Category: Movies

Actors in blackface

Hidden FiguresI am more than a trifle curious about a movie I have heard about but not seen, called Hidden Figures. The plot is easily seen to be contrived by the movie’s closing. There we learn that mathematician Katherine Johnson did some of the calculations that got astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon and back.  Since neither man left this planet to set foot in that one, no calculating (of the mathematical variety) was needed. Therefore, shall we just set the movie aside?

I would do so but there is another facet to it of interest … a delicate subject which needs cautious introduction, that of the dignity of African-Americans, allowing them to partake in the rich hoaxes visited upon us along with the wealthy landed gentry who own us and our world. Why not deal them into the game too?

This post is accompanied by a delicate fuse and a bomb that can easily go off in your face. Treat it with caution. Comment at your own risk.

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My Sunday morning … wasted efforts and ramblings

Martin Sheen flipped

A reader suggested that I take a look at Charlie Sheen as being a Matt Damon Batch member, and I didn’t have to look long. There are certain characteristics that immediately jump out at me, among them the part on the left side of the head, the square jaw, and what has to be considered ruggedly handsome features of leading man quality.

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Peculiar Plots – The Great Escape

Before I return to the earlier Peculiar Plots, I stumbled upon this story, that deserves being part of the series. Again, the plot is so ridiculously contradictory, that it baffles people actually believe these kinds of plots. The plot holes are so deep and pervasive, the story could just be called a talking Swiss cheese.

The Stalag Luft III allegedly was a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp of Nazi Germany in the extreme east of the Altreich (the borders of Germany pre-WWII), in present-day Poland. It is said there were “10,949” prisoners (unknown if this is a cumulative number or the maximum at one moment) consisting of British RAF and US American USAF and other nationality prisoners. The two compounds of the camp are said to have been guarded by 800 Nazi officers.

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The Italian Stallion grew up in hell’s kitchen, where he excelled at polo

Stallone StallionNeeding to get away from the Perón‘s (there is one more segment to follow with another startling discovery from Richard Juckes), I decided to do something quick and dirty. Somewhere I saw a photo of Sylvester Stallone playing polo. That’s not a big deal, as the man is very athletic. But it is incongruent. Stallone is said to be from Hell’s Kitchen and a broken home one who did odd jobs like cleaing animal cages to make his living as a youth. Polo is a difficult sport that takes years of practice to be good. Stallone has described it as like playing golf during an earthquake.

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Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions …

A few years back I was alive with the excitement of a discovery that changed my outlook, that “Paul McCartney” was actually two men, a set of twins. Once I got a thorough immersion in their faces, they became easily to tell apart, so that I can easily see that today’s Paul McCartney is actually “Mike,” though we do not have the luxury of knowing their real names.

That information in tow, I put together a (in retrospect, sloppy) blog post on the matter, and submitted it to Miles Mathis. He rejected it as not up to standards, which I easily accepted, as I was indeed a newbie. At a certain point in the succeeding conversation he suggested one flaw in my writing: “You make too many assumptions.”

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Grizzly deaths

Comment

Treadwell wavingI was not prepared to accept this comment from XE on first reading. It sat uncomfortably even as I know I can be fooled, and have been time and again.

I watched the movie Grizzly Man in 2005, and we met Timothy Treadwell at a lecture in either Bozeman or Billings, Montana. That created personal interest. What I wrote before was the result of twelve-year-old memories.

Back then I did not watch movies with a discerning eye. I still thought jets flew through  buildings like a knife through butter.  I thought that elections were real, that news was essentially a (distorted) reflection of reality, and that a movie labeled “documentary” by its makers would be an honest enterprise.

I had to watch the movie again, and did yesterday afternoon.

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JasonBoring

Back many years ago I used to go to our local library looking for something new and interesting. I would go through the stacks looking for books that had many copies, thinking that popular meant good. I’m no literary critic, but in that manner, I discovered Robert Ludlum, and gobbled up everything he wrote. If not good, at least he was enjoyable. He had a sense of authenticity about him, and his characters, while formulaic, were not the typical American-good-everyone-else-bad type. Anyone could be a villain, duplicity was all about, and power was always hidden in the shadows.

Ludlum died having written perhaps half of his final book, and other authors took over. I could tell, reading that last book, exactly where he passed on. The writing voice changed, the characters became cardboard cutouts.

Robert Ludlum is now a trademark, and the books are written by a committee named “Robert van Lustbader.” I’ve not read another since.

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Writers, ghosts and spooks

Ludlum
Ludlum

Back in the 1980s, hungry for fresh reading material, I wandered up and down the fiction aisles at our local library looking for books that had multiple copies on hand. These I knew would be popular, and so worth a look. In this manner I came across Robert Ludlum. I enjoyed his work, and read every one of his books. I was impressed that his heroes and villains could be of any nationality. Americans were not singled out as good guys, which was a nice relief from the constant barrage of patriotism and jingoism we get in the espionage/thriller mode.

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Great moments in cinema

The line “Mongo only pawn…” was written by Richard Pryor, who was originally cast to be the black sheriff in Mel Brooks’ classic, Blazing Saddles. I watch the movie when I need a lift. Good hard laughter is a sleep aid.

The studio overrode Brooks in casting, and the part of Bart, the sheriff, went to Cleavon Little, who did a creditable job.

But we’ll never know what we missed had Pryor gotten the part.