Screening Log
This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.
February 2008 activity
Total Log Entries: 38
- Adam (6)
- Chet (0)
- Chiranjit (1)
- Cullen (0)
- David (3)
- Eva (4)
- Evan (0)
- Ian (0)
- Jenny (0)
- Katherine (0)
- Leo (4)
- Megan (0)
- Rumsey (4)
- Teddy (0)
- Thomas (5)
- Victoria (1)
Total Comments: 22
- Juno (8)
- Electroma (1)
- The Room (0)
- Grave Robbers (0)
- The Roost (0)
- The Power of Nightmares (0)
- Axe (0)
- The Room (0)
- How She Move (2)
- Step Up 2 the Streets (0)
- The Phynx (0)
- The Oh in Ohio (0)
- Chicago 10 (0)
- Billy the Kid (0)
- The Visitor (0)
- Kisses For My President (0)
- Re-Animator (0)
- There Will Be Blood (3)
- The Ten (3)
- Atonement (0)
- Shoot ‘Em UP (0)
- Beach Girls (0)
- The Satanic Rites of Dracula (0)
- Fried Green Tomatoes (0)
- How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days (0)
- The King Of Kong (1)
- Duck Soup (0)
- The Golden Compass (0)
- Cloverfield (0)
- The Cremator (0)
- Great World Of Sound (0)
- Sweeney Todd (2)
- Throne Of Blood (2)
- Zodiac (0)
- Away From Her (0)
- Reeker (0)
- 27 Dresses (0)
- Subway (0)
Full Archive
Kisses For My President / USA / 1964
A completely coincidental1 viewing of a film in which Thad McCloud, the nation’s first First Husband, threatens to collapse under the weight of his—ahem—responsibilities: Speaking at women’s groups, hosting garden parties, christening ships, and brunching with the Secretaries’ wives.
In case you haven’t figured it out, Robert Kane’s screenplay is astoundingly sexist, as the First Lady “role” is depicted as one of subservient unimportance. Never mind that, forty-five years before, Lucy Wilson had essentially run the country while her husband recovered from a stroke; or that, twenty years before, Eleanor Roosevelt had become FDR’s second conscience, his eyes and ears, and could easily have run for higher office herself; or that Lady Bird Johnson, in the very year Kisses for My President was released, was already re-redefining expectations. This is not an instance of comedy for the sake of fun, or comedy in place of rationality or reality; the suggestion buried beneath this film is not “What if ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ met American politics,” but rather “Wouldn’t if be funny if a man was First Lady,” and it’s embarrassing.
1A lie. This wasn’t coincidental at all.
by Adam Balz | Source: VHS
06 Feb 2008 9:20 AM | Submit Comment
