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Untruth as Fiction

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Camera Girl loves reading crime fiction and things like crime fiction.  Harry Bosch is one of the characters in her books and lately we started watching some tv series about him.  So today we sat down to an episode and in this story one of Bosch’s associates, a cyber security professional/hacker is being investigated by the FBI to try and get him to become a confidential informant against Bosch.  The FBI uses a woman who is a rising star in hacker circles to entrap this Bosch associate.

So, Camera Girl sees this woman working for the FBI and says, “She’s working for the FBI and trying to entrap him.  That’s awful.”  And I started laughing.  I said, “Hon, if only that were the extent of what they actually do.”  And I was about to go into a diatribe about J6 and the “plot” to kidnap the Michigan governor.  But then I thought, why should I make her depressed about how our country is really run?  It’s bad enough I have to know.  So, I just let it go.

The old saying is that truth is stranger than fiction.  And that’s absolutely true now.  I mean if you think about it, since 1945 our military arsenal contains devices that were the stuff of science fiction right up till Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And in 1968 when “2001: A Space Odyssey” reached the theaters, artificial intelligence was a homicidal computer named HAL that was obviously an impossibility.  And now we have AI stealing our jobs and insulting us in the comments sections.  And just three years ago we probably saw the first large-scale event featuring a bio-weapon.  Granted, it was a pathetic one but it caused a lot of damage to the world economy and destroyed most people’s faith in the honesty of the WHO and the American government.

So, stranger than fiction isn’t really surprising.  What is surprising is how wrong fiction gets it.  When Hollywood scripts the United States being threatened with a military coup it was always a crazy general who wanted to go to war with the Russians and blow up the world.  But he was always a right-wing religious zealot played by Burt Lancaster.  Instead, we get General Milley who wants to conquer Russia with drag queen special forces.  And now there is this Civil War movie and currently they’re keeping the plot details under wraps but it’s pretty obvious that the president who is serving his third term will be a dead-ringer for Donald Trump.  So once again they’ll trot out the old right-wing president who becomes new Hitler.  That one was already old when Heinlein had the “Prophet” seize control of the United States and turn it into a Christian theocracy.  And a while ago there was “The Handmaid’s Tale” which once again was an America as dystopian theocracy but added in the ever-popular sexual subjugation of the last few fertile females in the world.  Sheesh, those feminists really do worry an awful lot about being forced to have sex.  Just from a cursory analysis I think their problem tends to run in the opposite direction.  Sexual offers seem to be few and far between for most of those gals.

Well, all this is leading up to a question.  Does anyone think there will ever be a motion picture that accurately portrays the political and social dynamic that actually exists in the modern world?  To make it interesting, I think it should be a dark comedy but with a redemptive ending.  Lots of people are always saying that there is a large market for entertainment that doesn’t have a social bias.  But I’m advocating for a right-leaning bias.  I’d love to see characters that I can sympathize with.  I remember when Tim Allen’s show “Last Man Standing” first came out.  It was obvious that his character was a right-wing individual and it was very enjoyable and very funny.  But then Disney put a stop to that and neutered the character and the show.  Well, there’s a proof of concept.  All anyone has to do is copy what was done in that show.  They could even hire Tim Allen to star in it and as long as the writing is funny it would make money hand over fist.

And finally, how about a civil war movie where we win?  The outcome is we let them live the way they want to and we live the way we want.  We could have a postscript where we get to see what the two Americas look like in 2124.  Blue America would look like Idiocracy with broken down wind generators and disheveled poor people dressed in rags and eating crickets.  Red America would have nuclear power plants providing almost limitless energy, a thriving society based on meritocracy and well-maintained borders complete with 100-foot-tall fences.

24 GOP Governors Message Solidarity With Abbott in Texas

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24 GOP Governors Message Solidarity with Abbott in Texas

So, I was watching the Big Lebowski tonight.  That movie has an odd effect on me.  It’s a comic tour de force.  It piles absurdity on absurdity with nothing but bizarre characters as far as the eye can see.  And I find most of the humor highly entertaining.  But it always sort of depresses me too.  I guess it’s because even in their comedies the Coen Brothers are always laughing at us.  And it’s not a friendly laugh.  They’re dramatizing the meaninglessness of human existence.  Well, at least that’s how it affects me.

Then I read this.

The full list is:

Governor Kay Ivey (AL), Governor Mike Dunleavy (AK), Governor Sarah Sanders (AR), Governor Ron DeSantis (FL), Governor Brian Kemp (GA), Gov. Kim Reynolds (IA), Governor Brad Little (ID), Governor Eric Holcomb (IN), Governor Jeff Landry (LA), Governor Tate Reeves (MS), Governor Mike Parson (MO), Governor Greg Gianforte (MT), Governor Jim Pillen (NE), Governor Joe Lombardo (NV), Governor Chris Sununu (NH), Governor Doug Burgum (ND), Governor Mike DeWine (OH), Governor Kevin Stitt (OK), Governor Henry McMaster (SC), Governor Kristi Noem (SD), Governor Bill Lee (TN), Governor Spencer Cox (UT), Governor Glenn Youngkin (VA), Governor Jim Justice (WV), and Governor Mark Gordon (WY).  The only abstainers were Republican governors in Vermont and Nevada.  But those aren’t conservative states so there’s no surprise here.

So, this is a mildly encouraging sign.  Maybe the Republicans are starting to realize they have an enormous amount of leverage because of the panic about getting money for Ukraine.  They should demand that Biden deport ten million illegal aliens before he gets a penny.  But what are the odds of the House holding out for that?  Probably pretty slim.

But I do see some good coming of the Republican governors finding common ground.  And of course, I fantasize that they’ll go beyond a letter of support.  What they should do is coordinate a plan to not only close the border but to eject the illegals whenever they show up in the red states.  This is another case of federal law that is being ignored by the federal government.  They could announce to the country that they are going to arrest all illegals and give them a chance to hand themselves over and instead get free airfare back to their homes.

This is the basis of what I was calling the Red State Council.  The red states coordinating to circumvent the sabotage of the federal government and protect each other by enforcing the Constitution within their own borders.  So there’s the tie-in to the Big Lebowski.  It’s filled with nihilism, both explicit and implied.  And that is what the federal government stands for and enforces.  But luckily for us we don’t have to have a Coen Brothers moral to our story.  It is possible to end up with a happily ever afterward story line.  All we need is a bunch of red state governors who decide that twenty five states is enough to stand their ground and refuse to be stampeded on by Biden and his minions.  Well, I guess I should get around to doing a review of the movie.  After all, the dude abides.

Can I Review a Movie Trailer?

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It was bound to happen eventually.  Hollywood needs to give us cautionary tales.  I watched the trailer for an upcoming movie called “Civil War.”  The scenario is a “fascist” president in his third term (probably named Donald Tromp, Ronald Trump or something else equally subtle) is fighting a war to recapture nineteen states that have seceded including the Western Alliance (or something like that) consisting of California and Texas.  As an aside, the guy playing the president sounds exactly like Mike Pence.

The heroes of the movie are three intrepid “reporters” who travel across the country and witness the horror of Middle America in all its racist something or other.  In the trailer we see white men with guns interrogating some seemingly Hispanic people and when told that they are Americans the guys with guns say, “But what kind of Americans?”  And then it looks they’re going to shoot them.  And there is lots of footage of jets and tanks attacking New York City and monuments in DC blowing up and I think it looks like the invaders breach the White House.

The Democrats are attempting to take Trump off the ballot.  What a perfect time to have a movie showing what will happen if a fascist president is allowed to run for president.

My favorite part of the trailer is near the end where the intrepid female reporter says, “Every time I survived a war zone, I thought I was sending a message home saying, “Don’t do this.”  And yet, here we are.”  So even during a movie where the country is engulfed in war and the outcome should be the story we have “Karen” lecturing us about how we didn’t listen to the girl boss who knew best.

So really my only question about all this is how the hell did California and Texas form an alliance.  Are they commies or good guys?  Is it run by Gavin Newsome or Ron Paul?

Honestly, I’ll bet this movie will be incredibly annoying.  All the people we are supposed to applaud will be urban dwelling, latte sipping progressives and all the people we’re meant to boo will be white red state Americans.  I assume, at the end, once Donald Trump is dragged from the White House and burned at the stake, all of the seceding states will come to their senses and unanimously re-elect Barack Obama or some other BIPoC woman as president and we’ll finally reach nirvana.

Wouldn’t it be something if we could have a civil war movie where the bad guys were the people who were trying to destroy America for real?  The Summer of George rioting wasn’t exactly a civil war but it came really close.  It was akin to the Visigoths burning and pillaging the Roman Empire.

I’d pay some money to see a civil war movie where Joe Biden declares war on Texas and then gets his head handed to him.  I mean that makes some kind of sense.  I could see Texas just plain getting fed up with an immigrant invasion and putting a stop to it even in the face of federal intervention.  I’d love to see a movie where Washington calls out troops to force Texans to allow illegal aliens in and the troops revolt and join the Texans.  Now that I’d pay to see.

I guess I should wait until April and see what the actual plot turns out to be but I’d bet small change that I’ve just more or less spelled it out.  It’s a warning against Trump as dictator for life.  Please spare me this drama.

The Christmas Truce

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A fellow on X had this clip pinned on his feed.  I think the WW I Christmas truce was probably one of the truly lost opportunities to change the world for the better.

https://x.com/Resurrec_Ted/status/1727552093991641216?s=20

Imagine if hundreds of thousands of soldiers had just refused to go back to the trenches and formed a united front to end the war there and then.  What might the world look like today?

Just my emotional response to the idea of common people revolting against madness.  Maybe some day we’ll find ourselves in a slightly similar situation if we all revolt against our masters in Washington and tell them we won’t dance to their tune anymore.

Disney Doubles Down … Again

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The four-time Emmy winner and “Ms. Marvel” helmer told CNN that “it’s about time” a female filmmaker was behind a “Star Wars” film franchise installment. “Wonder Woman” filmmaker Patty Jenkins was previously attached to direct “Rogue Squadron” when it was announced in 2020; the film was removed from the Lucasfilm production calendar in 2021 and officially shelved in 2023.

“I’m very thrilled about the project because I feel what we’re about to create is something very special,” Obaid-Chinoy said of her upcoming sequel to “The Rise of Skywalker,” adding, “We’re in 2024 now, and it’s about time that we had a woman come forward to shape a story in a galaxy far, far away.”

Well I guess the only fitting comment is from Cartman.

(Not Safe For Work)

British Perspective on the Movie “The Holly and the Ivy”

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The Holly and the Ivy is one of my favorite Christmas movies.  But it is an intensely English movie and so I thought it would be interesting to hear what a British movie critic would have to say about it.

Whether it is interesting or not I’ll leave to the individual viewer but I enjoyed it.  However I was already a fan of the movie and didn’t require any convincing.

South Park is Making Disney Lose Billions of Dollars

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Anyone who has kids or grandkids is aware that Disney has been on a jihad to “diversify” their movies and tv shows.  This entails replacing characters who in earlier stories were male or white or sexually normal with women and specifically non-white women and very specifically non-white, queer women.  This was very noticeable in the Star Wars franchise where all the heroes are now women and all the men are either lame or evil.

But that was only the beginning.  Next comes the princess movies.  Apparently the irony of a character named Snow White who isn’t white was too complex for Disney.  And diversity has become the marching orders going forward in the Marvel Comic Universe (MCU).  So the old white male heroes like Iron Man and Captain America have been either killed off or put out to pasture and a new generation has been introduced.  So we’ll be getting Black Captain America and Black Spider Man.  But the most egregious example of DEI awfulness is the female Marvel superheroes.  And now that innovation has born fruit, poisonous fruit.  Whereas previously they produced Captain Marvel, we now have “The Marvels.”  That’s blonde haired Captain Marvel joined by two diverse and empowered female heroes who battle against a female super-villain and “don’t need no men to get in their way.”

The reviews of this movie have been scathing.  Apparently when you make message fiction it’s not necessary to have a coherent plot or likeable characters or even a recognizable beginning, middle and end.  You just stop when the special effects guys run out of stuff.

Well, there is no need to complain about this movie.  Making the Marvels was its own punishment.  Based on its opening box office, the movie is already predicted to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.  And all this pandering to diversity has inspired the South Park guys, Trey Parker and Matt Stone to create an episode that mocks Disney’s endless crusade to artificially diversify their movies.  In this episode Cartman finds himself both transformed into a diverse woman and also assuming the place of Disney’s diversifier in chief; producer Kathleen Kennedy.  In this guise Cartman endlessly orders the showrunners for his movies to “put a chick in it and make it lame and gay.”  Here’s the “not safe for work version.”

And now both Kathleen Kennedy and Bob Iger of Disney have made public statements complaining about what’s going on.  Kennedy has stated that South Park is causing Disney fans to think poorly of Disney’s movies and that is causing the poor box office.  She hints that legal action is forthcoming.

Iger is a little more grounded in reality.  He admits that a portion of Disney’s audience really is consciously unhappy with what he calls Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion program.  And he states quite openly that his solution to this situation will be to “double down” on more diversity, equity and inclusion.

You’ve got to respect his honesty.  Okay.  In the face of a string of movies and tv shows that because of the emphasis on unentertaining social messaging have bombed at the box office Disney is going to give us an even stronger dose of social messaging.  The beatings will continue until moral improves.

This is pretty great.  Disney is a corporate behemoth.  They’ve had a built in cash machine tied to the American family for generations.  And now they’re committing public suicide just to prove they can do it.  Well, how stupid do their competition have to be.  They should jump at the chance to provide these families with exactly what they used to get from Disney.  Hire some decent writers who don’t hate normal people.  Pay the special effects people to animate it and get rich.  Give them knock-offs of all the Disney and Star Wars and Marvel stuff but without “putting a chick in it and making it lame and gay.”

There. That’s not so hard to figure out, is it?

The Fountainhead (1949) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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The Fountainhead is a novel by Ayn Rand about an architect named Howard Roark who embodies Rand’s ideal of the individualist.  It was made into a movie with Rand providing the screen play.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Gary Cooper is Howard Roark, a young man who wants to build buildings where the form corresponds to the function of the building and the materials it is made from.  But the architectural profession demands that only the established patterns, like classical columns and facades be used.  Unwilling to compromise on these points he is scorned by his profession and denied any commissions by the corporate establishment and is forced to get work wherever he can find; a gas station here, a factory there.  But slowly he gains a reputation as an innovator who can build modern buildings that are structurally sound and gracefully beautiful.

During these years he meets friends and enemies that help or hinder his career and he meets his soul mate; Dominique Francon (played by Patricia Neal) who is the daughter of a prominent architect and is the first to recognize Roark’s great talent and integrity.  But because she sees that the world will try to destroy him, she leaves him to spare herself the agony of watching it happen.  He meets Gail Wynand (played by Raymond Massey) the owner of the New York Banner, a tabloid newspaper that profits from yellow journalism.  He is also Dominique Francon’s new husband.  Wynand recognizes Roark’s talent and hires him to build a mansion for him in the country where he will live with his wife.  Neither Dominique nor Roark keep their former relationship from Wynand and in fact Roark and Wynand become close friends.

Working for Wynand at the Banner is Ellsworth M. Toohey, the newspaper’s architectural critic (if you can imagine such a thing).  He is also Ayn Rand’s mouthpiece for the collectivist ideology.  He believes that individualists like Roark are criminals for defying the will of the majority and should be treated as such.

Eventually we reach a crisis when Roark agrees to design a low-income housing project on the condition that his design would be adhered to completely.  When the powers that be betray him and change his designs, he dynamites the buildings before they are completed and is put on trial.  Wynand attempts to defend Roark in the Banner but Toohey organizes a boycott of the paper and Wynand is defeated and must recant his defense of Roark.

In the climax of the picture Roark gives a summation speech to the jury defending every man’s right to the fruits of his labor, in his case the design of his buildings and the agreement that they would not be altered.  And of course, he is found not guilty.  Wynand sells the Banner and uses the funds to commission Roark to build the tallest building in the world and then shoots himself.  The movie ends with Dominique Roark taking a construction elevator to the top of the million story Wynand Building tower with Howard Roark standing there with his hands on his hips while the wind whips his shirt.

O good grief.  Where to start?  Ayn Rand was a novelist and social critic who proposed a theory of human values that she called “objectivism.”  It seems to be a justification for a libertarian view of human interaction.  It espouses individualism and the right of everyone to live life according to the individual’s free will without constraint as long as no one else’s existence is constrained by this behavior.  For Rand, the antithesis of objectivism and the epitome of evil is communism.  Since Rand had grown up under the Soviet regime, she knew something about how communism worked.  She was also a novelist and her books reflected her philosophy.  And Howard Roark was one of the exemplars of her philosophy.  And the book is a very interesting read in some respects.  But subtlety was not one of her attributes.  There are no shades of gray.  Howard Roark and Dominque Francon are demigods of individualist virtue and Ellsworth M. Toohey is a communist slug dripping slime wherever he goes.  But even this would be a starting point for a movie.  What is missing though is anything like actual human behavior.  The characters are there more or less only to mouth talking points and diatribes for their particular points of view.  Even the romantic entanglements are presented as examples of how these mythical objectivist supermen and women would behave.  At no point can you find yourself suspending disbelief and becoming immersed in the characters.  It’s more like one of those public service film documentaries from the fifties where you are told about how the air raid shelter will allow us to survive World War III and get on with our lives in the glorious future that awaits us.  I enjoy watching the movie as a lark.  But except as a philosophical treatise on Ayn Rand and objectivism I don’t think it can be recommended for entertainment value.

Cure (1997) – A Movie Review

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“Cure” is a Japanese psychological horror film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, starring Kōji Yakusho as a Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective named Kenichi Takabe investigating a string of murders by different killers that are only linked by the throats of all the victims being slashed with an X shaped incision.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Takabe and his partner the forensic psychologist Sakuma suspect that a powerful hypnotist is implanting the idea of the murders into each of the killers.  They track down a strange man named Mamiya that was present at several of the murder scenes.  He behaves as if he has no memory of his own identity or his history.  Sakuma has Mamiya committed to a hospital for observation.  Mamiya uses his hypnotic powers to learn the details of Takabe’s family problem from a hospital employee.  Takabe’s wife is seriously mentally ill and the stress of living with her is undermining his own mental balance.  Mamiya uses this information to torment Takabe during an interrogation.  Takabe begins imagining his wife committing suicide.  He has her placed in a psychiatric institution to safeguard her.

Next, we see Mamiya implant a murder suggestion in a young female doctor and shortly afterward she murders a man.  Afterward Mamiya even causes Sakuma to commit suicide.  Finally, Mamiya escapes from the hospital and Takabe who is now enraged against his tormentor tracks him down to an abandoned hospital and after being taunted by Mamiya shoots him.  When Mamiya’s last motion is to attempt to implant the murder suggestion in Takabe the policeman empties his pistol into the madman.

After killing Mamiya Takabe finds an old phonograph player in the hospital and listens to a recording that seems to be the source of Mamiya’s knowledge of the deadly hypnotic technique.  In the next scene we see the corpse of Takabe’s wife at the mental hospital with an X cut into her throat.  In the last scene we see Takabe in a restaurant finishing a meal.  As the waitress leaves his table, we see her walk over to a counter and grab a butcher’s knife.

This is a very strange movie.  And of course, since it’s spoken in Japanese that adds another layer of distance for the non-Japanese speaking viewer.  But the movie is quite compelling.  The Mamiya character is extremely unnerving.  Whenever someone attempts to interrogate him about his actions or even his history it always ends up with him turning the interrogation around.  The movie viewer develops a strong revulsion for the character.  He manipulates the interrogators and eventually implants his suggestion.  Because of this antipathy I felt a great sense of satisfaction when Takabe emptied his pistol into the homicidal hypnotist.

I’m not sure how to provide the recommendation for this movie.  My impression of this movie was definitely positive.  I did enjoy it.  But it’s such a strange movie that I’m having a hard time selecting what audience this movie is made for.  I guess we’ll have to start with audiences that enjoy crime dramas.  A somewhat similar type of movie might be “Silence of the Lambs.”  But added to that is the foreign language aspect which might be problematic for many viewers.  I guess I can only qualify this film’s audience with these two factors.  That will have to be my recommendation, as vague as it is.

Gilda – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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Currently the cable channels available to me contain two kinds of movies I might watch.  There are Halloween movies (horror and slasher movies) and classics (mostly movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s with a smattering of later movies that supposedly have “timeless” qualities).

So tonight, my choice was between John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982) and the 1946 film noir “Gilda.”  In deference to Camera Girl’s presence (she wanted something quiet in the background) I put on the older movie.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The plot of Gilda is slightly goofy.  The motives of the three main characters are hard to reconcile with their actions.  Glenn Ford plays Johnny Farrell, an American down on his luck in Buenos Aires for some unknown reason.  We meet him he has just won a sum of money in a craps game from some American soldiers.  As he walks away, he is accosted by a robber armed with a pistol.  He is rescued by Ballin Mundson who happens by with a walking stick that has a retractable 18-inch blade hidden inside.  We find out that Ballin owns an illegal gambling casino.  And after a very short time Johnny inexplicably becomes Ballen’s indispensable operations manager.

When Ballen returns from a business trip he introduces Johnny to his new American bride Gilda played by the absurdly beautiful Rita Hayworth.  But of course, Ballen doesn’t know that Johnny and Gilda were married and divorced sometime before the start of the movie timeline.  And they vehemently hate each other.  But neither of them reveals to Ballen this common history.  And because Gilda resents Ballen’s trust in and friendship with Johnny she attempts to torture Johnny by forcing him to cover up for a string of flirtations that she initiates with every man who catches her eye at the casino.  The logic of this isn’t really well explained.  But Johnny apparently feels its his responsibility to keep Gilda from upsetting Ballen.

During this part of the movie, we learn that Ballen has other business interests in addition to the casino.  Somehow through patents he has a monopoly on the world-wide production of tungsten (of all things).  And eventually we find out that his position was provided to him by Nazis(!).  Eventually the Nazis return and want their monopoly back.  A crisis arises when Ballen refuses their demands and he murders one of the Nazis at the casino.  Ballen must flee the country to escape the law.  He tells Johnny to find Gilda and bring her back to his house from which he will be fleeing with Johnny and Gilda that night.

When Johnny extracts Gilda from a romantic rendezvous that she was on and brings her to Ballen’s house they have a bitter fight which of course ends with them in a passionate kiss.  And, of course Ballen enters the room at that exact moment.  He rushes out and drives away.  Johnny jumps in his own car and follows him to the airport where Ballen runs to a waiting plane and flies out over the ocean.  The police have followed both of them and they tell Johnny that they have been waiting for the Nazis because they want to bust up the tungsten cartel.  They watch Ballen’s plane heading off into the night when it suddenly explodes.  We are then shown Ballen parachuting into the ocean where he is picked up by a boat.  He tells his rescuers that he will be hiding out for a while but he will return to deal with a situation, which we assume is Johnny and Gilda.

Thinking Ballen dead, his will is read and Gilda is his sole heir but Johnny is the sole executor of his estate.  So, Johnny marries Gilda to get control of the casino and the tungsten empire.  Afterward he treats her like dirt as revenge for what Johnny thinks of as her disloyalty with other men.  Gilda rebels by acting even more disloyal.  Finally, there is a rapprochement when Johnny finds out that Gilda has only been pretending to have affairs with various men.  Now the police tell Johnny that he must give up the casino and tungsten business because Argentina is about to seize them.  Johnny and Gilda decide to return home to America.  But at that juncture Ballen returns and announces that he is going to kill the couple.  And because he has to kill them both he won’t use his sword cane but his gun instead.  But just as he bears down on them, the friendly philosopher/bathroom attendant (I didn’t mention him before?) Uncle Pio stabs Ballen in the back with his own sword cane.  The understanding police inspector declines to press charges against the amiable killer saying, “you can’t murder someone who has already been declared dead plus haven’t you ever heard of justifiable homicide?”  And Johnny and Gilda live happily ever after.  Well, anyway we hope so.

Good lord.  This movie is a hopeless mess.  As I said earlier the plot and the motivations of the main characters are hopelessly absurd.  Gilda’s marriage to Ballen can’t be reconciled with her actions.  And Gilda’s and Johnny’s feelings for each other are hopelessly confusing and annoying to the audience.  The whole plot of the Nazi tungsten business makes no sense and seems ridiculous on its face.  Sure, uranium would have made sense for crypto-Nazis to be dabbling in but tungsten?  What were they planning to do, deprive the world of light bulbs?  And then there is the laid-back police inspector who wouldn’t let a little thing like homicide stand in the way of a happy ending.  Add to this Gilda’s almost incessant habit of saying Johnny’s name in every sentence she utters at him and you have a movie in which it is impossible to suspend disbelief.  The only possible motive for this movie was to showcase Rita Hayworth’s face and figure.  And without a doubt that is a worthwhile endeavor.  Hayworth is featured in several song and dance routines where she parades and shakes her very charming assets for the audience.  She was a very lovely woman in the prime of her life.  Now is this a movie worth recommending?  I would say only if all that I’ve said is taken into account.  You have to be going in just to watch Rita Hayworth dance to “Put the Blame on Mame.”  If not then don’t.