Thoughts Upon The Demise Of A Poker Princess-Jessica Chastain’s “Molly’s Game” (2017)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

Thoughts Upon The Demise Of A Poker Princess-Jessica Chastain’s “Molly’s Game” (2017)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell, former film editor of American Left History and of the American Film Gazette now emeritus at the latter and a contributing reviewer at the former if anybody needs my credential, my professional CV if you like

Molly’s Game, starring Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner but he is only window dressing on this one because the former two carry this film, 2017

I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore. Yes, I know that these are famous words that Peter Finch uttered to a sullen world back in the 1970s as a newscaster in the definitive film Network. They fit the occasion however since whatever ailed Brother Finch in those times has got me is a serious snit. As I made sure that I mentioned after my by-line space, a by-line that I have labored in the vineyards of the film industry, book industry too, hell, the art industry when I needed fast money to pay back alimony or the parcel of kids, nice kids, that my three ex-wives and I raised needed college money and until recently, very recently that designation had not been challenged, had not been sullied by young upstarts trying to make a name for themselves now that I am no longer reviewing on a daily basis-praise be.   

      

If the kids want war, hell, I am more than willing to oblige since we seem to have gone down the slippery slope away from social cohesion and not just of account of the Bozo who is running the asylum in Washington at the moment. Over the past few weeks two young, up and coming journalists, reviewers I guess they would call themselves and from what I have read of their reviews they may in fact have promising futures-if they ever get their facts right and maybe stop hanging on my old friend Seth Garth’s every word like it had come down from the mountain-have flat out attempted to besmirch, yes, besmirch is the only word that comes readily to mind my reputation. Everyone knows, or should know, should be assumed to know, that this review business, film, books, music, culture is a tough racket, is as one of the youngsters wrote a “dog eat dog” environment and I will admit, admit freely that when I was young and hungry I was as apt to try to cut up my competitors, hell, my fellow writers wherever I landed as anybody else-as long as I got my facts right. Just ask Seth Garth who still carries the scars from our battles as I do his.         

What these two writers, hell, what Sarah Lemoyne and subsequently young Will Bradley have been running around erroneously trying to sell a distracted public is that back in the day, back after I got my coveted by-line I started “mailing it in,” started having stringers, mostly young fresh females from one of the Seven Sisters colleges that Allan loved to hire to give the place some swag and some eye candy when there were mostly older guys writing their brains out here write my reviews for me. Still worse have accused me of, when desperate, taking whatever press releases the studio public relations departments were putting out, clipping off the tops and sending the rest off as my review so that I could keep drinking and cavorting with women which I freely admit I liked, still like to do-with one woman anyway. Will picked up on these Sarah comments and extended it to his view that while I indeed was the master of the film noir genre in my time after my major definitive book on the subject came out, a book which one and all, even these pups continue to recognize as the “go to” book on film noir I didn’t have a blessed original idea. Had gone the college professor route (and me without even a college degree to my name) and lived off that one big idea through a fistful of conferences, lectures and speaking engagements.

That last comment was what pretty much broke the camel’s back, no, that and the snide insinuation by Will that the only reason that I still was being published on a regular basis and syndicated a few places was that I had been the key vote that ejected my old friend Allan Jackson from the site manager position at this publication and that new manager Greg Green “owed” his job to my decisive intervention. Needless to say with all of that in the basket I immediately went to Greg and asked for the next available review so that I could respond to these wild and wooly children. In the interest of fairness Greg agreed (and not as I am sure will become the “real” reason among certain youngsters that I had “bought” him) and so I got this freaking suck-ass review of Molly’s Game about some smarty-pants ex-jock, played by comely Jessica Chastain, who landed on her feet for a while running on the cuff poker games for rich and famous Alpha males until she got caught in the “feds” bind,” got caught holding the bag. Everybody knows my thing is film noir and other older stuff but I had to take this stinker, well, not stinker because the acting is good and the story line is kind of interesting but who could really care about the trials and tribulations of some over-the-hill jock who couldn’t make the cut, ice-skating, no, I think it was free-form skiing something like that.

I will get to the damn thing in my own good time and still I have probably already given you enough of the “skinny,” the theme if you don’t know what skinny is for you to judge right now whether you want to spend a couple of hours watching the drama unfold. My long-time companion Laura Perkins who writes here occasionally loved it, maybe because of the strong acting by Jessica somebody who played Molly Bloom (yeah, everybody who is anybody except maybe Will and Sarah will gladly steal whatever they can from James Joyce even names named) but I got drowsy about half way through. Like I said this is about setting the record straight about my now besmirched career as about reviewing this baffling film. In any case since Greg has again in the interest of fairness told me that I will have another review to tackle Will Bradley’s allegations I am on the scent of one Sarah Lemoyne today who claimed in her cherished review of the original Star Wars episode from 1977 that she had researched her allegations about my so-called “mailing it in” practices. (Jesus was Greg serious giving that old tattered episode and series to her-hell I rejected doing it out of hand back then when I worked for the legendary Cal Clark over at the Gazette as so much wasted soda and popcorn on Pa’s credit card.)        

       

I accuse, yeah, like Emil Zola in anti-Semite Dreyfus times who one can also fruitfully steal from in a pinch. From what I can gather, and she should be shame-faced but probably won’t be if it is true, Sarah’s source for her accusations was, is one Leslie Dumont who after years at Women Today where she had a big and deserved by-line came back here to do occasional writing in her retirement. Hell, I was the one, along with her then boyfriend Josh Breslin (who in the now obligatory interest of transparency also writes here now), who got her to apply for that Women Today job when Allan Jackson was only taking care of good old boys and she was wasting her time as a stringer. A stringer for me on occasion.

Here is what Sarah didn’t bother to ask about, didn’t even probably have a clue to ask about since they don’t teach this kind of thing in those vaunted Seven Sisters and journalism graduate schools she attended is that despite her boyfriend Josh Leslie was “making a play for me.” Truth, ask her, ask Josh. I admit I asked Leslie to write a few pieces, maybe half a dozen, not a million like Sarah implied before I realized that she was interested in me romantically. I will further admit that in those days I was in an alcoholic/drug daze half the time along with half the guys on the staff, not Josh though, not that I remember. But then I was going through the last phases of my first divorce, was playing around and had no desire to upset any more apple-carts. Sarah, anybody looking for truth check it out. I prided myself on my reviews, saw my by-line not as a privilege but an obligation to do the best I could even under those hazes.

As for the allegations that I would take studio public relations department press releases and sent them to Allan as Sam’s pure gold. Sure I did that for some, some turkeys like The Return Of Godzilla, Sandy Dee Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Benny’s Beach Blanket Bingo, stuff that should never have seen the light of day, stuff that any self-respecting journalist would take a flyer on. What Sarah forgot to ask Leslie, or Leslie “neglected” to mention was that everybody did it, everybody who saw a turkey and would rather face Satan himself in all his fire than have to write two words of original material on the damn thing. And that included Leslie when she went to Women Today. Ask her.  If that isn’t enough egg on your face for one day then come at me again. Yeah, this is a cutthroat business, always has been and always will be. Tell your boy Will I am coming for him next.          

Oh yeah, the film. Like I said not my cup of tea and maybe a little long-winded going through the legal process which Molly Bloom, the notorious poker princess, the notorious real-life poker princess according to the cover blurbs and the front end film introduction although I admit although I love games of chance, like the horse too I didn’t know who she was, had to face before a little rough justice. Not film noir rough justice with some avenging angel private detective clearing the way for her taking some slugs if necessary but a good and capable lawyer who gave as good and he got. Charlie Jaffey, played by Idris Elba. He measured up to Molly’s expectations of what she would have been like as a Harvard Law School lawyer if she hadn’t been waylaid by that whole mock skiing jock stuff which went bust before she could hop on the gravy train. Unemployed and unemployable since who wants snow bunnies who have given up the ghost of Olympic gold, have failed one way or another, to sell their skis and sneakers Molly heads to sunny LA to thaw out for a while.

She does a little of this and a little of that, cocktail waitress, the usual until she hits “pay-dirt” with a guy who has been running, implausibly given his dirt-bagging Molly, high stakes poker games with high profile entertainers and bankers with a taste for the wild side-and who can pay cash on the barrelhead for their table stakes losses. Things go along pretty well for a while and the bright and sharp Molly (she would have made a good lawyer no question one that most lawyers would not want to have to contest) learns the ins and out of the game. Too well for the grafter and he fired Molly but she lands on her feet starting her own LA operation which draws the old crowd in. Plus others recruited in various ways to keep a pool of players in stock, a smart move. Eventually Molly and her ringer top player known as Player X part ways and her operation sinks in LA. Some lessons learned, especially about keeping hands away from the pot, taking her cut which would have put her at legal risk.   

So far so good and Molly heads east to New York to start anew.

No question Molly is a beauty but already she had had  enough

sense to keep business and sex apart, didn’t get involved with the clientele which would do her no good. It is not clear since there is no romance in this thriller whether she cared about sex or was too consumed making the kale to give somebody a tumble. The clientele was probably driven more by beating high profile X, Y, or Z than sex so that could have been an angle. In New York she started to run her operation along the lines she set down in LA. But something changed, she made the biggest mistake of all in getting wrapped around a heavy drug regimen. Moreover her expansion plans went awry. Her judgement got clouded, for example, in New York City of all places, she let a guy named Boris, Yuli, Vladimir, or whatever show up with an off-hand Monet from off the wall if his “art gallery” in a plain brown wrapping paper as collateral and she lets him in.     

This is where she gets in way over her head-she is in the crossfire between the FBI, the federal courts in the city and every bad ass operation from the Russian mafia (you think maybe the Monet guy might have been “connected”) to the Italian who wanted in on the action-strong-arming the deadbeats who she was letting play on the cuff). The only good thing she did through this whole horror show of deceit, fraud, Ponzi schemes, and letting players ride on her credit line was to get Jaffey. Why? Well it is always best, just as when you are looking for a private investigator, when looking for a lawyer to get one who has worked the other side, been a prosecutor. She got off in the end although she didn’t make a very good play by turning down a deal to get her dough back for basically finking. That is to the good in the circles I grew up in. Still she is deep in debt, has a ton of back taxes and a felony rap on her sheet. In the end she really needed a corner boy to guide her through this craziness more than a lawyer but given the situation she at least had that good lawyer. Strong performances by Jessica and Idris but still not my kind of film-sorry     

When The Blues Was Dues-Dan Ackleroyd’s “Blues Brothers-2000” (1998 ) With “Blues Brothers” In Mind -A Film Review

When The Blues Was Dues-Dan Ackleroyd’s “Blues Brothers-2000” (1998  ) With “Blues Brothers” In Mind  -A Film Review

DVD Review

By Zack James

Blues

It is not often that I, or anybody else at this publication has to “fight” over an assignment from Greg Green but in the case of the film under review Blues Brothers-2000 we were begging to be picked. (Usually reviewers are “running away from assignments like when Greg had his big idea that to “expand” our audience, to reach out to the youth we should start running reviews of Marvel/DC Comics film productions of their cohort of super-heroes and most of the older writers bucked before some buckled under or when he thought it would be a good idea to write book reviews of Harlequin-type romance novels. You get my drift.) Starting with older writers like Seth Garth, Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell who cut their teeth on the blues, country and urban, back in the early 1960s when what is now called classic rock and roll ran out of steam for a while and they were looking for something that spoke to their teen angst and alienation, what now would be called in the age of identity politics their oppression. Not only had they cut their teeth on the blues but when former site manager, then called administrator, Allan Jackson, several years ago put together a huge reflection series on the roots of rock and roll and such they were lined up overtime to work the project. A project that new site manager Greg had the sense to do an encore presentation of having the banished Jackson do the new introductions.

Of course no one from the older set, the 1960s cut their teeth set, picked up the blues on their own but had been guided along that path, as usual by Peter Paul Markin, the mad monk of their corner boy crowd in growing up poor Acre section of North Adamsville and something in the sound spoke to them. (In the interest of transparency which seems to be the watchword these days in all kinds of situations where before your word was your bond Markin always called Scribe was a very close friend of my oldest brother Alex but I was just too young being ten years younger to really remember much less be influenced by him like Alex and his crowd were.) That was the present at the creation tribe, the tribe that looked elsewhere when their foundation rock music crumbled for a while. Moving along to guys like me, not many of them here at this publication  whatever reason Allan had to keep the older guys around him especially a couple of years ago when he went over the deep-end with 50^th anniversary commemorations of every odd-ball event of their youth we grabbed onto the blues in the early 1980s when rock took another hiatus and we were scrambling from outlaw country music to Cajun-Zydeco and Western Swing to have a sound that spoke to us. A final grouping would include gals like Leslie Dumont and Laura Perkins, maybe Minnie Moore when she worked here, who didn’t live or die by the blues but who came to appreciate the sound second hand from their respective associations, their companionships is I think the word they use, with Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell. I won the “prize” for the very simple fact that I had recently written a review of the Neville Brothers and how Cajun-Zydeco music has been an important, if temporary, waystation in my own teen alienation and angst moments.                    

Maybe I should dig down a little deeper to explain how a retro-review of this film came about. Somebody mentioned that they had decided to watch the now ancient Saturday Night Live in order to check out Alex Baldwin’s rabid impersonation of one Donald J. Trump, allegedly the President of the United States or POTUS in tweet speak. Discussing that sent-up around the office water cooler one morning brought up, I think by Bart Webber, the start of the show back in the early 1970s with such now iconic comedians as Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Dan Ackleroyd and of course the late, lamented John Belushi. And that of course led to a discussion of the original Blues Brothers film where under the guile of an off-the-wall comic script John and Dan paid homage to the blues influences that had formed parts of their respective personas. The madcap adventures of the pair and a supporting cast of such blues, rhythm and blues, and classic rock and roll greats as Cab Calloway, James, please, please, please Brown, the recently passed on Matt “Guitar” Murphy and show-stopper Aretha Franklin (who came to the genre via her deep gospel roots) drove most of the action. Since that film had already been reviewed (by Seth Garth) the sequel was up for grabs once somebody checked the archives and found that former site manager Allan Jackson had not assigned anybody to do the film.               

Now a sequel, especially of an iconic film like Blues Brothers is a tough nut to follow although Hollywood seldom misses a chance to cash in on a blockbuster, and the producers Dan and John Landis (who co-wrote and directed both productions and again in the interest of transparency the latter who I worked with in the old Boston days at places like The Real Paper and the Phoenix) don’t really try to expand on the original concept. Part of the problem being, as dramatically pointed out in the front-piece dedication, that given the eighteen year interval between productions John Belushi, Cab Calloway and John Candy had all passed away.

That problem aside a certain context has to be provided and some continuity so naturally Dan, Elwood Blues, had to take a beating once he got out of stir in front of the old witch nun who gave the brothers hell when they were growing up in her orphanage. And a runt tagalong whom Elwood was supposed to “mentor.” Jesus was she totally crazy by then.

As the film opens once Elwood got out of that big house, got out of stir for whatever scam he got caught red-handed at, he automatically thought about starting up the band again. That gathering of the old crowd will drive the action for a while as these guys have grown long in the tooth and have “settled” down. But Elwood is persuasive, or maybe he was preaching to an already willing choir. With the addition of an out of work bartender at a strip club owned by one of the former band members played by John Goodman things are on the move. Almost. We need a short, well maybe not so short, diversion to put up a “brother,” a long lost son of old long gone Cab Calloway from his youth before he chained himself to that fateful orphanage and played “father” to the those two reprobates. Problem is this son is total Illinois state cop, a commander, and has no known DNA from papa on the blues scene. But he got “religion” at an out of doors revival stocked with plenty of well-known gospel singers- and James please, please, please Brown so before the end we have four men in black, the order of the day “uniform” for blues guys from a certain period. Well maybe three and one half, with the runt on that number thing.

Getting back on top though in the music game no matter the genre is a tough game and Elwood and mob slogged through the usual backwoods stops before hitting some pay-dirt in a battle of the bands down in the swamps presided over by some voodoo mama. A truly scary woman to set the heart beating. This is really what the film is all about-the homage to then still standing blues greats. The competition, a motley crew called the Louisiana Gator Boys just happens to be made up of B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Taj Majal, Junior Wells, Bo Diddley, Charles Musselwhite, Gary “U.S” Bonds, and a number of other lesser blues lights all first come to light for this reviewer via that blues records collection of my brother Alex cobbled together by the Scribe’s intelligence. In short, the last serious aggregation of blues greats still standing-then. Needless to say, Elwood and crowd who have their own not inconsiderable list of known blues greats like the late Matt Murphy lose to the “pros.”

The sad part of viewing this film at this remove is that many of the players seen in this sequel have also subsequently passed on headlined by B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Koko Taylor, and James Brown. My question, one which I intent to ask Alex when next we meet, is who will continue the tradition once that small coterie of white, mainly British blues artists like Eric Clapton from his youth fade from the scene as well. See this one to see what it was like when women and men played the blues for keeps. For when the saying “the blues was dues” meant everything.          

The Resurrection And The Light-The 50th Anniversary Revival Of Doctor King’s Poor People’s Campaign-Join Us, Join The Struggle Against Poverty-Join The Resistance

The Resurrection And The Light-The 50^th Anniversary Revival Of Doctor King’s Poor People’s Campaign-Join Us, Join The Struggle Against Poverty-Join The Resistance  

By Leslie Dumont

Doctor Martin Luther King was personally a brave man. Brave in that understated way that young women like myself could admire and follow if it came down to that as it had down in hell-hole Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, all those places where the anguished cries for justice could be heard. Bravely withstood jails, beatings and blood.   

I was a young girl actually since I was only twelve when the whirlwind of 1968 hit my home in Cambridge, North Cambridge like a storm (although social and cultural movement like the folk and poetry music period of the early 1960s, the bulk of the black civil rights struggle as it headed north, the draft resistance and anti-Vietnam War protests which were a daily occurrence happening right down the street in Harvard Square). The Tet offensive in Vietnam by the North Vietnamese which meant that the war there was far from over and that I had a sneaking suspicion filtered down by my father that America was on the short end of the stick as far was winning went. Doctor King’s death which left his last great project The Poor People’s Campaign the revival of which I am introducing here. Ruthless, idealistic beautiful Robert Kennedy dead as well so that the hopes for a “newer world” he kept touting would be stalled, continue to be stalled. The disaster of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a bloodbath that I wept tears for a long time. All too much for a twelve year old girl to understand, to take in. Still hard fifty years later when 2018 places all those events before the still-divided, cold civil war divided, country again.             

The war, the Vietnam War, Sam Lowell keeps telling me we have to reference which war for the younger crowd to distinguish that war from the myriad others the American government has pursued or purchased proxies for since then, took the stuffing out of a lot of other social movements, other points on the national social agency. That stuffing being pulled including the War on Poverty that then President thought might be his legacy but which went to ground in the rice fields and highlands of Vietnam. Like I say I was too young to appreciate all of that, of the lost. But I still kept thinking and reading about it, about how to reduce the poverty around that was not doing anybody any good. My father, my late father, was deeply concerned about the poverty issue especially the white Appalachian Mountains poverty from whence he came. He had this book, this The Other America by Michael Harrington which dealt with just that neglected (and still neglected) rural poverty, in his library which I asked him about after I read it.  He told me some stories about his growing up dirt poor with nothing to hang onto but some bastardized dream of getting the hell out of there one way or another.

So I was very disappointed, very concerned when the first Poor People’s Campaign, the Resurrection City campaign down in Washington produced nothing, or not enough to banish poverty from this great over abundant country. And now in some truly ironic twist of silly fate there is a movement, a recent movement, afloat to go back to the ideas presented in Doctor King’s dream of eradicating poverty. The damnation is that in the 2018 as in 1968 the poor are still with us and still need champions working like seven dervishes to get the story back on the public agenda. Good luck to you, good luck to me too since unlike that twelve and too young to fathom the whole thing I am ready to roll now.

***************

  

When The Juke Joints Rocked And Nobody Cared About The Electricity-Delta Blues- And Then Some

When The Juke Joints Rocked And Nobody Cared About The Electricity-Delta Blues- And Then Some

CD Review

Southern Journey, Highway 61, Mississippi Fred McDowell and various artists, Rounder Records, 1997

I have spent a fair amount of time recently reviewing, individually and on various artist compilations, performers from the 1960’s urban folk revival. You know, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, Eric Von Schmidt and the like. I have also reviewed the earlier performers who influenced them on the more traditional folk side like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. There was another component of that search for roots that entailed heading south to the Mississippi Delta (or the hills of North Carolina) and getting ‘religion’ on the black country blues scene.

I mentioned in a review of the performers who influenced the 1960’s urban folk scene that it did not fall from the sky but had been transmitted by earlier performers. That, my friends, applies as well to the search for the blues. I also mentioned that we all, later when we understood things better, appreciated that John and Allan Lomax did yeomen’s service to roots music by their travels into the hinterlands in the 1930’s and 1940’s (and had Pete Seeger tag along for a year and thus serve as a little transmission belt to the latter generation) to find blues, mountain and other types of American traditional music. However, most of us got our country blues infusion second-hand through our addiction to local coffeehouses and the performers who provided us entertainment. They, in turn, learned their material from the masters who populate this CD.

This CD compilation is filled with the legends of the genre like the renowned Mississippi Fred McDowell (a major influence on and mentor of Bonnie Raitt). Moreover it contains fife and drum music from North Mississippi, which can be traced back to the African roots, and work songs that do not get nearly enough attention (including by this reviewer) as the work of the Delta artists like McDowell, Son House, John Hurt and Bukka White. Nicely done.

Devil Got My Woman lyrics

You know, I'd rather be the ol' devil
Well, I'd rather be the devil
Then to be that woman' man
You know, rather be the devil
Than to be that woman' man

You know, I'm so sorry
You know, so sorry
That I ever fell in love wit' you-ooo-hoo-oo
Because you know you don't treat me
Baby, like you used ta do-hoo

You know, I laid down last night
You know, I laid down last night
And I thought to take me some rest
But my mind got to rambling
Like a wild geese from the west

You know the woman that I love
The woman that I love
I stol't her from my best friend
But you know he done got lucky
An he done got her back, again

You know, I used to cut your kindleing

When Marvel Comics Ruled The Comic Universe Bringing Super-Heroes To Shake, Rattle And Roll Our Placid Lives-Chris Hemsworth’s “Thor: Ragnorak” (2017)-A Film Review

When Marvel Comics Ruled The Comic Universe Bringing Super-Heroes To Shake, Rattle And Roll Our Placid Lives-Chris Hemsworth’s “Thor: Ragnorak” (2017)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne  

Thor: Ragnorak, starring Chris Hemsworth, Cate Blanchett, Anthony Hopkins, Jeff Goldblum and assorted other crazies who wanted to cash in on the comic book cum film gravy train playing a cast of characters well known in Marvel Comic Studios world, 2017

I promised Greg Green our well-thought of site manager that I would not linger on and on about how I got the assignment for this review of the third leg of this Marvel Comics Thor: Ragnorak saga since I had what he considered, and apparently what the Ed Board considered as well, my over-the-top discussion of how I was juked out of my original assignment to do a six-film Hammer Productions set of reviews of psychological thrillers from the 1950s done by that low-overhead operation at the behest of Columbia Picture. All set including having already had two parts published when one wizened senile old has-been Sam Lowell waylaid me with some desperate story to Greg about how in some previous time, and maybe another planet, he had done a film noir series put out by this cheapjack outfit working out of England back in the 1950s and in the interest of so-called completeness he should do the series-including a re-write of the two that I had already had published to create some controversy and add some spice to his viewpoint. Naturally since Sam, according to Will Bradley, I was not here at the time and there is something of a gag order around the subject, had been the decisive vote to oust the long-time previous manager and replace him with Greg he caved in. In my fury after further consultation with a knowledgeable fellow writer I confronted Greg and grabbed a nice assignment doing a younger person’s take on the Star War saga package with “first dibs” for the same reason on the Marvel/DC studios’ collective of film super-heroes as they came out. I grabbed this one since it seemed kind of interesting and Thor, Chris Hemsworth, is by any standard a hunk and kind of interesting in a low- ball kind of way. Since I have been told by sources close to Sam Lowell that he has some kind of feeble reply to my discussion of his raw tactics in that first Star Wars review in the works I need go no further and await his sullen words.

The beauty of this Thor series is that it is all about family, about who should be the head guy, the king or some other titled person when the old man, Odin, he of Viking lore fame and among the top dog gods if you think about where he stood in the firmament passes from the scene. Let’s face it though even gods, non-Christian gods who I think are considered eternal, have to leave the scene, have to pass on especially a crippled old man and who was a little senile too from what I could see goes beyond the pale-passes to Valhalla or wherever they go when time is no more. That succession is what they call it is what sets this whole saga afloat and although we already have been told in the previous episodes that Odin, for whatever perverse reasons, doesn’t think Thor is ready for prime time dull-witted Thor keeps thinking someday he will be the max daddy of Asgard.

Personally, I think Odin has Thor written off as just another hired gun (maybe hired hammer is better although I am right now loathed to use that word under any circumstances since I am still pissed off at that weasel Sam Lowell for dong me out of that prestigious Hammer Productions assignment), a set of strong biceps and all but a little weak in the smarts department, probably can’t hold the throne except by using that fucking mallet over the latest evil guy’s head. But Thor is blood and bloodlines in the real world and Valhalla count for a lot in monarchies which fortunately we in America dumped a couple of centuries ago-and good riddance. Then there is sullen Loki, an orphan as we finally find out who is actually smarter than Thor, as are about half the denizens of Asgard but who is so obsessed with beating Thor and being the head honcho that like a lot of guys, gals too these days, he lost his bearings, made some pretty bad decisions the worse being trying to go man a mano with brawny Thor whose pea-brain might not hold up come decision-making time but those 10,000 hours working out in the exercise yard carrying heavy rocks up hills really do give the dude a physical advantage. So that is the family part and if I don’t mention much about sex or love or stuff that young guys would usually be crazy to do something about especially with a fox like Natalie Portman around in previous episodes that is the nature of these pre-teen, teen, wannabe teen again male-centric plots. Now we have ham-handed Hela, played by Cate Blanchett who is also we find out from out of nowhere family, Thor’s bitch of a sister pardon my language, but is so power-crazed, such a junkie, no way can she take the throne or get within fifty miles of said room.  

The family part is key but there is no reason on this good green earth to even produce one Marvel/DC film if you don’t have good guys battling the forces of evil in America, on Earth, in the Galaxy, damn the universe if it comes right down to it. Thus we are led through this film, this endless film watching the final battle brew between Thor and his sullen allies and whoever has universe control on their minds- and will fight to the death over it. Which of course is what fills time. I still for the life of me cannot figure out why Thor and fellow super-hero (on his good days when he is off the drugs and doing his twelve-step program) were going mano a mano with each other except as action filler. Be that as it may we know two things from  a close watching of this film, actually of the closing credits, the bad guy, the Grandmaster, the evil genius here, but his name could have been legion in the bad guy book having messed with the gods is going down, going down hard and don’t feign shock when part four of this now weak-kneed saga hits the screen in the next couple of years.

[I think I will take a leaf out of Sam Lowell’s book and do a review of the first two sagas reviewed by Will Bradley purely in the interest of completeness.]  

Hard Times In The Country Down On The Farm-With Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More In Mind

Hard Times In The Country Down On The Farm-With Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More In Mind

By Bradley Fox

No one in Hazard, Hazard, down in Eastern Kentucky, Appalachia hard patch country which still has sections where the views would take your breath away just like it did those whose sense of wonder first brought them through the passes from the stuffed-up East, ever forgot the hard times in 1931, nobody. Not the coal bosses, actually coal boss since every little black-hearted patch belonged to Mister Peabody and company, who that year shut down the mines rather than accept the union, the “red union,” National Miner-Workers Union ( that “red” no euphemism since the American Communist Party was in its “ultra-left period of only working in its own “red” unions rather than as a faction of larger craft or industrial union) although Mister Peabody, given a choose, would have been under the circumstances happy to work out a sweetheart deal with John L. Lewis and his United Mine Workers. But the Hazard miners were a hard-nosed lot, certainly as hard-nosed as their more well-known cousins over in Harlan County who had songs sung and soft whispered words written about their legendary activities in taking on the coal bosses. (That cousin reference no joke since in hard times, and sometimes in good times you could not get a job in the mines if you were not vouched for.) Certainly no one in the Breslin clan ever forgot the 1931 hard times since they had lost a few wounded, a couple seriously in the skirmishes around the mine shaft openings  keeping the mines closed when the bosses, and not just Mister Peabody on that score, tried to bring in “scab” labor from West Virginia or Eastern Pennsylvania to work the mines.         

Of course the Breslin clans, the various branches gathered over the generations had been in the hills and hollows of Kentucky as far back as anybody could remember. Somebody said, some Breslin “historian,” that the first Breslin had been thrown out of England back in the early part of the 19^th century for stealing sheep and told never to return under penalty of death. And so he, Ike, or Icky, nobody even the historian was not sure which was the correct name hightailed it out on the nearest ship and wound up in Baltimore before heading west, ever westward as was the habit of lots of people, the plebes shut out of the big businesses and small craft shops by those whose people had come before, had come not long after the Mayflower, back then when the seacoast fame and fortunes were already locked and there was so much land to the west that it seemed a shame to see it go to another man, or his family.

So that first Breslin headed west and settled in the hills and hollows around Hazard, raised a big family, twelve who survived childhood and over a couple of generations helped populate the area. Here was the funny part, the part that would explain why there were still Breslins in Hazard after the land had petered out, and before coal was discovered as a usable mass energy source. Some of the Breslin clan had the wanderlust like old Ike/Icky and moved on when the land went fallow. Others took after that lazy, sheep stealing stay in one place part of the Breslin gene and refused to move expecting providence, or God, or something to see them through. The coal discovery to keep families from starvation’s door  helped but that didn’t change the sluggish no account ways of those who stayed, mostly.         

No question there was a certain amount of in-breeding which didn’t help the gene pool but was to be expected when you had people living in isolated pockets, more men surviving than women after childbirth. Some of it was a certain “don’t give a damn” attitude-as long as something was on the table for supper, as long as the roof of the shack, and most of the Breslins lived in the ubiquitous shacks seen in photographs of the times by photographers like Weston and Arbus. Places, tiny places, one or two rooms, a living area, a bedroom area, no windows to speak of, not made of glass anyway maybe waxed paper, just holes on the sides to let in air, those sides of the building protected by tar paper, ditto the roof, a porch with some old pappy sitting in a rocker, a parcel of kids, half clothed, and a lifetimes worth of junk scattered around the yard. Maybe a mangy dog, maybe some poultry. Some of the problem was lack of any education, or anybody to teach them the niceties of the right way to do things. Fathers would tell their sons that they didn’t need any education to pick coal out of the ground. And for a couple of generations that worked out, nothing good, nothing but short, brutish, nasty lives but there it was.             

That was the way it was in late 1930 in the Prescott Breslin clan, the great-great grandson of that original Breslin who had gotten himself unceremoniously kicked out of England. Living from hand to mouth with eleven children to raise like weeds. Then cousin Brody Breslin, who lived over in Harlan County, and was a son from the Jerimiah Breslin branch, came to organize for the NMU, for the “reds.” Organized the Breslins, the Johnsons, the Foxes and the Bradys mostly and when Mister Peabody refused to negotiate shut the damn mines down. Closed them tight, the Breslins took casualties to prove that point. And that was a very tough year as the company almost starved everybody out. But the union held, the companies wanted the coal produced and they settled (eventually with a lot of political maneuvering which nobody ever rightly figured out the NMU later joined the Lewis UMW and came under that leadership including NMU local president Brody Breslin).       

So thereafter in the 1930s the Breslins worked the mines, mostly, mostly except when there was “too much” coal and the company stopped production for short periods to drive the price up. Young Prescott Breslin, Prescott’s youngest son (not everybody gave the first born son the father’s name down there and hence junior but the pure truth was that old Prescott and his tired-out wife couldn’t think of another name and so Prescott), in his turn at fourteen dropped out of school and went to picking coal in the mines like his forbears (remember the epitaph-“you don’t need no education to pick coal” mentioned above) in about 1933 and worked there until the war came along, until the bloody Japanese bastards attacked Pearl Harbor. Three days after, December 10, 1941, young Prescott left the mines and headed for Prestonsburg where the nearest Marine recruiting station had been hastily set up.

When his father asked him why he did such a foolish thing since there were still young Breslin mouths including sisters to be feed and since he would have been exempted from military service because there was going to be a tremendous need for coal Prescott kind of shrugged his shoulders and thought for a minute about the question. Then he answered his father this way; between fighting the Nips (Japanese) out in the Pacific and shoveling Mister Peabody’s coal he would take his changes on survival to a ripe old age with the Marines. And he never looked back with the slightest regret for doing that despite the later hardships that would dog his life including more misunderstandings with his kids than you could shake at.            

Never looked back but as Prescott was leaving to head to boot camp a few days later he thought that it had not all been bad. There were those Saturday night dances down at Fred Brown’s old red barn where anybody with any musical instrument showed up and created a band for the evening playing the old mountain music songs carried over from the old country. (Stuff that a few spirited musicologists starting with Francis Child in the 19^th century collected and made more widely known.) Dancing his head off with Sarah Brown, Priscilla Breslin, a distant cousin, and Betty Shaw. As he got older  getting high on Fred’s corn liquor, remembering how sick he got the first time drinking too fast and not remembering the motto-this was Kentucky sipping whiskey, mountain style, so sip. When he came of age getting up his liquor courage to “spark” Sarah, Priscilla and Betty in that order causing real sparks when they found out that he had had his way with each of them by shyly saying they were each the first. When he thought about that predicament he began to think maybe he would be better off taking his chances fighting the Japs on that front too. But he was a man headed out into the great big world beyond the hills and hollows of home. So he left for good never to return except right after he was discharged from the Marines to pack up his few belongings not already passed on to some other siblings.           

This is the way the younger Prescott Breslin told the story to his youngest son Josh in 1966 when they were still on civil speaking terms as he was heading out into his own world leaving in the dust Olde Saco his growing up time up in Maine. (Prescott had been stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Base before being discharged, had met and married Delores LeBlanc from Olde Saco after meeting her at a USO dance in Portland and settled into that town when he returned from that brief sojourn back home.) And this is the way Josh remembered what his father said fifty years later. Yeah, those times in 1931 sure should have been hard. Hard like his father’s fate would be later. Damn, hard times come again no more.