by Dean | Sep 6, 2018 | General
Alzheimer’s disease rages on. Tons of money will be needed for the care, at home and in nursing homes, for those afflicted with it. But this is not all that poses a problem.
So many people in America, Europe and elsewhere have borne so few children that when they come down with Alzheimer’s or some other dementia, or suffer a debilitating stroke, they will enter a nursing home without a relative’s solicitude. (This has been written about by William Voegeli.) The spouses of these people will be dead or at least cripplingly ill, and siblings will be sparse. No family members will be checking up on these patients, no intercessions will be made. If there is nursing-home abuse or neglect, no communication about it will ever be forthcoming; the patient himself cannot protest it. We must determine what is to be done about this—and about the necessary funding for care—or else . . .
Euthanasia? Yes. There will be far more of it in both Europe and America. And, to get even further down to brass tacks, mass suicides might occur once aging people realize that dementia is starting to affect them. They’ll be terrified of the future.
Past centuries faced their nightmares. This will be our nightmare. What, really, would dissuade people from seeing suicide as the solution?
by Dean | Sep 3, 2018 | General
To the Indians in James Cruze‘s The Covered Wagon, a 1923 silent film, the plow is a white man’s weapon for devastating the land. But in truth the plow is a symbol for technological and material progress, progress those in the wagon caravans here, headed for Oregon, are hopeful of achieving.
Nothing captures Old West (though pre-Civil War) naturalism like a plains-dominated silent movie. And in this Western, naturalism is bolstered by some grim aggressiveness. Its protag, Will Banion (J. Warren Kerrigan), is reputed to be a cattle thief but is actually a decent man who will be exonerated. Not so Sam Woodhull (Alan Hale), Will’s rival, whose wild violence surpasses that of the Indians. I repeat: grim aggressiveness. Woodhull murders an Indian who rightly demands payment for a ferry ride. Pretty Molly Wingate (Lois Wilson) is the first one hit by a brave’s arrow in a nascent attack. No small amount of honesty in all this. Cruze holds the movie, an epic, together with careful directing, with effective camera use; and the intelligent editing of Dorothy Arzner shapes the picture as well. Notwithstanding it’s too bad two horses had to drown in a river-crossing scene, my eyes were glued to the grand images in The Covered Wagon.
by Dean | Aug 30, 2018 | General
The 1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a Paul Mazursky film, examines the late Sixties’ trends of “liberation”, such as touchy-feely therapy, as two married couples try them on for size. Only slightly satirical, it’s a humane work with competent performances by Dyan Cannon and Elliott Gould, but it’s also a garrulous bore which doesn’t really offer a proper resolution to the characters’ contretemps. Instead we get a flimsy what-the-world-needs-now-is-love conclusion (with Jackie DeShannon’s song on the soundtrack).
An Unmarried Woman is still the Mazursky movie to see, not this one.
Cover of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice
by Dean | Aug 28, 2018 | General
You might want to read an article for the right-leaning website, The American Thinker, called “Was Mollie Tibbetts the Victim of Mexican Machismo?” by Jeannie DeAngelis (Aug. 26)
This would be the Mexican machismo of the illegal immigrant, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who evidently murdered Miss Tibbetts. To be sure, most illegals would never perpetrate such an act, but just how much machismo do we want to cross the U.S. border or overstay a visa? Machismo, I’m sure, is very averse to being rejected by women.
“Hold on, Dean,” a detractor might say. “Immigrant machismo is not claiming the lives of a lot of American women!” Maybe not. The mainstream news media wouldn’t tell us if it was. Even so, what if border security weakens again and continued influxes of Latin American immigrants lead to frequent murders of American women? What if “catch and release” gets underway again?
Miss DeAngelis writes, “For the record, in 2016 alone, an estimated seven women a day lost their lives in Mexico [a much smaller country than the United States, remember] to femicide in public locations.” But, hey, don’t worry. The felony rate of illegal immigrants is gratifyingly lower than that of American citizens, right? Irrelevant! So says Daniel John Sobieski, another American Thinker writer, and he’s right. He avers, “The murder rate for illegal aliens should be zero because none of them should be here . . . ” (Aug. 27)
by Dean | Aug 26, 2018 | General
Detective Barney Nolan is oddly quiet as precinct bookings and other activity go on around him in 1954’s Shield for Murder, and no wonder. Nolan himself has just committed a capital offense: he murdered a bookie’s runner. Enacted with scary power by Edmond O’Brien, who co-directed this pic with Howard W. Koch, the wayward cop will do anything to enrich and protect himself. There’s a lot of ugly truth his brunette girlfriend (Maria English) has yet to find out about him, but she’s on her way. And he ain’t the guy flirty Carolyn Jones should have tried to pick up in a bar.
Two directors have turned out a well-made potboiler, an exciting one. Violent and disturbing too. There is an estimable shootout scene at an indoor swimming pool, and an almost Bonnie and Clyde-like shooting of a criminal. What’s more, there is something rather grand about Shield, but what is it? Maybe it’s that Barney is so diligent in the crummy things he does while we know perfectly well he is destined to be wholly defeated.
