I, Anna – An Underappreciated Film starring Charlotte Rampling and Gabriel Byrne

What it is. . . a film review

The title of this film should be a clue this is not a fast-paced detective thriller, but more of a character study.   The film hinges entirely on the Anna character, and who better to reflect the emotional nuances than Charlotte Rampling. 

Anna is a gentile woman too young to give up living and too old to easily fit in to the cruel world she’s lost in.  As a lost woman, her life is a mix of fact and fantasy, with loneliness being the predominant theme. Her eyes, her reticence, her elegant figure convey only a small part of her mystery.  You find out slowly, as if by drip torture, that she’s being crushed by traumas of her own making.

We meet her first in one of those meet and mingle affairs held for lonely middle-aged people without partners, a scene that is at once depressing  and pitiful.  In an early sequuence, the cinematographer cuts to snap profiles of battered people looking for human companionship in a dreary human landscape.  A bull-headed man has dandruff on his shoulders.  A skinny would-be prospect is missing more teeth than a two year old.  For another man, it’s all about all-too-eager serial sex with the presumption that Anna is there for the same reason.  Lots of people, no prospects.

I can’t say whether Anna’s social encounters are more or less depressing than today’s computerized speed dating and sex delivery services but  one of Anna’s problems is that she outclasses just about everyone at the ‘party,’ as the group meetings are termed by the hotel hosts.   Leaving the hotel she brushes by Detective Chief Inspector Bernie Reid, another lost and lonely soul who has recently separated from his wife. The detective becomes infatuated, finds in Anna’s remote personality some semblance of his own. 

So far as genre goes, people are calling it ‘film noir,’ but though dark shadows are ever present in the film style, that seems more convenient that describing what it really is.  There is a story arc – a murder in the beginning and the detective ferreting out the killer in the end — but the entanglements are interesting and often excruciating.  I would acknowledge that the ‘noir’ description fits   murder victim George Stone, a peach of a man who violently forces fellatio on Anna and otherwise brutalizes her. 

The story develops in a sufficiently mysterious way that doesn’t flinch at large and small telltale signs of a woman falling apart. The thing about Anna is that the more she falls apart the more the story comes together. It’s all pretty clear at the end, and there’s even a little Faulkneresque scene   (A Rose for Emily) toward the end where we get a peek into the closed off baby’s room.  There are serious cracks in the walls of Anna’s mind.

So my hit on it is that the film is largely unappreciated as the artistic tight piece that it is.  It’s not a film of fuzzy warm characters the Hollywood formula demands you must relate to.  Though it’s not overly highbrow,  I would recommend it to people of an artistic persuasion who are fond of fine acting, and from the minor characters as well.  Anna has a sort of broken elegance about her that makes you worry that, if you would take your eyes off the road for just a split second, you could fall as far and as fast as Anna does. 

Tessa Majors Murder: Going for the Match in DNA and Other Questions

UPDATE:  Tessa Majors was 18, just starting out at NYC's Barnard College/Columbia University when she was confronted by three individuals  in Morningside Park, just a stone's throw from the college.  One of the three handed a knife to the youth who stabbed her. One of the saddest and most pathetic videos you will ever see is when Tessa, bleeding from the knife wounds, stumbles up a long flight of concrete stairs to seek help.  The courageous young woman makes it to the top, just a few steps from the college, collapses and dies there.  Today,  sixteen-year-old Luchiano Lewis, who confessed to participating in the crime, was given a sentence of nine years to life. He was fourteen at the time the crime was committed. A second youth is already serving a sentence with a third still awaiting trial. 

Everyone knows that the  1989 Central Park 5 murder case has made investigators proceed with an abundance of caution in the similarly  high-profile murder case of victim Tessa Majors. Everyone except the morons who sent racist robocalls to Barnard University personnel knows that white adolescents have committed similar crimes, and for similar reasons. 

But let’s not mix social activism with criminal investigation in the murder of the first year Barnard College student stabbed to death in New York City’s Morningside Park on December 11.  Tessa and her family cry out for justice which just happens to involve a thirteen year old and two fourteen year olds, one of whom (allegedly, to use the appropriate legal terminology of innocent until proven guilty) stabbed and slashed Tessa Majors to death. 

Of course there are people observing and participating in the proceedings who do not want the responsible parties to be found out and, if they are found out, to be subject to the penal codes which, under normal circumstances,   apply equally to everyone, regardless of color, creed,and the rest of all that.  Below, you will see previously published material about the crime as it happened in December of 2019

Defense Attorney Hannah Kaplan would be happy to see her thirteen year old client go scott-free even though he’s admitted being present at the murder scene,   witnessing the fatal attack, and picking up a knife and handing it to one of the other suspects.  While Kaplan and others are doing what defense lawyers always do — play upon suspicions of police misconduct — it’s a good bet that the thirteen year old is on video, as are the two fourteen year olds.  It’s kind of hard to deny you were somewhere else if you’re on video where a murder is committed. 

Of the fourteen year olds, one was interviewed (with his lawyer and guardian) and, owing to the kindness and caution of the police department, released.  The other fourteen year old was believed to have fled south but was in fact found Thursday in the Bronx apartment of a relative.  According to several news sources (NYT for instance), the boy’s relatives were planning to shelter him until a bite wound on his finger healed. 

The notion that Tessa Majors fought back against her attacker(s) by biting comes from the thirteen year old’s confession and description of events. If the news reports have it right, that thirteen year old describes seeing the feather fly out of Tessa Majors’ jacket as she was being repeatedly stabbed and slashed.

But here are a few things I don’t know:

The New York Times and other news outlets often report that two assailants grabbed Tessa from behind, and that one of them reached into her pocket to grab a “plastic bag.”  The “plastic bag” term has appeared in several articles.  Could it just as easily have been “plastic purse” or “plastic wallet?”  Was Tessa carrying around in her pocket an empty Ziplock baggie? No problem there, just wondering.  I always keep a spare plastic bag in my pocket as I’m wandering about. But if it’s true, as one of Tessa’s school friends has it, that Tessa had gone to Morningside Park to buy marijuana, then it should be part of the investigation to determine whether other persons had been near and if somehow, perhaps inadvertently, such persons were involved in activities surrounding the murder.  Such persons, if they do exist, might even provide additional witness information.

I’m puzzled also by the testimony of the thirteen year old first taken into custody.  He says he picked up a knife dropped by one of the two fourteen year olds and handed it to one of the fourteen year olds. This is repeatedly and routinely mentioned in most news stories of the attack.  Can we assume that someone is shown on video picking up the knife and handing it off? But more importantly, how did it happen to be dropped?  Did it drop from a pocket or a hand?  Was it the murder weapon or just a spare knife kept around just for fun?  Where is the knife now?  

So with New York Legal Aid, Hannah Kaplan, and other fantasists attempting to shift focus and blame onto the police department handling of the interviews, investigating authorities are playing it smart by going for the DNA match.

 According to the NYT, forensics has gone over clothing and even the inside of Tessa Majors’ mouth to see what kind of DNA found there would match with DNA from all three of the ‘boys,’ but most especially the one who did the stabbing.  A judge has cleared the warrant for obtaining DNA samples from the most likely of the fourteen year olds to have killed Tessa.

Tessa Majors Murder: Blame the Police is Common Defense Strategy

It’s predictable enough.   When the facts are in your favor, you pound the facts.   When the facts are not in your favor, you pound the police officers involved in the investigation. 

It’s old news right now (as things go today) that the lawyer for the thirteen year old arrested in connection with the murder of Tessa Majors has launched a smear campaign against Wilfredo  Acevedo, a detective who interviewed and obtained the boy’s admission to  having gone to Morningside Park with his friends with the express purpose of robbing someone.  

They passed up on a male victim and then decided on Tessa Majors, a first year student at Barnard.  The thirteen year old admitted to being present at the stabbing-slashing murder, picking up a knife and handing it to teen who struck the fatal blows,  and provided a horrific detailed narrative about how the murder was committed. 

With few options, Defense attorney Hannah Kaplan influenceD news media to write smashing 20-point headlines about  how Acevedo was sued   times in   unconnected cases.  I find it amazing that so many news organizations, absent anything real to report, went with the story and were quite willing to smear the detective.

But Kapan’s wave of routine anti-cop strategy has already splashed harmlessly ashore.  While liberal media enjoyed a short feeding frenzy, I was rather impressed that CNN didn’t jump face forward into that sinkhole and is   reporting the words of New York’s Police Commissioner: 

New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea said Detective Wilfredo Acevedo has never been found to have made a single false statement or falsely arrested anyone and touted his exemplary record of service.

The police union president put it more bluntly, calling out Hanna Kaplan for using a "commonly used strategy employed by defense attorneys" to undermine investigations.  And for the record, Police Commisisoner Shea cites Acevedo’s outstanding record as a police investigator:

"The detective singled out here has made 237 arrests including 93 felony arrests removing dangerous criminals from our streets. He has been recognized with 24 department medals. He has never been found to have made a single false statement or falsely arrested anyone by either the Department, the (Civilian Complaint Review Board), any Civil Court or District Attorney."

  I guess since Acevedo is Hispanic,  defense lawyer Hannah Kaplan was probably frustrated that she couldn’t play the race card along with her other attempts to poison the jury pool.  It was smart for the police, in the early going, not to identify the assailants as persons of color, leaving open the possibility which occurred to me and others — that perhaps the assailants were white thugs.  Remove all phony justifications for murder and what do you have?  Just what it looks like — some   young, very dangerous, very vicious punks who wanted to find easy prey.

So where is this case at right now?  Frankly, it’s only the police who might have the answer, though they have to be a bit frustrated by sixth amendment protections against an accused. 

Here’s the short brief about where things stand:

·       Police have already questioned another teen implicated by the thirteen year old and didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. He was let go as the law requires. The only evidence announced so far is a video that reportedly shows the attack, and the eyewitness account of the thirteen-year-old which is self-serving.  Neither the thirteen-year old nor the released fourteen year old are seen stabbing Tessa Majors.   

·       Another fourteen year old, whose picture is shown above, is being sought as the one who stabbed and slashed Tessa Majors to death.  It is believed that he has left New York and traveled down south to hide among family connections.  Being fourteen, this person does not have a driver’s license and so it’s logical to believe he is being abetted as a fugitive by friends and/or relatives.  

Tessa Majors Murder: Lots of Guessing, Few Results

      The media seems to like this picture of Tessa Majors. Her brightness bespeaks the tragedy. . .

I’d been following the Tessa Majors story since it began. It is a sensational case, I can’t help that — a talented and accomplished young woman in her first year at a prestigious New York City College.  The major NY and other media is all over the story, often with unreliable results.

Some reports said Tessa had gone to the park for a nighttime jog.  Others said she was going for a walk.  An ill-thought out remark by one police union official offended the murder victim’s family when he said Tessa had gone down into the park to buy marijuana.  According to the New York Post, this speculation came from a “college friend of the victim.”

  Tessa’s parents and others were quick to point out Mullin’s comment reflected a blame-the-victim mentality.  True or not, the comment should never have been made. Mullins issued a quick and warranted apology.

 The newest public characterization of this horrible murder is that Tessa fought back, biting one of her assailant’s finger.  This information may or may not have come from the 13 year old who is in custody.  Wouldn’t this also be interpreted by some as a blame-the-victim trope?  Doesn’t it send the message that fighting back against muggers could get you killed?

 The thirteen year old currently in custody appears in a video which his lawyer touts to make the case that the thirteen-year-old (named in the NY Post) did not stab the victim but handed the knife to the teen who did.  Later it emerged that one of the assailants dropped a knife.  The thirteen-year-old picked it up and handed it back to the assailant who repeatedly stabbed Tessa, one blow striking under her armpit and reaching her heart.   

I have many questions.  The biggest one is this:  Why did the ‘boys’ who robbed Tessa Majors have to kill her?  They could have robbed Tessa and vanished into the city as they’d likely done before.  I can't help but wonder if too many public political attacks on color, class and privilege had contributed to the vicious mindsets of the young teen perpetrators.

Missing “The Wire” : TV Déjà vu All Over Again

Andre Royo as "Bubbles"


After watching so many episodes of “The Wire,” it’s been a little difficult for me to get into one of its verisimilitudes.   Starz TV  “Power” has its moments and some fine acting but once you get hooked on realistic portrayals “The Wire” is hard to beat.


It’s not for the faint of heart, of course. The show is determined to reveal life as it is in parts of Baltimore and other American cities and not the FCC sanitized version.    Baltimore was a good choice for the show because it’s a port city. Boatloads of cargo come in on container ships to be unloaded by men and machines.  


The old guys exaggerate their experiences of the ‘good old days’ when things were tough and real men wearing only tee-shirts in zero degree weather, unlike the 'pussies' of the modern world, could lift whole shipping containers  with one hand while fighting off pirates with the other.  


The longshoremen drink and swear a lot when they’re not grousing about the shrinking job opportunities.  We see how it is on the loading-unloading docks where nepotism rules and the foreman’s son Ziggy is somewhat of an embarrassment when he loses an entire ‘hot’ shipping container.    Okay, Ziggy is kind of a coglione, but in a show with such an undertow you need one or two of those to lighten up.


The focus on gritty repartee and private parts is part of the attraction though guys like Ziggy don’t know when to keep things zipped up.  That ‘zipped up’ is in the literal sense, by the way. There’s a scene where   Ziggy climbs up on the bar, unzips his pants and lets it all hang out.  

What is Justice in the Amber Guyger Murder Trial?

Defendant Amber Guyger.  Inset:  Botham Jean

I’d heard about this case some time ago and rushed to judgment.  If you asked me about it then, I would have sounded like the prosecutor. Police officer Amber Guyger comes home from work, parks on the wrong floor of the parking garage, goes to a fourth floor apartment instead of her own third floor apartment and shoots dead the man who lives there.  You couldn’t believe such a thing was a mistake.  This was a murder.

Only recently did I pay attention to the story.  CBSN and other news outlets televised some of the trial.  I also read several of the articles about it.  Now I don’t know what I think.   There are times when the very nature of justice is called into question and must be defined again.  This is one of those times.

First of all, it’s an incomprehensible horror for the man, his family, and the community. The people who loved him should not have to suffer this.  The man should be alive.    I understand the family would be bitter. I understand how they would file a federal lawsuit against Dallas.  

 Amber Guyger got fired about two weeks after the shooting happened.   Then she was charged with manslaughter, which   seems to fit.  But then the case is sent to a grand jury which decides a murder charge is the apt and only way forward.   Is that a political decision?

Murder means you want to kill.  Murder is something you run away from.  Amber Guyger didn’t run away as we know from her anguished phone call to the dispatcher at her Dallas precinct.  Clearly hysterical, she pieces it together as well as she can.  Listen to the audio and you’ll see she flipped her bird, struggling to hold herself together, desperate to get fellow cops on the scene. 

  I understand from reading that     Botham Jean was still alive while Amber was on the phone and waiting for police and ambulance to arrive. Does anyone think she was capable of giving mouth to mouth resuscitation when Jean took one through the heart?   She did the only thing she could do — she lost her shit and begged for help. 

What seemed like an open and shut case of manslaughter has now become very different with this murder charge.  I don’t want to comment further but will discuss various aspects of the case as things unfold.

"The Americans" never gets old: 1st Episode of Season 5 w/ Keri Russell & Matthew Rhys

There is an old  KGB joke which shows the cynicism that pervaded all aspects of Soviet Communism:  “ A guy goes into a food market and asks: “Don’t you have any meat?” Market owner replies: “We don’t have any fish. The market that doesn’t have any meat is across the street.”

If you haven't watched "The Americans" before you should.  It's the kind of television that never gets old.  We are not in the 1980s any more.  Or are we?

In the  First Episode of Season Five of "The Americans,"  there was a new character named Tuan.’ Tuan  is a young Vietnamese KGB trainee posted with Soviet spies Philip and Elizabeth Jennings as their adopted son. He’s hard-core, a blind believer in the Soviet system, gung-ho to the point that even Elizabeth can hardly stand his psychotic utterings at the dinner table.  One astonished gaping look from Elizabeth  says it all. The kid is too whacked even by   KGB standards.

It’s not as if American espionage agents were playing softball.   The CIA has hired a dissident Russian working for the  U.S. to develop a strain of fungus that will destroy the Soviet Union’s wheat crop.   That’s a bit of overkill. The failure of the Soviet socialist-communist system is evident in filmed food lines, bare supermarket shelves, rotting food, tractors mired in mud up to the hubcaps.

The dissident scientist Alexei in  “The Americans”   has a great deal of enthusiasm for America, its freedom and plenty.   He criticizes  his home country while unwitting talking to Soviet spy Philip, who is disguised as an airline pilot.“Good thing you don’t work for Aeroflot. Their planes crash all the time. They’re dirty. You want food you have to stand in line for hours.  In Russia, you must share toilets, pay bribes. Awful country.”   

The Americans is never without humor, though it’s often of the droll, mordant kind. Stan Beeman is a Steven Martin style ‘lonely guy’ FBI agent when he pops in on the Jennings with a sixpack of beer.  Neighborly chit-chat.

Stan’s been isolated too long and divorced not long enough. He bores a wry Phillip (Matthew Rhys,  great actor, and real life husband of Keri Russell)  with a non-eventful tale about a woman he’s seen at the gym. “I met a woman,” he tells Phillip. To ordinary mortals, this would mean he has possibilities. To nerdish Stan however, it means the woman on the treadmill next to him smiled at him while walking away.  

But the primary concern of the Soviet spies  is to get a sample of a biological warfare agent developed at an FBI lab in Virginia.  The Lassa virus had accidentally killed one of the embedded Soviet agents and it’s up to Elizabeth and Philip to dig up his body to get another sample.    It’s not going to be easy.  The CIA secretly buried  the toxic foreign agent in a sealed plastic overcoat inside a metal box buried fifteen feet deep in Fort Dietrich’s   back yard.

A team of agents, under the guidance of Philip and Elizabeth, sap the perimeter of the American compound and beginning digging. And digging. And still more digging. It’s pretty hard to explain how about 20 minutes of film digging can make for exciting TV but it does. 

You smell the dirt in more ways than one. The KGB team digs up the stinking body of their dead agent, cuts a chunk of his flesh out for transport back to Moscow.  One of the KGB team members slips off the ladder and cuts his wrist during the process. This exposes him to the Lassa virus. He panics,knows he’s going to die.   Elizabeth calmly reassures him that everything’s going to be all right, don’t worry, be calm.  When the man calmsdown, Elizabeth pulls a pistol and  shoots him in the head. Dead fall into the hole.

The ends justify the means. It’s brutal.  

Welcome to the Rileys: James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, and Melissa Leo Shine

“Welcome to the Rileys” presents a very American-style movie which seems almost from a different era.  It kinda’ is, considering  that in the speed-of-light movement of media in 2019,  a film from 2010  seems light years behind the times.  

In the   incessant parade of Marvel Comics inspired  sequels, prequels, and whatever other money-drubbing special effects   eyeball candy is drummed into audiences, “Welcome to the Rileys” is a window to a world of loss, patience, compassion, and possibly redemption. 

The independent film project is so archaic that it relies on superb acting by the late James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, and Melissa Leo to make its story engaging.  Nothing explodes, rockets into the air, crashes (unless you count human ones), or bleeds profusely (except when one of Mallory’s tricks smacks her around because he’s not happy with the sexual services she’s expected to provide),    “He tried to stick it up my ass,” she tells Doug, who is glad there is one vice Mallory does refuse to engage in.

Doug is the proprietor of a successful plumbing supply chain.  Lois is his wife.  And ‘Mallory’ (who goes by several aka(s) is a . . . .

1)     teen-age prostitute

2)     stripper

3)     orphan runaway from Florida

4)     substitute daughter to fill an empty space

There’s a lot of concentrated dissonance in the lives of Lois and Doug.  Since the death of their daughter Emily in a car accident, the couple has been locked into separate emotional boxes.  Lois has not left the house for years, not even to walk down her driveway to the mailbox.  Doug bides his time through business and an ongoing affair with a black waitress at a local diner.

It’s when Doug goes to a plumbers convention in New Orleans that he meets Mallory in a strip club where he’s gone to hide away from his obtuse conventioneer pals.  He refuses everything she offers beginning with a lap dance, and then graduating to just about everything else.  “Except anal, I don’t do anal,” Mallory says.   

It takes her a good long time to realize Doug is a real live human being and a generous one to boot.  Mallory is quite a beautiful mess with her tangle of hair, sharp features, halting bird-of-prey eyes darting around.  There are a couple of camera shots where you realize Doug may be a better man than you are.   Not having seen Kirsten Stewart in those fantasy flicks, I wondered if that was a body double climbing onto Doug’s lap in the seedy private room of the strip club. Yikes, there was one shot where I’d definitely lose my religion — but not to digress.

  Doug decides to take up permanent residence in the claptrap rooms where Mallory lives.  He calls wife Lois to tell her he won’t be home for a while.  She’s so numb with shock and loss that it hardly registers.  Weeks pass and finally Lois crashes out of her torpor and goes to look for her husband.   It’s all new to her – getting into the car, actually driving, rediscovering the outside world — but at least it’s a beginning.  Or it could be an ending the way she drives, confusing reverse for a forward gear.  So then you have Lois, Doug, and Mallory living together in a ramshackle apartment in a rundown part of New Orleans.

Of humor there are only short precise snatches.  Because it’s all very sad and heartbreaking.  It’s not the kind of pain you can easily shuck off.  It’s a familiar kind of pain that has you caring fopr Doug, and Lois, and Mallory.

 

Okay, so  being the discriminating film watcher that you are, and having seen some of this in RL, you know that Mallory (and it could be any drug addict, child prostitute, teen alcoholic, or serial loser in your life circle) cannot suddenly change into that wholesome mid-western fairy princess to fill that huge hole in the lives of Doug and Lois.

But she can deliver on a ray of hope.  If the film stumbled in a few spots, you quickly forgot about it, so engaging were the actors, and so human the story. 

Iran’s Government : iToday’s ‘Evil Empire.’

“Either the Trump administration is trying to goad Iran into war or a war could come by accident because of the administration’s reckless policies,” declared former Obama official Wendy Sherman Wednesday, after the State Department withdrew personnel from Iraq.

That’s from the Wall Street Journal today.  That and other Democrat ‘leaders’ from the Obama administration are seeking political advantage in 2020 by positioning themselves as peace-seeking opposition candidates. 

Okay, I get the politics but not at my expense and not at the expense of national security.  Neither at the expense of the cash millions that   Obama gave to the Iranians with a planeload of U.S. dollars paid for the 2015 Nuclear Iran Deal.

You’d almost think Obama official Wendy Sherman had sat down with the mullahs for  tea and sympathy.   Considering that Dems were raising issues of ‘collusion’ for talking to Russians,  it would seem that Wendy Sherman, Obama, and wobbly old 30s socialist Bernie Sanders would be a little more cautious about giving encouragement and succor to the enemy. 

Bernie Sander’s latest hymn to Iran Mullahs is that  recent U.S. actions to protect American troops, American, Arab, and European interests in the region as “provocations on the part of the United States against Iran.”

Iranians have had several rebellions against their militant Islamist leaders.  Some   remember (perhaps from reading western books)  the freedom once had before the 1979 Iranian revolution with its 444 day brutal capture, torture, and display of American hostages.  

Don’t doubt that the Iranian terrorist militias (al quds forces) are responsible for the horrors of Yemen, recent violent attacks on four ships, an attempted assassination of a Saudi official in Washington D.C. and  much more. 

Iran’s Government is at the heart of today’s ‘Evil Empire.’  

Beware the Writer's Group : John Updike is Watching from Above

Most people realize that some writer's groups are helpful whereas others may be toxic.  Often there is a mix of toxicity and helpfulness.  In my own group, there are people whom I listen to and others whom I discount the minutes their lips begin to move.  Too many people are in the latter category though I have to admit sometimes even that amuses me.

One of the dumbest criticisms I've heard in my group is that the writer (whomever is being reviewed) should use a simpler or less descriptive word than the one used. This is absolutely insane.  I'm currently in a throwback reading mood and going through a very clever and witty novel by John Updike (Bech at Bay).  I shudder to imagine his ghost sitting at our round table.

This dumbing down in my group has gone on too long. I thought it was time  I spoke out:

"Gotta' say I get a little stressed at Meetups when I hear (too often) a critique saying a writer should look for an easier word than the one used (or a shorter sentence where a longer one is warranted) so that a reader with a less developed vocabulary or level of comprehension  will find the writing more accessible. Aside from the fact that a limited vocab leads to flat and dull writing, it's a bit insulting to assume that readers are of such a low level that they couldn't figure out from the  context  of last night's piece that such terms as "voir dire" have something to do with questioning jurors before they are seated. 

Besides, it's not like we're as erudite as. .. say, John Updike for example.  Neither is it like back in the day when you had to keep three or four paper dictionaries on your desk.  Just spit a word into your cell phone and the definitions pop out a nanosecond later.  The English language is rich in nuance -- it behooves us all to reach for  the heights of it and not to surrender to our inner Neanderthal".    

Could You Please Come to Chicago 1968

Or maybe worse. . .  

Shades of 1968 in 2020?

As I look at the way things are shaping up among the Democrats vying for the party nomination in 2010, I can’t help thinking of the violent and crazy 1968  Democratic National Convention.   The Republican Party  of today might not be having its most illustrious moment, but the environment for Democrat candidates for President is  toxic,and potentially violent.  Democrats are clearly heading for a train wreck.   

While the protesters of the 1968 Democratic Party Convention had concrete political and moral concerns like racism, the Vietnam war, women’s rights, and the unsettling effects of a spate of horrendous assassinations,  Democrats today  are fretting about their fundamental political philosophy.  How far left can we go without re-electing Trump?  How can we  indulge the far-left and yet prevent the crazies from taking over the electoral spotlight as they did in 1968? 

Fact is, they can’t.   Not with far left crazies like  Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib,   and the bartender (no offense, bartenders, it’s a noble profession but just doesn’t automatically qualify you for congress)  Alexandria Ocasio Cortez becoming the new face of the party.  And let’s face it, that’s where the clicks are, and that’s where the media goes when it wants to hear venom pouring upon the Trump administration.

This coven (and their well-heeled sponsors)  is tactical, unafraid to use classic propaganda techniques to gain the spotlight, and  willing to attack anyone, especially fellow Democrats, under the banner of left-wing ideological purity.  The language will be Marxist-Maoist-Alinsky and no Democrats will be immune to shaming.

They’re not too bright and they can’t win but they’re willing to do a lot of damage, especially to members of their own party, to achieve   ideological goals:    isolate Israel, establish socialism,  and redistribute wealth, mainly among themselves, although you can be sure plenty of sops will be thrown to the ‘impoverished” to buy rare items like toilet  paper in  Venezuela.

It would be funny except that I fear violence.  It will be a toxic soup of fresh-faced but bizarre charmers like Beto O’Rourke , avuncular antiques like Joe Biden,  long-time progressive harpies like Elizabeth Pocohontas Warren, and early twentieth centry Wobblies like Bernie Sanders.   All of these will compete against Trump and the Republicans who may be unable to block the crazies in their own bloc.  Expect lots of foul language from Tlaib who called Trump a “mother**cker* and also other crazies  including those on the right who might abide or even vote for a Democrat like Joe Manchin.

But the real problem is that,  because of the identity politics the Democrats have used to steer minority votes in their direction, white men (and perhaps white “original people” women) need not apply.   The numbers held up today would seem to favor Beto-Nut who is reported to have (as a prank?) put his child’s feces into a bowl and told his wife it was an avocado.  Another of his supposed high school peccadilloes was to entertain by writing a story about killing children. 

Don’t believe me b/c I am No One? Here’s an except from Peggy Noonan’s excellent column in the Wall Street Journal today: “Ben Terris of the Washington Post had a striking piece this week in which he reports Mr. O’Rourke ate dirt for its “regenerative powers” after losing to Ted Cruz, has pranked his wife with “Psycho”-style scenes in the shower, and once placed his child’s feces in a bowl and told his wife it was an avocado.”

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan

    Amazon Prime’s   series “Jack Ryan” pilot episode gives you plenty to look at right out of the gate.    The opening scene puts you back in time to when you popped cassettes into your   boom box and danced solo around your bedroom  to the amusement of your little brother.   Except that this is not America and the two boys in the opening sequence are not American kids.  They’re dancing to a “Men Without Hats” tune when a   formation of low flying jets lays a heap of bombs on some  real estate.  This is how kids grow up to be terrorists, according to a popular TV meme. It’s as good a place as any to start  begin an international spy thriller series. 

 From the Middle East to America then where  the studious mildly athletic  preppy boy Jack Ryan is  wearing his  Boston College tee-shirt while rowing his crew boat up a placid river. John Krasinski is an engaging Jack Ryan.    Extreme closeups of his face while rowing   make you like him right away.  He’s the kind of guy mothers want their daughters to marry. He’s the kind of guy the girl’s dad wants to corner into a conversation about the Washington Redskins. Later on when he’s being the virtuous non-polluting CIA analyst riding his bike to work we run into Jack’s boss, James Greer (Wendell Pierce).

    

Pierce was a a laid back street-wise cop in “The Wire” but here he’s been ddemoted to a job behind a desk after screwing up some unknown business in Pakistan.    Greer’s not thrilled with anything about his new post.    He’s accustomed to more action than he expects to get in this new backwater job posting.    He’s an operations guy.  The team he leads at Langley is a heady group of academics and policy wonks.  

 “I heard he went all Colonel Kurtz in the desert. Started making S.A.D dip their bullets in pig’s blood so anyone they killed wouldn’t go to Paradise,” one analyst gossips to Ryan.  So you see right away the creators of this spy thriller are not afraid to call a spade a spade, even if you can’t tell one spade from another until it’s too late.  

Dr. Jack Ryan’s office has this plaque at its entrance:  “CTC Terror Finance and Arms Division.”  He’s no James Bond, in other words.   Jack Ryan’s job is to find patterns of evil in the labyrinth  of financial transactions.  There’s a lot of alphabet soup mentioned, things like SINGINT, fun to look up if you’re so inclined.   I’ll save you the trouble of an online search for SWIFT;  It’s a system set up to track terrorist financing networks around the world. And of course Ryan gets a lead on a high value target who has an unusual pattern of financial transactions in Yemen where the Saudis are battling Houthi rebels not only capsizing Yemen but threatening the Saudi southern border.

The filming is picturesque, the camera roaming over medieval fortificatioins and desert plains to  ( Al Menajeer Syria) the house where the HVT lives with his wife and children.   A convoy of menacing strangers armed to the teeth approaches the compound.  Hanin, the wife of the terrorist mastermind, is tasked to hide away a light complexioned Chechen terrorist and a bunch of other guys.    In Suleiman’s (the HVT)  world, women are expected to ‘know their place.’  

Of course,  Ryan and Greer are hot to find these sweethearts.  Among their more hideous schemes was a plan to infiltrate a joint U.S./Arab military base and free a terrorist held prisoner there.  Clever stuff all the way through makes “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” one of the liveliest action shows on TV.  They way the terrorists gain access to the compound is chilling.  They’ve hidden weapons in the sewn up body cavities of dead fighters who were sent to the compound morgue. A massive gunfight follows and seems never-ending.  

Performances were solid throughout. Great direction of this fast action episode and taut editing made any weak spots fade quickly into memory.  The script writers did a fine job with dialogue, quippy, spare, informed,  not drowning the characters in hollow “Go, go, go!” or “I’ve got this” kind of heroics. 

Virtue doesn’t triumph here. The bad guys get away in the end as they often do in real life.     As far as serial action films go, this first episode of “Tom Clancy”s Jack Ryan” sets a high bar for others including its own future episodes.

  

  

Gomorrah: Second Time Around

Just finished watching for a second time an Italian TV series called Gomorrah.  Rhymes with Camorra.   Unlike the American Mafia or the Sicilian Mafia, the camorras have no hierarchical structures.  There is not one single camorra – there are several, rather like constellations.

Organization is horizontal, rather than pyramidal. Positions may be inherited. Rules are not always followed.

It seemed strange to me how the actors and directors of this TV series were, in interviews, saying such nice things about American films and TV series.  Unless they were referring to ‘slick,’ I kind of thought the opposite. The Italian version of a crime epic was grittier and more realistic than the ones I’ve watched – excepting perhaps “Casino” where there is not much room for romanticism. 

But even there, Gomorrah was hands-down more realistic than any mafia conforming fare found on American TV and film. Hey listen, wiseguy, I’m not putting down the American films like Godfather and Casino and TV shows like “The Sopranos.” I thought they were great.

Gomorrah is different, that’s all I’m saying.  Part of it is my own taste for realism. The more realistic the better. So let’s face it, the comorras of southern Italy don’t play very nice. 

Gomorrah, offered by Sundance TV and still “On Demand” has three directors. You may have noticed that earlier I used the plural when I referred to the director (s).

There is Stefano Sollima, the key director of the character Pietro Savanstano, head of the clan. His wife is named Imma for Immaculata – how’s that for an Italian name? She gets her own director but in most cases she needs one only to move her through the scenes. Then they have a son.  His name is Gennaro. At first he’s clueless but then grows into a chip off the old block.  His director is Claudioo Cupellini. 

What’s up with three directors?  Well, Stefano Sollima is the top man but the other two have a great deal of independence.  There are three driving forces therefore. Just as in real life the tensions occur between people, so it is with these characters.  It’s fascinating – it’s conflict you can feel. It gets under your skin. The characters are despicable and noble at the same time. As in Game of Thrones, these three characters live in separate kingdoms, separate domains.

Other details:  The screenwriter is Stefano Bises.  The filming makes use of 126 different locations, 225 actors, and hundreds of actors. Italians go big if they go at all. The series transformed Naples into a huge movie set.

Though some Italians have complained of bad publicity for Naples (See Naples and Die) actor Salvatore Esposito, who plays Gennaro Savastano, points out that tourism to Naples has increased, not the other way around. I have to say that I am curious, too.  My father was a ‘Napolitano” (Neopolitan). 

The stories are true. They come from Robert Savio’s book of the same name:  Gomorrah. Some of the inspiration, too, comes from Matteo’s film which was adapted also from Savio’s book.

The Romanoffs and the French Ruling Class

Just watched the first episode of “The Romanoffs” a social satire sometimes requiring English subtitles.  The location is Paris.   Don’t frown – there are millions of people who love subtitles – it gives us a sense of superiority.  Actually, I’m thrilled by subtitles.  They provide a heighted sense of superiority that you just can’t get from films in your native language. We get to test our three or four years of high school French. 

  “The Romanoffs” is more of an anthology than a series.  The plots and subplots are not on-going, and neither are the characters. The only link from one episode to another will be some kind of connection, scientifically illusory,  to the Romanoffs.  It must also be mentioned that the ‘episodes’ of “The Romanoffs” are more like individual high concept feature films.

You know the Romanoffs, right?   The  last royal line to have ruled Russia before the Bolshevik revolution?   The Romanoff family came to a bizarre and gruesome ending when they were slaughtered, along with mad monk Rasputin who became a legend by refusing to die easily.  The foundational element of the story is that there was a female survivor who trailed a long line of descendants.  

 In the past  there were several frauds who claimed to be   descended from the Romanoff line.   Those frauds finally came to an end in 2008 when forensics scientists  dated and identified some old bones of Anastasia Romanoff, the purported survivor.

 Portraits of the   Romanoff family being shot down in their palace  are matched to the tune of hard-rock-driven Tom Petty’s “Refugee.” Tom would have liked that, maybe he saw it anyway.   The song bring you back from the era of the portraits to the present — modern France with its clash of old and new.  

 We’re speeding along in an ambulance where   an autumnal post-middle aged aristocratic woman begs to see the Arc de Triomphe one last time before she dies.  She is not dying. She is a drama queen, a grand-dame who puts on airs and lives in a luxurious apartment in the hear of Paris. ( Marthe Keller is Anushka,)   

That she doesn’t die is the problem for her American nephew Greg and his acquisitive girlfriend Sophie. Sophie is acquisitive in the sense that she’s hooked onto Greg with a view to acquiring the multi-million dollar apartment said to be the former home of one of a famous Romanoff duke.    Among the abode’s many treasures is what appears to be an original Faberge egg,  important for other reasons late in the episode.

 Back at home and not getting all the attention she feels she deserves, Anushka is attended by her nephew Greg (Aaron Eckhart) and Sophie (Louise Bourgoin).  Sophie is highly annoyed that she and Greg had to cancel a planned vacation because of Anushka’s fainting episode.  The caregiver Greg has hired to assist his aunt arrives late.  Anushka could likely hold her own with American rappers when it comes to trash talk:  “I forgive you for coming here in yesterday’s clothing and smelling of testicles,” she says to the poor girl, and then fires her. 

 Beautiful images of Paris swim in the background.   Lively French tunes play accompany the visuals.   Sophie’s  burning  hot and  uses her good looks to keep Greg on his toes. Even during their lovemaking she keeps up a lively chat which   doesn’t in the end defeat her dual purposes, the least noble of which is to acquire Anushka’s apartment.  “We’re never going to get that apartment unless the bitch dies.” And the bitch never dies.  But that’s the foreplay Sophie employs while Greg tries to get it on.

 It’s not as if they’re destitute.  On the contrary, Sophie owns a small hotel of the middling sort, complaining to friends that her patrons are increasingly of the lower classes. At a dinner with friends, one of them makes a complaint that seems to be heard everywhere these days: “The middle class is gone.  There is nothing left but the poor and ultra-rich.”  

   After firing the “Polish slut,” Anushka must now endure Hajar Azim, the Muslim caregiver replacement who is greeted by having the door slammed in her face.  There are other insults to follow and an ultimate accommodation which leaves Sophie reeling.   Beyond the bigotry, there is   class warfare and a history lesson.  Madame Anastasia LeCharnay (Anushka, for short)  claims historical superiority over the young Muslim woman who endures it all with kindness and patience.  “We beat you at Tours in 732. In 1204, we burned Constantinople (Istanbul, now). We beat you in Jaffa, Damascus, and Beirut.  We took Jerusalem and gave it to the jews, and in 1683, we pushed back from Vienna for good.”  Tormenting the poor caregiver further, she holds up a croissant to deliver the final blow:  “We took the symbol from your flag. . . “ She holds up a croissant (shape of a crescent) “. . . and every day we eat you for breakfast.”  

 Anushka may be the Archie Bunker of the French aristocracy but she’s not stupid.  While she remains tethered to her class superiority, she develops an uneasy and often intimate alliance with Hajar.  The relationship is funny, not mean, and Hajar endures all this with the determination of someone who wants to achieve an important goal. In Hajar’s case, she desires to complete her studies and become a full-fledged nurse.  Weiner’s motif here isn’t to inspire hatred of the French upper classes, but rather to ridicule them for their fear of a  changed world.   The satire is hopeful rather than mean-spirited and  thereby more successful.   Should I say that Anushka, mainly to spite Sophie but also because she’s become deeply attached to Hajar,  changes her will so that Hajar inherits the apartment and its luxuries?  

Having watched the episode develop I should have seen it coming but I didn’t.  Let me tell you now, I’m dying to.  Sophie gets the egg.  How she gets the egg is kind of charming and funny but also predictable. What’s not predictable is that it’s a convention   in film and TV that one go in the sack doesn’t lead to pregnancy.  But come on, boys, admit you have   fallen for the shy Muslim girl in the hijaj. What’s up with that anyway? Is it a lurid Arabian Nights fantasy or a pornographic writer’s dream?      The stark reality of it becomes clear  to Greg when Hajar turns up at chez Sophie-Greg with her seriously stern mother.  You do not want to take on this Tunisian woman. The enterprise never loses its comic side, delivering another clever and simultaneously symbolic poke at the avaricious   stunned, rejected, and aggrieved Sophie leaves the luxurious apartment clutching the fake Faberge egg. 

I think I like “The Romanoffs.”   It has no violence. I watch violence in films but only when it makes sense.  Same deal in real life, only there it hardly ever makes sense, though I suppose that’s part of it’s attraction for some people.  Amirite?

Check out “The Romanoffs.”  Only if you’re smart though.

Faulty Reasoning Candidate of the Week: Senator Patty Murray D-WA

Faulty Reasoning Candidate of the Week is Senator Patty Murray, Democrat, of the state of Washington.  Murray appeared on Sunday’s Meet the Press  with host Chuck Todd. Todd asked for Murray’s opions about the allegations  made by Christine Blasey Ford regarding Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.  This writing is not to discuss the allegations, but to focus on Murray’s weak thought process when answering Todd’s question.

Before asking for her opinion with regard to Ford’s credibility, Todd played two opposing political clips, one of them at odds with Ford’s allegations, the other in sync with it.

When Todd then asked whether Ford could be believed, Murray used some very specious reasoning.  “Well, if a person calls in and says their car is stolen, no one questions that.” 

That’s patently false.  But it’s what a senator in the U.S. Congress professes to believe, and such fecklessness  and/or sophistry scares me.    Senator Murray’s presumption might apply to persons as privileged as she is, but in large part, an allegation of car theft is routinely questioned by authorities in terms of its credibility.

 False reports of car thefts are common.  Criminals pay other criminals to have their cars stolen to collect insurance money. There are many other reasons for false reports of car theft, and authorities have just as much right to question such claims as they have to question Christine Busey Ford’s as yet unfounded accusations of Brett Kavanaugh.

Solid Evidence Lacking in British Spy Poisoning Story

AFP Photo

For months now, Democrats and some Republicans, in their zeal to topple the Trump administration, have been  beating the drum against everything and everyone connected with Russia.  I’m expecting any day now that caviar, borscht, and kvas will soon be subpoenaed in Brighton Beach, by order of Special Prosecutor Mueller.   If  you can indict a ham sandwich then why not borscht?

Anyway, there’s nothing to wax eloquent about regarding these paroxysms of Russophobia.  Suffice it to say that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ does not apply here.  The British have declared that Russia and Putin have ordered the poisonings of former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The U.S.  and the rest of the world has been expected to get in line behind the British in putting this crime on   the Russian Federation, and also on Putin’s doorstep. Unless the British or the sabre-rattlers provide something ever remotely resembling proof, there are good reasons for deep skepticism of the British claims.

First of all, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the countries involved suffered through a period of free-for-all where state assets could be bought cheap.  Everything and anything could be bought. A Showtime documentary airing now shows shady underworld characters buying helicopters, motorcycles, and even a submarine at unimaginably low prices. It was like Germany before WWII, even worse.  There was no economy except for foreign dollars. I would expect that somewhere a terrorist or criminal group has some really nasty and deadly material, even including Novochok, which was developed by the Russians. 

Consider the following:

Novochok is not just a single substance. It has several varieties and compositions, with varying lethalities.  Novochok 5 is said to be the deadliest.  All are said to be binary – meaning they need an activator or catalyst to become active.  So now the story is someone activated the substance and put in on the Skripal’s doorknob?  No security cameras operating? No one else (like the postman or a visitor) touched the doorknob?  For how  long would the substance be an effective killer?  I

British first reports virtually swore that the Kripals were poisoned in the park where they were found. Months later, the claim is that a deadly nerve agent was put on the doorknob of their house.  I don’t know how far the park is from the Kripal house but if they were poisoned at the home, and the poison was to be so deadly as to kill almost immediately, how did the Kripals manage a walk in and to the park?  We might get some answers since Yulia Kripal has come out of her coma and is reportedly being interviewed on those matters.

Russia does not deny the nerve agent was developed in a lab of the former Soviet Union.  British security services say it was developed in the town of Shikhany, southeast of Moscow.  The Russians say that their former stocks of chemical weapons were not stored there. "All the bases where chemical weapons were stored are well-known,” says Mikhail Babich, a former chairman of the Kremlin commission for chemical disarmament,

The British newspaper “The Times”  reports   the British defense lab analyzing the nerve agent  could not say for certain the substance came from Russia.  So why are we hearing this now? All of America has been bombarded with news that the British were 100 percent certain the substance came from Russia.  

Several former Russian scientists including Vil Mirzayanov say the Novichok group of nerve agents were invented by scientist Pyotr Kirpichev in Shikhany.  This is very likely true, but that is old news.  Mirzayanov is a welcome defector who has long been living in a million dollar house in ivy-covered Princeton, New Jersey.  The scientist-teacher also said it was difficult to establish where the poison came from.

Vladimir Uglev, one of the chemists who worked on the nerve agent, told one newspaper that components to produce the weapon could be bought in several countries. Isn’t this what happened with nuclear weapons in general?  Once the secrets are out, anyone might be able to get their hands on the formula. Thugs, criminals, terrorist factions, non-state operators, the list is long.

The really dangerous thing about blaming Putin and Russia for the poisoning is that everyone seems to accept the British version as if handed down from God.  And the west is going down this blind alley of sanctions, hostility, revised foreign policy, and accusations without any real evidence?

Why not give the Russians a sample of the substance for their own analysis as they have requested?  We seem to believe Russian scientists are competent only after they have defected. But  why did   the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons bow to political pressure and decline to investigate the matter independently?  That was also requested by the Russians – an independent inquiry. So much for ‘global chemical watchdogs,’ as the organization is described.