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In some sense, it is really his wife that is the main driver in this film.
I mean, maybe I am making too much of it, but it seems that she is the principal agent of the entire film.
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I couldn't quite say why, but this movie felt a whole lot like "The Tree of Life (2011)". I guess it is another exploration (to some degree) of the notion of Grace. Interestingly, Grace in this film is embodied in a sort of naturalism/witchcraft.
I also thought the mixing of a sort of magical surrealism into the story was well done.
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I'm currently in St. Louis and so thought it would be fun to watch this. The musical numbers were good, and I was surprised that both "Clang Clang Clang goes the Trolley" (The Trolley Song) and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (of the same name) were from this film. Which I thought was fun.
Weirdest parts:
Also, Grandpa seemed to be the only fully functional/formed adult in the entire family, so props to him.
I think I most wanted to see this film to try to place the optimism and pride that people had in Saint Louis at the beginning of the 19th century. Saint Louis at the time had almost twice the number of people as it does today. Saint Louis was central and growing city at the time. It is interesting to see that even in the fictionalized wonder of this film. I imagine the population collapse of modern Saint Louis would quite surprise someone from 1903.
I just finished an entire book and I genuinely think almost nothing happened in it. I am now reading the reviews and noticing that many people say it is best to just skip this one entirely. I am too much of a completionist to do so, but in recommending this series I would advise anyone else to skip this and just read the online summaries for this one. It is almost entirely a book of just world building and characters. Honestly, I am kinda impressed by the pure audacity of the whole thing.
This book perfectly hits what it aims for. It is a bit too "let's take a 90's New York cop show and set it fantasyland" for my taste, but you have to admit, it did a pretty damn good job of it.
The packaging was very familiar to anyone watching broadcast tv in the 90's. Clean, efficient writing. Pacing was good. I was genuinely entertained and would certainly consider reading the next in this series.
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I wish I had someone with me who deeply appreciated this series. Watching it solo, I thought it had some surprisingly prescient things to say about the disconnect from reality, the multiple versions of yourself online, and the loss of humanity that might occur as people join the Wired (internet).
I got these insights through my own experience, but I have been told that to (really) get lain, you might need to read more about it online. I am not sure that I will, and I am always a little hesitant to recommend something that can only be truly appreciated with further context.
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This is one of those movies that I largely enjoyed because I think it might be reflective of a culture or lifestyle (Shanghai, single mother) that is very foreign to me.
China, more than many places, is a country that is very difficult to get a "everyman on the street" read on. I think maybe something comes through in works like this, though maybe that is like judging American culture via the Barbie film.
I genuinely wonder how Robert Jordan sketched out this book? The next book evidently runs concurrently to this one. So when he wrote this one did he do so as a basic "background material" for the next book? Did he plan to do this ahead of time or did he make the decision to do so when he realized he had a bunch of B plots that he needed to partially resolve before he got to the "big action" end of this book.
Anyway, two major events happen in this book, and it feels like it should be a bigger deal, but you are so sort of overwhelmed by the amount of background noise going on that it is hard to even place them in perspective.
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The soundtrack and some of the special effects are the only redeeming thing about this film. If I had to point a finger I would say the editor/cinematographer are most to blame. It's hard to describe a visual medium as noisy, but it is all I can think to describe this. Slow motion scenes to excess, character arcs that just occur with no explanation, plot holes that you could drive a Recognizer through. Just... subpar.
I notice how much cleaner and professional most writing is becoming on the internet. I've also noticed that the average articles seems to have ballooned in size. Seems like every writer suddenly fell in love with emojied bulleted list.
I suspect that the reason for this is that more and more people are using AI to guide their writting. I'm not criticing anyone for doing so, the LLM can almost certainly write better than you ever could.
My own writing is weak. Stylistially I constantly put things in parentheses that should be better expressed as separate thoughts. I loose the tense of the paragraph all the time. I wander around ideas without finishing them. Sometimes I don't even bother to spellcheck. Tons of problems.
But I think that I am going to stick to writing without LLMs. For three principal reasons:
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A tight 90 minute thriller with no car chases and minimal action. Actually, there weren't even necessarily any "bad guys" in this film, depending on how much your adhere to Realpolitiks. Not to say that there weren't abhorrent characters, but they seemed to all be guided by differerrent interpretations of their reality.
And the movie, despite being very short, actually gave you enough time to at least begin to gather what those different interpretations were.
Honestly a pretty impressive feat in such a compact film.
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Felt like Napoleon Dynamite meets Sicario. Also kind of reminded me of Taken in the sense that things are being done that are so high visibility, and yet the world as a whole does not seem to react to them (just like in Taken's evidently lawless France).
A kind of gross movie about boring people doing nonsensical things.
I think the only character I actually liked was Benicio Del Toro's, he had a cool vibe to him.
If I did not love these characters like family, I would admit to myself that this is just not a very good book.
For one thing, it is Mat'less, which is weak.
We spend a whole whole lot of time in Egwen's power struggle as Amyrlin, which has it's moments. And I wonder if the notion of a ruler taking extraordinary wartime powers felt like a fresh idea at the time? I don't know, seems so common these days that it feels kinda hackneyed. I raised a serious eyebrow when supposedly only 1 Aes Sedai was aware of the implications of what they were doing. That seemed kinda forced.
Anywho, a little happens in this book, the weather gets better, and then there is a big boom at the end. Fin.
I went to the Yasukuni Jinja Yushukan museum in Chiyoda City, Tokyo. Roughly (if I remember correctly) 1/2 of the exhibit is on pre WWI excursions, with the last 2 being WW1 and WW2.
It is also a rather interesting museum if you want to hear the "other" view on the geopolitics leading to WWII. Unfortunately, these are not the sorts of conversations that are even remotely worth having on the internet, so I will leave it there.
Interesting museum, recommend.
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I was in a bit of a mood in Shinjuku and just wanted something to relax to. I saw it at the 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku, which was a luxury theater on I believe the 17th floor of a tower. It was an interesting experience as people actually seemed to be hanging out in the lounge before the film. Popcorn and drinks were included (with refills) up to the start of the movie. I'm curious if this luxury film model will work out any better here than it has in the United States. Still, it was enjoyable.
The film was pretty cool in terms of animation. I have seen one previous in this serious (I think the train one?) and other than a brief recap from my friend know nothing about this series. I always think it is interesting how often Japanese animes tend to like to humanize even the "bad" characters, this one was no exception.
I've read this before (twice), but this is genuinely a great book. I think few authors are as observant, critical, and yet still forgiving of human foibles as Jane Austen was.
I probably last read this something like 15 years ago. One thing that I didn't remember from the book (relative to the film) was how long the scene at the end where Darcy and Elizabeth discuss their misunderstandings is. I guess the film had replaced my memory of it.
Actually, on the subject of lost memory, I feel that when I saw the film in theaters 20 years ago it literally ended on Keith Sutherland saying "... send them in, I am quite at my leisure". I thought that was just an incredible end to the movie, not showing the love of the characters but implying it instead. However, when I watched it again on home video I was suprised to see that there was an ending past that scene with Elizabeth and Darcy at moonlight I believe, recounting their love and all that. I much prefer the film ending on Sutherland than the scene of the happy couple being the ending, it is just so confident an end to a film. With that said, the actual "couple at moonlight" ending is actually closer to the book (though incredibly compressed).
Anywho, it makes sense not to have the "remembrance" section of the book in the film, as you literally just watched all those scenes less than 2 hours ago. While it does make sense in the book, as you read each of those scenes many hours (wall clock likely days) ago. Just an interesting example of how certain things in literature are not translatable to film.
I am actually relatively new to drinking coffee (I'm a tea man). With that said, I quite enjoyed Austin's coffee culture. I like the energy from having other people around you who are focused. I enjoy the pleasure of listening (ok, evesdropping) when two friends catch up. I appreciate the education of watching two businessman negotiate a preliminary deal.
It has been more than a decade since I regularly worked at coffee shops, and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.
My only real regret was that in Austin I had to drive myself to each coffee place. It was also not uncommon to drive somewhere and find that I could not find any reasonable parking. Someday self driving will fix this, but it is still a thorn in what is otherwise an almost completely enjoyable outing.
This got me thinking that I should travel somewhere with the intent of partaking in "cafe culture" on the daily. I want to be able to travel (ideally walk) to nearby cafes, roughly 2 a day, and work for several hours at each of them. I am thinking go to the first cafe in the morning for a few, then break for an extended lunch, and then do another extended cafe session in the evening. There are lots of options (Vienna, Melbourne, NYC), but many of those are more money than I am willing to spend at this time. I decided that I will do a sort of limited tour of East Asia, starting in Tokyo, and then moving on to Seoul and then Kuala Lampur. I am planning on spending roughly a month at each of these 3 locations. At this time, I only have Tokyo booked in terms of hotels. I will play the future by ear.
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I.. I did not love this film.
It is odd, I feel like the individual pieces (even up to entire scenes) are quite good. However, the whole is just less than its parts. What was our character's growth here? Who sacrificed what for whom? What big emotions were at play?
I don't know man. I just couldn't figure out what Luthor's motivation even was here? Why was he so bent on this? Something about humanity not having to shine in Superman's beneficent aura? Really? You are going to potentially destroy the world for that?
Superman's transformation was just... kinda vapid. He was good because biological mommy and daddy told him to be good, then he learned they were actually bad, then he was sad, and then he was good because adoptive daddy tells him to be good. Like, you are 30+ years old man. I just don't get it.
As I said, lots of the individual scenes were great, but when you back out and ask "why are we here? What is he trying to accomplish? What is the point of this subplot?" it is just weak. Why are we having a scene where superman white river rafts down a proton stream holding a baby while his dog rescues him?" Why is Lois lane and like 5 other people in Mr. T's baseballmobile like doing something... aren't they reporters? Why do the Green Lantern's splinter at the most opportune time to help him?
What is anyone's motivation here?
It just does not add up to much honestly.
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What an odd duck.
It is sort of an argument for a strong man authoritarianism form of government. I was a little chilled about how prescient it was about the next great war (ok, there were no "death rays" or whatever, and chemical warfare was much less prevalent, and the airplane bomber did not render the battleship obsolete, but still). You sometimes forget how much people worried about the next big war after the first one.
It was also kind of wild to see a prohibition (and pre-code) film. I thought the idea of a "alcohol dispensary" was kinda wild, but it turns out those actually existed! Evidently some states allowed the sale of alcohol (for medicinal purposes). So points to this movie for motivating me into learning about my countries history.
Anyway, I didn't like the premise of a "spirit" taking over the president. I didn't like some of the proposed solutions. I didn't like the strong man arguments. And it wasn't a particularly captivating film.
However, it did give me some insight to some of the mindset that people had after the greatest war the world had every known. And I think that is worth something.
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Wow this was some really strong acting. Well paced and without any unearned moments. I was quite impressed how much was wrung from a fairly simple setup.
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Enjoyed. So many of these scenes felt... I don't know, like 4 panel comics. But where the punchline is visual rather than written gag. Never hilarious, and a little tedious at points. But enjoyable through.
If you look into it, there are messages here about class, modernism, old vs new urbanism, tech fetishism, and more. But I almost feel that to do so is to deconstruct a pleasant film into is more base, constituent parts. It is a bit of a disservice.
I picked it up as the the back cover made it sound quite fun. I think I found this book because I was looking for fantasy books where the fantasy creatures are forced to interact with the modern world. Unfortunately, it didn't capitalize on its back cover premise.
The writing was honestly a bit dull, and our protagonist Bart was a bit of a Mary Sue.
This came off more like a "let me tell you about something I once heard" and less like an actual adventure story. I would have enjoyed it quite a bit more as a 45 minute short film than as a (admittedly thin) book.
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Give her pointed ears and she could be mistaken for a Romulan! I wonder if this influenced the design of them in Star Trek? I know that this was a fairly popular film in its time and it isn't inconceivable that Roddenberry sampled from the film?
Cute movie, main critic is that the transition in her disposition occurs so abruptly that it almost feels like there is a missing scene or something.
I liked the three Russian bunglers, good sense of timing.
Also a little bit of a a love letter to Paris, though more as an excuse for our characters than as an actual study of the city.
This is one of the weaker books in the series. Maybe it should have been divided differently? I'm honestly not sure. I enjoyed parts of the Min/Rand interaction, and I thought the Salidar subplot was alright (too much dreamtime), but the Mat section was just dull until the literal end.
We will never know, but I'm curious what exactly was Robert Jordan thinking when he made this book? Was there a point where he consciously decided to just slow progress? Surely his early readers and editors told him that this was becoming tiresome. Just odd how unhurried this book feels.
Decided to go on a bit of a walkabout (well, road trip) last week. Decided that this is also an Spent about a week packing my stuff out of my (note to future self, always pay other people to pack and move for you). I am not a huge fan of Vegas or Reno, so basically just wanted to get through as much of Nneevada as I could in a day. Ended up staying in Fernley Nevada in a Comfort Suites. I was actually kind of surprised that the room was clean, the continental breakfast was sufficiennt, and the checkin and checkout was easy. It seems strange that a small town would have ammenities of that level.
Minor note: I was kinda impressed by this clock that had the time displayed on three separate faces.
