So instead, I’ve created The Bond Oscars, in which I acknowledge the standouts in various categories.  I’m eager to hear your thoughts as well, so please comment early and often, and offer up some categories of your own.

Best Bond Girl: Of course I start with the most subjective category.  It’s not an easy pick.   For me, Honor Blackman is all woman.  Voluptuous, fiery, delicious.  However, I’m going to go with Diana Rigg.  Although not your classic sexpot, she does it all.  A totally capable, untamed, attractive, sexy woman who gives Bond a run for his money.

Best Villain: No question here.  Although Dr. No is a very intriguing character, I feel Auric Goldfinger had more depth of character, and remains the most complete of the Bond villains, possibly of all time.

Best Nemesis: I identify a nemesis as the secondary villain – Rosa Klebb, Oddjob, et al.  There is such a rich array to choose from here that it’s again a difficult choice.  I am very fond of Robert Shaw’s Red Grant in From Russia With Love.  Oddjob is certainly an iconic character.  But I’m going with Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd from Diamonds Are Forever. These guys are just so bizarre, their performances so odd, and the gay psychopathic angle is too great not to love.

Best Blofeld: Yet again, it’s a tight race.  Telly Savalas or Charles Gray?  I’m choosing Telly Savalas because his Blofeld is more grounded, more realistic, and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.  He’s as balls-out as Bond is in OHMSS.

Best Ally: Marc-Ange Draco from OHMSS is my choice.  He’s the kind of rogue we like Bond associating with, and he’s got enough screen time to provide us with a fully formed character.  Tiger Tanaka from You Only Live Twice is a strong runner-up.

Best Action Sequence: Storming of Blofeld’s volcano HQ in You Only Live Twice. Visually exciting, suspenseful, well-executed.  The initial ski chase as Bond escapes Blofeld’s HQ in OHMSS is runner-up.

Best Fight: Hands (or fists) down, it’s the fistfight in the train in From Russia With Love. No score.  Just grunts, groans, punches, kicks, and lots of suspense.

Best Score: No competition.  John Barry’s work in OHMSS is transcendent.

Best Production Design: There’s a lot to be said for simplicity, which is why Dr. No takes this category.   Ken Adam’s design is just fabulous in all the films he worked on, but every Bond film in this early era owes its look to the design Mr. Adam pioneered in the first film.  Restricted by a small budget, the producers wisely chose to let the sets help tell the story.  Mr. Adam’s use of German Expressionist influences were a major factor in the film’s overall look.

Best Cinematography: Ted Moore for Goldfinger. The sweeping, wide-screen compositions give this movie a grand, epic feel.

Best Script: OHMSS.   Look, I happen to be a fan of the more serious Bond films.  With possible limited exceptions going forward, Bond is never more fully realized as a character (as opposed to a sketch or caricature) than OHMSS.  In fact, every character is fully realized.  There is a long yet engaging first act, a believable love story, a great villain, not to much emphasis on silly plots, great nemeses, and great action.   Mind you, Goldfinger is arguably as good if not better.  It’s a tight script, with all the elements, and everything hitting just the right tone.

Most “Iconic Bond” Film: I think most folks would agree that Goldfinger is the movie most associated with James Bond.  Everything we have come to expect from a Bond movie is owed to this seminal work.  The villain, the nemesis, cinematography, design, Bond’s wardrobe, character development, chase scenes, quirky Bond moments, grand plot, editing, tight script.

Best Title Sequence: OHMSS. By now you probably realize that I’m really fond of this underrated entry.  The recounting of the previous films via images sliding through an hourglass over Barry’s score is pitch-perfect.  Watch the clip yourself (appears after gunbarrel sequence).

Best Spy Moment: When does Bond do something that only a spy with lots of experience be smart enough to do?  It’s in OHMSS when Bond and his accomplice arrange to have the safe-cracking device lifted to Gumbold’s office via construction bucket.

Best Line: From Diamonds Are Forever. As Bond unmasks Wint and Kidd in the finale. “Mouton Rothschild is a claret. And, I’ve smelled that aftershave before, and both times – I’ve smelled a rat.”  Hijinks ensue.

Best Death: Same scene, seconds later.  How can not love Mr. Kidd setting the shish-kabob aflame to stab Bond, only to flame out himself…followed by Mr. Wint’s explosive exit.  And by the way, this scene hits the trifecta.  It’s also the Best Moment Where Bond Uses His Upper Class Sophistication to Serve The Story.

Best Scene: One scene and one scene only?  Really?  I came up with this category?  I must be crazy.  So I’m going to leave this one up to you folks!

James Bond will return in Live and Let Die.

Connery.  Sean Connery.  Again

We begin as we always do, with 007 himself. After George Lazenby allegedly took the bad advice of his agent following a totally satisfying outing as 007, Mr. Connery was persuaded to return. The script was a significant improvement over You Only Live Twice, and perhaps that (and the equivalent of $16 million in today’s dollars) is why Mr. Connery jumped back in.

Mr. Connery’s re-emergence is, not surprisingly, engaging.  He appears to have filled out a bit, and feels to be just the right age (40 at the time) for the role. Of course, we associate Mr. Connery with James Bond’s most masculine features — a brawler, womanizer, a powerful man with tremendous physical presence and confidence.  None of that has changed at this point, and in many ways, Mr. Connery feels like he’s reached a peak as Bond in this film in those aspects.  We are treated, for example, to some terrific fisticuffs in the combined space of an elevator in Tiffany Case’s building.  This is a great fight scene that is wonderfully inventive, well-choreographed, and Bond really has his hands full with his opponent.

I can’t quibble much as this point regarding Bond’s character. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service remains an anomaly in the series from a character point-of-view, but otherwise, the truth is that, outside of the pre-credit sequence in which he plows through people to exact revenge on Blofeld, Bond’s character generally isn’t supposed to develop from one film to the next.  In fact, his apparent dispatch of Blofeld isn’t delivered with the emotion we either expect or hope for, given the reason behind it.  Otherwise, there is a nice moment in this film where he is obviously impatient and disgruntled with taking on a silly diamond smuggling operation, and M reminds him that he’d spent far too much time chasing Blofeld and now it was time for him to do some “good honest work”.   Meanwhile, despite other flaws in the script and a more contained adventure, Mr. Connery remains the star attraction who is always, always worth watching.  How can you not love the moment where he kicks Blofeld’s cat, tipping him off as to which the real Blofeld is…only to discover there are cat doubles, as well.

Diamonds As Metaphor for the Film Itself

Diamonds are inherently valueless.  They aren’t particularly scarce or precious.  Those interested in the sordid tale of how DeBeers brilliantly (no pun intended) managed to create a monopoly over hundreds of years through restricted supply can find plenty to read about, and the resulting real-life civil war tragedies in Western Africa could themselves be the fodder of a long-running film, TV, or documentary series.  However, these conflicts had not yet arisen in 1970.  Instead, we get a plot involving diamond smuggling that takes up the first half of the film, and it’s just not terribly interesting.  Even Bond’s own dialogue portends this in his scene with M and Sir Donald.

Alas, diamonds are all about marketing, and so was this Bond film.  It’s a bright shiny object with lots of interesting sparkles but at its core, it’s not a great film.  Much of this has to do with the script.  Despite the return of the reliable Richard Maibaum — who was involved on all but three of the films from 1962 to 1989 — the film is low-rent Bond.  There are no real exotic locations, much of the film takes place in Las Vegas, and after the great ski sequence of OHMSS, we don’t get treated to very much action this time around. Diamond smuggling itself doesn’t lend itself to some of the action we saw in other movies.  That the big chase scene involves Bond in a moon buggy also shows the series begin its slow spiral into silliness. On the one hand, I appreciated that it wasn’t some bloated miscue like You Only Live Twice.  The compact nature of the adventure does allow Mr. Connery to do plenty of fun character moments involving deception, prowling about, and bedding Tiffany Case.  The scene in the crematorium is terrific — we really don’t know how Bond is going to escape that coffin.  Yet these scenes lack the suspense and intrigue that another trimmed down entry, From Russia With Love, contained.

Bondian Characters

But I’m not trashing the film.  In truth, there are some great characters this time around, led by the gay assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, and a fully formed and engaging performance from Charles Gray as Blofeld.

I love Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd.  They are iconic Bond to me.  Strange, quirky, sadistic assassins who really just adore killing people.  I remember first viewing the film when ABC showed Bond films on Sunday nights, and these guys stuck with me.  You get freaked out as a 12-year-old when a guy drops a scorpion down another guy’s back.  Plus, John Barry has this weird clarinet theme for them that is simultaneously whimsical and creepy.  In my first viewings, I totally missed the bit where they hold hands after taking out the dentist and helicopter pilot.  Their appearance on the cruise ship at the conclusion, the way Bond figures out who they are, and how they come to their respective ends, are just great.

I’ve always enjoyed the late Charles Gray as an actor.  Although he’s likely to be most remembered for this role and as The Criminologist in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, he was a talented character actor who appeared in a lot of movies and television.  He brings an upper-class sophistication to Blofeld, and the most fully realized characterization of Blofeld to date.  Readers know I thought Telly Savalas was terrific in OHMSS, but the little mannerisms Mr. Gray brings to the role give us yet another intriguing interpretation.  Mind you, the constantly changing interpretations and presentations of Blofeld make understanding him completely impossible.  I understand Dr. No as a character far better than I will ever understand Blofeld.  OHMSS presented both Bond and Blofeld as pragmatic individuals, neither afraid to get their hands dirty, and the only mano-a-mano climax between them.  In this film, Blofeld appears more as a reflection of Bond, in regards to upper-class British sophistication – complete with cigarette holder, refined accent, and crisp movements.  Regrettably, though, the story does not tease these similarities out in the way Dr. No presented their differences.

I know a lot of people like Jill St. John as the first American Bond girl, but I wasn’t wowed by her.  Beautiful, yes.  Busty, yes.  I felt like her acting chops weren’t fully formed yet, and she has the bad luck of following the very capable character of Tracy (and actress Diana Rigg) from OHMSS.  Bambi and Thumper are unexpected attackers, and the classic fight scene holds up as being entertaining, if perhaps unbelievable.  If  anything, Bond overcomes them far too easily once they hit the pool.  Still, it was a nice double twist to characters like Fiona Volpe.

Felix Leiter has a comparatively huge role this time, and he’s played by the late Norman Burton.  Mr. Burton does a fine job, but I would’ve liked to have seen Jack Lord return.  Felix is instrumental to the story this time, and despite Mr. Burton’s extensive experience as an actor, you can kind of feel that they wanted to cast someone bland so as not to detract from the star.

As For The Rest…

I had no idea whether or not Ken Adam was the production designer on this film or not, but I guessed that he was from the pre-credit sequence where Bond dispatches Blofeld’s doubles.  It’s been said that writers and directors have signature styles, but having seen so many Bond films at this point, it’s clear that Ken Adam was a visionary with his own style.  He designed complete sets — most notably utilizing ceilings in ways few designers ever have.  He use of shape and contrast are hallmarks of all his work.  Willard Whyte’s house in the desert has a minimalist 70’s feel to it, which makes the strange sculptures stand out in the room where Bond battles Bambi and Thumper.  Mr. Adam did not design the house — that honor went to architect John Lautner who designed the Elrod House that Mr. Adam merely decorated.  Still, that’s the point of a great production designer.  He knows what to put in a set that exists.

—–

John Barry’s score is serviceable, though not particularly memorable.  He had a tough act to follow after the transcendent score of OHMSS, though.

The climax is fairly exciting as Blofeld’s fortress is bombed, but there’s yet another character and plot hole.  It’s great to see Bond sling Blofeld’s escape capsule around, slamming him every which-way.  But you’d think, given the rage he must have for Blofeld and the failed opportunities to kill him, that he’d make absolutely certain Blofeld was dead.   And, of course, we have Blofeld needlessly keeping Bond alive during the climax when he should’ve shot him dead on the spot.  Then again, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd’s sadism — while arguably extending to great lengths — seems to take a back seat to poor screenwriting when they merely dump Bond in a metal tube and walk away.  At least with the crematorium scene, Bond is rescued by bad guys who are pissed about the missing diamonds.

Overall, the film was engaging.  It’s not a classic, but it was fun to watch again.

Before I turn my attention to the Roger Moore films, I’ll post a brief recap of the Connery/Lazenby era, and highlight some of the best elements from those films.  After that…

James Bond will return in Live and Let Die

Clash of The Titans is a film that has been made twice. Once with Laurence Olivier as Zeus (1981) and the second (2010) with Liam Neeson as the God of Gods.

In all deference to Liam Neeson and his brilliant performance in Schindler’s List,  I have seen the Great Olivier on stage and … well … no single actor in the world has so terrified me in a live theater performance.

Zeus’ trump card was terror.

Olivier’s vocal lightening?!

You “had to be there,” of course, but trust me. On stage, in 1963? At the Old Vic Theater? The mere human beings standing next to Olivier as Othello?

The entire acting roster of England’s National Theater were Piper Cubs when seen beside this mighty F117 Stealth Fighter Jet of demonic size, Sir Laurence Olivier.

Olivier as Othello was a lethal weapon on stage, always ahead of his time and his fellow actors when it came to erupting in unpredictably atomic vocal power!

With sound men and editors of film as The Great Leveler, however?

Olivier’s loss, Hollywood’s gain.

Only in Henry V, directed by Olivier himself, can we sense his vocal power in film. The cameras and sound, in long shot over the entire English Army, are cpturing the genius of an artist’s capacity to hurl his voice and his persona beyond even the farthest reaches of The Astrodome.

Returning to the theme of this offering, however, what has “Clash of The Titans” and its Gods to do with The Point Men of the New World Order and the Communist playwright, Bertolt Brecht?

Who has become the God of Gods Enthroned?

And why, in these faithless days, should we even care?

A Syllogism: The Ancient Gods of Greece were to the Greeks what The New World Order Architects are to America and Americans … THEREFORE … hmmm …

Knowing the Eastern Seaboard Bias  as I do and being profoundly unimpressed by it, I select the three-headed Cerebus as the Mythic Monster representing a select few within this delirium known as The Progressively Marxist New World Order.

Since, as the Intelligentsia, beginning with Dr. Henry Kissinger, believe: the Progressive New World Order is already a fait accompli and it is now “yesterday’s news,” what compromises must traditional America make in order to not only “fit in” but actually “lead” the New World Order?

That is all part of The Syllogism.

The outcome of this imperious, global design is of major concern to our three, Far Left-leaning wizards: George Soros, Barack Obama and Dr. Henry A. Kissinger.

Don’t let the Doctor’s former association with any criminally compromised Republican President fool you!

Dr. Henry’s “Real Politik” was always, for me at least, code for a Western-style Marxism. 

A three-headed Cerberus guarding the gates of The Invisible Medusa.

Who or what could Medusa actually be?!

This article about our Leader, our Enlightened One and his Divine Sense of Privilege has him projecting a Zeus-like Attitude. Somehow a member of the American justice system, a mere district court judge of Florida, and his admonitions directed at The Chosen One, President Barack Obama, are beyond even the contempt of royal insolence.

“Implementation of ObamaCare,” despite Judge Vinson’s opinion of it, will “proceed apace!”

This, I dare say, is beyond bad Presidential form. It again reminds me of The Invisible Medusa behind the doors to hell, so guarded by those three heads of Cerberus: Soros, Obama and Kissinger. 

Who or what could this Modern Day Medusa be?!

George Soros obviously thinks it’s himself; yet, Obama and Kissinger know better.

The Harvard know-it-alls have not only dreamed of The Invisible Medusa’s achievements, Dr. Kissinger actually met it, broke bread with The Beast and came back to America to quietly rave about this Master Monster’s wisdom to Norman Mailer.

“The greatest aphrodisiac is power,” was wryly offered to the world by Henry Kissinger.

The Good Doctor is possibly Power’s greatest lover!

Fickle though Power may be, mere mortal minds, such as the three heads of Cerberus, keep faith with their chosen God on Earth.

Who could that God be? Or have been?

Well … George Soros will bow to neither God nor Man nor Son of Man … nor any foolish disciple who doesn’t follow orders.

Barack and Dr. Henry, however, know for certain that even with all of George’s territorial bloodlust, there are memories of The Great Medusa that leave the Sorosian Misadventures look like Child’s Play.

Who or what could this miracle be?

My article on Henry Kissinger, if you stay with it to the end, is a dead giveaway for the answer.

Throw in Anita Dunn’s unforgettable love songs to The Invisible Medusa and, gee, well, Merry Christmas to The Invisible Medusa! 

Can this dead legend be so brought back to life that America begins to look like a mere suburb of Chicago?

Why Chicago?

Chicago is the setting for a play by Communist playwright, Bertolt Brecht: In The Jungle of Cities.

It is also, of course, the home town of President Obama.

The two leading protagonists of Brecht’s In The Jungle of Cities, this bizarre metaphor which offers two versions of Communism – Western vs. Oriental – is a Chinaman named Shlink and a Chicago man named George Garga.

The subtitle reads: “the fight between two men in the great city of Chicago”

Garga could have very well been an African-American named Barack Obama and Shlink, I dare say, could have been Brecht’s visionary metaphor for Red China’s ultimate divinity, Mao Zedong.

Mao Zedong in 1927

Mao Zedong, in the year of Jungle of Cities’ first production, 1923, according to Wikipedia:

“ … was elected as one of the five commissars of the Central Committee of the Party during the third Congress session. Later that year, Mao returned to Hunan at the instruction of the CPC Central Committee and the Kuomintang Central Committee to organize the Hunan branch of the Kuomintang.^[11] In 1924, he was a delegate to the first National Conference of the Kuomintang, where he was elected an Alternate Executive of the Central Committee. In 1924, he became an Executive of the Shanghai branch of the Kuomintang and Secretary of the Organization Department.”

Could the German Communist playwright, Bertolt Brecht, already have learned about this Young Chinese Communist Messiah within China’s Kuomintang Central Committee, Mao Zedong?

Could he have learned, via the Central Committee’s jungle drums, of the eventual Chinese Chairman’s genius?

In The Jungle of Cities, on the simplest level, is about the perversely complex relationship between China’s Shlink and Chicago’s Garga, both being Brecht’s version of Communism’s underground leadership: petty to gangland criminals.

The world around them, Garga’s family particularly, crumbles. The two main combatants, however, seem less interested in their family and friends than in the competition between them. With Brecht’s other early play, Baal, one sees another ego a deux and love affair that ends disastrously as well.

The Communist idea of love as an endless, homicidal competition between Alpha Males?

Hmmm … could Bertolt Brecht, while selling The Party Line, also have been the keenest prophet to also see World Communism’s ultimate demise?

Communism’s inevitable dead end?

The Gods of Greece and Rome
are no longer.
However,
the last remaining God of Communism,
Mao Zedong,
sits in his throne,
rather like Laurence Olivier’s Zeus,
awaiting any head or hair of the dog to unseat Him!
Meanwhile,
as Bertolt Brecht may have foreseen,
Mao’s would-be heirs,
rather like Medusa herself,
may very well lose a head or two
before the worshippers of another God.
Whether that God be Allah
or Jehovah
remains to be seen.
Both Divinities
are exceedingly older
and more indisputably powerful
than Mao Zedong.
However,
Communists and Communism
cannot give up hope.
The Progressively Marxist New World Order
will face what Communism’s first Chairman,
the French Revolutionary Napoleon Bonaparte,
fell to at Waterloo:
the English-speaking, Judeo-Christian Civilization.
Obviously,
when it comes to Gods enthroned forever,
my money is on Jehovah.
The God of the Old and New Testaments
has already survived at least two thousand years longer
than the God of The Koran.
For me it means
that Jehovah
and His Son
have owned eternity
for quite some time.
As for Marx’s Communist Manifesto,
first published in 1848?
It is hardly the Koran,
let alone the Bible.

Mister Bond

We begin as we always do, with Mr. Connery’s portrayal of the iconic MI6 agent.  In this case, however, it’s difficult to separate Mr. Connery from the rest of the movie because I believe the script’s inherent flaws affect Mr. Connery’s performance.  There’s nothing wrong with his work this time around, but I couldn’t help but feel that he’d almost become too comfortable in the role.  The first three films were so well-scripted that any actor would still find discoveries to be made in Bond’s character.   Both Mr. Connery, and the audience, are still becoming accustomed to who this man is in the earlier films.  With Goldfinger, the series pushed the boundaries of reality that it took Mr. Connery to keep the whole thing grounded.

In Thunderball, Bond is as confident as ever, to be sure.  He’s as professional as ever.  He knows what he’s doing, and utilizes all of his and the CIA’s resources to uncover the plot.  Yet something is lacking.   There are no more surprises to be had with Bond.  I blame the script.  This is a real shame, because the film starts out promising with a long first act that sets up the rest of the film beautifully.  I thought I was in for a well-structured picture.  Not so.  The problem is once the damn nukes are stolen, they are just left to sit with Largo until it’s time for them to be deployed.  Mr. Connery is left to handle a host of illogical maneuvers to mark time.  Certainly Mr. Connery is game, and does his absolute best.  It’s almost easy to think the film is actually better than it really is simply because of his presence.

About That Script…

Frankly, the script stinks once the nukes get stolen.  Up to that point, however, it’s actually terrific.  All the set-ups are clearly explained.  The clever use of a double to hijack a NATO test flight is slowly revealed to both us, and then to Bond.  There is intrigue and danger at Bond’s spa retreat, an amusing attempt on his life (or at least his spine) as Bond gets a taste of poetic justice for his…uh…pelvic activity.  There’s the unexpected theft of two nuclear bombs.  We get to see Blofeld and a quick glimpse inside SPECTRE.   It’s all wrapped up in a neat package forty minutes in, as Mr. Lippe is taken out by Fiona Volpe, an assassin on a motorcycle firing an RPG into the back of his car.  Tight scripting.  It’s a meaty first act with lots of possibility.

Then it grinds to a halt.  If you examine the second act closely, nothing happens.  And because nothing happens, the script flails around trying to come up with things to happen, even though they make little sense.  The problem is one of story.  The nukes don’t get moved.  Largo is supposed to stay put.  So he does.  And so does the movie.  The reason is probably due to the troubled history of the script itself.

The script’s logical inconsistencies really are a deal-breaker in my mind.  Bond first encounters Largo in the casino*, planting references to SPECTRE several times to see if it impacts Largo.  Clearly it does, because Largo sends a man to hide in Bond’s shower, with intent to kill.  Bond disarms him and send him back to Largo.  Later, Largo finds an underwater intruder by his boat.  He’s got to be fairly certain it’s Bond.

So why does Largo welcome Bond to his estate?  Why doesn’t he just shoot him right there?  This is just such sloppy storytelling, and at this point, I threw up my hands.  Any dramatic suspense has been blown out of the water (so to speak), I lost all interest in the story, and had to sit back and just enjoy individual scenes.

What made this all the more frustrating is that Largo could have been a great character.  I’ve not read the novel, but I’m told Largo is a sadist, and a far more interesting personality.  What I like is that this villain has a defined agenda, he’s a leader, and he’s kick-ass serious about it.  He strides right into the SPECTRE meeting, and following the electrocution of Number Eleven, commands the room as he strides down the catwalk detailing his plan.  Alas, there’s no depth to him.  Dr. No was an embittered outcast who finds a home in SPECTRE.  There is a suggestion that Largo is the same, in that SPECTRE’s hideout is inside the French Ministry of Displaced Persons, but that’s all we get.

I found Volpe to be an intriguing femme fatale, but again the drama strips away any suspense or interest.  When she picks up Bond on the beach, she then roars down the road at a hundred miles an hour to suspenseful Bond music.

So what?

What’s she going to do?  Crash the car and kill herself and Bond?  Not likely.  That the filmmakers insert this scene as if it was somehow supposed to raise the tension is pretty insulting.  It’s frustrating because Volpe has the capacity to be an interesting character, but there isn’t much else given to us.  Then there’s Largo’s sidekick, Vargas, introduced as a man who does not drink, smoke, or have sex. We don’t see this dramatized.  We don’t see how these alleged character quirks drive Vargas’ behavior.  One possibly interesting character, the nuclear physicist, is barely in the picture at all.

The conclusion arrives with Largo finally ready to offload the bombs, and Bond in hot pursuit.  But it pains me to say that the underwater sequences, which were innovative and probably exciting at the time, just don’t hold up.  The climactic fight is boring, with bodies flailing around, and everyone moving like snails.  There are only so many ways to kill someone underwater, and the ideas are tapped out before that sequence.

And yet…

Like the previous films, production designer Ken Adam does a marvelous job, and his work is worth noting.  One thing that Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Thunderball share is the continuity of Mr. Adam’s work.  His style for the films share similar characteristics and it’s worth noting that I feel From Russia lacks a cohesive sense of design — and he wasn’t the designer.

In previous articles, I suggested viewers keep an eye out for contrast — whether it be in shape, lighting, lines, space, color or texture — or uniformity.  A great designer’s use of these elements can really elevate a picture’s visual style, and subconsciously create emotional or visceral reactions.  Mr. Adam does not disappoint.  He owes credit to his directors, who shoot Mr. Adam’s expansive and expressive sets and locations from low angles, often permitting viewers to see all the way to the ceiling.

The fight sequence in Col. Boitier’s home is typical of a Bond set.  High ceilings, massive space, filled with contrasts of shape — in this case, circles and rectangles.  So deft is the filmmaking that contrast exists not only within shots, but between shots, appropriately heightening the subconscious tension.  The contrast of shape itself is representative of the collision between Bond and Boitier.

There is marked contrast between the SPECTRE’s HQ and that of MI6, where the briefing for all the double-O’s takes place.  SPECTRE’s hall is (once again) expansive.  Here the space stretches horizontally, with a lowered ceiling, creating a sense of narrowness and claustrophobia.  The colors are stark and cold — black, white, and silver.  It’s a rectangular room for the most part, with little round lights above each man’s head, suggesting an interrogation.  In a way it is, as they report their progress to Blofeld.

Meanwhile, the MI6 briefing also takes place in an expansive set.  However, there are several wide shots which emphasize the softer, more welcoming, and refined setting of British Intelligence.  The double-O’s are seated in a semi-circle.  Circles dominate the shapes in the room, even on the floor.  Here, a vertical perspective is emphasized, giving the room an open and airy feeling (think “freedom”).

One other sequence drives home the concept of shape contrast.  The health farm where Bond is recuperating is decorated in muted, but pleasant tones.  There are squares and rectangles everywhere.  The moment his nurse opens the curtains to the spine stretcher, there is a massive oval shape above it on the ceiling.   Viewers of Dr. No have seen this before.   The sudden contrast of a circle with the squares foreshadows the attempt to maim Bond.  The editing also cuts rapidly between the linear, boxy shapes of the spine machine and the round speed gauge.

Finally, we have the explosions of color that flood the picture when we enter the Bahamas.  And need I mention the strong blues and reds that accompany that dangerous Volpe?

Thwarted?

Look, the film is not an aesthetic failure and not a failure for the Bond franchise.  I like that the dramatic tone returns to that of From Russia With Love – a serious espionage film that lacks the more arch aspects of Goldfinger.  The direction is solid.  The actors are all engaging.  The design and editing are all strong.  The real weakness is in the second and third acts of the script, and it really does the picture a disservice.

James Bond will return in “You Only Live Twice.”

*Footnote: Baccarat has no skill associated with it whatsoever.  It is entirely a game of luck.

To paraphrase Martin Niemöller’s famous admonition about complacency with totalitarian fascists:  “First they came for Rush Limbaugh and called his satire racist, and I didn’t speak out because Rush Limbaugh is a conservative.  Then they came for Dr. Laura and called her commentary racist, and I didn’t speak out because Dr. Laura is a conservative…”

Well, this time they came after a high school drama program in far-from conservative Westbury, CT.  The Arts Magnet School in that city planned a production of August Wilson’s 20th century classic “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” until the district’s Superintendent, David Snead, tried to pull the plug because the play’s characters use the word “nigger”.

First, a little bit about the play and the playwright.  August Wilson was arguably the finest American Playwright of the past thirty years.  His monumental “Pittsburgh Cycle” of plays (of which “Joe Turner” is a part) represents a canon of literary and historic significance that will be studied and performed for centuries.  The group of plays include the Pulitzer Prize winning “Fences” (1987) and “The Piano Lesson” (1990) – yes, two Pulitzers three years apart .  All but one of the ten plays are set in the same neighborhood in Pittsburgh and focus on the African-American experience throughout the 20th century.  Each of the plays take place in a different decade, “Joe Turner” representing the 1910’s and primarily focusing on the experience of Southern Blacks’ migration to urban Northern cities looking for economic opportunities and promises of a more tolerant environment.

It’s obvious at this point, to any reader with a basic high school education, that it would be impossible to truthfully tell the stories that Wilson does in these plays without the word “nigger” escaping the lips of his brilliantly drawn characters.  Of course, if the reader happens to have more than a high school education, or worse, an advanced degree in education and school administration as I’m sure Mr. Snead possesses, you’re probably tossed into a vicious conundrum, torn between the virtues of artistic freedom and politically correct “sensitivity” to “hate speech” language codes.

So, Mr. Snead did what educated, tolerant, quasi-fascists always do:  He tried to use his power to silence what he personally found objectionable.  Even better, he used race-hustling activists as his shield against criticism.  “The use of the N-word is something all civil rights leaders around the country want us to stop using,” Snead said. “I don’t think we should be doing anything to encourage our students to use it.”

Thankfully, the school board that hired Mr. Snead (and now should fire him) saw fit to take up the issue in a public hearing this week and over-ruled the over-zealous Mussolini-wannabe.  The show will go on. And, to the great credit of the vastly left-wing theatre community, much support and advocacy was provided by producers, directors and writers who saw this move for what it was, a repudiation of the basic tenants of free artistic expression, and a not-so-veiled suggestion that future plays should be careful not to use language that “civil rights leaders” might find objectionable.

But, this story should not end here.  This can be a “teachable moment” for Americans who still find it challenging to remember the latest politically correct way to refer to their neighbor who happens to be a  2nd generation son of a Chinese mother and Guatemalan father (hint: you call him an American).

Left-wing activist groups like Media Matters and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network seek to silence voices like Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh under the guise of politically correct language codes that they invent and enforce to fit their needs.  It’s the classic “Al Capone” approach to political activism.  They can’t defeat Rush on intellectual grounds.  They tried and failed miserably to defeat him with competing left-wing radio programming.  So now, they lie about Rush’s supposed racism in an attempt to have the FCC remove him from the air.

Soros-funded Media Matters openly brags about forcing Dr. Laura off the air (although she’s now thriving on Sirius/XM radio) because she dared to use the same word found in Mr. Wilson’s play.  And one can argue that the political and artistic goal of Mr. Wilson’s use of “nigger” is in perfect harmony with Dr. Laura’s use.

So, what’s a lefty to do?  The same left-wing groups who fought to allow high school productions of “Rent” to go forward despite reasonable protestations from parents over its glorification of drug-use and sexual behaviors not suitable for many fourteen-year-olds are now forced to choose between those same free-speech standards and the argument they continue to use to justify silencing conservative commentators on radio, television and the internet.

It’s very instructive for all Americans to witness these events and to bear in mind one inescapable truth:  Whether it’s re-writing Mark Twain or passing laws against the use of cross-hairs on a map or banning a classic play by one of our country’s greatest writers, the knee-jerk instinct to silence speech is consistently and insidiously coming from the political left.

I pray that soon, artists in our community will start re-examining why they continue to align themselves with these speech-squelching totalitarians instead of the freedom-loving center-right Tea Party that they often find so abhorrent.  They better wake-up soon.  Remember, Niemöller’s famous statement ends with: “Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

———-

Enjoy this excerpt from August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” as your Sunday Matinee from Big Hollywood:

Soros is also bankrolling a documentary that celebrates left-wing terrorists who plotted to napalm Republicans at the 2008 GOP convention in Minnesota. Even worse, you too are bankrolling the film through your taxes.

A trailer for the left-wing film Better This World suggests that it depicts David Guy McKay and Bradley Neil Crowder as idealistic activists who, according to the official blurb, “set out to prove the strength of their political convictions to themselves and their mentor.” In fact McKay and Crowder are convicted domestic terrorists who manufactured instruments of death calculated to inflict maximum pain and bodily harm on people whose political views they disagreed with.

You can be sure that if it was right-wing terrorists who were plotting to attack the Democratic National Convention, whoever foiled the conspiracy would be immortalized in film, literature and song as a savior of democracy.

“If you flip the equation around and it had been a group of conservatives threatening to use force to prevent those on the Left from meeting, everyone would expect the government to infiltrate them and they would also expect the FBI to stop them and charge them with crimes,” said Brandon Darby, who helped the FBI thwart the planned attack. (Darby’s essay on political violence appeared on Big Government over the past weekend. Read it here.)

The movie, which is expected to be released this year, attacks Darby, a true American hero who undermined the conspiracy by alerting the FBI. Filmmakers Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega twist the facts to argue that Darby, a former revolutionary activist, manipulated McKay and Crowder into becoming would-be mass murderers.

It’s an easily disproved lie. During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis went out of his way to make a specific legal finding that McKay obstructed justice by falsely accusing Darby of inducing him to manufacture the incendiary devices.

McKay and Crowder had made homemade riot shields and were ready to use them in St. Paul to help demonstrators block streets near the Xcel Energy Center. The goal was to shut down the democratic process by preventing GOP delegates from participating in the convention. The shields were discovered and confiscated.

During a search of a residence, police found gas masks, slingshots, helmets, knee pads and eight Molotov cocktails consisting of bottles filled with gasoline with attached wicks made from tampons. “They mixed gasoline with oil so it would stick to clothing and skin and burn longer,” Darby said.

Thanks to Darby’s cooperation with the FBI, the two aspiring bomb throwers are now languishing in prison. McKay entered a “guilty” plea and was sentenced in May 2009 to 48 months in prison plus three years of supervised release for possession of an unregistered “firearm,” illegal manufacture of a firearm and possession of a firearm with no serial number. A week before, Crowder cut a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to 24 months in prison for possession of an unregistered firearm. McKay received the stiffer sentence in part because he fabricated the tall tale about Darby’s involvement in the plot.

Of course, it should surprise no one that Hollywood loves this kind of story with its anti-American overtones. HBO gave a grant to the filmmakers to produce their pro-terrorist propaganda. So did the Soros-funded Sundance Institute. After Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), gave Sundance’s Documentary Film Program $4.6 million in 2002, it gave the institute another $5 million in 2009.

Taxpayers also underwrite Sundance’s adventures in social justice indoctrination. According to nonprofit tax returns (known as IRS Form 990s), the Sundance Institute has taken in $11,240,081 in government grants since 1997. It is unclear which governments made the grants because the 990 forms lump all the grant-making governments together.

The federal government has given $1,350,000 to the institute since 2000, according to USAspending.gov. All but $5,000 of the money was from the National Endowment for the Arts. (The $5,000 grant was from the State Department.) It’s not clear if the $1,350,000 is part of the $11 million-plus figure for all government grants.

Upon receiving the most recent OSI grant, Sundance founder Robert Redford obediently genuflected before Soros. “Sundance Institute has supported documentary storytellers since its beginning,” said Redford. “The recognition of that history by George Soros and the Open Society Institute, and the continuation of our relationship over time, speaks to our shared belief that culture—in this case documentary film—is having a profound impact in shaping progressive change.”

Soros himself has acknowledged he is interested in the movies because “[d]ocumentary films raise awareness and inspire action.” He hails cinema for its power to manipulate audiences. OSI has been underwriting “social justice” documentaries since 1996. In 2001 Soros let Redford’s Sundance Institute take over management of his Soros Documentary Fund, which has since rechristened the Soros/Sundance Documentary Fund. (See Foundation Watch, March 2008).

In 2005 Soros acquired 2.6 million shares of the huge diversified media company Time Warner. In 2006 his companies, Soros Strategic Partners and Dune Capital Management, paid $900 million to buy the DreamWorks SKG film library from Viacom, a move that gave Soros the DVD and rebroadcasting rights to films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), Gladiator (2000), and American Beauty (1999). As James Hirsen noted, the transaction gives Soros “some highly desirable film rights at a time when the marketing and distribution model is changing to video on demand, video iPods and other forms of digital distribution.” But more importantly, it gives Soros “a presence in Hollywood where likeminded libs are ready, willing and able to collaborate in cinematic social engineering.”

Soros is also venturing into media overseas. In 2008 Soros Fund Management plunked down $100 million for 3% of India’s Reliance Entertainment, a $3 billion conglomerate that aims to provide Internet-based TV programs in India. Reliance also churns out movies and owns movie houses, radio stations and social networking websites in the country with one of the fastest growing economies in the world. When in the 1980s Soros set up offices in Eastern Europe for OSI, he helped to finance publishers, independent TV and radio outlets, and political parties.

As writer Rondi Adamson observed, “most of the documentaries that receive Sundance funding are highly critical of some aspect of American life, capitalism or Western culture. The projects generally share Soros’s worldview that America is a troubling if not sinister influence in the world, that the War on Terror is a fraud and terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters, and that markets are fundamentally unjust.”

The 2009 Sundance Film Festival screened the documentary Disturbing the Universe. The recently deceased Communist historian Howard Zinn described the movie about radical anti-American lawyer William Kunstler as “a wonderful, inspiring film.”

Putting America in its Place

Undermining America and promoting radicalism is what Soros is all about.

Soros seems to want Communist China to become a superpower, throwing its weight around on the world stage. Weeks before President Obama’s visit to China a year ago the Financial Times asked Soros, “What sort of a financial deal should Obama be seeking to strike when he travels to China next month?” He replied:

I think this would be time because you really need to bring China into the creation of a new world order, a financial world order. They are kind of reluctant members of the IMF. They play along, but they don’t make much of a contribution because it’s not their institution. Their share is not commensurate, their voting rights are not commensurate to their weight, so I think you need a new world order that China has to be part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in. [emphasis added]

In November 2010 Soros praised China effusively. “Today China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States,” he said.

It’s all in a day’s work for George Soros. And now he’s trying to control the media in America.

(Parts one and two of this comprehensive series can be read at Big Government)

(The full article appears in the January 2011 issue of Organization Trends, a monthly publication of Capital Research Center.)

You can be sure that if right-wing terrorists were plotting to attack the Democratic National Convention, whoever foiled that conspiracy would be immortalized in film, literature and song as a savior of democracy.

“If you flip the equation around and it had been a group of conservatives threatening to use force to prevent those on the Left from meeting, everyone would expect the government to infiltrate them and they would also expect the FBI to stop them and charge them with crimes,” said Brandon Darby, who helped the FBI thwart the planned attack.

A trailer for the left-wing film Better This World suggests that it depicts David Guy McKay and Bradley Neil Crowder as idealistic activists who, according to the official blurb, “set out to prove the strength of their political convictions to themselves and their mentor.” (Note: There was a functioning trailer when I wrote this post a few days ago, but it no longer appears to be working. -MV) In fact McKay and Crowder are convicted domestic terrorists who manufactured instruments of death calculated to inflict maximum pain and bodily harm on people whose political views they disagreed with.

The movie attacks a true American hero, Brandon Darby, who undermined the conspiracy by alerting the FBI. Filmmakers Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega twist the facts to argue that Darby, a former revolutionary activist, manipulated McKay and Crowder into becoming would-be mass murderers.

It’s an easily disproved lie.

During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis went out of his way to make a specific legal finding that McKay obstructed justice by falsely accusing Darby of inducing him to manufacture the incendiary devices.

McKay and Crowder had made homemade riot shields and were ready to use them in St. Paul to help demonstrators block streets near the Xcel Energy Center. The goal was to shut down the democratic process by preventing GOP delegates from participating in the convention. The shields were discovered and confiscated.

During a search of a St. Paul residence, police found gas masks, slingshots, helmets, knee pads and eight Molotov cocktails consisting of bottles filled with gasoline with attached wicks made from tampons. “They mixed gasoline with oil so it would stick to clothing and skin and burn longer,” Darby said.

Thanks to Darby’s cooperation with the FBI, the two aspiring bomb throwers are now languishing in prison. McKay entered a “guilty” plea and was sentenced in May 2009 to 48 months in prison plus three years of supervised release for possession of an unregistered “firearm,” illegal manufacture of a firearm and possession of a firearm with no serial number. A week before, Crowder cut a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to 24 months in prison for possession of an unregistered firearm.

McKay received the stiffer sentence in part because he fabricated the tall tale about Darby’s involvement in the plot.

Of course, it should surprise no one that Hollywood loves this kind of story with its anti-American overtones. HBO gave a grant to the filmmakers to produce their pro-terrorist propaganda. So did the Soros-funded Sundance Institute. After Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), gave Sundance’s Documentary Film Program $4.6 million in 2002, it gave the institute another $5 million in 2009.

Taxpayers also underwrite Sundance’s adventures in social justice indoctrination. According to nonprofit tax returns (known as IRS Form 990s), the Sundance Institute has taken in $11,240,081 in government grants since 1997. It is unclear which governments made the grants because the 990 forms lump all the grant-making governments together.

The federal government has given $1,350,000 to the institute since 2000, according to USAspending.gov. All but $5,000 of the money was from the National Endowment for the Arts. (The $5,000 grant was from the State Department.) It’s not clear if the $1,350,000 is part of the $11 million-plus figure for all government grants.

Upon receiving the most recent OSI grant, Sundance founder Robert Redford obediently genuflected before Soros. “Sundance Institute has supported documentary storytellers since its beginning,” said Redford. “The recognition of that history by George Soros and the Open Society Institute, and the continuation of our relationship over time, speaks to our shared belief that culture—in this case documentary film—is having a profound impact in shaping progressive change.”

Soros himself has acknowledged he is interested in the movies because “[d]ocumentary films raise awareness and inspire action.” He hails cinema for its power to manipulate audiences.

Not too many people seem aware that Soros has long been a player in Hollywood. As Rondi Adamson reported in “George Soros, Movie Mogul: ‘Social Justice’ Cinema and the Sundance Institute,” (Capital Research Center’s newsletter Foundation Watch, March 2008), OSI has been underwriting “social justice” documentaries since 1996. In 2001 Soros let Redford’s Sundance Institute take over management of his Soros Documentary Fund (since rechristened the Soros/Sundance Documentary Fund).

The preeminent funder of the American left has been buying up media properties for years in order to drive home his message to the American public that they are too materialistic, too wasteful, too selfish, and too stupid to decide for themselves how to run their own lives.

As Capital Research Center (my employer) reported, in 2005 Soros acquired 2.6 million shares of the huge diversified media company Time Warner. In 2006 his companies, Soros Strategic Partners and Dune Capital Management, paid $900 million to buy the DreamWorks SKG film library from Viacom, a move that gave Soros the DVD and rebroadcasting rights to films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), Gladiator (2000), and American Beauty (1999). As James Hirsen noted, the transaction gives Soros “some highly desirable film rights at a time when the marketing and distribution model is changing to video on demand, video iPods and other forms of digital distribution.” But more importantly, it gives Soros “a presence in Hollywood where likeminded libs are ready, willing and able to collaborate in cinematic social engineering.”

Soros is also a funder, whether directly or indirectly, of Media Matters for America, the left-wing character assassination website. Media Matters is the so-called media watchdog whose modus operandi is to mau-mau the media into mouthing the politically correct platitudes that pass for profound insights on the far left.

Soros is venturing into media overseas. In 2008 Soros Fund Management plunked down $100 million for 3% of India’s Reliance Entertainment, a $3 billion conglomerate that aims to provide Internet-based TV programs in India. Reliance also churns out movies and owns movie houses, radio stations and social networking websites in the country with one of the fastest growing economies in the world. When in the 1980s Soros set up offices in Eastern Europe for OSI, he helped to finance publishers, independent TV and radio outlets, and political parties.

Adamson observes that “most of the documentaries that receive Sundance funding are highly critical of some aspect of American life, capitalism or Western culture. The projects generally share Soros’s worldview that America is a troubling if not sinister influence in the world, that the War on Terror is a fraud and terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters, and that markets are fundamentally unjust.”

From Adamson’s article, here are some examples of films that have been funded by Soros directly or indirectly or that have been screened by the Sundance Institute or shown on the Sundance Channel:

Control Room (2004), a documentary about Arabic-language network Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Iraq war, which critics have said amounts to pro-Islamist propaganda.

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004), which argues that Fox TV news is a hotbed of conservative misinformation.

The Corporation (2003), a Canadian film that puts modern corporations on the couch and depicts them as sociopathic institutions.

My Terrorist (2002)…about Yulie Gerstel, an Israeli flight attendant who begins to suffer a delayed onset of Stockholm Syndrome after her airplane is hijacked on a flight to London. According to the film’s promotional blurb, “In a remarkable twist of faith, twenty-three years later Gerstel began questioning the causes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians and started to consider helping release the man who almost killed her.”

The Women of Hezbollah…focuses on what its promotional blurb calls two Hezbollah “activists,” Zeinab and Khadjie, examining their “commitment” to the cause. According to one review, the film offers a “complex picture of Islamism, gender relations, feminism and nationalism.”

More recently, the Sundance Film Festival screened the documentary Disturbing the Universe. The recently deceased Communist historian Howard Zinn described the movie about radical anti-American lawyer William Kunstler as “a wonderful, inspiring film.”

Undermining America and promoting radicalism is what Soros is all about.

“The system we have now has actually broken down, only we haven’t quite recognized it and so you need to create a new one and this is the time to do it,” Soros told the Financial Times last year.

In an interview with Der Spiegel in 2008 Soros said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful – but also very harmful to our society.”

Soros seems to want Communist China to become a superpower, throwing its weight around on the world stage. Weeks before President Obama’s visit to China a year ago the Financial Times asked Soros, “What sort of a financial deal should Obama be seeking to strike when he travels to China next month?” He replied:

I think this would be time because you really need to bring China into the creation of a new world order, a financial world order. They are kind of reluctant members of the IMF. They play along, but they don’t make much of a contribution because it’s not their institution. Their share is not commensurate, their voting rights are not commensurate to their weight, so I think you need a new world order that China has to be part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in. [emphasis added]

It’s all in a day’s work for George Soros.

And so it was no surprise when in 2002, Soros turned over stewardship of his documentary fund to Robert Redford and the Sundance Institute.

As Dr. David Yeagley, an American Indian author and political commentator wrote,

“On September 16, 2002, Robert Redford proudly announced at a press conference that he was launching a Sundance International Documentary Fund with $4.6 million in seed money from George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI). The new fund would underwrite films aimed at “promoting social justice and social change.”

In effect, the Soros Documentary Fund simply changed its name to the Sundance International Documentary Fund. Diane Weyermann, who had directed the “old” fund for Soros, stayed on to direct the “new” fund for Redford.

The deal helped both parties. Redford got access to Soros’ money. Soros got to camouflage his propaganda operation under the apple-pie image of Robert Redford and the respected Sundance label.”

Today, the Soros Documentary Fund now operates under the name Sundance Documentary Fund and is managed by the Sundance Institute.  The program provides about $3 million a year in funds to documentary filmmakers.  As of 2009, the Fund had provided over 500 grants to projects from 57 countries, according to the Sundance website.

A few of the other documentary films financed by Soros include “Which Way Home” and “My American Dream,” films aimed at achieving amnesty for illegal aliens, and “An American Soldier“, which portrays military recruitment in an aggressive and negative light. The complete list of films funded through the Soros/Sundance Documentary Fund from 1996 to 2008 is lengthy and likely includes others with which you might be familiar.  In a piece for Capital Research Center’s Foundation Watch in 2008 titled “George Soros, Movie Mogul: ‘Social Justice’ Cinema and the Sundance Institute“, journalist Rondi Adamson provided an excellent write-up on the Soros – Sundance connection and reviewed a variety of documentaries and other Soros-inspired Hollywood movie slants. 

Granted, many of the films may have no political agenda, but it would be naïve to assume that the shared goals of like-minded liberal partners to Soros play zero part in the selection of films to receive funding.

For years Soros has been skillfully executing his own blend of transference, labeling free market defenders “market fundamentalists” and accusing the right of practicing the very methods of Newspeak and propaganda that he pretends to condemn.  Liberals today repeat his words as though they’ve been scripted.  Despite his progressive political beliefs, this is not a man who simply wants to influence political policy to protect his Utopian vision of an Open Society.  For Soros, this seems to be more about influencing a global collective of governments to behave as HE wants them to behave, to protect his own investments and views.  Just as many criticize the U.S for any foreign intervention by military, Soros intervenes by way of investment – and he does so without any regard for the sovereignty of these countries.  As he says in this Open Society Institute video from 2007:

“What I am doing in Central Asia is what I have done in other countries as well – is empower people living in the country to promote these ideas of open society.  I know that I’m an outsider, I have no real understanding of the region, I have no particular solution to offer for the problems of the region.  All I can do is help the people there to help themselves.”

Of course, it’s no surprise that in the very same regions featured in Soros’ video, only two months ago – three years since that video – a spontaneous uprising of the people has been sparked against their government in Kyrgyzstan.  And what a surprise – they blame the U.S.!  Meanwhile, Soros merely breezes past the information in the second part of that video about his own investments in nearby Kazakhstan oil fields, and his intentions to use that investment to influence those governments.  He also never makes mention of his institute’s 2005 publication Covering Oil: A Reporter’s Guide to Energy and Development, intended to train journalists in Central Asia on how to report on petroleum development, complete with sample questions and sample stories.  I’m sure that his influence on American media and film in demonizing petroleum production has helped his Central Asian investments quite a bit.  How convenient.

While all of his rhetoric may sound noble to so many and his intentions charitable, Soros’ views are in actuality at odds with the intent of America’s founders.  That’s why many Libertarians and Conservatives simply don’t see eye to eye with the philanthropist.  Soros has stated on numerous occasions that there is an inherent conflict between Capitalism versus Open Society, again, calling free market supporters “market fundamentalists” while admonishing the capitalist system of the United States as one that ignores the common social needs.  It is for this reason that Soros constantly preaches that significant government involvement is necessary; while he praises his own efforts in private philanthropy to affect social change, he views government as the permanent arbiter of selecting, financing and enforcing such change, and he dismisses any possibility that private citizens can and will meet the social needs of our fellow citizens as our nation’s founders intended. 

Such a view defies the spirit of our founders and soils the praises from those, like Alexis deTocqueville, who once marveled at the American citizens’ affinity to fellow community members and their needs.  It’s this spirit that becomes less and less familiar over time as more government intervenes in taking over the social responsibilities once held by families, communities, community centers, churches and other places of worship, local companies, and neighbors.

Instead of encouraging a return to our true American roots, Soros’ money is spent on propaganda, the very practice of deception that he decries.  Among such efforts, the billionaire funds film and video that often depicts issues in a very slanted, one-sided way, by delivering a pre-packaged opinion to the viewers and intentionally appealing to the humanitarian nature of Americans, without presenting the truth to the other side or the unintended consequences of any proposed actions.

Soros has for years now opined that Americans have become very used to “pre-packaged thought” because our media only serves us information that is pre-packaged for us, and has called our political media coverage a “packaging industry”, comparing it to the Ministry of Truth, where Winston, the hero of 1984 worked.  For someone who throws such Orwellian rhetoric around and points his accusatory propaganda finger so often, the man certainly does more than his part to fund America’s biggest propaganda machines with a lot of his Capitalist-earned cash. 

To be continued in Part 3.

Part 1 can be found here.

We’re especially reminded of this in recent times, as we see the overabundance of falsely portrayed stories on film and video, and at the same time the complete absence of other stories from the mainstream view. 

That’s no accident.

Soros gained his political reputation this last decade largely by staunchly opposing the Iraq war and publicly comparing former President George W. Bush to the Nazi Regime.  Drawing on his proclaimed expertise on Orwellian propaganda techniques and modern day mind-control marketing, George Soros once vowed to dismantle the conservative infrastructure, a pledge that hoisted him to the mantel of hero to the far-left wing of the Democratic Party.  By 2004,dozens and dozens of Soros’ political advocacy organizations had been erected and pumped full of millions of dollars aimed at evicting George W. Bush from the White House. 

Soros has devoted a great deal of time and energy to dissecting the reasons why Americans should hate America.  He has convinced droves of liberals into believing that we are living in an Orwellian state, warning us that everything from the US government (preceding Obama, of course) is nothing more than propaganda, and that right-leaning news sources are not news, but Orwellian Newspeak.  In numerous conferences and symposiums, including this one in 2007 at the NY Public Library, speaking about the role of media in the U.S. today, Soros deems Americans to have been ignorantly shielded by the protection of Newspeak and Nazi-like propaganda filtered to the peripheral conscious mind of Americans through television and Hollywood movie screens.

How ironic, that Soros’ own rhetoric has so often taken on the very tone of conspiracy theory for which the left so famously criticizes the right.  Similar footage from 2004 sounds as though it’s literally the same script from which leftists recite today.  But whenever his rhetoric is challenged even by political neutrals, Soros repeatedly cites the Bush doctrine and “market fundamentalist propaganda” as his reason for engaging so heavily in the political process.  It’s in the name of protecting our open society, Soros claims.  The man who’s earned his billions via Capitalism has mastered the art of portraying himself as a world philanthropist who is fighting to protect society from the ills of Nazism and other oppression that he says are inherent of our American Capitalist system.

Meanwhile, the truth is that Soros’ supposed war on propaganda did NOT begin after the US invasion in Iraq, as he says it did.  Rather, Soros began his own propagandist endeavors around 1994, when he made a conscious effort to merge his political undertaking with the ultimate purveyor of propaganda – Hollywood.  In fact, by his own admission, he established a strategy that incorporated the three largest influencers of human behavior:  business, politics, and film and video.

But why would Soros deliberately try to blur this timeline? Why would he keep such a low profile about his early 1990’s dealings and instead use Bush’s Iraq policies to justify his conspiracy theory talk?  It starts with Soros’ realization that to execute his Utopian strategy, he would first have to force public opinion to the far left. He himself has often expressed that the best medium for propaganda in the US is through the Hollywood establishment.  Before he could force himself into that arena, he’d have to contend with how best to infiltrate and integrate his political beliefs into Hollywood films.  To do so, he’d have to get past the conservative values-based Democrats first – by quietly dismantling and then replacing the Democratic Party without average every-day Democrats even knowing it.

The FrontPageMag ran a piece several years ago that describes Soros’ plan perfectly:

Since 1994, he [Soros] had worked with a network of leftwing foundations to fund a $140-million-dollar lobbying drive in favor of “campaign finance reform.”  The campaign succeeded in passing the McCain-Feingold Act, which, by outlawing “soft-money” donations, in effect de-funded the Democratic Party. As a result of the Act, the Democratic Party could no longer collect the multi-million-dollar donations from labor unions which were its lifeblood.

Soros stepped in with the Shadow Party to collect the donations instead.

Having driven the Democratic Party to the brink of bankruptcy, Soros then offered to save it.

Right under the noses of the working-class salt of the earth voters that once came from coal mining and farming families, and blessed by Republicans, Soros and his political partners eventually killed off the Democratic party as our grandparents knew it– cunningly replacing it with a new progressive version, installing a new establishment sponsored by liberal investors and Hollywood elites, like Progressive Insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis, Hollywood producer Stephen Bing, and actress Jane Fonda.

From the 7th Floor of the Motion Picture Association of America headquarters in Washington, DC, Soros convened with Shadow Party partners Hillary Clinton and Harold Ickes to map out the support network of their new progressive party, which relied (and still do) most heavily upon ACORN and the public sector labor unions.

In parallel, Soros turned his attention to powerful Hollywood – where his money could be well-spent on integrating his influence into the mainstream.

In 1996, one of Soros’ first Hollywood endeavors was to embrace the power of documentary film.  Through his Open Society Institute, he created the Soros Documentary Fund to provide financial support to produce “social justice and human rights documentaries.”

Among the goals of this program is to raise public consciousness about human rights abuses and restrictions of civil liberties, to engage citizens in debate about these issues, and to give voice to diverse speech—all which are crucial to an open society. SDF started awarding grants in 1996 because the visual medium of film and video has enormous potential for effecting social change, increasing awareness and debate on significant human rights issues.

Soros has always fully understood the power of film and video for “effecting social change”, or more accurately, for influencing people’s minds.  More recently, Soros described the power of this medium as a propaganda tool:

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“…the techniques of deception have been really perfected since [George Orwell's book] 1984.  It’s partly the advertising industry that has really sort of [guided], it’s a commercial use that was eventually transferred to politics.  And actually, the art of deception has become a science.  Because there is cognitive science now, which has some very interesting findings about how the human mind works.

“And these findings actually justify or give a scientific basis for techniques that were sort of developed more as an art.  The two key findings of cognitive science [are] that reason and emotion are intricately interconnected, that in fact, there is no reason without emotion, and you can actually overcome reason by appealing to the emotions.  And there you have of course the television, which appeals to the emotions much more directly than the linear written word.  So the appeal to the emotions is easier than it used to be.”

“…Another element I think is that because of this industry, [the] communications industry, we have become very used to pre-packaged thought.  And so we actually use only information that is pre-packaged for us.  And when it has been used in politics, there is now a packaging industry.  And it does have some similarities to the institute where Winston, the hero of [Orwell's] 1984 worked, the Ministry of Truth.”

“And while you have pluralistic media, you have a parallel method of propaganda which parades as pluralistic media.  FOX News is a prime example of that.  And because it parades as a mainstream media, it’s accepted as a mainstream media.  And deliberate untruths are accepted as one of the pieces of information that you have to consider.  So you have FOX News which is ‘Fair and Balanced’ and that of course is Newspeak. And then you have the mainstream media that tries to be fair and balanced, and therefore information coming from Newspeak sources is accepted as one of the ideas that have to be presented. And you have a number of institutes that deliberately manufacture such information.”

We see this today in almost scripted fashion to Soros’ words – categorize something as “Newspeak” and you no longer have to treat it as a real story.  The stories that harm the liberal agenda can simply be ignored and need not be presented, rather than introducing them into the content cycle for viewers to filter in or out for themselves.  Case in point, the New Black Panthers story.  At the same time, outlets that once accused some of manufacturing war propaganda have themselves become the manufacturers of propaganda.  Case in point, the left’s portrayal of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s Anti-Illegal-Immigration Bill that was enacted into law earlier this year.

Politics and propaganda make an ugly yet powerful combination.

With such success in the medium of film and video from 1996 to 2001, Soros recognized two things.  First, the need to place a buffer between himself and his politically charged documentaries, especially after 9/11, as he was about to embark upon injecting massive financial sums into the political campaign system.  Secondly, the opportunity to take this success to the next level by bringing in a Hollywood heavyweight name to headline the program.

Enter Robert Redford. 

To be continued in Part 2. 

To view Soros’ session from “There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America” on video in its entirety, it can be found on three videos:  Section 1, Section 2 and Section 3.

Apparently not content to subsidize the whining of the nonentities at Media Matters, Soros is taking a break from his adventures in currency manipulation and general scuzziness to enlist entertainment celebrities like Sting in his newest quest.  The Drug Policy Alliance is the result, a group whose members, as its founder puts it, “come from across the drug use spectrum.”  Yes, the junkies, stoners, hopheads, dope fiends, pill-poppers, and Lindsay Lohan are unanimous:  Drug laws are bad, and it’s probably BusHitler’s fault.

The threshold problem with comments by Sting such as, “The war on drugs represents an extraordinary violation of human rights,” is that Sting presumably not only believes this piffle, but further believes that he can put down his bass and offer meaningful input into the discussion.  This assumption of competence is a common delusion among celebrities, and here it has more potential for damage than most mindless celebribabble.

Now, Sting is not alone – no one in that clip says anything worthwhile.  One woman, who is bald for no apparent reason, states that “The War on Drugs is a war on people of color,” as if Americans decided they would outlaw crack because they fear that black people might enjoy themselves.  Montel Williams shows up to explain that drug laws prevent him from making choices about his own body, but the awful tie and ridiculous earring he chose to wear make a powerful argument against allowing him to make any kind of choices at all.

Tony Papa also appears.  He went to jail for 12 years for being part of a drug deal – oh, I mean committing “a nonviolent drug offense” – and became an artist on the taxpayer’s dime.  While most of us will likely ask “Why only 12?,” naturally Papa is worshipped by trendy leftist celebrities.  Some Hollywood half-wit even scooped up the rights to his inspiring story.  So, to repeat, Tony Papa joined a drug conspiracy, got arrested, went to jail, leveraged that into becoming a hip artist and the subject of a movie, and yet he is somehow the real victim.

Of course, there’s also the perennial “America imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world!” meme.  In fact, the only drug incarceration problem in America is that too few drug dealers are incarcerated.  Sting suffers from the same delusion that afflicts many of his celebrity pals.  He seems to think that if the kind of people who deal drugs didn’t have drugs to deal, they would naturally flock to the world of hard work and responsibility.  Oh, if only drugs weren’t illegal, the drug dealing scumbags who infest our ghettos, barrios and college sociology departments would morph into clean-shaved, untatted workerbees eagerly embracing the world of 9-5 employment.  Yeah, it was outlawing meth and crack that turned the scumbags into scumbags. 

At one point, the clip promises “new solutions” to the drug problem.  Then Sting pops back up, smug and self-satisfied, to announce that drug laws violate his individual sovereignty.  Uh, typically, when you say you are going to provide new solutions you might consider, you know, providing some new solutions instead of some new cliché.

I certainly enjoy Sting and his pals’ new-found appreciation of my personal autonomy and “sovereignty over my body.”  I assume they’ll be standing by me when I reject the government’s interference in my health care decisions.  Unlikely.  If you think consistency is one of their strong points, perhaps you’ve been smoking the same stuff as them.

Now, Sting was always annoying but here he is reaching new heights of crappiness and pomposity in direct proportion to his declining relevance.  It’s always a pleasure to hear some Brit mega-millionaire who glides around his English manor practicing tantric sex sound off on American domestic policy. 

Please Sting, save us!  Unleash the full intellectual firepower you’ve amassed writing forgettable smooth jazz/rock fusion tunes for people who buy their music at Starbucks.  Just because you’ve been waited on hand and foot for three decades by a coterie of professional sycophants telling you you’re wiser than Buddha and smarter than Einstein doesn’t mean it’s true. 

There may be a case for looking at our drug laws, but these nimrods don’t make it.  The most compelling points are made by the conservatives at National Review and the libertarians at Reason.  Sure, pot smokers steal your snacks, listen to Phish and sound-off with long, disjointed monologues about the miracle of hemp, but I have a hard time getting too bent out of shape by them.  Many celebrities are among them, but Sting and Soros aren’t just talking about causal stoners.  They think we ought to go open season on meth, crack and whatever else these degenerate half-wits today are ingesting.  No thanks – I’d prefer not to live with the mess you’re rich enough to ignore.

The fact is that His Stingness knows nothing – or cares nothing – about the unspeakable devastation drugs cause, particularly within the inner cities.  Instead of standing behind the one truly effective response to urban drug terror – throwing the bastards in a cell and dropping the key down the Guatemalan sinkhole – His Majesty Sting decrees that drug dealing scumbags should run free, then retreats back behind his gates and armed guards to further hone his delayed orgasm skills.

Well, Sting, let’s discuss your really keen points about why poison ought to be legal.  But let’s expand the scope of our discussion to include some other celebrities who might be able to provide us with some valuable insights.  Let’s invite Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Brad Renfro, DJ AM, and Brittany Murphy to weigh in with their points of view.  Oh wait, they’re all dead.  So are just a few others.

Like a Sean Penn who can’t help but fly into some hellhole, figuratively fellate the local anti-American strongman then jet back to Santa Monica in time for dinner at Pizzeria Mozza, Sting wanders out of his fairy-tale life for a few minutes to tell the benighted peons in the real world how they need to live their lives before retiring back inside his palace behind three layers of security.  The violence, the abuse, the wasted potential brought on by drugs mean nothing to him; what is important is his own act of scolding his lessers for failing to conform to his personal vision.

That’s Sting’s high – lording over others as if he was something more than a glorified cruise ship bassist who got lucky and didn’t have to spend his career cranking out covers of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” for Corona-swilling passengers during runs between San Diego and Puerto Vallarta on the S.S. Living Hell.  And like so many in the entertainment world, he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of possession of stupid ideas – with intent to distribute.