Month: November 2020

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Top 100 Movies (well, 95 at least)

 Supporting a discussion elsewhere on social media, here are my top 100 films of all time, highly subjective of course, arranged alphabetically.  Cut it at 95 to leave some room for films I’ve probably forgotten about or which are on a near-term watchlist that have a chance to make it. Admittedly there’s a fair amount of junk and pop culture on here as I’m a product of my time, and I wouldn’t change the channel on any one of these. Sorry, no Citizen Kane. Documentaries would be a separate list.

      • After Hours
      • Alien
      • All the Presidents Men
      • Animal House
      • Annie Hall
      • Amarcord
      • Amadeus
      • Apocalypse Now
      • Armageddon
      • Badlands
      • Bacurau
      • Belle de Jour
      • The Bicycle Thief
      • Blow Up
      • Body Heat
      • Breakfast at Tiffany’s
      • Breathless
      • Boondock Saints
      • Brokeback Mountain
      • Casablanca
      • Claire’s Knee
      • Cleo from 5 to 7
      • Close-up
      • Coco
      • La Collectionneuse
      • Contempt
      • The Dark Knight
      • Day for Night
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Dead Poets Society
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Deliverance
      • The Departed
      • Do the Right Thing
      • Die Hard
      • Dr. Strangelove
      • Dog Day Afternoon
      • Easy Rider
      • Fargo
      • Field of Dreams
      • Forrest Gump
      • Gladiator
      • The Godfather (Part 1)
      • The Godfather (Part 2)
      • Goodfellas
      • The Graduate
      • The Great Escape
      • Hiroshima Mon Amour
      • House of Games
      • In the Heat of the Night
      • Lion King
      • Local Hero
      • Jaws
      • Jules and Jim
      • Jurassic Park
      • Kill Bill 1 & 2
      • Last Year at Marienbad
      • A Man for All Seasons
      • A Married Woman
      • The Matrix
      • Mean Streets
      • Memento
      • Moneyball
      • Mulholland Drive
      • No Country for Old Men
      • Ocean’s 11
      • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
      • Pirates of the Caribbean
      • Platoon
      • Pretty Woman
      • The Professional
      • Psycho
      • Pulp Fiction
      • Raging Bull
      • Raiders of the Lost Ark
      • Ran
      • Renoir
      • The Right Stuff
      • Rio Bravo
      • Rome: Open City
      • Scarface (1983)
      • Se7en
      • Shakespeare in Love
      • Silence of the Lambs
      • Swept Away
      • Taxi Driver
      • The Taking of Pelham 123 (original)
      • Toy Story
      • True Romance
      • Variety
      • Viridiana
      • Vivre sa vie
      • Without Limits
      • Working Girl
      • Z
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Whiteness vs. the common good

Outstanding new essay by Gregory Rodriguez on where the partisan divide in American is and has always been–race, of course, but with the added dimension of assimilated “whiteness”–with a nuanced discussion of how Puritanical religious themes, and not the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are used to reinforce white supremacy, deny not only race but ethnicity, and detour the abstract political idea of American patriotism into the fracture of self-interest we are experiencing today, manifested in the response to the pandemic. This is a serious and very worthwhile read.

“Once the glue to an imperfect type of social cohesion, whiteness now threatens to undermine the social contract altogether. The reluctance that we have witnessed over the past months of both millions of individuals to wear masks and for state and local governments to mandate it were just the most glaring examples of a trend that’s been building for decades. The massive loss of human life will do nothing to change this. The meaning of America, the role of race in it, and a peculiar brand of nation building have allowed the emptiness of whiteness to even pass as nationalism. And once again, as whites continue to shed any semblance of communal tradition, they grab onto patriotic symbols and ideology in an attempt to anchor themselves. But neither symbolism nor the constant attempt to reignite white cohesion by demonizing nonwhites both at home and abroad will make unhyphenated whites feel more secure in the world. The usual talismans will do nothing to keep them from falling through the latticework that is America. Meanwhile, they’re pushing the entire nation ever closer to the void.”

Whiteness: An American Tragedy
Part I: The Glue and the Fuel Almost every country in the developed world put its economy on ice for a few months this year. But none has seen its unemployment rate rise as high as Ameri…

 

Rodriguez’ famous essay from 2003, Mongrel America, is still timely and also worth a re-read.

Mongrel America
The most important long-term social fact in America may be the rising rates of intermarriage among members of ethnic and racial groups. A glimpse into our mestizo future
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Before there is a final solution

Starting to make my peace with Toni Morrison after that unfortunate encounter in the ’70s, now best forgotten after her passing (about which, regrettably, I may have said some not nice things).

Picked up a release of her essays which included a portion of her speech on Racism and Fascism, delivered at Howard University in 1995. It’s the passage that famously starts…

“Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.”

…and builds to this magnificent peroration:

“It changes citizens into taxpayers…it changes neighbors into consumers…it changes parenting into panicking…we find ourselves living not in a nation but in a consortium of industries, and wholly unintelligible to ourselves except for what we see through a screen darkly.”

Okay, I’m with her. Here’s the original video of the speech; she altered it slightly for publication (book below). After I’m done with that, may even have to pick up my copy of Song of Solomon again, which has been frozen in time since 1977 with a bookmark on page 109.

[from C-SPAN]

User Clip: Toni Morrison - Racism and Fascism
Toni Morrison - Racism and Fascism

 

The book is currently widely available in paperback:

The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison: 9780525562795 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
Here is Toni Morrison in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades. These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel...
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Our votes are not enough

Important essay. Our problems are huge and cannot be fixed with one vote.

“Viewing the solution to these problems as simply electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both underestimates the depth of the problems and trivializes the remedies necessary to undo the damage.”

[from The New Yorker]

Voting Trump Out Is Not Enough
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes on Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump, Philadelphia activism, and tensions within the Democratic Party over how to address structural racism, economic inequality, and suffering caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Progress beyond politics

Very thoughtful piece by climate change activist Bill McKibben on how we can make progress the next few years.
First, take care of everyone during the shift: “Any plan needs to focus on making sure that workers currently building oil pipelines have something else to build instead.”

And second, realize that movements are stronger than politics, and with that strength politicians can be moved:
“The Sunrise Movement, in the wake of a tough primary loss for their guy Bernie Sanders, didn’t walk away. They partnered effectively with the Biden campaign, helping reach a shared policy platform and then delivering millions of phone-banking calls. They are, in other words, a power — probably the most important electoral force in the environmental movement at this point.”

[from YaleEnvironment360]

Learning How to Talk: What Climate Activists Must Do in the Biden Era
A broad coalition brought Joe Biden to victory. If activists want real progress on climate in a Biden administration, environmentalist Bill McKibben writes, they need to learn how to press their case aggressively without alienating those they must work with to get things done.
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White supremacy, expanded and rebranded

“He also gave our unique brand of ugliness — rooted in racism, exceptionalism, recklessness, arrogance and a tendency to bully our way to power — a name. Trumpism is now rooted in the lexicon, and although white supremacy may be the better, more clinical term for what ails America, Trumpism is a useful, colloquial alternative. It encompasses an even wider category of people that includes not just avowed racists who have publicly supported the president but also those who downplay the problem, or align with it for personal gain, or are simply unwilling to acknowledge its history and persistence.”

Perspective | Trumpism is a lifestyle disease, chronic in America
Driving through the Virginia countryside and reflecting upon the ugly truths Trump made us face.