Monthly Archives: March 2019

The Last Ringbearer

Upon my sweetie-wife’s recommendation I have begun reading The Last Ringbearer. A 1999 fantasy novel the central conceit of the book is that because history is always written by the victors to make the victors look good that events of The Lord of the Rings  as told in that set of books is quite untrue. The Last Ringbearer skims over the events of the war of the ring, providing context and removing Elvish propaganda and then commences with the heroic struggles to avert the coming domination of the world by the unearthly elves.

Yes, if you are a lover of elves then this book is very far removed from what you are likely to enjoy. Also if you secretly dream of being a wizard then this too is not a book for you, nor if you long for the strong hand of a king, born to rule over you with his divine right. This book is truly for those who love freedom, the freedom of thought, the freedom to live without bending the knee to supernatural and un-chosen rulers, and most of all, the book if those who love science.

Told from the point of view of a Human and Orc who have escaped the destruction of Mordor’s armies and then joined by a lord of Gondor disgusted by the war crimes of the elves, they embark on a quest that will removed magic from the world and allow the learning and science of men to flourish.

I haven’t yet finished the novel and it may fall apart by the time I do but for the moment I am thoroughly loving this ride. As heretical as this statement may be for someone who has played Dungeons and Dragons  for more than 30 years, I like The Last Ringbearer  much more than I like The Lord of the Rings.

Unauthorized in the English language world, and I do not begrudge the Tolkien estate in protecting their intellectual property, The Last Ringbearer  is available as a free download from numerous sites and best thought of as professionally executive fan fiction.

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Movie Review: Us

Jordan Peele, the writer, director, and producer of the fantastic film Get Outreturned to theater screens last week with another horror film, Us. Centered on an upper-middle class family during their summer vacation, Us  is a horror film that avoids the cheap and easy gimmicks often employed by lesser films, such as the repetitive ‘jump scare,’ in favor of disturbing images driven by magnificent performances and yet it does not achieve the same heights as get Out  leaving this film as modest enjoyable but subject to several disbelief braking elements.

Led by Lupita Nyong’o as the movie’s central character Adelaide Wilson and supported by Winston Duke playing her husband Gabe, Shahadi Wright Joseph as their eldest daughter Zora and Evan Alex as their youngest Jason the cast is uniformly fantastic. Playing real and relatable characters that draw in the audience’s sympathy their relationship as a family and as individuals powers the emotional heart of this film. Vacationing at Santa Cruz’s boardwalk, in an earlier cinematic decade the site of a vampire infestation in The Lost BoysAdelaide is unnerved by an ominous chain of coincidence echoing her childhood traumatic experiences at the amusement park. Gabe, ignorant of Adelaide’s experiences, insists on visiting the location and as evening falls tensions are running high and Adelaide is fearful of unseen forces when the family is suddenly confronted by doppelgangers of themselves and thrust into a fight for survival.

Much of Us  works beautifully. The characters feel real and their pain and fright are palatable. Lupita anchors the cast’s performances as the emotionally damaged mother giving Winston Duke, perhaps best know for his star making turn in Black Panther  to stretch his comedic chops as a very ‘Dad jokes’ kind of father. Midway though the movie’s second act the story opens up in an unexpected manner raising the stakes and the bring more mystery to the doppelgangers sudden appearance but the third act, while still engaging and superior to many horror films, is hampered by a exposition/info dump that stops the pace cold and pushes too many hurdles for my personal suspension of disbelief. I can’t be specific without venturing deeply into the land of spoilers but I can try to give hypothetical examples of the problems I encountered with the film final reveals.

Imagine a ghost story, going into the film as an audience we are already primed to suspend our disbelief in ghosts. It’s a ‘give’ we are ready to surrender to the filmmaker just from what we have been exposed to in advertising and trailers. Now, as our plucky characters grapple with a vengeful spirit we are suddenly confronted with alien ghost busters who also have been directing human governments and developments since the fall of Rome. This is asking the audience to simultaneously accept too many impossible things and breaks the reality of the story. Us  does not break things as blatantly as my hypothetical scenario but for me the final explanation for the events is far from neat and that I found impossible to accept. The ultimate resolution to Adelaide’s trauma was deep and morally conflicted, I loved that, the grand explanation for the doppelgangers and the wider canvas to story painted starting in the middle of the second act failed for me. Overall Us was an enjoyable film, a cut above most horror movies, though that is a low bar, but not as satisfying as Peele’s masterpiece Get Out.

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Documentary Review: Los Angeles Plays Itself

Over the weekend on the streaming service Kanopy, in installments, I watched the massive documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself. Released in 2003 and with a running time of nearly three hours (how many documentaries have an intermission?) Los Angeles Plays Itself is a video essay and love letter to the filmmaker Thomas Andersen’s home city.  Utilizing films clips from movies as famous as Chinatown and Sunset Boulevard  but also as obscure as independent art films from marginalized communities and early 70s horror films such as Messiah of Evil  Andersen focuses on the distortion and misrepresentations of his beloved home by the film industry over the decades. The film also carries Andersen’s undisguised feelings about the powers that be in the city and the destruction of local color and communities that the filmmaker mourns in their passing.

One of the amazing things about this film is the sheer size and scope of identifying filming locations from iconic movies throughout the history of cinema. Some are already well know, such as the Bradbury building whose use as a location stretches back to the 40s, but also other mansions and works of architectural art that has severed as the homes of bad guys, corporate raiders, and even as Deckard’s apartment in Blade Runner.

With a sharp eye and sarcastic tone Andersen exposed the illusions of Hollywood and the urban myths about Los Angeles that the movies have spread far and wide. For fans of film this is worth seeing.

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Thoughts on the Mueller Report

Friday Robert Mueller turned in his report to the Attorney General of the United States and the AG Barr released a statement advising the congress and the public of the report’s conclusions.

The big revelations are Mueller found no evidence supporting the accusation and concluded that Trump and his campaign did not coordinated with the Russian governments interference with out election and did not coordinate their campaign in general with Russia. The other major element Barr relayed to us was that Mueller came to no conclusion on the question of Trump’s innocence or guilt concerning accusations of obstruction of Justice.

Let’s take a quick look at both of these elements.

First off, I breathe a sigh of relief that Mueller did not find coordination. While I still think of Trump as corrupt it is good to know that he is not both corrupt and traitorous. Secondly, this adds support to the reports that Trump never actually intended to win the presidency. If he wanted to win and he was corrupt dealing and coordinating with Russia might have been a temptation he could not have resisted. That said it is clear that Russia and Putin, for they are the same thing, *wanted* Trump to win. They interfered in the primary and the general election seeking to have him become the next president. Perhaps because they believed he would be so inept that it would harm America on the world’s stage, perhaps because they felt he was easily manipulated, or perhaps because they thought that they had leverage due to his extensive and questionable dealing with Russia and it’s cadre of rich corrupt oligarchs. Any or all of these can be true without Trump ever truly wanting the office or working closely or at all with the Russians to win it. The opaqueness of his finances makes it impossible to be certain that powerful individuals do not have financial leverage on him. The fact of no electoral collusion does not free him of other dark suspicions.

Mueller apparently did not come to any conclusions on the issue of Trump and Obstruction of Justice and this is likely a good thing. Robert Mueller from everything I have read is a man who has served his nation well and honorably for decades and it is unlikely he would side step such a conclusion, one way or the other, lightly. Ultimately this issue comes down to the question of impeachment and that is a political question not a law enforcement one. By leaving the question unanswered Mueller has pushed into the only court with the legitimacy to deal with it, the political court and investigations by the legislative braches.

The fat lady has not sung and the opera continues.

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After The Electoral College — Maybe

There has been a lot of talk recently of doing away with the Electoral College, the actual system by which the United States selects its president. In each state the people vote not for a candidate directly but for a slate of electors who have pledged themselves to support a stated person for the position. The elector meets and vote and the person who obtains a clear majority of that vote becomes the president. In the event that no one has a clear majority the House of Representatives determines the winner. With our mature two party system there is nearly always a majority winner, but as we have seen recently and repeatedly that winner, due to the quirks of the states, their populations, and how electors are distributed, may have actually lost the national popular vote. These lesser votes winning the election results are called electoral misfires and with the current president having lost the popular vote by 3 million votes has reignited the debate about how we elect our president with many advocating for a direct popular vote. I am, in general, in favor of direct elections, but I do wonder how we might handle the undoubtedly different outcomes it would generate.

Our two party indirect method of electing a president makes candidates from third parties nearly or wholly irrelevant. With the two major parties fielding candidates that many found deeply unpopular only one third party managed ballot access in all 50 states and obtained a popular votes total of just over 3 percent. But even just that minor number of votes lost in 2016 no major candidate crossed over 50% of the vote. How do you handle the situation where no one has gotten a majority of the votes?

Do you go with simply the largest votes total and accept a minority vote president?

Do you have run offs eliminating candidate until you have a majority winner?

Do you introduce a voting scheme such as ranked choice that creates the effect of an instant run off?

All of these solutions have their pluses and minuses with their advocates fiercely defending their adoption.

Here’s an idea; after the vote totals are known if no candidate has crossed the 50% line, starting with the person with the least number of votes, each candidate assigns their vote total to one of the top two in vote total. The process is repeated until a candidate crosses the 50% mark and wins the election.

This is in one way very similar to the instant run off created by rank choice voting but with what I think is an important distinction, it is not automatic. The losing candidate elects where his votes will go and to whom he, or she, gives their support, creating an incentive for horse-trading. A candidate who campaign had been dedicated to a cause, such as global warming, minority rights, or whatever can demand tangible concession in exchange for their support, cabinet posts, legislation, and so one. This means the winner has to have not just de facto coalitional support in order to win but that those collations are explicit and thereby reducing that likelihood that they will be ignored or taken for granted.

This idea is far from perfect but I think it has promise.

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Movie Review: I Saw The Light

Released in 2015 and starring Tom Hiddleston I Saw the Light is a biopic based on the brief meteoric life of Country singer Hank Williams. Adapting the biography writer and director Marc Abraham has a clear love and passion for the subject matter.

With a recording career that spanned jus six years, Williams blazed a brilliant career that produced 36 hit records and influenced Country/Western for decades after his premature death at 29 from heart disease. The film focuses on his turbulent relations ship with

image copyright Sony Pictures Classics

Audrey Sheppard Williams his first wife and sometimes singing partner (played by Elizabeth Olsen reuniting these two MCU stars), the pressures of his sudden fame, his complicated relationship with his mother, and his battles with alcoholism.

Hiddleston, a native of England, convincingly adopts William’s Alabama accent and singing mannerisms. Unlike many biopics about singers there is no attempt have the star lip sync to the singer’s performances but rather Hiddleston and Abraham work to create the impression of William’s unique style while giving the actor full reign for a performance. Olsen, as Audrey, has a tougher performance to nail down. Audrey’s irritation and eventual divorce from Williams over his infidelity and substance abuse issues is fairly straight forward and even handed but and additional source of friction in their relationship is Audrey’s desire for a singing career of her own and the film portrays her talents as quite lacking and Olsen must perform well enough that you can believe she has the possibility of a career and yet poorly enough that it is also clear she can never achieve her dreams. Frankly this did not work so well for me. It is possible that no one in the writing or production were looking out to make sure her story was faithful to her voice and viewpoint. I do not know enough to have an informed opinion but as for the action I think Olsen held her own against Hiddleston and they had a real on screen chemistry.

Where the film fails and it dos utterly is the lack of a narrative.  Biopics are particularly tough genre to produce. A person life rarely falls neatly into a narrative structure and this is doubly so when the story has to encompass their death. While there are plenty of  interesting characters and scenes a sequence of events is not a story. When the credits rolled on the Blu-ray I could not tell you why this film mattered or what it was trying to say, and you must always have something to say. There needs to be a point as to why were spent two hours caring about these characters and how that reflects on life in general. The film point of view is firmly fixed with Williams but we never come close to understanding the man, his art, or what drove his creativity. Without deeper themes or a character study the film is hollow and I cannot recommend it beyond enjoying Hiddleston’s enthusiastic performance.

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Digital Formats Give Movies More Time in Front of Audiences

So, the other day I was scrolling through the offerings at my local AMC theater, considering which movie to use of my reservations for and as I saw a number of films that had but one or two screenings for the entire day I suddenly considered the changing technology and options of film exhibition.

Many moons ago I worked at a local theater as an usher. It was a multiplex and each screen showed the same film throughout the week and, except for the rare double bill, only one film screen in each auditorium. Once a feature no longer commanded enough people in seats to justify the screen space it occupied all week the film was broken down back into its component reels and shipped away. This is very different than today where a film, such asThe Upside  might play for a showing or two during the matinee hours and then a different movie take over the screen for the prime time evening audience and it all comes down to digital technology.

This is the projector and film platter for a traditional projection booth. That massive set of three platters hold the entire film that had been assembled from its individual reels. At the theater where I worked this was done by an assistance manager for an extra $75

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/5240

Photo Credit Anthony Huneycutt

dollars per week. When Romero’s Day of the Dead  was released my friend, who was one of the assistant managers, assembled the print and we stayed later to ‘test’ it, screening the disappointing film for ourselves. Assembling the print onto the platter was a laborious and time consuming processes which dictated that you did not change out prints often or easily.

Here is the sort of hard drive that modern digital prints are distributed on these days. I took this photo during my tour of Paramount Studios and this has quickly become the standard for motion picture exhibition. It’s a lot cheaper to ship that hard drive than the reels and reels of a lengthy feature film, it involves a lot fewer employee hours to set up and project, and it is free from tampering my mischievous theater owners or employees. (I once worked for a theater manager who privately admitted to ‘editing’

photo credit R.M. Evans

the end of a film and sending it back out for distribution.) These hard drives are not only loaded with the film ‘assembled’ and ready to exhibit but also with a digital count that has been pre-authorized. The theaters can project the feature only as many times as authorized and no more. If a theater wants to hold a film over for more showing they have to contact the studio or distributor to have the hard drive reauthorized. (No more private screens like my friend and I enjoyed.) I suspect that these one a day showing of films that have been in release for months may be the theaters using every authorized screening before returning the drive back to the studio.

There are those who love film and maintain it has a look that digital has not duplicated but the chance for films to find audiences and for people to catch screening of movies that had missed I think is a wonderful thing.

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Sexual Assault in Dramatic Narratives

After watching No Blade of Grass I started thinking more about sexual violence in media because this film has a nearly perfect example of a gratuitous rape which serves no purpose in the narrative and I can use that to discuss why sexual violence is so often something that should be removed from a piece.

In the story John Custance, his wife Ann and daughter Mary are waylaid by evil men who knock out John, abduct Ann and Mary and rape them. John and the other in their band of survivors find the men, interrupt the assault, and kill them, Anne killing one herself. Then the band moves on, back on their quest for the safety of the potato far.

A scene in a narrative piece needs to fulfill a function the most common function for a scene include; Advancing the Plot, Revealing Character, Motivating Characters, and World Building/Exposition. It is not only possible but also preferable that a scene performs more than a single function but it should serve at least one of those goals. So let’s look at this sequence and see what functions it may fit into.

1) Advancing the Plot. This attack and its resolution in no way advances the plot. The characters quest remains the same after the incident as before and the attack doesn’t change their approach to their goals. There is no alteration to their methods that later effect their progress. The plot is utterly unaffected.

2) Revealing Character. The Point of View character for this film is John Custance and other characters, particularly given the movie’s brief running time, are scarcely explored at all. The assault reveals nothing new or hidden from the viewers. No unexpected reaction, no dark history revelation.

3) Motivating Characters. This is an old action movie cliché, the hero’s significant other is assaulted by the bad guy or his henchmen and the hero is finally propelled into action and the third act of the movie. It is sexual assault and major trauma reduced to a motivational excuse. In No Blade of Grass  the attack doesn’t even service that purpose. It takes place about the middle of the second act and the attackers end up dead adding no revenge element to the story. It should also be noted that the assault, while it produces some changes in the Ann and Mary, these changes are give only as surface treatment and are principally shown in how they affect their respective romantic partners.

4) World Building and Exposition. I think it is fairly likely that the filmmakers thought that the inclusion of this scene dramatized the cruel and violent world born of this disaster but that is a quite naive viewpoint. Rape is a daily reality. Stranger rape and gang rapes are a reality, one that women are quite aware of. If this is meant as world building then it sadly fails to understand how our world already works.

Major trauma should only be deployed for major story elements. Such real life terrors should never be used as a motivational gimmick to get a hero moving. If you need to rape someone to give the hero motivation, then make it the hero who is assaulted and leave side characters for side quests and lesser elements.

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Double Movie Review: No Blade of Grass & Bird Box

This was a pretty good weekend for the number of movies I have watched but sadly not for the number of good movies I have seen.

Bird Box   based on a novel. is about a woman, Mallory, played by Sandra Bullock, and two children, Boy and Girl, taking a dangerous river trip while blindfolded in order to avoid seeing a supernatural force that drives people mad, usually into suicidal behavior or depending on plot requirements religious mania to spread the truth of what they have seen coupled with homicidal behavior. Bird Box  operates on the level of plot and really nothing more and even there is fails as it requires suspension of disbelief that I was unable to provide. A person unskilled and blindfolded cannot row a boat for days down a river without ending up on the bank, not to mention running fully blindfolded through heavy growth forest, or accurately wielding shotguns while opposed by multiple attackers. Each of the several characters that begin their siege as the apocalyptic disaster unfolds has a specific plot purpose and once they fill that purpose they die making for route and unimagined writing. Too patly constructed, lacking any characters of depth, and demanding far too much suspension of disbelief Bird Box  fails every test of effective horror.

No Blade of Grass,  also adapted from a novel, is another apocalyptic tale, this one focused on environmental destruction and the attending collapse of society. In the film a virus or blight is spreading around the world that destroys all member of the grass family, that includes, wheat, rice, corn, and other cereal grains, leading to mass starvation and anarchy as the governments of the world prove incapable of meeting the existential threat. The story focuses on the trails of the Custance family who, with advance warning of the government’s plan to seal off London, flee with a friend to the safety of a large potato farm owned by the father’s brother in the north of England. Along the way they surrender civilized norms in their fight for survival becoming hard brutal people until reaching their sanctuary and discovering that their plans are upended forcing them into even more immoral choices.

Released in 1970 No Blade of Grass,  which I first heard about from a fellow panelist as we discussed environmental disaster SF stories, is an ambitious but ultimately flawed production. Partly the film suffers from too much compression in both screen time and the passage of time for the characters. With a scant 136  96 minute, and wasting quite a few of those with set up and exposition, and with a fair number of characters, the movies doesn’t have the running time to build, explore, and transform these character in an meaningful method, leaving the viewer to watch a series of scenes that only nominally follow a sequence but lacking in emotional impact. Further more the character appear to travel for only a few days and in that short time they become murderous and hard, transformations that lack any clear baseline, we hardly get a chance to see who they were before the crisis, and as such reinforce the impression that these were evil people all along. No Blade of Grass  required a more epic format and without it the film falls far short of its intended goals.

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A Most Dangerous President

In a recent interview with Breitbart Trump boasted of the ‘toughness’ of his supporters on the right.

 

“You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

 

This love, admiration, and longing for ‘toughness’ is a clarion call to violence. It is call that is heard and is welcomed. It was heard by Lt Christopher Hasson, USCG and his alleged plotting to murder Trump’s liberal enemies, it was heard by Cesar Sayoc and his alleged mailing explosive devices to Trump’s liberal enemies, it is heard and taken to heart by racists around the globe. A man who admires the slaughter of the peaceful protesters in China now occupies the White House and despite all this is supported by a major political party because victory overrides all sense of morality, justice, and honor and worst troubles are ahead for our Union.

 

Is needs to be remembered that in the waning days of the 2016 election Trump busily laid the foundation for rejecting the election likely outcome as a product of fraud and illegitimate. As a losing candidate Trump running around, getting money from suckers, as he frothed about stolen election would have been juts one more reality show for the con-man, but he did not lose. The results shocked he and the nation when even though he lost the popular contest by 3 million votes he won the presidency. To save his overinflated and fragile ego and – ah hem – reputation Trump immediately and insanely attacked the popular vote tally as fraudulent. Now we face something I do not think we have ever faced as a nation, the possibility of a sitting president, one that stokes violence, refusing to accept the outcome of an election.

 

This national nightmare, and our previous on was nothing more than a shiver from a cold draft, is far from over.

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