Wonder Woman 1984

Strange how 1984 was chosen for the title of the new Wonder Woman film, since Orwell's novel doesn't influence the plot, which has more to do with one man's unhinged megalomania. 

Indeed a somewhat bland artifact is found and brought to the Smithsonian in the 1980s, its legendary origins unknown at first as steadfast workers research and classify. 

But it turns out a television personality has been seeking its mythic prowess (Pedro Pascal as Mr. Lord), for it's reputed to grant a wish to whomever holds it in their possession. 

Diana (Gal Gadot) and co-worker Minerva (Kristen Wiig) were accidentally granted wishes, and didn't realize there was a penalty for unwittingly coaxing the treacherous stone.

Pedro wishes to become the stone itself and sets about granting elaborate wishes, his wish granting growing more and more outrageous as his prestigious worth ameliorates. 

Diana realizes he must be stopped and has to renounce her wish to do so, for even though she's ecstatic her love interest's returned (Chris Pine as Steve Trevor), his existence is taking away her powers. 

Minerva refuses to give up hers having grown accustomed to superheroic strength. 

The two face off near the chaotic climax.

As Pedro uses satellite technology to grant wishes throughout the world.

Satellites were huge when I was a kid not just in popularity but in size as well, now they're certainly much smaller yet possessed by a much larger number of people.

Does Wonder Woman 1984's use of the Orwellian date relate to contemporary global interconnectivity, or the ways in which satellites and other devices have linked billions of people across the globe?

The technology does seem essential and undeniably facilitates rapid communication, it's still fascinating how quickly one can converse with someone residing on a far off continent. 

But freedom lies with disconnection with a less engaged absorption of worldwide data. It's important to stay generally informed. But I feel so much better when I shut off the news.

I spent years finding cool articles to share with people and advertise my favourite news sources, and to contradict prevalent one-dimensional narratives which ignored the integrity of working people.

Perhaps some people did start paying attention and found some new news sources they liked.

Working class integrity goes without saying.

And used to be a focus in the media year round. 

Museum Hours

The active mind having aged to reimagine engagement through interpretive fluid rapt multivariable impression.

A rambunctious youth clad in melodic calculi (managing and touring with bands), then ruminative middle-age embracing quiet illustration (monitoring different rooms in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Art Museum).

Living a thoughtful solitary life well-attuned to simple pleasures (Bobby Sommer as Johann), he meets a curious tourist one day visiting from Montréal (Mary Margaret O'Hara as Anne).

She's in town to watch over her cousin who's fallen into a coma, and would love to see the sights but doesn't know where to begin.

The film loosely follows their interactions as they travel in and about town, different features brought to life through historical exposition. It's not just the Kunsthistorisches that shines, Vienna's contemporary spirit enlivens as well, evocatively situated in past and present, replete with urban wildlife.

As Anne and Johann converse reflections on art evanescently materialize, not as if they're searching for essentials, more like chill jazzy random observation.

In fact it's like Museum Hours aesthetically cherishes the chill and random, as various images are freely showcased without a particular focus.

It's not presenting a specific thesis arguing for a point of view, but rather sharing different images to let Vienna thrive on through.

According to individual tastes, a clever seminar in artistic analysis attempts to lead visitors away from cocktail clichés, to more expansive literary compositions, as they observe different paintings, like there isn't an essence to be extracted but rather a variety of compelling interpretive exports.

Johann looks on in studious wonder as a guide imaginatively elucidates, her insights applicable to Jem Cohen's style which doesn't seek to blandly distill.

He observes that the right has made things much more serious, and made casual conversation much less prevalent, if the left loses sight of lighthearted argument, don't you wind up with The Lobster?

If the emphasis is on the correct interpretation of a shifting multivariable phenomenon, aren't such aggressive and violent evaluations highly dubious and irrational?

Taking absurd comedic outputs that clearly lack exhaustive scope, and treating them with biblical import, can lead to an unwillingness for people to participate in sustained and vigorous debate.

If they aren't treated with biblical import but rather as just another form of expression, then you have something much less frightening, and more amenable to inclusive discourse.

The Square

Contemporary art clashes with civilization as the repercussions of spontaneous decisions made plague The Square's timid curator.

The square itself is a beautifully conceived space wherein which those who enter should feel free to honestly engage with one another.

Crafted according to egalitarian guidelines, it promotes goodwill and kindhearted understanding.

The supersaturated sensation prone advertisers tasked to promote it can't think of a complementary way to proceed, however, their resultant ad generating the critical controversy they seek, but, nevertheless, it's unceremoniously steeped in just bitter outrage.

By bellicosely blending explosive guilt with tender innocence, the ad reflects mainstream media obsessions with death and violence, the ways in which news outlets focus intently on the abominable in order to generate higher ratings, the unsuspecting public perhaps functioning like the innocent child blown to bits within.

But recognizing such a purpose and detaching it from its grotesque depiction, as it's applied to a subject of the public sphere (a museum), isn't exactly something you can expect from all and sundry, since they're more likely to see an explosion killing a young child within a zone dedicated to peace, and wonder why someone chose such a disastrous advertising method.

Here, intellectual pasteurization confronts working realities wherein which it's reduced to sheer idiocy in a matter of viral nanoseconds, accumulating high ratings meanwhile.

This happens elsewhere in the film too.

Not the ratings.

Explanations making things much much worse.

Means and ends.

The Square brilliantly comments on detached postmodern peculiarities, the universal accessibility immediately granted by YouTube and Facebook seeing old world sociopolitical boundaries disappear in radiant flux.

But the film's also concerned with hapless Christian (Claes Bang), who has a good heart but is somewhat of a fool, who tries to live according to the square's ethics but doesn't really get it, and consistently generates fury as he tries to take part and must eventually defend his poorly thought out decisions.

Being a public figure responsible for promoting a cultural institution, he has to constantly answer questions that don't follow an adoring script, with discursive agility and multifaceted ease, but he often can't formulate the simplest of sympathetic responses, can't flexibly b(l)end with inherent political realities.

Christian's ineptitude is chaotically brought to life both publicly and privately after one of his performance exhibits goes psycho at a formal dinner (the embodiment of disenfranchisement playing a role it naturally wouldn't if elites didn't reflexively assume its rage [or a role played by the disenfranchised who wrongly assume the elites assume they're malevolent {best to take each action on a case by case basis/plus watch the ending of The Dark Knight\}]) and his oblivious attempts to get his stolen wallet back cause trouble for a young immigrant boy (Elijandro Edouard).

This review just looks at a small cross-section of what's reflected upon in The Square and offers hasty interpretations.

An international extravaganza that not so subtly uses contemporary psycho comedy to question paths the arts are following, and the constitution required to manage the synthesis of everything, it interrogates the act of questioning with dry satirical responses, and leaves one man floundering while he assumes existential parlay.

Vivacious vortexts.

Decay in bloom.

Das große Museum (The Great Museum)

Times change, tastes, values, preferences, the integrity of the historical, timeless traditional structural dialogues, infused with contemporary stakes, striking artistic aggregates, emboldened through the maintenance of legacies.

Jockeying for position.

The decisions, the finances, the personnel, Johannes Holzhausen's Das große Museum (The Great Museum) blending various aspects of the Kunsthistorisches's management, its daily operations, linoleum, labour, preservation, advertising, executive inputs, some of which I would have found ridiculous if I didn't find myself having similar thoughts from time to time, through toil, mango, to converse, to generate dialogues with distinct publics, discourses of origins architecturally articulated, the thought, the detail, the work, meticulously cultivated to instruct and impress, with so many objects to enrich and tantalize, aesthetics of merit and truth bask in transitory permanence.

Intellectually gifted.

Delicately crafted.

The film illuminates a broad compelling practical yet highly abstract organism, budgeting its lucrative life blood with issues of power and control, while capturing moments of leisure and play, as a transformation strides and breathes.

In terms of mischievously yet respectfully examining the inner workings of a museum's perpetual motion, Holzhausen succeeds, but the sense of refined innocent yet aloofly didactic exuberance transports it to another level, Das große Museum wisely reflecting its subject matter.

You don't have to like museums to love this film.

There's also a tie covered in bears.