The_Film-Flam_Man
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Posts posted by The_Film-Flam_Man
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> {quote:title=NAZIE wrote:}{quote}
> hi my name is NAZIE,
I thought we beat those guys in World War II.
Are you, by any chance, living in Argentina?
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Appalling.
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I met him once, in the mid-1980s. If there was something special about him, it's that for four years he was able to work alongside the universally-despised Bob Crane during the making of Cummings's TV series Love That Bob! without killing him (that happy chore was, of course, left to others).
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> {quote:title=fxreyman wrote:}{quote}
> As far as you are concerned......It would seem as though you might want to go back and study our nation's history once again or for that matter take a refresher course.
>
> Several times in our history our nation went to war totally unprepared. Especially World War II.
>
> In that conflict we were caught with our pants down at Pearl Harbor, and it took us about one year until we were on the offensive, especially in the Pacific theater.
No, it's you who needs the refresher course.
Comparisons between the attack of December 7, 1941, and 9/11/2001 are totally inapt. It was a legal, Constitutionally-sanctioned war when Congress declared war on Germany and Japan on December 8, 1941. Further attacks by the Japanese (who also simultaneously attacked the Phillipines, Guam, Wake Island and the Alaska's Aleutian Islands) were imminent. As you point out, we were confronted with nations that had been arming and training for war for the better part of a decade, and we had no choice but to go on a war-footing immediately.
By contrast, the terrorists and their Taliban hosts in Afghanistan did not pose an immediate threat of subsequent attacks. Those attacks were going to be prevented by increasing security at home (including having the president and secretary of state actually read the President's Daily Briefing as to threats detected by the nation's intelligence agencies, and acting on them), not by filling Afghanistan with U.S. and British troops that were too few in number, poorly equipped for desert operations, and without the number of intelligence assets needed to fight a largely mobile guerrilla force on its own soil.
In short, Donald Rumsfeld's self-serving "You go to war with what you've got" strategy got a lot of our service personnel killed and wounded needlessly, without a lot to show for it. Several months' more preparation and training would have yielded fewer casualties and far better results.
As for Iraq, it was also embarked upon with insufficient preparation, as per Rumsfeld's insane dictum, sapping the effort in Afghanistan of the troops, materiel and funds needed to make a difference there. That the Iraq conflict was entered into on the basis of falsified "intelligence," the Bushies' wishful thinking, and the Neocons' long-planned goal of "rectifying" George H.W. Bush's "mistake" of not overthrowing Saddam Hussein, is almost irrelevant at this point. If any war could ever be described as being made of empty calories, Iraq is it.
> And the main reason for all of that unpreparedness was the simple fact that our government at >the time did not equip our armed forces well enough and did not institute the draft until it was >almost too late. All of this was happening even though Europe had been at war since 1939.
>
> Oh, and Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. So there were plenty of warning signs, however our government chose to ignore these truths.
No, the "government" did not "ignore" these "truths": it was the isolationist members of Congress, mainly Republicans and some Southern Democrats, who, during the mid-late-1930s, blocked Franklin Roosevelt's every attempt to re-arm the U.S., derided Winston Churchilll's ominous predictions of war that would eventually find its way to American shores, and provide Great Britain with military hardware and meet the gathering threat of the Axis Powers head-on.
This is basic history, and you've learned nothing of it, of from it. Your self-righteous ignorance is abysmal.
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> {quote:title=JakeHolman wrote:}{quote}
> My post was to do nothing more than honor and respect those men and women who gave an oath to defend and serve this great country.
You're not honoring anybody, nor the principles on which this country was founded, if you whitewash recent history by pretending none of the institutional disrespect for our military that the previous administration engaged in never happened.
It's a disrespect that actually resulted in the deaths of U.S. service personnel, beginning with wars for which the military was not given the proper amount of preparation time, the resources and manpower it needed, and those troops the hardened vehicles, ordnance and body armor they required to stay alive and perform their mission.
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> {quote:title=JakeHolman wrote:}{quote}
> *Freedom is not free*
Sometimes it?s very free, and an irresistible bargain, besides: George W. Bush and the Republican Congress wouldn?t even raise taxes to pay for their two on-the-fly wars ? the first time in U.S. history that the American people have not been called upon to make even that slight sacrifice for the protection of their Liberty.
What did Bush ask them to do to defeat the terrorists? Go shopping.
Heaven help us all.
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> {quote:title=StuartESGardner wrote:}{quote}
> *This was originally released in widescreen with a ratio of 1.85:1, but every video release I'm aware of and every television broadcast has been full frame / pan and scan / chop and crop. Not even TCM has been able to give the film a proper presentation.*
The simplest solution is to merely re-title the film "Some of Me."
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To hell with that! Where's Errol's real epic paean to the island: CUBAN REBEL GIRLS?
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> {quote:title=moviejoe79 wrote:}{quote}
>I just have to say, does it surprise anyone that Mankiewicz is left wing? Most people in the Hollywood community are, and even though he's probably at the very bottom of the rung as far as the Hollywood community goes, he's probably no exception.
What can objectively be described only as probably mild liberalism is "left wing" only to those who are far right-wing.
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}
> CITIZEN KANE was not really Welles' debut. Sort of like the "Rookie of the Year" award in baseball. What constitutes a "rookie"?
It's very simple: KANE was the first narrative feature film directed by Welles. To use your own analogy, documentaries and shorts (as in Too Much Johnson, the film-within-a-play Welles made to screen during performances of his Mercury Theatre production of William Gillette?s 1894 comedy) are the minor leagues, plain and simple, and have no bearing on the "rookie's" performance in the Majors.
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> {quote:title=cinemafan wrote:}{quote}
> ok everyone, quit your bickering and tell me what those "necklaces" were around the Yankee pitchers' necks.
All eunuchs wear 'em.
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> {quote:title=baby wrote:}{quote}
> after Capricorn One he made statements about how our government lies then brings up .like the events over the last 8 years.what was that supposed to mean ben!!!. why not the last 10 months with the lies about health care .clunkers for cash . $1 trillion economic stimulus package wasnt supposed to let unemployment rate above 8 per cent.well ben tell us more,left wing propaganda
The lies about health care are being spread by the health insurance companies, and their bought-and-paid-for lackeys in Congress. "Cash for Clunkers" got a lot of polluting, unsafe cars off the road, and put a lot of money into car-manufacturers' and dealers' pockets.
Economists said that $1 trillion wasn't a big enough stimulus for an economy the size of the United States', that its inadequacy meant it would take a long time for its effects to be felt in the job market (always a lagging indicator), and less than one-half the money's actually been spent, yet, anyway, so what do you expect for only about 1/4 of what actually needed to be committed to prime the nation's pump, anyway?
You just want to gripe. Your views and comments aren't based on any data, just your preconceived prejudices. It would never occur to you to really examine the intractable mess created by the previous administration and Republican Congress, a mess they'd love to make even worse by giving their beloved rich friends and Big Business even more tax cuts, while the rest of us go to hell in the proverbial handcart.
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}
> So why did Miss Wonderly hire Miles Archer, and then kill him a few hours later?
Why does Auric Goldfinger bother to tell all the gang bosses he's collected at his Kentucky farm his scheme for robbing Fort Knox, only to immediately gas them to death just for the hell of it (while sending boss Solo off to be shot by Odd Job and then crushed inside the Lincoln Continental, just because he demanded his money upfront. Why not just gas him with the others)?
Utterly illogical, all of it, to the point of being inane, but it's the movies: the writers need their set-pieces into which they can cram a lot of exposition, and they expect that the audience wiull be so engaged that they won't notice (and, in the case of the great, ever-watchable GOLDFINGER, they're right).
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> {quote:title=JakeHolman wrote:}{quote}
> *Pride. Power. Pinstripes.
Sorry, but you're describing the bankers at Goldman Sachs.
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Why even ask? Everybody takes a back seat to Orson Welles for CITIZEN KANE.
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Neither are drunks, Mr Bender.
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> {quote:title=ugaarte wrote:}{quote}
> TED HEALY
> ____________
>
> I've always seen this guy in a 'Bad' Light.
>
> Being the Lead of the Stooge Team,
> Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Shemp Howard &
> later, Jerome 'Curly' Howard . . .
> Ted Healy would Verbally & Physically Abuse
> them as Part of the Vaudvillian Act.
>
> According to Wikpedia, when the Team starred in,
> 'Soup to Nuts', FOX offered the 3 Stooges Contracts
> without Healy. When Healy found out he told
> FOX that the 3 Stooges were his Employees, thus
> causing FOX to withdraw their Offer . . .
>
> When the Stooges found out what had happened,
> they left Healy and began their Act on their own.
> Healy Threatened to 'Bomb' any Theatre that allowed
> the Stooges to Perform.
>
> The 3 Stooges Finally made a 'Clean' Break from Ted Healy
> due to his Alcoholism & Abrasiveness.
They were, literally, Healy's Stooges. Without knowledge of that, the name "The Three Stooges" really makes no sense, since any stooge has to be somebody's stooge.
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> {quote:title=scsu1975 wrote:}{quote}
> Let's be fair. They won the French Revolution - but then again, they were fighting the French.
Who is "they?"
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It does. Beyond that, it preserves the purity of the game the way it was conceived. There is nothing so coveted in baseball as the so-called "five-tool player" (someone who excels at hitting for power, for average, running, throwing and fielding. Willie Mays is a classic example of a five-tool player, and it's a measure of how rare they are that we remember so vividly a player like him who retired thirty-five years ago). It's also a measure of the current sad state of the game (as it exists in the AL) that team rosters reserve space for one- or two-tool players who are limited to that by design. If the DL's are one- or two-dimensional, they cannot help but make the game as played in that league one- or two-dimensional, as well.
As I said, such "players" are eunuchs (though whores is, perhaps, an equally apt description).
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> {quote:title=ugaarte wrote:}{quote}
>But looking over your Response Again,
> I Realized 'Brief Encounter' IS the Name of the Movie.
You thought, maybe, it was referring to a Fruit of the Loom ad?
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"I don't pray. Kneeling bags my nylons."
...Lorraine Minosa (Jan Sterling) to Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) in ACE IN THE HOLE
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Guys who earn a living as designated hitters and pitchers who don't bat are the eunuchs of baseball, all of whom have been emasculated -- their balls cut off in more ways than one -- though by their own choice, which makes it all the more grotesque and pitiful. They're not players, they're not athletes, they're not men.
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> {quote:title=skimpole wrote:}{quote}
> And with the same idea, what 10 films provide the essence of France? (As opposed to its history?)
The titles are irrelevant; all you need to know is that every one of them was directed by Jerry Lewis.
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I think that by merely nominating the most American of films, one automatically establishes a standard against which all others must be measured, thereby making the other nine rather irrelevant.
As such, I think that the Billy Wilder-Walter Newman-Lesser Samuels ACE IN THE HOLE is the quintessential American movie in that it states categorically and fearlessly that everything previously said about the very society that created it is a lie.
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We know you're cloning blue-eyed, black-haired little boys and placing them with domineering step-fathers and over-protective step-mothers, Herr Doktor.