R.CAllen
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Days Won
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Posts posted by R.CAllen
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Gary Graham died. The human cop in Alien Nation (‘89-’90, ‘94, ‘95, ‘96, ‘96, ‘97). Ambassador Soval on Enterprise (‘01-’05) + that one episode of Star Trek: Voyager (‘95-’01) where they found the Caretaker’s mate. 73!
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I’m all caught up.
Butchie from John From Cincinnati (‘07-’07) as the town magistrate in the Arthur Miller episode. Lou Diamond Phillips in the next one!
There’s a scene in the most recent episode (that’s the Lou Diamond Phillips one) where the lady — the lady who’s in her own little Rachel McAdams movie, she’s in The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), she’s in Midnight in Paris (2011), she’s in About Time (2013), she’s in Doctor Strange (2016), my point is she’s the lady who pines for the new Dr. Sam Becket while he Leaps through time in and around her own linear progression — tells the new Dr. Sam Becket that God clearly wants them to bang. She throws herself at him! She tells him that it’s so obvious God wants them to have sex. He lets her down gently and instead of being devastated by this she’s all, like, “That just makes me love you more.” What!? I am once again sliding the beads on the abacus a few notches forward to her ending up as some kind of Evil Leaper.
They eventually do seal the deal, though. Although it’s kind of left ambiguous. If it happened, well, it happened during the commercial break. Network television! There’s a moment where the new Dr. Sam Becket earnestly believes that he’s failed to save the person he’s supposed to save. The one that Ziggy predicted with whatever percent accuracy that he had to save in order to make the next Leap. So for the first time he’s faced with the prospect of having to spend the rest of his life trapped where he is. And she’s talking him through it. What he could do. Where he could go. After the act break they’re together still but the new Dr. Sam Becket is suddenly shirtless!? I don’t think it’s reading too much into things to wonder. Are they going to give the new Dr. Sam Becket a child!? An elderly Egyptian child — the episode takes place in 1960s Egypt so the kid would be in his sixties by now. Wait, just because the kid was conceived in Egypt wouldn’t make the kid Egyptian. The kid would just be, like, the child of the CIA agent the new Dr. Sam Becket leapt into and this weird lady he keeps bumping into over and over. (They eventually find out, surprise surprise, that whomever it was they thought was dead is still alive and still needs saving.)
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I don’t much care for when other art is inexpertly larded into the substance of the art I’m experiencing. I’m thinking of ... the thing where a book will have two opening epigraphs, one from a highbrow source and one from something lowbrow. Or when a movie will try to class up the joint by quoting from some poetry e.g. Skyfall (2012), Oblivion (2013), Interstellar (2014). Or when characters will drop a reference in dialogue which just don’t feel right, just don’t feel like the sort of thing that character would say, even when the character has JUST said it!!!!1!
BUT
One thing I do like is when you get a little piece of another movie inside of your movie. Now that’s just good value for money! Examples, examples, let’s see. The Limey (1999) repurposing that old Ken Loach film. That little piece of Star Wars (1977) inside 500 Days of Summer (2009). The Great Escape (1963) reworked within Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019).
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Norman Jewison died. I thought he was already dead! Kind of an understandable mistake. 97! Norman Jewison : wasn’t dead, wasn’t Jewish, 100% Canadian. I don’t know. I really like Agnes of God (1985). I’ve seen it ... three times? I think I’ve seen it three times. I’ve seen it twice definitely. I saw it for the first time in university, rented it once, I think I’ve seen it at least one other time. I should watch it again. Great movie!
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Nerene Virgin died. Jodie from Today’s Special (‘81-’87). 78!
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The reason the other thread was chockablock with people chiming in from jump with all the things they dislike about art and this thread is mostly silent is actually a pretty simple one. It’s easier to notice what we think is bad than what’s good. Even I — the world’s most important person, need I remind you, the man whose opinions REALLY MATTER! — find it to be a struggle.
Here are my best guesses:
* I really like art that takes language seriously. I think this accounts for my love of sci-fi, of fantasy, of period pieces, of genre generally, of the written word and of stuff that has the stink of the written word all over itself. And I think it explains my disdain for most non-competitive reality television. Those people are just making it up as they go along and, what’s worse, they’re all talking in normal people talk while they do it!!1! I mean, no thanks! And this love of words probably also has something to do with my limited appreciation for music. That’s not really a writer’s medium! People don’t like Star Trek because of all the treknobabble but I think the treknobabble is part and parcel of what makes Star Trek good. That stilted quality to even the non-technical dialogue! I love it! Even a contemporary drama without overt genre overtones like, say, The Arrangement (‘17-’18). It had Michael Vartan talking in cult talk! The people on it would sometimes speak entirely like themselves. That’s a quality I seek out. Its presence makes art feel good to me and its absence can make art feel like nothing to me. Sometimes I’ll watch a critically acclaimed indie movie or whatever, something shot with non-actors and with improvised dialogue, and I’ll come out of it completely unmoved. I’ll be full on Slavko Vorkapić with it. “What film?”.
* when a pretty lady takes her clothes off and she has big beautiful honkers
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Howard Waldrop died. ‘The Ugly Chickens’, yeah, but so many more. ‘Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me’, ‘Ike at the Mike’, ‘Der Untergang des Abendlandesmenschen’, ‘Horror, We Got’. 77!
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Terry Bisson died. ‘They’re Made Out of Meat’, of course, but the thing that sticks in my memory are the (pointless?) cash grabs. The work for hire stuff. The Johnny Mnemonic novelization. The Galaxy Quest novelization. Why did they ... well, I read them. I read the copies my library ordered. I don’t think I read the young Boba Fett books he did. The ones which came out after AotC. But they were on my radar then and now. They came to mind to me upon learning he’d passed beyond the veil. Oh well. 81!
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Tracy Tormé died. ‘Conspiracy’ from Season 1 of TNG! (Wait, he was Mel Tormé’s son!?!?1? Bing Crosby’s kid. Mel Tormé’s kid. Kind of a dr._doofenshmirtz_meme.jpeg situation.) 64! Terrible.
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Tom Wilkinson died. Great actor! Really great in The Governess (1998), as the money in Shakespeare In Love (1998), in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Michael Clayton (2007), Ben Franklin in John Adams (‘08), James Baker in Recount (2008) — I have a soft spot for those modern day politics movies Jay Roach and Danny Strong tricked Dr Pepper® into paying for —, in Valkyrie (2008) — “I will hear you say it, Colonel.” —, 44 Inch Chest (2009), in The Green Hornet (2011) and The Lone Ranger (2013), as Joe Kenedy in The Kennedys (‘11), in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), Belle (2013), in the closest-to-outermost framing sequences of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) oh wait I am actually unsure where his scenes are fitted into that but I obviously remember the bit with the pellet gun, LBJ in Selma (2014), as the older member of the trio in Unfinished Business (2015), wait, is that the most recent thing I remember him from, I saw Snowden (2016) but I don’t remember him in that. Hmm.
75! He just made everything better. One of the great balances between “Oh, it’s him!” and the total belief that he was now whomever he was onscreen.
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I still read books. I don’t have a reading goal for the year. I don’t think I have any good book recommendations — sorry! — I can never really manage to narrow it down.
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Wolfgang Schäuble died. Plenty of rough deaths this year but I’m chalking that one up in the column beneath Henry Kissinger. To quote the words of Gotham City district attorney Harvey Dent as written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Tim Sale OB”M in The Long Halloween : “If you ask me, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
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There’s lots of things in art I dislike. I’m just not sure they necessarily count as tropes. Shoddy craftsmanship, failed attempts at profundity, the apparently unthinking regurgitation of idées reçues, unfunny humour, unsexy titillation, unthrilling action, the elevation of structure above style and substance, when I have a longstanding grudge against whomever made the art because reasons, I could go on.
But, I have a confession to make. I don’t know what a trope is. What’s a trope? What isn’t a trope? When it comes to art — when it comes to a lot of things! — I like it when things are good and don’t like it when things are bad. If the thing is good I don’t care what the thing is. I don’t care if I’ve seen it before. I don’t care if I’ll see it again. I’m not going to complain that I’m getting too much of a good thing.
It can be the hoariest cliché but if it’s well executed I’m going to clap, I’m going to hoot, I’m going to holler. Oh, an anvil fell on your head and three bumps have grown atop your scalp and you go cross-eyed and stumble about in a daze as little baby blue birds fly in elegant pirouettes around you as they chirp and tweet? Hell yeah! Oh, you’ve disabled the bomb when it was just moments away from exploding? Hell yeah! Oh, you’ve just this very day turned eighteen and you’ve ordered pizza from the pizza parlour but have no cash on hand to tip the delivery driver? Hell yeah!
I come to this stuff with an open heart. My eyes aren’t closed. My ears are clear. Show me what you can do with what there is! They say that it’s a poor carpenter what blames his tools but as far as I’m concerned I’m a customer and what kind of, uh, tool would exchange the pleasure of sitting at a well wrought table for the meagre joys of pointing at various tools in a toolbox and excitedly declaiming “That’s a bad tool. I have seen this tool before.” Not me! There are only so many tools!
Look. I don’t want to go all the way with this and decry the malign influence of Television Tropes Dot Organization on the world or whatever. It’s a nice wiki. I’ve had fun looking at its pages. Sure! I just don’t think there’s much of anything fun for me — the world’s most important person, as we all well know, the man whose opinions REALLY MATTER! — in cataloguing all the ways art can be familiar.
Please don’t mistake this stance as some kind of dumb dumb ‘never yuck a yum’ ‘let people enjoy things’ ‘Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother (‘05-’14) took some of his sitcom money and paid an Olsen Triplet to mouth his dumb words’ sort of deal. I am all about yucking other people’s yums! If I could stop other people from enjoying things — I can’t! — you know I would. I dislike Josh Radnor!!!1!! What’s my point? My point is I’m describing the way I feel about things. If other people feel differently, sure, go ahead and talk about the tropes you can’t stand. Do you need my permission? If so, you have it. If not, fly free!
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Ian Gibson is dead. Dying? Well, his family said he is “in the last hours before he starts his new adventure.” No, wait, I think he’s gone. Halo Jones, of course, but I also have a fondness for that Boba Fett thing he did with John Wagner. What is it people say? I hope he enjoyed his time here.
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Norman Lear died. BD”E. 101! I guess that means he was ... 93 when I heard him on a podcast.
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I think that maybe George Santos and Madison Cawthorn are brought back to power on swamp draining duty for the federal branch in the next administration. And while I don’t think Santos has the juice to rise much higher than that I still think President Madison Cawthorn is in the offing. (This is all description and not endorsement. Of course! I’m not talking about what I want to happen. I’m talking about what I think will happen.)
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Damn. Henry Kissinger שר"י. What can you say? What can I say? What can one say? What can little Cambodian children dead from unexploded ordnance say!? I guess the answer to all four of these questions is nothing more than “Not much!”. A hundred years! This is one of those things like the Red Sox winning the World Series or Deep Throat being revealed. God shutting the book of the twentieth century close at long last.
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Mike of Mike’s Amazing World of Comics died. Awful!
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Elliot Silverstein died. BD”E. 96! He directed ‘The Obsolete Man’ and ‘The Trade-Ins’ and a few others. But those two there are the Twilight Zones he did that I really really really like. They made the list.
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Three (3) things about the new season.
1) I do think that new Quantum Leap’s occasional forays into the deeper end of the swimming pool are ... it’s never accomplished with aplomb but it’s nice to see them try. The American story is people being brutalized and/or brutalizing other people. It’s the tweet from twitter. So a show about people going back in time in America is obviously going to bump up against some things. Ziggy says there’s a 100% chance! And it’s not like that can all be ably handled within the limits imposed by medium, audience, and author(s) of a primetime episode of network television but still ... everyone involved on one side of the fence is quite clearly giving it their best shot! Somebody somewhere’s read a magazine article or two. I like it! I can only hope for more of it.
2) I never saw any of the episodes with the Evil Leaper. As far as I’m concerned the Evil Leaper may as well be as real as Roxie the Street Shark from Street Sharks (‘94-’97). So I don’t care about no Evil Leapers. And, well, they already kinda did their take on a new Evil Leaper last year. But is this lady ... is this an origin story for a new new Evil Leaper? Is the whole Quantum Leap program itself going to be one big timeloop where the new Doctor Sam Beckett ends up causing for the thing to exist in the first place through this waitress physicist lady!? I don’t know.
3) They’re doing a thing now where it’s too painful for both the new Doctor Sam Beckett and the new Al to be with each other as his hologram because she thought he was gone forever in the interim between seasons and got together romantically with someone else. So every week somebody else is going to be filling in as the hologram? Ernie Hudson one episode — they brought back the actress who played Al’s wife again! she has moved on as a widow to now having sexual intercourse with a man who was once briefly her dead husband’s best friend! to paraphrase a former (future?) president : So, lets get this right. Al Calavicci dies after Dr. Sam Beckett radically rewrites the timeline so he can stay married to his wife. Now his wife has a lover (boyfriend)! Oh Al! — and the security guard lady and the new Al’s new boyfriend the next. I like it. I mean, eventually they’ll run out of people. Until then I am enjoying it, yeah.
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I was weirded out that the anniversary of the JFK assassination was the day before Thanksgiving. I mean, that wasn’t ... that’s not how it was on Mad Men (‘07-’15)!
American thanksgiving is (apparently?) the fourth Thursday in November. Ours is (also apparently!?) the second Monday in October. It’s a sequel to that Walter Matthau movie!? Well. You live. You learn.
Anyway. Happy Thanksgiving!
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I did see this and (as expected!) did not like it. I do my best to try and go into any of these things, these make’em’ups — TV, movies, books, comics, whatever — with open eyes and an open heart. I want to enjoy things. I want to have a good time. I guess maybe the problem here is mostly me, sure. Maybe no amount of psyching myself up to like something that I’ve already half-convinced myself beforehand is just not going to be up to snuff is going to work. Yeah. Okay.
I’ve already lanced my boil re: this show, Netflix Scott Pilgrim, elsewhere on the Internet — I got a Discord account! I have officially joined the Internet circa the latter half of the ‘10s! — so I don’t really feel the need to go over again what I didn’t like about the show once more at length. But there is a little thing that I did like which is kind of a spoiler so...
There is a little acoustic lyric-less videogame music cover of ‘God Only Knows’ by the Beach Boys in the finale. I really liked it! The full version from the soundtrack is kinda less understated than the excerpts of it used on the show itself but, well, be your own judge.
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On 11/17/2023 at 5:22 PM, Odine said:
However Israel has thousands of detained palastinian prisoners, hostages if you will, that also have not been released.
I won't.
On 11/17/2023 at 5:22 PM, Odine said:The hostages that have been released by Hamas have all spoken of how they were treated with dignity and respect, much to the chagrin of the IDF and Netanyahu.
These hostages also have relatives still being held in captivity. Eight other members of the family of the first pair released. The husbands of the second pair. I imagine I might say whatever my former captors told me to in that situation.
On 11/17/2023 at 5:22 PM, Odine said:I have seen statistics that have demonstrated that of the minors killed by the IDF the age most represented is 5 years old. I'm struggling to find the same source documentation again however
I’ll help you. I found it. The claim seems to have been made by a Norwegian tabloid newspaper on November 8th tallying up the dead up until October 26th. I have no idea if their math is correct. It could very well be! If it were true I’d have expected to see the claim repeated by a lot more reputable outlets as well.
While “five-year-olds represent the largest age group” isn’t exactly the same thing as “five year olds making up the largest number of fatalities” or even “that of the minors killed by the IDF the age most represented is 5 years old”, well, I understand why that mistake would be made! Okay! Perhaps it was just another inaccuracy. Another poor use of language.
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I am not trying to deny or defend child killing.
On 11/14/2023 at 6:00 AM, Odine said:They have slaughtered over 10k civilians, half of whom are children (five year olds making up the largest number of fatalities), in response to an initial attack that resulted in around 1200 dead Israeli targets and a few hostages that have now mostly been released.
Do five year olds make up the largest number of fatalities?
Are most of the hostages released?
Poor Things; Art or Misogyny Disguised as Cinema?
in Entertainment
Posted
Haven’t seen the movie.
Is the movie misogynist? How? It’s several thousand feet of 35mm Ektachrome! It’s a ... it’s a file on the computer! Does it come to life at night and beat its wife? Is it married to the projector?
Is the director misogynist? Maybe but I think he’s just Greek. I’ve only seen three of his movies. I think watching this new movie he did and thinking he’s a misogynist would be like watching those other three movies and thinking he condones incest and animal-human hybridization and the British monarchy.
Are the actors misogynists? Mark Ruffalo went to the women’s march. Is he in that movie? Again, I haven’t seen it. Is ... is Emma Stone a misogynist? If so, she’s playing a deep game. Willem Dafoe!? But ... he’s from Appleton, Wisconsin! I’ve got to believe the best of him.
Is the audience misogynist? Does the movie make the audience misogynist? The movie’s been out there for, like, six months! If it was causing some wave of misogyny I think people would’ve noticed. Then again, think how much LESS misogynistic our world would be if Alasdair Gray had kicked it back in the 1980s. We’ll never know!!!!1!
I don’t know. I shouldn’t make fun. There are works of art where both the circumstances of production and the actual output — actresses getting told to take their tops off or they’d be fired from a giallo all about how sometimes ladies just deserve stabbing, that sort of thing — are such that it’s fair to describe the works themselves as misogynist. I don’t think those are the kinds of things that get Oscar nominated. Not no more. Society is progressing! Forward or backward? Who can say? I’m kind of like Lee Marvin when it comes to this. There’s not ENOUGH misogyny in the movies! (I should say for the sake of clarity that I’m kidding, I’m goofing, I’m joshing. Everybody deserves to be treated super duper nice all the time always. But my point is that artistic work shouldn’t be hampered by a risk of being seen by a hostile audience as an embodiment of a negative societal force. Artists should feel free to get ooky with it. To sincerely embrace aspects and elements which might make people uncomfortable, y’know? It’s make believe. It’s made up. Claire Denis responding to a journalist at a junket who asked her why she didn’t make films with strong female leads with a curt, “I’m not a social worker.” That sort of thing. That sort of deal.)