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Thousands of out-of-towners and Angelenos flocked to attend the 13th annual Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival, which featured a panoply of motion pictures from across the decades, talents, parties and panels celebrating – and analyzing – the cinema as an art form and “that screwy ballyhooey Hollywood,” where the fete took place on location April 21-24.

The cornucopia of screenings included 1982’s E.T. The Extraterrestrial at TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX, with the Turner Classic Movies channel’s host Ben Mankiewicz interviewing director Steven Spielberg onstage at the fabled movie palace, renowned for its courtyard with stars’ footprints/handprints in cement, where Lily Tomlin was thus immortalized at a Festival ceremony attended by her co-star Jane Fonda. Other extravaganzas shown on the big screen at this venerable venue formerly known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre included: 1956’s Giant, starring James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson; 1939’s The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland; 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain starring Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds; and 1973’s The Sting, featuring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

#92 GreeGree Zoom April 25, 2022

Violence v. Election Workers & Ohio Madness w. Nina Turner et. al.

Our action-packed GREE-GREE #92 begins with a devastating view from JOEL SEGAL of violence being perpetrated against poll workers, a direct assault on our democracy.

We hear from HAL GINSBERG of Our Revolution on the move to prevent 1/6 Insurrectionists from taking over Congress at the polls.

PAT MARIDA of Ohio fills us in on the state’s pro-nuke scam, while TATANKA BRICCA and RON LEONARD update us on the war against rooftop solar.

Then the legendary NINA TURNER tells of her race to represent Cleveland in the US Congress.

Ohio’s RACHEL COYLE explains the insane Gerrymandering disaster there, while NICOLE SANDLER and WENDI LEDERMAN do the same from Florida.We also hear from election protection greats JOHN BRAKEY and MIMI KENNEDY.

This is a completely jammed two hours.  Don’t miss it!
https://youtu.be/da3wUGaqy3I
 

Sometimes one decision speaks volumes. And so it was when the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- with 98 members in the House -- recently chose to have its PAC endorse a corporate “moderate” against the strong progressive candidate Nina Turner. In the process, the Progressive Caucus underscored its loyalty to establishment Democrats while damaging its credibility among progressives nationwide.

As the war in Ukraine makes front page news, a new documentary and film festival are shining a spotlight on this Eastern European nation that has been the setting for three of the greatest productions of all time. Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 Battleship Potemkin (https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1065917209?playlistId=tt0015648&ref_=tt_ov_vi), about the mutiny aboard one of the warships in the czar’s Black Sea fleet and the mass strike in the port city of Odessa during the 1905 Revolution was shot and set in Ukraine. The famed “Odessa Steps sequence” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xP-8r7tygo), which still jolts the senses, with the senseless barbaric cruelty of the czarist troops and Cossacks massacring frenzied, fleeing, unarmed civilians – baby carriages, amputees, stone lions and all.

A friend, a young journalist in Gaza, Mohammed Rafik Mhawesh, told me that food prices in the besieged Strip have skyrocketed in recent weeks and that many already impoverished families are struggling to put food on the table. 

 “Food prices are dramatically surging,” he said, “particularly since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war.” Essential food prices, like wheat and meat, have nearly doubled. The price of a chicken, for example, which was only accessible to a small segment of Gaza’s population, has increased from 20 shekels (approx. $6) to 45 (approx. $14).

 These price hikes may seem manageable in some parts of the world but in an already impoverished place, which has been under a hermetic Israeli military siege for 15 years, a humanitarian crisis of great proportions is certainly forthcoming. 

As wars rage, as cruelty shatters lives across the planet — as nuclear Armageddon remains a viable option for all of us — I think it’s time to claim some stunning awareness in this regard.

The human race is evolving in spite of itself — evolving beyond war, beyond empire, beyond dominance and conquest, and toward an uncertain but collective future. Indeed, I think most of us already know this, but only at a level so deep, so vague it feels like nothing more than “hope.”

With the great ANDREA MILLER and JOEL SEGAL our GREE-GREE gathering #91 dives into the realties of grassroots campaigning.

While the major parties will blow tens of millions on TV advertising, we saw in Georgia 2021 how effective “relational campaigning” can be.

Andrea reveals the realities of a Democratic Party dependent on a foreign-owned data company, and unwilling to do the nitty-gritty work of getting on the ground.

If a right-wing wipe-out is to be avoided, democracy centers and door-to-door tactics will be key.

TATANKA BRICCA, WENDI LEDERMAN and RON LEONARD then fill us in on the war against rooftop solar.  Anti-green moves in CA and FL are now at the cutting edge.

Join us to save both our democracy & our planet!!

https://youtu.be/CgstC82_I2M

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Moscow is trying to profit by offering weapons, investment, tourism and diplomatic support to Thailand and other best friends in Southeast Asia, to buffer Russia's international losses caused by U.S.-led sanctions against its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's latest success appeared April 7 when Bangkok joined 57 other nations and abstained from voting at the United Nations General Assembly when it suspended Moscow from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

"Thailand is deeply sorry about the loss of life, and is gravely concerned about the escalating conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, and believes urgent actions are needed to address the allegations about human rights violations," by Russia during its war in Ukraine, said Thailand's Ambassador to the UN Suriya Chindawongse.

Other Southeast Asian abstentions included Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Thailand -- a non-NATO U.S. treaty ally -- declined on February 28 to obey an unusually pointed, public demand by 25 Bangkok-based European ambassadors telling the government to condemn the invasion.

The meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in the Chinese eastern city of Huangshan on March 30, is likely to go down in history as a decisive meeting in the relations between the two Asian giants. 

 The meeting was not only important due to its timing or the fact that it reaffirmed the growing ties between Moscow and Beijing, but because of the resolute political discourse articulated by the two top diplomats. 

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As that sixties’ saying puts it, “the personal is political.” In the case of The Last Boy, which is being presented April 27 on Holocaust Remembrance Day at the renowned Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan’s Theater District, the personal is political and also theatrical to me. That’s because this timely fact-based anti-Nazi drama stars my 21-year-old cousin, who is making an auspicious Broadway debut.

Bret Sherman portrays the title character in The Last Boy, which is “about a group of seven boys who are in the Terezin camp in Czechoslovakia,” notes Sherman. “They are living through this terrible, dark time. But the playwright/director, Steve Fisher, does a really great job of not dwelling on that too much, of the miserable atmosphere they’re a part of. Because at the end of the day, while we can look back at it now and realize that was such a terrible time, and I’m sure the boys realized they were being mistreated, but they obviously didn’t have a ton of information and I don’t think they understood the scope of what was happening,” as Hitler’s “final solution” exterminated millions of Jews and others during World War II.