THE WEIMAR AESTHETIC OF FRITZ LANG

Metropolis: Lang’s most openly left-wing 
film, but also his most fascistic.

by Jake Bowyer

Sometime not long after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Joseph Goebbles, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, approached a monocled Austrian with a proposition: make films for the Third Reich. The filmmaker, one Fritz Lang, had originally approached Herr Goebbles with another proposition about the lifting of the Nazi Party’s ban on his film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). Goebbles responded with: “The Fuhrer and I have seen your films and the Fuhrer made clear that ‘this is the man who will give us the National Socialist film.’”

TOD BROWNING: SHADOW FILMMAKER

Freaks one of Browning's oddball masterpieces

by Jake Bowyer

The city of Louisville is responsible for a lot of American whackos. While the city’s most famous offspring is the overhyped showboat and draft dodger Muhammad Ali, it also lays claim to gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson,  Birth of a Nation director D.W. Griffith, and early baseball hero Pete Browning. There must be something in the water!

WHITE NOSTALGIA

A scene from the German show "Babylon Berlin"

by Jake Bowyer

One of the biggest hits of the summer in 2009 was an indie pop ditty about belle époque France. Entitled “1901,” this song, performed by the band Phoenix, is not about anything in particular. The one tell, if it can be called that, is contained in the lyrics:

SOMALIA—THE GIFT THAT KEEPS GIVING

by Jake Bowyer

Earlier this month, 38-year-old Navy SEAL Senior Chief Petty Officer Kyle Milliken was killed during a combat operation some forty miles west of Mogadishu. Milliken, a battle-hardened member of the same elite SEAL Team 6 that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, fought alongside, not behind, his compatriots in the Somali army. Milliken’s death marked a very unfortunate milestone. He became the first U.S. service member to die in combat in Somalia since Operation Gothic Serpent in 1993.