Untold History of The US – Bush & Obama Age of Terror

Human Train Wreck: Californication

I indulge some guilty pleasures, stuff from Showtime and HBO, as many do.  It’s usually more engrossing than the network TV universe, with naked people and bad behaviors.  I’ve gone in for the L-Word, The Tudors, Weeds and recently gave a shot to Californication, starring David Duchovny and Natascha McElhone.

This hyper-real often silly show spouts dialogue that is so over the top and accelerated that no one really talks that way.  Stuffed with sarcasm, allusions, metaphors and anger, the show combines the ridiculous with a deeply flawed and dramatic main character arc.   People like watching others self-destruct, and David Duchovny makes a sport of it.

I had to keep watching because Hank Moody’s family struck a relevant chord with my own experiences.  Not the steady stream of sex and alcohol, unfortunately, but the female members of his on-screen family unit.  Moody’s situation is one of an exceptional and often estranged middle-aged father trying to keep his family together as their teenaged daughter matures and drifts away.  His relationship with his wife Karen is epically strained, and no woman in her right mind would ever return to Moody.

That’s one of the weaknesses of the show.  Karen is pulled around like a puppet, constantly.  She lacks the agency needed for this to be taken seriously.  They try to put Karen in the driver’s seat, but it’s always a response to Moody’s crass infidelities.  Duchovny’s voodoo hold over womankind is taken to laughable extremes.  He’s a philanderer, an arrogant loudmouth and a drunk.  His excesses push farther than viewers might expect.

I think Californication is a bell-wether of our nihilistic, self-absorbed age.  As in Wolf of Wall Street it’s our culture, and it’s real enough.  We are the new Romans drowning mindlessly in our excess and depravity.  There isn’t much to redeem these characters.  Human, yes.  Heroes?  Not on your life.

 

Free Now: Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the US

Online Now at Films For Action

All ten parts are including.

Note:

Oliver Stone fumbles 9/11 completely (part 9), citing “incompetence” and showing zero of the evidence of complicity and cover-up, of Saudi Arabian intelligence participation and the evidence of the whistleblowers such as Senator Bob Graham.

In part one Stone also ignored evidence of foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack.  This is not the definitive history of the modern age.  Its broad strokes are fine and well, but specifics are not completely reliable.

Untold History of the US – Oliver Stone

Showtime is airing Oliver Stone’s Untold History, a work much like Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.  Stone sets out to set the record straight, and Showtime has given him a platform to do so.

The first episode concerns WW2 and the atomic bomb.  It is available on the web:

Oliver Stones Untold History of the United States S01E01 – World War II

I can’t let Oliver Stone gloss over the Pearl Harbor incident without saying something.  The US intelligence knew exactly that the target was Pearl Harbor, and a decision was made to allow the attacks to happen, so as to sacrifice the base in order to get the USA into the war.  This is undeniable, and has been the highly controversial reality of the matter for quite some time.

BBC: Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor

Do Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor?, by Robert Stinnett

Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, by Robert Stinnett

The Pearl Harbor Deception, by Robert Stinnett

WEEDS (2005 – ?)

DVD: Weeds – Season One

The tribulations of Nancy Botwin, the MILF Weed, Agrestic CA, and the Mexican Mafia — Showtime’s Weeds is a different kind of television. Very naughty, and not for kids.

For five years now Nancy Botwin has lived outside the law. After the death of her husband, Nancy decided to sell pot in order to retain her house and her accustomed standard of living in the upscale “ticky tacky” neighborhood of Agrestic.