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The 2009 French film A Prophet, directed by Jacques Audiard, is one of the best prison/crime films (it contains elements of both) I have seen in a long time. In its gritty realism, it is a throwback to the greatest prison films of bygone eras. (more…)
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2018 qualifications: While I still stand by the general points made in this essay, both the world and me personally are very different from what they were in 2011. First, I am less certain about 9/11 not being an “inside job” than I was then. (more…)
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On Friday, July 8, 2011, the 135th and last-ever space shuttle mission, carried out by the shuttle Atlantis, is being launched. What many Americans don’t seem to realize yet is that this effectively marks the end of a half-century of America’s adventure into space which began with John F. Kennedy’s call for America to land men on the Moon in his famous 1961 speech. (more…)
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The flap caused in May 2011 at the Cannes Film Festival by Danish film director Lars von Trier is no doubt destined to share the same fate as other racial-toned public outbursts from celebrities in recent years, when the lies hiding the realities of modern life in the West are momentarily torn back so that the tensions lying underneath are savagely revealed. I am thinking, of course, of such incidents as the Michael Richards “nigger” incident at a comedy club in 2006 or Mel Gibson’s drunken “Jew” outburst to a policeman during the same year, among others. (more…)