Lunch Break mashup. Take what you like and leave the rest...

The pic is from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Another note on the Obama Left's implosion: However, when the cardboard titty groper is putting words in his mouth, Obama becomes a double talking linguistic maestro, using language to magically transport an easily transfixed listener/reader to the brink of logical thought..."We are the ones we've been waiting for, " is just stupid. Where have "we" been while "we" were waiting? And, how come "we" didn't see "us?"
Read it all.

Music: After posting a guitar version of I Will Wait For You yesterday, today I meant to find the Jessye Norman version on youtube. It is disabled but you can listen here. Please do. It will make your day better regardless of how it is going now... Here is the Chairman of the Board singing I Will Wait For You



Shakespeare: I am slogging through all three Henry the 6ths as part of my morning ritual (A Shakespeare scene a day keeps the mass media numbing at bay)thinking I might find something new and exciting in these early works - I cannot. The Henry the 6th plays are dreadful. Yes, there are at least 4 BIG Shakespeare stink bombs. Shakespeare was young...and new....but I am almost done with it and planning my next read...(Measure for Measure, I think.)
So a "based on" clip is in order. My Own Private Idaho is based on Henry IV Part one (Bill S wrote Henry 4 long after Henry 6 and had, by then, become a master.)

The director (of the film) remembers, "I thought that the Henry IV plays were really a street story. I also knew this fat guy named Bob, who had always reminded me of Falstaff





A Quote: one of those lines from W.S. that is so universal now that is seems to have been in the language forever. It has not...it comes from Act 1 Scene 2 of Henry the 4th Part One.


"He will give the devil his due".

Milk

Writing a blog often causes a Napoleonic complex. Or rather - a Moulitsas Complex - no, I take that back, Napoleon was significant. Ducky is not.

At any rate, I try to avoid cocksuredness with words like "seems" and try only to go ultra definitive with the obvious like "Obama was sold to us by a compliant media" or "Shakespeare is a genius" - or when I'm really pissed - which is too much of the time.

That said, let me also say this: Ignore whatever reservations you may have about Sean Penn and go see Milk. His performance is masterful. The film itself may well end up being Gus Van Sant's masterpiece.

Sometimes the exact right director, gets the exact right material, the exact right cast, at the exact right time to make a perfect or near perfect film. It rarely happens. Coppola and first 2 Godfather films come to mind ( and the third is underrated in my book.). Sam Mendes and American Beauty as well. And, of course, Network.

I won't say if this film will end up being considered a masterpiece. Only the passage of time can create a masterpiece. Still, everything that Van Sant does with this material - all his quirks - that have kept him an interesting director but not a great one - come together in Milk and vibrate perfectly with his cast, and the subject.

And Sean Penn...The friend I went with said "That was not a performance. It was a possession."

Excepting Meryl Streep doing anything - it is as precisely lived and nuanced as anything I've seen an actor do in a decade.

So go. Learn something.

Below the trailer and the moment that made Diane Feinstien a national political figure: