Day: June 9, 2017

Logic Exercise

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For me the biggest aspect of James Comey’s Senate testimony was the return of interest in the infamous pee-pee tape. Mainstream media pushed the pee-pee aside a long time ago, and nobody outside this realm wanted to wish for it for fear of disappointment and despair, but it’s probably real. I think. During the Cannes Film Festival I asked Loveless producer Alexander Rodnyansky, a rich Russian guy who knows people, if he’s at least heard that the pee-pee tape is genuine, and, if so, if there seems to be at least a fighting chance it’ll turn up one of these days. I regret to say Rodnyanksy gave me no encouraging replies, and so doing broke my heart.

Decently Made, Culturally Significant Benchmark Flick

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Late yesterday afternoon I finally saw Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman. I found it stirring from time to time, and, like everyone else, I loved the fresh company of a canny and compassionate female superhero who knows all the angles and pretty much can’t be defeated. Or shouldn’t be. I was thoroughly swimming in Gal Gadot‘s performance as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, and particularly her character’s loathing of war and a nurturing, humanist determination to rid the world of this pestilence.

I wasn’t a fan of the bluish smokey gray color scheme during the World War I section, but I enjoyed some of the humor and the general winking attitude and professional aplomb. It’s a good film of this type as far as it goes. I didn’t mind a lot of it and I loved certain portions. Really. It’s not good enough to become a Best Picture contender in the fall, but I can understand why some who are super-thrilled by the cultural connotations would want to see this happen.


Wonder Woman poster in Paris metro

I also found Wonder Woman depressingly familiar. For this is yet another D.C. Comics superhero flick, and that means submitting to the same old D.C. formula elements — a draggy origin story that goes on too long, a romantic interest (Chris Pine‘s Steve Trevor), a team of colorful allies (Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Lucy Davis), several action set pieces, a pair of formidable but vulnerable villains (Danny Huston‘s Erich Ludendorff, Elena Anaya‘s Doctor Poison) and a super-demonic uber-villain whose cover identity is only revealed at the end.

To watch one of these films is to sit in a cage or a straightjacket and wait for the usual-usual to happen. It’s stifling. You’re watching it and saying to yourself, “I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this shit before and I know what’s coming,” etc.

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At Best, We’re Probably Stuck With Trump Until Sometime In ’19

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From Sasha Abramsky’s 5.18 Nation piece, “Trump Is a Cornered Megalomaniac”: “Yes, it’s a cause for celebration that this miserable, cruel man is on the ropes. [But] men like Donald Trump do not fade gently into their political night.

“Rather, with all nuance sacrificed in pursuit of their senescent need for the spotlight, they scrabble and scratch, lash out and fight. With no self-limiting or self-correcting moral gyroscope, they go down whatever paths they believe offer them the best chance of survival.


There’s something vaguely underwhelming about this N.Y. Daily News cover headline. Not bad, but it doesn’t quite slam it home on some level.

“[This] is a soulless, amoral thug, a con artist now fighting for his life. I do not doubt that, in the end, Trump will be destroyed, that all of those craven, fair-weather friends, those men and women in the GOP whom he embarrassed and humiliated, mocked and deliberately hurt throughout the primary process but who embraced him upon his electoral success, will turn on him as soon as they believe they can so do without destroying their own political careers.

“I do not doubt that he will be derided in the history books as an unmitigated catastrophe for the country. But while those fair-weather friends are still girding for their fight, and the historians are still whetting their pens, Trump, our wounded despot, remains a clear and present danger.”

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