Month: January 2024

I never thought leopards would ban MY books

Everyone whines about the censoriousness of the left and the things you can’t say any more and all that, and sometimes the people doing that whining have a point, but from what I can see it’s mostly the right in the US that’s actually trying to stops books being made available, withdrawing them from libraries, etc. Including DICTIONARIES. But now Ron DeSantis’ war against the printed word has affected professional right-wing shit Bill O’Reilly:

Conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly fumed against a Florida school district’s decision to pull two of his books while officials determine whether they run afoul of a state law he supported.
Escambia County School District has at least temporarily removed more than 1,000 titles from its shelves because those books have been “alleged to contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct.” Those include O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus: A History and Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the law in March 2022. […]
O’Reilly said he still supports the law, but added that the removal of his books is an abuse of the law.

“This will not stand!” he also gibbered on Twitter, where he has not attracted a lot of sympathy…

The worst thing, of course, is that Billo’s books will most likely be cleared, so this will just be a temporary glitch while young people are still kept safe from Anne Frank’s diary. Still, it may be temporary but I find it kind of hilarious even so, and I’m sure that somewhere Keith Olbermann is in hysterics over this story…

Flag of convenience?

So this is what we’re getting outraged about now:

A major supermarket chain has realised certain products don’t sell very well and so they’ve decided there’s no point keeping them on shelves. I can only assume this has never happened before in human history, cos people are certainly carrying on as if that were the case; their sudden inability to purchase things they apparently weren’t purchasing anyway has driven them to madness. I first discovered the story via the estimable Terry Sedgwick, who posted this on FB:

In other words, “don’t let Woolworths tell you what to do and think, let ME tell you instead!” Needless to say, this got the dickheads on Twatter riled up and all rabble rabble rabble, and when Coles piped up to say they would be selling Oz Day merch, the dickheads just got more rabbly, and your humble scribe here was just… what the fuck is WRONG with all these people? Why do they care about this culture war bullshit? And if having Australiana matters so much to them, why do they apparently not ALREADY own it? Jesus fuck, but these people are embarrassing.

But is it just culture war bullshit (though obviously it is fully that), or is Dutts trying to distract us from something?

Peter Dutton was flown to a party at the Pilbara mine of Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, by another billionaire rich-lister, where he made a speech suggesting parents and teachers talk to children about the positives of the mining sector.
In a speech at Hancock Prospecting’s Roy Hill mine in November last year, Dutton repeatedly thanked those working in resources. He described the work carried out at the mine as a “national treasure”.
“We need to hear more parents tell their children that the schools they attend, and the cities they live in, are only possible because of the mining sector,” the federal opposition leader told the crowd.
“We need to hear more teachers tell the students that the roads, the bridges, the railways that we travel on have been constructed thanks to your sector. Too many of our teachers are telling kids to be ashamed of the fact that their parents work in the mining sector. We need to turn that around.”
Rinehart hosted the party at her iron ore mine on 22 November as part of a lavish celebration to mark national mining day – a celebration founded by Rinehart herself.

Obviously there’s nothing actually surprising about the Liberal Party and its leader being owned by Gina Rinehart, that’s been clear for years, but the fact that Dutton engaged in such an act of arse-kissing from within Gina’s pocket and seems to have more or less tried to hide the fact really makes him look like an appalling piece of shit if we ever doubted he was one. I can’t help but feel the fact that this news appears to have emerged on Wednesday and the fact that this Australia day bullshit kicked off on Thursday are connected somehow. Indeed, if I were REALLY inclined, I might even argue the supermarkets actually colluded with him to provide the distraction on his behalf…

No, YOU step back from the keyboard

This grown-up is 28 years old, if Wikipedia is correct. He drew some mockery on Bluesky yesterday, particularly in the Doctor Who department of same, for such sparkling wit as this:

I have enjoyed some superhero films but I recognise they are fundamentally limited. They are made for children. To enjoy them is not something to be proud of. Many watch such films with their children (or nieces, nephews, grandchildren, godchildren) and take pleasure in them as part of a family outing. I am speaking of those who don’t watch them with kids and treat them with the rapture and critical attention befitting a work of art. This is embarrassing.
And this is not exclusive to film. A political journalist in his forties, for instance, tweeted this on Christmas Day about the children’s TV show Doctor Who: “These four Doctor Who episodes have been an absolute delight. Witty, radical, funny, scary, thrilling… But most of all they’ve been kind.” Another started a column in the FT, no less, with the question: “Should I throw away my Doctor Who DVDs?” — and concluded by saying he would keep them.
If I still possessed a large collection of Doctor Who DVDs, no one would know about it. And “kindness” should not be used to make an aesthetic judgment; it should be the language of a teacher enforcing the conduct of a school playground, not of a person evaluating the quality of a TV show.

So a TV show demonstrating that decent human behaviour is good should not be praised for doing so? I don’t quite understand. The BS poster who I first saw talking about this nonsense offered this criticism:

I think a more pertinent point, though, is that he also doesn’t offer a definition of what he considers a “good film”. The only thing he mentions is Scorsese’s Goodfellas, which, parenthetically, was produced by Warner Bros and is consequently as much a product of the Hollywood entertainment system as those superhero movies Tomiwa and Scorsese don’t like. I know he doesn’t have room in a newspaper opinion column to offer a full theory of aesthetics, but he could at least give more of an idea of what counts as “good” for him. 70s New Hollywood? French New Wave? Italian Neorealism? Who else, apart from Scorsese? Hitchcock? Welles? Godard? Bergman? Ozu? Bresson? Fellini? Antonioni? Dreyer? Eisenstein? Herzog? Fassbinder? Wenders? Jarmusch? Lynch? Kubrick? Tarr? Brakhage? Does he even count that sort of experimental art film as film at all? I suspect not somehow.

Indeed, I suspect somehow like Tomiwa’s actual grasp of “good film” is probably a lot weaker and narrower than he’d like us to think, and I’d be curious to know if he’s actually seen anything by the people I’ve named above, and indeed if he’s even heard of some of them. I’m also curious to know what he’d consider “good books” in opposition to his blanket dismissal of all young adult fiction. What, basically, IS his actual taste? How conventional or otherwise is it? What’s the oldest film he’s ever seen? How far out is he willing to go? How obscure and obtuse does he get? How low is he willing to go? Why do I feel like he’s the sort of person who actually believes Plan 9 From Outer Space actually is the worst film ever made? Maybe I’m being uncharitable. Maybe not. I’m just tired of the culture war nonsense. For some reason this whole silliness reminds me of Werner Herzog’s quote about Jean-Luc Godard being “intellectual counterfeit money” compared to a kung-fu movie or even a porno…

Monster, She Wrote

Book #1 for 2024. I did mention I was reading a Cornell Woolrich book, but that’s part of the short story per day component of this reading plan thing I’m trying; this is the first book I’ve actually finished, whereas the Woolrich volume will likely be third or maybe even fourth by the time I finish with it.

I chose this as the non-fiction book for the month of January… the title, Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction, basically says it all; it’s a history of women authors of horror and speculative fiction from Margaret Cavendish on down to the modern day, some of whom I already knew and others I hadn’t heard of, and very few of whom I’ve actually read anything by. Kroger & Anderson are engaging guides, though I wish the book had been a bit longer and more detailed, but they do a solid job within the limits I presume the publisher imposed on them. At any rate, I’ve now got a few I should check out, and I think that once I finish the Woolrich collection I might move on to this book’s companion volume of women Weird Tales writers for my next batch of daily shorts…

Mail call

First blu-ray order of the year. Eureka was doing a sale on some of their martial arts movies, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity… so what we have is mostly upgrades of stuff I’ve had on DVD since the oughts via the old Hong Kong Legends label, except for Dreadnought which I don’t think I’ve ever owned in any form and Dead and the Deadly and One-Armed Boxer, both of which I only ever had on VHS from taping them off SBS back in the 90s. So lots of good rewatching ahead, quite a bit of early Sammo Hung in there, and now I own the latter’s legendary calligraphy scene from The Prodigal Son in HD!

The clown cries at last?

Some people are getting excited by the prospect of Jerry Lewis’ infamous The Day the Clown Cried finally being released this year. After decades of keeping the thing locked away from human sight (though the script has long circulated online), he donated it to the Library of Congress with the stipulation that they not show it before June 2024. You may have noticed that it’s now 2024, and June 2024 is just a few months away. So I’ve seen a couple of things online like this suggesting the film’s release is therefore impending.

I, on the other hand, am remaining a bit sceptical cos, apart from the fact that the LOC themselves evidently haven’t said anything on the subject, I don’t know what the actual legalities over the film are, beyond the fact that they’re complicated… Given that the thing was never actually released, I don’t know if it was copyrighted or not, or if it was then was the copyright renewed. If not, then does that make the film public domain? But what about the script, which was the real source of the film’s trouble from what I can gather?

Cos apparently Lewis’ producer, Nat Wachsberger (who was also to blame for Starcrash a few years later), never actually paid the screenplay author, Joan O’Brien, the full price for the rights to her script and so actually didn’t even have the rights to make it in the first place. So all the changes made to the script (like the characterisation of the titular clown) and the film itself were completely unauthorised, until Wachsberger finally realised maybe he should belatedly get O’Brien’s permission, and a rough cut of the film was assembled to see if she’d agree to it being released.

The answer to that question, unfortunately, turned out to be “go fuck yourselves”; O’Brien apparently found the whole thing so appalling she refused to permit its release, and though she’s no longer a direct obstacle (having died in 2004), it looks like some of the legalities are still thorny. Anyway, Wachsberger then proceeded to legally threaten Lewis, who nicked the print and locked it away so no could see it (apart from Harry Shearer, bizarrely enough), until giving it to the LOC with instructions not to show it until this year, presumably cos he knew he’d be dead by then and not have to deal with it then.

So what can the LOC actually do with it, assuming they’re planning anything at all? From what I can see, not a lot; apparently they can show it on their own premises, but anything else seems to require the Lewis estate’s permission, and I feel like they’ll be so sick of this fucking thing they’re not going to grant that easily. I feel like what’ll happen is this: LOC will hold a screening, there’ll be a bunch of film people and historians invited to it, and the film will prove to be as bad as legend suggests it is, all these people will say as much, the Lewis estate will say “Jerry told you so”, and that’ll be as far as it goes. The clown will stay crying in the vault after that, I suspect…