Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

Shakespeare in Film – Part 5 – Hamlet – Olivier’s 1948 Version

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Olivier won the Academy Award for Best Picture and directed himself to the Best Actor award too.  That is still a unique circumstance.  Despite this acclaim purists condemned the excisions that Olivier made to the plot eliminating the sub-plots involving Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Fortinbras.  This shaved an hour and half from its length and concentrates the play into a personality study.

Despite Olivier’s modifications it remains a very formal telling of the tale from the aspect of the acting.  Olivier spent a number of years in London’s Old Vic Theatre Company performing Shakespeare’s plays with the greatest living British actors of his generation.  Comparing his portrayal with an American version such as Mel Gibson’s excellent 1990 version defines the two schools of acting.  The American method acting version requires the actor to submerge himself into the personality he “discovers” for the character.  He feels the part.  The British actor learns the techniques needed to portray the character and emotions he desires to project to the audience.  Olivier himself once described a circumstance that highlighted this difference.  During the making of the film Marathon Man his co-star Dustin Hoffman tortured himself with various discomforts to help him feel the part of a man exhausted and at the end of his strength.  When Hoffman noticed that Olivier was sitting comfortably in anticipation of his scenes Hoffman asked him how he could get into his part without some physical method.  Olivier was said to have answered, “Dear boy, it’s called acting.”

So, all that said.  I consider this the best version I’ve seen.  The dialog, the acting, the staging, all excel the other two versions I’ve seen.  The story flows and the characters live in front of us in a way that often escapes other performances of Shakespeare’s plays.  Every little phrase and movement works the way it should.  Olivier is a craftsman walking us through his weird world of pain and revenge.  The lines are alive and sound like dialog and not museum exhibits.  They fit perfectly with the action that attends them.  They are poetry and human speech both.

And I actually have no complaints with any of the actors.  All were skilled and none fell short that I can remember.  That is not a small thing.

And despite the formal theater there are naturalistic touches that work well.  My favorite is the gravedigger.  When Hamlet comes upon him he fits completely with what you would expect of a son of the soil.  He is contrary and defers not at all to the high-born questioning of his Lord and better.  He is witty and authoritative in his knowledge of graveyard ecology.  Another technical advantage of this version is the dagger and rapier duel in the final scene.  Olivier and Terence Morgan who plays Laertes do an impressive job of simulating a sword fight.  No special effects either.

My advice to anyone coming to Hamlet for the first time, watch this version first.  Measure the other ones by it.  It will actually make the others easier to understand and thereby improve them.  Olivier is truly a master at his work.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 22 – Space Seed

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I have previously reviewed this episode as part of ShatnerKahn I.  But I think it is desirable to provide a standard treatment for all the Star Trek episodes so I will follow the usual procedure here.

The Enterprise encounters a derelict space ship drifting slowly through space and identifies it as an old Earth vessel from the 1990s.  Upon scanning it they find signs of life and board it.  They discover the crew to be in suspended animation.  Upon rescuing the leader from his sleep they discover that the crew are eugenically produced supermen who were forced to flee Earth after their dictatorships were overthrown.

Their Leader Khan Noonien Singh, played by the inimitable Ricardo Montalban, dissembles his intentions and seduces crewmember Lt. Marla Mcgivers into assisting him in capturing the Enterprise in order to aid his people in finding and conquering an Earth colony for their new home.  The supermen quickly overwhelm the crew and Khan puts Kirk in a vacuum chamber and threatens to suffocate him if one of the crew does not assist him in his plan.  We get a view of Kirk gasping like an out of water goldfish which will earn this episode a very healthy Shatner mockery score.  But McGivers repents of her mutiny and saves Kirk from the death trap.  With the assistance of Mr. Spock Kirk is able to use knockout gas to subdue the mutineers.  But Khan escapes to the engine room and is causing an engine overload that would destroy the whole ship when Kirk arrives for their showdown.  Khan starts by prying Kirk’s phaser out of his hand and then bending it into a curve with his bare hands.  And here Khan makes his famous taunt.  He says, “Captain, I have five times your strength!” in his unique Ricardo Montalban enunciation.  Khan proceeds to toss Kirk around the engine room like a rag doll while Kirk attempts some pretty rudimentary martial arts moves.  I’m not 100% sure but I believe there was a stunt double for Shatner in some of the acrobatics.  But naturally Kirk fights dirty.  He grabs a metal rod and starts hammering Khan in the head and back until he passes out.

In the final scene Kirk convenes a court and dismisses all charges against the supermen if they will agree to exile on a deserted and inhospitable planet.  When asked if he accepts the offer Khan asks Kirk if he knows his Milton.  Kirk nods in understanding.  Then Kirk gives Mcgivers a choice; go into exile with Khan or stand trial for mutiny.  She eagerly accepts exile.

Scotty pleads shameful ignorance as a Scot for not knowing the Milton reference and Kirk explains that in Paradise Lost, Lucifer declares that he would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.  The show ends up with Spock and Kirk wondering what they would find if they were able to come back in a hundred years and see what fruit had grown “from the seed” they were now sowing.

This is one of the quintessential Star Trek episodes.  Kirk is out macho-ed by Khan.  Spock gets to act appalled by the humans’ clear admiration for Khan’s obviously authoritarian methods, to which charge Kirk admits and explains humans have a primitive streak that allows them to admire an enemy for his strength.  In these days of #metoo Khan would never be allowed to rough up McGivers as he does to dominate her into helping him.  Of course, he also plays with her hair quite a bit so he is a romantic too.  One of the ludicrous things about the episode is Kirk giving Khan access to the ship technical manuals.  These allow Khan to capture the ship.  I mean come on!  What part of superman is hard to understand?  Couldn’t he have just given him a game of free-cell to keep him from getting bored?

Kirk’s fight with Khan is also classic.  His shirt manages not to get shredded but he has several awkward and lame looking judo holds that helps qualify this episode for a decent Shatner mockery score.  And above all there is Montalban.  He struts and brags and mocks Kirk for being inferior in all ways.  It’s quite entertaining.

Let’s give this a 9 for the episode and a 7 for Shatner mockery.  9  //  7.  Well done Ricardo.

The Age of Entitlement – A Book Review

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Christopher Caldwell’s book, “The Age of Entitlement – America Since the Sixties” is a hard book to read.  As I described in several places it took me much too long to finish because many times I had to stop after about fifteen minutes of reading and put it down.  It was too painful to hear the seemingly endless litany of defeats, betrayals and acts of cowardice by our elected officials and their bureaucratic, academic, legal and corporate co-conspirators.  And yet I think this book should be read by anyone who doesn’t know the full history of how we have been stripped of our constitutional rights based solely on our European ancestry and normal male identity.  It is so infuriating to read, that it serves as the perfect eye-opener for anyone who still thinks that affirmative action and political correctness are harmless and just.

Caldwell walks us through the years, starting with the Civil Rights struggle against segregation in the South and shows the gradual but continual evolution of that movement from a crusade to end discrimination against blacks to a concerted program to discriminate against whites.  He shows how the logic went from successfully ending the unconstitutional denial of equal rights for blacks into implementing the unconstitutional practices of affirmative action, with its abrogation of free speech, freedom of association and property rights based on not equality of opportunity, but rather equality of outcome.  And since these decisions were made by unelected judges who were basically answerable to no one, no recourse was possible.  For every white man the burden of guilt never had to be proved.  It was always assumed.

After this Caldwell walks us through the expansion of the civil rights movement to embrace other “victims.” Next was women with the adoption by the left of abortion on demand and equal rights for women in the work place and the delegitimization of traditional marriage.  After this we get homosexual rights, immigrant rights and on to the explosion of immigration.  Finally, we come to the present day where demonization of European identity and culture is all pervasive.  We reach a point where open contempt for the native-born Americans is open and threatening.  We see these people marginalized and starved out of their homes by industry and government leaders who openly connive to replace them with immigrants legal and illegal.  They end up on welfare and waiting for death under the soporific influence of  cheap and plentiful opioids that have purposefully been allowed to flooded our streets and countryside.

Throughout Caldwell points out how the leaders of the conservative cause are always woefully unprepared or even unwilling to challenge incredibly unpopular programs and laws.  Time after time a leader will run for office on a platform to defend or revive some part of life that the progressives are undermining and again and again, we witness either a defeated attempt or no attempt at all to prevent the destruction of our way of life.

And at the heart of most of these campaigns are the progressive lawyers and judges working hand in glove with the progressives in the bureaucracies and in the non-profit foundations.  These foundations were set up by the elites that use them to push for the programs that they support but do not affect them personally.  Their schools and homes and families are above the level of being disadvantaged or impinged upon by these forces, unlike the common people that they demonize whose lives are thrown into chaos by these anti-social measures.

Equally distressing is seeing how the leaders of industry sided with the progressives in order to gain access to cheap labor by both exporting jobs to the third world and importing these third world workers right here in the United States as either legal or illegal immigrants.  And once the Tech Revolution was in full swing, we are walked through how the American men who dominated this industry adopted the progressive cause and used their new found tools to obliterate the brick and mortar retail landscape of the entire United States.  And with the diminution of newspapers, radio and television as advertising channels, communication companies like Google and Facebook now get to decide who is allowed to do business and who is not.  And they decide it based on whether they like your politics.

So, we reach the present day where any dissent from the official narrative that demonizes white men is not just shouted down but answered with de-platforming, unemployment, physical assault and sometimes criminal prosecution.  And as the book signifies on its last page.  That is what gave us the Trump presidency.

Personally, this book reinforced in my mind the necessity of challenging affirmative action in front of a conservative Supreme Court.  The fig leaf that affirmative action employs to shield its unconstitutional nature is the importance of “diversity.”  But since diversity doesn’t appear in the Constitution, a brave and honest court should strike down all the quota driven fairness devices and strip the Federal and State bureaucracies of their discriminatory mechanisms.  All that needs to be asserted is that equality under the law doesn’t need to provide equal outcomes for every individual.  Some people are smarter or stronger or more hard working or crueler or more beautiful or taller or shorter or luckier.  I can live with those things and believe me there are enough things that I wish I could do that I can’t.  But facing that is called sanity.  And it’s far from a bad thing.

I highly recommend this book.  It’s about time that someone published something as honest and informative on the subject of America’s descent into the maelstrom of social justice insanity.  It’s time that we throw our support behind whichever men are brave enough to lead the fight back to sanity.  And I know it won’t be easy.  As Steve Bannon said “If you think they are going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.”  He’s right.  They will fight at every step.  If the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action, the big cities will riot and burn.  Well, that’s nothing new.  But it’s the only way back to a world where fairness and freedom even have their original meanings.

Good work Christopher Caldwell.  You wrote a horrible, urgently important, good book.  Bravo.

Shakespeare in Film – Part 4 – Hamlet – Introduction

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Shakespeare’s strongest plays are the tragedies.  The comedies have their merits and the pure histories have some very engaging characters like Falstaff and Prince Hal.  But the heavy hitters are Macbeth, King Lear, Richard III, Othello, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet and most especially Hamlet.  Even the most ardent fan of the Bard will have scenes and characters that he dislikes even in his favorite play.  In fact, some plays are favorites only because of some especially powerful scene or character.  They are valued despite plot weaknesses or sections of dialogue or characters that disappoint.  And Hamlet is no exception.  I am sure every fan of the play dislikes some aspect of it.  But I will say that overall, the plot and the dialog exceed the other plays in how they engage the audience.  The characters are drawn in a lifelike way.  Even the villain is real.  And in the hands of a skilled cast, the play is fascinating to watch.

The character of Hamlet is famously defined by his indecision.  He has been commanded by his father’s ghost to exact vengeance against his murderer.  What could be more absolute than that?  And yet he vacillates throughout the play and is only goaded into action by his own assassination.  All this is obviously true but the action of the play shows us that this indecision is mostly due to his virtues and not his faults.  He is a noble, loyal, virtuous, intellectual, pious prince.  And all these instincts and talents work against his need to commit justifiable regicide.  His tender love for his mother is an almost insurmountable obstacle to exacting vengeance on her villainous husband.  His sense of justice prevents him from striking down his enemy when he believes that the timing, coming as the murderer is in prayer, would allow his victim’s soul to gain heaven instead of casting him down into hell.  His intellect even forbids him from escaping his problems through suicide.  He reasons through the consequences and arrives at the conclusion that possibly the afterlife might be filled with greater torment still.  He is a man haunted by the wreckage of his family, his life and even his sanity.  Think of what he has endured.  He has spoken with his father’s ghost, a thing more harrowing than any mortal occurrence.  His mother’s husband is his uncle, his father’s murderer and his king all at the same time and he must face him day in and out while his mother displays passionate affection for her husband’s murderer.  In order to dissemble his intentions, he plays at being mad and in doing so he loses the woman he loves.  There is literally no path available to him that doesn’t involve unthinkable crimes and madness.  I suppose indecision might be excused under such circumstances.

But plot aside, it is the language of the play that engages me.  Hamlet is filled with phrases and thoughts that we meet everywhere in cultured discourse:

  • “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
  • “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”
  • “Sweets to the sweet.”
  • “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
  • “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
  • “Get thee to a nunnery.”
  • “The Play’s the Thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”
  • “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”
  • “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
  • “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
  • “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
  • “To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause: there’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?  Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.”

There is constant word play as Hamlet pretends to be mad and yet makes cunning and cutting mockery of his foes.  All in all, it is an enjoyable two and a half hours (in the shorter versions) of highbrow art that yet could appeal to anyone if he were in the right frame of mind.  I have seen three film versions of the play along with a stage setting.  I’ll go into my particular opinions of those in later installments of this post.

29FEB2020 – American Greatness Post of the Day – Swing States, Landslides, and Libertarians by George S. Bardmesser

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Here’s a fun post for Leap Day.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/28/swing-states-landslides-and-libertarians/

Mr. Bardmesser does a quick quantitative analysis of what the Never Trump vote cost President Trump in votes and states in 2016 and what additional states he’s likely and unlikely to add to his total this year.    He’s predicting pick-ups in Maine, Nevada, Minnesota and New Hampshire.  For myself, I’m pretty sure about Minnesota and sort of hopeful about New Hampshire.  But if you like looking at numbers give it a look see.

 

Shakespeare in Film – Part 3 – Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

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Back in 1989 Kenneth Branagh made a splash in the title role of Henry V and because of it became a movie star and was allowed to produce several of Shakespeare’s plays paid for by major studios!  One of the fruits of this strange marriage of Hollywood and Branagh was “Much Ado About Nothing,” one of the comedies.  The cast combines English stage and screen actors with American movie stars such as Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton, Kate Beckinsale and Keanu Reeves.  And because at the time she was Mrs. Branagh, Emma Thompson co-starred.

Up front I will say that this film is a bizarre mix of good, bad, indifferent and unbearable acting.  The subplot that involves the thwarting of a marriage by a wrongful accusation against the bride is so emotionally overwrought and pathetic that I am tempted to fast forward through it.  On the other hand, the antagonistic love/hate relationship between Branagh and Thompson’s characters is at times very amusing.  But the stand out part in the play is Michael Keaton as the chief night constable Dogberry.  His bizarre appearance and mannerisms are very funny.  His malapropisms and nonsensical instructions to his men sound like they come from someone hallucinating.  My favorite exchange occurs when Dogberry tries to explain to the lord of the castle what he has discovered during his night watch.  When he speaks at length without making any sense the lord tells Dogberry that he is tedious.  Dogberry mistakes this for a compliment and promises that if he himself were as rich as a king he would willingly bestow all his tediousness on the lord.

Aside from the young love interests the worst acting of the play is provided by Keanu Reeves.  He plays the villain of the story Don John.  Never before or since have Shakespeare’s words been spoken so woodenly and so bereft of any skill.  Luckily he was able to move on and use this skill where it belonged, in John Wick 2.  Don John’s brother in the movie is Denzel Washington’s Don Pedro.  I must confess I couldn’t see the family resemblance but Don Pedro did acquit himself much more ably Keanu.  He was amusing and amiable.

For fans of the tv show House, the actor who played Wilson on that show, Robert Sean Leonard, plays the young love interest opposite Kate Beckinsale.  His emotional scenes which involved frequent tears are so embarrassing it’s a wonder he ever acted again.

So what can I say about this movie?  Anyone I haven’t scared away with my descriptions should give it a viewing.  It is most definitely a mixed bag.  But for someone who enjoys Shakespeare there are some fine scenes interspersed amongst the awful.  It’s your call.

6 Underground – A Movie Review

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Some of the longest-term readers of OCF may remember that I was a big fan of the first Deadpool movie.  And the lion’s share of that regards is probably due to the scathingly sarcastic humor that Ryan Reynolds brought to the part.  While discussing the attributes that I admired most in that movie with a millennial friend at work he mentioned that Reynolds had made a movie in 2019 that he thought also possessed some of these same characteristics.  That movie is “6 Underground.”  After watching the movie, I will agree that it does have some of the right stuff.

The premise of 6 Underground is that a billionaire technology inventor decides to fake his own death and recruit five mercenaries to form a team of ghosts to take down the worst of the worst human plagues.  Each will have faked his death and thereby prevent their family or friends from being hostages to their actions.  And even among themselves they are anonymous.  Ryan Reynolds is One.  A blonde CIA Spook is Two.  Three is a Hit-Man.  Four is a “Skywalker” (a traceur or one who practices parkour).  Five is a lady doctor.  Six is their driver.

The film is told in various jumps forward and back to show how Reynolds recruited his team and then to set the stage for the mission, to replace a brutal dictator with his more civilized brother.

One of the most memorable scenes is a car chase through the streets of Florence, Italy with the team being chased by a seemingly unending string of black sedans seeking revenge for a mafia lawyer who was robbed of his retina-scan-locked cell phone and also the retina needed to open it.  The driving and crashes are very well done and they are interspersed around Reynolds trying to unlock the phone with his victim’s gouged out eye in the front seat while Five attempts to remove a bullet from Two in the back seat while she is fighting a running gun battle against the other cars.

Reynolds isn’t as funny in this movie as in Deadpool but I enjoyed the movie.  I would say it is one of the better action adventure comedies.  So, if that’s a type of movie you enjoy give it a try and especially if you’re a fan of Deadpool.

The Z-Man Thinks Our Government System is Obsolete

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The Z-Man has a very clever analogy between government and software systems.

Our Legacy Code

He compares government reform to software revision.  but he makes the case that at a certain point the program needs to be replaced with something new.  This corresponds to revolution.  My hope is he’s wrong about what needs to be done.

Galaxy’s Edge – Order of the Centurion – A Science Fiction Book Review

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Order of the Centurion is another of the stand-alone Galaxy’s Edge series that branch off from the main narrative.  This first story in the series tells the story of a rash decision by a “Point,” which is derogatory slang for the appointed officers that the House of Reason has imposed on the “Legion.”  Lacking the training, discipline, skills and motivation to lead the supremely capable warriors in the Legion, they are despised by the men and real officers of the Legion.  And the points equally despise them back.  But these appointed officers don’t pursue Legion service as a career but rather as a political stepping stone in their efforts to reach the privileged position as an elite member of the House of Reason.

But one young man, Lieutenant Washam (or just “Wash), who was appointed to the Legion was different.  He was skilled, disciplined and motivated enough and he took advantage of the training that his other point brethren eschewed and became an actual legionnaire.

This is his story.  And it’s the story of how he allowed an old friendship with a fellow point to send them on an ill-advised but fate driven mission to discover the location of enemy artillery hidden deep in the deadly jungle that had taken a heavy toll of the Legion and the other Republic military services fighting the hostile Doros on planet Psydon.

Because the protagonist and his friend come from wealthy and high culture backgrounds this book differs somewhat from the earlier Galaxy’s Edge books in that the points are treated as outsiders by the legionnaires, at least at first.  A part of the story is composed of Wash figuring out how to prove himself to his enlisted men and at the same time keep his unskilled friend and superior officer from getting the whole platoon killed.

Although I though some of the internal monologue was a little unfocused, for the most part the action of the plot carries the story along at an exciting clip.

Although I am anxious for the Galaxy’s Edge books to continue on with the main sequence series, this Order of the Centurion is an enjoyable side course and I think the fans of the main series will enjoy it too.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 21 – The Return of the Archons

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The Enterprise is investigating the 100-year-old disappearance of an Earth ship called the Archon.  They are in orbit around a planet called Beta III.  Now first of all it’s a hundred years later who gives a damn?  Second of all they send down Sulu and some other guy.  As everyone knows Sulu is the lamest character except for Nurse Chapel.  Anyway, he returns from the planet having been brain washed into a state of placid stupidity.  He talks about Landru as if of a deity.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a couple of red shirts go down to the planet and observe the population acting the way Sulu did.  But while looking for a place to stay they observe a ritual insanity where at the stroke of 6 pm all the younger people go on a rampage smashing windows and ravishing the very cooperative women.  But at the stroke of 6 am everyone returns to their normal placid behavior and resume normal life.

Kirk and Spock figure out that the population is controlled by a force that calls itself Landru.  Landru was an historical figure from six thousand years earlier who reformed their civilization into the placid soulless existence it currently has.  The system is monitored by Landru’s robed priests who can deal out deadly force.  At the same time the Enterprise reports that a powerful heat ray is threatening the ship.  All the ship’s power is needed to power the deflectors but because of this, the ship’s orbit will soon decay and destroy the ship.

Finding allies among the native population, Kirk and Spock finally identify that the Landru controlling the planet is actually a six-thousand-year-old computer that has Landru’s knowledge and plan.  But Kirk argues the computer into knowing that the Landru life system is actually a living death and therefore it blows itself up.

This is the first mention of the non-interference prime directive and, of course, the first occurrence of Kirk ignoring it.  Also, Kirk’s ability to talk computers into destroying themselves is an often-repeated plot device that will be seen over and over.  But because these are the first occurrences, I’ll give this episode the pride of place.  Let’s call this a 7.  There is no Shatner mockery to speak of so let’s give the overall score of 7 // 1.