Network turns 50 — and somehow feels more shocking, more sobering, and more timely than ever!

It doesn’t happen until the halfway mark. You may remember the single most famous scene in Network, Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s take on television news, tabloid culture, corporate takeovers, and the shape of things to come, happening closer to the beginning of the movie. We don’t need to tell you which one we mean: A newscaster named Howard Beale, drunk on prophecy and clarity, rises from his anchor’s desk. Having run down everything that’s wrong with the world outside our windows — unemployment, crime, pollution, a failing economy — the gentleman now has a favor to ask of his viewers. He demands them to temporarily remove themselves from their state of perpetual isolation and become part of the collective chorus, to open their windows and scream into the void. Say it with us. “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!” Continue reading →

The Mark of Zorro (1940) — directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Tyrone Power, Basil Rathbone, and Linda Darnell — stands as one of Hollywood’s most enduring classics. The film truly shines, with its charismatic cast, sharp dialogue, beautiful cinematography, blending romance and witty one-liners with cinema’s best sword fight.

Set in colonial Spanish Los Angeles around 1820, the movie takes viewers back to a conservative and traditional society, very different from LA today. Yet, like the original novel from 1919, it explores timeless themes: identity and deception, the inspiring force of heroism, the tension between individual will and societal expectations, and — to top it off — justice and political struggle. One reviewer put it well: “The Mark of Zorro emphasizes the significance of fighting against injustice and standing up for what is right, even if it means taking risks and going against societal norms.”

These social and political messages make the film highly relevant today. Strong critiques of fiscal pressure, ruling minority corruption, and government overreach, all echo the situation in current so-called “democracies.” These messages are vividly delivered in dialogue, especially between Zorro (aka Don Diego Vega), his friend, friar Felipe, and his father. Continue reading →

This time of year, everyone – myself included – airs out their favorite Christmas movies, talking about the wholesomeness and meaning and warm fuzzies they bring each time they’re watched. Topping the list are films such as “Home Alone,” “A Christmas Story,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and even “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

One of my favorite Christmas films, however, never makes this list of classics. I suppose that’s not surprising. In fact, most people might say that except for a few scenes at the end of the film, it’s not even a Christmas film at all.

That’s technically true … that is, if one only looks at the surface. Beneath the surface, however, runs the entire message of Christmas – and that’s a message we could especially use this year. Continue reading →

Memories of My Brothers….

My Dad was watching this video on TV one day and saw himself in the video. He’s at 2:28 running behind the stretcher. He called CMT and explained what saw, they sent him a copy of the video and they requested he write down what happened that day. Two weeks later they did an interview with Big & Rich and Big Kenny was talking about a letter from a Marine who was on the video with others saving another Marine’s life…that was my Dad’s letter. ~ Lisa Folk

No matter what the reboot or rebrand may imply, Dracula is still a monster and “democratic” socialism is still tyranny.

July 27, 2018 ~ Many of us grew up watching Dracula movies – Nosferatu, the “Undead.” Fearful of the sunlight that could burn him into cinders, Dracula lived in a coffin filled with his native Transylvanian soil by day, only to come out at night to live off the life-giving blood of the living. But to continue his “unnatural” existence, this human-like vampire had to kill his victims by draining them of their own blood, or in the process of turning them into “creatures of the night,” like himself. Welcome to the nature and history of socialism. Continue reading →

The Classic American Western As Emblem of Historic American Culture

December 21, 2017 ~ Since the beginning of the twentieth century one of the newer art forms and expressions of our culture has been cinema – “motion pictures.” It was the novelty of live theater and acting captured as moving images in film and presented on a screen. In many respects, like other art forms, film represents what is happening in our culture. At its very finest it is capable of shining a vivid light on our beliefs and values, portraying them, dissecting them, and, like other art forms, it may be used as an instrument to affect or even shape our outlook and our politics. Continue reading →

I recently wrote about one of my favorite movies – “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”­ – noting that its message seems more relevant to our times than when it was first released. After penning that article, I pulled the movie out for a re-watch and found that yes, “Mr. Smith” rings even more true for our time than I remembered.

When the movie was over, one of my family members gave a little laugh and asked, “Can you imagine Hollywood doing a remake of that movie?”

That rhetorical question underscored the idea that anything Hollywood touches these days turns into some type of “woke” monstrosity, well diversified and obscuring the original meaning of the story. Yet perhaps this was the plan all along: to confuse and control our minds to such an extent that even our entertainment sends subliminal messaging about the political course of our daily lives.

Taki Theodoracopulos examines this idea in the November issue of Chronicles Magazine, traveling down woke Hollywood lane, imagining what some of these classic movies would look like if remade today. It isn’t pretty. Continue reading →

The dystopian science fiction film has become a little too familiar.

April 21, 2023 ~ For membership in the pantheon of iconic, climactic movie lines, you’ll find a few obvious contenders, like Rhett Butler’s “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” and Rick Blaine’s “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” But few can match Charlton Heston’s immortal warning at the end of a film released fifty years ago, Soylent Green. (If you know it already, or even if you don’t . . . read on!) Continue reading →

HyperFocal: 0

For a little recreation, instead of following the news channels, I put on the Western movie channel and watched Outlaw Joey Wales. I’ve seen it several times before but it is always good for a little recreation and there is a certain amount of truth to it. It was a Western/Southern that Clint Eastwood made back in 1976, I think, and if I am correct, he never made another Western until 1985. I can recall thinking after watching it several years ago that I wonder if Hollyweird warned Eastwood about making anymore movies like it, lest his film career suffer for it. I read the book it was taken from by Forrest Carter. Needless to say the book wasn’t exactly like the movie – but then they seldom are Continue reading →

“Vote for a Name you KNOW!”

We have never posted an entire Hollywood film on this site – but THIS one tells us so much about the UN-distinguished imbeciles who “We the People” are too ignorant to elect to public office over, and over and over again. ~ Editor

Like me, many of you may have seen the decades old movie about George Armstrong Custer titled “They Died With Their Boots On.” If I remember correctly, in the movie, Custer said the Seventh Cavalry was being “sacrificed” in order to give reinforcements time to get there so they could wipe you those nasty Indians. While such drivel was great for the movies, historically it was balderdash. But then, who expects truth out of Hollyweird anyway?

I’ve seen several movies over the years where Custer’s last stand was part of the script. None of them got it right. Custer is usually portrayed as the mythical hero upholding “truth, justice, and the American way”. Of course some of our “history” books don’t do much better. Continue reading →

It may be 5 years old – but some things will NEVER change! ~ Ed.

Hollywood studios are “drenched in the blood of innocent children” according to Mel Gibson who claims the consumption of “baby blood is so popular in Hollywood that it basically operates as a currency of its own.”

I remember a passage in the bible that says “if anyone hurts one of these children of Mine, it would be better if a millstone were tied around their neck and dropped off into the deepest part of the sea” ~ Rod

It’s time to watch Howard Hawks’s gangster masterpiece again.

The prime beneficiaries of Prohibition were gangsters, and the prime beneficiaries of gangsters were the Hollywood filmmakers who, in the late nineteen-twenties and early thirties, turned them into some of the most enticingly lurid characters ever seen in movies. The real-life gangster Al Capone was refashioned in the 1932 drama “Scarface,” directed by Howard Hawks and starring Paul Muni – a celebrated stage actor with little film experience – as a gangster so appallingly, flashily fascinating that the movie was accused of making the criminal life look too appealing. Hawks’s “Scarface” was “The Wolf of Wall Street” of its day, and, like Martin Scorsese’s extravagant, exuberant 2013 drama about financial grifters, the film’s allure and enticements are a crucial part of its substance. (“Scarface,” long available to stream on a variety of platforms, is newly available to stream on the Criterion Channel, in a clear and vivid transfer.) Continue reading →

…and 2020 is merely the beginning!

Mockinjay is Coming…

“If we burn, you burn with us” — those were the fighting words that rallied support behind the symbol of the rebellion: The Mockingjay.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), when pushed to her limit, became the symbol of hope and change that Panem’s Districts were so dearly in need of. ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1’ was 123 minutes of being on the edge of your seat, almost holding your breath to see what would unfold next. Even though I had read the books, I found that the cinematography, acting, and screenwriting were compelling enough for me lose myself in the narrative. Continue reading →

Pay no attention to that curtain.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Pay no attention to that network of conditioning behind the man. Continue reading →

The 39 Steps is one of five films that Alfred Hitchcock made in England about espionage in the mid-to-late 1930s. These films capture the growing threat felt in Britain from foreign powers. In their scenarios the nation’s security was nowhere more threatened than by spies hiding in plain sight…

The Thirty-Nine Steps – A novel.

Then a film: The 39 Steps.

In the end, that became part of our cinematic DNA. We all know the plot, or think we do.

What if, within the frames of the Hitchcock’s movie, there was a code? A warning of what then was taking place in England.

In the year that it appeared on movie screens – 1935 – it is easy to forget the England from which it emerged: a nation on the brink of something. Continue reading →