Thousands of people, government agencies, military, and private volunteers, responded to Hurricane Helene’s devastation in western North Carolina. Don’t let the People of the Lie tell you otherwise.
The official death count here is mounting. Our county sheriff reports over 70 so far. Search and rescue teams expect to find more victims among the tangles of branches and debris left behind by the flooding.
Neighbors helping neighbors
Not only is the military here, but an army of volunteers.
Drew Reisinger, Buncombe County Register of Deeds, turned his office into a relief center for coordinating welfare checks on thousands of people unaccounted for (mostly because of lack of cell service, thankfully). Many of those processing incoming reports worked remotely.
Everyone has heard that Asheville’s drinking water system will be down for weeks, so they’re sending in cases of bottled water. And cases. And cases. And cases.
Thank you. What they’re missing is you can’t flush your toilet (or bathe) with bottled water. (The city’s waste treatment plant never went offline.) So for the elderly and less mobile, another immediate need is water for flushing. These volunteers responded.
Family Assistance Center Oct. 6 – Final Summary
2,685 volunteers — managed by a team of hundreds of volunteers — through the Family Assistance Center at the Buncombe Co. Register of Deeds deployed to check and re-check 15,982 high priority households with 10,000+ care packages distributed and 4,413 toilets flushed. 13,049 of our neighbors confirmed safe and sound by volunteers, and via email and text, as of Sunday, October 6, 2024.
It’s been a bittersweet week since Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina. Homes and lives were lost. People and pets displaced. There was no water, no electricity, and no communication for hundreds of thousands of people. Despite the sudden, tragic devastation, the good people of Buncombe Co. stepped up to help one another. In just eight days, thousands of volunteers, tasked with checking on tens of thousands of our neighbors, made their way to the far reaches of the county to deliver food and water, render emergency aid, flush toilets, and relay the good news — their loved ones were safe and sound.
The Family Assistance Center will close on Sunday, October 6th. As we rebuild, our community will have many needs in the coming weeks. You can find more local volunteer opportunities at bit.ly/4eRc5kZ
Volunteers, from near and far, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Join our Facebook group: FlushingAwesome
To report a missing person, please contact the Buncombe Co. Sheriff’s Department at (828) 250-6650.
Today’s Good News
A father and daughter volunteer team found an individual in extreme distress. He was in the middle of a stroke. They immediately took him to a hospital. Just a few hours later, doctors reported, he would’ve died. Today he was able to visit his children who had to climb trees to avoid the flooding.
Former Asheville resident and current Pittsburgh resident, Adam Casto — employing advanced AI tools — processed 6,477 unique emails and voicemails, automatically extrapolating the data into spreadsheets.
Asheville native and Missouri resident, Emily Woodall, and the Remote Data Team of 70+ active volunteers from across the country — and Finland — processed 2,000+ emails and 730 voicemails — one by one — and called, texted, and emailed 630 grateful loved ones.
Emily writes, “The most surreal moment of this experience was Saturday, Sept. 28th as I was watching emails come into the buncombesearch gmail account. People were reporting dire situations. With everyone in Asheville and WNC literally in the dark, I realized in that moment I was the only one reading these messages, and besides sending them our form, all I could do in that moment was to bear witness to this unimaginable situation. To be able to grow our remote efforts from that very lonely experience to a team of more than 70+ volunteers, to see the deep love for WNC pour in from across the country, has been one of the best experiences of my life and probably the best thing I’ve ever done.”
FYI: After nine and a half days, my power came back on Suday night about five p.m. Made coffee with bottled water. We’re still tapping springs and creeks for flushing water.
Trump on how his mass deportation will impact other countries: “We’re bringing them back, and we’re gonna shove them right down their throats.”
Trump on how his mass deportation will impact other countries: "We're bringing them back, and we're gonna shove them right down their throat." pic.twitter.com/Zg6FoMrZcP
Do all those Hispanic men who love his guy think they are are immune from this? I don’t think Trump’s cult makes many distinctions when it comes to someone with brown skin and a Latino last name. I hope they watch their backs. If he wins they’re in for a rude surprise.
Republicans are refusing to answer whether Trump won the 2020 election. Their dodging is transparent and anyone with half a brain would consider whether or not Trump might just be lying about this. If so, they simply cannot consider themselves decent Americans after everything he did and continues to do.
Trump said last week that if they hadn’t stolen the election he wouldn’t be running again:
“You know last time, last election, we did great in 2016 a lot of people don’t know we did much better in 2020. We won, we won, we did win. It was a rigged election, it was a rigged election. You have to tell Kamala Harris, that’s why I’m doing it again, if I thought I lost, I wouldn’t be doing this again. You know where I’d be right now, on the beaches of Monte Carlo maybe, or some place. Be having a nice life.”
If only.
He knows he lost. He’s said it numerous times in the last few weeks. “We lost by a whisker.” But his broken psyche just can’t handle that reality. So he’s putting the country through all this again to soothe himself. And maybe it soothes his cult followers too, who also can’t accept the fact that their God is not universally worshiped.
So I keep saying that the polls are just the polls, they’re often wrong, and we shouldn’t spend any time worrying about them. But I have also admitted that I have a poll dependence problem and I’m afraid I’ve fallen off the wagon. Please feel free to scroll on by if you have taken my advice to spare your sanity.
But if you are still playing the parlor game against your better instincts, as I unfortunately am, here’s Dan Pfeiffer on the current state of the race according to the polls:
The national polling has been remarkably stable. As of October 4th, Harris leads a bit more than two points nationally.
Her lead sat between one and three for months with very little change. It “ballooned” to three points after the debate but later regressed as public memory faded.
Harris’s lead seems durable. It is, however, not yet big enough to feel particularly confident about her chances with the Electoral College. The battleground states that Harris needs to win are more Republican than the nation as a whole, which is why the Electoral College is biased towards Republicans.
The Electoral College bias is calculated by looking at the delta between the national popular vote and the margin of the “tipping point” state. This margin puts the winner over the top. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1 points and Trump won Wisconsin by 0.8%. Therefore, the bias was 2.9%. In 2020, the gap was 2.8%. If the Electoral College bias looks like 2016, Harris will win. If it is as large as 2020, she (and we) are in trouble. The good news is that the polling thus far suggests less bias towards Republicans than in ‘16 or ‘20. This is why electoral models like Nate Silver’s suggest that Harris is a slight favorite to win.
But as we all know, it’s all about the battleground states. The rest of us might as well just watch Netflix and forget about it since we are pretty much irrelevant. Of course, the campaigns need our money and if there’s a House race that’s close to where we live we can devote our time or you can write postcards and phone bank wherever you are. But in the end the swing states are going to decide the presidential election regardless of what the majority wants and the fact that we’ve had two elections in the past two decades decided by the minority shows that our archaic system isn’t working the way it should in a healthy democracy. But that’s for another day…
Pfeiffer asks why Trump is as popular as he is and he chalks it up to the fact that Biden is unpopular and the wrong track numbers remain so high. In other words, it’s not that unusual under the circumstances. (I might argue that this raises the question of why Biden is so unpopular and the wrong track numbers are so high and I would suggest that’s a consequence of Trump being out there pounding the negativity in a media environment that rewards that.) I also think that the cult-like devotion of the MAGA base skews the fundamentals in some unprecedented ways. After all, Trump is a convicted criminal and adjudicated rapist who tried to upend a legitimate election and brags about overturning Roe. That seems pretty fundamental to me and yet he’s got nearly half the country behind him.
The good news is that Harris has everything else going for her which explains why she leads slightly. Pfeiffer notes that her favorability rating is positive while he’s 10 points down. She has more money than him and she has a much better campaign. A Harris campaign aide toldPolitico last week:
The campaign [has] 238 offices and roughly 1,750 staff in battleground states as of Wednesday. And the record fundraising hauls Harris has brought in — raising $310 million in July, including $200 million in the first week after she replaced Biden — has allowed the campaign to pour additional resources into its ground game, including 418 staff and 30 offices in the last month.
Trump’s ground game looks pathetic compared to that. He’s outsourced it to Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk and they have no experience at any of it. They’re trying an unconventional approach of targeting non-voters but the word is that they really don’t have much presence anywhere. Republicans in the swing states are loudly complaining that they don’t know what they’re doing.
Pfeiffer concludes:
Harris’s field advantage could be the difference maker in such a close race. While the voters could break one way or the other in the coming 30 days, this race will likely be decided on Election Night.
He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful” body. He relishes “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is “trying to kill me” when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.
With Mr. Biden out, Mr. Trump, at 78, is now the oldest major party nominee for president in history and would be the oldest president ever if he wins and finishes another term at 82. A review of Mr. Trump’s rallies, interviews, statements and social media posts finds signs of change since he first took the political stage in 2015. He has always been discursive and has often been untethered to truth, but with the passage of time his speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past.
According to a computer analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.
Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. (A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings.)
Mr. Trump frequently reaches to the past for his frame of reference, often to the 1980s and 1990s, when he was in his tabloid-fueled heyday. He cites fictional characters from that era like Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lip” (he meant “Silence of the Lambs”), asks “where’s Johnny Carson, bring back Johnny” (who died in 2005) and ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was (“the most handsome man”). He asks supporters whether they remember the landing in New York of Charles Lindbergh, who actually landed in Paris and long before Mr. Trump was born.
This has been obvious for the past year but the media has not focused on it because, unlike Joe Biden, his garish make-up obscures the fact that he’s aging rapidly. He deterioration is obvious to anyone.
This is from just last week. He seemed half asleep and made little sense when he was off teleprompter. Nobody paid much attention because it was the day of the VP debate but it was alarming, even for him.
Trump in Milwaukee says he wants to close down the Department of Education and have parents run public schools to make sure teachers aren't "teaching woke" or "start teaching a language we don't want them to teach" pic.twitter.com/HTjYIIqfQU
this speech Trump is delivering right now in Milwaukee is the lowest energy speech I have ever heard from him. Here's a more than 2 minute clip where he gets 0 response from the crowd other than a stray cough here and there pic.twitter.com/upkVgTsj7R
He’s now in the “good days and bad days” phase of his encroaching senility. I get it. It can happen to anyone. But if Joe Biden was subjected to ruthless coverage of his aging because he is the president — fair enough — Trump should have been subjected to the same thing. He’ll be older than Biden by the end of his second term.
In that speech he complained about his campaign schedule being too gruelling. It probably is. And even with his ample use of “executive time” the presidency is going to take an even bigger toll. Look how much Biden’s declined since 2020. Even the young ones look like hell when they’re done. Trump will be even worse because he starts out much worse.
The debate should have brought that home a month ago at least. But they’ve finally done it so let’s hope the rest of the media picks this up and talks about it as well in these last few weeks before the election.
Elon Musk said at that rally that he’s saving the first amendment by backing Donald Trump.
Shortly after assuming office in January 2017, President Donald Trump accused the press of being an “enemy of the American people.” Attacks on the media had been a hallmark of Trump’s presidential campaign, but this charge marked a dramatic turning point: language like this ventured into dangerous territory. Twentieth-century dictators—notably, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao—had all denounced their critics, especially the press, as “enemies of the people.” Their goal was to delegitimize the work of the press as “fake news” and create confusion in the public mind about what’s real and what isn’t; what can be trusted and what can’t be. That, it seems, is also Trump’s goal.
Elon’s making that happen for him every single day. Twitter is a sewer of lies.
By pointing to McKinley’s presidency to justify his economic plan, Trump gives away the game. The McKinley years were those of the Gilded Age, in which industrialists amassed fortunes that they spent in spectacular displays. Cornelius and Alva Vanderbilt’s home on New York’s Fifth Avenue cost more than $44 million in today’s dollars, with stables finished in black walnut, cherry, and ash, with sterling silver metalwork, and in cities across the country, the wealthy dressed their horses and coachmen in expensive livery, threw costly dinners, built seaside mansions they called “cottages,” and wore diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. When the daughter of a former senator married, she wore a $10,000 dress and a diamond tiara, and well-wishers sent “necklaces of diamonds [and] bracelets of diamonds, sapphires, and rubies.”
Americans believed those fortunes were possible because of the tariff walls the Republicans had begun to build in 1861. Before the Civil War, Congress levied limited U.S. tariffs to fund the federal government, a system southerners liked because it kept prices low, but northerners disliked because established industries in foreign countries could deliver manufactured goods more cheaply than fledgling U.S. industries could produce them, thus hampering industrial development.
So, when the Republican Party organized in the North in the 1850s, it called for a tariff wall that would protect U.S. manufacturing. And as soon as Republicans took control of the government, they put tariffs on everything, including agricultural products, to develop American industry.
The system worked. The United States emerged from the Civil War with a booming economy.
But after the war, that same tariff wall served big business by protecting it from the competition of cheaper foreign products. That protection permitted manufacturers to collude to keep prices high. Businessmen developed first informal organizations called “pools” in which members carved up markets and set prices, and then “trusts” that eliminated competition and fixed consumer prices at artificially high levels. By the 1880s, tariffs had come to represent almost half a product’s value.
Buoyed by protection, trusts controlled most of the nation’s industries, including sugar, meat, salt, gas, copper, transportation, steel, and the jute that made up both the burlap sacks workers used to harvest cotton and the twine that tied ripe wheat sheaves. Workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs hated the trusts that controlled their lives, but Republicans in Congress worked with the trusts to keep tariffs high. So, in 1884, voters elected Democrat Grover Cleveland, who promised to lower tariffs.
Republicans panicked. They insisted that the nation’s economic system depended on tariffs and that anyone trying to lower them was trying to destroy the nation. They flooded the country with pamphlets defending high tariffs. Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888, but Republican Benjamin Harrison won the electoral votes to become president.
After the election, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie explained that the huge fortunes of the new industrialists were good for society. The wealthy were stewards of the nation’s money, he wrote in what became known as The Gospel of Wealth, gathering it together so it could be used for the common good. Indeed, Carnegie wrote, modern American industrialism was the highest form of civilization.
But low wages, dangerous conditions, and seasonal factory closings and lock-outs meant that injury, hunger, and homelessness haunted urban wage workers. Soaring shipping costs meant that farmers spent the price of two bushels of corn to get one bushel to market. Monopolies meant that entrepreneurs couldn’t survive. And high tariffs meant that the little money that did go into their pockets didn’t go far. By 1888 the U.S. Treasury ran an annual surplus of almost $120 million thanks to tariffs, seeming to prove that their point was to enable wealthy men to control the economy.
They don’t want to govern. They want to rule. Problem is, a lot of these freedom-obsessed MAGAs want to be ruled.
Got cases of bottled water here. Still without power and flushing/washing water (nine days so far); there’s power in three houses across the street. I’m fine here in the most accessible city in the region, just inconvenienced. Others are far worse off Many who have lost homes (here too) or jobs and businesses will need longer-term support. People need hazmat gear to do cleanup along the rivers. Rescuers are still getting to people still cut off in hundreds of isolated coves and by washed-out bridges. In some cases, it’s one home at a time.
This woman lives in my county and works in the next county south. She addresses the uys for memalicious BS you’re seeing in social media. Screw those guys for me, please.
Western NC paramedic: “I’ve never made a post before, but I’m engaged at the lies— the government IS here, and I find it ironic the same people who fight to cut all these programs are the same ones criticizing the government.”
In North Carolina, more than 760 Guard members, supplemented by over 140 Guardsmen from Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, New York and South Carolina, cleared roads, transported commodities and conducted search and rescue missions with helicopters. The North Carolina Air National Guard delivered over 100,000 pounds of food, water and other critical supplies for Hurricane Helene victims on a C-17 Globemaster III from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport to Asheville Regional Airport, which has become a central distribution hub due to impassable roadways caused by flooding and debris.
North Carolina Air National Guard hauls over 100,000 pounds of supplies from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a C17 to Western North Carolina as a part of Tropical Storm #Helene support. pic.twitter.com/QYa1UA2ASa
As it applies to vintage cinema, it could be argued that “forgotten” ain’t what it used to be. From the advent of video stores in the 1980s to the glut of streaming platforms available today, the idea of an “obscure film” has become, well…obscure to several generations of filmgoers now. However, for those of us of a certain age, there was a time when the options were more limited. As I wrote in a 2017 piece about the death of neighborhood theaters:
Some of my fondest memories of the movie-going experience involve neighborhood theaters; particularly during a 3-year period of my life (1979-1982) when I was living in San Francisco. But I need to back up for a moment. I had moved to the Bay Area from Fairbanks, Alaska, which was not the ideal environment for a movie buff. At the time I moved from Fairbanks, there were only two single-screen movie theaters in town. To add insult to injury, we were usually several months behind the Lower 48 on first-run features (it took us nearly a year to even get Star Wars).
Keep in mind, there was no cable service in the market, and VCRs were a still a few years down the road. There were occasional midnight movie screenings at the University of Alaska, and the odd B-movie gem on late night TV (which we had to watch in real time, with 500 commercials to suffer through)…but that was it. Sometimes, I’d gather up a coterie of my culture vulture pals for the 260-mile drive to Anchorage, where there were more theaters for us to dip our beaks into.
Consequently, due to the lack of venues, I was reading more about movies, than watching them. I remember poring over back issues of The New Yorker at the public library, soaking up Penelope Gilliat and Pauline Kael; but it seemed requisite to live in NYC (or L.A.) to catch all these cool art-house and foreign movies they were raving about (most of those films just didn’t make it out up to the frozen tundra). And so it was that I “missed” a lot of 60s and 70s cinema.
Needless to say, when I moved to San Francisco, which had a plethora of fabulous neighborhood theaters in 1979, I quickly set about making up the deficit. While I had a lot of favorite haunts (The Surf, The Balboa, The Castro, and the Red Victorian loom large in my memory), there were two venerable (if a tad dodgy) downtown venues in particular where I spent an unhealthy amount of time in the dank and the dark with snoring bums who used the auditoriums as a $2 flop: The Roxie and The Strand.
That’s because they were “repertory” houses; meaning they played older films (frequently double and triple bills, usually curated by some kind of theme). That 3 years I spent in the dark was my film school; that’s how I got caught up with Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Peter Bogdanovich, Werner Herzog, Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson, Wim Wenders, Michael Ritchie, Brian De Palma, etc.
Of course, in 2017 any dweeb with an internet connection can catch up on the history of world cinema without leaving the house…which explains (in part) why these smaller movie houses are dying. But they will never know the sights, the sounds (the smells) of a cozy neighborhood dream palace; nor, for that matter, will they ever experience the awesomeness of seeing the classic films as they were originally intended to be seen-on the big screen.
That said, I would argue that there are still plenty of vintage films that don’t get enough love. So if you want to do a little exploring for movie night, here are 25 recommendations from my favorite movie decade…in alphabetical order. Enjoy!
Americana (1973/1981) – David Carradine and Barbara Hershey star in this unique, no-budget 1973 character study (released in 1981). Carradine, who also directed and co-produced, plays a Vietnam vet who drifts into a small Kansas town, and for his own enigmatic reasons, decides to restore an abandoned merry-go-round. The reaction from the clannish townsfolk ranges from bemused to spiteful. It’s part Rambo, part Billy Jack (although nowhere near as violent), and a genre curio in the sense that none of the violence depicted is perpetrated by its war-damaged protagonist. Carradine also composed and performed the song that plays in the closing credits. It’s worth noting that Americana predates Deer Hunter and Coming Home, which are generally considered the “first” narrative films to deal with Vietnam vets.
The Day of The Dolphin (1973) – “Fa loves Pa!” This offbeat 1973 sci-fi film marked the third collaboration between Buck Henry and director Mike Nichols. Henry adapted the script from Robert Merle’s novel. George C. Scott is excellent in the lead role as a marine biologist who has developed a method for training dolphins to communicate in human language. Naturally, there is a shadowy cabal of government spooks who take keen interest in this breakthrough. I like to call this one a conspira‘sea’ thriller (sorry).
Dodes’ka-den (1970) – this 1970 film by Akira Kurosawa rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as, say, The Seven Samurai; nonetheless, it stands out as one of the great director’s most unique efforts. This was the first film Kurosawa shot in color (27 years into his career, no less)-and it shows; the screen explodes with every imaginable hue you could create from a painter’s palette.
Perversely, the subject matter within this episodic tale of life in a Tokyo slum (mental illness, domestic violence, rape, alcoholism, starvation, etc.) is as dark and bleak as its visuals are bright and colorful. It’s a challenging watch; but the film slowly and deliberately sneaks up on you with its compassion and humanity, packing a real (if hard-won) emotional wallop by the devastating denouement.
Don’s Party (1976) – Director Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morant) sets his story on Australia’s election night, 1969. Outgoing host Don and his uptight wife are hosting an “election party” for old college chums at their middle-class suburban home.
Most of the guests range from the recently divorced to the unhappily married. Ostensibly a gathering to watch election results, talk politics and socialize, Don’s party deteriorates into a primer on bad human behavior as the booze kicks in. By the end of the night, marriages are on the rocks, friendships nearly broken and guests are skinny dipping in the vacationing neighbor’s pool.
Yet, this is not just another wacky party film. David Williamson’s script (which he adapted from his own play) offers many keen observations about elitism, politics, and adult relationships. Savagely funny, brilliantly written and splendidly acted.
The Duellists (1977) – If you can get past Harvey Keitel’s anachronistic Brooklyn wise guy stance and Keith Carradine’s oddly mannered take on a 19th-century “popinjay”, there’s a lot here in director Ridley Scott’s sumptuously photographed 1977 debut (adapted from a Joseph Conrad story) for cineastes to revel in. Keitel and Carradine play a pair of officers in Napoleon’s army who engage in a series of duels spanning three decades (some people just don’t know when to “let it go”).
Happily, the existential futility of this purloined stalemate becomes moot, as it is cloaked in one of the most visually stunning period pieces you’ll ever feast your eyes upon this side of Barry Lyndon (all the more impressive when you consider the $900,000 budget, which is coffee and a doughnut compared to the $130,000,000 spent on his dreary-looking Prometheus).
FM (1978) – John Alonzo’s 1978 comedy-drama (written by Ezra Sacks) centers on fictional L.A. rock station “Q-Sky” FM, which has just shot to number one, to the elation of hip program director Jeff Dugan (Michael Brandon), who leads a team of colorful DJs (Martin Mull, Cleavon Little, Alex Karras and Eileen Brennan). While Dugan sees the win as validation for his “free form” approach, corporate HQ views it as a potential cash cow for landing big accounts like the U.S. Army. The battle lines between art and commerce are drawn…and it’s on.
Granted-the film is uneven, but the cast is game, the soundtrack is great, and Linda Ronstadt and band are in fine form performing several live numbers. It’s a nice snapshot of the era when “underground” FM was making a shift to the more corporate “Layla-Free Bird-Tom Sawyer” format that flogs to this day.
Gumshoe (1971) – This relatively obscure U.K. gem from 1971 was produced by its star Albert Finney and marked the feature film directing debut for Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, The Grifters, High Fidelity, et. al.). Finney is wonderful as an emcee who works in a seedy Liverpool nightclub and models himself after Philip Marlowe. He decides to indulge his long-time fantasy of becoming a private detective by placing a newspaper ad offering his services-and gets more than he bargains for with his first case.
Screenwriter Neville Smith’s clever dialog is infused with just enough shadings of Chandler and Hammet to deflect suspicion of plagiarism (and Finney thankfully doesn’t overdo his Bogey impression-which isn’t half-bad). Nice supporting turn from Billie Whitelaw, and Frears’ use of the gritty Liverpool milieu lends an appropriate “noir” vibe.
The Hired Hand (1971) – Peter Fonda’s 1971 directorial debut is a lean, poetic neorealist Western in the vein of Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Jan Troell’s Zandy’s Bride. Gorgeously photographed by the great Vilmos Zsigmond, it stars Fonda as a taciturn drifter who returns to his wife (Verna Bloom) after a prolonged absence.
Embittered by his desertion, she refuses to take him back, advising him to not even tell their young daughter that he is her father. In an act of contrition, he offers to work on her rundown farm purely as a “hired hand”, no strings attached. Reluctantly, she agrees; the couple slowly warm up to each other once again…until an incident from his recent past catches up with him and threatens the safety of his longtime friend and traveling companion (Warren Oates). Well-written (by Alan Sharp), directed, and acted.
Kings of the Road (1976) – Wim Wenders’ 1976 bookend of his “Road Movie Trilogy” (preceded by Alice in the Cities and The Wrong Move) is a Boudu Saved from Drowning-type tale with Rudiger Vogler as a traveling film projector repairman who happens upon a suicidal psychologist (Hanns Zischler) just as he decides to end it all by driving his VW into a river. The traveling companions are slow to warm up to each other but have plenty of screen time in which to bond (i.e., at 175 minutes, it may try the patience of some viewers). If you can stick with it-I think you will discover it’s worth the trip.
The Last Valley (1971) -Films set in Germany during The Thirty Years War are a niche genre…but as far as films set in Germany during the Thirty Years War go, one could do worse than this nearly forgotten but worthwhile drama from writer-director James Clavell.
The “outsider” is a recurring theme in Clavell’s work; and this tale is no exception. In this case the “outsider” is a two-headed beast in the form of an apolitical war refugee (Omar Sharif) and the ruthless Captain (Michael Caine) of a small contingent of mercenaries who both stumble upon a “hidden” valley whose residents have somehow managed to remain unscathed by the ravages of war and the Plague.
The Captain is ruthless (he would just as soon slit your throat as look at you) but also pragmatic; he decides against his initial impulse to kill Sharif, pillage the sleepy hamlet and move on after the quick thinking and silver-tongued Sharif convinces him it would be better all-around to spare the residents in exchange for putting his battle-weary soldiers up for the winter. The villagers, who seem malleable and complacent at first, come to reveal their own brand of pragmatism. A well-mounted period piece that also works as a timeless observation of human behavior in survival situations.
Little Murders (1971) – This dark, dark comedy from 1971 is one of my all-time favorite films. It was directed by Alan Arkin and adapted by Jules Feiffer from his own self-described “post-assassination play” (referring to the then-relatively recent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy). That said, it is not wholly political; but it is sociopolitical (I see it as the pre-cursor to Paddy Chayefsky’s Network).
Elliot Gould is at the peak of his Elliot Gould-ness as a nihilistic (and seemingly brain-dead) free-lance photographer who is essentially browbeaten into a love affair with an effervescent sunny side-up young woman (Marcia Rodd) who is bound and determined to snap him out of his torpor. The story follows the travails of this oil and water couple as they slog through a dystopian New York City chock full o’ nuts, urban blight, indifference and random shocking acts of senseless violence (you know…New York City in the 70s).
Many memorable vignettes, and nearly every cast member gets a Howard Beale-worthy monologue on how fucked-up American society is (remember…this was 1971). Disturbingly, it remains relevant as ever. But it is very funny. No, seriously. The cast includes Vincent Gardenia, Elizabeth Wilson, Doris Roberts, Lou Jacobi (who has the best monologue) and Donald Sutherland. Arkin casts himself as an eccentric homicide investigator-and he’s a hoot.
92 in the Shade (1975) – This quirky, picaresque 1975 black comedy is acclaimed writer Thomas McGuane’s sole directorial effort. (I consider it a companion piece to Frank Perry’s equally oddball Rancho Deluxe, which was also written by McGuane, features several of the same actors, and was released the same year).
Peter Fonda stars as a trustafarian slacker who comes home to Key West and decides to start a fishing charter business. This doesn’t set well with a gruff competitor (Warren Oates) who decides to play dirty with his rival.
As in most McGuane stories, narrative takes a backseat to the characters. In fact, the film essentially abandons its setup halfway through-until a curiously rushed finale. Still, there’s a bevy of wonderful character actors to savor, including Harry Dean Stanton, Burgess Meredith, William Hickey, Sylvia Miles and Louise Latham.
Also in the cast: Margot Kidder (McGuane’s wife at the time) and Elizabeth Ashley (his girlfriend at the time)-which begs speculation as to what was going through his mind as he directed a scene where Kidder and Ashley exchange insults and then get into a physical altercation!
Prime Cut (1972) – This offbeat 1972 “heartland noir” from director Michael Ritchie features one of my favorite Lee Marvin performances. He’s a cleaner for an Irish mob out of Chicago who is sent to collect an overdue payment from a venal livestock rancher (Gene Hackman) with the unlikely moniker of “Mary Ann”.
In addition to overseeing his meat packing plant (where the odd debt collector ends up as sausage filler), Mary Ann maintains a (literal) stable of naked, heavily sedated young women for auction. He protects his spread with a small army of disturbingly uber-Aryan young men who look like they were cloned in a secret Nazi lab.
It gets even weirder, yet the film has an strangely endearing quality; perhaps due to its blend of pulpy thrills, dark comedy and ironic detachment. It’s fun watching Hackman and Marvin go mano a mano; and seeing Sissy Spacek in her film debut.
Rancho Deluxe (1975) – This criminally underappreciated 1975 Frank Perry comedy-drama sports a marvelously droll original screenplay by novelist Thomas McGuane. Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston star as modern-day cattle rustlers in Montana. Loose and episodic…just like life on the range, I’d reckon (with the odd foray into sex and drugs tossed in just for giggles).
Wonderful ensemble work from a cast that includes Elizabeth Ashley, Slim Pickens, Clifton James, Charlene Dallas, Patti D’Arbanville, Richard Bright and Harry Dean Stanton (memorable as a love-struck cow hand). Outstanding cinematography by Willam A. Fraker.
Rockers (1978) – Admittedly, this island-flavored take on the Robin Hood legend is short on plot, but what it may lack in complexity is more than compensated for by its sheer exuberance (and I have to watch it at least once a year). Grecian writer-director Theodoros Bafaloukos appears to have cast every reggae luminary who was alive at the time in his 1978 film. It’s the tale of a Rasta drummer (Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace) who has had his beloved motorcycle stolen (customized Lion of Judah emblem and all!) by a crime ring run by a local fat cat.
Needless to say, the mon is vexed. So he rounds up a posse of fellow musicians (Richard “Dirty Harry” Hall, Jacob Miller, Gregory Isaacs, Robbie Shakespeare, Big Youth, Winston Rodney, et. al.) and they set off to relieve this uptown robber baron of his ill-gotten gains and re-appropriate them accordingly. Musical highlights include Miller performing “Tenement Yard”, and Rodney warbling his haunting and hypnotic Rasta spiritual “Jah No Dead” a cappella.
Saint Jack (1979) – Peter Bogdanovich’s least “commercial” project is my favorite of his, after The Last Picture Show. Adapted from Paul Theroux’s novel by the author, Howard Sackler and Bogdanovich, this 1979 drama is a low-key character study about an American (Ben Gazzara) hustling a living in Singapore during the Vietnam War era.
Gazzara plays Ben Flowers, an ingratiating fellow who specializes in showing visiting foreigners (mostly Brits) a good time. His modest brothel and bar isn’t exactly Rick’s Cafe, but he dreams of expanding, making a bundle and heading back to the states with a comfortable nest egg.
Unfortunately, this has put him on the radar of the local triad, who are escalating their harassment by the day. Flowers is wary, but too good-natured to go to the mattresses, as it were (he’s the antithesis of a “mobster type”, which is what makes the character so interesting). Eventually, however, he’s forced to seek another avenue-running a CIA-sanctioned brothel for soldiers on R&R from tours of duty in Vietnam.
I haven’t seen all of his films, but Gazzara’s performance is surely one of (if not “the”) best he ever delivered. The film is also a late-career highlight for the perennially underrated Denholm Elliot, who was nominated for a BAFTA award in 1980 (but didn’t win). Keep your eyes peeled for George Lazenby in the penultimate scene-a wordless, yet extraordinary sequence. Bogdanovich casts himself as a mysterious government spook. Leisurely paced but completely absorbing, it’s one of those films that has an immersive sense of “place” (beautifully shot on location by the late great Robby Müller).
That Sinking Feeling (1979) – Sort of a Scottish version of Big Deal on Madonna Street, this was the 1979 debut from writer-director Bill Forsyth (Local Hero, Comfort & Joy). An impoverished Glasgow teenager, tired of eating cornflakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, comes up with a scheme that will make him and his underemployed pals rich beyond their wildest dreams-knocking over a plumbing supply warehouse full of stainless steel sinks.
Funny as hell, but with a wee touch of working class weltschmerz; this subtext makes it a precursor to films like The Full Monty, Waking Ned Devine and Brassed Off. Nearly all of the same principal cast would return in Forsyth’s 1982 charmer, Gregory’s Girl.
Slade in Flame (1974) – Akin to Mott the Hoople, it may be arguable among music geeks as to whether Slade was truly “glam” (they were a bit on the “blokey” side- as the Brits would say), but they are nonetheless considered so in some circles, and this 1974 film was released during the heyday of space boots and glitter, so there you go.
The directorial debut for Richard Loncraine (Brimstone and Treacle, The Missionary, Richard III) the film is a gritty, semi-biographical “behind the music” drama about a working-class band called Flame (suspiciously resembling the four members of Slade, wink-wink) who get chewed up and spit out of the star-making machine (this just in: managers and A & R people are back-stabbing weasels). Far from a masterpiece, but better than you’d expect, considering its non-professional cast (with the exception of Tom Conti, in his first film!).
Sorcerer (1977) – The time is ripe for a re-appraisal of William Friedkin’s 1977 action-adventure, which was greeted with indifference by audiences and critics at the time. Maybe it was the incongruous title, which likely led many to assume it would be in the vein of his previous film (and huge box-office hit), The Exorcist. Then again, it was tough for any other film to garner attention in the immediate wake of Star Wars.
At any rate, it’s an expertly directed, terrifically acted update of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic 1953 nail-biter, The Wages of Fear (I say “update” in deference to Friedkin, who bristles at the term “remake” in a “letter from the director” included with the Blu-ray I own).
Roy Scheider heads a superb international cast as a desperate American on the lam in South America, who signs up for a job transporting a truckload of nitroglycerin through rough terrain. Walon Green wrote the screenplay, and Tangerine Dream provides a memorable soundtrack.
Stardust (1974) – Michael Apted directed this 1974 sequel to Claude Whatham’s 1973 film That’ll Be the Day. David Essex reprises his role as restless seeker Jim MacLaine, who has finally found his true passion: music.
The first third traces MacLaine’s Beatle-like rise to fame with his beat combo “The Stray Cats” (it’s a safe bet Brian Setzer and band mates saw this film back in the day and “re-appropriated” the name).
With massive success comes the inevitable backstage squabbles and jealousies; eventually MacLaine is surrounded by music company weasels and yes-men whispering in his ear to dump his “backup” band and pursue a solo career as a rock god (who can say “no” to that?). Then comes the inevitable decline: too much drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll excess.
One of the best (and most realistic) films ever made about the music business. Clever casting of a number of veteran UK rockers like Adam Faith, Dave Edmunds, Keith Moon, Marty Wylde and Paul Nicholas adds greatly to the authenticity.
The Seven Per Cent Solution (1977) – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s super sleuth Sherlock Holmes has weathered an infinite number of movie incarnations over the decades, but none as fascinating as Nicol Williamson’s tightly wound coke fiend in this wonderful 1977 Herbert Ross film.
Intrepid sidekick Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall), concerned over his friend’s addiction, decides to do an intervention, engineering a meeting between the great detective and Dr. Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). Naturally, there is a mystery afoot as well, but it’s secondary to the entertaining interplay between Williamson and Arkin.
Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer (who adapted from his own novel) would repeat the gimmick two years later in his directing debut Time After Time, when he placed similarly odd bedfellows together in one story by pitting H.G. Wells against Jack the Ripper.
The Shout (1978) – This unsettling 1978 sleeper was adapted from a Robert Graves story by Michal Austin and its director, Jerzy Skolimowski. The late John Hurt is excellent as a mild-mannered avant-garde musician who lives in a sleepy English hamlet with his wife (Susannah York). When an enigmatic vagabond (Alan Bates) blows into town, their quiet country life begins to go…elsewhere. This is a genre-defying film; somewhere between psychological horror and culture clash drama. I’ll put it this way-if you like Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (which would make a great double-bill) this one is in your wheelhouse.
Wanda (1970) – This 1970 character study/road movie/crime drama is an under-seen indie gem written and directed by its star Barbara Loden. Wanda (Loden) is an unemployed working-class housewife. It’s clear that her life is the pits…and not just figuratively. She’s recently left her husband and two infants and has been crashing at her sister’s house, which is within spitting distance of a yawning mining pit, nestled in the heart of Pennsylvania’s coal country.
When the judge scolds her for being late to a child custody hearing, the oddly detached Wanda shrugs it off, telling His Honor that if her husband wants a divorce, that’s OK by her; adding their kids are probably “better off” being taken care of by their father. Shortly afterward, Wanda splits her sister’s house and hits the road (hair still in curlers), carrying no more than her purse. Her long, strange road trip is only beginning.
Wanda is Terrance Malick’s Badlands meets Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA; like Malick’s film it was inspired by a true crime story and features a strangely passive female protagonist with no discernible identity of her own, and like Koppel’s documentary it offers a gritty portrait of rural working-class America using unadorned 16 mm photography. A unique, unforgettable, and groundbreaking film. (Full review).
The Wild Rovers (1971) – Blake Edwards made a western? Yes, he did, and not a half-bad one at that. A world-weary cowhand (William Holden) convinces a younger (and somewhat dim) co-worker (Ryan O’Neal) that since it’s obvious that they’ll never really get ahead in their present profession, they should give bank robbery a shot. They get away with it, but then find themselves on the run, oddly, not so much from the law, but from their former employer (Karl Malden), who is mightily offended that anyone who worked for him would do such a thing. Episodic and leisurely paced, but ambles along quite agreeably, thanks to the charms of the two leads, and the beautiful, expansive photography by Philip Lathrop. Ripe for rediscovery.
Wizards (1977) – Within the realm of animated films, Ralph Bakshi’s name may not be as universally recognizable (or revered) as Walt Disney or Studio Ghibli, but I would consider him no less of an important figure in the history of the genre. During his heyday (1972-1983) the director pumped out 8 full-length features (including Fritz the Cat, The Lord of the Rings and American Pop) using his signature blend of live-action, rotoscoping, and traditional cel animation.
While I grant it is not for all tastes, I’ve always had a particular soft spot for his 1977 film, Wizards. Tanking at the box office during its original theatrical run due to a combination of lackluster promotion by 20th Century Fox and an unfortunate proximity to the release of that same studio’s Star Wars (much to Bakshi’s chagrin, as he bitterly recounts on the commentary track of the Blu-ray i own) the film has nonetheless picked up a devoted cult following over the decades, thanks to home video.
It’s an elemental tale of two warring brothers, one good and one evil, who are both endowed with the magical powers of natural-born wizards. A familiar trope, to be sure, but Bakshi renders the story with originality, verve, and a fair amount of dark (and adult) humor.
Probably not a good idea if you care about what’s happening in the Middle East.
“Hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later.” Trump is reckless, stupid, and unfit. Here’s how he thinks Israel should hit back at Iran. (Video: RSBN) pic.twitter.com/Jxd19n2pmP
I appreciate him revealing his decision making process — “hit first and worry about the rest later.” What could go wrong?
The Miller Center has an interesting overview of Trump’s foreign policy in the first term. It was all over the place. He is an isolationist who nonetheless built up the military and approved any number of military actions. He was heavily involved in Syria and his vaunted outreach to North Korea resulted in Kim Jong Un continuing his nuclear and ballistic missile program even as Trump boosted his prestige on the international stage. We all know what he did with Russia. His treatment of our allies was outrageous and completely gratuitous.
In my opinion, he reversed as much of Obama’s policies as he could mainly because he didn’t know anything and that was an easy choice. (People around him were happy for him to do it because they genuinely disagreed with the policies like the Paris Accords and the Iran nuclear deal. If Obama had been against them, Trump would have been for them.)
There was no coherence to his actions. He seemed to do everything by impulse. As you can see by that comment above, he has not changed.
His foreign policy was puerile and stupid and I think it’s clear that he has not learned anything since then. After all the man stuck classified nuclear documents in a bunch of junk files and stored them in the toilet at Mar-a-Lago. He is not a serious person. He’ll be even worse in the next term. Why? Here’s a list of Trump’s top 10 foreign policy advisers. Stephen Miller, Ric Grenell and Kash Patel are among them. The rest aren’t much better.
4,413 toilets flushed. 13,049 of our neighbors confirmed safe and sound by volunteers, and via email and text, as of Sunday, October 6, 2024.
