The Nominee Strikes Back

The press jumped on Trump's claim that he raised $6 million for veterans in his rally back in January.  Trump replied by jumping on the press.  He held a press conference in which he hammered the media, calling them sleazy and dishonest.  It is a moment like this when I really like Trump.  For decades, I have seen the media hound Republicans about things that they ignore in Democrats.  Why aren't these same reporters quizzing Hillary about the Clinton Foundation?  The mainstream media is composed almost exclusively of Democrats.  Republican voters know this and have been frustrated by how Republican candidates just accepted it without comment.  When speaking to George Stephanopolous, Trump reminded the viewer that Stephanopolous was a Clinton operative.  Trump must also have taken note of the huge boost that Newt Gingrich received in the 2012 campaign when he blasted the media for 'gotcha' questions.  The Republican base knows that the media is just as much the enemy as the Democrats are.  The base is so starved for a Republican who fights that it has nominated a marginal Republican to get that long-missing trait.  Romney made a passable impression of a doormat, especially when he let Candy Crowley derail him in the third debate.  Though there are many other Republicans I would prefer to have as president, I really appreciate Donald Trump as a nominee who won't just sit back and let the media walk on him.  Unlike Romney, he strikes back.  As Lincoln said when asked to remove Grant from command: "I can't spare this man; he fights."

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

The movie follows Abe’s life fairly accurately though it adds some ludicrous vampire stuff along the way.  It opens in 1818 when Abe’s father runs afoul of Jack Barts, his employer.  Barts fires him and demands that Mr. Lincoln pay the debt he was working off.  Lincoln declines and Barts says he can get paid in other ways.  That night, Abe witnesses Barts biting his mother who dies shortly thereafter (Abe’s mother really did die in 1818).  The story follows his move to Springfield, his time as a shopkeeper, a country lawyer, an aspiring politician, and finally president, all true.  There is also his courting of Mary Todd.  It ends with his leaving for Ford’s Theater.

 

These are not your traditional vampires.  First, they hang out in the daylight with nothing more than sunglasses.  They have the ability to turn invisible.  Also, they are killed by silver, supposedly because it is related to mirrors where they have no reflection.  Okay, that’s a bit odd.  When they vampire-out, they have a maw full of jagged teeth and their face is grayish with veins standing out.  Not pretty vampires.  Also, it turns out that the vampires love slavery in the South because it provides an easy source of blood with no recriminations for killing humans.  Lastly, vampires are incapable of killing other vampires; “Only the living can kill the dead,” the lead vampire explains.

 

Abe is on his first vampire-killing mission and flubs it.  He finds himself hanging from his ankles in a basement filled with corpses also dangling by their ankles and drained of blood.  He is unable to reach his silver axe which is just beyond his reach on the floor.  Curses!  If only he could cut himself free.  Then the vampire arrives and ties his hands behind his back and is about to cut Abe’s throat to drain his blood into a bowl when Abe’s knife slips out of his waistband (why didn’t he deploy that while his hands were free?).  He catches it in his teeth, slices the vampire, manages to bend so that he cuts the rope holding him aloft – physically impossible by the way – and then frees his hands before hacking the vampire with his axe.  Abe goes to the trouble of burying the vampire in the forest but no mention is made of what happened to all the corpses and bowls of blood in the basement.

 

In another fight, Abe battles a vampire in the middle of a stampede of horses.  They jump from horse to horse – standing, mind you – and have at each other.  Professional riders have a difficult enough time standing on a bareback horse but jumping from one galloping bareback to another in the midst of a stampede is a recipe for suicide.  This wasn’t cool, it was just stupid.

 

It is the Civil War and Abe is President.  The first day of Gettysburg went badly because a horde of vampires were in the southern army.  The only hope is that silver can be delivered.  So, in one day, Abe has every ounce of silver confiscated, melted down, molded into silver bullets, cannon balls, and bayonets.  The issue is how to get it to the troops.  Abe and two of his most trusted advisors get on a train and head for Gettysburg.  However, they are just a distraction.  The real equipment is being marched to Gettysburg at night.  Sigh.  As the distraction, the train is assaulted by a horde of vampires.  The train finally plunges into a ravine but Abe narrowly survives.  Of course, the vampires are routed on the second day of Gettysburg.

 

At one point, the vampires get at Abe by killing his son Willie.  Abe had 4 sons, only one of whom is ever shown here.  Willie died in 1862, when he was 12 years old.  For some reason, a 7 year-old actor plays him.  In 1862, the Lincoln’s youngest son, Tad, was 9.  Tad doesn’t appear in the film.

 

Abe’s chosen weapon is, unsurprisingly, the axe (he is famed as a rail-splitter).  His is a special axe.  Not only is the blade coated in silver but the handle houses a gun.  This comes as a bit of a surprise when he is fighting Jack Barts and finds himself on the wrong end of the axe.  Well, just deploy the trigger and blammo!  Sigh.

 

The CGI is terrible, the worse so because it is so plentiful.  The stampede of horses was probably the low point but there was also the thick fog fight on top of the train.  Of course, every time the fangs came out, they looked almost cartoonish.  These guys can’t close their mouths without stabbing themselves with their teeth.

 

Now for the funniest (or saddest) thing of all:  Ever since it became a requirement in films to have the women be in the thick of fighting (e.g. Maid Marion was a warrior in Robin Hood, Guinevere was a warrior in King Arthur, Alice fights the dragon in the recent Alice in Wonderland, Snow White was a warrior in both recent films, etc.), I have parodied the trend by saying Mary Todd Lincoln, Warrior First Lady!  Well, my joke has come to pass.  Yes, after delivering the silver to the Union forces at Gettysburg, Mary Todd Lincoln faces off against a vampire, dispatching it like she’s an old pro.

 

The movie fails because of its scope.  Had it limited itself to an incident in Lincoln’s youth where he found himself fighting a nest of vampires in the backwoods of Illinois, that would have required less suspension of disbelief than that the South was harboring hordes of vampires that took an active role in the Civil War.  The movie proposes that the absence of a single journal that Abe had kept through the years explained why we modern folks are unaware of the true story of Lincoln.  Sigh.

 

Lastly, it is played too seriously.  The story is silly and yet all the actors play as if this is high drama.  If it had had some campiness to it, it might have played better.  All in all, disappointing.

Lincoln

The movie begins in December 1864 and generally concludes by January 31st of 1865.  Based on the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, this bio of Lincoln details the events surrounding the passage of the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery.  Though this was a hugely important event, legislation is by its nature boring; the movie fails to overcome that.  Sure, it is interesting to see the behind-the-scence arm-twisting and horse-trading to get votes in Congress but a little can go a long way.  Who would think we would hear the stories of half a dozen Democrats convinced to vote for the amendment?  The movie certainly has its charms.  Lincoln's homespun tales were the best part of the movie, especially the one about George Washington's portrait in a lavatory.  However, at 2 and a half hours, it mostly dragged.  Lincoln had it tough: a mentally-unbalanced wife, an eldest son eager to join the army, a cabinet that was often at odds with him, and a Civil War to boot.

Daniel Day-Lewis was not tall enough for the part and his fellow actors were too tall for their parts.  There were times when the camera angle was such to give the impression that he had great height but then the angle would change and he was near eye to eye.  This was most jarring, for me anyway, when he met with Grant.  Grant was 5 foot 8 inches tall, a full 8 inches shorter than Lincoln.  I am not a Civil War buff and I knew this. Yes, it's nitpicky but Lincoln towered over everyone physically as well as in character.  The complaints about his voice are overblown.  I expected this reedy squeak of a voice, especially considering the excerpts I had heard but he came off fine.

Tommy Lee Jones played Thaddeus Stevens, a leader of the Radical Republicans.  It is funny to see that his radical notions that threaten to derail the amendment are votes for blacks and that blacks are equal to whites.  Clearly, he was a man ahead of his time.  Of course, Jones looks absolutely ludicrous in his black wig, making it hard not to laugh when he first appears.

Sally Field paints a very different picture of Mary Todd Lincoln than is popularly known.  She is not just a crazy neurotic woman, though that is her fate after her husband's assassination.  Here, she is certainly difficult but she is also perceptive and witty.

 

Though interesting and often informative, it is far from gripping.  This is no Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan.  No reason to see this on the big screen.  Wait for the DVD from Netflix.

Killing Lincoln

I recently read the Bill O'Reilly book and found it both engaging and informative.  The book is told from the point of view of the central figures of the conspiracy and the end of the Civil War.  At times, the book follows John Wilkes Booth as he plots a kidnapping and then, after Lee surrenders, decides an assassination is the way to go.  Though the bad guy, the book is not unfair to him.  It explains his reasons and what he thought would happen.  Of course, as with most assassinations, it did not turn out as he had hoped; the South did not rise again.  At least not yet.

When following Lincoln, there is this annoying habit of opening with how many days he has to live.  "The man who has only 12 days to live" met with this General or talked to that Secretary.  It was an interesting device the first couple of times but got old quickly.  Lincoln, as one might expect, comes off extremely well.  I did find the numerous premonitions of his death to be hard to swallow.  Sure, he might have had a nightmare of being assassinated (I suspect many Presidents do) but the book has an amazing number of reports that hint at assassination.  Though it is surely in the historical record, I suspect some of this after-the-fact reports were a bit of rewriting by the reporters.

When the book was first published, there was much ado about inaccuracies and its being banned from Ford's Theater.  That's pretty harsh.  That made me curious to read it.  Anyway, I have read several accounts of the conspiracy and the book meshes perfectly with accounts from other 'reputable' historians I have read.  The errors, such as they were, are hardly of note.  For instance, O'Reilly mentions General Grant and Lincoln meeting in the Oval Office.  Well, there was no Oval Office until 1909.  The book is a fraud!  Bad history!  Or then there is the complaint that O'Reilly says the distance from the Presidential box in Ford's Theater to the stage is 9 feet when it is actually 11.5 feet.  Oh, what a travesty!  How dare such tripe be published!  The play that Lincoln was watching had only appeared in Ford's 7 times, not 8 as O'Reilly claims.  Oh, the horror!  Having read a great many history books, I can assure you that such errors are not uncommon.  I read a biography of James Knox Polk that claimed his son was at his death bed; he and his wife were childless.  I read a book on the Mexican War that mistakenly reported Archibald Gillespie's name as Arthur Gillespie.  These were the errors I knew because this is an area where I am well versed.  I suspect I missed the true minutia.

The tiny errors change the narrative not a bit.  The history that O'Reilly and his cowriter reveal is absolutely true.  That he follows the characters makes it read more like a thriller than a history book, a thriller where we know the end.  Or do we?  I suspect that most readers, lacking my enthusiasm for history, will be amazed.  A good read and I recommend it.