Skip to main content

Go get'em, cowboy

By

F-R-double-E-D, D-O-M spells Freedom! We fight for freedom, for one and for all! It's you-and-me-dom, and ten foot tall! Freedom, freedom, and oh-can-you-see-dom, we'll always beat 'em with star-spangled freedom! 

Criterion has released some wonderful box sets over the years, but one of the most delirious has to be this set of William Klein movies, including the fabulous Mr. Freedom.  This classic satire on American exceptionalism remains one of the best.  There was also the highly amusing Team America with perhaps the greatest depiction of the late North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il.  While the freedom-loving puppets obviously owe their debt to the Thunderbirds, whose creator passed away recently, I think a some of the inspiration came from Mr. Freedom.

Comments

  1. Rick DiguetteJanuary 5, 2013 at 7:08 PM

    The Mr. Freedom link took me to a cache of really bad films. Thank you so much! I love watching really bad cinema.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonJanuary 5, 2013 at 9:09 PM

    That's odd. For me it was a direct link to the movie in Dailymotion.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JAbelJanuary 7, 2013 at 6:53 AM

    Really Bad Cinema with Leonard Pinth-Garnell was one of my fave early SNL skits.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JAbelJanuary 7, 2013 at 6:53 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. James FergusonJanuary 7, 2013 at 9:04 AM

    So I take it that was your review of the movie, Rick ; )

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rick DiguetteJanuary 7, 2013 at 3:26 PM

      Well, the movie's production values are quite modest to say the least.

      Delete
  6. James FergusonJanuary 8, 2013 at 10:23 AM

    Speaking of a "cache" of really bad movies, here's a classic:

    Kentucky Fried Movie
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzrYqCnIolE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rick DiguetteJanuary 8, 2013 at 8:17 PM

      I had forgotten Wally and the Beaver made an appearance.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more