Artist at War and Other News

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One of the more interesting parts of watching Reagan were all the trailers that came before it, exposing some viewers like me to the kind of shadow Hollywood that exists to keep the pigs on the other side of the lifestyle divide. What is not to normal The cultural junk of Hollywood, which generally pretty bad too.

While mainstream Hollywood culture junk usually consists of millionth iterations of comic book adaptations and remember-that-style sequels to films that came out 30 years ago, Flyover Hollywood usually produces Hallmark-style faith-based films, star vehicles for problematic actors who got canceled for posting too much, and wacky documentaries. One of the trailers I saw did the catch was of the third kind, something with the admittedly astonishing title LOVER OF MEN.

This is a documentary that apparently claims that the 12th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was homosexual. Many of the talkers in it seem to be liberal professors (I kept expecting the old alien guy popping up for some reason), but the fact that this trailer was played earlier Reagan seems to betray both his true goals and his target audience. I assume this is a new version of the Myth of the Lost Causewhich re-imagines the Civil War as not about slavery, but this time, instead of claiming it was actually about states’ rights, it will claim that the Civil War was just an example of wokeness gone wild. I mean, come on, it was led by a homo man! Look at his great top hat!

Lots of ins, lots of outs, lots of what-have-you. The irony here is that the Civil War to have is kind of caused by a possible homosexual man, only the name of that man was James Buchanan. (Sorry, I just read The devil of unrest. It was… uh… detailed).

Anyway, one trailer that apparently Also previously played Reaganbut i did not see at my own screening, was for something called “Bau: Artist at War.” (Thanks to Chapo Staircase(that’s how I got to know this).

Bau: Artist at war is a black and white Holocaust drama from Reagan director Sean McNamara. Emile Hirsch plays the title role, which I guess qualifies it as a canceled actor vehicle, but it’s actually much weirder than that.

In an accent that is somehow even more energetic than Jon Voight’s as the ex-KGB agent in ReaganHirsch plays Joseph Bau, a man described as “Walt Disney from Israel,” who used his skills as an artist to survive in the Plaszow concentration camp. He became “Oskar Schindler’s right-hand man” and even married in the concentration camp — an event apparently mentioned in Schindler’s List and an entire film is built around it Bau: Artist at war.

The film, starring Inbar Levi as the future Rebecca Bau, depicts this period in Joseph’s life as a kind of screwball romantic comedy interspersed with Zale’s diamond commercial score, in which characters with full heads of thick hair refuse to let death camp life falter. They have a great time! They joke with the guards and suck and fuck in their barrack beds. (More like a kind of plow-schwitz, right?). Incredible stuff here.

I’d tell you when and where you can see it (IMDB lists a limited release date of November 1st), but since they couldn’t even upload a decent quality trailer to YouTube, I don’t hold out much hope it’ll get played anywhere. I hope someone gets a nice tax deduction for it.

Yes, I watched the debates. We discussed it on the FrotcastBut this tweet summed it up a bit. Seymour Hersh also had a solid report. Overall, Kamala Harris has done a great job of portraying Trump as an old idiot (They eat cats and dogs! I saw it on TV!), and in that sense she was a vast improvement over Biden. As far as looking competent enough to win an election, she did a great job. Of course, it was still incredibly depressing to watch the supposedly lesser of two evils fall over herself repeating how much she wanted to do more fracking, keep giving money to Israel, and grossly misrepresent the US’s actual military commitments around the world. But hey, I guess we can’t have it all. Or even anything (health care? please?).

Oh, and she also repeated the nonsense that “closing the border” will somehow stop fentanyl overdoses. Have you literally seen a movie about drug smugglers? How many of them show poor Central American people smuggling the drugs across the border in their pockets? It seems they’re mostly using planes and boats, which you’d think would be more efficient. (“More than 90% of fentanyl intercepted is stopped at ports of entry, where cartels attempt to smuggle it primarily in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens,” says the notoriously liberal Department of Homeland Security.)

If history is to be believed, we better worry about the CIA if we really want to prevent drugs from entering the country.

A new study shows that undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue in 2022, while many remain shut out of the programs that fund their taxes. The findings contradict anti-immigrant rhetoric that undocumented immigrants “destroy” social programs.

In 40 states, undocumented immigrants paid higher tax rates than the richest 1% of income brackets in those states.

Granted, not as catchy as “they’re eating your cats!”

I loved Kneecapthe pseudo-biopic about the Irish rap trio of the same name. “The Irish language 8 miles I didn’t know I needed it,’ I shouted. But hardly anyone saw it. Well, now you have another chance.

The film will return to theaters in major markets including Universal City, California; Phoenix, Arizona; San Diego, California; Miami, Florida; Orlando, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; New Orleans, Louisiana; Boston, Massachusetts; Kansas City, Kansas; Las Vegas, Nevada; Dublin, Ohio; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Knoxville, Tennessee; Houston, Texas; New York, NY; and San Francisco, California.Variety)

How the hell did Dublin, Ohio get in there? I mean, good for you guys, I guess, but damn.

I’m hesitant to read too much into a film I’m definitely going to see, but the reviews out of TIFF are starting to look positive. Friendshipa feature film debut from Andrew DeYoung starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd, in which Robinson “plays an awkward, manly suburban dad whose average behavior short-circuits after he’s taken into the care of a kindly neighbor.”

No release date yet, but I’m sold. Oh! He’s in a new show too! Robinson will write and star in The Chair Company for HBO.

“After an embarrassing incident at work, a man (Robinson) investigates a far-reaching conspiracy.”

Sold again.