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Is there anything left to say other than…. (more…)

Dead End?

The film with Joel McCrea and what finally became known of as The Dead End Kids?

Saw it … in its entirety … for the first time, two nights ago.

The authors, of course, Sidney Kingsley and Lillian Hellman had been, at the time of writing and production at any rate (mid 1930’s), the early radical Leftists of Hollywood. John Steinbeck’s successful but highly controversial Grapes of Wrath was yet to come.

Dead End (1937)

It dawned on me how Dead End might be the best starting point for a history of Hollywood film that eventually ended up producing an unashamed love song to American Communists in Warren Beatty’s Reds.

If you haven’t seen Dead End or don’t recall the story instantly, it’s a tribute to the Marxist theory that what creates crime is poverty.

The Latin American drug cartels and the Mafia … they are not comprised of poor people. (more…)

After a week that will go down in history as the moment Republicans finally stood up for themselves, comics are not laying off John McCain’s former running mate just yet. Bill Maher said that Iran was propped up by oil revenue and run by a religious whacko, just like Alaska. Letterman, despite frequent jokes about the amount of hate mail he has been receiving, couldn’t help mentioning that Gay Pride week was the only time of year when you can see hundreds of men dressed up like Sarah Palin.

The big topics of the week were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the presidential fly killing:

The election of Mahmoud was compared by the talk show hosts alternately to the 2000 Presidential and the 2008 Minnesota Senate elections. Fallon claimed that now that his opponent lost, he’ll go on to make a documentary about Global Warming.  David Letterman actually did a joke almost every single night, changing the punchline from Florida voting machines, to Pat Buchanan, Al Gore, Al Franken and Jeb Bush.  Bill Maher used Norm Coleman then criticized his audience for not knowing who he was talking about. The funniest line was Ferguson’s who claimed that Iranian politics have finally gotten as corrupt as Chicago. (more…)