Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 46

"Olive" Oiled in Venice

Glad to see HBO series "Olive Kitteridge" was hailed at Venice festival, as was terrific book and seems like Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins great casting.

McDormand, who acquired the rights to Elizabeth Strout’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and also serves as hands-on executive producer, said that she has been married for 32 years to the same man, and Jenkins 45 years to the same woman. They believe in marriage, and this clearly plays a role in their wanting to make this particular film, which works its way through various strains well known to most long marriages.

This is not an easy film – there’s a lot of death, depression and other difficulties dealt with – and yet it’s always a deep pleasure to watch. It doesn’t hurt that Bill Murray turns up at one of its darker, slower moments, and brings a whole new peas-in-a-pod chemistry to McDormand’s Olive. The extensive supporting cast is uniformly good, notably Zoe Kazan as the over-amped mouse who works for – and affects – Henry, and Peter Mullan as Olive’s counterpart, the alcoholic English teacher Jim O’Casey. Gallagher has his moments, too, particularly as his relationship with Olive begins to fray. Several small roles are also memorable, especially Cory Michael Smith as an ex-student suffering from psychosis, beautifully and frighteningly illustrated by Cholodenko.

Gaza Casualties, Redux

An honest probe into the contested numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza in the past weeks from William Booth at the Wash Post--in contrast to the laughably biased, pro-Israel "reporting" on the same subject (and others) by the NYT's Jodi Rudoren.  Surely there are grey areas but read the sourcing and see how the "research" by the Israeli side vs. the multitude of UN and human rights groups on the other side.  And ponder how disgraceful the Rudoren coverage has been.

Lessons in Hypocrisy

The NYT today in an editorial wisely calls for release of photos of U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Images of war are frequently appalling, and the safety of American citizens and soldiers is vitally important. But the greatest threat to that safety lies not in the photographs of horrific behavior; it lies in the fact of the behavior itself. The treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was a shameful episode in U.S. history.

America reinforces its values and thus its security by being transparent about even the worst abuses of those values, not by hiding the evidence deep in a file drawer.

Nowhere does the editorial mention that until this summer the Times itself engaged in "hiding the evidence"--by refusing to use the word "torture" describe various episodes in the Bush-Cheney era.

End of Summer, Cape Cod

My photo from last year.

Derek Hit?

Nice New Yorker cover coming next week.  Always liked Jeter, though hate the Yanks, but if he's so "classy" and "team-first" why is he helping to kill their playoff hopes by refusing to sit down for more games and suggest he get moved to 8th or 9th in the order?  His OPS is almost the worst for any major league starting SS and his range stats are not only the worst but by a big margin.  Terrible way to go out....

Sam Cut

St. Louis Rams just cut, on final day, Michael Sam, the league's first openly gay player.  They hope to sign him for their practice squad but he is free to sign anywhere.  That gives 31 other teams a shot.  He was a 7th round pick and did quite okay in preseason games.  More here.

Give Me 'Shelter 104'

NYT piece in print tomorrow in arts & leisure reviews a new DVD that collects some classic '50s-'60s nuclear panic civil defense films, especially one titled "Shelter 104."  Well, it's been up at YouTube for awhile, and here it is.  Love the hard-rain-depressing hipster folk singer angle...and catch his song at the close.   Here's a posting with all kinds of fun background. 

Lange Went to Church

There's an "American Masters" doc on Dorothea Lange airing tonight on PBS and before watching it I noted that she once lived in Taos.  I have long known and admired and posted the famed photos taken by Ansel Adams and Paul Strand, and paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, of my favorite building in the USA--San Francisco de Asis Church in Taos.   But I'd never seen one by Lange, but looking it up...sure enough, she took one. (See below.  And below that, one of the many I've taken there.)  See more here of mine.  

Graham and Truth

As I've revealed, Graham Greene's The Quiet American is my favorite novel of the past few decades (also a fine film with Michael Caine).  It eerily forecast the U.S. disaster in Vietnam and Greene, as usual, knew what he was talking about, as he had reported from there for years.  Now the New Republic, as part of its 100th anniversary tributes, has just posted one of his pieces.   From 1954, after he came back for more:  "Two years ago men believed in the possibility of military defeat or victory; now they know the war will be decided elsewhere by men who have never waded waist-deep in fields of paddy, struggled up mountain sides, been involved in the middle of attack or the long boredom of waiting."

There is a despondency of return as well as a sadness of departure, and I noted that first evening in my journal, “Is there any solution here the West can offer? But the bar tonight was loud with innocent American voices and that was the worst disquiet. There weren’t so many Americans in 1951 and 1952.” They were there, one couldn’t help being aware, to protect an investment, but couldn’t the investment have been avoided?

Oh, Bullshit

An Onion parody of cable news, four years old but still timeless--one of their greatest things ever.