Political Movies

JBS, The Trailer

2011-02-01T17:21:05Z

JBS VLOG

2010-06-30T04:59:11Z

Posting a modest vlog each weekday morning.

"Andromeda Strain" 1971 and "Deepwater Horizon" 2010

2010-05-15T22:23:38Z

What Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain and BP's "Deepwater Horizon" have in common is a remote, all-exasperated Executive Branch that depends upon the same brains that started the fire-in-the-hole to solve the fire.

]]> Obama administration is frustrated in both theaters just now. Start the clock on BP. June 1 and hurricane season approaching, and the relief wells cannot work before July 1 at best.

"Then we must toughen the men."

2010-04-10T20:51:46Z

Walter Matthau steals the Cold War nightmare "Fail Safe" (1964) early with his lucid, brutal, logical and necessary remarks about nuke deterrence and the MAD doctrine in the Cold War...

]]> Hit them.

The joy of Walter Matthau's character is that he has accepted that civilization is a useful fiction (see below) and that manners stop at the gun locker. In response to a dovish, haunted Air Force general's worry that the nuke systems are too complicated for men to control, the Walter Matthau character responds bluntly, "Then we must toughen the men...." The general (Blackie) complains that if the bombs fall, we are all finished. Matthau replies, "Would you prefer that only we were finished?" The general recommends that we slow down the build-out of nukes. Matthau disagrees, "We have got to speed up..." Matthau observes, "We can only control our own actions...." And thinking aloud about an enemy accidental launch, about the enemy (Soviets) communicating that the missile just got away from them, that it's not a war attack, Matthau asks harshly, "Even if we believe them, should we still think in terms of limiting our response, or should we hit them with everything we have?"

Mass-murderers.

POTUS asserts that he is a history buff. Perhaps POTUS skipped over the part on the effectiveness of the Cold War's policies of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), of the Hotline, of the launch-on-warning, of the assumption of a nuclear winter. Nukes are not for war-fighting. Nukes are for war-ending. What contains predators like Tehran and the Kim regime (and the PLA puppet-masters) is certain annihilation in the event of an attack on the US. POTUS is not focused on limiting mass-murderers. Instead, POTUS is focused on the limiting the US. Mention that the New START treaty that reduces US and Russian nuke lockers to 1550 per side, trades out first rate US weapons for antique Russian junk. Like giving up a Predator for a T-35.

David Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957).

2010-03-14T03:28:46Z

Alec Guinness's Colonel Nicholson is a supreme example of a man who commits himself so completely to a particular event that he forgets the mission. Is this the Democrats and healthcare? The bridge is up. The train approaches. The explosives are rigged. The wire to the detonator is exposed. Will William Holden's Shears blow the bridge, or will the train roll across?

]]>

AlA

Alec Guinness admires the monument as POTUS admires the monument. Neither can see the contest. A bridge on the river Washington. To where? For what? Vanity and folly.

Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers."

2010-02-20T01:35:37Z

On the 65th anniversary of the beginning of the horror on Iwo Jima, February 19, 1945 - March 26, 1945. Why did Truman and Marshall decide to use the atomic weapons after Curtis LeMay's firebombing B-29s did not break the Japanese warlords?...

]]> Purple Hearts.

...The answer is Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Speaking with Charles Pellegrino, author "Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back," the facts of the bombs and what happened to the human beings on the ground cannot be explained in logical terms unless you include the casualty figures from Iwo Jima and Okinawa -- and the projected casualty figures for the invasion of Japan, scheduled to begin November 1, 1945. We are still drawing from the warehouse the remainders of the 750,000 purple hearts manufactured in 1945 in anticipation of the invasion.

Mr. Obama Goes to Washington

2010-01-30T07:02:46Z

"I'd Better Get My Pencil...."

Jean Arthur's brilliantly correct explanation to Jimmy Stewart of how to write and pass a bill in Congress which can then go to the President's signature for law - from Frank Capra's over-the-top "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" -- illustrates about all President Obama and his impatient administration believed was needed in order to pass their fairy tale healthcare concatenation -- before the El Alamein of January 19 in Massachusetts. The coulda/woulda/shoulda books are coming. Better get a pencil.

Atomic RX Tsunami

2010-01-16T17:21:26Z

The healthcare pow-wow at the White House -- behind closed doors as if there was any other way business is done at the most non-bi-partisan ever of White House's -- has a useful analogy to an underwater 1950s nuke test to see what a skyscraper tall of Pacific Ocean water will do to the ships of fifty states just laying around not working very hard for all the joblessness and REOs...

History of Ambush

2010-01-01T23:06:04Z

Remember when it was 20th century edgy that Harrison Ford's POTUS James Marshall in "Air Force One" (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) took the risk of committing his presidency to fighting terrorism as an evil...? (more)

]]> Learn the Hard Way.

"Atrocity and terror are not political weapons," declared the grouchy Harrison Ford, "and to those who would use them, their day is over." This was early second term Bill Clinton, before the Monica Lewinsky looniness, and the presidency still appeared virile, experimental, an exercise in state-to-state power when dealing with the failed states of the former Soviet empire. Mid-90s, while this was being constructed out of a 1995 screenplay pitch, the interpretation was that terrorism was a policing theme, that the 1993 World Trade Tower attack had been a one-off by nut cases, that Israel's battle with Arafat launched terror was not a threat to the homeland, and that the notion of a terror strike on the US air fleet was Hollywood bunkum exaggeration. What a blood simple version of threat analysis for Harrison Ford to charge into with Vice President Glenn Close and a handsome terror op in Gary Oldham. Within the next year there was the East Africa embassies attack, August 1998, and the cruise missile counter-attacks into Afghanistan terror camps that missed Bin Laden by hours, but there was still no grand theme of warfare. Though there had been the capture of Ramzi Yousef in January 1995, no one much had the details of the scale of the Bojinka plot against airliners. No one much had Al Qaeda's outlines at all. The International Front for Combatting the Crusaders and Jews was still on a jihadist wish-list. POTUS Clinton learned the hard way with the Cole in October 2000; then POTUS Bush learned the hard way with 9-11-01. Will POTUS Obama learn the hard way with Hasan and 12-25-09?

Target Yemen.

Most presidents have been ambushed by history from a completely blinding direction. How those wounded presidents responded was the measure of their time. POTUS Obama responded cautiously, slowly, defensively, as suits a man who came to the office thinking the closing GITMO, and changing the word from "terrorist" to "extremist," and reaching out an open-hand to kleptocrats in Riyadh, Cairo, Baghdad, Kabul, Islamabad, San'a, Damascus and Tehran, would answer the threat of the jihadists. Now may be a transition from peace in our time to war in double time. Yemen is the new show-boat target. JSOC, Predators, blockade, scrupulous data mining and analysis, and a strong hand on the money flow into the Dubai jihad bankers, all will answer the call. POTUS Obama has to believe he is at war with the International Front and its state sponsors. Can we picture POTUS Obama declaring to a roomful of worshipful EU/Ummah diners, "Atrocity and terror are not political weapons, and to those who would use them, their day is over." What I can picture is that POTUS will treat Yemen in the same double game that State treats Pakistan and Egypt. We pay iron-handed bosses to police the jihadists; and the iron-handed bosses do nothing because the jihadists are their ticket to ride the money from the West. Who is more at fault? The crook who takes our money; or we who stuff the pockets of crooks? Below find Ali Abdullah Saleh (born 1942), president of the Republic of Yemen, waiting for cooperation with POTUS Harrison Ford and successors.

Dubai World Bailey Savings and Loan

2009-11-30T05:04:33Z

The most frightening scene in the epic Frank Capra film "It's a Wonderful Life," is the Bedford Falls bank run in the rain, when George (Jimmy Stewart) Bailey abandons his honeymoon and struggles to hold off his neighbors who want their money, now, cash, now, from the humble Bailey Savings and Loan ...

]]> Mr. Potter Rules.

...My grandparents lived through the bank runs of 1933 and never forgot the lesson for an afternoon nor let me forget it. There was a can of coins in the house, and my grandfather kept five-dollar bills pinned to his coat and vest pockets. The failure of Bear Sterns and then again the failure of Lehman Brothers were both caused by 1933-like bank runs, nothing fancier, when the market would not accept the word of the managers that all was well over the weekend and that there would be a rescue in place for Monday morning opening. The story is repeated in the Gulf. Dubai World, during a coincidentally convenient Islamic bank holiday, claimed it cannot meet a note due in two weeks. Dubai World's debts outweigh its asset worth. European banks are said to have at least $40 billion in exposure. In Bedford Falls, George Bailey pleads and argues and connives to keep his doors open until closing time. He hands out the last dollar to the last demanding doubting depositor just before he can close on time -- without a failure that would let the State take over his bank and permit the scourge Mr. Potter to rule Bedford Falls. What about the local Gulf banks that are exposed to the failed Dubai World debt -- the Dubai World Bailey Savings and Loan banks? The UAE central bank proposes cunning defenses. Enough? Unknown. Therein lies the fear of cascading smaller bank runs for the next weeks and months (small enough to fail) on our global road to Pottersville.

Paladin (Retired)

2009-11-21T21:06:53Z

Gunplay and Talk.

Fifty years ago, the national experience included twenty-five minutes of Paladin's unironic sense of violent justice once a week when jeopardy was always resolved with gunplay and talk...

]]> The series ran for five years, 1957-1962, written by creators Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadows, with Albert Aley, Bruce Geller and the pre-Star Trek Gene Roddenberry. Paladin, as played as a world-weary, sybaritic, murderous, generous entrepreneur and professional gunfighter (40-year-old Richard Boone), was supposed to be a West Pointer, ex-Army officer, as well as an educated, refined, musical, gaming, private detective, who also spoke Chinese, Spanish, many dialects of Native American, Italian, French, Latin, Greek, and was also capable of accompanying an opera singer with Mozart and serving as president of the San Francisco Stock Exchange Club. Polymath and paladin. It all worked because Boone played Paladin as an impossibly self-confident and solitary man, without colleagues, without equals, wifeless and childless, like a shaman of aggression, who regarded his judgement as exceptional and superior. In short, just like America played it 1945 to 1965, before the car crash of the Vietnam War. Paladin's rise and domination of the American Western conversation -- he was routinely, mercilessly homicidal: the body count was enormous -- was coincidental with the rise and domination of the politician who was exactly Paladin's age, Jack Kennedy. Both Boone and Kennedy saw combat in the South Pacific (Boone on carriers as an ordinanceman; Kennedy on PT 109); both were somber, methodical personalities; both believed that gunplay and talk are effective. When you put Paladin's self-confidence in his own opinion together with Jack Kennedy's self-same confidence, and add American exceptionalism, you get something like the aggressive policies of the brief Kennedy years, 1961-1963, and then something like the legend of JFK ever since. We do right because we are right. Even the opening scene, the unholstering of the weapon, the threat, the speech, all clear American gestures of righteousness. And then the weapon goes back in the holster. Ultimatum delivered. Ready to draw and shoot. Make your move, villain.

Paladin POTUS 2009.

The question today is what about POTUS? Does he know Paladin? Does he appreciate the ironies of the unironic Paladin? POTUS was born in the midst of the Paladin mania, 1961. His political career describes a man who believes in his own opinion, who exercises exceptional self-confidence. Who knows how to talk. What about the gunplay? Does he doubt the gunplay part? Is that why the delirious reluctance on Afghanistan? Paladin's episodes come from another age, the 1950s living with the still maturing and haunted generation that survived the Depression and the genocidal world wars. Paladin's age hasn't left us. Paldin is in retirement (Boone died too young, at 64 of cancer in Florida, still working), but the lesson of Paladin is that gunplay and talk is how to resolve the crisis, the mystery, how to conquer. You unholster the weapon. You aim at (Tehran, Taliban, Jihad, Beijing bullies); and you make the speech. You holster the weapon. Make your move, villains.

"I steal."

2009-11-02T16:25:32Z

Depression Opera.

Warner Brothers released Paul Muni's sensational "I Am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (1932) as an expose of the cruelty of the actual gangs in states like New Jersey, yet seventy-seven years later the film survives as a metaphorical opera of the rage, fright and battle of the country during the Great Depression and the corresponding mass murder that started in Asia and spread to Europe....

]]> The narrative begins sentimentally when Jim (Paul Muni) returns from the horror of the First War in search of a better world for himself. Frustrated by the regimen of his hometown, he gets caught stupidly in a robbery and is sentenced to a sadistic chain gang that is supposed to be in an unnamed Southern state but can also stand for all tyranny. The metaphor grows, as the protagonist escapes, rebuilds his life as a wealthy engineer, falls in with a scheming glamorous blackmailer (Glenda Farrell) and then with a decent beauty who loves him, Helen (Helen Vinson). Tricked to surrendering to the police in exchange for a pardon, he is condemned again to another chain gang, escapes and becomes a haunted fugitive. The final scene of the film stands today as a jeremiad against the the failure of institutions, leadership, hope during the Depression. Meeting a damaged, hunted Jim in the dark one evening long after his second escape from Hell, Helen pleads with him, "Can't you tell me where you're going? Will you write? Do you need any money?" Jim mutters "No, no, no," and backs off. Helen is near hysterical, "But you must, Jim. How do you live?" And the final horrifying line, with Jim faded into the blackness, "I steal." It makes the movie more real and acute than 1932 could admit to or imagine, because the doom of the Depression was just beginning, because the banks wouldn't fail till the following winter, taking everyone into the vortex, because the mass murder that was at the edges of the news, in Manchuria, would spread like a pool across the continents for the next fifty years. And here we are today, at the edge of what could still become an abyss of bank failures and the wrecked dollar and protectionism and blind appeasement of tyrants, and the last line looks freshly subversive. What do you tell a family whose life is wrecked by the housing collapse, the joblessness, the abuse of loans, credit, savings by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Congress in collusion with the billionaire bankers? Do you tell the family, honesty is the best policy? Do you tell the family, thievery is only for the smart guys?

AIG Steals.

Does the Obama administration preach hard work when there is no work? Jeff Bliss, BlissIndex.com, told me Sunday 1 that the unemployment for 18-25 year-olds in California is near 50%. Do you tell young men who have no guidance or confidence that they must stand in line, stay in school, watch their parents stare at the mortgage, watch their friends spend cash from unknown places? When do Washington and Sacramento declare an emergency? POTUS and Summers and Geithner and Bernanke are worried about the zombie banks -- lending them our tax money at 0% which they then gamble with again on the commodity markets -- but what about the Jims in California, in Nevada, Arizona, Florida, where the REOs pile up like unpaid parking tickets? Unknown. Hugh Son, Bloomberg, told me Saturday 31 that AIG was in tortured negotiations with Goldman Sachs and others over the counterparty contracts prior to the AIG failure in September 2008. The negotiation was for 40 cents on the dollar. The New York Fed and the Treasury then took over AIG and, using TARP funds, paid the banks 100 cents on the dollar. Goldman and Deutsche Bank and Societe General got all their money from us. What did we get? And then Goldman paids its partners tens of billions in bonuses. With our money? Is this theft? Who told Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke they didn't have to bargain, they could pay the bankers all they wanted after AIG failed? Pay them in November, ignoring the AIG negotiations on the risk with the banks. Is this collusion? Is this larceny? Who steals?

Monsters Every Night

2009-10-15T04:26:32Z

Magnavox B&W.

My cracking wise about the operatic genius of the FNC reminded me of the Twilight Zone corpus at the forefront of American pop culture during the coldest part of the Cold War...

]]> and surely one of the most effective evenings of my youth was watching "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." Twists within twists here -- as the bland, sweet, dopey neighbors build themselves into a mob and then a riot and then mass defeat. It first aired March 4, 1960, a Friday night, and I would have watched it with my second brother, Kevin, in the back TV room on our B&W Magnavox. I do not recall understanding the drama, except that I do recall feeling satisfaction with the close to learn that alien monsters do exist -- and that they are very superior and clever monsters. I must have seen this episode three more times in the 1960s, as I changed my opinion of the monsters with my shifting political awareness -- and then not again until I watched it last year while reviewing all of the Twilight Zone corpus. My politics today, nearly fifty years later, are back to where I started. There are monsters, and they are very superior and clever. I do know enough now to understand that if the cable TV hosts are discussing monsters you can see, then those are not the truly dangerous variety. You do not ever see the dangerous variety. The other insight from over the decades is that the child I was, he actually lived on a real Maple Street -- we called it Anthwyn Road, intersecting with Oak Street. The child I was, he had no comprehension of how rare, odd, special, magical a place it was. It is still there. No monsters except the faux kind on the TVs turned to cable every night.

Torn Nukes

2009-10-06T04:44:00Z

Worst Case Scenario.

"Torn Curtian" was the Cold War in startling Hitchcock style, and now we have the New Cold War in high tension drama in the case of "missing " ex-Soviet nuke techs...

]]> Bibi Netanyahu travelled quietly to Moscow recently in order to confront the Russians with the names of four ex-Soviet nuke technicians who Israeli intelligence asserts are working with Tehran to engineer their centrifuges and produce highly enriched uranium in mass production for bomb-making. Missing technicians? No. Moscow knows where they are. So does Jerusalem. There are more than four, and the seriousness of it is that Moscow is not running the operation. I am told these are ex-Sov techs from Kazakhstan and Ukraine. There is much more. David Hoffman's thrilling and highly crafted new book, "Dead Hand," includes several anecdotes, supported by named informants, that point to Tehran shopping for Soviet nuke and biowar technicians in the 1990s in Kazakhstan. I add the Ukraine detail on advice, without naming sources. The Netanyahu trip to Moscow on September 7 (two years after the IAF strike on the nuke facilities built by North Korea and Iran in the eastern Syrian plain) was a declaration by Jerusalem that it no longer needed to keep its penetration of Iran's nuke ops secret from anyone. Jerusalem wanted Moscow to know it knows. And the US, too. Why? This is a thriller. George Friedman at Stratfor argues right now that the revelation of the nuke techies makes the worst case scenario credible for Iran's nuke program. I agree with George Friedman. Paul Newman agrees with George Friedman, and so does Julie Andrews. Hitchcock calls this movie, "Torn Nukes."

Terrorism In Music

2009-10-04T04:43:33Z

Twenty-five years later, Terry Gillam's "Brazil!" remains a smashing progressive fairy tale version of Orwell's "1984" tricked up with a transporting soundtrack and goony, hambone, over the top paranoia....

]]> Gillam's helter-skelter romance makes Orwell seem pious and defeatist -- as there is no scene too grim in "Brazil" that can't and won't shift to the dance steps of the theme song. What is most futuristic for me is that the terrorism is joyfully, randomly directed against the meaningless state edifices. Who cares what happens to the institutions or the nameless apparatchiks? We don't care that much for the fate of the hero either, though we do admire his fantasy life. Working in Washington is not dissimilar, absent the glamour of the violence and the hair-dos. Gillam's imagination would consideriably improve the leaden atmospherics of the Obama administration on its stiff-lip course of patch and mend and skate and deny all interruptions in the rock star script from the late campaign. The Obama team needs "Monty Python" pizzaz. Some dead parrot skits. A cheese shop. Green Knight pantomine. You know, skip and soar a little. Stop covering up your driver's permit brain trust and its self-pitying lugubriousness. Try grace and ideas, they work. Whenever I see the ceremony of Air Force 1 or the Rose Garden or a Joint Session of Congress, I can imagine them breaking into laughter, singing, "Aquarela do Brasil."