Sunday, April 27, 2014

Rooney


Mickey Rooney died earlier this month, at the age of 93. Best (and most mistakenly) remembered as the way-too-energetic Andy Hardy goofball always trying to put on musicals in his dad's barn (this at a time when he was the most popular movie star in the world), Rooney was something beyond that as well: he was one of the best and most subtle character actors of classical Hollywood.

This revealed itself, of course, when he stopped being popular, in all those B-grade noirs and TV appearances he did after the war and into the 1960s.

One of his best: Each man trying to outrun his past, by returning to it: David Janssen at his warmest and most intimate; and a middle-aged Rooney, very special. "This'll Kill You" from January 18, 1966. TV noir at its best, directed by Alex March. (With the young and luscious Nita Talbot.)



And, as himself, an appearance on the smartest and classiest show of its time, from May of '57.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Mayfair

Happy Birthday to me. And Happy 50th Birthday to the 1964 New York World's Fair!

This was it. The zenith moment of the American Century. Opening five months to the day after Dallas broke the back of that Century, the Fair embodied all that was lost and would never return again: a belief that, in the words of the fallen martyr: "Our problems are manmade - - therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable - - and we believe they can do it again."

It was a moment on the cusp of Tonkin Gulf, on the cusp of the first urban riots soon to explode in Harlem, before the murders of Schwerner, Goodman & Chaney, before the take-off of Johnson / Goldwater, before the fall of Khrushchev. . .The martyr was to open the Fair; rather, it was opened by one of his killers, Lyndon Johnson.

Here's a glimpse of the Fair through the NBC lens of the ever-droning Edwin Newman. Watch closely. You'll never see the likes of this again.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

LHO


A brilliant and moving primer on the man who didn't shoot anybody, no sir: Shane O'Sullivan's Killing Oswald.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

It Was You, Barry

Surprise, surprise. It was the White House Death Squad Commander inventing and pushing all those lies about the Syrian government's involvement in the Ghouta poison gas attack last August. Actually, it was the US-backed Syrian "rebels" who did it, supplied by US lap dogs Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia -- intelligence well-known by Obama whose planned Libya-type destruction of Syria was stopped by -- get this -- the Pentagon. Hail to the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate!

Seymour Hersh spoke with Amy Goodman about his just published report. (A report blacked-out by all establishment US media.)



Hersh's full investigation.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Guess Who Was Behind This Junk?


[For the answer, please click on it.]

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Fools Rush In

"Logorama" (2009) from H5.