Category Archives: History

Movie Review: Sisu

Subzero Film Entertainment Stage 6 Films Good Chaos

 

The words Sisu is Finnish and denotes a grim determination in the face of overwhelming odds. It combines stoicism, perseverance, and making the most of limited resources to struggle to the very end without surrender. Developed as a concept during Finland’s 1939 bitter war with the Soviet Union it has become an element, a proud one, of the Finns national character.

Sisu is also a 2023 Finnish action movie now playing in theaters.

Set in the Lapland region of Finland during the closing months of the world war II, Sisufollows Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) a former Finnish special forces commando and now gold prospector. Having discovered a ludicrously rich vein of gold Korpi is beset by retreating Nazi soldiers evacuating to Norway following Finland’s separate peace with the USSR. Naturally the Nazis attempt to steal the gold and murder Korpi and his little dog sparking an hour and a half of bloody, gory, revenge, (Don’t fret the dog is fine.) as Korpi slaughters Nazis and frees women that they have taken as sex slaves.

Despite the gore, the dismembered limbs, the clouds of blood from exploding Nazis I describe Sisu as cartoonish violence. This is not a feature you attend with an eye towards realism. Reality visited screenwriter and director Jalmari Helander, glanced at the script in progress, and took its leave. At no point in the movie did I have the slightest doubt to Korpi’s eventual triumph. It simply isn’t that kind of flick. This is a movie where you leave your higher logical functions at home and revel in the inventive slaughtering of fascists. If you have a delicate stomach or suspension of disbelief, then this movie is not for you.

Helander directs Sisu with a firm solid hand aided by cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos’ stark yet beautiful capturing of Lapland’s desolate beauty.

Sisu is not for everyone but for those that it is for it should strike a very pleasant nerve.

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Quick Thoughts on the Leaker SCOTUS Draft

First off let me be plain, I am pro Choice on the issue of abortion. There are lots of arguments why but one I see too little of that to me is hugely determinative is that giving birth is life-threatening, particularly in the American health care system, especially so for people of color and poor economic resources. The decision to rick one’s life should only rest with the person whose life is being risked.

Alito’s leaked draft opinion is some 98 pages long and my summation of his argument will be both reductive and from a non-lawyer’s perspective. From what I can determine listening to sources both left and right his basic argument flows like this.

Abortion is not specifically named as a right in the constitution.

The constitution does protect right which are not specifically named. (The 9th Amendment.)

To determine if something is an unnamed right one looks to history and tradition as it was understood at the time of the 9th amendment and the 14th. (part of the legal dismantling of slavery following the civil war.)

In Alito’s view abortion was not part of the history and tradition of accepted rights in either the 18th or 19th centuries, therefor it could not be counted among the unnamed rights of the 9th amendment nor among the privileges and immunities of the 14th.

Given that Alito concludes that there is no right to abortion and at the time of the leak has persuaded four other conservative justices to agree to this reasoning, terminating, for the first time ever in American history, and individual right.

To me there are several philosophical troubles with this reasoning.

First it presumes that the unnamed rights of the constitution are a close set, limited in number, and restricted to only what could have been conceived of at the time by while male slavers. Rather than interpreting the galaxy of unnamed right to be an evolving set matching culture as it changed it is a static set but one without any definition to guide future person in that determination.

It relies upon reading minds, from a distance of more than two hundred years, of men who recognized no rights for women in self-determination to adjudicate the rights of people in the 21st century.

It presumes that the men who wrote and adopted the constitution were so limited in their minds and imagination that they were incapable of conceiving of rights not yet considered by history and tradition.

There is a school of thought, generally conservative, that rights are not granted by governments but rather recognized by them and that their true source is a divine power. But if you accept this theory on the source of rights then Alito’s opinion is even more insane. Alito is then saying though God, all knowing throughout all time, imbues people with rights he was incapable of granting rights fallen humans were unable to think of in 1789 or 1868.

In my opinion Alito conclusions, and the agreement of his fellow justices, is nothing more than highly motivated reasoning. This is something I have seen in my past time, tabletop gaming. A player has a predetermined conclusion that would benefit their game and suddenly the interpreting of rules becomes quite fluid and twisted logic is employed to arrive at the desired outcome. The conservatives want to overturn Roe and the method of getting there matters very little. As it has been said on one legal podcast the vibe is very much ‘Stare decisis is for suckers.’

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Why The West Must See Ukraine Victorious

 

First off let me make clear there are numerous reasons why the Russian aggression in Eastern Europe must be repelled and repelled without Russia gaining material benefits from invaded its neighbor.

Aggressive wars of conquest must have consequences and that must be uniformly negative, or we invite other nations to follow in that profitable lead.

The horrors that have been visited upon the Ukrainians, which echo the history of the 20th century, must be answered. Ukraine was forcibly integrated into the communist empire by the Russian Bolsheviks and suffered greatly as subjects of the evil soviet empire as well as Nazi atrocities during the second world war. By both malice, such as the Holodomor when the Soviets starved millions of Ukrainians to death, or by incompetence such as when lies and budgetary short cuts instigated the greatest civilian nuclear disaster in history with Chernobyl the Ukrainians have suffered at the hands of the Russian and they deserve their freedom.

But there is another reason the Ukrainians must win, and it is a reason that matters to every person on this blue-green planet.

In 1991, when Ukraine declared its independence which shattered the USSR it took with it a massive collection of nuclear weapons, the third largest armory of these in the world, along with the technological ability to design and create more. The world stood on the precipice of a rapidly expanding number of nuclear armed states.

1994 Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal and committed itself to non-proliferation. As part of that commitment Ukraine received security assurances that most importantly the UK, the USA, and ironically Russian would provide assistance should Ukraine be subject to an act of aggression. They walked away from nuclear weapon on our promises.

If Russia topples the Ukrainian government or seizes large elements of its territory the lesson heard around the globe will be clear. Those without nuclear weapons can be subjugated by those with them. A lesson made crystal clear by Iraq and Tunisia and now if true for the second largest nation in Europe one that cannot but inspire a scramble for the only safeguard against the superpowers of the world, your own nuclear weapons. A world where Ukraine falls or loses great swaths of land may very well lead to world where more and more nations armed themselves with nuclear devices. And the world becomes a powder keg that endangers us all.

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My Favorite April Fool’s Joke of 2022

Mostly April Fool’s jokes are tired tedious and not for me. Howvere this year there was one that I throughly enjoyed.

WWII in real time is a Youtube channel that is following the events of the Second World War week by week. (They are currently in April of 1943.)

This was the special episode that aired on Friday April 1st. (I particularly like the David Hasselhoff deep cut.)

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The Past is Not Today

 

I can’t be counted as among the great fans of historical fiction. There are plenty of historical dramas, comedies, and even some fantasies, I’m looking at you Tim Powers, that I enjoy but it is not my primary genre of fiction.

However, if your historical fiction, be it fantastic or not, gets some very basic things wrong, so wrong that I am noticing, then you are in trouble.

It is important to remember that the people of the past, while still very much people, had utterly different world views than people today. The further into the past you set your fiction the further removed from modern thinking and speaking will be the characters actions. And that doesn’t get into the little trick of language that are more modern than you might expect.

‘Hello’ as a general greeting is a product of the telephone and as very nearly ‘ahoy.’ (Something C.L. Polk dropped into her Witchmark series without explanation that I just adored.)

‘Point of no return’ is a turn of phrase coined with the coming of the age of aircraft.

‘Hands of time’ is something you only say once clocks have become common.

And the ahistorical element that bugged me last night.

People conquered by Imperial Rome did NOT become citizens of Rome. That was a vastly tiny number of people they became subjects of the empire. Getting that wrong displays, a vast ignorance of Rome, its history, and its people.

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Streaming Review: Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster

 

I recently ignited a spirited discussion on the questions was the original novel Frankenstein science-fiction or not. A number of people argues the process of using electricity to vivify the creature as a principal aspect of the science in this fiction. But that image, the grand storm, the massive bolts of lightning, the sparking machinery, all originate with the 1931 film Frankenstein and if any visual image leaps into your head of the creature, particularly if that image is hulking, brutish, and mute then the person leaping to your mind is Boris Karloff.

This week I watched a fantastic documentary on the life of Karloff, Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster and while I knew some of the story there was a great deal about this extremely talented actor I never knew. For example, due to the racism of the times he hid and never discussed his ethnicity and what I had assumed was a ‘Hollywood tan’ George Hamilton was actually his South Asian (Indian) heritage.

Remember almost exclusively in popular culture as Frankenstein’s monster, a part he gave pathos and empathy to that lives on nearly a century later, Karloff’s best work came in other films. Personally I have not seen a finer performance by him than as the murderous cabman in The Body Snatcher, (1945) where he is not only frightening but also disarmingly charming. However, The documentary also gave me new films to seek out and watch with the amazingly versatile man such as Lured starring Lucile Ball searching for a killer in London, or The Black Room where Karloff plays noble brothers with one decidedly evil.

The film covers his life, its hard knocks, and that somehow this man remained giving, gracious, and inspiring throughout the turbulent turmoils. For fans of good documentaries, classic horror, and above all Karloff, this is a must see.

Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster is currently streaming on Shudder.

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Final Review from 2021: The King’s Man

A prequel to 2014’s Kingsman: The secret Service this film takes place in the run up to and during World War I depicting the events that led to the formation of the private intelligence service.

The Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) after serving in and suffering the horror of Victoria’s Little Wars at the end of the 19th century has become a dedicated pacifist providing food and medical aid to the people suffering during wars. (Historical points to the film for showing Brittan’s invention of the Concentration Camp during the Boer War in South Africa. Points the film will later forfeit due to gross historical inaccuracy.) As the world if pushed towards the first global war by a shadowy secret conspiracy Oxford along with his man servant (Djimon Hounsou) his housekeeper (Gemma Arterton) and his adult son (Harris Dickerson) try to foil the plot. When war breaks out Oxford finds that his son doesn’t share his dedication to pacifism and is determined to perform his patriotic duty in the Great War. In order to defeat the conspirators’ plot to destroy England by using Imperial Germany as their pawn Oxford and his people involve themselves in events from Russia to Washington D.C.

I did not care much for Kingsman: The Secret Service but the actors and setting of this film enticed me out to the theater. Overall, I enjoyed the movie, finding the familial drama compelling enough and the adventure entertaining enough to serve as a nice ‘popcorn’ distraction. If you have any real historical knowledge of the Great War and how it resolved, you will need to set it all aside during the film’s third act when everything turns on bringing America into the war to provide the force required to defeat Imperial Germany. Germany was starving by 1918 and was already staring defeat in the eyes. Plus, the filmmakers were forced to sweep aside the Lusitania as a cause for American intervention or else somehow make out heroes responsible for her sinking. Still, if you can ignore history this movie is fun and has a few surprising turns in its plot.

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20 Years On

 

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and flight 93 that is generally assumed to have its target the capital but was thwarted by its passengers at the cost of their own lives.

I remember clearly where I was how I heard about the attacks. At the time I was working an overnight shift at a laboratory that performed drug testing for commercial clients. I loaded and ran a large machine that processed the samples. I was far from a scientist but a worker with basic skills and to help pass the hours I listened to radio during the night. Every night as the dawn came atmospheric changes began interfering with reception and usually, I had to shut off the radio for the last hour or so of my shift. On Sep 11th, 2001, just as the signal was degrading beyond usability, I hear the first reports that a plane has collided with one of the towers at the WTC. I assumed it was probably some light civilian aircraft and heard no more as noise swamped the signal.

At the time I used mass transit to get home and at the bus stop a random person was trying to tell me that a tower had collapsed. At this point I still had no confirmed information that it had been a massive airliner and assumed this person was passing on rumor or speculation. (Even before the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter there was plenty of bad and fake information out there.) When I reached the 7-11 just blocks from my apartment, I saw the video playing on their television and understood that the world had changed.

 

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The Baron of Arizona: A Disappointment Years in the Making

 

Some years ago, in the before time when streaming wasn’t a common way to locate and see film I chanced upon a fragment of a broadcast of 1950’s The Baron of Arizona, a western starring horror icon Vincent Price.

The film’s central plot, loosely adapted from a historical event, is how James Addison Reavis (Vincent Price) with forged documents nearly swindled the government of the United States out of almost all of the territory of Arizona.

That idea is so grand and so daring that I really wanted to see the film adaptation of it, particularly since it starred Vincent Price and was written and directed by Samuel Fuller. This month The Baron of Arizona is streaming on The Criterion Channel, and I have finally watched it.

It’s hard to remember an anticipated film that disappointed me more than this one. The film about a swindle of nearly unimaginable scale is told with dull plodding voice over and all the excitement of long boring day at work on a Monday. We follow Reavis as he takes the steps to work his forgery and swindle, a globe-trotting series of events that includes infiltrating a monastery to gain access to ancient Spanish records and manipulating a Roma Tribe to gain access to a noble’s library. After putting the grift into operation Reavis faces angry ranchers and locals who look less than kindly upon the man now calling himself their Baron and demanding rent for lands that thought they had own. but even when the plot escalates into action with hurled sticks of dynamite and federal government sending forgery experts to investigate the pace remains glacial and not even Price’s magnetic screen presence can make the movie interesting or compelling.

 

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Movie Review: Dragonwyck

 

Despite the title the film Dragonwyck is not a fantasy but rather a period drama set in the area around New York and Connecticut during the years of 1844 to 1846.

Gene Tierney plays Miranda Wells a devout Connecticut farmgirl who is asked by distant cousin Nicholas Van Ryn, (Vincent Price) to come live with he and his wife for a while as a companion to

Title: DRAGONWYCK ¥ Pers: TIERNEY, GENE / PRICE, VINCENT ¥ Year: 1946 ¥ Dir: MANKIEWICZ, JOSEPH L. ¥ Ref: DRA005AB ¥ Credit: [ 20TH CENTURY FOX / THE KOBAL COLLECTION ]

their eight-year-old daughter. Miranda convinces her religiously strict father to consent, and she leaves the family farm with dreams of see a larger and more exciting world.

Nicholas is estranged from his wife and daughter and rules over his vast estate, Dragonwyck, as a patroon, a Dutch title nearly invalidated by the Revolutionary War and Independence, but Nicholas retains ownership of the land and extracts rents from the farmers living there.

Miranda also meets the handsome young Doctor for the farming community Jeff Turner who is also involved in the Anti-Rent movement seeking to abolish the last vestiges of patroon system. Torn between these two men and their opposing political views Miranda is mired in ancient superstitious familial curses, the growing threat of political violence, and possible murder.

Dragonwyck is an enjoyable melodrama and few actors performed haughty patrician as well as Vincent Price. Though popularly known for his work in the horror genre Price’s gifts as a thespian granted him great range with his stature and demeanor perfectly suited for the doomed nobles.

While not the best example of his work, Dragonwyck is thoroughly serviceable for anyone wanting to experience Price beyond ghosts, ghouls, and ghastly revenge.

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