There is a small category of movies which fail to make much of a mark during their theatrical release; but which, when they make it onto television, and are available to be watched repeatedly, begin to commend themselves to audiences in a different and special way and which then proceed to metamorphize into beloved classics.
Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) is that kind of film. Nobody thought much of it at all until television networks adopted it as particularly Christmas-themed, and began making a big deal of broadcasting it around the holiday. Before long, watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” turned into a regular seasonal American ritual.
“The Shawshank Redemption” (1994) was a failure in its theatrical release that did not even recapture its production costs, but Ted Turner (then owning Castle Rock, the film’s production company) later essentially sold the movie to himself (as the TNT network) and began broadcasting it in 1997 over and over again. The film slowly and gradually grew in audience acceptance as a sort of 20th century Les Miserables, and now routinely tops the IMBD list of most-beloved films of all time.
“The Big Lebowski” (1998) followed the same pattern, of confusing and boring viewers in the theater, but coming into its own with the aid of repetitive viewings on television.
Exciting news for Big Lebowski fans around the world as a sequel to the cult classic has just been announced.
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, directors of the first Lebowski movie, confirmed with NBC News they will both be returning to direct the sequel.
“We’re thrilled to be coming back to film a second part to this classic movie,†Ethan Coen said. “For years we’ve been staying away from doing this project but when we received this new script and the cast fell into place, it was a no-brainer. We just had to do it.â€
Gage Luce, who helped write the new script, spoke with CNN to shed light on the plot behind the highly anticipated sequel.
“Now 18 years later, Maude Lewbowski (played by Julianne Moore) informs The Dude (Jeff Bridges) that they conceived a son together and that he has been kidnapped. The Dude teams up with his estranged brother, played by actor Bill Murray, and fellow bowling partner Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) to track down the child’s whereabouts. Just like the first movie, there’s guaranteed to be plenty of beers, bowling, and laughs.†…
Accompanying the trio on their journey to find the missing teen is Jesus Quintana, played by John Turturro, who stole the show in the original movie. …
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RETRACTION 10/24:
Bummer! The story is not true. It turns out that it was originated by the spoof news site National Report which has a very annoying habit of purveying completely plausible sounding, but entirely false, news stories. National Report often fools people, and this time a number of sources believed the story and picked it up, including me.
Heritage Auctions at their Historical Manuscripts Grand Format Auction #6149 in New York on November 4 – 5th, among many interesting items, will be offering several lots associated with WWII German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel:
Lot 49179: An never-sent autograph letter, written two weeks before Rommel’s death by forced suicide, dated October 1, 1944, to Hitler justifying reverses at Allied hands in Normandy and attempting to defend his Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Hans Speidel (arrested three weeks earlier for participation in the plot to kill Hitler).
Lot 49180: A typed letter to Captain Helmuth Lang,his aide-de-camp, dated September 18, 1944, thanking that officer for his letter and commenting on Rommel’s recovery from an Allied air attack two months earlier.
Lot 49181: Four Photograph Albums compiled by Hellmuth Lang containing 750 photographs, a presentation copy of Cornelius Ryan’s Book The Longest Day, and an original copy of Rommel’s Death Announcement.
Lot 49182: A signed photograph of Erwin Rommel (see above) formerly the property of his aide Helmuth Lang.
[A] man in Norway… recently stumbled across a 1,200 year-old Viking sword while walking an ancient route.
The find, which dates from approximately 750 AD and is in exceptionally good condition, was announced by Hordaland County Council.
County Conservator Per Morten Ekerhovd described the discovery as “quite extraordinary.”
“It’s quite unusual to find remnants from the Viking age that are so well preserved … it might be used today if you sharpened the edge,” he told CNN.
Outdoorsman Goran Olsen made the unusual find when he stopped for a rest in Haukeli, an area known for fishing and hunting about 150 miles (250 kms) west of capital, Oslo.
The rusted weapon was lying under some rocks on a well-known path across a high mountain plateau, which runs between western and eastern Norway.
The mountains are covered with frost and snow for at least six months of the year and not exposed to humidity in summer, which contributed to the sword’s exceptional condition, Ekerhovd said, adding that archaeological remains are often found along the paths.
He speculated that the sword could be from a burial site or may have belonged to a traveler who had an accident or succumbed to frostbite on the high pass.
The sword, which was found without a handle, is just over 30 inches long (77 centimeters) and made of wrought iron. From its type, archaeologists estimate it to be from around 750 AD — making it approximately 1,265 years old — but warn that this is not an exact date.
Swords like this were status symbols in Viking times because of the high cost of extracting iron, Ekerhovd said, and it’s likely this blade would have belonged to a wealthy individual.
The editors of the New York Times are shivering with fright this Halloween season, but it is not some knife-wielding serial killer in a hockey mask that frightens them.
It is the specter of an intelligent and able Ivy-League-educated committed conservative.
His campaign has more cash on hand than that of any other Republican in the hunt. If you add “super PAC†money that’s been officially disclosed so far to the tally, he trails only Jeb and Hillary Clinton. …
He’s the patron saint of lost causes, at least if they bring the spotlight his way. In that sense he’s emblematic of the flamboyantly uncompromising comrades in the so-called Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives, who similarly confuse attention with accomplishment.
All of them, with Cruz as their spiritual leader, have turned petulance into a theory of governing, or rather anti-governing, as they breezily disregard the contradiction of their ravenous lunge to become monarchs of a kingdom that they supposedly want to topple, to gain power over a system that they ostensibly intend to enfeeble.
Cruz doesn’t propose remedies. He performs rants. He’s not interested in collaboration or teamwork. His main use for other politicians, even in his party, is as foils and targets. Paul Ryan got a taste of that over the weekend, when Cruz, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,†was asked if Ryan was a true conservative and dodged the question, withholding his blessing.
He should be careful about genuineness versus phoniness, given the problems with his own prairie-populist pose.
Cruz’s law degree is from Harvard and he did his undergraduate work at Princeton, where the 250-year-old debating club that he belonged to is called the American Whig-Cliosophic Society. Cruz’s wife is on leave from a job with Goldman Sachs.
Keep that in mind when he rails against the establishment and the elites. And remember that when someone is as broadly and profoundly disliked as Cruz is, it’s usually not because he’s a principled truth teller.
Hillary Clinton (Kate McKinnon), Bernie Sanders (Larry David), Jim Webb (Alec Baldwin), Lincoln Chafee (Kyle Mooney) and Martin O’Malley (Taran Killam) face off at the Democratic presidential debate, hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper (Jon Rudnitsky).
Anderson Cooper: Never mind. Senator Sanders, do you agree with the Secretary?
Bernie Sanders: SYRIA? Why are we talking about Syria when 41 PERCENT OF 99 PERCENT of all the money is going to the 1 PERCENT.
Anderson Cooper: Can you just answer the question.
Bernie Sanders: Syria is CONFUSING. Lots of PEOPLE fighting. Economics is SIMPLE. You just take away all the money from all the people who have the MONEY.
Anderson Cooper: The question is about Syria.
Bernie Sanders: Right NOW the 1 PERCENT are eating BABIES. They have piles and PILES of babies in their MANSIONS and on Wall Street and they’re chowing down on them like hungry dogs.
A wooden sea monster has emerged from the Baltic sea after lying on the ocean floor for more than half a millenium.
The creature, which has ‘lion ears and crocodile-like mouth’, is around 660lbs (300kg) and stood at the prow of a 15th-century Danish warship.
It was carefully lifted from the coast of Ronneby in southern Sweden [last August] by divers bringing up treasures from the wreck of the ‘Gribshunden’.
A sea monster has emerged from the Baltic sea after lying on the seabed for more than half a millenium
The Gribshunden, which belonged to Danish King John, is believed to have sunk in 1495 after it caught fire on its way from Copenhagen to Kalmar on Sweden’s east coast.
Although the hull suffered extensive damage, the remaining bits make it one of the best preserved wrecks of its kind, dating from roughly the same period as Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria.
For those who missed the fun, Heather Wilhelm describes the action.
If you watched Tuesday’s Democratic debates, you probably noticed a whole lot of yelling. Indeed, the event, sponsored by CNN, was a veritable white-knuckle ride of hollering, with most of it coming from just one guy—a guy who looked like he just received a nasty shock trying to jump-start his DeLorean in a shed filled with half-baked inventions and sad, peeling posters celebrating the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This guy also specialized, I should add, in occasional, disgusted harrumphs.
I’m talking, of course, about Bernie Sanders, who may not have won the debate, but who certainly set the tone. It was amazing to behold: In a country where just 26 percent of voters describe themselves as “liberal,†the Democratic Party has apparently gone full-bore, hair-on-fire Oberlin dorm room progressive. …
hen Hillary Clinton was asked if she was a moderate or a progressive at Tuesday’s debate, she got so excited she almost ate her microphone. “I don’t take a back seat to anyone when it comes to progressive experience and progressive commitment,†she declared, her long-repressed inner life force flaring, despite the fact that this wasn’t actually true. “I’m a progressive, but I’m a progressive that knows how to get things done.â€
The subtext of this statement, which came out loud and clear, was this: “I’m a progressive, voters, but not a loopy, reality-challenged, inept one, like Old Half-Baked Quasi-Redistributed Tuft-Haired Vermont Maple Crumble Cake over there.†This would be wonderful and reassuring if progressivism weren’t by definition loopy, reality-challenged, and inept.
And so on Tuesday night, we watched people cheer for free college, perhaps funded by the elusive Gender Studies Phantom who dwells in the basement of the National Endowment for the Arts. We watched candidates call for free college for illegal immigrants, too, because hey, why not? We watched repeated implications that climate change is going to annihilate us all, likely by next year, unless we vote correctly. We saw people gathered in an air-conditioned auditorium in Las Vegas—Las Vegas, that strange and mysterious capitalist beast, a place where a million glitzy desert lights shine, and to which many in the audience had flown into on a gas-guzzling, cocktail-addled, bargain-basement flight—cheer at the thought of giving up fossil fuels. …
The script on Tuesday night was clear, at least for Bernie and Hillary: All socialism, all the time. How ironic to see two ’60s retreads—people who see themselves as progressive, open-minded, forward-looking, and advanced—so terribly confined by a tired, failed narrative. Let’s hope they’re also sorely mistaken as to what the rest of America’s preferred script might be.
