Y’all know your political movies!
Archive for Deborah Lipp
It’s like some kind of tic
Giuliani has moved beyond being the “Mayor of 9/11” and of playing the 9/11 card tastelessly and often. He now simply says it over and over. I think he has 9/11 topping on his breakfast cereal.
Mentioning it—virtually randomly—in response to Hillary’s “emotionalism” today, and last week in response to his Iowa caucus loss; I mean, what is that except some kind of mental deficit?
Jesus H. Christ.
Tuesday Trivia: Political Movies
Well, y’know, New Hampshire Primaries. We have a theme going.
1. A prop campaign button from this film is on display at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History in Washington. It is on display with several authentic campaign buttons.
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #1).
2. “Nice thing about you, Joe, is that you can sound like a liberal, but at heart you’re an American.”
Solved by Melville (comment #10) and Barbs (comment #11).
3. “There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off.”
Solved by Hazel (comment #7).
4. Because the Boy Scouts of America objected to the politics of this film, the fictitious “Boy Rangers” were used.
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #1).
5. This film about the rise and fall of a South American political figure features a scene in which a group of soldiers shower with their underwear on.
Solved by Melville (comment #6).
6. “You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year.”
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #1).
7. John Wayne was offered the lead in this film, but refused it in a heated letter to his agent, saying it “smears the machinery of government for no purpose of humor or enlightenment.”
Solved by Melville (comment #8).
Thoughts on the primaries
It’s galling to me that in a Democratic field that has, for the first time, a woman and an African-American and a Latino, the candidate with whom I most align on the issues is a white Southern male. But there you are.
Hillary Clinton is not my candidate, but if she wins the election, I think she’ll be a good president. Not ideal, but good. I was moved by the passion and commitment evidenced in her “display of emotion,” and being a girly girl, I’m not afraid of emotion, nor do I think that it’s inconsistent with toughness or clarity of mind.
John Edwards is my candidate, but the sexism he displayed when asked to respond to Hillary’s “emotionalism” is appalling.
I enjoy watching Keith Olberman very much, but I’m stunned at how visciously he criticized Hillary last night for daring to compare herself positively to Obama. An election is a competition, in which one person wins and others lose, is she really expected not to think she’s the best candidate for the job? Is she expected to campaign for Obama or what?
One final thing: Obama is not my candidate. Nonetheless, the little dance he did on Oprah kinda turned me on. Mea culpa.
Too active for love?
This morning on the way to work, I was stopped at a red light and saw two vanity plates directly in front of me, side-by-side: TOOACT1V and 1TRULOVE.
It felt like a coded message that I didn’t understand.
Monday Movie Review: Starstruck
Starstruck (1982) 10/10
Aspiring singer Jackie (Jo Kennedy) and her aggressive young cousin Angus (Ross O’Donovan) will do anything to make Jackie a star. Can they win the big prize money on a pop show competition in time to pay Jackie’s mom’s debt, and save the family pub?
Starstruck delights me and thrills me and makes me all giddy inside. Roberta and I saw it in the theater in 1982 and we fell mad in love with it, and then it disappeared. No one saw it or had really much heard of it since. We each bought the soundtrack and played it to death. And now I’ve got the special edition DVD and I am so pleased to be able to report that I wasn’t wrong in 1982, it’s as wonderful as I remembered and more so.
There’s only one description for Starstruck, and I’ve been using it for twenty-five years: It’s an Australian New Wave Andy Hardy musical. Save mom’s store (pub) by singing in the big show with fun musical numbers and oh, look a romance! So it was gratifying to see the extras, where director Gillian Armstrong and writer Stephen MacLean describe it in exactly those terms.
So what else can I say? It’s a brightly colored, delightfully homey indie film, that was just a little before its time. Had it been released in 1983 or 1984, I think it would have been a hit. It was MTV style before MTV, funky Aussie family life before Muriel’s Wedding, with distinctive production design by Rocky Horror’s Brian Thompson.
There’s something about it that’s campy, except that campy is the wrong word. It’s the word that comes to mind for something that’s over the top, a little surreal, and very playful. But camp suggests sarcasm or mockery or so-bad-it’s-good, and there’s only one scene that goes down that road even a little. It’s just…fun. And inviting. It’s a movie that wants you to step into its world and enjoy the ride.
The cast is all unknowns and newcomers, and sometimes the acting is a little rough around the edges, but again, everyone is having fun, and the performers all have enormous conviction. They throw themselves into their roles with abandon.
The subplots are throwaway, in exactly the right way for a musical. Jackie and Angus are “Siamese cousins;” Angus’s mother is dead (I think?) and his father abandoned him, so he and Jackie have lived together as siblings since he was ten (he’s 14, she’s 18). They are delightful together, full of in-jokes and shticks that feel authentically silly. He fancies himself a music promoter, and comes up with bold and outrageous schemes to make Jackie famous. Jackie is clothing-obsessed, boy-crazy, and loves to sing, but pretty clearly wouldn’t know how to promote herself without her cousin.
One night Jackie gets on-stage in a local battle of the bands, and ends up spending the night with a guitar player from another band. It was a one-nighter for her, but he tracks her down when one of Angus’s schemes gets her on the local news. Meanwhile, the scheme brings her to the attention of the host of a local music show, and she’s after the big prize money as well as the host. There’s also a financial threat to the bar, a romance for Jackie’s mother, and more. It all adds to the frantic pacing but it’s never hard to follow.
The musical numbers are joyful and dynamic and memorable.
Rating systems are weird. Is it really a 10 out of 10? What it is, is strongly recommended. Go! See! This! Movie!
Sunday Meditation: The Glowing Pearl
This is another expanded grounding and centering meditation. There is a section at the end for extending it outward for a group meditation. If you were working in a group, one person would read aloud (or speak from memory).
Begin by being aware of your breathing, and as you breathe deeply, in and out, with long, cleansing breaths, allow yourself to feel the movement of breath in your body.
As you breathe, notice the breath moving through your human body. Become aware that you have a body, that you are a human being and of the Earth.
You are also a being of Spirit. Notice your center, the place where spirit resides in your body. It is round and glowing with the light of your spirit. Notice the beauty of its shimmering glow. It is iridescent white, like a pearl.
Feel the glow extend through your body. With each breath, the glow fills you more deeply. The glow extends to the tips of your fingers and toes, to the top of your head and the ends of your hair, and at the core of it remains the bright pearl of your center, shimmering and shining, bathing you in sacredness and peace.
In your life, there are challenges, blocks, hardships. Notice again that your center is a pearl, and see the pearl forming its beautiful shell around those challenges, making them beautiful and perfect. Just as an oyster turns its irritations into pearls, so your pearl center can transform your problems into precious gems.
Allow yourself simply to bask in the light.
(For a group)
Now notice you are in a circle of such glows. It is a beautiful necklace of pearls, bound together in a strand, united and individual, and glowing as one.
Catblogging hold
Until I get that USB port fixed, I’m not uploading new photos. Rest assured, they’re still pretty cute.
Hiding in Plain Sight
So, the other day I was talking about public Paganism and its effect on the tenor of Paganism in general. Gus diZerega worries that an ecstatic religion is becoming staid in the process of being made palatable for a rapidly growing and increasingly public Pagan populace.
I think there is a natural balance that any religious population will achieve. I don’t know what the percentages are, but I think they’re more-or-less static, whether you’re Pagan or Christian or Hindu. As I suggested the other day, the Neopagan movement front-loaded the esoteric, mystery- or ecstacy- oriented folks. But in terms of what people want and need from religion in their lives, I think we were over-represented. As our population grows, the portion that is exoteric and casual about religion will grow faster than the mystical, ecstatic, and intensely devoted. That’s representative of how people are.
In Traditional Wicca, we sometimes call ourselves the Hidden Children of the Goddess. At one time, we were hidden primarily by being scarce. To find us, you had to figure out that there was such a thing as Wicca, and figure out a contact point. It could be maddeningly difficult, but many Traditional Wiccans believe that this hurdle brings those to us who were meant to be among us, while screening out many of the rest.
Today, we are hidden by an exoteric Pagan community and a publishing boom. You have to figure out that there’s more to Wicca than the superficial, the bland, and the anything-goes. There are many, many points of contact, and most of them are bullshit. You have to try again and again, and not be daunted by the fakes and flakes and failures. You might have to attend a public ritual where the periodic table is recited, and still keep seeking.
Somehow, this is affirmative of the Mystery nature of Wicca. The inner traditions cannot grow past a certain point, because growth denatures them. But that very fact keeps the Mystery alive; hidden, alive, and available for those who know to seek it.
No Trivia For You!
Go, nurse your hangover. Make resolutions. Break them. Come back for trivia next week.
