Carl Scott

Today Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande met at Reims Cathedral, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle meeting there as a gesture of Franco-German reconciliation this day in 1962. For German and French eyes, a significant moment, full of momentous symbolism, . . . . Continue Reading »

. . . even if, like Germany’s Gerhard Schröder, German Chancellor from 1998-2005, you are of the general social democrat mode, you rely on centralized government action too much, and you are not above stoking rabid denunciation of U.S. efforts to fight terrorism and WMD proliferation for . . . . Continue Reading »

Mr. S. was the alias of the Jack Black-played rocker/teacher character in The School of Rock . That film is one of my favorites from my list of best films about popular music . Very funny, but I also like the way presents an intelligent teaching about rock’s role in our society. Really, it . . . . Continue Reading »

Surely there are at least 50 different ways President Obama and the Democratic Congress of 2006-2010 have employed, but Victor Davis Hanson reminds us of the top ten. . . . . Continue Reading »

The School of Rock was just a feel-good comedy about Rock and 6th-graders, given life by Jack Black’s performance, right? At first glance, yes. But the script was onto the fact that by the late-90s, rock felt played out, tiresomely/predictably decadent. And that in a reaction to general . . . . Continue Reading »

Since I want films about any and every sort of pop music since the advent of jazz, and about the rock music of 1966 to the present, for this topic I’m sort of overlooking the rock v. rock n’ roll distinction I insist upon elsewhere . And since what I really want are films that convey what . . . . Continue Reading »

. . . because Matt Franck schooled me on it years ago, in a 2006 NRO piece : Activism, I think, can be pretty neutrally defined as the wrongful use of the power we call judicial review. (Not its wrongful non-use, though . . . ) I don’t agree with Franck down the line on con-law (although . . . . Continue Reading »

Thanks again, pomocon commenters—I benefitted from a fine thread below, learning about a whole slew of films about communism.  Of course, one of the questions asked was, why haven’t there been more films about communism? In particular, why have there not been more Hollywood , . . . . Continue Reading »

This is the conclusion of the long series of Songbook posts kicked off by my simple observation that many bands championed as representative of new music , such as Crystal Castles, really aren’t . While many themes have been touched upon, overall, Songbook posts #36-51 have been about 1) . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m currently working on an introduction to a book I’m co-editing on one of the greatest films about communism, The Lives of Others , and I’m wondering what other films there are that portray life under communist oppression that our readers know about. There don’t seem to be . . . . Continue Reading »