Saturday, June 10, 2006

DIANE LANE IS LIKE GOOD WINE.

Back in the ole days when MFBB made a real huge sport of not successfully chasing gorgeous broads, he sometimes found solace in movies. Although I’m not a real filmfreak I do consider myself some kind of connoisseur, which means I saw quite some which are not generally considered mainstream. Some were real jewels and scandalously underrated (while a lot of mainstream is scandalously overrated), others just deserved to linger on in Eternal Pelliculoid Limbo. Some 20 years ago I saw one I'd rate between both categories: Rumble Fish (1983), by Francis Ford Coppola. Saw it on VHS, that is. Don’t even know if it first came out in theatres over here. Rumble Fish got some genuine film noir gravitas, but altogether it's more about style than content. The story line is extremely thin, for one thing. Rebel with no cause whatsoever Rusty James (Matt Dillon) tries to live up to the reputation of his older brother “The Motorcycle Boy” (Mickey Rourke), who just returned disillusioned from a meditating trip to California, and doesn’t want to take up the thread where he left it, as a motorized gang leader. There’s a bit of rummaging with hot chicks in a lakehouse here, an awful lot of pseudoexistential babble there, and at the end Rourke gets himself killed by a cop for trying to release a stupid bowlfish in a pond. Big deal. I have no clue how Rumble Fish was ever received in the States, but for some reason, among movie aficionados over here, it acquired cult status, find that silly or not.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.

One of the broads in RF was a very young Diane Lane, as Rusty James’ girlfriend Patty. And I provided this intro just to have a starting point for showcasing – tadaa – a remarkable evolution! In Rumble Fish, Lane is just sexy on 17 – not much else, and even then we get to see zilch, since the film is almost exclusively shot in black and white and there’s an awful lot of smoke, fog and shadows. In short, although I noticed her name I was not particularly impressed. Today I’d have called her a non-blonde bimbette. Pretty, but the draught of blotting-paper. Yup, that’s her on the poster. Btw, notice how young Matt Dillon looks? Saw him too in Crash of last year? Well, you have grown that older too. As did Nicholas Cage and Laurence Fishburne, who co-starred in RF. I'm not counting Dennis Hopper. He looked like an old wreck back then already.

Then, in 1992, I watched Knight Moves.

And that was a frikkin disaster. There’s a big chess tournament in a small town on an island somewhere off the coast of Washington. Then a couple of horrendous ritual murders happen. The prime suspect is chess grandmaster Peter Sanderson, played by Christopher Lambert. Lambert, as you may or may not know, is a guy who had one real good movie, Highlander (1986), but after that it was all downhill. Anyway, in Knight Moves it doesn’t help when it comes out he lied about an encounter he had with the first victim. Still, police can’t nail him, and resorts to engaging a psychology student, Kathy Sheppard (Diane Lane, Mrs. Lambert at the time) to try to get into Sanderson’s brain.


I don’t remember anymore how it ended, it was too bad. The one thing that lingers on in MFBB’s mind though is – who’d have thunk it??? – the steamy sex scene between Lambert and Lane in a hotel sauna. For the faithful BlowneastDog readership I include a clip from it to the right, but as you can see I kept the best part(s) for myself, hehe. Anyway, after Knight Moves Mrs. Lane had sunk in my opinion pretty much the way Bush’s approval ratings sank this spring, only, unlike in the latter case, I didn’t think there’d ever be a rebounce. I even thought she looked fuglier than in Rumble Fish. Yeah ladies, I know. Men.

It’s 2000, and MFBB, in the meantime finally having succeeded in chasing down a gorgeous broad nice lil Polish girl, goes to the movies with his newlywed to see The Perfect Storm!

Lo and behold, there’s Diane Lane!!! Hmmmm, there’s wrinkles in her face, and sometimes she looks a lil bit scrawny, but otherwise she don’t look bad… not bad at all. Sure, for some reason she knocks her fiancé Bobby, played by Mark Wahlberg, a blue one during banging time, and MFBB just hates female to male violence (for good measure, vice versa too, absolutely, but a man who gets brushed off by a woman, that’s so… uh… my mind has trouble coping with that, you know… OK, I'm disturbed. I admit). I include the movie poster in German: “Der Sturm” means just “The Storm”, for some reason the perfectionist Germans decided to dispense with the prefix “perfect”. Notice, to the left, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Have you got that too, every once in awhile wondering whatever happened to this or that promising actor/actress?

Anyway, The Perfect Storm, despite the prominent presence of George F*cking Looney, was very good imho. But the curious thing was that I did not remember it just for the real good story, but for Diane Lane as well, who had unexpectedly reappeared on my radar. The still to the right shows her listening to a fisherwoman’s tale as the boat her fiancé is on – the “Andrea Gail” – forever leaves the port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, forward to its inevitable rendezvous with a killer storm.

And recently my wife forced me to watch Must Love Dogs (2005), a Gary Goldberg vehicle about divorced fortysomethings in search of Mr. and/or Mrs. Right. Lane is Sarah Nolan, a preschool teacher whose family does the googling for her. John Cusack is Jake, a sailing aficionado who gets a helping hand from his lawyer. Yawn, but did Lane look goooooooooood!!! More wrinkles than in The Storm, but golly, you'd almost think it's that what makes her sexy! Or else it's the discrete décolletés? Yeah, that'll be it. A good advice from Outlaw ladies: if there's anyone among you on a Seduce and Destroy Mission right now, watch Must Love Dogs. Men Love Décolletés ya know. I'll even go deep... uh, further. DON'T make it sumpin you could park a Humvee in. But offer a tantalizing eyeful and when you see the chap on the other side of the candlelight is getting lost in transpiration assume an attitude as if the subject you're talking about is as far from sex as Ted Kennedy from Mental Sanity. Bingo, you got the bloke in your pocket, a guarantee from MFBB. OK, in the pic to the left Diane has taken that eyeful a bit to the extreme, but you get the picture. I certainly did.

We conclude this series with a final photo of Ms. Lane, who truly understands the art of looking sexey without looking like Spears Britney. Btw, the last two photos come from Ex-Donkey Blog, run by Gary, ex-Democrat who hails from somewhere in New England. Actually, it's Gary's excellent Diane Lane Archives which got me to write this post! Go say howdy to the man!





Now WHO sez women can't round Cape Fearorty and still look DAMN attractive hmmmmmmmm?


MFBB.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

YOU DON'T MESS WITH BOMBS OF 500LBS



The Beast is dead. Le Monde on the other hand is sorry:

"La mort d'Al-Zarkaoui, une "bonne nouvelle" qui ne résout rien."

In English: "The death of al-Zarqawi, a "good news" which will solve nothing."

But then, I guess Le Monde is written for those famous Fwench youths. Also nice, Hamas' reaction:

...but in a statement faxed to Reuters after Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike north of Baghdad on Wednesday,it said it mourned the Jordanian-born insurgent as a "martyr of the (Muslim Arab) nation". "With hearts full of faith, Hamas commends brother-fighter Abu Musab ... who was martyred at the hands of the savage crusade campaign which targets the Arab homeland, starting in Iraq..."

I don't know if Zarkman was a martyr of the muslim arab nation, but what I do know is that he martyred a lot of arabs in the muslim nation: on August 29, 2003 some 100 in Najaf, including Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr Hakim, on March 2, 2004 some 180 plus in coordinated attacks on Shia mosques during the Ashura ceremonies, on September 14, 2004 47 police recruits in Baghdad, on December 19, 2004, some 60 in Najaf and Karbala, using car bombs, on November 9, 2005, another 60 in his own homeland, Jordan, etc. etc. etc.

In short, a nice brother-fighter. Somebody learn those Hamas nutters the meaning of the word irony. Btw, keep those EU checks coming.


MFBB.

UPDATE:

Zarqawi lived briefly for some ten minutes after the strike, was put on a stretcher, and tried to get off it when he realized he was surrounded by US personnel, says Major-General Bill Caldwell:

"He was conscious initially, according to the U.S. forces that physically saw him," Caldwell told Fox. "He obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realizing it was U.S. military."

Heh heh. Sweet.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

TRIBUTE TO A FALLEN MARINE



This tribute is for Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, from El Paso, Texas, who was 20 at the time of his death in Haditha, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, the 1st Marine Regiment (3/1), of the 1st Marine Division. A brave and inspiring trooper who distinguished himself in Fallujah, Terrazas was killed in action on November 19, 2005, while conducting combat operations in Haditha, in Iraq's al-Anbar province.

Rest in peace, Lance Corporal Terrazas. You will not be forgotten.

Semper Fidelis.


MFBB.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

6 JUNE 1944 - D-DAY.



On June 6, 1944, 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops landed on the shores of Normandy in an attempt to wrest control of Western Europe from the Nazis, who occupied it since early summer 1940. From west to east there were five landing sectors, designated Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword, of which the first two were assigned to American forces and the other three to British and Canadian forces, although small contingents from many countries also took part in the operation. Opposing them was the German Seventh Army, which provided the infantry backbone for the redoubtable beach fortifications known as the Atlantikwall. The Omaha sector, or Omaha Beach, as it is better known, by far proved to be the toughest theater of the day. Troops from the famous US 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) and the untested US 29th Infantry Division (Blue and Gray), as well as a couple of Ranger battalions, were tasked with establishing a bridgehead on Omaha, and as fate would have it, it was here that they were not only faced with very strong coastal defences but also with a fearsome adversary in the form of the German 352nd Infantry Division.

The men in those landing craft which made it ashore and had the misfortune to land opposite machinegun nests were wiped out. Those who landed between forts found themselves pinned down on the beach in the middle of minefields. Preparatory bomb runs meant to neutralize or at least soften up the defenses had curiously achieved nothing. "War is Hell", as Sherman put it, and hell it was certainly on that grim day in June. Little by little small teams, using Bangalore torpedoes to carve a way through the minefields, were able to advance towards the bunkers, which were then neutralized in heavy hand-to-hand fighting with ample use of flamethrowers and grenades. At the end of the day, Omaha Beach was American territory. But at what a cost! More than 3,000 casualties (some sources say 3,881), of which officially 1,000 were KIA. Omaha proved to be the toughest landing ground. Overall casualties on all five beaches were some 10,000, of which roughly 2,500 were killed. The losses were heavy... but the allies were ashore, and although the Germans would not acknowledge it and keep on fighting for eleven long months more, June 6, 1944, was the irreversible point of no return towards their destruction. Had they been able to throw the invaders back into the sea, they might have been able to stall the Russian summer offensive and consolidate a position in Continental Europe so unbelievably strong that the Allied will to break the Nazi power might have faltered. They might have accepted the status quo, and not have dared to risk the A-bomb on Germany itself for fear of reprisals against the occupied countries.

Instead... the landing succeeded.

Reading about the sacrifices makes me numb and pensive. I am not a war junkie and I am always very reluctant to use the word "glory" in an Omaha-like context. But for some reason I keep reading stories like the ones about Omaha beach. The least noble reason I can think of is that I feel a certain fascination for these times when a life meant nothing - I have always wondered how the knowledge that every minute can be your last affects the human being.

The noblest reason I can think of is that we have an obligation to not forget the sacrifices of men who gave life and limb so that others could be free. Shelving their stories and forgetting those who gave all means burying them a second time. Reading their stories brings once again back their forgotten names, which in a way, is a meager, but nevertheless substantial substitute for lives tragically cut short.

Remember those heroes.


MFBB.

Monday, June 05, 2006

HOARY JOKE OF THE WEEKEND (TOLD YOU THEY WERE DUMB)

Last weekend, June 3, 4 and 5, the French Trotskyists held their yearly family gathering in Presles, north of Paris, and the fantastic crew of NoPasaran! managed to sneak in, UBooting as you have never seen!!!

"Karl Marx Tent"? "Women's Liberation Lane"? "Political Town"? "European Workers Lane"? "Toilets"? Yes, that's right. I must be at the annual celebration of Lutte Ouvrière, France's Marxist-Trotskyist party aka Workers' Struggle.

Oh and, attention! We're talking here about the French Trotskyists, NOT the French Communists!!! Although, of course, in the end it all boils down to semantics (and a similar body count numbering in the millions....)

If you visit NoPasaran! regularly, you will know that one of the posters there is a certain Erik Svane, who is actually a Danish-American freelance journalist who also seems to be eking out a living as an actor. Erik and his pal mingled among the Guevara-T-shirt-clad loons, with Erik wearing this shirt, and apparently nobody noticed who was really on Erik's chest!!!



But the best is yet to come! Lutte Ouvrière's strongwoman and perennial candidate for the French presidency, Arlette Laguiller, was naturally also at the gathering. Miss Laguiller, on the barricades ever since France's war in Algeria (which she of course opposed) really started to put a mark on French politics in 1974, when she became the leader of that year bank workers' strike which began with actions of employees at Crédit Lyonnais. All her political life she was an ardent adversary of capitalist mechanisms and the free market, and she is also an accomplished writer who produced a.o. the following masterpieces:

* "Moi, une militante" (I, a militant, 1973)
* "Une travailleuse révolutionnaire dans la campagne présidentielle" (A female worker in the presidential campaign, 1974)
* "Il faut changer le monde" (The world has to be changed, 1988)
* "Paroles de prolétaires" (Words of Proletarians, 1999)
* "Mon communisme" (My communism, 2002)

ROFL!!! I don't know how he did it, probably she was momentarily stunned by the good looks of our Nordic warrior, but that evil Erik Svane managed to get on the same photo with Laguiller, the French Trotskyites' candidate for the 2007 Presidential elections, with his Reagan T-shirt on AND holding his latest book in his hand!!! It's "La Bannière Etalée", in which he points out, like Revel did, that French anti-Americanism really has much deeper grounds than occasional loathing for a Republican US President.



I don't want to downplay Erik's writing qualities, but maybe he should get Madame Laguiller another book.


MFBB.