Unfit

ICYMI

7 Things

Quick little roundup.

1) Abortion rights advocates won big victories in three states yesterday.

• In Ohio: Voters passed a constitutional amendment to guarantee abortion access, making it the latest state to take this step since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year.
• In Virginia: Democrats took control of the General Assembly, meaning they can stop Republicans, led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, from introducing new abortion limits.
• In Kentucky: Voters reelected a Democratic governor who attacked his Republican opponent for supporting the deep-red state’s near-total ban on abortion.

2) Ivanka Trump will testify in her father’s New York civil fraud case today.

• The details: She is not a defendant in this case. But she will be the state’s last witness following testimony from her father, Donald Trump, and two of her brothers.
• In related news: The former president will skip a Republican primary debate in Miami tonight and host a rally nearby instead. The debate starts at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC News.

3) Israel’s endgame in the Gaza Strip is unclear after a month of war.

• What to know: Israel’s prime minister said Monday that Israel would control Gaza’s postwar security for an “indefinite period,” which reportedly concerned U.S. officials.
• In the U.S.: The House voted yesterday to censure the only Palestinian American member of Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), over her comments about the war.

4) The Supreme Court appears likely to allow gun bans for domestic abusers.

• What happened? Justices seemed to agree yesterday that a federal statute preventing people under domestic-violence protective orders from possessing guns is constitutional.
• Why it matters: This case is the first big test of the court’s ruling last year which requires judges to decide challenges to the Second Amendment by finding examples in history.

5) Northern Greenland’s ice sheets are rapidly retreating.

• What to know: The vast floating ice shelves have lost 35% of their total volume since 1978, according to new research.
• Why it’s worrying: The ice shelves hold back glaciers from flowing into the sea. If more are lost to warming oceans, it could lead to significant sea level rise.
• In related news: Last month was the planet’s warmest October on record.

6) Nintendo is making the Legend of Zelda into a live-action movie.

• The details: The creator of the wildly popular video game series, Shigeru Miyamoto, revealed yesterday that he’s working on the film but said it will “take time” to finish.
• It will be tricky to pull off: The series’ main character, Link, doesn’t speak out loud. And the innovative games are famous for letting players choose their own pathways.

7) Cats might be more affectionate and articulate than we thought.

• How we know: Researchers watched 150 hours of cat videos to learn more about how felines express themselves. They found that cats can make nearly 300 facial expressions.
• What’s your cat saying? When cats are happy, they typically move their ears and whiskers forward and outward. When unhappy, they flatten their ears and lick their lips.

RIP Ned Beatty

Ned Beatty (July 6, 1937 – June 13, 2021) delivered what is possibly the greatest movie soliloquy ever.

Network - 1976

Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton's gags

Russia Russia Russia

It's always Russia.

I went to see The Death Of Stalin, and maybe it's just me, but I can't stop thinking there's an obvious parallel here. There are efforts to scramble our brains - efforts coming from the White House - that seem to sync up pretty well with the main theme of the movie: "Believe nothing except what I'm saying to you right this instant."

Maybe it's not just me. Maybe we need to proceed with enough of a touch of paranoia to keep us mindful of how this shit goes when it really gets going.

Maybe it's about The Russian Daddy State by mere coincidence. And maybe not.

Art is pretty amazing.

Today's Tweet

On this holy day - as on all others - The Dude abides.

(actually, it was yesterday, but The Dude is chill and flexible)

You have to watch The Big Lebowski 2-3 times to move from “meh” to “I now know who I am and will quote this movie every day until I die.” pic.twitter.com/rTS0s8ZUMk

— TheBloggess (@TheBloggess) March 6, 2018

Pick A Side

In today's little fit of nostalgia, I'll say that we used to have movies for grownups where the lines were drawn pretty clearly. I'm not saying there's always a perfect dichotomy, but most of the time, there's a fairly obvious distinction between what's right and what's not, and art should illustrate those values for us - or at least reflect the values we manifest in living our everyday lives.

At some point you have to be able to step back and take a look at your own position. An art-form is supposed to help us with this self-examination thing, but it seems like something's shifted, and we've been pushed off kilter.

When I look back on some of the great movies that helped us figure ourselves out, and I start to wonder about overlaying those lessons onto our ideological alignments today, I can't help but think an awful lotta people would find themselves on the wrong side.

12 Angry Men

Seven Days In May

It's A Wonderful Life

Executive Suite

I promise this is not just me wanting to go back to some simpler time - there's no such thing in the first place. 

But what I'm always going to be harping on is that we have to be committed to believing as many true things as possible and not believing as many false things as possible. And we have to keep learning and relearning the skills we need to know the difference.

Chris Rock Rocks

We might be talkin' about this for a while.

And this too.

And the winner for least funny #Oscars bit goes to @FoxNews' @REALStaceyDash: https://t.co/p0FsTAtxPe pic.twitter.com/Qao1iRSKsv

— Matt Wilstein (@TheMattWilstein) February 29, 2016

Might Be Worth A Look

If anybody can make it work, these guys can make it work.

Required Viewing

It's locked up pretty tight behind pay walls, but John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May is a mighty good thing to see now and again.

Lotta weird shit goes on most of the time, but now it seems the weird shit meter is about to peg in the red again.  

"...this threat from the far right is never very far from us."

$3.99 on Amazon Video

Can't Wait For Movie Night

I Hope Not

These 2 movies are not bad.  Some decent values statements, and some really good Movie Moments.

I only wish I could shake the creepy feeling that they're really just 2-hour ads for companies with piles of money so ridiculously gigundous that they can produce feature-length infomercials, and get us to pay twelve bucks a head for the privilege of absorbing their Corporate Branding Messages.

Resolving Cognitive Dissonance

Alvin York was something of a rambunctious bad boy in rural Tennessee who got religion and tried to dodge the draft in 1918 by claiming Conscientious Objector status.  The draft board denied his petitions and appeals, and he was drafted for service in WW1.

His religious fervor conflicted with his "duties" as a soldier in the US Army, and since cognitive dissonance generally moves an individual to change his behavior and/or his thinking, Alvin did what most every young man does who gets hammered every day with military training and indoctrination - he (more or less) simply rationalized his way into thinking god wanted him to be a good little soldier, and of course, that led him to alter his beliefs enough to view the German soldiers as a line of turkeys that he then proceeded to shoot one-by-one in the back - and that makes him a true American hero and we all wish we could grow up to be just like him.

Prophecy

From Paddy Chayefsky's Network (1976):



ARTHUR JENSEN:
"And I have chosen you, Mr Beale, to preach this evangel."

HOWARD BEALE:
"Why me?"

ARTHUR JENSEN:
"Because you're on television, dummy."

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Today's Best Blog Line - #2

"Ignorance Arbitrage"

Here's the whole post from No More Mister Nice Blog:

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

EVEN THE TRIVIAL TALKING POINTS FROM THE RIGHT ARE DISHONEST

I saw that Newsmax was pushing this ridiculous story and wasn't sure it was worth a post, but now I see it's a front-page story at Fox Nation, so here's the ridiculousness:

'Butler' Box Office Sales Plummet by One-Third

The movie "Lee Daniels' The Butler" saw its weekend box office receipts plummet by nearly a third, from $24.6 million in its opening week to $17 million last week, after a storm of protests from Republican and veterans groups.

The film depicts a White House butler who served eight presidents, and has come under fire for its portrayal of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy as being racially insensitive and for casting Jane Fonda as the first lady.

Supporters of President Reagan and veterans groups especially have criticized the film, with some calling for boycotts....

Oh, its box office plummeted? By nearly a third? And it's all because of boycotts by Reagan lovers and Jane Fonda haters? (Or, as the Fox Nation headline implies, because America has suddenly become tired of Oprah Winfrey?)

Nonsense. Every movie that reaches #1 at the weekend box office "plummets" the next week. Boycotts aren't necessary -- moviegoers just move on.

Yes, The Butler's box office dropped 33.0% in its second weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. But the previous #1, Elysium, suffered a54.1% drop in its second week. Before that was 2 Guns: a 58.4% drop.Before that was The Wolverine: a 59.9% drop. Before that was The Conjuring: a 46.9% drop.

Do I need to go on? In fact, The Butler had the smallest second-week drop for a #1 movie since Identity Thief back in March.

This story is up at Fox Nation even though Rupert Murdoch runs a movie studio. It's not as if the moviegoing habits of Americans are unknowable to the Fox media empire.

But this is what I call the right-wing media's "ignorance arbitrage." The conservative purveyors of this nonsense know it's nonsense. But they know they can sell it to people who don't. And that's what they do.

Today's Silly

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