Category Archives: History

Remakes Aren’t So Terrible

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I missed making a post yesterday. I had a dental visit, now I have two new molars, and for most of the day a somewhat sore jaw.

This past week saw a remake of the 90s cult favorite The Crow. Now, I have seen the 90’s film, it didn’t work for me, and I found it quite dull, so this remake hasn’t interested me at all. Naturally, there have been various vocal critics not wanting to see a remake of a film that was beloved to them. I can understand that. Remakes are often, particularly in this day of studio and demographic polled directed artistic decisions, inferior copies of the originals. The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still possessed nothing of the 1950’s film’s intelligence or pointed narrative. The remake quickly fell from cultural attention and has been largely forgotten. The original remains accessible and untouched.

There are loads of badly executed remakes, Flight of the Phoenix, Poseidon vs The Poseidon Adventure, The Manchurian Candidate, King Kong and its pair of remakes. In each of these cases the remakes failed to capture the mysterious elements that made the original such classics.

All art is a product of its time. The artists and the audience are baked in the cultural over of their lives and that impressions on the art. The magic that made the classic so unforgettable is from much the years in which they were crafted as much as the people who crafted them.

So, if remakes are so often lesser movies, then why did I title this that they aren’t so bad?

Because the originals remain. Sometimes they gain new life because of the attention created by the remake. And sometimes, quite rarely, the remake becomes the new classic. The Maltese Falcon is the 3rd film adapted from the novel, but it is the 3rd film that lives on as a timeless classic while the preceding movies, who undoubtedly had their fans, fades away.

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August 6th, 1945

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Today is the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Estimate of those killed by the attack range from 90,000 to 140,000 persons. The bombing was followed up three days later with another atomic attack on the city of Nagasaki. Despite an attempt to remove the Emperor from the throne and continue the war the militarists the twin attacks empower a faction of the government to unconditionally surrender to the Allied Powers effectively ending the Second World War.

The loss of life in the bombings is horrific and, in many minds, looms large as a terrible act that defined the ending of the Second World War. The Hiroshima mushroom cloud is often used as a visual shorthand for technological terror.

While the idea of being subjected to atomic or nuclear bombing is indeed terrifying, I find it hard to consider these attacks to the Platonic Ideal of technological murder.

Millions were killed in the holocaust. Unlike the distant impersonal slaughter that comes from dropping a bomb at enormous altitudes, whether those bombs are conventional or atomic, the murder in the camp was done close up, looking those victims in their eyes, hearing their cries and screams and was no less a product of technology than the enormous energies released by nuclear fission.

With mass production, without the industrial revolution, the ability to murder on the scale of millions simply could not exist. Without the scientific revolution and method, the Japanese barbarous experiments on helpless civilian populations with biological warfare could not exist.

The atomic bombings of those two Japanese cities cost a lot of live, but in all likelihood saved more than they killed. Japan knew the war was lost and that continuing it would only result in more and more of their people, military and civilian, being killed. They could have accepted the unconditional surrender when it was offered and avoided both atomic attacks.

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248 Birthdays

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It has been 248 years since the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. That nation born nearly two and a half centuries ago has never been far from perfect. It labor under the Absolute Evil of slavery and that has cast a long and terrible shadow across time. On the other hand, the aspirational ideals presented in that document has not only given fire to the fight against slavery and tyranny here and abroad but has severed as beacon to be our better selves.

Over the centuries we have explanted the notion about who matters and whose voices can be heard in the public square. What was once unthinkable in terms of human liberty are now enjoyed but there are more to unchain.

Recently the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) enacted a new test to determine in something was constitutional or not, the ‘history and tradition’ test. If something did not have an analog in the nation’s history or its tradition, a very slippery concept to applied fairly without biases of the head or heart, then it was in conflict with the supreme law of the land.

This is not only an invitation for personal preference to direct outcomes it is directly and thematically in opposition to our founding. A founding that proclaims that the traditions of the past do not fence in our present or future liberties. That because we have always had a king who should therefore always have a king. This nation is a bold experiment in new thinking not traditional customs.

For citizen of the United States of America this year is vitally important year. This election transcends petty policies and speaks to the very nature of the American system.

We can elect a corrupt, venal, criminal of a man who has no wish beyond his own greedy vices and appetites, throwing away two and half centuries of democratic self-governance, or we can accept that policy is less important that principal and keep him and his ilk out.

Like Klaatu said at the end of The Day the Earth Stood Still “The choice is yours.”

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Juneteenth: A day to Remember Dreams and Nightmares

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June the 19th 1865 is the day the freedom loving Texans were, at the end of a rifle, forced to free the people that they had enslaved, the final state of the traitorous Confederacy to do so. It was not the end of slavery in the United States that would come officially later the same year, but it was a vital and important step along the long rocky road to freedom. A road we still stumble down.

This is a day of celebration as it was the date that the United States Army freed the enslaved peoples of Texas partially validate the great principals upon which this nation is founded. It is also the day to remember the horrific hundreds of years of nightmarish torment our nation visited up a subjugated population. Like an element in a state of quantum state that is simultaneously wave and particle America’s history is both pride and shame.

That the founders of this nation expressed all too human hypocrisy does not negate the amazing ideal that ‘all men are created equal’ nor does that bold septimate absolve them of their evils. The inspiring belief that freedom and equality are due to all people has unleashed a forced unlike any other on this planet and the failures to live up to those aspirations is a source of shame but also a motivation to do better.

Far too many people only want to think of history in one mode or another. That the centuries of slavery are an original and inescapable sin upon everything this nation has achieved, or that the evils of the past are dead and bear no relevance today. Both extremes are wrong headed.  It is the wave and particle duality again. It is both things and it is neither thing. It is the history that we must celebrate and the shame we must never forget.

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Another Movie Review: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

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This past weekend was a two-movie weekend and after seeing Abigail on Friday evening Sunday morning me and my sweetie-wife took in Guy Ritchie’s latest film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. (Henceforth referred to as The Ministry.)

Lionsgate

The Ministry is a highly fictionalized retelling of Operation Postmaster and early mission by the Special Operations Executive to degrade Nazi U-boat operations in the Atlantic. The supply vessel Duchessa D’Aosta carries vital equipment and provisions for the U-boats and because the ship is in a neutral Spanish harbor off the coast of West Africa a direct military assault could bring Fascist Spain into the war on the Axis side. Instead, a very small team of disreputable agents lead by Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) is sent in to destroy the ship at anchor. Operating out of uniform in in a neutral port if the teams is captured torture and death await them.

From its opening musical score and its poster art The Ministry is like a classic ‘Spaghetti Wester’ melded with a World War II action flick. The heroes all possess fantastic skills and preternatural cool. Plans go awry, the enemy is more skill and numerous that expected, schedules are disrupted and through it all March-Phillips and his team of Nazi killers remain steadfast, committed, and collected.

This is not a movie with deep social commentary or complex questions of morality, it is a romp, a fun couple of hours watching incredible competent men and women handle adversity and challenges in the manor of our fantasies. Aside from the theater’s sound system being way too loud I had a quite enjoyable time with this movie and as long as you do not go in with expectations of reality, I think you will as well.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is currently playing in theaters.

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Masters of the Air Rekindled my Annoyance with The Eternals

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(Minor Spoilers follow)

In the final episode of Masters of the Air Major ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal (Nate Mann) after being rescued by the Soviet Army following the crash of his B-17 sees with his own eyes a death camp that the Nazis had operated. This naturally has a massive impact on the pilot, but the scene also reawakened an irritation I had with the superhero film The Eternals.

The conceit of The Eternals is that a small group of immortal being and the source of many myths and legends have live with humanity from before history shaping and guiding our development. One of these beings is Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) whose particular gift to humanity is teaching us technology.

Phastos’ faith in humanity is shattered with our use of technology and this is exemplified in the movie by having him break down crying amid the rubble of Hiroshima.

Yes, the nuclear bombs kill hundreds of thousands. Yes, they were the very cutting edge of science and technology at the time. But millions were murdered by the Nazis in Europe, millions. Their murders did not end the war, their murders were the point of the war. Murder on such a scale is impossible with the technology of industrialization. The vast incomprehensible scale of it is only achievable with the industrial revolution.

One can argue the terrible ‘trolley problem’ of ending the war in the Pacific with nuclear weapons. Would it have been more moral to forego the atomic attacks and launch a ground invasion that would have almost certainly cost far more lives? That’s a debate that cannot be resolved because it is a personal value judgement, but the slaughter of the innocent in camps built only for death? That is undebatable. That is a clear and perverse corruption of technology and that is what should have shattered Phastos belief in humanity.

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Series Impressions: Masters of the Air

I am calling this post an impression because I do not feel I and anyone can fairly review any piece when it remains incomplete. I may return after the series finishes its run and give my opinion on its totality.

Apple TV+

Masters of the Air is the third limited series production from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg about the Second World War. The first series, Band of Brothers followed ‘Easy Company’ an Infantry Regiment during their combat in the European theater while the second, The Pacific followed Marines during their island campaigns against Imperial Japan. This show follows the 100th Bombard Group, the ‘Bloody 100’, flying B-17s into occupied Europe on dangerous and costly missions. The Group earned their nickname after suffering extremely high losses in the first few months of the deployment into action.

The story focuses on a pair of friends Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven (Austin Butler) and John ‘Bucky’ Egan (Callum Turner). Writing advice would tell you not to created characters with similar names but history cares not for your rules of writing.

The first pair of episodes, released together, covers the Group arrival in England, illustrating that now dangers come from active combat missions as faulty navigation and mechanical failures can be as deadly as well, through the first mission pair of combat missions into the continent and the Norwegian coast. Along with Buck and Bucky the audience is introduced to a number of characters, Harry ‘Croz’ Crosby (Anthony Boyle) a navigator that suffers from airsickness, Curtis Biddick (Barry Keoghan) a fellow ‘Fort’ commander, and others.

The characters of the series are in general likeable and differentiated enough as to feel like distinct people. The production values are topflight with perhaps the best depiction of ‘flak’ anti-aircraft fires I have seen. Anti-aircraft artillery is ground based cannons firing shells into the flight path of the aircraft timed to explode at the target’s altitude, throwing up a curtain shrapnel in an attempt to damage or destroy the planes. It’s tell-tale sign are the sudden black clouds that appear in the air when the shells detonate. In previous films and shows the deadly black clouds are nearly always all that you get but with modern visual effects and utilizing On-Set Virtual Production, such as has been employed by The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, can the terror and helplessness of the bomber crews can truly be recreated.

While I had little interest in following group troops through their horrific ordeals in Europe and the island hoping campaign in the Pacific, I look forward to the remaining seven episodes of Masters of the Air.

Masters of the Air streams on Apple TV+.

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An Unimaginable Future

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I was born in the early 1960s making be part of the tail-end of that massive generation the Baby Boomers. Bright beckoning futures such as Star Trek filled my childhood while the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation hovered over our heads. For decades the go-to and standby baddies of most fiction was the menacing duplicitous and seemingly everywhere conspiracy of International Communism as exported to ever trouble spot around the globe by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but we just called it Russia.

The United States led the ‘Free World’ against the spreading, infecting, and corrupting influence, and subversion of freedom by Russia. Our allies, while not always endeared to out ways and over-sized personalities, stood shoulder to shoulder with us in that fight, united in the belief that freedom was a universal good. Even if we, and I mean all of the allies, more often than we’d ever admit, fell short of that lofty ideal. The striving for that goal, for a more perfect realization of freedom for humanity, for the rights of self-determination, is what stood as apart from the vast police states of Russia and her brood of puppet nations.

Throughout the 1980s I had friends across the American Political spectrum and my conservative ones were steadfast in the belief that Russia posed a threat to democracy and freedom. That Russian intelligence services infiltrated and manipulated groups in our open society creating conflict and divisions that weakened the ‘free world.’ They were right. After the fall of the USSR so much came to light about their massive operations attempting to exploit both our divisions and our freedoms against us. My conservative friends crowed in being proved right.

And now I live in a future that would have been unimaginable to all of us in the 1980s. I don’t mean the power computers we carry about in our pockets like so many dimes, nor do I mean the fantastic imagery we created with keystrokes, or that we can now launch and land rockets as we envisioned in the SF movies of the 1950s.

No, I mean that those same conservatives who crowed so loudly about their correct detection of the threats to our freedoms have so willingly, so enthusiastically wedded themselves to the very same threat. That violations of the constitutional order and attempts to steal power from legitimate free and fair elections are swept away as mere distraction of ‘personality.’

Back in the 1980s a common criticism of the left from my conservative friends was that the people on the left were only voting for their own selfish interests, free food, and money from the teat of the government. It is clear now that this charge is quite accurate to the conservatives. All professed dedication to the ideals of democracy and the ‘free world’ are casually overthrown for the party that promises to keep delivering the goodies you want. Maybe those goodies are tax cuts and commerce unrestrained by the public good. Maybe it’s the power to compel people to live by your own hypocritical ethics. Or perhaps it’s the promise to not encumber your choice in firearms. Whatever the ‘goodie’ it is clear that the ideals of Freedom are disposable when weight against that selfish interest.

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Spooky Season — Interrupted: The Pigeon Tunnel

Apple TV+

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A few days ago, the latest episode of KPSA Cinema Junkie podcast appeared on my iPhone naming documentarian Errol Morris and his latest film ‘The Pigeon Tunnel.’ The title meant nothing to me, and I let the episode sit unplayed. Then YouTube offered up to me the trailer for The Pigeon Tunnel which is an extended interview and documentary about bestselling author John le Carre.

John le Carre is the pen name of David Cornwell. Cornwell worked for British intelligence with MI5 and MI6 during some of the most consequential years for the west then went on to under his pen name craft some of the most compelling realistic espionage fiction ever composed. I consider spy stories to exist on a continuum with Flemings’s James Bond at the fantastical end and Le Carre’s George Smiley at the other. The Spy who Came in from the Cold, both the film and the novel, are perfect representations of the Cold War’s cynicism. Well, with all that there was no way I wasn’t going to watch The Pigeon Tunnel.

This documentary/interview, comprised of footage of Cornwell speaking, dramatic recreations of events and fantasies of his life, and brief clips from film and television adaptations of his works mine three rich veins from its subject.

One is the man’s life itself, his abandonment by his mother, his criminal conman father, his alienation at elite British schools, and how betrayal weaves throughout his existence. It’s a fascinating study of how events and environment shapes a person.

Second is his work and like within the UK’s intelligence community, particularly during the period when it was learned that Kim Philby, a man who had reached some of the highest positions of trust in that community, had for the entirety of his career been a Soviet agent.

And finally, there is also discussion of the craft and art of writing with glimpses of how Cornwell sees himself, the process, and the meaning of writing.

This film, which could have been dry and disinterested is instead compelling and as irresistible as its subject. The only reason I did not watch it all in one go is that I started it too late and on a work night I must get those seven hours of slumber. This thing grabs you, not with overly dramatic recreations of escapes and dangers but with the quiet reality of human drama and the pain of merely existing.

Beth Accamando interview is well worth the listen and she follows it up with a talk with two of Cornwell’s surviving sons, giving us a peek into the filmmaker and the family of a man that is forever fascinating.

The Pigeon Tunnel streams on Apple TV+.

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Bits and Bobs

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Not a lot to post this morning as I awoke with a low-grade migraine. Not enough to keep me home but strong enough to require medication and to screw with my focus.

Sunday evening I stayed for the evening in a hotel as San Diego Gas & Electric had a planned outage for our condo complex that may have lasted several hours while I would have been asleep. Without power my CPAP machine will not function, and I would sleep terribly and so would my sweetie-wife due to the return of my snoring.

Also Sunday I discovered a non-fiction book I just had to read, Shot From The Sky: American POWs in Switzerland. Allied aired crew in Switzerland has fascinated me since I learned of the topic in the later 80s. This book had first-hand accounts of life while interned by the ‘neutral’ Swiss.

The Wolves of Wallace Point my Idaho werewolf novel is coming along. I have just passed 63,000 words and should need only another 17 to 25 thousand to complete this draft. This week I should transition into the fifth and final act with still only a vague and hazy sense of how to resolve everything.

That’s all for now.

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