Category Archives: Cinema/Visual/Audio

sacred stories: niche interests

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Dave

The sacred and the profane. the eternal tango. …“Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.”― Primo Levi….Max Frisch once wrote that “technology … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged Blazing Saddles movie, Dalai Lama, Jacques Callot, Jean-Pierre Norblin painter, Max Frisch, Mel Brooks, Primo Levi, Tiffany Starr | Leave a comment

the chosen: wandering decisions

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Dave

Tyranny of the majority. Its a stock character today, but is the perhaps dominant cultural aesthetic of our time: the endless variations on the neurotic and hyperarticulate, as well as sexually obsessed individual; throw in issues of class and assimilation … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word | Tagged bar refaeli, Bob Dylan, eugene sue, Guy Debord, Herman Wouk, Hieronymous Bosch, Jacques Derrida, Jean Genet, Marcel Duchamp, natalie wood, Philip Roth, Slavoj Zizek, Woody Allen | Leave a comment

obscure gestures: allowing the malignancy to spread

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Dave

Well thought out article below by Hasan Mehdi on Muslim anti-Semitism. It underlies another layer of thought in which the existence of a Jewish state can serve as the locus and focal point of an endless stream of poisonous and … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged Barack Obama Israel visit 2013, Bernard-Henry Levy, Daniel Gordis, Hasan Mehdi, Joseph Interfaith Foundation, Khalidi, Nazir Ahmed, Rock the Casbah film, Yariv Horowitz | Leave a comment

the secret agent: saving us by conspiracy

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Dave

The cult of the secret agent. In fact as in fiction the spy is the indispensable person of our time. Yet their activity poses a deadly threat to the open society… …One likes to think that the antifascist fanaticism that … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged Alex Kurtzman, Alfred Hitchcock, J.J. Abrams, John Gielgud, Kathryn Bigelow, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Marianne Faithfull, Nixon plumbers, Peter Lorre, Roberto Orci, Tom Cruise | Leave a comment

looking glass warrior

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Dave

…In the nether world of espionage, a particular odium- and with it a particular fascination- attaches to that distorted mirror image of the patriotic spy known as the double agent. One notorious exemplar of the breed was Colonel Alfred Redl, … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged Allen Dulles, Colonel Alfred Redl, Gen. Mikhail Milstein, Georg Markus, Guy Burgess, Istvan Szabo, Kim Philby, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog | Leave a comment

the secret agent: few scruples

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Dave

…It was Munich that told all Western democrats that espionage was no longer a game. They had previously viewed Hitler’s new Germany as representing a conventional but not-to-be-exaggerated military threat to democracy. Munich declared it a monstrous, worldwide enterprise of … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged 13 rue Madeleine movie, E. Howard Hunt, General Donovan OSS, James Cagney, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Peter Ward E. Howard Hunt, Richard Conte, Wild Bill Donovan OSS | Leave a comment

coming to a scream near you

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Dave

Another critique of this Oscar nominated propaganda films coming out of Israel, the Gatekeepers and Five Broken Cameras. Sarah Honig fires a broadside, in the main, accurate, but not entirely. The part of her article on Jewish appeasement, lack of … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged Dror Moreh, Emad Burnat director, Five Broken Cameras Movie, Guy Davidi Five Broken Cameras, Joseph Kennedy Sr., Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Mohammed Bakri, Otto Dix, The Gatekeepers documentary | Leave a comment

the secret agent: the clubby attitude

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Dave

…The myth of espionage as an essentially patrician sport, like polo, had some slight foundation. In the early twentieth century secret service budgets, except possibly in Russia, were still modest, and to stretch them as far as possible the professionals … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged Colin Simpson, D.G. Hogarth, John Le Carre, Kim Philby, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Michael Korda author, Philip Knightly, Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, T.E. Lawrence, White's Social Club | Leave a comment

secret agent: great game ethos

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Dave

The cult of the secret agent. Despit the bling and action, the secret agent poses a menace to the open society… …The Great Game ethos of the professionals was reflected in the spy novels and a little later in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion | Tagged Alfred Hitchcock, Colonel Alfred Redl, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Erskine Childers, Hannah Adams Summary History of New England, James Fenimore Cooper, John Buchan, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Rudyard Kipling, The Dreyfus Affair, William Le Queux | Leave a comment

cicero: first he looked at the purse

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Dave

One for the money and later for the show. We glorify and exalt the spy; from Nathan Hale down to James Bond, yet they pose a danger to the open society…. …A World War II spy, Elyesa Buzna- better known … Continue reading →