A Rough Week for Fox and its Hosts Part I – Dominion Voting Settlement

Posted on April 26, 2023 by Ralph Hanson

The popular right-wing cable talk network Fox News has had a rough couple of weeks. Today, we’ll talk about their settlement of Dominion Voting Systems $1.6 billion defamation suit. And in our next post will discuss why popular Fox host Tucker Carlson was forced to leave.

The Fox News network announced a settlement Tuesday, April 18, with Dominion Voting System’s libel lawsuit that claimed that Dominion was defamed by Fox’s false claims that the company helped rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. There was never any evidence that this happened. Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to the voting equipment company to bring the lawsuit to a close. According to The Washington Post, this was the “largest publicly disclosed monetary settlement ever in an American defamation action.”

While Dominion got a massive financial settlement, they did not get a substantial apology from Fox. Instead, the network issued a statement that said, “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

The settlement was announced two days into what was to be the start of the trial. Numerous people critical of Fox were unhappy that Fox did not give a meaningful apology. But it’s worth remembering that this was Dominion’s lawsuit, and by settling they got a guaranteed large financial settlement without an extended trial.

Washington Post media commentator Erik Wemple notes that Dominion had massive amounts of evidence they said showed that Fox knew the claims made by Trump and his supporters about Dominion were false, and that the claims were being broadcast to help keep Fox’s audience happy.

Journalist Charles Fishman had an excellent Twitter thread last week where he explained why it made good sense for Dominion to settle without a trial. His key points included:

  • There would be no audio or video from the trial to highlight the lies Fox hosts propagated.
  • There would not be great social media materials to go viral.
  • There was a good chance that it would take years for a court case to settle.
  • A cash settlement now would give Dominion 80 times its annual profit with a single check.
  • The only thing Dominion is not getting is a clear apology from Fox.

Would you settle under these circumstances?

Settling would also seem to be in Fox’s best interests. Wemple, writing the day before the case settled, gave multiple reasons why Fox News would want to avoid going to trial. These include:

  • The trial would be a public relations disaster for the network. Every day of coverage of the lead-up to the trial included more dirt on the company coming from e-mails and texts from inside the company.
  • The judge was not sympathetic to Fox’s arguments. He was continually criticizing their attorneys’ behavior.
  • Fox winning in court could result in the Supreme Court changing the long-standing “actual malice” standard for public officials to prove libel. Several members of the court have indicated that they would be interested in reconsidering that standard, making it much easier for public officials to sue for libel. That kind of decision would clearly not be in Fox’s best interests. (Or, to be honest, that of any news company.)

Up Next:  Why Fox fired popular host Tucker Carlson.

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Current Problems with Sports News, Social Media, and AI-Generated Images

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Ralph Hanson

There’s a lot of important journalism to be done surrounding professional sports. But when the leagues own the media outlets covering them, there’s a real limit to how far the reporters can go. This situation, with the NFL owning a network, ranks up there with the problems created years ago with ESPN sucking up to the leagues so they wouldn’t lose the cable rights. For example: How ESPN and the NBA handled fights over civil rights in Hong Kong and China.

Saw great comment that Elon Musk is running Twitter into the ground in the manner of a cartoonish “chaotic evil” villain. Thoughtful analysis of the tech billionaire’s mismanagement of the bird site.

Talk about AI-generated images have been everywhere as of late, including concerns about  intellectual property of artists whose images are being modeled, the need to support human artists (my Twitter avatar was drawn by graphic designer/web comic artist Gordon McAlpin and my Zoom avatar created by graphic novelist Sophie Goldstein), and the emerging problems of deep-fake deceptions.

And finally, some disturbed person put together a Banshees of Inisherin video game!  Colm has to go through a Pac-Man-like maze trying to collect his severed fingers on the way to the pub before being caught one of his annoying pursuers.   (You may remember that Banshees was my “most memorable” movie of 2022.)

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A Global Tour of Government Officials Attacking Press Freedom

Posted on February 21, 2023 by Ralph Hanson

One of the most depressing things showing up in my Twitter feed over the last week or so has been the number of cases of journalists and news outlets being under attack around the world and here in the United States. Here are several examples.

Journalism is under attack in Bangladesh.

And similar attacks by the government are happening in nearby India.

Over in Pakistan (and elsewhere around the world), women journalists are being attacked online simply for being women.

Over in Russia, journalists are needing help being smuggled out of the country.

Cambodia’s prime minister is shutting down local news organizations.

And Florida’s Ron DeSantis wants to roll back press freedom in the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/ron-desantis-news-media.html

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A triangle of everything I have to say about the Oscar’s screaming banshees….

Posted on January 24, 2023 by Ralph Hanson

Really pleased by this year’s Oscar nominees, having been to a surprising number of the nominated films. But what I’m most excited about is seeing some excellent “small” movies getting nominated for Best Picture and a bunch of other major awards.

It’s so great to see movies like The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and The Triangle of Sadness getting nominated for Best Picture as well as other awards.(Everything Everywhere topped the list of nominations with 11!)

I’m perfectly happy to see them joined by crowd pleasers such as Elvis, Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick. Those three blockbusters all helped remind lots of people how enjoyable it can be to go see a big movie on the big screen. I watched and enjoyed all of them. Of the blockbusters, the Avatar sequel was my favorite, well worth driving to the city to see it in 3D on the big screen with top-notch sound.

But I hope that the nominations will help bring more people to watch some of these quirkier, smaller movies as well.

I’ve previously written about The Banshees of Inisherin as being the most interesting or memorable movie I’ve seen this year. 

Poster for Banshees of Inisherin featuring Bolin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.

This little film, staring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan, tells the story of two old friends living on a remote Irish island in the 1920s when Gleeson’s character decides he doesn’t want to spend anymore of his limited life with Farrell’s character.

I was fortunate enough to see this at our gem of a community-run non-profit The World Theatre. And this is a movie that demands your full attention in a darkened room with no distractions from phones or other electronics. It is billed as a dark comedy, and I suppose it is that. But mostly it is a story of what a friendship can mean and how we decide to spend our time on earth.

It’s great to see the entire leading cast nominated for acting awards, including Farrell for Best Actor, Gleeson and Barry Keoghan for Best Supporting Actor, and Kerry Condon for Best Supporting Actress. And when you combine that with a Best Original Screenplay nod, it’s not hard to see what makes this movie so good – a great script and great actors to perform them.

 

I also really enjoyed the rather strange Triangle of Sadness.
Triangle of Sadness movie poster.

It’s an excellent look at the power in our relationships, and how that power can change as our circumstances change. Triangle considers the relationships between men and women, the rich & beautiful and those who serve them, capitalists and Marxists, and those with survival skills and those who are suddenly worthless. I know this doesn’t sound fun and exciting, but I highly recommend it if you can get past the amount of rather comical vomiting during a storm at sea. I doubt it will pick up any wins, but I would love for more people to see and talk about this provocative film.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is the most familiar and successful of these smaller films, and it takes the multiverse concepts so overblown in Marvel movies and applies them to perfectly ordinary people trying to get through their life issues like running a small business, maintaining relationships, and making sense out of craziness. (Yes, for the record, I loved Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.) Like Banshees, almost all of the lead performers get nominations, including Best Actress Michelle Yeoh, who shows her dramatic, comedic and action chops all out in equal measure; Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu for Best Supporting Actress; and Ke Huy Quan (who you may remember as a child star from Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) for Best Supporting Actor. (Quan also is making an incredible comeback after staying away from acting for about 20 years.)
Everything Everywhere All at Once poster.

By all means, go see the blockbusters, but also make sure you get to see the smaller films as well. (I still have yet to see Spielberg’s The Fablemans, but I hope to remedy that before Oscar night.)

And finally, Michelle Yeoh is the first Asian Best Actress nominee. Or at least the first who acknowledges her Asian heritage. There’s been a little controversy over a story from the Hollywood Reporter today mentioning that Yeoh is the first Best Actress nominee who identifies as Asian. That’s not as snarky as it sounds, because the have likely been Asian nominees in the past, most notably Merle Oberon who passed for white and hid the fact that her mother was of partial Sri Lankan descent.

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Twits commenting on AI student deception, auto transcription & more charges of bias

Posted on January 20, 2023 by Ralph Hanson

Twitter’s had a lot of discussion about some interesting issues in the last week. Here’s some thoughts on student use of AI tools, use of automated transcription, and false equivalency bias.

Yes. There are lots of ways that students can deceive faculty. New technology like the AI writing and art tools can certainly do so. But so can girl/boyfriends, greek system archives, and purchased help. The real solution is to know your student’s writing style (which really only occurs in upper-division classes) so you can tell when it wasn’t written by them.

There are a lot of tools out there to automate interview transcription. But as the author of this list points out, there can also be real privacy concerns about what the transcription services do with their data (your data that’s become theirs). Also, there is a lot to be said for transcribing the recordings yourself – that’s how you really get to know what’s in the interview. But, I understand, there isn’t always time for that.

Journalists are terrified of being accused of being biased. We need to get over it. No matter what we do, we will be accused of being biased. But here’s the truth – both sides are not always (perhaps only rarely) equivalent. In the case of the debt limit – one side wants to have a clean raise of the debt limit. One side wants to threaten to crash through it. (To be fair, if the Democrats had been serious about really wanting to make the problem go away, they could have done so, or at least tried to do so, during the lame duck session.)

 

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Will we be extremists for love or hate? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Ralph Hanson

" One of the greatest honors of my life was being invited to speak at the Martin Luther King, Jr. candlelight vigil several years ago at the UNK student union, along with KevinThe question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr National Museum of African American History & Culture

One of the greatest honors of my life was being invited to speak at the Martin Luther King, Jr. candlelight vigil several years ago at the UNK student union, along with Kevin Chaney, who was then UNK’s women’s basketball coach. 

Here’s what I had to say about Dr. King when I spoke:

Visalli-11-10-13When we think of public relations, we think of a professional in a suit trying to persuade us about something related to a large corporation. But not all PR is practiced by big business.

Civil rights leader The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a brilliant understanding of public relations during the campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.

The goal of the campaign was to have non-violent demonstrations and resistance to force segregated businesses to open up to African Americans. What King, and the members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, wanted to do was stage a highly visible demonstration that would not only force change in Birmingham, but also grab the attention of the entire American public.

King and his colleagues picked Birmingham because it was one of he most segregated cities in America and because it had Eugene “Bull” Conner as police commissioner.

Conner was a racist who could be counted on to attack the peaceful marchers. Birmingham was a city where black protestors were thrown in jail, and the racists were bombing homes and churches. There was a black neighborhood that had so many bombings it came to be known as Dynamite Hill.

Dr. King and his colleagues had planned demonstrations and boycotts in Birmingham, but held off with them in order to let the political system and negotiations work. But time passed, and nothing changed. Signs were still up at the lunch counters and water fountains, and protestors were still headed to jail.

King and the rest of the SCLC needed to get attention for the plight of African Americans in cities like Birmingham.

They needed to do more than fight back against the racism of segregation. They needed to get Americans of good will in all the churches and synagogues to hear their voices.

Starting in April of 1963, predominantly African American volunteers would march in the streets, hold sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, and boycott local businesses in Birmingham. As the protests started, so did the arrests.

On Good Friday, King and Abernathy joined in the marching so that they would be arrested. While King was in jail, he was given a copy of the Birmingham News, in which there was an article where white Alabama clergy urged the SCLC to stop the demonstrations and boycotts and allow the courts to solve the problem of segregation.

But King was tired of waiting, and so he wrote what would become one of the great statements of the civil rights cause. One that spoke to people who were fundamentally their friends, not their enemies. This came to be known as the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Writing the letter was not easy. Dr. King wrote it in the margins of the newspaper. He wrote it on scraps of note paper. He wrote it on panels of toilet paper. (Think about what the toilet paper was like if Dr. King was able to write on it!)

The letter spoke to the moderates who were urging restraint. To them, he wrote:

“My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas…. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.”

He went on the acknowledge that perhaps he was an extremist, but that he was an extremist for love, not for hate:

“But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label.

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” …

Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” …

And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.”

And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .”

So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?”

King’s jailhouse writings were smuggled out and published as a brochure. His eloquent words were given added force for being written in jail. As he says toward the end of his letter, it is very different to send a message from jail than from a hotel room:

“Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?”

Once King was released from jail eight days later, he and his followers raised the stakes. No longer would adults be marching and being arrested, children would become the vanguard. And as the children marched, photographers and reporters from around the world would document these young people being attacked by dogs, battered by water from fire hoses, and filling up the Birmingham jails.

King faced criticism for allowing the young people to face the dangers of marching in Birmingham. But he responded by criticizing the white press, asking the reporters where they had been “during the centuries when our segregated social system had been misusing and abusing Negro children.”

Although there was rioting in Birmingham, and King’s brother’s house was bombed, the campaign was ultimately successful. Business owners took down the signs that said “WHITE” and “COLORED” from the drinking fountains and bathrooms, and anyone was allowed to eat at the lunch counters. The successful protest in Birmingham set the stage for the March on Washington that would take place in August of 1963, where King would give his famous “I have a dream” speech.

We are now more than fifty years from King’s letter from Birmingham Jail. This letter was not one of his “feel good” speeches. It doesn’t raise the spirit the way his “I have a dream” speech did.

But it did give us a message that still matters more than ever today:

 “I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

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Set Free The C-SPAN!

Posted on January 6, 2023 by Ralph Hanson
Kevin McCarthy on C-SPAN

Rep. Kevin McCarthy on C-SPAN during the multiple votes for Speaker of the House.


If you’ve been watching the Kevin McCarthy for Speaker mess over in the U.S. House of Representatives on C-SPAN (and who among us hasn’t been riveted on C-SPAN that last four days?), you can’t help but notice that the video has been much more engaging than their typical coverage of the house.

Part of that is certainly because what could be more exciting than a once-in-a-century struggle of the majority party to elect a speaker and start the session of Congress?

But the real reason is closely related.

Under normal circumstances, the Speaker of the House sets the rules for how the cameras can be used for C-SPAN broadcasts. But since there currently isn’t a speaker, the C-SPAN camera operators and directors can focus on whatever they want to, which means we can see all the groups of people getting together to negotiate, commiserate, or just congregate on the house floor.

We’ve seen some amazing things here.

Consider this conversation between Freedom Caucus Republican Paul Gossar and Squad-member Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). What makes this particularly interesting is that Gossar had previously posted a social media video that had a cartoon version of himself murdering a cartoon AOC.

Another favorite of mine was the arial look down at Congress that echos the view of the Library of Congress from the movie All The President’s Men.

But, really, it’s just the amazing looks at the House in action.

Perhaps the greatest moment of coverage came Thursday night when the whole House gave a standing ovation to Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson, who is running things absent absent a speaker.

Seriously, whoever is elected Speaker, please set free C-SPAN to be it’s best self!

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2022 in Review – Ralph’s favorite and most memorable books, movies, music, video games & TV shows

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Ralph Hanson

I don’t know that I believe in a Best Of Annual Review, but here’s a list of what I enjoyed in media during 2022.

Favorite Audio Book/Book Series:
Andy Serkis reading The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings

Cover of Lord of the Rings audiobook read by Andy Serkis.J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings have been favorites of mine since my teens. I loved the books, and I really enjoyed the Peter Jackson LOTR movies (though the less said about his Hobbit movies, the better). But I think this very long tale has found it’s ultimate expression with actor Andy Serkis’ new audiobook recording of the entire series. Although it was just Serkis reading, he has such talent as a voice actor it’s as though it were a fully cast recording.

Tolkien writes that the whole point of LOTR was to tell a really long tale, and if you are reading it in print, it is all too easy to skip over some of the songs or poetry or history. But these are all part of telling a long tale in its fullness. And with Serkis reading/singing/reciting it, there is little temptation to bypass the slower portions (don’t say boring parts…)

Favorite Print Book:
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is not only my favorite graphic novel of the year but my favorite print book. (I do most of my recreational reading with audiobooks.) Before Ducks, Nova Scotian Kate Beaton was best known for her long-running Hark a Vagrant webcomics and anthologies that skewer everything from super heroes to Victorian literature to Canadian history.

In Ducks, Beaton tells of the two years she spend back in the 2000s working in the Alberta oil sands as a way of paying off her school debt for a degree in the humanities. Working out west was a massive change for her – leaving behind the remote life in Cape Breton Nova Scotia where family and friends lived but there were few good-paying jobs. The oil fields were far from Nova Scotia, were full of men who were far from home, and was where women were massively outnumbered.

Beaton’s story is full of her characteristic humor and skewed observations, but it is also a painful narrative of sexual harassment and assault. The comics manage to capture the young men, barely out of boyhood, seeking some kind of adventure; the older men, trying to support themselves and their far-away families; and the young women, desperate for good-paying work.

The book has made a number of top book lists of 2022, most notably former President Barak Obama’s.

Page from Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate BeatonThe pages from this graphic novel are not just traditional comic panels. Some are much larger scale that capture the remote, desolate, and sometimes beautiful settings of Beaton’s work in the oil fields, such as this one illustrating the northern lights.

Art from Ducks by Kate Beaton depicting northern lights.

Most Memorable Movie of the Year:
The Banshees of Inisherin

Please note that this is my most memorable movie, as in the movie I can’t stop thinking about, not my favorite movie of the year.

This little film, staring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan, tells the story of two old friends living on a remote Irish island in the 1920s when Gleeson’s character decides he doesn’t want to spend anymore of his limited life with Farrell’s character.

I was fortunate enough to see this at our gem of a community-run non-profit The World Theatre. And this is a movie that demands your full attention in a darkened room with no distractions from phones or other electronics. It is billed as a dark comedy, and I suppose it is that. But mostly it is a story of what a friendship can mean and how we decide to spend our time on earth.

I would urge you not to find out anything more about this odd little movie. And if you have access to subtitles while you watch it, you might avail yourself. The accents get a bit thick. Currently streaming on HBO Max.

Favorite Movie of the Year:
Tick, Tick … BOOM!

Actually a 2021 movie, but I saw it on the big screen at The World Theatre early in 2022 and twice more on streaming later on. Since this is the only movie I watched three times in 2022, it has to be my favorite, No?

Tick, Tick … BOOM! is Jonathan Larson’s (of RENT fame) first produced musical, and it tells the story of how he tried unsuccessfully to get a show based loosely on 1984 produced. Lin-Manuel Miranda directed and Andrew Garfield stars in this uplifting and tear-jerking story of Larson facing turning 30 without being as successful of a composer as Stephen Sondheim. So many great songs, such a talented cast, so many amazing cameos. This may be heresy, but I like the movie version of TTB! even better than RENT.

Only available on Netflix.

Favorite Old Movie of the Year:
In a Lonely Place

From 1950, In a Lonely Place is a top-notch film noir directed by Nicholas Ray that was new to my Dear Wife and me this year. It was featured on Turner Classic Movie’s Noir Alley series, hosted by Eddie Muller. It stars Humphrey Bogart as a failing Hollywood screenwriter and Gloria Grahame as a new love interest who has to come to terms with suspicions that Bogart’s character has murdered the last woman he was with.

A wonderfully complex story of existentialism, trust, and temper, it’s available in a variety of formats (see the link above) but will certainly show up sooner or later again on TCM. Don’t miss it when it does. Bogart is good in almost everything he does (even the silly The Return of Dr. X), but Lonely Place has to be one of his best dramatic performances.

Favorite Music of the Year
Bach’s Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites, performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Jan Vogler, and Pablo Casals. 

Apple Music’s Replay statistics for 2022 suggest that I spent close to 5,000 minutes (83 hours) listening to the Bach Unaccompanied Cello suites from various recordings over 2022. The six suites combined run about two-and-a-half hours if played without interruption. I won’t pretend to be able to explain why they matter or are so important. I only know that every time I listen to them, there is something new to pull from them. My listening included three different complete recordings of the suites from Yo-Yo Ma, one from Austrian cellist Jan Vogler, and the original recordings of the suites by Spanish cellist Pablo Casals from the late 1930s that reintroduced the suites to the world after they had been largely ignored for nearly 200 years.

Here’s Ma performing the six suites for the BBC Proms 2015.

Image of Yo-Yo Ma playing the Bach cello suites with link to YouTube video

Favorite Video Game of the Year
Pure Mahjong

This was a tough one to decide on. But I suppose the measure of my favorite game was the one I spent the most time playing – and that would be Pure Mahjong for the Nintendo Switch. It is a simple Mahjong game that offers four boards each day, ranging from easy to challenging. All of them have the advantage of being doable if played correctly. I often finish the evening by working my way through three or all four boards before bed. They are an excellent way of clearing my head of whatever else has been afflicting it. I have had a version of Mahjong (or Shanghai) on almost every video game system I’ve owned over the years, and they have always been an enjoyable stress reliever. But this version with four new boards every day is the best. It is available for $2.99 (through 1/13/23) as a digital download from Nintendo.com.

Pure Mahjong screenshot for Nintendo Switch

Favorite TV Series:
Jeopardy!

In the spring of 2019, the year before the COVID19 pandemic really took hold, my family got in the habit of watching Jeopardy! every evening at dinnertime as professional gambler James Holzhauer began transforming the game with his aggressive play. (Spare me the judgey-ness on watching TV with dinner. You know you do it!)

Since then, whenever Jeopardy! is not in reruns, Dear Wife and I are regular viewers, shouting out our answers and competing fiercely with each other. We have watched our way through a number of “super champions” who are able to utilize Holzhauer’s strategies to build amazing winning streaks.

I think what attracts us most to Jeopardy is that it celebrates people who are smart and well read. What more could you ask for in a competition show?

Co-host Ken Jennings remembers Alex Trebek

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We’re back! A Year In Movies 2021 – Part 10

Posted on December 22, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

In December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to be returning to normal life any time soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately. This is one of series of blog posts about those films.

It’s been several months since I last posted to this series – I hope to be more regular with it in the months to come. But we return with a vintage Sherlock Holmes story, a documentary, and a couple thrillers from the latter portion of the 20th Century.

 

#33 – The Woman in Green, Sherlock Holmes (1945), directed by Roy William Neill; starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Hillary Brooke. Rathbone made 14 Sherlock Holmes movies, his most prominent character in more than 70 films. This one was based on a pair of Arthur Conan Doyle stories: The Adventures of the Empty House and The Final Problem. 

#34 – Hearts of Darkness (1991), directed by Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, & Eleanor Coppola, starring just about everyone involved with making Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. 

This is a documentary on the brilliant madness that was the filming of Apocalypse Now, including a typhoon, star Martin Sheen’s heart attack during the filming, and a script that never seemed to never be complete. The core of the film is based on behind-the-scenes footage shot by Eleanor Coppola, Francis’s wife. Hickenlooper and Bahr then edited that footage with new interviews to create the documentary. Highly recommend this for you after you’ve seen Apocalypse Now. I purchased my copy of this as part of a two-movie package from Apple with the latest cut of Apocalypse Now.

#35 – Avalanche (1979), directed by Corey Allen, starring Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow. An utterly unmemorable film produced by low-budget movie king Roger Corman about an avalanche at a ski resort.

#36 – Midnight Run (1988), directed by Martin Brest, staring Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, and Yaphet Kotto. A fantastic road trip thriller starring De Niro as a bounty hunter bringing in a mob accountant played by Grodin. Kotto is the FBI agent chasing both of them. The less you know about the film beyond this, the better. One of the great entertaining movies of the 1980s.

Coming up next: The movie that led to Bewitched along with one of the most successful movies of all time.

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99 Great Kids’ Books From the WaPo

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Going to take the lazy way out on this and just put up the Twitter thread….

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