Filmy Streak
By Mitch Berg
Movies are pretty streaky to me.
Before Gran Torino came out I think I’d gone something like 3-4 years without seeing a movie in a theater. No big deal – I scarcely noticed it, and had plenty of other stuff to keep me busy.
After the “lockdown” ended, I went to a couple of films just to throw a throbbing middle fingers at the Karens of the world. I don’t even remember the movies – just how good throwing. that finger fels. Also how much room I had. I literally was the only person in the theater more than once. #ThaanksGovernorWalz
But I’ve been light on movies again, for a while now. I didn’t grow up with comic books (other than “Flaming Carrot” and, later, “King and Country”), so I have no nostalgia for the endless Marvel and DC franchises. For that matters, I lost all interest in Star Wars after “Attack of the Clones or whatever it was called. I literally haven’t seen a single one after the third episode/sixth movie. When asked which universe I prefer, Star Trek or Star Wars, I reply “Firefly“.
And I try to avoid going to movies I reasonably believe are going to be a waste of time and money. I’ve literally walked out of one movie in my life (The Burbs with Tom Hanks).
But I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately. I’ve seen movies four weekends in a row. And – unbelievably – they’ve all been good.
- Sound of Freedom. Amazing film. . Unbelievably intense. Its critics say “it manipulates the audience ZOMG”. Right . So did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “Oliver Twist” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner”. That’s art, especially art for a cause, for you. .
- No Hard Feelings. Yep ,a Jennifer Lawrence film. “But she’s a lefty”. I don’t care – it’s a movie with a fundamentally conservative message. One reviewer called it “a sex comedy without the sex”, and it’s not wrong – especially given that the one nude scene is hilarious and diametrically not erotic in the least.
- Oppenheimer. I love the fact that a director trusts and audience to be able to follow a complex, non-sequential plot.
Aaaaaaaand Barbie.
“Wait – wut”
Yep. Barbie. And I’d do it again – entirely on conservative social criticism grounds .
More tomorrow .
August 9th, 2023 at 11:46 am
Oppenheimer is a great film — afterwards I wondered if it was about the wrong man.
Truman first had to steer the US out of a devastating world war, then through a series of hot international crises caused by Stalin’s moves in Europe (the occupation of half of it, then the blockade of Berlin) and Asia (the Korean War was just the most visible consequence), all this without repeating the negligence to global economic recovery practiced by his predecessors after WWI.
He was a great president, simply too modest to attract the hagiographers.
August 9th, 2023 at 12:13 pm
Truman was an uneducated, lefty scumbag that would have fit right in today’s DC. No surprise rAT admires him.
Truman quashed Patton, and MacArthur because they disagreed with his handling of post WWII and the debacle in Korea. Patton was a vociferous critic of the scorched Earth program that was carried out in Germany, and he specifically noted the the firebombing of Dresden constituted a war crime. When Patton looked like he was about to spill the beans about the US/USSR pact, Truman had him killed.
Truman relieved MacArthur, but revived him when he decided to continue the invasion of N. Korea, after they were rebuffed at Inchon…war with China ensued, and we lost.
Truman is a study of what happens when a feckless buffoon takes command.
August 9th, 2023 at 12:27 pm
I think what so many people miss about his presidency is that he wasn’t just trying to win WWII. He was also trying to prevent another world war.
From our stance on using the Bomb in Japan, to our stance on Europe, or Korea, the overarching goal, was preventing the grounds for another world war for as long as possible.
Had a nuclear weapon never been used in WWII, it would assuredly been used in WWIII to the decimation of all peoples.
Had we not stayed in Europe, it would have destabilized again into the grounds for another war.
Had we abandoned the peace deals we made in Korea, and Asia in general, that would have destabilized and resulted in a much larger conflict.
So yes, some of the things he did seemed noble, others seemed horrific, but the overarching theme was pragmatic. Which absolutely fits the personality of a draper’s son. American functionalism, looks strange from the perspective of Europe or Asia, because our history is a bit different.
His biography, written by daughter Margaret starts with her memory of the presidential train racing across the prairie, 105mph was unsafe by Truman’s measure, he suggested that 80 would meet his needs his needs. No excitement, no “order”, a calm expectation of compliance.
Harry S Truman is well worth a read in a time of frauds and cheapskates.
August 9th, 2023 at 1:33 pm
rAT squeaked: “I think what so many people miss about his presidency is that he wasn’t just trying to win WWII. He was also trying to prevent another world war.”
Right…that’s why he allowed the USSR to snatch up key rocket scientists, blockade and partition Berlin, handed over Poland and the Baltic states to them and to allow them to steal our most closely guarded nuke secrets, allowing the Russians to be first in space, and to avoid years of development on their own nuclear arsenal. Also explains why, instead of just stopping N. Korea, which MacArthur did at Inchon, the hat man ordered Mac to invade, and started a war with China, which he promptly lost.
I’m not sure if it’s just a case of wet brain due to all that cheap booze, or if rAT was just born stupid. At this point it really doesn’t matter.
August 9th, 2023 at 2:22 pm
When your alcoholic father was defiling your sister did you watch or were the two of you acting as a team?
August 9th, 2023 at 2:32 pm
Truman could’ve stopped the Berlin Wall from being built, before it got beyond some strands of barbed wire. In fact, an Army lieutenant and three of his men, pulled it down, only to receive orders from “higher ups”, to leave it alone. How many people died due to that wall being built?
August 9th, 2023 at 2:33 pm
Flashing back to your pre-sentencing evaluation, rAT?
August 9th, 2023 at 2:39 pm
Truman could have crushed the USSR in a month, which many of his top military commanders were telling him to do. They had no navy, no air force, and were completely dependent on the US for munitions. The Red Army was extended way past their ability to supply it. even if they did have material. Instead, the hat man let them become a competing world power, and sentenced E. Germany, Poland and the Baltics to 4 decades of suffering.
What kind of colossal nitwit thinks that was great leadership? lol
August 9th, 2023 at 2:41 pm
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were as much about cutting the Soviets out of the post-war Japanese geopolitical spoils, as Stalin was about to put boots on the ground in the Asian theatre, so Truman needed a win quickly. Same reason that D-Day happened. Not so much to stop Hitler, who was being rolled back by the Soviets, as to stop the Red Army from rolling through all of Germany, as possibly beyond, then sitting there for decades.
August 9th, 2023 at 2:55 pm
rAT, your stupidity is escalating exponentially. It’s a marvel to watch you go on so devoid of self-respect.
The only boots Stalin had were supplied by the US. His manufacturing centers were smoking heaps of rubble. He had no ammunition in reserve for his tanks, or his guns. He had no fucking navy to get to Japan, or any maritime arena; he had no air coverage for any ships he did manage to piece together.
Seems like you’re very agitated….getting on towards Berkeley horse time is it?
August 9th, 2023 at 3:44 pm
David McCullough’s 1993 biography is wonderful. Truman succeeded first by delegating and second by being decisive. The bomb saved hundreds of thousands of US solders lives. (Read the new book on Ernie Pyle to get a felling of the potential cost of a land war in Japan.)
Millions of Japanese were also saved.
Some of Truman’s character was captured by this comment “Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists say ‘on one hand…’, then ‘but on the other…”
Truman was the right person for the time. He is overlooked today by many. However, it can be argued that the division in the United States today is so great as to make the types of success recorded by Truman impossible.
Ironically one needs to look to the Ukraine to see a leader who, like Truman, has risen far beyond expectations and unified a country.
Truman is not forgotten. Sadly, the political environment is so fractured it is unlikely someone of his character could succeed in the US today.
August 9th, 2023 at 3:54 pm
Regarding the Berlin Wall, it was put up in 1961, eight years after Truman left office. Yes, the Soviets did restrict movement from the “Soviet zone” to the free zones, but Truman had no power to prevent the Berlin Wall. That would have been Kennedy.
August 9th, 2023 at 4:53 pm
Sorry to disagree, BN. Had Truman attempted to prolong the war in Europe, he’d have been out of office damn fast. The civilian population by mid-44 was rapidly losing support for the war. You have to remember that rationing was really cranked down in ’44 to support the situation in Europe (supplies had to go to keep liberated Europe alive) and to prepare the vast amount of supplies needed for an invasion of Japan.
Personally, I think Truman did the right thing given his set of circumstances. He probably couldn’t keep the Russians from taking over Europe and prosecuted the war in Japan at the same time. Dropping the bomb forced Stalin to tell Stavka to put the plan to take over Western Europe on hold. So dropping the bomb saved 5M+ Japanese from dying in the next 6 months, and kept Western Europe from becoming a Soviet colony. Overall, given all the constraints Truman was operating within, he did the optimal path.
August 9th, 2023 at 5:09 pm
Truman was not a good human being.
And various international machinations dead go back-and-forth on Soviet efforts to fence/wall off the Western Zone.
But he also had the Berlin airlift, so…
August 9th, 2023 at 10:17 pm
Just a reminder for regular SITD commenters.
The comment-bot known as “emery” predicted the Brexit vote would fail, that Hillary would win by a landslide over Trump in 2016, and still believes that Trump colluded with Putin to steal the 2016 election from Hillary.
Emery has been wrong on everything he has commented about on SITD.
August 10th, 2023 at 12:34 am
[…] Shark Tank: State Rep Carolina Amesty Slams Orlando Sentinel Over Hit Piece Shot In The Dark: Filmy Streaks, 4 Out Of 5 Red Sox Fans Say “The Yankees Suck”, and Facts STUMP: Drug Overdose […]
August 10th, 2023 at 1:36 am
You could say that about a great number of the leaders of the time. When the main leadership of that decade included FDR, Stalin, Toto, Mussolini, Chang, and the big H himself, I’d have to rate Truman’s foibles as relatively minor in that crowd.
Sure, Truman started the Democrat trope of calling is (R) opponents Hitler, but he also was CiC and owed deference by McArthur, Patton, and the rest. He managed to get the Marshall Plan implemented over the objections of many Americans, and in doing so he helped keep the commies from taking over even more countries. Considering how war-weary the country was, I’d have to say he was lucky to get the support he did for his anti-commie initiatives.
So as much as I don’t like Truman, I’d have to say that he was more like Clinton: he did well by not totally f*cking up the country and making the world much worse. You can’t say the same about Obummer and POTATUS, both of whom have worsened the world/country considerably.
August 10th, 2023 at 7:17 am
The predicaments of Oppenheimer and Truman have nothing in common. Oppenheimer was a scientist who had moral doubts about the creation of an exceptionally powerful weapon. Truman was a political leader who had to calculate whether using that weapon would, paradoxically, save lives. The bomb was the same, the choices were utterly different.
I did not see the film as a dismissal of Truman — quite the opposite. While it didn’t present him as polished and sophisticated — which he wasn’t — it did make the crucial point that Truman was the one who took the decision and bore the moral responsibility, and it was quite damning that Oppenheimer didn’t see this until Truman reminded him of it.
August 10th, 2023 at 10:10 am
We won that war by destroying the industrial capacity of every other nation. Then we destroyed our own.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/guest-post-united-states-plan-b/
August 10th, 2023 at 10:15 am
I wasn’t aware anyone paid attention to Gateway Pundit.
August 10th, 2023 at 10:19 am
ad hominum
respond to the substance of the analysis
or STFU
August 10th, 2023 at 10:39 am
Captain Caplock says: %#&!
Naw. It was an entirely defensible, accurate, and really minor observation. And you whining about it says far more about you than me.
August 10th, 2023 at 10:50 am
^ well, defend it then.
August 10th, 2023 at 10:56 am
“Naw. It was an entirely defensible, accurate, and really minor observation. And you whining about it says far more about you than me.”
Bullshit. Impugning the source of the analysis without evidence of error is neither defensible, accurate nor minor. It’s entirely consistent with your demonstrated inability to engage in cogent discussion and contributes mightily to my oft-justified conclusion that you are not only liars but idiots as well, all of you in the collective.
August 10th, 2023 at 1:31 pm
[…] as I noted yesterday, I’d seen a couple of great movies on the previous two weekends – Sound of Freedom and […]
August 10th, 2023 at 8:21 pm
You guys trying to get an intelligent response out of rAT is almost as amusing as his pathological lying.