Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 266

“Chicken in the Pot”: A brilliant ‘Solo’ soundtrack by John Powell

Soundtrack for a scoundrel. Get the music of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Available now from @DisneyMusic. https://t.co/YazjmjyDlg pic.twitter.com/h3FV1iBqyr

— Star Wars (@starwars) May 26, 2018

I saw Solo: A Star Wars Story two times in the first 24 hours of its release–it was a day that I’ve long looked forward to. As I’ve established many times Star Wars for me is an intellectual vacation destination. Some people like to go to the beach and lay out on the sand under a powerful sun to relax, others like to visit other countries and sip mixed drinks from their hotel bar. Personally, I enjoy visiting that galaxy far far away in the movies, music and video games that have sprung from the mythology of Star Wars. There is so much imagination in that vast entertainment option that I find my mind can rest there and enjoy the world they have created. Real life has plenty of challenges and as readers know who read here often, I have a grip on reality that is far more intense than what the average person cares to endure, so I don’t mind sharing some of my little secrets for dealing with excessive amounts of stress, and Star Wars does it for me, especially on the creative side of things. When a new movie comes out on Blu-Ray I enjoy the making of the movies far more than the actual stories because that’s what I most enjoy in Star Wars is the vast creativity those projects generate. And among all the elements that are positive from Star Wars movies is the music, so when a new film hits that I like a lot I usually get the soundtrack at the very first opportunity. It is my favorite part of any good movie I enjoy is listing to the soundtrack of the film, and that is certainly no exception with Solo: A Star Wars Story. John Powell did a great job with it and I have found myself particularly obsessed with one particular part of that musical track, a song called “Chicken in the Pot.” It is the weirdest bit of music that I’ve heard in many years and I just love it.

I loved Solo: A Star Wars Story the first time, but I found the second time even more enjoyable. On that second time I was listening to the soundtrack in the car on the way to the theater and that track 8 song came on and it reminded me of the original cantina song from the original A New Hope soundtrack that has been used so many times over the years for everything that exhibits weirdness in these films. But this was different even for a Star Wars movie, the sound is clearly classic almost Frank Sinatraish only with an eerie female chorus of varying pitches singing in an alien language. Further, in the actual movie when that scene is up our heroes are about to meet the gangster Dryden Vos at his luxury barge and there are lots of exotic people at the bar where these singers are performing. One is a woman of some alien species singing with this strange little guy providing base in a jar of liquid. It was a really unique scene I thought that was spectacularly environmental. It was so weird that it took me a couple of viewings to register it, and I was so happy it ended up on the soundtrack. That is just the kind of music that a place like the new Disney World Galaxy’s Edge is going to need for the fans who participate in their new Star Wars experience next year. John Powell pulled that one out of somewhere to create a new level of creative brilliance.

What makes music like that work is the context, its rooted in our classic Hollywood musicals, but it is certainly distinctly alien. It also nearly sounds like the music is being played backwards which is a hint into the character of the main villain Dryden Vos who appears quite pleasant when he first meets people but if you peel back just a few layers of his behavior he is absolutely brutal—in the calmest fashion possible—a strange mix of contrasts. What’s bold about this new Solo: A Star Wars story is that they are exploring how all these crime syndicates function in the great mythology of the greater Star Wars galaxy, such as the Crimson Dawn and the Pike Syndicate. Its like stepping away from the politics of a film like All the President’s Men and getting to know the details of The Godfather, or even Scarface, which gets into the details of the boots on the ground thugs that are often used for the greater advantages of the top-level politics. The plots are compelling because they are rooted in reality. In the case of Star Wars Dryden Vos is kind of regional player. Everyone is afraid of him, but he’s very quick to suggest that he’s just another small fish in a very big pond. In that scene where we meet Dryden for the first time it’s that music that introduces him. Nothing is as it seems, but yet it’s all right there in front of you.

This is now the second Star Wars film that does not have John Williams scoring it, although he did play a part of the John Powell soundtrack, which is obvious. I was worried about this part of the Solo film experience, but now that I’ve had a chance to listen to the soundtrack a few hundred times over the last 48 hours I am quite happy with it. Music is what sells these stories to our subconscious and we are truly in new territory here with these movies. Very few people really think about what it takes to make a film but it’s always on my mind with regard to projects like this. Hollywood as a whole is a dying culture yet there are people working in it that are brilliant in what they do, like the people who work at Industrial Light and Magic, all the musicians that score all these big movies—people like John Powell out there who are bringing the classics of tomorrow alive today within the context of the film industry. I admire filmmakers in how they employ thousands of people who on something like a Star Wars movie are the best in the business, from the unsung producers who set up everything on these complicated shoots to the people like Powell who get to put their name on a major part of the creative process. I look at each one of these as a small miracle of capitalism that they even happen. If they are financially successful, then more people get to work on a new movie, and I really hope Solo: A Star Wars Story is successful financially so that our culture can get more of these movies. If we get more movies than I get more soundtracks that make daring music like John Powell did in Solo: A Star Wars Story, specifically the track “Chicken in the Pot.” I could listen to that all day long, and if there are many more of these Star Wars movies, there will be quite a collection of unusual music that will emerge from them.

Seeing Solo a Star Wars Story for the second time in 24 hrs. @starwars @RealRonHoward pic.twitter.com/0lbXndwDX1

— Rich Hoffman (@overmanwarrior) May 25, 2018

I think we all benefit from these explosions of creativity. As I was watching this latest Star Wars movie on the two occasions within 24 hours of each other on opening day, I saw a lot of happy people buying Star Wars merchandise and enjoying themselves with their families. If that is all that came out of Star Wars, I think that would be enough. But there is more, a lot more and the platform of Star Wars gives some of our most creative people a place to experiment and sometimes those results produce something so unique, like “Chicken in the Pot.” That takes life and elevates its potential by expanding our imaginations in positive ways which advance our species in ways that are so far, immeasurable.

Rich Hoffman

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The Miracle of Capitalism: Why every country should try to be like the United States

The solution to helping others in the world is not to keep throwing money at them, or in letting them live in the United States as immigrants—its to help them make their own countries better than they are now by exporting American ideas that could help them become better. Let me tell those people a little story about life near my house this week so that they can understand why capitalism is such a wonderful thing and why they should adopt it in their own lives for the great improvements that it could bring them. In telling this story I have to start with the gun shop at the end of my street, Right 2 Arms which is located on Rt 4 in Liberty Township, Ohio that I use often, especially when I make a new gun purchase because everything about capitalism starts and ends with gun possession. It is the reminder to the government that they should tamper with the American economy as little as possible and to let the free market determine successes and failures and it is what made for a pretty remarkable day that I had recently.[image error]

I had hit one of those milestones in my life where it justified the purchase of a gun I’ve wanted for a very long time, a .50AE Desert Eagle from Magnum Research. I first decided I wanted it way back in 1988 when I was a newly married 19-year-old, and the guns have only gotten better over the years. It was something I have wanted for a whole bunch of reasons, manly the technical value of it. I’m looking for a good concealed carry gun that can deal with the unique challenges of our modern age and for me it’s just the right thing, a seven shot semi-automatic pistol that shoots like a high-powered rifle within the tight confines of a pistol frame. Why would I ever need such a thing? Well, thugs, goons, radicals and terrorists these days wear body armor and should there come a circumstance, having the ability to neutralize them is what would be the strategic objective. So when it came time to buy it, I went to the gun store at the end of my street and purchased the .50AE Desert Eagle to add to my assets.

But that wasn’t all I needed to do that day. I additionally had three trees that I needed to cut out of my yard and I had a major brake job that was pressing me on an older vehicle we have. The 12-year-old Town and Country has been a workhorse in our family since we bought it new, so I’ve kept it running nicely all that time with occasional repairs. But my dilemma was that I was concerned that the new rotors I needed to fix the brakes were just too old to be on the shelf at the O’Reilly auto parts store I go to often across from the great Elk’s Run Golf course. So after I bought my new Desert Eagle, I swung by to see if the O’Reilly guys could track down some new rotors for me to put on that old van.

Like gun stores one of my favorite places are auto parts stores. One thing about American culture that is unique in the world is their personal automobiles. The ability to own two or three vehicles per household is unique in the world and are directly attached to our insistence on personal freedom. If firearms keep politicians honest in America cars give us the freedom to use our time for whatever use we choose. We can literally go anywhere, any time of day any time we want and that is a big deal that is not common elsewhere in the world. So to have auto stores so common in the United States is a real treat because that’s how we keep our vehicles running and I love going down the aisles and looking at all the different products intended for that purpose. I go to an auto store about twice a month, I love the way they smell, I love the colors, and I like talking to the people working there who know things about cars. We always have a car in our family that needs an oil change, spark plugs replaced, or fluids topped off, and I enjoy doing the work. But I had no hope that O’Reilly’s would have the rotors I needed on the shelf in their inventory.

But guess what, I inquired about the rotors and the clerk went to his computer to check the status and I was quite shocked to find that O’Reilly’s had them. So I bought two for $40 each and left amazed that I was going to be able to get that brake job done that day instead of having to wait for an order to come in. I continue to be surprised that O’Reilly’s most always has the things I need for auto repairs—even items that given the number of different cars on the road, they seem to always have for both new and older models. The inventory control to always have that type of stock is amazing, and you would only find it in a capitalist country that has a lot of wealth to justify the personal investment by the store itself. I can’t imagine there are many Town and Country cars left that need major brake jobs as most of them are headed for the scrap heap now—not being rebuilt from the suspension outward. Yet they had them proudly on the shelf when I needed them, and it amazed me.

However, I wasn’t done for the day. The last time I used my Huskvarna 455 Rancher chainsaw was during the previous fall when I did some tree work. After I put it away that day I knew the chain was dull so the next time I used it I’d need a new chain. My philosophy on these types of tools is that I like big and mean so that they have all the force needed and then some for whatever I’m doing. My Desert Eagle is part of that philosophy. Most of the time you’d never need a semi-automatic .50 caliber magnum bullet to stop a problem, but if you do need it, it’s there. That’s the same philosophy behind my Huskvarna 455 Rancher chainsaw with a 20-inch blade. When I first bought it most everyone said that it was too big to work with, which I disagreed completely. It’s big and known to be a bit of a beast. My wife has been after me to cut out a tree stump of an old ash tree that was on our property which fell victim to the Ash Bore insects that killed it a few years ago. It was a big mature tree so it had a large stump. Just big enough for my big chainsaw with a 20-inch blade. To do that type of job, you really need a sharp chain because you have to keep the saw horizontal without hitting the ground while making the cut so once you get started you don’t want to pull out.

I literally pulled out of the parking lot of O’Reilly’s and drove a few hundred yards down Rt 4 to Tractor Supply which is another store I love going to for similar reasons as the auto stores. That’s where I was able to get everything I needed for my chainsaw job. Of course, Tractor Supply had everything I needed as they have a nice Huskvarna chainsaw section and all my blades where there along with the oil I needed. For that big chainsaw I need the 20” 72 drive chains which are the largest they carried, but I found a two pack for about $37. I was able to get home and do all my jobs within about three hours of buying all that and I still had time to enjoy my evening. Would you believe that everything I described was within one mile of each other, including the gun purchase?

Part of being a wealthy country means that there are options like this near most of our homes, and the things I described are more specialized than the average types of things that might be needed typically on a Saturday afternoon. That is the magic of capitalism—those things were all there for me when I needed them because of the free market system and because I didn’t have to waste a lot of time looking for all those items, it made my time much more productive which is always the name of the game. If my time is not wasted, it provides more opportunities for me to make money so that I can do more things like buy guns, fix cars and do landscaping in my yard. Most places around the world can’t do one of those things, let alone all three in the same day and still have time to binge watch a show on Netflix later that night. Life in America is the best and other countries would do well to adopt what we do here for their own benefit, and that all starts with embracing capitalism. To really improve the lives of people around the world, capitalism is the magic trick they all need to learn. Its something we take for granted in America because we are used to getting what we want when we want it, but on days like I have described I realize just how special all those abilities are. And I’d like to see that for everyone.

Rich Hoffman

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Solo: A Star Wars Story Review—What a GREAT movie!

Well, that was a lot of fun—a whole lot of fun. I need to see it again, but I think the new Star Wars movie Solo: A Star Wars Story is my favorite film from the franchise and is in my top ten of all time. It reminded me a lot of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In many ways it also reminded me of a kid’s version of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. And it reminded me a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean and likely that was what Disney was thinking by going with this part of the Star Wars franchise. Solo: A Star Wars Story was just pure fun technically executed to perfection. If this was the most expensive Star Wars film ever made requiring something like nine months of shooting to get right—it showed on the screen. [image error]I enjoyed the movie as an adult, but really it’s the kids who see this that are in for the biggest treat. In so many ways I thought the film was brilliant. It started with a car chase on Han Solo’s home planet of Corellia and ended with a card game where Han wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando—but what happened in between was pretty magnificent on the scale of adventurous fun and special effects achievement. Solo: A Star Wars Story is one of those movies that you come out of the theater feeling good about seeing, and it’s certainly one that will be the most fun to watch over and over again once it hits the home theater market. This for me personally is the Star Wars film that I’ve always wanted to see and it actually went a few steps further—which was refreshing.

There are movies over the years that were defined by just a few scenes, such as in Jurassic Park in 1993 where we first saw a T-Rex eat its way through the fence of its holding cell during a thick downpour of rain. Or in 1981 in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones climbs under the truck that is trying to run over him—Solo: A Star Wars Story has several moments like that in it. The two that most come to my mind is when the Millennium Falcon was caught in the gravity well of the Maul during the Kessel Run and a giant monster was trying to eat them in space. The effects and story elements were just jaw dropping beautiful. Then the second is the stand-off between Han Solo and Tobias Beckett near the end where it is recorded for all time, “Han Shot First,” without question. Put that controversy to rest forever, and I thought it was a very powerful moment in these very political times where PC seems to ruin everything. With Han Solo being such a practical, no-nonsense guy, shooting first is a logical thing to do, and it was very satisfying to see him unflinchingly do so. I think it was on par with the time that Indiana Jones shot the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark, also written by this Solo screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan.[image error]

When George Lucas decided to re-edit the Han Solo scene shooting Greedo in A New Hope he was giving in to political pressure that was coming from the anti-gun crowd. Lucas wanted to make sure that Han Solo wasn’t considered a blood thirsty murderer which can sometimes be a very fine line between a sparkling hero who just shoots a villain. If everyone can’t agree that a villain is a villain one person’s hero is another person’s murderer, so George Lucas made sure that Greedo shot first in the 1997 Special Editions of his original Star Wars Trilogy. Making the decision to have Han shoot first in this film to end the life of a main character was quite a statement and now an issue that as been bouncing around among Star Wars fans for many years is settled. Han Solo will have forever be known to have shot first—which is consistent with his character. As a person who has seen hundreds of westerns over the years, I thought it was an extremely well-done scene that felt oddly good. I would go see this movie another 20 times at the theater just to watch that one scene. I put it on my scale of fantastic cinematic events in the top ten—perhaps the top five. This movie would have been good if that’s all that happened in it.

But that was only one small scene. For me the best of the Star Wars movies were sections of A New Hope and the first two-thirds of The Empire Strikes Back. I think I would put this Solo: A Star Wars Story just ahead of those two films because it gives audiences all the fun things without the emotional weight that happened at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, or even The Force Awakens. With Han Solo being one of the best characters it’s no fun to have him frozen like what happened in Empire, or to be killed like he was in Force Awakens. I understand those artistic needs in a film but what makes a prequel like Solo: A Star Wars Story fun is that you know Han is going to live and come out on top, so you can just enjoy the ride. In that way I think this is the best Star Wars film made to date because it is lacking the emotional weight of any heavy subject matter—just like the Pirate of the Caribbean movies. Star Wars has certainly contributed to heavy story telling with difficult subject matter, but the roots of the franchise were always well-set in B-movies and Saturday Morning Matinees where viewers knew the hero would live from one cliffhanger to another, but the thing they wanted to really know was how.

In that way this Solo: A Star Wars Story was more like an Indiana Jones film where we knew the hero would find some way out of whatever mess they found themselves in but learning how they’d escape was the real fun. It’s like a fun amusement park ride where it all looks dangerous and you know that when the ride ends, you’ll safely put your feet back on the ground. But during the experience, you are experiencing thrills and chills that you couldn’t get anywhere else. In a lot of ways if we as the audience didn’t know that Han Solo would survive this movie we’d not be able to deal with the suspense of going through so much in such a short period of time. The young life of Han Solo was pretty intense and for lots of emotional reasons, is best viewed in hindsight—as a prequel film. Pretty stunning stuff.[image error]

Another movie I kept thinking about during Solo: A Star Wars Story was James Cameron’s Titanic from 1997. Like Solo, it had a troubled production, cost overruns and all types of controversy, but Cameron kept his nose down and plowed through the production to what became one of the biggest box office sensations in the history of cinema. On the day of its release which I took a day off work back then to see with advanced tickets that my wife was bewildered that I wanted to see so bad, the critics were all over the picture slamming it for every little thing they could think of. When the film opened, and the word of mouth got out about it, the business exploded for the next six months which was unheard of for films even back then. People wanted that type of optimistic story set against a tragic backdrop and the big downer of course was that Jack had died. The critical appraisal and industry backlash against Lucasfilm for inserting Ron Howard into a movie that was almost done and reshooting 80% of the film with an additional 4 month schedule has all those naysayers smelling blood in the water and the real sharks out there love to take bites out of careers and torpedo films that find themselves in such a situation. But I was just a little stunned at how good Solo was even down to the musical score by John Powell in using vuvuzelas to provide emphasis and some heightened emotion. Vevuzelas are those insect sounding horns that you hear in European soccer stadiums that are constantly buzzing—those horns were used in this movie to a very stunning effect in the background that I thought was very gutsy. The entire production takes those kinds of unique risks that will go down in film history as some of the boldest by a supposedly big commercial company like Lucasfilm and distributer Disney.

One thing that really benefits Solo is the presence of some big names in the business of acting, such as Donald Glover who is presently nearly like Michael Jackson in his popularity. The kid has the number one song in the country and here he is playing Lando Calrissian in the latest Star Wars movie—and he’s having fun with it. Glover isn’t the star, Alden Ehrenreich is. Without question, this is Alden Ehrenreich’s movie and that’s big shoes to fill considering that Emilia Clark is starring in the last season of Game of Thrones filming presently and she is the star of that series which is also filled with fantastic actors—the best of the best. Talk about a tough job not just to overcome the Hollywood legend of Harrison Ford which Ehrenreich did I think quite spectacularly, but in holding his own against some really big stars sharing the screen with him. As much as people want to make this movie about Lando, as it turned out, Lando as played by Glover was the same Lando from The Empire Strikes Back, a swindler, a con artist, and a person of questionable moral authority who is on the check list of revenge for a raging Han Solo at the end of this film. It says a lot about a movie that for a change doesn’t end with a big action sequence that saves the universe from immaculate destruction, but with a card game that in its own subtle ways does save the galaxy. What if Han had not run down Lando at the end of the film to play one last time that game of sabacc. The first Death Star would have killed all the rebels in A New Hope. Princess Leia would have never have gotten away from her raging father in The Empire Strikes Back. The second Death Star from The Return of the Jedi wouldn’t have been destroyed by Lando Calrissian many years after these events in Solo. Rey would have died on Star Killer Base in The Force Awakens and she never would have found Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi. In so many ways this sabacc game at the end of Solo: A Star Wars Story was a huge climax, but for a film like this in this day and age where bigger and bigger explosions leave audiences gasping just prior to exiting the theater, this movie slowed down long enough to get to the real heart of the movie, the treasure that Han Solo wanted more than anything else in life—his own starship so that he could earn his freedom finally to live life on the terms he always wanted to live it.[image error]

The tragedy of the film is that Han Solo doesn’t get to live happily ever after with his childhood love who turns out to be an agent of evil—sort of. But this isn’t the kind of heart wrenching let down that we see in Titanic and it remains to be seen if a film like Solo can drive big billion-dollar numbers without essentially being a tragedy. I think the answer is a big yes, but producers are following formulas of what has worked in the past basically starting with films like Casablanca and Citizen Kane. To end a movie on a high note is what film schools are teaching their students who then work in the industry as “paying fan service.” Well, yeah, duh. Aren’t these movies made for the fans? Who says that Han Solo has to become a mess because he has lost his girlfriend in this movie to the ambitious revenge plans of Darth Maul? Hey, Han won the ship of his dreams—who needs a woman? And that is pretty much the attitude which is very refreshing in these kinds of movies where Anakin Skywalker was drawn to become Darth Vader because of his love for his secret wife. The ability to shrug off trouble is exactly what makes Han Solo a great character and why these types of Star Wars movies are needed for the franchise. The emotions over the last three films have been too heavy-handed, Luke has died, Han Solo as an elderly figure has died, and all the members of Rogue One died. It’s nice to see a film mostly without heartache for a change that is full of fun and adventure—because most of us have enough of all that in our lives, who wants to pay money to see more of it?

As I said the best parts of Solo: A Star Wars Story are the scenes it recreates from the best parts of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back—the scenes in the cantina in the very first film, the heroics on Hoth in Empire and into the asteroid field which has never been recreated in any film since—in forty years of trying. The price of the entire movie would be worth just watching the Kessel Run, a desperate journey into the Maw of Star Wars legend where a black hole makes passage very dangerous—impossible really. To watch a bold young Han Solo cut off from an exit into the Maw by an Imperial Star Destroyer turn the Millennium Falcon around within a gravity well and to fly back into the worst part of it in order to escape is something that no modern movie can duplicate. It’s not just that there has been a 40 year build up into creating an elaborate mythology about what constitutes a “Kessel Run” but the execution of it on a movie screen is something that has just recently become technically possible—its quite something to see. Why would anybody wait to see a big firework display on the Fourth of July? Because its cool. That’s also why everyone should see Solo: A Star Wars Story at least once, because this one scene of the Kessel Run is just that cool. Luckily, that’s not the only thing worth watching but if you had to pick one thing, that would be it.

The character of Han Solo is something that is very unique, and precious to human creation, there really has never been another character in film or literature like him. You won’t find a comparable character in any Shakespeare literature or within the music of Mozart. The Greeks and Romans never came close in any of their work in creating a foundation for the kind of fearless character that Han Solo is—the boldness and self-confidence that made the character something so many people have loved now for half a century. The only literary reference out of all creative efforts by mankind over our entire history has been the work of Wofram Von Eschenbach’s Parzival in the Middle Ages with a little bit of Lancelot sprinkled in for good measure. George Lucas literally created the character of Han Solo during his racing days where souped-up cars and cruise music filled his mind. After nearly dying in a car crash and deciding to get serious with his life he ran into the work of Joseph Campbell and these stories by Eschenbach and Han Solo was born. The spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone were popular during this period so Lucas put all those strong images of maleness into the character of Han Solo from A New Hope and something really new was born which certainly does deserve its own movie—or series of movies. The character of Han Solo is beyond review for most studied people, because there is no reference for which to place context in the traditional way. Han Solo really isn’t afraid of anything. He is like Parzival in Eschenbach’s epic Arthurian legends in that he knows how to get to the Grail Castle with his hands limp against his horse trusting fate and his raw talent to take him anywhere he needs to go. Getting “there” is never the goal for Han Solo, which is why he always finds himself exactly where he needs to be where heroics are needed. Solo always trusts that he can get out of whatever trouble he finds himself in which makes seeing a movie starring a character like that extremely unusual. Usually what drives a dramatic narrative is the hopes and fears of the protagonists—but in the case of Han Solo he’s really not afraid of anything and he believes anything is possible and it is on that boundless optimism that we as viewers are transported to possibilities that are best experienced in a great movie. That puts Han Solo into a category all his own and makes a movie like this so much more special.[image error]

Solo: A Star Wars Story is a movie that is special. You don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it, but if you are, then we are seeing the start of something really positive emerging creatively from the Lucasfilm group. I would place Solo as one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s up there with Raiders of the Lost Ark and even Scarface. It’s a reflection into the way movies used to be made with themes that simply have not been part of the modern theatrical experience. It’s a movie you will want to watch in the future on a home system just to feel good about something. When you are having a bad day, this is the movie you will want to put in and watch for a few hours—its fun, its optimistic and is full of adventure. Additionally, it takes the mythology of Star Wars and really begins the expansion of it in ways that build the brand under the Disney tent like nothing else could. We go places in this film that unlocks thousands of potential stories for the future. If everything we know about Star Wars came out of the first three films done forty years back in the eighties, then this film takes a step into that world to unlock more potential on a scale of 100 times what we’ve known. Simply put, there is a creative impulse to this movie that is so bold and audacious that it is formulative into everything that comes after it, even if those creative endeavors are not Star Wars related. Solo: A Star Wars Story is in a place of its own and shows theatrical leadership in ways that are not only necessary, but excessively refreshing. It is the movie to see if you are going to see one, not just once, but as many times as possible. It’s that good.

Rich Hoffman

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‘Solo’: Making ‘Star Wars’ Great Again

A lot of my readers are millionaires and are people used to having net assets due to long time investment portfolios, so they are rather perplexed why I am making so much over this new Han Solo movie titled Solo: A Star Wars Story. I think it’s one of the most important things going on today in the world, not just because I love Star Wars, and the character of Han Solo—but because culturally it says a lot about our society in general. I think there are many things that are very important about this upcoming movie that are epic not just in the film itself but in the reaction to it that so many sectors of society have invested. With that said, the film is for children. It’s intended to inspire kids from the ages of 5 to 12 and make it so that their families can go see the movie with them. It’s a family film that expands generations, adults who loved these movies as kids can now take their own kids to see a movie that they can all relate to, and that is the miracle of Star Wars in its purest form. As of this writing I haven’t yet seen the picture, but I know what I’m getting in to. I am delighted that Kathy Kennedy and Bob Iger at Disney greenlit this movie and that all those San Francisco progressives that work at Lucasfilm went against their modern political instincts to make a movie about a white guy who is a strong alpha male who shoots guns, has no reverence for the law and likes to fly starships insanely fast. Han Solo is everything that progressive society is trying to eliminate culturally, so I think it says a lot that Lucasfilm and Disney decided to make this particular movie because it’s what the fans have always wanted—its what the story of Star Wars demands and they went with it, and it took a lot of guts. The fact that these filmmakers made this movie about this kind of character goes a long way to fixing problems I had with both Lucasfilm and Disney—and I admire them for extending that branch. I could easily think that based on what I know about the movie that they made it just for me. But that would be a bridge too far—they made it for kids—a new generation of fans that they want to appeal to the Star Wars brand, and they fully intend to make a lot of money while they do it—which is the name of the game. Personally, I am delighted about this movie in every way possible from the money it will make to the product it delivers.

But I warned about this a long time ago on a radio show I did for 1600 WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan when after The Force Awakens came out where I was concerned that Bob Iger and Kathy Kennedy were going to divide the Star Wars fan base by eliminating the extended universe, the many books and comics that had been made to continue the storyline over the last thirty years. Then there was the incident where Kathy Kennedy said she didn’t care about the male fans of the Star Wars fan base to a New York Times reporter, which didn’t go over well. Additionally, she allowed The Last Jedi to be a very progressive film that was bordering on Cloud Atlas in sentiment which was only saved by the score of John Williams and the great visual effects of Industrial Light and Magic. The fans were mad at Kathy Kennedy after The Last Jedi because she had betrayed them and now they are on a mission to destroy her at Lucasfilm, wanting to boycott this new Star Wars film, Solo: A Star Wars Story to force Disney to fire her.

I am rather shocked at the vitriol over this film—the activists are really the same type of people who make up the Antifa protestors in politics, they have hit the Rotten Tomatoes site trying very hard to put up bad scores to hurt the film financially at the box office. Right before the release of the film the “want to see it” score was hovering at around 40% which is really low for any film, especially a Star Wars movie. That says there are enough activists out there mad that their ideas for Star Wars have been destroyed and they are throwing a fit about it. They think if they hurt the Solo film financially that it will force Disney to listen and they will get the kind of movies they want. But of course, most of these people are idiots and they have no idea how business actually works. They forget that these movies are not made to make them happy intellectually or to provide them with the voids for religion that they are seeking. In some cases Star Wars does all those things, but only on an infantile level. Most of the complaints I have been hearing about not just for The Last Jedi but Solo: A Star Wars Story is that its fans want new material to carry them deeper into the mythology. However, that’s not what Disney needs, they require a new fan base to take this whole franchise into the future and if they piss off the long-time fans, they rationalize that they are willing to do that because they need to reach the children. If the adults don’t come along for the ride, then so be it.

You can tell that most of these protestors are of the millennial age because they say all those dumb things they learned in public schools—that money, or making money is some kind of evil enterprise and that Disney should be making these movies out of the kindness of their hearts—sacrificing profit for the greater good. No, that’s not how things work in the real-world people, Star Wars movies are and have always been about making money—lots of money. They sell ideas and images in exchange for profit which they then use to expand the reach of those things. If people want to see an art film, as many critics think they do, then go to Sundance and watch all those art movies. But Star Wars is a huge commercial enterprise designed to drive many other commercial enterprises and that’s part of the fun of it. Let me explain this to everyone, even though Disney leans to the political left these days, they are not evil. They are a company designed to make money and from what I have witnessed with them, they listen to what fans want and they try to give it to them—because they want to make money. They aren’t trying to make a bunch of 30-year-olds who still live with their parents happy because their mothers over coddled them all their lives and the people they talk to at GameStop agree with them. Money and the making of it is not “evil,” as they taught you in public school. Let’s get that straight right now.

As to the industry news, many of the critics out there and newspapers they work for are all into the kind of fake news that has led a campaign against the Donald Trump presidency. In many ways if Solo: A Star Wars Story breaks the $300 million mark globally over this Memorial Day weekend in spite of all the efforts the protestors have attempted to stop it, it will truly be a moment where the Star Wars franchise will be made great again, just as Donald Trump has made it his effort to “Make America Great Again.” On election night in 2016 people elected a person that all the industry analysts projected would lose terribly to Hillary Clinton. The labor unions in the entertainment industry have their hands in everything which is why movies these days have moved in such a progressive direction. If the fans are mad at Kathy Kennedy for screwing around politically with Star Wars, the labor unions are mad at her as an executive at Lucasfilm who fired the original two directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. There is a very interesting article in Indiewire linked below that goes into more detail, but the gist is this, labor unions don’t like to see people getting fired, and when Ron Howard was brought in to fix Solo, so that it would be a profitable film, and not some comic art piece, the battle lines were drawn and Kennedy couldn’t make anybody happy. But I give her credit for putting the effort into making a profitable film that would be loved for years instead of a film critics enjoy.

http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/solo-a-star-wars-story-phil-lord-chris-miller-original-film-1201967484/

With hindsight being 20/20 it would have been smart for Kathy Kennedy to keep the fans to her back. I think the power of her position and her feminist nature got Star Wars off to a rough start through the first three films under her control, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi. But I’ll give her credit, she put her finger to the wind and made adjustments and this movie Solo: A Star Wars Story is the result, and I think its going to be great. Like I said, I feel like she made the movie just for me. But I know better than that—she made it for lots of kids around the world that want to see and live through this character a very exciting life. And I think it will be so good that it will overcome all the protests and negative press that is highly politically motivated. I remember what it was like to see movies like this back in the late 70s and early 80s. There is a good reason that nobody makes movies like this anymore—because there are parasitic fan bases that want movies to mean more to them then they really do—and they are always disappointed. It’s hard for filmmakers to sit down in a concept meeting and quiet all that noise and to make a movie like Solo: A Star Wars Story—a fun movie that doesn’t deal with changing character arcs and relish in a bunch of progressive themes such as whether or not Lando is pansexual. This movie and all movies are about the joys of capitalism and the fun that can be found in a good character that takes everyone for a nice ride for a couple of hours—and that’s what Solo is. And that excitement sells toys, amusement park experiences, and an expansion into more mythology such as books, comics and even more movies. When people ask why anybody needed a movie about Han Solo the answer is because at the heart of all Star Wars movies is Han Solo. He’s the only character who ever really had his head on straight and if Lucasfilm wanted in their wildest fantasies to make Star Wars great again—they needed to turn to Han Solo—in his pure, overly optimistic form, even if it meant pissing off everyone so that it could win everyone’s hearts all over again much to their eventual benefit.

Rich Hoffman

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Join the NRA and Defend your Country: Looks like Oliver North will be a good president

It’s always a good day when I open my mail box and in it is a new magazine from the NRA’s American Rifleman. There are a lot of publications out there hostile to the Second Amendment and the kind of traditional life in America that I respect and cherish, ownership of private property, strong families, a capitalist economy with upward mobility for anyone willing to work for it—but there are few like the American Rifleman which represent my values so honestly. With each new addition, I cherish it and usually I read Wayne LaPierre’s commentary in the opening pages as I walk down my driveway and back into my house. The one he wrote for June is just another fine example of why the NRA is so important to our culture with all the incursions against America that have been lining up for years, LaPierre’s article expressed quite well why the Second Amendment is so important by featuring the efforts by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to encourage progressives to repeal the Second Amendment all together.

I haven’t been a big Oliver North fan over the years—to me he is too moderate, and military-minded for my liking, but I thought he did an excellent job on Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday show defending the NRA. That’s good because he’s set to become the new president of the NRA so I watched the interview carefully, knowing that Wallace would put the screws to North at every chance, and much to my surprise the upcoming NRA president was nicely aggressive and was pushing for even more members to join the organization. That was a very refreshing thing to see in a media environment that has assumed their trajectory of attack would put an end to the NRA forever. Considering that it wasn’t that long ago that Charlton Heston was the president of the NRA and that people like Clint Eastwood were open supporters, Hollywood has pushed all those types of actors out of their ranks leaving a tremendous void of charismatic personalities to advance the cause of the NRA to the next generation. I mean who would promote the NRA for the generation of millennials—Snoop Dog? He’s doing commercials on Fox News these days after all.

Governments are dangerous, probably the most dangerous aspects of any society. When they go bad, lots of people die and many more are left in conditions of existence that are less than respectable. Take a look at Venezuela for instance—a bus driver took over the government there and used socialism to enrich himself at the expense of the entire country, and now they have big problems. For certain kinds of aristocratic bureaucrats, it is their greatest fantasy to rule over other people from the power of government. They yearn for the kingdoms of Europe where gaining favor in the king’s courts would give power over the peasants and satisfy the egos of the corrupt. In those realms the rules were fairly easy to master—just learn whose ass you had to kiss and get to it. But America has rejected that entire premise and instead looked to self-rule to replace such a system where merit mattered more than the bloodline of your family. And that type of system unleashed the most powerful economies in the world by essentially cutting out the middleman of government.

But government is always a threat. It’s needed to some extent to organize the affairs of mankind, but they must always be watched over for impropriety which is all too tempting, and that is why we have the Second Amendment in America—as a protection against an out-of-control government as they typically evolve into threats against their own people. It doesn’t matter how educated the people of government become, the natural temptation to rule over other people and to abuse that relationship is all too powerful to resist for the types of people who are drawn to serve others. For instance, I’m the type of person who doesn’t care to know what my neighbors are doing, or even to know much about them. But people who tend to seek jobs in government are those types that are always looking out their windows and into what is going on with their neighbors, and they want to know every little bit of gossip that they can get to use in some fashion they can’t yet manage to their advantage to control the people around them. We call them “busy bodies” but the more technical term would be government bureaucrat and they come in all shapes, ages, sizes—and sexes.

We can now see quite clearly right under our noses that James Clapper, John Brennen and James Comey of the most top jobs of American intelligence were activists trying to tilt the nature of our 2016 election and when they were caught, tried to blame the Russians. They attempted to create the same kind of coup in America that the CIA might be blamed for in some third world country by deposing dictators or protecting them depending on the circumstances. They tampered with an American election and would have done much more if the lights of justice had not been shown on them after Donald Trump won the presidency. If not for that election it’s quite clear that America was on a path toward European progressivism for which we may never have been able to return from. Our American government obviously with the president of the United States looking over everything was trying to take over our nation away from the type of people who are current NRA members. While all that was going on Obama’s administration was sneaking money into Iran to prop up terrorist groups trying to advance Marxism across the world and was lying to the American people about all of it.

It is that very type of government that is now stating that the Second Amendment should be abolished, and that we should put our complete trust into them. No thanks. Right after the Chris Wallace interview on Fox News Sunday with Oliver North, Mark Kelley was up to provide a retort and it was he who shockingly stated that he was a gun owner but that he believed there should be legislation that directed all people owning guns to keep them in a safe locked up in their house. He called it common sense legislation, but it was obviously one step in the direction of complete Second Amendment repeal, because what he was proposing was that government further direct the behavior of its citizens within the four walls of their private property residence and keep their guns locked away or…………..else. The assumption is that if people violated the law their guns would be confiscated which is just another step in the direction of gun grabbers everywhere, to remove guns from society so that government can rule without concern of insurrections against it. That is the real issue behind all this talk of repeal.

Government is the problem, and ironically the public-school shootings are their fault as well for what they teach children and for keeping those areas gun free zones because of the government’s position on removing the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights. If they did the right thing and arm teachers in these schools so that someone could shoot back when a student snaps and tries to kill all their class mates, the Second Amendment would be strengthened, which is not the goal of government. So they’d rather exploit the deaths of innocent children rather than try to save them because of government’s arrogant desire to rule all human beings from a position of strength. To do that they must remove guns from existence—which isn’t going to happen, but it’s what governs their behavior.

It is in these times that I am so grateful that there is an NRA because it’s very existence is preventing so much destruction. The legal battles we are currently involved in through the election process are much better than actual armed insurrection. But should they fail and all there is between us and complete tyrannical rule by corrupt governments, such as what we were experiencing under the extreme progressive activism of John Brennen and many others—is the gun. And we’ll need those guns if such a day comes. So long as we have those guns, it keeps those tyrants in their offices scheming. But it keeps them somewhere that we can watch them. Our memberships in the NRA provides that extra barrier between bullets flying and actual spilled blood—and I’m very glad it’s there for the safety of all.

Rich Hoffman

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The Trump Campaign Spy Stefan Halper: America’s biggest scandal, so why is Jimmy Kimmel talking about gun control?

Things are really getting ridiculous. The Failing and Crooked (but not as Crooked as Hillary Clinton) @nytimes has done a long & boring story indicating that the World’s most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2018

….At what point does this soon to be $20,000,000 Witch Hunt, composed of 13 Angry and Heavily Conflicted Democrats and two people who have worked for Obama for 8 years, STOP! They have found no Collussion with Russia, No Obstruction, but they aren’t looking at the corruption…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2018

…in the Hillary Clinton Campaign where she deleted 33,000 Emails, got $145,000,000 while Secretary of State, paid McCabes wife $700,000 (and got off the FBI hook along with Terry M) and so much more. Republicans and real Americans should start getting tough on this Scam.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2018

Jimmy Kimmel is in the minority in our American republic and he’s frustrated by it. There are more NRA members in America than Kimmel and his other late night comedy hosts have together for their television shows and they can’t understand why they can’t move the bar on gun control with truly disgusting emotional influences such as Kimmel displayed after the latest school shooting in Santa Fe. Look people, I have explained to everyone what creates school shootings, I’ve outlined the issue explicitly, and others have as well. I think my offering, not because its my own, but because it goes further than other people have, is the best and should be looked at by everyone concerned about school shootings. The solution is rather easy, but it will require people like Jimmy Kimmel to give up their liberal approaches to the problem so that the real complications can be addressed. I don’t think Kimmel really cares about the school shooting issue—I think he’s just a liberal man who says what he has to so he can impress liberal girls and Hollywood types who live in their ridiculous coastal bubble of intellectual stagnation. But if he really cares about stopping school shootings, then he needs to listen to what I’m saying. CLICK HERE for the real answer to school shootings. However, giving up our guns, or weakening the Second Amendment is not going to happen—and here’s why.

https://nypost.com/2018/05/19/cambridge-professor-outed-as-fbi-informant-inside-trump-campaign/’

The biggest scandal in American history just occurred over the last two years and people like Jimmy Kimmel are a part of it—because they have used their hatred of President Trump to justify the necessity of what happened which goes far beyond any rationalizations that were ever made about Watergate. This scandal is so big that all people no matter what party they came from should be worried about it. No matter what people think about Donald Trump, they will have to admit that if he didn’t run his presidential campaign the way he did—essentially as a one-man road show with his own airplane and money to fuel it, we would have never discovered just out deep the “Deep State” truly was. The FBI and the DOJ under President Obama put a spy into the campaign of a political rival for the purpose of undermining it. The name of the spy was Stefan Halper from Cambridge and was working on behalf of traditional institutionalism to subvert the efforts of change that were taking place under a presidential candidate whom had survived all the proper primaries and delegate acquisitions to eventually win the presidency fair and square.

The FBI on many levels was conducting illegal activities to support the reigning president, Obama at the time, and attempting to hand the election to the representative of a rival political party. Traditional conservatives for which Halper was were attempting to subvert the efforts at reform for the protection of Washington D.C. institutionalism as defined by the type of politics that has gotten America into so much trouble, ultimately creating the kind of climate that produced that Santa Fe shooter culturally. The FBI and the DOJ was using the powers of government to serve a sitting president for the benefit of a candidate that was running against Trump and the whole thing would have worked if Trump had been a traditional candidate that needed advisors, money, and media resources. Because Trump could give himself all those things there wasn’t anything that the institutionalists in the FBI could do—and Trump won anyway despite all those efforts.

All this didn’t happen overnight, it’s been going on for decades likely, going all the way back to World War II. We cannot trust our government and we sure as hell can’t trust the press. So under what line of insanity does anybody think that we should be giving up our guns and our Second Amendment? That would be insanely stupid. The Second Amendment does not exist so we can hunt rabbits or go target shooting—its there to keep our government in check from just these types of problems. Liberals like Jimmy Kimmel are so intellectually lazy that they want to believe that there are countries who are performing better than the United States in the realm of governing, and that their gun control laws should be followed as a guiding light to the school shooting problem, and that’s just ridiculously stupid. Nobody is doing things better than the United States in general, more layers of government are not a solution. Making the mess that we know of in current abuses of the FBI and DOJ more exacerbated with more rules, regulations and government personnel would be insane. The world Jimmy Kimmel and his fellow liberal gun grabbers wants does not exist and it never will because logic does not accompany reality.

Even with all the evidence right there in front of our faces our nation is locked in indecision as to what to do next. How do we prosecute this case, who goes to jail? Just about everyone in Washington D.C. is guilty, and several former presidents are guilty of the cover-up as well, because this has all been going on far longer than just the Trump campaign. It probably happened to John McCain and Mitt Romney while they were going around the nation telling the rest of us to be civil—because advisors like Halper advised them to run their campaigns based on the needs of the institutions, not the real needs of our republic. Remember when Romney changed his tune after that fierce debate where he tore up Obama and was rising in the polls? Who told him to change-up his game, who told him not to go on the night-time shows—Obama certainly did. This kind of internal campaign manipulation has probably been going on since before Bob Dole’s campaign. Remember when George Bush said “no new taxes,” then he raised taxes. Who told him to do that? Probably someone working from the Shadow Government like Halper who was working both sides of the political landscape for objectives that were wanted at the FBI thinking they were a fourth branch of government and not direct employees of the Executive Branch. This entire situation is as messy as anything our country has witnessed since the War of 1812.

There are no conditions that Americans should ever give up their guns. I would say that we should make public education illegal before there are ever any considerations against the Second Amendment. There is no evidence that we can trust the FBI. They are our employees, but they think they rule as elected representatives and have become drunk on the power we gave them to act on our behalf. Instead, they have acted on interests that don’t appear to be American in any way, but rather some other source not focused on domestic affairs, but more global ones. When celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel are more than willing to use children as hostages in the gun debate but fully support abortion, criminals like Hillary Clinton, and a trust in the Deep State when the evidence shows us clearly that we should never fully trust them under any circumstances, you must ask lots of questions. This spy in the Trump campaign story is the biggest scandal in American history and should be the lead in every newspaper, and on every late-night show. We know what causes school violence and we could fix everything tomorrow just by putting guns on teachers in schools stopping them from being gun free zones. But for Kimmel to use the sadness of the school shooting to mask the much bigger problem of corruption at the highest levels of our Republic indicates how much trouble we really are in. And if not for Trump and our guns, the situation would already be far out of our grasp and irredeemable without a violent revolution. Thankfully, because of guns, we can still have an election that takes power away from people who shouldn’t have it, and if not for Trump, we wouldn’t know any of this.

Rich Hoffman

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Glenn Beck Is Supporting Donald Trump: The nature of gangs and animals in America

It says a lot that Glenn Beck wore a “Make America Great Again” hat during his show on Friday, May 20th, 2018. He then went on to list the great accomplishments of Donald Trump shown below thus far in his presidency, which is really just getting started. If Donald Trump has won over Glenn Beck—which is probably more out of economic necessity than out of sentiment—then there are a lot more like him that are also coming over to the right side of things. Apparently for Beck it was the media reaction to the MS-13 issues where the president called the gang leaders in many American cities animals, that pushed him over the edge and into the Trump camp. Honestly after all that Beck has said about Donald Trump from the time of the primaries to the present, it caused me to no longer listen to Beck, let alone watch any of his programs. Prior to his hatred of Trump, and being one of the first Never Trumpers, I promoted Beck any way I could—especially his radio station, The Blaze. It was always on somewhere in my life, but I turned it off over two years ago now and dropped Beck in every way possible. So it was a little shocking to see him throw his support behind Donald Trump so honestly.

Welcome to the twisted world of liberalism where its like an Alice in Wonderland parody on everything. For instance, the May 17th 2018 Robin Hood event in New York City that tried to raise awareness for ways of fighting poverty, but in doing so it was largely liberals and progressives who were hosting the thing—which is to say that their solution to poverty is to use socialism to solve the problem. But logic says that socialism causes the problem. Socialism is what has put people on the streets and in need of homeless shelters. Some of those idiots who are poor were taught through socialism that somebody would always be there to give them something—and they were never taught that the path to success means you must work more than 40 hours a week at something—your whole life. Living in the lower middle class which we now call the working poor—according to the advocates for the Robin Hood charity in New York, the richest city in the world has it has 1.8 million people living in poverty. Yet if you talk to those people to discover why they are poor, it is because somewhere in their life they were taught they wouldn’t have to work more than 40 hours a week, or even less, to live—that someone would feed them, so thus, they are homeless or at the poverty level due to their beliefs. They could easily get out of poverty if they did as Oprah does—who is a big supporter of this Robin Hood group, and that is to work70 to 90 hours a week, like most successful people do.

The designation that members of MS-13 are not animals by the political left is just as perplexing. One thing that is hard for many people to admit is that left leaning monsters like the nice people at that Robin Hood event in New York dressed up with great opulence to convince people to donate money to the poor are really just another form of MS-13, a gang designed to muscle individuals towards the aims of a collective minority. Gangs and mobs are part of the liberal lifestyle and they are taught in school. That kid in Texas who shot up kids he didn’t like in his high school just a few weeks before graduation was a creation of the liberal left, where peer groups are formed to cast people into gangs—by design. MS-13 are made up of the leaders of the El Salvador revolution during the 1980s as they fled their country and hit the streets of Los Angeles as a bunch of marijuana users—literally. Over the years they spread to other American cities and began taking over as drug distributers and today they are into just about everything that crime syndicates are into. It doesn’t take much to learn that the liberal left wants these gangs terrorizing people in the poor communities they reside in, because it gives them an excuse to come up with more gangs to deal with the aftermath of the efforts.

The teacher’s unions are gangs who join together to extort the tax payers into giving them more money for doing a job that requires less than 40 hours a week of commitment if you average out their yearly investment into their professions. By massing together as a gang the government school teachers gain power and influence much the way MS-13 does and are the methods that the political left uses to stay in power over people. They use fear and anxiety to move people toward their needs, so it was a very personal thing to have Donald Trump call MS-13 gang members, animals—because people on the political left from the Robin Hood charity donors to school teachers all across America identify with those MS-13 animals intellectually. They all use the same methods of coercion to advance their liberal positions. So when a school shooting occurs like it did in Texas this past week at a small high school in Santa Fe the problem is the gun’s fault, not the person doing the shooting. In poverty, it is the fault of the United States for not giving more money to the poor, not the people who are too lazy to work more than 40 hours a week to pick themselves up and over the poverty line. And when it comes to gangs, they call them immigrants looking for opportunity in America when all they really are is considered dangerous terrorists who are killed on site in their native country of El Salvador, because they know the truth, that MS-13 members are dangerous animals who will kill innocent people as easily as most of us drink a glass of water. The political left wants all these gangs to spread fear through the weak and lazy so that they can have voters in fall elections—so that their gang can rule in Washington, as it has for so many years.

It was to leave that game in Washington D.C. that caused me to support Donald Trump from the beginning, and to turn off Glenn Beck. Beck was talking peace, and love when what was needed was to confront all these gangs directly and end the practice of mob rule in America in favor of America first policies that unite all people under the flag of the United States. Beck clearly didn’t see the potential behind Donald Trump, but now he does and like the rest of us has joined the correct fight. Many on Beck’s sentimental side of politics were willing to give the benefit of the doubt toward the realms of evil that we all deal with which breeds itself on the progressive side of politics. They didn’t understand that the key to beating all these gangs that have set up shop in the United States, from MS-13 to the teacher’s unions was to put a self-made billionaire in the Executive Branch who had lived the life of luxury for so long that he couldn’t be enamored by the power of gangs into making decisions which favored them in some way. Instead he calls them animals, which they are, and with that designation he is calling most on the political left the same, and they know it. So they distorted the truth to their favor and finally Glenn Beck had enough. The situation became clear as it is for so many others in America who had been willing to turn the other cheek so much that their heads were about to fall off from being slapped so many times. Enough is enough. It is good to see the good among us joining back together to fight the tyranny of group think—it has taken over out country for far too long and its about time to fight back to remove their influence from our lives—starting with the obvious, MS-13 and their animal behavior that is not conducive to a good life for anybody. From teacher unions to MS-13 all these gangs must go, and its about time for us all to admit that to ourselves.

Rich Hoffman

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How to Stop Gun Violance in American Schools: The answer is in the roots of our basic philosophy

It was never a mystery as to why all these school shootings are occurring. It’s two things really, one is that they are government places which are gun free zones, and the second is that they are essentially liberal places filled with liberal people who think liberal things. The shooter in this case was Dimitrios Pagourtzis who killed 10 and wounded at least 10 more at Santa Fe High School who admittingly shot up people he didn’t like, based on his own statements. The kid wore a trench coat with leftist Soviet era propaganda on it and apparently, he wore it often, even when it was 90 degrees outside. It’s not a mystery that these kids are snapping as reality outside of these government schools are clashing with the leftist learning they get in those places. Dimitrios intended to kill himself after he used a shotgun and a revolver he stole from his dad and attacked people he didn’t like in an art class at that small high school around 7 AM Friday morning of May 18th, 2018.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/school-shooter-anti-trump-icon/

Yet it was perplexing as many news reporters covered the story and continued to ask—why are these school shootings happening and what can we do about it. Well, first you must arm the teachers and make those schools gun zones to discourage the kind of carnage that kids like this Dimitrios Pagourtzis was—troubled youth that have had their minds filled with leftist ideology that is not conducive to the world outside of their schools. If those kids don’t have strong peer groups, girlfriends, or goals in life that might otherwise keep their thoughts in check, then they will be prone to violence and will have to be destroyed once they initiate an attack. I would guess that there are hundreds of thousands of kids out there in America just like this Dimitrios kid and they aren’t going to go away soon. Even if we put together again all the broken homes, started teaching kids the correct things in those government schools, and managed to convince the entertainment industry to stop publishing such angry music, movies, television shows, and video games—it would take 50 years to begin to solve the problem. Gun violence and murderous kids are going to be a part of American schools for the foreseeable future. Why you might ask—well, it’s because those schools made those kids the way they are. Its their own fault, a fault of liberal sentiment aligned with improper philosophy that is collapsing against the merits of reality. It’s pretty simple.

Of course the political left is going to blame guns, because they can’t blame themselves. They can’t admit it is their failed policies and beliefs that are causing all these kids to become mass murderers. This actually is a global problem and is rooted in philosophy itself, the epistemological beliefs of society itself. Most places in the world are to the political left of even the liberals in America. While its true that we don’t hear much about mass murder violence in schools in France, or in China, the kind of trouble that Dimitrios Pagoutizis exhibited manifests in other ways, either in sexual depravity, body piercings and tattoos, and generally a somber existence that is quite typical of most Europeans and members of the Asian corridor. But because in the United States there is a Constitution that is rooted in a very independent philosophy of self-governance, the emphasis has always been on the individual with expectations that each would do their part to conduct themselves properly in context with the greater society. The right to own and use guns for self-defense were always intended to protect that individual sanctity from the kind of group think that is so persistent elsewhere in the world and has been failing for many centuries.

Yet the political left in the America which would be considered the far right in almost every other country in the world has brought these clashing ideas into North America and made them the basic platform of the tax payer funded schools that kids are learning in. Yet those ideas are not conducive to the capitalist society that those same kids find themselves in once their school days have concluded, leaving many to face a very fearful future filled with anxieties that their parents are becoming increasingly ill prepared to help them with. That is largely also the fault of the government schools which actively has sought to replace parents in the home with a parental authority figure within the school. That is an experiment that has not worked. It hasn’t worked in Europe, it certainly hasn’t worked in Mexico and all through South America and Canada—it doesn’t work in Australia, and New Zealand—it doesn’t work anywhere. It appears to work in communist countries like China because they hide all their domestic statistics from the world—the misery factor is obscured with state-controlled polling data that is not representative of the individualized lives of their citizens—because communist countries in Asia do not care about individuals. They are concerned with the affairs of the state as a whole—so analysis from those places cannot be trusted. Obviously, the American model should be studied by all people of the world since it is within North America that the most successful economies anywhere are found, and the quality of living for each person are extremely high. Even our poorest of the poor in America would be considered to live a great life if compared to the average villager in Africa or India. So in the context of who should learn from whom, it’s quite clear that America does enough things correctly to merit a philosophy shift that is conducive for success in other countries. Yet American schools do not respect or teach those values, so it’s really not practical to expect other countries to do what’s right for their people and make the necessary changes. Instead the political left has declared a civil war against the American right and they purposely have used our own youth against us as weapons. It is the American leftists who built the mind of Dimitrios Pagourtzis. You don’t see kids with strong mothers and fathers in the home that take their kids fishing every Saturday running around in black trench coats covered in Soviet propaganda trying to kill other kids. You certainly don’t see kids growing up in homes of NRA members entering adulthood with lots of crazy anxieties that prove to be self-destructive—where other people get hurt as a result. There is a reason that families that put God and guns at the front of their epistemological beliefs do better than families who turn to mother government for their basic necessities. Those two groups can’t be put together and expect everything to just work out.

The answer is easy in how we can stop this violence in our government schools—stop letting those places be run by liberals who teach liberal ideas to kids who don’t know any better and make them gun zones. Put guns on the teachers so they can do more than pull fire alarms and can engage a threat at the point of attack and end the misery quickly, before 10 people are slaughtered for no reason. This is not a problem that can be solved by politics or any legislation. Politics is born of philosophy, so if a philosophy is wrong, obviously the politics will fail as well. Gun ownership is not a political problem, it is part of a philosophy of self-reliance—and education comes out of that branch of thought. So to solve the problem you have to fix the philosophy that feeds the politics, and in this case left leaning philosophies are proven failures everywhere in the world they are utilized. That means that if we really want to fix these government schools, we must use American ideas to solve them, not the same old European failures and until that happens, there are many more Dimitrios Pagourtizis types waiting to snap and make a name for themselves at the expense of others before they kill themselves.  And those are facts we all must deal with.

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.

Why I’m So Excited for Han Solo’s Movie: A brief history of cinema and the progressive attempts to control the messaging of American values

[image error]If you study any ancient society—or any society at all for that matter, scientists and historians always find a way to rationalize their successes or failures on a few key elements. They will proclaim a civilization may have been successful because of their proximity to water, or key trade routes. Or fertile soil, access to natural resources, abundance of food—those types of things. The truly great societies are often judged by the artists they produced and the literature they performed. In a lot of ways entire societies are judged based on the written works produced by their cultures, such as in England with William Shakespeare, or Ireland’s James Joyce. But we don’t really have enough history yet to properly understand how our modern age of great art and entertainment will recoil through the ages, because most of it is so new. American movies for instance are underplayed in their importance to how they shape world culture—because they essentially have only been around for a century, so the effects on people as a whole are still being determined. But I have a pretty good idea how those results will be determined as judged by time and it is for that reason that I am so excited when a new film comes out that I know will be a game changer in the way that art shapes society. That is why I am so excited for this new Solo: A Star Wars Story as it is being produced by Disney. Something very different is going on with this one and if it turns out the way I’m thinking, there will be shock waves percolating through the industry as a whole that will favor the political trajectory of the modern Donald Trump age—and that’s a really good thing.  To get a good idea of what I’m talking about read this fine movie review about Solo: A Star Wars Story in Forbes.  I don’t think I could have written a better one.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2018/05/18/review-solo-a-star-wars-story/#48a5365b7dd8

Over that same century that movies came to be as a form of new art and entertainment liberals under the umbrella of progressivism made their move to spread tyrannical socialism to every corner of the world. Movies didn’t always reflect this socialism because the cultures they were speaking to had emerged before the progressive move to take over the world essentially. Westerns specifically were a group of movies that told stories of Americans yearning for freedom at any cost and the values that could be inflicted on large tracts of unpopulated land with the barrel of a gun pointed at a bad guy, and on the backs of that concept, Hollywood was essentially born. It was westerns that propelled the film industry into being such an important artistic endeavor that became the envy of the world. Not only had America created this interesting artistic machine known as Hollywood that mass-produced art and entertainment in such an excessive capitalist fashion. But it could do so in seemingly infinite quantities quickly spreading the culture of a free North America to every part of the world that had electricity.

Progressives saw this power and sought to take it over starting before World War II but really beginning to succeed in the late 1960s. But some of the best films of that time still came from filmmakers who made movies in the traditional way of Hollywood before the liberal invasion and it was those films that carried Hollywood into the modern age financially. Star Wars is a great example of the type of America that used to show up in the movies of its culture—B movies made quickly and cheaply for Saturday Morning Matinee entertainment. George Lucas was often derided by his peers in the film industry for wanting to make such old-fashioned throwbacks to the old westerns and science fiction films of his own youth—yet the Hollywood liberals built and industry around the commercial success of those movies and the history of all that is well-known.

Fast forward to my excitement in 2012 when I found out that there were going to be more Star Wars movies because Disney had bought the franchise from George Lucas for $4 billion dollars and I had high hopes. I also had my concerns which I expressed to everyone who would listen, including the key people at Lucasfilm. I did not like The Force Awakens not just because they had killed the character of Han Solo, but because they had cheapened that very popular fan favorite into a much weaker progressive character as was reflective of the attempt by Hollywood to follow a more progressive political agenda for which they sought to take over the entertainment industry in the first place. But I kept my mind open because I knew they were planning to make a Han Solo movie in the future so I stayed on the ship awaiting the results of that to figure out if I would continue to support the artistic efforts of Star Wars in the future—or relegate that it had died with the Disney acquisition. Thankfully I am quite happy to say, the financial viability of Star Wars as a business has won out and the filmmakers at Lucasfilm and Disney have come to terms with what works and what doesn’t in that particular universe of storytelling—which is essentially the values of the traditional westerns in America, and they have unleashed all that into this new Han Solo movie.

That’s important because Solo: A Star Wars Story is not about social justice, or the mysticism of religions—its not about altruism and all that garbage—its much more of an Ayn Rand type of story which is what I have always said was the core value system of Star Wars. Han Solo has always been and will always be best when he reflects more a character that would be written by Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged than from Les Misérables. Star Wars fails when it tries to be reflective of European literature more than American bravado and that lesson has been reluctantly unleashed in Solo: A Star Wars Story, which is all about guns, getting rich and taking care of the character’s self-interests.

Of course, the liberal aspects of Hollywood are hoping that this Solo: A Star Wars Story will fail at the box office, and for that to happen the industry will pounce on any numbers that don’t reach a billion dollars globally, or under $600 million domestically. Anything short of that and this Solo movie will be destroyed in the press much the way Donald Trump’s presidency is under constant attack because it threatens the status quo. But as I have been saying for many, many years—Star Wars is best when it is about all the things I described this upcoming movie to be as opposed to the self-sacrifice and general altruism of the Jedi and the Skywalker portions of the saga. Without Han Solo, I’d say there is no Star Wars. So to their credit, they listened at Lucasfilm and Disney has not been shy with the money and has thrown their full weight behind this movie knowing that it goes against the general strategies of the progressive community. And they had to do it because economic necessity dictated that they protect the property of Star Wars from the politics of the modern age. The last time I saw Disney market this hard for something like a western was The Lone Ranger in 2013, which was financially successful, but was considered a big bomb at the box office. If I had to bet, I’d say that is why Bob Iger has been nowhere near the early previews of Solo: A Star Wars Story. He is keeping one foot in the world of deniability. But I don’t think he’ll have to throw anybody under the bus. I think this new Star Wars movie will make everyone happy at Disney, even if it does give them a political paradox to deal with.

Progressives would love to assume that they can shape culture—which is why they wanted to take over the movie business. Films were to reflect the cultures they came from and the values expressed which is what other nations wanted to see in American movies. People get excited to see things they can’t get at home or yearn to become themselves, so they enjoyed the lofty characters of the American westerns who shot first and asked questions later, who did whatever they had to do to get rich so they could live free of the rest of the tyrannical world. Thinking of the great Sergio Leone movies from the late 1960s, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and For A Few Dollars More, the filmmakers were from Italy making westerns as they interpreted them, as a way out of the fascism that their country had just emerged from and the character emphasis wasn’t on saving the world or even a damsel in distress, it was in using a gun to get rich and live happily ever after alone and disconnected from the rules of society. That was always the allure of the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean movies, that is why the Fast and Furious movies make so much money, and that is the commitment behind Solo: A Star Wars Story.

With this being the fourth Star Wars story produced by Kathy Kennedy as the new head of Lucasfilm economic necessity has dictated a more traditional approach to their films. That is a great thing because it informs what the true values of our culture are which addresses at the most epistemological level values that are conducive to a successful modern culture reflective in movies, and not where Hollywood shapes culture. The values of people are inherit and they need to form their lives around those values—that is self-interest, acceptance of capitalism as the primary driver for success and improved lives. What could be a better message in Star Wars than a black character called Lando Calrissian who loves wealth and the fine things in life and became an extraordinarily successful businessman? Solo: A Star Wars Story may be the first movie in several decades that doesn’t demonize the acquisition of wealth. I doubt the movie will do well in China for that very reason, but that’s OK. Lucasfilm made this movie and hopefully people support it the way I’ve always said they would. I can say this, I am excited for it—for all these reasons and more. I think it’s a game changer that could very well alter the way Hollywood produces films, and that is not good for the progressive elements which have taken over. Like the presidency of Donald Trump, Star Wars is rooted in old-fashioned values, and that was something that Hollywood has wanted to destroy but find that they must reconcile with if they want to live into the future. I never honestly thought I’d ever see a Hollywood product like this movie, where guns are as much of the plot as the pursuit of personal wealth and freedom. But here it is, and my hope is that people show up and support it, because it took a lot of guts to make it—and for Lucasfilm and Disney—it’s a tremendous gamble that could pay off big for them—and the rest of us.[image error]

Rich Hoffman

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‘Solo’ Gets a Standing Ovation at Cannes: Mythology and culture are on expanding in a very positive way

I can’t emphasize enough what Star Wars means to our current society—and specifically how important this next film, Solo: A Star Wars Story is to the continuation of the great mythology that is now set to take on a life well beyond anything planet earth has ever seen. As I say often the most important topic to me out of all the things that I discuss is the realm of mythology and how it captures the minds of mankind and propels it forward at each juncture of history. I am specifically thinking right now about the great legends of King Arthur, or the early works of the Iliad where Odysseus propelled modern society to its current form to the point where our civilization has outgrown those great stories. Our modern society is very complex, and we know so much about so many things that were not known at the time that the great classics were written, and we are and have been in desperate need for stories that can take us all into the future—because that’s how human beings work. They need conceptual devices in story form to put into context their observed reality—and even though Star Wars is intended for kids, it works on so many levels to get the imaginations of the human race moving that I think it’s currently the most important thing in the world happening right now, and I understand very well what is happening from North Korea to the taxation of Amazon in Seattle—to the teacher union strikes, to the corruption of our own FBI becoming weaponized against us all. Even in that context I think this new Star Wars movie is a tremendous opportunity for mythmaking to expand dramatically into the lives of all thinking beings on planet earth for the better, and it would all come down to the presentation of the film at the Cannes Film Festival in France. It’s not just because I love the character of Han Solo, but it’s why the movie was made in the first place that I think it’s so important and I was very happy to see a standing ovation for the film after its screening. This is going to be a big one.

Fun night. Warm reception. Thanks to those who attended last night #Cannes #HanSolo Cast a blast https://t.co/lpI6H1Xvfn

— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) May 16, 2018

I read the critics opinions of the film and most of them were positive, many very positive with about 23% less than enthusiastic. What those lukewarm reviews had in common was that they missed the epic scale of life and death situations that have been present in Star Wars up to this point—the save the whole galaxy or else type of storylines. If Star Wars is going to work in future, they need to become much more individualized, personal stories which we all know culminate into the three trilogies of nine films we have mostly been familiar with. And once Lucasfilm accomplished that, mythology by way of the vehicle of Star Wars will be unleased in a very dramatic way and I don’t think those people trained into their institutional professions, and are making good livings in those comfortable places, are open to these big changes. Their comments about nobody asking for a movie about Han Solo and that the movie is just capitalizing off the Star Wars name and is an entirely different kind of film altogether are missing the point. This movie was always intended to expand the Star Wars mythology in ways that I would argue it always needed to go—since the Empire Strikes Back way back in 1980 and I think everyone watching this movie is going to be in for a surprise.

I know enough about this movie to be happy with the decisions that Kathy Kennedy has made over the last two years. A lot of people do not understand how hard it is to make a movie, and to negotiate contracts with expensive actors and to hold those contacts over many films. I continue to be amazed how the Marvel team does it with all their big-name actors now and how they can put them all in a film like Infinity War. That would be an astonishing payroll to put all those stars into one movie, but Marvel has figured it out and that Disney polish is now coming to Star Wars with these Han Solo movies serving as a test bed of creative entanglement. I will be the first to say I was not happy with the Lucasfilm abandonment of the original books which they now call legends, and I was not at all happy with The Force Awakens when they killed Han Solo in that movie. Long time readers here know very well how angry I was at the way they dealt with Han Solo’s character in that film and I did several radio shows discussing the issue in detail. However, and I know I wasn’t the only one, I think Lucasfilm to a reasonable extent has listened to the fans—and they have made some adjustments with this Solo movie which is why it needed to stay on schedule even after the previous directors were fired and Ron Howard was brought on to fix things. It’s also why I believe that the last movie of the modern trilogy, Episode 9 now directed by J.J. Abrams was pushed out into 2019—because Lucasflim needed to see how audiences reacted to new story elements in this new Solo movie.

I don’t think Kathy Kennedy or Bob Iger are all that happy with the direction of Solo: A Star Wars Story, I think they’d love to have a much more progressive film with less male characters acting so strongly. That’s a very educated guess on my part, but business is business. If you are running a movie company that makes Star Wars movies and you intend for them to transcend modern politics, then they need to be timeless stories, and this new Han Solo movie needed to be more of a classic western than a modern progressive version of Guardians of the Galaxy. I watched Kathy Kennedy at the Cannes press events and I think she is breathing a bit better now—she really needs to pull in at least a billion dollars off this Han Solo movie to justify everything they’ve done with Star Wars since Disney bought it in 2012. She made serious mistakes putting top-heavy female characters into Star Wars and making really stupid comments like she did to the New York Times where she said she didn’t care about male Stars Wars fans—which traditionally have been the primary support of the franchise for over four decades now. There was always room for women in Star Wars, but they couldn’t just take everything over and get away with it. The backlash against Kathy Kennedy in general has been harsh. And Bob Iger is an anti-gun liberal, so it’s probably tough for him to see all these posters of Han Solo pointing a gun out into the horizon, but that’s the character and that’s what people want to see in movies, and putting politics aside, Lucasfilm and Disney have given fans what they want—which is a very good thing.

I will likely give a very long and detailed review on the 24th of May which will articulate many, many things that I think are superb about this new kid’s movie which I think will capture the hearts of so many people in a very positive way. It’s not just the movie that I’m happy about, but what will come out of it creatively. Mythology has always been the center of any advanced culture and when a story works—it advances everything from arts and sciences, to politics and philosophy. And after watching that standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, I am quite sure that we are all about to see something very special.

Fun from our post premiere party #Cannes #HanSolo #May25 pic.twitter.com/zmgwj72K7w

— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) May 17, 2018

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.