ART & POETRY

By David Walsh, Senior Film & Culture Critic, wsws.org he 90th Academy Awards ceremony…

“One type of argumentation is rational and logical; it is presented as a self-evident truth for those who are willing or capable of considering Russia’s historical development through the Biblical context: “Had there been in Russia a true religious order and not just an estate of morally obtuse people of religious profession, they would have understood long time ago that Christ is with the Red Guardsmen. It is hard to challenge this truth, so obvious for those who have read the Gospels and thought about them.”

GAITHER STEWART—That the most traditional of races renounced the memory of its past, mythical or true, is no small matter. The Chinese had three thousand years of chronology (in those years, the Yellow Emperor and Chuang Tzu and Confucius and Lao Tzu) when Shih Huang Ti ordered that history began with him.

DAVID WALSH—Damon’s comments were mild, and, in fact, in the course of them, he endorsed the disgraceful and cowardly erasure of actor Kevin Spacey, one of the first victims of the recent sexual scandals, from Ridley Scott’s new film All the Money in the World. The actor called Spacey’s removal from the completed work, which involved replacing the latter with Christopher Plummer and refilming 22 scenes, “smart” and “a total business decision by Ridley.

GARY CORSERI—Day by day we weave

a web of lies

and demos plays 2nd fiddle

because the final score’s a riddle

only the Conductor knows;