And on Twitter.
Monday, February 25, 2019
'Green Book' is So Not the Best Picture
This is a devastating take-down, man.
From Justin Chang, at the Los Angeles Times, "Oscars 2019: ‘Green Book’ is the worst best picture winner since ‘Crash’":
I didn't see it, and I don't know if I'm interested at all now, after reading this evisceration.
Frankly, 2018 wasn't the best year for cinema:
From Justin Chang, at the Los Angeles Times, "Oscars 2019: ‘Green Book’ is the worst best picture winner since ‘Crash’":
GREEN BOOK is the worst best picture Oscar winner in more than a decade. https://t.co/JpS2zTp2EJ— Justin Chang (@JustinCChang) February 25, 2019
“Green Book” is the worst best picture Oscar winner since “Crash,” and I don’t make the comparison lightly.More.
Like that 2005 movie, Peter Farrelly’s interracial buddy dramedy is insultingly glib and hucksterish, a self-satisfied crock masquerading as an olive branch. It reduces the long, barbaric and ongoing history of American racism to a problem, a formula, a dramatic equation that can be balanced and solved. “Green Book” is an embarrassment; the film industry’s unquestioning embrace of it is another.
The differences between the two movies are as telling as the similarities. “Crash,” a modern-day screamfest that racked up cross-cultural tensions by the minute, meant to leave you angry and wrung-out. Its Oscar triumph was a genuine shocker; it clearly had its fans, but for many its inferiority was self-evident.
“Green Book,” a slick crowd-pleaser set in the Deep South in 1962, strains to put you in a good mood. Its victory is appalling but far from shocking: From the moment it won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, the first of several key precursors it would pick up en route to Sunday’s Oscars ceremony, the movie was clearly a much more palatable brand of godawful.
In telling the story of the brilliant, erudite jazz pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), who is chauffeured on his Southern concert tour by a rough-edged Italian-American bouncer named Tony “Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), “Green Book” serves up bald-faced clichés and stereotypes with a drollery that almost qualifies as disarming.
Mortensen and Ali, who won the Oscar for best supporting actor, are superb performers with smooth timing and undeniable chemistry. The movie wades into the muck and mire of white supremacy, cracks a few wince-worthy jokes, gasps in horror at a black man’s abuse and humiliation (all while maintaining a safe, tasteful distance from it), then digs up a nugget of uplift to send you home with, a little token of virtue to go with that smile on your face.
There is something about the anger and defensiveness provoked by this particular picture that makes reasonable disagreement unusually difficult.
I can tell I’ve already annoyed some of you, though if you take more offense at what I’ve written than you do at “Green Book,” there may not be much more to say. Differences in taste are nothing new, but there is something about the anger and defensiveness provoked by this particular picture that makes reasonable disagreement unusually difficult. Maybe “Green Book” really is the movie of the year after all — not the best movie, but the one that best captures the polarization that arises whenever the conversation shifts toward matters of race, privilege and the all-important question of who gets to tell whose story.
I’ll concede this much to “Green Book’s” admirers: They understandably love this movie’s sturdy craft, its feel-good storytelling and its charmingly synched lead performances. They appreciate its ostensibly hard-hitting portrait of the segregated South (as noted by U.S. Rep. John R. Lewis, who presented a montage to the film on Oscar night) and find its plea for mutual understanding both laudable and heartwarming. I know I speak for some of the movie’s detractors when I say I find that plea both dishonest and dispiritingly retrograde, a shopworn ideal of racial reconciliation propped up by a story that unfolds almost entirely from a white protagonist’s incurious perspective.
“Green Book” has been most often compared not to “Crash” but to an older, more genteel best picture winner, 1989’s “Driving Miss Daisy,” another movie that attempted to bridge the racial divide through the story of a driver and his employer in the American South. “Driving Miss Daisy” was adapted from Alfred Uhry’s play; “Green Book” was co-written by Nick Vallelonga (with Brian Currie and Farrelly), drawn from the stories he heard from his father, Tony. The truth of those stories has been called into question by many, including Shirley’s family, which wasn’t consulted during production and which dismissed the movie as “a symphony of lies.”
Historical accuracy is, of course, just one criterion by which to judge a narrative drawn from real events, and a movie could theoretically play fast and loose with the facts and still arrive at a place of compelling emotional truth. Distortions and omissions can be interesting in what they reveal about a filmmaker’s intentions, and “Green Book,” whether you like it or not, does not have a particularly high regard for your intelligence. In its one-sided presentation and its presumptuous filtering of Shirley’s perspective through Vallelonga’s, the movie reeks of bad faith and cluelessly embodies the white-supremacist attitudes it’s ostensibly decrying.
That cluelessness has been well-documented. Earlier this season, Vanity Fair critic K. Austin Collins pointed out the gall of a white filmmaker blithely psychoanalyzing a black man’s alienation from his own blackness (especially when it takes the form of jokes about Aretha Franklin and fried chicken). Vulture’s Mark Harris aptly described “Green Book” as “a but also movie, a both sides movie” that draws a false equivalency between Vallelonga’s vulgar bigotry and Shirley’s emotional aloofness, forcing both characters — not just the racist white dude — to learn something about themselves and each other.
It’s a tactic, Harris noted, whose echoes can even be found in a terrific older movie (and best picture winner) like “In the Heat of the Night,” and it exists mainly to reassure any audience that might be uncomfortable with a black man gaining the moral high ground.
You would hope that in 2019 — even in a 1962-set movie — such strategic pandering would be a thing of the past. But in “Green Book,” we should be especially nauseated by how crudely the deck is stacked against Don Shirley from the get-go. A more honest, complex and tough-minded movie might have run the risk of actually becoming Shirley’s story, of letting the much more interesting of these two characters slip into the metaphorical driver’s seat. (The fact that Ali was pushed as a supporting actor to Mortensen’s lead campaign is telling in all the wrong ways.) But there isn’t a single scene that feels authentically like the character’s own, that speaks to Shirley’s experience and no one else’s.
His intelligence and elegant diction is continually Otherized. (Vallelonga’s intellectual inferiority is mocked as well, but the picture’s sympathies couldn’t be more clearly on his side.) The movie makes little attempt to parse or appreciate his musical gifts critically; Shirley’s artistic brilliance, much like his alcoholism or his homosexuality, is deemed interesting only insofar as it changes Vallelonga’s opinion of him...
I didn't see it, and I don't know if I'm interested at all now, after reading this evisceration.
Frankly, 2018 wasn't the best year for cinema:
I haven’t watched a single best picture nominated film in theaters, and I only watched #Roma because it was on #Netflix — and I’m usually a huge film fanatic. 🤷♂️ #Oscars #AcademyAwards
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 24, 2019
Look you guys, it's simple. It was one of the worst years for movies in history.
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 25, 2019
Kurt Schlichter, Militant Normals
*BUMPED.*
Here's Kurt Schlichter's new book, at Amazon, Militant Normals: How Regular Americans Are Rebelling Against the Elite to Reclaim Our Democracy.
Here's Kurt Schlichter's new book, at Amazon, Militant Normals: How Regular Americans Are Rebelling Against the Elite to Reclaim Our Democracy.
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Cherry Bomb
The Runaways, just a little while ago, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles:
Down Under
Men At Work
10:36pm
Highway Tune
Greta Van Fleet
10:33pm
Walk This Way
Run-D.M.C.
10:24pm
Surrender
Cheap Trick
10:20pm
Cherry Bomb
Runaways
10:18pm
Cherry Bomb
Weezer
10:14pm
Undone (The Sweater Song)
Weezer
10:14pm
Panama
Van Halen
10:10pm
I Melt With You
Modern English
10:06pm
Been Caught Stealing
Jane's Addiction
10:03pm
Life In The Fast Lane
Eagles
9:52pm
Snow Comes to SoCal
That Arctic freeze reached all the way down to sunny SoCal. Folks walked out to snowfall on the ground and didn't know what it was, lol.
At LAT, "Snow comes to L.A., with powder in Malibu, Pasadena, West Hollywood":
At LAT, "Snow comes to L.A., with powder in Malibu, Pasadena, West Hollywood":
OMG, the storm system moving through California is so cold that there could be a dusting of snow in the Santa Monica Mountains and the Hollywood Hills: https://t.co/yk5bblc9aa— Laura J. Nelson 🦅 (@laura_nelson) February 21, 2019
Xavier Bias walked out of the Whole Foods Market in Pasadena and saw another woman looking to the ground puzzled at the white stuff covering the sidewalk.More.
The woman wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking at. But Bias, who is originally from the East Coast, quickly set her straight.
It was snow.
“People didn’t know what it was,” Bias said. “I was like, no, this is snow.”
It was that kind of day in some parts of Southern California, where snow dropped at extremely low elevation levels, creating a winter wonderland for a short while. Snow fell in Malibu, Pasadena, West Hollywood, Northridge, San Bernardino, Thousand Oaks and other unexpected places.
Snow level hit the 1,000-foot mark, bringing tiny bits of the white stuff into neighborhoods that had not seen snow in decades. But the show was fleeting, lasting in most cases a few minutes before the sun melted anything that had hit the ground.
By Thursday evening, the storms were moving east, with officials saying the snow elevation level had dropped to 800 feet in Orange County. Snow plows were clearing Ortega Highway between Lake Elsinore and San Juan Capistrano.
An unusually chilly storm system that originated in Alberta, Canada, was lingering over Nevada and had already blanketed Las Vegas with snow early Thursday. Before daybreak, snow was falling in parts of the Southland, dusting Palmdale and the Lucerne Valley. By the early afternoon, it was snowing across Southern California and winter weather had forced the closure of the 5 Freeway through the Grapevine.
“This is probably the coldest storm system I’ve seen in my time in California,” said David Sweet, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “We’ve had cold mornings and freeze conditions, but I don’t remember seeing anything quite this cold.”
Forecasters predict that up to 6 inches of powder could fall in the eastern San Gabriel Mountains. Sweet said snow could fall in the Santa Monica Mountains and even some sections of the Hollywood Hills.
By around noon, the predictions were proving to be true.
“We’re seeing a little bit of everything out there,” said Eric Boldt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
After seeing the confusion on social media and as residents began calling in to the weather service, Boldt took it upon himself to clear things up.
“Correct, that is snow! Lots of confusion today,” he posted on the National Weather Service’s Twitter account.
He explained that if the precipitation bounces off the ground, then it contains ice, which would make it hail or sleet. If it floats, it’s snow. In many areas, residents reported seeing small slushy balls, which Boldt said is graupel, snowflakes slightly melted and bunched together...
The Air Force is Buying New F-15s
This is really cool.
At Popular Mechanics, "The U.S. Air Force Is Buying New F-15s After All: The F-15X will complement the F-22 and F-35 in tomorrow's aerial battlefields."
At Popular Mechanics, "The U.S. Air Force Is Buying New F-15s After All: The F-15X will complement the F-22 and F-35 in tomorrow's aerial battlefields."
The U.S. Air Force Is Buying New F-15s After All: The F-15X will complement the F-22 and F-35 in tomorrow's aerial battlefields: #USAirForce #Boeing 🇺🇸👍 https://t.co/JbS1Rhl3Dv
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 21, 2019
Perris Child-Torturing Parents Plead Guilty, Face Possible 25 Years-to-Life in Prison
Well, they certainly deserve it.
The parents from hell pleaded guilty, and they're going away for a long time.
At LAT, "Perris couple plead guilty to torturing their 13 children":
The parents from hell pleaded guilty, and they're going away for a long time.
At LAT, "Perris couple plead guilty to torturing their 13 children":
David and Louise Turpin, a couple accused of torturing, starving and keeping their 13 children captive in their Perris home, have pleaded guilty to 14 felony counts, including one count of torture. https://t.co/ACMb80XF2P
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) February 22, 2019
The Turpin siblings were tortured and abused by their parents for years in ways so extreme, prosecutors said, it appeared to have caused malnutrition, cognitive impairment and nerve damage in some of them.
Since being freed last year from a Perris home, the 13 siblings have had to rebuild their lives.
All that time, they have also had to contend with the prospect of a trial — of being called to testify and having to relive, in front of their parents and the public, the horrific treatment they suffered, said Jack Osborn, an attorney who represents the adult children.
“The issue of their parents’ trial has always been weighing heavy with them,” Osborn said.
So the siblings were relieved to learn earlier this month that their parents, David and Louise Turpin, had each agreed to plead guilty to 14 felony charges, ending the prospect of a trial, Osborn said.
The Turpins entered those pleas Friday during a short hearing in Riverside County Superior Court. They are expected to be sentenced in April to 25 years to life in prison, Riverside County Dist. Atty. Mike Hestrin said.
The charges include one count of torture, four of false imprisonment, six of cruelty to adult dependents and three of willful child cruelty.
Hestrin told the siblings, now ages 3 to 30, about the plea agreement during a meeting this month at his Riverside offices.
“It was a very good day for them to be all together,” Hestrin said, recalling the meeting during a news conference Friday.
The story of the abuse the Turpin children suffered made headlines around the world and left their neighbors struggling to understand how the cruelty could have gone unnoticed for so long.
Prosecutors have said the couple subjected their children to abuse and neglect for years, dating back to when the family lived in Texas in the 1990s and continuing after they moved to California several years ago.
It was brought to an end by the brave act of their then-17-year-old daughter who, early one morning in January 2018, summoned the courage to climb out a window and call 911 to ask for help.
The girl told a dispatcher that her little sisters were chained up, that they would wake up crying at night, and that they wanted her to “call somebody and tell them.”
When deputies entered the Turpin home on Muir Woods Road, they discovered a nightmarish scene, including two young girls who had been chained to their bed for weeks.
The chains were punishment for stealing candy, investigators were later told.
Twelve of the 13 siblings were so frail and malnourished that deputies at first assumed they were all minors; they later learned that seven were adults. The youngest child, a toddler, appeared to have been spared the lack of food, prosecutors said.
Deputies arrested the couple, and shortly after, Riverside County prosecutors filed dozens of charges against them related to allegations of abuse, captivity and torture of the children. Additional charges of child abuse were later filed against both parents, along with a charge of felony assault against Louise Turpin and a perjury count against David Turpin.
In June, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Bernard Schwartz ordered the couple to stand trial after finding sufficient evidence to support 49 of 50 charges.
The Turpins initially pleaded not guilty to all charges last year.
Prosecutors had been gathering evidence and preparing for trial, but after continued conversations with the defense, Hestrin said the Turpins opted for a plea agreement.
“This is among the worst, most aggravated child abuse cases that I have ever seen or been involved in in my career as a prosecutor,” he said.
Hestrin said he had hoped to spare the children any further trauma that might come with a trial...
'Nasty Woman' Amy Klobuchar is a Horrible Boss
I'm not sure what it is, but the New York Times let loose on Senator Klobachar. I mean, seriously, this is taking her down a few pegs, to say the least. She's seriously a "nasty woman," and an effing bitch, if this report is to be believed.
RTWT.
RTWT.
As Amy Klobuchar joins the 2020 U.S. presidential race, former aides say she was not just demanding but often dehumanizing, the steward of a work environment colored by volatility and distrust https://t.co/65VushRbKX
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 22, 2019
This reporting by @mattfleg and @melbournecoal is based on interviews with more than 2 dozen former Klobuchar staff members and internal emails https://t.co/65VushRbKX pic.twitter.com/uqty2kNLIo
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 22, 2019
This is part of our coverage examining the leadership, judgment and professional conduct of candidates. We recently wrote about the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign and complaints by female and black staffers, Joe Biden’s paid speeches and Kamala Harris’s actions as a prosecutor.
— Patrick Healy (@patrickhealynyt) February 22, 2019
Of the 6 senators running, Klobuchar has the highest turnover rate in staff. We reached out to aides from over the years to talk about her as a boss. This follows other reporting about her policy views on Medicare for all and her decision to run as a heartland candidate.
— Patrick Healy (@patrickhealynyt) February 22, 2019
— Patrick Healy (@patrickhealynyt) February 22, 2019
— Patrick Healy (@patrickhealynyt) February 22, 2019
— Patrick Healy (@patrickhealynyt) February 22, 2019
Friday, February 22, 2019
Michael Anton, After the Flight 93 Election
*BUMPED.*
At Amazon, Michael Anton, After the Flight 93 Election: The Vote that Saved America and What We Still Have to Lose.
At Amazon, Michael Anton, After the Flight 93 Election: The Vote that Saved America and What We Still Have to Lose.
Giada De Laurentiis Swimsuit Malfunction
Heh, her bathing suit couldn't contain her ample knockers, lol.
At Taxi Driver, "Giada De Laurentiis Nipple Pops Out of her Bathing Suit."
And at London's Daily Mail, "Giada De Laurentiis catches a little too much water and suffers embarrassing wardrobe malfunction in a revealing swimsuit on the beach in Miami."
At Taxi Driver, "Giada De Laurentiis Nipple Pops Out of her Bathing Suit."
And at London's Daily Mail, "Giada De Laurentiis catches a little too much water and suffers embarrassing wardrobe malfunction in a revealing swimsuit on the beach in Miami."
Whoops! https://t.co/mv8QpcakZW— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) February 22, 2019
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Kirsten Powers Apologizes
Boy, she's really gone off the deep end.
At USA Today, "I'm not proud of role I’ve played in toxic public debate. I plan to change."
Still more at the link.
At USA Today, "I'm not proud of role I’ve played in toxic public debate. I plan to change."
I'm not proud of role I’ve played in toxic public debate. I plan to change, says columnist @KirstenPowers. https://t.co/USJCKr9xql
— USA TODAY Opinion (@usatodayopinion) February 19, 2019
We need to have humility and realize that there but for the grace of God go I. It’s easy to delude yourself that you would never do whatever today’s designated bad person is accused of doing. But don’t be so sure. Given the wrong circumstances, people would be surprised at what they are capable of doing.She attacked Nicholas Sandmann, and when the fact exonerated him, she hedged and doubled down. I predicted she'd regret it, and I was right.
We also need to recognize what we are doing: It’s called scapegoating.
In the Bible, a scapegoat was an animal burdened with the sins of others through a ritual, then driven away. This is in effect what our society does when we designate certain people to bear our collective sins. Once it's discovered that a person behaved in a racist, homophobic or misogynist way — often in the distant past — she is banished from society, creating a sense that something has been accomplished. That somehow there has been atoning because someone was punished.
This creates two problems: First, the systemic problem still exists. Second, one person is not responsible for the sins of everyone. People should not be treated as disposable and banished in perpetuity with no path to restoration with society. Would you want that to happen to you?
It’s critical to remember that people simply are not the sum of their worst moments in life. Go back through your life and write down every terrible thing you have done or said, and now imagine a video of it is on the internet. Would you want that to be the record of your life? Don’t underestimate the power of denial. I frequently hear people who I knew to be homophobic 20 years ago express indignance over anyone who doesn’t support same-sex marriage today with no sense of self-awareness...
Still more at the link.
CNN Hires Smokin' Hottie Sarah Isgur
She's a hot chick. I can see why progressives went nuts: they're jealous.
The women's also a flaming hot MAGA conservative and former spokeswoman for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Who cares if she's got no formal "journalistic experience"? I mean, c'mon, no one's ever heard of George Stephanopoulos? *Eye roll.*
At the Daily Beast, with a nice photo of this luscious babe:
The women's also a flaming hot MAGA conservative and former spokeswoman for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Who cares if she's got no formal "journalistic experience"? I mean, c'mon, no one's ever heard of George Stephanopoulos? *Eye roll.*
At the Daily Beast, with a nice photo of this luscious babe:
CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network’s decision to hire GOP operative Sarah Isgur to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting: “It’s extremely demoralizing for everyone here" https://t.co/4fQSKc6IF2
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 19, 2019
Nicholas Sandmann's Family Sues Washington Post for $250 Million (VIDEO)
Robert Stacy McCain reports, "Can Nick Sandmann Win? Covington Student Sues the Washington Post."
Plus, here's Lin Wood on Twitter, and the total exoneration video posted below:
Plus, here's Lin Wood on Twitter, and the total exoneration video posted below:
In this country, our society is dedicated to protecting children regardless of the color of their skin, their religious beliefs, or the caps they wear. Washington Post did not care about protecting Nick Sandmann. The Post just cared about being the first & loudest media bully.
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) February 19, 2019
Washington Post recklessly ignored basic journalist standards because it was eager to advance its biased agenda against @realDonaldTrump by impugning individuals perceived to be his supporters. Nick Sandmann was perceived as an easy target. He is 16. Inexcusable on every level.
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) February 19, 2019
Nick Sandmann is 16-years of age, 5’9” in height and weighs 115 pounds. The school field trip to the Nation’s capital was the first out-of-state trip Nick had ever taken without being with his family. He did nothing to deserve being attacked, vilified & bullied. Nothing.
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) February 20, 2019
Sarah Smarsh, Heartland
*BUMPED.*
At Amazon, Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.
At Amazon, Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
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