Good article Ry....

i watched Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" today. It was the first Chaplin movie I've seen, and at first I was a little annoyed because as comedy, it's not typical Chaplin; it was his first "talkie," and it mixes a fair amount of politics with the laffs.

But shit... for a movie that was made in 1940, before America was in the war, back when it was staunchly isolationist... making this movie took a lot of balls. Chaplin was actually trying to Save The World with this movie. That's impressive.

He plays two roles in it... a Hitler lookalike in a pseudo-Germany, and a Jewish barber. The movie was made before people fully understood the roles of the concentration camps, so they are portrayed more as a regular prison, but there are some super-funny parts and a really great speech at the end, where the barber is mistaken for the dictator and delivers a speech, much in the manner that Hitler delivered his speeches, but saying the cardinal opposite: love everybody, soldiers put down your guns, etc.. Worth seeing, even if it's a little slow at times.

yo la tengo is teh rulez