Movie Review: Alice (1990)

Entertaining film of troubles with the gilded cage, by Woody Allen
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright  ________________ Rating 9/10

Set in the posh East Side/Fifth Avenue world of wealth and youth, Alice (Mia Farrow) has been married to Doug (William Hurt), a millionaire businessman, for 15 years. They have two kids, with a nanny, and live in what looks like a $5,000 to $10,000 per month apartment. After having the chauffeur drop off her kids at the elite private school, Alice basically spends her weekdays in an epicurean montage: manicures, pedicures, hair styling, massage, acupuncture, shopping, gossiping with her similarly situated girlfriends.

What instigates her initial discomfort is a back ache that won’t go away. One of her friends recommends a Chinese ‘herbalist,’ a Dr. Yang (Keye Luke) , who serves more as a psycho-therapist and deliverer of tough love… in conjunction with ‘natural substances’ to cure the various dramas that are Alice’s unfulfilled life. She starts with something that opens her up emotionally and sensually toward an apparently single man, Joe (Joe Montegna), she finds attractive who brings his child to the same school that Alice’s kids attend. Good writing, and very good acting—I consider Alice to be a major tour de force of Mia Farrow’s career. She’s simply magnificent, and hilarious, as the dominating presence in her initial conver-sation with Joe, which moves the relationship to the next step.

So much more, as Alice starts to break out of her shell and leaves behind her insecurities, seen in her various relationships…with Joe, of course, but also with her first love Ed (Alec Baldwin—quite the handsome stud in 1990), her sister Dorothy (Blythe Danner), a woman friend Nancy Brill (Cybill Shepherd) who has ‘made it’ as a TV executive and to whom Alice goes to to propose a writing project, and so forth. All these relationships are drawn finely and fittingly into the general plot of Alice trying to find fulfillment away from the superficial life that she knows she’s leading but is afraid to let go of. Continue reading

Guest Column: Ursula Haverbeck awarded Robert Faurisson prize at Vichy

Transcript of speech by her lawyer, Wolfram Nahrath, accepting on her behalf
Courtesy Rudy List

On the 25th. January 2019, at a ceremony at Vichy, France, the International Robert Faurisson prize for 2019 was awarded to Ursula Haverbeck.

The German lawyer, Wolfram Nahrath – who has represented Frau Haverbeck in innumerable trials – accepted the International Robert Faurisson prize in her place. In his Laudatio Herr Nahrath acknowledged, that it was a great honour to receive the prize on behalf of his client.

The full text of the Laudatio is as follows:

Ladies and Gentlemen, esteemed committee, Michele Lady Renouf, Master Fallisi, the Honourable Mr. Nichols.

It is for me a great honour to accept this prize on behalf of my client.

My client, Frau Ursula Haverbeck-Wetzel, last year celebrated her ninetieth birthday, but it is not age or physical infirmity that has hindered her from traveling to Vichy.

No, she finds herself in prison in the Federal Republic of Germany. Last year she was condemned in the first instance to three and a half years’ incarceration. A series of further trials against her have been planned and so it is not impossible that she may yet be condemned to further years in prison. The possibility is not to be excluded that she may spend the rest of her life in prison and die in prison.

Now everybody is going to ask, what type of fearful and dangerous criminal is my client who has the criminal energy still to commit crimes at her advanced age. Is she the Godmother of a mafia-type criminal organisation ? Has she robbed, murdered, wounded, cheated, stolen, molested children, dealt in drugs, organised human-trafficking ?

No, she has committed none of these offences. But in reference to her rights of Freedom of Opinion, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Enquiry, she has exercised her personal right publicly to question and to comment on one particular event, limited to a particular time and place. She has done so in public and in her writings and at meetings where she was the guest-speaker and she has distributed her literature widely. And, Yes ? – just for this, people are going to ask, you can be locked up for years in jail in the most free (and liberal) judicial ordering that has ever existed in Germany ? Yes, this has happened and this is the fate of the recipient of this prize. Continue reading

ADVANCING THE FIRST CLASS SCREENPLAY OF THE USS LIBERTY INCIDENT BY CLINT BURNETTE

USS Liberty Screenplay Flyer
By Brian R. Wright

Note: The information on this html page is laid out similarly to the flyer I composed for myself to announce and promote the marvelous screenplay about the USS Liberty incident written by Clint Burnette and now available on Amazon at this location. The actual flyer you may download to tailor and use is one of the following pdf files, all prefixed with http://brianRwright.com/
EW_Flyer.pdf (flyer author w/my contact info: Novi, Michigan, area),
EW_Flyer_CB.pdf (screenplay author Clint Burnette: Sydney, Australia, area), EW_Flyer_EG.pdf (Liberty survivor/advisor Ernie Gallo: Palm Coast, Florida, area)
EW_Flyer_RK.pdf (Liberty survivor/advisor Ronald Kukal: Sheridan, Wyoming, area).

The flyer source MS Word file is linked on the pdf file, so you may tailor your own pdf flyer [by modifying the source Word file] to yourself.

Available for Purchase at Amazon.com

Typical Review of Enemies Within

“I’ve just read Enemies Within and am ready to read it again. It seems the more I read the more I want to know. I’ve been following the USS Liberty for approximately 24 years and never imagined I’d be reading something as chilling and riveting as this! So realistic that I was in tears, and actually felt as if I were there, terrified and slammed into a wall. I did not want this to end. I want more. I want to read more, know more and see more in FILM! A blockbuster film! Almost forgot to mention that my partner Wayne Kyle was aboard the USS America and witnessed some of the after effects of that incident.” — Rose Marie Higgins

What We Can Do to Help Turn this Screenplay into a Movie

We want to bring the screenplay to the attention of a film making team of excellence and courage in the face of hostile opposition who desperately want it squashed. So: Continue reading

Book Review: Teenage Idol, Travelin’ Man (1992)

The Complete Biography of Rick Nelson, by Philip Bashe
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

For some reason around Christmas 2018, I know what it was, I was pondering whether I’d be receiving a card from my former boss, Cathy. We had worked together doing documentation of an EDI [electronic data interchange (paperless business transaction documents)] suite of documents for a company in Livonia, Michigan, back in the 1990s. I’d just recently heard a desultory comment from a current coworker that Rick Nelson’s plane had crashed because he was freebasing cocaine—IOW, the sort of rumor meanspirited people, guided by hearsay, not knowing and not caring, use to dismiss another’s achievement.

Well, Cathy, whom I really admired professionally and personally, had shared with me a book on Rick Nelson back in those days I worked for her. Turns out she was a major fan of Rick’s music and of Rick the individual. [“Elvis was too full of himself, and, like, a greaser.”] I read the book that she recommended back then and came away quite impressed with Mr. Teenage Idol, as well. In particular, whatever book I read dwelt on the distressing relationship between Nelson and his wife Kris, the drugs and affairs and whatnot—mostly on Kris’s end of the stick. It was a good book, putting Rick mainly in a favorable light. BUT it was NOT this book that I just read and am reviewing here.

Foundation

This book, Teenage Idol, Travelin’ Man, is several cuts above the other one I remember reading in the early 1990s. Mr. Bashe has delivered a remarkable achievement that focuses first and foremost on Rick the musician and on Rick the person. With a full family history and background, especially of the remarkable Ozzie Nelson.

“Oswald George Nelson was born in Jersey city, March 20, 1906…. A voracious reader, Ozzie dog-eared copies of David Copperfield, Tommy Tiptop, the Rover Boys, and especially Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches boys’ stories. The latter’s recurring theme of infinite possibility had an immense impact on him, as it did on young men as Henry Ford, David Sarnoff, John D. Rockefeller, George Eastman, and Thomas Edison. That they and Ozzie all wound up millionaires might be coincidence. Then again, maybe not: for the honesty and virtue of Alger’s protagonists weren’t their own rewards, but were usually supplemented by cash.”

“Though the public would come to know Ozzie as the indolent, bumbling father he played on the air, in reality he displayed Algeresque drive and ambition his entire life. In addition to becoming the youngest American Eagle Scout on record at 13, Ozzie went on to excel in scholastics, debating, cartooning, and sports…. Ozzie followed his brother Alfred to all-male Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey,” where at 130# he played running back on the varsity football team. After graduating and enduring many hardships, including his father’s death from a rare bone cancer, superachiever Ozzie developed a thriving entertainment business—band, orchestra, singer, conductor, composer—on the east coast while even earning a law degree. — Pages 4-7

By comparison and contrast, Rick fit the following description:

“Strong-willed professionally, in his private life Rick was passive and reserved, the loyal son of a domineering, ambitious father. Ozzie Nelson, creator and star of an unprecedented radio and television dynasty, directed Rick not only on The Adventures [of Ozzie and Harriet] but off camera as well, and was the most influential person in his life. Rick felt forever torn between his devotion to Ozzie and his desperate need to establish an identity separate from father and family. He became an escape artist, always seeking his independence—from Ozzie;  from an unhappy marriage; from adulthood, which Rick resisted like Peter Pan by singing rock & roll; and most of all from the Boy Next Door image that plagued him through the years.” — Page xvii

Continue reading

Movie Review: Dreamgirls (2006)

A composite retrospective on the music of Soul and Motown___ 8/10
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

Directed by Bill Condon

Jamie Foxx …. Curtis Taylor Jr.
Beyoncé Knowles …. Deena Jones
Eddie Murphy …. James ‘Thunder’ Early
Danny Glover …. Marty Madison
Anika Noni Rose …. Lorrell Robinson
Jennifer Hudson …. Effie Melody White
Keith Robinson ….  ‘C.C.’ White

This is a large, beautiful movie that stays true to its roots.  Based on the book and lyrics written by Tom Eyen, the movie is an adaptation of the musical play of the same name that debuted in 1981.

Condon dedicates the movie to the director-choreographer of the play, Michael Bennett, who died in 1987 of AIDS complications.  He keeps the spirit of Bennet’s creation intact with a bold, insightful, entertaining gem of a movie with dynamite acting and musical performances.

The story is about three young women, a composite of the Supremes and Aretha Franklin—Beyonce (~Diana), Anika, and the American Idol finalist, Jennifer Hudson (~Aretha)— who as the Dreamettes meet up with a young promoter, Curtis—a Barry Gordy Jr. surrogate played by Jamie Foxx—at a Detroit theater in the early 1960s.

Initially performing backup with James Early (a combo of Jackie Wilson and James Brown, and others, played by Eddie Murphy), Curtis turns the Dreamettes into the Dreamgirls and promotes their considerable talents all the way to the top of the musical world.  The sets of Detroit and environs, LA, and other entertainment venues are uncannily realistic. Continue reading

Guest Column: The Real Story of the Creation of Israel

Hint: It wasn’t the UN
By Alison Weir [Full article here.]
(First published Oct. 11, 2011 in CounterPunch & AntiWar.com) 

Israel and its partisans have been celebrating Nov. 29 as the 70th anniversary of the UN partition vote that some people believe created Israel. In reality, this vote was obtained through bribes and threats, was opposed by the U.S. State Department, and has no force of law. Individual Israelis, like Palestinians and all people, are legally and morally entitled to an array of human rights. On the other hand, the state of Israel’s vaunted “right to exist” is based on an alleged “right” derived from might, an outmoded concept that international legal conventions do not recognize, and in fact specifically prohibit. — AW

The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the US governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect.

In reality, while the UN General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council.

Second, the General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.

Third, the US administration supported the recommendation out of domestic electoral considerations, and took this position over the strenuous objections of the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

The passage of the General Assembly recommendation sparked increased violence in the region. Over the following months the armed wing of the pro-Israel movement, which had long been preparing for war, perpetrated a series of massacres and expulsions throughout Palestine, implementing a plan to clear the way for a majority-Jewish state.

It was this armed aggression, and the ethnic cleansing of at least three-quarters of a million indigenous Palestinians, that created the Jewish state on land that had been 95 percent non-Jewish prior to Zionist immigration and that even after years of immigration remained 70 percent non-Jewish. And despite the shallow patina of legality its partisans extracted from the General Assembly, Israel was born over the opposition of American experts and of governments around the world, who opposed it on both pragmatic and moral grounds. Continue reading

Brian’s Column: Everyone Wants to See Atlas Shrugging…

… but no one wants to BE Atlas Shrugging
By Brian R. Wright

When: Wednesday, January 30, 2019 and Thursday, January 31 ’til noon.
Where: Livonia, Michigan; Southeast and South Central Michigan.
Context: Polar Vortex, unprecedented arctic cold temperatures and winds
Note: Michigan is east of Chicago and on top of the word “Chicago” in the vortex map on the right. The US Post Office cancelled delivery operations in 10 states, Michigan being one.

Company: We do mobile swallow studies in southern Michigan, using a driver-technician, speech pathologist, and medical physician—travel to rehabilitation facilities in a Ford Transit 250, with a 500 lb. rolling Fluorscope machine and gear to diagnose and help patients swallow better. I’m the lead driver-tech, and was NOT scheduled to go out on 1/30 or 1/31. NOR WOULD I HAVE CONSENTED TO GO ON 1/30 ALL DAY OR 1/31 A.M… AT GUNPOINT.

Incident: Our company in central Illinois, of all places, schedules the Livonia, Michigan, team to go to three facilities on 1/30, where the HIGH temperatures for the day are -10º and sustained winds are above 20 mph (wind chill -45º. Further, the company schedules local studies on 1/31 where the morning high is -15º (!) and sustained winds are above 10 mph (temps were headed toward zero at around noon).
Coincident: Everyone on the Michigan swallow teams for 1/30 and 1/31 a.m.—one driver-tech (50-something guy), two speech paths (young mothers, 30-somethings), and two MDs (one single woman, 40-something; one man, ~74)—complies with the company dictated schedule without a peep [note: the woman MD on the Wednesday was likely gung ho to go because that’s her ‘certifiable’ nature].

My Deep  Philosophical Question of the Moment

Why? Continue reading