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Monthly Archives: May 2008

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Posted on by Posted in Movies

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal SkullSome good action sequences, but far too much reliance on computer effects, along with a poor script and some uninspired performances make the fourth iteration of the Indy saga a mixed experience.

The pic begins as the Paramount Studios trademark mountain morphs into a CGI molehill, alongside a road filled with military vehicles heading for a secret Nevada facility. The year is 1957, meaning we are picking up where the last episode of the franchise —Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)—left off, adding the actual number of years in reality.

It soon becomes clear that there is something quite wrong with this convoy, as it is filled with Russians, who break into the facility, heading straight for Area 51 (of course). Upon arriving, they let Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) out of a car trunk, accompanied by fellow prisoner (or maybe not) ‘Mac’ George McHale (Ray Winstone). The Ruskies, under the direction of Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett–miscast, with a Russian accent that changes even within single sentences) are looking for an artifact, that Jones can supposedly lead them to.

Via rather improbable circumstances, Jones escapes, only to find himself in the middle of a nuclear test site. How he survives that little problem strains credibility even more. But, soon he is back at his teaching gig and gets caught up in a ham-handed reference to the so-called “Red scare” of the 1950s, and temporarily loses his job—albeit with full pay.

Unfortunately, Hollywood’s constant propagandizing notwithstanding, there was plenty of reason to be worried about the Commies in that era, and not only because they were able to steal atomic secrets with the greatest of ease.

Now with little to do, Indy is informed of the perils of his former colleague Professor ‘Ox’ Oxley (John Hurt), who is being held somewhere in Peru. The messenger with this information is a cocky kid who calls himself Mutt (Shia LaBeouf). Mutt tells Jones that the same baddies are also holding his mother, soon to be revealed as Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). It’s no spoiler to mention here that Mutt is their son.

Father and son travel down to Peru, but then so do the Russians. Numerous adventures occur, but even the ones that promote some interest seem to go on for too long. And yes, there really are space aliens in this movie, but thankfully they don’t do very much. Since there were several drafts of a script prior to the one that made it to the screen, you have to wonder what the others were like, and why Spielberg rejected them.

And what about no attention to detail? If Blanchett’s horrific Russian accent represents the sum total of many retakes, who was watching the dailies? Beyond that, the part was a very poor man’s version of James Bond foil Rosa Klebb, in From Russia with Love (1963). Perhaps the most amazing goof occurs when an LED digital countdown timer appears in what is supposed to be 1957. This is at least 15 years ahead of its time, and is sadly indicative of the level of care in most aspects other than photography throughout the film.

Village Voice critic Robert Wilonsky pretty much nailed it: “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is as joyless as its predecessors were blissful.

HOW A CHICKEN TOOK DOWN THE BIG BAD BLUE EAGLE

Posted on by Posted in History

Conventional history of the Great Depression will paint Hoover as the do-nothing guy, and FDR as the bold experimenter. In fact, Engineer Hoover couldn’t stop tweaking with the economy, and even signed the Smoot-Hawley bill, that drastically increased tariffs in 1930. Of course, other countries retaliated, and America’s international trade went down by about 50%. Some commentators argue that Smoot-Hawley alone exacerbated, and might have even caused the Great Depression. Ironically, Hoover had wanted tariff rates to decrease, but signed the bill anyway—supposedly as payback to farmers.

Hoover also tried to jawbone suffering companies that it was morally wrong to lay off employees, and his Reconstruction Finance Corporation was one of the very few government programs that actually did help to alleviate some of what the Depression had wrought. Of course, most people—not without justification—blamed the Depression on him, and this combined with his lackluster campaign style, assured Hoover of a landslide loss in the 1932 election.

Not that Roosevelt helped the situation very much. The linchpin of his New Deal strategy was the National Recovery Administration, an incredibly complicated and contradictory set of thousands of rules to micromanage every business. Six months after the NRA went into effect, industrial production dropped twenty-five percent. According to some economists, the NRA increased the cost of doing business by forty percent. It didn’t help that the architects of this policy were ardent admirers of the planned economies of Stalin and Mussolini.

Many people were arrested for not complying with NRA regulations. Jack Magid of New Jersey, for example, was jailed for violating the “Tailor’s Code” by pressing a suit for 35 rather than the NRA required 40 cents. The NRA was symbolized by a blue eagle, and its flag flew outside all complying businesses. Historian John T. Flynn remembers:

The NRA was discovering it could not enforce its rules. Black markets grew up. Only the most violent police methods could procure enforcement. In Sidney Hillman’s garment industry the code authority employed enforcement police. They roamed through the garment district like storm troopers. They could enter a man’s factory, send him out, line up his employees, subject them to minute interrogation, take over his books on the instant.

Night work was forbidden. Flying squadrons of these private coat-and-suit police went through the district at night, battering down doors with axes looking for men who were committing the crime of sewing together a pair of pants at night. But without these harsh methods many code authorities said there could be no compliance because the public was not back of it.

The case that was to finally break the back of the NRA was A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935). Immigrants Joseph, Martin, Alex, and Aaron Schechter ran a wholesale kosher poultry business in Brooklyn. They would procure the birds from some primary source, truck it to their slaughterhouse markets in Brooklyn, for resale to retail poultry dealers and butchers who sell directly to consumers. As such, the Schechters did not engage in interstate commerce.

Since a hallmark of NRA codes was efficiency, a specific regulation actually provided that their customers could not pick out specific birds for slaughter. Rather, entire coops had to be taken at large, or on smaller orders, the birds were to be accepted as drawn from the cage. Bear in mind that chickens are prodigious carriers of disease, and this was well before antibiotics. Thus, the customers wanted to be able to observe and pick out the healthy birds.

As the Schechters’ operation was large and visible, it did not take long for federal agents to cite them for 60-odd violations of NRA codes, subjecting them to significant fines and even jail time. The Schechters, though, were to fight back—all the way to the Supreme Court.

It is difficult to adequately portray the arrogance of the pathologically self-assured New Deal brain trust, including the attorneys who would argue the case against young lead counsel Joseph Heller, along with Frederick Wood, of the prestigious firm Cravath, de Gersdorff, Swaine, and Wood. Some donations came in to help defray the Schechters’ legal expenses from dozens of businesses that would be only too happy to see the NRA fall.

And fall it did in a unanimous decision on May 27, 1935. Governor Huey Long of Louisiana said, “I raise my hand in reverence to the Supreme Court that saved this nation from fascism.”

As to the Schechters, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. Even before the case, Joseph Schechter remarked that the New Deal had all but ruined him, closing most of his facilities, and leaving him with one-tenth of the business he had enjoyed in 1934. In an interview with the New York Times, sister Sarah Schechter Seligman said that the A. L. A. Schechter Corporation was out of business. Aaron and Alex were running a small poultry store nearby, and Martin worked in another. Patriarch Joseph was unemployed.

“None of them has any money,” she told the reporter. “Although a lot of people felt sorry for them afterward and promised to help them out, all they got was a few ten-dollar bills and letters of congratulation.”

During the case, elements of the pro-New Deal media such as Drew Pearson were not above anti-Semitic remarks in their columns—views that were certainly shared by FDR and his wife. Yet, history records that the Schechters were unwavering in their support of the tyrant who persecuted them, and voted for FDR in every election.

THE CURE FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR ANXIETY AND FATIGUE

Posted on by Posted in Politics

Since the media—in all its varied formats—is constantly starved for material, we should expect no letup in the nauseatingly persistent saturation coverage of this event. No doubt, there are those who follow every iteration with the greatest interest, but my feeling is that they are in the distinct minority.

To sum up the current situation, we have three decidedly mediocre candidates, and the biggest takeaway is the tragic conclusion that this is apparently the best we can do.

On the Dem side, we are observing the rather obvious consequences of a strategy that started around the time that Blacks forgot that Team D was the party of segregation, and started supporting them in virtually monolithic numbers. The break would come when a Black candidate finally emerged, and the irony is that the Dem establishment brought this on themselves, by featuring Obama at the 2004 convention.

Meanwhile, Hillary, apparently born with a sense of entitlement, and a nearly supernatural ability to convince people that she is far more capable than she actually is, assumed that this would be her year—notwithstanding her high negatives. As the primary process grinds on, the essential conclusion is that Obama can mostly win in states that will probably go Republican in November, and Clinton seems better in traditional Dem strongholds.

Team D has a serious problem, of course, in that they cannot throw off Obama, and thus turn off their most fanatic support base. And, even though the conventional wisdom is that Clinton is probably the better candidate, it is impossible to draw this conclusion based on the unknowable Black defection quotient that would occur if she were the nominee. My advice is for the Dems to nominate Obama, who will likely lose, and go on with the rest of their lives.

But there is a larger issue here. Does it really matter who the president is? After all, the office is given limited duties by the Constitution, confined these days to starting undeclared wars, nominating federal judges, and vetoing legislation. In truth, the president is really little more than a symbolic figure. Beyond the Constitution—and most of what goes on these days IS beyond the Constitution—are the many executive agencies, the source of so much regulation, and cause of so many taxes.

Since even Reagan—possessed of a giant mandate—who supposedly was going to eliminate the Department of Education, did nothing to shrink the executive bureaucracy, we can assume that not much will happen in this regard for the foreseeable future. As to federal judges, the process has become extremely politicized, and even when the judges are approved, they are often not as advertised. Historically, it has been hit or miss with Republicans, and generally Leftist with the Dems.

Bear in mind that in the entire history of this republic, there have been perhaps ten good presidents. More importantly, there have been at least a few terrible chief executives, and somehow we have survived and even thrived. Note that the only sensible way to evaluate a president is within the historical context of his tenure. For example, Truman had a low approval rating when he left office, and he richly deserved it. Attempts to raise him up decades later are as foolish as the efforts to denigrate those who preceded Lincoln, not to mention the Lincoln cult that sprung up in the 1920s.

And, even though Bill Clinton’s popularity was far more a reflection of the good economy he presided over (although he had nothing at all to do with it), than any actions on his part, it will be pointless for future historians to state this. They can’t remove the fact that he WAS popular, anymore than reflections on the disaster that was FDR will change the fact that he was popular, as well.

Simply put, unless government is made much smaller, and taxes are reduced, it does not matter who the president is. So why worry?

IRON MAN

Posted on by Posted in Movies

Iron ManGreat FX, a compelling story, near-perfect editing, and above all fine acting propel this pic to be easily the best Marvel adaptation yet.

The film opens on a Humvee in the wilds of Afghanistan, containing some soldiers, and our hero Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), billionaire defense contractor. The group is on its way back to base, after a successful demonstration of Stark’s new Jericho missile, but gets intercepted by rogue Afghan forces.

Stark is captured, and is nursed back to health by captive doctor Yinsen (Shaun Toub), for the express purpose of making a Jericho missile for the baddies. Tony is shocked to find that these insurgents have no shortage of bona fide Stark weapons and parts. Tony and Yinsen work together on something all right, but it is not a missile. Instead, Tony has fashioned his first Iron Man suit, and it functions well enough to allow him to escape.

He returns back to the US, greeted by personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and top Stark Industries exec Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). Immediately, he calls a press conference, and suggests that his time in captivity will drive the company in new directions—as in de-emphasizing weapons production, and going whole hog on developing his arc reactor—a marvelous new power source.

Not surprisingly, Wall Street does not take kindly to this new direction, as established in a cameo by Jim Cramer, playing his manic self. Nor does this sit well with Obadiah, who clearly has plans of his own.

Tony is advised to stay out of the public eye for a bit, and starts working on a new and improved version of the Iron Man suit, while warming up to Pepper. Many have noted that Paltrow has never looked better on screen, by the way.

The plot will thicken considerably, affording many opportunities to show off the FX. My favorite involved the holographic stuff going on as Tony designs the new suit. Some comic moments include an overachieving robotic device, and a guaranteed method to avoid collateral damage in hostage situations.

Critical reaction has been mostly positive, with some snipes at how the story is too predictable, or how the Americans are tritely portrayed as heroes, and the religious motivation of the baddies is hidden. Of course, some of these critics are so intent on discovering an esoteric deep meaning that they forget that we are talking about a comic book story here.

Even in movies that probably DO have more depth, the sophomoric hyper-analysis can be astounding. Indeed, you only have to read the self-indulgent drivel that tainted many reviews of Cutter’s Way (1981), a cool nouveau noir film, that also featured Jeff Bridges. While set in Santa Barbara, the pic could have been based anywhere, yet hapless fans had to read about “a meditation on the death of the California dream.”

Some of the crits need to get over themselves, along with a goodly percentage of sports commentators.