Mo' Better Blues

A resourceful mother expeditiously seeks potential employment for her talented son, and wisely purchases a musical instrument for him to learn to dynamically play.

It means a bit less free time but he puts in the hours and develops a style, which transforms into a sought after act on the New York scene several years later.

He becomes a renowned band leader playing each night at a fashionable club, with a solid group deftly backing him up, and versatile friends animately adoring.

Trouble's a' brewin' nevertheless his manager's unable to renegotiate their contract, and they could be making so much more considering how many people come nightly to see them.

His saxophone player's just as good as he is too if not better they make quite the team, but like so many other famous acts with two leading men, conflict arises as egos exasperate. 

Gambling's a big issue too and that very same manager gets in way too deep.

The pressure, the rivalries, the contract, the romance.

Everything suddenly comes crashing down.  

Band conflicts didn't make sense to me when I was really young and I always loved it when they held it together, or didn't frequently change their line-ups, which I briefly studied in a Rock'n'Roll Encyclopedia. 

Pink Floyd's leading men held it together for so long, The Guess Who for a shorter time period, The Beatles making the most of their time together, Jagger and Richards only briefly splitting up (Union by Yes unavailable on Apple Music). 

The Benny Goodman Jazz Quartet can't be beat in my opinion. What incredibly quick inspired jams! I've never heard anything like it. Lionel Hampton doing so well with his own bands too. 

Playing cards can be a lot of fun but I would recommend not making it your principal goal, unless you have no responsibilities or bills, and don't really mind if the house always wins. 

I'm not saying you can't win at a casino but you should intently study before making your bets.

There are quite a few books that can help.

And I imagine hundreds of YouTube videos.

But still even then the odds favour the house but on one special might you might just get that lucky.

If you want to bet on sports, just practice beforehand.

You can easily find out if you know what you're doing.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

Lost, adrift, on the vast imposing interminable Pacific, rage erupting, thirst infuriating, until rescue emerges, with aloof repose. 

Douglas is taken to an isolated island where he's given time to rest and recuperate, still taken aback when he distressingly notices, that his room's been tightly locked down.

Not one to embrace incoherency, he soon picks the inordinate lock, and begins spying on the strange inhabitants as they experimentally express themselves. 

But lo and cross-breedingly behold, he's rather shocked to invariably find, that the secluded scientists working on the island, have created a colony of industrious mutants.

He tries to expediently escape but finds himself cut off from aquatic crafts, then chaotically immersed in a self-contained world presided over by a distant demagogue. 

It turns out he's applied his genius to the novel creation of a forbidden realm, wherein which beasts must cast off their ways and politely live like civilized humans. 

Unfortunately, order is upheld through the authoritarian dissemination of pain, each hybrid animal arrhythmically attached to a remote control which punishes disobedience. 

For most of the modest citizens the rules aren't particularly hard to follow.

But some question Moreau's civility.

And covet his daunting absolute impetus. 

Ah the perfect world idealistically enrapturing innate truth and justice, perhaps even flourishing here and there at times before newfound tensions and jealousies disrupt things. 

A logical world delectably defining codes of conduct and cerebral sentiments, through which harmony and balance are perennially restored through the judicious elevation of enlivening discipline. 

Alas, illustrious logic and reified reasonability don't prosper unchallenged, and the people lacking control of the spirited unity seek the recodification of the rules and regulations. 

Often trying to make a complicated system too simple (politics), or a simple system too complicated (commerce), while prohibiting the attainment of bountiful resources, the accumulation of which would pacify many.

But not all, the desire for power madly drives the overly ambitious to fits of frenzy.

Moreau's island destroyed and reconstructed every day.

Ingenious creation.

Dispersed manifold.

Spiderhead

The pursuit of manufactured obedience follows the pharmaceutical path, as Spiderhead's solo unattached dismal warden despotically pursues reckless inactivity. 

Unsupervised with serious responsibility he develops several potential new drugs, and tests them on his prison's inmates every decision he makes of his own free will.

Fret not concerned enthused viewer, he wants to keep things friendly and fun, and even strikes up acquaintances with his test subjects while becoming addicted to the drugs himself.

They're far off so far away inimically isolated from spirited criticism, idyllic mad spontaneous digressions only provocatively questioned by one rogue assistant. 

Seeking to make billions on joy and happiness not to mention free form conversation, he still can't dishonour discreet somnambulism with soporific sequestered sedulity. 

Problem: to make sure the obedience drug works he needs to challenge ethical parameters, and see if people will do horrifying things simply because they've been recommended.

Thus, he convinces a test subject to administer his "paranoia" drug to another, but "paranoia" isn't really the right word, it rather encourages excessive terror. 

The subject's driven to suicide after the dose is accidentally augmented. 

But genuine guilt indeed manifests.

With the mass megalomania in jeopardy. 

Here we go again with the pursuit of hegemony unilaterally applied, attempting to accomplish sadistic ends to alarmingly overwhelm free choice and expression.

Odd how so many people spend so much time consuming arts and entertainment, while also cutting down creative synergies, the 1970s and David Bowie were miracles.

The irony let loose in Spiderhead is that independence itself seeks mindless automatons, who'll listen and follow the guidance of whomever no matter what the proactive cost.

Like the dreamy demagogue preaching equality who locks everything down after the revolution, Abnesti proceeds to definitively ensure no one else like him will ever co-exist. 

As others have likely suggested, is it not better to mal/adroitly attune, independent instincts to constructive endeavours to promote diversity and innovation?

Without such inherent expression does decay not metastasize with fetid impersonality, and prevent the development of sundry alternatives from multivariably delineating enchanted metamorphosis? 

Never stop writing poems just because you're convinced someone else is better. 

Keep writing absurdity ad infinitum. 

Who cares if no one else is interested?

Alienoid

Imprudence exceedingly deteriorates an unorthodox prison constructed by aliens, when a particularly rebellious inmate is radically set free by robotic insurgents (hopefully their next stop's Russia around this time last week!). 

The jail consists of human hosts randomly chosen due to time constraints, the extraterrestrials placed within their bodies and left there (theoretically) dormant to slowly fade.

To make them more difficult to locate different time periods are meticulously mobilized, aliens resting in different bodies everlasting throughout time. 

Obsessions with magic periodically erupting should an alien escape two cyborgesque guardians arrive, their remarkably fluid technology enabling atemporal matriculate moxie. 

In the opening moments, one such innovative captive escapes, chaotically perishing in the ensuing confrontation, her host's baby daughter left alone and helpless, her lifeforce still indicating rampant resonance.

The guardians take her back to the present and improvisationally raise her as best they can, Yi-an (Kim Tae-Ri/Choi Yu-ri) slowly figuring things out as she ages, a unique inquisitive non-traditional childhood.

But the aforementioned shipment of criminal aliens eventually arrives to usurp and challenge. 

Proving too volatile for the resilient guardians.

Who can only defeat them through the passage of time.

That would be cool to have a special device which lithely facilitated forbidden time travel, not only to voyage to different times and observe, but also to hide vital treasures throughout history.

Divergent ideas im/materially motivating newfound visions and corresponding networks, the careful management of ingenious works may modestly encourage enriching contemplation.

Should time munificently permit the dynastic emergence of cartotemporal relevance, consistent multilateral mechanisms may spellbindingly enchant with rhythmic reticence. 

Perhaps more suited to the far distant past classic literature and museums performing similar functions, different generations reimagining first contact to inspire insurrections within established genres. 

But Chinese and Japanese cultures developed so much earlier than European customs, and have cherished artistic traditions for thousands of years give or take a century.

Unfortunately, conflict and power-relations may have led to many incredible works being lost, but how many of them were also preserved?, I don't know much about such history.

Nevertheless, if you had something precious to be wondrously showcased without fear of theft, managing different personas throughout time may lucidly enable multifaceted continuums. 

Perhaps another goal for alchemists should they discover the elixir of life.

Too complicated for me I'm afraid.

I thought Alienoid was amazing (with Twin Peaks characters).

*Looking forward to the recently released sequel.  

Athena

A chilling video is released depicting police violence in an unsettled town, where tensions run high and misperceptions embroil as many hardworking people just try to earn a steady living.

A noted family takes opposing sides after it's announced their brother was murdered, Abdel (Dali Benssalah), a celebrated war her who works for the police, urging calm, Karim (Sami Slimane), his volatile younger sibling, suddenly erupting with insurgent fury.

He leads a group of friends into a local police station which they ransack, taking the weapons back to an apartment complex where they prepare for a wild confrontation.

The police show up in force as similar uprisings break out around France, people tired of the reckless violence taking matters into their own chaotic hands.

But it soon becomes apparent that the video was staged by sadistic members of the belligerent far right.

Attempting to start a race war to further their mad agenda (with Google's Magic Eraser?).

Easily facilitated by the lack of oversight on social media. 

It's a disastrous grim scenario hypothetically engaged with extremist tensions, that points out the necessity of police restraint, and the overarching danger of unhinged fake news.

The news is much more healthy in a widespread differentiated spectrum, where sundry journalists are committed to the truth and manifold independent papers fact check ad infinitum. 

In Canada, Bell Media just cut another 4,800 jobs from its shrinking mainstream newsroom, meaning even fewer people with be responsible for the official news, the smaller the number, the greater room for error. 

And as a lack of trust emerges it's much harder to follow a small minority viewpoint, which indubitably pursues its own interests, the news should be expanding, not contracting.

It is expanding online with another 4,800 people now looking for work, some of the them may have to criticize vaccines or promote electoral fraud to pay the bills, hopefully not, but those stories aren't going away.

Athena takes a hard-hitting look at the inherent dangers of provocative intrigue, and the ways in which honest hard-working citizens have their lives torn asunder by base collusion.

Fact check your sources and be patient sometimes it takes a while for a story to unfold.

There are new media outlets currently blossoming who still respect the truth as their modus operandi (like the National Observer)(nothing associated with Trump). 

Note: they aren't trying to start a race war.

And they can take it when they lose an election.

*Athena is the best film I've seen so far on Netflix. Super impressed for sure. It could have played theatres no doubt. And found a huge receptive audience (like it probably has on Netflix too). 

Nomadland

An entire town picks up and moves after the mine shuts down after 80 years, the rural location never resourcefully blossoming into a multi-integrated industrious locale.

What do the reliable people who have lived their whole lives there do however, it's a bit of an unsettling preponderancy especially considering the magnetic wilderness.

Fern (Francs McDormand) tenaciously improvises to her new set of challenging economic circumstances, earning enough money to live off at different jobs, while taking deservéd time off in between.

Her husband passed away not long ago and she has no children or viable pension, she has family who are kind and sympathetic, but she's always prided herself on her independence. 

It's cool how the continental United States has so many warm regions during the winter months, and you can literally move from state to state throughout the progression of the solar year.

I suppose you could try to live in your car during a cold and provocative Canadian winter, but you'd have to spend a lot in gas to keep the heater running so much of the time.

Not only does Fern live the nomadic lifestyle she boldly defends it in critical arguments, democratically pointing out the rights of citizens who may not be as well of as those homeward bound.

Even when she's overwhelmed she doesn't hesitate to have her say, and isn't worried about spoiling the evening or what her in-laws may think later on.

A hesitant beau is interested (David Strathairn as Dave) and should have realized she's a heartbreaker.

Who loved that mining town.

And doesn't mind life on the road.

I don't want to recommend the nomadic lifestyle to the millions of people embracing bourgeois domesticity, I've found that what sounds appealing to me at times gets me into trouble when I start to advertise. 

But assuming that you're level-headed peeps who aren't going to drop everything because of an oddball blogger, I have to admit that I loved Nomadland's final moments, when Fern freely drives off into the mountains. 

Some people like the dynamic thrill of constant movement and unpredictable designs, their labyrinthine zigzagging ways non-traditionally motivating alternative economies. 

It often sounds like freedom to just live in your ride and travel the country, picking up work here and there as you go, assuming you don't have any responsibilities. 

You'd get to see so much of the continent as you productively roamed vigilantly throughout, there are thousands of places to visit, and wouldn't it be cool to see NFL and CFL games in every home city?

Fern chooses life on her own and as I watched I thought she was real.

It's tough to think that people her age still have to work.

You'd imagine we'd have cleared that up by now. 

*Geez Louise. This has nothing to do with the war in Palestine. I wrote it last week. There's a lot of rural industry in Canada so it's important for the different towns to integrate multidimensionally so people don't have to move (easier said than done). Honestly, I think Netanyahu's a butcher (as is Hamas), and his appeal to the stone age is making things infinitely worse, historically speaking. 🥲

Stillwater

A father whose tumultuous routine led to an awkward relationship with his struggling family (Matt Damon as William), is consumed with obsessive guilt several years later when his daughter's arrested (Abigail Breslin as Allison). 

She's found guilty of resonant murder and sent to prison near the coast of Marseille, her father visiting her there when he can, the flights expensive, work hard to find.

She emphatically proclaims her innocence and on his most recent visit reveals a clue, which gives him reemergent hope as he soon tries to get her case reopened. 

Obdurately blocked however by pressing realities within the law, he buckles-down and radically adjudicates by trying to find the suspect himself.

Problems: he doesn't speak French and is oblivious to local custom, he's also spent most of his life in the rural American mid-west and is generally uncertain as to how to proceed.

Moving forward nevertheless fate soon secures a definitive lead, and provides shelter and cultural refinement not to mention employment and domestic salvation. 

But to find the irascible murderer he may have to pay too high a price.

Caught between cultures and families. 

He instinctually reacts with western-style gusto. 

Expediently extemporary the ethical dilemmas contract and metastasize, no easy answers no glib illumination as a hard-boiled family deals with its own.

As newfound chances wholesomely radiate and enlivened parenthood intricately seasons, bad decisions still surreally occupy a bitter frustrated entombed consciousness. 

He's willing to risk everything he's gained on an assuréd probability which crosses the streams, if things work out, tout va bien toujours, if they fall apart, it's worse than worst case.

Not only that, it soon becomes apparent that his daughter's innocence is not that clear-cut, and that the investigation held in accordance may not have been led quite so far astray.

I wouldn't have taken such a risk new life's far too precious for improvised risk management, it does bring about the sought after ends, but they could have been achieved through less threatening means. 

In terms of a neo-western-film-noir mind*^*& Tom McCarthy's Stillwater internationally succeeds nonetheless.

Nothing quite like amoral gristle.

Destitute detritus.

Mid-winter mayhem. 

G-Loc

There's always the possibility of another ice age.

At times, as global heating seems to be presenting a scorching vituperative evaluation of technoprogress, as if fossil fuels were in fact the Earth's effervescent lifeblood which it was none too willing to freely disseminate, my thoughts counterintuitively stray to the other chaotic extreme, and wonder what brought about the last ice age, so many millennia ago?

We clearly weren't responsible, it must have had something to do with our distance from the sun, as if our orbit temperamentally expressed mad frigid interminable armageddon. 

Others clearly think this way as cinematically indicated by the icy G-Loc, which sees frozen wastes consume the Earth, as people desperately seek food and shelter.

Fortunately, as if a benevolent deity serendipitously sensed our grievous peril, a miraculous wormhole appeared at the same time, offering courageous peeps an interstellar lifeline, time passing at a different rate in the alternate dimension. 

Nevertheless, as if that very same deity's most clever rival awaited on the other side, humans were generally shunned by the resident Rheans who traditionally occupy that region of space.

In this tale, two fearsome individuals, one Earther (Stephen Moyer as Bran) and the other Rhean (Tala Gouveia as Ohsha), must learn to constructively work together or find themselves floating woebegone lost in space.

Ill-accustomed to habitual diplomacy their mutual trust comes at a sharp premium, as different cultures maladroitly clash with no apparent purpose but to illogically destroy.

A well-meaning spirited tale soulfully suited to contemporary times, as refugees from the Middle-East continue to flock to more peaceful regions.

Not to forget the troubled Rohingya who have been searching for homes for forever, these free peoples in need of compassion to end their death-defying plights.

G-Loc steps things up a notch and turns the entire planet into a refugee group, intergalactically headed for a far distant planet where no one has even ever heard of their freakin' species.

Perhaps hoping that a lack of knowledge may inspire sympathy for their personal legends, astral alchemy synchronously applied, to solar caravans in spatial deserts.

Of course, a distrustful government sees itself losing hold of its traditional hegemony, and soon finds ways to demonize the Earthers not unlike those presented in Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain.

Does it not seem much more cruel and horrifying when xenophobia is applied on a planetary scale, not simply between countries and continents, but rather to everyone existing on Earth?!

Why then must it be so problematic to peacefully aid weary refugee travellers?

There's a ton of room in Canada and Québec (look at the window when you're on a plane).

Assuming it doesn't get too cold.