tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post2649531767739329216..comments2024-03-28T16:47:27.333-05:00Comments on Acidemic - Film: Daze of our Lies (or "As the Reichstag Burns"): SECRET HONOR, HITLER (1962), UFO HUNTERS, Lord Lhus!Erich Kuerstenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-15139232266982754152019-07-14T05:48:37.911-05:002019-07-14T05:48:37.911-05:00I have watched SECRET HONOR many times and always ...I have watched SECRET HONOR many times and always alone. It seems few Altman enthusiasts mention it. I find it an obsessively solitary experience and evidence that nothing is too insane to be possible.Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17050780812342957714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-40103838568306700812011-10-07T14:11:23.981-05:002011-10-07T14:11:23.981-05:00Birch! Halfway through the first book right now. E...Birch! Halfway through the first book right now. Ellroy is god. Thank you. Thank you! Thank you.Erich Kuerstenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-19939725337199759832011-09-27T09:49:50.512-05:002011-09-27T09:49:50.512-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Erich Kuerstenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-67360539008977840062011-09-26T18:44:29.268-05:002011-09-26T18:44:29.268-05:00Hey Erich, Thanks for checking it out and respondi...Hey Erich, Thanks for checking it out and responding so quickly, I'm glad you seemed to get a kick out if it. I'm slightly obsessed with the seedier, corrupt side politics, particularly in the 60's and 70's, and this is one of the few films that really leaps into that void without coming off as silly(like Stone's JFK). I've found myself drawn back to Altman and Hall's paranoid black hole of a film twice since recommending it to you, and have loved more and more each time. The ending is one of my all time favorites- the image of a belligerent pistol-totting Nixon bellowing "Fuck You!!!!" into his security cameras on repeat is branded on to my brain.<br /> I've been reading a lot of nonfiction about the time, such as biographies of Hoover, LBJ and the Bushes and the Underground Empire, about the cia's history in drug smuggling, along with James Ellroy's Underword U.S.A trilogy which is pure acid pulp literature: a largely fact based political crime thriller that follows the bagmen, hitmen, and enforcers of Hoover, Howard Hughes, the mob, and the Kennedys, brings you behind the scenes of the bay of bigs, JFK RFK and MLK assassinations, heroin smuggling in vietnam COINTELPRO and Watergate, and exposes the shadowy intersections of organized crime, intelligence agencies, politics, big business and wars. For example it features Sal Mineo blackmailed into helping the FBI entrap one of MLK's advisors in a homosexual tryst after being caught murdering a gay prostitute, and a doped out Sonny Liston beating on and collecting gambling debts from Sihran Sihran, among countless more lurid, violent and tragic episodes. I don't know if you're a reader, but i highly recommend it. I plan on making it into the greatest television series of all time! <br /> Anyways this background information adds weight to every strange comment Nixon mutters, and Hall imbues Nixon with an incredible amount of pathos. After a Secret Honor and Nixon double feature I found myself oddly empathetic for this dark political creature. Stone's Nixon wasn't as impressive as Secret Honor but does feature one of the greatest lines of all time- a sweaty, unshaven, disgruntled looking Nixon confidently boasting "Time to give her a little of the old Nixon charm."<br /> Another interesting tidbit about this film it that it was produced while Altman was a film teacher, and it's production constituted his class, with almost the entire crew composed of his students.<br /> Sorry for the rant but it was a good place to unload some stuff I've been obsessing over that my friends have no interest in. I dig your blog, you always have imaginative and original perspectives, have introduced me to a number of great yet widely unknown films, and you always supply plenty of yuks. I'll have to check out Hitler, seems like a strange one. Keep up the good work!Birchnoreply@blogger.com