I’m old enough, and have perhaps wasted far too much time on following the ebbs and flows of politics, to recall when Michael Steele was chair of the Republican Party. When he was in that capacity, he would come on TV and often make what to me were incredibly asinine comments in defense of the Republican Party.
To put it bluntly: He made my blood boil.
Now, I should have taken those comments that so inflamed me back then with the proverbial grain of salt. While chair of the RNC, it was his job to defend the Republican Party and therefore some of those crazy (again, IMHO) statements were probably made for the cameras but which he may well not have believed in.
Now that he’s no longer the chair of the RNC, he’s become one of my favorite pundits on TV. His comments/opinions have been, it would seem now, to come from a far more honest place. He’s willing to criticize both sides equally and, at least whenever I catch him, talks with a combination of wit, humor, and refreshing bluntness.
His latest comments given toward the end of this segment of MSNBC’s Hardball, regarding evangelical leaders, is particularly right on target (sorry for the stupid add for a CNN clip that hides his face):
To me the most interesting category is that of Best Picture. I’ll spoil the article above -at least a little bit- by listing the movies nominated for this year’s Oscar:
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Post, Call Me by Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Shape of Water.
So, I’m familiar with all the films listed above and a couple of them, especially Three Billboards, have intrigued me to the point where I want to see them.
But, once again, I’m batting .000 in terms of having seen any of the films considered for the Oscar.
Yup, I’ve not seen any of them.
I was intrigued with Get Out but as word …er… got out (ouch) about the story presented, I unfortunately had too much information on what the story presented was and, therefore, felt little need to go see the film.
Dunkirk, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is a film that intrigues me, especially given that its a Christopher Nolan directed film, BUT I’m so tired of “war” films at this point. Understand, I have little doubt its a good, perhaps even great film, but there you go.
Very curious to see which of the films win, though I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever see any of ’em!
New England Patriots? I suppose that isn’t too much of a surprise yet one has to give credit -to a point!- to the Jacksonville Jaguars for giving them such a hard game and, for a while anyway, making it look like the Cinderella underdogs might just unseat the proverbial king of the mountain.
The Philadelphia Eagles, the team that will face New England, sure looked unstoppable with the suddenly surging backup QB Nick Foles.
Weird year and New England, though certainly a favorite, may get quite the game from the Eagles, provided Mr. Foles continues what he’s doing.
Released way back in 1955 and directed by Robert Aldrich (perhaps best known for directing 1967’s The Dirty Dozen and the original 1974 Burt Reynolds starring The Longest Yard), Kiss Me Deadly is, to me, one of the most fascinating post-modern “noir” films ever made. It was WAY ahead of its time and skirted with what I’m sure were considerable censor issues, presenting us with a Mike Hammer we’d never seen before or since.
In this movie, Mike Hammer (played by Ralph Meeker) was a smiling shark, a sleazy, blinged out P.I. who made a living off of equally sleazy divorce cases. Once hired by a disgruntled wife, he’d set his faithful and sexy secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper, terrific in her role and accompanying Mr. Meeker in the picture below) off to seduce the soon to be divorced men while Hammer takes photographs of the whole thing. Here they are, the sleazy P.I. and his faithful girl Friday…
In the movie, Hammer’s living is good enough for him to dress well and have a very modern -for the time- apartment while driving around in an exotic car. But Hammer is after a bigger score, and when he gets involved in a case of some stolen …something… that has the government, local police, and the mob all excited, he senses he’s about to make himself the biggest score of all.
And when Lt. Pat Murphy, who has absolutely zero tolerance for this creep, tells him he’s in “way over his head”, Hammer should have listened to the man’s warning.
If you haven’t seen the film and this sounds like your cup of tea, by all means go out there and get it. It was recently released by Criterion films on BluRay and is very much worth checking out. A bit of trivia: Remember the glowing suitcase in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction? That idea was taken directly from this movie.
Hard to avoid the topic today as the Government is just hours away from a shutdown. There have been shutdowns before, all of which hurt Republicans who, for the most part, initiated them against Democratic Presidents.
Interestingly, this time around we have a Republican House, Senate, and Presidency and yet here we go again. The last time such a thing happened with a party in control of all parts of the Government? Jimmy Carter back in the 1970’s.
He wound up being a one term president.
Unlike other government shutdowns, the scariest thing about this one is that President (Gods how hard it is to address this… individual… with that title!) Trump either doesn’t care or doesn’t think a shutdown is a big thing. Worse still, he is so fickle regarding what he wants to get done -changing his opinion on what he wants done sometimes within seconds- that many in Congress and the Senate have little idea what to do to solve the problem at hand.
What’s most amusing is the politics of the whole thing, and the fact that Trump and the Republicans are trying to blame their regular boogey-man, the Democrats, for any potential shutdown.
Yeah, blame the party that is in the minority on everything and can’t get anything they want done for your own failures.
Makes about as much sense as everything else we’ve seen going on in Washington this year.
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The other still fairly big news out there involves sexual harassment. It’s truly harrowing to read about Larry Nassar, for example, the one time USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor who, its been revealed, abused for years the girls in the Gymnastics programs he was involved in and, incredibly, had the huevos to complain that facing the people he abused in court is hard for him to do and, I suppose, it was somehow becoming abuse to him.
The judge in the case shot that one down nicely, calling him “delusional” for thinking that way considering the lives he ruined.
But what intrigues me is the fact that all this seems to be catching up with actor/director Woody Allen.
I will admit here and now that there are some works/movies he’s done that I’ve loved. Some of his early comedies were hilarious and some of the more “serious” films he did after that first wave of comedies are quite good.
But when Mr. Allen had his breakup with Mia Farrow and the stories involved in that (and his subsequent marriage), things certainly turned… icky.
Later still he was accused of sexual abuse by Dylan Farrow, Mia’s daughter, and while for years it appeared people were unsure whether to believe her or Woody Allen, the tide appears to have finally turned.
Yesterday, Dylan Farrow gave a tearful and, quite frankly, chilling interview regarding her one time step father…
Today, word today came that Colin Firth has announced he will no longer work with Woody Allen. He follows in the footsteps of several other actors who once worked with Mr. Allen and have announced they will no longer do so.
Good.
Being a clever, even brilliant artist doesn’t make you immune to being a creep (or worse) and if the accusations are to be believed, and I do, then Mr. Allen’s day of reckoning appears to have finally come.
Caroline Munro… an incredibly beautiful actress best known today for playing Naomi, bad guy Karl Stromberg’s lovely (and deadly) helicopter pilot in what many consider Roger Moore’s best James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me.
According to Ms. Munro, at the time she had to chose whether to take that role or Ursa in the Superman films and chose Bond. While I’m glad she played Naomi, I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t have been intriguing to see her play Ursa! Ms. Munro would appeared in many other films, including At The Earth’s Core and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.
In the last years before the passing of David Bowie, I noticed he had an affinity to “celebrate” his birthdays by giving his fans something special.
His birthday is January 8, 1947 and he would pass away two days after his 69th birthday on January 10, 2016. His last two albums, The Next Day and Blackstar, were announced on his 66th birthday (2014) and released on his 69th birthday, respectively.
After his passing, the No Plan EP album, featuring his final recordings was released on January 8th, 2017.
When January 8th neared this year, I figured something would be released to celebrate what would have been his 71st birthday. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I missed the release, which turned out to be a demo version of one of his biggest hits, the song Let’s Dance.
If you’re like me and you missed it, here it is!
Clearly a “rough”, pre-Niles Rogers (the producer of the album) version, which he considerably funked up. And yet, everything is pretty much there, lyrically and in terms of how the song “flows”.
For comparison, here’s the version that made it to the album…
Question: Who was the first superhero to make the transition from comic books to the screen? It was Captain Marvel, the one now called -stupidly- Shazam.
The 12 part serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel was released in 1941 and featured the imposing Tim Tyler in the role of the good Captain, a man who made Zach Snyder’s Batman look like Ghandi (I kid, I kid, but you should check out some of the stuff he does to the bad guys!). Anyway, Mr. Tyler as Captain Marvel!
Curious about Mr. Tyler, I looked his bio up on IMDB and was saddened to find that he passed away in 1954, only 13 years after the release of Captain Marvel, and at the too young age of 50 due to rheumatoid arthritis. Another bit of trivia: Mr. Tyler would also be the first person to portray The Phantom in the 1943 serial, as well.
The temple, originally re-discovered soon after the end of WWII, was dedicated to the cult of Mithras, a religious cult in ancient Roman times of which little is known.
I don’t want to give everything in the story away, but it is a fascinating one and proves, as if there was ever any doubt, that researchers, archeologists, and historians have a long way to go to understand the various religions and organizations lost to time.
