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Film Review: Last Days In Viet Nam -- With Liberals Like Rory Kennedy, Who Needs Reactionaries?

Ed Rampell Hollywood Progressive
However, skillful propagandist that Kennedy is, in her effort to whitewash history and try to ferret out something positive in a colossal debacle, there’s something even she can’t hide. Look closely at the newsreel clips as the NVA tanks roll into what was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Not only are the soldiers jubilant, but look at the smiling faces of the Vietnamese masses as they are being liberated from decades of Japanese, French and Yankee occupation and imperialism.

‘The Wire,’ the burning of Baltimore and the limits of art

Alyssa Rosenberg Washington Post
Pleas from Simon, Andre Royo and Wendell Pierce, among others, are an acknowledgement of the real-world authority we’ve granted to “The Wire,” one of the most venerated shows ever to air on American television.

Abandoned Mine Under Snow

David Salner North American Review
"I learned how to fight the long shifts, the bashed fingers," writes poet David Salner of his mining experiences, but he also sees the beauty of sorrow. An appropriate lyric for May Day.

A Love Story, A War Story and A Story About Brutal Work

Olivia Laing New Statesman
The Patriot Act is a nightmare for immigrants without papers already living precarious lives of dead-end jobs, zero-hour contracts, squats, and physical danger. When a young Asian woman, alone in the U.S., meets an ex-serviceman, himself traumatized by three tours in Iraq and living in a basement flat , the two bond in a tough but brilliant first novel absent stock characters or cartoon emotionality but with a profound and intimate knowledge of life on the margins.

The Poems of Amiri Baraka

Patrick James Dunagan Bookslut
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) was the most influential African American poet of the last half-century. His was a wide ranging, experimental practice that left its mark on literary poetry, spoken word verse, and hip-hop. He was a socially committed and engaged intellectual who combined a Marxist enthusiasm with a linguistic panache that resulted in a rich, humorous, and rigorous body of work. Patrick James Dunagan looks at a summing-up collection of his work.

Native Actors Walk Off Set of Adam Sandler Movie After Insults to Women and Elders

Vincent Schilling Indian Country Today Media Network
Adam Sandler's The Ridiculous Six is said to be a spoof on The Magnificent Seven. Examples of the disrespect that triggered the walk off included Native women’s names such as Beaver’s Breath and No Bra, an actress portraying an Apache woman squatting and urinating while smoking a peace pipe, and a severely negligent portrayal of the Apache. The movie will star Sandler, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Dan Aykroyd, Jon Lovitz and Vanilla Ice.

Ugly Food Gets Attractive

Dan Mitchell Time.com
Less than beautiful produce can be an attractive and economical supply source

Netflix' Daredevil Is TV's First Gentrification-Fighting Superhero

Jeet Heer New Republic
“Daredevil,” adapted from the long-running Marvel comics franchise, is a superhero show about the evils of gentrification—a politically engaged work which is energized by debates about urban inequality. These debates are salient not only in the era of Mayor Bill de Blasio but also have roots deep in the city’s history.

Guernica, revisited

Richard Vargas Guernica, revisited (Winston-Salem, NC: Press 53, 2014).
April 26 is the 78th anniversary of the bombing of the Basque town, Guernica, by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War. It was this atrocity against innocent civilians that prompted Pablo Picasso to create his most famous painting. As New Mexico poet Richard Vargas writes, however, worldwide public outrage has not stopped the strategy of indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations.