Friday, 31 December 2010

Wild Grass
[Herbes Folles]
(2008)

60%

WEBSITE: Wild Grass (Les Herbes Folles) (2008)...

Inelegant fairy tale about the desire for desire that offers little insight into the nature of such desire. This is a child's view of desire that offers us only the desire and not the consequences.

The characterization is thin - to say the least - and there is, ultimately, boredom with a stultifying bourgeois life that Leaving explored far more profitably.

Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Okuribito
[Departures]
(2008)

100%

(http://www.rottentomatoes.com)

…leave a good-looking corpse

Taking us into the world of undertakers, this movie alternately offers us our own feelings of revulsion at the physical fact of death as well the humor that naturally comes from this fear as a means of dealing with it. This fear is here particularized as if death were an infectious disease and the mere touching of a corpse would induce death or make one somehow unclean.

The deaths here also concern those of the paths taken in life that lead nowhere and, when this is accepted, are left to die before this acceptance leads-on to new goals and opportunities. Thus, the film is more about grieving than dying; and finding one's true vocation from the ashes of the childhood one must leave behind to die.

The characterization is excellent and serves the themes perfectly. Like Field of Dreams, this understands grief in a way few movies ever dare. Impossible not to be affected by this.

HISTORY OF AFRICA:
The Quest for Eternal Harmony
(2010)

60%

(Image: http://www.amazon.com/)

A veritable mine of historical data marred by a polemical turgidity that borders on the ridiculous - almost as foolish, in its own way, as many White historians' (eg, Niall Ferguson) claim that the British Empire was a force for good. As this book shows, it is the opposite. The book could have been so much shorter and would, then, have made its point more clearly and concisely.

But that said, the book's main theme is that for Africa to fully realize its potential it had free itself of the systemic rape, torture, murder and pillage of Whites in order to achieve self-determination through self-definition. And it is important to recognize that this could not be done with the help of non-Blacks because of the historical mistrust between the two groups. Yet we still see that a United States of Africa is as likely to be achieved as a United States of America (US) (not all American countries are members of the US); especially given the White-drawn national boundaries that still exist separating similar ethnic, religious and cultural traditions. These boundaries demonstrate that White political ideas still predominate and that the psychological affects of White supremacism still negatively effect African politics. Yet because White culture never took root in Africa - because of its palimpsestic nature - the indigenous culture was never totally destroyed.

It makes a nice change to see Africa presented from an African perspective rather than the usual ethno- and Eurocentric one. Yet this book does not compare too well with the work of a Cheikh Anta DIOP - despite being his champion.

Thursday, 30 December 2010

We Are Family
(2010)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/)

A good tearjerker partly let-down by the fact that the central relationship - between ex-wife and soon-to-be new wife - is underwritten.

Only the excellence of Kareena KAPOOR and KAJOL save the day in their equal ability to say so much about their characters without uttering a word.

The husband and the cute children do not rise much above being plot devices for the central female relationship concerning an affective custody battle as to who should parent the children if KAJOL dies from cervical cancer.

Somewhat better than the original, of which this is a remake: Stepmom.

EMPIRE MADE ME:
An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai
(2003)

80%

(http://www.amazon.co.uk)

Fascinating, if overlong, exposé of the ongoing UK White obsession with Empire - as both a concept and a practice: A dream and a nightmare. Current British politics and culture are profoundly shaped by the imperial experience in the twenty-first century - especially the extreme violence and brutality that maintain it. The latter produces more enemies than friends; rendering the institution moribund - as it is today, despite present-day (2010) attempts to revive it in Arab lands.

The legacy of Empire lurks everywhere in the UK, in museums and galleries stuffed with looted treasures, statues of White supremacist militarists, genealogical studies revealing family histories benefiting from imperialism and tv programs about the glories of the Raj. Outside the UK, ex-colonial states possess national borders drawn by Whites and Western political and religious philosophies grafted onto indigenous norms.

This book tells this story from one man's point-of-view to emphasize the characterological distortions inherent in any imperial system - particularly that of the twentieth-century British Empire - in presenting mediocrities with the chance to shine abroad by pretending to be gods among men. Effectively, the borders of the British Isles were extended for such people to increase and improve their employment opportunities.

This is the diary of an uneducated nobody, who is not a member of the colonial elite, yet is not a stupid man. He is simply caught up in what it is to be White and British in the Chinese Raj; resulting in disturbed thoughts and physical violence against the native Chinese. The experience here is contradictory (& thus psychologically damaging) because colonial policemen were treated as servants, while being issued with them for their private use. Treated as inferior, yet told they were superior Whites. Like the UK lower-classes today, they are treated as chavs, yet told they are superior to immigrants. This reveals the recurrent mental confusions that lie at the heart of White, Western culture as nothing else can.

Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

SYSTEMS THINKING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR:
The Failure of the Reform Regime....
and a Manifesto for a Better Way
(2008)

80%

WEBSITE: Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: The Failure of the Reform Regime.... and a Manifesto for a Better Way...

(Image: http://www.amazon.co.uk/)

Excellent, easy-to-read guide to what went wrong with UK public services in the last part of the twentieth-century and the early part of the twenty-first. This book explains the origins of these problems, the absurd political ideology behind them and the means of counteracting their worst effects.

The free market was introduced into the UK public sector with little thought as to whether this was ever appropriate. So-called Customer Choice and the setting of standards and targets dominated the command-and-control thinking of politicians obsessed with quick, election-winning results based on the flawed, deterministic view of human nature that proclaims people are naturally lazy and need to be incentivized - and even bullied - to do their work. This has resulted in more expensive and less effective public services, since target inspection is more important than service delivery. Because the problem is systemic, failure is built-in, and so only a Systems' Thinking approach can help save the day.

This would be perfect reading for any local authority manager to help them do their job better – and W Edwards Deming would be proud of the author (John Seddon). It is also salutary reading for the long-suffering rate & taxpayer and the even longer-suffering public service user.

The only - understandable - flaw of the work lies in the assumption that bad systems' design is based on ignorance rather than a cynical attempt to make money from the ignorance of others. That the folly exposed is so obvious suggests the over-weaning cynicism of politicians, in their ambitions being so much more than their actual abilities. Unless it is clearly understood that this situation is rooted in a fundamental dislike of self and of others - based on outdated, socially-snobbish cultural hierarchies - there can be no motivation to change the situation for the better. This is because of the vested interest of the Games' Theoreticians creating a stranglehold on the culture of government. It also fails to adequately detail the politicians' desire to blame public sector managers for the politicians' failure of leadership and lack of interest practical, long-term ideas; resulting from needing to secure the short-term goal of electoral success.

Its greatest failing, however, lies in the wider issue of UK culture, itself, being the very command-and-control culture the author so successfully criticizes. He does not place due weight on the difficulty of creating demand-led public institutions in a culture obsessed with arbitrary evaluations of others. This would reveal the uphill struggle always presented to such rational ideas while still offering the reader food for thought.

History of White People
(2010)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	Book

(Image: http://www.amazon.com/)

Easy-to-read, if overlong, academic text that exposes the White cultural fallacy of the alleged plurality of human races. The author does not deal well with the fact that English is a language, when used by Whites, that finds it difficult to discuss cultural differences without referring to skin color; thereby implying that skin pigment is not only important in determining character but also natural because it is enshrined in the language as a self-fulfilling political prophecy.

Where she does well is in talking about Whites' exploitation of physical differences for economic and psychological reasons. That Whiteness was invented in the eighteenth-century to justify White supremacism and that before this time cultural background and geographic location were seen as indicators of temperament and ability. This reinforces her explication of how Whites presently feel about themselves by virtue of the fact that she has to constantly say that this is how Whites feel now and not how those who would be called White today (by those same Whites) felt then.

The book details the invention of race as color in order to determine citizenship rights, beauty and virtue, Blackness, if not actual skin color, continues to play a leading role in the way Whites think about themselves. Blacks are seen as Dionysian: Passionate, dancers, rhythmic, lighthearted and sensual. Whites as Apollonian: Energetic, active, persevering, rational and technically able. All Blacks are thus feminized as inferior by Whites in the way White women often are. This leads to the creation of self-fulfilling categories that do not rank people as they are but as they are supposed to be for the economic benefit of self-identified Whites. This also led to the White cultural fetishization of sex, reproduction and sexual attractiveness.

Yet White supremacists are faced with an incontrovertible fact: There is no biological basis for clearly differentiating between peoples and cultures. The advent of DNA testing has made the fact that race do not exist in the plural even more clear since DNA testing does not reveal the history of biological descent of either individuals or groups. Nevertheless, White supremacism is a myth that refuses to die; while yet creating cultures that see Whiteness as existing at the expense of those not considered White for obvious economic and psychological reasons. This lets Whites think of themselves as individuals – and of others as an undifferentiated mass - and not even as possessing an ethnicity at all. Yet, obvious White privilege proves these claims to be political chimera; disabling many Whites from living fully. and enabling their inevitable cupidity and amoralism despite the facts that: All peoples are much the same; customs are not racial; character is not inborn; civilization is not caused by race; and, race prejudice is, therefore, not inevitable.

Friday, 17 December 2010

Dabangg
(2010)

RATING: 60%

(Image: http://www.thelatestnews.in/)

A lot of nonsense but a lot of fun - especially in the action scenes. Bollywood has obviously learned a lot from films like The Matrix and the Bourne series - and it shows here in their impressive attempt to outdo both.

The story of two feuding brothers is completely disposable and all we are left with is a lot of macho posing-for-the-ladies wrapped-up in a faux-revenge plot against the villain for killing the two brothers' mother; bringing them together for the final showdown. The pitiful characterization asks us not to care about this as if it were an unimportant matter. But it is not and so this could have been so much better.

Thursday, 16 December 2010

I Love You Phillip Morris
(2009)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://www.rottentomatoes.com)

Being Yourself

Very funny black romantic-comedy about a closet gay who comes out and leaves his previous Christian religiosity behind him to embrace his true self. We are effectively drawn into the world of a con-man because we are only told what he is prepared to tell us. Because this film is as emotionally-rewarding as it is, you almost hope the cheats get away with it.

Jim CARREY is excellent and completely inhabits his character. The idea that so many homosexuals hide their sexuality by joining homophobic religions neatly encapsulates the conflicts within each of them that come from living in a homophobic West as the selfsame conflict in that culture itself - especially the idea that gays are naturally prone to criminality. Ewan McGREGOR is also superb as the eponymous character and there is a genuine chemistry between the two leads that makes the romance truly affecting. Along with the high quality of the comedy, the sheer ineptitude of the US judiciary revealed here quite simply boggles the imagination.

Where this film fails is in its lack of insight into compulsive or addictive behavior. We never really understand why the lead is such a kleptomaniac except his desperate need for attention. Do all adoptees turn out so maladjusted and anti-social? Yet, like The Life & Death of Peter Sellers, this is essentially a treatise on identity - about a man who demands attention and is desperate to keep it - by telling lies. Yet, such a man does not really exist in any meaningful sense since his lies are designed to cover his essential sense of inferiority.

Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Idiots
[Idioterne;
Dogma 95]
(1998)

80%

(Image: http://seanmorrisseycarroll.blogspot.com/)

Yet another film made by Whites expressing the many oddities of their culture. By pretending to be retarded the characters here play jokes on those who are taken in by their performance, yet no real answer to the lack of happiness in a materialistic culture is ever offered - save the schizophrenia on offer here. Trying to explore their 'inner idiot', they create what does not exist by retreating into childhood behavior patterns. The would-be critique of a shallow and empty West then becomes nothing more than just another example of it - just like the short-lived Hippie movement.

Like Godard's Weekend this movie is obsessed with a self-confessedly dogmatic system that especially and expressly evade artifice in that there is no post-production on the images and sound, but this does not represent any kind of thinking outside of the box that it intends: It laughs at rather than with.

The often very funny characterization is excellent, however, and the actors represent themselves as they really are to great effect as they expose the empty hypocrisy of those they meet, in stylistic parody of Candid Camera. The characters here clearly in a great deal of pain because of their learned emotional retardation - and the actors play it perfectly. R D Laing would have loved this.

Chiave
[Key]
(1983)

60%

(Image: http://www.worldscinema.com/)

Above-average Tinto Brass vehicle that suffers in this UK DVD release because the few scenes in Italian are un-subtitled.

Nevertheless, Frank FINLAY is excellent as the older man married to a younger woman of whom he is madly jealous; while desperately wanting to rekindle their faded sexual life. The lovely Stefania SANDRELLI is not as good as FINLAY and so unbalances the film dramatically. Yet the marriage drama is convincing and involving in its focus on reliability and commitment.

Wednesday, 15 December 2010

Last Picture Show -
Director’s Cut
(1971)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://kobli.blog.hu/)

A yearning paean for a lost time in one’s life when the future was bright and shiny and a girl’s thighs were deepest, darkest Africa. Yet, it is never the last time because it is always the last - since history continually repeats itself. Many of the characters here believe their boat has sailed and life has passed them by - the women especially complain because their men have no ambition. In this one-horse-town nothing much happens yet it encapsulates so much about our everyday lives that the world outside of it seems pale and without merit: A virtual ghost town filled with living, breathing people.

A perfect cast bring the screenplay beautifully to life in a well-directed film whose nostalgia makes you nostalgically wonder why the US cannot seem to make films as good as this any more.

Monday, 13 December 2010

Hero
[Accidental Hero]
(1992)

40%

(Image: http://www.ahashare.com/)

Semi-clever movie that tries hard to be another Capricorn One in being a disquisition on lies that tell the truth.

In common with this theme, the movie itself is a lie which tries to tell the truth in a futile attempt to resurrect the spirit of Frank Capra. The claim that heroes are so desperately needed in a cynical Western culture is not fully explored and the characters never come to life as they should in a story of the essence of humanity. The communitarianism of the plot is insincere since it does not define heroism - especially its inherent irrationality. The point about our need of heroes who look like heroes; that is, are as attractive physically as they are ethically is well made, but the glosses over the reality of most people's lives in a typically superficial Hollywood manner.

Rather a waste of first-rate actors in a story that is also about the redemption of a father who (like the Dad in Close Encounters of the Third Kind) abandons his wife and son to a life of petty crime. There are, in fact, too many themes at odds with one another here - with none examined in sufficient dramatic depth.

Earth Girls Are Easy
(1989)

60%

(Image: http://www.scifimoviepage.com/)

Amusing-enough movie about inter-species mating that, despite the abundance of acting talent, does not really explore the issues it raises. These are: White supremacism; the superficiality & materialism of White culture and the importance of fulfilling and satisfying sex for women.

The rampant individualism on show denies empathetic human relations; hence, the loneliness displayed. The weak characterization never helps answer the question: How does one live better than the characters here? The love that could be here is never present. Visit to a Small Planet or Starman.

Bloody Sunday
(2002)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.reelingreviews.com/)

Excellent reconstruction of a particularly shameful day for British imperialism in Northern Ireland in the deliberate shooting of unarmed civilians. The legally-sanctioned cultural oppression of Catholics by Protestants, backed by a despairing British government, is the source of the conflict here; made worse by the political decision to murder civilians.

Highly reminiscent of the shootings carried out by Whites in South Africa under apartheid, especially Sharpeville, this film brilliantly evokes what inevitably happens when people's life goals are centered upon the exploitation of others. Such political belief systems are always maintained by the view that those you exploit are somehow genetically inferior and that the belief is somehow self-justifying.

The desire to end the Troubles in when Northern Ireland with more violence simply and inevitably led to thirty years of more. If there is a defining moment in the recent history of Northern Ireland, this must surely be it. That by killing moderates you simply admit to the moral bankruptcy of your political position with its attendant claim that there are no moderates and that all Catholics are terrorists. Reminiscent of current-day Islamophobia this has the inevitable effect of ruining any chances of civil rights for at least a generation.

Comparisons with Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers and Attenborough's Cry Freedom are as inevitable as they are accurate as, for once, we see a truthful portrayal of Irish politics unfiltered by the needs of the British government of the day.

Sunday, 12 December 2010

Appaloosa
(2008)

60%

(www.rottentomatoes.com)

Elegantly-mounted redeployment of some hoary old Western cliches stolen from better movies like Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957) but which fails to add anything much that is new of its own. There are no great existential themes of human nature explored here despite the paring down of the drama to classic Western components of a man, a woman, a bleak landscape and a horse.

The acting overall is fine but the movie's lack of essence scuppers it from the characterization point of view from the outset - despite it being largely character driven and softening the expertly-staged and inevitable violence of the male antagonisms shown. The simplistic concept of a woman looking to settle down with the bravest man is never explored in the ethical terms needed, save to say that she is little more than the whore they all lust after. More psychological complexity here would have put this into the John Ford class.

Saturday, 11 December 2010

39 Steps
(1935)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.doctormacro.com/)

Despite not being a great dramatist or superlative artist, Hitchcock was a superb plot-driven storyteller whose mastery of film technique and editing brilliance created engrossing thrillers like this. This one utilizes a common plot device in the great man's work of a man unjustly accused of murder out to prove his innocence. the deftly handled sexual humor always bring a chuckle and the fact that he started his career when films were silent shows through in his ability to make telling plot points without resorting to dialogue. A behaviorist/determinist film director largely uninterested in the psychological motivations of his characters; making him cinema's greatest entertainer.

Robert DONAT is suitably dashing and Madeleine CARROLL appropriately beautiful in this astonishing template for all the couple-on-the-run movies you have ever seen since (eg The Bourne Identity). What a pity no filmmaker today comes anywhere close to duplicating the suspense and the adroit comedy (that does not overwhelm the story) of this masterpiece.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
(2009)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/)

Michael SHANNON brilliantly plays a modern-day Orestes in this Oedipal drama of matricide and clinical depression.

The film is less than the sum of its parts, however, in never revealing much about the protagonists – we only see the symptoms of their mental sickness, not very much of the causes. One is, thus, left with the feeling that this film director has simply run out of story ideas; hoping that the visuals will tell the story for him. Because the latter are not that interesting, on their own, they will not do this.

This movie could have been a fine examination of the ennui and malaise of a materialistic Western culture that produces such schizophrenic behavior, but it wallows in it rather than exploring the failings of those who never find a purpose in life.

Friday, 10 December 2010

NAZI OFFICER'S WIFE:
How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust
(1999)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.amazon.com)

Walking through hell but not burning

Exceptionally well-written book chronicling the adventures of a young Austrian Jewess trapped by the events of the Second World War at the heart of the Third Reich. Her sort-of escape was to marry a Nazi Party member and to successfully conceal all evidence of her Jewishness.

What is striking about her story is that the thin veneer of so-called Western civilization could be so easily stripped away to reveal the Freudian repressions lurking beneath; with their attendant anger, resentment and bitterness directed at historical scapegoats: The Jews. That this would result in a climate of fear where Christian friends (& lovers) would turn their back on their Jewish counterparts is not altogether surprising given the historical antagonism between the two religions, but that Western Whites could be so White supremacist as to claim that even their fellow Whites - of a different religion - were to be as persecuted as non-Whites traditionally are. This suggests that the West is so institutionally racist that skin color is as equally significant as it is insignificant! With White supremacism, not even Whites are safe! Still, no-one ever said racism had to be either logical or consistent. And this is what makes this book so fascinating: A White woman passing as a White woman. (This could not work a for a Jew since a man would then be conscripted into the armed services and risk death that way.)

This is every bit as good as The Diary of Ann Frank in its especially-vivid depictions of the everyday fear of being picked up by the Gestapo and the resulting psychological tension of being a foreigner in one's own land. These are clearly memories burned into the mind of the percipient as if a Black man had turned White overnight and suddenly found Whites treating him as Black.

The ultimate point of this book is that cultural assimilation and integration is always a politically-correct charade. It is White supremacist in concept since it places Whites at the top of a cultural system where they decide the rules and they decide who is and is not acceptable. It is no better than the Nazism it claims to supersede.

Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Judgment at Nuremberg
(1961)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/)

white trash live among us

Compelling drama about institutional racism that makes clear the extreme difficulty for members of any racist society to fight the racism benefiting them. This explains the unwillingness to become part of any cultural resistance - then as now. Guilt and shame run through this lengthy drama as it explores the willful political myopia, ethical complacency and moral complicity that compares it favorably with Gentleman's Agreement. The characterization is well done and we come to understand the empathic failings of all concerned, on all sides of the argument.

The central problem of how to put all Germans on trial after a genocidal war is answered in the movie as in real life. It is only possible to try the ringleaders and the fanatics. The vast majority of fellow travelers are to be left alone simply because it is impractical to do anything else. This renders those executing justice to be as complicit in the activity they try as those they try.

As with White supremacist cultures today, those against White supremacy have the problem that they all benefit from the activity they claim to be against. The life- and reality-denying solidarity of the Whites here - even at the cost of ethical compromise - is well shown and strongly suggests that most Nazis got away scot free. As with White supremacists in all ages, the frequently-repeated claim that ordinary German citizens were unaware of what was really happening to those being persecuted (Jews here) is as laughable now as it was then; as the White denial of endemic racism is as much to blame now as it was then. The hypocrisy of so called victors' justice is also exposed when many Western countries explored the idea of sterilizing the educationally sub-normal and anti-miscegenation laws as assiduously as the Nazis.

An interesting film about the classic effects of White culture’s institutional racism: Guilt, avoidance-of-responsibility, denial, etc, that has much to say to the same effects concerning the same racism today.

It takes its own good time to reach a powerful and satisfying climax, but does not deal with political expediency well; the latter determined to push the truth away and evade the past.

It is difficult to untangle oneself from a culture that has both legalized racism and valorized it in everyday social practice. To try and step outside of the racism from which Whites benefit - while denying that that racism exists - leads to self-contradiction. To pretend that such unearned privilege does not exist - while benefiting from it - leads to hypocrisy. To fight such a system is to put oneself beyond any possible benefits - avoiding guilt &shame - but putting one’s own life at risk. The guilt-ridden White denial of such an endemic state-of-affairs is essentially what this movie is about. Considering the distressing material on show here it is hardly surprising that anyone would wish to deny the overwhelming historical evidence

Similar problems arise when trying to condemn such a culture, since those doing the condemning can also be shown to have benefited from such a White supremacist system. This is why Germany could never be truly denazified - without killing all the Germans - and why modern Western culture can never fully move on from similar problems today. As the Germans blamed the Jews for their economic problems, the victors of the Second World War blamed the Germans for Nazism, not their own pre-war complicity with it.

Monday, 6 December 2010

Eating Raoul
(1982)

60%

(Image: http://atrocitynights.com/)

Lively black comedy about the aftershocks of the sexual revolution in America. It shows the affects of accepting the credo of no emotional repression as a mantra as the inevitable acceptance of criminality as a valid lifestyle choice. In this it is not the apologist for such excess that it seems to be but a conservative riposte to such excess.

Yet the visual explicitness is troubling since it tends to give the impression of valorizing and validating a sexual revolution that only represented freedom for male rapaciousness – with little to offer women. However, the deadpan style cleverly exacerbates the feeling of the emptiness of the characters' lives that is only solaced by sexual promiscuity. A pleasing look at the moral vacuum of Western culture that refuses to look too deeply at its own subject resulting mainly from weak characterization.

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

King Kong
(1933)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.alleycatscratch.com/)

BLONDES ARE SCARCE AROUND HERE

A brilliant and easily the best of all monster pictures ever made because, at heart, it is a great romantic love story. The beauty and the beast myth is cleverly re-imagined and presented larger-than-life in the modern world; the emotional impact of the movie stemming from the fact that it is a tragedy of unrequited and unrequitable love. Where the story differs from the original is in the way it, in common with a great many Hollywood films - up to and including the present day (2010) - presents a story of intercultural love in the guise of interspecies attraction.

The blonde White woman is presented as the epitome of human beauty and White virtue who needs protecting from being affectively raped by a large gorilla; representing White supremacist ideas of Black sexuality. Whites are shown as needing to protect themselves from the alleged taint that any such sexual unions imply by first attempting to tame the beast and, when this fails, to destroy him. Presenting an analogous Black as a potential rapist of White women (as literally shown in Birth of a Nation) is clearly readable as an analogy to White attitudes toward miscegenation - especially in the United States of the time when in some states it was a criminal offense and/or extra-judicially punishable by lynching. Yet, despite this, the lure of forbidden sexual-relations captivates the White mind; hence, the immense popularity among Whites of this amazing picture; representing, as it does, Whites' simultaneous fear of and desire for Blacks.

And yet the feared "Beast" - so-called - is humanized, as few movie monsters are (& as few Blacks still are in Hollywood where the ban on miscegenation still holds sway), so that he becomes a character in his own right and not a mere ragbag of clever special effects (as in Jurassic Park or Alien). We empathize with his love for the White woman. and his (thwarted) sexuality - although violent - is somehow endearing, chivalrous, the stuff of great tragedy and understandable in human terms. The SFX still look good today in an age of CGI.

An unusual Hollywood attempt at showing Blacks as human rather than as the ravening beasts of the White supremacist imagination - in this it resembles Shakespeare's play Othello. To have presented such a story in literal terms would have meant box-office failure with a White audience as well as censorship problems with White censors. Here the beast is the romantic hero whose violence is subdued by love and whose grand passion becomes as big as he is himself.

The entire cast is excellent particularly Fay WRAY as the "scarce blonde": The perfect cinema ingenue. Bruce CABOT is fine as the square-jawed, Flash Gordon-type out to protect his mate from any simian interest, whose love for WRAY is compared and contrasted dramatically with that of Kong. His character also has the same problem as Kong; coming to terms with his true feelings for WRAY despite his deep-seated misogyny. While Robert ARMSTRONG is perfect as the alter ego of the director (Merian Cooper): The daredevil film director out to obtain film footage that 'no white man has ever seen before'.

Monday, 29 November 2010

Amour l’Après-Midi
[Chloe in the Afternoon;
Love in the Afternoon]
(1972)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.qnetwork.com/)

Movie dominated by the existence and very presence of the female sex. Here women are presented in all their glory and the sheer variety of them in this film cannot be beaten. All the women here are attractive in their own way because they realize that all men are really a little frightened of them and they know how to exploit this to their own psychological advantage. This is accepted by the men here as the price they have to pay for being the weaker sex.

A man can only know what a woman is thinking until the fate she has in store for you has come to pass. The seductress here presents the hero with the tempting moral dilemma of whether or not he should be unfaithful to his wife with her. The affect of being tempted by his own sexual fantasies is to bring him closer to his wife and a deeper appreciation of his love for her.

Mad Men
(2007–)

40%

(Image: http://www.imdb.com/)

Like Desperate Housewives, this drama series represents Whites pretending to look at their own culture in a knowing way while actually celebrating a culture that they simultaneously love and hate. As usual the characters here are semi-intelligent types whose only real goal in life is the tail-wagging-the-dog one of avoiding hard work and replacing it with an office career that is just as soul-destroying. Only high pay, endemic White supremacism and gynophobic sexual-promiscuity make their mediocrity tolerable – at least to themselves.

Amusingly, the White actors here are playing caricatures rather than flesh-and-blood characters; revealing the lack of genuine depth of this drama. And you find yourself amazed that any advertising person could ever believe that any true creativity was involved in their work. And that the lack of creativity here could possibly be the basis for the creative drama that this most definitely is not. The actors portray only their characters' personae and not their actual characters; how they appear on the outside, not who they are on the inside. This is not acting, it is mere self-conscious pretending – appropriately enough, the kind you find in a tv commercial!

The problem for the characters here (like that of the dramatists!) is to sell products people do not need; while creating the want for them - even if they are harmful to health, like nicotine. This proves the lack of genuine innovation in Western culture that leads to the need to constantly resell peplum as if it were "New and Improved". An odd drama that celebrates a time, a place and a still-existing set of attitudes that Whites refuse to drop in the present: Self-conscious knowingness as a substitute for insight or wisdom. It is easy to be rueful about the past since the time for useful knowingness is long past and, thus, less painful. It would have been a revelation if Whites had made a tv series about the present that would serve a useful political purpose rather than the one here of pretending how different Whites were then to what they are now. A drama about this simple fact would have been far more profound, far more enjoyable and far less prone to the commercial needs of its sponsors.

The quality of the acting is compromised by the lack of any genuine thematic content that could possibly reveal the essence of reality. In this, it is the advertising man's dream about how to dramatize reality rather than a proper dramatist's vision. One senses White culture as a kind of emptiness that dramas like this refuse to explore the rationale behind: A celebration of political and ethical superficiality and the inability to connect to objective reality. The other dramatic problem here is the implied belief that only White culture exists and, therefore, matters: White Men Behaving Badly; making it difficult to relate to the non-existent characters.

Our Cancer Year
(1994)

60%

(Image: http://www.amazon.com/)

Like most autobiographies, this falls into the classic trap of self-indulgence and of not knowing what to include or to exclude. This is both exacerbated and caused by a lack of thematic purpose in the telling.

Despite the first-person narrative, there is little insight into struggling with cancer and so we are confronted with un-empathetic characters who would much rather whine than confront their actual existential problems. The movie American Splendor handles the same couple with more humor, warmth and truth.

Führerprinzip:

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.

(1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)

Pages:

Friday, 31 December 2010

…leave a good-looking corpse

Thursday, 30 December 2010

Friday, 17 December 2010

Thursday, 16 December 2010

Being Yourself

Wednesday, 15 December 2010

Monday, 13 December 2010

Sunday, 12 December 2010

Saturday, 11 December 2010

Friday, 10 December 2010

Walking through hell but not burning

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

white trash live among us

Monday, 6 December 2010

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

BLONDES ARE SCARCE AROUND HERE

Monday, 29 November 2010

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