erik lundegaard

Wednesday August 31, 2022

What is D.W. Griffith 'Known For'?

How much is IMDb/Amazon warping our history? Here's D.W. Griffith's Wikipedia page, second graf. I mean it says it right there:

Griffith is known to modern audiences primarily for directing the film The Birth of a Nation (1915). One of the most financially successful films of all time, it made investors enormous profits, but it also attracted much controversy for its degrading portrayals of African Americans, its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan, and its racist viewpoint.

Here's an obit from 1948:

 

Here's a comparison of these four films using IMDb's own stats:

Rnk Movie Quotes Trivia Movie Connects Critic Rvws User Rvws Rating No. of Ratings
1 Intolerance 31 46 105 76 125 7.7 15,576
2 The Mother and the Law 0 3 1 1 4 7.1 210
3 The Birth of a Nation 26 79 260 80 380 6.2 24,748
4 Broken Blossoms 18 20 42 76 96 7.3 10,360

In terms of engagement/interest, “Birth” trumps everything. I mean, I'd go in this order: “Birth,” “Intolerance,” “Broken Blossoms,” and then maybe “Abraham Lincoln”? I'll leave the last one to true film historians or Griffith scholars. But “The Mother and the Law”? Which is simply a portion of “Intolerance” released three years later? Putting that ahead of “Birth of a Nation”? I'm intolerant of that. 

Yes, it's not as bad as IMDb's “Known For” for Thomas Dixon, but it's not good. I'm almost getting the feeling IMDb doesn't take its role as the repostiory of our online movie information very seriously.

Posted at 05:15 PM on Wednesday August 31, 2022 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Tuesday August 30, 2022

Judge, Ruthian in His Solitude, Hits No. 50

I like the pitcher looking straight up. Nope, not there, kid.

Aaron Judge hit his 50th homerun in a 4-3 loss to the Angels in Anaheim last night.

Here's a breakdown of 50-homerun seasons by decade. See if you can spot the anomaly.

YRS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
20s Ruth Ruth Ruth Ruth                
30s Wilson Foxx Grnbrg Foxx                
40s Kiner Mize Kiner                  
50s Mays Mantle                    
60s Maris Mantle Mays                  
70s Foster                      
80s                        
90s Fielder Belle Mac Andrsn Mac Jr. Mac Sosa Jr. Vghn Mac Sosa
00s Sosa Bonds Sosa Gnzalz A-Rod A-Rod Thme Jnes Hwrd Ortiz A-Rod Flder
10s Bautsta Davis Stnton Judge Alnso              
20s Judge                      

Yeah. You could say it began with Fielder (Cecil) and it ended with Fielder (Prince).

I grew up in the '70s, when 50-homerun seasons were exceedingly rare-to-nonexistent. Harmon Killebrew always seemed to hit 49, and he led the league. Willie Mays' back in '65 was the last, and no one would do it again until George Foster in the expansion year of '77. Then nothing until 1990. And then everything. 

Related: Last night I went to Elliott Bay Books to see SABR's Mark Armour talk about his book, “Intentional Balk: Baseball's Thin line Between Innovation and Cheating,” with Seattle sportswriter Art Thiel. It was a small, nerdy crowd so I fit right in. My main takeaways: Everyone is still angrier at the 2017 Houston Astros than I am; many are less angry about the steroid era than I am; and the problem is still one of regulation. And the problem with that is that Major League Baseball doesn't really have an independent regulatory body. They have a commissioner, who is hired by and subservient to the owners. At some point during the evening I had this epiphany: Baseball will condone, or at least ignore, cheating as long as it's good for business (McGwire and Sosa in '98). Baseball will crack down on it if it's bad for business (spider-tack in '21) or if it becomes obvious or problematic (Barry Bonds in '01 and '07). The above chart is why the steroid era is still a scandal to me: the stain it left on the record books can't be washed away. It can't even be parsed.

That chart also underlines how, for much of baseball history, hitting 50 was a pairs thing. It was rarely just one guy. Both Foxx and Hank Greenberg did it in 1938, then nothing until 1947 when Johnny Mize and Ralph Kiner turned 50s. Mays and Mantle went 50 in back-to-back years in the mid-50s, and both Mantle and Maris threatened 60 in '61. In the steroid era it was McGwire and Sosa trading leads and mock-punches to the stomach. Even in the post-steroid era (if we're in that), Stanton and Judge sent them soaring together (in opposite leagues) in 2017.

When wasn't it two guys? Foxx in '32 was by himself: 58 to Ruth's 41. Ditto Kiner in '49: 54 to 43 for Ted Williams. George Foster hit 52 when the next best was Jeff Burroughs' 41. The greatest gap, of course, is 1920 when Babe Ruth remade baseball. First place, Babe Ruth: 54. Second place, George Sisler: 19.

This is another single-guy year: second to Judge's 50, at the moment, is Kyle Schwarber's 36. Judge is all alone up there. He's Ruthian in his solitude. The talk is whether he can beat Maris' record, as if it were still the record, or New York talks about whether he can beat Maris' Yankee record. But there's another big deal here. Judge might be the first guy since Ruth to hit 60 when no one else in Major League Baseball hits 50. 

Posted at 07:44 AM on Tuesday August 30, 2022 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Monday August 29, 2022

Weaponizing Americans

The other week I said Mark Leibovich's “Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission” was easier to read than, say, Jane Mayer's “Dark Money,” because it's kind of fun finding out how painful the Trump era was/is to most traditional Republicans: the Reince Priebuses and Paul Ryans of the world. Example:

When Trump took office in 2017, there were 241 Republicans in the House, David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report pointed out. “Since then, 115 (48%) had either retired, resigned, been defeated or at that point had signaled plans to retire in 2020.” Anecdotally, the single biggest reason these members gave for walking away was they had no interest in debasing themselves in the service of Trump any longer than they had to. “You have a situation where the leader of our party models the worst behavior imaginable,” another outgoing Republican member of Congress told me. “And if you're a Republican in Washington, the idea is basically to make yourself as much of a dickhead as possible in order to get attention and impress the biggest dickhead of all, the guy sitting in the White House.”

I asked the outgoing congressman—very nicely, even a tad aggressively—whether I could attach his name to this excellent quote. “No fucking way,” he said. Why? “Because a lot of these dickheads are my friends. And I might have to lobby them one day, too.

”I know, it's depressing.“

Reading that and other similar comments, though, some part of my schadenfreude dissipated. Because I realized this on a deeper level: No one in American history has weaponized a greater segment of the American public than Donald Trump. No one. He's turned 35% of America into his private little goon squad.

This past week has underlined this fact. He has threatened to unleash his useful idiots if the DOJ/FBI continues its investigation into the Mar-a-Lago docs. Because after six, seven years, these people still believe his lies. They still attack and threaten those who search for the truth, or who fight to keep America—and them—safe. That's the irony and awfulness. They think Trump is their guy but he's only his own, horrifically his own. Yet they'll flip and flop however far he asks them to: from cries of ”Law and order!“ to cries of ”Kill the FBI!“ From ”Lock her up!“ to ”It's just papers!“ Never have so many been so devoted to someone so worthless.

Will they ever fall away? What would it take? It's a cult. That's the Republican party now: a cult propped up by cowards and opportunists. It's not just depressing, it's beyond depressing. ”I might have to lobby them one day, too." Sure, buddy. And when you look around from that lobbying, when you look beyond your own interests, exactly what kind of country are you standing in? That's the worry.

Posted at 10:02 AM on Monday August 29, 2022 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Sunday August 28, 2022

Trump's Not-Final Scorecard

Read this the other night while finishing Mark Leibovich's book on the cowards and opportunists in the Republican/Trumpian party. It's a sum-up as Trump is letting the door hit his ass on the way out:

Trump's always-low approval ratings—now down in the 30s—were the well-earned product of a toxic personality and now fully disastrous final scorecard: he would leave office as the first president in history to be impeached twice, the first since Hoover to preside over his party's loss of the House, Senate, and White House in a single term, the first president in history to leave office with fewer jobs than he entered with, the indirect cause of (conservatively) thousands of coronavirus deaths, countless international embarrassments, and a nation that felt far more divided and deranged than at any time in decades. Trump was easily the sorest loser, most prodigious liar, and most insufferable whiner in presidential history. And no commander in chief had ever departed the White House with as massive a legal and financial burden as Donald Trump would now face.

And it gets worse—for him. This week the affidavit that led to the FBI retrieval of classified and/or national security documents from Trump's private residence at Mar-a-Lago was made public in very redacted form. (The New York Times has a very helpful annotated version.) What does it show that we didn't suspect? Not much. But it shows it in plain legal language. All of us are learning our government acronyms, too: NARA for National Archives and Records Administration, the dept. that spent much of 2021 and '22 trying to retrieve the 15 or more boxes; NDI for National Defense Information, which was what was in those 15 or more boxes, including SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information), SI (Special Intelligence) and HCS (intelligence derived from human sources or spies). Trump was putting them all at risk—that's how NYT led with it the following day—but the big point is he might have already done so. Allies and operatives might already be dead because of him. He's a sloppy man who put top secret intel in a sloppy place, and the question is still this one: why.

Initially I thought it was just the sloppiness. It was the whiny baby in him who needed to say “MINE!” on the way out. That, by the way, is the best interpretation Republicans can make—that their man is just a whiny spoiled child who grabbed stuff as he pouted his way home. “Well, if you're not letting me win I'm going to take this!” That was my initial thought. But now I'm wondering. There's also vindictive Trump. Maybe he's trying to get back at us, the whole country, for “betraying” him by not letting him win. Then there's bad-businessman Trump, who never did a thing in his life without attempting to monetize it. Those documents had value to our enemies—who were often his friends. Could I perceive a scenario where Trump might think, “Why wouldn't I make money by showing my friends these papers that my enemies, who wouldn't let me win, think are important?” You bet. 

That final scorecard is still in play.

Posted at 10:31 AM on Sunday August 28, 2022 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Friday August 26, 2022

SeaUsRise, Sewald Fall

94 middle-in: Not sure I agree with you 100% on your pitching work there, Paul.

Thirty-two year-old Mariners reliever Paul Sewald is having a great season. In 50 innings pitched, he’s got a 2.66 ERA, an amazing 0.69 WHIP, with 56 Ks against 13 BBs. Any team would want him.

So why do I always flinch whenever he trots in from the bullpen?

Here’s why: I’ve been to eight games this year, he’s appeared in six of them, pitched a total of 5 innings and given up 5 runs—all earned. In those games, he’s got a 9.00 ERA, a horrendous 2.20 WHIP, with 4 Ks against 6 BBs.

And it’s not just a consequence of one bad outing. In two of those games he didn’t give up a run but still gave up the game. On May 29, Marco Gonzalez was pitching a tight 1-1 game against the Houston Astros when he gave up a one-out double in the 8th. In comes Sewald. He gets a groundout, walks a guy intentionally, walks a guy uninentionally, then gives up the go-ahead (and ultimately game-winning) single. We lose 2-1. My next game, June 15, Marco Gonzalez is pitching a tight 0-0 game against the Minnesota Twins when he scatters a walk and single in the 7th. There are two on and two out. In comes Sewald. And he promptly gives up a single to break the tie and the Twins go on to win 5-0.

Again, those are the games where, statistically, he doesn’t look bad. The only game I’ve been to where Sewald trotted in and did what relievers (and he) tend to do was the 13-inning beauty against the Yankees in early August: three up, three down. Otherwise, in those six games, he’s been on the mound four times when the M’s gave up the lead.

That includes Wednesday afternoon’s game against the Washington Nationals—the literal worst team in baseball (41-83), whose two best hitters (Soto, Bell) are now with the Padres. Plus we were facing a pitcher with an ERA over 6.00. I assumed, OK, we got this. And sure, Mariners starter George Kirby gave up a run in the 1st. But this was the Nats, the literal worst team in baseball.

This is what we managed through the first six innings:

  • One-out single, erased in DP
  • Leadoff walk, bupkis
  • One-out HBP, bupkis
  • One-out walk, erased in DP
  • Leadoff double, stranded
  • One-out single, bupkis

It wasn’t until two outs in the 8th that Julio Rodriguez tied the game with a homerun to left—his 20th. Finally! Now we’re talking!

And in trots Sewald for the top of the 9th:

Cue Charlie Brown-ish sigh all around T-Mobile Park.

I guess the ump wasn't great throughout the game—J.P. even got tossed late—but that's bad placement from Sewald on a 1-2 pitch with two outs in the 9th inning of a tie game. If there's a general zone for hitters, he placed it exactly there. Charlie Brown could've hit it out. 

For the bottom half, we got a leadoff double and a walk. And with two outs Cal Raleigh soared one to center, the deepest part of the park. Caught at the warning track. It was that kind of blue-ball game. All promise and no follow-through.

So what to make of this statistical anomaly with Sewald. Am I just bad luck for the guy? I go to a lot of day games so I thought maybe he’s just bad at day games. Nope. He’s better during the day: 23.1 IP, 1.93 ERA, 0.64 WHIP. However, he is worse at T-Mobile. His home/away innings are all but split down the middle (25.2/25) but he's given up 14 of his 15 earned runs, and 6 of his 7 homers, at T-Mobile. His away ERA is 0.36. At home, it's 4.91. Wow.

Paul, my next scheduled game is Sept. 6 against the ChiSox. Give me a call if you’d rather I didn’t go. I’d understand.

Posted at 10:32 AM on Friday August 26, 2022 in category Seattle Mariners   |   Permalink  

Thursday August 18, 2022

'If It Were Anyone Else...'

“If it were anyone else but the president, a former president, they would be facing criminal charges now.” 

Former Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, a defense policy expert, on the national security documents retrieved from the safe of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate by the FBI, on Stay Tuned with Preet (12:10 in).

Posted at 07:51 AM on Thursday August 18, 2022 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Sunday August 14, 2022

Quote of the Decade

“The reason Donald Trump is the first former president to be treated like a criminal is that he is the first former president who is a criminal.”

-- Jonathan Chait, “What Is Really Unprecedented Is the Criminality: Republican outrage to the raid on Trump is telling,” in New York magazine. Among the Republicans he quotes berating DOJ and the FBI for upholding the rule of law are Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and National Review, which, Chait reminds us, “treated the FBI's preelection announcement of an investigation into Hillary Clinton, over whether she mishandled classified information with her emails, not as a case of FBI abuse but as a devastating indictment of Clinton, and it was still publishing stories two years later insisting she ought to have been criminally charged.” Trump's actions already go way beyond a private email server. And yet more of the same from the GOP. Another chance to break free and instead they double down.

Posted at 04:11 AM on Sunday August 14, 2022 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Saturday August 13, 2022

Gene Hackman on James Cagney

GQ: You've got to do one more movie. ... Your hero James Cagney was retired forever and then came back to do Ragtime. Can't you do one more?

Hackman: [laughs] Well...

GQ: Why do you love Cagney so much? 

Hackman: There was a kind of energy about him, and he was totally different from anyone I'd ever seen in my life. Having been brought up in the Midwest, I didn't know those New York people. I thought he was terrific. Everything he did had a life to it. He was a bad guy in most of the films, and yet there was something lovable about him and creative.

-- from an interview between Gene Hackman and Michael Hainey, GQ magazine, June 1, 2011

Posted at 07:55 PM on Saturday August 13, 2022 in category James Cagney   |   Permalink  

Friday August 12, 2022

Movie Review: Vengeance (2022)

WARNING: SPOILERS

I had trouble with this movie immediately. There were a few things I just didn’t buy.

Writer-director B.J. Novak plays Ben Manalowitz, a douchey writer for The New Yorker who hangs out at parties with a douchey friend, John (John Mayer), where they keep agreeing with each other’s douchey thoughts “100 percent.” That’s their catchphrase. Novak really underlines that one. Oh, and they drink their bourbon neat—a classic sign of movie douchiness. It’s such a classic sign, I don’t know if Novak isn’t mocking the trope rather than the characters. 

That’s not what I didn’t buy, by the way. I mean, it’s uninteresting but believable. Here’s what I found unbelievable.

Ben, desperate for a podcast, seems to need the help of Eloise (Issa Rae), a big-name podcast producer, to make it happen. He’s all but begging her. I’m like: Wait, can’t anyone create a podcast? Also, doesn’t he write for The New Yorker? Isn’t that enough for writers these days? And even if it isn’t, wouldn’t the fact that he writes for The New Yorker help him get such a podcast? I mean, don’t they even have one? “The New Yorker Radio Hour”? Shouldn’t he be talking to David Remnick?

And then the movie gets more unbelievable.

Ben’s list
So it’s already been established that Ben’s a douchey guy, with a lot hook-ups. He’s in the middle of one such hook-up when he gets a call from the brother of one of his former hook-ups, letting him know that she died. Of a drug overdose. Near her home in west Texas. He barely remembers the girl, but the brother, Ty (Boyd Holbrook of “Narcos”), assumes they were very, very close—that he was the love of his sister’s life—and invites him to Texas for the funeral. More than invites: He assumes he’ll be there. It’s really the last thing Ben wants to do in the last place he wants to go.

And he still goes.

Admittedly the phone call is an awkward situation. But there are a zillion ways to get out of it. Plus, as we've established, he’s a douche. I’m sure he’s had practice. 

Instead, there he is, hopping a flight, to go to a very isolated part of west Texas, and sit with the family in the front row of this poor girl’s funeral, where the big funeral photo, the one on the stand, is of her kissing Ben on the cheek as he stares at the camera and sips from his glass of bourbon, neat. (That actually cracked me up.) 

Anyway, it’s here that Ben comes up with an idea for a podcast that finally catches Eloise’s interest. Ty, you see, believes his sister, Abby, didn’t die of an opioid overdose; he thinks she was murdered by a Mexican drug cartel. And so on a dusty Texas backroad, with Ty 12 feet away in his truck, Ben phones Eloise and makes his pitch: a podcast about “a new American reality where people invent these conspiracies because the truth is too hard to accept.”

Sounds intriguing. Ben winds up staying not only with the family but in Abby’s old bedroom. He’s pretending to help Ty expose the murder but in reality he’s exposing the family. Or on another level he’s exposing himself. That’s a big point of the movie. Sure, they’re hicks, but they’re hicks with hearts. And he’s a douche without one. And their down-homeness help make him become a better man. You see it coming about as far as you can see down a flat, west Texas backroad. 

The movie almost saves itself halfway through, particularly with the arrival of Ashton Kutcher as an existential Zen-like record producer, Quentin Sellers, who once recorded Abby. Plus Novak is a comedy writer and we get some good bits. Ben sends away for his own high-end coffee-maker and asks Abby’s younger sister (Dove Cameron of Bainbridge Island) how she takes her coffee. “In my mouth?” she says, with a “no duh” tone. I also like the grandma (Louanne Stephens) saying Abby’s murder isn’t something you can solve with a .45. “It’s the breakdown of society is what it is,” she says. After Ben nods, she adds, “You’re gonna need a 12 gauge, a couple of ARs, a Wesson automatic and a sidearm for safety.”

Maybe the best line is when some good ol' boys are talking revenge movies, including Liam Neeson in “Taken,” and one of them says Ben reminds him of someone from a Liam Neeson movie. It takes a second for him to remember: “Schindler’s List.” Ben's “right” nod is perfect. Right, that’s who I am here. Right, that’s who you are here.

In cold blood
The problem with the movie—along with all the aforementioned hard-to-believe stuff—is its unevenness. Just as we’re getting a more nuanced view of everyone involved, Grandma, at their favorite hangout Whataburger, let’s slip that, yes, Abby had a drug problem. They all know she ODed. They all know there’s no conspiracy. Which leads to the most idiot rant from Ben, in which he condemns them in the most broad blue state/red state terms, as if he hadn’t just spent weeks getting to know them better.

And after that rant, after Ty decks him in the parking lot, he still returns to their house? To sleep? In Abby’s room? They let him?

Which is where he finally unlocks Abby’s phone and finds out she never was enamored of him, that all that time she was in love with Quentin Sellers, who is in fact a seller—a drug dealer. Ben confronts him and finds out he caused Abby’s death without a shred of remorse. Which is when Ben turns into Liam Neeson. He pulls a gun and kills him. In cold blood. Ben. And he gets away with it. And that's that.

So the movie begins with stuff I don’t buy and ends with an act I don’t buy.

“Vengeance” is so uneven I assumed it began pre-pandemic and finished up when things got safer. Yep. If I could’ve given B.J. Novak notes I would’ve told him: Lose the “100 percent” scene at the beginning; lose the Whataburger parking lot rant; lose the bourbon, neat. Don’t make Ben a cartoon douche. Make him someone whose ambitions maybe get a little ahead of his morality, but don’t be afraid to let us care about him a little. Novak plays shallow all the time, which is fine for a supporting role, but tougher for a lead. It’s tough to sustain a whole movie with it. This is Exhibit A.

Posted at 08:52 AM on Friday August 12, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 2022   |   Permalink  

Thursday August 11, 2022

June 12, 2017

I'm reading Mark Leibovich's “Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission,” and all of it is still infuriating. But unlike other “What assholes these Republicans be” books (cf., “Dark Money,” which I want to try again), I'm able to get through it. One of the joys is learning how painful this was to most traditional Republicans: the Reince Priebuses and Paul Ryans of the world. Even if they worked with Trump, as Preibus did, they hated him. That was the trade-off. That was all of their trade-offs. And some drank the Kool-Aid. 

So many awful things happened so fast, they tend to blur in the memory. Leibovich, for example, goes pretty deep into the first full cabinet meeting of the Trump administration, June 12, 2017, whose point, it seemed, was not to do the people's work, or even the GOP's work, but to kiss Trumpian ass. I'd forgotten it but remembered seeing it and being mostly disgusted, slightly amused, and a bit amazed that they would grovel so quickly: 

  • “It's just the greatest privilege of my life to serve as the vice president,” Mike Pence said after Trump gave him the honor—and greatest privilege—to open the testimonials. Not just any vice president, Pence said, but one serving “the president who's keeping his word to the American people and assembling a team that's bringing real change, real prosperity, real strength back to our nation.” ... No one did complete submission the way Pence did: the hushed voice, the bowed head, and the quivering reverence for “my president,” “this extraordinary man.” He was constantly referencing Trump's “broad shoulders” ... 
  • “Mr. President, it's been a great honor to work with you,” gushed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.
  • “I am privileged to be here, deeply honored,” said Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta. “I can't thank you enough for the privileges you've given me and the leadership that you've shown,” added Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price.
  • “Thank you for the honor to serve the country,” said Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO who was enduring a particularly unhappy tenure as secretary of state. This came shortly after Tillerson had privately derided his boss as “a moron,” according to NBC News. 

It's both creepy and comic. It's like an authoritarian regime but the sitcom version. The fear isn't that the Great Leader will chop off your head but will tweet nasty things about you. Then you'll lose the support of assholes (the base) and won't be able to keep doing the thing that you hate doing. Or maybe you won't be able to imagine that perfect future for you: Speaker of the House, Veep, Prez. Right. 

The one cabinet officer who kept his dignity, according to Leibovich, is the man Trump chose because his nickname was “Mad Dog”:

The outlier to the praise parade was Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who was seated directly to Trump's right and spent much of the session staring down at his hands. When it was his turn to speak, Mattis pointedly did not mention the president and could barely manage to look at him. “Mr. President, it's an honor to represent the men and women of the Department of Defense,” Mattis said. Trump turned away, not pleased. After a few seconds, Trump shifted back and leaned in close to Mattis's face in an attempted LBJ-style intimidation move.

“We are grateful for the sacrifices our people are making,” said Mattis, staring straight back. He spoke in a determined monotone, then raised his voice slightly as if to accentuate his nonparticipation in this debasement.

Leibovich has a good conversation about the book, and the awfulness, with Al Franken on Franken's podcast.  

Posted at 07:23 AM on Thursday August 11, 2022 in category Books   |   Permalink  

Wednesday August 10, 2022

Num num num num num num num

What’s your biggest takeaway from Monday’s events?

The usual way to get documents from somebody you trust is to give them a subpoena. Almost any time that the government is trying to get documents from a corporation, they do it by issuing a subpoena, or even by informal request. With any normal civilian, you will issue a subpoena and the person will collect the documents and produce them.

You use a search warrant, and not a subpoena, when you don’t believe that the person is actually going to comply. For me, the biggest takeaway is that the Attorney General of the United States had to make the determination that it was appropriate in this situation to proceed by search warrant because they could not be confident that the former President of the United States would comply with a grand-jury subpoena. ...

Based on what you are saying, I assume that the Justice Department would need to convince a judge that a subpoena would not work. Is that accurate?

That is not accurate. The decision about whether to use a subpoena or to use a search warrant is a discretionary one made by the executive. A judge doesn’t weigh in on that. A judge doesn’t say, “I am not going to issue a search warrant because you could do this by subpoena.” That is not something that a court would weigh in on. But what the court would weigh in on is the following: in order to issue a search warrant—unlike a subpoena, where you don’t need any factual predication—there has to be a determination by a judge that there is probable cause of a crime, and that the evidence of that crime will be in the location that you seek to search.

-- from Isaac Chotiner's interview with former federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann, following the FBI raid on former Pres. Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate Monday. Love Weissmann's use of “any normal civilian.” Things are getting interesting. 

Posted at 02:43 PM on Wednesday August 10, 2022 in category Law   |   Permalink  

Wednesday August 10, 2022

Mariners Turn Ghostbusters on Yankees in Extras

Well, I never thought I'd see that again.

By which I mean a game that goes 13 innings because the two teams keep putting up goose eggs in extras. Every inning, each team essentially got a leadoff double and stranded them all. In two of those innings, the Yankees made baserunning blunders that erased their Rob Manfred-mandated ghost runner. You know the old “three up, three down” line? For the Yankees, it was “two up, three down.” Which ... yeah, I can't even.

I also never thought I'd see that again: my long-suffering Seattle Mariners manhandling the mighty New York Yankees like it was 1995. Or how about watching a true ace pitch for your side? That was fun. Welcome to Seattle, Luis Castillo. How about a packed stadium in which, whenever Yankee fans began their idiot “Let's-go-Yank-kees!” chant, we drown them out with “Let's-go-Marin-ers!” That was funner. That made me proud.

I've been tracking these 2022 Yanks for a while now, initially out of fear. By mid-June it felt like they couldn't lose: they were 49-16, 33 games over .500. That's a .753 winning percentage, which put them on pace to win 122, which would've shattered the 116-game mark the Mariners set in 2001. They'd lost just once that month. They were big, moneyed, and unstoppable. Then, suddenly, not. They lost a game here, a game there. They split a four-game series with Houston at the end of June. They split a two-game series with Pittsburgh at the beginning of July. They lost a three-game series to Cincinnati before the All-Star break. And since the All-Star break, they've gone 7-12, getting swept in two-game series by the Astros and Mets, and in a three-game series last weekend by St. Louis. They've been no-hit, one-hit, two-hit, and last night, after crushing the M's 9-4 in the opener, they managed just three hits in 13 innings: a single in the 1st, a single in the 4th, a single in the 8th.

They couldn't run the bases. Their 10th-inning ghost runner was speedy, Andrew Benintendi, but he got caught stealing—by the pitcher. He made his move to third before our pitcher, Paul Sewald, made his move to the plate and got caught in a rundown. We kept playing pickle with the Yanks. It was little league again. It was elementary school. In the 11th, their ghost runner Miguel Andujar was doubled off second after a leadoff lineout, and in the 12th, their ghost, Jose Trevino, was caught between second and third on a comebacker to the pitcher. After we ran him down, we ran down the batter, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, trying for second. Ghosts were falling everywhere. The Mariners were Ghostbusters.

But the M's, still Julio-less, weren't doing much against Gerrit Cole, either. We got a single in the third from Sam Haggerty, who's still batting over .300 and still batting near the bottom of the order for some fathom-less reason. Next inning, leadoff hitter Adam Frazier lined a single to right and improbably tried to stretch it to two, and was out by a country mile. Since Ty France then grounded out to third on a slow roller that would've advanced Frazier, and Mitch Haniger lined a single that would've scored him, my friend Jeff complained for the rest of the game about the run Frazier cost us. Meanwhile, I kept wondering over why Jake Lamb and his .200 SLG was hitting cleanup for us. It was a beautiful summer evening, with wafts of cool, clean sea air, and we had nothing but complaints.

A one-out double by Cal Raleigh in the 5th went nowhere. A two-out single from Sam Haggerty (again!) in the 8th went nowhere. In the 9th, a leadoff HBP was erased in a DP. In the 10th, our ghost never moved. In the 11th, we sacrificed him, then ended the inning on a DP. In the 12th we loaded the bases on walks but Eugenio Suarez struck out with two outs and promptly broke his bat over his knee, Bo Jackson style. 

Yanks had a real shot in the 13th. Matt Brash was pitching his second inning of relief and walked the bases loaded with one out. But then he got Gleyber Torres swinging and a groundout to short from Andujar. Which is why, in the bottom half of the 13th, even after a leadoff single by Cal Raleigh and a IBB to Haggerty, it still felt problematic. It was the third straight half-inning that the bases were loaded and so far no one had scored. And with one out, our pinch-hitter in the nine-hole was .200-hitting backup catcher Luis Torrens, who quickly went 0-2. Same old, same old, right? Wrong. A line single to right. Stadium goes nuts. We go nuts. Aaron Judge in right goes nuts trying to get Haggerty in a force at second. With one out? Was he just being a dick? Or was he too tired to remember what was happening? 

Anyway, it's been a while since I've seen such a game. I guess never. 

Posted at 09:18 AM on Wednesday August 10, 2022 in category Seattle Mariners   |   Permalink  

Tuesday August 09, 2022

Olivia Newton-John (1948-2022)

In the summer of 1978, I went to see “Grease” while on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Del., in a movie theater near the boardwalk. Then I went back to watch it again. And again. And again.

I think I might’ve watched it a half dozen times that week. Because of Olivia Newton-John.

I’d known who she was, of course. When I first began listening to the radio, “Please Mr. Please” was all over it, and probably “Have You Never Been Mellow,” and “Let Me Be There.” I liked those songs. I think my older brother and his friends refered to her as Olivia Neutron-Bomb, which I kind of got. I thought she was pretty but I was also told—I think?—that she was a lesbian. Wasn’t that a rumor-mill thing back then or am I misremembering? That she was on “The Tonight Show” and after she left Johnny Carson said “What a waste” or something? And she sued? 

Either way, watching “Grease,” I developed a mad crush on her. And with each viewing, my crush deepened. 

Here’s something that doesn’t happen every time you develop on a crush on a celebrity, particular if you live in the Midwest, as I did: that same summer I got to see her in person.

Olivia, Minn., about 100 miles west of Minneapolis, was celebrating its centennial, and on a lark they sent a cheeky invite to Olivia Newton-John, thanking her for helping make their town famous, and hey, would she like to be grand marshal of the parade that year? Shockingly, she said yes. The female lead of the biggest movie of the year, with No. 1 hits up the wazoo, said, sure, I’ll come to your town, pop. 3,200, and no, you don’t have to pay me. In fact, I’ll pay my own way there. I’d just like some fresh corn, that’s all.

And who did the state’s biggest newspaper send to cover this story? My father, of course.

“Do you want to go?” he asked me.

Do I … want to ... go??????

I was wholly ill-suited for the whole thing, of course, a mumbling-into-his-sleeve 15-year-old, resentful of everything close to me, desiring everything far away, and with that deep, burdensome crush.

While Dad worked on his story, I wandered around the town, seeing what I could see, and hoping to see her. I even had a plan. At one point in “Grease,” her character, Sandy, is dating a jock, Tom, played by Lorenzo Lamas, mostly to make John Travolta’s Danny Zuko jealous. At the diner, talking to Danny, she waves to Tom, a kind of waggling of fingers. It’s almost like peek-a-boo—I see you—and I thought it was very cute. Once she winds up back with Danny, Danny mockingly gives Tom that same finger-waggling wave.

Anyway, my plan was to do that, to wave at her the way she'd waved in the movie.

I didn’t see her in town, only in parade, where she sat astride a horse. Which is when I put my plan into action. As she was smiling and waving to the crowd, and when her eyes were passing over me, I gave her that wave—that Sandy wave from “Grease.” And she smiled and gave me that same wave back. 

Now what? I felt like I should do something but couldn’t imagine what it would be. I mean, I was 15 and wholly ill-suited for the whole thing. Do I just walk up to her? In the middle of the parade? And say what exactly? Who does that? Nobody does that.

Well, my father did that. He was doing his job, of course, which made it easier—I’ve since discovered that for myself—and he needed a quote for the story. So in the middle of the parade he walked up to her, astride her horse, and asked what brought her here. She told him, “The letter was such a kick, how could I pass it up? This is the only place I've ever heard of with the same name as me.” The Star-Tribune also had a photograher there, Darlene Pfister, and she captured the moment and later gave Dad the photo. That glossy, 8x11 or whatever it was, sat on Dad’s dresser for years, semi-mocking me. Be bold. Fortune favors the bold.

It is a great story. With “Grease” sweeping the country (it was the No. 1 movie of 1978, 28th all time, adjusted), how cool that she would do this, and for nothing, just for the fresh corn and bread. But it sounds like she needed it, like it was almost a breather for her amid the chaos.

The big final moment in “Grease” is almost a “Gift of the Maji” moment—Danny turns letterman-jock to appeal to Sandy, Sandy turns leather-clad wearing hottie to appeal to Danny—but the former, along with the letterman’s sweater, quickly gets shed, and it’s all about what a hottie Sandy is. And that’s kind of the direction ONJ’s own career wound up going. She shed the virginal, country-esque image, singing lovelorn ballads by the jukebox, and went sleek, short-haired and disco-y, with songs that increasingly got to the sexual point: “Totally Hot,” “(Let’s Get) Physical,” “Make a Move on Me.” And she just got bigger. “Physical” was No. 1 for 10 weeks and Billboard magazine considers it the biggest-selling single of the 1980s.

At the end of “Grease,” there’s a magic realism moment where Danny’s car, with he and Sandy in it, suddenly takes to the air, and Olivia’s subsequent movies kind of continued that magic-realism ride, to ill effect. In “Xanadu” she plays a literal muse, the daughter of Zeus, who hooks up with a struggling LA artist; in “Two of a Kind,” reunited with Travolta, she’s part of a couple who must find love and morality to stop God from flooding the earth again. On IMDb, the ratings go from 7.2, to 5.2, to 4.6, and just like that, she was back to earth. She starred in just the three movies and I only saw the one. But the one was huge.

Celebrity crushes are odd things but this one went deep. I’m nearly 60 now and it never really went away.

Posted at 10:41 AM on Tuesday August 09, 2022 in category Music   |   Permalink  

Monday August 08, 2022

Vin Scully (1927-2022)

I had a bad reaction to the shingles vaccine last Tuesday night—fever, literal teeth-chattering shakes—and spent much of Wednesday recovering in bed, but it was a good-news day so that helped. Alex Jones was getting his ass handed to him in a Texas courtroom for truly abominable behavior toward the Sandy Hook families; the Yankees and Gerrit Cole had their asses handed to them by the Seattle Mariners in a getaway game in the Bronx, 7-3; and Vin Scully died.

Obviously Vin Scully dying isn't good news, but it did mean I got to sit in bed and listen to him broadcast baseball games. Everyone was posting their favorite clips: the final inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game; Hank Aaron's 715th; Game 6 of the '86 World Series; and Kirk Gibson's “Natural” moment off of Dennis Eckersley. A Twins fan posted Vin's radio call from the final at-bat of Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, and wrote, “Saddened by the passing of Vin Scully ... he was the master of describing the moment & then letting it breathe,” and I responded, “'Letting it breathe' is exactly right. He had all the right words, and then he stopped talking so we could bask in the moment, and then he had all the right words again.” 

His death severed a rather remarkable connection. One of the first games he broadcast for the Dodgers, when he was a mere stripling of 23 in 1950, was an exhibition game against the Philadelphia A's, managed, in his final year, by Connie Mack, who had been born in 1862, just after the Battle of Fredericksburg. So just those two men connected the U.S. Civil War to the present. Remarkable. If you want to put it in baseball terms: Connie Mack began playing professional baseball in 1886, and managed professional baseball from 1894 to 1950, at which point, at that exhibition game, you can imagine him tagging off to Vin Scully, who broadcast professional baseball games another 66 years. So it's 1886 to 2016. That's the entirety of the sport, really. That's 130 years of baseball between two men.

I don't know if I had a favorite Vin Scully call—maybe Aaron's 715th—but I do love this quote of his that I read in Joe Posnanski's encomium. Joe wrote that we loved Vin for what he said and what he didn't say (letting it breathe), and as examples of the former he includes these lines:

  • “Bob Gibson pitches like he's double-parked.”
  • “Football is to baseball like blackjack is to bridge. One is the quick jolt; the other the deliberate, slow-paced game of skill.”

But the line I love is actually earlier, when Vin Scully is comparing Willie Mays and Hank Aaron:

“Now Willie ran with his hat flying off and joy just coming off him like sparks. But Henry, there was something regal about Henry, opposite of Willie, who was a sandlot kid playing with all of us. And, understand Willie did play stickball in the streets of New York, as I did when I was a kid. Henry was just a little bit apart. He was just a regal player from the first time I saw him.”

I like all that but I just love “joy just coming off him like sparks.” How beautiful is that? 

Posted at 01:11 PM on Monday August 08, 2022 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Sunday August 07, 2022

Nothing Guys from Nowhere Clobber M's 7-1

Bernardino’s stat line: How could a guy come in for 1/3 of an inning, give up a hit and a walk but no earned runs, and still lose?

A viral video made the rounds last week of a young New York construction guy complaining about the Yankees latest loss—which included Gerrit Cole giving up six run in the first inning—to, of all teams, the Seattle Mariners. It was the way he said it that was the chef’s kiss. He said it like it was preposterous. This podunk team, these nothing guys from nowhere, beating his team, the mighty New York Yankees, and raising his blood pressure. The Seattle Mariners. We all had a good laugh as the M’s took a series in the Bronx for the first time since 2016. It was a sign we were going places. 

Last night at the Mariners game, I felt a bit like that guy. We get clobbered 7-1 ... to the Anaheim Angels???

To be fair (to me), if we’d lost 7-1 and Shohei Ohtani had hit two homeruns, well, god bless. But Ohtani went 0-3 with a walk and a sac fly and didn’t look good at the plate. At all. So not only did the Mariners not win but we didn’t get to see a historic player doing historic things.

Instead we saw guys who don’t walk (Jared Walsh, 20 BBs against 117 Ks) walking on five pitches. We saw guys without hits (Mickey Moniak, 2 for 11) hitting the ball all over the place (he went 2-4 with a homerun). None of their 5-9 guys had OBPs over .300, a few had OPSes in the .400s, and their clean-up hitter, with the World War II-ready name Max Stassi, had a SLG in the .300s. Those stats reminded me of the bottomless futility of the early 2010s Mariners team, pre-Cano, when we were at the bottom of every important offensive stat in the Majors. Our 30-30-30 years. And yet these nothing guys from nowhere cleaned our clocks. Their 5-through-7 guys went 5-for-11 with 4 runs scored and 4 RBIs.

Meanwhile, the usually sure-handed J.P. Crawford kept letting things slip past him. We’ll give him the infield dribbler that he couldn’t barehand, even though it led to the Angels’ first run. But then he botches a relay? And in the 9th he bobbles a sure double play for an error? By then we were down 6-1, so it didn’t really matter, but it mattered for its pile-on effect. The thing didn’t happen cleanly and smartly. It was just … this again.

And just when we thought we were done with “this again.”

That accounts for some aspect of my frustration: I expect something from the Mariners now. Each game matters. It’s been a while.

I was also more laser-focused on the game because I went by myself. It was the second half of a “day-night doubleheader,” meaning two games played on the same day with separate admissions, and so, on my Mariners calendar printout, where normally I have a big circle around the date so I can tell at a glance which games I’m going to, this one had a smaller, tighter circle around the second game. And I never noticed. It wasn’t until Friday night, when MLB sent me a reminder that my tickets were now available in its Ballpark app that I went “Oh shit,” and tried to drum up business. To no avail. First Sat. night in August. Everyone was busy. So I went solo. As a result, I could focus on the Angels’ hitters horrific stats. And I could wonder over why Adam Frazier, a lefty, was leading off against lefty Reid Detmers. And I could wonder whether the scoreboard crew had screwed up yet again when it flashed M’s relief pitcher Brennan Bernardino’s stats:

0.1  IP, 1 HIT, 1 WALK, .500 BAA, 0.00 ERA, 0-1

I mulled over that one for a while. How could a guy come in for 1/3 of an inning, give up a hit and a walk but no earned runs, and still lose? If he’d let inherited runners score, it wouldn’t be his loss. I was guessing errors and unearned runs, but the answer was simpler if dumber. Bernardino game in for the 10th inning of a game against Houston and let the ghost runner score. Not an earned run but a loss. The ghost runner. Rob Manfred strikes again.

Mitch Haniger got a nice round of applause in his first game back, and went 1-3 with a walk—the one hit being a two-out, nobody-on double in the 8th. Eugenio Suarez followed with an HBP (why are they always hitting our batters?), and Carlos Santana strode to the plate. A homerun would make it 5-4 and we would be back in it. Instead a fly out to right and the fat lady cleared her throat.

I miss Julio. The Mariners miss him more.

Posted at 10:30 AM on Sunday August 07, 2022 in category Seattle Mariners   |   Permalink  

Saturday August 06, 2022

Nichelle Nichols (1932-2022)

Here’s a story about the influence of Nichelle Nichols’ Lt. Uhura character.

After the first season of “Star Trek,” she was thinking of quitting because there often wasn’t much to the role beyond “Hailing frequencies open, Captain.” Apparently she’d already submitted her resignation to creator Gene Roddenberry, who told her to think it over. During that thinking-it-over period, she attended a NAACP fundraiser, where she was told someone wanted to meet her:

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Turns out he was a fan. “Star Trek” was one of the few shows he and Coretta let the kids watch. Per Nichols’ New York Times obit

“He said, ‘We admire you greatly, you know,’” Ms. Nichols said, and she thanked him and told him that she was about to leave the show. “He said, ‘You cannot. You cannot.’”

Dr. King told her that her role as a dignified, authoritative figure in a popular show was too important to the cause of civil rights for her to forgo. As Ms. Nichols recalled it, he said, “For the first time, we will be seen on television the way we should be seen every day.”

 On Monday morning, she returned to Roddenberry’s office and told him what had happened.

 “And I said, ‘If you still want me to stay, I’ll stay. I have to.’”

Such was her influence that when Roddenberry rebooted the series two decades later with Picard, Riker, et al., a major movie star said she wanted in. That’s why Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan began showing up in the second season. “Nichelle was the first Black person I’d ever seen who made it to the future … the one beacon that said, ‘Yes, we’ll be there,’” Goldberg said this week, in tribute.

Lt. Uhura was the main woman on the show, wasn’t she? I’d never really thought about that before. Roddenberry’s original conception was even more progressive, with a female second-in-command (Majel Barrett) in the pilot episode “The Cage,” but of course the network had notes. Basically: lose the woman and the guy with the ears. Roddenberry had to pick his battles and went with Spock. Of the other recurring female characters, Yeoman Rand was just first season, Nurse Chapel (Barrett again) only began with the second season, and both were kind of lovelorn—the former making eyes at Kirk, the latter making plomeek soup for Spock. Lt. Uhura had a job.

What else did we know about Uhura? She liked to sing. She could speak Swahili. She liked small furry things. Sometimes she was frightened. I remember reading, decades ago, fan supposition that she had a thing for Kirk, or Kirk for her, since in the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” the Platonians chose Chapel for Spock, knowing their history, but why Uhura for Kirk unless something was there? Sure. Or maybe because there was nothing there? “Trek” fans have long claimed this was the first interracial kiss on television, though there’s plenty of evidence of predecessors, but I’m pretty sure it was the first interracial kiss between TV series regulars. Anyway there’s a better argument that it was Sulu, rather than Kirk, who had a thing for Uhura. Cf., “Fair maiden” in “Naked Time” and rapacious ways in “Mirror Mirror.”

An even better argument: We all had a thing for her. I sure did. I had a poster of Lt. Uhura on my wall as a kid. This was in the mid-1970s when I watched “Star Trek” on reruns at 6 PM on Channel 11 (MetroMedia Television), at first haphazardly, then regularly, and then I fell hard: memorizing titles, their production order, their air dates. And up Uhura went, next to Cheryl Ladd. Even with that, it wasn’t until I was an adult and saw some TOS episodes again that I realized how absolutely freaking gorgeous she was. Just stunning. I look at photos today and I’m still stunned.

Shame I didn’t see her in more stuff, but onscreen roles were skimpy back then even for stunning Black women. She was hired by Duke Ellington as a dancer for his orchestra in the 1950s, and per IMDb, she was an uncredited dancer in the 1958 Otto Preminger “Porgy and Bess” movie. Pre-“Trek,” she played a mother preparing to send her kids to a newly integrated school in a 1964 TV movie, and was a guest star on an episode of Gene Roddenberry’s “The Lieutenant” TV series that went unaired because it was too controversial (read: mildly progressive). Mostly she was in the background: uncredited as a nurse on “Peyton Place,” uncredited in a 1966 Ann-Margret movie, a dice player in a 1966 James Garner movie. She also played “Ruana” in two episodes of the 1966 “Tarzan” TV series. Dare we? Probably not. Then she was in space. Then she was in the future.

After “Trek” there’s not much, either. She kept returning to Uhura: in the animated series, in the movies. She has 69 credits on IMDb and 16 of them are for Uhura, who finally got a first name, Nyota, in, I guess, “Star Trek VI”? Tim would know. Uhura also led to Nichols’ work with NASA, beginning in 1977, to help recruit women and people of color. The role she was ready to shed was the one she never did, and it made all the difference. 

Posted at 09:36 AM on Saturday August 06, 2022 in category TV   |   Permalink  

Friday August 05, 2022

Movie Review: The Northman (2022)

WARNING: SPOILERS

I’ll take “Hamlet.”

Not that I don’t admire what Robert Eggers has done here. Our culture is way too now-focused and future-focused, and if the movies create anything historical it’s usually from the author or auteur’s youth, and tinged with nostalgia, it’s not from, you know, before the Magna Carta. I might have even made this exact comment when reviewing a movie from China. (Which I can't find, of course.) The Chinese have way more legends from pre-1,000 A.D., so they’re that much more likely to make movies from those periods, while Hollywood, nah, it doesn’t give a shit. Well, Eggers does. As does Alexander Skarsgård.

Apparently Skarsgård, the hunky vampire of “True Blood,” as well as our most recent big-movie Tarzan, has wanted to make his Viking movie for a while now. He’s Swedish born-and-bred, son of Stellan, brother to an unending host of Skarsgård siblings, and he wanted to go full Scandinavian. Good for him. (BTW: Did he ever try out for “Thor”? Just checked: he did. And Marvel went Australia instead. How rude.)

Apparently Eggers was also interested in making a true-life Viking movie. But whose story? Erik the Red? Fran Tarkenton? They wound up going with the tale of Amleth.

Yes, it’s the tale that inspired Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” So instead of an action hero, they went with the West’s most famous inaction hero. 

Slings and arrows
Is “Hamlet” also one of our most famous revenge stories? I don’t think of it that way, but I guess that’s what it is. If revenge is a dish best served cold, Hamlet serves it up not just cold but dumped in the trash in the back alley.

Amleth is also big on the delaying tactic, but there are big differences between the stories. Amleth is a child when his father is murdered (not a young adult), he witnesses his uncle Fjölnir doing it (as opposed to second-hand info from his father’s ghost), he sees his mother being carried away to be ravaged (Hamlet just imagines that one), and Amleth goes into exile (no similar exile for Hamlet). This is what young Amleth says, over and over, as he rows away: 

I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.

It’s his Inigo Montoya line. 

The next time we see him he’s Skarsgardian strong, dirty and brooding with a massive back, and attacking and pillaging with a berserker tribe of Vikings. When he hears that some of their latest victims, Slavs, are being sent as tribute to the now-deposed King Fjölnir, living in his own exile in Iceland with Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman) and their children, he doesn’t think, “Well, I guess Harald of Norway did my work for me. Guess I can get on with my life.” The revenge is his life. So he sneaks aboard the boat to be part of the tribute. Only Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy) notices. Will she give him away? Will they get together?

Yes. It's a serious, indie movie that goes for verisimilitude as much as possible, and with deep historical research into the period involved. But some tropes die hard, such as, “Hey, the two best-looking actors are going to shack up. How nice for them.” Eggers also includes mysticism and witchcraft as an almost daily part of life. Because we’re getting the POV of the people involved and they believe that it’s happening? Or maybe Eggers himself believes in that shit? Who knows? The asides to the mystical took away from the story for me, to be honest. What’s Willem Dafoe’s head doing here? Is that sword his dead father’s or just a sword?

In Iceland, Fjölnir’s eldest son, Thorir (Gustav Lindh), dismisses the new group of slaves as unworthy. He somehow misses the tall, hulking man among them until Amleth all but roars. Thus begins his rise. A game of knattleikr is played against another farm, the point of which seems to be to throw a ball and hit an opposing post, but the point quickly becomes survival as players maim or kill one another. In the end, it’s just Amleth and Thorfinnr, played by Hafpor Julius Bjornsson, the Icelandic strongman champion who played “The Mountain” on “Game of Thrones.” Which is when Fjölnir’s youngest son Gunnar (Elliott Rose) joins the action, stealing the ball, and is about to be killed by Thorfinnr. Amleth saves him and kills the Mountain.

Yes, Amleth is doing the opposite of what he promised to do. He’s actually saving Fjölnir’s kids. But such saving means rising further and getting closer to his target. Is that part of the plan or mere happenstance? Privileges are given, including Olga, and there’s more nighttime mysticism. 

At some point Amleth kills some of Fjölnir’s men and nails them to a wall. To what end? Then he reveals himself to his mother to a not-good end. Turns out his beloved mother was originally chattel for his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke); she was the spoils of war, and Amleth was the result of a rape. She was actually part of the coup. As a child, when he saw Fjölnir carrying her away? She wasn’t screaming, she was laughing. I’m like, “Wait, did she know Fjölnir wanted to kill Amleth?” She did. She didn’t care. She was good with it.

You’d think at this point Amleth would kill her, too, but, sure, I guess it’s tough to switch gears like that. But it means he’s lost his advantage—his identity has been revealed. So he splits. Then when Fjölnir is about to kill Olga, he shows up on a hillside with Thorir’s heart in a sack, offering a swap: her life for the boy’s heart. Fjölnir takes the deal and then tortures Amleth. Somehow, by raven, Valkyrie or Olga, he escapes; and even though Olga is pregnant with his children (twins), and they’re on a boat away from Iceland, he can’t leave his oath undone. He swims back to shore.

He still doesn’t act much. In the village, his mother attacks him so he kills her (through the heart—she thanks him, a good bit); then Gunnar attacks him so he kills him, too. Then he and Fjölnir meet at the Gates of Hel, which I took to mean more mysticism, but apparently it’s Hekla, a volcanic mountain in Iceland. And in the heat and the dark, nude or near-nude, they battle, and Fjölnir is beheaded after mortally wounding Amleth. And there’s no Fortinbras or Horatio to offer benedictions.

Indifferent honest
I got bored. Sorry. The story never quite catches, and Amleth’s inaction is never interesting, or resonant, or poetic. 

What’s inside him? Hamlet spilled his guts constantly, and poetically, while Amleth keeps spilling guts literally, and it’s usually the wrong guts. I recently rewatched Michael Mann’s “Thief” and a cool thing in the final siege is that our hero kills the head bad guy first, then fights subordinates on the way out. The trope is usually the opposite—building to the big confrontation—which is what Eggers does. For all of his 9th-century verisimilitude, it’s another Hollywood trope he buys into.

Posted at 07:49 AM on Friday August 05, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 2022   |   Permalink  

Tuesday August 02, 2022

Public Enemy

I did a quick search on IMDb the other day and got this:

Where was my guy? Where was my movie? I took personal umbrage.

I'll give them the rap band, particularly since I left off the definite article. It's the titles below I wonder over. How can a search for the 1931 James Cagney classic lead to: 1) a 1996 straight-to-video “Ma Barker” biopic; 2) a Belgian TV show; 3) a Korean movie.

Just crunch the numbers:

Title

IMDb Rating

# of IMDb Ratings Awards
Public Enemies (1996) 4.4 1.2k 0
Public Enemy (TV) (2016) 7.5 1.0k 0
Public Enemy (2002) 7.1 2.3k Best Actor, Blue Dragon (S. Korea)
The Public Enemy (1931) 7.6 21.0k

AA nomination for screenplay; National Film Preservation Board

Even better is an area of IMDb called “Connections,” where users have tabulated which other movies or TV shows you might've seen a reference to this movie (or TV show). It indicates both cultural cachet and user engagement. The 1931 Cagney movie, for example, has been referenced in 85 other movies, featured in 44, spoofed in 14. The Ma Barker? Zero, zero, and zero. Same with the others. Goose eggs. Because they don't matter.

So is it all about the definite article? Does IMDb do this if you leave off the “The” in other titles? I tried “Godfather” instead of “The Godfather,” and the first result was for the '72 Coppola movie, thank god; and I tried “Exorcist” rather than “The Exorcist” and the first result was for the '73 Friedkin movie, thank god. So sometimes it works. Particularly if your title is the definite article plus one noun.

But if there's more than one word following the definite article, IMDb can't seem to fathom what you're talking about.

This is what you get with “Dark Knight” (which, not for nothing, is No. 3 on the IMDb Top 250 Movies list):

And here's my absolute favorite:

Imagine that's a conversation you're having with an actual person:

You: So the other day Jim and I were talking about that the scene in “Wizard of Oz” when the flying monkeys—
Actual Person: “Wizard of Oz”? You mean the 1985 video game? Or maybe the episode of “30-Second Bunny Theater” from 2004?
You: What?
Actual Person: How about that episode of the 1990s news program “Time & Again” with Jane Pauley?
You: Dude, I'm talking about the movie. With Judy Garland? Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion? “Over the Rainbow”? 
Actual Person: Sorry. Nothing.
You: You don't know “The Wizard of Oz.”
Actual Person: Ohhhhh, “THE Wizard of Oz.” Well, that's completely different then. I gotcha now. Please continue.

It's a conversation with a crazy person. And you'd think that a website as important as IMDb wouldn't want its search results to seem like a conversation with a crazy person.

Posted at 07:04 AM on Tuesday August 02, 2022 in category Technology   |   Permalink  

Monday August 01, 2022

Movie Review: Illegal (1955)

WARNING: SPOILERS

Edward G. Robinson plays a district attorney who convicts “Star Trek”’s Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) of murder, then finds evidence he was innocent but is too late to stop the execution. He descends into booze, loses his job to “Get Smart”’s Chief (Edward Platt), loses his girl to “Another World”’s Jim Mathews (Hugh Marlowe), but with the help of his assistant, Grandma Walton (Ellen Corby), takes on the bad guys, including Roger Manning, Space Cadet (Jan Merlin), and saves the day.

You get the idea. “Illegal” was a cheap B picture made at the fulcrum of old movies and new television.

It doesn’t speak much of new television. Or it speaks to something odd in the culture—that the dynamic, ethnic heroes of Warner Bros.’s early talkies (Robinson, whose ethnicity kept shifting; Cagney, whose ethnicity didn’t), were replaced by dull WASPs—that mid-century, “FBI”ish thing. Do we blame Joseph Breen and the PCA for pushing us in this direction or is it what we wanted? Either way, it's Robinson, licking his wounds after HUAC and trying not to fall too far, and the others trying to hold onto their rung of the ladder and possibly ascend. This is where they meet. 

“Illegal” is also the debut, or near-debut, of Jayne Mansfield. She’s the moll, but smart, and piano-playing, and the final surprise witness. She’s definitely doing Marilyn but she’s not full-on Jayne Mansfield yet. She seems like she might be a person.

Decking and drinking
Robinson plays Victor Scott, who crawled up from the gutter to become D.A. but then lost it all. It’s not just guilt over the death of “Bones”; it’s that, without prosecution he doesn’t know what to do. He’s not really interested in corporate law and/or the corporate types shun him. It’s not until he winds up in court on a drunk and disorderly and hears a man pleading his innocence that the light bulb goes on: Oh right, I could be a criminal defense attorney. The most obvious path from prosecution.

As such, we see him get clients off by: 1) literally decking a witness, and 2) literally drinking poison, which is Exhibit A in the case. He pretends it’s not poison, but it is, just slow-acting, so when the prosecution asks for a recess to regroup, he goes to get his stomach pumped. But … I don’t know. Destroying evidence? And doesn’t this mean his client was guilty?

The girl he loses early, his former assistant, is Ellen Miles, played by Nina Foch, who played the rich bitch in “An American in Paris.” You know she wasn’t even 30 when that movie came out? Here, she’s the daughter of a judge whom Scott helped raise, and she has a thing for him despite this and the difference in their ages. Scott feels she’s better off elsewhere and pushes her into the arms of his assistant, Ray Borden (Marlowe), who winds up a crum-bum mole for the mob in the D.A.’s office. Plus he's a jerk of a husband. Plus he’s a jerk to Jayne Mansfield.

The second half of the movie is basically: Scott rises as a defense attorney while trying to steer clear of mob boss Frank Garland (Albert Dekker). At the same time, the new D.A., Ralph Ford (Platt), tries to find the leak in his office. Both come to a head when Ellen overhears her husband plotting with Garland, he hears that she overhears, and she has to kill him in self-defense. Sadly, District Attorney Ford is such an idiot he assumes Ellen was the leak, not Ray, and he puts her on trial for murder. So Scott has to defend her without implicating Garland.

That last part is silly, too, and goes away when Garland uses creepy hit man Andy Garth (Merlin) to try to off Scott, who winds up gut-shot but insists on calling surprise witness Angel O’Hara (Mansfield), who can testify that Ray called Garland a lot, including the night of his murder. And he was a jerk besides.

So the prosecution drops its case just in time for Scott to die on the courtroom floor. Mother of mercy, is this the end of Victor Scott? It is.

Stuff dreams are made of
Why “Illegal” as a title? I guess for the pulpiness of it. Probably should’ve had an exclamation point. That’s what the movie feels like. Like it makes up for its lack with SENSATIONALISM!

It was produced on the cheap by Frank Rosenberg, whose upcoming film, “Miracle in the Rain,” can also be spotted here on a movie marquee. What else can be spotted? Believe it or not, the Maltese Falcon—or a Maltese Falcon. It’s on the top shelf in a bookcase in the D.A.’s office. I guess because Warner Bros. needed to fill background? “What do we got in the prop closet?” “Well, it’s this or the letters of transit from 'Casablanca.'” Meanwhile, those Degas and Gauguin originals that Scott admires in Garland’s office are in fact Degas and Gauguin originals. They belonged to Robinson, an art lover, and he lent them to the production. I like that his character says “I’ve always had to content myself with reproductions” when they’re actually his.

Despite the cheapness, there’s still talent in the room. Max Steiner does the music, and the screenplay was co-written by W.R. Burnett, who wrote the original “Little Caesar,” as well as “High Sierra,” “The Asphalt Jungle” and even “The Great Escape.” Robinson is his usual professional self, while Jan Merlin impresses as the porkpie-hat wearing hit man. Something about his character just feels off. Like he could’ve played perverse Richard Widmark-type roles. Maybe he did.

The rest is a lot of bland WASPy stuff that will wind up on television. And Mansfield, the shape of things to come.

Just a knick-knack on the shelf. 

Posted at 07:38 AM on Monday August 01, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 1950s   |   Permalink  
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