Monthly Archives: July 2021

Facebook Memories

 

The thing that Facebook does where is previews for you posts you did one to several years prior on that date is really an odd trip for me.

There are quite a few posts about making progress on a writing project, nearly always unnamed, and as such I have no idea what stories or books these refer to. I am nearly always working at some level, on a project, usually oscillating between short stories and novels and they progress so quickly that without cues I simply can’t identify them.

This morning Facebook presented a memory from eight years ago that I had received a job offer following an interview and it took me a moment to work out which job offer that had been. Very close together I got two offers, both were temp jobs, both were with companies new to me, but I ended up working only at one.

Looking at the exact date I think I worked it out and it’s the anniversary of the offer to work at Kaiser as a temp. That turned out to be the very best job offer I ever received. Eight months later I transitioned from contract to regular full-time employee of KP and I have been there ever since.

I have never experienced a level of financial and job security like I have working for KP. In addition, I work with good people and generally can be proud that I am doing my best to working at a non-profit helping people access vital healthcare.

The financial security has led to emotional stability which enhances my creative work. All in all, this memory from eight years ago is a truly happy one.

 

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A Pair of Micro Reviews

Messiah of Evil

This is a 1973 independent horror movie that managed to scrap up enough money for a day or two’s work from Elisha Cook Jr but not enough to a competent screenplay. Marianna Hill plays Arletty a young woman who comes to a seaside community in search of her artist father who has gone silent. She teams up with a womanizer and his harem of two who also are seeking her father. A sinister force seems to inhabit the town and gruesome murders result. Despite a decent set-up the screenplay is clumsy, the cinematography is bland, and the acting uninspired stretching the film’s 90-minute run time into tedium. Messiah of Evilis currently streaming on Shudder.

Masters of the Universe: Revelations

Kevin’s Smith’s revisioning of the second-rate animated series that couldn’t bother to produce actual names for character but referred to them solely by the story function is smarter and had more emotional depth than it deserves. I have watched just the premier episode but already there have been surprising twists and honest emotional reactions from characters discovering that their most loved and trusted companions have been lying to them for years. A special call out needs to be given to Sarah Michell Geller’s vocal work as Teela who is shaping up to the be the series most important viewpoint character.

This is currently streaming on Netflix

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Movie Review: G. I. Joe: Snake Eyes

 

When the 80s animated television series G.I. Joe, in reality a 30-minute toy commercial masquerading as entertainment in a recently deregulated space, originally aired I was too old for its key demographic but young enough to enjoy the campy, winking-at-the-camera, fun the show presented. Stalwart heroes and arch-villains can be a hell of a lot of fun in the right context and mindset.

It’s really no surprise that in 2009 I went to and thoroughly enjoyed G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the first live action attempt to bring the franchise to the silvered screen. That film took liberties with the source material even losing The Baroness’, one of Cobra’s lead villains, delightfully euro-trash accent. That film’s sequel looked half-hearted, and I skipped it.

Now, twelve years later, studios are again interested in reviving the franchise and have started with an origin story for one of the show’s most popular characters, the ninja Snake Eyes.

Henry Golding, a talented and charismatic Malaysian actor, plays the titular character Snake Eyes. After being orphaned by the murder of his enigmatic father Golding’s Snake Eyes grows to
adulthood as an underground cage fighter until he is recruited by a mysterious patron who promises to deliver his father’s murderer in return for Snake Eyes services as a spy and combatant.

Snake Eyes becomes entangled in a deadly contest within an ancient ninja clan, the Arashikage and is soon torn between his thirst for revenge, his growing bond with the members of the clan, and the realization that forces far greater than his personal grudges are at play forcing him into irrevocable choices that will not only decide his fate but nearly everyone’s around him.

G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes is an enjoyable cartoon of a movie. It is not a film to be taken seriously, though the stakes and emotions are played straight, and the actors involved give the characters real emotional weight. As to be expected there are a lot of ‘set pieces’ or action and martial arts fighting which are marred by an editing that is a little too quick robbing the audiences of stunt performances that need to be fully seen to be fully enjoyed. The films greatest failure comes in the movie’s final act as we follow several groups of character though the near continuous fight for resolution. The fact that it is near continuous is not the issue with fights and the action but rather that each group doesn’t possess a clear goal defined to the audience. In Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Solider we also follow different characters through a very action-packed final act, but for each set of characters we understand exactly what they are trying to achieve. The Falcon must get the chips into the right slots to realign that craft’s targeting system, Black Widow and Fury have to infiltrate and subvert to command level of SHIELD, now controlled by Hydra, and Captain America must not only get the chips to the right slots like same but must find a way to save his friend Bucky, now the Winter Solider, from Hydra’s brainwashing. BY know their goal the audience knows when the characters have wins that bring them closer and losses that set them back on their heels. In G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes most of the character groups do not have well defined goals so the fights carry less weight, and we are never sure how big any particular win or loss matters and as such are less invested in them.

That said if you enjoy action, martial arts, and stories of betrayal and redemption served with melted cheese then G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes may be a movie for you.

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Returning to Our Winter of Discontent

 

COVID 19 cases continue to rise alarmingly fast. The United States has sufficient quantities of vaccine to immunize every single adult in the country. The right’s base, following decades of anti-science and anti-expertise propaganda follow their orange god/king with the fever of fanatics foregoing vaccination even as their elite take the shot along with their followers money.

This is the current situation in America and though last week so half-hearted and weak attempts my ‘conservative’ elites to urges their base to get vaccinated those efforts has evaporated and case rates and death continue to rise.

This is summer. People are out and about in the open air lessening the spread and still the rates are climbing fast. When winter comes and people remain indoor sharing their breathing air over and over it may be very very bad.

“Break through’ infections, infection among the vaccinated, are happening but those who have been vaccinated even if they get COVID are not winding up in the hospital or the morgue. We will lose more people, a lot more people, all the flatter a thin-skinned lying narcissist about an election he lost.

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Movies Are Back

 

At least for me anyway.

 

With the release of Black Widow my sweetie-wife and I returned to the theaters for movie but before that I had gone back to see Cruella. This weekend I will be heading out for a bit of what I expect to be mostly mindless fun with Snake Eyes. (While I was too old to be in the actual target demographic for the 80s G.I. Joecartoon series, I did enjoy the campy fun it produced.)

Looking ahead I can see a number of films that I want to see, and I want to see them in a proper theater. I’m not going to bother mentioning the MCU entries, just consider them a given.

The Green Knight. This looks to be trippy and bizarre and interesting.

The Suicide Squad. Right Wing internet trolls may have delayed Guardians of the Galaxy 3 by getting writer/director James Gunn temporarily sacked but, in the end, Disney restored him and as a bonus we’re getting his unique take on this DC property.

Free Guy. Odds are this is not going to live up to expectations, but it might, and Ryan Reynolds is fun and I’m looking forward to Taika Waititi as the bad guy and more Jodie Comer is always good.

Speaking of Jodie Comer brings us to The Last Duel a rich and luscious period piece from master filmmaker Ridley Scott. Scott, given a good script makes masterpieces, and given a bad one makes films that look great. I am going to see The Last Duel and hope the script is great.

Venom: Let There be Carnage. Should be fun.

Dune. Yes. I want to see this so much.

No Time to Die, the last outing for my favorite Bond even is all his entries haven’t exactly been good.

Last Night in Soho. Edger Wright doing a multi-period ghost story of a horror film. I’m sold.

A couple of film that I do not know the release dates for that are certainly on my radar.

Lamb an atmospheric moody piece about an Icelandic couple that finds an infant that may be a changeling.

The Tragedy of Macbeth from A24 that has so far always given us interesting films that are not budget busting spectacles but thoughtful artistic films.

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A Decision Has Been Made

 

Running a little late this morning and so this post will be a brief one.

With my latest novel now off to a publisher and query letters off to new agencies it is time to turn my attention from my former Work In Progress to my next one.

I had two in mind, one the idea came quite recently and would be a direct sequel to Vulcan’s Forge as I had some rather intriguing ideas, at least to me, on the fall out of the vents of that novel and the larger ramification it had for the fictional setting as a whole.

The second is a more fleshed out novel about ‘no contact.’ A situation where aliens have arrived at earth but have no communication with humanity and one person who thinks she has fond to key to bridging the gulf between the humanity and aliens.

The ‘no contact’ idea has won out, principally because I see the arc of the entire story including the ending. It is a truism that I cannot write a story or even a decent outline until I know how it ends. Endings are critical. To me they are where plot, story, and theme unify. And so soon I will begin the pick-and-spade work of hammering out an outline for my next novel.

 

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Someone Lighted the Nut-Signal Yesterday

 

After months of anti-vaxx messaging, fear-mongering, and countless people suffering pain and death to appease a spoiled pamper man-baby in Florida ‘conservative’ news and twitter yesterday suddenly began broadcasting the urgent needs for people to be vaccinated. Tweets from the Senate minority leader, commentary from Fox News and other ‘conservative’ quarters all began singing from the same hymn.

I do not know why a sanity suddenly burst like a star flare over the right and while I expect it to fade as quickly as that flare, I still welcome it.

It’s with great doubt that I would entertain the concept that a sudden empathy for the people suffering and dying motivated these elites to urge a rational and urgently needed course of action. Yesterday’s messengers have been long vaccinated themselves against this plague and all too content to let others die slow lingering isolated deaths for brief political points making empathy an impossibly high hurdle for any sensible person’s suspension of disbelief.

No, I would look to some motivated, selfish, self-interest for the sudden, and in all likelihood, temporary change in messaging. Perhaps the growing hospitalizations has depressed fundraising and the flood of cash slowed frightening the politicians. Perhaps the suburbs fled the right even more as death and disease replaced low taxation as the most identifying aspect of the Republican party. Or maybe, just maybe, someone with a little foresight, able to peer into the misty future beyond the 24 hours news cycle understood that being anti-vaxx actually resulted in killing the very voters who would be insane enough to return them to power. Despite losing the popular vote by seven or so million the GOP lost the White House only by a margin of fifty or so thousand votes a margin easily expanded by a pandemic that concentrated itself within their base.

 

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Weekly vs Binge

 

Over the last few years, the streaming wars have given us two options for watching our series, have an episode drop every week very much like the traditional methods of series production or make all episode available at one and leave it to the viewer to decide on when and how much to watch at once.

I have engaged with both formats. The Queen’s Gambit and The Crown were consumed watching two or three episodes at a time while all the Disney+ MCU extension shows have been offered only once per week but then available for binge re-watching. There are also programs that I watch with my sweetie-wife that are available for binging but that is not her preferred method of viewing and these programs such as The Bridge (Which we have on disk) and Katla are watched episode by episode but not on a set this day of the week schedule.

Binging gives the viewer quick satisfaction and powers through the story but at times can feel like skimming a book rather than luxuriating in the artistry. However, the plot and characters are there right away and there is no need to wait for a resolution to a twist or surprise.

Weekly episodes give time and space for fans to connect, all synched to the rhythms of the story and speculate and share in the communal mood of the experience.

Sporadically gives the least satisfying experience. IT’s too easy to lose track of characters and events if the series is not watched regularly.

Of the three I think I still favor the weekly episodes but my feeling on this is not particularly strong.

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Neo-Noir: The Long Goodbye

 

After hearing it praised and discussed on the Junkfood Cinema podcast and knowing it was part of the Criterion Channel’s current Neo-Noir I decided to 1973’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel The Long Goodbye a viewing.

In the film Marlow is awakened in the middle of the night by his friend who needs an emergency car ride to Mexico from Los Angeles following a fight with his wife. Marlow, apparently a very good friend, complies and later when the wife turns up dead finds himself considered a co-conspirator in her murder kicking off the plot.

Sadly, I can’t say the film was an overwhelming success for me. Elliot Gould’s mumbling and seeming distracted take on P.I. Philip Marlow never fully engaged me as a character but only as an affectation. In addition to that Marlow in the script jumps to correct conclusions for the next stage of the mystery but seemingly without have seen or discovered the clues that would actually lead to such a leap of logic. For example, he asks a woman if she knew a particular couple that lives in the same gated community as she. She answers that she vaguely knew them and later he’s asking the woman’s husband if his wife was having an affair with the husband of the pervious couple and nothing in the film established or hinted at such a relationship. Marlow simply knew somehow. The gangster sub-plot, apparently an invention of the screenplay, is jarring both tonally and logically to story. It’s odd and absurdist but never fully explored or explained.

Directed by hailed filmmaker Robert Altman with a screenplay by the legendary Leigh Bracket, The Long Goodbye should have been a film I loved but instead it slots in as a piece of film history I can now say I have watched but I have desire to see again.

 

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GOP Anti-Vaxx Did Not Start with Trump

 

I am running late this morning and so this post will be shorter than most.

While (hat tip to Stephen Colbert and his writing team) The Turd Reich has certainly accelerated and amplified anti-science and anti-vaccine ideology within the GOP he did not instigate or create that movement.

Long before that terrible entrance down the tower’s escalator many within the GOP had already begun swarming to the anti-vaccine message.

Michelle Malkin championed the idiocy because the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in women might *gasp* encourage sexual activity in girls. Better they die painfully and slowly of cancer that enjoy sexual pleasure not approved of by conservatives and the church.

Senator Rand Paul, a doctor for god’s sake, played with vaccines cause autism as a political ploy and then when called on it demanded that you believed him over the actual taped evidence.

The Delta variant, a far less entertaining variant thank any Loki, is spreading fast through the counties and districts of the country dedicated to the orange god/king and when winter arrives, I would not be surprised to see hospital in those area overwhelmed. Of course, the elites of the Turd Reich are vaccinated, they will survive the next waves like taxes it’s only little people that will die of COVID this winter.

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