 Welcome to Connect the Dots, I'm David Feldman, filling in for the incredible Lila Garrett, who is still lining up outside of Best Buy-in Whittier for a Black Friday deal on a flat-screen TV. Can you imagine that? I don't know why I picked Whittier, maybe because it's the childhood home of Richard Nixon, and I know what a huge fan Lila Garrett is of Richard Nixon. Well, it truly is an honor to fill in for Lila Garrett. There are two people in this world who tell me to do something, and I do it. No questions asked. One is Ralph Nader, the other is Lila Garrett, who will be back next week. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, spending it with the people you love. I on the other hand spent it with my family. Thanksgiving is where we practice gratitude, and what I was most thankful for was that I wasn't the toilet plunger at Governor Chris Christie's house. Morbidly obese Republican candidates like Chris Christie or Mike Huckabee should be way more sympathetic towards a woman's right to choose considering they spend their waking day waddling around like a pregnant woman in her third trimester. By the way, you think the weekend, you think this weekend was America's busiest travel season? Just wait till the Wednesday after Election Day, when Donald Trump is elected president. And by the way, anyone who thinks America isn't dumb enough to elect Donald Trump, I have three words for you, Ronald Reagan. You know what the hardest job in the world has to be? The crazy uncle at Donald Trump's Thanksgiving dinner. I mean, how do you out-crazy that family? They keep asking the Republican candidates, would you go back in time to kill baby Hitler? Which is ridiculous because in order for a Republican to kill baby Hitler, they would have to go forward in time. But right now, given how scary things are, I would use my time machine to convince baby Trump's mother to breastfeed baby Trump. I think that's the root of that man's problems. Not enough breast milk as a child. I'd say not enough oxygen, but that would turn him blue, not orange. Well, the holiday weekend was marred yet again by another gun massacre this time in Colorado Springs. Only in America, and I do mean only in America, could a man shoot up a planned parenthood clinic utterly convinced he's pro-life. It's always depressing to be reminded that America's unending war on women sometimes includes guns. Who knows? Maybe we can finally get the GOP on board gun control. If we somehow convince them it's about protecting the lives of the unborn again. In the spirit of compromise, how about this? I'm willing to defund planned parenthood as soon as the National Rifle Association defunds the Republican Party. Wayne LaPierre, who heads the NRA, he always says the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Well, one of the people killed in this weekend's shootout was a police officer who also served as a Christian pastor. I guess Wayne LaPierre never claimed that good guy with the gun gets to survive. On today's show we talk with Howie Klein, the founder and treasurer of the Blue America Pack, and then we lighten things up talking holiday movies with film critic Michael Snyder. You're listening to Connect the Dots, Lila Garrett is back next week. I'm David Feldman. Howie Klein is the founder of the Blue America Pack, which raises money for progressive groups all over America and he writes the down with tyranny blog, which everybody should read. Hello, Howie Klein. Hey, how are you doing? Good to hear your voice again. Very quickly before we get to the meat of it, Ted Cruz, is he going to win Iowa? I don't know for sure, obviously. My feeling is that Ted Cruz will probably be the Republican nominee. I see him as the one who will go all the way and I look forward to it because it will be a real contest of ideas. He is the most right wing of all of the Republicans and it'll be good to see him. I would love to see him fight Bernie Sanders, but any Democrat will do. What is going on with the Republican Party because they keep saying for the past eight years that there's a civil war in the Republican Party, then they say there's a crack-up. They say that the Republican Party is falling apart. Meanwhile, they control the House, they control the Senate, they control a majority of state houses. How do we get the Democrats off their meds? How can my side have this kind of crack-up? The Republicans are winning. Yes, the Republicans don't win the presidency, but they do manage to win the House and the Senate. As you said, the state houses and the governorships, they're doing really well. How does that happen? They have a lot of money. That's one thing. The legislative seats in the states are very gerrymandered. That's another thing in their favor. The congressional seats are very gerrymandered, another thing in their favor, but all of this comes down to really one thing, which is the gross incompetence of the Democrats. The Democrats have a geriatric leadership. The Republicans don't. The Democratic leadership is more than two decades older than the Republican leadership. It shows because the Democratic leadership, as much as I like and respect Nancy Pelosi, she has hired one completely, totally, utterly incompetent DCCC chairman after another from Rahm Emanuel, who did a horrible job, to, which is named... Steve Israel? ...Kris Ray and Hollin, who did a horrible job to Steve Israel, who's the worst of all. I mean, these people are as bad as you can possibly get, and they can't do it and they'll never be able to do it if a Democratic president wins 80% of the vote and it's a landslide. the DCCC will still not be able to take back the house just because they are doing it completely wrong. They're corrupt. All the money that comes, I shouldn't say all the money, but much of the money that comes in goes right into their own personal pocket. You're stealing left and right. And if anyone who donates to the DCCC, if you want to help the Democrats to win and you donate the DCCC, let me make a suggestion. Take the money and put it in your toilet and flush the toilet because it'll do exactly the same amount of good. Actually, it'll do better if you flush it down the toilet because if you give it to the DCCC, that empowers these people, which is really bad. So, you do think Ted Cruz is actually going to be the nominee? When did you start thinking this? I thought it from before Trump even entered the race. And once Trump entered the race, I thought for a minute, well, you know, I better rethink this a little bit. But watching him in action, I realized again, so I've basically always thought with a brief little period of a week and a half, that Cruz would be the nominee. Is it possible that people are saying they're going to vote for Ted Cruz, but when they get to the ballot box, they're too illiterate to fill out a ballot? I think it's more likely that people are saying that they're going to vote for Trump and they're too illiterate. I think that Ted Cruz's followers are very, very much wedded to him, and it's the real. Trump's not for real. Trump's whole premise is that people who have never voted before are going to vote for the first time. And I've been hearing this since I was a child, and it doesn't happen. People who have never voted before aren't going to vote. That's unfortunately how it goes. And all of the support for Trump is based on people who haven't voted. Yes, they're right-wing and they're idiotic and they're insane. They're angry and frustrated and all this kind of stuff. They're still not going to vote. So there are three legs to the Republican stool, and I use the word stool, advisedly. Great joy. Yeah. What leg does Ted Cruz represent? I mean, he's a Tea Partier, but he's married to a Goldman Sachs executive. Yeah, his wife isn't running. He is what you would call the doctrinaire through conservative. Right. But he would be anti-Wall Street? Isn't he rallying the Tea Partiers? What leg is he? It's not just the Tea Partiers. He is the extreme right-wing guy that's got all the talking points down. He's against everybody. He won't really do anything substantively against Wall Street, but if it takes him putting them down in a speech, he'll certainly do that. Socially, his father is a pastor who believes that America should return to its original religion ignorance. I mean, how socially conservative would Ted Cruz be? Ted Cruz would be the most socially conservative nominee ever for any party in the history of the United States of any major party. There's no describing how far to the right he is. In fact, if you were to call Ted Cruz a neo-fascist, you would be pretty correct. His views on gay marriage? He's against everything that it could be in any way interpreted as progressive. Right. I get a sense that if this guy were any more of a closet case, his first name would be Tom. But let's talk about the legs to the Republican stool. What leg does Trump represent? He's not part of the Republican stool unless you're concluding one of these three legs, which we haven't defined yet, as no-nothingism and anger and frustration and just fun and games. Trump isn't even really a Republican. Trump has been a Democrat more than a Republican for his whole life. But he's a Trumpist. He's not a Democrat. He's not a Republican. He's just himself. He's just what he is. All right, cards on the table, Howie Klein. If I put a gun to your head and said, you have to pick a Republican candidate, I'm going to be honest with you, and people are going to be appalled that I'm saying this. If somebody forced me to pick a Republican candidate, I would pick Trump because he's so ridiculous. I'm afraid of the other guys. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, Kasek would just be more of the same. I mean, the difference between Kasek and let's see, any, you know, garden variety conservative, let's say Hillary Clinton, for example, isn't that great? It's not that big of a difference. I resent Kasek. I resent Kasek for the same reason. I don't like Kasek. I don't like Kasek. I'm just saying that these people are all about the same. They wrap, you know, guys like Kasek and Bush lend legitimacy to this insanity. I rather just have a full blown lunatic like Trump. Yeah. I can understand. I can understand why you would feel that way. Yes. Let's talk about the Colorado shooting. I'm hearing that my side is politicizing the Colorado shooting. What about the other side, the right wing? Are they politicizing the Colorado shooting? Well, let's put it like this. When a compulsive liar who doesn't know the difference between telling the truth and lying and can't distinguish between reality and fantasy, so I could be describing almost any of the Republicans. I just talked about public arena, for example. When she comes on and makes up a story about a video that doesn't exist that she saw of people going into a Planned Parenthood place and harvesting a brain of an unborn fetus, that is inciting a psychopath like this murderer. Is that politicizing? Is that what you're talking about? I mean, that to me, that sounds like politicizing all of these Republicans having incited people to target Planned Parenthood and to target people who believe in women's choice, these are very, very, very sick people. So that, in my mind, that's what politicizing is. For President Obama to stand up today, and for some of the Democrats in Congress or Democratic candidates to stand up today and say that they are going to work to defend women's rights choice or to say that they are going to continue their battle against the NRA, that sounds perfectly rational and sane to me. That doesn't sound like politicizing a tragedy. That sounds like trying to fight against the people who have caused this tragedy. And when I say people who have caused this tragedy, I mean virtually every single Republican, every one of them. They all vote for the NRA. They all against women's choice. That's defined their crazy party these days. You write it on down with tyranny about CNN, not Fox, but CNN, inviting Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger. So Adam Kinzinger, it looks like really good. He's a young guy, he's very handsome. He was Adam, I mean, Aaron Shock, a Republican who was forced to resign recently. They were like, they were supposedly, they were lovers. I don't know for a fact that they were, but you know, I've seen pictures of them like, you know, embracing. And I know that Shock would fantasize about him and talk about that to people. So whether they actually had sex with each other or not, I have no way of knowing that, but I think they did. In any case, Adam Kinzinger is supposed to be the face of the new Republican Party. They wanted to run him for a Senate seat. They tried to push their own Senator out and put Kinzinger in. They talked about running him for governor. They want to do something with Kinzinger because he looks like a regular normal person, but he's not a regular normal person. While this shooter was still in the, in the building, in Planned Parenthood, shooting people, killing them. He was, he killed three people, including a policeman. While that was happening, he was on TV saying, well, we don't really know if he was targeting Planned Parenthood. Like what? Like he just wandered into a random building and started shooting people? No, that isn't what happened, but he's not willing to, you know, that, well, we don't know yet. That's what he's saying. We don't, we don't know yet. But on the other hand, he immediately defined him as being, um, uh, psychotic. He used the word psychotic in the video I ran on my blog. So he doesn't know if the guy is targeting Planned Parenthood, although he's in Planned Parenthood with a gun killing people and shooting lots of people and he's, but he's, he's a psychotic. Well, how about he's a right-wing terrorist? How about that? Is that too far of a, of a, um, a leap to make that you say he's a right-wing terrorist? I, I, it sounds like he's a right-wing terrorist to me. And of course he will be proven as a right-wing terrorist, but Kinzinger would rather say, you know, he has legitimate rights. And the CNN person agreed that, that Planned Parenthood is, uh, what she said, Planned Parenthood is, um, uh, controversial. How about the remarks that Holly Fiorina made about Planned Parenthood? Are they controversial? Are they inciting anybody? How about the remarks that Marco Rubio made about Planned Parenthood? Or the remarks that Ted Cruz made? Or the remarks that Jeff Bush made? Or the remarks that any of these phony balonies made? They are controversial. Those, that's what I, we call controversial. And on top of that, they are inciting violence. That's what they're doing. That doesn't mean a normal, even a normal Republican, if it's such a thing, isn't going to grab, you know, then I'm not saying they're all going to grab guns and run and shoot people. But what you need is one week, one, you know, mentally weak, like any Trump follower, for example, or any Ben Carson follower. They hear this kind of talk and they get, they get driven crazier and then they run and get a gun and run in and start shooting people. I mean, this guy, what it was, he believes in life, so like let's shoot a bunch of people. Does that, I mean, what is that? That sounds insane to me. You know, I, if you live long enough, you're amazed at what comes under attack by the Republicans. I'm old enough to remember the first George Bush attacking the ACLU in 1988. I'm calling Dukakis a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and I remember going to the ACLU. Who would attack the ACLU? And now it's considered controversial to support Planned Parenthood, which does more than just provide abortion services. They provide mammograms and health for both men and women. It's a lot of people need Planned Parenthood for their health care. Alan Grayson, and I understand you're in the car right now with one of Alan Grayson's consigliaries. Is that correct? Well, we're out of the car now. We're walking down Ventura Boulevard. But yes, David works for Alan. Alan Grayson, and Alan Grayson was the voice of sanity during the shooting, right? He came out and defended Planned Parenthood. Somebody was willing to defend Planned Parenthood. Of course he did. But I'll tell you something. Most Democrats did, or are defending Planned Parenthood, of course. And Alan talked about the fact that he's had these anti-choice people coming to his office and threatening his staff. I mean, these are violent, horrid people. But why are they violent and horrid? They're violent and horrid because these Republican politicians think that by riling them up and getting them, they've worked up into a lather, that it could somehow help them to break with their own campaigns. So that's what we wind up with. Now you have a Republican Party establishment that's crying and whining that all of their base are such morons that they're behind Trump and Ben Carson. Well, they deserve that. They created that base. They nurtured that base. They got that base crazier and crazier and crazier. They thought it was really funny. Now they're stewing in there in that. Well, they revel. You write on Down with Tyranny that they actually revel in their lies. So that's the thing, because I did have a crazy uncle at Thanksgiving. And he was enjoying spreading the lies. So on Down with Tyranny, you kind of imply that the Trump supporters know their lies and they enjoy the lies because it's just upsetting our side, right? Yes, there's a lot of truth to that. Some of them are too stupid to know that it was being lies and reality and TV reality shows. They just don't know. But a lot of them do know. I mean, I've been reading these really interesting reports from good reporters who are going on the road and meeting these Trump people at the Trump rally. There was Mollie Kimmerlest, named just a woman reporter named Mollie Ball. That's it. Mollie Ball just wrote a very, very good story about this for the Atlantic just a day or two ago, where she interviewed a bunch of Trump supporters. And it was frightening. I mean, they are just so full of hatred of everything and everyone. These are life losers. They're not going anywhere. They know they're not going anywhere. They are hateful of everybody and everything. They don't want things to be better. They want things to be over. They want it to end. And that's a Trump supporter. Someone who wants everything to be over. In your heart of hearts, is Trump going to drop out on Christmas Day? Something tells me Trump is going to prove a point and just drop out and say, I'm incredible. I was the greatest candidate. I've changed my mind and he's rebranded himself, reinvented himself, and will get his own show on Fox. I don't know that that's going to happen. I wouldn't say it's not going to happen. I don't, I don't know, especially, you know, by Christmas time, that's like around the corner. I have always felt that eventually Trump will endorse Ted Cruz eventually, at some point. I don't know what's going to cause that to happen. I don't know when it's going to happen, but I don't see Trump going all the way. And like I said, from the beginning, and I've been writing about on my blog from the beginning, Ted Cruz will probably be the Republican nominee. And finally, Bernie Sanders. I would assume you're a big Bernie Sanders supporter. You would be correct to assume that Bernie Sanders, by the way, went to my high school. He was a few years ahead of me, but I, you have the same, you have the same Vermont accent as Bernie Sanders. Exactly. We grew up in the same neighborhood. We went to the same elementary school and went to the same high school. Bernie is my kind of Democrat. I can't say enough about my admiration to him. I understand where he's coming from. I understand what he'd like to do. And he's a really, really great guy. And to me, Hillary Clinton is better than any of the Republicans. And there's nothing else I can say about her, except that she's better than the Republicans. And Bernie is a lot better than her, to put it mildly. And what are the chances of Bernie winning Iowa or New Hampshire? I think the chances of winning New Hampshire are better than even. And the chances of winning Iowa are quite a bit steeper. So I, you know, I'm not an odds maker, but I would bet on him for New Hampshire. And he's got a chance in Iowa, but I don't see it happen. Okay. Finally, my last question. I have spoken to you before, and I know you don't like the Clintons. Is that, is that fair? Personally, I actually do like the Clinton thing, but especially Bill has been really, really nice to me. I've had great times with him, and I think he's a very nice guy. So in terms of not liking the Clintons, I think that's the world war. In terms of their centrist corporate policies, and in terms of the way they do politics, I don't like the Clintons. That's right. You don't like the Clintons. And they are kind of, I, there's no sunlight between the Clintons and Steve Israel, right? Well, there's definitely similarities. You know, listen, the one thing about Bill Clinton is that he's a very smart guy. Bill Clinton is smart. Steve Israel is a moron. He's not a smart guy. He's not an intelligent man. Bill Clinton, no one's going to say that Bill Clinton is not an intelligent man. So when you say there's no sunlight, there's a problem there because although they may, they may, they may wind up on the same page, although not that often, the way they get to that page is very, very different. And I would guess that that Bill Clinton probably wishes that Steve Israel would disappear off the face of the earth. Steve Israel's a loser. Bill Clinton's a winner. Well, if you had a vote for Hillary Clinton, she becomes the nominee. Because in the past, you've said you would vote for a third party candidate. You'd rather lose taking the high road than when taking the middle road. A lot of my friends are going to vote for Hillary Clinton if she's the nominee. Most of my friends, I don't, I don't look down on them. I don't think they're necessarily wrong. And they're going to do what they want to do. And that's fine. And I don't lose any respect for them for doing that. I have no intention of voting for Hillary Clinton. I did not vote for Obama in 2012. I did vote for him in 08, even though I knew what he was, what he was all about, because I had followed his Senate record so closely. So I had no expectation that he was the great savior. But I did vote for him anyway for other reasons. I voted for him because I thought it was a bad time. We have an African American president. And by that same reasoning, I could say, well, you know, Hillary Clinton is horrible. She's a terrible corporate candidate. She's a Wall Street candidate. So I'm not going to vote for her, but or maybe I should vote for her because it'll be mean a woman president. And I don't discount the importance of that blast feeling and having a woman president. I think that would be amazing. But she she is not someone I would vote for. I will I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. And like I said, many of my friends will they will vote for her. And I happen to live in the state of California. So it's easy for me to say that because Hillary Clinton needs my vote in California. She ain't winning the election. I'll tell you that. So my state is going to go for Hillary Clinton if she's the nominee, no matter what. But I would tell you if I live in Florida, I don't think I would vote for Hillary Clinton. Either way, they do need every single vote. But I would be, you know, I don't know that for sure. I had a lot. How would I know? But my gut feeling tells me there's nothing that would make me vote for Hillary Clinton. So you're going to vote Green Party or whomever probably vote for Jill Stein again, like I did in 2014, the woman who is the candidate for the Green Party. Howie Klein, Founder and Treasurer of the Blue America Pack, he writes the Down with Tyranny blog. It's October 31, 2016. Okay, Jill Stein is your candidate. It looks like it's going to be... No, no, my candidate is Bernie Sanders. Okay, all right, but okay. But let's say it's Hillary Clinton. She has, she gets the nomination, right? And she's running against Ted Cruz and it's neck and neck. And it looks like Ted Cruz could possibly win, which means he would be picking our next Supreme Court, making it further to the right than it already is. They already control the house and the Senate. You know the Democrats aren't smart enough to win that back. The Republicans control the state houses. You're facing the possibility of a Republican president picking an even more right-wing Supreme Court. Are you still going to stand on principle? It's not a matter of standing on principle. But the other thing is, is that the hypothetical that you just created is the opposite of reality. The real story here would be if Hillary Clinton versus Ted Cruz, we're not talking about who's going to win. It's going to be obvious that she's going to win by a land flight. What we're talking about is will her coattails be strong enough, well they'll definitely be strong enough to take back the Senate. If Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders is up against the Ted Cruz, the Republicans can say goodbye to the U.S. But does one of them have strong enough coattails to take back the house and 20 state legislatures? That's really what the hypothetical should be. And my vote is going to make a difference one way or the other. Anyway, it was great to talk to you. Thank you very much. I'm sorry about the ambient noise I'm standing here in front of Tatsuya and there's traffic and somebody cleaning the street and there's dogs and it's just a mess. But let's talk again soon. Thank you, sir. Howie Klein is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America Pack and everybody should read his down with tyranny blog. Thank you, Howie. Thank you. Michael Snyder is the resident film critic of the David Feldman show and we thought we'd introduce him to listeners of Connect the Dots. These are the movies Michael Snyder will be talking about, The Danish Girl, Trumbo, Brooklyn, Spotlight, Spectre, Suffragette, Bridges, Spies and Room. Tell me about The Danish Girl. Well, you know, transgender issues have become a big deal in the news. Caitlyn Jenner, the transition from Olympian Bruce Jenner to, I guess, a quasi-supermodel. Caitlyn Jenner has been very, very public. But all of this kind of is rooted back in the 20s. And in the 20s, a Danish artist named Einar Vegener began cross-dressing with his wife's encouragement and approval to both painters. And eventually, he began to realize that he was a woman trapped in a man's body and always had been. And this true story has provided the foundation to a movie called The Danish Girl directed by Tom Hooper, who won the Academy Award for the King's Speech. And it stars Eddie Redmayne, who's already got himself plenty of awards for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. And he takes on a pretty difficult role here in Einar. But pretty great stuff. As Gerta Vegener Einar's wife, the almost, I would call her the prolific Alicia Vikander, shows up and does a fantastic job. She has to be a wonderful kind of yin to his yin. No, maybe that gang to his yang. Anyway, they're both fantastic in this film. And as we see Einar begin to realize that he is, in fact, Lily, not Einar. It's very, very moving. And then the struggle they have to help him reconcile all this moves forward in Bohemian Europe in the 20s, starting in Copenhagen and moving to places like Paris, where he finds the possibility of the first gender reassignment surgery. And again, this is all based in historical facts. I'm sure it's somewhat fictionalized and dramatized, but the actors are wonderful. Supporting work by Matthias Schoenert as one of Einar's childhood friends. Ben Wishon, in fact, is an out gay actor and plays Q in the Bond films. And we'll get to that in a second. He plays a guy very interested in Lily, not Einar. And it's powerful stuff. You know, Tom Hooper directed it. And you know, I love the King's speech, even though it was sort of a fancy masterpiece theater for the cinema. Maybe they could call this the Queen's Privates, but the Danish girl works just fine. And I thought it was a really, really solid stuff. Very moving. I saw the movie. Yeah, I saw it. It's very relevant. It's beautiful. I mean, every shot is a postcard. It's about two artists. And so they do justice to that. I mean, the cinematography is spectacular, the lighting, the acting. But you know, it was about, it's about something very a little slow, a little slow. Yeah, it's a little trial, a little trial. I do want to say that what's really fascinating is Gerda's career as an artist is kind of belittled and diminished in the shadow of her husband until she starts painting him as Lily or her Lily. And then suddenly she has this subject that moves her and makes her passionate and creates these passionate paintings and the ones that get her attention and art shows. I thought, again, it's a little on the stately side. That's what this director does, generally speaking. And I thought it did justice to the story. You know, let's put it that way. Well, had I hate to say Caitlyn Jenner might have cut them off at the feet. I think had we not had Caitlyn Jenner this year, this would have been a much more interesting movie. I just, I don't know how edifying the movie was. That's, that was the problem I had with the movie. It was beautiful. It's about an important subject. It shows his struggle to become a woman and what he had to go through. But I'm not sure it couldn't have been said a lot quicker. Well, yeah, you know, it's possible. But again, you know what, we really, from this particular review, don't know how things play out. And I guess those who are familiar with the story are aware of it. But it is a tragic circumstance. When you think about this person being such a pioneer in a field that is still considered on the, on the cutting edge of medicine. Yes. So there you go. All right, let's go to Trumbo. Well, this is a film biography that tells the story of the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee and their commie witch hunt in the late forties, found his career in freefall was jailed and blacklisted and then vowed to strike back. And one of the things about this movie is that it can give people a little insight into the mania and the and the backbiting and the internal ugliness of what surrounded the what was known as the Hollywood 10 and the divisive kind of destructive schism between people like John Wayne and had a hopper on one side and fancied themselves great patriots and Dalton Trumbo and his friends and colleagues who felt that they had the right to believe what they believed. And, you know, this film rises or falls in a lot of ways on the strength of the performances and Brian Cranston, who you mostly know is breaking at the start, Breaking Bad Walter, the meth cooking cancer-reflected former teacher in Breaking Bad plays Trumbo and he is compelling and fantastic, much like Eddie Redmayne makes the Danish girl work at its heart with great support from Alicia Vikander. Cranston is the heart and soul of this film and yet he also gets great support from Diane Lane as Trumbo's wife and in particular, as the villain of the piece, Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, the venomous gossip columnist who was one of the most powerful people in the entertainment business for years and years. She's just what she could make and break careers and I guess it was kind of true. Dame Helen Mirren, I throw in the game because I respect her so much, so good in this film as Hedda Hopper and, you know, hateful, awful, nightmarish. Oddly enough, the movie directed by a guy best known for comedy, Jay Roach, but John McNamara's screenplay is pretty great and there are questions of the things getting whitewashed a little here and there because these guys were brought before congressional committees and were expected to rat out their colleagues and, you know, it's amazing also what we see in terms of characters such as the man who was a dear, dear friend of Trumbo's and a renowned actor, Edward G. Robinson, who was on Trumbo's side and then was co-opted by pressure to keep his jobs coming and to stay on the good side of the likes of Hedda Hopper and there were interesting, let's put it this way, there were some fascinating performances of celebrities, famous actors and my favorite of them is probably the Kirk Douglas portrayal which I thought was pretty cool. Dino Gorman is really good as Kirk Douglas. So Michael Stolberg's Edward G. Robinson, maybe not what you would expect, there's not a lot of that, hey, see, you know, I'm on the side of a commie, Sadie, the stuff going on, but also John Goodman as Frank King who was the guy who took a chance on Trumbo after he had already been smeared and gave him an opportunity under false names to write a lot of pot boilers and genre films. You know, Trumbo in fact wrote two award winning movies under assumed names, you know, he had sort of ghosts or beards if you will and I guess at least one of them won an Academy Award, maybe two, but he won two Academy Awards under fake names, one for his screenplay, maybe you can remember, sort of escapes me at the moment, but some great stuff. Now Roman Holiday, he wrote Move in Holiday for instance, that's just absolutely amazing. Yeah, I think he won, he won it for Roman Holiday and Spartacus. Well, Spartacus, he was... No, not Spartacus though, something else, and forgive me for not remembering, but I saw the film about two months ago, but the point being that he had to do it under fake names and eventually Kirk Douglas said, I'm Bruce Lee Dalton, Trumbo's team on the Spartacus Richard one that Johnny got his gun is one of the best anti-war novels out there and it was Trumbo's work as well and such the irony, you know. Yeah, yeah, it's worth exploring that period. He has been deified, maybe some would say he wasn't as innocent as the movie says he may have. Well, I think a lot of liberals, Hollywood liberals, cooperated in name names. I thought the struggle that Edward J. Robinson had was kind of interesting, where anyway, it's an interesting film. We don't know how we would hold up given under that kind of scrutiny and that kind of pressure for sure. We should point out that a couple of favorites, Media and Louis Step, comedian, actor, Louis C.K. plays one of Trumbo's pals as does Alan Tudyk, who you know is known to some as part of the Serenity crew in the Firefly TV series Elle Fanning, the one of the two Fanning girls plays his daughter as she's growing older. It's a prestige production considering what might have been a story that Hollywood would prefer buried and forgotten because it's an ugly story in terms of the way the entertainment is depicted. It's pretty cool stuff, I thought. Again, without the performance of great power and magnitude by Grantson, it doesn't work. For me, it worked. Okay, Brooklyn. Brooklyn is a very, very sweet film. It's a romantic and romantic story of a young Irish immigrant who's navigating her way through 1950s Brooklyn in New York and one of the big assets of the film, other than its very adorable, compelling, and charming Sir Charon and the young Irish actors, is that the script is written by Nick Hornby, a novelist behind High Fidelity and Dever Pitch and About a Boy and also the screenwriter, I believe, of all three of those films and also the screenwriter of An Education, one of my favorite Coming of Age films in the past 15, 20 years. And in this case, he finds a sweet spot and this is a very emotionally resonant and gentle love story. And it's also a story about Coming of Age and also the progress of one woman to establish herself on her own. And there's sort of no perfect period. If you're a cast that sells the whole thing and you get the immigrant experience, this girl comes from Ireland when she's sponsored by a priest who her family knows and trusts. She needs work and she wants to go out on her own and she gets a look at New York in the early 50s and she sort of buys in a little bit of home sick. She's in a boarding house with other women, goes back in the day. That was what she did when you were a single woman and she tries to find work and she finds love with the kind of charming and the ambitious young Italian American. I just want to feel a little bit in some of the ways that Marvel was a superhero thing, Agent Carter, which is also about a woman in the late 40s, early 50s in the case of Agent Carter moving to New York and dealing with having to live at a, when there's all women's boarding houses and stuff, but it's a little different. And again, Sir Charonan is absolutely fantastic as Isla Spacey, the girl. And you know, if you don't have the support of other good actors, again, something like this wouldn't work. And it could have been a cliche, the kid could have been a cliche, the one she falls in love with. But instead, it doesn't happen that way. Jim Blood then plays the father, the priest who kind of sponsors her. And of course, the charming Drew Waters plays the laylady at the all women's boarding house and Emory Cohen as the young, ambitious American kid is fantastic. And Donald Beeson is an actor who appeared in Ex Machina earlier in the year, plays against that sort of type as the kind of well to do man back home in Ireland who also fancies our heroine. Good stuff directed by John Crowley. And again, Nick Hornby's screenplay is no perfect. This is a very sweet movie. If you want to go to a movie, don't go to some horrible Hollywood romcom. This is what you take your beloved to see far more effective spotlight. Wow, this is one of the most important films of the year and one of the best made in my top five. Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Michael Starr in this as the three components of the spotlight, which is the investigative branch of the Boston Globe. And they dig stuff up and they reveal the truth about stories no one's heard about. They try to get to the core and they don't care how controversial, in fact, the more controversial, the better. So they have uncovered this massive scandal of child molestation and a cover up about this scandal within the local Catholic Archdiocese in Boston in the early part of this 21st century. And this tears the whole place apart. You know, the good Catholics of Boston are shocked and horrified that we can suggest this. These guys are getting death threats and what have you. Again, a true story. They earned a pure surprise for the investigation. And this is powerful, exciting, deeply affecting, and fact based human drama with excellent performances all around. Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton are like probable nominees for awards. We have Shriver's Diplomes, Crusading New Editor who people are wary of and who says, let's just people off the leash at the spotlight segment of the paper. It says, go for it. Find out the truth. Stanley Tucci plays a very dedicated and difficult lawyer trying to help the victims who have been marginalized or may have been bought off by the church. In general, this is a rough stuff because, you know, it's a very volatile issue directed by Tom McCarthy, co-authored by McCarthy. It hits every note. It hits every corner of the story and does a fantastic job of it. It's heartbreaking. And at the same time, it's kind of uplifting that people in journalism can still make a difference in this post-digital age bars. Another good supporting work by Billy Crop as a kind of sort of a two-faced legal type, and John Slattery as Ben Bratley of all people. He's good. Every role from top to bottom is properly cast. Let's blow through Spectre because I want to get to Suffragette, Bridges Spies, and Room and Spectre. Sure. Well, Spectre is the fourth of the James Bond films to feature Daniel Craig as the first secret agent and assassin code named 007. And I think it nicely wraps up the interconnected courtset of movies that began with him rebooting the series. The reboot is Cino Royale, other than Connery Craig's, my favorite cinema version of Fleming's Super Spy. And they updated him pretty well. He was originally a Cold Warrior in the 50s and 60s. You know, if Craig quits now, these four films can kind of stand alone like Christopher Nolan's Dark Night Trilogy about Batman with Kristen Bale. I thought it was pretty good stuff. The four films made me the third best because I thought that Skyfall was the second best, and I thought that, oh man, Cino Royale. But you know, amazing action sequence in Mexico City that opens this on Day of the Dead. And maybe there are some moments where I kind of shrugged a little bit, but you can't go wrong with Kristoff Valtz as the villain. He was born to play a Bond villain. We could have seen more of him. I could have seen more of him in this movie. Yeah. And I thought that, you know, there's a few reveals I really like, but I also want to point out that the women of chemistry or no chemistry, Leah Sidhu and Monica Baluchi are fine actors in their own right. And they're very, very sexy gals. And Leah Sidhu is sort of the kind of the co-star in this one. And you know, it wraps things up. What can I tell you? You know, it's... It's a fun waste of time. It's a fun waste of time. Yeah, exactly. And it also introduces Grace Fiennes as Anne for the first time. And he's very good. There you go. I like Spectre. Okay. But I didn't really learn anything watching that movie. So let's move on. Suffragette, which I see tomorrow. Oh, well. Meaningful, well-written and well-acted look at the early and treacherous days of the Suffragette month, movement in the early 20s. In Britain, as women sought to vote in equality and, of course, the latter is still a problem when the wage front is these days, is it not? It's a little starchy and occasionally a little leaden, but it's adult drama with adult themes and an important message. And the lead actresses are great. The leading play is Chary Mulligan as a washerwoman who sees inequities and feels compelled to get on board and actually follow the fugitive Emmeline Tankhurst played by Meryl Streep, who is leading this growing suffragette movement in the UK. It's... What can I say? Having Streep as the grand dom here is kind of a waste in a small role. I mean, you couldn't get a British actress for this one, but Abby Morgan was the script. And since Meryl got so much praise for playing Magistrate and Abby's Iron Lady, I scripted, I guess, they figured whatever. Abby Morgan is also the woman behind The Hour, one of my favorite dramas, a serialized drama from the UK over the past few years. So, you know, you're dealing with talent here, great support from Helena Bonham Carter as a fellow suffragette. And Ben Wishaw, we mentioned earlier, who plays Q in the Bond films these days, plays the Cary Mulligan character's husband. He's all over the place. This particular segment is a tribute to Ben Wishaw. And, you know, it's an important story, too. Directed by a woman, Sarah Gavron, written by a woman, Abby Morgan, and... Exactly. People should know about this stuff. Aroma LeGarai is an... It's a pretty stellar piece of work. A little starchy, like I said, but suffragette is an important, important story, like, you know, the one behind The Danish Girl. Bridges Spies. Well, this is an historical provocative call for adventure and an intrigue that's pleasurable to watch, but not truly great or memorable. It's the work of a director named Steven Spielberg. I don't know if you've heard of this guy. And in any case, he wrote the thing. And the Cone Brothers, a guy named Matt Sharman, wrote the script. The Spielberg directed it, excuse me. And it's basically starring Tom Hanks as the American lawyer who had to negotiate the release of the YouTube spy plane pilot shot down over Russia at the very beginning of the Cold War. And, you know, we heard about the old Russia, the Soviets versus the US. It's historical. It's kind of thing, though, again, rises and falls on the performances and also a solid script. And you get that. A workman-like job, I would think. And Mark Rylance as a Soviet spy here in the States, they're going to try to trade up for Gary Powers, the YouTube pilot, basically runs away with the movie. Without his textured, layered performance. Tom Hanks, solid, lovable American, would probably dominate this thing. And it wouldn't have been as good as it is. You know, I mean, I think America should have a holiday called Thanksgiving because he makes so many prestige films. Yeah. I saw it. I think Spielberg squandered a great story, squandered the Cone Brothers, he squandered Hanks. I mean, visually it was stunning. The acting is always great. But again, I really didn't learn anything. And that's what really irritated me, because this was a teaching moment that got squandered. Well, in that case, you're right. They went for the surface. And that's the problem with this movie. I thought that it could have been great as well. I was really excited about it. I enjoyed watching it as I watched it. But not truly great and not truly memorable by any stretch of the imagination. We should wrap up with room, because this is a truly memorable performance on the front of a young actress. Room, yeah, free Larson. This is the festival sensation about a young mother and her five-year-old son who has stayed closed off from the world, from the world for the child's entire life, because it's something very screwed up and tragic until circumstances intervene. And then they're thrust out into the real world. One of the best films of the year with a pair of the best performance, the particular free Larson, who plays the sister in Amy Schumer's train wreck and struggling but a female social worker in a very under-appreciated drama called Short Term 12. She's doing work here with a debt that might not have been imagined from her pretty solid but slighter performances in like 21 Jump Street and Community on TV in the United States of Paris. She is fantastic. Joan Allen and William H. Macy as her conflicted and separated parents who have to deal with the psychological problems that she and her son face after they're kind of basically freed into society. It is potent and heartbreaking and just really extraordinary stuff. Lenny Abranson directed it. Emma Donnelly wrote it and I say thumbs up, free Larson and Sir Sharon, the two actors that I've mentioned today that I think deserve nominations unquestionably for the performances they gave in their respective films. Fantastic. Michael Snyder is the resident film critic for The David Feldman Show Friday Nights at 7 p.m. And if the listeners to connect the dots would like to hook up with you, how do they find Michael Snyder? Well, you can find me on Twitter at Culture Blaster which is one word culture blaster and also on Facebook at Michael Snyder's Culture Blast page. You can like it. You can hear David converse with me down the road and you can read various essays and other radio and podcast segments and just in general, thanks for the airtime, David. Well, and thanks to Lila Garrett. Now, you may not know this. This is the Lila Garrett Show Connect the Dots that you're guesting on as am I. You're a big movie buff. Did you know? I think this is true, so I apologize if it's not. But I have heard that the way we were, the Barbara Streisand character is based on Lila Garrett. Did you know that? No, I did not. And I would say that's a wow moment for me if that's the case. Yeah, I may be speaking out of school here, but I'm pretty sure the way we were is based on Lila Garrett. Who played the David Selman character? Robert Redford, of course. No, this is, I think it's probably true. And if this were Fox News, that would be good enough. But I will look into it. Michael Snyder, thank you so much. I'll see you later in the week. Okay. You're listening to Connect the Dots. Lila Garrett is back next week. I'm David Feldman.