DVD Reviews

The Soloist:
A true story about a mentally ill homeless man in L.A. who also happens to be a brilliant cellist. He is befriended by a local newspaper columnist who writes about and becomes personally involved in the man’s life. Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx pair up well together.
Recommended

Gran Torino:
Clint Eastwood is still the man. Who better to play an embittered, alienated senior citizen who resists change and no longer recognizes the world in which he lives.
Recommended

The Great Buck Howard:
John Malkovich plays a mentalist performer well past his peak of popularity. An amusing look at fleeting fame.
Recommended

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seasons 1-6:
Larry David (co-creator of “Seinfeld”) stars in this hilarious comedy series about himself. The show has a continuous stream of fresh characters, each one seemingly more hysterical. There is no script. The actors instead follow a detailed plot outline and spontaneously provide the dialogue. The choicest confrontations are when old buddies David and Richard Lewis go after each other. It’s going to be a long, excruciating wait for Season 7 to be released.
Recommended

John Adams:
Superbly written and acted HBO miniseries that examines the life of the founding father. It was a pleasure to see the dialogue was not dumbed down to accommodate the ignorant masses of the present. The contrast is so clear between the highly educated, intellectual debate of that time with the clueless jokers who now inhabit Capitol Hill. The attention to period detail is excellent, right down to the swarming flies and moist, sweating brows on a hot, July, 1776 Independence Hall. Paul Giamatti is beyond brilliant as Adams and Stephen Dillane is his equal as Thomas Jefferson, the quiet, soft spoken revolutionary.
Recommended

Shooting War:
A comprehensive look at the film makers and still photographers of World War II.
Recommended

Goodbye Solo:
A taxi driver befriends one of his fares who seems intent on committing suicide.
Recommended

Be Here to Love Me- A Film About Townes Van Zandt:
A documentary that examines the life of the gifted songwriter. Some writers and poets seem to have that rare gift of channeling thoughts and emotions from some unknown, spiritual place. Townes Van Zandt was one of the few.
Recommended

Howard Zinn- You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train:
This is a biographical documentary of the writer and anti-war activist’s life. I’ve never read any of Zinn’s books, just a couple articles. Though his analysis of the obscenity and uselessness of war is as accurate and eloquent as any writer’s, his continuing belief in a benevolent state is very disturbing.
Recommended

The Golden Boys:
Good acting from several veterans of the craft, but a weak story.
Not recommended

The Peace!
This 2003 documentary, made during the troubled months leading up to the Iraq War, examines the peace movement through interviews with activists, historians, and intellectuals. It makes you wonder where are all these people are six years later.
Recommended

12:
The Russian version of 12 Angry Men. Great dialogue and animated acting. Make sure you can read subtitles quickly- the words come at you fast and furious.
Recommended
　
Retribution Road:
Within 30 seconds of viewing I could detect this was going to be a grade-B western. Not bad acting, but uneven enough to downgrade it to that status. Some of the audio sounds like it was recorded with an I-Phone.
Not recommended

Amexicano:
A nice independent film about two day laborers in Queens- one a second generation Italian, the other a recent illegal Mexican immigrant. An enjoyable film about friendship, integrity and humanity.
Recommended

Image Review and Quotes of the Week.......

........will be on indefinite hiatus.

Just too much travelin' and shootin' goin' on.........

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:

“We in America need to hear many voices telling us that it is self-defeating to become like an enemy in order to defeat an enemy. As Germans learned under Hitler and Russians learned under Stalin, it is the internal enemy – the unaccountable elite that controls a country’s government – that is the worst and most dangerous enemy.”
Paul Craig Roberts

“Adult people who beg that their mere inconveniences be regulated by the surrogate Mommies and Daddies of the bureaucratic state have no right to whimper and whine when they finally wake up and find that their freedoms are gone forever."
Garry Reed

“You are always, at all times, in every situation, obligated to dowhat you deem right, no matter what so-called "government" and"authority" and "law" have to say about it. And when the tyrantsand control freaks, authoritarian thugs and megalomaniacs, try totell you that are an evil, nasty, despicable criminal and traitorfor daring to think for yourself, you have a right and duty tostand firm, and say, with confidence, "You are not the boss of me!"

Larken Rose

“If the achievement of a free society is to require that a million bleeding heads of torturing tyrants, damnable dictators, pandering politicians, sadistic generals, privileged policemen, criminal soldiers and psychotic, irresponsible “servants” be hoisted on pikes to surround the palisades of the free cities, count me in for the headsman’s role, for I will not dwell in my ice-cream-and-flying-ponies fantasies so long as to preclude my own action toward the attainment thereof.”
Mike Gogulski

“The police are your enemy- unless and until they stand up and refuse, unequivocally, to participate in any more violations against peaceable people, no matter what their bureaucratic masters demand. No excuses. The lines are drawn between the people and the state.”
Kent McManigal

****************************************************

From the Darkness:

"We cannot tolerate outsourcing of state employees," she said. "We cannot tolerate privatization of our state employees' jobs."
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

"Every day we delay in implementing this strategy and increasing the number of troops there - which we all know is vitally needed - puts more and more young Americans who are already there, their lives in danger.”
John McCain, on sending still more troops to the failed war in Afghanistan.

“From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point."
Ben Bernanke

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American."

Jimmy Carter [Senility is never becoming for a politician.]

Image Review of the Week

State harassment is not restricted to humans:



"Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors."
Jim Morrison




Meet you’re biggest supporter:




"There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats."
Pablo Picasso




Get your meat fresh:

"Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; .....

.....they support the laws before destroying them."
Voltaire



More clunkers looking for cash?



"Freedom is not defined by safety.....




Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference.....




Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, .....




.....because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. ......



Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. .....




Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long."

Ron Paul

Ben basks in the light of omniscience:

"It is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people in any country can be preserved.....

.....where a numerous standing army is kept up."

Brutus

Obama takes it to the Chinese.....

…..and gives us more expensive tires:

"The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, .....

.....Thus far and no farther."

Ludwig van Beethoven

The independent media stands out from the crowd:

"Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values."
Justice William O. Douglas

The Bush Band of Butchers has a new mouthpiece:




Just a little trip to buy some groceries:

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:

"There was a time, not all that long ago, when the U.S. pretended that it viewed war only as a "last resort," something to be used only when absolutely necessary to defend the country against imminent threats. In reality, at least since the creation of the National Security State in the wake of World War II, war for the U.S. has been everything but a "last resort." Constant war has been the normal state of affairs. In the 64 years since the end of WWII, we have started and fought far more wars and invaded and bombed more countries than any other nation in the world — not even counting the numerous wars fought by our clients and proxies. Those are just facts. History will have no choice but to view the U.S. — particularly in its late imperial stages — as a war-fighting state."

Glenn Greenwald

“Instead of continually trying to get freedom “legalized,” those who value individual liberty should be working to come up with ways to outwit, escape, resist or defeat the tentacles of “government.” Yes, I mean they should be figuring out ways to be free, despite the fact that freedom is, and always has been, ‘illegal.’”
Larken Rose

“No one has any “right,” under ordinary everyday circumstances, to use violence or the threat thereof to control another’s life or property. In fact, each of us has a very serious moral obligation to not engage our fellow human beings in such a manner. Yet, cloak a cop or a tax collector or a politician in the magical, quantum-physics defying aura of government, and suddenly this becomes not only acceptable, but even commendable and necessary. Such is the intrinsic nature of the State.”
Alex R. Knight III

“Whether there is any truth to the "9/11 Truth" movement or not, it is absolutely essential to freedom to suspect government of complicity in everything that could possibly be its fault. You must know, if you are paying attention, that governments lie. If you have a known pathological liar in your life, it is healthier to distrust every word he utters, until verified by you, than it is to take his words at face value. He may be telling the truth occasionally, but you can't take the chance. So it is with government. Government is a lying axe-murderer with rabies in your bed. Trust it at your own peril.”
Kent McManigal

“Inflation is a deliberate impoverishment of the benighted masses, by the political elites. It is an unlegislated tax, confiscation of capital. The Fed would have us believe inflation is like cosmic rays or a hurricane something out of their control, but that would be mendacity, i.e. a lie. It is a deliberate policy and always has been it is an unlegislated tax, nothing more.”
George Giles

***********************************************

From the Darkness:

"Humankind has to limit itself to emit only fixed amount of carbon into the atmosphere until 2050. [...] Because the industrialized nations have already exceeded their quotas if you take into account past emissions. [...] With the current output you see that Germany, the US and other industrialized nations have either already used up their permissible quota, or will do so within the next few years. [...] The industrialized nations are facing CO2 insolvency. This means that they have to notch up their efforts to reduce climate change, otherwise they will use up the CO2 budget actually designated to poorer countries and future generations."
German climate “scientist” Joachim Schellnhuber
[Just when you you think the climate kooks can’t get any more wacked, they manage to do so.]

"The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation."
Barry Obama, addressing US school children.

“Mindful that the work of protecting America is never finished, we will do everything in our power to keep America safe.”
Barry Obama on 9/11. [And who protects us from YOU?]

“In the United States of America, no one should have to worry that they’ll go without health insurance — not for one year, not for one month, not for one day. And once I sign my health reform plan into law, they won’t.”
Barry Obama [Utopia is within reach! Just follow The Magic Negro!]

“Enforcing trade laws is key to maintaining an open and free trading system.”
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk [Formerly known as “Kirk the Jerk,” mayor of Dallas, Tx.]

Image Review of the Week

The loyalist’s view of the state:



The anarchist’s view of the state:



"The larger the state, .....



".....the more callous it becomes... the colder its heart."

Dennis Prager



Play close attention.....



.....and take plenty of notes:

Shakedown. Afghanistan gets a taste of their precious new democracy:

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."

George S. Patton

It’s time for thugs in badges to chill out:



The Exalted One gives yet another snoozer.....

.....except for one brief moment of honesty:

"It is the hour to rend thy chains, the blossom time of souls."

Katharine Lee Bates

The public loves to be told sweet lies:

The folks aren’t tickled with Timmy:

"Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it."
Elias Canetti

The Obama Health Ration Regulators take a trial run:

An LEO gets off on some in-the-womb violence:




"The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape. "

Alice James

Soldier boys still swallow their master’s lies:



There’s still a lot of political hay to be reaped from 9/11:

Typical government building program- 8 freakin’ years and still a hole in the ground:

Still looking for that Boeing 757.....

It’s a toxic combination serving two masters- God.....

.....and country: