Listening to Trump answer questions from reporters today. One of the things he mentioned was the number of judges he is appointing all up and down the judicial system - this is actually one of the scariest things he's doing (Trump’s Real Personnel Victory: More Conservative Judges).
That reminded me of a review I saw on the PBS NewsHour a few days ago about Marshall, a movie on the first Black Supreme Court Justice ...
The film looks like it will be worth a watch, both as compelling contemporary history and because Marshall is being played by Chadwick Boseman, aka the Black Panther.
Monday, October 16, 2017
Marshall
Listening to Trump answer questions from reporters today. One of the things he mentioned was the number of judges he is appointing all up and down the judicial system - this is actually one of the scariest things he's doing (Trump’s Real Personnel Victory: More Conservative Judges).
That reminded me of a review I saw on the PBS NewsHour a few days ago about Marshall, a movie on the first Black Supreme Court Justice ...
The film looks like it will be worth a watch, both as compelling contemporary history and because Marshall is being played by Chadwick Boseman, aka the Black Panther.
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Thanks for the video clip, Crystal. This looks like it would be good. I read a little background, and it sounds like Marshall's early career involved a lot of cases of defending black men against accusations of sexual assault of white women. I always wonder what the motive is for these these accusations. Maybe sometimes the woman made the advances, and the man rejected them, knowing what kind of hot water he'd be in if anyone found out. Hell hath no fury...
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this tendency to assume that Black men want to rape White women is really about White men fearing their "property" being damaged by out-group men. It seems like in conflicts between groups of men, brutalizing women is a way for one side to harm the other.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if white men fear black men raping their women because they did it incessantly to enslaved women.
ReplyDeleteI heard about this movie on NPR, and it sounds great.
When LBJ appointed Marshall to the SC, he said he wanted him to have an prominent office in the building. Johnson reportedly said, "I want people to walk by and say, 'There's a n***er in there!'"
Not sure but what we are the last generation that might fully understand what that remark said about Johnson or those times.
Yeah, I'm starting to have a greater appreciation for those past presidents now, in light of the Trump era. Even Nixon is starting to look good in comparison ;)
DeleteBout, Crystal, how can Chadwick Boseman be The Black Panther when he is No. 42 in the best baseball movie ever made -- leaving aside the fact that it isn't even a baseball movie. The sequence in which he steals second, goes to third on a bad throw and then scores when a fuming Kirby Higbe balks will never be matched in movies of the greensward. From the clips I've seen so far, it is entirely possible that he will end up being Thurgood Marshall.
ReplyDeleteI had never seen any of his movies, including the baseball one, until I saw him in 'Captain America: Civil War', where he debuted as the Black Panther. Now the Black Panther has his own movie just coming out ... Black Superheroes Matter: Why a 'Black Panther' Movie Is Revolutionary ... and about the comic book from which it's made, from the Atlantic, The Return of the Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates
ReplyDeleteWe saw "Marshall" last night. Good, very good in places, but not as good as it could have been. It is, after all, your basic courtroom drama, so it has all the conventions of the genre to overcome. The casting was absolutely first rate. James Cromwell, who had such soft,warm eyes as a sheep herder in "Babe," looked upon the defense with the coldest eyes this side of Antarctica as the judge.
ReplyDeleteMarshall could not be confirmed as a justice today. Heck, not even Merritt Garland can be. If this goes on eight years we will have a judiciary of morons and tinfoil-hats.
P.S. We saw the trailer for Black Panther. Even his own mother won't recognize Boseman. Amazing how little acting one can get by with if the computer graphics are good.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review of Marshall.
ReplyDeleteThe Marvel movie are sort of an acquired taste. I read all those comics when I was a kid, so being able to see them now as movies is really fun. My favorites are the Avengers Thor, and Captain America. Some good actors appear in them - Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L Jackson, Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgard. Robert Redford was a bad guy in one :)
On the pop culture front, Star Trek returns sort of to television as "Star Trek: Discovery". I saw the first episode broadcast conventionally before continued by CBS in streaming mode. The CGI was beautiful and the plot was ok, with Klingons reinvented for the umpteenth time, but I'm played out with Star Trek. There are no challenging scifi concepts, just lots of action. The last scifi series I liked was "Invasion", where people were copied by aliens during a hurricane. Catch was, the copies didn't know what they were until they discovered the dead originals. Also, the "pods" didn't know what their purpose was and were in disagreement. Unfortunately, never renewed after the first year.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think that franchise has played out. The old clunky original was great. The reboot with Patrick Stewart had some interesting moments but struck me as incredibly preachy. Have heard I should watch "Deep Space Nine" because it has the Ferengi. My people!
DeleteThe Ferengi ;)
DeleteStanley, I watch almost only science fiction in both tv and movies. The last movie I saw was The Mummy with Tom Cruise. The latest tv show I've been renting is Timeless, about time travel.
DeleteWe watched Timeless last season. I don't know if it got renewed for this one. I liked a lot of things about it, especially Lucy Preston, played by Abigail Spencer. But it made me mad that Lucy's parents are lying to her, and there's a lot of manipulation going on. But I suppose I'll watch the new episodes if there are some.
DeleteKatherine, yes - I'm only about 6 episodes into the series but already the trust between the characters is fraught and the conspiracies are growing. Kind of reminds me of the X-Files.
ReplyDeleteNot a Tom Cruise fan but I dutifully watched the last Jack Reacher film since I worked with the father of the young actress who played Reacher's possible daughter. I also earlier clenched my teeth and watched the reboot of "Heroes" since she played the telekinetic supergirl who stopped the asteroid. Her mother worked admin for a while at my place. I guess if you marry two good looking people, you sometimes get good looking kids.
ReplyDelete