British Palestine faced many attacks in 1920, 1921 and 1929 — all instigated by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who allied himself with the Nazis during World War II.
Then Netanyahu dropped his bombshell. He said: “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time; he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said, ‘Burn them.’ ”
Netanyahu, the son of a historian, said the mufti played “a central role in fomenting the Final Solution,” as the Nazis termed their plan to exterminate the Jews.
The prime minister is “The son of a historian”? Really? Is he out of his fucking mind? Even the Germans are scratching their heads:
The controversy erupted on the eve of Netanyahu’s state visit to Germany, where Holocaust denial is a crime. The Germans pushed back, telling the Israeli leader — politely — that the Holocaust was their responsibility alone.
Uh, yeah. In fact, Hitler never waffled on that particular agenda. Eight years before he even came to power in 1933, he published this little book you may have heard of, called Mein Kampf…in which he pretty much spells out exactly what he was planning to accomplish once he came to power. And he eventually was able to check off nearly everything on his to-do list, before he checked out (except for that “1000-year Reich” part). That’s one thing about the Nazis that blows my mind…they loved to make lists, and keep records. As I noted in my 2011 review of the documentary Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today:
Through the course of the grueling 11-month long proceedings, a panel of judges and prosecutors representing the USA, the Soviet Union, England and France built a damning case, thanks in large part to the Nazis themselves, who had a curious habit of meticulously documenting their own crimes. The thousands of confiscated documents-neatly typed, well-annotated and (most significantly) signed and dated by some of the defendants, along with the gruesome films the Nazis took of their own atrocities, helped build one of the most compelling cases of all time.
Unless every history of WW II I’ve ever read is part of a vast cover-up conspiracy, there were no Palestinians among those defendants. Sounds like the prime minster needs to brush up on the history of his own people. His revisionist stance reminds me of a movie character:
“Hitler…there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!!”
–Kenneth Mars as “Franz Liebkind”, author of the musical Springtime For Hitler: A Gay Romp With Eva and Adolph at Berchtesgaden (from the original 1967 film version of The Producers, screenplay by Mel Brooks)
