Wknd Box Office: Hyde Park on Hudson, Jack Reacher, The Guilt Trip, This is 40

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: Hyde Park on Hudson, Jack Reacher, The Guilt Trip, This is 40


By Debbie Schlussel



With Christmas in just a few days, this is the time that Hollywood is supposed to put out its biggest, best blockbusters. Instead, they give us schlock, which is the best descriptor for the new movies at theaters, this weekend.



* “Hyde Park on Hudson“: A while ago I wrote on this site about a disgusting scene in a movie in which a President I don’t even like is shown getting manually masturbated by someone. That was this movie, as some readers correctly guessed. It’s Hollywood’s way of attacking and taking down every single authority figure in American history, even the uber-liberal, statist ones they revere. This long, slow, boring, creepy movie presents an even creepier version of Franklin D. Roosevelt than anything I’ve seen on any President. FDR (played by Bill Murray) is portrayed as a sleazy, sex-obsessed weirdo, who doesn’t let a visit to his Hyde Park estate by the King and Queen of England get in the way of his conquests of multiple members of his harem. Yuck.



This is the story of Margaret Suckley (in the movie, she is just “Daisy,” probably for obvious reasons), FDR’s plain Jane fifth or sixth cousin (in the movie, she says they’re not sure which it is), who is recruited by FDR’s mother to “entertain” him at the Hyde Park estate one summer during his Presidency. Yup, FDR’s mother–as portrayed in this movie–is his pimp, and ultimately Daisy becomes one of his several concubines, joining his secretary and one of his longtime wealthy patrons in the harem. The movie is supposedly based on Suckley’s diaries and letters between her and FDR that were allegedly found under her bed after her death at age 99 in 1991. Suckley is played by Laura Linney.



Skip this barf-fest at all cost.



FOUR MARXES




* “Jack Reacher“: I was really looking forward to this movie based on the thriller novels of author Lee Child. But what a letdown. While there were some mildly cool car chase and shooting scenes that are inserted in any action thriller, the movie was silly and preposterous–particularly when it comes to the plot and the storyline. It wasn’t interesting or thrilling most of the time, and you don’t really care “whodunit.” The why is stupid and never ever explained, nor is much of what is going on. It’s not a tight script, and I’m surprised this movie is coming out now, instead of January or August, the cemeteries of movies where Hollywood sends the worst movies to die a quick death. Tom Cruise is his usual great acting self, but he produced this jalopy of a movie so he takes the blame for the bad vehicle featuring his good acting.



The plot: a former Army sniper who served in the Middle East is accused of shooting five people from a parking garage across the river. He writes a note to prosecutors to get Jack Reacher, a mysterious superhero-type of a guy in the form of a retired military police investigator, played by Cruise. He’s not only a brilliant investigator, but a great physical fighter, car chaser, shooter, and so on. Reacher is hired by the accused’s defense lawyer, who also happens to be the daughter of the district attorney prosecuting her client. Someone is out to get Reacher as he gets closer to the truth. Is it the district attorney? To be honest, I didn’t care much because the movie is that bad. The only good thing about this is the presence of Robert Duvall, but even that isn’t enough to make things right.



I’m surprised this is PG-13, since it’s violent and includes a scene in which the bad guy tries to make someone bite his own fingers off. Sick. Sad. Long. Boring. Waste of time.



HALF A MARX


* “The Guilt Trip“: Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen play an ambiguously but stereotypically Jewish mother and son with the last name, Brewster, who go on a road trip together, as Rogen tries to sell his invention (an organic cleaning solution made out of fruit) to major retailers. Streisand is your stereotypical, annoying, guilt-inducing, intrusive Jewish mother who asks questions about the most personal and inserts herself everywhere she’s not wanted. Rogen can’t stand it, but he feels sorry for her and takes her along on the trip so she can reunite with her long lost first love, after whom he’s named.



While there are some parts of this movie that are alternately very funny or touching and endearing, mostly it’s just a non-stop reel of bad joke after bad joke and stupid, raunchy joke after stupid, raunchy joke. I liked the idea of a mother/son road trip, which we haven’t seen before at the movies. I just liked it without these two, neither of whom I like much at all. And too much of this movie was melodramatic angst and whining and screaming that’s just what people go to the movies to get away from. In the end, the messages are two of the typical and predictable ones: mother knows best and mother and son will do best by getting along after all.



A side note on this: after the screening I attended, there was a live telecast featuring Streisand and Rogen. I don’t like Seth Rogen, but his stock went up 1,000% after seeing the telecast, since all he did was rip on Streisand and her ridiculous lifestyle and demands. The movie was supposed to be a road trip, but Streisand is so special in her own mind and so absurd in her demands that the whole movie had to be done from a warehouse and sets built especially for her, since she insisted on filming the entire movie 15 minutes from her Malibu home, after making increasing demands of the filmmakers. During the live telecast, Streisand constantly whined about how hard it is to drive and how impossible it is to drive at night. She also spoke of how difficult the internet is, as is checking things online It was a nice insight to how out of touch this over-pampered far-left, Obama-supporting celeb is. As in, very.



As I said, while some of this is very funny, it’s also very overwrought and annoying. It was mildly entertaining, though, and better than all of the other new offerings.



HALF A REAGAN



* “This is 40“: It takes a lot to sit through this incredibly long, boring, 2 1/3 hours whine-fest. If seeing a naked husband (Paul Rudd) with butt and legs in the air looking in a mirror to see if he has hemorrhoids is your idea of a good time, then this is your movie. For the rest of us, um, no thanks. This is writer/director Judd Apatow’s latest raunchfest, and in this case, it’s not even funny. Just gross and extremely whiny.



Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Apatow’s real-life wife) play Pete and Debbie, the husband and wife from Apatow’s “Knocked Up” (read my review). They are both turning 40 and don’t want to face it, instead having signs of a mid-life crisis. They are constantly arguing over his secret eating of cupcakes (sugar isn’t allowed in the household), his support of his father and the father’s new family with an airline stewardess, and other things I couldn’t care less to hear about. They read their kids’ facebook accounts and confront the boys who attack their kids online. Debbie worries about her women’s clothing store and who stole $10,000 from it. Pete is worried about his failing new record company and the fact that he can’t sell CDs of his latest golden oldie rocker.



Lots of bickering, shouting, yelling, and so on. Very little that’s entertaining. Why pay money to go to the movies to see this when you can see it in households across America or in divorce court? And in those places, it’s a lot more interesting than this portrayal of spoiled very-upper-middle class people living beyond their means and constantly complaining about nothing.



TWO MARXES

Pearl Harbor Day and the Pearl of Great Price

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about Pearl Harbor. This follows this post about marriage problems. This follows this post about the season called Advent. For a free magazine subscription or to get this book for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886-8632.

Pearl Harbor Day and the Pearl of Great Price


 Submitted December 6, 2011





USS Arizona Memorial Pearl Harbor Hawaii



Source: Photos.comPearl Harbor Day, 70 years later, December 7, 2011.



December 7, 1941, was the worst day in U.S. military history as a Japanese armada of ships and planes made a devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. This Hawaiian U.S. naval base was a tempting target for the imperialist Japanese since America’s entire Pacific Fleet was headquartered at Pearl. The Japanese met little resistance as their planes bombed and strafed U.S. Navy ships and Army aircraft.



The next day the President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the U.S. Congress and delivered what turned out to be the most famous American political speech of the 20 th century—the “Day of Infamy Speech.” Congress then declared war on Japan, and three days later it declared was on Nazi Germany.



The United States, by being unprepared for this attack, paid a very heavy price:



- 2,388 Americans died in the attack



- 1,178 Americans were wounded



- 21 American ships were sunk or damaged



- 323 American aircraft were destroyed or damaged



The Japanese paid a dear price but not nearly so great:



- 64 Japanese died during the attack, though the number of injuries is unknown



- 5 Japanese ships were destroyed



- 103 Japanese aircraft were destroyed or damaged



The U.S. paid the greater short-term price but Japan paid the greater long-term price. If much more time had gone by without the U.S. getting involved militarily, both the Japanese and the Nazis might have been victorious in their conquests. Quite likely, God allowed the Pearl Harbor bombing to awaken America to join the war against Japan and Germany.



Some inspiring facts

The Japanese failed to accomplish their primary objective when they bombed Pearl Harbor. They wanted to destroy the aircraft carriers, but the three carriers were all at sea away from the port at the time. Those carriers were critically important in the ensuing war against Japan. and at the same time protected the aircraft carriers. Sparing those carriers was also likely an act of Providence.



Lately several websites have posted a message which had also been sent around the world by e-mail. It supposedly is an excerpt from a book titled, "Reflections on Pearl Harbor" by Admiral Chester Nimitz. Although it sounds like it could have been authored by Admiral Nimitz, I have not been able to verify that such a book exists. However, I did verify most of the facts stated. Following is my summary of that message:



“Immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt appointed Admiral Chester Nimitz to be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.



“When Nimitz landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941, there was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat--you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war. On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.



“Afterwards, someone asked him, ‘Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?’ Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone: ‘The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America.’



“Nimitz explained:



“Mistake number one: The Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk, we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.



“Mistake number two: When the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.



“Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is on top of the ground in storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make, or God was taking care of America.”



Whether or not Admiral Nimitz said those exact words, it’s obvious that this disaster could have been much, much worse. God has been very merciful to the United States and to freedom-loving people in general.



The "pearl of great price"

Pearl Harbor has a nice name. It originally had a native Hawaiian name which meant “Water of Pearl.” The harbor was teeming with pearl-producing oysters until the late 1800’s.



One of the most famous and popular Bible passages is Matthew 13:45-46 [45] Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:

[46] Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.





See All..., in which Jesus said, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”



The naval base at Pearl Harbor has been and still is extremely valuable for the United States. It would have been extremely valuable for the Japanese had they been able to conquer and hold it.



But the combined value of that that harbor, that real estate, the military facilities, the ships and planes, and the strategic location are a tiny pittance compared to the value of life after death—life in the Kingdom of God forever and ever! Every sacrifice that we ever need to make in this life will be a small price to pay for glorious eternal life!



The “good news” is this: All those who died on December 7, 1941—and at all other times and places—will yet have their opportunity to learn God’s truth and to qualify for God’s Kingdom! With Jesus Christ reigning over all the earth, we will at last have peace on earth!



Someday all peoples will have the opportunity to attain “the pearl of great price”!







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Virginia Dare's Birthday‏

An urgent post from www.Vdare.com about Virginia Dare. This follows this post about protesting immigration enforcement in Chicago and  this post which shows that there are 30,000 openly illegal immigrants in the border town of El Paso, where President Barack Obama recently bashed immigration enforcement! On a related note, you can read about Miss Kentucky Latina here, an interesting article about Jessica Alba here or another article about Salma Hayek here. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!

And Remember when contacting public officials to please be firm but respectful. Any over the top messages could result in law enforcement action against you. Just let these senators know that you are aware of what they have done and that you intend to remove them from office in the 2012 elections.

Happy Birthday, Virginia Dare!


By James Fulford



http://www.vdare.com/fulford/110817_virginia_dare.htm







A year ago on this date I wrote




"Virginia Dare, after whom this webzine is named, was born on this date, August 18th, in 1587, the first English child born in the New World. Her date of death is unknown, since she, and the whole Roanoke colony, went missing, presumed massacred or enslaved, by local Indians."


To the left is a statue of Virginia Dare on display on Roanoke Island.


The beautiful Elizabethan Gardens—near Manteo, North Carolina--were constructed fifty years ago in memory of the Elizabethans who settled the Lost Colony in 1584, and who have been missing since 1587.

The statue is a marble nude, made by Louisa Lander in 1859, based on her viewing of the story of the Lost Colony in the British Museum. (See Louisa Lander, by Kihm Wilkinson for more on this.) Virginia Dare's semi-nudity is based on a picture of an Indian woman (left) drawn by Virginia Dare's grandfather, John White, that the sculptress saw in the British Museum.


The Elizabethan Gardens have their own description of the history [PDF]:


"Down the steps to the east is a Carrara marble statue of Virginia Dare, which is the sculptor’s idealized version of what Virginia Dare would have looked like had she grown to womanhood.



An American sculptor Maria Louise Lander, in Rome in 1859, carved it. After an incredibly hectic existence, including two years at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean due to shipwreck off the coast of Spain, a tenure in the State Hall of History in Raleigh in the early twenties where it become a controversial work of art, a short stay with the Pulitzer prize-winning Paul Green at his estate, “The Oaks”, near Chapel Hill who decided to give it to The Gardens, the statue of Virginia Dare finally came to rest about one hundred years after its creation by Miss. Lander.



“Today Virginia Dare stands at the place of her birth in her own niche at the foot of an ancient live oak, gazing dreamily beyond the trees toward the softened surge of nearby Roanoke Sound. Instead of schoolbooks, she holds a fishnet draped about her waist. About her neck and arms she wears the Indian laces of an Indian princess. Instead of a royal greyhound, a royal heron accompanies her.



“An Indian legend persists that Virginia did grow up among the Indians and that her spirit roams Roanoke in the form of a white doe. Whatever one elects to believe, Maria Louise Lander’s sculpture, Virginia Dare, stands serenely fixed in The Elizabethan Gardens, a figure of quiet hope, wide-browed and intelligent, the first child of the first colony of Elizabethan England, gazing toward the future despite the odds of the history, mystery and fantasy that surround her."



There's a lot of history and fantasy around Virginia Dare. VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow covered some of it in Why VDARE.COM / The White Doe?, and there's a lot more of it out there. You can see it in Wikipedia's Literary and cultural references section of their Virginia Dare page. (Up for deletion because "Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided," although actually they're the most useful thing in Wikipedia.)


The Indian legend is that Virginia Dare was transformed into a "white doe" (hence our logo) but most of the iconography depicts her as a young woman living in the woods.



This image of Virginia Dare was used to sell tobacco in the 1870s.







He colour print of Virginia Dare in an animal-hide minidress is by J. L. G. Ferris,




Of course, there's one qualification—all of these imagine what Virginia Dare, having gone native, would look like "had she grown to womanhood."

It's more likely, alas, that her first birthday was also her last. Since the Lost Colony is lost—they vanished to the last man, woman, and child—there's no real reason to believe that the Indians would have saved Virginia Dare. Indeed, it's not impossible that they ate her.



And if she did survive with an Indian tribe, she would have been the ultimate "white minority"—and her story might be more like that of Jaycee Dugard than that of Pocohontas—a depressing thought, compared to the legends.



In Why VDARE, Peter Brimelow wrote that



"Today, Virginia Dare seems to be vanishing from American education too. But she was a fixture for earlier generations. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt felt free to give a speech commemorating the 350th anniversary of her birth. At one point, I planned to pay homage by bestowing her name on the heroine of a projected fictional concluding chapter in Alien Nation, about the flight of the last white family in Los Angeles. It seemed . . . symmetrical.



“I was dissuaded."



What would that girl's later life be like?



Here's hoping we don't have to find out.



Previous Virginia Dare Pieces, and External Links
http://www.vdare.com/fulford/110817_virginia_dare.htm





The Fulford File
Virginia Dare’s Birthday And The New Colonizers



The Fulford File
Virginia Dare, White Minority?



The Fulford File
Happy Birthday, Virginia Dare!



Emotion At Reason

(Nick Gillespie, editor at Reason magazine, doesn't get it.)



The New World, Virginia Dare, And The Historical American Nation

(Steve Sailer explains what Hollywood did to Pocahontas; and to the colonists who would be the heroes of the movie if Hollywood weren't so PC.)



Boy Scout Version of the Indian Legend: The White Deer named Virginia Dare



The Virginia Dare food company's explanation of why they picked her: Virginia Dare, A Legendary Symbol Of Purity



Fort Raleigh National Historic Site: this is where FDR saw the play, The Lost Colony, still performed there every year.



The Lost Colony": A Cure for Depression? (The National Park service's take on its play)



A statue of Virginia Dare, in the Elizabethan Gardens on the North Carolina Coast.



Marcus Epstein atop a fortunate coincidence.