Category: Entertainment

Provenance

Entertainment, The Gun Thing

I understand the concept of “provenance” — I sometimes call it “touching history”, in that when one can establish through an object some kind of lineage which can take one back in time, it’s always interesting.  It’s why people continue to brave all the hassle and potential ills of going to Egypt, just to see and stand next to the Sphinx and the Pyramids.

I get all that.  I’ve spoken how it felt to show the kids a church in Austria which had been built in 937AD, or going to a pub somewhere in southern Germany which had first served beer in 1256AD (and smelled like it — Daughter:  “Eeewwww do you think they’ve cleaned the floors since then?”).

Those are all Good Things, and that kind of provenance is wonderful.

Much less wonderful is this nonsense:

The pistol used by the late Sir Sean Connery in the first ever James Bond movie – the 1962 classic Dr. No – has sold at auction for $256,000 (£190,000).

Now granted, the James Bond movies brought the old Walther PP/PPK back from the dead — it was never that great a pistol, despite being the sidearm of several European police departments — but… a quarter-million for a studio prop?

I don’ theenk so, Scooter.

I’ve never understood “collectibles” when applied to movie rubbish — Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz  shoes fetched some ungodly amount of money a while back (can’t be bothered to look it up) — and I’ve always considered this kind of thing to be akin to the groupie syndrome.  I mean, who wouldn’t pay a boatload of money for Sonny Corleone’s bullet-riddled and (fake-)blood-drenched shirt from The Godfather, as somebody apparently did back in 2003?

Well, I wouldn’t, for starters, nor for any piece of make-believe “heritage”.  Lord knows I love guns, but emptying out the old bank account for a piece of historical gunnery — even for Frank James’s Remington revolver?  Nuh-uh.

And coming back to the Bond thing:  Ian Fleming was a fine writer, but he didn’t know shit about guns.  I think his original Bond gun was a Beretta .22 pistol, later “upgraded” to the .25 ACP and finally to a Walther  (.32 ACP, not the .380 ACP as in the movie prop), as though this was the very apogee of weaponry a spy should use.  Hell, even back in the late 1950s, those guns were already in disfavor as sidearms.

As the expression / cliche goes:  A fool and his money are soon parted.  And this is just the latest proof of the thing.

That’s More Like it

Entertainment

I’ve had some advice for Brad Pitt on a previous occasion, e.g.:

Yep;  all over the world, there are a million beautiful women who will have sex with you on whatever terms you wish to make; and if you’re done with those, there are yet another million who would leave their boyfriends or husbands just for the chance to bounce on your Sealy Posturepedic with you.
…
Grab a bottle of Southern Comfort, fire up a joint and give a call to [insert the name of random hottie here].

Took the boy awhile, but it seems he’s finally done just that.

Brad Pitt has a new love interest. The 56-year-old actor, who is locked in a bitter divorce settlement with Angelina Jolie, is dating 27-year-old German model, Nicole Poturalski, and the two appear to be getting very close.
The couple sparked rumors after they were spotted leaving Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport together on Wednesday and Page Six has now confirmed their relationship.

Of course, he’s Brad fucking Pitt, so he’s back to his old tricks:

BRAD Pitt’s rumored new girlfriend Nicole Poturalski is allegedly in an open marriage with her 68-year-old husband.
The model is married to restauranteur Roland Mary, who owns Berlin celeb spot Borchardt, a favorite of Brad’s in the city.

That’s the stuff, Brad;  don’t bonk just any old pretty chick — get a married German one, for extra-exotic in-your-face goodness.  I kinda feel sorry for the Olde Phartte Hubby, but when you’re pushing 80, have a wife the same age as yer grand-daughter, and Brad Pitt puts in an appearance… well, shit happens.

I feel better about the world, now:  Pantifa snotnoses are getting their arms blown off in riots, and now Brad’s back to being Brad.

I think I’ll make my breakfast gin & orange a double.

Screening

BaconLettuceMayo, Entertainment

I see that Amazon Prime has added a movie category:

…etc.

Of course, putting a “Black” identifier also allows Eeeevil Raycissss to put their own filter on the thing (“I’m not gonna watch any of that shit” ), which is kinda sad.  What it does do is help identify which “Black” movies are decent movies in their own right (Flight, Out of Time  etc.) in that the movies are watchable and the appearance of Black lead actors is incidental and not an essential part of the movie.  It also helps identify which movies are just BLM-style agitprop (e.g. Hurricane , which is to actuality as Braveheart  was to Scottish history or Inglourious Basterds  was to WWII — a wild approximation).

Speaking of wild approximations and Nazis, last week I watched the first episode of Amazon’s The Hunters  (about hunting down old Nazis in the 1970s), and won’t be watching any more of them. (The episode synopses alone in that link should justify hanging for whoever wrote such shit.)  Fucking hell, what a load of bullshit.  Never mind casting Al Pacino (!) as an old Jew — his thick Noo Yawk accent covers a multitude of sins — but the plot seems to have been written by a teenager, full of holes, glaring historical inaccuracies — inspired by true events my ass — and improbable situations.  (Quentin Tarentino has a lot to answer for.)  Worst of all, it’s positioned as comedy — which it is, a little — but frankly, it is to its subject matter as Blazing Saddles  was to the settling of the West.

I read a meme a couple weeks back which stated despairingly:  “I finished Netflix” and I’m starting to get there myself.  The problem with movie streaming is that the demand for fresh content is insatiable, which means that a lot of shit is being made that should never have got past the first read-through — good grief, the stand-up comedy show offerings alone need about a 70% culling, what a load of unfunny people — and just because Amazon and Netflix have more money than the Vatican doesn’t mean that they should be turning out all this dreck.  I can just see the executive meetings:

“We need ten new movies by next month.  Any new scripts?”
“Yeah, there are two which talk about rednecks fighting Blacks and Jews.”
“Documentaries?”
“Could be, if we need docs instead of features.”
“Okay, greenlight both.  We’ll decide where to put them later.”

I’m not even going to mention the outright propaganda movies which talk about eeevil banksters and Global MegaCorp, to name but two favorite topics of AmaFlix’s offerings.

The nice thing about modern technology is that we’re given lots of choice when it comes to entertainment.  Unfortunately, the choice is often between a plate of dogshit and a bowl of cold puke.

Swapping Lives

Entertainment

It’s an old party game:  “If you could live the life of another person and not your own, whose life would you choose?”

I know, I know:  most people would turn down the choice and want to live their own lives, thank you very much.

And even if they did decide to play, first choices are generally not so good after a little reflection, e.g. “Jesus Christ” (crucified at age 32, after an admittedly-virtuous life), “Errol Flynn” (died of cirrhosis at age 50, after an anything-but-virtuous life), and so on.  Most lives are either noteworthy but short, or else pretty much unremarkable and not worth the substitution.

However, allow me to suggest just one alternative:  Flavio Briatore

Who he, you ask?  Well, under “Bad Boy” in the dictionary you will find this photo:

Allow me to present the salient facts (as I see them) of this man’s extraordinary life.

  • failed high school repeatedly;
  • started off life as a ski instructor, then a restaurant owner;  and when the latter failed, changed to selling insurance;
  • escaped multiple prison terms and bans stemming from “questionable” activities such as fraud, race-fixing and so on;
  • during exile from Italy, started a successful string of clothing-store franchises, ending up as CEO of Benetton USA and, by the way, stinking rich as a result;
  • was engaged to supermodel Naomi Campbell, then left her for Heidi Klum;
  • fathered a child with Heidi, left her and then got her next husband (Seal) to adopt it (ergo  no child support);
  • co-owned a British Premier League football team (Queen’s Park Rangers);
  • ran two successful Formula 1 racing teams (Benetton and Renault, with all the perks therefrom), and along the way:
  • discovered not one but two Formula 1 champion drivers (Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, FFS);
  • is married to Wonderbra model Elisabetta Gregoraci, who is (duh) thirty years his junior;
  • lives in Monaco (see details below).

Former Bandmate Knob’s little palais  is near Briatore’s in Monaco, and he contributes these two factoids:

Tell me this isn’t at least a somewhat decent alternative to your life… and now you can scurry off to Wikipedia to get all the details.

Feel free to offer your alternatives in Comments, but they’re better be good to beat this guy.

Must-Have Movies — Part 1

Entertainment

Earlier this week I talked about the benefits and/or wisdom of having all your favorite movies on DVD, against the possibility that they could be “canceled” (i.e. censored or maybe worse, bowdlerized) by The Usual Suspects.

So here’s the first part of a list of movies I think one should have in one’s video library, or the stars / directors thereof, just on case they appear on some lefty’s Enemy Of The People list.

Actors:

Clint Eastwood — pretty much any or all his movies (even Bridges Of Madison County , but not Paint Your Wagon )  because a) Clinty and b) the Left hates him for being a conservative.

John Wayne — ditto, except for the appalling The Conqueror  (Genghis Wayne?  No.)

Lee Marvin — ditto, except for Paint Your Wagon  as noted above, and especially The Dirty Dozen.

Steve McQueen — yeah, he was a wife-beater.  So he’ll be on someone’s list sooner or later.

Paul Newman — as an Eastern liberal, he’s probably not going to be “canceled” anytime soon, but everyone should have The Sting, Butch Cassidy, Hud and The Hustler  on their shelf anyway.

 

Directors:

John Frankenheimer — just about all his movies, but especially The Manchurian Candidate,  Birdman Of Alcatraz, Grand Prix  and Ronin.  Quite possibly the best action-movie director ever.

John Milius — we all know him from Red Dawn, of course, but there’s also Conan  and Flight  Of The Intruder.

Clint Eastwood — he’s already up as an actor, but his solo (non-acting) directing shouldn’t be ignored, either.  Think of Bird, Sully and American Sniper.

We’ll talk about specific must-have movies in the next part of the series.

Feel free to add your favorite “bodies of work” in Comments.  Leave specific movies till next time.