Flick Pick: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(Paramount, 1989)

The only one of (three, so far) sequels worthy of the original,
and worth the time to view it. (If you haven't seen them, by all means spare yourself the abysmal Temple Of Doom, and doubly so the utterly atrocious I.J.& The Temple of WTF?, which should be used only to torture terrorists. You're welcome.) This follow-up has everything the first movie did, and adds the wonderful chemistry of Sean Connery as Henry Jones, Sr. to an outing full of everything that is why we go to the movies.

Flick Pick: Raiders Of The Lost Ark

Raiders Of The Lost Ark
(Paramount, 1981)

What started as an homage to Saturday B-movie serials, and became one of the best and most nearly perfect movies of all time. If this isn't in anybody's personal Top Ten list, they're pretty much dead to me.

Flick Pick: Black Rain

Black Rain
(Paramount, 1989)

Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia in Ridley Scott's look at the yakuza, on what Scott vowed would be his only trip to Japan after all the red tape involved in simply making a movie there. Visually notable on at least two levels, because it not only gave us a look inside Japan when they were on top of everything, it also gave us a look at the stunning Kate Capshaw before she became Mrs. Steven Spielberg, in this role quite possibly the sole cinematic proof that she could indeed act, and "coulda been a contendah".

Flick Pick: Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy Theory
(Warner Bros., 2000)

Mel Gibson as the most likeable whackjob ever encountered in a NYC taxi (opening shots were actual cab passengers, and Gibson ad-libbed the bilge he was spewing), and the ever beautiful-on-film Julia Roberts as the object of his obsession. Never mind the fare, enjoy the ride.

Flick Pick: Death On The Nile

Death On The Nile
(Paramount, 1978)

David Niven and the inimitable Peter Ustinov as Agatha' Christie's famed Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, in this star-packed cruise on location aboard a slow steamer up the Nile. Well worth your time, and seeing the multiple ways they kill Lois Chiles in flashback re-creations is both high comedy, and the basis for an excellent drinking game.

Flick Pick: The Big Sky

The Big Sky
(RKO, 1952)

Howard Hawks frontier epic, starring Kirk Douglas, Arthur Hunnicutt, and the Snake River in Wyoming in all its black & white glory. One of the few movies ever colorized by Ted Turner that should have been, and worth watching in either version.

Flick Pick: Sergeant York

Sergeant York
(Warner Bros., 1941)

Howard Hawks' timely biopic featuring Gary Cooper in the title role, (back when studios thought nothing of lauding the heroism of Medal of Honor awardees instead of mocking them as patsies, suckers, and baby-killers) with Cooper's best co-star sidekick ever, Walter Brennan.Try not to fall over in shock at blatant Christianity, pro-Americanism, and the triumph of uplifting morals as central themes, or the fact that Cooper won a Best Actor Oscar for the role of a hell-raiser turned pacifist turned war hero, reenacting what was a phenomenal event in the midst of a very bloody business. The movie premiered 5 months before America entered WWII, and holds up well for something 72 years old.
Happy Veterans' Day.

Flick Pick: Battle Los Angeles

Battle Los Angeles
(Sony, 2011)

Gritty, realistic (as can be, given the subject) look at a squad of Marines taking on our would-be alien overlords in Santa Monica. From their lips to God's ears. Just the thing to watch to celebrate the birthday of the USMC today. "For yea, thou I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil; for I am the biggest, baddest, meanest m*****f***** in the Valley." Oohrah.

Flick Pick: Innerspace

Innerspace

(Warner Bros., 1987)

Well-engineered buddy tale with Dennis Quaid and Martin Short, and the incredibly cute Meg Ryan forming the third corner of the love interest triangle. Still holds up well 25 years later, with Joe Dante directing another solid delivery for Steven Spielberg.

The Tip Of The Assberg

This topic just won't go away, apparently because it's a Cornholeucopia of Fail:

Border Patrol Doing Vaginal and Anal Exams Without Warrant

If you're keeping score at home, that's the third such story in as many days, and I can state categorically that I'm not having to look inside anyone's anus to find them. Evidently no one told a number of guys with badges that "assclown" is a pejorative term, not an appellation of the level of professionalism to which one ought to aspire.

Look, let's try this slowly, and in small words for those of the law enforcement ranks who apparently took the training on the Constitution at the academy via internet courses they cribbed the answers for:

In any situation where you wouldn't, as part of the course and scope of your employment, be entitled to walk around with your hand casually inserted up into any bystander's bodily orifices as they go about their normal business, any such search of same absent clear and compelling grounds, with the requisite warrant from competent authority, based on clearly articulable probable cause, is an illegal search.

Knowing this, and doing it anyways, is sexual battery under color of authority, especially when y'all seem to be getting off on doing it, and serially addicted to the procedure, both of which are rather serious violations of civil rights, not to mention perverted, disgusting, and grounds for horsewhipping in at least 57 states, or should be.

So just for the hell of it, maybe the rest of law enforcement could act like the victims here were their friends and family, if you want the rest of us to act like you are ours every time some knucklehead takes a shot at you.

Otherwise, there isn't enough attitude and body armor on the planet to protect you from the backlash that's coming.

The fact that you've trumped the TSA should have been your first clue that you've gone so far off the legitimate law enforcement reservation that it can't be tracked with existing technology.

So seriously, get your hands out of our asses, and your heads out of yours.

Flick Pick: Aliens

Aliens
(20th C. Fox, 1986)

Sigourney Weaver, sole survivor of the last outing, in a grudge match against the species that wiped out her crew and ruined her life. This time with James Cameron at the helm in a classic '80s Cameron-Hurd sci-fi spectacular, the focus is less on horror/suspense thrills, and more on raw ass-kicking action, which it delivers by the spaceship-load.

Raping the Bill Of Rights: Just Another Day In Deming NM

Caveat: Good cops are worth their body weight in gold. Bad ones can - and should - be melted down to make fishing sinkers.

"Welcome to Deming NM, where the only safe @$$holes wear badges!" - proposed sign for the Deming NM Chamber of Commerce to put up at city limits

Yes, I'm late getting to this, because everyone else is having so much fun with it.

First, the LINK.

Now, the highlights:

One Mr. Eckert, of southern New Mexico, having concluded his shopping at a local Wal-Mart last January 2nd, did a rolling not-quite-a-stop as he left the parking lot, and was immediately selected to donate to the town's tax coffers pulled over for a  moving violation by the Deming PD.
Whereupon, for this grave breach of public order and safety, he was ordered to exit the vehicle.
(WTF. Why?? For a ticket, all you need is a promise to appear, and normal observables for citing officers don't include the behavior of your ass muscles.){Update: Aha! Because their Talking Dog told them! More later.}

Whereupon, based on personal observation, and a career familiarity with proper buttocks etiquette, Officers Assclown and Dipshit decided that the driver was almost certainly clenching his cheeks to maintain an imaginary stash of illicit narcotics in his booty hideout.
Whereupon they contacted and received from a local graduate of New Mexico's finest internet law school and all-night taco stand judge a search warrant for the anus of the motorist in question.

Apparently in Luna County, probable cause of no more than some jackassical officer's desire to have a peek up your ass is sufficient to set aside the entire Bill Of Rights.
There's doubtless a thumping sound coming from the vicinity of 77 graveyards as the signers of said document spin in their graves.

Our brave butt pirates in blue took him to a local Deming ER, whereupon the medical professional on duty told them not just no, but Hell NO! because performing such a procedure, warrant or no, was a violation of his professional ethics. Doctors typically bill separately from the hospital, so this guy's medical group should award him an on-the-spot 5-figure cash sum for sparing them the lawsuits and ridicule to follow, a sum that should be matched by the hospital out of sheer gratitude. And if the AMA has an Ethics prize, this unnamed doctor just won it for 2013, whether they acknowledge it or not.

Undeterred by such flawless ethical reasoning, Officers Assclown and Dipshit, assisted at some point by Officer Shitforbrains, and later assisted by Hidalgo County sherrif's deputies Bumblefuck, Stumblefuck, and Bufflefuck, trundled the motorist outside the county limits (and the limits of the jurisdiction of said search warrant, nota bene) to the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City NM, where the local disciples of Dr. Mengele were more than happy to use a search warrant from an alleged judge in another county as a pretext for an epic butt-fishing expedition.

As noted in the federal filing complaint and linked story, the motorist was then subjected to the following:

1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
{Nota bene that at this point, it ceased being a search, and the torture began. - A.}
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a second time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
{At this point chronologically, after failing to notice that the warrant itself was invalid in their locale, no one noticed that the time limit for said warrant had also expired even if it had been a valid warrant. Which it wasn't.}
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a third time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert's anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines.  No narcotics were found.
Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures.

This all took place in January 2013, and while it's a wonderful practical demonstration of Obamacare a few months early, like most of the activities of the current president, it's also a wee bit afoul of tiny details like the Bill of Rights and that pesky Constitution thingie.

My original response to that catalogue of nonsense was to a fellow online commentor who wondered why they didn't "just give him a dose of salts, and wait for the results" is as follows:

Because he has the legal right to refuse anything and everything. The only thing that can be done to anyone without their own consent in the ER is drawing blood for alcohol/drug tests, and administering emergency psych medication and strapping them down when they're actually violent and a danger to themselves or others (by which I mean swinging punches, kicking, and frothingly Hannibal Lecter bite-happy, not merely enamored with dropping F-bombs due to a lack of serotonin or social graces).

For everything else, they can tell everyone up to and including the President to "Eff off" with a mere 500 years of English Common Law and the full faith and credit of the U.S. Constitution on their side, something I regularly have to remind both cops and doctors of, but which our Legal Dept./Risk Mgmt. drones pound out in memos about 3X/yr.

Evidently somebody forgot to tell the local gauleiter, statspolizei, and the local disciples of Dr. Mengele in this instance that this sort of behavior was rather discredited post-1945.

Remember this when someone tells you the average h.s. grad doesn't need to know civics and political history for life beyond the 12th grade.

"These guys need to be locked up."

Letting the punishment fit the crime dictates that during confinement, they also be placed in restraints - by court order - and ass-raped by convicts repeatedly.
It's also funnier that way.

And for the record, every medical professional who didn't say not only "no" but "Hell no!" at the offending facility, from the lowest clerk up to the attending physician, just forfeited their licenses to practice, everything they own, and the next 10 years of their lives, at minimum.

Whether anyone admits it or not, this victim is on the short list to becoming the new co-owner of that entire hospital. This is a $20M judgement, and that's if it never gets to a jury's ears. He'd be crazy to settle for anything less than that, and if he has competent counsel, they've made that clear to him.

If it were me, I'd let them off with $5M in damages, provided they all stood in the town square for a week while any resident of the city limits was permitted to come up and kick them in the crotches as hard as they desired, once apiece.

And in all probability, Eckert was still issued a citation for the moving violation, and the medical center sent him a $6000 bill for sexually assaulting and humiliating him with glee multiple times, and showing a shockingly reckless disregard for anything we normally associate with professional ethics or common sense.
But, as countless late-night infomercials have told us, "Wait - there's MORE!"

They've done this before!

And come to find out, the original suspicion in both cases was the K-9 partner of Officer Shitforbrains: Leo the Ass-Sniffing Drug Dog!

Whose Crack Hound certification as a drug dog expired in 2011, at least a year before both incidents. Thus neither the dog nor the probable cause passed the smell test.

Not to mention that he doesn't know drugs from dirty underwear, and the false positives in both such notable occasions were ignored by everyone from Officer Shitforbrains to the Chief, because ass-raping both the citizenry and the Constitution in Deming and Hidalgo County is apparently so commonplace there that it doesn't even rate a yawn.

And notably, they again took their prospective butt-rapee to the same Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City. One might notice a pattern here.

To the disciple(s) of Dr. Mengele working at that particular would-be Nazi Concentration Camp Processing Station and Sexual Assault Training Camp brilliant example of what you get when you make doctors the tools of the government at Gila RMC, particularly the really really questionable ones who should probably have been flunked before licensure, and be dissecting cattle for the local butcher shop instead of practicing medicine last seen at Auschwitz circa 1944, and best left there:
Show some self-respect, and burn down your hospital, for the good of all mankind, not least of which includes the local citizenry.
And then, please, if you personally had anything whatsoever to do with participating in the above or similar incidents, with all dispatch, go home and hang yourselves, as a mark that you have some shred of personal honor and a sense of shame.
Or turn yourselves in and become State's Evidence witnesses, and offer a full confession. It's the very least you can do, and clearly long overdue.

And one wonders just how many times this sort of outrageous conduct will have to be repeated before the Governor of New Mexico directs the State Police to step in, suspend the entire city of Deming Police and Hidalgo County Sheriff's Departments, and take over both until further notice to restore the rule of law and order, after referring both and any other such matters (and if they've done this twice, they've probably done it twenty times) to the state's Attorney General for some rather speedy and sweeping show trials in Albuquerque, ideally no later than close of business Friday.

When the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico will commence an investigation into the issuance of dodgy search warrants by judicial jackholes in and around Luna County has not been addressed, even by reporters who should know better. C'mon, counselor, this is an easy ticket to Congress or the governorship, and looks to be as hard as shooting fish in a barrel. Jump right in.

No points for guessing the winners of the 2013 Jackbooted Thugs Of The Year Award, by miles.

Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

And please, for the love of all that's holy, it's long past time for SCOTUS to revisit the Fourth and Fifth Amendments relating to automobile and personal searches during traffic stops, and the admissibility of using drug dog "testimony" as probably cause for doing anything but handing out Milkbones. I pray that counsel for plaintiff uses some of the undoubted civil damages in this case to seek redress at the highest level for what has become a long train of abuses and usurpations of the Constitution, evincing a design to reduce us all under absolute despotism. Jefferson had a solution for that. What say let's nip things before we go there?

Flick Pick: Alien

Alien
(20th C. Fox, 1979)

Scariest sci-fi suspense thriller ever, and another in a string of masterpieces by Ridley Scott.
Fantastic ensemble cast, vs. one horrific mystery guest.

Flick Pick: Kelly's Heroes

Kelly's Heroes
(MGM, 1970)

All-time great heist caper set amidst WWII in France with Clint Eastwood before he was Dirty Harry, along with Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and Donald Sutherland as the hippest tank commander ever.

Flick Pick: Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows
(Warner Bros., 2011)

Sherlock Holmes redux, and the rare sequel that is truly an excellent continuation of the story begun in the first movie.

Flick Pick: Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes
(Warner Bros., 2009)

Guy Ritchie's marvelous re-invention of classic characters, via Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, with Holmes and Watson equal parts action heroes along with the cerebral pursuit of criminal goings on. The game is afoot.

Flick Pick: Young Sherlock Holmes

Young Sherlock Holmes
(Paramount, 1985)

Excellent homage to the original character and legend, courtesy of Chris Columbus' story, Barry Levinson's direction, and with effects by ILM and Pixar. This was Harry Potter before he even existed, produced by Steven Spielberg.

Flick Pick: Bladerunner

Bladerunner
(Warner Bros., 1982)

Ridley Scott's brilliant film noir thriller, with Harrison Ford, Sean Young, and Rutger Hauer set amongst a visually stunning imagining of a near future, wrapped in sci-fi and yet all too chord-strikingly human.  

LAX Shooting

At approximately 9:30A local today, a whackjob from New Jersey began shooting TSA agents at LAX, with a rifle he'd cleverly smuggled into the airport by putting it in a bag, underlying motive(s) as yet undisclosed. He apparently hit three, and killed one, thus buying a ticket in the federal death penalty sweepstakes (Go Team Lethal Injection!) Within moments of his attack, a Los Angeles Airport Police officer or officers fired shots that wounded the suspect multiple times (and hey, NYFPD, they hit ZERO bystanders! What a concept!), ended his rampage, and for all intents and purposes, ended forever any further criminal activities for the rest of his natural life as a free man. (Yay, great police marksmanship! Nota bene criminal dumbshits and crazies, an airport is NOT a Gun Free Zone. Heh.) That return fire was evidently the last demonstrably intelligent activity of law enforcement or government in that zip code detectable with existing instrumentation for the entire balance of the day.

At this point now (note: updated as of 11/2), well over 700 1500 flights inbound to or outbound from LAX, the nation's 3rd busiest airport, have been affected, including delayed, cancelled, or diverted. Passengers on arriving planes immediately afterwards were held incommunicado on board aircraft for hours with no updates, getting better news from smartphone apps than airline officials, then let out into terminals and held incommunicado for another good bit of time by law enforcement officials, and again with no explanations. When they were finally turned loose, it was on foot, as all roads into and out of the airport complex were closed to all but official traffic for nearly ten hours after the incident, long after it was clear to anyone with brainstem activity that the incident was over in the first 5 minutes. Passengers, including wheelchair-bound/handicapped and elderly, were left to fend for themselves in making a trek of 3 or more miles to exit the airport complex and fend for themselves for further transportation or assistance. Passengers present in the terminals at the time of the attack were cleared out immediately, in many cases minus all belongings, and again sent on their way for the same Bataan Death March to exit the premises.

There are 7 HUGE primary passenger terminals at LAX, IIRC. The middle one, at the top of an inverted "U", is the international terminal, adjacent to the shooting. Arrivals and departures take place on separate levels. The shooting itself took place in Terminal 3. By some point tomorrow, they expect to reopen the other six terminals, but all of Terminal 3 is closed until further notice.

My condolences to the victims and families of the wounded. I would not wish this fate on any of them, but I do confess to a hope upon initial reports that this was the result of some frequent flier who'd been groped one time too many, and finally snapped.

But long before the details are released, one thing is absolutely clear: there haven't been as many retarded people all in one place at one time as there are at LAX today, since whenever they held the last Special Olympics.

Today's unredeemed and inexcusable biblical level of pandemonium, chaos, and associated disruption, traffic jam, and destruction of public order was clearly not the result of one lone whackjob shooting three unfortunate targets.
It was the concerted unpreparedness, negligence, incompetence, and calculated and studied stupidity of countless bureaucracies, agencies, and generally useless buffoons who populate almost every finger stuck in this pie this morning from top to bottom, other than the few good or lucky bastards who shot straight at today's assclown du jour when it counted.

And there is also clearly one way today's senseless tragedy could have been totally avoided: disband the TSA completely and absolutely, immediately and forever.

It's clearly an idea whose time has come.


But wait! There's more!: The Fairytale Version The Official After Action Report

Flick Pick: The Mark Of Zorro

The Mark Of Zorro
(20th C. Fox, 1940)

Seventy-three years(!) to the day after it premiered, this classic tale of romance and swordplay still outshines every pale latter-day attempt to ape it. Tyrone Power is peak-of-career dashing, Linda Darnell is breathtakingly beautiful, and Basil Rathbone is a villain with whom it's worthy to cross swords. If there's any fault in the production it's that it creates a yearning for the days when meddlesome government officials could be sent packing at the point of a stout blade.