Just Before Dawn

Looking east, before 

dawn, you see a deep blue hint 

of encouragement.

'Shazam:' Quirky Charm of the Gods

Meagan Good and Ross Butler in 'Shazam: Fury of the Gods'

Bart and I went to see Shazam: Fury of the Gods, which had the same quirky charm as the original but seemed overlong to me. These superhero sagas, necessarily lacking surprise, depend on pacing and rhythm, like a familiar piece of music. 

Helen Mirren chewed the scenery like a gourmet as an evil Titan. British Shakespearean actors can handle this sort of nonsense with their eyes closed.

The GOP's House of Fascism

The ever-clever Bruce Kanin improves upon the original 1960 DC comic. The GOP is full of comic book villains, so why not?

Howard Beale: Ever More Prophetic

“We know the air’s unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit and watch our TVs while some local newscaster tells us today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

“We all know things are bad. Worse than bad.  They’re crazy. It’s like everything’s going crazy. So we don't go out any more.  We sit in the house, and slowly the world we live in gets smaller, and all we ask is please, at least leave us alone in our own living rooms. 

“Let me have my toaster and my TV and my hair-dryer and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything, just leave us alone.

"Well, I’m not going to leave you alone.  I want you to get mad …”

— Howard Beale in Paddy Chayefsky’s Network (1976). I always made that movie the capstone of my journalism ethics class.

Fox News Staffers Pick Bad Day to Stop Sniffing Coke

Bingo!