Celebrate 10 years of Warrior Writers in Philly, Nov 17-19!
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Wednesday, November 01, 2017
11/8 Ralph Nader & Charlie Derber, Trumping Trump, Old South Church 4:30 p.m. (Wednesday)
11/8 Ralph Nader & Charlie Derber, Trumping Trump, Old South Church 4:30 p.m. (Wednesday)
Trumping Trump: New Directions and Waves of Resistance
Nader & Derber - Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 4:00 p.m.
Old South Church (Gordon Chapel), 645 Boylston Street, (Copley Square)
Boston, MA 02116
Ralph Nader, in a rare Boston appearance, joins activist scholar and public
sociologist Charles Derber in a public conversation about resistance in the
Trump era. Both will speak to the content of their recent books and public
initiatives to resist the current regime by universalizing resistance
across movements. Although not completely identical in approaches both
thinkers turn to public opinion and identify a progressive majority whose
values and preferences contradict both the Trump agenda and the
alternatives proposed by mainstream Democrats.
For more information: see http://UniversalizingResistance.org, @
universalizenow <https://twitter.com/universalizenow>
RSVP on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/events/140432129918012> (not
required, free admission on a first come, first serve basis, doors open at
3:45 p.m.)
Program: 4:00 - 4:45 Speaker Presentations; 4:45 - 5:15 Discussion; 5:15 -
5:30 Closing Comments
This event is free and open to the public; donations may be offered to help
defray venue and publicity costs.
Contact Suren (suren@fairjobs.org), or Jason(jlow19@gmail.com) for more
information.
Sponsor list: in formation.
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Nader & Derber - Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 4:00 p.m.
Old South Church (Gordon Chapel), 645 Boylston Street, (Copley Square)
Boston, MA 02116
Ralph Nader, in a rare Boston appearance, joins activist scholar and public
sociologist Charles Derber in a public conversation about resistance in the
Trump era. Both will speak to the content of their recent books and public
initiatives to resist the current regime by universalizing resistance
across movements. Although not completely identical in approaches both
thinkers turn to public opinion and identify a progressive majority whose
values and preferences contradict both the Trump agenda and the
alternatives proposed by mainstream Democrats.
For more information: see http://UniversalizingResistance.org, @
universalizenow <https://twitter.com/universalizenow>
RSVP on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/events/140432129918012> (not
required, free admission on a first come, first serve basis, doors open at
3:45 p.m.)
Program: 4:00 - 4:45 Speaker Presentations; 4:45 - 5:15 Discussion; 5:15 -
5:30 Closing Comments
This event is free and open to the public; donations may be offered to help
defray venue and publicity costs.
Contact Suren (suren@fairjobs.org), or Jason(jlow19@gmail.com) for more
information.
Sponsor list: in formation.
______________________________
Act-MA mailing list
Act-MA@act-ma.org
http://act-ma.org/mailman/listinfo/act-ma_act-ma.org
To set options or unsubscribe
http://act-ma.org/mailman/options/act-ma_act-ma.org
In Boston - No War on North Korea! Save the Iran peace deal! End the Endless Wars
No War on North Korea! Save the Iran peace deal! End the Endless Wars
November 8 @ 5:15 pm - 6:15 pm
Rally at Park Street downtown Boston
Local peace and antiwar groups will rally to protest the war policies of President Trump. Speakers will include South Korean born journalist Tim Shorrock who will describe how diplomacy with North Korea can work.
In addition, activists will address how Congress must stop Trump’s reckless effort to destroy the Iran peace deal, threatening yet another war. Ending the endless wars will require cuts in the huge military budget and justice at home.
Trump’s belligerent rhetoric continues to inflame the tense situation in the Korean peninsula as he even belittled the negotiating efforts of his own secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. The US military buildup continues with joint maritime exercises with South Korea and plans to evacuate US personnel in case of a North Korean attack. Meanwhile, China, Russia and most other countries call for lessening of tension
This has to stop! What can you do?
Sponsored by United for Justice with Peace, American Friends Service Committee – northeast region, Massachusetts Peace Action, local peace groups.
Tim Shorrock will give an indoor talk following the rally.
From: Raymond Ajemian [mailto:rpajemian@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:11 PM
To: Paul Shannon <PShannon@afsc.org>
Cc: jsbrummer1944@gmail.com
Subject: Re: invite to Nov. 8 korea rally
Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:11 PM
To: Paul Shannon <PShannon@afsc.org>
Cc: jsbrummer1944@gmail.com
Subject: Re: invite to Nov. 8 korea rally
I'm fine with it Paul. Problem, though, for me personally is that I have to give a
lecture in Middleboro at 6:30. I could never make it. We can put it out, though, and
try to get people to come.
Ray
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The Con Is The Con-With Kevin Spacey’s The Usual Suspects In Mind
The Con Is The Con-With Kevin Spacey’s The Usual Suspects In Mind
DVD Review
By Zack James
The Usual Suspects, starring Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, 1995
In my old neighborhood at least among the corner boys of my own generation that I hung around with at the variety store that was our “headquarters” everybody loved a con man, if, naturally, not being conned. You know we loved guys who could spin up a tale out pure cloth and produce some gold, dinero, moola for their efforts (there may have been female con artists but I don’t recall any since they were spending their time leading us a merry chase in a different way and if that was the case then almost every gal around the town was a con artist). So Kevin Spacey as the beautifully characterized “Verbal” Kint in the film under review, The Usual Suspects, would have been worshipped as a living god back in the day. No false idols need apply as we lighted the candles to one of our own.
Here’s why. After a horrendous ship’s explosion one of the two survivors of what apparently was a gang war one Verbal Kint was being interrogated by the feds, by a customs agent since there was suspicion that the war had been over drugs or some other contraband. Through a series of flashbacks Verbal leads the agent on a verbal merry chase about what had occurred at the docks. He had been among five “usual” suspects who were in a police line-up in New York who had through a series of adventures, successful adventures in grabbling dough, and had been “hired” by an unknown master criminal to do some work for him after his agent made a very forceful case for why they should do so if they valued their lives, and of anybody even remotely related to them. After initially balking at the deal they took it on when the guy who seemed to be the leader of the group, Dean Keaton, played by Gabriel Byrnes, committed to the caper. They went to L.A. to meet their adversaries and consummate the deal. Then all hell broke loose on the ship and everything and everybody went boom boom.
Everybody but Verbal who lived to tell the tale. See here is the beauty of a guy like Verbal. He put himself out in public as a small time con, a “crip” nobody (that crippled up part as it turned out he was faking, another beautiful move) in the company of serious desperados like Keaton and the other hombres so nobody caught the mis-directions he was feeding everybody from his comrades to the fuzz. He wove a big-time tall tale to the agent about an evil Mister Big who had been manipulating everything and whom when Verbal “confessed” who it was turned out to the now deceased Keaton. Except, well, except that well-woven tale was all fluff because Mister Big was none other than guess who. Yeah Verbal walked into the sunset with all the dough, with immunity and with all the feds scratching their heads. Hail Verbal.
It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van Zandt’s "A Far Cry From Dead" (1999)-A CD Review
It Ain’t The Singer It’s the
Song-Townes Van Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review
CD Review
By Zack James
A Far Cry From Dead, Townes Van Zandt,
Arista Records, 1999
[The world of on-line editors and named
bloggers is actually rather small when you consider what cyberspace can allow
the average ingenious citizen to do. I have been highlighting some of the
conversations between long-time music critic Seth Garth and some of his growing
up in Riverdale (that is in Massachusetts west of Boston) friends as he/they
discuss various older CDs which reflect a certain period in their then youth
lives growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Part of this latest series
of sketches by me is based on information that Seth has provided comes under
the sign of the Summer of Love, 1967 out on the West Coast, especially in the
San Francisco and Bay area.
I am a bit too young by about a decade
to have had anything but a nodding acquaintance with the Summer of Love
experience. That era’s music did not form the basis for my musical interests
although I heard it around the house from older siblings but rather the music
of the 1970s which when I get a little bored with book reviews or general
cultural pieces I write about for various publications including this one I
write some music reviews. Knowing that let me take a step back so that you will
understand why I made that statement about the review world is really a small
place.
As I said earlier I was a little too
young to appreciate the music of the Summer of Love first hand but my eldest
brother Alex was not. Had in fact gone out to the West Coast from our growing
up neighborhood the Acre section of North Adamsville that summer along with a
bunch of other guys that he had hung around with since highs school. He wound
up staying in that area, delving into every imaginable cultural experience from
drugs to sex to music, for a couple of years before heading back to his big
career expectations-the law, being a lawyer. The original idea to head west
that summer was not his but that of his closest friend, the late Peter Paul
Markin forever known in town and by me as the Scribe (how he got that is a long
story and not germane to the Seth sage). The Scribe had dropped out of college
in Boston earlier in 1967 when he sensed that what Alex said he had been
yakking about weekly for years that a “new breeze,” his, the Scribe’s term, was
going to take youth nation (and maybe the whole nation) by a storm and headed
west. A couple of months later he came back and dragged Alex and about six
others back west with him. And the rest is history.
I mean that “rest is history” part
literally since earlier this year (2017) Alex, now for many years a big
high-priced lawyer after sowing his wild oats and get “smartened up” as he
called it once the bloom of the counter-culture they were trying to create
faded had gone to a business conference out in San Francisco and while there
had seen on a passing bus an advertisement for something called the Summer of Love Experience at the de
Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. He flipped out, maybe some latent recoil from
those long ago drugs, and spend one “hooky” afternoon mesmerized by the exhibit
of poster art, hippie clothing, photographs and music. That was not all though.
When he got back to Boston he contacted all the old neighborhood guys still
standing who had gone out there in 1967 to put a small memoir book together.
One night they all agreed to do the project, do the project in honor of the
late Scribe who had pushed them out there in some cases kicking and screaming
(not Alex at the time). That is when Alex, knowing that I have had plenty of
experience doing such projects contacted me to edit and get the thing
published. Which I did without too much trouble.
The publication and distribution of
that book while not extensive got around to plenty of people who were involved
in the Summer of Love, or who knew the Scribe. And that is where Seth Garth
comes in. While he was not part of the Summer of Love experience he did drift
out west after college to break with his Riverdale growing up home in the early
1970s. As a writer he looked for work among the various alternative presses out
there and wound up working first as a free-lancer and then as staff as a music
critic for the now long defunct The Eye which
operated out of Oakland then. Guess who also was working as a free-lancer there
as well after he got out of the Army. Yes, the Scribe who was doing a series of
articles on guys like him who had come back from Vietnam and couldn’t relate to
the “real world” and had established what amounted to alternative communities
along the railroad tracks and under the bridges of Southern California. So yeah
it is a small world in the writing for money racket. Here is what Seth has to
say right now. Zack James]
Recently in reviewing a bluesy CD by
outlaw cowboy singer Willie Nelson (at least that designation was the basis for
my introduction to him back in the early 1980s) I mentioned that I was reminded
by my oldest brother Alex’s high school friend, Seth Garth, who like me became
a writer and later a music critic for many alternative newspapers and rock and roll
scholarly journals and publications, that back in those late 1970s and early
1980s I was drawn to such outlaw cowboy music that had broken sharply with the
traditional stuff out of Nashville that I could not abide., always associated
with the Grand Ole Opry and stuff like that, redneck music.
I also noted that just then, just that
late 1970s, early 1980s, rock and roll was taking one of its various detours, a
detour like in the late 1950s when the soul went out of rock for a while before
the storm of the British invasion and “acid” rock saved it which I could not
follow, folk music, the social protest kind anyway that had attracted me in my youth
was fading fast even among aficionados as more mundane concerns filled that
niche, and the blues was losing its star mostly black performers by the day and
the younger crowd, mostly black, was leaving the field to white aficionados
like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn and heading to what would become
hip-hop tradition so I was up for listening to something different. Something
that might catch my ear for roots-based music, the music of the “big tent”
American songbook beyond Tin Pan Alley.
What Seth hadn’t remembered was the
genesis of that outlaw cowboy moment. My finding of an old used record by
artist under review Townes Van Zandt at Cheapo’s Records in Cambridge (still
there) of all places to find such music. And of course once I get on to a sound
I like I tend to look just like every other writer, writer for publications with
dead-lines, for everything I can find by the artist (film-maker or writer too).
Done. But more than in that outlaw moment I actually saw Townes in person at,
well, several places over a couple of years, but all of them in the heart of
“outlaw country” music, ah, Harvard Square. So in those days I was not alone in
looking for a new sound since all the venues were sold out.
What drew me Townes then, and drew me
to this CD recently although it had been put out in 1999 a few years after his
untimely death in 1996 was he command of lyrics that “spoke” to me, spoke some
kind of truth of things that were bothering me just then like lost loves, not
understanding why those loves were lost, and about just trying to get through
the day. Yeah, that gravelly voice on that first record kind of fit my mood
then, and it still sounds good although unlike that first live in Houston album
this one is much more a produced product of the studio. Still the searing
burning messages and lyrics are there for to help you get through those tough
days that creep up and pile up on you. Listen up.
The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “The Gambler And The Lady” (1952)
The Golden Age Of The
B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “The Gambler And The Lady” (1952)
DVD Review
By Film Critic Emeritus
Sam Lowell
The Gambler and the
Lady, starring Dane Clark, Naomi Chance, Hammer Productions, 1952
You know I really only
have myself and my furtive furious need to take a “run” when I find something
of interest to review and need to go overboard to cover every bet. Been that
way since I was a kid and even in retirement and not having to face the daily grind
has not deterred me from this overkill. The overkill in question is my interest
in of all things a bunch of B-film noirs, B at best, produced over in England
during the early 1950s. Starting out when I came across a first DVD at a book
sale at the local library I thought that was it until looking at dreaded (on
this occasion) Wikipedia I found
there were ten in the series. So once started here I doing another one. And
guess what while some have a certain merit none is going to break me from my
classics-that is for sure. But enough of my woes as I trek another offering out
for your perusal.
*****
I am now deep, too deep
but also too deep to given my personality stop now, into my retro-reviews of
the classic Hammer Productions film noir
in which an American producer, the well-known Robert Lippert and his
organization, contracted with that organization to do a series of such efforts,
the now woeful ten films, using known, although maybe fading American film
stars, down on their uppers film stars, backed by English character actors to
do the whole thing on the cheap. My whole operation started the day I went to a
book sale at the local library and spied a Hammer Production DVD which led to a
review of the film Terror Street
(distributed in Britain as 36 Hours
which actually made more sense since the star had that amount of time to find
the murderer of his wife otherwise he was going
to be taking the big-step off for it and would not have worry about the
time at all and there was no particular terror that I saw going on) and
subsequently another entry The Black
Glove (distributed in Britain as Face
The Music probably a better title since the plot involved a well-known
trumpet player turning from searching for that high white note everybody in his
profession is looking for to amateur private detective once a lady friend is
murdered and he looked for all the world like the natural fall guy to take the
big step-off for it) I noted that long time readers of this space know, or
should be presumed to know, of my long-standing love affair with film noir. Since any attentive reader will
note this is my sixth such review of B-film noirs and hence proof positive that
I am now in deep and that I still have the bug.
I mentioned in that
review some of the details of my introduction to the classic age of film noir in this country in the age of black
and white film in the 1940s and 1950s when I would sneak over to the now long
gone and replaced by condos Strand Theater in growing up town North Adamsville
and spent a long double feature Saturday afternoon watching complete with a
stretched out bag of popcorn (or I think it is safe to say it now since the
statute of limitation on the “crime” must surely have passed snuck in candy
bars bought at Harold’s Variety Store on the way to the theater). I would watch
some then current production from Hollywood or some throwback from the 1940s
which Mister Cadger, the affable owner who readily saw that I was an aficionado
who would pepper him with questions about when such and such a noir was to be featured would let me
sneak in for kid’s ticket prices long after I reached the adult price stage at
twelve I think it was, would show in retrospective to cut down on expenses in
tough times by avoiding having to pay for first –run movies all the time. (And
once told me to my embarrassment that he made more money on the re-runs than
first runs and even more money on the captive audience buying popcorn and candy
bars-I wonder if he knew my candy bar scam.)
That is where the bulk
of my noir experiences were formed but I should mention in passing as well that
on infrequent occasions I would attend a nighttime showing (paying full price
after age twelve since parents were presumed to have the money to spring for full prices) with my parents if my strict
Irish Catholic mother (strict on the mortal sin punishment for what turned out
to have been minor or venial sins after letting my older brothers, four, count
them four, get away with murder and assorted acts of mayhem) thought the film
passed the Legion of Decency standard that we had to stand up and take a yearly
vow to uphold in church led by the priest exhorting to sin no more and I could
under the plotline without fainting (or getting “aroused” by the fetching
femmes).
Readers should be aware from
prior series that when I found some run of films that had a similar background
I would “run the table” on the efforts. Say a run of Raymond Chandler film
adaptations of his Phillip Marlowe crime novels or Dashiell Hammett’s seemingly
endless The Thin Man series. That
“run the table” idea is the case with a recently obtained cache of
British-centered 1950s film noirs put
out by the Hammer Production Company as they tried to cash in on the popularity
of the genre for the British market That
Terror Street mentioned at the
beginning had been the first review in this series (each DVD by the way
contains two films the second film Danger
On The Wings in that DVD not worthy of review) and now the film under
review under review the overblown if ominously titled The Gambler and the Lady (distributed in England, Britain, Great
Britain, United Kingdom or whatever that isle calls itself these Brexit days as
unlike others in the series by the same title although one cannot say much for
their choice of titles under any circumstance) is the sixth such effort. On the
basis of these seven viewings (remember one didn’t make the film noir aficionado cut so that tells you
something right away how bad it must have been to take the toss in the B-world)
I will have to admit they are clearly B-productions none of them would make
anything but a second or third tier rating. (I have already wailed in my
introduction about my extreme tiredness over the whole project already.)
After all as mentioned
before in that first review look what they were up against. For example who
could forget up on that big screen for all the candid world to see a sadder but
wiser seen it all, heard it all Humphrey Bogart at the end of The Maltese
Falcon telling all who would listen that he, he Sam Spade, no stranger to
the seamy side and cutting corners life, had had to send femme fatale Mary Astor his snow white flame over, sent her to the
big step-off once she spilled too much blood, left too long a trail of corpses,
for the stuff of dreams over some damn bird. Or cleft-chinned barrel-chested
Robert Mitchum keeping himself out of trouble in some dink town as a
respectable citizen including snagging a girl next door sweetie but knowing he
was doomed, out of luck, and had had to cash his check for his seedy past
taking a few odd bullets from his former femme
fatale trigger-happy girlfriend Jane Greer once she knew he had
double-crossed her to the coppers in Out
Of The Past.
Ditto watching the
horror on smart guy gangster Eddie Mars face after being outsmarted because he
had sent a small time grafter to his doom when prime private detective Phillip
Marlowe, spending the whole film trying to do the right thing for an old man with
a couple of wild daughters, ordered him out the door to face the
rooty-toot-toot of his own gunsels who expected Marlowe to be coming out in The Big Sleep. How about song and dance
man Dick Powell turning Raymond Chandler private eye helping big galoot Moose
Malone trying to find his Velma and getting nothing but grief and a few stray
conks on the head chasing Claire Trevor down when she didn’t want to be found
having moved uptown with the swells in Murder,
My Sweet. Or finally, tall lanky and deceptive private eye Dane Jones
chasing an elusive black box ready to explode the world being transported
across Europe by evil incarnate if gorgeous Marla Sands in European Express who would stop at nothing including whoring
although in those days that would have been inferred not shown to get what she
wanted. Those were some of the beautiful and still beautiful classics whose
lines you can almost hear anytime you mention the words film noir. The entries in this series are definitively not ones
with memorable lines or plots.
In the old days before I
retired I always liked to sketch out a film’s plotline to give the reader the
“skinny” on what the action was so that he or she could see where I was leading
them. I will continue that old tradition here to make my point about the lesser
production values of the Hammer products. In the Gambler
and the Lady not surprisingly the two main characters are Jim, an ex-pat
American gambler from nowhere seeking in Merry Olde England to get in tight
with the Mayfair swells and Lady Susan, played by Naomi Chance, as the Mayfair
swell, well, Lady. Jim had clawed and climbed his way from nothing to the top
of the gambling rooms in London and intended to stay there-with plenty of
backup to enforce his will. But instead of craving more dough like a real
racketeer like Johnny Rocco in Key Largo
Jim has big ideas about crushing high society not knowing that those bastards
are worse than the scumbags he had to deal with back in the say. Christ Jim
even had some old biddy teaching him table manners, you know what spoon or folk
to use with which course, Jesus.
One of Jim’s clients, a
Lord no less, bounced a check and that is where the trouble began. One of Jim’s
boys got rough without permission (Jim didn’t even want a dead-beat Mayfair
swell touched-double Jesus). This Lord had a sister though, the Lady Susan in
question and she and Jim became against all good sense by either party an item.
(Not without the others swells ripping him apart for trying to crash the gate
to their class.) Everything was going fine until two things happened. One some
foreign tough guys wanted to crash the London gambling scene and before it was
over Jim had cashed his chips and sold out to them in order to get “legit.” And
second he invested all his dough in a project he got conned into by that
deadbeat Lord and his father with a little assist from Lady Sue. That thing
turned out to be a Ponzi scheme and Jim went belly up. But not before an irate
ex-heavy put the bad news on him and an ex-girlfriend who was crazy for him
tried to take him down in her speeding car. All this to grab the lapels of
decadent nobility gone wrong. Jim, I thought you were a smart guy.
This one almost got that
Wings of Danger treatment mentioned
above, a non-review, but with an actor like Dane Clark who seems to have been
down on his uppers more than most of those fading American stars recruited for
this series since he is in at least three and a couple of minutes on my hands I
figured once again what the hell.
Better that Terror Street but not as good as The Black Glove although it also can’t
get pass that Blue Gardenia second
tier in the film noir pantheon. Sorry
Hammer.
A View From The Left-Self-Determination and Socialist Revolution
A View From The Left-Self-Determination and Socialist Revolution
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Hell No They Ain’t No Angels-Humphrey Bogart’s We’re No Angels
Hell No They Ain’t No Angels-Humphrey Bogart’s We’re No Angels
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
We’re No Angels, starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov,
Aldo Ray
Over the past couple of years I have been running the table
on Humphrey Bogart films, as an expression of the kind of guy, cinematic guy
anyway, that I could relate to as a kid (and still admire in certain ways). You
know a guy that no one would dare throw sand in their face, certainly no woman,
not because of his physical size so much as that he had a look that if somebody
was so foolhardy as to do such a deed they would find themselves in a bad place
on some dark, foggy night when they least expect to find themselves facing his
personal bastinado. A guy not looking for trouble but not ducking it either,
not ducking even some punk hood, all what did they call it back then, yeah, all
“gaudy and show” with some dangling hot gun that he would be more than happy to
take away from such a miscreant, and the punk, being a punk would have to take
it, have to take it or else. And speaking of dames, twists, frills, frails or
whatever you called women, good-looking femme
fatale-type women in your old corner boy night, including good-looking
dames who might be so foolhardy as to throw sand in a guy’s face (not literal
sand but fog-bound sand and story to mix a guy up beyond belief), a guy who was
not afraid to take a little gaff for some twisty dame who gave him that come
hither look. A guy ready to chase some windmills for that look just to see
where it led. Best of all a guy not afraid to run the rack on some bad guy (or
a good guy who was looking to turn bad) just because he was a bad guy, maybe
kept some old man awake at night, worrying, or some frail tied up to his
rackets, that kind of thing.
Now some of those attributes might not mean a lot, might in
fact be kind of old-fashioned, kind of rough male of the species over the top
these days in some circles in polite Western society but there you have it. For
a time that running the table included reviews of Bogie as the hard-nosed, take
no prisoners, give no quarter and take none shoot first and ask questions later
mad monk gangster Duke Mantee who really was a man of his deadly word in the
matchup between primitive man and the increasingly effete intellectual modern
world man featured in The Petrified
Forest and the take no nonsense world-weary, world-wary detective Sam Spade
ready at the drop of a hat to either chase some stuff of dreams windmills or to
put the handcuffs on tight for some wayward femme
with that come hither look and that jasmine scent or whatever the hell she was
wearing in the film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Reviews as well of the jaded ex-pat (who had
that funny little prior resume point of having been a “premature anti-fascist”
in the 1930s struggle in Spain) “welcome to the struggle” ready to take on the
whole German Army once he got religion and once she, and you know the she even
if she did not have the price of that jasmine scent, for the seven thousandth
time got under his skin Rick of Rick’s Café in Casablanca, and, oh yeah, along that same vein the knight in
shining armor, or better because more useful sea-worthy boat captain ready to
take on the whole Vichy French apparatus in the wartime (World War II version)
to save a damsel in distress, a dame who would have gotten under anybody’s skin
once she asked for that off-hand cigarette-lighting match and gave that come hither
whistle, in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have Or Have Not. And to give a couple more examples for those
who don’t get the allure a couple of reviews of Bogie as the resourceful but
also world-weary, world wary detective Phillip Marlowe who keeps the dreams of
an old man alive (and his wayward daughters, including one who took dead aim at
him as a windmill chaser and the other just dead aim, out of trouble) in taking
a punk mobster down to size in the film adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and as a “don’t leave your buddy behind” true blue Army
guy looking for the bad guys who tried to blocked him from doing just that in Dead Reckoning. So with just those few
examples you can see that they were all films where Bogie exhibited certain
manly traits that were (and some may still be) worth emulating. And then we
come to the film under review, We’re No
Angels, and the guy switches up on us. Turns into a Good Samaritan, of
sorts, an ironic one splashed with a little humorous bend too.
What gives? What gives, just to give a snapshot of what this
film is about, is that Bogie is one of three hardened convicts (the other two
played Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray), French convicts, hard cases all (murderers,
career criminals) who are doing hard time at that little maximum prison resort
in the Caribbean, Devil’s Island. But being resourceful, especially around
Christmas time, they escaped to the town nearby with plans to set sail for
France and to take up their old lives as carefree guys once again, maybe a
heist here, a con there, simple stuff. But first they need dough, plenty of
dough, and some new duds since to grab that departing ship requires not just
dough but a certain look, a look like you did not just escape from high security
Devil’s Island. So they planned to rob a
clothing merchant to give them that cash, and throw in the duds while they were
at it. Turned out though, as the film slowly developed, the merchant was no
good as a businessman having failed in France and been sent out to the
boondocks by his greedy rich cousin, a nefarious relative as it turned out, no
question, had a wife, a fetching wife, no question, who stood by him (they
don’t always, the fetching ones), and a sweet teenage daughter, all betwixt and
between, who was in love with, well, you know how teenagers are, in love with
being in love.
So our hardened criminals, our nefarious bad guys slowly turned
things around and went from attempted robberies and petty pilfering of civilian
outfits to Good Samaritans and help the merchant (by getting rid of, getting
rid in a very final way, the greedy cousin who had come from France for an
inspection), the wife (still standing by her husband to Bogie’s chagrin), and
that smitten daughter (who fell in and out of love with one guy, and then in
love with another, like I said a typical teenager) being witty, ironic, and
funny by turns, especially Bogie. And get this, once they have spread their
Christmas cheer they head back to jail, no, head back to hellhole Devil’s
Island. What the heck is going on with our man Bogie. Give me Duke Mantee who
would just as soon put a slug in a guy as look at him (and does in that endless
cinematic battle between the primitive instincts of man and the modern attempts
to curb those baser instincts which got a thorough-going test in the real world
of the 1930s and 1940s) or Sam Spade who turned over, once he took a cold
shower to wipe that come hither look out of his mind and opened a window to let
the city air merge and melt that jasmine scent, that filled with the stuff of
dreams femme fatale who just so happened to have an itchy trigger-finger to the
coppers without a tear. Give me that Rick of Rick’s Café who gave up his honey,
without or without the jasmine scent as a lure that was just the way it was
with them, for the good of the cause or that made of sterner stuff
skirt-chasing Captain Morgan once he saw she could sing too, sing and take a
few knocks without crying about the matter. Okay, and give me that handy Philip
Marlowe, avenger of sullen women’s sicknesses, avenger of old men’s broken dreams,
avenger of wrong track turned right femmes, avenger of small time right gees
and grifters by bad hombres who put paid to the career of one Eddie Mars or the
stick to his guns, undeterred, inquisitive, and vengeful Rip not leaving his
Army buddy behind, or anything to sullen his memory. You take him in We’re No Angels, okay.
From the Archives of Marxism-Friedrich Engels' “From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom”
Workers Vanguard No. 1096
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23 September 2016
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From the Archives of Marxism-Friedrich Engels' “From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom”
We publish below excerpts from Friedrich Engels’ 1880 work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. In explaining scientific socialism, Engels makes clear that only through the conquest of power by the working class and the expropriation of the capitalist class can the benefits of science, technology and education be available to all, laying the material basis for the full liberation of humanity. The excerpts below are taken from the Marx and Engels Selected Works (Progress Publishers, 1976).
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