A SAMPLE CHAPTER

The ideosyncratic early French Chapter Serial "Les Vampires" is the subject of an essay in process now I am working on. The youtube flic is Chapter II. Is it about crooks, cupernatural crooks, vampires, or sort of vamps? Stay tuned....Henry_Allen

From http://goatdog.com/moviePage.php?movieID=598 goatdog's movies

In Paris, in the depths of World War I, a vast criminal empire, the Vampires

(not the blood-sucking variety), holds the city in a death grip. Nobody knows

who might be a member, and nobody knows when they will strike next. Residents

are so terrified of the gang—it can't be fear of the war, which is never

mentioned—that they don't leave their homes. Into this terrifying situation goes

Philippe Guerande (Edouard Mathe), an intrepid reporter who vows to solve the

mystery of the Vampires. With the assistance of his somewhat faithful and mostly

hapless sidekick Mazamette (Marcel Levesque), he attempts to track down the gang

and their leaders, the Grand Vampire (Jean Ayme) and his consort, the beautiful,

mysterious, and dangerous Irma Vep (Musidora).

This grand and sprawling serial, produced in 1915 by auteur Louis Feuillade, is

one of the great masterpieces of the cinema. In its ten episodes, ranging in

length from 15 to 60 minutes, Feuillade and company use the entire city of Paris

as their set, and they create something unlike anything I've seen before. That

it manages to be gripping through almost all of its nearly seven hours of screen

time is an amazing feat. It combines slapstick comedy, edge-of-your-seat

suspense, pretty amazing outdoor shooting and stunt work, and dramatic pathos in

a thoroughly enjoyable mix. The film isn't like a lot of Hollywood serials: each

episode has its own story, but each one advances the plot a little more, and the

episodes don't all end in cliffhangers. It doesn't need them. Each episode is so

perfectly mounted that a cliffhanger at the end might have been a little too

much. It's enough to be left wondering what horrible things the Vampires would

be up to next; thankfully, since I rented it on DVD, I got to find out right

away.

Over the course of the episodes, Guerande and Mazamette come closer and closer

to defeating the Vampires. The film doesn't pull any punches: in the first

episode, the gang has beheaded a city official, and Feuillade and company

weren't afraid to have the head show up in a hatbox. For this, its glorification

of the criminal element, and its depiction of the Paris police as a bumbling

bunch of fools, several episodes of the film were banned from French screens.

Guerande and Mazamette do most of their sleuthing with guns blazing and by

themselves, with little assistance from the police, who tend to mess things up

anyway. Among their adventures, they solve the murder of a famous ballerina,

decode the Vampires' secret code book, capture the leader of a rival gang,

recover money stolen from a rich American businessman, and foil an elaborate

bank robbery. Captures and escapes abound, as does wanton murder and mayhem,

including the Vampires' free use of cannons to achieve their ends. Along the

way, the cast of the Vampires changes: the Grand Vampire gives way to Moreno,

the rival gang leader; Satanus, the true head of the Vampires; and Venomous, an

expert poisoner who ends up in charge. But Irma Vep is always present.

It's a travesty that Irma Vep and Musidora, the actress who played her, weren't

household names in the United States. She's one of the most magnetic characters

in film history. She's a strong female character, which is rare, and she's a lot

smarter than most of the men around her. Throughout the film, she reveals

herself as a dancer, an expert in disguise, an expert shot, an acrobat, and

surprisingly resilient woman. She often appears, to our pleasure, wearing the

uniform of the Vampires, a skintight black outfit that she fills most admirably.

She's a breath of fresh air to those of us who are sick of modern stick-figure

anorexic movie starlets. As the film progresses, the Vampires modify their

goals: instead of involving themselves in crime, they just want to kill off

Guerande and Mazamette. Through it all, both heroes find true love, which

ratchets up the stakes, as the Vampires target everyone and anyone involved in

their lives.

The DVD contains a beautiful restoration of the film. It includes the original

color tinting, which was used in silent films to indicate location or time of

day: blue for night, brown for indoors, yellow for outdoors, etc. The last

episode is a little washed out from age, and sometimes characters' faces appear

as white blobs, but overall it's very watchable. There's an orchestral score,

and while I don't know if it is based on the music that originally accompanied

the film, it works perfectly. There aren't a lot of extras, which is too bad,

because for once I would like to have read a little more about the film.

A lot of silent films, to be honest, are little more than historical artifacts,

and most viewers don't have the patience to sit through them. This is one

example of a relic from a bygone era that stands on its own as a great film with

both historical importance and relevance. The film's plotlines will be familiar

to just about everyone who has ever seen a mystery or an action film, but

they're presented here in a way that few of us have seen before. It's completely

accessible to modern audiences, and I hope that some of you go out and rent it.

It's worth the six-hour time investment.

Shock And Awe-We pay the price of Lies

1. We owe the Kurds,they like us. We should guarantee an Independent Kurdistan.
2. Otherwise, we are unwelcome, it was a lost and wrong cause - not responsive to Islamism, but an exacerbation of it.
3. Out now. Screw their sectarian war.Henry_Allen
consortiumnews.com

The Right's Parallel Universe

By Richard L. Fricker
May 9, 2007

To understand how the United States got itself into its current fix, it’s helpful to understand that the American Right and its powerful media apparatus have created a kind of parallel universe that has its own internal logic that sort of makes sense even if the “reality” isn’t exactly real.

So, on the Iraq War, everything is going pretty well except, as Fox News reminds its viewers, the “liberal media” keeps hiding all the positive developments from the American people. Plus, the only way to explain hostility toward George W. Bush is to postulate that his critics are consumed by irrational hatreds. The Right’s reality-divergent narrative exists on domestic policy, too.

For instance, Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and a medical doctor, explained in an April 23 speech at the Tulsa Press Club why a single-payer health insurance system like Canada’s is a sure failure and why the U.S. system of private insurance, often paid by employers, works so much better.

Coburn noted that the auto industry and many other old-line U.S. companies want a national health insurance program to get medical costs off the backs of employers and help them compete with foreign rivals that don’t pay for employee health insurance. But the senator offered anecdotes why that wouldn’t be a good idea.

“I talked to the head of General Mills,” the giant food manufacturer, Coburn said. “They have lots of employees in Canada. … I said what do you do when one of your Canadian employees gets really sick? They said they bring them to America because the Canadian system isn’t working well for acutely ill people.”

Commenting on the British medical system, the senator said, “When you look at England, the average length of time from the diagnosis of cancer to the onset of chemotherapy in England now is eight months. How many of you would be satisfied with that?”

However, like much of Fox’s happy talk about Iraq, Coburn’s scary comments about the health programs in Canada and the United Kingdom don’t square with the facts.

General Mills denies it has a program to send Canadians to the United States for treatment of serious illnesses and the U.K. cancer treatment program operates well within acceptable medical standards.

“It is true that, in certain circumstances, a General Mills employee in Canada could visit a doctor in the U.S.,” General Mills spokesman Tom Forsythe told me. “It would likely involve a U.S.-based employee on assignment in Canada. It does not happen often, and it could not be described as routine.

“However, there could be and have been cases where routine surgery, for example, (hernia, knee arthroscopy, some scans) could be done more quickly in the U.S., and an employee may visit a doctor in the U.S. for that procedure. I do not know the number, but it would be small.”

David Jensen of the government-run Health Canada said the health care budget for fiscal year 2005-06 was $37.9 billion, of which only $55.6 million was paid to U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities. That included care or treatment for Canadians vacationing in the U.S., students, and persons assigned to the U.S. by Canadian companies.

In short, there was no stream of Canadians surging into the United States for medical treatment as suggested by the senator from Oklahoma.

UK Care

When I sought comment from the Kings Fund, the health care oversight organization for the United Kingdom, I was directed to a 2006 study on cancer treatment.

According to the study, “Patients who visit their GP with symptoms that suggest cancer must be given urgent referral to secondary care under the two-week target established by the Cancer Plan. In June 2006, 98.9 percent of people with suspected cancer were seen by a specialist within the target time.”

The report continued, “The plan also set a target of a maximum one-month wait from diagnosis to first treatment for all cancers, which was meant to be achieved by the end of 2005. Some 99 percent of patients diagnosed with cancer start treatment within 31 days.”

Kings Fund senior associate Tony Harrison said Coburn’s information was “not correct, assuming that chemotherapy is the first line of treatment, which of course it may not be.” In reference to the 2006 study, Harrison said, “You will see that targets that have been set for referral to start of treatment are now largely met.”

As for Coburn’s claim about an eight-month wait for chemotherapy, Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy director of the American Cancer Society, said the point could be misleading since any treatment plan depends on a patient’s condition when the cancer is discovered.

“We do not have a single standard of care,” Lichtenfeld said. “We really don’t have good studies from diagnosis to cure.”

In other words, Coburn’s assertion about an eight-month window has no real point of reference in treatment plans since other strategies might be employed besides chemotherapy.

Still, Coburn’s horror stories about medical care in Canada and the U.K. have been part of the Republican mantra in the ongoing fight to prevent a universal health care system from being established in the United States.

Bizarre Myths

The Oklahoma senator has become notorious for making extreme statements that are later revealed as bizarre urban myths.

During his 2004 race for the Senate, for instance, Coburn was taped saying a campaign worker from Coalgate, Oklahoma, told him “lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”

The Coalgate superintendent of schools expressed outrage at the ludicrous claim, which was met with ridicule by many other Oklahomans. Nevertheless, Coburn was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Coburn also has argued that condoms promote sexually transmitted disease, that abstinence education prevents teenagers from having sex, and that silicone breast implants are good for women’s health. All these positions have been challenged by government studies and expert medical opinion.

Coburn, as a new member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2005, opined while pondering a bill restricting class-action suits, "You know I immediately thought about silicone breast implants and the legal wrangling and the class-action suits off that.

"And I thought I would just share with you what science says today about silicone breast implants. If you have them, you're healthier than if you don't. That is what the ultimate science shows. . . . In fact, there's no science that shows that silicone breast implants are detrimental and, in fact, they make you healthier."

At the time, Coburn made that statement silicone breast implants had been banned in the United States for more than a decade because of cases of implant leakage and other health complaints from women.

In 2006, the Food and Drug Administration did approve the implants return to the U.S. market, although a subsequent European study and many doctors have continued to raise questions about possible protein buildup around the implants and other safety issues.

Other medical experts, including the scientists cited by the FDA, argue that the preponderance of studies fail to show that silicone implants are detrimental to a woman’s health, but they don’t claim the implants make women healthier.

Richard L. Fricker is a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based freelance reporter/writer and two-time winner of the American Business Press Editors Award for Investigative Journalism. He writes regularly for the Swiss newsweekly Sonntags Blick and Consortiumnews.com. Fricker can be reached at rlfricker@hotmail.com .