A Non-Commercial Decade Of Dominance!

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Bylines Essays:    Title/Subject/Author

1001) Amazing Babies/Essay/Len Holman  Texas legislators have apparently uncovered an amazing mutation:  babies who can remember where everything was 30 years after they left the place of their birth.  These incredible infants have super memories which will enable them to be born in the U.S., move to some terrorist camp, grow up speaking the local language, train to blow things up, then—and here’s the part where evolution advocates just gasp—will return 30 years later and go directly to sensitive landmarks in the U.S. and destroy them.  Just like homing pigeons or moose returning to their summer grazing grounds....

Get'em young.

1002) VQR/Scandal/Dan Schneider  One of my website’s fans forwarded me a link to a recent New York Times article with the tabloid title, A Suicide Leaves A Literary Journal And Its Editor In Limbo. As I have a popular website and traverse through 15-1600 emails per week, I actually get many, MANY links to online stories about the absurd, the literary, the artistic, the scientific, the scandalous, the political, etc., and sometimes several of these formats are in one tale. The story detailed the editor of a university literary journal’s supposed bullying one of his underlings into committing suicide. The story, as the phrase now goes, went viral online, and within a few days there were literally tens of thousands of hand-wringing accounts about the ‘incident.’ On many literary blogs the editor was personally condemned as cold and unfeeling, even as his ‘editorial prowess’ was praised as visionary, even within the original article. But, in scouring many sources online, the basic thrust of the story is as such: one of the staff members of the journal committed suicide, either because of one or both of two salacious reasons: a) he was a ‘victim’ of the tyrannical editor’s workplace abuse, or b) he was imputed to be a lonely, aging homosexual, albeit most of the references were not so bold as to come out and state that, using weasel words, instead, to impute the dead man....

Nail'em.

1003) Love Story/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  When I was a boy, the film that dominated my earliest memories of pop culture was 1970’s Love Story. From the music to the saying, ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry,’ to Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal being everywhere, it was the biggest movie of its day; sort of what Titanic was to folks a decade ago. And, yes, like Titanic, it’s a schlocky film. It has a few saving graces which place it above the doomed ocean liner picture, though. One, there’s no Leonardo DiCaprio in the film. Yes, Ali MacGraw was a terribly wooden actress. Her wooden performance here is mind-numbing. But, it’s still not as earnestly bad as DiCaprio’s. Second, despite the title being meant to refer to the film’s two leads, Oliver and Jenny, played by O’Neal and MacGraw, the far more interesting love story is that played out between father and son. O’Neal plays Oliver Barrett IV, while Ray Milland plays his father, Oliver Barrett III. And, it is this relationship, between WASP scion and patriarch, that is so good that it carries the otherwise predictable soap opera of a film over the threshold to passability as a film. Is it a great film? No way, but Ray Milland does give a great performance as the emotionally impotent father....

Corny but fun.

1004) Army Of Shadows/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Oftentimes, critics like to toss around terms like great, masterpiece, brilliant, etc., just to blow their own horns, or to jump on a bandwagon started rolling by a big name critic (this is called critical cribbing, and also involves the pilfering of review points from others). But, more often than not, the real reasons such terms are loosely bandied about is because most critics are simply lazy, too lazy to actually invest some time in engaging the film, book, artwork, theory, they are, by dint of their profession, supposed to do. What happens, then, is that this overpraise boxes a critic in, especially when a true masterpiece, or great film, comes along, because you end up with a pantheon of art that is mostly solid to good, at best; thus effectively making the praise they offer to truly great art meaningless, for it is indistinguishable from that offered to the merely solid. A good recent example of this comes from the 2006 American release of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 film on the French Resistance during World War Two, Army Of Shadows (L'Armée Des Ombres)....

Solid.

1005) Mishima/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The more I have become aware of the works of Paul Schrader the more I am convinced that his great screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver was just a random act. Having read his ill-wrought and puerile book, Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, having sat through, to be kind, mediocrities like American Gigolo, Bringing Out The Dead, Affliction, The Last Temptation Of Christ, The Mosquito Coast, and the unfortunate remake of Cat People, I was almost convinced that Schrader was a hack, but a lucky one, at that, to have Taxi Driver on his resume, as a balance to all the naysayers. Now, having watched his 1985 film, Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters (fashioned on Mishima’s Sea Of Fertility tetralogy), I am convinced that Schrader is a hack....

Mediocre.

1006) Preying/In Schools/Len Holman  School prayer is one of those defining issues:  it clearly illustrates the “culture wars” and keeps track of who is on which side.  But it’s a false eyelash on the Eye of Truth, a non-issue in which the pundits and point-makers and zealous ideologues do nothing more than pour more cement onto their feet, to stand more firmly in an already-deep hole, and they do nothing but prey on those kids who just want to pray....

Thinking it through.

1007) The Wild Blue Yonder/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  I just watched Werner Herzog’s 2005 science fiction fantasy film The Wild Blue Yonder, and am left in that rare position of not having much to say of the film that could really change the opinion of a viewer, pro or con, toward it. This is not because it is good nor bad, simply because it is one of those works of art that is not even on a good/bad scale. It is beyond such reckoning, a purely aural and visual experience for most of its 81 minutes, and thus has an effect similar to the phantasmagoric end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey....

Solid.

1008) An Autumn Afternoon/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Goddamn, Yasujiro Ozu’s great. Thus my first thought whilst taking in the last few moments of the Japanese film master’s last completed film, 1962’s An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma No Aji- which, according to online sources, translates as The Taste Of Mackerel- a feeling Ozu reputedly wanted to evoke with this film). Yes, many critics have pointed out that it shares many concerns with earlier Ozu films, and films that are considered greater films, but there is no doubt that this film is a great film, and arguably one of Ozu’s finest. It is in color, and clocks in at 112 minutes in length. Ostensibly, it follows the path of other Ozu films, in that it deals with a widowed father trying to marry off his daughter, and the fact that this act will likely leave him lonely. Yet, An Autumn Afternoon differs from the earlier takes on this subject in that its main focus is not on the emotions of the daughter, dealing with the guilt over leaving her father (as in 1949’s Late Spring or 1951’s Early Summer), but instead focuses on the father’s coming to terms with having to let his daughter go, for her good, if not his own....

Great.

1009) Gesualdo/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Werner Herzog, in his storied film career, has made many a good documentary and mockumentary. Gesualdo: Death For Five Voices (Tod Für Fünf Stimmen), made in 1995, is not one of them. Coming from a master of cinema, like Herzog, though, that still means Gesualdo is a pretty good film, but don’t expect anything of depth. Ostensibly, the film is a chronicle of the life of a 16^th and 17^th Century prince and musical composer named Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa. One might think that the sordid tale that emerges in the 60 minute, made for television documentary, was crafted just to satisfy Herzog’s own dictates about ‘ecstatic truth.’....

Ok.

1010) All About Eve/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  If a singular aspect, alone, can propel a film to greatness, than perhaps writer-director Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1950 black and white Oscar winning best film, All About Eve, is that film. Given that the film is about a play- a medium dominated by the power of the written word, this should not be a surprise, but it’s also a testament to the notion that, despite the fetishizing of cineastes, film was, is, and always will be, a medium dependent on the written word more than any visual aspect. In short, it is literature with pictures. All About Eve is blessed with dialogue that still sparkles with wit nearly six decades on, and, even more so than the films of Billy Wilder (whose Sunset Boulevard, released in the same year, is often compared to All About Eve) there simply was no Hollywood screenwriter that came as close to the great stage comedies of Oscar Wilde than Mankiewicz....

Great wit.

1011) We/Essay/Len Holman  If you’ve been living in a cave, here is some news:  mid-term elections are here, and with them comes the whine, the lament, the complaint, that the middle class is being screwed by the government and we need to throw the old bums out—the ones who don’t understand the damage done to “regular” Americans—and elect people who bleed for the middle class, and will restore that class’ rightful place in the American pantheon....

Who?

1012) American Beauty/Film Review/Anthony Zanetti  Why is it that these movies about miserable WASPs in suburbia always have to have someone die at the end of the film? Oh, yes. It’s because instead of being dramatic pieces that really explore these characters, these films are usually melodramas that have to have a ‘big moment’ that emotionally affects the audience. Though released years after the subject of this essay, American Beauty (1999), the film Lymelife (2008) was similar in that it featured a fairly humourless white family struggling with their own unhappiness in their suburban environment. The father also gets shot at the end of the film. Rather than accuse the writer of Lymelife with ripping off American Beauty, I think this is simply a result of un-great minds thinking alike. The fact is, American Beauty is a very formulaic film, both in its script and its cinematic execution, and this is why so many of its components are recognizable. ...

Ugh.

1013) Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories/Book Review/Dan Schneider  It is an unusual circumstance that finds me writing not the first nor second, but the third, review of a particular book of short stories: Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories, by Yasunari Kawabata, to appear on my own website. The first two reviews of the book to appear were written by Brent Peterson, in 2006, and by my wife, Jessica Schneider, earlier in 2010. Both were quite positive in their assessments of the stories, and, it’s an interesting circumstance that finds me, basically, not being able to disagree with most of the positive points both made about the book, yet still finding both reviews to be, essentially, wrong in their final judgments. The reason for this is that both prior reviews focused mainly on the books positives, while ignoring the book’s flaws, which, to me, are quite obvious and many. Not enough for me to toss it onto the same dung heap I would toss most MFA penned pieces of garbage, but enough for me to state the overall book is, at best, a barely passable work, not anything close to being a work that holds greatness. In this sense, I find the two earlier reviews to be disappointing because I think they both ill prepare a reader for the totality of the text they will encounter, for the bulk of the book is larded with rote and formulaic tales....

Ok.

1014) For Your Consideration/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Christopher Guest’s latest film, 2006’s non-mockumentary For Your Consideration, which skewers both the Hollywood and Independent film genres, is his weakest film to date. That said, it’s still a fine little comedy. Guest, who rose to fame in the seminal 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, directed by Rob Reiner, had released three mockumentaries to great critical success and solid box office. These were Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, and A Mighty Wind, all featuring Guest’s own ensemble of actors, from Indy film queen Parker Posey to old SCTV regulars like Eugene Levy (his writing partner on this and other films), Catherine O’Hara, and Fred Willard (who, as usual, steals this film)....

Solid.

1015) When A Woman Ascends The Stairs/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Mikio Naruse was a Japanese film director who was often thought of as the Fourth Wheel of Japanese Cinema during the mid-20^th Century, safely ensconced behind the Trinity of Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu. Of course, there were other directors, like Masayaki Kobayashi and Kon Ichikawa, who could also claim that Fourth Wheel status, but of the three non-trinity directors, Naruse’s work has probably been the least seen in America. Thus, popping in The Criterion Collection DVD of his 1960 film, When A Woman Ascends The Stairs (Onna Ga Kaidan Wo Agaru Toki), I had no preset expectations of what the film would bring, and whose style (if any, of the five other named directors, Naruse’s style would most be near....

Great.

1016) Burden Of Dreams/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Les Blank’s 1982 documentary, Burden Of Dreams, is a film that, like Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, follows the near-obsessive drive of a great filmmaker to bring a great film to fruition. In the latter film, Eleanor Coppola detailed her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s will to bring Apocalypse Now to the screen. The former film details the similar drive that compelled German filmmaker Werner Herzog to make Fitzcarraldo. While the two fictive films are both great, the Coppola film is likely the greater film than Herzog’s, but, as far as the documentaries are concerned, Burden Of Dreams far outstrips Hearts Of Darkness. The latter film is a good film, but there’s nothing that lifts the film above the Making Of sort of documentary that’s since become de rigueur with DVD releases. In short, the film is pointless if you’ve not watched Apocalypse Now....

Good.

1017) Islam's First Cougar?/Essay/Len Holman  She was about 15 years his senior, a rich and comely widow with ambition and character who knew good from evil and a good man from a bad one.  He was a bachelor, a man of upright character and noble mien, an impeccable reputation for honesty and a deep sense that the society of his time was corrupt and in need of cleansing.  They had a destiny to fulfill together, but she was the one who made the first move....

Sexy lady.

1018) The Red And The White/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Watching Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancso’s 1967 black and white film The Red And The White (Csillagosok, Katonák) is an interesting experience, because it really is an experience, more so than a coherent story. But, I mean that in the best possible way. No, it’s nowhere near great cinema, but it’s a very interesting film, especially considering that he is seen as the biggest influence on the later Hungarian film director, Bela Tarr, who perfected the long take aesthetic in modern film. The primary difference between Tarr’s films and this one by Jancso is that Tarr’s cinema is definitely poetic- from what is in the frame, to the lingering over shots, to the scoring, to the way he directs his actors. Jancso’s film, however, reveals a definitely prosaic aesthetic, as well as the off the cuff realism that eluded filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and the rest of the New Wave aesthetic that swept into European cinema earlier in that decade....

Good.

1019) Written In Stone/Book Review/Dan Schneider  I recently received the galleys for an upcoming book (its evolving edits are the reason I will not quote from the work, as well as some needed correction of errors proofreading should catch) from Bellevue Literary Press called Written In Stone: Evolution And The Fossil Record, And Our Place In Nature. It was written by science blogger Brian Switek, who once wrote the popular blog Laelaps, but now blogs on his own, at http://brianswitek.com/. I had long read his blog, on and off, especially whenever new controversies were in the air, and am always on the lookout for a younger version of Stephen Jay Gould or Loren Eiseley; and while he’s not there yet, Switek’s writing and scientific mind do show promise that the next few decades need not be lost to the ignorance of religion....

Solid.

1020) Don't Ask, Don't Tell/Essay/Len Holman  Every bureaucracy is a thicket of rules—some official, some not—regulations, norms, procedures and an overall tendency to stifle creativity and to make the easy very hard and the very simple impossible.  So it is with the military....

Do tell.

1021) The Crystal World/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  This is my first time reading British writer J.G. Ballard, following the recommendation from a friend. Sort of science fiction and literary fused, The Crystal World is probably a better-written book than it is overall great story. Ballard is most commonly known for his memoir Empire of the Sun, which was made into a standard Hollywood film in 1987....

Good.

1022) The Chinese Lose Their Character/Essay/Len Holman  According to the popular—and alarmist—media of today, China is just beating this mighty nation to death.  We buy their stuff and they don’t buy ours—unless it’s made there, like luxury autos and clothes.  They use up a huge proportion of the earth’s resources and that angers us no end because that’s OUR job.  What in hell are they doing with all that cement?  Besides building block houses for the Uygurs after knocking down their traditional towns, I mean.  They have a modern navy and army, a growing sense of superiority, and a burgeoning appetite for more, not to mention a huge weapons arsenal with God-knows-what-all in it.  Despite all that, however, we will bury them because we have the most corrosive, intrusive, and seductive culture since modern humans took over from Neanderthals....

Apps for that?

1023) La Haine/The Lord's Of Flatbush/Alex Sheremet  Having just re-watched Stephen Verona’s The Lord’s Of Flatbush, I was shocked by two things. First, it’s simply an excellent little film. I was able to pick up on many details that eluded me when I was younger, which probably means that I’ve grown as a critic and artist. Second, it has garnered pretty average reviews, and although it deals with a similar problem – a few losers trying to grow out of adversity – it is vastly superior to Matthieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (The Hate), which suffers for being precisely what Lord’s isn’t: didactic, heavy-handed, and unable to balance the film’s anomie with good narrative. La Haine simply goes on and on through pointless scenes and dull conversations where Lord’s makes this palatable by giving its characters depth, irony, and poesy – even if they themselves are too dumb and immature to see it. They get in, get out, and linger only to deepen things within their purpose....

Losers war.

1024) Quicksand/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  I’ve not ever read a Tanizaki novel that was absent of merit or one that I did not enjoy. His breezy style, coupled with his moments of humor, make all of his books entertaining on one level, yet he also carries a psychological depth within his characters, often revealing them as flawed and yet creating them in such a way that causes the audience to empathize with them. Quicksand is no different....

Good.

1025) Sara Palin/Essay/Len Holman  It would do little good to ask Sarah Palin who she is. She doesn’t really know.  She thinks she knows what she wants, and she thinks she knows what she needs, but she—like many of the rest of us just putting one foot in front of the other in life—doesn’t really appear to know very much about herself at all.  Sarah Palin doesn’t just put one foot in front of the other, though.  She rushes, chasing her desperately-sought, self-constructed destiny.  She seeks after the yang of American politics, but carries too much yin to catch it and hold it....

Schwing?

1026) Thousand Cranes/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Subtlety and intricacy are what composes the power within a Kawabata novel, and Thousand Cranes is no different. Readers are given insights into characters via way of passive comment, a gesture overlooked, the description of lipstick on a stained cup or forgetting a stamp when mailing a letter. While Kawabata has managed to mostly hit home runs with all of his novels, Thousand Cranes falls slightly below his best, thereby causing me to rank it as one of his (slightly) lesser works, comparatively. Yet even lesser Kawabata is still very good....

Good.

1027) Ultimate Reality/Essay/Len Holman  Let’s take an onion and start peeling it.  First layer:  gone.  Second layer: gone.  Third layer: also gone.  Eventually, you’ll get to the core, the essence, of that onion.  You could call it the ultimate reality of onionness.  Today, we have the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, Jim Demints, and Sarah Palins of the world, plus the good Christians of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who have finally turned on their Muslim neighbors after thirty years, not to mention all the zealots posing as so-called Muslims, perverting the teachings of the Qur’an, knowing—KNOWING—that there is only one Ultimate Reality, and that reality is the monotheistic Christian God, or an Islamic, fire-breathing one.  For these people, that God is the onionness of Divinity, the onionness of human reality—and for those who are not so “religious” that onionness is whatever is left after they peel away the social, ethical, political and social stances of their opponents....

Zennish?

1028) Forbidden Colors/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  One of the qualities about Japanese literature to admire is the brevity. So often readers are presented with contemporary novels that are needlessly long, and endlessly describe boringly with a lack of insight. Forbidden Colors still has quite a bit going for it, in that it has Mishima’s stamp of skilled wording and numerous passages that are both lyrical and philosophical. Yet, what works against Forbidden Colors is the fact that the book, unlike many other Japanese novels of Mishima’s era, happens to be a bit verbose. Finishing at over 400 pages, this novel felt unnecessarily long, especially if comparing it to James Baldwin’s thin gem Giovanni’s Room....

Ok.

1029) Rome Open City/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 breakthrough black and white film, Rome Open City (Roma Città Aperta), is one of the more misinterpreted films in cinema history. It’s often claimed as being the film that established Italian Neo-Realism as a movement, yet, even a cursory look at it reveals that, while it employs a few of the Neo-Realist tenets, by and large, the film that followed it, in Rossellini’s canon, Paisan, was truly his first Neo-Realist film. By contrast, Rome Open City is a fairly standard , although occasionally quite good, melodrama. Unlike ‘pure’ Neo-Realism, it employs numerous sets, two of Italy’s then most famous actors (Aldo Fabrizi, as Father Don Pietro Pellegrini and Anna Magnani, as Pina), and uses many shots that can only be described as ‘subjective.’ Compared to the most famous film of Italian Neo-Realism, Vittorrio De Sica’s 1948 The Bicycle Thief, this film simply does not hold up....

Good.

1030) Back To The Classroom?/Essay/Len Holman  Can you hear the rumbling of distant thunder?  Can you feel the rising wind? Does the very earth beneath your liberal, optimistic feet seem to shudder and ripple?  It’s not your imagination, it’s the stampede of wannabe politicians and commentators and wrench-throwers positioning themselves for the impending 2012 presidential election....

Duh?

1031) Paisan/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Having grown up amongst many folks of Italian descent, the term paisan, or pal, was quite familiar to me; especially when used by non-Italians to describe Italian friends of theirs. A similar meaning is conveyed with the use of the term as the title of the second film in Robert Rossellini’s War Trilogy. Paisan (Paisá), from 1946, is not nearly as well known as Rome Open City, his first trilogy film, but it is a significantly better film, as well as being more truly a Neo-Realist film than its more melodramatic predecessor. Part of the reason is that the 126 minute film is episodic, so that the mawkishness and melodrama, that is inherent in many war stories, never gets to the point of overwhelm. Made and released a year after Rome Open City, Paisan often played on double bills with the earlier film when it was released in  America. The film is set during 1943 and 1944, and each of the six episodes follows the Allies’ chronological battles....

Good.

1032) Germany Year Zero/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Odd as it may seem, given that I was born two decades after the end of World War Two, watching the final film in Roberto Rossellini’s war trilogy, Germany Year Zero, brought home visions of the decimated cityscapes from my own urban youth in the wastelands of the industrialized parts of Brooklyn and Queens in the early 1970s. Of course, whereas the whole city of Berlin, as filmed in 1947, was still mostly post-war rubble, there were only city blocks of such abandoned and destroyed buildings, and, instead of having happened in a brief period of a few weeks or months of bombing, it took decades of slow social and civil neglect to get the landscapes that still return to me in dream. But, the end result- poor people who turn to black markets to survive, and who scrape by one another to survive- is just as true. Also true is the psychic toll such takes on children who grow accustomed to such squalor. As some people who grew up in Belfast or Lebanon, or those living right now in Baghdad or other cities laid waste. I state this up front, just to get my own personal leanings toward the film out of the way....

Great little film.

1033) Encounters At The End Of The World/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Werner Herzog’s career, the last couple of decades, has been far more focused on documentaries than on fiction films. His classic fiction films are almost all from the mid-1980s or earlier, whereas his notable documentaries are almost all since that era. Encounters At The End Of The World, a 100 minute long film, released in 2007, is among the very best of that later output. It follows the 2006-2007 austral summer journey of Herzog and his cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger to Antarctica....

Good.

1034) The Junky's Christmas/Film Review/Geoff Hendricks  A couple days ago, I was bitching about this worthless hideous awful horrendous atrocious cinematic assrape of a Holocaust of a molestation of a stupefyingly shitty piece of shit. I had to write a review of it, and so I decided to torture you with it! Here’s my review of The Junky’s Christmas!....

Shit.

1035) Tea Party Checklist/Essay/Len Holman  The Tea Party has risen, Venus-like,  above the foam of traditional political activity, and though it is far from a monolithic block, it exerts leverage disproportionate to its size, including spelling it with capital letters and LOTS of dire warning about the End of The Republic—which would probably make Tom Jefferson snort with derision.  It does have a lot of closet aficionados and they have—both openly and through their more traditional Republican colleagues—stated certain objectives, and hinted at others, when they get to the House and Senate in January.  I say, why wait until then?  Tell everyone specifically what you’re planning to do.  Herein follows my modest suggestions....

Gotcha.

1036) I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Like James Cagney, Paul Muni was a Broadway star who made it big in Hollywood, during the early sound era. And, like Cagney, his breakthrough role was that of a gangster, in a Warner Brothers film. In Cagney’s case, it was in 1931’s The Public Enemy, and in Muni’s case it was a year later, in the original Scarface (yes, this was the film that the 1980s Al Pacino quasi-comedy was loosely based on). Later, that same year, Muni delivered his second powerhouse performance, in another black and white Warner Brothers social crime drama: I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, directed by Mervyn Leroy, who was coming off the successful Little Caesar, which made Edward G. Robinson a star....

Muni rocks.

1037) I Am Cuba/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1964 film, I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) is probably the most divergent film I’ve ever watched in terms of the quality of its constituent parts. It is, as its reputation boasts, visually stunning, imaginative, innovative, and flat out great. But, in terms of its narrative, it is hackneyed, trite, and unimaginatively anti-American in its blatant agitprop, and laughably bad. And I say this fully aware of the Ugly Americanism that has wrought the communist fervor that still grips South America, as well as the Islamic Extremism, because the propagandizing in the film has a seriously negative effect on the film, to the point that its labeling as ‘Commie kitsch,’ by many of its detractors, and even some of its champions, is dead on....

Commie kitsch.

1038) Secret Rendezvous/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Kobo Abe is sort of the Kafka of Japan. One doesn’t have to look far to see the influence, and Abe himself even admitted Kafka’s influence in one of the Hiroshi Teshigahara documentaries put out by Criterion. Teshigahara directed a number of films based on Abe’s novels, and thus far Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes appears to be his best work by a mile. Other works of his, such as The Face of Another and The Box Man have their moments, but none of his works that I’ve read thus far (including Secret Rendezvous) reaches the same level of greatness as The Woman in the Dunes....

Solid.

1039) Death By A Thousand Gnat-Bites/Essay/Len Holman  It could have been different.  Software is available to make it all better.  People would have some other thing to bitch about besides their breasts and asses being exposed to an unseen  viewer in a remote room.  Americans don’t mind seeing other people’s breasts and asses; they just don’t want THEIR parts exposed.  Voyeurs, yes;  exhibitionists, not so much.  The unconvincing justification by the TSA is that—because someone’s Haynes briefs might be filled with nitro—we can’t be too careful (It’s not a bomb ‘til I SAY it’s a bomb!).  We must, TSA officials say, be ever-vigilant, and if that means some minor inconveniences to the traveling public—so be it. But those images!....

Perhaps change the Cotton Mather in us?

1040) And Then/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  And Then is the fifth book I’ve read by Natsume Soseki, and he is one of Japan’s most highly regarded novelists. And Then is actually part of a trilogy, and is meant to follow his earlier novel Sanshiro, followed by The Gate (or Mon). Yet these books couldn’t be further from one another, for one does not need to read any or all of them in their designated order....

Ok.

1041) Distance From Death/Essay/Len Holman  Imagine an enquiring sociologist from a galaxy far, far away.  This being is doing some research on Earth’s most prosperous political entity, the United States—specifically attitudes toward death and dying.  Publish or perish is a mandate on her planet, too, so she has to get as much information as she can and re-arrange it into academic-speak for her superiors so she can keep her university job and tenure.  So she alights here and begins her investigations.  And what does she discover?....

Bye-bye.

1042) American Stories/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Nagai Kafu is a somewhat underrated writer when one thinks of Japanese literature. I say this now after having read one of his early collections, American Stories. While I’ve not read any of his novels yet (Rivalry: A Geisha’s Tale will be next), much of his work has simply not been translated into English. Other than American Stories and Rivalry, no other major works of his seem to either be 1) translated into English and 2) easily available on Amazon. Published by Columbia University Press, Kafu’s work came recommended by a fellow writer friend of mine, and given Kafu’s influence upon the great Tanizaki, I became eager to read him. Happily, I can state that American Stories is both inventive, surprisingly fresh and many of the tales within are excellent reads. In fact, this is a great book for any young short story writer to examine, for not only Kafu’s narrative play, but also because the tales are economically written and also full of memorable characters that are not stereotypes....

Good.

1043) A Fistful Of Dollars/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  A Fistful Of Dollars, the 1964 film by Sergio Leone, that ignited the Spaghetti Western craze, is a very interesting film, even if it is only a pretty good film, cinematically. Among the interesting things about it is that its English language title, as presented within the film, lacks the article ‘A.’ It is Fistful Of Dollars, translated from the Italian Per Un Pugno Di Dollari. Another of its interesting facts is that it is perhaps one of the miost successful examples of artistic plagiarism ever, basically being a rework of Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 film Yojimbo (Kurosawa sued Leone over the film and reaped substantial financial benefits from an out of court settlement, getting 15% of the film’s worldwide gross, and exclusive distribution rights for Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, making more money with this film than with any of his own). And, despite claims of this film’s being rooted in other sources, including those that aided Yojimbo, there are simply far too many scenes that are not the same, but virtually identical....

Solid.

1044) For A Few Dollars More/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Italian film director Sergio Leone’s 1965 color film, For A Few Dollars More (Per Qualche Dollaro In Più), is the sort of film that’s not only good, but educational. I’ve often said that great art is hermetic, in that it is difficult for younger artists to learn how the thing was accomplished. Near-great art, such as this film, is even better for educating young artists on how to achieve greatness, for it does achieve greatness, in parts, but also allows the internal ‘scaffolding’ of the art to leak through in its non-great moments. This provides a ready contrast for young artists to see the mechanics behind something that works to such an extent that greatness is applicable, and aspects of the work that do not. Having said that, this film is a quantum leap above Leone’s first in the Dollars Trilogy: A Fistful Of Dollars, made a year earlier. Whereas that film was a hit and miss reworking of Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 comic classic, Yojimbo, For A Few Dollars More is from an original screenplay....

Excellent.

1045) The Good, The Bad And The Ugly/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Having just watched The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo), Sergio Leone’s final film in his Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns, I can say rarely has a film trilogy been so instructive as to the step by step artistic growth of its director as an artist. 1964’s A Fistful Of Dollars is a solid to good film, and a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. It is enjoyable but not that deep. 1965’s For A Few Dollars More is an excellent, almost great, film which showed Leone rising near greatness in almost every facet of filmmaking, and surpassing that bar in some. But it still had a few kinks to work out, and fixed many of the flaws of the first film, both technically and artistically. This 1966 three hour long capstone film sees Leone actually ascend over that bar and on into greatness....

Great.

1046) Might As Well Bomb/Essay/Len Holman  If I’m being accused of every heinous act which occurs in school because I belong to an ethnic group, a few of whom are really bad people, and constantly branded as evil and no good at home because of the fact I live in the same neighborhood some who are truly evil, and if I am accused of being as bad as the rest of my group, even though I am nothing like any of them, if I am hounded harassed, and discriminated against in society by the leaders and opinion-makers of that society—even absent any facts that I am an evil person or even in the face of manufactured evidence which bears no resemblance to truth—then  I’m going to start wondering if I am what everyone says I am.  At the least, I’m going to wonder if there is anything I can do to get people to either like me, or at least ACCEPT me, to get people to see me—not as a part of a bad group, but as an individual.  If I can’t, then my psychological options are slim, indeed....

Why not?

1047) Drunken Angel/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Watching Akira Kurosawa’s black and white 1948 film Drunken Angel (Yoidore Tenshi) is an interesting experience, since he clearly had not mastered his art form yet, but there is so much that is good, that would become great, in just a few years. It’s like looking at a fetus and seeing distinguishing characteristics of its parents, yet none are fully formed. The same could be said to be true of the director’s aborning partnership with leading man Toshiro Mifune: it’s not fully formed, and part of this is because Mifune really is not the main character of the film, and part of it is that the titular lead, the drunken angel, is played by Takashi Shimura, one of the best actors in film history....

Good.

1048) The Scarlet Gang Of Asakusa/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  It is difficult to take much from Kawabata’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa because in many ways, it is an odd and experimental work that plays with narrative to the point that the overall arc comes across somewhat fragmented. This is not to say there are not nice moments within, but The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa is both an early and relatively minor work when thinking of Kawabata’s output. It’s not even a stretch to claim this, since it is noted that Kawabata himself would often cringe whenever he heard it read aloud....

Ok.

1049) It's For Electricity...Really!/Essay/Len Holman  The recent release of about a zillion diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks has embarrassed just about everyone—well, everyone except the  3 million “special” people had who access to the stuff while the American public didn’t know what the hell was going on behind the scenes.  As it turns out, just about EVERYTHING was behind the scenes.  One of the most surprising things was the news that the solidarity of the Arab World (is there such a thing?) is a myth, manufactured by the media and the Arabs themselves (they don’t want to look weak and divided to a VERY interested Tel Aviv).  Arab leaders have been quoted as wanting the U.S. to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites, to “cut off the head of the snake,” as one cable has the Saudi king saying....

Bombs away!

1050) Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Werner Herzog is so unique as a director of films that he is as close to being uncategorizable as any filmmaker in the medium’s history. His 2009 film, Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans, is no exception. The film is a sort of satiric riff on the 1992 B film, Bad Lieutenant, made by schlockmeister Abel Ferrara, and starring Harvey Keitel. That film got wildly divergent criticism, but was a pretty bad film, and not nearly as campily fun as Ferrara’s best known film....

Solid.

1051) Mean Streets/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  There is a scene in Martin Scorsese’s seminal 1973 film, Mean Streets, that is key to understanding not only the characters that inhabit that film, but also many of the characters that populated his later films, including even some of his polished, but bloated, lifeless garbage with Leonardo DiCaprio. In it, the thugs played by stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, go along with a couple of other pals to shake down a pool hall owner who’s behind on a protection or loan payment. They basically insult the owner, who says he’s not gonna pay them, for being offended. He calls one of the punks (not Keitel nor De Niro) a mook. The punk famously rejoinders, ‘A mook. What’s a mook?’....

Great.

1052) Radio Days/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Woody Allen’s 1987 film Radio Days is the best pure comedy the filmmaker ever wrote and directed, and as such it is a great film. There is much truth to Allen’s own stated dictum that drama his a higher form of art than comedy because it is, to paraphrase, ‘sitting at the grownups’ table.’ However, the fact that it deals with mere life (therefore gaining it the mischaracterization as plotless- think of the same criticisms of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn) rather than one or two ‘major’ ideas, the way his Stardust Memories, Crimes And Misdemeanors, Manhattan, or Another Woman do, does not diminish the sheer brilliance and greatness of Radio Days as a film, apart from its reality as a great comedy, as well. It is also why, despite the end of Allen’s Golden Age of filmmaking (1977’s Annie Hall through 1992’s Husbands And Wives), so many of his fans still go to see his films, in the hopes that Allen will recapture the sustained greatness of films like this, or, at least, hit some similar highs....

Great.

1053) Nightlights And Imagination/Essay/Len Holman  When I was a kid, I had a radio by my bed. No, not an iPod or a smart phone, I mean a REAL radio which only got AM programs, and out of which poured the culture of the times, from songs and singers to dramas, comedy shows, crime shows, superhero exploits and spooky melodramas which chilled me and made me cover my head with the blankets. I was supposed to be going to sleep, but instead I turned on my old radio, and waited impatiently for the tubes to warm up, waiting for that glow from it to throw golden light across my dark room—a nightlight against the dreads of the night.  I would cuddle up near it, the sound turned down so my parents wouldn’t know I was breaking the rules, and listen intently to my favorite shows....

Mush for brains.

1054) Mary/Book Review/Alex Sheremet  Mary, a solid first novel, presages all that’s good and bad with Nabokov’s career. At a bit over 100 pages, it’s a short book, and this really works to Nabokov’s advantage. After all, his books -- I’m thinking of the autobiography, Pale Fire, and Lolita in particular -- are awash in pointless details, overlong scenes, and the occasional cliché. Ironically, many readers praise Nabokov for all these faults, since Nabokov himself was in love with tedium and closed to new ideas, bragging that his ideal editor would only rework a misplaced semicolon, or apologetically suggest a nipped comma, and nothing else. As he says in a taped interview about Lolita, in response to queries about the novel’s “ideas” (which, by the way, turned him off, hence the intellectual dearth in much of his writing), “I don’t want to touch hearts; I don’t even want to touch minds. What I want to produce is really that little sob in the spine of the artist’s reader...” As a kid, it was great to see such confidence, especially from a writer with talent, toying with ideas indefensible, pouting through bold non-sequiturs, and gritting his teeth at ‘philistines.’ I was surprised, then, to finally see the interview on-screen a few years back....

Solid.

1055) Kids And Breasts/Essay/Len Holman  Finally, someone is taking the moral health of our children seriously.  No, I’m not talking about the Catholic Church.  I’m talking about the National Organization of Women.  NOW has filed a number of complaints about those famous (or is it infamous?) Hooters restaurants, which have a kid’s menu and which allow children to be served.  NOW is concerned that Hooters is not a fit place for children, that it is an adult entertainment venue and thus inappropriate for kids.  Now, it is indisputable that some people, mostly infantile men with no real life, are entertained by big-bosomed young ladies in skin-tight tops delivering cheeseburgers, but does this make Hooters off limits to kids?  If it does, then this protective instinct shouldn’t stop there, but be extended to other morally and physically dangerous places for our precious children....

Danger, danger!

1056) Meet Me In St. Louis/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The major problem with the film musical, as a form, is that there is never a hint of naturalism in it. Think of a science fiction or horror film. Yes, they may have outlandish plots and scary monsters, but the best of them will sneak the situation or monster up on the viewer so as to make the viewer comfortable with the notion of them, if not comfortable with the situation they present. But, in musicals, one has to expect the absurdity that people will break not only into son, but often song and dance, and often with background music that is diegetically not part of the reality. This is not to say people do not sing in their lives, on occasion. We all have; but it’s the rest of the situational expectation that makes most musicals cringe-worthy. And the most guilty of these sins are the classic Hollywood musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1960s, things started to change a bit, with West Side Story, and then with the avant-garde musicals of the hippy era, and by the turn of the century the musicals of Baz Luhrmann propelled musicals into, if not greatness, a certain level of artistic respectability not seen before....

Ok.

1057) The Sound Of Waves/Book Reviews/Jessica Schneider  Before this point, I was beginning to think that Yukio Mishima was only capable of one type of novel—that is, the angsty, pissed off, young male protagonist in search of self-destruction. In fact, it is sort of a joke among Mishima readers, in that one does not need to wonder too much what the unfolding of events will be. If there’s an attractive, young male, he will likely die (usually by seppuku) because all beauty must be destroyed. If there are women present, they’re likely dull, nagging, one-dimensional and getting in the way of said young male’s homoerotic fantasies. Destruction, angst, and hyperbole—all of these traits are often present within Mishima’s work....

Good.

1058) Rivalry/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Much of Nagai Kafu’s work unfortunately has yet to be translated into English. After reading his collection of short stories, titled American Stories, I had much hope for this book, yet at the same time I’d been warned by a Kafu fan that Rivalry, while a good read, is nowhere near his best work. I find myself surprised that I agree with said assessment, for often what I am told by others I discover to be the opposite. I approach this review as not a fan, but as someone who knew little to nothing about Kafu before reading his work, save for the influence he had upon other Japanese writers....

Solid.

1059) Voting/Democracy's Co/Len Holman  Welcome to the 2012 elections!  Politicians are already positioning themselves to lie to the electorate, which will dutifully go to the polls because we’ve been told what we want to hear and we will vote in our comfort zone—as always.  We’ll all vote and will have served democracy because that’s what we have been told will happen: democracy will have exhibited its strength again, in the will of the people.  We’ve heard it, learned it, and believed it, generation after generation....

Stay home?

1060) Frisky, Furry And Fearsome/DVD Review/Jessica Schneider  Part of the fun in visiting any National Park is the hopeful chance of catching a glimpse of wildlife in its natural surrounds. Produced by Ambassador Video, Frisky, Furry and Fearsome focuses on five of our National Parks and the various animals that inhabit them.....

Good.

1061) Southern Discomfort/Essay/SuZi  The South, as a geographically centered culture, has been the subject of a slow and steady colonization since the American Civil War (and the absence of a promulgation by the mainstream media of a sesquicentennial of the Civil War seems oddly suspicious, since, in the words of generations-born Floridian Ginny beard “The Restoration never ended”). This colonization—some would say the Restoration alone, and attribute a terminus to the early twentieth century—has also effected the nation as a whole: mostly observable as evidenced by the history of the public school system, and by the ubiquitous nature of Big Box commerce. Although Manifest Destiny is a phrase not yet picked up for  Orwellian inversion in our current cultural climate, Manifest Destiny was the philosophical Third Reich of American history....

Good ol' stuff.

1062) The Crown Of The Continent/DVD Review/Jessica Schneider  Readers will recall my review a while back of a nature documentary by filmmaker John Grabowska called Crown of the Continent. It was a highly poetic and beautifully crafted experience—taking viewers to deeps of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, in Alaska. Now, what is the difference, you wonder? Note the article: The Crown of the Continent is a 42 minute nature documentary by Ambassador Video on Glacier National Park in Montana. Originally, it was the title that caught my attention, as I’d encouraged many to watch Crown of the Continent within my review of it....

Solid.

1063) The Birth Of The Blues/Essay/Len Holman  Certain Red State denizens (either geographic or political, or both) are not pleased that the Blue State guy is president.  They claim Obama’s policies, not his pigmentation,  are the cause of their angst, and we might reasonably take some of them at their word—but others of these people have gone a step—or two, or three—more and wondered aloud, and often, about the birthplace of the President of the United States.  Not only is this a transparent slap at Barack Obama, but it cuts to the heart of what a person IS, what his or her identity is comprised of.  Where a person is born is a part of the fabric of a person’s life. It includes all the cultural elements of language, religion, politics, social life and structure—even what sport is called “football.” It tells Hawaiians, native and transplanted, that they are not real Americans....

Birther nonsense.

1064) The Silent Cry/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  The Silent Cry is a novel with not the best title. At least in the English translation, that is, for were I to just encounter this title without the Nobel winning stamp upon it, I would have quickly passed over it. That said, it is still not a good title, Nobel winner or not. This sort of reminds me of Hungarian writer Sandor Marai’s great novel Embers, which doesn’t have the best translation of title either, but Embers is better than The Silent Cry—both in title and in book. The title actually puts me in mind of that anti-abortion propaganda film I was forced to watch my freshman year in Catholic high school—The Silent Scream…or something....

Ok.

1065) I Vitelloni/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Sometimes, after achieving a certain level, an artist makes a slight regression before hitting the heights of greatness. Such an arc is apparent to me after having watched Federico Fellini’s 1953, black and white Neo-Realist film, I Vitelloni (roughly translated to mean The Idlers or The Loafers). While better than his debut film, 1950’s Variety Lights, it is also better than his more lauded film, 1954’s La Strada (despite the lack of Fellini’s wife, Giulieta Masina). None of these three films touches greatness, but I Vitelloni is clearly the best of the three. Even though it is a melodrama, a soap opera, its humor and pathos carry it a long way, and its influence can be felt in American films as diverse as Mean Streets, The Lords Of Flatbush, and Diner, all films about young male bonding, and its ending (the last scenes of one of the Vitelloni leaving town) wholly rubs against the melodramatic grain of the film and reaches true drama, whereas the end of La Strada, possibly a better film....

Good.

1066) The Thin Red Line/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  There are moments when greatness is immediately apparent. When I first watched Terrence Malick’s 1998 film, The Thin Red Line, over a decade ago, it was clear that the film was great, and so was its director. Perhaps it was the opening shot of the film, wherein a crocodile slithers into muck as a rising fugue intones, that invoked a poetic realism that the rest of the nearly three hour film sustains. Or, perhaps, it was within the first 5 or 10 minutes, when the voiceover narration and watery images mixed into something rarely seen onscreen. Nonetheless, I immediately felt that sort of pleasure seep into one, knowing that this artist knows exactly what he is doing, and it will be something very good, or even better....

Great.

1067) Nothing/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The 1997 Canadian sci fi film Cube, by Vincenzo Natali, was one of the great examples of good writing, good acting, and a limited budget making for an excellent, and thought provoking little film. Unfortunately, its financial success led to two mediocre sequels, neither of which had the verve of the original, and neither of which were directed by Natali. Thus, when I stumbled upon a 2003 film made by Natali, starring two of his stars from Cube, David Hewlett and Andrew Miller, I thought there was a good chance that it would be equally compelling....

Not much.

1068) Reach Out And Touch Something/Essay/Len Holman  The “in” technological item isn’t any particular machine, it’s a behavior: touching, and it’s supposed to make computers, phones—every gadget we use, with many more to come—more open to “natural” human gestures.  “Natural” is what the CEOs and other techno-geeks call the newest in user interfaces.  Of course, it isn’t all that new, just used in a different way, and called new, especially by the folks who want to sell us their latest device.  We have been conned, again, by our own desires and the more we want the new stuff, the more new stuff is produced....

Grab it.

1069) PC & Destruction/Essay/William Glass  The upcoming NewSouth version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will excise controversial language, specifically replacing the word nigger with slave.  And the furor over this news has cast Mark Twain's work, which raised the collective bloodpressure even in his day, back into the center of the public buzz, revealing that the United States still stumbles over history and has not yet found a way to deal soberly with what it has done and been.  Indeed, movie critic Roger Ebert has dramatized this unresolved tension in recent days--reacting initially against the edition and later retracting his comments.  As a southern, white Christian, lifelong student of history, and man of letters, I have not been surprised by the indigestion revealed in Ebert's comments and their aftermath....

Killing Huck....

1070) Bogeyman Politics/Essay/Len Holman  The recent, scary, unexpected—but predictably and alarmingly media-worthy—news is that China’s military has a prototype stealth fighter plane, way ahead of the projected time our intelligence people had estimated it would.  It’s not unexpected or scary that China has a stealth fighter said to be very good.  It’s not scary because China is already scary, and it’s not unexpected because China wants to be HSIA (Hot Stuff In Asia) and she can’t do that without a decent stealth fighter.  It IS newsworthy because China is our on-going bogeyman.  You probably thought it was Hugo Chavez or Kim Jong Il or that crazy guy in Iran, but China plays its part very well, and its continuing shadow has—as the show biz folks say—legs....

China or Palin?

1071) Husbands/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  John Cassavetes was a filmmaker who made his independent films in two primary modes: brilliant character-driven masterpieces like Faces, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night, or interesting character-driven mediocrities with ‘moments,’ like Shadows, A Woman Under The Influence, and Gloria. His 1970 film, Husbands, however, falls somewhere in between. It’s nowhere near a great film, for it is poorly edited and, surprisingly, poorly scripted, most of the time. But, there are certain scenes that are not overly long and utterly pointless. And in these scenes lie the seeds for what could have been a brilliant, if not great, film....

Good.

1072) Mon/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Mon or The Gate is the third book in Natsume Soseki’s trilogy, with his first two books including Sanshiro and And Then. I place Mon as the second strongest book within this series, with Sanshiro being the strongest and And Then as the weakest. While Mon is the most psychologically complex of the novels (the lead of And Then is a bit of a whiny, self-indulgent brat) Sanshiro, with its humor and criticisms of academia and so-called intellectuals, is probably the better book....

Good.

1073) Autumn In Spring/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  This is my first time reading anything by Ba Jin, and this collection of tales seems to be somewhat hard to come by. I ended up discovering it upon one of the discount paperback shelves in Half Price Books, where it had been marked down to something like 50 cents. It’s unfortunate that Ba Jin seems so difficult to come by, at least in translation, for this collection of tales was quite good. Not perfect mind you, but quite good—certainly good enough for me to recommend....

Good.

1074) It's Alive/Essay/Len Holman  The new Congress began its proceedings by having various members read the Constitution of the United States.  There was some consternation and confusion at first because there was a question as to whether the original Constitution should be read, or the liberal-inspired, edited version—you know, the one we use now. They finally decided on the 2^nd edition, and read it.  Now this is too amusing for me to contemplate and I hope to convey the reason for my hilarity.  You see, at least two justices on the Supreme Court are believes in a strict construction of the Constitution, and one is an avowedly, vocally, an Originalist, while the Tea Party followers and others even more conservative have repeatedly stated that it’s the constitution, stupid.  If Obama and the Dems would just follow the sacred, immutable text, we would return to Eden—without the serpent....

It is?

1075) Taster's Choice/Essay/Len Holman  There is a Latin phrase often used as an excuse for doing what one pleases:  de gustibus non est disputandum—there is no disputing about tastes.  Of course, there IS disputing about tastes in the land—and lots of it—in the guise of “what’s good for the country” or the “moral decay of America” or some policy decision about immigration or health care or those insensitive Muslims building mosques in the same block as betting parlors and strip joints.  But since it is thought that no argument can be adduced to support taste, there can be no disputing.  I like raspberry sherbet and that’s the name of that tune.  No one can say I shouldn’t like it because it’s MY personal taste....

Palinorama?

1076) Galapagos/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  What will become of the human race in a million years? Will humans be reflecting on how much smarter (or bigger brained) they once were? Galapagos is arguably the last good novel Kurt Vonnegut wrote, and as the book stands, I’d rank it below Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions yet it is definitely one of Vonnegut’s classics worth reading....

Good.

1077) Bad Review/Justin Isis' Book/Dan Schneider  Let me be up front about something, and that is the fact that the person whose book is at the center of this review, of a review written about that book, has been a participant in the e-list of my own website, Cosmoetica, for several years. I have also spoken with him via Skype, once, and exchanged emails with him. My wife has an even longer history of corresponding with the writer in question, Justin Isis. With that out of the way, my opinions expressed have nothing to do with my personal knowledge of the writer. Rather, they have everything to do with the poorly written review of his first published book; one which is symptomatic of the problems with criticism, online and off, on literature and the other arts, in today’s culture....

When right is wrong!

1078) Semper Fi Michele/Essay/Len Holman  After the President’s State of the Union address, the Republican establishment allowed Representative Paul Ryan to give what is euphemistically called a “response.”  This was followed by a Tea Party “response,” and would have been followed by “responses” from the NRA, Sarah Palin’s maid, and Rush Limbaugh but for the demands of TV time, and possibly Sean Hannity—if he didn’t have another gig at a Jay Leno look-alike contest.  These were not responses so much as a free swing at Obama, and it was basically more of the same....

Cute and ____?

1079) 12 Monkeys/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Chris Marker’s 1962 short film, La Jetee, is one of the most interesting and exciting films ever made. Its use of still photographs for all but a few seconds of its near half hour length, allows a remarkable bit of viewer empathy to occur. In recall, the viewer actually animates the film. Director Terry Gilliam is one of the most interesting and exciting film directors in America over the last few decades, and his 1995 film, 12 Monkeys, ‘inspired’ by Marker’s film, is an excellent film....

Good.

1080) The Quiet Duel/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Great artists have a way to make even their lesser works interesting, if not great. Such is the case with the 1949 black and white film, The Quiet Duel (Shizukanaru Ketto or 静かなる決闘,) from Akira Kurosawa, which was based on a play by Kazuo Kikuta, and adapted by Senkichi Taniguchi. At 95 minutes long, this melodrama is not long enough to get on one’s nerves, and just good enough to make a number of its moments stick in memory. The key word about the film, though, is melodrama....

Good.

1081) Paths Of Glory/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Having grown up in the Vietnam era I knew many an ax-GI who would tell tales of fragging a bad C.O. Many older people, especially of the World War Two generation, could never understand what would drive soldiers to loathe their superiors to the point of murder. Well, the answer is laid out in Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 film, Paths Of Glory, like in no other. In fact, the film could well have been subtitled A Defense Of Fragging, if only the term had been coined. Yet, the film not only anticipated things to come, in the field of war, but showed its endebtedness to the past because, of the many images and tropes culled, through the centuries, from Thomas Gray’s poem, Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard, perhaps none has resulted in a better and more perfectly realized work of art than Paths Of Glory, a film often wrongly and simplistically called an anti-war film....

Great.

1082) Antonio Gaudi/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Sometimes, when watching DVDs to review, the odd occurrence of extra features surpassing the featured film occurs. Such is the case with The Criterion Collection’s DVD of Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara’s titular 1984 documentary on the buildings of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926)- the film’s title is a spelling error. The film runs a mere 72 minutes, yet it seems much longer, and this is because, despite the film’s title, there is a surprisingly small focus on the actual works of the architect. Much of the film skirts over things related to the buildings, and adds in odd musical accompaniment, by Toru Takemitsu, Kurodo Mori, and Shinji Hori....

So-so.

1083) The Real Vampires/Essay/Len Holman  There is currently a real vampire craze in this country, and it’s pretty interesting to make connections between vampires and our culture: we have a great desire to be young, so great that the creams and Botox and wrinkle-potion firms are buying Gulfstreams for their execs and caviar for the cleaning crews.  We are desperate to be young, look young, stay young, and to live a great, interesting , and very long and vigorous sex life, no matter how much it costs.  And vampires fill the bill.  We admire them at some Jungian level.  We make films and TV shows about them and that’s not to mention all the weird clubs....

Lords of the dark.

1084) The Princeton Field Guide To Dinosaurs/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Having lived less than a half century, I yet marvel at the speed with which science and human knowledge of its place in the cosmos has changed. Within my lifetime, man has ventured on to the moon, satellites have landed on other planets, dove into Jupiter’s clouds, sped out beyond Pluto and into interstellar space, the Hubble telescope has peered back billions of years into the cosmos, medical marvels have come aplenty, and even our understanding of the earth’s past has radically altered. Just in my brief lifetime we have learnt the earth was once a glaciated iceball, that life arose within a few hundred million years of the planet’s formation, that for over 3 billion years life was no more complex than simple bacteria and viruses, that there are regular extinction events that almost kill life off, then spur its growth and radiation, that the planet’s biosphere seems to have its own Gaia effect....

Excellent resource.

1085) I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Any topic, no matter how disturbing, is potential for a short story. It all depends on how well the said topic is executed, and if executed well, the story succeeds. If executed poorly, it fails. Then, there are topics that when shoved together within a single collection don’t always work. Topics like cannibalism, incest, animal cruelty, S&M, masturbation, transsexuals, and any additional form of emotional cruelty may not work if there are more than say, two of these topics within a tale....

Ok.

1086) Harp Of Burma/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  The first thing to note when reading Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama is that this isn’t a war novel. Certainly there are aspects of war involved, but to call it either a war or anti-war novel would be too lazy, since it is not really either. The novel contains some of the most idealized versions of both the Japanese forces and anti-war, for fighting itself is not sensationalized in any way. Instead, the thrust of the book is more of gentleness and peace, rather than the actual brutality that went on....

Good.

1087) Deity Test/Essay/Len Holman  If I were the Supreme Being, the Deity, the Head of the universe, I would be VERY happy to be given credit by the American President for helping him through the rough spots in his life.  At last week’s National Prayer Breakfast, a noticeably grayer President than the candidate he was just two years ago, Obama told the audience that “[W]hen I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and ask him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people.”  I’m sure God smiled when Obama said that....

Godly?

1088) Black Rain/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  It is amazing that whenever a book deals with “serious” subject matter, be it genocide, Hiroshima bombing, or lynching, the book will often receive rave reviews, regardless of how well the said subject is executed. This is because the majority of readers do not critique a work on its craft, but more due to its politics or heavy-handed subject matter. Then, whenever someone attempts to point out the flaws, the reviewer is immediately accused of being “unsympathetic” and a Nazi, and pro-death....

Good.

1089) Echoes Of Chongqing/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Chongqing plays an important role when examining the Second Sino-Japanese War, for it became not only the target of severe Japanese bombing, but many Chinese citizens from the eastern and northern parts of China migrated inward, that is, west, to escape Japanese captured territory. Chongqing was the wartime capital during China’s war with Japan (1937–1945) and as a result of the increased population from other provinces, prices of food and other goods skyrocketed, making the lives of those living there quite difficult, but especially difficult when one is poor....

Good.

1090) One Hundred Great Paintings/Book Review/Dan Schneider  I received an excellent art book recently, from the Yale University Press, called One Hundred Great Paintings, edited by Louise Govier. The 216 page book is a series of 100 prints of paintings from the National Gallery in London, England, and has a preface by well known art historian Tim Marlow....

Good.

1091) First Man Into Space/DVD Review/Dan Schneider   I first watched the 1959 black and white English film, The First Man Into Space (Satellite Of Blood in the U.K.), on television, as an eight or nine year old child. I believe it was on a twilight double bill with The Unearthly Stranger, another British horror film, made a few years later. Like many similar films, The Quatermass Xperiment or The Crawling Hand, this low budget film has a standard premise. But, like The Unearthly Stranger, it is a bit more literate and enjoyable a sci fi romp. The odd thing is that it was one of four The Criterion Collection titles in a release called Monsters And Madmen, as all four films were produced by the same people, Amalgamated Films....

Ok.

1092) Crowded Democracy/Essay/Len Holman  The president of Egypt has left the building.  The crowds are euphoric, flags are waved, hope is burgeoning, and shopkeepers are awaiting the next busload of tourists.  But wait—haven’t we been through this before?  Of course we have…many times.  A dictator rules with an iron fist for years, for decades.  He plunders the national wealth, has his own private death squads, abrogates the rights of his country’s citizens for the smallest of reasons—or no reason at all, like having a bad plate of foie gras at supper in his sumptuous digs, and has a military which is overpaid and undertaxed abroad, but is used extensively for domestic reasons—like keeping the dictator in power.  He takes U.S. dollars and military equipment, and the U.S. uses him for its own ends....

The perils of freedom.

1093) Dreams With Sharp Teeth/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  This is my first review of a film that I first saw on Netflix, rather than in a theater or on a DVD, and I have to say the service is something of a revolution in how one watches film; or, to be more accurate, in WHAT one watches, for had it not been for the recommendations links the website provides, based upon earlier choices of viewed material, I would likely not have had any knowledge nor interest in seeking out the title I ended up reviewing....

Mediocrities.

1094) Shane/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Mythic realism. That’s the perfect term to describe director George Stevens’ 1953 classic color Western Shane, one of the most unlikely great films I’ve ever seen. That’s because much of the 117 minute long film plays out as if it’s cheesy, with its lone, virtuous gunman who stands apart and above all others (a precursor to Clint Eastwood’s characters in Sergio Leone’s revolutionary Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti westerns), as a western version of the fathers of perfect nuclear families of the Eisenhower era sitcoms. Yet, below is a roiling realism that only serves to heighten the mythos, by contrast. This is the tension that is so unusual, yet remarkably powerful. I may have, when a boy, seen this film, in black and white, on television, for some scenes resonated....

Great.

1095) To Madison And Beyond!/Essay/Len Holman  There is anger in the Wisconsin capitol.  There is suspicion, and crowds with signs and people hiding out and it’s really a zoo, while the President of the U.S. wades into a pool he needs to stay out of or be sucked down into the muck.  The Democrats are hiding, which in this case is not a metaphor, but actually hiding, so that a quorum will not be formed and a bill they don’t like won’t be debated, which is a swell example for students in civics classes across the land.  The unions say Governor Scott Walker is trying to bust them, and the governor says it’s about saving money, and the chattering classes are predictably lining up according to their labels as “conservative” or “liberal” or “tea party” or whatever box a particular commentator lives in....

The long view is required.

1096) McCabe & Mrs. Miller/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Two points ring out clarion when watching Robert Altman’s 1971 film, McCabe & Mrs. Miller: 1) Robert Altman is probably the most hit and miss major director in Hollywood history, with good films such as M*A*S*H, Nashville, The Player, and Gosford Park on his resume, and really poor films like this one, Popeye, and Vincent & Theo. 2) One of the main reasons McCabe & Mrs. Miller fails is because it is badly dated, and this is so due to a horrendous soundtrack for the film. Poor acting, poor screenwriting, and poor cinematography certainly don’t help, but the sheer finger up the ass ludicrousness of scoring a de facto Western....

So-so.

1097) Ebert Presents At The Movies/A Review/Dan Schneider  This past January, long-time film critic Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, made his return to television based film reviewing, with a revival of his old battling critics format on PBS, titled Ebert Presents At The Movies. The last three words of the title was one of the sundry names of the review program that Ebert hosted for over three decades, first with deceased film critic Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune, and, after Siskel’s death, with fellow Sun-Times culture columnist Richard Roeper. It was a format which debuted in 1975, and continued after Siskel’s death, in the late 1990s, and ended in 2008, after Ebert’s protracted battle with thyroid cancer left him unable to speak. In the interim, Ebert launched his own blog, which has been one of the more popular online websites for film and political discussions. Then, late in 2010, Ebert announced that he would be reviving his old format, replete with new battling critics, and with his wife as producer, this year.....

A sad final chapter.

1098) Harakiri/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 black and white film Harakiri (Seppuku), is the second film of his that I’ve seen; the first being his 9½ hour long The Human Condition. Despite Harakiri’s being only 133 minutes in length, it’s the better film; and that’s with the full acknowledgment that The Human Condition was a hell of a good film. Harakiri is also one of the best examples of a great political work of art precisely because its greatness has nothing to do with its politics, but because of its art. It’s only the fact that it has a political stance that makes it political, whereas most ‘political’ art preens its politics....

Great.

1099) Options/Essay/Len Holman  When you’re born into a very material culture, or when you’ve lived almost your entire life in one, options seem unlimited, possibilities seem endless.  It must amaze and confuse the visitor to our land to go into a grocery store and see fifteen kinds of cereal, mountains of fresh fruit in the dead of winter, enough different kinds of cheese to please the pickiest Green Bay Packer fan, and every conceivable flavor and color of snack chip—enough to replicate any acid freak’s most glorious trip.  Our visitor is suitably flabbergasted by the endless decisions an American shopper must make.  Here, these people have so many options, they must have a hard time making a choice: chocolate or strawberry for breakfast?  Square, triangular, rectangular....

To use or not to use?

1100) The Naked Kiss/Criterion/Dan Schneider  Maverick American filmmaker Sam Fuller was both a progressive and a prude, and no film of his better illustrates this schismic personal dichotomy, echoed in his art’s use of high and low techniques, than his 1964 black and white film noir melodrama The Naked Kiss, a cult classic whose title derives from its lead character, a prostitute named Kelly, who describes the kiss of the fiancée she kills, that way, meaning she could tell he was a sexual deviant from the get go. It’s a film that has brilliance, inanity, memorable scenes of realism, and trite predictable scenes of sheer fantasy- such as the mention of the titular act, which is not real, but works symbolically to explain certain elements of the lead character’s behavior....

Good.

1101) The First Amendment/Essay/Len Holman  Last week, the Supreme Court of the United states—the final arbiter of constitutionality and friend of corporations who can now take private homes to build malls—decided, in an 8-1 decision, to allow what the NY times called “hateful protests” at military funerals. The outraged howls could be heard all the way to Madison’s grave.  In Snyder v. Phelps, et al., the issue addressed was whether members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas had a constitutionally protected right to picket the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who died in Iraq.  This small, but very vocal, group has done this all over this country, carrying signs which state explicitly that God hates homosexuals and allows military people to die because they are agents of a decadent country, the mildest of which seems to be “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”....

Questions?

1102) Chris Wong/Poetry Review/Dan Schneider  Some time ago I got a request to review a poetry book from a young poet who had spent a few years on my website’s e-list. Over several years I only had a few email exchanges with him, and he seemed content to be what is called a ‘lurker.’ It’s an odd thing to realize that probably less than .01% of people who ever read your work online ever contact you. Those that do, unfortunately, always want something from you. This may be a request to wave a magic wand and make them great writers and artists without expending the effort, or, sometimes, it’s an old acquaintance who contacts me not to catch up, but to ask me to do something for them, without remuneration, just because they have an idea, but don’t want to put in the effort themselves....

Good debut collection.

1103) Godzilla Raids Again/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The 1955 black and white Japanese film, Godzilla Raids Again (ゴジラの逆襲,  or Gojira No Gyakushū; aka Godzilla’s Counterattack, or Gigantis, The Fire Monster) was, for many decades, the ‘lost’ Godzilla film. Growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I saw many Godzilla films, of the Showa Era, on television and some in theaters that ran children’s films; but I never saw Godzilla Raids Again until the early 1990s, when it was first released on VHS, in a truncated American version that was overdubbed with voiceover narration from noted Chinese actor Keye Luke (and additional work from Star Trek’s George Takei, aka Mr. Sulu). Other than the first Godzilla film, from a year earlier, this was the only film in the series that was filmed in black and white, and, oddly, it adds a realism and documentary nightmare like feel that all later films failed to capture....

Underrated film.

1104) Mothra Vs. Godzilla/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  It is odd how memory unfolds from art. It’s been twenty or so years since I last saw the classic 1964 color Godzilla film, Mothra Vs. Godzilla (better known to American audiences by the title Godzilla Vs. The Thing, as Roger Corman’s company, AIP redubbed it to lend more mystery to the ad campaign) yet, upon popping in the Toho Master Collection DVD of the film, instantly some things returned to me, of earlier viewings. The first was Godzilla’s famed entrance into the film, a half hour or so in, when reporters are covering a story about a radioactive mud field, after a typhoon has hit Japan’s countryside. Suddenly, the ground shakes, and it seems that an earthquake is abrewing. Except that it turns out to be Godzilla rising from beneath the mud, after having been swept ashore and buried. The second thing is....

Overrated.

1105) Godzilla's Revenge/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  I’ve seen thousands of films. Not as many as most remunerated film critics, but quite a bit more than your average filmgoer. And in all those films, across genres, decades, screenwriters, nationalities, directors, there are only two films that I can think of that truly get inside how a child reacts and thinks. Note, I am not claiming films that well portrayed childhood, such as a modern family classic like My Dog Skip, amongst that lot. Although, it is itself an arguably great film, that film, for all its virtues, was told in a rather conventional manner. No, the two films that best penetrate a child’s mind are actually both B science fiction films, and both are sequels. The first is Robert Wise’s 1944 debut directorial effort, the black and white The Curse Of The Cat People, and the second is 1969’s mere 69 minute long color film, Godzilla’s Revenge (aka All Monsters Attack, Oru Kaiju Dai Shingeki- admittedly all bad titles). Both films were made on shoe string budgets....

Near great.

1106) What Happened To Islam?/Essay/Len Holman  It’s one of those sad historical conundrums: How did a rich, vibrant, educated, cosmopolitan culture, awesome in its military might, it’s architecture, and its scholars, come under the thrall of dictator after dictator and sink to the level of what would be called Fourth World  status (if we acknowledged such a term)?  How did a group which produced the polymath al-Biruni produce someone like Saddam or Qaddafi?  How did a culture which originally tolerated non-Muslim communities (ummas) in its midst turn out to be so rigid, intolerant and—in many cases—so Anti-Semitic towards one of a group which the Qur’an calls “the people of the Book?”  How did it travel from the Ottoman Empire in the 16^th century to squalid living in hate and revenge....

Questions.

1107) The Makioka Sisters/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1948 novel, The Makioka Sisters (細雪, or Sasameyuki, whose Japanese title is Light Snow), is often referred to as the greatest of last century’s novels from Japan. Inevitably, this sort of hyperbole is difficult to live up to, and the book, classically divided into three ‘books’ and 101 chapters, fails in that claim. It’s not a bad novel, and not even a particularly good one, although it has many merits. The biggest drag on the book is its running 530 pages in length, in the Vintage Books edition, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker....

Solid.

1108) The Master Of Go/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  There are some works by great writers that one cannot do without. Likewise, there are some works by those same great writers that will only appeal to a select few. Kawabata’s The Master of Go belongs to the latter category. Although some readers have lumped his novella The Lake into the minor works category, I strongly disagreed. Yet The Master of Go is not a book I recommend even to readers of Japanese literature, but rather, it’s one that readers can put off reading for a long while, maybe even ever....

Ok.

1109) Japan At War/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  It was not too long ago that I reviewed a book of oral history about wartime China called Echoes of Chongqing by Danke Li. The book focused only on women and their stories, and while there were certainly enough merits for me to recommend the book to anyone interested in this subject matter, my criticism was that 1) by having only women, the book suffered from a certain isolation and one-sidedness. Also 2) the voices, after a while, all sounded the same. The book also suffered from too much academia; in that there were moments of nebulous platitudes inserted within that added nothing, save for sounding kind of preachy....

Good.

1110) No End-Game Zone/Essay/Len Holman  What the American government likes to call “the international community” has approved what is being referred to as a “no-fly zone” over Libya.  Maybe it should be called a no-thought zone.  Yes, the media is chock-full of reports about the many, many meetings held “at the highest levels,” and there can be little doubt that this decision was dissected like a frog in a freshman anatomy class, but even so, the result for the frog is not good, and this decision bodes ill for the Forces of Justice.  The administration is very lucky (or very calculating) that it’s Qaddafi’s country it plans to chastise.  The Colonel is not well-liked by the Arab world—as witness those talking heads called “the Arab League” and their insistence that Qaddafi be turned into a charred corpse—and is thought to be dangerously unstable....

No foresight.

1111) Portraits Of A Marriage/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Hungarian writer Sandor Marai (1900-1989) has been having a rebirth of a literary career ever since his novels have been slowly released into English. His first, Embers, is a great psychological and philosophical experience that I highly recommend. His others, such as Casanova in Bolzano and The Rebels, have both been consistent in their quality. Now, his most recent release into English, Portraits of a Marriage, is definitely worth the read and overall an excellent book. It is great in parts, but perhaps what keeps me from calling it an overall great book is that there are some moments that dwindle on a bit too long, and at times, slightly dip into soap opera....

Excellent.

1112) The Promise/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  This is the second Pearl S. Buck book I have read, following her more popular The Good Earth, which is the better of the two books. The Good Earth has one of the most memorable endings I’ve ever encountered, where a father is dying and his last wish is for his sons to not ever sell his land. The two sons agree to this wish, though at the last moment exchange a glance (and smile) that means just the opposite....

Good.

1113) Stagecoach/Film Review/Geoff Hendricks  John Ford’s 1939 classic Stagecoach, starring Claire Trevor and John Wayne, is one of the best pre-Sergio Leone Westerns. It is a terrific film, and it succeeds on many levels. It’s also one of the most influential films ever made- Orson Welles claimed that he watched it fifty times before making Citizen Kane, and unsurprisingly, that film’s cinematographer, Gregg Toland, was a regular Ford collaborator. In fact, Stagecoach comes within a hair of greatness, but just barely misses- primarily due to some stereotypes and a few too many clichés. After all, it is a Western....

Good.

1114) Confucius And Whorf/Essay/Len Holman  Maybe Confucius had the right idea all along.  When asked, if he were in charge of a certain Chinese Warring States-period territory, what he would do first, he answered, “The one thing needed is the rectification of names.”  From the Confucian point of view this was necessary for the good of the society.  The reasoning is as follows:  in making relationships and duties and institutions conform as much as possible to their ideal meanings, the ideal social order will emerge.  Once this intellectual reordering is done, good things will happen, just as the night follows the day.  This idea seems like a good place for us all to go, if not for moral reasons then for practical ones: there is no unanimity of opinion on anything anymore....

What does it all mean?

1115) School For Zealots/Part One/Len Holman  Given the current events in our country and throughout the world, and given the events of history, one can only conclude that somewhere, in some remote place—far away from the prying eyes of satellites hissing overhead—there is a secret school for zealots.  It has apparently been in operation for a very long time.  This school makes the most radical madrasas seem like Sesame Street. One can imagine that Barry Goldwater’s quote is emblazoned over the entrance: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!  And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” This school turns out—and has turned out, for many, many generations—thousands of zealots per year, of every stripe and persuasion, and they are everywhere.  The curriculum is so secret even the Skull and Bones members are envious; even the Trilateral Commission is miffed; even the folks at Coca-Cola’s headquarters don’t guard their recipe as well, but a careful examination of world events reveals certain strands from which can be teased out this school’s curriculum....

Training for the masses?

1116) How It Ends/Book Review/Chris Impey  British astronomer Chris Impey’s 2010 book, How It Ends: From You To The Universe is a classic sort of science book for the masses: it takes a topic all have an interest in (death) and expands it into something beyond the immediate. On the negative side, the book’s major flaw (albeit a minor one) is that it does not focus too strongly on actual endings, as it takes digressive turns into philosophy and minutia. On the positive side, the book never bogs down in jargon, abstruseness, nor extended discussions of either. This means that its 290 page text had no long patches that your average reader will just skip through because ‘this doesn’t interest me.’....

Good.

1117) The Darjeeling Limited/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  For the last year and a half or so I’ve been lucky enough to be on the list of official reviewers for The Criterion Collection’s forthcoming releases, and this has meant that I have gotten a number of requested titles of films that I already knew were great, having seen them in earlier, inferior video editions, or in the theaters, or I have gotten titles that I suspected were great, due to the reputation of the work or its director. But, I have also gotten a batch of unrequested films thrown in to the mix, I figure, as a way for me to give publicity for the release that no one else really wants to review. A perfect example of this comes from a request I put in for the recent release of the DVD version of....

Mediocre.

1118) Mildred Pierce/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Time has a way of making some films seem grander than they really are. A good example in 1945’s Mildred Pierce, the black and white melodrama from 1945, directed by Michael Curtiz (who also directed Casablanca), which won star Joan Crawford a Best Actress Oscar. It’s certainly not a bad film, and, as a soap opera, it’s quite entertaining. No, make that very entertaining, and entertainment is a quality that can stand on its own. The problem, in recent decades, is that cinema has become nothing BUT entertainment. However, it is a very formulaic and rather predictable (albeit in a good, campy sort of way) film. And it is in no way, shape, nor form great art....

Good.

1119) School For Zealots/Part Two/Len Holman  A school for zealots, if it exists—and it seems there MUST be a Shangri-la for zealotry in the Himalayas or someplace because we seem to be surrounded by SO many of its graduates—must be offset by something positive, life-giving and life-saving if we are to keep from degenerating into smaller and smaller opinion enclaves, each aggressively antagonistic to the other. If we get to THAT place, then pray that your children or grandchildren live very near a military base for protection of your own small opinion and protection against the possible invasion of some other small opinion-group wielding iPads with murder in their eyes. Pity the people who live near a McDonald’s and who will have only fish fillets and chicken McNuggets to throw at invaders—Halal McNuggets in Muslim communities....

Training for the masses, deux?

1120) Marty/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  I recently purchased The Criterion Collection’s The Golden Age Of Television DVD set. It features eight of the classic live teleplays from the 1950s, which were labeled that title during a 1981 PBS rebroadcast of the best of the bunch, those dramas that stuck in the cultural memory over time. The reality was that live television drama was almost akin to what silent films were to film history: a unique early period where a now lost art form seems almost untouchable, or unrecreatable, for it was both unique yet accessible to later art forms in its medium. To think that live drama blended with television camera, in a sort of theater meets film experience....

Classic.

1121) Three Hands/Essay/Len Holman  A third political party is a little like having a third hand.  It is, sometimes, useful to have, and it can be very effective for certain tasks—say, if you’re juggling three balls and have a sudden need to pick your nose.  But, in the long run, you can’t really live with it.  Third parties don’t have a “successful” history in the U.S. if success is measured by “big names” being elected to the White House or the congress.  Except for the GOP (remember Lincoln?), which came to life in 1854, tried for the President’s home with John C. Fremont, failed, but six years later had its man in the White House, the real success of third-party efforts has been two intertwined effects: having its ideas stolen by the other two parties, which used and implemented them, and thereby pushing the standard, status quo political dialogue off dead center.  We’ve had socialists, free-soilers, libertarians, greens, progressives, and various flavors of every possible permutation of belief in America....

Nosepickers?

1122) L.A. Confidential/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Director Curtis Hanson’s 1997 film, L.A. Confidential, was far and away the best film released in Hollywood during that year Titanic swept all the awards. There were likely some independent American films that were good, and possibly some foreign films that were its equal, but from Hollywood, nothing was close. It is a great film that succeeds on every possible level, Perhaps its lone flaw is that there is no underlying deep philosophic posit to it, save, arguably, that all people are corrupt and corruptible; it just depends on the degree and motive....

Great.

1123) Ozymandias Redux?/Essay/Len Holman  John McCain wants America to jump on Libya like a trampoline.  He has said the president doesn’t understand “American exceptionalism,” which is the current term for Manifest Destiny, and which clearly implicates God in this country’s historically successful hegemony over the rest of the world.  We have been the biggest, most powerful, most invasive, corrupting and corrosive power since the Roman Empire.  We have done some pretty amazing, wonderful things in a very short period of time, and we’ve done some amazingly stupid, hurtful, cruel things in that same amount of time.  Through it all—just a little over 400 years, from Jamestown to rovers on Mars....

The mighty have....

1124) Patterns/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The more I reacquaint myself with the live television dramas of the 1950s the more I feel what a great opportunity the medium wasted. Well, perhaps wasted is the wrong word- it was killed. Murdered. This was not an example of declining ratings nor a changing culture. This was television coldly opting for videotape to do shows cheaper, without the ‘risks’ of live television. But, since risk, by definition connotes opportunities for failure AND success, television executives decided to cave in. There were dozens of great teleplays aired in the late 1940s through the early 1960s, out of thousands of episodes aired. That meant there were failures and mostly mediocrities. But there WERE many great performances....

Great.

1125) Where Is The Emerald City?/Essay/Len Holman  “Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!” sang the Munchkins.  They were so-o-o happy and relieved, they sang and danced and looked impossibly cute, but little did they know, the scary stuff wasn’t over.  Not even close.  Dorothy had a mission: to find the Wizard and get him to return her and Toto to Kansas, to her familiar, homey surroundings.  So she went on her quest, down the Yellow Brick Road, sure that the Wizard was the key to all her problems.  And so are we, contrary to all the cautionary remarks the President has made in the wake of the death of Osama Bin Laden, contrary to the Los Angeles police chief saying we need to be vigilant....

Where indeed?

1126) No Time For Sergeants/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  When most people think of the live television shows from the 1950s, that produced such shows as Playhouse 90, The U.S. Steel Hour, etc, almost universally what comes to mind is drama, usually penned by the likes of a Paddy Chayefsky or Rod Serling. But the third entry in The Criterion Collection’s boxed set of DVDs, titled The Golden Age Of Television, is a comedy called No Time For Sergeants, adapted from a novel by Mac Hyman, and directed by Alex Segal. Most interestingly, though, the novel was adapted by Ira Levin, the man who would later pen his own novels, most famously Rosemary’s Baby. This teleplay debuted on The U.S. Steel Hour on March 15^th, 1955....

Good.

1127) Shock Corridor/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Director Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor is one of those wildly aberrant works of art than can be called great, on some levels, and utter schlock, on other levels. And both are correct assessments of this film that can only be termed a didactic melodrama. What results, though, is that one is left with a so-so film- not the piece of pulp garbage that many reviewers first assailed the black and white film (with dream sequence snippets in color) as, upon its release in 1963, nor the masterpiece that revisionists have proffered in later auteur-based assessments. It had been almost a quarter century since I last watched the film, but recently popped in The Criterion Collection DVD of the film, and rediscovered its ‘charms.’....

Classic.

1128) 3 Documentaries/On The Self/Dan Schneider  How does someone become the star of a documentary film? Since recently joining Netflix I have found myself far more drawn to the bevy of online streaming documentaries available than to the fictive films I’ve reviewed for years with DVD releases. One recent Sunday afternoon, after a long and hard day’s work, I came home, too tired to write or do anything else, so I watched three short documentaries in a row, in about four hours. It was an afternoon which prompted the query that opens this essay because all three films had lead protagonists that could, at best, charitably, be called idiotic and annoying....

Ok.

1129) But Who'll Clean The Toilets?/Essay/Len Holman  The following is an excerpt from a secret planning meeting held by several top officials of a little-known government bureau of the Department of the Interior called the Office of Undesirable Tenants (OUT).  Alphabetic indicators have been used in place of names to preserve the anonymity of the sources....

Equal opportunity offender?

1130) Still Walking/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Having recently gotten a review copy of The Criterion Collection’s latest DVD release, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2008 film Still Walking (Aruitemo Aruitemo), I found myself torn as fundamentally as I have ever been at the receipt of the package, but not for the reasons one might think a critic might be torn. The film is fabulous, great, and everything that the people who recommended I check out Kore-eda’s films said it would be, and I requested on their praise. But the DVD package left me profoundly saddened because this very same film is available for streaming on Netflix and the DVD’s features are so meager as to offer no real reason to actually buy the DVD package rather than just stream the film....

Great film.

1131) Close-Up/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Abbas Kiarostami is one of those ‘name’ foreign directors who is looked to as a god. Close-Up (Nema-Ye Nazdik) is the second film of his that I have seen, and while not flashy, and made on a low budget, it is an excellent film. It is a pseudo-documentary, and not a mockumentary, although it’s been labeled as the latter. Written and directed by Kiarostami between the making of two other higher budgeted films, Close-Up nonetheless shows what pouncing upon something that just happens can do for an artist. Sometimes it’s not the force of creation, but the moment of recognition that defines when a piece of good art is wrought....

Good.

1132) Public Service Announcements/Essay/Len Holman  There are reports that Sarah Palin has made twenty million dollars so far.  She quit public service (as governor of Alaska), and seemingly has stopped shadow-running for the Republican nomination (was she EVER a real contender?), with Fox dropping one of her shows, curtailing her “commentary”, and no doubt cringing at her dismal poll ratings.  In recent polls, Mike Huckabee had come in first for the GOP nomination, but a lot of his people moved to other campaigns and he has said that his new business venture is finally making him some money, money he didn’t make while a public servant, so he won’t run after all....

Calling....you.

1133) Nietszche And The Nazis/Film Review/Dan Schneider  ‘The Nazis knew what they stood for; do we?’ is how the 165 minute long documentary, Nietzsche And The Nazis: A Personal View, by Stephen Hicks, PhD., ends queryingly. Yet, one might be loath to even label the 2006 film a documentary, as it is more an illustrated lecture. But, oh, what a lecture! I have famously railed against most philosophy. Not because I lack opinions but because so much philosophy is so mediocre and so poorly written. Friedrich Nietzsche, however, was an engaging, if not great, writer, and his ideas- good, bad, or indifferent, are always a challenge. These ideas, a near flawless dissection of Nazi theory and power, a historical weighing of their influence....

Excellent.

1134) About To Die/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  We live in an image-obsessed culture, and if there is an image that can keep us from actually having to read an article, we’re likely to gawk at it, especially when that image exploits someone’s death, or rather, the moment just before someone’s death. Barbie Zelizer’s About to Die: How News Images Move the Public addresses why and how journalists exploit the use of the moment before one dies (what she calls the “as if” moment) over the actual death itself. Many examples are offered (likely too many), but one of the most notable “as if” is that of victims jumping from the Twin Towers on 9/11....

Bad.

1135) It's About The Job/Essay/Len Holman  The United States Marine Corps is working hard.  It’s a big, tough, unpleasant job, but the Marines are training diligently and no doubt will achieve success.  The mission?  To prepare for the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and accept gay Marines as…well, just Marines.  At the Marine Air Ground Combat Center in 29 Palms (MCAGCC) classes are being held to “train” for that fateful day, the day that gay and lesbian Marines will be allowed to be who they are; that fateful day when gay and lesbian civilians may join the Marines even though they are not normal.  All that the future recruit will have to prove is that he or she can cut it in boot camp and do the job assigned in the field....

Duh?

1136) Senso/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  In my recent review of the upcoming The Criterion Collection DVD for Still Walking, I lamented the fact that streaming technology of companies like Netflix may be the demise of the Golden Era of DVDs because there will be little or no market for the extra features popularized by that format, and that companies like Criterion may only be able to survive by becoming distributors of films. Just a few days ago Criterion announced that it had engaged in an exclusive streaming partnership with Hulu, one of Netflix’s competitors....

Good.

1137) Exercising Brevity/Essay/Neil Hester  When writing poetry, brevity is bliss. That said, I think I’m done writing this. Okay- so there's also such a thing as a lack of substance....

Bliss?

1138) Autoquill/Essay/Len Holman  At midnight, Friday, the 27^th of May, the extension of provisions in the Patriot Act were set to expire and the bill needed the President’s signature, but Mr. Obama was in Europe and couldn’t get to the special set of pens he keeps in the Oval Office, so he authorized the use of an autopen.  This device exactly duplicates a signature and has been used by just about everyone except you and me and Lady Gaga....

Penmanship in extremis.

1139) Eyes Of The Mothman/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Having grown up in the 1970s I was exposed to many documentaries on subject matter that could be termed supernatural or paranormal. Back in those pre-VHS days, these sorts of films actually got fairly widespread releases into secondary theatres, and often ran for a year or two before hitting local television stations. If over the age of forty you surely must recall these films, which usually were on such topics as UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, Erich Von Daniken’s Ancient Astronauts, the Loch Ness monster, or other such ‘mysteries.’ Its television equivalent was Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of… series....

Great doc.

1140) Mr. Untouchable/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Marc Levin’s 2007 documentary film, Mr. Untouchable, which gives background on notorious 1970s Harlem drug kingpin LeRoy ‘Nicky’ Barnes is a flat out great documentary. It is insightful, points out things that are wrong with many people’s ideas on reality, and does very well in backgrounding Barnes’ life and times, as well as using the often tired ‘talking heads’ approach in a fresh way, by making those talking heads contradict one another and reveal their own evils when they speak of Barnes....

Great doc deux....

1141) Technology Anyway/Essay/Len Holman  I have a phone. It makes calls and receives them.  It was cheap and I have no contract because I buy a card with minutes, and I never use all the minutes before my time expires, when I have to buy more minutes.  My phone doesn’t play movies or games or have apps to help make my shelves straight or find local restaurants or track the latest from Lady Gaga.  I can’t download the latest movie or get a ringtone which is Mozart at his finest or the mating call of a moose.  I carry it when I’m out in case I need to call Triple-A, or my wife.  When I get home, I turn it off.  I use my land line to fend off cold calls from insurance companies and charities and drunks trying to call a cab.  I have seen the latest phones—some of my students have them—and they are a marvel of technology. They do things no one really needs to do, but they do it in color, with screens bigger than the one our TV had when I was a kid.  They weigh more than a well-fed gerbil, and no one can buy the latest, fanciest one because by the time the contract has expired, three generations of phones have come on the market, and the consumer has missed the latest tweak....

What the hell?

1142) A Walk Into The Sea/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Why do so many documentary filmmakers decide to make films about relatives or people they know? The obvious answer is the ease of getting information. But that does not explain why they choose the subjects they choose. Andrew Neel’s portrait of his grandmother, Alice Neel, at least has the benefit of being a profile of a great artist. Lucia Small’s portrait of her architect father, Glen Howard Small, called My Father, The Genius, at least shows off the insights of an underrated designer. And even Bill Rose’s The Loss Of Nameless Things at least profiles an artist of potential whose life and career were cut short by an accident....

Snooze.

1143) War Is War/Essay/Len Holman  The war business is going well.  The war business has always gone well, and the United States wants its fair share of this business.  The Secretary of Defense has chastised NATO for becoming “irrelevant,” which means some NATO countries are not leaning into the Libya campaign, which means not enough arms and war material are being used. We sell arms all over the world and have had proxy wars with client states as our pawns when the other side had nukes, had access to nukes, or could spell “nukes.”  We have trained special ops teams, which use the fanciest, most sophisticated gear the war machine makes, and who have done remarkable things, ops people who killed Bin Laden, and who—of this I have no doubt—are either IN Iran at this moment, or HAVE BEEN there, or periodically GO there, or all of those....

Pull the plug?

1144) The Tree Of Life/Film Review/Dan Schneider  American film director Terrence Malick’s fifth feature film release, in four decades in the business, The Tree Of Life, is a film that, in parts, has some of the greatest techniques and moments ever recorded in film history, but it also has some fatal narrative flaws that prevent it from outright greatness, as an overall work of art, and possibly the worst ending to a near-great film since Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 classic, Rashomon, while at the same time having one of the most self-indulgent and showoffy endings to a film since Federico Fellini’s 8½. More reprehensible than anything the film does, positively or negatively, is how utterly over the top some praise of the film has been, and how utterly ridiculous some of the criticism of the film has been....

Great potential.

1145) Sky Island/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  A number of years ago I visited northern New Mexico and I have been eager to return ever since. For any nature lover, this topography is paradise, and for me personally there is something universal about the American Southwest—perhaps it’s the notion that one is able to, with just a hike across the terrain, travel back into time so easily. There is also a comfortable ease about the surrounds and a beauty that is unlike any other place on earth. I understand what Georgia O’Keeffe meant when she said she had found her home there. And sometimes it is nice to just travel across canyons and the faraway without having to lift your feet. In John Grabowska’s latest documentary, Sky Island offers just that....

Great doc.

1146) Who's Next?/Essay/Len Holman  Arizona’s immigration bill, 1070, started the toilet flushing, then Georgia was in the news and now Alabama has gone them all one better, with an immigration law that is stunning in its harshness, shattering in its ignorance, and another example of the inherent tension in our political system between the federal government and the states.  The new Alabama immigration law requires police to check the immigration status of those they stop (what happened to “probable cause?”), bars undocumented immigrants from receiving public benefits or enrolling in state colleges, and makes it a crime to give a ride to an illegal immigrant, which in practice, makes the driver of a vehicle a cop who must check the legal status of his or her would-be passenger before providing a lift out of the rain.  It also requires public schools to determine the immigration status of their students and report the number of those who are here illegally to state officials....

Great album....oh, wait.

1147) Stagecoach/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  I love when I catch myself in a bias, and have the reality of the art bitchslap me. Having watched a number of John Ford and John Wayne films over the years I had come to expect certain things from both men. From Ford you get the landscapes, shallow screenplays, and often overweening visual poesy. From Wayne you’d get the wooden acting, hammy bodily gesticulations, and racist pseudo-patriotism. When I watched The Searchers, a monumentally overrated film, I nailed these flaws in both men. So, I was expecting much of the same, only more of it, and worse, from Stagecoach, the first pairing of these two men because 1) it was older, 2) it was made in the 1930s, 3) in black and white, and 4)much of film acting in that era was little beyond the silent era’s necessitated overacting. Thankfully, I was wrong....

Wayne enters.

1148) Slow-Motion Apocalypse/Essay/Len Holman  Secretary Of Defense Robert Gates is retiring, which only means he’s leaving his job, not that he’s reticent about stating his position.  He has said (as quoted by Newsweek) that America is losing its grip.  This is macho-speak for The End of the America.  It is the negative side of Manifest Destiny, in which the U. S. doesn’t gain prominence and power, it loses them.  Gates laments the polarization in Washington and also laments the lack of commitment, in money and political will, to engage with the world, which sounds veddy British colonial.  Gates speaks with the petulant tone of a Wall Street stock trader who is angry that his corner office doesn’t have a built-in latté machine....

Tim-berrrr!!!!

1149) Strange New Worlds/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Ok, let me get this out of the way: Ray Jayawardhana, the author of the uber-long subtitled Strange New Worlds: The Search For Alien Planets An Life Beyond Our Solar System, recently released from Princeton University Press, is not a great wordsmith. In short, no one is going to mix up his prose stylings, in this 288 page book, with the ruminative poesy of a Loren Eiseley, the enthused didacticism of a Carl Sagan, nor the wonderfully metaphoric Stephen Jay Gould, for here is a typical sample of his writing....

Ok.

1150) Hearts, Minds, Votes/Essay/Len Holman So the race is really on now.  Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney, among others, have finally figured out that if they want the Republican nomination for President, they’re going to need more votes than they can get from survivalists in Montana, separatists in Texas, and those three guys in Alaska freezing their parkas off in a moose blind.  They need to appeal to the hearts and minds—and therefore get the votes—of the still-mostly sensible voters in the Great Middle.  They cannot be seen as wild-eyed fanatics intent on slicing the federal budget so much that children will be sitting around campfires in the middle of once-great cities being taught how to banish evil spirits by a shaman who used to be school teacher--when there were schools....

Thank you, Ronald Reagan!

1151) Speak For Itself/Essay/SuZi  Reading translation is an act of trust. We trust that the translated text is true to the original, that the spirit of the original comes through to the reader with the same potency as it would if read in the native tongue. The editorial decisions made by the translator –- regarding idiomatic phrases, sound versus sense, what to do with meter in closed form work, et cetera—are the conundrum that does not change the intrinsic nature of translation, as Charles Bernstein says, as that of being “always a form of collaboration: between two[..] poets and  two[…] languages” (199). In the end, the text must speak, must rise to possess the mind of the reader, must be present....

OK.

1152) The Silence Of The Hands/Essay/Len Holman  My handwriting is execrable.  It’s more curse than cursive, even with all the blood, sweat, and tears I gave during my formative years to learn to sculpt the letters, the humiliation I endured of going to the chalk board and not being able to remember what a capital “q” looked like, the disappointment I suffered when I finished a handwritten page and discovered that the earnest, tight-fisted grip on my pencil produced, not flowing script, but a foreign language which even I couldn’t read.  I wish I were going to school in Indiana right now, because that state’s board of education has told teachers they can stop teaching cursive if they wish....

Clapping with one?

1153) Kes/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The upcoming release of Ken Loach’s 1969 color film Kes allowed me my first chance to see the new Blu-Ray technology firsthand, as I recently upgraded to a Blu-Ray player with Netflix capacity. Hence, when sent a review copy by The Criterion Collection I was eager for my virginal go at the newer generation disk. Having seen it, I can say I noticed only a marginal quality difference vis-à-vis regular DVDs. Perhaps this is because Loach’s film is 40 years old, and Blu-Ray makes more sense on newer all digital films, and/or because I lack a digital widescreen tv. That said, crispness is one thing....

Good.

1154) The Public Enemy/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The time a film was made often has an interesting effect on its ability to last or not. The 1931 black and white film that launched James Cagney into superstardom, The Public Enemy, directed by William Wellman, is a good case study. While it’s not, overall, an inarguably great film, it certainly is close. It’s a near-great film that certainly ranks as a great genre film- in this case the gangster film. The reason for its missing greatness is essentially because it is an early talking picture, and for the first decade or so, after the silent film era ended, many actors struggled with trying to get a more naturalistic feel to their physical appearances and acting styles....

Good.

1155) Naked Bungee Jumping/Essay/Len Holman  There are things which seem easy to do, or at least eminently doable—until you get down to actually doing them, and then you realize that the thing you thought was within easy accessibility actually was immensely complicated, dangerous, and not for you at all.  Like naked bungee jumping.  We’ve all seen videos of people doing it, and we’ve heard the yelling and moaning—and afterwards, the effects of all that adrenaline pumping through the participants, their smiles of exhilaration, their joy at the conquest of their fears.  So you tell everyone you’re going to do it, that it’s not that big a deal, that the fear and complications are all in your mind—because in real life, it’s a piece of cake.  So there you are standing on the rail of the bridge, clothes off, bungee cord around your ankles, and the cool updraft from the river far below....

Whee!

1156) I Am New Orleans/Book Review/SuZi  New Orleans will ever be on the conscience of America: a shameful show of overt brutality, a legacy of prevarication (the storm was the long-awaited for opportunity, believe not the propaganda), and now an era  for profiteering that is, alas, somewhat abetted by the diaspora  of her denizens. In the latter decades of the twentieth century—after the petro-chem industry  mutilated the fragile delta ecosystem—New Orleans was an adult amusement park, and media portrayals always included the obligatory strip-of-bars versus wetland settings with maybe a zydecajun musical accompaniment, but woefully ignored was any real understanding of a distinctive culture that is now on the verge of extinction. The colonization and generic-clone replacement of local culture....

Rap?

1157) A Clockwork Orange/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange, was the culmination of possibly the greatest consecutive run of three films from a single director, ever.  Before this film, he had released Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb in 1964, and 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. The former is, if not the single greatest comedy film ever made, is certainly the greatest satire. The latter, is inarguably the greatest science fiction film in the medium’s history, to date, and in the running for greatest film of all time, period. Yet, in some ways, A Clockwork Orange equals and surpasses its progenitors. It is a film that, despite its claims of being science fiction or pornographic, is even more subversively funny than Dr. Strangelove, in certain moments....

Great.

1158) General Idi Amin Dada/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Watching French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder’s 1974 documentary General Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait two things came to mind. First was an old Mad magazine spoof of Amin titled Idiot And Mean, in which, I believe the 1970s dictator of Uganda was visited by the crew of the original Star Trek television series, and also that fact that the word Dada, while literally part of Amin’s name, also was an early 20^th Century arts movement that embraced the meaningless of all art. The first point is obvious, because the name accorded Amin fits....

Ok.

1159) 2 Nazi Docs/Mengele & Mr. Death/Dan Schneider  I recently watched two very different documentaries about the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s policy of genocide against Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘undesirables’ during the Second World War. Most people have termed the genocide things like the holocaust or The Final Solution, but the phrase Nazi Genocide seems a far more apt term, as both the other terms tend to focus almost exclusively on the deaths of Jews (who were about 50% of all people killed in the death camps), while ignoring all the others killed. Ancillary to that is the tendency for the media to overplay the Nazi Genocide vis-à-vis all other earlier and later examples of genocide, including those that killed far more many people and far greater percentages, overall, of the people that were set out to be killed by the genocidalists. I get this out of the way, early, simply because both films deal with controversial aspects of the Nazi Genocide....

Interesting.

1160) A Cat, A Man, And Two Women/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  A Cat, a Man and Two Women is a good collection of three tales—containing one that is very good and two others that are pretty good. The title story, A Cat, a Man, and Two Women, is a 100-page novella and is the best in the book, offering just the right amount of humor and tenderness involving a cat that affects the lives of those around it. The male protagonist, Shozo, is a weak-willed man who loves his cat, Lily. He loves her so much that the woman in his life is jealous of the affection he bestows upon her. The tale opens with Shozo sharing his mackerel with Lily, by getting her to repeatedly leap for the bait. His wife, Fukuko, has always had somewhat a disdain for the cat, and thus she resents the close bond her husband shares with the animal....

Solid.

1161) 3 Biographical Docs/Bruce Lee, Jesus Christ, Joan River/Dan Schneider  One recent afternoon I watched back to back to back documentaries on Netflix, and only after watching them realized they had a common theme: they were biographies of people. Or, technically biographies of two real people and one mythic figure with no historical proof; but you get my drift. The three films in question were 1994’s Martial Arts Master: The Life Of Bruce Lee, a 52 minute long film directed by Guy Scutter; The Case For Christ, a 71 minute long pseudo-documentary, from 2007, directed by Michael and Timothy Eaton, on Christian Apologist Lee Strobel’s claims to have ‘proof’ that Jesus Christ really existed, really was divine, and really died for your (yes, your!) sins; and a 2010 documentary, directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, called Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work, which runs 84 minutes....

Mixed bags.

1162) The Thin Blue Line/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Errol Morris, the documentarian who wrought the great The Fog Of War, first came to prominence for his 1988 documentary film, the 98 minute long The Thin Blue Line. It’s a very good film, but it is not a flat out great film like The Fog Of War is. In a sense, many of the things that hit full bloom in the later film, made in 2003, were given a test run in this more standard film. But, while The Fog Of War is a film whose import will only grow over the years, The Thin Blue Line is a film that was important upon its release, for it documented the incompetence and corruption that resides in the American legal system....

Excellent.

1163) The Three-Cornered World/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  “Walking up a mountain track, I fell to thinking. Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh. Pole along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away by the current. Give free rein to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined. It is not a very agreeable place to live, this world of ours.” And so this is the opening to Soseki Natsume’s novel, The Three Cornered World....

Good.

1164) The Old Capital/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Kawabata is known for the emotional intricacy and subtlety throughout his work, and in that regard, The Old Capital is no different. What separates Kawabata’s work from other Japanese writers are the insightful observations that the characters partake in—what one notices in the very small, and thus, how the character imbues into the scene. Descriptions of the passing vistas in Snow Country evoke internal isolation and pathos, while the rumblings of a nearby mountain introduce feelings of death in The Sound of the Mountain. It is this shift from the external to the internal that makes Kawabata the distinct and intricate writer he is, and someone separate from his peers....

Good.

1165) Narcissus And Goldmund/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Hermann Hesse is one of those writers that allows for one to be picky. He has enough great titles that of those great titles, certain ones rank better, or in this case greater than others. Narcissus and Goldmund is among his great titles, but it’s one of his lesser greats. Steppenwolf, Demian and Siddhartha are still stronger works overall, but Narcissus and Goldmund is not too far behind. A couple of things that keep me from ranking this as his best....

Good.

1166) Diary Of A Mad Old Man/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  With a title like Diary of a Mad Old Man, one does not need guess too hard when trying to assume what this story is about. In it, we have an old man named Utsugi who, because he is old, is suffering from a list of medical ills, yet that does not stop him from recording his sexual perversions in his journal. One of the first things he mentions is how he is sexually attracted to male dancers dressed up to look like women. Not men, mind you, but men dressed to look like women. There’s a difference, Utsugi claims, and he justifies it plenty. And since he no longer finds his wife attractive, the object of his lust has shifted to his daughter in law, Satsuko—a feisty dancer with a past....

Ok.

1167) Called By God/Essay/Len Holman  The governor of Texas is now in the Joan of Arc Hall of Fame.  God spoke to him (although he hasn’t been specific about the exact method) and either 1) invited him or 2) commanded him to seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States.  If he was merely invited by the Deity, he could have declined.  I’m sure God would have understood.  Maybe Perry thought that an invitation from God was an offer he couldn’t refuse. But that can’t be right, because that’s the definition of a command, so Perry had a choice: if it was merely an invite, he could have declined, sent an RSVP....

Calling Phillip Morris....

1168) Jason Sanford Ascending/Essay/Dan Schneider  As I have often rightly been harsh on editors and critics who gladhand praise to their friends and associates in return for advancement opportunities in the fields of the arts and academia, let me state up front that I have known Jason Sanford for well over a decade, he attended maybe a dozen meetings of my old Uptown Poetry Group, and I have read a number of examples of his prose fiction over the last decade. That being my full disclosure (and, no, I have no financial investment in his person nor literary career), let me state that, having read Sanford’s two latest releases in e-book formats- his novella, Sublimation Angels, and his short story collection, Never Never Stories, I can say, with complete objectivity, that he is an excellent writer, at the minimum, and possibly a great one, especially if he keeps improving his craft....

Great?

1169) Night Fright/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  John Agar is a B film sci fi and horror legend from the 1950s. By the late 1960s, however, his once renowned B film career had sputtered to even sub-Tor Johnson depths. In the remaining decades of his life he was reduced from B film leading man to (ugh!) B film character actor. One of the last roles that Agar had, as a B film leading man was in 1967’s Night Fright.....

Ugh!

1170) Can We Put Up With Anything?/Essay/Len Holman  The benevolent tolerance (some might say indifference and/or ignorance) of the American population is truly amazing.  This fact was noted long ago by Thomas Jefferson in his Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, where. in his florid but clear style, he commented that the American people would—and had—put up with poor government just because of inertia, and it was only because such execrable rule from the British Crown that SOMETHING had to be done, viz. start a new country: ”Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed....

Can we?

1171) Blue Valentine/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Blue Valentine is a film designed to stir debate, but not in the usual silly political nor emotional sort of way. Its debate is of a deeper and more profound measure, and that is it asks which of the two main characters profiled in the film is in the wrong? The film does its best to be evenhanded, and for every tick of the ledger against one of the major characters, an equally incisive demerit can be handed out to the other. However, the biggest demerit I can give regarding this 2010 film, directed by Derek Cianfrance, about the turmoil of a mediocre marriage, is the critical cribbing that abounds in essays and reviews of the film, online and off. And that cribbing involves the almost near-universal claim that this film follows the end of, or the dissolution of, that marriage. Yet, nothing of the sort can be convincingly construed from the film’s contents nor its ending....

Good.

1172) The First Fossil Hunters/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Sometimes a book can have a good germ of an idea, and be bloated WAY beyond all reasonable measure, based upon a) the good intent of the author, b) the ego of the author, or c) both a and b. Such is the case with Adrienne Mayor’s 2011 reisssue of her 2000 book The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, And Myth In Greek And Roman Times, which is a 253 page book of text, supplemented with 108 pages of appendices and notes which has to be some kind of a record ratio for supplements to actual material in a book that, technically, is neither a history nor science book. In fact, given the many illustrations in the book, it’s likely that for every two pages of text there is a page of textual annotation....

Take a pass.

1173) Samurai Rebellion/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  It is a trite thing to do, but when most critics try to laud a play or a film, or even the development of characters at their highest, they will use the term Shakespearean. This is odd since, while Shakespeare certainly was a great writer, the fact is that he was not adept, at all, in developing realistic characters nor scenes. His greatest plays- 7 or 8 out of his published 37 (perhaps a dozen to his most ardent champions) are great, in no way, shape, nor form, for their above mentioned qualities. Shakespeare, in fact, was not a dramatist, in the modern sense of the term, for pre-modern playwrights simply had no idea how to get in to the mind of the average man (or woman). One need look no further than Shakespeare’s own abysmally (and often painfully) bad and unfunny comedies....

Great.

1174) When A Privilege Is A Bribe/Essay/Len Holman  The Saudis think they have it all figured out—and so far, they have done a pretty good job of doing just that.  Arab Spring?  It sends a shiver down the royal family’s backs.  There is nothing a reactionary, long-privileged, ruling class hates more than a truly democratic situation in the country—I mean, what happens if the “wrong” people get elected (see; Hamas election)?  The Saudi royal family is not beloved, but they are feared, and with good reason.  All their armaments are used in defense of their own privilege, with any outside protection left to others—mostly the U.S.  The Saudis are very good at that old sleight-of-hand any politician or political order is good at....

Exactly.

1175) The Desert Of The Tartars/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The Desert Of The Tartars (Il Deserto Dei Tartari) is a film that has been described as a cross between Beau Geste and Waiting For Godot, and into that mix I would toss some of the films of Hiroshi Teshigahara, especially Woman In The Dunes, as well as the troop interactions seen in the 1960s American television sitcom F Troop, even though The Desert Of The Tartars is not a comedy. This is because the slow moving and contemplative first half of the film follows the setting up of the main military officer characters between each other, and with their men....

Near-great.

1176) It Might Get Loud/Confessions Of A Superhero/Dan Schneider  Documentaries that focus on individuals generally should focus on people of accomplishment or those with unique talents….unless the people focused on are being focused on for some higher purpose. In watching the two documentaries, It Might Get Loud and Confessions Of A Superhero, I witnessed both types of documentaries on people at, if not the absolute peak of their respective art forms, then close to it....

Good.

1177) The Problem Of Poetry Publishers/Danse Macabre/Ben Smith  What makes a poem a poem and not mere prose written in verse and meter?  First, to write a poem, one must think in terms of poetry, its tricks and turns of phrase, its music and meter (however one wants to interpret such), its grab and hold, even its mystery and outright enigma, and certainly its rhetoric.  And what is the shape of shame?  We’re soon to see. What one finds in many journals is a form of “poetic” prose written in line, an attempt to write in verse divorced from that which is its historical identity.  The poetaster fails to differentiate between two very different types of writing, instead working in a realm ignoring the knowledge of this very difference. Perhaps he, the inept poet, fails before he even puts pen to page, for his mindset itself is unpoetic.  It is my belief that the poorly written poetry published by most of the literary magazines of our times calls to be criticized for the tripe it truly is....

Taking out the trash.

1178) Vita Sexualis/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  The very first thing that is mentioned about Ogai Mori’s 1909 published novel, Vita Sexualis, is that it was banned three weeks after publication. I find this amusing since the book is bereft of sex, and more about the burgeoning curiosity about it. All this is fine, and actually makes for an interesting read, albeit readers looking for steamy scenes are likely to be disappointed. Yet, those who know where to find them are not going to be sifting through a Japanese novel published in 1909....

Good.

1179) The Wild Geese/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  In Japanese literature, two names are often lumped together: Soseki Natsume and Ogai Mori. Both are noted for having written during the fall of the Meiji Era—or what marked the decline of the classical image of Japan as it struggled to accept the new Western influences. They are also two writers who were hugely impacted by the suicide of General Nogi (which was carried out following the death of Emperor Meiji). Soseki’s novel, Kokoro, contains the influence of such, and many of his works have been translated into English. Ogai, however, is not as easily available in translation....

Good.

1180) The Nanny State/Essay/Len Holman  The harping continues.  Mrs. Obama is jamming veggies down kids’ throats.  Mr. Obama is jamming solar energy through our electric grid.  The government has the audacity to want American kids to learn something in school, and be tested to see if they actually have.  He wants to spend money—spend money!—to keep our roads and rails and bridges from falling apart.  The Conservative candidates complain that the government has become worse than Big Brother—it has become The Nanny. To hear them tell it, the government just won’t leave us alone, and we are all the worse for it.  There is one country—France—whose government’s dietary guidelines mandate that schoolchildren will only have access to ketchup once a week, on the day French fries are served.  Mayo, higher in calories, will be rationed.  THAT’S a Nanny State....

Stupid Right Wing Bullshit.

1181) Alice Neel/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Growing up in New York City, in the 1970s, painter Alice Neel (who died in 1984, at age 84) was often in the news, with a show or retrospective at this or that gallery or museum. Such was the extent of her fame and renown, locally, that it’s hard to imagine she was anything other than a famous painter, but in the 2007 documentary, Alice Neel, directed by her grandson Andrew Neel, it is a myth that is quickly dispelled....

Good.

1182) Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Have you ever watched a Christopher Guest mockumentary, like For Your Consideration, loved it, but said, ‘Well, there are no real life people that stupid.’ You would be wrong, because in director Jay Delaney’s 63 minute long, 2009 documentary, Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie, that’s exactly what the viewer is seeing. The film follows two middle aged Portsmouth, Ohio friends and losers named Dallas Gilbert and Wayne Burton. The former is a small, clearly psychotic, but harmless, individual with bad dentition who believes he has a gift to call out to Bigfoots (or Bigfeet?) that he and Wayne track down in local forested areas. He has a Gabby Hayes jaw movement....

Good.

1183) Whence The Image/Essay/Ben Smith  Poetry comprises innumerable elements, each of them ready to be called upon by the poet as it serves him.  One element though is often emphasized above others: the image.  Now I would never suggest that images do not play a role in the poem; they do. But, to what extent?  I would propose that the image (the concrete image, that is) plays a much smaller, a lesser, role in the composition of the poem than has been indicated by many others. Indeed it is the wording of the images themselves as well as the words that relate to the images that give the image itself its importance.  Poetry is not a visual art in the sense that it is not painting, it is not sculpture, nor photograph; neither is it song, a thing of tactile sensation, or a scent, not to mention it not being kinesiology. ...

Tackling Stevens and co.

1184) Three Artist Docs/Film Reviews/Dan Schneider  Over the course of several evenings I found myself watching an eclectic run of three biographical films of artists of varying quality. The films were Genius Within: The Inner Life Of Glenn Gould, American: The Bill Hicks Story, And James Ellroy’s Feast Of Death, and herein my views on all three works of art....

Solid.

1185) Capturing Reality/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Pepita Ferrari’s 2008 documentary, Capturing Reality: The Art Of Documentary, on the insights of documentarian’s craft is a solid film, but one that, despite its nature, never does what it celebrates in the films of others: i.e.- to innovate and explore all the ways that true stories can be told. The film runs 97 minutes and consists almost solely of the talking heads of almost 40 documentary filmmakers talking on their craft, interspersed with about 150 or so scenes from many of their films....

Solid.

1186) Why Are We Still Listening?/Essay/Len Holman  Donald Trump is at it again.  He and Gov. Perry have become the Denial Duo and they are milking the birther thing for all they’re worth.  But why is anyone paying attention?  Why is the CNN website still printing this poor, ignorant man’s words?  Doesn’t this country have more to concern it than this non-issue?  There is the Herman Cain story, or non-story, which Ann Coulter called a “high-tech lynching”—reminiscent of the Clarence Thomas hearings and Anita Hill’s scurrilous treatment by the panel.  This supposedly happened more than a decade ago....

Why indeed?

1187) This Dust Of Words/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Full disclosure up front: I received a DVD screener copy of documentary filmmaker Bill Rose’s 2008 film, This Dust Of Words, after I contacted him hoping to interview him for my Dan Schneider Interviews series, after I had seen and been impressed with his first documentary, 2005’s The Loss Of Nameless Things, which documented a promising young playwright and director’s fall from prominence after a careless bridge accident left him a wholly different person from the artist he once was. While a bit raw, the film used some dramatic innovations to make memorable a tale about a figure that, before his accident, was almost a stereotype of the solipsistic self-declared genius enfant terrible of art. Similarly, This Dust Of Words, follows another artistic stereotype whose abortive arts career was not cut short by physical damage imposed by a physical trauma....

Excellence on nothingness.

1188) Some Like It Hot/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Some films are terrifically overrated, even if they are solid, enjoyable little films. Perhaps the most glaring example of this dictum is Billy Wilder’s 1959 black and white comedy Some Like It Hot. It often appears on Best Of lists as the top comedy of all time, but, while a good, solid film, it is nowhere near a great film, in screenwriting, technical measures, nor in, well, laughs per minute. Let’s tackle those three things in reverse. Perhaps the funniest film ever made, in terms of laughs per minute is Stanley Kramer’s 1963 all star comedy, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It’s a pants-pisser that unleashes 2-3 guffaws per minute. The scene where Jonathan Winters destroys the gas station is priceless. By contrast, Some Like It Hot hasn’t a single guffaw in the whole film....

Solid.

1189) Ben-Hur/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Ben-Hur is one of those sword and sandal epics that, like The Ten Commandments or Spartacus, is a good film, well acted, well directed, but ultimately, is just a good excuse to eat junk food, for there’s nothing of any real depth to it. In many ways, it is sort of Part Two of Charlton Heston’s three part ‘religious epic’, which started with The Ten Commandments and ended with El Cid (a bit better of a film than the two others).  The difference is that this is the least religious of the trio, despite its subtitle being A Story Of The Christ....

Good.

1190) Wheel Of Time/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  What is it about middle aged white mean and their sudden love of Orientalism (or jazz, for that matter)? Is it a midlife crisis? This thought came to me watching Werner Herzog’s 2003 documentary Wheel Of Time. The best thing I can say of the film is that it would make for a solid PBS film by a typical documentary director, but coming from a master of cinema, like Herzog, it’s a profound disappointment. Why? There simply is nothing more to this film than Herzog filming the mundane goings on at a trio of Buddhist festivals in 2002, and acting as if peasants trekking about a mountain (Mount Kailash in Tibet), monks painting mandalas with colored sand, and white Austrians rapt with Orientalism, were supposed to lend some deep insight into the cosmic goings on. At least, that is what can be taken from Herzog’s narration of the film....

So-so, Werner!

1191) Whither America's Freedoms?/Essay/Len Holman  Many years ago, when I was an inquisitive kid riding home from the movies with my parents, I saw—from my place in the back seat—a couple of police cars and a line of traffic in front of us.  I asked my father what was going on and he shrugged.  “Must be an accident,” he said.  It turned out the police were checking for drunk drivers.  This is a common occurrence today, but not then.  When we got to the place where the cops were stopping every car on the road, my father rolled down his window and asked why we were being stopped and the cop shined his flashlight into my dad’s eyes, then ran the beam around the inside of the car....

Thither?

1192) Amen/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras is not a poetic filmmaker. He is the exemplar of the political artists, except for one thing. He’s actually quite good at it. His career is filled with well made, if not visionary nor great, films, but, because the films do take some creative risks, and rarely condescend, they rise above the mountain of bad political art, in most fields, which can easily be reduced to a bumper sticker....

Good.

1193) The Loss Of Nameless Things/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Of the many documentaries available for streaming on Netflix, very few are worth watching. Some have potentially interesting subject matter, but are ill wrought. Others are just paint by numbers formula documentaries with a political, religious, or philosophic agenda. Still others are just plain amateurish. Then there are documentaries like Bill Rose’s 2005 The Loss Of Nameless Things, about the rise and violent fall of a playwright and dramaturg whose critical and artistic star seemed to be waxing, before, like many clichéd artists of talent, he kyboshed it all and nearly killed himself. Instead, he ended up destroying his brain, his marriage, his past, and his future. The artist in question was Oakley ‘Tad’ Hall III, son of the fairly well known novelist and Academic, Oakley Hall II....

Excellent.

1194) The Thin Red Line (1964)/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Journeyman film director Andrew Marton’s 1964 film version of James Jones’ novel, The Thin Red Line, is quite different from the 1998 film version by Terrence Malick. And almost all of those ways are inferior, despite there being a number of important scenes that are the same in both films. Having said that, the 99 minute long, black and white film is still a pretty good film, despite its cheap B movie level special effects, and pretty rotten acting. There is none of the high-minded philosophy of the later version, but this version, like its successor....

Solid.

1195) Leadership/Essay/Len Holman  Herman Cain was in the news for what seemed an eternity, now as faded as last year’s swim trunks, as Newt rises in the polls. Herman was not prominent because he invented a machine to provide unlimited energy for nothing.  Not because he discovered life on Mars. It’s not because he cured Peyton Manning’s neck or solved the problem of world hunger. It’s because he is alleged to have had problems with women, and to have had a 13-year affair with another lady, including giving her money and texting her repeatedly.  He has suspended his campaign, though he insists he will make an endorsement.  The world waits with baited breath....

Whither?

1196) Winning Isn't Everything/Essay/Len Holman  So after eight years and nine months, lots of death, blood and destruction, tons of money spent and the shredding of American basic freedoms, the war in Iraq has officially been declared over. We’re leaving town and the Iraqis are free and the seeds of democracy have been sown and stability reigns, even if electricity is still iffy, and the government is at war with itself, and garbage is beginning to hide Baghdad.  We say it’s over and therefore it’s over.  Which raises an interesting point: we’re gone (mostly), but did we win?....

It isn't?

1197) Rock Prophecies/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Relaxing at night, after a hard day at work and a few hours online, tending to emails, website modifications, correspondence, and creative things, amongst the best things to do, if too tired to read a book, is to watch a film. But, not a fictive film, but a documentary where, even if the film is not so good, you can at least learn some facts about the world at large. John Chester’s 2009 documentary, Rock Prophecies, is just a such a film, as it follows the life and sudden fortune that befalls freelance rock photographer Robert M. Knight. After 40 years chronicling the biggest names in the business, from ‘championing’ Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones to Jimi Hendrix and Guns-N-Roses....

Solid.

1198) Muhammad Ali/3 Films/Dan Schneider  Growing up in the 1970s, the specter of heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali- whom I could never stand, was everywhere and, contrary to opinions voiced about him post-Parkinson’s Disease, he was the most despised athlete, worldwide, of that era. The most beloved was actually soccer superstar Pele. Nonetheles, in that era, and since, a raft of mediocre documentaries cum hagiographies have been made of the man, yet none have really gotten to that rotten core. Here are three of them that I watched in consecutive order: Muhammad Ali: The Greatest, Muhammad Ali: Made In Miami, and AKA Cassius Clay....

Ugh.

1199) No Breathing Today/Essay/Len Holman  The National Transportation Safety Board has called for a nationwide ban on mobile phone use in cars, including hands-free use.  They claim that cell phones cause drivers to be more distracted than they would be if they were talking to a live passenger.  Of course, this has set off the American public, which can’t be bothered with domestic policy decisions or global warming or Iraq’s pending implosion, or Israel’s loss of its original identity and its resulting increasing bellicosity towards Iran.  No, we are concerned with four main things:  autos, sex, guns, and electronic toys, all of which can be indulged in within the confines of our cars....

Or tomorrow!

1200) The Emperor Jones/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Eugene O’Neill’s play, The Emperor Jones, is one of those works that is very easy to misconstrue as simply racist or simple-minded Freudianism. It’s neither, but the 1933 film adaptation of said play, starring Paul Robeson in the role of Brutus Jones, suffers from many of the same misconceptions, as well as a few of its own, due to the breaks the film makes from its source material- both pro and con. And these breaks owe all of their power to the screenplay by DuBose Heyward....

Good.

1201) Polls, Not Thought/Essay/Len Holman  In 2011, a year whose passing is lamented only by disaster buffs and fans of worldwide chaos, the Pew Research Center found that 62% of those polled said they wouldn’t mind if a Presidential candidate were gay, and 68% wouldn’t mind if he or she were Mormon, but 61% said they’d find it hard to vote for an atheist.  Let’s unpack these numbers....

Duh?

1202) Sandhills Boy/Book Review/Dan Schneider  On a recent trip to San Angelo, Texas, my wife and I were introduced to the name and persona of Western writer and Texas journalist Elmer Kelton. Well, introduced is a mite too passive a term, for in San Angelo- Kelton’s adopted hometown, one simply cannot avoid the man- his image is on billboards andsides of buildings, and his books take up whole shelves at local bookstores where the man, dead a few years, was a local legend and cottage industry. In one such store, the Cactus Book Shop, after talk and inquiries by me to the establishment’s owner, I decided to take the plunge....

Good.

1203) Hunger/Film Review/Dan Schneider  British film director Steve McQueen’s 2008 debut film, Hunger, is notable for many reasons: it is a great film, a great debut film, uses an innovative narrative structure, uses interesting cinematography in concert with its soundtrack, makes the best use of ambient sound to have the best non-musical soundtrack I’ve heard in a long time- if not ever, is the work of a black artist that is not obsessed with black only topics, and shows a maturity and grace that goes beyond even the first films of directors....

Great.

1204) Shame/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Yes. Let that word simmer for a moment. It is the answer to a question I have long asked, in relation to the relentless puerilization of American cinema over the last 3 decades. The question was: will there be a next great adult filmmaker (in the John Cassavetes, not porno, mold) to come along? Well, he’s here, and his name is Steve McQueen, and I suspect that once his film career is at an end no one will be confusing him with the dead white American male film star of the 1960s and 1970s, for this black British director is now 2 for 2 in releasing great art to the masses....

Great.

1205) Cutting The Fat/Essay/Len Holman  OK, I give.  I have seen the light. We need to tighten our belts, stay within our means, leave the rich people alone to create jobs (they’ll be starting that any moment now), and NEVER, ever tax anyone at anytime—except for the ones who can’t contribute large amounts to a party or a candidate.  This all reminds me of any zombie movie you’d care to name.  Zombies eat human flesh.  They growl and stumble all over and are difficult to stop, but—I always wonder—what happens when they eat their last live human....

Rip.

1206) Hiroshima Mon Amour/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Alain Resnais’s 1959 black and white film Hiroshima Mon Amour is the third film of his that I’ve seen, after 1955’s mediocre documentary, Night And Fog, and 1961’s great and brilliant Last Year In Marienbad, and, unsurprisingly, the film lands somewhere in the middle, qualitatively. That said, it’s much closer to the later film, for only the somewhat melodramatic portrayal of its lead female character keeps it from reaching Last Year In Marienbad’s heights. And, in many ways, Hiroshima Mon Amour reaches dramatic and creative heights the later film cannot....

Excellent.

1207) The Green And The Gray/Essay/Len Holman  The noble United States Marine Corps has a very red face.  There is that video which shows four Marines urinating on three insurgent corpses.  There is outrage and horror and consternation among those who are in the “winning hearts and minds” business—especially with talks with the Taliban imminent, as well as those charged with taking a fat kid from the city, this kid through boot camp, and turning him or her into one of the finest fighters in the U.S. military.  This video certainly shows us as Ugly Americans, but its core feature is the reality check the Marines have, up ‘til now, been mostly free from facing: the gray miasma which is our culture....

The Few?

1208) And So It Goes/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  I admit I have a love/hate relationships with writer biographies, for while I believe the creative work should stand on its own and that an artist’s personal issues should be no concern, I can understand why some might wish to know about the individual behind the creative process. Too often, however, readers rely on the biography as a means of interpreting the work (I saw it most in the case of Sylvia Plath where many teens and early twenty-somethings who frequent poetry blogs are incapable of understanding her poetry without knowing the details behind her suicide). ....

Ok.

1209) Iran's Nukes/Essay/Len Holman  Passions run high when it comes to consideration of Iran and the probability of its obtaining nuclear weapons.  Reason runs low, as indicated by the latest incident concerning this issue, which has a Jewish newspaper owner in very hot water.  The owner of the Atlanta Jewish Times wrote a column suggesting that Israel, in defense of an existential threat from Iran, assassinate President Obama, presumably because he hasn’t ordered our military to turn Iran into a glowing spot visible from Mars. Yet.  There have been five (so far) assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists in the last few years, for which no one has claimed credit, and the Stuxnet virus which attacked the system which controlled Iran’s centrifuges....

Dilemma.

1210) Extraordinary Minds/Howard Gardner/Dan Schneider  In reviewing the five part television series, Extraordinary Minds, from 2010, a series of 52 minute long interviews conducted by Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist, let me return to an earlier point in time. Some years ago, in the mid to late 1990s, I happened across a book by Gardner, who had pioneered the idea that there are multiple intelligences- seven he initially defined, then expanded to eight, beyond that measured on standard IQ tests. This theory, propounded in 1993’s Multiple Intelligences, was embroidered upon in the book I read, titled Extraordinary Minds, published in 1998, which detailed the workings of four historical figures....

So-so.

1211) Our Official Language/Essay/Len Holman  Conservatives and liberals have certain slogans they love to trot out which they misrepresent as actual thoughts, having real content.  They can do this because few voters or constituents bother to examine these slogans to see if they make any sense at all.  These bumper-sticker thoughts work, so they get used a lot, with a few words changed here and there, depending on the context.  Conservatives, it appears to me, are winning the slogan contest, with that “take back America” howl and “values voters” label.  One of my favorites is the one, variously stated, about making English the “official” language of America....

Really?

1212) I Am Better Than Your Kids/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  I recall this plate I made for my mom when I was in the third grade. It was for Valentine’s Day, or maybe Mother’s Day. I don’t remember which. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I drew a house with trees along side it, and flowers that stretched over the roof. Big hearts floated in the air, the butterflies had multi-colored wings, and were larger than the front door. There is a small date in the bottom corner—I believe from the year 1984. My mom still keeps this plate in her pantry, and every time I visit, I see it there. She keeps it near, but not on display....

Solid.

1213) Voter's Dilemma/Essay/Len Holman  The passions running so high during this election cycle are not touching me.  I am not as invested in whether Newt or Mitt (just first names? Are they supermodels?) or whoever, gets the Republican nomination, as I was in the Super Bowl.  If I see another morning show from a noisy diner on CNN, I’m going to puke.  If I hear another candidate say he’s THE ONE (social conservative, fiscal conservative, defender of the faith, believer in American values, and all-around God-Approved candidate), I’ll scream.  It’s not that the Republican catfight for nominee isn’t entertaining, but so is watching one of those videos on Youtube where some guy on a skateboard tries to jump a Trailways bus and crashes....

Yawn, deux?

1214) Esther's Inheritance/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Esther's Inheritance is now the fifth Sandor Marai novel I have read, and this also happens to be the total number of novels (as of this writing) that has been translated into English. All I can say is that I hope the translations continue, as I don’t think there’s much this man cannot do within his literary realm. Marai is one of those writers that focuses on the intricacies of human relationships—assessing and dissecting motives, presenting flaws and arguing for them, then arguing against them, and leaving some conclusions answered and others open. His writing is muscular and poetic, lean and intricate. His men are often too proud and his women too willing, yet the relationships are complex and the tension is taut....

Excellent.

1215) The Mental Defective League/Book Review/Dan Schneider  One of the more rewarding things about running a popular arts website is having tons of people begging for you to review their books, films, poems, etc. Naturally, with time being precious, a single critic could never review everything, especially if he, like me, is a creative artist, as well. But, even if one could, the overwhelm of bad art is so great that the need to properly rip the bad art would be a Sisyphan task. But, every so often, interesting and good work is offered to you. In the past, such books have included The Iconoclast Goes To Sea, by Jack DeBar Smith, My Remembers, by Eddie Stimpson, Jr., and Stealing The Borders, by Elliott Rais. Each and every one of those books- all memoirs, are works of art that are significantly better and more memorable than anything penned by T.C. Boyle, Joyce Carol Oates, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, or James Frey, or any MFA writing mill graduate or reject....

Good.

1216) Cincinnatus, Call Home/Essay/Len Holman  Could it be possible that a person is called to the service of his country, saves it from extinction, then—instead of going on to fame, glory and a fat book deal, goes back home to the farm to slop the pigs?  Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (520 BCE—430 BCE) did exactly that.  Called on to attack and destroy Rome’s enemies, he succeeded and went back to his farm each time.  Of course, George Washington was compared to Cincinnatus for his selfless giving up of power to go back to Mt. Vernon, when he could have been President for as long as he wanted.  These men are held up as examples of public servants, serving the Roman Republic and the nascent American republic, respectively....

Like, yesterday!

1217) Color Me Kubrick/Film Review/Dan Schneider  I watched my first pure Netflix fiction film, as opposed to documentary, and it was not good. I was going to watch In The Mood For Love, by Wong Kar-wai, but the picture could not include all of the subtitles at the bottom. The same was true with Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion, but that, too, had issues with the framing out of subtitles. Reported both problems, so that dampened the mood for foreign films. Then I came across a 2006 comedy and drama called Color Me Kubrick: A True...ish Story....

Ok.

1218) The God Problem/Book Review/Dan Schneider  In any given month, because of my having a popular arts website, I am literally offered hundreds of published books, videos, and other things to review, aside from thousands of submissions of poems and essays to look through. Because I work a physically demanding 40+ hour day job, run a website, and have my own creative and critical work to pursue, the fact of the matter is that I actually review well less than 1% of all the items offered to me, just as I cannot possibly comment on all of the bad written work submitted to me, even if I were able to make a full time living from Cosmoetica. But, when I encounter something of quality or promise, I am far more apt to look at and/or review subsequent works by that person....

Excellent.

1219) Remembering Privacy/Essay/Len Holman  The stories are chilling, even if you were channeling George Orwell:  Social networks and phone applications are capturing personal information of the users and ….and, well they are storing it.  After they store it, advertisers will be getting that information…and who knows what others—say, Homeland Security.  The government has been data-mining all our phone calls and electronic traffic for years and the activity has picked up under Obama.  When the head of HS testified before Congress, he said that his agency only looks for “emergency situations” and the like.  Apple is shocked, shocked ,to discover that its app, Path, stores addresses, and Facebook is also horrified and will get right on this inadvertent difficulty, making it clearer to its customers that the information posted there is fair game for anyone and everyone....

Recall?

1220) Please Make It Stop/Essay/Len Holman  After what seems like 700 so-called debates, endless spinning, changing, and lying about everyone’s positions on everything, breathless commentary by putative journalists, rehashing of a mountain of statistics displayed on those keen graphic boards all the news shows have, and interviews with candidates who never answer the questions asked, but rather give mini-campaign speeches, we’re not even close to the end of it all.  And why not?  Because it’s the “democratic process,” the “American way” and that’s the way we like it—except a lot of us don’t.  It would be both refreshing and informative if we changed our system to make our choices easier and more meaningful....

With a cherry on top?

1221) War Of Shame/Essay/SuZi  Shameful, bloody, American history is a sweep of hegemony, of group-held prejudices that in old-school definitions would qualify as a form of fascism. Yet, the cultural consensus is one of a polemic, of a welcoming of multi-culturalism—and indeed, syncreticisms abound: just witness the food enfranchisement of edibles that were previously the realm of Italian, Cuban, Mexican folk cuisine that are available at every interstate highway exit....

History redacted.

1222) 3 Biographical Documentaries/Dan Schneider  I recently watched three biographical documentaries. Two of them were vanity documentaries on men of little accomplishment and artistic skill, while the other one was a near-great political documentary on one of the most important American heroes of the last fifty years. The three films were, in order of viewing, Bill Cunningham: New York; The Most Dangerous Man In America, and The Cats Of Mirikitani....

Hit and miss.

1223) On The Beach/Essay/Len Holman  I live in the high desert, and just below us, relatively speaking—about 30 or so miles—is the San Andreas fault.  When the Big One hits, I tell everyone, my property value will skyrocket because when California splits off from the rest of the U.S., the Pacific Ocean will come rushing in, and I will have valuable beachfront property, just like the “A” list folk in Malibu.  But now, if things go as well as they have so far, I won’t have to wait for an 8.3....

Not the film.

1224) 4 Queer Documentaries/Film Reviews/Dan Schneider  I recently watched four documentaries on Netflix on the subject of homosexuality in America, and, as some may not expect, it was a mixed bag; not only qualitatively, but in the approach to the subject matter within. I state that some may not expect this because humans often lump each other into these vast categories from which escape is impossible: all Jews are-  , all blacks must be-  , all queers-  , and so on. The four documentaries in question were, in order of viewing: Chris & Don: A Love Story; Black White + Gray: A Portrait Of Sam Wagstaff And Robert Mapplethorpe; Before Stonewall: The Making Of A Gay And Lesbian Community, and For The Bible Tells Me So....

Mixed bag.

1225) Patton/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Director Franklin Schaffner’s 1970 film, Patton, is a film that falls just shy of overall greatness, unlike his previous film, Planet Of The Apes, even though both had excellent scripts, were unconventionally shot, had great acting performances, and were films that fundamentally altered their subgenres, biopics and science fiction. It is a film that, while it’s clearly not a great film, does not offer up an obvious reason. It starts off brilliantly, with Patton’s famous address to the film audience, and then, well, becomes, in many ways, a routine biopic....

Excellent.

1226) Money's Bad Reputation/Essay/Len Holman  These days, money has a bad rep among certain segments of the polity, including the people who run Rick Santorum’s campaign—who wish they had much more of it.  What with the Citizens United decision and Super Pacs and the wobbling economy and the Occupy movements and all the stories about the soaring pay CEOs are getting, you’d think money was the Devil’s own saliva—evil, corrupting, and just plain bad....

Nah, couldn't be.

1227) 3 Biopics/Film Reviews/Dan Schneider  Sometimes an evening can conduce one to a certain way of feeling, and one evening I felt like watching biographies. The three I chose were W.C. Fields: The Great Man, Charlie Chaplin: The Forgotten Years, And Right To Exit: The Mock Trial Of Jack Kevorkian. Two of the films on silent era film comedians, three on controversial figures, and two on figures who were punished by the United States legal system. Chaplin was all three....

Quite a trio!

1228) Jules And Jim/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Francois Truffaut’s films have never been particularly deep, and his black and white 1962 ‘masterpiece,’ Jules And Jim, is no exception to that claim. Obviously, the quotation marks around the term declare that, no, it’s not really a masterpiece, but in researching old criticism of the film it’s amazing how often this term was bandied about without any support for its claim. Having said that, and given the rather fallow and overrated ground that is the Truffaut soil....

Ok.

1229) Age, Wisdom And Failure/Essay/Len Holman  There is an old saying that you can do everything right and still get a bad outcome.  There is another old saying that age brings wisdom.  I’m old enough to know that the first is correct and the second is a hope which is often unfulfilled.  The same is true of nations, which start raw and idealistic and are bubbling with ideas and rising leaders and the sure, juvenile knowledge that this country, these founders—so pure of heart and divinely inspired—will save the world....

True.

1230) Pickpocket/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Watching Robert Bresson’s 1959 black and white film Pickpocket, after having seen his earlier Diary Of A Country Priest and later Mouchette and Au Hasard Balthazar, is to see a great artist in mid-flight to apex. Pickpocket is not a great film, for it suffers from some of the tics that worked against Diary Of A Country Priest (notably the habit of the character writing down what will happen in a journal, speaking it to the audience, then seeing the action play out visually), but it also presages some of the more visually fenestral moments of the two later films....

Good.

1231) Cravings, Karma, And A Seat In Parliament/Essay/Len Holman  This slight and delicate woman, under house arrest for 15 of the 21 years from 1989 until 2010, and who has won election to Myanmar’s parliament along with 43 others of her party is—according to my calculations either in deep trouble, or is refashioning Buddhism so that her next life will be all saffron and flowers....

Choose, bitches!

1232) Woody Allen/Documentary/Dan Schneider  I watched the recent PBS American Masters documentary on Woody Allen, Woody Allen: A Documentary, online, and it was surely a disappointment. It covered, in its three and a half hours, many of his films, his early life and break into show business, but it offered almost nothing of depth- oddly recapitulating the flaws of Barbara Kopple’s 1998 documentary on the same subject, Wild Man Blues. In a sense, the film gives the best representation of the critical cribbing that is killing most film criticism, by having vapid and flat out bad critics opine on subjects they do not understand....

Ok.

1233) Budget Woes Hurt Everyone/Essay/Len Holman  America’s cities are in disrepair.  Roads are crumbling, bridges cracking, police being laid off, and blocks and blocks of foreclosed homes stand empty and—in many cases—vandalized.  Schools across the country are scrambling to find money to pay for teachers and to fuel buses to carry students to and from class.  School lunch programs and aid to the elderly and disabled are being scaled way back, if not completely dismantled.  Colleges and universities are cutting classes and capping enrollment, and even the homeless are worried about the shortage of cardboard boxes....

True.

1234) The Dust Of Time/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  There is a phrase that I came up with to describe when critics, especially of film, write reviews or essays about a film they claim to have seen yet feel no obligation to show any fealty to the images and actions depicted onscreen, and it is called critical cribbing. The most recent example of it that has proliferated- at least in a work of a director worth arguing over, is in Theo Angelopoulos’s last completed film, before his accidental death, earlier this year, 2008’s Trilogy: The Dust Of Time (Η Σκόνη του Χρόνου), the second of a now never to be completed tercet of films on existence....

Good, but not great.

1235) Candidates, Fix Your Faces!/Essay/Len Holman  If a candidate for elected office wants to win an election, he or she should heed the old maxim, “the mind is a relevance-making machine.”  A political junkie of my acquaintance said—when Robert Bork was being ferociously grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee for a possible slot on the Supreme Court—“he looks like the Devil.”  This from an atheist.  In her mind, Bork’s countenance inspired disgust, mistrust and revulsion.  This is a psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia (parr-i-DOH-lee-uh), and it’s the same phenomenon which allows humans to see ships in clouds....

Ahum.

1236) Transgression In Motion/Essay/SuZi  Because we humans transverse the topography on our anterior limbs—like birds, but unlike birds, do not fly—our species has a peculiarity of motion dissimilar to our brethren species on this, our planet. This peculiarity of motion has created a hegemonic precept of human superiority as an excuse for brutality toward all other life forms, and a rapaciousness of consumption that has not been a benefit to planetary health. Our peculiarity of motion might have once held the potential of beneficence—our agile hands, shared with other primates and with the clever raccoon....

No pirouetting now.

1237) The Beatles/Led Zeppelin/Dan Schneider  Growing up, the rock heavens were dominated by four bands from Britain: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones. The Who, and Led Zeppelin. In fact, so dominant were this quartet on rock stations of the late 1960s and 1970s that the foursome was simply known as Beatles/Stones/Zeppelin/Who and the only real argument was as to how they ranked, relative to each other. The Stones were always trying to catch up to the Beatles, in terms of fame in the wake of the Beatles, but then Led Zeppelin came along and pretty much buried everyone else, becoming to the 1970s what the Beatles were to the prior decade. In my pantheon, I always found the Beatles wildly overrated, especially at the expense of bands their equal or superiors, such as the Zombies, the Yardbirds, Cream, and even the Hollies....

Not as good as could be.

1238) Terms Not So Endearing/Essay/Len Holman  The general election for President of the United States is on.  Sure, there is the anointing thing (the conventions), but that is a mere formality. And the speculating is getting very noisy, centering on Mitt Romney and his ability, or lack of it, to “pivot.”  This pivoting means, apparently, two main things:  he must switch over somehow from a “primary mode” to a “general election” mode.  And he must begin, in earnest....

Not so nice, either.

1239) Gomorrah/Film Review/Dan Schneider  There is a difference between realistic films, such as those made by John Cassavetes, and cinema verité, or films that try to approximate realism. Realistic films know they are fiction, but nonetheless mimic reality for the sake of art, whereas cinema verité attempts to fool viewers into thinking it is real. Matteo Garrone’s 2008, 137 minute long gangster film, Gomorrah (Gomorra), is the latter sort of film, and in its attempt at fooling the viewer lays bare its artifice, as well as its essential failure, insofar as making any claims on greatness. This is not to say it is a bad film, just not a great one. It is a good film, with interesting moments....

Solid.

1240) A Face In The Crowd/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Elia Kazan’s 1975 black and white film A Face In The Crowd is neither the lost masterpiece its champions claim, nor is it the film worthy of totally being forgotten that it was for many decades. It’s a good, but manifestly flawed film, starting with the too over the top performance by Andy Griffith, in his film debut as Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes, a homespun philosopher ala Will Rogers, who rises from drunken jailbird to national kingmaker in a tale that weaves together strands....

Good.

1241) West Of Brooklyn/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  There are many ways to learn the art of constructing a compelling narrative: one can read classic novels and plays, one can watch great films and television shows, one can read ancient Greek dramas or watch professional wrestling, and one can even watch serial fiction: from old time movie serials to modern soap operas. I have done all of these things, and the last thing on this list is how I found out about the 97 minute long film, West Of Brooklyn, written, produced, and starring Ronnie Marmo....

Good little film.

1242) Austerity Blues/Essay/Len Holman  Austerity is that policy which allows the Haves to continue their evil ways, while the Have-nots continue to board up their shops and demand their last few coins from the banks.  Austerity is what a solvent nation tells an insolvent one to do to get a handout and keep the majority of rioters off the streets.  Austerity is what Germany has told Greece to implement, and this matches nicely with what the Ryan Budget in the U.S. wants our nation to do.  It all sounds good, but there is that—as always—hint of moral condescension in the demand....

Cut.

1243) Humanus Diabolicus/Book Review/SuZi  Tales of apocalypse are archetypes in which our culture is pretty well soaked—especially for those educated in both literature and cinema; however, the apocalypse as a comedy has mostly been the domain of stand-up performers. The authorial intention is always didactic: in comedy, it is to  persuade to the cynical, absurdist point of view via the release of laughter; in James Houk’s novel  Humanus Diabolicus, the didactic intent seems to be to persuade to a socio-political point of view that Houk repeats so many....

Solid.

1244) The Terror Of Tiny Town/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The Terror Of Tiny Town is a 1938 dwarf B film (black and white) that is often spoken of in the same terms as two other films with dwarves in them- Tod Browning’s 1931 film, Freaks, and Werner Herzog’s 1970 film Even Dwarfs Started Small, because it is, at its heart, an exploitation film- a typical 1930s B film Western, except that it boasts a cast of midgets (well, a few midgets, technically, and mostly dwarves- I shall differentiate the two different types of little people by appending an m or d after their names). However, the film is far more lighthearted than Browning’s film (although both films open with a de facto introduction- a commonality for many classic cult films....

Ok.

1245) 3 Vanity Documentaries/Film Review/Dan Schneider  It used to be that film documentaries were in the purview of professional film directors, editors, and producers, and that certain standards of artistic integrity and journalistic objectivity were observed. However, in this age of Netflix and instant streaming video, there has been the rise of the far too often noxious vanity documentary film, wherein the filmmaker essays a subject near and dear to them, with little import to anyone outside of whom they know, and try to propound that is artistically or culturally significant. On a recent morning I watched three such highly lauded films: Her Name Is Sabine, Exit Through The Gift Shop, and Buck....

Not so good.

1246) Little Caesar/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Little Caesar is a good example of a film that is historically important but which has dated very poorly. The camera work, by cinematographer Tony Gaudio, is mediocre, the spare soundtrack, by Erno Rapee, is garbled, and the acting very wooden. Even Edward G. Robinson, who became a star in this role, is merely ok. What makes this all the more amazing is that, just a few months later, in 1931, Jimmy Cagney would burst on to the screen with The Public Enemy, a film that holds up cinematically- technically and aesthetically- far better. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy....

So-so.

1247) The War Of The Worlds/CD Review/Dan Schneider  While perusing through the DVD racks at a local Half Price Books I came across a package with two DVDs and a bonus CD, called An Adaptation Of H.G. Wells’ Classic The War Of The Worlds. Thinking it was a version of the classic sci fi film from the 1950s, I bought it at its cheap price. But it was not the old film. Rather it was from a company called Madacy Home Video, and consisted of  some faux newscasts, some documentaries, and a CD of the original 1938 broadcasts of the Mercury Theatre’s radio broadcast of The War Of The Worlds. This was the infamous broadcast that made a national name of Orson Welles. It’s actually a high quality rendition, and easily the best part of this package....

Mostly shit.

1248) The Spirit Of The Beehive/Film Review/Dan Schneider  Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice is not that his debut feature film, 1973’s The Spirit Of The Beehive (El Espíritu De La Colmena) is a great piece of cinema- far better than anything by Luis Bunuel, but that it is only one of three feature films he has made in his career, and only one of two fiction films, thus giving him the honor of being the lone major filmmaker who is in a position to call American film titan Terence Malick ‘prolific.’ That stated....

Great.

1249) Lilyhammer/TV Review/Dan Schneider  Northern Exposure meets The Sopranos! This sentence was uttered at some time during the pitch for Netflix’s first foray into original television programming, and the result is a pretty good first season of a Mafia comedy (not dramady) called Lilyhammer. The premise is that a New York City Mob Underboss finds himself aced out of a top slot by a rival, and takes it on the lam to the Feds, after his rival tries and fails to whack him. In return for testifying, Frank ‘The Fixer’ Tagliano (Steven Van Zandt- of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band infamy and The Sopranos) requests that his Federal Witness Protection....

Better than expected.

1250) Kuroneko/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Japanese film director Kaneto Shindo’s 1968 black and white horror film, Kuroneko (Yabu No Naka No Kuroneko or The Black Cat From The Groves), is a film both in step with its era- especially with the horror films coming out of Italy, and those from England’s Hammer studios, yet it is also a much deeper and cinematic film. It got worldwide acclaim, upon its release, but didn’t get good stateside distribution due to the cancellation of the 1968 Cannes Film Festival where it was considered one of the strongest entries....

Solid.