Raffles (1939) **

Niven defines the gentleman thief role, but Mr.Clive nearly steals the picture as his butler. Olivia is wasted as the love interest with not much to do.

2021 Prediction #3: Get ready for more GameStops as hedge funds are no longer the only bullies in town | I, Cringely

Now here’s the rub: 138 percent of GameStop shares were shorted. Theoretically that’s not possible, of course. You can’t sell more of something than even exists. Yet from time to time that’s exactly what happens because of another concept called GREED. Somebody (brokers in this case) makes money on all those shorts or calls, no matter how the trade is eventually resolved. Even though the contracts apply to shares that don’t actually exist, a contract is still a contract. The seminal GameStop trade that started all this was Redditor u/DeepFuckingValue buying GameStop puts — the right to sell (rather than buy — that would be a call) GameStop shares at a specific strike price. As of yesterday this $53,000 trade had grown to about $48 million with $14 million of that in cash. That’s some Deep Fucking Value.

Did the Coronavirus Escape From a Lab?

As Shi explained to Scientific American, late in December 2019, she heard from the director of the Wuhan Institute that there was an outbreak of a new disease in the city. Medical samples taken from hospital patients arrived at her lab for analysis. Shi determined that the new virus was related to SARS but even more closely related to a bat disease that her own team had found on a virus-hunting trip: the now-famous RaTG13. Shi was surprised that the outbreak was local, she said: “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” The bat hiding places that she’d been visiting were, after all, as far away as Orlando, Florida, is from New York City. Could this new virus, she wondered, have come from her own laboratory? She checked her records and found no exact matches. “That really took a load off my mind,” she said. “I had not slept a wink for days.” If one of the first thoughts that goes through the head of a lab director at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is that the new coronavirus could have come from her lab, then we are obliged to entertain the scientific possibility that it could indeed have come from her lab. Right then, there should have been a comprehensive, pockets-inside-out, fully public investigation of the Virology Institute, along with the other important virus labs in Wuhan, including the one close by the seafood market, headquarters of the Wuhan CDC. There should have been interviews with scientists, interviews with biosafety teams, close parsings of laboratory notebooks, freezer and plumbing and decontamination systems checks — everything. It didn’t happen.

My Foolish Heart (1949) ***

A tight script and strong supporting cast make this a top soaper.

Emma (TV Movie 1996) ***

Well made for TV version of the Austen tale with a top notch cast.

Emma (1996) ***

Enjoyable version of the Austen rom-com prototype with the lovely Ms. Paltrow and a fine supporting cast. Well directed.

QAnon Woke Up the Real Deep State | by Nicholas Grossman | Jan, 2021 | Arc Digital

The president appoints and the Senate confirms top officials, from the Secretary of State to the five members of the Arctic Research Commission, over 1,200 in total. Every other executive branch employee — over 4 million if you include the military, over 2.7 million if you don’t — is hired or recruited, not elected or appointed. This means that the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, the intelligence community, and federal law enforcement are staffed with people the agencies hired themselves.

Their mandates are broad. For example, the FBI is supposed to “investigate federal crimes and threats to national security.” While there are laws giving the FBI certain powers (e.g. to arrest people) and limits (needing warrants), a lot is open to interpretation, especially regarding national security threats.

It’s fair to say the FBI, CIA, IRS, CDC, and other federal agencies have, to some extent, taken on lives of their own. So has the military, and the larger defense-industrial complex. They’re under control of elected and appointed leaders, but also not, acting according to established laws, established regulations (many of which they wrote themselves), and individual judgment calls. You could call that “the Deep State.”

The Pro-Trump Mob Was Doing It For The Gram

But it was also quickly apparent that this was a very dumb coup. A coup with no plot, no end to achieve, no plan but to pose. Thousands invaded the highest centers of power, and the first thing they did was take selfies and videos. They were making content as spoils to take back to the digital empires where they dwell, where that content is currency.

You can see this most clearly in this photo, where the man in the god-knows-what costume, Jake Angeli, the so-called QAnon Shaman, is posing on the dais of the Senate, his friends carefully framing him to get the perfect shot. It is the Trump supporter equivalent of an Instagram influencer getting a photo beside a perfect mural.

Eternally Yours (1939) **

Lackluster direction and a goofy script waste a fine cast in this attempt at screwball romance.

Enchantment (1948) ***

Terrific ensemble actors, crisply written and directed and some nifty camera work (especially the flashback/forward transitions) from the great Gregg Toland make this a top-notch gothic melodrama.

Holiday (1938) *

Despite Cary's acrobatics (literally), Cukor can't force this faux-populist drivel into screwball tin let alone gold. Just not good at all.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) **

Excellently acted and written but not so much with the direction and photography. Ms. Davis shines.