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Sunday, April 13, 2008

FREE MOVIE REVIEW!!!

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WARNING: THIS MOVIE REVIEW IS FREE: DO NOT PAY FOR IT!

OK, OK, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO PAY FOR IT, SEND THE MONEY HERE

"THERE WILL BE BLOOD."

"CITIZEN KANE." "TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE." "CHINATOWN." "THE SHINING." "UNFORGIVEN."

Pretty good company: Orson Welles. John Huston. Roman Polanski. Stanley Kubrick. Clint Eastwood. Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, O'Neill, Miller, Williams.

I missed the first few minutes of this movie, and what I wanted to l know all through the film, it turns out, was only hinted at: The "Rosebud." The defining moment in the main character's past, on or off-screen, that set the narrative in motion. I went straight home from what was, alas, the last screening of this film state-wide, and hit the 'Net. It seems that the lost sled, the mother's love, the opening of a great emotional chasm, the itchy scabbing over of a cardiac wound, took place way, way off-screen. Or maybe it ended up on the floor. Let's hope it makes its' way onto the definitive DVD.

The mystery of Daniel Plainview is what drives him. In the beginning, it is his raw determination to wrest first silver and then oil from the bowels of the earth. This completely absorbs him in his early life, as depicted on the screen. He has no human connections other than his fellow prospectors, with whom he shares only the work, and the lucre. Then one of them is killed, and Plainview takes charge of the man's orphaned son. This is the beginning of Plainview's only real emotional relationship. But it also the beginning of a new phase in his life, as he becomes an entrepreneur, a con-man who uses his own adopted son as a shill to steal land from ignorant peasants.

Even as he came to hate the earth he conquered, Plainview begins to despise the people he cons. It is all too easy for him, this triumph of the will, first over the naked earth, and then over humanity itself. At this point, only God stands between Daniel Plainview and the fulfillment of his destiny, the final raw surge of power that will wrench out the very guts of his reality. God help anyone or anything that stands between Plainview and his destiny, if only for a moment.

His next turning point severs his connection to humanity entirely, as his adopted son is deafened by the explosion of an oil well. It is the Earth striking back at Plainview, and he is not up to the battle. He loses his son by failing to care for him. For all this, he blames God, or his minions on Earth. And now, like Lucifer, he will take them on. Like Cain, a la Citizen Kane, he kills his own brother. To cover up and profit from the crime, he does a devilish deal with the local false prophet, and wins his last great battle with Man and Earth. He completes his oil pipeline to the sea, standing like a demonic, greed-driven Moses overlooking the Promised Land. But it is all as ashes in his mouth.

He beat the Earth, he beat all mankind, but he could not beat God, in whom he does not even believe, despite his pretenses for business purposes. God's minions have humiliated him and forced him to crawl to them for his ultimate success. So it becomes an ultimate failure of the will, and his whole empire comes to mean nothing to him. Now it must end like a classic tragedy, with a Biblical doom. The madness that has always driven him to beat everything and everyone turns in upon itself, and Plainview destroys all he has worked for. He strikes out at the earth, at humanity, and at God, killing the false prophet who first took away his only son, and then humiliated him in his final moment of triumph. And now Plainview must face God's justice, to which the film leaves him.

This is not just the story of a man, but of all mankind. Those who pay attention will notice certain parallels to current events. The choice of oil as the means to power, and the cause of downfall, should bear especial meaning for Americans, today. We are all Daniel Plainview.
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MCCAIN TURNED ON TO GAY AUTHOR BY TEEN CRUSH

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REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE STILL MOONS OVER HIGH SCHOOL MAN-CRUSH

CONSERVATIVE SENATOR CITES EARLY "RELATIONSHIP" AS "MAN-MAKING"

"Good-Bye Mr. Chips" Or "Tea & Sympathy"?

"I was a punk. But I was his punk. We used to sit in his garden and read Somerset Maugham. He was the first person I wanted to see after I got back from Vietnam."

Socialist-Realist author Maugham, a life-long homosexual, wrote novels featuring gay sex, adultery, divorce, nymphomania, abortion, prostitution and bondage, none of which he condemned. He maintained an open relationship with a gay man from San Francisco throughout World War One, using him to gather material on other people's private lives. He was born in France, raised in a vicarage in England, studied in Germany, worked with Russian Communists during the Bolshevik Revolution, traveled in Manchuria, and lived in a villa in the south of France, maintaining a salon on the Riviera. When WWII broke out, he fled to Hollywood, where he spent the duration, acting as a paid British agent, attempting to draw America into the war. After his long-time companion died, Maugham "kept" a much younger man who had been kept by other older gay men, whom he later legally adopted as his son and heir. His later works focused on colonialism, Imperialism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, anti-war themes and the occult. He was a particular fan of devil-worshipper Aleister Crowley, and wrote an entire book about him. He also wrote for the theater, and was active in the London theatrical scene. Socialist "1984" author George Orwell claimed him as a major influence.

Obviously, a big influence on McCain. Bwa-ha-ha! Imagine the furor on the Networks if Obama had said this:

McCain the 'Punk' Goes Back to School







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inNBl6UV1TY


Somerset Maugham Biography
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