Keeper of the Clown Bell

The critical battlefield was outlined by POTUS 44 with the mid-December release of  his annual list of favorites  from the closing year (2025) which includes the top movies he has watched in the hours that remain after reading many books and listening to a lot of music. Because he's a capitol (D) donkey I figure Barack gets to watch all of these pictures for free plus hear the industry chit-chat about what celebritards are paid to promote. As longtime KOTCB readers know, I do NOT usually watch the films critiqued here because, for the most part, I don't need to but unlike Barry I do give commentary regarding the themes in these flicks to explain WHY they make anyones list. The Enigma just lobs his picks skyward like he's shooting hoops with LeBron and hopes the rock falls into the hole.* For me it's one battle after another in the cinephile war and in the spirit of years past I humbly submit my reviews. Through a series of odd circumstances, I have actually watched a mo...

When I was a boy my parents took me to the Uptown theater in Washington, DC to see Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece, "2001: A Space Odyssey," in all its 70mm glory and while I don't remember much from my pre-teen youth I do remember this spectacle. The America of 1968 was just starting to chase the LBJ Great Society pipe dream and the near future envisioned by Arther C. Clark and Kubrick had not yet taken it's  50 Years of Failure  detour so the fantasy of orbiting space stations and expansive moon colonies seemed achievable. In fact, a young boy of today watching this movie might rightly ask, "why don't we have these things? Shouldn't I be living in a Moon base? What happened to this future I was meant to inhabit?" There's an answer for those questions and it's shown in the film's opening "Dawn Of Man" sequence when the circle of monkey-men huddled around a watering pool get beaten and run-off by a competing clan of mon...

  Longtime readers of the KOTCB blog will know that Rob "Meathead" Reiner has a lifetime pass on Clown Bell ringing due to his 1984 film "This Is Spinal Tap" which remains one of the most based and high-handed spankings ever delivered to Hollywood, celebrity culture and the "liberal" ethos (such as it is) in these United States of America. It matters not a whit that this  evisceration of America's post-1973 corps was performed by comedic thespians possessed by the spirit of the times in an effort to ridicule the Anglo-Saxon, high testosterone, white supremacy of Heavy Metal Rock 'n Roll. This Mockumentary depicts the cultural revolution of "The 60's" and its degenerate 1970's aftermath with more unfiltered authenticity than reality itself. The unintended consequence of creating a work of art that gets interpreted by the audience in ways that the artist couldn't conceive of during production is a recurring source of merriment f...

There are three meta totems that serve as recurring symbols of the modernist ethos projected by the Techno-Fascist Imperium which I have contemplated my entire adult life. They are as follows: Disposable lighters  - released on the world in 1973 these little Promethean wonder sticks brought fire to everyman at almost no cost in a valueless plastic container which could be tossed or lost without consequence. In a post titled  July 5th - Disposable Culture  the KOTCB marked '73 as year zero of America's  50 Years Of Failure  in large measure because of the irony of these butane lighters and the impact they had on global human consciousness. Jell-O  - It is a food product that requires refrigeration but provides no nutritional value to the grinning Deeble who spoons the colored cubes of reconstituted cow bones(?) into his gaping mouth. I put the (?) behind the possible ingredient of Jell-O because... little known fact... only a handful of people, by which I me...

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My grandmother loved the cinema and in my  adolescence she took me to lots of movies, none of which were G rated pablum served up from Disney or other “child friendly” brain washers but rather adult themed pictures like The Anderson Tapes (1971),  What's Up, Doc? (1972),  The Day of the Jackal (1973)  and Freebee And The Bean (1974). Needless to say, none of the films I just listed could get made under today’s DEI requirements. She loved the magic on the silver screen and taught me to appreciate the wonders rendered on the wall of Plato’s cave. Watching these films as a tween changed my perception of the world and their programming  probably still colors my fundamental views on  cops and robbers ,  transvestites ,  France  and  Babs Streisand . I didn’t know it then but this era was the glory years of independent minded studio backed pictures which came to an abrupt and devastating end with the release of  Star Wars  in 1977. I...