Global

Borderline: A Chip Off of Dusan Makavejev’s Cinematic Block

Serbian co-writer/director Ivana Mladenović’s Ivana the Terrible is many things, but one thing it most definitely is not is a sequel to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1940s Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II. The cinematic style of this funny semi-autobiographical film is interesting in that Ivana plays a version of herself, as do her mother, father, grandmother and others in a mostly nonprofessional cast. Ms. Mladenović also relates that most of the events depicted onscreen actually happened to her. So Terrible is a hybrid movie, combining elements of documentary and fiction filmmaking.

Onscreen (and I guess offscreen) Ivana is from Kladovo, a small town on the Serbian-Romanian border. She moves to Bucharest, where she studies filmmaking and becomes an actress and director. In doing so Ivana turns into a local celebrity, the most famous living person from her hometown. But suffering from some unknown, undiagnosed ailment, when she returns to where she grew up Ivana finds out, like Thomas Wolfe before her, that “You Can’t Go Home Again.”

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Pope Francis' visit to Buddhist-majority Thailand
focused attention on Catholic hill tribes and sexual abuse against
women amid improving relations between the two religions quietly
influenced by the army's failure to defeat southern Muslim
separatists.

During Francis' November 20-23 visit, he also emphasized the need for
Catholics to strengthen links with Buddhists.

"General public opinion holds that Thai Catholics are relatively
'quiet and peaceful'," said Katewadee Kulabkaew, a scholar of Thai
Buddhism's contemporary politics.

"However, those inclined to Buddhist chauvinism argue that Catholicism
may still be a threat to Thai Buddhism," she wrote in an analysis of
Francis' visit published on November 21 by New Mandala, a website
hosted by the Australian National University.

"Nevertheless, the focus of those determined to 'protect' Buddhism is
now centered on Islam. The escalation of violence in Thailand's Deep
South, where Muslim secessionists have previously killed Buddhist
monks and burned down monasteries, sounds much more alarming to the

In 1927 The Jazz Singer - the first feature length movie with a synchronized soundtrack - was released. The musical had a memorable spoken line when Al Jolson quipped: “Wait a minute, wait a minute I tell yer, you ain’t heard nothing yet.” Given the ensuing deluge of dialogue since talkies displaced silent films, truer words have rarely ever been spoken onscreen.

But “Jolie” couldn’t foresee that around 80 years later a theater company specializing in “merg[ing] animation and live performance” would name itself after that fateful year in cinematic history in the U.K. And in 2012, according to the company’s website, “1927 collaborated with Komische Opera Berlin, to conceive and create a reimagining of The Magic Flute” that combines not only animation but a silent cinema aesthetic with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music. The mind blowing result can now be seen onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion LA Opera.

The nuclear industry's violent assault on democracy in Ohio has taken a surreal leap. It could seriously impact whether Donald Trump will carry this swing state—-and the nation—-in 2020.

Ohio's GOP secretary of state has now asked the Ohio Supreme Court NOT to provide a federal judge with answers about key procedural questions surrounding the state's referendum process.

The short-term issue is about a billion-dollar bailout for two nuke reactors and two coal burners.

Long-term it asks whether targeted violence perpetrated by paid thugs will now define our election process. And whether the public referendum will remain a workable part of our democracy.

The battle starts with House Bill 6, the now-infamous billion-dollar nuke bailout approved by the corrupt, gerrymandered Ohio legislature in late July.

HB6 forces all Ohio ratepayers to subsidize two crumbling nukes on Lake Erie, along with two decrepit coal burners, one of them in Indiana. It helps underwrite ten small solar farms, but undercuts much larger subsidies for other wind and solar facilities.

Last week, I attended Joe Biden’s first rally in California since he launched his presidential campaign more than six months ago.

It was revealing.

The Biden for President campaign had been using social media and its email list in the Los Angeles area to urge attendance. Under sunny skies, near abundant free parking, the outdoor rally on the campus of LA’s Trade-Technical College offered a chance to hear the man widely heralded as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

No more than 500 people showed up.

Admittedly, as an active Bernie Sanders supporter, I didn’t have high expectations. But what struck me about the rally went beyond the dismal turnout and the stale rhetoric from a corporate Democrat posing as a champion of working people.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- One of Indonesia's worst death squad leaders,
78-year-old Anwar Congo, has died decades after executing at least
1,000 suspected communists and others during a U.S.-backed purge which
killed more than 50,000 people during the 1960s.

Mr. Congo died in a hospital on Oct. 25 of undisclosed causes.

As a young man, he was hired as a deadly enforcer for a newspaper
publisher and paramilitary gang boss in Medan city, in the north of
Sumatra island.

In a 2012 documentary titled, "The Act of Killing," Mr. Congo proudly
re-enacted his favorite execution method -- strangling victims with a
wire.

In the non-fiction film by dual American and British citizen Joshua
Oppenheimer, Mr. Congo enthusiastically described hanging, strangling,
decapitating and driving automobiles over victims.

Mr. Congo also acted as an execution victim and let a wire be gently
laced around his neck to demonstrate garroting.

He and other death squad members said they believed torturing and
murdering suspects helped Indonesia's U.S.-backed military defeat
communism.

The American Film Institute’s annual film festival is arguably Los Angeles’ best and most comprehensive annual fete of feature, documentary, short, animated, domestic and foreign cinema, plus panels and parties, taking place in Hollywood from Nov. 14-21. Here are capsule reviews of some of AFI Fest 2019’s myriad productions.

CLEMENCY: Film Review

Dead Woman Walking: A Capital Film on Capital Punishment

[NOTE: This review may contain plot spoilers.]

With her first full-length feature film, Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency is a gripping death penalty drama. (Her 2012 Alaskaland was only 75 minutes long.) The movie opens and closes with a legally sanctioned execution that is botched at a prison (after a screening the writer/director told the AFI audience that Clemency was shot on location in a penitentiary no longer in use, which enhances and heightens the movie’s realism).

Part One:

Psych Drug-related Symptoms are Often Tragically Mis-diagnosed as “Mental Illnesses of Unknown Cause” (and Therefore Tragically Mistreated with More Brain-disabling Medications)

By Gary G. Kohls, MD – 11-18-2019 (Part 1 = 1287 words) (Part 1 and 2 = 2243) (Parts 1, 2 and 3 = 3360 words)

Catch 22 when it comes to taking psychiatric drugs there is a Catch 22, meaning that you may well be damned if you started taking psych drugs and damned if you stopped taking them (too suddenly). As Joseph Heller, author of the famous anti-war book by that name, wrote about the concept:

"Orr would be crazy to fly more (World War II bombing)missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and shouldn’t have to fly them; but if he didn't want to fly them he was sane and had to."