Skip to main content

Go get'em, cowboy


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

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

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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

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

      Delete
  6. 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. I had forgotten Wally and the Beaver made an appearance.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''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

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  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...

The People Debate the Constitution

As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified.  After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution.  Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through.  But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 .  The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others.  Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified.  A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.