I'M SORRY I JUST CAN'T LET THIS GO WITHOUT SAYING SOMETHING. What (if anything) was McCain thinking?!? All day long the news of course has been the naming of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as John McCain's VP pick. Can anybody explain to me how this isn't possibly the most boneheaded choice anyone has ever made?!? I can't think of another more wrong-headed choice in history. Some people are comparing it to Walter Mondale's pick of Geraldine Ferraro as the last boneheaded VP choice. I think they are absolutely wrong in that assessment; even though there IS a comparison to be made. Ferraro was I believe a very GOOD choice for Mondale simply because it was his only chance to get anyone to even notice him. If he had chosen just some guy, I doubt if he would've won even his home state (which is in fact the only state Mondale won WITH Ferraro). However, I think a comparison CAN be made in the fact that choosing Ferraro was a desperate attempt to bolster a badly doomed candidacy -- and that's what McCain's choice today makes HIS campaign look like: a candidacy that must be in much worse straits than we thought. Here in OfficeLand (Hi, Pax!) the talk I've been overhearing from Republicans and Democrats alike is that it's like a bad joke.
- First, is the McCain campaign in such serious trouble that they thought they needed to resort to such a blatantly transparent plea for attention. "Gee, Obama's a black guy so I guess I'd better pick. . .uh. . .a woman for my VP. Any woman. At least then maybe someone will notice me." That's how it looks to anyone with more than one brain cell. As far as I knew, McCain and Obama were pretty evenly matched in the polls. But this leads me to believe that the McCain campaign must have some SERIOUS reservations about their candidate's ability to win. The problem, of course, is not that he chose a woman for his VP. The problem is that, of all the eminently qualified and respected women in the country, he chose THIS particular unknown and unqualified PERSON.
- Choosing a woman for your running mate is a great idea. However, a woman who has at least SOME standing in the political world and SOME experience would've been nice. A choice of a woman with limited political experience but a top notch resume and high-standing would make sense. Gov. Sarah Palin doesn't have that and no one can seriously claim that she does. At the risk of offending any potential Alaskan readers, Alaska isn't exactly the center of political activity. Unless they suddenly give trees the right to vote. Palin's entire political resume consists of being mayor of some microscopic Alaskan town called Wasilla, unsuccessfully running for Lt. Governor in 2002 and serving as Governor of Alaska since 2006. In other words, she has been in REAL political office (I don't consider being mayor of your small hometown REAL political office) as Governor of Alaska about 2 months LESS than Obama has been running for president. Since the chance of Palin becoming President if McCain is elected are pretty good, McCain's choice for VP should have been someone with impeccable credentials and experience. In the words of Phil Rosen: "When you're 72 and you have had four bouts with cancer, you ought to choose a qualified VP." Frankly, if McCain becomes (the oldest elected) President , there's a good chance he might die in office. In the words of Joe Quint, McCain is older than Israel, Social Security and Phillips-head screws. Consequently, his judgment that thought Palin would make a good successor President is suspect . . . to put it MILDLY!
- A word about experience: Virtually McCain's entire campaign strategy of late is to try to convince everyone that Obama is not experienced enough to be president. This spurious opinion is not only inaccurate but now out of bounds. McCain can't very well harp on Obama's so-called inexperience while placing a woefully (and ACTUALLY) inexperienced woman as his Vice President; a woman who has a very good chance of becoming President when McCain possibly kicks the bucket during his term. By choosing Palin, McCain has essentially eliminated the only weak card he had to play. Do we really want someone whose strategical thinking is this bad to become our President?!?
- Governor Sarah Palin is known for two (and only two) things in her extremely brief career. As Governor she has striven to push through "ethics laws in politics" as government reform and she is in favour of the Alaskan gas pipeline and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. Unfortunately, the so-called "ethical" champion is currently under investigation because one of her personal staff attempted to get her brother-in-law fired as state trooper because he's divorcing her sister. Palin's staffer "implied" he was acting on the Governor's behalf when calling the trooper's boss Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan and trying to get him to fire the trooper. The boss refused (obviously because there was no grounds for dismissal other than the trooper was divorcing the Governor's sister). Palin then fired Monegan allegedly because he wouldn't fire the trooper. The Governor insists she never authorized any member of her staff to do any such thing and that she's "truly disappointed and disturbed to learn that a member of this administration contacted the Department of Public Safety regarding Trooper Wooten." Naturally. The only conclusions possible are either that she knew full well what was going on or else she has no control of her own staff and no knowledge of what's going on in her own administration. Neither scenario bodes well for a possible Vice President or future President. As regards the oil drilling, Palin's husband works for an oil company so she obviously has big oil interests at heart and her record shows this. Meanwhile, her support for oil drilling in Alaska's Wildlife refuge is opposed by her very own running mate John McCain.
- If the choice of Palin is meant to somehow woo Hillary Clinton supporters still feeling the sting of Obama's nomination, then that thinking is way off base. Frankly any Clinton supporter who would vote for McCain is out of their minds. Besides the fact that Obama and Clinton agree on almost all political platform points, McCain disagrees with just about all of them. That would be like cutting off your proverbial nose to spite your face. In the words of reporter Jill Porter, herself a Clinton supporter: "no one who shares (Hillary) Clinton's values could vote for anyone but (Obama) in November." So while McCain will gain absolutely no Democratic votes by choosing Palin, he will most certainly lose Republican and conservative votes from this choice.
These are the facts I've been able to dig up on Governor Palin so far today. Naturally since practically nobody has ever heard of her before today, that's what a lot of us will be doing. Being an unknown, Palin will most-assuredly have a lot to prove next week in St. Paul. More than most, in fact. She has apparently expressed in the best a yen for national office. However, is hitching her star to a very weak Republican presidential candidate -- (exactly how many times has McCain attempted to run for president and been summarily dismissed by his own party?!?! I forget) -- who has now I think made his position even weaker the way for her to go? For their sakes, they'd better hope they grow magic wands in Alaska because they'll need it. As I've said several times, the fact that Palin is a woman has no bearing on her qualifications for office; the fact that she has no real qualifications for office makes the fact that a woman was chosen merely a stunt. Don't we deserve better???
UPDATE!!! Um. . .yeah. So they were interviewing her on TV when I got home from work tonight. They asked her what she thought about Iraq. Her answer was -- and I shit you not - - "I don't know. I never thought about it."
I found myself enjoying this film much more than I thought I would. (I admit to buying the FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD VOL. 2 box set for another movie on it). I was frankly expecting some rather heavy going. I expected it to be a typical Hollywood weepy that was incredibly stilted and creaky. I expected something stagey with old-fashioned overly-theatrical acting featuring people grouped around a big bowl of flowers with the microphone concealed inside of it. I was quite surprised, therefore, to find some camera mobility as well as the willingness to NOT have the film consist of wall-to-wall dialogue (as is the case in most early talkies). In fact, the scene where Jerry contemplates and then has her affair with Tom is played in a series of shots with NO DIALOGUE WHATSOEVER;
In that way, I think Tomas is like a lot of us. The truth is we'll never "know" for sure in this life one way or the other. The truth is nobody knows; except those who have left this life . . . and they aren't telling. In this way, I think the film makes it's most powerful connection. There are no sugar-coated, pat statements to make us all feel better. These are questions we've wrestled with throughout time and we're no closer to an answer now. And how could we be? Anyone (or any institution) that declares emphatically that they know the answer is simply engaging in wishful thinking. Nobody can know. There are no facts involved. If something is "known" than it's not faith; it requires no "belief" since the knowledge is plain to be seen. Belief requires that one make the proverbial "leap of faith" between what you can prove factually and what you "believe". 
When the man comes to Tomas for spiritual comfort, the pastor first delivers the expected trite platitudes before admitting that Persson's probably correct to feel that way. What sane person (Persson) wouldn't feel just that way? The manner in which all the various characters in the film deal with this depair echoes how all of us have to do the same day in and day out. One can either move past it (Marta), let it defeat them (Persson) or take some middle course (as Tomas may resign himself to by the end of the film). 
The very definition of a masterpiece would seem to fit Bergman's film. It faces truthfully and squarely the existential tortures each of us must face in our lives. It shows us several different roads toward wrestling with these very intimate crises but takes no stance on which road is the better taken. Bergman forces us to confront them, to think about them, to turn them over in our minds. As in real life, there are no easy answers. But as someone once said: the unexamined life life is not worth living. Unfortunately, for examining life they made him drink hemlock. Fortunately, Bergman was able to examine life in a film. In a career of such films. Are we going to ignore these themes or face them? The tendency nowadays is to ignore them. Bergman (himself the son of a Lutheran minister) urges us to think about them. It's for these reasons that WINTER LIGHT is such an intensely emotional, thought-provoking, sometimes frightening and intimate masterwork; as well as being a quietly powerful experience. The director himself seems to have felt the same way about the film. As quoted in John Simon's book "Ingmar Bergman Directs", here is what the maestro himself had to say about it:
And while DeNiro, as usual, doesn't act but merely plays himself, that actually kinda works here. Shockingly this film, made by DePalma in 2 weeks for a mere $43,000 was so popular with antiestablishment hippies, Vietnam protesters and college students that it took in a cool million on it's theatrical release. And any independent production like GREETINGS deserves some support for just getting itself made and seen in the first place. So, GREETINGS is a diverting and funny little movie.
Paul is obsessed with sex and, while waiting for his induction appointment, embarks on a series of computer dates where he can exercise his sexual hunger with as many random women as possible. 
Lloyd is fanatically obsessed with the JFK assassination and conspiracy theory; he has studied every detail and blows up frame after frame of the Zapruder film (linking him directly with Antonioni's BLOW UP -- which is even referenced in the script). In fact, Lloyd is so obsessed that while he's in bed with a naked woman he would rather dress her up in a shirt onto which he plots JFK's bullet wounds than have sex with her! 
Lloyd is stymied by the fact that blowing up photographs only makes it impossible to see anything; the photo becomes too blurry and grainy. DePalma seems to run with this aspect by featuring many scenes in which our main characters are performing in the foreground while other activity (apparently just as important) is going on farther back in the frame. 
Lastly, we have DeNiro's character Jon who is a voyeur that likes to film women (thankfully WITH their full knowledge and cooperation) through a window acting out their "private moments". 
DeNiro is so obsessed that, when he finally does get drafted and sent to Vietnam, he still does the same thing. A TV reporter in the jungle with DeNiro's character films him while he sneaks up with a rifle on a supposedly Viet Cong women and has her act out the same "private moments" for the TV camera.
This is an interesting thing about DePalma's films. He (co-writing the screenplay with Charles Hirsch) has his characters mostly end up where they don't want to be. The sex-obsessed Paul is the only one who probably finishes where he belongs: as the star of a porno movie called "The Delivery Boy and the Bored Housewife". We find this out in a backhanded (and quite deft) manner. 
In a truly funny scene, a rather sleazy man strikes up a conversation with DeNiro's character on the street and eventually leads up to selling him a dirty movie for $5. This movie, of course, stars his friend Paul. DeNiro's character Jon, as mentioned, fails to stop himself from going to Vietnam but still manages to act out his "peeping tom" obsessions (Michael Powell, anyone) in the jungle for a TV camera. 
And Lloyd's character meets an extremely cracked character who claims to have been in Dealey Plaza as a witness to the Kennedy assassination. This paranoid guy insists that he (and Lloyd) and are being watched by the government. When he suggests a later meeting, Lloyd shows up and is himself assassinated by an unseen shooter (!) on his way to the Statue of Liberty.
I'm not sure when I first became aware of her. Handl often appeared uncredited in movies; she was an uncredited "customer" in Benny Hill's 1956 comedy WHO DONE IT?, and uncredited "cellist/organist" in the classic BRIEF ENCOUNTER and even an uncredited "maid" in the very early (and very boring) 1938 Edgar Wallace programmer THE TERROR. Hell, she was even in the punk rock Sex Pistols movie THE GREAT ROCK 'N' ROLL SWINDLE! But however small her role she ALWAYS garnered the viewer's attention. Handl also appeared in such varied films as Hitchcock's STAGE FRIGHT (1950), the rather unfunny comedy THE WRONG BOX (1966), CARRY ON NURSE (1959), SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS (1960), the caper film MAKE MINE MINK (1960), THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1970) and the from-all-accounts abyssmal Peter Cook & Dudley Moore version of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1978). She was definitely in the right movie when she appeared in the "swinging London ultra-mod" comedy SMASHING TIME with a young and dotty Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham. And I adore her as communist union leader Peter Sellers' bedraggled wife in the classic British comedy I'M ALL RIGHT, JACK. Then there's her sidesplitting brief turn in the classic Michael Caine caper movie THE ITALIAN JOB as the unflappable Miss Peach.
However, there is one appearance which I think I fell in love with her. And I don't own the movie. Or even have the slightest chance of getting it since it appears to be unavailable ANYWHERE!!! In fact, I'm not even sure it's the right movie I'm thinking of since I saw it back in the dim mists of my childhood. However, I'm pretty sure the movie was LIONHEART (1968) in which a lion (named Simba, of course) escapes from the zoo and is befriended by a couple kids. It's a kids movie, obviously. No tearing apart civilians here. The lion turns out to be a real pussycat. There is nothing funnier than seeing Irene Handl, using THAT VOICE of hers, to gently scold a huge lion as if it were a dachshund!!! I saw this film so long ago it was before VCRs -- but somewhere I have an audio tape of some of the movie. All Irene Handl's scenes, of course. Naturally, I'd kill to find this movie but I've yet to have any luck. Irene Handl literally lit up the screen any time she was on it and caused a genuine smile of recognition in the viewer. Especially every time she opened her mouth.
