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Movie Review: The Green Knight

 

People who have heard me talk about story construction know the importance I place on endings. The end of the tale is where theme, plot, and story unify into a meaningful and satisfying whole. It is also where David Lowery’s The Green Knight fails in its quest to be great cinema.

The Green Knight a cinematic adaptation of the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, starring Dev Patel as Gawain, nephew of the king, who I the script is never named, who longs for the honor and respect of a knight but who spends more time in brothers than at mass. During Christmas celebrations the mysterious Green Knight, played in perfect casting by Ralph Ineson, offers up a game to the king and his Round Table Knights. He shall let one of them strike any blow they wish and claim his war axe as their prize but in one year’s time they must seek him out and receive a blow from him equal to the one they delivered. Gawain, desperate for a tale worthy of retelling, steps forward and delivers what should have been a mortal blow but magic is at work and the Green Knight is not killed. Gifting the prize to Gawain the Green Knight departs leaving the young man with the quest to seek him out at the next Christmas and receive his mortal strike. The years passes quickly and at the next Yule Gawain departs to find his destiny with the majority of the film’s two hour run time devoted to his travels, encounters, and adventures under the growing shadow of his doom.

The Green Knight is a lyrical, symbolic, and metaphorical piece of cinema. The cinematography is lush, colorful, and mysterious with every frame a lovely painting of light, hue, and shadow. This is not a film shot to be clear but to be beautiful and in that goal is succeeds beyond measure. The performances, save Patel’s, are not meant as realistic human portrayals but rather expressions of the mythic folklore presented on the screen leaving on Gawain’s as the emotive naturalistic performance. The film takes place in a world of magic, monsters, and mystery but while special effects are utilized in the telling of the tale, they are not the drivers of the experience. The overall mood of the film is contemplative, and it seeks to burrow into the ultimate human condition, knowledge of our mortality, rather than distract with spectacle.

Where The Green Knight falls is in a rewriting not merely a reinterpretation of the legend’s conclusion and in doing so stripped away the myth’s meaning ending on a confusing, ambiguous conclusion that failed to satisfy. The more familiar you are with the original myth the more likely the ending is going to anger you. Subtle establishment of silent characters would lead someone familiar with the tale to expect the traditional end only to have it stripped away.

I enjoyed The Green Knight, but the altered ending spoiled what might have been a masterpiece of mythological cinema.

The Green Knight, released from A24 pictures, is currently playing in theaters.

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Facebook Memories

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Disorganized Thoughts

The Collapsed Condos: I think we’ll find that in addition of a cocktail of events and conditions that some form of corruption was involved. Cursed with a vivid imagination it’s all too easy for me to visualize being jolted awake as my room fell and then being crushed to death. Horrifying

Cosby: The turn on details and it certainly looks like the DA missed/ignored a detail that unraveled the entire prosecution. I have no doubts about his guilt.

The Former Guy: The Manhattan DA has arrested the CFO of the Former Guy’s organization and the financial crimes appears to go back decades and decades. Here’s where the Former Guy is not a cause but a symptom. The lax enforcement of laws against the wealthy has thoroughly corrupted our system. A robust and fair enforcement regime would have not only prosecuted the crimes much earlier for the former guy and others it would have prevented the travesty that was his election.

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I Am Back

 

Well, this has been an interesting week. Tuesday, I went for an out-patient procedure to have cataracts removed from both eyes.

I admit that I was quite apprehensive about the operation. Yes, these are routine, and surgeons perform them daily, all that is very good in the abstract but when it is your eyes getting sliced, well abstract becomes concrete quite quickly.

Overall, things went well. The most irritating aspect of the surgery itself was that it took three nurses 5 attempts to get the IV needle into my vein. One the table and thanks to the drugs pumped into my system I was awake for the entire procedure but relaxed and calm. The visuals were off, bright indistinct shapes as the doctor removed my lenses and replaced them with artificial ones.

That afternoon and evening I was unable to see anything clearly and light sources presented rainbows induced by chromatic aberrations and I passed the time listening to podcasts. Sleeping was far more difficult.

I had been given the two plastic shields to cover my eyes, they were transparent with holes to allow gas exchange and served as a barrier to prevent me from accidentally rubbing my healing eyes. Meaning I had to wear them to bed and these shields were too close to my lips with my lashes sweeping across them every time I blinked. Worse still was they tended to direct sweat into my eyes, frequently waking me with burning sensations. Luckily, I saw my Doctor the next morning and when I told her the issues, she gave me a new set of metal ones that were adjustable, and these work a hell of a lot better.

Wednesday I could see much better and by the evening I could watch TV, yay LOKI!, and playing video games. Thursday I was very nearly back to normal and today I have returned to my day-job.

Now I can get back to work on my novel, edit the first few chapter and write a new one for the tail end of the story based on the feedback my beta readers kindly gave me.

 

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Various Thoughts

 

I have been suffering eye strain headaches so the posting here might be a little sporadic this week. So here are just some random thoughts.

  • The Netflix movie Stowaway is not good science and not engaging fiction. Just streaming something else.
  • Game of Death, a horror movie about seven young adults playing a boardgame that compels them to kill people or die themselves, is even worse and I did not finish it. More than 10 percent of the movie’s running time is wasted up front and watching the characters party but without performing any establishment of character development.
  • The GOP doesn’t care if you die. Remember that in the voting booth.
  • 20 years on The Wire is still spectacularly good television.
  • WorldCon this year has been moved to December and I have no intent of experiencing Washington DC in winter. This makes me sad.

 

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An Intersection of Technology and Grief

 

June 2020 Craig my friend of nearly 40 years died from COVID-19. This was a hard blow and personally the worst effect from the pandemic. We had not seen each other since early March for what we did not know would be our last session of the Space Opera game I ran for my friends and on my smartphone was the last text I had sent him in early February.

In the months after his death, I never found the will, the heart, the closure to delete that text conversation. It sat there with other texts always on that tiny screen.

Yesterday his name vanished from the text conversation replaced by the cell’s number. I am assuming that Craig’s cell phone number has been reclaimed by the network and is ready to be recycled to a new user. It is logical, it is practical, it is required that these things happen, and it is an instigator of fresh grief.

Technology changes culture sometime is massive disruptive ways, the automobile did more than scatter communities it shattered the standard human family, and sometimes in small way we don’t notice fully as they happen. Several times now I have become aware of friends’ and acquaintances’ deaths by a post on their Facebook wall by their families a method both immediate and impersonal. This tiny thing, my friend’s name vanishing from my device, it a passage to another period in my life without his presence, without his bad puns, and without his unlimited generosity. An unalterable fact of life is that it goes on. It does not pause, it does not stop for our loss, our pain, our grief, and it sweeps us along.

Always.

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Migraines Suck

 

For whatever reasons the last few days, since Sunday, I have been enduring a spat of smallish migraines. This forced me to bail on my twice monthly writers’ groups meeting and has hampered but not stopped the revisions and edits to my next novel.

I have been making it out the door each day to my day-job but in the evening it’s difficult to get more than the bare minimum work done on my writing.

My meds work and will usually dispatch the headache but sadly they leave me feeling ‘off,’ and with my scalp tight as though it is two sizes too small for my head.

All that said I am still pleased with the new novel and have high hopes of getting it out the door soon to editors and agents.

The pandemic smashed my debut last year, turns out have your novel published the week the world shuts down is not so good for sales, but in the scheme of things I have done so much better than so many that it would be quite petty to complain.

Here’s hoping everyone’s days get better.

 

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Second Pfizer Dose

 

Yesterday, now about 23 hours ago, I received the second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine for COVID-19. I count myself extremely lucky that workers in the health care industry, though I do not directly interact with patients or people receiving care, I am eligible to get the vaccine. I have to say that my employers and my union have done an excellent job providing care to our members and patients while protecting the staff and workers throughout our facilities.

As far as adverse events I seem have suffered quite few. I took the day off from work and that was the right call. By late afternoon I experienced muscles aches and possibly a fever but nothing more than that at the time. I was still able to get just over 1000 words down on my novel and attend the virtual meeting of my writers’ group.

This morning I awoke to a minor headache, enough to be annoying but not enough to compel the heavy-duty migraine medication or that I remain home. In about fifteen minutes or so I will leave for work, I am among the few that are working in the office versus working from home, and I expect today to be fairly routine. In one week, I should be at full immunity and be able to relax a little while mourning my dear friend who passed from this pandemic last year far too soon gone from our lives.

 

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Three Days Post Vaccination

 

Friday, because I work in the healthcare industry as my day job, I received my first does of the Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine.

First let me complement the nurse, Amanda, for her excellent skills handling the syringe. Despite this being an intermuscular injection vs a subcutaneous one I really did not feel the piercing at all. Well Done!

Onto side effects, or as they are known in the industry, Adverse Events.

On Saturday I had muscular soreness and fatigue in the arm that received the injection but no where else. This was not an effect from the needle, I inject medication every week for other conditions and I am quite familiar with injection site pain. This was sort of like a flu muscular ache but restricted to the upper arm that received the vaccine.

Also by late Saturday, despite having gotten a good night sleep with my replacement CPAP machine, my energy levels plummeted and a strong lethargy permeated me.

Bu Sunday both of these effects dissipated away and I felt fine.

I urge everyone to get the vaccine. It is the primary way we are going to end the pandemic that has claimed nearly half a million American lives. You may hear in various news sources about the vaccine not being one hundred percent effective possibly and even less so against new variants of the disease. This true in that it doesn’t stop 100 percent of all infections, but it does stop death. No one in the 75,000-person trial of the Pfizer vaccine died from COVID-19 and very few had any serious illness. Those 5% form whom the vaccine was ‘not effective’ suffered a mild form of the disease much like a weak flu. Getting vaccinated is literally the difference between living and dying, get it.

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