My heart goes out to DVD Beaver‘s Gary W. Tooze, who can’t even pay his heating bill. The world can be a cold (i.e., heartless) and brutal place, but the bell began tolling on physical media big-time six or seven years ago. I’m stunned that Studio Canal, Warner Archive, Network and Shout! Factory won’t even send Tooze review copies of their Blurays. DVD Beaver has been a necessary home-video pit stop for a long, long time. What kind of people are running these outfits?
Yes, Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz‘s The Peanut Butter Falcon, a Down Syndrome buddy dramedy, got rave notices when it opened a couple of months ago. And yes, it has the right kind of cast for an indie, Mud-like venture of this sort — Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson, John Hawkes, Bruce Dern, Jon Bernthal, Thomas Haden Church. I plan to watch within two or three days, or certainly by the weekend. It begins streaming on 11.5. My bad, but I’ll soon make amends.
As I understand this latest development, Donald Trump and his attorneys have decided to stonewall any and all attempts from House Democrats to obtain pertinent testimony or documents in their ongoing impeachment inquiry. Basically a blanket “eff you” posture. This in itself would and should add another article of impeachment along with the “get the Bidens” Ukraine whistleblower thing.
The bottom line (and please inform if I’m missing something) is that Adam Schiff and other pro-impeachment House Democrats don’t have the power or the cojones to force Trump to do anything. They’ll strongly protest, of course, and will eventually vote for impeachment, but we all know the drill about the Republican-dominated Senate being all but certain to vote it down.
Excerpt: “Trump administration lawyers and aides have spent days puzzling over how to respond to the impeachment inquiry, and [now this] abrupt move suggests that the president’s team has calculated that he is better off risking the House’s ire — and even an impeachment article focused on the obstruction — than setting a precedent for cooperation with an investigation they have strenuously argued is illegitimate.
“The strategy, if it holds, carries substantial risk to the White House. Privately, some Republicans had urged the White House to allow witnesses…to appear, in order to deflate Democratic accusations of a cover-up and offer a public rationale for the president’s actions toward Ukraine. Now, some Republicans worry, Democrats have more fodder to argue publicly that Mr. Trump has something to hide.”
I’m more of a Mel’s Drive-In type, certainly alongside alternate options like Middleburg’s Red Fox tavern. I bought this little pin on the spot a few minutes ago. Mel’s is plain and beautiful with a perfect indoor climate on hot days, and I adore the absence of tasting menus. On the other hand I’ve been in love with Pier Luigi in Rome since my first visit there in ‘01. It’s a little complicated.
Robert Downey, Jr.: “It is this very large, multi-head hydra at this point. And according to [Martin] Scorsese, it’s not cinema — gotta take a look at that. And by the way, there’s a lot to be said for how these genre movies [have] degraded the art form of cinema…and you come in like a stomping beast and eliminate the competition in such a demonstrative way, it’s phenomenal. ”
Yes, elbowing aside the proverbial Scorsese brand of cinema has been phenomenal — he’s not wrong about that.