Movie Review: The Revenant

Movie Review
The Revenant

I should know better than to listen to professionals in the entertainment industry when they recommend a movie.

Uggh.

I had a casting director recommend “Birdman” to me a year ago.  I really hated it.

Then, today, I had the director of an acting school recommend “The Revenant.”  I didn’t realize until afterwards that this movie actually has the same director as “Birdman.” If I had realized that, I would have been more careful.

The thing is, with these professionals, they are looking with highly critical eyes at the details of the execution of the movie.  How is the acting? How is the camera work?  How is the editing?  They often particularly judge the quality of acting by the authenticity of scenes where the performer is suffering.  Ugh.

If those things are excellent, they like the movie.

They aren’t really looking at things like: Is this a fun movie?  Is it going to depress the viewer?

Now, with this movie, “The Revenant,” the execution is great.  All those technical details are just lovely.

Does technical quality make this a movie I want to see?

NO!!

The movie is all about murdering, raping, bleeding, groaning, gasping, spitting, suffering, crawling through the snow — and it’s winter — and it’s a very, very long movie, by current standards.  It’s two and a half hours of extreme, overwhelming suffering, by filthy, miserable, tortured people. 

Moreover, the acting roles are predominantly male.  Women are there to be murdered, raped, or otherwise exploited.  There is one female character who appears rather frequently as a ghost/memory — but, again, only because she is the wife of the protagonist.  Otherwise this is another of those male movies.

Moreover, I like to think of wilderness as beautiful and spiritual.  In this movie, it becomes an instrument of torture.  It makes me so happy to be inside, in a safe place — not being mauled by a bear, falling off a cliff, escaping by floating through icy waters. 

I have to feel, too, that this things is improbable.  The protagonist survives the unsurvivable. 

Then, at one point, he smiles.  I think this is the one technical flaw of the movie.  When he smiles, it’s suddenly a movie star smile — the million dollar smile of Leonardo DiCaprio.  That’s the one part of the movie that seems technically flawed.  Otherwise, DICaprio is a brilliant actor.

Anyway, if you liked “Birdman,” which I didn’t, you might like this one.

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Addendum:

It was interesting that the protagonist and one of the antagonists were both motivated by wrongs done to their children.

Movie review: The Force Awakens

So I went to see the new Star Wars, “The Force Awakens,” with my son.

I thought there were some interesting points. They brought back some of the original characters.  They brought in some new characters.  Some of the plot appeared to be a bit recycled as well, unfortunately.

For me, it was a sequel, part of a series.  I’m expecting to keep watching it.  I’m expecting to find out what is going on.  I expected to be left hanging at the end.

OK, so the villain was not depicted as really intimidating.  He has childish temper tantrums.  He looks like Severus Snape — kind of pouty.  He does battle with a guy who has never held a light saber before and does not instantly slaughter him. Still, I’m expecting this villain to be more intimidating later.  He’s not ripe yet.

My son was much more harsh. 

He said he had seen some Star Trek movies directed by J. J. Abrams.  He said “J. J. Abrams just doesn’t know how to do big. This is Star Wars.  It’s supposed to be big.”  I was impressed that my son was following this director and knew who he was. 

It made me think about Tom Hooper, who directed “The Danish Girl.”  He was certainly capable of making even ordinary scenes quite visually impressive — though there were other issues with that work.  I wondered if it would have been more visually impressive with Hooper.

We went home and watched the phantom menace again.  This was a bit of a challenge.  it’s on VHS tape.  I haven’t actually used my VCR in about 10 years or so.  The picture kept migrating off screen — like we used to get with poor broadcast signal — with the top half of the picture on the bottom of the screen and the bottom half on the top half of the screen, and a dark line between.

Still, I had to agree that the older movie was more captivating. 

The music was certainly much more dramatic.  We called those older movies space opera.  The music seemed subdued by comparison in the recent movie.

George Lucas spent more time scanning the space craft, slowly, so that you could really appreciate their size or craftsmanship. 

My son pointed out that when they destroyed a planet in the original Star Wars, they built up to it and
 had Princess Leia being really upset while watching it.  Here they just destroyed planets willy, nilly with no reaction by anyone.  Just fireworks. It seemed more fake than in the original movie.

Actually, when I think about it, I didn’t think this woman who is essentially the main character, was acting all that well. 

My son wished they had hired Idris Elba to do the villain’s voice in the new Star Wars movie, because he thought Elba would have been able to do a real villain voice.  I asked my son, who has a nice, full, bass-baritone voice, how he would have done the villain voice.  He’s actually quite a good actor, though he’d never do it for an audience.  He said he wouldn’t try to imitate James Earl Jones, because he wouldn’t be able to do it as well. Instead, he demonstrated with a hoarse, hissing whisper, which certainly could have been effective.

Also, he pointed out, and I guess he was right, that when they used the force, it wasn’t as credible as it was in the earlier movies.  This was partly due to the sound effects.

Still, I wonder, if it had been really grandiose and pompous, like the originals, would we accept that now?  Doesn't it make sense that these are people who are kind of muddling through?  Not sure.

Anyway, I really thought Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher did well — much their old selves.  The big surprise was Mark Hamill.  Somehow he was suddenly the Luke Skywalker of that first, old movie (“New Hope”) — just loaded with charisma and presence that he hadn’t had in the later movies.

Of the newer performers, I was most impressed with John Boyega.  I thought he was great throughout.

Adam Driver I'm reserving judgment on.  Like my son said, he doesn't have that kind of charisma like the original Darth Vader, but maybe he's not supposed to.

Yeah, ok, I guess I have to concede my son’s point that if the original movie had been like this one I probably wouldn’t have been as excited about the series.  I’m not sure that’s the point, though.  My son said he wouldn’t necessarily want to see the sequel of this one.  I think I would.

Anyway, we went on Christmas day & it wasn’t very crowded, which was nice.  And we saw it in 3D.  I expected the 3D to make it more exciting, but it didn’t seem to.

Terrorism and the USA

I'm thinking about the news stories out of Paris.

I'm remembering

1) this blog I wrote in August: Iran: Bitter Harvest

2) estimates of 500k dead from our second invasion of Iraq: civilian casualties in Iraq

3) estimates of 500k CHILDREN dead in Iraq due to the economic boycott we led between the Iraq wars: Economic sanctions kill children

4) all these public shootings that are purely domestic: domestic shootings rise

How dare we accuse others of being terrorists?  How dare we?

We talk about stopping terrorism?  How about stopping our own horrible behavior that gives rise to terrorism?

On dealing with death

These are some comments I wrote recently to a sponsee relating to dealing with death.

For me, it's part of the disease to always focus on the negative and never the positive.

I like the Hindu trinity: Brahma; Vishnu; Shiva -- it's a cycle: create, sustain, destroy/transform, respectively.  When I first heard about it, I thought that Shiva, the destroyer/transformer, must be a bad guy -- like our Satan.  I was quite surprised to discover that Hindus regard him as a loving God -- the cosmic declutterer. 

Once I attended a seminar at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the earth sciences, graduate campus of Columbia University.  I heard a presentation about disaster hotspots: places where natural disasters are closely located to population centers.  These disasters include floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, and storms. The worst disaster hotspot in the world was in the Ganges valley of India. 

It made sense to me then how they had to include Shiva in their trinity.

In the western tradition, we always refer to HP as "creator."  That's incomplete.

We're still in a time in our world when more people are being born than are dying, though.

Another interesting thing that I heard was when I attended a seminar on fear at a local yoga ashram.  The speaker said that fear is often associated with fear of loss.  Then she said, "if we truly believe that we are part of a universal whole, than we must believe that nothing is ever truly lost," or something to that effect.  I may be distressed because things are redistributed somewhere where I personally cannot access them, but that is a selfish distress.

For instance, in physics we learn that time is a dimension, just like the physical dimensions of our visible world.  We humans have not learned to travel in time.  Presumably, tho, an omniscient HP can do so.  Therefore, people who seem lost to us do not seem lost to HP.  It's just that we personally cannot access them according to our current perspective.

I find these thoughts helpful in dealing with loss.

@wsj article about alliance against the Islamic State

9/28/15 There was an article on the front page of @wsj, talking about an alliance between Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria to fight the Islamic State militants.

The POV for the article was that somehow this was reducing USA influence in the Middle East and therefore hurting us.

Hello?

Why aren't we cheering? Don't we want the Islamic State militants eliminated?  Aren't they the wicked terrorists?  Isn't it great that this diverse group is assembling to accomplish just exactly what we're hoping for? 

Why do we have to make everything be about us -- about our giant egos getting bent out of shape?

Why does every article about China or Russia in the mainstream USA media have to be with the "see no good, hear no good, speak no good" framework?  Can't we stop this negative knee jerk reaction and notice when these people are doing something good?  Are we so simple minded that we can see no nuance, no complexity, no evolution? 

@wsj should be ashamed of itself for arousing people into fear and hostility over this.

Equal Rights Amendment

I see that NOW is going for the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) again.

This was the text of the failed ERA:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification

This amendment floundered before for 2 main reasons

1. People did not want co-ed restrooms
2. People did not want to see women drafted or put in combat -- and did not want to compel the military to do that.

Also there were concerns about maternity leave and special protections for moms.

Let's fix this amendment before re-presenting it. Let's add some things

Section 1 Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of [sex] gender, provided however that this provisions shall not be interpreted to
a)  prohibit gender segregation of sleeping, bathing, or toilet facilities;
b) require conscription of females;
c) require the military services to put females in combat or in combat units with males; or
d) relate to provision of beneficial health or work accommodations or services, where those are necessarily biologically gender specific.

You'll notice that the American language has changed.  The word "sex" now commonly refers to sexual acts, rather than the gender of individuals.  The word "sex" is no longer appropriate to this amendment.

Sometimes issues are complex and need more consideration.

I do foresee difficulties because of the gender reassignment trend that is currently so much in the public eye.  It may be that additional language will have to be considered to cover this situation.

Iran: The Bitter Harvest

[this essay was written in support of an agreement that Barack Obama reached with Iran in August of 2015, but many of the points continue to be applicable after that issue has passed from the public consciousness]

We, in the USA,  find ourselves reaping the bitter fruits of a long period of misguided foreign policy, policy that has been as evil as it has been stupid. We have supported brutal, unpopular regimes around the world to advance short term interests, ignoring the ill will we were sowing in the people affected. We have repeatedly abused our super power status.

First, there was the anti-communist period.

Iran is only one country that has been the object of such treatment. Our CIA helped overthrow a popular government in Iran in favor of a shah, whose policies were more palatable to us.

This action totally ignored the future. Most Iranians were furious about our actions. Eventually they wrested control back to an elected government. This government, being a reaction to anger over our actions, was angry at the USA and unpleasantly conservative, more so than it might have been if we had not intervened.

We did something worse in Chile, where we conspired to destroy an 84 year old democracy, because the elected president was a communist. The resulting brutal dictatorship was known for "disappearing" large numbers of people.  This became the topic of a popular song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESSbVYHHS0o

Worse still was our intervention in Viet Nam, where we fought for years to prevent a popular election, because we feared that communists would be elected. The result was untold carnage. Fortunately those people are Buddhists and seem to have forgiven us.

With the passage of time, we have come to see that our domino theory ideas, which led us into many of these actions, did not come to fruition. Politics is much more complex than black and white dotted toys. We also did not recognize that a communist government, popularly elected through a constitutional democracy, might be a very different thing from the Soviet Union or Maoist China.

I don't really understand the history of Korea, but whatever we did there has at least contributed to the survival of the fiendish lunacy that they call a government there.

More recently there has been the period of attacking Muslim regions.

The evil folly of our intervention in Iraq is fresher in our memory. First, we took the side of Kuwait in an oil dispute, ignoring the fact that Kuwait was one of those countries where women were held as slaves, while Iraq was a country where women had relatively better status. Women's rights have never taken a sufficiently important role in our considerations of foreign policy.

Then Bush II, and Cheney, conspired to deceive the American people into participating in a second war in Iraq that benefited Cheney's company at horrendous expense, both in money and in human lives. They overthrew a stable government that kept terror under control, in favor of violent anarchy. They violated the Geneva convention, relating to war criminals, a treaty our country self-righteously imposed on others, by authorizing torture and refusing international inspection. They are war criminals, yet they walk free.

Afghanistan is a strange story. Our fear of the Soviet Union was so great that we backed and trained the mujahideen, an insurgent group that opposed Soviet influence in the region. We didn't look too closely at who we were training, because we trained the likes of Osama bin Laden.

I remember reading an interview with a mujahideen member in Time magazine back in the early eighties. The fighter was asked why he opposed the USSR. He replied that they wanted to educate women and girls, which he opposed. It immediately occurred to me that, in our blind fear of the Soviets, we had rushed to help the bad guys. We saw that later, when the Taliban arose, saw too late the folly of our actions.

Then we rushed to install Karzai in Afghanistan, one of Bush II's oil industry cronies, becoming involved on the pretext that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan, when it now appears that he was in Pakistan. While this action seemed temporarily successful, we see the Taliban coming back now -- those same women haters who we helped back in the 70's and 80's.

Ever since WWII, our military adventurism has been mostly evil and stupid, earning us much enmity all over the world.

People in the Middle East, in particular, remember military adventurism from other countries as well, notably European countries, not only in modern times, but also in ancient times,  especially during the crusades – which is still a topic frequently mentioned by terrorists, and which provokes a lot of negative emotions in the minds of Middle Easterners.

I remember being in seventh grade social studies and having Mrs. Raymond, at Cherokee Junior High School, teaching us about the Monroe Doctrine.  For those of you who don’t remember, this was a policy instituted during the early history of the USA.  We undertook to protect other Western Hemisphere countries against European military incursions. 

I asked her, “Who is going to protect them from us?”

She said “No one needs to be protected from us.”

Really, Mrs. Raymond?  Really? Why are we studying in a school called "Cherokee?"  What did we do to the native peoples?

So now we find, "Gee whiz! Iran is actually a fairly powerful, wealthy country. They're developing nuclear capability, and they hate us."

As I stood on 8/10/15 in front of the Manhattan building where Schumer has an office, protesting Schumer's stance on Obama's agreement with Iran, I heard a counter protestor shouting, “do you trust Iran?” He was talking to someone else. I didn’t say anything,

Afterwards, I thought “No, I don’t.  Do you trust the government of the USA? If you do, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.”

Still, my sense is that Iran is not part of the “axis of evil,” the way Bush II characterized it.  They have a democracy – granted not perfect, but still a democracy of sorts.  The people there do have a deep concern about morality – maybe not our sense, but still a sense.  They’re not at all like North Korea, where the people are held in slavery to a mythical king.

One question is whether Iran is less to be trusted with nuclear weapons than countries that  already have them, such as Russia, China, Pakistan, India, France, the UK, Israel, and North Korea.  I would personally rate them as more trustworthy than North Korea and Pakistan – possibly on a level with China and India, in terms of the quality of people who are in government. 

We should note that, as afraid as we were of Russia using nuclear weapons against us, it has never happened.  Please note my prior blog about Russia Russia v Ukraine a Dissenting View

What is the only country that has used nuclear weapons in war?  The USA!

What moral authority do we have to say that we should have nuclear weapons – and other weapons of mass destruction – while others cannot? My view is none – no moral authority whatsoever.  Our history is shameful -- as I've listed above.  We're just international bullies.

The real problem here is that Israel is afraid that Iran is going to attack them.  It’s not the nuclear weapons exactly – after all Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons itself, though I don’t think that’s been officially confirmed.  The problem is that Iran has committed to wiping Israel out. 

It’s a unfortunate that we’re arguing about nuclear weapons rather than the real issue.

It would be more cool if Iran were committing not to invade/bomb Israel, much more cool, but what we have is this proposed agreement.  It’s remarkable, given that we have had this ignominious history of perfidy with respect to Iran, and so many others, that they’re willing to talk to us at all.  That’s to be celebrated.  That we got any kind of concessions out of them at all is a miracle.

Can we trust them?  No.  Can they trust us?  No.  Will they abide by the agreement?  Who knows?  Will we? Who knows?

Still it’s progress. It’s a commitment not to go into nuclear weapons.  That’s cool.  It should be supported.

The alternative seems to me to be war – short-sighted, evil, misguided war – a reflection of the short-sighted, evil pattern that we’ve been exhibiting for so very long. Let's stop this pattern.  Let's stop trying to control the world.

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Addendum 8/26/15 Here is a link to the FCNL flyer on the topic of the Iran deal FCNL FLYER

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I was at a protest demonstration in front of Chuck Schumer's office and an obnoxious person came up and started making outrageous statements which I later realized were sardonic critiques of Obama's Iran Deal.  She claimed he would do well as Hitler, and wanted to wipe out Jews.

I found this offensive.  My father was a refugee from the Holocaust, because his ancestry was Jewish.  

I do not want to wipe out Jews.

I think that we have a better chance of negotiating with Iran about Iran's position on Israel if we have good relations with them.  This deal is a good step in that direction.

Also she implied that Iran is like North Korea. NO.  I don't think so, not at all.