Space Jam: A New Legacy - A Review

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 23 seconds

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: YIKES!

Space Jam: A New Legacy is just more proof that LeBron James is no Michael Jordan.

This dreadful kid’s movie is a piece of desperate, shameless, self-aggrandizing marketing masquerading as entertainment.

Space Jam: A New Legacy starring LeBron James arrived in theatres and on the HBO Max streaming service on Friday.

The movie, a sequel of sorts to Michael Jordan’s 1996 blockbuster Space Jam, tells the story of LeBron and the Looney Tunes characters having to win a basketball game against the villain Al-G Rhythm (Don Cheadle) and the Goon Squad, a team of computerized NBA and WNBA superstars, in order to save his family from some sort of eternal damnation.

It should come as no surprise considering LeBron’s meticulous, corporatized self-promotion in recent years, from his vociferous support of Black Lives Matter to his pandering to China, that Space Jam: A New Legacy is nothing but a relentless and shameless two-hour commercial for the LeBron brand and Warner Brothers’ intellectual property.

The original Space Jam was wildly popular back in 1996, raking in $250 million at the box office, no doubt because Michael Jordan was such an iconic and beloved figure at the time.

Space Jam: A New Legacy is no Space Jam. Watching Space Jam 2 is the cinematic equivalent of stepping barefoot in a pile of dog mess baking on a sidewalk during a heatwave. It’s so bad it makes the entertaining but middling original look like a cross between Citizen Kane and Star Wars.

The biggest problem with Space Jam 2 is that LeBron James, no matter how hard he tries…and he tries very hard, is no Michael Jordan. Jordan had an undeniable charisma and magnetism to him, both on and off the court. Even basketball fans who loathed the Bulls, still loved and admired Jordan back in the day. The same cannot be said of LeBron, who is a much more polarizing figure, and whose game, while stellar, is considerably less aesthetically pleasing than Jordan’s. It also doesn’t help that LeBron doesn’t have the movie star good looks or charisma of Jordan either.  

There’s no denying his greatness on the basketball court, but LeBron is not exactly Le Brando in front of a camera. For someone who has spent their entire adulthood being filmed and who does copious amounts of acting on a basketball court, it’s stunning to behold how painfully uncomfortable LeBron is on screen. They would’ve been better off casting a cigar store Indian in the lead role as LeBron is so wooden in Space Jam 2 he should be checked for termites.

LeBron is certainly a big problem for the movie, that said, he isn’t the only problem.

The film’s director, Malcolm D. Lee, is Spike Lee’s cousin, and his work on Space Jam 2, and his previous filmography, speak volumes to the insidiousness of nepotism.

Space Jam: A New Legacy also boasts a budget of over $150 million and yet remarkably appears decidedly low-rent, as the 3-D versions of the Looney Tunes characters look like unconscionably cheap amusement park mascots.

And then there is the nadir of the film, the Porky Pig rap, the less said about that the better.

Space Jam 2 is supposedly made for kids, but even for them the movie is emotionally, narratively and comedically incoherent. It’s also littered with references they’ll never understand. For instance, there’s a bit about Indiana Hoosiers basketball coach Bobby Knight throwing a chair at a ref, something that happened in 1985. There’s also a plethora of references to older Warner Brother’s intellectual property, like Casablanca, Mad Max, Austin Powers, The Matrix and Training Day, not exactly stuff a ten-year-old will understand or care about.

As for parents, or self-loathing childless adults, who watch Space Jam 2, they’ll quickly discover that the movie is an instantly regrettable, headache inducing, sensory overloading experience in corporate marketing run amok.

And despite all of that awfulness, my overwhelming feeling at the end of Space Jam: A New Legacy, was that I actually felt bad for LeBron. I know that is idiotic as I’m just some clown reviewing his movie and he is a billionaire basketball god and burgeoning movie business impresario, but it’s true.

What struck me was that LeBron making a blatantly self-reverential, hagiographic movie where everyone tells him he’s the greatest basketball player ever, and where he incessantly declares what a tough upbringing he had, how hard-working and disciplined he is, and what a devoted father and family man he is, is not a testament to his ego but rather a monument to his insatiable insecurity and need to be loved. This is the inverse of Michael Jordan, who was loved and validated by fans because he never needed their love and validation.  

LeBron has everything…NBA titles, Hall of Fame credentials, millions of dollars, adoring fans, a great family, and yet he still desperately needs validation. He left Cleveland for Miami in search of it. He left Miami for Cleveland looking for it. He left Cleveland again and came to LA on his quest. He embraced Black Lives Matter hoping for it. He sold his soul to China in an attempt to attain it. And now he tries, once again, to mimic Michael Jordan by making Space Jam 2 in the hopes of securing it…but for LeBron, validation will remain ever elusive.

Space Jam: A New Legacy is not going to make anyone who watches it feel good, including LeBron James. The movie may fill his pockets with money but it won’t make him feel loved and validated because it can’t change the fact that he isn’t Michael Jordan, and he never will be.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Passion of Mel Gibson

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 44 seconds

Mel Gibson’s survived charges of sexism, racism and anti-Semitism… but it’s saluting Trump that could finally get him canceled

Woke Twitter is outraged at footage that shows the Oscar winner paying tribute to the ex-President at a UFC fight. In Hollywood’s eyes, this overshadows all his previous misdemeanors… and could deal a terminal blow to his career.

Mel Gibson, the movie star and Academy Award winning director, has long been a lightning rod for his problematic behavior and beliefs. But over the weekend he finally crossed the line and committed the most egregious of mortal sins in the New Hollywood… he saluted Donald Trump.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, let me fill you in. On Saturday, Trump attended UFC 264 in Las Vegas, and as he entered the arena Mel happened to be nearby and gave the former president a salute.

This ugly incident was caught on video and people on Twitter dissected it like it was the Zapruder film to see if that was actually Mel Gibson – star of Lethal Weapon and director of The Passion of the Christ – and not some lookalike who’d been filmed.

After much detective work by intrepid internet sleuths, it was confirmed that it was indeed Mad Max himself who had the gall to salute the former president of the United States.

A gigantic tempest in the Twitter teapot ensued, with the legions of woke bravehearts putting on their war paint and declaring that the heretic Gibson must be drawn and quartered for his heinous behavior in the name of “FREEDOM!”

Not surprisingly, since they solely seem to function to make mountains out of molehills, the establishment media responded by churning out articles bemoaning Gibson’s indecency, some with headlines even declaring the salute to be “dramatic”.

I’ve never actually been a Gibson fan, not because of his political or religious beliefs, but because I consider him a ham-handed director and cheesy actor. Others may find that ham and cheese combo delicious, but it’s never appealed to me.

So, I come to bury Mel Gibson, not to praise him, but it’s curious that of his many sins against the supposedly pure people of Hollywood, it’s saluting a former President that may finally get him to Golgotha and foisted upon the cancel cross.

In the seemingly never-ending Passion of Mel Gibson, this new station of the cross pales in comparison to other, much more brutal ones.

In 2006, during a drunk driving arrest, Mel infamously called a female cop “sugartits” and touched the third rail of Hollywood by accusing Jews of being responsible for “all the wars in the world”.

Then in 2010, Mel is alleged to have punched his girlfriend in the face and knocked out two of her teeth – the same girlfriend who he said on an answering machine looked “like a f***ng pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n***ers, it will be your fault”.

It’s completely apropos of the utterly absurd and inane culture of the woke New Hollywood, where racial, sexual and ethnic quotas reign supreme and a new de facto Hays code regarding storylines and dialogue is celebrated, that the thing that may finally get Mel Gibson cancelled is that he gave a half-hearted salute to Trump at a UFC fight.

That Gibson was able to come back from his more unsavory previous public sins, but might not survive this one, points to how Hollywood previously didn’t really care what you said or did just as long as you kept the money train rolling. But now money seems at the very least secondary to social and political demands.

In the past, Gibson’s films, particularly the ones he directed, always made money for their investors and his partners, and thus his sins were washed away. For example, Braveheart not only made $213 million at the box office but won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture.

The Passion of the Christ was an independent production, and Gibson put up money for the $30 million budget. And despite the fact that the dialogue was entirely in Hebrew, Latin and reconstructed Aramaic, and that there was a concerted and under-handed effort to besmirch the film as anti-Semitic, it still made an astounding $612 million worldwide. Gibson alone made nearly half a billion dollars on that movie.

Gibson’s 2006 film Apocalypto, no surefire hit since all the dialogue, was spoken in the ancient language of the Mayans, made an astounding $120 million.

The most telling sign of the recent history of Hollywood’s fluidity regarding forgiveness and Gibson’s once-Teflon ability was that his 2016 comeback film, Hacksaw Ridge, a truly dreadful cinematic venture, not only made $180 million at the box office but, in what seemed like a very generous gesture, received six Oscar nominations, including one for Gibson as Best Director. 

The adulation heaped upon Gibson and Hacksaw Ridge, his first directorial effort after the 2010 allegations, seemed to finally put the ugliness of Mel’s racist, sexist and anti-Semitic statements permanently in the past. But now in New Hollywood, where social/political standing overrides finances and forgiveness is verboten, the simple gesture of a salute to Trump may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  

Ultimately, this clash between titanic assholes will probably result in every jerk getting exactly what they want. New Hollywood will cancel Gibson, forcing him to self-finance a sequel to The Passion of the Christ, causing a Twitter firestorm and generating free publicity, thus resulting in Mad Mel getting richer and giving another giant half billion-dollar middle finger to Tinsel Town. Twitter will get to be irrationally angry, New Hollywood will get to be self righteous, and Mel Gibson will get even more ridiculously rich.

The only losers in all this will be, as always, the rest of us.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Obama's 'We the People' Netflix Series: A Review

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 19 seconds

Obama’s well-intentioned ‘We the People’ Netflix series aims to teach kids about the promise of America…the promise he failed to keep.

Like Obama, the series is more forgettable and phony than it is enlightening and entertaining.

On the Fourth of July Barack and Michelle Obama gifted the American public We the People, their new Netflix series aimed to give kids a fun and entertaining lesson in civics.

The series is a collection of ten short animated music videos featuring pop stars like H.E.R., Janelle Monae, Adam Lambert and Brandi Carlisle among others singing about such topics as The Bill of Rights, Taxes, The Three Branches of Government, Immigration and more.

The series is obviously an attempt to update the classic Schoolhouse Rock! animated shorts from the 1970’s that educated young Gen Xers on much the same topics with informative earworms like “I’m Just a Bill”.

The problem with We the People, especially in comparison to Schoolhouse Rock!, is that the songs are a dismal collection of entirely forgettable numbers and the animation is more high-end but much less effective.

With eye-rollingly banal lyrics like “little homie you better pay your taxes” from Cordae in episode 3 - “Taxes”, the entire series feels less like a useful educational tool for kids than a useful way for pop celebrities to signal their political virtue.

Speaking of signaling non-existent virtue, Barrack Obama, the man who used the Espionage Act twice as much as all other presidents combined in order to stifle the press during his presidency, producing a series that unreservedly cheers the constitutional protection of freedom of the press is, to say the least, shameless.

And when the lyric “the government works for you and me” was sung in episode two I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly gave myself a seizure considering Obama not only supported bail outs of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, but also protected bankers from prosecution. He also used extra-judicial means to assassinate American citizens, and left the hard-working people of Flint, Michigan drink poisoned water and be used as military target practice. Obama’s administration, like all the ones before and after, worked for Wall St., the military-intelligence-industrial complex and big moneyed interests, not little old you and me.

We the People is so thoroughly steeped in devout, Obama-esque establishment liberalism, both politically and culturally, that it’s rendered entirely blind to its own relentless bias.

For instance, in episode 5 “The First Amendment”, Brandi Carlisle sings the lyric, “there’s only one wall built with wisdom, it’s the wall between church and state!”.

Similarly, in the second episode “The Bill of Rights”, Adam Lambert sings positively about the entire Bill of Rights, but reserves a caveat solely for the 2nd Amendment when he notes “the right to bear arms, which were much different back in my day”.

I’m noticing a pattern here in who this show is targeting, and it ain’t gun advocates and those wanting a secure border.

Then there’s episode 4, “The Three Branches of Government” featuring the insidious Lin Manuel Miranda. This episode represents the executive branch with a black woman as president who belts out the refrain “checks and balances”. Poor old Joe Biden better check his balance or the Obamas and Kamala Harris will be more than happy to push him down a flight of stairs.

Episode 8 – “The Courts”, highlights all the court decisions that affect us as it follows a school girl through her daily routine. The episode ends with the young girl kissing her girlfriend at a protest rally, which is a bit rich considering Obama’s long-time resistance regarding gay marriage, and also unnecessarily explicit for a show aimed at 7-year-olds.

My least favorite episode, and that is saying something, is the final one, which features a poem by Amanda Gorman, the young poet who became a star at Biden’s inauguration. This episode “The Miracle of Morning”, is about recovering from recent difficulties (morning as mourning – get it?) and while it’s obviously about recovery from the pandemic, it also seems like it’s referencing recovering from the liberal trauma of four years of Trump.

Gorman is, like the insipid Lin Manuel-Miranda, one of those media creations that we’re all supposed to think is brilliant but who in reality is an absolute artistic charlatan.

Ms. Gorman’s poetry, both at the inauguration and on We the People, is such C level establishment pablum so devoid of insight or incite, that it makes readers gouge out their eyes so as not to see, and listeners to seek silence by throwing themselves into the sea. Anyone who has had to suffer through Ms. Gorman’s imbecilic and pedantically performative poetry will understand that joke.

Obviously, I’m not a fan of the series but I’m not the target audience, so I ran it by the few kids I know to get their reaction.

The six-year-old was overcome with indifference upon viewing a singular episode and exited without comment. The 13-year-old bailed halfway through the series with “peace out, this is dumb”, and the erudite and politically sophisticated 17-year-old found some of it annoying but none of it bad, and thought it useful for elementary school kids since the episodes were short and comparable to Schoolhouse Rock! My friend who works with kids in schools liked it too and said she’d recommend it to teachers to use in classrooms.

So maybe I’m just too jaded to appreciate We the People, but for me it was similar to Obama’s presidency in that it was vacuous, vapid and entirely self-serving. In other words, like Obama, We the People vacillated between being consistently disappointing and entirely forgettable.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Cosby and Rumsfeld - Perfect Symbols of Degenerate America

Cosby is getting out of prison and Rumsfeld is dead, but like America, they’ll never regain their veneer of moral authority.

The once beloved comedian and the once adored Secretary of Defense, are the perfect representations of America’s hypocritical, corrupt, deceptive and destructive culture.

It’s telling that American icon Bill Cosby, the comedy superstar who went from beloved tv dad to reviled convicted rapist, had his rape conviction thrown out on a technicality on the same day Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration on 9-11 and during the Iraq War, who was the ultimate Washington establishmentarian, died.

Cosby, who was accused by 53 women of drugging and raping them, and Rumsfeld, who oversaw the murder of millions in the Middle East and the U.S. torture regime, seem to have avoided being punished for their egregious crimes, when state supreme court of Pennsylvania overturned Cosby’s conviction and Rumsfeld, who never faced any charges for his litany of war crimes, died of cancer in New Mexico.

Cosby and Rumsfeld seem to me to be a perfect representation of America and its diabolically twisted culture.

The only reason Cosby was able to prey upon women, and long evaded his comeuppance, was because he had deceptively created a role for himself as the safest man in America – the nation’s dad, the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Rumsfeld painted himself as a patriot and then did everything in his power to undermine American democracy with his embrace of the “unitary executive” philosophy, and wreak havoc across the globe in the name of spreading democracy.

Cosby’s massively successful, curse-free, soft edged stand-up comedy routines of the 1960’s led him to be a spokesman for such family friendly brands as Coke and Jell-O, and to equally clean roles in film and tv, most notably as the creator and voice of the 1970’s kid’s cartoon Fat Albert, and Cliff, the ugly sweater wearing patriarch of the Huxtable family on the 1980’s smash hit tv series, The Cosby Show.

Cosby, who would be the first to tell you he had a Doctorate of Education from the University of Massachusetts, a fact highlighted every week in the credits of The Cosby Show, also wrote books with titles like “Fatherhood”, “Love and Marriage” and “Childhood” to further reinforce his persona of being a gentle, loving dad.

Rumsfeld, who never failed to remind the fawning media that he was a military pilot in his younger days, was a major player in the Nixon, Ford and first Bush administration, and brought his insidious establishment powers to bear on the hapless wonder that was George W. Bush.

Of course, while Cosby was wearing the Dr. Jekyll mask of corporate American sainthood shilling for Coke and Jell-O and mugging for the camera on The Cosby Show, he was actually Mr. Hyde drugging and raping women. And while Rumsfeld was dazzling the media with his supposed military brilliance during the Iraq War, America was systematically torturing people, gutting Iraq and losing the war.

And now Cosby is going to walk because he was wealthy, the victim was greedy, the former prosecutor was deferential to the rich and powerful and the current prosecutor was blinded by emotion amidst the panic of the #MeToo movement, and Rumsfeld is going to avoid his comeuppance because the media adore dead establishmentarians and immediately cleanse all of their bad deeds from public memory.

This is why Cosby and Rumsfeld are such perfect representations of America.

Like America, which talks incessantly of peace but only makes war and touts democracy but deplores popular movements, Cosby and Rumsfeld are voracious predators hiding behind the mask of respectability who lectured the world about their faults but were oblivious to the cancer metastasized in their own soul.

And in the most American way possible, Cosby used his great wealth and fame to avoid accountability for his heinous sins by playing the rich man’s rigged game in a desperately corrupt system, and Rumsfeld avoided being held accountable for his crimes by embedding himself in the untouchable elite of Washington.

Cosby is so American he even became the poster boy for the recent hysteria of the #MeToo era, which was emotionally satisfying to many but is now being exposed as having a legally dubious foundation. This is particularly egregious in the Cosby case considering that it was good old American greed in the form of a payout via a civil suit that derailed the criminal conviction.

Rumsfeld will no doubt have the media slobber all over him and try to exalt him as some great American hero in the next few days. His Iraq War crimes, his failure as Secretary of Defense and as a human being, whitewashed.

Rumsfeld is dead, but Cosby is 83, and like the nation he once so enraptured, is decaying and on his last legs. Cosby and Rumsfeld may never be held accountable for their crimes but, like America, they’ll never escape the stench of their foul behavior. I suppose the silver lining in this ugly situation is that we won’t ever have to watch a self-righteous Donald Rumsfeld lecture us on “known unknowns” or watch Bill Cosby sell us Jell-O ever again because Rumsfeld and Cosby, like America, have forever lost their fabricated veneer of moral authority, not death, an overturned conviction or media self-deception, is going to bring that back.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Amazon Studio's Playbook to Ruin Cinema

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 42 seconds

Amazon Studio’s new “playbook” makes it official, diversity, not talent, skill or merit, is the only thing that matters anymore in the entertainment industry

The stunning document is shameless in its disdain for artistry and individuality, and its aggressive worship of all things woke.

The entertainment industry and the art of cinema took a gargantuan step on their relentless death march into the hellscape of the woke Mordor recently when Jeff Bezos, the Sauron of Amazon Studios, released his new “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) playbook”.

Following in the footsteps of the Academy Awards, which implemented new diversity and inclusion mandates into awards eligibility criteria, and Disney, which has turned the happiest place on earth into the People’s Republic of Wokestan, Amazon Studios, the new home of James Bond and Rocky, has, like a suicide note, put in writing its demand that film and TV ignore talent, skill and merit when hiring in favor of diversity, equity and inclusion.

It’s now clear that the corporate human resources junta has successfully transformed Hollywood into nothing more than the propaganda arm for the woke Savonarolas who burn art and entertainment on the bonfire of inanities that is DEI.

Among many things Amazon’s “playbook” demands are creative roles on productions being 50% women and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups by 2024, and documentation and reporting of these diversity quotas is required both pre and post production. Unfortunately, the exact skin tone and percentage of “racial/ethnic” blood needed to qualify as belonging to an underrepresented group, and the papers you’ll need to show to the DEI gestapo to prove it, are not made clear.

The insidious “playbook” also declares its commitment to “authentic portrayals” and its intention to cast “actors in a role whose identity aligns with the identity of the character they will be playing (by gender, gender identity, nationality, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability) and in particular when the character is a member of an underrepresented group/identity.”

In other words, Amazon appears to be outlawing the art of acting as only disabled actors can play disabled characters and only LGBTQ actors can play LGBTQ roles. This is what happens when human resources deplorables take over the creative process.

One wonders how exactly Amazon will check if an actor up for a lesbian, gay or bisexual role is the real deal or not? Will actors be forced to “prove’ their lesbian, gay or bisexual bona fides by performing a sex act with an appropriately aligned producer? Maybe the casting couch can get a public relations facelift if it’s used to help Hollywood achieve the woke nirvana of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Of course, from an artistic perspective, the absurdity of Amazon’s totalitarian woke decrees is only topped by its power to suffocate and stultify creativity.

Consider this, some of the greatest performances we’ve seen in recent years would be wiped out by Amazon’s DEI manifesto, and it wouldn’t be surprising if eventually they’re retroactively cancelled for not being aligned with the new mandates.

For example, Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest actors we’ve ever had, but despite not being disabled he won an Oscar for playing Christy Brown in My Left Foot, and won two Oscars for playing Americans in There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, despite being British and Irish.

In addition, Sean Penn isn’t gay but won an Oscar for playing Harvey Milk, Eddie Redmayne is able bodied but won for playing Stephen Hawking, Colin Firth won for playing King George VI but didn’t have a royal stutter and Jamie Foxx won for playing Ray Charles despite not being blind.

Even last year’s crop of movies would be affected by Amazon’s woke encyclical. Anthony Hopkins doesn’t have dementia but won the Best Actor Oscar playing a man suffering from that malady, Daniel Kaluuya won Best Supporting Actor Oscar is British but won for playing an African-American, and in Amazon Studio’s own Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed was Oscar nominated for playing a deaf character but has perfect hearing.

Two of Amazon’s big hits from last year, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and Coming 2 America violate this new woke law too as Brit Sacha Baron Cohen played a Kazahkstani, and New Yorker Eddie Murphy is played an African King. The horror!

Amazon’s decree is so specific it even states “But if the character has a distinct ethnic background, make sure that the actor’s ethnic background doesn’t conflict with this portrayal”, using as an example of a bad approach “are you casting a person of Puerto Rican heritage to play a character who is Colombian?” Under this edict Benicio del Toro’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing a Mexican in Traffic wouldn’t happen because he is Puerto Rican.

Amazon’s “playbook” blatantly declares its repulsion at talent, skill and merit as a casting-criteria when it states that casting directors need to avoid “Relying on your “gut” or seeking “the best person for the job” as that’s an “inherently biased processes that may skew your decision making.”

If this relentless focus on hiring actors, creatives and even crew based on their gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity and nationality all sounds legally dubious if not outright discriminatory, Amazon agrees, as they throw in this playbook disclaimer to cover their backsides, “While this Playbook provides a general overview, it is not intended to provide legal advice, so it’s crucial to discuss these issues with your attorney.”

As a cinephile and lover of quality art and entertainment in movies and tv, I’m looking forward to the day when the despicable woke totalitarian philistines currently running and ruining Hollywood learn the hard way, at the box office and in the courtroom, that “get woke, go broke” is a universal law that supersedes their self-righteous, anti-merit, DEI declarations of blatant discrimination. They deserve nothing less.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Pentagon UFO Report Viewer's Guide

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 59 seconds

The Pentagon is releasing their UFO report, so now might be a good time to check with movies to see what to expect when we make contact.

This Friday the Pentagon is supposed to release its highly anticipated report on UFOs, or as the government now calls them, UAPs – unidentified aerial phenomena.

Similar to Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I’m a long-time, self-confessed, tin-foil hat wearing UFO enthusiast/fanatic. As such I’m delusionally hoping the recent government and media pivot to taking UFOs seriously will lead to some sort of “disclosure”, where the truth out there will finally be revealed.

Of course, my more rational side knows that anytime you’re relying on the government or media for transparency or truth you’re playing a fool’s game.

Regardless of what the new UFO report says, the possibilities of what’s going on in our skies and under our seas span from the mundanity of mistaken perception combined with malfunctioning equipment to the momentous notion of extra-terrestrial/inter-dimensional visitors. Despite the alleged implausibility of it, my bet is on the latter, which means that aliens are indeed traversing our air space and ocean depths with technological aplomb and military impunity…so it might be a good idea to figure out their intentions.

As a film critic, I thought the best way to prepare for contact with our elusive galactic visitors the Pentagon cannot confirm or deny exist was to turn to movies as a guide, as our collective imagination has projected onto the silver screen and our culture a cavalcade of useful alien archetypes.

The Benevolent Aliens

Movies about human-alien contact that feature gentle aliens we’d be lucky to have visit us are very reassuring, and among the very best that cinema has to offer.

In this archetype, which features fantastic movies like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Abyss, Arrival and The Iron Giant, the aliens are good guys and the villains are our aggressive and deceptive government.

In some of these types of films, like Starman, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Midnight Special, the alien can be a pseudo-Christ figure, and government bureaucrats a nasty combination of the Sanhedrin and brutish Roman soldiers.

These benevolent alien stories put us at ease because in them humans are still in power. These movies are philosophical in nature and posit that the problem isn’t the aliens, it’s our own corrupt human nature, something we foolishly believe we can eventually overcome.

The Malevolent Aliens

Hollywood has inundated audiences with a plethora of malevolent aliens with distinctly human-mindsets over the years as well, which may lead us to assume nefarious intentions on the part of actual visitors from space.  

For instance, in the less than stellar Independence Day, War of the Worlds (1953/2005), Edge of Tomorrow, Battle: Los Angeles and Starship Troopers, aliens, despite their non-human appearance, seem remarkably human in their militaristic behavior and thirst for blood and conquest. The malevolent alien archetype scares us because it renders us powerless and reflects our violent aggression back onto us.

The creators of these fictional aliens assume that extra-terrestrials share our depraved belligerence and can only be defeated by military force (and accompanying bigger budgets), which is not surprising considering Hollywood’s long-standing, fierce commitment to making shameless propaganda for the Pentagon.

A similar archetype is the vastly superior malevolent alien with a specific weakness. For example, in the taut thriller A Quiet Place the terrifying aliens are blind but have super-sensitive hearing…maybe too sensitive. In the often-over-looked M. Night Shyamalan gem Signs, the alien’s weakness is water, while in War of the Worlds it’s susceptibility to the common cold.

This specific archetype is actually religious in nature as it spotlights humanity’s desire to think they exist under God’s divine protection against the demonic evil of alien invaders, which is sort of amusing considering there are actually reports of some real-life military brass believing UFOs/Aliens are “demonic” entities.

The Hunters

To me the most terrifying alien archetype is that of the alien hunter whose prey is humans.

In Predator, the alien hunts humans for sport, and in the Alien franchise, the alien is a horrifying beast relentlessly hunting humans in order to propagate its species by incubating its eggs in our bellies. Alien in particular forces humans to consider the prospect of being moved down the food chain, and while that’s exhilarating in fiction, in reality it’s absolutely chilling.

The Shapeshifters

Another terrifying alien archetype is the shapeshifter that can assimilate and mimic humans. Films like The Thing (1983), Species, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978) and Under the Skin all turn humans into potential aliens.

This archetype is unnerving because it makes us suspicious of other people and ourselves. Aliens might already be among us, and anybody, including us, could be an alien. That said, if aliens are seductresses that look like Scarlett Johansson (Under the Skin) and Natasha Henstridge (Species), there are worse ways to die.

In conclusion, to be optimistic about alien visitation, watch E.T. For a realistic portrayal of how all this UFO stuff will go down, check out Close Encounters or Robert Zemeckis’ under-rated Contact. For a philosophical/religious alien experience dive into Arrival, Starman or The Iron Giant. For a tense thrill ride, go with A Quiet Place. To indulge the nightmare scenario, go with John Carpenter’s The Thing (1983) and Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Alien. To see a fantastic documentary that seriously examines the UFO phenomenon, watch Out of the Blue (2003). And to find the truth regarding UFOs, keep your eyes on the prize and to the skies, and trust absolutely no one.  

A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

'In the Heights' and the Woke Albatross

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 34 seconds

The new movie musical ‘In the Heights’ is too woke for regular people and not woke enough for race-obsessed wokesters

The movie was relentless in marketing its diversity but is learning the hard way that you can never satiate the hunger of the woke beast.

In the Heights, the movie adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award winning musical about life in the Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City, was supposed to be ‘the movie of the summer!’

The film marketed itself as a “celebration” of diversity, and shamelessly boasted about its Latino writer (Miranda), Asian director (John Chu – Crazy Rich Asians) and all minority cast.

The film was aggressively marketed by Warner Bros., and was projected to rake in anywhere from $25 million to a staggering $50 million on its opening weekend, even though it was simultaneously being released on the streaming service HBO Max.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to blockbuster status… the movie embarrassingly underperformed. Despite rave reviews the movie made a measly $11 million and came in second at the box office to A Quiet Place II in its third week in theatres, it also fell flat on HBO Max.

Who would’ve thought that a rap-heavy musical that only has as its calling card its relentless diversity, and which features no stars but sells itself as the musical equivalent of a two hour and twenty-two-minute neo-liberal lecture on immigration and the DREAM Act, wouldn’t attract hordes of normal people to theatres or HBO Max?

Welcome to life in the Hollywood bubble.

The most hysterical thing about the In the Heights situation though is that in a delicious bit of irony, despite its supposed diversity bona fides, the film has come under attack from wokesters for its lack of “Afro-Latinx” representation.

During an interview Felice Leon of The Root challenged director Chu and cast members Melissa Barrera and Leslie Grace over the “white passing” and “light-skinned” cast and the lack of “black Latinx” actors in featured roles, and her criticism attracted much attention and support on Twitter and the media.

What makes this all so funny is that Lin Manuel Miranda, whose artistic talent at writing insipid raps and insidiously sappy tales is inversely proportionate to his over-sized ego, only became a cultural icon/pet of the establishment because he hungrily and wantonly embraced diversity, most notably with Hamilton.

The same is true of director John Chu, a filmmaker of gargantuan limitations whose only claim to fame is that he made a derivative rom-com (Crazy Rich Asians) but did it with an all-Asian cast.

With In the Heights, Warner Bros., Miranda and Chu were all trying to pander to the woke in order to line their pockets, and to see these proud politically correct poseurs squirm as they are hoisted by their own petard is, pardon the pun, in the heights of comedy.

As this glorious feast of woke cannibalism played out, Chu and Miranda both tried to assuage their attackers while barely concealing their own fury at being called before the tiny Torquemadas of Twitter as the newest woke inquisition raged.

Chu responded to the criticism by saying “…when we were looking at the cast, we tried to get people who were best for those roles…”. Uh-oh…that is a terribly “white” answer and sounds an awful lot like embracing meritocracy and not diversity.

Melissa Barrera, who plays Vanessa in the film, had an uncomfortably “white” answer to the lack of dark-skinned cast members too. Barrera said, “In the audition process, which was a long audition process, there were a lot of Afro-Latinos there. A lot of darker-skinned people. They were looking for just the right people for the roles, for the person that embodied each character in the fullest extent…”

I’m sure that Mr. Chu and Ms. Barrera’s newfound touting of meritocracy will quickly transform into a vigorous playing of the diversity card the second it works to their advantage.

As for the Patron Saint of Diversity, Lin Manuel Miranda, he originally replied to the uproar with a detached defiance saying, “it’s unfair to put any undue burden of representation on In the Heights”, which is woke-speak for ‘I am King of diversity how dare you question me?!’.

Of course, the mealy-mouthed Miranda, ever the craven eunuch, later changed his tune when the tide against him continued to rise, writing an embarrassing Twitter tome which started by his stating that he wrote In the Heights because he “didn’t feel seen” and ended with his tail firmly between his legs with, “I’m dedicated to the learning and evolving we all have to do to make sure we are honoring our diverse and vibrant community.”

The lessons in all of this In the Heights nonsense is two-fold. First, the film is “get woke, go broke” made manifest. Touting diversity instead of quality and entertainment as a main selling point for a movie, particularly a musical, is a sure-fire way to turn off regular people, particularly older ones, who are usually the audience for a movie musical.

Secondly, a business plan that puts placating the woke on the top of its list is doomed to fail. In the Heights is a corporate woke Frankenstein’s monster with its Latino writer, Asian director and all minority cast, and it still wasn’t enough for the woke. Nothing will ever be enough for the woke.

And if you like this ‘woke eating their own’ story about In the Heights…wait until December. That’s when the paleolithic woke pandersaurus himself - Steven Spielberg, premiers his remake of the Latino-themed musical West Side Story. It’s guaranteed to be ferventy woke but like In the Heights, not nearly woke enough to satiate the ever hungry woke beast.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Anne Boleyn and Color-Conscious Casting

Anne Boleyn is so dull that the lead’s race is the only worth discussing…as intended

The Channel 5 mini-series has attracted a lot of attention for its unconventional casting, but it is an underwhelming piece of television.

The first episode of the highly anticipated three-part drama, Anne Boleyn, which has generated a great deal of conversation because it cast Jodie Turner Smith, a black actress, in the titular role, premiered Tuesday night on BBC Channel 5.

The casting of a black actress to play a white historical figure has garnered much attention, which seems to be the point. I certainly wouldn’t have watched Anne Boleyn if it weren’t for the casting controversy…so mission accomplished.

This color-blind (casting without considering an actor’s race) or color-conscious (intentionally casting a minority because of their identity) casting approach has been a hot topic in recent years.

“Whitewashing”, where a white actor or actress plays a role that’s a minority in the source material, such as Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell or Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange, or where white actors/actresses play “people of color” like Emma Stone in Aloha, Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart or Jonathon Pryce in Miss Saigon, has been labelled culturally insensitive and all but banned.

In a case of “race-washing for me but not for thee”, during this same time-period “artists of color” playing characters that are white in the source material, even when that source material is actual history, has been met with cheers for being a sign of victory for “diversity” and “inclusion”.

A Wrinkle in Time, Hamilton and Mary, Queen of Scots(2018) are just a few of the examples of the race-washing of white characters, including white historical figures, with actors of color in recent years.

As a traditionalist who believes in respecting source material, particularly when the source is history itself, I always find it ironic that the woke are so enthralled with color-blind or color-conscious casting when it comes to white historical figures or originally white characters yet are so addicted to classifying people by their racial identity in real life.

Of course, the argument from the pro-color-blind/color-conscious side is rather disingenuous and unserious. Author Miranda Kaufman’s recent article on the subject in the Telegraph is a perfect representation of the vacuousness and vapidity of that position.

Kaufman opens her piece by declaring she is “always exasperated by the uproar when a new historical drama comes out with a cast that isn’t solely white” and then goes on to reveal her ignorance and stunningly obtuse perspective on the issue.

According to Kaufman, since there were blacks in England during the Tudor era that means it’s no big deal if a black actress plays Anne Boleyn.

There were white people in the civil rights movement, so should Joaquin Phoenix, Daniel Day Lewis and Meryl Streep play Malcolm X, MLK and Rosa Parks? There were white abolitionists so should Sean Penn and Jennifer Lawrence play Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman? This is obviously absurd.

Equally absurd is Kaufman’s reasoning that because there were 200 free blacks out of a total of between 2 and 4 million people living in Tudor England, then a black Anne Boleyn is perfectly reasonable even though, as Kaufman admits, “of course” Boleyn wasn’t black.

Kaufman’s article is titled, “Yes, there were black Tudors – and they lived fascinating lives”, so why not make a tv show about one of them and cast black artists in the roles instead of turning history into fantasy by casting Jodie Tuner Smith as Boleyn?

My opposition to color-blind and color-conscious casting is purely a function of wanting to see the very best film and television possible. Film and tv is all about ‘make believe’, as the actors are playing ‘make believe’ in order to make the audience believe what they are witnessing is genuine.

This is why movie and tv studios pay millions of dollars for top-notch CGI to make it look like superheroes are really flying and dragons actually exist, and why taller actors play Abe Lincoln and pretty actresses play Marylin Monroe.

By casting a black woman as Anne Boleyn, or any other white figure, the critically important suspension of disbelief needed to lose oneself in entertainment has one more obstacle to overcome in our jaded age, and the ‘make believe’ is made markedly less believable.

Which brings us to Anne Boleyn.

I wanted Anne Boleyn to be good because I want every-thing I see to be good, but unfortunately it isn’t just Anne’s head that will roll in relation to this show, but viewer’s eyes as well.

This drama is a rather flimsy and flaccid retelling of the Boleyn tale that brings nothing new to the table except for the race of its leading lady.

The show is not underwhelming because of Jodie Turner Smith, it would probably be anemic regardless of who played the titular role, but it isn’t helped by her presence either.

Smith is an undeniable beauty but she’s not particularly charismatic, and she certainly lacks the magnetism and skill to elevate this rather shallow and stilted drama.

The rest of the cast, be they white, black or other, don’t fare any better, as the production feels decidedly cheap and devoid of drama.  

Episode two and three of Anne Boleyn air over the next two nights and maybe it will find its dramatic rhythm and improve significantly, but I doubt it as the first episode was so dull it left me wanting to chop my own head off.

The bottom-line reality regarding Anne Boleyn is that the virtue signaling of color-blind or color-conscious casting may make pandering studio executives and the woke feel good, but it often doesn’t make for good art and entertainment.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Final Account: Documentary Review and Commentary

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 58 seconds 

New Nazi documentary ‘Final Account’ is a powerful and prescient warning for our identity politics obsessed age

Luke Holland’s film, which chronicles the complicity of ordinary German’s in the crimes of the Third Reich, is a reminder that it’s easy to label our enemies as Nazis…but the true search for evil should begin with a look in the mirror.

The new documentary Final Account is a collection of interviews with elderly, ordinary Germans recounting their experiences of life under the collective madness of the Nazi regime and their connection to, or complicity with, the Holocaust.

The film opens with a quote from Primo Levi, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

Director Luke Holland, whose mother lost her family in the Holocaust and who himself died of cancer in 2020 after the film’s completion but before its premiere, goes on to prove Levi’s thesis.

Holland began production in 2008 and ultimately interviewed 300 people for this fascinating project, and his bare-bones, oral history approach, works exquisitely well in revealing the banality of evil.

Holland’s subjects were indoctrinated into the Nazi system early in life. The women went through the League of German Girls, the men the Hitler Youth. The males then graduated to the Waffen SS, some becoming concentration camp guards and one becoming a member of Hitler’s elite body guards, the Leibstandarte.

Their recollections regarding the holocaust run the gamut. Some claim to have known nothing, while others say they heard whispers and gossip but were too afraid to speak up or act. Others give grudging admissions of complicity, while some admitted the egregiousness of the crime but doubt its scale. And one, a former member of the Leibstandarde, is unbowed by the weight of history.

This former bodyguard of Hitler says the Fuhrer was a great leader with a good plan, except that the Jews should’ve been deported and not exterminated. He’s so unabashedly defiant he refuses to accept the Nuremberg ruling that the Waffen SS, of which he was a member, was a criminal organization because “then I would dirty myself”. His reasoning is wrapped in patriotism as he explains that the Nuremberg court wasn’t a German court, and therefore lacks authority in his eyes.

Other stories reveal how Jew hatred and the Holocaust were normalized. Stories of children being taught anti-Semitic songs in school, reading books with derogatory Jewish depictions and being indoctrinated by teachers into Nazi ideology are common.

Tales of visiting camps in order to get a cavity filled from a dentist who was a prisoner, or of routinely seeing prisoners escorted to and from camps, some being worked or starved to death slowly before their eyes, are mundanely recounted.

None of these revelations are met with tears or even overt remorse, just a stern, steely-eyed matter of fact-ness.

The most compelling subject in the film is Hans Werk, a former member of the Waffen SS. Werk is at times elusive and at times defensive, but he evolves over a series of interviews.

The most electrifying moment in the entire film is when Werk goes to the sight of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leadership made official the Final Solution policy, to speak to a group of college students about his guilt.

After saying he is ashamed of what he did as a member of the SS, these students push back. At first it seems they’re resistant because they think he’s lying about his contrition, then it becomes clear they’re actually angry with him for his shame. They call him a traitor for being ashamed of being German and having fought for Germany.

This scene is electrifying because it’s the only time the veneer of control recedes and the beast comes to the surface baring its teeth. Werk is shaken by the young men confronting him, and his horror at the realization that the disease of Nazism has passed to a new generation is readily apparent on his face as he pleads with them to “don’t let yourself be blinded”.

Werk’s warning fell on deaf ears in that room, and across the globe as well. The Nazi disease, or as my Jungian therapist friend describes it – the “not-see” disease, is back in our collective psyche with a vengeance. “Not seeing” the humanity of the other has reached epidemic proportions.

The dehumanizing sentiment of Nazism is readily apparent in recent videos of Jews rampaging on the streets of Israel attacking Arabs, Palestinians roaming the streets of New York attacking Jews, blacks viciously attacking Asians and whites, militarized police brutalizing minorities and rioters wreaking racially motivated havoc, as well as in stories of Uighers being held in Chinese concentration camps.

This ugly sentiment is also found in the establishment approved Critical Race Theory, a shamelessly anti-white and anti-Asian ideology that demands people be judged by racial and ethnic categories instead of by the content of their character, which is now being used to indoctrinate students in schools and becoming the default setting in corporate American.

This industrialized effort at dehumanization is horrifyingly reminiscent of the process which created the legions of “functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions” which populate the Nazi nightmare of Final Account.

Final Account is not a great film, it is somewhat derivative in style as evidenced by its repeated use of a melancholy cello played over shots of hollowed out concentration camps, but it is most certainly a powerful and prescient one.

It is cold comfort that the collaborators and perpetrators of Nazi evil in Final Account will soon be dead of old age, for the spirit of Nazism is obviously alive and well in our world, living in all of our hearts, whether we have the courage to admit it or not.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

It's Maybe the End of the Golden Globes...and I Feel Fine

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 29 seconds

The Golden Globes are moronic, but Hollywood’s boycott of them is the height of idiocy and hypocrisy

Hollywood is holding the Golden Globes to account, not for its blatant corruption, but because the skin tone of its members isn’t dark enough.

Shock waves were sent through Hollywood this week when the esteemed Golden Globes became the target of a virtue signaling blitzkrieg and boycott by some of the movie business’ heavy hitters.

I am kidding of course, the Golden Globes are certainly not esteemed and no one is shocked by Hollywood virtue signaling over anything anymore.

The whole absurd firestorm started with Netflix and Amazon declaring they’d no longer work with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the parent organization of the Golden Globes. This was quickly followed by WarnerMedia joining in the boycott, Tom Cruise returning his three past awards, and then NBC declaring they wouldn’t telecast next year’s Golden Globes ceremony.

The HFPA are a notoriously corrupt and cinematically ignorant organization filled with people with only a passing and tenuous connection to the film industry. The HFPA’s awards, the Golden Globes, have long been a punchline for being so easily purchased by big studios looking to boost a movie’s profile and box office. These are the reasons why I am so glad that Hollywood is coming together to put an end to this blight on the movie business and blasphemy against the art of cinema.

I’m just kidding again, Hollywood doesn’t care about the Golden Globes being corrupt, instead, Netflix, Amazon, WarnerMedia, Tom Cruise and NBC are all piling on the Golden Globes because the HFPA, an organizationof roughly 90 individuals that is packed with “people of color” from Asia, India, the Middle East, and Central and South America, doesn’t have any members whose skin tone is dark enough to be considered “black”.

This horrifying lack of melanin caused such an uproar at this year’s ceremony that it led to one of the most unintentionally funny moments in the show’s history when HFPA members Meher Tatna and Ali Sar, an Indian woman and Turkish man respectively, sheepishly spoke about the organization’s dire need for “diversity” after being chastised by hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, two white women, one of whom, Fey, rhad episodes of her hit tv show 30 Rock pulled from streaming circulation last year because they featured scenes with blackface. Only in Hollywood!

It’s hysterically funny to me, but not the least bit surprising, that Hollywood is not concerned by the HFPA’s relentlessly corrupt practices, just that no people with dark enough skin tone are getting in on the egregious grift.

Speaking of grift, it may come as a shock to learn that NBC’s decision to not telecast the Golden Globes this year might not exactly be entirely motivated by a wholesome yearning for diversity. According to reports, NBC pays the HFPA $60 million to televise the Golden Globes, with most of that money going to production costs, but by refusing to televise the awards, NBC saves the vast majority of that money.

Considering that the Golden Globes ratings were down 63% this year and only attracted 6.9 viewers, and that ratings and viewership for awards shows across the board are plummeting, this seems much more like a savvy business decision by NBC and not one of conscience.

NBC isn’t the only one signaling its virtue for self-serving reasons, Tom Cruise’s returning of his Golden Globes, which he won over twenty and thirty years ago for Born on the Fourth of July (1990), Jerry Maguire(1997) and Magnolia(2000), is not only utterly absurd but calculated and contrived.

Much like when Cruise was “caught on audio” chewing out crew members for violating covid protocols on the set of the newest Mission Impossible monstrosity, a scenario which struck me as being completely staged for publicity purposes, Cruise’s Golden Globes flex is a public-relations maneuver meant to generate talking points and good will when he is out shilling for his big movies this year, Top Gun: Maverick and Mission Impossible 7.

I assume Cruise is thinking that if he can distract people with his race-based virtue signaling people won’t notice how oddly contorted his face is becoming from plastic surgery. Not a bad plan.

I’m also assuming that Amazon is hoping that by signaling its phony virtue regarding race and the Golden Globes it can distract people from its horrendous treatment of its employees.

As for me, the Golden Globes have never been more than a Rickey Gervais delivery system, and an opportunity to watch rich, famous movie stars get drunk in public.

Gervais has hosted the show five times, each more glorious than the last. His final hosting gig was in 2020, before all of the covid unpleasantness, and it was a glorious thing to behold as he eviscerated the vacuous celebrities and their vapid awards with surgical precision and unabashed brutality.

I won’t miss the Golden Globes this year, and if they vanish forever, a distinct possibility, I could not care less. But with that said, I do wish that in their stead NBC gets Ricky Gervais in front of a room filled with movie stars and Hollywood big wigs and televises him comedically disemboweling them for their pretentious, self-serving nonsense. He could start with their ridiculous virtue signaling boycott of the Golden Globes over something so insignificant as skin tone.  

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Disney's Hostile Woke Work Environment

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 48 seconds

Insider documents reveal woke barbarians have breached the gates of the Disney Empire and transformed the ‘happiest place on earth’ into a totalitarian hellscape

Disney is going to find out the hard way that wokeness destroys everything that it touches.

In November 2019, Disney slapped a content warning on some of its classic animated movies. The warning read simply, “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”

If you give the woke an inch, they’ll take a mile, and this was proven when less than a year later in October of 2020 when that concise and mundane warning was updated to state, “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of peoples or cultures. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together. Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe.”

As I wrote at the time regarding the absurd verbosity of the updated warning, “…if brevity is the soul of anything than the Winston Smith wannabe who wrote this atrocious piece of human resources porn is as soulless as they are spineless and brainless.”

Thanks to journalist/filmmaker Christopher Rufo, who is the Woodward and Bernstein of all things woke-gate, we now know what sort of corporate cultural conditioning went into making the type of individual that would write such a woke monstrosity as that updated “content warning”.

In an article titled “The Wokest Place on Earth”, Rufo uses documents from whistleblowers inside Disney to reveal the woke racist hellscape that is the Walt Disney Corporation.

According to Rufo’s documents and statements from anonymous sources, Disney’s “diversity and inclusion” program “Reimagine Tomorrow” aggressively indoctrinates employees in woke politics and appears to create a hostile work environment for white employees.

The company has “launched racially segregated affinity groups” for minority employees such as Asians, Hispanics and blacks, but white employees are singled out for indoctrination and must fill out “white privilege” checklists and be grilled on their “white fragility”.

“Anti-racism”, which is little more than anti-white racism wrapped in intentionally vague and impenetrable academic language, has become the center of the company’s agenda, with “almost daily memos, suggested readings, panels, and seminars that [are] all centered around antiracism”.

Disney’s “white fragility” and “anti-racism” agenda is about “pivoting” from “white dominant culture”, which Disney describes as one that emphasizes “competition”, “power hoarding”, “predominantly white leadership”, “individualism”, “timeliness” and “comprehensiveness”.

 It’s pretty rich that Disney, which controls 40% of the U.S. box office after spending $83 billion buying up Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox in recent years, is lecturing low-level employees on the evils of “power hoarding” and “competition”.

As Rufo points out, it is equally rich that Disney’s four top executives, Bob Iger, Bob Chapek, Alan Bergman and Alan Braverman - white males with over a billion dollars of net worth, feel it appropriate to badger their hourly-wage employees to complete “white privilege” checklists and “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness about their whiteness.”

Speaking of these Disney executives, if they were really interested in “pivoting” from “white dominant culture”, they’d start by addressing “predominantly white leadership” by getting their pasty white asses out of the seats of Disney power.

These pale-faced bastards could also eradicate “competition” and “timeliness” by letting people pay what they want and stay as long as they like at Disney theme parks resorts. This way Disney theme parks would be “inclusive” to homeless, poor and low-income people, including many people of color, who currently cannot afford the exorbitant prices.

They could also renounce all of Disney’s copyright claims on their vast resources of intellectual property, allowing anyone to use them for gain. Of course, they would never do any of those things.

Disney’s diversity and inclusion push is hypocritical nonsense too, as like all woke totalitarians, Disney actually has no interest in diversity of opinion or the inclusion of differing viewpoints, only in enforcing conformity, just ask Gina Carano.

Examples abound of how the malignancy of wokeness has spread and radically transformed Disney.

The Pixar movie Soul is a perfect example. Instead of letting two-time Oscar winning director Pete Doktor make the best movie possible, Disney went to hysterical heights to appease the woke gods of diversity in making its first Pixar movie with a black protagonist. This included using a corporate “inclusion strategies” department, creating a “cultural trust” of black employees, hiring outside consultants and black organizations, and hiring a black co-director.

Disney’s walk to wokeness looks like a Bataan death march for artistry and entertainment when you see the radical transformation of the Marvel properties. The rollicking, insightful yet fun-loving action movie sentiment of pre-Disney Iron Man (2008) has morphed into the lifeless, soul-sucking woke propaganda of Captain Marvel (2019) and the relentlessly preachiness of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021).

The all-powerful Disney is the Roman Empire of the entertainment industry, and the woke barbarians aren’t at the gate, they’re well inside the walls and sitting at the seat of power. These woke parasites don’t build things, they only destroy them by draining them of vitality and driving out talent. This is why Disney’s business model shifted from making its own original content to gobbling up content creators like Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox, and slowly sucking the life out of them.

Disney is going to learn that wokeness destroys everything it touches. It may take years or decades, but it’s just a matter of time before “get woke, go broke” becomes Disney’s reality and Mickey Mouse’s whole shit house goes up in flames. Good riddance.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

7th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards: 2020 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: 69 seconds

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next years Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - Writer/director Aaron Sorkin out did himself with this masturbatorial piece of baby boomer trash. The only thing worse than the writing and acting in this movie is the directing. Just an abysmal movie in every respect.

Da Five Bloods - Just when you thought Spike Lee might have gotten his groove back, he churns out this amateurish hunk of shit. This cringy movie is so poorly directed as to be embarrassing. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Hillbilly Elegy - Hillbilly Elegy is the cinematic equivalent of watching two toothless, elderly cousins have sex in a dumpster filled with month old egg salad during a heatwave. This movie should be considered a crime against humanity.

AND THE LOSER IS…Hillbilly Elegy. I would rather stick 112 toothpicks down my urethra than watch this movie again.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Sacha Baron Cohen - The Trial of the Chicago 7 : Funnyman Cohen managed to transform Abbie Hoffman into Borat in one of the most unintentionally funny performances in cinema history. Cohen set the art of acting back roughly 75 years with his cornucopia of ham-handed, God-awful accents - none of which were correct for Hoffman.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR

Da Five Bloods - Mine explosion scene : This scene is so transparently ridiculous and so egregiously staged and executed it made my colon twinge. The fact that a professional director shot this scene is a travesty.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - Final courtroom scene: It was tough narrowing this down to just one scene…but I did my best. This scene where the audience in the courtroom slow claps in appreciation for the courage of the Chicago 7 is like something from a rejected junior high school play. Just the ultimate in cringe.

Hillbilly Elegy - Literally any scene : Just awful. Every scene is just so fucking awful.

AND THE LOSER IS…Hillbilly Elegy. Just atrocious how many awful scenes there are in this abomination. Pick any scene and watch it and try not to light yourself on fire.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - This laughably bad movie was actually nominated for a bunch of Oscars. That is utterly insane. It is also adored by audiences….which is equally insane. What is the world coming to when a piece of cinematic fecal matter like this is exalted? God help us all.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE - Ron Howard : Ron Howard is one of the all-time worst big-time filmmakers. Howard’s movies are so trite they make Happy Days episodes look like Raging Bull. After committing cinematic genocide with Hillbilly Elegy, Howard should have his Oscar for A Beautiful Mind revoked, and be executed on the steps of the Mayberry Courthouse. Thanks for nothing Ron Howard…I’ll see you in hell…where no doubt your films will be playing on a loop.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

Andrew Cuomo - I have been telling people Andrew Cuomo was a piece of shit well before it was ever fashionable. Last summer the media, most notably Andrew’s retarded brother Fredo…oops, I mean Chris, and the public, were enamored with Andrew for being such a great leader during the pandemic. Cuomo was so intoxicated by the smell of his own farts he actually “wrote” a book about what a great leader he was during the pandemic…AS NEW YORK WAS BEING RAVAGED BY THE PANDEMIC! I wrote a year ago that Cuomo was a piece of shit and that people were dying because of it…but nobody listened.

Cuomo has always been full of shit. He had done tremendous harm to the New York state health care system before the pandemic even started and then when it did he did even more damage. He also fucked over seniors with his nursing home policy and then lied about it to the feds.

Then once the bloom came off the Cuomo rose and people acknowledged he was a piece of shit, a cavalcade of sexual harassment allegations became public. I have no idea if these allegations are true…and to be honest, I don’t really care. Andrew Cuomo is a piece of shit of epic proportions even if he is entirely innocent of harassing these women…which I seriously doubt.

Andrew Cuomo and brother Chris are nothing but vapid bullshit artists cashing in on their family name. My hope is that Andrew Cuomo, that Sonny Corelone wannabe thug, gets his comeuppance on the Causeway just like Sonny did in The Godfather. I also hope Andy’s numb-nuts, mental defective brother Fredo/Chris has a “boating accident” while saying a Hail Mary out on Lake Tahoe. The world would be so much better if it was devoid of Cuomos.

Andrew Cuomo…you have always been a gigantic piece of shit, but now your legacy is cemented…welcome to the Piece of Shit Hall of Fame!!

P.O.S. ALL-STARS -

Every Asshole in the “I Take Responsibility” video - A collection of imbecilic, dead-eyed actors morally preening by reading words on camera so that everyone knows they hate racism and “take responsibility” for “every not so funny joke, every unfair stereotype” was one of the more nauseating displays in a truly repulsive year. Upon seeing the “I Take Responsibility” video the Aerosmith song “My Fist Your Face” (1985- Done With Mirrors) immediately came to mind. I just want to let the vacuous virtue signaling celebrity twats of “I Take Responsibility” know that I cannot take responsibility for what I will do to them if I ever have the great misfortune to meet them, but I promise you my rage will be more sincere than their phony pandering.

Every Asshole in the “Imagine” video - Imagine being so self-absorbed that you think making a video of you and your wealthy friends singing the saccharine anthem ”Imagine” from your mansions during a pandemic when ordinary people are suffering unimaginable-to-you hardships is a really good idea. Where’s Mark David Chapman when you need him?

NBA/WBNA– This year the NBA emulated the flopping and vacant histrionics of its players by doing an extravagantly exaggerated, dramatically over-the-top embrace of “social justice”.

In the NBA bubble in Orlando – The Happiest Place on Earth,  ‘Black Lives Matter’ was painted on every court and players wore trite woke slogans on the back of their jerseys. The absurdity and obscenity of filthy rich, pampered, dim-witted athletes, safely sealed in five star hotels with all expenses paid, adored by millions of people worldwide, wearing jerseys demanding fans “See Us” and “Love Us” is so astronomical as to be immeasurable.

No one gives a shit about the hapless WNBA because even their all-stars would be beaten in a game against a quality boys high school basketball team, but that didn’t stop them from trying to get attention by desperately embracing social issues as well last Summer. After Jacob Blake was shot by a cop in Wisconsin, WNBA players didn’t wear shirts against police brutality, but instead wore shirts celebrating Jacob Blake. Blake had a warrant out for him for sexual assault and domestic abuse of the woman who called the cops on him the day he was shot. Mr. Blake seems like an odd choice for a female basketball league to hold up as a civil rights icon.

LeBron James - This past year the Greatest Receding Hairline of All-Time proved himself to be a social justice charlatan with testicles the size of raisins. Last season, after then Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong protestors, LeBron kissed China’s ass and threw Daryl Morey under the bus in order to keep the Chinese money train rolling.

LeBron claimed he couldn’t speak up on China’s brutality toward Hong Kong protestors and Uighers because he wasn’t informed, but then turned around and said Daryl Morey was uninformed too…which of course doesn’t make any sense. How could LeBron know Morey was uninformed if he himself was uninformed?

The narcissistic neanderthal and integrity deficient Lebron then traded in his Nikes for clown shoes last summer by wearing a Breonna Taylor “Say Her Name” t-shirt and doing an egregiously adolescent and nauseatingly pretentious Wakanda salute when Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman died.

His comments in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the shooting of Jacob Blake about how he was terrified to leave his house (which is a mansion in a gated Beverly Hills community) because cops are hunting black people were so moronically imbecilic as to be absurd, but he upped the ante when in the wake of the police shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus Ohio, LeBron posted a picture of the cop who shot her accompanied by a demand for “accountability”.

I believe LeBron when he says he was uninformed about China since he seems perpetually uninformed about pretty much everything. For example, apparently LeBron didn’t know (or care) that the cop in the Ma’Khia Bryant case was saving a young black girls life by by shooting Bryant, who was poised to stab the young black girl her in the chest when she was shot and killed.

Another example of LeBron’s emotionalist buffoonery is his Breonna Taylor fetish…I am willing to bet that LeBron has no idea about the circumstances around that tragic case, such as the fact that Breonna’s boyfriend actually fired the first shot in the battle - wounding a cop, and that Breonna was shot - not in bed as most people believe, but in the hallway next to her boyfriend - who had just fired his weapon.

Look, I am not saying LeBron should shut up and dribble, he should, like anyone, speak his mind, but maybe he should actually get informed before he makes comments on anything.

And if LeBron doesn’t want to be a shameless hypocrite maybe he should stand up for things when it actually costs him something, as opposed to only when it benefits him and his wallet. So maybe if he spoke out against Chinese brutality against Hong Kong protestors and Uighers, then he might have some moral authority when it comes to his comments regarding race and policing…no matter how ill-informed and emotionalists they may be…and they are almost entirely ill-informed and emotionalist.

Anyway…LeBron is a great basketball player and that is evidenced by his being a 17 time NBA all-star…but he is also a gigantic piece of shit, as evidenced by his inclusion on this year’s Piece of Shit All-Star team.

Every Asshole “Health Professional” Who Signed the Letter Telling People to Get Out and Protest Against “Racism” During a Pandemic - These assholes decided to flush their integrity and sell their credibility when they said people should be in lockdown during the pandemic…except if it was to join a protest against “racism”. Of course, these pricks also said to gather for any other reason - especially to protest against the lockdown, was a super spreader event and extremely dangerous (and racist). According to these geniuses having the “correct” politics makes you immune from infection.

Anyone with half a brain in their head could see how detrimental to public health this bit of medical virtue signaling really was…but it took months for anyone in the media to actually even gently question the illogic behind this movement.

So when medical professionals or the media now wonder why people aren’t getting vaccinated or why the public doesn’t trust them…look no further than the action of these pieces of shit for an answer.

And thus concludes another Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards. If you are one of the people who “won” this year I ask you to please not to take it personally and also to try and do better next year….because remember…this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award winner could be next year’s Mickey™® Award winner!!

This article contains previously published material.

©2021

The Father and the Media's Dementia Simulation Machine

The Oscar-nominated The Father is a masterful film about living with dementia…and a reminder that the mainstream media is a dementia simulation machine.

The film immerses viewers in the confusion of dementia – the same sort of bewilderment caused by US media misinformation to disorient the public and make them easier to control and manipulate. 

The Father is a terrific movie that tells the story of an aging man struggling with dementia, and it has left me rattled as it’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the delusional and disorienting nature of American life.  

The film is rightfully nominated for Best Picture at the upcoming Academy Awards as it showcases a superb performance by Anthony Hopkins who was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his stellar work.

What makes The Father such a poignant and insightful film is that director Florian Zeller doesn’t just show the effects of dementia on the screen, he immerses the audience in the excruciating experience of dementia.

Watching the film and experiencing that disease-imposed confusion, I couldn’t help but think about how, here in the U.S. at least, it feels as if our entire culture is suffering from a collective dementia. The disorientation and detachment from reality that come with that dreaded disease are entirely commonplace in America, where we seem incapable of remembering the past, or of clearly seeing the present.

This rapacious American dementia is fueled first and foremost by the mainstream media’s manipulation and misinformation.

The establishment media have long distorted reality in order to manufacture consent around a desired narrative. This is why Americans always see themselves as the “good guys” on the world stage and not as the imperialist aggressors and colonialist exploiters that we are.

For proof just look at the flag-waving coverage surrounding the Iraq war and the WMD nonsense, or the egregious media assaults on Julian Assange and Edward Snowden compared to the genuflecting coverage of infamous bs artists like Chris Kyle, George W. Bush and Barrack Obama.

This duplicitous media approach can often be so blatant as to be ridiculously absurd, such as when CNN described the rioting, looting and arson last Summer as “mostly peaceful” protests.

The same is true regarding the current wave of anti-Asian violence. The media blame the attacks on the ever-expanding yet conveniently amorphous label of “white supremacy”, but the videos and statistics regarding these repugnant attacks against Asians show black people are the majority of perpetrators, a fact the media steadfastly fail to mention.

Another dementia-like distortion caused by the media is the perception that police are killing black people en-masse.

As a 2021 Skeptic Research Poll found, most Americans greatly over-estimate the number of unarmed black people killed by police.

When asked “How many unarmed Black men were killed by police in 2019?”, 53.3 % of those self-described as “very liberal” estimated that over 1,000 unarmed black men had been killed by police, even though the actual number is believed to be between 60 – 100.

According to the same study, 24.9% of people killed by police are black, yet those self-describing as “liberal” or “very liberal” estimated the number to be 56% and 60% respectively.

This detachment from reality is no shock as according to a Gallup poll over half the country already over-estimates the size of the black population in general, believing it to be over 30% when in reality it is roughly 14%.

The over-estimation of police killings of unarmed black men is to be expected as every killing of a black person by the police or by a white person results in massive media coverage and a declaration that the only motivation for the incident is racism. In contrast the deaths of white people at the hands of police or by black perpetrators are not considered noteworthy.

The anti-Russia hysteria is another establishment media manufactured narrative that is directly at odds with reality, but that is deeply rooted in the American psyche.

Russiagate, hacking of electrical grids, using super-secret microwave weapons to attack U.S. diplomats, and putting bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, are just a few of the dominant pieces of anti-Russian disinformation devoid of fact that the media tout as gospel truth.

The immigration crisis is another bewildering story disorienting Americans. The media vehemently chanted the mantra “kids in cages” when Trump detained children at the border, but were silent when Obama did the exact same thing during his presidency. And now that Biden is doing it too, the media are back to downplaying its significance or ignoring it entirely.

And of course, the most perplexing media coverage surrounds the coronavirus. Originally the press excoriated anyone who raised the notion that the disease may have come from a lab in China, but now the truth that they aren’t sure where it initially came from is acknowledged.

The medical establishment is just as perfidious and deceitful as the media.

For example, Dr. Fauci knowingly lied early in the pandemic about the need for masks.

And last Summer a collection of medical professionals said that no large groups should gather, except for Black Lives Matter protests, making the obscene and absurd claim that the media manufactured “epidemic” of racism was just as bad as the coronavirus pandemic.  

In addition, concerns over vaccinations are broken down by race, with white concerns stigmatized and black concerns gently understood.

Just like dementia, this insidious media and medical duplicity creates stress, irritability and aggression among the populace.

In conclusion, The Father is a masterful film insightfully exploring the tragedy of dementia, and the hypocritical, pernicious, frivolous and mendacious establishment media are a relentless dementia simulation machine. The former is worth indulging, the latter is terminal and should be avoided at all costs.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

The 'Roll Up Your Sleeves' Vaccination Variety Hour!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 29 seconds

NBC’s vapid vax propaganda ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ was entirely ineffective in restoring faith in the medical establishment

Sunday’s star-studded TV special starring the Obamas and Hollywood A-listers did its best to persuade people to get the Covid jab. But it spurned seriousness in favor of woke posturing and self-serving virtue signaling.

Last night, NBC aired a one-hour special titled Roll Up Your Sleeves, which was meant to inform viewers and inspire them to get a Covid vaccination.

The show, which was ‘presented’ by drug store behemoth Walgreens, was the most inane and insulting of infomercials. Wedged between a cavalcade of drug commercials for various medical ailments, from bi-polar disorder to migraines to eczema, numerous Hollywood celebrities, politicians and ‘medical professionals’ used stilted conversations and dead-eyed monologues to urge viewers to take the “safe and effective” vaccine in order to get back to their “family and friends”.

Instead of convincing me to get the vaccination, this insipid piece of propaganda that kept endlessly repeating the mantra “safe and effective” left me wanting to stick needles into both of my eyes.

My biggest question regarding Roll Up Your Sleeves is who in the hell – besides some sorry son of a bitch like me – is actually watching this piece of garbage? I mean, no one in their right mind watches network television anymore and of the sad souls who do, are they really going to watch an hour of a high school health class level of medical advocacy?

The show opened with Michelle Obama, Faith Hill, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the power couple Russell Wilson and Ciara chatting unnaturally on Zoom together. After some limp back and forth, Michelle Obama turned the evening over to Wilson and Ciara, who hosted from a TV studio made over to look like… a club in a TV studio.

I like Russell Wilson as a football player. But as a TV host, he seems like he’s received one too many hits to the head, and Ciara is a beauty but quite the annoying piece of arm candy. These two bland buffoons were like if Donny and Marie had gotten charisma bypass surgery.

One of the evening’s lowlights was when Matthew McConaughey ‘interviewed’ Dr. Anthony Fauci. McConaughey turned the smarm up to 11 and had his hair greased back and wore tinted glasses for the Zoom occasion.

The interview consisted of the sweaty McConaughey sneering at anyone who could doubt the vaccine, as he asked Fauci the questions people might have such as “are there long-term side effects to the vaccine?”

Fauci answered “No!” and greasy McConaughey gave his million-dollar smile and moved on to the next propaganda talking point.

If this exchange was meant to ease anxieties around the vaccine, it failed miserably. Having some vapid, Hollywood clown who looks like a second-rate used car salesman pitch softballs to a known liar like Fauci isn’t going to convince anyone but those already of like mind.

The rest of the seemingly endless hour was just as ineffective for the cause of getting people to take the vaccination.

Besides shilling for the vaccine, there was also a lot of talk about racism and the history of medical professionals mistreating black people, who were definitely the target audience for the show.

Barack Obama came on and discussed past medical racism with Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley, but reiterated that things have changed and that “black and brown” people should trust the “safe and effective” vaccine.

Actor Sterling K. Brown later did the same, but he couched his impassioned argument around the fact that black doctors and scientists have always been at the forefront of vaccinations and that a black woman had been integral in developing the “safe and effective” Covid vaccine.

There was even a completely incongruous segment in the show about the recent spike in anti-Asian violence that had nothing to do with the “safe and effective” vaccine at all.

That said, there was one less-than-subtle appeal to whites, which came in the form of former NASCAR driver Dale Jarrett saying people need to get vaccinated so they can go to the races again. I am sure this was incredibly appealing to the hordes of rednecks tuning in to a woke vaccination special on NBC on a Sunday night.

The show did try to be intentionally funny a few times too, but not surprisingly never actually succeeded.

Actor Kumail Nanjiani did a cringe-worthy ‘kids say the darndest things’ type segment and comedian Wanda Sykes came on to tell what were supposed to be jokes. It seemed as though they had both been “safely and effectively” vaccinated against being funny.

The bottom line regarding Roll Up Your Sleeves is that it wasn’t actually designed to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with it and it will not be effective in getting people to take the allegedly “safe and effective” vaccine.

The Walgreens Propaganda Hour featuring thirsty celebrities and bloviating politicians is just not going to restore people’s lost faith in medical professionals.

Fauci and his ilk spent the last year mortgaging their own integrity and hemorrhaging their own authority. You can’t lie about the necessity for masks, like Fauci originally did, or tell people that they must isolate at home, unless it is to go to Black Lives Matter rallies, and expect anyone to believe a word you say.

The vaccine may very well be “safe and effective”, but Fauci and his Hollywood and Washington snake oil salesman are not trustworthy advocates, and no slapdash variety hour is going to change that fact.

A version of this artivle was originally published at RT.

©2021

Coded Bias: Documentary Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. The film tackles a fascinating topic but is too narrow and shallow to be of much use.

Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, explores how artificial intelligence algorithms propagate racial and gender bias.

Big tech totalitarianism is one of the most important issues of our time, and I’m on board with any film highlighting the inherent perils of over reliance on insidious technologies. But Coded Bias, while being somewhat informative, ultimately falls flat because its focus on race and gender is much too narrow.

The film sets out to show how artificial intelligence dehumanizes people and encodes racial bias into the job, college, mortgage and loan application process as well as the criminal justice system, but this misses the techno-tyranny forest for the trees and is akin to complaining about a lack of art by people of color on the walls of the Titanic.

MIT computer scientist Joy Buolamwini opens the movie by recounting how she discovered racial bias in facial recognition software and then documents her attempts to combat it with her collection of activists named the Algorithm Justice League (AJL).

Buolamwini makes for a compelling protagonist on this journey into the Orwellian hellscape of artificial intelligence due to her superior knowledge of the subject matter and magnetic personality.

Equally compelling is the disturbing information about the totalitarian use of algorithms by the Chinese government to control their populace through a social credit system and the U.K.’s baby steps down the same authoritarian path as it implements its own flawed facial recognition program.

Americans are under the same invasive surveillance and are imprisoned by a similar social credit system, the only difference being that they are unaware of it and it’s being done by big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

But these issues are painfully complex and Coded Bias is often at cross-purposes with itself when confronting them. For instance, the film highlights the Chinese and U.K. government’s draconian use of technology, but then spotlights activists demanding the American government assert itself more aggressively regarding oversight.  

The same is true when Buolamwini takes her racial bias study to IBM to show them that their facial recognition tech fails to adequately work on black faces. In response, the company fixes the problem, which results in…more black people being able to be put in facial recognition databases. This pyrrhic victory makes the AJL seem like controlled opposition.

In this way the AJL is reminiscent of Black Lives Matter, in that they’re really a grievance delivery system designed to divide people and distract them from the much bigger issue. The race and gender obsessed AJL, just like BLM, makes enemies of potential allies by refusing to see all victims as equal.

For example, the conservatives and “conspiracy theorists” that have been de-platformed by algorithms from Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube are not considered worthy victims of tech totalitarianism by the AJL (and are never mentioned in the movie), but these ‘deplorables’ could be powerful allies in the fight to rein in the Sauron of Silicon Valley.

In one scene Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio is aghast at the power and pervasiveness of the FBI’s extra-judicial facial recognition program. The AJL no doubt loath Jordan (an easy thing to do), but he could be an effective asset in attempting the Herculean task of restraining the tech behemoth.

In contrast to Jordan, in the same congressional hearing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ignores deeper concerns and instead theatrically focuses her ire at the majority “demographic group” that writes the code for artificial intelligence…white males.

The arch-villains of big tech expanding their surveillance capabilities without the slightest thought to ethics or human rights makes the possibility and probability of a dystopian corporate and draconian governmental future (and present) extremely high, but the film and the AJL are simply incapable of moving beyond their slavish devotion to identity politics and their own biases against white men to focus on that truly horrifying bigger picture.

The reality is that artificial intelligence doesn’t just dehumanize black people, it dehumanizes all people, and any movement that fails to put that fact front and center is deserving of distrust if not disdain.

If the AJL were serious about stopping techno-tyranny they’d be fighting vociferously to restore every person’s right to privacy and freedom of speech, especially if that speech is ugly and hateful, and for the right of people to own their personal information and data, and to stop tech companies from collecting and selling that data, and to either shatter the tech monopolies into a million pieces or transform them into public utilities. But they aren’t serious and they don’t aggressively address any of those issues.

Coded Bias ends by recounting the true story of Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet soldier in 1983 who defied technology during a missile scare and refused to launch a nuclear counter attack against the U.S. The film states that if the artificial intelligence of a Strangelovian “doomsday machine” were in charge, and not Petrov’s humanity, then the world would have been obliterated. This nod to individualism is a nice sentiment but rings hollow after 90 minutes of relentless identity politics. It’s also somewhat amusing since the heroic Petrov is a member of the dreaded white male demographic.

In keeping with the Dr. Strangelove metaphor, Coded Bias and the activists it spotlights unfortunately aren’t truly interested in fighting against big tech’s artificial intelligence “doomsday machine”, they just want to make sure the war room is diverse and inclusive enough.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

MLB Needs to Stop Playing Politics and Start Playing Better Baseball

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

This past weekend Major League Baseball announced it was pulling this season’s All-Star game from Atlanta, Georgia because it believes a new voting bill recently passed in that state’s legislature is racist.

In a rather amusing coincidence, a poll came out the same day revealing that 34.5% of fans are watching fewer sports due to political and social messaging by leagues and players.

As the saying goes “Get Woke, Go Broke”, and the poll, done by YouGov/Yahoo News, robustly reinforces that mantra.

According to the poll, nearly half of all Americans changed their viewing habits in the wake of last summer’s social justice protests at sporting events, with 34.5% watching less and 11% watching more.

Apparently performative virtue signaling like kneeling during the anthem, adorning stadiums and arenas with “Black Lives Matter”, and millionaire NBA players wearing jerseys with such inanities written on the back as “Love Us”, “See Us” and “Group Economics” is a turn off to many people, imagine that.

As the YouGov/Yahoo news poll reveals, significant numbers of fans across the political spectrum are tuning out, with 19% of Democrats, 53% of Republicans and most importantly 38.6% of Independents, decreasing their sports consumption due to social justice and political advocacy at games.  

The television ratings for sports in 2020 reflect the poll results and the frustration many feel toward the constant sloganeering and political pandering.

In 2020 the ratings for the NBA Finals were down 49%, the Stanley Cup 61%, the NFL regular season 7% and the Super Bowl 9%, and the World Series was the least watched in history, down 32% from the previous low.

These numbers are certainly not solely due to sports going woke, but the mainstream media claiming the political/social justice shift in sports has nothing to do with the decline in viewership are whistling past the graveyard.

What makes MLB’s swift decision regarding moving the All-Star game so odd is that no one within the sport was asking for it. For instance, the MLB players association weren’t demanding action and none of the league’s high-profile stars had raised a protest flag over the new Georgia law.

Adding to the oddity of MLB’s decision is that interpretations of the bill in question vary wildly. Republicans claim the bill secures elections and expands voting opportunities and believe the bill is being misconstrued and distorted by Democrats in Washington.

Meanwhile Democrats are calling the bill “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” for among other reasons that it requires voters to provide photo I.D., which is amusing in the context of MLB’s social justice preening since the league itself demands fans show photo I.D. at will call ticket booths and to purchase beer in stadiums.

Considering the disparity of opinions on the Georgia bill and the fact that MLB’s viewership and attendance was already in a steady decline you’d think that they might be more wary of alienating a good portion of their fanbase, which skews older and white, over an issue the league seems to not know enough about.

The problem for sports leagues across the board is that watching sports has already devolved into a tortuous experience regardless of all the social justice posing and pandering.

The NBA is basically unwatchable. The game has deteriorated into a carnival of entitled primadonnas hurling up thirty-footers, incessantly bitching at refs and flopping so flagrantly that it would shame the most flamboyant of Italian soccer players.

Watching the NFL is now an absurd exercise in capitalism porn as games are reduced to one endless commercial break after another with minimal on-field action.  

MLB gameplay has become unbearable too, with contests resembling monotonous marathons of swing and miss and miss and miss again. Chicks may dig the long ball but they aren’t going to sit around four boring, strikeout filled hours on the hopes of seeing one.

Baseball has been hemorrhaging fans for decades because the game is just too slow for younger viewers with shorter attention spans. Is MLB signaling a woke corporate virtue by pulling the All-Star game from Atlanta going to turn that tide? No. But maybe moving the mound back a foot, implementing a pitch clock and outlawing defensive shifts might.

The truth is I don’t care about Georgia’s voting rules…you know why? I don’t live in Georgia. If Georgians don’t like the voting rules, then they can vote to change the legislature that passed these new rules. If the new voting rules are unconstitutional, then the courts will intercede. That’s how democracy is supposed to work.

The bottom line is that I hate politics and I especially hate politics in sports. I hate the players kneeling during the national anthem just as much as I hate that they play the national anthem at games. I hate the militarization of sports with the fucking flyovers and honor guards and all that other militarized Nuremberg-esque nonsense just as much as I hate the woke preening by self-serving, millionaire morons on teams and in league offices.

Sports fans like me are simply exhausted by the endless hyper-politicization of everything in our culture and we look to sports to escape, not to be politically assaulted. MLB would be very wise to avoid playing politics any further and instead focus on fixing their ailing game and playing decent ball.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Godzilla vs Kong: Review and Commentary

****WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Popcorn Movie Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. If you love monster movies you should like this one. If you are ambivalent about monster movies then don’t waste your time.

Godzilla vs Kong, directed by Adam Wingard, made a big splash at the box office when it premiered internationally last weekend, and has generated a lot of attention in the U.S. as it opened on Wednesday in both theatres and on HBO Max.

The film, which stars Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry among many others, is a sequel to both Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Kong: Skull Island (2017), and is the fourth film in Legendary’s Monsterverse franchise which kicked off in 2014 with Godzilla.

I’m always interested in monster movies because they feature rich myths that express deeper truths regarding their time and place and are ripe with opportunities for insightful metaphor and allegory.

For instance, beginning with the first King Kong film in 1933, the Kong story was an allegory for colonialism and slavery, as he was stolen from his tropical homeland by outsiders and brought to America in chains and exploited for profit.

Cinematically born in post-war Japan by Toho Studios in 1954, Godzilla was a metaphor for the perils of atomic weapons and American imperialism, and the embodiment of nuclear age anxiety.

As the world has changed, so has the metaphorical meaning of the monsters. Kong has grown to represent, at least in American eyes, the U.S. He is a primate, warm blooded and big hearted, who is ferociously protective of those he loves, and Americans are delusional enough to see themselves and their nation in his good qualities.

Godzilla has transformed from being a lizard-brained menace to being a hero, and even the previous Legendary films Godzilla and King of the Monsters paint the cold-blooded beast as a guardian of humanity and environmental protector.

In this context, Godzilla vs Kong strikes me as an allegory about the transition from a uni-polar world with America the lone superpower to a multi-polar one where China and the U.S. are equals, with Godzilla representing China and its bid for global dominance and Kong the U.S. fighting to maintain its alpha standing.

The cinematic evidence supporting this thesis is that American favorite Kong is the main protagonist in the story, and that the U.S. military fights on Kong’s side when the monsters battle.

In a nod to China’s status and power, Godzilla proves his alpha dominance by forcing Kong to submit and also obliterates the U.S Navy when it defends Kong.

It’s also conspicuous that the moviemakers set the climactic battle between Kong and Godzilla in Hong Kong, which is a city which can simultaneously represent different things to the film’s two largest target audiences…China and the U.S.

To Americans, the Let’s Get it on In Hong Kong battle can be interpreted as Kong (U.S.A.) fighting for democracy against the tyranny of China. In China it can be interpreted as the city merely being collateral damage in the wider battle against the imperialism of the west.

Of course, with the film ending with both Kong and Godzilla saving face and being victorious, Hollywood is simply trying to kiss two asses at once and stay in the good graces of both China and the U.S. and their massive audiences.

Another interpretation could be that the third monster in the movie, Mecha-Godzilla, is supposed to be representative of the corporate titans of the tech world that are maneuvering to rule us all, and that Kong (U.S.A.) and Godzilla (China) must work together to stop the seemingly all-powerful globalist tech behemoth. Considering that the tech industry, the U.S. and Chinese government, and Hollywood are like the evil three-headed monster Ghidorah, and work in unison to horde profits, power and spread propaganda, this interpretation isn’t as compelling.

A more likely scenario is that I’m just reading way too much into the popcorn delivery system that is a mindless monster movie.

The bottom line is that as a piece of cinematic art, Godzilla vs Kong isn’t exactly Citizen Kane, but as a monster movie it’s entertaining, especially in contrast to the three Monsterverse films leading up to it which were decidedly disappointing.

Sure, the film gets bogged down in a bevy of exposition and entirely incomprehensible plots involving conspiracy theories, hollow earth and some corporate nefariousness, but all that tomfoolery fades away once the CGI creations start stomping the earth and beating the crap out of each other.

Thankfully the movie also eschews the emotional preening so prevalent in the earlier Legendary ventures and simply lets the monsters battle it out. And the big fights are well executed, proficiently filmed and efficiently choreographed for prime viewing of the carnage, something also lacking in the muddled visuals of previous Monsterverse movies.

As for the fights, my critique is that Kong is like former Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder in that he is much too reliant on big right hands. Kong needs to develop and then utilize a jab to keep a short-armed in-fighter like Godzilla at bay. To Kong’s credit though he is a great closer with his signature double fisted beat down move.

Godzilla is just a monster…literally. Despite short arms he has a long and powerful tail that can cause serious damage when whipped, and of course boasts some of the deadliest atomic breath around. Godzilla is sort of like George Foreman before the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974…just a horrifyingly big, strong and brutal fighter.

The Godzilla-Kong fights are what everybody is tuning in to see, and while there weren’t enough of them for my taste…the ones that did happen were pretty good so I will take what I can get.

As for whether Godzilla vs Kong is good or its deeper meaning, the film business couldn’t care less, it just cares that the movie raked in $123 million from overseas markets in its opening weekend, a Covid era record.

This seems to indicate that the Hollywood beast is awakening from its Covid slumber and is prepared once again to slouch across the globe asserting its malign influence. The U.S. and Chinese governments will be thrilled to have their reliably pliable Hollywood propaganda monster back in the game.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. Not a great film by any stretch, and not as good as the original Borat, but it has some cringe-induced laughs and a gloriously balls to the wall performance from Maria Bakalova.

Borat Subsequent MovieFilm, directed by Jason Woliner and written by Sacha Baron Cohen and a cavalcade of others, is the sequel to the 2006 mockumentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan. The new film once again documents intrepid foreign tv personality Borat as he journeys through America. The film stars Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat with a supporting turn from Maria Bakalova as Borat’s daughter.

Sacha Baron Cohen came to prominence in 2002 with Da Ali G Show , which showcased his distinct brand of cringe comedy . Cohen’s dim-witted Ali G convinced regular and famous people alike into taking his buffoonery seriously and it made for some hysterical moments.

Da Ali G Show also featured two other Cohen characters, Bruno, a gay Austrian fashionista, and the aforementioned Borat.

Cohen brought Borat to the big screen and reaped a box office bonanza in 2006 with Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan, instantly becoming a cultural icon and meme generator. Cohen followed up that success with Bruno in 2009, which wasn’t as big a hit as Borat but still was a massive box office success.

Since 2009 Cohen has gone away from his signature mockumentary style cringe comedy and has tried to find success in more orthodox movies, both comedy and drama. That success has been somewhat elusive, in part because Cohen is so identified as being Borat. For instance, it is difficult to watch him star in the serious Netflix drama The Spy because you keep expecting him to do something inappropriate and say “niiiice!” Although things might be changing for Cohen as he was just nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his work, which I thought was atrociously bad, in The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Regardless of all that, I was surprised that Cohen came out with a new Borat movie now. It seemed like both the Borat cultural moment had passed and that dredging it up would only further hamper Cohen’s attempt at becoming a “legitimate” actor.

So when Borat Subsequent MovieFilm premiered on Amazon Prime in October of 2020, I made no effort to watch it. After months of putting it off I have finally taken the plunge.

Borat Subsequent MovieFilm is not as good as the original Borat…but it will certainly satisfy those who have a taste for Sacha Baron Cohen’s particular brand of comedy.

The movie is a shameless piece of anti-Trump propaganda (which is probably why it is nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar - which is absurd), but just because it is propaganda doesn’t mean it isn’t funny. The movie is, at times, uproariously funny. The most remarkable thing about it though is that Sacha Baron Cohen is totally outshined in lunacy by his fearless co-star Maria Bakalova. Bakalova, who plays Borat’s maligned daughter Tutar Sagdiyev, is ferociously funny as she sheds all inhibitions and even leaves her famous co-star looking a bit shell-shocked.

Bakalova is nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance, which is unbelievable not because she is undeserving but because the subject matter of the film is so outrageous. What sets Bakalova apart is her unabashed courage at diving into the most absurd and often repulsive scenes. The father-daughter dance at the Dallas debutante ball is so horrifying as to be gloriously amazing, and if she wins the Oscar I hope she recreates that dance when receiving her statuette.

In terms of the propaganda power of the movie, it seems more cathartic than persuasive. I mean, if you loved Trump and watched the movie it wouldn’t change your mind. Liberals will adore the movie’s political perspective and will no doubt only have their beliefs further reinforced, which isn’t necessarily a healthy thing, but this is life in 21st Century America. With all that said, I must admit that the movie felt very dated me just five months post-election.

Oddly, some of the things that Cohen uses to attempt to show Trumpists as morons and monsters actually does the reverse but he and his target audience are probably too enraptured by their own self-righteousness to be aware enough to recognize it. For instance, Borat stays with two Trumper/MAGA hat wearing men during the pandemic and uses that opportunity to show how bigoted, close-minded and hateful they are…but all that is undermined by the fact that these supposed bigots actually took a foreigner in during a pandemic and are patient and respectful towards him and go to great lengths to help him out.

Of course it should be stated that it is doubtful any of the stuff filmed in the movie is actually real. Cohen’s mockumentary style is easily manipulated and “real” moments are few and far between. But with that said, the biggest scene in the movie, and the one that got the most attention, involves Rudy Giuliani in a hotel room with a young woman. As a former New Yorker who lived there under his reign and absolutely hates Giuliani with the fury of a thousand suns, I have to say that the “gotcha” moment in this scene feels contrived and cheap. Giuliani is certainly a liar, creep and scumbag, but to imply he was playing with himself or whipping his miniscule, aggressively impotent tiny pecker out is pretty hyperbolic.

The bottom line is that Sacha Baron Cohen’s outrageous comedic style is an acquired taste, and to be frank, I have acquired it. I didn’t love Borat Subsequent MovieFilm, but it did make me laugh out loud a bunch of times, and that ain’t nothing. The film is worth watching for the laughs and to enjoy watching Maria Bakalova devour every scene she inhabits.

If you like Da Ali G Show, Borat and Bruno, you’ll like Borat Subsequent MovieFilm…but if Cohen’s style is not your cup of tea, I recommend you don’t even attempt to take a sip of this raunchy, rancid and ridiculous brew.

©2021

Sound of Metal: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An insightful and captivating drama that boasts a simple but layered narrative, a fantastic performance from Riz Ahmed and some exquisite filmmaking craftsmanship.

Sound of Metal, written and directed by Darius Marder, tells the story of Ruben Stone, a drummer in a heavy metal duo that loses his hearing. The film stars Riz Ahmed as Ruben, with supporting turns from Olivia Cooke and Paul Raci.

Sound of Metal was released on Amazon Prime streaming service back in November of 2020. I would see the advertisement for it whenever I went online but was always hesitant to watch it as it looked like a rather predictable movie on its surface. I finally made the plunge last week and watched…and boy am I glad that I did.

Yes, Sound of Metal is about a drummer who loses his hearing, but it is infinitely more than that.

For some viewers, the premise of the movie and the opening scenes may be a hurdle, but I wholly encourage you to stick with the movie because it is a multi-layered, dramatically precise, profound and powerful piece of cinema well worth your time.

Director Darius Marder apparently developed this story for over a decade, and successfully navigated the minefield of Hollywood to get it made the way he wanted it made…and it shows.

Marder’s confidence as a filmmaker (this is his first feature) oozes through every scene of the film. The movie never takes the easy or predictable route in storytelling, and every time I thought I knew what was coming I was wrong. Marder’s refusal to rely on conventional narrative arcs and story turns makes Sound of Metal very compelling viewing.

The technical proficiency on display in the movie is impressive, as the film’s use of sound to propel the narrative and heighten the drama is masterful. The way the movie allows the audience to experience Ruben’s hearing loss creates a visceral intimacy that is captivating, jarring and mesmerizing.

The film is nominated for six Oscars, two of which include Best Sound and Best Editing and it should win both awards. The sound design on this movie is exquisite and is a pivotal part of the storytelling. The editing is seamless as scenes are never rushed nor linger too long and the film is perfectly paced.

The cast are terrific. Riz Ahmed is just one of those guys…he is an exceptional actor who has an innate presence to him that is compelling and undeniable. Ahmed is able to draw viewers into him rather than needing to be showy to attract their attention. His work as Ruben is specific and complex, and he never falls prey to the desire to overly emote. This role in lesser hands could have been a great deal of volcanic histrionics, but with Ahmed it is an exquisite exercise in subtlety and nuance.

Ahmed is nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance and while be probably won’t win, he certainly deserves to.

Paul Raci plays a counselor named Joe and is outstanding. Raci is a knock around type of actor who has been nibbling away at the periphery of the business for decades. This is the most prominent role in his career and he makes the most of the opportunity. Raci is so grounded and genuine as Joe I wasn’t sure he was a professional actor when I was watching him. I don’t say that as an insult, I say it to highlight how real he comes across and how devoid of performance his work truly is.

Olivia Cooke also acquits herself quite well as Lou, Ruben’s girlfriend and bandmate. Cooke is an intriguing screen presence and she makes the most of the small role she is given.

What makes Sound of Metal so profound is that it is extremely accurate and insightful when it comes to the issue of drug and alcohol recovery. The film expertly maneuvers through the choppy waters of recovery and never flounders.

Director Marder connects the audience to Ruben and we too fall under the spell of his unseen wound and issues. He seems fine to us because we want him to seem fine. When the reality of the situation is revealed it is a breathtaking moment and a staggeringly well executed piece of cinema.

I loved Sound of Metal because it’s a “simple” bit of filmmaking that makes use of the craft and skill of moviemakiing to create a piece of cinematic art. Obviously, just because something is simple does not make it easy. For instance, if you are an addict the simple solution to your problem is to stop using…but that ain’t easy.

The beautiful simplicity of the storytelling and filmmaking of Sound of Metal is why this movie is so impressive and this type of moviemaking so exceedingly rare.

I also loved Sound of Metal because of Riz Ahmed’s heartfelt and absurdly well-crafted performance. This is Ahmed at his very best and it is glorious to behold.

And finally, I loved Sound of Metal because it dramatically presents the important truth about the intricate process of recovery, one with which I am all too familiar and which America needs to learn in a hurry…that returning to normal isn’t the panacea the addicted mind thinks it is. Becoming sober doesn’t mean your life is perfect and you are instantly happy, it means life is still suffering but now you have to feel it because you aren’t drunk or high.

Recovery doesn’t end with sobriety, it BEGINS with sobriety. Once sober, you can start the journey of self-discovery to find the wounds that cause the pain you’ve been trying to self-medicate away. Returning to normal for the addict isn’t a return to a good place, it is a return to the place that instigated the drug and alcohol use in the first place (An example of which is establishment liberals wanting to ‘return to normal’ after the nightmare of Trump - well…the pre-Trump normal is what got us Trump!). Those in recovery must discover a new normal, one that is based on integrity and isn’t self-deceptive or self-destructive.

If you’re in recovery, Sound of Metal holds important lessons for you. If you love someone in recovery and want to understand what it is like, Sound of Metal is for you too. If you just like exceedingly well made movies, then Sound of Metal is for you too. Sound of Metal is just a terrific film and I highly recommend it.

©2021

The Trial of the Chicago 7: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Yikes. What an abysmal Sorkinian shitshow.

The Trial of the Chicago 7, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, recounts the story of the infamous prosecution of a group of famed anti-Vietnam war protestors arrested for inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Among the star-studded ensemble are Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Redmayne, Michael Keaton, Mark Rylance and Frank Langella.

The film, which is streaming on Netflix, has been nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Sacha Baron Cohen).

The Trial of the Chicago 7 tells an extremely important story, but unfortunately, it is an abysmally crafted, relentlessly hackneyed shitshow of a movie.

One can only speculate as to why such an aggressively trite cinematic venture has been so well received.

Maybe people say they like this movie because they think this is the type of movie they’re supposed to like. In this way The Trial of the Chicago 7 is reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln in that It covers a “serious” historical topic meant to convey a noble truth about a current social political issue. Lincoln was a terrible movie too, but that didn’t stop critics from fawning over it during their Obama sugar high. It was like critics endorsed the film in an attempt to avoid seeming to be against the abolition of slavery - as inane as that sounds.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is like baby boomer porn where Sorkin and his fellow boomers can signal their historic virtue all over themselves in a frantic fit of masturbatorial self-righteousness. The film allows the auto-erotic boomer fantasy to extend to current issues and protests movements like Black Lives Matter, with climax no doubt gushing forth accompanied by an orgasmic cry of “right side of history!”

Regardless (or as Dictionary.com would now say - ‘irregardless’) of why it is being praised, it is definitely being praised. At the website Rotten Tomatoes the film currently has a 90% critical score and a 91% audience score.

It is at times like these that I feel the world has officially lost its mind. .

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is so cinematically cliched, dramatically defective and pretentiously pedantic it feels like a two hour and ten minute SNL skit.

The film boasts some of the most embarrassing acting of the year. Sacha Baron Cohen is nominated for a Best Supporting Actor for his work as 60’s icon Abbie Hoffman. Cohen looks like a dad who dressed up in in a bad hippie costume to accompany his kids to a Halloween dance. It is painfully embarrassing watching the 49 year old Cohen play acting as the 30 year-old Hoffman. Adding to the suck is the fact that Cohen absolutely tears limb from limb Hoffman’s unique New England accent, and ends up sounding like Borat, a Brooklynite, Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and a posh Brit all rolled into one giant acting shit sandwich.

Eddie Redmayne is just as dreadful as Tom Hayden. Redmayne is a charisma-less acting vampire that drains every scene of even the most remote bit of life. He too mauls an American accent like a newly freed Vegas tiger seeking revenge on his life-long tormentors Siegfried and Roy.

Even Mark Rylance, the great Mark Rylance, churns out a sub-par performance. Rylance plays the iconic civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, who was one of the great New York characters of all-time. Rylance’s Kunstler is so far removed from any version of reality as to be criminal. Rylance too never properly wields Kunstler’s distinctive New York dialect. But as my friend Mo Danger pointed out, to Rylance’s credit he at least seems like the only actor in the cast not in on the Sorkinian joke.

The Trial of the Chicago 7’s biggest problem though is the direction of Aaron Sorkin, who simply lacks the requisite cinematic skill to take on such sprawling and complex subject matter.

Sorkin’s ham-fisted, hit-all-the-bullet-points, broad brush, watered down approach drains the dynamic story of any dramatic power. His limp direction also leaves his actors floundering, unable to piece together performances with any dramatic coherence.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is like a very special episode of Sorkin’s 90’s remake of Fantasy Island …The West Wing. It is so self-reverential, pandering and dramatically flaccid as to be egregiously cinematically inept.

The piece de resistance of The Trial of the Chicago 7 is that it builds to a cinematic climax where people unironically stand and clap in a courtroom. It’s like Sorkin went all meta and made a movie set in the 1960’s that had the dramatic sensibilities of a high school drama from the 1980’s.

The story of the Chicago 7 is one that needs to be told…maybe in a Netflix mini-series so as to give each character more depth and the conflagration in Chicago in 1968 more context. The Trial of the Chicago 7 fails to adequately recount the time, place, events and characters involved in one of the crazier and more dangerous times in American history, and that failure is entirely on Aaron Sorkin.

My advice is to either skip The Trial of the Chicago 7 or go all in and just hate watch the damn thing, because it is certainly a target rich environment for scorn and cathartic loathing. Either way, this movie is a blight on the cinema landscape and can’t be forgotten soon enough.

©2021