Tag: Hollywood

Alec Baldwin Talks to George Stephanopoulos About His Dream Come True

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Serial rage-aholic Alec Baldwin sat down with malignant dwarf George Stephanopoulos to discuss how he was able to shoot two people without any criminal responsibility.  And it was palpable just how in awe of Baldwin’s genius the sniveling dwarf was.  Sure, Stephanopoulos had witnessed Bill Clinton evade serious consequences for any number of felonies.  But none of the Clinton murders were ever captured on video tape.  Here Baldwin went through a second-by-second account of his shooting of the cinematographer and director of his grade z western.  You could hear the pride in his voice at pulling off the trick shot that bagged both targets with only one bullet.  Of course, there is a trace of sadness that the director survived, but he remained upbeat and speculated that in future shootings he might be able to line up three or even four targets as Deadpool did in the famous opening fight scene of his movie.

A second video will be coming out consisting of the portions of the interview that were edited out.  They consist of the times where the conversation got side-tracked while Stephanopoulos reminisced about the good times during the Clinton White House when Vince Foster and Vic Raiser met their fortunate ends.  Unfortunately, Disney will be putting that episode behind a paywall.

At the end of the interview Baldwin was asked what he had lined up in the future.  He said he was in development on a biopic project about President Biden.  It was tentatively titled, “Plugs” and it would star Baldwin as the incontinent commander in chief.  Baldwin spoke in glowing terms of the cooperation he had received from the White House.  He hoped to have it in theaters for Christmas 2022 and hinted that Wesley Snipes was being considered for the part of Corn Pop.

Seriously though, Alec Baldwin is a soulless sociopath.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that he put the bullet in the gun to collect on some kind of weird codicil in his movie’s insurance policy.  The points in the interview where he breaks down and weeps look completely fake.

I have to assume that at some point in the future Baldwin will up his game and succumb to the urge to cannibalize someone just to check it off his list.  Hopefully it will be Stephanopoulos or possibly Robert DeNiro and Baldwin will die from ingesting that much toxin.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – Hollywood Hates Us

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I recently wrote the below to a friend and they are seeing the same thing:

It seems that the mega entertainment corporations hate their customers so much that they are happy to commit suicide just to hurt their customers.

A crazy statement? Hear me out:
The latest Star Wars trilogy featured all female leads (The poor black dude who featured large in the first movie was a tertiary character at best in the second two.)
“OK, fine,” I thought. “The force can be used by male and female. No big deal. On with the story.” And I’m sure lots of people like myself felt the same way.
But Disney went further. It wasn’t enough to have STRONG FEMALE LEADS (TM) they had to destroy the male leads that came before. Luke wasn’t just a Jedi who was past his prime, he was a coward, a loser and a child murderer. It’s like Disney was saying: “Take that! All you losers who loved the original movies and characters. We’ll wreck them for you.”
Yes, the movies made money – lots of it, but only about a third of what they should have made. Did you hear of anyone standing in line to see those movies 4 times? 3? even twice?

OK, that’s a single example. . . .

The latest Marvel movie – Black Widow – has a scene consisting of women discussing their menstruation issues. I am told that Disney put that in the movie “Just to make men uncomfortable”.
Who watches comic book movies starring sexy women wearing tiny tight costumes? Is it pre-teen girls? Is it soccer moms? Is it the local Karen group of wine and whine?
No! Its men! Men and adolescent boys are your target audience. Why would you put in a scene just to make them uncomfortable?
Because Disney / Marvel hates their audience.
Black Widow is going to be the lowest grossing Marvel movie ever and may not even break even.
But it’s worth it, because they hate their audience and want to hurt them.

OK, that’s 2 examples, but they are both from the same company.

Let’s talk about Dr. Who. (Do we have to?) The BBC recently introduced a female Doctor Who. Not a female Gallifreyan – that had been seen before – but a female Dr. Who – the title character. OK, Its Sci-Fi, anything is possible. The fans will still watch as long as the writing is good. . .
But the writing was horrible. Every single plot revolved around social justice and other Woke topics. The fans stopped watching in droves. Remember that this is the longest running series in the history of television – almost 60 years of fans. There are people who grew up watching the show who are now collecting social security who have turned it off. The ratings are so bad that the BBC is considering cancelling the show.
But it’s worth it because they hate their fans.

The thing is that these companies are hurting themselves. The fans will go elsewhere – Japanese Manga is a big winner. They still feature male characters defeating bad guys and saving the day. (For now.) But the dollars the fans of Star Wars, Marvel, and Dr. Who would have spent on the movies, and products won’t be going to those mega corporations.

This is insanity. This is mental illness. And in the case of a publicly traded company, this might well be criminal.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) – A Movie Review

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“The Bad and the Beautiful” is a film about Hollywood.  Kirk Douglas plays Jonathan Shields, the son of a famous Hollywood producer who has his sights set on following in his father’s footsteps.  Starting out as the producer of B movies for a friend of his father’s, Harry Pebbel (played by Walter Pidgeon), Jonathan finds, befriends and ultimately betrays the best director, actress and author that fate sends his way.  The movie is about this destructive mode of living that Jonathan inhabits.  Along the way we see that Jonathan is both tremendously talented and possessed of enormous personal magnetism.  But these positive traits are set against his staggering disregard for the welfare of the people around him.  Basically, he’s a narcissist.  He also suffers from bouts of clinical depression when he finishes each of his film projects.

The set up for the plot is the actress (Lana Turner playing Georgia Lorrison), the director (Barry Sullivan as Fred Amiel) and the author (Dick Powell as James Lee Bartlow) arriving at the office of Harry Pebbel who is trying to get the three of them to agree to star, direct and write Jonathan’s next project.  His last film was a financial disaster and the only way he can get funding is to have a team of celebrated professionals like them involved.

Harry is the narrator introducing the three vignettes that chronicle Jonathan’s disastrous relationships with Georgia, Fred and James Lee.  Each of the stories features Jonathan catalyzing the creative success that each is capable of but also betraying each of them in a way that is unforgivable.

Fred hands Jonathan the script of a great movie with the understanding that Fred will direct it.  Jonathan manages successfully to get the studio to provide a lavish million-dollar budget for the project but then decides to hand the direction to a more experienced man.  This ends Fred’s friendship and partnership with Jonathan but allows Fred to pursue his own career which ends in him becoming a highly successful director for other studios.

Georgia’s story features Jonathan saving this fragile young daughter of a famous actor who has fallen into a self-destructive cycle of drunkenness and loveless affairs.  He realizes that in order to give Georgia the confidence she needs to succeed he will have to pretend to be her great love.  With Jonathan’s help she finds her acting skills and makes the part and the movie a great success.  But after the film wrap Jonathan goes into his typical depression and when Jonathan isn’t at the opening party Georgia returns to Jonathan’s home to cheer him up.  Instead, she finds him entertaining a starlet in a negligee.  But instead of being embarrassed he becomes enraged that she thinks she can own his affections.  She flees into the night in a torrential rainstorm and we see her driving wildly and almost crashing into the oncoming traffic.  This is the weakest scene in the movie.  Her hysterical screaming while braking the car into a spin strikes me as absurdly comical.  The next day she quits her job and even though she was bound by contract Jonathan lets her out of it.  She goes on to become the most acclaimed, in demand and highest paid actress of her time.

James Lee’s story finds him recruited by Jonathan to write the script for a movie being made from his own best-selling book.  It’s actually James Lee’s wife Rosemary (played by Gloria Grahame with an awful Southern accent) who wants him to stay in Hollywood for the movie work.  But at the same time Rosemary is the greatest impediment to James Lee accomplishing much writing.  She interrupted him at every turn and distracts him with chaperoning her to Hollywood parties.

Jonathan is frustrated by this lack of progress so he arranges for James Lee to accompany him to a cabin in the woods where they can work undisturbed.  But to make sure that Rosemary doesn’t intrude Jonathan arranges for his handsome friend “Gaucho” to keep Rosemary company.  Of course, Jonathan knows Gaucho will make a pass at Rosemary and he also believes she will welcome it.

Sure enough, James Lee and Jonathan make enormous progress and finish the script.  But in the meantime, Gaucho and Rosemary take the opportunity to fly to Acapulco for a love tryst.  They are both killed in a plane crash and James Lee is devastated by his wife’s death and by the knowledge of her infidelity.  Jonathan convinces him to stay on in Hollywood to assist in the production of the movie and this lifts James Lee out of his despair.  But Jonathan inadvertently says something that reveals that he knew about Gaucho’s affair with Rosemary.  But instead of apologizing Jonathan goes on the attack and tells James Lee that Rosemary’s death was her own fault and that she was a hindrance to James Lee’s career.  And the outraged widower punches Jonathan in the face and walks out.  Afterward James Lee writes a book about a woman like Rosemary and the book wins the Pulitzer Prize.  We are led to understand by Harry’s remarks that James Lee’s new understanding of his wife’s hidden desires was what made the book the success it became.

After finishing the reminiscences Harry is going to call Jonathan in Paris and tell him whether Fred, Georgia and James Lee will be willing to work with him on his new project.  As the call is connected the three of them tell Harry they refuse and begin to leave the office.  As they walk into the anteroom, we hear Harry talking on his phone to Jonathan as he begins to hear the details of the new movie.

In the last scene Georgia carefully picks up the receiver of an extension phone in the anteroom and starts listening very interestedly in what Jonathan is saying.  Quickly Fred and James Lee huddle around her eavesdropping with her.  Obviously as much as they despise Jonathan for his selfishness they are fascinated by his talent.

This movie is a narcissist’s love letter to itself.  Hollywood almost prided itself on destroying the people it used up to make its products.  Vincent Minelli was the director and his wife Judy Garland could have been the model for the character Georgia.  And any number of other Hollywood actors, producers, directors and writers could probably have been templates for the characters in this movie.  The only difference would be that the betrayals were worse in real life and the talent of the producer would have been much less impressive.

I’m of two minds about this movie.  It is very well made.  It captures the spirit of the industry it portrays.  But the shabbiness of the people on display revolts me.  Jonathan is never apologetic.  He always attacks his victims.  He always justifies his betrayal.  He is a sociopath.  I guess taken as a cautionary tale it would have value.  Maybe it speaks to the selfishness in all of us.

Last Man Standing – Thoughts on the Last Episode of the Series – A Television Review

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Back in January 2021 I wrote a review of the last season of “Last Man Standing” that was beginning at that time and I said the show was unwatchable.  And it was, but being the stubborn fool that I am, I decided to watch the final season as a lesson to myself.  And as predicted it was unbearable.  Sure, every once in a while, Tim Allen would inject a funny moment.  But the overall unfunny, bland, bad writing, the trivial plot elements and emasculated male characters was beyond awful.

But I stuck it out until the bitter end and I’m glad I did.  Because in the last half of the final “double episode” Tim Allen injected a plot element that was an open metaphor for the hijacking of his series by the network.  The story element was that Mike’s classic pick-up truck that he restored from the ground up was stolen.  Now just in case the metaphor escaped anyone he even slips and says “show” instead of “truck” in one place.  He stresses several times that he’s had the “truck” for ten years and of course “Last Man Standing” premiered in 2011.

At one point the characters are talking about the fact that they can’t find the truck because the tracking GPS is off the “network.”  One of them asks if it could be found on another network and someone else says he’s heard of something like that and then Tim Allen says he doesn’t think it will work.  So, he’s hitting out at both ABC and Fox with this statement.  Later on, he asks “Who steals somebody else’s work like that?”  And there is a mock wake where the various actors talk about their feelings for the “truck.”  And finally in the Mike character’s final VLOG episode Tim Allen says just like Ronald Reagan after his 1976 defeat in the Republican primary that he is bloodied but he’ll get back up again.

So maybe Tim Allen thinks he has another show in him.  But what network will play it without neutering all the normal masculinity that Allen is known for?  I don’t see it happening.  But at least it was something that he at least acknowledged that his brain child had been butchered by the powers that be.  For that at least I salute him.

If he ever does start a new series, I’ll give it a look.  Who knows?  Miracles can happen.

I Come to Bury the Oscars Not to Praise Them

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I read today that the Oscars took place last night and that the ratings had shrunk by 58% below the already lowest ratings of the year before.  I laughed heartily for several minutes while I read the details of this farcical proceeding.  I think the very best bit was the fact that the Best Actor award was saved for the end to highlight what they hoped would be the victory of the star of the Black Panther super hero movie who died of cancer.  But then he surprisingly lost to Anthony Hopkins in a non-Hannibal Lecter part.  And then just to add insult to injury Hopkins didn’t bother to stay up to accept the award and it had to be accepted by the janitor at the laundromat where the ceremony took place.

It’s just marvelous to watch as these creepy perverts who lecture us on morality fall into the dustheap of history.  Even the shills who pretend to provide honest reviews of these awful movies admitted this year that even they had never heard of some of these movies and that there was little or no chance that anyone who wasn’t forced at gunpoint would pay to see any of them.

Here’s the list:

  • Nomadland
  • The Father
  • Judas and the Black Messiah
  • Mank
  • Minari
  • Promising Young Woman
  • Sound of Metal
  • The Trial of the Chicago 7

The only one that has at least a reason to be on a list of American motion pictures is Mank.  It’s about an American movie director during the Golden Age of Hollywood and stars Gary Oldman whom I really like.  All the rest of the movies are either diversity projects or so awful that they’re basically daring you to go see them, or both.  Nomadland won the Oscar because the director is a Chinese woman.  Reading the plot summary, I was struck by how awful it sounded.  The Father was the movie that Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor award for.  He plays an Alzheimer victim.  The Sound of Metal is the story of a heavy metal drummer who is going deaf.  Judas and the Black Messiah and The Trial of the Chicago 7 are the obligatory black struggle films.  Minari is the obligatory Korean immigrant story.  And finally Promising Young Woman is the female empowerment rape revenge movie.

Wow.  Who wouldn’t want to just run out and see all these movies over and over again?

Well anyway, it’s truly gratifying to see that they’ve finally crashed and burned their whole tawdry industry and there’s nothing left to do but dig a whole and bury the whole stupid enterprise underneath that broken down Hollywood sign on the hill.  It should be interesting to see if some country that isn’t completely infected with woke imbecility manages to start making movies that people want to see.  I know it seems unlikely but honestly in the past it happened all the time.  Maybe it’ll have to be stone age people in Papua New Guinea or the Amazon jungle.  Places that have never heard of Hollywood.  Or maybe space aliens might crash land and take up movie making as a way to earn money to buy repair parts for their warp drive.  But however it happens, I’d like to think that someday we’ll do better than this crap.

If Robert Redford is Against You Then You Must be Doing Something Right

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I saw the headline, “Joe Biden Gets My Vote in 2020.”  And the byline, “Robert Redford.”  How could I resist?  But save yourself the trouble.  It’s not worth the couple of minutes it takes to read.  It starts off with Redford hearkening back to when he was just a wee lad listening to FDR during WWII.  He heard a voice that combined strength with compassion and a call to unity.  Then he fast forwards to now and disparages President Trump for being divisive.  And then he ends up with an encomium of the FDR-like Joe Biden.  It’s quite a tour de force of nonsense.  FDR’s ability to bring everyone together must have been a real comfort to the Japanese that he interned.  And did FDR ever have J Edgar Hoover planting false evidence against his cabinet officers?  I doubt it.  And the idea of Joe Biden projecting a patrician dignity under any circumstances is not even a joke.  It’s more like a reversal of reality.  The idea that the hair-sniffing, shoulder-rubbing conqueror of Corn Pop could be anything other than a delusional sociopath is ludicrous.

It’s clear that Redford is just writing whatever sounds good in his own head regardless of the absurd divergence from reality.  A couple of sentences will highlight this departure from the real world, “You can see it in the peaceful protests of the past several weeks — Americans of all races and classes coming together to fight against racism. You can see it in the ways that communities are pulling together in the face of this pandemic, even if the White House has left them to fend for themselves.”

Peaceful protests?  That might surprise those in the graveyard after the riots put them there.  And the pandemic has certainly given some blue state governors the chance to show how little they care for their constituencies.  Favoring rioters over churchgoers in terms of social distancing rules is just one example of how division is what the Left sows.

Robert Redford stars in two or three movies I really enjoy.  But true to form, he is a dishonest Hollywood nitwit.  If he were on my side, I would start to doubt myself.  But it is a good reminder to read what he has to say about important issues of the day.  Someone who can call the two weeks of rioting “peaceful protests” reveals all you need to know about the delusional nature of his thinking.  And this is right in line with what you’ll hear from the rest of the entertainment industry.  Actors and artists can paint pretty pictures out of thin air and try to convince the feeble-minded that it’s reality they’re providing.  And being delusional maybe they actually believe it themselves.  That’s harder to know.

But one thing I’ll guarantee, for all his talk about peaceful protests, if the mob ever came down his street and headed for his door, Mr. Redford would sell his soul and even his Oscars for a platoon of policemen with automatic weapons.  And if that meant he had to call Donald Trump on the phone and grovel through an apology for all the foul things he’s said about him, Redford would do it in a heartbeat.  After all what’s the good of being an actor if you can’t give the performance that’s needed?

The Same Old Script

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Camera Girl is a fan of the NCIS shows.  Like all women she has her weaknesses.  From the few times I’ve sat through these procedurals I have been enlightened as to just how many blonde, beautifully coiffed policewomen there are who can chase down a two-hundred-pound perp, subdue and cuff him while wearing high heels and without breaking a fingernail.  Well sure, I can see that.

By sad happenstance tonight she was watching NCI-NO (New Orleans) while I was in the living room.  The action was around an NOPD officer who while in pursuit of a robbery suspect becomes surrounded by a crowd of the suspect’s friends and thinking he sees a gun in the hand of a man shoots and kills him.  So, of course, the cop is white and the suspect and the shooting victim are black.  Eventually we find out that the victim was holding a phone that the policeman mistook for a gun.  Speeches and anger by the black cast members over the unjust treatment of black men by law enforcement, shame and appeasement by white cast members over how racist the world is.  The policeman resigns in shame.  The victim’s mother gives a dignified and loving speech about her son.  Everyone looks wistful.

That’s all very nice.  But isn’t that exactly what they said was the case with Michael Brown in Ferguson?  He was just a gentle giant who was executed by a racist cop.  He was a good kid who just accidentally assaulted a policeman, tried to take his gun and even after being shot once, charged the officer rather than surrender.  Why that could happen to anyone.

Anyway, what I’m wondering is when the next police show on tv is going to devote an episode to the knock out game.  You know, where a black teenager cold cocks some old Hassidic man or woman just to see if he can knock him unconscious with one punch while his friends capture it on their phones.  As a special bonus if he hits his head hard enough on the pavement he might even die.  Now that would be must see tv.  Maybe they could explain how it’s really racism by the old man that caused the incident.

Or maybe they can highlight one of those scenes that get captured on camera fairly frequently of a white or Hispanic or even black teenager being mobbed by black teenagers, knocked down and pummeled relentlessly with fists and feet until unconscious and then robbed of shoes and other belongings.  Certainly, this can be shown to be, once again, the result of anti-black discrimination.

So, the point of this post is to say that the bad relations between the police and the inner-city black population is hardly one of inexplicable racism.  The police are stuck with trying to keep order within an environment where many of the inhabitants, of these neighborhoods, even the teenagers, are depraved thugs and the rest of the community blames the police for enforcing laws that everywhere else are just normal behavior.

And now since the police have been prosecuted for doing their jobs, they have sensibly stepped back from enforcing the laws in these neighborhoods.  And the result of that is criminality and the law of the jungle.  Just last week, the Mayor of Baltimore begged his citizens to stop shooting each other so that there would be more beds available for COVID-19 patients.  That’s what Ferguson has brought us to in 2020.

Now I know that Hollywood would never have the courage to provide equal time to the politically incorrect truth about life in modern American cities but it certainly would get high ratings and everyone has always told me that Hollywood is a business and what makes money decides what is shown.  I don’t think there’s much of a market for the racist cop trope any more.

Where Do You Go for Opinion

  • Tucker Carlson (31%, 5 Votes)
  • Right Wing Blogs (19%, 3 Votes)
  • Rush Limbaugh (19%, 3 Votes)
  • Whatfinger (19%, 3 Votes)
  • Somewhere Else (13%, 2 Votes)
  • Cable Shows (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Newspapers (including on-line versions) (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 6

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Trump vs the Kevin Hart Oscar Depart MAGA Restart

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Dramatis Personae:  Robert Iger – (RI);  The Ghost of Walt Disney – (GWD);  Steven Spielberg – (SS);  Robert De Niro – (RD);  President Trump – (PT);

Scene 1 – Robert Iger’s Office, Steven Spielberg and Robert DeNiro are sitting facing Iger’s desk.

RI – Look Steve and Bob we’ve got to do something about this Oscar mess.  ABC is hosting the Oscars this year and we’re depending on the ratings to get us through the doldrums between the Superbowl and Spring training.  And considering the money we’re losing on the ESPN fiasco we need this bad.

SS – Robert, why don’t we have Bob over here do the hosting?  Everyone loves him.  He’d be great.

RD – Yeah, Robert, I’ll kill it.  I can start out with a Trump bash and end up with a #MeToo medley of monsters we’ve purged this year.

RI – Are you insane?  We’re trying to expand our base beyond the weirdos and cat ladies.  Can’t you try and be human?

SS – Robert, what’s wrong with playing to our base?

RI – Look, other than Marvel superhero movies and cartoons this studio hasn’t made a dime on any of these other pictures in years.  We’ve got to start bringing in normal people soon or I’m going to sell off the other business to China and just keep Pixar and Marvel.  Now who do we have who can bring in the normies?

SS – How about Tom Hanks?

RD – No good.  Back when he was doing Bosom Buddies, he called his co-star a fruit while the camera was rolling.  That’s hate speech.

RI – Great Caesar’s Ghost!  Doesn’t GLAAD ever take a break?

SS – I’m sorry Robert, Tom was our last straight man that hasn’t been #MeToo’ed.

RI – Alright you two idiots, get out of here.  I’ve got to have some quiet so I can think.

Scene 2 – Robert Iger’s bedroom that same night.  Iger in his bed alone talking to himself.

RI – What can I do?  I’ve tried every actor, singer, politician and intellectual in the country and every one is either compromised or unwilling.  What can I do, what can I do.

Suddenly the ghost of Walt Disney appears over Iger’s bed.

GWD – Iger, you idiot, how did such a loser end up running my company?

RI – Is that really you Walt Disney?

GWD – No I’m Tupac Shakur.  Of course, it’s me, you idiot.  You’ve got a life size picture of me on your office wall.  What’s the matter, are you blind?

RI – I just can’t believe you’re really here.

GWD – Well, it’s not as if I had a choice.  I can’t let a congenital imbecile like you chloroform my company.

RI – But what can I do?  The only man who isn’t afraid of #MeToo is Rosie ODonnell.

GWD – The answer is staring you in the face. (Disney punches Iger between the eyes)  And when you wake up you’ll have the answer.

Scene 3 – Host’s Dais at the Dolby Theater for the Oscars.  President Trump walks to the microphone to the sound of screams and boos.

PT – Good evening weirdos and losers of Hollywood.  I’m here because I’m the only living man in these United States who isn’t afraid of the Outrage Police.  So, I’ve been tasked with announcing the nominees and keeping it under four hours.

Well I can do a lot better than that.  How about four minutes?  All you need to know is that no one who voted for me will see a single one of the pictures you’ve nominated.  And I’ll tell you something else.  If you don’t start making movies like they did in the last century you’ll be lucky if the Oscars make it to the next decade.  My vote is for Deadpool 2.  Oh, and DeNiro, you suck.  Trump out.

The Films of Alfred Hitchcock – Part 3 – Notorious – A Classic Movie Review

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Of all the films made by Alfred Hitchcock, the one that most closely aligns with the feel of Hollywood’s Golden Era is Notorious.  The action of the characters and the look and feel of the scenes adheres to the conventions and formulas of that period’s filmmaking.  And I mean this in a positive sense.  The production values are excellent.  The actors are the finest.  The dialog and plot are very well done.  A good case can be made that this is the best movie made in Hitchcock’s long and successful career as a filmmaker.  The movie takes place in 1946.  World War II had just ended and Nazis were still topical.  Ingrid Bergman’s character, Alicia Huberman, is the daughter of a German spy recently convicted of espionage in the United States.  She is a loyal American and agrees to help the U.S. government in the person of T. R. “Dev” Devlin played in his typically winning way by Cary Grant.  Naturally they fall in love but the problem is the government wants Alicia to become romantically entangled with a German industrialist living in Rio de Janeiro named Alex Sebastian (played by the inimitable Claude Rains in his remarkably idiosyncratic way).  She is supposed to find out what dastardly plots these escaped Nazis are planning.  This of course leads to jealousy and spite in Devlin and pain and anger in Alicia.  When circumstances force her to marry Sebastian to maintain the espionage this further poisons the relationship between our two star crossed lovers (are there any other kind?).  The plot has twists and turns and uranium salts (which got Hitchcock in trouble with the real US Government) but throughout we root for the love story and hiss at the bad guys (in this case Nazis and the US Secret Service).  The remarkable thing in this movie is that although Claude Rains is the evil Nazi you kind of sympathize with his character at certain turns.  He is the unfortunate man in a house with two women, his new wife and his domineering mother.  And he is haunted by the ubiquitous Cary Grant popping up everywhere and presumably a rival for his wife’s affections.  Who wouldn’t want an atom bomb available under those difficult circumstances?

Hitchcock’s cinematic work began well before Hollywood’s Golden Era and in England.  He continued to create popular and original thrillers well into the 1960s, long after the studio system had disappeared.  Thus, Hitchcock is not defined by or limited to the Golden Era sensibilities.  But Notorious without a doubt possesses the “classic” look of that era and definitely deserves its reputation as a masterpiece.  Anyone interested in Hitchcock or the movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s should consider viewing this film.

Now put all that aside.  Notorious is a great story.  Hitchcock provides all kinds of suspense and intrigue.  Everyone on both sides is hiding something from everyone, including themselves.  So much deception even starts to trip up the deceivers and eventually it all starts to crumble.  The ending is a collapse all around and a fitting finale.  I highly recommend this movie and hope you’ll enjoy the performances not only by the three main characters but also from all those bit part Nazis doing their best to be wonderfully evil.

Texas Movies for Americans Hollywood Left Behind

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Going along with the Tim Allen news here’s a film producer who’s trying to provide Hollywood unfriendly fare for Middle America.  Here are some quotes from the article.

“Dragged Across Concrete,” starring Mel Gibson as a cop accused of beating a suspect.

His October release, “Brawl in Cell Block 99,” passed the test. Mr. Vaughn portrayed an out-of-work mechanic who killed Mexican drug dealers to protect his wife from a forced abortion. It had a tiny theatrical release with little media coverage, but its DVDs were a hit at Walmart as soon as they hit the shelves.

Mr. Sonnier’s company, Cinestate , which made “Brawl,” is backed by an anonymous Texas oil heiress, he says, to produce “populist entertainment.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-texas-movies-for-americans-hollywood-left-behind-1526400385

 

I’ll have Netflix send me  “Brawl in Cell Block 99.”  It couldn’t be any worse than half the crap that wins an Oscar.  Plus Vaughn is usually entertaining even in stuff that’s not great.