Hearts and Minds

Iranian anti-Trump art is really pretty good.

Hope: Wut I Thunk

Take your pick -- boring and formulaic, or a genre-busting swing for the fences?  With the South Korean film Hope, you're getting the latter kiddo!  And the results are pretty disappointing.  What starts out promisingly as a sort of small town cop meets a village-eating alien is pretty good, with some excellent practical effects and camera work.  But the second act really starts to stretch things out, to the point where we've got a dozen different characters doing their own thing and it's simply too hard to keep track of all of them.  Then there's the final act, which goes in a direction that simply doesn't pay off anything set up earlier in the film.  Individual performances are fine, and there are some funny moments amidst the ultra-violence, but this is a swing and a resounding miss.  Also, way too long.

Two amazing leather cop jackets out of five!

To Stay Or Not To Stay, That Is The Question

My local movie theater now lets you know if your movie has mid- or end-credits.

Like everything Marvel, it's way overdone but I do appreciate the info.

Where Ya Been, James?

Mandu and Chingu both turn four in October.

I'll keep it short -- I put an offer on a house down in North Carolina last month.  Inspection turned up some major issues, including the roof and drainage / standing water.  North Carolina gets a lot of rain, not to mention wind and even hurricanes, so I walked.

I drove down again last weekend and now have another offer out.  It's a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood, and now I'm waiting for another inspection.  If it gets a relatively clean bill of health (roof was supposedly redone in 2019) I'm going to buy it and ideally getting out of Maryland by the end of 2026.

I'm ready to live near, not on, the beach and start a new adventure with these two non-rent-payers above.

Adulting, man.

"that old fear, and that old pain"

"'Lord,' I said. 'Lewis, you're out of sight.'

'Who knows,' he said. 'But I believe in survival. All kinds. Every time I come up here, I believe in it more. You know, with all the so-called modern conveniences, a man can still fall down. His leg will break, like Shad Mackey's. He can lie there in the woods with night coming on, knowing he's got two cars in the garage, one of them an XKE, a wife and three children watching 'Star Trek' as he lies trying to get his breath under a bush. The old human body is the same as it always was. It still feels that old fear, and that old pain. The last time I was near here...'"

-- James Dickey, Deliverance

Mushroom Trail

Seen on a recent walk around my neighborhood.  I can only guess I'm being lured into a cooking pot.  It's been a surprisingly wet summer here in Frederick -- last two summers I swear everything turned brown by the end of July and stopped growing.