Ruth's Radio Report 2013

Ruth: For radio, 2013 was a year of silence.

Throughout U.S. President Barack Obama's first term there was silence.  Censorship, refusal to cover real stories.

In the fall of 2012, President Obama sends a unit of U.S. Army Special Ops into Iraq and Tim Arango reports this in September 2012 in The New York Times right before the presidential debates start and not one of the worthless moderators ever brings it up.

Nor did any NPR radio program, then or since, not did any Pacifica Radio Program.

Silences.

Worse than that they repeatedly lied throughout 2013 insisting that all U.S. troops were out of Iraq.


In the end, they learn their whoring is not making them richer.





It is not increasing the size of their radio audience.

NPR can get away with that right now because they still have a sizeable audience.

But remember 2003 and 2004 and 2005 . . .

Remember how NPR used to brag about its efforts to increase the size of its audience?

It no longer bothers.

Pacifica Radio does not have NPR's large audience.

It was actually building its audience in 2003 and 2004.  It was delivering audiences and the audiences were delivering donations, 'pledges.'

And they could have built on that; however, they did not want to provide information.

They wanted to tell you how to vote, they wanted to trick you into voting their way.

And they dropped Iraq at the same time.

Then, in 2008, we got the lovely Professor Patricia J. Williams as a guest on KPFA's The Morning Show insisting to the audience that they should vote for Mr. Obama in the Democratic Party primary because, as a U.S. senator, in 2002, he had voted against the authorization for the Iraq War.

Was Columbia University's professor really that ignorant?

No.

She just thought so little of public radio listeners that she lied to them over the airwaves.

You lie to the audience, you lose them.

And that is what has happened to Pacifica.

The radio 'network' operated largely by paying the VISA bill with Master Card.

WBAI was an asylum of lunatics.  They delivered bad radio because they were stupid, they were ignorant, and they were boring.

And WBAI has been a drain on the system.

When Pacifica had a number of listeners, KPFA, KPFK, and KPFT could keep WBAI afloat as well as the embarrassing D.C. station that I will not even bother to name.

But when the listeners left, there was no excess money to carry the awful two stations and the three that had brought in money now had financial issues of their own.

All of this led up to 2013 and the silence.

There was the sad silence of Free Speech Radio News.

The only Pacifica program that really mattered was a half-hour, Monday through Friday program -- an actual news program.

Pacifica does not have a lot of news programs.

They have bad talk shows like Democracy Now! but shows with actual reporting?

No. It was Free Speech Radio News and The Pacifica Evening News (KPFA and KPFK produce The Pacifica Evening News and air it.)  Monday through Friday, that was it.  Saturday and Sunday?  The KPFA Evening News, a thirty minute broadcast on each day.

They could spin records, they could interview their friends, they could plug their own books, and speaking appearances but they could not report.

And the loss of Free Speech Radio News is felt constantly.

Public radio lost many programs in 2013.

Along with FSRN, there was also Progressive Radio with Matthew Rothschild that ceased production.

The Progressive, as C.I. has noted throughout the year, is in serious financial trouble.

The monthly magazine has run off readers with its sick devotion to and worship of President Obama.

Instead of exploring the issues effecting people, the magazine -- especially online -- spends the bulk of its time doing campaign ads masquerading as journalism.

Mr. Rothschild is a Socialist.

Which makes it all the sadder that he seems to feel his highest purpose in life was carrying water for a Democratic administration.

Progressive Radio had become little more than an excuse to press various artists into providing praise for Mr. Obama.

Mr. Rothschild was not up to interviewing artists since he has no grasp or understanding of artists.

He demonstrated it recently with praise for Will Ferrell.

Mr. Ferrell is frequently a funny performer.  He is less funny in the last years, to be honest.  In fact, by Bewitched with Nicole Kidman, his limitations were very obvious.

So for Mr. Rothschild to be praising Mr. Ferrell and the actor's ha-ha-let's-be-sexist-and-make-money-but-pretend-like-we're-dong-it-ironically-and-knowingly movie.

Seriously, Mr. Rothschild's contribution to the 'arts' was to praise the film?

Should I add "that he did not see" or do we, since we are talking about public radio, all already grasp that?

Silences.

Law and Disorder Radio.

Unlike the other two radio programs, it is still producing episodes.

Though less and less people are listening.

"The worst part about the 60 Minutes - Lara Logan story," Denise e-mailed me, "is that I now have to avoid Law and Disorder because I just cannot take more sexists attacks on women from them."

It is a shame the Michaels -- Michael Ratner and Michael Smith -- refused to grasp that listeners listen.

If they had grasped that, they might have understood how damaging their various attacks on women were.

In 2013, it all came together.

Their attacks on the women who may have been raped by Julian Assange, their attacks on director Kathryn Bigelow, their attacks on Hillary Clinton (even after she had left the administration), their attacks on --

Well anyone but President Obama.

The Michaels and the program were not helped by the cowardly Center for Constitutional Rights which Mr. Ratner is so identified with.  (His title is "President Emeritus" -- "Duchess of York" having already been taken.)

The cowardly organization avoided the illegal spying scandal despite this being a Constitutional issue.

As Marcia noted weeks ago, while C.C.R. avoided the issue of the illegal spying, they did weigh in with press releases on Uganda.

Last time I checked, Uganda was not governed by the U.S. Constitution.

But that is what they focused on to avoid calling out Mr. Obama for the illegal spying.

Today's illegal spying is worse than it was under Bully Boy Bush.

But when Bully Boy Bush did it, Mr. Ratner explained on air and in a book why the spying was reasons for impeachment.

Again, they appear to forget that listeners listen.

They listen to what is said and what is not said.

So, for example, they registered the non-stop attacks on Kathryn Bieglow by the Michaels (Heidi Boghosian would make a fool of herself joining the game of bash-the-bitch already in progress).

And then came NBC's Ironside remake and where were the Michaels.

They insisted that Ms. Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty endorsed torture.

Many of us disagreed with that assessment.

But could anyone disagree that Ironside endorsed torture?

The pilot opened with Ironside in the back of a police car with a suspect.

Ironside would threaten him and torture him.

And when it finally ended, another police officer would call out Ironside for breaking the law and torturing.  He would do that just as the missing young girl was found in a car trunk . . . thanks to Ironside's torturing of the man.

Ava and C.I. called it out.

Where were The Michaels?  Or Ms. Boghosian, for that matter?

No where to be found.

Making it even more clear that their sudden interest in critiquing media was really just about providing them with another excuse to trash women.

In 2013, public radio was all about the silence -- the programs like Free Speech Radio News that we lost and deeply missed, the programs like Progressive Radio that we lost but did not miss and programs like Law and Disorder Radio which ran off listeners instead of engaging them.

------------------------

Ruth also covered radio in 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008, .



iraq
radio
zero dark thirty npr pacifica
ruths report
the common ills

2013 in Books (Martha & Shirley)

In 2013, The Common Ills community was always eager for a good read but didn't find much.  Which was why there were repeated cries for more book coverage at community sites and in community newsletters.  This year, every book on the list was either covered or noted at a community site or in a community newsletter.

How much did such mentions matter?

The more mentions you had, the higher up the list you tended to rank.

Brooke, Tori and KeShawn were among those voting for the book that ended up at number one. When we spoke to them about how they ended up picking their number one book pick, they said that the book sounded interesting, that they wanted to read it, that when they'd forget about it due to daily life, it would pop back up in one of C.I.'s Iraq snapshots or in a column she wrote for one of the newsletters or . . .  KeShawn, "It was just a constant reminder.  By the second month, I got the book."  Brooke added that she too kept forgetting so "at some point when it was in a snapshot again, with the link, I just went ahead and clicked on the link and downloaded it.  This was my first digital book."

Digital or physical pages?  That was actually a debate about one book that made the list.

In looking over the choices, we remember the year far more clearly and hope you will as well.


1) Toby Dodge's  Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism by Toby Doge.

How did this end up number one?

We are a community who cares about Iraq.  We may be the only ones who are honest enough to note Tim Arango's revelation, in the midst of his NYT report on Syria, in September 2012 that US President Barack Obama sending US troops back into Iraq.  Of course we'd note that, we are readers!  We're not skimmers, we actually pick up books.  Books of all kinds -- fiction, non-fiction, serious, popular, camp, literary, etc.

But Toby Doge's book had community awareness in a way that few books did.

And those mentions in the Iraq snapshots served as reminders to pick up the book.

If you bothered to do so, you learned so much more than what the US news media has provided.

The Erbil Agreement, for example, is addressed as part of Nouri al-Maliki's seizure of power.  What no one in the US media other than CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq will tell you about Nouri refusing to nominate people to head the security posts so that he can keep control of them, it's in the book.

This is the book that best captures Iraq today.

That said, as C.I. always notes, Iraq is "highly fluid."  Things change all the time.

Sadly, for Iraq, these changes are usually for the worse.

If you want to understand Iraq, you want this book.


2)  Heidi Boghosian's new book  Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power and Public Resistance.




The executive director of the National Lawyers Guild and co-host of the radio program Law and Disorder Radio wrote one of the community's favorite books for 2013.  10 more votes and it would have reached number one.  It really was close.  Community awareness of the book was boosted by it being quoted in several Iraq snapshots, by the Third Estate Sunday Review book discussion "Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power and Public Resistance" and by Maria's review in El Spirito.  It probably also benefited from the illegal spying scandal revelations via whistle-blower Ed Snowden.  The book explains how we arrived at this time in history when both our personal privacy and our Constitution are in grave danger.



3) My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.



This book was a surprise.  It had only one community mention.  But what a mention.  In Third's "German sympathizers or agents shot down a plane? Huh?"  That attention grabbing headline resulted from this exchange between film director Henry Jaglom and film director, actor and screenwriter Orson Welles about the actress Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey, Nothing Sacred, To Be Or Not To Be, Hands Across The Table, Twentieth Century,  etc.) and her then-husband actor Clark Gable:



HJ: Now, Lombard could not have been very bright.

OW: Very bright.  Brighter than any director she ever worked with. She had all the ideas.  Jack Barrymore told me the same thing.   He said, "I've never played with an actress so intelligent in my life."

HJ:  But Gable was certainly not bright.

OW: No, but terribly nice.  Just a nice big hunk of man.  If you're working hard that long -- if you have to be in makeup at five fifteen, and you get home at seven o'clock -- how much brightness do you want?  The guys just wanted to stagger home at seven o'clock -- how much brightness do you want?  The guys just wanted to stagger home -- and, if they could, get laid.  Otherwise, a happy smile and get ready for the next day's work.



HJ: So Lombard was also killed in a plane crash?

OW: Yes.  You know why her plane went down?

HJ: Why?

OW: It was full of big-time American physicists, shot down by the Nazis.  She was one of the only civilians on the plane.  The plane was filled with bullet holes.

HJ: It was shot down by who?


OW: Nazi agents in America.  It's a real thriller story.

HJ:  That's preposterous.  What was she doing on a plane full of physicists?  Do people know this?

OW: The people who know it, know it.  It was greatly hushed up.  The official story was that it ran into the mountain.

JH: The agent had antiaircraft guns?

OW: No. In those days, the planes couldn't get up that high.  They'd just clear the mountains. The bad guys knew the exact route that the plane had to take.  They were standing on a ridge, which was the toughest thing for the plane to get over.  One person can shoot a plane down, and if they had five or six people there, they couldn't miss.  Now, I cannot swear it's true.  I've been told this by people who swear it's true, who I happen to believe.  But that's the closet you can get, without having some security clearance.  No one wanted to admit that we had people in the middle of America who could shoot down a plane for the Nazix.  Because then everybody would start denoucning anybody with a German grandmother.  Which Roosevelt was very worried about.  The First World War had only happened some twenty-odd years before.  They were getting lynched.  And he was very anxious for nothing like that to be repeated.


Alright, you've got our attention.

And the book holds it.  It's transcripts from the two men's recorded conversations.  And others pop up in the conversations.  For example, actor Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot, The Great Race, The Apartment, Under The Yum Yum Tree, The China Syndrome, etc.) will be invited to join the discussion, actor Richard Burton (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) will be sent away.




4) Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's Rock Chick: A Girl And Her Music



Everyone's invited to legendary rock critic Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's music seminar.  The woman known today for The Keltiad fantasy series -- which we firmly believe should be turned into a film franchise -- didn't begin her career as a novelist.  It was the sixties when she started and music mattered.  Patricia Kennealy Morrison quickly became one of the major rock critics.  Reading this wonderful book, a collection of her past writing, you'll understand why.  And you'll marvel over how the history of rock was able to write Patricia -- along with many other women -- out of the story.  With this book, she reclaims her rightful credit. Third Estate Sunday Review's "Rock Chick: Book discussion" addressed this book.


5) Jay McInerney's Brightness Falls.

This 1993 epic novel caught the community's attention as a result of multiple posts by Mike -- here, here and here.  Does Oprah still have her book club?  Who knows?  Who needs her when we've got Mike.  Like many of you, we went out and picked up the book.  It's haunting.  One of the best novels of the second half of the 20th century.  The ending should leave you in tears.


6)   America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East by Hugh Wilford.

This book benefited from a mention in an Iraq snapshot and from Goldie's review in Polly's Brew.  It came out late in the year, at the start of this month.  We've noticed that the later the book comes out, the lower it appears in the top ten.  It's not easy to release a book in December and get it on to our list because everyone's so busy that reading a thick volume -- and this is physically a big book -- is hard to do during the holiday season.  But this is an important book and it's appearance in the top ten is a testament to that.

7) Penny Marshall's My Mother Was Nuts.

Actress and film director Penny Marshall's book came out late in 2012 (September) and didn't make last year's list.  But as she continued to promote it -- and with the rave Elaine wrote on it in the gina & krista round-robin -- the community became more and more aware of it.  This May, the book comes out in soft cover.  If you can wait that long, pick it up then.  If not, grab it now because this really is a great book.  It's funny and it's fair.  She's not playing kissy-kissy to everyone.  When she has praise, she shares it.  When she doesn't,  oh well.  The woman we all loved as Laverne (Laverne and Shirley) writes a book that's funny and fair and makes you feel like she's sitting across the table from you sharing these stories.  Like what it was like on set of The Preacher's Wife -- one male actor didn't handle the table read well when others were getting the laughs. You'll learn why Debra Winger didn't make A League of Their Own. She was supposed to be the lead (the Geena Davis role) but she walked when one person was cast in the film.  (Guess who?)  Find out how Tom Hanks ended up in that film and how he ended up in Penny's Big.  Who did Penny have to sideline when casting her film Awakenings?  And how did she and Rob Reiner end up married anyway?  All that and so much more is in the book.  Brandon is among 12 community members who insist this is a book you really want to get the audio version of so consider that as well.

8)  Darwin Porter's Marilyn At Rainbow's End: Sex, Lies, Murder, and the Great Cover-up.




Marcia's "Marilyn At Rainbow's End by Darwin Porter" and Rebecca's "books: marilyn at rainbow's end" covered the book and launched a six week debate in the gina & krista roundrobin over whether a summer read requires a physical book.  At the end, about 62% of respondents agreed with Marcia and Rebecca that a page turner works best in physical form and not in digital download.  Has any figure captured us the way Marilyn has.  The actress who died August 5, 1962 (we'll say she was murdered) continues to capture the country. 51 years after her death, you've seen her this month in TV ads for Chanel No. 5 perfume -- the ad starring actress Charlize Theron and the one featuring Marilyn speaking about what she wears to bed.  Many powerful men tried to bury Marilyn.  She refuses to fade away.


9) Jon Krampner's Female Brando: The Legend of Kim Stanley.

This 2006 book came on the community radar when Betty discussed the book she was reading in "The Female Brando."  Jon Krampner argues that stage and TV actress Kim Stanley was the female Marlon Brando.  Stanley also acted in five films -- one of which was a film of the 1966  production of Three Sisters.  Her best known role to most people today is probably in the film Frances which starred Jessica Lange.  Stanley played Frances Farmer's mother in the film and was nominated for an Academy Award.  She lost to Jessica Lange who was nominated for Best Actress for Frances and for Best Supporting Actress for Tootsie.  Stanley was a stage actress with the bulk of her TV appearances coming via television plays. Brando was done with Broadway (and theater) in December 1949 after his sixth Broadway play.  He would go on to act in at least 39 completed films. (1995's Divine Rapture which starred Brando, Debra Winger and Johnny Depp was shut down during filming.)  His acting would result in eight Academy Award nominations (he won twice -- for The Godfather and On The Waterfront).  So, since Stanley made so few films and only was the star in two of them, the book also inspired a variety of theme posts on who was really the Brando female equivalent in film?  Betty offered "Jane Fonda," Rebecca picked "debra winger,"  Elaine offered "Jessica Lange," Mike went with "Marilyn Monroe," for Marcia it's "Charlize Theron," Ann selected "Diane Keaton," Stan argued for "Tuesday Weld," Trina felt the obvious choice was "Faye Dunaway," for Kat it's "Cher" and Ruth went with "Shelley Winters."



10) Linda Ronstadt's Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir.




Community members felt that Ava and C.I. more than nailed the problems with the book in "She sang so much, she wrote so little (Ava and C.I.)."  Community member Barbara noted, "With no more new albums from Linda, I wished she'd written a better book.  But with no more new albums from Linda, this probably is her final statement."  Another member who voted for the book, Brita, wrote, "It's really small, in scope and in reference.  Anyone wanting to devour a book should go find something else.  But if you need light reading, something you can pick up and put down regularly, this is the book.  I read it while spending a week at the hospital with a dying parent.  The book was something I could enjoy as a distraction and didn't require a great deal of concentration."  Russ, however, wrote, "I love Linda.  Heart Like A Wheel [hit album by Ronstadt].  'Don't Know Much' [hit single].  The book for me is a continuation of the music."



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Martha and  Shirley have also done the year in books for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005.


books
toby dodge
heidi boghosian
orson welles
penny marshall jay mcinerney henry jaglom patrica kennealy morrison darwin porter linda ronstadt jon krampner

10 Best Films of 2013 (Ann and Stan)

This is Ann's "10 Best Films of 2013 (Ann and Stan)" and Stan's  "10 Best Films of 2013 (Ann and Stan)."

 10 Best Films of 2013 (Ann and Stan)

Ann and Stan doing yet another look at films.  2013 wasn't a very good year for films.  We saw a dogpile, for example, on "Zero Dark Thirty" by people who supported torture (Senator Dianne Feinstein) and people who didn't (Debra Sweet).  Their arguments were with one another, somehow they tried to make them about the film.

Supposedly Sweet, Michael Ratner and many others were opposed to torture.  Yet when NBC embraced torture -- openly and clearly embraced and endorsed --  with the TV show "Ironside," only Ava and C.I. seemed able to point that out.  Suddenly, the crowd that had trashed Kathryn Bieglow and her film for months had nothing to say.

Then there was the other stupidity.  Racism gets ignroed in "Django Unchained."  This was a blacksploitation film made by a White man.  Jane Fonda, we expect a hell of a lot more from you then you're lying that it represents the finest statement on slavery.  It was a dumb action film where the most evil person was an African-American man.  Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

A number of us called those statements out.  But it was left to Betty to serve Jane:

 Keesha asked, I read.  Read for yourself:

[Jane Fonda:] There’s a scene in “Django” where Kerry Washington is lashed with a whip. I told Quentin that it was the first such scene that I actually believed. I could feel every lash. Kerry seemed to be receiving each lash on behalf of her ancestors, all those who had experienced that, all the ghosts of the slaves on the actual plantation where they filmed. Kerry really got to me and I cried. I asked if it was a hard scene to shoot and he said that the one where Jamie Foxx has to get down on his knees before a white man and beg him not to whip his wife was perhaps even harder. “I filmed that myself with a hand held camera,” he said. “I was crying and my tears filled the camera lens and it fogged over and I couldn’t even see exactly what I was filming. I just pointed the camera in what I thought was the right direction.” “Did you actually use that footage you shot yourself?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered, “That’s the footage in the film.” It’s an important film, as is “Lincoln.” I have read about and heard people say after coming out of “Django,” that they’d never realized before what slavery was really like.

What a load of s**T Kerry Washington is beaten in the film and Jane's praising Kerry's acting and asks Quentin about that scene.  Was it hard to film? Not as hard as it was to film Foxx begging a man not to beat Kerry. WTF. Does Jane Fonda not know how many women in this country are beaten and raped? She wants to claim to be a feminist -- at least right now, like a daffy lightbulb she flickers on and off with feminism -- but she doesn't even register what Quentin just said. Quentin has problems directing the scene where a man has to beg.  That was hard for him. Poor baby.

And that should be the final word on that crappy, racist and sexist film.  It wasn't hard for Tarantino to film Kerry Washington being beaten with a whip but that Foxx had to beg for the beating to stop, that really ripped Tarantino's little world apart.

For Jane Fonda and others it was 'real.'  For these two African-American bloggers, the whole film was bulls**t and racist.

And though every film in 2013 wasn't racist, so many were, in fact, bulls**t.

This was an awful year for film.

The relationship films are largely gone.  They were too adult for the cinema.  Instead we have the same damn story of super hero men -- men (go read Third's "Movies: Are they all the Invisible Woman?") -- told over and over.  How they overcome Daddy issues and manage to put on a cape or metal or whatever.

Superman and Spider-Man are now Brits and Wonder Woman's going to be an Israeli.  Wonder Woman's going to be played by a woman who fought in the Israeli military.  That should really help the box office for that film ("Superman vs. Batman") in the Arab world.

Meanwhile Paull Rud -- of the comedy films -- is 44-years-old and gearing up for his action lead as Ant-Man.

It's all so sad and disgusting.

We long for an Alan J. Pakula to emerge.  A Sam Peckinpah.  A Billy Wilder.  A Norah Ephron.

Instead, we live in a year when Spike Lee had to fight like never before with a studio and he lost.  And yet the critics cut him no slack.  We happen to love "Old Boy" (Spike's version) but we damn well wouldn't have written some of the garbage that made it into newspapers mocking Spike or questioning his vision when we knew the studio controlled how that film ended up, how Spike's vision was completely disregarded.

It was as though a lot of people had been waiting for the day they could rip apart Spike.

It's amazing that so many White actor rushed to defend the White director making a mockery of a painful episode in Black history but Jane Fonda and others didn't rush to defend Spike, didn't blog about how the studio should have let Spike have final cut on his own film.

They strip 35 minutes from his film and 'critics' want to whine about how they couldn't follow this or didn't get that?

We're sorry but we think if a studio tried to strip 35 minutes out of Martin Scorsese's cut of his own film -- or even a lower grade director or 'director' like Robert Redford -- that this would be celebrity news and actors would be expressing their outrage.

2013 found no artistic outrage and damn little art.


Our picks for the ten best films of 2013 are based on any film -- drama, comedy, action, documentary, concert -- that came out on DVD, BluRay or streaming in 2013.





1) "The Wolverine."  Yeah, it tops our list.  Yeah, it's a comic book movie.

We're actually burned out on comic book movies -- especially bad ones.  "The Wolverine"?  It's actually an incredible film.  You've got some great new characters, it's set in Japan and it's Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Does it get better than that?

Yes, it does.  Famke Janssen appears throughout the film as Jean Grey.  And that adds a special richness to the film -- both due to Jansen who really is a one of a kind performer and due to Jean Grey, the most complex woman the comics have ever created.

The film reteams Jackman with director James Mangold.  One of Jackman's earliest great non-X-Men films is Mangold's "Kate & Leopold" which teams Jackman with Meg Ryan.

There are surprises and plenty of thrills and the root of the story revolves around the invulnerable Wolverine being effected by bullets, not immediately healing from injuries.  A great film with an amazing look.




2) "The Heat."

This was the funniest damn movie of the year.

Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy team up with director Paul Feig for this Katie Dippold scripted comedy.  Sandra's the straight laced FBI agent, McCarthy's the more rough around the edges police detective.  Their chemistry is amazing and they've got to be reteamed -- for a sequel or a different comedy, they've got to be reteamed.  They're just too good together.

And they've got a great supporting cast with especially strong turns by Marlon Wayans and Jane Curtain.

How good was this film?  It's 2013's biggest comedy at the box office with $159 million in ticket sales..  "We're The Millers," the second biggest comedy in the US this year, sold $150 million in tickets



3) "Oz the Great and Powerful"

Stan: I was at work talking to some friends and heard a sequel to "The Wizard of Oz" was coming out next month.  I thought this had to be a joke and something awful.  I call Ann and ask, "Have you heard about this?"

Ann: And I'm like five months pregnant and have only just gotten over puking every morning and I have no idea what's coming to the movies.

And we talk and agree that only two directors could possibly pull that off today: Tim Burton or Sam Raimi.  And, lucky for this film, it had Raimi.  "Oz" is a masterpiece.  It's only going to become more so each year.  James Franco, Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Bill Cobb and Tony Cox have created memorable characters.  And as much as you appreciate the film the first time you see it, it's months later that you realize you love the film so much more than you thought.  In fifty years, this will probably be considered the best film of its year. 




4) "Zero Dark Thirty." Like "Oz," you can use the term "epic" here.  The two films really are epics.  Kathryn Bigelow had already won the Academy Award for Best Director with "The Hurt Locker," but this is her finest film so far.  It is also her biggest box office so far.

Jessica Chastain leads the cast as Maya.  She's determined to locate Osama bin Laden. The cast also includes James Gandolfini in what Betty rightly hailed as "his career topping role" playing CIA Director Leon Panetta.  And Chastain and Gandolfini are part of an amazing cast which also includes Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Chris Pratt, Reda Kateb, Jason Clarke and Edgar Ramirez among others.








The film was attacked by people who hadn't even seen it -- Debra Sweet organized a protest against the film she hadn't seen, Michael Ratner and Michael Smith wasted about 10 minutes trashing the film that, oh, by the way, they hadn't seen yet.

Their petty bulls**t has no place in the arts.  This is an important film and, yes, an epic. 



5) "Stoker"

This may be the best film pretty much no one saw.

Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode and Mia Wasikowska star in this film directed by Park Chan-wook (directed the original "Old Boy") from an amazing script by "Prison Break" actor Wentworth Miller.  Is it a horror film or a thriller?

That'll probably be argued as people discover this film and they should.  We can't tell you anything about it without risking spoilers.  You'll want to enjoy the shocks, the twists, the turns without anyone tipping you off.



5) "Skyfall"

Wait?

Did they just kill James Bond off at the start of "Skyfall"?

Yes, in the same way they did on "You Only Live Twice."

This is the best Bond of the Daniel Craig period.  And that's saying a great deal because all three of Craig's Bond films stand up.

Daniel Craig has been an amazing Bond.

And the set pieces of this film (especially the train and the subway) are among the best Bond moments.


6) "The Family"

When this mafia comedy came out at the theaters,  we weren't crazy about it.

We felt Michelle Pfeiffer was amazing but that the film wasn't.  We're still not crazy about Robert De Nero and the same performance he's recycled for about 20 years now.  He's become a "Saturday Night Live" parody of himself.

But Pfieffer and Tommy Lee Jones give performances that startle with the freshness and richness the two bring to the screen.  And Luc Besson's direction grows on you.  The film probably should have come out in November or March.  Far away from summer because this isn't a summer comedy film.



7)  "Celeste and Jesse Forever."

This is another film that very few people saw.

Celeste and Jesse are married and they divorce in the film.  In fact, we know they're divorcing at the start of the film and it ends with their divorce being final.  So maybe that kept people away?

Or maybe they thought it was going to be "Forget Paris"?

What it is is a really funny film starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg in the title roles -- a really funny film that explores what happens when the marriage is over but the friendship isn't?

Rashida Jones finally gets the perfect film role and, to get it, she just had to co-write it herself (with Will McCormack).





8) "Aziz Ansari: Buried Alive" (tie) "Joan Rivers: Don't Start With Me."



Aziz's comedy film is a Netflix exclusive.  Joan's aired on Showtime in 2012 (and came out on DVD and BluRay at the start of 2013).

These are concert films.  So don't expect to be blown away by some sweeping tracking shot or similar cinematic business.  With a concert film, the focus is the main performer.

And Aziz and Joan are hilarious.  They're also doing humor that people may not be able to handle.  For example, Aziz muses on stage that he may have been so good looking as a youngster that he intimidate child molesters.  He talks about the boys molested at soccer camp and explains that an old man forcing him to perform oral sex would have been a "deal breaker"  and he creates a conversation where his mother is telling him he has to go to soccer camp and he explains why he is not going back. He also does a lengthy routine on men who send pictures of their penises to women they know.

 For some, that may be too much.  For others?  They're probably feeling like Joan, "Just lighten the f**k up, these are just jokes, assholes."

Joan's concert film continues and expands on the theme of her 2012 best seller I Hate Everyone Starting With Me.  She works her way through the audience, group by group.  For example:

Blind people are so f**king selfish It's all about them. When was the last time a blind person gave you a compliment, think about it. 'You look great, have you lost weight?'  Never happens. They're always talking about themselves.  'Is the train coming at me?'


These will both leave you laughing.  Mike praised Aziz's special noting, "This is a hilarious performance.  There are a lot of blow job jokes and other things so you've got your warning if you're looking for, I don't know, Bob Newhart.  Aziz is hysterical.  I have not laughed so hard in so long."



10) "Star Trek Into Darkness"
We share Zoe Saldana's dismay (see photo above).

This film really demonstrates how awful cinema has become in the US.  The 'rebranding' is nothing but the promotion of ignorance, the rejection of wisdom.  'Let's redo ____ but with a young cast!  We'll call it a reboot!' But what happens after the reboot?

This is the follow up to the reboot and yet the film is acing as if Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) has actually gotten dumber since the 2009 reboot.

We like Chris Pine.  We're not talking about his acting.  We're talking about the lousy script.

And Pine's performance as well as the performances of Zachary Quinto, Saldana, Leonard Nimoy, Karl Urban (Bones is the only one who comes off well in the script, by the way) and John Cho are the only reasons this made it into our top ten.

If Zoe Saldana's Uhura is sidelined again like she was in this film, we'll have a quite a bit to say.  Uhura is the only African-American in the films currently and she is also a pioneering character -- so much so that when Nichelle Nichols was planning to quit the TV series, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself asked her not to leave, pointed out how important her character was.

So, J.J. Abrams, understand right now that you can work on your Daddy issues all you want and we don't care.  But if you don't stop screwing up Uhura, you're going to have to deal with the Black community.

the heat star trek into darkness stoker zero dark thirty joan rivers the wolverine aziz ansari celeste and jesse forever the family oz the great and powerful skyfall