tagged w/ Gore Vidal
-
“This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest,” Gore Vidal said of Ayn Rand, writing for Esquire in July 1961, “and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the ‘freedom is slavery’ sort.”
The mindset of Rand’s followers has not changed over the decades. “She has a great attraction for simple people” Vidal said then, “who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the ‘welfare’ state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.”
Even so, then as now, Rand had a large following. “What interests me most about her,” wrote Vidal, “is not the absurdity of her ‘philosophy,’ but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about).”
(read more at link)“This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self... more
-
-
Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox join forces with bloggers, comedians, students and citizen critics to review "Amelia."
The Rotten Tomatoes Show is a movie review show that airs on Thursday nights at 10:30 e/p on Current TV. From reviews of the newest releases to commentary on cult favorites and movie trends, each episode of The Rotten Tomatoes Show is a fast-paced, comedic journey through the week in cinema.
For more from the Rotten Tomatoes Show: http://rottentomatoesshow.com
For more about movies from Current: http://current.com/moviesBrett Erlich and Ellen Fox join forces with bloggers, comedians, students and citizen... more
-
-
You’re going to have to trust me on this one: I am a romantic. ONCE is one of my favorite films; I teared up at both UP and MARY AND MAX (animated characters struggling for their small bit of happiness just hit some special spot in me). But when you’re telling the tale of Amelia Earhart, I’m not quite looking to swoon. I want the adventure, I want the danger — I want the tale of how the first aviatrix thumbed her nose at the patriarchy and got it done.
In AMELIA, director Mira Nair seeks to delve into both the personal and professional life of Earhart, played here by Hilary Swank. The flying stuff, particularly a final act dedicated to the doomed final leg of Earhart’s attempt to circumnavigate the globe, is pretty much everything I could ask for — accomplished with a mix of live action aeronautics and CG simulation; and both visually beautiful and dramatically riveting. The romance, though — which focuses primarily on Earhart’s relationships with her publisher and point man George Putnam (Richard Gere) and pilot and airline innovator Gene Vidal (yes, father of Gore, and here played by Ewan McGregor) — didn’t particularly grab me. I sensed Nair tiptoeing genteelly around the subject, and can’t help but suspect that the private world of such a, s’cuse me, balls-out woman was possibly messier and certainly more dynamic than what appears on-screen. I would’ve preferred seeing if the fires that fueled Earhart’s pursuit of the sky burned as bright in her personal relationships. That opportunity seems to have been missed.
Mira Nair talked to me about making the world of Earhart of filmic reality, and discussed how one of the earliest media sensations strained against her public image. Click on the link above to hear the interview.You’re going to have to trust me on this one: I am a romantic. ONCE is one of my... more
-
-
Over 70 years of speculation and research have surrounded the disappearance of aviation legend Amelia Earhart. Some have suggested that this maverick flyer’s ill-fated effort to circumnavigate the globe in 1937 was a narcissistic, myth-making trek destined to end in failure.
Others propose that she and her navigator landed on an uninhabited coral island in the midst of the Pacific Ocean and led a Crusoe-ish existence for years afterwards. Regardless of the circumstances of her apparent demise, her spirit of adventure and determination against formidable odds earned her unprecedented acclaim at the time and a continuing following over the years.
Her story would seem ideal for a dashing cinematic epic. Amelia however, fails to soar to the same lofty heights as its heroine. There is an unrelentingly “thumbs-up” quality to this biopic. Throughout, the feel is lush and golden, though an intended element of grandeur escapes it.
Your comments welcome on filmsoundoff.comOver 70 years of speculation and research have surrounded the disappearance of... more
-
-
writa
-
added this
-
2 years ago
- |
-
For all those democrats, especially our current President, that opposed the Patriot Act against Islamic Terrorist, will turn the efforts to those who they consider a real terror threat, that is their own constituency. With all the crap they are attempting to pull over our eyes, they know they will get voted out.For all those democrats, especially our current President, that opposed the Patriot... more
-
-
Gore Vidal said, "America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise [sic] how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.”
Read the entire interview, including his regret for switching his support from Clinton to Obama during the 2004 election at the link.Gore Vidal said, "America has “no intellectual class” and is... more
-
-
I love it: because everyone knows everything Ali G says is absurd anyway, no one believed a Jane Doe suffered any real damages when she sued Ali-G for mentioning her in a jibberish-heavy metaphoric joke.
This is what Ali G said while he interviewed Gore Vidal about amending the Constitution:
"Ain't it better sometimes, to get rid of the whole thing rather than amend it cos, like me used to go out with this bitch called [Plaintiff's name] and she used to always be trying to amend herself. Y'know, get her hair done in highlights, get like tattoo done on her batty crease, y'know gave the whole thing shaved n very nice but it didn't make any more differnece. She was still a minger and so, y'know, me had enough and once me got her pregnant me said alright, laters, that is it. Ain't the same with the Constitution?"
Even funnier, he outsourced his lawyers to India.I love it: because everyone knows everything Ali G says is absurd anyway, no one... more
-
-
"From cinema comes the idea of the auteur: the dominant directorial figure whose individual stamp is on every frame of a piece of film. But although the cult of the auteur has been widely attacked – not least by Gore Vidal in a brilliant essay called Who Wrote the Movies? – it is now in danger of spreading to theatre. Certain creative figures are in danger of acquiring auteur status. What that means, in effect, is that their individual style and idiosyncratic signature becomes more important than the work itself.
Elevating the director to cult status at the expense of the writer is the road to Hollywood's creative bankruptcy: keep the dramatist at the heart of the creative process.
The danger of the auteur theory is twofold. It creates idols who, to their acolytes, can do no wrong. In cinema this reached the point of absurdity. The other danger is that the interpreter becomes bigger than the thing interpreted. Or, to put it more bluntly, that the director takes precedence over the writer. And, if you want an example of where that can lead, you only have to look at the sterility of post-war German theatre which is dominated by star directors and starved of great dramatists.
In cinema the elevation of the director to cult-status, and the consequent downgrading of the writer, has led, most obviously in Hollywood, to a growing sense of artistic bankruptcy. Theatre, in Britain at least, is more level-headed and still places the dramatist at the heart of the creative process. I just hope that continues and that the director is seen as a necessary interpreter rather than as an icon to be devoutly worshiped.""From cinema comes the idea of the auteur: the dominant directorial figure whose... more
-
-
* PRIVATIZE THE PROFITS & SOCIALIZE THE LOSS *
Disaster Capitalism triumphant!
Mussolini said that fascism is quite simply the corporate state. This story ends all speculation that we are living in a fascist empire where it is impossible to determine where corporations end and government begins and vice-versa.
"Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. 'We have a single system,' he wrote, and 'in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses." : Gore Vidal - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Militarily overextended and with a faltering economy and collapsing currency, the cabal of morons that rules America still hopes to attack Iran, Syria, and to drive Hezbollah from Lebanon. American idiots in think tanks are busy at work drawing up plans about how the US is going to check China and prevent her emergence as a power beyond US control. The Republican presidential candidate has boasted that he will challenge Russia and bring Putin to heel.
Amazing. The world’s greatest debtor is going to take on the two powerful countries with the largest trade surpluses. According to the World Factbook, an annual publication of the CIA, Russia’s 2007 current account surplus is $465 billion and China’s is $363 billion. In contrast, the US current account deficit is $987 billion--an amount larger that the total deficits of all other countries in the world combined.
In truth, American power is already broken, and the country is already lost. The country is lost, because the brownshirt Bush Regime has destroyed the US Constitution with the complicity of the opposition party and the federal courts. There is no organized power that can restore the Constitution or even much concern that it has been overthrown.
The country is broken, because American capitalists have moved offshore so many US manufacturing, engineering, and research jobs that US imports now exceed US industrial production. American dependency on imported manufactured goods, advanced technology goods, and energy is astounding.
There is no possibility of the US closing its trade deficit. The US is able to survive such enormous deficits only because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. This role for the dollar is nearing an end as the world looks for more stable stores of value. Although oil is still nominally priced in dollars, in reality it is being priced in euros as oil producers raise the dollar price with a view to keeping their oil revenues at a constant purchasing power in euros.
When the dollar loses its reserve currency role, foreign financing for US trade and budget deficits will evaporate. US living standards will collapse, and the indispensable omnipower will be just another washed up country. - Anglo-American Ascendancy Lost in Unnecessary Wars By Paul Craig Roberts
As long as people believe that our so-called leaders are well-intentioned, they can, and do, get away with murder. Literally.
The Military is Nowhere; the Press is Nowhere; the Congress is Nowhere...
We've Been Taken Over By a Cult
Where is everybody indeed !
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." – Plato
Meanwhile...
"We are watching a poorly staged rendition of Wag the Dog , interpreted for the morbidly stupid and performed by the criminally insane." - Jules Carlysle
VIVE LA FAYETTE ;)
* PRIVATIZE THE PROFITS & SOCIALIZE THE LOSS *
Disaster Capitalism triumphant!... more
-
-
