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Andrew Prokop

29 Dec, 8 tweets, 6 min read

Thread: Best films I saw for the first time in 2021 (released any year). I mainly focused on Japanese, Hong Kong and Chinese art films this year. Disclaimer: I like "difficult" stuff that takes big swings. Here we go...

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE (1983, Oshima) - Japanese officer running WWII POW camp becomes obsessed with his prisoner, played by David Bowie. Theme is radical empathy. Excellent score.

EROS PLUS MASSACRE (1969) - Four-hour maximalist epic about 1910s anarchism, 1960s disillusionment, and how we retell and alter history for our own ends. Wild, over-the-top, ultimately shattering. Stunning photography in this Arrow Blu-Ray

amazon.com/Kiju-Yoshida-A…

AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL (2017)- 4-hour depression epic following 4 characters who go through it. Aesthetically gripping, bleak. Channeling that feeling that the world is corrupt and there’s little good people can do, but without hope for better ever quite being extinguished

Okay, a fun one! PEKING OPERA BLUES (1986)- I was getting Tarantino vibes from this one and then saw he said it was "one of the greatest films ever made." Three very different women thrown together in 1910s China and embroiled in various capers. Action, suspense, comedy — a joy.

FALLEN ANGELS (1995)- Wong Kar-Wai's spiritual sequel to Chungking Express, but exploring different tones and emotions. One dramatic plot, one comedic one, but the comedic one is the heartbreaker. As typical of Wong, excellent use of music, especially a Laurie Anderson track

HAPPY HOUR (2015) + ASAKO I & II (2018) - Two films by Japanese auteur Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Talky, about interpersonal relationships in which simmering emotions suddenly boil over. He has 2 highly acclaimed 2021 films I’m psyched for, but they haven’t made it to streaming yet

CASTING BLOSSOMS TO THE SKY (2012) + HANAGATAMI (2017) - An anything-goes aesthetic in the service of retelling stories of WWII tragedies before the generation that remembers them passes from the scene. Veers back and forth between charmingly silly and deadly serious. Monumental

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Andrew Prokop

@awprokop

23 Dec

Many Dems have wondered about the hypothetical of, "what if they'd won 1-2 more Senate seats?"

I'm also interested in the flipside — what if they'd won 1 fewer Senate seats? How would Biden's first year have been different with a McConnell-run Senate?

Obviously no BBB. Stimulus would have had to be bipartisan and looked quite different. Would infrastructure still have happened?

Probably a few differences in the Cabinet but not too much (he had mostly moderate picks anyway).

Judicial confirmations slowed to a crawl, of course. Macro conditions probably mostly the same. Biden probably still unpopular, but much more commentary would blame that on McConnell.

Read 4 tweets

Andrew Prokop

@awprokop

21 Dec

https://twitter.com/EricLevitz/status/1473316449716518913

Democratic leaders have tried everything to win over Manchin — everything except actually addressing the key demand he's made for months.

(Yes they've made significant concessions to him. But they tried to handwave past this one.)

https://twitter.com/EricLevitz/status/1473316449716518913

Here’s a key moment in this saga.

10/24: Biden, Manchin, and Schumer meet in Wilmington. WH later claims Manchin agrees to support Biden’s new BBB framework here.
10/28: Biden announces framework
11/01: Manchin trashes the framework

So what happened?

I see two possibilities here.

1) Manchin was inconsistent. He told the WH he'd be fine with all this. But a week later, he decided he wasn't.
2) The extent of the framework's reliance on temporary programs to meet the cost cap was not made clear to him in the private meeting

Read 7 tweets

Andrew Prokop

@awprokop

16 Dec

Joe Manchin vs. the expanded child tax credit: vox.com/2021/12/16/228…

Manchin is essentially demanding one of two things — either the expanded child tax credit gets dropped from the bill, or nearly everything else gets dropped from the bill.

vox.com/2021/12/16/228…

The expanded child tax credit in BBB is a near-universal benefit for families with children, but folded inside it is a transformative anti-poverty proposal aimed at helping the neediest.

vox.com/2021/12/16/228…

Read 5 tweets

Andrew Prokop

@awprokop

10 Dec

https://twitter.com/zackbeauchamp/status/1469385116636131334

The issue is that the big picture of what happened has been clear for some time and is no longer "news." So there is a desire to find new details that make it newsworthy again and justify new coverage. But those new details don't change the big picture, which we've long known

https://twitter.com/zackbeauchamp/status/1469385116636131334

Trump tried to steal the election. He pressured GOP officials to make that happen. He whipped his supporters into a frenzy. When the Capitol was stormed, he was delighted, and slow to act. He explored (but did not take) more extreme executive actions. Eventually, he backed down.

Since we've long known all that, new coverage tends to be:
1. Drip-drip investigative coverage with new details about what happened.
2. Retrospectives trying to more effectively synthesize / present / explain what happened.
3. Forward-looking coverage (will it happen again?)

Read 4 tweets

Andrew Prokop

@awprokop

2 Dec

Since the Roe v. Wade decision 48 years ago, 10 SCOTUS seats have opened up while Rs were president, and 5 while Ds were.

11 seats were actually filled by R presidents and 4 by D presidents because... you know.

Still, took a while for (apparent) anti-Roe majority to take shape

That's because of those 11 GOP appointees, two (Stevens and Souter) went rogue and essentially joined the court's liberal wing.

And two others — O'Connor and Kennedy — got cold feet on overturning Roe specifically the last time it looked plausible, in 1992.

I'd split this span into two eras.

In the first (1973-1992) all six SCOTUS vacancies occurred when Rs were president. They won most of the elections, and none happened to open up during Carter's one term.

But there is a catch — Dems controlled the Senate for much of this time

Read 8 tweets

Andrew Prokop

@awprokop

2 Dec

https://twitter.com/AdamBlickstein/status/1466104558254530578

I don't know, if there's one thing Democrats have been quite good at, it's "appointing Supreme Court justices who will end up protecting Roe."

The reason for defeat is that they couldn't appoint enough of those justices due to losing the Senate in 2014 and presidency in 2016

https://twitter.com/AdamBlickstein/status/1466104558254530578

I guess the theory is that there were voters who flipped to GOP or stayed home in '14/'16 but would have voted Dem if there was better messaging and activism about Roe being in danger?

Probably will get some indication of whether such voters exist in significant numbers in 2022

But the success of the well-funded GOP legal movement here is mainly in *getting Republican presidents to, at long last, consistently appoint SCOTUS justices who would actually overturn Roe.*

Nixing the O'Connors, Kennedys, and Souters.

Read 4 tweets

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