Screen Screed: Thoughts on Movies From a Lifelong Eater of Cinema

     Five movies I haven't seen:       Chariots of Fire  (1981, '82 in the U.S.): Slow motion running on the beach, Vangelis, Olympic runners in the twenties, running on a Scottish beach, many locations in Britain, wearing of tweed, runners look like they're in a Marine recruitment video, or a detachment of pray-the-gay-away Republican congressmen.  Ooh, dig on the Republicans!  Don't worry, Democrats, I bitch at you, and plenty!       The film looks like a professional English prestige picture, like The English Patient .   Chariots  director Hugh Hudson made Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (1984).  I saw that with my brother in a theater.  Pretty fucking hot, Andie Macdowell as Jane.  Real jungle scenes, so different from a set.  Not quite like Gilligan's Island is what I'm saying.  Ian Holm is really in the fucking jungle!  Yes, Ian Holm, Bilbo Baggins, is in the fucking jungle! ...

     I was wrong about Russian intentions towards Ukraine.  It could be that Putin seeks to secure Donetsk and Luhansk from Ukrainian forces backed by NATO nations.  Dirty war is upon Ukraine it looks like.  Was it Putin's intention to say, "Back off, NATO."  Will Ukrainian forces, bristling with new shipments of arms from the United States and Canada, to name just two, attack the annexed regions?  Will Biden's and Trudeau's favored Nazis go apeshit on Russian troops and separatists?  Is this all a very dangerous and stupid game played by the worst people on the planet?      I leave it to the reader to decide.      I saw a movie called Patterns (1956), written by Rod Serling, starring Ed Begley Sr., Van Heflin, Beatrice Straight (who won an Oscar for her small role in Network ).  Everett Sloane plays Walter Ramsey, a workaholic CEO of a New York corporation.  He's exactly the type one would expect to b...

     This could be about anything.  I don't know the subjects just yet.  Working my way towards them.      Obeying the concept of a screen, a place defined usually as a rectangle, I write here this time about what I've seen on screens, weaving ideas together and so on, the usual Neptunian mishmash.      I've seen videos of war drums beaten by people on CNN and MSNBC.  On my iPhone screen, I've seen and read articles in the Wall Street Journal , Popular Mechanics , CNN, NBC News, all gung ho for military maneuvers, airstrikes, and force exerted and displayed by the U.S. and NATO.      Ukraine 2022, Hunter Biden's War!!!      After the 2014 coup in Kyiv carried out by the Obama administration, Ukraine's internal political processes bloomed hard rightward.  The Ukrainian Army has a Nazi battalion, supplied at least in part just recently by the United States in a 200 million dollar shipment of "le...