The Long Walk: Wut I Thunk

When it doesn't seem like it should work, it manages to.  When it has moments that might be capitalized on to go from good to great, it doesn't quite manage.

Mark Hamill isn't given much material to work with, so he grunts a lot.  The violence is predictably graphic, but the script also manages to bring some warmth and humor at times.

It's ultimately a movie about relationships, as strange as that might sound in such a twisted world.

Peter, the second lead, has an accent that swerves crazily between rural Alabama and Cockney London.  It's truly distracting.

The ending is safe and predictable and goes against a major sacrifice by the main character.  If only it had ended about one minute sooner it would have been something special.

Three sets of post-apocalyptic insoles out of five!

"bigger and bigger machines"

"'Strategic considerations dictate the construction of bigger and bigger machines, and, whether we like it or not, this inevitably means an increase in the amount of information stored in the brains. This in turn means that the brain will steadily increase its control over all of society's collective processes. The brain will decide where to locate the infamous button. Or whether to change the style of infantry uniforms. Or whether to increase production of a certain kind of steel, demanding appropriations to carry out its purposes. Once you create this kind of brain you have to listen to it. If a Parliament wastes time debating whether or not to grant the appropriations it demands, the other side may gain a lead, so after a while the abolition of parliamentary decisions becomes unavoidable. Human control over the brain's decisions will decrease in proportion to the increase in its accumulated knowledge. Am I making myself clear? There will be two growing brains, one on each side of the ocean. What do you think a brain like this will demand first when it's ready to take the next step in the perpetual race?'"

-- Stanislaw Lem, The Investigation

"only statues"

"Suddenly, after I finished a poem, he said, 'Esther, have you ever seen a man?'

The way he said it I knew he didn't mean a regular man or a man in general. I knew he meant a man naked

'No,' I said. 'Only statues.'

'Well, don't you think you would like to see me?'

I didn't know what to say. My mother and my grandmother had started hinting around to me a lot lately about what a fine, clean boy Buddy Willard was, coming from such a fine, clean family, and how everybody at church thought he was a model person, so kind to his parents and to older people, as well as so athletic and so handsome and so intelligent.

All I'd heard about, really, was how fine and clean Buddy was and how he was the kind of person a girl should stay fine and clean for. So I didn't really see the harm in anything Buddy would think up to do.

'Well, all right, I guess so,' I said.

I stared at Buddy while he unzipped his chino pants and took them off and laid them on a chair and then took off his underpants that were made of something like nylon fishnet.

'They're cool,' he explained, 'and my mother says they wash easily.'

Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed."

-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Crabs, Hon

A crab feast with my sister, brother in law, and nephew.  Not cheap, but very delicious.  A nice way to end the summer.

Frederick, Late Summer

Frederick, Maryland.

Summer was a mixed bag.  Bring on fall!

"a din like silversmiths"

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,   

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.   

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,   

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me   

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock   

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space   

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths   

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

-- Sylvia Plath

My Two Cents

With everything going on politically with and within Ukraine the basic calculus is the same: Putin won't give up, and Ukraine would be stupid to take a deal that just means Russia waits a year to rearm and invades again.

It is good to see the UK and EU stepping up, but hopefully they realize it's fight in Ukraine or fight in ten years in Poland and the Baltics.

Kitty TV

 

Chingu and Mandu are fascinated by the newly born bunnies in the backyard.

Fantastic Four: First Steps, Wut I Thunk

I'm a sucker for retro-futurism, and that's probably the best thing about this film.  No spandex, just wool!  Performances are fine except for the huge bad guy Galactus, who literally says almost nothing other than he's hungry for planets.  Johnny Storm is kind of the dumb lady's man, but a twist in the plot gives him a little more credit for having some brains.

The real question is, in 2025 are superhero movies still something worth watching?  I'd say this is an above average Marvel product, although just that.  The Silver Surfer never really looks right -- too much CGI or too little I don't know.  Natasha Lyonne is criminally underused, as is her relationship with The Thing.

Three Clobberin' Times out of five!

Bark At The Moon

R.I.P. Ozzy Osbourne.

I guess it makes sense that as a 90s kid I was too busy listening to Pavement and Nirvana to really give Heavy Metal the respect it deserves until I was older.  His antics and drug use covered over some incredible talent.

"historic events in themselves"

"It hurt him to talk about it, she felt, but she guessed he didn't know how much, or how. She could tell he didn't unpack this, much, or maybe ever. He said that people like Ash made their whole lives about it. Dressed in black and marked themselves, but for them it was more about other species, the other great dying, than the 80 percent.

No comets crashing, nothing you could really call a nuclear war. Just everything else, tangled in the changing climate: droughts, shortages, crop failures, honeybees gone like they almost were now, collapse of other keystone species, every last alpha predator gone, anti-biotics doing even less than they already did, diseases that were never big pandemic but big enough to be historic events in themselves. And all of it around people: how people were, how many of them there were, how they'd changed things just by being there.

The shadows on the lawn were black holes, bottomless, or like velvet had been spread, perfectly flat."

-- William Gibson, The Peripheral