[Peace-discuss] Fascists favor filmed fascism

[John W.]

While you've been scouring the internet for coruscating reviews of Hellboy
II, Carl, I've been watching American Experience on PBS.  The subject?  Las
Vegas, the fastest growing you-name-it in America.   The quintessentially
American city, with all that that says about those who go there for "escape"
from reality.  Perhaps you can find an article comparing Las Vegas, with its
fake pyramid, Eiffel Tower, volcano, etc., to - oh, I don't know - ancient
Athens?  That would be interesting.

J.W.

P.S.: Isn't the Wall Street Journal owned by Rupert Murdoch now?  He too is
quintessentially American...and he isn't even an American!  Hahahaha!


On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 11:53 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

[It's better to read the news in the Wall Street Journal than in the New
> York Times, if you have to choose -- the latter tells the college-educated
> how they should think about the world (and they believe it!), while the
> former tells business types what they need to know -- but the WSJ's cultural
> criticism is better yet. Here it assesses what seems to be a good new flick.
> --CGE]
>
>        'Hellboy II: The Golden Army'
>
> If you didn't know that there's a Troll Market underneath the east tower of
> the Brooklyn Bridge, you need to brush up on your monstrosities with the
> help of Guillermo del Toro's hugely inventive -- and smashingly beautiful --
> "Hellboy II: The Golden Army."
>
> Like the first Hellboy feature four years ago, this film was based on Mike
> Mignola's Dark Horse comic, and stars Ron Perlman as the red-faced,
> cigar-puffing, kitten-and-candy-loving, working-class do-gooder who was born
> a demon but wants to fit in as a human. In that previous episode, Hellboy
> battled a mad monk, plus hordes of tentacled, egg-laying creatures that had
> infested our society. Now he's our bulwark against an indestructible robot
> army that waits to be released from the bowels of the earth. While it waits
> (for quite a long time, actually), Mr. del Toro and his lavishly gifted
> colleagues -- among them the cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, the
> production designer Stephen Scott and the creatures-and-effects specialist
> Mike Elizalde -- trot out the most spectacular assortment of life forms
> since "Star Wars" opened its cantina.
>
> Indeed, "Hellboy II" is best savored as a bestiary, one that includes an
> eyeless Angel of Death, a legless Bethmoora Goblin (who's a long way from
> Glocca Mora) and some extremely unpleasant Tooth Fairies -- their most
> prominent feature being their teeth -- who feed, diabolically, on calcium.
> The pace isn't always brisk; this film seems more dependent than its
> predecessor on set pieces. But the pieces are impressive, and Hellboy is
> accompanied once again by Doug Jones's aquatic empath, Abe, and Selma
> Blair's melancholy, pyrokinetic Liz. She keeps trying, with mixed results,
> not to set herself on fire.
>
> ...
>
> Guillermo del Toro is best known for "Pan's Labyrinth," the dark and
> remarkable fantasy, set in Spain during the civil war, that won three Oscars
> last year. At least as remarkable, and perhaps superior as an allegory of
> that war, is his 2001 horror film "The Devil's Backbone." The time is the
> late 1930s, and the setting is a Spanish orphanage, a place of shelter and
> learning that's haunted by more than standard spooks. The orphanage, and its
> school, are emblematic of civilized Spain, menaced from within by fascist
> violence.
>
>        ###
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