naught-moses Reviews

Scarface (1983)

A Major Missed Opportunity, the Second Time Around

[1/10 · 5 July 2021]

With well over a thousand other reviews in line ahead of this one, I'm quite sure almost no one will ever see it. (Or care if they do.) I just need to get it off my mind.

The film is artless and has no redeeming virtues save as a very amateurish attempt to display what Ollie Stone saw as a bitter young man's descent into compensatory narcissistic and sociopathic hell. (One could say precisely the same thing about the 1932 Warner Brothers version, as well, save for its revelation of "Ma's" awful enabling.)

De Palma's direction wouldn't have gotten him a renewal after a first season, free TV crime drama. Lighting serves mood. But the lighting here serves nothing. Music serves mood (as Scorcese and Coppola =well= understood). But the music here serves nothing.

The characters are cardboard cutouts of what Ollie imagined Miami thugs to be, with no more depth to them than Cash's & Epps's in Warren Beatty's later cinematic comic book, "Dick Tracy." Which is surprising, considering what Stone had to go on after several seasons of Michael Mann's =far= superior (but still insufficient) "Miami Vice" TV show.

If Luis Valdez or Edward James Olmos had written and directed SF on the heels of their terrific "Zoot Suit" (not to mention "American Me"), chances seem far better that SF would have been a lot closer to "real."

I grew up in a transitional neighborhood around kids who turned into The Real Deal in LA's White Fence, Avenues, Temple Street and MS 13 gangs. Every single one of them was a tightly controlled, lizard-brained, pragmatically violent criminal by the time he was ten... and very little like the stupidly impulsive Tony M., who wouldn't have survived for long in any of =those= deals.

After decades of encountering them professionally in places like Corcoran, Chuckawalla and Pelican Bay, I know why. Because I've met many of their mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers.

NONE of that is evident in this trite, witless, cinematic nonsense.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

A Nostalgic Romp in QT's Alternate Reality

[9/10 · 26 July 2019]

IDK if it's "typical" OT, but it had a lot of hallmarks. Or hallquirks. High concepts, scenarios, dialogue, non-verbal cues, set design, period reality, etc. (Tho culturally normalized self-obsession having to face up to What Is will probably escape the dulled awareness of the legions in the "consensus trance." Sigh.) =Very= adroit performances by Len & Brad =for= sure. (Len's range may give him a shot at some nominations for this. Brad did Brad, but it worked like it always does) Margot channeling starry-eyed Sharon even if she doesn't have Sharon's other-worldly bones. Margaret doing the runaway-gone-wrong. The guy who "did" Steve McQueen. Pacino doing Pacino. Bruce doing his angry thing. And whoever the 8-year-old actress was. Even the dog was great. But QT does get the best out of people. Definitely worth $11.00 and a Lyft. Especially if you lived in Hollywood at the time.

Righteous Kill (2008)

Two great actors cannot save a rotten script.

[3/10 · 26 May 2019]

Nothing wrong with the premise. (For a movie, anyway.) But the script is so airheaded, inept, ignorant and reality-defying -- even to anyone who watches TV shows like "CSI" or "Law & Order," let alone anyone with law enforcement experience -- that the original print screams, "Just burn me." (I'm sure Al and Bobby knew that, but they weren't doing anything else at the time, and bills needed to be paid, so...)

King of Jazz (1930)

Two-Strip Colorizing is THE Reason to Watch

[7/10 · 5 March 2019]

The print is very sharp on the version I'm watching right now on TCM. Add the colorizing, and these long-gone folks I remember much later in their lives =come= to life as youngsters, including famed band leader Paul Whiteman and singer/actor Bing Crosby. Likewise the drum skin dance scene preceding Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," which looks right out of the 1960s. The art deco sets most of associate with black & white cinematography are fascinating in 2SC. Light up and enjoy this almost 90-year Trip Back in Time.

The Caretakers (1963)

Back Story

[5/10 · 6 March 2018]

Crawford's, control-obsessed, pre--Cuckoo "Nurse Ratched" had good reason to try to protect her nurses. No one out there on the floor in the pre-muscle, pre-"psych-tech" era took more of a physical (and mental) beating than the RNs. While most people (about 4:1 female) with borderline personality disorder are not (often) violent, those who get hospitalized more often are.

What this romp didn't get into Way Back Then (before Alice Miller, Andrew Vachss, Diana Russell, Judith Lewis Herman and others started raising consciousness about the main cause of it) is that BPD is a sort of diluted form of multiple personality disorder where sufferers are sometimes relatively functional, sometimes horrible depressed and/or anxious, and sometimes raging maniacs.

Why? Because they were almost always severely abused as children... often sexually, and often by fathers, older brothers, grandfathers, uncles, and/or a single mother's boyfriends. And they were threatened within an inch of their lives if they told anyone about it by the perp and/or the perp's accomplices, often including mother and other family members. Put another way, they were Raised In Hell. And when temporarily "dis-inhibited," They... Are.... ANGRY about that.

Suffice it to say that "The Caretakers" =is= over-dramatic and histrionic to the point of being in-credible by current standards. But in many ways, the script was barking up some of the right trees. TG most post-traumatic-stress-disorder-stricken borderlines are no longer dealt with in anything remotely like what is seen here, but... back then... they =were=.

Mental Hospital (1953)

Of it's Time, but not of This time.

[5/10 · 6 March 2018]

Typically upbeat and bland, MH =is= somewhat informative, "Fred" (the patient shown with the clinical psychologist and his assistants) =is= properly paranoid, and the almost wholly discarded treatments of the time =are= realistically presented in the era pre-dating the advent of Thorazine and the other, first-generation "major tranquilizers" we now call "anti-psychotics."

But the film is utterly unrepresentative of the interpersonal behavior between patients in present-day mental hospitals, as well as the degree and percentage of successful treatment and symptom remission. Dances? Softball games? Religious services? Work in hospital departments? Not now, folks.

Ya see, everything changed when Thorazine, Lithium, Nardil and the other early psych meds made it possible for the "Freds" of the world to be treated far less expensively in "partial day" programs or even weekly visits to a "shrink." Mental hospitals emptied out, and politicians looking for budget reductions (Ronald Reagan was one of the foremost during his turn as governor of California) loved it.

Fast forward 65 years: Take a stroll downtown. (And I'm not taking about downtown Delhi.) Have a look around at the folks sitting on the sidewalks with a hat or a basket in front of them. They're almost always medicated (one way or another). And they usually get some disability, but it's not enough to live any sort of what you or I would call a "life."

And the ones who're hospitalized now in long-term residential care are those whose suffering defies medication or even modern-day, low-amperage electric shock... along with those whose psychosis is so intractable that allowing them out on the street would be intolerable to your local police chief.

But, insofar as the "system" is concerned, they're all "fixed." Hey! "Mission accomplished!"

Grand Prix (1966)

Back Story

[6/10 · 7 February 2018]

Phil Hill earned every second of the onscreen time he was given here. Because in some respects, "Pete Aaron" =is= Phil Hill, America's first Formula One world champion. The final race in the film at Monza (in '64 for the filming; in '61 in real life) =is= what happened with point leader Hill and runner-up Wolfgang von Trips when Hill won the title. And though Hill never caused any other driver to be seriously injured so far as I know, the years that followed his triumph were troubled when the Ferrari team blew apart, and the ATSs and Coopers her drove thereafter were third-rate. The drama is no better here than it was in "The Racers" with Kirk Douglas in '53, but we do get to see five-time champ Juan Fangio, then current champ Graham Hill, Richie Ginther and others get some well-deserved cameos. That's Graham Hill battling with John Surtees in the terrific opening race scenes at Monte Carlo, btw.

Pather Panchali (1955)

The Dharma of What Is

[9/10 · 4 January 2018]

There really are films we should see every now and again to regain our actual sense of the way things are behind all the window dressing we build around our perceptions to try to make them fit our requirements and expectations.

To call the story told largely without resort to dialogue, but very much with non-verbal sounds, visual imagery, including body postures and facial expressions, "stunning" is far from adequate.

But the most honest thing one may be able to say about Satyajit Ray's tour de force is that although it should be required viewing for virtually everyone who takes their automobile, their computer, their cell phone, their paid vacation, and their "right" to "live as they choose" for granted... only those who know the Yogic Hindu and Pali Cannon Buddhist "way" will likely "get it."

For this is not only The Way Life Is for half the world's (over-) population even 60 years after it was first screened, this is proof that all our "stuff" is just that, regardless of how effectively it lulls us into our (supposedly) painkilling trance.

Deep in My Heart (1954)

Reflects it's (Two) Times, but Still Impressive

[8/10 · 22 December 2017]

DiMH rated a 6.5 when I saw the thing for the first time tonight. I certainly understand that it is a snapshot of both it's own time in the HUAC - Tail Gunner Joe - Blacklist era and the turn of the 19th to 20th century... mid-century faux-Broadwayish rendition and all.

Nevertheless, as a collection of set designs, use of Technicolor, musical performances, gorgeous (and talented) females in stunning costumes, and star turns for otherwise "serious" actors like Jose Ferrer, DiMH is both visually and aurally mindblowing to any student of the development of film-making. Moreover as an example of craftsmanship on so many levels that was head and shoulders above almost anything else I can think of during that era.

Why "American in Paris" continues to get accolades is no mystery. But this film is at least on a par with that one, and it's all but ignored now. If the genre that gave us Fred & Ginger and Judy in St. Louis -- not mention Gene, Don O'Connor and Danny Kaye -- twists your pretzel, fer cryssake don't miss =this=.

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Romantic Antidote to the New Age of Atomic Horror?

[7/10 · 2 February 2017]

Maybe someone would have had to have seen it as a child in the context of the times, as well as live through something like this when it was still possible. (She even looked like AG.) The film is in some ways both a throwback to the propitious values of the Belle Epoch before the Great War and a quite startling prediction of events in the very near future. One who wasn't there probably cannot appreciate how different the world was then from what it is now. For even though one could not afford to live as these people did, most people (in America, at least) had pretensions. Pretensions that had been delivered to them by the popular novels, the popular music, and indeed the popular cinema of the time.

But let's take a moment to get grounded in why it was that this film was made, and why it was then -- and has continued to be -- so popular. Ava Gardner was everything Marilyn Monroe was not. She had been the single most famous "starlette" and as yet not quite "known" female icon of the World War II era. Married first to Mickey Rooney when he was a star of the brightest possible magnitude. Then to band leader Artie Shaw when he was as big as Bruce Springstein or Justin Beiber. And then to no less than Frank Sinatra. (The same Frank Sinatra who made it clear for the next 40 years that the woman he left the mother of his children for had been his one and only goddess.) (I knew Barbara. And =she= knew that.)

Cast in "The Killers" in 1945, "One Touch of Venus" in 1947, and the somewhat similarly tragic "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman" in 1950, she was... everything Marilyn Monroe was not. No one of her time had the spellbinding charisma she projected in front of a camera or... in front of a man's eyes. It's arguable that she was The Most Desirable Woman in the World. And that's where plot twists.

Because if there was any competition for the title, it was Grace Kelly. In 1955, at the height of her stardom, she walked out on Hollywood - - just like this -- and married the Prince of Monaco. At the age of 53, Grace Kelly had a stroke on a mountain road and crashed to her death. Decades later, it was reported that she had been lonely, troubled, alcoholic and miserable for many years.

Despite -- or perhaps because -- of the horrors of the years from 1914 to 1953, the age of =romanticism= that began during the Belle Epoch lasted well into mid-century. People seemed to need a different reality from the Somme, Hiroshima and Belsen. The word is almost meaningless now. The age ended when the harsh existentialism of those years became the cultural norm for those who had not seen the fields of Flanders or the beaches of Salerno... because of what they did see on November 22, 1963. One is accustomed now to the course realities of the Age of Instant Awareness brought to us on the toob. Romanticism was a polite form of escape. Now we use stronger stuff.

And with porn, and drugs, and cocktails of energy drinks and beer, we have managed to destroy our capacity to have the sort of sentiments embodied in this and Gardner's other great films. Realists we think we are as we sniff at such "drivel" as the fairytale romances of Venus, Pandora and Maria Vargas. Perhaps we should stop and think about that.

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (2016–2019)

The Ultimate Form of Codependence?

[10/10 · 23 January 2017]

A lot is revealed here. And anyone who's ever been in =any= mind- control cult will do well to watch the entire series. But there's so much more to be revealed. And I'm not talking about the personal dramas. I'm talking about the whole matter of how cults take advantage of the cultural normalization of codependence to suck the unsuspecting into what is nothing more or less than indentured servitude.

In his discussion with Leah, Steve Hassan's explanations provide some of the ways that normalization is manipulated to seduce the average person who already has been instructed, indoctrinated, conditioned, socialized and habituated to submit to authority to turn over their free will and their lives to others for some (ostensibly) "higher purpose." (I've written about it online in a scholastic manuscript called "Understanding Codependence as 'Soft- Core' Cult Dynamics... and Cult Dynamics as 'Hard-Core' Codependence.")

I expect to hear from some attorneys with C&D orders sooner or later, but if one is trying to figure out what happened to them, Leah's excellent series, people like Hassan and those referenced in my article are worth looking into.

8½ (1963)

La Condizione Umana in the World of Rules & Regulations

[8/10 · 19 December 2016]

For the time -- and probably still for those who haven't caught up to such as explained further along here -- 8 1/2 was a dandy treatise on Catechistic moral absolutism vs. trying to manage one's having been thus in-struct-ed, programmed, conditioned, socialized and normalized into codependent shame, guilt, worry, regret, remorse and morbid reflection with lots and lots and lots of romantic and sexual relationships, and then having to deal with all the moral repercussions.

Guido is bemused and de-tached here and there, a-ttached and caught in the grind of shame and guilt here and there, and plain lost in the cultural F.O.G. of fear, obligation and guilt at other times. Fellini had read the classics, as well as the psychoanalysts, social constructionists and existentialists. And having the capacity to manifest what he learned in scenario, character and dialogue, he enlightens the rest of us.

Holy Hell (2016)

There's a Pattern Here...

[8/10 · 31 August 2016]

...though one has to admit, this guy was really strange from the git in ways Hubbard, Erhard, Silva, et al weren't (as much, anyway) during their own days as Hollywood's cult leading men. The dynamics are -- as is relatively well, but far from completely, demonstrated in the film -- pretty much always manipulations of the inherent low self-esteem, defense mechanisms (including compensatory competence- seeking), codependence, et al in the psyches of the "true believers."

Look up an article called "Codependence as Soft-Core Cult Dynamics... and Vice-Versa" on the Pairadocks blog at Blogspot for a thorough rundown. Or click on http://pairadocks.blogspot.com/2016/08/understanding-co-dependence- as-soft.html if it works here; I dunno.)

But, yes, I do agree with one of the thread starters who suggested that all the documentaries about these characters are similar. One wonders if it's because the gurus themselves are essentially similar (as that blog article suggests) or if one of the cults (that is =very= well established in Hollywood) is continuing to do battle with the "competition."

Aquarius (2015–2016)

Apocalypse Now meets Norman Mailer?

[6/10 · 28 May 2015]

There's plenty of noir dijon atmosphere here to =suggest= that More Will Be Revealed. But, if you were expecting something like "based on a true story," try something else. Because this is a Duchovny vehicle, and this is the way Duchovny does it.

(Supervisor Kenneth Hahn was my boss from 1963 to 1966. I didn't recognize him at all in the first episode. The real KH had huevos the size of his district.)

Charlie =was= one of a number of opportunists around the hippie culture in LA, San Francisco and a few points in between. Look, I knew a =real= protégé of Terry Melcher's who acquired quite a bit of knowledge I didn't from sitting on the steps at the Hall of Justice with Lynn Fromme in '70.

Vince Bugliosi's versions of "reality" are the most widespread, of course. But there are many others; Jeff Guinn's being the one that squares the most with what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears.

Aquarius gets this much right: Charlie =was= whacked, but as delusional (and badly programmed) as he was, he had a very fast processor and very effective instincts for manipulation of the naive, abused, abandoned adolescents who flocked to him at the Spahn Ranch north of Chatsworth.

Around sophisticated adults, however, he wasn't nearly as slick as this stylish fairy tale would have viewers believe.

Fearless (1993)

Therapeutic

[10/10 · 18 April 2015]

Director Peter Weir and actors Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez deserve their share of credit here. But this film was built on a SCRIPT. And that script was built on a novel. And the builder of both was Rafael Iglesias.

I've no actual idea how Iglesias had come to have such a =deep= understanding of the symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, but... a great deal of what I saw in this wonderful film points directly to the remarkable body of work done by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk at Harvard in the 1970s and '80s.

The author of Traumatic Stress, The Body Keeps the Score, and other books provided scores of superior articulations of what happens to people when they are become so overloaded with stimulation that their nervous systems cannot handle it.

What he saw then, and what many of us have witnessed since then is that such people have to force bits and pieces of the experience out of consciousness into vaults with pass codes and combinations they may never be able to remember. The upshots of that fragmentation often include "crazy" behavior designed to make sure those vaults are sealed forever.

"Fearless" was therapeutic for me. And I expect it may be so for those of us whose minds came apart -- just as that airplane did when it hit the ground -- and left us hunting for the fractured memories.

Katharine Hepburn: All About Me (1993 TV Movie)

Holy Moly

[9/10 · 7 April 2015]

Having seen a bunch of these, I was prepared for the same sort of star turn, image-projecting, egotistically considered, carefully edited and sculpted, "make sure you show my best side" deal we've gotten used to. BUT... I guess I should have known better, and I certainly wasn't surprised, given the Character (with a capital C) of this remarkable person.

She may have known what she wanted to talk about in each segment, but she does (or appears to do) every one of them impromptu.

Her disquisition on her 27 years with Spencer Tracey would have been affecting on its own. But intercut as it was with his manifesto scene from "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" -- shot as it was in Tracey's final weeks of life -- her reaction to his commentary about =their= relationship (not just the one on screen) caused her eyes to widen and mouth to drop open. And the director of that film made sure it didn't wind up on the cutting table.

If you get a chance to see it on TCM, you may consider yourself as blessed as I do just now after having seen it.

Darling Lili (1970)

No Worse -- or Better -- than any other Blake & Julie vehicle

[5/10 · 20 March 2015]

Regardless of which of the three extant versions one sees, there are simple facts about all of the Blake & Julie movies one can only ignore if one is locked in a time warp. Let's face it, Julie was a =terrific= technical vocalist of the archaic "bel canto" style. As well as an actress of the suspension-of-observation and buying-of- belief mode that was popular when bel canto singing was popular. If one likes Gilbert & Sullivan, Julie is truly one's cup of tea.

However, if one expects to see something other than Andrews's standard, patently demure ingénue projection of feminine behavior, this will no more be the place than anything else she and Blake ever put together.

Had the film laid on more of the pretty decent -- if at times fantastical -- aerial combat scenes and far less of the numbing melodrama, it might have almost been in a class with "The Blue Max" of more or less the same vintage. (The reliably Teutonic Jeremy Kemp, provided much of the character intrigue -- such as it was -- in both films.)

One has to have a particular taste and value set to enjoy Blake & Julie movies. This is no different.

Basic Instinct (1992)

Great Grasp of the Subject

[8/10 · 15 March 2015]

Scriptwriter Esterhazy had done his homework.

The psychopath can lie to a galvanic-skin-response-measuring because their insular-amygdalar-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axes are genetically indisposed. They do not experience anxiety. Anton Chigur. But a cop with alcohol- and sadomasochistic sex-addiction-masked Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder will react to provocations. Catherine double-majored in Lit and Psych, so she can connect the dots between de Sade and Hans Selye. (So could Joe.)

He also knew a florid concerto of DSM-IV-R Axis II, Cluster B personality disorders when he saw one. Nick's, Beth's =and= Catherine's. (Ya get knocked around by a few 140+ IQ Cluster Bs and stay conscious, you get to "pattern recognition.") (Well?)

Cat's (like Cat) (especially those who are bi-sexual) love to play with mice. They're ultra-stimulation freaks. Nick likes the hits, and he's smug, but he's crippled. (People with PTSD tend to be obsessive. Even head-up-yer-ass obsessive.) She's at the top of her Game. (If I recall correctly, Eric Berne called it "Mud Pie," which is the most extreme version of "Rapo.") Too sure of his own instincts, Nick just isn't sufficiently self- aware to know when he's in over his head.

All the Cats I've had the sadomasochistic pleasure of knowing hate smug, self-certain men for a good reason. Dad (or hottie ma's boyfriend) ran her up and down a pole, actually or figuratively. Cats imitate their abusers and love to do it most with others who actually can run their IAHPA's up to whatever extent anyone can. (Hey! Even reptiles need excitement.)

And they can spot a mouse in seconds. Hang out in Beverly Hills, Palm Springs, Miami Beach, DC and Manhattan. They seem to congregate there.

"BI" deserves way better than a 6.9. This is Verhoeven on top of his game with a solidly research-based script, at least for an American audience. One frustrating, crazy- making little booby trap after another.

Out of Africa (1985)

Will One in Twenty Really Get the Two Relationships?

[8/10 · 26 February 2015]

Let us dispense with "OoA" as breathtaking travelogue, mood piece, presentation of sociological awakening (all of which it is) in favor of dissecting the two attachments in the context of the cultural rules and norms of just about a century ago.

For Karen, both of the attachments are "anxious" or "ambivalent" in the terms of famed, mid-century psychologist John Bowlby and his disciples. Karen may have felt "secure" with Bror, but being a budding climber out of cultural boxes, the "security" would become chafing. Karen never felt "secure" with Denys, of course, because he was simply too far out of the box for her until it was too late.

Bror was too attached to -- and dependent upon -- her, though insistent that she fit his programmed pictures of what a woman "should" be, according to the instructions implanted in his Mind of the Time.

Denys was as ambivalently attached to Karen as she was to him, but for precisely opposing reasons. She was (unconsciously) attracted to his "free-spirited" and "independent" transcendence of the cultural norms... while, however much he may have been drawn to her hormonally, Denys was as (quite consciously) disturbed and put off by her culturally normalized, conventional possessiveness.

Thus, "OoA" works -- on just one of its many levels -- as a dramatization of the conflict many, more enlightened people (as many women as men, nowadays) experience when attracted to those who are still stuck in the common cultural cave of "lover as chattel."

Auntie Mame (1958)

Cult-ure Clash

[9/10 · 20 December 2014]

Forrest Tucker was an acquaintance of my adoptive father's. Pa adored him in the "Crunch & Des" TV series from the mid-'50s but could not understand why he ever deigned to be a part of this "West Hollywood weirdness." (Dad spent a lot of time in WH in those days, but was very much a stranger in strange land.)

I was too young to "get" all this in '58... BUT a lifetime in and around La and Palm Springs -- and their eccentricities -- was enough to elevate my consciousness. One might not wish to share in =all= the "fun," but let's face it: A little time outside the common cult-ural box most of us are forced to live in to make enough to pay the rent is good for everyone.

They used to call shows like this "comedies of manners." Any wonder?

King Rat (1965)

Morality In -- & Out -- of The Box

[9/10 · 24 February 2014]

Lawrence Kohlberg wrote a controversial and much discussed paper about the stages of moral development at the U. of Chicago in 1958. Kohlberg asserted that moral development ranged from conditioned obedience and fear of punishment through self-interest, conformity, authority for the sake of maintenance of social order, and consciously made social contracts, to awareness of universal ethical principles.

While still subject to argument, a number of psychometric tests have been adapted or specifically developed to test the accuracy of Kohlberg's notions. To this day, his ideas strongly influence measures of anti-social, sociopathic and sadomasochistic thought and behavior in criminal justice and other endeavors.

Take a look at it on, say, Wikipedia, and then watch "King Rat" closely to see where the various major characters fall on the scale.

Further, one can utilize "KR" as an illustration of socialized, acculturated, "normalized," and belief-bound -- vs. chillingly empirical, anti-socialized, anti-ac-CULT-urated, ab-normalized, observation-driven -- appraisal of events. The former may well be "just" and "fair," but relatively ineffective when it comes down to survival... and the latter may be "ruthless" and "vicious," but relatively effective therefor.

"KR" demands one climb out of the box of "delivered truth" based on authoritarian in-struct-ion to "get it." In modern neuropsychological parlance (see, for example, Iain McGilchrist), it requires that one pretty much abandon the rules and regulations of the brain's verbal- symbolic-skewed left hemisphere for the open-mindedness of spatial- sensory-skewed right.

Even though the 1950s had been a watershed decade for existentialism and the 1960s a decade of wider distribution therefor, "King Rat" was =far= ahead of its time in the English-speaking world. But if one could have seen it in the Russian-speaking one (not possible during the Cold War, after all), anyone who'd read Dostoyevsky and Chekov -- let alone lived in a gulag -- would have sussed it immediately.

RG, Psy.D., "The 12 StEPs of Experiential Processing," online.

Lady of the Night (1925)

In a League of Her Own

[9/10 · 3 January 2014]

Actors: Watch and learn.

Most =talking= film performers haven't learned as much about the effective communication of internal processes and emotional congruence in speech =and= motion as Shearer knew about motion alone at the age of 23.

The standard of the time was "acting." This... is =being=.

If there had been a Motion Picture Academy and an awards show in 1926, Shearer would have won in a walk. And Irving would have had nothing to do with it.

Since IMDb requires ten lines, I'm forced to add the superfluous notion that though the script may have reflected the value judgments of a more belief-stricken and closed-minded -- vs. observant and open-minded -- cultural normality, "Lady..." is nevertheless right there in the ballpark with the probing of sensitivities Irving and other producers were trying hard to convey at the time. The Legion probably loathed "Lady...," but the "expansionists" came out in legions to see it.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The Ultimate Cult-ural Send-Up?

[8/10 · 24 November 2013]

From the Lyman Frank Baum Wikipedia page:

"Originally a Methodist, Baum joined the Episcopal Church in Aberdeen to participate in community theatricals. Later, he and his wife, encouraged by Matilda Joslyn Gage, became members of the Theosophical Society in 1892.[44] Baum's beliefs are often reflected in his writing. The only mention of a church in his Oz books is the porcelain one which the Cowardly Lion breaks in the Dainty China Country in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Baums believed in God, but felt that religious decisions should be made by mature minds and not religious authorities. As a result, they sent their older sons to "Ethical Culture Sunday School" in Chicago, which taught morality, not religion.[45][46]"

From the Theosophical Society Wikipedia page:

"...the Society's objectives evolved to be: 1) To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour. 2) To encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science. 3) To investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man."

Watch the film carefully with a little background in collegiate sociology -- as well as Baum and the TS -- and it becomes evident that The Wiz was a send-up of the "brainless" common culture (listen to the cowardly lion sing "If I Were King" for one example of many) of unquestioned belief in and submission to omniscient and omnipotent, mystical, religious and political authorities.

"Somebody pulled my tail."

"You did it yourself."

Indeed.

The lesson for Dorothy and all the rest was to give up their "good ideas" and just look to see how it all really works. Just observe. Just notice. Which is exactly what the anointed "world teacher" of the TS came to preach from 1929 to 1985.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

What Siegel Said... & What He Seemed to Have Meant

[8/10 · 19 November 2013]

Many of the reviewers here pointed to the paranoia of the (Sen. Joseph) McCarthy era, the Cold War, and the House Un-American Activities Committee. That's climbing up the side of the box a bit, at least. But I'd like to get completely =out= of that box.

Director Don Siegel said in 1975 that "Invasion..." was -- at least for him -- a metaphor for the human condition: "I felt that this was a very important story. I think that the world is populated by pods and I wanted to show them." So... what did he mean?

Could it have been that, regardless of political system or religious belief, the education of young people worldwide is designed to drill control modules into their heads (as in another classic from the era called "Invaders from Mars")? Or that it is constructed turn people into belief-bound automatons ready to follow orders, including those to do whatever is necessary to maintain "order?"

The notion that Americans (and Russians, and Chinese, and Koreans, and, and, and) were trained to be good little wage slaves, good little consumers, and good little ("patriotic") defenders of the wealth ... err, "realm," has gained traction several times in popular literature. E. A. Poe, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Karl Jaspers, C. Wright Mills, Theodor Adorno, Hanna Arendt, S. E. Asch, Martin Buber, Frederich Nietzsche, Charles Cooley, Emile Durkheim, George Hegel, Jean Jacques Rousseau and =many= others had explored it decades before "Invasion..." was even written.

Likewise, the suppression of that notion has cropped up again and again. The motion picture industry had lived through a decade of career-wrecking FBI and Congressional investigation by 1956. The target was labeled "communism," but some (including some of the people listed above) argued that it was really support of an ideology that sought to pull the rug out from under behaviorally conditioned consumerism, more or less as Stewart Ewen described it in his mid-1970s book, =Captains of Consciousness=. (Think Marshall McLuhan's =The Media is the Massage= on steroids.)

In whatever event, the science fiction genre has often served as metaphoric vehicle for delivery of a Big Idea (or two). Recall "Metropolis," "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde," "Frankenstein," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Forbidden Planet," "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Blade Runner," "Star Wars," "Starship Troopers," and (possibly the most disturbing of them all given the rapid robotizing and de-human-ization of the military) "The Terminator."

Along with "The Day...," "Invaders...," and "Forbidden Planet," "Invasion..." =was= a quality film... quite possibly with a quality message.

The Sixties: The Assassination of President Kennedy (2014) Season 1, Episode 3

Disappointing Whitewash

[1/10 · 14 November 2013]

Virtually every logical fallacy I know of -- including selective elimination -- was used here to once again assure the school-trained and dulled that Lee Oswald was the sole shooter.

Look. I don't buy Garrison's or Prouty's or Ventura's or Stone's (or the other Stone's) or a lot of other peoples' "good ideas" about what happened in Dallas, either. But I do buy what my eyes can see on the film strip shot by Abe Zapruder from the grassy knoll. (Bugliosi's editing of it before the President's head jerks backwards was, well, perplexing.) As well as the means, motives and opportunities of the mob, the CIA, the Cuban freedom fighters, the far right crazies in Texas, etc.

And wonder about the four witnesses who all said Oswald was in the lunch room on the second floor when the shots were fired. And "downward and to the left." And those who heard more than three shots (including the Select Committee on the Assassinations in the House of Reps in '76). And the flawless (and bloodless) "magic bullet" that turned up on the empty gurney. And those who documented Jack Ruby's =long= history of connections to the mob. And Navy Dr. Hume's (and others') statement(s) that there was no brain in the skull when the body arrived at Bethesda... and no verification of who had done what to the body =before= it arrived there.

And. And. And.

Because there's a mountain of documents released via the Freedom of Information Act since 1966 that demonstrate that the Warren Commission Report selectively ignored hundreds of pages of deposed material from eye witnesses who later asked, "Why?"

A lot of people had a lot to gain with Kennedy out of the picture. That does not mean that they did anything to advance their interests, but where there is smoke, fires often burn... regardless of efforts to just plain ignore them.

That he was a (rather moderate by current standards, cold war) Democrat has no bearing on my questions. Not when I know whose son it was who put a hole in Ronald Reagan a mere nine weeks into his first term. Nor why it might be that two different people tried to knock Jerry Ford off.

The "psychotic lone assassin" notion has been around since the days of the pharaohs. And in many cases, a single whacko may have been the doer of the deed in question. But that does not mean such is always the case. Nor that when one has been documented as having been in regular contact with the CIA station chief in New Orleans though waving "Fair Play for Cuba" pamphlets is necessarily one thing or another. But it does make one wonder.

The most reasonable question one hears about the conspiracy theories regards the extent thereof. I for one don't think any of the possible assassination conspiracies could have been very extensive, and strongly question Prouty's, Garrison's and Stone's suggestions of a cast of thousands (please). But we do know -- via FOIA documents -- that Murder Inc. was still up and running in 1963, and that the CIA, as well as the "syndicate" were making contracts with them at the time.

I would simply like to see a presentation that was neither so riddled with holes as Prouty's and Stone's, nor as door-slamming as this and the cheesy TV movie on Murdoch's National Geographic Channel.

But after a half century, I'm not holding my breath.