How The Empire Strikes Back Ruined Star Wars

Now, don't get me wrong, the Empire Strikes Back was certainly the best movie of the franchise. Thanks to the talents of Lawrence Kasdan, especially, the Empire Strikes Back was the most emotionally striking and technically impressive movie of the bunch, with a textbook screenplay and perfect pacing along with amazing sights.

It also ruined the franchise.

Why?

Because it destroyed the myth of the Jedi.

Now, this was a scene from the first film. An alien threatens Luke Skywalker in the bar and so Obi-Wan Kenobi cuts off the alien's arm.

Step back and think about it.

Cutting off someone's arm completely is a pretty extreme move. Especially since it isn't really apparent that he had a weapon. And even then, if Darth Vader could choke a man to death who was in another room, perhaps ten kilometers away,

Or Yoda could easily move a multi-ton space fighter

why couldn't Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is at least comparable to Vader, intervene without cutting off the man's arm?

Cutting off the arm is incredibly stupid. First of all, it is disproportionate. Secondly, it draws attention to Obi-Wan Kenobi, since it was done in front of a roomful of persons.

The answer is that the above two images are from the second film. In the first film, the Jedi are more akin to savage mystical warriors, more myth than reality. In Eastern religions, tales abound of holy men who can do insanely amazing feats. In ancient China, for instance, holy men were said to have been able to make themselves bulletproof through their mastery of chi, able to withstand the blast of a gunpowder cannon from ten feet away.

In the Star Wars universe, the holy men are masters of The Force. But, just as most people in the modern day do not believe in Chi, so too do most people not believe in The Force in the days of Star Wars.

Image aside, the man was mocking Vader from a secular standpoint.

So, why did Obi-Wan Kenobi cut off the man's arm? Because that's what Jedi do! Jedi are mystical holy warriors. They are wild and unkempt. They cut off the arms of other people because that's just how they roll! They're not nice and cuddly. They're cruel, deceptive and manipulative, and severe. 

Their enemies are not the Sith, who conveniently take on all of the evil features of industrial society. Their enemies should be the secular professional classes, who tolerate a disfiguring of the natural order for higher standards of living. 

Instead, as the series has gone on, this notion has been forgotten. 

Here is a recent depiction of the Sith.

The Sith are red-skinned wild warriors. 

They have been made into, and I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but they have been made into Native Americans. 

Somehow, all of the bad aspects of industrial society, the pollution, the selfishness, the killing of innocent persons, have all been grafted onto the bad guys, who choose these vices because they enjoy them. Meanwhile, the Jedi and the Republic have it all: they live in harmony with nature despite being in an advanced star-faring society, they are selfless, and they preserve life. And never do they ever must make a choice against those values. 

It's two-dimensional, basically.

And it all started with the Empire Strikes Back, when Force powers were let out of the bag. With the Empire Strikes Back, the conflict moved from being one of the secular world vs the mystical world, and instead to a two-dimensional mystical and evil protagonist, that the good secular persons could wipe out with zealotry. 

The Strokes, in view of Lou Reed

I never really managed to get into the Velvet Underground. I've listened to some of their songs, which felt kind of hum-dum, like something that I could appreciate but not really really dig. Not something that was a daily listener for any time of the day, like some songs and bands can be. Just something that should be played once in a while, on a lark, maybe at the right time of the day, maybe as a joke with others, kind of like how much should be.

A big reason I never got into the Velvet Underground is that the Strokes were out when I tried to start listening to them, and the Strokes were just more fun. Yeah, they are to some degree derivative, but the songs are catchier, the lyrics plumb the depths of the human condition with equal snark and irony, and they really have an energy to them, a musicianship which is impressive in a clockwork manner than the laid-back Velvet don't have.

Because the Strokes are a marriage of the East Coast and the West Coast. They do have the East Coast cynicism that Julian Casablancas so expresses in his lyrics, which were ironic at first but now are kind of who he is. But they have the West Coast sunniness of the Beach Boys, in the guitar work of Albert Hammond Jr., whose father was, of course, Albert Hammond Sr.

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The Education of Charlie Banks

I was a Radiohead fan in high school. I guess I could say that I liked them because of their post-rock synths, their anti-technology message, or their instrumentation, but the truth is that I liked them because they were critically acclaimed and everyone said that theirs was the best album of all time and I wanted to be a fan of the smartest band of the decade.

I wanted to be a fan, but I never really was a fan. Radiohead's music is cold and detached. There's not much life to it. It's all just depressing stuff about not leaving your room because everything and everyone is awful. But pessimism is taken as seriousness by too many people. There's always some form of class snobbishness in the kind of music people listen to, and because school really is all about class in society, music is just another front.

I later learned that just because someone speaks in a faint British accent, it doesn't mean they're worth listening to. I later figured that a lot of the great thinkers from the past simply spent too much time staring at parchment and so came up with overly complicated thoughts which were simply elaborations of the base feelings they felt. For instance, Ayn Rand of Atlas Shrugged fame was also an amphetamine addict. The prophet of radical individualism was fueled by a drug known to cause paranoia and aggressive behavior.

I've been listening to Limp Bizkit lately.

And I really enjoy it.

The sound is monstrous, the vocals are distinctive, and there are weird sounds in the atmospherics. It is innovative. It is a fusion of rap and metal. Art is all about combining things together. Rap/metal is art. At the same time, they're not annoying. They don't take themselves too seriously like Linkin Park, the Deftones, or Rage Against the Machine. They don't try to tackle serious topics. The lyrics are about day-to-day problems in life. A lot of the rhymes are really stupid, but you know, it's more fun listening to these stupid rhymes than trying to like The Roots or Common because they are *serious* bands that you must be *serious* while listening.

Which takes the fun out of music.

Listening to the music, I get the impression that Fred Durst is *not* the huge jerk that everyone made him out to be. That he really was misunderstood on a colossal level. People tend to take things at face value and so they'll point at the misogyny on "Nookie," but you know, it's honest, it's base, and everyone has relationship problems.

But if you pay attention to the songs themselves, well, it takes a sensitive artist to get the nuances of the songs and what makes them work. A knucklehead simply wouldn't be able to manage to write a catchy hook in the first place. To write that catchy hook, one has be able to step back and away from the complexity in playing the songs, to get a sense of the impression that the song makes on someone else.

Durst isn't the band of course, though he's frequently the whipping boy of the group. If you watch videos of them in rehearsal space, he makes up for his lack of musical ability by communicating with the rest of the band and working with them in getting the song across. Like a director.

Which brings me to The Education of Charlie Banks.

The Education of Charlie Banks is a coming of age story set on a leafy Ivy League campus (presumably Cornell), where young minds wrestle with big questions and do battle with the great philosophers. The setting is more Radiohead than Limp Bizkit.

But it is directed by Fred Durst.

Charlie and Danny are best friends. Charlie comes from a humble liberal background. Dad's a bookstore owner with a strong conscious that he tries to instill in his son. Danny comes from a family of two college professors who live in an opulent townhouse. He wants to be a cool guy, a guy of the streets.

They both know Mick. Mick comes from the rougher part of town. He's good with his fists and he's quick to anger. Their friendship with Mick is strained when he shows up one day at their leafy college, and to the surprise of Charlie, proceeds to take the social scene by storm.

Mick doesn't have the education of Charlie or Danny. But he has an animal instinct and a way of getting right to people. He quickly insinuates himself with the richest guy on campus and the prettiest girl. He starts auditing the classes and it turns out that he has the raw ability to understand the topics being discussed.

But he still has the street in him. He is quick to anger and he is violent. Things don't work out.

It works. The story-telling is focused and to the point, without being shallow, but without meandering either. It simply works. Like a good pop song.

I noticed this first in Jonathan Franzen's book The Corrections, but authors often will split aspects of themselves among different characters. And while Durst didn't write the movie, he was at least chosen to be director and worked closely with the writer of the movie in creating it. Mick is clearly the one closest to Durst's heart. Someone from the rough part of town who doesn't really belong there but is able to take his place among the rich and connected.

Yet, in Durst I do sense that a lot of the tough guy stuff is a facade. He isn't as hard as Mick. Not by a long shot. He is deep down inside the sensitive Charlie. The movie ends with a confrontation. Mick vs Charlie. Charlie is clearly outmatched and doesn't stand a chance. Mick lets him get his shots in, but he takes Charlie out. Charlie is lying on the ground, and Mick is geared up to deliver the final blow.

Sometimes people can change, but they can only change so much. You can't become someone else, but you can at least stop doing the things that you know cause harm.

It's a great movie. Check it out.

Marriage

I have always found Mitt Romney to be...underrated. I found this speech to be genuinely inspiring. At the same time, it makes me want to go here:

 

I will likely never be married. I simply exist on a different...frequency...than most people will tolerate.

The Faces of Public Radio

In Case You're Wondering, Those Are Prison Jumpsuits

Occupation

K-Pop, again

This is a very impressive video. It subtly mocks the older conventions of Asian pop, which I find sappy and annoying, has some organic conversational moments and characterizations, and has the song go in and out.

Very impressive.

Lady Gaga and Ke$ha have done similar music videos where it's some sort of extended narrative. And of course, so has Michael Jackson. But this one has a sophistication to it that fits it perfectly.

I've gotten to thinking about why this is so popular, and it really isn't just the music, but also the lottery/American Idol part of it. Now, American Idol has been great, but really it hasn't produced the biggest acts. The biggest talents come up on their own, through the real industry channels. So Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, etc they never went on stage to American Idol.

In Korea, process is king, so you can take just about anyone, put them through the process, and out comes a pop princess. In Korea, the Idol winner (to a different extent of course, there's no voting or televised performances) becomes the biggest star. And she could be anyone just walking in the mall one day who catches the eye of a talent scout.

This used to happen in America, too. The biggest analogue to K-Pop is the Hollywood studio system. When Gone With the Wind was being produced, there was a nationwide casting call for the female lead. Any woman could be in it.

Nowadays, celebrities gobble up all of the bit parts. It's a more crowded world, simply. The previous system could ensure hits because it was the only game in town. Now, with digital tech, anyone can release a movie. Celebrities are basically a bigger and brighter neon sign.

But I'm tired of seeing Brad Pitt in all of the movies and thinking of the character not as like Colonel Jackson, but as Brad Pitt.

Korea is having it's golden age right now, I think. This is their 1950's and 1960's.

A Movie Idea That I Will Never Have the Time to Pursue

The New York Times is being annoying again. Here, they are sympathizing with a hit and run driver, who by the way has a hispanic/latino last name, telling us his life story of mishap and misfortune. He killed these two people when he slammed into the cab that was carrying them.

Raisy and Nathan Glauber. She was pregnant. The child did not survive.

Here's the hit and run driver.

So what's the movie idea?

Kind of unrelated to this event. It turns out that Mr. Julio Acevedo was once forced to kill a close friend of his. The close friend was a major criminal figure who went by the alias "50 Cent." Curtis Jackson, the rapper, later adopted the same handle. 

So what happened was a man named Richard Bush plotted to have Mr. Acevedo kidnapped. They kidnapped Mr. Acevedo and then threatened family members of his. They gave him a gun. He killed his friend, 50 Cent.

Hell of a movie idea if I ever heard of one. 

Dixe Dirt- Pieces of the World

Here is an album of heartbreak, of the most stricken female voice I've ever heard. It washes over you like a dust storm. It's music of noble suffering, of a western woman out on the hinterlands, of the worry if he'll ever make it back, and yet I don't think she'd have it any other way.

I can't this stupid korean song out of my head

It's catchy.

It's kind of neat how they do all these I guess feminine twirls, which I vaguely recognize from anime I've seen.

Then comes the chorus and they sound like clone ants. It's a little creepy at that point.

Number one group in Korea right now. I'm impressed, actually. The music won't win any, like, feminist race theorist accolades, but the craftsmanship of the music is impressive. The melodies swirl around each other, the beat bubbles up, there's a breakdown, it's all very good.

Chinese Man Sues Wife for Birthing Ugly Baby

Here's the baby

Here's the wife.

Here's what she really looks like

Korean Plastic Surgery

Apparently, men are having face lifts now.

T-Ara Roly Poly

Color me impressed! This reminds me of New Order's Perfect Kiss, just in the length and geekiness of it.

Early Day Miners

This is one of the most calming albums I've ever listened to. It's like a calm nature walk on a cool afternoon.

The Joys of Batman

I started turning against the darker batman when the news of the Aurora shooting came out. I know that the movie isn't responsible for the shooter's actions, but I do feel like he was influenced by the general tone that the movies promoted. And the movie itself, well, it was a mess. It had moments of brilliance but overall was uneven. My favorite part of the film was Anne Hathaway's catwoman. Watching her, the biggest influence for her catwoman was actually the original catwoman. The joys of Adam West's batman. I want to go back to that.

FPS Game Designers Take Note of This

The perspective cam here is gripping

The Iron Lady

One realization that came to me while watching the excellent movie "Downfall," the German movie about the final days of Adolf Hitler, was that while the Nazis were plotting evil throughout Eastern Europe, they were holding galas and balls, feasts, parties, revelries. A mid-level person could have been swept away in it, and not realized until later all of the evil that had gone on. Adolf Hitler is said to have always been able to win arguments in conversation. He won over the room, and from there, we got WWII.

That's an extreme case, but it can universally apply to any political system. Party politics is about convincing the people in the room. It's about showmanship, about projections of strength. People see reality on the ground in accord to their own ideology, some never let reality on the ground shake their convictions.

The movie glosses over the policies of Ms. Thatcher and I'm okay with that. She was the head of political party. Her story isn't about how she saved Britain. No, there are business executives to thank for that (if true, Britain doesn't seem to be doing too hot right now). Her story is about how she won over the room.

When it does do that. A significant part of the movie depicts Ms. Thatcher in her old age, and that is where it goes off track. There is nothing wrong with criticisms of a leader. I found Oliver Stone's movie W. to be pretty compelling. But here, they show her at her weakest -- really, when any human being is weakest, at the end of her life and in retirement. It's okay if you do that briefly, like the Titanic. In this movie, the old age segments are the bulk of the movie. They are the touchstone of the plot, and they make up between 1/3 to 1/2 of the movie.

No matter how you feel about a leader, this is simply not how to depict him or her. No one's life is about their end. You life is about your prime and what you do in your prime. The filmmakers really should be ashamed of themselves for what they've done.

Ecosystem the sculpture

Found on Etsy.

Video games are a lot like gardening. You care for a living organism, giving it nutrition and light in intervals, and watch it blossom.

Gardening is better.

Down to Earth

Happiness

Sitcom idea I will never have the time to pursue: Crisis management firm

A crisis management firm. Like Ally McBeal. Professional woman, office rival, boss, office dynamics generally. Crisis management for variety, lots of celebrity cameos, odd scenarios. Like House M.D.

Iran at night

This photo courtesy of Amos Chapple Photography.

I often find that when I am taking photos, I am usually miserable: suffering under the hot sun, thirsty, tired, body aching, and wanting to go to sleep.

When I get to viewing the photos several months, if not years later, I'm amazed at how good they are.

I just like this picture

This duo sued/is suing the Lonely Island for plagiarizing their work.

They're not the most glamorous duo, but they did come up with the backing track for this song

Musical Ideas

Late at night, I become a musical savant.

I can never put any of it down. I am pretty much musically illiterate and so I can't figure out the notes.

But some nights, and I can never really know when, when I go to bed, or when I'm just waking up, I can not only hear music, I can compose music. Stunning, amazing pop music that would set the pop charts on fire, that people would sing from here to Bombay in bars and pubs on every street corner and through the headphones of every teenager's bedroom.

Then I enter into waking life and it's all gone.

A better package for music

I'm not a fan of singles. I will occasionally buy them, but only when it's a novelty track. I don't like buying albums piecemeal.

But quick break, here are some good singles I've listened to over the years.

Skittles and Iced Tea by GdotO

Horse Outside by The Rubber Bandits

It's got a good video,

But okay, back on topic. Albums are too long.

But singles are too short.

I love the energy of a good song. It sets the day, it takes you to a different place. It makes the world seem different.

I also find that I'm good for about 15-20 minutes of song at a time.

After that, it begins to drag, like a party that has gone on for too long and the people are running out of conversation and ideas.

A well-timed single has the opposite problem. After 4 minutes, you want more, but there's nothing more to listen to unless you want to listen to it again.

Okay, so anyways,

Right now we have a release cycle where a band typically spends a few years in obscurity, releases an album, scrambles within 1-2 years for a followup, spend a hiatus of like 3 years working on some opus that is the maturation of their work, have a slump, then a return to form, break up, reunite, then go on an old-guys circuit tour.

 There are often hiccups along the way.

Chinese Democracy is the sixth studio albumby American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, released in November 2008 on Geffen Records. It is the band's first studio album since "The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993), released exactly 15 years before Chinese Democracy

...

It is the most expensive album ever produced, with production costs in excess of $13 million.^[4][5][6] 

There are a lot of...vestigial traces of vinyl in today's music. Artists feel that they need to fill both sides, and make at least 40 minutes worth of music. The ambitions lend to creative hell, Brian Wilson-esque breakdowns.

A shorter EP model, say 20 minutes music at a time, released every 1.5 years, lets you get out your musical ideas faster, get faster fan reaction and, frankly, sales, and is just as satisfying for a typical listener (or, at least, myself)

Kernels of Creative Ideas I Will Never Have the Time to Pursue

Bond, James Bond, of Her Majesty's Secret Service, carrying out a campaign of sabotage against a middle-eastern country which wants to nationalize its oil fields.

Stick with the 16% agreement of 1922 or else

Human-wave attacks during the 8-year Iran-Iraq War.

Better Days

Letters from Iwo Jima

Letters from Iwo Jima is one of the worst movies I've watched recently. It is slow and disjointed. It treats the characters with kids gloves. So much effort is made into making the Japanese personable that they make them saints as well. But enough about the movie.

There is an interesting idea which I picked up on while watching the movie. That is of the unstoppable American advance and how if you're on the other side, how desperate you are to stop the advance. Also, how with mechanized war there is lots of softening up, but still, you need to eventually send infantry to secure the place. Lastly, the bombing while they're dug into tunnels underneath reminds me of the Empire Strikes Back. The entire Pacific campaign also reminds me of Babylon 5 and the battle of the line, with the Terrans as the Japanese and the Minbari as the Americans. 

Also, how fragile human beings are and how easily they break. Plus, how machine gun fire is used, strategically holding fire to draw them close, and then mow them down.

Speaking of Urban Outfitters, they never fail to amuse

The New Yorker on K-Pop

In effect, Lee combined his ambitions as a music impresario with his training as an engineer to create the blueprint for what became the K-pop idol assembly line. His stars would be made, not born, according to a sophisticated system of artistic development that would make the star factory that Berry Gordy created at Motown look like a mom-and-pop operation. Lee called his system “cultural technology.” In a 2011 address at Stanford Business School, he explained, “I coined this term about fourteen years ago, when S.M. decided to launch its artists and cultural content throughout Asia. The age of information technology had dominated most of the nineties, and I predicted that the age of cultural technology would come next.” He went on, “S.M. Entertainment and I see culture as a type of technology. But cultural technology is much more exquisite and complex than information technology.”

This week, the New Yorker has an article on the phenomena known as K-pop. 

The author has a general pessimistic tone on the actual quality of the art. Americans won't much care for the assembly-line packaging. The androgyny of the men simply won't appeal to American cultural norms. The stars would not survive a TMZ-world of celebrity gossip.

I don't know. Here's a video of one of the groups.


I find it catchy. I wouldn't exactly spend an evening poring over lyrics for deep meanings, but then I always thought that people took Nirvana too seriously for what it was: entertainment. I wouldn't mind listening to this in a mall or on the way to work. It sounds happy, energetic, optimistic, things which I need more of. It's escapism, an entry into a dream-world of color and beauty. 

This really reminds me of Richard Hayne's Urban Outfitters. Hayne oversees a stable of designers who work on the product line. It gets mass produced, like how the performers in these groups are pretty much interchangeable cogs. On that note, anyone who really knows say, hip-hop, knows that you don't follow the individual rapper, who really is an interchangeable cog, you follow the producer who is the talent. 

But on to the other points. Androgyny. N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys sold millions of records and they too were quite androgynous. Next?

America's celebrity culture would tear them apart. That I agree with. TMZ is the nastiest thing I've ever seen on television, worse than daytime talk like Jerry Springer.

Miami Vice

For some reason I had avoided Miami Vice. I don't know why. It's a film by Michael Mann, set in the night. I love Michael Mann films. Collateral, Heat, and to a lesser extent Public Enemies were fantastic films. Collateral in particular I go back to just to marvel at the intricate combat scenes.

To me, Miami Vice is kind of like Christopher Nolan's The Prestige. It takes some of the director's favorites and puts them in a different light. There are at least two returning actors from Collateral in Miami Vice. Jaimie Foxx in particular is not a nervous cabbie, but a cool and professional FBI agent. It's jarring seeing a role change like that, given similar settings. I liked him more in Collateral, which is an all-around superior film.

Miami Vice pretty much was what I expected it to be. It's mainly about people in fast cars, or fast boats, or fast planes, set against a night sky backdrop. There is some competent action, but Mann has done better work in Heat and Collateral. There is some competent acting, but there have been better performances, Tom Cruise in particular in Collateral. 

Mann seems to have gotten into nu-metal, Chris Cornell being a favorite of his to put in his films. I might even have detected Nickelback in the soundtrack. In the end, it was okay, but not spectacular. 

Munich, and he who lives by the sword dies by the sword

There's an incredible scene in Steven Spielberg's Munich when the protagonist, Avner, dismantles the room he is sleeping in. He killed a man with a bomb hidden in a telephone. So he dismantles his telephone. He killed a man with a bomb in a television set. So he dismantles the television set. There is no bomb underneath his bed. He ends up sleeping in the closet, gun in hand.

In these violent movies we get the fantasy of unbridled power. That is what a gun means. But the truth is that everything goes both ways. You can kill with a gun, but you are also vulnerable to a gun. It's not so much fun to have a gun pointed at you. And the truth is that you can just as easily be the guy with the gun pointed at you. Eventually, Avner's actions catch up to him and his group. They are hunted themselves by other clandestine groups. He loses friends. He knows how vulnerable people can be where they live and sleep, and he is a person, he is the same as his victims. So he takes apart his room.

Munich to me is the anti-Quentin Tarantino. I'm not the biggest Tarantino fan. Not at all. He has talent in his stylized camera action, but his characters are cartoony, loud and without conscience. Munich depicts a man thrust into a revenge movie plot, except this man flinches when he kills. He takes pains to only kill those who deserve death. He questions his mission, ultimately, and he cares more for the love of his wife and child than he does for revenge. 

This makes the movie more impactful. It's not a set-piece cartoon. The protagonist is human. He's down-to-earth, at his core he has humane values. He could be one of us. He's not someone out of a movie. 

The movie also has the Spielberg magic, the clever camera angles which draw you in and then with a subtle shift, take you somewhere else. You see explosions not being neat little fireballs, but chaotic unbridled and uncontrolled forces which spray glass on the street and pummel innocent bystanders. This might be the best action movie I have ever seen.

Harry Potter and writing Evil

I had a hard time watching the last four Harry Potter films. I've already read the books, and so I know what happens. All that remains to be seen is the creative execution, much of which is obviously CGI. There are some arty camera angles and silent moments, but the fundamental narrative does not deviate from the books. In fact, it mostly cuts out stuff from the books, due to movie time limits.

What you are left with is a teen drama about dating and school and stuff, and some really bad two-dimensional villains who basically cackle and do evil stuff that no one could really justify. The wonder of the magical universe is what drove the popularity of the books, clever things like hidden passageways, broomstick sports, newspapers with moving type. Such wonder seemed better on the page as opposed to the screen. Maybe because it was described in such a clever way in the books. And because CGI takes the wonder out of special effects. 

Voldemort is 2-dimensional. Rowling herself didn't really know much about Voldemort. He was created in order to give Harry a foil. A foil, by the way, is an interesting analogy. When I think foil I think airfoil, which on an airplane shapes the wind around it in order to lift it up higher. The analogy would then be that the narrative actually should center around the villain, not the hero, who is always scrambling to meet the machinations of the villain.

And so we see Harry Potter scrambling to stop the evil of Voldemort. The thing about Voldemort is that his motivations are kind of undeveloped. I get the sense that the final two books, especially the bit about Voldemort having 7 horocruxes that need to be destroyed, was sort of JK Rowling scrambling to come up with an explanation for the bad guy she created but didn't understand in the first book. 

But what annoys me is how bad the motivations are. Why is he going around killing people? Well, it doesn't really say. There's something about him being a racist, that unforgivable sin, something about him simply being a murderer, which would then make you wonder about how he got so many to follow him. The thing is, while Rowling says that she based Voldemort off of some of the most evil men in the 20th century, Hitler and Stalin, she seems to have a cartoon understanding of the two. She doesn't really understand the circumstances leading to them. The extreme poverty and injustice that they wanted to combat with their own peculiar ideologies. In JK Rowling's universe, everyone has everything they need, and so we're left with evil for the sake of evil. 

It's a very British thing, actually, isn't it? To ignore the injustice from say, taxes for a magical prep school. Instead to focus on some way the bad guy is inhumane and use that to justify the status quo. 

The Town

I've been finding that I can only really be truly contemplative while watching feature movies. I have two hours to focus my attention on a narrative. The web destroys my attention span. I know that it will be destroyed in about 20 minutes, as my impulses have a ready enabler.

I used to live in Fishtown, a working class Irish town, rapidly gentrifying, an old favorite of Edgar Allen Poe. I chose it because it was cheap and relatively safe. To this day, I probably find ethnic enclaves like Fishtown more interesting, more akin to part of my self-image, how I self-construct myself.

The Town is about these places. Charles Town in Boston is basically an ethnic enclave like Fishtown. Very clean, by the way, because it is rapidly gentrifying. I would have counted as a gentrifier.

It's an excellent movie, by the way. Authentic, to the Irish Boston that produced Staind and Godsmack. Tightly woven, excellent action. Every movie, every narrative, has to start with a bang, then some character development, a quiet moment, then the big finale. This movie hews to the formula and it works.

What I end up thinking about while watching this movie is something that I keep on coming back to. It is how the faces I see in the movie could be Chinese. That is, the different village types: the fat guy, the handsome guy, the guy with the big nose, the young guy with the undeveloped features, the girl with the hoop earrings whose emotions are worn on her sleeve. I saw those types when I visited the village back in Taiwan a few summers ago. In America not quite so much, for reasons I won't get into.

Another thing I thought about was how movie directors probably think alot about camera angles. I don't really notice camera angles, or even camera work so much anymore, focusing more on the story and arrangement of sequences. I often don't bother watching the video, preferring to listen to the story, and when I do watch the video I often just notice the technical aspects of the blu-ray disc. The attention thing, again.

A Science View

This is a photo of rogue biologist Russ George's experiment with geoengineering plankton blooms by dumping 100 tons of Iron Sulfate in the Pacific Ocean. The idea is that by stimulating plankton blooms, you will remove CO2 from the atmosphere and also reinvigorate Salmon fisheries.

Here is a view from space.

The Proposition and how savages are portrayed

I recently watched the Proposition. It is an excellent movie well worth the time. It is in the same vein as There Will Be Blood and 3:10 to Yuma, a 19th century frontier epic.

One issue that I found myself thinking about was how to portray the "savages." The aborigines are the savages, as the movie is set in Australia. It is a tough needle to thread. Because if I'm an aborigine actor, I would feel angry at my coworker who plays the role of the captor. They portray the captors as monstrous, in a good-intentioned attempt at bringing some balance, but still, they hold more power than the aborigines at the end of the day, no matter how ugly they are. But an unrealistic portrayal is also condescending.

I wish that there could be a film shown which depicted life from the perspective of the aborigine, or of the Indian. Show their own factions in their own cultures, their prestigious places, their ugly moments, and how they deal with the outsider Europeans.

I've been watching Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States which starts with why the Soviet Union, not the US, won WWII