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MOVIES AND TELEVISION

Alyssa Lappen on Clarence Thomas *****

Alyssa A. Lappen
5.0 out of 5 stars Profile in Courage

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2021

After reading Saturday evening that Amazon had removed this documentary from its rental streaming library, and next from its inventory of DVDs available for purchase, I immediately rented it from Vudu.

By censoring this film, Amazon proved Clarence Thomas correct and, moreover, guaranteed the film’s unrivaled success on other platforms.

I remember the Clarence Thomas hearings. I was then a senior editor at Working Woman.

This is a phenomenal report, regardless of your standing on the political spectrum, and it is a testament to human strength and the true tenor of courage.

Exceedingly well-documented, it tells of Thomas’ rise from an impoverished backwater in rural Georgia, with the help of his loving, wise, no-nonsense grandparents, illiterate though they were.

Through a grueling educational process he learned he had no choice but to achieve 100 percent 100 percent of the time.

‘Minari’ Shares One Family’s American Dream Of Yearning To Belong By Josh Shepherd

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/26/minari-shares-one-familys-american-dream-of-yearning-to-belong/

Director Lee Isaac Chung and co-star Yuh-Jung Youn discuss ‘Minari,’ a drama that shows the importance of family ties and faith in the American experience.

After five decades on-screen, 73-year-old actress Yuh-Jung Youn has been winning global accolades this year. In “Minari,” released Friday via on-demand platforms, she co-stars as a no-nonsense grandmother — not unlike herself — in the story of an immigrant family that moves to Arkansas to pursue the American dream.

Youn demurs when asked how the film speaks to current events. “I’m sure everybody has a different opinion,” she told me in an interview. “Always when I have a premiere in [South] Korea, they ask: ‘What message should we get from this movie?’ But I’m not some kind of crusader! If people feel something or are moved by this movie, I’ll be very grateful.”

Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung loosely based the story on his childhood, when English and Korean were spoken interchangeably at home. In the mid-1980s, his father (fictionalized as Jacob in the film) bought a plot of land in Lincoln, Ark. aiming to raise a farm — and a better life for his family.

His wife Monica isn’t so convinced their sacrifices will be successful. Their children, seven-year-old David and older sister Anne, are alternately diverted by and complaining about their unfamiliar new home.

Awards buzz for “Minari” has come in part due to what many consider to be a snub. The Golden Globe Awards, to be telecast on Sunday night, nominated it in their Best Foreign Language Film category. Yet that association did not consider it for Best Film, despite being shot in Oklahoma by an Asian-American filmmaker. Insiders await Oscar nominations on March 15 to see if it fares better with the Academy.

Amazon Strips Clarence Thomas Documentary From Streaming Service During Black History Month By Tristan Justice

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/26/amazon-strips-clarence-thomas-documentary-from-streaming-service-during-black-history-month/

Amazon stripped a documentary on conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black justice currently serving on the Supreme Court, from its streaming service during Black History Month.

“This video is currently unavailable to watch in your location,” the website reads when the title is clicked.

While this article is being written in Denver, the outage appears nationwide, also reported by Breitbart News.

Amazon appeared to drop the PBS title, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” while still promoting a wide array of feature films under the category of Black History Month such as “All In: The Fight For Democracy,” with Stacey Abrams and two movies on Anita Hill, Thomas’ accuser of sexual misconduct who attempted to derail his confirmation. All come free to stream with a Prime membership.

The Thomas documentary released in January last year remains available to purchase on DVD. A simple search for “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” comes up short for the title however. To find it, users must include “DVD” in the search box, and the documentary will come up as the 10th result. A search for “RBG” on the other hand, will bring three documentaries on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s documentary to the top after promoting a sponsored post of her biography, “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.

The company built by Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, has only escalated its censorship of political dissidents to the progressive world order.

Just this month, the massive online retailer wielding unprecedented power over the digital public square deplatformed conservative scholar Ryan Anderson and his book, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement.”

Obama’s New Muslim Podcast: Allah’s “Throwing Shade at Jews and Christians” Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/02/obamas-new-muslim-podcast-allahs-throwing-shade-daniel-greenfield/

Obama’s gotta do something with his time besides serving as the facade for a bunch of white socialists looking to wreck America. Besides that job only pays in the low six figures, so he’s got contracts with Netflix and Spotify through his own production company. 

The Obama podcasting game includes talking about how racist the country is to fellow working-class millionaire hero Bruce Springsteen, and this Muslim podcast.

Barack and Michelle Obama have their Ramadan plans ready.

The couple, who have spent the years since Barack’s US presidency came to an end focusing on developing multi-platform media projects, announced a new season of their Higher Ground podcast called Tell Them, I Am, which will feature a collection of narratives from Muslim voices.

No, Obama’s not actually in it. 

Produced by the Obamas, the pod will be hosted by Misha Euceph, a first-gen Pakistan-American and exclusively available on the platform, launching on the first day of Ramadan.

Euceph also appears to have hosted a Koran book club on Instagram. Here’s the description of one episode.

God is still throwing shade at the Jews and Christians this episode of #quranbookclub 

Meanwhile, social media is purging conservatives. But this sort of thing can help you get a podcast produced by Barry.

Reagan: The Movie — Finally By John Fund

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/reagan-the-movie-finally/

A great movie about the Gipper is in the works, and none too soon.

Saturday was the 110th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Just the day before, I spent some time in California with the team that is finishing a new movie on his life. It’s the first time that a film company has been allowed access to the Reagan Ranch and the nearby Reagan Library for such a project.

When Reagan: The Movie appears in theaters twelve months from now, America will have the big-budget film about the Gipper that should have made a long time ago. The telling of Reagan’s inspiring story and America’s rebound may have been delayed, but it will never be more timely. (You can find out more about the project at reaganmovie.com.)

Just watching 66-year-old Dennis Quaid (The Right Stuff, Soul Surfer) stride through the Reagan Ranch in a cowboy hat and jeans makes you realize the casting for this movie is perfect. Penelope Anne Miller (Carlito’s Way, Kindergarten Cop) is also a smart choice to play Nancy Reagan. The rest of the cast includes Jon Voight, Lesley-Anne Down, and Robert Davi.

New Documentary Reveals the Character Behind Thomas Sowell’s Brilliant Economics By Stacey Lennox

https://pjmedia.com/culture/stacey-lennox/2021/01/31/new-documentary-reveals-the-character-behind-thomas-sowells-brilliant-economics-n1419638

A documentary chronicling the life and work of Thomas Sowell narrated by Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley has now been released for public viewing. It is a preview of Riley’s written biography of Sowell titled Maverick, which will be released May 25, 2021, and is available for pre-order now. Sowell, a brilliant economist known for his conservative views, has published his work widely but has remained personally somewhat reclusive.

Riley previewed his work in an interview with Dave Rubin. Riley has known Sowell for about 15 years and became familiar with his work during college when he debated affirmative action. A classmate said he sounded like the famous economist.

Rubin and Riley talked about how Sowell’s work had influenced their thinking even though they had already been on their way to supporting economic freedom before reading Sowell. Sowell’s work reinforced their own ideas. Riley also said that Sowell’s work and willingness to engage in public debates on issues related to race and economics made it easier to be a black conservative. He says he gets far more support today than Sowell received earlier in his career.

The documentary begins with Sowell’s childhood and his birth in South Carolina. He was orphaned at a young age, and a great-aunt and her daughters took him in and raised him. To provide young Thomas with greater opportunity, they moved north and settled in Harlem in New York City. A family friend took him under his wing and introduced him to the public library, which opened a new world to the young boy.

When Mob Inciters Become Lions of the Left An Aaron Sorkin film celebrates the Chicago Seven for plotting an attack on a party convention.By Helen Andrews

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-mob-inciters-become-lions-of-the-left-11610558248?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Chicago Seven were countercultural heroes in the 1960s. They thumbed their noses through one of the country’s most notorious political trials, taunting the judge and making a mockery of the proceedings with flippant courtroom pranks. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed a movie about them last year, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which will probably win a few Oscars.

One thing people forget about the Chicago Seven is that most of them were guilty. Jerry Rubin admitted as much later: “We wanted disruption. We planned it. . . . We were guilty as hell. Guilty as charged.”

The crime they were accused of was crossing state lines to incite a riot. The defendants believed that Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 nomination for presidency was illegitimate. Nominations in those days were decided not by primaries but by backroom deals among party power brokers. The antiwar movement believed that a more democratic process would have produced a candidate opposed to the Vietnam War.

The question was whether the violent clashes between protesters and police outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago were an unfortunate consequence of peaceful marching that got out of hand, or whether the organizers intended for things to get violent.

Greatest Events of WWII in Colour

https://www.netflix.com/title/80989924

Release year: 2019

From the attack on Pearl Harbor to D-Day, the most pivotal events of World War II come to life in this vivid docuseries featuring colorized footage.

Pearl Harbor. 50m. …
Battle of Midway. 50m. …
Siege of Stalingrad. 51m. …
D-Day. 50m. …
Battle of the Bulge. 50m. …
Dresden Firestorm. 51m. …
Liberation of Buchenwald. 50m. …
Hiroshima. 50m. To avoid a protracted ground war, the U.S. uses atomic bombs against Japan, causing unprecedented devastation — and changing the course of history.

Showtime’s Pathetic Exercise in Reagan Bashing By Alvin S. Felzenberg

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/showtimes-pathetic-exercise-in-reagan-bashing/amp/

The network’s The Reagans doc traffics in misstatements, partial truths, and strategic omissions to pin Trump’s rise on the late president.

In making its programming decisions for the interval between the end of the 2020 presidential election and the holiday season, the top brass at Showtime reverted to what had once been standard fare in Hollywood and elsewhere: Reagan bashing. Over four successive Sundays, the network released yet another hour of its tedious and repetitious documentary, The Reagans.

Warning to the uninitiated: Do not mistake what comes before you as an update of anything like PBS’s extraordinary presentation of Reagan and his era as part of its “American Experience” repertoire. What you see on Showtime is neither objective history nor a fair-minded attempt to review past controversies through the perspective of the present. Its creator, Matt Tyrnauer, to his credit, is straightforward about that. He is a man with a mission.

His thesis is simple: that Ronald Reagan, through a series of “dog whistles,” carefully woven into his rhetoric, paved the way for Donald Trump’s angrier form of populism, with policies that promote white supremacy as the intended legacies of both presidents. Whatever history’s final judgment of Trump may be, few would doubt that this is a lot to pin on Ronald Reagan. In comparing the two presidents, the creators overlook some essential facts: Reagan twice won the presidency in two landslides, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College. Trump twice lost the popular vote and prevailed in Electoral College once and narrowly. Hidden in the numbers are the hopes and expectations the American people placed in both presidents and how the presidents regarded them.The only obvious similarity the documentary draws between Reagan and Trump is that both were entertainers. Both knew how to reach and move audiences, the filmmakers say — as if the calm reassuring Sunday night host of G.E. Theater, who entered into American living rooms every week after Ed Sullivan for eight years, was anything like the carnival-barking star of reality television, famous for his loud utterance of the two words: “You’re fired!” Both had audiences, but they related to them in different ways.

China: The Conquest of Hollywood by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16842/china-films-hollywood-censorship

One Hollywood producer told PEN America that suggestions for projects critical of China aroused the fear that “you or your company will actively be blacklisted, and they will interfere with your current or future project. So not only will you bear the brunt [of your decision], but also your company, and future companies that you work for. And that’s absolutely in the back of our minds.”

“It’s not just the Hollywood issue, it’s not just the tech issue, it’s not just the basketball or the sports issue, or various other industries. … It’s all across the board. To get products and services into that market, there are certain rules you have to play… so they allow you access to the consumers. But those processes… have gotten worse and worse… and more amplified over time…. [It]has got to the point where we either need to stop it now and fight back, or we are just going to lose….” — Chris Fenton, Hollywood executive and author of Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business. voanews.com, October 16, 2020.

The problem is much larger than just the movie business.

In October, for the first time, China overtook North America as the world’s largest film market. “Movie ticket sales in China for 2020 climbed to $1.988 billion on Sunday, surpassing North America’s total of $1.937 billion, according to data from Artisan Gateway. The gap is expected to widen considerably by year’s end,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter on October 18. “Analysts have long predicted that the world’s most populous country would one day top the global charts. But the results still represent a historic sea change”.

“The day has finally arrived when China is the world’s No.1 film market, surpassing the box office total of North America for 2020,” said the authorized government portal site to China, published under the auspices of China’s State Council Information Office, also known as the CCP’s Foreign Propaganda Office, China.org.cn, in a self-congratulatory article, “China officially the world’s biggest film market.” The article, published on October 20, went on to mention the Chinese blockbuster, The Eight Hundred, a WWII movie about a group of Chinese soldiers under siege by the Japanese army, which was the highest grossing film in the world in 2020, as well as a handful of other Chinese-made films scheduled for release in the final quarter of 2020.