The new issue of Bright Lights Film Journal has another of my pieces on the films of Charlie Chaplin. Flicker Alley recently released virtually all of Chaplin’s 33 odd films made in one year, 1914, at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios in Los Angeles. I take a look at the first 18 films Chaplin made. The…
Newt and the Neo-Cons, updated
Last week I noted that noted Likudist Jennifer Rubin has been industriously pissing on Newt Gingrich and every other Republican presidential candidate not addressed as “Mitt” and suggested that this was all a plot on Jennie’s part. Well, welcome Charles to the party, as in Krauthammer. Charles is a lot more subtle than Jennie. Instead…
Again, NTNY
If you want the official New Yorker cartoon contest, go here. And stop wasting my time. “Yes, I am a stripper. But I’m a very nice stripper.” “How can you eat? Well, why don’t you just leave that to me.” “Okay, this is the part where I question you intensively about your toilet training.” “I…
Newt Gingrich, not really a friend of Israel, it seems
Not enough to satisfy the admittedly exacting standards of Jennifer Rubin, at least, who plants one of her many long knives between the former Speaker’s shoulder blades here. While other conservatives politely averted their eyes from Newt’s whopper, delivered in last night’s debate, claiming that he charged Freddie Mac $300,000 in 2006 to tell them…
Ba-da-bing! Ba-da-bing-aling-aling!
NYTimesman Michael Cieply is all over the departure of Eddie Murphy from the upcoming Oscars telecast, as a result of the departure of Murphy buddy Brett Ratner, a day after Ratner was forced out, due to Ratner’s utterance of something bitchy about gays and, apparently, some jive talk about his sex life on the Howard…
Tim Geithner, Idiot Servant
Yet another entry pissing on poor old Tim? Pissing on poor old Tim isn’t going to reduce the unemployment rate, so maybe I should just shut up and fly to Vegas first class and run up some serious credit-card debt, which would, you know, actually stimulate the economy. But Vegas isn’t really my kind of…
Joe Lovano—Charlie Parker’s “Barbados”
The band is introduced as “Joe Lovano and Us Five,” except there are only four guys, that I see, and none of them is Esperanza Spalding, who plays bass for the band. Well, it’s still good jazz. Posted by KPLU885
Attack of the crazed italics-loving captionist
Are italics funny? I seem to be addicted to them. Fasten your comedy seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy flight. Actual, New Yorker-approved captions here. “I am not getting all Fay Wray on your ass. I’m just afraid of heights.” “Hey, I would love a Jaguar for my birthday. But did you see that…
You’re an expert on Russia, huh? Well, where is it?
“You know, I have had some great foreign policy conversations with Liz Cheney and with John Bolton, I mean, people who actually understand intimately where these countries are, why they think like they think.”—Rick Perry, on Sean Hannity.
DOJ: “Lying” is not lying: Misspeak = Meesespeak
UPDATED BELOW “If you’re innocent, you’re not a suspect,” Ed Meese once explained. So if you’re a suspect, you’re not innocent? Damn straight, according to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, in a recent letter “explaining” the department’s clearly reluctant decision to not to issue regulations that would allow federal government agencies to deny Freedom of…