Movie Review: Coming Home (1978)

The best all-round antiwar love story of all time (10/10)

Reposted October 11, 2017. Not much has changed. Only now war for most Americans is a bunch of fat cowards sitting in a room murdering women and children with drones. Don’t even need to suit up, just watch TV and push buttons.

Coming HomeLuke Martin (Jon Voight): [Luke’s speech is spliced with final scene of Capt. Bob Hyde where he is at the beach] You know, you want to be a part of it, patriotic, go out and get your licks in for the U.S. of A. And when you get over there, it’s a totally different situation. I mean, you grow up real quick. Because all you’re seeing is, um, a lot of death. And I know some of you guys are going to look at the uniformed man and you’re going to remember all the films and you’re going to think about the glory of other wars and think about some vague patriotic feeling and go off and fight this turkey too. And I’m telling you it ain’t like it’s in the movies. That’s all I want to tell you, because I didn’t have a choice. When I was your age, all I got was some guy standing up like that, man, giving me a lot of bullshit, man, which I caught. I was really in good shape then, man. I was captain of the football team. And I wanted to be a war hero, man, I wanted to go out and kill for my country. And now, I’m here to tell you that I have killed for my country or whatever. And I don’t feel good about it. Because there’s not enough reason, man, to feel a person die in your hands or to see your best buddy get blown away. I’m here to tell you, it’s a lousy thing, man. I don’t see any reason for it. And there’s a lot of shit that I did over there that I [forced with tears] find fucking hard to live with. And I don’t want to see people like you, man, coming back and having to face the rest of your lives with that kind of shit. It’s as simple as that. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m a lot fucking smarter now than when I went. And I’m just telling you that there’s a choice to be made here.

Novel by Nancy Dowd
Screenplay by Robert C. Jones
Directed by Hal Ashby

Jane Fonda … Sally Hyde
Jon Voight … Luke Martin
Bruce Dern … Capt. Bob Hyde
Penelope Milford … Vi Munson
Robert Carradine … Bill Munson
Robert Ginty … Sgt. Dink Mobley

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Book Review: The Truman Prophecy (2015), Excerpt #11

From Part I: Dorothy: Battle Creek Headquarters, New Libertarian Overworld

Sojourner[Excerpt from The Truman Prophecy, due for publication 12/25/15.]

Alfonse’s days of actually running to escape police capture were behind him—as a young leading man of the new cloth, Brother Al was ‘Mr. Medical Marijuana’ before Medical Marijuana was cool… or legal.

His tech setup back then was like something out of a science fiction movie: the distribution-center he set up in his church and residence on Emmett Street doubling as a halfway house, and all product in proximity to carriers or workers was protected from detection via ‘transform tech.’

Transform technology (transform tech) was one of a series of high-tech antiaggression (AA) tools[1] made available to ordinary fellows like Alfonse Cody Jefferson by a mysterious benefactor in the early part of the new century. Basically, for finely programmable circumstances of unwanted intrusion or coercion by authorities or other aggressors, your illegal substance and all nearby traces would turn into a material analog… instantly. Continue reading

Movie Review(s): Bridges… at Ramagen (1969) and One Too Far (1970)

Classic War Movies about Bridges (7/10)
… or anti-war movies: bracketing the antiwar movement

Bridge at Remagen (1969)

Bridge at RemagenWritten by Roger O. Hirson
Screenplay by Richard Yates
Directed by John Guillermin

George Segal … Lt. Phil Hartman
Robert Vaughn … Maj. Paul Krüger
Ben Gazzara … Sgt. Angelo
Bradford Dillman … Maj. Barnes
E.G. Marshall … Brig. Gen. Shinner
Peter van Eyck … Generaloberst von Brock
Joachim Hansen … Capt. Otto Baumann
Sonja Ziemann … Greta Holzgang
Anna Gaël … French Girl (as Anna Gael)
Vít Olmer … Lt. Zimring (as Vit Olmer)
Bo Hopkins … Cpl. Grebs

Gen. Von Sturmer: General von Brock, you must prepare to destroy the Remagen bridge at the earliest possible moment.
Gen. von Brock: Destroy? We have 75,000 men who would be trapped on the other side of the Rhine.
Gen. Von Sturmer: And if the bridge falls to the enemy, are you prepared for the consequences?
Gen. von Brock: These men are all that’s left of the 15th Army. Their only hope of salvation is that bridge!
Gen. Von Sturmer: The 15th Army will stand or die. Hitler has ordered that not one foot of our sacred soil will be yielded to the enemy.
Gen. von Brock: Herr Feldmarschall, if orders won wars, we wouldn’t now be fighting with our backs against the Rhine, we’d be dancing at the London Savoy!


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Movie Review: 1971 (2014)

PBS Documentary will have you on the edge of your national security state

1971The story of a notorious 1971 activist burglary of an FBI office that lead to exposing the Bureau’s numerous abuses against dissidents.

“In 1971, long before Edward Snowden’s revelations of NSA surveillance, a group of [young antiwar activist] citizens broke into a small FBI office in Pennsylvania, took every file, and shared them with the public. Their actions exposed the FBI’s illegal surveillance program of law-abiding Americans. Now for the first time, these anonymous Americans who risked everything share their story publicly.”

This movie is a white-knuckle ride through late 1960s and early 1970s America, when brutal national-security-state fascism was no longer a dream of the power elite… it was a stark reality. Thanks to the War in Vietnam and the militaristic regime of Richard Milhouse Nixon, millions of young Americans had to face the grim reality that, as John Lennon put it, the world was indeed “being run by insane men for insane purposes.” Continue reading