Clint Howard again

Poor Clint Howard. When I was a kid and Gentle Ben was on in syndication, I really disliked him. I watched the show because there were hardly any channels back then. It was either Gentle Ben or The New Zoo Revue, and I wasn't going to watch that.

I saw the show again as an adult and I still didn't like Clint Howard, but now I felt guilty for not liking him. And I didn't realize that bears were so stupid-looking.

I was reminded of the words of Werner Herzog in Grizzly Man:

And what haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior.

It's frightening---a show about a boy and a bear that could turn on him at any moment. Jodie Foster was mauled by a lion on the set of a Disney movie. I don't know if Clint Howard had any close calls with the man-eating prehistoric monster he was forced to co-star with.

Clint Howard may be a perfectly nice fellow. But he's a Ted Cruz supporter. He looked at Ted Cruz the way he looked into the soulless, beady little eyes of his TV bear. To him, he was a friend, a savior.

Clint Howard, Ted Cruz

My God. Turns out Clint Howard was a Ted Cruz supporter.
Don't know why I'm shocked or interested.

Daratt, (Dry Season)

Made in Chad in 2006.

In order to bring a 40 year civil war to an end, the Chadian government declares an amnesty on war crimes. Outraged, a blind grandfather hands his fifteen-year-old grandson, Atim, a pistol and sends him to the city to murder the man who murdered his father. His father had been killed before he was born. The kid sets off to kill a man he doesn't know to avenge the murder of his father who he never met.

His intended target is now very religious. He operates a small bakery and hands bread out to children who gather outside. The kid becomes an apprentice at the bakery. He sullen and speaks very little. The man had his throat cut during the war and now has to hold an electrolarynx to his throat to speak, so there's not much conversation.

Interesting movie. A bit slow. Reminded in some respects of some of the movies from the Peoples Republic of China, like Er Dong. It looked great, filmed mostly static camera. Cost $1.7 million.

Available on Fandor.

Obama's daughter gets into Harvard

One of Barack Obama's daughters whose name I haven't bothered learning has been accepted into Harvard. What a shock.

When I was in high school, I began to wonder how Thurston Howell III managed to graduate from Harvard. I knew how he got in, but how could he keep up? Then, years later, I heard George W. Bush graduated from Yale and I started to have grave doubts about these colleges. In what way were elite universities elite?

Jodie Foster went to Yale, Jonathan Taylor Thomas went to Harvard, Brooke Shields went to Princeton, the girl who starred in Flashdance went to Yale. Natalie Portman went to Harvard. Are movie stars ALL geniuses? Do any of these people NOT go to elite schools?

James Franco completely destroyed the illusion by enrolling in several universities at once. If he really is some kind of Einstein, why is he wasting his super-intellect on creative writing and conceptual art? He's not good at either. He hasn't done one thing that, objectively, requires any brains. If he's that smart, let's see him learn French.