Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

An ancient warrior fortunately comes across 10 vital rings which grant immortality, afterwards using his newfound power with invincible finesse on the field of battle (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung as Xu Wenwu).

Hundreds of years pass and the thrill of ruling loses its appeal, he begins to seek out myth and legend to discover alternative adventurous yields. 

He's led to a mythical forest reputed to nurture fascinating animals, whose unique supernatural existence endemically eclipses mortal agency.

Not that they likely wouldn't spiritedly co-exist with adorable hippos and freewheeling zebree, but having spent millennia secluded in wild embowerment it's difficult to determine how they may react.

Xu finds the entrance to their peaceful home but is mischievously prevented from entering, a feisty resident bluntly refusing his unexpected visitation (Fala Chen as Ying Li).

He slowly falls in love with her and she indeed with him, but he is forbidden from staying in the village, so the two depart for the outer world.

Children are born their family expands but Xu's enemies soon come calling, and take the life of his cherished bride which drives him into a chaotic fury.

Years later he believes he hears her voice behind a forbidden gate.

And swears to break her free.

Unaware he's tragically mistaken.

Shang-Chi's mythic secluded forest with its multidimensional peaceful species, immediately bring humble Ghibli to mind, and I wonder if Marvel and Ghibli influenced one another (Marvel Comic Books and eventually Marvel Film) over the bountiful contemporaneous years.

Or if legends of mythic forest villages gained more prominence as Asian populations expanded, the less forest the greater the mystery the more mythically profound the innovative narrative.

Thus, I may search for some books chronicling the development of forest myths in Asia, which perhaps refer to Ghibli and Marvel, that may be asking too much!

And perhaps stories need to be written of integral First Nations exceptionality, still at eternal play in the unexplored forests of Northern Canada.

So much to gingerly explore if only time and weather weren't pressing factors.

Experimental venturing June through September.

Novel expenditure come January. 

Just Mercy

It's clear enough that justice is a matter of guilt or innocence, the guilty party convicted for their crimes, the innocent individual eventually set free.

It's also clear that determining someone's guilt or innocence is a lengthy complex procedure, which takes multiple factors into account in order to assert the highest degree of reasonability.

These factors are subject to various interpretive procedures, presented by prosecutors and defence attorneys according to alternative plausible perspectives, each perspective like a contradictory ingredient in an opaque conflicting recipe, which is hopefully judged without bias, within the spirit of daring independence.

Different narratives emerge.

But which one is in fact correct?

Some cases are more complex than others, however, and Walter McMillian's (Jamie Foxx) conviction for murder in Just Mercy is presented as a serious perversion of justice, the evidence supporting his innocence both reasonable and overwhelming, as brave civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) has to go to great lengths to prove.

The world needs more lawyers like him.

He's harassed and humiliated for doing his job to the best of his abilities, because local law enforcement was more interested in locking someone up for the crime than actually finding the guilty individual.

Since they were unable to find the guilty individual, they arrested a prosperous African American, who had been bold enough to do his job well and earn a respectable living, by working hard and honestly persevering.

Serious roadblocks prevent his retrial from moving forward, but his lawyers are determined to see he has another day in court.

Their interactions add interpersonal integrity to the story which abounds with emotionally charged dialogue, dispassionately conveyed, to reflect bitter rational despondency.

Hope and hopelessness creatively converse within to highlight gross jurisprudent indecency, but the resilient lawyers care about truth, and won't back down in the face of disillusion.

Tim Blake Nelson (Ralph Myers) puts in a noteworthy performance as a felon who gave false testimony which led to McMillian's conviction, emanating a compelling presence on screen which complements that of Foxx, Jordan, and Brie Larson (Eva Ansley).

I haven't seen everything Foxx has done since Ray but his performance in Just Mercy reminded me why he once won an Oscar.

I hope films like Just Mercy and Dark Waters inspire practising and potential lawyers to keep fighting the honourable fight.

I know it's hard to remain hopeful sometimes.

But without hope there's just the abyss.

Tweeting relentlessly.

Calling the bravest most intelligent American service people dopes and babies.

It really is reminiscent of various depictions of Caligula.

Reckless callous abuses of power.

Blind unilateral engagement.

The Glass Castle

Lifelong freespirited learning clashes with a daughter's less romantic pending nuptials as social interaction is inquisitively utilized to vindicate love in Destin Daniel Cretton's The Glass Castle.

Jeannette's (Brie Larson) wild unpredictable upbringing inculcated desires to seek out stability.

But schmoozing high and dry has its manicured blemishes, and a life spent precisely calculating the whimsical and/or incisive and/or apt and/or deconstructive impact of every austerely crafted glance, blush, and/or statement, and/or, sterilely severs her invaluable absurd attachments.

Through an intermittent series of sustained past life remembrances we're feverishly introduced to a lovingly versatile chaotically constructive family, complete with self-destructive alcoholic husband, and tender angelic supportive wife.

Their interactions bluntly interweave the traumatic and the endearing to intergenerationally spread a gritty multiphasic aggregate across recent genealogical landscapes, in order to strengthen psychological shielding which counters antiseptic evaluations.

It's well done, joyously celebrating unrestrained freedom while heartbreakingly illustrating potential related consequences, the bohemians and the bourgeois culturally busking and(/or) burnishing, as a family unconditionally demonstrates what it means to love.

Unfortunately, Captain Fantastic was released not too long ago, and while The Glass Castle makes more of a polished mainstream fit, Captain is the more exciting film.

A new subgenre?

Watch the booze peeps!

I love having a drink when the working day is done, a couple more on the weekend, and having learned to drink moderately, I find I now enjoy a glass of red wine or a pint much more.

I believe I learned to do this through cultural osmosis, my definition of the phrase being "learning and/or adopting features of the new culture you find yourself living within without socially interacting with it that often."

I should have posted that phrase when it popped into my head years ago.

It's probably from the 19th century.

Bah!