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of around 1400
ratings publicly available. I've included the individual ratings with my
notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable...
]]>
of around 1400 ratings publicly
available. I've included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie.
These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other -- I rate the film on
how well it suited me for the genre and my mood and. let's be honest, level of
intoxication. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.
The Congress (2013) -- "8/10"
Robin Wright stars as herself, an actress in her forties whose best days are
behind her. Her agent Al (Harvey Keitel) gets her an opportunity to be
scanned and sampled and preserved and to be an actress for all time,
playing
roles that she had, until now, either refused or been too flaky to play.
Producer Jeff Green (Danny Huston) makes a brutal offer: he needs her
past,
not her present or her future.
She tells him to fuck off. He is not dismayed and leaves the offer open
for
30 days. She returns to her family: a perky, sassy daughter Sarah (Sami
Gayle) and her chronically ill boy Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee). The boy's
addicted to flying kites and will not stop flying them over the airport.
So far, though, this movie has absolutely nothing to do with the "The
Futurological Congress"
by Stanisław
Lem.
That she will be scanned into a computer is perhaps a way that they will
sidle crabwise into the virtualized (un-)reality in which the book mostly
takes place, though, in the book's case, it was layered hallucinogens in
the
water.
Al holds forth on how Robin never had a choice in her roles and, if she
virtualizes herself, she'll still have no choice, but it won't be so much
different than her whole life has already been. It's a pretty brutal
speech,
especially considering he delivers it in front of her kids.
Paul Giamatti is Dr. Barker, the son's physician, and he delivers a
terrible
verdict -- that the boy has a degenerative disease that will rob him of
his
sight and hearing within decades, if not years.
Robin agrees to the scanning, agrees to doing sci-fi movies, but her
lawyer
gets her a clause that limits the studio's use of her likeness to 20
years.
They scan her immediately in a touching scene with Al, who tells stories
to
elicit all of the emotions from her that they need for the recording. This
is
the third big speech from Keitel, who is chewing up the scenery really
well.
The story picks up 20 years later, as Wright drives to a party celebrating
the release of her new film: a sci-fi movie called Rebel Robot Robin. She
is
at the party in an "animation-only" zone. The film is animated from 45
minutes onward, looking like an R. Crumb cartoon.
Wright passes out in her hotel room, in a hallucinogenic daze, dreaming
that
sings in a club and is arrested for working under her own name. She meets
up
with Jeff Green, the producer, in an office that looks like it came from
the
set of Brazil. He exhorts her to re-up for twenty more years, but this
time
not just selling her acting ability, but also licensing herself to be sold
as
food and drink so that you can become her. We do not see her sign. Nor do
we
see her refuse to do so.
Next, we see the keynote speech where the president of Miramount/Nagasaki
studios announces these new formulas, to be other people. There is a
shooter
in the catwalks. He ices the president, escapes outside and signals an
attack
with a single flare. The rebel forces arrive to take over the Miramount
Hotel. Is this real? Did the president really get killed? Was it a
publicity
stunt? Are the rebel forces real? All up in the air.
She meets animator Dylan Truliner (Jon Hamm), who was in charge of her
career, post-contract. They get to know each other, but it's mostly in the
context of the hallucinatory animated world, which is beautiful, but
largely
meaningless (or meaningful to different people in different ways).
It's fun to try to pick out the characters that people pose as, now that
they
can be whomever they want: Muhammed Ali, Clint Eastwood, Jesus, Venus on a
Half Shell, Buddha, Jeanne d'Arc, the apple-faced guy from the Magritte
painting, even Ron Jeremy.
The backdrops and details are lovely, organic and vaguely...female. That
is,
the world is filled with less recognizable but beautiful women and the
backgrounds look like they've been designed by Georgia O'Keefe, but the
main
characters are male. Perhaps a fitting depiction of the world where the
rich
and powerful spend their time.
Time passes. Dylan is gone.
Jeff is back. He banishes her to icy wastes (for having dared to appear as
herself on a stage, singing), where she meets her son, flying a kite. They
escape to an ice shelf? She is diagnosed with being too far gone to save
now
and thus is cryofrozen. She is awakened 20 years later (rather than 70)
and
she meets first a Grace Jones--lookalike and then Dylan again. They
saunter
forth into the world to help her find her bearings and, maybe, Aaron.
Instead, they find love in a completely fictitious world in her
mind...their
minds?
They discuss the "real" world, where their real bodies live, cared for by
those who haven't escaped into fantasy. This feels kind of like the
Matrix.
Dylan has a ampule that would take one of them there. It's his
compensation
for 20 years of having animated her.
They are in love. She loves her son more. She wants the ampule. If she
takes
it, she has perhaps a hope of finding her son, although he will be nearly
completely blind and deaf, if he's even alive. If she takes it, she can
never
join Dylan again because their shared fantasy -- guided by the pheromones
that engender the animated world -- would be forever out-of-sync. She
wants
it. She deserves it. A mother's love trumps all. I thought Dylan had said
that the animated world had erased all ego? She is the destroyer.
She takes the pheromone and slowly walks out of the animated world as it
morphs back to squalid reality. It is a zombie world where no-one is
really
aware of their non-animated reality. The only remaining pockets of
civilization are in airships. She quickly and easily ascends and then just
as
easily finds Dr. Barker (suggesting that she is still hallucinating). He
says:
"Don't be so impressed that I'm still here. Being here, on this side of the
truth, is not so brave. [...] Nothing has really changed, has it? Once we
just masked the truth with anti-depressants and drugs, concealed and lied.
Now, we reinvent the truth. Not so much of a difference. The drugs have
just
gotten much, much better. The only difference is between waiting for
death,
here, in this filth of truth and hallucinating the same, out there. Maybe
it's better out there, dreaming."
Barker tells the ego-driven Robin that her son had crossed to the animated
world six months before, after having waited for her for over 19 years.
Devastation. She gave up her world with Dylan for her son, who had already
given up on her. She cannot go back. She mourns for herself, though the
world
is in shambles around her -- perhaps she does not think to rescue it
because
it is so seemingly completely irredeemable?
She takes an ampule from Barker and goes back, back to the animated world,
back to fantasy, but a more realistic one, perhaps, where she imagines the
continuation of her life now, where she imagines herself finding Aaron.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) -- "8/10"
This is an absolutely beautiful animated film. It looks like a graphic novel
come to life, at times, with more than a bit of a Team Fortress aesthetic.
This is the story of Miles Morales, a young man from an alternate
continuum
(although they keep calling it a "dimension" in the movie) where Peter
Parker
is blond and Wilson Fisk kills him. Miles's mother is a latina nurse and
his
father is a black cop, so Marvel made sure to check all of the boxes with
its
foray into intersectionalism.
Morales acquires his power early in the movie -- on a foray into a subway
access tunnel with his cool uncle Aaron, who took him there to let him
practice his graffiti chops -- when a spider bites him just as they're
leaving. He discovers weird powers the next morning and returns to find
the
dead spider, but also to witness the original Spider-Man's death in a
nearby
underground lab/reactor/accelerator.
The same experiment that Spider-Man (in that continuum) was trying to stop
is
the one that imported other spider-people from other continua:
Spider-Woman
(Gwen Stacey, voice by Hailee Stanfield), Spider-Man Noir (voiced by
Nicholas
Cage), Peni Parker (voiced by Kimiko Glenn and from the year 3189), and
Spider-Ham (voiced by none other than John Mulaney).
Fisk has commissioned the multidimensional device in order to find his
wife
and son, who abandoned him during one of his violent fits of rage, in
which
he was trying to kill Spider-Man. Desperate to find them again, Fisk will
fire up the machine again, threatening to swallow all of New York (in
Miles's
continuum) in a black hole. The Spideys band together to thwart him and to
help Miles train up his powers (which include some of Spidey's traditional
powers but also electro-shock hands and invisibility).
Miles's Uncle Aaron -- his hero -- turns out to be the Prowler, the
Kingpin's
#1 henchman, but he is killed by the Kingpin when he refuses to ice Miles
(as
Spider-Man). Miles eventually gets a handle on his powers, is able to send
his Spidey friends back to their respective continua, defeat the Kingpin,
reconcile with his father as both Miles and Spider-Man and also to get a
bad-ass new costume and control of his powers and cement his reputation as
the replacement Spider-Man.
The post-credits sequence shows the missing Spider-Man: Spider-Man 2099,
who
was the first alternate-universe Spider-Man in the comic books. He'll
probably show up in the inevitable sequel to this, the fourth reboot of
the
modern-era Spider-Man movies.
It's a bit on the long side, with the final scene stretching a bit,
spinning
higher and higher into nigh-incomprehensible hallucinogenic animation --
probably just because it was digital and they could afford it. It all
looked
lovely, but it wasn't the kind of artistic film where you could sell a
ten-minute hallucinogenic experience (as in, for example, 2001: A Space
Odyssey). It didn't detract, but it didn't add, either.
It's well-written, well-voiced, gloriously well-animated and has a
kick-ass
soundtrack and vibe. Seriously, I could watch it again just for animation.
This is how they should have been making comic-book movies all along. It's
the kind of Spider-Man reboot I can really get behind.
The Hunted (2003) -- "4/10"
This movie jumps right into it with a nearly interminable slaughter and
battle somewhere in the former Yugoslavia. The Serbians are depicted as
mercilessly slaughtering Albanians while worshiping posters of Milosevic.
Not
exactly subtle; am I watching the Zero Dark Thirty of the NATO Balkan
intervention/slaughter?
Benecio del Toro is a super-soldier who takes out the Milosevic-worshiping
Serbian with a knife and with absolutely no trouble at all. To cement him
as
a basically good guy who's been led down a dark path by his training, we
see
him awaken in a darkened room somewhere back on home soil, haunted by
visions
of his feats in battle.
Next we see a brief shot of a bald eagle soaring over a forest (the
subtlety
continues) that we are shown to be in Canada as we see Tommy Lee Jones
running after a white wolf on foot. He rescues it from the snare that it
is
trapped in, using something he chews to gum up its paw to prevent
infection.
He is revealed to be even more of a naturalist frontier hero when he takes
the snare back to its owner and uses it to bash his head into a table.
We rejoin del Toro (we still have no names at all and, at this point, I
refuse to learn them) in the deep woods where he baits and toys with two
hunters looking for him. He takes them on John Rambo-style: his knife
against
their guns. Also his booby traps. Also, he wins handily, murdering and
dismembering them both.
In classic fashion, one of his old friends roots Tommy Lee Jones out of
his
deep-woods nature job and brings him back for "one more hunt" to find the
killer who's ritually killing people. He investigates the scene of the
crime,
finds out a whole bunch of stuff that the entire FBI was completely
incapable
of discovering for themselves, reluctantly takes a walkie-talkie offered
by
the gorgeous and capable crime-scene lead (Connie Nielsen) and heads off
into
the woods on his own, telling them to assume he's dead if he's not back in
two days.
He tracks for an indeterminate time and meets up with (a very
young-looking)
del Toro and fights him almost to a standstill, distracting him enough
until
the FBI tranquilizes him. It is not clear whether Jones knew that the FBI
were following but, given his amazing tracking powers, we can only assume
that he was aware.
They know each other, with del Toro claiming that Lee Jones had trained
him.
Del Toro claims to be interested in the way humans treat nature, (in his
police interview, he mentioned the number of chickens slaughtered per
year,
to Jones, he complains about inept hunters with magic scopes that let them
kill above their pay grade) but he's also interested in airing dirty
laundry
about covert operations he was on with Lee Jones. Jones shuts him up
quickly
once he starts talking with the FBI recording on.
Some of his former comrades (his black-ops group) show up to take him out
of
custody, but they want to kill him or silence him. They take him away, but
he
tips their transport truck, killing them all and escaping into the woods.
He
visits his ex and her daughter, exhorting them to leave the area before
whoever is after him gets to them. The FBI shows up and is typically
strong-arming, forcing their way into her house without a warrant. This is
standard fare for American movies and TV these days: training people to
kowtow to authority without asking any questions or making them adhere to
procedure.
Del Toro is at the house, but can't be captured, leading them all on a
merry
chase through the city and escaping into the tunnels of a building site.
The
FBI follows him down there and starts dropping like flies. Good old Tommy
Lee
is chasing del Toro (he's obviously the only one who can track him,
right?)
but del Toro gets away, escaping back into the city, up through a manhole.
Lee Jones can track him anywhere though: look! There's a construction
helmet
on the ground! He went thataway! Look, there's footsteps in the grass! It
could only be one person out of millions! Tommy Lee is a superhuman
tracker!
He tracks del Toro to a metro-rail, then chases him up a bridge structure
while the FBI fires away, risking all of the bystanders with ricochets
even
though they have no chance of hitting anything. There is a sexy helicopter
with a balaclavaed sniper riding Vietnam-style but even he can't prevent
del
Toro from jumping into the river and (presumably) swimming away without
trouble.
The FBI is super gung-ho but it's OK because it's a hot woman acting like
a
testosterone-crazed man this time. Tommy Lee Jones is pretty spry and has
pretty good endurance for an older guy who hasn't slept in days. Del Toro,
too, doesn't seem to be suffering any lingering injury or loss of mobility
due to the horrific car wreck that he recently survived.
Del Toro is clearly more than capable of forging his own knife blade over
a
campfire that is somehow hot enough to smelt steel. Also, he builds a an
Endor-like trap with giant logs all by himself. Tommy Lee Jones is also
doing
crafty things in the woods and still tracking like an all-seeing God while
they both await the Hollywood showdown between "reluctant master who's
never
had to kill before" and "renegade student driven mad by what he's had to
do
for his country".
Hollywood has trained me (as a viewer) so well that, despite Jones getting
his artery punctured by a filthy wooden stake and then plummeting on a
plain
old (non-bungee) rope what looks like several hundred feet above a river,
I
don't expect him to be injured in any debilitating way -- or in any way
that
will affect his ability to fight the much younger and clearly more capable
del Toro to a standstill and, eventually, to defeat him. Just the shock
from
dropping on a normal rope for 100 feet should have shattered Jones's body,
but I digress.
As expected, Jones manages to cut the rope and drops into a raging river
with
absolutely no ill effects and hitting no rocks. There is literally no sign
of
his previously expressed fear of heights. Del Toro finds him and, as
expected, Lee Jones manages to somehow get an advantage despite all that's
happened to him and his advanced age. This is how these things are done.
Now
they are both injured animals and, WWE-like, Jones has turned the tables.
They're both bleeding like stuck pigs from what seems like dozens of
egregious wounds inflected by professional killers and they're still as
spry
as two 20-year-old boxers. The FBI finds them just as Jones kills del
Toro,
proving... I don't know what. This is ludicrous. Jones takes a minute at
the
death scene to mourn his former student and also, presumably, his
reputation
for having never taken a life.
The best thing about this is the credits music: Johnny Cash's When a Man
Comes Around. It is not at all clear why they chose it. I subtract two
stars
for not even trying to do something with del Toro. At least they didn't
make
the hot FBI agent show up at Jones's cabin, at the end.
Parasite (2019) -- "10/10"
This is the story of a poor family somewhere in Seoul. They have no wi-fi and
the whole family folds pizza boxes for a living -- but not even well, so
that
their young manager docks part of their pay. The son has a good friend Min
who's been tutoring a high-school sophomore girl. Min has to leave for a
while, so he asks his friend Kim Ki-woo (Kevin) to take over English
lessons
for her. On his first day, he is quite successful and convincing and gets
wind that the girl's mother thinks that her younger son is an art genius
who
needs tutelage, as well. Kim Ki-woo's sister Jessica fills the bill
perfectly
(it was her art skills that forged his tutor papers in the first place).
Jessica takes up her job, very convincing as a hard-ass and
nigh-inscrutable
tutor. The whole family is used to scamming for a living. Jessica bluffs
out
a much higher rate, guessing that the boy is damaged goods (or that his
mother believes that he is) and arranging for many sessions per week. The
mother is a typical upper-middle-class fool who believes that her children
shit gold and that money and tutoring will make them successful. It's the
same all over the world.
The next stage is to replace the driver with their father, Kim Ki-Taek
(played by the always brilliant Kang-ho Song). Replacing the housekeeper
with
their mother will be a bigger challenge. The scammer family is easily up
to
it, preparing their speeches and tuning their words at home. They frame
the
housekeeper as having TB and get the mother signed up as having come from
an
exclusive agency "for rich people". The son (Park Da-song) almost outs
them
-- because they all smell the same, living in the same apartment and being
from a poorer neighborhood.
The Kims are pleased with their progress -- and reveal a bit about how
Korean
society is afflicted with a surfeit of education unmatched by accompanying
jobs.
"Anyway, aren't we fortunate to be worrying about things like this? In an age
like ours, when an opening for a security guard attracts 500 university
graduates -- our entire family got hired!"
The Parks go on a family camping trip, leaving their home to the Kim
family,
who enjoy themselves as if they live there. They are interrupted by the
former housekeeper Moon-gwang, who asks entrance to "get something" from
the
basement. It turns out she's been hiding her husband down there in the
bunker
where "you can hide in case North Korea attacks, or creditors break in".
The Moons quickly cop that the Kims are a family and are scamming the
Parks
and try to turn the tables by threatening to send a video outing them. But
the Kims are wily and they end up in a huge scuffle and retrieve the phone
from Moon-gwang and her husbandj Geun-sae (played as a wonderfully mad man
by
Myeong-hoon Park).
However. The shitty weather has canceled the camping trip and the Parks
are
nearly home and want service from their staff. Their desperate preparation
for the impending homecoming is genius. Moon-gwang refuses to go quietly
--
but Kim Chung-sook insists: with a foot to the chest and back down to the
basement she goes.
The family scatters around the house while the mother comforts the wife
(Park). They try to escape but Da-song (the boy) runs outside to set up
his
tepee and the parents end up sleeping in the living room while the Kims
lie
under the coffee table. Mr. and Mrs. Park are enflamed by the moment and
start to fool around. They tucker themselves out and the Kims make their
escape though not without incident. They escape into the rain, seemingly
without having endangered their positions. The gutters are filling up.
They
are forced to walk all the way home to their half-basement, through a
torrential, cold, uncaring and eerily warmly lit and beautiful Seoul.
The Kim's half-basement apartment is flooding, a meter or more. The toilet
is
nearly exploding. Nearly nothing can be saved. The Moons are in the
basement
of the Parks -- she has a concussion and her husband is tied up. Things
have
gone deeply south for all of them.
While half of Korea has seemingly drowned, Mrs. Park is refreshed and
greets
the new, sunny day ready to throw an impromptu birthday party for her
little
shitty kid. Jessica and Kevin are invited to join, of course. They have
nothing better to do -- that Mrs. Park could imagine, of course. Mrs. Park
gives Mrs. Kim marching orders on how to arrange tables for the party --
again, oblivious to everything except her needs. Bong Joon Ho is a master
of
irony here. He absolutely piles it on -- it's a wonder Mr. Kim doesn't
drive
Mrs. Park and her insipid and tone-deaf nattering right off the road.
The desperation, mania and murderousness of the Kims and Moons contrasts
with
the oblivious ostentatiousness and narcissism of the Park's stupid party.
They live in different, parallel worlds. These worlds collide in
spectacular
fashion. Moon exacts revenge for his wife's death on Kevin, Jessica and
almost Mrs. Kim. Blood is everywhere. Park insults Kim for the last time.
Stupid Da-Song passes out again because he thinks he saw a ghost. The poor
boy was right, though: a ghost had been living with them the whole time.
The story picks up two months later, with Kevin and his mother on trial.
Kevin is looking the worse for wear, with a traumatic brain injury. He
can't
stop laughing. He heals and returns to spy on the house, seeing the lights
blink in morse. His father is hiding in the basement, like Moon before
him.
Kevin resolves to make enough money to buy the house and rescue his
father.
The film ends on this ... fantasy.
Director and writer Bong Joon Ho has really outdone himself -- he's one of
my
absolute favorite directors and writers (Memories of Murder, The Host,
Snowpiercer, Okja and now Parasite).
The article "Films From the Frontlines: Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite" by Eric
Mann
writes,
"Parasite, in the brilliant web Bong weaves, shows capitalism as a system
that implicates the members of every class and, in the absence of a
revolutionary, counter-hegemonic movement, is loved or at least emulated
by
all. The poor are not angry at the rich. They are angry they are not rich
and
their only real anger is not at the system but those below them–what I
call
“upward mobility and downward hostility.”"
They're all parasites. The Kims, the Moons, the Parks. Capitalism
engineers
theirs behavior to be adversarial rather than supportive. There is no
brotherhood or sisterhood, just alienation and cold calculation, with
roles
to play rather than people to be.
"Joon casts actors to play the part of working people who in turn are actors
in their own play impersonating other working people to hustle the ruling
classes. So maybe we can act our way out of class subordination or at
least
to aspire to the next rung on the class ladder."
It makes us stupid parasites -- those that don't even realize the are
killing
the host.
Gone in Sixty Seconds (1974) -- "5/10"
This is the original movie about an organized gang of car thieves who somehow
get an enormous contract from a foreign-sounding investor who has a hard
deadline and a very specific list of 40 cars to steal. In this one, many
of
the targets are Rolls Royces instead of high-end sports cars (there
weren't
that many of those at the time).
What they did have were giant hairdos (both men and women), mustaches,
muttenchops, long leather coats and pimp hats. They had that shit in
spades.
Unlike in the remake, they don't bother giving a reason for why those cars
are on that list or need to be delivered by that specific deadline. The
stealing begins, with the first theft at night, which isn't super
cinema-friendly. The next few thefts are in daylight and go pretty easily.
One of the cars has a tiger in it. Another of the cars is being guarded by
a
cop. The thief poses as the tow-truck driver, but the cop and his dog are
onto him. The thief drives the truck straight into the patrolman's
car...with
nary a word from either of them. The cop is amazingly calm. He doesn't
pull
his weapon. He just looks annoyed. He jumps in his car and gives chase. I
can
only imagine that this would all have seemed normal 45 years ago. The cop
finally swears mildly when he crashes into a parked car and loses the
truck.
Most of the rest of the thefts happen without incident, until they find
dozens of kilos of heroin in one of the cars. The police show up just then
and they try desperately to hide it. There's a machine for destroying
evidence that looks like a modified water-heater. One entire part of the
garage wall was covered from top to bottom with soft-core pornography. The
cop comes in and Jackson does his best to cover up the exploded bag of
heroin
on the floor of the garage.
The fleet of stolen cars looks magnificent: it must have been even more
impressive in 1974, when those cars meant real money. Still, $400,000 for
48
stolen luxury cars still seems a bit light. It's amazing how those numbers
have changed -- nowadays, they'd be talking about dozens of millions.
As in the remake: they get all but one of the cars with hours to spare.
It's
only "Eleanor" left. Technically, they already have the cars they need,
but
"Eleanor" turns out to be uninsured -- and they're in the business of
ripping
insurance companies off, not people. They linger on this scene of
Maindrian
walking down a line of cars for what seems like ten minutes, switching
back
to hif fiancé Pumpkin Chase (that's seriously her name) in her office,
looking alternately bored, anxious and pensive. Maindrian jumps into
Eleanor,
returns it, and knows where to find another.
But this is all just a so-so movie with no-name actors that's leading up
to
what is supposed to be one of the classic, all-time great car chases in
cinema history. Maindrian steals Eleanor (a mustard-yellow Ford Mustang
where
the remake had a lovely Ford Shelby GT500), leaves the garage and triggers
the alarm. He gets out, stops the alarm and squares off with a pair of
cops
in a patrol car who are onto him.
Maindrian is not nearly as worried about the paint job as Memphis Raines
in
the sequel was. Cars are getting destroyed right and left, but Maindrian
is
still going. This reminds me a bit of GTA, Driver or the finale of Blues
Brothers. It's not as varied, with a lot of driving out in the desert, as
Maindrian shakes one cop after another. Maindrian hits a light pole at
85MPH
and is none the worse for wear -- and the car's fine, too. Doubly amazing,
considering seatbelts weren't really a thing at the time (we did see him
buckle up when he started, though).
We continue: windshield has gunshot holes in it, the front end is ruined,
the
whole side is scraped up. The hoods all wavy and folded up. Maindrian
crashes
into more cars, more roadblocks -- glancing blows all -- until he gets
cornered in a parking lot/garage and must finally slow down. The cops have
him surrounded and they're still not shooting. He slips away. Again. His
car
is a shambles.
Unbeknownst to him, he's headed for the scene of an unrelated accident. He
ends up jumping off one of the cars like a ramp and the movie shows in
gloriously detailed slow motion what really happens to a car when you jump
it. He keeps going, somehow. He stops at a car wash, where he spots
another
mustard-yellow Mustang. He swipes that one, switches out the plates, and
is
on his way with a clean, non-destroyed ride.
The police are actually nice in this! One stops to help a woman get out of
the road before she gets hit by the chase. The chase is a bit staid by
today's standards, but it's real -- instead of cars jumping from building
to
building in Dubai (I'm scowling at you, Vin Diesel). To be honest, I think
the James Bond chases of the time were better, but they also had a lot
more
money to spend.
I don't have to describe the soundtrack during the chase, do I? I didn't
think so.
None of the actors or actresses would go on to make a name for themselves,
unsurprisingly. I'm sure they had fun making the movie, though. An extra
point for all the really nice-looking vintage 70s cars pretty much all
over
this movie.
Yojimbo (1961) -- "8/10"
Toshirô Mifune is the Samurai Sanjuro who's come to a town split into two
factions, represented by rival gangs. The constable is useless. Sanjuro
sees
a way to enrich himself in this situation -- and also to free the town.
He allies himself first with one side Seibê, but he overhears himself
being
double-crossed and abandons the fight that they start, giving their money
back. He approaches the other side Ushitora and offers his services. He is
refused.
The first big battle takes place without his sword; instead, he climbs to
a
high perch and observes from above, laughing, as the cowards all pretend
to
want to fight each other, but no-one makes the first move. It's broad
daylight.
The supposed fight (that was going nowhere) is interrupted by an inspector
from Edo. Sanjuro schemes further as he observes the two gang leaders
interacting with the inspector. Seibê and his wife squabble further over
how
to honor Sanjuro as he smirks. Sanjuro visits the casket-maker -- the only
one doing any business in town since the gangs started fighting. The silk
business is dead; the brothel business, too.
It is raining. Torrentially. Just how Kurosawa likes it. It is very cold.
You
can see everyone's breath.
The inspector leaves, taking the rain with him. The brother of Ushitora
blows
into town. He kind of looks like a samurai, but is actually a gunslinger
and
a poseur. The machinations continue. Each side takes hostages; they meet
at
02:00 to trade. They are at a stalemate again.
They arrange another trade, again in full daylight. The son of one of the
hostages is there to spoil the exchange. Her husband is there, too, and we
learn later that he lost his wife and his house at cards and that the poor
sap built a hut next to his former house and watches his wife be ravaged
by
the victor (Tokuemon) every night.
Sanjuro tells Ushitora that he will go with his other brother Ino (serious
unibrow) to make sure that Tokuemon and the captured wife are safe. He
tells
Ino that all six guards have been killed and to get help. Then he slays
all
six of the guards himself and rescues the wife, returning her to her
husband.
He throws the family the money he'd been paid thus far by Ushitora and
urges
them to flee. He tears apart Tokuemon's house more, slashing the ceilings
to
let out the seeds used as insulation. He comes back out to find the
foolish
family still there -- worshipping him and thanking him for saving them. He
is
angry with them -- they should leave, lest it all be for naught.
Ushitura accepts Sanjuro's story and takes revenge on Seibê by setting
one
of his silk shops on fire, demanding the woman back. Unosoke grins
maniacally, his stupid gun poking from his robes.
The next morning, we see Ushitura stumbling through runnels of sake
pouring
from his slashed casks; Seibë has exacted revenge. It's quite an
incredible
scene.
In the next scene, the town is in shambles, half burned, bodies in the
street. Even the casketmaker's business is in ruins. Uno and Ino confront
Sanjuro about the escaped woman. They find proof, because the dipshits had
to
write a thank-you note. Sanjuro knew they were fools. Sanjuro is repaid
for
his kindness to them with a horrific beating by Ino and Uno and Kannuki
the
giant (who looks kind of a like a Japanese Jaws/Richard Kiehl).
He manages to escape, eventually sneaking out of town in a coffin (TIL
old-timey Japanese coffins look more like barrels). On the way out of
town,
his friend Gonji (the tavern keeper) and the casket-maker stop and witness
the slaughter as Ushitura's men smoke out and kill Seibê's men and his
entire brothel. In the meantime, the casket-maker runs away and they must
enlist stupid Ino's help in carrying Sanjuro out of town, to a small
temple
to recover.
Gonji has been kidnapped and Sanjuro is ready to take on Ushitura's gang,
once and for all.
It's wonderfully filmed, seeming to really have taken place in 1860s
feudal
Japan. Except there are no regular townspeople: the town has only sake and
whores and gangs. It's not ever clear where food comes from. Mifune has
all
sorts of mannerisms that are hard to tell (for me) if they are signs of
that
time or his own invention. He strokes a non-existent beard all the time.
He
is constantly pulling his arms in and out of his billowing sleeves.
The film is black and white and uses a lot of side-wipes to change scenes
(George Lucas would use those a lot, as well). It's always incredibly
windy
in that town. The Samurai look mixes very nicely with the classic Western
aesthetic. I can see a thousand graphic novels being born from any one of
these scenes.
You Were Never Really Here (2017) -- "8/10"
There is almost no dialogue in this film. What there is, is washed out and
difficult to understand. Background noise like televisions or
conversations
from other booths and tables in restaurants tends to drown it out. It
doesn't
matter because the story is told visually.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe, a haggard man with a medical problem of some
sort,
almost certainly PTSD. He was in one of America's foreign wars. He was in
customs or perhaps ICE. We see flashbacks of him discovering immigrants
piled
up in a container. He lives alone with his mother, who seems a bit off,
either with natural age-related dementia or with the repercussions of
beatings she'd gotten from his father, an obviously brutal man from whom
Joe
got certain mannerisms. He's certainly inherited his weapon of choice from
his father -- the hammer.
He is brutal, efficient and violent in his job, rescuing girls from human
trafficking. He is hired to discreetly rescue a Senator's daughter from a
high-end child brothel. He does so with neither pomp nor circumstance,
taking
her back to his motel room. Before he can return her to her father, she is
re-abducted by police officers (or men dressed as such), one of whom
absconds
with her and the other who is killed by Joe.
Joe returns to his handler to find him dead, slaughtered, with his hands
brutally mutilated. Fearing the worst, Joe rushes home to find his mother
has
been killed by two men still in his home. He kills one and gut-shoots the
other, who reveals to him that State Governor Williams has had Nina
re-abducted, as she was his favorite.
Joe buries his mother in a local lake, filling his pockets with stones to
join her in her watery grave. An obligation to Nina changes his mind and
he
strides away, with a modicum of purpose. With the same lack of care to
planning and strategy or tactics, Joe enters Williams's palatial country
home, dispatching a few henchmen only to find Williams in the girl's room,
with his throat slit. Joe is in bits. He finds Nina in the dining room,
eating with bloody hands and a straight razor next to her plate.
He takes her to a diner, where they both recover somewhat. As she goes to
the
bathroom, he has a violent fantasy of ending his life. She wakes him from
his
reverie and tells him that "it's a beautiful day".
The film is lean, without extra bits, told mostly visually, with a fitting
soundtrack and understated performances. Phoenix oozes angst. Interesting
and
unique.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) -- "8/10"
We meet Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) lying undressed in her upstairs room
where she lives in West Dallas in Texas, obviously hating her life as a
waitress. She hears a noise outside and catches Clyde Barrow (Warren
Beatty)
trying to steal her mother's car -- and then pretending not to. They talk
and
hit it off immediately; she's not averse to his larcenous lifestyle and he
sees something special in her.
They rob their first store and she's all over him -- but he demurs,
telling
her that it's not his style. She is nonplussed, unsure of her role. Their
minor crime spree continues with a car here, a car there, an empty bank, a
general store where he was just trying to buy supplies with the two
dollars
they had.
They pick up a third wheel in the form of a clever mechanic C.W. Moss. In
their next bank robbery, Clyde kills a man and they barely get away
because
the driver is too cautious -- he parallel-parked the car. Clyde makes a
final
offer to Bonnie to let her get out scot-free, but she refuses. They try to
make love, but Clyde is...not a loverboy.
They head to Clyde's family home, where they meet his ludicrously
enthusiastic and hillbilly brother Buck (Gene Hackman). His wife Blanche
(Estelle Parsons) is less than thrilled with the three of them. They all
move
into a house in the country together. While Blanche is happier being more
settled down, Bonnie is restless and unhappy with the domestic
arrangements.
They're discovered and forced to hit the road again. They hit more banks,
with the police giving chase, and many being killed by what Buck terms the
"Barrow Gang". Tensions continue to rise as Blanche insists on a cut, even
though she doesn't do anything but sit in the car. They're forced to steal
another car, taking Eugene Grizzard's car (Gene Wilder).
Grizzard and his fiancé Velma give chase, but give up. To their chagrin,
the
gang turns around and gives them chase, forcing them to a stop. They pick
them up and now there are seven people in the car, driving God knows
where,
picking up takeout burgers and fries (was that a thing in 1931?). When he
tells them he's an undertaker, Bonnie insists they be dumped immediately,
in
a cornfield in Oklahoma in the middle of the night.
The Barrows have a family reunion of sorts, with Bonnie's mother and a
passel
of children of, quite frankly, unknown origin. Soon after, the gang is
attacked at night by many, many police and barely escape with their lives.
Buck is shot in the face and severely incapacitated. The noose of law
enforcement is closing. They are set upon again, with the law killing Buck
and taking Blanche into custody.
In the shootout, Bonnie and Clyde are wounded and C.W. takes them to his
father's house. They get patched up a bit and get back on the road a few
days
later, where they finally manage to consummate their relationship. This
reluctance is all the more humorous because Warren Beatty was such a
Casanova
in real life. Papa Moss is hell-bent on getting his son out of trouble --
and
makes a deal with local police to give up Bonnie and Clyde. He traps them
when they stop to help him fix a flat tire; the police do the rest.
The movie is a bit more accurate than press accounts at the time (the
movie
mentions this), but still doesn't address nearly the severity of Bonnie's
injuries, near the end (one of her legs was nearly destroyed, with visible
bone sticking out of a wound that refused to heal). See "Bonnie and Clyde"
for much more
information.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988) -- "8/10"
The nearly unbearably guileless and adorable opening credits set the mood for
this Studio Ghibli film. Everything is hand-drawn, hand-made, comfortable,
warm, cozy. [1] The landscapes are beautiful. This is not a slick U.S.
animated film.
It starts with a father driving to the countryside with his two daughters
(Satsuki, who's about ten, and Mei, who's about four or five). They open
up
the semi-dilapidated house together, investigating the yard and the
bathhouse
and so on. The older girl enters the house on her inverted knees, shoes
held
up in the air so that they don't touch the floor.
They finish cleaning up the house, with the help of caretaker Nanny and
her
grandson Kanta, who's afraid of the "haunted" house. They've moved there
to
be near the girls' mother, who's in the hospital. They all visit the
mother
and hope for her rapid recovery and return. The next morning, Satsuki
takes
care of breakfast because their father overslept and isn't ready to handle
the household yet. They have sushi and rice for breakfast and Satsuki
heads
off to school. Mei dresses up to go "out" in the garden. Tatsuo gets to
work
in his office.
Mei plays in the garden and that's when Totoro's minions come chugging out
of
the deep grass, looking like someone crossed a rabbit with a penguin.
They're
cute, but Mei is nearly unbearably adorable. She follows them down a
rabbit
hole to Totoro's lair, falling asleep with him for the whole day.
Satsuki comes home from school and finds Mei asleep in the garden, but
just
under some bushes. There's no sign of Totoro. They also can't find the
path
to the big tree that Mei followed before. Tatsuo and Satsuki laugh at her
silliness, but Tatsuo tells her that she was lucky to have met the "king
of
the forest".
The movie deals with the small gods that accompany regular people
throughout
the day. The "dust bunnies" that make the house dirty, the gods of the
forest, and so on. The girls stop at a shrine on the way home, during a
rainstorm, asking for leave of the god who lives there to stay under the
roof
until the rain passes. Later, in the forest, near a bus stop, Mei
discovers a
shrine behind a tree, with a dog god of some kind.
As they wait for their father, Totoro shows up to the bus stop. Satsuki
loans
the creature [2] her father's umbrella and it takes off with it. It gives
her
a gift of seeds in exchange. Its bus comes first and is different -- it's
a
Cheshire Cat with glowing eyes for headlights. Satsuki is over the moon
because now she's met Totoro, as well.
The girls plant the seeds and wait. A few nights later, Totoro shows up --
with his umbrella -- to make them sprout. And sprout they do -- into a
majestic tree. This is all in their dream, though. (Or is it?) The next
morning, the seeds have sprouted, but much more modestly.
The same day, the girls get news that their mother isn't well enough to
come
home, yet. Mei runs away to the hospital -- the whole town is looking for
her, fearing the worst. Satsuki runs all over the damned place; everyone
communicates exclusively by shouting. The townspeople think they've found
Mei's shoe -- but it's not hers.
Satsuki calls on Totoro for help, who obliges by calling the cat-bus [3],
which carries Satsuki first to Mei and then both of them to the hospital,
where they see that their father is with their mother -- and that she's
OK.
They leave an ear of corn on the windowsill, proving that they were really
there.
The end credits are possibly even cuter than the opening ones. The song's
terrible, though.
A Dangerous Method (2011) -- "8/10"
This is a David Cronenberg film starting in 1904 and dealing with the birth
of psychoanalysis and its two main midwives Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.
The
opening scene sees Keira Knightley's Sabina Spielrein being carted to the
Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital overlooking Zürich.
Sabina becomes a patient of Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and is soon not
just in therapy with him, but also working for him as his assistant. While
she's in therapy, Jung sits behind her. Cronenberg here chooses to focus
Sabina so that half of her face is out-of-focus, suggesting her
unsettledness.
In a therapy session, she admits that she becomes excited by the thought
of
her own beating or humiliation. She diagnoses herself as a vile creature
who
should never leave the hospital.
Two years later, Jung travels to Austria with his wife, to meet Freud
(Viggo
Mortenson). They dine together and Freud lightly admonishes Jung when he
couches his professional talk too guardedly,
"And by the way, please don't feel you have to restrain yourself here. My
family are all veterans of the most unsuitable manner of mealtime
conversation."
The two men collaborate; we learn that Freud is absolutely fixated on a
sexual interpretation of every facet of human behavior. We learn that he
is
poorer than Jung, whose wife is quite wealthy. They spar, but Freud is not
to
swayed on any point. Jung confides later in Sabina.
Next we meet Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel), an unstable acolyte of Freud. He
becomes Jung's little devil on his shoulder, exhorting him to take Sabina,
as
she so clearly wants to be taken. Gross escapes from the institution, but
not
before ravishing a field worker. Jung goes through his soft-core
pornographic
effects and finds a letter addressed to himself. The advice is unchanged.
Jung becomes more and more deeply conflicted about his personal vow of
monogamy -- and more and more swayed by Gross's arguments.
He finally gives in and begins sleeping with Sabina. When he tries to end
the
affair, she psychoanalyzes him, asking how his lovemaking is with his wife
--
and then telling him how it will be different with her: "With me, I want
you
to be ferocious. I want you to punish me." They agree to continue the
affair.
Freud visits Jung in Zürich; he is still an arrogant egotist, but he's
not
wrong when he admonishes Jung for wasting time with "telepathy" or
"catalytic
exteriorized phenomena" (which is where Jung said his gut starting burning
the second before a bookcase cracked).
During this time, Jung is often shown in the sailboat his wife gave him,
but
never in any significant wind. He takes his wife's gift regularly to visit
his mistress. Matters come to a head and Jung shows himself to be the
absolute king of terrible breakups. Sabina attacks him, then accepts his
breakup because he's a giant jackass. Sabina writes to Freud (all writing
is
in German), asking for his assistance.
Sabina confronts Jung again, begging him to confess to Freud all that's
done
with her. She wants Freud to take her on as a patient. While Sabina will
summer in Berlin with her parents, Jung and Freud plan to travel to
America.
They are on the same ocean-liner, but Jung is in first class, with his
wife,
whereas Freud mst travel in a lower class. That chaps his hide something
fierce.
Sabina is in Küsnacht, visiting Jung at his new practice. He notes that
he
was worried about whether he'd be able to find enough patients at the new
location, but it hasn't been a problem. Obviously not: Küsnacht is at
most
10km from his previous hospital (and probably closer). He agrees to take
her
on as her thesis advisor. The affair begins anew. This time she breaks it
off, moving to Vienna, where she meets with Freud. She presents her idea,
to
which he responds,
"I fought against the idea for some time, but I suppose there must be
indissoluble some link between sex and death. I don't feel the
relationship
between the two is quite the way you've portrayed it, but I'm most
grateful
to you for animating the subject in such a stimulating way."
The rift between Jung and Freud grows, eventually exploding in a flame war
executed via post. It's based on Freud's insistence that therapists should
not play god, that all a therapist can do is diagnose, but never cure.
Whereas Jung wants to be able to help the patient work around the disease,
to
reinvent themselves. This is a difficult tightrope to walk: how to cure
without shaping, without instilling structure from without? How to avoid
playing God? It's an interesting dispute and I'm not even sure I know
where I
land, to be honest.
Mortenson, Fassbender and Knightley are all quite excellent. Her accent is
a
bit odd, but I honestly can't judge what it should sound like as a Russian
emigré fluent in German, living in Switzerland in the early 1900s and
being
portrayed in English. I give the movie an extra point for nicely written
dialogue, though I can't help but think how much better it would have been
in
German.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] A confession: I was wondering to myself why Studio Ghibli always made
characters who looked more European than Japanese. I finally bothered to
look up the answer and it's quite eye-opening (no pun intended). The
"accepted answer" by Dimitri mx
is that the characters do look Japanese to the Japanese.
The characters only look European to Europeans because we think people look
like us; the Japanese think the same. They are more right, though, in this
case. Once you have this mental model, watch anime again. You'll see that the
characters are smaller people, with small noses, they are usually portrayed as
slimmer and more delicate and are largely hairless.
Also, they are incredibly culturally Japanese. Just in this film: they speak
Japanese, there are Japanese texts lying everywhere, they write in columns
from right-to-left. they take off their shoes to enter houses, they have
rice-paper walls, they eat sushi and rice for breakfast, they sleep on a
tatami on the floor, they wear very uncomfortable-looking wooden sandals.
Also, Tatsuo just works all day without noticing that his kid has been playing
unsupervised in the garden for the whole day. That's not very American.
With eyes open, you wonder how you ever saw the characters as anything other
than Japanese. They're just stylized people.
In anime, there's no mistaking characters who are actually European. They are
drawn more like "Dan Eagleman" (just as an
example) and the difference is then very noticeable.
Is the hair color not natural? Are the eyes too big? Big eyes are expressive
-- and that's why they're too big in Western cartoons, as well.
There is an excellent article "Why Do The Japanese Draw Themselves As White?"
by Lisa Wade
that starts with the example of Marge Simpson, who has yellow skin and blue
hair, but who Americans have always accepted as a white lady.
The article includes a great example of how cultural perspective shapes what
we see: the stick figure.
"If I draw a stick figure, most Americans will assume that it is a white man.
Because to them that is the Default Human Being. For them to think it is a
woman I have to add a dress or long hair [or boobs]; for Asian, I have to add
slanted eyes; for black, I add kinky hair or brown skin. Etc.
"The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of
otherness, then white is assumed.
"Americans apply this thinking to Japanese drawings. But to the Japanese the
Default Human Being is Japanese! So they feel no need to make their
characters “look Asian”. They just have to make them look like people and
everyone in Japan will assume they are Japanese – no matter how improbable
their physical appearance. (Emphasis added.)"
Lesson learned. Eyes opened.
[1] I'd originally written "him" but, in light of the discussion in the end-note
above, there's no reason to think that Totoro is male. It has no identifying
male organs nor has it done anything male. It is a magical creature. It's
not a cat; it's not a rabbit.
Our default worldview colors everything.
[1] Our brains categorize everything, trying to make sense of things. Think of
the Cheshire Cat bus: it's neither a cat nor a bus -- but we have to
describe it. It has about eight legs per side. Its carapace opens like a
sphincter and it looks only vaguely like a bus. But we call it a cat/bus --
and others (from our culture and with our experiences) will know exactly
what we're referring to.
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=38632019-12-24T17:53:44+01:00https://earthli.com/users/marco
. The cast was excellent;
several of the main characters had played in the same musical on Broadway. See
the link for more information.
[Synopsis]
It's a lot to unpack, but I'll give it a shot.
It starts with a song called "Hello", which shows a dozen Mormons ringing
doorbells, speaking the word of Jesus Christ (of the Latter Day Saints). Soon
after, the young men are sorted into missions and Elder Price and Elder
Cunningham are teamed up to go to Uganda. Cunningham is excited to be matched
with star pupil Price; Price is less than thrilled to be going to Uganda, as
he'd had his heart set on Orlando instead.
They go to Uganda, meet the villagers and the warlords, sing a bunch, Price
loses his faith and thinks he's escaped to Orlando, but really he's just having
a Spooky Mormon Hell Dream, Cunningham converts them all by lying heavily about
the Book of Mormon (they end up publishing a fourth installment called the Book
of Arnold), the villagers put on a very special show for the visiting Mormon
chieftains and Cunningham and Price decide to stick around longer to promulgate
their good work.
The final song starts with the Ugandans reenacting the opening song: Hello.
[An Earnest Satire]
There is so much going on, at so many levels. Tongue in cheek doesn't even begin
to cover it. It's less direct irony or satire or parody and much more like an
earnest homage that goes just a little farther to reveal shadows that indicate
that there are other interpretations possible. As with South Park, nearly every
line can be taken literally or not, as a coarse joke or as a subtle dig at a
power structure or commonly believed myth. The songs are very much like this, as
well -- earnest sabotage. [2]
Mormons just believe -- which is, on the one hand, a wonderfully naive and
beatific quality, but then they also believe the wildest horseshit. Parker and
Stone make fun of Mormonism by just presenting it as it describes itself. It's a
ludicrous story.
The misinterpretation of the Ugandans is no more of less ridiculous than the
original. It's perhaps cruder, sure, but it's also more appropriate to their
situation, more likely to offer them guidance that makes a difference in their
lives. Here Parker and Stone seem to be showing us that this is all that
religion can really do for us: tell ridiculous but entertaining stories that
keep us from killing each other or letting nature kill us.
Jews believe in one book, Christians in two and the Mormons in a Trilogy. They
also happen to believe that Jesus was in upstate New York in the 1800s and that
Joseph Smith wasn't a con man.
[Details and Impressions]
The opening scenes of the two acts look very much like school plays and are
voiced exactly like South Park. Jesus sounds kinda like Eric Cartman.
The backdrop for Salt Lake City has a Wendy's and a McDonald's in it. The one
for Orlando has a bigger Mini Golf sign on it than the Epcot Center Dome. Why?
Because it loomed larger in nine-year-old Elder Price's memory. Orlando is, on
the one hand, believable as a dream destination for a boy, but not for an adult
male, for whom Orlando is a ridiculous dream destination, a playground in
Florida -- someplace that everyone knows is terrible. Are Mormon boys naive to
believe that it's not? Or are we jaded? Who knows? Parker and Stone leave it
open, poking fun but also cutting their targets a break.
You have to already have known a bunch about Mormons to get some of the jokes --
like that they're not allowed to drink coffee, which isn't exactly common
knowledge. I never thought I'd hear a song about Upstate New York and Rochester
(Joseph Smith's origin story) or one in which the words clitoris and scrotum
featured so much.
There's another song called Hasa Diga Eebowai (Fuck You God), which featured
enthusiastic gesticulation with middle fingers in the Lord's direction, to the
missionaries' utter horror. The finale where the tribe re-enacted what they'd
learned ended up in a simulated orgy with lots of positions and gigantic dildos.
This almost topped the "Crazy Mormon Hell Dream", which featured Jeffrey Dahmer
buggering Elder Price's father while Hitler was fellated by District 9's leader
while Genghis Khan looked on.
Was that all? No, the musical also featured a warlord named "Butt Fucking Naked"
who shoots a man directly in the head in a shocking scene that's sandwiched
between jokes -- and whose juxtaposition was anything but an accident. AIDS is a
fact of life that is so accepted by the Ugandans that they think nothing of
threatening the Mormons with it or noting it like the weather. The first scene
of Uganda features a woman dragging a half-eaten animal carcass across the
stage. Slowly.
Clitoral mutilation is presented as a prevalent problem -- enforced by the local
warlord. But one of the villagers is depicted as believing that having sex with
a virgin -- even a baby -- will cure his AIDS. These are just as ludicrous and
overblown as anything else in the show, but are traps for dipshits at NPR and
elite universities to try to call the show racist.
The point isn't that Ugandans are stupid or primitive or backward. At least not
only them. Everyone's an idiot. Mormons believe ridiculous shit and travel the
world trying to dunk people underwater and get them to believe it, too. Ugandans
believe crazy shit to get through the day and deal with the horrific hand
they've been dealt. But it's always fun to see the prudes and stick-in-the-muds
fault a comedy for failing to be unfunny about taking the piss.
In a way, the depiction of Uganda was exactly what a Mormon would expect, no?
Otherwise, why send missionaries? I mean, Africa is the land of cell phones, but
the girl doesn't know what "text messaging" is. It's a joke, guys. The Ugandans
were exactly as most Americans -- not just Mormons -- would expect. It was a
caricature of what Westerners think "Africa" is.
There are several bits shedding a very dubious light on the tales from the Book
of Mormon and also a song called "Man Up" where Cunningham exhorts himself to be
like Jesus -- who showed balls when he climbed up on that cross and let himself
be nailed there. There is a song called "Baptize Me" that just drips innuendo
and double entendre, another song called "I Am Africa" sung exclusively by the
whitest Mormons you've ever seen.
[A Real-life Producers]
I honestly spent the first half just smiling thinking of Stone and Parker just
daring each other to make an even more ludicrously named character or write a
more shocking line or make the characters say "fuck" more than any other
Broadway musical (or "scrotum" or "clitoris").
It's hard to imagine that Parker and Stone didn't just dare each other to come
up with crazier and crazier stuff, with an eye on Mel Brooks, whose movie The
Producers about a musical so deliberately bad that it would close on opening
night -- and featured a song with half-clad goose-stepping Nazis singing
"Springtime for Hitler" -- was subsequently made one of the most successful
Broadway musicals of all time, just as Book of Mormon has now done. In both
cases, it's utterly unclear who gets the joke and who doesn't or who is getting
which joke.
I can think of many people who would have seen this is a straight-up musical
about Mormons in Africa that had a bit too much swearing in it (OK, they said
"fuck" all the time).
Also, the uncircumcised girl's name was Nabalungi, not Nefertiti or Necrophilia
or Nintendo or any of the many other names Cunningham called her.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Missionaries are presumably male, because I didn't see any female Mormons
except for the converts in the African village. I don't want to cast
aspersions, but it seems like American Mormon women are not allowed to leave
Utah
[1] The "Original Broadway Cast Recording"
is available on Google Play.
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=38542019-12-01T12:50:33+01:00https://earthli.com/users/marco
. The article
below extends those instructions to explain how to use a new mobile
mode.
[New Features]
Mobile Mode
There is a new browsing mode on earthli that provides a read-only
view of individual
...
]]>
. The
article below extends those instructions to explain how to use a new mobile
mode.
[New Features]
Mobile Mode
There is a new browsing mode on earthli that provides a read-only view of
individual entries (like articles, pictures, journals, etc.) that is much
more mobile-friendly. This mode is available for all applications (e.g.
"Recipes" or "News"
) but is most useful for the "Albums"
where the mode is now the default for
picture-browsing. Each application tracks mobile mode separately.
Better Photo-sizing
Full-size pictures are now sized to the browser window without artificial
constraint. Instead of clicking a picture to see the full-size view, use
"Open Image in New Tab" on a device with a mouse or trackpad or pinch-to-zoom
on a mobile device.
Key Photo per Day
The calendar now includes thumbnails of the key picture for each day with
pictures. An editor can set any photo to be the key photo for the day from
the photo's command menu.
[Browsing thumbnails]
The basic thumbnail browser is already mobile-friendly enough. [1] You can see
the thumbnail browser in the screenshot below. In it, you can see that the
calendar button is more prominent on each album home page.
[image]
[Calendar View]
If you click that button, it takes you to the calendar view, shown below. The
calendar now shows the key photo for each day. [2] As before, the calendar shows
the number of journals and pictures on a given day, showing the full title of a
picture or journal if it's the sole entry of that type for that day.
[image]
* Click “# Pictures” at the bottom of a day to jump to the thumbnail
browser for that day.
* Click a day's key photo to jump directly to the full-size picture navigator.
* Click the title at the top of the day for the journal entry (you can get to
the pictures for day from there, too)
[Navigating in Mobile Mode]
Once you get to a picture, you're in the mobile-browsing mode, by default. This
mode clears away the standard header, breadcrumbs and toolbar, replacing it with
just the title of the item (e.g. a picture) and a small drop-down menu with
navigation commands and a command to get back out of mobile mode.
[image]
Since the navigation toolbar is hidden, you can't use the mouse to navigate.
Instead, swipe to move back and forth on a mobile device [3] or use the left and
right keys on a device with a keyboard.
Click the little down-arrow button in the top-left corner to show a menu.
* The top button closes mobile-browsing mode and goes back to the "classic"
browsing mode (shown below)
* The other links go back to
* the thumbnail browser for that day
* or the calendar
* or the thumbnail browser for the main album
* or other albums
[Navigating in Classic Mode]
[image]
From here, you can use the regular breadcrumbs above the toolbar to navigate as
you would with the menu in mobile mode. Click the “Show Mobile Mode” button
in the toolbar buttons to get back to the mobile mode.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Earthli has two copies of each picture: the uploaded original and a
generated thumbnail. The generated thumbnail is already a certain size. To
support a browser with dynamically sized thumbnails, the page would have to
load all of the originals, which is not a good strategy for mobile.
[1] A user can select the command menu from any picture and set it as the key
photo for the entire album or the key photo for its day. This allows a user
to customize the appearance of the calendar for multi-day albums.
[1] Unfortunately, Safari on MacOS captures the swipe left and right events and
directs them to "back" and "forth" in the browser history. While it is
possible to "disable these gestures"
,
it's not very easy and it applies to all web sites. It would be nice if they
funneled those touch events to the browser page, but they don't. There
doesn't seem to be a web standard for touchpad events vs. mobile swiping
events. Since the left and right arrow keys work, that's a decent fallback.
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=31272016-04-20T08:28:56+02:00https://earthli.com/users/marco
in a separate
post.
A Feast for Crows (2005)
by George R.R. Martin
This is book four of the Song of Ice and Fire. Cersei descends into
paranoid
madness, reinstating a religious army, an act she would come to rue as it
backfires spectacularly. Jaime and Brienne meet up again in the
Riverlands,
after Jaime had solved a few issues there. The Iron Islands feature much
more
prominently, with all of the Greyjoys -- Euron, Victarion, Aeron and Asha
--
getting in on the action. In Dorne, intrigue abounds, with plot built on
plot
and the Red Viper's brother machinating to maintain the power balance with
King's Landing and the upper South. Quentyn Martell has traveled East with
his friends to try to join Dorne to the Targaryens through Daenerys. Arya
arrives in Braavos and apprentices at the House of Black and White. Jon
maintains a balance between Stannis's demands -- and those of Melisandre
--
as well as arming to fight the Others from the North. Samwell travels with
Gilly and Aemon around the periphery of the Seven Kingdoms by boat, to get
to
Old Town and train at the Citadel.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
A Dance with Dragons (2011)
by George R.R. Martin
This is book five of the Song of Ice and Fire. Bran ends up in the lair of
the Children of the Forest, far North of the Wall, with the three-eyed
raven.
Jon's fate is unknown, but things don't look too good. Arya's training
continues. Tyrion is captured by Mormont and both of them near Meerreen.
Quentyn's mission fails horribly, Victarion approaches Meereen, possessed
of
powers. Daenerys accepts her destiny and mounts Drogon. Stannis marches on
the marshes first, rousts the Ironborn, captures Asha and then sinks into
the
snows before he can arrive at Winterfell, where he wants to roust the
Boltons. Young Aegon Targaryen and John Connington land in Dorne and make
their way north to attempt recapture of the Iron Throne. Cersei takes the
walk of shame.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
by Ken Kesey
This is the story of a the Big Chief and McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. The
Big
Chief is a long-time resident of the mental institution run by Head Nurse
Ratched; McMurphy arrives as a transferee from a work camp who thinks he's
going to have an easier ride in the home. This is true, at least at first.
He
is a breath of fresh air for the other inmates there, a force of nature,
as
it were. he chafes and takes liberties and cracks wise and runs card games
and generally doesn't follow the rules. He tries to help free the others
from
their artificial, psychological fetters. He takes them on a fishing trip.
He
sneaks ladies and booze into the building late at night. He tries to help
poor Billy. Ratched thwarts him every step of the way. The Big Chief
narrates, grows and learns. McMurphy sacrifices the last of what he has in
a
futile act of revenge, though he is aware of what is happening. The Big
Chief
makes an actual escape. Really surprisingly well-written and deep.
Recommended.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2013)
by Mark Blyth
This excellent book provides an approachable analysis of the recent
history
of the financial crisis that started in 2006, exploded in 2008 and is
still
being sorely felt by many in 2015. Blyth skewers the main idea for solving
the crisis: austerity for the majority of the public. Why is austerity not
the solution? He lists many reasons, but the main one is that it doesn't
work. It has never worked. Accurate histories show that it doesn't work.
Inaccurate studies claim that it might work.
Worse, the crisis was caused by private machinations and profit-taking and
the price is paid by the public -- who've already paid the price in the
form
of a severely impacted economy. The public pays twice for the
mistakescrimes
of the few, while the few take their profit, take no punishment and line
themselves up for the next reaping.
How do they get away with it? By selling the idea of austerity of all: if
our
economy tanked, then it must be our collective fault and we must all
shoulder
the blame and tighten our belts. The private losses are bailed out by the
state and instantly transformed into a story of state profligacy. It's
like a
child who crashes his car, gets his father to buy him a new one, then
mocks
said father for not being able to pay the rent.
Never mind that it is exactly these jackasses who aren't tightening their
belts -- we can't police everyone, can we? Never mind that exactly those
who
aren't tightening their belts are actually the ones who caused the
problems
in the first place. With their crimes. Some will argue that what happened
was
perfectly legal -- but that is only because those who commit crimes at
high
levels are careful to ensure that the crimes they wish to commit are first
made legal.
This is an important book. Blyth cover the minutiae of recent history,
covers
the history of austerity over the last century, examines the writings and
recommendations of oft-cited and great economists of the past -- Locke,
Hume,
Smith, Keynes, among others -- and looks at recent academic studies that
are
clearly if not deliberately fraudulent. He is a bit cagey about coming
right
out and accusing world leaders of collusion and corruption to serve their
rich buddies and financial partners, but we can excuse an academic a bit
of
hedging. See below for my "less-generous analysis"
and "Blyth's possible solutions"
.
"When world leaders keen to legitimize the damage that they have already done
to the lives of millions of their fellow citizens reach for examples such
as
these to vindicate their actions, applauding these countries for creating
misery, it shows us one this above all. Austerity remains an ideology
immune
to facts and basic empirical refutation."
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale is the story of a possible future America in which
society has taken a rather hard, right turn into a dystopian,
quasi-religious
patriarchy -- more even that what exists today. In this world, women have
no
rights whatsoever. Some are used as drudges -- Marthas -- while others --
Aunts -- inculcate the new regime to the breeders -- Handmaids -- and,
finally, there are the Wives. Among the men, the Commanders are at the top
of
the food chain -- they are married to Wives -- but also have a series of
Handmaids. There are other men, high-ranking soldiers -- Angels -- as well
as
spies -- Eyes.
The prose is poetic, evocative, metaphorical, at-times almost
hallucinatory
-- as if the mists of recollection have twisted certain parts of the
remembered past. The ideas and chilling visions are just as likely to
happen
as they were in the 80s, when the book was written. There are good
portions
of the American population who would happily view the book as a guide to
revolution, to creating a better version of America. At times reminiscent
of
Orwell's 1984. Highly recommended.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Lucky Jim (1953)
by Kingsley Amis
So far, it combines the stultifying mundanity of day-to-day drudgery of
Confederacy of Dunces with the whining tone of Holden Caulfield from the
Catcher in the Rye. The prose is a bit stiff for my tastes and Amis seems,
to
me, a bit overrated.
The middle bits, which involve Dixon's quasi-dalliance with Christine, are
more evocative. The book has that feeling of lifting slowly but seemingly
inexorably from a quagmire of boredom, stretching, stretching, with what
one
feels might perhaps be interpreted as acceleration, a feeling that one
would
soon snap free of gummy strands that yet cling and tie one to the tedium.
But
alas this feeling is fleeting, as you knew in your heart of cynical hearts
that it probably would be, as the gummy strands win more battles and
eventually the war and you sink back into that tepid morass with nary a
change for all that you saw when you briefly, if not soared, perhaps one
could describe it generously as ... flew.
It's as if Dixon is trapped in the miasma of Welch, as a prehistoric fly
when
first it steps in amber and the honeyed fluid hasn't quite seeped into
every
last receptor of its compound eye. This book documents the struggles of
that
fly. In fairness, the fly in this case doesn't struggle so much as
complain
that the vitrification process isn't going quickly enough and that the
other
flies should just go about their business and stop bothering it.
The style and subject matter is, at times, quite strongly reminiscent of
The
Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov, but perhaps that is only because those
books
also dealt with idiotic families in quasi-boring situations that never
come
to any strong conclusions. The ending is a bit of a surprise, tying things
up
in a far neater bow than I'd have expected. Was this done to because the
author wanted his hero to semi-triumph? Or was it an ironic stab at books
with happy endings? Is it a happy ending to see Dixon stumble further
along
the road to success? Was he the hero? Or was he just relatively
less-insufferable, rising above the others by dint of their utter
awfulness
rather than an positive qualities of his own? All in all, it was an
interesting read, but as for it being the finest comic novel of the 20th
century: no. Not even among British authors. Just, no.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Joyland (2013)
by Stephen King
You can tell this is a Stephen King book from a mile away. It's about a
young
man -- Devin, a writer -- who's been jilted by the love of his life. She's
decided that it's time to see other people and he's not quite on board
with
that yet. So he takes a job several states away and spends a good deal of
time mooning around over her. He makes a couple of good friends at this
odd
little amusement park called Joyland. They have a dog mascot that he's
especially good at playing. After learning of a ghost in the haunted-house
ride, Devin becomes nearly obsessed with the case and is convinced that he
can release the ghost if he just finds the real killer. Along the way, he
befriends a standoffish woman, Annie, through her son Mike, who's
physically
disabled but gifted in other ways. He is crucial to releasing the ghost
because of his psychic powers. They finally discover the real killer
hiding
right under their noses. They all learn a lot about life, go their
separate
ways and nobody really lives happily ever after, but that's OK too.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
And Another Thing... (2013)
by Eoin Colfer
This is the sixth in the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy, the
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This installment picks up where Adams
left
off in Mostly Harmless and reads a bit like Pratchett's Raising Steam in
that
absolutely everyone from the respective pantheon appears. The good news is
that it's a pretty good story and the characters are handled well and feel
natural. The dialogue is clever and the writing is funny. Good old
Wowbagger
the Infinitely Prolonged features prominently as well as the always
interesting Trillian and Tricia McMillan. A planet built by the Magrathean
Slartibartfast has been populated by people far too rich for their own
good
and they're petitioning for a God to rule their planet for them. Wowbagger
and Thor both show up and lock horns. Even the Vogons, led by the
implacable
Prostetnic Jeltz and his son, who's not as enthusiastic as his father
about
eliminating humanity forever (finally closing the chapter on every
possible
extrusion in every possible multiverse). A fun romp and an installment
that
can stand proudly next to the others.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy (1971)
by Stanislaw Lem
This is a surrealist romp by the master of speculative non-hard science
fiction, Stanislaw Lem. In this one, we meet the narrator Ijon Tichy, who
is
so wonderfully written and who is so convincing, that one quickly wonders
whether the eponymous congress actually exists. It doesn't. The Congress
takes place in Costa Rica, a convocation of the best and brightest minds
that
looks to tackle the problem of the future for the whole of planet Earth.
In
particular, they are to tackle the problem of population. Everything that
follows may or may not have taken place, because of the copious amounts of
mind-altering substances ingested both deliberately and accidentally by
the
author.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism (2012)
by Ha-Joon Chang
This is the second book I've read by Chang. The first was Kicking Away the
Ladder, which discussed how the much-ballyhooed free-market practices
forced
on developing countries were not used by the first-world countries when
they
themselves were developing. This book kind of picks up where the other
left
off. Instead of viewing the obvious disparity between what the developed
world says and what it does in a clinical manner, Chang uses a more
class-based lens to examine how the rich manipulate the story to benefit
themselves. A primary part of that story is the myth of capital-C
Capitalism.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Factotum (1975)
by Charles Bukowski
Henry Chinaski is a variously employed, alcoholic drifter living in
America
in the 1940s. He's been rejected from the draft, so he's left in a country
that doesn't really want him for anything else, that was already
suspicious
of people who didn't yearn for the two-kids/white-picket-fence/steady-job
dream. He's willing to work, but doesn't like to do the same thing for
long,
doesn't like authority, and likes to booze and whore and write. He
continues
to try to publish, but is continually rejected by the only publishing
house
he considers worthy. He gets involved with Laura and Jan at different
times,
who have varyingly detrimental effects on his life.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Cloud Atlas (2004)
by David Mitchell
This is a well-written and far-reaching book. All the more so considering
the
many narrators, voices and dialects used for the several distinct
sections,
each of which also took place at a different time in our past or future.
It's
written in several parts: the first five parts are from different
narrators
and each subsequent one picks up the story by somehow mentioning the
writings
of the previous narrator, however obliquely. Each piece builds on the
previous one, laddering up through the years into a future where humanity
is
reduced to tribes on islands visited by leftover vestiges of more advanced
but increasingly desperate humanity. With the middle part of 11, we
retreat
back through the narrators, in reverse order, until we arrive where we
started, having perhaps learned something of humanity's reach and maybe
something about souls.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey (2008)
by Chuck Palahniuk
The story is told through one-line to one-page--long biographical
snippets.
The story goes from Buster's upbringing in a grindingly poor town, where
his
young mother teaches him to how to make Easter eggs with wax and boiled
vegetable stock. He is an odd child, inuring himself to poison through
repeated animal, insect and arachnid bits, collecting old paint cans from
old
folks, who don't realize they might be full of extremely valuable coins
dating back to the mid-1800s, and following the foretellings of an old man
who he met once and claimed to be his real father.
He warps the local economy in a way that makes all the townspeople
complicit
in his scheme, he catches and beats rabies multiple times, all the while
spreading it throughout the town, especially the girls who, oddly, can't
get
enough of him. He takes his ill-gotten gains to the city, where more of
the
world he inhabits is revealed, in the form of a stark subdivision between
night and day shifts for humanity as a way of solving traffic woes, as
well
as a whole subculture of people organizing crash parties, in which they
crash
their cars into each other to feel what it's like to really live --
something
that almost no-one knows now that one can "boost peaks" from others.
That is, full-bore digital sensory capture is freely available and lulls
the
populace. And this is very much what it is intended to do, according to
some
of the later biographical participants -- to keep people from discovering
that, if you crash your car just right, and you're in just the right
theta-wave, meditative state, you will be transported to another place in
time, where you can become your own progenitor and increase the power of
your
current self, until you reach a point where you can kill your own parents,
terminate the loop by eliminating the beginning and live forever,
suspended
in a liminal state. Very much an Infinite-Jest vibe (even a bit of Pynchon
at
times).
Some wicked cool concepts and intriguing thoughts in this one.
Recommended.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Mind of My Mind (1977)
by Octavia Butler
This is book two of the Patternist series. The main character of the first
part of the book is Doro, a 5000-year–old superbeing with enhanced
mental
powers. His primary power is the ability to force his way in to another
being’s mind, eradicating that mind and replacing it with his own. Doro
is
beyond human, and views most of humanity as herd animals, for use as he
pleases. He started a breeding program many millennia ago with another
powerful woman, a shapeshifter and their progeny tend toward superpowers
of
the psychic kind.
The star of this book is Mary, a distant descendant, who transitions
successfully, but in so doing becomes almost more powerful than Doro
himself,
capable of contacting and leading a whole society of powerful minds. In
effect, Doro has succeeded in his program, but his progeny is ready to
leave
him and his rapacious dog-eat-dog society behind.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Perdido Street Station (2001)
by China Miéville
This is the story of Isaac, a thaumaturge/scientist in New Crobuzon, a
city
described in incredible and sprawling detail by Miéville. He lives with
girlfriend Lin, who's an artist. She creates sculptures using special
materials that she chews with her mandibles behind her head. You guessed
it,
she's not human. She's kind of a combination fly/super-sexy woman. You're
not
allowed to talk about her like that, but that's the most succinct
description.
There's also Yagharek, an outcast member of a strict flying species, who
commissions Issac to help him fly again -- his wings having been ripped
from
him by the expulsion ceremony. In his investigations, Issac discovers an
iridescent caterpillar that turns into one of the most evil,
multi-dimensional beings known to Crobuzon. He feeds it dreamshit, a drug
made from the shit of the caterpillar's captive full-grown compatriots.
This
is a bad move. The creature escapes and frees its comrades.
They all begin to prey on the populace of Crobuzon, sucking souls and
psyches
and just basically bringing the whole mood down. The creatures were
deliberately kept by the military of New Crobuzon as a military weapon
that
is now out of control. Isaac discovers so-called "crisis energy", which is
kind of analogous to harnessing the power of quantum foam, I guess.
There's also an extra-dimensional spider called Weaver as well as a
secretive
Council that machinates throughout the city. The book was more intricate
than
that, but it was also about 800 pages long. Well-written but a bit
over-detailed in places.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe (2011)
by Charles Yu
Charles Yu digs through baggage from his past in the guise of a real-life
time-machine mechanic. The universe in which he lives is kind of a mix of
our
own plus all sorts of fictive universes. So, for example, Luke Skywalker
is a
character because, well, he's part of a popular science-fiction world. The
novel addresses all sorts of interesting paradoxes, including loops and
writing paradoxical warnings to oneself. He harks back to how his father
invented the time machine, but failed to profit from it, instead trapping
himself in a diorama/time-loop. It was a meandering, interesting and
unique
book that seemed to have a lot to do with Charles Yu personally, though
that
was perhaps just the auto-biographical feel.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Requiem for a Dream (1978)
by Hubert Selby Jr.
I'd already seen the movie and it was relatively faithful to the source
material. The book is written in a rambling, near--stream-of-consciousness
street patois with little punctuation and structure. The grammar is mostly
OK, so you can get used to it, but it's a bit of a challenge at first. Not
as
much so as the middle chapter in Cloud Atlas but it might still be
off-putting for some.
tl;dr: Drugs are bad.
More precisely, addiction is bad. This film is the story of a mother, her
son, his girlfriend and their best friend. Nice, huh?
Spoiler alert: the book ends with the mother strapped to a bed in a mental
hospital, withdrawing from a severe amphetamine addiction, the son lies in
a
hospital, his left arm amputated because of a festering needle wound, the
best friend is on a work gang in prison, suffering beatings and
malnutrition
and the girlfriend is curled up on her couch at home, cuddling her scag,
earned by performing in a private sex show for her new pimp.
The mother never quite recovered from the death of her husband and the son
isn’t around enough to take care of her. She spends her days watching a
self-help guru’s infomercial. She gets an invitation to the show but
can’t fit into her dress. She resolves to lose weight by the time she
gets
her actual invitation. After a day spent trying it the old-fashioned way,
she
makes an appointment with a diet doctor and starts her downward spiral.
The son and his friends are already well on their way, shucking and jiving
for enough money to buy a stash for the night. They resolve to follow the
junkie dream: they pool their cash and start selling instead of just using
everything they have. This actually works OK for a while, but the friend
is
busted by the cops on a deal and the money they’ve saved is used for
bail
and nearly gone in one fell swoop. The son and his girlfriend predictably
fight over the lack of drugs and he heads out with his friend to Florida
to
make a big score. She can’t wait that long and calls a dealer who wants
women rather than money in exchange for drugs.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (2009)
by Slavoj Žižek
This is a philosophical/economic discussion of the 2008 financial crash
from
a wider angle, one that acknowledges the possibility that some of our most
seemingly axiomatic notions must be reëxamined. In particular, the notion
that capitalism has won -- Fukuyama's end of history -- and that humanity
has
found the final expression of itself. That the drive to consume is
immanent,
that the drive to amass long after one has more than enough is genetic.
This book is not afraid to discuss various expressions of capital and
capitalism and to shine a harsh light on the really-existing version that
has
slipped in in sheep's clothing.
Step one: convince everyone that capitalism is good; remain vague about
the
definition. Step two: convince everyone that the system that benefits you
the
most is capitalism. Step three: profit.
Criminalize that which you do not want to do; legalize that which you do,
but
only with tight strictures so that it applies to yourself. Privatize
profit;
socialize cost. This system is ridiculously short-lived. As the author
says
on page 90, "[…] even in the US, the bastion of economic liberalism,
capitalism is having to re-invent socialism in order to save itself."
Capitalism as practiced today is the greatest con game of all. It's an
absolute cruel joke that so many fervently believe in it, while all the
time
getting screwed by it. It's feudalism dressed up with better marketing.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965)
by Philip K. Dick
This is one of Dick's trippiest works. He envisions a planet Earth in the
future that is too hot to visit during daytime without special cooling
gear.
Humanity organizes itself to get off-planet. To combat the boring
conditions
in the colonies, there is a drug called CAN-D that, when taken by groups,
allows a shared hallucination. The hallucination approaches reality when
it
can be anchored on real-life objects, so there is a thriving market for
"layouts", which are basically intricate dollhouses. The colonists take
the
drug and subsume themselves into a shared hallucinatory life in the
layout.
The story centers on Palmer Eldritch, a heroic but exceedingly odd space
traveler who'd been lost to a far-off solar system, but who has supposedly
returned, Barney Mayerson, a precog who's been drafted as a colonist, Leo
Bolero, his boss and owner of the major layout company. Palmer starts
peddling CHEW-Z, an even-more powerful alternative to CAN-D that is
capable
of making people travel inter-dimensionally or hyper-spatially or just
condensing time to a dot, so that an entire live can be lived in a
so-called
real-world instant. Things get really, really trippy with nested layers of
reality, non-real layers of reality due to hallucination -- shared and
individual, as well as complete overtaking of other people's bodies and
personae. The precog makes things lively with predictions of
assassination,
but the intended target is unsure how to prevent an event for which the
time-stream isn't even clear.
More details in the "Wikipedia entry"
. If
that sounds good to you, then this book is highly recommended. I loved it.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Ark (2009)
by Stephen Baxter
At the end of Flood, the planet Earth had been covered in water, right up
to
the very top of Mt. Everest. The only life left on Earth was floating
around
on top of the seas, in various states of civilization. This story overlaps
the events of Flood, showing preparations for saving humanity in other
ways.
The primary focus is on an ambitious space program -- Ark One -- that will
launch a spaceship that is destined for another solar system, a decade of
traveling distance away. Arks Two and Three are only hinted at, but also
exist.
The first part of the book follows the travails of the candidates for the
Ark, until its final launch, which doesn't go according to plan, but the
technology holds up. Several candidates who were pre-selected don't make
it
because they are replaced by children of rich and power people. Others are
pushed off by members of the military who forced their way onboard at the
last moment before launch.
The Earth drowns. The Ark heads for nine years toward Earth II, but it
proves
to be far less attractive than originally hoped. Factions onboard have
gotten
more stratified and there are three main paths proposed: settle the planet
below, continue onward for 30 more years, to another system, or go back to
Earth. They end up doing all three, splitting into three parties,
splitting
the bolo of two ship bodies that provided gravity.
The group that returns to Earth finds it completely flooded, but they make
contact with survivors on the surface as well as in Ark Two, which is on
the
ocean floor. The group that went onward goes through many tribulations,
finally arriving at the destination planet. It's better than Earth II, but
troubles along the way lost them a shuttle, so they have to colonize with
children to maximize genetic diversity. The colonists settle in, while the
survivors on the orbit further.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Despair (1934; en/1965)
by Vladimir Nabakov
This is the story of an unreasonably vain Russian man Hermann who meets a
homeless man Felix, whom Hermann is convinced is his doppelgänger.
Hermann
lives with his wife Lydia. He thinks her lovely, pudgy, stupid, but loves
her
very much. Her cousin Ardalion is also quite close to the family -- quite
close to her, in ways luridly hinted at. Hermann is in despair with his
life
and wants to move on, so comes up with the plan to pay Felix to pretend to
be
him, but then he would kill Felix and allow the world to think Hermann
dead.
Hermann and Lydia would then abscond with the insurance money. Hermann, it
turns out to no-one's surprise is a good deal less clever than he thought.
Felix is absolutely not a doppelgänger for him, his plan for the perfect
murder is an absolute shambles and Hermann, who escapes to France, is
captured soon after. In Hermann's absence, Ardalion swoops in on Lydia.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Netherland: A Novel (2008)
by Joseph O'Neill
As with Despair by Nabakov, this is kind of a story of a sad man with
delusions of grandeur. Because this is a modern novel, though, in Hans van
den Broek's case, he is an immensely successful financial analyst living
in
London with his wife and son. They haven't a worry in the world as far as
prosaic concerns, so we are free to focus on their ennui. Most of the
novel
is experienced as a series of flashbacks from narrator Hans, as he thinks
about his life in New York City and about his relationship with the
dynamic
and mysterious Chuck Ramkissoon, an avid businessman with 1000 irons in
the
fire as well as the founder of the Staten Island cricket club.
Chuck and the Cricket Club were the only thing that kept Hans going after
9/11 triggered a separation from his wife, who moved back to England with
their son. We follow Hans through his memories as he tries to figure out
who
Chuck was and why his body was discovered handcuffed in the Gowanus river.
As
to this, we receive no satisfaction, but Hans does end up getting back
together with his wife. There is little joy in this because they are both
vaguely dissatisfied upper--middle-class people with a seemingly stunted
penchant for joy.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Gone Girl: A Novel (2012)
by Gillian Flynn
This is the story of Amy, a woman financially privileged from birth, whose
parents established their fortune with children's books about "Amazing
Amy".
Amy lives off of a trust fund established by her parents from this
fortune.
This all has left a mark on Amy. They all live in New York City, where she
meets Nick. The book alternates between Amy and Nick's viewpoints, with
Amy's
entries describing an earnest young lady trying her best to deal with a
moody
man. Nick, on the other hand, describes himself in the same exact way.
Various details that become relevant later are mentioned.
They both lose their jobs in New York. Amy's parents, it turns out, are
terrible financial managers and come to Amy, asking for the remainder of
her
trust fund so that they can pay their bills. With no income and no trust
fund, the couple retreats to Nick's hometown, Missouri, where his sister
and
father still live. Nick opens a bar with his sister using the last of
their
money and they settle in, more or less, to life in the Midwest. On their
tenth wedding anniversary, though, Amy is gone. There are signs of a
struggle.
The first half of the book turns out to have been an exceedingly
unreliable
telling of their lives and in the second half, we learn what really
happened.
It's quite a neat plot, so I'm not going to "ruin it for anyone"
.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Mr. Mercedes (2008)
by Stephen King
This isn't one of King's best outings, but it was a fun read. It's
obviously
a Stephen King book from a mile away. You can see his craft in the
characters, the pacing and the conclusion. It's the story of a retired
police
detective Hodges living a sad and lonely life in a small town. He receives
a
letter from Mr. Mercedes, taunting Hodges that he will never be able to
catch
him. Who is this Mr. Mercedes? He is the man who ran over several dozen
people at a job fair. Hodges was in charge of the case, but wasn't able to
solve it before retirement.
Very soon in the novel, Mr. Mercedes is revealed to be a demented young
man
with delusions, who's now following Hodges as well as planning another
strike. He's a typically psychotic mess of a King character. He lives with
his alcoholic mother. Bits of his past are revealed throughout, forming a
picture of a damaged person damaged further by life.
Olivia Trelawney is the older woman from whom Mercedes borrowed a ...
Mercedes. She kills herself soon after the attack, feeling guilty that
she'd
contributed, even unwittingly. In his investigation, Hodges meets her
lovely
sister Janey -- another typically powerful female character, well-written
--
and they hit it off, investigating Mercedes together. Jerome, a young man
who
helps Hodges around the house, also forces his charming way into the
investigation. Most of Janey and Olivia's relatives are exceedingly
unpleasant, but Holly, though odd, is also of immense help. Together, they
manage to thwart Mr. Mercedes's next attack.
The Martian (2014)
by Andy Weir
This is the story of a mission to Mars, the Ares 3. They are only days
into
their several-week–long mission before a freak windstorm forces them to
abandon and escape by the skin of their teeth back to the Hermes, in orbit
around Mars. Unfortunately, the wind tore a satellite antenna from its
mooring and propelled it directly through Mark Watney, tearing him away
into
the howling, sandy darkness of the Martian night.
The crew is bereft, feeling survivor’s guilt. Watney, however, is not
dead.
He is left alone on the surface of Mars with a lot of technology at his
disposal and food for a crew of six. Short-term survival is not a problem.
It’s surviving long enough for a resupply mission that’s an issue.
With
the satellite antenna gone, he can’t even tell NASA that he survived.
NASA
notices that something is up when they see changes in the camp, so they
know
he’s alive. They keep this from the Hermes crew, at least at the
beginning.
Mark does all sort of neat stuff to survive, described in at-times
excruciating detail but very well-written and entertaining nonetheless.
The
writing started off quite stilted, with very short sentences and about a
sixth-grade reading level—if that. About 1/3 of the way through, though,
it
picked up steam and became quite funny as more characters were introduced.
Even Mark’s somewhat flat witticisms become sharper and funnier. I saw
the
movie before reading the book, but that didn’t ruin anything for me—as
psychologists say, anticipation is just as enjoyable as surprise.
He locates and re-enables the Pathfinder in order to use it for
communications. He farms potatoes. He re-enables the RTG as a heat source
for
long missions—like the one to the Area IV landing site on the other side
of
the planet. He makes it over there, the Hermes mission is extended to come
pick him up, he takes the MAV from Ares IV to LMO (Low Mars Orbit) and
they
miraculously pick him up.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Blindness (1995)
by Jose Saramago (translated to English by Giovanni Pontiero)
The story is of a man who is suddenly struck blind, seeing only a wash of
milky whiteness. Others soon follow, as it becomes clear that the
blindness
is caused by a communicable disease.
Soon enough, everyone has it and the city is filled only with the blind,
All,
save one lady -- the doctor's wife, played by Julianne Moore -- who is
unaffected by the blindness, but not by its horrific effects (she lives in
a
world of blind people). The effects are as you can imagine, if you were to
think about it: a city filled only with the newly blind, fumbling about,
looking for food, looking for shelter, for a place to urinate or defecate.
Before everyone has succumbed, the government ruthlessly quarantines the
initial afflicted in a mental asylum. Food is delivered sporadically but
relatively regularly. The place becomes nearly unbearably filthy.
As more and more people arrive, an element finally arrives that
understands
that societal rules no longer apply. They take all the food for
themselves,
rationing it out to the others in exchange for the last of their worldly
possessions. When those run out, they naturally demand that the other
wards
send their women. After several days, the women volunteer for this
horrific
duty, even the doctor's wife. Afterwards, though, she's had enough and
takes
a pair of scissors she found to kill the ringleader, threatening the
remaining pirates that she will kill more if they don't give up. Another
woman, traumatized by the rapes, finds a lighter and sets the pirates' den
on
fire, taking them all out.
At the same time, the doctor's wife takes her small group outside to ask
the
soldiers for help. They are gone. There is no authority remaining. All is
chaos and anarchy, with only the blind to fill the power vacuum. The small
group escapes back to the city, the doctor's wife the only witness to the
utter horror of the place, overrun by people who can no longer take care
of
themselves. They survive better than most, with the doctor's wife's sight
helping them find food that others have missed. They return to the
doctor's
home and settle in for a somewhat better existence than they had in
quarantine, but one still bereft of true hope. And then, just as quickly
as
it left, their sight returns. The end.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Wyrd Sisters (Discworld Book 6) (1988)
by Terry Pratchett
This story is the Discworld take on Hamlet, more or less. It features
Nanny
Ogg, Grannie Weatherwax and Magret as the witches three. Duke Felmet of
Lancre kills his cousin the King in order to take over the throne. The
kingdom is not happy about this. By the kingdom, I mean not necessarily
the
people -- though they feel it too -- but the actual kingdom, the ground,
the
trees, the sky. The kingdom as a being is dissatisfied. The King's son
Tomjon
survives, to Felmet's chagrin and he bends his considerable powers to
finding
him.
All to no avail, as the child is whisked off to Ankh Morpork with a troupe
of
traveling actors. He grows up to be a highly influential actor with an
unparalleled power to mesmerize. His adoptive father owns the troupe, his
best friend is the dwarf Hwel, an at-time very gifted playwright. Also in
the
mix is the suspiciously eloquent court Fool, who helps the witches wrest
the
kingdom from Felmet, which involves flying around the kingdom very quickly
on
a broom.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
Wool Omnibus (2011)
by Hugh Howey
Howey originally self-published this work on Amazon but at least the first
part suffers much less from a strong editorial hand than other
self-published
works I've seen. He spins a good yarn [1], plucking ideas and moods from
other genres to weave [2] his own interesting and thrilling murder mystery
in
a silo that houses an entire society in its 144 floors.
The stratification becomes clear over the course of the stories, which
were
published serially over the course of more than year. The various power
factions and policies are shown to create a working machine, but one that
works for a very distinct and not-very-well-publicized purpose.
The story starts with the death of the Silo's sheriff, as he is sent out
for
"cleaning" -- as his wife before him -- as punishment for
heresy/thoughtcrime. Next we meet the Silo's Mayor, Jahns, an older woman
nearing the end of her career, and her deputy Marnes, also in his sunset
years. They seek out and find a new sheriff in Juliette, a very clever
Mechanic from the lowest levels of the silo. This brings them into direct
contact with Bernard, the power-mad head of IT (level 31). Bernard's
"shadow"
(apprentice) is Lukas, a young man with fewer scales on his eyes, who is
smitten with Juliette and willing to help her find out more about what the
Silo is really for, about how it was created. This, despite the trouble
this
causes him at work, where Bernard is grooming him for succession. Juliette
is
eventually banished to cleaning as well, but she uses her connections in
Mechanical and Supply to ensure that the journey is not as fatal as usual.
There are some editorial oddities [3] but overall the book is
well-written.
I've included "notes, citations and errata"
in a separate
post.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] If you'll pardon the pun.
[1] Again.
[1] For example, he doesn't seem to know about the verb form "had been", instead
using "were" everywhere and making the reader stumble and have to figure out
from context that he'd intended the non-continuous past participle. At
another point, he used "leeching" to indicate something leaking out
insidiously but that's a brand-new meaning of that word and, again, caused a
stumble. Even in his bits of code, he used single apostrophes for a unit of
dimension (feet) but then all of the characters acted as if he'd written
double apostrophes (inches). I wasted minutes trying to figure out if that
were some hidden meaning I'd overlooked, but had to come to the conclusion
that it was just a pretty grievous editorial oversight.
]]>