By Wayne Allensworth “AI will replace humans for most things”—Bill Gates More than once, I’ve written that the American Remnant cannot grow complacent or indulge in triumphalism after President Donald Trump’s stunning political comeback in November. It’s all good fun to watch Fox News personalities mock the “word salads” of Kamala Harris or again state the obvious — that we all know the...
By Wayne Allensworth A scene near the end of David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai resonates with the older me. Colonel Nicholson, played by the great Alec Guiness, is walking the length of the bridge built by British soldiers in a Japanese POW camp under the colonel’s supervision. He pauses and looks out over the waters of the river and notes that he has had a good life and career, but that...
By Wayne Allensworth Westerns were once upon a time the most popular American film genre. And the great John Ford directed some of the best ones. Our greatest star in the Western film firmament was John Wayne, who was associated as a friend and collaborator with Ford for much of his career. Their names are inseparable in American film history. Movie buffs know the Ford-Wayne films that did so...
By Wayne Allensworth My wife and I were watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time the other night, and something stood out that I hadn’t thought of before. Early in the movie, when old man Potter, the story’s Scrooge character played by Lionel Barrymore, complains that the Building & Loan in which he holds shares has loaned the princely sum of $5,000 to Ernie Bishop, a cab driver...
By Wayne Allensworth You only live twice Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face — James Bond, after Japanese poet Basho in You Only Live Twice My first encounter with James Bond at the movies was quite memorable, partly because I was trying to watch Goldfinger from the backseat of our family car at Thunderbird Drive-in in Houston, Texas, and partly because my...
By Wayne Allensworth The picture below, of Christ being led to a snowy Golgotha, is from a movie that, along with others from the film’s director, have often been chosen as among the hundred best ever produced. Rating movies can get complicated, but nevertheless this film belongs in any cinematic canon. The director is Russian Andrey Tarkovsky. The film is his Andrey Rublev (1966) about a...
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