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The musical film La La Land won a whole bunch of Golden Globes last night. As I explained in Taki’s Magazine, it’s not as good as Singin’ in the Rain with Debbie Reynolds:
Of course, that’s only the third best scene in Singin’ in the Rain, after #2 and #1.
But when was the last time you remember a movie being compared to Singin’ in the Rain?
I appreciate commenters calling various movies iSteveish, but this is probably the most Steve Sailerish movie ever.
From Pitchfork:
Rostam Criticizes La La Land’s Problematic Narrative, Lack of Queer Characters
“Black people invented jazz but now we need a white man to come save/preserve it?”
Rostam has taken to Twitter to express his misgivings with the recent film La La Land, the musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone set in Los Angeles that also features a cameo from John Legend. In the film, Legend plays Keith, an old schoolmate of Gosling’s jazz pianist character, Sebastian. Sebastian joins Keith’s band and is disappointed when he discovers that Keith has abandoned his jazz roots for a more pop-oriented sound. “The people of color written into the script were not really important to the story,” Rostam wrote. “John Legend gave a great performance but his character was what? A sellout? Who made uncool pop music?” He continued, “Black people invented jazz but now we need a white man to come save/preserve it? Sorry, this narrative doesn’t work for me in 2016.”
In another tweet, he criticized the lack of queer characters in the film, saying, “La La Land didn’t have a single gay person in it #NotMyLosAngeles.”
One of my fellow Boy Scout dads was a producer of La La Land’s director Damien Chazelle’s previous film Whiplash, which won J.K. Simmons’ his Academy Award. After a long career producing quality low budget movies such as Drive and Night Crawler, he got to put on a tuxedo and attend the Oscars as a Best Picture nominee. After Whiplash’s $3 million budget, La La Land got a $30 million budget, so my old acquaintance got dropped as a producer.
That’s how it works.
But La La Land is a good movie; it’s just not as good as Singin’ in the Rain, so if you don’t get your expectations too high you’ll enjoy it.
English
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“La La Land didn’t have a single gay person in it #NotMyLosAngeles.”
There also wasn’t a single Gay person in Boyz In Da Hood #NotMyLosAngeles.
After Whiplash’s $3 million budget, La La Land got a $30 million budget, so my old acquaintance got dropped as a producer.
That’s how it works.
Can you explain this a little more? Was your friend financing the small pictures, or was he not considered big leaguely enough for a major motion picture?Replies: @asdf, @Jefferson, @Thomas
Heck now i may go see it. When i dumped getting the Seattle Times 10 or 12 back, it was mostly the digital age thing, but the immediate push was they insisted on slapping gay this, gay that in the paper day after day.
I think some of the Hollyweird folks underestimate the demand for entertainment by normals where they are *not* being held up for abuse, subjected to laughable "black genius" diversity or having their faces rubbed in homo-perversion. Just tell an entertaining story without the Maoist re-education. And romance in particular is an area where good old fashioned natural man-woman attraction without having to think about the sideshow freaks, is really nice.Replies: @fitzGetty
Unfortunately, yes. This is true to life and represents a phenomenon that deserves fuller treatment, which is that the white man works to preserve all cultures, often more strenuously than members of those cultures themselves.
Exhibit A: Alex Kerr and his Chiori Japanese farm house.
It would be one thing if the Coalition of the Fringes was a kind of minority culture preservation society, but they just want to live in Anglo countries without any Anglos to remind them they aren’t straight white males too.
Example: first song about "Jas" (jazz) music was 1916's "That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland" performed by white guys Collins & Harlan and written by white guys Gus Kahn and Henry Marshall.
There's a better argument to be made in favor of the black origin of blues music, but even that has a large Jewish* contribution.
*By the way, is there some triple bracket combination, like ")))Jewish(((", to imply that Jewish people may have had a hidden white agenda?Replies: @Anotheranon, @Andrei Martyanov, @anonymouslee, @guest, @SFG
Tupac Shakur was inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame this year thanks to the enthusiasm of tragic white boi hip-hop fans, as was grunge mainstay Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam was the consummate rock-fan-turned-rock-star band, and were famous for their open worship of their distinguished classic rock predecessors like THE WHO and NEIL YOUNG. The implicit "bro-ish-ness" of this stance was one of the reasons Pearl Jam was dissed by uber-SJW Kurt Cobain, despite Pearl Jam's otherwise impeccable politically correct/raging male feminist credentials, as white males honoring and preserving the achievements of older white males was way too SMELLS LIKE WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
Hip hop has no intuitional memory except that provided to it by goofy whites (and yeah, OK, nerdy blacks who compensate for their self-hatred by being extra anti-white). As in prison, the first task of any aspiring rapper isn't to gush over who his biggest influences are; it's to get noticed by finding some big act and then metaphorically punching it in the nose; hence the whole "beef" aspect of rap culture. If Tupac were still alive and riding the city bus today he'd get jacked, beaten up, and thrown into the gutter. And then rushed to emergency by adoring 30-something whites who'd instantly recognize him beneath all that gore.Replies: @guest
The Brahmins of Boston hate Bollywood by the way. #NotMyDanceProduction.
I also noticed that the Indian actors wear so much makeup that they sort of look white. There were lots of backup white dancers in their movies too. Apparently, Indians have the white fetish.
Indians should stick to coding. They can't act or make movies.Replies: @TWS, @Jack D, @Kyle a, @Dave Pinsen, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Indian Bollywood is complete garbage. I’ve seen a couple English-dubbed Indian moves on my local television station. Absolutely terrible acting and dance scenes. Judging by what I saw, the Indian population must suffer from some mild degree of autism or social retardation. No normal person could watch those movies without breaking down in laughter at how terrible they were.
I also noticed that the Indian actors wear so much makeup that they sort of look white. There were lots of backup white dancers in their movies too. Apparently, Indians have the white fetish.
Indians should stick to coding. They can’t act or make movies.
Also, I saw the Carrie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds documentary on HBO this weekend. Apparently, it had been in the works before they died. A couple of observations:
- Debbie Reynolds was pretty tough. You see her performing on stage in her '80s, without betraying any sign of discomfort, and then after she needs assistance to get down a few small steps, or she's zooming around a casino floor in a motorized wheelchair/scooter.
- Carrie Fisher wasn't a health nut. She's smoking frequently, and there's a scene where she begrudgingly exercises on an elliptical machine, mentioning something about it being a requirement of her Star Wars contract.
Exhibit A: Alex Kerr and his Chiori Japanese farm house.
It would be one thing if the Coalition of the Fringes was a kind of minority culture preservation society, but they just want to live in Anglo countries without any Anglos to remind them they aren't straight white males too.Replies: @yaqub the mad scientist, @Alfa158, @Almost Missouri, @Abe, @Thirdeye
If anything, the Japanese are more weirdly archival. I mentioned this on a post about a year ago, but there’s something obsessive about a culture where you can get a boxed set of everything Grand Central Station did in a studio-demos and all- and make it available on CD, vinyl, or retro 8 track.
Speaking of LA, what ever happened to the California surfer culture? You never hear about it anymore. For decades, pop culture and music (especially the Beach Boys) glamorized it. Young used to want to move down there and become surfer bums.
These days surfer culture isn’t mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don’t seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don’t understand.
There were older surfers but they were the ones that grew up with it and had aged into it. None of them were friendly or inviting to outsiders except the young men. They wanted young women to hang out with afterward whether they surfed or not.Replies: @The Alarmist
Also, pretty much all the decent surf beaches have territorial locals (most of whom are greyhairs now in their 40s and 50s) who liberally impede, threaten, or harass outsiders, legally or illegally.Replies: @Prof. Woland, @Marat
But must not be noticed.
Because its primary USPs are deplorable - non colour, muscle, real daring, straight ... out goes non violent Pet Sounds ... in comes the blood and guts of race games .
Young males today are poor swimmers and poorer fighters.Replies: @anon
By Brahmins of Boston do you mean the Forbes or the Mukherjees?
Pitchfork.com, WTF…is it some kind of pogrom how-to guide? I’m triggered!
At the movie theater where I saw La La Land, there was a sheet of paper taped up at the box office saying, more or less, “As a courtesy to our guests, we wish you to know that the movie La La Land is a musical.” There must have been some customers expecting something else, and people who aren’t looking for a musical really don’t want to see a musical.
It seemed to me that the New York reviewers were harsher on La La Land. They had their reasons, but I suspect underlying those was the notion, “Hey, not all of us love LA.”
Anyone who liked La La Land, should watch The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Warning: This film contains lethal doses of Adam Sandler.
Caution: Clip of Al Pacino cameo shown in trailer is 50 minutes in and lasts one minute.
Guest Advisory: The following X-Men movie does not have Wolverine. Don't bother.Replies: @whorefinder
http://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/views-article/jeff_sessions_trump.jpg?itok=O6--yqDV
US Senator Jeff Sessions will not tolerate cities or localities who give “sanction” to illegal alien invaders. Sessions will take the fight to the enemy. Sessions will attack and keep attacking.
Jeff Sessions knows damn well that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Lindsey Graham are in bed with the Democrats on open borders mass immigration. Sessions will win the fight over immigration — legal and illegal — and scoundrels such as Ryan, McConnell, McCain and Graham know it.
Mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns. Attack…attack…attack.
Oh, man, this insanity gets really tiring. If I had known this country was doomed to loose its collective mind I would have moved elsewhere long ago when I was young. Tasmania sounds nice.
Jupiter sounds better.
First of all, blacks did not invent jazz, it was a true multicultural product arising from black and white elements. But now it is PC to claim that blacks did everything and whites took the credit. What’s next – Einstein and Mendel stole their work from poor black scientists?
Second, it seems like every new TV show over the past couple years has to have a gay couple, almost always two guys, and I am sick and tired of seeing two men kiss and make out. Gays have gone from being a small minority to the preferred class of people with the Hollywood elite.
they made a lot of musicals in the last depression – before the war part – so i guess that’s a silver lining
John Legend really does make very uncool pop music, and blacks haven’t given two shits about jazz for decades.
Jazz is about as lame as it gets in 2017. It’s black music that only tryhard whites pretend to care about.
Musicians find in jazz an intellectual and technical challenge, but most jazz music, especially that beyond the big band era, is not 'fun' or 'happy' music-it's an acquired taste and not particularly appealing to most people. To the casual listener it's a lot of noise.
Within the hard core of jazz fans, though, it is one of the few places where race really does not matter. Behavior, however , does.Replies: @Seneca
not generally into Bollywood but thought the mountain climbing scene in Bahabuli was pretty darn cool
(also clips of the battle scene are funny to send to south Asians online who are attacking white people over color prejudice)
Exhibit A: Alex Kerr and his Chiori Japanese farm house.
It would be one thing if the Coalition of the Fringes was a kind of minority culture preservation society, but they just want to live in Anglo countries without any Anglos to remind them they aren't straight white males too.Replies: @yaqub the mad scientist, @Alfa158, @Almost Missouri, @Abe, @Thirdeye
About 10 years ago one of the Black jazz greats (Miles Davis I think) was interviewed on NPR and he was bemoaning the abandonment of jazz by young Black men in favor of rap, pop and soul. He admitted that if he formed a jazz group today that consisted of the best musicians in the field, it would have to include a lot of White men. The attendance at jazz festivals is also heavily White, so yeah, White people are in fact saving jazz.
It also became an art music, and 'art' always has limited appeal.
As for classic jazz, it went out of fashion... like original rock n roll.
Btw, jazz-as-art-music had a large white contingent from the beginning.
I frequented NYC jazz clubs in the 1990's, and in general, the only blacks in the audience were other musicians on their nights off, checking out the competition or waiting to get up on the bandstand as a "very special guest."
Jazz was invented in the days of Jim Crow. The greatest female mathematicians were perhaps Emmy Noether and Sofia Kovalevskaya. One might argue that Jews reached their apogee in achievement between, say, 1850 and 1950 -- during which real prejudice often operated. Steve has mentioned a number of cases in which, say, Hispanic performance at the highest levels seemed greater in the past than today.
Maybe nothing motivates like a chip on the shoulder?
Sometimes it seems as if the more our culture celebrates diversity, the less there is to celebrate.Replies: @guest, @NOTA, @Anon 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jmpXFXsJdA
PS
In 2016 Wang was awarded the title "International Musician of 2017" - "...this is the world of the miracles and wonder...."
White men invented spacecraft but now they need black women to get them to the moon?
#NotMyNASA
During this same time period I worked in a high energy physics lab. The lab had a staff of recent female high school graduates who traced particle tracks on projections of bubble chamber photographs. Their tracking pens were connected to card punch machines which entered path coordinates onto punch cards which were later fed to computer programs provided by CERN and modified for our purposes by on-site FORTRAN programmers.
I was one of these but at a fairly low-level, Several high-level programmers, including some female applied mathematicians, devised and programmed more complicated programs, e.g., to calculate various integral transforms, Bessel functions, and the like. None of the people I've described, most particularly the young women, would have thought of themselves as high energy physicists nor would they have described themselves as such. BTW, the lab comprised staff of all races except Negro. Since this was at a prestigious, ultra-liberal, New England university I am sure it was not for want of trying.
Similarly during WW II, women educated enough to handle a Frieden mechanical calculator and follow basic written instructions were hired in the thousands to perform a few simple calculations and, depending on results, hand them on to another woman who would do something similar. These women acted as components in a virtual computer that operationalized complex algorithms for computing things like ballistic trajectories. They were not mathematicians nor would they have described themselves as such.
#NotMyNASA"
Ever since Hidden Figures was released in theaters, Black Twitter is flooding it's pages with the hashtag BlackGirlMagic#.
#NotMyNASA
These days surfer culture isn't mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don't seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don't understand.Replies: @carol, @International Jew, @TWS, @Anon, @Thomas, @Anonymous, @fitzGetty, @Anonymous
People sure as hell still surf, though. And there was a cultish revival of surf music, a kind of dope acid instrumental surf music about 20 years ago. I know only because I heard it on late night college radio. It was pretty neat stuff but I could never find a good example of the genre to buy.
Here's a good Beach Boys song from back in 1988. I remember we used to love this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYTFST7uaKQReplies: @carol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVH_L0dVf2U
I like the Mermen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aNYf_kznDU
Surf culture seemed to swerve off into aggro sometime in the 80's. That took away the laid back vibe, and took it deeper into territoriality and fighting. More speed than pot.
Rostam is right, black characters are layered in thick to La La Land but purely for ornamental purposes. Judging from the movie (putting aside the opening song on the freeway) LA is about 50% white, 49% black and 1% Hispanic. There’s an interracial couple that pops up at intervals to get engaged, to get married, and to have a child, but they are so disconnected from the plot that I can’t remember what their relationship to Gosling’s or Stone’s character is supposed to be.
I found the plethora of black characters distracting but most people would either not notice it or be vaguely reassured by it, I think.
These days surfer culture isn't mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don't seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don't understand.Replies: @carol, @International Jew, @TWS, @Anon, @Thomas, @Anonymous, @fitzGetty, @Anonymous
Plenty of surfers at the beach in San Francisco and Santa Cruz all year round. They aren’t particularly young though, so maybe there’s a coolness deficit.
There are no middle class white Americans (formerly known as "Americans") who can afford to grow up and live on the Pacific coast.Replies: @JohnnyWalker123
Legend’s character points out to Gosling that jazz is supposed to be innovative, but all Gosling wants is for jazz musicians to keep doing what Charlie Parker was doing 70 years ago. It’s one of many contradictions that get noted and promptly discarded in the course of the movie. I suspect Chazelle has gotten used to that in his meteoric life.
there’s a “boomers are the worst generation” deficit.
There are no middle class white Americans (formerly known as “Americans”) who can afford to grow up and live on the Pacific coast.
Back 25 years ago, you could work a part-time job and be a part-time surfer bum. These days real estate prices are extreme in Southern California. So cisgendered over privileged microagressors (formerly known as "Americans") probably can no longer afford to live on the best real estate in their own county, a country that their fathers and grandfathers defended during WWII.
These days, I suppose you have to be a high-income dual earner family to afford the California coast line. Or maybe a multi-paycheck immigrant family that crams a lot of people under one roof. You probably also have to work such long hours to afford your accommodation that you don't have much time or energy for the beach.
Back in the evil days (ie when immigration and oligarchs were kept under check), the surfer lifestyle was actually affordable.
In conclusion, virtuous oligarchs and vibrant immigrants defeated racist white surfers through high housing prices.
I’ll admit to never having heard of Rostam – and having no intention of googling him/her, but what kind of stereotypical behavior was he/she looking for in ID-ing gay characters in the film?? What a bigot!
“In another tweet, he criticized the lack of queer characters in the film, saying, “La La Land didn’t have a single gay person in it #NotMyLosAngeles.””
Apparently this is another Klan project. Not enough gays and blacks and latinos.
1. It’s fiction. If it was anything like the real LA it wouldn’t be much of a romantic musical.
2. Do these guys ever take a day off?
Exhibit A: Alex Kerr and his Chiori Japanese farm house.
It would be one thing if the Coalition of the Fringes was a kind of minority culture preservation society, but they just want to live in Anglo countries without any Anglos to remind them they aren't straight white males too.Replies: @yaqub the mad scientist, @Alfa158, @Almost Missouri, @Abe, @Thirdeye
Agree. And even the degree to which these other cultures exist absent white contribution is overstated.
Example: first song about “Jas” (jazz) music was 1916’s “That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland” performed by white guys Collins & Harlan and written by white guys Gus Kahn and Henry Marshall.
There’s a better argument to be made in favor of the black origin of blues music, but even that has a large Jewish* contribution.
*By the way, is there some triple bracket combination, like “)))Jewish(((“, to imply that Jewish people may have had a hidden white agenda?
If jazz is black music, is basketball a white sport? It was invented by a white guy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Family_picking
With the technique Carter, who "was among the first" to use it as such,[4] "helped to turn the guitar into a lead instrument".[5] Maybelle, in turn, had first learned the technique from Lesley Riddle, an African-American guitarist who used to frequent the Carter family household.[6][7][8]
Hank Williams:
Tee Tot is best known for being a mentor to Hank Williams, Sr. Rufus Payne met Hank Williams Sr. when Hank was eight years old and legend has it he would come around and play Hank's guitar, showing Hank how to improvise chords. His influence in exposing Williams to blues and other African American influences helped Williams successfully fuse hillbilly, folk and blues into his own unique style, which in turn expanded and exposed both white and black audiences to the differing sounds
Criticism of African-American culture is fine. Doubting their influence on music is just nuts.Replies: @guest
Of course, white people were playing minstrel music way back when, too, and the only reason we're familiar with any of this music is because white people like it.
I've seen square brackets, but they're mostly making fun of the whole thing.
SINGING IN THE RAIN is the only musical I like.
The Irish were as responsible for the syncopated rhythms of Jazz as the blacks. Indeed, the blacks stole shamelessly from the musical traditions of the poor Irish.
Doesn’t he mean there are no Gay CHARACTERS? ’cause if its a musical I’m sure there are lots of Gay people in the movie.
Of course, everyone in Singing in the Rain was pretty Hetro. The director and Kelly has a thing for each others wives, Donald O’Connor and Debbie were straight as an arrow.
And the song-writers were a man-wife writing team.
Singing in rain has to be one of the least Gay musicals ever.
Maybe it somehow balances out.
Jazz became like modern art. It became obsessed with experimentation and ran out of ideas.
It also became an art music, and ‘art’ always has limited appeal.
As for classic jazz, it went out of fashion… like original rock n roll.
Btw, jazz-as-art-music had a large white contingent from the beginning.
Example: first song about "Jas" (jazz) music was 1916's "That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland" performed by white guys Collins & Harlan and written by white guys Gus Kahn and Henry Marshall.
There's a better argument to be made in favor of the black origin of blues music, but even that has a large Jewish* contribution.
*By the way, is there some triple bracket combination, like ")))Jewish(((", to imply that Jewish people may have had a hidden white agenda?Replies: @Anotheranon, @Andrei Martyanov, @anonymouslee, @guest, @SFG
Yeah, while blacks were instrumental (heh) in inventing jazz, white musicians have been involved since the early days.
If jazz is black music, is basketball a white sport? It was invented by a white guy.
‘… But La La Land is a good movie; it’s just not as good as Singin’ in the Rain, so if don’t get your expectations too high you’ll enjoy it…’
And very few movies about media people are as good as Citizen Kane (although I thought that His Girl Friday was pretty good)
Not sure if comparing something to the best is too fair.
Miles Davis passed in 1991, so it’s unlikely to have been him. In any event, Miles had long since integrated his bands (pianist Bill Evans on 1959’s Kind of Blue, organist Joe Zawinul, bassist Dave Holland and guitarist John McLaughlin on 1969’s In A Silent Way). Notwithstanding his occasional rhetoric to the contrary, Miles wanted to work with only the best musicians, black, white, brown, green, purple or polka-dotted.
I frequented NYC jazz clubs in the 1990’s, and in general, the only blacks in the audience were other musicians on their nights off, checking out the competition or waiting to get up on the bandstand as a “very special guest.”
Example: first song about "Jas" (jazz) music was 1916's "That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland" performed by white guys Collins & Harlan and written by white guys Gus Kahn and Henry Marshall.
There's a better argument to be made in favor of the black origin of blues music, but even that has a large Jewish* contribution.
*By the way, is there some triple bracket combination, like ")))Jewish(((", to imply that Jewish people may have had a hidden white agenda?Replies: @Anotheranon, @Andrei Martyanov, @anonymouslee, @guest, @SFG
Late B.B. King was explicit in crediting British blues (and rhythm-and-blues, a real, original one) bands in saving and propagating this music genre. Needless to say, all of those British bands were white. Be that Animals, Rolling Stones or Cream. OK, Alexis Corner was a Jew, sort of;-)
Hollywood needs the Chinese Menu Casting Department. From Column A, Take your lead actor/actress. From column B, take one trans actor/actress, one gay actor/actress. a POC of any orientation, and a actor/actress with a visible disability. There, fixed that.
White people invented Congress and the Presidency and now we need black people there? What kind of cultural appropriation is that?
I don’t seem to remember any gay or black characters in ‘Singing In the Rain’.
The big difference of course was that in Singing in the Rain the main characters could sing and dance. Who is the modern equivalent of Donald O’Connor?
The main reason that Jazz needs to be saved is that it isn’t very good. There have been dozens of musical styles and modes. Some last – like the operas of Verdi – and some fade quickly – like almost all modern opera. The critics will lecture us on the value of the operas of Alban Berg – but the public fails to respond at the box office.
Only a few of the many musicals, operettas or operas that have ever been mounted have been successful. For example in the United States in the nineteenth century there were more than two thousand full length original operas produced – most of them about cowboys and Indians. Not a single note of any of those shows has survived. Most new original music dies after one hearing.
That's true, speaking of Jazz as it's currently played. I do think it would be possible to have a popular and "sustainable" version of jazz if they went back to the old principles. The ones that kept it as the dominant form of popular music for a half century (i.e. not modernist, abstract, navel-gazing, masturbatory jazz nor Starbucks jazz). Or maybe it isn't possible, because no one's writing songs anymore. You know, ones with tunes you can humm and keep in your head. I don't suppose Beyonce is big in sheet music, for instance.
Soooo, I had NO IDEA who Rostam was. Then I googled him: This is the guy from Vampire Weekend. He grew up and went to High School around me.
I think I heard an interview of him on Public Radio. Anyway, I sort of followed his career a bit. From an affluent Persian family, and he seems pretty creative, but with the usual politics.
No surprise there.
There also wasn't a single Gay person in Boyz In Da Hood #NotMyLosAngeles.Replies: @Lugash, @AnotherDad
Didn’t Boyz in the Hood have a crackhead get shot for offering to perform oral sex on a gang banger? If the movie had been shot in 2016 it would have been problematic.
After Whiplash’s $3 million budget, La La Land got a $30 million budget, so my old acquaintance got dropped as a producer.
That’s how it works.
Can you explain this a little more? Was your friend financing the small pictures, or was he not considered big leaguely enough for a major motion picture?
That was Menace To Society.
My guess is that race > LGBT in SJW Olympics, same way race > gender. The fact that blacks in California voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 8 in 2008 to ban gay marriage got swept down the memory hole, and the result was blamed on Mormons (who make up less than 2% of California's population). Dan Savage tried to take black antigay attitudes to task after this, and was excoriated for it.Replies: @Jefferson
OT: while looking up “bih” and “boolin” on Urban Dictionary I stumbled across “Harambe’s Law”, which appears to be the codified version of “a racist is anyone winning an argument with a progressive”, with shades of Godwin’s Law.
436 upvotes to 2 down. Very impressive ratio.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=harambe%27s%20law
Example: first song about "Jas" (jazz) music was 1916's "That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland" performed by white guys Collins & Harlan and written by white guys Gus Kahn and Henry Marshall.
There's a better argument to be made in favor of the black origin of blues music, but even that has a large Jewish* contribution.
*By the way, is there some triple bracket combination, like ")))Jewish(((", to imply that Jewish people may have had a hidden white agenda?Replies: @Anotheranon, @Andrei Martyanov, @anonymouslee, @guest, @SFG
well, I’ve got some news for dozens of isteve commenters I’ve seen over the years: even country music isn’t that white.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Family_picking
With the technique Carter, who “was among the first” to use it as such,[4] “helped to turn the guitar into a lead instrument”.[5] Maybelle, in turn, had first learned the technique from Lesley Riddle, an African-American guitarist who used to frequent the Carter family household.[6][7][8]
Hank Williams:
Tee Tot is best known for being a mentor to Hank Williams, Sr. Rufus Payne met Hank Williams Sr. when Hank was eight years old and legend has it he would come around and play Hank’s guitar, showing Hank how to improvise chords. His influence in exposing Williams to blues and other African American influences helped Williams successfully fuse hillbilly, folk and blues into his own unique style, which in turn expanded and exposed both white and black audiences to the differing sounds
Criticism of African-American culture is fine. Doubting their influence on music is just nuts.
I came to notice that the second I heard actual blues recordings from back in the day, before music industry marketing, hipster revisionist history, and so forth corrupted our knowledge. Back to the source!
Mississippi John Hurt, for instance, sounded like your typical 1,000 year-old Magic Negro on his recordings from the 60s, after the folk movement adopted him. Listen to him in the 20s, and he sounds like a country singer. Jimmie Rodgers, the "Singing Brakeman," on the other hand, sounds distinctly black to me. I imagine if I heard Hank Williams for the first time today, without knowing anything about him, I'd guess he's black. He was doing straight rhythm and blues music; that's what honky tonk is.
We'd know this if we didn't have such short memories. I've read books on the subject, but it's kinda hard to keep that information in my head. Better to hear it, unless it's in a Ken Burns documentary.
I also noticed that the Indian actors wear so much makeup that they sort of look white. There were lots of backup white dancers in their movies too. Apparently, Indians have the white fetish.
Indians should stick to coding. They can't act or make movies.Replies: @TWS, @Jack D, @Kyle a, @Dave Pinsen, @Jenner Ickham Errican
You’re not supposed to laugh?
These days surfer culture isn't mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don't seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don't understand.Replies: @carol, @International Jew, @TWS, @Anon, @Thomas, @Anonymous, @fitzGetty, @Anonymous
The young surfers I knew in the PNW were all dead broke but had expensive boards. Tried to avoid every single legitimate rule and law regarding their use of other people’s property (parking, camping, access etc.) and spent all their money on gas to get where they were going, pot and beer in that order. Whatever was left over was spent on food. Although some were simply ‘cooler-grabbers’ snatching other guys’ food and beer and running down the beach with it.
There were older surfers but they were the ones that grew up with it and had aged into it. None of them were friendly or inviting to outsiders except the young men. They wanted young women to hang out with afterward whether they surfed or not.
what was highly annoying about the film was the 25 minutes of commercials everyone in the Chinese owned AMC theatre had to sit thru.
I still maintain Ryan Gosling’s eyes are disturbingly too close together. He looks like a wolf spider, which is a poor casting choice for a romantic musical, since his facial defect leads the viewer to fear that he will pounce on, and drain the innards of his costar at any moment.
http://www.livescience.com/41467-wolf-spider.html
The big difference of course was that in Singing in the Rain the main characters could sing and dance. Who is the modern equivalent of Donald O'Connor?
The main reason that Jazz needs to be saved is that it isn't very good. There have been dozens of musical styles and modes. Some last - like the operas of Verdi - and some fade quickly - like almost all modern opera. The critics will lecture us on the value of the operas of Alban Berg - but the public fails to respond at the box office.
Only a few of the many musicals, operettas or operas that have ever been mounted have been successful. For example in the United States in the nineteenth century there were more than two thousand full length original operas produced - most of them about cowboys and Indians. Not a single note of any of those shows has survived. Most new original music dies after one hearing.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @guest, @Crawfurdmuir
Pat, probably won’t see La La Land, but I loved the old musicals and song and dance movies. I remember the quote about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers. Ginger could do any dance step Fred did, but backwards, while wearing heels.
One strange fact across many disciplines is that the greatest achievements of many of the “diverse” groups came about in eras in which they were subject to real prejudice.
Jazz was invented in the days of Jim Crow. The greatest female mathematicians were perhaps Emmy Noether and Sofia Kovalevskaya. One might argue that Jews reached their apogee in achievement between, say, 1850 and 1950 — during which real prejudice often operated. Steve has mentioned a number of cases in which, say, Hispanic performance at the highest levels seemed greater in the past than today.
Maybe nothing motivates like a chip on the shoulder?
Sometimes it seems as if the more our culture celebrates diversity, the less there is to celebrate.
In World 1, the smartest blacks are funneled into the Ivy League and end up working for investment banks or law firms or big media companies, where they compete for big time success and innovation against everyone else.
In World 2, the smartest blacks are denied access to that pathway to success, and have to find their own way.
You can imagine World 1 being better overall for smart blacks, but World 2 getting more genuine black cultural innovation, because that's the only way up for the smartest blacks, and because they'll be doing it in a mostly black environment, whether that's Jazz or the Harlem Renaissance or Motown.
I don't know if that is right, but it is at least plausible. You have to be smart and driven to invent a new musical form, and to make partner at a top law firm. But you probably make the world a better place by inventing s new musical form than by making piles of money doing M&A work for huge corporations.Replies: @Desiderius
is as conducive to progress in science and technology
as military expansionism, since as von Clausewitz reminded
us, war is the father of invention. Europe and North America
made their greatest discoveries and came up with their
greatest inventions during the time of military expansionism,
colonialism, and war. E.g., World War II gave us computers,
rocketry, jet planes, nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs, cybernetics,
radar, etc.
Now we've had 70 years of relative peace, and according to Tyler Cowen
we're in the midst of the Great Stagnation. Lee Smolin says in
The Trouble with Physics (2006) that physics effectively ended in 1981,
thus bringing the 500-year march of progress to an end. Sure, there have
been discoveries in astrophysics but no great empirically-verified discoveries
in physics proper
After Whiplash’s $3 million budget, La La Land got a $30 million budget, so my old acquaintance got dropped as a producer.
That’s how it works.
Can you explain this a little more? Was your friend financing the small pictures, or was he not considered big leaguely enough for a major motion picture?Replies: @asdf, @Jefferson, @Thomas
I believe you are thinking of Menace to Society. (Similar milieu though…)
I have to say that as ridiculous as the comments of Rostam and other like him are, after seeing La La Land last month, I did feel it was a very white movie. I am so used to film and television shoehorning in as many characters as possible from various victim classes that it does stand out when they aren’t there. Also for what it’s worth, if I had to grade the movie it’s a solid “B.” I didn’t love the songs, Gosling and Stone are not good dancers or singers, and the musical aspect just seemed like something that was stapled on to make an otherwise very predictable plot stand out as a bit different.
I also agree with the sentiment that yes, Euro people do spend a lot of time “saving” things – in fact, I would argue that no group is more enthusiastic about learning about other people and cultures and supporting efforts to keep them preserved in amber.
In the very greatest musicals (e.g. Oklahoma), the plot and the music are one organic whole but it is very rare to achieve this. If you look at the plot of most of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pictures, the dance numbers are terrific but the plot is terrible to non-existent.Replies: @ic1000, @whorefinder, @guest
Both characters should have been struggling actors. The Ryan guy was better as a dancer and singer than keyboard player. None of the tunes were very jazzy or grab your attention. She was very good in her audition scenes. Could have built on that. Maybe show the roommates as backstabbing sluts, just for some contrast with the heros. The director had no guts to show scenes from her one person show – as it was I was kind of thinking she flopped for good cause. More spirit than talent. The Gosling character does not develop at all in the film. No friends. So what if he opens a jazz club and plays the keyboard.
“Sorry, this narrative doesn’t work for me in 2016.”
Welcome to 2017, biatch.
Exhibit A: Alex Kerr and his Chiori Japanese farm house.
It would be one thing if the Coalition of the Fringes was a kind of minority culture preservation society, but they just want to live in Anglo countries without any Anglos to remind them they aren't straight white males too.Replies: @yaqub the mad scientist, @Alfa158, @Almost Missouri, @Abe, @Thirdeye
Good Whites will trample each other to death trying to fight their way to the head of the Civil Rights worship line, yet who in Black America besides the Obamas and Oprah Winfrey still remember who Rosa Parks was? Parks was the victim of a brutal robbery where her home was invaded and she was savagely (and also completely gratuitously) beaten. The (you guessed it, black) robber had no idea who she was, and that was over 20 years ago!
Tupac Shakur was inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame this year thanks to the enthusiasm of tragic white boi hip-hop fans, as was grunge mainstay Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam was the consummate rock-fan-turned-rock-star band, and were famous for their open worship of their distinguished classic rock predecessors like THE WHO and NEIL YOUNG. The implicit “bro-ish-ness” of this stance was one of the reasons Pearl Jam was dissed by uber-SJW Kurt Cobain, despite Pearl Jam’s otherwise impeccable politically correct/raging male feminist credentials, as white males honoring and preserving the achievements of older white males was way too SMELLS LIKE WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
Hip hop has no intuitional memory except that provided to it by goofy whites (and yeah, OK, nerdy blacks who compensate for their self-hatred by being extra anti-white). As in prison, the first task of any aspiring rapper isn’t to gush over who his biggest influences are; it’s to get noticed by finding some big act and then metaphorically punching it in the nose; hence the whole “beef” aspect of rap culture. If Tupac were still alive and riding the city bus today he’d get jacked, beaten up, and thrown into the gutter. And then rushed to emergency by adoring 30-something whites who’d instantly recognize him beneath all that gore.
1. Who the hell is Rostam?
2. Moonlight is the perfect movie for him and the rest of current year Hollywood – Gay AND Black. Look for it to get a bunch of Oscars as a big F.U. to Trump (even though Trump has nothing against gays or blacks or black gays).
3. How brave and transgressive for Meryl Streep to speak out against Donald Trump in Hollywood. I can’t imagine how much courage it took for her to stand up there and denounce him in front of a crowd that was surely hostile to her beliefs. And her big talking point was the canard that Trump makes fun of handicapped people, based on one 5 second film clip. Because the left never makes fun of anyone that has views that differ from their own. Doesn’t Hollywood realize that all the trumped up anger (on both sides – “Lock Her Up:”) was just kayfabe for the rubes? It was nothing personal, just business. The Clintons were good friends with the Trumps before the election and probably will be again but Meryl is too dumb to understand that they have wrapped that picture and she can stop using the fake Polish/Australian/whatever accent.
Of course, Pres. Obama's derogatory reference to the Special Olympics early in his presidency was so easily forgivable. A perfect fit for the memory hole, like so much else.
"Streep puts fans of football and Ninja Warriors in Hillary's basket of deplorables. So sad."
Good to know that a person of colour has acknowledged that the racial group who invented something is a significant factor in how it should be perceived and presented to the world.
I trust he’ll be sticking to that principal in other areas of human achievement.
These days surfer culture isn't mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don't seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don't understand.Replies: @carol, @International Jew, @TWS, @Anon, @Thomas, @Anonymous, @fitzGetty, @Anonymous
Hispanics don’t tend to surf. Millennial’s are simply too ghey. They hate sand. It gets everywhere. Boomer surfers are being hassled by the man. Surf areas get skunked by pollution. A lot more raw sewage gets blown out into bays than ever before. Beaches get closed after major rains thanks to sewage spewing out of assorted outlets. Dog and cat shit, cigarette butts, dead homeless people really puts a scratch in a surfers groove.
You never see millennials listening to any good music (Beach Boys, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Lenny Kravitz). They mostly seem to like rap, hip hop, and Justin Bieber.
I don't get it.
By the way, here's the opening of a high school show that's very popular with Millenials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UHaup8TPaQ
Can you believe that people are watching this? I thought it was a parody the first time I heard it.... but no, it's a real show! Unbelievable.........Replies: @Jefferson, @Njguy73
There seems to be a ships passing in the night quality to public life. On the one hand we have black people and their honky enablers, who cannot get enough of their own white-bashing. On the other hand, we have a pretty large pool of people who are getting very tired of the white-bashing. I hear people, who used to take pride in the anti-racism, saying things that suggest they have gobbled down a handful of red pills.
As to the issue of music, I think you can make a good case that Hip-Hop killed pop music. Per capita (or per person if you are Jill Stein) sales have been plummeting for close to two decades. The collapse started in the late 70’s, but was masked by the boom in CD sales. People re-bought their music in the new high quality format. Once that ran its course, the decline returned.
The fact is, black culture, no matter how hard it is sold, is not popular with white people. The NBA is another good example. Without ESPN bankrupting itself subsidizing the NBA, the league would still be a financial mess. Black culture as a modifier to white culture works well. Jazz, Blues and Rock are obvious examples. Black culture as a stand-alone product is honky repellent.
I also noticed that the Indian actors wear so much makeup that they sort of look white. There were lots of backup white dancers in their movies too. Apparently, Indians have the white fetish.
Indians should stick to coding. They can't act or make movies.Replies: @TWS, @Jack D, @Kyle a, @Dave Pinsen, @Jenner Ickham Errican
First of all, Bollywood movies are made on a tiny fraction of a Hollywood movie budget and they turn these things out by the dozen so you can’t compare them to Hollywood productions. They have really kept the tradition of the Busby Berkeley style big song and dance number alive during decades when Hollywood had discarded it.
2nd, singing and acting styles differ between cultures and media – Kabuki actors perform their craft differently than Western actors, actors on stage act differently than film actors, etc. We think of the modern Western acting style as “naturalistic” but it’s just as artificial as any other acting style, we just don’t notice the artifice because we are immersed in it. You have to consider Bollywood movies as their own thing, made for their own audience of Indians. They have their own conventions, such as the fact that in the musical numbers the actress is never the one who is singing – it’s always some famous old fat Bollywood singer lady, on the theory that she can sing better than a 110 lb. girl with a thin reedy voice. Listen to Emma Stone singing in La La Land and tell me that they are wrong. If you played Moonlight in an Indian theater with all the gay black stuff the audience would probably stone the projectionist to death.
3. Not all Bollywood movies are the same quality – as I said, they turn these things out by the boatload and some are better than others. Some are surprisingly good given the shoestring budget and many are about what you’d expect on the you get what you pay for model. Hollywood back in the day used too also, because people used to go to the movies every week before TV came in. So you may have just come across some particularly bad ones.
The Busby Berkely stuff is totally unappealing, except maybe to gays or 80 year olds. You're the first guy I've known who liked that stuff.
I don't think there's anything particular to their acting style. People from that region (India/Pak) come across as socially awkward and, not surprisingly, their actors are also awkward. Simple as that. There's a reason why Indian-American actors (Aziz Ansari, Raj from Big Bang) are portrayed as being weird and off.
Indians/Paks are like the anti-blacks. Blacks are constantly portrayed as cool, tough, sexy, vibrant. Indians/Paks are typecast as sexless, bizarre, and terminally uncool. Remember Screech from "Save by the Bell"? Indians seem to be hogging up those type of roles these days.Replies: @Jefferson, @Jack D
Off-Topic
A great post by Emil Kierkegaard, laying out clearly for us less numerate types why discrimination is rational:
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=5788
He cites this very interesting-looking paper by Tetlock on the “Sacred Value-Protection Model,” as well as Lee Jussim and Neven Sesardic, both of whom I learned about from the tireless efforts of our host…
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~maccoun/LP_Tetlock2002.pdf
Living in the SF Bay Area burbs, I know more than a few gays, but they tend to come in ones and twos and they are integrated in a tight knit group. Generally, if a family has a gay son or daughter, it is only one so if I go to an extended family gathering or work social they are always in the minority and often alone unless they bring their partner and like a girlfriend dejour, they don’t do that if it is not a long term partner who already knows everyone. Same for the work place.
As you get geographically closer to the gay ghettos (Hollyweird and SF) there is a greater concentration of gays but they hang out in adult venues. San Francisco in general is not a kid friendly place which is why you see so few there. It is not all the gays fault but trendy restaurants, cool parties, and chi chi art galleries are not what you do if you have a 5 year old.
As far as La La Land not being as good as Singin’ In the Rain (which BTW won not one Oscar when it came out) , as Steve has mentioned, Arthur Freed recycled the best songs he had written over a 25 year period into one picture. Each one of these songs had been the standout song in some otherwise completely forgettable MGM musical with an implausible threadbare plot that is just enough to string the songs together and no other good songs. So if you compare La La Land to any one of those 20 other pictures and not SITR, it comes out more favorably.
Wrong. "You Were Meant for Me" was first featured in "Broadway Melody", which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1929. "Good Morning" was first featured in "Babes in Arms" which was one of the ten biggest hits of 1939.
Only an SJW could conceive a narrative suggesting that the Negro women protagonists in the movie, “Hidden Figures”, were mathematical superstars without whom the space program would have been impossible. And only SJWs and grossly over-inflated Negro egos would buy into the farce. In fact, for the most part, the women so falsely portrayed in this movie were average graduates of second rate technology programs in third and fourth rate Negro colleges. For the most part, they performed straight-forward arithmetic computations according to instructions provided by real engineers and mathematicians.
During this same time period I worked in a high energy physics lab. The lab had a staff of recent female high school graduates who traced particle tracks on projections of bubble chamber photographs. Their tracking pens were connected to card punch machines which entered path coordinates onto punch cards which were later fed to computer programs provided by CERN and modified for our purposes by on-site FORTRAN programmers.
I was one of these but at a fairly low-level, Several high-level programmers, including some female applied mathematicians, devised and programmed more complicated programs, e.g., to calculate various integral transforms, Bessel functions, and the like. None of the people I’ve described, most particularly the young women, would have thought of themselves as high energy physicists nor would they have described themselves as such. BTW, the lab comprised staff of all races except Negro. Since this was at a prestigious, ultra-liberal, New England university I am sure it was not for want of trying.
Similarly during WW II, women educated enough to handle a Frieden mechanical calculator and follow basic written instructions were hired in the thousands to perform a few simple calculations and, depending on results, hand them on to another woman who would do something similar. These women acted as components in a virtual computer that operationalized complex algorithms for computing things like ballistic trajectories. They were not mathematicians nor would they have described themselves as such.
I also agree with the sentiment that yes, Euro people do spend a lot of time "saving" things - in fact, I would argue that no group is more enthusiastic about learning about other people and cultures and supporting efforts to keep them preserved in amber.Replies: @Jack D
,
I think you have that exactly backwards – the PLOT was stapled on to create a framework for the song and dance #s. Without the music and dance, this movie could not have been made – there is not enough plot in there to support a 2 hr movie (boy meets girl, boy loses girl).
In the very greatest musicals (e.g. Oklahoma), the plot and the music are one organic whole but it is very rare to achieve this. If you look at the plot of most of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pictures, the dance numbers are terrific but the plot is terrible to non-existent.
I think what happened in most cases was that a studio had a slush pile in one corner of mediocre, lightweight stories and a pile of mediocre songs in the other and a few big stars in need of a movie to star in. And then they assigned some poor schlub to mash them all together so they could get some value out of them. Movie musicals for a while were a pretty good moneymaker and an assembly-line production of sorts was made for them.
A mashup musical worked well with a star who could ad-lib his way around awkward moments----so comedians/vaudvillians worked best. More serious "artiste" stars would be frustrated by this lack of coherency.
Bob Hope was good at these kinds of mash-ups that were light on writing and rococo in music. Bob Hope's The Lemon Drop Kidis my favorite under-rated Christmas movie. It's a pretty funny Bob Hope comedy, almost a straight B-level Christmas comedy, but at one point, out of the blue, he (and his future real-life mistress) start singing the then-new song "Silver Bells." It became a hit, and really pulled the film together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNwGVgfkcgI
Hope had a very good (if slightly nasally) singing voice---his rendition of "Buttons and Bows" won an Oscar in the film The Paleface--- but we credit him more as a funny man than anything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvqRMEdU8Kk
But Hope could absolutely (and did) carry many silly tunes through his silly pictures that made it all work as a movie musical---his duet with Crosby in The Road to Morocco being my personal favorite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_w3UG6C_MoReplies: @Jus' Sayin'...
There’s a large Indian/Pakistani population in the area I live and a local cineplex is evidently Indian-owned and is always screening a number of Bollywood movies. I’ve gone to several whose streamers seemed inviting. Once I got used to the slightly different conventions, I enjoyed some of the better Bollywood movies very much. My favorite was a historical epic about the first Mughal emperor to marry a Hindu woman. The wedding was an opportunity for the producers to go all out with a Bollywood dance and music spectacular. The result was great, particularly a five minute Sufi Darwish dance number. BTW, I found it fascinating how much cross-cultural critical standards vary. An Indian co-worker dismissed this movie as trash and recommended several others she thought were much better and which she thought I would enjoy more. I loathed all of them.
I mostly have exposure to Indian and Ceylonese (not Bollywood) films of several decades ago, so standards may have changed somewhat; the idea in general seems to be that since this is the only entertainment viewers will get for a while, it should have some of everything: gaudy costumes, exciting fight scenes, comic banter (using dedicated comics with little connection to the main plot), beautiful women, catchy songs, and whatever else the writers can come up with.
A number of Bengali and Ceylonese productions are more highbrow and some are well known internationally, Satyajit Ray and Lester James Peiris being the most renowned filmmakers of this type. Possibly this sort of thing may be what your friend was trying to direct you to.
Hard to top “Make ‘Em Laugh.”
Adventures in Invasivism against Nativism.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/01/06/california_as_alt-america_132724.html
‘Progressive’ Hellifornia increases Diversity in the name of Equality and becomes the most Unequal state in America.
The sociopathy of the Left is pretty obvious in this article: in a movie season devoid of an Evil Right-Wing Movie to denigrate, the Left turns on its own for not being sufficiently Leftist. Imagine attacking a movie musical that sounds like one that straight men might, gasp, not totally hate going to? But no, reviving the 1950s big-budget movie musical is far less important than the Left stepping on one another.
Remember last year when the meme was for blacks to boycott the Oscars unless there was sufficient number of blacks nominated every year? Same thing. Although both of these campaigns are obviously driven by rival studios and producers trying to drag down the front runner and get their own movies/stars/directors/screenwriters/etc. awards (especially the Oscars), the tone of the propaganda is enough to drag down the whole awards season and all movies here on in.
Steve has been correct in his implications: if we just cede an organization to the Left, they turn on one another and rip each other’s throats out. Look what happened to Chicago/Detroit: the Dems took over and turned it into a shooting gallery murder capital. It’s obviously happening here.
We can also say Vox Day is right: when an organization is fully converged, it cannot accomplish it’s original mission and remain converged. The Left will force it to abandon it’s mission to further the Left’s goals, destroying the organization.
Hollywood has been fully converged , and is thus bleeding in quality while it attempts to further the Left’s goals. Were it not for the studio’s monopolistic practices in holding onto movie and TV production and distribution, they would be facing stiff outside competition from American production companies not interested in promoting Left-wing talking points.
It’s time President Trump turned the Justice Department’s Anti-Trust division on Hollywood. Rip their protectionism to shreds. If he does so, we could see a major anti-Left movie studio (hopefully outside LA, to prevent future convergence) within a decade.
Good catch.
Trump Derangement Syndrome claims another pundit:
Stuff White People Like # 116: “Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore.” https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/11/18/116-black-music-that-black-people-dont-listen-to-anymore/
Right down the plate.
In the very greatest musicals (e.g. Oklahoma), the plot and the music are one organic whole but it is very rare to achieve this. If you look at the plot of most of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pictures, the dance numbers are terrific but the plot is terrible to non-existent.Replies: @ic1000, @whorefinder, @guest
Thanks for these knowledgeable comments, Jack D.
Speaking of LA, what ever happened to the California surfer culture? You never hear about it anymore. For decades, pop culture and music (especially the Beach Boys) glamorized it. Young used to want to move down there and become surfer bums.
These days surfer culture isn’t mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don’t seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. …
Have you been asleep for the last 30-40 years? Not as many white CA youths as there once were.
For that matter, songs extolling surfing and fast cars were out of fashion before the end of the 1960’s.
Wake up.
After Whiplash’s $3 million budget, La La Land got a $30 million budget, so my old acquaintance got dropped as a producer.
That’s how it works.
Can you explain this a little more? Was your friend financing the small pictures, or was he not considered big leaguely enough for a major motion picture?Replies: @asdf, @Jefferson, @Thomas
“Didn’t Boyz in the Hood have a crackhead get shot for offering to perform oral sex on a gang banger? If the movie had been shot in 2016 it would have been problematic.”
That was Menace To Society.
I also noticed that the Indian actors wear so much makeup that they sort of look white. There were lots of backup white dancers in their movies too. Apparently, Indians have the white fetish.
Indians should stick to coding. They can't act or make movies.Replies: @TWS, @Jack D, @Kyle a, @Dave Pinsen, @Jenner Ickham Errican
You don’t happen to reside in Northern California do you? Just relocated back from Oklahoma after twenty five years and a station I once got my horse racing results from is now the ethnic channel. I’m now affluent in Iranian, Korean, Mandarin and Dravidian after less than a year. Have you ever had a Persian haggle with you over an ounce of weed? It’s like pulling teeth.
Persian men are totally obnoxious and look like Hadji Murads, but their women aren't bad looking. They build classless "Persian Palaces" wherever they go and seem to love BMWs and Mercedes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOEVKHXhcJsReplies: @Desiderius
In the very greatest musicals (e.g. Oklahoma), the plot and the music are one organic whole but it is very rare to achieve this. If you look at the plot of most of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pictures, the dance numbers are terrific but the plot is terrible to non-existent.Replies: @ic1000, @whorefinder, @guest
Gentlemen, couldn’t it both?
I think what happened in most cases was that a studio had a slush pile in one corner of mediocre, lightweight stories and a pile of mediocre songs in the other and a few big stars in need of a movie to star in. And then they assigned some poor schlub to mash them all together so they could get some value out of them. Movie musicals for a while were a pretty good moneymaker and an assembly-line production of sorts was made for them.
A mashup musical worked well with a star who could ad-lib his way around awkward moments—-so comedians/vaudvillians worked best. More serious “artiste” stars would be frustrated by this lack of coherency.
Bob Hope was good at these kinds of mash-ups that were light on writing and rococo in music. Bob Hope’s The Lemon Drop Kidis my favorite under-rated Christmas movie. It’s a pretty funny Bob Hope comedy, almost a straight B-level Christmas comedy, but at one point, out of the blue, he (and his future real-life mistress) start singing the then-new song “Silver Bells.” It became a hit, and really pulled the film together.
Hope had a very good (if slightly nasally) singing voice—his rendition of “Buttons and Bows” won an Oscar in the film The Paleface— but we credit him more as a funny man than anything else.
But Hope could absolutely (and did) carry many silly tunes through his silly pictures that made it all work as a movie musical—his duet with Crosby in The Road to Morocco being my personal favorite.
These days surfer culture isn't mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don't seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don't understand.Replies: @carol, @International Jew, @TWS, @Anon, @Thomas, @Anonymous, @fitzGetty, @Anonymous
Surfing in Southern California didn’t really get passed down the generations very well. Learning to surf and staying proficient means getting time in the water, which means time on the freeways unless you live close to the beach, which few Californians under the age of 40 who don’t live with their parents do. Also, you need a place to keep your board (i.e., not in a studio apartment in Van Nuys) and a way to get it to the beach (i.e., not in the trunk of a Prius).
Also, pretty much all the decent surf beaches have territorial locals (most of whom are greyhairs now in their 40s and 50s) who liberally impede, threaten, or harass outsiders, legally or illegally.
#WherThemBlacksHidingOutAt?
Sounds like they need to up their budgets. More importantly, your staunch defense of musicals would leave one with the impression that your a lifelong bachelor with Celine Dions entire catalogue on your iPod.
Nice insult, though.
After Whiplash’s $3 million budget, La La Land got a $30 million budget, so my old acquaintance got dropped as a producer.
That’s how it works.
Can you explain this a little more? Was your friend financing the small pictures, or was he not considered big leaguely enough for a major motion picture?Replies: @asdf, @Jefferson, @Thomas
That was “Menace II Society.”
My guess is that race > LGBT in SJW Olympics, same way race > gender. The fact that blacks in California voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 8 in 2008 to ban gay marriage got swept down the memory hole, and the result was blamed on Mormons (who make up less than 2% of California’s population). Dan Savage tried to take black antigay attitudes to task after this, and was excoriated for it.
My guess is that race > LGBT in SJW Olympics, same way race > gender. The fact that blacks in California voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 8 in 2008 to ban gay marriage got swept down the memory hole, and the result was blamed on Mormons (who make up less than 2% of California’s population). Dan Savage tried to take black antigay attitudes to task after this, and was excoriated for it."
For a brief period Mormons were the darlings of the Left when they believed Utah was going to StandWithHer#.
Now that Utah decided to MakeAmericaGreatAgain#, Mormonism is back again to being a religion of White deplorables.
2. Moonlight is the perfect movie for him and the rest of current year Hollywood - Gay AND Black. Look for it to get a bunch of Oscars as a big F.U. to Trump (even though Trump has nothing against gays or blacks or black gays).
3. How brave and transgressive for Meryl Streep to speak out against Donald Trump in Hollywood. I can't imagine how much courage it took for her to stand up there and denounce him in front of a crowd that was surely hostile to her beliefs. And her big talking point was the canard that Trump makes fun of handicapped people, based on one 5 second film clip. Because the left never makes fun of anyone that has views that differ from their own. Doesn't Hollywood realize that all the trumped up anger (on both sides - "Lock Her Up:") was just kayfabe for the rubes? It was nothing personal, just business. The Clintons were good friends with the Trumps before the election and probably will be again but Meryl is too dumb to understand that they have wrapped that picture and she can stop using the fake Polish/Australian/whatever accent.Replies: @ChrisZ, @Anon7, @Jefferson, @Dave Pinsen
Yes, Jack, I expect the Left to keep that 5-second clip on permanent loop through the next four years.
Of course, Pres. Obama’s derogatory reference to the Special Olympics early in his presidency was so easily forgivable. A perfect fit for the memory hole, like so much else.
I didn’t like Singin’ in the Rain all that much, as many great ideas as it had. Gene Kelly an amazing dancer, but a cornball sap as an actor. I thought that was exacerbated by the imbalance of the characters – the Jean Hagen villain at once dumb, unattractive and evil.
I prefer American in Paris for a Kelly dance exhibition. Hard to think of a better comedic treatment of the silent-to-talkie transition though.
This is something you might like to write about Steve:
“As far as La La Land not being as good as Singin’ In the Rain (which BTW won not one Oscar when it came out) , as Steve has mentioned, Arthur Freed recycled the best songs he had written over a 25 year period into one picture. Each one of these songs had been the standout song in some otherwise completely forgettable MGM musical with an implausible threadbare plot that is just enough to string the songs together and no other good songs.”
Wrong. “You Were Meant for Me” was first featured in “Broadway Melody”, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1929. “Good Morning” was first featured in “Babes in Arms” which was one of the ten biggest hits of 1939.
A Black thug in Orlando murders a Black female cop. Of course this is of no importance to Black Lies Matter because the finger on the trigger is not a pale finger.
Black Lies Matter diagnoses a minor cold (White on Black murder) as if it’s more deadly than cancer (Black on Black murder).
These days surfer culture isn't mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don't seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don't understand.Replies: @carol, @International Jew, @TWS, @Anon, @Thomas, @Anonymous, @fitzGetty, @Anonymous
Funny you should mention this. Here’s a story today out of Huntington Beach, aka Surf City USA. Surf City here we come…
Hey, is that Jan Berry and Dean Torrence they have in custody??
Unfortunately, if you look at the arresting officers, I don't see any vibrancy at all. It appears that Huntington Beach has racist PD hiring policies.
There's still work left to be done.Replies: @Jefferson
My guess is that race > LGBT in SJW Olympics, same way race > gender. The fact that blacks in California voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 8 in 2008 to ban gay marriage got swept down the memory hole, and the result was blamed on Mormons (who make up less than 2% of California's population). Dan Savage tried to take black antigay attitudes to task after this, and was excoriated for it.Replies: @Jefferson
“That was “Menace II Society.”
My guess is that race > LGBT in SJW Olympics, same way race > gender. The fact that blacks in California voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 8 in 2008 to ban gay marriage got swept down the memory hole, and the result was blamed on Mormons (who make up less than 2% of California’s population). Dan Savage tried to take black antigay attitudes to task after this, and was excoriated for it.”
For a brief period Mormons were the darlings of the Left when they believed Utah was going to StandWithHer#.
Now that Utah decided to MakeAmericaGreatAgain#, Mormonism is back again to being a religion of White deplorables.
Example: first song about "Jas" (jazz) music was 1916's "That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland" performed by white guys Collins & Harlan and written by white guys Gus Kahn and Henry Marshall.
There's a better argument to be made in favor of the black origin of blues music, but even that has a large Jewish* contribution.
*By the way, is there some triple bracket combination, like ")))Jewish(((", to imply that Jewish people may have had a hidden white agenda?Replies: @Anotheranon, @Andrei Martyanov, @anonymouslee, @guest, @SFG
Jazz and blues have the same origin. It might be more accurate to call them the city blues and the country blues, respectively. They both derive from black Southern, and more specifically Delta, pop/folk music, the first widely popular version of which was mistrelsy.
Of course, white people were playing minstrel music way back when, too, and the only reason we’re familiar with any of this music is because white people like it.
Freak opinions don’t carry heft they once did. So the dink also is horrified, horrified by hideous whiteness of the central couple and cast. Most people aren’t or won’t be. I wasn’t. LOVED the movie. Almost no indoctrination! He can always rent “Birth of a Nation.” I never will. I find it “problematic” as movie, and, as usual, pig-squat as history. But, hey, pitchdork: enjoy!
Jazz was invented in the days of Jim Crow. The greatest female mathematicians were perhaps Emmy Noether and Sofia Kovalevskaya. One might argue that Jews reached their apogee in achievement between, say, 1850 and 1950 -- during which real prejudice often operated. Steve has mentioned a number of cases in which, say, Hispanic performance at the highest levels seemed greater in the past than today.
Maybe nothing motivates like a chip on the shoulder?
Sometimes it seems as if the more our culture celebrates diversity, the less there is to celebrate.Replies: @guest, @NOTA, @Anon 2
That’s because no one who matters really believes in diversity, multiculturalism, etc. The goal is to make everyone the same. True Believers in Black Power, for instance, are reactionaries. They just don’t know it.
Jazz was already ruined by people like Miles Davis. Bebop is like modernism in classical music, i.e. degradation of the form.
There also wasn't a single Gay person in Boyz In Da Hood #NotMyLosAngeles.Replies: @Lugash, @AnotherDad
A breath of fresh air!
Heck now i may go see it. When i dumped getting the Seattle Times 10 or 12 back, it was mostly the digital age thing, but the immediate push was they insisted on slapping gay this, gay that in the paper day after day.
I think some of the Hollyweird folks underestimate the demand for entertainment by normals where they are *not* being held up for abuse, subjected to laughable “black genius” diversity or having their faces rubbed in homo-perversion. Just tell an entertaining story without the Maoist re-education. And romance in particular is an area where good old fashioned natural man-woman attraction without having to think about the sideshow freaks, is really nice.
The craven production SJW types fear to be seen to service such deplorables ... since decisions are short term, gradually, step by accelerated step - cinema dies as audiences drift ...
2. Moonlight is the perfect movie for him and the rest of current year Hollywood - Gay AND Black. Look for it to get a bunch of Oscars as a big F.U. to Trump (even though Trump has nothing against gays or blacks or black gays).
3. How brave and transgressive for Meryl Streep to speak out against Donald Trump in Hollywood. I can't imagine how much courage it took for her to stand up there and denounce him in front of a crowd that was surely hostile to her beliefs. And her big talking point was the canard that Trump makes fun of handicapped people, based on one 5 second film clip. Because the left never makes fun of anyone that has views that differ from their own. Doesn't Hollywood realize that all the trumped up anger (on both sides - "Lock Her Up:") was just kayfabe for the rubes? It was nothing personal, just business. The Clintons were good friends with the Trumps before the election and probably will be again but Meryl is too dumb to understand that they have wrapped that picture and she can stop using the fake Polish/Australian/whatever accent.Replies: @ChrisZ, @Anon7, @Jefferson, @Dave Pinsen
A better tweet from our president elect would have been –
“Streep puts fans of football and Ninja Warriors in Hillary’s basket of deplorables. So sad.”
The big difference of course was that in Singing in the Rain the main characters could sing and dance. Who is the modern equivalent of Donald O'Connor?
The main reason that Jazz needs to be saved is that it isn't very good. There have been dozens of musical styles and modes. Some last - like the operas of Verdi - and some fade quickly - like almost all modern opera. The critics will lecture us on the value of the operas of Alban Berg - but the public fails to respond at the box office.
Only a few of the many musicals, operettas or operas that have ever been mounted have been successful. For example in the United States in the nineteenth century there were more than two thousand full length original operas produced - most of them about cowboys and Indians. Not a single note of any of those shows has survived. Most new original music dies after one hearing.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @guest, @Crawfurdmuir
“The main reason that Jazz needs to be saved is that it isn’t very good”
That’s true, speaking of Jazz as it’s currently played. I do think it would be possible to have a popular and “sustainable” version of jazz if they went back to the old principles. The ones that kept it as the dominant form of popular music for a half century (i.e. not modernist, abstract, navel-gazing, masturbatory jazz nor Starbucks jazz). Or maybe it isn’t possible, because no one’s writing songs anymore. You know, ones with tunes you can humm and keep in your head. I don’t suppose Beyonce is big in sheet music, for instance.
“White men invented spacecraft but now they need black women to get them to the moon?
#NotMyNASA”
Ever since Hidden Figures was released in theaters, Black Twitter is flooding it’s pages with the hashtag BlackGirlMagic#.
How dim do you have to be to commit a crime when your “getaway” vehicle is something as easy to identify and catch as a party bus? Maybe these people just assumed that they had a license to act that way and no one would bother them. And in a state with gun laws as draconian as California’s, why only two arrests when there were seven loaded handguns? Did they just let five of the carriers go? If a stand-up Regular Joe like myself was caught carrying a handgun here, I get the impression they would re-open Alcatraz just to lock me up there.
In California it's a lot easier to purchase crack than it is to purchase a gun, which makes sense because the Liberal elites who run California are pro-drugs and anti-guns.
C’mon, man! Jack D is one of the better commenters here.
Nice insult, though.
They look like they are students at USC. I’m sure they have great grades too. Especially when they’re starting on the football field.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Family_picking
With the technique Carter, who "was among the first" to use it as such,[4] "helped to turn the guitar into a lead instrument".[5] Maybelle, in turn, had first learned the technique from Lesley Riddle, an African-American guitarist who used to frequent the Carter family household.[6][7][8]
Hank Williams:
Tee Tot is best known for being a mentor to Hank Williams, Sr. Rufus Payne met Hank Williams Sr. when Hank was eight years old and legend has it he would come around and play Hank's guitar, showing Hank how to improvise chords. His influence in exposing Williams to blues and other African American influences helped Williams successfully fuse hillbilly, folk and blues into his own unique style, which in turn expanded and exposed both white and black audiences to the differing sounds
Criticism of African-American culture is fine. Doubting their influence on music is just nuts.Replies: @guest
To be fair, country music contains within it a couple of non-black sources. The “Western” in country-Western music is non-black, and bluegrass derives from Old Countries not on the continent of Africa. But on the whole country music is the blues, basically.
I came to notice that the second I heard actual blues recordings from back in the day, before music industry marketing, hipster revisionist history, and so forth corrupted our knowledge. Back to the source!
Mississippi John Hurt, for instance, sounded like your typical 1,000 year-old Magic Negro on his recordings from the 60s, after the folk movement adopted him. Listen to him in the 20s, and he sounds like a country singer. Jimmie Rodgers, the “Singing Brakeman,” on the other hand, sounds distinctly black to me. I imagine if I heard Hank Williams for the first time today, without knowing anything about him, I’d guess he’s black. He was doing straight rhythm and blues music; that’s what honky tonk is.
We’d know this if we didn’t have such short memories. I’ve read books on the subject, but it’s kinda hard to keep that information in my head. Better to hear it, unless it’s in a Ken Burns documentary.
I’ve never been able to get into instrumental jazz. It all sounds like elevator music to me, even the “greats” like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.
The point about the film is that it is so little, so slight, so fragile.
In other days it would have been a woman’s afternoon picture.
It is essentially B.
It is remarkable that it got made at all – even as a low budget production.
It remains a woman’s film — no harm in that — freighted with filmic reference and LA so called tribute.
It fails to touch the heart – even with those tentative, maudlin little musical phrases.
http://www.livescience.com/41467-wolf-spider.htmlReplies: @guest, @S. Anonyia
They are too close together, though he’s still on the handsome side of evil. Bradley Cooper looks to me like he should be playing villains, too. In fact, he was cast as assholes early in his career, for instance in Wedding Crashers. He was an asshole in The Hangover, too, but it was a different kind of asshole. He was fortunate in the movies he picked and his timing, and he transitioned into leading man roles.
Gosling first broke out as a Jewish neo-nazi in The Believer, then got nominated for an Oscar playing a crackhead commie schoolteacher in Half Nelson. He played killers and weirdos in too many movies for me to remember early in his career. This may have been as much because he was in the “indie” realm as because of his looks or in what direction his talents lie.
There was one called “The United States of Leland” where he was a teenager who killed a retarded kid. There was a movie where he was a depressed college student who told his therapist, Ewan McGregor, that he was going to commit suicide. There was another where he was spoiled rich kid married to Kirsten Dunst and probably ended up murdering someone. I can’t remember, I think I only watched half an hour.
I expected his career to stay on that trajectory. But he has some comedic chops, and then there was The Notebook. So he’s become a rom-com guy, too. Actually, it seems like they’ll cast him in anything: courtroom dramas, musicals, action buddy cop, probably cartoons and gross out comedies for all I know.
I can't recall seeing him in any movie, so seeing him all of a sudden (to me) in a romantic lead role is jolting.
A romantic lead should be a guy you wouldn't mind your sister dating. A guy you wouldn't mind having a beer with. You could say that with any notable leading man in film history.
I'd hesitate letting Ryan Gosling change my flat tire in a blizzard. Homicidal maniacs should be his bag. He's not Cary Grant. He's Peter Lorre.
In the very greatest musicals (e.g. Oklahoma), the plot and the music are one organic whole but it is very rare to achieve this. If you look at the plot of most of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pictures, the dance numbers are terrific but the plot is terrible to non-existent.Replies: @ic1000, @whorefinder, @guest
That’s true about Top Hat, et al. I fastforward to get to the musical numbers.
Heck now i may go see it. When i dumped getting the Seattle Times 10 or 12 back, it was mostly the digital age thing, but the immediate push was they insisted on slapping gay this, gay that in the paper day after day.
I think some of the Hollyweird folks underestimate the demand for entertainment by normals where they are *not* being held up for abuse, subjected to laughable "black genius" diversity or having their faces rubbed in homo-perversion. Just tell an entertaining story without the Maoist re-education. And romance in particular is an area where good old fashioned natural man-woman attraction without having to think about the sideshow freaks, is really nice.Replies: @fitzGetty
The audience market mentioned here is obviously considered Deplorable.
The craven production SJW types fear to be seen to service such deplorables … since decisions are short term, gradually, step by accelerated step – cinema dies as audiences drift …
Tupac Shakur was inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame this year thanks to the enthusiasm of tragic white boi hip-hop fans, as was grunge mainstay Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam was the consummate rock-fan-turned-rock-star band, and were famous for their open worship of their distinguished classic rock predecessors like THE WHO and NEIL YOUNG. The implicit "bro-ish-ness" of this stance was one of the reasons Pearl Jam was dissed by uber-SJW Kurt Cobain, despite Pearl Jam's otherwise impeccable politically correct/raging male feminist credentials, as white males honoring and preserving the achievements of older white males was way too SMELLS LIKE WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
Hip hop has no intuitional memory except that provided to it by goofy whites (and yeah, OK, nerdy blacks who compensate for their self-hatred by being extra anti-white). As in prison, the first task of any aspiring rapper isn't to gush over who his biggest influences are; it's to get noticed by finding some big act and then metaphorically punching it in the nose; hence the whole "beef" aspect of rap culture. If Tupac were still alive and riding the city bus today he'd get jacked, beaten up, and thrown into the gutter. And then rushed to emergency by adoring 30-something whites who'd instantly recognize him beneath all that gore.Replies: @guest
I don’t think you need to speculate about what would happen to Tupac today. He was in fact killed as part of a “beef.” I don’t know because I wasn’t much aware of him while he was alive, but undoubtedly he was being excoriated at the time for acting opposite Janet Jackson in the ridiculous “Poetic Justice,” for instance.
Jupiter sounds better.
First of all, blacks did not invent jazz, it was a true multicultural product arising from black and white elements. But now it is PC to claim that blacks did everything and whites took the credit. What's next - Einstein and Mendel stole their work from poor black scientists?
Second, it seems like every new TV show over the past couple years has to have a gay couple, almost always two guys, and I am sick and tired of seeing two men kiss and make out. Gays have gone from being a small minority to the preferred class of people with the Hollywood elite.Replies: @Father O'Hara, @The Last Real Calvinist, @Jasper Been
The Golden Globes started with host Jimmy Fallon and Justin T doing an ugly and disgusting gay dance Why?
These days surfer culture isn't mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don't seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don't understand.Replies: @carol, @International Jew, @TWS, @Anon, @Thomas, @Anonymous, @fitzGetty, @Anonymous
That culture lives still of course, up and down the coast.
But must not be noticed.
Because its primary USPs are deplorable – non colour, muscle, real daring, straight … out goes non violent Pet Sounds … in comes the blood and guts of race games .
Also, pretty much all the decent surf beaches have territorial locals (most of whom are greyhairs now in their 40s and 50s) who liberally impede, threaten, or harass outsiders, legally or illegally.Replies: @Prof. Woland, @Marat
I one time new a man who was a “Seal” or special ops or commando (not sure what they were called then) in the Korean war. He used to attached mines to ships and they type of thing. He was from So Cal and was in the first generation of scuba divers who pioneered the sport. One story was how they would use US Army ammo belts filled with lead weights when diving because there were none commercially available. One time the Perelli Tire Company approached him to test a new ‘dry’ wet suit they wanted to market. It was something you put on over your clothes if I remember correctly. So he put this thing on and they waded into the water. He almost drowned because there was air in the legs which became buoyant and flipped him upside down. He managed to struggle ashore but not before nearly losing his life. The story is only funny because this guy was such a tough SOB and we were drinking at the time.
… San Francisco in general is not a kid friendly place which is why you see so few there.
Isn’t your analysis kind of backasswards? If a person has a 5 year old or a child of any other age, that person is probably not gay and doesn’t live in Hollywood or SF.
I understand that SF is developing one of the oldest average white populations in the USA, not that far behind Florida retirement towns such as Sarasota. How hip is that?
http://www.livescience.com/41467-wolf-spider.htmlReplies: @guest, @S. Anonyia
You’re right. Both leads were poor choices. Emma Stone has the opposite problem: eyes spaced too far apart, which makes her look like a frog. Movie stars aren’t as good looking as in past decades, maybe because good looking people aren’t interested in pursuing acting. Only quirky people get into it.
The Corporate Propaganda Apparatus is highly aware that US Senator Jeff Sessions will be confirmed as the next Attorney General of the United States. The NY Times’ lengthy story today on Jeff Sessions has an air of resigned formality to it.
Harry Reid changed the rules so nominees only need 50 rather than 60 votes to be confirmed in the US Senate. Harry Reid’s filibuster fiddling has made sure that Sessions will be confirmed — Sessions will get 50 votes.
Jeff Sessions will force the Democrats and the Corporate Propaganda Apparatus to defend the so-called “sanctuary cities” for illegal alien invaders. Trump and Sessions know that they will win that media battle.
The Corporate Propaganda Apparatus must be destroyed, and the upcoming fight over the so-called “sanctuary cities” for illegal alien invaders will help in that destruction.
Huntington Beach is only 1 percent Black. Where the hell were these ghetto Negroes bussed in from? Baldwin Hills? Inglewood? South Central? Watts? Compton?
Yeah.End the Blackout; give us that Robert Goddard biopic
#NotMyNASA
No kidding – I recently had a dream about the streetlights of the past and the sad fact that they are not coming back. Lots of the difference between the world we live in and the world we used to live in is created by government imposed streetlight changes. If you think you can still sort of revisit the sights of LA of the early 80s by seeking out certain areas, or the Greenwich village of the 50s or the Southern State Parkway or that lonely four-lane road that led from Coney Island to the east of Long Island, with its dark parade of highway-adapted street lights like the cover of the most poetical calculus textbook William Blake in his best moments could have imagined, well you can’t, not at least at night. That is why La La Land will win lots of awards – it gets the old streetlight vibe right. Not any movies do even one thing right, this one did. Also, Hacksaw Ridge would have won lots more awards if it came out 20 years ago – guys in the Academy like Borgnine would have recognized how good it was at showing how extremely intense and difficult the fight on Okinawa was (I am not saying that Hacksaw Ridge did not have too many PC moments – watch it twice and you will see what I mean – but Mel Gibson, gifted as he is, has always had a thing for PC preaching. Understandable, because, among his numerous gifts, being smart enough to get nuance is not present. Sad but true). Today fewer people care about the fantastic and inspiring courage of the American fighting men on Okinawa. Too bad.
Good work by the HBPD arresting 80 people. Keep it from happening again. I get the impression most of the time this happens there are few if any arrests.
I wish my fellow Americans who are black all success, but the authorities need to make it clear that bad behavior will be punished no matter who you are.
Jazz is about as lame as it gets in 2017. It's black music that only tryhard whites pretend to care about.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous, @Perplexed, @Thirdeye
There are a hard core of jazz fans that are across several (I won’t say all) races-blacks, whites, Jews, Japanese, Iranians-and beyond that a lot of white “jazz fans” that are into it for signifying or posturing purposes. There are also a lot of jazz educators and pundits that have figured out how to make a living talking about jazz or teaching something that purports to be jazz music in the public school system.
Musicians find in jazz an intellectual and technical challenge, but most jazz music, especially that beyond the big band era, is not ‘fun’ or ‘happy’ music-it’s an acquired taste and not particularly appealing to most people. To the casual listener it’s a lot of noise.
Within the hard core of jazz fans, though, it is one of the few places where race really does not matter. Behavior, however , does.
I read famed alto saxophonist Art Pepper's autobiography who was White. Several famous actors have been attached to a proposed film of his life at various times. It would make a very interesting film in my opinion as his life as a musician in L.A. stretched from 1940 to 1980.
Interestingly, he lived almost all his life in L.A and was matinee handsome (just like his sometime friend trumpeter Chet Baker) and spent time in the San Quentin prison in the early 1960s for heroin possession. Shows you how times have changed. You could get hard time for possessing and using small amounts of heroin not just dealing it back in those days.
When he was thirteen or so he got his first full time gig in an all Black band in South L.A. It was Lester Young's brother's band I think. It was during the early 1940s I believe or late 1930s.
It was a very famous local band at the time and he was one of the only White members in the band. The pictures of the band in the book really struck me, because they show he was really breaking down racial barriers. He was a White face in a sea of Blackness. It was a different time too. Can you imagine a thirteen year old White kid doing the same thing in today's environment?
One interesting anecdote from his book is that after his release from San Quentin in the mid 1960s he claimed he started to encounter anti White racism from fellow Black players for the first time in his life.
The 1960s effected everybody even jazz.
I do agree with you that jazz fans like sport fans try to focus on performance not skin color.
That is why I think part of the recent decline in the ratings and popularity of American professional football this year can be traced to the injection of racial issues into it by Colin Kapernick and other players who support Blacks Lives Matter etc. People, especially Whites, want to escape racial politicking not be subject to it 24/7/365. Who wants to be lectured to on his weekends by an SJW millionaire player?
I play jazz myself (as an accomplished amateur) and have played with some great White and Black professional players and never encountered any racism. But some White friends of mine who are professional players have told me they have encountered it from Black players on occasion. I kind of understand it. It is a very competitive business, and Black players may feel the need to help out a "brother." So they sometimes employ Black players instead of a White player who might actually be a bit better.
That being said, there is still no substitute for performance. Most true jazz fans can tell a bullshit performance from a great performance. It reminds me of what famed Black trumpeter Miles Davis said in response to Black criticism that he sometimes employed too many White players. Basically, he told the Black critics to "fuck off." That he was a businessman and that he had to employ the best players he could find. Period. End of story. I thought that was very cool for him to tell the Black SJWs to shove off. This was the late 1960s early 1970s when he said this.
Of course, on other occasions he did say he did not especially like White "people" (not White musicians though apparently ha ha). But at least he tried to treat White musicians fairly. Of course it was a win win situation for everyone. He made some amazing music with these young great White (and Black) players and they got a jump start on great careers by playing with him and gaining early fame, notoriety, and exposure.Replies: @guest
Jan is dead and Dean’s career never recovered after he and a couple of his pals kidnapped Frank Sinatra, Jr. He had a graphic design company with some success but musically no one would touch him.
OT: Farmers re-evaluate operations in wake of increasing minimum wage
Some excerpts:
As minimum wage increases each year, many producers are concerned that higher wage, workers’ compensation and unemployment benefit expenses will put New York farms at a disadvantage against other producers and industries.
John D. Peck, county legislator and owner of Peck Homestead Farm, Carthage, said farmers will lose prospective employees to businesses in different industries — particularly downstate businesses in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties where the minimum wage is higher — that can afford to pay higher wages each year. Mr. Eastman said processing plants will purchase milk from dairy farms outside New York that can produce it at a lower cost.
“It’s hard to find people to do this job,” Mr. Peck said. “You’re going to go where the wages are higher.”
To compensate for higher wages, Mr. Matteson said, several Jefferson County farmers will consider reducing their numbers of entry-level positions, investing in robotic technology or reducing other expenses.
………………………
Last year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo proposed a “special modification” to the minimum wage plan for the agriculture industry, but John W. Wagner, a senior area field supervisor for New York Farm Bureau, said the plan never came to fruition.
Former Farm Bureau President Dean Norton previously said the bureau opposed Gov. Cuomo’s “special modification” because it would make attracting employees more difficult with lower wages than other industries.
“It was stupid,” Mr. Robbins said.
+10. There were very few arrests after all the mall flash-mobbing the day after Christmas. Being in jail for even a few hours might change some minds. Too much of this crap is ignored because Raaaaacism.
I wish my fellow Americans who are black all success, but the authorities need to make it clear that bad behavior will be punished no matter who you are.
These days surfer culture isn't mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don't seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. They do, however, love rap. Which I don't understand.Replies: @carol, @International Jew, @TWS, @Anon, @Thomas, @Anonymous, @fitzGetty, @Anonymous
If you are going to take up surfing now, you’d better be a very good swimmer and a pretty good fighter as well. Most surfing spots in warm areas are pretty well infested with territorial and aggressive locals and you will either have to charm or bribe them or fight your way in and establish yourself as alpha dog-and they are all in good shape and not afraid of a good scrap.
Young males today are poor swimmers and poorer fighters.
Boomer Sean Penn was a former surfer, which is why his Spicoli character was flawless. You have to have been in the middle of it to nail that character so well. After he became a successful actor, he still didn't mind punching a face when a face needed it. Lots of surfers never thought twice about throwing down. To them, it was just an extension of an argument.
And Pacific Islander surfers? They liked to fight then, and they like to fight now.
Act like an asshole, and they'll learn you...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqqS8lYYSdk
Although they are technically not a surf band, the Ventures are still insanely popular in Japan. There are something like 300 Ventures albums ( including compilations and live shows) sold only in Japan and both Ventures model Fender and Mosrite (and copies of Mosrite) guitars sell well over there. It’s almost impossible to find original Mosrite guitars in the US anymore since the Japanese bought them all up. (In fairness, no one else wanted them-most are crummy guiters.) The band has made a good living playing out there since the seventies.
Blacks don.t generally tolerate queers.
The big difference of course was that in Singing in the Rain the main characters could sing and dance. Who is the modern equivalent of Donald O'Connor?
The main reason that Jazz needs to be saved is that it isn't very good. There have been dozens of musical styles and modes. Some last - like the operas of Verdi - and some fade quickly - like almost all modern opera. The critics will lecture us on the value of the operas of Alban Berg - but the public fails to respond at the box office.
Only a few of the many musicals, operettas or operas that have ever been mounted have been successful. For example in the United States in the nineteenth century there were more than two thousand full length original operas produced - most of them about cowboys and Indians. Not a single note of any of those shows has survived. Most new original music dies after one hearing.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @guest, @Crawfurdmuir
Not 19th century, but one still occasionally sees La fanciulla del West (1910).
Apparently this is another Klan project. Not enough gays and blacks and latinos.
1. It's fiction. If it was anything like the real LA it wouldn't be much of a romantic musical.
2. Do these guys ever take a day off?Replies: @Romanian
I’m amazed that the liberals have a publication literally named Pitchfork! Such brazenness!
Jazz peaked in 50’s with Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Stan Getz, Hank Mobley, etc.
Once Bop was over , still searching for something.
Still listen to this era.
I think what happened in most cases was that a studio had a slush pile in one corner of mediocre, lightweight stories and a pile of mediocre songs in the other and a few big stars in need of a movie to star in. And then they assigned some poor schlub to mash them all together so they could get some value out of them. Movie musicals for a while were a pretty good moneymaker and an assembly-line production of sorts was made for them.
A mashup musical worked well with a star who could ad-lib his way around awkward moments----so comedians/vaudvillians worked best. More serious "artiste" stars would be frustrated by this lack of coherency.
Bob Hope was good at these kinds of mash-ups that were light on writing and rococo in music. Bob Hope's The Lemon Drop Kidis my favorite under-rated Christmas movie. It's a pretty funny Bob Hope comedy, almost a straight B-level Christmas comedy, but at one point, out of the blue, he (and his future real-life mistress) start singing the then-new song "Silver Bells." It became a hit, and really pulled the film together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNwGVgfkcgI
Hope had a very good (if slightly nasally) singing voice---his rendition of "Buttons and Bows" won an Oscar in the film The Paleface--- but we credit him more as a funny man than anything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvqRMEdU8Kk
But Hope could absolutely (and did) carry many silly tunes through his silly pictures that made it all work as a movie musical---his duet with Crosby in The Road to Morocco being my personal favorite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_w3UG6C_MoReplies: @Jus' Sayin'...
Another great “Road to….” duet:
OT
NYTimes picking comments to try to herd the Women’s March SJWs divided by Angry Oppressed Women of Color: http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/us/womens-march-on-washington-opens-contentious-dialogues-about-race.html?_r=0
Queers? The guys in corporate are pissed there are no Chinese characters. How are we supposed to sell this they cry. But I have to admit in the US queers are probably a big part of the target audience.
I’m not a bachelor, I don’t like Celine, I don’t own an iPod. Other than that you’re batting 1000.
There’s only one Céline worth mentioning: Louis – Ferdinand Céline!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-Ferdinand_Céline
Jazz was invented in the days of Jim Crow. The greatest female mathematicians were perhaps Emmy Noether and Sofia Kovalevskaya. One might argue that Jews reached their apogee in achievement between, say, 1850 and 1950 -- during which real prejudice often operated. Steve has mentioned a number of cases in which, say, Hispanic performance at the highest levels seemed greater in the past than today.
Maybe nothing motivates like a chip on the shoulder?
Sometimes it seems as if the more our culture celebrates diversity, the less there is to celebrate.Replies: @guest, @NOTA, @Anon 2
Suppose we have two possible worlds.
In World 1, the smartest blacks are funneled into the Ivy League and end up working for investment banks or law firms or big media companies, where they compete for big time success and innovation against everyone else.
In World 2, the smartest blacks are denied access to that pathway to success, and have to find their own way.
You can imagine World 1 being better overall for smart blacks, but World 2 getting more genuine black cultural innovation, because that’s the only way up for the smartest blacks, and because they’ll be doing it in a mostly black environment, whether that’s Jazz or the Harlem Renaissance or Motown.
I don’t know if that is right, but it is at least plausible. You have to be smart and driven to invent a new musical form, and to make partner at a top law firm. But you probably make the world a better place by inventing s new musical form than by making piles of money doing M&A work for huge corporations.
Jazz is about as lame as it gets in 2017. It's black music that only tryhard whites pretend to care about.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous, @Perplexed, @Thirdeye
Other tryhard White behavior/tastes?
Jazz is about as lame as it gets in 2017. It's black music that only tryhard whites pretend to care about.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous, @Perplexed, @Thirdeye
My understanding is that jazz was popular big-band dance music. As of World War II, the feds imposed a “cabaret tax,” which led to smaller untaxed clubs with instrumental bands only, where patrons just sat and listened. Jazz became abstract noodling. It was deadly to a popular entertainment form.
Look through old Fender and Gibson guitar catalogs. Buddy Merrill, the Mary Kaye Trio, dozens of others. Some of those were western swing, some were country, but many were the now forgotten white pop. You'll see accordionists and banjo showmen, like the superb Eddie Peabody, in the old Ampeg (not Ampex, Ampeg) catalogs too.
But yes, amplification in the form of PA systems that didn't weigh tons, didn't feed back, didn't need huge 19 inch racks of twiode Restrum Erectric amps-that and decent mics from Shure that weren't fragile or heinously expensive, meant the little jazz combos could be heard too. Actually a lot of those trios and quartets played good (i.e., not hard bop) listenable music and backed singers like Tony Bennett.
In a way it was a heyday for some musicians-they weren't going to be the next Sinatra, but they could make two to five times what an automotive assembly line worker made gigging four or five nights a week half the year. When rock and roll came out, it was boom or bust: you were a star or you played for beer and p***y after expenses.
“And in a state with gun laws as draconian as California’s,”
In California it’s a lot easier to purchase crack than it is to purchase a gun, which makes sense because the Liberal elites who run California are pro-drugs and anti-guns.
Like the fat gay husband on “Modern Family”? How has the actor (reportedly straight) escaped criticism for stereotyping?
In World 1, the smartest blacks are funneled into the Ivy League and end up working for investment banks or law firms or big media companies, where they compete for big time success and innovation against everyone else.
In World 2, the smartest blacks are denied access to that pathway to success, and have to find their own way.
You can imagine World 1 being better overall for smart blacks, but World 2 getting more genuine black cultural innovation, because that's the only way up for the smartest blacks, and because they'll be doing it in a mostly black environment, whether that's Jazz or the Harlem Renaissance or Motown.
I don't know if that is right, but it is at least plausible. You have to be smart and driven to invent a new musical form, and to make partner at a top law firm. But you probably make the world a better place by inventing s new musical form than by making piles of money doing M&A work for huge corporations.Replies: @Desiderius
Substitute “people” for “blacks” and you’ll see the underlying problem driving the whole kit and kaboodle.
Sure people still surf, but they do it more as an isolated activity or with a small group of friends. You don’t see huge crowds of surfers on the beach like you did back in the 80s and early 90s. Back 25 years ago, the California surfer dude was a familiar icon in youth culture and everyone loved the Beach Boys. These days you never hear about the California surfer and the Beach Boys appeal mainly to Xers and Boomers.
Here’s a good Beach Boys song from back in 1988. I remember we used to love this.
Agree surfing has become pretty esoteric. In the 60s lots of kids lived in Redondo and Torrance..how I envied them from our dump in Temple City!
https://twitter.com/fenolj/status/818610595687792640
Jeff Sessions Is On The March.
Also, pretty much all the decent surf beaches have territorial locals (most of whom are greyhairs now in their 40s and 50s) who liberally impede, threaten, or harass outsiders, legally or illegally.Replies: @Prof. Woland, @Marat
Ironically, one of the surfiest capitols, Malibu, has distinctly disappointing waves. The average number of daytime surfers may be 15, but the mean (like today) is 3.
Jazz was invented in the days of Jim Crow. The greatest female mathematicians were perhaps Emmy Noether and Sofia Kovalevskaya. One might argue that Jews reached their apogee in achievement between, say, 1850 and 1950 -- during which real prejudice often operated. Steve has mentioned a number of cases in which, say, Hispanic performance at the highest levels seemed greater in the past than today.
Maybe nothing motivates like a chip on the shoulder?
Sometimes it seems as if the more our culture celebrates diversity, the less there is to celebrate.Replies: @guest, @NOTA, @Anon 2
Another counterintuitive thought is that nothing
is as conducive to progress in science and technology
as military expansionism, since as von Clausewitz reminded
us, war is the father of invention. Europe and North America
made their greatest discoveries and came up with their
greatest inventions during the time of military expansionism,
colonialism, and war. E.g., World War II gave us computers,
rocketry, jet planes, nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs, cybernetics,
radar, etc.
Now we’ve had 70 years of relative peace, and according to Tyler Cowen
we’re in the midst of the Great Stagnation. Lee Smolin says in
The Trouble with Physics (2006) that physics effectively ended in 1981,
thus bringing the 500-year march of progress to an end. Sure, there have
been discoveries in astrophysics but no great empirically-verified discoveries
in physics proper
There are no middle class white Americans (formerly known as "Americans") who can afford to grow up and live on the Pacific coast.Replies: @JohnnyWalker123
I think this is a factor. Good point.
Back 25 years ago, you could work a part-time job and be a part-time surfer bum. These days real estate prices are extreme in Southern California. So cisgendered over privileged microagressors (formerly known as “Americans”) probably can no longer afford to live on the best real estate in their own county, a country that their fathers and grandfathers defended during WWII.
These days, I suppose you have to be a high-income dual earner family to afford the California coast line. Or maybe a multi-paycheck immigrant family that crams a lot of people under one roof. You probably also have to work such long hours to afford your accommodation that you don’t have much time or energy for the beach.
Back in the evil days (ie when immigration and oligarchs were kept under check), the surfer lifestyle was actually affordable.
In conclusion, virtuous oligarchs and vibrant immigrants defeated racist white surfers through high housing prices.
That’s one vibrant looking crowd!
Unfortunately, if you look at the arresting officers, I don’t see any vibrancy at all. It appears that Huntington Beach has racist PD hiring policies.
There’s still work left to be done.
White cops in California are overwhelmingly WASPs, unlike in The Tri-State area where White cops are overwhelmingly Catholics.
…or chinese women, even: Watch whichy Yuja Wang, improvising about Mozart, Fay and Volodos – fasten your seatbelts, this is quite a ride (Triggerwarning – this video might make you doubt (at least some of) your senses) – –
PS
In 2016 Wang was awarded the title “International Musician of 2017” – “…this is the world of the miracles and wonder….”
I’ve noticed this too.
You never see millennials listening to any good music (Beach Boys, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Lenny Kravitz). They mostly seem to like rap, hip hop, and Justin Bieber.
I don’t get it.
By the way, here’s the opening of a high school show that’s very popular with Millenials.
Can you believe that people are watching this? I thought it was a parody the first time I heard it…. but no, it’s a real show! Unbelievable………
https://youtu.be/qKYQNtF11eg
No, but I have a lot of relatives there and visit frequently.
Persian men are totally obnoxious and look like Hadji Murads, but their women aren’t bad looking. They build classless “Persian Palaces” wherever they go and seem to love BMWs and Mercedes.
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/tolstoy/hadij.ii.html
Doubt he had any problem with the ladies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3068967/Court-hears-dead-Boston-bomber-tricked-girlfriend-thinking-d-given-AIDS-fought-constantly-converted-Islam-married-him.html
Their frequent dance scenes are unique. You sorta like them at first, but they get mind numbingly repetitive after a while. I suppose it’s the type of thing a gay man might like though. I noticed lots of Indian male actors combine a certain flamboyant Queeniness with a gaudy Persian/MidEastern style. It’s very strange, but their audiences seem to love it.
The Busby Berkely stuff is totally unappealing, except maybe to gays or 80 year olds. You’re the first guy I’ve known who liked that stuff.
I don’t think there’s anything particular to their acting style. People from that region (India/Pak) come across as socially awkward and, not surprisingly, their actors are also awkward. Simple as that. There’s a reason why Indian-American actors (Aziz Ansari, Raj from Big Bang) are portrayed as being weird and off.
Indians/Paks are like the anti-blacks. Blacks are constantly portrayed as cool, tough, sexy, vibrant. Indians/Paks are typecast as sexless, bizarre, and terminally uncool. Remember Screech from “Save by the Bell”? Indians seem to be hogging up those type of roles these days.
Russell Peters said that most women at nightclubs in Western countries are extremely turned off by men with South Asian accents.
The cabaret tax was part of it, but a bigger development was amplification. A small combo could make enough sound to fill a dance hall. Most of these combos that replaced Big Band were not jazz and not marketed as such: most of that is lost to memory, it was just pop music that (except for Lawrence Welk, Lester Lanin and Guy Lombardo, which ironically were large bands, and maybe Don Ho: James Ellroy fans may remember Dick Contino) has been written out of history by rock and roll and the writers that promoted it as the one, true and only kind of music whites were fit to make.
Look through old Fender and Gibson guitar catalogs. Buddy Merrill, the Mary Kaye Trio, dozens of others. Some of those were western swing, some were country, but many were the now forgotten white pop. You’ll see accordionists and banjo showmen, like the superb Eddie Peabody, in the old Ampeg (not Ampex, Ampeg) catalogs too.
But yes, amplification in the form of PA systems that didn’t weigh tons, didn’t feed back, didn’t need huge 19 inch racks of twiode Restrum Erectric amps-that and decent mics from Shure that weren’t fragile or heinously expensive, meant the little jazz combos could be heard too. Actually a lot of those trios and quartets played good (i.e., not hard bop) listenable music and backed singers like Tony Bennett.
In a way it was a heyday for some musicians-they weren’t going to be the next Sinatra, but they could make two to five times what an automotive assembly line worker made gigging four or five nights a week half the year. When rock and roll came out, it was boom or bust: you were a star or you played for beer and p***y after expenses.
Stevie Ray Vaughan & Dick Dale – Pipeline (1987) –
The Blue Stingrays were a good surf revival band. They’re a side project of the Heartbreakers minus Tom Petty:
I like the Mermen:
Surf culture seemed to swerve off into aggro sometime in the 80’s. That took away the laid back vibe, and took it deeper into territoriality and fighting. More speed than pot.
These days surfer culture isn’t mentioned much anymore, especially not among youths.
The youths also don’t seem to be much interested in the Beach Boys or beach-themed music. ...
Have you been asleep for the last 30-40 years? Not as many white CA youths as there once were.
For that matter, songs extolling surfing and fast cars were out of fashion before the end of the 1960's.
Wake up.Replies: @Kevin O'Keeffe
About a decade ago, a co-worker of mine was planning to go surfing in Santa Cruz, and shortly upon his arrival (within sight of the Boardwalk) he made the mistake of using a finger gesture that he associated with a surfer concept known as “Hang Loose.” The Mexican he made it to, misinterpreted it as some sort of gang sign, and stabbed him to death on the spot. So I suppose you can tell that guy, that’s what became of California surfer culture.
I also noticed that the Indian actors wear so much makeup that they sort of look white. There were lots of backup white dancers in their movies too. Apparently, Indians have the white fetish.
Indians should stick to coding. They can't act or make movies.Replies: @TWS, @Jack D, @Kyle a, @Dave Pinsen, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Related, Mark Steyn’s obituary for Debbie Reynolds is worth a read: http://www.steynonline.com/7658/a-glorious-rain#.WHObqKB07iY.twitter
Also, I saw the Carrie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds documentary on HBO this weekend. Apparently, it had been in the works before they died. A couple of observations:
– Debbie Reynolds was pretty tough. You see her performing on stage in her ’80s, without betraying any sign of discomfort, and then after she needs assistance to get down a few small steps, or she’s zooming around a casino floor in a motorized wheelchair/scooter.
– Carrie Fisher wasn’t a health nut. She’s smoking frequently, and there’s a scene where she begrudgingly exercises on an elliptical machine, mentioning something about it being a requirement of her Star Wars contract.
Example: first song about "Jas" (jazz) music was 1916's "That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland" performed by white guys Collins & Harlan and written by white guys Gus Kahn and Henry Marshall.
There's a better argument to be made in favor of the black origin of blues music, but even that has a large Jewish* contribution.
*By the way, is there some triple bracket combination, like ")))Jewish(((", to imply that Jewish people may have had a hidden white agenda?Replies: @Anotheranon, @Andrei Martyanov, @anonymouslee, @guest, @SFG
Reverse brackets mean you’re stressing that you aren’t.
I’ve seen square brackets, but they’re mostly making fun of the whole thing.
2. Moonlight is the perfect movie for him and the rest of current year Hollywood - Gay AND Black. Look for it to get a bunch of Oscars as a big F.U. to Trump (even though Trump has nothing against gays or blacks or black gays).
3. How brave and transgressive for Meryl Streep to speak out against Donald Trump in Hollywood. I can't imagine how much courage it took for her to stand up there and denounce him in front of a crowd that was surely hostile to her beliefs. And her big talking point was the canard that Trump makes fun of handicapped people, based on one 5 second film clip. Because the left never makes fun of anyone that has views that differ from their own. Doesn't Hollywood realize that all the trumped up anger (on both sides - "Lock Her Up:") was just kayfabe for the rubes? It was nothing personal, just business. The Clintons were good friends with the Trumps before the election and probably will be again but Meryl is too dumb to understand that they have wrapped that picture and she can stop using the fake Polish/Australian/whatever accent.Replies: @ChrisZ, @Anon7, @Jefferson, @Dave Pinsen
“2. Moonlight is the perfect movie for him and the rest of current year Hollywood – Gay AND Black. Look for it to get a bunch of Oscars as a big F.U. to Trump (even though Trump has nothing against gays or blacks or black gays).”
The Left Wing Megaphone mentality is insulting 1 Nonwhite group is the same thing as insulting all Nonwhite groups. If you say Mexicans are bringing drugs into The U.S, you are somehow attacking Ta-Nehisi Coates and his Black body.
America is a White Vs Nonwhite nation, not a Black vs Nonblack nation.
For some reason when you bash a Nonblack Minority group, it still somehow ends up being tied to anti-Blackness. If you say The Prophet Mohammad is a pedophile, The Left finds a way to spin it back to anti-Blackness. All Minority roads lead back to Black bodies.
The Busby Berkely stuff is totally unappealing, except maybe to gays or 80 year olds. You're the first guy I've known who liked that stuff.
I don't think there's anything particular to their acting style. People from that region (India/Pak) come across as socially awkward and, not surprisingly, their actors are also awkward. Simple as that. There's a reason why Indian-American actors (Aziz Ansari, Raj from Big Bang) are portrayed as being weird and off.
Indians/Paks are like the anti-blacks. Blacks are constantly portrayed as cool, tough, sexy, vibrant. Indians/Paks are typecast as sexless, bizarre, and terminally uncool. Remember Screech from "Save by the Bell"? Indians seem to be hogging up those type of roles these days.Replies: @Jefferson, @Jack D
“Indians/Paks are like the anti-blacks. Blacks are constantly portrayed as cool, tough, sexy, vibrant. Indians/Paks are typecast as sexless, bizarre, and terminally uncool. Remember Screech from “Save by the Bell”? Indians seem to be hogging up those type of roles these days.”
Russell Peters said that most women at nightclubs in Western countries are extremely turned off by men with South Asian accents.
Unfortunately, if you look at the arresting officers, I don't see any vibrancy at all. It appears that Huntington Beach has racist PD hiring policies.
There's still work left to be done.Replies: @Jefferson
“Unfortunately, if you look at the arresting officers, I don’t see any vibrancy at all. It appears that Huntington Beach has racist PD hiring policies.”
White cops in California are overwhelmingly WASPs, unlike in The Tri-State area where White cops are overwhelmingly Catholics.
Here's a good Beach Boys song from back in 1988. I remember we used to love this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYTFST7uaKQReplies: @carol
Ugh, my least favorite of theirs. Still love to hear Help Me Rhonda. FM plays it a lot.
Agree surfing has become pretty esoteric. In the 60s lots of kids lived in Redondo and Torrance..how I envied them from our dump in Temple City!
Musicians find in jazz an intellectual and technical challenge, but most jazz music, especially that beyond the big band era, is not 'fun' or 'happy' music-it's an acquired taste and not particularly appealing to most people. To the casual listener it's a lot of noise.
Within the hard core of jazz fans, though, it is one of the few places where race really does not matter. Behavior, however , does.Replies: @Seneca
Thanks for the comment. Big jazz fan here and amateur player.
I read famed alto saxophonist Art Pepper’s autobiography who was White. Several famous actors have been attached to a proposed film of his life at various times. It would make a very interesting film in my opinion as his life as a musician in L.A. stretched from 1940 to 1980.
Interestingly, he lived almost all his life in L.A and was matinee handsome (just like his sometime friend trumpeter Chet Baker) and spent time in the San Quentin prison in the early 1960s for heroin possession. Shows you how times have changed. You could get hard time for possessing and using small amounts of heroin not just dealing it back in those days.
When he was thirteen or so he got his first full time gig in an all Black band in South L.A. It was Lester Young’s brother’s band I think. It was during the early 1940s I believe or late 1930s.
It was a very famous local band at the time and he was one of the only White members in the band. The pictures of the band in the book really struck me, because they show he was really breaking down racial barriers. He was a White face in a sea of Blackness. It was a different time too. Can you imagine a thirteen year old White kid doing the same thing in today’s environment?
One interesting anecdote from his book is that after his release from San Quentin in the mid 1960s he claimed he started to encounter anti White racism from fellow Black players for the first time in his life.
The 1960s effected everybody even jazz.
I do agree with you that jazz fans like sport fans try to focus on performance not skin color.
That is why I think part of the recent decline in the ratings and popularity of American professional football this year can be traced to the injection of racial issues into it by Colin Kapernick and other players who support Blacks Lives Matter etc. People, especially Whites, want to escape racial politicking not be subject to it 24/7/365. Who wants to be lectured to on his weekends by an SJW millionaire player?
I play jazz myself (as an accomplished amateur) and have played with some great White and Black professional players and never encountered any racism. But some White friends of mine who are professional players have told me they have encountered it from Black players on occasion. I kind of understand it. It is a very competitive business, and Black players may feel the need to help out a “brother.” So they sometimes employ Black players instead of a White player who might actually be a bit better.
That being said, there is still no substitute for performance. Most true jazz fans can tell a bullshit performance from a great performance. It reminds me of what famed Black trumpeter Miles Davis said in response to Black criticism that he sometimes employed too many White players. Basically, he told the Black critics to “fuck off.” That he was a businessman and that he had to employ the best players he could find. Period. End of story. I thought that was very cool for him to tell the Black SJWs to shove off. This was the late 1960s early 1970s when he said this.
Of course, on other occasions he did say he did not especially like White “people” (not White musicians though apparently ha ha). But at least he tried to treat White musicians fairly. Of course it was a win win situation for everyone. He made some amazing music with these young great White (and Black) players and they got a jump start on great careers by playing with him and gaining early fame, notoriety, and exposure.
Thanks for the background. I had no idea he’d been in the game so long. I guess his career momentum has rolled him into romantic lead roles by force–which is bizarre.
I can’t recall seeing him in any movie, so seeing him all of a sudden (to me) in a romantic lead role is jolting.
A romantic lead should be a guy you wouldn’t mind your sister dating. A guy you wouldn’t mind having a beer with. You could say that with any notable leading man in film history.
I’d hesitate letting Ryan Gosling change my flat tire in a blizzard. Homicidal maniacs should be his bag. He’s not Cary Grant. He’s Peter Lorre.
Jupiter sounds better.
First of all, blacks did not invent jazz, it was a true multicultural product arising from black and white elements. But now it is PC to claim that blacks did everything and whites took the credit. What's next - Einstein and Mendel stole their work from poor black scientists?
Second, it seems like every new TV show over the past couple years has to have a gay couple, almost always two guys, and I am sick and tired of seeing two men kiss and make out. Gays have gone from being a small minority to the preferred class of people with the Hollywood elite.Replies: @Father O'Hara, @The Last Real Calvinist, @Jasper Been
Sorry, but you can’t escape PC madness even in Tasmania. Just to give one example, we Calvinists were in Tasmania and then Sydney over this past Christmas/New Year holiday. We watched the New Year’s Eve countdown show on the nation’s flagship TV channel, i.e. ABC1. The show was appalling, PC-infested, talent-free garbage.
We turned on the program about 11:30. The segment showing was some kind of quiz show. It was tedious stuff, so we didn’t pay much attention until the host of the show and one of the quiz team members — both middle-aged white men — suddenly jumped out of their seats to meet up at the front of the set and then, for no apparant reason, proceeded to clinch and tongue-wrestle for a couple minutes.
The next segment was a couple of middle-aged harpies attempting a kind of estrogen-buddies comedy routine. Again, it was snooze-inducing stuff, so our attention quickly drifted away — until one of them screeched ‘you know that 2017 is the year we’re gunna get F- – -ED from every direction!’ She didn’t use hyphens. Charming.
I won’t bore you with the other absurdities and indignities that followed, other than to note that the MCs for the actual countdown were so self-absorbed and dense they almost missed the clock hitting 12; they had to be reminded to pay attention by the drummer of the rock band they were interviewing.
My apologies to any Aussies who read this. I love Australia — it’s spectacular, the food’s great, you share deep affinities with us Americans and our culture — but it’s no refuge from the sickness that afflicts the West.
Young males today are poor swimmers and poorer fighters.Replies: @anon
Dude… surfer’s liked to fight, back in the day.
Boomer Sean Penn was a former surfer, which is why his Spicoli character was flawless. You have to have been in the middle of it to nail that character so well. After he became a successful actor, he still didn’t mind punching a face when a face needed it. Lots of surfers never thought twice about throwing down. To them, it was just an extension of an argument.
And Pacific Islander surfers? They liked to fight then, and they like to fight now.
Act like an asshole, and they’ll learn you…
I really enjoyed and respect Night Crawler and view Drive as the best movie of the last decade. Always great for gritty LA specific movies to get some love.
Drive as a reaction to the financial crisis and presaging the Rise of the Alt-Right will be cinema that will be studied for decades hence.
The Busby Berkely stuff is totally unappealing, except maybe to gays or 80 year olds. You're the first guy I've known who liked that stuff.
I don't think there's anything particular to their acting style. People from that region (India/Pak) come across as socially awkward and, not surprisingly, their actors are also awkward. Simple as that. There's a reason why Indian-American actors (Aziz Ansari, Raj from Big Bang) are portrayed as being weird and off.
Indians/Paks are like the anti-blacks. Blacks are constantly portrayed as cool, tough, sexy, vibrant. Indians/Paks are typecast as sexless, bizarre, and terminally uncool. Remember Screech from "Save by the Bell"? Indians seem to be hogging up those type of roles these days.Replies: @Jefferson, @Jack D
You seem to be unusually hung up about the gay thing. Indians are gay, musicals are gay, Indian musicals are especially gay. You may want to discuss this with your shrink/priest/guru.
Busby Berkeley himself was married 6 times and apparently got around a lot more than that, so he was emphatically not gay.
Watch this Berkeley number and tell me if it is intended to appeal to gay men:
Note that this is early (1932). Shortly after, the “Hayes Code” went into effect due mostly to the efforts of the Catholic Church hierarchy, speaking of repressed gay men and nothing so risque was seen again on Hollywood screens for another 30 years.
You never see millennials listening to any good music (Beach Boys, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Lenny Kravitz). They mostly seem to like rap, hip hop, and Justin Bieber.
I don't get it.
By the way, here's the opening of a high school show that's very popular with Millenials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UHaup8TPaQ
Can you believe that people are watching this? I thought it was a parody the first time I heard it.... but no, it's a real show! Unbelievable.........Replies: @Jefferson, @Njguy73
“I’ve noticed this too.
You never see millennials listening to any good music (Beach Boys, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Lenny Kravitz). They mostly seem to like rap, hip hop, and Justin Bieber.
I don’t get it.”
I am a Millennial who prefers the oldies over the current generation of music. My Baby Boomer father got me hooked onto this type of music when I was a little kid.
Nu, as a Calvinist, total depravity should come as no surprise.
There were older surfers but they were the ones that grew up with it and had aged into it. None of them were friendly or inviting to outsiders except the young men. They wanted young women to hang out with afterward whether they surfed or not.Replies: @The Alarmist
Some grew into what some describe as Team Gold Card … surfers with real jobs.
Harry Reid changed the rules so nominees only need 50 rather than 60 votes to be confirmed in the US Senate. Harry Reid's filibuster fiddling has made sure that Sessions will be confirmed -- Sessions will get 50 votes.
Jeff Sessions will force the Democrats and the Corporate Propaganda Apparatus to defend the so-called "sanctuary cities" for illegal alien invaders. Trump and Sessions know that they will win that media battle.
The Corporate Propaganda Apparatus must be destroyed, and the upcoming fight over the so-called "sanctuary cities" for illegal alien invaders will help in that destruction.Replies: @Desiderius
I don’t know. The local “conservative” morning drive-time host on WLW had Steve Roberts on and they were talking like it was the most obvious thing in the world that Sessions is just an unreconstructed racist who couldn’t even be confirmed back in the bad old racist days.
How can it be the most Sailerish movie if it doesn’t feature any sports, or twins, and the music isn’t what you listened to as a youth? I just got back from seeing 20th Century Women, and that strikes me as more Sailer-ish (the only sport depicted is skateboarding, but that’s still very southern california).
Whiplash, yeah great movie. Not.
We watched it all the way through, waiting for the good part. Surely there is a pony at the bottom of this pile of manure. Nope, never happened. At the end, we said “Thank God that’s over”.
Learned our lesson, though — never bother to watch a movie that won famous awards. And we like J.K. Simmons.
It seemed to me that the New York reviewers were harsher on La La Land. They had their reasons, but I suspect underlying those was the notion, "Hey, not all of us love LA."
Anyone who liked La La Land, should watch The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.Replies: @Njguy73, @LondonBob
Theaters should post more warnings like that.
Warning: This film contains lethal doses of Adam Sandler.
Caution: Clip of Al Pacino cameo shown in trailer is 50 minutes in and lasts one minute.
Guest Advisory: The following X-Men movie does not have Wolverine. Don’t bother.
Warning: Lead Actor needed a paycheck.
Warning: Lead Actress was sleeping with producer to get role.
Warning: Oscar-bait.
Warning: Studio is really trying to get this one actor over with the audience, it's not working, but they're gonna keep pushing him down your throat, so it's annoying.
Warning: White Guilt-laden film. Check your privilege.
Emma Stone isn’t as good looking as Emma Stone used to be. Since I don’t know better I’m going to assume the homos are behind the current trend in women’s eyebrows, which is thick and straight across. Which doesn’t always look that bad, but I expect more from movie stars.
“How can it be the most Sailerish movie if it doesn’t feature any sports, or twins, and the music isn’t what you listened to as a youth? I just got back from seeing 20th Century Women, and that strikes me as more Sailer-ish (the only sport depicted is skateboarding, but that’s still very southern california).”
20th Century Women takes place in 1979. Was Steve living in Los Angeles in 1979? Or was he living in Chiraq in 1979?
We watched it all the way through, waiting for the good part. Surely there is a pony at the bottom of this pile of manure. Nope, never happened. At the end, we said "Thank God that's over".
Learned our lesson, though --- never bother to watch a movie that won famous awards. And we like J.K. Simmons.Replies: @guest
That movie was all J.K. Simmons. The main character was a dud, there weren’t any other real characters,the plot was simple to a fault, and the music was hard for me to sit through. But I did like it, because his was a tour de force performance, he was a good character, and it had a good moral. (Something about the phrase “good job.”)
I read famed alto saxophonist Art Pepper's autobiography who was White. Several famous actors have been attached to a proposed film of his life at various times. It would make a very interesting film in my opinion as his life as a musician in L.A. stretched from 1940 to 1980.
Interestingly, he lived almost all his life in L.A and was matinee handsome (just like his sometime friend trumpeter Chet Baker) and spent time in the San Quentin prison in the early 1960s for heroin possession. Shows you how times have changed. You could get hard time for possessing and using small amounts of heroin not just dealing it back in those days.
When he was thirteen or so he got his first full time gig in an all Black band in South L.A. It was Lester Young's brother's band I think. It was during the early 1940s I believe or late 1930s.
It was a very famous local band at the time and he was one of the only White members in the band. The pictures of the band in the book really struck me, because they show he was really breaking down racial barriers. He was a White face in a sea of Blackness. It was a different time too. Can you imagine a thirteen year old White kid doing the same thing in today's environment?
One interesting anecdote from his book is that after his release from San Quentin in the mid 1960s he claimed he started to encounter anti White racism from fellow Black players for the first time in his life.
The 1960s effected everybody even jazz.
I do agree with you that jazz fans like sport fans try to focus on performance not skin color.
That is why I think part of the recent decline in the ratings and popularity of American professional football this year can be traced to the injection of racial issues into it by Colin Kapernick and other players who support Blacks Lives Matter etc. People, especially Whites, want to escape racial politicking not be subject to it 24/7/365. Who wants to be lectured to on his weekends by an SJW millionaire player?
I play jazz myself (as an accomplished amateur) and have played with some great White and Black professional players and never encountered any racism. But some White friends of mine who are professional players have told me they have encountered it from Black players on occasion. I kind of understand it. It is a very competitive business, and Black players may feel the need to help out a "brother." So they sometimes employ Black players instead of a White player who might actually be a bit better.
That being said, there is still no substitute for performance. Most true jazz fans can tell a bullshit performance from a great performance. It reminds me of what famed Black trumpeter Miles Davis said in response to Black criticism that he sometimes employed too many White players. Basically, he told the Black critics to "fuck off." That he was a businessman and that he had to employ the best players he could find. Period. End of story. I thought that was very cool for him to tell the Black SJWs to shove off. This was the late 1960s early 1970s when he said this.
Of course, on other occasions he did say he did not especially like White "people" (not White musicians though apparently ha ha). But at least he tried to treat White musicians fairly. Of course it was a win win situation for everyone. He made some amazing music with these young great White (and Black) players and they got a jump start on great careers by playing with him and gaining early fame, notoriety, and exposure.Replies: @guest
This may be sort of beside the point, but there is a substitute for performance: songwriting. Many jazz greats will be better remembered for their compositions than for their virtuosity. I’d rather listen to a good tune from a hackish band than nonsense from supposedly the best musicians of the past century like Miles Davis.
You never see millennials listening to any good music (Beach Boys, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Lenny Kravitz). They mostly seem to like rap, hip hop, and Justin Bieber.
I don't get it.
By the way, here's the opening of a high school show that's very popular with Millenials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UHaup8TPaQ
Can you believe that people are watching this? I thought it was a parody the first time I heard it.... but no, it's a real show! Unbelievable.........Replies: @Jefferson, @Njguy73
Was a real show. It ended last year. It just might be the most influential show among Millennials ever. You know how Sailer wrote a lot about Mad Men? If he binge-watched the entire run of Glee, he could write 10,000 words on it. It’s an HBD-issue bonanza.
Once Bop was over , still searching for something.
Still listen to this era.Replies: @guest
Jazz was over after WWII, roughly. Bebop was its death rattle.
Journey to the End of the Night is something I really ought to hate, but I loved it. I can’t account for that, and it will haunt me until the day I die.
Persian men are totally obnoxious and look like Hadji Murads, but their women aren't bad looking. They build classless "Persian Palaces" wherever they go and seem to love BMWs and Mercedes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOEVKHXhcJsReplies: @Desiderius
Hadji Murad was a bad dude. Fintional, sure, but still a bad dude.
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/tolstoy/hadij.ii.html
Doubt he had any problem with the ladies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3068967/Court-hears-dead-Boston-bomber-tricked-girlfriend-thinking-d-given-AIDS-fought-constantly-converted-Islam-married-him.html
The CCM Jazz ensembles play to packed, enthusiastic houses. Talented young instrumentalists still dig it. Quality varies, but still hits enough heights to be memorable.
Jazz was once the dominant form of popular music in this country. Now it's a niche market at best.Replies: @Hippopotamusdrome
I also noticed that the Indian actors wear so much makeup that they sort of look white. There were lots of backup white dancers in their movies too. Apparently, Indians have the white fetish.
Indians should stick to coding. They can't act or make movies.Replies: @TWS, @Jack D, @Kyle a, @Dave Pinsen, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Dabangg 2 is good for a few (intentional) stupid laughs. Lots of entertaining ‘cartoon’ violence.
Very OT, but.
What ever happened to this movie? Never mind about the Turkish suppression, but how did Hollywood bigshots get “owned” so easily. Sheesh…there are no real guys running Hollywood studios anymore. End of an era. Kinda’ like this movie for Armenians: End of an ear.
(This clip is out of order, so I set the link to start at the scene that came first. After you see it, what the clip from the beginning to that point).
https://youtu.be/cALpwNHEqb0?t=2m54s
In year 2017, jazz is for elderly white Democrats and GOPe supporters. If asked, Juan McCain and Ms. Lindsey Graham would probably say they like jazz.
Peepul with any actual musical taste shun jazz.
“progressive” jazz — the acoustic counterpart to abstract painting.
I second Boomstick on the Mermen. Maybe you’ve heard this track, “Varykino Snow.” They’ve got that virtuoso surf twangle down.
end of an era, meant to say…but end of an ear could conjure up atrocities by offenders :). Anyway, this movie is a very Meryl Streepian movie in that it is a period movie with exotic accents and history that most Americans don’t have a fracking clue about! It makes me mad that not one Hollywood studio boss had the cajones to greenlight this movie/just release it to theaters across the country. I know that Turkey deep-sixed this, but I took Obama’s words seriously when he said, “this is not who we are.” Suppression of art and film/content/arty stuff was supposedly bad for us, citizens. So, so, so what happened to this movie which was finished but not shown in theaters across the USA? Armenian lives don’t matter (are they technically, POC, according to the narrative that is pushed by Progressives? This is huge….Armenians will not be happy that Hollywood is full of weak people (we are talking about movies, btw, and Trump is now President before the Oscars) , and I am happy to be their pit bull.
Armenians occupy a middle ground between Europeans and MENA Muslims. They are seen as less vibrantly diverse than the latter, but more vibrantly diverse than the former.
You replied to JohnnyWalker123:
To recap: Indian musicals, not gay. But adults celebrating Halloween, totally gay.
FWIW JohnnyWalker123 mentions donut a lot; might be some attraction there.
Settle down, granpa.
“Armenian lives don’t matter (are they technically, POC, according to the narrative that is pushed by Progressives?”
Armenians occupy a middle ground between Europeans and MENA Muslims. They are seen as less vibrantly diverse than the latter, but more vibrantly diverse than the former.
2. Moonlight is the perfect movie for him and the rest of current year Hollywood - Gay AND Black. Look for it to get a bunch of Oscars as a big F.U. to Trump (even though Trump has nothing against gays or blacks or black gays).
3. How brave and transgressive for Meryl Streep to speak out against Donald Trump in Hollywood. I can't imagine how much courage it took for her to stand up there and denounce him in front of a crowd that was surely hostile to her beliefs. And her big talking point was the canard that Trump makes fun of handicapped people, based on one 5 second film clip. Because the left never makes fun of anyone that has views that differ from their own. Doesn't Hollywood realize that all the trumped up anger (on both sides - "Lock Her Up:") was just kayfabe for the rubes? It was nothing personal, just business. The Clintons were good friends with the Trumps before the election and probably will be again but Meryl is too dumb to understand that they have wrapped that picture and she can stop using the fake Polish/Australian/whatever accent.Replies: @ChrisZ, @Anon7, @Jefferson, @Dave Pinsen
The actress who plays the protagonist’s crack-addicted mother was interviewed on Charlie Rose last week. She speaks with a posh British accent.
Much more surfers than that in Munich – even in wintertime, at the inner-city Eisbach-wave. And an overall very friendly mood among them.
The Armenian genocide was mentioned on the Showtime series Ray Donovan.
(This clip is out of order, so I set the link to start at the scene that came first. After you see it, what the clip from the beginning to that point).
“Rostam wrote. “John Legend gave a great performance but his character was what? A sellout? Who made uncool pop music?””
So Rostam is complaining that this part of the movie is true-to-life?
It seemed to me that the New York reviewers were harsher on La La Land. They had their reasons, but I suspect underlying those was the notion, "Hey, not all of us love LA."
Anyone who liked La La Land, should watch The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.Replies: @Njguy73, @LondonBob
Blimey not just a musical but a jazz musical! Not just me then who would walk out if I had gone in not knowing that.
Surfing is somewhat of a youth thing and I expect the California coastal communities to continue to age as the housing costs become prohibitively expensive to raise a family.
. “John Legend gave a great performance but his character was what? A sellout? Who made uncool pop music?”
buy
Rostam needs to learn the tropes. When making a movie about jazz or jazz musicians, there must be a Black Sellout. And Black Sellouts are even worse than White Appropriators. The memorable scene in “Bird” where Charlie Parker confronts the Black Sellouts cones to mind.
Jupiter sounds better.
First of all, blacks did not invent jazz, it was a true multicultural product arising from black and white elements. But now it is PC to claim that blacks did everything and whites took the credit. What's next - Einstein and Mendel stole their work from poor black scientists?
Second, it seems like every new TV show over the past couple years has to have a gay couple, almost always two guys, and I am sick and tired of seeing two men kiss and make out. Gays have gone from being a small minority to the preferred class of people with the Hollywood elite.Replies: @Father O'Hara, @The Last Real Calvinist, @Jasper Been
On what TV shows do you see guys kissing each other? I would think that would be pretty easy to avoid. I don’t watch TV anymore (for real) so please tell me.
Agree on Emma Stone. When she was new to movies 6-7 years ago she stood out to me. I thought she was a really pretty redhead. Lately whenever I see her in the media she just looks like a bug eyed weirdo.
So Rostam is complaining that this part of the movie is true-to-life?Replies: @Daniel Chieh
Blacks can never be villains, don’t ya know now.
Incidentally, this bothers me when applied to Asians as well. I would much rather have seen the Mandarin as Asian in Iron Man III with all of its connotations of exotic Orientalism. Its not exactly bad to be special.
Instead, we just keep appearing as diversity tokens with no real connection to Asian culture. Ugh.
Beethoven and Mozart still provide employment to armies of musicians, promoters, critics, record producers, sheet music publishers, instrument manufacturers, academics, and so forth. Classical music is enjoyed daily by millions of passionate fans. There are actually still composers writing in the tradition. But would you say it’s a living art? Hell, no. It’s dead.
Jazz was once the dominant form of popular music in this country. Now it’s a niche market at best.
buy
Rostam needs to learn the tropes. When making a movie about jazz or jazz musicians, there must be a Black Sellout. And Black Sellouts are even worse than White Appropriators. The memorable scene in "Bird" where Charlie Parker confronts the Black Sellouts cones to mind.Replies: @Steve Sailer
I liked the scene in Clint’s “Bird” where Dizzy Gillespie tells Charlie Parker he’s going to live 50 years longer than Parker. Eastwood has directed two straight movies in his mid-80s.
Clint Eastwood is the Woody Allen of tough white gentile men.
Warning: This film contains lethal doses of Adam Sandler.
Caution: Clip of Al Pacino cameo shown in trailer is 50 minutes in and lasts one minute.
Guest Advisory: The following X-Men movie does not have Wolverine. Don't bother.Replies: @whorefinder
Warning: May contain unrealistic scenes of 100lb tough grrrrls winning fights over men.
Warning: Lead Actor needed a paycheck.
Warning: Lead Actress was sleeping with producer to get role.
Warning: Oscar-bait.
Warning: Studio is really trying to get this one actor over with the audience, it’s not working, but they’re gonna keep pushing him down your throat, so it’s annoying.
Warning: White Guilt-laden film. Check your privilege.
The James Bond film Die Another Day—yeah, the one with Madonna and the invisible car, the one so bad they rebooted the entire series for the first time ever—-began with a great premise: Bond captured by the North Koreans and tortured for so long he can’t remember if he gave up any secrets or not, and then is traded back to the Brits (he doesn’t escape). The Brits cancel his secret agent status because of his possibly having given up the secrets/being compromised.
And then the film all falls to pieces. Sigh.
Anyway, the main bad guy of the film is a young Asian dude who is the Westernized son of the North Korean dictator, who delights in the torture.
But then he’s in a horrible accident….which forces him to become……a white guy (through gene therapy). For the majority of the film.
I am not making that up. The bad guy was literally whitewashed from East Asian to Northern European. And from then on is played by and speaks with the accent of a white Brit (sad I have to write “white” there) and then no more mention of his yellowness is mentioned.
Sigh. At least a young Rosamund Pike appeared here and caught my eye—she was dazzlingly hot. Note to Halle Berry: never have a much prettier woman appear as your rival in the film when you’re supposed to be the hot one.
Jazz was once the dominant form of popular music in this country. Now it's a niche market at best.Replies: @Hippopotamusdrome
John Williams Conducts The Main Theme From Star Wars
Exhibit A: Alex Kerr and his Chiori Japanese farm house.
It would be one thing if the Coalition of the Fringes was a kind of minority culture preservation society, but they just want to live in Anglo countries without any Anglos to remind them they aren't straight white males too.Replies: @yaqub the mad scientist, @Alfa158, @Almost Missouri, @Abe, @Thirdeye
The abandonment of jazz by blacks is emblematic of the decline of black culture over the past 50 or so years. It’s a music requiring diligence, dedication, and above all, moral commitment to play well. There are a dwindling portion of blacks who possess those traits. The culture that’s really promoting jazz nowadays isn’t white or black but Japanese. They’re doing awesome things.
Bebop was the beginning of a tremendously fertile period in jazz that burned out in the mid 1960s. There’s been some good jazz since then, albeit mostly bebop or post-bop revival music.
Jazz is about as lame as it gets in 2017. It's black music that only tryhard whites pretend to care about.Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous, @Perplexed, @Thirdeye
The connection between jazz and blackness has been tenuous for decades now. If there’s any group that “owns” jazz nowadays, it’s the Japanese. The values of American culture no longer promote what it takes to make good jazz. Within the US it’s a small, dedicated, multiracial subculture that bucks the trend.
That was 40 years ago, and romantic movie scores are an exception that proves the rule.
How Much Money Does the Average Film Scorer Make?
Top-Grossing Composers at the Domestic Box Office
Fertile like rats.
There have been more movies made since 1977.
How Much Money Does the Average Film Scorer Make?
Top-Grossing Composers at the Domestic Box Office
Sailer, why ain’t John Rappoport’s blog in your blogroll?
It’s worthy of being there, I think. Check it out.
If you’re a man, that may explain the differing “critical standards”.
I mostly have exposure to Indian and Ceylonese (not Bollywood) films of several decades ago, so standards may have changed somewhat; the idea in general seems to be that since this is the only entertainment viewers will get for a while, it should have some of everything: gaudy costumes, exciting fight scenes, comic banter (using dedicated comics with little connection to the main plot), beautiful women, catchy songs, and whatever else the writers can come up with.
A number of Bengali and Ceylonese productions are more highbrow and some are well known internationally, Satyajit Ray and Lester James Peiris being the most renowned filmmakers of this type. Possibly this sort of thing may be what your friend was trying to direct you to.