It can’t really have one, because the producers decided to stay with real events in 2010 — but how would they stand anyone as fierce as LR pissin’ in their Post Toasties?

(SFX: machine click, thunderous applause)

http://madefortvmayhem.blogspot.com/2012/07/andy-griffith-1926-2012-pure-bad-ass.html

I’m not sure if the phenomenon really has to do with television, After all, Huey Long (and his perhaps better known fictional equivalent Willie Stark of “All the King’s Men”) pulled off the folksy yokel with a sinister power streak act with nothing more than radio and personal appearances.

Even Clodius Pulcher and Julius Caesar were populares.

It’s an amazing juggling act,  all they would have to do is to utter an original thought that speaks truth to power, but they rarely do that, because their ego is being expertly stroked. (“Say what’s on the teleprompter, and you get a very comfortable life and big check. I will choose to exercise my free will “tomorrow”.)

I’d also throw in his performance as the bad-guy rancher (who has the misfortune of being the only nearly sane person in the featured cast) in RUSTLER’S RHAPSODY. It’s a fun, cardboard movie that plays with bent western stereotypes, and Griffith brings hilarious depth to his personation. A YouTube clip (a short scene numbered 3/9) shows him at work, and sets up the funniest gag in the movie, which is presumably in another clip.

I’d love for TCM to show all three of these. (Is there a recording of the US Steel Hour version of “No Time for Sergeants” out there?)

A lot of it – maybe 2/3 – is excellent, especially most of the acting, but the rest includes a lot of really heavy-handed satire that felt really trite and near-unwatchable to me (not to mention out of line with the tone of the rest of the film). I mean I realize the whole thing is satire, but it combines what you might call “serious” satire (the successful part of the film) with silly satire along the lines of Woody Allen’s earliest films. The silly stuff is what doesn’t hold up (Allen’s early films are a mixed bag there too, but generally hold up well).

A Face in the Crowd is such a great, important film because there’s really nothing that doesn’t hold up. There’s nothing to roll your eyes at – it’s transfixing all the way through. And when it hits you that nothing has changed, and politics is essentially the same today, it’s really unsettling. In that way it’s actually gotten better over time.

What I actually meant to reply to you about was how your professor ran that class – I had a history professor I took three courses from on various aspects of Japanese history who showed us Japanese feature films every week (and gave lectures to support them and to correct major inaccuracies). The course on the samurai was especially great. For many humanities/social science type topics it’s a great, very effective approach.