Sic Semper Tyrannis

Rob Reiner's Shock and Awe--Not So Much by Publius Tacitus

Last night (Monday the 11th) at the Newseum in Washington, DC, Rob Reiner screened his new film, Shock and Awe. Hard to believe that 15 years have passed since George W. Bush launched an unnecessary war in Iraq. During the prelude to that war, Knight Ridder was a lone voice in the media herd that refused to swallow the propaganda elixir brewed and served by the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA. Specifically, the movie is supposed to tell the story of Editor John Wolcott and his reporters, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, who spent almost two years as pariahs in the journalism community because they reported that there were no facts to back up the claim that Iraq had WMDs. Rob Reiner's new movie (it will hit theaters next month), attempts to tell this story. Sadly, he fails.

I was tempted to title this review, SHOCKINGLY AWFUL. But that would be unfair. The movie is not dreadful. Just really disappointing. A more accurate title would be, BANAL and MEDIOCRE. Although the movie is stocked with a talented cast--Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Tommy Lee Jones and Rob Reiner--and the actors do a fine job given the material they have to work with, the story is fragmented and superficial. The problem starts with the script. It lacks identity and focus. 

The movie opens with a paraplegic black Army private wheeling himself into a Congressional hearing where he then testifies before a stereotypical congressional committee. It is a few years since Bush went to war in Iraq and the soldier, rather than read his testimony, decides to  ask the committee members a blunt question--why the hell did we go to war in Iraq. Cue the flashback.

It is now September 11, 2001 and we are introduced to reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel. The Al Qaeda attack on America lit the fuse on an 18 month time bomb that ultimately exploded in Iraq. We still do not know why George W Bush and his band of malevolent neocons decided that Saddam Hussein should be taken down. Maybe some really believed that Saddam and Bin Laden were in cahoots. Perhaps some knew that was just a pretext for getting rid of Saddam as a stepping stone to creating a path for democracy in the Levant. Reiner's movie does not answer this question. 

"Zero Days"

 "Zero Days covers the phenomenon surrounding the Stuxnet computer virus and the development of the malware software known as "Olympic Games.""  wiki on the film

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I watched this yesterday and I urge you all to watch it.  The level of detail concerning the roles of NSA, Cyber Command, the CIA and Israeli Mossad Section 8200 is surprising.  Something that is not well understood by the public are the various roles of these groups in the covert operations world.  In this case the US military originated the idea of a cyber strike when under pressure from Israel and the Bush White House to find an alternative to air attacks on Iran.  Robert Gates when SECDEF decided that because Iran was not included in the AUMF, DoD had no legal authority to conduct an offensive cyber attack on Iran.  For that reason Gates felt that CIA with its legal authority to wage peace time war in covert actions should be the command element in attacks of the Iranian nuclear program.  As a result CIA people would stand behind the operators at NSA/Cyber Command to order each specific attack.

Fascinating.  pl 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Days

A Somewhat Different Take on American Sniper

Adam L. Silverman

This morning, just before I saw COL Lang's post about American Sniper, I read Matt Taibbi's commentary at Rolling Stone. Taibbi has a very interesting and insightful take into why the movie has been so popular. It relates back to what a lot of people - analysts, commentators, and just informed regular citizens -  have identified as a problem in our ongoing experiment in self-government. American Sniper, like the war movies that came out in the years after the Vietnam War, allows Americans off the hook. As a result there is no need for deep politial or ideological self examination. There is also no reason to actually do anything to change the circumstances that allow for poorly conceived and ill advised adventures abroad and the ongoing degradation, at all levels, of self-government at home.

Taibbi writes:

"Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it  would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question."

 

In reference to an actual revuew of the movie, Taibii also writes that "Griggs added, in a review that must make Eastwood swell with pride, that the root of the film's success is that "it's about a real person," and "it's a human story, not a political one." Well done, Clint! You made a movie about mass-bloodshed in Iraq that critics pronounced not political! That's as Hollywood as Hollywood gets."

 

Taibbi saves the best of his unique ability to write with a biting wit for his most important argument about the movie:

"The thing is, it always looks bad when you criticize a soldier for doing what he's told. It's equally dangerous to be seduced by the pathos and drama of the individual solider's experience, because most wars are about something much larger than that, too.

They did this after Vietnam, when America spent decades watching movies like Deer Hunter and First Blood and Coming Home about vets struggling to reassimilate after the madness of the jungles. So we came to think of the "tragedy" of Vietnam as something primarily experienced by our guys, and not by the millions of Indochinese we killed.

That doesn't mean Vietnam Veterans didn't suffer: they did, often terribly. But making entertainment out of their dilemmas helped Americans turn their eyes from their political choices. The movies used the struggles of soldiers as a kind of human shield protecting us from thinking too much about what we'd done in places like Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos.

This is going to start happening now with the War-on-Terror movies. As CNN's Griggs writes, "We're finally ready for a movie about the Iraq War." Meaning: we're ready to be entertained by stories about how hard it was for our guys. And it might have been. But that's not the whole story and never will be.

We'll make movies about the Chris Kyles of the world and argue about whether they were heroes or not. Some were, some weren't. But in public relations as in war, it'll be the soldiers taking the bullets, not the suits in the Beltway who blithely sent them into lethal missions they were never supposed to understand."

Click on over and read the whole thing! And while you're there, if you haven't already, check out his writing on both the financial crisis and the criminal justice system. Make sure to catch his explanation of how turning the commodity markets into a casino helped to hugely inflate the price of gas. And treat yourself to his book and column reviews of Tom Friedman. WARNING: Do NOT eat or drink anything while reading the reviews of Friedman! 

The Gatekeepers

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

Not to horn in on BG Farrell's movie reviews here at SST, but I recently saw a documentary and wanted to bring it to the attention of the SST community.  About two weeks ago I was asked to go with our former USMC senior service rep here at the US Army War College to see the new Israeli documentary The Gatekeepers by Dror Moreh. The Gatekeepers is an oral history of Israel's internal security and intelligence service - Shin Bet.  Moreh's documentary is built around in depth interviews with the last six Shin Bet directors and spans events from the 1960s through to the last several years, combined with archival footage and computer generated reenactments.  In fact the documentary's production was delayed until the most recent former director, Yuval Diskin, retired and could be interviewed for and part of the project.  Moreh was able to get the project going, which features the first public interviews with any of these men, because one of the former directors, Ami Ayalon was willing to be interviewed after being elected to the Knesset from the Labor Party.  It was Ayalon who helped convince his peers to participate.

Moreh's documentary is divided into seven segments and includes such controversial topics as the 300 bus incident, the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, and breaking up the Israeli Jewish extremist attempts to blow up the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. For me one of the most interesting portions of the film was when Yaakov Peri, who ran Shin Bet from 1988 to 1994, referred to Palestinian's who had engaged in attacks on Israel as melkhamim.  Melkhamim is Hebrew for warriors.  All the other former directors referred to Palestinian attackers as terroreest, which, as you can tell, is the transliteration word imported into Hebrew for terrorist.  The documentary was excellent and I cannot recommend it highly enough to the SST community.  If you're interested in counter-terrorism, intelligence, counterintelligence, and/or the Israeli/Palestinian dispute you need to see it if it is in your area. All six of the former directors interviewed demonstrated significant nuance in regards to their assignments, their adversaries, the problems Israel faces, and the politicians they work for.

* Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the United States Army War College.  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Army War College and/or the US Army.

Lincoln: A Brilliant Film with a Disturbing Subtext - Kieran Wanduragala

Barack Obama is said to have drawn much inspiration from Abraham Lincoln and his “Team of Rivals”, to be a close reader of the Doris Kearns Goodwin work by that title, itself a chief source for the Spielberg flick. And a great film it is too, largely thanks to the utterly compelling portrayal of the man by Daniel Day-Lewis.  

The film tells the story of the 13th Amendment’s passage, forever outlawing slavery in the United States - a great moral achievement however you slice it. The stirring emotion one feels when the legislation finally passes, and the prayers of the black men and women onlookers are answered, and as Lincoln himself looks like a crushing weight has been lifted - all mask the central political message of the film: a calculus of executive power according to which the end justifies the means. 

 

"V for Vendetta" - A review by Alan Farrell

V for Vendetta.  Directed by James McTeague.  Written by the Wachovia Brothers (or something, same guys who did all the Matrices, so get ready for heavy—read incomprehensible—indictment of modernity, governmentitude, authoritariness.  “Based,” as they say in the movies, on a comic book by the same guy who did The League of Metrosexual Gentlemen, where Oscar Wilde is an action hero, Captain Nemo a fop, Tom Sawyer a gun-slinger, and Harriet Beecher Stowe (or one of them) a décolleté down to here vampiress… so you know we’re talking high art.  Starring Natalie Portman, who’s lucky to got pouty enough lips to make up for not having any hair most of the flick … annnnnnnd for not having any umph umphs, neither  …nor an umphety umph, poor thing, so if you were hoping for, like, spandex catsuit or shiny latex britches or at least a laced up to here leather jerkin, save your eight bucks; Hugo Weaving, who(m) you never see but who purrs sinisterly out from behind a Phantom-of-the-Opera mask; John Hurt, who hammers just a whisssssssssker too heavily on the Big Brother bit but who’s fetched up with  an appropriately virulent (like “serious,” only seriouser) case of the uglies; Stephen Rea, who(m) you never heard of but who’s about the only likeable presence in this joyless, humorless, and mostly senseless “animation” of a “graphic novel” (kinda like a comic book, except, you know, can leave it on the coffee table).

 

#Persepolis; Renaissance; Waltz with Bashir - Reviews by Alan Farrell

 
Animated Triptych (kinda like a picture in three parts, only--you know--classy): Persepolis; Renaissance; Waltz with Bashir.

The French call it B.D. (pronounced “boo-yah-bayss”) for bande dessinée, that is, not “comic strip” but “drawn strip.” These days it’s anything but comic. The Spanish for their part say “Cimoc,” that is “comic” backwards or stood upon its head, not funny at any rate. The Boc I mean Germans prefer their collocation Bildgeschichte (“picturestoryshamepleasureworldvisiondevelopmentnovel”). Then of course we gots animé, expropriated by the Japanese (translation: “little girls with big gringo eyes and big gringo umph umphs in little gringo Catholic school skirts and maryjanes,” everybody’s dream). Cartouche, carton ( > cartoon). All the familiar mechanics of the comic as we know: the standard box within which the action takes place (case), the thought or speech balloon (bulle), the strip or string of boxes (planche) in linear disposition (left to right, up to down), the movement lines, the tortured perspective, the onomatopoeia (pan! plouf! flatch! baf! vlan! and on and on). All this we take for granted when we see drawn images leap from a page, drawn images flash across a screen. We used to could identify the quality of animation by the number of cels (individual images) per minute and thus distinguish between the glorious Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and the ugly, assembly-line Hanna-Barbera or stiff, bird-like Rankin-Bass stuff of later vintage.

#Anne Hornaday - Movie Reviewer or Polemicist?

 

This film review is "peculiar."  I have not yet seen Reford's opus but it seems to be about the abandonment of due process in the case of the confinement, trial and execution of the team of people who killed Lincoln.  It is, of course, set in the WBS, but not really about the CW.  In this it is somewhat like my novels.

FWIW I think Mary Surratt was "guilty" of having acted as an accomplice before the fact in this killing.  I think the same thing is true of Dr. Mudd.

Redford has made a political movie, one that is preaching about the Bush Administration, Guantanamo, "enemy combatant" status, etc.

Interestingly, this reviewer cannot resist the opportunity presented by the film to focus, not on Redford's sermon, but rather on her dislike for the South and the supposed bias in the American film industry in favor of the Confederacy.  She cites "Gone With the Wind"  "The Birth of a Nation."  Both examples are a bit long in the tooth, but, all right, point taken, in these two examples.  What else?  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-conspirator-and-the-lost-union-cause/2011/04/14/AFhcYjeD_story.html

 

#Correction to "Prisoners of the mountain" review.

 
Correction to Prisoner: A sharp-eyed commentor advises me that the principals (if not principles) in this film are Georgian, not Afghan(stani), the war the Chechen not Afghan(stani). Grateful to be set straight, apparently through Wiki-Whatzis, who knew all along. You might be tempted, now, to say “Chechen, Afghan(stani). Yeah, like there’s a difference…” Sadly, they seem to be butchering each other over there on account of just that difference in particularly unfunny fashion. To this dumbo viewer at any rate, who did not spot the authentic history, the altered setting actually adds yet another asset to the film’s considerable charm: it leaves the issues of war, occupation, race, otherness abstract and divorced from time and place (at least for those ignorant of the precise cultural discriminators) and a yet broader comment on those same issues. A very nearly perfect little movie if not a very nearly perfect little review of it. In a related matter, a correction to my review of Citizen Kane: Marilyn Monroe did not discover radium.  Alan Farrell

"Suckerpunch" A Review by Alan Farrell

 
Suckerpunch. Directed by Zack Snyder. Starring (maybe featuring better): Emily Browning (the one with the bee-sting lips stuffed into the crevasse-seeking spandex outfit) ; Abbie Cornish (the one with the bee-sting lips stuffed into the crevasse-seeking spandex outfit); Vanessa Hudgens (the one with the bee-sting lips stuffed into the crevasse-seeking spandex outfit); Jenna Malone (the one with the bee-sting lips stuffed into the crevasse-seeking spandex outfit); Oscar Isaac ( I think he actually paid them for a part in this one); Carla Gugino (putting up a good fight at 40-something I’m guessing and not to be forgotten for her stark naked walk-on in Sin City, which Snyder did not do but if he didn’t, should have… though based on subsequent would not have altered much); Jon Hamm (over-exposed these days in a spate of second-banana parts); Scott Glenn (Ouch! Somebody left the phonebook out in the rain).

#The Black Swan - A Review by Alan Farrell

 
The Black Swan. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Natalie Portman (degrees of separation: Natalie stars with Jean Reno in The Professional; Jean Reno stars with Vincent Cassell in Crimson Rivers; Vincent Cassell stars with Natalie Portman in The Black Swan); Vincent Cassell; Mila Kunis (the only skin in the thing); Wynona Rider (or Winona Ryder, she spells it both ways… and whoa! …someone left the cake out in the rain); Barbara Hershey (come full circuit from her days as “Barbara Seagull” nursing her son, Free, on the set of Boxcar Bertha); Barbra Streisand as the Nutcracker (or is that a different ballet? …yeah, like they’re different!).

#The Beast (DVD) - Alan Farrell

 
The Beast.  Directed by Kevin Reynolds (who directed Robin Hood:  Prince of Thieves and Waterworld, both with Kevin (!) Costner ...annnnnnd who wrote Red Dawn along with John Milius, from whom he doubtless soaked up the obsession with Satellite ordnance, Rooshan nastiness, and guyness).  Starring George Dzundza (whose family was doubtless happy to see him playing a Rooshan), Jason Patric (now where’d I put that -k?), Stephen (the other one) Baldwin, and (unbelievably) Steven Bauer as the Afghan.  Based on a play, Nanawatai, allegedly the Afghan word for the “guest-friend” hospitality obligation to which even the barbarous must cede.

 

#9th Company (DVD) - Alan Farrell

9th Company.  Directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk (son, you’ll be happy to learn, of “renowned director” Sergei Bondarchuk… yeah, sure:  name two of his films …ready, go!).  Starring:  Bunch of Rooshans, apparently drawn from whole spectrum of Asian racial palette much like the World War II squad of undying fame:  Zingari, Sacco, Vanzetti, Prinzip, Van Der Lube, Barrow, Parker, Gacy, Dahmer, Berkowitz, Dillinger, Sheen.

We’ve grown weary—some of us, at least—of the appeal by blow-dried journalists on the teevee comparing our morass (they actually found another word for “quagmire”) in Afghanistan, Cesspool of to our morass in Vietnam, Republic of.  Seems among the lessons we did not learn is that other people watch our teevee, too.  The Pentagon, meanwhile, has resurrected the French morass (“merdier,” in the original) in Algeria as the model for counterinsurgency, COIN in Pentagonspeak, though COIT(us) might be better acro, and taken to showing Gillo Pontecorvo’s Bataille d’Alger (frequently mistranslated as “The Battle of Algiers”) to deploying officers… or thinkers …sometimes both (urf!  urf!).   Anyhow.  Whether the morass in Vietnam or the morass in Algeria turn out to be the most appropriate paradigm (kinda like an example but next-level cooler)  remains a question for the over-the-horizon guys.  Still, this unregenerate SP/4 wonders if maybe the morass in Afghanistan might not be a more plausible metaphor for the morass in Afghanistan.  Just a thought.

 

"The Good Shepherd" A Review

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by Alan Farrell

"The Black Dahlia" - A Movie Review

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Alan Farrell

"The Guardian" - A Movie Review

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Alan Farrell

"The Departed" - a Movie Review

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Alan Farrell

"Flags of Our Fathers" - A Movie Review

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Alan Farrell

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I am out of town and Alan has agreed to entertain you for a few days.

PL

"Crank" - A Review

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Alan Farrell

"Hollywoodland" a Review

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Alan Farrell

Pirates Part 2 - Farrell

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General Farrell's review.

"Scoop" a movie review

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By Alan Farrell

"Open Range" a movie review

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"Open Range" a movie review by Brigadier General Alan Farrell.

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Personally, I think any film directed by Costner is bound to be a loser.  "Dances With Wolves" was one of the most sentimental pieces of clap-trap I have had the displeasure to view.  "Blazing Saddles" with its Yiddish speaking Indians seemed a more likely depiction of the Plains Indians.

And then there was the depiction by the Hollywood nitwits of the officers and men of the 2nd US Cavalry Regiment.  Costner is lucky that those fellows are all long gone.

You want to see a Western?  Go watch the director's cut of "The Wild Bunch."

Pat Lang

"The Devil Wears Prada" a Review

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A Review by Alan Farrell

Eric suggested Adrienne Barbeau as an alternative for Streep.

"Prairie Home Companion" a Review

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by Alan Farrell

"The Break-Up" Alan Farrell

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Alan Farrell

"X-Men the Last Stand" Farrell

OK.  Take your pick of formats.  Farell rides again.

 

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Mission Impossible III - Farell

Alan Farrell says it sucks, but he says it so well.

Pat Lang

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"Inside Man" Alan Farrell

Alan Farrell is one of the few people I know anymore who actually knows a lot of Latin and Greek as well.  "Beati pauperes spiritu." This is from this movie review.  It applies neatly in the context of the piece but even more so to the race of Wal-Mart managers now running the US Government.  Hmm.  Maybe this all comes together somehow.

Pat Lang

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BG Alan Farrell.

"The World's Fastest Indian" A Review

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by Alan Farrell

Review of "The Pink Panther"

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Alan Farrell

Review of "Maid in Manhattan"

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Review by Alan Farrell

Review of "King Kong"

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Alan Farrell

Might have been a better flic with the sex scenes. Actually, the monkey should stop by Ben Benson's on 52nd street and forget about the rest.

Pat Lang

"Brokeback Mountain" a Review

"what inspired Annie maybe since this is after all a woman’s vision not a man’s"  Farrell

"the scary menace of the guy culture"  Farrell

I haven't seen this movie yet, but now I am sure I will make the effort.  A lot of women don't understand men any better than men understand women.   Over the decades I have heard women say the most amazing things about men.  I had a secretary once who thought that any indication of affection between men must mean that they were gay.  Another woman colleague thought  that the lack of physical modesty in American soldiers meant that they were participants in a "homosexualizing" culture.

The man in the foreground in the picture is an American.  The one in the back is a Montagnard of the Malayo-Polynesian group.  I was introduced to one such who looked me in the eye and said, "You die, me die." I never felt like I wanted to kiss him, but.....

This might be a better movie without the "three minutes" of thrashing about.  It might then actually say something real about men and their feelings for each other.  I'll let you know after I see it.

Pat Lang

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Alan Farrell

Cinema (Ptui!) by AF

Ten Memorable Moments from the Movies

10. Grace Kelly, décolletée down to here and recumbent on a sofa the size of your porch, invites Cary Grant in the dim light of that Monte Carlo penthouse, to “look at these.” “Did you ever want anything any more in your life?” she purrs. Cary Grant, impenetrable as ever, adverts gentlemanly to her string of pearls, but behind him a roman candle goes spurrrrrrrt in the night sky. To Catch a Thief.

9. Bad guy goes to kick Hondo Lane’s dog, Sam, flaked out in walkway of cavalry commandant’s tent. “I’ll be hanged if I’ll go out of my way for any cur dog,” he says. Click of hammer drawn back on a Winchester ’92. John Wayne at his fortyish, virilest, best. He will shoot you, par’ner. “Man oughta do what he thinks best,” he rasps, in a whisper dark with menace. Guy weenies out and walks around. Hondo swings a boot half-heartedly at his dog: “Quit blockin’ the door.” Hondo.

8. In a rain-pelted back alley off a noisy New Yawk avenue, Holly Golightly and Varcek, Paul hunt for Cat. Soaked and soul-weary, Holly finally admits she’s not Holly, embraces Paul, sheds Illusion, finds Love, finds Purpose… finds Cat. Mooooooo-ooon river, wi-i-i-i-i-i-i-der than a mi-i-i-i-i-i-i-ile… Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Note: When the guys come over for beer, better tuck this one in the desk drawer or footlocker or something… or at least wedge it in between Magnificent Seven and Dirty Dozen)

Movie Review - "Aeon Flux"

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Alan Farrell

Movie Review "Walk The Line"

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"Walk The Line"  Alan Farrell

"The Chronicles of Narnia" - A Movie Review

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Alan Farrell

"Sin City" Movie Review

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Alan Farrell - A Movie review

"The Kingdom of Heaven" - Farrell

I like this movie.  I have studied the period of the crusades for a long time.  The film has a number of ahistorical aspects, but Ridley Scott is a great director and I think he "pulls it off."

The negatives:

The film gives the impression that the Kingdom of Jerusalem pretty much consisted of Jerusalem.  In fact, it reached from Ghaza to Beirut and from the Mediterranean to the desert in Trans-Jordan.

The film gives the impression that the kingdom ended with the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 AD.  In fact, the kingdom revived and lasted nearly a hundred more years.

The Templars were nothing like their image in the film.  they were quite sophisticated in their relations with Muslims.  A Muslim chronicler of the time wrote that during his visits to Jerusalem he stayed at their guest house and they made a place in one of their churches for him to pray.  Guy de Lusignan and Reynald de Chatillon had nothing to do with the Templars.  The Templars were exactly like the Hospitallers who were portrayed in a favorable light in the film.

Saladin's behavior at Jerusalem was admirable, but on other fields, (Acre and Hittin) he killed thousands of prisoners.

The positives: 

A realistic portrayal of the actual nature of Muslim/Christian relations in the Latin kingdom in the time of Baldwin the IV.

A richness of detail in costuming and atmosphere which brings the period to life.

A history lesson.  Many need it.

Pat Lang

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"Jarhead" A Movie Review - Farrell

Alan Farrell's review of the film.

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"The Motorcycle Diaries" Movie Review

I may well have know Alan's captain.  I was in the 8th SFGA at the right time.

Pat Lang

This is Alan Farrell's "take" on the Guevara film

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Movie Review - Farrell "Broken Flowers"

"Broken Flowers" a review by Alan Farrell.

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"Sideways" - A Movie Review

This was a film in which I managed to develop some passing interest because it is set in the Santa Ynez Valley region of central California.  My parents lived there in retirement, and Buellton, "Anderson's Pea Soup Restaurant," Casmalia, "The Hitching Post," (world's greatest cowby hang-out/with steaks) Solvang, etc., are all very familiar to me.

There is also a lot of "doodaa" about relationships, angst, etc., but Alan gets into that with his usual "'90s guy" sensitivity.

Here is is Alan Farrell's review:

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"Alexander" - Alan Farrell

I saw this flic on the TV a while back.  Stone has the ability to make things look real even as you know that he is a bit of a lunatic.

Pat Lang

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"The Life Aquatic" - Movie Review

I am a Bill Murray fan and I missed this one in the theaters but am still hoping to see it on the tube.  For those who share this hope we have here Alan Farrell's broodings on the film.

Pat Lang

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Movie Review - "The 40 Year Old Virgin"

"Well, then, natch, we run Andy through  a series of mis-matches with implausible young women.  Predictable bits turning on contraceptive devices, toilet sex, personal hygiene, clumsiness, humiliation, despair… you know, all the real laughs in a fella’s life.  Happily, though, despite the maladroit efforts his buds subject him to—well-intended, we’re asked to believe, as mortification bursts upon mortification into the poor little schmuck’s circumscribed world of silence and solitude—in course, Andy finds a girl of his own, right across the street in some kind of e-sales business now that she’s dee-vorced:  sweet, gorgeous, brainy high cheekbones, pouty lips, tight jeans entrepreneuse… easy to see why some guy wanted shut of her…  With this and that and after an appalling contretemps ( a lot like “waste of time,” but—you know—classy!), we break—so to speak—the spell—so to speak—and it’s done:  virtue is served as virtue is swerved.  “Uxoriousness,” sniffed Matthew Arnold or Cardinal Newman or one of them, leads to the Fall of Man.  Rocky, though, knew the real secret:  “Women weaken legs.”"

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Alan Farrell

"The March of the Penguins"

SST2005 has in hand several reviews of recent and/or classical films.  These were reviewed by Alan Farrell who resides at Lexington in the Shenandoh Valley of Virgina.  Professor Farrell is a college teacher of French (ptui!) (That was a joke - see review)  Pat Lang

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