Chronicle of a Summer

Happiness can be difficult to find if you spend your time consistently looking for it, questions seeking to discover if you're happy often encouraging disgruntled malaise. 

A blissful state of visceral integration can immersively flourish if unacknowledged, the conscious interrogation of the waking dream potentially producing unsettling affects. 

In the final episode of the original Twin Peaks series Marcus Aurelius is quoted, Waste no time arguing what a good man should be, be one, so the saying goes, the meticulous depth into which ethical discussions sink often generating misery, if you're not interminably disposed they can go on ad infinitum. 

Attempting to apply the morose despondency to the lighthearted nonchalance often found when working, while attempting to inspire a higher state of awareness, often gets bogged down in manifold detail, and leads to greater confusion as opposed to widespread lucidity.

Simple solutions sweetly flowing with unobtrusive easy-to-follow-messages, can lead to more lasting results as melodramatically demonstrated by advertising. 

For the people who see through the ads and constantly feel aloof and cynical, a comprehensive literary bearing with lengthier more convincing arguments may help.

If they seek the dynamic realization of their arguments in a mass restructuring of postmodern society, they may find frustration routinely abounds as they spearhead colossal change.

If they can settle for elaborate books which imaginatively delineate alternative reconstructions, without radically attempting to implement their designs, if such designs demand shocking changes to the smoothly flowing status quo, and discuss things amongst themselves, they may find peace for a time, if they aren't just indefinitely accustomed to doom and gloom.

If they attempt to implement abstract theories that even they have trouble understanding, without thinking through the startling consequences the intense remodelling is bound to have, woe may be widely disseminated as we see happening in the United States these days, where stubborn idealistic governmental impositions are obstinately ruining a once robust economy.

If only things were certain like they seemed to be earlier on in life.

The more media you consume, the more jaded.

While happiness can't be found without consuming more media.

Unless you stop thinking about it.

Go with that flow. 

Stagecoach

A method of travel once widespread and common effectively navigating the wild frontier, transporting people 'cross rugged uninhabited tempestuous forbidden exhaustive terrain. 

The sturdy stagecoach led by agile beasts 🐎 resiliently determined to reach sundry locations, forthright and steady disalarming reliable stalwart steads industriously envisioned. 

Things were somewhat more divisive back then and uptight crusaders could run you out of town, in John Ford's Stagecoach indubitably indeed we find alternative dispositions hitching a ride.

The alcoholic doctor dipsomanically settles in serendipitously next to a whiskey salesperson, a notorious gambler respectful of gentility also joining the stealthy coach.

The journey will take them through hostile lands where the ancient citizens have not been consulted, the domain historically occupied by them their inherent disfavour no doubt justified.

The army will only follow the passengers for a relatively short distance before departing. 

The telegraph line has also been cut.

The resonant danger lurid and taunting.

I had the wrong idea about ye olde Stagecoach I thought it had more of a stiff upper lip, but several of the characters elaborately entwined don't necessarily follow paths straight and narrow.

I was surprised to see that the trusty John Wayne was playing an escaped convict in search of bloodshed, not a lawman or general or pilot just a lovestruck honest to God cool reckless kid.

Those in possession of non-traditional tendencies are given room to orthodoxly manoeuvre, the doctor abandoning liquor to deliver a baby, the lady of the night inspiring conjugal love.

The interrelations between the three cultures the Spanish and British and Native compatriots, are melodiously presented in ethereal song before troubling antipathies erupt once again.

I'd like to learn more about the 17th and 18th centuries and how often British peopled joined Native tribes.

I suspect it happened much more often than imagined.

Details perhaps found in the Library of Congress.

Until then compassionately note that Stagecoach is an entertaining reflection of the times.

Well beyond austere considerations. 

With a tenderhearted endearing finale.

Don't Look Up

Adam McKay's Don't Look Up picks up on a pesky political particular, the unfortunate despotic aspect of truth, as applied to commercial controversy.

As it's become plainly evident during the pandemic, at times truth does enter politics, void of cunning or incisive angles, just raw clear unimaginative data.

For the people willing to accept the truth value of the data, things remain rational and balanced, proceeding with impediments perhaps, but still reasonably and logically composed.

For those who doubt its legitimacy, or the well-meaning intent of the cultural guardians, the truth takes on a tyrannical aspect, however, and can effectively problematize polls and predictions as it honestly reveals frank shocking exposure.

The people in possession of the truth, in Don't Look Up's case two astronomers who discover a massive comet is going to crash into the Earth and destroy everything on the planet (Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy and Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky), may be somewhat confused when they attempt to share their findings, and discover a virtually impenetrable network of ridiculousness, wholeheartedly designed to fight off tyranny. 

You see, when people attempt to spread mass lies on an enormous scale the system usually works, and generates enough doubt and troubling dismay to prevent rampant mistruth from mendaciously enabling.

But what happens on the other end of the spectrum when something both serious and true genuinely emerges, and has to pass the elusive litmus which initially regards it as obnoxious madness?

The people in possession of the knowledge may not be media savvy, and may have difficulty with their newfound designations, like the scientists in Don't Look Up.

And as the media crushes their dreams and makes them appear like snake oil salespeople, it also crushes blind ambition seeking widespread banal influence.

It makes any effort to sincerely pursue anything seem dispiritingly grim (besides being a part of the media), and it's no wonder alternative websites have im/moderately matriculated. 

But I suppose most stories aren't adamantly concerned with doomsday, it's just a byproduct of the pandemic that can't help but transmit that aspect.

I thought Don't Look Up was a brilliant take on truth in media, or the commercial politics of truth, as applied to the less media savvy.

I'm wondering what people will think of it 50 years from now down the road.

It seems like it has a timeless quality.

Made by Netflix no less. 

Fisherman's Friends

Daily life twists and turns much as it always has in a small Cornish town, the local inhabitants full of stern comment bluntly mixed with jocose observation.

Not much has changed in recent centuries concerning work and the steadfast tide, the sea continuing to provide spry livelihoods for those rich in oceanic endeavour.

Record industry reps show up for a jaunt in the afternoon one sunshiny day, their activities irritating the townsfolk after they necessitate search and rescue.

But true to form they keep an ear open and discover an old school sound, fisherpeeps revitalizing age old melodies in newfound vibrant distinct bounds.

One remains after the lads depart to see if they're interested in a record deal, the singers responding with cheeky discord as he makes his lively pitch.

They're not to be won over swiftly so he must prove himself at sea, departing with them shortly thereafter bona fide recruitment pleas.

But his friends are having a laugh and don't intend to sign the band, which ruffles his feisty feathers since they've agreed to chant offhand.

He decides to go it alone and find another label who might like their sound.

Falling for village life. 

And a suspicious homegrown belle (Tuppence Middleton as Alwyn).

Fisherman's Friends celebrates traditional valour with bucolic pluck and sombre tenacity, the unwritten integrity of the spoken word as dearly vital as brave responsibility.

As brave as voting for Biden in Texas.

It's clear what will happen from the outset but that's entirely keeping with form, since a degree of predictability is to be expected from ancient scores.

A strong filmscape doesn't only include the wondrous novelties of the avant-garde, since democracy takes into account multivariable vast divergence.

It's not up to one or the other to uniformly evoke taste or style, since democracy is inherently diverse and such diversity upholds tradition.

Tradition itself isn't always as concrete as proponents would have you believe, libraries home to exceptional repositories of historical change and off-kilter mutation.

I imagine many people have traditions which they hold dear, and would change others posthaste if given the chance, the corresponding multifaceted dialectic robust with intrigue and grave indignation.

Ye olde tradition was once likely novel or as innovative as Zoom or the Dodo.

Biden himself is rich in tradition.

And clearly innovates with old school integrity.  

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

Men and women who go beyond and take risks to help their community get through difficult times, who care enough to try and set hardworking impoverished people up with the loans they need to simplify complicated cashflow problems, people like Thomas Sung, who saw that his community needed a bank, a bank which he then went about creating, as chronicled in Steve James's Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, Sung spent a huge chunk of his life assisting struggling immigrant families who had been rejected elsewhere, innovative families, whose loans rarely defaulted.

That's what statistics presented in the documentary precisely state, although they didn't prevent the Abacus Federal Savings Bank from being indicted for fraud.

After the 2008 financial crisis.

None of the gigantic American banks were tried in the fallout, instead, one small bank from New York's Chinatown was presumed guilty, and the government didn't even have much of a case.

Had crimes been committed at the bank?

Yes.

As the bank grew, Sung and members of his family eventually became executive managers, a reward for years of dedicated service, and their higher ranking positions slowly cut them off from ground level employees, as the years passed by.

They could monitor the bank's activities from higher up, but since they had less direct contact, it became easier for the unscrupulous to cheat them.

And a popular employee named Ken Yu did just that, along with many of the people for whom he secured loans.

As soon as his crimes came to light he was fired, but the damage had already been done.

Were the crimes committed at the bank significantly less serious than those committed by major American financial institutions?

Yes.

And whereas many of the loans approved by those institutions defaulted, only an extremely small statistically significant number of those approved by Abacus did as well.

Was there an attempt to scapegoat a small bank catering to an immigrant community for crimes committed by more formidable opponents?

It certainly looks that way, especially when you consider that none of the bigger banks were prosecuted, none, as in ye olde not a single one.

Who is Thomas Sung if not a first rate American who devoted his entire life, a life filled with countless self-sacrifices, to making the United States even greater?

Damaging his reputation and humiliating him and his family and his community in court was a cowardly act perpetrated by a lack of imagination.

It's as if he was targeted for his integrity by those who had none, The Dark Knight's Harvey Dent factor coming into play.

Fortunately he unyieldingly faced the charges and diligently proved his innocence.

One tough hombre.

An inspirational American.

Money Monster

Televisual luminosity, the centripetal cynosure dazzlingly captivating your attention for a sensationally scripted surefire thirty slash sixty, making all the right moves, gimmicky ingratiation, applying the research so you don't have to, don't have to do anything, besides bask in his or her cardiovascular charisma, as he or she blows off your steam, and insulatingly ensures you make the correct decision.

But correct decisions are not always made, and if the viewer has not cultivated a cogent degree of critical awareness, tragedy can strike leaving bitter grievances pending.

Jodie Foster's Money Monster exorcizes such a scenario as Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) loses his life savings following the guidance of Lee Gates's (George Clooney) networked investment extravaganza, and vengefully responds by taking his outputs hostage.

Live in real time.

Yet, as it becomes apparent that foul play may have been involved in the dealings of the company Gates lauded (IBIS Global Capital), the two begin to forge an investigatory friendship, hoping to reveal the truth, thereby saving both their good names.

Both!

The result is an entertaining heartwarming yet woeful examination of fraud, the broadcasters functioning like bourgeois intermediaries between the penniless and the plutocrats, impoverished angst voicing its anguish, malevolent miscalculations haunting the residue.

It had the opportunity to elaborately interrogate the dire financial predicaments many Americans find themselves in but only really touched the surface, focusing more of its attention on Gates's shock.

At one point you see Budwell passionately pleading on camera but you don't hear what he's saying as Gates's reaction is martyred.

Budwell has gone way too far but he could have been evidenced as more of a victim than a miscreant.

Should Chomsky have been consulted?

Most definitely yes.

The audiences watching Budwell's stand don't add much either. If individual members had been given personalities throughout, additional layers of reflective commentaries would have been added, like a web 2.0 factor.

Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) and Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) do add level-headed managerial insights however, holding things together, interactively mediating and sleuthing.

Not as hard-hitting as I thought it would be, but still creatively conscious of economic crises.

Solid ethical entertainment.