Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

The Milagro Beanfield War

Competing interests divergently envision the possible future of a rural town, one striving to see the local populace flourish, the other secretly leaving them behind.

A family man hardworking and fed up decides to irrigate his land with forbidden water, suddenly changing the fortunes of the town as the impoverished people line up behind him.

The water had been reallocated for the lavish construction of a new land development, many residents having already sold out to the vested interests and swiftly left.

So many people don't want to leave though and dig in deep to defend their rights, seeking employment and inclusive strategies which sincerely enable lifelong habitation. 

They're old friends and newfound companions who have already found where they want to live, there's no desire to pick up and go to a different town and then start over.

Why not find steady jobs for them and dynamically include them in strategic plans, finding a place for schools and hospitals the next generation of crafty citizens?

Those kinds of leaders deserve respect the ones who genuinely care for the people of their town, and holistically look far ahead to a future that substantially includes them and their families.

The Milagro Beanfield War offers a crash course in multilateral civil conflict (there's even a sociologist), when the interests of struggling people are smugly dismissed with hard-hearted unconcern.

A former lawyer who became a journalist attempts to lead them even though he's jaded, a determined feisty knowledgeable mechanic consistently encouraging his strict resolve.

Imagine cutting off the water supply from impoverished farmers trying to feed their families, it's a bona fide human rights disaster so often ignored with lofty disgrace.

The well-financed powers-that-be are hoping they'll ignore the distressing changes, and won't exercise their democratic rights to firmly hold onto their courageous town.

Mutual respect for the townspeople and the developers can lead to sustainable economic interests, if people aren't trying to cheat one another and honestly agree to progressively work together.

Too bad so much of everything is inefficiently structured along distrustful lines, conversation, books, the cinema, religious differences, shopping, the news. 

There are times when things are less bitter and collective involvement leads to great change.

Like public schools and universal healthcare.

Democratic governments. 

Universal dynamism. 

Friday, June 9, 2023

The Hudsucker Proxy

Difficult to say what leads to success in business, if you've never really read anything about it or worked in the industry, although sundry films and series suggest cut-throat dispositions are indeed paramount, is there something to be said for such conceit?, I have to admit, it's far beyond me.

In The Hudsucker Proxy the opposite rings true as a mild-mannered mailroom dreamer moves up, to lead a million dollar company no less, with only a peculiar idea to back him (Tim Robbins as Norville Barnes). 

The company was doing well at the affluent time of its founder's tragic parting, but due to a willful irregularity, comes up for sale at the start of the next year.

Its shares are to be made public thereby preventing the Board of Directors from cashing in, unless they can diabolically decrease their value and then snatch them up before anyone else does.

Thus they hire Mr. Norville with the malevolent hope that he begets ruin, he does have unorthodox methods but his initial idea proves rather lucrative.

The Hula-Hoop in fact captures the fascination of an adoring public, and leads to acrimonious accolades from the foiled and irate distraught conspirators.

As time passes and opinions fluctuate will he be able to stay afloat?

Tumultuous tides trepidatious tenacity.

Inherent preposterous production.

What to do if harnessing miracles through spontaneous agile eclectic blunder, through the art of tantamount translation elucidating chill commercial thought?

It seems clear in Norville's case since his idea is direct and practical, but I imagine things could be much more abstruse if you require televisual or filmic structure.

It does seem somewhat odd that so much wealth can be gargantuanly generated, from such a simple idea even if adage and aphorism extol them.

You see the argument played out every day in democratic political venues across the land, study and learning consistently duelling with worldly knowledge upon the stage.

So many people work within the world that their crafty leadership no doubt feels, as if they deserve a certain percentage of the inspired decision making financed by government.

Their intellectual counterparts at times find it odd having to share the coveted spotlight, as they diversify through complication inevitably leading to brilliant foresight.

But democracy guarantees their privilege just as it lauds equal upstanding opportunity, who's to say who should hold the reins?, I myself prefer books and learning. 

Books and learning with practical knowledge gregariously bulwarked through realistic expenditure.

Sounds kind of like one Joe Biden.

Who seems to genuinely care. 

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Reversal of Fortune

Snap judgments based upon agitated reckonings lead to pejorative sensationalized repute in Barbet Schroeder's Reversal of Fortune.

How to make someone appear guilty without making it look like you're attempting to make someone appear guilty, if they are in fact not guilty?

If they are in fact not guilty, how do you convincingly make it look like someone has attempted to make them look guilty without looking as if they were attempting to make them look guilty, before cold judicial verdicts descend?

It's basic Columbo, the televisual and cinematic world worse off without a regular dose of Columbo, and its freewheeling composed articulate dishevelled discourse, perhaps channeled by Professor Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) and his team in this inclusion, which asks if maligned bourgeois sentiment has predetermined an aesthete's obituary?

It's certainly quite the team.

It's incredible how many people can come together to defend or prosecute, many of them working pro bono, out of devoted respect for the law.

Engrained malfeasance.

People in positions of power exploit that power since no one holds them to account, but then someone does, it seems obvious that they're guilty, and justice adjudicates, condemning the reckless individual.

But it's still quite the task, the required reading voluminously dissonant, to transform every link into a succinct gripping narrative no small feat albeit thrilling for a motivated legal team, in possession of the facts, and interpretive plausibility, expert testimony, meticulous mechanics, it must be like playing a stable integral role in a constantly shifting production, not improvised, still rehearsed, but unaware of specific counterarguments, the speculation part of the fun, bold jurisprudent research and development.

Reversal of Fortune takes place in such a frame as Claus von Bulow (Jeremy Irons) seeks legal counsel, he's been convicted once already, and his lawyer's none too sympathetic.

He takes the case though, assembles his team, and finds evidence which contradicts his assumptions.

Upon appeal, another round of judicial observation considers the alternative facts, and the second reading makes Claus seem as innocent as he was once thought definitively guilty, differing detailed composite accounts, instructive rhetorical consommé.

People observe thousands of minute details distilled into an accessible format that leads them to make claims which back up narrative threads.

Hoping there isn't some technical distortion.

While theatrically duelling in shades.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Rules Don't Apply

Sure and steady representatives of 1960s youth find themselves fetchingly employed in Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply, wherein an angelic songwriter with purist heart (Lily Collins as Marla Mabrey) and a loyal driver possessing patient ambition (Alden Ehrenreich as Frank Forbes) are caught between careers and courtships in the employment of Howard Hughes (Warren Beatty).

They're ever so cute.

Yet their employer, however so cunning in the face of adversity, however so adorable in his wild eccentricities, however so unpredictable in his unwavering caprice, however so devoted to reifying his dreams (eccentricity does not imply caprice!), even if he spends every waking nanosecond taking care of his responsibilities (wherein lies the eccentricity [when you work all the time suddenly an undeniable desire hits and you immediately must have that thing /often Denver Broncos related {this works better when you have employees who will bring you that thing |shopping online is changing this|}\]), can't be relied upon to simply do what's right, like a/n h/airline fracture, at critical moments, with destinies in overdrive, with futures notwithstanding.

That doesn't mean he doesn't remain endearing, as he's depicted in the film anyways, since he possesses an inextinguishable fancy free flame, which has come to be idealized in American cinema, with refined audacious tenacity.

Rules Don't Apply.

Young at heart, always.

I'm thinking about renting Cool Hand Luke.

Collins and Forbes romantically drill their way through Rules Don't Apply, frustrated in frenzy, synergistic straight shooters.

I can't say if the film's reminiscent of a cinematic golden age (I'm assuming many people associate such a phrase with the films of their youth and seeing it redefined is a matter of another generation reaching a specific age having made the right arguments), or trying to recapture the magic of watching movies (surprised this wasn't a Disney film), some ethics thrown in, a political struggle, a charismatic tycoon, Matthew Broderick (Levar Mathis), principles plucked im/pertinently, an appreciation for simple pleasures (burgers and fries), a story that could have seemed trite if left in less capable hands, with filmmakers who don't know how to both provoke and entertain, but it pulled me into its dazzling sashay with raw sincere wondrous precision, the split-second editing keeping things lively in the early going (Robin Gonsalves, Leslie Jones, F. Brian Scofield, Billy Weber), and even if it may not be one of my favourite films of the year, it still revitalized my love of going to the movies and writing about them more than any other.

There's a great sequence where the main characters are depicted doing something individually which simultaneously highlights their doubtful loneliness (content) as well as their sense of communal belonging (form), on the job, I suppose I'm a sucker for that kind of thing; poutine once a week you know; and the occasional root beer.