Anniversary time!
Thirty years ago today, I married Margie.
Definitely one of, if not the, smartest and most rewarding thing I ever did.
The odds aren’t fantastic that we’ll make it another thirty after this, but however many we roll the odometer to, I’m sure they’ll all be wonderful.
Watching the pre-movie trailers is always fun.
We went to see Captain America: Brave New World on its opening Saturday — a key moment for movie studios to advertise upcoming flicks they think that audience will want to come see.
Here are the trailers they fed us (with IMDb links for more info, the trailers themselves, etc.):
Novocaine: Looks like an action-comedy featuring a guy who feels no pain. Which, in real life, is really very dangerous (pain is an important way to keep us from burns and dismemberment), but here is being played for yucks as he tries to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend. I mean, I like Jack Quaid, but this makes me a little queasy.
Warfare: Looks like a gritty, meant-to-be-realistic view of modern warfare, based on the memories of a former Navy SEAL and his time in Iraq. From what I know (which is not a lot), it certainly looks realistic. Which, to my mind, is a great reason not to plan to go see it, because honestly I like my violence a little cartoony.
The Accountant 2: Another in the “cool guy who is a lethal weapon and tackles his job with casual aplomb” genre of films, starring Ben Affleck. I didn’t see the first one, and I don’t see anything here that has me rearing to go and catch the new one, which introduces a “buddy film” vibe by also include the protagonist’s equally-lethal brother.
Sinners: This looks intriguing, lots of interesting visuals, music, FX, period piece (20s-30s) around a pair of black brothers who return to their home town, only to find a Sinister Evil has taken root and etc. etc. I don’t anticipate going to see it because I am not a horror film guy, but it sure looks well done.
Jurassic World: Rebirth: I had no idea the franchise was continuing onward, this time with action hero Scarlett Johansson and all the dinosaurs that the original Jurassic Park deemed “too dangerous” to have at their amusement park. Looks like lots of CG dinosaurs, lots of guns, lots of action and danger and (I suspect) red shirts. Maybe if I ever get caught up with the franchise I’ll watch it on an airplane flight to somewhere.
How To Train Your Dragon: See! Companies other than Disney can ransack their IP to make oodles of money recycling animated features as live-action-except-for-all-the-CG features! What I saw in the trailer looked pretty good — but the original HTTYD looked (and still looks) pretty good so this one goes in the “when it’s streaming somewhere for super-cheap” stack.
Fantastic Four: First Steps: The same trailer as has been running on TV, only up on a great big screen, which looks pretty darned awesome. I am already planning on seeing this, so the trailer just made me re-aware that it’s one of the three MCU films coming out this year.
Thunderbolts*: Again, this trailer has been on TV already, so it’s just getting to see it embiggened. Still looks like fun, with an obvious “Suicide Squad, only in the MCU” vibe to it (and maybe a bit of that old fave, Mystery Men). Already marked on my calendar.
So there you have it — the only films I’m likely to see from that batch of trailers are the two I was already intending to see. Still, I don’t mind being exposed to some things I likely otherwise wouldn’t know about, so there’s that.
A solid return to the MCU. Well done.
Captain America: Brave New World is a quite satisfying MCU romp. Much of it has the political / conspiratorial tone of Captain America: Winter Soldier, though it also contains the obligatory 5th Act super-hero punch-out extravaganza.
But up until that point, and after it, and even a little during it, it’s a much more interesting and introspective film than the movie trailers make it out to be. Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson is still feeling doubts about taking on the shield and mantle of Captain America, and even more doubtful about doing so working for the US government — especially since Thadeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, who once put Sam in the Raft during the whole Civil War business, is now the President of the United States.
StoryThe film is about interlocking redemption arcs — Sam coming to feel himself worthy of the Cap name, and Ross trying to show the world, and his estranged daughter, that he’s not the fire-breathing pile of anger he used to be. How these arcs criss-cross and entangle amid a long-standing conspiracy makes up the substance of the film, and by and large I found it handled pretty well.
Interestingly enough, Ross isn’t out to use his new position to hobble super-heroes. In fact, initially, he and Wilson get along decently in a guarded way. His big push is for a treaty between competing nations as to how to handle the Celestial remains sticking up out of the Indian Ocean post-Eternals, especially because the teams that have explored there have found a nifty brand-new metal: adamantium, which provides an interesting entree for whatever the MCU wants to do with Wolverine and the other X-Men.
Having the focus be on a treaty for peaceful cooperation, with high stakes and even possible war looming in the background, makes some interesting scenes, especially since it’s “only” a high-tension backdrop for the actual plot unfolding.
Since most of the action in the film centers on public events, it’s able to make good use of newscasts to provide backstory and plot reminders.
ActingMackie has had plenty of time to build his Falcon role, and, with the under-appreciated Falcon & Winter Soldier TV series, his story works well, as he goes back and forth between quiet wise-cracking and calm seriousness.
Surprisingly, Harrison Ford turns in a strong performance, too, with his own varying degrees of calm, anger, urgency, and desperation. He does a solid job as a US President, as a man with his own demons to fight, and, ultimately, a man who is faced with decisions about doing the right thing.
The rest of the cast acts competently, with Carl Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley (originally from Falcon & Winter Soldier) the best of the show. I found Danny Ramierez Joaquin Torres (Falcon) character annoying. Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Stens made for a nifty villain, as did Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder (even if that character was completely added in reshoot).
On the female side (caveat below notwithstanding), Xosha Roquemore does a decent job as Ross’ security detail head, Leila Taylor, though she doesn’t get a chance to do much other than take orders and look concerned. Shira Haas’ controversial role as security agent Ruth Bat-Seraph suffers a bit from how it was edited, but is still fun.
ProductionSo, not surprisingly, lots of flying, which by and large works well, as does the aerial combat. The shield-slinging is pretty good, too.
For some reason, I was less satisfied with the Red Hulk CG than I was with the Green Hulk’s a decade ago. It might have been because of the effort to make him look like Harrison Ford so much, but his movements (except for jumping) and actions just didn’t feel quite right to me.
Any other problems?Sam Wilson keeps doubting himself for not taking the super-soldier serum that created Steve Rogers’ Cap as well as Bucky “Winter Soldier” Barnes. Even so, he is flawless in throwing the shield, an incredible hand-to-hand fighter, shrugs off multiple injuries until the very end, and wears a Wakandan-designed flight suit. Given that Tony Stark was nothing without the armor, it’s a character conflict that never quite seems real.
That flight suit also felt a bit jarring and not in keeping with the attempt to keep the film more reality-grounded. From force fields to super-sonic flight to deus-ex-machina Redwing drones, it makes Sam Wilson more than himan in his ability to affect events.
When we deal with the World Leaders that President Ross is trying to get involved in a mutual cooperation treaty, there some significant missing pieces (there are, after all, some other significant countries in the world besides the US, France, India, and Japan). As well, those World Leaders are all male, and much of their setting is all male as well, which seems like a missed opportunity.
Frankly, the Act 5 battle between Cap and Red Hulk is almost anticlimactic. It not only wildly and abruptly amps up the power levels in the film (with the obligatory destruction porn to go with it), but Thunderbolt Ross himself would be furious that his security detail even dreamed of taking on a Hulk with pistol fire, or even with helecopter drones. The battle’s resolution kind of makes sense (almost any other would have seemed unrealistic), but it just stays this side of being kind of hokey.
Net-NetI liked it. I was happy to pay movie theater prices for it. I plan to watch it again when it streams and goes to Blu-Ray. It’s not the best MCU film, or even the best Captain America film, but it’s a strong lead for the three MCU flicks we get this year (with Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four arriving in coming months). Well done.
Do you want to know more?
Where I would say to my 2023 self, “I got some good news, and some bad news.”
As in past years, I’m going to share out Christmas Card letter here on the blog, where the three of you who actually read it can enjoy it, and where I can keep a permanent-ish copy. It’s that historical aspect that gets me to actually do a Christmas Card letter.
Christmas Card letters are, of course, generally upbeat. It’s okay to share challenges and even tragedies, but letters that turn into a litany of health issues, large and small, are a bit problematic.
This time around I’m going to add some color commentary.
Well, that was certainly a year! We were really busy a lot of the time, managed to sneak in a bit of travel, had some major life transitions, and … well, mostly tried to keep out of trouble.
The generic introduction.
James continued his post-grad work, spending the spring in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the fall in Oslo, Norway. That all wraps up this coming spring, back in Reykjavik, completing his Masters in Viking and Medieval Norse Studies.
In answer to the question we’re always asked (after exclamations of “Oh, that’s really cool!”), “What is he going to do with that MA?” the answer is … nobody knows. He’s not interested in academia, but museum and/or archaeological support work are both things he’s working his network for — which might mean him staying on in Iceland or another Nordic country.
We’ll know more by the next Christmas Card letter.
All of which has been a great excuse, of course, for various folk to travel and see him. Margie and Dave did so in Iceland in the spring, …
Went there with Stan and Mary, and enjoyed it a lot. It’s a beautiful country, an an interesting combo of cosmopolitan Europe and rural backwater. Looking forward to another visit (I’m going to be helping James move in in a few weeks).
… and continued from there to a fabulous cruise of the Scottish isles – Shetland, Orkney, Outer Hebrides, Skye, Mull — and tours in the cities on either end, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Delightful.
Once in a lifetime trip, both in terms of all the cool places we were able to visit, and on sailing on a Ponant cruise, which was top-notch everything. Great trip.
In the spring Margie and Dave also took a long weekend trip with friends to Sonoma, where we drank much good wine (and, maybe, joined a few wine clubs).
Went with Jackie and Scott, and had a fine time there, too.
In the fall, Dave and Margie road-tripped with friends to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone (and points coming and going). Fun times, and wonderfully scenic!
Another trip, this time by motor vehicle, with Mary and Stan. I’d never been to Yellowstone before, and I’d love to go there again sometime. Also had the chance to see Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial and all sorts of other cool locations as we circled back.
On the work front, Margie continues her (fully remote) work in Kaiser Permanente HR, focused on the data quality program.
And continues to get kudos and plaudits from her management team.
Dave, on the other hand, unexpectedly got laid off from his employer (while shoulders-deep in a mission critical project), and decided that both the job market and the financial numbers looked right for him to retire early – or, from a more important perspective, to become full-time coffee boy for Margie. That was at Thanksgiving, so we are both getting used to the new cadence in our lives.
More on that story here.
Our cats, Kunoichi (15) and Neko (13), are enjoying Dave and Margie being full-time at home. Kunoichi gave everyone a scare, though, when she slipped out an open door without being noticed until the next day, and went on a three-week (!) walk-about in October. She was finally found by a neighbor using a flyer Dave had put up. She’s recovered the three pounds she’s lost and seems to be in good health again.
We had, quite honestly, given up hope for Kunoichi, and it was one of the high points of the year when we found her. Or, as Margie put it, “Best birthday gift of the year.
For entertainment purposes, we continue to be regulars in the local theater scene, especially at the Arvada Center and at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
I’ll put either of those up against any other regional theater in the country. Fantastic work.
Game-wise, we’ve been playing various tabletop fantasy role-playing games run by friends,
Including a D&D campaign (Phandelver and Below) being run by Stan, and a joint Frosthave game with Jackie and Scott. Busy!
and Dave in December started up his own new ongoing game about cozy murder mysteries in a New England town.
“Brindlewood Bay,” for the record, a PBTA-based system that you can think of as Murder, She Wrote, with a large dollop of Lovecraft lurking in the background.
Alas, we’ve been slackers this year in organizing monthly Game Days for board games – we’ll see what 2025 brings.
It was a stressful (and busy) year, all that fun stuff notwithstanding, and Margie and I both tend to cocoon a bit when things get anxious. We’ll try harder this coming year.
We hope you have a very Merry Christmas (and other seasonal holidays and celebrations) to you all, and here’s to what we hope will be a Happier, Safer, and more Enjoyable New Year.
So that’s all the Good News. Bad News, we actually were pretty well off in — no major illnesses, no family tragedies that I can think of offhand.
Biggest (and most dire) disappointment of the year was Trump getting reelected. I don’t know what madness has gripped a big chunk of the voting public, but for all our sakes I hope they get over it soon.
All that said, let me raise a toast to 2024, and repeat the good wishes noted above for 2025. Thanks to our family and friends for helping make our lives so good.
Milestones galore!
Yesterday I talked about the milestone of having lived in Colorado for 30 years.
Today’s milestone is a bit different.
So … I retired today.
It wasn’t in my original plans (and I don’t respond well to changes of plan, as all who know me will tell you). But regardless of my plans, I got notification three months ago that my role was being eliminated, too bad, so sad, if you find another job in the company great, but that will zap your severance.
Harrumph.
Not the first time I’ve been RIFfed (and it was indeed a RIF of some sort — several others were all departing on the same day), and, in bygone days, I was sometimes that guy on the other side of the table (a real table in those days, not a Zoom table), so I know the drill.
Reasons Not To Retire
Reasons To Retire
Also contributing to the emotional mix was The Project I have been project managing, which has been a huge hairball for the last three years and is currently struggling between “We think we can get it done … in the Spring” or “Management Pulling the Plug.” The stress of that has been … not healthy for me, in a variety of ways, which made the idea being no longer in that kind of rat race a lot more attractive.
So even if the company had offered to keep me on once they realized what they had done (whatever algorithm dictated the RIF was … weird; nobody who should have known about it, or the impact it would have on The Project, was in on it and they were all generally as gobsmacked as me over it), it is possible, even likely, I would have turned them down.
So, today was the last day, and quite likely my last day in White Collar America. I finished cleaning my cube, I sent the last emails, I attend the last meetings, I said the last goodbyes, I turned in my laptop and card key, and drove away.
Yay?
Well, I’m not one of those people who defines himself by his job, or his company, or even as being the main breadwinner or being a professional or whatever. My work-life balance is fairly decent, and I have a plethora of projects and identified tasks around the house to keep me busy for, like, years. Plus hobbies. Plus being at my wife’s beck-and-call for coffee service, etc. And if I do get bored, there are a lot of volunteering activities I could do.
It does feel a little weird knowing I can turn off the 7 a.m. weekday alarm on my phone (with a skip for Tuesdays when I had to get up at 6:35 a.m. for a status call). It’s odd that the place I’ve been going to, and walking near, and being paid by, for the last six years (minus one week, to the day) will now just be a place I zip past on the interstate — but any bitterness about my treatment is very much mitigated by a guilty sense of relief from being out form under The Project.
I’ll miss the people. I’ll miss the neighborhood.
I won’t miss the company, their irksome RTO policy, their continuous reorganizing, or The Project.
* * *
So, generalizing between the two days of milestones, my life has had two 30ish-year phases:
Given reasonable lifespans, I am now believably starting Phase 3, retirement and what I do with it.
Let’s see how that works.
Time passages …
So today is a milestone date for me, which means I’ll probably blabber about it far more than anyone is interested. But, for the record …
Today, 30 years ago, I arrived in Colorado.
I was born and raised a California boy, starting up in the Bay Area, then moving down to LA when I was in early elementary school. Except for a brief 9 month stint up in Fort Collins (Colorado) when I was in high school (as my dad tested out a different twist on his career, which he decided he didn’t care for), I lived, went to college, got jobs, got married, in California.
Fast Forward to 1994, which was not a great year for me — going through a (zany but moderately amicable) divorce, tied up for several months living out of a hotel for a project I was trying to rescue for my employer, and, subsequent to that, sort of kicking around the office, trying to figure out what was next (and learning all about this amazing Internet that the company was finally connected to).
Then my boss asked me if I wanted to move to Denver and become the IT Manager for an office they were expanding there.
All other factors aside, this was nearly a non-starter because (a) I don’t take changes in expected life paths well, and (b) I was very much dating a new girlfriend (and an old friend at that) and didn’t relish the prospect of screwing up a long-distance relationship and losing her.
Sure, I had some indication that I liked Colorado from that brief high school stint. And it was a chance to break out of my funk, not to mention to advance my career. But … still … even after I got over the surprise, there was that relationship thing I did not want to screw up.
I was smart enough not to outright say “No” (or “Yes”), but told my boss I’d sleep on it.
I called the girlfriend, explained my concerns, and she said to take the offer and we’d work it out.
So I did. And then, at a big Thanksgiving Dinner (with my family and hers), I popped the question. Yay, romance. And the next day, we hopped in the car and I moved to Denver. (She only came along for the ride, and headed back home shortly after, juuuuuust before Stapleton was decommissioned).
And I’ve been here ever since, and never looked back. And, if things go as planned, I’ll be here the rest of my life, because I love this town and this state.
Oh, and we did work it out, and got married the following April. (Which means we have another big milestone anniversary next spring. Hmmmm.)
So that was one milestone. Another comes tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Time for my quadrennial quoting of folk who have something to say about the US elections
I maintain a website of quotations, so once every four years or so I dip into the grab bag there for other people’s profound words about elections and voting and the like.
This year I had two classes of quotes I picked: ones about character (and, just to be clear, Donald Trump’s lack of anything that can be considered the sort of character you want to have in a US President, or even your McDonalds’ fry wrangler), and ones about voting and participation (and why it’s important).
Here’s what I had to say, cleverly covered up by other people saying it.
If a public man tries to get your vote by saying that he will do something wrong in your interest, you can be absolutely certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do something wrong against your interest.
¶ Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech (1910-04-23), “Citizenship in a Republic [The Man in the Arena],” Sorbonne, Paris
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office. If a man’s associates find him guilty of phoniness, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.
¶ Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
(Attributed)
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust of both Britain and Russia. They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
¶ Henry Wallace (1888-1965) American politician, journalist, farmer, businessman
“The Danger of American Fascism,” New York Times (1944-04-09)
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions — without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch.
¶ Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Speech (1941-01-06), “State of the Union [Four Freedoms Speech],” Washington, D. C.
Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, “His color is not mine,” or “His beliefs are strange and different,” in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this Nation.
¶ Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech (1965-01-20), Inaugural Address, Washington, D. C.
Dependability, integrity, the characteristic of never knowingly doing anything wrong, that you would never cheat anyone, that you would give everybody a fair deal. Character is a sort of an all-inclusive thing. If a man has character, everyone has confidence in him. Soldiers must have confidence in their leader.
¶ Omar Bradley (1893-1981) American general
Interview with Edgar Puryear (1963-02-15)
A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.
¶ John Paul Stevens (1920-2019) American lawyer, US Supreme Court Justice (1975-2010)
Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) [dissenting]
Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
¶ John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
(Attributed)
If you don’t understand that you work for your mislabeled “subordinates,” then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.
¶ Dee W. Hock (b. 1929) American businessman
“Unit of One Anniversary Handbook,” Fast Company (1997-02-28)
The best foreign policy is to live our daily lives in honesty, decency, and integrity; at home, making our own land a more fitting habitation for free men; and abroad, joining with those of like mind and heart, to make of the world a place where all men can dwell in peace.
¶ Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Inaugural Gabriel Silver lecture, Columbia University (1950-03-23)
For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each of us — recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state — our success or failure, in whatever office we hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions:
First, were we truly men of courage — with the courage to stand up to one’s enemies — and the courage to stand up, when necessary, to one’s associates — the courage to resist public pressure, as well as private greed?
Secondly, were we truly men of judgment — with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past — of our mistakes as well as the mistakes of others — with enough wisdom to know what we did not know and enough candor to admit it.
Third, were we truly men of integrity — men who never ran out on either the principles in which we believed or the men who believed in us — men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust?
Finally, were we truly men of dedication — with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and comprised of no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest?
Courage — judgment — integrity — dedication — these are the historic qualities […] which, with God’s help […] will characterize our Government’s conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead.
¶ John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
Speech (1961-01-09), Massachusetts legislature, Boston
You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.
¶ Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech (1952-08-28), “Faith in Liberalism,” State Committee of the Liberal Party, New York City
You see the thing you have to remember. When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one-gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency, and you’ve got to keep yourself separate from that in your mind. If you can’t keep the two separate, yourself and the Presidency, you’re in all kinds of trouble.
¶ Harry S Truman (1884-1972) US President (1945-1953)
In Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, ch. 15 (1973)
Dishonor in public life has a double poison. When people are dishonorable in private business, they injure only those with whom they deal or their own chances in the next world. But when there is a lack of honor in Government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.
¶ Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) American engineer, bureaucrat, President of the US (1928-32)
Speech (1951-08-30), “Concerning Honor in Public Life,” Iowa Centennial Celebration (national radio broadcast), Des Moines
The only way of really finding out a man’s true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.
¶ P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
“Ordeal by Golf,” Collier’s Magazine (1919-12-06)
Precisely in trifles, wherein a man is off his guard, does he show his character, and then we are often able at our leisure to observe in small actions or mere mannerisms the boundless egoism which has not the slightest regard for others and in matters of importance does not afterwards deny itself, although it is disguised. We should never miss such an opportunity. If in the petty affairs and circumstances of everyday life, in the things to which the de minimis lex non curat applies, a man acts inconsiderately, seeking merely his own advantage or convenience to the disadvantage of others; if he appropriates that which exists for everybody; then we may be sure that there is no justice in his heart, but that he would be a scoundrel even on a large scale if his hands were not tied by law and authority; we should not trust him across our threshold. Indeed, whoever boldly breaks the laws of his own circle will also break those of the State whenever he can do so without risk.
¶ Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher
Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 1, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life [Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit],” ch. 4 “Counsels and Maxims [Paränesen und Maximen],” § 3.29 (1851) [tr. Payne (1974)]
Something of a person’s character may be discovered by observing when and how he smiles. Some people never smile; they grin.
¶ Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904) American epigrammatist, writer, publisher
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought, vol. 2 (1862)
We can have no better clue to a man’s character than the company he keeps.
¶ Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Discourses on Livy, Book 3, ch. 34 (1517) [tr. Thomson (1883)]
Build movements. Vote with your values, but vote strategically. Voting isn’t a Valentine. It’s a chess move.
¶ Rebecca Solnit (b. 1961) American writer, historian, activist
Facebook (2016-10-17)
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. And when a nation has to fight for its freedom, it can only hope to win if it possesses certain qualities: honesty, courage, loyalty, vision and self-sacrifice. If it does not possess them, it has only itself to blame if it loses its freedom.
¶ W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
Strictly Personal, § 30 (1941)
Of course I vote! If you’re a woman, or a person of color, or a person who doesn’t own property, or even a white male who doesn’t belong to the nobility, centuries of struggle and many deaths have bought you the right to vote. I vote to keep faith with peasant rebels and suffragist hunger strikers and civil rights workers braving the lynch mobs of the South, if for no other reason. But there is another reason — because who we vote for has an enormous impact on real peoples’ lives.
¶ Starhawk (b. 1951) American writer, activist, feminist theologian [b. Miriam Simos]
Blog post (2016-11-07), “Pre-Election Day Thoughts”
Monarchy is like a sleek craft, it sails along well until some bumbling captain runs it into the rocks. Democracy, on the other hand, is like a raft. It never goes down but, dammit, your feet are always wet.
¶ Fisher Ames (1758-1808) American politician, orator
(Attributed)
The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.
¶ Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1859-09-16), Columbus, Ohio
Another point of disagreement [with Lesser Evil Voting] is not factual but involves the ethical/moral principle […] sometimes referred to as the “politics of moral witness.” Generally associated with the religious left, secular leftists implicitly invoke it when they reject LEV on the grounds that “a lesser of two evils is still evil.” Leaving aside the obvious rejoinder that this is exactly the point of lesser evil voting — i.e. to do less evil, what needs to be challenged is the assumption that voting should be seen a form of individual self-expression rather than as an act to be judged on its likely consequences. […] The basic moral principle at stake is simple: not only must we take responsibility for our actions, but the consequences of our actions for others are a far more important consideration than feeling good about ourselves.
¶ Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) American linguist and activist
“An Eight Point Brief for LEV (Lesser Evil Voting)” (2016-06-15) [with John Halle]
Bad officials are elected by good people who do not vote.
¶ George Jean Nathan (1892-1958) American editor and critic
(Attributed)
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse men.
¶ Plato (c.428-347 BC) Greek philosopher
Republic, Book 1, 347c
I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
¶ C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
Essay (1943-08-27), “Equality,” The Spectator
CALVIN: When I grow up, I’m not going to read the newspaper and I’m not going to follow complex issues and I’m not going to vote. That way I can complain when the government doesn’t represent me. Then, when everything goes down the tubes, I can say the system doesn’t work and justify my further lack of participation.
HOBBES: An ingeniously self-fulfilling plan.
CALVIN: It’s a lot more fun to blame things than to fix them.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1992-05-18)
Ballot initiatives are direct democracy. Here’s how I’m voting.
I’ve been doing these sorts of analyses for several years here on the (woefully under-uitilized) blog. So let’s look at what’s on the ballot in the way of Amendments and Propositions this year.
So two things first:
One, the idea of the legislature referring issues to the citizenry to approve (and, better yet, letting citizens themselves propose such things) was one of the great Progressive reforms from over a century ago, along with statewide votes for US Senators and women’s suffrage.
Has putting up measures been an unalloyed success? Certainly not. It has, in fact, led to state constitutions full of clutter and cruft, badly written laws and amendments, and too often, populist measures that hamstring government’s abilities to deliver services to those that need them.
That said, this limited effort at direct democracy helps break lawmaking out of the hands of partisan politicians who are most interested in what their more wealthy lobbyists want to see in the way of law. That’s a good thing, far outweighing cases of human frailty, to which the citizenry at large is no more prone to than their elected representatives.
Second — boy, howdy, do we have a lot of measures on this year’s ballot in Colorado: seven Constitutional amendments and seven propositions for new laws. So … we’d better get started.
As a guide, ballot proposals with a letter were put there by the legislature (cowards). Those with numbers were put on by citizen initiative.
I feel a deep, but not unlimited, appreciation for veterans, especially those whose service has left them unable to work. This proposition would expand an existing homestead-style property tax exemption (on the first $200K value of their house) to vets with a disabilities as judged under an alternate VA criterion, impacting some 3700 veterans int he state.
But … I’m not seeing it. It seems to complicate property tax matters significantly, to the tune of some $1.8M a year. Seems there should be a better way here. I’m not sure of my NO vote — I want to do a bit more research — but that’s the way I’m leaning.
In current judicial discipline proceedings, matters are handled by other judges, and the proceedings themselves stay confidential unless the disciplinary panel of judges selected by the state supreme court decides on public sanctions. That just feels a little too cozy and self-adjudicating to me.
The new arrangement would have an independent board consisting of judges, lawyers, and citizens, and charges would be made public at the beginning of processes — which sounds like sauce for the gander to me.
I swung from maybe-no to maybe-yes for this. My initial reaction was to not go along with something that further cracks down on bail, which is the reverse of (good) current trends.
(Bail is a one-size-fits-all way to let rich people get out of jail while awaiting trial, and to keep poor people in jail, getting more poor because they lose their jobs because they are in jail, and making them desperate to get things done with.)
But this one requires a bit more reading before treating it as a straightforward bail question.
Colorado law already allow judges to deny bail for particularly heinous crimes such as first degree murder where (a) the death penalty could be imposed, and (b) “the proof is evident and the presumption is great” of guilt.
That’s how things stood since the state became a state … until in 2020 the state (appropriately) abolished the death penalty. Good move, state, but, oops. Suddenly a vicious axe murder where the accused was found standing over the body with a bloody axe in their hand became a case where judges were required to offer bail because no crime could incur the death penalty.
This measure basically restores the bail status quo ante.
On that level, I’m inclined to vote Yes. There is the potential for miscarriage of justice (they only seem guilty) to occur, but I think the overall rule feels sound.
In 2006, Colorado (back in its red-leaning days) passed a “Definition of Marriage” constitutional amendment: one man + one woman = Constitutional Marriage!
In 2015-2015, both the state supreme court and SCOTUS ruled (correctly) that bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, invalidating that amendment … which still remained on the books.
The current SCOTUS seems to be licking its chops to overturn that Obergefell precedent, which could suddenly make that wretched Colorado DOMA provision take effect again. Bah.
And the only argument presented against this new amendment is … well, gay marriage is icky and sinful and wrong, so we should await SCOTUS to get rid of it so we can go back to respecting good, pure, honest, different-sex, Christian marriages like those celebrated at the Church of Elvis in Reno, Nevada.
Double bah.
Basically requires various election filings and public publication of ballot measures in newspapers to happen sooner. The argument is that it will make life more convenient for election officials. To me, it’s just feels designed to make it more difficult for citizens to impact elections. I’m unconvinced it’s necessary or beneficial, thus No.
The 2022 SCOTUS Dobbs ruling basically said there was no federal protection for abortion, so states could do what they wanted. So here’s where Colorado can follow that guidance. Not only does this amendment establish the right to an abortion in the state constitution, it gets rid of language that prohibited the state from covering it under Medicaid or state employee health insurance.
There are basically two arguments offered against this:
This would enshrine the right to K-12 “school choice.” It would not immediately change any laws, but would clearly lay the groundwork that parents should get paid for homeschooling, or that religious schools should get my state tax dollars (see #2’s argument in the previous amendment — I’ll admit to my inconsistency if they admit to theirs).
As a former public school teacher, and as someone whose kid went through public schools — I just say No.
This state (under the insidious influence of Douglas Bruce) fell into the trap of tax measures being required to refund any taxes above certain limits. In the case of the (I didn’t vote for it) legalization of sports betting a few years back, any tax revenues brought in over some voter-approved limit get refunded to the casinos. This proposition keeps the money and sends it to where the rest of it is sent to: water conservation and protection projects.
I am not a fan of “sin taxes” to support things that the government should be paying for. But sending tax refund checks to casinos and betting parlors is ridonculous. Yes.
Again, sin taxes are often sketchy (if it’s worthwhile funding crime victim services, mental health services for vets and youth, and school safety programs, then pony up and do so without using a whipping boy to make it more attractive and thereby incent the state to keep that revenue flowing as well as incenting bootlegging).
That said a 6.5% tax on guns and ammo isn’t going to break anybody’s bank.
So sure, as reinforced by the Arguments Against of “GUNS! FREEDOM!” and “I will be killed by Venezuelan dog-eaters because I won’t be able to afford an AR-15!”
This would make Bobcats and Mountain Lions (Lynx are already protected) illegal to hunt.
I’m not a hunter, and tend to feel a bit queasy about the whole subject, but neither Bobcats or Mountain Lions are endangered species, so that would tend to make me think that current hunting/culling of those predators is working pretty decently. We do have a surplus of deer in the state, so increasing those predator populations some might not be a bad idea, but I’d rather see the state wildlife folk gauge that based on, oh, science, rather than “Oh, it will be fine if we let mountain lions increase their populations and not worry about hunters any more.”
(As a note, 500 mountain lions are successfully hunted — I won’t use the awful term “harvested” — each year, of an estimated 4,000 stable population.)
Basically this tweaks the formula of what percentage of a sentence for violent offenses must be served, and how earned time impacts sentences. It will probably pass because it is a “tough on crime” proposition, which are always popular, but basically it means that someone sentenced to a 20-year sentence will most likely serve 17-19 years instead of 14-19 years …
… which seems a fairly trivial difference, esp. as it removes some incentives for convicts to behave and better themselves.
This would create a new category of veterinary workers, basically working off of a Masters degree rather than a Doctorate, with an eye to increasing access to veterinary services in rural and less populated areas. It’s sort of like the proliferation of different types of nurses / physician’s assistant categories.
That said, there seems to be some value here, and the “Against” argument that “the state board that would oversee this hasn’t given specific criteria for the role, so who knows what crazy thing might happen?” seems kind of weak.
This proposition slices off $350M as a one-off fund to go to recruiting more police and retaining the ones they have (i.e., increase salaries), with the feel-good addendum of the state paying a $1M death benefit to the family of state or local law enforcement offices who are killed in the line of duty.
Despite the advocates’ cry of impoverished police departments, I haven’t seen any actual numbers presented. In general, I don’t think the state should be funding local law enforcement. This just seems like a money grab for law enforcement without any demonstration that it will actually impact crime.
Most law enforcement have pensions that pay out to surviving families, or death and disability insurance that does same. If that’s not adequate, then address that in a more coherent way. And I mean, $1M for the family of an heroic police officer who does in the line of duty sounds great, but why just limit that to cops? Are there no other valuable and/or dangerous professions where the state should start paying out big dollars upon the death of a worker?
The current system basically guarantees that either the person the Democrats nominate, or the person the Republicans nominate, will win the state or federal position they are running for … and the two-party partisan constituency of electoral districts makes that, in too many cases, a partisan slam-dunk.
Ranked Choice Voting lets people vote for the person they actually like most, rather than being forced to choose between the D and the R, without the fear that they are “throwing their vote away.” And the accusations that it is “difficult to understand” or that it will cost zillions of dollars to explain seems highly patronizing to me.
I am less sanguine about All-Candidate Primaries — I feel it’s less necessary if RCV is in play — but I’m not strongly opposed to it.
Bottom line, this weakens political parties (who are the folk most vigorously opposing it), encourages people to vote for who they want (vs. who they think is likely to win), and arguably promotes more moderate candidates. Those are all good things.
So, there we are: 8 I am inclined to vote for, 6 I am inclined to vote against. I’ll be doing a bit more research on some of those; if I change my mind, I’ll let you know.
Always fascinating to see how many movies I’m never going to watch.
We rarely see R-rated movies, so going to see Deadpool & Wolverine opened up a whole new tranche of trailers, pretty much all of which we won’t be going to.
Hmmm … so … not a lot of prospect there in movies that thought advertising before Deadpool & Wolverine was a good idea. The only thing I can say is, well, the movie trailers were a hell of a lot more interesting than the more conventional ads that have infested movie trailer time like … well, like face huggers on a mysteriously-deserted space station …
A very funny, very actiony, very enjoyable way to wile away a couple of hours. NO SPOILERS.
We went to see Deadpool & Wolverine on Friday (opening weekend) night. I kind of pushed for it — we’ve enjoyed the DP movies in the past (usually to our surprise), but the rest of the fam didn’t seem enthused — until we were watching it.
I run very hot and cold on Deadpool in the comics. I tend to take my storytelling fairly seriously, and DP — along with “fan favorites” like Ambush Bug and the Impossible Man and Mr Mxyzptlyk and G’nort and even Lobo — are intrinsically silly characters that I usually get tired of pretty quickly.
I’ve also got only a moderate tolerance for Wolverine, as one of these characters who is so over-used it isn’t even funny.
Live action is a little difference, since movies with a given character tend to come out far less frequently. I enjoyed the first couple of Deadpool movies, despite myself, and Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. So I figured … this should probably be worth a go.
And, in fact, this movie is a very, very fun (and bloody) romp through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, tying together narrative lines from the previous Deadpool movies (with plenty of flashbacks and talky-talk for those who don’t remember that far back), things having to do with Wolverine movies (with the same caveats), recent doings in the MCU, and plenty of Fourth Wall commentary about 20th Century Fox, Disney, and whatever else turns out to be funny.
There’s a plot or three here, much more coherent than you might imagine, especially with a zany character like Deadpool, slathered with a Church Spring Picnic-full of Easter Eggs, and much capering about the Marvel multiverse (with plenty of meta commentary). There are even some lengthy serious moments! And character advancement!
But there are really two things about this movie that stand out (speaking broadly and non-spoilery). First, is that it’s fun. Well, unless you dislike F-bombs, and find huge gouts of CG blood disturbing. I was usually smiling, and I was laughing out loud (embarrassingly so) more than once.
And second, it is a HUGE love letter to the 20th Century Fox Marvel movies — various iterations of the Fantastic Four, Daredevil & Elektra, and, of course, the X-Men. With the Disney acquisition of Fox’s movie properties, they are able to — and actually do — some delightful things, even as they fade into the multiverse.
Good times. I look forward to getting this one on Blu-Ray so I can pause a thousand times and point and laugh some more.
I enjoyed myself.
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Yes, the chirping crickets are real
Wow. I’ve been doing a piss-poor job of updating the blog here.
Yeah, yeah, all the normal reasons. Job really stressful. Busy with stuff at home. But ultimately it really is about prioritization: I’ve doing plenty of stuff with my quotations blog, and even my gaming blog has been getting some love.
What I usually do here has traditionally been “my life” (boring), “my pop culture stuff” (uninspiring of late), and “my politics”.
Aha.
Politics has been — a wildly stressful hot mess. Trump & Co. are simultaneously terrifying and fury-inducing in their smug proto-fascism and very direct threat to people I love (and, hell, to me under certain not-necessarily-the-worst-case scenarios). Biden’s problems filled me with existential dread (since somewhat alleviated by Harris — but that’s a whole other set of posts). And, with everything else going on, it’s just hard to write about and face that terror and dread and fury in a way that isn’t just incoherent keyboard smashing.
Sigh.
(And, yes, feel free to mutter “Trump derangement syndrome” … and keep walking on.)
Can’t promise I’ll be more active here, but it’s bubbled to the top of my attention again, so … let’s hope for the best.
Who’d think that a movie about a kid’s toy would be one of the most human films of the year?
First off, let me say that the production aspects of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie are … incredible. It is a beautiful movie and an incredible homage to its subject matter and its selected era aesthetic.
The movie itself is far more complex, with dozens of delightful, if not bravura, performances (Margot Robbie is, no matter what Helen Mirren says, perfection), coupled to an intricate narrative and examination of concepts around feminism, patriarchy, interpersonal relationships, societal norms, existentialism, capitalism, self-actualization, and a stubborn defiance of expectations to turn an message movie about dolls into a cartoon of easy heroes and villains.
I’m always a bit leery about saying something is brilliant, or even profound, but I will say that Barbie is simultaneously entertaining, nostalgic, hilarious, moving, inspirational, and thought-provoking, and I look forward to re-watching it a number of times in the future.
(And if it doesn’t have a broad spread of Oscar nominations, I’ll be quite put out.)
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Putting some new life into the old blog.
I am trying a new experiment, as my normal posting here (for things other than movie reviews) has been a bit, um, lacking.
Since I have been more active posting over on Mastodon, I will start pulling my posts from there over here. As some of the metadata (like post title) stuff is missing, and wanting a chance to clean up some of the formatting bits, I’ll be importing in draft mode, and then manually publishing it.
That creates a bit of a lag but with diligence and discipline (ha!) I’m sure I’ll stay caught up.
My goal here is not necessarily to garner a huge audience (the days of blog-centric Internet are long past), but to re-establish this site as my “extended memory,” my journal, keeping track of stuff I’ve done, thought, written, etc.
If it works out, I’ll eventually post about how I did it, technically.
(And, yes, I could use the blog as the source and use various tools to post to Mastodon — or, heck, ActivityHub to making things here visible over there … and maybe I’ll eventually go that course. But using a Masto client to write things remains a lot easier, which is the key to sustainable blogging, even of a micro sort.)
We shall see.
A surprisingly low-key but satisfying wrap-up to Indy’s career
Hey, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is now streaming. Let’s watch it!
TL;DR: Not a great movie, plot-wise (but, then, Indy movies never are). But from a satisfying character study, it rocked.
Yes, there are SPOILERS below. You have been warned.
Okay, first off, that’s a horrible title, as it turns out. I’ve been trying to figure out a better one, and haven’t but … still, not good.
So there was all sorts of controversy over the CG de-aging of Harrison Ford for the first chunk of the film. I thought it worked just fine, as a matter of fact. There was plenty of (presumably doubled) action to carry through the visual illusion. Really, the only thing that doesn’t work in the WW2 sequences is Harrison Ford’s voice.
That said, mad props to Harrison Ford following that up with a full torso nudity at age 80ish. He looks old and horrible and absolutely, therefore, sells where the character is at.
Which is, a Man out of Time, old and in decline, working for a (it feels) less prestigious college, and literally plummeting into retirement. The audience recollections of his past adventures are assertively upstaged by the first Moon Landing. His adoring students of bygone films are now bubble gum-popping, jaded, and disinterested in stupid old “history.” His grand romances are reduced to a tiny apartment and divorce papers.
But it’s played very straight, no melodrama. It just is, grounded, mundane, in keeping with where Indy is in his twilight, a life of memories, bounded by noisy neighbors and the concrete jungle of New York.
God bless John Williams. The soundtrack is, with a few leitmotifs, unique unto itself … but so very, very Indy.
The story and direction (and Harrison Ford) convincingly give us age, even frailty, punctuated by a great right hook. Perfect.
I was really kind of hoping that CIA Lady would be a “figure of authority who ultimately sees that the bad guys are actually bad guys and she should be on the side of the protagonists” character. Alas, no.
The car/car/tuk-tuk/tuk-tuk chase through Tangiers is delightful, arguably the best action sequence in the film. Indy’s skill, competence, age, and incompetence are beautifully balanced.
I love that Indy represents received knowledge in competition with Helena’s street smarts, with her having a leg up in modern ruthlessness and him having a leg-up in experience.
The one least-believable part of the script is the idea that the ship carrying the Antikythera was manned by “one hundred centurions,” which is like saying “one hundred master sergeants,” which is kind of nonsensical.
A decent round of applause for addressing the “Mutt” problem — not just addressing it, but actually making it a key part of the backstory as to where Indy is at the opening of the film. It plays a part of the setting (the Vietnam War era) and the backstory (and not-so-backstory) of Indy and Marion.
So, yeah, Indy is not the worst sort of grave robber (accusations notwithstanding), but only because he donates what he robs to museums (phone call from Lord Elgin, Dr. Jones). That said, any archaeologist in the audience would be crapping their pants over (a) Indy’s treatment of the university artifact collection and (b) the recovery, opening, reading, and treatment of the Grafikos.
I loved how the references to Helena’s relationship with / obsession over his obsessions with / asserted disappointment from her dad had very, *very* clear parallels with Indy and his own father. Rubbed in when she noted his role as her godfather.
Okay, nice to see the Big Brute Killer Bad Guy hoist by his own over-sized petard.
Good Lord. It’s the “If you could kill Hitler …” time travel question, pivoted with “… and create a better Reich from it” as a plot element. Fantastic.
The final fate of the Bad Guys is fitting, but relatively low-key. That said, their fate is not actually tied to the fate of Our Hero, which is both weird and actually kind of fitting.
I was really wondering if they would pull the actual time travel trigger. And … they did, marvelously. And then I was really wondering if they would have Indy stay in the past. And … they resolved it quite on-point.
I love that, at the beginning, we are told that “Mutt died in Vietnam, Marion was inconsolable, Indy didn’t handle that well, their marriage fell apart.” And, when Marion returns at the end … maybe it wasn’t quite the way he described it. “Are you back?” I am not at all surprised that Indiana Jones is not a reliable narrator.
And, after a movie with lots of John Williams cues that are quite Indyesque music, with brief moments of leitmotifs … we get the full, bad-ass Indiana Jones March over the closing credits.
Character-wise, it’s a pretty large cast. Most are competent figures in passing, tropes to play a scene or five and be disposed of. The bad guy henchfolk fall into that category. So does the kid, Teddy. Toby Jones’ Basil Shaw is fun, but more of a plot device. Antonio Banderas’ Renaldo feels like a character who was contractually required to be prominently displayed in the posters, but who mostly ended up (appropriately) on the cutting room floor. John Rhys-Davies returns delightfully as Sallah, adding to the character’s richness but definitely in a supporting role.
Those aside, there are really three main characters. Harrison Ford is, of course, Indiana Jones, and plays him with weary enthusiasm and splendor. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a delight as Helena Shaw, Indy’s almost-Irene Adler / god daughter, uber-competent and very much not a romantic interest for the protagonist (thank heavens). Mad Mikkelsen’s Dr. Voller plays a worthy anti-Indy, the Nazi physicist / scientist who’s out to re-write history; he never gets much motivation other than “Nazi scientist!” but plays the role gamely.
In sum … a movie that flows in a competent narrative from scene to scene, with fine (if not spectacular) FX and action scenes … but a truly marvelous character sketch for Indy, and a profoundly fitting wrap-up for his career.
I was satisfied.
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A look back at Season 4 of NuWho, and the best Companion ever.
I will confess, I am a total Donna Noble fan (and have been for some time). So prepping for the 60th Anniversary Doctor Who specials by rewatching the Donna Noble season was a task I readily welcomed.
After endless ages in Doctor Who S1-2 of the Holy Beloved Rose Tyler, and the weirdly abortive S3 “oh, she’s falling for the Doctor, too” tenure of Martha Jones, having a Companion for S4 that was (a) out for a good, interesting time, (b) not falling on love with the Doctor, (c) sassy and independent, (d) definitely not falling in love with the Doctor, (e) nagged by an inferiority complex, and (f) oh so very much not falling in love with the Doctor, was like a breath of fresh air.
The chemistry between David Tennant and Catherine Tate was lovely. The dynamic of a Companion who wasn’t cowed or dominated or (as noted) smitten with the Doctor was delightful. There was humor, there was terror, there was so much of an EveryPerson about Donna, that every moment in her early tenure was a delight.
Her first encounter, in the S3 “Runaway Bride” gave us a person-on-the-street encounter with the weirdness of the Doctor. “Partners in Crime” shows both how that encounter has changed her and how the Doctor (a lesson that holds true for every regeneration, but particularly for Ten) absolutely needs a Companion. That’s reinforced in “Fires of Pompeii,” showing how the Doctor’s hit-and-miss adherence to the rules, like a good little Time Lord, can lead to moments of amoral inhumanity, and in “Planet of the Ood” gives the Doctor a boost in the moral outrage over that race’s slavery.
Donna gets pushed a little to the side with a standard alien invasion in “The Sontaran Strategem” and “The Poison Sky,” and, for obviously reasons, continues to play support in “The Doctor’s Daughter.” But she’s back on stage for the Agatha Christie “The Unicorn and the Wasp.”
After what is, at that point, a pretty normal Doctor Who season (a few invasions, some weird planets and historical pieces), S4 becomes nightmarishly dark. I would say that “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” are the scariest bits of the season, if not for the Twilight Zone-perfect “Midnight,” but Donna remains a presence — her phantom family drama in the Library two-parter makes up for River Song’s introduction pushing her a bit to the side, and her grounding of the Doctor after a very, very unpleasant encounter in the worst parts of human nature are critical parts of what make those episodes work.
All of which leads to an even darker tale in the first of the three-ep season wrap, “Turn Left,” where we see what the world — and, by extension, the lives of Donna and her family — becomes if she never takes the step that brings her to meet the Doctor. It’s an hour of progressive dystopia with shades of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, as the various disasters and plots that the Doctor averted over the course of S3-4 actually come to pass when Donna’s not there to pull the Doctor back in “The Runaway Bride.” After the horror of the Library saga and the psychodrama of “Midnight,” “Turn Left” just becomes horribly depressing (with a frisson of horror from the bug on Donna’s back).
Throughout it all, though, Donna remains — if not positive, then resolute. Capable of outrage. Determined to make things better. Self-deprecating, but willing to step up for a fight. She is utterly human and utterly a force of nature.
That brings us to “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End,” as Donna lets herself be recruited to save the world. The pair of episodes carries a massive, sometimes almost overwhelming amount of fan service, drawing in every NuWho Companion and hangers-on, including key cast members of Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, into a massive, multi-layered conspiracy by and battle against the (of course) Daleks.
Through this, it would be easy for Donna to fade a bit into the background, but she’s a key, if controversial, part of the plot. By the end of things, she’s proven herself, the “Temp from Chiswick,” to be the most important human in the universe … and is, for Reasons, demoted into amnesiac former Companion, unaware of what she’d seen, done, accomplished.
It feels outrageously, massively unfair to the character, of course (esp. as Martha heads off to new possible adventures, and Rose ends up with her mom and the Man of Her Dreams, sort of). It’s still gut-wrenching to watch (even as it includes the meme-worthy “David Tennant in the Rain” scene), but, aware how much of it must have been driven by Catherine Tate’s contract (she had a successful career both pre- and post-Who) and the winding down the Russell Davies era, it’s actually a far better ending than “Oh, I’m tired of / traumatized by / unrequited about traveling with the Doctor, so I quit” (which is pretty much what sort of happened with Martha, and with a number of Companions over the decades). It hurts like hell, but it’s also a tribute to the character at the same time.
And where did things go from there? Lacking Donna, the Tenth Doctor goes into what turns into a self-destructive spiral ending with him (and the showrunner) regenerating into Matt Smith’s Eleven and Steven Moffat — accompanied by increasingly Mary Sue-ish Amy Pond and Clara Oswald.
Which, of course, brings us a few Doctors along (Peter Capaldi’s gruff rock star Twelve, and, under Chris Chibnall, Jodie Whittaker’s lovely Thirteen) to the 60th Anniversary specials, with David Tennant somehow becoming the regeneration into Fourteen and (we are told) Catherine Tate back as Donna. How will that work? Well, yeah, I’m a day or two late in watching, but I’m very eager to find out.
Because sometimes the trailers are the best part of the theater experience
There were fewer trailers than usual at our Regal theater prior to our Friday night premiere showing of The Marvels.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: I am sure that someone thought that there was some huge audience for a Hunger Games prequel (as if “yes, this is how things got so horribly miserable, plus, character hints for the people who end up so even more miserable in the original movies!” was a winning pitch), especially given the last film was eight years ago.
It all looks appropriately post-apocalyptic, and the trailer hints at it all being terribly depressing, despite some fundamental sense that somehow, sometime in the future, virtue will prevail, kindasorta.
Seriously not my cuppa.
Migration: Something animated about birds (mostly? ducks) migrating or maybe taking a vacation, and ending up being stuck in New York City, where hilarity ensues. Looks amusing. Not planning to see in the theaters.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: This trailer was interesting for the first ten seconds, until Jason Momoa stopped being onshore and started living in a CGI world under the waves. At which point it all turns into what seems like a synopsis of the entire film. I suspect I will eventually watch it, but it will not be in a movie theater.
On the bright side, this should, finally, finally, spell the end of endless articles about the far-too-delayed end of the DCEU.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: So I was there back when the original Apes movies were made, and they were all around the juxtaposition of humans and intelligent apes who oppressed / were oppressed by them. As far as I can tell from this trailer, it’s basically about CG apes and the rise of their civilization, and while the CG apes look to be nicely done, I have zero to no interest in what they are doing.
Wish: For all this seems to have some nifty-looking animation, the story seems like such a pastiche of other Disney films that it’s hard to get at all excited for it. There’s a young girl! Who is magically special! And there is a power figure that doesn’t like it! And danger! And cuteness! And a meta-aware talking animal!
I mean, okay, sure, it’s better than a live-action remake of Sleeping Beauty (coming to theater probably around 2027, by my guess), but there’s nothing there that feels fresh or new or intriguing.
So, net-net … nothing I feel any great urge to see, though a couple I might get around to streaming someday.
Honestly, going back over the list … I’d probably rewatch The Marvels first.
The latest MCU film is a disappointing, sloppy jumble. But it’s also a lot of fun in enough places to make it worthwhile.
Seen in the theater this evening in 2-D. Not much SPOILERy, beyond what you can see in the TV ads.
This movie was always going to be fighting an up-hill battle. Between constant media reports about “super-hero fatigue” from movie-goers, MCU and/or comics fans who have their very strong opinions about who should be allowed in the super-hero club, and people who disdain Marvel (and Disney) on some sort of principle, any MCU film that is less than perfection is going to take a very loud drubbing.
And, yes, this film is definitely less than perfection.
(To be fair, there are a lot of critics, and sites, that have good things to say about the movie. That there is still a very vocal contingent touting this as yet another sign that the MCU is inexorably spiraling into the toilet speaks to me more about the folk saying that than the movie itself.)
You will probably hear, somewhere, the line that “The Marvels is less than the sum of its parts,” and there’s something to be said for that. This is a movie that went through a major restructuring (from a Captain Marvel sequel to this three-fer) and never quite got put back together correctly. It feels like it needed about three more runs through the writers room, honing and focusing a scattergun storyline and smoothing the oddly frantic jerkiness of its pace, while giving decent attention and story and opportunity for its three protagonists.
Its also the shortest MCU film yet, which seems odd for a movie focused on a trio of heroes, and that dichotomy shows in missed (or edited-out) moments that could have made a big difference in the feel of the piece.
At the same time, and I’m going to bold this: The Marvels is a lot of fun, and there were enough positive moments to outweigh the negative ones for both me and my wife (who is far less a Marvel enthusiast than I am). It is at its best when being relatively light-hearted, even a bit silly (net-net, I think the controversial “musical” scene works), but falls flat when giving us overly-melodramatic emotional conflicts or trying to build stakes for the overall villainous plot.
The original film trailer actually captures some of the better tonal moments.
Interestingly, the final trailer plays up the “serious” super-hero side of things:
Let’s start with those protagonists. Best of the list has to be Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, doing a bang-up follow-on to her Ms Marvel TV mini-series and leaning whole-heartedly into fan-girling her idol, Captain Marvel. Actress and character both brighten up everything when on-screen, and the substantial inclusion of her family makes it all the more delightful.
Her story seems to be about trying to prove herself, getting validation as a super-hero from her idol, and maybe enduring some sobering-up moments to show it’s not all skittle and beer behind the spandex. Those aspects never quote connected the dots for me — I could see the outlines there, hints and indications, but in the rush to wrap up the film, it never quite gelled.
I liked Brie Larson in the original Captain Marvel, a lot more than some folk seem to. She could be a bit strident, but there was justification for it all down the line, and there was no doubt she was a strong character. Here she’s facing a very real tale of dealing with the consequences of her actions, both with her Earth family (Monica in particular) and with her previously-unseen actions toward the Kree.
That tale of consequences should be super-powerful, something that rarely gets highlighted in super-hero fare, and maybe in a solo film it would have been. Instead, it means too often that Carol Danvers came off to my mind as weak and emotional and apologetic far too frequently. Her eventual efforts to Do The Right Thing and Fix the Problems She Created come too late and feel too brief, like checking a box to solve the problem. Maybe, hopefully, there was more left on the virtual cutting room floor.
Which then brings us to Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau. After an initial setup (as a child) in Captain Marvel, and an unexpected heroic power bump in WandaVision, this movie takes that teed-up, defined character and …
… does nothing of substance with her except for a very fun mid-credits scene. Monica comes off too often here as whiny, untrained, entitled, uncertain, and for the most part unpleasant, except when she’s called upon to be the movie’s Voice of Expository SCIENCE, and when she finally gets around to becoming a hero. The character, and actress both deserve better.
Every hero needs a villain, and with three heroes we should have a villain that is three times as good, right. Unfortunately, Zawe Ashton, for all her impressive resume, is directed here as a third-rater Kree leader/villain, Dar-Benn.
Given her background and the situation on Hala, there are a lot of interesting ways you could have done that character. An admirably do-or-die patriot for her people that you could almost appreciate as a noble enemy. Or maybe a victim of madness in the face of her race’s impending death, someone you can feel sorry for and hope that she will be helped.
Instead, she comes off as just a “mean girl,” animated more by petty resentment toward Captain Marvel than a deep-seated philosophical stand or a fiery-hot desperation. Her scheme is crazy to begin with, and turning it into revenge tour on Carol just makes it feel more not-in-a-good-way silly. As such, Dar-Benn ends up weakening every scene she opens her mouth in, and keeps a lot of the “serious” aspects of the film from gathering any weight.
The rest of the supporting cast is workable — some random SABER agents, a handsome prince, a Skrull emperor, and, of course, Samuel L Jackson drawing a tidy paycheck for a very pedestrian Nick Fury rendition.
But, again, as legit as all those disappointing elements are, we still had fun. Keep remembering that.
The backdrop for all this has problems as well. There are some decent VFX, in my opinion — but also some not-very-good ones as well. The hex-grid hyperspace effect from the Guardians movies is still here, but both more simplified and more oddly tactile than before. Okay, fine.
On the other hand, some of the fixed sets (on the initial planet, on the Kree ship) are pretty disappointing, and feel like visual sacrifices were made to make them convenient locations for big battles.
That said, the fight choreographing with three protagonists — especially against the villain, especially when they are body-location-swapping — is very neatly done. Indeed, the whole quantum entanglement / body-location-swapping thing works far better than it should, to both humorous and action effect (see the Original Trailer, above, for examples).
Music-wise, aside from the Captain Marvel primary theme, and the “musical” scene, the soundtrack varies from mediocre to hackneyed. Laura Karpman has an amazing resume and I liked her work on “What If …?” but here the music is conspicuously, distractingly conventional.
Random other thoughts which I will try to keep not-too-spoily:
* So what exactly is Earth’s tech level these day? Apparently we have full-fledged space stations, with energy-cable space elevators, and instantaneous cross-galactic comm units, and recognized and active hyperspace gates. With no discernable difference to the people of Earth.
* On the other hand, the galaxy (or galactic neighborhood) sure seems awfully small. We have a limited number of hyperspace gates, and no indication that anyone but the Kree, the Skrulls (previously), and Earth are out there using them (or worrying about the problems occurring with them). I realize we weren’t going to see a Guardians cameo, but it makes the playground feel a bit cramped and unambitious.
* As always, very much appreciate that Ms Marvel’s costume aligns in style with her comic book version, and that it is “modest” in a non-frumpy way.
* Monica’s costume was unimaginative at best — though I did enjoy the under-arm sashes that the water people offered her, as a call-back to her original goofy comic book uniform.
* My problem with the “musical” scene was not its existence, but that the music was very Earth-conventional in chords and other musical structures. It didn’t feel intriguingly alien, it felt pedestrian Bollywood.
* Whatever happened to the water planet? Sorry, no time to consider that planetary ecological disaster, too bad, so sad.
* Nice to see Valkyrie’s too-brief cameo, but not only it feel way too much like almost-literal deus ex machina to solve a plot issue, but it was a solution to a plot issue that might have made a very big difference in a recent MCU TV show. Crikey.
* I loved the flerkin stuff. All the flerkin stuff. Kamala and the flerkin. Nick and the flerkin. Flerkins in space. So much fun. (Okay, all maybe except the question of why Carol flies through space, into danger, with Goose on her shoulder; it seemed more plot-driven than logical.)
* My wife suggested that SABER’s Employee Assistance Program was going to get a lot of heavy demand for the next few years.
* WTF happened to the other bangle at the end? No, seriously. Horrifying continuity gaffe or a last-minute edit of a cut scene that didn’t get explained (or CGed) in the final edition.
* Man, I sure hope we don’t have a new invasive species problem here on Earth.
This movie feels like it suffered from too-choppy writing, even with the highly publicized reshoots, exacerbated by a far shorter run time than it deserved.
As a result, character development and coherent plotting, not to mention the opportunity to take a breath from constant planet-hopping, were all in short supply.
It still has plenty of good moments, though, and I don’t mind the somewhat light-hearted, even whimsical nature of much of the film. Not taking itself too seriously was honestly not a bad thing; the movie’s weaknesses came up when it tried to be more serious and started dropping things all over the place.
I can see watching this movie again, though not at theater prices. Maybe on Blu-Ray when it comes out.
Would you like to know more?
If you are what you eat, you are also what you use to communicate
Marshall McLuhan famously said “The medium is the message,” noting that the nature of the medium used to communicate is itself an essential part of what is being communicated.
I didn’t think about it in those terms a year ago when I pretty much cold turkey switched from Twitter over to Mastodon. But it was, and remains, true. The social media tool I use is a reflection of my priorities, the way I want to communicate, and, ultimately, me and my message.
(Note: I created my Mastodon presence on 2 November 2022; I gave up Twitter for good on 13 December, according to — hey! — my blog entry about the same.)
I don’t recall what particular shenanigan Elon Musk pulled to make me make the switch. I’d been watching with alternating waves of mild humor and appalled horror at the whole “Is he buying Twitter or isn’t he?” fiasco of the preceding year. Having actually closed the deal, he started acting like the Joker at an art exhibit.
Not just destructive to Twitter as a company, mind you — crazy layoffs, damaging cuts in support, weird work demands — but destructive to Twitter as a social medium.
Let’s not get too sentimental. Twitter had long had a lot of problems. An open forum of its type could hardly avoid it. But, for all the less-than-good bits of it, there was a lot of great discussion, news, statusing, and commentary going on, and the management seemed to realize that they needed to act responsibly (or at least make motions like they were) for both moral and good business reasons.
Musk did away with all of that. His attitude toward social media seemed to be a Hobbesian war of “all against all,” with the most brutal (and view-garnering) voices “winning.” That the bullies and nihilists usually find it easier to out-shout people who really don’t want to shout in the first place wasn’t, for him, a bug: it was a feature.
So maybe it was making it easier on anti-semites, or some new offense against LGBTQ folk on the platform, or even getting rid of blocks on content and users spewing COVID fantasies and Election Denial.
Whatever it was, I had enough. It wasn’t a place I wanted to be. So, in remarkably short order, I wasn’t.
I do still occasionally peer over there, most often by inadvertently clicking on a link to an image pointing there. When possible I try to avoid it.
Because the medium is the message. And, for me, actively participating on Twitter is adding head count and click count and tacit support for Musk and his cronies and the Joker Gang wandering around the place and pissing in the corners.
I find it disheartening that so many Twitter members — news organizations, local and national government agencies, individual contributors I respect — are still on “X” (which rebrand exemplifies so much of what is wrong with Elon Musk and his private soap box). Not only is its technical reliability an increasing concern, but Musk’s abusive behavior against anyone who he takes a disliking to means its business reliability is dodgy as well.
“But, Dave,” you might say, “Twitter still has a huge following! We have thousands and millions of followers who would never, ever dream of moving over onto another platform! We’d lose a lot of money, a lot of influence, a lot of visibility.”
True. Those are all priorities. I suspect that any number of people who have, in history, chosen not to flee a country that was becoming increasingly unstable, hostile to them and theirs, oppressive, etc., used the same excuses. “I have a business here! I have a home! I have friends — fewer, maybe, than before, but I have a place in the community. I am sure it will all blow over soon …”
Those stories sometimes don’t end well.
I’ve been on a lot of social media over the years. I started a blog a couple of decades ago — too late for the birth of my kid, but just in time for 9/11. It saw a lot of use in the following years … but I also early adopted some lighter-weight content gathering. Google Reader in the day. Some early Twitter stuff. Then (insert angelic choir sound here) Google Reader, then, after that, back to Twitter, as life and attention span and stuff made shorter-form stuff a lot easier to do.
And then all the Twitter stuff above, and …
… off to Mastodon.
On the surface, the two platforms are similar — short-form individual messages, threads, etc.
But as so many have commented, the environment on Mastodon is a lot more … quiet. Not in terms of content sharing — I get more messages in than I can keep up with — but in terms of it all being less shouty, less click-baiting, less outrage-to-drive-eyeballs. There’s tough, incisive posting about things, as well as a lot of silliness. There are people dedicated to a given topic, and others who (like me) wander about, making noises about politics, comic books, or silly jokes.
I’m not quite sure it yet feels like home, but it is feeling increasingly comfortable.
One thing I want to work on is sharing my contact from there to here. One reason I like having a blog is that it’s mine — dependent only on my paying quarterly hosting bills, not on the business plan of anyone else. That said, one of the things I like about Mastodon is its decentralization, so that if one instance is mismanaged or lets the deplorables run roughshod, it’s easy to isolate the damage and/or move to another host if needed.
Anyway, cross-posting on an automatic basis from There to Here — to act as a repository and a place I can more easily pull past info from — is high on my list of things to do (which is still very long).
Mastodon isn’t perfect. That decentralization makes for a few sharp corners when trying to find people or share stuff. It’s actually improved there over the last year, but it’s a slightly steeper hill to climb than simply hopping onto Twitter or Facebook, etc.
I think Mastodon, as a “kindler, gentler” environment, sometimes gets contentious over whether people are being properly kinder and gentler. This pops up in debates about the platform and what should be the soft rules and the hard rules. Content Warnings (a clever tool) can be a touch-point, though I’m generally unaware of the extent of their use (as I simply have the window open to everything automatically, and don’t generally post stuff I think will be triggering to people).
Mastodon’s native inability (at the moment) to QTs is hotly debated whenever the proposal comes up — some groups find the feature too prone to abuse, others find it essential for how their sub-communities operate. I tend to favor them, but I’m able to work around that usually.
But so it goes. Any human community is going to have some sensitive points of friction, and the ones I tend to see on Masto are orders of magnitude less problematic than, say, Twitter debates about Were the Jews were behind COVID or if it was actually the trans people (so maybe we should do something to deal with both groups, just to be safe) …
At least that’s how I feel about it at the moment. The Masto I see and interact with is very open and accepting, especially to anyone who approaches conversation in a way that doesn’t easily translate into “Here’s my rationale for wanting you gotten rid of.”
This is probably far more info than I needed to share, esp. for something so trivial as my 1st Mastodon Anniversary. But there’s a reason I’m there (and why I’m not at my old there), and it’s probably worth writing down before everything changes again.
Net-net, I not only feel comfortable on Mastodon, I feel the general values and nature of the community there is something I’m willing to be associated with. If the medium is the message, the message Mastodon is currently sending is part of mine.
If you need help or advice getting yourself onto Mastodon, give me a holler.
If you’re looking for me over there, here’s where I am: https://mstdn.social/@three_star_dave
This very unchallenging movie could use a lot more fury.
Part of my DCEU Rewatch. First Watch? YES.
There might be spoilers … (but it’s hard to care too much).
I went into Shazam 2 knowing only that, with a huge stable of classic Captain Marvel villains, the creative team had chosen to come up with something new of their own — a big waste of possibilities, even if Captain Marvel’s classic villains tend to be stuck with a Golden Age sensibility to them.
(Don’t worry: there’s a lamp-shading post-credit scene for that.)
The bottom line is, after a sort of rocky start, and toying with questions of self-worth, of identity, of belonging, of independence, the movie finally settles for rollicking sibling action with some independent side quests (especially for Freddy) along the way. It’s cute, and it’s actually more engaging than when brushing on some of the deeper, more serious themes, but at the same time, it’s really, really generic. Half the kids (in either form) are random tropes, and aside from Billy having imposter syndrome and Freddy falling for a girl, there’s not much there actually there.
The antagonists are generic godly types resentful of the wizards who stole their powers and the one wizard in particular who passed them on to Billy (and through him to his family). There’s some slight interest here in that the three godly sisters, the Daughters of Atlas, don’t agree on policy, which leads to some not-insignificant conflict between them. But even with talents like Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren involved, it still feels (to use the word again, and intentionally) generic.
(How this movie’s depiction of the fall of the gods jibes with the the analogous backstory from Wonder Woman is not worth thinking too much about. Ironically, SPOILERS, Diana herself makes an appearance, leaning into the god thing herself a bit more than usual, but also classing up the joint tremendously.)
Shazam 2 isn’t a bad film. It’s just sort of fluffy, middle of the road, undistinguished. If there is actual “super-hero fatigue” in movie audiences (and I think there is, to the extent that super-hero movies are now like anything else: audiences demand something special and interesting, not just a satisfaction to a hunger for anything about super-heroes; they want steak, not hot dogs, or at least a thick, juicy burger), Shazam 2 is definitely a self-victim of it, generally entertaining but safe and unchallenging. It’s the summer family comedy that you’re sure you’ve seen the commercials for, but don’t know anyone who went to see it (or who thought the viewing noteworthy enough to mention at work).
What it also is, is proof that in no way would a Shazam/Black Adam film ever, ever work. Ever. They are tonally way too different.
Or, on consideration, maybe I’m wrong: the seriousness and confrontation with violence that Black Adam would bring to Shazam might shake the sub-franchise out of its family dramedy doldrums, while giving Teth-Adam something to do other than brood and murder.
Not that we’ll ever know one way or the other, since it seems unlikely this iteration of Shazam will ever make it into the New, Improved DCU. And, with Billy Batson turning 18 “in only five weeks” (something he makes a somewhat uncomfortable point of mentioning to Wonder Woman), maybe this a good opportunity to bring this particular tale to a close, even if it weren’t being shut down by WB in the first place.
Do you want to know more?
Not as bad as I expected, not as great as Dwayne Johnson wants you to believe.
Part of my DCEU Rewatch. First Watch? YES.
There will be spoilers …
After its critical and box office drubbing, I was not holding out much hope for Black Adam. To my surprise, it’s actually a decently crafted super-hero flick, with some unique elements that make it not just another slog. It’s not the paragon of the genre, no matter how much Dwayne Johnson wants you to think so — there are some plot and characterization elements that are more than a bit goofy. But that said, there are far worse DCEU films (I know — I’ve watched several of them this past week).
The theme of being a hero vs. being an avenger (small A), or force of anger, or even just a protector, is centrally, though shallowly, addressed. Johnson, in the title role, sometimes comes across like David Bautista’s Drax — literal and violent in a way that’s meant to be endearing (and turns disturbing if you give it any thought) — but when he relaxes he — and the movie — are eventually able to more or less walk the fine line between serious issues and situational humor.
Some notes from the viewing:
¶ Ultimately, the question for the movie is going to be how well Dwayne Johnson does Black Adam. If this movie had never been made, fans would have debated the matter for decades.
Well, the movie was made, and the answer is: pretty darned well. Physically, of course, he’s perfect — big, bald, and brooding. Emotionally, the brooding part works, too, as well as the glower. He has some emotional scenes he carries off decently. This is not a King Lear star turn, but he filled what it was just fine.
(OTOH, we can debate whether his wrestling-style publicity-driving behavior — aggressive hyperbole about his future role in the DCEU — might have been one of the factors that turned audiences away from the movie, or, more importantly, turned the WB execs away.)
¶ Along those lines, the anti-hero thing is getting a bit tired, but Black Adam does provide us with a novel instance of it: a brutalized man, from a brutal culture, with the power to be brutal to the folk he thinks need brutalizing. I sort of got some flashes of Conan the Barbarian there, early on.
¶ While appropriate, it’s also kind of cool to see a movie like this set in a foreign country — and focused on its people — rather than another supers film centered on the US. That another country could have a history, could have patriots, could serve as something more than an exotic plot layover or a homeland for terrorists — is probably the most imaginative thing about the film.
That said, the treatment doesn’t get more than skin deep. While I’m a little glad that we didn’t get the usual gang of juntaists or dictators, saying that Kahndaq has been taken over by Intergang for the past several years isn’t telling us much (even for someone who recognizes the reference, as 95% of the fans won’t). Other than strip-mining for the hitherto unheard-of “Eternium” for their hi-tech weapons and transport, the question of what Intergang is doing there — how and why they are controlling the country, or who is even running the show — is handwaved aside, leaving those bad guys as merely often-faceless mooks for Black Adam to kill.
That speaks to a bigger flaw here: the idea that a nation could fundamentally exist, especially as a perpetually-conquered geographical realm, for five thousand years without serious cultural disruption or confusion of identity. To take a parallel example, Iraq doesn’t deem itself Assyria, or Babylon; it barely holds itself together as a nation, vs. regional ethnicities. The history and socio-politics of Kahndaq is (or should be) no different. We’re not just speaking out against colonialism, here; a lot of that “foreign” domination would be by regional neighbors.
Ditto with people tracing their heritage back 5,000 years. No matter what Ancestry.com tries to sell you, or how much your family talks about an object being “in the family for generations,” 5,000 years is really beyond the pale. Anyone who stepped forward claiming to be the last descendent of Nabonidus would be locked away.
That’s a problem brought over from the comics, though, not new with this movie. And, yes, it may seem weird to cavil at such a point in the face of a guy who can fly and punch people through stone walls. But romanticizing such things is culturally degrading in its own way, a subtle but real orientalism. Moon Knight had its own problems here, but still did a better job of focusing on the present world and its problems, not making everything dependent on the past.
¶ It’s brought up on a couple of early occasions that Black Adam is vulnerable to Eternium — what Intergang has been using (and even labeling!) in their new weapons. Weirdly enough, this basically gets dropped as a plot element (so to speak), even when Adam gets caught in the explosion of their fancy jet bikes.
¶ There are some odd (or at least noteworthy) narrative choices in the film. One is that the titular character is absent for a big chunk of the Fourth Act, after he surrenders to the JS and gets locked away under the Arctic Ocean. Such a powerful presence leaves a big gap — and that’s a bold move.
On the other hand, we have the narrative structure that Kahndaq is being controlled by Intergang (one in a list of five thousand years of conquerors, as discussed above), but we only ever see low-level mooks and mid-level fellow-traveler Ishmael; Intergang almost a McGuffin antagonist, there to provide victims to Black Adam and big explosions as their strip mining operations blow up real good. I read that there was originally an intent to include Bruno Mannheim as the head of Intergang; that might have been a distraction, but it might have lent a bit of focus to this aspect of things.
Note that it’s not that the Intergang thing is unbelievable in and of itself (glowy jet scooters aside). Read a bit about how the Wagner Group (yes, that Wagner Group) has been involved (or involved itself) in a number of African civil wars, mostly to literally take over extraction industries there for a tidy profit. The thing is that Intergang here has absolutely no personality. They operate checkpoints in “the city,” and strip mines in the desert, and that’s about it.
¶ On the other hand, there are two very neatly done twists. First, that the solitary named bad guy (Ishmael) actually wants to be killed by Adam (thus why he turns off the Eternium force field at the penultimate conflict) so that he can … get turned into Sabbac (which he figures out will happen in some unexplained fashion). It turns what looks like an early, almost-big-enough victory, into just a stepping stone for the final act. I know that I didn’t glance at the clock, but instead wondered, “Is this really how it ends, with the bad guys foiled, and Adam being sent into black ops exile?” They fooled me, and that’s a good thing.
Second, we have the unexpected twist in Teth-Adam’s backstory — and what he does about it. It’s quite nicely executed, and actually lends some character to the character. Having followed Black Adam as a character since DC pulled him out of just being a Captain Marvel/Shazam antagonist, I wasn’t surprised by it (variations have show up before), but the abrupt but believable shift in the history does good things to make Black Adam — if not more sympathetic, at least a bit more understandable as a person.
¶ I am amused to read that, for a movie that features (indeed, calls out) such a high body count, it originally garnered an “R” rating for it, and so had to be toned down — largely, I suspect, by simply not “showing” the deaths, just showing Black Adam tossing people high into the air, dropping them from great heights, or smokelessly electrocuting them.
I don’t know — turning (even marginally justified) mass murder into something of a bloodless joke is a bit disturbing. I mean, it was also disturbing in The Suicide Squad (2021), and even in the various Guardians of the Galaxy films, but there it worked. In those films, the question is, can someone who kills people (for fun, for sport, for money) also be a good person in some way, caring, self-sacrificing, even arguably heroic? Here, Black Adam is trying to establish who he is, for himself and his associates and his nation, and he seems happy to not be any of those positive things, as long as he can work out his anger.
I don’t know — it bears more consideration. Perhaps it’s simply that The Suicide Squad wasn’t afraid to lean into it — it accepted its “R” for “strong violence and gore” (among other things), rather than hiding the results of that strong violence by simply having Black Adam throw bad guys over the horizon.
¶ I will confess I watched this movie much more to see the Justice Society than to see Black Adam. And, remarkably enough, I was not disappointed.
Well, disappointed a little. That their mission is to protect “global stability” is … in its own way, as amoral and anti-heroic as Black Adam, vows against killing aside. They represent a world order that seems accept Intergang controlling a country (or, since there’s been no independent Kahndaq for five thousand years, a region within some other country) and stripping it for resources — accepting enough that when someone pops up and potentially will be disrupting their operations, the US Government calls in some big guns to publicly knock that someone down.
The Justice Society are not the good guys here. That they get called out for that a bit by Adrianna was a good thing to see.
That illusion of moral high ground is further damaged by their being in bed with Amanda Waller (and dumping a prisoner off to a Task Force X black site). To date, we’ve only seen Waller running her “Suicide Squad.” Presumably, the JS doesn’t have bombs in their heads, which makes me wonder what the backstory is for these ostensible heroes. We never get much hint of it
In such a (literally) gritty environment, the cool Nth Metal (!) Hawk Jet (and its very silly launch sequence) feel quite out of place.
That said, I loved the characters. I could do without the Atom Smasher / Cyclone flirtation, but Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate and Aldis Hodge’s Hawkman were wonderful, and quite in character. I am actually surprised we got to see as much of them, in and out of battle, as we did — though they all lacked much in the way of context (if only to provide contrast to Black Adam), and they all needed briefings on (a) de-escalating conflict, (b) how to minimize civilian casualties, and (c) the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
I mean, you only say “Kneel or Die” when you want to escalate conflict, right?
Damn. I really do want to know more about this group, because it seems under- and poorly staffed. Hawkman is the world’s worst choice of leader, given his clear anger management issues, Doctor Fate is too often checked out, and the only other two members (one of them brand new) are too young to be acting independently. Is the Justice Society just a public operation of whatever group Waller runs or is part of? An actual government-sponsored team to be sent in when covert wet-work is not preferred, but an overt statement of US policy is? That would be a very cool twist (and an inevitable conflict with the JL) that we will never, ever get to see.
¶ Adrianna sure seems to turn on (or at least get suspicious of) Black Adam pretty quickly, upon conversation with the JS. It felt like there was a scene or two missing there.
¶ I’m sure there was no winking message there when Black Adam, in beating up Hawkman in Amon’s room, pointedly demolished every DC comic book poster he had. (Eyeroll.)
On the other hand, it’s fascinating to learn that the very real heroes in the DC Universe have comic books (and comic book posters) of themselves.
¶ The Black Adam / Sabbac BBEG battle at the end is almost anticlimactic, given what’s come before. Still, it actually does a much better job — maybe because it is grounded in a realistic-looking setting — of feeling real, even with all the energy being thrown about and illusions being cast. Having watched a lot of BBEG battles, this one was one of the best.
That said, it there’s no real sense going into it who is better, or if the two SHAZAM figures are dead even. That lowers the tension a bit, especially with multiple heroes involved.
Nice twist on the vision that was fulfilled/averted/accommodated.
I guess it was nice that the civilians had something to do during that battle other than scream madly and flee down the streets — but the zombie battle felt a little bit silly.
¶ In keeping with the comics (well, some threads of them with this character over the past decade or two), Black Adam becomes, not a hero, not a ruler, but a protector of Kahndaq. Which is totally cool, totally needed, and I’d love to see that kind of model show up elsewhere in whatever the DC Universe looks like in the future.
¶ The mid-credits sequence … yeesh. I know the DCEU’s Amanda Waller doesn’t always use the best judgment, but she has three Justice Society people working for/alongside her that could tell her that approaching Black Adam with threats is SO counter-indicated.
Of course, she (through some unexplained means or another) demonstrates the power she claims to be able to wield. Also, of course, though we don’t see it, I can very easily see Adam punch Superman in the snoot a half-second after the credits continue rolling, because, again, Black Adam as a character is all about showing who’s dick is bigger if he thinks someone is challenging that point.
It’s all a moot point, of course. Black Adam was a cinematic dead end. Its mediocre financial performance — not really deserved, but Johnson’s ego-boosting hijinx around this, as well as fatigue over the known collapse of the DCEU — means we will not see a sequel to this, or see Black Adam show up elsewhere, and, most likely not any of the Justice Society members, either.
Which is a shame. As I said, I kind of liked this film. I can see coming back to watch it again in the future, too … even if it’s just a footnote in cinematic history.
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