Hooray for ISIS! It's Not What You Think

Lets go ISIS! Before you get all worked up and think I’ve gone over to the dark side, let me assure you I am not advocating for Islamic terrorists. Rather, I am rooting for my latest stock acquisition, Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS).

I was dumbstruck when my broker called four weeks ago suggesting Isis for my portfolio. Who knew there was a drugmaker unfortunate enough to share a name with a most vile organization whose idea of pain relief is to lop off one’s head? Anyway, I trust Annette to do the right thing so I approved the purchase at $49.74 a share. When she called Friday to secure approval for an additional purchase, Isis shares had already jumped to $65.09. 

You can talk to your own financial advisor about Isis, but make sure you note you’re inquiring about the pharmaceutical company, not the Islamic State. 

Gilda and I saw the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything last week. Extraordinary performance as Hawking by Eddie Redmayne, but more to the point, how can one not feel inconsequential after seeing Hawking overcome adversity that easily would defeat even the most resilient and strong? Hard to say, “I can’t” after observing his travails and his success.

Speaking of movies, and overcoming troubles, Exodus; Gods and Kings is on my must see list, not because it received great reviews (it didn’t) but rather to see how Hollywood messed with a good (not great) picture, 1956’s The Ten Commandments. As filmdom again has discovered with the less than fanciful new Annie, remakes most often are not worth the updated time and effort (though, to be truthful, the Cecil B. DeMille-Charlton Heston-Yul Brynner Ten Commandments was a talkie version of the director’s 1923 silent screen epic). 

I’ve previously acknowledged my devotion to Davy Crockett so I was thrilled to see Turner Classic Movies, in a deal with Disney, will be airing tonight the Fess Parker Disneyfication of his life. But it will be important to remember some Davy Crockett truths, as reported here some three and a half years ago:

According to a biography by Chris Wallis, Crockett was an illegal immigrant to Texas who wound up at the Alamo not by choice but through assignment by those fomenting rebellion against Mexico, the rightful owner of Texas. 

Though Parker’s portrayed Crockett as humble, Wallis noted he was not above self-promotion, even attending a play about his exploits. 

Crockett was sympathetic to Native Americans, but apparently not to the plight of Afro-Americans. He served two terms in the U.S. Congress, only to be swept out of office after he broke with President Andrew Jackson for the latter’s treatment of the Cherokee Nation and their forced removal from Tennessee land granted them by treaty. 

Crockett went to Mexico-owned Texas to help American settlers who wanted to build plantations worked by slaves. Only trouble is, Mexico did not permit slavery. At age 49, Crockett died at the Alamo in San Antonio. He did not choose to go to the Alamo. He had joined the local militia and had been assigned to defend the mission. 

Sticking to the entertainment theme, the literary world and by extension the film and TV industries are lucky the Internet wasn’t around 150 or 100 or even 50 years ago. Otherwise, we might not have the spy novels of John LeCarre who demonized the Russian KGB. Or we wouldn’t have Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 spoof of Hitler, The Great Dictator. Or the 1939 Warner Bros. flick, Confessions of a Nazi Spy. 

Those books and movies, and many, many more would not have been produced and distributed if executives followed Sony’s example of acquiescence to North Korea’s demand to shelve The Interview, a farce about an assassination plot against the country’s leader. 

Yes, Sony has been damaged by North Korea’s violation of Sony’s Internet integrity. But giving in to North Korea damages our collective freedom. What is to stop Pakistan, upset by its Homeland portrayal as being complicit with Taliban attacks, from issuing a similar demand to Showtime and its cable partners? 

And where do the threats end? Can North Korea effectively blacklist The Interview stars Seth Rogen and James Franco from any other movie project, for any other studio? With so many action films and video games depicting Muslims as the enemy, could Arab states threaten retaliation, economic if not physical?

North Korea threatened a violent response to any airing of The Interview. But if we have learned anything from 9-11 and its aftermath, it is that our best response to such threats is to go about our normal business and way of life. Be cautious, but do not cower. Stay away from the movie theater, if you so choose, but that choice should be made by everyone individually, not collectively on our behalf by a corporation. 

American policy has been not to negotiate with terrorists, with hostage takers. North Korea took all of our minds and freedom hostage, and for now, has won.

Bible Studio Is Not Bible Study

It's no secret to loyal readers of this blog—I prefer movies to books. From my childhood days I've been a fan of biblical-themed films. Counting last week’s airing of The Ten Commandments, I must have seen that film at least 30 times. Probably lots more. 

Maybe my fascination with bible movies harks back to my father telling me bible stories before bedtime. He gave a particularly emotive rendition of the Samson and Delilah story. The movie version of the strongman and the seductress, starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr, was among the first I recall seeing.

I was non-sectarian in my devotion to bible films. Demetrius and the Gladiator, also starring Mature, Androcles and the Lion (Mature, once again), The Robe (with you know who, once more), Quo Vadis,  David and Bathsheba, Barabbas, Ben Hur—I was all in on those 1950s-early 1960s epics, mostly because The Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York City played them a week at a time, over and over. I drew the line at King of Kings and other Jesus bio-pics, though I did enjoy Jesus Christ Superstar when the musical debuted in 1970.

All this by way of saying I was less than enthralled by Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s treatment of the Flood. One of the things you want to see in any bible film is creative treatment of the back story, how the director fills in missing details, what Jewish scholars call midrash. What you don't want to see are significant contradictions to the accepted text. Thus, as absurd as it was to see rock people (fallen angels) help Noah against the onslaught of an evil mob, it was an imaginative interpretation of the Bible’s suggestion of giants living during those times, though a little too derivative, in my mind, to the tree-like Ents that aid the hobbits Merry and Pippin in The Lord of the Rings.

The Bible several times states the three wives of Noah's sons boarded the ark, yet Aronofsky chose to have only one daughter-in-law, Shem’s wife, in his retelling. How the world would be repopulated with only one woman of child-bearing age is solved(?) by having her deliver twin girls. Aronofsky would have us believe uncles Ham and Japheth will just have to wait until their nieces’ puberty arrive to fulfill god’s directive to be fruitful and multiply.

I also had difficulty swallowing the notion of a stowaway on the ark. Sure, it made for a more interesting plot line, but it was an uncalled for reach. 

I did like the creative way Noah kept the animals from feasting on each other, by putting them to sleep. But I was humorously amazed to see biblical man and woman dressed to the nines. Their boots could have come from Steve Madden, their leather, form-fitting togs from Beged Or, the once formidable Israeli leather clothing maker. 

And who knew the ancients had real firepower. Forget swords, spears, bows and arrows. Tubal Cain had the equivalent of a rocket propelled grenade launcher.

I'm not alone in dismissing the choices made by Aronofsky. My friend Noah R., no relation to Noah of the Bible, had this to say:

“Due to my name, I was overwhelmed by invitations to see the movie ‘Noah’, and we finally succumbed. I understand what the director was trying to do to reconcile the Biblical narrative with the possible historical basis, but the "stone giants" [who reminded me of the employees of the contractor who put-on a new roof for us a couple of years ago] and watching Hermione Granger (Emma Watson from the Harry Potter movies) give birth to Noah's grandchildren detracted greatly from the experience.  Furthermore, you and your beard are MUCH better-looking than Russell Crowe.

“It also got me thinking about who the director might have cast as Noah’s other two daughters-in-law to complement Hermione Granger and provide the diversity needed for future generations of mankind/womankind.

“Perhaps Kerry Washington and Ziyi Zhang?  I also think that Lindsay Lohan would have been a more interesting daughter-in-law than Emma Watson.  [And if Lindsay had failed to show-up for the sailing of the ark, as was the case with her court appearances, well.....]”

But here’s my real bottom line: There are too many people out there who profess belief that the Bible is sacred, that it really is the word of god. Yet too many of those people have not read the Bible and are ignorant of simple facts. They don’t know, for example, that Jesus was born and died a Jew. They don’t know that men, not a higher authority or power, chose what to include in, and exclude from, the Bible based on their own prejudices. They gloss over contradictions in the text. 

So, a movie that has so much fable simply complicates an already hard-to-believe text. Let’s remember the Bible says Noah was 600 years old when the deluge began, that he lived another 350 years after the waters abated. Russell Crowe hardly looked a day over 50. 

Picture This

Over breakfast most mornings I scan the Turner Classic Movies listings in the newspaper to see if there are any old time flicks that interest me. This morning I noticed The Blob was to be shown tonight at 8. Starring Steve McQueen, the 1958 movie is far from a classic sci-fi thriller. But as an impressionable 9-year-old sitting in a darkened theater, I was forever frightened by its coming attractions, never to see this flick, not then, not now.

The trailer aired before two movies I distinctly remember, Run Silent, Run Deep, and The Decks Ran Red. I had tagged along with my older brother, Bernie, and his friend, Jerry, for an afternoon of celluloid entertainment. Other than being scared out of my wits (there was a preview of another even scarier sci-fi film, but its title escapes me), the double-bill features did not disappoint. Run Silent, Run Deep starred Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster as officers of a WWII submarine. James Mason received top billing in The Decks Ran Red, a story about a mutiny aboard a freighter.

I don’t know why, but certain movies from my childhood have stayed with me, not because I have seen them time and again on television (though mostly I have), but because I remember the circumstances of when and where I saw them as a youngster.

In 1956, our mother took my brother, sister Lee and me to see The Ten Commandments at Radio City Music Hall. First, we had lunch at Schrafft’s. A day of spectacle any 7-year-old would remember.

That same year, while my brother attended a bar-mitzvah party, my father took Lee and me to a screening of Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer, the first feature film produced in Israel. It told the story (mostly in English) of a group of four Israeli soldiers assigned to hold a strategic hill near Jerusalem during the War of Independence. As the title implies, they did not survive their mission.

I remember seeing what should have been a most forgettable double bill, Pocketful of Miracles, a less than fulfilling 1961 remake of the delightful Lady for a Day (both, incidentally, directed by Frank Capra), and Party Girl, a story about mobsters and molls in early 1930s Chicago.

Two of the earliest movies I saw were Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and The Trouble With Harry (1955). Both times our babysitter, Madeline, took us to the theater, most probably because she wanted to see them herself.

When I was 10 years old in 1959, I encountered my first example of censorship, and how to beat it. Twelve-year-old Lee and I went to see Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat. Because of the “raciness” of the script, we were barred from entering the movie house on Coney Island Avenue and Avenue U without an adult. Not to be deterred, we made our way to the theater at Kings Highway and Coney Island Avenue where they were more than glad to take our money.