Movie Review: Highlander (1986)

“I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal.” – Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert)

Director: Russell Mulcahy

Writer: Gregory Widen , Peter Bellwood and Larry Ferguson

Producers: E.C. Monell, William N. Panzer and Peter S. Davis

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Major Stars: Sean Connery, Christopher Lambert, Clancy Brown, Roxanne Hart, Jon Polito

Highlander always struck me as a film that just needs to be remastered to become a very good movie. Better special-effects, clean up the film stock, and get rid of the wrestling intro (the latest version cleaned the film stock nicely). There has to be a better way to get MacLeod and Fasil into that parking garage.

Despite the horrendous sequels that followed it (and a moderately-decent television series), Highlander remains a fun little film about Immortals, the price they pay for eternal life and why they all want to kill each other. We aren’t talking classic here, but it’s not crap either.

You all know the story, yes? So I don’t have to re-hash the anguished tale of Connor MacLeod? Good. Suffice it to say, Christopher Lambert’s almost-lazy, sometimes undecipherable speech works very well in this role. If you were a 400-year old Immortal, wouldn’t life bore you to tears as well?

Clancy Brown is fantastic as Kurgan, one of the best movie villains ever. Completely evil and insane, he steals every scene he is in. I love Brown as an actor. If you want to see him absolutely kick-ass on-screen, check out HBO’s Carnivale on DVD, where he played Justin Crowe. Or, for a more kid-friendly product, he’s also the voice of Mr. Krabs on Spongebob Squarepants. A multi-talented man is Clancy Brown.

Then there is Sean Connery as Ramirez, the Spanish-named Egyptian with a Scottish accent via Japan who’s over 2000 years old. It’s definitely a one-of-a-kind role. Connery hams it up a bit but it works because he has so much fun with the character. And Ramirez is an interesting guy, willingly training a fellow Immortal whom he may have to fight someday in the future.

The sword-fights are fun to watch (if basic), as are the vignettes of Connor’s life. My favorite is the duel where he is repeatedly run through with a sword without effect. And there is the undercurrent of the pain he suffers as an Immortal, watching his wife grow old and die, with no children to their name. And how that has made him a bitter and distant man.

Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

"You probably heard we ain't in the prisoner-takin' business; we in the killin' Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin'." – Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Writers: Quentin Tarantino

Producer: Lawrence Bender

Studio: The Weinstein Company (USA)

Major Stars: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger

In the genre of exploitation films, there are numerous sub-genres. The blaxploitation film, rape-revenge, splatter, sleaze...the different types seem almost endless. But one that hasn't been explored yet is the World War II exploitation film*.

That has changed. In Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds we have been given our first exploitation film covering WW2. And it kicks ass.

The multi-pronged story should be familiar to most of you by now. A unit of Jewish-American soldiers, led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), are air-dropped into Occupied France to terrorize the Germans. They take scalps and bash in heads, the bashing courtesy of "The Bear Jew", Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) and his bat. They even have a German soldier who murdered Gestapo officers (Hugo Stiglitz, played by Til Schweiger) in their band. At the same time, a cinema owner in Paris who happens to be a Jew using a false identity is forced to host a German film premiere attended by the Nazi hierarchy, which is targeted by an Allied OSS operation. And tying all these different stories together is SS Colonel Hans Landa, "The Jew Hunter", played by Christoph Waltz.

The title may say "Inglourious Basterds", but the story is Landa's. He ties it all together. Nothing in the story would happen (except for one scene) without his involvement. And Waltz plays him to perfection. He is smooth, polite, intelligent and deadly. The opening scene where a Jewish family hiding under the floorboards in a French farmhouse are discovered and killed by Landa's unit is some of the best film-making you will ever see. Landa is exceedingly polite to the French farmer, but you know from the first how dangerous Landa is. From beginning to end, no other character grabs your attention like Landa. Waltz won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for the role, and he deserved it. In a perfect world Waltz would have won the Best Actor award. That is how good Waltz is in Inglourious Basterds.

The sole survivor of the Jewish family massacred in the opening scene is Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), who becomes the aforementioned cinema owner. She is the second most important character to this film. Dreyfus puts the climactic scene into action, an act of Jewish revenge upon the Nazi elite that is stunning and beautifully shot. But it begins to make you wonder why Tarantino named this film Inglourious Basterds when they are, in many ways, tangential at best to the unfolding story.

This isn't to degrade their performances. Pitt chews a bit of scenery as Raine but is a very enjoyable character, one that reminded me more than a little of Lee Marvin's Major Reisman in The Dirty Dozen. Roth is obviously enjoying his role as Donowitz, even as he mangles a Boston accent**. And Schweiger's Stiglitz is memorable in the short time we get to know him. But by and large, the Basterds are mostly ciphers who appear only a few times before the film's conclusion.

Poor Have Plenty of "Skin In the Game"

He's the real victim, here.

In the 2012 Presidential election, one of the common lines of attack from the Republicans and Mitt Romney was that 47% of Americans were, in essence, moochers. That they took from the government and gave nothing back. The solution? Make them pay more in taxes so that they, too (according to Romney and Pals), had "skin in the game".

So while the petulant whining and butthurt from all these millionaires and billionaires amounted to another defeat, the idea that the poor have it easy and need to pay more in taxes persists. Which makes the news that the poor actually do pay plenty in taxes all the more interesting.

When it comes to the taxes closest to home, the less you earn, the harder you’re hit.

That is the conclusion of an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that evaluates the local tax burden in every state, from Washington, labeled the most regressive, to Delaware, ranked as the fairest of them all.

According to the study, in 2015 the poorest fifth of Americans will pay on average 10.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes, the middle fifth will pay 9.4 percent and the top 1 percent will average 5.4 percent.

Now, of course, these are not federal taxes so you'll have plenty of Republicans say this doesn't matter. But remember, the complaint was that the poor paid nothing into the system, they were "moochers". When, in fact, they pay plenty into the system.

The reason is simple. Sales taxes, excise taxes, even property taxes, are regressive taxes that take up a larger percentage of low-income wages than the incomes of the one percent. Paying a 6% sales tax on milk, or a television, hits someone making $30,000 a lot more than someone making $300,000. And when a state relies on that kind of income, the result is an unequal system where people who need money the most are the ones without it.

The result is a self-perpetuating system where low-income families are always behind and trying to catch up while the wealthiest pay relatively little. Which, to a rational person, is insane since you cannot build a healthy economy by catering to the economic concerns of a tiny minority of people.

The Face of GamerGate

These are the brave warriors fighting a battle for ethics in journalism by...viciously slandering and attacking women.

“I have been terrified of inviting a deluge of abusive and condescending tweets into my timeline. I did one simple @ reply to one of the main victims several weeks back, and got a flood of things I simply couldn’t stand to read directed at me. I had to log offline for a few days until it went away. I have tried to re-tweet a few of the articles I’ve seen dissecting the issue in support, but personally I am terrified to be doxxed (having personal information such as an address, email or real name released online) for even typing the words ‘Gamer Gate.’”

As has been noted, the targets of this vile insanity are almost exclusively women. Men talking against GamerGate and it's mouth-breather adherents don't get nearly the same kind of response. I'll let you discern why that may be.

But to make this all really simple...

Fuck GamerGate, GG, #GamerGate or whatever the Hell they want to call it. Fuck every little WATB who thinks that slagging and attacking women is somehow acceptable.

Sorry women scare you so much, brohams. But it's the 21st Century. Get the fuck over yourself.

Even the Power of Jesus Won't Get You 10 Points With This Guy

I am not a fan of Tim Tebow. Not at all. For a variety of reasons. Chief among them is that he inspires an insane level of slavish devotion coverage from the media for reasons I cannot quite comprehend. It can't be because he is a good quarterback because, brother, he flat out sucks at slinging the ball.

Nevertheless, the Legend of the Mediocre Messiah persists. To the point that, even though Tebow hasn't played a competitive game in almost two years, people are still putting him on their fantasy football teams.

According to NFL on ESPN, Tim Tebow was owned by 1.3 percent of teams in ESPN’s fantasy leagues as of Tuesday, despite the fact he hasn’t played an NFL game since Dec. 30, 2012.

Surprisingly, he actually beat out an NFL Week 1 starter: Jaguars quarterback Chad Henne, who appears on just 0.8 percent of teams in ESPN leagues.

That. Is. Insane. Granted, Henne isn't a great QB either. But the guy is starting a game while Tebow is working for the SEC Network. You may as well put Steve Young or Y.A. Tittle on your squad while you're at it.

Seriously, people. Tebow sucks at QB. Just let it go.