The great Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was a giant of a man, not just physically but by virtue of his many talents as a professional athlete, lawyer, singer, actor, and political activist. By rights, he should be much better known than he is in the US. One should find his name on public buildings and monuments but his political activism, his steadfast support of socialism and the working class, his anti-imperialism, and his relentless denunciations of American racism made him a pariah to the ruling elites in the US who tried their best to derail his career and ruin his life and they partially succeeded.

In Howard Bryant’s excellent book The Heritage that deals with black athletes and politics that I reviewed here, he described Robeson’s testimony in 1956 to the House Un-American Activities Committee that hauled him up before Congress and tried to berate him. But he was defiant in his testimony.
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Dramatic rescue of stranded horses

I am reposting something that I originally published over a decade ago for the benefit of those who did not see it, because it is one of those things that makes me feel good whenever I see it.

The video is undoubtedly enhanced by the music by the Greek composer Vangelis that begins around the one minute mark. It was the soundtrack for the film 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992). He also won an Academy Award for his equally memorable score for Chariots of Fire (1981).

Film review: Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Just recently I watched this film version of the musical that has been one of the biggest musical stage sensations ever since it was first performed in 1986. I have not lived in places where big-budget musicals are staged and even if I did, I would likely not have gone to the theater to see them because the ticket costs would have been beyond my means. So I wait until they make a film version and usually watch it when they stream it.

Given how massively successful it was on stage, I was expecting a lot and was hugely disappointed in this film. It was, to be honest, quite boring and apart from a few songs that have become hits (the title song, Music of the Night and All I Ask of You), I found the whole thing underwhelming.

Not all successful stage musicals translate well to the screen. Other failures include Hair and Cats. Some notable successes were South Pacific, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Jesus Christ Superstar.

Why do some fail and others succeed? It is not due to skimping in the film version. Since this film production was lavish and elaborate (as the stage production was reputed to be) the difference may well be due to the fact that what people find spectacular when seen live on stage may seem just ordinary to film viewers who are used to special effects. It also depends on the strength of the music. The successes I listed each had many more memorable songs than this one.
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Samantha Bee’s show canceled

I have frequently linked to clips from her show Full Frontal because they were topical, funny, hard-hitting, and biting. So I was saddened to learn that after seven seasons, it will not be renewed this fall.

Over the course of seven seasons, Bee’s “Full Frontal” brought an aggressive and saucy voice to TV’s late-night arena, and one of the few programs led by a female point-of-view. Bee captured attention with outrageous humor and monologues that pushed the usually genial cable network to embrace hefty amounts of profanity and tackle political issues that are often polarizing.
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“We do a show to please ourselves,” Bee told Variety during an interview in 2016. “This gives us an opportunity to say the things we want in the exact way we want to say them.” In the process, her viewers get a few laughs, but also can exorcise their frustrations with modern politics and culture.
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The end of “Full Frontal” comes as Warner Bros. Discovery has been cutting back on its content spend for big cable networks like TBS and TNT. To be sure, the outlets continue to feature movies and have added more nights of sports, thanks to a recent rights deal struck between Warner Bros. Discovery and the NHL. But TBS has been cutting back on scripted series, with shows such as “Chad” and “The Last O.G.” scrapped in recent weeks. Brett Weitz, general manager of TBS, TNT and TruTV, left the company in May after the cable networks were consolidated under the aegis of Warner Bros. Discovery executive Kathleen Finch. Weitz had been a strong backer of “Full Frontal.”

It seems like scripted shows are giving way to cheaper alternatives like sports and reality TV.

Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj and Conan O’Brien’s show were two very good comedy programs that also are no more.

Film review: American History X (1998) and the neo-Nazi movement

I finally got around to seeing this film that had long been on my list of things to watch. It tells the story of a young man Derek Vinyard (superbly played by Edward Norton) who, under the influence of an older neo-Nazi, gets drawn into a skinhead gang in Los Angeles with swastika tattoos and all, and becomes a leader and recruiter for the gang. He ends up killing two black men and goes to prison where he undergoes a change in views that causes him to abandon his prior beliefs. When he emerges, he tries to change the beliefs of his younger brother who idolizes him and, in his absence, has joined the gang that he had been in, under the influence of the same older neo-Nazi. What struck me most about this film is that though it was made in 1998, how contemporary it is in terms of the neo-Nazi ideology it articulates.

There are three powerful scenes (they are in black and white like all the flashback scenes). One is a flashback to the family dinner table where high-schooler Derek describes his excitement about his English course where he is reading the book Native Son. His fire fighter father advises him to reject the teaching of his charismatic black teacher because it is all propaganda designed to advance black people at the expense of white people. The film implies that this is what starts Derek down the road to racism.


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Film review: Meet the Patels (2014)

This comedy by Geeta Patel and her brother Ravi shows her filming him as he tries, as an Indian-American, to navigate the dating and marriage scene that is complicated by the conflicting pressures of the two cultures. Both of them were born in the US to Indian-born parents who want them to marry and have children, preferably with other Indians or Indian-Americans who come from the same Indian state. The problem is that neither child is having much success finding marriage partners on their own and the parents step in to try to guide them through the arranged marriage process. Much of the humor comes from the westernized children of immigrants trying to accommodate the traditional expectations of their parents.
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TV Review: The Plot to Overturn the Election

The so-called ‘Big Lie’, the idea that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election and that there was a major conspiracy to steal the election and give it to Joe Biden, is so preposterous that one has to be delusional to give it any credence. And yet, it seems like many Republicans have bought into it.

The excellent investigative journalism outfit ProPublica has combined with the PBS program Frontline to produce an absorbing 53-minute documentary in which correspondent A. C. Thompson (who has previously investigated hate groups) tracks down the origins of the Big Lie, the people behind it, and their goal of trying to rig future elections to get the results they want. Although I have been following this story closely, I learned a lot of new things about it.

What’s with the fascination with designer clothes?

I watched the Netflix series Inventing Anna that told the story of a young Russian-born German woman named Anna Sorokin who came to New York in her twenties with the name Anna Delvey and managed to persuade many of the wealthy socialites in that city that she was a wealthy heiress to a massive trust fund that she would have access to as soon as she reached a certain age. She used that reputation to live large, getting multiple credit cards and bank accounts with large overdraft limits, stay for extended periods in fancy hotels, eat in expensive restaurants, fly in private jets, and get major players in Wall Street such as lawyers, bankers, and hedge fund managers to work on her project of converting a choice building in the heart of the city into a highly exclusive art-based private club that would serve just the highest echelons of the elite. She even persuaded prestigious architects, artists, and designers to join her project. And then finally, it all fell apart, as it had to, because it was all a house of cards. She was not an heiress and there was no trust fund. She was running a Ponzi scheme, using money that she borrowed from one place to impress wealthy people that she too was wealthy and thus get them to fund her lavish lifestyle, since they assumed that she had the means to repay them.
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Don’t unnecessarily kill off animals in dramas!

One of the nice things about the arrival of streaming services is that we now get to see many programs produced in countries where the language is other than English. I tend to watch a lot of police procedurals, a genre that seems to be very popular worldwide as can be seen from the many mini-series that are being shown in a variety of languages. (Spoiler alert: In what follows, there is a spoiler for a minor plot line in the Spanish (Galician) series Bitter Daisies that can be seen on Netflix.)

In these shows, there are of course human corpses galore but one expects them so their appearance does not really disturb unless the filmmakers go out of their way to show blood and gore and violence, which, fortunately few of them do. Most often, the dead bodies are just briefly seen in the crime scene or in the morgue or the autopsy room.
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