Tag: Movie

The Trial Of The Chicago Seven

NOTE:  This will be my only post today for Hurricane Ida is heading my way and I need to batten down the hatches and move stuff around to keep it from flying around….so my time will better spent doing precautionary work.

This is a seldom review by me…..this film interest me for I was around for the real trial….but before I go into the film maybe a little history for those that were not around for the actual event.

The film did do one thing….it illustrated what a clown show it was with the old fart Judge Hoffman (which illustrates why judges should be forced to retire at age 65).

The trial was held to punish the leaders of the protests of 1968 at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

The Chicago Seven (originally eight) were political radicals accused of conspiring to incite the riots that occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During the five-month trial, the prosecution stressed the defendants’ provocative rhetoric and subversive intentions, while the defense attributed the violence to official overreaction. The case drew national attention for the artists and activists that testified as witnesses, as well as defendant Bobby Seale’s actions, which earned him four years in prison for contempt of court. In February 1970, five of the seven were found guilty, but an appeals court overturned the convictions in 1972.

There were originally eight defendants: David Dellinger, a pacifist and chairman of the National Mobilization against the War; Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis, leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, leaders of theYouth International Party John Froines and Lee Weiner, local Chicago organizers; and Bobby Seale, cofounder of the Black Panther Party.

https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/chicago-seven-1

Now that the history lesson is over…I will move on the the film…..

Netflix’s portrayal of the trial directed by Andrew Sorkin…..the film had an excellent cast…..the major characters of the trial……

If one watches this with the mindset of entertainment then it is excellent….but if one is looking for historic accuracy then it is lacking.

As someone who lived through those turbulent days I was disappointed in the film all together.

Sorkin seeks to tame these radicals, and the anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary politics they represented (not, of course, without differences among them) by recasting them as boosters for liberal reform. The result is not only an inaccurate rendering of the group’s political visions but a tone-deaf affirmation of the American state, and specifically law enforcement, as fundamentally virtuous.

Since I am not the best reviewer on the web….I will let others give you the review this film deserves…..

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/chicago-7-trial-film/

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/aaron-sorkins-inane-history-lesson/

All in all the film was well acted but the character study it portrayed failed.

I recommend this film for entertainment reasons…..if you want historic accuracy then I would, if I were you, pass.

On a side note–I would like to see the same dogged determinism by the government when the leaders of this most recent insurrection against the government when they go to trial and the same sensationalism by the media as well during the trial.

Turn The Page!

To close out the day…..as with my tradition “Trying To Reason With The Hurricane Season by Jimmy Buffet……

War And Peace

I realize that too many of the younger generations do not think much about the classics….but they should for the original is always better than the re-make.

Remember that book that you told yourself you wanted to read and you began it but seldom did you finish it.

Why?

Well it is written by a Russian and they are notorious for being long winded in their writings……and War and Peace is NO different.

In case you are one of those that never quite got to finish the novel…..I offer a short summary….

1 People change. The characters in War and Peace endure extreme experiences, and emerge at the end as quite different people. The miracle of the book is that the Natasha who falls in love with anyone and everyone in the ballrooms of the opening is recognisably the same woman who withdraws from society at the end.

2 There is no hero and no heroine. This is the story of a group of people living within a society. Andrei Bolkonsky is not Tolstoy’s hero, and Natasha is not a romantic heroine. It forgives ideas of heroism, most beautifully in the last words any character speaks in the book, as Andrei’s son thinks of his father at the end of the First Epilogue. It understands and sympathises with those ideas but it excuses itself from repeating them. The book will try to understand why people behave as they do, and it may make the best case possible for some strange actions, but it won’t make apologies for anyone and won’t pass a final judgment. Don’t expect to be able to predict what happens. Even the characters won’t be able to explain why they do what they do, perhaps until weeks or months later. The subject of the book is the wildness of possibility, and how the world can be changed by one woman saying, for no particular reason that she can explain, “I have had so little happiness in my life.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/22/war-and-peace-guide-philip-hensher

I Seldom do film reviews and I recently watched the 1950s adaptation of the book starring Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn…..

The trailer……

This book reminds me of a Hemingway novel……personal conflict and love and death and love again…..

The acting was I remembered it….great.

I admit that I have not seen some of the newer versions of this novel…so I cannot make comparisons….but I do not think that anyone could do a better job that Audrey Hepburn as Natasha Rostova….

It is a shame that most of the stars of this film are no longer with us…….

To be fair these are the trailers from several versions of War and Peace…..

First from 2007 BBC…

Then there is the re-make in 1966……

The film’s larger-than-life legend begins in 1961, when Bondarchuk commandeered the largest budget the USSR had ever seen for a single motion picture. Released in four parts in 1966 and 1967, it was a colossal success in its original homeland run as well as a worldwide sensation, and playing as a four-night special on ABC in 1972 after having set a new record for highest ticket cost — as steep as $7.50, the equivalent of dropping $56.52 on a ticket today, and a big step up from the $1.20 rate in place at the time — during theatrical screenings of an abridged six-hour edit in the US. The 1966 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film was just the feather in its cap — er, shako.

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/2/15/18223285/war-and-peace-sergei-bondarchuk-adaptation-1966

Those are the two others that I am aware of….I shall let you do the comparisons.

If you have not viewed the 1956 version then I suggest you do so you will not be disappointed.

“lego ergo scribo”

The Manchurian Candidate

Cooler weather has once again come to town,,,,,My Saturday and my Better Half and I will settle in and watch the Manchurian Candidate…..a great way to spend Saturday……speaking of the Manchurian Candidate…..

One of my favorite movies of all time is the Manchurian Candidate….the 1960s original not the remake with Denzel…..the re-make just did not have the same impact as the original…..these are a couple of trailers form the original….

What a fanciful movie…..a little trip into fantasy right?

Maybe no so much……..

An influential politician who’s actually an enemy mole, turned while a prisoner of war, and now subverting America … It’s the subject of Homeland, the hit cable series. Ironically, the program’s second season on Showtime unfolds exactly 50 years after a classic movie first named its theme.

The Manchurian Candidate premiered in October 1962. Since then the specific strain of ideological corruption has mutated, from communism to violent Jihadism, but the public remains fascinated with the concept of brainwashing – of Americans returning from captivity secretly beholden to foreign enemies. Now U.S. government records, many declassified after decades of secrecy, are finally revealing the real story behind the enduring meme.

https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2012/10/30/manchurian_candidate_was_no_mere_fiction.html

Fiction imitates Life……

Ain’t history grand?

Coolness and the garden make for a great afternoon…..a little wine, cheese, nuts and fruit…….and my buddy Mo…..

Sympathy For The Devil

I could post a link to the Rolling Stones but why bother….I am sure that 80 year rockers will try one more concert tour…..this post is about a movie that is being released as I type…..Operation Finale.

Fifteen years after the end of World War II, Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad and security agency Shin Bet – led by the tireless and heroic agent Peter Malkin (Isaac) – launched a daring top-secret raid to capture the notorious Eichmann (Kingsley), who had been reported dead in the chaos following Nazi Germany’s collapse but was, in fact, living and working in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina under an assumed identity along with his wife and two sons. Monitoring his daily routine, Malkin and his operatives plot and execute the abduction under the cover of darkness just a few feet from Eichmann’s home. Determined to sneak him out of Argentina to stand trial in Israel, Malkin and Eichmann engage in an intense and gripping game of cat-and-mouse.

Perfect timing for a movie to gain sympathy for Israel…..the news has been biting Israel in the ass for a month or so….with the protests in Gaza and all the deaths of civilians by Israeli troops and then the Zionist pricks passed a  Jewish state law….making anyone no Jewish as not a citizen…that includes Christians as well as Muslims…..

As usual Hollywood is helping Israel play the victim card in response to their aggression against civilians……and trying to help spread the lie that Israel is a democracy and a victim….maybe in theory but in action they are NO better than the Nazis they hunted…..

Please do not get me wrong….yes the Jews were treated horribly and deserve all sympathy for those days……I question the timing of this release…t..as with all releases based on this point in history.

Israel needs all the help Hollywood can muster for their atrocities of killing civilians and stealing land, destroying crops and just acting like the thugs they are…..

I have questioned Israel actions in the last 40 years and just now the world is seeing what I saw in the 70’s and we can thank social media for most of the information.

They will get NO sympathy from me.  Period!

“1984”

During the inaugural speech I watched the 1984 production of Orwell’s “1984” starring Richard Burton….I had forgotten how excellent the movie was since the last time I watched….

I read the book about a thousand years ago….but since the electronic explosion books seem to be read less and heard more…an audiobook…..so if you would like to listen to “1984” then this will help…..

But if you have never seen the 1984 version of “1984” and have about an hour and half then I suggest that you take the opportunity to do so…..

There is something all too familiar about all this……I just cannot put my finger on what it is exactly……

Have a great Saturday and enjoy your day to the fullest….chuq