THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT

By Bean-girl

Have you ever had an encounter with a thief breaking into your home? If not how many times have you read about their sudden attacks in newspapers and TV? Scary, right? Don’t want it to happen to you. Well, got some bad news for yah all... it already has.

Yes, I realized something long ago, most thieves in the night are your local newspapers and news shows, your high end fashion magazines, almost all of Hollywood movies and TV shows.

Oh, yes, you heard me right; they come into your life as innocent as a Vogue magazine, or a TV show and they steal your soul. Only you don’t realize it until it is way too late. One day you wake up and go through: ‘I feel so tired’, or ‘I am no good’, or ‘Why does he or she hate me so? or worse of all, ‘America is bad, I can’t believe I live here!’ Well when this happens it is a damn good sign you have been struck by the thief in the night.

I grew up with so many thieves unaware, I thought it was all me. Why does the media do this? Mind control, my friends, the Marxists call it Psyhcopolitics. It is their way to take over a country without bombs. How else can you explain the actions of the murderers of the spirit?
They have good reasons in their hearts; these are thieves that work on people’s minds for a specific reason. They need you to do their bidding, like voting for a certain person whom caries their agenda, or making sure everyone in America has a lousy HDTV, or breaking the spirit of boys so they never become men, thus, no Army! They do all this and so much more while you believe they are spotless humans whom do no wrong.

Think of “The View”. The best classic example of a bogus mind altering TV show. They throw in a token Conservative girl who was a host on a cable beauty show and make her look like the daily fool. Of course, she is not, but she is a novelty, she is weak. They want you to see her as weak. Think of it, all Conservatives are weak!!! All liberals are strong!... and let’s tell another scary nightmare bedtime story.

If these people were real they would have an Ann Coulter or a Michelle Malkin on the panel, someone who can fight as good as they can. Or anyone, for that matter, with the brains and the heart to take the panel of four liberals to one Conservative to task.
But this is what a thief in the night does; they steal. My friends, every time you allow them to enter your home via your ‘soon to be replaced by a new edition’ HDTV they steal from you.
They seal you soul, your heart, your children, your money. Believe me, you can be killed with evil words and evil images.

That stupid song we used to sing when we were young. ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.’ How untrue that statement is. Almost everyone I know has a dysfunction due to words that were shoved down their throats like rocks. Hook up with the abuser on TV, Madison Ave or Hollywood; the slick ones with all intellect and no wisdom and you are done in.
So how do you STOP the thief in the night from stealing a large part of your life from you? Aah, this is where it gets tough. You can be a victim at any time if your guard is down. What does this mean and how can I keep myself protected you think?

First you must use something we all posses but are not taught to use from grade school up; wisdom. When you listen and watch or read, engage with the box or words in your home, do not jump. I repeat, do not jump into the flame. Watch, wait and listen, think and think again. All the road signs are there if you take the time to really hear and see what this person says and how this person acts. Look up the ramifications of their actions, like larger taxes, no army, social health care, the fairness doctrine, hate laws, etc. All these are designed, DESIGNED to take your freedom away!

So the next time you open a fashion magazine and read the headline of some famous actress who has done nothing in her life except learn how to read lines and put fake tears in her eyes without messing up her makeup, telling you who to vote for… run, RUN from that page. Just look at the clothes, don’t even read a word.

When you see the full page adds for “kids for peace”, rip it out. I am not kidding, rip it out, make a ball of it and throw it in your trash. Why? Because, as we teach our kids to worship the peace symbol, the Islamists, and Fascists and Marxists are laughing at us fools. Get it, they are laughing as it is a matter of a few years that they can take over our country and close down those back ass magazines, and put the people in jail who don’t do as they say. They will steal your possessions and homes for real and divide it up for the masses. And then the hippies for “peace” will wail and cry, for what the hell will they do without their HDTV’s? FIN

(The Photo of Reverend Al Gore by Giovanni Calia http://www.flickr.com/photos/estragon_flickr/ )

WOMEN ARE THE NEW MEN

by The Stranger

Turn on the TV these days and what you see mostly are strident, angry women. In your face, particularly if it’s the face of a male. Sarcastically putting the males in their places. Lately, and increasingly, punching the lights out of the men when its called for and sometimes when its not - just to let the men know who the bosses are these days: WOMEN: THE NEW MEN!!!

Why is it that in most commercials being shown on TV the man is the goofball, the doofus? In family commercials Dad is the dummy of the household, butt of derision, the one who is lame, who needs to be brought up to speed, often by the kids in the family. And if they’re not the ones doing it, then there’s the man of the house - MOM!! - the authority figure, the one who wears the pants (think Hilary Clinton) - the one with the BALLS (again, think Hilary Clinton). Poor dad - he no longer knows best. Its all about mom now.

The silent majority, the oppressed, the disenfranchised, life force being discriminated against, and disrespected today - are men. Man as hero - where has he gone? The closest thing we have these days to a heroic man are ….. males who appear to be geeks and nerds .The real endangered species these days are guys who are admirable, comfortable in their own skins, masculine without trying to be - guys, in short, who feel no need to jump up and down on couches ( uhh - he ain’t one of ‘em).

In my opinion the losers in this equation are the women. In the name of equality and feminism- women have begun to act like men. Look at an old episode of Murphy Brown. Then look at a current episode of a show that’s on TV today, Boston Legal - and compare Candace Bergen in both shows. Formerly she sounded, in the quality of her voice, like a woman.

Today she sounds like a MAN. Look at the clothes she wears on the show (again, think Hilary Clinton). She’s become manly…. A manly woman: The NEW WOMAN.

What’s being lost is the polarity between the sexes. La Difference: The celebration between the male energy and the female energy. Men have noticed this. But aren’t saying anything, because its not politically correct. Today, political correctness means celebrating feminine empowerment (think Sex and The City, Desperate Housewives, Army Wives ad nauseum), woman as goddess etc. - all the Oprah bullshit. And speaking of the goddess of ego-speak, Ms. Winfrey - why whatever happened to the studmuffin in your life - Steadman?

There is something about Oprah that is, to me, off-putting. Is it me or does her voice sound like that of a 12 or 13 year old boy’s? And her mannerisms, too, seem to me to lack femininity. In some strange way she seems devoid of womanliness.

I also believe and its mostly to do with her financial success, that Oprah is the pre-eminent role model of what it is to be a woman today. There is, to me, something scary about this, if its so. That has nothing at all to do with the success she’s become, nor with her fortune or her supposed independence. What’s scary to me is - HER- the woman she appears to be. There is nothing about her I find or am able to feel from her - of genuine warmth, or vulnerability. Nothing about her as a woman that is alluring to me as a man. I’m not sure she can be moved viscerally by male energy (unless perhaps it takes the form of jumping up and down on her couch). When it comes to the opposite sex, Oprah seems to be - somewhere else. To me she is a strange role model unless all a role model needs to be is fabulously wealthy. It has nothing to do with her color, or her girth; c’mon, I can see why Queen Latifa is a star - she’s a babe. She digs men. She’s a lady, too. But, Oprah as role model…. Like I said, to me, THAT IS SCARY. People tend to imitate role models. They try to model themselves after the way they see them behave. YIKES!!

Men are hungry for women who make them feel good. About them being men ….about them being themselves….about there being women in the world that they can be friends with, associates with and sometimes lovers with….relishing all those qualities that women have always possessed that have captivated, and elevated us as men that I no longer see absolutely any trace of on afternoon talk shows or in my living room any more watching TV.

I saw a Country & Western Awards show on TV some months ago. I noticed that all the women performers (Reba &co,) were singing songs that all had the same message: “I am woman, hear me roar” …“ I’m a powerful woman who doesn’t need a man” blah, blah, blah. At one point in the show Country superstar George Strait sang a song “HOW ABOUT THEM COWGIRLS.” And just for a moment - there it was! A man singing about the beauty that is WOMAN. Celebrating it ….singing about it/ admiring and loving the all that is the feminine energy in a country song. WOW!! He nailed it! He stopped the show.

I saw the faces of the men AND THE WOMEN in the audience. It was a moment - a baptism of LOVE / POLARITY and MUTUAL ADMIRATION- a celebration of the polarity between the male and the female energy! And it was so refreshing to see - just for that moment the absolute GRACE of the male and the female energy COMPLEMENTING ONE ANOTHER. And it had absolutely nothing at all to do with competition, with women acting like men, acting tough, or physically behaving as though “I’m gonna kick your ass!”

The truly, truly great love stories that I have seen in a motion picture theatre like CASABLANCA, A PLACE IN THE SUN, GONE WITH THE WIND, (The French Film) HAPPY NEW YEAR, SOUNDER, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, (even) THE ENGLISH PATIENT to name just a very few - are all centered around a man and a woman who love one another and whose love, each for the other is a COMPLEMENT the audience bears witness to that is the very essence of the grace that exists at the very center of who and what we are as human beings, male AND female: TOGETHER.

Yes, indeed and Amen, too. We need more a that kind of celebratin’. We need more a that: men being just men - and women actin’like …. well, then, there, now …… ACTIN’ LIKE WOMEN….INSTEADA’….. LIKE MEN.

..............

(Artwork of Kali in the article by Manohar Saini)

TRUE OR FALSE

by The Stranger

On6/1/08, in the Sunday Times was a book review of a new bio:
POSTHUMOUS KEATS, the life and work of poet John Keats who died at the age of 25, far from home, poor, in Rome. Family members were either dead, or estranged from him. The woman he loved was convinced they had no future together. He had no reputation, or success. What must it be like to die at that age, in those circumstances? The review mentions that today Keats “ranks with Shakespeare now, in talent if not in achievement, and the homes where he so suffered in Italy and England have become museums. His grave in Rome is a pilgrimage site, the poems he scrawled and saw decried are everywhere anthologized….and this Mozart of musical language has become the very emblem of romantic gain and loss.”

I was reminded of the same feelings of awe, admiration, and inspiration that I had reading DEAR THEO, Vincent Van Gogh’s book of letters to his brother and sole benefactor, Theo. Van Gogh sold just one painting during his lifetime. He also died destitute, alone, in obscurity. Who is “now a multimillion-dollar franchise on the auction block.”

I was driving down Robertson Blvd. this afternoon. And all of a sudden there was a pack of paparazzi surrounding a woman whose last name is Kardashian. I heard someone say “She’s famous for being famous.” And that “She comes from a wealthy family.” The paparazzi were behaving like she was someone important, and as though what they were doing at that moment was life and death. Paris Hilton, Nichole Richie, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan have become the new standard bearers. But - of what? The lust for fame? The greed for attention?

Keats and Van Gogh lived for the highest sense of a creative expression that each of them believed existed. They were willing to sacrifice their very lives on behalf of that possibility. They lived and died attempting to attain that pinnacle of achievement. And achieve it they did. But not during each of their lifetimes. The recognition, and acceptance; the success and the fame came to them only after they had gone. And what they left behind - the poems and paintings - thrills, moves and inspires us so today because they labored on behalf of a LOVE that had nothing to do with fame or wanting to be famous. And everything to do with Beauty. With Truth. With what it means to be Human in the fullest, deepest, richest sense of that word.
They left this for us, for all of us. What will someone like a Paris Hilton leave us? Or the Kardashian lady who is simply “famous for being famous?” What they seem to be leaving me with, even though neither one of them has gone anywhere, except perhaps to the nearest mall, is a sense of misdirected, misguided energy.

The great Russian filmmaker, Andrey Tarkovsky writes in his exceptional book Sculpting In Time that: “My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him.” What has this to do with fame and wanting to be famous.

(A Scene from Tarkovsky's film "Stalker")

My intention in this instance is neither to be, nor appear to be mean-spirited toward Ms. Hilton, nor Ms. Kardashian. And perhaps these words have nothing at all to do with anyone who aspires to celebrity and or fame over and above all else. But they do have to do with something we all are a part of and in the process of evolving together: the human condition. I suppose there exists a need in the world today for a Paris Hilton, a Britney Spears, a lady named Kardashian. But …..

Thank God for a Keats….a Van Gogh….A Tarkovsky. “By their works shall ye know them.” Read the poems …. Look at the paintings …. See just one of the films ….

------------Keats Room in Rome -------------------------Van Gogh's Room









-----Room from Tarkovsky's "Mirror"

"I am sorry, that with reverence I did not entertain thee as thou art"

by Yervand Kochar

At an early stage movies, and arts in general, were not, yet, divided into entertainment and pure art. The art for its own sake is a relatively new and in a way conventional concept.
I can't imagine Leonardo DaVinci thinking about whether he should entertain or create something of an eternal value. He did what he felt doing in tune with the sensibilities of his time and people.

Great art is always entertaining but
entertainment, even great entertainment,
cannot be art. In other words, Chaplin was entertaining and could have had his own late night show just like David Letterman but Letterman cannot be Chaplin.
By the same token, Shakespeare’s plays are entertaining and are great art at the same time.
Yet, numberless other plays at the Globe theatre in the 16th century London were probably even more entertaining to the public but they had never reached the level of mastery as the Shakespeare’s works did.

On the other hand, the entertainers of London theatres could very well do without Shakespeare (as they did before and after) but Shakespeare could not be possible without all the 16century theatrical entertainment.
All the great masters and masterpieces of great art were possible in the environments where the level of mere entertainment was elevated and stimulating.
The stronger the environment the stronger the master for the master and his art is a culmination of his and her surrounding.
Had Leonardo been not born during the cultural upheaval in Italy, were ordinary people’s interest and sensibility in visual arts was heightened and profound, he would have had less chances to flourish to the degree he did.

To understand the relation of art and entertainment it is helpful to clarify their etymology.
The very genesis of the English verb "to entertain" implies continuity for it is derivative from Latin inter 'among' and tenere 'to hold'. Entertain means to maintain, to continue. But what is it that it is supposed to maintain or to continue?
In Shakespeare's time and a little later the verb obtained an additional meaning that of 'maintaining in a certain condition', 'treating in a certain way', and/or 'showing hospitality'.
In "Henry VI", Part i, Shakespeare uses the verb with this new meaning,
"I am sorry, that with reverence I did not entertain thee as thou art".
The variations of meaning of the word point in a direction that implies a certain way of doing things, a way that needs to be preserved, a way 'it ought to be', a way it is worth to continue. This, in turn, implies a reality or a state of mind that needs to be entertained, or continued, or maintained. So one cannot entertain without a knowledge of the assumed reality or the knowledge of its existence. Entertainment is derivative of a reality beyond itself and is pointed to that reality.

It was only in the 18th century when the noun 'entertainment' implied a public performance intended to amuse an audience. Now, the word amusement was not equated to entertainment until the 17th century. Originally meaning 'deception', amuser came from the Old French, from a- expressing a causal effect and muser 'stare stupidly'. The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories notes: 'Current senses relating to entertainment date from 17th century at the time when the noun amusement (from French) is recorded meaning 'musing, diversion of attention'.

There is a fundamental difference between the concept of entertainment and amusement. The former leads to a reality beyond itself, the latter tricks the observer into believing that it is a self-sustained reality. Entertainment is a key to the unknown; amusement is using that unknown to lock the door and focus attention on itself.

This is the essence of magic tricks where an effort is put to make the audience believe (or muser -'stare stupidly') that the reality of the trick is self-sufficient. The trick does not move you to a reality beyond itself, it is not incentive to understanding the process that makes it possible because the process is that of a deception and delusion. It is literally, a 'diversion of attention" from a reality of its own process.

Amusement has elements of entertainment but unlike entertainment it does not lead to a higher form of expression, art. Entertainment depends on the elements of amusement, yet, by definition has to overcome them, or elevate them to next step.

Art depends on the entertainment.

This is why strong and solid entertainment is a sign of great art on the horizon.
This is why good entertainment is important. A cultural establishment cannot create an artist but it can create a solid foundation for an artist to build upon.
What happens today, in the movies and elsewhere, is a very perverted process. Solid entertainment is replaced by a strange extroverted showcase so unrealistically labeled as a reality show, barely acceptable entertainment is marketed as great art and great art is made impossible. In other words, amusement is considered entertainment, entertainment is elevated to the status of art and art is deemed unnecessary.

The quality of entertainment and its style feeds from the wholeness of cultural, political, economic and national factors and experiences. In our confused and relativist times when ambiguity of thought and inability to focus is sold as thoughtfulness, clarity is an archaic fancy. Our culture is a disguised pornography, politics is a partisan warfare, economics is permeated with fear and the idea of people as nation dismissed as fascism. Any attempt to create a clear and simple form of action and communication, whether in politics, economics or culture is met with a disarming 'Baby, it's not John Wayne's time anymore' line.

There are laws of human art are the are laws of Spirit and Nature. These laws are clear and simple, which allows for a complex human construction upon them. Those who do not understand the simplicity of laws create rules to complicate them and confuse complexity with perplexity. Complexity, though, is an elaborate simplicity. A complex, multilayer building is constructed by simple known laws and their variations, not by an ambigiuty and by laws of relaitvity. The constructions of the entertainment-industrial complex today are shaky and dangerous. The day is not far when this irresponsibly built lawless construction buries its occupants under its rubble.

The demand creates reality and we were trained to demand mediocrity. We have been taught to be satisfied with entertainment that does not resonate within us and does not move us in depth. We were indoctrinated to accept light with darkness and got used to living in a good apartment in a bad neighborhood. So, we pointlessly float on the surface in the hope that the good stream will take us to that lonely island not infected, yet, with the deseases of our time.
We comfort ourselves with a hope that artists will be artists anyway and will do their art regardless how low the common denominator is dropped for the culture in general. It is a very comforting thought, a false but comforting thought.














The same people who are responsible for littering the cultural highways wage an environmental war for pure arts. They scout for people who are not entirely in the gutter and proclaim them artists. This is the only reason why such a dull and fake movie as “There Will Be Blood” was proclaimed an American classic and socially concerned but essentially meaningless Paul Thomas Anderson as the new George Orson Wells.
This is why men conflicted about their sexuality are coined as leading male protagonists, hysterical women who overpower those men are elevated to a goddess status and mediocre directors are put in charge of the overall offensive.

The solid entertainment must have a direction. It should be a helpful push, a key to unlocking the door to mysteries of life through the arts. However silly and superficial, entertainment must be an emanation and an imitation of great art, a simpler formalistic expression of a complex source. It should be simplified for the masses in order for them to reconnect with the realities, which will require some extra steps to enter.

Today, the cheap and meaningless entertainment industry dictates our tastes and moods. Current entertainment is not just stupid; it is arrogant for it assumes to be more important than its source. Without a sense of direction and with proud self-gratification, it leads people away from a possibility to know arts and eventually to know themselves.
It also destroys the seeds of artistry in people who need a solid foundation and mileage on their way to mastery.
In its essence, all this silliness and glorification of dumb and dull is evil masquerading as entertainment. It is evil because it takes one away from good and there are no buffer zones or border states between good and evil. This is a reality from which the modern thought defended itself with a shield of relativism. Yet, there is no hiding from the fact that deceptive entertainment is not even an amusement but simply wrong and evil.

As all evil it has no staying power but possesses very strong marketing tools and an ability to undo good and delay great.

YOU DON’T MESS WITH MR. SUCCESS

by The Stranger

First off, the very first moment I saw Adam Sandler, and I believe it was his very first appearance on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, I remember thinking “This guy is FUNNY.” I’ve never felt that way, for example, about Will Farrell. If he is in a story that is funny, and in some circumstances that are funny, he can benefit from the assumption of the audience that it must be Mr. Farrell who is actually the funny component.
But it AIN’T him dat’s funny. Richard Pryor….. And the original comic genius of them all JONATHAN WINTERS….
These were funny individuals. All they needed to do to make you laugh is - to simply show up. I think of Adam Sandler in that same category, albeit to a lesser degree.

Pryor and Winters were comic genius personified. Exactly what Robin Williams has aspired to be, but ain’t, never was, never will be. I am worn out by his manic, forced life force within a moment or two of any exposure to him. And Chris Rock….He thinks that if HE acts as though he believes himself to be funny, then you will, too. He wishes he were Richard Pryor, but he’s not, never has been, never will be. He’s a shock meister, like Madonna, and he’s not funny in the same way she ain’t talented. Their talent is getting you to notice them, that they’re alive and on the planet at the same time you and I are. But once either of them has my attention - after two seconds I’m bored to death.

But getting back to Adam Sandler - could anyone other than him actually get a film made about a guy who is a terrorist fighter, who wants to be a hairstylist???? I haven’t seen "You Don't Mess with the ZOHAN", and I’m pretty sure I won’t. In spite of the fact that the premise of the film… well, I mean who couldn’t identify with the inherent universality of this premise RIGHT???? Where did he think this one up? But really, he’s already laughing all the way to the bank - he got Hollywood to go along with his goof: “ WOW - wait till I tell the guys.”





















And, oh yah - Mike Myers is also about to open in a new movie "The Love Guru". Who’s the first person YOU thought of when you saw the ad for the film? Did someone say to Mr. Myers: “Charles Manson. Now he’s funny!” Charlie baby ain’t, never was, never will be.

Whatever happened to great ideas and great possibilities as premises for movies - that inspired you and I to reach for the stars? By “stars “ - I don’t mean Adam Sandler or Mike Myers.
I mean the ones ABOVE.

CANNES' VOYAGE TO NEVERLAND

by Yervand Kochar

During the 1963 Moscow International Film Festival few had a doubt that Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” was not just a masterpiece but a milestone achievement that will signal a new epoch in filmmaking. The film was not merely contending for the Grand Prize; it was clear that no conventional prize can put a tag on the sheer artistic genius and refreshing power of the movie. Threatened by Fellini’s highly formalistic language, the Communist party’s movie department that was behind making the decisions of the festival, as usually, suspected something potentially harmful for the cause of the international proletariat. They began putting pressure on the head of the jury, a Soviet filmmaker Grigori Chukhrai not to award the Grand Prize to “8 ½ ”.

Chukhrai was in a tight spot. He had his share of problems with the system with his 1959 war movie “The Ballad of a Soldier” where he did not depict the Nazis as stupid animals but rather as a highly organized and evil intelligence. Because of that, some in the government tried to ban Chukhrai and tried to label him as a Nazi sympathizer.
They failed for, first, Chukhrai’s movies about the war were Soviet classics and Chukrai himself was a war hero who fought his way all the way to Berlin, involved virtually in every major battle of the war.
So when Chukhrai refused to back down the pack sensed an opportunity for a sweet revenge. Chukhrai claimed that depriving 8 ½ would not only be a blunt error of cinematic judgment but a political disaster for an A class festival. He claimed that when people see the movie in the West and learn that Moscow did not award it, the credibility of the festival would be ruined beyond repair. Chukhrai got into a power play with some very dangerous people who warned him that if Fellini gets the Grand Prize, Chukhrai will not be able to make another movie anytime soon, or ever…

Fellini’s ‘8 ½’ won the Moscow’s Grand Prize. It triumphed all over the world afterwards as a masterpiece acknowledged first at the Moscow International Film Festival. As a result, as promised, from now on Chukhrai had to fight for his every subsequent movie and was sabotaged and attacked for years to come.
It is easy to underestimate the magnitude of Chukrai’ sacrifice. Yet, it was tremendous. He bet his career, fame and ability to create his own movies for abstract ideals of truth and art. This was a character of the man who fought in World War , a man who saw and knew evil and never gave in to it. He was a real judge, a judge whose verdict meant something. His judgment of life and arts had a repercussion for him first of all. His judgment was substantiated by his character. He was responsible for his judgment and he paid for it dearly.
However great “8 ½” was, Chukhrai’s action made it even more precious.

Now, what are the power and the value of Sean Penn’s judgment as the President of the Jury of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival?
This is a man who within two years met with three tyrants and validated,(in an insignificant but well promoted way) regimes and people who have blood and repression of artistic and human rights as their basic operational procedure. Appointing Sean Penn as a grand judge of the Cannes film festival was like appointing Bonnie and Clyde as the secretary of treasury. Of all the politically active celebrities Sean Penn was the only one who made the same idiotic move three times in a row. If his fellow tyrant praising filmmakers, like Spielberg and Stone, had a crush on only one antiquated imbecile, namely Fidel Castro; Sean Penn felt that he needs to understand and shake hands with the whole trio- Castro, Ahmadenijad and Chavez.

I mean, Leni Riefenstahl was undoubtedly a much more talented filmmaker than Penn, but even Neo-Nazis would agree that she was not fit to judge a major film festival after she kind of misjudged (or was forced to by history) the real character of that Austrian psychopath.


Ok, let’s put Sean’s politics aside, after all, celebrities (not artists) are usually aligning on the wrong tracks of a political locomotive. This is natural since they both rotate in self-imposed sphere of worldly power and feel akin to each other’s contest to replace God.

Let’s leave the politics aside and see what are the artistic merits by which Sean Penn was considered to lead the pack of jurors in an attempt to set the tone for the contemporary world cinema. Let’s assume that he is a fine actor, since I don’t think anyone in their sane mind would claim him as one of the greats. (I personally think that he brings a nervous, irritating energy onto the screen…kind of like his pal Ahmadenijad to politics). But again let’s assume that he is a fine actor. Ok, but there are many fine even finer actors. So what separates Sean Penn from his colleagues, what is the criterion by which he is chosen to establish the trend?
He directed a movie, one may say. Oh, that’s right. Well, this surely separates him from the only twelve remaining fine actors who haven’t yet tried to direct a movie based on an ‘edgy’ screenplay. I mean, common, why didn’t they choose George Clooney as the president of the jury? He is another fine actor who directed a movie and also loves foreign dictators.

I just really care about this festival. There were times when Cannes was praising masters. People who came here to tell the world something that the world didn’t know or didn’t know how to express. This was a great cultural event that inspired people and made them see something that affected their minds and souls.

Today Cannes just signals the decline of the cinema as an art form. It shows how bankrupt the movies have become. And this probably, better than anything, explains the choice of Sean Penn as the chief justice of the festival. He is just perfectly representative of everything that went wrong with cinematic expression. The movies today communicate exactly what Sean Penn communicates through his life and on the screen: a confused and weak character moved by anger and immersed in despair; artistically dead and socially wired; cowardly to fight, yet, anxious to be in peace; unable to discern good from evil, relative in truth and absolute in fallacy …and above all impure in every single move.

It is this impurity that leads to the clinically bizarre fascination with tyrants and mass murderers like Che Guevara by weasels like Steven Soderbergh. I mean think about this Cannes’ usual. To be able to make a movie about his private proletarian murderer hero, Soderbergh must once in a while make a movie about the pinnacle of American capitalism, a Las Vegas casino. Again, it’s like Bonnie and Clyde making a home security system infomercial video. Oh, I get it, Soderbergh is just a genius. He is robbing capitalist Americans by selling them his crappy Ocean movies in order to make real movies about communist heroes. Now I get it. But, wait, doesn’t it make him a bit of a traitor? Actually, a big time traitor?
Shame on me! Now I sound like Senator McCarthy. Actually, yes, I am acting just like McCarthy. I am accusing a guy who made a move about a communist hero for being a communist sympathizer. That’s unfair to Soderbergh. I hope I don’t hurt his infantile hunger for an international revolution that proved to be a mass murdering failure, let’s see, only about every time it was applied.

If these filmmakers continue to be the moral and artistic compasses of our time, our next stop is an iceberg.

Cannes, actually, lost its virginity when they gave the Palme D’Ore to, a McDonalds ‘aficionado’ turned filmmaker, Michael Moore. His “Fahrenheit 911” was such a deceptive documentary that even professional Bush-haters detested it as a gross fabrication.
By the way, in the film Michael Moore went into great length depicting pre- invasion Saddam’s Iraq as Milton’s Paradise Lost. Rosy cheeked happy children playing as their happy and well dressed mothers watch them with humility… and (the part omitted by Moore) their fathers, the players of Iraqi national soccer team being tortured by Saddam’s sons Uddai and Hussei for loosing a World Cup qualifier to the Saudi Arabia team.

Not only did Cannes not bother to check the facts of Moore’s vomit, but it didn’t even consider that what they were making was not a political statement by an artistic community but a primitive and partisan attempt to affect a political election of a participant country. They basically ignored a tradition of a great movie event that always praised an independent artistic spirit, in favor of …yes, a vision of a hysterical political hack who made an election propaganda documentary. How disrespectful was that to the filmmakers of other countries that had to see their beloved festival sacrificed for the benefit of the American political infighting. Then we wonder why people hate America.

By the way the President of Jury that year, the man who awarded it to Michael Moore with a prideful smile, was, a guy who turned watching Blockbuster movies for free into an art form, Quentin Tarantino. Here is another psychopathic megalomaniac who marketed his sickness into a standard and was given the privilege to teach this year’s Master Class at Cannes. His major lesson to filmmakers was to demonstrate that after they tell you that you made it, you can begin swearing in the presence of people in tuxedos, tell them how great you are because you worked in a Blockbuster for a year and, yet, made it, as opposed to a mundane Chukrai, for instance, who spent four years in the trenches fighting the Nazis, then was banned by the Communists and, yet, made it. And, yes, I almost forgot, another precious lesson that Tarantino gave to the filmmakers. ‘Just do it’, he said, ‘just go ahead and do your f…g movie.’ Now, is that what you people call a Master Class? You don’t have to go to Cannes for this and spend a fortune on a hotel room. Nike has been saying this same crap on TV for years trying to sell their sneakers to kids in the ghettoes.

Wake up people! Antonioni was a master. Kurosawa was a master. These people, today, are just tricksters.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to say that because of their moral bankruptcy these people are not good artists. They have their talents, they have their moments but they are not masters. They are not people who are supposed to set the bar. And setting the bar is precisely what festivals like Cannes do. They set the tone and they tell what goes and what does not.

Cannes is in part responsible for the visionary development of the human race. By entrusting the wheel to a filthy mouthed boatswain Tarantino and a Persian pirate’s parrot Sean Penn, Cannes gradually takes its ship to the ‘Neverland’ of becoming an irrelevant film event that ignores real masters, people like Chukhrai who will prefer an oblivion to a festival that increasingly becomes to the art of movies what Michael Jackson is to child development.

(The image above is by artist David Shannon http://www.everypicture.com/show_product.php?id=2955&sc=1&sc=1)