Showing posts with label Remorse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Remorse. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Oppenheimer

Nuclear weapons are a horrible thing.

They're easily the most reckless anything anyone has ever created, and it's an international miracle the secrets of their creation have been kept under lock and key to this present day.

For a while it seemed like their manufacture would become a thing of the past, as Russia and the United States struck accord after accord, and seemed ready to cultivate lasting peace throughout a united interactive world, wherein which difference wasn't something to be feared, and absolutes were nothing more than sewage.

But this historical epoch is partially defining itself in opposition to the last 30 years, as Trump has arisen to challenge them, so instead of a brilliant film like Planet of the Apes (1968), which effectively obliterated arguments in their defence, we have Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which revels and glorifies in their creation, overlooking the ill-fated Planet of the Apes sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. 

Paying disingenuous lip service to the ways in which madmen can use them to coordinate mass destruction on a planetary scale, it instead introduces several powerful independent scientists, and examines various controversies as they jockey for position.

Thus, two prominent individuals see their reputations slowly ruined as the film bureaucratically concerns itself with bilateral character assassination, without really generating much character along the way, besides that associated with blind innocence and petty grievances. 

It's more like an academic paper with no sense of objectivity than a convincing film.

Prometheus taught the people to make fire so they could cook their own food and have warmth and entertainment.

Anyone who would have denied them such knowledge is certainly not worthy of divinity. 

Oppenheimer coordinated a team that built a nuclear weapon with the power to kill hundreds of thousands that select military officials can use hopefully only as a deterrent. 

Do you see how Prometheus is not like Oppenheimer? How the comparison is ridiculous?

It does seem more and more like Christopher Nolan is the military industrial complex's darling, as they note in Barbie, the patriarchy just hides its hegemony more effectively these days, and whereas Oliver Stone actually made an incredible film looking at the ways in which JFK's murder was covered up, Nolan's Oppenheimer creates a Republican rib roast to be saluted for years to come, while presumably catering to democratic sympathies (JFK didn't win best picture when it should have [Oliver Stone also made a film that lauded Edward Snowden, it didn't make the case for the mass institutional invasion of privacy through cellphones like Nolan did at the end of The Dark Knight]).

I used to have a friend who was nice to talk to but sometimes didn't take her meds, and thought she heard voices in the walls of people discussing this and that.

I tried to ease her mind when these thoughts would overwhelm her late at night, and even though nothing could convince her that the voices weren't real, the conversation helped lighten the anxious mood.

In turn, it was nice to have someone to talk to, to know someone who didn't quickly change their tune, to have a sympathetic yet mischievous outlook to clarify trajectories and nothing in particular.

She tolerated my French too and even taught me a couple of words. 

I like being nobody in Québec.

And I'll always love working and living there. 

Monday, August 26, 2013

Blackfish

Glad I don't work for Seaworld.

Seems to me, that if you capture a killer whale, and stick him or her in a bathtub for the rest of his or her life, forcing them to do ridiculous tricks thereafter, there are going to be problems, problems, problems, as the decades go by.

And if one of the orcas kills a trainer, you should release it back into the wild afterwards, making sure to warn current and future employees about the dangers of working with them, in order to mitigate future conflicts, if you don't decide to simply let them all go, to roam the ocean freely at their leisure.

But while working at Sealand formerly of Victoria, B.C., an orca named Tilikum did kill a trainer, Seaworld did then purchase him, they didn't let their trainers know about his problematic past, and he did kill again, what is your problem, Seaworld?

Documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite comprehensively examines Seaworld's business practices in Blackfish, expertly intertwining the plights of both orcas and workers, thereby synthesizing environmental and humanistic concerns, while chillingly interspersing promotional Seaworld commercials, in an attempt to help put a definitive end to socioenvironmental circus acts.

Obviously if you're working with orcas or bears or tigers you need to exercise caution at all times.

Obviously if you're employing people to work with them you have to warn them to exercise constant vigilance, and reevaluate your capitalistic considerations once life threatening patterns emerge.

For example, this whale killed someone. Be careful.

The animals might not understand how much stronger they are than humans and may end up killing someone during what they thought was harmless playtime.

They may also go mad after living in cages for years and grow tired of not receiving staple food allotments after failing to perform the perfect trick, and may seek to teach their trainers a lesson of their own.

Blackfish scientifically explores the nature of orcas and the evidence uniformly indicates that they are highly intelligent beings possessing complex emotional matrices, and strong family bonds.

Leave them in the ocean I say, and let them conduct their leviathanesque affairs unabated.

Whalewatching, a fun family friendly option during the right times of the year.

It's a wonderful thing seeing marine life actively and independently engaged.

Seaworld can recuperate lost profits by building an orca themed roller coaster.

Where people sit in killer whale trains.

And are splashed by artificial sea spray at some point during the ride.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Shame

Consumed and dominated by uncontrollable sexual desires which demand constant strategic salacious improvisations, Brandon Sullivan's (Michael Fassbender) unquenchable thirst for carnal pleasures is disproportionately interrupted by a visit from his little sister (Carey Mulligan as Sissy Sullivan).

Who, as it turns out, has no where else to go.

His private carnivalesque prurient pursuits must now adjust themselves to the potential impact of familial judgment and the threat of patronizing restraint. As it becomes clear that Sissy's economic circumstances are by no means self-sufficient, the resultant limitations psychologically materialize a contemptuous backlash which leads to a breakdown in their sustainable relations.

And a resurgent unfettered libidinous conflagration.

Shame works as an emotionless stark rigid character study which sociologically examines localized affects of satyriasis. Michael Fassbender's focused distant unattached self-absorbed performance seductively infuses Mr. Sullivan with a wantonly calculated individualistic purpose. Carey Mulligan's struggling confused desperate counterpoint functions as an effective curve.

Responsibilities bear their consequences in jolting destructive strikes whose unleashed immediate pressures instantaneously distill a sense of belonging.

Consequent reactions determine semantic interpretations incorporating previously manifested patterns built into historical socio-foundations established in relation to a kaleidoscopic point of view.

Director Steve McQueen's direct approach attempts to resist the interpretative labyrinth.

In so doing we're given the cold hard narrow unforgiving facts.

Which themselves impose additional limits on Brandon Sullivan's freedom.