Histoire(s) du cinéma {Chapter 1(b): Une Histoire seule} [1989]

“And Gauguin, he buggered off, man, and went all tropical.”

Sang Nick Cave.

On the brilliant song “There She Goes, My Beautiful World”.

And our world is going to shit.

Fast.

So let’s get some answers, shall we?

Event 201.

10/10/19.

Coronavirus.

Bats.

http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/scenario.html

“The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms.”

Sound familiar?

Players.

War gaming.

Avril Haines.

Former Deputy Director of the CIA.

haines.html

Instead of CNN, Event 201 came up with a fake news channel called GNN which supplemented the reality of its war game.

Go to 1’17” in video.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but consider the following:

A.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helps put on the Event 201 coronavirus simulation on October 10, 2019

B.  Bill Gates leaves the boards of directors of Berkshire Hathaway [Warren Buffett] and Microsoft on March 13, 2020

C.  94 of the 154 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. as of March 20, 2020 were in Washington State [specifically in the King County (Seattle) area]:  Bill Gates’ home

Bill Gates’ father was the former head of Planned Parenthood.

The Gates Foundation gave $82 million to Planned Parenthood organizations over the years 2009-2015.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Event 201 bat coronavirus simulation in NYC on 10/19/19 was cosponsored by the World Economic Forum.

Among its board members is Al Gore.

https://www.weforum.org/about/leadership-and-governance

Also among its board members is Queen Rania of Jordan.

If you look at the Twitter account of John Podesta (Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman), you will find that the first person he followed on Twitter was Queen Rania.

Why?

Also on the World Economic Forum board is David M. Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group.

The Carlyle Group has a close connection to the Bush family.

On the morning of 9/11/01, the Carlyle Group was meeting in Washington, D.C.

Who was at that meeting?

Dig!

“Event 201 was supported by funding from the Open Philanthropy Project.”

http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about

What is the Open Philanthropy Project?

Who runs it?

One of the founders of Facebook (and his wife).

Dustin Moskovitz (the person in question) donated $20 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  He was the third-largest donor in the 2016 campaigns.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/facebook-cofounder-gift-democrats

Melinda Gates is on the board of The Washington Post.

melinda-french-gates-elected-director-washington-post-company

Bill Gates has attended the Bilderberg Meetings.

bilderberg-group-conspiracy-theories-secret-societies-new-world-order-alex-jones-a8377171.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/is-bilderberg-a-conference-on-world-affairs-or-a-powerful-global-cabal-depends-on-who-you-ask/2012/06/01/gJQA5uqx7U_story.html

Both Bill and Melinda Gates were considered by Hillary Clinton staffers as possible running mates for her 2016 run.

https://time.com/4534899/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-running-mates/

Are you seeing a theme here?

This amazingly prescient Event 201 which had a scenario (see above link) that mirrors the present coronavirus outbreak almost exactly (transmission of a coronavirus from bats to humans…misunderstanding of community spread dynamics owing to mistaken comparison to SARS) was headed and funded almost entirely by left-wing, globalist people who support the Democratic Party in the United States.  The only “foil” might be the Carlyle Group presence on WEF’s board (a connection to the equally-globalist, anti-Trump Bush family).

The Clintons and the Bushes.  Lots of money.  Unequivocally anti-Trump.  And they just happen to run a coronavirus simulation a few months BEFORE the current outbreak even began in China.

Cui bono?

Bill Gates has plenty of money.

He can withstand the shock to his personal bank account.

The Democrats (and Marxist globalists) were unable to impeach Trump.  Before that, they were unable to have Robert Mueller (former FBI Director) bring down Trump for “colluding” with Russia in the 2016 election.

So what did they have left in their effort to unseat the populist Trump?

Were they backed into a corner?

Was their collective corruption about to come to light?

Perhaps they played their last card:  attempt to destroy the U.S. economy with a pandemic PSYOP.

An average of 25,000 American die every year from the flu, but we don’t close the whole country down.

In 2017-2018, the CDC estimates that 61,000 Americans died from the flu.

past-seasons.html

Finally, how did a Johns Hopkins website become the end-all/be-all source for global and American coronavirus statistics?  Why was Johns Hopkins working with the Gates Foundation for the 10/19/19 bat coronavirus simulation Event 201 in NYC?  Has the simulation now become “real”?

Which brings us back to Gauguin…and Godard.

And part two of the greatest film ever made (in my opinion).

Histoire(s) du cinéma.

Godard contends in this 42 minute segment that cinema (the movie industry) is really a part of the cosmetics industry.

Everything is masked (and anonymous).

All is façade.

Godard further excoriates Hollywood by calling it a minor branch of the industry of lies.

Quite a humorous and pithy insult.

And self-deprecating.

It is true that Godard was an avowed Marxist.

A Leninist.

And even a Maoist.

And so it’s no surprise that he references Bertolt Brecht.

But Godard was, at this point in his career, becoming less of a radical (politically) and more of a humanist.

He was mellowing as a political firebrand.

But he was hitting his apex of creative experimentation.

I must admit.

This section is not the strongest of his eight-part masterpiece.

Section one Toutes les histoires is a tour de force.

But section two, Une Histoire seule, is a bit of a sophomore slump.

Or a lull.

A composer cannot maintain a fever-pitch indefinitely.

The great auteur got our attention in the first section.

And then he eases up.

He played the “head” (as in jazz).

And now he is beginning to improvise.

At first, he loosely pounds out the melody à la Thelonious Monk.

It sounds like more of the same.

And it is.

But it’s subtle.

It is a creator pondering his own creation.

“What have I just created?”

He turns it over and surveys it.

He feels its dimensions.

He tosses it and catches it like a baseball.

He estimates its weight.

The greatest movie ever made, Histoire(s) du cinéma, is not a movie in the strictest sense of the word.

It is not a narrative film per se.

There is very little NEW footage within.

Just like James Joyce’s magnum opus Finnegans Wake, it is not a novel.

It is much closer to poetry.

But it is novel (adj.).

This is a film review.

 

-PD

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me [1999)

This one is painful.  No getting around it.

Mike Myers is a very talented guy, but this film is seriously lacking in creativity.

I get it…  The James Bond series is very formulaic, but a spoof franchise can’t afford to be so predictable.

And thus it is little wonder that Austin Powers only lasted three installments.

But to be fair, let’s give this film a chance.

Austin starts out learning that his luck was too good to be true.

Elizabeth Hurley.  Not a professional model until age 29.

Speaks of a certain beauty.  Timeless.

Perhaps.

Daughter of Angela Mary Titt (!)…you can’t make this stuff up.

Bruce Beresford cast Hurley in Aria (1987) [a compilation film which happened to feature a vignette by my idol Jean-Luc Godard].

Aria was her debut.

Ok, enough about Hurley. She’s not in much of this film, but I really did her a disservice by completely failing to mention her performance in the first Austin Powers movie.  Really, she is a fine actress and her contribution to that movie was significant and impressive.

By now you may be noticing that the current film under consideration (installment two) must be quite a clunker for me to be going on about an actress who appears in about ten minutes of this feature.

If you have surmised thusly, you have surmised correctly.

Moving on…

There are moments in this movie when things briefly coalesce.  Dr. Evil’s headquarters atop The Space Needle hosts one such moment.  The schadenfreude I felt as a patron of a particularly lackluster Starbucks (watch the movie) was, in this scene, among the highlights of a rather limp film.

There is, of course, the addition of the 2′ 8″ Verne Troyer in this installment.  Troyer does a fine job as Mini-Me.

Even the Fat Bastard character is entertaining (up to a point).

I suppose that is the M.O. of the Austin Powers franchise: to go beyond the limits of ridiculousness and good taste.

When it works, it’s quite special.  When it doesn’t (as in most of this film), it’s a rather tragic affair.

Unfortunately, Rob Lowe is not really allowed to shine in this film.  His comedic gifts deserved better.

One player who makes the most of her small role is Kristen Johnston.  Kudos to her for making the sport of chess as exciting and bizarre as Marcel Duchamp and Henry Miller would have done had they wound up in this shambles of a film.

And now on to the bright spot of the film:  Heather Graham.

Yes, I know…I know.

Though it’s not as powerful as her breathtaking performance in Boogie Nights, it’s not a bad performance.

No…far from it.

Graham takes the charm of Elizabeth Hurley and ratchets it up a few notches.

But the story…oy vey, the story.  Really, there is no story.  The same story.

It’s pretty sad when a spy spoof is less entertaining than a Bond clunker such as Moonraker.

Back to Graham…anyone who’s dated Adam Ant is alright in my book.

Pushing onwards…

Dr. Evil at least happens upon the perfect name for his doomsday laser:  The Alan Parsons Project.

Like the evil Starbucks Space Needle, it is one of few highlights.

One of the few storyline threads to come through intact is the one involving Powers’ mojo.

Unfortunately, the naïvete of enlightenment which somehow alighted upon the first Austin Powers film is not present here to sustain the promising premise of mojo lost and found.

Strangely, the series itself seemingly lost its mojo in this its sophomore slump.

There’s one final twist at the end involving Fat Bastard.  For a moment the film threatens to redeem itself.

But alas, as they say…

-PD