Monthly Archives: June 2020

A Virtual Film Festival

For the past several years one of my favorite things has been the Horrible Imaginings film festival. In 2018 the festival moved the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego to the Frieda Cinema in Orange county, about a 90-minute drive from my home. However, an all-day and deep into the night festival or short and feature length horror films is well worth the drive and so I still attend. Indeed, I have discovered some of my favorite horror film at the festival including Alena a ghost story set in an all-girl Swedish school.

Last year Festival Director Miguel Rodriguez started a new element with Campfire Tales where one evening per quarter the Frieda cinema and Horrible Imaginings would host three or so hours of horror shorts. While the evenings sounded fun and interesting, I couldn’t quite justify driving for three hours and eliminating an evening with my sweetie-wife, for essentially one long films worth of entertainment and so I haven’t attended any of the campfire tales events.

This year COVID-19 changed that. Because in person events were still banned Miguel moved the festival on-line and after paying a very reasonable admission donation, I was able to watch the offerings at this quarter’s Campfire Tales. Better yet I watched them on my schedule, after an evening of board and card games with my sweetie-wife and a couple of friends. From 9 p.m. until nearly midnight a friend and I watched the short horror films and had a truly wonderful time.

I hope, even though it goes against my own interests, that Miguel can soon get back to the in-person screenings he adores and hosts so very ably but I can’t deny how much fun it was to take part in a cycle of ghost, monster, and psychological horror films.

 

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Political Bits and Pieces

The title of today’s post in not to disparage the importance of any of the subjects but just because I’m doing quick comments and opinions and several at once rather than diving deep into any of them.

Juneteenth

Under unexpectedly harsh criticism the Trump campaign has moved the date of the return to rally event off June the 19th. Trump himself has said it was moved ‘out of respect,’ but that’s a statement I consider to be yet another lie. Aside from possibly Jared and Ivanka it is my opinion that Trump has never manifested any respect for anyone other than himself. More likely, and this is sheer speculation, Ivanka persuaded him to move the event as though a single bucked of water pumped from this political Titanic could make any difference.

LGBQT Rights

This morning the US Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the 1964 civil right law that forbade discrimination in employment on account of sex protected sexual orientation as well. Well, that’s an unexpected gift for Pride month.

Trump vs. The Ramp

At the commencement ceremony for the graduating class of West Point, the site of the United States most infamous treason, Trump had clearly visible difficulty navigating the shallow ramp prompting more speculation about his physical health. While a president’s physical health is of vital national importance, such as concealing when the President has suffered a stroke while in office, this matter is rather more of a distraction. Trump’s ignorance, pettiness, bigotry, corruption, and tendency to view himself and his office in authoritarian terms are reasons enough to remove him from office.

Defund the Police

Policing in the United States is terrible. It is applied unjustly, frequently with racial bias, and police forces throughout the nation too often have the culture of an occupation force rather than public servants. Much has been made about the police’s non-use of a heavy-handed tactics during protests over pandemic driven lockdowns versus the deployment of batons, riot gear, and tear gas against peaceful protester participating in the Black Lives Matter movement. I do not think it is mere coincidence that police forces have reacted with unjustified force against people directly challenging their authority. We must reinvent policing in the nation.

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A Thumb in the Eye

Next Friday Trump returns to the rally circuit but in doing so he’s quite deliberately putting his thumb in the eye of the black community and everyone with even a modicum of decency. The date is June the 19th and that date is a holiday celebrated by many African-Americans as the end of hundreds of years of chattel slavery was enforced by Union, read American, General Gordon Granger in Galveston Texas. Perhaps you can ascribe ignorance of the date to our most ignorant president but his staff and closest advisers, particularly Steven Miller, are too well educated to be blind to the symbolism.

Trump multiplies his insult by holding this rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma the site of a horrendous slaughter of black residents at hand and aerial attacks from whites. A massacre that slaughtered hundreds and left 10,000 homeless with their homes burned and their businesses looted. This ethnic cleansing, it was far beyond a riot, was recently captured in popular media with the opening scenes of HBO’s magnificent series Watchmen. Again, perhaps Trump himself is too uneducated to beware of the history, it would be difficult to under-estimate this man mental abilities, but Miller and the rest will know.

Oklahoma is a solidly red state that in the electoral college is beyond Biden’s reach. Here is no political advantage to hosting a rally in the state.

Trump administration, campaign, and argument is one based on racism and there is no policy or appointment that can justify supporting it.

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A Most Challenging Giallo

Giallo is Italian for ‘yellow’ and refers to the bright yellow covers for books that dealt with lurid criminal plots, sort of the Italian answer to pulps but with far less content moderation. As these books were adapted into films the term carried over and Giallo is a sub-genre of Italian cinema dealing with lurid, sexual, and criminal themes.

This week my sweetie-wife and I watched a 1970 Italian/Spanish GialloIn the Folds of the Flesh.’ This was a very challenging movie to view. With a scant running time of a mere 88 minutes In the Folds tries to pack in a number or reveals, reversals, and shocking twists that would be more suitable for a couple of seasons of any daytime soap opera. In short, the story is about Lucille the much younger couple Colin and Falaise dealing with Falaise’s uncontrollable urges to murder any man who is sexually forward with her. Ladled onto this are plot elements of incest, mafia revenge murders, deeply undercover police investigations, and even exploitive flashbacks to Nazi death camps bonus gratuitous nudity.

The camera work seems to have been performed by a spastic chimpanzee with sudden and unmotivated crash zooms, indecipherable close-ups, and rapid circling pans that induce motion sickness. While the editing is reminiscent of a goldfish on acid with unestablished leaps in time and place that are terrible disorienting.

There are quite a few Giallos that I have thoroughly enjoyed since I discovered the genre a few years ago but In the Folds of the Flesh is not one of them and I cannot recommend this movie to anyone who is not currently dosing with hallucinogens.

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Streaming Horror: Scream, Blacula, Scream

The past several nights I watched the 1973 blaxploitation horror film Scream, Blacula, Scream. A sequel the previous year’s movie Blacula about an old-world African vampire played by the incomparable William Marshall, and depending on how geeky you are you may know him best from the Star Trek (Original Series) episode The Ultimate Computer as Daystrom the inventor of the M-5 computer, that arrives in an American urban center instigating a plague of vampirism before meeting his end at the hero’s hand.

Scream, Blacula, Scream, starts with a Voodoo congregation in turmoil as their high priestess passes without naming her successor and two devotees contend for her title, Willis, the self-important son of the priestess, and Lisa, played by Pam Grier, who is more popular with the congregation. Willis, unable to endure his rejection invokes dark magics and unwittingly reanimated Blacula initiating a new cycle of vampirism.

Not as sharp or as on point as its predecessor this film in many respects moves too quickly. Lisa’s lover, Justin, a police detective moves from skeptic to vampire hunter with too much ease and the political among the congregation was brushed aside far too quickly for something that had been introduced with the elements of a major plot development.

That said, I enjoyed this movie. Marshall’s command of every scene in which he appears is unquestioned and he brings a tragic dignity to his African prince that was cursed for confronting the slave trade. Pam Grier, one of the stars to emerge from the blaxploitation cycle, isn’t given a lot of the stuff to do as an actress but she takes this meager meal and gives us a banquet of a performance.

Side comment; while watching this film I realized that Pam Grier is a nearly perfect image for the character Sakita Bergen in my military sf series I am

American International Picture

writing. I shall have to keep that in mind.

In the end this movie suffers from being rushed to screen and doesn’t compare favorably to its progenitor piece but it is still worth at least one viewing.

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Why It’s Necessary to Say, ‘Black Lives Matter.’

As protests, unrest, and repression continues throughout this country over the killing of George Floyd the unifying chant heard from protesters is ‘Black Live Matter.’ The Chat did not start with this protest but is sadly years old and is likely to be carried forward for years to come.

A common response from those in disagreement is ‘All Lives Matter,’ and less common but more contentious is the response ‘Blue Lives Matter.’ Both of these responses miss the point and the reason for why the BLM movement exists at all.

The terrible truth of the matter is that black lives are valued less by our society and our culture than other lives. In terms of income, wealth, education, justice, health, voting, and in life expectancy, it is painfully clear that societally black lives simply do not count as much, commanding far less attention for injustices of all kinds visited upon and receiving far less resources to address their troubles. To say ‘Black Lives Matters’ is to say that these devalued should be valued. It is not taking lives that are equally valued and placing them above the rest, which is the implication of the response ‘All Lives Matter,’ it is trying to remove the blinders that keeps many people from seeing the terrible price black lives pay for merely existing in our society.

“Blue Lives Matter’ is beyond wrong it is egregious and a perversion of the argument. First off there are no ‘blue lives,’ policeperson is a chosen identity not one assigned by accident of birth or societal bigotry. Every cop out there chooses to be a cop a choice that is incomparable to race. Secondly, ‘blue lives’ are more valued in our society that other lives. Crimes against the police are punished more heavily than comparable crimes against average citizens. (NOT civilians, the police are civilians and the use of that term to describe non-police is part of the police’s culture of occupation that is exacerbating all of our problems.) In terms of valorization and resources police are valued far above nearly every other for of public employee and citizen.

It is a terrible thing that we must say ‘Black Lives Matter’ because is it an indictment of how far short we have fallen of our lofty cultural goals.

 

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Columbia Noir: Human Desire

This weekend I continued my exploration of the Criterion Channel’s collection Columbia Noir with Human Desire.

Human Desire is the story of Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford), recently returned home from the Korean War and now resuming his job as a locomotive engineer. In his absence the Assistant Yard Supervisor Buckley, (Broderick Crawford) has married a much younger woman Vicki, (Gloria Grahame.) Before long there is jealousy, robbery, and murder the staples of American Noir. This is very much like the descriptionprovided by the Criterion Channel and it is in my opinion

dŽsirs humains
human desire
1954
rŽal : Fritz Lang
Broderick Crawford
Gloria Grahame
Glen Ford
Collection Christophel

quite misleading and capture where I think the film took its initial and consequential misstep. The entire movie is told from Jeff’s point of view treating the unfolding events as principally his story and it really isn’t his at all. The story should have been written and presented from Vicki’s point of view. When Buckley, a brute and intellectually challenged man, is fired from his position it falls to Vicki to win him his job back but in doing so triggers his violent jealousy launch a series of events that will entangle Buckley, Vicki, and Jeff in robbery and murder as she desperately tries to survive.

Despite its erroneous point of view Human Desire is a film worth watching. Glenn Ford plays the sort of role that he is best known for the fundamentally decent man though in keep with noir’s traditions he has a difficult time resisting temptation. Broderick Crawford as Buckley convincingly gives us both a man who is dangerous and unpredictable but also deeply flawed and trapped by his own self-doubted that is amplified by his alcoholism, but the real star of this film is the luminous Gloria Grahame. Grahame’s realistic portrayal of a woman desperate to escape her circumstances using the means and methods at her disposal without sliding across into evil is a wonder to behold.  Grahame appeared in many great noirs and died too young at 57 but her star continues to shine bright through her performances such as this one. Direct by Fritz Lang is a competent film though a number of plot threads were either never completed or are used simply as audience misdirection. Particular attention in the story is paid to a distinctive watch and yet that element never closes back to a resolution.

Overall, I enjoyed watching Human Desire but I have no desire to add it permanently to my library.

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No Real Posting Today

I don’t want every post to be political but at the moment my brain is working on nothing else.

Riots only appear spontaneous, they are the result of long term pressures and the current one are no different.

Not much else to say this morning.

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Could Trump Play a ‘Stabbed in the Back’ Card?

In his mind Trump never loses. Any loss is always either a secret win that he spins with enormous lies or a result of ‘cheating’ and betrayals. Everyone, including Trump himself, was ready for his endless and utterly false claims of having won the 2016 when it was expected that he could not win. But he did win. A think margin of 70,000 votes in less than a handful of states put him into the presidency and created the conditions of our current chaos.

At moment Trump is running for re-election and in national polls and in the battleground states he is losing to Biden. Moreover, he has never held a lead over Biden during this entire race and with the triple threat of a global pandemic, an economic crisis, and civil unrest the prospect for Trump to take the lead is rather slim. Not impossible mind you but the electoral map does not look good for team Trump.

Given that the map is threatening and Trump’s ego requires that he does not lose I wonder if there is a possibility that he’s going to turn the campaign ship and run it aground.

Not as a ‘quitter’ because that too runs afoul of his over-inflated ego, but could some action, particularly an action taken by the Republican party or elites, such as not having a crowd packed convention, provide him with an excuse that the ‘deep state’ and ‘corrupt elites’ have stabbed him and ‘the country’ in the back and he then drops out of the race?

It was on March 31 when LBJ stood down from his second full term and left the Democratic party in a shambles and Trump has less concern for his party than any party leader in history. He wouldn’t care that a summer declination to run would trash the GOP, all that matters to him is his ego. Before the August Convention the GOP will not have officially nominated anyone as their candidate, leaving open the possibility that it could be someone else.

I am not saying that this is a likely scenario but as we have seen so far in 2020 unlikely is far from impossible.

 

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A Thousand Little Compromises

A friend on Facebook asked how was that conservatives were disgusted and ashamed by this presidency and its horrific actions.

The truth of the matter is that is a very human things to do to turn a blind eye towards one’s tribe and one’s self when looking for flaws and hypocrisy and simultaneously be hyper-aware of the same things in others. Understanding this requires understanding that people rarely go from one extreme to another in a single leap but rather get there by a thousand little steps, justifying, if they think about it at all, as unpleasant actions and compromises taken for a greater good. Think back upon Saruman in The Fellowship of the Ring, “Our goals need not change only our methods.”

That element of goals is critically important, it is what allows someone to accept the unacceptable because the destination is worth it. Of course, this is the classic ‘the ends justify the means,’ and that so often leads to terrible consequences but it is difficult to see that slow corruption in one’s self and it is equally difficult to admit error particularly for anything of high personal importance. So, when someone of your team acts in a dishonorable manner, cheats, or is abusive it is far easier to excuse it, justify it, or point an accusing finger back at the opponents than face the painful truth of what you have even tacitly supported.

However, this has limits and eventually people either abandon their previously held truths for new ones or they abandon the tribes associated with their previous selves and both are ruptures of identity.

Among conservatives you can watch this process in action. Some have gone silent, simply no longer associating with the tribe as it currently stands, some have abandoned the tribe and formed their own new identity, the ‘never Trumpers,’ and some have adopted the uniform of their new movement, washing away their former ideals. It is wrong to think of conservatives as a single monolithic block and the same is true for any very large ideology. The reactions among conservatives is varied but the political party and its apparatus is firmly in the control of a single faction, Trump’s, and it would be best not to confuse the larger collection with the party.

 

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