As an opera reviewer who doesn’t know much about the legendary Maria Callas I greatly enjoyed Tom Volf’s extremely informative documentary Maria By Callas. The film consists entirely of archival footage, clips of the soprano on TV talk shows and in the news, performance/concert vignettes, home movies and sound recordings. I don’t believe there’s a single solitary shot of original material per se by Volf but he has done a masterful job assembling this compilation film that is worthy of the genre’s creator, Soviet director/editor Esther Shub.

(For some reason, from time to time some of the footage is glimpsed as if we are looking at the frame of a motion picture - which may want us to reflect on the fact that we are watching films of Callas? Who knows?)

Election Protection Volunteers needed:

Wanted: Election Protection Volunteers

Help us protect our right to vote.

Green Party/Free Press will again be placing election observers inside the polling places for the critical November 6th election. Fair elections require vigilance. The Free Press continues to be the leader in election reporting. We held the public hearings after the 2004 election debacle, and have worked hard on election issues since. For more information: http://freepress.org/article/election-protection-2018

Election Protection Observers:

Ohio law allows election observers inside the County Board of Elections and/or local polling places if appointed by a political party 10 days in advance of the November 6th election. The Free Press, in conjunction with the Green Party, is looking for interested activists to observe and report on this election. Training and materials will be made available.

What is the job of an Election Observer? The answer is to show up, to observe, to ask questions and take notes.

Making Montgomery Clift - the four time Oscar nominee for classics such as 1953’s From Here to Eternity - is one of the most singular nonfiction films this movie historian has ever seen. Like many others it is a biopic, but one with a unique take on its reputedly “troubled” subject, who was as renowned for his beauty as for his prodigious talent. Co-directed/co-produced by the actor’s nephew Robert Clift with his wife Hillary Demmon, much of Making is a celluloid refutation of the reputation and version of Clift that has emerged from countless tabloid stories and, in particular, from two tell-all books.

September 28, 2018, marks 100 years since the stupidest parade I’ve ever heard of. And this is a world awash in stupid. Donald Trump wanted to hold an insane weapons parade in Washington this November. That was dumb. But so was, on a far lesser scale, the move by various peace groups to de-prioritize going ahead with a massive celebration of having helped get the parade cancelled. I suppose the thinking is that we have got just too many victories for peace to be bothered with inspiring people to join us.

Anyway, the French parade of death that inspired Trump was certainly moronic. So is the French plan to let Trump back into the country. Three cheers for the Irish, whom he won’t be visiting! But nothing matches for sheer idiocy the parade held in Philadelphia on September 28, 1918.

This is so much bigger than Brett Kavanaugh, or the outcome of his nomination.

Women are suddenly opening their secret wounds. Their trauma — often many decades old — is becoming, for the first time, public. So are their tears.

Enduring a sexual assault is only the beginning of the journey through hell.

This is the awareness that has accompanied the Kavanaugh nomination and the politically motivated dismissal of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against him, beginning with Donald Trump’s all-knowing tweet: “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”

It’s not easy being vulnerable!