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20Apr

Drift

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by Rachel Maddow

Reading a book like this one can fill you with hope or despair. Hope, in that there are still good Americans (the one percent of our population comprising the volunteer military) and vital journalists like Maddow; but also despair, because as the proverb says, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The cycle goes like this: Presidents and institutions gain power and then proceed to abuse or misuse it. There is public outcry, restraints are instituted – and those presidents and institutions resist mightily. Good intentions lead to unforeseen disaster. These patterns are repeated throughout history. Your choice, as an average citizen, is to be outraged, depressed, or desensitized. Maddow’s book makes the case that, since the Reagan administration, Americans have become desensitized to war, and this attitude is encouraged by politicians (right and left) who prefer that most voters be removed from the actual cost of endless military adventures.

I suppose it’s a product of my age, but I believe that a lot of the material in Drift would have outraged me when I was younger. Now, mostly, it just depresses me.

16Apr

Free Flick of the Week: “Penny Serenade”

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“If you are prone to easy weeping, you might even take along a washtub.” – New York Times. “This is a weeper from the start.” – TV Guide. “A wonderful tearjerker.” – Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide. “One of the greatest weepies ever made.” – Hot Button. Yes, you guessed it: my type of movie. Click here or here to watch Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in 1941’s Penny Serenade.

14Apr

The Weekly Review: April 8 – 14

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Pretty Boys, Pansies, and Penises

Hollywood scuttlebutt says Johnny Depp has been tapped to play Nick Charles in a remake of the classic screwball mystery, The Thin Man. This seems wrong on so many levels.

I like Johnny Depp. I think he’s a fine actor. But casting him as ladies man Nick Charles is like casting Arnold Schwarzenegger to play Danny DeVito’s twin brother. Hold on. That’s a bad example.

William Powell (above, with Myrna Loy) was the definitive Charles in the 1930s-’40s detective series. Powell was a fast-talking smoothie who looked just right with a Scotch in one hand and wife Nora in the other. He was a suave “man’s man” who mixed well with both high society and his ex-con buddies.

Depp is … soft. He is many things, including attractive to women, but macho he ain’t. Look at the pictures below. Does Depp look more likely to steal your wife — or your boyfriend? Uh-huh.

*****

CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield (above) lost it last weekend when a woman named Laura Saunders introduced Fredricka to a chicken.

Saunders: “And that’s my rooster — little pecker.”

Whitfield: “Funny, foul language always welcome!”

The rooster reminded me of Johnny Depp.

*****

Speaking of little peckers, we were treated this week to the following exchange between two adults in the room, Gloria Allred and Donald Trump:

Gloria: “[A transgendered beauty contestant] didn’t ask Mr. Trump to prove he’s a naturally born man, or see photos of his birth, or to view his anatomy.”

Donald: “I think Gloria would be very, very impressed with me.”

Gloria: “I don’t have a magnifying glass strong enough to see something that small. The world does not revolve around his penis.”

Allred is one of America’s pre-eminent lawyers, and Trump would like to be president. Feel better about the future of our country?

*****

James Van Der Beek is back, starring on some ABC sitcom. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was a fan of his old show, Dawson’s Creek. Or maybe I am, since this clip from Dawson has popped up everywhere on the Internet.

*****

We are told that Ann Romney can relate to middle-class women because she raised five boys. With professional house-cleaning help. And with millions of dollars for things like health-care emergencies. Or any other emergencies.

Hang tough, Hilary Rosen, because you were right.

14Apr

The Cabin in the Woods

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If I told you that this review was written by Zargon, a 10,000-year-old wooly mammoth that was recently discovered in Antarctica, unfrozen by scientists, and then taught typing skills by an English teacher, you’d have to admit that the possibility is fairly imaginative. Hopefully, we could also agree that it’s a profoundly stupid claim. But that’s what you get with The Cabin in the Woods — an imaginative but profoundly stupid horror movie.

Esteemed film critic Roger Ebert has written of Cabin’s plot, “You’re not going to see this one coming.” With any luck, that’s because you’re a somewhat rational human being who expects at least a modicum of realism in your movies, even silly movies like this one.

Everything in Cabin is culled from countless kids-in-peril flicks of the past. You already know the story: Five kids party at an isolated cabin, where bad things happen to them. The kids are all archetypes from other slasher movies, which isn’t entirely bad because it does mean we get an obligatory topless scene from one of the girls, this time courtesy of actress Anna Hutchison.

Much has been made of Cabin’s supposedly novel take on a tired genre, but imagination with no discipline is also what you get when a three-year-old draws pictures on the wall. With his own poo. Grade: C

Director: Drew Goddard Cast: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Brian White, Amy Acker Release: 2012

Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

12Apr

The Psychopath Test

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by Jon Ronson

Ronson is a peculiar fellow. At times, while reading his descriptions of the charm and deception utilized by psychopaths to get their way, I wondered if perhaps Ronson himself was a psychopath, using his considerable writing skills to mislead us and cajole us into buying his book. For one thing, the title of The Psychopath Test is inaccurate: Yes, Ronson unearths a psychopath or two, but mostly he presents a series of encounters with people who are merely odd – or possibly crazy, but not psychopaths.

Test is no scholarly analysis of mental illness, but it is a fascinating read, letters from a Caspar Milquetoast with balls (Ronson) who passes on the unwelcome news that all of us harbor some of the traits found on the Hare checklist of psychopathic symptoms. There is also the unsettling possibility that – with all of our recent talk about the wealthy “one percent” – we should perhaps be focused on a different “one percent”: the estimated number of psychopaths in our midst.

12Apr

Lebanon

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The gripping war movie Lebanon is unpopular with some groups in Israel because, according to a news report, “the film will deter young men from volunteering for the [Israeli] army.” I don’t entirely buy that argument.

Does Lebanon emphasize the horrors of war? Yes, indeed. As you might expect from any war film, there are graphic scenes of violence, gore, and sheer terror. Does Lebanon also glamorize war? I’m certain that it does — at least for some members of the audience.

I feel confident that many young men will identify with at least one of the film’s four main characters, young Israelis confined in a hellish tank at the onset of the 1982 conflict in Lebanon. This kind of viewer-identification is nothing new; audiences sided with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker when Bonnie and Clyde was in theaters. And I’m guessing that more than one Nightmare on Elm Street fan would enjoy being in Freddy Krueger’s blood-stained shoes. Some young men who watch Lebanon will be repelled by what they see; others will leave the movie and seek out an enlistment officer.

For me (an old man), the most compelling reason to see Lebanon is its stunning photography. Director Samuel Maoz, who wrote the script based on his own experience as a gunner in the 1982 battle, also has a background in art direction and photography — and man, does it show. Shot almost entirely within the confines of a leaking, creaking tank, Maoz’s visuals are a luminescent feast, with green and gold patinas casting an eerie glow onto a drop of sweat falling off a soldier’s chin, or a crushed cigarette floating in a pool of oil.

You might think that a 93-minute movie restricted to the inside of a tank is about 90 minutes too much, but you’d be mistaken. We feel the men’s claustrophobia, but there is also suspense because we see what they see: kaleidoscopic snapshots of chaos on the dangerous streets outside of their metal cocoon, all viewed through the lens of a rotating gunsight.

Some people will likely experience Lebanon as a big-screen videogame: cool-looking, violent, and with clearly defined good guys and bad guys. Others will see it as a harrowing anti-war statement. Some people will see it as pro-military; some will see it as anti-army. That’s just the way we are. Grade: B+

Director: Samuel Maoz Cast: Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen, Michael Moshonov, Zohar Shtrauss, Dudu Tassa, Ashraf Barhom, Fares Hananya, Reymond Amsalem Release: 2010

Watch Trailers (click here)

09Apr

Free Flick of the Week: “La Femme Nikita”

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A female gang member is recruited by a French intelligence officer and converted into an undercover “hit woman.” I haven’t seen this, but plenty of people have, since it was remade in the U.S. and later revived as a television series. Watch the French original by clicking here.

07Apr

The Weekly Review: April 1 – 7

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Hey, we enjoy a good May-December romance as much as the next guy, but this news that 56-year-old Bill Maher is dating 14-year-old Rebecca Black is a bit much, even for us. *

*****

What’s with all of these retired jocks hawking meds for penis problems? Jimmy Johnson and his penis-enlargement ads finally stopped airing, just in time for Joe Theismann to show up and inform us that his prostate forced him to stay near bathrooms, “just in case I had that sudden urge to go.” I suppose it’s only a matter of time before we see Brett Favre in … oh, never mind.

*****

Pictured above is apparently Britain’s most beautiful woman, Samantha Brick. Standing guard is Samantha’s husband, a man who is armed and prickly because, you know, it’s difficult fending off so many wolves.

*****

“Oh, please put security cameras on every street.” — HLN anchor Jane Velez-Mitchell (above) while doing a story about a missing child. A camera on every street? Great idea, Jane. Lots of bad things happen on the street. Lots of bad things happen in bedrooms, too. Shall we put security cameras in every bedroom — starting with yours?

*****

To Kill a Mockingbird is back in the news as we celebrate the film version’s anniversary. Whenever I begin to feel old — like in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings — I remind myself that somewhere in the South, Harper Lee is still alive and kicking. How cool is that?

*****

Wolf Blitzer reminded viewers on Tuesday of the type of terrorist that law enforcement most fears: the dreaded “lone wolf.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly trust bearded men with ominous German-sounding names, and who scowl and lurk in the background at public events.

* Just in case we hear from Bill Maher’s lawyers … we’d like to point out that this is the April Fools’ Day edition of The Grouchy Editor.

06Apr

The “New” New Rules

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by Bill Maher

I’m tempted to call Bill Maher a genius – but if I did that, I might be accused of self-flattery, because I happen to agree with about 95 percent of his opinions. No, that’s not true: 96 percent. If you lean left like me, Maher is your man, because he counters any “bleeding-heart-liberal” charges with take-no-prisoners wit.

As Maher points out in the foreword to New Rules, this is primarily a joke book, with hundreds of one-paragraph zingers targeting pop culture and everyday life. The jokes are usually clever, often true, and frequently funny. But Maher also includes dozens of longer essays – mostly about politics – and this is where he does us pinkos proud.

02Apr

Free Flick of the Week: “The Gods Must Be Crazy”

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A Coke bottle falls out of the sky, an African bushman encounters civilization, and what do you get? In 1984, you got the biggest foreign box-office hit in American history. Watch The Gods Must Be Crazy for free by clicking here.

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