• Casablanca.

(But there are still things to criticize.)

• Hey Lenona, do you still read Arcamax everyday?

2001: A Space Odyssey.

Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Das Boot.

1984.

Raider of the Lost Ark? Where Indy rode on the deck of a submarine for a week, across the Indian Ocean?

"The Shootist", a valedictory for John Wayne's career. Perfect in every respect. No actor had a better conclusion to a long and iconic career in movies. Writing and acting are stunning, with every role perfectly cast by every character actor that ever appeared in a Western.

"The Killing", with Sterling Hayden. Kubrick could direct in every genre, including the crime drama. This is a heist picture, with, again, every character actor that actually appeared in a crime drama in the 40's and 50's.

Hypothetical Liberal “Ally” Who Lives in the Suburbs Which Aren’t On Fire – “Hey, gun owners! Here is some civil unrest! Why won’t you come and help us?”

Snort. Fuck off.

“Pussies! Why not?”

Well, every single gun nut in America has spent their entire adult life being continually mocked, insulted, and belittled by the left. You’ve done nothing but paint us as the bad guys.

https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/06/04/where-are-all-you-gun-owners-now/

One of China’s main propaganda outlets has paid American newspapers nearly $19 million for advertising and printing expenses over the past four years, according to documents filed with the Justice Department.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/06/08/chinese-propaganda-china-daily-washington-post/

Raiders of the Lost Ark. ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 9, 2020 12:17 AM

An uncommonly perceptive episode of The Big Bang Theory blew holes in Raiders with a character pointing out that, in the end, Indy had very little influence on events and even failed in his mission.

The Nazis still got the Ark, despite all Indy's machinations and persistence. And he was supposed to deliver it to a museum, but it ended up in a government warehouse.

Althouse has questions about "defund the police".

Why not use words that people can understand and that convey the meaning you want to put in our head? If your idea is so reasonable, why not use words that are effective in making people who care about peace and harmony agree with you?

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2020/06/were-told-not-to-take-defund-police-and.html

I'm sorry that she passed away, having said that, play stupid games, win stupid prices.

https://twitter.com/zayer_dounya/status/1269504142634102784

Boat Trip.

Roger Moore as a thirsty, chubby-chasing sugar daddy is how I picture James Bond in his golden years should be.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

Cinderella But I'm talking about the 1977 soft-core uh, musical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMXtlYLteDM

1. Csefalvay can be trusted.

2. The timeline is changing.

> I'm sorry that she passed away,
> having said that

This posting cannot end well…

Didn't.

Groundhog Day. The only think I would change is a geographical error: as the news crew leaves downtown Pittsburgh for Punxsatawney, they drive eastward on the Parkway towards Monroeville. They should have crossed the Allegheny river and gone northwards.

This posting cannot end well…

Didn't.

I have no sympathy for these useful idiots. She wanted a place in history, she got it.

> Groundhog Day

• Amy's Alkon responded poignantly.

• Clock.

> I have no sympathy

We'll have to try and remember that about you, but she certainly demonstrated her case in the clearest imaginable terms.

Crid, just half-a-dozen comics - plus John Rosemond, since it's practically the only news site that includes comments on his weekly column. Why do you ask?

Anyway, there are dozens of cult movies that I love and that I can't imagine being improved in any way - but I suppose they're just not famous enough, mostly.

But I'll list a few of the slightly more famous ones:

The Bicycle Thief
Children of Paradise
City Lights
Cyrano de Bergerac (with Jose Ferrer)
East of Eden
The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
The Great Dictator
La Belle et la Bete
Marty
A Matter of Life and Death
Metropolis
The Miracle Worker
Pan's Labyrinth
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Ran
Schindler's List
Some Like it Hot
The Sting
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Way Down East

Young Frankenstein
Trouble in Paradise

I'll second "Blazing Saddles", and add "The Big Lebowski," but with the caveat that it's way better if you're on the Hippie Lettuce.
My burn-out college roommates could watch "Being John Malkovich" again and again. That was a terrible, terrible movie. I never understood why they liked it, but then again, I wasn't into hallucinogens. Or opium.

Somehow, I got that last one out of order.

(To my annoyance, many years ago, when some program on one of the major broadcast TV channels did a top 100 countdown of film comedies, that one was NOT included, even though plenty of B&W comedies WERE included! Maybe that was because that movie was not on DVD yet.)

"Where Indy rode on the deck of a submarine for a week, across the Indian Ocean?"

The answer lies in Kasdan's original script, on the cutting room floor, and in the Mediterranean.

I guess this means the New York Times is going to start writing articles about anal sex.

https://twitter.com/_HelenDale/status/1270287715079249921

Is the South China Morning Post a Xi-owned subsidiary of the CCP? looks like it might be some sort of in-between, not wholly independent, but allowed some flexibility.

China has mobilised thousands of paratroopers, armoured vehicles and equipment in a military drill, saying they could be deployed “within hours” to the border with India in the Himalayas, where tensions have again flared.

The soldiers and armoured vehicles were transported from the central province of Hubei to an unspecified location in China’s northwest plateau, thousands of kilometres away, in “just a few hours”, according to state media reports over the weekend.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3088093/china-mobilises-thousands-troops-armoured-vehicles-near-border

Two perfect Movies cane out three years apart. Chariots of Fire ( 81)and Amadeus (84) but my all time favorite is Babette’s Feast (87)

> Why do you ask?

Ah that's right, that's what you said when you mentioned them years ago. I've been going through the past few months of comments here to see which things we were right about and wrong about as it all went down. (As it turns out A LOT of the information we'd hoped would soon be at hand is still mysterious.) Sometime in March you sent Darth & I to a comic there, but I missed your comment, and now it's fallen out of their archive. It was an excuse to look at the site again. Wiki says

Type: Private[1]
Industry: Web syndication
Founded 1996[1] or 1999[2]
Headquarters: Newport News, Virginia
Number of employees: 11 (2006)

And it's one of the anodyne websites I've ever seen. It calls to mind the old Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, which was an annual reminder that a lot of Americans have very gentle tastes. (Pretty girls! At the water's edge! In *swimsuits*!) Everything linked on there, all the editorial pieces, are gentle in tone and conventional in perspective.

Hitchens used to say that he woke up in the morning he'd look at the top-right corner of the New York Times to see if it still said "All the News that's Fit to Print." If it did, AND if he was as angered by that notion as he deserved to be, he'd start reading. Otherwise he'd try to wake up a little more first.

I like Arcamax because it's a reminder that not everyone needs a teaspoon of powdered garlic and two of ghost pepper in their coffee before engaging the world. Nor do they need the idiotic exploitation of local teevee news, nor are they enchanted by Twitter's fisticuffs.

(Ahem.)

It was here:

Crid and Darth, check out today's "Zits":

https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/zits/s-2341787

At least three thoughtful comments so far.

Lenona at March 28, 2020 8:07 AM

I just love everything about that. It's seriously charming that you're enthusiastic about harvesting the opinion of other people — Not media types, celebrities, authorities or experts.

Thank you.

I slipped up back in March. There's a trick to catching the exact link for a particular strip - but I forgot to do it with Arcamax, and even if you get it right with Seattlepi, the comments remain, but the strip itself disappears.

Anyway, for maybe another week or so, you can see the 3/28 strip here:

http://jamesralexander.com/comics/Zits/all

Scroll down one-quarter.

And the 52 comments at Seattlepi:

https://www.seattlepi.com/comics-and-games/fun/Zits/2020-03-28/

This is what happened to the last batch of Americans who thought a collectivist system would be better than a capitalist one.

Those American emigrants who entered the "workers' paradise" were certain that they were leaving the misery of unemployment and poverty behind them.

Thousands were killed in this quiet country backwater, surrounded by trees to muffle their screams.

Stalin's executioners had been convinced of the need to "kill and kill and kill" for the benefit of all mankind.