Blackmoor Vituperative

“Both sides are the same”?

• Only one party has had 120 criminal indictments of Executive Branch officials, 89 criminal convictions, and 34 prison sentences in the last five decades (as of the last time I looked into it — it has gone up since then).
• Only one party is devoted to oppressing women.
• Only one party is pillaging public services for the private gain of billionaires.
• Only one party is deliberately refusing to participate in the government of the USA by sabotaging the legislative process.
• Only one party is obsessed with ridiculous conspiracy theories.
• Only one party’s Presidents have consistently left the USA with much more debt than it had when they started (Clinton left office with a surplus, while Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump have all run up huge debts).
• Only one party is overtly, blatantly, PROUDLY racist.
• Only one party is aggressively anti-science.
• Only one party calls Nazis “fine people”.
• Only one party places grossly unqualified people in charge of government agencies with the purpose of destroying those agencies.
• Only one party is steadfastly, maniacally devoted to lies, hatred, and death.

I’ll put this as nicely as I can: if you say “both sides are the same”, within the context of political parties in the USA in the 21st century, you are just as responsible for the fall of the United States as the Republicans are.

If I had the time (and frankly, interest), I would start a YouTube channel called “18 minute movies”. I noticed many years ago, while letting Netflix play while I worked, that I was stopping really bad movies at about the same point each time: 18 minutes. It was uncanny.

“18 minute movies” would be me spending about a minute describing the first 18 minutes of some movie that I stopped watching at that point. For example:

“Guns Akimbo” (2019): Daniel Radcliffe portrays an internet troll. He runs afoul of an illegal Fight Club style mafia, who appear to all be extras from the movie “Hackers” (1995). They use common power tools and hardware store screws to attach guns to his hands, somehow without making him bleed to death or collapse in screaming agony. Meanwhile, an eyebrow-less Samara Weaving shoots a lot of people while the camera is flung around the room by chimpanzees.

By the way, I really like Samara Weaving. I wish she had been cast as Captain Marvel (I’m not saying she was even considered or had any interest in the part, just that I wish she had been cast). My point is, Samara Weaving was not reason enough for me to keep playing the movie.

Here’s another one.

“The Vast Of Night” (2020): Jake Horowitz portrays a guy who “works at a radio station”. He roams aimlessly around a high school, which appears to be getting ready for a game of some kind (probably basketball). He steals an instrument from a member of the band and insults a girl who asks him for help with her tape recorder, all while mumbling incoherently around a cigarette.

Today’s Saturday matinee is “Battletruck” (1982), also known as “Warlords Of The 21st Century”. This is not a great movie, but it is interesting for a number of reasons.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were the golden age of vehicle-based adventure movies. “Death Race 2000” (1975) was the vanguard of the genre, leading to “Blue Thunder” (1983), “Megaforce” (1982), “Deathsport” (1978), and so on.

The 1980s were also the golden age of post-apocalypse movies. “Mad Max” (1979) was the vanguard of the genre, leading to “Road Warrior” (1981), “Warrior And The Sorceress” (1984), “Cherry 2000” (1987), and so on.

“Battletruck” (1982) combines these elements. Unlike most films of both genres, it is not filmed in Argentina, nor does it feature David Carradine. It was filmed in New Zealand, and the cast includes Michael Beck (best known for “Warriors” (1979) and “Xanadu” (1980), and who also appeared in “Megaforce”), Annie McEnroe (who appeared in “Snowbeast” (1977), a weird intersection of the 1970s crazes for ski resort movies and Bigfoot movies), and James Wainwright (who has been in a number of fairly good films, but I know him as Dutch from 1974’s “Killdozer”). John Ratzenberger, who would make his appearance as Cliff Clavin on the show “Cheers” later the same year, has a small but memorable part as Rusty, the mechanic and weaponsmith. (Fun fact! Ratzenberger is one of the most successful actors of all time in terms of box-office receipts.)

As a vehicle-based post-apocalypse film, “Battletruck” doesn’t quite measure up to classics like “Damnation Alley” (1977), but it’s a sincere film with sympathetic characters, and it tells its story without the outlandish nonsense of “Warriors Of The Wasteland”, aka “New Barbarians” (1983) and without the sexual assaults of movies like “Road Warrior” (1981) and “Postman” (which came out in 1997, but which is very much a throwback to the post-apocalypse films of the 1980s).

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[red pild]
adjective

To internalize a set of misogynistic far-right beliefs popular with certain corners of the internet; the product of a noxious blend of junk science, conspiracy theory, and a pathological fear of social progress.

Origin and etymology of redpilled

based on the “red pill” philosophy, using a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix (1999)

First known use by far-right misogynists: 2012

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, two dozen police officers are under investigation for falsifying evidence, and three (so far) have been charged.