Sunday, downtown. Church bells. Bright sunshine. All well with the world, although of course all is not.
One of those weekends of blocking and muting on Twitter, since events have compelled people to drop masks and girn and gibber and do their best to turn horror to their own advantage.
This tweet wasn't offensive, just sad.
Hol up, internet frens - we have Soundcloud and Pride Marches and Marvel movies, and tribal barbarbism is still a thing?
Why yes. You'd be surprised. In fact you're guaranteed to be surprised, at some point, and possibly soon.
Well, A) they don't, and B) to the extent that they do, they carry no values. There are no Facebook morals. There is no Instagram culture beyond "look at me" and "look at this." Hollywood's global-oriented products could probably be boiled down to "fight the thing that stands in your way" or "follow your awesome dream, you awesome person who seems themself as a Disney animated character with wide eyes looking up, about to sing."
It's like saying "I can't believe that Germans spent the 30s watching American films produced by Jews then built the death camps."
Or, as the uptalk weightless ninny-people who grew up with the Internet would say, the Germans "did a Holocaust."
This might explain why so many people these days are confused by the existence of different ideas. Dude the internet basically took a vote on this, what are you doing here if you believe this. Or they're angry, because you've brought Hate and Unsafeness to the great peaceable Global Culture Main Street, where cool trans dudes from Kenya play Fortnight.
Anyway. I don't know anything and no one knows how this is going to end, but if I had to put a ten-spot on the table, I'd say the likelihood that Israel goes after Iran this time is pretty good. But no one thinks that an Israeli airstrike on Iran would stop the mullahs from supporting Israel’s destruction.
I know, I know the whole Death to Little Satan, it’s just a rhetorical device, one of those kill-the-farmers things. It helps people blow off steam! Anyhoo the Mullahs are all about power and personal enrichment; whatever religious revolutionary fervor was present at the start has ossified into an establishment that wants, like all establishments, to perpetuate itself and profit the members of the inner party. They’re more concerned with internecine power jockeying than actually doing the whole death-to-the-Jews thing, which frankly by now is just like a catch-phrase. Right? Oh sure there’s some hotheads who think conflict hastens the return of Imam #12, but really, who believes that stuff anymore. They’re all about fattening the Swiss accounts and dying in bed, beards oiled and combed, knowing they safeguarded the Revolution and did God’s work.
That's the conventional wisdom held by people who are probably irreligious but totes understand the nature of a theocratic regime. Maybe it's true by now. Or maybe the Mullahs can walk and chew gum.
I do know that the post-war order seems withered and brittle, and that restless sullen populations breed elements that celebrate chaos, thinking something better and more virtuous will be revealed when the whirlwind subsides.
History is often made by people who have the least knowledge of it, and couldn't care less for its lessons. Sometimes it's made by people who know too much of it, and are imprisoned by it, and cannot think past its lessons because they are old and unsure. We have bounteous quantities of both now - but I suppose that's always the case.
Anyway. The usual unfolding for this story is "Hamas / Hezbollah strikes, The World Says things about fine people on both sides, Israel retaliates, The World disapproves, Cease Fire, off the news feed after ten days, tops."
I don't think that's the case this time.
Then again: If I had another ten I'd wager that it inevitably ends as these wars have ended before, with all the major actors still in place and planning the next war.
Can, kicked. But it's a small planet and eventually, the road ends somewhere.
When the subject of “worst movies by great directors” comes up, there’s one artist whose contribution to the genre isn’t in doubt. If you mentioned him, and said “What’s his wo-“ you wouldn’t finish the sentence, because the answer is obvious:
That's not the name by which it usually goes, and I wonder if they renamed it to wave away the reputation.
Oh, it's got some good shots.
Lots of tilted camera angles. Nice clean shots of interesting people -
I’d like to see a movie about these two. But the clever camera work is almost too much, and very soon you realize it can’t compensate for the unintelligible story. Oh, it’s there, and you can make it out, but you’re not particularly interested. And the actor we follow around is a dud as well.
We have a carnival scene, full of hallucinogenic imagery:
Again: shots like this, and the movie still isn't interesting.
Lots of shots from the floor:
Eventually we meet the titular character, a man of mystery and immense wealth and power.
Our director.
And you’re thinking, did this suddenly turn into King Lear or something?
He seems to be made of plastic:
Well, his nose certainly is.
Have you recognized him by now? The wry cast of the eyebrows gives him away.
It’s praised on imdb, of course, as a brilliant masterpiece that surpasses its limitations. I yield to no one in my admiration of this man, but this one . . .
It's just not good.
That'll do: off on another week of stuff, and I hope you enjoy it.
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