42

Humanizing a legend's heroic ability to overcome adversity by continuing to excel at his chosen profession through the suppression of his justified temper, thereby demonstrating how the strength of a ground breaking individual (Jackie Robinson) can benefit his or her collective generally, adopting a subtle resilient egalitarian sense of fair play to tell its tale, egalitarian in the sense of equal opportunity for all, even those whose private indiscretions conflicted with the Brooklyn Dodger's public image, Brian Helgeland's 42 cooperatively merges the particular and the universal by accentuating the economic benefits of their synthesis, without hesitating to showcase the hardships endured.

It's persons like Jackie Robinson who paved the way for a more inclusive society, for something much more openminded.

It's this simple.

I don't care if you're black or white, English or French, female or male, gay or straight, wealthy or homeless, there are members from each of these groups with whom I will get along, others with whom I will not, I'm going to try to get along with everyone and analyze each specific social interaction individually, taking economic, educational, cultural and professional factors into account, while keeping the door open for differing perceptions, a conclusion kept in a state of permanent flux, nurtured by reading Proust, to act ethically, and collectively, in the postmodern world.

I don't think I have the courage or the capabilities of a Jackie Robinson, very few people do.

I can never know what it's like to have to deal with that kind of penetrating pernicious prejudice.

I can act ethically however in order to help others to not have to deal with it either.

It's just good business sense.

R/evolution

The evidence seems clear to me.

Even if the earth's oceans are acidifying at a slower pace than that suggested in Rob Stewart's documentary R/evolution, they're still acidifying at an alarming rate, the impacts of which, if ignored, could significantly threaten future generations, and are significantly threatening ours.

The impulse to receive immediate gratification theoretically drives a lot of decision making.

Some of these systemic problems require 400 as opposed to 5 year plans, however.

But if such plans are not universally agreed to, soon, as the vast majority of climate change scientists contend, polar bears aren't the only ones who'll be having trouble surviving the upcoming centuries.

Climate change scientists equal Copernicus.

Big business's voracious desire for continuously increasing profits, not just profits, they have to be continuously increasing, equals the religious pricks who killed Copernicus.

Thankfully there are currently millions of logical Copernicans who have evidence to clearly state their convincing case.

It's not a socialist plot, it's coherent global strategic planning.

Disastrously, influential global warming denying charlatans have deep pockets, well-financed lobbyists, and, perhaps, an obsession with tricking people into believing in nonsense like the rapture.

Taking on the coal industry isn't easy (don't know if the coal industry [or if anyone] has an obsession with tricking people into believing in nonsense like the rapture, but the coal industry and the tar sands are examined in R/evolution).

What happens to all the people it currently employs if coal is eliminated as a source of energy?

Well, if alternatives to coal can be integrated, why not set up industries to replace it in the effected towns and train the employees to work within them.

Everyone keeps their jobs and no one has to move.

R/evolution points out that if we change the way we do business by adopting environmentally friendly models, the resultant decrease in profits will be insignificant and the über-capitalists can continue to make massive profits, which makes this situation all the more exasperating since it's obvious that it's an ideological battle, one side willing to risk existence to prove that the untethered pursuit of wealth is the best possible socioeconomic matrix, the other, armed with close to unanimous erudite scientific evidence-based support, not fantastic castles in the sky, suggesting that a slight decrease in profits will save existence, labelled fools, extremists, and crackpots consequently, because they know God's not going to clean-up this mess.

Science has solutions to these problems.

If God exists, he or she could be counting on us to use science to take care of the planet.

If we can't take care of our planet, how can he or she expect us to manage our environments in the afterlife?

Canada's conservative government won't even let scientists discuss their research in public.

Thomas Mulcair risked everything when he quit Québec's Provincial Liberal Party because of a matter of environmental principle.

Frustrated with politics? Jaded? Unconcerned?

I bet he was too.

But he kept going, kept fighting, and found a New Democratic model.

Which works. Is working. And will continue to work.

For a more just society.

L'homme qui rit

A child is grossly deformed and abandoned.

Chance intervenes, providing shelter, friendship and nourishment.

The passage of congenial times nurtures love and success, swathed within an impoverished yet self-sufficient itinerant tenacity, innocent yet cunning, diligent and stable.

Until historical alignments introduce an aristocratic heritage whose peers and privileges threaten his sense of balance.

But these very same entitlements present means, pretentious and vitriolic though they may be, through which that sense's desire for social justice can institute positive change, in pre-revolutionary France.

L'homme qui rit is more of a kid's film, filled with obvious larger-than-life stereotypical depictions situated within a maudlin yet tear-jerking realistic fairy tale, but it does function as a contemporary allegory for democratic citizens who lack wealth but still wish to use their (available) political channels to influence current affairs, such as the environmental footprint of big business.

It's difficult.

It's daunting.

And seemingly impossible.

Unless you take into consideration the work of organizations like Avaaz and/or what's currently taking place in highly industrialized nations like Germany, whose decision to replace all of its nuclear reactors with environmentally sustainable technologies should be applauded.

It can be done.

It's being done.

Canada can do similar things.

If it's intent on moving forward.

Trance

Establishing an historical distinction regarding old and new security precautions taken to protect precious paintings during auctions, right-off-the-bat, thereby foreshadowing both the ways in which Danny Boyle's career has progressed from Shallow Grave to Trance and its contemporary utilitarian utilization of amnesia and hypnosis, narrative tools which frequently showed up in the television shows I watched during my youth, and have possibly been used regularly since then, although I may be blowing the memory out of proportion, Trance has traditional motifs, enticements and motivations (find the painting and cash in) which are thrust into a coherent mesmerizing fugacious distillery, whose economic and romantic film noiresque reversals, complete with critical comments concerning legal structures that prevent female victims of violence from obtaining justice, fitting in relation to the recent horrific suicide of Nova Scotia's beautiful young Rehtaeh Parsons, its diversified ambient tonal modifications, young professional addiction seeks underground remedies for financial miscalculations (gambling debt) which in turn threaten the livelihoods of everyone involved, upend expected outcomes, as if Boyle is precisely aware of what you require him to elucidate, apart from the absent review of Simon's (James McAvoy) extracurricular activities, which I thought would have fit considering that he's responsible for safekeeping 25 million dollar works of art (is that how much it cost to make this film?), most likely because I just saw New World, a review which wouldn't have fit well anyways due to the dense nature of Trance's convolutions (another layer within would have made the brew too lucidly phantasmagorical), destined diagnostic discombobulating detoxification, a less analytical form of Inception, but, if they had found a way, amidst the sex and the greed and the artifice, to stick to the opening sequence more devoutly, while paying the same meticulous attention to unnecessary yet compelling details, I would have perhaps given it a rating of 9.7 instead of 9.4, which really doesn't make much difference.

New World

Not sure whether Hoon-jung Park looked to The Godfather when writing and directing New World, but I think the comparison warrants consideration.

I'm not saying the film will have the same impact on South Korean audiences as The Godfather had on North American ones, just mean that elements of its matrix, components of its design, seem to have been intelligently incorporated into New World's script, and the result is a strong examination of an individual's struggle within two worlds, those being an underground criminal organization seeking corporate status and the police who are trying to in/directly influence them.

In Settai the police and the smugglers neutralize each other leaving the protagonists free to explore alternative means of expression.

This is not a comedy, however, it's a voracious rampant demented hypermasculinized scripture, complete with fierce consequences and mortal outcomes, a strict pressurized treacherous contemplation wherein expendable means and sought after ends conspicuously strive for psychological dominion.

Or survival.

Like The Godfather, the violence is omnipresent yet detained, erupting in sophisticatedly timed bursts, unlike what the previews and opening sequence would have you believe.

Both worlds suffer from a lack of abundant institutional active feminine counterbalances whose integral presence would theoretically decrease the violence.

The 50/50 split is best case.

Those fighting to lead aren't from the same family but their characters grow and expand throughout, overcoming stock critiques often easily launched at such personas.

The ending's totally Michael Corleone and less predictable than The Godfather's.

The law enforcement dimension arguably pushes New World past The Godfather, adding an additional layer of consistent threatening complications to the story, well thought out and cripplingly jaded, symbiotically existing with the syndicate which explodes from the inside to the contrary.

I suppose that's the purpose of roughing up the police photographers early on. In The Godfather, that's it, end of scene, in New World, Detective Kang (Min-sik Choi) steps in and asserts New World's respectful intertextual alternative outlet.

While revelling in his unrestrained cheek.

A new Godfather outlet.

Respectful and alternative to The Godfather, not a respectful alternative new outlet.

This outlet's been around forever.

Detective Kang reminded me of Columbo.

A prick Columbo.

A more-of-a-prick Columbo.

Columbo with additional responsibilities.

He's very Columboie.

Settai

Writer John Mahendran has packed a plethora of modest jocose sensationalizations into Settai's script, subtly and frankly working within while deconstructing what I'm assuming are Bollywood tropes, the singing and the dancing, always with the singing and the dancing, while intricately laying the foundations for an alternative journalistic cultural outlet, practically yet scatologically introducing capitalistic sentiments (the scoundrel of the film's triumvirate of struggling unmarried young male professionals knows how to find money but suffers from recurring bowel disruptions throughout), as well as a host of additional interconnected motivations.

The film is deep.

Fidelity, friendship, professional integrity, authenticity, keeping up with the Joneses, love, economics, other things, all of these concurrent psychological influences are mischievously intertwined, made to seem ridiculous yet pertinent, in an attempt to encourage change from within.

I think.

For instance, one of the first scenes shows a song about to be sung by gaudy performers equipped with robotic tigers but we then discover that it's just being played on a television screen in an airport and has nothing directly to do with the film.

Hence, I thought there would be less singing and dancing.

There is still a lot of singing and dancing but one number does include flaming sitars.

They're not really flaming, it's more like gigantic electric sparks are shooting forth from their instrumental breadth, but still, a nice touch.

The distinction between quality and quantity appears again and again as mistakes introduce obstacles the surmounting of which proves empowering.

Reminded me of my idea to start a new National monthly periodical, 25% First Nations, 25% Francophone, 25% Anglophone, 25% Allophone.

Something like Multicultural Mayhem.

Not really the title I'm thinking of.

I don't have a title.

Just need some capital.

And some contacts.

And some colleagues.

And a market.

And a title.

Looks like I may have to learn to sing and dance.

Cool flick.

G. I. Joe: Retaliation

Better than the first G.I. Joe film.

And a good episode of G.I. Joe.

Cobra's back and still tryin' to take over the world.

The Joes are betrayed and have to head to the underground for cover.

They're able to find this cover quite easily and confidently stroll around in broad daylight even though the American government, whom Cobra has infiltrated, is looking for them.

But like I said, it's a good episode of G.I. Joe, following a format which employs improbability as a cogent asset in order to conceal their recruitment tactics.

There is a clever scene which neutralizes attempts to analyze the film following the opening credits, wherein Duke (Channing Tatum) and Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) are found playing militaristic video games, a scene whose immediacy implies that the film has been made in good fun and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Message received.

Other highlights include the best poppy condensation of a strategical debate I've seen in a while, which is simultaneously bland, comic, disconcerting and instructive, plus Roadblock and Duke consistently dissect their discussions while conversing.

Agents of Cobra do not.

Cobra's not hip to Web 2.0 applications.

Adam Reed is hands down the master of humorous observational conversational commentary.

Adam Reed did not write G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

And would not have ruined the affect by introducing a remark endemic to the Terminator series in the film's concluding moments.

In such moments, you synthesize your intertextual research into a franchise specific all-encompassing one-liner.

Ad infinitum.

Olympus Has Fallen

An otherwise dismissible action flick makes a good point regarding teamwork that can be transferred to sporting domains, amongst others, at least.

The point under examination concerns the removal of an esteemed member of the President's (Aaron Eckhart) personal security force after exceptional naturalistic circumstances result in the death of his wife.

At Christmas.

The esteemed member's presence serves as a constant reminder of the misfortune and he therefore must find work elsewhere.

When your team loses a big game or your strategic plan fails to generate predicted revenues there seems to be a prominent cultural desire to attach blame to a specific individual and then punish them accordingly.

Obviously when the game is lost or the revenues fall short there's a period where what could have been disrupts the cheery flow of social relations but shortly thereafter things (often) return to normal.

You still have an experienced team, and, obviously again, due to the tenacity of the competition you're up against, can't win all the time.

New deals are made.

Partnerships negotiated.

Adjustments taken into consideration.

And another NFL/CFL season begins.

Or BlackBerry takes back its former share of the market.

In Olympus Has Fallen, a rather downcast despondent far too rigid Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) (he's no John McClane [not that everyone needs to be like John McClane but he's a good model {different from the Kurt Russell model/which I loved in The Thing\}]) loses his job only to discover later on that he's the only shot the United States's got to prevent a terrorist lunatic from starting a war between the Koreas.

If he had still been on the job the terrorists may have never gotten a leg up.

Although if they had never let him go he would not have avoided the initial onslaught after which he (miraculously) finds himself in a position to disintegrate their network.

When the unexpected intervenes those who failed to find an exceptional solution within shocking unpredictable circumstances and were consequentially let go find the opportunity to prove their worth as the natural becomes corporeal and its features pursue mad personal goals whose existence presents the criteria for a successful occupational reintegration.

Perhaps that isn't a good teamwork related point.

Not a very good movie either.

Ugh.

Caesar Must Die

The real's incarcerated dominion finds itself transformed into a Shakespearian atemporal time warp whose interpersonal intertextual transhistorical vertices passionately bridge a parochial rubicon.

The play within the play transports the film into a concrete surreal hyper-reactive microcosmology, crime, punishment, serendipity, urbanity, patiently orchestrated by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, enacted by denizens of the damned.

As the conception is corporealized manifested methodologies collaboratively clash while their situational subject matter is acutely fumigated.

Artistic adornments and monumental minutiae see their beings metamorphically idealized as the process of creation extends its interdimensional limits.

Memories forge an objective counterbalance.

Brutus and Cassius must flee.

That is how it was written.

More than a thousand years after the fact.

A roguish retinue theatrically matriculates as an artistic presence brings semantics to life.

In/transitively.