Summer Movies

The Ringer, the new website from Bill Simmons, has so far not lived up to the expectations he created with the defunct Grantland site, but this week it featured a fun article on the best summer for movies.  Since the site is run by kids, don't expect to find any summers from the Sixties on the list.  One summer stood out to me, but before we get to that let's remember one film released in early July 1997, Men In Black.

THC and the then-12 year old THC Son (who today serves as Official Science Advisor to the blog), were anxiously awaiting the release of this film and planned to see the first show on the first day of its release.  The hard-working THC had to sneak out of work early to pick up the Son in order to catch the matinee premiere at a local Boca Raton, Florida theater.  About thirty minutes into the movie, the picture froze, then the screen went black and were informed that the film was broken and the showing would not continue.  Fortunately, we had a copy of the local paper with us and quickly determined another showing would begin shortly at a theater in Deerfield Beach.  We drove there in record time, just made the beginning of the movie and, this time, watched it all the way through.  Men In Black lived up to the hype and THC will always remember the adventure that day with his son.

And THC has always appreciated the philosophical underpinnings of the movie:
And now on to 1998.  Until seeing the list in The Ringer, THC had forgotten how many good movies were released this summer.  These are the ones he saw, in order of their release:

He Got Game.  Spike Lee can be one of the most irritating film makers, even when he's made a good one, and He Got Game was a good one.  Starring Denzel Washington as Jake Shuttlesworth, an imprisoned convict, and Ray Allen, just off his rookie NBA season, as his son, Jesus Shuttlesworth, a high school senior being heavily recruited by several university basketball programs.  Jake has been released to try to persuade Jesus to go to the state university.  It's complicated since Jake is in jail for killing Jesus' mom.  Spike made the odd, but brilliant choice, to use the music of Aaron Copeland for his soundtrack.

The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey.  We thought this was pretty good at the time, but it's aged badly.

The X-Files.  Not a great movie, but the circumstances made it memorable. We were all fans of the X-Files TV show and our kids were devoted to it.  We happened to be on a two-week family driving vacation from Las Vegas to Alliance, Nebraska during which the film was scheduled to premiere and it was very important, particularly for the THC Daughter, that we see the movie on the day of its release.  After determining that we would be in Alliance on the day of its release, we contacted the one theater in town and found it would be playing.  We sat in the balcony of the small theater in that town on the Great Plains and watched the movie.

Out Of Sight.  The first time THC thought George Clooney could actually act and he and Jennifer Lopez are terrific.  That's not all this movie had going for it.  Based on a book by Elmore Leonard and also featuring Ving Rhames, Dennis Farina, Don Cheadler, Albert Brooks, Michael Keaton, Samuel L Jackson and a delightfully goofy performance by Steve Zahn, it's a movie that bears rewatching.

Armageddon.  Described by The Ringer as "one of the best terrible movies ever".  THC agrees.  Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?

Lethal Weapon 4.  Yeah, they were running out the string but you had Gibson, Glover, Russo and Pesci.

There's Something About Mary.  Yes, indeed.  Ben Stiller and many others felt that way about Cameron Diaz. 

Saving Private Ryan.  The first twenty minutes are absolutely shattering.  So are the last twenty.  And so are parts of it in between.

Snake Eyes.  Entertaining trash from Brian De Palma, starring Nicholas Cage and Gary Sinise and filmed in De Palma's trademark flashy, hyper realistic, and sharp focused style.

Run Lola Run.  An entertaining German film, in which Lola, played by Franka Potente, who went on to star in the first two Jason Bourne movies, has to deliver a 100,000 DM ransom in twenty minutes in order to save her boyfriend.

Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. Written and directed by Guy Ritchie, a story about London gangsters and a series of misadventures that are gruesome and funny, all at the same time.  Introduced Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham to international audiences.  Everyone speaks in incomprehensible Brit dialect but you'll enjoy it anyway.

Not bad for one summer, isn't it?

Ophelia

They got your number
Scared and running
But I'm still waiting for the second coming
Of Ophelia
Please darken my door

The Band with Levon Helm on vocals.  Yeah.

Authoritarianism & The Election

From Arnold Kling's always thoughtful Askblog, in response to a commenter's question:

Should Trump win the election, he will take it as proof of his infallible instincts. How does an infallible man behave in a position of power? A bit like Hitler, no?

Arnold writes:

1. The nature of the Presidency, as an elected office occupied by a single individual, lends itself to authoritarianism. It inspires awe among journalists, worship among citizens, and sycophancy among aides. It selects for narcissists.

2. I think that in the United States, the “Overton Window” has moved mostly in the authoritarian direction over the last century.

. . .

7. Because Barack Obama is convinced of his own absolute moral righteousness, he acts as if his instincts were infallible. Thus, I believe that he meets the commenter’s definition of authoritarian. Of course, those who share Mr. Obama’s outlook would say that he has merely responded appropriately to Republican obstruction.

8. By my definition, Mr. Trump speaks like an authoritarian.

9. However, I am more worried that the country will move in authoritarian direction if Mrs. Clinton wins. Many in Mr. Trump’s own party are opposed to his authoritarianism. Not so with Mrs. Clinton and her party. She is Nixon without anyone to play the role of Howard Baker [an elder statesman of the same party willing to stand up to a President].

10. Hitler was more than an authoritarian (by my definition). He used murder and physical intimidation to try to eliminate all opposition. I am not worried about either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton doing that.

You can read the entire post here.

Arnold's thoughts pretty much encompass my own on the subject, with the exception that I am more worried about Republican elected officials ultimately falling in line with Trump than he seems to be, although he is correct that many in the party and in conservative ranks oppose his authoritarian instincts.  Then, again, in Trump's case it depends if we're dealing with Dr Donald or Mr Trump.

Another Day In The Life

While the crook and the clown fight over the presidency, Instapundit gives us two more examples from the "it's just another day in your increasingly government-planned life" file:

First up, staggering ignorance of the laws of supply and demand:

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: What’s the Matter With San Francisco?

We are watching the old San Francisco slip away before our eyes. Every time a housing unit becomes vacant, it goes on the market at a price so high that no organizer, writer, teacher, activist or artist could dream of affording it. Trying things that don’t have monetary potential just isn’t possible anymore.
How did we get here?

—The Atlantic’s “City Lab” blog, in a 2005 article with an unintentionally hilarious “unexpected” dek: “The city’s devastating affordability crisis has an unlikely villain—its famed progressive politics.”

Which brings us to Fox Butterfield*, Progressive Urban Planner:

“You cannot lower the cost of housing by building more. Supply creates its own demand,” said Amit Ghosh, chief planner for The City.
If more market rate dwellings are built, Ghosh predicted, “rich people living outside would want to come to San Francisco to fill them. And how does that relieve our supply problem?”

—The San Francisco Chronicle, “Highrises called cure for city housing crunch,” March 8th, 1999. Ghosh was the chief of the San Francisco planning department from 1992 to 2008.
 

Next, another installment in the Nice Work If You Can Get It series:

WHAT JOB PAYS THE MOST FOR DOING THE LEAST WORK? Try running a local public housing authority in a small town like Linden, New Jersey, Clayton, Oklahoma or Mabank, Texas. Your paycheck is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and odds are you’ll only have a handful of housing units to oversee.

“The executive director of the Housing Authority of the City of Linden, New Jersey, for example, drew $295,000 a year for overseeing 200 government-owned housing project apartments and 350 Section 8 vouchers redeemed with private landlords,” reports Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

“That’s more than the same position makes in poverty-plagued Newark with 25 times as many residents, and more than the position in major cities like Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, according to HUD’s Public Housing Authority Executive Compensation database covering 2014, the most recent available year.”

The Mabank ED’s salary is only $47,005, but then overseeing a mere 16 public housing units means the job pays nearly $3,000 per unit managed. It’s not a time-consuming job, why not have a second job? Down in Marietta, GA., the ED got $242,000 in salary, plus a $50,000 bonus!

Tony Hits 90

It's Tony Bennett's 90th birthday!
(Central Park by Tony Bennett)

Probably the most relaxed performer I've ever seen.  It was in 2008 at a taping of one of Elvis Costello's Spectacle interview shows for the Sundance Channel done at the Saturday Night Live studio at 30 Rock in NYC (and my thanks to the folks at NBC who knew I was an Elvis fan and got us tickets!).  No more than 200 to 250 people were there and we were in the third row, seated just behind Diana Krall, Elvis' wife, who'd given birth to twins six months before and had performed since then.  Tony was Elvis' only guest that evening.

Elvis would ask Tony questions; sometimes he'd answer, other times he'd talk about whatever he wanted to talk about.  He told us the two things he liked to do most in life were sing and paint (he's quite a good artist).  At one point, he ventured into the audience, grabbed Diana and brought her onstage to perform a song with him.  We're pretty sure it was an unstaged moment since we'd overheard some of her conversation with a friend just before.

The first song Tony did that evening was The Way You Look Tonight.  His voice is not what it once was, and when he started, I wondered if he could pull it off.  Silly me; the man can deliver a song.  By the time he finished, all of us were a bit misty. And listen to the lovely piano accompaniment by Bill Charlap.  The version below is more recent, but the same arrangement.

Happy birthday, Mr Bennett. 

Duke Ellington by Tony Bennett.

A Unique Honeymoon

It seemed appropriate on this 36th anniversary of the nuptials for Mr and Mrs THC to bring readers attention to this piece from Messy Nessy, a website which often features fascinating travel photos.  In April 1947, ex-GI Ernest Kreiling, took his new bride, Jean Vonachen, on a honeymoon tour of war-ravaged Europe, including the battlefields in France, Belgium and Germany on which he'd fought in 1944 and 1945.  It's a powerful reminder of the devastation that remained two years after the end of WWII.  Life Magazine ran a photo essay on their trip.

Ernest Kreiling served from 1941 until 1945 and was awarded a Bronze Star for bravery in action. Ernest and Jean met in junior high school in Peoria, Illinois and remained married until Ernest's death in 2008.

Below are a sampling of photos.  One of them is of a visit to the grave of Ernest's best friend. You can view them all at Messy Nessy.