Monthly Archives: February 2010

TCM Thrillers (March 1 – 7)

February 27, 2010
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TCM Thrillers (March 1 – 7)

This week: * Monday—Brando is all at sea. * Tuesday—Sydney Greenstreet likes to talk to people who like to talk. * Wednesday—John Hurt gets a great big hug—on his face. * Thursday—John Garfield is in a fog—several of them, in fact. * Friday—Karloff wants to terrorize Nicholson, but more likely it was the other way around. * Saturday—Peter Sellers aspires to greatness—as a criminal. * Sunday—The girl can’t help it: Ava Gardner is a femme fatale. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Monday—March 1st 9:30 AM—Possessed (1947) A married woman’s passion for a former love drives her mad. Cast: Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey. Dir: Curtis Bernhardt. BW-108 mins, TV-PG, CC 8:00 PM—Morituri (1965) The English blackmail a German expatriate into a Nazi rubber shipment. Cast: Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Janet Margolin. Dir: Bernhard Wicki. BW-123 mins, CC, Letterbox Format ———- Tuesday—March 2nd 9:30 AM—The Maltese Falcon (1941) Hard-boiled detective Sam Spade gets caught up in the murderous search for a priceless statue. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet. Dir: John Huston. BW-101 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS ———- Wednesday—March 3rd 11:30 AM—Adam’s Rib (1949) Husband-and-wife lawyers argue opposite sides in a sensational women’s rights case. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday. Dir:

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‘Cop Out’ Doesn’t Just Stink, But It’s Racist, Too?

February 27, 2010
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‘Cop Out’ Doesn’t Just Stink, But It’s Racist, Too?

The new movie “Cop Out” has created a lot of buzz, and not just because critics are hammering Kevin Smith’s homage to the ’80s “buddy cop comedies” for being painfully un-funny. The film is apparently racist, too. Film critic Christian Toto gives us the run-down: Armond White of the New York Press, a reliably contrarian voice in film critic circles, slams star Tracy Morgan for his performance: “His broad face and goofy baritone are the essence of how Hollywood once tried to stereotype Louis Armstrong; yet Morgan embraces the denigration, performing a string of mortifying buffooneries.” Critic Emanuel Levy also found fault with Morgan’s character and how the film depicts the Latino heavies in the film. “There’s also an uncomfortable racial awkwardness to a great deal of the material that makes “Cop Out” feel rather unseemly. The opening Morgan monologue is dangerously close to a minstrel act. (Not to mention a recurring and very abysmal subplot involving his raging insecurities about his wife’s alleged infidelities.) “Worst of all, the Mexican criminal lords that become the movie’s traditional heavies are so lazily conceived, overscaled and outrageously drawn that turns “Cop Out” not only into a bad film though a somewhat unpleasant

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Fiction Friday: Teaching Style vs. Grammar

February 26, 2010
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Fiction Friday: Teaching Style vs. Grammar

Should a certain writing style be pushed by authors and teachers as embodying good writing and equivalent to following grammar rules? This week’s Culture Alliance Fiction Friday newsletter featured some very different opinions on this topic.  Numerous notable authors, including Richard Ford, Neil Gaiman, Roddy Doyle, and P.D. James, provide writing “rules” inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing. Elmore’s Rules begin with: 1) Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a charac­ter’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want. 2) Avoid prologues: they can be ­annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, but it’s OK because a character in the book makes the

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Another Angle on Sinatra’s ‘Way’

February 26, 2010
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Another Angle on Sinatra’s ‘Way’

Essay by Hal White Perhaps only The American Culture (TAC) can talk intelligently about Frank Sinatra and simultaneously leave a reader wondering about the limits of personal responsibility. But that’s exactly what an article by Mike D’Virgilio has done—at least in my tiny little brain—for several weeks now. Perhaps I should start at the beginning. In 2009 TAC ran a brief article on Sinatra’s famous song “My Way” and its narcissistic lyrics. As most will recall, this song celebrates the premise that throughout the singer’s life he did things his way and was proud of that fact as he reflected on it in his later years. Like Mike D’Virgilio, I’ve long disliked this song for sending such a message. However, D’Virgilio indicated in his article (quoting from a Wall Street Journal column), that since Sinatra “utterly hated” this song—and only sang it because his audience wanted to hear it—that this revelation redeemed Sinatra in his eyes. I’ll grant you that I feel better about Sinatra now that I’ve learned this. But should that be the end of our analysis? I recently read a fascinating news article which discussed what’s called the “My Way” killings in the Philippines. The article was

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HuffPo Hopes for Religious Revival

February 25, 2010
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The Huffington Post is adding a section on religion, which seems intent on redefining it away from Christianity. Full story here.

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Forget the White House: Imagine the Sarah Palin Show

February 25, 2010
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Forget the White House: Imagine the Sarah Palin Show

As time goes by, more folks on the Right realize that there’s more to America than what happens inside the DC Beltway. Furthermore, they are beginning to discover that what happens in New York and Hollywood drives what happens in Washington DC. Fox News Channel political commentator and columnist Andrea Tantaros is one of these folks, and she has a radical idea for the person many would consider conservatism’s brightest star: Forget politics and go into daytime television. Sarah Palin, Tantaros argues, is too great a lightening rod to be effective politically. Were she to run in 2012, Palin would be a “distraction” for both Democrats and Republicans. If you think the deep division and party gridlock is bad with President Obama, the alleged uniter, at the helm, picture what a Palin candidacy – and, if that works out, a Palin presidency – would bring. She could barely govern in Alaska with the onslaught of allegations and baseless lawsuits thrown at her daily. Life in the lower 48 would be increasingly more challenging. If politics isn’t the path for Palin, then what is? Palin should get this through her head now: She would be far more influential as a talk

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Buckley Critique Misses Point

February 24, 2010
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S. T. Karnick writes about Christopher Buckley and the Mount Vernon Statement on Pajamas Media. Full essay here.

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Lifetime Tries Again.

February 24, 2010
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After suffering ratings disasters by changing its highly popular programming lineup to chase after younger viewers, the Lifetime Network is changing again, looking for . . . younger viewers. Full story here.

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Kornheiser Suspended

February 24, 2010
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ESPN commentator Tony Kornheiser has been suspended for two weeks for criticizing a fellow employee’s clothing choices, on his radio show. Full story here.

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Glass Hammer Cheers

February 23, 2010
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Glass Hammer Cheers

For well over a decade, Glass Hammer has been one of the most impressive and productive rock bands while remaining resolutely independent from the music industry’s star-making and -consuming apparatus. Taking advantage of that independence and the liberty it affords, the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based group led by multi-instrumentalists and songwriters Fred Schendel and Steve Babb has produced some of the most musically impressive and thematically interesting albums of our time. Releases such as Lex Rex, Perelandra, On to Evermore, and The Inconsolable Secret are classics of modern rock, while Culture of Ascent and Chronometree are likewise impressive and thoroughly enjoyable. All are well worth owning, and the band’s entire catalog, extensive as it is, is well worth exploring. Their musical and lyrical adventurousness and their virtuosic instrumental abilities placed Glass Hammer firmly in the category of progressive rock, an assessment which the group embraced without seeming to let it limit their creativity. As appears to be the case with most of those who gravitate to progressive rock, Babb and Schendel seem to revel in stretching their musical and compositional abilities and exploring far beyond the confines of three-chord rock music while always keeping in mind the premise that music should be

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Review: Klavan’s Latest Will Leave You Breathless, Wanting More

February 22, 2010
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Review: Klavan’s Latest Will Leave You Breathless, Wanting More

Andrew Klavan shines with his latest young adult novel The Long Way Home. On several occasions, I had to hold myself back while reading this taut, thrilling mystery, and not skip ahead to see what happens next. The Long Way Home is a breathtaking page-turner. If you buy it for your kids and don’t read it yourself, you will definitely miss out. This second in the Homelander series picks up pretty much where The Last Thing I Remember left off, but you need not have read Last Thing to enjoy The Long Way Home. Charlie West continues to wrestle with the year long blank spot in his memory, a period during which he was tried and convicted of murdering his best friend, escaped from prison, and got sucked into an Islamist terrorist network. Now Charlie must avoid both police and terrorists to get back home and clear his name. Andrew Klavan’s latest grabs you at the opening, with a life or death knife fight in a public library’s bathroom, and never lets go. With this book, Andrew goes head to head with video games for kids’, and probably some adults’, attention and comes out on top. Charlie’s matter-of-fact patriotism, fear

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Surprise: Daily Kos Poll Identifies Republicans As Extremists

February 21, 2010
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Surprise: Daily Kos Poll Identifies Republicans As Extremists

Before I comment on the results of the poll, one question: Where are the polls that show the extremism of self-identified Democrats, liberals, or progressives? Why is it that the word “extreme” applies onlyto views on the right? Certainly we can chalk this up to media bias, and all the rest of the predictable conservative complaints, but part of it is that conservatives generally never refer to liberal/left policies and views as “extreme.” Maybe that’s a tribute to the fundamental decency of most conservatives and their worldview, but more likely it’s a function of the right having played defense to what the left claims is their moral superiority for over 100 years. More on this in a moment. The survey by Research 2000 of 1,000 self-identified Republicans found the following: 21 percent believe the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) stole the 2008 election and 55 percent aren’t sure. 31 percent believe Obama is a racist who hates white people and 33 percent aren’t sure. 23 percent want their state to secede from the U.S. and 19 percent aren’t sure. Only 26 percent favor letting openly gay Americans serve in the military. 67 percent believe the only way

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