One More Johnny Blake, More Or Less, Is Not Worth Dying Over…With Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Bullets Or Ballots” (1936) In Mind

One More Johnny Blake, More Or Less, Is Not Worth Dying Over…With Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Bullets Or Ballots” (1936) In Mind   

DVD Review-of sorts

By Josh Breslin who re-enters the film review wars after a long-term assignment working through the effect on cultural workers who went through World War I which will be published in this space in November during the 100^th anniversary commemorations of Armistice Day which ended that war on November 11, 1918.

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The only thing as far as the law went worse that a crooked cop was an honest one. That was the familiar ring around my growing up neighborhood in the heavily French-Canadian Ocean View section of Olde Saco up in coastal old-time mill country Maine. That sentiment came to mind the other day when I watched the 1936 classic Bullets or Ballots where an honest cop, a public cop, tried to break up the rackets and got nothing but a diet of lead and maybe a big sent-off funeral from cop departments around the country.

(This saying obviously applied only to the very visible public coppers who ruined our young man-hoods although I will draw a distinction between the corrupt and honest a bit below after I mention that this only applies to civil servant coppers. Definitely not to private coppers, private eyes who we held in high regard off of the movie screen come Saturday afternoon at the Majestic in downtown Olde Saco. Although some of them might like Sam Spade, Nick Charles, Phil Larkin, and Phillip Marlowe have started out as public coppers they soon came up against that “go along, to get along” idea that most cop departments worked under and split that scene when they were looking for a little rough justice in this evil world. Tilted at windmills for a living although none of us every came in contact with any real P.I.s so that might be all hooey.)

Since this screed is as much about the cops, corrupt and honest, in that growing up town up in Maine let me give a short overview of that situation before going to the “what is what” of this film. Ocean View was heavily F-C as we used to say (F-C on my Le Blanc mother’s side with relatives who still live up there). There was always a tension between the Down-East Maine Yankee mill-owners and their hangers-on and the immigrant F-Cers from Quebec who came down to get off the dead-ass farms and make a little money when the mills were thriving mostly in my great-grandparents and my grandparents’ generations before and during World War II. In my parents’ generation those mills started to go south, to the low-wage non-union southern states before heading off-shore altogether. That did not stop the mill-owners and their hangers-on from lording it over the F-C community every way that they could. This included direct harassment of my crowd of guys who hung around Jimmy Jack’s Diner (owned by Jean-Jacques Renan who Anglicized his diner’s name to draw the old swamp Yankees in for lunch breaks and after work) mainly wishing and maybe a little thought of larceny which I will keep silent about.

Any given Friday or Saturday night during the school year, any given night in the ocean spray summer, Billy Babcock and William Smith, public coppers, and so crooked they needed a corkscrew to get into their respective uniforms would move us along even though Jimmy Jack could have cared less about us hanging around, at least outside in summer since this was peak tourist season when the place was jammed between mill-workers and “foreigners.”  During the winter, during the school year especially when we were in high school we could be inside o or outside since Jimmy Jack (sorry for not using his F-C name but we were so used to called him by his English moniker it is hard to change up even now) thought we added “class” to the place. By that he meant our hanging around brought guys with cars-and girls around. Girls to endlessly play his jukebox to perdition and back.

This is where a small example of how crooked Billy and Will were comes into play. They got a cut of the jukebox money, got a cut of the waitresses’ tips and a bunch of other small-time hoods hustles that even we from hunger kids would not stoop to do. They also make dough on their “protection” racket for small shop owners who didn’t want hoods hanging around their stores. Like I said crooked like pretzels. Which did not stop them from trying to shake us down as well to keep us out of jail when we were doing those un-said larcenies, or to just try to run us in as vagrants. A few groin kicks and police batons to the knees, front and back, were also part of their arsenal. Naturally every once in a while, the Yankee brethren who ran the mills and town would get in a reform mood and guys like Billy and Will would be bounced out. Replaced by a copper, an honest copper as far I know, like Officer Baker, that is what we called him, that is what he wanted to be called by guys like us. This guy wanted to be our friend, tried to get us to play basketball, Jesus, tried to wean us from jailbreak rock and roll whenever he came into Jimmy Jack’s’ to tell him to keep the jukebox music lower. (Like he couldn’t see that we had girls to die for who wanted louder music and no fucking basketball bozos hanging around them.) Like I said, and will say again, the only thing worse that a corrupt cop is an honest one.                 

Which brings us to one Johnny Blake, one honest copper in the red hot corrupt big urban city of New York in the film under review. This Johnny Blake, played by Edward G. Robinson who would later in one of his gangster films, Key Largo, play another Johnny, Johnny Rocco, who also fell down in a hail of bullets from a guy who didn’t like him much, made me feel the same way I had about the latter Johnny. As somebody said in that film “one Johnny Rocco, more or less, is not worth dying over.” You can figure six, two and even that nobody is going to cry much over this honest cop after he gets that big cop send-off. And they don’t except maybe some small-time hooker, bar girl, whatever, Clara,  who was running a small numbers racket while Johnny looked the other way. Yeah, she was sweet on Johnny boy but he was all cop, bled blue, although red when the deal went down.      

As Sam Lowell, my dear friend with his own public copper stories from down in the Acre section in North Adamsville south of Boston to tell, used to say here is the skinny. Gotham, or the do-gooder reform element in it were in one of their periodic “tired of the rackets” moods so they grabbed a head cop who they thought would clean up the town. Fat chance but they were trying anyway. This commissioner grabbed Johnny as a guy who knew the guys running the rackets, or who they thought were running the rackets. Brought him in to go palsy with Big Al Kruger the front man for whoever was really running the operations, the guys who were getting the big pay-offs. Some of Big Al’s underlings, especially one dope named Bugs, played by Humphrey Bogart who turned out to be the guy who said that remark about the Johnny Roccos of the world in Key Largo, and who liked to use his phallic symbol weapon, his gun, regularly or he got nervous suspected that Johnny Blake, ex-cop, was a stoolie, was working undercover.

Although Bugs, the guy with the itchy trigger finger, wasted a few too many people he shouldn’t have, was right about Johnny Big Al wouldn’t hear a word against Johnny once he conned him into doing the numbers racket big-time. Of course there had to be tension between “shoot and loot” old time Bugs and what he had represented back during Prohibition when a handy gun was a necessity and “businessman” low over-head Big Al. Johnny played to those irreconcilable tensions, played as well once he got in Big Al’s confidence the info-wars to find out who Mister Big really was. Well Johnny found out, found out the hard way after confronting Bugs after Bugs had wasted Big Al in a fit of hubris and was ready to take over the rackets himself. Johnny figured he was the guy the big boys would want to run things and he was right. Dead right once Bugs was tipped that Johnny was a stoolie. And the big boys-guess what-this ending is maybe something out of Bertolt Brecht’s Three Penny Opera the big boys were the biggest robbers of all-the leading town bankers. That didn’t mean much to Johnny though as he fell down with the life draining out of him on Wall Street. I wonder if he heard the noise of wings before the end-or Bugs’ ironic laugh.     

Oh What Tangled Web We Weave When We Practice To Deceive-With The Film Adaptation Of W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter” In Mind

Oh What Tangled Web We Weave When We Practice To Deceive-With The Film Adaptation Of W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter” In Mind

By Josh Breslin 

“I swear I wish sometimes I could be a woman. NO, I am not talking about turning from male to female or anything like that. Society in the year of our lord 1936 would not put up with it, would not put up with such an idea even though anybody who is anybody who has read any amount of history, the history of sexual experiences anyway knows, that cross-dressing, cross-sexing I guess you could call it has been going on since Eve came out of Adam’s rib, maybe before,” Roger Saint John mentioned in passing to his dear friend Bernard Baron. The causes for Mister Saint John’s comment were two-fold. He had just read his close friend Somerset’s latest novel, The Letter, after having avoided the pleasure as long as possible since he did not like the subject matter as a rule of whatever concoction Somerset had cooked up to titillate the literate reading public here adultery and murder, murder most foul. Moreover this same Bernard Baron had insisted that they go see the opening of the film adaptation of Somerset’s novel starring Bette Davis and he had had quite enough of the whole thing. However Roger was intrigued by the craziness, his term, that the woman would go through to hold a man, a man who was no longer interested in being with her.

This Clara, Bette Davis’ role in the film, starts off directly in scene one doing her version of rooty-toot toot on her paramour who went south on her, Roger something. Yes, dear Clara was in a tizzy over hard fact than this Roger cad was smitten by another woman. Maybe it was that Roger had gone “native” on her, had taken up with a beautiful Polynesian woman whom he swore he was pledged to eternal devotion. For that transgression he paid with about two fistfuls of bullets and plenty of splattered blood (to speak nothing of the defamation of his character as this Clara came up with the usual tart story that this Roger had made improper advantages toward her and she had to defend her honor, her womanhood in the only way that woman can-with a handy revolver.

But Saint John once he started to get up a head of steam decided that perhaps it would be better for the reader to have a little background as to why he was at pains to try to figure out what made the female sex tick. The ploy was pretty simple. Clara, married, unhappily married to Donald Smythe, the famous geological engineer for the East Coast Oil Company, was stuck unto death in dreary Indonesia where Donald was often called away on business for his company. Clara none too strong on Donald anyway except as a meal ticket out of the West End of London from whence she came got easily bored and started hanging around the Leeward Inn where she met this guy Steven who would wind up with many holes in him before Clara was through with him. They became hard and fast lovers for over a year and Clara, at least had dreams of getting out from under her Donald burden and leave the goddam archipelago and then Steven lowered the boom on her. Told her that he was in love with his native woman, Sisil. End of story. No, end of Steven. Clara was going to have her man or else she was going to take care of business her own way.

Here’s where things got dicey, where Saint John was at a lost to figure out what was running behind a woman’s mind when she has been unceremoniously dumped. She developed this whole elaborate plot about how her lover, now dead, and unable to contradict her had really being public nuisance number one, had thrust himself upon her. This weak sister of  an alibi which anybody who ever spent ten minutes at the Leeward Inn would know was false since Clara and Steven had their little corner love nest spot in the bar got her easily past her gullible and witless cuckolded husband, No problem. More importantly got her past the friendly constabulary which was friendly with Donald and wanted to be friendly toward whatever wishes East Coast Oil had. She was ready to walk after a perfunctory trial which was necessary given the death in the case,

Then the fucking letter came to light, the letter where Clara expressed her undying devotion to Steven and gave the back of her hand to the foolish Donald. She moved might and main to get that fucking letter back from whoever had found it. Of course it was Sisil who figured to cash in on Clara’s school girl indiscretion, cash in for then thou in cold hard cash. So the suppression of the letter got her off the murder rap. Didn’t get her off the rub out list though which Sisil had compiled just for her after taking her man from her. Maybe the whole thing should have been centered on what Sisil was going through rather than white girl Clara but that was a different time and maybe Somerset was deaf to such inklings. Go figure.             

[Afterword- we live in deeply troubled times, cold civil war times as almost every event over the past decade or so had indicated so this piece had a certain resonance for today even though the book, the subject matter and the film represented a very different look at what in the old days writer Seth Garth, quoting the late Peter Paul Markin a boyhood friend, was called the “Woman Question” in radical Cambridge circles. (In those halcyon days every political issue was framed as a question as in the Black Question, the Russian Question, the Party Question and so on so the Woman Question took its place in that context with the rise of the women’s liberation movement in the late 1960s.)

Perhaps Josh, who after all had as a moniker the Prince of Love in the Summer of Love, 1967 according to that same Seth Garth mentioned above, had been writing this piece today in 2018 rather than just five years ago he might have been a bit more circumspect about how he framed this version of the woman question which would be quite different today. Josh, with three unsuccessful marriages and many affairs, some while he was in various marriages, has made no bones about the fact that he doesn’t understand women, never has, since he was brought up with four brothers and no sisters to kind of pave the way and beside the time of his growing up time in Maine in the mid-1960s were not times that would lent themselves to develop any kind of equitable feelings toward women. And he didn’t-then-as he freely has admitted.    

But men can learn something in this wicked old world and Josh did, at least in a way, via learning about being on the right side of the angels on the question of war, now endless wars, having served in Vietnam during that hellish period. As an adjunct he “learned” to respect what the burgeoning women’s liberation movement was doing to step up the fact rather than the fiction of social equality. So, despite fits and starts, and despite that life-long habit of not understanding women, Josh has been very sympathetic to the #MeToo movement which has galvanized the country, pro and con pushed, on these days be those daughters from the various marriages.

This matter came to the fore when he had to deal thoughts of his own past mainly youthful ways of dealing with women, women as sex objects rather than social equals since that is really what is what a lot of the controversy has been about. Josh not only confesses to not understanding women but has been rather shy around them despite his reputation in various incantations of that original prince of love business. So he has never used whatever authority he had to get a woman to submit to his desires, or wants. When I asked him if he would change what he wrote when he wrote this review back a few years ago he said probably not because that would be anachronistic-moreover he really believed that Maugham’s view given his proclivities was a way of dealing with women not so foreign these days. He did say he thought running Sisil as the main character rather than Clara would be a better fit today but that was for somebody else to work on. Site Manager Greg Green]            

Once Again On The Death Of A Super-Hero-With Ben Affleck’s “Batman vs. Superman”(2016) In Mind

Once Again On The Death Of A Super-Hero-With Ben Affleck’s “Batman vs. Superman”(2016) In Mind

By Associate Editor Alden Riley 

   

Okay, okay I expected some blow-back from my put upon review of Ben Affleck’s Batman vs. Superman from 2016 where I mentioned that I cried no tears over the death of Superman in that film. Although I expected it from a closer source, mostly from Sandy Salmon who “ordered” me to write the review since he was personally emotionally too distraught to do so since he had apparently wasted away his childhood (and later years at it turned out) endlessly reading comics and watching super-heroes go mano a mano against the bad guys of this good green earth. Although Sandy read the review before it was posted he made not huff and puff about it except that he was a little miffed by the last couple of sentences where I make it seem like it was my job if had not done the review which I had done in any case without good grace.

No the source is one Sam Lowell, the longtime film editor here now in emeritus status. (Beside a few maniac readers who decided for some ill- conceived reason to enter the lists in defense of the caped crusader out of old time nostalgia or simply to write something since they nothing better to do-I do not question motives but that is what I think they were about given the hyper-tense tenor of the collective indignation.) His objection. We, meaning me, should not be denigrating the idea of super-heroes in a time when we are desperate for such figures. He argued against my idea that just plain ordinary heroes, people who step up and organize against the ills of the world, are what we need today as models. Argued, vociferously argued, that super-heroes are the only ones capable of taking on the mad men (and women) who run the world and those in the waiting like ISIS and a million other tin-pot desperados too numerous to mention by name. And that is exactly the nub of my objection to the man from Krypton. I am writing this in early October, 2107 shortly after the horrific mass murders in Las Vegas proved once again some very heroic actions by those same ordinary citizens. It was wearisome for me to watch this film and see people running for cover, running like rats, as the forces of evil descended on sweet Gotham hoping against hope that Mister S would show his face and save them. Like very resilient New Yorkers who put up with a ton of hell on a daily basis needed this dude to work things out. No, a thousand times no.             

Sam further went into this spiel about how Superman had done more than yeoman’s service in the fight against evil having taken out whole generations of bad guys and evil empires-until that last tough stretch where it looked for all the world to see like he had lost a step or too. He even alibied the caped crusader on that one charging it off to known bad guy Lex Luthor’s evil schemes. Come on now Superman was way over twenty-one, had free will and he just quit, went out with a whimper on that front until he gathered in that last ditch bit of remorse by falling on his shield (but only after honey Lois and sweet mother were taken hostage).  When I read that response I called Sam up and asked him with as much aplomb as I could muster if he was serious-if he believed that Superman had actually done anything except make his creator and the film companies rich. Frankly I was glad that he had retired since he seemed to have gotten a serious case of senility or something like that. 

Here is the kicker though. Sam accused me of either willfully neglecting to point out that last scene where something seems to be levitating around Clark Kent’s grave. Some arising from the dead like Lazarus or Jesus Christ. (Kent Superman’s alter ego and earthly persona had the official funeral while empty casket Superman was being honored in Washington by a cover-up government which wanted the people to cower and rely on their good services now that he was gone.)  I finally figured out what Sam’s real deal was about. It’s all about a religious experience. Sam has Superman as the modern savior, the messenger from God at first misunderstood but come to save the world in end times. That graveyard scene was the “second coming” of Jesus Christ arisen from the grave. We walked that one around for a while until I realized that whatever Sam’s mental state talking religion with a true believer is always a waste of breathe. Yeah, as I told Sam I stand by my original statement-no tears are shed in this corner for Superman’s demise, none. And plenty for those real citizens like the firefighters in New York on 9/11 and the average citizens who saved lives in Las Vegas heading to not away from the danger.         

He’s Been A Bad Boy, He’s Been A Bad Boy-Again-The Very Loosely Film Adaptation Of Homer’s “The Iliad” Bad Boy Brad Pitts “Troy” (2004)-A Review

He’s Been A Bad Boy, He’s Been A Bad Boy-Again-The Very Loosely Film Adaptation Of Homer’s “The Iliad” Bad Boy Brad Pitt's “Troy” (2004)-A Review

DVD Review

By Alden Riley

Troy, Brad Pitts

That dude, that max daddy poet who wrote in weird meter indeed, some hex hexameter thing only poets and English Lit majors would understand Homer (no known last name or place of residence although assuredly not homeless in the modern sense) knew how to tell a story, kept the crowds humming, kept the boys and girls fixated to see what they could learn about allure and love trampling power, glory and a side order of hubris which is after all a Greek word.

Yes, that daddy, oops, max daddy poet whose works were only slightly shorter than the late Professor Alan Ginsberg, he of Howl angel hipsters and homoerotic fantasies got the whole thing about the ten major themes in Western literature right-especially the boy meets girl idea, the hubris of the gods (God in latter day mono speak) defining some ill-thought out fate for mere mortals, the mortals taking their own bad ass  fates with grains of salt, the hubris and rage, fury maybe a better word and the seemingly never-ending wars for power, glory, etc. maybe love in the mix too if Helen was as beautiful as the man said, the tormented life of the hero-heroine and the like. Good job brother, good job indeed. How old Homer’s idea translate to the big 21^st century screen is another question as the Bad Boy Brad Pitt-led cast of the film adaptation of Homer’s epic Troy bring to a crude point what our max daddy was trying to say on his way to numero uno in the Western literary canon, the now doomed old white men canon which has been given short shrift of late. (For no known academic reason except style and politics because after all you could in my humble opinion make world literature a “big tent” including all the unjustly forgottens-but later on that since we are into the roots today).

Here’s the play as old-time film reviewer Sam Lowell a man locked in his own literary battles with Sarah Lemoyne, a young up and coming reviewer, was fond of saying in his salad days. Needless to say, love drove things batty back then, back three thousand years ago just like today if you can believe the news, fake, alternative, truthful or otherwise and take a look at what is going on around you. Paris, excuse me if I don’t run the litany of other aliases he went under especially after he went down to infamous and unmanly defeat at the hands of his girlfriend’s husband, Menelaus, king hell king, another Sam Lowell expression, of virtuous and manly Sparta who was full of that rage, maybe fury is a better word, and swore to kill the bastard who took his woman away without so much as a by your leave had eyes for one Helen. Helen, hellion, formerly of Sparta and now address unknown but suspected to be in a place called Illium and hence the Illiad but who in those days when men, women, gods (God in that damn mono-speak) worked like seven dervishes to keep the place safe from infidels, greedy kings and warlords, con men and priests under the name Troy, not Troy, New York which was only a Dutch sailor’s wonder dream back then if anybody was living in Dutch land.

The presiding dignity of the fortress unbreachable King Priam, played in the film, remember to follow the bouncing ball because we are reviewing a film along the way, by the oldest brother of Peter O’Toole or maybe father because he had lost a step or seven since he played Lawrence of Arabia in another war is hell film and Henry some number in The Lion In Winter going mano a mano with Eleanor of Aquitaine speaking of salad days. Priam father to ninety-eight pound weakling Paris who was totally outmatched by old man Menelaus and his mega-death brother and heir apparent Hector who as older brothers often have to do finished off Menelaus just in a nick of time.  So Hector he-man and Paris light on his feet match up in the sibling contest to bring some excitement to Illium town.  

Funny this older brother had it right when he heard Paris had bewitched Helen, that beauty so they say who would go on to launch a thousand ships-and not in a good and jovial way like at a ship’s christening. War ships and plenty manned by rough-hewn sailors who took their love anyway they could get it under the whip just like Carl Solomon of Ginsberg hipster dreams and madness. This kidnapping, some say the whole thing was an early high-end wife-swapping but those harpies have malicious tongues, of Helen was bad news, was predicted by Mr. Hector, also no known last name or abode, except that silly Illium, of bringing down everlasting hell and damnation on the town, would make guys, gods, like Apollo go crazy with ire, maybe fury is a better word. Proved right but at what cost when senile and nerve-deadened Priam indulged his freaking younger son and who knows maybe had twilight designs on her himself if she really was that beautiful. (The gal who played her Diane Kruger no question an ice queen beauty was built for sweaty nights and silky sheets but who would soon wear on a man’s nerves with her damn harping about that bloody lost to her ex-husband now mercifully dead by the hand of Hector mentioned already).

War, war to the death, like half of the Western literary canon that would follow this path-breaking epic was all that could resolve this deadly dispute. Not surprising the leader of the war party in Greek was Menelaus’ older brother Agamemnon, king of flea-bitten Mycenae and a guy who lived to breath everlasting hell and damnation on anything that breathed over in Illium town-wanted power glory and a few good wenches, slaves to keep his bed warm. Naturally this is only the barest outline of what got the conflict going and be assured that no way could Hollywood dole out enough dough to do the whole Trojan War, Trojan remember the other name for residents of wacky Illium. The cost for the billion extras along would break Universal or Paramount. The war lasted years as one might expect of guys who fought with axes, spears, and arrows so this film will only detail the last gripping episodes where Troy is burned to the ground by the greedy Greek governors led by brother-less child Agamemnon and that cast of thousands who roiled the Aegean finding love wherever they could-savage rapine if the occasion called for it and wenches and shipboard romances if they hit an lively port.  

While the boy meets girl story drives the film, has to since after all Helen’s face launched that one thousand ships and the guys who played the Greek kings except the pretty boy kind of Ithaca who seemed to have some sway over him, the real focus is on the warrior class, on guys like one Achilles, later in history as predicted by myopic mother to be known as painful Achilles heel but then a stone-cold killer, a warrior to put every Marvel Comic cinematic character in the shade, even Captain America if you can believe that. This Achilles is ranked number one in the world, the known world which was basically the Greek city-states, Troy, Dutch lands if inhabited by static dreamers and maybe bloody England since many of the actors had distinctive British accents and had that sun never sets on the Empire demeanor.

The problem with being Achilles, warrior for hire to the highest bidder or if he liked the take, remember played by modern day bad boy, and bad boy again Brad Pitts, is some ass is always looking to knock you down, take you down a peg. Or have some hireling do the dirty work. No question Achilles, another guy with no known last name or address except the battlefields of whoever has the best deal, had a long run at number one stone cold killer maybe the legendary Greek psycho but he also had his sensitive side, that brooding philosophy king in waiting Plato was always dogging us mere mortals with. Worried maybe about his strange obsession with bedding vestal virgins especially those who served one Apollo, a god among gods (God in mono-speak), also with no known last name or place of residence. Emphatically not worried about his fate, knowing what dear mother had spun her crystal ball around, knowing too a soldier’s destiny but ready to throw the dice that glory would come with living fast, dying young and making a good ashen-strewn corpse. And we still speak his name, speak of the warrior king if not of his vestal virgin with the unpronounceable first name, also with no last name although her former residence was One Temple Of Apollo Place. Yeah, that max daddy Homer sure knew how to tell a story-even in weird meter.              

It’s Only A Chocolate Moon, June-Version 2 Million And Seventy-One Of The “Boy Meets Girl” Saga-Jean-Pierre Ameris’ “Romantics Anonymous” (2010)-Better “Les Émotifs anonymes » -A Film Review

It’s Only A Chocolate Moon, June-Version 2 Million And Seventy-One Of The “Boy Meets Girl” Saga-Jean-Pierre Ameris’ “Romantics Anonymous” (2010)-Better “Les Émotifs anonymes » -A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Les Émotifs anonymes-Romantics Anonymous, starring Benoit Poelvoorde, Isabelle Carre, 2010

I have only been in the film reviewing business, profession really since I went to graduate school at NYU for a short while (at least let me call it a profession to satisfy my beleaguered parents who wound up paying for me to become a professional at something, paid a ton of money so bear with me). I have had many conversations with my unofficial “mentor” Seth Garth who has been particularly helpful in my struggle to be the “Queen” of 21^st century film noir against the limitation posed by the so-called “King” of film noir in the middle of the 20^th century or thereabouts Sam Lowell. (In the inevitable interest of transparency Sam an old friend of Seth’s from high school days which has not hindered him from helping me.) Fortunately today I do not have to lock horns with Sam in doing this review of the French-Belgian film Romantics Anonymous but Seth helped me nevertheless. Or maybe better Sam through Seth when he pointed out that Hollywood and later other film centers has survived by playing about two million versions of the “boy meets girl” theme which they grabbed from early in the Western literary canon, maybe Homer with his sweet music hexameter The Illiad.  When I thought about it later I checked through the recent film review archives and noticed from Robin Hood grabbing Lady Marion to Phillip Marlowe grabbing some ravishing blonde that theme really does resonate.

All this lead-in to let the reader know that the film under review, except maybe to say “man meets woman” is deeply indebted to that trope-doesn’t actually make an sense otherwise. Doesn’t grab the viewer, as it did me, unless you take it for granted that the film is trying to pull at your heartstrings-and succeeds. The only addition that I make to the genre is the observation that this meeting was a very unusual- two social misfits meeting and cavorting despite their anxieties.  Their social shyness.

Angelique, played by fetching and doe-eyed Isabelle Carre, is a bundle of social anxieties who is in an anonymous group trying to overcome her affliction. She also happens to be one great chocolatier, a natural who is befriended by a fellow candy man who let her make her chocolate confections at home and let the legend  of her work thrive in secret. Problem though is that eventually that candy man died and left  her high and dry looking for another job. That job search was finally successful when she was hired at the Chocolate Mill, a struggling old-fashioned candy operation headed by Jean-Rene who as it turned out was also filled with about six million social anxieties as well. Second problem-Angelique was hired by Jean-Rene, played by antic, frantic Benoit Poelvoorde, to be a sales representative-to go sell chocolate not make confections. Not good. As the film moves along Jean-Rene who is seeing a therapist is given various exercises to help break his social patterns (or lack of social graces) just as Angelique is using her group sessions to get a handle on her anxieties. The two are a carnival of mixed messages and misunderstandings.

That “collision” triggers the couple getting together for dinner and other social misadventures, some scenes which are funny and are added by Jean-Rene’s facial expressions and Angelique’s doe-eyed responses. Also along the way she helps bail out the firm by getting secretly back into her great chocolatier hermit character through a thin guise. At some point, probably well before they actually spent the night together-unintentionally, you know, you can bet six, two and even as Seth says (which he later told me he got from Sam who got it from an old high school friend known as the Scribe who was addicted to film noir private detective films) they will be together, will get married, or be together some way, even if they have to run away from each other for a while. A little gem of a feel good film but I wonder, given my own social anxieties and that of my partner, whether two people really would get together like this pair based on their personalities. Just a question though in the eternal  “boy meets girl” mix (which is now expanded to whatever coupling anybody is into-which is okay too).

The Death Of A Super-Hero-Ben Affleck’s Batman vs. Superman (2016)- A Film Review

The Death Of A Super-Hero-Ben Affleck’s Batman vs. Superman (2016)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Editor Alden Riley

Batman vs. Superman, starring Ben Affleck, based on the DC comic series character, 2016 

There were no tears shed in these quarters when I heard that so-called super-hero Superman cashed his check, parted this life. My feeling is that the times, these times, require plenty of heroes, of that there can be no doubt, but that super-heroes are a drug on the market, a dime a dozen, maybe less. So I could to use an expression that the former film editor in this space was fond of using going back to his ancient corner boy, his expression, youth give a rat’s ass about the demise of a guy who wasn’t even from earth, was an alien, and not even an alien from another country but from a woe begotten planet, Krypton, I never heard of, don’t remember reading about in high school when we studied astronomy. We will never know, and maybe it is better that way, of the how and why of his going off the track, of his nefarious activities at the end against the interests of dear Metropolis/ Gotham, an American city (which we all know is New York City where else could it be). The powers that be covered up, covered up big time after Superman bought it, after he allegedly fell on his own sword, so that “the people” could have something to believe in during these trying times. Yeah, that was the “alternate facts” story from the bowels of Washington. Figures, right.          

Let me explain how I drew this assignment, the assignment to review Batman vs. Superman in this space. I have to admit that the few months I have been doing the associate editor’s job here that the film editor, my boss, Sandy Salmon has except on rare occasions given me films to review that are of interest to me. This though is one of the times I have drawn an assignment that Sandy has “ordered” me to do but for an unusual reason so I am placating him on this one. Sandy freely admits that in his youth, afterwards too, he was addicted to DC and Marvel comics, super-hero comics mostly. He felt that he could not emotionally handle the idea that one of the key guys who brightened up his benighted youth had passed on, would be no more. He told me that he had tried to write the thing but just couldn’t finish it.

I know that Sandy had grown up in tough circumstances so maybe he needed some super heroes to get through the tough times. My own youthful times were not nearly as traumatic. In fact we used to beat up on kids who wore Superman costumes for Halloween or some occasion like that. Used to call such kids the “f” word or as my gentile father used to say they were “light on their feet” and you know what I mean. Well I know better now about such stuff but the super-hero business still leaves me cold.

Let me get to the story line as Sandy likes for all of us to summarize so the readers get an idea of what the film is about. As with most comic-based films it is kind of simplicity itself-good vs. evil and little middle ground. This is where homegrown boy, Batman, played by Ben Affleck, gets his dander up about this in the end alien Superman. It seems that through several misunderstanding and some sleight of hand by log time nemesis Lex Luthor who is never up to any good Batman thinks Superman has gone over the edge. From one stand-point that looks to be the case, especially when a guy like Superman who has a long track record of saving humanity from rescuing little girls in distress to fending off monsters and other bad guys is the last guy standing when a bomb exploded in a Senate committee hearing on how to safeguard the world against those like Lex who want to use a recent find of kryptonite as a “safeguard,” a deterrent against any Krypton-initiated attacks.

Admittedly Batman fell into a lot of traps which were made to look like old pal Superman was in on the “fix.” It was not until too late that Batman found out that Superman alter ego love interest Lois Lane and his adopted earth mother were being held ransom to get Superman to do some nefarious bidding. Superman in the end though has to fall on his metaphysical sword attempting to fight off a mega-monster to save the world. Tough break though he is mortally wounded and in the cover-up he is once again an international hero and given an appropriate send-off. (Alter Ego Clark Kent, Lois’ honey gets a quiet hometown Kansas send-off.) Yeah, no tears shed in this corner for the guy since he knew he was in way over his head but maybe one should shed a tear for Batman because who knows what he will get embroiled in next. There Sandy I did your freaking review for you. You owe me, owe me big.                 

To Seek A Newer World-The Trials And Tribulations Of The Non-Violence Path To Social Change -Join The Resistance Now!

To Seek A Newer World-The Trials And Tribulations Of The Non-Violence Path To Social Change -Join The Resistance Now!  

Frank Jackman comment:

Recently I noted in a short comment about my checkered political past concerning my very often wavering adherence to the principles of non-violent action that Anna Riley my maternal grandmother was a great believer in the social message of the Catholic Worker movement, gave great credence to the essentially non-violent social change message that leaders like Dorothy Day had to say about pursuing the course. I failed to mention then that around the old neighborhood, the Acre section of North Adamsville, the geographic fate of the working poor section, mostly Irish from “famine ships” times to “just off the boat,” most definitely mostly Catholic, that sweet Anna Riley was considered a “saint.” That saint designation provoked primarily by her ability for over fifty years to put up with one curmudgeon, and I am being kind here, named Daniel Patrick Riley, her husband and my maternal grandfather. Virtually everybody in the neighborhood, the older folks and his many local relatives, including me, had except on his deathbed and when they laid him down to rest which in Irish tradition forgives even the most wicked, had nothing but curses when his name was spoken. He was that kind of man, unfortunately.    

But dear sweet grandmother Anna was also known around the neighborhood by all except the most hardened heathen Protestants, few as they were, who had nothing but scorn for the raggedly shanty Irish, as a saint for her gentle but persistent adherence to her well-defined Christian-etched social gospel. She was always among the leaders when someone was to be evicted from one of the crummy three-decker apartment buildings for which the section in imitation of the far larger ones in the Dorchester and South Boston sections was locally famous, or infamous. Moreover when the “boyos” were on strike against the shipbuilding companies which drove the economy of the town in those days (now long gone and almost forgotten once the shipbuilders headed off-shore to cheaper labor markets leaving the Acre even poorer and less stable) Anna was the first to knock on doors to get the women and non-shipbuilding men down to the picket lines in support of the brethren. She did a million small and unacknowledged kindnesses as well but also made sure that the local authorities (they were always called the authorities, governmental, court, police around the Acre) knew when children were going to bed hungry in the land of plenty, the 1950s land of plenty.       

What drove Anna like I said was her simple but strong sense of social gospel which was derived not from the main tenets of the Roman Catholic Church (that “Roman” not necessary in North Adamsville but as I am addressing a wider audience Roman to separate from other forms of Christianity) but from her allegiance to a small group of “renegades” the Brethren of the Common Life led by old Father Joyce who was constantly in hot water with the very conservative Cardinal who presided over the Archdiocese of Boston. That old goat threaten ex-communication and perdition to anybody who adhered to such basic principles as opposition to war, charity to the poor and bedraggled, and any communal what he called communistic sensibilities ( I never did get the whole list of their principles but these general categories give an idea of what the organization was about). Hence Anna’s kinship with the old-time Catholic Workers movement.           

Hence also her very great influence over my youthful political and social formation. She never pressed the Brethren issue on me, per se, since my mother and uncles were adamantly opposed to her views and maintained a strict orthodox Roman Catholic view of the world but just being around her gave me a sense of what she was about. And as I came of age in the red scare Cold War anti-communist keep your head down and let Ike handle everything late 1950s her bromides against the craziness of the known world egged me on. Egged me on too when I began to spent more and more time at her house which was only a few blocks from my family house as my mother got to be more and more (and more) overbearing. Those were the days too when Daniel had been placed  in what today would be called an “assisted living” home and back then a rest home after he suffered a stroke. So the place was tranquility itself, a place to read stuff like the Catholic Worker which she subscribed to and other books and pamphlets put out by the Brethren and other such organizations like the Quakers            

I mentioned in that previous comment about non-violent action that in my youth, my younger days, the idea of non-violent action was not an abstract question. I was especially (and so was Grandma) impressed by   the assertive and definitely not passive non-violent lines of the black civil right movement in the South that were unfolding before my eyes  seemingly every night on television and which held great sway over me. In those days sympathy for the black civil rights struggle down South was almost non-existent in the Acre. Any sympathy even in school debating the merits of the case against Mister James Crow and its equivalent in the North was met with snarls of “n----r-lover,” or worse. (Belying the old-time leftist notion that the poor and working people have much in common no matter what race or ethnic grouping which should override everything else. Unfortunately almost the direct opposition was/is true since down there at the margins of society down there where the working poor meet the thugs, gangsters and rip-off artists it is every person for him or herself-and theirs). So very early on I had had to take a very close look at some of the trends that had developed in the struggle for human emancipation. The central debate in my mind, and remember too I was a child of the Acre as well, was about passive non-violence argued by the likes of Tolstoy or a more muscular one that was beginning to form in action down South. I gravitated toward the more muscular variety (and so did Grandma).           

Naturally direct non-violent actions in the North other than solidarity actions with the struggle down South were few and far between in those days. Mainly sit-ins around equal access to places that were supposed to serve the general public-but didn’t. I have mentioned elsewhere that my very first public political street action demonstration had been a SANE-Quaker and other religious pacifistic organizations rally at historic Park Street Station on Boston Common around the struggle against nuclear weapons in the fall of 1960 (at a time when I was also campaigning like crazy to get one of our own, Jack Kennedy, elected President, even though he was rattling the “missile gap” saber-go figure).        

In retrospective those heady days when the black civil rights movement was carrying all before it were also the heydays of my belief in creative non-violent action. The time when whatever Doctor King and the other leadership said about bowing our heads before the aggressors held me in its thrall. Although, and here is my contradiction of the time if you will, I was enamored under the spell of my maternal grandfather, that old curmudgeon Daniel Riley, an ardent Irish nationalist of the struggle in Ireland that got its modern start around Easter, 1916. Despite his gruffness and meanness I would sit by and listen as he told tales learned from cousins who had been in the 1916 fight even if at other times I avoided him like the plague. So let’s put it down that I was probably more tactically committed to non-violent actions (and under current circumstances still am with what I see of the huge disparity of forces on our side and those leveled against us-and the passive quiescence of the working populations).

The great change, maybe of emphasis, maybe of getting older and wiser, and maybe, just maybe as a result of my truncated Army career which was a watershed of sorts since that service happened during the Vietnam War (where I didn’t go although I was 11 Bravo, an infantryman but that is a story also told elsewhere). The savagery of the American government against a small but real national liberation struggle (like the British for a long time against the Irish if you want an analogy until they got noses bloody in 1916) which could not be fought any other way except under the gun led me away from even that previous total tactical acceptance of the idea that non-violent action could slay the evil dragon. And that stance has not changed much in the last forty years or so, although I wish those who can “keep the faith,” the faith of my youth, well.