Legal complications threaten the existence of The Washington Post after they publish government documents concerning executive American lies relating to the war in Vietnam, and the ways in which the unsuspecting public was scandalously misled about its necessity, in Steven Spielberg's The Post, wherein which the truth is jurisprudently vindicated.
A bold conscientious writer risks everything to photocopy and transmit the documents to the press, hiding out in a nondescript hotel room as the information first hits The New York Times.
The Post, also in the business of selling newspapers, 😉, is caught off guard without a competitive headline, and immediately seeks the clandestine source while Nixon's administration litigiously responds.
But its owner has recently taken the initial steps of transforming her paper into a public company, and controversial eruptions misclassified as shady dealings could seriously jeopardize the prosperity of its future (Meryl Streep as Kay Graham).
Her longtime and trusted friend Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) manages The Post's daily outputs, however, and is dead set against letting those who started a war, even though they knew it was outrageously unconscionable, unlike fighting back in World War II for instance, off the public hook.
Thus, you have ethics, the correct move in this situation obviously holding the government to account for its domestic and international abuses, versus economics, or the possibility that making the correct move could result in both jail time and the loss of an historic voice, an historic newspaper, omnipresent politics overshadowed by the courageous stand.
Debates abound as to what course should be taken, and multiple opposing viewpoints passionately have their say.
Mrs. Graham is haunted by her patriarchal conditioning and the misogynistic paternalism that has dominated most of her life.
But it's still her decision to make, the bold reckoning resting on her magnanimous shoulders, and wisdom is applied when she makes it, bold risk in the extreme, altruistically disseminated.
The Post's a good film, a dynamic multifaceted script introducing and diversifying sundry distinct personalities as they lucidly dispute big picture questions within scant pressurized time constraints, with the interests of encouraging a more peaceful world, the freedom of the press, and more mature public debate.
The debates are convincing, differences and alternatives characteristically narrativized, determined brash eloquent strengths qualified with reasonable compunction, professionalism, journalism, prison, and friendship, perforating the discussions with apt interrogative logic.
A bit cheesy at times, but I think that's just how Spielberg brilliantly crafts intense complex potentially boring films that can be thoroughly enjoyed by adolescents and adults alike.
With Bob Odenkirk (Ben Bagdikian) and David Cross (Howard Simons).
Reading the news online is convenient but definitely not the same as sitting back with a paper.
Sometimes with online news it's like you have to know what to search for, regardless of whether or not it exists.
With the physical paper you can move from page to page and find compelling articles you never knew you were searching for, as easily as if you're browsing at Indigo or the local independent bookstore.
Come to think of it.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Friday, January 19, 2018
The Commuter
A horrible day becomes incredibly worse as an honest intelligent literary family man finds himself caught up in a plutocratic conspiracy, after having been callously dismissed from work, multiple lives dependent on his aggrieved spontaneity, while time quickly passes, in chilling centigrade.
He's a commuter, commutes downtown tous les jours from a quiet idyllic hideaway, for 10 years in fact, doing his best at work to ensure his clients are treated fairly, let go so the miserly company he worked for wouldn't have to pay his pension.
Disgraceful.
On his commute home, he's villainously coerced into discovering the identity of a conscientious individual in possession of evidence which would incriminate the perpetrators of an executive level crime, before the last stop, malfeasance which he or she also witnessed, the upper levels none too pleased with the illicit nature of their dealings being made public, and willing to pay lavish sums to see those they can't buy off silenced.
Not in Trump's case though.
Wow does everyone ever love screwing that guy over.
It's becoming a sport.
The commuter in question, one Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson), has to uncharacteristically schmooze with his fellow passengers, the awkward nature of the exchanges becoming increasingly hostile as time runs out.
He's friendly and greets everyone daily, but is more known for reading on route, not forcing small talk.
There's even a great Texas hold-em match which demonstrates how unreasonable pressures lead otherwise upright peeps to use xenophobic strategies to obtain scurrilous sought after goals, the politics of who belongs aggressively employed out of sheer wanton hopelessness, psychotic demands bellicosely breeding psychotic outcomes.
Michael feels ashamed and eventually stops playing along even though his puppeteers claim they've abducted and will harm his family.
Inspired by his example, soon everyone on the train is self-sacrificing, and there's another great scene, where you see them metaphorically creating a union.
Makes it harder to be fired.
Just have to make sure the company you work for remains profitable.
It's a thrilling bold ethical castigation of those who caused the 2008 financial crisis and were never held to account, The Commuter is, the ways in which they still screw over little guys and gals with or without the aid of law enforcement also a subject of interrogation, paydays and corrupt ways plus pilfering and penny-pinching pronounced and nuanced, cronies versus constitutionals, 😉, stickin' it to the man, evidenced through combative conscience.
Smoothly situated in a sustained daily environmentally friendly ride, the opening moments cleverly capturing loving variations on a conjugal theme, The Commuter breathtakes to incarcerate belittling politics of division, or at least derails attempts to shatter hardworking solidarity.
With a classic performance from Mr. Neeson, whose unparalleled passion gradually builds as the tension chaotically intensifies, the other characters on the train adding complementary cheek, notably Colin McFarlane (Conductor Sam), and the one and only Jonathon Banks (Walt)(Gremlins, Freejack).
With Vera Farmiga (Joanna), Sam Neill (Captain Hawthorne) and Patrick Wilson (Alex Murphy).
My timing for the métro was perfect afterwards.
Didn't miss a beat.
He's a commuter, commutes downtown tous les jours from a quiet idyllic hideaway, for 10 years in fact, doing his best at work to ensure his clients are treated fairly, let go so the miserly company he worked for wouldn't have to pay his pension.
Disgraceful.
On his commute home, he's villainously coerced into discovering the identity of a conscientious individual in possession of evidence which would incriminate the perpetrators of an executive level crime, before the last stop, malfeasance which he or she also witnessed, the upper levels none too pleased with the illicit nature of their dealings being made public, and willing to pay lavish sums to see those they can't buy off silenced.
Not in Trump's case though.
Wow does everyone ever love screwing that guy over.
It's becoming a sport.
The commuter in question, one Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson), has to uncharacteristically schmooze with his fellow passengers, the awkward nature of the exchanges becoming increasingly hostile as time runs out.
He's friendly and greets everyone daily, but is more known for reading on route, not forcing small talk.
There's even a great Texas hold-em match which demonstrates how unreasonable pressures lead otherwise upright peeps to use xenophobic strategies to obtain scurrilous sought after goals, the politics of who belongs aggressively employed out of sheer wanton hopelessness, psychotic demands bellicosely breeding psychotic outcomes.
Michael feels ashamed and eventually stops playing along even though his puppeteers claim they've abducted and will harm his family.
Inspired by his example, soon everyone on the train is self-sacrificing, and there's another great scene, where you see them metaphorically creating a union.
Makes it harder to be fired.
Just have to make sure the company you work for remains profitable.
It's a thrilling bold ethical castigation of those who caused the 2008 financial crisis and were never held to account, The Commuter is, the ways in which they still screw over little guys and gals with or without the aid of law enforcement also a subject of interrogation, paydays and corrupt ways plus pilfering and penny-pinching pronounced and nuanced, cronies versus constitutionals, 😉, stickin' it to the man, evidenced through combative conscience.
Smoothly situated in a sustained daily environmentally friendly ride, the opening moments cleverly capturing loving variations on a conjugal theme, The Commuter breathtakes to incarcerate belittling politics of division, or at least derails attempts to shatter hardworking solidarity.
With a classic performance from Mr. Neeson, whose unparalleled passion gradually builds as the tension chaotically intensifies, the other characters on the train adding complementary cheek, notably Colin McFarlane (Conductor Sam), and the one and only Jonathon Banks (Walt)(Gremlins, Freejack).
With Vera Farmiga (Joanna), Sam Neill (Captain Hawthorne) and Patrick Wilson (Alex Murphy).
My timing for the métro was perfect afterwards.
Didn't miss a beat.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
I, Tonya
Piecing together an identity can be laborious work, requiring years of dedicated research and a mastery of sundry source materials, a striking caricature then struck from the resultant reams of research that hopefully captivates both lay and expert viewers or readers alike, with its traditional exceptions, critical controversies exemplified notwithstanding, how does one classify an individual?, I'm still not certain, but can loosely stitch different economic realities together, if so tasked, or perhaps, commissioned.
Some worlds within worlds, however, the figure skating world as it's depicted in I, Tonya for instance, delicately existing within the unpredictable rambunctious buck of wild hardworking American egalitarian miscellany, prefer such narratives to eagerly adopt a prim presentation, as they're inspirationally and influentially disseminated to curious fans, exceptions to the rules obdurately punished for their lack of eloquence, even if, like Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie/McKenna Grace/Maizie Smith), they're one of the greatest representatives the sport has ever seen.
In the U.S even, where a versatile hardboiled lack of gentility has long been its cultural calling card.
More research required.
But you would think that in a culture which also prides itself on athletic achievement, funds would have been made available to assist young Tonya in acquiring the expensive outfits she couldn't buy, especially after she became the first American female figure skater to land the triple Axel, it wasn't the case though, according to I, Tonya, and instead her sartorial ingenuity often resulted in belittling judicial penalties.
Not that goodwill would have saved her.
Eventually, her foolish abusive shitbag husband's (Sebastian Stan as Jeff Gillooly) Cro-Magnon friend (Paul Walter Hauser as Shawn) ruined her career by facilitating an act so loathsomely stupid it still occupies a prominent place in the halls of true idiocy.
True infamy.
Strange film.
The music and mockumentarially realistic interviews set it up like a rip-roarin' homebrewed good time, but then you watch as Tonya's constantly abused from the age of 4 like director Craig Gillespie found a way to incarnate hair on the dog, and it's disconcerting.
You bought it.
Even with all that national attention she still had nowhere else to go, and the people whom you'd think would offer support, the aristos of the figure skating enclave, seem to have given her the crystal clear finger, perhaps hoping her unsuitable image would then quickly fade.
She was tough though, didn't back down, kept fighting until her supporting cast fucked shit up irreconcilably, an iconic American.
The film's really well done if it isn't disturbing.
Frightening.
Don't know where the truth's to be dug out of it but it certainly does facilitate some sincere craziness.
General sobriety's a good thing if you're competing internationally.
I'm not saying the world of figure skating should be like a monster truck rally, although that might make a funny tv movie, but perhaps it could be more sympathetic.
Seems like Ms. Harding should have had a lot more support anyways.
More research required.
As it stands, I, Tonya's an American tragedy.
Always great to see Bobby Cannavale (Martin Maddox).
Some worlds within worlds, however, the figure skating world as it's depicted in I, Tonya for instance, delicately existing within the unpredictable rambunctious buck of wild hardworking American egalitarian miscellany, prefer such narratives to eagerly adopt a prim presentation, as they're inspirationally and influentially disseminated to curious fans, exceptions to the rules obdurately punished for their lack of eloquence, even if, like Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie/McKenna Grace/Maizie Smith), they're one of the greatest representatives the sport has ever seen.
In the U.S even, where a versatile hardboiled lack of gentility has long been its cultural calling card.
More research required.
But you would think that in a culture which also prides itself on athletic achievement, funds would have been made available to assist young Tonya in acquiring the expensive outfits she couldn't buy, especially after she became the first American female figure skater to land the triple Axel, it wasn't the case though, according to I, Tonya, and instead her sartorial ingenuity often resulted in belittling judicial penalties.
Not that goodwill would have saved her.
Eventually, her foolish abusive shitbag husband's (Sebastian Stan as Jeff Gillooly) Cro-Magnon friend (Paul Walter Hauser as Shawn) ruined her career by facilitating an act so loathsomely stupid it still occupies a prominent place in the halls of true idiocy.
True infamy.
Strange film.
The music and mockumentarially realistic interviews set it up like a rip-roarin' homebrewed good time, but then you watch as Tonya's constantly abused from the age of 4 like director Craig Gillespie found a way to incarnate hair on the dog, and it's disconcerting.
You bought it.
Even with all that national attention she still had nowhere else to go, and the people whom you'd think would offer support, the aristos of the figure skating enclave, seem to have given her the crystal clear finger, perhaps hoping her unsuitable image would then quickly fade.
She was tough though, didn't back down, kept fighting until her supporting cast fucked shit up irreconcilably, an iconic American.
The film's really well done if it isn't disturbing.
Frightening.
Don't know where the truth's to be dug out of it but it certainly does facilitate some sincere craziness.
General sobriety's a good thing if you're competing internationally.
I'm not saying the world of figure skating should be like a monster truck rally, although that might make a funny tv movie, but perhaps it could be more sympathetic.
Seems like Ms. Harding should have had a lot more support anyways.
More research required.
As it stands, I, Tonya's an American tragedy.
Always great to see Bobby Cannavale (Martin Maddox).
Friday, January 12, 2018
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Martin McDonagh cranks up Sympathy for the Devil and holds nothing back in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, as an abusive bigoted homophobic policeperson does the right thing for once after a lifetime of gross civil indecency.
The schematics.
A grieving mother (Frances McDormand as Mildred), whose daughter was brutally murdered, rents three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, to boldly call out the local police chief (Woody Harrelson as Chief Willoughby) for having made no progress on the case months later.
Her fury is justified and her disobedience sincere, even if members of the local constabulary don't see it that way, members who no longer take the case seriously.
An individual's reasonable observations therefore conflict with statistics and precedents, the police having handled similar cases before, and done relatively little after their initial investigation led nowhere.
Did complacency brought about by years of cold routine cause them to simply ignore the case?
Possibly.
Spoiler.
The police chief, who is dying of cancer, does commit suicide not long after the billboards go up.
This isn't Mississippi Burning.
Even if Ebbing's blunt righteous inspirational indignation generates hardboiled perdition, wherein which everyone is scorched in the flames, including James (Peter Dinklage), unwittingly, who's introduced to critique Mildred, or to reflect upon a culture so saturated with stereotypical thinking that no one's done anything genuine for decades, until the three billboards go up, after which people who don't have much experience feeling suddenly find themselves culturally enraged, unprecedented emotions wildly seeking semantic clarification, it's no Mississippi Burning, a film that doesn't present the racist pretensions of the local police force so lightly.
But the Feds aren't called in in this one, and even though I'm a forgiving man, and love a story that sees the hardboiled ethical transformation of a character like Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a grizzly tale that doesn't shy away from gruesome cultural codes, he still brutally assaults people and the law doesn't hold him to account, apart from taking his badge away, and I don't see why the metamorphosis of the brutally violent police officer is being celebrated with awards, when Wind River, another dark film that examines stark polarized realities, which is also well-written and compelling, was released in 2017, and ignored by the Golden Globes.
That's called white privilege, I believe.
Was The Revenant too soon?
The schematics.
A grieving mother (Frances McDormand as Mildred), whose daughter was brutally murdered, rents three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, to boldly call out the local police chief (Woody Harrelson as Chief Willoughby) for having made no progress on the case months later.
Her fury is justified and her disobedience sincere, even if members of the local constabulary don't see it that way, members who no longer take the case seriously.
An individual's reasonable observations therefore conflict with statistics and precedents, the police having handled similar cases before, and done relatively little after their initial investigation led nowhere.
Did complacency brought about by years of cold routine cause them to simply ignore the case?
Possibly.
Spoiler.
The police chief, who is dying of cancer, does commit suicide not long after the billboards go up.
This isn't Mississippi Burning.
Even if Ebbing's blunt righteous inspirational indignation generates hardboiled perdition, wherein which everyone is scorched in the flames, including James (Peter Dinklage), unwittingly, who's introduced to critique Mildred, or to reflect upon a culture so saturated with stereotypical thinking that no one's done anything genuine for decades, until the three billboards go up, after which people who don't have much experience feeling suddenly find themselves culturally enraged, unprecedented emotions wildly seeking semantic clarification, it's no Mississippi Burning, a film that doesn't present the racist pretensions of the local police force so lightly.
But the Feds aren't called in in this one, and even though I'm a forgiving man, and love a story that sees the hardboiled ethical transformation of a character like Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a grizzly tale that doesn't shy away from gruesome cultural codes, he still brutally assaults people and the law doesn't hold him to account, apart from taking his badge away, and I don't see why the metamorphosis of the brutally violent police officer is being celebrated with awards, when Wind River, another dark film that examines stark polarized realities, which is also well-written and compelling, was released in 2017, and ignored by the Golden Globes.
That's called white privilege, I believe.
Was The Revenant too soon?
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
All the Money in the World
What would you do if you were the richest person in the world, if you had more money than anyone else, if you made the other plutocrats look like paupers in comparison, if you could turn the Cleveland Browns into a Super Bowl contender?
I suppose I would travel a lot. Buy some nice things. A lot of Ne'Qwa. Donate heavily to schools. Open a bakery and a vegetarian fast food chain and a restaurant that sells its own craft beer. Make a film, tip lavishly, give tens of millions away, support athletes and artists, and vigilantly fight the poaching of endangered species.
A lot of good could be done with the world's largest fortune, a lot of positive changes could be made, poverty could be reduced for millions, a little bit more camaraderie, a little bit less sarcastic fatalism.
Incredible Christmases/Holiday Seasons.
Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World takes a look at J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), who was the richest man in the world yet still never felt comfortable or secure.
A miser in the purest sense, even with all that money he never made much of an effort to get to know his family, his offspring, let alone learn to love them, preferring to acquire esteemed physical objects instead, because they wouldn't change their minds or disagree with him, he even let his grandson be terrorized by kidnappers for months rather than pay his ransom, even after they cut off his ear, even after they threatened to kill him.
Monstrous avarice.
That's what the film's about, the kidnapping of Getty's grandson (Charlie Plummer as John Paul Getty III), the dire straits of his desperate mother (Michelle Williams), the transformation of stern Ex-CIA Agent Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), and a growing friendship forged between kidnapped and kidnapper (Romain Duris as Cinquanta).
Costume design by Janty Yates.
Michelle Williams keeps getting better. She's capably transitioning from ingenue to matron with remarkable ambivalence.
Duris caught my attention too.
Solid film, well-constructed, super direct but perhaps not the place for metaphorical innovation, a critical examination of wealth backed up by believable characters and situations which energetically, controversially, argumentatively, speculatively, and empathetically move the plot along, sure and steady confident competent filmmaking, emotionally telling a story without histrionically agitating.
In these bizarro political times, I imagine some groups are commending the elder Getty on his moribund intractability.
While mad people argue about whose nuclear missile launch button is bigger.
Sometimes I think they're friends and they just like globally stirrin' the pot.
Such thoughts are dangerous.
*I'm so boycotting Tim Hortons.
I suppose I would travel a lot. Buy some nice things. A lot of Ne'Qwa. Donate heavily to schools. Open a bakery and a vegetarian fast food chain and a restaurant that sells its own craft beer. Make a film, tip lavishly, give tens of millions away, support athletes and artists, and vigilantly fight the poaching of endangered species.
A lot of good could be done with the world's largest fortune, a lot of positive changes could be made, poverty could be reduced for millions, a little bit more camaraderie, a little bit less sarcastic fatalism.
Incredible Christmases/Holiday Seasons.
Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World takes a look at J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), who was the richest man in the world yet still never felt comfortable or secure.
A miser in the purest sense, even with all that money he never made much of an effort to get to know his family, his offspring, let alone learn to love them, preferring to acquire esteemed physical objects instead, because they wouldn't change their minds or disagree with him, he even let his grandson be terrorized by kidnappers for months rather than pay his ransom, even after they cut off his ear, even after they threatened to kill him.
Monstrous avarice.
That's what the film's about, the kidnapping of Getty's grandson (Charlie Plummer as John Paul Getty III), the dire straits of his desperate mother (Michelle Williams), the transformation of stern Ex-CIA Agent Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), and a growing friendship forged between kidnapped and kidnapper (Romain Duris as Cinquanta).
Costume design by Janty Yates.
Michelle Williams keeps getting better. She's capably transitioning from ingenue to matron with remarkable ambivalence.
Duris caught my attention too.
Solid film, well-constructed, super direct but perhaps not the place for metaphorical innovation, a critical examination of wealth backed up by believable characters and situations which energetically, controversially, argumentatively, speculatively, and empathetically move the plot along, sure and steady confident competent filmmaking, emotionally telling a story without histrionically agitating.
In these bizarro political times, I imagine some groups are commending the elder Getty on his moribund intractability.
While mad people argue about whose nuclear missile launch button is bigger.
Sometimes I think they're friends and they just like globally stirrin' the pot.
Such thoughts are dangerous.
*I'm so boycotting Tim Hortons.
Friday, January 5, 2018
Downsizing
Diseases, viruses, contagions, and plagues, having become much less common in the Western World in recent centuries, the afflicted often living long productive lives regardless, a Canadian even having recently found a way to stop cancer cells from spreading, it seems that either humanity is soberly outwitting its microbacterial/. . . foes, or they've used stealth to regroup so that they can one day deliver an unsolicited crushing biological blow, which will significantly reduce unselected populations, and make trivial obsessions seem much less monumental.
Havoc unleashed as the misperceived threat pounces.
Desperation disseminated as no cure can be found.
Heroic scientists combatting the pestilence in experimental pharmaceutical conclaves.
Subterranean realms geothermally flourishing with the spontaneous agility of a holistic labyrinthine avant-garde.
Global warming is undeniable, and taking steps to fight it paramount, and when people argue that it's too late, that we can't reverse what's already been done, I tend to think they've embraced gross ignorance to cover up their lack of transformative imagination.
Alexander Payne's Downsizing is ripe with metamorphic creativity however, even if its cute and cuddly miniaturizations wind up satirically reinstating the status-quo, the idea itself applied and collectivized literally, without much savage elaboration.
A bird attack?
Tame the ants!
I like to overlook the irrational, or find related metaphorical justifications, especially while viewing films who seem to be ironically catering to realistic pretensions which seem out of place in the prognosticative fantastic, so although the sea voyage from the airport was stretching it a bit, and could have been less dry, they were towing vodka, it still suggests that a wild credulous embrace of the unknown can generate blissful compensations, at peace in distilled waters, the compensations themselves rich inasmuch as they bask in surprisingly unfathomable depths, wherein unforeseen variables constantly tempt at play.
If you can simultaneously keep a level-head while somehow getting caught up with them.
Nothing like that happens in Downsizing though, it's more of a laid-back chill examination of how a good natured individual stoically deals with distress, his composed self-sacrifices fraught with cumbersome repercussions, which he patiently ignores with resigned saintly composure.
And humour.
A remarkable look at humble moderation and the seemingly preordained aspects of random belittling chance, Downsizing wasn't as energetic as I thought it would be, but still excelled at fomenting fortunes rich in communal longevity.
Who knows for how long?
Add more ridiculousness, harvest sequels and/or televisual applications.
A bird wouldn't actually be ridiculous I suppose.
It would seem sensational but would actually be realistic.
Restrained genius?
With Udo Kier (Konrad).
Havoc unleashed as the misperceived threat pounces.
Desperation disseminated as no cure can be found.
Heroic scientists combatting the pestilence in experimental pharmaceutical conclaves.
Subterranean realms geothermally flourishing with the spontaneous agility of a holistic labyrinthine avant-garde.
Global warming is undeniable, and taking steps to fight it paramount, and when people argue that it's too late, that we can't reverse what's already been done, I tend to think they've embraced gross ignorance to cover up their lack of transformative imagination.
Alexander Payne's Downsizing is ripe with metamorphic creativity however, even if its cute and cuddly miniaturizations wind up satirically reinstating the status-quo, the idea itself applied and collectivized literally, without much savage elaboration.
A bird attack?
Tame the ants!
I like to overlook the irrational, or find related metaphorical justifications, especially while viewing films who seem to be ironically catering to realistic pretensions which seem out of place in the prognosticative fantastic, so although the sea voyage from the airport was stretching it a bit, and could have been less dry, they were towing vodka, it still suggests that a wild credulous embrace of the unknown can generate blissful compensations, at peace in distilled waters, the compensations themselves rich inasmuch as they bask in surprisingly unfathomable depths, wherein unforeseen variables constantly tempt at play.
If you can simultaneously keep a level-head while somehow getting caught up with them.
Nothing like that happens in Downsizing though, it's more of a laid-back chill examination of how a good natured individual stoically deals with distress, his composed self-sacrifices fraught with cumbersome repercussions, which he patiently ignores with resigned saintly composure.
And humour.
A remarkable look at humble moderation and the seemingly preordained aspects of random belittling chance, Downsizing wasn't as energetic as I thought it would be, but still excelled at fomenting fortunes rich in communal longevity.
Who knows for how long?
Add more ridiculousness, harvest sequels and/or televisual applications.
A bird wouldn't actually be ridiculous I suppose.
It would seem sensational but would actually be realistic.
Restrained genius?
With Udo Kier (Konrad).
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Darkest Hour
Western Europe crippled by Nazi aggression.
The entire British army almost lost.
Homeland resistance overwhelmed yet fierce.
Bitter negotiations clad in distraught whimper.
A controversial figure emerges, as respected and envied as he was distrusted and maligned, as equally capable of blundering as he was of succeeding, audaciously exemplifying both defeat and triumph, yet always ready to make difficult decisions, finding bold solutions when faced with formidable opposition, branded bullish bellicose resolve, suddenly called upon, to lead throughout times most wrathful.
Joe Wright's Darkest Hour presents a well-rounded examination of Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) near the beginning of World War II, when he was tasked with leading the United Kingdom.
It appeared as if the British army would indeed be lost, which led many politicians to reasonably consider capitulating to Germany.
Although after seeing how cavalierly Hitler had disregarded deals he had struck with independent nations in recent years, negotiating with him under any circumstances must have made one feel extremely vulnerable.
Churchill seemed to understand the latter better than Halifax (Stephen Dillane) or Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup), as suggested by Darkest Hour, and even if the loss of Britain's army may have compelled him to agree to direst terms, he was still courageous enough to do anything he could to avoid such a disastrous situation.
Call on the civilian fleet to save the troops surrounded at Dunkirk.
Brilliance.
Joe Wright's Churchill was a fighter who knew how to lose but would do anything he could to win during a conflict.
And he wanted to save Britain from Nazi tyranny.
He wanted to fight them until all was lost.
Others within the government assumed they had already lost, so Churchill had to fight them along with the Nazis.
In fact, Darkest Hour showcases a politician who had to fight powerful personalities throughout the entire course of each and every day after he was sworn in as prime minister, a non-stop internal and external battle which he was stubborn enough to keep fighting yet malleable enough to know when to back down.
Staying one step ahead of alcoholic ruin the whole time.
He was broke too.
His unpredictable nature even frightened the King (Ben Mendelsohn), unpredictable inasmuch as people never knew what he was going to say or do, never knew what improvised comment or action would support his determined passionate argument.
It was like he handled the most stressful circumstances Britain had faced since the Roman Empire invaded with the resolute calm of a massive grizzly bear defending its kill from both other bears and a pack of wolves, always ready to fight on, thoughtfully working within an emotional tempest which he had the foresight to bravely ride and the composure to resist unbridled.
It is a movie after all, I don't know if he was really such an admirable person, but it's still a good movie that's well worth seeing, if not to praise the person who led the UK through its darkest hours, then to uphold a multidimensional inspirational caricature which could practically imagine a concrete solution for any theoretical problem, without overlooking lessons taught by chance and spontaneity, irrepressible spirit, always struggling on.
Reanimated by Gary Oldman.
I was almost clapping near the end.
The entire British army almost lost.
Homeland resistance overwhelmed yet fierce.
Bitter negotiations clad in distraught whimper.
A controversial figure emerges, as respected and envied as he was distrusted and maligned, as equally capable of blundering as he was of succeeding, audaciously exemplifying both defeat and triumph, yet always ready to make difficult decisions, finding bold solutions when faced with formidable opposition, branded bullish bellicose resolve, suddenly called upon, to lead throughout times most wrathful.
Joe Wright's Darkest Hour presents a well-rounded examination of Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) near the beginning of World War II, when he was tasked with leading the United Kingdom.
It appeared as if the British army would indeed be lost, which led many politicians to reasonably consider capitulating to Germany.
Although after seeing how cavalierly Hitler had disregarded deals he had struck with independent nations in recent years, negotiating with him under any circumstances must have made one feel extremely vulnerable.
Churchill seemed to understand the latter better than Halifax (Stephen Dillane) or Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup), as suggested by Darkest Hour, and even if the loss of Britain's army may have compelled him to agree to direst terms, he was still courageous enough to do anything he could to avoid such a disastrous situation.
Call on the civilian fleet to save the troops surrounded at Dunkirk.
Brilliance.
Joe Wright's Churchill was a fighter who knew how to lose but would do anything he could to win during a conflict.
And he wanted to save Britain from Nazi tyranny.
He wanted to fight them until all was lost.
Others within the government assumed they had already lost, so Churchill had to fight them along with the Nazis.
In fact, Darkest Hour showcases a politician who had to fight powerful personalities throughout the entire course of each and every day after he was sworn in as prime minister, a non-stop internal and external battle which he was stubborn enough to keep fighting yet malleable enough to know when to back down.
Staying one step ahead of alcoholic ruin the whole time.
He was broke too.
His unpredictable nature even frightened the King (Ben Mendelsohn), unpredictable inasmuch as people never knew what he was going to say or do, never knew what improvised comment or action would support his determined passionate argument.
It was like he handled the most stressful circumstances Britain had faced since the Roman Empire invaded with the resolute calm of a massive grizzly bear defending its kill from both other bears and a pack of wolves, always ready to fight on, thoughtfully working within an emotional tempest which he had the foresight to bravely ride and the composure to resist unbridled.
It is a movie after all, I don't know if he was really such an admirable person, but it's still a good movie that's well worth seeing, if not to praise the person who led the UK through its darkest hours, then to uphold a multidimensional inspirational caricature which could practically imagine a concrete solution for any theoretical problem, without overlooking lessons taught by chance and spontaneity, irrepressible spirit, always struggling on.
Reanimated by Gary Oldman.
I was almost clapping near the end.
Friday, December 29, 2017
Lady Bird
At any given historical moment, you have powerful institutions, and powerful men and women who want to play roles within them, whether they be Jedi or Sith, whether they seek power to benefit the many or the few, the institutions exist and they need people to fill them up, in times of economic prosperity or depression, they just keep rollin', just keep rollin' on.
If religion dominates a culture, if a country's most powerful institutions are religious, Sith will be attracted to them, and will cunningly take on roles within to deviously feign virtue as they pursue oligarchic ends.
It's much simpler than launching a revolution, much less destructive, more palatable.
Thus it's men and women who pervert religious virtues for their own ends as opposed to those virtues themselves that are inherently corrupt, and if a cold hearted conniving megalomaniac seeks and gains power within a country dominated by religion, his or her tyranny would likely flourish just as it would within a democracy, assuming there were no checks and balances to restrain them, and they couldn't install loyal servants everywhere in a devout bureaucracy.
In a religious society you therefore wind up on occasion with a ruling elite who care nothing about generosity or goodwill, but are more concerned with holding onto the reigns forever, and acquiring as much personal wealth as they can meanwhile.
No matter what needs to be done to acquire it.
There are of course, other religious individuals, good people who recognize the fallibility of humankind and forgive their flocks for embracing desires that they don't encourage themselves but don't furiously condemn either.
They tend to understand that people are trying to live virtuous lives but can easily be swayed by enticing earthly passions, and spend more time trying to find constructive ends for those passions rather than condemning those who gleefully break a rule or two.
Finding religious people like this requires research and critical judgment on behalf of the curious individual, who may find a chill likeminded community if they search for it long enough.
Beware religious institutions who want large cash donations or think the world is going to end on a specific day or that science is evil or that war or racism or homophobia are good things, or that because someone saw a butterfly everyone should invest in bitcoin.
Perhaps consider the ones which argue that people shouldn't be huge assholes all the time and that communities flourish as one using science like a divine environmental conscience.
Or not, it's really up to you.
There can be a ton of associated bullshit.
But if it can stop you from being angry all the time, it may be beneficial.
In Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird, religious youth rebelliously come of age in a small moderately conservative Californian town, awkwardly experimenting with the will to party throughout, reflecting critically on wild behaviours from time to time.
Guilt and gumption argumentatively converse as a passionate mother (Laurie Metcalf as Marion McPherson) and daughter (Saoirse Ronan as Lady Bird) vigorously solemnize independent teenage drama, unacknowledged childlike love haunting their aggrieved disputes, while im/modest matriculations im/materially break away.
It's a lively independent stern yet chill caring depiction of small town struggles and feisty individualities, with multiple characters diversified within, brash innocence spontaneously igniting controversy, wholesome integrities bemusedly embracing conflict.
None of these characters are trying to rule the world, they're just trying to live within it.
Religion provides them with strength, perhaps because they live in region where it doesn't have the upper-hand.
Loved the "eager-football-coach-substituting-for-the-drama-teacher" scenes.
Not-so-subtle subtlety.
Out of sight.
If religion dominates a culture, if a country's most powerful institutions are religious, Sith will be attracted to them, and will cunningly take on roles within to deviously feign virtue as they pursue oligarchic ends.
It's much simpler than launching a revolution, much less destructive, more palatable.
Thus it's men and women who pervert religious virtues for their own ends as opposed to those virtues themselves that are inherently corrupt, and if a cold hearted conniving megalomaniac seeks and gains power within a country dominated by religion, his or her tyranny would likely flourish just as it would within a democracy, assuming there were no checks and balances to restrain them, and they couldn't install loyal servants everywhere in a devout bureaucracy.
In a religious society you therefore wind up on occasion with a ruling elite who care nothing about generosity or goodwill, but are more concerned with holding onto the reigns forever, and acquiring as much personal wealth as they can meanwhile.
No matter what needs to be done to acquire it.
There are of course, other religious individuals, good people who recognize the fallibility of humankind and forgive their flocks for embracing desires that they don't encourage themselves but don't furiously condemn either.
They tend to understand that people are trying to live virtuous lives but can easily be swayed by enticing earthly passions, and spend more time trying to find constructive ends for those passions rather than condemning those who gleefully break a rule or two.
Finding religious people like this requires research and critical judgment on behalf of the curious individual, who may find a chill likeminded community if they search for it long enough.
Beware religious institutions who want large cash donations or think the world is going to end on a specific day or that science is evil or that war or racism or homophobia are good things, or that because someone saw a butterfly everyone should invest in bitcoin.
Perhaps consider the ones which argue that people shouldn't be huge assholes all the time and that communities flourish as one using science like a divine environmental conscience.
Or not, it's really up to you.
There can be a ton of associated bullshit.
But if it can stop you from being angry all the time, it may be beneficial.
In Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird, religious youth rebelliously come of age in a small moderately conservative Californian town, awkwardly experimenting with the will to party throughout, reflecting critically on wild behaviours from time to time.
Guilt and gumption argumentatively converse as a passionate mother (Laurie Metcalf as Marion McPherson) and daughter (Saoirse Ronan as Lady Bird) vigorously solemnize independent teenage drama, unacknowledged childlike love haunting their aggrieved disputes, while im/modest matriculations im/materially break away.
It's a lively independent stern yet chill caring depiction of small town struggles and feisty individualities, with multiple characters diversified within, brash innocence spontaneously igniting controversy, wholesome integrities bemusedly embracing conflict.
None of these characters are trying to rule the world, they're just trying to live within it.
Religion provides them with strength, perhaps because they live in region where it doesn't have the upper-hand.
Loved the "eager-football-coach-substituting-for-the-drama-teacher" scenes.
Not-so-subtle subtlety.
Out of sight.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
The Shape of Water
An ancient unfathomed independent environmental consciousness is captured and brought back to the United States, in chains, clandestine military operations responsible for its incarceration, it actively expresses its discontent oceanically, stuck within a container in a back room of a forgotten corridor in a decrepit building, wondering why a similar species would proceed so callously, when so much more could be learned under respectful mutual examination?
Others humanistically understand this point, immediately recognizing the unjustness of the circumstances, and unaccustomed to viewing such sincere pain and suffering, decide it's time to uncharacteristically encourage sneaky boat-rocking initiatives.
Introspectively speaking, it's really the brainchild of a lone sweet cleaning person who discovers the aquahumanoid (Doug Jones) throughout the course of her daily labours, tries to make friends, and eventually realizes she cares enough to save him.
With a little help from the ethically inclined.
Her heartstrung horizons.
Symphonically submerged.
Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water might not be the best film I've seen this year, but that doesn't mean it isn't my favourite.
It's still incredibly good, and thought provokingly entertains while crossing comedic, dramatic, romantic and sci-fi streams, the resultant energy discharge composed of purest raw loving artistic soul, the delicately distracted uniting to outwit a nuclear family man, in possession of everything people are supposed to desire, accept for his personal accompanying douche baggage.
The film's so well nuanced.
And casted (Robin D. Cook).
So many spoilers.
I have to mention these things.
There's just too much cool in one film.
Like characters from Ghost World decided to take on the army, there's a struggling painter who's lost his cash cow (Richard Jenkins as Giles), a conscientious Russian spy who's more scientist than commie, more concerned with promoting life than objectifying ideals (Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Robert Hoffstetler), a splendiferous local cinema that can't find an audience, Michael Shannon (Richard Strickland), Octavia Spencer (Zelda Fuller), multiple cats, pie slices to go, a potent critique of exclusive diners, amorous eggs hardboiled, hilarity ensues as positive thinking bemuses, even the douchiest character makes a reasonable plea for sympathy (he's used to lampoon by-any-means-necessary so well), dialogue heartwarmingly places the "human" back in "humanistic", Nigel Bennett (Mihalkov) seriously impresses in Russian, fellow Canadian actor David Hewlett (Fleming) burnishes the brash bumble, prim cold war ridiculousness with a taste for culinary excess, a bit of gore here and there, Hamilton Ontario's city hall plus the CFL Hall of Fame, methinks, good people given a chance to do something good which they overcome rational fears to do, a sense that everyone loved working on the film, yet didn't let the good times detrimentally effect their performances.
With the incomparable Sally Hawkins (Elisa Esposito) tenderly stealing the show; she has an endearing knack for showing up in the simply awesome.
The plot elements and cool criticisms and situations aren't just a smattering of amazing either, del Toro brilliantly blends them together into a startlingly clever narrative that keeps you acrobatically positioned to appreciate virtuous leaps and bounds, that seem to be vivaciously drawing you into a fantastic day in your life, during which you make a remarkable difference, during which you are the change.
Looking past racially motivated sensation.
Discourses of the huggable.
Like perennial blossoming unassailable fountains of youth.
Spontaneous trips to candy stores.
Artistically crafted vegan ice cream.
Others humanistically understand this point, immediately recognizing the unjustness of the circumstances, and unaccustomed to viewing such sincere pain and suffering, decide it's time to uncharacteristically encourage sneaky boat-rocking initiatives.
Introspectively speaking, it's really the brainchild of a lone sweet cleaning person who discovers the aquahumanoid (Doug Jones) throughout the course of her daily labours, tries to make friends, and eventually realizes she cares enough to save him.
With a little help from the ethically inclined.
Her heartstrung horizons.
Symphonically submerged.
Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water might not be the best film I've seen this year, but that doesn't mean it isn't my favourite.
It's still incredibly good, and thought provokingly entertains while crossing comedic, dramatic, romantic and sci-fi streams, the resultant energy discharge composed of purest raw loving artistic soul, the delicately distracted uniting to outwit a nuclear family man, in possession of everything people are supposed to desire, accept for his personal accompanying douche baggage.
The film's so well nuanced.
And casted (Robin D. Cook).
So many spoilers.
I have to mention these things.
There's just too much cool in one film.
Like characters from Ghost World decided to take on the army, there's a struggling painter who's lost his cash cow (Richard Jenkins as Giles), a conscientious Russian spy who's more scientist than commie, more concerned with promoting life than objectifying ideals (Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Robert Hoffstetler), a splendiferous local cinema that can't find an audience, Michael Shannon (Richard Strickland), Octavia Spencer (Zelda Fuller), multiple cats, pie slices to go, a potent critique of exclusive diners, amorous eggs hardboiled, hilarity ensues as positive thinking bemuses, even the douchiest character makes a reasonable plea for sympathy (he's used to lampoon by-any-means-necessary so well), dialogue heartwarmingly places the "human" back in "humanistic", Nigel Bennett (Mihalkov) seriously impresses in Russian, fellow Canadian actor David Hewlett (Fleming) burnishes the brash bumble, prim cold war ridiculousness with a taste for culinary excess, a bit of gore here and there, Hamilton Ontario's city hall plus the CFL Hall of Fame, methinks, good people given a chance to do something good which they overcome rational fears to do, a sense that everyone loved working on the film, yet didn't let the good times detrimentally effect their performances.
With the incomparable Sally Hawkins (Elisa Esposito) tenderly stealing the show; she has an endearing knack for showing up in the simply awesome.
The plot elements and cool criticisms and situations aren't just a smattering of amazing either, del Toro brilliantly blends them together into a startlingly clever narrative that keeps you acrobatically positioned to appreciate virtuous leaps and bounds, that seem to be vivaciously drawing you into a fantastic day in your life, during which you make a remarkable difference, during which you are the change.
Looking past racially motivated sensation.
Discourses of the huggable.
Like perennial blossoming unassailable fountains of youth.
Spontaneous trips to candy stores.
Artistically crafted vegan ice cream.
Friday, December 22, 2017
Loving Vincent
Choosing an occupation isn't so easy for some, not easy at all for many, and can be a source of frustration for those who don't have much desire to do anything, for the majority of their lives, even if they develop expensive tastes for automobiles, or, perhaps, exotic vacation destinations.
Social evaluations of job titles and financial motivations can be disheartening as well, especially if that which you never wanted to do earns less money than something else which someone else never wanted to do, when situated within the context of various cultural mating rituals.
But some make the decision to follow their hearts despite dismissive pretensions or a reliable income, and apply themselves vigorously to something they love doing, much to the dismay of people who never really loved or had any desire to do anything, it's a strange social phenomenon that can discombobulate if considered logically.
The disenchantingly bizarro.
Competing discourses of maturity.
It's not like this with everyone, but in Loving Vincent a tragic account of exclusivity explains why the brilliant painter Vincent van Gogh (Robert Gulaczyk) was unable to feel at peace throughout his professional life.
He spent years painstakingly developing an original style that was only moderately celebrated during his lifetime (he only sold one painting for instance), and never really felt as if he fit in.
Cast out from his hometown, judged peculiar by his parents, unsuccessful with traditional occupations, a depression set in which was soothed by constant work.
Loving Vincent celebrates that work in one of the most beautiful films I've seen.
Perhaps the most beautiful, I've never seen anything like it before.
Like a distant graceful star consciously transmitted its sympathetic and understanding warmhearted radiance to the brushstrokes of dozens of gifted artists, and left them capably distilling sweetly flowing raw solar energy with the tender care of loving parents who seek to bless their children's youth and adolescence with the utmost imaginative uncompromising love and sacrifice, and simultaneously, through an act of synthetic genius, fluidly articulated the starstruck luminescent incandescent joyful orchestrations of the children as well, thereby exemplifying freespirited innocence and wonder, like an enchanting and carefree perpetual Christmas morn, Loving Vincent harnesses gregarious gifts and shares them with modest intent bewilderment, delicately crafting an image of a curious soul, who was tragically misunderstood if not overlooked by dull considerations of propriety.
I'm sure Loving Vincent will view well on a television screen, but it's so worth checking out in theatres.
To say that it should be seen in theatres wouldn't be fitting, however, due to the laissez-faire chill style of the lauded humble subject in question.
I agree with the postmaster (Chris O'Dowd), animals really can know your heart at first sight, but you have to be willing to know theirs too in order to notice.
It's like they intuitively sense love, good, evil.
More than 100 artists came together to craft Loving Vincent's unique oil paint animation.
Quality and quantity immersed in effervescent equilibrium, it's like collective conscious soul, cinematically reified, by acrobatic admirers.
What a painter.
What a calling.
What an artist.
His conflicted infinities, ingeniously underscored.
His extant outputs, kaleidoscopically exceeding.
Social evaluations of job titles and financial motivations can be disheartening as well, especially if that which you never wanted to do earns less money than something else which someone else never wanted to do, when situated within the context of various cultural mating rituals.
But some make the decision to follow their hearts despite dismissive pretensions or a reliable income, and apply themselves vigorously to something they love doing, much to the dismay of people who never really loved or had any desire to do anything, it's a strange social phenomenon that can discombobulate if considered logically.
The disenchantingly bizarro.
Competing discourses of maturity.
It's not like this with everyone, but in Loving Vincent a tragic account of exclusivity explains why the brilliant painter Vincent van Gogh (Robert Gulaczyk) was unable to feel at peace throughout his professional life.
He spent years painstakingly developing an original style that was only moderately celebrated during his lifetime (he only sold one painting for instance), and never really felt as if he fit in.
Cast out from his hometown, judged peculiar by his parents, unsuccessful with traditional occupations, a depression set in which was soothed by constant work.
Loving Vincent celebrates that work in one of the most beautiful films I've seen.
Perhaps the most beautiful, I've never seen anything like it before.
Like a distant graceful star consciously transmitted its sympathetic and understanding warmhearted radiance to the brushstrokes of dozens of gifted artists, and left them capably distilling sweetly flowing raw solar energy with the tender care of loving parents who seek to bless their children's youth and adolescence with the utmost imaginative uncompromising love and sacrifice, and simultaneously, through an act of synthetic genius, fluidly articulated the starstruck luminescent incandescent joyful orchestrations of the children as well, thereby exemplifying freespirited innocence and wonder, like an enchanting and carefree perpetual Christmas morn, Loving Vincent harnesses gregarious gifts and shares them with modest intent bewilderment, delicately crafting an image of a curious soul, who was tragically misunderstood if not overlooked by dull considerations of propriety.
I'm sure Loving Vincent will view well on a television screen, but it's so worth checking out in theatres.
To say that it should be seen in theatres wouldn't be fitting, however, due to the laissez-faire chill style of the lauded humble subject in question.
I agree with the postmaster (Chris O'Dowd), animals really can know your heart at first sight, but you have to be willing to know theirs too in order to notice.
It's like they intuitively sense love, good, evil.
More than 100 artists came together to craft Loving Vincent's unique oil paint animation.
Quality and quantity immersed in effervescent equilibrium, it's like collective conscious soul, cinematically reified, by acrobatic admirers.
What a painter.
What a calling.
What an artist.
His conflicted infinities, ingeniously underscored.
His extant outputs, kaleidoscopically exceeding.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I'd wager that when George Lucas set out to write Star Wars Episodes I-III he imagined himself creating sophisticated scripts which would politically and ethically diversify his intergalactic creation through a tragic appeal to universal social justice.
Tragic inasmuch as the Jedi would be betrayed and the Emperor would inevitably reign supreme.
It's possible that Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer and director Rian Johnson respected this aspect of Lucas's vision (he did achieve that aspect of his vision) but wanted to tone it down a bit, or to make Episode VIII easier to follow anyways.
If that's the case, well done.
In fact, The Last Jedi's a masterpiece of unpretentious chill ethicopolitical sci-fi activism, not to mention an explosive Star Wars film, way done to the nitty-gritty.
Best since Jedi.
Possibly better than Jedi.
Conflict.
As the last remnants of the resistance run out of fuel, star destroyers who can track them through hyperspace pick them off one by one, and after most of their senior leadership is suddenly wiped out by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), passionate headstrong and defensive rebels bitterly dispute their remaining options.
Lacking the requisite rank to command, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) improvises plan B, which an embarrassed Finn (John Boyega) puts into action, along with the aid of dedicated worker Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).
Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) become better acquainted as her innocent forceful magnetism awakens hope in his forlorn Jedi consciousness.
Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) seek to drive them apart however, to further delay the resurgence of the Jedi, and strengthen their sadistic stranglehold on the galaxy.
That's the bare bones, but I don't want to give too much away, nothing too out of the ordinary, I'd say, it's more of a matter of how it's held together.
Comedically.
Astronomically.
General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) of all characters, looking much more pale and sickly, taking the brunt of the insults, he battles wits early on with Dameron, but if you think of their dialogue extranarratively, it's as if Johnson is brilliantly laying down his gambit, his new direction, his original take on Star Wars, his embrace of lighthearted extreme space tragedy.
Muck like Captain America: Civil War's bold mention of The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi's uncharacteristic unprecedented Star Warsian ridiculousness pays off as nimble youthful energy, and Hamill, and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), Chewbacca doesn't show up in spellcheck, and Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), and Laura Dern (Vice Admiral Holdo)(Dern is super impressive), spontaneously and playfully redefine rebellious agency.
Apart from Rey and Finn, I wasn't that impressed with the new cast in The Force Awakens, but as Johnson's lighthearted humanistic fallible yet decisive characters joyfully play their roles with competent agile abandon, in situations wherein which there is no clear and precise plan of action, it's as if his direction creates a loving caring nurturing self-sacrificing bold aesthetic that's lucidly transmitted through every innocent yet volatile melodic aspect.
It's a risk, embracing the lighthearted so firmly in such a solemn franchise, but it works well, incredibly well, no doubt a byproduct of having the legendary Mark Hamill so close at hand, and, possibly, red bull, could this be the crowning achievement of today's youth's sober obsession with red bull?
It's like they know when to be funny, when to be furious, when to be desperate, grateful, condemnatory, sad, ruthless, gracious, assertive, feeble.
Abused animals are set free.
Plutocratic weapons dealers castigated.
Vegetarianism presented as a conscientious choice.
Loving kindness shown towards animals leads survivors towards light.
Without being preachy or sanctimonious.
Just short random bursts well-threaded into the action.
It's not all cute and cuddly, the mischievous substance is backed by unyielding pressure, the entire film apart from the interactions on Luke's far away island is one massive extended fight scene, coming in at 152 chaotic minutes, a sustained accelerated orgasmic orchestration, that seems like it was just takin' a walk in the woods, or considering what to do on a long weekend.
New character DJ's (Benicio Del Toro) embrace of moralistic relativism left me puzzled.
You'd have to be a huge piece of shit to betray the resistance like that.
He's right that both sides purchase weapons from arms dealers and use them to pursue alternative ethicopolitical visions.
But he's wrong to have not chosen a side during a real conflict with physical casualties mounting by the minute, one group notably less oppressive than the other.
When shit hits the fan, when a Hitler decides he wants to conquer Europe, or the president of the United States starts directly supporting misogynists and white supremacists, or the right to unionize is threatened politically, when extremes govern, then moralistic relativism takes a back seat to action, and you fight them, with mind, body, and spirit, plain and simple.
Don't know what to make of Maz Kanata's (Lupita Nyong'o) labour dispute. If her employees are comin' at her that hard, she must be utilizing antiquated labour policies.
Too much praise perhaps, but I haven't really loved a new Star Wars film since I was 7.
It worked for me.
Big time.
Spoiler: I was glad they recognized there could never be a last Jedi.
The Jedi might take on a new name if future Jedi don't understand that the powers they possess were once referred to as Jedi powers.
They'd still be Jedi, however, or at least gifted individuals in tune with whatever word they use to characterize the force.
The universe would never stop producing them.
Although alarming build-ups of plastics could prevent people from breeding which could lead to even less Jedi, which would be a very small number indeed.
Kylo Ren the death eater, Rey, born of non-magical parents.
There's a Harry Potteresque magic to The Last Jedi.
Culturally conjuring.
Tragic inasmuch as the Jedi would be betrayed and the Emperor would inevitably reign supreme.
It's possible that Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer and director Rian Johnson respected this aspect of Lucas's vision (he did achieve that aspect of his vision) but wanted to tone it down a bit, or to make Episode VIII easier to follow anyways.
If that's the case, well done.
In fact, The Last Jedi's a masterpiece of unpretentious chill ethicopolitical sci-fi activism, not to mention an explosive Star Wars film, way done to the nitty-gritty.
Best since Jedi.
Possibly better than Jedi.
Conflict.
As the last remnants of the resistance run out of fuel, star destroyers who can track them through hyperspace pick them off one by one, and after most of their senior leadership is suddenly wiped out by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), passionate headstrong and defensive rebels bitterly dispute their remaining options.
Lacking the requisite rank to command, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) improvises plan B, which an embarrassed Finn (John Boyega) puts into action, along with the aid of dedicated worker Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).
Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) become better acquainted as her innocent forceful magnetism awakens hope in his forlorn Jedi consciousness.
Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) seek to drive them apart however, to further delay the resurgence of the Jedi, and strengthen their sadistic stranglehold on the galaxy.
That's the bare bones, but I don't want to give too much away, nothing too out of the ordinary, I'd say, it's more of a matter of how it's held together.
Comedically.
Astronomically.
General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) of all characters, looking much more pale and sickly, taking the brunt of the insults, he battles wits early on with Dameron, but if you think of their dialogue extranarratively, it's as if Johnson is brilliantly laying down his gambit, his new direction, his original take on Star Wars, his embrace of lighthearted extreme space tragedy.
Muck like Captain America: Civil War's bold mention of The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi's uncharacteristic unprecedented Star Warsian ridiculousness pays off as nimble youthful energy, and Hamill, and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), Chewbacca doesn't show up in spellcheck, and Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), and Laura Dern (Vice Admiral Holdo)(Dern is super impressive), spontaneously and playfully redefine rebellious agency.
Apart from Rey and Finn, I wasn't that impressed with the new cast in The Force Awakens, but as Johnson's lighthearted humanistic fallible yet decisive characters joyfully play their roles with competent agile abandon, in situations wherein which there is no clear and precise plan of action, it's as if his direction creates a loving caring nurturing self-sacrificing bold aesthetic that's lucidly transmitted through every innocent yet volatile melodic aspect.
It's a risk, embracing the lighthearted so firmly in such a solemn franchise, but it works well, incredibly well, no doubt a byproduct of having the legendary Mark Hamill so close at hand, and, possibly, red bull, could this be the crowning achievement of today's youth's sober obsession with red bull?
It's like they know when to be funny, when to be furious, when to be desperate, grateful, condemnatory, sad, ruthless, gracious, assertive, feeble.
Abused animals are set free.
Plutocratic weapons dealers castigated.
Vegetarianism presented as a conscientious choice.
Loving kindness shown towards animals leads survivors towards light.
Without being preachy or sanctimonious.
Just short random bursts well-threaded into the action.
It's not all cute and cuddly, the mischievous substance is backed by unyielding pressure, the entire film apart from the interactions on Luke's far away island is one massive extended fight scene, coming in at 152 chaotic minutes, a sustained accelerated orgasmic orchestration, that seems like it was just takin' a walk in the woods, or considering what to do on a long weekend.
New character DJ's (Benicio Del Toro) embrace of moralistic relativism left me puzzled.
You'd have to be a huge piece of shit to betray the resistance like that.
He's right that both sides purchase weapons from arms dealers and use them to pursue alternative ethicopolitical visions.
But he's wrong to have not chosen a side during a real conflict with physical casualties mounting by the minute, one group notably less oppressive than the other.
When shit hits the fan, when a Hitler decides he wants to conquer Europe, or the president of the United States starts directly supporting misogynists and white supremacists, or the right to unionize is threatened politically, when extremes govern, then moralistic relativism takes a back seat to action, and you fight them, with mind, body, and spirit, plain and simple.
Don't know what to make of Maz Kanata's (Lupita Nyong'o) labour dispute. If her employees are comin' at her that hard, she must be utilizing antiquated labour policies.
Too much praise perhaps, but I haven't really loved a new Star Wars film since I was 7.
It worked for me.
Big time.
Spoiler: I was glad they recognized there could never be a last Jedi.
The Jedi might take on a new name if future Jedi don't understand that the powers they possess were once referred to as Jedi powers.
They'd still be Jedi, however, or at least gifted individuals in tune with whatever word they use to characterize the force.
The universe would never stop producing them.
Although alarming build-ups of plastics could prevent people from breeding which could lead to even less Jedi, which would be a very small number indeed.
Kylo Ren the death eater, Rey, born of non-magical parents.
There's a Harry Potteresque magic to The Last Jedi.
Culturally conjuring.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Radius
Egregious acts of villainous content are cosmically externalized after an erroneous admission of covert maniacal desire, the resultant coupling romantically symbolizing the ways in which a strong union can prevent its partners from diabolically seducing appetite, if they focus on mutual goals at hand, after having been intergalactically forgiven.
Realizing that if they don't remain close together the destruction of life will balefully revel, they struggle to stay united as law enforcement seeks viral separations.
Amnesia encourages their love's growth even if past lives ungraciously intervene, appeals to authorities instigating carnage, as two young lovers radically strive.
To understand what's happening.
Without ever asking, "why?"
Caroline Labrèche and Steeve Léonard's Radius makes the most of its small budget.
It's an excellent example of a film maximizing its cinematic appeal while working within financial constraints.
While it deals with extraordinary subject matter, its plot is fantastically plausible, a bit of down-to-earth realistic imagination, meaning that its multiple woodland settings are narratively justified.
The script doesn't take on airs or attempt to situate itself within a broader cultural dynamic, rather, it minimally focuses on using every amorous/confused/desperate/caring/terrified/inquisitive/calculating syllable to move the action along within its own tightly constructed boundaries.
Diego Klattenhoff (Liam) and Charlotte Sullivan (Jane) calmly yet keenly adopt level-heads to judiciously consider their predicament and logically structure stoic certitude, fine performances athletically exemplifying cold hard scientific rationality.
Plus there's a twist at the end that propels it to another level without histrionically horrifying the ethics of the heartbreak, remarkably well done startling severance, sudden historical revelations, which complicate everything that's passed beforehand.
It could be a solid television series methinks, this Radius, allegorical implications of the storyline notwithstanding.
I'm thinking at least two chilling seasons on Space could be hauntingly broadcast, the inevitable cataclysm tragically intensifying each passing tender chaotic moment, thereby indirectly commenting upon cultural obsessions with the past, while polemically polarizing discourses of mercy.
Prolonged judgment withheld.
True love?
Realizing that if they don't remain close together the destruction of life will balefully revel, they struggle to stay united as law enforcement seeks viral separations.
Amnesia encourages their love's growth even if past lives ungraciously intervene, appeals to authorities instigating carnage, as two young lovers radically strive.
To understand what's happening.
Without ever asking, "why?"
Caroline Labrèche and Steeve Léonard's Radius makes the most of its small budget.
It's an excellent example of a film maximizing its cinematic appeal while working within financial constraints.
While it deals with extraordinary subject matter, its plot is fantastically plausible, a bit of down-to-earth realistic imagination, meaning that its multiple woodland settings are narratively justified.
The script doesn't take on airs or attempt to situate itself within a broader cultural dynamic, rather, it minimally focuses on using every amorous/confused/desperate/caring/terrified/inquisitive/calculating syllable to move the action along within its own tightly constructed boundaries.
Diego Klattenhoff (Liam) and Charlotte Sullivan (Jane) calmly yet keenly adopt level-heads to judiciously consider their predicament and logically structure stoic certitude, fine performances athletically exemplifying cold hard scientific rationality.
Plus there's a twist at the end that propels it to another level without histrionically horrifying the ethics of the heartbreak, remarkably well done startling severance, sudden historical revelations, which complicate everything that's passed beforehand.
It could be a solid television series methinks, this Radius, allegorical implications of the storyline notwithstanding.
I'm thinking at least two chilling seasons on Space could be hauntingly broadcast, the inevitable cataclysm tragically intensifying each passing tender chaotic moment, thereby indirectly commenting upon cultural obsessions with the past, while polemically polarizing discourses of mercy.
Prolonged judgment withheld.
True love?
Friday, December 15, 2017
Tulip Fever
Fortunes scripted, ventured, improvised, inherited, youth and innocence nimbly characterized with cascading credulous streetwise spiritual tenacity, the frenetic pace complementing risks with elegant acrobatic smoothly flowing brisk tremors, the resultant emission subconsciously generating wild resonating exhilarating cerebral undulations which extranarratively converge in a whisking amorous three-dimensional dance of serendipity, illustrative soul ecstatic choreography, breaking waves basking beachheads seductive surf immaculate maelstrom, calmly executed with the delicate argumentative poise of a parlour room chat at high tea, which discusses obsessions with authentic splendour while staking suppositions with audacious rapt sincerity, spurred momentary inspirations lucidly identifying integral ephemerals with substantial sage elasticity, blossoming concerns burgeoned through wager, foresight, chance, bidding, marketed stratified sociocultural immersions, tantalizingly blended with cherished sympathetic assumption.
Religious figures often make a muck of communal virtues but Tulip Fever's Abbess (Judi Dench) and Cornelis Sandvoort (Christoph Waltz) do exemplify with resounding magnanimity.
Sheer beauty, unafraid to revel in perpetual genius with unconcerned in/discreet hesitant bold symphony, like lunching at an ill-defined French bistro it pauses, reflects, manoeuvres and mystifies to romanticize a psychology well worth perceiving.
Overflowing with life.
Materializing mercy.
Like the ideal and the practical were courting for millennia and suddenly found themselves conceptually synthesized for 105 begrudged minutes, during which they purified raw tranquility before separating everlastingly once more.
The omega directive.
Heartstrung honeysuckle.
It makes you wish you weren't too prone to love for postmodern romance.
Take your hand in mine.
And vanish.
Religious figures often make a muck of communal virtues but Tulip Fever's Abbess (Judi Dench) and Cornelis Sandvoort (Christoph Waltz) do exemplify with resounding magnanimity.
Sheer beauty, unafraid to revel in perpetual genius with unconcerned in/discreet hesitant bold symphony, like lunching at an ill-defined French bistro it pauses, reflects, manoeuvres and mystifies to romanticize a psychology well worth perceiving.
Overflowing with life.
Materializing mercy.
Like the ideal and the practical were courting for millennia and suddenly found themselves conceptually synthesized for 105 begrudged minutes, during which they purified raw tranquility before separating everlastingly once more.
The omega directive.
Heartstrung honeysuckle.
It makes you wish you weren't too prone to love for postmodern romance.
Take your hand in mine.
And vanish.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
You're Soaking in It
I suppose advertisements often work.
That people see them on television or online and then buy the products they witness after having unconditionally embraced ecstatic desires to shop, or at least, do something.
Every so often I see a really good ad (Heineken had some great ones a couple years ago and there was that cool one with the hamster or gerbil escaping from a hospital last Summer), and I can appreciate the creativity that goes into crafting them, but actually buying something that they mention, or feeling compelled to buy something they mention, that's something I don't understand, even if I appreciate the variety of goods available at various shops/. . . throughout town and I may use Wix to create a website at some point.
Then again, craft beer, wine, indie music, fictional and non-fictional books, knickknack boutiques, juice purveyors, speciality cheeses, and items from antipasto bars don't really show up in televised ads that often, and I don't watch television, and if they do, I then instinctually don't want to buy them if I happen to see them because it seems as if they've lost something genuine in the marketing.
I don't hold it against companies who decide to go this route (Molson and Labatt were likely craft breweries long ago). If they desire to expand to larger markets, good for them, just don't change the original recipe!
Film trailers, I do watch a lot of film trailers, I love watching film trailers, but I go to the cinema often enough and like to keep abreast of what's coming to town and usually won't see a film if I don't like the trailer unless it's been hewn by a director I like or just seems unapologetically incorrigible and/or ridiculous.
Does Ricard advertise in France?
Does Simons advertise in Québec?
I love the collective nature of STM advertisements and check out artists advertised in métro stations on iTunes later on if they have a catchy name or their album sounds cool.
Or they're holding a violin or standing next to a piano.
There are a preponderance of little ads that pop-up online (pop-up ads [😉]) that are somewhat irritating, and I thought You're Soaking in It was going to condemn them with more passionate argumentation, was going to create an all-encompassing death-defying theory or two to conspiratorially define things, even if they bluntly recognize the inherent impossibilities of pursuing such objectives, as people have been stating for centuries, that's where you find the most sincerely odd novelties, ludicrously presented with cold hard immaculate ephemeral tact.
I was hoping it would take me a stage past Fast Food Nation or game change like Cowspiracy or Blackfish but I didn't really get there, although I did like considering facts presented, the promotion of AdBlockers, and having the chance to listen to contemporary internet gurus in their own words.
Maybe it wasn't trying to seem like an ad so it ignored filmic conventions and decided to boldly wing it?
Although it seems like even if you spend millions on market research, if you never wing it, you may find yourself struggling to sell.
Some relevant postmodern analyses of a reality that's been (relatively) uncritically pontificating nevertheless, You're Soaking in It offers some thoughtful commentaries without strikingly conditioning, like a late afternoon novel that coyly resists immersive seduction.
Not bad.
That people see them on television or online and then buy the products they witness after having unconditionally embraced ecstatic desires to shop, or at least, do something.
Every so often I see a really good ad (Heineken had some great ones a couple years ago and there was that cool one with the hamster or gerbil escaping from a hospital last Summer), and I can appreciate the creativity that goes into crafting them, but actually buying something that they mention, or feeling compelled to buy something they mention, that's something I don't understand, even if I appreciate the variety of goods available at various shops/. . . throughout town and I may use Wix to create a website at some point.
Then again, craft beer, wine, indie music, fictional and non-fictional books, knickknack boutiques, juice purveyors, speciality cheeses, and items from antipasto bars don't really show up in televised ads that often, and I don't watch television, and if they do, I then instinctually don't want to buy them if I happen to see them because it seems as if they've lost something genuine in the marketing.
I don't hold it against companies who decide to go this route (Molson and Labatt were likely craft breweries long ago). If they desire to expand to larger markets, good for them, just don't change the original recipe!
Film trailers, I do watch a lot of film trailers, I love watching film trailers, but I go to the cinema often enough and like to keep abreast of what's coming to town and usually won't see a film if I don't like the trailer unless it's been hewn by a director I like or just seems unapologetically incorrigible and/or ridiculous.
Does Ricard advertise in France?
Does Simons advertise in Québec?
I love the collective nature of STM advertisements and check out artists advertised in métro stations on iTunes later on if they have a catchy name or their album sounds cool.
Or they're holding a violin or standing next to a piano.
There are a preponderance of little ads that pop-up online (pop-up ads [😉]) that are somewhat irritating, and I thought You're Soaking in It was going to condemn them with more passionate argumentation, was going to create an all-encompassing death-defying theory or two to conspiratorially define things, even if they bluntly recognize the inherent impossibilities of pursuing such objectives, as people have been stating for centuries, that's where you find the most sincerely odd novelties, ludicrously presented with cold hard immaculate ephemeral tact.
I was hoping it would take me a stage past Fast Food Nation or game change like Cowspiracy or Blackfish but I didn't really get there, although I did like considering facts presented, the promotion of AdBlockers, and having the chance to listen to contemporary internet gurus in their own words.
Maybe it wasn't trying to seem like an ad so it ignored filmic conventions and decided to boldly wing it?
Although it seems like even if you spend millions on market research, if you never wing it, you may find yourself struggling to sell.
Some relevant postmodern analyses of a reality that's been (relatively) uncritically pontificating nevertheless, You're Soaking in It offers some thoughtful commentaries without strikingly conditioning, like a late afternoon novel that coyly resists immersive seduction.
Not bad.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
The darker side of contemporary sick demented psycho comedy distraughtly horrifies in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which is sort of like The Lobster's less nuanced emaciated bile, striving to absorb Yorgos Lanthimos's excess fat, while also producing gut wrenching nausea.
Whereas a lot of time and care went into crafting The Lobster's clever maniacal sociocultural criticisms, Sacred Deer is more like that other idea Lanthimos had while ingeniously writing, an idea that was perhaps quickly given the green light after the former's success to capitalize on wry sadistic sensation.
All the elements for a bit of intelligent woeful macabre distraction are there, and whether or not he was being intentionally banal is beside the point, it's just too content with suffering to offer any critical stoic insights, as if it wants to be masochistically beaten to the point of bitter exhaustion.
Even if you're being intentionally banal to comment on how disenchantment abounds, it doesn't change the fact that banality is banality and your audience is still stuck sitting through the entire practically pointless slide show.
Perhaps such endeavours do encourage creative growth, I'm in no position to measure such outcomes, but if it's not a way to make a trite point that metaphorically condemns a lack of bold fictional imagination, it's a lazy way to disinterestedly appear genuine for a mundane bit of excruciating tedium.
Why does the new Twin Peaks come to mind?
The Secret History of 'Twin Peaks' book is quite good.
Barry Keoghan (Marting) haphazardly steals the show and is given the best material, notably his interactions with infatuated Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and his ice cold emotionless curses.
Nevertheless, like Sophie's Choice if it had an aneurism, The Killing of a Sacred Deer begs brilliant qualifications but flops down more like an unappealing B-side, or Belle and Sebastian's How to Solve Our Human Problems (Part 1).
La Femme's Mystère?
Which means it is an excellent horror film.
Comedic tremors notwithstanding.
Whereas a lot of time and care went into crafting The Lobster's clever maniacal sociocultural criticisms, Sacred Deer is more like that other idea Lanthimos had while ingeniously writing, an idea that was perhaps quickly given the green light after the former's success to capitalize on wry sadistic sensation.
All the elements for a bit of intelligent woeful macabre distraction are there, and whether or not he was being intentionally banal is beside the point, it's just too content with suffering to offer any critical stoic insights, as if it wants to be masochistically beaten to the point of bitter exhaustion.
Even if you're being intentionally banal to comment on how disenchantment abounds, it doesn't change the fact that banality is banality and your audience is still stuck sitting through the entire practically pointless slide show.
Perhaps such endeavours do encourage creative growth, I'm in no position to measure such outcomes, but if it's not a way to make a trite point that metaphorically condemns a lack of bold fictional imagination, it's a lazy way to disinterestedly appear genuine for a mundane bit of excruciating tedium.
Why does the new Twin Peaks come to mind?
The Secret History of 'Twin Peaks' book is quite good.
Barry Keoghan (Marting) haphazardly steals the show and is given the best material, notably his interactions with infatuated Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and his ice cold emotionless curses.
Nevertheless, like Sophie's Choice if it had an aneurism, The Killing of a Sacred Deer begs brilliant qualifications but flops down more like an unappealing B-side, or Belle and Sebastian's How to Solve Our Human Problems (Part 1).
La Femme's Mystère?
Which means it is an excellent horror film.
Comedic tremors notwithstanding.
Friday, December 8, 2017
Wind River
Friendships slowly cultivated over the years like birch trees crafted into dependable canoes, launching this way and that across un/familiar waterways, consistently patchworking principles and down-to-earth dossiers, weathered yet versatile hardboiled harkenings celebrating cherished repetition with iconic seasoned variability, thematic thimbles boisterous bows, jaded elasticity ample comebacks, good hearts strong people all too aware of systematic cruelties lodged in impermeable stone, bookhousin' it nevertheless hived and alive intrepid backbone, resourceful headway, local integrity, tooth and nail, afloat.
Aware of the dark side, contending with wayward unscrupulous desire detached and frothing with venomous inadmissibility, beautiful strong intelligent women cut down by worthless ignorance, whose fear leads it to horrifically crush inquisitive spirits, without generating remorseful emotions, the branding of men without honour.
I don't even like to use that word, the word honour. Search these blogs, I doubt you'll find I've used it often. It's associated with the killing of independent women so regularly that its merit has been severely diluted. And even if it's honourable to serve your country, when the leaders of a country drive it astray, it's just as honourable to humbly refuse them.
Canada has launched an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. Said murders and abductions represent a reality that's so offensive it makes me ashamed to be human.
Deer don't pull that kind of shit.
Water buffalo, horses, nope.
Wind River works in a more rustically sophisticated frame than the one I've laid out, a dark sombre penetrating investigation into one of the most loathsome hushed-up realities assaulting North American culture.
It isn't a box of chocolates.
It ain't a bouquet of flowers.
It's a character driven harshly hewn multidimensionally matriculated stark blunt tragedy.
With the best performance I've seen from Jeremy Renner (Cory Lambert) in years.
There's good and evil in everyone and people fight if differently at various points in their lives.
But if you see people doing the purely evil things the bad guys do in this film, you need to stand up to them.
It doesn't matter if you get hurt. It doesn't matter if you lose your shit. It don't matter if corrupt policepersons lock you up. It matters that you did the right thing.
It's not about being Indigenous or European, Chinese or African, Australian, Brazilian, Danish or Russian, it's about simply being human.
Not that I won't plug the Irish at times or write about how I love being Canadian, but I don't consider those groups to be superior to any other, just different, and I know that there's so much to be learned from other cultures that it seems foolish to clash with them, I'd rather have a pint or something nice to eat with strangers from other lands/towns/provinces/neighbourhoods, I don't understand this divide and conquer nonsense.
It's nothing new you know.
In fact it's probably the oldest play in the book.
The demonic logic of the damned.
Pestilent profitability.
When I was a kid I figured all the people who saw the ending to the original Planet of the Apes film would get it and peace would globally prosper.
Such a shame.
Such a missed opportunity.
Aware of the dark side, contending with wayward unscrupulous desire detached and frothing with venomous inadmissibility, beautiful strong intelligent women cut down by worthless ignorance, whose fear leads it to horrifically crush inquisitive spirits, without generating remorseful emotions, the branding of men without honour.
I don't even like to use that word, the word honour. Search these blogs, I doubt you'll find I've used it often. It's associated with the killing of independent women so regularly that its merit has been severely diluted. And even if it's honourable to serve your country, when the leaders of a country drive it astray, it's just as honourable to humbly refuse them.
Canada has launched an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. Said murders and abductions represent a reality that's so offensive it makes me ashamed to be human.
Deer don't pull that kind of shit.
Water buffalo, horses, nope.
Wind River works in a more rustically sophisticated frame than the one I've laid out, a dark sombre penetrating investigation into one of the most loathsome hushed-up realities assaulting North American culture.
It isn't a box of chocolates.
It ain't a bouquet of flowers.
It's a character driven harshly hewn multidimensionally matriculated stark blunt tragedy.
With the best performance I've seen from Jeremy Renner (Cory Lambert) in years.
There's good and evil in everyone and people fight if differently at various points in their lives.
But if you see people doing the purely evil things the bad guys do in this film, you need to stand up to them.
It doesn't matter if you get hurt. It doesn't matter if you lose your shit. It don't matter if corrupt policepersons lock you up. It matters that you did the right thing.
It's not about being Indigenous or European, Chinese or African, Australian, Brazilian, Danish or Russian, it's about simply being human.
Not that I won't plug the Irish at times or write about how I love being Canadian, but I don't consider those groups to be superior to any other, just different, and I know that there's so much to be learned from other cultures that it seems foolish to clash with them, I'd rather have a pint or something nice to eat with strangers from other lands/towns/provinces/neighbourhoods, I don't understand this divide and conquer nonsense.
It's nothing new you know.
In fact it's probably the oldest play in the book.
The demonic logic of the damned.
Pestilent profitability.
When I was a kid I figured all the people who saw the ending to the original Planet of the Apes film would get it and peace would globally prosper.
Such a shame.
Such a missed opportunity.
Thursday, December 7, 2017
The Hitman's Bodyguard
Hitperson nobility chaotically clashes on the way to trial after two bitter rivals begrudgingly team up to ensure evidence is produced that will incriminate a tyrant.
In Patrick Hughes's The Hitman's Bodyguard.
Independently affixed, one smoothly flowing while the other meticulously researches every operation's specialized nanoaspects, their contradictory approaches enraging the more assiduously inclined, much to his immortally gifted interlocutor's amusement, the bodies reflexively pile up as the bromance intensifies, discourses of the huggable ironically embracing acutely accented vitriol, voice two highly successful underground phenoms, unaccustomed to negotiating viscid bonds of true friendship.
Because they're usually out killing people.
And rarely have time.
To love.
The tyrant's henchpeople at least try to make things difficult, even going so far as to instigate the best most intelligently and intricately edited (Jake Roberts) high speed chase I've seen in years, involving boats in Amsterdam, plus Salma Hayek (Sonia Kincaid) versatilely delivers, and Elodie Yung (Amelia Roussel) tantalizes with less bravado.
The international policing community is betrayed.
Vengeance pontificates while reacting condemnatorially.
Just tell her you love her.
This joyful Christmas/Festive season.
So close to entering the realm of the cult classic, one day, perhaps it will, I don't know, but, although both Samuel L. Jackson (Darius Kincaid) and Ryan Reynolds (Michael Bryce) captivatingly execute, casting by Elaine Grainger and Marianne Stanicheva, I couldn't help but wish Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino had edited the script, which is oddly still a bit light considering (a chummy bloodbath for the entire family?), although there are moments of comedic genius, Reynolds uncharacteristically laying it down to a bartender before reentering the fray for one, and the line, "he ruined the [phrase] mother fucker."
Can't one of these films that torches a car, or, building, have a self-reflexive moment where the controversial ponder their consequent environmental impact?
A sequel seems apt since Jackson and Reynolds work so well together.
I would suggest not bringing them closer together as it progresses.
Rather, I'd replace the tendency to strengthen familial or bromantic feelings in round two with a two minute scene, after some pyrotechnic shenanigans, where they actually stop talking and just stare at one another for awhile, their looks encapsulating thirty awkward cheesy moments of convivial intrigue, to give it more of an edge, make it more furious, more vital.
That's what I'd do.
In Patrick Hughes's The Hitman's Bodyguard.
Independently affixed, one smoothly flowing while the other meticulously researches every operation's specialized nanoaspects, their contradictory approaches enraging the more assiduously inclined, much to his immortally gifted interlocutor's amusement, the bodies reflexively pile up as the bromance intensifies, discourses of the huggable ironically embracing acutely accented vitriol, voice two highly successful underground phenoms, unaccustomed to negotiating viscid bonds of true friendship.
Because they're usually out killing people.
And rarely have time.
To love.
The tyrant's henchpeople at least try to make things difficult, even going so far as to instigate the best most intelligently and intricately edited (Jake Roberts) high speed chase I've seen in years, involving boats in Amsterdam, plus Salma Hayek (Sonia Kincaid) versatilely delivers, and Elodie Yung (Amelia Roussel) tantalizes with less bravado.
The international policing community is betrayed.
Vengeance pontificates while reacting condemnatorially.
Just tell her you love her.
This joyful Christmas/Festive season.
So close to entering the realm of the cult classic, one day, perhaps it will, I don't know, but, although both Samuel L. Jackson (Darius Kincaid) and Ryan Reynolds (Michael Bryce) captivatingly execute, casting by Elaine Grainger and Marianne Stanicheva, I couldn't help but wish Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino had edited the script, which is oddly still a bit light considering (a chummy bloodbath for the entire family?), although there are moments of comedic genius, Reynolds uncharacteristically laying it down to a bartender before reentering the fray for one, and the line, "he ruined the [phrase] mother fucker."
Can't one of these films that torches a car, or, building, have a self-reflexive moment where the controversial ponder their consequent environmental impact?
A sequel seems apt since Jackson and Reynolds work so well together.
I would suggest not bringing them closer together as it progresses.
Rather, I'd replace the tendency to strengthen familial or bromantic feelings in round two with a two minute scene, after some pyrotechnic shenanigans, where they actually stop talking and just stare at one another for awhile, their looks encapsulating thirty awkward cheesy moments of convivial intrigue, to give it more of an edge, make it more furious, more vital.
That's what I'd do.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
The Rift: Dark Side of the Moon
North of Belgrade, a mysterious satellite crash leads an eclectic international mismatch to cautiously exhibit.
Their leader, ill at ease with working with others and known for adopting unorthodox methods, blindly yet confidently leads onwards.
A brilliant scientist, tenacious tesla, and liaising liability accompany him forthwith, illustrious classified governmental nocturnes somnambulistically elucidating their scratchy lunar distillates.
After encountering a haunting spaceperson, whose inexplicable presence seems to be immortally manipulating its surroundings, madness slowly hemorrhages their improvised intentions.
Correspondingly, a secret portal holds enigmatic clues to his or her terrestrial origins, its temporal spatial eccentricities, seductively eviscerating psychological bounds.
As well.
Is the world at large a component of an invisible computer program (requiring caring environmental stewardship) within which those designated prophetic in ages past had accidentally downloaded information regarding the future through the ether which made no sense within their contemporary sociocultural predicaments?
I'm not sure.
Even if it's true, nevertheless, it couldn't save The Rift: Dark Side of the Moon from taking itself too seriously.
I imagine it was written by someone whose first language isn't English, because its clunky clichés, hastily delivered as if they're hard-hitting extravagantly stranded bona fides, are precise yet sloppy, inasmuch as a Native speaker would likely do a better job of covering up their emotionless tact.
That's likely what I would sound like writing in another language if I overemphasized my fluency anyways.
Had everything been slown down a bit and a slight comedic element attached, with a lot more gore, this aspect would have been more appreciated.
That isn't to say the film's all bad.
The soundtrack's fantastic and it ends well.
It made me think of David Bowie's first album, upon which you'll hear the origins of unparalleled songwriter awkwardly developing his genius chops.
More time and care and perhaps Dejan Zecevic will pull it together for a Diamond Dogs or two, a Rebel Rebel, a Young Americans.
'Tis the season.
Their leader, ill at ease with working with others and known for adopting unorthodox methods, blindly yet confidently leads onwards.
A brilliant scientist, tenacious tesla, and liaising liability accompany him forthwith, illustrious classified governmental nocturnes somnambulistically elucidating their scratchy lunar distillates.
After encountering a haunting spaceperson, whose inexplicable presence seems to be immortally manipulating its surroundings, madness slowly hemorrhages their improvised intentions.
Correspondingly, a secret portal holds enigmatic clues to his or her terrestrial origins, its temporal spatial eccentricities, seductively eviscerating psychological bounds.
As well.
Is the world at large a component of an invisible computer program (requiring caring environmental stewardship) within which those designated prophetic in ages past had accidentally downloaded information regarding the future through the ether which made no sense within their contemporary sociocultural predicaments?
I'm not sure.
Even if it's true, nevertheless, it couldn't save The Rift: Dark Side of the Moon from taking itself too seriously.
I imagine it was written by someone whose first language isn't English, because its clunky clichés, hastily delivered as if they're hard-hitting extravagantly stranded bona fides, are precise yet sloppy, inasmuch as a Native speaker would likely do a better job of covering up their emotionless tact.
That's likely what I would sound like writing in another language if I overemphasized my fluency anyways.
Had everything been slown down a bit and a slight comedic element attached, with a lot more gore, this aspect would have been more appreciated.
That isn't to say the film's all bad.
The soundtrack's fantastic and it ends well.
It made me think of David Bowie's first album, upon which you'll hear the origins of unparalleled songwriter awkwardly developing his genius chops.
More time and care and perhaps Dejan Zecevic will pull it together for a Diamond Dogs or two, a Rebel Rebel, a Young Americans.
'Tis the season.
Friday, December 1, 2017
Thor: Ragnarok
Sibling rivalry basks psychotic in Thor: Ragnarok, as the God of Thunder's (Chris Hemsworth) necromongesque sister (Cate Blanchett as Hela) escapes her prison to bring death and destruction to those worlds who would forthrightly oppose her, challenge her, spurn her, mock her.
In possession of seemingly limitless power which Odin's (Anthony Hopkins) death helplessly releases, she ungraciously overwhelms Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) before returning to Asgard to assert her dominance.
Boastfully awaiting their bellicose return.
The defeated brothers find themselves playing different roles upon a chaotic planet, perhaps modelled upon the last days of Rome's imperial pretension, ruled by a comic tyrant (Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster [it's the best Goldblum I've seen in years]) who loves gladiating and humiliating, the gladiators themselves intent on revolting, Thor forced to fight and plot amongst them, Loki cleverly seducing the oligarchic elite, with a beautiful Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) haunted by battles fought long ago, in the heavens, who has taken to drink and collecting random strays, and remains unimpressed upon encountering her devoted liege.
Old friends pop up as Thor remains evergreen, the film's actually quite funny despite its violent extremities, an unsettling kind of apocalyptic autocratic resigned athletic humour that emboldens the democratic subconscious by turning masters of war themselves into subjects of gladiatorial intrigue, to be criticized and championed as they interact cinematically.
It's the best Thor film I've seen, even if it seems like a diagnosis for a mental illness, Heimdall's (Idris Elba) shepherding diminutively contrasting the conquistadorial ostentation, Thor's cheery undaunted good spirits making everything seem stable and safe, frenzies notwithstanding, even if he still needs guidance from his deceased progenitor, new characters introduced and developed with crafty eccentricity, a hulking universal ferocious manifest, in that leather, the world Marvel films has created is expanded with fascinating conspiracy.
It's like they're not just trying to voraciously cash in, they're often delivering high quality products that make going to the cinema so worth it.
Ragnarok's music gives it an oddball artistic touch born of the 1980s.
Like Tron could have been.
Hoping Loki figures prominently in the next Doctor Strange film
How do they choose which characters end up in which films?
It must be fun to make such decisions.
Will every Asgardian have superpowers on Earth?
In possession of seemingly limitless power which Odin's (Anthony Hopkins) death helplessly releases, she ungraciously overwhelms Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) before returning to Asgard to assert her dominance.
Boastfully awaiting their bellicose return.
The defeated brothers find themselves playing different roles upon a chaotic planet, perhaps modelled upon the last days of Rome's imperial pretension, ruled by a comic tyrant (Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster [it's the best Goldblum I've seen in years]) who loves gladiating and humiliating, the gladiators themselves intent on revolting, Thor forced to fight and plot amongst them, Loki cleverly seducing the oligarchic elite, with a beautiful Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) haunted by battles fought long ago, in the heavens, who has taken to drink and collecting random strays, and remains unimpressed upon encountering her devoted liege.
Old friends pop up as Thor remains evergreen, the film's actually quite funny despite its violent extremities, an unsettling kind of apocalyptic autocratic resigned athletic humour that emboldens the democratic subconscious by turning masters of war themselves into subjects of gladiatorial intrigue, to be criticized and championed as they interact cinematically.
It's the best Thor film I've seen, even if it seems like a diagnosis for a mental illness, Heimdall's (Idris Elba) shepherding diminutively contrasting the conquistadorial ostentation, Thor's cheery undaunted good spirits making everything seem stable and safe, frenzies notwithstanding, even if he still needs guidance from his deceased progenitor, new characters introduced and developed with crafty eccentricity, a hulking universal ferocious manifest, in that leather, the world Marvel films has created is expanded with fascinating conspiracy.
It's like they're not just trying to voraciously cash in, they're often delivering high quality products that make going to the cinema so worth it.
Ragnarok's music gives it an oddball artistic touch born of the 1980s.
Like Tron could have been.
Hoping Loki figures prominently in the next Doctor Strange film
How do they choose which characters end up in which films?
It must be fun to make such decisions.
Will every Asgardian have superpowers on Earth?
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Churchill
Qualifying the identity of a charismatic colossus with definitive ambient converging characteristics can be as politically crafty as the individual under observation, if sober rhetoric is to be biographically evidenced, the resultant identity less of a fiction than an interpretive constellation/polemic/homage/impression, narrative arguments creatively distilling personality inasmuch as their propositions are culturally elevated, for a time, for a fissure, for a season, skilfully situating themselves within broader agitations depending on the motivations of their supporting cast, like strategic serendipity, or a bit of provocative horseplay.
The wonderful thing about In Search of Lost Time is that it follows the same characters for thousands of pages throughout their lives, Proust intricately demonstrating how different ages and relationships and fashions and successes/failures privately shape mass marketed caricatures, a book about someone's life seeming more like a resonant aspect within such a frame, even if the press may still play the Ignatieff card if it so chooses.
So much diversity condensed into stereotypical miniatures which guide light yet edgy conversations with the playful wit of meaningless escapades.
Unless they're about Trump.
Monster.
Jonathan Teplitzky's Churchill sympathetically examines the great orator's rational wish to not repeat World War I's Gallipoli disaster.
His criticisms of Operation Overlord, as logical and sound as they appear, were countered by alternative evaluations which were rather unappreciative of his sustained opposition.
The realization that his viewpoints weren't militaristically cherished briefly derailed his confident locomotion, the film humanistically yet melodramatically suggesting that this was the moment he completely transformed from military strategist to political exponent.
Chruchill (Brian Cox) the man figures more prominently in Teplitzky's film than the immutable godlike figurehead I've encountered in books at times, a compelling cinematic feature considering how respectfully leadership at the highest levels is depicted within.
Cognizant of the great unknown, the approach of less critical engagements, he strove on regardless, cultivating tidal pride.
James Purefoy (King George VI) delivers a brilliant supporting performance.
Brian Cox also excels.
*Forgot to mention the ways in which Churchill's editing process is dramatized: fantastic. At least when he's searching for the right word.
The wonderful thing about In Search of Lost Time is that it follows the same characters for thousands of pages throughout their lives, Proust intricately demonstrating how different ages and relationships and fashions and successes/failures privately shape mass marketed caricatures, a book about someone's life seeming more like a resonant aspect within such a frame, even if the press may still play the Ignatieff card if it so chooses.
So much diversity condensed into stereotypical miniatures which guide light yet edgy conversations with the playful wit of meaningless escapades.
Unless they're about Trump.
Monster.
Jonathan Teplitzky's Churchill sympathetically examines the great orator's rational wish to not repeat World War I's Gallipoli disaster.
His criticisms of Operation Overlord, as logical and sound as they appear, were countered by alternative evaluations which were rather unappreciative of his sustained opposition.
The realization that his viewpoints weren't militaristically cherished briefly derailed his confident locomotion, the film humanistically yet melodramatically suggesting that this was the moment he completely transformed from military strategist to political exponent.
Chruchill (Brian Cox) the man figures more prominently in Teplitzky's film than the immutable godlike figurehead I've encountered in books at times, a compelling cinematic feature considering how respectfully leadership at the highest levels is depicted within.
Cognizant of the great unknown, the approach of less critical engagements, he strove on regardless, cultivating tidal pride.
James Purefoy (King George VI) delivers a brilliant supporting performance.
Brian Cox also excels.
*Forgot to mention the ways in which Churchill's editing process is dramatized: fantastic. At least when he's searching for the right word.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Justice League
Superman's (Henry Cavill) death having exposed Earth to intergalactic invasion, Batman (Ben Affleck), riddled with guilt, must find a way to heroically compensate.
Assembling a team of gifted phenoms seems like the best course of action, and the globe is traversed to collectively materialize both ancient and contemporary myth and legend.
Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) quickly joins up shortly after Aquaman (Jason Momoa) initially refuses to participate, the Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) eventually accommodating Mr. Wayne's self-sacrificing request, the resultant union improvising in battle with hopes of defeating the tyrannical Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds), whose monstrous heart terrifyingly seeks the destruction of passionate worlds, the annihilation of free peoples, the nourishment of death and decay.
They come together with much less ego than their avenging competitors, reluctance and leadership issues more of an itch than an implosive characteristic, historical reverence subduing aged contemporary Gods, youthful postmodern members discursively ready to mystify.
Perhaps suggesting that DC is distinguishing itself from Marvel by focusing more on collective unity than individualistic personality?
Even if interstellar awakenings make some of these reflections mute.
Batman is ridiculed for having no superpower.
David Bowie and Prince are awesomely compared to Superman.
Sea shepherding of the rustic conveys bucolic mythological fortune.
Love vanquishes the unleashed chaos of blitzkrieg.
Computational prowess is as highly regarded as environmental stewardship, global interconnectivity physically synthesized ad infinitum.
Whales.
I rather liked how Justice League holds it together.
Not as verbose as The Avengers nor as intricate, but its laid-back approach is still rich in metaphor which indirectly stylizes an imaginary vortex, wherein which interpretive discourses manifest interdisciplinary comment, the intellectualization of the straightforward, the love for all things plaid.
Does the Flash become jealous of Batman in subsequent films as Wonder Woman appears to prefer him?
Will Aquaman and Cyborg's habitual independence destabilize their cherished unity?
As much of a catalyst as it is a fulcrum, Zack Snyder's Justice League gives DC even more eclectic momentum, some versatile room to manoeuvre, the depth of its successors hopefully reaching way down to Atlantis, while diversifying cyberspatial manors, with Amazonian lightning speed.
Burgeoning.
Assembling a team of gifted phenoms seems like the best course of action, and the globe is traversed to collectively materialize both ancient and contemporary myth and legend.
Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) quickly joins up shortly after Aquaman (Jason Momoa) initially refuses to participate, the Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) eventually accommodating Mr. Wayne's self-sacrificing request, the resultant union improvising in battle with hopes of defeating the tyrannical Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds), whose monstrous heart terrifyingly seeks the destruction of passionate worlds, the annihilation of free peoples, the nourishment of death and decay.
They come together with much less ego than their avenging competitors, reluctance and leadership issues more of an itch than an implosive characteristic, historical reverence subduing aged contemporary Gods, youthful postmodern members discursively ready to mystify.
Perhaps suggesting that DC is distinguishing itself from Marvel by focusing more on collective unity than individualistic personality?
Even if interstellar awakenings make some of these reflections mute.
Batman is ridiculed for having no superpower.
David Bowie and Prince are awesomely compared to Superman.
Sea shepherding of the rustic conveys bucolic mythological fortune.
Love vanquishes the unleashed chaos of blitzkrieg.
Computational prowess is as highly regarded as environmental stewardship, global interconnectivity physically synthesized ad infinitum.
Whales.
I rather liked how Justice League holds it together.
Not as verbose as The Avengers nor as intricate, but its laid-back approach is still rich in metaphor which indirectly stylizes an imaginary vortex, wherein which interpretive discourses manifest interdisciplinary comment, the intellectualization of the straightforward, the love for all things plaid.
Does the Flash become jealous of Batman in subsequent films as Wonder Woman appears to prefer him?
Will Aquaman and Cyborg's habitual independence destabilize their cherished unity?
As much of a catalyst as it is a fulcrum, Zack Snyder's Justice League gives DC even more eclectic momentum, some versatile room to manoeuvre, the depth of its successors hopefully reaching way down to Atlantis, while diversifying cyberspatial manors, with Amazonian lightning speed.
Burgeoning.
Friday, November 24, 2017
Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend)
Playful deceit with murderous intent wickedly tricks resigned desperation into committing uncharacteristic crimes in Wim Wenders's Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend), the lucrative potential payoff producing imaginative cures for dissembled diagnoses, beforehand, while innocence still tenderizes, while conscience remains impenitent, while a child acknowledges fraternity, while a wife willingly confides, the sudden possibility, the imposing tactile ease, inherent obscurities coaxing refined obsolescence, disappearing into the fold, in possession of purist panacea.
Concurrently, a fraudulent easel facilitates brushstrokes which comfortably pay the bills for both facsimilator and procurer, a man of the world always eager to make new friends, his kaleidoscopic contacts adroitly brimming with opportunistic fervour.
Begrudged meetings of minds.
Corruption classed exclusive.
The film's mix of grizzled despondent frightened action and curious childlike malevolent pause maliciously meows with tantalizing solemnity, like you've been dating a cool partner for a while and have run out of ideas, your whiskers rustling with uncertainty as you acquiesce to their control.
Cat style, things are still rather loose knit and unconcerned but the spontaneous bursts of profound inspiration startlingly ignite uncharted expeditionary crazes.
Visceral emotions.
Subconscious realization.
Like the ingredients for grandma's seductive shepherd's pie, Der Amerikanische Freund reflexively socializes with clandestine variability, each mouthful uniquely pronounced, the devouring of morsels plain yet sublime.
Taken in its entirety, it timorously yet nonchalantly plays dangerous games as it heuristically high jumps, surprisingly settled with enterprising leaps and bounds, intuitively melding cautious authenticity with bold improvisation, it angelically clasps demons, in cloaks of aspen rue.
Concurrently, a fraudulent easel facilitates brushstrokes which comfortably pay the bills for both facsimilator and procurer, a man of the world always eager to make new friends, his kaleidoscopic contacts adroitly brimming with opportunistic fervour.
Begrudged meetings of minds.
Corruption classed exclusive.
The film's mix of grizzled despondent frightened action and curious childlike malevolent pause maliciously meows with tantalizing solemnity, like you've been dating a cool partner for a while and have run out of ideas, your whiskers rustling with uncertainty as you acquiesce to their control.
Cat style, things are still rather loose knit and unconcerned but the spontaneous bursts of profound inspiration startlingly ignite uncharted expeditionary crazes.
Visceral emotions.
Subconscious realization.
Like the ingredients for grandma's seductive shepherd's pie, Der Amerikanische Freund reflexively socializes with clandestine variability, each mouthful uniquely pronounced, the devouring of morsels plain yet sublime.
Taken in its entirety, it timorously yet nonchalantly plays dangerous games as it heuristically high jumps, surprisingly settled with enterprising leaps and bounds, intuitively melding cautious authenticity with bold improvisation, it angelically clasps demons, in cloaks of aspen rue.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
A Quiet Passion
You forget about the thunderous lambasted dissatisfied offended vengeful austerity of artistic realms at times, quite different from the sporting world, as noted by others, overtly liberal yet savagely obsessed with youth and purity, pedantic pastures pirouetting and periodizing, wherein which people, many of whom can neither dribble nor throw a ball, act like severe generals intent on asininely disparaging anyone they can't seduce with their discursive charms, suckling the silver spoon with seditious sentiment, exceptionally accomplished yet insanely jealous, having created an odious convoy of fictional evaluations (principles) which they adhere to as if they're the essence of assiduity, as if they've asseverated a house of cards, the foundations of which they earnestly value like divine truths.
I made a crucial error upon engaging.
In my youth, I thought there would be a warm and friendly community wherein which one would feel free to express themselves in order to advance and learn, these were, after all, the people who couldn't catch or throw, and always wanted to play soccer (which they were terrible at), only to discover inherent habitual derisive reflexes often haunting otherwise cheerful discussions, reflexes which made beers with the jocks seem less cumbersome, even if I didn't get it and usually felt out of place with them.
It was disillusioning to find cruel pretensions backed up by limitless disdain uttered by people who weren't even that good yet had worked their way into a steady state of affairs, or would do anything they could to inanely disseminate their mediocrity.
I was too nice.
There was absolutely no chance for me.
They still do it. I still think I'm having a casual conversation only to find everything I've said without necessarily meaning any of it, just small talk, thrown back in my face behind the scenes with displeasure.
Terence Davies's A Quiet Passion made me think of those days as Emily Dickinson (Emma Bell/Cynthia Nixon) writes while martially pondering ethics.
Extremely gifted, passionate, verbose, and strict, she logically finds ways to justify her viewpoints while writing sweetly flowing unmatched poetry.
The title of the film is odd considering how often Dickinson disputes with so many, by no means a shrinking violet, more like a rigorous grizzly defending poetic cubs.
Her sister's (Rose Williams/Jennifer Ehle as Vinnie Dickinson) sympathetic and understanding, she diplomatically mediates between Emily and brother Austin (Benjamin Wainwright/Duncan Duff) as they become more estranged through argumentative age.
I loved the scenes where there was hardly any dialogue, when different family members have their portraits painted for instance, or when the family is depicted quietly relaxing one evening in the same 19th century room, long before the noisy rise of electronic interests.
It's like you're there.
At peace.
At contemplative leisure.
A different time, when religion and marriage still played a powerful role in many people's lives, marriage still being rather popular I suppose, Ms. Dickinson resolutely cultivating alternative paths for herself and others along which she independently strides.
The writing in the film displays remarkable talent at times, especially as Emily ages, but at others a lack of editorial finesse is plainly evident.
The words are out of control.
Its confident blend of the quirky and the serious made me think it was Canadian.
English Canadian.
I made a crucial error upon engaging.
In my youth, I thought there would be a warm and friendly community wherein which one would feel free to express themselves in order to advance and learn, these were, after all, the people who couldn't catch or throw, and always wanted to play soccer (which they were terrible at), only to discover inherent habitual derisive reflexes often haunting otherwise cheerful discussions, reflexes which made beers with the jocks seem less cumbersome, even if I didn't get it and usually felt out of place with them.
It was disillusioning to find cruel pretensions backed up by limitless disdain uttered by people who weren't even that good yet had worked their way into a steady state of affairs, or would do anything they could to inanely disseminate their mediocrity.
I was too nice.
There was absolutely no chance for me.
They still do it. I still think I'm having a casual conversation only to find everything I've said without necessarily meaning any of it, just small talk, thrown back in my face behind the scenes with displeasure.
Terence Davies's A Quiet Passion made me think of those days as Emily Dickinson (Emma Bell/Cynthia Nixon) writes while martially pondering ethics.
Extremely gifted, passionate, verbose, and strict, she logically finds ways to justify her viewpoints while writing sweetly flowing unmatched poetry.
The title of the film is odd considering how often Dickinson disputes with so many, by no means a shrinking violet, more like a rigorous grizzly defending poetic cubs.
Her sister's (Rose Williams/Jennifer Ehle as Vinnie Dickinson) sympathetic and understanding, she diplomatically mediates between Emily and brother Austin (Benjamin Wainwright/Duncan Duff) as they become more estranged through argumentative age.
I loved the scenes where there was hardly any dialogue, when different family members have their portraits painted for instance, or when the family is depicted quietly relaxing one evening in the same 19th century room, long before the noisy rise of electronic interests.
It's like you're there.
At peace.
At contemplative leisure.
A different time, when religion and marriage still played a powerful role in many people's lives, marriage still being rather popular I suppose, Ms. Dickinson resolutely cultivating alternative paths for herself and others along which she independently strides.
The writing in the film displays remarkable talent at times, especially as Emily ages, but at others a lack of editorial finesse is plainly evident.
The words are out of control.
Its confident blend of the quirky and the serious made me think it was Canadian.
English Canadian.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Zemletryasenie (The Earthquake)
I like how Sarik Andreasyan's Zemletryasenie (The Earthquake) focuses primarily on rebuilding a town after a massive natural disaster strikes, thereby championing the ways in which local, regional, national, and global citizens gather to respond to crises, the lasting bonds forged thereafter strengthening the endurance of their latent communal resolve, like winter in Canada and Québec, or the logistics of the World Cup of Soccer.
You can also create a bunch of characters and situate them within troubled relationships wherein which stubbornness and idiocy prevent them from appreciating their resounding good fortune, and then have an earthquake destroy their lives, the end, in order to suggest that your audience take some time to reconsider its own stable state of affairs, and perhaps encourage them to engage in random creative acts of kindness in the upcoming months, to prove that people don't require exceptional shocks to demonstrate their love.
That point may be missed, however, and Zemletryasenie actually does demonstrate how Armenia grieves, bleeds, retrieves, constructs post-quake, albeit in an ultra-patriarchal blockbustery fashion, complete with crime, heartbreaking sensation, flourishing hope, and cosmic justice.
It's a shame sophisticated delicate intricate less emotional dramatic tragedies don't make the same impact.
It's like you ignore the simplistic yet worthwhile message from the blockbuster because it's too cheesy, and refuse to accept the complicated ethics of the artistic because they're too serious.
You don't need earthquakes you know, or hurricanes, tornadoes, or ice storms, to show family and friends every once in a while that you're not quite so self-obsessed, it can be done either spontaneously or within a designated time slot every Saturday evening, depending on the dynamics of your sociocultural surroundings, and/or your willingness to express genuine care.
I suppose if someone who's known to be self-obsessed suddenly does have a Scroogesque awakening one day their resulting conduct would generally be regarded tectonically, artistic revelations inspiring thereafter like agile movement on a seismograph, as the tyrant's goodwill resoundingly evokes cheer.
Although when such acts occur interlocutors might reasonably respond suspiciously, thereby frustrating the curmudgeon in mid-reformation.
Wage hikes perhaps placate these tendencies.
Ice cream also.
And dinner at the Keg or Végo.
Money donated to help endangered species.
Grand Marnier.
A blender.
It's kind of fun to hangout with others sometimes and listen to what they have to say.
So many different takes on things.
So much emphatic life.
You can also create a bunch of characters and situate them within troubled relationships wherein which stubbornness and idiocy prevent them from appreciating their resounding good fortune, and then have an earthquake destroy their lives, the end, in order to suggest that your audience take some time to reconsider its own stable state of affairs, and perhaps encourage them to engage in random creative acts of kindness in the upcoming months, to prove that people don't require exceptional shocks to demonstrate their love.
That point may be missed, however, and Zemletryasenie actually does demonstrate how Armenia grieves, bleeds, retrieves, constructs post-quake, albeit in an ultra-patriarchal blockbustery fashion, complete with crime, heartbreaking sensation, flourishing hope, and cosmic justice.
It's a shame sophisticated delicate intricate less emotional dramatic tragedies don't make the same impact.
It's like you ignore the simplistic yet worthwhile message from the blockbuster because it's too cheesy, and refuse to accept the complicated ethics of the artistic because they're too serious.
You don't need earthquakes you know, or hurricanes, tornadoes, or ice storms, to show family and friends every once in a while that you're not quite so self-obsessed, it can be done either spontaneously or within a designated time slot every Saturday evening, depending on the dynamics of your sociocultural surroundings, and/or your willingness to express genuine care.
I suppose if someone who's known to be self-obsessed suddenly does have a Scroogesque awakening one day their resulting conduct would generally be regarded tectonically, artistic revelations inspiring thereafter like agile movement on a seismograph, as the tyrant's goodwill resoundingly evokes cheer.
Although when such acts occur interlocutors might reasonably respond suspiciously, thereby frustrating the curmudgeon in mid-reformation.
Wage hikes perhaps placate these tendencies.
Ice cream also.
And dinner at the Keg or Végo.
Money donated to help endangered species.
Grand Marnier.
A blender.
It's kind of fun to hangout with others sometimes and listen to what they have to say.
So many different takes on things.
So much emphatic life.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Limbo
A struggling small town, as conscious of its historical economic uncertainties as it is of its naturalistic providence, its identity surfing Northwest waves with surges of prosperity before suddenly crashing with hawkish speed, introduces a newcomer to its local pantheon, her voice mellifluously diagnosing with gritty surgical precision, a tavern effervescently supplying tales and testaments and intrigue and romance, while a local canning factory shuts down, a mayor envisions the benefits of ecotourism, a couple grow tired of meagre cashflows, and winter incrementally and hauntingly approaches.
As all of these plots threads stitch together and breakaway, like preparations being made for a regional mini-series replete with bucolic melodrama, a wayward son shows back up in town in desperate search of liquid capital, his by-the-book sibling unaware of his shady dealings, the two reunited for a trip by sea enriched by artistic accompaniments, which indiscreetly departs with adventurous cheer, glibly unaware of the creditors who pursue them.
Some films chart a different course halfway through, and courageously alter their narrative visions, such as Full Metal Jacket or Lost Highway, with more success than John Sayles's Limbo.
Theoretically speaking, or inasmuch as one is to apply thought to speculate regarding its cryptic prophetic ending, the second half of Limbo works, after three of its characters find themselves lost on Pacific shores without much hope of rescue.
The rest of its characters disappear though, after having been creatively developed, and I have to admit that they had been developed to the point that I was somewhat irked to see them largely absent from the rest of the film.
However, during the second half young Noelle (Vanessa Martinez) does demonstrate remarkable storytelling skills as she pretends to read from a diary found sitting in an abandoned cabin which doesn't contain many entries.
The film was released in 1999.
By isolating an imaginative youth and then celebrating her literary agility, minutes before her rescue arrives, and then ending the film before we find out whether or not she's been rescued or murdered, Sayles may have been expressing his concerns regarding the future of American cinema, her death representing one wherein which friends sell each other out to make a quick buck, or original storytelling fades as commercial interests place more of an emphasis on calculating revenues than cultivating independence, her life allegorically symbolizing the flourishing of American small town communal solidarity, with its corresponding continuing focus on original ideas, which would inevitably find themselves hailed in the nation's cinemas.
It looked like her feisty mom (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) had finally found a stable nice partner (David Strathairn as Joe Gastineau) as well, a relationship that may have prospered within diverse creative cultures.
The depth of Sayles's prophecy can't be explored here unfortunately, but I can confidently claim there are still many excellent independent films being made in the U.S., and many that are still out there to make a quick buck.
Did the 2000s engender a paradigm shift or cleverly dissemble artistic realities which never stop agitating?
How would I know?
May make a cool book however.
As all of these plots threads stitch together and breakaway, like preparations being made for a regional mini-series replete with bucolic melodrama, a wayward son shows back up in town in desperate search of liquid capital, his by-the-book sibling unaware of his shady dealings, the two reunited for a trip by sea enriched by artistic accompaniments, which indiscreetly departs with adventurous cheer, glibly unaware of the creditors who pursue them.
Some films chart a different course halfway through, and courageously alter their narrative visions, such as Full Metal Jacket or Lost Highway, with more success than John Sayles's Limbo.
Theoretically speaking, or inasmuch as one is to apply thought to speculate regarding its cryptic prophetic ending, the second half of Limbo works, after three of its characters find themselves lost on Pacific shores without much hope of rescue.
The rest of its characters disappear though, after having been creatively developed, and I have to admit that they had been developed to the point that I was somewhat irked to see them largely absent from the rest of the film.
However, during the second half young Noelle (Vanessa Martinez) does demonstrate remarkable storytelling skills as she pretends to read from a diary found sitting in an abandoned cabin which doesn't contain many entries.
The film was released in 1999.
By isolating an imaginative youth and then celebrating her literary agility, minutes before her rescue arrives, and then ending the film before we find out whether or not she's been rescued or murdered, Sayles may have been expressing his concerns regarding the future of American cinema, her death representing one wherein which friends sell each other out to make a quick buck, or original storytelling fades as commercial interests place more of an emphasis on calculating revenues than cultivating independence, her life allegorically symbolizing the flourishing of American small town communal solidarity, with its corresponding continuing focus on original ideas, which would inevitably find themselves hailed in the nation's cinemas.
It looked like her feisty mom (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) had finally found a stable nice partner (David Strathairn as Joe Gastineau) as well, a relationship that may have prospered within diverse creative cultures.
The depth of Sayles's prophecy can't be explored here unfortunately, but I can confidently claim there are still many excellent independent films being made in the U.S., and many that are still out there to make a quick buck.
Did the 2000s engender a paradigm shift or cleverly dissemble artistic realities which never stop agitating?
How would I know?
May make a cool book however.
Monday, November 20, 2017
Patriots Day
Once you move past the flag waving and the patriotism and the obsessive communal pride and the righteousness of it all, the ra ra ra, Patriots Day isn't so bad, a multidimensional humanistic account of the heroic men and women who boldly risked their lives to hunt down loathsome terrorists after they attacked the Boston Marathon crowd in 2013, a vile act objectifying infamy, the product of pathetic misplaced ambition, madly demonstrating sociopathic idiocy, fortunately they were caught and dealt with strictly.
Edited by Gabriel Fleming and Colby Parker Jr., multiple characters, each playing a role in the ensuing chaos, are intelligently introduced and skilfully interwoven, each short scene adding a bit more depth, each brief moment humanistically diversifying.
Thereby augmenting terrorist horrors.
One character shows up more often than the others, Mark Wahlberg as Sgt. Tommy Saunders, a wild passionate smartass police officer who never holds back what he's thinking.
Within a hierarchy, if the higher-ups have forgotten to take steps that you feel are necessary, it's important to delicately speak your mind, carefully choosing which battles to fight.
The fight is real and threatening in Patriots Day, so Saunders expresses himself freely throughout.
The film doesn't just focus on law enforcement however, it also provides the victims of the bombings with lots of screen time, as well as a brave young Chinese entrepreneur (Jimmy O. Yang as Dun Meng) whose knowledge leads to an explosive confrontation.
And there's cool little scenes too, like the rooftop zeroing-in where the national and the local colourfully exchange ideas, depth and pluralization consistently added, a sophisticated well-thought-out investigation of the city of Boston.
Which clearly responds to the Hollywood lumps it took in 2015.
With serious grit.
And undeniable attitude.
Like a mainstream independent film oddly focused on homeland security, Patriots Day shocks as it sweats, synergizes as it sizzles.
It makes it clear that it isn't encouraging Islamophobia either, carefully acknowledging that these were extremist lunatic exceptions.
Saunders delivers quite the speech in the end.
I didn't expect it to be so sensitive.
It maybe could have used a couple more takes, but it still courageously salutes discourses of the heartwarming, emphatically tenderizing amorous relations, which hopefully aren't criminalized due to some shortsighted jackass's bigoted ideals.
Legalizing love is a strange way to go about things.
People fall in love.
There's nothing more beautiful than that.
Edited by Gabriel Fleming and Colby Parker Jr., multiple characters, each playing a role in the ensuing chaos, are intelligently introduced and skilfully interwoven, each short scene adding a bit more depth, each brief moment humanistically diversifying.
Thereby augmenting terrorist horrors.
One character shows up more often than the others, Mark Wahlberg as Sgt. Tommy Saunders, a wild passionate smartass police officer who never holds back what he's thinking.
Within a hierarchy, if the higher-ups have forgotten to take steps that you feel are necessary, it's important to delicately speak your mind, carefully choosing which battles to fight.
The fight is real and threatening in Patriots Day, so Saunders expresses himself freely throughout.
The film doesn't just focus on law enforcement however, it also provides the victims of the bombings with lots of screen time, as well as a brave young Chinese entrepreneur (Jimmy O. Yang as Dun Meng) whose knowledge leads to an explosive confrontation.
And there's cool little scenes too, like the rooftop zeroing-in where the national and the local colourfully exchange ideas, depth and pluralization consistently added, a sophisticated well-thought-out investigation of the city of Boston.
Which clearly responds to the Hollywood lumps it took in 2015.
With serious grit.
And undeniable attitude.
Like a mainstream independent film oddly focused on homeland security, Patriots Day shocks as it sweats, synergizes as it sizzles.
It makes it clear that it isn't encouraging Islamophobia either, carefully acknowledging that these were extremist lunatic exceptions.
Saunders delivers quite the speech in the end.
I didn't expect it to be so sensitive.
It maybe could have used a couple more takes, but it still courageously salutes discourses of the heartwarming, emphatically tenderizing amorous relations, which hopefully aren't criminalized due to some shortsighted jackass's bigoted ideals.
Legalizing love is a strange way to go about things.
People fall in love.
There's nothing more beautiful than that.
Friday, November 17, 2017
Murder on the Orient Express
Possessing an inexhaustible gift for anaesthetizing extraordinarily complex behemoths, resolved riddles exemplifying multidisciplinary mettle, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) fittingly decides it's time for a vacation, and boards the lauded Orient Express in search of computational repose.
But just as he begins to exercise his literary imagination, a hardened degenerate comes a quizzically calling, in search of world renowned vigilance, to serve and protect his undignified exemptions.
Having already proven that dignity is something he regards philosophically inasmuch as he takes manifold vicissitudes into intellectual account before making variable judgments, he still refuses the thug's request and continues to seek solitude.
Only to awaken to discover that a fellow passenger has been, murdered, and that he must therefore astutely detect once more, to avoid indirectly condoning the free movement of violent criminals.
His voyage having been impeded by a serendipitous avalanche.
He flexes inquisitively.
As his investigation commences.
Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express condenses the famed detective's sleuthing into a series of short but meaningful exchanges, each fully charged with guilt and inculpability, cloaked details deductively electrifying a productive narrative gridiron.
With somewhat more formal spectacle (production value) than I'm used to seeing in stories concerning culturally elevated investigatory phenomenons.
I rather enjoy watching the great detectives/inspectors/private investigators/dudes piece together clues delineating nefarious acts, with my parents, but I'm more used to seeing them explore within televisual boundaries.
I'm happy to see the actors who haven't yet become heartthrobs, starlets, or characters on demand cut their chops in a well written episode (usually around 2 hours in length), and am often not that concerned with how much screen time they each receive.
Indubitably.
When this format is given a much larger budget, as it should be more regularly, with many more famous actors, I certainly appreciate the cinematography, along with corresponding cinematic eccentricities, but if it ends with one of my favourite actors not having been given a larger role, when they could have been, or if the pressures of having more critical exposure make it seem rushed, it can be somewhat of a disappointment, one which might have been dismissed had their been a lower budget with multiple unknowns.
That isn't to say I didn't enjoy Branagh's take on Poirot, the cunning nature of the collective revenge reverberating with vindicated compunction.
Poirot himself mesmerizes, and the eclectic yet cohesive jigsaw cast commands the puzzling scenes judiciously.
Another 45 to 90 minutes though, too much of a commercial focus (were Frost or Morse ever trying to make money?[the commercial approach worked more successfully for Guy Ritchie methinks]), how many more tributaries could have been navigated with that much more time?
Thus, I'm hoping there's an extended version coming out soon, which adds more depth of character to a film that's already highly thought provoking as it scintillatingly yet diminutively reprimands.
But just as he begins to exercise his literary imagination, a hardened degenerate comes a quizzically calling, in search of world renowned vigilance, to serve and protect his undignified exemptions.
Having already proven that dignity is something he regards philosophically inasmuch as he takes manifold vicissitudes into intellectual account before making variable judgments, he still refuses the thug's request and continues to seek solitude.
Only to awaken to discover that a fellow passenger has been, murdered, and that he must therefore astutely detect once more, to avoid indirectly condoning the free movement of violent criminals.
His voyage having been impeded by a serendipitous avalanche.
He flexes inquisitively.
As his investigation commences.
Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express condenses the famed detective's sleuthing into a series of short but meaningful exchanges, each fully charged with guilt and inculpability, cloaked details deductively electrifying a productive narrative gridiron.
With somewhat more formal spectacle (production value) than I'm used to seeing in stories concerning culturally elevated investigatory phenomenons.
I rather enjoy watching the great detectives/inspectors/private investigators/dudes piece together clues delineating nefarious acts, with my parents, but I'm more used to seeing them explore within televisual boundaries.
I'm happy to see the actors who haven't yet become heartthrobs, starlets, or characters on demand cut their chops in a well written episode (usually around 2 hours in length), and am often not that concerned with how much screen time they each receive.
Indubitably.
When this format is given a much larger budget, as it should be more regularly, with many more famous actors, I certainly appreciate the cinematography, along with corresponding cinematic eccentricities, but if it ends with one of my favourite actors not having been given a larger role, when they could have been, or if the pressures of having more critical exposure make it seem rushed, it can be somewhat of a disappointment, one which might have been dismissed had their been a lower budget with multiple unknowns.
That isn't to say I didn't enjoy Branagh's take on Poirot, the cunning nature of the collective revenge reverberating with vindicated compunction.
Poirot himself mesmerizes, and the eclectic yet cohesive jigsaw cast commands the puzzling scenes judiciously.
Another 45 to 90 minutes though, too much of a commercial focus (were Frost or Morse ever trying to make money?[the commercial approach worked more successfully for Guy Ritchie methinks]), how many more tributaries could have been navigated with that much more time?
Thus, I'm hoping there's an extended version coming out soon, which adds more depth of character to a film that's already highly thought provoking as it scintillatingly yet diminutively reprimands.
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Singularity
A future planet Earth, lacking its dominant terrestrial species, upon which two virtual executioners patiently seek out fleeting remnants of civilization, resignedly prepares itself for the enviroassimilation of an amorous cyberconsciousness, as a young heroine chants out between worlds, and her fellow survivors heed not her call.
She searches for a fabled realm known to artistically nurture, accompanied by a naive stranger, but she knows nothing of his directed origins, nor of his manufactured indemnities.
It's very Terminator.
With a little room left over for young love.
Left to bloom in the sequel, wait a second, Singularity functions more suitably as a proxy for critiques of the aforementioned, even if its landscapes are much less apocalyptic, and its scope less armageddonesque.
One point that's confused me regarding the Terminator films at times is how do the machines continue to produce more machines throughout the war. Fully automated factories? But where do they get their raw materials?
The humans that are rounded up aren't sent to labour camps, they're exterminated, and the machines are never depicted roaming throughout a city gathering metal to build more of their kind.
Similarly, in Singularity, the majority of which takes place 97 years into the future, technology that's almost a century old still works, and people still know how to use it even though they grew up without schools or sustained community.
The vast majority of the human race has been gone for decades.
How do its machines still smoothly function?
Cyborg labour?
Also, in both cases, why do the machines continue to attempt to eradicate humanity?
If a significant proportion of your enemy has been destroyed, one so big that they're no longer a threat and won't be again for millennia, doesn't it make sense to use your resources to pursue other objectives, rather than spending 20 times as much as you did to achieve 90% of your goal on discovering and eliminating a scant fraction of that total?
Wouldn't the logical nature of machines come to this conclusion?
Sit back on ye olde cyberdairy farm with a vineyard and kick their electronic feet up?
Suppose that point works better for Singularity than it does for The Terminator.
The points I'm making would make for more boring Terminator or Singularity films.
Questions.
She searches for a fabled realm known to artistically nurture, accompanied by a naive stranger, but she knows nothing of his directed origins, nor of his manufactured indemnities.
It's very Terminator.
With a little room left over for young love.
Left to bloom in the sequel, wait a second, Singularity functions more suitably as a proxy for critiques of the aforementioned, even if its landscapes are much less apocalyptic, and its scope less armageddonesque.
One point that's confused me regarding the Terminator films at times is how do the machines continue to produce more machines throughout the war. Fully automated factories? But where do they get their raw materials?
The humans that are rounded up aren't sent to labour camps, they're exterminated, and the machines are never depicted roaming throughout a city gathering metal to build more of their kind.
Similarly, in Singularity, the majority of which takes place 97 years into the future, technology that's almost a century old still works, and people still know how to use it even though they grew up without schools or sustained community.
The vast majority of the human race has been gone for decades.
How do its machines still smoothly function?
Cyborg labour?
Also, in both cases, why do the machines continue to attempt to eradicate humanity?
If a significant proportion of your enemy has been destroyed, one so big that they're no longer a threat and won't be again for millennia, doesn't it make sense to use your resources to pursue other objectives, rather than spending 20 times as much as you did to achieve 90% of your goal on discovering and eliminating a scant fraction of that total?
Wouldn't the logical nature of machines come to this conclusion?
Sit back on ye olde cyberdairy farm with a vineyard and kick their electronic feet up?
Suppose that point works better for Singularity than it does for The Terminator.
The points I'm making would make for more boring Terminator or Singularity films.
Questions.
Friday, November 10, 2017
Victoria & Abdul
Dualities softly structure Stephen Frears's Victoria & Abdul, like stately courtly pillow fights stuffed with feta cheese.
Abdul (Ali Fazal), a young Indian clerk who's suddenly given the chance to serve the British Queen (Judi Dench), is initially contrasted with Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar), a fellow citizen who has a much less romantic vision of Britain's sleepless empire.
He's also opposed to Victoria's eldest son, Bertie (Eddie Izzard), since his close relationship with the Queen allows her to be much more maternal with him than she ever could be with her entitled offspring.
The Queen is royal yet rough and grumpy after decades of diplomatically socializing, while Abdul is common yet polished and enthusiastic after years of cultivating working relationships.
She's also contrasted with her staff whose racist pretensions cringe at the thought of entertaining and living with an Indian muslim.
Jealousy fosters collusion.
Collusion begets wrath.
The dualistic structures of the script, which is full of light short meaningful scenes which briskly move the film along while digestibly dramatizing intense subjects, create a disputatiously inclusive reverent collage of hospital hostilities and delicate debates, complete with brave moments that champion multicultural communities and uphold principles of mutual tolerance at the highest anti-racist levels.
Eat it Trump.
The release of Victoria & Abdul comes at a critical time.
Trump's in/direct promotion of intolerance and hate is spreading like a loathsome psychological plague, enacting a total disaster for the working people he claims to champion and likely regards as cannon fodder.
I've lived and worked with people from Africa, Indian, China, South and North America, Europe, the country, the city, etcetera, and I've learned that the racist hate speech fuelled by Trump and his supporters is as detestable as it is absurd.
I obviously want to see the terrorists brought to justice.
If the police have more power to stop terrorist suspects before they act without infringing upon the rights of citizens in general, especially considering how freely terrorists move throughout Europe, then perhaps the terrorist brats who keep giving their cultures a violent name will think twice before detonating bombs or driving through crowds.
It should be remembered, as Victoria & Abdul soundly relates, that muslims also seek the benefits of civil society and continue to form an integral part of Western communities.
Most of them simply wish to work and peacefully support their families while simultaneously building strong communities.
Tolerating these communities in an atmosphere of mutual trust leads them to feel like citizens, not muslim citizens but French or American or Canadian citizens.
And if they feel at peace within their cultural surroundings, they'll be much more likely to do the work of the police for them.
Don't let the politics of hate destroy your mind.
Simple acts of kindness, and a willingness to constructively work together, can lead to a proliferation of united nations, the many deconstructing warlike rhetoric with comedic dis/engaged prosperity, psychotic mainstream discourses, crumbling into meaningless dust thereafter.
Which is ironically how they’re often presented.
Beware the ignorant boy Mr. Scrooge, beware.
His kind understands next to nothing.
And seeks to rule everything with extreme prejudice.
Abdul (Ali Fazal), a young Indian clerk who's suddenly given the chance to serve the British Queen (Judi Dench), is initially contrasted with Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar), a fellow citizen who has a much less romantic vision of Britain's sleepless empire.
He's also opposed to Victoria's eldest son, Bertie (Eddie Izzard), since his close relationship with the Queen allows her to be much more maternal with him than she ever could be with her entitled offspring.
The Queen is royal yet rough and grumpy after decades of diplomatically socializing, while Abdul is common yet polished and enthusiastic after years of cultivating working relationships.
She's also contrasted with her staff whose racist pretensions cringe at the thought of entertaining and living with an Indian muslim.
Jealousy fosters collusion.
Collusion begets wrath.
The dualistic structures of the script, which is full of light short meaningful scenes which briskly move the film along while digestibly dramatizing intense subjects, create a disputatiously inclusive reverent collage of hospital hostilities and delicate debates, complete with brave moments that champion multicultural communities and uphold principles of mutual tolerance at the highest anti-racist levels.
Eat it Trump.
The release of Victoria & Abdul comes at a critical time.
Trump's in/direct promotion of intolerance and hate is spreading like a loathsome psychological plague, enacting a total disaster for the working people he claims to champion and likely regards as cannon fodder.
I've lived and worked with people from Africa, Indian, China, South and North America, Europe, the country, the city, etcetera, and I've learned that the racist hate speech fuelled by Trump and his supporters is as detestable as it is absurd.
I obviously want to see the terrorists brought to justice.
If the police have more power to stop terrorist suspects before they act without infringing upon the rights of citizens in general, especially considering how freely terrorists move throughout Europe, then perhaps the terrorist brats who keep giving their cultures a violent name will think twice before detonating bombs or driving through crowds.
It should be remembered, as Victoria & Abdul soundly relates, that muslims also seek the benefits of civil society and continue to form an integral part of Western communities.
Most of them simply wish to work and peacefully support their families while simultaneously building strong communities.
Tolerating these communities in an atmosphere of mutual trust leads them to feel like citizens, not muslim citizens but French or American or Canadian citizens.
And if they feel at peace within their cultural surroundings, they'll be much more likely to do the work of the police for them.
Don't let the politics of hate destroy your mind.
Simple acts of kindness, and a willingness to constructively work together, can lead to a proliferation of united nations, the many deconstructing warlike rhetoric with comedic dis/engaged prosperity, psychotic mainstream discourses, crumbling into meaningless dust thereafter.
Which is ironically how they’re often presented.
Beware the ignorant boy Mr. Scrooge, beware.
His kind understands next to nothing.
And seeks to rule everything with extreme prejudice.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Positive growth.
Sustained undaunted environmental activism.
Mr. Al Gore and his inspiring message of hope, brilliantly documented in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, invigoratingly offers contemporary scientific fact to fight the baseless rhetoric of the Trump administration, with both compelling truths and constructive consensus.
According to Dune, "fear is the mind killer."
Gore casts it as despair, and rationally comments upon how crushing blows to a movement, in this case Trump's ignorant decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, for starters, can lead members/supporters/leaders/partners to be overwhelmed by grief and hopelessness, even though the movement still exists, even though hope is still flourishing.
His unwavering commitment provides those who believe that climate change can be reversed, that citizens of dynamic metropolises can stop breathing in a pack of cigarettes a day, that economies which no longer rely on mass fossil fuel consumption can be created, that rivers, lakes, and oceans can stop being experimental dumping grounds for toxic pollutants, destroyed by unethical businesses who won't bear the costs of conducting their affairs responsibly, with a shining flame which will not be extinguished, no matter how obstinate, well-financed, destructive, and dismissive the opposition, launching attack after attack on one's personal credibility, their well-oiled obsessions with everlastingly increasing profits driving thousands of species to extinction, while continuing to recklessly contaminate inhabitable symbiotic environments.
Politics can achieve these ends if people continue to lobby politicians to produce effective change.
The Democrats may be in a bit of a tailspin, but they'll soon be back and ready to govern.
Gore points out how markets for wind and solar are rapidly expanding throughout the world and that some cities within the United States (Texas included) now meet all of their energy demands with renewable resources.
Not bad.
How does the old argument work?
Yes, if 99% of a group believes in something and 1% challenges this belief, it's the 1% who may see things more clearly.
This argument can be effective, and if Copernicus hadn't challenged religious viewpoints that the world was flat we may still be living in a much less imaginative globe.
But professional scientists are a highly independent well-educated group, and around 99% of them maintain climate change is real.
That's a high percentage for independent thinkers.
Getting highly independent well-educated people to agree about anything is next to impossible, yet here we have 99% of a highly independent well-educated group agreeing that climate change is real, and 1% of them possibly earning mad profits to spurn them.
Such challenges are highly suspect.
Getting sick from swimming in a river or walking to a store in extreme heat or having your town destroyed by a hurricane isn't.
As Gore points out, mass destructive weather events are increasing worldwide.
Climate change is real and alternative energy sources can produce mass wealth.
Adopting renewable energy sources to supply your municipality with power isn't a socialist plot, it's capitalism, plain and simple.
The title of the film is misleading.
Alternative energy sources couldn't be more relevant.
Sustained undaunted environmental activism.
Mr. Al Gore and his inspiring message of hope, brilliantly documented in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, invigoratingly offers contemporary scientific fact to fight the baseless rhetoric of the Trump administration, with both compelling truths and constructive consensus.
According to Dune, "fear is the mind killer."
Gore casts it as despair, and rationally comments upon how crushing blows to a movement, in this case Trump's ignorant decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, for starters, can lead members/supporters/leaders/partners to be overwhelmed by grief and hopelessness, even though the movement still exists, even though hope is still flourishing.
His unwavering commitment provides those who believe that climate change can be reversed, that citizens of dynamic metropolises can stop breathing in a pack of cigarettes a day, that economies which no longer rely on mass fossil fuel consumption can be created, that rivers, lakes, and oceans can stop being experimental dumping grounds for toxic pollutants, destroyed by unethical businesses who won't bear the costs of conducting their affairs responsibly, with a shining flame which will not be extinguished, no matter how obstinate, well-financed, destructive, and dismissive the opposition, launching attack after attack on one's personal credibility, their well-oiled obsessions with everlastingly increasing profits driving thousands of species to extinction, while continuing to recklessly contaminate inhabitable symbiotic environments.
Politics can achieve these ends if people continue to lobby politicians to produce effective change.
The Democrats may be in a bit of a tailspin, but they'll soon be back and ready to govern.
Gore points out how markets for wind and solar are rapidly expanding throughout the world and that some cities within the United States (Texas included) now meet all of their energy demands with renewable resources.
Not bad.
How does the old argument work?
Yes, if 99% of a group believes in something and 1% challenges this belief, it's the 1% who may see things more clearly.
This argument can be effective, and if Copernicus hadn't challenged religious viewpoints that the world was flat we may still be living in a much less imaginative globe.
But professional scientists are a highly independent well-educated group, and around 99% of them maintain climate change is real.
That's a high percentage for independent thinkers.
Getting highly independent well-educated people to agree about anything is next to impossible, yet here we have 99% of a highly independent well-educated group agreeing that climate change is real, and 1% of them possibly earning mad profits to spurn them.
Such challenges are highly suspect.
Getting sick from swimming in a river or walking to a store in extreme heat or having your town destroyed by a hurricane isn't.
As Gore points out, mass destructive weather events are increasing worldwide.
Climate change is real and alternative energy sources can produce mass wealth.
Adopting renewable energy sources to supply your municipality with power isn't a socialist plot, it's capitalism, plain and simple.
The title of the film is misleading.
Alternative energy sources couldn't be more relevant.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Alone in Berlin
A husband and wife, conscientious citizens who watched in silent horror as their culture madly lit jingoistic imperialist flames, once more, as their neighbours and compatriots became communally intoxicated with the blind xenophobic ambition of institutionalized megalomania (Trump?), politically isolated yet industrially integrated, morosely aware of the overwhelming tyrannical dogmas that have consumed their beloved Germany, quietly protest by writing critiques of Hitler's government on postcards and leaving them in public places throughout Nazi Berlin, their messages blunt and to the point, boldly castigating a movement that reduced their country to ash.
Long past the age when passionate inexperience habitually motivates romantic rebellious protest, for those lacking inexhaustible wealth, their logical engagement soberly revitalizes their youthful commitment, tenderly captured by director Vincent Perez with tender aged compassion.
A civil bureaucracy (a police force) believing it can independently operate outside Nazi jurisdiction is assigned their case, the intelligent objective inspector soon castrated by totalitarianism.
Individualized governments require general violence to rule.
General violence inherently encourages revolution.
Until such a time as cooler heads prevail.
And different cultures forge diverse unions.
Alone in Berlin modestly visualizes proactive labour in action, as it takes social democratic steps to subvert authoritarian cruelty, using intellect to promote sustainable security as opposed to sensationalized sanity (fascist psychiatry), capturing active conjugal middle-aged bliss meanwhile, as well as constabulary sympathy and inspired materialism.
If that scene didn't break your heart you've stiffened your lip too rigidly.
I wonder if the film would have been stronger if other protestors from Berlin had played secondary roles, the Quangels (Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson) still isolated but part of a bigger picture?
It's a very patient film that excels at slowly and soberly building tension and character (note how the wedded dialogue becomes lengthier as the film unreels), however, in order to reflect realistic independent engagement, a simplified upright form harmoniously working with diverse mature content, lessening its multilateral impact to focus its robust character.
Too many distractions may have spoiled it.
Light yet hard and penetrating, it humbly captures aspects of resistance that many more complicated narratives fail to realize.
Sincere.
Long past the age when passionate inexperience habitually motivates romantic rebellious protest, for those lacking inexhaustible wealth, their logical engagement soberly revitalizes their youthful commitment, tenderly captured by director Vincent Perez with tender aged compassion.
A civil bureaucracy (a police force) believing it can independently operate outside Nazi jurisdiction is assigned their case, the intelligent objective inspector soon castrated by totalitarianism.
Individualized governments require general violence to rule.
General violence inherently encourages revolution.
Until such a time as cooler heads prevail.
And different cultures forge diverse unions.
Alone in Berlin modestly visualizes proactive labour in action, as it takes social democratic steps to subvert authoritarian cruelty, using intellect to promote sustainable security as opposed to sensationalized sanity (fascist psychiatry), capturing active conjugal middle-aged bliss meanwhile, as well as constabulary sympathy and inspired materialism.
If that scene didn't break your heart you've stiffened your lip too rigidly.
I wonder if the film would have been stronger if other protestors from Berlin had played secondary roles, the Quangels (Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson) still isolated but part of a bigger picture?
It's a very patient film that excels at slowly and soberly building tension and character (note how the wedded dialogue becomes lengthier as the film unreels), however, in order to reflect realistic independent engagement, a simplified upright form harmoniously working with diverse mature content, lessening its multilateral impact to focus its robust character.
Too many distractions may have spoiled it.
Light yet hard and penetrating, it humbly captures aspects of resistance that many more complicated narratives fail to realize.
Sincere.
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