Archive for the ‘entertainment’ Category

Five Movie/TV Thoughts: Blazing Saddles, Bond, Big Bang & Brian (Plus Tom Brady) Under the Fedora

Posted: October 25, 2019 by datechguy in entertainment, nfl, Sports

When you work a repetitive job that doesn’t require a lot of mind, you have time to pray your rosary and occasionally have ideas for post pop into your head, you also get weird and silly things running through your head like this:

This scene from Blazing Saddles was in my mind lately:

It’s not a well known but a “do da day” is 21.779 hours long that’s why it’s much easier to do things “all the do da day”. I think it would be a lot of fun to put a bunch of college snowflakes in an auditorium and watch them go doing their best to hold back laughing while pretending to be “triggered”. Of course a few true believers would in fact be outraged.

Such people should be laughed at.

In the Big Bang Theory, Howard is supposedly a lapsed jew and Bernadette is supposedly a good Catholic Girl, does that mean their children were baptized? Was their wedding blessed or “Jewish” & “Catholic” just a word to be thrown out for a joke?

For some reason this scene from the Classic Bond Movie “The Man With the Golden Gun” came into my mind this week

That’s Clifton Webb as Louisianan Sheriff JW Pepper who Bond (Roger Moore) met in the previous movie “Live and Let Die” He might be there for comic relief but if you think about it this guy is actually pretty brave.

He suddenly finds himself, while on vacation, in a high speed car chase with a man he knows is a secret agent (what he’s doing shopping for cars half a world away is another question) and how does he react?

Does he insist on being let out, does he call for help. Nope, he goes all in. It’s true that he doesn’t know that the man he is now helping to chase can kill him with one shot and I suspect he wouldn’t have cared if he did. As far as he’s concerned the cold war is on, Bond is on our side and he’s ready to lay it all out there.

For some reason Siskel & Ebert has been coming up in my Youtube suggestions and I dug up an old review of theirs of Monty Python and the Life of Brian:

I watched them for a lot of years and preferred the old “Sneak Previews” vs the syndicated “At the Movies” and this is the only time I remember both of them laughing out loud at a scene in a movie.

Finally I know this doesn’t go here but if you, unlike me, subscribe to the idea that Tom Brady is leaving NE look for a team that has two things

  1. a great receiving corps
  2. An impenetrable offensive line

Brady has all the money he will ever need and if anyone thinks he is leaving New England for any time that doesn’t provide a group of people who can catch the ball along with a group of people who are going to keep him from getting killed, you’re out of your mind.

Me I think he stays in NE after winning the Superbowl this year to try to get a ring for every single finger. I suspect eight will be enough.

Review: Season 5 of Peaky Blinders

Posted: October 13, 2019 by John Ruberry in Always look at the bright side of Trump, culture, entertainment, media
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By John Ruberry

Earlier this month Season 5 of Peaky Blinders arrived on Netflix. If you haven’t heard of the BBC show, it centers on a Gypsy organized crime gang from Birmingham, England.

The Peaky Blinders are named for the razor blades the actual hoodlums,-they were an 1890s gang–wore in their flat caps.

The television Peaky Blinders, who usually refer to themselves as the Shelby Company, Ltd., are led by Thomas “Tommy” Shelby (Cillian Murphy), a World War I veteran. The first season takes place in 1919, Season 5 begins in the auspicious year of 1929.

Tommy, at the end of Season 4, is elected to Parliament as a member of the Labour Party.

A new season of course brings a new primary villain, this time it’s Sir Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin), a minor member of the British nobility who also sits in the House of Commons. If you are American, it’s likely that you’ve never heard of Mosley, but he’s one of the most notorious figures of 20th century Great Britain. He didn’t go as far as Benedict Arnold did during the American Revolution, but had the Nazis defeated Britain in World War II, it’s probable that Mosley would have been prime minister—with Edward VIII restored to the throne. A 2005 poll of British historians determined that Mosley was the Worst Briton of the 20th century. Jack the Ripper took the title for the 19th. Mosley not surprisingly was a virulent anti-Semite.

Sir Oswald pursues Tommy as an ally while Winston Churchill (Neil Maskew) does the same. Maskew is the third actor to portray Churchill in this series. What’s up with that?

The Black Tuesday Wall Street Crash puts pressure on the rest of the Blinders, particularly Michael Gray (Finn Cole), who in the first episode of the season awakens from a stupor in Detroit to learn that the Shelby Company money he invested in America has evaporated. He wants a bigger say in the family business, as does his American wife (Anya Taylor-Joy). The family matriarch, Polly Gray (Helen McCrory), Michael’s mother, continues to struggle to keep the family from tearing itself apart, and their battles now directly effect her lover, Aberama Gold (Aidan Gillen). Tommy’s older brother, Arthur, continues to battle his “animal inside me.” While Tommy and Mosley, politically speaking, court each other, the Peaky Blinders face a new foe, the Billy Boys, a Scottish Protestant gang, who joyously sing their fight song, which is based on the melody of “Marching Through Georgia.” The Billy Boys hate Gypsies and Catholics–the Shelbys are both.

Peaky Blinders has always played loose with history. Lighten up, though, it’s fiction!

On the other hand…

As 1929 winds down, Mosely announces the formation of a new political party, the British Union of Fascists. But after leaving Labour, the real Mosley first formed another new party, called, well, the New Party. After that came his fascist party. I bring this up because in his introductory speech as leader of the BUF, Mosley, complaining about Indian competition forcing the closing of British textile mills, sounds a bit like Donald Trump, with a dash of UK Independence Party founder Nigel Farage thrown in. I’m not a fan of historical parallels with the present, particularly when it comes to individuals. And I get it, many people believe in “Orange Man Bad.” But sheesh, can TV scriptwriters give us a break from that for once?

I see Season 5, quality wise, as a step back for Peaky Blinders, but better than the Russian sinkhole two seasons back. But a Season 6 apparently is in the works, and maybe even a seventh. And perhaps we will see a couple of other men portray Churchill. The 1930s offers many plotlines as the world marches again to war. Still, even a below-par Peaky Blinders is worth your time.

Peaky Blinders is rated MA. It contains graphic violence, drug use, and overt sexual activity.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

9% vs 72% or why I don’t fear the MSM

Posted: October 13, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, entertainment
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Over at Nerdrotic they have a video about the reviews of the new extremely woke Batwoman.

Now the 9% fan reviews which during the video shoot actually dropped to 8% is very telling when compared to the critics who loved it.

Now of course the professional critics live in a bubble world where if you do not use the right pronouns they are out because it’s not hard to find someone to type something for money so the line that has to be followed will be, but real people in the real world don’t have that problem so the end result with be a show with bad ratings and either very targeted ad revenue or a dumping ground for compensation spots.

I suspect that despite this it will get a second season because like Doctor Who which has taken a year off, it will be considered “too woke to fail” or to be allowed to be seen as failing.

And that brings us to the whole “impeachment” business.

It’s already been noted that we are seeing skewed polling with samples designed to produce the “evidence” to justify the desired meme but unfortunately for the media they have not quite caught on to the fact that their access to the general public is no longer exclusive and that no amount of astroturf in town halls are going to convince real people to doubt the evidence of their own eyes, a fact that some of them have figured out:

The problem is, that room is not representative of the majority of America. Yes, attitudes towards LGBTQ people have improved remarkably in recent years. But just as in 2016, the general election could very well come down to a handful of moderate districts in swing states, places where nonbinary driver’s licenses and teaching gender identity in schools (both of which candidates endorsed last night) are going to resonate a hell of a lot less than Donald Trump screaming about his record on jobs.


It’s a real problem: To garner media attention and win the primary, the candidates need to be beyond progressive on all the issues. But to win the general, they’re going to need to be a little more moderate—or at least talk less about identity and more about the issues that affect everyone in America: things like jobs, healthcare, taxes, infrastructure, and retirement.

emphasis mine

And consider that wasn’t written by someone like me, it was written by someone who actually believes in all this crap but understands that it can’t be sold to people who live outside of their bubble, not that people outside of the bubble are actually watching CNN, but she understands that these town halls are ready made Trump ads made to order.

We’re seeing the same thing with impeachment, you don’t have to skew pols when the numbers actually are going your way and no matter how many time the MSM and even now Drudge claims that impeachment “furor grows” the reality, even in a place like the woke Massachusetts I live it, nobody is talking about it outside of the media, the various activists and the like

That’s why I’m not greatly worried about what is coming, because I understand that the future belongs to those who show up and that while I’m not big on Dawinism as a whole I AM big on the idea of natural selection and Mark Steyn’s maxim that the future belongs to those who show up. Yeah woke la la lands like Massachusetts are going to get a lot worse before they get better but as a state we are marginalizing ourselves to the point where in the scheme of things we increasingly don’t matter. This is due to one basic thing about reality

Reality doesn’t care how woke you are, reality is and despite all attempts to warp it, reality in the end, whether we are talking about always asserts itself.

Buttigieg on Scripture, The Chappelle add on, Rabbits Farmers Chanel Captain’s Courageous, Chick-Fil-A wins again, Maybe they’re all lunch? Under the Fedora

Posted: September 10, 2019 by datechguy in comedy, culture, dave chappelle, elections, entertainment, News/opinion, primaries, Uncategorized, under the fedora
Tags: ,

I have to disagree with this argument at PJ media on Pete Buttigieg on scripture. I think he understands scripture just as I think Andrew Sullivan understands scripture and Fr. James Martin does and the idea is the same.

He wants to remake scripture in general and God in particular in his own image in order to redefine sin because as I can tell you from personal experience it’s a hell of a lot easier to redefine sin to meet your behavior that to change your behavior to avoid sin.

One interesting thing about the Dave Chappelle special on Netflix is that there is a 2nd special that emphasis his close relationship with liberal icons.

Don’t think for one moment that it wasn’t included as insurance against cancel culture.

Didn’t work though.

I confess took too much pleasure from this story of a bunch of vegans getting beaten up by rabbit farmers when they tried to storm their locations and set their livestock free.

All I could think of was the famous scene from the Spencer Tracy move Captain’s Courageous that I’ve written about before when the wealthy brat whose been recused from the passenger liner that he fell overboard from keep disrupting the fishing schooner he’s on.

 Troop finally concludes: “I guess there’s nothing left for it.” He rears back and gives Harvey a slap that knocks him flat. Harvey for perhaps for the first time in his life doesn’t know what to say:
You HIT me!
“Now you just sit there and think about it.”
It is here, with the establishment of discipline, that the movie begins to shift.

I suggest those vegans just sit there and think about it.

When will the left learn that no matter how loud they are they aren’t going to change the fact that the number of people who like the taste of Chick-fil-a vastly outnumber the woke who show up for die ins?

Each one of these protests get a lot of media but it keeps getting bigger and bigger. But there’s STILL not one in Fitchburg!

Finally speaking of food something just struck me about this story concerning an academic who suggests we can save the planet by eating each other (in a non-sexual way of course).

For several years we have been teasing the least about all the people who have supposedly died from Donald Trump’s tax cuts, his dropping out of the Paris accords, his court appointments etc etc etc and have sarcastically asked, if all these people have been killed by Trump where are the bodies?

Now we know.

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