"War Horse:" A Love Story

When Stephen Spielberg directed "War Horse," he set out to make an epic in the mold of "Dr. Zhivago" or "Gone with the Wind." Like those films,"War Horse" is a war movie that is a celebration of the power of loyalty and commitment.

But mostly it is a love story of the old-fashioned kind: boy meets horse, boy loses horse, boy and horse find each other and ride into the sunset. The story is simple and sentimental, as you might expect from a film based on a children's novel. "War Horse," the book, was written by Michael Morpurgo and published in England in 1982. It was also the source of a successful play staged in London and New York.

The movie gets the full Spielberg treatment, with gorgeous photography by Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg's favorite cameraman, and sweeping music by John Williams, his favorite composer. The countryside and small towns of England provide the most picturesque scenery imaginable for a story set in Devon for about an hour before Spielberg gets around to the war. The war scenes are by turns stirring and shocking when they are supposed to be, but fortunately Spielberg leaves out the bloodshed and carnage so typical of war movies today (and TV shows, for that matter), with suffering and death more implied than shown.

The cast is solid throughout, with splendid British actors in the major roles. It's lucky that so many Europeans speak perfect English, because Spielberg recuited his cast on national lines, with German or Danish actors playing the German soliders and a Frenchman playing an old French farmer caught in the war.

The horse of the title is Joey, a high-spirited Thoroughbred colt purchased at auction by a boozy Devon farmer, Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan), who really needs a plow horse. His son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), trains the horse to both the saddle and the plow. Albert trains Joey to come when he whistles, a trick that will come in handy later.

But Ted needs money to save the farm. When the war starts, he sells Joey to a cavalry officer. So begins Joey's wartime service, in which he changes hands several times before ending up trapped in no-man's land, which soldiers on both sides help him escape. Albert is in the army by then, and if you doubt that Albert and Joey will be reunited, you are not a student of the obvious.

The twists and turns in the story are predictable, and the interest is in seeing how the happy ending gets worked out. The experience is satisfying if not challenging.

The British are so fond of their horses, dogs, cats and other animals that there is a huge monument in London to the animals who have served their country in war. "War Horse" is a cinematic memorial to the enduring bond between man and beast that brings out the underlying humanity in men even when they are busy trying to kill each other.

Expiration of ethanol credit could help ease corn prices

By Richard Lobb on 12/22/2011
from www.meatingplace.com (free registration)
reprinted by permission

Corn users could see some softening in prices if the tax credit supporting the ethanol industry – the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), the “blenders’ credit” – expires on schedule at the end of the year, according to an economist who follows the ethanol market closely.

“With loss of the VEETC incentive of 45 cents a gallon of ethanol added to motor fuel, we should see demand soften and more price competition among the plants emerge,” said Tom Elam of Farmecon.com. “It’s going to be hard to pin down a number, but something in the range of 20 cents a bushel or somewhat higher is likely.”

Virtually all of the fuel ethanol in this country is distilled from corn. Production of ethanol and by-products is expected to use up 37 percent of the nation’s corn supply in the 2011-12 crop year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

VEETC can be claimed by fuel companies and others who add ethanol to motor gasoline. The credit nets the fuel industry $500 million per month in 2011, Elam said. Barring last-minute action by Congress as it races towards adjournment for the holiday break, the credit will expire on Dec. 31.

Ethanol distilleries have been running flat-out as blenders seek to make maximum use of the credit before it lapses, Elam said. According to the weekly reports of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, production of ethanol in the last month has been running more than two percent ahead of same period in 2010.

Without the blenders’ credit, the fuel industry will buy only the amount of ethanol mandated by the federal Renewable Fuels Standard, which sets the minimum amount of ethanol and other renewable materials that must be added to motor fuel every year, Elam said.

“While we are currently producing at a rate of more than 14 billion gallons of ethanol per year, the 2012 mandate is 13.2 billion gallons,” he said. “Also, due to the 2011 excess production, the blenders will be able to carry over some credits that they can use to offset 2012 obligations. The effective mandate could be under 13 billion if they use those,” potentially further softening the demand for corn, he said.

More than 70 members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter to Congressional leaders earlier this month urging them to "allow ethanol subsidies set to expire to do just that and to resist calls to expand or create new ethanol subsidies in the eleventh hour."

The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), which represents ethanol makers, spent nearly $259,000 in the third quarter on lobbying for extension of the credit among other issues, according to the Associated Press.

Fieldale Farms Recycles for Sustainability and Savings

Recycling catches on when companies see they can save money and improve their brand image as well as contribute to environmental protection and sustainability. That's the message of the cover story in the December issue of Watt PoultryUSA, which I wrote. Located in rural north Georgia, Fieldale had to link up with a management company in Atlanta to make the program work. The dedication of the family-owned company is commendale.

Corn farmers’ incomes soar while poultry producers struggle: USDA report

By Richard Lobb on 12/19/2011
on www.meatingplace.com

Farm income is booming, with crop farms – led by corn – and cattle and hog operations enjoying huge gains while poultry farms are seeing lower pay due to the lagging wholesale price of broilers, according to a report by USDA’s Economic Research Service.

Net farm income in the United States is expected to top $100 billion in 2011, up 28 percent from 2010 and 50 percent higher than the 10-year average for 2001-2010, the report said.

"The U.S. annual corn price is expected to increase from $3.89 per bushel to $6.04, a large increase over its earlier high of $4.66 in 2008, as corn continues to respond to the increased demand for ethanol," said the ERS report.

Federal law requires the fuel industry to utilize a fixed amount of ethanol every year, with corn-based ethanol topping out at 15 billion gallons in 2015. Among commodity types, farms specializing in raising corn are expected to enjoy a 19 percent increase in net cash income in 2011, highest among crop farms.

Other program crops, including wheat, hay and cotton, are also registering "very large gains in annual receipts" in 2011, the report said. Wheat is expected to hit $7.43 per bushel, a 44 percent increase from 2010 and 8 cents-per-bushel below its 2008 average, reflecting a large increase in wheat exports, the report said.

Cattle and hog farms are also having a banner year, while poultry farms are lagging. Farms specializing in cattle should see a 21 percent increase in income in 2011 over 2010, while hog farms should average an 18 percent increase, the report predicted.

"With wholesale prices for most broiler products projected to be below 2010 levels, poultry farms businesses’ average net cash income is forecast to decline 18 percent in 2011, in sharp contrast with other livestock farms," the report said. Poultry companies complain that the high cost of corn has forced them to curtail production.

Government payments make up a significant share of farm income, about 10 percent, the report said. While government payments based on crop prices are expected virtually to disappear in 2011, other payments -- such as conservation easements -- are expected to total $10.6 billion in 2011.

Penn State Trustees Drop the Message Ball

The Penn State board of trustees missed a golden opportunity to make a statement of its moral values last week. Chances like that don't come very often, and it's a bad sign that the trustees didn't realize they had it.

In firing Joe Paterno as head coach -- and the president of the university as well, almost as an afterthought -- the board could have stood up and said, we cannot accept the moral blindness involved in protecting the football program instead of innocent little boys. We are drawing a line. We have to get our vision back, and we starting now.

Instead the board vice chairman, John P. Surma, refused to give any specific reason for sacking Paterno and went vague.

"In our view, things had reached a point where we had to make a change for the best long-term interest of Penn State," he said. Yeah, no kidding. He added that the trustees felt it was "necessary to make a change in leadership and set a course in a new direction.”

Those answers, of course, could quite reasonably be interpreted to mean, this is going to kill our recruiting unless we get rid of Paterno. Controversy is poison in sports. To stay on top, we have to get rid of the troublemakers.

At least he remembered to make the ritual nod in the direction of the boys whose youth and innocence was stolen by Jerry Sandusky.

"The past several days have been absolutely terrible for the entire Penn State community. But the outrage that we feel is nothing compared to the physical and psychological suffering that allegedly took place," he added.

Gee, thanks. Big of you to say it. Next time, say something that shows you mean it.

The assembled media, many of them Penn State boosters, bombarded Surma with questions but could not get him off his message points.

There's nothing wrong with message points. I've written lots of them.

But there is no substitute for having the right message. Penn State's overseers have given little sign that they have figured it out.

Horror at Penn State

The horror story coming out of Pennsylvania involving a former Penn State coach and his alleged sex crimes is a salutary reminder to everyone involved in youth activities that the obligation to report obvious wrongdoing does not stop with the organizational chain of command. If you see something really bad going on, call the cops.

Jerry Sandusky himself is almost certainly toast. If the witnesses discussed at length in the grand jury report -- a graduate assistant and a janitor -- testify at trial, Sandusky will be painted into a corner. If the alleged victims come forth with details, and those details can be corroborated, he will be trapped by his own evil.

The two Penn State administrators are in a different spot, however. It's likely they had no legal obligation to report what they heard to the police. The attorney general seems to think they did, but usually that obligation runs only to people who had some direct responsibility for the youth being victimized -- nurses, doctors, teachers, institutional staff. Defense counsel seems confident that the athletic director, for one, is not in that category.

The perjury charges against them are very serious, of course, but that could come down to a he-said, no-he-didn't argument. The graduate assistant says he reported very specific and totally unlawful physical conduct between Sandusky and a child. The adminstrators say all they heard about was "horsing around," whatever that it.

The university, for its part, took the report seriously and banned Sandusky from bringing children from his program to the Penn State campus. But they did nothing else. Protection of the program trumped any protection of the children.

Anyone involved in youth activities these days has it drilled into them that suspicions of child abuse should be reported to the organization sponsoring the program. Reference is usually made to a obligation to report to the civil authorities as well. Often, however, little guidance is given and the individual is left on his or her own to make a painful decision that could lead to an unncessary investigation of an innocent person and, one fears, a lawsuit aimed at the person who reported him. No wonder people are reluctant to drop the dime.

If a person merely has suspicions, or has seen what he regards as signs and portents, but not actual behavior, then perhaps it is appropriate to try to work it through the unofficial system. But anyone who sees the type of outrageous conduct witnessed in the shower room by the graduate assistant should, first, break it up, and then dial 911. Let the adult explain to the police what he was doing in there.

Child abuse, including sex abuse, is a serious crime. If you saw someone hitting people over the head in the street, you'd call the police. Same for an adult taking advantage of a child.

The “Anonymous” Shakespeare
Note: contains spoilers (sorry!)

Was William Shakespeare the author a role played by William Shakespeare the actor? The question is posed by "Anonymous," an earnest and occasionally entertaining historical drama directed by Roland Emmerich. The film's answer, that the plays, poems and sonnets of Shakespeare were in fact the creation of Edward DeVere, Earl of Oxford, is a popular but utterly improbable theory embraced by those who cannot believe that a man of only modest education, and little social standing, could have created one of the pillars of the English language. "Anonymous" will persuade many conspiracy theorists but few who understand that genius does not require membership in the upper class.

The William Shakespeare depicted in the film is an actor who can read but cannot actually write -- not just in the literary sense but literally: he cannot form letters on paper. But he is money-hungry and keeps an eye out for the main chance, and he sees it when DeVere begins to stage his plays through Ben Jonson, also a notable literary figure in 16th century London. Jonson is reluctant to lend his name, so the plays are produced without a designated author; when the enthusiastic audience cries, "Author! Author!" Shakespeare steps forth, much to Jonson's chagrin. Thus begins a spectacular run of successful plays which Jonson and Shakespeare obtain from DeVere, who has spent his life writing plays which he feels it would be too déclassé to produce.

If that was all there was to it, the obvious questions would be overwhelming, such as, how could such a fraud be kept secret in the hothouse atmosphere of Elizabethan London? If DeVere was so reluctant to let his literary abilities be known, why did he in fact publish (or allow to be circulated) some poems that bear his name? And why are those poems so lacking in grace, style, wit, and other literary characteristics? Why would be publish the junk under his own name and let Shakespeare have the good stuff?

The filmmakers (and "Oxfordian" theorists) need something to distract attention from these simple but deadly questions. They need a maguffin, so they invent one in the majestic personage of Queen Elizabeth the First.

The mature Elizabeth is played quite wonderfully by Vanessa Redgrave, and in a film full of flashbacks, the younger Elizabeth is played by Redgrave's real-life daughter, Joely Richardson. They portray Elizabeth not as the reserved, parsimonious Virgin Queen of history but a frisky, fun-loving theater fan who retains her romantic spark into old age. DeVere is one of her several lovers who, in a rather icky plot twist, also turns out to be her son. This appears to be an attempt to inject some Greek tragedy ("Oedipus," anyone?) into what is otherwise an historical drama. Elizabeth's need to protect the secrecy of her love life is the impetus for the long-term cover-up of the authorship of the plays.

The film comes to life when Shakespeare, played by Rafe Spall, stages the plays that he did not write. It grinds almost to a halt when Jonson (Sebastian Armesto) and DeVere (Rhys Ifans) play court politics, which is actually the bulk of the film. The politics of the day include the aristocracy's sensitivity to the political jabs in the plays, but the overwhelming factor is the looming question of succession to the unmarried and aging queen. British audiences might eat this up, but most Americans will be left wondering what the hell is going on. Anyone who thought they would see something like "Shakespeare in Love" will be quite disappointed.

Ultimately, the Oxfordians just cannot accept that a man without much of an education or any social status could have been the real William Shakespeare. They cannot wrap their minds around the thought that a streak of genius surfaced in an otherwise modest man who lived at just the right time in history, when the modern English language was struggling to be born, and that he made the most of his opportunities without benefit of high birth or learned schooling.

In the opening to the film, set in the present day, the actor Derek Jacobi describes William Shakespeare as "a cipher, a ghost" because he neglected to be modern enough to leave more visible tracks. It is the revenge of the ghost that many people will go to see a movie about William Shakespeare, but few people will bother to see a film about Edward DeVere.

Endorsing Mostly Democrats

The Washington Post of Saturday, Oct. 29, published my letter to the editor noting the paper's penchant for endorsing Democrats in the great majority of political races. The letter says:

"After reading your endorsements in the Virginia General Assembly races, I suggest that The Post could save space in the newspaper, and the time and energy of editors and readers, by running a single editorial that begins, 'With the following exceptions, we endorse all the Democrats,' and then lists those few Republicans and independents upon whom your favor has fallen.

"It would not be a long editorial.

"Richard L. Lobb, Fairfax"

http://tinyurl.com/RLobb-Post

I had a rather similar letter printed last year pointing out that the paper decried "lock-step, Democratic rule" in Montgomery County, Maryland -- and then endorsed nearly all the Democrats. "Is that any way to break the lock-step?" I wrote.

The Post can endorse anyone it wants, and everyone knows it is a Democratic paper as far as the editorials are concerned. It is just a bit amusing to see the paper go through the motions of considering all the candidates -- and then fall just short of endorsing a straight ticket.

But I give the Post credit for printing letters that puncture its pretensions a little. Some papers will not countenance any such gentle criticism. The New York Times would never print a letter like that, for example.

Tax Money for Sports Cars for the Rich

Let me get this straight: The United States government has put up half a billion dollars in taxpayer's money for a venture dominated by foreigners who are building an electric car that will retail for something like $100,000 but cannot go even 50 miles on electricity alone. The hope is that the venture will eventually produce affordable electric cars built in the United States, but everything about the project screams luxury, and the similarities to the Solyndra fiasco are becoming very uncomfortable.

The venture is Fisker Automotive, the brainchild of one Henrik Fisker, a Danish-born international businessman and designer of luxury automobiles. His experience is with Aston-Martin and BMW and his factory in Finland builds Porsche Cayennes. Yet the U.S. government seems to think he is a good bet for building affordable family cars that run on electric batteries and has awarded his company loan guarantees totaling $529 million.

Fisker has bought a closed-down General Motors plant in Delaware to build the electric car of the future. But for now, the company is producing a luxury model called the Karma at the factory in Finland, with a base price of $95,900, according to its website, $108,000 fully loaded, although in interviews Fisker has casually discounted the car to only $80,000. A hatchback model with slightly more carrying capacity, called the Surf, is on the way.

Even the federal government can't get away with subsidizing a line of straight-out luxury sports cars, so Fisker is promising cheaper cars derived from a deal called "Project Nina" that will supply engines from BMW. All well and good, but BMW doesn't make any cheap engines, and Fisker acknowledges that his "affordable" car will run around $40,000, squarely in what he called the "premium segment." That price presumably reflects the full $7,500 federal tax credit for plug-in vhicles, since the price stated by the company is $47,500. Even the after-credit price is pretty steep. You can buy a GMC Yukon for that much money.

All the cars are hybrids that will run on electric power, although the range is limited to fifty miles a day. While purring along in electric mode (which Fisker calls “stealth") might be satisfying from the environmental point of view, the temptation to switch to "sport mode," utilizing that beast of a BMW engine, might be quite overwhelming to someone who has just invested upwards of fifty thousand dollars in a car. I mean, why purr when you can roar?

The market for expensive, sporty cars is rather small, and previous attempts at affordable sporty cars (the Pontiac Fiero and Mazda Miata, for example) have failed or met with limited success. Americans like big cars and SUV's that can carry lots of stuff. Nobody is talking yet about an electric Yukon.

Fisker will have to sell a lot of cars to pay off the loans guaranteed by the government. History offers little encouragement that it can be done. Uncle Sam is likely to end up with more bad loans in his portfolio, which is turning into a monument to good intentions trampled by reality.

The bottom line is that at a time when real unemployment is running 10 percent or more and the government is deep in debt, the Obama Administration is throwing money at a company that will build playthings for the rich. Hopefully they will still want to buy fancy cars after Obama raises their taxes.

Was It a Crime to Kill Al-Awlaki?

Was the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and another American-born al-Qaeda thug actually unconstitutional? The ACLU and others have challenged the killing as the extrajudicial murder of a U.S. citizen who was entitled to legal due process, which is not usually carried out by a Hellfire missile.

Oddly enough, however, there was no legal case against al-Awlaki. He was never charged with any crime by the United States. This blows out the argument that all he had to do was return to the United States to face justice. He had no charges to face.

His problem was that he was, legally speaking, a belligerent, since he was clearly associated with al-Qaeda, a terrorist gang with which the United States has been in a state of undeclared war sincce 2001. We've had lots of undeclared wars, Korea and Vietnam, for example (the War Powers Act has covered subsequent wars). If an American had been so foolish as to join the Vietcong, the U.S. would have had little compunction about shooting him.

Targeted killings are rare in our military experience. The shoot-down of Admiral Yamamoto in World War II is a notable example. But improvements in intelligence and long-range technology (i.e. "drone" aircraft) have made planned killings more feasible. The enemies of the Republic are finding new ways to die.

"Drive:" High-Gear Bloodbath

There are many different ways to kill a man, and some of them are demonstrated quite graphically in "Drive," ranging from slashing with a razor to stabbing with a curtain rod, or some other handy piece of hardware. The only one that did not involve copious amount of blood was drowning.

Ryan Gosling plays an automobile mechanic in Los Angeles who works occasionally as a stunt driver for the movies and moonlights as a getaway driver for stickup men. He guarantees them five minutes of police evasion in a souped-up car, and then they are on their own. But then he discovers Irene, played by Carey Mulligan, who's both lovely and lonely, and he resolves to go straight and start a new life. Their romance develops slowly since Gosling channels his inner Gary Cooper and plays the Driver (no name is ever mentioned) as the strong, silent type. He probably had little trouble learning his lines since there are so few of them.

Things go haywire when Irene's husband is sprung from prison, but his debts follow him and both the husband and the Driver are sucked back into the underworld. Gosling nearly meets his match in another, unseen driver in a doublecross and resolves to get even and protect Irene and her four-year-old son. The bad guys fight back. Weapons include a hammer, a fork, and a kitchen knife as well as the usual pistols and shotguns, operated at close range.

The cast is solid, with Albert Brooks as a sleazy investor in a harebrained scheme hatched by Bryan Cranston as Shannon, who thinks he can use The Driver to break into stock-car racing. Ron Perlman is a hoodlum hiding behind a pizza place instead of the motorcyle club he helps lead in "Sons of Anarchy."

The question is whether the Driver can get out of this mess alive and save Irene, which is, I suppose, a rather old-fashioned gangster movie trope. What sets this film apart is Gosling's steely performance and the producers' heavy investment in fake blood. Don't see it if you're squeamish. I was hiding behind the popcorn.

Catching up on the movies . . .

"The Conspirator," directed by Robert Redford, is a well-made historical drama, respectful of its sources and reasonably acccurate, but lacking in emotional punch and therefore unlikely to transcend the limited audience for history brought to life.

The story centers on Mary Surratt, who owned a Washington, D.C., boardinghouse frequented by John Wilkes Booth and other Confederate sympathizers. It's clear she was at least aware of the original plot to kidnap President Lincoln and did nothing about it, which these days would land her in prison at least and in 1865 put her in peril of her life. Robin Wright plays Mary Surratt with stoic reserve and gives viewers little reason to care what happens to her.

Evan Rachel Wood manages to put a little more fire into her portrayal of Mary's daughter Anna, who sees her family torn apart by its allegiance to the southern cause. Kevin Kline and Tom Wilkinson bring some gravitas to their roles as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ruthlessly manipulates the legal process, and Reverdy Johnson, a U.S. senator from Maryland who agrees to serve as counsel to Mary Surratt in the trial of the conspirators.

Johnson's loyalty to the Union is questioned, so the the role of counsel falls to Frederick Aiken, played by James McAvoy, best known for his role as the hapless doctor in "The Last King of Scotland." As a trial attorney, he's in over his head and the trial is rigged anyway, so Mary Surrat goes to the gallows despite his best efforts.

The trial of the conspirators (all eight of the accused were tried together) was quick and just a notch above a railroad job, but Mary Surratt had more of a defense than is depicted in the movie. She was probably not in fact guilty of conspiring to murder Lincoln, as charged, but she would have been blind and deaf not to realize that all kinds of treason was being planned under her roof. She should have kicked them all out and moved back to Maryland before Booth set his plot in motion.

Some say the film draws a comparison to the treatment of terrorism suspects today, and there are some parallels. But in 1865 they knew how to put on a trial; the murder was in April and four of the conspirators were hanged in July. Nowadays the government cannot figure out how (or whether) to try the bad guys. To this date, only one person associated with the 9/11 attacks ten years ago has been put on trial and convicted. One other trial has been pending for years. If I was Kalid Sheik Muhammed's lawyer, I'd say "Justice delayed is justice denied" and move for a mistrial.

Redford deserves credit for a good effort in the first project of the American Film Company, which hopes to make a series of acccurate and entertaining historical films. Unfortunately, "Patton" it is not and the company will need more engaging material if it needs a hit to keep the project going.