The Big Lebowski [1998)

It’s been a long time.

And a rough time.

Cousin died of a heart attack.

Freaked me the fuck out.

I was sick for two months.

Had to start taking heart medicine.

Double whammy.

Thought I could sleep it off.

Depression.

But, more so, overwhelming fear.

My cousin went at age 43.

Like a thief in the night.

And here I am sittin’ at age 40.

Jesus.

Yes.

Jesus has happened to me.

No, really.

A funny thing happened on the way to my mid-life crisis…

Mental breakdown?

Sure 🙂  Whatever…

Doesn’t matter what you call it.

Just matters that grieving can fuck you up.

Our minds are fragile.

And I am not used to death.

I am not a hardened individual.

I have seen a lot of things.

But I haven’t seen a lot of death.

So my cousin’s death fucked me up.

Bad.

But I’m back.

And I’m getting better than ever.

Which brings us to this film:  The Big Lebowski.

You know, I used to be such a snobby prick.

Probably still am in some people’s eyes.

But believe me:  life has brought me low.

And so I say prayers…all the time…for anyone I’ve ever hurt.

Anyone I’ve ever insulted.

Karma follow us.

Like baggage.

And thus the East-West divide of The Big Lebowski.

Cowboys as Confucians.

My cousin was a cowboy.

Big, Copenhagen-dipping hoss!

I miss that motherfucker.

Shit, I miss Copenhagen 🙂

The city and the tobacco…

Well, at least Denmark.

Never been to København.

My new readers (if I have any) might be wondering, “Does he have to curse so much?”

I’m working on it.

I don’t know how to be me.

I love God.

I believe in Jesus.

And I drop f-bombs everywhere…when I write.

Let me explain:  Pauly Deathwish is a persona.

It’s me, to a certain extent.

But it’s also the badass (failed) musician who toured the world in Young Heart Attack (yes, you read right) and Lost Bayou Ramblers.

I am that guy.

And I am getting back to music.

After 2 1/2 torturous years in business school.

Now I have a BM and an MBA.

[bachelor’s of music is the first one…in case you were wondering]

The Big Lebowski.

Is a masterpiece.

This is The Beatles’ of films.

Everyone loves it.

And should love it.

Film snobs will scoff at it (as I once did).

But I have seen the error of my ways.

Life is too fucking hard to forego a laugh.

I needed this film tonight.

I needed John Goodman.

I needed Jeff Bridges.

And I needed les frères Coen 🙂

Being a snob is a hard habit to break.

Critic is just another word for snob.

And cursing is really hard to quit…once you’re balls-deep.

“What the fuck are you talking about…man?”

Exactly.

The exception that PROVES the rule?

I don’t know.

Etymology has shifted.

Words have taken on their opposite meanings.

Much stranger than dialectics.

Defined by opposition.

No, that is much simpler.

Yin and yang.

But language is slippery.

And, so, do not fear…dear friends.

I am back.

I am scared as shit.

But here I am, writing my ass off.

Trying to bring you some glimmer of REAL in this world of fake.

That is the whole point.

We are searching for those treasures…

We want to keep our best moments.

Cinema.

We love vérité.

I owe to Jesus my salvation.

I am a sinner.

No better than any other man or woman.

I have a long road to walk (God willing)…to get back to the godliness I once knew.

But the point is simple:  all glory to God!

It is not my doing.

I am saved by the grace of the Lord.

This may sound like psychobabble.

That is fine 🙂

Don’t worry about a thing, my friends.

Love one another.  And seek God.

God is love.

I hope to bring you many more film reviews.

I praise God for this opportunity to share my writing with you.

Thank you for reading.

God bless you.

I love you all.

 

-PD

Borat [2006)

This may be the funniest film ever made.

🙂

Really!

An erudite film critic shouldn’t admit such, should they?

But I learned long ago that I must have my own voice.

I can scour the Earth for every film to which Jean-Luc Godard made reference in Histories(s) du cinéma, but I still must contend with my own personal predilections.

We like stuff because it resonates with us.

For me, the realization was with the Romanian New Wave…and ’80s American comedies 🙂

The serious, austere, heartrending, bleak works of the Romanian New Wave have not been canonized by Godard.

Godard, the man, will (sadly) pass away.

Which is a terrible thought to me.

Because he has made his best films [sic] in his “later” years.

But the Romanian New Wave was “mine”.

I discovered it by accident.

And I dug a little deeper.

I would say about 90% of Romanian film resonates with me in a powerful way.

Almost as much as French film resonates with me.

But then I had to come to term with ’80s American comedies.

These were the things on which I grew up 🙂

And there is no greater joy in my film-viewing experience than to see a film which elicits hyperventilating belly laughs 🙂

And so, Borat [directed brilliantly by Larry Charles].

If Sacha Baron Cohen never again makes a good film, he’s still a genius in my book…based solely on this one masterpiece.

No, it is not Citizen Kane.

But it is something.

Something closer to Cohen’s hero Peter Sellers.

And to the bent mind of Andy Kaufman.

Borat Sagdiyev is the epitome of awkward…once he is placed within American society.

He is from the “backwards” land of Kazakhstan.

[of course, there is a great deal of exaggeration in this film…because such caricature can be quite funny]

The special thing about Borat (and Cohen, working through Borat) is that HE INSULTS EVERYBODY 🙂

Borat very much prefigures the Trump Presidency.

Not to mention the young Trump supporters fond of Pepe the Frog 😉

The idea is, “Lighten the fuck up!”

Laugh a little.

Laugh at yourself.

And, naughty naughty, laugh at what you’re not SUPPOSED to laugh at.

The forbidden subjects of laughter make us laugh the heartiest.

Our conscience kicks in.

We feel BAD about making light of such and such.

But it is a reflex:  it just simply is fucking funny 🙂

Nothing is going to take the fun out of this world quicker than those who scrub history, those who censor films, those who impose sensitivity training liberally…

Let’s get nitty-gritty.

Ken Davitian is excellent as Borat’s assistant Azamat Bagatov.

Nothing like having to hairdry the balls of your boss 🙂

[not to mention “back pussy”]

Yes, the humor is SO WRONG.

So bad!

But, as I overheard two days ago at the video story, white guys still reminisce fondly about Eddie Murphy standup routines.

Not exactly my bag, but I get it.

[and black guys, hispanic guys…Eddie Murphy was very much a “taboo” comedian]

Which brings us to Lenny Bruce.

I love Lenny Bruce.

Guy was messed up.

But he was brave.

So the point is, crude humor is maybe not the smartest…maybe not the best influence on society…but we need a little of it, it seems.

Maybe it’s because we’re all sinners?

I don’t know.

I don’t want to get too theological.

If I was a better Christian, perhaps I would repudiate Borat.

But I simply cannot do that.

And so I’ll keep it brief:

God works in mysterious ways.

I may be wrong.

But this film helps my heart with a laughter unlike any other.

 

-PD

Beynelmilel [2006)

Wow 🙂

What a beautiful and perfect movie!

The International.

Yes, we are back to Turkey.

But this film is very much about the passions of youthful revolution.

Is Trump a revolutionary?

Of course.

Was George Washington a revolutionary?

Of course.

But the strain of revolutionary verve in this film is that of communism.

I don’t hate communism.

I don’t hate anything.

But I think some things are not so good.

With communism, I mainly criticize it on an economic level.

Have I read Marx?

Not very much.

But I’ve read enough Debord to get the late-60s version of Marxism.

I would argue that Debord, one of my three favorite writers, was at his best when he was NOT talking about Marxism.

When he goes off on Marxist tangents, he loses me.

I find it boring.

And, as I’ve said, I object to it on economic grounds.

I have a college degree in music.

[which will be very important in reviewing this film]

But I have an advanced degree (above and beyond that) in business.

Am I a genius of economics?  No.

But I questioned.  I was skeptical.  I studied Marx.

And I found the capitalist system to be the best system.

It is, by no means, perfect.

And so why, then, do I like Guy Debord?

Perhaps no one in history hated capitalism more than Guy Debord 🙂

I respect Debord because he was a brilliant social critic.

I do not agree with his economic assumptions.

I do not agree with his Marxist assumptions.

But when it comes to a critique of capitalism (which is the underpinning of globalism), no one has found the flaws like Debord.

No one has completely dismantled the matrix in which we live (the “spectacle”) quite like Debord.

And so his book The Society of the Spectacle is essential reading in my opinion.

At least the first few chapters.

As I said, Debord gets a bit bogged down in Marxism and loses his poetic divining power concomitantly.

But let’s discuss this film.

This is, by far, the best Turkish film I’ve ever seen.

Granted, I think this is only the fourth I’ve ever watched 🙂

But this is really a special movie!

Wikipedia says that it is set in a small town near Adana.

For that, I will say hi to the American soldiers at Incirlik Air Base 🙂

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for representing the United States.  Thank you for your service.  We love you and we pray for your safety and happiness!

It is true.

I love our American troops.

Most of my life I did not appreciate these wonderful people.

I took it for granted…

“Somebody will do that job…”

But in my older age, I respect these soldiers very much.

But let us shift back to this film.

First, let us thank the two directors:  Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Muharrem Gülmez.

They have made an almost perfect movie.

Really, this film is so, so good!

But you must be warned, my dear friends:  it is simple.

It you are looking for a complex, confusing film, then you will be disappointed.

Such that, you must be like a child–like a youth to appreciate the naïveté of this masterwork.

So I would say this:  it’s a bit like a Turkish version of Cinema Paradiso.

Do you see what I am getting at?

It is poetic.

The mise-en-scène is a bit like what we might expect from Claude Monet (were he still alive).

It is loving.

Large swaths of color.

And, perhaps most quintessential, it is unassuming.

Down to earth.

There’s no condescension in this film.

Come as you are.

First movie you’ve ever seen?

No problem 🙂

It is that sort of loving masterpiece!

It is set in Turkey in 1982.

Cassettes 🙂

80s-style clothing.  The Turkish version 🙂

A junta is in place.  A military government.  Martial law.

And one band of musicians gets rooked into being a “marching band” (of sorts).

But these are folk musicians 🙂

They don’t play brass instruments.  They don’t play the sousaphone.

So it is a very steep learning curve (which sounds a lot like Charles Ives in its beginning stages) 🙂

But let’s get to the most important point.

“I fell in love with the actress/She was playing a part that I could understand”

[Neil Young]

Yes.

Özgü Namal.

Just two years younger than me.

She is the star of this film.

Amazing facility as an actress.

But really just a glow–a vibrance in her every gesture.

Here is someone who is glad to be alive 🙂

And it made me glad to be alive!!!

But let me tell you the other star:  Cezmi Baskın!

This man!

He has no Wikipedia page in English, but he is a wiseman.

A humanist.

A saint of an actor.

A craftsman.

He plays the bandleader.

And his daughter in the film is Özgü Namal.

Umut Kurt does a very good job as the young communist.

And, hence, the title of the film:  The International.

“L’Internationale” 🙂

The most famous of communist anthems.

Yes, dear friends, it is that melody written in 1888 by Pierre De Geyter which is the MacGuffin of this film.

The whole plot hinges on it.

Derrida would call it the brisure (if film were a text).

To deconstruct.

The hinge.

I will say this:  the struggles in this film are very real to this day for the people of Turkey.

I would say our communist character would probably today be a member of the CHP party in Turkey:  Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi.

The Republican People’s Party 🙂

Which is funny because in the U.S., the Republicans (whom I support…more or less) are conservative or “right wing”.

So, yes:  the CHP is “left wing”.

But as I say, this is a very fine film.

It shows very much the love which a father can have for his daughter.

It shows the sacrifices which parents make for their children.

Parents will even die to save their children.

This is a funny movie, but it has this tone of seriousness as well.

Actually, the whole film is like a brilliant joke 🙂

It starts very serious…

But the it becomes festive and ridiculous!

Most of all, there are so many poetic camera shots of Turkish life.

Little things which we don’t see in America.

So an American can learn some of another culture.

But also, we see that people all around the world have similar worries and dreams as us.

Well, I don’t want to tell you too much.

I will just say that this is well-worth watching.

It is a bit long, but I watched it in two installments.

And the subtitles are good 🙂

Anyway, it is on Netflix streaming in the U.S. currently as Beynelmilel.

I am so glad I found this film 🙂

Güle güle

 

-PD

Romancing the Stone [1984)

This movie was very dear to me as a kid.

It’s one of those which came on TV all the time.

And it always pulled me in.

For me, nothing in this film beats the scene in which Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas huddle ’round a marijuana campfire in the fuselage of a crashed plane.

Taking strong belts of Jose Cuervo tequila.

Basically sitting in a giant bong 🙂

But the best part–the cutest part…is KT eating olives.

An old jar.  To be sure.

But they last awhile.

And liquor kills all germs, right?

Who cares if the dead pilot took a few swigs long ago 🙂

It’s such a cozy scene.

Perhaps it’s what the Danish mean by hygge.

And it’s an ambiance I’ve only seen approached in Vertigo (Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart by the fireplace in his apartment…after he rescues her from the waters of San Francisco Bay) and, surprisingly, The Pink Panther (David Niven and Claudia Cardinale by the fireplace…Claudia on the tiger-skin rug).

But Romancing the Stone, unlike those two films, is a full-on romcom.

Sure, there’s action…to entice the leery men 🙂

But there’s no denying that this is a romantic comedy.

And so I’m glad to join the ranks of romcom lovers.

Glad to christen a new category on my site with this fine film.

Some of it hasn’t aged so well (like Alan Silvestri’s sequenced electro-samba soundtrack), but most of it has…so kudos to director Robert Zemeckis.

Zach Norman plays a gay villain in such a way that one cannot help thinking of John Podesta.

Danny DeVito, who plays Norman’s cousin, is definitely the funniest thing in this film.

Neither Turner nor Douglas are particularly funny, but they are graceful and charming (respectively).

I would even add that Michael Douglas encapsulates a sort of masculinity which has been on the wane since the 1980s in America…UNTIL DONALD TRUMP WON THE FUCKING PRESIDENCY!

Yeah 🙂

It is trippy.

To watch this movie late at night.

To relive childhood memories.

And then to rouse oneself to one’s feet and think, “Is Donald Trump really the President? Is this not some kind of dream???” 🙂

I know for many it is a nightmare.

So I will just leave that train of thought there.  For now.

Actually, there is a more serious villain in this film:  Manuel Ojeda.

He is certainly a BAD HOMBRE 🙂

[sorry, can’t help it]

So yeah…

The bulk of the action takes place in Colombia.

It’s like William S. Burroughs, in search of yage, writing back to Allen Ginsberg.

Though the narrative becomes evermore-farfetched as it unfurls, it’s so much fun that we don’t much care 🙂

Buried treasure?  Check.

Wrestling crocodiles?  Check.

Mr. Dundee and The Goonies were from this same era 🙂

Alfonso Arau is here too…with his little “mule” 🙂

[I guess, on second thought, that is a drug-smuggling joke]

This was the performance which preceded Mr. Arau’s all-world turn as El Guapo in Three Amigos.

Yeah…the plot really gets ridiculous right after the waterfall 🙂

But this is a feel-good movie!

And we need this kind of stuff.

Sitting down to ENJOY a movie 🙂

What a concept!

 

-PD

Young Frankenstein [1974)

Hollywood.

It’s been a bad week for Hollywood.

And a rough week for me.

But John Cusack hasn’t sent a hitman after me 🙂

Not yet.

I guess.

But let’s dispense with all these murderous liberals.

Let’s give them no more airtime here.

Jerks like Seth Rogen (who made jokes last week at the expense of a man in intensive care who at been stabbed nine times).

And let’s only mention Pedowood in passing.

The Hollywood run by pedophiles.

About which Corey Feldman has spoken.

About which Elijah Wood has spoken.

About which Ashton Kutcher has spoken.

About which Nicole Kidman has spoken.

And about which Stanley Kubrick spoke.

Ugly, nasty Hollywood.

Let’s not speak about Operation Broken Heart III (in which 238 “suspected child sex predators” [including “household names” as yet to be divulged] were recently arrested).

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-operation-broken-heart-arrests-20160621-snap-story.html

And yet, the “household names” seem to be slithering away so far.

So let us not talk of John Podesta, of whom we have talked so much.

Nor Kevin Spacey, who has preemptively (?) blocked me on Twitter 🙂

What do these folks have to fear?

Spacey, of course, famously rode on convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous Lolita Express (private plane).  If I am not mistaken, Spacey’s trip aboard the aircraft coincided with one of Bill Clinton’s MANY trips aboard that airplane.

So yes.

Let us not speak of this.

Let us, in fact, celebrate (?) the fact that I am actually once again reviewing a film in my own peculiar way 🙂

This was a personal favorite of mine as a kid.

Mel Brooks made a very fine film.

It hangs together nicely.

And the trio of actresses (Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, and Cloris Leachman) who festoon this production bring a real joy of variety to the whole affair.

But the real star, besides the amazing Gene Wilder, is Marty Feldman.

Which brings us to Jimmy Savile.

Let me be clear:  Marty Feldman, for all I know, was just a damned funny comedian.

But he bears a striking resemblance to the infamous Savile.

And thus we must talk about what needs talking about.

Savile was a British eccentric.

[one who gave eccentricity an extremely bad name]

His Wikipedia page lists the following as his métiers:

  • DJ
  • television personality
  • radio personality
  • dance hall manager

But he will sadly be remembered mainly as a sexual predator who preyed (it seems) primarily on those in hospitals and psychiatric institutions to which he had access as part of his celebrity and “charity fundraising”.

He may have raped children (and elderly) in as many as 28 National Health Service hospitals in the U.K.

Said Jeremy Hunt, U.K. Secretary of State for Health in 2014:

“Savile was a callous, opportunistic, wicked predator who abused and raped individuals, many of them patients and young people, who expected and had a right to expect to be safe. His actions span five decades — from the 1960s to 2010. … As a nation at that time we held Savile in our affection as a somewhat eccentric national treasure with a strong commitment to charitable causes. Today’s reports show that in reality he was a sickening and prolific sexual abuser who repeatedly exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes.”

So I should just go back to reviewing Young Frankenstein, right?

Or should I wonder why John Cusack has blocked me and thousands of Trump supporters on Twitter?

Or why Kevin Spacey seems to have blocked a very large number of people on Twitter who have (at one time or another) talked about “pizzagate” or “pedogate”?

Or should we talk of Cardinal George Pell?

This week has been a bad week for Cardinal Pell 🙂

New York magazine’s article title about sums it up:  “The Pope’s Pedophile?”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/cardinal-pell-and-the-vaticans-day-of-reckoning.html

That’s right.

Pope Francis’s “right-hand man”.

The man [Pell] in charge of the Vatican’s finances.

[remember the infamous Mr. Michele Sindona]

And for one more ingredient, let’s add former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s strange 3 a.m. tweet from last night:

“To the career men & women at DOJ/FBI: your actions and integrity will be unfairly questioned. Be prepared, be strong. Duty. Honor. Country.”

What the fuck?!?

I thought only nutbags like me tweeted at 3 a.m. 🙂

And Trump!

But Holder seems to be telegraphing something.

What the fuck is about to happen?

Something/Anything?

Nothing?

Will the U.S. “Deep State” (which appears to be so highly-addicted to pedophilia and occult ritual) finally be exposed?

Will Hollywood finally be exposed in such a way as to make Kenneth Anger rise from the grave?

What is this Babylon that we are witnessing?

In closing, Young Frankenstein is a very entertaining film…which I highly recommend.

No 🙂

Remember friends:  sometimes only humor can get us through the valley of the shadow of death.

And, for me, I pray to God.

I saw this wickedness coming long ago.

The level of vile crimes has already disgusted me and freaked me out before.

So I pray that you will be strong, my friends, as many bad things are revealed.

There are heroes in the world.

And those are such as former Navy SEAL Craig Sawyer.

His organization Veterans for Child Rescue is taking on the scourge of child sex trafficking.

He’s a sniper.

He’s been to war.

He’s not afraid of guys in suits.

Guys like Podesta and Soros.

And he’s not alone.

He’s been on the teams that go in and rescue kids that are literally in cages.

Check out that first article above.

It’s talking about a 6-year-old kid being raped.

The kid is lent out by the parent for $250 dollars.

And it gets much worse than that.

Let’s not talk about New York City Mayor Bill di Blasio’s employee Jacob Schwartz who was recently busted for child pornography.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4546320/De-Blasio-employee-arrested-child-pornography.html

My friends, this young man (age 29) was apparently aroused by sexual photos of SIX-MONTH-OLD BABIES.

And I have to say it one more time:  it gets worse than that.

So when you see photos of Mr. Schwartz and Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, pay those photos no mind, right?

And when you find to what ends Mr. Mook and Mr. John Podesta (Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair) went to concoct the “Russian collusion” (or, variously, “Russian hacking”) story which the largely-liberal U.S. media swallowed whole-cloth, you might begin to wonder just what dark secrets Mr. Podesta (and Hillary Clinton, for that matter) is hiding.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/21/shattered-revelation-clinton-campaign-hatched-russian-hacking-narrative-24-hours-after-hillarys-loss/

For those in a hurry:

“That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

The quote comes from Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s book Shattered:  Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign.

So once again, see Young Frankenstein 🙂

 

-PD

Sen Kimsin? [2012)

It’s been a long time since I “visited” Turkey.

Indeed, it’s been awhile since I reviewed an actual movie 🙂

Film critics should review films, right?

Not sporting events.  Not YouTube videos.  Not the Double Windsor of Trump’s necktie.

Well, I am guilty as charged.

I like sports.

And occasionally a video on the Internet has immense impact on me.

And I like Trump.  Sometimes I disagree (strongly) with what he does.

But mostly I agree.

So far.

But as I was saying, I have not reviewed a Turkish film since my initial foray into the national cinema of Anatolia.

In retrospect, I actually reviewed two Turkish films long ago:  Hudutlarin Kanunu and Susuz Yaz.

What is really complex is the “i” with no dot.  I don’t think I have this anywhere on my WordPress possibilities.

But we will forget about that for now.

[at least I can copy and paste]

🙂

Which is to say, it is hard to top Yılmaz Güney.  Hudutlarin Kanunu is a really special film.

But we must move into the modern era…and see what the Turkish are doing now, right?

Well, Sen Kimsin? may not be a perfect film, but I really enjoyed it 🙂

There is something about Turkish humor which I love!

So let me tell you about this motion picture.

First of all, it is currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S. (!)…

Yes, Netflix seems to all-of-sudden be glutted with Turkish films (which is, for me, a good thing).

And we will get to geopolitics shortly (the strange case of U.S. forces “guarding” the Turkish border [to prevent attacks on the Kurds in Syria?!?]).

Actually, let’s get to that now.

Webster Tarpley (whom I stopped listening to quite awhile ago…when he started calling Trump a Nazi) was forever railing about closing the Jarabulus corridor.

Jarabulus is a Syrian city very near the Turkish border.

Tarpley maintained (if I remember correctly) that ISIS (which, like al-Qaeda, was created by the U.S. [according to Pieczenik]) was being supplied mainly from Turkey.

Tarpley continuously insisted that closing the “Jarabulus corridor” would starve the supply line(s) of ISIS.

And then today we have these headlines:  “US troops patrol Turkey-Syria border after strikes on Kurds”.

That was CNN.

It required immense (and worthwhile) effort to not click on that article.

Fuck CNN!

They don’t even deserve italics…

“US troops deployed at Syrian border to prevent clashes between Turkish & Kurdish forces”.

That’s RT.

[Russia Today]

Hmmm…

I thought Turkey was part of NATO?

I thought NATO was the greatest thing since sliced shawarma??

I thought the USA and Turkey were on the same side???

Well, maybe not.

Which brings us back to that “failed coup attempt” last year in Turkey.

July 15.

Now, if the U.S. is today (literally) protecting the Kurds from the Turkish (which even CNN and RT can agree upon).

And the U.S. has nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base in Adana, Turkey as part of NATO’s “nuke sharing” program (which is well-known).

Then what the fuck is going on here?

Is ErdoÄŸan such a dipshit that we have to work AGAINST him (while keeping nuclear weapons in his country)?

If that’s the case, then it would not be farfetched to think that the U.S. had some part to play in the failed coup attempt of last year.

Motive?  Check.  Means?  Check.  Opportunity?  Probably.

As for the U.S. forces on the Turkish border (inside Syria?), their location is not clear from the reportage I am seeing (whether Jarabulus or not).

In a moment of weakness, I clicked on CNN.

The gist there seems to be that the Turks and the Kurds hate each other, but that the Turks and the Kurds are the closest “anti-ISIS” allies of the U.S.. 🙂

Boy, if that’s not generalizing things…

Which is why we need comedy.

And why this will seek to be a film review from here on out.

First, let’s translate Sen Kimsin?:  “who are you?”.

Who are you?

This phrase becomes very important during the course of Sen Kimsin?.

Tolga Çevik is the star of our film 🙂

He’s very funny!

Truly, he has some great comedic talent!!

And so this whole film is a bit like The Pink Panther minus Peter Sellers.

But Tolga Çevik does a very admirable job 🙂

Actually, as you’ve noticed, I can’t stop smiling after this film.

There are so many wonderful parts to it.

Indeed, Çevik is the fumbling/bumbling detective (!) who gets made for a useful idiot.

But the ID was only half-right.

He’s an idiot, alright.

But he’s completely useless 🙂

And I know the feeling.

I really related to Tolga Çevik’s character Tekin.

Director Ozan Açıktan did an excellent job of letting Tolga’s talents come to the fore!

But this comedy of errors just wouldn’t be the same without the priceless contribution of Köksal Engür.

You know, the Turks are a brave people.

And seeing the great humor of Köksal Engür reminded me of that 🙂

But let us talk about the beautiful ladies of this film.

Zeynep Özder is really charming as Pelin 🙂

But I must also give credit to the villainess Pelin Körmükçü.

Wow!  What a beautiful 46-year-old woman!!!

Anyhow, these ladies are distracting.

But this is just a plain fun film.

It is meant for enjoyment.

And there is some great dialogue (particularly between Tekin and Ismail).

I thoroughly recommend this film as a fun way to learn a little more about Turkish culture 🙂

Thank you, my friends!

-PD

La vita è bella [1997)

If would be a shame if there were any lies wrapped up in Holocaust historiography.

Because, if there were, they would have the potential to seriously degrade what should be a pure remembrance.

If, for instance, the majority of concentration camp prisoners/workers died as a direct result of the Allies cutting Nazi supply lines.

And when these camps were “liberated” or otherwise found, public relations needed a story (and fast!) to account for this horrible loss of life which technically fell on the shoulders of the Allies.

If (and it’s a big if) that was the case, then such a “noble” lie might have been “borrowed” by the emerging Zionist state of Israel.

Anything to make way for the Jewish homeland.

To recap, if a majority of Jewish casualties in WWII were actually the result of the Allies attempting to starve the Nazi state into submission through siege tactics, then the Allies would have had motive and opportunity to foist upon the world a caricatured distortion of the facts.

Caricatures do not do true honor to the victims.

And if the emerging Jewish state of Israel used such distorted facts to further lobby for a “homeland” (a place where people were already living…non-Jews…for a long time), we could say that “Israel” also had motive and opportunity to participate in this “noble lie” (for different reasons).

But what is most sad is that what I have just written would get me arrested in several countries of the world (mostly in Europe).

We will mention one:  France.

I have spoken about the Loi Gayssot in critical terms before.

And I do not think it is a smart piece of legislation.

It is, ironically, a very authoritarian law.

If I understand it correctly, this law (aimed at “Holocaust deniers”) punishes even those who object on critical grounds to any factual aspect of Holocaust “history”.

As we know, history has been wrong before.

And it can be wrong again.

Furthermore, we never close the door on a particular epoch.

For every other event (except the Holocaust), we welcome new research which brings the situation into clearer focus.

The Holocaust is the one period of history which is off limits (verboten) to any sort of skepticism.

And it is this sort of authoritarian attitude of anti-history which will be the unraveling of whatever the liars of history are trying to hide.

Lies are a big part of every world event.

Operators at the lower level just want to cover their butts.

White lies.

But these white lies can pile up.

And pretty soon the official historiography bears little resemblance to the actual event in question.

Mid-level operators merely want to move up in life.

They want to keep the bigwigs off their backs.

So they condone low-level lies.

And they even concoct some fairly witty stratagems of their own.

And these regional efforts coalesce into inexplicable gumbos of narrative (like the story we have all been given concerning 9/11).

But the real fuckery happens at the high-level.

Here is where everything is a game.

Here is where hubris reigns supreme.

Here is where the Ivy League and the Oxford/Cambridge set conspire in an unholy matrimony of minds to make “a new world”.

These are the minds which, largely, have been so besotted with “logic” that they can no longer entertain the idea of a God or any sort of higher power.

And it is at this level that public relations and social engineering churn out lies which are meant to shape world history.

Lies which are meant to redraw the map.

If the gas chambers did not exist (except in the propagandistic imagination of Allied copy) in any Nazi camp, then it would have likely been a high-level wonk who conceived of such a grand macabre to once and for all paint the Nazis as “pure evil” and the Allies as “beneficent warriors” fighting a “just war”.

So let’s see how censored the Internet is, ok?

As of today, you can still harbor some doubts.

A mathematician doubts.

Bertrand Russell doubted Gottlob Frege.

And Russell was right to doubt.

Logic and mathematics teach us that most “complete, unified” systems eventually fall by the wayside.

That is because they are flawed.

Our knowledge improves.

Some discoveries are truly special, but it is always a process of learning.

The Gayssot Act in France (and other similar legislation in neighboring countries) wants you to take (on faith) the complete accuracy of Holocaust historiography SO FAR.

Such legislation is eager to CLOSE THE BOOK on all nuance and scholarship.

But there is at least one website which seems to harbor healthy doubts about aspects of the Holocaust.

Remember:  questioning ANY PART OF THE HOLOCAUST in France is a violation of the Gayssot Act.

Excuse my French, but that is fucked up!

Don’t we want the truth?

If Hillary Clinton was running a child trafficking ring, do we want to know that?

Yes.

If Donald Trump was colluding with the Russian government to get elected, don’t we want to know that?

Yes.

If the gas chambers were a fanciful way to paint the Nazis as the ultimate enemies, don’t we want to know that there were (in fact) no gas chambers in any concentration camp?

Yes.

We want to know.

And we also want to know how bad the Nazis were.

We want to know about babies on bayonets.

We want to know every Jew-hating idea they ever penned or yelled.

Because we do not approve of this Jew hating.

But we will not punish speech.

In our quest to quash the Nazi strain of hatred, we will not become (ourselves) “Nazis”.

Because the Loi Gayssot only encourages people to seek out “taboo” knowledge.

I can’t believe I agree with the scumbag Cass Sunstein on an actual point, but I think I do.

In other words:  don’t make the knowledge taboo.

Let the cream rise to the top.

Let the crap sink.

Do not criminalize idiocy.

AND DO NOT EVEN think ABOUT A CHINESE METHOD LIKE REEDUCATION!

So here is the site, dear friends:

Life Sign

Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust.

Sounds reasonable, right?

Don’t let some shit-stained-pants-wearing talking head deter you from visiting this site.

Remember when CNN told the world that only “they” could report on WikiLeaks?

These tactics are wearing thin.

If the truth is out there (thank you X-Files), then people will find it.

And the frauds will be exposed.

And the genuine articles will be raised up on cheerful arms.

The global media wants you to think that only dumb Arabs and Persians would ever “deny” the Holocaust.

Do some fucking research!

And I fall into the same target.

I tell myself, “Do some fucking research!”

I do.

All the time.

Just as it was impractical to get an unbiased assessment of 9/11 when the commissioners were appointed by the Bush administration, so too is it impractical to think that a Jewish (or, God forbid, Israeli) author can give an impartial account of any aspect of the Holocaust.

And yet, this is a conundrum.

For Jews, no period of history is so important.

And I sympathize with the call to “never forget”.

But we must be extremely careful to get right exactly what it is we are to “never forget”.

“Never forget” rings especially hollow in the United States regarding 9/11…because most people have absolutely no deep understanding of that event.

I have done my research on that fateful day.

And everything which led up to it.

And much of what followed.

So in the case of 9/11, “never forget” is meaningless…because the vast majority NEVER KNEW IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Which is the trouble with such campaigns.

The message, then, is “Never forget…what we’ve told you…happened.”

Well, that’s not very bloody comforting!

And the propaganda is pretty transparent.

Which brings us to the “Holocaust industry” and this masterpiece of a film (really):  Life is Beautiful.

There is very little propaganda in this film.

There is very little mindless regurgitation of dubious assertions.

But yet it is still there.

And hence my opening diatribe.

First, let me get in one more jab.

Here is something I have actually read.

By Robert Faurisson.

It is called, “The ‘Problem of the Gas Chambers'”.

http://codoh.com/library/document/868/?lang=en

It is from 1980.

There are 141 pieces by Dr. Faurisson (among many other authors) on the CODOH site.

I have read few of them.

But enough to pique my curiosity.

As I said, it makes me highly suspicious when an obviously brilliant scholar such as Dr. Faurisson is “refuted” solely by ad hominem attacks.

When such is the case, said victim only grows stronger.

And Dr. Faurisson is not attacking the Jews.

He’s attacking history.

With logic.

Read it for yourself.

To be recursive, he seems to have found a “fatal flaw” in the historiography which predominates in such shite as Schindler’s List.

We don’t need a John Williams swooning violin melody to tell us the truth.

We just need the fucking truth.

Whatever it is.

We don’t need music in our museums to drive home a particular point.

We just need the artifacts.

They must be laid out in a way which allows for logical conclusion.

They must not LEAD the museum-goer to a particular conclusion.

If they do, then we have entered the realm of propaganda.

And we should be made aware of our participation as guinea pigs in such attempted thought control.

You can read about Dr. Faurisson’s struggles against the French government here (in his biography on the CODOH site):

http://codoh.com/library/categories/1104/

Ok…

La vita è bella.

🙂

It’s a beautiful movie.

Which I saw many times in the theater.

When it came out.

One of the most important and formative films for me as a cinephile.

Roberto Benigni is my favorite actor ever.

And Nicoletta Braschi is wonderful in this film.

Furthermore, Benigni’s film direction is underrated.

The scene, for instance, where he and Sergio Bustric lay in bed is such a lushly-filmed tableau.

I wanted to live in that scene.

Amongst those antiques.

And their hilarious repartee involving Schopenhauer 🙂

But Life is Beautiful is notable mostly as a work of naïveté.

Like Cinema Paradiso.

Instead of Ennio Morricone’s gossamer score, we get Nicola Piovani’s criminally-unavailable musical backing.

[get on that, Spotify!]

There is true magic in this film.

The kiss between Benigni and Braschi under the banquet table.

Sure…

There is so much Chaplin in this film.

Mistaken identity.

The whole thing starts with a virtual rip of The Great Dictator.

But Benigni tells a new story.

And the details don’t matter.

One death was too many…during World War II.

And one family torn apart…was too many…during the Holocaust.

-PD

Blondie’s New York [2014)

Man…

So much I could say about this one.

But it’s one of the few times where I can say, “I worked with that person.”

Clem Burke.

Probably wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.

Now.

Because I’m a Trump supporter.

But he was the best drummer I was ever in the same room with.

And drumming was the longest “career” I ever had.

I’ve played drums since I was a kid.

All of them.

The set.

“Traps” 🙂

Orchestral snare drum.

Marimba.

The whole 4-mallet thing.

Jazz vibraphone.

But when I worked with Clem, I was a bass player.

That day.

That year.

For awhile.

It was the bass that took me to England.

To Scotland.

And to Spain.

And it was the bass that first took me to Los Angeles.

But this is about Blondie.

The band.

And what a band!

Based on my own experiences just mentioned, I can attest to the extremely high musicianship of Clem Burke.

And watching this relatively-short documentary (an hour) convinces me of just how special each of the band members were/are.

But perhaps my favorite part is seeing Mike Chapman work.

The record producer.

What a talent!

It was my dream to be a record producer.

Didn’t really work out 🙂

Tough business.

Maybe you fuck up.

Or maybe no one helps you.

Or maybe you get one chance.  And only one chance.

But that’s ok.

Because life goes on.

Marilyn Monroe aged.

Lou Reed sang about it on the Velvets’ “New Age”.

And Godard wrote about it.

The aging of Marilyn Monroe must have been a traumatic phenomenon for the first generation of movie goers.

The first generation with that color reality.

And with the television buttress.

And Marilyn…

Even Elton John, a homosexual man, was in love with Marilyn…in a sort of way.

“Candle in the Wind”

Which brings us to Debbie Harry.

The former cocktail waitress from Max’s Kansas City.

Chickpeas and lobster.

Park Avenue South.

And brings us to the album Parallel Lines.

This documentary is almost strictly about that album.

About Blondie’s breakthrough into the mainstream.

Yeah, they were punk…

Had the street cred.

But they transcended.

Mostly due to musicianship.

A bit like the Talking Heads.

The other bands were hopelessly arty.

Of this scene.

My favorite, Suicide.

[R.I.P. Alan Vega]

I met Alan once.

Changed my life.

But Suicide never really had a hit.

[Nooo…you don’t say?!?]

Yeah.

The name.

Whoa mama!

But that was punk.

And my whole mission is a bit of a punk mission.

Pauly Deathwish.

Uh huh.

Not a name I came up with.

But given to me.

I remember that day.

And the personages.

But my mission is also a bit like the mission of Greil Marcus.

And Lipstick Traces.

Now I’d just prefer to read Debord.

Or read Len Bracken on the Situationists.

But Greil tries (valiantly!) to pull it all together.

And I’m a bit like that kind of wanker.

Just hoping to SOUND like I know it all.

And someday have Harvard written on my spine.

But we’ve hardly discussed Blondie.

Or this excellent little film.

Which is currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S.

Again Kino Lorber’s marketing team (?) seems to be absent behind this release.

There’s no Wikipedia page.

And the iMDB page lists the title of this made-for-TV-affair as Blondie’s New York and the Making of Parallel Lines.

Ok, so it’s not Citizen Kane.

But it’s well worth watching!

Directed by Alan Ravenscroft.

He does a fine job here.

It really is a magical story.

Punk.

New York City.

CBGB-OMFUG.

The Fugs! 🙂

New York, a magical place.

Hell, even mayor Ed Koch is in this.

And he’s much easier to stomach than Bill Clinton.

I don’t care…liberal, conservative…whatever.

Just don’t be a dick!

And if you’re a dick, have the schtick down!!

Like Trump.

He has the schtick down.

He’s learned to lie.

In his many years.

“The babies, the beautiful babies…the innocent babies”…

There were no babies, my friends.

There was no chemical attack.

That footage was in the can for some time.

But it’s a white lie in the world of geopolitics.

It’s like telling your kids that Santa Claus delivered the presents.

There’s no way to explain, “I’ve gotta bomb Syria to make an impression on China.  And the bombing has to happen almost simultaneously with dinner…at Mar-a-Lago.”

And McMaster must be lying too.

That’s ok.

Just don’t make a habit of it.

Because then you’re CIA.

And that’s a dark road.

To get wrapped up in lies.

But the white lies are synthetic terror where nobody dies.

Even the Russian/Syrian body count.

Likely false.

Especially the “four kids” detail.

Pithy.

Icy.

The Democrats are really (I mean it, unfortunately) exceptionally dumb.

They only sense the general outline of the conspiracy.

Russia’s faux indignation.

But they don’t understand that their infantile foreign policy made such machinations necessary.

Blondie 🙂

And Quintilian.

See the documentary.

Forget about North Korea for a moment.

By all means, don’t watch inferior propaganda.

The Propaganda Game?

Great film.

Songs from the North?

Cinematic equivalent of toilet paper.

The Cinémathèque Française knew the value of propaganda films.

Henri Langlois.

Back when they were educating “the five” (Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, and Rohmer).

And Godard understood the importance of “good”, well-crafted, persuasive propaganda.

As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, “Ineffective propaganda is no propaganda.”

In other words, it has no business calling itself propaganda.

It’s less-than-worthless.

But kick back with some Machiavelli.

And The Art of the Deal.

And remember the unholy marriage of art and commerce that is and was Blondie.

-PD

Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang [2014)

I bet you thought I stopped writing about film, right?

🙂

Me too.

Sometimes.

I think…

“Am I still a film critic?”

With all this Trump this and Trump that.

With these tableaux.

This lazy poetry.

But I am back with an actual film.

And it is a masterpiece.

But I don’t know what to call it!!!

It’s a Chinese film.

Sort of.

But not really.

Because it’s by a Brazilian film director.

But not just any Brazilian film director.

Someday I will get around to reviewing one of the best exemplars of naïveté ever made.

Yes, one of the best FILMS ever made.

Central do Brasil.

Central Station.

A formative episode in my filmic life.

But back to this Chinese film directed by a Brazilian.

I didn’t even get to his name yet 🙂

Walter Salles!

Yes…two masterpieces are enough to make an auteur!!

But we can’t use the Chinese title here.

For the film.

Under consideration.

Because that would be disingenuous (and we will get to Trump).

[Or we will try.]

{so much…stuff…in the world}

Let’s paint the picture…

Three Gorges…no.

We must wait.

Central Station was a fiction film.

A beautiful masterpiece which stretches even up into the sertão.

But Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang is a documentary…about a guy from Fenyang…named Jia Zhangke.

Messrs. Baggini and Fosl (Julian and Peter) would call that a “spectacularly uninformative sentence”.

And Kant, the less-colorful–less-candid “analytic proposition”.

But we hit an impasse.

The film I am reviewing is so little-known (apparently) that it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page.

Worse, it has a strange, butchered title on iMDB.

There it is called Jia Zhang-ke by Walter Salles.

Hmmm…

I must admit:  it appears some people in marketing over at Kino Lorber are dicking around.

But we press on…

Just who the fuck is Jia Zhangke?  And why should you care about him?

Well, first:  he’s a film director.

And second:  he’s as good as Jean-Luc Godard.

Did I just say that???

Yes.

I just put someone on an equal level with my favorite director of all time.

What’s more, a Chinese guy you’ve probably never heard of.

Of whom.

And what about this Fenyang business?

Well, let’s get out our maps.

First, we must find Shaanxi Province.

Northern China.

The capital is Xi’an.

But we must get to the more obscure.

Fenyang.

Home of our subject auteur:  Jia Zhangke.

So we don’t exactly know the title…here to there…from this platform to the next.

But we will say this.

If you are in the U.S., this film is currently streaming on Netflix under the title Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang.

Or something like that.

This is the confusion of a lack of standardization.

Where’s ISO when you need them…or Zamenhof!

Ok…so why should you watch a 105 minute documentary about a filmmaker of whom you have likely never heard?

Because Walter Salles compels you.

He says, “Watch my story…  Pay attention to this little self-deprecating Chinese man.  He’s a cinematic genius.”

Wouldn’t it be great if all artisans and artists helped each other out in such a way?

A filmmaker, age 57, decides to make a film about another filmmaker, age 46.

Actually, that is quite an honor.

That an older filmmaker would help in the career of the younger one.

So we heartily praise Salles for his mise-en-scène as well as his morals.

But then we hit another impasse.

Because words cannot express the brilliance of Jia Zhangke’s grasp on cinematic language.

And so, why should you watch this film?  I ask again.

Because it gives you an introduction (not dumbed down in any way) to the works of a contemporary film artist who is leading the cinematic medium into this new century.

Likewise, it gives you an introduction to Chinese film at the same time.

These aren’t kung fu flicks (for the most part).

These are art films.

Similar to Breathless

Born of the French New Wave.

But also born of Raj Kapoor.

Indeed, as a young boy…Jia Zhangke remembered an early film which extolled thieves.  And it was this Indian film shown in China.  And the Chinese kids remembered the melismatic melodies for decades…to rip off a shred and a few threads of a melody which bound them as enfants terribles.

Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang is a bit like Cinema Paradiso.

The big director returns home.

And there’s a sadness.

Maybe you can see your childhood home.

And hit the wall one more time.

You can imagine the family bed and the father’s desk was there.

And the books on shelves along here.

So many books.

That there is a sadness of being from Fenyang.

I feel it being from San Antonio.

And Jia Zhangke, all throughout this film, ideates thoughts which have now and then wisped in and out of my dreams.

Jia is very calm.  Thoughtful.  Serene.

A true artist.

And as he talks about the process of creation, I find him to be an exceptionally dedicated artist.

We hear about Xiao Wu (1997).

Pickpocket.  Starring Wang Hongwei.

I mean, this bloke…Wang…  His clothes hang on him in almost a magical way.

He’s a good-for-nothing bum in the Chaplin mold, but still puffing away like Belmondo in Breathless.

But Jia was right.

It’s the gait.

The way Wang Hongwei walks.

Body language.

Brilliant!

And the shots we see of Platform are really moving.

It’s like being from a place like Kiruna, Sweden.

Gotta get there by train.

Up past the Arctic Circle.

And the kids…they don’t have a lot of entertainment.

Maybe even the sight of a train.

But in China…………….far more vast.

These remote places.

Like the Three Gorges area where Jia made Dong and also Still Life.

But the joke’s on me.

Because the whole world knows Jia Zhangke.

The whole world of cinema.

And me, with my insular approach, not so much.

Because Jia won the Palme d’Or in both…wait.

We have the wrong envelope.

Ok…so maybe he’s not that well know.

His films have been screened in competition at Cannes, but no hardware yet.

With the exception of his Golden Lion from Venice.

But none of that matters.

What matters is that he’s making great films.

What matters is that he has the potential to best us all.

This was a very moving film for me.

Because it speaks to the obstacles of life.

Of the unhappiness.

Of the solitude which must be for creations to ferment properly.

To mix metaphors, we need the darkness in which to screen our masterpieces of light.

We cannot screen them in a glass house…at 2:30 p.m.

Finally, this film will give you invaluable insights into the recent history and current state of China.

All the people on Weibo (like Twitter).

The market system which has been kicking ass since the 1990s.

And crucial periods such as 1976-1989.

The restructuring period right after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

WE NOW JOIN PAULY DEATHWISH NEWS NETWORK…IN PROGRESS: “…

Xi Jinping.  His father purged in 1963.  His father jailed in 1968.  Xi was sent without his father to work in Shaanxi Province in 1969.  [The remote province from which film director Jia Zhangke hails.]

This was a time of immense violence in China.  Being purged.  Being jailed.  Being sent to the countryside to work and be re-educated.  All of this was suffused with violence.

So when President Xi got the message from President Trump himself that the U.S. had just launched 60 Tomahawk missiles into Syria minutes earlier, President Xi was met with the shock of surrealism…a perfect steak…beautiful ladies…the glitz and glamour of Mar-a-Lago…and the throat punch of an actual tiger.  No paper.

“Get North Korea in line, and fast!”  Would have been the message.

So that, in these times, to truly appreciate that which is unfolding around us, we need directors like Jia Zhangke.

These are our new philosophers.  Our new poets.

Thinking about social media.

Fooling around with it.

Inventing new artistic forms.

And finding new types of loneliness.

And desperation.

Jia came from a very poor area.

He loved his family very much.

The Chinese don’t like violence.

We Americans don’t like violence.

See this film.

Then get back to me on Dereliction of Duty 🙂

-PD