Wizard of Oz

I watched this thing as a kid and thought it would be a pretty good movie if they weren't singing all the time and for no reason. Were the songs supposed to be dialog? But every time something starts to happen the movie stops dead and they start singing.

There was a time when musicals were thought to be somehow educational. So I got dragged to see Oliver! and I've had a grossly distorted picture of the work of Charles Dickens ever since.

Mark Lester, a big child star in his day who played Oliver, was reportedly tone deaf and arhythmic. Just plain couldn't sing at all. His singing was dubbed by a five-year-old girl.

Obama endorses pro-assasination movie

Doesn't seem like a good idea for a president, but Obama has his sarong in a bunch over Sony pictures not releasing the pro-assasination "comedy", The Interview, starring and directed by traitorous Canadian millionaire Zionist Seth Rogen and grinning internet predator James Franco.
 
I don't know why the United States should retaliate against North Korea for allegedly "hacking" into the computers of a Japanese company. But Obama said he would retaliate. The "hackers" had caused "serious damage", Obama said, by exposing Sony executives' racism, how much they paid their stars and their hatred for Angelina Jolie.

Sony brought this on themselves. They made a movie that ends with, according to their own executive in Britain, a level of realistic violence that would have been shocking in a horror movie. Seth Rogen, who reveled in the slaughter his fellow Zionists carried out in Gaza, ends the movie with the graphic murder of Kim Jong-un. No one thought Kim might object to this?

Day of the Jackal was made well after de Gaulle died of natural causes, and the mockumentary about Bush being killed presented that as a bad thing in part because Cheney was even worse. There was a terrible B movie about American criminals who set out to murder Hitler, but that was in the middle of World War Two. I won't give it away, but Hitler was still alive at the end of The Great Dictator. I haven't seen the reportedly crappy remake, but The Manchurian Candidate is about a plot against a fictional politician, and it was an American movie about an American being killed.

Look at how upset the Catholics got over The Pope Must Die. They had to change it to The Pope Must Diet. I haven't seen it, but the Mafia wants to kill the idiot priest the cardinals accidentally elected pope. The assassination plot was the least anti-Catholic thing about it.

They're reporting that the rest of Hollywood is outraged that Sony pulled the movie, but it's also been reported that the other studios were mad at Sony for not pulling it sooner. Theaters are all multiplexes and a threat against one is a threat against all.

People are also saying that, even with the massive publicity, the only people who would go see this thing are the idiots who would have gone to it anyway. It shows how bad Hollywood has gotten. Even after a massive international terrorist operation to prevent people from seeing a movie, no one is the least bit curious about it. Everyone knows it's just more of the same crap Hollywood keeps churning out.

Does anyone regard Sony's action as a loss to cinema? George Clooney was outraged----was he actually planning to see it? Was Obama going to take his daughters to it? He says he "loves" Seth Rogen. He didn't say how he felt about would-be statutory rapist James Franco.

The good thing about this is that it'll probably cost Sony hundreds of millions of dollars and will damage the careers of a number of executives. My sincere hope is that it will end the careers of Seth Rogen and James Franco, but I'm not holding my breath.

Seth Rogen and "actor" James Franco cancel appearances

Internet pervert James Franco and zionist millionaire Seth Rogen

endanger movie goers with their pro-assassination "comedy". 

Well, really, now, if you make a movie where the "heroes" assassinate the actual leader of any country, you're going to have some special problems.

Remember when they made The Pope Must Die and had to retitle it The Pope Must Diet? And that was about a fictional pope who was an idiot.

Now Seth Rogen and James Franco, each of whom I hate for various reasons, made a movie where they're going to try to murder the leader of North Korea.

To quote the New York Post quoting Gawker quoting a hacked Sony email:

“James Franco proves once again that irritation is his strong suit which is a shame because the character could have been appealing and funny out of his hands,” Sony Pictures UK executive Peter Taylor wrote to his colleague in an email obtained by Gawker.

Taylor goes on to call the film, which centers around the assassination of North Korea’s dictator, a “misfire,” saying it is “unfunny and repetitive [with] a level of realistic violence that would be shocking in a horror movie.”

So Rogen and Franco have cancelled all press appearances after some new threats against the thing.

I won't be going to it. May watch it on Netflix if it's on there for instant viewing.

Poor Sony Pictures. They're stuck with this thing. Can't pull it now. In any situation, you should always give yourself a way out.

Turns out Hitler was very bad

I was having dinner with extended family. My sister claimed that George W. Bush's dog didn't like him. She thought this was proof that he was a bad man. Like you needed that as proof.

I pointed out that Hitler's dog, Blondi, got along fine with der fuhrer. In fact, Hitler killed Blondi. He tried out the cyanide capsule on him before committing suicide. Blondi didn't suspect a thing. Dogs are poor judges of character. He was as oblivious as the Goebbels children were as their parents prepared to murder them in the bunker.

Blondi and one of the Goebbels children. Both

died of acute cyanide poisoning in 1945.

Most of the people at the table were shocked that Hitler would do such a thing.

I mentioned that other Nazis in the bunker were more upset about Blondi than they were about Eva Braun's death.

I had a conversation a couple of years later with the same people. They seemed to have forgotten everything I told them. My sister mentioned the Pope "excommunicating" the Mafia (he didn't really.) I said that Mussolini had completely crushed the Mafia, then the U.S. invaded Italy and put all the mafia scum into power.

She was surprised that Mussolini did something good.

"Mussolini had his points," I said ironically. I hadn't praised Mussolini---I condemned the U.S. for putting the Mafia in power. They wanted to install a non-Fascist right-wing government, but the opponents of Mussolini had all been Socialists and Communists.

But my sister asked if Hitler had any good points.

"Well, he killed himself," I said. "He took cyanide AND shot himself."

"He was thorough," she said, again missing my point.

"He tested the cyanide on Blondi before he did it."

"Who's Blondi?"

"His German Shepherd."

And again, they were horrified and heartbroken. Poor Blondi! Poor sweet, innocent, trusting Blondi!

"You know, we are talking about Hitler here."

That whole "banality of evil" thing has gone too far. Now people think of Hitler as a dog person.

Shia LaBeouf "raped"

Am I wrong to be utterly indifferent to the alleged attempted "rape" of Shia LaBeouf?

I didn't really understand it. She was whipping his legs and nobody noticed?

I'm not blaming the victim here, but the guy DOES go around starting fights like an idiot. He attacked his neighbor with a knife. You can watch video of him hopping around like a boxer trying to fight with some guy on the street. He was physically helpless all of a sudden? If he had been the victim of some other crime, like if the woman had come in and started whipping his legs and then DIDN'T attempt to rape him, I don't think it would unreasonable to suggest that he should have called for help. If someone had come in and stolen his keys and his credit cards you'd expect him to say something.

And, also, after all that crap, after the plagiarism and the repeated fake "apologies"---he ripped off an artist and paid a skywriter to do a fake apology, but wouldn't simply pay the person whose work he stole. All this was going on. He was scum. Starting fights in bars, disrupting plays. And you just knew he was going to get away with it. Nothing would ever happen to him. He would continue living a charmed life, raking in millions. How are we supposed to feel about this?

Stubble

I will say this, though. Bill Cosby's pushing 80 and he looks pretty good. Stubble becomes him.

A beret is the poor man's toupe and a beard is the poor man's face lift. Look at Ronald Reagan whose neck aged faster than the rest of him. A beard could have taken twenty years off. At 80, he could have passed for a hopelessly senile 60-year-old. Hair dye didn't do him any favors. Horrible, repellent old man.

But it turns out that you don't need a full beard anymore. Stubble is enough to do the trick and a lot of people think it looks better. A full beard can make you look like an old prospector, and I'm suspicious of people with neatly trimmed facial hair of any kind. 

Both the Swedish and British versions of Wallander have aging stars with a lot of stubble. Makes me wonder if Swedish police don't have a dress code. But the guys do look better this way. My guess is that face lifts are less common among European stars and this is a safe, affordable alternative.

I've said this before, but Paul McCartney should take a page from Ringo Starr's book and grow some sort of beard. The only trouble is that Sir Paul dyes his hair and he'd probably have to dye his beard, too, but I'm sure there are ways to deal with this. I somehow doubt that's Ringo's natural hair color.

It's only good if you have something to cover up, though. It looks so stupid on some people.

Bill Cosby: a startling theory

 Dr Susan Block has a theory of what Bill Cosby's problem is. He has a sleep fetish.

As a sex therapist in private practice, I’ve treated many clients with sleep fetishes of various kinds. The clinical term is “somnophilia,” a paraphilia in which sexual arousal arises from fondling or having sex with someone who is asleep or unconscious. A more romantic name for it is the “Sleeping Beauty” syndrome. The fairy tale fantasy of an exquisitely beautiful, utterly helpless princess in a deep, hypnotic, erotic sleep that only awakens, with the climactic kiss of a charming prince, has captured imaginations and titillated libidos for centuries of civilized human history. If Prince Charming had given Beauty a roofie and then done his kissing and maybe a little fondling, he’d be a nonconsensual sleep fetishist, a.k.a., a sleep rapist. Not so charming any more.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/05/bill-cosbys-sleep-fetish/

Block noted that one of Cosby's alleged victims was already sleeping with him and he STILL drugged her. It's a dangerous fetish when it involves drugging people. As Dr Block writes:

The other side of the sleep fetish, getting sexually aroused by having sex with slumbering lovers, is far more dangerous to others than to the fetishist, especially when it involves putting “lovers” to sleep without their consent and then using their knocked out, very vulnerable, rag-doll body to satisfy desires for absolute power, selfish sensation and an intoxicating feeling of total control. If the allegations are true, this appears to describe the sexual appetites and behaviors of Bill Cosby.

There's an Australian sex movie about this, by the way, called Sleeping Beauty, available on Netflix.