tobytylersf
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6 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - Will Ben Mankiewicz Be... · 0 replies · +1 points
6 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - Top 10 Movies That Tak... · 0 replies · +1 points
7 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - Top Ten Greatest Chris... · 0 replies · +1 points
7 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - 25 Greatest Christmas ... · 0 replies · +2 points
7 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - Dear Hollywood: It's O... · 2 replies · +6 points
I'm still in love with Hollywood, but the one I'm in love with died years ago. She was great, and I still get to see her wonderful products every night, and can pause them when I need to get more popcorn. The real masterpieces are still there on DVD, thank God.
8 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - Howard Zinn, Intellect... · 1 reply · +2 points
I don't know what Eddie and the Cruisers is, though. Was there a Toby Tyler in that one? My post name comes from the book (and later film) about the boy who ran away and joined the circus, just like I did many years ago. I'll have to look up Eddie, et al. and see what it's about. Thanks!
8 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - Howard Zinn, Intellect... · 3 replies · +2 points
Facts are such troublesome things, aren't they?
As for Mao's China being a truly people's government -- I can't count how many Chinese I've met over the years who have relatives who were murdered by that same "people's government." There are 60 million graves in China as a result of that people's government's actions, ten times more slaughter than Hitler committed in Europe.
This Zinn sounds like a complete loon, frankly. But there's no shortage of loons here in America, is there? Freedom does indeed have its cost.
8 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - Dead End America · 0 replies · +2 points
My own take re: poverty and crime came from my own experiences with poverty. When I was a kid, my parents split up and my mom moved us into a housing project, which was all we could afford. Everyone there was, of course, poor, but I knew of no neighbors who were engaged in crime. If there was any common thread among the inhabitants, it was religion. People who were poor tended to be the most avid churchgoers, and all of our neighbors had pictures of Jesus and/or crucifixes hanging on their walls (since it was in the heart of Cajun Louisiana, most people were Catholics). One could argue that the values they held kept them honest, I suppose. Also, I recall most of my former neighbors going on to work their way through trade schools and/or local colleges, which in turn enabled them to become more successful and eventually move out of the projects. None of them stole their way out of it.
The only poor people we saw engaging in crime were in the movies, like the one you listed (you've only seen Dead End a couple of weeks ago? What is it with people in the movie business not watching movies? I guess you're either in the movies or you go to the movies, eh?). The point is: movies are fiction. They're basically parables, used to grind whatever ax the writer/producer/director was into. I've seen other movies about poverty -- The Grapes of Wrath, Tobacco Road are two that come to mind -- which show people who are poor who do not "automatically" gravitate toward crime as a solution. But then, John Ford wasn't a socialist.
I remember watching Dead End on television when I was a kid living in the projects, and I never thought that poverty led to crime. It just wasn't a message that made sense to me, because I didn't see any real people succeeding as criminals, nor did I think that just because my family was poor we were somehow failures, or even doomed to stay poor. Now, for example, I'm underemployed, and living in reduced circumstances, but it hasn't once entered into my mind that the solution would be to become a criminal. That's not something that poor people do, it's something that immoral people do. Assuming that poor people are also immoral smacks of class hatred to me.
The other thing I learned from being poor is that the poor aren't socialists. Socialism was an idea born in the comfortable middle class, after all -- Karl Marx wasn't poor. People who are a few steps removed from reality, like millionaires and the petit-bourgeois, come up with some goofy ideas. But then, idle hands can be the devil's workshop, eh?
Thanks again for a good post. And you should watch more old movies!
9 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - 25 Greatest Christmas ... · 0 replies · +1 points
Jeeze, the taste of you youngsters...
9 weeks ago @ Big Hollywood - 25 Greatest Christmas ... · 0 replies · +1 points
A great movie! It's always been my favorite movie version of A Christmas Carol. I can't sit through the last ten minutes of the film without weeping for joy.
I'll be curious to see the rest of the 25th best Christmas movies. My own favorites include We're No Angels (with Humphrey Bogart), Comfort and Joy, and the one you listed today, Scrooge. Merry Christmas!
Ruckus