Archive Listing
January 10, 2010 - January 3, 2010

Monday, January 26, 2009

OBAMATRIX REDUCTIO. Well. The short answer is that he hasn't been tested yet. Maybe that's what Biden was talking about when he warned of dire international challenges early in the Obama administration.

I looked around for old-fashioned, low-tech gif animations just to be fair in my comparison. Here is the most popular one I could find that featured the new POTUS.


And then there's the inevitable dancing...


Which, I suppose, is cool, but does it really hold a candle to this?


Be honest. Don't you miss the old (lowercase) one just a little bit already?

PROOF. Today, Rush Limbaugh is grappling with the Democrat definition of 'Bi-Partisan,' which has always meant only what the Democrats and mass media want it to mean. For example, Democrats are allowed to have frantically perverse erotic fantasies about the assassination of George W. Bush, and Republicans are treasonous if they don't want a left-wing Democrat administration to succeed in turning America into socialist Britain or France. The only thing (relatively) new is the alacrity with which formerly conservative Republicans are willing not only to hope for the Democrats' success in such schemes but also to criticize those conservatives who stubbornly continue to believe what they have always believed in -- limited government, free markets, and the kind of American exceptionalism which tolerates not treading in the lemming-like footprints of the doomed nations of the EU.

As far as I'm concerned, it's time for (about) a 12,000 word "I told you so." Back in 2000, long before many of the stellar internet pundits on whose words everyone hangs like damp washing, I imagined an incredibly stupid and willfully blind country called Shuteye Nation. It was perhaps the first world-level multimedia fiction posted on the internet, and it anticipated absolutely everything Rush Limbaugh is saying this afternoon inside the circled wagons of the few remaining committed conservatives.

Which may explain the disgust you see here about the new era of hopenchange and my reluctance to soil my hands in the already voluminous dirt of an administration that's barely a week old. (Does anyone realize that the conflicts of interest and admitted integrity issues of Obama appointees -- quite apart from the disgrace surrounding unelected Democrat senate appointments -- already surpass the cumulative scandal record of eight years of the Bush presidency? Of course not.)

Back on point. Those of you who can't be bothered to enjoy or participate in our mostly comedic take on the Coming of the One -- which is, frankly, all that's left in the current political scene -- should take the time to study this purely verbal anticipation of the impending Democrat utopia in all its semantic details. I give you my word. There's only one graphic. CountyPunk didn't make it. And it's not even meant to be funny. You should love it. Nothing about James Bond. No faux magazine covers. No playful jabs at the pretentious inaugural ceremonies. No fun for fun's sake. Just pure and deadly satire like Ambrose Bierce used to make.

It's called The Y2K Amerian Glossary. It's extensively hyperlinked within its own text, and most (though not all) of the links are still operational after the CPR that rescued them from the Wayback Machine.

It should demonstrate beyond doubt how much of your current rage is really really really old news to us here. And if you do your homework, you might find that you too are ready for some posts that are just "What the hell" fun rather than fetid third autopsies of the needlessly exhumed dead.

Or not.

If I sound angry, I apologize. But I am. I enjoyed doing my movie piece and the responses it got, but truthfully I think CountryPunk's recent entries have been better conceived and better executed than mine. But that's just me. I know the rest of you have very good reasons for staring woefully at your navels rather than joining his one-man party of exuberant defiance. It's really so much more fun to wind up doomsday clocks than unwind with a reckless jeer or two.

Not that I'm dissing my own work. I love The Y2K Amerian Glossary. I wrote it, after all. But then I can't do what CountryPunk can with photography and graphics. So maybe I'm prejudiced.

But I am planning to finally send him a Christmas card next year. If I could be sure he wouldn't just laugh and send me a parody of it back in the mail.

Some honestly good advice perhaps. Stay the hell away from satirists. You can't trust them. Even when they're your friends.

Friday, January 23, 2009

FILLING HOLES:

HONORABLE MENTIONS. Everything else in this country is over budget at the moment, so why shouldn't I be, too? As soon as you make a finite list of anything, you realize immediately after you filled in the last slot that you've forgotten this and missed that. So here are, as promised, the "Tacked-On Ten."

1. My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Yes, dear readers, it's a comedy. Funny, affectionate, and rarest virtue of all, still entertaining after many viewings. It also illustrates the duality of the American melting pot. Yes, we assimilate immigrants into American ways, but we also absorb the gifts they bring with them. It's more frankly warmhearted than most of the comedy suggestions from commenters, many of which I couldn't understand at all. Liking some movie a lot doesn't mean it belongs on this list. It's got to reflect more than just the writer's or director's political perspective on some issue, however important that issue is. Comedy succeeds best when it illuminates human strengths and foibles in endearing ways. (As opposed to satire, which is almost invariably an intellectual attack by the mind behind the words.) I like this movie for the list not only because I like it but because it succeeds delightfully in expanding our appreciation of the joyful sparks of culture clashes. It's grossly unfair to WASPs, but as a WASP myself, I'm used to it and there's no point in explaining that nine out of ten of us would have been  enthusiastic participants in all those Greek parties. That aside, it's a worthy addition to our American canon. To be brutally honest, I'm all done with watching Dr. Strangelove. There's nothing else in it for me. This modest little movie still has miles to go before I tire of it. (clip)

2. Pork Chop Hill

Someone correctly pointed out that the Korean War is a hole in the list of 25. I agree. But the best Korean War movie isn't a political thriller. It's a movie about the men who fought that terribly costly and now forgotten battle in the Cold War. In movie terms, it's almost as big a hole as World War I (and don't anybody dare mention M*A*S*H, which was always only about Vietnam). Pork Chop Hill, though, is exactly the movie it should be -- hard to watch, painful, dreary, and admirable all at the same time. Make the effort to watch it, and as you do, remember one of the saddest of all facts about that war -- how many of the men fighting it had already survived military service in World War II only to be called up again to fight under the flag of the U.N. But you never saw Korea vets burning a flag or throwing their medals away. You've never heard a peep from them. That's the kind of men they were and are. (clip)

3. Advise and Consent

Does anybody but me remember this movie? It was a star-studded Otto Preminger production about the internal partisan wars attendant on the confirmation of a key post in the president's administration. In 1962. Before Bork. Before Clarence Thomas. If you think there was a time when Washington politics weren't bloodsport, think again. At first it seems dry and dull and procedural, but it slowly pulls you into the center of a very nasty game. With excellent performances by Don Murray, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Lew Ayres, Walter Pidgeon, Burgess Meredith, and Franchot Tone. It's a sobering lesson about what power in America's constantly growing federal government entails. Can we ever trust them? And why should we? The advantage of examining the question at a great remove from our current policy fights and power brokers is that we can see how the thing itself works or doesn't, independent of our own pet priorities. Not a small contribution to our perspective given that the federal government of the United States is the single largest organizational creation in the history of human civilization. Never forget that, by definition, government is force. It shows in the way our government does its business. (No clip available. Sorry.)

4. The Caine Mutiny

Commenter DW made an impassioned case for this movie, and I'm including it here for two reasons. First, because the navy was the only branch of service excluded from the three WWII movies on my list of 25. Second, because of a point made perhaps more clearly in the book than in the movie DW remembers: the Captain Queeg who is so vilified in the course of the plot was an officer in the peacetime navy -- part of that FDR-ravaged corps of professional military men who served faithfully and uncomplainingly in the years before a Depression-distracted country realized they still needed an army, a navy, an air force, and a marine corps. Without them, the massive miltary machine that won the Second World War couldn't have been created. That's why the military attorney played by Jose Ferrer was so enraged at having to destroy Queeg on the witness stand. It's a fair addition to our understanding of the largely civilian military which helped win the war that they were, for the most part, constitutionally incapable of appreciating the professionals who were there before them and would remain there after them. (clip)

5. Pastime

There have been maybe a hundred Hollywood movies about baseball. That's how important it is to our history and national psyche. So I have (modestly) selected the best one for your enjoyment and education. It's about a minor league team from parts unknown. We follow the team and watch what they endure to be able to keep playing the sacred game of baseball. No Kevin Costner. (Yes!) No acting stars to speak of, although there are numerous cameos by real major league baseball players, which should tell you something about their perceptions of the honesty of this low-budget, unmarketed ode to their sport. The emphasis here is on the continuum, as an old player trying to hang on for one more season helps a talented youngster adjust to the vagaries of fortune and life on the road. Something about life and passion and following your dreams. In a venue that used to be the American pastime. (No clip available.)

6. The River

With the possible exception of John Ford, American moviemakers have always considered farmers and farming a huge yawn and box-office poison. When farms do appear in the movies, they're usually just a departure point for some much more exciting adventure (Wizard of Oz, Walk the Line) or an ironic background for some surreal or otherwise improbable drama (Field of Dreams, Witness, Signs). OR a flat-out horror show (Texas Chainsaw Massacre et al). So it's yet another hole in our cinematic history of America. The River is about a farm family. Unlike Places in the Heart, it's not about unqualified and mostly helpless amateurs making farming heroic because of who they are. It's about a farmer who is trying desperately to keep his farm. Period. Do we have room for that in our understanding of our nation's people? I think we do. (clip)

7. Running on Empty.

The main list didn't cover the sixties generation of sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and insane politics except through the lens of the Vietnam War. This is a big hole, but it's not a terribly interesting one in many ways, being mostly a story about brats whose over-indulgent parents never really taught them the essentials of growing up. Brats are largely the same whether they're drug dealers or rock groupies or hippies or anti-establishment narcissists in any number of professions and lifestyles. I considered a lot of possible candidates here, ranging from the documentary Gimme Shelter to the lame cinematic artifact Easy Rider to the most epic tale ever told of the American drug culture, Blow, but I finally settled on Running on Empty because quite serendipitously it manages to kill two birds with one stone. It demonstrates the rank idiocy of those who got caught up in the "revolutionary" politics of the sixties in a country which was and is the envy of the world. And it demonstrates, via the real-world facts surrounding its star, that the legacy of that time remains incredibly destructive. The plot concerns the plight of a radical  couple who have lived hand-to-mouth in hiding for decades since setting off a bomb back in the good old days and now have a teenage son who would like to have a real life of his own now, please. The son is played by River Phoenix, who was soon to die (for real) of a drug overdose as one more victim of the "if it feels good, do it" generation of idealists portrayed in middle age in this movie by Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti. Empty is the operative word here, despite the movie's clear attempt to make all the characters sympathetic. That's why it's here. Such attempted manipulation of our judgment is a trick, and it's a trick that's still being played at this very minute by all the glib apologists for Bill Ayars and his murderous wife. See the trick in action. Watch this movie. And remember River Phoenix. And who must have been the parents who named him 'River' in the first place. (clip)

8. The Great Debaters

This one's here because it represents an almost invisible hole that has nevertheless always bothered me. It's the road not taken by black people in America. There was a small and intellectually proud nucleus of black colleges in this country who were absolutely dedicated to the principle of overcoming though learning, accomplishment, and impeccable character. Due to a variety of causes -- black and white both -- what should have become a mainstream liberating movement never acquired critical mass. Today it's only a sad footnote recalling what might have been. That's what this movie is about. A small black rural college in Texas develops a debating team so skilled that it wins the national college championship. Not surprisingly, the key to their success is not money or government assistance but an incredibly able and demanding teacher, who is as controversial in his own community as he is feared and monitored by the white authorities for his secret (and, yes, marxist) political activities. The movie is deeply flawed, but it is based on fact. The Wiley College team did win, against all odds, the national championship. In the movie, the deciding event was placed at Harvard for maximum impact, which is inaccurate. In reality, the team did defeat Harvard in a debate but won the championship against USC (which would make me mad if I were a USC alum). And more inexcusably, the Wiley debaters are never seen having to argue a proposition they don't agree with, which is absolutely a requirement of collegiate debating. The result is that their arguments in competition become an increasingly annoying political argument about the rights of black people and the injustices of life in America.  I wish Denzel Washington, the director, had understood that the movie itself was making all those arguments more effectively than the script's sermonizing could. Still. It's heartbreaking to realize the huge contributions a few generations of such highly educated and fiercely proud achievers could have given our nation. To drive this perception home, I'd suggest a double feature. Watch The Great Debaters and then watch 8 Mile, in which the natural impulse toward verbal achievement is hobbled and rendered ridiculous by the bankrupt cultural tradition of black anti-intellectualism. (clip)

9. We Were Soldiers

I debated long and hard before choosing The Deer Hunter over this movie as my Vietnam entry. But I can't leave it out altogether. It's about the professional military that existed at the beginning of the Vietnam War and their victory in one of the only full-scale battlefield confrontations of the entire war. It's about discipline. It's about valor. It's about the wives and families and religion and fidelity. Sam Elliott almost steals the show, as he frequently does, but there's also a touching performance by Greg Kinnear as a chopper pilot and, yes, Mel Gibson, too. The music alone is worth watching the movie for, but so is the rest of the movie. And ironically, this movie may be the best filmic effort yet that illuminates the extraordinary heroism of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It helps us understand what "professional" means in the context of war. It encompasses so much, and it seems to ask for so little in return. It is humbling. Like this movie.Which, unlike many on the list, is a great movie. (clip)

10. A Christmas Story

Full circle. We close with another comedy. You've all seen it. You know that it's deeply true in a variety of ways and hilariously funny because it is so true. Is it true of today? Almost certainly not as much as it was. It's rapidly becoming an artifact. Which lends it pathos. But it's still impossible to understand who we are now without first understanding who we once were. It's a deceptively simple movie. But there's nothing simple-minded about it. That's all I have to say. Except for two more words: Darren McGavin. (clip)

That's it. I'll save my generalizations and pompous inferences for another post.

LEFTY INSANITY. Y'know, these people are out of their freaking minds. It's unusual for us to post without a unique angle of our own, as you're aware, but this post is an exception because I don't want you not to know the kind of weird stuff that's going on.

Here's what a Boston Globe columnist has to say about the video above.


There's more. Read all of it.

Do I need to point out that in Nazi Germany, the people swore oaths of personal loyalty not to their country but to their leader? Who was you know who. Of course I don't. You knew that. No need to repeat it.

And is this bizarre cult of personality in any way responsible for the fact that CBS goddess Diane Sawyer was totally drunk on her ass and broadcasting after the inauguration without getting booted off the air? The media joy over the Obamascension was just too ecstatic and infectious to be restrained by minimal standards of professionalism? Jeez.


How many other media stars were in attendance at the 'hail the fuehrer' booze and bombast orgy? Uh, I know Anderson Cooper was there.

These are deep waters. But I think they swirl with the same currents. I apologize for providing no new insights, but you do have to know what happened.

How about this as an antidorte? "I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."


See ya down the primrose path.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

JUST A BAD DREAM. Everybody copes in his own way. IP decided to think about other stuff and so generated his list of 25 movies about America. I chose another route, opting to find what media I could that was not all about the Second Coming of Abraham Lincoln. No cable news. No newspapers. No newsweekly magazines. No women's magazines (They're just The View on slick paperstock if you want to know.). In fact, I thought, here was a golden opportunity to catch up on the specialized periodicals that couldn't possibly have anything to do with a change in the political leadership in the United States. Was I right? Judge for yourselves.

For example, everyone who reads this blog knows that I'm a motorhead. Years ago, I was a huge fan of Car and Driver Magazine, which once scandalized the automotive world by  conducting a performance test of the Ferrari GTO and the Pontiac GTO -- and preferring the Pontiac. I lost contact with C&D for a few years during a sojourn in the midwest. When I left the east coast, they were vociferous opponents of airbags. When I returned, they were among the most fervent advocates of same. Apparently, the possibility that airbags could flat-out kill small women and children by functioning normally had ceased to bother them. But let bygones be begones, I thought. Maybe they'd be a palliative in the new age of messianic politics.


There had to be some safety somewhere. After all, what could anybody do to the Honeymooners?


And so, before I even looked, I knew that the gush had reached I Love Lucy too. Which I never even liked in the first place.


By then I knew. The TOON channel:


And HGTV.


And even the Food Channel.


Drudge says the Obama inauguration got 35 times the worldwide coverage of the Bush inaugural. I'm pretty sure he's misunderstimated the total by a bunch.

But I don't mind. There's only one icon that will send a chill to my bones. And we may be months and months away from that.


How does the line go? "Build it and they will come."

Like gangbusters.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

THE LINCOLN LOG. Just a quick update on inauguration details, in case you're one of the estimated 50 million people who will be squeezing into Washington, DC, for the festivities. You'll need to park your car in Poughkeepsie, Scranton, or Raleigh and walk the rest of the way to the ceremony, so wear comfortable shoes like these.

Part V:

NEXT LOT. I know I promised Baby Boomers, but that's not completely accurate, any more than the things which Baby Boomers are anxious to take credit for are really their accomplishments. For example, neither the Beatles nor the Stones were Baby Boomers, even though they became the soundtrack of that entire generation of self-obsessed jerks. The miserably sad truth is that Baby Boomers have produced almost nothing memorable, significant, or new in their whole time on earth. With that disclaimer delivered, here's the final set of my list of 25.

21. Walk the Line

Consider this one a kind of book end to Bird (No. 19). It's popular among American intellectuals to celebrate black contributions to music, which originated with uneducated folk among the rural poor, and to laugh out loud at country music, which originated with uneducated folk among the rural poor. No wonder they're so convinced we're a racist nation. This movie fills a couple of holes in our movie picture of America. It shines a light on the other distinctively American contribution to our nation's hold on the world's music (quit chortling: the Stones owe as much to country as they do to Motown), and it also acknowledges, as Hollywood almost never does, the powerful cultural impact of our agrarian population -- you know, the people who drive pickup trucks, wear cowboy boots, and grow the food we and a big chunk of the rest of the world eat. Like Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash (not a boomer) became a transcendant figure, beyond genre and beyond the reach of critcs. But unlike the other two, his persona was not a manufactured or gimmicky invention. He was exactly what he looked like on stage -- a barely contained force of nature who intertwined rage, love, lust, violence, and tenderness so tightly into his voice that the contradictions produced the permanent bass quaver which made every song sound like the five minutes of roller-coaster tension before a prison riot. This movie is the story of his life, the good and the awful both, and it's one a huge percentage of Americans can relate to. The first terrible thing happens on the farm, and it never stops resonating through all the subsequent ups and downs of Cash's life. Which is exactly how life can be. Even in the pampered place The New York Times sums up as white America. With stunning performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, and the busiest actor in show business, Robert Patrick. This is about country. Our country. (clip) (and a bonus) [DO watch the last clip. It's IP's theme song, too.]

22. The Deer Hunter

For this choice I have to give a nod to Ed Morrissey at Hotair. He named it as one of the worst movies of the past 25 years, which finally decided the debate I'd been having with myself between The Deer Hunter and We Were Soldiers as the necessary Vietnam movie to include here. [Singling out The Deer Hunter as a 'worst' on any list that also includes Forrest Gump, Apocalypse Now, Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July, and Platoon, {a.k.a. the Oliver Stone Poor Poor Pitiful Me Story} is about as outrageous as it gets... but enough about Morrissey.] I happen to know the part of Pennsylvania where the characters in The Deer Hunter lived, and I can assure you the rendition of their lives -- in the wild, on the road, and in the bars -- is pitch perfect. The performances by John Savage, Meryl Streep, and most of all the amazing Christopher Walken are astonishing. The movie shows what other Vietnam movies don't, the wrenching dislocation of lives effected by a war in which the role of soldier was changed from winning battles and territory to mere killing . It has more impact because it is long and slow, because it shows us the lives of the men before their service, and the amplifying effects of memory after the fact, when memory cannot coexist with the life that would have been lived without a soul-destroying derailment onto a hell nothing in their previous lives could have prepared them for. It's not a Hollywood movie in any traditional sense. It's a journey to the heart of darkness Coppola could never have filmed because he had read the book, and the characters in this movie never did. They just lived it. (clip) (and another) Between these two clips, there's a brief, exploding lifetime of unbearable pain. Was the movie long? Not as long as the distance between a western Pennsylvania bar and a bloodsport gambling den in Southeast Asia. We're still living that distance down today.

23. Apollo 13

One of my all-time favorite movies about men. No, not the Clint Eastwood/John Wayne sort of men. The real kind. Smart, creative, focused, perseverant to the last second of the last gasp of the last chance. And they wear plastic pocket protectors the whole time. This is the movie where you can see the real pioneering spirit that probably won the west during the age of Manifest Destiny. The careful planners who packed exactly the right combination of food and water and ammunition and spare parts for the conestoga wagon, plus a few handy tools to fix things if the worst happened. "Houston, we have a problem." And such a problem. Unprecedented and wholly unanticipated. Bringing our men home from a certainly fatal disaster in space that they then passed off as a routine "doing what we're paid to do" example of ordinary competence. (See Slasha and CP's response in the Comments section of this post.) It's a perfect mix of both kinds of American hero -- the ostentatiously risk-taking hero-type heroes that have always been part of out national story, who live up to their own highest expectations even as the awkward, shy, too-smart-to-fit-in antihero-type heroes put their minds and their faith on the line to do the impossible. THIS is what Americans can do, and it's all BIG. The budget, the technology, the objective, the calamity, the eventual triumph against prohibitive odds. And the wives. God, women are wonderful. If Obama has seen any movie on this list, I hope the most that he has seen this one. (clip)

24. All the President's Men

You'll note that the press has played a part throughout this list, usually in their historical role as buzzard opportunists feeding on the travails of real people doing real things while the parasites prosper. I have looked, but it's almost impossible to find a movie that treats the press without scorn, satire, or wry cynicism (including especially this, 7:40 in) until All the President's Men. Which is the story of the Washington Post doing everything it can to bring down a president of the United States (who, quite coincidentally, they had hated since his first appearance in public life.) More than any other movie on the list, this one served as a recruiting tool that brought armies of young people into a trade for reasons precisely opposite the stated principles of the (so-called) profession. They watched this piece of fiction and signed up as journalists to "make a difference," "save the world," and "speak truth to power." None of which has anything whatever to do with reporting the facts, without fear or favor or emotion or bias or slanted diction, to the people who buy newspapers. If 'On the Waterfront' is the best American movie, this is the most important American movie, and its message to its audience was, and is, absolutely corrupting. Why are The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune, and The LA Times dying with withered claws outstretched for a federal bailout from what used to be their sacred target? This movie. That's why. Anyone who saw this movie and joined the press afterwards is the journalistic equivalent of a crack whore. Fact. These are the people who are the source of Bush Derangement Syndrome. But you can't understand America without seeing this monstrosity of a movie. And, God, how they LOVE this image of themselves. If they only knew what a sickness they've infected us with... (clip)

25. The Guys

So far, the best 9/11 movie. A small production, a small budget, a small focus. A freelance writer (Sigourney Weaver) helping a New York Fire Department captain (Anthony LaPaglia) write last words about his men who died in the terror attack on the Twin Towers. It's our new reality. Still. No politics. No hysterics and no bathos. No speculation (why United 93 isn't on the list). No special effects. Just people. Americans. Which is who we are. And hopefully will remain, no matter how high-flown the oratory from the bully pulpit of The One. See it. (clip)

There you have it. And now I have to admit I've failed. There are still holes. This is too big a country to be understood in just 25 movies, no matter how carefully chosen. I have another ten Honorable Mentions that are actually cheating. Because they're as important as the first 25. What an amazng country we live in. Stay tuned for the Tacked-On Ten, as well as some observations about interesting patterns I've observed in my selections.

Still. Go ahead and sharpshoot. The ones that didn't make the 25 didn't make the 25 and I'm accountable for what I've chosen. It's just that there's more, and we're more than what I've picked out.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Part IV:

NEXT LOT. Well, we've reached the fifties, that decade in America where nothing interesting whatever happened because the Baby Boomers were in cribs and all the people who know everything now share the same smeared memory of conformist idiots doing exactly what they were told, unless they were energized by Elvis and other Top Forty acts to kick authority in the balls. You know, reacting against the moron clowns who raised them and getting ready for the inspired and enlightened sixties. It's possible something interesting might have happened if it weren't for the same old Republican problem -- an old white man as president, who didn't know anything about anything, which doomed the fifties to a kind of cartoonish timeout in which people didn't live their lives (didn't even know they had genitals) and America almost imploded from boredom.

16. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

Exhibit A. Unless it's really Exhibit Z. I love this movie. Just as many men who deplore the anger and hostility of feminism love women individually for all the marvelous capabilities that redeem the worst of their chosen mates. In fact, this is the movie I would prescribe for all those men who act baffled at how long their wives and girlfriends spend shopping for the right card for every occasion, including their own sorry-ass birthdays and anniversaries. READ THE CARDS. This is a movie about the lives so many women lead, even today, and what's distinctively American about it is the entrepreneurial possibility our great nation offers to those who are determined to keep fighting as individuals for what matters most in their lives. What is schlock in critical terms can be high art in life terms, and this is the story of a life of artistic genius in a purely fifties American context. If you can watch this movie and NOT fall in love all over again with the whole idea of the women in our lives, you are probably a serial killer. Watch it and you will never again feel a moment's impatience with her meticulous wrapping of gifts that will be torn open in a moment by children or shunted aside by embittered oldsters. You will just love her -- and all the seemingly silly rituals and courtesies she so faithfully executes while caring for everyone more than she does for herself. If she wears your team's football jersey and assembles the tailgate feast while raising your kids on the side, she's not your subordinate. She's the blessing that redeems all the disgusting low points of your life. Back in the fifties, she held the whole country together. Thanks to her, there were two-parent families and homes to go back to. She had the Christian gift of forgiveness. Now that we've worked so hard to turn her into us, and she's just another struggling, narcissistic single-mother household, what are we? Better? Freer? Maybe you and she should talk about it. (clip)

17. The Godfather

Yeah, we've dissed this one, too. But it's still part of who we are as a nation. Not the mob, but the mafia, whose sick code of silence has infected every organization that cultivates a sense of its own specialness. Including the government. All organizations are prey to the accumulated conviction that they are too important to obey anyone else's rules. Show me any large, old organization, and I will show you a mafia. In fact, that why I have always hated this movie so much. The sense of belonging to a privileged, elite group which can thumb its nose at more universal affiliations is what I have always despised about investment bankers and corporate executives quoting lines from The Godfather as life lessons or Rules of Engagement. To an obsolete WASP like me, it teaches all the wrong lessons -- weakness where you should be strong and reactive wrong where you should seek out the hard right thing to do. But here's the irony. All of you who turn your noses up at the fifties, who think that realistic, pragmatic life began in the post-superstitious age of the enlightened, "progressive" sixties -- why do you still hearken back to the "offer that can't be refused"? Because for all your supposed education and rationality, you are trapped in the anti-romanticism of Michael Corleone, the raw display of Machiavellian power that enables you to perpetrate the hoax of global warming, the myth of salvation by a new elitely chosen Godfather, and the lie that a chosen iconic boss can somehow make everything right, no matter how ruthless and hypocritical his methods. Why American intellectuals who have always been free still idolize Castro. They worship the fucking drama of a life-and-death overlord, given how dull life is if you're just an Irish consigliere played by Robert Duvall. Why do the freest people on earth still want (anti)royalty to rule them? Maybe Obama will explain. Whatever the answer is, there is a uniquely American answer. Which, in this case, is headquartered in the boring fifties. I hate it. But it's still part of who we are and have become. (clip)

18. Malcolm X

Never cared for Spike Lee either. But this is a great  movie. Quite free of some of his other, more self-indulgent peaeans to the moral imperviousness of blackness. The subject made him honest. Malcolm X began as a thug. One can understand the extremity of his escape route. In fact, one -- meaning I -- can understand why he became so radicalized. Does this mean that he was right for all black men for all time? No. But it's the American Way that you get to choose. Malcolm X chose. Decidedly. Intellectually. Morally. And he chose wrong. Not Spike Lee's point, I suppose. I think he was after an alternative Christ for African-Americans who sort-of-thought MLK had failed kind of thing. The last-refuge-ofanger kind of thing.

But here's the irony. I admire this movie as a testament of real honesty. I thought Spike Lee created a masterpiece. I thought he was telling black people that the way out of the abyss was education. Which it is. Malcolm X learned how to read and write and speak. Eloquently. That was the lesson. Not the particular politics he advocated. Which are completely at odds with everything I have experienced in the African-American community. His attraction to Islam was an attraction to discipline. Control everything. He realized what made black people a stereotype in the white world and he stood all that on its ear. Except that he was wrong. About everything. He had a bigger dream than MLK. He dared to believe that black people could transcend their heritage and history and be better than the white folk at having families, being faithful to their wives, and being fathers to their children. He was wrong. They killed him for it. In a hail of bullets.

Black people in America remain for the most part slaves, governed by an outlaw, slave mentality. Malcolm X is proof that this is an unnecessary mentality. But the extremity of his philosophy and his sacrifice are a huge part of the burden we all bear. We prefer the much much dumber vision of MLK. Who fantasized that his own people might one day give up the resentments of their past and rely on their own gifts instead. Malcolm X knew better. That blacks had to exceed whites in morality, accomplishment and discipline to win their separate peace, because self-respect was more important than the flattery of debtors.

Idiotic. A fifties delusion. Right? (clip)

19. Bird

Remember how nobody in this country ever even noticed black people before the sixties and the dawn of the Civil Rights era? I mean, like Malcolm X was wrong, and oh go to hell. Except for Jazz. Americans have loved black musicians for several centuries, but they've also cited them as the bad moral examples they've always been. Because Americans prefer delivering sermons over the doomed dead to being energized and enlightened by the brilliant live performances of their social inferiors. (Like none of your friends ever dance, do they? Racist sticks...) Another instance. (clip -- dubbed in Italian, but it doesn't matter)

20. On the Waterfront

Probably the greatest American move ever. The greatest acting performance. The greatest screenplay. The greatest director. The greatest irony between the story told and the story implied. The greatest cultural vindication demonstrated by the greatest industry insult. The movie is great art by itself, and it's also history, and its after-effects are the QED of its point. No artist can ever hope for more than Elia Kazan achieved with On the Waterfront. And no artist can ever recover from the insults deliverately heaped on Eia Kazan for having made this movie. I could explain all this. But I also have the sense that our readers who lionize Reservoir Dogs and Saw IV need to step up and ask what the big deal is. It's a VERY BIG DEAL. Here is the movie that analogizes history, encapsulates history, is history, critiques history, and stands as a personal tragedy that is also one of the sorriest instances of American history you can expect to find in a supposedly free country. Elia Kazan did the right thing. Just like Terry Malloy. He got beaten mostly to death for it the same fashion. That's also part of the American Way.

So, without apologies, here's the final scene of the greatest American movie ever made:


Next up, the Baby Boomers.

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