I think I’ll be sticking to surreal food

Kennedy’s going to be furious that someone at the HHS department put this out without including Ivermectin… but I must say this poster is interestingly time after this one appeared last month:

This… thing was posted by the White House itself, as you may see. Who knew there even was a war on protein? I presume it’s one of those wars Trump keeps insisting he ended…

This, incidentally, is George Eastman in Joe D’Amato’s Anthropophagus. If you know why Kennedy in the above photo is lit to look someone from a bad Italian cannibal movie, well, you’re doing better than me, cos damned if I understand it…

THIS bullshit again?

Premier Chris Minns says Newcastle Writers Festival ‘crazy’ to invite author Randa Abdel-Fattah

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns says the Newcastle Writers Festival is “crazy” to invite Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah to speak, after she was removed from a similar event in Adelaide.
Dr Abdel-Fattah was uninvited from Adelaide Writers’ Week, part of the Adelaide Festival, last month after pressure from the South Australian government.
That decision set off a chain of events resulting in the resignation of the Adelaide Festival’s entire board, and the writing event being cancelled.
Mr Minns said on Friday he did not agree with the Newcastle Writers Festival’s decision to book the author, but he would not intervene.
“I don’t know why these organisations do it,” he said.
“I think they are crazy to invite that author when you think about how divisive it is, and how difficult it would be for the organisation as a result of the notoriety.”

To give him credit, Minns does seem to be handling the situation differently to Peter Malinauskas, at least insofar as I can see he hasn’t mentioned Bondi yet. And, to be sure, the event organiser has also said that Minns hasn’t put pressure on them to cancel Abdel-Fattah’s invitation and that they wouldn’t be doing so… but whatever, apart from that, it shows that not many lessons have been learned from the Adelaide debacle, especially when it comes to, frankly, not looking like you’re specifically targeting this individual AGAIN for the heinous crime of having a Palestinian background (I mean, I don’t know that Randa Abdel-Fattah is necessarily a great or even good person as such, but her ancestry does seem to be the problem people have with her as much as anything she’s actually said)… and the timing could’ve been better given that Israel’s president Isaac Herzog—who holds all Gazans responsible for the October 7 attack and said it was their fault for not overthrowing Hamas—is coming to town, though whether or not that’s the work of the festival or of Minns I don’t know. Either way, nice to see we’re still “avoiding” divisive debates in this country…

Oh no, we made Edolf sad

I’m in an admittedly odd situation for a pensioner, in that I am actually reasonably comfortably off thanks to my parents, whose decades of hard work and effort basically, you know, paid off for me as much as them… I inherited the house I live in with no mortgage, plus their various investments, so that even though the pension leaves a fair bit to be desired I’m still fairly secure that way. I’ve got a housemate who covers quite a few expenses, so I don’t actually have a lot of expenditure in that area either. Basically, I’ve got enough, and I’m relatively happy with that. Unlike some people:

Oh, BABY, that’s tragic. Richest man on Earth and he’s still miserable. And he wants sympathy, apparently, and he can fuck the fuck off with that. You don’t want happiness, anyway; what money does buy is power, and that’s what you want more than anything (with the possible exception of love, and money won’t buy you that either, not the real thing anyway. You have to be capable of it yourself first to deserve it from others, and Edolf has frankly demonstrated his lack of ability there).

I can’t imagine having as much money as this individual and still not being happy with that… I mean, money doesn’t buy me happiness per se either, but it covers the costs of the things that do… I’ve got enough, like I said, to make me happy, and this cunt doesn’t despite having about 400,000 times my wealth. Maybe it’s just that I’ve never really wanted a lot, whereas he clearly does and has the proportionately greater wherewithal to achieve those things, and he’s still not happy. And I’m kind of glad about that somehow.

Well there’s a shock

Melania film earns $7m in US, strongest documentary debut in over a decade

Remarkably, Melania seems to have actually done some business after all, even better than predicted (remember, $5m was the most optimistic amount forecasters expected before it came out), and still little enough to be believable; if this were White House propaganda, Mushroom Cock would be calling it the best opening weekend for any film ever and we would all know it was a lie… but $7m feels honest and plausible. From the article:

A statement from the head of Amazon MGM Studios’ domestic theatrical distribution, Kevin Wilson, said the company was “very encouraged by the strong start and positive audience response” and reiterated the early box office results had exceeded expectations.
Referred to a planned follow-up documentary series about the first lady, Wilson’s statement also said: “This momentum is an important first step in what we see as a long-tail lifecycle for both the film and the forthcoming docu-series, extending well beyond the theatrical window and into what we believe will be a significant run for both on our service.”
Amazon says it operates on a different economic system to a traditional film studio, offsetting the costs of a theatrical release and promotion for distribution to 200 million subscribers to its Prime Video service.

Yeah, but 200 million people aren’t going to watch this shit, and $7m still isn’t that much better than the forecast $5m. If they were expecting a $50m opening weekend and got $70m instead, that would be rather more notable. This additional series alluded to above has been mentioned before but for some reason it’s not being hyped nearly as much as the film has been, and I somehow doubt this long-tail lifecycle for the film and the series will actually come about… the buzz around the “documentary” has been amusing, but I expect people will have lost interest within a few weeks at most.

The article also talks about Brett Ratner:

Ratner, the director – who had otherwise largely retreated from Hollywood after numerous sexual misconduct allegations during the #MeToo movement – was pointedly asked at the Melania premiere if he felt he was part of a larger quid pro quo.
“That’s ridiculous, but it’s OK, I’ll answer,” he said. “I can tell you right now, if we were audited and they said, ‘How much was spent on this movie?’ This movie is one of the most expensive movies – documentaries – in the genre ever made.”
“It wasn’t about getting rich. I mean, I think the Trumps are wealthy and successful enough. This is about giving me the ability to hire the best crew in the world, to not only score the film with the best composer … I mean, when you see the movie, you’ll go, ‘Oh, we see where the money went now.’ This wasn’t about corruption. Melania only cared about one thing – making a great movie for audiences.”

The question of why she didn’t pay for it herself if she cared so much about it was clearly left unasked or otherwise ignored.

Oh it’s capable, all right

Spotted this on Bluesky, where someone in the ensuing comments noted this nonsense could only have been written by someone with a name like “Barton Swaim”. I can only assume brother Barton has never heard of the “business plot” nor indeed studied much history in general, else he might have known better than this. America put a fascist into the White House, then it did it a second time. Sinclair Lewis probably didn’t make the famous statement credited to him about fascism coming to America wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross, but he or whoever did wasn’t far off:

The reviews are in

FUCK.

German-occupied Poland, summer of 1943. More than anything, Hedwig, an indefatigable mother of five, wants to keep her well-organised life as is. After all, she has worked her fingers to the bone to create a fragrant slice of paradise to raise her children, and nothing will change that. If only her husband, the distinguished SS officer and Auschwitz commander Rudolf Hoess, weren’t always burdened by his duties. But perfection is a fleeting illusion. As the oblivious life of the commandant’s wife unravels in cloudless bliss, Rudolf finds himself swamped with work, saddled with testing a new ventilation design and overseeing the installation of a highly effective Topf and Sons multi-muffle, non-stop incineration oven system. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that just a hair’s breadth away from the peaceful and idyllic Höss household, the unimaginable horrors of the Final Solution were unfolding in full swing. And as noisome fumes and muffled, blood-curdling noises blemish Hedwig’s verdant utopia, a question emerges. When evil becomes banal and apathy requires no effort, what separates man from beast?

That is the IMDB summary of the film The Zone of Interest. Obviously there’s been a lot of comparison with the Krasnov regime to the schöne Zeiten of Germany in the 1930s/40s, but I think Xan Brooks just drew the bleakest and nastiest one, and he only gets nastier after that:

This mood of cosy conviviality extends all the way through the opening credits; at which point the chill descends and the novocaine kicks in, as the film’s star and executive producer proceeds to guide us – with agonising glacial slowness – through the preparations for her husband’s second presidential inauguration. She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the “candlelit dinner” to the “starlight ball”, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. “Candlelight and black tie and my creative vision,” she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. “As first lady, children will always remain my priority,” she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house.
No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn’t it. It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.

And, a bit more locally, this critic saw it was eight other people. Yes, as many as that:

As I emerge from the cinema, I have the strange feeling that I have not only learned nothing but lost brain cells.
“What did you think?” I ask the elderly lady. “I loved it, wow!” she cries.
I pin down the only two people who didn’t see the movie alone. The couple tell me they’re a fan of Trump, and of Melania, but they found the experience too much like a “PR vehicle”.
“It’s not as insightful as I thought it would be,” one says.
“I’ve loved Melania for 15 years … and I feel like it was made to make Trump look better,” the other says.
“As much as it was for her, it was for him.”
Isn’t everything.

Still, at least it’s actually showing here, which is more than can be said for some countries:

Cinemas in South Africa will not be showing the documentary about US First Lady Melania Trump that is due to be released around the world on Friday.
The South African distributor Filmfinity has decided not to release it, its head of sales and marketing told the New York Times and South Africa-based website News24. The company was not explicit about the reasons behind the move.
The film, Melania, is not promoted on the websites of the country’s main cinema chains. One Cape Town independent cinema contacted by the BBC said that it was called by Filmfinity and told not to list it.
Relations between the US and South Africa have seriously deteriorated over the past year. […]
“Based on recent developments, we’ve taken the decision to not go ahead with a theatrical release in territory,” Filmfinity’s Thobashan Govindarajulu is quoted as saying by the New York Times.
He told News24 that the decision had been taken “given the current climate”.
The executive did not elaborate on what he meant by “recent developments” or “current climate”.

Trump’s insistence that there’s a “white genocide” happening in South Africa and Cyril Ramaphosa’s letting it happen has nothing to do with it, I’m sure. In its way, this is the best review of all, I suppose…

EDIT (late night Feb. 3rd): There’s been a correction to the Xan Brooks review:

Which answers the question I did have about why Brooks still gave the film one star instead of none if he thought it was that heinous, i.e. 0/5 was the intended rating. Bloody subeditors, eh…

Melania goes down?

Remember that “documentary” about the current Mrs Trump? It is now bidding fair to be one of the worst box office tankers of all time, having cost an obscene $40m (which NO documentary should ever cost; apparently nwarly three-quarters of that amount went to its subject) plus an alleged $35m extra for marketing. It looks like it will return almost none of that investment. From the Graun:

UK ticket sales for Melania are so far “soft”, according to Tim Richards, the chief executive of Vue, one of the country’s biggest cinema operators. Just one ticket has been sold for the first 3.10pm screening on Friday at its flagship Islington branch in London, while two have been booked for 6pm.
At the time of publication, all seats remained available for the 28 screenings of Melania at the Blackburn, Castleford and Hamilton branches.
The picture was slightly rosier at the Cineworld in Wandsworth, which had sold four tickets, while five backrow seats were also booked at the Cineworld in Broughton. […]
One industry analyst told the Guardian they suspected the underlying strategy was “four-walling”, meaning distributors pay a set fee to each cinema if they agree to play a certain title.
This would explain why so many exhibitors – which usually adopt a revenue-sharing model with distributors – have agreed to take on a movie with such modest financial prospects at a time when award-nominated films are vying for screen time.
“I’d be amazed if box office gets reported on this title,” added the pundit, who wished to remain anonymous.

I’m sure the box office will be reported… it’s just that the report will be a complete lie. The regime is so full of shit about everything else, it’s not going to be honest about this either… It is being shown in Australia, too, but, per Channel 9, it’s doing about as badly here as in the UK:

At its one screening this Friday at Sydney’s Hoyts Warringah Mall, not a single ticket has been sold. In Cronulla, one person is going.
At three cinemas in Melbourne, nobody has reserved a seat. Two tickets have been sold at a fourth.
Most people don’t buy movie tickets several days ahead of time, so the true reception won’t be known until Friday.
But a lack of pre-sales does indicate a lack of interest.

The other thing the film has lacked, apparently, is critic previews, which is never a good sign for any film and is a worse sign than normal for this particular one. And the behind the scenes stuff that’s coming out thanks to Rolling Stone is illuminating, too:

One person familiar with the production estimated that some two-thirds of the crew members who worked on the film in New York had requested not to have their names formally credited on the documentary. A separate person who will be credited on the film said that, after experiencing the first year of Trump’s second term, they now wish they had not put their name on it. “I’m much more alarmed now than I was a year ago,” that person said.
People who worked on the film said they had fewer problems working with Melania Trump herself, who was described as friendly and very engaged in the process, than they did with the director, Brett Ratner. (“She was totally nice,” one person said. “She was the opposite of Brett Ratner.”) […]
“I feel a little bit uncomfortable with the propaganda element of this,” one member of the production team said. “But Brett Ratner was the worst part of working on this project.” That person said they weren’t aware of Ratner’s involvement until just days before filming began, and they would not have accepted the job if they’d known.

Ah, Brett Ratner, the accused sexual predator who hasn’t made a film since 2014 cos he fled to Israel after those accusations… sex pests look after one another, don’t they… That’s another thing putting people off, apart from the film’s subject matter… I do see some comments saying not to write it off, it could do more than the expected $5m the most optimistic prediction was suggesting; that Reagan hagiography a couple of years ago took some $30m at the box office despite the critical drubbing it got because enough of the Cult went to see it out of sacred duty. Mind you, that still wasn’t enough for that film to make a profit, and I don’t see the Melania thing achieving that either… what, $75m allegedly spent on this thing in an industry where a film usually has to bring in three or so times its cost before it’s considered a profitable success? I don’t see a documentary doing that, especially this one, even on Amazon Prime where it will soon be dumped.

But so what, really? What is $75 million to Jeff Bezos, a man with a fortune just shy of $250 billion? Small change at best, three ten-thousandths of his overall wealth. The Melania film will probably do OK on Prime, but will almost certainly never recover its costs cos the Cult isn’t that big, but Bezos will never notice and profit wasn’t the point here anyway: it was only ever a colossal suck-up to the regime, for Bezos to curry favour with Mushroom Cock, and as long as the latter has his monument that’s all that matters. I do suspect, mind you, that a large part of whatever audience the film gets will wind up being liberals hate-watching it; I just hope that, like me, if they do that, they also plan to pirate the thing rather than pay for it…