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Todd Field’s Tár is the story of the rise — or perhaps I should say “social climb” — and fall of Lydia Tár, a pioneering ethnomusicologist, conductor, and the first female Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic, who is brilliantly played by Cate Blanchett. Shot on location in New York and Berlin, Tár very effectively conjures up the world of contemporary classical music, from the concert halls and conservatories to the journalistic latrine flies. (more…)
Santi di Tito, Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli, ca. 1550.
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Gregory Hood was host Greg Johnson‘s guest on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio, and they discussed James Burnham and Machiavellianism, the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, and answered YOUR QUESTIONS, and it is now ready for download and online listening. (more…)
Meat Loaf
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“We didn’t know each other, we were each other.” — Meat Loaf on Jim Steinman[1]
On Thursday, as it must to all men, death came to Marvin Lee Aday, known professionally as Meat Loaf. Mr. Loaf was perhaps an acquired taste, but he was certainly an energetic performer — on one occasion, falling off the stage, only to insist on completing his tour in a wheelchair. Despite his prodigious girth and periodic drug abuse, he more than fulfilled his Biblical three score and ten, dying at 74. (more…)
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Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999) is a science fiction classic. The setting is a devastated Earth in the far future. The premise is that humanity has been enslaved by artificial intelligences. Human beings spend our lives in what are essentially coffins while mechanical vampires drain our energy. We don’t know it, because we are asleep, dreaming that we are in a radically different world. This is the Matrix. Today we would call it a multiplayer online game.
Like many dystopias, The Matrix is actually too optimistic. The Wachowski brothers thought the human race would have to be forced into the pods. (more…)
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House of Gucci is a highly entertaining combination of comedy, tragedy, and farce, tracing the decline of the Gucci fashion empire from an Italian family business to a global capitalist brand.
House of Gucci would have been the best Martin Scorsese movie in years — if it hadn’t been directed by Ridley Scott. It has all the Scorsese touches: lots of Italians (albeit Italian-Italians rather than Italian-Americans), a plush running time, studies of characters who are seldom admirable but always interesting, (more…)
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You have to give the Left credit. They never take a day off. The eye of Sauron never blinks. They are frenzied and relentless in their attempts to overthrow our civilization. They softened us up for a long time, rotting away our character and identity by promoting vice, cynicism, and nihilism — all while playing the victim. Now that we are too weak to resist and too deracinated to care, they have launched a ferocious campaign of iconoclasm against our forefathers’ heroes: Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, etc. (more…)
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Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948) is one of the greatest Westerns. Red River has it all: charismatic performances by John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, a solid ensemble cast to back them up, a beautifully economical script, dramatic black-and- white cinematography, and a surprisingly good score from Dimitri Tiomkin, who had always struck me as a hack. All of these elements are masterfully drawn together by Hawks. His sense of pacing and visual drama never fails. He grabs your attention with stark contrasts between dark and light, vast landscapes and closeups. He’ll sweep you up in action, then stop you dead in wonder. (more…)
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Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, Part I is now in theatres. I can’t recommend it. It isn’t terrible. It is merely mediocre. I found it dull to the eyes, grating to the ears, and a drag on my patience. Villeneuve spends 156 minutes and only gets halfway through the novel. David Lynch told the whole story in 137 minutes. Of course audiences are willing to sit through long movies if they are really good: Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance. But this film isn’t in that league. (more…)
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No Time to Die is an excellent Bond film. It belongs in the company of Casino Royale and Skyfall and quite self-consciously reaches for the heights of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is arguably the best Bond film ever.
I was especially looking forward to No Time to Die because — although it is very much a minority opinion — my favorite Bond actor is Daniel Craig. (more…)
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When I first saw Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987), it struck me as a remake of Doctor Zhivago. Both narratives begin in glamorous and archaic empires that fall to Communist revolutions. Of course, that could just be due to the fact that the Chinese Revolution was something of a remake of the Russian Revolution. But there are parallels specific to the two films, both of which depict Communism as recapitulating the old forms of despotism but as vulgar and brutal farces, stripped of all refinement. (more…)
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David Lean’s epic anti-Communist romance Doctor Zhivago (1965) is a great and serious work of art. Doctor Zhivago was initially panned by the critics — probably not because it is a bad film, but because it was very bad for Communism. Nevertheless, it was immensely popular. It is still one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, adjusted for inflation. It also won five Oscars — for Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Bolt), Best Original Score (Maurice Jarre), Best Cinematography (Freddie Young), Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. (more…)
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Brad Bird is the director of three classic animated films: The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007), as well as the blockbuster sequel The Incredibles 2 (2018). The Incredibles is a superhero film that also pays affectionate homage to the spy movies of the 1960s, especially classic Bond. (more…)