The Midnight Sky

What to make of the future?

Some forecasts are incredibly grim.

They've been made by the brightest minds in the business, however, and predict an increasing preponderance of natural disasters.

Judging by the ways in which natural disasters have harrowingly increased in recent decades, and how the planet continues to rapidly warm, it seems likely that they're correct, even if it's rather depressing to consistently think about it.

Steps clearly need to be taken to halt the increasing preponderance of natural disasters (and save koalas), and the last I heard Canada was on track to meet its Paris Accord targets, but what else needs to be done beyond international treaties, and how do we save the planet while keeping people working?

That seems to be the most serious question facing responsible politicians these days, to me anyways, how do we save the planet while keeping people working?, I resolutely want to see the effects of global warming rapidly decrease, but it would also be nice to avoid mass unemployment at the same time.

I don't want to live under totalitarian lockdown conditions until the Earth cools either. I've never experienced anything worse than this necessary lockdown. The sooner vaccinations bring it to an end the better.

Another serious problem we face regards how reliant contemporary infrastructure is on oil. So much of the economy is dependent on oil; how do you suddenly redesign everything?

Factories, cars, toys, houses, industrial equipment, oil, it's mind-boggling how much plastic you take home sometimes when you order takeout, and if you don't like cooking, the problem intensifies.

I personally think industry needs to find a way to transition to an environmentally friendly economy, it has the resources and the means to make such a transition, but seems to uniformly lack the will.

I suppose that will never happen but if it did there would be so much less conflict. And so many people could continue to keep productively working, managing the tectonic shift.

Governments can legislate transitions but it's only a matter of time before the Republicans are elected again. If they miraculously started taking global warming seriously, cultivated hope would significantly increase.

But this is so grim and serious, people still have to go about living and working, and there's a great scene in The Midnight Sky where that's precisely what astronauts do (cool Netflix film).

On one of the coolest spaceships I've ever seen, three astronauts head out into space to fix something, and suddenly find themselves listening to music, to none other than the lively Sweet Caroline. 

At first I was confused by the scene, it seemed bizarre to suddenly take 10 minutes to focus on fixing something, when so many other things were happening, I admit, I was initially skeptical. 

But then I realized it patiently captured the fluid vivacious nature of teamwork, how wonderful it is to work while listening to music, you don't see that focused on too often in film.

Wouldn't industry still own practically everything if it transitioned to a green economy? Is it worried about losing power and influence? Even with all those trillions?

It'll be interesting to see what happens regardless, glad things seem on track in most of Canada anyways.

Even if the vaccinations are taking a while to roll out.

Remember, many countries aren't much bigger than New Brunswick (I imagine).

And how much easier it would be to vaccinate 30-60 million people if they lived together tightly packed into New Brunswick. 

The Monuments Men

To enter a war zone with inadequate training and hardly any ground support with the goal of retrieving precious works of art from Nazi thugs, risking everything to return them to their rightful owners, this is how George Clooney's The Monuments Men proceeds, decadently daring and cluelessly clever, exoterically unreeling, with far too strong a sense of invincibility.

It's a great idea but it's difficult to treat Monuments Men like a serious war film.

War films need to be serious.

World War II's more of an afterthought than an omnipresence within and although the high spirits of the tangential team are endearing, in war films the war needs to be present in each and every nanoframe, every aspect scrutinizing the terror.

True, such films often include moments where the struggling combatants think of home or let loose for a while, but their despair still ominously flows.

Monuments Men sort of reverses this standard, the film occasionally focusing on the war while it seems like the combatants never left home, and, while it's noteworthy that the film doesn't play by the book, it falls flat throughout.

I applaud what it sets out to do however.

It's simple and easy to follow, providing a clear sensible message: great works of art chronicle and catalogue a people's historical and contemporary conditions, and any attempts to pilfer this aspect of a culture is universally unacceptable, to be resolutely fought against even if the impracticality of fighting against it directly during an actual war is daunting, that fight being artistic in its pursuits nevertheless.

By stating this message in terms that can be easily understood, Monuments Men will hopefully encourage many latent art lovers to cultivate their interests more actively.

One scene is commendable too, when James Granger (Matt Damon) returns a stolen painting to the house where it once belonged, even though the homeowners may never return, this scene defining a post-war rebuilding stage's genesis, highlighting how difficult it must be to know where to begin.

It passes by far too quickly.

Loved the Granger.

Up in the Air

Flying high, city to city, your life in a suitcase, firing people for a living, aware of every hotel/car rental/flight deal in the USA, trying to save up 10 million air miles, lovin' it. That just about sums up Ryan Bingham's (George Clooney) life in Jason Reitman's new film Up in the Air, a romantic comedy that probes the depths of the resolute "can't be tied down" bachelor. Bingham works for a company that flies its workhorses around the country 24/7 firing people for firms who don't have the gusto to do it themselves. But technological complications arise in the form of a lively young graduate (Anna Kendrick as Natalie Keener) whose videoconferencing ambitions threaten Bingham's comfortable lifestyle. But before taking her revolutionary ideas to heart, manager Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman) decides she needs to learn the ropes herself and sends her "on the road" with the veteran Bingham. During their trip, experience meets education in an age-old rivalry designed to test the limits of both their idealistic life plans. Throw Bingham's love interest Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) into the mix, along with a troublesome wedding, and you have a multi-layered quizzical examination of the platonic nature of values, thoroughly saturated with longstanding larks.

A thoughtful, entertaining, somewhat unpredictable story, Up in the Air demonstrates how things work out when they don't work out while deconstructing the concept of love. Whether or not it considers the subjective life to be ideal is up for debate insofar as its heartbroken protagonist sustains his uncommitted lifestyle by suavely spreading misery as the crow flies.