Murder By Death + A Quite Different Film

Murder By Death was on television. It is a spoof of various film detectives though not quite accurate. For instance, the Thin Man couple is portrayed as oh-so-proper when Nick Charles is far from that. 

The film is best as a satire of the characters. It is not laugh-out-loud funny generally speaking. Peter Falk as the Sam Spade character and Peter Sellers as the Charlie Chan character (note the originals were also played by whites) were the best. Sellers had some of the funniest lines.

Un chant d'amour is a quite different animal. It is a short film denounced as pornography. Its reputation is more justified than that of The Lovers. 

Lucas Powe Jr. in The Warren Court and American Politics notes that it is the one film upheld as banned pornography after that court basically washed their hands of trying to parse obscenity in Redrup v. N.Y.

The lower court ruling was summarily affirmed with basically the usual suspects (Black, Douglas, Stewart) along with Fortas dissenting without comment. The film and legal battle are addressed here. 

Brennan later granted the government generally could not ban obscenity (at least for adults) and would have been among the dissenters (along with Marshall, not yet on the Court) at a later date.  

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Meanwhile, a new book challenges originalism, with one review noting the original understanding would give more power to the other branches to interpret the Constitution. History being used to challenge the use of history and tradition by originalism is by now basically a cottage industry.  

The book is receiving many positive reviews though do not know how readable it is for the average reader. I found an earlier book by the author, and it was too much of a trudge for me. 

Another book that sounds interesting is The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms [not a typo!] by Alison L. LaCroix. She talked about it in a segment recently on C-SPAN.

The book argues that the period (1815-1861) was an informative and busy period of constitutional development. Again, constitutional law develops over time, including in ways quite beyond the explicit text.

Sorry if this seems "obscene" to some people. The books help "murder" some misguided viewpoints.