THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING – REVIEW BY PAULINE KAEL
John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King, based on the Rudyard Kipling short story, is an exhilaratingly farfetched adventure fantasy about two roughneck con men, Danny and Peachy (Sean Connery and Michael Caine), in Victoria’s India, who decide to conquer a barbarous land for themselves.
“The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves.”
― Bill Mollison
The Latest
NOAM CHOMSKY: REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM [TRANSCRIPT]
Renowned academic and author Noam Chomsky elucidates 10 principles of concentration of wealth and power that have led to unprecedented inequality and the hollowing out of the American middle class.
TRUMP PRAISES “DEMON SPERM” DOCTOR WHO PUSHED HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE – LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS [TRANSCRIPT]
Seth Meyers Blasts Trump for Trusting “Demon Sperm Lady” on Coronavirus. The Late Night host also mocked “dumb guy” Donald Trump Jr. for trying to defend his recent Twitter timeout.
CENSORSHIP IN LITERATURE: LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood ended with both the little girl and her grandmother dead and no hunter to save them. The Grimm brothers softened the ending to suit their intention of entertainment rather than the moralizing of Perrault’s tales.
CENSORSHIP IN LITERATURE: FAHRENHEIT 451
Fahrenheit 451 is an indictment of censorship and expurgation, so the fact that this book was expurgated and marketed by the publisher that way for 13 years before the author became aware of the abuse is particularly ironic.
CHINA & UIGHURS: LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER [TRANSCRIPT]
John Oliver discusses the human rights abuses the Uighur people are facing at the hands of the Chinese government, and why those atrocities are worth our undivided attention.
JACK WHITEHALL: I’M ONLY JOKING (2020) – TRANSCRIPT
Jack Whitehall hits the stage with hilarious tales about happy couples, life in hotels, human stupidity and his well-traveled father.
“Don’t settle believing, strive for knowledge”
– Carl Sagan
Comedy
CONSPIRACY THEORIES: LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER [FULL TRANSCRIPT]
With conspiracy theories about coronavirus proliferating, John Oliver discusses why we’re prone to believe, how to distinguish fact from fiction, and what you can do to help others.
URZILA CARLSON: OVERQUALIFIED LOSER (2020) – FULL TRANSCRIPT
Stand-up comedian Urzila Carlson keeps the crowd roaring with her thoughts on recasting "The Biggest Loser," sex tape regrets and boxed wine hangovers.
GEORGE LOPEZ: WE’LL DO IT FOR HALF (2020) – FULL TRANSCRIPT
Lopez spends the majority of his time onstage celebrating Latino contributions to American culture, and within that, a lot of nostalgia for how parents used to raise their kids. If you’re looking for light-hearted laughs, this will do the trick.
JIM JEFFERIES: INTOLERANT (2020) – FULL TRANSCRIPT
In this new Netflix special, his latest since 2018’s “This Is Me Now,” Jim Jefferies recounts in excruciating detail a date during which he dismissed his lactose intolerance and indulged in cheese. It did not go well.
Cinema
THE KILLER ELITE – REVIEW BY PAULINE KAEL
Peckinpah's "The Killer Elite" is intensely, claustrophobically exciting, with combat scenes of martial-arts teams photographed in slow motion and then edited in such brief cuts that the fighting is nightmarishly concentrated—almost subliminal.
PAULINE KAEL: NUMBING THE AUDIENCE
by Pauline Kael Early this year, the most successful of the large-circulation magazines for teen-age girls took a two-page spread in the Times for an “interview” with its editor-in-chief, and after the now ritual bulling [...]
LITTLE BIG MAN: AMERICANA
In Little Big Man, Arthur Penn uses the mode of comic elegy in order to sustain a reverent feeling for the American past without falling into sentimentality
LITTLE BIG MAN: THE RED AND THE WHITE
Jack Crabb is 121 years old. His eyes are agate chips; senility seeps through the cracks in his voice. But Crabb is not your average superannuated former Indian fighter. He is Little Big Man, sole survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn.
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“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.”
― Karl R. Popper
The Underrated and Overlooked
FUTURE BOY CONAN (1978): HAYAO MIYAZAKI’S EARLY MASTERPIECE
This seminal work of Japanese master of animation Hayao Miyazaki, Future Boy Conan (Mirai Shōnen Konan) is a post-apocalyptic anime series, consisting of 26 unforgettable episodes packed with action, drama, humor.
Video