2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 6

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Film Noir (Crime)

So once again there is some chicanery going on here.  Because of my previous list I have to leave out all of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies that should be in this category.  “Strangers on a Train,” “Dial M for Murder,” “Rope” and whole bunch of his stuff is right near the top of this genre.  But consistency was never my strength.  Laziness is.

I have emboldened the movies I particularly like.  Take that as personal preference.

I’ve reviewed some of these movies separately if you want my detailed opinion on them search the site.  So here’s a list of what I think is some pretty good noir.

  1. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
  2. HIGH SIERRA (1941)
  3. MURDER, MY SWEET (1944)
  4. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
  5. THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
  6. THE STRANGER (1946)
  7. THE BLUE DAHLIA (1946)
  8. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946)
  9. GILDA (1946)
  10. OUT OF THE PAST (1947)
  11. ODD MAN OUT (1947)
  12. DARK PASSAGE (1947)
  13. THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1948)
  14. KEY LARGO (1948)
  15. SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (1948)
  16. THE NAKED CITY (1948)
  17. WHITE HEAT (1949)
  18. THE THIRD MAN (1949)
  19. ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949)
  20. D.O.A. (1949)
  21. THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)
  22. IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)
  23. KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952)
  24. THE BLUE GARDENIA (1953)
  25. THE BIG HEAT (1953)
  26. SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957)
  27. TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)

If I left out one of your favorites or if you detest one of my listed films, feel free to speak up and make your opinions known in the comments below.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 14JUL2024 – Unsung Hero

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war pig

So many are sending encouragement to Trump, but he lived with relatively little damage. I am angry with the media, pundits and celebs who are apparently forgetting the bystander who was killed and the two critically wounded. I still have not heard THEIR names mentioned. The dastard murderer’s name we know well, hearing or reading it dozens of times everywhere.

How about the media and pundits showing some respect for the bystanders who caught bullets, hmmmm?

The man who died sacrificed his life to shield his wife and daughters from the bullets. He died a bona fide HERO. And how about his family who saw him take the bullet and die before their eyes?

On Saturday, July 13, 2024, a shooting occurred at a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The incident resulted in the death of Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former firefighter who was attending the rally with his family. Comperatore was fatally shot while trying to protect his family from the hail of bullets.
Corey Comperatore: A Hero
Corey Comperatore, a devoted father and volunteer firefighter, was hailed as a hero for shielding his family from the gunfire. According to reports, Comperatore threw himself over his family members, including his wife and two daughters, to protect them from the bullets. His selfless act ultimately cost him his life.
Other Injured Victims
Two other individuals were injured in the shooting, including a 35-year-old man who was shot in the leg and a 42-year-old woman who was shot in the arm. Both victims were treated at a local hospital and are expected to recover.

 

 

 

 

Trump on the Firing Line

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So, I wanted to write a post on the assassination.  But I’m kind of at a loss.  Where to start?  Most of Donald Trump’s secret service detail looks like an aging, out of shape girl scout troop.  Then we have the anti-sniper unit, they must have been on a coffee break.  Eventually after the shooter emptied a magazine at the president, they got around to killing the guy on the roof in front of them.  I guess that was nice of them under the circumstances.  Then the press goes through some histrionics but their takeaway is that preventing retaliation by insane Trump followers is the most important mission of the security agencies.  Trump’s political enemies prosecute him in every jurisdiction where they can assemble a kangaroo court and then they hyperventilate on the television about him retaliating against them with lawfare if he wins.  What’s wrong with this picture?  We live in a permanent upside-down reality.

But we already know all this.  Basically, we are waiting to find out if Deep State will thwart the will of the people of this country and essentially prove that they can and will do whatever it takes to maintain control over our lives and enact their agenda, which is basically make us into serfs.  We’ve got four months more or less.  Maybe they’ll get lucky with the next psycho.  Maybe his aim will be better or his weapon a little more robust.  Or maybe Trump will survive to election day, and they’ll cheat him the way they did in 2020.  Or maybe they’ll let him win the election and then just stonewall his every attempt at reforming the system with crooked judges and bureaucratic obfuscation.  Who knows, they might have a more effective bioweapon this time or a deadlier RNA vaccine as a follow up.  But the chance of him fixing things seems remote.

Watching Trump on that podium and seeing his defiance after they came within an inch or two of blowing his head off, I was grateful that a man who didn’t have to put up with any of this madness cared enough about this country to try and fix the awful mess we’re in.  Trump is this enigma.  Trump is a businessman, or a salesman, or a huckster, or a con-man or a flim-flam artist depending on whether you like him or hate him.  But he’s definitely one thing.  He’s an American.  And I’m an American.  Now to a lot of people that word no longer has any meaning.  But to a lot of us it still does.  So, I recognize in Trump someone who is trying to save the world we used to live in.  He wants to stop the wholesale destruction of the way of life that we all loved and took for granted.

Now, at this point I’d give him considerably less than a fifty-fifty chance of saving this country.  He’s up against the Democrats, the Republicans, the Deep State, Wall Street, the rest of the globalists of the world and now the lunatics of the Left who want to blow his brains out.

I doubt he’ll win.  But I can’t doubt his courage.  He’s proven that under fire.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 5

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Suspense – Alfred Hitchcock

I’m faking a lot of thinking here with this category.  Alfred Hitchcock usually can be considered as a creator of crime or specifically murder stories.  But sometimes it’s a spy story or something really crazy like birds turning against humanity.  So, suspense is probably as good a label as anything else.

For most of his career Hitchcock produced very high-quality product.  At his peak he could get the best actors and lavish budgets to make his films.  But even on a shoestring like with Psycho he could produce a memorable movie.  At the very end he did produce some awful stuff.  I assume he was beginning to fail due to old age.

I’ve reviewed most of these movies separately if you want my detailed opinion on them.  But here’s a list of what I liked in Hitchcock’s output.  I still haven’t seen all his films but there are enough to form more than a good list of his best stuff.

  1. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  2. The 39 Steps (1935)
  3. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
  4. Suspicion (1941)
  5. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
  6. Lifeboat (1944)
  7. Spellbound (1945)
  8. Notorious (1946)
  9. Rope (1948)
  10. Strangers on a Train (1951)
  11. Dial M for Murder (1953)
  12. Rear Window (1954)
  13. To Catch a Thief (1955)
  14. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
  15. North by Northwest (1959)
  16. Psycho (1960)
  17. The Birds (1963)

If I left out one of your favorites or if you detest one of my listed films, feel free to speak up and make your Hitchcockian opinions known in the comments below.  People are usually very decided in their feelings about his films, one way or the other.  For instance, film aficionados consider “Vertigo” Hitchcock’s greatest masterpiece and a seminal work of cinematic importance.  But being a philistine, I despise it.  So, I left it out.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 13JUL2024 – Divine Intervention

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war pig

It’s no fun being a prophet. As I wrote earlier, the left has pulled out all the stops.

Now Trump and me are brothers. I’ve had an AK bullet pass between the right side of my head and my right ear. It nicked my ear and burned the short hair on my head. We both have been within an inch of dying.

What bothers me is how the shooter got that close. ALL rooftops within a mile with direct line of sight of the stage are supposed to be under surveillance by human eyes with binoculars, snipers with scopes, helicopters, and drones. Drones should have been swarming the perimeter and out to at least 400 yards.

Trump has his Teddy Roosevelt moment. Too bad the shooter was killed. Should have been captured and sent to Gitmo for “questioning”, but I guess they had to ensure he couldn’t shoot any more bystanders.

I can say with experience. TRUMP WILL HAVE RESTLESS NIGHTS OVER THIS ONE. He’ll wake up, sit up in bed and grab his ear from bad dreams.

Trump has earned his PTSD.

Update:

TomD:

Thank God the shooter had little experience or was so stressed out that he couldn’t use the fundamentals. Maybe he just didn’t know enough to zero his scope.

A head sized target from 130 yards from a prone position is trivial.

Whatever the circumstances that caused him to miss an easy shot, thank God.

 

Chemist:

The witness in the video said there were multiple higher points around that the SS was not manning.
They did not have the high ground.
Yes, I am Monday morning quarterbacking this.
Doesn’t change anything. They fucked up.