James Woods is like a force of nature. When he’s on the screen he virtually blows away most of the people with whom he shares that screen. His staggering versatility also marks him as one of the few true actors in the industry. Here are some of the movies which harnessed Hurricane Woods:
VIDEODROME (1983)
Role: Max Renn, cable television entrepreneur
Comment: Sorry to start with such an obvious choice but I’m amazed that there are still people out there who haven’t seen this movie. David Cronenberg’s patented body horror and other surreal visuals needed a thespian who wouldn’t fade into the woodwork among them. Woods as the intense, sleazy Max Renn fit the bill perfectly.
James proved you don’t need to be twitchy and leering to portray a character who is virtually amoral in his pursuit of money, kinky thrills, Deborah Harry … and the ultimate underground broadcast called Videodrome. Anticipating the Deep Web, there was this magnificent film about how – before the internet came along – it was cable television that was considered a doorway to the forbidden and the depraved.
A cable titillation peddler tries to locate and strike a broadcast deal with a seeming Snuff Show called Videodrome. The sinister parties behind the pirate broadcast are the ultimate villains for the time period, and Cronenberg’s treatment of them shows that SUBTLETY can be more effective than hammering your audience over the head. LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH! Continue reading
Here at Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog I can certainly understand hostile feelings toward given presidents. Regular readers know how much I despise George W Bush and Barack Obama, but I also pointed out when I thought negative stories about them were absurdly over the top. With de facto Third Party President Donald Trump it’s like the media did nothing BUT absurdly over the top stories about him that fell apart under the most casual scrutiny. This most recent example involves the lie about Russia and bounties (links below) which turned out to be as untrue as all of the “Russian collusion” nonsense. 
Non-partisan journalist Sharyl Attkisson, the Ida Tarbell of the 21st Century, has catalogued 
Now come revelations about the utter falsehood of last year’s media hit pieces claiming that Putin was offering bounties to Taliban troops in Afghanistan, and that Trump was aware of it and did nothing. Now the media – and America’s forever-vile “intelligence community” – have walked back those ridiculous claims. THE BOUNTY OFFERS NEVER HAPPENED, so there was nothing for Trump to know, but hey, they got to damage Trump close to the election by implying he answered to Putin and was letting him offer bounties on U.S. troops. 
Back to the Russian Bounty lies – here’s an excerpt from a terrific article (link below) about that miscarriage of intelligence work and “journalism.” FAKE NEWS is an accurate description of what America’s corporate media inflicts on the public. 
“At the time the Russia Bounty story was an obvious and blatant lie, an unconfirmed report, a manufactured narrative to undermine one of Trump’s many presidential strengths — in this case, his affection for the U.S. military and his string of foreign policy success at making the world a safer and more peaceful place.
Back to athletics, Corporate Sports don’t just publicize the issues the Democrats want publicized they even advocate for or condemn particular political candidates AND SPECIFIC PIECES OF LEGISLATION now. Democrats who get elected with the aid of such support are not likely to pass legislation hurting their corporate fascist allies in the major sports franchises. And the Corporate Sports Leagues know that political favors will keep coming as long as they mouth Democrat talking points. The clueless buffoons who run the Republican Party are irrelevant because of their mindless reverence for “the Free Market” (LMAO). 
Yes, the misleadingly named Antifa (really KLANtifa) continues to riot. Saturday night roughly one hundred members of the fascist hate group set fire to a federal building in Portland with employees still inside. (link below) In March, Antifa set fire AGAIN to the Federal Courthouse in Portland. 
Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats continue to pretend “Antifa is just an idea” – which is typical of their non-response to problems they are unable or unwilling to come to grips with. So America is now even more like a Third World country, complete with masked groups of violent predators striking at their targets on a regular basis. 
PART FIFTY-FOUR – There was no February issue of James Larkin Pearson’s version of The Fool-Killer in 1912, so we resume with the March issue, put together with Pearson’s new printing machinery. The Fool Killer’s targets this time around included: 
THE LAST DAYS OF PATTON (1986) – George C Scott SINGS! Yes, an ENTIRE SONG while camping it up like he’s in a vaudeville revue! 
Roughly half of the movie is spent with the great George C Scott in a hospital bed, like we’re watching Whose Life Is It Anyway, Ya Pusillanimous Sons of Bitches? Scott is always watchable, and really shines here, but the other actors have no room. With such a gigantic figure – real-life Elmer Fudd voice aside – it may have been like that in reality, too. Sharing any stage with the likes of George S Patton must have been suffocating for one’s own ego. 
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog takes another look at Joe Biden’s corruption, incompetence, senility and hatred of the working class & the poor. Will he be even worse than America’s last “selected and not elected” president, the execrable George W Bush? Who knows? 
Silence is consent, Democrats tell us. 
GARRISON TALES FROM TONQUIN (Tonkin): AN AMERICAN’S STORIES OF THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION IN VIETNAM IN THE 1890s (1895) – Written by James O’Neill. Seven years ago here at Balladeer’s Blog I examined Washington Irving’s 1809 work 
In a similar spirit, I am now examining Garrison Tales From Tonquin, published in 1895 and written by American James O’Neill, who had served in the French Foreign Legion during the 1880s and early 1890s. Just as Washington Irving was ahead of his time with his sentiments in The Men of the Moon, James O’Neill was ahead of his time in regard to his observations on the French occupation of Vietnam during and after the Sino-French War. Readers in 1895 who were expecting Kipling would have found O’Neill to be virtually his polar opposite.
I found it staggering to read 1890s accounts written by an American fighting man in Vietnam reflecting on the ugliness and ultimate futility of the military situation. So much of O’Neill’s fictionalized accounts of his real-life experiences in Vietnam read like something from an author in the late 1960s or later using such a tableau as an allegory for America’s involvement in Indochina. 
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