RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/television/2018/07/line-troy-tv/

One might quibble about some of the historical details or the scriptwriters’ habit of weaving new storylines into the novels that inspired it, but ‘The Last Kingdom’ on Netflix is well worth a binge session. Homer would have thought so too.

Bob Car and Greg Sheridan, together on the same page in today’s Australian (30/6/18), both make the case for the structured reading of the great books of the Western Canon. Homer’s Iliad and its sequel, The Odyssey, are widely accepted as being the very first of these. We should look at them in a new light when it comes to Netflix’s The Last Kingdom during these winter nights of immersion in streamed entertainments.

What an eye-opener these two ancient poetic books are. The gods pitch into the battles of Agamemnon and Achilles in the great ten-year Trojan wars, taking sides in human affairs, even fighting amongst themselves in Olympus over the rights and wrongs of the protagonists they support and the women over whom both heroes and gods battle. Betwixt and between times, and after it all, Odysseus/Ulysses meanders his slow way to Ithaca’s home shores, back to the women and slaves he left on his warlord estate to keep the home fires burning. Ever it was thus, as religion intrudes into the battle sphere and warrior lords gather their fighters, even from the farms, for mighty conflicts where women and treasure are the prizes, deals are sealed and the gods retire happy until the next time.

Among the inheritors of all of this drama are TV’s hugely popular Vikings series and, more recently, BBC America’s The Last Kingdom (with a third season to be released later this year), both of which titles draw those who’ve never heard of Homer right onto the battlefields and emotional concerns of Europe’s ancient Indo-European warrior culture. For this was still the way of things in outer north-western Europe, ever beyond Roman reach, after that period when Rome, beset with its own concerns, had bequeathed only a very shaky Christian civilization to Britain.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/supreme-court-lets-brendan-dassey-conviction-stand-in-declining-making-a-murderer-case/

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case of Wisconsin man Brendan Dassey, whose lawyers argued that his confession to a 2007 murder was coerced. His confession played a large role in the controversial case of Steven Avery, the focus of the Netflix true crime show “Making a Murderer” (2015-).

“Making a Murderer” show suggests that Avery — who was convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder in 1985 but released after 18 years when DNA evidence exonerated him — was then set up by local law enforcement and convicted of a murder in 2007. In 2003, Avery had filed a $36 million civil lawsuit against Manitowoc County, its former sheriff, and its former district attorney for wrongful conviction and imprisonment. These officials, the story goes, then attempted to frame him for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach.

Dassey, whose case the Supreme Court rejected, was convicted of being party to Halbach’s murder. At age 16, he was convicted of being party to first-degree murder, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison, with the earliest possibility of parole in 2048.

Dassey recanted his videotaped interrogation and confession at trial, and parts of the footage were shown in the Netflix show, which echoes his lawyers in claiming police coerced a confession from the teen. Dassey and Avery appear as themselves in the show.

Ted Williams was so good at baseball, he had more than one nickname — “The Kid,” “The Splendid Splinter,” and “Teddy Ballgame” — but the only nickname he wanted was “The greatest hitter who ever lived.” During a remarkable 19-year career as a left fielder for the Boston Red Sox (for which he was named an All-Star 19 times), Williams cemented his reputation as one of the best players in the history of the game. But his life was bigger than baseball, and Nick Davis’s film TED WILLIAMS tells the full story of Williams’s life in a delightful, complex portrait of an American hero.

AMERICAN MASTERS PRESENTS
TED WILLIAMS: “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived”

an Albert M. Tapper Production
in association with Major League Baseball, Nick Davis Productions, and Big Papi Productions

Produced and Directed by Nick Davis
Narrated by Jon Hamm
Edited by Josh Freed
Music by Joel Goodman

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/movie-review-the-catcher-was-a-spy-moe-berg-biopic/The writing and directing are flat, and Paul Rudd is miscast as the curious, multifaceted Moe Berg.

The major-league baseball catcher Moe Berg had a lengthy if undistinguished career on the diamond: 15 seasons, including five with the Chicago White Sox and five more in the rival hosiery of the Boston team. But it was his off-field hobby that earned him the honor of a 1994 biography by Nicholas Dawidoff and a new film adaptation, both entitled The Catcher Was a Spy.

Tinker, Tailor, Catcher, Spy? Movies telling yarns about the dark arts of espionage are notoriously difficult to pull off, being cerebral and internal, which is why most spy movies are simply action movies with some intel jargon thrown in. That isn’t really an option when dramatizing the case of Berg, though the movie tries to James Bond-ify him with, for instance, a ludicrous early scene in which the veteran, nearly washed-up ballplayer (Paul Rudd) beats a rookie teammate into strawberry jelly because the younger man is snooping on him. In life, unlike in spy movies, you’re not actually entitled to assault someone for observing you in a public place, and the scene has the further fault of showing the elusive, pensive Berg acting completely out of character.

Berg’s life proved well worth a biography, full of incident and intrigue and unanswered questions, but it isn’t obvious that there is a movie in here, given the lack of any overtly cinematic accomplishments on his résumé. A bit desperate for filler, the movie at one point resorts to showing Berg starring in a pickup game of baseball amongst G.I.s. As he was an actual professional baseball player, though, albeit one with a career .243 batting average, it’s hardly surprising that he can knock the hide off a baseball that’s being served up to him by a non-athlete.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/03/a-clueless-

Remember the Duck Rabbit? That’s the famous image that, seen one way, looks like a duck but, seen from another angle, looks like a rabbit. The image has provided fodder for children’s books and also philosophers, its inherent ambiguity being catnip to both light fancy and epistemological lucubration.

I thought of that teasing graphic confection when I encountered “The Final Year,” Greg Barker’s HBO documentary about the last 12 months of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy. At first I thought it was intended to be a duck: a sympathetic portrait of its main characters: President Obama himself, of course, but also Secretary of State John Kerry, our ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes. But the more I watched, the more the rabbit theme intruded: the more, I mean, that it struck me as a devastating portrait of mandarin entitlement gone horribly wrong.

I am really uncertain what Greg Barker intended. He indulges in no editorializing. The camera follows the principals around the world and simply captures their speeches and conversations: Samantha Power and John Kerry, President Obama at the U.N., Obama on his final trip to Greece, Ben Rhodes padding about the White House and elsewhere. It’s all presented in a very straightforward way to outline the Obama Administration’s ambitions as well as its frustrations as world events—the mess in Syria, the unbelievable election of Donald Trump—unfold around them.

The main characters are given plenty of on-air time to explain what they hope to accomplish and also to describe the forces, domestic as well as international, that they see as frustrating their aims.

On March 23, 2018, the Wall Street Journal’s Television critic, Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote of the final season of “The Americans”: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-americans-review-from-russia-with-no-love-1521752705

“It comes as no surprise that one of the greatest drama series in television history should come to its end as powerful as ever.”

“The Americans” is a television series about Soviet Union spies operating in America. The spies, married with kids, manage to don disguises, seduce, bed, even wed, bribe, blackmail, entrap and wantonly murder dozens during their long seditious sojourn in America. They even engage their college age daughter in espionage.

It was entertaining, with mediocre dialogue, gratuitous sex, a rather pedestrian depiction of real spies, a bland FBI agent neighbor who falls in love with a Russian agent, a hardened operative who cooks borscht or some variant in almost every scene while directing deadly missions . The historical perspective on the unraveling of the Soviet Union is shallow and ignorant. It skips the role of Ronald Reagan entirely while burnishing the importance of Gorbachev.

In the infuriating final episode, the FBI neighbor/friend, who has grown suspicious, abets their escape to Mother Russia, leaving their children behind with the daughter as potential witness to the betrayal of duty of the FBI agent.

This is “the greatest drama series in television history?” Oh Puleez!!!! rsk

For more about the film or to order a DVD, visit www.thefightofourlives.com.
https://www.jns.org/a-sneak-peek-at-the-ideological-war-against-the-west

Buy a box of popcorn, find a seat, and then sit back and let your mind relax into Entertainment Land, where you forget about this troubled world for an hour or two.

If that’s your idea of a perfect night at the movies, you’ll probably wish to skip “The Fight of Our Lives: Defeating the Ideological War Against the West.”

But if it’s a different kind of experience you want—one that challenges your comfort zone—you might want to check out this latest release from Doc Emet Productions. That’s what 250 folks who gathered last week at a Boston-area movie theater for the film’s New England premier did.

This was the 14th screening in a series of theaters, community centers, synagogues, churches, museums and universities across the United States, Canada and Israel, for the production company’s fourth documentary wrestling with some of today’s toughest issues. Producer/director Gloria Z. Greenfield set the tone of the evening with this Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about the things that matter.”

Reviewing the movie “Little Pink House” for the New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote the film “succeeds neither narratively nor visually.” So, there you have it. The Times has spoken: you don’t want to see it.

Then again, maybe you do. After all, the Times is ground zero for political correctness. A positive review of this movie in the Times is about as likely as the Times editorial board championing the Tea Party movement back in the day.

“Little Pink House” tells the story of Kelo v. City of New London. My wife and I saw it this weekend, and she encouraged me to give you a friendly heads-up about our experience. Though we were keenly aware of the hideous outcome for Susette Kelo because we followed the Supreme Court’s terrible decision in 2005, we were so caught up in the action of the film that our spirits lifted during the scene when Kelo got the news the Court had put her case on its docket.

But of course, as we know, the justices did not serve justice. What the Court served up instead of justice was “social justice.” It turns out that putting “social” before “justice” empties justice of its meaning—and “Little Pink House” makes that case in compelling human terms.

Catherine Keener plays Susette Kelo. Kelo only wants to keep her house. She seeks fair treatment by her city and eventually justice from the Supreme Court. Jeanne Tripplehorn plays the college president and political climber who leads the effort to evict Kelo and her neighbors and to tear down their homes in the name of social justice. Kelo reluctantly agrees to become the face of the fight to save the neighborhood. The Tripplehorn character is the face of the politicians and the bureaucrats who plot and maneuver against the homeowners. Both portrayals are outstanding.

In the film, the mayor of New London tells the homeowners their only chance to save their homes is to take the fight to the people. Have you ever had to fight city hall? This is how it plays out. You only have to fight city hall because you have found out they are planning to do something to you. You only have a chance if what they are planning affects your neighbors too, and if you and your neighbors can succeed in making a public issue of it.

In the film, government at every level, from the city council to the governor and finally to the Supreme Court, works together against the homeowners.

Diablo Cody, Jason Reitman and Charlize Theron sound like an unbeatable team of irreverence and straight-shooting. The trailer for Tully similarly manages to cull the smartest dialogue and best reaction shots – so what could go wrong?

Only everything. In a movie about an over-burdened mother of a bright 8 year old, a problematic 5 year old and a newborn, nothing rings true. Never have you seen an infant diapered so many times, as if a child just out of a place where she was surrounded by amniotic fluid would be crying primarily because of some localized wetness. Never have you seen a seasoned mother change a screaming baby’s diaper before stopping the horrendous crying. Never have you seen the mother of an autistic child seat him behind the driver’s seat so he could continually kick it – what about switching him the second time this happened to the seat nearby?

We see Charlize Theron pumping her milk but wonder why she’s not using that in the middle of the night when she has a night nanny? What else is she saving it for? Where are the words autistic , hyperactive, attention deficit disorder, and why is quirky the omnipresent substitute? Why is the term post-partum depression never mentioned, never anticipated and barely treated? Why is the advent of a third child in eight years treated as if it were a national disaster?