The Judge [2014]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (2 1/2 Star)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review  


The Judge [2014] (directed and story co-conceived by David Dobkin along with Nick Schenk screenplay by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque) is a Grisham-like iconic story, IMHO worthy of some serious consideration come Oscar Time, about the complex relationship between Father and Sons.

The film begins focused on Hank Palmer (played by Robert Downey, Jr) a hotshot/arrogant Chicago lawyer who's made his career helping millionaire white-collar criminals beat the rap.  "But does it bother you that you only defend the guilty?" asks a hapless State's Attorney rival.  "I defend the guilty because only the guilty can afford me," is his smart/casual reply.

Of course, the rest of Attorney Hank's life is a mess.  His wife (played by Leighton Meester) apparently got tired of him and began an affair with someone else, something that Hank's clearly been unable to get-his-head-around / forgive. Then, Hank gets a message from his hometown somewhere in southern Indiana that his mother died.  He hasn't been home in 20 years.  But it's mom who died, so ... he decides to fly home, briefly, for the funeral, no need to bring estranged/angry soon-to-be ex-wife AND 10 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER Lauren (played wonderfully throughout the film by Emma Tremblay) along...

The "homecoming" is about as one would expect for an a-hole who hasn't been home for years.  Only sweet, blessedly largely-in-his-own-world, developmentally-challenged younger brother Dale (played again wonderfully by Jeremy Strong) greets him nicely.  Older brother Glen (played by Vincent D'Onofio) notes the obvious "Gee, so you did come.  Where have you been for the last 20 years?"  Bereaved Dad (played again wonderfully by Robert Duvall) a stern but fair local judge basically ignores Hank when he arrives.  When Glen shows Hank to his old room, he finds that Dad's made it into a storage closet ... Apparently not too many "Christmas cards" had been exchanged between Hank and "the folks back home" over the years.

The question, of course, is why.  And, of course, that's the rest of the movie.

Now it turns out that bereaved and aging / no longer altogether healthy Dad comes to need his son when Dad, somewhat confused, gets involved in an accident that takes the life of a person that years before he had sentenced to prison for a notorious crime in the town when Hank was still growing-up.  But I would argue that this _device_ (of Dad and estranged son being forced to "work together") is actually "beside the point."

The real story in this film is the OBVIOUS preference of Dad for the older son Glen over the only-a-few-years-younger-son Hank (Everybody liked / felt sorry for the youngest son Dale).  MOST PARENTS WOULD FIND IT VERY HARD TO ADMIT THAT THEY PREFERRED ONE OF THEIR CHILDREN OVER ANOTHER.  IN THIS FILM, IT IS OBVIOUS that Dad preferred Glen.  And here he was a "stern and fair JUDGE" to boot.  Again, the question becomes WHY?

Fascinatingly, THERE'S AN ANSWER.  And it's an answer that IMHO does makes one think.  I myself am still uncomfortable with it.  After all, WE ALL want our parents to be impartial and love without distinction.  But the Dad's behavior here does come to make sense.  And, of course, that the Dad here is a JUDGE does play into providing an explanation as well (and on multiple levels).

I'm not going to say more here except that this film does offer some very interesting "food for thought" for "adult families" facing some real reconciliation issues. 

Yes, Robert Downey, Jr continues to play "Tony Stark" / "Iron Man" in this film.  Still I do think that he plays _more_ than "just Tony Stark" here.  And he plays his role quite well.  He's definitely NOT a hero in this film.  I also appreciate Leighton Meester's presence, however small, in this film.  Both she and Downey, Jr have some personal experience with difficult family situations and Downey, Jr certainly has experience in facing some tough personal demons.  Those experiences, IMHO, show in the film.

So good job folks, good job!


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Citizenfour [2014]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (3 1/2 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (4+ Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (G. Cheshire) review
AVClub (D. Ehrlich) review  

Citizenfour [2014] (directed by Laura Poitras [IMDb]) is almost the very definition a landmark documentary.  After all, for about half the film we watch former NSA contractor Edward Snowden actually being interviewed / debriefed by the American, Berlin-residing director Laura Poitras [IMDb] as well as the The Guardian's journalists, the American, Rio de Janeiro-residing Glenn Greenwald [IMDb] and British, UK-residing Ewen MacAskill [IMDb] over the span of a week to ten days in a Hong Kong hotel room.

(Indeed a part of the simultaneously fascinating and disturbing sub-text of the story is the environment in which we find ourselves living in: Here are two two of the most significant investigative reporters of our time, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, and _both_ have come to feel more comfortable doing their investigative work _abroad_ rather than "from home").

The film begins with the director reading via voice-over the initial e-mails she received, encrypted from an anonymous source, by the name of "citizenfour" promising an unprecedented story about the mind-bending extent of the U.S. NSA's post-9/11 electronic surveillance programs. Ms. Poitras had already been working on a documentary about American intelligence's post-9/11 surveillance of dissenters.  Her project was inspired in part because in the aftermath of the release of her Bush-era documentary, My Country, My Country [2006] about post-Iraq War Iraq, she was put on a "U.S. government watch list" that made travel so hard for her to and about the U.S. that she finally decided to pack-up and move to Berlin (Berlin?  Kinda ironic / iconic, huh...?)

Some of the footage from her unfinished documentary on the monitoring of dissent in the U.S. is presented in the first half hour of the film to provide context for Snowden's subsequent disclosures.

Among the background footage shown in the first hour is a clip of then N.S.A. director Gen. Jack R. Clapper caught telling a bald-faced lie at an earlier 2013 Congressional Hearing in which he was directly asked Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR: "Does the NSA collect any data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans."  Gen. Clapper responded: "No sir.  Not wittingly.  There are perhaps cases when they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly." (The same exchange appears near the beginning (4:37-4:56) of Part II of the PBS Frontline documentary The United States of Secrets [2014] [IMDb]).  Apparently, this public lie was the final straw for Snowden, who knew far better, resulting in the exchange of e-mails between Snowden and Poitras producing the 7-10 debriefing with Snowden in Hong Kong.

The documentary, which then documents this remarkable 7-10 days of history presents both Snowden being interviewed by Greenwald, MacAskill and Poitras and then the initial reactions of both the Obama Administration and the rest of the world's press to the rolling disclosures being published first by Greenwald in The Guardian and then Barton Gelman and Laura Poitras in the Washington Post (Washington Post correspondent Barton Gelman had also been contacted in the months previous by Snowden, but preferred to remain in the States rather than go out to interview him face as did the already overseas residing Greenwald and Poitras).

The key disclosures were that of the NSA's routine monitoring of "metadata" from ALL PHONE CALLS and electronic communications via VIRTUALLY ALL major American telecommunications companies like Verizon, ATT, Sprint, etc (as reported by Greenwald and MacAskill's articles [1] [2]) and the NSA's mining via the PRISM program of VIRTUALLY ALL information stored on / passing through VIRTUALLY ALL major internet services like Facebook, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc (as reported by Gelman and Poitras' WP article).

The shock of Snowden's disclosures centered ON THE EXTENT of the surveillance / monitoring.  Instead of "a few bad apples" being monitored, Snowden's disclosures made clear that VIRTUALLY EVERYONE'S ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION, if perhaps initially "anonymously" was being monitored by the NSA.

Note that the PBS Frontline documentary The United States of Secrets (Part II) [2014] [IMDb] noted that internet services like Google and Facebook ALREADY MINED ALL POSTINGS, EMAILS and SEARCHES for "Advertising Potential."  However, it noted that the NSA has become essentially ONE OF THEIR "CLIENTS." 

In the final analysis, the Snowden's disclosures have made it clear _to everyone_ what already most of us have suspected for a while: Our privacy is basically gone.

Talking about the film with a friend of mine afterwards, he put it this way: "We basically live today in an electronic East Germany.  We simply have to assume that EVERYTHING that we share electronically WITH ANYONE is being mined."  Perhaps "some of the motives" of "some of those doing the mining" are "benign" -- they just want an edge to sell us something -- but we can never be absolutely sure of who all is doing the mining and why.

As such, this has got to be one of the most remarkable "you are there" films ever made about one of the most important stories of our time.


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Nightcrawler [2014]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

Nightcrawler [2014] (written and directed by Dan Gilroy) is a very timely if very disturbing mash-up of Taxi Driver [1976] and Network [1976] that will almost certainly earn the film's lead-actor Jake Gyllenhaal an Oscar Nomination come award season.

In the film, Gyllenhaal plays a troubled if perhaps utterly sincere 20-something loner named Louis Bloom perhaps suffering of some degree of autism spectrum disorder.  Living / struggling / making-do _alone_ in the megapolis that is Los Angeles today, with apparently no connection with anyone (at least DeNiro's character in Taxi Driver [1976] was shown in that film writing a letter to his parents...), ALL that the (perhaps) pitiable and (certainly) troubled Louis wants to do is to SUCCEED IN SOMETHING with the necessarily limited "skill set" that he's been given.

So we are introduced to the Louis in the film IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, FOG SWIRLING ABOUT, FIRST _stealing_ some chain-linked fence from _some scrap-yard_ SOMEWHERE in the vastness of L.A., THEN _selling_ the stolen 50-100 lbs of chain linked fence to (presumably another) scrap-metal dealer, and FINALLY asking the scrap-metal dealer FOR A JOB, telling him, among other things, that he's MOTIVATED and A QUICK LEARNER.  Almost in disbelief, the scrap metal dealer tells him "Louis, I'll never hire you... (why? you may ask...) because I DON'T HIRE THIEVES."  Louis, who's probably been down this "Road of Rejection" before, shrugs-off this latest one without much emotion.  Instead, he just walks to his car, starts the engine, and ... heads off ... into the Damp, Foggy, DARKNESS ... basically to Nowhere.

En route ... (to nowhere...) ...  Fate seems to finally lend a "helping hand."  As he's driving along the largely empty concrete artery of one of L.A.'s vast freeways, he comes across an accident.  A car's crashed into an embankment.  Two police cars are stopped at either side.  A woman is crying out from inside the car.  The two police officers are feverishly trying to pull her out of the car as the engine under the hood is beginning to smoke and then catches fire.  IN THE MIDST OF THIS, A TELEVISION VAN COMES OUT OF NOWHERE, SCREECHING TO A STOP. Out jumps a bearded man with a video camera who films the two police officers _as they succeed_ in pulling the screaming woman out of the car just moments before it inevitably explodes.  Soon the bearded man, who turns out to be a freelance videographer named Joe Loder (played in the film by Bill Paxton), is talking to someone he has on speed-dial, negotiating a price for the video he just captured.

Jobless, directionless, but focused and sincere, Louis sees him do all this.  So he comes up to him and asks what he was doing (Joe answers that he and his partner/driver drive about Los Angeles every night, monitoring the police radio to fall upon scenes such as this which they then film and sell to the early television news shows in LA).  How much do they make?  (Enough to have a pretty sophisticated van outfitted with some pretty sophisticated gear along with some pretty sophisticated professional looking cameras).  Is he looking for perhaps to hire someone?  (No).  Sigh.  But how does one get into a business such as this?  (Well, get yourself a video camera and a police scanner).  And so ... the very next morning ... Louis does.  The rest of the movie ensues...

It turns out that Louis is "a natural" for this sort of "work."   Always more "focused on task at hand" than "empathetic" he walks into crime and accident scenes with a "clear vision" that comes to stun even the most veteran of bottom feeders like good-ole-pro Joe.  

THEN WITH FINALLY A MARKETABLE PRODUCT IN HAND he becomes "A NATURAL" IN THE "BUSINESS END" of this line of work AS WELL, as the somewhat desperate TV News producer Nina Romina (played by Rene Russo) soon comes to find out.  She's introduced to us as the producer of the lowest rated early television news program in the L.A. market, hence quite desperate to get those ratings up.  So when Louis comes to her with some of the (if nothing else...) _most viscerally gripping_ "news footage" imaginable -- again, he's able to walk over bodies, EVEN MOVE BODIES to "frame a better shot" without any moral qualms -- not only does she buy his stuff to help her show's ratings, but she soon becomes dependent on it.  FOR HIS PART, Louis soon realizes THAT FOR ONCE IN HIS LIFE HE HAS THE UPPER HAND.  And so he soon presses his advantage in ways that NO ONE in his/her right mind would ever do (or ever tolerate) ... But HE's COMING UP WITH THE STUFF that's KEEPING HER ... IN HER JOB ...

Soon Louis comes to look for "an assistant," to "ride shot-gun" with him to help him with "navigating" as he careens across Los Angeles at night, trying to be first at one or another accident or crime scene.  He settles on a similarly desperate homeless guy his age named Rick (played by Riz Ahmed) who he treats as badly as everybody else had previously treated him even though he seems to believe that he's actually serving as a "mentor figure" to Rick: "Remember Rick, nothing comes for free.  It's all up to you.  You have to prove _to me_ every day that you're worthy of working for me."  (To some extent, Louis is right, of course. But then, Louis is nuts ...).

So does one have to be(come) a (perhaps) part-autistic SOCIOPATH to "succeed" in the cut-throat world of today?  That's ultimately what the film asks.  Of course, the answer is hopefully no.  Still, for his part, Louis, honestly doesn't believe that he's doing anything wrong.  As his "business" "grows", he tells his increasing number of employees: "Remember, I'm not asking you to do ANYTHING that I MYSELF would not do."  And as throughout the whole of the film, he's UTTERLY, TERRIFYINGLY, SINCERE.

This is one disturbing film.


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Before I Go to Sleep [2014]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune/Variety (2 Stars)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune/Variety (G. Lodge) review
RE.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


Before I Go to Sleep [2014] (directed and screenplay by Rowan Joffe based on the novel by S.J. Watson [IMDb]) tries really hard to be a Hitchcockian "amnesia" film.  Does it succeed?   While that determination would have to be up to each viewer/reader, I can attest that the attempt is certainly sincere.

The film's central protagonist, Christine (played by Nicole Kidman), wakes-up each morning in terror and confusion having forgotten everything that had happened the day, and indeed over the last 15 years, before. 

The man who she wakes-up next to calmly introduces himself (he's done this before...) to her as Ben (played by Colin Firth), her husband.  He explains to her that (1) she had an accident some 10 years back, (2) as a result of her accident, she's lost her ability to retain new memories and (3) she wakes-up each morning with the last 15 years erased from her memory, believing that she's still in her mid-20s even if she's now 40. 

He has some pictures of him, her and the two of them together up for for her in their bathroom, so that she can at least remember who the two are but little else.  After giving her this daily morning debriefing, he kisses her goodbye, leaves her (presumably confident that she won't hurt herself) in their house and calmly goes off to work as a chemistry teacher in a nearby secondary school.  She's left, each day, staring at the windows, furniture, and pictures of her, Ben and them together, struggling (but try as she might, failing...) to remember anything else at all

Now it turns out that she really did have that accident/incident 15 years ago that really did destroy her ability to keep new longer term memories.  As a result, her case had been studied by various neuro-psychologists at the time and though apparently none had been able to help her in the past, one of these neuro-psychologists a Dr. Nasch (played by Mark Strong) decides to look her up and try to help her anew. 

Each morning, after her husband leaves for said chemistry job, Dr. Nasch calls Christine's home, reintroduces himself to her, and tells her go back to her wardrobe and find a shoebox at the bottom of it where he's had her place a digital camera that he had given to her some time previous (with an appropriately large "flashcard" memory) and where he has her record (for recall) "a video diary" so that she could come to remember at least some of the events of the previous day(s) and thus (re)acquire a new kind of long term memory. 

Each day, she's surprised to receive the phone call from Dr. Nasch, but each day she's surprised to find that she really has that digital camera with her recorded on it, giving herself instructions about what she's learned during the previous day(s), and above all, what she's learned about her past.

'Cause, obviously there's something wrong ... Each day, when Christine wakes up, the only person she encounters is Ben, who, while kindly/nice, leaves her with _nothing else to think about_ EXCEPT, him, her and their apparent relationship together.  Where did she come from?  Did she have friends?  Who were her parents?  What did she do / study / dream, prior to her accident?  When she does ask (occasionally) Ben these things after he comes from work, he does answer her questions.  But he does so with an attitude of, "You're not going to remember any of this tomorrow anyway.  So I'm sorry if I don't seem all that forthcoming until you come to me to ask me these things on occasion.  We've been down these little paths of inquiry of yours various times before."

He says all this quite calmly, quite soberly, quite somberly, and even quite convincingly.  So both she (and we, the viewers) would largely want to believe him.  After all, remember what HE'S gone through here as well.  YET ... isn't it odd that the only pictures in that house are of him, her and them together.  And even that the medical doctor is apparently calling her "on the sly..." to remind her of that digital camera he's given her to keep in the shoebox at the bottom of her wardrobe.

Obviously, much needs to ensue (and, yes readers/viewers, much does ensue ...) but to say more would get into various levels of spoiling the story for you.  So I'm going to leave it here.

Is it a great story?  I don't know.  But IMHO it's not a bad one.  And it does invite one to place oneself into the shoes of every one of the characters in the story.  What would you do if you found yourself in this situation (or had a loved one who found him/herself in this situation)?

As such, I found it to be a rather thought provoking (and perhaps subsequent discussion provoking film).


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Fair Play [2014]

MPAA (UR would be R)  ČervenýKoberec.cz (3 1/2 Stars)  iDnes.cz (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CSFD.cz listing*
FDB.cz listing*

CineEuropa (M. Kudláč) review

ČervenýKoberec.cz (J. Kábrt) review*
iDnes.cz (M. Spáčilová) review*
Respekt.cz (K. Fila) review*

Variety (A. Simon) review

Lidovky.cz (H. Petrželková) interview with director*


Fair Play [2014] [IMDb] [CSFD]* [FDB]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Andrea Sedláčková [IMDb] [CSFD]* [FDB]* along with Irena Hejdová [IMDb] [CSFD]* [FDB]*) is a Czech, Slovak and GERMAN co-production that played recently at the 2014 (50th Annual) Chicago International Film Festival.

The film, a historical drama, is about a fictionalized 1980s (Communist Era) Czechoslovakian athlete, Anna (played by Judit Bárdos [IMDb] [CSFD]* [FDB]*) who, along with her teammates is doped with a performance enhancing steroid-based cocktail, in Czech called "Stromba," at least _initially_ without her/their knowledge, to thus "render greater glory" to the then Communist System in the run-up to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games (Some viewers/readers here would recall that the Communist bloc ended up boycotting those games, held in the U.S.A., ANYWAY.  So the whole exercise was futile ... But the "sports doctors" posing here more properly as "witch doctors" were being asked to get the athletes "ready" ANYWAY). 

Now how would Anna and her team-mates initially "not know" that they were being doped in this way?  Well (1) they were young (Anna would have been in her late teens, early 20s); (2) they were proud that they were already athletic enough to "make the grade" to be selected for the state-sponsored national athletic training program, and the said national athletic training program already had a scientific/professional almost science-fictiony / "space program" feel to it (besides coaches there were all sorts of trainers, sports doctors and other therapists always hovering about); and (3) they were already receiving regular "vitamin injections" as part of the nutritional regimen of their program.

So the "simple change" from one set of injections to another would not draw a great deal of initial notice by the athletes themselves -- except for (1) sensing a new level of defensiveness / evasiveness on the part of the coaches and sports doctors, when one or another of the athletes would ask questions that would seem otherwise quite reasonable:

Q: "What's the new concoction supposed to do?"
A: "It'll increase your muscle density, making you stronger and faster, and in a way that _nothing else in sports medicine_ can deliver."  Hmm...

Q: "Why am I being asked to sign special forms now that I didn't have to in the past"
A: "Well, you've been _selected_ to participate in something very special here, my dear.  YOU SHOULD BE PROUD OF HAVING RECEIVED THIS HONOR, and WE KNOW THAT you'll make OUR WHOLE COUNTRY proud."

Q: "What if I refuse to take the new injections?"
A: "Well, YOU'LL HAVE TO LEAVE THE TEAM, something that will certainly be a great disappointment to us AND TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY, as we and THE WHOLE COUNTRY have already _invested a great deal of money and resources_ into your training/preparation"

and (2) beginning to experience the multitude of steroid-based side-effects:  the sudden experience of various abdominal pains when one had no previous history of such things in the past; the predictable appearance chest and facial hair that would certainly terrify most young women; a noticeable spike in the number of tendon injuries among one's team-mates.


OKAY, you find that your coaches and doctors ARE PROBABLY MESSING WITH YOUR BODY IN A WAY THAT MAKES YOU REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE.  WHAT DO YOU DO?

Well, folks, that's the rest of the film.  What do you do?  Czechoslovakia was NOT a free country in the 1980s.  And even Anna's own mother (played wonderfully by Aňa Geislerová [IMDb] [CSFD]* [FDB]*) WHO HATED THE REGIME encouraged Anna to continue to take the "Stromba."  WHY??  "Just shut up, keep your head low, qualify and then you'll be able to get out of the country and YOU'LL FINALLY BE ABLE TO BE FREE."

Of course, though, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic along with the rest of the Communist Bloc ended up boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Games ANYWAY ...

It all makes for a fascinating movie about how DEFENDERS / PROPONENTS of an INSECURE / PARANOID IDEOLOGY can come to MESS WITH THEIR MOST VULNERABLE (HERE ITS YOUNG) for the sake of "PROVING" that SAID IDEOLOGY is "better" than it really is.


ADDENDA

An excellent English language recent documentary on the former East German athletic doping program is the PBS's Secrets of the Dead: Doping for Gold [2008] episode available for streaming free on the PBS's website.

Additionally, a recent there has been a critically acclaimed GERMAN documentary You Will Not Lose (orig. Einzelkämpfer) [2013] on the matter as well (Interview with former GDR athlete and director of the documentary Sandra Kaudelka).


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser.

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Kill the Messenger [2014]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune/Variety (3 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune/Variety (A. Barker) review
RogerEbert.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review  

Kill the Messenger [2014] (directed by Michael Cuesta, screenplay by Peter Landesman based on the books Dark Alliance by Gary Webb [IMDb] and Kill the Messenger by Nick Schou [IMDb]) tells the story of San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb [IMDb] (played in the film by Jeremy Renner) who reporting on some of the trials of various mid-level California drug traffickers walked into an investigative journalists' dream / conspiracy of a lifetime:

It turned out that some of the key government informants against some of these mid-level California drug traffickers worked for the CIA and had been involved _in protecting_ some of these same mid-level drug traffickers from prosecution in the 1980s because these drug-traffickers were moving "bargain priced" cocaine that was being converted to _crack cocaine_ which _due to its "bargain price"_ EXPLODED then onto the drug scene in AFRICAN-AMERICAN GHETTOS ALL ACROSS THE U.S., AND (yes, there's an and) THE PROFITS FROM THE SALES OF THIS DIRT-CHEAP CRACK COCAINE WERE BEING USED TO FINANCE THE CIA SUPPORTED CONTRAS (IN NICARAGUA).

I warned you, this was ONE HECK OF A CONSPIRACY, originally reported by Gary Webb in a three part series printed in the San Jose Mercury-News between August 18-20, 1996 and is available in full (on the Libertarian-leaning / anti-Drug War website "NarcoNews.com"). 

For those too young to remember the Contra War / Controversies of the 1980s, the then Reagan Administration was basing a good part of its strategy in fighting the expansion of Communism in Central America on supporting the "Contra" rebels fighting the pro-Soviet Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas having successfully overthrown the decades-old pro-U.S. Samosa family dictatorship there in 1979 under then U.S. President Jimmy Carter.  The then Democratic Party dominated U.S. Congress, however, refused to fund the Contras.  So the Reagan Administration / C.I.A. and affiliated right-wing groups looked for all sorts of "creative" ways to fund the  Contras without using U.S. taxpayer money to do it.  

The most (in)famous scandal of the time in this regard was the Iran-Contra Affair, in which the U.S. supplied Iran (at that time in the midst of a deadly war with neighboring Iraq) with U.S. weaponry IN PART in return for release of U.S. hostages held by Iran-supported Shia groups in Lebanon AND IN PART FOR MONEY which _technically not_ from U.S. taxpayers was then used to finance the Contras.   At subsequent Congressional hearings, U.S. Col. Oliver North working on President Reagan's National Security Council Staff, (in)famously called this scheme "a neat idea."

Getting hundreds of thousands to millions of African-American youths addicted to crack cocaine and turning around and JAILING AS FELONS said hundreds of thousands to millions of African American youths for everything from competing drug-gang shoot-outs TO SIMPLE POSSESSION and SUBSEQUENTLY DENYING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THEM (AS "FELONS") THE RIGHT TO VOTE EVER AGAIN would have seemed like ONE HELL OF AN IDEA for SOUTHERN RIGHT-WING RACISTS still smarting from their loss of their past power to deny Blacks the right to vote throughout the South thanks to the passage of the Johnson Era 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Consider simply that G.W. Bush "won" the 2000 election by a few hundred votes in Florida WHILE THERE WERE OVER A MILLION OF _PETTY_ "FELONS" IN FLORIDA DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE _FOR LIFE_ FOR SIMPLY BEING ARRESTED WITH A ROCK OR TWO (PLANTED?) IN THEIR POCKET. 

Imagine what this country could have been like WITHOUT the G.W. Bush Presidency:

(1) A BALANCED FEDERAL BUDGET and PERHAPS EVEN A COMPLETELY PAID DOWN FEDERAL DEBT (we were ON TRACK FOR THAT at the end of the Clinton Administration),

(2) NO 9/11 -- (!!) -- The Bush Adminstration was simply not concerned about terrorism until those planes crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon.  Instead, they were focused on missile defense against North Korea, and a still secret "energy task force" that could have very well plotted the division of oil spoils a "post-invasion" Iraq.  By contrast, the Clinton / Gore Administration did take their National Security advisors seriously with regard to terrorism and did break-up a fairly major plot on the homeland around the turn of the Millenium.

In any case, we'll never know what could have happened because hundreds of thousands of African Americans who could have voted in Florida (and would have certainly voted for Gore rather than G.W. Bush) were not allowed to vote because they were "Convicted Felons" even if their convictions were for possession of trivial amounts of (even _planted_) crack cocaine.  

Again, selling AFRICAN AMERICAN YOUTHS cut-rate "crack cocaine" and using the funds to finance the Contras was ONE HELL OF AN "NEAT" IDEA ...

And Gary Webb, who stumbled onto this story, was eventually destroyed for writing it, and even died, somewhat mysteriously, in 2004 -- of suicide WITH TWO BULLETS IN HIS HEAD (possible, but ...)

Anyway, enjoy look the film up and read.  Again, Webb's whole original expose is available here.


ADDENDA:

Excellent articles about how the Felony "loophole" has been used to deny millions of (mostly people of color) the right to vote in the U.S. and especially Florida can be found here:

Susan Greenbaum, Restore Voting Rights to Ex-Felons, Aljazeera America, Feb 14, 2014

Did Florida's Felon Disenfranchisement Laws Cause Al Gore from Losing the 2000 Election? (procon.com)


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A Dream of Iron (orig. Cheol-ae-kum) [2013]

M

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
AsianWiki listing

A Dream of Iron (orig. Cheol-ae-kum) [2013] [IMDb] [AW] (written and directed by Kelvin Kyung Kun Park [IMDb] [AW]) is a South Korean documentary reflection which played recently at the 2014 (50th Annual) Chicago International Film Festival.

The thesis of the often striking visual (documentary) reflection was that while cave drawings in South Korea dating back 30,000-40,000 years indicate that Korea's first inhabitants venerated whales (the largest beings around) as de facto "gods," they soon came to master (kill) them.  Today, we arguably venerate even more enormous beings (in the form of truly GIGANTIC ships and super-tankers, often built at South Korea's Hyundai shipbuilding works).  But by building them, we actually "Master" them as well.  So by "venerating" "our Gods" do we actually "consume" them and thus destroy their divinity?

It makes for a fascinating visual (and at times auditory) reflection.  One of the more striking comparisons made is, in fact, auditory -- as the whale songs _can sound_ like the traditional humming of Buddhist chants, which in turn _can sound_ like the noises made by GIANT hydraulic machines. 

In the end, the film arguably declares that we ourselves, at least as "Man," if not as "people" (who in comparison to both the whales and the giant ships that we build may look like ants), are the True Gods of our times.

I don't necessarily agree with the film's thesis (it's rather Idolatrous, with a Capital "I")  But the visuals are, in fact, striking and worthy of those found in the films of Ron Fricke and Mark Madigson who've previously brought us some truly Wondrous visual reflections on arguably religious themes such as Chronos [1985], Baraka [1992] and most recently Samsara [2012] (reviewed here).
 

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