Part Exposition, Part Canonization

     I’ve just seen Dinesh D’Souza’s “docudrama” Death Of A Nation, and I thought it important to set down my thoughts about it before they have a chance to fade.

     The primary thrust of the movie is to make plain the parallels, and the outright identities, between “progressivism,” ostensibly the philosophy of the Democrat Party, and the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler. D’Souza does a good job at this, in part by delineating the historical connections that united Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Let there be no mistaking it. Wilson, the first U.S. president to decree the federal enforcement of racial segregation, was entirely in line with Hitler’s racialism. Moreover, Wilson used World War I as a lever with which to impose a fascistic system of control on the American economy. FDR, an open admirer of Mussolini who sent several members of his “brain trust” to study Mussolini’s Italy, instituted a fascist economic program much like Wilson’s as the core of his “New Deal.” Hitler saw in FDR a kindred spirit whose program greatly resembled his own. D’Souza draws this out through historical documents and interviews with prominent historians of those eras. He ably establishes the ideological continuity between those “progressives” and those of today.

     However, the movie has a secondary thrust of almost equal importance: to establish Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, as the ideological progenitor of contemporary free-market conservatism, and Donald Trump as his ideological progeny. This is false to fact. Despite many stirring things Lincoln said about freedom in the abstract, the policies he pursued while in Congress and as president were at best cool toward freedom. He was a supporter of high protective tariffs, a central bank that would have de facto control over the American dollar, and an extensive system of “internal improvements” to be undertaken by the federal government. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, acted to suppress internal dissent, and instituted the Republic’s first income tax and its original system of conscription. Moreover, while he was a sincere enemy of slavery, Lincoln did not believe in the equality of the races; this can be documented with his own public statements.

     The movie, thus, is split between historical-ideological analysis and exhortation of a completely different kind. In some ways it’s quite valuable; in others it’s somewhat misleading. In particular, it attempts a partisan whitewashing of the Republican Party, by passing silently over the gulf between what Republican officeholders claim to stand for and what many actually do when in power.

     It’s commonplace for a partisan to represent his party as the crown of wisdom and virtue, while depicting its adversaries as deluded at best, evil at worst. The tendency to do so is stronger today than it’s been since Lincoln’s time; in that regard Death Of A Nation provides an important – and sobering – historical perspective. However, uncritical partisanry, in which the other party is made to look like the embodiment of evil, is easily exploited by party kingmakers to create opportunities for its elected ones to get away with all sorts of mischief.

     In short: see the movie and benefit from its depiction of “progressivism” as a soft-focus version of Twentieth Century fascism, but don’t buy all the way into its canonization of Lincoln nor of the Republican Party in our time. While today’s Republicans are preferable to today’s Democrats, Republican officeholders have underperformed on their supposed commitment to free markets, limited government, and the defense of the rights of the individual. To cheer for the GOP uncritically is to condone that underperformance. That guarantees that we’ll receive more of the same.

     Never forget that the one and only goal of any political party is to get its candidates elected. Once they’re in office, the party’s task becomes keeping them there, not enforcing the party’s nominal ideological commitments upon them. The job of enforcement belongs solely to us.

Humanity Denied And Rights Suppressed, Yet Resurgent And Triumphant

     The fiction of Philip K. Dick, gone from us these past thirty-six years, has inspired a multitude of paeans and some of the best visual fiction – large screen and small – ever to come out of the science fiction genre. Many have sought to emulate him stylistically, but no one has ever equaled his depth of insight into Mankind, our needs, and our fumbling, often tragicomic attempts to advance our condition. To those who lack an acquaintance with this giant taken from us far too soon, allow me to recommend a few of his novels:

• Ubik
• The Zap Gun
• Now Wait For Last Year
• Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
• The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
• Our Friends From Frolix 8
• Eye In The Sky
• Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
• A Scanner Darkly

     ...though you really can’t go wrong with anything he wrote, whether long or short.

     In speaking of his fiction, Dick once said:

     "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards....In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real."

     The love – whether wholehearted, chiding, or supremely distancing – Dick felt for his characters comes through in every one of his stories. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, and you haven’t yet enjoyed the Electric Dreams series crafted from some of Dick’s best short stories, repent of your sins and get over there at once!

     But I’m not here to talk about Dick’s fiction. At least, not specifically.

---

     Hollywood is currently mired in “sequelitis.” Everyone is aware of how great a fraction of the movies being released today are sequels to successful predecessors...or worse, remakes of earlier, much loved works. Tinseltown producers are apparently afraid of genuinely new ideas and new themes to explore in the visual media. Perhaps that’s only rational, given the immense cost of making a wide-release film and the crapshoot nature of its returns. Whatever the case, we’ve been given little original work to dazzle us: a pox that afflicts the written word as well.

     For that reason, a sequel that improves upon its predecessor, exhibits original thinking in its plotting and characterization, and introduces new and vital themes in doing so is something to celebrate.

     The movie Blade Runner, one of Ridley Scott’s early triumphs, was inspired by Dick’s book Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? The central theme in that mighty film was the struggle to live and be free in the face of irresistible forces that compel enslavement and death. The “replicants” of the film weren’t “androids” of the sort Scott inserted into his movie Alien, but rather bioengineered humans with a built-in four-year lifespan, intended to become slave labor in strenuous and dangerous occupations. Escaped replicant Roy Batty and his three companions strive to find a way out of that box, and fail...but in failing display one of the quintessential human virtues: the fellow-feeling that underpins our conception of the right to life.

     Quite a lot of the fans of Blade Runner were nervous about the planned sequel. It struck them as all too likely to be unoriginal, derivative, and exploitative: a defacement of one of cinema’s true gems. I know a few people who’ve declined to see Blade Runner 2049 for that reason.

     I saw it just yesterday afternoon. It blew me away.

     Director Dennis Villeneuve apparently had the cooperation of Ridley Scott, both as a producer and in the creation of the story. It’s a homage to its predecessor, but it’s more – much more. It deserves to be evaluated on its own merits, which are plentiful.

     Central to Blade Runner 2049 are the themes of the sanctity of life and the rightness of freedom. Protagonist K, brilliantly played by Ryan Gosling, is a late-model replicant with no lifespan limit, and supposedly incapable of disobedience to his superiors. He’s employed by the LAPD as a “blade runner,” providing the first of the movie’s innovations: replicants hunting other, older-model replicants. K first illuminates the sanctity of life in this exchange, when his superior officer has just ordered him to “retire” – in other words, to kill – a child born of a replicant: the first one ever known:

'K': I've never retired something that was born before.
Lieutenant Joshi: What's the difference?
'K': To be born is to have a soul, I guess.
Lieutenant Joshi: Are you telling me no?
'K': I wasn't aware that was an option, madame.
Lieutenant Joshi: Attaboy.
Lieutenant Joshi: Hey! You've been getting on fine without one.
'K': What's that, madame?
Lieutenant Joshi: A soul.

     Yet Joshi is wrong about that last. K most definitely has a soul. He demonstrates it throughout what follows.

     The child K has been ordered to hunt is the offspring of Rick Deckard by Rachel, the replicant girl who loved him, played in Blade Runner by Sean Young. K undertakes the mission, but ultimately refrains from “retiring” the child, whom he recognizes after a series of plot convolutions whose resolution I failed to foresee.

     Blade Runner 2049’s replicants aren’t just long-lived; they have full human potential, apparently including the possibility of reproduction by natural means. They see in this the key to their liberation: If they can reproduce without the assistance of technology, they can have their own society and be their own masters.

     That’s something they want desperately enough to risk their lives.

---

     I needn’t detail K’s decision to align himself with the rebel replicants. It develops slowly, even painfully, as he searches for leads to the mysterious, well hidden replicant-child. Suffice it to say that Blade Runner 2049 exhibits a deep affection for Mankind, and extends it to Man’s technologically engendered unwilling slaves. It expresses the seldom articulated yearnings to live, to love, and to be free that anyone – or anything with volitional consciousness – must feel, whether or not he’s aware of it.

     The acting is uniformly excellent. The script is first-rate. The cinematography is superb. And the climax...well, you really must see it for yourself.

     I think Philip K. Dick would have loved it.

Video Games, Movies, And Sex

     The C.S.O. and I went to see the new Tomb Raider movie recently, and enjoyed it. Mind you, it’s not Citizen Kane or Gone With The Wind. It’s an action-adventure movie with a pretty good story embedded in it. Alicia Vikander carries the role of Lara Croft very well, though with less sass than Angeline Jolie brought to it in her two films. The story itself is essentially an “origin” tale that uses elements from the two most recent games in the franchise, A Survivor Is Born and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

     But some people are never satisfied:

     On Friday, Stephen Spielberg's "Ready Player One" hit theaters in the U.S., and it is expected to earn about $50 million at the box office this weekend. Another video game flick, "Tomb Raider," has earned $46 million at the U.S. box office since its debut earlier this month. These video game films seem particularly noteworthy for likely deliberate efforts to minimize the sex appeal often associated with women in video games.

     High levels of sexual content have become the norm in teen entertainment, from movies to television to novels. Video games in particular are infamous for including sex scenes to appeal to young male fantasies.

     More specifically, each of these specific franchises has a more salacious past. When Angelina Jolie played Lara Croft in the original "Tomb Raider" (2001), the directors had her wear a padded bra despite her already large breasts. The book "Ready Player One" includes a sexual encounter between the main character and a sex doll, with masturbation themes.

     These sexual elements did not make the final cut for either of the 2018 films, perhaps due to the influence of GamerGate and the #MeToo movement.

     "Tomb Raider" fans — both those who played the video games and those who loved the 2001 film — complained that the new Lara Croft, Alicia Vikander, does not have the ample breasts of the original franchise. Indeed, this Croft seemed less a sexual object and even more a complete character in her own right, with sexuality an afterthought in the movie.

     Say what?

     I believe I’ve played all the Tomb Raider games. None of them contained anything resembling a sex scene. What the earlier ones – i.e., the ones with the “bustier” Lara Croft – did feature was boobs. Big boobs. Specifically, on Lara. Also, it should be remembered that those earlier games foe PlayStations I and II were light on story and characterization.

     Sexual desire as a noticeable element in the adventures of Lara Croft made its bow in the two movies made by Angelina Jolie. Yet neither of those movies contained a sex scene. The closest either of them came to such was a heated kiss between Jolie and co-star Gerard Butler. So as regards sex qua sex, there’s nothing to miss in the new movie...or the rebooted games.

     Before I go any further, allow me to say this: I like boobs. I’m one of the most pro-boob people you’ll ever meet; just ask the C.S.O. I have no objection to massive melons as an element in a video game character, a movie, or any other form of entertainment. But if I’m compelled to choose between huge jugs and a rollicking good story, I’ll take the story every time.

     The most recent models for Lara Croft can be seen in costume here. They’re beautiful women and no mistake. However, they’re not as busty as the “original” Lara of the PlayStation I and II games. Moreover, the Crystal Dynamics franchise-reboot games were produced with much more emphasis on accurate motion capture and realism – and as any gymnast or ballerina will tell you, athletic gyrations and huge knockers don’t really mix.

     So for the sake of a well made game, the massive, gravity-defying headlights of Lara Croft Mark One had to go. As that was the only sexual or parasexual element in those games, the reboot games could, with minimum plausibility from the perspective of a connoisseur of the English language, be described as having been desexualized.

     In other (and fewer) words: What’s the big deal?

     Lara Croft Mark Two is a beautiful woman, albeit without the mega-rack of her predecessor. She’s also a much more fully developed character with an involving life story. And the games are both excellent and phenomenally popular. If the most recent movie is less so, well, Eidos, Square / Enix, and Crystal Dynamics have already been paid their license fees. They can shrug off the carpings from a few of the less mature video game fans. Not #MeToo but popularity, profit, and the satisfaction that goes with a job well done are what matter to them.

     To a mature gamer – and I feel I speak with authority on this subject – the story and the gameplay are what matter. Gazongas are everywhere. Indeed, there are probably plenty of video games for the dweeb who eats every meal at his local Hooters. But that’s a topic for a much coarser screed.

     (tee hee)

“Atomic Blonde”

     Remember Eighties spy thriller movies? The intrigue, the plots and counterplots, the betrayals, the glorious violence? Well, they’re back with a vengeance. Just a few years ago, martial arts sensation Gina Carano brought us Haywire. This weekend has brought us Charlize Theron’s star vehicle Atomic Blonde.

     The C.S.O. said we simply had to see it – “It’s going to have a really high body count, Fran” – and as I’m a major Theron fan, I concurred. So we spent yesterday watching her kick, slash, and shoot her way through the week that climaxed with the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that would have had some significance even without Charlize’s derring-do.

     Despite all the violence, it’s a genuinely beautiful movie. Director David Leitch uses several subtle tricks of the cinematographer’s trade to chart protagonist Lorraine Broughton’s course through her pursuit of a critical list of Allied undercover agents and her agonizing discovery that she’s been misled about a great deal by her MI6 employers. Theron’s Lorraine is electrifying in every scene; I could hardly look away when she was in action. Alongside her, James McAvoy and Sofia Boutelle give splendid performances: the former as the duplicitous David Percival whose games are more than double or triple, the latter as Delphine Lasalle, fledgling French agent and Lorraine’s fleeting lover.

     Another star of the show is the selection of pop songs of the era as counterpoint to the action. There were so many brilliant juxtapositions of memorable pop with plot events that I can no longer remember them all. (One I won’t forget is when Lorraine walks into a seedy dance club to the tune of Re-Flex’s The Politics of Dancing.) Suffice it to say that it all works wonderfully well.

     However, Atomic Blonde gives us more than excellent performances, music, and cinematography. It also reminds us why we read fiction or go to the movies: we want to see good duke it out with evil. We want to root for a genuine good guy. We don’t expect him to be invulnerable or indefeasible; certainly Lorraine isn’t either of those. But we want the moral issues to be plain more or less from the outset. Nothing is more dispiriting than the John le Carre style portrayal of losers and victims embedded in a milieu in which conscience has no place because right and wrong are irrelevant.

     Highly recommended.

A Public Service Announcement

     Perhaps my guiltiest pleasure is really silly movies: movies of such cartoonish implausibility that complete (albeit temporary) paralysis of the reason is required to view them at all, much less with enjoyment. Comic-book movies. Vampire movies. Movies with lots of gunfire and explosions. Movies with body counts that would rival World War I (which didn’t result in too many movies of quality). To give you a sense for the depth of this...condition, I may be the only living American who actually liked Green Lantern.

     However, there are limits. Over the past three days I’ve encountered them twice.

     First, there’s Milla Jovovich’s star-vehicle series Resident Evil, loosely based on the video games of the same name. I happen to like Milla Jovovich. I find her quite beautiful and talented. (Yeah, yeah, she could use some tits. Her husband, director Paul W. S. Anderson, doesn’t seem to mind.) As I enjoyed the first five movies in that series rather a lot, I was waiting for the sixth and last: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.

     Great God in heaven, what a stinker! A completely idiotic premise, an incoherent plot, grade-school-quality acting, and a conclusion that almost had me wishing the villains had won! It made me grateful that that was “the final chapter"...if it was, and dear God, may it please be so.

     After I saw that abortion this past Wednesday, I thought I’d seen the worst movie since Bloodrayne. I didn’t expect to see an even worse one today: a movie so bad that it might have taken the Worst Movie of All Time crown from Bloodrayne.

     That movie was Underworld: Blood Wars.

     I consider Kate Beckinsale one of the most beautiful women alive. She doesn’t have Jovovich’s breadth of talent, but she’s awfully nice to look at. (Yeah, yeah, she could use some tits, too.) I’d managed to enjoy the previous Underworld movies despite their general implausibility and two-dimensional quality. But this latest celluloid turd...this ultimately stupid insult to moviegoers...this complete waste of everyone and everything that was expended upon its making...this utter befoulment of the cinematic form is so bad that I think if I were forced to choose between a bullet between the eyes and watching it again, I’d say “Shoot me now. Please.”

     Friends, creditors, and poor relations, avoid these movies. No matter how cheaply you can purchase them from a remainder bin or at a flea market. I tell you sincerely, with tears in my eyes, no compensation could possibly be enough! If she’s beautiful, intelligent, sensuous, daring, and thinks you’re devastatingly handsome and sexy, but suggests that it would make a really nifty “date night” to tuck in, snuggle up, and watch one of them while making random whoopie, immediately tell her that you have gonorrhea, syphilis, and herpes II simplex, apologize for not admitting your maladies sooner, and move swiftly away.

     You’ll thank me. I promise you. Now excuse me, please, while I get drunk enough to dull the pain.

“Passengers,” A Review

     There isn’t much the “critics” can say that will deter the C.S.O. or me from enjoying some bit of entertainment. In the usual case, what they despise, we enjoy. Many books, music, and movies the critics have condemned to the ninth circle of Hell are among our favorites.

     When it comes to the movies, part of that divergence arises from what aspects of the story are most important to us, versus what parts matter most to the critics. For example, I value the emotional weight of the story line above all other things, at least if it’s delivered elegantly rather than crudely. Many a critic has little or no soul – perhaps they get too good a price for them on eBay – and is more impressed by surprise, or innovative cinematography, or political correctness, or what-have-you.

     The C.S.O. and I saw Passengers this morning, and were greatly impressed. Perhaps you’ll be surprised to read that in many ways it’s a “small” movie. It has a cast of only four persons, a sharply constrained setting, and a fairly simple plot line. Despite the interstellar-travel motif, parts of it were probably shot in a cafeteria, other parts in a very upscale hotel – with the appropriate CGI overlays, of course.

     But Passengers isn’t really a space opera. Indeed, it’s about as non-SF an SF-style movie as one could imagine. What it is, mostly, is a love story.

     The promo trailer has been widely distributed and viewed, so the typical Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch surely knows the broad outline of the story: Two interstellar colonists, engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) awaken from suspended animation only a quarter of the way through a 120-year journey toward their intended new home planet, and discover that they can’t “go back to sleep.” They bond emotionally, becoming lovers – what alternatives are there, really? – and appear to be settling into the constrained future before them. Then things start to go wrong. Heroism is required.

     But that taste of the plot of Passengers tells you nothing of importance about the movie. It highlights a painful moral-emotional dilemma. It depicts the fury of a woman who learns, to her complete surprise, that she’s been “used.” And it delineates the great divide between genuine heroism and the tin-plated counterfeit the media so often try to foist upon us.

     The script is outstanding. Pratt and Lawrence give perfect performances. The setting is alternately as luxurious, as stark, and as terrifying as anyone could imagine. The resolution gives new power and freshness to the words heartwarming and love.

     For the politically obsessed: Yes, Jennifer Lawrence has said some supremely stupid and bigoted things. Give her a break; she’s a twenty-six-year-old actress with no experience of real life worth mentioning. You don’t need to endorse her idiocies to be entertained by her acting talent, which is enormous. Remember the old saw: “If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.” Appreciate the magnitude of her talent and the extraordinary presence she brings to the silver screen. Appreciate also the equally fine performance of costar Chris Pratt, in a more emotionally demanding role than I would have cast him for.

     Highly recommended.

A Movie That Begged To Be Made

     Those of us who dream of eventually spreading Mankind to the stars have long hoped for some technology that would make the trip practical – specifically, for living human beings to board a starship, and for the same living human beings to debark at their destination in another solar system. Unfortunately, no such technology has yet emerged.

     At this time the only conceivable method for interstellar propagation of the human species is the “generation ship.” They who board the ship would not be the eventual colonists of the target system. Rather, the new home would go to their remote descendants, several centuries later. Several generations would live, work, reproduce, and die without ever knowing any environment other than the ship.

     For example, if it were possible to build a sufficiently large ship to provide a complete agricultural / industrial / informational infrastructure for a few thousand persons and get it to a currently achievable velocity – say the escape velocity of Earth, approximately 25,000 miles per hour – traversing the gulf between our solar system and Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to us (which, unfortunately, doesn’t have any habitable planets) would require a journey of over 114,000 years. That’s over 4000 human generations, according to the usual reckoning of a generation as 25 years. Very few persons would be interested in embarking on such a voyage.

     Robert A. Heinlein told of such a ship – and of what fate might befall it – in his early novel Orphans of the Sky. It’s a bleak story wrapped around a plausible development: the degeneration of the ship’s population away from the high intelligence and dedication of those who boarded it in Earth orbit, resulting in the loss of the entire concept. Heinlein’s portrayal of the quasi-medieval society that emerged, whose denizens weren’t even aware that their ship was a ship, was frighteningly plausible. Unfortunately, he concluded it with an implausibly happy ending, at least for its main protagonist.

     Passengers, built on the idea of a crew in suspended animation intended to emerge at its destination as young and hale as when it boarded, centers on another possible calamity: the awakening of some members of the crew much too early, such that in contradiction to what they were told, they’ll never live to see their destination. Given that a suspended-animation technology would probably receive less testing than it should before being put to use, it’s more than plausible:

     The movie stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, and is slated for release in late November. I’m hoping against hope that Miss Lawrence, the most compelling actress to come along in decades, will have the good sense to restrain her unfortunate political and religious opinions until then.

Would You Like To See

     ...a movie about innovation?

     ...a movie about guts under unimaginable pressure?

     ...a movie about determination undaunted by any obstacle or opposition?

     Then see Joy.

     Jennifer Lawrence gives the performance of a lifetime, ably assisted by Robert DeNiro, Bradley Cooper, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, and Isabella Rossellini. Directed by David O. Russell.

     See it!

Quickies: Could It Happen Here?

     Because it’s certainly happened elsewhere:

     I hope this makes it to theaters on Long Island.

Ultra-Quickies: The Academy Awards Nominations

     The recent publication of the nominations for the 2015 Academy Awards (“Oscars”) has prompted some sniping from the usual black racialist mouthpieces, because none of the nominees for individual-achievement awards are black. As usual, the cry of “Racism!” can be heard across the length and breadth of the land.

     To which I reply: the nomination slates arise from individual nominations by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). For “racism,” however defined, to have any relevance to those slates, it would be necessary that “racism” was the reason for a majority of the various individual AMPAS members to have chosen their nominees. Therefore, the question becomes:

Which individual members of AMPAS would you like to accuse of “racism,” oh All-Knowing Black Racialist Mouthpieces?

     Take your time. I’ll wait.

Quickies: Cinema And “Gender Politics”

     These days Hollywood treads the politically-correct line almost perfectly. It can make moviegoing a problematic thing for someone who will have no truck with such trash. However, there are a few prominent figures in cinema with whom I have no problem. I applaud such producers, directors, and actors for being true to themselves even when it means “going against the grain” of their industry.

     One such actress, who currently bestrides her trade, is Jennifer Lawrence. This young superstar has graced some of the best movies of the last decade – and her performance was usually the jewel in the movie’s crown. (Watch Winter’s Bone or Silver Linings Playbook for examples.) Off-screen she’s struck me as normally American: i.e., a person of good sense who takes responsibility for her own decisions and actions, rather than one who buys into the PC nonsense about “structural oppression” of women (or anyone else) by “the white capitalist patriarchy.” Our Celebritarian era is improved by figures like that.

     So it made me unhappy to read the following:

     Reading the logline we previously reported for The Rosie Project may not have seemed like a problem when we picked up on it a couple of months ago, however that all changed after Lawrence's essay on gender imbalance. The moment Jennifer Lawrence put the industry on notice, was the moment the Richard Linklater project's story of a man trying to find his perfectly defined woman became something that didn't sound like a Jennifer Lawrence picture.

     Lawrence’s “essay,” which strikes me more as a squib of irritation with herself, can be found here. It does include the following:

     It’s hard for me to speak about my experience as a working woman because I can safely say my problems aren’t exactly relatable. When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn’t get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early. I didn’t want to keep fighting over millions of dollars that, frankly, due to two franchises, I don’t need. (I told you it wasn’t relatable, don’t hate me).

     ...which, despite the “lucky people with dicks” bit, makes Lawrence appear aware that her shortcomings as a negotiator, if any, are her responsibility. However, it concludes as follows:

     Again, this might have NOTHING to do with my vagina, but I wasn’t completely wrong when another leaked Sony email revealed a producer referring to a fellow lead actress in a negotiation as a “spoiled brat.” For some reason, I just can’t picture someone saying that about a man.

     Dear Jennifer, while men are seldom called “spoiled brats,” we’re frequently called much worse things – things no woman is ever called.

     We who have admired Jennifer Lawrence and appreciate her acting prowess should hope this will pass.

Movie Recommendation: The Arroyo

The Arroyo, from Declaration Entertainment

Declaration Entertainment is Bill Whittle's gamble on a chancy proposition, to wit: That there are enough Americans unhappy about Political Correctness's dominance of American entertainment, particularly American cinema, to step up as "citizen producers" of productions with a more conservative, more patriotic subtext. DE's first feature-length production, The Arroyo, is now available on DVD.

Gentle Reader, please take the following from one who started out as a doubter: it's a winner.

You're unlikely to recognize any of the cast members. You might not be familiar with director Jeremy Boreing. You'll note the near total absence of special effects. All of this is to be expected from an indie movie; their budgets typically won't accommodate big names or big CG effects. But you'll be impressed nonetheless.

The Arroyo, a small movie in most ways, has a big theme: the need for ordinary Americans to rise to the challenges of justice that "our" government and "our" law enforcers appear to disdain. The plot centers on the habitual violation of our southern border by drug traffickers and illegal-alien-shepherding "coyotes." Protagonist Jim Weatherford takes up arms against those who use his land as a conduit for their vile businesses, and thereby enmeshes himself, his family, and his neighbors in a duel with a drug cartel and its utterly amoral enforcer.

The direction is straightforward. The script is unornamented by grandiloquence. The acting is simple and unaffected. The scenery is that of southern Arizona. And the combination comes near to perfection.

Highly recommended, as is signing up as a DE "citizen producer."