End of an era?

Jerry Falwell is dead. The New York Times obit says that he was the one who made the religious right a political force that was indelibly linked to the Republican party:

Mr. Falwell went from a Baptist preacher in Lynchburg to a powerful force in electoral politics, at home in both the millennial world of fundamentalist Christianity and the earthly blood sport of the political arena. As much as anyone, he helped create the religious right as a political force, defined the issues that would energize it for decades and cemented its ties to the Republican Party.

Now, we live at a time when -- in the wake of the Iraq war debacle -- that the Republican party stands in a greater degree of disarray than at any time since the 70s and neither of the top three Republican presidential contenders enjoy strong support among the religious right.

Is the indelible link finally over?

Goodbye, Mr. Altman

יום שלישי ל' בחשון תשס''ז

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind
"M-A-S-H," "Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking
Hollywood management and story conventions, died at a Los Angeles Hospital, his
Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said Tuesday. He was 81.

I only really learned to appreciate Altman over the last year or so . . . . At one point, I held my own retrospective, watching nearly every movie of his available on Netflix. . . And I just the other day watched his final film, Prairie Home Companion. . . . What a great way to go out. A wonderful flick and so much classically in his style. . . The constantly (but slowly and gently) moving camera. . . The overlapping dialogue. . . that can feel so amazingly natural and rich and real. . . . I especially loved the scenes with Meryl Streep, Lilly Tomlin and Lindsey Lohan playing an aging couple of singing sisters and one of their (teenage angst ridden) daughters. What beautiful women. What great actresses. Such (deceptively seeming) simple material. . . With the sounds of the radio show shifting in and out between being in the background and in the foreground -- the classic Altman technique of an “overlapping” soundtrack.

I’ll miss him. Nashville. Short Cuts. . . . I think those long flicks with the great multitude of characters and story lines were the richest. But MASH and The Player were awesome, too. . . . . Not my favorite director – Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese are probably my top ones – but a true great . . .. And an American original. . . Thanks, Mr. Altman.