Archive for 2018
November 12, 2018
KYLE SMITH ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, Orson Welles’ last movie, recently completed and now streaming on Netflix:
Wind, like everything Welles did, contains enough inspiration and beauty to provide fodder for a film-school paper, but like (almost) everything he did it’s undisciplined to the point of exasperation, beset by so-so sound quality, amateurish lighting, ragged editing, and wooden acting, all in the service of a script as flabby as its auteur. The film stock, color, and aspect ratio are variable. Far from being a successor to 8 ½, Wind is mostly hot air, with all the rambling self-pity of a student film. Welles, who was very much in “experimental” mode, may well have wanted the finished version to be as choppy and freewheeling as it is, but just because Orson Welles, Genius (™), wanted it that way doesn’t mean the film works.
Ah, but those scattered moments of brilliance.
Unless you’re a Welles completist, it’s tough sledding, arguably with the exception of Welles’ film-within-the-film, which combines shots approaching softcore porn, and spoofs Michelangelo Antonioni’s arch hippie-era ‘60s movies, Blowup and Zabriskie Point. As a result, Welles’ “newest” film seems like his most dated, a strange relic of the early 1970s. As Kyle writes, “You’d be better off watching instead the movie about the movie: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (the title refers to one of Welles’s mordant self-observations) explores the relentless, almost purposeful squandering of talent that is the Welles tragedy.”
Read the whole thing.
PALLYWOOD PROPAGANDA FACTORY LOSES A STUDIO. “Gloves Off:” The IDF Blows Up the Al-Aqsa (Hamas TV) Studios in Gaza.
(Classical reference in headline.)
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Conservative Gift Guide for Christmas 2018.
Thanks to Christian Toto for including my review of Roger Daltrey’s new autobiography.
I remember when the Smartest President Ever mocked Sarah Palin for suggesting that we could drill our way out of energy shortages.
PC GONE MAD: Phrase ‘Long Time No See’ Is Declared Racist.
Adjust Newspeak Dictionaries accordingly, comrade.
CNN UNVEILS NEW SLOGAN: ‘ORANGE MAN BAD.’
It’s the Babylon Bee, so it’s satire – or is it?
Earlier: “During last night’s election coverage on Fox News, The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway dropped an ‘orange man bad’ line while discussing Dems and Trump Derangement Syndrome and folks loved it.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Trumpy Bear is not fake news.
As Iowahawk tweets, “Say what you want about Trumpy Bear, but it’s objectively less stupid than a Che Guevara t-shirt.” Beyond that, I’m still trying to process the arrival of Trumpy Bear. I think it will be easier after I down a few cans of Billy Beer.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Get your Trumpy Bear right here.
THEY KEEP GOING BACK AND FORTH ON THIS: Fish, omega-3 may lower heart attack risk, studies find.
JUST NBC THE HACKWORK: MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Says Broward Election Supervisor Snipes ‘Is a Republican’: ‘She’s Hardly a Democratic Official.’
In reality, “It is easily fact-checked. In addition to hundreds of media reports, Snipes self-identifies as a Democrat, and in her elected position, she runs as a Democrat. She won her last Democratic primary in 2016.”
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Dan Crenshaw Proves That Outrage Ain’t the Only Way.
MARS NEEDS SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS!
Scientist-comrade L. Walkowicz understands quite well what she’s up to, saying, “The language we use automatically frames how we envision the things we talk about.” She knows that controlling language is key to establishing control over people, because you teach them to absorb the ideology as second nature. This woman is a hardcore ideologue. If you think science is immune to this ideologization, let Comrade Walkowicz and National Geographic, which popularizes science to the masses, disabuse you.
As Rod Dreher writes, “National Geographic is not (yet) Teen Vogue” — but as quotes from the publication illustrate, it’s getting there at warp speed.
TONI AIRAKSINEN: UW Institutes ‘Diversity’ Training After Professor’s Op-Ed on Sex Differences. “The controversy began in June, when UW-Seattle Professor Stuart Reges published ‘Why Women Don’t Code’ for Quillette, in which he articulated why women are less interested in computer science than men. (Hint, hint: men and women are different). Though Reges admits the title was hyperbolic — as he has taught hundreds of women to code during his career — UW students didn’t see it as such. They circulated an internal memo of concern and lobbied UW against his gender harassment’.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Essential Tools For The Firearm Tinkerer.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Here’s a Preview of House Democrats’ Cavalcade of Investigations.
SELLING OUT THE NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIP: Any article that begins with this…
Calvin: The hard part for us avant-garde post-modern artists is deciding whether or not to embrace commercialism. Do we allow our work to be hyped and exploited by a market that’s simply hungry for the next new thing? Do we participate in a system that turns high art into low art so it’s better suited for mass consumption? Of course, when an artist goes commercial, he makes a mockery of his status as an outsider and free thinker. He buys into the crass and shallow values art should transcend. He trades the integrity of his art for riches and fame. (Thinks.) Oh, what the heck. I’ll do it.
Hobbes (rolling his eyes): That wasn’t so hard.
— Calvin and Hobbes strip from November 2, 1990
…Is well worth a read, particularly if you’re as fascinated as I am about the last days of mass media.
SPACE: Astronomers see material orbiting a black hole *right* at the edge of forever.
The photos are stunning.
YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN: Dementia Is Getting Some Very Public Faces.
Despite all the hypocritical tributes at McCain’s funeral, his politics was always personal and often petty, and frequently destructive.
RIP: Stan Lee, Marvel Comics’ Real-Life Superhero, Dies at 95.
Excelsior.
HMM: Drive-by shooting suspect remotely wipes iPhone X, catches extra charges. “The iPhone was seized as evidence in the case, but police say that shortly after she triggered the remote wipe, an option available via Find My iPhone in iCloud. Normally the tool is intended for people with lost or stolen devices.”
DOES THIS MEAN THE #METOO MOVEMENT IS LITERALLY KILLING WOMEN? Bystanders less likely to give CPR to women: Respondents said bystanders may worry about hurting a woman while doing CPR chest compressions — or fear being accused of sexual assault.
SAUL MONTES-BRADLEY: Brenda Snipes, idiocy and how to destroy the electoral system.
For 15 years now, this harridan has been bungling elections in Broward County with a combination of incompetence, cupidity and corruption that would make Mexican drug dealers blush. She has managed to turn her County and State in the short list of the most corrupt on record. She has been found guilty of systematically violating the Florida Constitution, the law and the responsibilities of her office and…crickets.
The Sun Sentinel published a nice abridged list of her misdeeds here. “For 15 years, Snipes has served as Broward County’s elections chief, with mixed results. Long lines and vote counts that continued long after polls closed marred elections in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2012, 2016 and, of course, this year.”
And for all of those 15 long years, a succession of Republican governors have done NOTHING to end her reign of fraud and corruption. Jeb Bush, Charly Christ and Rick Scott sat on their gluteus maximus, occasionally raised a vapid complaint, and took no action. Now, as her team of activists continue to produce as many ballots as needed to revert the results of November 6th last, a chorus of indignant politicians wail their woes to the air, but all of them, from Rick Scott to Marco Rubio to the waitress at the Flashback Diner on Federal Highway knew well what was going on and lacked the testicular fortitude to do anything about it.
Now is too late. Their fates (and ours) are in her creepy hands.
Read the whole thing, because the stakes this week are far higher than just one senate seat or governor’s mansion.