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ESSENTIAL
The first of the Godfather films cost 6 million dollars and has to date grossed 133 million dollars, making it one of the most profitable films of all time. It was the highest-grossing film in its year of release and in adjusted dollars it’s among the top 25 highest grossing films in the history of movies.
Its sequel, The Godfather Part II, cost 13 million dollars and has to date grossed 57 million dollars. It was the fifth most successful film in its years of release. Not in the same box-office league as its predecessor, but it has still earned the studio which made it a clear profit of at least 13 million dollars on an investment of 13 million dollars. In most businesses, that would qualify as a killing.
The Godfather Part II is one of the greatest of all films. It is intelligent, impeccably crafted, visually stunning, profound in its insight into American culture — and wildly entertaining. The idea that an intelligent, impeccably crafted, profound, visually stunning film could be a high-grossing film today is an almost surreal fantasy. The film came out 40 years ago. 40 years is a long time, but it’s not that long a time.
What has happened to Hollywood, to our culture, in those four decades? Has there ever been a more complete and more catastrophic collapse of values, virtue and taste in the whole history of human civilization — apart from cultures ravaged by war or financial apocalypse?
This is a subject worthy of the most serious meditation.
Meanwhile, the Blu-ray edition of The Godfather Part II belongs in every civilized home.
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WHAT I’M SPINNING NOW
Sounds like Bob and the band are playing live in my living room . . .
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ZOMBIE NATION
If you harbor a shred of respect for Barack Obama as a President, as a public servant, you should consider yourself a member of a cult, a moral zombie, and seek professional help.
Don’t wait until he asks you to drink the Kool-Aid.
GIRL WITH LPs
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WITH A TREMBLING HAND
. . . I clutch the magical object.
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FREE TO BORROW!
If you own a Kindle and subscribe to Amazon Prime you can borrow my Western tale Missouri Green for free. If not, you can download it for just $1.99 and read it on almost any computer or portable device with Amazon’s free Kindle Reading Apps, available here.
The year is 1849. A feisty young whore in New Orleans decides to light out for the goldfields of California and gets the bright idea of buying a slave, a sullen man seething with rage but infinitely resourceful and a crack shot, to help her make the overland journey. Neither of them can imagine the epic adventure that lies before them, the dangers, the magnificence, the heroism and the unlikely bond, stronger that any slaver’s chains, that will come to unite them. This is a Western tale, an American tale — a voyage into the wild and troubled heart of the American dream.
OUT OF THE BLUE
Sometimes I don’t know you, you’re like someone else — but that’s all right, I’m a stranger here myself . . .
AN AMOS SEWELL FOR TODAY
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NASTASSJA
THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN
PZ offers some thoughts on Edward Snowden from a religious perspective:
‘Edward Snowden’ by Howard Terpning
Viewing the 1968 movie The Shoes of the Fisherman, which was based on a 1963 novel by Morris West, made me think of Edward Snowden. To my mind, Howard Terpning’s theatrical poster for that movie (above) of a good man dressed in formal whites, brings Snowden’s immortal sacrifice bunt into the world of popular art.
Why would I say this?
Well, the hero of The Shoes of the Fisherman, a Russian-born pope and former political prisoner named Kyril Lakota, is a real Christian! That sounds a little strange to me as I write it, but what the Pope in West’s novel and the movie does is so unexpected and counter-institutional that it could break the moral impasse of the world. (You’ve got to see this movie.)
The Pope suddenly starts to stand in the real shoes of the fisherman — the poor, broken and impetuous first head of the Church. In doing so, Kyril kicks the legs out from under the set table of international politics and self interest that permeates the world. This is what I believe Edward Snowden has done — the wonderful illegal sin he has committed. He has knocked the legs out from under a massive set table.
We talk sometimes about “speaking truth to power”. Religious people will speak of the “principalities and powers of this world”. But rarely does a religious person actually go there. What usually happens is that religion “strains out gnats and swallows camels” (Matthew 23:24). Which is to say, religion, in many forms, gets stuck on tertiary things — personal angers and giant nothings.
In Snowden I see a man who has touched a nerve. A really BIG nerve. I say this because a country like ours would not be straining so hard to get him, using client states to force down a president’s plane and threatening every airport and state — every Middlesex village and farm — before he has even taken a single footstep to freedom, if he had not touched a really big nerve.
What is this nerve? It is Power and Control, the truth about Power and Control.
Edward Snowden has embodied George Orwell’s maxim, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
As a religious man, therefore — Snowden himself has said he is an agnostic –I can’t help putting together this operation of personal sacrifice, truth-telling, and hitting the world’s open secret of Power and Control. When I think of Edward Snowden, I can’t help thinking, of Kyril Lakota, and Howard Terpning’s picture.
YOU NEVER KNOW
. . . how much you love your country until you stand on the brink of losing it.
THE SPIRIT OF ’76
By Howard Pyle.
WHY WE FIGHT
No comment required.
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NO, YOU CAN’T!
