Groucho Sings About Political Debate in 2010

Political debate in 2010 seems more like this song from 1930s America -- are today's pundits so far behind or was Groucho thinking far ahead?


ALSO SEE:

-- Doctor Hates Health Care Reforms Which He Doesn't Really Know About

-- Tennessee 'Teapublicans'

FOX Lies and Is Loved

Back in the year 2004, veteran TV news anchor Dan Rather was cut loose from CBS for reporting about series of memos about then-president Bush's days in the National Guard, which many believed to be plain old fakes.

Times have changed. The bulk of the entire line-up of FOX News Channel reports on a series of stories - reports which have been proved false and fake - and their ratings go up. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow calls out the lies and the liars:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Camera Obscura: Nashville Film Festival 2010; Who Is The Girl In Hitchcock's Shower?

Some notable movies will premiere at the upcoming Nashville Film Festival which starts April 15 including the opening film for the 2010 festival called "Nowhere Boy", about the teen years of John Lennon in Liverpool. The movie has been gathering strong reviews from the Sundance festival showing -

"Johnson and the filmmakers have based that characterization largely on Lennon's own reflections, particularly in post-Beatles interviews. More broadly, this Lennon is an almost archetypal angry young man or rebel schoolboy of British Isles fiction and drama, a Liverpool cousin of Stephen Dedalus, dreaming of escape from his strangled, provincial environment."

More from the Salon review here, including the tabloid details of director Sam Taylor-Wood dating her lead actor, Aaron Johnson.

Here's a trailer for the movie -


Other features include "Art House", a story about artists on the verge of being evicted from their college home - and it sort of looks like "Animal House", except with artsy folks instead of frat follies. Here's the trailer:


A full list of the schedule and events is here at the Nashville Film Festival web site.

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A truly bizarre true-crime story arrives with the new book from Robert Graysmith, who penned the book "Zodiac" about the 1960s killer which was made into the impressive David Fincher movie. This new book tells the story of a movie fan, Kenneth Dean Hunt, who was so deeply obsessed with the movie "Psycho" he set out to kill Janet Leigh's body double from the movie, Marli Renfro, but actually killed the wrong woman, Myra Davis, in 1988 -- it seems the two women were used as stand-ins for Leigh, a reality Leigh and Hitchcock himself had denied for many years.

Cinematical has more:

"The crime, committed by Hunt went unsolved until roughly ten years ago, and folks confused the two gals so much to the point that even the Associated Press reported Renfro (not Davis) had been murdered when she was actually alive and completely unaware of her apparent death. There was also a report that claimed the two women were actually one in the same."

April Fool's Day Originated in Iran?

Here in the modern now-a-go-go days of the 21st century, one can easily do some online research to explore the origins of April Fool's Day. Which means I Googled the infamous prank day (do I say "Topeka'ed" instead??)

While I am reluctant to believe anything I read on the Internet - especially today - I did learn something I had never known before.

April Fool's Day originated as long ago as 538 BC, when Iranian's marked the end of their New Year's celebration on April 1st, and designated that day as Sizdah Be-dar, the "Festival of Joy and Solidarity". Not exactly the two words I've used to describe Iran before.

Still, the day of pranks seems to start there ... it seems to involve lentil sprouts known as sabzeh. (I always thought the word "lentil" was rather humorous.)

It's just that no one really called that country "Iran" until the 20th century ... or did they? Does that make it a Persian holiday now celebrated worldwide?