Paleo Retiree writes:
Blowhard, Esq. writes:
I had to make a quick business trip to the city of Placerville recently, located in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The town, a California Historical Landmark, was one of the central locations of the Gold Rush. Here are a few snaps I took of the area.
Click on the images to enlarge.
I’ll share some shots of Sacramento in a later post.
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Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:
Sax von Stroheim writes:
God knows, they aren’t very well made. Adam Sandler may be our Jerry Lewis – he certainly seems to embarrass middlebrow would-be-sophisticates in the way that Jerry did – but unlike Lewis he has no interest at all in filmmaking as a craft. I get the sense that he thinks of the film set as a place where he and his buddies get to hang out at.
But I find them really funny and they are usually about things that are actually relevant to life in contemporary America. For instance, Jack & Jill deals with diversity and stereotypes in a very direct way that’s rare in mainstream entertainment today: Sandler’s movies don’t have any of the ironic distance and intellectual gamesmanship of Sacha Baron Cohen’s movies or Larry David’s shows.
If a comedy is funny, does it matter if it’s made very well? Well, a little, I think, in as much as better filmmakers can, theoretically at least, pull off more elaborate gags. But I don’t think it matters as much as it does in other popular genres: a good action movie, for example, almost always comes down to the filmmaking.
Anyway, I do love Adam Sandler movies, though I find myself completely uninterested in trying to convince anyone else that they should love them or even like them. I mean, he’s ridiculously popular and successful, why should anyone (let alone me) care that most film critics treat his work with an almost reflexive revulsion?
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Paleo Retiree writes:
Andrew Bacevich thinks he knows why so many establishment journos consider isolationism such a clear-and-present danger:
Warn about the revival of isolationism and your prospects of making the grade as a pundit or candidate for high office suddenly brighten.
Happy to embrace the “isolationist” label myself.
Paleo Retiree writes:
NSFW (of a very innocent kind) alert:
epiminondas writes:
This is a very good talk given by John Tamny, an editor at Forbes Magazine. He discusses many misconceptions about the Great Depression and how the reckless actions of the Federal Reserve endanger our ability to invest scarce resources. All in all, this is a very basic deconstruction of Keynesian economics. The first part of this video is not very interesting, so move the time hack to 8:30 and start there.
Paleo Retiree writes:
When I saw it on release in 1993, I took this crime yarn, directed by John Dahl and written by Dahl and his brother Rick, as a postmodern joke — a droll riff on smalltown noir themes. The surprise for me watching it a few days ago was how well it works as a tense and juicy picture in its own right. It ain’t just a put-on (although it’s certainly that too). The actors (led by Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle and J.T. Walsh) chew the scenery in the best downtown-theater/B-movie way, the story twists surprise and delight, and the atmosphere is irresistible. I’ve become a big John Dahl fan, if rather late in the game.
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Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 