Film review: Salt of the Earth (1954)

I recently watched this powerful film that I heard about on a podcast on Latino USA. It reminds us, if we needed it, how much we owe to the unions who fought hard to get the benefits and working conditions that so many of us now take for granted. The film also brings to the fore the major but often unrecognized role that women played in these struggles by keeping things from falling apart by maintaining homes and raising children under very difficult conditions. This film, though, shows an occasion when women actually took the lead role.
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What’s happening in Sudan

There has been a lot of violence in that country. After public protests resulted in the dictator Omar al Bashir being deposed on April 11 after 30 years in power, the military took over under what they call the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and have started brutally suppressing the pro-democracy groups who had organized a civil disobedience campaign to demand civilian rule.

In his latest episode of Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj provides the background to what is going on there. He says that the military junta in Sudan is getting support from the despotic leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE and that what is happening is similar to what happened in Egypt where the overthrow of a dictator ushered in a brief period of democracy before the military took over again.

The impact of Plessy v. Ferguson

Brown vs Board of Education is a landmark 1954 case in the US civil rights movement because it deemed the practice of ‘separate but equal’ to be unconstitutional. That policy had held that it was acceptable to have separate schools for black and white students as long as the schools were ‘equal’. Of course, in practice they were not. But it interesting to go back to the earlier 1896 case Plessy vs Ferguson that had challenged the constitutionality of segregation laws. The US Supreme Court held that the laws were constitutional, thus putting a seal of approval on practices that had already existed for 60 sixty years in all parts of the country and led to their further expansion.
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Perpetuating war by exalting its sacrifices

Currently many world leaders are in Europe commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. This remarkable scene from the anti-war satire The Americanization of Emily (1964), set during World War II, just prior to the D-Day invasion, has James Garner warning of the dangers of glorifying war to the mother of Julie Andrews, who has lost her husband, father, and brother to the war.

That speech was written by screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. I wonder if mainstream film companies would allow such a scene these days.

TV review: Unforgotten

I have watched all three seasons of this British police procedural TV series. Each season has a self-contained story and consists of six episodes spread over 4.5 hours and is one of the best of such shows that I have seen. I fancy myself as a connoisseur of such detective shows and like most connoisseurs have strong likes and dislikes. I heartily dislike violence and gore and find action sequences such as chases and fights to be boring. They seem to me to be a cheap way of generating interest to compensate for weak plots and poor writing, acting, and directing. I like shows where the focus is on the process of detection and this show definitely fits the bill.
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All you ever wanted to know about 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a polarizing film. On the one hand, there are those like me who absolutely love it. The other pole does not consist of people who hate it, because there is nothing really objectionable in the film. Instead it consists of those who were utterly bored and baffled by it. Even those who loved it were baffled by it but did not let that reduce our enjoyment as we were swept along by the cosmic grandeur of this revolutionary science fiction film, the story it told, and the awesome special effects that blew us away even though (and perhaps because) they were done using models and film trickery in that pre-CGI age. They still hold up well in this CGI age.
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What Game of Thrones says about America today

As I have said many times before, I had no interest in watching Game of Thrones but have been fascinated by it as a cultural phenomenon that garnered a huge amount of media attention. So I was interested in this article by Jon Schwarz titled THE RISE OF GAME OF THRONES WAS PART OF THE FALL OF AMERICA because he is enough of a fan that he watched the entire series and yet can provide a dispassionate analysis about what the show’s popularity says about its audience, by which I mean all of us, not just those who actually watched the show.
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Do spoilers spoil the fun?

Recently I wrote about receiving an email that had a major spoiler for a recent film. The email was from someone I did not know who had sent it out as a mass mailing.to everyone at all connected with my university. In the discussion that followed my post, some readers said that knowing how things turn out actually increased their enjoyment. It turns out that there is some evidence in support of that position.
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Doris Day (1922-2019)

The actress and singer died today at the age of 97. I have seen many of her films and they were easy to enjoy. Her three romantic comedies with Rock Hudson were great fun. There was something very appealing about her but while she turned in some good dramatic performances in some films, her enduring image of the wholesome girl next door stuck to her, aided by her rejection of some great roles.

She turned down the Sound of Music, declaring herself too American to play a nun from Salzburg. But nor was she ready to change her image and embrace the times: rejecting the role of Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. She said she found the script to be “vulgar and offensive”.

After she retired in 1975, she devoted her life to animal welfare.

Here is an appreciation of her life and career.