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beinglibertarian · 6 years

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The Case For The Second Amendment

1. Gun ownership, support of the Second Amendment, or “gun culture” do not lead to higher murder rates

There are three major things to compare when addressing a correlation between guns and loss of life: statistics across US states, statistics across countries and statistics over time, and I intend to address all three. First, let’s agree to use the homicide rate, not the gun death rate, for two reasons: gun death rate includes suicides, which, while equally tragic, aren’t related to the topic of guns and domestic violence, seeing that suicide has existed since the beginning of time and it doesn’t include murders by non-firearms. If a city banned guns outright and gun murders went down by 1000 but knife murders went up by 2000, why would we consider that gun control law a success even if the firearm related death rate went down?

First, let’s start by comparing time periods. From 1993-2013 the gun homicide rate has plummeted by 49%, while the number of privately owned firearms went up by 56%. The two problematic issues I find with these numbers is it doesn’t adjust for population change and it only counts gun murders, not homicides as a whole. When counting for population change, homicide rate plummeted by a staggering 52.63% while guns per capita increased by 28.22%, so after improving the data, the notion that more guns equates to less crime still isn’t less true.

Unfortunately, not every country has been as lucky as America in this regard. In 1997, the United Kingdom implemented a handgun ban throughout the county, and from 1996 to 2002 alone, when crime in the US and most countries was plummeting, the homicide rate skyrocketed 51.4%. Sadly, the Washington Post article I referenced to cite the UK handgun ban failed to mention that minor detail involving a historic hike in crime, and when the author mentioned the Cumbria rampage in 2010 when 13 people were killed in Britain, it didn’t blame the laws of the land, it just said it could’ve been worse if the gun laws didn’t exist.

If we were to look nationally, there really isn’t firm evidence either way. States like Wyoming, North Dakota and Idaho have some of the highest gun ownership rates in the country and all have a murder rate lower than 2 according to the CDC, while Delaware has the lowest gun ownership rate in the country at around 5.2% and a homicide rate of 7, higher than the national average. Gun control advocates can cherry pick too and point to states like Arkansas and Louisiana as violent gun environments or to New Hampshire as a gun free utopia.

Internationally, there seems to be a much more obvious conclusion: well-armed civilian populations generally have low crime, and vice versa. Look at the numbers and you’ll find that Russia and nearby states, Sub-Saharan Africa and most of Latin-America are evidence of gun-free countries with uncontrollable crime, while Central Europe, the Gulf states and North America represent gun-loving countries with limited domestic crime. However, the best representation of 178 countries can be seen in the image I provided with facts from the UN.

2. Gun rights are a women’s rights issue

The trend of the past few decades is a spike in female gun ownership and a decline in male gun ownership. In 1980, the gender gap calculated by male gun ownership minus female gun ownership was 40.2%, which has fallen to a mere 23.4% in 2014. In 1990, that number was 42.8%, which is also the first year I can find statistics for the forcible rape rate, which was 41.2 until falling to 26.6 in 2014. (This is per 100,000 people) There’s no questioning the correlation here: a 41.8% drop in the gender gun ownership gap matches a 37.9% drop in the forcible rape rate. Correlation doesn’t mean causation, but there are a few indicators that would encourage us to assume causation.

First, are female purchases of firearms for personal protection? Women certainly think so, as female gun owners are over three times more likely than male owners to say protection is the only reason they have a gun. The same source finds that 58% of female owners never go hunting compared to 35% of men. There are many instances of this, including the case of Catherine Latta, who was raped and assaulted by her ex-boyfriend in 1990. She illegally purchased a handgun after being informed a permit would take a week to obtain, and she fatally shot her ex-boyfriend that day when he attacker her outside her home. Amanda Collins was raped when she was a senior in college, and while she had a concealed carry permit, it is illegal to carry a firearm on campus in most states across America.

If one were to stipulate leftist and feminist talking points that a rape culture persists in America, what would the solution be to combat this? Getting liberal sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., John Conyers, Kevin Spacey and Al Franken out of power, fired or exposed brings justice. However, is this the best form of deterrence and does it prevent the vast majority of sex offenders that aren’t sitting senators or Hollywood actors from committing horrible acts? My immediate answer is no.

As much as I think it would be wonderful to snap my fingers and change the behavior of every sexual predator along with every murderer and thief, it’s unrealistic to think we can dramatically change this centuries-old phenomenon overnight. The police response time isn’t nearly quick enough to prevent most rapes and much of the far-left distrusts the police anyways. If altering the behavior of the perpetrators is unrealistic and using a third party (law enforcement) to help with prevention is just as idealistic, the objectively best solution is to help the possible victims, which is usually women. Biologically, men on average have 40% more pounds of upper body mass than women, meaning they are at a disadvantage for defending themselves with handheld melee weapons, leaving the great equalizer to be guns, not safety pins, to help prevent rape.

3. Rifles aren’t normally used in murders

I would express confusion and bewilderment to the Democratic Party’s calls for bans on assault rifles or rifles in general if I wasn’t fully aware that liberals and left-wingers from Vox to Piers Morgan were excellent at cherry-picking or just blatantly ignoring data. In 2016, over 11 million firearms were produced in the United States, 48.5% were pistols or revolvers (“handguns”), 36.87% were rifles, 7.38% were shotguns, 7.25% were miscellaneous firearms. Because I don’t like to fabricate numbers, I subtracted the weapons exported and added those imported so we only count in weapons sold domestically, changing the numbers to 55.67%, 31.47%, 9.6% and 3.26% respectively. These numbers have been fairly consistent across the years and reflect the national amount.

Now, out of all the gun murders in 2016, how many were because of those awful children-killing rifles like the AR-15 that the left hates? After rounding up, 3.4%, compared to 64.57% for handguns and 2.38% for shotguns. So why are liberal politicians and organizations like “March for our lives” spreading false propaganda about rifles? I do not know. All I can tell you is that this misbelief can be added to the long list of lies from the gun control activists.

4. The Australia buyback program wasn’t successful

First off, the notion that the Australian buy-back program was respectful of any freedom that gun owners should have is ridiculous. The gun owners didn’t consent to have their 640,000 firearms taken away from them and didn’t have a role in the money given to them as compensation. In addition, to pay for this, the Australian government levied a 0.2% hike in the Medicare tax to pay for this, raising an expected $500M. (If you count for the Australian inflation rate, this would cost $833.4M today, or $1302 per firearm) Keep in mind, this only took away one third of all firearms in the country. If this were tried in the United States where there are 1.01 firearms per person based on the 2009 numbers, and a 2017 population of 324 million, and then adjusting for the US CPI of 249.62 compared to 112.1 for Australia, would cost just shy of $318B, roughly equal to the GDP of Colombia ($322B). Obviously, I don’t expect the left to care about the fiscal repercussions, but the reality is it would be a strain on the economy if that was ever adopted here.

Australia also hasn’t had a remarkably low homicide rate because there aren’t many guns. In a 2007 study taken after major buy backs, the nation ranked 42nd in the world out of 187 countries for guns per capita. Not only that, but it really didn’t prevent homicides, even though there were few homicides in Australia to begin with. In 1996 when the buyback program began, there were only 354 homicides in the country total. There would be 364 in 1997, 334 in 1998 and 385 in 1999. Did I miss the part where homicides plummeted?

5. Do these specific gun control proposals even work?

One of the biggest reductions in crime nationally in the United States occurred in the 1990s, and the authors of Freakonomics (Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt) concluded that the data doesn’t support the claim that tougher gun laws had anything to do with it. The Brady Bill and Federal Assault Weapons Ban were the two major pieces of gun control laws from the Clinton era.

Let’s paint a picture of a country with remarkably similar gun control laws as the ones that many of these “March for our lives” protestors are calling for. This country has no right in their constitution that guarantees private firearm ownership, citizens are required to have licenses that come with automatic background checks, they are prohibited from having automatic weapons, homemade firearms, armor-piercing ammunition and long guns with shortened barrels. Owners are limited to only purchase five firearms, open carry is illegal, the country has seized at least 2000 firearms every year since 2012 and it only has 6.2 guns per 100,000 people, which is 14 times less than the United States. The country I’m thinking of? Honduras, the country with the highest homicide rate in the world at a whopping 91.6, according to the United Nations. To put that in perspective, if the US had that homicide rate in 2011 when that number was taken, an additional 270,167 people would’ve been killed that year.

6. Most perpetrators of gun crimes aren’t committed by the legal owner

This is not a controversial fact. The University of Pittsburgh found that in the 893 firearms uncovered from crime scenes, only 18% were used by the lawful owner. In a University of Chicago study, less than 2.9% of inmates that possessed a firearm purchased the weapon at a gun store, you know, the place where peaceful gun owners go to buy their firearms. Why are all of these gun control activists focusing on the marginal cases of homicide and trying to pry away guns form the owners that are disproportionately less likely to commit crimes with it?

David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez have all the passion in the world to march across the country and call for ludicrous gun control measures, yet none of the facts. Emma went on a podium to say “They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS.” Every bone in my body hopes she reads this article or really anything for that matter, and I genuinely hope she references something resembling a statistic, fact or academic journal in her future rants. I would print something from 17 year old David Hogg, but I don’t want to publish a poorly articulated collection of word vomit littered with profanity, but I’ll post the link to the data-free eye sore here. The problem is that the facts don’t support the claims or any policy proposal I’ve heard thus far. I didn’t make a natural rights argument and I don’t believe the Constitution or Bill of Rights are impeccable or sacred documents, otherwise the 7th Amendment wouldn’t have ignored the concept of inflation and the issue of slavery would’ve been dealt with. I look at the facts as objectively as I can, and I print it. I challenge David and Emma to a debate on the issue as long as it’s civil, and I warn everyone a final time: rights aside, most of these gun control measures will cause more destruction than prosperity.

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wearemozzerians · 6 years

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Here’s today's full interview with Morrissey Official by

Chrissy Iley for The Sunday Times:

I'm inside Morrissey’s hotel room at the Sunset Marquis, West Hollywood. It smells incensy, instantly exotic with a dangerous edge rather like the man himself. He’s in LA because he’s performing at the Hollywood Bowl and because Friday, November 10 has been declared Morrissey Day by the mayor of Los Angeles. He lived near here until a few years ago, but now he’s just visiting. Where does he live now? A sigh. “I’m in a different place all the time. I’m not sure why everyone wants to know where I live, what that says about me. It means my credit card is permanently blocked for security reasons. They think I’m an anonymous person if I’m never in the same place. I never ask people where they live, but they always ask me as if it would reveal anything about me. I’m here now, as you can see.” Because he’s performing. “Well … I don’t perform. I’m occasionally on a stage, but I don’t ever perform.” How very Morrissey. It’s as if he never wants to be really seen — except by tens of thousands every time he is on a stage, or when he makes one of his trademark outrageous comments, whether that’s about politics, or last week, defending Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey (more of that later). He no longer lives in the house next to Johnny Depp? “No, he bought it to put his argumentative relatives in when they came to stay and since then I have been homeless. I just move around the world, which is a fascinating way to live. People say, ‘But surely you need your own kitchen.’ But I’ve managed for many years doing without.” Does he cook? “Yes I do, and it’s a very nice idea to have a kitchen ...” But room service will provide? “It tries, but it’s difficult sometimes. We don’t like to wait do we, really, for anything?” Does he travel light? “I have a sickening volume of possessions. They’re all stored away in different parts of the world waiting for that moment when I stop and buy a house and relax.” Does he ever relax? “No.” This is a moment where I want to tell him about the first time I heard his voice. So soul-curdling and deep-reaching when he sang How Soon Is Now? The Smiths are remembered by their fans with a huge amount of romanticism. It seems that they were around for ever, but in fact it was only five years — 1982 to 1987 — and four studio albums. But so many songs, such poetry that spoke for a generation about love and loss and waiting. Post Smiths, there was a series of solo albums, starting with Viva Hate, some of which were less loved. There was a dark autobiography in 2013 and a strange foray into novel writing — List of the Lost was reviewed as “turgid” and received the Bad Sex Award in 2015 for a scene describing a “giggling snowball of full-figured copulation”. But now Morrissey is back, as unconventional as ever. And with the release of the new album, Low in High School, he is on the radio, the television, that voice strangely more fluid and insistent than ever. Some of his views must jangle with his new generation of younger fans. He has said that he thought Brexit was magnificent, and the new single Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up on the Stage ends with a haunting chorus of “exit exit”, which some people have translated as “Brexit Brexit”. He denies it. “No, it’s not a Brexit song. There’s no Brexit in it,” he insists. “The line is, ‘All the audience head for the exit when she’s on stage’, so it’s nothing to do with Brexit. People just rush to stupid conclusions and create facts and create their own truths and slaughter the issue.” But he did say Brexit was magnificent, right? “I thought it was a fascinating strike for democracy, because the people said the opposite to Westminster, and that was extraordinary. David Cameron didn’t imagine the result could be as it was, but at least he did the honourable thing and slid away. The unfortunate thing is that politicians only speak to other politicians. They don’t speak to the people, so on that day their bubble burst. And now I don’t think Brexit has taken place, or even will, because Westminster don’t want it. It’s not that difficult. They’re just finding a way to not make it Brexit.” Is it true that he banned David Cameron from ever listening to a Morrissey-penned song? “No, that was never true, but these are the things I have to live with.” Big sigh. “I didn’t say it and it’s nice if everybody listens. It really is.” There’s nobody he wants to ban? “Well, only the obvious — the obvious international pest.” The orange one? “Yes.” “He’s beyond salvation. Beyond any help. The biggest security threat to America and the world. He’s like a two-year-old constantly reaching for something, damaging it and then moving on to something else and destroying it.” Indeed, the next day when I go to his show at the Hollywood Bowl, one of the backdrops is Morrissey holding a toddler with Trump’s head superimposed. A tiny tyrant. It goes down well. Morrissey is still mesmerising on stage as he lashes and whips his microphone cable. He gives us the songs that still speak to us even though they’re decades old. This audience — a diverse collection: black, white, brown; young, old and very young; men, women, gay, straight — seems to be with him all the way. No one minds that on Morrissey’s orders the only food sold is vegetarian. I’ve been to that same stadium many times and seen artists of similar years with pretentious trousers and hair plugs. I’ve seen them sing their old songs to a crowd of middle-aged spread. This concert was not like that. Though I could have done without the bit where the 58-year-old threw his jacket into the crowd and flaunted his unworked-out torso. But it was unselfconsciously done. On the sofa in his hotel room we sip bottled water and he asks me if I would like anything more dangerous. I suggest a coffee. He shrugs in despair. “That’s not what I meant.” The new album has created a buzz. “It feels good. People always want their latest offspring to be the cutest, I believe,” he says. He doesn’t have children. He has songs. Does he have a particular track that’s more important than the others? “No. I mean if you gave birth to quads you wouldn’t say which quad is the best one, would you? You would love all your quads equally for different reasons.” I tell him I’ve got four cats. “There. I rest my case. I bet you don’t pick one out and say you’re the one I love and boot the others in the linen cupboard.” We chat about how Russell Brand’s cat is called Morrissey. “Yes, and he’s still alive. I don’t mean Russell — I mean the cat. He is getting on now: I do mean Russell. I don’t mean the cat.” I read that Brand named the cat Morrissey because he’s an awkward bugger. He grins. “There you go. You should have guessed that one straight away.” But however difficult he can be — for instance, during the preparation of this article he spends four days saying he will do a photo shoot and then doesn’t — he is having a moment in the spotlight. “It’s certainly a moment that might annoy many people, but here I am and I offer no apologies and no excuses.” Hmm. The first single on the album, Spent the Day in Bed, has had more airplay in America than any Morrissey track ever. “I don’t spend the day in bed often but people love their beds,” he says. He advises several times that people shouldn’t stay in bed and watch the news because it is so depressing. He should know: Morrissey has spent much of his life depressed. Surely that’s where quite a few of the hits came from. “Years ago I sang a song called Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, and it’s like an old school uniform. People insist I wear it, but I’m really not that miserable. I’m not an unhappy person. Not in the least. I’m certainly very surprised and very pleased to still be here.” I’m wondering if his new resolution to appreciate life had anything to do with it nearly being taken away. He is in remission from oesophagus cancer. “I’d had quite a few scares and was on a lot of extreme medication. I lost a lot of hair. You can be as healthy as possible, but something will always get you in the end. I thought, here we go. Just accept it, but I’ve done very well. I’m not on any medication now.” And his hair is back — greying — and the Morrissey superquiff is perhaps not as super as it once was. “It’s real. A lot of people my age don’t have hair. They don’t have teeth, so I feel quite blessed.” Following his diagnosis in 2014, he “had a lot of scrapings, but they weren’t all painful”. Wasn’t he worried a procedure involving the scraping of his oesophagus would affect his voice? “No, incredibly,” he laughs. “In fact my voice is better, absolutely better than it was. I had to give up 150 things, from red wine and beyond, but that was OK because I don’t really like red wine. When you sit before a doctor and they use the c-word you hear it but you don’t hear it. You just say, ‘Ah, yes,’ as if it’s something you hear every day. Your mind goes into this funny little somewhere and you say, ‘Ah, yes,’ as if you knew it all along.” I’m not sure that’s how most of us would react, but then he’s always been one of these people who seem to be able to dislocate himself from his own being. “Giving up red wine was meaningless to me anyway.” Doesn’t he drink alcohol? “Just not red wine.” He also has a dislike of mushrooms. “Oh they are horrific, fungus — truffles make me cry. I say to people, ‘What are you doing eating fungus?’ Truffles shock me and the smell. Ewwww. Garlic is also horrific.” Morrissey’s superfood of choice is potatoes. “I’ve never had a curry and I’ve never had a coffee. I’ve never wanted one and I’ve never been handed one. I have Ceylon tea, very, very weak with an alternative milk. Cashew milk is beautiful. Dairy farms all over England are collapsing. Non-dairy milk is now 51% of the market, which is fantastic.” Thirty-two years ago, when he first sang Meat Is Murder, veganism was rare. A vegan diet was difficult to maintain. Now, vegan food is in supermarkets. “What about champagne?” he says. I’m not sure if he’s offering to crack open a bottle, but I hate champagne. “I’ve never met anybody that hated champagne,” he says. I’ve never met anybody that hasn’t drunk coffee or eaten curry, I ripost. “I don’t like any food where the following day you can still taste it or you smell of it or your clothes smell of it. I’m very, very bland as far as food is concerned,” he says. It is as if the psyche of Morrissey is so piquant, he needs to balance it with food that tastes of nothing. Not only has he never had an onion bhaji — “I’ve never had an onion. That would make me cry. It’s just too eye-crossing. I’m strictly bread and potatoes.” Not for the first time, the conversation drifts back to politics. Does he think Trump will be impeached? “It’s a long time coming and there have been multiple reasons and it hasn’t happened. It’s a shocking reflection on American politics. I understand people wanting somebody who is nonpolitical, who is not part of a system. But not him. They thought that he was something he absolutely is not. Surely people realise it now. Everything he says is divisive. It’s meant to be. It’s meant to distract you.” He is similarly disparaging about Theresa May. “She won’t answer questions put to her. She’s not leadership [material]. She can barely get to the end of her own sentence. Her face quakes. She’s hanging on by the skin of her teeth. She has negotiations about negotiations about negotiations about the EU. I’m not a Conservative, but I can see she’s actually blocking the Conservative Party from moving on and becoming strong. But as we know, politicians do not care about public opinion. And she wants to bring back fox hunting.” This is not only “cruel and disgraceful”, but signifies that May is “out of step and not of the modern world”. Morrissey loves talking about politics, there’s always an opinion. But then he says: “I’m nonpolitical. I always have been. I’ve never voted in my life.” At the last election there was a story going round that Morrissey voted Ukip. In fact, at a concert earlier this year, he appeared to support Anne-Marie Waters, an outspoken Ukip politician with anti-Muslim views, claiming the party’s leadership contest had been rigged against her. He is the most political nonpolitical person on the planet. He’s shy, except in front of thousands. He writes about love, but only admits to one proper relationship — with Jake Walters, a boxer from east London. They lived together from 1994 to 1996. When he was in the Smiths he declared himself celibate and said he hated sex. After Walters, he discussed having a baby with Tina Dehghani, a friend whom he met while living in Los Angeles, and in his autobiography he refers to a relationship with an Italian whom he calls Gelato. He’s said in the past he’s only attracted to people who aren’t interested in him. He’s never been on a date. He only writes about wanting to be loved. Many contradictions. “Well, I’m human. I’m not interested in being part of anything. I don’t see a party that speaks to me and I haven’t ever. My vote is very precious. I won’t use it just to get rid of somebody I don’t like because they’re all absolutely the same.” Does he think Jeremy Corbyn is the same? “He has had many opportunities to take a strike against Theresa May and he has resisted. It’s hard to believe that this is the best England can produce at this stage of the game. We survived Thatcher by the skin of our teeth, and somehow we’re all still alive and we are presented with Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.” I laugh, and he corrects me: “It’s a tragedy. The UK is in a state of cultural tragedy, dominated by political correctness. Nobody tells the truth about anything. If you tell the truth in England, you’ll lose your job.” This is not a rule, however, Morrissey feels applies to him. I ask him about the behaviour of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey who are both accused of multiple cases of sexual misdemeanours. He is in no mood to condemn them. “You must be careful as far as ‘sexual harassment’ is concerned, because often it can be just a pathetic attempt at courtship.” Most people wouldn’t see the kind of behaviours these sexual predators are accused of as in any way “courtship”. But Morrissey is undeterred. As this interview went to press it emerged that he’d told the German magazine Der Spiegel that the claims against Kevin Spacey — one of which alleges a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy — were “ridiculous” and argued, as he did with me, that definitions of harassment and assault have become too broad. “Kevin Spacey was 26, boy 14. One wonders where the boy’s parents were,” Morrissey said. “One wonders if the boy did not know what would happen.” On Weinstein, he said to Der Spiegel that some of the movie mogul’s alleged victims: “play along”. “Afterwards, they feel embarrassed or disliked. And then they turn it around and say, ‘I was attacked, I was surprised.’ But if everything went well, and if it had given them a great career, they would not talk about it.” He added: “I hate rape. I hate attacks. I hate sexual situations that are forced on someone. But in many cases one looks at the circumstances and thinks that the person who is considered a victim is merely disappointed.” Our conversation covers similar ground. When I ask him about these sexual attacks he says: “I’m sure it’s horrific, but we have to keep everything in proportion. Do you not agree? I have never been sexually harassed, I might add.” Perhaps that is why he seems so unsympathetic. Morrissey’s sexuality has always been a point of some discussion. Is it still true, I ask, that he doesn’t identify as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual but, as he puts it, “humoursexual”? “No, humasexual as in we’re all humans.” Oh, I thought it was only about sleeping with people that you had a laugh with. “That would dramatically limit things, but certainly I think we are obsessed with labels, obsessed with knowing where we stand with other people, what we can expect them to do, and it doesn’t make any difference really.” Just like veganism, he insists, being sexually fluid and gender fluid is now much more accepted. “It’s extraordinary. People seem to be very relaxed by it.” But when Morrissey announced his humasexuality in 2013, he was a lonely voice. “Yes, I was. I spearheaded the movement. I know no other way, so nothing has changed for me, but the rest of the world leaps on. I am pleased because I want people to be happy. There is an expiration date on our lives on this planet. You have to be yourself and hopefully get some happiness from it. It seems everybody, in every respect of their lives, is coming out of their cupboard saying this is the person I’d like to be. I want to wear these clothes, not those that have been imposed on me. As long as nobody’s harmed, I think it’s good.” Is it true that he’s never been on a date? “Yes, I’ve never been on a traditional date. I’m not that kind of person.” No one’s ever said I’d like to take you to dinner? “No, never. But I’m happy with my vocation.” What does he mean by vocation? “I’m very interested in the singing voice. I’m very interested in making a difference in music, not simply being successful.” Isn’t it possible to do that and have a date? “No. I’ve never found it to be so.” It’s one or the other? “Well, life leads me. Does it lead you? Are you successful at the cost of something else?” I’m quite shocked by his question. I suggest that it’s not valid because I’m not really successful. He says, “Well you’re not working at KFC, are you?”and laughs a conspiratorial laugh. He’s interested in the way journalism has changed. “The Guardian, you can’t even meet them halfway. They are like The Sun in 1972. So obstinate. They don’t want to talk to you. They want to correct you. You can’t simply say, ‘This is how I feel,’ because they’ll say, ‘How you feel is wrong.’ And they’ll say, ‘He’s racist. He should be shot, he should be drowned.’ It’s very difficult to sit down with somebody and simply convey your feelings. In a democracy you should be able to give your opinion about anything. We must have debate, but that doesn’t happen any more. Free speech has died. Isn’t modern journalism about exposing people? When I was young I saw a documentary accidentally about the abattoir and I fell into an almost lifelong depression. I couldn’t believe I lived in a society that allowed this. The abattoir is no different to Auschwitz.” The tack back to animals reminds me he was once voted Britain’s second most important cultural icon by the audience of BBC 2’s The Culture Show, after David Attenborough. “It was beautiful but I don’t know about Attenborough’s regard for animals,” he says. “He often uses terms like ‘seafood’ and there’s no such thing as seafood. It’s sea life, and he talks about ‘wildlife’ and it’s free life. Animals are not wild simply because we pathetic humans haven’t shoved them in a cage, so his terminology is often up the pole.” I tell him one of my favourite songs on the album is Israel. It’s a romantic hymn to the country. How did that come about? “I have made many trips there and I was given the keys to Tel Aviv by the mayor. Everybody was so very nice to me and I’m aware that there’s a constant backlash against the country that I could never quite understand. I feel people are judging the country by its government, which you shouldn’t do. You can’t blame the people for the rulership. Israel is beautiful.” Steven Patrick Morrissey was born and raised in Manchester. A lapsed Catholic, he went to a religious school. Manchester in the 1960s and 1970s was damp, somewhere he wanted to escape from. Part of that escape was through television — and soap operas. He was once offered a part in EastEnders, but turned it down. “I was invited to be Dot Cotton’s other son, a mysterious son no one had ever spoken about, who returns to the Square, doesn’t get involved with anybody and doesn’t immediately have sex with anybody as most characters who come into the Square do.” So basically he’d have played himself. “Yes. I didn’t do it.” Is it too late? “For many things, yes … I was also offered a part in Emmerdale. I was to play an intruder in jodhpurs — which I’d longed to be, of course, I had waited years to be an intruder in jodhpurs — an intruder at Home Farm, but I refused to wear the jodhpurs. As they say, it’s nice to be asked.” He has no ambitions to act, his time occupied with the new album and a tour that will include China, Australia and Europe. China has one of the worst records for human and animal rights in the world, I point out. “You can’t simply fold your arms and say I’m not going to China because of the cat and dog trade, which is absolutely tearful, but hopefully your presence can make a difference,” he says. His only problem with not living anywhere is he has no animal companion. “My best friends have been cats. I had one cat for 23 years and one for 22. They just walked into the house, one when I was a small child and one when I was slightly older. I won’t say they were like children, because I don’t know any children that are actually nice. They were black-and-white and called Buster and Tibby. Tibby had been kicked in the face so he had to be fed by hand. He couldn’t eat from a plate. He required a lot of patience but he cured himself and became a healthy, incredibly happy cat. They certainly enriched my life.” It’s been hours now. Morrissey is too polite to end our meeting and I feel if I don’t end it I may never leave. For me, meeting Morrissey is like meeting a battered, black-and-white alley cat. Sure, he’s not to everyone’s taste. But that is the highest compliment I could ever give — although Morrissey is the only one who could recognise it as such.

The Sunday Times Magazine - Interview by Chrissy Iley:https://t.co/0rq4KHtItW

We Are Mozzerians.

#Morrissey #Moz #the sunday times magazine #interview #true to you #no to censorship #morrisseytour2017 #the smiths

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silver-tangent · 7 years

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So I finally got around to watching Batman V Superman. Honest opinion? 3/5...

Get ready for a Tangent review. I have ripped in BvS before but hadn’t actually seen it. I find that to be unprofessional of any nerd philosopher. If you are going to dislike something you need to know what you’re disliking. So I watched it… and before the lovers of the film get too excited, my opinion hasn’t changed. A 3/5 for a superhero movie isn’t quite up to par. Call me stubborn but I want a 7/10 or better.

I did watch the directors cut, because that’s all I had access to, so I don’t know what was removed from the theatrical version, please keep that in mind.

So no restraint on spoilers ahead, here we go…

The movie was pretty great… until Batman fought Superman. Even before that it was falling apart, but that is the kryptonite spear that did it in.

Here’s the thing; it’s okay to establish this as an alternate universe, and get away with a lot of character changes, but if you call it “the expanded universe” and never say “this is it’s own thing, not a cinematic earth 1” you’re going to be judged like it’s earth 1.

Let’s start with Batman: ruthless, dark, and no restraint on killing. He didn’t break his golden rule “no killing with guns” but he did in his dreams. That… I guess that’s okay? But Snyder even said that he took inspiration from the original comics; “Batman DID kill people back in the day.”

Okay… I’ll get back to that at the end.

Batman then blamed Superman for the destruction during Zod, and people were divided, with Bats saying “no he’s evil.”

Superman of course confronts him during a reckless chase against Lexcorp’s smuggling operation, somehow miraculously doesn’t destroy his own tracking device when he PLOWED INTO THE TRUCK! And then Superman says “stop it” and Batman says “YOU’RE NOT MY MOM!”

This all blows up when the hearing held by the… Superman senate? Who I really thought was run by his mom… was blown up. Sabotage.

Batman has had enough, and he basically calls Superman down for a death battle….

Let’s pause here for Supes… framed for murder, and not painted in the best light towards the people but completely innocent…. and feeling terrible for all of the people that get hurt…

But here’s probably my first complaint there; in every Superman movie, Superman is super fast, and basically able to do anything… unless someone has plot armor. Seriously Plot armor is a bigger weakness to Supes than Kryptonite in this movie. He didn’t even try to outrun the bomb, he just stood there in shock, when we’ve seen that he’s faster than a speeding bullet… faster than a speeding bullet; fast enough to go “oh shit a bomb!”

Yet he doesn’t. He also doesn’t grab Lex and SHOW HIM AND THE PHOTOS TO BRUCE WITH HIS SUPER STRENGTH AND SPEED, he immediately caves.

He has super hearing too. There are so many times someone could have whispered; “it’s a trap, don’t go…”

But… the plot… it’s called Batman v Superman. They have to fight.

Well then how about Lois Lane? Well Lois Lane used to be the damsel in distress character back in the 60s, but I’m fairly certain that even pre-crisis Lois had already started to become a feminist icon. She’s tough, she’s capable, she can take care of herself, and she’s the daughter of a military general who taught her how to fight……. and while she has situational awareness in this movie, she is somehow overpowered by two hired convicts, even though she recognized the ambush and called it out… and again by a bony, early twenties Lex Luthor… Before that I forgive, the guy at the beginning had a gun and she was surrounded. You’re probably sensing a theme here, and I will get to it in my closing statement.

So finally we have Lex. Despite all of the hate that Jesse Eisenberg got as Lex, I feel like his Lex was the best performance in the movie! “But he had hair!” I hear you say, “And he was wacky and erratic, not cool and collected!” Ah but Lex Luthor used to have hair, in fact he was a redhead before his hair fell out because of kryptonite induced cancer… back in the 60s… So Lex is a difficult character. We’ve all been spoiled by Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex, and why not? He was Lex for 10 years, but we forget that Lex has been changed over 50 years. The original Lex wasn’t a misunderstood genius who thought himself a savior, he was a land owner, a mad scientist/billionaire who wanted more money. A lot of his schemes were based around land ownership, no joke… Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex is like a combination of Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey, and in that light he was terrific! He was wacky, but always in control, he played himself as a spoiled foolish child, but he was playing the audience the whole time! But… the question is why? He completely Sherlocked the audience with a twist “I planned all of it from the beginning” moment… yet… he… why did he do this? Why did he want to see Superman and Batman fight? He didn’t know about Darkseid until the end of the movie, he wasn’t trying to prevent that. Did he just want to watch them kill each other? Did he think he was saving the world? Did he just want them both out of the way? His original plan was either to get Superman to kill Batman, or have them kill each other… but… if Superman kills Batman, then what? Will you maintain control of him? How? The point of this made no sense, and what made even less sense was initiating plan B before plan A even failed… did the ship tell him something? That’s the only explanation, but again he was already planning to frame Superman, he already HAD framed Superman once. What was the motive?

Backing up from that; here’s my biggest issue with Lex… it felt like Snyder’s solution to make Lex appear smart was to make everyone else in the movie a complete idiot. That’s a great cop-out but it’s kinda obvious. Batman was looking into Lex, but never suspected a setup? Superman was defeated by Martha being kidnapped, and Lex didn’t even have kryptonite as insurance? Lois figured him out and was damseled IMMEDIATELY? Really it felt like Snyder didn’t know how to write Lex as a genius so he settled for writing Lex as smarter than everyone else…

So we get to the moment when Superman is sent to kill Batman… and Superman says “No you need to listen.”

And Batman says, “I’m a detective and have been doing this for years, so of course I’ll hear you out, what do you have to say?” “F** you I’m Batman” and sets off booby traps…

And Superman says “No listen.”

and Batman thinks he may have some important information, still doesn’t listen, and picks a fight…

And Superman quits trying… for some reason… and batman shoots him with Kryptonite and beats the crap out of him!

Superman starts to get back up! He’s not as powerful, but that’s okay because he still has kryptonite in his system and we watch as the kryptonite wears off and he suddenly has the upper hand… and uses it to talk some sense into batman kicks batman’s ass because that’s what the title is about!

Batman shoots superman with another Kryptonite gas bomb, and superman for some reason hasn’t learned the first time and doesn’t avoid it… maybe he was still a little weak…

But now Batman has an advantage. He’s a genius. He was testing it the first time, counting the seconds! Now he knows how long the kryptonite lasts… wait… it… it just stays permanent this time… no consistency in how long it works…

and suddenly Batman pulls a spear out of nowhere…

and then the Martha scene, and for some reason even though it’s their job to kill her, they put off killing her to try to kill Batman… because movie…

after that though, I think the last segment is pretty decent. Not the best, but not bad, just a bit forced in the writing…

So what’s my takeaway? Well… a lot of Batflek fans have argued that this Batman is the ORIGINAL Batman, and that’s great! Yet they hate Lex… the thing is that for all it’s faults, it seems like Snyder was trying to make a classic DC film; a 1960s pre-crisis Batman and Superman film but set in the 21st century… and that would be okay I guess?

But here’s my opinion on that… Batman, Lex, and Lois all changed for a reason. Batman’s was that gun violence was frowned upon and the publishers asked to get rid of guns. Some people want to rebel against that, but this happened before Batman was 5 years old… the truth is that as a character, he developed into the modern Batman, regardless of the reason. As for Lex and Lois? Their original characters aren’t relevant to the modern world. Lex evolved to appeal to the audience and became a Julius Caesar; someone who wants the best for his people but becomes a tyrant to make it happen, and that version of Lex has become the more popular version. Lois became more capable because of the women’s rights movement, and because a damsel in distress who has to be saved every single issue was going to get stale and unmemorable. These character changes are all relevant to who the characters are, and the fact that it was ignored for this movie was in my personal opinion a bad move.

Lex was handled okay, but it’s obvious that people want Julius Caesar, not Goldfinger, and he was somewhere in between that I could appreciate, but obviously a lot of people didn’t.

This movie, for what it was, was good and enjoyable… but it wasn’t spectacular or memorable. It won’t sink the DCEU, but it didn’t do it any favors. It was just a set up for a grand entrance later down the road, and I honestly think that it would have been a better movie if they took out “Batman vs Superman”

The entire team pushed too hard to make Superman and Batman fight, and I don’t think it was necessary. In the grand scheme of things they damaged both characters by making them fight.

Batman was too stubborn. He wasn’t rational. Batman can kill, sure, and Batman can even have guns to an extent, but he was completely reckless and the only point was to make Superman not like him, and to make him jump the gun. He’s supposed to be clever and forward thinking, but instead he jumps right into things over and over, without any regard for bystanders, his own tracking devices, or what the heck Lex is up to. The fact that he tracked packages back to Lexcorp should have been a red flag that something was amiss. He should have been willing to listen. Instead he became extremely angry and irrational, and yes I recognize that he just lost Robin, but even at his most broken state, he wasn’t this reckless.

Superman gave up too easily. He gave in to Lex’s blackmail, he froze when the bomb went off, he sacrificed himself pretty quickly, and he gave up on trying to talk with Batman… why?

Those two things, even when rationalizing it as a pre-crisis based movie, just don’t fit, and really it could have been written better to come to the same conclusion. However, as the characters that they’re supposed to be, they wouldn’t have fought. It would have made more sense to blackmail Batman into killing Superman than the other way around by having Robin be captive the whole movie…

So yeah, 3/5 good action movie… about as good as any other Batman movie…

#Tangent review #long winded #long post #batman v superman #DCEU #DC #Batman #Superman #Tangent

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televisor-reviews · 5 years

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Top 10 Best Movies Of 2017!

2017, as a whole, was a pretty damn good year for film! Sure, it had a shit ton of crap, but I definitely think there was way more great films than terrible. Even the bad stuff, tended to have something likable about them (hence why there were mostly unfunny comedies on my worst of list). Meanwhile, the good movies, I generally really loved. I don’t think it’ll go down as one of the best years for film, but it’s a better contender than most. And these are what I believe to be the top 10 best! And keep in mind, even with the extra year, I still didn’t see everything: so as great as I’m sure The Big Sick & The Florida Project are, I never got around to them. For a comprehensive list of every movie I did see from 2017 (in order from best to worst), go here: https://letterboxd.com/animatorreviewa/list/every-2017-movie-ive-seen/

#10. Baby Driver In a few decades, Edgar Wright is going to be considered one of the best directors of all time. It’s going to be: Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Edgar Wright. Baby Driver, though not as energetic as Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World nor as hilarious as Hot Fuzz, is objectively his best directing project. How Baby’s mind boggling driving goes along perfectly with the music he’s playing looks incredible the entire way through, never relenting & always exciting! And if this was all it had, it’d still be an amazing movie but not “top 10″ worthy. But it has Oscar-worthy performances from Ansel Elgort, Jamie Foxx, & even Kevin Spacey (a terrible person with lots of talent), a gripping narrative, & amazing looking special effects that’ll make Transformers: The Last Knight blush! If anything, the reason why it’s only at #10 is because, at the end of the day, I’d still prefer to watch Shaun Of The Dead... again...

#9. Coco Pixar has been on a serious roll ever since they got through their shitty phase. Inside Out made my 2016 list, Incredibles 2 is probably going to make my 2018 list, & even Cars 3 was way better than it deserved to be! Coco is Pixar showing that not only are they back & going to stay, but could make movies that should suck & yet is still amazing! Every dumb movie cliche is on full force in this: the family that hates music but it’s the main protagonist’s passion & his family just doesn’t understand, but through a wacky & heart-warming adventure through his family’s history, maybe they’ll blah blah blah blah blah... It even rips off The Book Of Life to a good extent! Yeah, this movie isn’t great because of its twists & turns. It’s great because even though you know exactly what’s going to happen from beginning to end & yet it’s still gripping, interesting, & fun with gripping, interesting, & fun characters that you’d want to run around a million cliches with! It was a blast to watch in theaters & definitely worth sitting through Olaf’s Frozen Adventure to see.

#8. Get Out I’m not even going to pretend like I know what it’s like to be black in America. It’s pretty clearly not something I will ever understand as I can actually hide my minority-ness. So, a movie like Get Out, as great as it is, I find generally pretty hard to relate to what happens in them. But I will say that Get Out, as a film, is absolutely thrilling, exciting, & at times scary. I was worried about this character & concerned about what he was going through; when things start not making sense, I’m right there with him! That’s what a good horror movie should do & that kind of horror is in low demand nowadays. Even It, a movie that almost made the list, didn’t engross or engage me as much as Get Out did! The directing of Jordan Peele & the acting of Daniel Kaluuya are on full display & only makes this chilling movie even more so! A great start to a great comedian’s great directing career!

#7. Gerald’s Game Though, as a horror movie, I find Get Out far more engaging & engrossing than Gerald’s Game, I do think it’s far better made with a much better basis, story, & acting. What I really love about Gerald’s Game is how it tells its plot. It’s not new to tell your story out of order (Pulp Fiction, Mulholland Drive, every Christopher Nolan movie), but very few do so as well as this! From the beginning, its unique & universally horrifying concept makes sure you’re paying attention & holds on to it with equally unique & universally horrifying events told in the perfect order to have it make sense throughout but not entirely so until the very end. It starts off on the perfect note & holds it throughout! Fascinating & universal, Gerald’s Game is the perfect engaging drama!

#6. Molly’s Game A biopic that doesn’t tell the whole truth, just how much did happen & to whom is the whole reason why I found myself intrigued with Molly’s Game. The great story told fascinatingly with incredible performances is why I love Molly’s Game. The film itself feels like a particularly great poker game: just when you think Molly’s up, just as quickly, she can fall back down. At the end, you’re just concerned if she’ll end up broke by the end of the night! And just like a great poker game, it’s hard not to get engaged with every little thing that happens in this film & it requires Oscar-worthy performances from everyone, especially Jessica Chastain! Incredibly engaging & engrossing, it’s the perfect movie for critics!

#5. I, Tonya I already praised Molly’s Game for how it tells its mostly true story, but I, Tonya is about a famously inconsistent story from & about inconsistent people. I don’t know why, but I find that everyone in this movie has their own stories & they’re probably all lying very interesting & it makes for a great story. It’s kinda like if you took every good element from every Alice In Wonderland adaptation & put them all into its very own movie. Like if the story itself had a couple of decades to edit itself into the best version it possibly can be. Add in the marketing of it maybe being true: taking all the intrigue of a “based on a true story” of something so outrageous while not feeling like it disrespects its audience enough to think they’d believe it. And it helps that its story is based on one of the most interesting parts of modern American history & it has 2 of the best performances of the year (Margot Robbie & Allison Janney). Put them all together & you get the 5th best movie of 2017!

#4. The Shape Of Water Beauty And The Beast is one of the most timeless & universal stories ever told, hence why there is so many versions of it. Everybody can relate to the idea, feeling, & fear of being neglected, ignored, & hated & for many people at many points in history, that fear was a reality. The original story is so universal, it can be read as being a peasant at the turn of the 18th century just as much as it can be about being gay at the turn of the 21st century & that’s why it has persisted for so long. The Disney animated film of the same name from 1991 was revolutionary for many reasons, but its incredible story is largely why it became the first animated movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. So, The Shape Of Water actually winning with this story is not only deserving, but it’s probably my favorite telling of the classic. Guillermo Del Toro had already made a name for himself by directing the critically praised Pan’s Labyrinth, the audience pleaser Pacific Rim, & creating the hit series Trollhunters: Tales Of Arcadia. The Shape Of Water is plausibly his most praised work & possibly his best work. The chemistry between the 2 mute leads is incredible & it becomes even more so after you realize that it’s all without talking! And that fact makes the villain seem even more villainous when every little thing he says is hate filled. And the amazing directing of Del Toro is what brings it all together, making it a worthy Best Picture winner.

#3. The Disaster Artist Another biopic with a possibly untrue story, The Disaster Artist shows that James Franco & Seth Rogan don’t need cheap sex jokes or obvious drug jokes to be funny. In fact, they can make a movie about an already obscure film that only nerds know about & can make a decent hit! Hell, maybe they can also get it nominated for a few Oscars & make it on my Top 10 list! I was ready to call this duo dead after The Interview made only obvious jokes, The Night Before was ungodly uninteresting, & Sausage Party was straight up unfunny. But The Disaster Artist brought a breath of fresh air, a movie for movie nerds & not just the kind that Google what really happened in the Infinity War comics. Ones that keep up with Nostalgia Critic & Cinema Snob because they’re still pretty big guilty pleasures & hope that they’ll eventually review Where The Dead Go To Die. The kind that already knew that The Room exists, love the fact that The Room exists, were immediately excited when Greg Sestero released his book, & were even more so when James Franco said he wanted to make a movie about it! I do my whole shpeal about how true to life the Franco bros. performances are & how great the directing was. But really, the reason I put this above The Shape Of Water & I, Tonya is because I’m a nerd. That’s mostly it! It’s not even my favorite movie about movies, that’s still Ed Wood.

#2. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 Stepping back & looking at the empire & universe Marvel has created, it’s impressive & incredible just how huge & lucrative it has become. And it wouldn’t have become so if it didn’t have the films to back it up. When the first Guardians Of The Galaxy came out, it was Marvel trying to send the message that they can make a film out of one of their most obscure properties & not only make it a humongous hit, but also make it so good that it ends up on the 1001 Movies To See Before You Die list! And with its sequel, they pumped up everything that made the original great tenfold, added in some heartwarming moments to make sure you don’t leave the theater dry, & a much more interesting villain! And by god is Ego such a fascinating & engrossing villain, especially compared to the nothing of a character that made up Ronan. The way it covers its themes of family & parenthood is clever & amazingly well done. You’re right there with Peter Quill, wondering when to side with his dad or his best friends; whether or not a few good deeds redeems the torture of a childhood he had thanks to Yondu. And that kind of inner thought process is largely thanks to the incredible writing & directing of James Gunn, who is irreplaceable. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 is now my 2nd favorite Marvel movie & 2nd favorite movie of 2017. #RehireJamesGunn

Before we get to #1, here are a few runners up:

Wonder Woman I didn’t realize it until after the fact, but 2017 was a really good year for superhero movies. Spider-Man: Homecoming was an amazing comeback for my favorite hero, Thor: Ragnarok somehow made Thor more likable, even Justice League managed to not piss me off! But, arguably, the most important of these was Wonder Woman which showed that not only can female led superhero movies make money, but also be very good!

Paddington 2 2014′s Paddington surprised both critics & audiences with its genuinity, heart-warming-ness, & immensely likable lead character, gripping everyone. When Paddington 2 came out, it immediately got 100% on RottenTomatoes, & that is a serious rarity. To the point where I first thought it was a fluke, like it got almost entirely middling reviews resulting in a 100% on a movie that generally averaged with 6/10s. Leaving the theater about 2 hours later, I can agree that it not only deserves that 100%, but it’s way better than the first movie! And I love the first movie!

Call Me By Your Name This was actually a really good year for Oscar nominated films. Most years, I don’t even consider most of the nominated movies because they tend to be a little pretentious, long, & boring. Which does have a place, just not the type I tend to watch a million times like the films I do put on my lists. But this year, my list is filled with Oscar winners & I actually wanted to include more like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Dunkirk, & All The Money In The World. I think Call Me By Your Name is at least more interesting than most of these if only for the background of being about 2 bisexuals, one being a kid. It can get a little pretentious, long, & boring but definitely worth watching!

The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected) Meyerowitz Stories is Adam Sandler’s stab at an artistic movie after nobody saw Ridiculous 6 & Punch Drunk Love continues to garner praise from just about everyone. It’s the beginning of a new kind of Sandler movies as he gets used to his new home on Netflix & realize what kind of movies that kind of audience wants to see. I really hope that he continues to make these kinds of movies in the years to follow!

John Wick Chapter 2 On the side of action movies that aren’t based on comics, the John Wick movies continue to be exciting, action packed, & most importantly, fun! I had fun when I watch these movies, which is something I don’t say about the darker side of modern action movies. I haven’t had this much fun watching an action movie like this since Die Hard!

mother! On the battle of is this movie pretentious garbage or exciting drama; nominated for both an Oscar & a Razzie; do I love or hate mother!... I actually fucking love these kinds of movies! The kind that makes no sense as you’re watching it but every sense after the fact. Movies like Black Swan, Mulholland Drive, & The Cure For Wellness. So I might be biased towards this kind of movie, but I loved it!

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi Talk about toxic movie topic, I also really loved The Last Jedi! I actually thought it was a clever film that completely subverted my expectations at every moment. I love that Rae’s parents turned out to be nobodies, it’s such an interesting twist on this build up & arguably the most daring take they could’ve have after the millionth fan theory stated that it’s Luke & Leia. I loved where it left our heroes, at their bleakest moment, paralleling The Empire Strikes Back! I genuinely loved this movie & I’ll admit, I don’t totally get what all the hate is about! But whatever, my list, my runners up, nyeh nyeh.

Bill Nye: Science Guy Here’s my documentary entry... & it was a hard pick between this & Jim And Andy: The Great Beyond but I did inevitably pick this one because Bill Nye is a personal hero of mine. I’m a science dork, I’m subscribed to ASAP Science, I grew up with Bill Nye. I find his journey fascinating, this documentary very well made, & I can’t wait for the next season of Bill Nye Saves The World.

World Of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden Of Other People’s Thoughts I really hope Don Hertzfeldt catches on with more movie nerds. Just between this, the first World Of Tomorrow, It’s Such A Beautiful Day, The Meaning Of Life, Rejected, & every other film he’s created, he’s easily one of my favorite directors. Making some of the most thought provoking & intelligent films I’ve ever seen. If I included short films, this would be a serious contender for #1! Please watch this, just the phrase “The Burden Of Other People’s Thoughts” makes this worth watching!

Loving Vincent Fuck! I didn’t even get to include the pretentious animated film of the year? This is the only movie I can think of where literally every frame is a painting & it looks beautiful! Throughout, you can tell the people making this are genuinely passionate about Vincent Van Gogh & that’s what really drives the movie. I also want to take this time to mention My Little Pony: The Movie, which is my “I love this animated movie way more than most people probably should” of the year & I didn’t even have room in the runners up for it!

#1. Logan Last year, I was running around looking for a movie to beat Captain America: Civil War for Best Movie Of 2016. Luckily, I did find it in Arrival but the reason why I so desperately didn’t want Civil War to win out is because it just didn’t feel right. A fun & intelligent film for sure, but mostly surface level in a way the Marvel movies are able to be. For 2017, I saw Logan in theaters & instantly knew it should at least be on my year end top 10. At first it was just #5, but it did eventually climb up as the more I thought about it, the more I loved it. Before long, I was battling whether or not this or Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 should top the list. And though I do think I’ve seen GOTG2 more times than Logan, at the end of the day, Logan is the objectively & subjectively better made film. The action feels dark but in a real way, like this could genuinely be someone’s reality like Die Hard or John Wick. But this is way more clever, intelligent, & interesting than those movies ever were. This was the last film for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine & for his efforts, it was rightfully nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars. What a way to go out...

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joeygoespolitical · 7 years

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The 71st Annual Tony Awards: The Least Political Award Show in 2 Years

Since Donald Trump announced he was running for president, every single award show became less about the art they were celebrating and more about celebrities airing their political grievances they had for the man who would eventually become our next Commander in Chief.

The Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Golden Globes, it seemed like every televised event for the past two years was about Trump. However, we might have had a breakthrough.

On Sunday, the 71st Annual Tony Awards were on. Between Hollywood and Broadway, you'd think it would be another anti-Trump affair. Surprisingly, it wasn't.

That's not to say that this year's Tonys were politics-free. They weren't. That said, we're making progress.

For starters, no one, not the host, not the presenters, and not the winners ever uttered the word "Trump." Crazy, I know. And we managed to go 45 minutes straight without anything going political. That in itself must be a record! It could have lasted longer had it not been for Cynthia Nixon's politically-charged acceptance speech, where she applauded those who "aren't doing nothing" in 2017.

Besides the occasional call for social justice in other acceptance speeches and the blue ACLU ribbons many of the attendees were wearing, no one made an overt attack on President Trump. That was until Stephen Colbert showed up.

To give Colbert credit, he was actually creative when he ripped the Trump presidency (again without referring to Trump by name) by comparing it to a bad musical revival. While most Trump supporters were probably nauseated, I was able to appreciate the humor, and I'm no fan of Colbert at all.

Aside from that, we were overall spared from the dead horse that actors, musicians, and comedians have been beating for 24 months straight. It was quite refreshing actually. And it makes me wonder why we were spared.

One reason is obvious: Kevin Spacey.

Spacey, who has never hosted an awards show, arguably was the greatest award show host in recent memory, certainly within the last two years. He was humorous and extremely talented. No one really knew how good of a singer he was until he performed his opening number. Not only that, he gave us an incredible impersonation of the late Johnny Carson and an hysterical Bill Clinton (while it was political, it definitely was good-natured). Even when he appeared as President Frank Underwood, he resisted any temptation he might have had to bash Trump. Perhaps he should host the Oscars instead of Jimmy Kimmel.

Another reason why this year's Tonys lacked the Trump hate could be the winners themselves. Most of them were not household names and many of them have won their first Tony. Of course we all know that they're all given a such a short amount of time to speak (except for Bette Midler, who refused to get off the stage when she won), they can't afford to waste any of it on Trump. They have to thank their families, their agents, their directors, their playwrights, their companies, it was about them and their art, as all awards shows should be.

Now if you hate Trump, then you don't mind all the Trump bashing that has become common at these award shows. In fact, you probably relish it. However, this country is made up of more than Trump haters.

There are Trump supporters. There are people who neither love nor hate Trump. There are people who hate Trump but hate Hollywood's bashing of Trump even more. And then there are those who don't care about Trump at all and just want to watch the show.

I'm not sure if the producers of this year's Tonys had that in mind or not. If they didn't, they should have and so should the producers of the next Emmys, the next Golden Globes, the next Grammys, the next Oscars, and beyond.

Am I saying that award shows should avoid politics altogether? Of course not. That being said, award shows should respect their viewers no matter what their political views are, especially if they want to further increase their viewership.

I sincerely hope that the 71st Tony Awards isn't just a fluke. The more we don't inject bitter politics into everything like we as a society already have, the more we can heal the political divide in America. Don't let 2017 be the curtain call of civil discourse in this country.

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joeygoeshollywood · 7 years

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The 71st Annual Tony Awards: The Least Political Award Show in Two Years

The Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Golden Globes, it seemed like every televised event for the past two years was about Trump. However, we might have had a breakthrough.

On Sunday, the 71st Annual Tony Awards were on. Between Hollywood and Broadway, you'd think it would be another anti-Trump affair. Surprisingly, it wasn't.

That's not to say that this year's Tonys were politics-free. They weren't. That said, we're making progress.

One reason is obvious: Kevin Spacey.

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d2kvirus · 4 years

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Dickheads of the Month: December 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of December 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

There’s something wrong with the British electorate when they look at nine years of austerity, massive layoffs in police and NHS staff, outright persecution of the disabled, the country’s economy and standing being completely tanked and housing safety reports being sat on until Grenfell went up and their thought is “I want five more years of that!”

...although nobody should overlook how Liberal Democrat supporters refused to accept any responsibility for the result, in spite their party being directly responsible in handing control of Kensington to the Tories by 150 votes, as well as splitting the votes in Tory marginals Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley & Golders Green

...while Blue Labour crawled out of the woodwork to say the reason why Labour lost was because they weren’t indistinguishable enough from the Tories (which makes so much sense...) while saying the party should have listened to Caroline Flint - the same Caroline Flint who said that Labour should shut up and fall in line with the Tories...and lost her seat as a result

Nothing sums up Laura Kuenssberg better than how, the day before the General Election, she appeared on Politics Live to either blatantly lie about seeing postal votes or casually break electoral law by discussing postal vote results she claims to have seen - which is a direct violation of the The Representation of the People Act 1983

...although with Laura Kuenssberg being Laura Kuenssberg it wasn’t long before yet another example of gross unprofessionalism reared its head when she forgot her job is to report the news and not create it according to her own personal bias when she said history would condemn all Remainers who tried to undo Britait, which not only happens to be a direct violation of the BBC’s editorial guidelines but also betrays a remarkable failure to understand history

...and she was hardly the only example of this, not when Suraj Sharma was putting up anti-Corbyn posters outside polling stations across Merseyside on election day in spite doing so being illegal

It shouldn't surprise anyone that proven liar Boris Johnson broke his election promises within a week of duping the electorate, with him binning off pledges on workers rights, raising minimum wage and taking No Deal off the table - yet somehow the ignorant foghorns defend this by saying something about four legs being good

...soon afterwards proven liar Boris Johnson also reneged on the campaign pledge to raise the national living wage to £10.50 and instead raised it to £8.72 - and of course the BBC tried to spin that as a good thing, crowing about the percentage that it had increased by instead of how the Tories have been pledging that figure since the 2015 election

Smirking halfwit Priti Patel decided she too wanted to exploit the London Bridge attack for political gain and was quick to claim that the laws that saw the attacker released were implemented by a Labour government...in spite the obvious issue that he was released due to laws passed in 2012, i.e. when the Tories were in government and Theresa May was serving as Home Secretary, but that’s not important right now...

...soon afterwards Godfrey Bloom also decided the best course of action was to go on the offensive against the deceased’s family, going so far as to say that as the deceased believed Jihadists should be released early he reaped what he sowed and, by the way, could the deceased’s father pipe down and stop saying nasty things about the Tories

Australians were happy when their Prime Minister Scott Morrison responded to the widespread wildfires torching the country by...not being there as he’d rather bugger off to Hawaii on holiday, and having begrudgingly cut his holiday short his next suggestion was to try and withhold compensation for the volunteer firefighters that were combating what had become the most widespread wildfires in decades

Tory donors Alan Howard and Jeremy Isaacs showed how committed the two are to the party and to Britait by...paying millions of their own money to buy Cypriot passports so they don’t have to leave the EU like the plebs who voted to Leave will have to

It’s not even a surprise that the BBC somehow mutated a story of fact-checkers revealing that 88% of Tory Facebook ads contained lies compared to 0% of Labour’s into a headline saying both parties had been warned about publishing untruths during the campaign as opposed to just one of them

...although ITV were not far behind with their reimagining of Stormzy saying “Yes, 100%” as an answer to the question “Do you think Britain is racist?” into the headline “Stormzy says Britain is ‘100% racist’” which (predictably) got those who get far more riled up by the suggestion that they’re racist than they ever are by the existence of racism to kick off on social media

Nobody was surprised that Allison Pearson responded to the photos of the four year-old boy sleeping on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary was to claim the photos were staged...and being the coward that she is, she played the usual “I was hacked” card as if she doesn’t have a track record for shit like this

Among the wave of inept tactical voting guides The Guardian published the most inept of them all, telling their readers to vote Lib Dem in seats held by pro-Remain Labour MPs - which worked out marvelously in Kensington, didn’t it?

...and right before the year ended Jeremy Gilbert further aided The Guardian’s credentials of not having a clue by writing a hit piece saying that if Labour want to win elections they need to not be Labour, as if Clement Atlee or Harold Wilson didn’t exist - or, more likely with the usual centrist idiocy, the belief that Labour didn’t exist until Tony Blair came along and made them Labour In Name Only

Of course the dogwhistling boneheads would find some excuse to foam at the mouth about Diane Abbott during the election campaign, and this time it was her wearing two different shoes, which begs just one question: “...and?”

In a remarkable act of cowardice Arsenal responded to the Chinese state broadcaster pulling a broadcast of their match of their match against Manchester City due to Mesut Ozil’s criticism of the country’s treatment of Uighur Muslims by...throwing Ozil under the bus and claiming he doesn’t represent the club

In the mind of Patrice Désilets the reason why Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey got remarkably average Metacritic reviews isn’t because the game has a boring gameplay loop and unintuitive controls, but because a couple of reviewers spoke about features that weren’t in the game (although he neglected to say who those reviewers were, as they don’t appear to be on Metacritic) that obviously mean that all reviewers didn’t play the game and just decided to be negative for the sake of it

As if going full Pravda wasn’t reason enough to doubt anything the BBC say ever again, the fact that they ran a story about Cats receiving glowing reviews further showed just how uninterested they are in reporting an actual story compared to their own interpretation of it

When it emerged that Caroline Flack had assaulted her partner by cracking him in the head with a lamp while he was sleeping her response was to come out swinging with a bullish attitude that she wouldn't leave Love Island really worked in her favour...for about a day, until ITV announced she’d been replaced, and it wasn’t as if they had to look too hard for a replacement

It’s the time of year where Kevin Spacey posts a video of him totally in character as Frank Underwood from House of Cards...which was the creepy side of weird last year, but this year weird’s gone out the window

Somebody opened the crypt in which Michael Howard sleeps his eternal slumber, meaning we had to hear him venture his opinion about how judges should not be allowed to use their knowledge or judgment and instead shut up and fall in line with what the government tells them to do

Somehow a story about how Jo Maugham killed a fox in his back garden with a baseball bat while wearing his wife’s silk kimono on Boxing Day morning wasn’t a headline from Guido Blog designed to whip up their readers into indignant and/or ignorant rage, instead something that Jo Maugham himself tweeted on Boxing Day morning having done just that

Of course Tom Watson crawled out the woodwork to say it;s terrible how Labour members hated him...while at no point mentioning his years of backstabbing or how he tried to disqualify Labour members from voting in a leadership election so he could install the centrist option that nobody wanted

Nobody was surprised to see Darren Grimes taking to Twitter to bemoan the lack of funding in public infrastructure in the north...just as nobody was surprised to see the penny clearly hadn’t dropped with him that he was campaigning on behalf of the people who slashed public service infrastructure funding in the north for the past nine years

Hard centre extremist Andrew Adonis thought it was a smart idea to say that Corbynism needs to be “eradicated” from the Labour party. Just a hint: that’s what Tom Watson thought was a bright idea

It’s one thing for Youtube to play it safe with this year’s Youtube Rewind after last year’s downvote prison romance, but making the 2019 Rewind little more than a WatchMojo list video without the commentary goes beyond playing it safe and into being downright lazy

For a brief moment Giles Coren thought he was Rod Liddle, judging by his Times column where he spoke about Owen Jones getting a peerage and preying on the anal virginity of young researchers

There’s something pathetic about various WWE wrestlers taking to Twitter to mouth off about a badly-performed spot on an episode of AEW Dynamite that can either be explained by them being ordered to tweet that crap out by Vince McMahon or by their suddenly feeling threatened, which only served to make them look like the pro-WWE trolls that howl about everything AEW-related in a manner which stopped being amusing and started being concerning a couple of months ago

And finally, because of course, is Thanos wannabe Donald Trump and his belief that Justin Trudeau is “two-faced” because he said nasty things about the Orange Overlord - but of course, there’s no record of Trump ever saying nasty things about any nation’s leader after pretending to be all buddy-buddy with them

#dickheads of the month

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mychristopherstokes66world · 5 years

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With the Saturday arrest of Jeffrey Epstein - who is reportedly offering to name elite pedophiles in exchange for leniency, a leaked copy of the billionaire sex predator's "little black book" may provide some insight into some very rich individuals who should be nervous right about now. he book was smuggled out of Epstein's residence by his former house manager, Alfredo Rodriguez, who was busted trying to sell it in 2009 for $50,000 - only to get caught, charged with obstruction of justice, and die in prison after 18 months from a 'long illness.' According to an FBI affidavit, Rodriguez described the address book and the information contained within it as the "Holy Grail" or "Golden Nugget" to unraveling Epstein's sprawling child-sex network. But despite having been subpoenaed for everything he had on his former boss, Rodriguez didn't share it with the FBI or Palm Beach Police Department detectives investigating Epstein. Instead, he tried to make a $50,000 score by covertly peddling the black book to one of the attorneys launching lawsuits at Epstein on behalf of his victims. -Gawker According to a 2015 Gawker article, Epstein's little black book contains hundreds of names that a hobnobbing socialite billionaire might keep on hand, however around 50 of the entries were circled by Rodriguez - "including those of many of Epstein's suspected victims and accomplices," according to the report. Some of the names in the book include: Ralph Fiennes Alec Baldwin David Blaine Jimmy Buffett Courtney Love Charlie Rose Mike Wallace Barbara Walters Ehud Barak Tony Blair David Koch John Gutfreund Prince Andrew And of course: Bill Clinton and Donald Trump About 50 of the entries, including those of many of Epstein's suspected victims and accomplices as well as Trump, Love, Barak, Dershowitz, and others, were circled by Rodriguez. >Alec Baldwin >Tony Blair >the Bronfmans >office of Bill Clinton >Alastair Campbell >Jonathan Dimbleby >John Cleese (;A;) >Minnie Driver >Duke and Duchess of York >”Elizabeth” (Queen?) >Chris Evans (0207 number, extremely overpaid BBC presenter, not the Captain America actor) >Brian Ferry >Ralph Fiennes >David Frost >Rupert Heseltine >Liz Hurley >one of the Jagger offspring >literally all of the Kennedy clan >Jemma Kidd >Henry Kissinger >Boby Kotic (Activision CEO) >Christopher Lambert (;A;) >Simon Le Bon >Doug Liman >Courtney Love >Peter Mandelson >Rupert Murdoch >Andrew Neil >Jon Peters, Hollywood mega-producer >Prince Charles >Joan Rivers >the Rothschilds >Maria Shriver >Soros >Kevin Spacey >Koo Stark >Ivana and Ivanka Trump (not Donald, though) >Chris Tucker >Bob Weinstein >Prince Michel of Yugoslavia >”Police - sergeant Robert Goldberg” >entire section devoted to “ISLAND” >John Kerry And those are just the recognisable-to-normies entries. There’s a who’s-who of financiers and high society money in there too. Jesus Christ. In addition to the names above, as well as scores of apparent underage victims in Florida, New Mexico, California, Paris, and the United Kingdom listed under the rubric of "massage," the circled entries include: Billionaire Leslie Wexner Former New Mexico Governor Bruce King Former New Mexico Governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson Peter Soros, the nephew of George Soros Former Miss Sweden and socialite New York City doctor Eva Andersson Dubin Some of the circled entries include additional notes—one address in New York City, for instance, is marked as an "apt. for models," and two names bear the marking "witness." You don't even have to do anything, and most people invited might even be totally unaware of the real purpose of the parties! But, sooner or later, some billionaire will get handsy, she'll escort him to a room with a hidden camera, things happen. Morning after, you strike. The fund is offshore in a tax haven (check) and nobody will see the client list (check). Of course, you don't really know anything about investing, instead making up some nonsense about currency trading (check), and nobody on Wall Street has ever traded with you (check) A $20 million wire from Billionaire X to you with no obvious reason will raise many questions, and the IRS will certainly want to know what you did to warrant it. A $5 million quarterly fee for managing $1 billion in assets? Nobody bats an eye. Because of this structure, you're extraordinarily secretive about client lists (check) because they artters or return streams ever leak (check) Occasionally you may also try this trick on other people: important political figures, mayors, prosecutors, etc. They don't invest in the fund, but it's nice to have them in your pocket. Others (academics, artists, etc.) can just be bought with money as a PR smokescreen. And the last piece of the puzzle is the evidence. You'd want it somewhere remote, but accessible: a place the US can't touch but you have an excuse to visit all the time to update. Remember that offshore fund? I bet there's a *very* interesting safe deposit box there.

this wasn't his rolodex. it was his special book; which he's old buttler was trying to peddle for 50k. probbaly is worth a lot more. >tony blair >mike bloomberg posted this one just because it has 2 wins.

this looks like a fun read. https://pt.scribd.com/document/416207833/Jeffrey-Epsteins-Little-Black-Book-Redacted#from_embed

"And there were lots of parties! I remember I ran to the bathroom of the hotel L’Hirondellein the Queen Elisabeth Street in Knokke where a party was taking place. I was breathing heavily when I crawled towards the toilet, fighting the urge to throw up. One of the men had orally raped me pushing so deeply in my throat that I had gagged, upon which he had beaten me. After a while however he had found another victim and I had taken advantage of this to flee to the bathroom. But instead of throwing up I had started to cry uncontrollably. I was taken over completely by feelings of panic, fear and helplessness and pushed myself against the cool tiles of the bathtub. The door opened. One of the abusers entered, closed the door and sat down in front of me. I tried to stop crying but the tears kept coming. It looked as if a dike had burst inside me. He caressed my hair, whispered in a soothing way that I was safe now. “Don’t be afraid little girl, I’m with you now…” And he stroked my hair, pulled me close to him. I braced myself at first, afraid to get hit again, but his hands kept caressing me. I cried against his chest and my little eight-year-old body

>eight-year-old body

was shaking against his shoulders. I put my little arms around his neck, hesitating, and cuddled up against his body. I allowed all the pain and misery to break loose. I cried as if I would never stop, clung to him like a drowning person. Then his hand went between my legs. Suddenly, without any warning, he turned me around, made me sit on all fours and raped me. He breathed heavily when he came, pushed me away, zipped his pants and left. I had turned him on by looking to him for consolation and protection."

Regina Louf, Dutroux Affair victim. Her full testimony can be found here:

>https://www.scribd.com/document/125814985/109518200-Regina-s-Story

>The book was smuggled out of Epstein's residence by his former house manager, Alfredo Rodriguez, who was busted trying to sell it in 2009 for $50,000 - only to get caught, charged with obstruction of justice, and die in prison after 18 months from a 'long illness.' This is all very tantalizing, but isn't it possible this is just an innocuous address book, 99% of the names have no knowledge of the crimes and only brief associations with Epstein, and the butler was just trying to profit?

A shill is someone whom cannot see criminal behavior based on a gradient of political partisanship. Shills are pushing a third party's (A: Me, B: You, C: not in the room) agenda loyally, while engaging in every confirmation bias known to man, while unironically (in the shill's opinion) hating Snopes.com, to whom the shill is logically identical. This isn't about Trump, or Epstein. This is about how a corrupt system has emerged, and replaced typical American values with Zionist ones, to include the kike sodomite obsession with sex, and preoccupation with perversion. Now, be sure to say some uncalled for repudiation, using every attempt to ignore this lesson. But, let it sink in, as well. Jimmy Buffett... Fifteen may get you twenty, that's all right Cause they'll be rocking and a rolling on a Livingston Saturday night https://youtu.be/X7ckBvSKG-Q https://thedevilman666.blogspot.com/https://www.facebook.com/groups/qanonreports https://twitter.com/CIACLOWN1 https://www.bitchute.com/channel/ciaclown16661/

#CIA CLOWN #RED PILL #REDPILL #ANON #HONKHONK

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