Month: March 2021

Blood Simple (1984) – A Movie Review

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This was the Coen Brothers first movie.  Even in their first picture all of the Coen Brothers’ tendencies are on full display.  I have a love/hate relationship with their movies and I’m sure it colors all of my views but that is probably true of a very large part of their audience.  The Coen Brothers are undoubtedly extremely talented movie makers.  Their dialog, cinematography and actor selection are quite remarkable.  But there is such a blackness, such a nihilistic core in their work that you always walk away shaking your head.

The plot involves a married couple Julian and Abby Marty, played by Dan Hedaya and Frances McDormand.  Julian owns a bar in Texas and when the movie begins his bartender Ray is driving Abby back from some trip.  We quickly learn that Abby is not happily married to Julian and in fact Ray and Abby are about to stop at a motel for a sexual tryst.  Unbeknownst to them Julian has hired a private investigator named Loren Visser (played by M. Emmet Walsh) who has followed them and is able to get pictures of Ray and Abby in bed together and provides these to Julian.

After some violent encounters between Julian and the lovers he hires Visser to kill them for $10,000.  When Julian returns from an alibi fishing trip Visser meets him at his office and hands over some pictures showing Ray and Abbey in bed with blood spattered on their bodies.  Julian secretly steals the photo and hides it in his safe while taking out the $10,000.  When Julian hands over the money Visser takes out the small caliber gun that he somehow stole from Abby and shoots Julian in the chest and leaves after throwing the gun on the ground.

Now we find out that the death photos of Ray and Abby are fakes.  Ray shows up at the bar and finds Julian shot in the back-room office.  But when he sees Abby’s gun, he assumes she shot Julian.  He decides to dispose of the body.  He puts it in his car and drives out into the farmland surrounding his town.  While stopping on a road to look at a plowed field as a possible burial location for Julian, he discovers that Julian is not quite dead yet.  He has crawled out of the car and is inching down the road on all fours.  Ryan agonizes over running Julian over with the car or banging him in the head with a shovel but because of an approaching truck he just drags him back in the car and heads onto the field.

He digs a grave and puts Julian in but as he begins to bury him Julian finds Abby’s gun that Ryan has stuck in the assumed dead man’s coat pocket.  He then pulls the trigger a couple of times but none of the chambers he tries has a bullet in it so Ray takes the gun from him and buries Julian alive.

Ray returns home to Abby but he thinks she shot Julian and since he won’t say what has happened, she is completely in the dark about Julian and is scared by Ray’s strange behavior.  They become suspicious of each other.  Now Visser discovers that the doctored picture of Ray and Abby is missing and he decides he will have to kill Ray and Abby to ensure no one figures out his involvement.  At this point all three protagonists are sneaking around in the same locales and the tension builds.  Finally, Ray and Abby are holed up in his apartment and Visser comes to get them.  Ray suspects that someone is out there and tells Abby to shut the light but she is a stubborn dope and because of this Ray takes a sniper shot to the back and falls down dead.  Visser comes into the apartment and a game of cat and mouse develops between him and Abby that ends with a knife through his hand in a window in another room from the one he is standing in and him shooting holes in a wall to allow his other hand to enter the other room to get the knife out.  It’s bizarre to say the least.  Finally, Abby retrieves her gun again and shoots Visser through the door of the room he is in.  She still thinks it’s Julian after her so she says, “I’m not afraid of you, Marty.”  And Visser, lying on the floor, dying, says laughingly, “Well, ma’am, if I see him, I’ll sure give him the message.”

Good lord, what can you say?  The Coens revel in ordinary people becoming submerged in criminality and violence.  There are never any heroes.  There are only varying shades of black and dark gray.  Visser is a twisted man but Julian is hardly better and Ray and Abby are impulsive fools who get swept along in the flood of hatred and greed.  To say it is over the top would be an understatement unless we are putting the statement in the context of other Coen Brothers movies.  Remember this was their first film.  Later on, this movie would be considered a light hearted romp.

But as a Coen Brothers movie it is a success.  The plot bounces along from outrage to outrage and instead of reaching a satisfying conclusion the screen just goes black and the end-credits role.  You have just been told a very disturbing crime story but it was effectively told.  If you enjoy this kind of movie experience then you should watch this film.  They do this very well.  But please don’t expect a happily ever after ending.  There ain’t no such thing in the Coen Brothers universe.

The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard by Tyler James Cook – A Book Review

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Full disclosure, Tyler Cook is the proprietor of the website The Portly Politico, a fellow conservative and in my opinion a fine fellow.  He and I have shared many an interesting conversation on-line about a number of different topics, political and non-political.  He’s a multi-talented fellow and a good guy.  So, I wasn’t surprised to find that he has also self-published a book and asked me to review it.  And always on the look out for something good to review, I immediately agreed and he was kind enough to send me a review copy.

“The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard” is a short book and is made up of a number of “cases.”  The eponymous Inspector is a Sherlock Holmes-like savant who usually solves the case simultaneous with the initial narration of the crime.  But the final solution always involves logic that is a complete non sequitur to the clues.  That is the joke.

The thing that I noted was that the content of the stories reflect the various ages at which Tyler wrote them.  So, the earliest tales are very, very short and have solutions that defy any conventional logic.  They are what a teenage kid would find funny.  And as the series of stories progresses, they become more complex and the writing adds touches of noir-like characterization and other dramatic effect.

And finally, as the author enters adulthood his writing becomes mature and his story telling powers become developed.  The culmination is a story called, “Inspector Gerard and the Dead-End Job Caper.”  It is a comical piece that dramatizes Gerard’s ennui and determination to abandon crime-solving and take up a life as a fish-monger.  This story has everything.  Dramatic tension, character development, local color and timing.  Well, maybe not, but it is funny.

So here is the verdict.  Tyler Cook is a smart talented writer.  I can see that in the output of his blog.  “The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard” is a showcase of his earliest fiction writing output.  It reflects his sense of humor applied to the mystery genre.  It is amusing but very short.  I think the takeaway from this selection is that Tyler is going to write a longer and more commercial work in the future.

Tyler has the story on Amazon and I see it’s on kindle unlimited for free I believe.  Because of its short length and the ironic nature of much of the work I wouldn’t know if many folks would be happy to pay a lot for the collection.  But I encourage readers of the Portly Politico to try it out and then lobby Tyler to spread his wings and write the comic novel that he obviously has in him.

A Horrible Injustice Has Occurred!

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Yesterday was William Shatner’s 90th Birthday and I missed it!  Excusing myself by pleading COVID vaccination side effects would be a pathetic lie.  I have no good reason.  Forgive me Bill, I knew not what I did.  Well, I will atone for this sin.  I promise very soon to provide a ShatnerKhan update and provide some very shatnerian widom.

Meanwhile follow the link.

Are There Any Smart People in the Stupid Party? Build Us an On-Line Town Hall

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Dementia Joe and the forces of darkness are working overtime to reduce what’s left of the United States to rotted rubble.  And although they are doing incalculable damage to millions of good people, they are also convincing the rational remnant of the population that isn’t also incurably evil that something must be done about the present situation.

This presents a remarkable opportunity for someone with something on the ball.  The social and financial leverage available to someone on the right who actually has a workable plan is not unlimited but it is formidable.  Back during Obama’s tenure Americans on the right were looking for a movement to support their dissatisfaction with the political situation.  As it worked out hucksters appeared to grift money from those well-meaning people and dissipated the political energy that existed.

But ten years later we are in an even more dire situation.  The American people are even more incensed by the horrifying reality of the Biden abomination and the Deep State actors that are inflicting a soviet-like surveillance state on them.  Why isn’t there some legitimate right-wing leader to focus that anger and channel it into something constructive.  Are our leaders really all that useless?  Are they just simply as stupid as their reputation says they are?  That is the million-dollar question.

Yesterday a little bit of news came out.  Donald Trump is planning to build his own social network platform.  But what will it be?  Will it be Right Twitter, Right Facebook?  Will it be more than that?  Does Donald Trump even know what it will be?  These are all good questions.  But a better question is what do we need?

What I think we need is an on-line town hall with the alleged Republican leaders plugged in on a regular basis.  We need to be able discuss the issues and we need actual leaders to provide us with feedback and hopefully solutions to the situations we are being subjected to.  It has to be more than just us peons complaining about the horror we are enduring.  We need powerful people to provide us with solutions.  It’s understood that some problems can’t be solved overnight or maybe ever but honest talk about what can be done and what will have to be endured will go a long way toward giving these leaders credibility and backing from their people.

And add into this town hall a place for the pundits and the reporters.  And while we’re at it add in the entertainers and the artists.  That means comics on our side will actually have a place to tell their jokes and mock the Left without being de-platformed.

Well, that should be enough.  That sounds like a combination of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and also the News Media the way it was supposed to be, along with an interactive version of FDR’s Fireside Chats thrown in for good measure.  That’s about what I think we need.  So, if Mr. Trump is going to provide that then he’s hitting the market at just the right time.  I’d be willing to take the $100+ I give to Bezos for Amazon Prime and switch it over to something like what I’m discussing here.  I imagine it would be worth that much to me.  Maybe they could have a discount plan for the poor but eight bucks a month wouldn’t be asking too much to get something of our own that the SPLC won’t be able to shut down.  Oh, and I forgot.  It’s going to need its own online payment service provider and probably a bank to do business with it.  But billionaires can take care of things like that too.  So, get going.

You get the idea; we need a nerve center for the normal people.  The Left has Google and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and heaven knows what else.  I don’t think it’s too much that we have a place too.  So, President Trump and whichever of your friends with money and savvy are out there consider this your golden opportunity to capture an untapped market of about fifty to a hundred million people who are currently unserved and starving for a home on line.

Hat Tip to Vox Day on an Article About Virtue Signaling Gone Terribly Wrong

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Vox Day links and quotes a very funny article about an outdoor apparel company, North Face, that disdained to treat an oil and gas company with just reasonable courtesy and in turn was exposed for its absurd hypocrisy.  I guess North Face wasn’t aware that polymers are almost 100% manufactured out of oil.  In fact without petrochemicals we’d all be looking and living like relics from the early 19th century.  But woke dolts think all these things they enjoy are made magically from unicorn farts and rainbow penumbras.  Sucks being stupid.

 

 

 

The ZMan’s Monday Morning Double Header Hit Two Home Runs

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On Mondays the ZMan has his usual post and also puts up a post on Taki’s Magazine.  Today both of them are very worthwhile.  On his site he discourses on the analogy of prison life to our current environment and how freedom of choice has been banished from the public square by a pseudo-religion.

On Taki’s he compare the current American political regime with the Soviet era and likens trying to figure out what the Left will do next with how Kremlinologists in the West of that era tried to read the tea leaves by the Brezhnev’s expression during filmed ceremonies and pontificating on what it meant.

I enjoyed both posts quite a bit.  The ZMan is on his game this morning.  A good start to the week.

https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=23223

https://www.takimag.com/article/a-wilderness-of-lies/

Who Would Follow Joe Biden unto the Breach?

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Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

…

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge

Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

I was trying to imagine anyone yelling ‘Cry Gaia for Dementia Joe, Washington D.C. and George Soros!’  I mean exactly who would charge into battle and throw their lives into the meat grinder for either this President or this government.  After the way they’ve been treating the National guardsmen in the Capitol farce I wouldn’t be surprised if the re-enlistment quotas remain unfilled from now on.  As it is, it’s bad enough that the FBI is acting like our own version of the KGB and harasses and imprisons Americans because of their political party.  I don’t even want to imagine what kind of wars a Joe Biden administration would throw our men into.

Of course, I would support the idea of sending the “tranny brigade” into action.  I think that the trannies are our most valuable weapon in the war against radical Islam.  I can only imagine how terrified the Al Qaeda boys would be if a vast ocean of fabulous drag queens, a platoon of Chers here and a company of Madonnas there, charged across the desert in their stiletto heels brandishing coordinated weapons and khaki designer handbags.  Well, they might die laughing anyway.

And we know that Dopey Joe wants to put pregnant women into maternity flight suits and send them into dog fights.  I wonder if he knows what happens when a pilot has to eject out of the cockpit of a fighter jet?  Is he aware of the stress that will put on an unborn child?  Well of course he does and he also knows that no woman other than an imbecile would put her unborn child in that position.  But the virtue signaling and posturing inherent in even bringing it up was too much to resist for the creepiest administration since Obama’s.

It should be interesting to see what Biden does in Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East.  The public has had enough of the forever wars.  If the military loses patience with all this and stop re-enlisting the progressives may find they no longer have anyone left but the girls and the trannies and that may sound like a diversity dream come true but it wouldn’t even deter the Mexican Cartels, never mind the Russians and the Chinese.

But the larger question is how long will it take for even the Democrats to realize that the military and more specifically the nuclear arsenal is the reason that this country has lived in virtual peace since 1945.  Even things like Korea and Vietnam didn’t threaten to plunge this country into fighting on our soil.

But the obvious incompetence of more and more of the military caused by the prioritizing of diversity promotions instead of based on job competence will eventually reach a point where other nuclear powers like China and Russia may decide that they no longer have to fear retaliation.  And even the regional powers like Iran and Turkey may stop fearing our military capability and thumb their noses at our orders.  That’s going to be a dangerous day for us.