Posts Tagged ‘Dwight Hobbes’
War on Humanity
from the series Something I Said... Dwight Hobbes By DWIGHT HOBBES Correlations between Donald Trump’s presidency and his hero Adolf Hitler’s regime continue. Dachau and other early concentration camps included abandoned factories, breweries and warehouses. These are places you stock and store materials – things, not human beings. ICE had such plans for migrant detainees. Until community unrest and state lawmakers put a halt to them. A vacant commercial building on Emery Way in Shakopee was going to hold up to 1,500 people. The local developer, Opus, decided not to finalize a lease. In Woodbury a half-million- square-foot facility off I-94 was in the works but has not panned out. The Department of Homeland Security had, in fact, reportedly targeted several industrial properties for Trump’s mass deportation goal, but hell raising locals scuttled those sites as well. Yet again, Minnesota’s resolve is not in the Third Reich playbook. On all fronts, fromguerilla [...]
SOMETHING I SAID: The Animal Factory
Book Review By DWIGHT HOBBES Dwight Hobbes Rule of thumb goes, the book’s better than the movie. Edward Bunker’s The Animal Factory (St. Martin’s Minotaur) and Franchise Pictures is a tossup. Both are brilliant. The novel’s narrative is fluid, with compelling immediacy. Co-screenwriter John Steppling teams with Bunker for an ingenious adaptation. Bunker (Education of a Felon: A Memoir /St. Martin's Griffin,) made his way from the wrong side of the law to a career as screenwriter-actor (Animal Factory, Straight Time). He was “Mr. Blue” in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Franchise Pictures The Animal Factory protagonist, 20-something, privileged Ron Decker is slapped in prison so the judge can stand hard on white offenders, not just criminals of color. Never mind that Decker, no angel for sure, dealt weed and coke, but this is his first bust. He’s a politically correct scapegoat. Street spawned, veteran of incarceration Earl Boen takes him [...]
Something I Said: ‘Charmed’ Revisited
Dwight Hobbes. By DWIGHT HOBBES If something isn’t broke, don’t fix it. So goes the truism. Not always the case. Constance M. Burge’s Charmed (CBS/1998 – 2006) was state of the art pop. Solid scripts, strong cast about three white women waxing supernatural against the forces of evil. Charmed (2018 – 2022) reinvents that wheel, doing a fascinating job of it. Starting with casting Latinas as the leads, something nobody could’ve seen coming. Added to which, one sister is lesbian. And there’s a womanist bent. Talk about pushing the envelope, which isn’t all that surprising, considering Canada’s track record for quality commercial fare, including the supernatural hit Lost Girl. This time around for Charmed, there’s feisty firebrand social protester Mel (Melonie Diaz), sexy nerd cum genius biochemist Macy (Madeleine Mantock) and sardonically easy going college kid Maggie (Sarah Jeffrey). Ace ringer Rupert Evans (Hellboy) is glib, debonair [...]
