** "The Sopranos is so much more than gangsters. It's about capitalism, it's absolutely about capitalism..."

Steve Schirripa Talks The Sopranos, Blue Bloods. And why he doesn't like playing a gangster, how in the current climate of culture cops the show would not have been made today, and much more...

"Willieboy and I stand strong!"

** "At this point the match is lit - the fuse is lit and it ain't gonna go out..."

Pacifica host Garland Nixon on the contradictions of a hopeless cause, Gaza seeming intent on fighting a losing battle, and why. With connections to Frederick Douglass, the Nat Turner slave rebellion, the French Resistance against Nazi Germany, Algeria, oil, and the weaponization of words in a post-truth world.

** "Loach has been a socialist for his entire adult life - his contribution in radical cinema is unmatched on a global scale..."

A Conversation With David Archibald - the Scottish professor and musical performer on 'Tracking Ken Loach.' And his own creative inspiration gleaned from 'Glasgow as a city haunted by a proletarian ghost' connected to the spread of collectivism forged in the shipyards and factories - and exploring from Havana to Catalonia 'how to converse with that ghost...'

** "Her musical genius over time, the right combination of gifts, that voice of irresistible charm and perfect pitch - made every note of melody just tingle with perfection."

Music Corner: Ella Fitzgerald - The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song.

The Zone Of Interest Review: The Banality Of Evil Update

A historically unconventional to say the least movie about the German Holocaust, 'The Zone Of Interest' ironically if not astonishingly, is eliciting its own horror. And even though contrasting to all the other WWII genocide dramas, as not exactly about the Holocaust traditionally. Well, yes and no. 

Indicating that British writer/director Jonathan Glazer would appear to be addressing the horrors of genocide as much in the present time, even as we speak - while mostly ho hum attitudes towards ongoing obliterations can be described euphemistically as muted. In other words, rarely has a death camp authentic history dredged up side by side in parallel real time, been so disorienting an experience in its subdued, deceptively mundane sensibility. 

Adapted from the Martin Amis novel of the same name, The Zone Of Interest revisits SS Commander Rudolph Hoss (Christian Friedel) in his command post over the dreaded Auschwitz massive death camp in Poland back then. Though neither his reputed genocidal efficiency nor his actual 'workplace' are in sight. 

Rather, those holocaust activities are intimated instead - with unseen gunshots, screams, and human ashes rising from the smokestacks of ominous crematoriums concealed behind looming brick walls. While the film focuses on the giddy daily suburban lives of the Hoss family frolicking about just on the other side of the wall. Though interrupted periodically with a weird terror, as if floating in suddenly from an unrelated horror movie. 

For instance, when the Hoss servants bring his more often than not cranky wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller) an elegant fur coat. Which she models to her delight in her bedroom mirror - until discovering in the pocket, applying briefly to her lips and then tossing aside a used lipstick - apparently hidden away there by the invisible doomed female prisoner in question, as a desperate clinging to her final bit of feminine identity on her way to her murder.

Other scenes of accumulated sickening cognitive dissonance, include the children on an outing to a lake, where they're covered with human ashes that have drifted there and fallen into the water - later having their skin wordlessly scrubbed in seeming desperation in the bathtub, like a Lady Macbeth visitation. Or, Hoss and his staff mathematically calculating during a staff meeting, the most efficient procedure to exterminate the incoming 'loads' in the tens of thousands.

And while a number of reviewers have disdained the ironically intentional reaction of monotony and boredom to the proceedings, one only has to venture beyond the actual wall in the film surrounding Auschwitz, to the fourth wall of the movie - breaking through the mass denial in real time as horrific genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza - with the apparent blessings and weaponry laundering of the USsmuggled to Israel. And, as a public drugged on sensory overload at the movies, diverts their attention away to the usual escapist euphoria of this holiday season.

The Zone Of Interest: A Banality Of Evil Update Shocker, Subliminal Or Otherwise

Prairie Miller

Review on Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/prairie-miller/movies?critic=self