Monthly Archives: March 2012

1950s movies marathon – part 70

The Ladykillers (1955, UK)

The British are nostalgic about Ealing Studios, but they didn’t make all that many good movies, and only a few really great ones. This is one of them. One of the many many great things about it is how amazingly ugly and evil Alec Guinness manages to look. Watched it all.

The Seven Little Foys (1955, USA)

Oh, Bob Hope. You’re the worst. You really are. But I don’t blame you, I blame the entire generation of moviegoers who thought you were the very definition of wittiness. Watched: 3 minutes.

The Seven Year Itch (1955, USA, Wilder)

I have a theory that makes Marilyn Monroe’s character a lot more interesting: She’s actually quite intelligent, and is just stringing Tom Ewell along for the fun of it. Watched it all before, and again now, this time slightly more attuned than before to the nuances of 1950s innuendo.

Conquest of Space (1955, USA)

So now we know what inspired the title sequence for Pigs! In! Spaaaaaace! Watched: 5 minutes. This movie is begging for a m3stking, but I don’t think it ever got one.

Summarnattens leende / Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, Sweden, Bergman)

What confuses me about Ingmar Bergman is how someone can be so talented, and at the same time make movies that feel so irrelevant. Perhaps it was a mistake for him to work in a country where he was vastly more competent than anyone else. Or maybe I’ll change my mind when I’ve seen more of his classics. Watched: 25 minutes.

1950s movies marathon – part 69

Five Guns West (1955, USA, Corman)

The Confederates send a dirty dozen of hardened criminals to rob the Union, and, although the movie eventually introduces some morally upright characters, you can tell that Roger Corman finds the bad guys more interesting. Watched it all.

The Man With the Golden Arm (1955, USA, Preminger)

Ex-con Frank Sinatra has a talent for drumming, but will he be able to to resis the lure of the OLD DOPE PEDDLER?!!?!  (Probably not).  Watched: 10 minutes.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, USA)

Small-town America is full of bigots, and it takes the occasional visit by big-city liberals to shake them out of their narrow-minded ways. Watched it all. It’s a classic, although with a hypocritical premise. The greatest crime against the Japanese-Americans during the Second World War was committed by the government, not by backwater hillbillies.

Battle Cry (1955, USA)

It remains true in 1955: The only good movies about the Second World War were made during it. It’s not that they were all great, but that they were made by people who bore all the weight and uncertainty of the war on their shoulders, and not these jolly late-comers. Watched: 13 minutes. The only interesting scenes here are actual footage from the battle of the Pacific. Each time I see such clips I react with new emotions, this time was with the realization that, dear God, we’ve been documenting our world in color all the way back to 1942! (Try it yourself – watch this clip, and see how you react.)

Uro i tillitens høyborg

Jeg skriver i Aftenposten i dag om påstanden om at Norge er verdensmestre i sosial kapital og tillit, med utgangspunkt i boken Sosial kapital i Norge:

I boken Sosial kapital i Norge som ble utgitt i fjor høst legger norske sosiologer fram ny forskning på hvordan det står til med den sosiale kapitalen i Norge, ikke minst i møte med innvandring. Anniken Huitfeldt skriver at boken knuser myten om at nordmenn har blitt mindre tillitsfulle. Og den innvandringsoptimistiske avisa Utrop presenterer den som et oppgjør med frykten for etnisk mangfold: Norge er ikke bare verdensmestre i sosial kapital, vi får stadig mer og mer av det.

Innholdet er ikke fullt så overbevisende, og får meg til å undres på om sosiologene i det hele tatt har noen god måte å måle sosial kapital på. For hvor i disse tallene finner jeg de 1 av 4 som  mener islam er en trussel mot norsk kultur, eller de innvandrerne som var redde for å gå ut på gata etter at bomben smalt 22/7?

Les resten hos Aftenposten.

En nettreise gjennom islamkritikkens tiår

Samtiden har lagt artikkelen min fra nr 4/11 på nett:

Kort tid etter at identiteten til gjerningsmannen bak terrorangrepene i Oslo og på Utøya 22. juli 2011 ble kjent, kunne vi lese kommentarene Anders Behring Breivik hadde skrevet på blogger, og manifestet han hadde lappet sammen.

Det første som slo meg da jeg begynte å lese, var tonen: Selv i kommentarene på Document.no, hvor han tydeligvis dempet seg selv for å innynde seg hos redaksjonen, aner du konturene av amatørallviteren, det ivrige hverdagsmennesket som har funnet svaret på alle spørsmål. Det kan jeg knapt fordømme ham for, siden jeg er en slik selv.

Les resten hos samtiden.no.