macphysto
Newbl Citizen
-
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by macphysto
-
While I was "sweatin' bullets" about going to Vietnam*, I read Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Both novels -- especially Trumbo's -- aggravated my anxiety and fear. Heller's satire was laudably transformed into a 1970 movie by Heller, Buck Henry, and director Mike Nichols. In comparison, Trumbo's 1971 cinematic adaptation of his allegory was, for me, less memorable and less potent. * Which I thankfully avoided, courtesy of Icky-Tray Icky-Day who pulled the U.S.A. out of 'Nam after I registered for the draft but before I was called to service.
-
To me, Rod Serling's "sermonizing" was sometimes heavy-handed and didactic (e.g., The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street). He's Alive is afflicted with the writer’s characteristic moralizing. Yet, it is redeemed by Serling's prescience and, sadly, by its timeliness and relevance during the dark, bleak, and dangerous American era of DJT.
-
Who do you regard as "Hollywood Liberals"? From the past: "The Hollywood Ten," Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, John Garfield, Katherine Hepburn, Stanley Kramer, Norman Lear, Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson, and Gale Sondergaard . . . to list but a few.. In the present: Warren Beatty, George Clooney, Jane Fonda, Mark Hamill, Spike Lee, the aforementioned Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Rob Reiner . . . among many others. Regarding V.3's swipe at the Hollywood movie industry, the fame, fortunes, and idolatry lavished on movie stars and filmmakers* . . . to quote William Shakespeare out of context, "The fault . . . is not in our stars, but in ourselves." To use another quote, "Don't hate the player. Hate the game." If Hollywood demigods and demigoddesses are outrageously adored, worshipped, exalted, and rewarded by society, the blame lies not with them but with society whose cultural values are seriously twisted. * And also showered on ridiculously overpaid and idolized "superstar" athletes and fashion models.
