Radicals for Happiness is my blog dedicated to spreading things of value amongst likeminded people. The blog is implicitly Objectivist. I accept the principles of Objectivism, but the site does not promote Objectivism per se or engage in philosophical argument - it just takes it for granted that you may have read Rand or have some familiarity with her. Neither are the subjects I address, ranging from music, books, painters, websites and web resources, among other things, necessarily Randian or of interest to all Randians. For example, check out the posts on Orson Welles' Mercury Theater and the website Strange Maps. I will update this thread occasionally to list my most recent posts. Please check out the site, and post your comments if you enjoy it. Thanks.

These are last week's posts at Radicals for Happiness: Rita Hayworth and the movie Gilda, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, 25 Articles by Christopher Hitchens and a Link to a three hour interview with the fiercely pro-Western writer Ralph Peters.

Ted; This sounds like a great web site and I will look at it.

Ralph Peters did three hours on Book TV this month. I think it is archived on the Book TV web site.

Ted,

Good luck with your enterprise. It is a worthy one and I wish you all the success in the world.

I will be stopping in from time to time.

Michael

Ted,
Very nice. A mini-vacation. I like your factual yet enthusiastic reviews. Thanks.

Thanks, I really like the mini-vacation analogy. My thanks for all the comments. I'll make periodic updtaes of new posts.

Ted; I wanted to note that Gilda is available ON Demand from TCM. I think I will watch it.

I didn't even know that there was an On Demand TCM. I love that channel! You will not, could not possibly - unless you are a misogynistic music-hating Nazi-sympathizing nihilist, , be dissapointed.

Ted,

Skimming through your blog, I see a place for Quigley Down Under even though it is a late Romantic Western (1990) not in the West. It has all the elements of a Rand kind of story, with larger than life characters, including the music. I think it is an under-appreciated gem, which seems to be one of the themes of your blog.

Michael

Well, it's certainly well reviewed on Amazon, but I haven't seen it yet. Anything with Laura San Giacomo can't be all that bad. I'll have to check it out.

Ted; I am taking a break from Gilda but it seems like a great movie.

Rita Hayward is luscious and then some.

Be sure to let us know how it ends!

Here are the most recent posts at Radicals for Happiness:

BBC Radio 4 "In Our Time" with Melvyn Bragg

Strange Maps

Servalan "There are no women like me."

Betraying Spinoza

Ilya Repin "Pictures at an Exhibition"

Simpsons "Citizen Kang" 1996

Ultraman Lives!

Chris, have you finished watching Gilda yet? My two latest posts at Radicals for Happiness are Kim Novak in Bell, Book and Candle and Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose.

Yes; I finished Gilda. You might look at my blog where I have a posting about another Rita Hayworth movie. BTW; Gilda was wonderful. I have only see Bell, Book and Candle once but I love Novak in Vertigo.

There are two problems I have with Vertigo - again, Jimmy Stewart (although he's much better here than in Bell, Book & Candle) he's just no match for Novak - and the ending. I could kill Hitchcock over the ending. But her performance is top notch. My father strongly recommended Picnic when he found out I love Novak. (She looks uncannily like my mother.) He said I had to see the dance seen. A rather bad trashy naturalistic movie, but the dance scene, for all the two minutes it lasts, was good. I'll check out your blog. Thanks.

About Vertigo, see also here.

Yes, I largely agree with your criticisms. I did wonder how Stewart managed to get off the roof in the chase scene! I am no fan of Psycho, either. I think 39 Steps (well reviewed but rarely shown) and Marnie are undervalued. I'll review Marnie for Radicals for Happiness after I watch it again. I am keeping up with one post a day, so eventually I'll have to get to it.

Here are some of the most recent posts at Radicals for Happiness:

Experience Sergei Rachmaninoff, David Lean, Celia Johnson & Trevor Howard all together on one stage in Noels Coward's "Brief Encounter"

Also:

Michael Crichton "State of Fear"

Kerr Avon, Blake's 7's anti-Anti-Hero

Steven Pinker "http://radicalsforhappiness.blogspot.com/2008/09/steven-pinker-stuff-of-thought.html"

"The Morphodite" by M. A. Foster

Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose"

Hew Strachan "The First World War" DVD Set

Ronald Reagan "A Time for Choosing"

Don Lafontaine "The Voice" 1940-2008

I dig the site. Got a good kick out of "The Voice" and the comedy clip.

~ Shane

Thanks, Shane.

I'm curious, what is your avatar image?

Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer helmet. A writer by the name of James Silke gave life to a series of drawings by Frank Frazetta. Four books in all.

Death Dealer

If ever there was a man who lived by his own code and on his own terms, Gath of Baal was it. Of all the sword and sorcery stories I've read, watched or heard of, he is my favorite.

~ Shane

Thanks. I remember the painting of him mounted on the horse. I never did read the books - was more into sci-fi than fantasy.

I left these posts out of my last update on Radicals for Happiness:

The Loeb Classical Library: The Essential Stoics and Epicureans

Steven Pinker Stuff of Thought

Experience Sergei Rachmaninoff, David Lean, Celia Johnson & Trevor Howard all together on one stage in Noels Coward's "Brief Encounter"

The bailout blues got you down?

These are all the titles from the last three weeks at Radicals for Happiness

+ Star Trek "The Animated Series"
+ Frank Herbert "The White Plague"
+ Colin Wilson "The Mind Parasites"
+ Otters Holding Hands
+ Niven, Pournelle, "The Mote in God's Eye"
+ The Doctrines of Epicurus
+ Robert Heinlein "Starship Troopers" 1997
+ The Loeb Classical Library
+ Noels Coward's "Brief Encounter"
+ Michael Crichton "State of Fear"
+ Kerr Avon, Blake's 7's anti-Anti-Hero
+ Steven Pinker "The Stuff of Thought"
+ "The Morphodite" by M. A. Foster
+ Don La Fontaine "The Voice" 1940-2008
+ Ronald Reagan "A Time for Choosing"
+ Dune 1984 (Extended Edition)
+ Hew Strachan "The First World War" DVD Set
+ Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose"
+ Kim Novak in "Bell, Book & Candle"
+ Servalan "There are no women like me."

I will look at it.

Here were the August posts at Radicals for Happiness, of which Peters and BBC4 were most popular:

* Simpsons "Citizen Kang" 1996
* Betraying Spinoza
* Ilya Repin "Pictures at an Exhibition"
* Ultraman Lives!
* Strange Maps
* BBC Radio 4 "In Our Time" with Melvyn Bragg
* William-Adolphe Bouguereau
* My Soul is a Pack of Coyotes
* "Hate Can Be a Very Exciting Emotion"
* Barbara Stanwyck 1907-1990 the "Ball of Fire"
* Citizen of the Galaxy
* 25 Journeys with Christopher Hitchens
* Enjoy Ralph Peters "In Depth" on Book TV
* "Volver" 2006 Pedro Almodovar
* iGoogle: Mistranslating the World One Phrase at a ...

Here are the latest posts at Radicals for Happiness.

(Oh, and I'm waiting for my better half to watch that laura san giacomo movie, Michael.)

Posh Nosh

Piensa En Mi

Ravel's Bolero

She Dove Off!

Mists of Avalon

These are my most recent editions to Radicals for Happiness:

Frank Herbert The Santaroga Barrier

Walker's Marsupials of the World

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Calvert Watkins American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots

NEA Funds $1.3 Billion Poem

Bondage, Puppies, Flamenco, here are some of the newest posts at Radicals for Happiness.

Passion, Drama, Suspense, a forgotten fling, a length of cord and trhe outrage of feminists on three continents: Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down

A story of unrequited love, a style of dance that combines the grace of ballet and the energy of tap...is it Rand's lost novel To Lorne Dieterling? No, its The Flower of My Secret, the story of a passionate writer looking for just a little bit more out of life, and one night, at a dance recital where Miles Davis and Pedro Almodovar intersect, she finds it.



When Puppies Play

Ted,

It really is a joy seeing you do this.

Michael

Michael, I assume you must have liked the clip from Almodovar's film.

Do the Brazillians or Portuguese have a similar dance form?

Do you recommend any Portuguese language directors?

Can you yourself get Spanish movies w/o the subtitles? I can follow Italian with its mixed up vowels, but not Portuguese with its drunken sounding consonants.

Almodovar is easy to follow anyway since he is so dramatic - not talky or obscure. I can get about half the Portuguese I hear, but the parts I can't understand literally sound Polish with the sh and zh sounds and the nasal vowels. Indeed, "I don't speak Polish" would be written "yanhimião popolhscu" if it were transliterated into Portuguese orthography.

Michael, did you see the last post? Anyone who would like to contribute to the website is welcome. I will also edit and illustrate your post if you want. Send me an email here if you're interested. I expect my first outside contributors soon.

The latest from Radicals for Happiness:

Immortal? No. Eternal? That's up to You.

Doctor Who "Scream of the Shalka"

Patsy Cline on the 2008 Election

Ted,

I'll put something together soon for you. Unfortunately the best Brazilian audio-visual productions are in TV, not cinema. For many years (after the Carmen Miranda era) the government subsidized Brazilian movie-making and, in collusion with Hollywood, er... stimulus... to top government officials (through the efforts of one tireless backroom friend-of-Brasilia wheeler-dealer from Hollywood named Harry Stone), they practically wrecked the industry.

The idea was to make Brazilian productions that were so awful that the public would go see American ones. It worked, too. The government (through Embrafilme) paid good money to Brazilian filmmakers and encouraged them to make any kind of film they desired. There was no regard for the public since the filmmakers would get their money one way or another through loans that were backed by the negatives to their films.

In other words, a filmmaker filed an application at Embrafilme for a loan and pledged his film as collateral. Then he took half the money and bought personal real estate and spent the other half on what Brazilians disparagingly call "author-films." This term means that the producer-director was also the screenwriter. Then he pranced about pretending he was a big-shot Hollywood director until he released his production to the theaters. (Law provided for a minimum space for new releases, but this was for show to cover over the government's con game.) Nobody would go because the film would not make any sense (and what little did make sense was just terrible), left-wing critics would rave about a daring new film-making language, and the director would haul the negative over to Embrafilme and say, "I can't pay for the loan. Nobody came. Take this." Then the film would sit on the shelves forever more while he would apply for a new loan for a new film.

Producing such a turkey did not disqualify him from being eligible, either. On the contrary, a small group formed around Embrafilme producing one butt-ugly film after another. These dudes—and only these dudes after a while—were able to get financing. Corruptions settled in and these dudes became prolific turkey farmers.

There was a golden era before all this where a Brazilian-American private venture named Vera Cruz made some decent romantic films. They tried to turn tales from Brazil's Northeast badlands into the equivalent of the American Western and they did some very good work.

Here is a fair overview of the industry from Wikipedia: Cinema of Brazil.

Of course, there are some exceptions to the low quality of Brazilian films. Bruno Barreto ended up with Spielberg's ex-wife (Amy Irving) and now makes films here in the USA. At least his films have always had a recognizable storyline from the very beginning of his career.

Brazilian films are much better industry-wise at comedy and children's films by famous Brazilian TV stars (Xuxa, Os Trapalhões, etc.), but these are short-run successes to a very targeted audience and they do not export well. In the early years, there was a Brazilian version of the kind of slapstick work The Three Stooges did, Oscarito.

Probably the best formula Brazil ever came up with for movies was called the pornochanchada. This was a genre in the 70's of lightly erotic comedies, often with a strong dramatic element. The critics called it sexploitation, but it was strictly soft-core. Actually, the critics killed it through excessive sneering and now these same critics usually lament the golden days when Brazilians actually went to see some Brazilian movies. If you want to have an idea of what this kind of this kind of movie is, the last pornochanchada I saw was an American production, although it is not classified as pornochanchada: Striptease with Demi Moore. All the essential elements are there. If you change the background to Brazil and replace the American actors and actresses with Brazilian ones, you can leave the rest identical and it would be a first-rate pornochanchada.

I will try to remember something good from down there, something specific, but it's a tough order.

btw - Did you check out Quigley Down Under?

Michael

Thanks for the informative response. Sounds like they ran their movie industry the way we want to run our banks.

Quigley will have to wait until my boyfriend is in the mood to rent it from netflix, but it is on the list, and you can post about it on R4H if you like, send me an email.

Here are the latest posts at Radicals for Happiness:

Mike Erickson on Callista Pappas at the Crossfit
Games.

The Klezmer Roots of "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

Women with Guns: Johnny Guitar and Women on the Verge of a Nervoius Breakdown

Ted; Johny Guitar is childhood movie I saw and never forgot.

It should be mentioned that the woman who was the verge of a nervous breakdown was not the Joan Crawford character, Vienna, but the Mercedes McCambridge character. I think Mercedes became Hollywood's crazy lady.

Here are the next three postdated posts, of which I am particularly proud, at Radicals for Happiness:

James Blish "A Case of Conscience"

Dos Best Friend: "Ratchet's Reprieve"

Umm Kulthum "The Ruins"



PS Michael, Quigley is not available on Netflix

Here are three more posts at Radicals for Happiness:

Tuchman The Guns of August

"Yaadein" a Bollywood Treat

John Collier "The Essence of Femininity"

If you'd like to contribute (I well do editting and add images if you like) please email me for an invitation.

Ted,

It is available on your computer if you have broadband. Free.

Here and here if the first doesn't work too well.

I don't know what arrangement these sites have with Hollywood, but they are too common and too big for them to be entirely bootleg. The domain to OVGuide, where these sites advertise and are advertised (among a truckload of others), is registered right smack in the middle of Beverly Hills. Do a Whois check and you can see for yourself.

Michael

I have tried such sites before and they cause crashes. Don't know if it's because I have a Mac, but do have jee four with OSX and broadband

Ted,

G4 is overkill for streaming video.

I presume your broadband is hefty.

The crash might come from not enough RAM (which would be weird on a G4) or a firewall kicking in. Or maybe the Mac doesn't like the ads that pop up on these kinds of sites. They tend to be intrusive, but they are not malware (at least I have not encountered malware the few times I used OVGuide).

Since the film is cut up into segments, I don't see too much of a problem with size. The first link looks a hell of a lot better than the second (it appears to be hosted in Italy). The second is God knows where.

Michael

Here is a bonus post, The Fate of Aino, Finnish Maiden





Here is a bonus post, The Fate of Aino, Finnish Maiden

Check out my cool new logo at Radicals for Happiness

Kind and Generous

I would like to be beautiful I love beauty, I do, I love it when I see it in others. Happiness, like Marilyn Monroes contagious mirth.

External appearance is superficial.

Ba'al Chatzaf

External beauty is beautiful.

Sure it's on the surface, but what's wrong with surface? We all have one.

Michael

Emphasis on external physical beauty is a futility. If we live long enough we will shrivel and become ugly. If being beautiful is important then so is dying young. Ideas are much more important than looks.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob,

Try having an inside without an outside.

That I want to see.

(Hint: You can have beauty with both. It is silly to blame one for not being the other.)

Michael

"At fifty everyone has the face he deserves."

-George Orwell

I'm holding up pretty good, in spite of the hair thing. Is it true that it all will go to hell on my 70th birthday?

--Brant