Politically speaking the great Charlie Chaplin was a left-leaning humanitarian and a self-described peacemonger who became entangled in the raw end of the anti-Communist fervor of the late 1940s, and out of this conflict he eventually left this country for Switzerland — an exile given the boot.
In ’47 Chaplin angrily denounced the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in response Representative John E. Rankin, who helped establish HUAC, declared in June 1947 that Chaplin’s “very life in Hollywood is detrimental to the moral fabric of America…[if he is deported] his loathsome pictures can be kept from before the eyes of the American youth…he should be deported and gotten rid of at once.”
Chaplin’s delivery of the final speech in The Great Dictator (’40) is too agitated, too shrill. He should have dialed it down a couple of notches. And yet portions of the speech are a close match with a certain John Lennon song that some are saying should replace Francis Scott Key‘s “The Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem.
Rick Worley‘s “The Rise and Fail of Ronan Farrow“, posted on 7.20.20 and introduced by Robert Weide, punctures several holes in the obstinate Farrow narrative that insists Woody Allen is guilty of having molested Dylan Farrow in August 1992.
“The truth, of course is that Allen has been asked these tough questions endlessly for 28 years. Reporters still ask them constantly, and now he’s written a memoir, including a section that provides his answer in forensic detail.
“Ronan Farrow, on the other hand, has been very careful to never put himself in situations where he would be asked questions he didn’t want to answer, and until recently, nobody wanted to ask them. I’m wondering how long it will be until Ronan gets asked some ‘tough questions’ where his usual vague answers won’t cut it.
“Once people see that much of the animosity toward Woody Allen is built on this very same house of cards and shoddy reporting, will they maybe start to ask themselves the tough question of why they were so willing to assume Allen was guilty when all the evidence pointed to the contrary?”
Why would I want to watch Outpost in Malaya (aka The Planter’s Wife)? Because I mentioned it 12 and 1/2 years ago, sight unseen, after finding a color photo of the old Leows’ State marquee while this 1952 Ken Annakin film was playing there. In the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to at least sample parts of it.
Posted on 12.6.07: “I accept that I’ll probably never see Outpost in Malaya, a Jack Hawkins-Claudette Colbert adventure flick with rubber plants, Communist insurgents, elephants, a cobra and a mongoose. It’s not on DVD, was never issued on VHS and hasn’t even aired on TCM or TNT. But if I hadn’t wandered across this shot of 1952 Times Square, I never would have even heard of this Ken Annakin film. And to think that people lined up to see it, bought popcorn and everything.”
That was then, this is now. A year or two ago a 480p version began streaming on Amazon, and about two weeks ago it appeared for free on YouTube. I watched the very beginning this morning and was shocked to discover it’s in black and white.
All this time I’d presumed it had been shot in glorious color. The exotic backdrop obviously required it. A year earlier John Huston‘s The African Queen had been location-filmed in Technicolor, and in ’52 John Ford‘s Mogambo (which opened on 10.9.53) was captured in Kenya the same way. Alas, the Outpost in Malaya producers (Pinnacle Productions) couldn’t manage the cost. Here’s Bosley Crowther’s 11.27.52 review.
By the way: Malaysia was subject to the British Empire from the 18th Century onward. Peninsular Malaysia was unified as the Malayan Union in 1946. Malaya was restructured as the Federation of Malaya in 1948 and achieved independence on 8.31.57. Malaya united with North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore on 16 September 1963 to become Malaysia. In 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation.”
The trailer strongly suggests that Marjane Satrapi‘s Radioactive (Amazon Prime, 7.24) is an instructive sanctification thang, the subject being twice-Nobel Prize-winning radiation pioneer Marie Curie (Rosamund Pike). You can smell the determination to pay tribute to a great, independent-minded woman who wasn’t sufficiently respected by the male establishment, etc. And if that doesn’t scare you off, the fact that Radioactive was written by the guy who wrote the depressingly on-the-nose screenplay for The Aeronauts should at least give you pause.
“Radioactive gives the by-the-numbers biopic treatment to the great Marie Curie (Rosamund Pike). The film flits through the defining moments in her life: meeting her husband and lifelong research partner Pierre (Sam Riley), discovering the elements polonium and radium, two children and two Nobel prizes, the tragic loss of her spouse to a trampling horse, and her scandalous affair with her other colleague Paul Langevin (Aneurin Barnard)
“All the while, both Curie and the film remain firmly committed to the cause of scientific advancement, which we know because she says so several times over the course of the script. It’s as if a string hangs off of the back of Pike’s spine, and when a key grip offscreen pulls it, she recites one of a handful of inspirational catchphrases.
“Satrapi, a thrilling talent when she brought her graphic novel Persepolis to the screen, explicitly and aggressively champions the virtue of being smart, then treats her audience like they haven’t got two functioning brain cells to rub together.
“This is a film that, in Dewey Cox-ian fashion, believes the audience can’t identify a historical figure until somebody says their complete name out loud. This is a film that decides we must actually watch a random child create an atomic model to understand that Curie left a lasting legacy. This is a film that forces Curie to make hilariously foreboding statements about the possibility of her advances in radiation being co-opted for unsavory ends, then flashes forward to the atomic bomb melting the happy citizens of Hiroshima to make sure everyone gets the point.
“Is Satrapi worried that the viewer isn’t aware of the devastation in the Japanese theater, or just that they don’t realize that it was sad? Either way, the admiration for a woman who knew so much about so much clashes with the unspoken assumption that the audience knows absolutely nothing about anything.”
The general consensus is that Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost is still the top-streaming movie after three weeks of exposure. If you go by iTunes and Google Play rankings, that is, as reported by Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson.
On the other hand FandangoNow says that Trolls: World Tour was the #1 flick last weekend, followed by The Outpost. The Numbers also has Lurie’s film behind Trolls.
Mendelson: “The Outpost is technically the top movie on iTunes, while Google Play seems to [also] give the advantage to The Outpost.
“Over at Netflix NFLX +1.9%, it looks like a day-to-day battle between The Old Guard (which is allegedly on track to nab 74 million viewers in its first month) and Fatal Affair. The Charlize Theron comic book superhero movie is allegedly topping worldwide, while the 90s throwback thriller starring Nia Long and Omar Epps has been #1 since premiering on Thursday.”
(l. to r.) Caleb Landry Jones, Rod Lurie, Scott Eastwood during filming of The Outpost.
Speaker Pelosi to Mika Breszinski on Morning Joe this morning: Orange Plague “will be leaving” the White House “following the 2020 election, whether he knows it or not. There is a process. It has nothing to do with a certain occupant of the White House [who] doesn’t feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there.”
Fumigating is what people do to get rid of insects. Just so we’re clear on that.
“But it’s gonna happen. Either way, he’s goin’. I told you before, we tried everything to help him, you know that. He brought this on himself. And it’s landing on us.” — Joe Pesci in The Irishman, starting ar 1:37.
Initially posted on 7.17 by Babylon Bee, re-posted here with equally satirical HE edits: Martin Luther King has been posthumously cancelled for stating 57 years ago that people of all races should be treated equally and judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
The feeling today, particularly among “1619 Project” advocates, is that MLK was unfortunately blinded by Christian humanitarian instincts, and was therefore unaware of (or in denial about) the fundamentally heinous nature of white Americans, not to mention the fact that the U.S of A. is and was a Nation of Evil that was built upon slavery and is currently maintained and administered by relentless racism.
The basic progressive view is that it’s pointless to encourage nobler, gentler behavior by whites due to their incorrigibly racist attitudes, which are baked in the bone.
It is therefore best to posthumously (if regretfully) cancel Dr. King, as the beliefs espoused during his “I Have A Dream” speech (8.28.63) do not reflect the truth of things as BLM progressives now understand them.
Respect must be paid to the Lincoln Project for the speed in which they assembled this spot last weekend. The first reports of the Department of Home Security goon squads in Portland, allegedly activated by Trump-Barr over frustration with what they regarded as half-measures by local law enforcement, surfaced late on Friday, 7.17. The spot was up and running by Sunday, 7.19. HE counter-opinion: I still say it’s tedious and mystifying for street demonstrations to continue day after day in Portland (and more recently in Seattle). Do Portland demonstrators feel that their point hasn’t been made after 54 days of non-stop street action?
Warner Bros. hasn’t once again bumped the release date for Chris Nolan‘s Tenet — it’s taken the allegedly mind-blowing, time-game thriller off the release calendar entirely.
Rather than shift the release for a third time (the previous dates were 7.17 and then 8.12) WB distribution is basically saying “this is infuriating and borderline ridiculous…we don’t know when we can open Nolan’s brilliant film but we’re also getting tired of setting new dates only to see them fall by the wayside. This country has become an international joke as far as battling COVD-19 is concerned, but at least we can open it in Europe before too long.”
When will Tenet open domestically? Sometime in mid to late October or more likely November? Sometime before 12.31.20? “We will share a new 2020 release date imminently for Tenet,” WB chairman Toby Emmerich said in a statement.
Things couldn’t be much worse for moviegoers and U.S. exhibitors in particular, already cut off at the knees by the pandemic and recently praying for late summer re-openings. But arrogant under-40 asshats (along with southerners and rural bumblefucks nationwide) said “no” by continuing to party at bars and cafes and spreading COVID-19 willy nilly.
Exhibitors are dying and the country’s economy is suspended in a medically induced coma, and these guys are socializing like there’s no tomorrow…could their behavior be any more loathsome or despicable?
Those who want to see Tenet sooner rather than later might want to fly to Europe, as it seems likely to open there first. “We are not treating Tenet like a traditional global day-and-date release, and our upcoming marketing and distribution plans will reflect that,” Emmerich explained.
“Per HE commenters The Band and JBM, Drago, SaveFarris, Hardcore Henry and Arpin Lusene are really making your website toxic. You need to ban half a dozen of the worst asshats to restore some fresh air to the site. Time for them to go. This is important. Hardcore recently said he ‘wasn’t getting any pussy.’ Your female readers are losing their lunch. DO SOMETHING.” — Producerpally.
