The Silence of the Lambs [1991)

Wouldn’t it be neat if the FBI actually did things?

Good things.

When’s the last time the FBI actually caught a criminal?

A real criminal.

They had a lovely chance to save America.

By investigating 9/11.

And so we have been investigating the investigators.

Special Agent.

So special…

I was wrong about Twin Peaks.

Because you have to add to the propagandistic litany The X-Files.

And finally this hulking slab of mind control.

Lies can be so beautiful.

Perhaps…once upon a time…the FBI did something.

After Hoover…and before OKC.

A small window.

But let me pause for a minute and admit.

That I love this film.

It is one of the few true masterpieces of American cinema.

It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Rosemary’s Baby.

The only real heirs to the legacy of Hitchcock.

1991. 1991. Nineteen-ninety-one.

Does America have any honor left?

Do American troops read books?

Do military officers ever avoid the most grave corruption?

Where is the genius to save our country?

What can we learn from serial killers?

Which animals are the most clever?

At the bottom and into the middle are good men and women.

Like Clarice Starling.

Mozart’s pet bird.

A requiem.

Apocryphal.

Lachrymal vases.

My intellect is miniscule.

Our computers would have picked it up.

Desperately random.

How far can you push an old body.

How much fear can you handle?

How much panic can be breathed!

Such genius to personify.

The pathetic fallacy. They all fawn.

But it is rather reverse reification.

Humanizing.

It.

The way of no way.

Swing hovering to deal with ambush predators.

That’s a quote.

When life mattered.

Isolation savors detail.

Real, not fake.

Hans Selye will never know.

Everything you need to know is here.

The dossier.

Two acting masterpieces.

Jodie Foster.

And Anthony Hopkins.

Once in a lifetime.

The auteurist glue? Jonathan Demme.

What kind of game is this?

It is the biggest test.

-PD

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Twin Peaks “The One-Armed Man”[1990)

Sometimes we spend more time searching for what to watch than

watching that upon which we decide.

It’s an old phenomenon.

“57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” Bruce Springsteen was singing in 1982.

And so by the confluence of circumstances these days

I am bringing you more musings on the greatest TV series ever.

I think it’s safe to say.

I’ve approached a few other television programs.

TV is not my natural interest.

The medium tends towards the antithesis of my love.

For cinema.

So I sat down. More or less.

I rummaged a bit. Upon the Hulu trash heap.

No deep cuts tonight.

Straight to a standby.

Because now Orlando has a special agent in charge.

A government operation always has the killer wrapped up by midday.

With a bow around him.

And his wallet on his chest…open to show his photo ID.

I’m assuming.

None of that proves anything.

Either way.

What’s at issue is a trend. A government which operates as a serial killer.

For the sake of survival we avoid (at all costs) the news outlets which have led us so far astray in the past.

These unrepentant charlatans continue their mockingbird mimesis.

I’ve seen good Americans question because something is not quite right.

Not much has moved along.

Same old song and dance.

The essence of code.

To be talking about two things at once.

Key would reveal what those two things are.

[Making code-breaking possible.]

Cipher and code.

A long-term project.

Professionals.

Acting honorably.

Priceless propaganda.

The real story…

is not pretty.

America wants the truth.

From Rosser Reeves (hard sell) to soft sell to no-sell.

That is the future.

Anti-marketing.

Perception management will be a reservist function.

There will be no marketing of ideas.

Until that time (a goal, not a calendar date), closer and closer to brute truth.

That the greatest crime would be for a federal employee to leads his or her countrymen astray.

That such activity should cease cold turkey and news anchors be caught like deer in headlights before blank Tele-Promp-Ters.

No directly line from Langley, no news.

A very valuable oversimplification.

And we have the honorable men and women in the FBI who come through Quantico.

The LGBT culmination will feature a J. Edgar Hoover auto-icon (à la Jeremy Bentham) dressed in drag.

And the message will be clear: no more obfuscation.

That at least one agency (the FBI) has a vested interest in bringing criminal elements within the CIA and DoD to justice.

This is the only route which saves the FBI.

The same for every agency. The U.S. government (across the board) has zero credibility (at home and abroad).

It can work.

Who will be the first to rebuild the country?

Comey? He shares the same birthday with me.

But it might take a madman like Trump to throw the moneychangers out of the temple.

[poor choice of metaphor…on several levels]

Trump still thinks it’s Islamic terror. Trump needs to visit a decent bookstore.

Get some books which the State Dept. calls disinformation (those are the good ones) and go to work.

Get the country back on track.

9/11 makes sense only as a largely inside job.

The assets or operatives employed may have left trails to incriminate (blackmail) future targets (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.).

Their domestic movements were picked up by Able Danger.

Translation: DoD (rightly) doesn’t trust CIA.

But let’s give the Agency its due.

Dirty deeds, done for no more than the risk-free rate.

NSA just sits back and giggles.

Could take down any of these punks.

So that everyday the transmission of fraudulent information passed on as news is hell on Earth.

Skills is one thing.

Brazen is another.

Too close to the fire.

Emotional intensity.

Not a disorder.

-PD

Perličky na dně [1966)

I’ve never been much a fan of the omnibus film (or anthology film) genre.

Several directors.

One product.

But this one serves a very interesting purpose.

So far, we have only considered the work of Jiří Menzel (among Czech directors).

So now we will get to branch out a bit.

A sampler of sorts.

Funny enough, Menzel leads this whole thing off.

Start with your best speaker, they say.

Menzel’s contribution is fairly good.

It is closer in spirit to Capricious Summer than it is to the masterpiece Closely Watched Trains

Which is to say, it is largely “meh”.

But a true auteur is still engaging even when he or she is meh, and Menzel is interesting…even when he’s boring (as in Rozmarné léto).

If we want to know where the Belgian juggernaut Aaltra comes from, then we should look no further than Menzel’s short contribution on motorcycle racing.

As with all the stories in this omnibus, the author (in the literary sense) is Bohumil Hrabal.

We get our first bit of the “aging” theme in this installment.

The old man with his stories of Smetana and Dvořák.

The weird harpsichord music courtesy of Jan Klusák (or perhaps Jiří Šust).

It’s baroque, but just slightly off. Anachronistic. Neobaroque. Like Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (and just as rococonutty).

But the “aging” theme really comes to the fore in the next section which is directed by Jan Němec. Němec sadly passed away but four months ago.

In this scene we meet two old men in a hospital. It is a very touching piece of cinema.

They try to keep each other’s spirits up.

We also start to sense another theme in Hrabal’s writing: lies.

Lies notwithstanding, Němec’s segment is perhaps the most poignant thing about this film.

In the middle we get a splash of color (the rest of the film being in black and white) courtesy of the radical Evald Schorm.

What makes Schorm’s segment so beautifully jarring is the music (extremely reminiscent of Olivier Messiaen): organ dissonance ostensibly courtesy of the aforementioned Klusák and/or Šust.

We are presented with outsider art in its purest form. A painter who paints every wall in his house. It is certainly reminiscent of the one-of-a-kind Henry Darger.

Incidentally, the scene is deliciously dark humor directed at not only the bureaucracy of the Czechoslovak state but also at the legitimacy of the insurance industry.

Věra Chytilová contributes a dark-yet-dreamy vignette suffused with desperation throughout. Her use of slow-motion photography captures some very special emotions and is reminiscent of Jean Vigo’s use of the same in Zéro de conduite.

Finally, we encounter gypsies for the first time thanks to the loving depiction of Jaromil Jireš.

A Czech boy does his best Jean-Paul Belmondo before the cracked mirror near the lobby cards.

Dana Valtová might be the most convincing actress in this entire feature. Her role of the dark-skinned gypsy (who remains nameless) is quite astonishing.

And so we learn a bit more about the Czech people thanks to this defining mosaic from the Czech New Wave: Pearls of the Deep.

And little by little we learn a new culture.

-PD

3 Comments

Viskningar och rop [1972)

Cris et Chuchotements.

…et Chuchotements.

This horribly powerful film.

No light reading.

From the lips.

Fumbling big-hand thoughts.

Like Brice Parain said, inseparable from language.

We can see this fount at which Godard drank.

We can see the borrowing of von Trier.

We can see the fealty of Wes Anderson.

It is Cries and Whispers of Ingmar Bergman.

Tired, aging Bergman.

Clear as a bell.

Static shots which must be achieved through moving pictures.

Just stop moving for a moment.

And be quiet.

That microphone.

Just out of sight.

No B-movie swoop-downs.

But absolute perfection throughout.

And yet the message is dark.

No hope.

Cathartic, maybe.

Always fade to red.

And reemerge through the color spectrum.

Yellow to white light.

Four women.

Three sisters and a zaftig maid.

Someone’s crying Lord…

Come by here. In a dream. See their lips move.

We should love the coquette. The redhead. Liv Ullmann.

She should dominate us like a Renoir painting.

A madder rose cinema has known not.

But is she not a fake, Maria?

Is she not just a color palette towards which we gravitate?

What worth in the façade when the heart is empty?

It had been a long time since Summer with Monika, but Harriet Andersson was here.

And yet, it is Liv Ullmann who gets the plastic surgeon insults of the doctor (Erland Josephson).

But Harriet Andersson has enough grief with which to deal.

No no, I have gotten mixed up with all these actresses of Bergman. And don’t even mention Ingrid!

We will come back to poor, sweet Harriet.

But we must first deal with the witch: Ingrid Thulin.

What kind of misery makes such a witch?

A tissue of lies (reads the subtitles).

I believe Thierry Meyssan had to deal with such proclamations (though I read them in translation).

What kind of lies here, though…specifically?

Loveless marriage.

Probably even more empty than simply.

Loveless.

No creative punctuation. No flirtatious commas or semicolons.

But simply poetry written like a telegraph dispatch.

Full stop.

Desperate.

Depression unto madness. That is Ingrid Thulin here as Karin.

But then we must come back to our sickness.

A true physical ailment.

A patient.

Bedridden.

Patience.

It is Agnes. Painful. Wheezing. Horrible. Ghastly.

A high-water mark of art films.

Top that, motherfucker.

Jerry Lee to Chuck Berry. Worse than an expletive.

But what brings this whole film together? Who holds this house against her bosom?

It is none other than Kari Sylwan.

Yes, there are no important male characters within.

Georg Årlin chews his fish like someone in the diplomatic service should.

And expects “a little consensual rape in the evening” (to quote the Nick Cave of Grinderman).

But such petty existence boils the madness.

The glass.

Shards of light.

Smeared with lunacy.

Against all this is Kari Sylwan as Anna.

The maid.

The help.

Priceless.

Humanist.

A believer. As the sick believed more than the priest.

No real important male characters here.

But Anders Ek is the voice of reason. The voice of poetry. For a moment. Touching.

Don’t touch me.

Such damage in the world.

And Anna bears it all.

The only true hero.

Meek.

Equally tormented.

But strong.

Annas make the world go round. Deliver the medicine. Keep the world from splitting open. Make sure the trains are on time. Hugs.

The history of cinema is littered with sad brilliance.

Strewn with fictional corpses.

Troubled directors trying to come to terms with their own fears of death.

And in the end, such creations loom large because they closest resemble the art of the ancient world and the itch of the Renaissance.

Storm on! And write all night long!!

Someone has stolen my beard, but my mustache is plenty weird.

We shall live to see Nietzsche bitch-slap Hitler.

And Tarantino will again work at a video store. Where he belongs. A very able clerk. Like me.

-PD

Les Misérables: Les Thénardier [1934)

When last I left Raymond Bernard’s three-part masterpiece, I was comparing Donald Trump to Jean Valjean.

But one thing is for sure: the world from which the Donald comes is that of the Thénardiers.

Trickery.

Fakery.

Deception.

Violence.

Anything for a buck.

To extend my past diatribe, every time Ted Cruz opens his mouth he merely helps the prospects of Mr. Trump.

I am convinced that Mr. Cruz made it through Harvard Law School by requesting his course materials be in coloring book format.

An intellectual debate between Cruz and George W. Bush would be a toss-up.

Cruz and W. are two of the most dense personages ever to have matriculated from Ivy League institutions.

But that is only part of the story.

Ted Cruz is a walking lie.

Ted Cruz is Edward Bernays’ 1928 book Propaganda with feet.

All of this is to say that there is something very wrong with the enemies which Donald Trump has made in his “wrecking-ball candidacy” (to borrow a phrase from the esteemed Dr. Webster Tarpley).

Fox News has created Donald Trump (the candidate) by badmouthing him for so long.

As Fox News has zero (ze-ro) credibility, this criticism has given credibility to Trump.

All of the major media outlets are bad, but none are as Twilight Zone, Orwell vicious as Fox News.

But we still have to examine these pesky Thénardiers.

For dramatic purposes (in the novel of Victor Hugo), they are “the arch conspirator[s]” (to borrow another phrase from another esteemed fellow, Mr. Len Bracken).

The Donald tells us [and I paraphrase], “Vote for me and you’ll find out who really knocked down the towers [WTC].” He tells us we might find it’s the Saudis…

That’s a brilliant maneuver.

Trump sunk Jeb Bush’s candidacy with fear.

Jeb’s got stuff to hide.

The family business might finally fall afoul of the law (officially) for the first time since Prescott.

Whatever the case may be, Bush got out.

Sure, his numbers were horrible, but I think Dr. Steve Pieczenik nailed it in a particular interview on the Alex Jones radio show. You can find a video of that [for the time being] under my “links” tab.

So getting back to these pesky Thénardiers, they would seem to be the vicious thugs who pulled off 9/11 (if we are to superimpose a humanist novel onto modern geopolitics).

A massive ad campaign (grassroots, of course) sounded the bell for the longest time that “9/11 was an inside job”.

While that may be true in many respects, it has all the hallmarks of a marketing tagline. Which is to say, what appeared to be an organic movement (9/11 Truth) may have been steered by the real culprits away from the bona fide jugular.

It certainly seems that the Thénardiers in question had many high-level moles (to borrow a line of reasoning from Tarpley) of the George W. Bush administration in thrall to their machinations.

But then another ad hoc deflection recently resurfaced. The “28 pages” chorus.

Alex Jones, who used to so vehemently pronounce that 9/11 was an inside job, recently became more concerned with the “28 pages”.

The “28 pages” seems to essentially be an attempt to blame Saudi Arabia for 9/11.

Therefore, Trump’s bombshell statement can either be taken at face value (to paraphrase, “You might come to find out that it was the Saudis…”) or as coded language.

If it is coded language, then it is brilliant.

But the question is this:

is Donald Trump a). Jean Valjean or b.) Thénardier?

Donald has done hard time in the free-range world of corporate stratagems.

The real question remains: does he have a heart?

Jean Valjean had a heart.

Thénardier had none.

As Cosette asks about the convicts, “Are they still human?”

Valjean answers “Sometimes.”

Did Donald make it through the gauntlet to finally bring the RIGHT perps to justice for 9/11?

I sincerely hope so.

-PD

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Roma città aperta [1945)

When I was younger I could take the easy way.

But as I have grown older I have found that increasingly impossible.

In moments of weakness I think of money. A job. Adventure.

But none of that really matters.

What matters is our fellow human beings.

Dear friends, this film (Rome, Open City) is an extremely moving experience.

What I try to bring to you as an amateur film critic are the words of a man immersed in the film…baptized…in the experience of each film.

Most pieces of cinema are not worth this effort, but occasionally a film is worth every minute…every second…every tear shed.

Roma città aperta is a masterpiece from director Roberto Rossellini. This is a very famous film because of the milieu in which it was made.

WWII was not even over. You can imagine how hard it must have been to get film stock (film for the camera) while Europe was in flames and Italy was a defeated country occupied by the Allies.

But this film tells of Italy occupied by the Nazis (and, indeed, Rome was occupied by the Nazis prior to American occupation).

But all of these descriptions I’m giving you…they mean nothing.

What you must understand about this film is that it did something which no film before it had done.

This film was infused with the sorrow of the World Wars, but was presented as one would present a documentary.

Hence the name neorealism.

Anna Magnani is so beautiful, but not glamorous. She is beautiful because she is believable. It takes a philosophical film director to deliver such a performance. It also takes a hell of an actress!

Roma città aperta is like an opera by Mascagni or Leoncavallo. Verismo!

Act I ends with Magnani running after her fiancé. The SS have literally come to take him away. And her weaving, desperate run became an iconic film moment which wouldn’t be adequately interpolated back into the cinematic discussion till Jean-Paul Belmondo took the entire Rue Campagne-Première to die in À Bout de souffle.

Godard was young. À Bout de souffle was his first film.

Godard took the easy way. Postmodernism.

A bit from here and a bit from there. Voila!

But later Godard grew a conscience. And his conscience helped him find himself kicked to the curb of the film industry.

In our film, Aldo Fabrizi is the voice of conscience.

He plays the priest don Pietro.

He’s not your average priest.

This is a guy who stands against the Nazis.

Don Pietro helps the resistance.

Don Pietro gives and gives and gives and asks nothing.

He is a true man of God…a true humanitarian.

He helps anyone in need…atheists, communists, it doesn’t matter.

But one thing is important.

Don Pietro has made a value judgment concerning the Nazis.

He has discerned who the enemy is.

That is a large step.

Today, we are told every day who our enemy is supposed to be.

The worst offender is Fox News, but the other networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC) are all equally devoid of journalistic merit.

As for the print media, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post are completely worthless.

If you lived in Nazi Germany, you would have been bombarded with propaganda about how the Jews were the enemy and how the Jews were responsible for every conceivable ill in society.

That was, of course, untrue.

In America today, we are told (particularly by the infantile Fox News) that Islam and Muslims are the enemy and that every conceivable problem in the world today relates back to this group.

This is, obviously, untrue.

The other three/five networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC) are more eager to push gun control (something which Hitler would no doubt have applauded).

And so, I propose to you, dear readers that what we are seeing in the world today is an array of psychological operations which mirror something about which Italy knows only too well: Operation Gladio.

But I propose to you that what we are seeing nowadays are multiple Gladios run by gently-warring factions of the New World Order.

The biggest Gladio in operation (a series of false-flag attacks accompanied by fake wars) is the one being run by the neoconservative faction of the New World Order (including several prominent Zionists who, despite holding high U.S. government offices [and Top Secret clearances], held dual citizenship during their terms of service to the U.S. with Israel and the U.S.). This Gladio brought you the Paris attacks. This Gladio is responsible for the War “on” Terror (including the synthetic Arab army/marketing confection known as ISIS). And finally, this Gladio almost certainly brought you the San Bernardino shooting as well.

The main goal of the neoconservative Gladio is endless war. It is a macro operation. It operates on the level of geopolitics. War profiteering, oil, drugs… The neoconservative Gladio brought you the mother of all false-flags: 9/11.

On the other hand is the liberal Gladio. The liberal Gladio brought you Sandy Hook (their masterpiece). Their other suspected jobs are Aurora (the Batman shooter) and Umpqua. It wouldn’t be a stretch to also include the OKC bombing and the Waco massacre of the Branch Davidians. But focusing on the first three cases alone (Sandy Hook, Aurora, Umpqua), it is very clear that the liberal Gladio has as its main goal gun control.

The liberal Gladio is operating on a micro (or domestic) level. The San Bernardino shooting was meant to make Obama look soft on crime. The neocon gang which engineered the shooting exhibited perfect timing as Obama had recently announced an initiative to reclaim MRAPs from local law enforcement across the country (in response to police abuse of power). The neocons took a page out of the liberal false-flags-for-gun-control playbook on this one, but the main goal was endless war. [This, of course, didn’t prevent Obama from trying to leverage the event to prop up HIS faction’s agenda.]

The unfortunate equation is that neither side can expose the deeds of the opposing side because they are both dealing in untruths. Obama has, up until now, squandered his opportunity to bring the neocons of the Bush administration to task for 9/11 and the fraudulent War “on” Terror. Indeed, Obama has only proven that he himself is a fraud down to his very core.

The layers-upon-layers of lies in the United States cannot hold. Snowden pierced the veil. Only those with a conscience can save us now.

-PD

7 Comments

La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc [1928)

For this one I should really write a good piece.

Because this is a miracle of cinema.

Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.

You might cue it up on Hulu (good luck with Netflix) as part of the Criterion Collection.

You might put your headphones on.

But the Criterion Collection presents this as a truly silent film.

We know that that wasn’t the case most of the time with “silent” films.

They had live piano accompaniment. Perhaps an orchestra.

In some countries (Japan?) they had sound effects performed live.

But watching La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc today is truly a lonely experience.

You might keep the headphones on out of habit (as if a sound might finally emerge…but it never does).

It takes a valiant effort to watch this film in its totality and not cry when the famous scene comes.

“The famous scene” I refer to is the one made famous by Godard’s best “movie”: Vivre sa vie.

Anna Karina sits in a movie theater and watches this very film. And we join her just in time to see the tears roll down her cheeks.

Joan of Arc.

She stood for something.

And somehow, a “religious” court found her guilty. She is labeled for all time, by this panel of judges, an “apostate” and an “idolater”.

What a tragedy!

It very plainly shows us the error of religion.

Joan’s religion is pure. Her dedication is personal.

And who ever gave “the Church” the power to kill?

There is no part of the New Testament which even suggests such a power should emanate from Jesus through the Apostles (his “descendants”) and on down the ages to “the Church”.

And so Christianity failed. There are a lot of apologies to be handed out. The Inquisition, etc.

[It should be pointed out that the Catholic Church rectified this mistake made by a regional element which was allied with the English against the French.]

But the important thing is that Joan stood.

She stood for something. Even if she was a fiery mystic like Hildegard von Bingen.

And who do we have to look to today?

I would say Snowden. Is Snowden the real article?

He is certainly filling the needed role.

The great evil now is the surveillance state.

It is plain and simple.

And Will Smith should win the Oscar for Best Actor in Concussion even if for one line: “Tell the truth!”

But there are far more important things on which we need the truth.

9/11, the War “on” Terror, ISIS…

Who is standing for those nearly 3000 who died horrible deaths in New York City?

When you wave a false flag, your soldiers don’t mete out justice.

When you wave a false flag, you get the wrong people.

No wonder Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had to be waterboarded 183 times.

And Guantanamo is full of goat farmers.

Therefore (q.e.d.), the 19 hijackers story (being impossible without the assistance of highly-placed “moles” in both the FBI and CIA) is the deadliest “Once upon a time…” ever written.

As much sympathy as I have for all those who died on 9/11 (and it is substantial), we must recognize the web of death which emanated from that lie…that “Once upon a time…”. Try reading the 9/11 Commission Report without vomiting. Why, because it is graphic? No. Because it reads like “My Pet Goat” (which George W. Bush was busy reading in Florida while he should have been rushing for cover = fake terror [w/ real death]).

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria…

It is disgusting. There is not a “dictator” or “warlord” in the world who has wrought the needless destruction which the United States of America (by way of lies) has visited upon the Muslim world in the past 15 years.

But let’s be fair. Our soldiers have been tricked. Their lives have been ruined in the course of fighting this imperial war. I am an American. I pity our military. They did not join up to fight shadow wars. They did not join up to be the tools of imperialists. They wanted to protect the United States. Their generals have only succeeded in making the world a more dangerous place.

And that brings us to ISIS. ISIS typifies everything fake about the War “on” Terror. From the bastards who brought you the self-inflicted wound known as 9/11 comes a new comedy starring those wild and crazy terrorists who sprang up from nowhere.

Just like al-Qaeda. Sprang up from nowhere. Of course, there was the Operation Cyclone-era groundwork laid (that would be, CIA funding), but in general the “roll-out” of al-Qaeda was fairly quick. But ISIS took the cake. The confectioners of fake terror (that would be, the U.S., U.K., NATO countries, Israel, Five Eyes, take your pick, etc.) really outdid themselves with their speed to market in introducing ISIS. In doing so, the New World Order (let’s call them) cannibalized their own product (al-Qaeda) just as Apple does each time it rolls out a new iPhone.

And so it has been transparent all along. The catchy name has incriminated ISIS (no fundamentalist terrorist group from the Middle East would ever name themselves after an Egyptian pagan god) from the beginning.

ISIS is like a water cooler joke at Langley. The spooks can’t believe how dumb we are.

And so it has been the U.S. airdrops which have sustained ISIS. Yes, Turkey has provided a good bit of sustenance (under the aegis of NATO).

And the aerial campaign against ISIS’ formidable Toyota (!) trucks? Nonexistent.

WE have been ISIS’ air force. We haven’t been bombing ISIS. At all. Ever.

Russia has made this clear.

Make no mistake, Russia entered the Syrian theater because of the insanity of NATO along her borders.

Since Russia has entered:

-Russian passenger jumbo jet blown up over the Sinai Peninsula

-sabotage operation of explosions which have knocked out a considerable amount of power in Crimea (in the winter)

– Turkish (NATO) shootdown of Russian fighter/bomber

These are not pleasant things.

It is hard to tell exactly what role the Paris attacks played.

I think they were an American operation which backfired when France leaned towards Russia. It is, however, possible that it was a French-engineered false-flag to allow France a pretext for joining Russia. Perhaps the DGSE saw no other solution than sacrificing a hundred or so Parisians to stop the American war of insanity in Syria.

What is most obvious is the general arc of this farce: 9/11 (absolutely false narrative regarding the guilty party), the War “on” Terror (more lies lies lies…never ending war…profits for Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, United Technologies, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum ad nauseam), and ISIS (as fake as the Kuwaiti babies being ripped out of incubators which was foisted upon the U.S. Congress thanks to Hill & Knowlton PR firm).

And so we stand. Each in our own little ways.

The panopticon is already constructed.

The camps are empty.

The data vacuumed up thus far will be mined from now till eternity.

Thus, Snowden needs to be eclipsed.

Who will be the next great human to take the world stage?

-PD

7 Comments

To Write Love on Her Arms [2012)

This film goes beyond film. Which is not to say it doesn’t have its problems. Like the protagonist, it does. But let me tell you why this film is worth it. No…you know what? This is fucking bullshit! That’s not the way to review a film. This is.

It’s gotta come from the heart and mind. Depend too much on the mind and you miss the beauty. Secrets make you sick. Must be a whole lot of sick people in Langley, Virginia and Fort Meade, Maryland. Go on, look it up. It’ll do you good. But for you lazy bums, that’s the CIA and NSA.

I read about the CIA all the time. Why? I’m only answering limited questions today. But suffice it to say that both of these spy agencies are pretty interesting. Don’t you think?

Well, so that’s one of my secrets. It’s not really a secret. It’s pretty transparent. But maybe not. So, there. Like Robert Creeley said. There you have it.

It’s very hard to not drop into John Berryman testimonial mode when talking about this film (oh yeah, this is a film review…duh!).

First things first: you gotta love a film that premieres at the Omaha Film Festival (!) Just knowing that Omaha has a film festival makes me feel a little less depressed about my life and the shitty town I live in (San Antonio).

And so…our setting: Orlando. It’s like an outtake from Mister Lonely–Cinderella smoking a cigarette at the bus stop. Headed to the theme park presumably… It’s certainly begging for a Harmony Korine touch, though director Nathan Frankowski does a nice job handling this priceless aside in more of a Terry Zwigoff way.

Wow. Somebody needs to give the Wikipedia page for TWLOHA (the movie) some love. I mean, Jesus! A three-sentence plot summary??? There’s lost silent films which have more detailed synopses on Wiki than this!

So I guess my first inclination was correct: speak from the heart.

Well God damnit! There are some priceless moments in this film. The secret weapon is Rupert Friend. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t strike a stake right to my heart…fondling that pocket watch… It’s no jive-ass MC5 John Sinclair rave-up testifyin’ going on. This is some real shit.

For all of the snobs (like me) in the audience: you gotta give this film time. Clear from your mind the unpleasant parallels to the CGI of What Dreams May Come and The Lovely Bones. IT GETS BETTER.

That said. How? Well, once again Ms. Kat Dennings hits a home run. This is no easy role. It’s a tough, tough, TAXING role to embody with anything even approaching Method Acting. But I have a sneaking suspicion that Dennings felt this role naturally (to a certain extent).

How does this film go beyond film? Because. Ghost World was a masterpiece. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist was perfection for its genre (young adult comedy romance). Charlie Bartlett was a mini-masterpiece…a damn good film. Hell! Daydream Nation was pretty fucking good too. But TWLOHA moves into the social realm…because it touches on depression and substance abuse (not to mention the cutting words of the haiku title) in a real, sobering way. No pun intended. At least not the sober one.

Yeah. What does this mean for you, dear WordPress blogger…or for someone who stumbled across this article? It means you are powerful beyond your wildest belief.

Every time you commit your precious thoughts to the page and share them with people (comma) you are saying the only stuff that people believe anymore.

It doesn’t mean you can talk about reptilians and be taken seriously (no offence to my reptilian theorist brothers…and sisters). No, it means that the only people who have CAPITAL in SINCERITY are everyday people like me…and YOU.

We don’t believe the lies anymore. We’ve swallowed so many damned secrets that we’re sick to death. We can’t sleep. But we are fucking powerful! Hillary Clinton knows it. Zbigniew Brzezinski knows it. I’m not sure if David Rockefeller knows it. Nor George H.W. Bush.

That’s ok. They came from a different generation. Hell…I’m not even a “digital native”… Not a Millennial. I guess I am part of that lamentable flannel fuzzed Generation X. I hyphenate when I damn well please.

I make inside jokes that only I get. I don’t have any friends. Not anymore. But I have family. I have cats. Some days I think my best friend is an extraterrestrial in Turkey. Or a classmate from Iran. But most days my best friend is an actor or an actress.

So to Kat Dennings (and Renee Yohe)…wherever you are. Thank you. It makes a big fucking difference. That you exist. My sentence fragments and idiosyncratic punctuation are yours. Mi casa es su casa.

-PD

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paulydeathwish

musician and film critic

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