This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"! Starting in May 2016, many of the reviews for new feature films have been done on a hosted Wordpress site, and this blog now mostly does shorts and older films.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
NASA presents the "First Flight of the Ingenuity Helicopter:
Live from Mission Control" (47 Min)
Most of the flight footage is at about the 6 minute
mark. The chopper appears to have flown for about 30 seconds, in an atmosphere
1% as dense as Earth’s at Sea Level.
There will several more tests (at least five)
according to Wikipedia.
This is the first flight of a human made aircraft on another planet.
The School of Life presents “Why So Many People Want
to Be Writers”, animated, 5 minutes, 2019,
Why not change “be writers” to “write”? Yup, many first novels are autobiographical, from those prolific with the pen or keyboard but who don't bond to people in groups easily.
The short film makes us wonder if literature, even as
we study it in high school English and undergraduate college, was a replacement
for “real life” for the authors. Remember the 1950's card game "Authors"?
It is a desire to be heard when the real world won’t
listen and is already too polarized by its own intersectional whining. But then, for tribal people, rioting is the remedy of the unheard.
Even Socrates said this.
So I wonder what School of Life would think of Tyler Mowery’s
recent YT series “The Writer’s Mind”, on Patreon (part of it members only).
“Did Scientists Just Discover the Best Ever Super
Earth?” from Unveiled, April 12, 2021
The planet in question is Gliese 486b, around a red
dwarf 26 light years away.It has 10
times Earth’s mass and is thought to be a hot, volcanic planet like Venus. It
transits its star frequently in a manner that makes it very easy for
astronomers to study it.
Gliese 581c is around an even nearer red dwarf star,
20 light years away, 5 times Earth’s mass, gets discusses.Space.com thinks it might be too hot.
A better chance is 581d, or even 581g, if it exists.
Picture: Wikipedia diagram of proposed 581 planet model, click for attribution
“The Mind of a Writer”, directed by Andrew Kan, story
by Tyler Cucuzza.
A portly young man tries to write a story for a job assignment
in a company making short films. He is working from home (although this little
film was shot in 2016).
A homely couple comes in, sits on the couch and makes
various skits Finally when they get
serious bout some romance, Kan comes up with a story that the boss likes. Ironically this film comes up if you look for Tyler Mowery's "Writer's Mind".
The WhatIf Channel presents the little short, “What If
We Found Earth 2.0”?There was a series
called this ("Earth 2") in the 1990s with Anthony Sabato and an underground civilization of
humanoids.
It’s likely to be somewhat larger than Earth and near
a K star or possibly mature red dwarf (no longer flaring), and tidally locked.
But it would take many generations reproducing on a
closed O’Neill-like spaceship with authoritarian politics to get there.
The short had an annoying long advertorial by NetSuite
in the middle.
At the end, the video takes another look at Titan.
You can also watch “What If We Discover Life After Death?” on the same channel.It does
explain the Greyson scale of 1983, and the syncing of brain to heart and
nervous systems during death.
There is a film in development named “1946: The Mistranslation
that Shifted Culture”, to be directed by Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, and produced by Daniel Karslake. This is the official site so far, and this is the Facebook page. There is also a second official siteto advertise the film.
The film will maintain that the word “homosexual” as
such did not appear in editions of the Bible until February 1946, the Revised
Standard Version, in 1 Corinthians Chapter 6.
It then maintains that the pervasive anti-gay culture
that persisted until Stonewall and then gradually improved was instigated by
this translation change.
The film website has a donation page.I don’t know it is using indiegogo or
gofundme.
Ridddle presents “A Better Planet than Earth
Discovered in the Galaxy”, 14 min, March 2021.
That “planet” is really Titan, the largest moon of Saturn,
sometimes previously covered. But the phrase
in the title “discovered in the Galaxy” indeed sounds, well, pleonastic.
The video mentions organic compounds associated with
cell membranes, including vinyl cyanide, and acrylonitrile.
You will wear a mask, indeed a spacesuit, but you might
be able to fly in your uniform with the low gravity and thick atmosphere.
The video mentions the hardships of COVID lockdowns in
jest.
Artist conception of ice-rimmed methane lakes, p.d., NASA, Wikipedia embed, click for attribution
Is an O'Neill Cylinder like a model railroad loop?
“O'Neill Cylinders Explained-- Deep Space Colony of the Future” (14
minutes) by “Epsilon Is Greater Than” (Feb. 2020).
Two scientists do the math on a whiteboard and talk
about how to build sustainable deep space environments, to have sustainable
life in space, without “gravity wells”.
There is no actual scenery in this video, and the
comment about HIV was a bit offputting.
They mention the O'Neill cylinders in “Babylon 5” and
the Cooper Station in “Interstellar”.
Update: April 8: Also look at Interstellar Research Group's "Construction Scenarios for O'Neill Cylinder Space Settlement Habitats, 30 min, 2019, all mathematics, here.
“18-Year-Old Skydiver’s Parachute Didn’t Open on Jump”, short from Inside Edition.
This was apparently a birthday present (in 2016).But was run by a company without the proper safety
protocols.
Tyler Turner’s family was awarded $40 million for
wrongful death.The instructor also died
from the 13000 foot fall.
Avi Schiffmann, who created a major coronavirus
tracker at age 17, went skydiving (successfully) on his 18th
birthday in Washington State (Instagram).
Trey Yingst (Fox News international reporter) has
documented his own skydiving on his Twitter channel.A waiter at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington
was, at least a year ago as the pandemic started, working on becoming a Skydiving
instructor in Virginia.
Th DC LGBT outdoors group Adventuring has, in the past,
arranged jump lessons and hot air ballooning. Wikipedia embed of a typical
“Sol 87”, directed by Justin Kruse (Empty Can Films, 11 min), presents James MacDonald
as a solo astronaut exploring Mars, especially caves, with the help of a robot
REX,
The Rex finds something, enclosed in a box, that may
well be alive, looking like a squishy monster with tentacles. Someone else had
placed it there. But how has it survived in a cave in a lantern?
Wikipedia embed: NASA picture of impact crater, click for attribution
Here is a special 70 minute documentary on YouTube “We
Need to Talk about Anti-Asian Hate”, written and directed by Eugene Lee Yang..
His film discusses the 1991 killing of Latasha
Harlins, by a manager at a Korean store in Los Angeles, and the subtle effect
it had of diving POC minorities for a time. After Rodney King’s killing in 1991 and the acquittal
of the policeman, Korean-American businesses became targets of looting. The Oscar
nominated documentary short “A Love Song for Natasha”, on Netflix is mentioned in the film (Esquire review).
I simply never encounter this personally.There is an element of our society that is
very tribal and very gullible and influenced by slogans (as from the mouth of
former president Donald Trump).
One of the main grocery businesses in Arlington VA,
the Westover Market, which has a bar and book-reading events (though not during
the pandemic) and runs charity events and concerts outdoors is run by a Korean-American
(mixed) family.
Connie Guglielmo writes about the colorblind casting of Bridgerton on Netflx as exerting a real influence on Hollywood as a whole.
But the concept works only when a film or series is
essentially abstract enough that characters, at least how they look, become
more interchangeable.That sounds more
common in comics or fantasy.
This might not work so well in films tied to specific
personalities or characters where appearance somehow matters. My own screenplay "Epiphany", in a sci-fi spaceship setting, has about 15 major characters, and three are black. But for some of the characters, looks matter and do influence what happens to or with them.
“We the Curious” provides a video showing the “surfaces”
of at least four exosolar planets, intended to be viewed with 360-degree
virtual reality headsets,
Shown are (1) the atmosphere of a hot Jupiter (2) an
ocean planet (3) a planet covered with volcanoes (4) a planet more like Earth,
but tidally locked around a red dwarf.The video title says it shows 6 planets, but I counted only four.
The films were prepared at the University of Exeter,
there are other videos.
"Inside the George Floyd Memorial ‘Autonomous Zone’”,
by NewNationNow.
Some persons manning the zone did now allow people
from the public in to film (even though it is a public street) and when one
person was shot in an incident, reportedly police and fire were not let in.
The intersection is 38th St and Chicago
Ave, called the Phillips neighborhood.
It is about a mile south of Lake Street, which connects Uptown to Highway 55.
I lived in Minneapolis 1997-2003m but downtown in the Churchill Apartments.
The “Short of the Week” channel offers a 2014 film (in
Feb. 2021), “Red Rover”, directed by Brooke Goldfinch.The film was funded in Australia but is set
in the Hudson Valley, New York. It calls itself a "Sci-Fi Short Film about the End of the World".
The link is here. YT has marked this film as age-restricted (although it isn't really clear why).
As an unstoppable asteroid approaches Earth, people
prepare their last day.A fundamentalist
Christian family gets up its kids for one last breakfast.The oldest sister encourages her teen brother
and one other sibling not to eat the food but to take it and run out.
The family dies immediately of poisoning, and the girl
pukes on the way out.They make it to
town and find a sex orgy in a motel.Then
the go into the woods to meet their maker.
Starring Natale Racossin, Christopher Gray, and Idela
Cory.
There is one other film to preview from SXSW, which I
would expect to become available virtually (or maybe be released theatrically
first) before too long, “Not Going Quietly”, directed by Nicholas Bruckman, a biography
of activist Ady Barkan.
Barkan was diagnosed with ALS in 2016 at age 33,
shortly after the birth of his son. He became an activist for health care reform
(and practicing attorney), with a confrontation with Republican Senator Jeff Flake
on a plane.
The major film about ALS from the past was “The Theory
of Everything” (about Stephen Hawking, reviewed here Nov. 14, 2014).
Ford Fischer (News2Share) provided some health careprotest footage for this film, which won the SXSW award for Documentary Audience.
This film might well fit PBS Independent Lens (hope they
wouldn’t cut the 96 minutes to fit if they buy it; PBS often cuts and over-frames the films it airs).
A channel called “Aspergers from the Inside” offers at
least three videos on how someone can determine if they are autistic (Aspergers
is clinically seen as part of the autism spectrum), and the most important one
is “Are You Undiagnosed Austistic? How to Tell If You are on the Autism
Spectrum”, which was a “patron’s” choice (from Patreon). The video is self-described as a “Part 2” (Dec. 2019).
The speaker, an articulate young British man, mentions
three main signs: (1) you “feel different” (2) you find yourself not being
believed by others (3) not being able to mix naturally into a group without a
lot of conscious effort.
On the first point, he mentions asking one time as a
boy if he was an “alien” from another planet. It would be like asking a cat to
join a “pack” of dogs (or wolves).
He also says that people with Aspergers are often
targets of gaslighting in social situations.
Asperger’s might be a “genetic” adaptation to the
reality that it is sometimes an advantage to be able to function well alone
without others in the environment.That
is why (most species of) cats are more solitary than most dogs or canids, they
have to be able to hunt and survive alone.Persons on the high end of Asperger’s are often likely to question the
motives of their “tribe” and less likely to join in with “solidarity” with
others or believe in identarian theories of abuse (intersectionality). Jordan Peterson seems to urge everyone to take
on a pinch of Aspergers with his “clean your room” ideology.
“FTL” (“Faster
than Light”) directed by Adam Stearn (14 min, 2019)
A mission uses faster-than-light technology to reach
Mars in 3 minutes (light would take 15 minutes under the best circumstances).
On the way back, the crew (Ethan Kane) the ship gets
lost and is rescued by a bizarre spider-like alien spacecraft that recombines
Ethan’s body in space suit in the driveway of his Florida home, to a loving
family.
SXSW was held online 100% virtually March 16-March 20,
and I discovered this morning that none of the films can be viewed right now,
But I found a video channel ("Office Hours Live") with Tim Heidecker, who
interviews the director Jasmine Stodel and star Hayden Pedigo, of the
documentary “Kid Candidate”.Hayden made
a joke video in 2018 about running for the Amarillo TX city council, and wound up
being dared to do so.The film “Kid Candidate”
is about the campaign in 2019.He
lost.But he actually spent effort on underserved
minorities in the city.
From 48:00 to 1:00:00, Tim interviews both of them on
this video.
Hayden also performs music, which can be accessed on
his Instagram channel.
I moved from NYC to Dallas in January 1979 (stayed
there until 1988) and in my first year there I did a one March Saturday SW Airlines
Peanuts fare trip with car rental to Amarllio, and almost got fogged in
returning home, in a normally dry place. I also drove to the Palo Duro Canyon.
When I moved to Minneapolis in September 1997, after
having authored my first DADT book, I met a Hamline University senior, Anthony
Sanders, who sponsored my first lecture about my book at the campus.He had run for the St. Paul MN city council
in 1997 as the libertarian candidate at the age of 20 as I remember.
So I’ve seen this sort of narrative before in my own
life.I also remember the activity of “ballot
access petitioning”.Did Hayden have to
do that in Amarillo?
Let’s home “Kid Candidate” gets distribution
(Netflix?? Hulu??).
Yes they do, but not from vision resembling faces, has
human faces look the same to us, just as theirs might to us.And they are farsighted.
But the do go by smell, sound, maybe magnetic fields.
When I lived in Dallas in a garden apartment 2nd
floor, a neighborhood tom whom we named Timmy recognized the sound of my car
and would run to the front to of my apartment, remembering exactly which one it
was.
replacement apts on Lucas St in Oak Lawn, near Dallas North Tollway, where I lived in 1979
If he spent the night, he would come into the bedroom
and knead the pillow if he had to go outside. "Mr. Clinton" on Louis Rossmann's channel is so much like Timmy (screaming at the mention of Cuomo) that I wonder if he is a reincarnation of Timmy.
Wikipedia picture of a cat in a loaf position, embed, click for attribution
Benjamin A. Boyce presents “The Complete Evergreen
Story”, much of it told through meetings and interviews in July 2017, about the
woke “day of absence” on the Evergreen State College Campus in 2017.
Dr. Bret Weinstein had refused to participate because it
seemed like a group-oriented, reparative remedy that depended on arbitrary assignment
of people into groups rather than their own individual actions.
Yet many (woke) students took the position that providing
identity-based safe-spaces was necessary, otherwise the world would become a
privilege-based meritocracy, and could navigate toward fascism.
This seems like a question of “mandatory socialization”.
The college is located in Olympia, Washington. The college
has unusual approaches to curricula and majors, as Wikipedia explains.
Wikipedia embed of panorama of campus, click for
attribution.
“Half AS Interesting” presents “The Seven People Who
Can Turn off the Internet”.
The video (7 minutes) describes how the domain name and
IP address system works, and how there is a complicated system of public and
private keys (comparable to what exists for crypto currency) involved in resolving
a domain name.Ultimately, there are
seven individuals responsible for the integrity of these keys.
No, I’m not one of them.
Sometimes you get a “can’t find DNS” or a NXT DOMAIN
error, that seems to happen when the backbone companies that manage this setup
have an issue (I think one of them is Century Link). One of my Wordpress sites
sometimes gets one of these errors around 9 PM many night.
Bright Sun Films presents “Abandoned: Memphis Pyramid”
It is part of a series of abandoned construction
projects.
At one time, in the 1950s, developers want to put up
three pyramids on the Mississippi river.
When plans for a basketball arena floundered, it
became a shopping mall, and there was interest from fast food chains. I drove past it in a visit in 1992.
New Mexico State University graduate student Andrew
Dotson makes higher math entertaining with his 42 minute lecture“Reimann Curvature Tensor”, which is Episode
15 of his “Tensor Calculus” series.
One aspect that is interesting is how he presents his
material using video editing and an interesting setup of devices in his
apartment, which creates a particularly effective blackboard (or whiteboard), so
this video may be interesting to other YouTubers wanting to polish their style
of presentation and make it more professional.
Tensor calculus can describe what it would be like to
live on other surfaces, like inside an O’Neill Cylinder in outer space (“Rendez-vous
with Rama”), or maybe a Klein Bottle if we could become 4-dimensional beings
(well maybe we can through dreams, if you ask Christopher Nolan (“Inception”)).
Dotson begins each video with “hello smart people”, but
sometimes he touches on subjects covered by other college YouTubers (especially
John Fish at Harvard).He is
particularly interested in the right place for graduate school and advanced
degrees in theoretical subjects.
One question would be, whether this branch of mathematics
really will show us how to move to Space if we have to (we will some day; even without
the pressure of Global warming now, the Earth would warm up anyway because of
the Sun in a few hundred million years).
He also talks about partial differential equations, a
dreaded subject at KU for me in 1966 because it was poorly presented (then).
KU McCollum Hall dorm, 2006, now torn down and replaced (I was there 1966-67).
Picture: Wikipedia embed of NASA picture of Las Cruces NM from space, PD, click for attribution
“Asking Online Strangers for Advice”, edited and
directed by Max Reisinger, for his new Perspectopia channel and clothing
business.
The channel also has an earlier film of how Max
selected YouTube partners for his business. The real point of reviewing this
film is to discuss how teen entrepreneurs are quickly organizing, even in the
middle of a pandemic (or hopefully toward the end now).
The current film (9 minutes) comprises short
testimonials by young people, one of which says “be kind, and not just because
people are kind to you.”I’ve seen
similar sentiments on Twitter from Trey Yingst (formerly News2share, now Fox
correspondent from Israel), and from the “real” David Hogg (a 19 year old in North
Carolina, going to UNC Charlotte and working in the real world for a grocer).For the record, Max himself has yet to turn
18, and is finishing his last year of high school at UNC Chapel Hill (some of
it virtual).Max covers topics for young
adults in a manner that reminds me of John Fish (21, Harvard), Nate O’Brien (22
years old, I think, Santrel Media in Philadelphia), and even Tyler Mowery’s
screenwriting channels (2 of them). All
of these influencers talk about the importance of reading a lot of books, including
fiction.
While mentioning companies started by very young
people, we have to mention “that” David Hogg (Harvard) and his new pillow
company, Good Pillow, with William LeGate. Yes, the motive for the company is
partly political (anti-Trump), and we won’t get into that right now.On the other hand, the “real” David Hogg at
UNC sells sewn potholders and other hand art woodwork.To an outsider, it looks like there is
synergy between these companies and maybe they could work together.
In one earlier video, Max showed how he imprints his
Perspectopia T-shirts or jackets with a press in his home.The Perspectopia
channel page shows a drawing of an alien city.
All of them have mentioned how they relate to
investors and spend time on business proposals.The Harvard David Hogg even showed a daily schedule for a Monday, where
he would do school homework and meet with investors, and get up at 3:30
AM.He used a planner that looked motivated
by John Fish’s growth notebook. The two
David Hogg’s, if claiming opposite political loyalties, are more alike than
they think.
My high school, 1961 (Washington-Liberty now, Arlington VA)
“David Hoffman Has Some Fun with 1950s High School
Dress Codes.Did They Work?” (Sept 2020).
Well, sort of.
But two-thirds of the film shows a middle school math
teacher, a Mr. Grimes, try two different styles of “classroom management”. The class is ninth grade, which used to be "junior high school". After my time it moved to senior high school. He finally has to teach the concept of ratios. (No Hilbert spaces this time.)
With the first style, he is antagonistic and has
severe discipline problems.
With the replay, he is more laid back and gets better,
though not perfect behavior.
When I worked as a substitute teacher, 2004-2007, at
least with middle school, classroom discipline was an issue.I was too laid back to intervene in
situations I had no real knowledge of.
The Walt Disney Company has removed four of its
classic films from its app offerings for kids (still available for adults). Why dies this remind me of COPPA and YouTube's "made for kids" at the end of 2019 (when life was still normal).
They are “Dumbo”, “Peter Pan”, “The Swiss Family Robinson”,
and “The Aristocats”.
I remember seeing Dumbo as a boy;Peter Pan has been remade as a musical, and I
recall reading “The Swiss Family Robinson”.
Screenrant has a description of what stereotype
support Disney found necessary for self-censorship. Dumbo accidentally walks into "Jim Crow" territory, quite literally. As the article says, "stories matter".
Picture: Map of “New Switzerland” in “Swiss Family
Robinson”, Wikipedia embed, click for attribution
“What Was the First Virus?”, from the History of the
Earth, researched and written by Leila Battison, narrated and edited by David
Kelly, and Art by Khail Kupsky.
The film starts out by describing how soldiers brought
smallpox to Rome from afar at around 100 AD, and were horribly disfigured when
they survived.
Viruses are depicted as being possibly “progressive”, “regressive”
(from former cells) or even originating in replicating molecules (which might happen
in the lakes of Titan).
An interesting point was that some bacteria have
regressed to becoming parts of mitochondria of cells or larger organisms.
Retroviruses are particularly effective at creating
new genetic material to become part of higher organisms, like the placenta of
mammals.
Wikipedia embed of Wuhan-Ju-1 first SARS_CoV2 virus, p.d., click for attribution.
Shane Stanley, “Writing a Treatment and Synopsis for a
Screenplay”
Stanley suggests that a treatment, besides a logline
and tagline, would include a functional summary of the components of the work
For example a paragraph for each of the five acts (Freytag
or “Shakespeare” structure).But there
are other models, such as Don Harmon’s story circle, or Michael Hauge’s Six Parts
(similar to Freytag but there seem to be two critical points of plot turns in
his model).
If you were submitting a treatment for copyright there
might be a question as to who owns the “structure” you are using
(legally).
But the basic parts of any story can be aggregated and
numbered into various steps and sub-steps,
I think, especially in science fiction, you need to
summarize the “rules” in your world.This may lead to a political structure which could become disturbing or
controversial.Imagine how alien civilizations,
maybe on more than one planet, could have had to deal with race or even gender
and sexuality. (I still wait for a movie on Clive Barker’s “Imajica”.
You would want to list the major characters and
suggest a character arc for the major ones.
Stanley suggests specifying alternative possible
endings.
Tristan Simpson renders “Day in the Life as a Ballet
Dancer”.
Tristan says he is 20 years old and is from the US but
studying in Germany. The video was shot recently, just with a preview of spring.
He says his mornings are free, but include a regular gym
workout (which he is allowed to film – just himself), and then class (with all
the usual stretches) in the afternoon.
Two-thirds through the video (12 min), yes, he shows
up close enough that you see that he shaves his legs for tights, but not
close.I don’t think I’ve had a video
about a swimmer, or a biker.
David Hoffman:“What
to Do Before Making Your Video” (Jan 22, 2021)
He particularly talks about setting up situational
videos where the reaction of the subject to the surprise circumstances is the
reason for the video. So you could film a celebrity to get their reaction to a
surprise filming.Some of his advice
might apply to filming demonstrations and protests, or maybe even the police. He presumably is emphasizing YouTube, or
perhaps a short film for a festival submission.
He also talks about getting liability insurance and mentions
two times he was sued.One time a doctor
sued him for referring to the doctor as a hippy, but the court bought the
argument that no harm was shown.But another
time his filming a teenage girl led (supposedly) to her being bullied at
school, but still the case got dismissed.
This short is apparently #5 in a series, and he says
he has a sequence of lessons on Skillshare.
Recently we’ve been hearing more scuttlebutt of sales
of classic movies from the past that show African-Americans in a bad light in
today’s cultural standards, despite historical relevance.
The most notorious of these is “Gone with the Wind”
(old legacy review by me), directed by Victor Flemming and George Cukor, Selznick
International and MGM, which I saw twice as a child (the first time on a long
Sunday afternoon at the Arlington theater around 1954), based on Margaret
Mitchell’s one novel (1936). My parents had
the Motion Picture Edition of the book with heavy technicolor illustrations.
Jennifer Schuessler had described the controversy for
the New York Times in June 2020, here.
A few of the most controversial scenes from the book
were changed in the movie.
It’s a story of resilience, of a girl who seems
spoiled, loses it and gets is back, and loses it (love) again.
Protest sign day after Trump's inauguration in 2017
“The Plot Against the President” (Oct. 2020) is not
well known as a film outside of conservative circles, but it surely must have
been shown at CPAC recently in Orlando.It is directed by Amanda Milius, and based on the book by Lee Smith “The
Plot Against the President: The True Story of how Congressman Devin Nunes
Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History”, published by Center
Street (which also published Andy Ngo’s “Unmasked”). The film distributor seems to be Turn Key Films. Right off the bat, the movie title reminds me
of a little known Irving Wallace novel, “The Plot”, from the 1960s.
The basic irony is that the Democrats, according to
this film, not only colluded illegally to prevent Trump from winning (and
failed), they also tried to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power in
2017 (and I saw no real evidence of that).Today, we know what happened after the 2020 election and on January 6
(which will generate a major PBS movie soon).
The narration goes at breakneck pace, so it’s easier
to give the basic references on Wikipedia, to the Nunes Memo, a link that also
produces the 4-page PDF.There are
accusations of improper surveillance of Carter Page, accusing him of setting up
deals with the Russians for his own benefit. We could pass along the summary of the MuellerReport on supposed ties of Trump to Russia. An important figure in all of this
was George Papadopoulos.
The film makes many other ironic points.One is that a private citizen cannot legally
conduct “diplomacy” outside of the government or State Department.I have come close to doing that on at least
one occasion. It talks about quasi-memes like “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” and
the “Three Jump Rule”, which made it easy (supposedly) to go after Steve Bannon
after first doing Carter Page.They note
that it is not legal for a private citizen or journalist to disclose classified
information that “they” (watch my pronouns!) come in touch with, but, oh no,
CNN can read it to you.There is a lot
of material on how FISA works in the film.
The music score by Stephen Limbaugh sounds rather post-romantic.
Armond White has a useful discussion in National Review
of the film.
Tatiana Siegel writes in Hollywood Reporter that the film was held
up by Amazon for “content review” before allowed on its platform, where it can be
watched free by Amazon Prime members.Now that is the process that self-publishing platforms use to clear
self-published books for legal risks and, they say, hate speech.
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