RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/showtimes-pathetic-exercise-in-reagan-bashing/amp/

The network’s The Reagans doc traffics in misstatements, partial truths, and strategic omissions to pin Trump’s rise on the late president.

In making its programming decisions for the interval between the end of the 2020 presidential election and the holiday season, the top brass at Showtime reverted to what had once been standard fare in Hollywood and elsewhere: Reagan bashing. Over four successive Sundays, the network released yet another hour of its tedious and repetitious documentary, The Reagans.

Warning to the uninitiated: Do not mistake what comes before you as an update of anything like PBS’s extraordinary presentation of Reagan and his era as part of its “American Experience” repertoire. What you see on Showtime is neither objective history nor a fair-minded attempt to review past controversies through the perspective of the present. Its creator, Matt Tyrnauer, to his credit, is straightforward about that. He is a man with a mission.

His thesis is simple: that Ronald Reagan, through a series of “dog whistles,” carefully woven into his rhetoric, paved the way for Donald Trump’s angrier form of populism, with policies that promote white supremacy as the intended legacies of both presidents. Whatever history’s final judgment of Trump may be, few would doubt that this is a lot to pin on Ronald Reagan. In comparing the two presidents, the creators overlook some essential facts: Reagan twice won the presidency in two landslides, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College. Trump twice lost the popular vote and prevailed in Electoral College once and narrowly. Hidden in the numbers are the hopes and expectations the American people placed in both presidents and how the presidents regarded them.The only obvious similarity the documentary draws between Reagan and Trump is that both were entertainers. Both knew how to reach and move audiences, the filmmakers say — as if the calm reassuring Sunday night host of G.E. Theater, who entered into American living rooms every week after Ed Sullivan for eight years, was anything like the carnival-barking star of reality television, famous for his loud utterance of the two words: “You’re fired!” Both had audiences, but they related to them in different ways.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/ravishing-propaganda-bruce-bawer/

Since debuting with Aliens 3 in 1992, the director David Fincher has racked up an impressive list of no-nonsense, fast-moving pictures, mostly thrillers, and mostly terrific: Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl. It’s a rare filmmaker today who has such a solid list of credits.

Fincher’s latest film, the much-hyped Netflix offering Mank, is not a thriller but is, rather, the latest contribution to another major genre, the movie about Hollywood movie. Hollywood has always loved making movies about Hollywood, for the same reason that Narcissus loved looking at his reflection. Mank is about Herman Mankiewicz, nicknamed Mank, who, depending on which story you believe, either co-wrote Citizen Kane with Orson Welles or wrote it alone, only to see Welles slap his own name on the script.

When we first meet him, in 1940. Mank (Gary Oldman) is a rumpled, drunken, self-destructive has-been who’s been fired from MGM and planted by Welles in a house in the California desert, where he dries out while fitfully writing Kane. But Mank’s stay at that house turns out to be simply a frame for a story that, like Kane’s, is told mainly in flashbacks. Most of this movie, indeed, takes place in the 1930s, chiefly at MGM, where Mankiewicz wrote or co-wrote dozens of screenplays, and at San Simeon, the seaside estate of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, the model (needless to say) for Charles Foster Kane, who was (who knew?) a chum of Mank’s.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/09/3-reasons-you-should-stream-this-top-rated-classic-bbc-miniseries-right-now/

Now available to stream on YouTube, it’s time to discover why ‘Talking to a Stranger’ is considered one of the best television programs in British history.

In 1966, BBC-2 premiered the television drama “Talking to a Stranger.” Shown in four roughly 90-minute weekly installments in October of that year, the program was part of the BBC’s “Theatre 625” series, which aired from 1964 to 1968 and featured titles such as “1984,” “She Stoops to Conquer,” and “All’s Well That Ends Well.”

Many of the “Theatre 625” recordings have been lost, but “Talking to a Stranger” — which placed 78th in a 2000 British Film Institute ranking of the 100 greatest television programs in British history — is available for streaming on YouTube as well as in a boxed Judi Dench collection. Dench, who won the 1967 British Television Academy Best Actress Award for her role as the main character, Terry, is reason alone to watch “Talking to a Stranger,” but here are a few more.

As Relevant Today as in 1966

You might think a 55-year-old black-and-white British television show set in London, about an aging, middle-class married couple and their two adult children, would have nothing to say to contemporary Americans dealing with 21st-century problems. You would be wrong.

Indeed, “Talking to a Stranger” is about the things humans across the centuries have grappled with: dysfunctional relationships, mental health issues, poor life decisions, and the consequences of those decisions. The main characters struggle with fear, anger, resentment, guilt, and regret. There isn’t a clear-cut hero or villain.

And, much as we do in our own lives, the players in “Talking to a Stranger” each take turns at being both the victim and the perpetrator of hurt. At times, it’s almost painful to watch. Why? Because it’s all too real.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2020/12/07/the-feminists-gambit-a-skeptical-take-on-netflixs-the-queen-gambit-n1196739

At one time Chess was the reigning passion of my life, amounting almost to an obsession. I regularly visited the chess clubs in Old Montreal and played scrappy games with strangers on linoleum “boards” with chintzy plastic pieces. In time I acquired an extensive library of chess books and fell in love with opening theory, which I studied assiduously. I had a chess table built for me, bought a set of lovely hand-carved rosewood pieces, set about analyzing the games of the masters, and played as often as I could with friends, students and chess buffs. 

Soon it seemed I was doing little else. Montreal had become a mecca for chess tournaments, provincial, interzonal and international, which I devotedly attended. It was at the Tournament of Stars, sponsored by Quebec’s major French newspaper La Presse, that I met grandmaster Robert Hübner, then ranked sixth in the world. We became close friends over the years. Robert would visit me in Montreal and twice he spent summers with my family on the Greek island of Alonissos, where he would prepare for various international matches. As a friendly test and on a whim, I once asked Robert to set up the pieces as they were on the 18th move in the 27th game of the Alekhine-Capablanca 1927 World Championship match in Buenos Aires. It took him only a few seconds to reproduce the formation. 

By that time chess had become the center of my life. Though I never played in formal competitions, Robert assigned me a hypothetical rating of 1700, which falls into the FIDE Class B category. Eventually I came to understand chess as one of the great metaphors for life and published a book of poems, Chess Pieces, in which each chess piece, the various rules and the major opening gambits, stood allegorically for some aspect of human relationships.

Though many years have passed, my fascination with the game has never entirely waned. Thus, when Netflix featured the pseudo-biopic The Queen’s Gambit, based on the Walter Tevis novel of that title, which appears to have ignited a chess boom across the country, I couldn’t help binge-watching the career and exploits of chess prodigy Beth Harmon—Tevis’ “tribute to brainy women,” as he told The New York Times. The series (like the book) was quite mesmerizing—a gripping narrative of a young girl surmounting childhood trauma to reach the pinnacle of the chess world, with excellent production values, and snatches of games cloned from the manuals—which many commentators have fulsomely praised. And yet I found myself naggingly dissatisfied with the affair. Too much detracted from the aura of authenticity which the series aspired to.

To begin with, although there have been (and are) amazing women chess players, they were always few in number. This was not because they were held back by the “Patriarchy.” In the Soviet Union, Israel, and other nations, they were coddled and subsidized, but never reached the status of the very top world-class male grandmasters. The closest any woman ever came to winning an Open World Championship was the extraordinary Judit Polgar of Hungary, who finished last of eight participants in the 2005 San Luis Invitational, losing to Veselin Topalov, though she was playing White. 

http://politicalmavens.com/

While the Times offers David Kelley and Hugh Grant a chance to slap each other on the backs for the finale of “The Undoing,” word of mouth offers an abundance of disgruntled watchers who sat through the multiple inaccuracies of life on the upper east side expecting something unexpected as a payoff. Not only did we find out that the obvious was the right answer all along, but we learned that there were hidden references in this mediocre melodrama. Turns out that “The Undoing” was really about Trump, another narcissistic man who of course can be compared to a psychopathic killer because in the words of Hugh Grant, “he knows intellectually that he lost the election, but when he’s arguing that it was fixed, he believes every word of it.” (NYTimes 12/2/2020) Other deep thoughts are offered by screenwriter Kelley, ” Power and money accomplish results that are not available to ordinary people.” And this “He (actor Hugh Grant) really wanted him to be a monster….He really wanted to go for it. He urged us to make him a monster.”

Perhaps Trump Derangement Syndrome may explain some of the other inscrutable plot points that occur throughout, particularly Nicole Kidman’s somnambulistic walks through Harlem and Central Park at night, once in her bathrobe; Hugh Grant’s “doctor” appearing at school next to his paramour and their baby while the children are being dismissed; the lovely Elena coming to the benefit committee meeting after all its preparations have been completed; the young son choosing to protect his father – not by throwing the bloody hammer in the CEntral Park reservoir across the street, but by giving it two runs in the dishwasher; and perhaps most peculiarly, Nicole Kidman’s flaming hairstyle worn by this Harvard educated doctor of psychology as she counsels her troubled patients. Never mind penis envy – here’s something female patients can really lash into.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/review-the-way-i-see-it-obama-dream-worshipful-documentaries/?utm_source=recirc-

Two new worshipful documentaries tie in to #44’s propagandizing memoir.

‘How can we miss you when you won’t go away?” political podcaster Yvette Carnell joked two years ago when Barack Obama began his comeback tour by making sideline pronouncements about the state of the nation after his brief retirement. Now the comeback is official, with two new Kool-Aid-drinker Obama hagiographies to prove it.

Obama Dream and The Way I See It are released in theaters and on streaming like promotional tie-ins to accompany the publication of Obama’s latest literary memoir, The Promised Land. Both films provide audiovisual aid to the 800-plus-page book. Reliance on pictorial persuasion in these docs brings to mind how friendly the media coverage of Obama has always been, in contrast to the media hostility aimed at George W. Bush and Donald Trump. It’s the B.O. and A.O. media — journalism Before Obama and After Obama.

Almost four years since the Obama administration walked from the White House to its Kalorama bunker near the White House, these documentaries remind us of what that media thrall from 2008 to 2016 was like. (Full disclosure: I had to devote a large section of my book Make Spielberg Great Again to Obama’s debilitating artistic influence.)

Obama Dream was made by Italian filmmaker Francesco Pavarati, who followed the 2008 campaign stops, traveling 20,000 miles from Denver through 14 states to Election Night, giving the perspective of an infatuated outsider. Pavarati is astounded by the candidate and aghast at America itself. He offers fever-dream imagery of a nation as bewitched and enraptured as he was and apparently still is.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/british_royalty_and_why_you_shouldnt_trust_tv.html

At a moment when Britain is disquieted by scandal about Prince Andrew, disgraced for his friendship with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein; the ongoing drama of Megxit, the withdrawal of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from royal duties; and the rift between the two royal brothers, William and Harry, the British TV soap opera, ten episodes of The Crown, season 4, has appeared to provide alleged entertainment of the doings of the British Royal Family.

Because it is lavishly produced, well written, carefully acted, and cleverly invented, it is easy to accept The Crown as an accurate representation of a twenty-year period in British history.  However, no one should be confused.  It is not a documentary of the life and behavior of Queen Elizabeth II, members of the Royal Family and associates, in the stately homes of Buckingham Palace, Windsor, and Balmoral, and the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.  Rather, it is a psychodrama written with what can generously be termed artistic license about the actions and motivations of the leading figures.

Some of the invented incidents in The Crown can be noted.  Discussions concerning Lord Mountbatten and Prince Charles, or the supposed political dialogue between Queen Elizabeth II and Michael Fagan, who infiltrated Buckingham Palace and spoke to the queen in her bedroom, or the tension with Margaret Thatcher because of personal concerns about the safety of her son and public concerns over the Falklands war, are not accurate representations of history.  In particular, all of the remarks of Elizabeth, who bestrides the series as a colossus, are invented.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/hillbilly-elegy-ron-howards-inverted-mayberry/

Americana for our age: Booze, opioids, and ignorance. But Glenn Close, at least, sails past the white-trash clichés.

Amy Adams stars in Hillbilly Elegy (Lacey Terrell/Netflix) Americana for our age: Booze, opioids, and ignorance. But Glenn Close, at least, sails past the white-trash clichés.

Hollywood knows two registers when it comes to the white working class (WWC): sentimentalizing and condescending. WWCs are either cute, neighborly, and folksy, or they constitute a tawdry, alien life form. There are 130 million WWCs in our country, and yet nobody in Hollywood has the slightest grasp of them. With the plucky rural folk, it’s always about hearts overflowing with kindness or sinks overflowing with dirty dishes. Their veins surge with either the American dream or opioids.

Ron Howard’s career got rolling in one WWC cliché — Mayberry, on The Andy Griffith Show — and now he’s traveled a great distance to indulge another, the Middletown, Ohio, recalled so memorably and with such wounded pride by J. D. Vance in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

Howard’s movie adaptation for Netflix recounts the events of Vance’s book but lacks the feel, the personality. So much of its power was in its authorial voice, as was the case with Frank McCourt’s 1996 memoir Angela’s Ashes, which was poorly adapted by Alan Parker in a 1999 film. Hillbilly Elegy the movie has much in common with Parker’s film: It’s an Appalachian Angela’s Ashes. If Vance’s book was a page-turner with a message, Howard’s film is just one damn thing after another: fights, screaming matches, drug sprees, shoplifting episodes, police interactions. It gets to be unintentionally comic at times.