MAY 13, 2025
The Wrong Stuff: From Claustrophobia to the Cosmos Director Damien Chazelle has had a meteoric rise in the Hollywood firmament. His 2014 hit Whiplash had a $3.3 million production budget and earned more than $13 million at the box office, while 2016’s La La Land cost $30 million. Presumably because that musical scored five times its costs, Chazelle’s latest movie, First Man, almost doubled La La Land’s budget. I usually don’t dwell on film Continue Reading...
In the final analysis, it was painfully simple and should have been obvious to any clear-eyed observer, which my preternaturally hopeful self was not: The forces that were able to lie the most, be the most deceitful and the most underhanded would control the confirmation "process" to determine whether Brett Kavanaugh would slither into a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. And so they did and so he has despite an extraordinary outpouring Continue Reading...
Clift Notes: The Full-er Monty Making Montgomery Clift - the four time Oscar nominee for classics such as 1953’s From Here to Eternity - is one of the most singular nonfiction films this movie historian has ever seen. Like many others it is a biopic, but one with a unique take on its reputedly “troubled” subject, who was as renowned for his beauty as for his prodigious talent. Co-directed/co-produced by the actor’s nephew Robert Clift with his Continue Reading...
The New York Times reports that deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein talked about wearing a wire to record Trump’s insane prattering, and spoke ofinvoking the 25th amendment, which allows the cabinet to remove the president if he is incapacitated. Rosenstein’s office says that the remarks were facetious. They were recorded in memos by former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, that somehow came into the possession of NYT reporters. Trump has Continue Reading...
Yesterday, at his press briefing on Hurricane Florence, which is likely to fuck up South Carolina, along with possibly North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and/or Maryland, Donald Trump, a man whose every word and hand gesture makes him seem like a carny barker trying to get people to see the "mermaid" that's just a dead monkey with a fish tail sewn on, shit all over Puerto Rico. Devastation from Hurricane Maria last year was exacerbated, according Continue Reading...
The Washington Post yesterday carried excerpts from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, “Fear,” which profiles the Trump White House from hundreds of hours of interviews with staffers. Trump declined to be interviewed. Here are some of the main points regarding foreign policy (though the word ‘policy’ has to be taken with a grain of salt). 1. When Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad was accused of using chemicals in an attack that killed Continue Reading...
Let's be very clear why Donald Trump will not be attending the memorial service for John MccCain at the Washington National Cathredral on Saturday. He probably will be playing golf and that, of course, has much to do with the refusal of the man Barrack Obama called "the lion of the Senate" to kiss his ring. But the biggest reason writ plain and simple is that Trump has failed to accept the responsibilities of the presidency and has become Continue Reading...
According to the just-released grand jury report, in 1990, Bishop James Timlin of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was first made aware that a priest who had recently been transferred to his Diocese, Father Arthur Long, had admitted to having sex with underage girls in his parish in Harrisburg. Timlin was the bishop in the Scranton Diocese, which encompasses the entire northeast section of Pennsylvania, from 1984 to 2003. Prior to being the bishop, Continue Reading...
Dystopian Racial Apocalypse Tomorrow: May the Purge Be With You Move over George Orwell and Aldous Huxley! Although it depicts a not-so-brave-world and is set in the near future instead of 1984, The First Purge is in the tradition of these dystopian tales about futuristic fascistic states. This is the fourth installment in the popular film franchise about an anti-Utopia America ruled by a quasi-totalitarian government run by a third party Continue Reading...
On 8 May 2018, US President Donald Trump, true to his style and ‘America First’ philosophy, walked out of the Iran nuclear deal, technically known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). A fortnight has elapsed and it would be pertinent to examine the geopolitical implications of Trump’s decision. The US’ Position By now it is reasonably clear why Trump withdrew from the deal. He has failed to provide any rational argument against Continue Reading...
Eco-Messages Abound in this Wild Kingdom Summer has arrived and that means only one thing here in Hollywood: Bring out the blockbusters! Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the fifth in the film franchise featuring frenetically genetically-engineered dinosaurs in modern times who run amok, wreaking havoc that began with Steven Spielberg’s 1993 screen adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park novel, with Crichton’s screenplay. The Continue Reading...
Trump allegedly complained to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that after the 2015 nuclear deal, the Iranians “think they can do anything they want.” Presumably Trump was referring to Iran’s geopolitical reach in the Middle East, where it had gathered up allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It is likely that Trump’s violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal signed between Iran and the five permanent Continue Reading...
Here are a couple of facts to make your head explode. A mere 15 bills that are not ceremonial in nature or rescind existing laws have passed Congress since Donald Trump became president. This includes a bill sent to the president this week that rescinds a law forbidding discrimination in car loans. (I am not making this up.) Meanwhile, the august House Rules Committee has sent a record-shattering 84 bills to the House floor this year under Continue Reading...
Please, motherfuckers. Fucking, fucking please stop acting like anything other than confirmation is going to happen with Gina Haspel. When Barack Obama nominated John Brennan to be the director of the CIA, the vote to confirm him in March 2013 was 63-34-3. Brennan had been the third-ranked CIA official during the time of the torture used on supposed al-Qaeda detainees in the few years after 9/11, many of them completely innocent (although it Continue Reading...
The news last week that the president of the United States lied repeatedly about the $130,000 hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels was greeted less with outrage than a practiced yawn, and with every passing lie -- which come at the rate of four or five a day and a mind-boggling 3,000-plus since Donald Trump took office -- that attitude becomes increasingly dangerous. This is because the pandemic of lies is so blatant and so vast that we risk Continue Reading...
It was the pictures of Palestinians swimming and sunning at a Gaza beach that rubbed Yehuda Shlezinger, an Israeli journalist, the wrong way. Stylish in round red glasses and a faint scruff of beard, Mr. Shlezinger unloaded his revulsion at the “disturbing” pictures while appearing on Israel’s Channel 12. “These people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death, and instead we see them enjoying on the beach and having fun,” complained Mr. Shlezinger, the religious affairs correspondent for the widely circulated right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper. “We should have seen a lot more revenge there,” Mr. Shlezinger unrepentantly added. “A lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood.”
“A specter is haunting the world — the specter of American isolation.
Signs of a retrenchment start with Congress’ reluctance to authorize additional military assistance for Ukraine to defend it from a revanchist Russia. An aid bill finally made it to Biden’s desk for a signature this week, but it took the GOP-led House months to pass their version of the legislation, with many Republican leaders claiming the U.S. should focus instead on problems closer to home — a sentiment widely shared on the right.”
“LAST NOVEMBER, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) awarded Donald Trump its highest honor, the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion. Nine days later, the former president dined with two of America’s most prominent antisemites, rapper Kanye West and white nationalist provocateur Nick Fuentes. Noting the proximity of the two events, The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner asked ZOA president Morton Klein an uncomfortable question: Could Trump be among those “people who, for whatever reason, have sympathies with Israel but don’t like Jews?” Klein dismissed the proposition.”
“It’s an Oscar tradition: a serious political speech pierces the bubble of glamour and self-congratulation. Warring responses ensue. Some proclaim the speech an example of artists at their culture-shifting best; others an egotistical usurpation of an otherwise celebratory night. Then everyone moves on. Yet I suspect that the impact of Jonathan Glazer’s time-stopping speech at last Sunday’s Academy Awards will be significantly more lasting, with its meaning and import analyzed for many years to come . . . “
“My father was something of a lapsed Jew. An ardent atheist, he thought all religion, including Judaism, was a dangerous anachronism. He couldn’t speak a lick of Yiddish, unlike his Russian-born father, and disliked most Kosher food. Borscht Belt humor was lost on him . . . “
At a critical moment in the 2016 presidential campaign, President Obama met with Republican congressional leaders and, after presenting them with evidence of Russian tampering, asked that they uniformly condemn it. GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others refused. The evidence just wasn’t there. But it was. And many of the same lawmakers eagerly condemned Hillary Clinton’s perceived misdeed, as reported by the FBI. So much for love of country.
